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A Miami man briefly wrestled with and ultimately used a knife to kill a Burmese python measuring 18 feet, 8 inches. That sets a state record for pythons captured or killed in the wild. The previous record measured 17 feet, 7 inches. Jason Leon was not hunting pythons but, while driving late at night recently in southeast Miami-Dade County, he and a friend spotted about 3 feet of snake protruding from the brush. Leon applied the brakes, climbed out of the car, grabbed the visible portion of the snake, and began hauling it onto the road.

Roy Spencer is a climate scientist at the University of Alabama-Huntsville who may be the world’s most important scientist. He has discovered scientific insights and theories that cast great doubt on global warming doctrine. That doctrine has always been dubious and is often defended by attacking the integrity of anyone who dares to raise questions. Spencer is a rare combination of a brilliant scientist and a brave soul willing to risk his livelihood and reputation by speaking plainly. The global warming promoters say we must scrap the world’s energy infrastructure in favor of green energy. They say that burning coal,...

With a veto-proof majority, the Missouri legislature approved a popular bill protecting private property and due process rights by banning a deeply controversial United Nations “sustainability” scheme known as UN Agenda 21. The legislation, SB 265, now heads to Democrat Governor Jay Nixon, who has not yet taken a public position on the issue. ~snip~ The widely criticized UN scheme, adopted by governments and dictatorships worldwide at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro more than two decades ago, has been marketed as a way to make humanity more “sustainable.” According to UN documents, however, Agenda 21 essentially seeks to...

Former Vice President Gore on Tuesday said "there's no such thing as ethical oil," slamming the notion that importing oil from U.S. ally Canada was better than doing so from unfriendly nations. “There’s no such thing as ethical oil. There’s only dirty oil and dirtier oil,” Gore told Canada’s The Globe and Mail during a Tuesday event in Toronto. Gore was responding to Globe and Mail Editor in Chief John Stackhouse on whether it made a difference that oil sands from the proposed Keystone XL pipeline would come from a democratic nation. U.S. backers of the Canada-to-Texas pipeline have pointed...

Previewing an upcoming story for NBC's Rock Center on Friday's Today, correspondent Ann Curry warned that tribes of the Amazon rain forest "are sharpening their spears and preparing their blow guns to fight Ecuador's new plan to auction as much as 8 million acres of the rain forest for oil drilling." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] She then cited Boston University biology professor Kelly Swing arguing that "America, a top importer of oil from Ecuador, shares responsibility for this coming conflict....And the toxic legacy of past oil drilling in other parts of the rain...

I've done work for T. Boone Pickens and the Pickens Plan since 2008. I wanted to mention this at the top because we're going to be discussing natural gas. Don't…don't go on your next email yet, this is actually pretty interesting. New data from the Environmental Protection Agency indicates that drilling for natural gas releases significantly less methane (the main component of natural gas) into the atmosphere than previously thought. Twenty percent less. This is not seen as good news for the ultra-environmentalists who fervently believe that any fuel made from fossilized plant or animal matter (coal or natural gas)...

Raleigh, N.C. — It took just 45 minutes Thursday morning for the Senate Commerce Committee to approve a massive rollback of rules and regulations meant to protect the state's environment. Senate Bill 612 would require cities and counties to repeal any rules stricter than state or federal law. It would also require a list of environmental oversight boards and agencies to repeal or rewrite any state rule stricter than federal regulation on any given matter. Those agencies include the Mining and Energy Commission, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the Environmental Management Commission, the Commission for Public Health, the...

On April 22, in cities across America, some environmental activists will celebrate Earth Day, claiming only increased government control can protect the environment. Those celebrations will expose a couple ironies. First, many activists will arrive in a Toyota Prius, which has become the symbol of environmental consciousness. Ironically, however, the Prius is not a triumph of political planning but of the free market. In the 1990s, while California was requiring "zero-emission" vehicles, leaders at Toyota and Honda saw an opportunity to sell cars to people who want to spend less on gasoline, drive a car that emits less carbon dioxide,...

Today is being celebrated by modern pagans as “Earth Day.” It is a date set aside to worship the earth (paganism). Today is also the birthday of Vladimir Lenin, (April 22nd 1870). Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary, author, lawyer, economic theorist, and political philosopher among other things. Lenin created the Soviet Communist Party.

Earth Day is here again, but few people seem interested any more in global warming. It's plausible to inquire whether people realize we've got a duty to protect the environment. Actually, "protecting the environment" is not necessarily the same topic as "global warming." Confusion about the two needs to be cleared up

The massive Thirty Meter Telescope will be able to image objects 13 billion light years away, near the beginning of time. Set atop Mauna Kea, the Thirty Meter Telescope will be able to observe planets outside our solar system. (Credit: Courtesy TMT Observatory Corporation) If you love eye-popping images of space, here's welcome news: the Hawaiian Board of Land and Natural Resources has backed building what's to be the world's largest, most powerful optical telescope above the clouds atop the volcano Mauna Kea. The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) will have a primary mirror of 492 segments measuring some 100 feet...

Maryland Democratic Governor Martin O’Malley has instituted a tax on citizens for the amount of rain that falls on their property. The tax, officially known as a "storm water management fee," will be enforced in nine of the state's counties. The state legislature passed it in 2012 purportedly to "raise revenue to cleanup [sic] the Chesapeake Bay," according to MarylandReporter.com. Former 2012 GOP U.S. Senate candidate Dan Bongino bashes the tax in a Wednesday afternoon press release. The law "requires individuals, businesses, and even charitable organizations and houses of worship to pay a tax based on the amount of rain...

Do you suppose the eco-trendy crowd really, carefully thought this one through before jumping on the self-righteously outraged bandwagon? I have some pretty severe doubts on the matter, but they're in this thing, and they're certainly not going to back down now that they've invested so much time, money, and media coverage to the issue --- even though killing the Keystone XL pipeline will not prevent oil companies from developing Canada's tar sands even a little bit. Stopping their product from moving through pipelines simply means that they’ll have to seek other markets, i.e. shipping it to China via tankers,...

FORT BLISS, Texas -- A West Texas military base said Friday it plans to build the U.S. military's largest solar energy farm. Fort Bliss commander Gen. Dana Pittard made the announcement and touted the Army base's other green initiatives, including planting 14,700 trees, encouraging the use of energy-efficient vehicles and building bicycle lanes. The Army wants to generate about one gigawatt of power from renewable energies by 2025 -about a tenth of its total consumption or enough power to supply at least 250,000 homes. However, Fort Bliss decided to take it even further and plans to become a "net zero"...

The book of Genesis was written in part to counteract a theory later known as Manicheanism. It held that a god of good created spirit and a god of evil created matter. In this view, the more spiritual we are, the less we are connected to matter. This position suggests that by withdrawing from matter, we will become more spiritual. Logically, this would make the fallen angels, who are pure spirit, models of spirituality. Genesis, for its part, tells us that God looked on each level of creation to see that it was good. Evil was not to be identified...

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has long campaigned for the fashion industry through organizations like Fashion’s Night Out and the CFDA. And now it seems as if all that fashion do-gooding has panned out—it’s won him the cover of the eco-friendly May edition of L’Uomo Vogue, Italian Vogue’s magazine for men. For the event, the New York City mayor and C40 Climate Leadership Group president was photographed by Italian photographer Francesco Carrozzini in a conservative though spiffy dark suit and striped tie. Of the casting choice, Italian Vogue editor in chief Franca Sozzani told the Financial Times: “I did think it might...

Environmental activists and politicians would like you to think that we must love their regulations -- or hate trees and animals. I love trees and animals. But you can love nature and still hate the tyranny that environmental regulations bring. The Environmental Protection Agency just announced it will boost gas prices ("only" a penny, although industry says 6 to 9 cents) to make another minuscule improvement to air quality. In New York City, my mayor wants to ban Styrofoam cups, saying, "I think it's something we can do without." Congress already dictates the design of our cars, toilets and light...

Despite deficit woes, Obama pushes forward on bizarre projectsWhile the U.S. Senate, for the first time in years, has adopted a budget, it includes $1 trillion in new taxes, adding to the record deficit. The budget also doesn’t align with a House plan that spends hundreds of billions of dollars less. Both, however, project spending more than the government receives far into the future. But even so, frogs, Uganda and pine cone projects apparently are so important to the Obama administration that it’s worth borrowing money and paying interest to fund them.

The resolution to implement Meatless Mondays was unanimously passed by the St. Mary’s College SGA in early December after months of inter-campus debate. According to the resolution, the concept of Meatless Mondays upholds the college’s mission to be environmentally sustainable by decreasing its dependence on factory farming. The eight-week long trial program will cease the serving of meat, with the exception of deli meats, in the Great Room (the college’s main dining hall) on Mondays. Meat options will continue to be available at other campus eateries, including the Grab-n-Go and the Upper Deck.

Sir John Beddington, the government's retiring Chief Scientist has been doing the media rounds today, telling anyone who'll listen how "Climate Change" is still a serious problem about which we should all worry greatly. Has he looked out of the window recently? Looking out of my window just now, I noticed that the Northamptonshire landscape was completely blanketed in Dr David Viner. Just like it was yesterday. And the day before that, when we rescued two orphaned lambs from the frozen fields. Which isn't something you normally expect in March, is it? I'm sure I know what Beddington would say...

Bad Data: As yet another Solyndra looms, a new government report shows that by the government's own broad definition of a green job, more can be found in a coal mine than near a solar panel. The second annual Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report on "Employment in Green Goods and Services," released Tuesday, will be the last, allegedly a casualty of the same sequestration that claimed the White House tours and may doom the Easter egg hunt on the White House lawn. That is probably a good thing, for if it were published as a book, it would deserve...

For all the Obama-era talk of decline, there is at least one reason why America probably won't, at least not quite yet. "Peak oil" and our "oil addiction" were supposed to have ensured that we ran out of either gas or the money to buy it. Now, suddenly, we have more gas and oil than ever before. But the key question is: Why do we? The oil and gas renaissance was brought on by horizontal drilling and fracking that opened up vast new reserves either previously unknown or considered unrecoverable. Both technological breakthroughs were American discoveries, largely brought on...

Climatologists and meteorologists are familiar with the last Mini Ice Age (MIA) that occurred between 1350 and 1850 AD. It is also referred to as the Little Ice Age. Suffice to say it was cold and, as such weather cycles tend to do, it altered history in a variety of ways. The failure of crops was one aspect of the cold spell and in France the revolution that overthrew the monarchy is attributed to the unhappiness of its citizens, but famine in the northern hemisphere was widespread. In the United States, it is best recalled for the horrid winter our...

With Michigan governor Rick Snyder’s appointment of a financial manager in Detroit, the working class in the city is about to be subjected to a financial dictatorship modeled on the savage wage and benefit cuts imposed by the Obama administration during its forced bankruptcy and restructuring of General Motors and Chrysler in 2009. Like the auto workers, the city’s public sector workers and residents will be forced to sacrifice their jobs, pensions and the needs of their families to pay for a financial crisis they did not create. The script is the same. According to the politicians from both big...

The Los Angeles Times ran a Thursday editorial by Middlebury College Professor Bill McKibben arguing that allowing millions of illegal immigrants into America will reduce global warming. “I feel it's urgent that we get real immigration reform, allowing millions to step out of the shadows and on to a broad path toward citizenship,” wrote McKibben. “It will help, not hurt, our environmental efforts, and potentially in deep and powerful ways.” McKibben says that while the average American has a larger carbon footprint than a person living in the developing world, bringing more immigrants to America would likely reduce their tendency...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama announced his nominees to lead a new U.S. push to tackle climate change on Monday, choosing an air quality expert to run the Environmental Protection Agency and a nuclear physicist to head the Department of Energy. In a widely expected move, Obama selected agency veteran Gina McCarthy to replace Lisa Jackson as EPA administrator and scientist Ernest Moniz from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to take over for Steven Chu as Energy secretary. Obama also announced his choice to lead the White House budget office - Sylvia Mathews Burwell, president of the Walmart Foundation,...

In his first address as Secretary of State, John Kerry said we must safeguard “the most sacred trust” we owe to our children and grandchildren: “an environment not ravaged by rising seas, deadly superstorms, devastating droughts, and the other hallmarks of a dramatically changing climate.” Even the IPCC and British Meteorological Office now recognize that average global temperatures haven’t budged in almost 17 years. No evidence suggests that sea level rise, storms, droughts or other weather and climate events or trends display any statistically significant difference from what Earth and mankind have experienced over the last 100-plus years. So Mr....

(snip) ...in 2009, when unemployment hit a 70-year high for the state, the California State University-Sacramento study came out. DeVore said the study laid out how California’s energy policy led to the highest gasoline tax and the costliest electricity in the country. No wonder, he said, that “people will move out of California and go to Texas.” DeVore said even Canadians have figured out how to profit off the state’s regulatory culture. “California imports a lot of electricity, but it has to be green,” said DeVore. “BC Power, in British Columbia, which got caught manipulating energy costs in 2001, exports...

Self-fancied environmentalists have an unfortunate tendency to turn to big-government and top-down control as the best and most efficient arbiter of environmental quality, when in fact the effort to coerce people's behavior into complying with their preconceived notions of "green" living reliably comes with a whole host of unintended consequences and puts a damper on the very economic growth that is the real driver of the types of innovation and efficiency for which environmentalists claim they're pushing. Prosperity is not the enemy of environmental quality, and as much as the greenies doth protest, it is more than possible to both...

And the environmental pressure groups wanted you to believe solar energy was “clean” and “green.” If that’s true, then why do we keep hearing the words “toxic” and “hazardous” connected with the production of solar panels – especially with the companies that fail? The latest example of phony eco-purity is Abound Solar, which declared bankruptcy last summer after it had received $70 million of a $400 million Department of Energystimulus loan guarantee. According to news reports from Colorado, where Abound was based, the state Department of Public Health and Environment found 2,000 pallets of solar panels that couldn’t be sold...

Anthony Brasfield saw romance when he released a dozen heart-shaped balloons into the sky over Dania Beach with his sweetie. A Florida Highway Patrol trooper saw a felony. Brasfield, 40, and his girlfriend, Shaquina Baxter, were in the parking lot of the Motel 6 on Dania Beach Boulevard when he released the shiny red and silver mylar balloons and watched them float away Sunday morning.

A little more than two years after Barack Obama made a headline-grabbing visit to India, another, lesser-known Obama has made a quiet trip to the country and reached out to it in the name of the US president. Malik Obama, the Kenyan older half-brother of Barack Obama, was in India last week as the chief guest at a convention organised by a spiritual leader in Vrindavan, Mathura, and even took part in an event to clean the Yamuna river as part of the convention. "Guru Kumar Swami and I met when he was on a visit to New York in...

... a second major winter storm in less than a week hits the central Plains. The National Service says today's storm, which has been tracking across western Texas toward Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri, also is packing high winds

If Congress won’t act soon to protect the future generations, I will, I will direct my cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take now and in the future to reduce pollutions. - President Barack Obama Earlier today, House Speaker John Boehner said that he didn’t “think that he (Obama) had the ability to impose a national energy tax on Americans without the authority of Congress.” Reading between the lines, Boehner is saying that if Obama enacts any executive order framed in the form of a tax raising directive, it would violate the constitution, as only Congress is...

According to Toyota Vice Chairman Takeshi Uchiyamada, "Because of its shortcomings - driving range, cost and recharging time - the electric vehicle is not a viable replacement for most conventional cars; we need something entirely new." Uchiyamada is considered the "father of the Prius." An article by Reuter's exposes the limitations of EVs and focuses on Toyota's, along with Nissan's, change in strategy, which is now moving away from EVs. Even the most ideological and extreme green energy proponents and backers of the Chevy Volt will have to open their eyes to the sad truth uncovered by the latest report....

Enlarge Image Thanks, California! Massive amounts of irrigation in California's Central Valley boost summer precipitation across the American Southwest and during that period increases runoff into the Colorado River, which flows through the Grand Canyon, by an average of 28%, a new study suggests. Credit: iStockphoto/Thinkstock Water diverted to central California's farmlands boosts rainfall in nearby states and may even exacerbate periodic flooding in some regions, a new study suggests. The phenomenon may also be happening elsewhere in the world. California's Central Valley—an area almost twice the size of Massachusetts where farmers raise more than 200 different crops, including...

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced his resignation from the Obama Administration this week. Chu had clashed frequently with critics of Obama's so-called green investment approach. He took the occasion of his pending departure to fire off a final volley at these critics. “Much as these people would like to portray the bankruptcies of a large number of recipients of government aid as a failure of the Administration's green investment policy, they are wrong,” Chu maintained. “Take the Solyndra Company as a example. The contention is that the $500 million we invested in this now bankrupt company was a waste...

Three weeks after announcing he would sell his struggling cable news channel, Current, to Al Jazeera — pocketing an estimated $100 million in profit — Al Gore skewered television news in an interview with BuzzFeed. "I think that the influence of television over the last half century has been harmful to the operations of our democracy," said Gore. "In the age of our founding, and for much of the history of the republic, crucial. Individuals could gain easy access to information and could express their own views. They can't do that on television." "They get plenty of information from it,...

Leo DiCaprio Vows To Save Environment By Flying All Over The World Django Unchained and Titanic star Leonardo DiCaprio says he is planning to take a significant break from filming and concentrate on his environmental campaigning. In an interview with Germany's mass circulation daily Bild, the 38-year-old American actor said: "I am a bit drained. I'm now going to take a long, long break. I've done three films in two years and I'm just worn out.'' "I would like to improve the world a bit. I will fly around the world doing good for the environment,''

Canadians produce more garbage than anyone else Conference Board calls Canada an 'environmental laggard' Canadians use far too much energy and water, and they produce more garbage per capita than any other country on earth, a report from an influential think-tank says. The Conference Board of Canada gave Canada a C grade on Thursday and ranked it in 15th place among 17 developed nations studied across a host of environmental-efficiency metrics. "Our large land mass, cold climate and resource-intensive economy make us less likely to rank highly on some indicators of environmental sustainability, but many of our poor results are...

The moral high ground of environmentalism seemingly was ceded by free-market proponents a long, long time ago. There exists multiple reasons why this appears to be so, but perhaps the most often argued — if not the most persuasive — case employed against the free-marketers is the intrinsic “evil” ascribed to the profit motive of businesses and individuals alike. Nothing could be further from the truth, but urban mythology abounds with bad actors passing out carcinogens like Halloween candy while polluting groundwater, rivers, lakes and streams. This mythology is bolstered by the Hollywood subgenre of whistle-blower flicks of the past...

“Lack of Global Warming Means Cold, Empty Chairs at New York Times Environment Desk,” Jim Lakely writes ... The New York Times will close its environment desk in the next few weeks and assign its seven reporters and two editors to other departments. The positions of environment editor and deputy environment editor are being eliminated. ... Al Gore has just declared Mission Accomplished for environmentalism? He’s got his $100 payout, and the rest of the world is left wondering why we should care about a religion when its chief practitioner has just signed his non-aggression pact with Big Oil. At...

Primitive N.C. retreat a bit too primitive for Watauga officials Watauga County mountain man Eustace Conway’s passion for teaching primitive living came to a sudden halt in October when local government officials shut down his operation, citing safety and health concerns. After receiving a tip that Conway had built structures without a permit, Watauga County Planning and Inspections Director Joe Furman obtained an administrative search warrant to inspect the roughly two dozen buildings and structures at Turtle Island Preserve, Conway’s 500-plus acre retreat in the mountains east of Boone. In September, Furman assembled a team of building inspectors, health department...

If frackophobes are to be believed, natural-gas fracking is the most frightful environmental nightmare since Japan’s Fukushima nuclear-power plant melted down amid an earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.In Promised Land, Matt Damon’s new anti-fracking film funded by the United Arab Emirates, one character demonstrates this production technique’s “dangers� by drenching a toy farm with household chemicals and then setting it ablaze.In the upcoming pro-fracking film, FrackNation, one Pennsylvania homeowner absurdly claims that fracking polluted his well water with weapons-grade uranium. (For details, watch AXS-TV on Tuesday, January 22, at 9 p.m. EST.)In an agitprop poster from the group...

recent reports indicate the entire program may have actually hurt the environment far more than it helped. According to E Magazine, the “Clunkers” program, which is officially known as the Car Allowance Rebates System (CARS), produced tons of unnecessary waste while doing little to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The program's first mistake seems to have been its focus on car shredding, instead of car recycling. With 690,000 vehicles traded in, that's a pretty big mistake. According to the Automotive Recyclers Association (ARA), automobiles are almost completely recyclable, down to their engine oil and brake fluid. But many of the “Cash...

<p>The Obama administration's chief environmental watchdog, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, is stepping down after a nearly four-year tenure marked by high-profile brawls over global warming pollution, the Keystone XL oil pipeline, new controls on coal-fired plants and several other hot-button issues that affect the nation's economy and people's health.</p>

Pot farms wreaking havoc on Northern California environment • Burgeoning marijuana growing operations are sucking millions of gallons of water from coho salmon lifelines and taking other environmental tolls, scientists say. EUREKA, Calif. — State scientists, grappling with an explosion of marijuana growing on the North Coast, recently studied aerial imagery of a small tributary of the Eel River, spawning grounds for endangered coho salmon and other threatened fish. In the remote, 37-square-mile patch of forest, they counted 281 outdoor pot farms and 286 greenhouses, containing an estimated 20,000 plants — mostly fed by water diverted from creeks or a...

Rosa Brooks serves as Counselor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Michele Flournoy. In May 2010 she also became Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and then Special Coordinator for Rule of Law and Humanitarian Policy. She is running a new Pentagon office dedicated to those issues. She is on leave from her job as a law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. Brooks is known as a columnist (most recently with the LA Times) and at the Pentagon her portfolio has included both human rights issues and global engagement and strategic communication. Her mother, Barbara Ehrenreich, is...

A simple new method has been shown to remove carbon-dioxide emissions from power plant exhaust while consuming half the energy needed by the best existing carbon-capture approach. Testing of the technology, which uses cheap limestone-derived material to trap carbon dioxide, has been underway at two different megawatt-scale pilot plants in Spain and Germany.

........Late Friday night, the EPA said in a news release that it had approved the state rules for part of the state's waterways, but would still impose the federal rules for the rest. According to David Guest of Earthjustice, that means the state rules cover only 15 percent while the new federal rules cover 85 percent — about 100,000 miles of waterways. State DEP officials said they were disappointed the EPA would impose federal rules on any part of the state and vowed to "work with them to craft solutions" to put the state in charge of all pollution rules....