Free Republic

... The president mocked those who question the science behind climate change or the urgency of addressing the problem, which has emerged as a legacy issue for his presidency and a polarizing topic in November congressional elections. "In most communities and work places, et cetera, when you talk to folks, they may not know how big a problem, they may not know exactly how it works, they may doubt that we can do something about it, but generally they don’t just say, no, I don’t believe anything scientists say," he said, to laughter. He likened evidence that human activity causes...

Annual property losses from hurricanes and other coastal storms of $35 billion; a decline in crop yields of 14 percent, costing corn and wheat farmers tens of billions of dollars; heat wave-driven demand for electricity costing utility customers up to $12 billion per year. Commissioned by a group chaired by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Secretary of the Treasury and Goldman Sachs alum Henry Paulson, and environmentalist and financier Tom Steyer, the analysis "is the most detailed ever of the potential economic effects of climate change on the U.S.," said climatologist Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University.

THERE is a time for weighing evidence and a time for acting. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned throughout my work in finance, government and conservation, it is to act before problems become too big to manage. For too many years, we failed to rein in the excesses building up in the nation’s financial markets. When the credit bubble burst in 2008, the damage was devastating. Millions suffered. Many still do. We’re making the same mistake today with climate change. We’re staring down a climate bubble that poses enormous risks to both our environment and economy. The warning signs...

Junk Science: Without evidence to back up their claims, climate zealots have taken to intimidation. They're blacklisting academics who have the nerve to question the "settled science" of climate change. The latest victim of climate McCarthyism is Caleb Rossiter, who, until his op-ed challenging the "consensus" on climate change was published in the Wall Street Journal, was a Democratic academic who briefly forayed into politics but was content to crusade against U.S. support for dictators and against the use of anti-personnel land mines. In that op-ed, Rossiter called himself an "Africanist." He not only questioned the science behind climate change...

President Obama, appearing emboldened after his recent move to cut carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants, on Saturday ridiculed members of Congress who deny climate change or plead scientific ignorance as an alibi for avoiding an inconvenient truth. Speaking in gleefully sarcastic terms to a commencement ceremony at the University of California, Irvine, Mr. Obama likened those who deny climate change to people who would have told John F. Kennedy, at the dawn of the space program, that the moon “was made of cheese.” He saved his most scathing words for lawmakers who say they are not qualified to judge...

Major negative effects of climate change are here now and they're only getting worse. We've gathered some notable effects of climate change below. 1. Climate change will be insanely expensive. 2. Hundreds of millions of people may be displaced by 2050. 3. Dengue and malaria could spread in the U.S. 4. Western wildfires could burn up to eight times as much land by 2100. 5. An additional 8% of the world population will experience water scarcity by 2100. 6. Hurricanes could become up to 11% more intense and 20% wetter by 2100. 7. Four times as many New Yorkers could...

A 2005 Senate trip to Canada opened Hillary Clinton’s eyes to the dangers of climate change and inspired her to push for aggressive actions to fight it, the former secretary of state wrote in her book released Tuesday. Clinton described flying over the Yukon Territory with three Republican senators and seeing large areas of spruce trees that had been killed by beetles driven north temperature changes. “A tribal elder recounted how he had returned to a lake where he had fished as a boy only to find it dried up,” Clinton said in her second book, “Hard Choices.” “I met...

WHEN it comes to dealing with the world’s climate and energy challenges I have a simple rule: change America, change the world. If America raises its clean energy standards, not only will others follow — others who have hid behind our inaction — we’ll also stimulate our industry to invent more of the clean air, clean power and energy efficiency systems, and move them down the cost curve faster, so U.S. companies will be leaders in this next great global industry and American consumers will be the first to benefit. That is why the new Environmental Protection Agency rules President...

Few places in the nation are more vulnerable to rising sea levels than low-lying South Florida. It's a tourist and retirement mecca built on drained swampland. Other coastal states and the Obama administration are taking aggressive measures to battle the effects of global warming. But Florida's top Republican politicians are challenging the science and balking at government fixes.

White House counselor John Podesta is “fairly confident” that proposed EPA greenhouse gas restrictions can survive scrutiny under the next president — and that Democrats can campaign on the climate change issue in races this year. “If you’re a climate denier trying to run nationally, I think you’re going to have a very hard road to go getting elected president of the United States,” he said. “There’s no doubt there’s some states where this is an issue that presents a different set of political challenges, particularly coal-producing states,” he said. “And there’s no doubt that the polluters have come after...

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy put herself at the mercy of the Internet on Wednesday by taking part in a question-and-answer session on the popular forum reddit. "Ask Me Anything," McCarthy wrote. reddit's users obliged. The account Gina_EPA, endorsed by McCarthy's Twitter account and the EPA website as authentic, answered 15 questions over the span of two hours. Many users seemed underwhelmed by her responses.

An Associated Press analysis of federal temperature records shows Carson City has warmed the most than any other city in the nation in the last 30 years. The average temperature in Carson City has risen 4.1 degrees since 1984. Boise, Idaho, came in second, posting a rise of 4 degrees. Las Vegas, known for its sweltering summers, was sixth, with an increase of 3.4 degrees. But it's the boost in summertime heat that really makes Carson City stand out.

The United States is warming fastest at two of its corners, in the Northeast and the Southwest, an analysis of federal temperature records shows. Northeastern states - led by Maine and Vermont - have gotten the hottest in the last 30 years in annual temperature, gaining 2.5 degrees on average. But Southwestern states have heated up the most in the hottest months: The average New Mexico summer is 3.4 degrees warmer now than in 1984; in Texas, the dog days are 2.8 degrees hotter. "In the United States, it isn't warming equally," said Kelly Redmond, climatologist at the Western Regional...

President Barack Obama might be the only black person on the planet who cares about climate change. Well, not really, but close—the ill-fated climate-change debate is as white as late-night talk shows. It’s that way for a number of reasons: from who funds either side of the heated climate conversation to allegations that environmentalists routinely dis black perspectives on the topic. Most egregious is a pervasive lack of urgent black political action on the subject. Even within the context of climate change’s devastating and disproportionate impact on communities of color, black politicos won’t follow the president’s lead on the issue....

For many congressional Democrats, new regulations on power plants are as much about health care as they are the environment. "The destructive effect of unrestrained carbon pollution is felt not only in rising temperatures and increased, more powerful natural disasters, but also in higher asthma rates in our children," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said it was a "moral imperative that we bequeath to our children a healthy planet with clean air and water." "As a mother, I’m concerned about the detrimental effects of pollution on our children’s health," the Florida congresswoman...

President Barack Obama kicked off a campaign to promote new restrictions on U.S. power plant emissions on Saturday by tying the fight against climate change with efforts to promote better health for children and the elderly. In his weekly radio address, Obama said the United States had to do more to reduce carbon emissions so that children suffering from asthma and other related ailments did not face further problems as a result of polluted air. Obama said the new guidelines would reduce smog and soot that threaten vulnerable populations such as the young and the aged and he said up...

What is the origin of the false belief—constantly repeated—that almost all scientists agree about global warming?Last week Secretary of State John Kerry warned graduating students at Boston College of the "crippling consequences" of climate change. "Ninety-seven percent of the world's scientists," he added, "tell us this is urgent." Where did Mr. Kerry get the 97% figure? Perhaps from his boss, President Obama, who tweeted on May 16 that "Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous." Or maybe from NASA, which posted (in more measured language) on its website, "Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that...

The war on climate change may soon be moving inside the kitchen. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy is set to unveil on Tuesday six federal grants to universities to fund research on clean cookstove technology. The announcement will put the EPA’s resources squarely behind a United Nations’ quest for cleaner burning stoves and an end to deadly cooking pollution. “This research will help to improve air quality, protect public health and slow climate change,” the EPA said in explaining why the agency chief will preside over the announcement on Tuesday. To make the case for why these grants are...

Studies warning of an Antarctic ice sheet collapse. A wildfire season that could shatter records. Shellfish eaten away by oceans turned more acidic due to greenhouse gases. U.N. and U.S. reports stating that climate change is advancing more quickly. Everyone gets down about their work from time to time, but for environmentalists, they can sometimes quite literally be dealing with the end of the world as we know it. “It’s hard to stay perky when scientists conclude that tragedy, such as the loss of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, is inevitable,” says Denis Hayes, a veteran activist who co-founded Earth...

Taxpayers paid more than $5 million to create climate change games, including voicemails from the future warning that “neo-luddites” will kill global warming enthusiasts by 2035. Columbia University’s Climate Center has received $5.7 million from the National Science Foundation for the university’s “PoLAR Climate Change Education Partnership,” to “engage adult learners and inform public understanding and response to climate change.” Based on the theory that games “motivate exploration and learning of complex material,” the school created “Future Coast,” a website that features hundreds of made up voicemails painting a dire picture of the future as a result of climate change....