Free Republic

as backwards: To support its December rate-increase request, the Connecticut utility Yankee Gas Services said it needs more money because too many of its customers have lowered their bills by heeding calls to conserve energy. And a November report commissioned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce included the proposal that Congress replenish the federal Highway Trust Fund by imposing a special tax on gas-saving hybrid cars (in that those cars consume less fuel than regular cars and therefore pay less in gasoline tax).

A woman charged with damaging a transmission tower also is suspected in half a dozen other ecoterror crimes, including a firebombing at a Colorado ski resort, one of the costliest such crimes in the U.S. Chelsea Gerlach was ordered held without bail after Assistant U.S. Attorney Kirk Engdahl made the allegations against her. Gerlach, 28, was among six people arrested in five states last week on indictments alleging they set fires and damaged property between 1998 and 2001 in Oregon and Washington. The Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front took responsibility for most of the crimes. Gerlach, of Portland,...

It was a rainy day and a Monday that got one woman down. Five hours after she reported to work at her job in Des Plaines, she discovered her black 2004 Land Rover missing from a parking lot. That’s when she learned witnesses had reported seeing her vehicle sink to the bottom of the manmade lake outside the O’Hare Lake Office Plaza off I-294, about 15 minutes after she arrived to work in the rain. Investigators believe another vehicle rear-ended the Land Rover, sending it down a slope into the lake, Police Chief James Prandini said. Employees at the Federal...

With its Gothic abbey soaring 170 metres above a mostly flat, nondescript Normandy landscape, Mont-Saint-Michel is both a feat of human will and a quirk of nature, planted in a tidal system that each day brings the sea surging in as fast as a trotting horse. But Mont-Saint-Michel is no longer much of an island. Since the 19th century, a causeway from the mainland has been disrupting the currents that flush away silt, and about 25 hectares of salt marsh are gaining on the islet annually. Now, as much of the world worries how to stop sea levels from rising,...

A leading Brazilian environmental campaigner has died after setting himself on fire to protest against the construction of an alcohol plant in the fragile Pantanal marsh region. Francisco Anselmo de Barros suffered 100% burns after wrapping himself in a burning duvet during a demonstration in the centre of Campo Grande, the capital of Mato Grosso do Sul, on Saturday. Officials at the Santa Casa hospital confirmed that the 65-year-old died in intensive care on Sunday. Mr Barros was the president of the Foundation for Nature Conservation in Mato Grosso do Sul state. He founded the organisation in 1980. He consistently...

Experiments with intensive fertilization show that a spruce forest in Västerbotten, northern Sweden, can more than triple its growth if the trees have access to all plant nutrients. This favorably affects the function of the forest as a carbon sink. In other words, fertilizing forests can help slow down global warming. This has been shown by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) at Umeå and Alnarp. The research findings were recently published in the journal Global Change Biology. The authors are Per Olsson, Sune Linder, Reiner Giesler, and Peter Högberg. In terms of both the climate and energy policy...

Toxic fumes favour the fairer sex, a group of researchers in Brazil has found. Jorge Hallak and his team at the University of Sao Paulo turned up the surprising result by studying babies born in their city. They divided the metropolis of 17 million people into areas of low, medium and high air pollution, using test results from air-quality monitoring stations. They then studied birth registries of children born from 2001 to 2003. The team found that 48.3% of babies were female in the least polluted areas, but 49.3% were female in the dirtiest parts of town. After measuring the...

Mass kills of fish, insects and plants could have saved Earth from greenhouse sterilization SALT LAKE CITY--(Oct. 16, 2005)--Prehistoric global warming episodes from massive atmospheric pollution involving carbon dioxide and methane could have created and preserved "mass kills" of wildlife, according to a University of Oregon study presented at the Geological Society of America's annual meeting. The work, done by Gregory Retallack, professor of geologic sciences at Oregon, involved a worldwide compilation of thousands of exceptionally well preserved fossil assemblages of fish, crustaceans, insects, starfish and other life forms. There are only about 41 episodes of exceptional preservation from the...

Do giant flashes of lightning striking upwards from thunder clouds merely pose an extraordinarily spectacular view? Or do they actually alter the chemical composition of the atmosphere, playing a role in ozone depletion and the climate on Earth? This is the key question that may be answered by specially designed cameras, which ESA proposes to place on board the International Space Station. The International Space Station (ISS) is the ideal setting for studies of spectacular natural phenomena well hidden from us on Earth - so-called red sprites, blue jets and elves: vast flashes of lightning striking not from clouds to...

Study does not discount the suspected contributions of 'greenhouse gases' in elevating surface temperatures DURHAM, N.C. -- At least 10 to 30 percent of global warming measured during the past two decades may be due to increased solar output rather than factors such as increased heat-absorbing carbon dioxide gas released by various human activities, two Duke University physicists report. The physicists said that their findings indicate that climate models of global warming need to be corrected for the effects of changes in solar activity. However, they emphasized that their findings do not argue against the basic theory that significant global...

Federal officials appear to be seeking proof to blame the flood of New Orleans on environmental groups, documents show. The Clarion-Ledger has obtained a copy of an internal e-mail the U.S. Department of Justice sent out this week to various U.S. attorneys' offices: "Has your district defended any cases on behalf of the (U.S.) Army Corps of Engineers against claims brought by environmental groups seeking to block or otherwise impede the Corps work on the levees protecting New Orleans? If so, please describe the case and the outcome of the litigation."

COLUMBUS , Ohio – For the third time in as many years, glaciologist Lonnie Thompson has returned from an Andean ice field in Peru with samples from beds of ancient plants exposed for the first time in perhaps as much as 6,500 years. In 2002, he first stumbled across some non-fossilized plants exposed by the steadily retreating Quelccaya ice cap. Carbon dating showed that plant material was at least 5,000 years old. Then in 2004, Thompson found additional plant beds revealed by the continued retreat of the melting ice and when tested, these proved to be carbon-free, suggesting that they...

Toxic chemicals in the New Orleans flood waters will make the city unsafe for full human habitation for a decade, a US government official has told The Independent on Sunday. And, he added, the Bush administration is covering up the danger. In an exclusive interview, Hugh Kaufman, an expert on toxic waste and responses to environmental disasters at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said the way the polluted water was being pumped out was increasing the danger to health. The pollution was far worse than had been admitted, he said, because his agency was failing to take enough samples...

KATRINA'S AFTERMATH A Barrier That Could Have Been Congress OKd a project to protect New Orleans 40 years ago, but an environmentalist suit halted it. Some say it could have worked. By Ralph Vartabedian and Peter Pae, Times Staff Writer September 9, 2005 latimes.com In the wake of Hurricane Betsy 40 years ago, Congress approved a massive hurricane barrier to protect New Orleans from storm surges that could inundate the city. But the project, signed into law by President Johnson, was derailed in 1977 by an environmental lawsuit. Now the question is: Could that barrier have protected New Orleans from...

The most impressive speech during the recent Regional Meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society was undoubtedly Czech President Václav Klaus’s “View from a Post-Communist Country in a Predominantly Post-Democratic Europe.” Klaus has been an MPS member since 1990 and likes to attend the MPS meetings. Though his political obligations (as Prime Minister from 1992 to 1997 and President since 2002) do not always allow him to attend, he combined his presence at the MPS meeting in Reykjavik with an official visit to the Republic of Iceland. President Klaus spoke last Monday, warning for the new “substitute ideologies of socialism” such...

I noticed a few FreeRepublic posts lately such as this one which wonders whether the poor box office at the movies this year might be due to the liberal mind-set found in Hollywood. Well, I'm a Hollywood writer and I know of at least one movie that Hollywood refuses to make called "Eco-America". "Eco-America" a comedy about the environmentalist movement and is unabashedly pro-American, pro-business and pro-freedom. Believe me, all the environmentalist elites you'd ever hope to see bashed are here...egghead professors, Hollywood actors, radical politicians -- they all get what's coming to them, and they are unmercifully made fun...

New Jerseyites take pride in being the "Garden State," but even nature lovers have their limits. How far those limits will be tested now rests with a state government that is once again deciding how to deal (or not) with its out-of-control bear problem. So far, it doesn't look good. New Jersey's black bear population has rocketed to some 3,400, and bears have been spotted in every one of the state's 21 counties. In the first half of this year alone, the state logged 677 damage and nuisance complaints, up from 424 in the same period last year. Bears have...

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) - A radical environmentalist who is one of the FBI's most wanted fugitives told an extradition hearing Monday he was being unfairly targeted by the U.S. government and should be allowed to remain in Canada. Tre Arrow, born Michael Scarpitti, is accused of taking part in the 2001 firebombings of logging and cement trucks in Oregon. The FBI also claims he is associated with the Earth Liberation Front, a group that has claimed responsibility for dozens of acts of destruction over the past few years. "I am being targeted by the U.S. government and the FBI,...

Buckyballs, described by some scientists as "the perfect molecule" and a hallmark of Rice University research, may cause more havoc in the environment than researchers originally thought. A team of researchers at Rice and Georgia Tech universities has found that the ultra-tiny, soccer-ball-shaped buckyballs, contrary to what they had thought, do in fact dissolve in water, a finding that suggests they could pose a risk for wildlife and water supplies. The new results compound concerns raised by earlier studies that found buckyballs can cause brain damage in bass and harm human cells. Discovered nearly two decades ago at Rice, buckyballs...

Disneyland in China Offers a Soup and Lands in a StewBy KEITH BRADSHER HONG KONG, June 16 - Donald Duck and friends are being drawn into an unusual showdown between Western sensitivities and Chinese tradition, setting off a debate that has this city buzzing.It all began when Hong Kong Disneyland, a new theme park scheduled to open on Sept. 12, announced that it would serve shark's fin soup - a chewy, sinewy, stringy dish that has been a Chinese favorite for two centuries.But plans for the culinary delicacy, to be served at wedding banquets, have drawn an outraged response from...

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration ended a 4-year-old ban on development in roadless areas of national forests Thursday. The move could pave the way for oil and gas drilling, logging, mining and road building in 34.3 million acres of untouched woods. The new rule gives governors of pro-development Western states greater say over forest management in their states, which environmental groups fear will lead to development that threatens fish and wildlife in pristine areas. The first intrusions into the forests will probably be by natural gas drilling rigs rather than chainsaws and timber mills because of market forces, according to...

Would Ward Churchill approve of violence against his colleagues at the University of Colorado who engage in research using animals? If you read his introduction to the 2004 book Terrorists or Freedom Fighters?: Reflections on the Liberation of Animals, you can only conclude the answer is quite possibly yes. Although Churchill initially indicates he is among those who "privilege humans over other species," he nevertheless lavishes praise on "animal liberationists" and describes the logic of the movement as "compelling." If Churchill has a problem with groups such as the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front, whose attacks have...

Sea creatures make chemicals similar to those spewed out by human factories. Noxious chemicals found in whale blubber may not be entirely artificial, research shows. Some of the compounds, which resemble the environmentally polluting chemicals we create as flame retardants, may be produced by sponges and other sea creatures. Scientists have known for years that certain artificial chemicals in the environment can accumulate in animals, especially in predators that eat other contaminated animals. Such tenacious molecules, called halogenated organic compounds, include the toxic pesticide DDT. Recently, a group of similar compounds was identified in marine animals, but its source was...

Robert Redford and George Soros surely make one of the oddest couples in American pop culture. For most of us, Redford’s all-American good looks evoke images of the dashing outlaw Harry Longabaugh, better known as the Sundance Kid. By contrast, Soros’ gaunt visage, thousand-yard stare, thick Central European accent, levitating gray hair and megalomaniacal pronouncements weirdly echo those of the “Dr. Strangelove” character in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 Cold War classic. The differences between these two men are only skin deep, however. Both owe allegiance to the far left. And both work quietly, in a sinister partnership, to flood U.S. media...

PATONG BEACH, Thailand - Many believe the tsunami that devastated this tourist hotspot and killed thousands had one positive side: By washing away rampant development, it returned the beaches to nature. Greg Ferrando glistened with sweat and sea water as he went for a barefoot jog up the immaculate white sand beach, where the tsunami has wiped away almost all signs of humanity. "This whole area was littered with commercialism," said the 43-year-old from Maui, Hawaii. "There were hundreds of beach chairs out here. I prefer the sand." The beauty of Thai beaches is the stuff of folklore: pristine, clean...

Less than a year after first setting up shop in China as a self-professed "environmental consultant", Kyoto Protocol architect Maurice Strong is a mega Chinese car salesman. Among the 250,000 cars the company in which he’s a partner will export to the United States is the enviro dreaded SUV. Strong, a former senior adviser to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, is current adviser to Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and adviser to the president of the World Bank. . . . . . Strong’s main mission in China was to replace the United States of America with China as a...

Wednesday, December 29, 2004 Atheist: Christmas tree recycling unfairProgram changed because incentive said to favor ChristiansPosted: December 29, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com An atheist activist forced Chicago to change its Christmas tree recycling program, complaining it was unfair to non-Christians. The city wanted to bolster its Blue Bag recycling program by offering a years worth of blue bags and some mulch to anyone who turned in a used Christmas tree. But Rob Sherman, known for his campaign to keep crosses off city seals, protested to Chicago, insisting the trees-for-bags exchange unfairly benefits Christians, the Chicago Tribune reported. "The concern was...

(Note: The subtitle is NATURALLY a negative spin; "Chilean Town bears brunt of radiation") PUNTA ARENAS, Chile - The worst of the ozone hole has pulled back once more to Ant-arctica this southern spring, leaving behind a shadow of uncertainty for the people living at the bottom of the Americas. How many will develop skin cancer in years to come? How many more decades must their children live with dangerous ultraviolet rays? Will the global treaty to save the ozone survive until then? The people of windblown Punta Arenas, like the local evergreens forever bent eastward from westerly gusts, are...

The nation obviously has been focused very heavily on terrorism for the last three years. Unfortunately, the overwhelming attention paid to foreign terrorist threats has tended to make people complacent about homegrown, domestic terrorism. Those living in the Washington, DC area got a wake-up call this last week, when an apparent group of environmental terrorists torched a housing development under construction in nearby Charles County, MD. Law enforcement officials have not yet determined who the perpetrators were and it is conceivable that simple vandalism or other motives were at work. But the evidence strongly suggests eco-terrorism. The development has been...

Drudge has posted an article stating that 2004 was among the hottest summers on record.But as I've been telling fellow freepers for a while now, I just got through doing a bunch of research to locate articles debunking Global Warming, and once I get them all put together, I'll post them for everyone. But one of the articles I found stated that 2004 was one of the coolest summers on record, according to NOAA Weather's website.*Scratches head* I'm so confused! But then again, the UN is the one behind Kyoto, which IS based on faulty science.

A former member of Greenpeace who became disillusioned with what he saw as bad eco-science urged a United Nations climate change conference to "save the world" by ignoring global warming. "Climate change is a huge thing, but there is very little that we can do about it," Bjorn Lomborg told CNSNews.com following a speech in Buenos Aires on Monday.

December 20, 2004 issue Copyright © 2004 The American Conservative Baby Gap How birthrates color the electoral map By Steve Sailer Despite the endless verbiage expended trying to explain America’s remarkably stable division into Republican and Democratic regions, almost no one has mentioned the obscure demographic factor that correlated uncannily with states’ partisan splits in both 2000 and 2004. Clearly, the issues that so excite political journalists had but a meager impact on most voters. For example, the press spent the last week of the 2004 campaign in a tizzy over the looting of explosives at Iraq’s al-Qaqaa munitions dump,...

Environmentalist BigfeetCNN does not stand for Conservative News Network. That is for sure. Sometimes they surprise us with a story like this one: Group Warns On Resource ConsumptionAlthough the article refers to certain facts that confront us all about how our natural resources are being used, the environmentalist solution never fails to be presented as government-control and limiting personal consumption. The basic idea of really tackling the environmental issues with regulatory policies and smarter consumption is a good idea to all of us, but other solutions on how to replenish natural resources give way to alarmist theories presented by the...

Bill O'Reilly of "The O'Reilly Factor" fame might not know this, or even care for that matter, but the principal members of a Manhattan law firm defending him in a $60 million sexual harassment lawsuit have close ties to the Democratic Party and have been generous contributors to various candidates over the years, among them Sen. Chuck Schumer, Rep. Nita Lowey and Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano. This is mentioned here in the interest of full disclosure (call it the "O'Reisman Factor") since O'Reilly's legal team has oddly accused plaintiff Andrea Mackris' lawyer, Benedict P. Morelli, of being such an...

The Schwarzenegger administration has quietly shut down virtually all expansion of California's state parks -- even land paid for with private donations, the Mercury News has learned. Saying the state cannot afford new rangers, fences, signs and maintenance, Schwarzenegger officials in the state Department of Finance are refusing to buy almost any new land or accept new scenic beaches, forests and historic sites into public ownership. The policy was put into place by the state Public Works Board, an obscure panel appointed by the governor that approves funding for state buildings, college classrooms, prisons, parks and other facilities.

SACRAMENTO (AP) - A joint federal and state water program intended to unite farmers, city folk and nature lovers was hailed by water users Thursday, but criticized by environmentalists who said a congressional reauthorization bill did not do enough to improve habitat. President Bush is expected to sign the $395 million California Federal Bay-Delta Program bill passed Wednesday by the House of Representatives that aims to restore the fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The system feeds the nation's most productive farm land while providing drinking water to 22 million Californians. The bill, which has been the subject of six years of...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some of Antarctica's glaciers are melting faster than snow can replace them, enough to raise sea levels measurably, scientists reported on Friday. Measurements of glaciers flowing into the Amundsen Sea, on the Pacific Ocean side of Antarctica, show they are melting much faster than in recent years and could break up. And they contain more ice than was previously estimated, meaning they could raise sea level by more than predicted, the international team of researchers writes in the journal Science. "The ... Amundsen Sea glaciers contain enough ice to raise sea level by 1.3 meters (4 feet),"...

Among the many luxuries that wealth can buy is insulation from reality — the most dangerous luxury of all. Another dangerous luxury is a sense of being one of the wonderfully special people with superior wisdom and virtue. Environmental extremism flourishes among those who can afford both luxuries. Did you know that people in the wealthy San Francisco suburb of Sausalito, across the bay, own 80,000 acres of land in Kenya? What are they doing with it? They are setting it aside as a nature preserve, in order to keep poor people in Kenya from hunting animals for food on...

US Newswire WASHINGTON, Aug. 12 Contrary to popular myth the Earth is not warming significantly, according to new research published last month in Geophysical Research Letters by scientists with the universities of Rochester and Virginia. The reports note two important findings that run counter to the view that human activity is causing catastrophic global warming. "It's been known for some time that satellites and surface thermometers give different temperature trends," said one of the reports' co-authors Prof. S. Fred Singer, president of the Science & Environmental Policy Project (SEPP). "We now have independent confirmation that the satellite results are correct...

TULSA - Blake Champlin, a Tulsa lawyer and environmental activist, died Monday at his home when a tree supporting a hammock fell and crushed him. Champlin, 45, died instantly, said Gerald Hilsher, an attorney with Shipley & Kellogg, Champlin's former law firm. Champlin was a member of Sierra Club and Save the Illinois River, and the director of Keep Tulsa Beautiful. He also pushed for an agreement between Oklahoma and Arkansas on phosphorus limits in northeast Oklahoma waters, Hilsher said. Champlin was a past director of the Oklahoma Society of Environmental Professionals and a past chairman of the Environmental Law...

You know things are getting bad when a conference sponsored by seemingly mainstream groups like the Ocean Conservancy and the Pew Charitable Trusts includes a panel on "direct action" featuring the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's "Captain" Paul Watson. An open promoter of violence, Watson declares there's "nothing wrong with being a terrorist, as long as you win." Yesterday he told the self-described "seaweed rebels" at the conference on ocean health: "We can no longer afford to eat any seafood." After announcing that Sea Shepherd is "proudly a pirate organization," Watson insisted: ... we have got to cease and desist and...

More on Environmentalism Science, Politics and Deathby Arthur B. Robinson & Jane M. OrientEnvironmental extremism kills. Millions die annually because of restrictions on DDT, and imposing the "Kyoto" regulations would kill many more.Dr. Arthur B. Robinson, a professor of chemistry, is the founder of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, and editor of the newsletter Access to Energy. Dr. Jane Orient, a specialist in internal medicine, has a private practice and is the executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Easily usable energy is the currency of human progress. Without it, stagnation, regression and untold...

LONDON (AFP) - Only nuclear energy can slow down the rapid and potentially devastating warming of the earth, a veteran British scientist and environmental campaigner argued. "Only one immediately available source does not cause global warming and that is nuclear energy," James Lovelock wrote in an opinion piece published in the Independent newspaper. The 84-year-old is best known for fathering the "Gaia Hypothesis" in the mid-1960s that states the earth is alive and maintains conditions necessary for its survival. Lovelock warned that environmentally-friendly energy sources were not being developed quickly enough to replace coal, gas and oil, whose waste gas...

PHOENIX — Any way you look at it, Superior is a town down on its luck. Since the mines closed in the 1980s, most of the community's businesses have folded and more than half of its residents have moved away. But in the struggling community that has seen its share of booms and busts, another boom could be on the horizon. At the old Magma Mine's Shaft No. 9, east of town, geologists are swooning over ore samples taken from more than 7,000 feet below the surface. They show a huge deposit of high-grade copper ore that geologists believe could...

<p>April 23, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - On Earth Day, Democrat John Kerry reluctantly admitted to having a gas-guzzling SUV in the family - but blamed his wife. "The family has it. I don't have it," Kerry said yesterday.</p> <p>But at first, Kerry - quizzed by reporters on a conference call - tried to deny any links to a gas-guzzler on a day when he was touting his credentials as an environmentalist.</p>

<p>The ongoing hysteria about lead in Washington, D.C.’s drinking water is much ado about nothing, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Though that’s no surprise, the controversy does have some value ¯ it demonstrates the potential unintended consequences of implementing junk science-based environmental policy.</p>

It's about the trees, foe of logging says Activist charged in firebombings denies FBI's 'terrorist' label By ANDREW KRAMER THE ASSOCIATED PRESS VICTORIA, B.C. -- For 19 months, Tre Arrow was one of the most wanted fugitives in North America -- he was accused of firebombing logging and cement trucks in Oregon and having links to a group of radical environmentalists viewed as terrorists by the FBI. Now he's in the Vancouver Island Regional Correctional Centre, facing charges of trying to shoplift bolt cutters. He has begun a hunger strike to protest what he calls injustices in the U.S. legal...

<p>SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - Environmentalists who successfully tapped taxpayer money to buy thousands of acres of California coastline to stop development are now targeting the Pacific Ocean, with a plan to curb human activity by buying boats, fishing permits and possibly underwater land.</p>

Many of us have long believed that the true goal of the environmental movement is socialism. Below are just a few examples that provide proof of just that. These documents may be well known to some of you, but I had to go “undercover” as a liberal environmentalist to obtain proof of their motives. Most of the excerpts shown here are from the Environmental Research Foundation. The Environmental Research Foundation isn’t just some small "fringe" group. No, they distribute their nutty tripe to more than 3,500 (including the EPA and ACLU for example) organizations worldwide. You can see which organizations...

FRIDAY HARBOR, Wash. -- Paul Watson leans back into a fluffy couch surrounded by swords and confides that his reputation as a crazed, eco-terrorist pirate actually helps him perform his mission. He used to have to actually ram and sink whaling ships to be effective, Watson explains. Now he's considered so dangerous that all he has to do is show up. During the past 30 years, Watson takes credit for sinking eight whaling ships and ramming six other vessels. He's faced off navies and brawled on Canadian ice over the killing of baby harp seals. He was beaten, shot at...