Free Republic

The CO2 red line for plant death on Earth is around 150 ppm...During the last Glacial Maximum (20,000 years ago) CO2 was 180 ppm...The optimum CO2 level for plants is around 1,000 ppm...CO2 today is 422 ppm...

It looked like the Sun was heading toward a historic lull in activity. That trend flipped in 2008, according to new research. The Sun has become increasingly active since 2008, a new NASA study shows. Solar activity is known to fluctuate in cycles of 11 years, but there are longer-term variations that can last decades. Case in point: Since the 1980s, the amount of solar activity had been steadily decreasing all the way up to 2008, when solar activity was the weakest on record. At that point, scientists expected the Sun to be entering a period of historically low activity....

Turns out, as much money as those Biden bozos blew through, prepaying for electric buses up front that were never and will never now be delivered?EPA head Lee Zeldin says the Biden administraiton sent $160 million dollars to a Canadian electric vehicles company.... which then pocketed the money, didn’t send the school buses promised and then declared bankruptcy!“There was $160 million that went to a Canadian electric… pic.twitter.com/hANBqhFPfm— Mike Netter (@nettermike) August 16, 2025...“There was $160 million that went to a Canadian electric vehicle bus manufacturer. The Biden administration sent all of the money — They gave all the money...

The US power grid is under significant stress due to rapidly increasing electricity demand from AI data centers and electric vehicles, coupled with the retirement of traditional power plants.The grid faces mounting vulnerabilities from extreme weather events, cybersecurity threats, and physical sabotage, while policy gridlock and infrastructure delays hinder necessary upgrades.Despite challenges, the situation presents investment opportunities in grid modernization, diversified generation, and solutions for energy storage and load management.America’s power grid is straining under the weight of a fast-changing energy landscape. Beyond the usual summer hum of air conditioners, power demand is surging from electric vehicle chargers and sprawling...

Global climate models are software behemoths, often containing more than a million lines of code. Inevitably, such complex models will contain mistakes, or "bugs." But because model outputs are widely used to inform climate policy, it's important that they generate trustworthy results. Ulrike Proske and Lieke Melsen set out to understand how climate modelers think about, identify, and address bugs. They interviewed 11 scientists and scientific programmers from the Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie who work on the ICON climate model for their study published in Earth's Future. When new code is developed for ICON, it's screened and tested to catch bugs...

India's oil demand is likely to outpace China's this year, according to Trafigura Group. The prediction was made by Chief Economist Saad Rahim during an event hosted by S&P Global Commodity Insights on Monday. He said that "this year, Indian demand is set to outstrip China's if you exclude strategic stockpiling." Market dynamics Role in global demand growth India and China, the region's top crude importers, are major contributors to demand growth. The two countries are at the center of how producers and traders adapt to economic changes and the rise of renewable energy. India's growth is fueled by urbanization...

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...

European leaders are not driving a bandwagon onto which the world is jumping, but rather a hearse toward self-destruction...Fossil fuels - coal, oil and natural gas - accounted for 87% of the world's energy in 2024...despite more than $5 trillion being spent on wind and solar in the last 20 years.

Wilmington, Ohio – Spotty morning showers will give way to a dramatic shift in Ohio’s weather pattern, with fall-like conditions expected to settle across the state beginning Sunday. A strong push of cooler and drier air will bring a noticeable drop in temperatures through the final week of August. According to the National Weather Service in Wilmington, outlooks from the Climate Prediction Center show a high probability for below-normal temperatures across Ohio from August 25 through early September. The shift will be most pronounced Sunday as a reinforcing cold front ushers in the cooler air mass.

Work has begun to lay the underwater cable for the first electricity interconnector between Ireland and mainland Europe. It marks a major milestone in the €1.6 billion ($1.9 billion) Celtic Interconnector project, which will link the electricity grids of Ireland and France to ensure security of power supply. A specialist marine vessel Calypso, from Norway, has begun cable-laying along an 84-km (52-mile) section of the route. Once fully installed, the entire 575-km (357-mile) interconnector will run from east Cork to the northwest of Brittany. It will allow for the exchange of 700 MW of electricity, enough to power some 450,000...

It turns out many Americans aren’t great at identifying which personal decisions contribute most to climate change. A study recently published found that when asked to rank actions, such as swapping a car that uses gasoline for an electric one, carpooling or reducing food waste, participants weren’t very accurate when assessing how much those actions contributed to climate change. The top three individual actions that help the climate, including avoiding plane flights, choosing not to get a dog and using renewable electricity, were also the three that participants underestimated the most. Meanwhile, the lowest-impact actions were changing to more efficient...

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...

The U.S. military and Coast Guard are monitoring the simultaneous appearance of five Chinese icebreaking vessels in the Arctic region near Alaska. That unprecedented presence represents two and a half times the number of icebreakers currently capable of being operated in the entire Arctic region by the U.S. Coast Guard. Another is scheduled to be commissioned on Sunday and plans are underway to build dozens more. The Chinese icebreakers, which include a number of research-focused types, are being monitored by North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), a NORTHCOM spokesperson told The War Zone Thursday evening....

The ship will be ceremonially commissioned in August in Juneau, Alaska, which is the vessel’s homeport. Until then, the icebreaker and two others will be berthed in Seattle, Washington, until infrastructure improvements are made at the ships’ homeport. ... The U.S. Coast Guard’s newest polar icebreaker is officially operational, which the agency says will bolster its Arctic operations. The 360-foot-long icebreaker departed from its assembly port in Pascagoula, Mississippi and was headed to Seattle, where it will be based until renovations are completed at its homeport in Juneau, Alaska. ... The USCGC Storis will join the USCGC Polar Star and...

Ireland’s 40-year-long era of burning coal — the dirtiest fossil fuel imaginable — to generate electricity came to an end in June. That was when ESB announced it had ceased burning coal at its Moneypoint power station in County Clare, six months ahead of schedule. Throughout those 40 years, the coal was transferred on noisy conveyer belts through what must surely have been the longest, ugliest, sequence of brown tunnels in the country. They ran from the jetty at Moneypoint, where the coal ships pulled up, to a huge coal storage yard and then right into the powerplant and furnaces...

Record-breaking heat continues for parts of the desert Southwest into the weekend, with sweltering temperatures beginning to expand east into the Heartland.Extreme heat warnings remain in effect for parts of the desert Southwest -- including Palm Springs, California; Phoenix; and Tucson, Arizona.High temperatures are expected to reach well into the 100s and up to 115 in spots.

An eastern Russian volcano has erupted for the first time in more than 500 years, which may have been related to an 8.8 magnitude earthquake last week... The Krasheninnikov Volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula emitted a plume of ash 3.7 miles into the sky overnight. The last recorded eruption of the volcano happened in the 15th century.. ... Last week's massive earthquake was the latest in a series of seismic events in the region, including another temblor that shook a region 11 times zones away from Moscow on the Pacific peninsula ... Krasheninnikov is one of 8 volcanoes nestled among...

The Carbon Dioxide Endangerment Finding, first enacted in 2009, rested on claims that rising levels of CO2 posed a dire threat to public health and welfare...By removing the Endangerment Finding, the EPA is signaling a long-overdue return to rational, evidence-based policy.

Some Thoughts on Our DOE Report Regarding CO2 Impacts on the U.S. Climate July 31st, 2025 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D. PREFACE: What follows are my own opinions, not seen by my four co-authors of the Dept. of Energy report just released, entitled A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate. Starting sometime tomorrow, the comment docket at DOE will be open for anyone to post comments regarding the contents of that report. We authors will read all comments, and for those which are substantiative and serious, we will respond in a serious manner....

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....