Free Republic

The Environmental Protection Agency, seen by President Trump as a bloated bureaucratic whale, is on schedule to fulfill his promise to cut its staff nearly in half by the end of his first term, according to officials. The EPA Tuesday provided to Secrets its first year staff cutting results which show that the agency is below levels last seen during former President Reagan’s administration. And if just those slated to retire by early 2021 leave, Administrator Scott Pruitt and his team will have reduced a staff of nearly 15,000, to below 8,000, or a cut of 47 percent. “We’re proud...

Yale professor and clinical psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee has warned that President Donald Trump may bring about the “extinction of the human species” because of his mental instability. Lee, who has briefed members of congress on the president’s psychological state, insisted that her extreme prediction was “not hyperbole” but “reality.” Dr. Lee said told Newsweek that the situation is so grave that “a public health emergency” should be declared that would need to be “responded to as quickly as possible.” “As more time passes, we come closer to the greatest risk of danger, one that could even mean the...

With most of the U.S. recently in the grip of significant cold, and given the proper goading from President Trump, liberals again felt led to lecture us on the difference between weather and climate. It's lost on most leftists how they so often fail to apply the same standards to themselves. Whether blizzards, hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes, record heat, record cold, and so on, with religious devotion, liberals almost never fail to link dramatic weather events to their apocalyptic climate narrative. One of the easiest jobs in the world has to be that of climate doomsayer. No matter the weather, the...

Just when you thought the Big Freeze couldn’t get any worse, here’s Al Gore to twist the knife. It’s bitter cold in parts of the US, but climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann explains that’s exactly what we should expect from the climate crisis. https://t.co/6UfJ9Xxpq6 — Al Gore (@algore) January 4, 2018 Yep. Where others might see a crisis, Al Gore has spotted a Rahm-Emanuel-style opportunity to promote his renewables scam. This bitter cold, he wants you to know, isn’t a sign that his global warming theory is a busted flush. It’s a sign that he’s even more right than ever...

Former Vice President Al Gore has weighed in on the record cold and snow in the U.S. “It’s bitter cold in parts of the US, but climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann explains that’s exactly what we should expect from the climate crisis,” Gore wrote on January 4 on Twitter. *snip* Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth did not warn of record cold and increasing snowfalls as a consequence of man-made global warming.

Let’s start with the universe and work our way in. Who cares? Not them because as far as we know they aren’t there. As far as we know, no one exists in our galaxy or perhaps anywhere else but us (and the other creatures on this all-too-modest planet of ours). So don’t count on any aliens out there caring what happens to humanity. They won’t. As for it - Earth - the planet itself can’t, of course, care, no matter what we do to it. And I’m sure it won’t be news to you that, when it comes to him...

Tens of thousands of people have evacuated their land in Bali as the nearby volcano Mount Agung angrily spits ash and its magma rises. Many Balinese hold the mountain sacred and accept its occasional outbursts as moral admonishments whereas geologists consider this activity a routine part of Earth’s behavior. But scientists have found another force - climate change - affects the frequency of eruptions. Now a new study shows even relatively minor climate variations may have such an influence. If they are right, today’s global warming could mean more and bigger volcanic eruptions in the future. The new study is...

As a coalition of community organizations working in low-income communities of color most impacted by pollution, we have been proud to support California’s ambitious goals on climate change. But the state’s leadership depends on demonstrating in words and actions that our climate policies protect and benefit our most vulnerable communities. This is a moral imperative, a legal mandate and a political necessity. Last week, the California Air Resources Board approved a roadmap to achieving the 2030 greenhouse gas reduction targets, but unfortunately it does not say how it will avoid disproportionate impacts in low-income and minority communities. The air resources...

President Trump's national security report has been released, and climate change is not on it. That is a departure from not only the Obama administration, but the George W. Bush administration, some media are noting.Since 2003, the Defense Department has indicated that climate change threatens "disruption and conflict," refugee crises, border tensions and other military conflicts. President Obama saw the threat as more dire, putting climate change in the same conversation as the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in his 2015 memo. Climate change, that document warned, was contributing to "increased natural disasters, refugee flows and conflicts over...

**SNIP** The Oscar buzz comes despite pushback from skeptics, led by University of Alabama in Huntsville climatologist Roy Spencer, a former NASA scientist who accused Mr. Gore of attributing natural phenomena to human-caused climate change. In September, Mr. Spencer published an 84-page e-book, “An Inconvenient Deception,” which blasted the film as “bursting with bad science, bad policy, and some outright falsehoods.” “An Inconvenient Truth” was similarly rebuked by skeptics — Danish academic Bjorn Lomborg challenged it in a book and film called “Cool It”—but the movie earned $24 million at the box office, making it the 11th-highest grossing documentary of...

As global warming exacerbates drought and floods, farmers’ incomes plunge – and girls as young as 13 are given away to stave off poverty. ... Everyone has their own idea of what climate change looks like. For some, it’s the walrus struggling to find space on melting ice floes on Blue Planet II. For others, it’s an apocalyptic vision of cities disappearing beneath the waves. But for more and more girls across Africa, the most palpable manifestation of climate change is the baby in their arms as they sit watching their friends walk to school. Many experts are warning a...

EARLIER THIS month, 13 federal agencies released an exhaustive assessment of the country’s climate, concluding that Americans are now living in the “warmest period in the history of modern civilization.” The warming of the Earth, particularly if it accelerates, will raise sea levels dramatically, with catastrophic consequences for coastal communities such as Hampton Roads. Perhaps most striking about this report aren’t the conclusions, though they are particularly dire. They echo much of the climate science already available to the public, though the extrapolated effects listed here are deeply alarming. Rather, it’s that the scientists who authored this report were clear...

After 30 Years, Alarmists Are Still Predicting A Global Warming ‘Apocalypse’ Michael BastaschFor at least three decades scientists and environmental activists have been warning that the world is on the verge of a global warming “apocalypse” that will flood coastal cities, tear up roads and bridges with mega-storms and bring widespread famine and misery to much of the world.The only solution, they say, is to rid the world of fossil fuels — coal, natural gas and oil — that serve as the pillars of modern society. Only quick, decisive global action can avert the worst effects of manmade climate change,...

America’s biggest problem right now is that “We’ve got people in charge of important shit who don’t believe in science.” Well, at least it is if you believe that world-renowned expert Harrison Ford. Ford was speaking at an environmental awards ceremony in Culver City, California, where he was fêted for his work as executive vice chair of Conservation International. According to Hollywood Reporter: “We face an unprecedented moment in this country. Today’s greatest threat is not climate change, not pollution, not flood or fire,” Ford said during his acceptance speech of the Founders’ Award. “It’s that we’ve got people in...

Bill Nye “the Science Guy” said his efforts to convince the public of the dangers of global warming have failed, largely due to a misinformation campaign by the fossil fuel industry.“I am a failure,” Nye told Salon in an interview ahead of a documentary on the Science Guy’s rise to fame.“The United States has now got the head of the EPA who wants to close the EPA,” Nye said, adding his decades-long effort to convince people of the dangers of man-made global warming has been “completely ineffective.”Earlier this year, Nye aired a documentary series on Netflix aimed at adults. The...

Sam Krop’s characterization of catastrophic wildfire on public and privately owned forest lands (guest viewpoint, Oct. 4) doesn’t match the reality of what Oregon experienced this summer. But I can see why Cascadia Wildlands and other special interest groups oppose solutions such as the Resilient Federal Forests Act. These bills untie the hands of our federal land managers, and provide them with more tools and resources to restore the health of our public forests, before and after a fire. Has “hands-off” forest management reduced the size and severity of forest fires? Are we choking on less wildfire smoke every summer?...

Before Hurricane Harvey even made landfall on the Texas coast, what Sean Hannity calls the “Destroy Trump Media” was already condemning President Trump’s handling of this natural disaster. No doubt Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords will soon be blamed for this and every other natural disaster. As Salon shrieked: Hurricane Harvey is predicted to be the first major storm in a decade -- and Trump just tweeted a useless promotional ad in preparation. According to the White House, Trump was briefed on the government’s hurricane preparation efforts earlier this month, but his campaign-style commercial -- fitted with a...

Chicago (AFP) – The operator of a controversial US oil pipeline, which was the focus of months of protests by Native American tribes, on Tuesday sued several environmental groups, claiming they spread false information and incite violence. Energy Transfer Partners launched broad accusations against Greenpeace and other environmental groups, alleging racketeering, defamation and inciting violence that amounted to “eco-terrorism” among other charges, for actions taken against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Greenpeace rejected the claims, saying they amounted to “harassment by corporate bullies.” The $3.8-billion, 1,172-mile (1,886-kilometer) oil pipeline was the focus of months-long protests in 2016 by dozens of North...

While this happened in Lancashire Farm, England in April 2016, I don't think this has been seen before. ENJOY…… Despite courts telling her that she couldn't trespass onto a local farmer's private property to host her fracking protest, Oscar-winning actress Emma Thompson obviously thought she was above the law given her celebrity status. Defiantly entering the arm along with her sister Sophie and a small group of other wacko protesters, the two spoiled brats then set up their bake sale where they displayed energy-themed cakes as part of a Greenpeace-backed protest stunt. But the farmer who owned the land wasn't...

Donald Trump may have pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement to combat climate change, but if former US vice president Al Gore is to be believed, Americans will fulfill its terms nonetheless. The 69-year-old environmental activist was in Berlin to preview “An Inconvenient Sequel,” a follow-up to his Oscar-winning 2006 film “An Inconvenient Truth” about global warming. Citing the axiom from physics that “for every action there is an equal counter-reaction,” Gore said that Trump’s election had galvanized and energized environmentalists in the US. “The good news is that we are working around [Trump],” Gore said. “The...