Free Republic

It is something like central heating for north-west Europe: the North Atlantic circulation ensures that the winters are milder than elsewhere in northern latitudes. It brings warm water from the tropics up to the North Atlantic in the upper ocean layers. The warm surface of the sea in front of the European coasts heats up the atmosphere. This mild air flows to us and ensures a temperate climate. However, there are increasing indications that climate change is turning this heating off slowly but irrevocably. The Atlantic current is one of the tipping points of the global climate system - among...

The Trump administration is scrapping satellite observations of Earth that officials say go beyond the essential task of predicting the weather.Two satellite instruments that track Earth’s carbon dioxide levels will soon go offline, deemed “beyond their primary mission.” Two others meant to monitor water contamination and air pollution, including from greenhouse gases, will be removed from a future satellite mission based on orders to “deliver a weather-only instrument manifest.” The Trump administration is scrapping satellite observations of Earth that officials say go beyond the essential task of predicting the weather, according to budget documents that outline plans to reshape government...

A desert covered in solar panels and sheep could mark the beginning of the end for coal in China. Aerial view of solar panels at Gansu Dunhuang Solar Park in Dunhuang, Jiuquan City, Gansu Province of China. Credit: VCGChina is building a ‘city of mirrors’ on the roof of the world.High on the Tibetan plateau, solar panels stretch across the desert in every direction. They shimmer like a second horizon. Sheep wander between them, grazing on plants that have taken root in the shelter of the glassy rows. Locals call them “photovoltaic sheep.”The project is billed as the world’s largest...

Rise of ‘paper mills’: 32,700 fake scientific papers published in real journals, study finds​ Before buying into the latest study splashed across the headlines, better check the source. In an increasingly troubling academic trend, companies dubbed “paper mills” are selling fake studies to researchers who need publications to keep their jobs or careers moving. These fake scientific papers are being published in real journals at an alarming rate, according to a study published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The number of fake papers doubled every 1.5 years between 2016 and 2020, and there are...

MSU researchers discovered that microbes begin shaping the brain while still in the womb, influencing neurons in a region critical for stress and social behavior. Their findings suggest modern birth practices that alter the microbiome may have hidden impacts on brain development.

A new law went into effect in Colorado earlier this month requiring health warning labels on gas stoves, similar to those placed on cigarette packages. It’s one example of multiple efforts, primarily in blue states, to stop consumers from using gas-powered appliances in their homes. After a Biden administration official in 2023 alluded to the possibility of a ban on gas stoves in the name of public health, legacy media outlets produced a number of “fact checks” insisting the Biden administration wasn’t going to ban gas stoves. They claimed the whole idea was just a "right-wing conspiracy." Conveniently, most of...

The fear-mongers on climate change are alive and well. The compliant media just repeat this made-up garbage every day, without questions. They should be embarrassed by such abject stupidity.Take a look at this article from July:Sounding the alarm over the financial impact for UK households, the Autonomy Institute thinktank said that climate-induced price increases for everyday food items risked pushing almost 1 million people into poverty without urgent government intervention.And of course the solution is not to eat meat; to drive cars powered by the flammable pollutant lithium; and giving up oil, natural gas, and coal. That has been the...

A new global study reveals that ancient carbon, once thought securely stored in soils and rocks, is leaking into the atmosphere via rivers. For the first time, researchers have confirmed that carbon trapped in landscapes for thousands of years or longer can return to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide escaping from river surfaces. The study, led by scientists from the University of Bristol and featured as the cover story in Nature, suggests that plants and upper soil layers may be absorbing about one additional gigaton of CO2 annually to balance this release. This highlights an even more critical role for...

New Mexico’s clean energy and environmental advocates are recoiling from energy policy shifts set in motion by the Trump administration this week, including the possible rollback of a major scientific finding about climate change and the delay of rules regulating oil and gas emissions. For a big oil- and gas-producing state like New Mexico, the consequences could be far-reaching, state officials say. But Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s administration is sticking to its own clean energy policies, and a state board in the coming weeks will hold a hearing to consider the adoption of a clean fuels rule. “ The proposal...

No, your car isn’t running on liquefied dinosaurs. The good stuff, unless you want a stable environment, of course. Image Credit: Alexander Knyazhinsky/Shutterstock.com At some point, you have probably heard somewhere that oil comes from dinosaurs, as if every time you fill up at the gas station, you are pumping refined velociraptor into your Volvo. It’s a vivid image, but it’s not true. Despite how widespread the belief is, oil isn’t made from decomposed dinosaurs. “For some strange reason, the idea that oil comes from dinosaurs has stuck with many people," geologist Reidar Müller from the University of Oslo explained...

The Trump administration has announced a plan to scrap a landmark finding that greenhouse gases are harmful to the environment, severely curbing the federal government's ability to combat climate change. Known as the "Endangerment Finding", the 2009 order from then-President Barack Obama allowed the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to create rules to limit pollution by setting emissions standards. ... The Endangerment Finding stemmed from a 2007 Supreme Court case in which the court ruled that greenhouse gases are "air pollutants" - meaning that the EPA has the authority and responsibility to regulate them under the US Clean Air Act....

Deep learning ‘powerful tool’ for future climate change scenarios, says studyChinese researchers have developed 30,000+ artificial intelligence-induced climate mitigation scenarios, according to a study published on Nature Climate Change journal's July issue. The published study covers the potential of deep learning (DL) merged with integrated assessment models (IAMs), offering a base for handling climate mitigation scenario generation. “IAM based scenarios often face challenges such as modelling biases and large computational burden. Here we develop a DL framework to generate key variables through synthetic mitigation scenarios,” the study said. According to the study DL is a “powerful tool for extracting hidden...

Climate change activists are now arguing that simply owning a dog can increase a person’s carbon footprint. A finding published in PNAS Nexus says that, supposedly, people overestimate the climate benefits of activities like recycling or switching light bulbs. At the same time, they underestimate other beneficial impacts, such as taking fewer flights. “We think, ‘I have to recycle this and it will help the planet,’” Madalina Vlasceanu, an assistant professor of environmental social sciences at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, told the Greater Good Magazine. “It’s less likely you will hear that if you fly less, that’s the...

Joe Rogan had a big chat with Senator Bernie Sanders about climate change, and it got pretty spicy! Bernie told Joe that climate change is real and switching to things like wind and solar power could make lots of jobs. But Joe wasn’t having it. He pointed out that the Earth’s temperature has always gone up and down. There have been ice ages and hot times before.Joe even mentioned an article from The Washington Post saying that we might be in a cooling period now, contradicting Bernie’s idea that the last ten years were the hottest ever.Joe backed it up...

Anti-Israel journos with the intelligence quotient of a moth flying face-first into a bug lamp are just inventing stupid new ways to stir up furor at the Jewish State for daring to defend itself against terrorists obsessed with its obliteration. The Guardian’s climate justice reporter Nina Lakhani put out a staggering piece of mind-numbing, fallacious eco-drivel May 30 that insults common sense. “Carbon footprint of Israel’s war on Gaza exceeds that of many entire countries,” cried Lahkani. Writing as if she found some kind of proverbial silver bullet, she flexed a new bonkers study to claim that the “carbon footprint...

A widely used federal website that publishes information about changing weather patterns, drought conditions, agricultural best-practices, atmospheric changes and greenhouse gas emissions will no longer be updated, according to current and former employees familiar with the site. The website will stop publishing new content on July 1. The site, climate.gov, is operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). As of 2021, it received nearly one million visitors every month, and was one of the most trusted sources of climate-related information in the U.S., according to public surveys about the site. A staff of 10 people wrote content and...

Scientists have announced a new discovery of an underground city beneath the Egyptian pyramids. The announcement comes just months after the first reports of an underground city beneath Khafre’s pyramid, reports Metro. The latest finds, said to be located beneath the Pyramid of Menkaure, suggest the existence of a large underground complex that may connect all three pyramids at Giza. A team of researchers led by Italian scientist Filippo Biondi previously announced the discovery of columnar structures beneath the Pyramid of Khafre. According to Biondi, tomographic scans now reveal a similar structure beneath the Pyramid of Menkaure. Researchers suggest that...

With the welcome mat withdrawn for promising researchers from around the world, America is at risk of losing its longstanding pre-eminence in the sciences.For decades, Bangalore, India, has been an incubator for scientific talent, sending newly minted Ph.D.s around the world to do groundbreaking research. In an ordinary year, many aim their sights at labs in the United States. “These are our students, and we want them to go and do something amazing,” said a professor at the National Center for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, Raj Ladher. But this is not an ordinary year. When Professor Ladher queried some 30...

In one of the nation’s first wrongful-death claims seeking to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for its role in the changing climate, a Washington state woman is suing seven oil and gas companies, saying they contributed to an extraordinarily hot day that led to her mother’s fatal hyperthermia.

Three activists banned from campus for three years A professor was among several climate protesters who during commencement defaced the statue of Andrew Dickson White, one of Cornell University’s founders, as a message to stop the school’s “fossil fuel complicity.” Early Saturday morning, the group Cornell on Fire, a “coalition of Cornellians and community members calling for a just and comprehensive university-wide response to the climate emergency,” put a blindfold over White’s face along with a poster protesting Cornell’s association with the fossil fuel industry, The Cornell Daily Sun reports. According to a press release from the group, Scientist Rebellion...