Free Republic

a group of Democratic senators took cash from a Ukraine lobbyist to push Ukrainian gas interests at the same time the Democrats are pushing the Trump-Ukraine yarn. ... Remember Devon Archer, Hunter Biden's business partner? .. previously been a top fundraiser for John Kerry, who was Secretary of State at the time. And soon after Devon and Hunter joined the Burisma Board, the company channeled $90,000 to a lobbying firm called ML Strategies, which was headed by none other than David Leiter, John Kerry's former chief of staff. That's handy because then-Secretary of State John Kerry himself has visited Ukraine...

Jane Fonda has worn many hats during her Hollywood career — model, actress, activist — but apparently she also considers herself a climate scientist. “I’ve been a climate scientist for decades and decades,” Ms. Fonda told ABC News in an interview shortly before she was arrested Friday during a protest at the Capitol in D.C. Despite her “decades and decades” of climate experience, she credited her recent activism to 16-year-old Swedish protester Greta Thunberg, who launched the Fridays for Future climate strikes. “But it was Greta Thunberg, this little Swedish girl holding her sign every Friday in front of the...

Concerned that rising waves will flood runways and buildings in the coming years, officials at San Francisco International Airport are moving ahead with a $587 million plan to build a major new sea wall around the entire airport. The plan, the latest example of the growing cost of climate change in California, involves driving steel pilings - sheets with interlocking edges - into the mud and also constructing concrete walls in some places around all of the airport’s 10-mile perimeter. “This is something we’ve been looking at for many years,” said Doug Yakel, a spokesman for the airport. “What’s changed...

As it is becoming obvious that political responses to global warming such as the Paris treaty are not working... **SNIP** Solving climate change, in fact, requires getting China, India and all the other developing countries on board to cut emissions. But of course, their goal is to lift their populations out of poverty with cheap and reliable energy. How do we square that? A carbon tax can play a limited but important role in factoring the costs of climate change into fossil-fuel use. Nobel laureate climate economist William Nordhaus has shown that implementing a small but rising global carbon tax...

As Matt Kirwan walks through Maryland’s Blackwater National Refuge, his rubber boots begin to squish. With each step the land beneath him turns from dry ground to increasingly soggy mud. The trees around him go from tall and full of leaves or needles to short, bare and pale white. Partway out, ankle deep in water, Kirwan stops. “At this point we’ve transitioned from being in the forest, to actually being in a full-fledged marsh,” explains the Virginia Institute of Marine Science ecologist. “This ground is now too salty and too wet to support living trees.” Kirwan is standing in the...

As the anti-flying movement known as “flight shaming” is gaining momentum across Europe, Switzerland is adding new train services to some of its international routes. The TGV company Lyria, which is owned jointly by the Swiss Federal Railways and France’s SNCF, is adding trains to its high-speed link between major Swiss cities and Paris. Beginning on December 15th, 30% more connections will be offered to the French capital from Geneva, Zürich, Lausanne and Basel. That means an increase from the currently available 13,500 seats daily to 18,000 by the end of 2020. The goal of the expanded service is to...

The UK government must tell the public small, easy changes will not be enough to tackle climate change, warn experts. Researchers from Imperial College London say we must eat less meat and dairy, swap cars for bikes, take fewer flights, and ditch gas boilers at home. The report, seen by BBC Panorama , has been prepared for the Committee on Climate Change, which advises ministers how to cut the UK's carbon footprint. It says an upheaval in our lifestyles is the only way to meet targets. The government has passed a law obliging the country to cut carbon emissions to...

The power is out in Northern California. More than 1 million Californians are now without electricity, one of modern life’s essentials that is frequently taken for granted. The blackout was done on purpose—to prevent sparks from powerlines that could ignite deadly wildfires. Before planned blackouts are through in two or three days, as many as 3 million Californians may go without power. On the surface, the blackout and its causes are simple to understand. But the deeper causes are complicated, span decades of public policy, and dozens of overlapping unintended—and intended—consequences of decisions, both related and unrelated. The wind in...

The Republic of the Marshall Islands, one of the lowest lying island nations in the world, has declared a national emergency over climate change. The country’s president, Hilda Heine, tweeted the news Friday, blaming the international community for not acting quickly enough to mitigate global warming “of its own making.” “Our parliament has officially declared a national climate crisis. As one of only four low-lying coral atoll nations in the world, the failure of the international community to adequately respond to the global climate crisis of its own making holds particularly grave consequences,” she tweeted. The official declaration of the...

Well, surprise, surprise: The Norwegian Nobel committee has decided to award the 2019 peace prize to someone who at least worked on promoting actual .... peace. Here's the johnny-on-the-spot Guardian, which sets such store by such awards: "The Norwegian Nobel committee has decided to award the Nobel peace prize for 2019 to Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed’s efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation and for his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighbouring Eritrea." Apparently, they'd been ripping each others' heads off and he put a stop to it. In some purviews, that's called making peace. Which stands in...

Democrats are turning California into a third-world hellhole without electricity, water, and freedom. Due to Democrats' love for trees, at least 800,000 Californians will be without power for several days. Instead of properly managing California forests to reduce the chances of big fires, Democrats are saying Californians have to go without lights, refrigerators, and air-conditioning. Democrats could also avoid this by not making the power company financially liable for all forest fire damages, but since PG&E is a company, not an illegal alien, the Democrats couldn't care less about doing what's best for California. While they try to blame climate...

Nearly two-thirds of North American birds studied will go extinct if global warming hits 3 degrees Celsius (5.4ËšF), a new report from the National Audubon Society finds. Orioles, eagles, grouse and gulls are among 389 types of bird - 64% of 604 species assessed on this continent - that are highly or moderately vulnerable to climate change, the study says. The stark warning follows research published last month that showed the U.S. and Canada had lost 2.9 billion birds in about the last 50 years. The existential threat to birds also impacts humanity. As canaries warned coal miners of invisible...

Consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble faces pressure from environmentalists to clean up its act. More than 150 groups are pushing the maker of Charmin toiler paper and Bounty paper towels to use recycled materials in its products. Currently, neither of those products uses recycled paper, and about one-third of it is sourced from Canada's boreal forest — a large swath of virgin forest that rings the Arctic Circle and acts as a critical check on climate change. "It's just unacceptable that a company like P&G is making toilet paper, a product that is used for seconds and flushed, from...

Pacific Gas & Electric, California’s biggest utility company, shut off electricity to more than 1 million people on Wednesday in an effort to prevent wildfires caused by downed power lines. The utility said it cut power to more than 500,000 customers in Northern California and that it plans to gradually turn off electricity to nearly 800,000 customers to prevent its equipment from starting wildfires during hot, windy weather. A second group of about 234,000 customers will lose power starting at noon, the utility said. The power outages are expected to affect about 2.5 million people. The utility plans to shut...

Greta Thunberg became the poster child for climate hysteria and fraud by sailing across the Atlantic in a supposedly “zero-carbon” yacht, the Malizia II, which in fact was made out of petroleum products from stem to stern ... Malizia II, like the rest of the yachts in the Imoca 60 class, is constructed from high-tech carbon fiber composites to make it ultra light and fast. It is the ultimate play thing of the wealthy elite. These boats are made of hydrocarbons, not to mention all the energy it took to make them. Carbon fiber composites are primarily made from propane...

Despite being the start of meteorological autumn, September felt more like a summer swelter across much of the contiguous United States. The month was also drier than normal, but 2019 continued its soggy stretch with the wettest January through September period (YTD) ever recorded. The U.S. also experienced four new weather disasters since May, each exceeding $1 billion: Hurricane Dorian, Tropical Storm Imelda, a southern/eastern severe weather outbreak, and flooding of the Arkansas River that impacted Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kansas. Here are more highlights from NOAA’s latest monthly U.S. Climate Report: Climate by the numbers September 2019 The average temperature...

If you’ve heard of the phrase “carbon footprint” chances are, you’ve heard of Greta Thunberg. The impassioned 16-year-old climate activist is now the subject of countless news articles, angry tweets, and not surprisingly, a whole host of uncharitable memes. A polarizing force, you either love her for her devoted climate fervor or you hate her for the public spanking that she unleashed on world leaders for not taking the impending climate doom seriously enough. She has shamed politicians and individuals and has unapologetically called on the world to panic along with her. But does Greta really buy what she’s selling?...

A gas shortage threatens the Long Island region,” bleat six Long Island state senators, all Democrats, in a letter pleading for approval of a pipeline proposed to fix the problem — belatedly admitting that the policies they’ve long favored don’t work for their own constituents. This year, Sens. Todd Kaminsky, John Brooks, James Gaughran, Anna Kaplan, Monica Martinez and Kevin Thomas all voted for Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Green New Deal law, whose very purpose is to further crimp energy supplies, and for a $100 million hike in taxes on energy. And, as Senate GOP leader John Flanagan (their fellow Long...

Pittsburgh has become the second U.S. city to incorporate United Nations Sustainable Development Goals into its practices, planning and policies, an initiative that will affect more than $4 billion worth of public and private projects in the region during the next 12 years. Mayor Bill Peduto announced the commitment to the 17 U.N. sustainability goals Friday, saying they identify the most important issues facing the globe -- poverty, hunger, climate change, education, gender equality and health, among them. He said the goals will help inform coordinated and collaborative programs and partnerships with universities and nonprofit, business and civic sectors, and...

Although the wealthy can and should be expected to make larger sacrifices than the middle class, it's vanishingly unlikely that any plan serious enough to slow global warming will leave the bulk of Americans financially untouched. But if Americans are going to be asked to engage in a war on climate change, they should understand the material and economic sacrifices that will be required of them. The best way to do this is to look at an ambitious, well-crafted climate plan like the one put forward by Washington Governor Jay Inslee. **SNIP** Much of this could be financed with taxes...