Free Republic

NEW YORK (AFP) - Despite record profits, US oil majors have built no new refineries on American soil for 30 years, raising the country's dependence on foreign supplies and making it vulnerable to even small accidents and bad weather. Standing in Garyville, Louisiana, the Marathon Oil refinery is the most recently built refinery in the United States -- and that was in 1976. Since then, the number of US refineries in operation has dropped by more than half, from more than 300 in the early 1980s to less than 150 today. And while these refineries' capacities may have increased in...

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case being brought by a dozen states, several major cities, and environmental groups who want carbon dioxide, widely believed to be contributing to the current global warming trend, to be designated as a pollutant. The plaintiffs are challenging the Environmental Protection Agency's decision in 2003 that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant that would come under the regulatory portions of the Clean Air Act. That decision has been upheld by two lower court rulings. A Supreme Court decision siding with the plaintiffs could have wide-ranging consequences, since it would open the...

Canada's new Conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper, has been urged by more than 60 leading international climate change experts to review the global warming policies he inherited from his centre-Left predecessor. In an open letter that includes five British scientists among the signatories, the experts praise his recent commitment to review the controversial Kyoto protocol on reducing emissions harmful to the environment. "Much of the billions of dollars earmarked for implementation of the protocol in Canada will be squandered without a proper assessment of recent developments in climate science," they wrote in the Canadian Financial Post last week. They emphasised...

CAVE JUNCTION, Ore. — John Roth shined his flashlight on a black streak flowing through the cream-colored marble forming the walls of the Oregon Caves. The graphite line is graphic evidence of dramatic global warming that consumed so much oxygen that it nearly wiped out all life on the planet 247 million years ago, said the natural-resources specialist for the Oregon Caves National Monument. "It was the biggest extinction by far of all time," he said. "Geologists and paleontologists all agree on that. ... The extinction that killed the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago, that wasn't anything compared to...

Scientists, environmental campaigners and opposition politicians yesterday issued a scathing response to the government's admission that it will fail to meet a key target to cut greenhouse gas pollution. They called the results of an 18-month review of climate change policies "pitiful" and accused ministers of lacking the political will to tackle global warming. Margaret Beckett, the environment secretary, confirmed that measures to reduce emissions are now projected to cut UK carbon dioxide pollution by 15%-18% below 1990 levels by 2010. The government had pledged to reduce it by 20%. ... Peter Ainsworth, the shadow environment secretary, said: "The review...

(found at the Global Warming News Site)Was Confusion Over Global Warming a Con Job? Some Claim Disinformation Campaign Attempted to Create the Impression Scientists Were Broadly Divided WASHINGTON, March 26, 2006 — - American attitudes about global warming are shifting, according to a new poll by ABC News, Time magazine and Stanford University -- but it has taken years for the public perception of the problem to catch up with the warnings.That lack of concern may have been just what big oil wanted.It's not as if the information hasn't been out there: A new ad by the Environmental Defense Fund...

There is a new Paganism taking root around the world and it manifests itself as environmentalism or more explicitly, Pantheism, a doctrine identifying the Deity with the universe and its phenomena, Fundamentalist Environmentalism, if you will. Pantheism is a metaphysical and religious position, it is the view that "God is everything and everything is God, the world is either identical with God or in some way a self-expression of his nature” Similarly, it is the view that everything that exists constitutes a "unity" and this all-inclusive unity is in some sense divine. Anthropologists have observed in cultures the world over...

NOVATO, Calif. - An 82-year-old animal lover was arrested this week on allegations he grabbed and brandished a trapper's revolver during a scuffle over the skunk. Lou Kessler was arrested Tuesday. He was released on his own recognizance Wednesday after being charged with misdemeanor counts of using a firearm in a fight and disturbing the peace. The victim, Ron Bailey, 52, told The Press Democrat in a phone interview that he simply was doing his job as a state-licensed trapper and he believes Kessler disobeyed the law and attacked him. The scuffle allegedly began when Kessler and his wife went...

Detroit WHEN TREASURY SECRETARY John Snow announced guidelines for a new tax cut for the rich here last week, liberals did not denounce him. That's because the proposed tax breaks were for gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles, the favorite ride of environmentalists this side of bicycles. But the dirty secret about hybrids is that, even as the government continues to fuel their growth with tax subsidies, they don't deliver the gas savings they promise.Most cars and trucks don't achieve the gas mileage they advertise, according to Consumer Reports. But hybrids do a far worse job than conventional vehicles in meeting their Environmental...

I know that this may be a long read, there's a lot of content here, but I think that many FReepers will find the information here interesting and disturbing. I will appreciate any help I can get with this situation. My wife and I have been homeschooling our children since they started schooling. We have 5th, 6th, and 8th graders. Recently, we made the tough decision to enroll them in a local Charter School. In Arizona, a Charter School is a privately run, smaller, more focused public school. It provides parents with school choice and some competition between the schools....

Category 7 has been on for 41 minutes and we have hit evil corporations, evil Republicans, global warming, corrupt Christians and poisonious frogs. We have not gotten the bigot theme yet. But a drinking game is in order here. This movie is as funny as I expected it to be.

For some environmentalists, watching the House pass an energy bill heavy on industry tax breaks and light on long-term alternative fuel sources this week confirmed what two Bay Area liberals have been saying for months: Modern environmentalism must die -- in order to evolve into something politically powerful enough to prevent such legislation. Six months ago, El Cerrito's Michael Shellenberger, a public relations strategist, and Berkeley's Ted Nordhaus, a pollster, delivered their unsolicited, 36-page treatise with the sexy title of "The Death of Environmentalism" at a gathering of the nation's largest environmental grantmakers. Former Sierra Club President Adam Werbach piled...

Judge Confirms $600,000 Libel Award and Finds Fault with Environmentalists (Tucson) Judge Richard Fields entered formal judgment on March 2, 2005 against the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental activist corporation, and found that they must pay $600,000 in actual and punitive damages to Arizona rancher Jim Chilton and the Chilton Ranch and Cattle Company. The formal judgment confirmed a Tucson jury’s verdict, delivered on January 21, 2005, finding the Center for Biological Diversity guilty of making “false, unfair, libelous and defamatory statements” against Jim Chilton, a fifth generation Arizona rancher whose pioneering ancestors drove cattle into Arizona in the...

The seasonal hole in the Arctic ozone layer could be the worst ever this year if the current cold conditions persist, scientists are warning. Temperatures in the Arctic ozone layer are now the coldest for 50 years and have been consistently low for two months. The ozone layer blankets the Earth at an altitude between 15 to 30 kilometres. It is part of a zone called the stratosphere, and absorbs ultraviolet light. European Union scientists said on Friday that if the exceptionally cold temperatures continue, and the persistent polar clouds - which alter the chemistry of the ozone layer -...

In my words (because I can't quote the article directly)...a new report on global warming is to be released tomorrow saying that we have already past the threshold of danger that will cause an unavoidable global warming catastrophe. (Not a joke)

Another Cheesy United Nations Ripoff It's those wacky United Nations wingnuts again, who are bringing us the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, Aug. 26 - Sept. 4. Apparently it occurred to some genius among them that bringing 65,000 delegates to South Africa for the clambake might cause a bit of environmental damage, and not just to the local prostitutes. But not to worry, according to a UN press release; UNDP, GEF and World Bank Agree to Offset Environmental Impact On Johannesburg During Summit:New York, 16 August - In an effort to make the World Summit on Sustainable...