Free Republic

Donald Trump, after stating that he was going to reinstate waterboarding "and worse" for terrorists, now says he is against waterboarding. He also says global warming, which he once said was a hoax created by the Chinese to make U.S. manufacturing uncompetitive, may be caused by man-made activities. Donald Trump seemed to acknowledge that humans contribute to climate change Tuesday in a meeting with New York Times reporters, moving closer to widely held scientific opinion but away from the Republican Party line. He is keeping an "open mind" when it comes to climate issues, he said. "I think there is...

NASA’s top climate scientist Gavin Schmidt has warned President-Elect Donald Trump that the planet just won’t stand for having a fully-fledged climate denier in the White House. Good luck with that one, Gavin. Or “Toast” as we’ll shortly be calling you… Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), told the Independent: “The point is simple: the climate is changing and you can try to deny it, you can appoint people who don’t care about it into positions of power, but regardless nature has the last vote on this.” Unfortunately, Schmidt doesn’t feel so strongly on the issue...

United Nations delegates agreed to put off writing any rules for the recently ratified Paris climate agreement to 2018 after President-elect Donald Trump, who’s opposed the agreement, won a surprising election victory. UN delegates came away with little more than a pledge to reconvene by December 2018 to write rules for the global warming agreement despite extending their two-week summit in Marrakech, Morocco an extra day. News outlets are reporting nearly 200 countries reaffirmed their pledges to fully implement the Paris deal, which aims to somehow keep projected global warming below 2 degrees Celsius. But Trump’s surprise election victory shocked...

In my special Donald Trump Victory Edition Delingpole podcast on Thursday, I describe how I’ve been feeling since I heard the happy news. Like a baby sea otter on MDMA, basically: frolicking and swooping and frisking and diving in the lovely warm, salty water made up entirely of the tears of Hillary voters, greens, and the bien-pensant wankerati. If you’ve accidentally strayed over here from Buzzfeed, Salon, Slate, or similar, you will probably see this as evidence of my cruel and vindictive personality. On the contrary, I’m saying this stuff because I’m nice and because I care: some really, really...

One of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s wealthiest donors said he plans on spending as much money necessary to fight President-elect Donald Trump and his pro-fossil fuel positions. Billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer told reporters Tuesday that he intends on crafting a multi-pronged strategy engaging voters and anti-Trump activists once the former reality TV star takes residence in the White House. “We have always been willing to do whatever is necessary,” the former hedge fund manager said when asked about the amount of money he was willing to dump into the system to destroy Trump’s agenda. Steyer’s position closely...

Last week, a group of 21 young people, aged 9 to 20 years, won the right to sue the US government for its inaction in mitigating climate change, when an Oregon federal judge ruled that the plaintiffs' lawsuit was valid and could proceed in court. The chief legal counsel for the plantiffs, Julia Olson, had this to say about the significance of the ruling, urging outgoing President Obama to come to an agreement with a binding court order before Trump's inauguration early next year: We have a President-elect who is an obvious climate denier and both political branches controlled by...

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency is telling staff to quickly finish up the last round of regulations before President-elect Donald Trump enters the Oval Office next year. "As I've mentioned to you before, we're running — not walking — through the finish line of President Obama's presidency," EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said in a staff memo obtained by the Washington Examiner after Trump was declared the winner of Tuesday's election. The agency is currently working on regulations for the oil and gas sector, and is finalizing new annual regulations for the nation's ethanol mandate and renewable fuel blending...

The Department of Interior’s blog [1] stated Thursday that the biggest threat to seven of the most iconic landmarks in the United States is climate change. “Climate change is the biggest threat to our national parks,” the blog stated. “It’s not just a future threat -- we’re seeing the impacts right now at national parks and other public lands across the country. “We must #ActOnClimate to ensure that current and future generations can enjoy America’s most treasured places,” the blog stated. “If we don’t, we will have to say goodbye to these iconic views.” Here are the seven places the...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Okay, testing, testing, one two. Okay, folks, we're in Los Angeles here as we have migrated. We have moved to the Left Coast in order to evacuate ground zero for Hurricane Matthew. And, as always happens, we gotta do some things live on the radio because what we do beforehand never holds. So this is called mix minus. You need to bring the audio up. Bring it up... There we go. Bring it up a little bit more. Bring it up just a little bit... You are not hearing the changes I'm hearing. This is only how...

Hurricane Matthew is barreling towards Florida, and left-leaning bloggers and scientists have already blamed the storm’s ferocity on, you guessed it, global warming. “Matthew has already set a number of records — and global warming is giving it a boost,” Joe Romm, ThinkProgress’ climate editor, wrote. “Hurricane Matthew, a record-shattering storm that is unusual for October, is a reminder of climate change’s potential to turn seasonal weather events into extreme, year-round threats,” echoed Huffington Post reporter Lydia O’Connor.

Former vice president Al Gore will start campaigning for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, according to individuals briefed on the plan, in an effort to mobilize young voters who see climate change as a key issue. The decision by Gore to plunge into the campaign during the final weeks shows the extent to which Democrats remain concerned that Clinton has yet to connect with many millennials, some of whom are backing third-party candidates this year.

Chelsea Clinton opted to travel to a “clean energy” roundtable in Asheville, North Carolina on Wednesday afternoon in a private jet to campaign on behalf of her mother Hillary Clinton. Clinton first attended two events in Greenville, North Carolina, stopping by a campaign office and then going to an event at East Carolina University to discuss college affordability. After her two events in Greenville, Clinton was scheduled to attend a “clean energy roundtable” in Asheville, which is about a 5-hour drive away. But instead of driving or flying on a commercial plane, Clinton opted to a take a private jet....

CAFE is just one of the many policies that make doing business difficult in America Ford Motor Company made headlines on Wednesday, September 9, when, during an investor conference, CEO Mark Fields told attendees that it will invest $1.6 billion building a manufacturing plant in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, and will move all of its small car production there during the next two to three years. The announcement was hardly news as Ford has been talking about the shift for more than a year. But in the throes of an election that has both candidates decrying companies that send jobs...

“Dangerous changes in our climate, caused mainly by human activity; dead zones in our ocean, caused mainly by pollution that we create here on land; unsustainable fishing practices; unprotected marine areas, in which rare species and entire ecosystems are at risk -- all those things are happening now. They’ve been happening for a long time. So if we’re going to leave our children with oceans like the ones that were left to us then we're going to have to act. And we're going to have to act boldly…. “One of the reasons I ran for President was to make sure...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Most Americans are willing to pay a little more each month to fight global warming — but only a tiny bit, according to a new poll. Still, environmental policy experts hail that as a hopeful sign. Seventy-one percent want the federal government to do something about global warming, including 6 percent who think the government should act even though they are not sure that climate change is happening,..

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein said she vandalized a bulldozer at an anti-oil protest earlier this week to show solidarity with those working to rescue the planet from global warming. Stein told a crowd at the Metropolitan Community College’s Fort Omaha campus Thursday that she had no other choice but to spray paint the words “I approve this message” on a bulldozer blade at the protest. She said she did it because the Native American protesters asked her to. “I felt like it was the least I could do in front of these Indian leaders, as they were putting...

Hillary Clinton is very important, and she can’t be bogged down by pesky things such as boats or waiting. The presidential candidate, who is endlessly trying to tell factory workers in Ohio and Pennsylvania that she’s one of them, jetted approximately 20 miles from Martha’s Vineyard — where she was last night partying with President Obama — to Nantucket for a fundraiser on Saturday. Fox News aired footage of her stepping off her plane in the latter. (snip) Cindy Adams of the New York Post reports: On the 20th Hillary’s piggy bank gets a do at the de Rothschilds. As...

Liberal billionaire George Soros gave former Vice President Al Gore’s environmental group millions of dollars over three years to create a “political space for aggressive U.S. action” on global warming, according to leaked documents. A document published by DC Leaks shows Soros, a Hungarian-born liberal financier, wanted his nonprofit Open Society Institute (OSI) to do more to support global warming policies in the U.S. That included budgeting $10 million in annual support to Gore’s climate group over three years. “U.S. Programs Global Warming Grants U.S. Programs became engaged on the global warming issue about four years ago, at George Soros’s...

"Chelsea Clinton declares: ‘Yesterday we used up the world’s resources allotted for this year. It gets worse." Hillary Clinton’s daughter did her best Chicken Little impression on Tuesday, firing off a tweet that warned humans had used up all of the resources “allotted” for the year 2016. We are now be borrowing against future generations, kind of like her mom’s economic plans.

As contenders scramble for the White House this fall, thoughts have naturally turned to President Obama’s legacy, and particularly his environmental legacy. As taxpayers consider the lessons of that legacy they would do well to consider past support and use of taxpayer dollars for favored industries and companies. One of those once favored companies is the now defunct renewable energy company Solyndra. During the late 2000s, the Obama administration deployed its political capital to cultivate an environmentally friendly image for the president. In a quest for renewable energy as part of the stimulus package and at the urging of the...