Free Republic

........."If you believe that freedom is at the core of what it means to be human, then theWarmists and what they stand for are instinctively repulsive to you. On the other hand, if you believe that human society must be organized into a moral collective for the betterment of all, then theWarmist idea provides a wake up call compelling us to form into ranks and goose step in recycled rubber boots into the green future. It’s an exaggeration, but that’s what debates over the proper role of man tend to become. We don’t fight wars over temperature gradients. The passions...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration says new rules to manage nearly 200 million acres of national forests will protect watersheds and wildlife while promoting uses ranging from recreation to logging. The new rules, to replace guidelines thrown out by a federal court in 2009, are set to take effect in early March. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the rule change on Thursday. Vilsack said in an interview that the rules reflect more than 300,000 comments received since a draft plan was released last year. The new rules strengthen a requirement that decisions be based on the best available science...

It’s been a few days since our last Global Warming Quote of the Day, and because our readers probably have yearned for another, we bring you without further ado, today’s Global Warming Quote of the Day. “I don’t pursue the electrification of the automobile out of any fear I might have of planetary meltdown. . .

The Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) left the BlueGreen Alliance on Friday, citing a disagreement with the group’s members over the Keystone XL pipeline. LIUNA, a vocal Keystone supporter, took aim at other unions for opposing the project. “We’re repulsed by some of our supposed brothers and sisters lining up with job killers like the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council to destroy the lives of working men and women,” LIUNA General President Terry O’Sullivan said in a statement. The BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of environmental groups and labor unions, confirmed LIUNA’s exit Friday afternoon. “The...

A review of Love Your Monsters, a collection of essays on a new kind of environmentalism. Environmentalists Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus famously proclaimed The Death of Environmentalism in 2004. Now they're back with an ambitious new collection of essays titled Love Your Monsters: Postenvironmentalism and the Anthropocene. Their goal is to dismantle the neo-Malthusian environmentalism of sacrifice and collapse and replace it with a new environmentalism that celebrates human creativity and technological abundance. Hooray! In their introductory essay, Shellenberger and Nordhaus make the case that technological progress and economic growth is the road to salvation, not the highway to...

I confess I am not a zealous football fan, and until a month ago, I hoped Tim Tebow would don a Colorado Rockies uniform so I could get really excited about him. But like the other five million residents of Colorado, I have come to love the amazing Broncos quarterback who does not hide his evangelical Christian faith. According to a poll by a national sports magazine, Tebow is today the most popular American athlete, ahead of Kobe Bryant, Tiger Woods, Peyton Manning, and (no surprise here) Tom Brady. Tim Tebow has made believers out of millions in more ways...

Sir Fred Hoyle Vindicated (Via Dr. Benny Peiser of the GWPF) According to new research to be published in Nature Geoscience  (embargoed until 1800 GMT/10AM PST, Sunday 8 January 2012), the next ice age could set in any time this millennium where it not for increases in anthropogenic CO2 emissions that are preventing such a global disaster from occurring. The new research confirms the theory developed by the late Sir Fred Hoyle and Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe in the 1990s that without increased levels of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere ‘the drift into new ice-age conditions would be inevitable.’Hoyle and Wickramasinghe...

The recent killing of an aggressive Mexican gray wolf by federal agents at a ranch near Winston could lead to a reassessment of the already struggling recovery effort for that species. The wolf was reportedly shot by agents with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services division on Dec. 14, after it paced across the porch and gazed through the window of John and Crystal Diamond’s Beaverhead Ranch home. The Diamond residence is located in Catron County, although near enough to Sierra County to be in the Winston mailing area. The wolf was killed just weeks after the Arizona Game...

Houston-based Pelican Refining Co. has been fined $12 million for felony violations of the Clean Air Act at its Louisiana refinery. A federal judge in Lafayette, La., imposed the fine - the largest ever in Louisiana for violations of the act - after the company pleaded guilty in October. The violations were ...

The Nature Conservancy — a tax-exempt corporation — is a pretty aggressive purchaser of land in the Third World in the name of environmentalism. One of its mottoes is “Donate to The Nature Conservancy and give back to nature.” In Kenya, a gift may have gone a little to far back to nature — all the way to the law of the jungle. From the Guardian: Members of the Samburu people in Kenya have been abused, beaten and raped by police after the land they lived on for two decades was sold to two US-based wildlife charities, a rights group...

The 20th century will be remembered for the totalitarian monsters of various stripes who conceived, planned and executed programs of selective mass extermination of humans. I think that all Leftists, without exception, including the meekest of democratic socialists, have been implicated - knowingly or in consciously cultivated ignorance – as apologists for, or accomplices and abettors to the crimes of the totalitarians. I am stating this categorical proposition so bluntly rather late in life, although I have been convinced of its verity for as long as I can remember being able to recognize the evidence, i.e. since my teens. I...

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has settled with Lafarge North America Inc., a large construction materials supplier in the United States and Canada, as well as four of its U.S. subsidiaries, to resolve alleged Clean Water Act violations. The settlement includes a fine and the creation, within the company, of the positions of environmental vice president and ...

Animal rights groups suffered a setback as the Appellate Division of the New Jersey state Superior Court....

What we instead need are more free markets and more liberty – for history has shown that this is the way for our country’s restored greatness – both as a nation but also for the general populace. To that end, we will be rallying on December 3rd at 11:30 a.m. on the West Steps of the Colorado State Capitol to show support for free market capitalism. Additionally, we will be having a charity drive for a charity to be determined to help show that voluntary contributions – not forced altruism at the hand of the government – is the most...

Like a good neighbor, Canada is there—offering America tens of thousands of jobs, protection against soaring gas prices and up to 700,000 barrels of crude oil a day for Oklahoma and Gulf Coast refineries to process—if America accepts TransCanada’s proposal to build the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta’s tar sands to the Gulf Coast. Let’s say your neighbor invites you over to her holiday party and you respond: “No way, you’re an animal killer. Last year, you served meatballs at your party and I’m against animal cruelty.” Don’t expect your neighbor to ever talk to you again. Likewise, Canada has...

H.L. Mencken, I think it was, who uttered the immortal phrase "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public." No one is a greater admirer of the dynamic and generous society that is America, and when I consider all the nations we could have had living next door I often think we won the neighbourhood lotto. But for some reason Mencken's phrase kept echoing in my head when I heard the news about Washington's plan to delay their decision on the Keystone XL pipeline. Folly is too kind a word for this decision. It is the crassest...

Obama delays Keystone decision until after 2012 reelection bidBy Ben Geman - 11/10/11 05:54 PM ET The Obama administration announced Thursday it would delay a politically explosive decision on the proposed Keystone XL oil sands pipeline until after the 2012 elections. The pipeline is especially treacherous waters for President Obama because it splits key elements of his base. While green groups oppose it, several major unions are pushing for approval. Keystone had become a serious thorn in Obama’a side, with environmental groups warning they’d feel betrayed if the pipeline moved forward. Business groups and unions had heralded the thousands of...

We’ve made a bit of a mistake as a conservative movement fixating so much on the race for the White House. There’s a behind the scenes fight happening in Washington right now. Congressional Republicans are not just selling us out, they are hell bent — and I really do mean hell bent — on destroying the conservative groups raising red flags about what they are doing.For so long the GOP in Washington could hide behind surveys like the American Conservative Union survey, which shows just how much more someone is Republican than Democrat. No one actually did a survey that...

Barack Obama is busy, busy, scattering largesse to the populace. Whatever he can say to win votes — he’ll say it. His address in Denver yesterday included not only the announcement of his highly impactful student loan program reforms, but also a testy reassurance that he’s taking into consideration concerns about a proposed pipeline — the Keystone XL — that would run from Canada to Texas: During an event with young people in Denver, one activist interrupted Obama’s remarks, urging the president to reject the project.“We’re looking at it right now, all right?” Obama replied. “No decision’s been made and...

Occupy Wall Street may be "leaderless," but it's far from directionless. In the time since the protest movement began on Sept. 17, its "We Are the 99 Percent" (http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/) message has exploded into a national rallying cry, inspiring not only a bustling mini-city in New York's financial district, but also an overnight network of sympathizers from Seattle to Miami. According to the unofficial umbrella group Occupy Together, some 1,500 cities worldwide will see "Occupy" events this week. And while the nebulous campaign is focused mainly on economic issues, it has also strived for inclusiveness, winning the support of diverse groups...