Free Republic

<p>Unusual weather in the Southwest could cause a nationwide salad shortage later this month. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg (lettuce): Scientists say the weird weather is probably caused by climate change - which means these sorts of problems are likely to happen again.</p>

Moose calves across northern New England are dying at alarming rates, and scientists believe that deadly parasites benefiting from shorter winters are the primary culprits. Winter ticks have taken a toll on moose across Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, killing about 70 percent of moose calves. Winter ticks attach themselves to a single moose by the tens of thousands. “It’s just off the charts; this should not happen with such frequency,” said Pete Pekins, chairman of the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of New Hampshire (UNH). “This is about a calf carrying 75,000 ticks that...

LONDON - Less than 10 percent of funds spent to help poorer communities adapt to climate change impacts and adopt clean energy are reaching the people most in need of the money, finance researchers say. Today, donors have given only 11 percent of the climate funds they promised, in part because of the obstacles, she said. Richer nations have promised to donate or otherwise mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poorer countries switch to clean energy and adapt to problems such as worsening droughts, flooding and sea level rise. But getting that money raised and flowing has...

Earlier this week, as I’m sure you know, was International Polar Bear Day. Usually I celebrate by tossing a well-marinaded bear haunch onto the barbecue – note to novices: DO NOT eat the liver. It’s poisonous – but I couldn’t this year because of pesky global cooling, so instead, I sat indoors by the fire and drank a toast to the world’s exploding polar bear population which has now reached record highs of 30,000. To be clear, polar bears are not “threatened”, “vulnerable” or otherwise “endangered” – and have not been at any time during the long period in which...

The White House is fiercely divided over President Trump’s campaign promise to “cancel” the Paris agreement, the 2015 accord that binds nearly every country to curb global warming, with more moderate voices maintaining that he should stick with the agreement despite his campaign pledge. Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s senior adviser, is pressing the president to officially pull the United States from the landmark accord, but he is clashing with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump, who fear the move could have broad and damaging diplomatic ramifications. Mr. Trump wants to make a decision by...

Dozens of governments and private philanthropists have pledged nearly $200 million for family planning services, after US President Donald Trump banned funding for groups linked to abortion. Sweden, Belgium and Finland promised €20 million each (about $21 million) to the the global fundraising initiative, She Decides, launched by Dutch Development Minister Lilianne Ploumen. The pledges came at a one-day She Decides conference in Brussels on Thursday, aimed at raising funds for aid groups whose funding is under threat. Some 50 governments, ranging from EU members states to African and Asian countries, attended the conference. Organizers hope to raise $600 million...

The White House is pushing for significant cuts to EPA programs and staff levels, giving a glimpse of how the Trump administration plans on devolving more control to the states. The budget plan sent from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to EPA leadership calls for eliminating dozens of programs, including at least 16 that have to do with global warming and implementing former President Barack Obama’s climate agenda. OMB also requested a 30 percent cut in grants to states and a 20 percent reduction in EPA’s workforce through buy-outs and layoffs. In total, President Donald Trump is calling...

March 1 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will target a handful of Obama-era green regulations, including a federal coal mining ban and an initiative forcing states to cut carbon emissions, in an executive order as soon as next week a White House official told Reuters on Wednesday. Trump and his fellow Republicans who control Congress are seeking to unravel former Democratic President Barack Obama's initiatives to combat global climate change, which they say are costly for U.S. business and have hampered drilling and mining without providing any clear benefits.

A Southeast Asian Cardinal says he is following Pope Francis’ lead in denouncing “'ecological sin' made individually and collectively by humans who destroy Mother Earth.” “Today we find ourselves faced with an ecological holocaust,” said Cardinal Charles Bo, Archbishop of Yangon, during a pre-Lenten speech at a conference for religious held in Yangon. “It is a very serious moment. Pope Francis has raised a great shout against this impending disaster when talking about modern sins, the 'ecological sin' made individually and collectively by humans who destroy Mother Earth,” he added. As a remedy to this so-called man-made ecological disaster, the...

For years German cities have suffered under the effects of polluted air, mainly caused by diesel cars. But now that it's nearly the Christian season of abstaining before Easter, experts have a novel solution. The Federal Environmental Agency (UBA) and other climate protectionists are encouraging Germans to go on a ‘car fast’ for the season of Lent leading up to Easter. Katrin Dziekan of the UBA suggested special discounts on Deutsche Bahn and regional train services could be offered to those who abstain from cars for the 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter. The Minister for Environment and Nature...

The seemingly innocuous loaf of bread you just consumed may be contributing to global warming, according to a new published Wednesday in the science journal Nature Plants. [snip] “We found in every loaf there is embodied global warming resulting from the fertilizer applied to farmers’ fields to increase their wheat harvest. This arises from the large amount of energy needed to make the fertilizer and from nitrous oxide gas released when it is degraded in the soil,” Liam Goucher, lead author of the study, said in a statement. [snip] Although the report notes that cutting down on fertilizers may be...

Californians are in shock that after five years of too little water, the problem now is too much. Some are calling this a wake-up call for California as climate change could bring similar damage. But this shouldn't be a surprise, says Noah Diffenbaugh, a climate scientist at Stanford University. "It's actually exactly what has been predicted by scientists for at least 30 years," he says. He says California is likely to see more extreme flooding with climate change. And the reason is pretty simple. If it's warmer, storms produce more rain instead of snow. But that's not what California's water...

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt on Saturday said the Obama administration neglected would-be department priorities to pursue a climate change agenda and hinted that a rollback of some regulations could be announced as soon as next week. “I wanted to send a message to those at the agency — there are some very important things that the EPA does for this country,” Mr. Pruitt said on the final day of the Conservative Political Action Conference. “There are air quality issues and water quality issues that cross state line[s].” “There’s some very important work to protect and provide leadership …...

Bill Nye said Monday that climate change skeptics suffer from a psychological problem preventing them from understanding how so-called man-made global warming affects their daily lives. Climate change skeptics suffer from cognitive dissonance on global warming, a type of psychological disorder that prevents people from recognizing reality, the comedian and former TV show host told Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders during a Facebook Live event. “To the deniers out there. I want you to think about what is called cognitive dissonance,” Nye said, referring to situations wherein people prefer to bury their head in the sand instead of facing reality. It’s...

Guest Essay By Larry Kummer. Posted at the Fabius Maximus website. Summary: To boost our fear, activists and journalists report the weather with amnesia about the past. Ten year records become astonishing events; weather catastrophes of 50 or 100 years ago are forgotten. It makes for good clickbait but cripples our ability to prepare for the inevitable. California’s history of floods and droughts gives a fine example — if we listen to the US Geological Survey’s reminder of past megafloods, and their warning of the coming ARkStorm. ” A 43-day storm that began in December 1861 put central and southern...

Since the media is all aflutter over proposed changes to the EPA and various climate-based regulations, we may as well visit (or revisit) the debate on climate change. Is it the result of activities of man or simply the normal patterns of changes in the Earth’s complicated biosphere? Some claim that it’s a combination of the two. But now, a team of astrophysicists has released new data which seems to support a decades-old theory which places the blame, shall we say, a bit further away. Since a picture is worth 1000 words, here’s a hint:That’s right. The actual culprit...

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him. – VoltaireIt is peculiar how the Left, who likes to mock God-fearing Christians as “superstitious religious Neanderthals”  and “compulsive believers,” are quick to embrace their own secular religion of politically correct ideologies: The reason these secular, individualistic and utilitarian ideologies are unchallengeable is that they’re held to represent not a point of view but virtue itself. That’s because they are all utopian. In their different ways, they represent an idea of the perfection of the world. So, class divisions would give way to equality, the capitalist despoliation of...

Since the media is all aflutter over proposed changes to the EPA and various climate-based regulations, we may as well visit (or revisit) the debate on climate change. Is it the result of activities of man or simply the normal patterns of changes in the Earth’s complicated biosphere? Some claim that it’s a combination of the two. But now, a team of astrophysicists has released new data which seems to support a decades-old theory which places the blame, shall we say, a bit further away. Since a picture is worth 1000 words, here’s a hint: That’s right. The actual culprit...

Hundreds of scientists and policy experts sent a letter to President Donald Trump asking him to withdraw from a major United Nations environmental treaty ratified during the Bush administration. More than 300 eminent scientists signed the letter to Trump, delivered Thursday, arguing he should pull out of the UN Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) because it targets carbon dioxide — a gas essential for life. CO2 “is not a pollutant but a major benefit to agriculture and other life on Earth,” reads the petition, obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Observations since the UNFCCC was written 25 years ago...

Environmental hypocrites who were protesting against the Dakota Access oil pipeline, burned oil to keep themselves warm! They also left enough litter to fill more than 250 garbage trucks! Environmental hypocrites who were protesting against the Dakota Access oil pipeline, burned oil to keep themselves warm!They also left enough litter to fill more than 250 garbage trucks!Fox News writes of this: (the bolding is mine)What was once a bustling makeshift city is now a largely abandoned garbage pit. Teepees and yurts, thousands of sheets of plywood and tents, kerosene and propane stoves, diesel and gasoline generators, food, clothing, cars and mountains...