Free Republic

3.3 Centered in Irving Texas...Felt it in the 75230 zip area...rolled from side of the house to the other.

Some people call it "renewable energy" but I prefer to call it "alternative energy" because that's what it really is: an alternative to energy that actually works (eg nuclear and anything made from wonderful, energy-rich fossil fuel.) Now a pair of top boffins from uber-green Google's research department have reached the same conclusion. Ross Konigstein and David Fork, both Stanford PhDs (aerospace engineering; applied physics) were employed on a Google research project which sought to enhance renewable technology to the point where it could produce energy more cheaply than coal. But after four years, the project was closed down. In...

Comparison of this winter with 1976. This November looks like, and may even be colder than, 1976. "When you know you have a similar pattern, you go to the similarities." The bottom line is, it's not global warming.

Scientists have revealed that levels of carbon dioxide increase in the Northern Hemisphere during summers each year as plants absorb carbon dioxide to convert sunlight into food. The CO2 levels again rise as the plants release CO2 after the growing season. Scientists have found that corn, rice, wheat and soybean are the four leading crops that account for maximum CO2 release in the atmosphere of Northern Hemisphere. Crops act as sponge for CO2 and it could be said that the sponge effect has become bigger because of the advancements in agricultural techniques, leading to more production. There is a sharp...

It may be the timeliest -- and most troubling -- idea in climate science. Back in 2012, two researchers with a particular interest in the Arctic, Rutgers' Jennifer Francis and the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Stephen Vavrus, published a paper called "Evidence linking Arctic amplification to extreme weather in mid-latitudes." In it, they suggested that the fact that the Arctic is warming so rapidly is leading to an unexpected but profound effect on the weather where the vast majority of us live -- a change that, if their theory is correct, may have something to do with the extreme winter weather...

24 degrees breaks old record of 30 set in 1873. Thursday morning not only broke an "ancient" record from 1873, but we also dropped to the second coldest temperature ever recorded in the month of November in Jacksonville. According to the National Weather Service, for the second morning in a row, Jacksonville set a new cold weather record. Thursday mornings temperature dropped to a bone chilling 24 degrees breaking the old record of 30 degrees set in 1873. If that wasn't cold enough for you, Thursday's 24 degrees also marks the second lowest temperature ever recorded in the month of...

Germany’s Vice Chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, has indicated that the country will abandon its commitment to reducing CO2 emissions by 40 percent by 2020, from a 1990 base level. In doing so he has won the ongoing clash with his own environmental minister Barbara Hendricks over energy policy, telling her that he will tolerate no further resistance to the change of direction, according to Der Speigel.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Paul District, locked a final tow on the Upper Mississippi River Thursday, shutting the navigation channel down for the season because ice conditions on the river are becoming difficult for vessels to navigate. Traditionally, the last tow heading south of Lock and Dam 2 has marked the unofficial end of the navigation season for the Twin Cities portion of the St. Paul District, the Corps said. The navigation season started April 16. The spring start was the second-latest start to navigation in the district's history, the Corps said, as ice thicknesses in Lake...

8-minute audio segment Plenty of coverage of the biblical-type snowstorm in Buffalo (and, remember, it's over a month until the start of winter ... and plenty of Thanksgiving turkeys are at this point still alive). Also, Sandra Fluke tweets about global warming.

Lies and deceptions surrounding the manufactured global warming crisis created for political and financial gain at the expense of millions of people The area south of Buffalo, New York was buried this week in 76 inches of snow, quite possibly the largest 24-hour total in U.S. recorded history. At the same time, the desperate advocates of global warming/climate change are finding more novel ways to push their carbon dioxide reduction and carbon footprint taxation in order to redistribute the wealth from the United States to the rest of the world. David Ignatius suggests in the Washington Post that climate should...

So much for momentum on climate change. Reality bites. Without nuclear power, Japans emissions have hit a new record high. At the same time, even with 17% of its energy from Nuclear power, and with 23,000 wind turbines, Germany stands no chance of reaching its emissions targets. The rich, technologically advanced nation that has spent more than any other on green energy admits they’ve failed. Those who want to stop producing CO2 have billions of dollars to spend on advertising and pointless windmills, but in the end, chemistry and physics can’t be bought. If renewables could provide cheap reliable power,...

I have a special place in my heart for lake effect snow. Living in Sault, Michigan as a teenager is what got me interested in weather and started me down my career path. But it’s hard to compete with what Buffalo, New York gets for lake effect snow. Over six feet of snow fell in some areas on the south side of town in the last 48 hours, most of it in a 24 hour period. The all-time U.S. record for a 24 hour snowfall is 76 inches in Silver Lake, Colorado way back in 1921, and it is possible...

Last week President Obama announced a historic climate change agreement with Chinese president Xi Jinping. Aimed at drastically curtailing carbon emissions into the atmosphere, the goal is to rein in the carbon footprints of the planet’s two major polluters, the U.S. and China. I wonder if the agreement contains anything about carbon paw prints. While humans and their ravenous appetite for growth remain the primary drivers of climate change and the accompanying specter of climate catastrophe, pets have a surprising negative impact of their own. Bowser and Mittens may be your best friends, but with around one billion pet dogs...

If the left can’t get around the First Amendment one way, it will find another way around it. Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley made national news last year when he fought to pass and signed a tax bill that levied a tax on Marylanders, businesses and churches for the amount of “impervious surface” they have on their property.Though the O’Malley administration calls it a “fee,” it is commonly called the “rain tax” throughout the state. It is wildly unpopular and the promise to fight to repeal the tax was a large factor in Maryland electing Republican Larry Hogan governor this...

....If the president nullifies deportations on such a grand scale that the effect is the nullification of federal laws, then he has violated his oath “faithfully” to execute his.... obligations. The Framers required that every president swear to do his job “faithfully” to serve as a reminder to him that his job requires fidelity to the enforcement of laws with which he may disagree. The American people, Congress and the courts need to know we have a president who will enforce the laws, whether he agrees with them in his heart or not. Without presidential fidelity to the rule of...

The U.S.' much-ballyhooed recent deal with China to cut carbon emissions got a lot of attention in the media. So did Europe's recent pledge to slash its carbon output by a whopping 40%. But both plans seem to have run into a major snag: India.

People in the Buffalo, New York, area have been snowed in for the second straight day, and some are even trapped at stores or jobs because of a sudden huge snowstorm. And it isn't over. More snow is expected to pound upstate New York today, as officials frantically try to clear massive truckloads of snow from the area. How a Basketball Team Spent a Day Stranded on a Bus in a Snowstorm New York Dealing With Massive Snow; Storm Looming The storm that dumped 5 feet of snow has resulted in seven deaths and Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said today...

Democrats have long lamented that they do not enjoy the kind of enthusiasm which Republicans benefited from with the rise of the tea party. The left has gone to great lengths to manufacture this sort of energy, including touting the volatile Occupy Wall Street movement as a rough tea party equivalent. Though some have fretted that tea party’s downsides – the targeting and ousting of electable Republican candidates – would necessarily follow the ascension of a liberal version of this grassroots movement to prominence. Democrats got lucky, in a fashion, when it became clear that the Occupy movement had no...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The world still isn't close to preventing what leaders call a dangerous level of man-made warming, a new United Nations report says. That's despite some nations' recent pledges to cut back on carbon dioxide emissions. The report looks at the gap between what countries promise to do about carbon pollution and what scientists say needs to be done to prevent temperatures rising another two degrees. The two-degree level is a goal that world leaders set in 2009. "The time window (for reaching that goal) is closing, closing," said United Nations undersecretary for environment Achim Steiner. And the...