Free Republic

The Bramble Cay melomys has become more famous in extinction than it ever was in life. A mouse-like rodent, the melomys amazingly survived on a 3.6 hectare grass-covered cay (a low-lying island in a coral reef) in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef like a ratty Robinson Crusoe for thousands of years. There, it thrived off just a few plant species until human-caused climate change—in the form of rising sea levels and increasing inundations of sea water on the low-lying island—wiped it off the planet. But, while the extinction has been reported widely, articles have missed an important point: the scientists who...

CO2 is only a bit-player in the drama of world climate, while the main characters are ice, dust and albedo....Ice age cycles have something to do with precession: the slow wobble of the axis of the Earth. The ancient Egyptians and Greeks knew of precession and called it the Great Year, because it gives warm and cool seasons over its approximate 23,000-year cycle. But there is a problem with invoking the Great Year as the regulator of ice ages, because we should really get an interglacial warming every 23,000 years or so. And we don’t – they only happen every...

An Evangelical Christian leader went against the grain of her religious subset’s strong pro-life stance this week and endorsed pro-abortion candidate Hillary Clinton for president. Deborah Fikes is the executive advisor to the World Evangelical Alliance, which works with churches in 129 countries to spread the Christian message. The Hill reports Fikes voiced her personal support for Clinton on Tuesday after a meeting between Christian leaders and likely Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. She called Clinton “trustworthy” and Trump “un-Christian” as she gave her personal endorsement to the pro-abortion candidate. “Hillary Clinton is the leader who people of faith are...

GENEVA, Switzerland, June 10, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Pope Francis’ representative to the United Nations told the World Health Assembly in Switzerland last month that the Holy See “welcomes” goal 3 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), focused on ensuring “healthy lives,” and the goal’s 13 targets. However, the representative is coming under fire because one of the 13 targets included in his praise, specifically target 3.7, calls for “universal access to sexual and reproductive health care services.” The UN defined these terms at the 1994 Cairo conference to mean providing women with “modern contraception” for “family planning” and with “safe...

Italy (Ammoland.com) Pope Francis spoke with a group of young people at a rally of thousands at the end of the first day of his trip to the Italian city of Turin. Francis started by attacking the Right to Keep and Bear Arms as well as accusing the allies during World War Two of being complicit in the killing of Jews, Christians and homosexuals. Francis issued his toughest condemnation to date of the weapons industry, saying. “If you trust only men you have lost,” he told the young people in a long, rambling talk about war, trust and politics after...

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (Reuters) - Pope Francis said on Sunday that Christians and the Roman Catholic Church should seek forgiveness from homosexuals for the way they had treated them. Speaking to reporters aboard the plane taking him back to Rome from Armenia, he also said the Church should ask forgiveness for the way it has treated women, for turning a blind eye to child labor and for "blessing so many weapons" in the past. In the hour-long freewheeling conversation that has become a trademark of his international travels, Francis was asked if he agreed with recent comments by...

Turkey says Pope Francis' description of the WW1 mass killing of Armenians as genocide shows "the mentality of the Crusades". The pontiff's remarks have "no relation to reality", Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Nurettin Canikli said. Armenia and many historians say up to 1.5 million Armenian Christians were killed by Ottoman Turkish forces in 1915. But Turkey disputes the figure and denies the deaths constituted genocide. It says the deaths were part of a civil conflict triggered by WW1. The row continues to sour Turkish-Armenian relations, drawing in other countries such as Germany, whose parliament recently declared the killings to be...

YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) — Pope Francis hailed Armenia's steadfast Christian heritage on Friday as he arrived in the former Soviet republic for a three-day visit to commemorate the centenary of the Ottoman-era slaughter of Armenians that the pope himself has called a "genocide." In a largely Orthodox land where Catholics are a minority, Armenians seemed genuinely honored to welcome a pope who has long championed the Armenian cause from his time as an archbishop in Argentina and now as leader of the 1.2-billion strong Catholic Church. Small groups of residents lined his motorcade route, and a gaggle of schoolchildren wearing...

Environmentalists are freaking out that Britain voted in favor of leaving the European Union on Thursday– something activists claim will be “catastrophic” for the environment. British environmentalists took to Twitter to vent their fears about leaving the EU after the “Brexit” vote. Activists have been arguing for months that leaving the EU would allow “climate deniers” to gain more power and undo environmental protections. From an environmental perspective this is catastrophic. Fight now on to ensure EU standards maintained and cooperation on climate continues.

NASA’s top climate scientist took to Twitter Friday morning to criticize British voters for choosing to leave the European Union, calling the so-called Brexit vote “stupid and selfish.” Gavin Schmidt is the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, but long before becoming the space agency’s lead climate scientist, Schmidt was born in Britain. He’s obviously not a fan of U.K. voters’ decision to leave the EU.

A judge in Spain ruled on Thursday that a cardinal denouncing an attack against the Christian family by a “gay empire” was not, simply by virtue of using that language, committing a hate speech crime but exercising his right to freedom of expression. The criminal proceedings against Cardinal Antonio Cañizares of Valencia were dismissed without further investigation because the magistrate saw no “criminal intent” nor an appeal to “hatred and violence” in the homily delivered by the prelate on May 13. “The family is haunted today, in our culture, by an endless threat of serious difficulties, and this is not...

Meanwhile it’s not safe for anybody now that Barry’s come out of the school bathroom and into the parkland The Pirate in the Oval Office is not only fleecing American citizens out of more than 265 million acres of public lands and waters, he’s rubbing their noses in his park acquisition on his way out of the door. Barack ‘Captain-Kidd-you-not” Obama spent Father’s Day weekend hanging out in the park.

The federal government says filtered tap water is safe for everyone in Flint, Michigan, lifting a recommendation that pregnant women, nursing mothers and children under 6 drink only bottled water to avoid lead exposure. The announcement Thursday is based on tests of filters that have been distributed for months for free by the state of Michigan and the federal government. The Environmental Protection Agency says the filters remove or reduce lead to well below the action level of 15 parts per billion. …

Washington D.C., Jun 22, 2016 / 04:54 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Obama administration has rejected a challenge to the State of California’s requirement that health care plans include abortion coverage. A major federal budget amendment intended to protect abortion foes does not apply, it ruled. Leaders with the U.S. bishops’ conference said it was “shocking” that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services allowed the State of California to force all employers, including churches, to fund and facilitate elective abortions. “Even those who disagree on the issue of life should be able to respect the conscience rights of those...

President Obama signed a bill into law Wednesday that places stronger regulations on chemicals present in nearly every product Americans use, including detergents, clothing, paint thinners, cleansers and automobiles. The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act passed by Congress early this month in a rare bipartisan vote. It updates the Toxic Substances Control Act, which had not been reauthorized since the Ford administration in the mid-1970s. The new law gives the Environmental Protection Agency more oversight and stronger tools to monitor chemicals that in some cases could cause cancer and other health problems in adults and...

For some, Mgr Ma’s blog post praising the Patriotic Association and acknowledging his mistakes is nothing but “dirt”. For others, he chose humiliation for the “sake of his diocese”. Many wonder why the Holy See has remained silent about the article’s content and the bishop’s persecution. Some suspect the Vatican views the episode in positive terms. Yet, the Ma Daqin affair raises a major question. Has Benedict XVI’s Letter to Chinese Catholics (which describes the Patriotic Association as “incompatible with Catholic doctrine”) been abolished? If it has, who did it? A journey of compromises without truth is full of risks.Vatican...

Wood-fired pizza is bad for the environment, according to science erwrer43535dfs34.jpg Is Brazil's love of authentic wood-fired pizza wrecking havoc on the environment? (iStock) If you love wood-fired pizza or wood-smoked barbecue, then go outside right now and peel that “Go Green” bumper sticker off your Prius. Science says your favorite foods may be major causes of environment pollution. A study conducted by 10 air pollution experts from seven universities has found that burning wood to cook your trendy kale-and-feta pie or your old-fashioned Texas brisket is polluting the air we breathe. The collaborative study, whose findings have been published...

VATICAN CITY (AP) - Pope Francis is amplifying his opposition to capital punishment, saying it's an offense to life, contradicts God's plan and serves no purpose for punishment. In a video message to an anti-death penalty congress in Norway, Francis declared: "The commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' has absolute value and applies both to the innocent and to the guilty." Francis has gone beyond his predecessors and traditional Catholic teaching in saying there is simply no justification for the death penalty today. He said Tuesday that rather than rendering justice, it fosters vengeance. Church teaching allows for recourse to capital...

Pope Francis is very popular around the world, but there are growing signs that his popularity is dwindling in his own country, Argentina. And there are good reasons for it. When former archbishop of the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires Jorge Bergoglio was chosen pope of the Roman Catholic Church in 2013, there were massive celebrations in Argentina. He was the first Latin American pope, and a respected priest in Argentina, where he was known to be at odds with the corrupt populist government of former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. Once in the Vatican, Francis’ frequent calls to Argentine...

It is earth-shattering for a pope to mix-up a two-faced devil with Jesus. It happened last Thursday when Bergoglio mistakenly referred to a column capital on Vézelay Cathedral: a “case of mistaken identity” emblematic of this pontificate, even if a somewhat superficial ghost-writer was probably to blame. It is, on the other hand, in his own style to mix them up (Jesus and the devil) by proposing that Judas had been saved (without repenting) thus giving the impression he hadn’t ended up in hell... It’s difficult to know whether this Pope believes in hell or not – but listening to...