Free Republic

BISMARCK, N.D. – Federal and state officials announced plans Wednesday to accelerate cleanup at a camp in southern North Dakota that has housed hundreds and sometimes thousands of Dakota Access pipeline opponents. Officials fear the camp near the Cannonball River will soon flood due to warm weather and rapid snowmelt. They worry trash and debris left behind by people who have left in recent weeks might pollute the Missouri River and other nearby waterways. “With the amount of people that have been out there and the amount of estimated waste and trash out there, there is a good chance it...

Environmentalism How many times have we seen this play out? Whether it’s the Earth Day mob leaving mountains of trash on the national Mall, Leo’s private jets and mega-yachts, or Al Gore’s enormous carbon footprint, it’s always the same. The people who scream the loudest about the environment always seem to be the worst offenders when it comes to the planet’s alleged destruction. Case in point, the Dakota Access Pipeline protest camp in North Dakota. A small army of hippies had nothing better to do, so they descended on the site, screamed about the evils of oil, then left. Now...

(Skip) A decade later, comprehensive smoking bans have proliferated globally. And now that the evidence has had time to accumulate, it’s also become clear that the extravagant promises made by anti-smoking groups—that implementing bans would bring about extraordinary improvements in cardiac health—never materialized. Newer, better studies with much larger sample sizes have found little to no correlation between smoking bans and short-term incidence of heart attacks, and certainly nothing remotely close to the 60 percent reduction that was claimed in Helena. The updated science debunks the alarmist fantasies that were used to sell smoking bans to the public, allowing for...

“As the new Republican administration marches the English-speaking world out of Europe’s climate crusade transatlantic relations will surely plummet. At the same time, and to the mortification of Europeans, US-Russia relations will probably thaw. After all, it wasn’t Moscow that led a 30-year economic warfare campaign against America’s energy infrastructure via the ruse of Global Warming; no, that was our old “Allies” in Berlin. Insights into European deep-state machinations can be gleaned from Timothy Snyder’s Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning – published in 2015 by the German media conglomerate, Bertelsmann ....

It’s the grand, exotic trees that especially call to Julianne Skai Arbor — the ones with gnarled outgrowths, tangled roots or hollows into which she can crawl. She likes to drape herself across swooping branches or ease herself into small spaces, exploring the habits, curves and textures of the different species she seeks out around the globe and absorbing their life force. The Sebastopol resident’s affection for the trees of the world has evolved into a unique vocation, one that forms the basis of a new coffee table book that features photographs of the author posing nude, enmeshed or intertwined...

Environmentalists are really worried that your home's Christmas lights will ruin the planet. They worry that both the manufacturing processes of the lights and the electricity needed to power them will generate lots of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. They worry that the lights are manufactured in China and thus the amount of CO2 emissions generated during their construction is effectively unknowable. [Snip] Christmas lights aren't the only pressing issue troubling the minds of environmentalists this holiday season. The left-leaning news website Huffington Post encouraged readers to consider the environmental impact of Christmas trees in an article this month comparing the...

Environmental groups are ready for a fight with President-elect Donald Trump. Trump’s victory in November’s presidential election was a shock to the green movement, which is now consolidating opposition to a GOP-controlled government bent on undoing President Obama’s environmental agenda. If the initial reaction was depression and despair, environmental activists now sound energized to take on Trump. "Our goal is to channel that sense of outrage into political pressure," said Jamie Henn, the co-founder of climate group 350.org.

2016 will go down in history as the year when the world finally saw sense. Nowhere will this be more apparent than in America’s bold and brilliant decision to elect Donald Trump who, in my view, is set fair to be one of the truly great U.S. presidents. I realise that this isn’t obvious to some people—even those who claim to be on the conservative side of the political argument. But after a recent trip to D.C. for some private briefings, both with his transition teams and with key members of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, I came away more confident...

PHOENIX — Call off the doomsday bunkers and carbon taxes! The “climate” scare is officially over. The time for hysteria over alleged man-made global warming and CO2 has passed. The theory is toast — it is totally and completely debunked. At least it will be, once a soon-to-be-released “Weapon of Mass Instruction” exposing the climate fraudsters and their fraud is dropped on the world.In early December, various prestigious scientists and a wide range of experts in various disciplines converged here, in Phoenix, Arizona, to forever demolish the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) alarmism and the deadly policies the alarmism underpins....

In some of the biggest news which will not come as “news” to anyone who follows the industry, the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality concluded a two year study this week into reports of ground water contamination in Pavillion, Wyoming. There had been reports of “foul smelling water” in two test wells drilled by the EPA near one of the many drilling sites in the gas field half a decade ago. The initial EPA report which was ready to blame fracking for the contamination immediately came under heavy criticism in the scientific community and was never released. Still the Wyoming...

Some Upper Peninsula residents are outraged over a U.S. Forest Service plan to close roads in the Hiawatha National Forest. Community members say they were left out of the planning process and presented with a plan they were expected to sign off on. The proposal, called the Camp Cooks Integrated Resource Management Project, would close a number of specified two-track roads and trails in order to diminish accessibility and reduce alleged environmental damage. These roads are unpaved and typically not large enough for full-sized vehicles. They are often used for recreational purposes by people who ride ORVs, side-by-side ATVs and...

Bloomberg. Excerpts not allowed.

FULL TITLE: CAUGHT ON TAPE: UN bans skeptical journalists from climate summit for holding views not ‘particularly helpful’ The United Nations has rejected the media credentials of three journalists from a conservative news outlet in Canada to the upcoming UN climate summit in Morocco in November. Nick Nuttall, a UN official, admitted in an October 18 CBC interview that The Rebel news outlet is being banned from attending the UN summit because of its skeptical reporting of the UN’s climate claims. Nuttall tried to justify the UN media ban by noting that The Rebel TV host Ezra Levant has called...

America’s first offshore wind power plant will cost about $17,600 dollars to build per home it will power. Three miles off the coast of Block Island, Rhode Island, the wind farm is supposed to generate enough energy to power 17,000 homes, but will cost $300 million to build five turbines. This cost is just to build the turbines, not to operate them. The extremely high cost of offshore wind doesn’t worry environmentalists and progressives, however, because, as Salon.com says about the project, “it’s the precedent that counts.” Despite the extremely high cost, federal officials want to power a whooping 23...

Back in 2010, deep green environmentalist Rick Smith, then head of Environmental Defence Canada, hailed Ontario’s Green Energy and Green Economy Act regime as a cost-free operation that would catapult the province into the big leagues of renewable energy. Through fat subsidies and high prices offered to wind, solar and other renewable industry players, jobs and growth would boom and Ontario would be free of its dirty coal plants. It was the End of Coal, the government said. The birth of a renewable miracle. Asked whether the plan might lead to higher prices for consumers, “No,” said Dr. Smith —...

Everyone knows that before the global warming scare began in the 1980s, scientists were much more worried about global cooling and the coming ice age. At least everybody did till a cabal of lying climate alarmists – one then a senior administrator at NOAA, now a president at the World Meteorological Association – hijacked Wikipedia, published a lying paper, and rewrote history by painting the 1970s Global Cooling Scare as an urban myth.

Colorado officials identified “several potentially forged signature lines” on a failed ballot anti-fracking ballot measure pushed by environmental activists to restrict drilling inside state lines. Officials said “No. 78,” a measure calling for a 2,500-foot setback on hydraulic fracturing, may have had forged signatures, and Colorado State Department officials “referred the questionable section to the Attorney General’s office for investigation.” Secretary of State Wayne Williams announced Monday that “two proposed ballot measures aimed at adding more limitations on oil and natural gas drilling in Colorado failed to make the November ballot because supporters didn’t collect enough valid voter signatures.” Both...

Colorado’s anti-fracking campaign is a bust – again. But make no mistake: The campaign goes on. According to CBS Denver, environmental activists have nowhere near the number of valid signatures needed to put two anti-fracking measures on the November ballot. This is a huge embarrassment for the national environmental groups behind the anti-fracking push – including 350.org, Food & Water Watch, Sierra Club and Greenpeace. ... One way or another, the environmental left is making a big move in Colorado this year. The anti-fracking campaign isn’t going anywhere – it’s just going to be reassigned to support a much bigger...

WHEREAS, Secretary of State John F. Kerry has suggested that air conditioners are as big a threat as ISIS, and WHEREAS, it is the duty of our elected and appointed government officials to lead by example, THEREFORE, we call upon the U.S. Department of State to remove air conditioning from all property that the Department owns, rents, or otherwise employs, including but not limited to embassies, consulates, office buildings, etc., all vehicles owned and/or operated by the Department, and any other property, real or movable, owned, rented, or otherwise employed by the Department.

A conservative legal group is accusing state Democratic officials of conspiring to flout public records laws in order to keep secret details of a campaign to bring racketeering charges against climate policy dissenters. Democratic attorneys general led by New York’s Eric Schneiderman are seeking to block efforts to obtain documents about their efforts by invoking an overbroad claim to secrecy in ongoing legal proceedings, according to the Energy and Environment (E&E) Legal Institute. “These activist AGs are trying to write themselves out from freedom of information laws their legislatures have written them into,” E&E senior legal fellow Chris Horner said...