Free Republic

''We've had so much snow and the cold to preserve it,'' Vazzano said. ''We had storm after storm after storm.'' At times the snow was so plentiful it was problematic. The blizzard in late January triggered travel warnings and skiers in the Boston area were shoveling rather than skiing. It was followed closely by four successive weekends of winter storms. Vazzano said a cold spell in February helped preserve the snow but discouraged some skiers. ''When you can't get out of your driveway you can't get to the mountain,'

Wesley Smith at National Review Online caught my attention while I was down here at Right Online with this piece on the question of nature rights. The nature rights movement is real and extremely subversive to human freedom and thriving. Most people think such a thing can never happen. But it already is happening. Bolivia and Ecuador have legalized the rights of nature, as have more than 30 U.S. cities, including Santa Monica. Moreover, the Secretary General of the UN, Ban-ki Moon has declared his support. Smith is referring to an article at Commonweal which discusses the Pope’s upcoming encyclical...

Our scientific method and traditions of free speech and open debate are under assault as never before, by intolerant inquisitors in our media, universities, government agencies, and even Congress and the Vatican. They threaten our most basic rights and freedoms, our political and scientific processes – and ultimately our continued innovation and invention, energy reliability and affordability, job creation and economic growth, and modern living standards, health and welfare. Congressman Grijalva and Senators Markey, Boxer and Whitehouse sent letters to universities, think tanks and companies, demanding detailed information on skeptics’ funding and activities – in an attempt to destroy their...

Another "Garden of Eden" summer for Texas and the plains states.

Will the next presidential election be won by a lie? Truth has long since been replaced by “narratives” on the American left. Rather than discuss genuine issues and objective facts, progressives prefer to make up a politically effective story. It doesn’t matter whether the story is false, as long as it sways the public’s emotions and wins the day. The ends justify the means. This “lying game” strategy often shows up in politically sensitive scientific debates. In honor of Earth Week, let’s look at one of the patron saints of environmentalism, Rachel Carson. Carson wanted to eliminate DDT, the most...

UPPER PENINSULA -- The Michigan Department of Natural Resources is considering changing, or even cancelling deer hunting season this year. DNR officials say that the winters in the Upper Peninsula have been especially harsh and have severely thinned out the deer population. According to Deer Management Specialist Chad Stewart, the most recent deer harvest will be one of the lowest in the last thirty years. To help preserve deer population numbers in the U.P., the DNR has prepared six options that they will present to the Natural Resources Commission at their May 7th meeting. The most severe, and controversial, of...

Holding global warming to a 2-degree Celsius temperature rise will fail to prevent many of climate change's worst impacts, a group of $cientists and other expert$ warned Friday. With a 2-degree temperature hike, small islands in the Pacific may become uninhabitable, weather-related disasters will become more frequent, workers in many parts of the world will face sweltering conditions and large numbers of people will be displaced, particularly in coastal cities, the expert$ warned. The 2-degree goal is "inadequate, posing serious threats for fundamental human rights, labor and migration and displacement" the expert$ said in a series of reports commissioned by...

A stranded sea lion pup nicknamed “Rubbish” was walking along a San Francisco sidewalk Thursday morning in what marine mammal rescuers fear could be the “new normal” of a warming Pacific Ocean. The pup was seen waddling about in the Marina District along Divisadero Street before someone spotted the unusual sight and called it in about 7 a.m., according to Laura Sherr, a spokeswoman for the center. Sherr said the male pup was captured by net, put into a doggie-style crate and was whisked off for follow-up care at The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito. Rubbish is one of 1,800...

Imagine—just imagine, for the sake of the argument—that scientists in a future generation discover that the global-warming trend of recent years was not caused by human activity. If that happens, what will be the consequences for the Catholic Church, in light of the Vatican’s apparent embrace of the climate-change hypothesis? This is not-- repeat, not another column about the scientific evidence for or against the reality human-induced climate change. If you are inclined to respond by denouncing either the proponents or the foes of that theory, please stop. My own personal opinion on that theory is of little or no...

Global warming will eventually push 1 out of every 13 species on Earth into extinction, a new study projects. It won't quite be as bad in North America, where only 1 in 20 species will be killed off because of climate change or Europe where the extinction rate is nearly as small. But in South America, that forecasted heat-caused extinction rate soars to 23 percent, the worst for any continent, according to a new study published Thursday in the journal Science. University of Connecticut ecologist Mark Urban compiled and analyzed 131 peer-reviewed studies on species that used various types of...

Climate change could drive to extinction as many as one in six animal and plant species, according to a new analysis. In a study published Thursday in the journal Science, Mark Urban, an ecologist at the University of Connecticut, also found that as the planet warms in the future, species will disappear at an accelerating rate. “We have the choice,” he said in an interview. “The world can decide where on that curve they want the future Earth to be.” If emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases continue to grow, climate researchers project the world could warm by...

The present four-year California drought is not novel -- even if President Barack Obama and California Gov. Jerry Brown have blamed it on man-made climate change. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, California droughts are both age-old and common. Predictable California dry spells -- like those of 1929-34, 1976-77 and 1987-92 -- more likely result from poorly understood but temporary changes in atmospheric pressures and ocean temperatures. What is new is that the state has never had 40 million residents during a drought -- well over 10 million more than during the last dry spell in the early...

Governor Jerry Brown issued an executive order to bring down emissions to 40% below 1990 levels, in the next 15 years. The US state was already one of the most ambitious in its previous targets and has forced companies to pay for their carbon pollution. Mr Brown said the new target must be met for the sake of future generations. He called the plan "the most aggressive benchmark enacted by any government in North America to reduce dangerous carbon emissions". There were few details about how he intends to meet this target, but the governor has previously talked about increasing...

The Pontifical Academy of Sciences had its one-day global warming conference yesterday. Not unlike a certain synod, it ended with the issuing of an anticlimactic pre-prepared climatic document “Climate Change and The Common Good: A Statement Of The Problem And The Demand For Transformative Solutions.” Gist: we are soon doomed unless we “do something.” More on that in a moment. First, the Big Question. Why? Why is the Catholic Church entering into the fray of doubtful global warming science? Why now and why with such shrill apocalyptic exaggerated rhetoric? Why strident calls for supranational government control at the same time...

Soon more than 1 billion consumers in developing nations will be able to buy their first air conditioner, increasing energy demand, says co-author of new study. Global warming will increase sales of air conditioners, which in turn will increase climate change, according to a forthcoming study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The growth of global economies will allow more consumers around the world to buy more comforts, including air conditioners, according to the researchers from the University of California Berkeley. The increased use of air conditioners, however, will require significantly more electricity. Air conditioning and global warming,...

Finance Minister Siv Jensen, who also leads the populist Progress party, made her statements in an interview with Aftenposten journalists Trine Eilertsen and Harald Stanghelle. When asked, ”are you Convinced that the climate change that has been documented over the past decade is manmade?”, Jensen responded, “no”. “So you have doubts about it?” the interviewer went on, to which Jensen answered “yes”. The head of Norwegian environmental campaign group Nature and Youth on Tuesday called for Jensen’s resignation. “It’s not possible to have a climate denier as finance minister in the climate year 2015,” Arnstein Vestre said in a statement....

The untold – and terrifying – story behind the earthquake that devastated Nepal last Saturday morning begins with something that sounds quite benign. It’s the ebb and flow of rainwater in the great river deltas of India and Bangladesh, and the pressure that puts on the grinding plates that make up the surface of the planet. Recently discovered, that causal factor is seen by a growing body of scientists as further proof that climate change can affect the underlying structure of the Earth. Because of this understanding, a series of life-threatening “extreme geological events” – earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis –...

(Reuters) - The Vatican and the United Nations teamed up to warn the world of the effects of climate change on Tuesday, coming down firmly against skeptics who deny human activities help change global weather patterns. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon discussed climate change with the pope before opening a one-day conference of scientists and religious leaders called "The Moral Dimensions of Climate Change and Sustainable Development".

Meanwhile, the intrusion of Climate Change in community churches will spread like wildfire. Going to church will never be the same again. The New Green Religion of Global Warming/Climate Change is coming out of the closet to begin preaching from the pulpit. In the lib-left world timing is everything. Now that Christianity is being persecuted worldwide with the many slings and arrows sent its way flashing out in neon, it’s time for ‘sustainability’ to squeeze out Salvation at Sunday church services. “The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is spending $84,000 to study how churches can be used to combat climate change....

Japan used to have a pretty good reputation on climate change. Thanks to its robust industrial economy, it has the fourth-largest carbon footprint in the G20 nations. But it gets a sizeable chunk of its power from zero-carbon sources like hydro dams and, at least until the 2011 disaster at Fukushima, nuclear plants. In the aftermath of that disaster Japan decided to indefinitely shutter all of its nuclear power plants. The last one closed in September 2013, completely eliminating an energy source that had once provided nearly a third of the country's power. That hole has since been filled by...