Free Republic

From The Washington Free Beacon, Lachlan Markay. Press release follows. Internal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) emails show extensive collaboration between top agency officials and leading environmentalist groups, including overt efforts to coordinate messaging and pressure the fossil fuel industry.

The BBC has spent tens of thousands of pounds over six years trying to keep secret an extraordinary ‘eco’ conference which has shaped its coverage of global warming, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. The controversial seminar was run by a body set up by the BBC’s own environment analyst Roger Harrabin and funded via a £67,000 grant from the then Labour government, which hoped to see its ‘line’ on climate change and other Third World issues promoted in BBC reporting. At the event, in 2006, green activists and scientists – one of whom believes climate change is a bigger...

An educational program funded by Ohio’s oil and gas industry and sponsored by Radio Disney has environmental activists — and some parents — up in arms over what they say is a hijacking of public education by hydraulic fracturing (fracking) interests, in a state sitting on billions of dollars’ worth of gas-rich shale. The program, called Rocking in Ohio, went on a 26-stop tour of elementary schools and science centers across the state last month. It involves interactive demonstrations of how oil and gas pipelines work, and is led by three staffers from Radio Disney’s Cleveland branch. It is entirely...

Inside the Beltway: Polar vortex fits leftist agenda By Jennifer Harper The Washington Times Monday, January 6, 2014 The word of the day is “polar vortex,” which has inspired several thousand press accounts obsessing over the frigid weather pattern now freezing much of the nation — along with a call of fraud. “Right on schedule, the media have to come up with a way to make it sound like this is completely unprecedented, because they’ve got to find a way to attach this to the global warming agenda. And they have. It’s called the polar vortex. The dreaded polar vortex,”...

Regardless of party affiliations, true conservatives have made the old fashioned light bulb—an unassuming household item—into a symbol for something much larger. But what, exactly? At the risk of sounding melodramatic, it has become symbolic of the fight between liberty and tyranny. The light bulb ban provides a useful window into the mindset of liberals. Here’s how they see the issue: energy-saving bulbs are better, therefore the others should be illegal. The pattern repeats itself in nearly every other realm: they determine the best policy, then impose it in a top down manner with no regard for states, localities, or...

ONLY a fraction of Scottish forests felled to make way for wind farms have been replanted, figures show, sparking calls for a ban on new developments. Forestry Commission statistics reveal that about five million trees – almost one for every person in Scotland – have been cut down to clear space for turbines in the past six years but less than a third of them have been replaced. Of the 2,510 hectares stripped of woodland to make way for turbines since 2007, just 792 hectares were reforested after construction was completed. The Scottish Conservatives, who obtained the figures through a...

Turney later told FoxNews.com the ice surrounding his ship is old, rather than recently formed, and likely from a particular 75 mile-long iceberg that broke apart three years ago. Climate change may have prompted the iceberg to shatter and float into the previously open sea where the mostly Australian team finds itself stranded, Turney said.

The helicopter rescue crew is coming to take me away, ha-haaa! They're coming to take me away, ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-haaa! To the funny farm. Where I can find banana peanut butter milkshakes sprinkled with delicious carbon credits. We thought it was a joke and so we laughed, we laughed when I had said that proving global warming had trapped us in ice and that I'm going MAD!!! And U.K. Guardian reporter Laurence Topham has proclaimed himself going mad (along with his craving for banana peanut butter milkshakes) in this rather morose video diary in which he discovers that that the...

No rules yet for recycling mercury-containing alternatives A federal ban on inefficient light bulbs goes into effect Jan. 1, 2014, almost seven years after it was announced with fanfare by a then-rookie Conservative government. But the tough regulations are being watered down, and there are no federal rules yet on recycling a class of bulbs that meet the new standard but contain toxic mercury.

The Earth Justice website paints a bleak picture of strip mining which has “devastated Appalachia,” claiming that “in the past few decades, over 2,000 miles of streams and headwaters that provide drinking water to millions of Americans have been permanently buried and destroyed. An area the size of Delaware has been flattened. Local coal communities routinely face devastating floods and adverse health effects.” If so many miles of streams that provide drinking water to millions had been buried, how do these millions get their drinking water? I also wonder if the cancer rate and lung-related illnesses are higher in these...

Nick Clegg’s party has unveiled proposals to only allow ultra-low carbon vehicles on UK roads by 2040. The controversial measures would mean millions of petrol and diesel cars being forbidden. Only electric vehicles and ultra-efficient hybrid cars would be allowed on UK roads under the Lib Dem plans. However, petrol and diesel vehicles would still be allowed for freight purposes. … The Lib Dems also want to introduce a system of road pricing in congested areas. … As part of the party’s plans to create a “zero-carbon” Britain, the Lib Dems could also embrace nuclear power and shale gas exploration....

A person who is actually a climate skeptic (and WUWT regular) applied for and was granted a training slot in Chicago this week. http://climaterealityproject.org/leadership-corps/ and has graduated as one of the 1500 people that attended the event. For obvious reasons, I can’t reveal the person’s name, but I can reveal the communication I received last night. The ‘mole’ writes:

An all too familiar scene was enacted on the campus of Swarthmore College during a meeting on May 4th to discuss demands by student activists for the college to divest itself of its investments in companies that dealt in fossil fuels. As a speaker was beginning a presentation to show how many millions of dollars such a disinvestment would cost the college, student activists invaded the meeting, seized the microphone and shouted down a student who rose in the audience to object. Although there were professors and administrators in the room — including the college president — apparently nobody had...

‘No such thing as ethical oil,’ Al Gore tells Toronto audience IVAN SEMENIUK The Globe and Mail Published Tuesday, May. 07 2013, 10:44 PM EDT Last updated Wednesday, May. 08 2013, 7:41 AM EDT Declaring that “American democracy has been hacked,” former U.S. vice-president Al Gore told a Toronto audience that his countrymen needed to wake up to the special interests that have a grip on the levers of power in the U.S. Congress and are able to block legislation on a range of policy issues including his signature cause, global climate change. Mr. Gore added that he felt action...

Enjoy the footage of Liberal environmentalists showing each other how much they love trees, but also showing the world how crazy they are... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElJFYwRtrH4&feature=youtube_gdata_player

April 21, 2013 Earth Day co-founder killed, composted girlfriend Remy Melina Ira Einhorn was on stage hosting the first Earth Day event at the Fairmount Park in Philadelphia on April 22, 1970. Seven years later, police raided his closet and found the "composted" body of his ex-girlfriend inside a trunk. A self-proclaimed environmental activist, Einhorn made a name for himself among ecological groups during the 1960s and '70s by taking on the role of a tie-dye-wearing ecological guru and Philadelphia’s head hippie. With his long beard and gap-toothed smile, Einhorn — who nicknamed himself "Unicorn" because his German-Jewish last name...

The Economist and other journalism icons are beginning to reassess their position on global warmingThe overwhelming consensus on global warming among journalists may be cracking. Last week, the world’s most prestigious newsmagazine – The Economist – backed away from its past alarmist position, saying that “If climate scientists were credit-rating agencies, climate sensitivity would be on negative watch.” The Economist now discounts the high-end estimates of warming coming from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as being unlikely if not far-fetched. Carbon taxes offer economic pain for little to no environmental gain Kenneth P. Green: Whether or not one...

A California billionaire is pledging to spend as much of his fortune as necessary to make climate change “the defining issue of our generation.” Tom Steyer, who made his riches as a hedge fund manager, told The Hill on Tuesday that he wants to make climate change a campaign issue for years to come and Democratic support for environmental protections as widespread as support for gay marriage and immigration reform. “The goal here is not to win. The goal here is to destroy these people. We want a smashing victory,” Steyer said of candidates he judges to be on the...

I checked first, thinking this was some April Fools joke, it appears legit. (h/t to Tom Nelson and Skiphil)Climate Alarmist Jim Hansen leaving NASA on Wed. to devote himself to legal and political activism:Hansen retiring from NASA to press legal and activist efforts At the same time, retirement will allow Dr. Hansen to press his cause in court. He plans to take a more active role in lawsuits challenging the federal and state governments over their failure to limit emissions, for instance, as well as in fighting the development in Canada of a particularly dirty form of oil extracted...

March 24 is Palm Sunday, which means that millions of Christians across the country will be celebrating Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem by carrying palm leaves, often shaped in the form of a cross, into their places of worship. Where do these palms come from? Most likely they have been imported from one of a few Latin American countries: Guatemala, Belize, or southern Mexico, for instance. And most likely, they have been harvested in a manner that is harmful to the environment. Harvesters are often paid by volume rather than quality, and they have a strong incentive to cut as many...