Free Republic

... For insurers, it’s not about the political machinations but rather, it’s about the potential economic losses. If even part of the predictions hold — the ones released by the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change that ascribe temperature change to humans with 95 percent certainty — then the rate of extreme weather events will only increase and the effects would be more severe. That, in turn, would lead to greater damages and more payouts. Meantime, Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services just issued a report saying that the credit ratings of sovereign countries would be affected by global warming. It pointed...

... Think of it this way: Once upon a time it was possible to take climate change seriously while remaining a Republican in good standing. Today, listening to climate scientists gets you excommunicated - hence Rubio's statement, which was effectively a partisan pledge of allegiance. And truly crazy positions are becoming the norm. A decade ago, only the GOP's extremist fringe asserted that global warming was a hoax concocted by a vast global conspiracy of scientists (although even then that fringe included some powerful politicians). Today, such conspiracy theorizing is mainstream within the party, and rapidly becoming mandatory; witch hunts...

Global Warming: A noted researcher who questioned the climate's sensitivity to greenhouse gases says his paper is not being published for ideological reasons and because it might fuel doubt in the climate change story. First the climate change zealots tried to manipulate the data. Now they are trying to control the debate they claim is over. It's not over, though, and the science is not settled as true science never is. But those, such as Swedish climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson, who dare to challenge the climate change orthodoxy are being silenced in an organized campaign.

The fallout from the new government’s budget is still being seen in Australia, but it is already obvious that climate change is a loser when it comes to funding. The budgetary facts are inescapably grim for researchers and scientists based in renewable energies and research. The funding for all government programs related to climate change is set to shrink at an alarming rate, going from $5.75 billion this year to a scant $500 million in the next four years.

A major insurance company is accusing dozens of localities in Illinois of failing to prepare for severe rains and flooding in lawsuits that are the first in what could be a wave of litigation over who should be liable for the possible costs of climate change. Farmers Insurance filed nine class actions last month against nearly 200 communities in the Chicago area. It is arguing that local governments should have known rising global temperatures would lead to heavier rains and did not do enough to fortify their sewers and stormwater drains. The legal debate may center on whether an uptick...

Scientists have warned about climate change and its consequences for decades. Now, the military is taking a stand. “I think the days of isolation are over,” Donald Hoffman, a retired four-star general in the Air Force, said yesterday during a Columbus Metropolitan Club panel discussion. “We will be pulled into things ... because it’s the right thing to do and there’s no one else to do them.” Hoffman is one of 16 retired military leaders who contributed to a report on climate change and national security that was released this week. “The one thing we didn’t get right was the...

What keeps you up at night? That’s the question economist Gary Yohe, one of the architects behind the White House’s 2014 Climate Assessment report, posed to several of his co-authors during a May 6 panel in Washington D.C. Unsurprisingly, the assembled team of climate experts and other academics had no lack of answers, ranging from the possibility of more extreme weather events to the risk of climate-induced mental health degradation. But what keeps Iowa State University climate scientist Gene Wanker up at night is what climate change could do to one of humanity’s most basic needs. “I worry about food...

Kerry to warn of climate threats to national security in speech By Laura Barron-Lopez - 05/14/14 11:43 AM EDT Secretary of State John Kerry plans to give a major speech on the connection between climate change and national security this summer. In an interview with the New York Times, Kerry said the speech would also be an opportunity to build political support for President Obama's climate agenda. “We’re going to try to lay out to people legitimate options for action that are not bank-breaking or negative," Kerry said. A central part of that agenda are regulations to curb carbon emissions...

A slow-motion and irreversible collapse of a massive cluster of glaciers in Antarctica has begun, and could cause sea levels to rise across the planet by another 4 feet within 200 years, scientists concluded in two studies released Monday. Researchers had previously estimated that the cluster in the Amundsen Sea region of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would last for thousands of years despite global climate change. But the new studies found that the loss is underway now as warming ocean water melts away the base of the ice shelf, and is occurring far more rapidly than scientists expected.

Replacing fossil fuels with renewables as the world’s primary source of energy will not only save the planet from dangerous levels of warming – it will also save the global economy US$ 71trillion by 2050. This is the finding of a report, Energy Technology Perspectives 2014, released today by the International Energy Agency, which looks at the direction of the energy sector over the next 40 years. The changes needed to keep the world within 2C of warming— a widely agreed target in efforts to tackle climate change – will benefit the global economy, confirms the report, although a “coordinated...

When a team of researchers from the University of Delaware traveled to Africa two years ago to search for exemplary chickens, they weren't looking for plump thighs or delicious eggs. They were seeking out birds that could survive a hotter planet. The researchers were in the vanguard of food scientists, backed by millions of dollars from the federal government, racing to develop new breeds of farm animals that can stand up to the hazards of global warming.

WASHINGTON - It is time to craft new politics and economic policies to address the sustainability crisis, according to the latest edition of a flagship report by the Worldwatch Institute, a think tank here. “We need to rethink many of our basic economic assumptions and mechanisms, and aim not only for a better and wiser distribution of resources, but also a better sharing of available work. This can’t be accomplished via conventional forms of capitalism.” The global community has delayed addressing the issues associated with rapid climate change and environmental degradation for too long, according to the 294-page report, “Governing...

OLYMPIA – Gov. Jay Inslee appointed a new task force to find ways for Washington to reduce carbon emissions as part of an executive order to fight climate change. At a speech at Shoreline Community College on Tuesday, Inslee outlined goals in an order that calls for less carbon pollution and more clean energy sources, including a reduction in electricity generated by coal-fired power plants and increased use of electric vehicles and mass transit.

Changing cattle fields to forests is a cheap way of tackling climate change and saving species threatened with extinction, a new study has found. Researchers from leading universities, including the University of Sheffield, carried out a survey of carbon stocks, biodiversity and economic values from one of the world's most threatened ecosystems, the western Andes of Colombia. The main use of land in communities is cattle farming, but the study found farmers could make the same or more money by allowing their land to naturally regenerate. Under carbon markets designed to stop global warming, they could get paid to change...

If modern industrial capitalism were a person, he or she would be on suicide watch. The system that has brought us quantum physics and reality television, modern medicine and the columns of Andrew Bolt is set on a course which, by all the best reckoning, points directly to its doing itself in. If capitalism goes on — everything goes. Climate, coastlines, most living species, food supplies, the great bulk of humanity. And certainly, the preconditions for advanced civilisation, perhaps forever. Moreover, we’re not just talking risk, in the sense of an off-chance. These are the most likely outcomes for capitalism’s...

1) What do you make of the extension of the comment period for federal agencies to Keystone XL? President Obama said he would take his time to make a considered decision whether or not to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, and that appears to be exactly what he's doing. 2) The State Department wrote in a recent report that even if the pipeline isn’t built, the oil will still be exported by other means. So, is protesting the pipeline fruitless? Not at all. 3) For many, the debate on Keystone comes down to jobs. The presence of a pipeline will...

Climate activists just can’t seem to catch a break on Capitol Hill. Michael Grimm has become the first sitting House Republican to stop denying the science that humans cause climate change. But now the second-term lawmaker from Staten Island might be facing his own dangerous climate — inside a jail cell. POLITICO reported late Friday afternoon that Grimm, who has been the subject of an investigation into alleged campaign finance violations, expects to be indicted in New York. Shortly before that story broke, the pro-Obama group Organizing for Action had been celebrating Grimm’s about-face on climate change. “That’s huge —...

While researchers have sometimes connected weather extremes to man-made global warming, usually it’s not done in real time. Now a study is asserting a link between climate change and both the intensifying California drought and the polar vortex blamed for a harsh winter that mercifully has just ended in many places. The Utah State University scientists involved in the study say they hope what they found can help them predict the next big weird winter.

Virginia’s highest court has denied a conservative group’s effort to force the University of Virginia to turn over emails from a controversial climate scientist who worked at the school. The Virginia Supreme Court on Thursday held that the public university wasn’t obligated under the state’s freedom of information law to release thousands of emails that Penn State researcher Michael Mann wrote while he was a UVA professor several years ago. Mr. Mann in 2009 came under scrutiny among global warming skeptics after hackers leaked thousands of email exchanges between the professor and other researchers that suggested that the scientists sought...

The cult centered on “global warming” alarmism is getting hot under the collar. People seem to have stopped paying attention, and polls show “climate change” barely registers on a list of voters' concerns. This can only mean, as losing politicians like to say, that their message isn’t getting through. What to do? Why, shout louder, of course. A recent story in the New York Times sought to help alarmists raise the decibel level: “The countries of the world have dragged their feet so long on global warming that the situation is now critical, experts appointed by the United Nations reported...