Free Republic

With two Pulitzer Prizes to her name, Dana Priest is one of the Washington Post’s most celebrated reporters. Until Monday, when the Post published the first installment of a bombshell series on post-9/11 intelligence industrial complex, national security blogger William Arkin was hardly known to the paper’s readers. But from a media perspective, Arkin’s role as co-author of the series might be the more important. It marks the first time one of the Post’s bloggers – lately the cause of controversy because they sometimes blur opinion and reporting — has had a byline in one of the paper’s big, investigative...

Crusade against carbon dioxide threatens the environmentTechnologies advanced as the solution to the purported global warming problem are catching fire — just not in the way intended. Bureaucrats are quickly learning that their regulatory offerings designed to entreat Mother Nature into bestowing cooler temperatures upon the planet have created environmental hazards of their own. It’s well-known that the fluorescent light bulbs being foisted on a reluctant public spread deadly mercury when dropped. In March, the administration will be free to enforce a federally imposed ban on the manufacturing of warm, pleasing and affordable 100-watt light bulbs. This will force more...

Seattle would have more environmentally friendly buildings if environmentalists got out of the way.As a bastion of liberal values, Seattle is proud to be the capital of what some call Ecotopia. But local advocates of sustainable cities—densely packed urban landscapes with a mix of residential, commercial, industrial, and retail uses—are battling with Seattle’s neighborhood activists who, ironically, are using environmental regulations to stop construction of green-friendly buildings that would dramatically reduce energy use. Filing appeals based on the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) and the Growth Management Act (GMA), the activists have worked against the construction of two buildings, the...

MEMORANDUM THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON September 17, 1969 FOR JOHN EHRLICHMAN As with so many of the more interesting environmental questions, we really don't have very satisfactory measurements of the carbon dioxide problem. On the other hand, this very clearly is a problem, and, perhaps most particularly, is one that can seize the imagination of persons normally indifferent to projects of apocalyptic change. The process is a simple one. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has the effect of a pane of glass in a greenhouse. The C02 content is normally in a stable cycle, but recently man has begun to...

My apologies to the memories of the late Richard Llewellyn and late John Ford; but I just had to borrow their title for this post. This paragraph from a 2010 Telegraph article really says it all… Its 500,000 photovoltaic panels will generate 30 megawatts of electricity, enough, in the popular measurement, to power 9,000 homes. It is costing about $250 million to build, significantly less than a gas, coal or nuclear power station, which can easily exceed $1 billion. And it represents a sea-change in America’s energy business.America has been notoriously devoted to hydrocarbon fuels. Big Oil, Big Coal and...

Sen. Dick Durbin reacts to the tornadoes in Dallas, Texas earlier this week. Durbin calls for more laws regulating carbon output while he sends a dire warning that we must convert to hybrid cars or lose our life. Durbin says we must spend money now to fix the problem. "It's your money or your life," he said a press conference. "We are either going to dedicate ourselves to a cleaner, more livable planet and accept the initial investment necessary or we're going to pay a heavier price in terms of loss of human life, damage and costs associated with it."

The Global Warming Policy Foundation has produced yet another devastating report: this time on the economics of wind farms. Turns out they're even worse than we thought. Not only do the Bat Chomping Eco-Crucifixes (TM) ruin views, kill birds, cause bats to implode, destroy the British film industry, frighten horses, enrich rent-seeking toffs like David Cameron's father-in-law Sir Reginald Sheffield Bt, drive up electricity bills, kill jobs, create fuel poverty, cause old people to die of hypothermia, wipe out property values, drive people mad with strobing and noise pollution and enable smug liberal idiots to spout rubbish like "Oh, I...

At the turn of the twentieth century, President Theodore Roosevelt became embroiled in a public controversy over how some writers and naturalists described the natural world in overly anthropomorphic and sentimental terms. In a 1907 article attacking Jack London, among other writers, Roosevelt popularized the moniker “nature fakers,” those writers whom Roosevelt called “an object of derision to every scientist worthy of the name, to every real lover of the wilderness, to every faunal naturalist, to every true hunter or nature lover. But it is evident that [the nature faker] completely deceives many good people who are wholly ignorant of...

It was recently observed that Ron Paul was to the left of Obama on national security and the best evidence for that statement can be found when one year ago Ron Paul joined forces with Barney Frank​ on a proposal to gut national defense via a panel of experts, quite a few of whom were tied to George Soros​. In July 2010, Barney Frank and Ron Paul co-authored a Huffington Post article rolling out their Sustainable Defense Task Force. The Task Force “consisting of experts on military expenditures that span the ideological spectrum” would recommend a trillion dollars in defense...

Beginning in 2012, common light bulbs sold in the U.S. will typically use about 25% to 80% less energy. Many bulbs meet these new standards, including incandescents, CFLs, and LEDs, and are already available for purchase today. The newer bulbs provide a wide range of choices in color and brightness, and many of them will last much longer than traditional light bulbs. The lighting standards, which phase in from 2012-2014, do not ban incandescent or any specific bulb type; they say that bulbs need to use about 25% less energy. The bipartisan Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA...

Dr. Ann Maest is a managing scientist at Straus Consulting, and she’s the go to expert on all things groundwater. In the press release announcing her reappointment to the National Academy of Sciences, they mention that she is focused on the environmental effects of mining and petroleum extraction and production, and, more recently, on the effects of climate change on water quality. Maest is in high demand as an expert for those looking to stop oil and mineral exploration. She’s also heavily used by the federal government, even though after new details about her past work are coming to light...

Link only - Questions Raised After DOE Hides Costs Of Energy Projects Each project is listed in detail on the DOE's website, but the costs were recently taken down.

WASHINGTON, DC, Aug. 29, 2011 - America's top climate scientist and a large group of religious leaders were arrested at the White House this morning with 140 other Americans to push President Obama to deny the permit for a massive new oil pipeline. "If Obama chooses the dirty needle it will confirm that the President was just green-washing all along, like the other well-oiled coal-fired politicians, with no real intention of solving the addiction," said NASA's Dr. James Hansen, who was arrested at the White House this morning. President Obama must decide whether or not to grant a "presidential permit"...

Via Jonathan Last at the Standard. Remember a few months ago when people were snickering because GM had sold only 281 Volts that month? Yeah. The Nissan Leaf once again outsold General MotorsÂ’ Chevy Volt in July after GM slowed production of its electric car last month, giving Nissan a nearly 2,000-car edge in total sales.Nissan sold 931 all-electric battery-powered Leafs in July, bringing the total number of electric cars the company has sold to 4,806. General Motors only sold 125 Volts after shutting down its Detroit-based plant to retool it, bringing its total vehicles shipped to 2,870. General Motors...

A Sacramento federal judge has thrown out a challenge by environmentalists to the U.S. Forest Service's effort to prevent a recurrence of the disastrous Angora fire near South Lake Tahoe. The environmentalists argued the agency "failed to take a hard look" at the project's impact on a certain bird species, on future fire behavior and on climate change. Not so, said U. S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. The agency addressed these issues "in proportion to (their) significance," he ruled. One by one, Burrell shot down every aspect of the claim by Earth Island Institute and the Center for...

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard is set to reveal the details of a carbon tax designed to help fight climate change and billed as one of the nation's biggest economic reforms for decades. Labor leader Gillard plans to tax Australia's top 500 polluters for their carbon dioxide emissions as a means of reducing pollution, changing energy use and building investment in clean sources of energy. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard "No longer will the nation's biggest polluters be able to pollute our atmosphere for free," Gillard told a Labor Party conference on Saturday. "From July 1 next year, the freedom...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) announced Thursday that he would pull out of a regional climate pact by the end of the year, delivering a political setback to the fledging effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming. In a news conference, Christie said the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a 2005 accord in which 10 states agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions from power plants 10 percent by 2018, would not be able to meet its goals. The program requires plants in the region that burn fossil fuels to buy pollution allowances for the carbon they...

In his weekly address Barack Obama told the country that green energy jobs are “the jobs of the future.” The president continued to push his green agenda this week. At least 7 oil rigs moved out of the Gulf area to other parts of the world since President Obama initiated his oil moratorium last year. Obama’s energy plan includes blocking domestic drilling here at home. According to international studies subsidizing renewable energy in the U.S. may destroy two jobs for every one created. A study by researchers at King Juan Carlos University in 2009 found that 2.2 jobs were destroyed...

Barack Obama: Clean energy will deliver the ‘jobs of the future’ By: MJ Lee May 7, 2011 09:22 AM EDT For the third weekend in a row, President Barack Obama used his weekly address to the nation on Saturday to promote his energy agenda, calling clean energy jobs the “jobs of the future.” Speaking from the Allison Transmission plant in Indianapolis, where he visited on Friday, Obama lauded the workers at the hybrid technology manufacturing company for doing “big and impressive things.” “The clean energy jobs at this plant are the jobs of the future – jobs that pay well...

At an age when most of his peers are worrying about driver's licenses and the SAT, Alec Loorz is tackling some weightier challenges. This week, for example, he's suing the U.S. government in an effort to fight climate change. And right after that, he'll lead what's being billed as a "Million Kid March" in 25 countries. "I think it's awesome," the 16-year-old environmental activist and founder of Kids vs. Global Warming said by phone from his home in Oak View. "We don't have political power. We don't have the money to compete with corporate lobbyists. We can't vote. All we...

Steven Chu, Obama's energy secretary, has called for higher and higher gas prices to force citizens to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles and live closer to work. "Somehow, we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe," Mr. Chu was quoted as promising. By the way, Mr. Chu's goal would equate to $7-$8 per gallon. Sure enough, the Obama administration has slowed down or stopped the future development of most of the vast U.S. energy reserves, onshore, offshore and in Alaska. That is despite the fact that the United States' oil shale deposits,...

Obama floats plan to tax cars by the mile By Pete Kasperowicz - 05/05/11 07:45 AM ET The Obama administration has floated a transportation authorization bill that would require the study and implementation of a plan to tax automobile drivers based on how many miles they drive. The plan is a part of the administration's "Transportation Opportunities Act," an undated draft of which was obtained this week by Transportation Weekly. This follows a March Congressional Budget Office report that supported the idea of taxing drivers based on miles driven. Among other things, CBO suggested that a vehicle miles traveled (VMT)...

A bill in Washington state would tax electric vehicle drivers for the gas they aren't using to power their cars. As Sarah Gardner reports, it's all about finding new ways to pay for growing budget deficits. An all-electric vehicle exhibited in Santa Monica JEREMY HOBSON: New legislation in Washington state has electric vehicle enthusiasts all charged up. But not in a good way. The bill would tax EV drivers for the gasoline they don't use. From the Sustainability Desk, Sarah Gardner reports. SARAH GARDNER: Gasoline taxes pay for road maintenance and repair. But cash-poor states are beginning to worry about...

Times of international turmoil are great moments for domestic governments to make important announcements they don’t want to be noticed. Especially if the announcement involves a sudden reversal in policy that could seriously embarrass the government. So Friday afternoon was an ideal time for Ontario’s Liberal government to take a big chunk of its alternative energy program and chuck it overboard. .. After years of touting wind projects as a critical piece of the alternative energy puzzle, the government let slip — very quietly — that offshore wind projects are no longer part of the game plan. Turns out there...

Rather than seeing WikiLeaks through the lens of morality or national security, let's look at it through an institutional lens. To those of you who've been reading this blog for a while, that may be second nature. But to the newcomers, let me explain what I mean. Perhaps the most basic economic institution is GDP. And unfortunately, it's also one of the most in need of radical institutional innovation. So at the Cancun climate talks, one country has already committed to updating it for the 21st century — by including the costs of environmental damage to make the numbers a...

Three Rutgers University scientists came to Trenton Tuesday to give Governor Christie a message: climate change is real, and it's man-made.  The State House forum, sponsored by several environmental groups, was held in response to Christie's recent comments at a Toms River town hall that he is skeptical that global warming results from human activity. "I've heard over 100 different arguments about why we shouldn’t accept global warming. They're all fallacious and I'd be happy to point out the errors in any of them," said Rutgers professor Alan Robock, a meteorologist.Responding to a question at the town hall last month,...

Three years after he led the charge to require consumers to ditch their comfortable old incandescent lights in favor of those twisty CFL bulbs, Rep. Fred Upton now wants to be the man to help undo that law as the next chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. That about-face is not unique among lawmakers looking to atone for stances they've taken over the past decade as they seek to gain top posts in a decidedly more conservative Republican Congress, but his reversal underscores how intent the GOP is on proving it has broken with past practices. "We have...

WASHINGTON — With energy legislation shelved in the United States and little hope for a global climate change agreement this year, some policy experts are proposing a novel approach to curbing global warming: including greenhouse gases under an existing and highly successful international treaty ratified more than 20 years ago. The treaty, the Montreal Protocol, was adopted in 1987 for a completely different purpose, to eliminate aerosols and other chemicals that were blowing a hole in the Earth’s protective ozone layer. But as the signers of the protocol convened the 22nd annual meeting in Bangkok on Monday, negotiators are considering...

Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) seeks the chairmanship of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee (CNSNews.com) – Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) may have some explaining to do to fellow GOP colleagues as he seeks the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, given the incoming wave of new conservatives who may not appreciate some aspects of Upton's voting record.Upton joined with Rep. Jane Harman (D.-Calif.) in  2007 to co-author the legislation that effectively banned indoor incandescent light bulbs in the United States. In the last Congress, he an Harman teamed up again to offer new legislation that would extend the...

The military airlifted the suspected hijackers of the Arctic Sea and most of its Russian crew from Cape Verde to Moscow on Thursday, after the lumber freighter mysteriously vanished and reappeared in the Atlantic. Eleven of the 15 crew members arrived in Moscow, while the captain and three sailors remained on the ship, which was adrift about 200 nautical miles from the West African island nation of Cape Verde. Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said the freighter was sailing to the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk. The sailors and their suspected captors arrived in two separate Il-76 cargo jets at the...

(Reuters) - A German entrepreneur is bypassing a European Union ban on light bulbs of more than 60 watts by marketing his own brand as mini heaters.

South Korea's kimchi crisis has deepened, after the president was forced to step in amid fears that cabbage rustlers were descending on farms to steal the key ingredient in the nation's national dish. Kimchi is a fiery side-dish of pickled cabbage President Lee Myung-bak has this week ordered the government to block the price of staple foodstuffs from rising above international levels after the price of cabbage, which is used to make the fiery dish, increased sharply. "There is no reason for people on low incomes to purchase items that are necessary to daily life at higher prices than international...

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 15 (UPI) -- A California non-profit is urging sponsors to pull their ads from Fox News Channel, because of "a would-be assassin inspired by" Fox personality Glenn Beck. The Tides Foundation, which says it promotes human rights, justice, and a healthy, sustainable environment, has come in for frequent criticism on Beck's show. A suspect in a July 28 shootout with police, Byron Williams, told police in an affidavit he had intended to go to the Tides Foundation's office in San Francisco and kill founder and Chief Executive Officer Drummond Pike.

MOLALLA, Ore. -- A posting on a website that conveys information for the Animal Liberation Front says animal activists removed a large section of fencing at a deer farm at Molalla. The message says the raid last Saturday was intended to allow deer to escape into the surrounding forest. Owner Richard Bentley told KGW-TV he's raising 80 European Fallow deer for meat, but there were no animals on the land where the fence was cut. He wonders why animal activists would want to release tame deer during deer hunting season.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7awFypTnrOw

Tonight is the premier of this seasons "Whale Wars" where a fat guy takes a crew of volunteers thousands of miles into dangerous waters to make a big stink about the Japanese phony research whale killing. And what does he ever accomplish? Nothing, oh wait a second, I guess he just prompted Australia to take their best trading partner, Japan, to international court over the matter...... but he's stll fat! (s/)

Bicycles instead of cars? Dense apartment clusters instead of single homes? Community rituals instead of churches? "Human rights" instead of religious freedom? The UN Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) which met June 3-14 [1996]in Istanbul, painted an alarming picture of the 21st century community. The American ways-free speech, individualism, travel, and Christianity-are out. A new set of economic, environmental, and social guidelines are in. Citizenship, democracy, and education have been redefined. Handpicked civil leaders will implement UN "laws", bypassing state and national representatives to work directly with the UN. And politically correct "tolerance"-meaning "the rejection of dogmatism and absolutism"...

Van Jones, President Obama's former "green jobs" czar and newly appointed Princeton lecturer, has teamed up with a coalition of extremists to push an environmental activist agenda to "transform the American economy" and bring about "social change." The groups working with Jones have been described as using the tactics of guerrilla communication, agitation and disruption techniques. One organization working alongside Jones, the radical Earth First! environmentalist group, has a history of violence and sabotage. Jones spoke Monday at a Northern Arizona University event titled "Challenging America: Achieving Sustainability and Justice Through the Green Collar Economy." He spoke with Billy Parish,...

Despite terrorist attacks against the United States recurring with the Fort Hood shooting and the December underwear bomber, President Obama has tasked the Central Intelligence Agency with investigating global warming. Obama has resurrected a program formerly cancelled by President Bush that shares information from the CIA's spy satellites and other classified sensors with environmental scientists. The program, called Measurements of Earth Data for Environmental Analysis, or MEDEA, has already been used by a group of government-chosen scientists to measure Arctic sea ice.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - A Canadian businessman lost his job as the top U.N. envoy to North Korea amid questions about his connection to a suspect in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal, the world body said Monday. The decision not to renew Maurice Strong's contract follows criticism that he gave his stepdaughter a job at the United Nations and concerns over his ties to a South Korean businessman accused of accepting kickbacks from Saddam Hussein's government. Deputy U.N. spokeswoman Marie Okabe said in response to a question that Strong's contract expired last week "and it has not been renewed." She gave...

Matt Frei, BBC man in Washington, has a long history of patronising Middle America and especially evangelical Christians. His latest piece instructs them to change their views on climate change, because “there is no prominent conservative politician on the horizon who is, to put it bluntly, both pro-life and pro-planet”. Pro-planet, in Frei’s worldview, means accepting the AGW alarmists’ views lock, stock and barrel.Frei doesn’t condemn all American evangelicals. On the contrary, he divides them into good and bad varieties: The evangelical movement is split between those conservative Christians who suspect that climate change is an evil secular plot, concocted...

Climate deniers are on the offensive, even here. Check out the press release to see the way these guys operate. In the advisory, they call themselves the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and they are inviting the press to an International Climate Eco-Summit (ICE 2009). Sounds so smooth. Meanwhile tomorrow's event comes after another one organized by the Americans for Prosperity just yesterday where a group of fifty U.S. clean energy youth activists stormed the stage in Copenhagen during a live webcast also featuring endless climate crisis denier Christopher Monckton. He goes buck. Here's the video (Monckton spills the...

Hollywood isn't alone in its anticipation of Armageddon. Writing in the summer issue of World Policy Journal, Maurice Strong - Canada's very own prophet of doom - unequivocally embraces the apocalypse. Straight-forwardly entitled "Facing Down Armageddon: Environment at a Crossroads," Mr. Strong's essay ends with a dire warning. "Human existence is at risk," he says. "We face an Armageddon that is both real and imminent." Yet he implicitly grasps for hope - choosing at any rate not to specify (as the new film 2012 does) the precise day, month and year of the catastrophe. More so than most people who...

No apologies for revisiting Climategate, for this is the exposé of the can of worms that is the AGW mindset that just keeps giving. Now, what would you say if I were to tell you that the BBC News website is running a story on Professor Michael Mann, of Pennsylvania State University, one of the boys in Phil Jones’s gang hut at CRU East Anglia? “B****r me!” you would probably respond. “Don’t tell me the BBC has finally caught up with Climategate.” Relax. I’m not telling you that; and it hasn’t. Instead, the BBC “News” site is running a story...

"General reaction seems to be that the CRUgate emails are genuine, but with the caveat that there could be some less reliable stuff slipped in. In the circumstances, here are some summaries of the CRUgate files. I'll update these as and when I can. The refs are the email number. Phil Jones writes to University of Hull to try to stop sceptic Sonia Boehmer Christiansen using her Hull affiliation. Graham F Haughton of Hull University says its easier to push greenery there now SB-C has retired.(1256765544) Michael Mann discusses how to destroy a journal that has published sceptic papers.(1047388489) Tim...

While on the board of a Chicago-based charity, Barack Obama helped fund a carbon trading exchange that will likely play a critical role in the cap-and-trade carbon reduction program he is now trying to push through Congress as president. In 2000 and 2001, while Barack Obama served as a board member for a Chicago-based charitable foundation, he helped to fund a pioneering carbon trading exchange that is likely to fill a critical role in the controversial cap-and-trade carbon reduction scheme that President Obama is now trying to push rapidly through Congress. During those two years, the Joyce Foundation gave nearly...

UPDATE: Response from CRU in interview with another website, see end of this post. The details on this are still sketchy, we’ll probably never know what went on. But it appears that University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit has been hacked and many many files have been released by the hacker or person unknown. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/annrep93/cru.jpg UPDATED: Original image was for Met Office – corrected This image source: www.cru.uea.ac.uk I’m currently traveling and writing this from an airport, but here is what I know so far: An unknown person put postings on some climate skeptic websites that advertised an FTP...

London, England (CNN) -- Research teams at the Danish Golf Union have discovered it takes between 100 to 1,000 years for a golf ball to decompose naturally. A startling fact when it is also estimated 300 million balls are lost or discarded in the United States alone, every year. It seems the simple plastic golf ball is increasingly becoming a major litter problem. The scale of the dilemma was underlined recently in Scotland, where scientists -- who scoured the watery depths in a submarine hoping to discover evidence of the prehistoric Loch Ness monster -- were surprised to find hundreds...

On October 31, 2009, the once largest aluminum plant in the world will shut down. With it goes another American industry and more American jobs. The Columbia Falls Aluminum Company in Montana will shut down its aluminum production because it cannot purchase the necessary electrical power to continue its operations. How did this happen in America? America was once the envy of the world in its industrial capability. America’s industrial capacity built America into the most productive nation the world had ever known. Its standard of living rose to levels never before accomplished. Its currency became valuable and powerful, allowing...

Taxes fund environmental suits - Environmental law firms reap billions in fees to fund lawsuits October 15, 2009 The federal government has paid out billions of dollars to environmental groups for attorney fees and costs, according to data assembled by a Cheyenne, Wyoming, lawyer. Karen Budd-Falen of Budd-Falen Law Offices [main@buddfalen.com or 307-632-5105] said the government between 2003 and 2007 paid more than $4.7 billion in taxpayer money to environmental law firms -- and that's just in the lawsuits she tracked. The actual figure, she said, is far greater. "I think we only found that the iceberg exists," she said....