Free Republic

The Republic of the Marshall Islands, one of the lowest lying island nations in the world, has declared a national emergency over climate change. The country’s president, Hilda Heine, tweeted the news Friday, blaming the international community for not acting quickly enough to mitigate global warming “of its own making.” “Our parliament has officially declared a national climate crisis. As one of only four low-lying coral atoll nations in the world, the failure of the international community to adequately respond to the global climate crisis of its own making holds particularly grave consequences,” she tweeted. The official declaration of the...

As bad as wildfires have been in Northern and Central California in recent years, another new study shows that climate change could make them even worse in the coming years. That study, published by researchers from Brown University in the journal Environmental Research Letters, found that “climate has been the main driver of fire on a regional scale” in the Sierra Nevada region, according to Richard Vachula, the study’s lead author. “We find that warm and dry conditions promote fire, which in light of climate model predictions suggests that future fires may be more extensive than we have observed in...

As sea levels rise, more and more homeowners will be desperate to sell their flooding homes. And increasingly, they’re expected to turn to an unusual buyer: the federal government. It’s a form of retreat from climate change, one FEMA has been paying for since 1989 using local governments as the brokers. Economic models suggest buying people out will be the most common tool in poorer, less dense communities, and wealthier places will spend their cash armoring the coast so that residents can fight nature and stay in their homes. But a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances showed...

Nearly two-thirds of North American birds studied will go extinct if global warming hits 3 degrees Celsius (5.4ËšF), a new report from the National Audubon Society finds. Orioles, eagles, grouse and gulls are among 389 types of bird - 64% of 604 species assessed on this continent - that are highly or moderately vulnerable to climate change, the study says. The stark warning follows research published last month that showed the U.S. and Canada had lost 2.9 billion birds in about the last 50 years. The existential threat to birds also impacts humanity. As canaries warned coal miners of invisible...

Consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble faces pressure from environmentalists to clean up its act. More than 150 groups are pushing the maker of Charmin toiler paper and Bounty paper towels to use recycled materials in its products. Currently, neither of those products uses recycled paper, and about one-third of it is sourced from Canada's boreal forest — a large swath of virgin forest that rings the Arctic Circle and acts as a critical check on climate change. "It's just unacceptable that a company like P&G is making toilet paper, a product that is used for seconds and flushed, from...

Michael Mann, a climatologist at Penn State University, is the creator of the "hockey stick graph" that appears to show global temperatures taking a noticeable swing upward in the era when humanity has been burning fossil fuels and dumping CO2 into the atmosphere. The graph was first published in 1998[...] The graph's methodology and accuracy have been and continue to be hotly contested, but Mann has taken the tack of suing two of his most prominent critics for defamation or libel. One case, against Mark Steyn, is called by Steyn likely to end up in the Supreme Court. But another...

OXNARD, Calif. – The City of Oxnard has received grant funding to offer free fruit trees to residents. Qualified applicants will have the opportunity to have their choice of a lime, lemon, peach, orange, or avocado tree planted in their front yard. All Oxnard residents are encouraged to apply, but grant requirements will prioritize applicants who reside in neighborhoods that are disproportionately affected by pollution, based upon CalEnviroScreen scores. According to these scores, priority neighborhoods include: Tierra Vista Mar Vista Five Points Northeast Rose Park La Colonia Cabrillo Requests from communities outside of the priority areas will be added to...

California is not on track to meet its greenhouse gas emission goals, in part because Californians just aren’t ready to give up their trucks and SUVs. A new study by nonprofit group Next 10 and Beacon Economics found Californians in late 2018 owned more gas-guzzling pickups, mini-vans and SUVs than they did five years ago. Those vehicles made up 57.3 percent of new vehicle registrations in 2018, compared to 39.3 percent in 2013. ... “Assuming the same rate of reduction from 2016 to 2017, California will reach its 2030 and 2050 goals in 2061 and 2157, respectively — representing a...

Greta Thunberg became the poster child for climate hysteria and fraud by sailing across the Atlantic in a supposedly “zero-carbon” yacht, the Malizia II, which in fact was made out of petroleum products from stem to stern ... Malizia II, like the rest of the yachts in the Imoca 60 class, is constructed from high-tech carbon fiber composites to make it ultra light and fast. It is the ultimate play thing of the wealthy elite. These boats are made of hydrocarbons, not to mention all the energy it took to make them. Carbon fiber composites are primarily made from propane...

We actually do not know how much carbon dioxide was in Earth’s atmosphere prior to the 1930s. Devices to reliably measure carbon dioxide in the air went through painstaking, slow, bumpy development. Instruments did not really come into their own until around 1930. Because we don’t know the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere, climate change proponents depend upon unreliable “proxies.” They substitute gas pockets retrieved from ice core samples from deep within ancient glaciers. They hope this will tell us Earth’s ancient atmosphere and the concentration of CO2 in the air. Speculation that air pockets remain exactly the same...

Despite being the start of meteorological autumn, September felt more like a summer swelter across much of the contiguous United States. The month was also drier than normal, but 2019 continued its soggy stretch with the wettest January through September period (YTD) ever recorded. The U.S. also experienced four new weather disasters since May, each exceeding $1 billion: Hurricane Dorian, Tropical Storm Imelda, a southern/eastern severe weather outbreak, and flooding of the Arkansas River that impacted Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kansas. Here are more highlights from NOAA’s latest monthly U.S. Climate Report: Climate by the numbers September 2019 The average temperature...

With a stroke of his pen, California Governor Gavin Newsom has redirected part of the money you pay at the pump with the state’s gas tax to the railway system and other projects. Governor Newsom signed Executive Order N-19-19. It calls for leveraging billion in annual state transportation funds to reduce green house gases and emissions. The order directs money away from fixing local highways, stalling important projects here in the valley. Valley Assemblyman Jim Patterson (R)-Fresno, is upset and wants Republicans and Democrats in the state to speak out. Assemblyman Patterson says, “One of the very first things Governor...

Scientists seeking funding and journalists seeking an audience agree: panic sells.“Global cooling is going to kills us all!” “No, wait: global warming is going to kill us all!”All that’s  missing is a back-and-forth of “You shut up!” “No, you shut up!” That is reserved for those who doubt the need for panic.That’s the gist of an amazing chronology of the last 120 years of scare-mongering on climate, assembled by butnowyouknow.net and reprinted by the estimable Anthony Watts in Wattsupwiththat, who updates it to the present. It is truly mind-boggling: 1895 - Geologists Think the World May Be Frozen Up Again – New York Times, February...

Pittsburgh has become the second U.S. city to incorporate United Nations Sustainable Development Goals into its practices, planning and policies, an initiative that will affect more than $4 billion worth of public and private projects in the region during the next 12 years. Mayor Bill Peduto announced the commitment to the 17 U.N. sustainability goals Friday, saying they identify the most important issues facing the globe -- poverty, hunger, climate change, education, gender equality and health, among them. He said the goals will help inform coordinated and collaborative programs and partnerships with universities and nonprofit, business and civic sectors, and...

Although the wealthy can and should be expected to make larger sacrifices than the middle class, it's vanishingly unlikely that any plan serious enough to slow global warming will leave the bulk of Americans financially untouched. But if Americans are going to be asked to engage in a war on climate change, they should understand the material and economic sacrifices that will be required of them. The best way to do this is to look at an ambitious, well-crafted climate plan like the one put forward by Washington Governor Jay Inslee. **SNIP** Much of this could be financed with taxes...

When I came to faith as a 16-year-old, drug-using, hippie rock drummer, I was told that Jesus was returning very soon. The end of the world was near. Very near. Today, there is a new religious narrative, especially among young people, with a new "end of the world" scenario. But this one is depressing and grim, with nothing redemptive about it. I'm talking about the new religion of manmade global warning. It has its unique gods (like Mother Earth). It deifies the created world (with seminarians confessing to plants in a chapel service). It has its high priests and religious...

Researchers from University College London are forecasting an average temperature in the UK of just 3.9ºC (39ºF) for January to February in what is expected to be “the coldest weather in 30 years.” Yahoo News reported Saturday that temperatures in Great Britain could reach as low as -14C with “snow event after snow event” expected to hit various parts of the territory. Forecasters expect the lasting cold spell to begin sometime this month and to continue at least through March. “October is now looking like it will turn out to be colder than average with more of a chance of...

SANTA FE, N.M. — Methane sensors will be put on planes, trucks and atop towers in the West Texas and southeastern New Mexico desert in a new effort to gauge the extent of greenhouse gas emissions from surging oil and natural gas production, advocates with the Environmental Defense Fund announced Wednesday. The yearlong project in the Permian Basin petroleum production region involves researchers from Pennsylvania State University and the University of Wyoming, and low-flying planes from a Colorado-based atmospheric research company. The new methods will be used because traditional estimates of methane emissions have not kept up with the rapid...

This year’s apple season has been so fruitful that distributors in Norway are running short on storage space. Meteorologists have linked climate change to the quickly-ripening fruits, NRK reports. Orchards in the western area of Hardanger told the broadcaster that this year’s apple season had been unusually short and intense, with a much shorter window than usual for harvesting. Large quantities of apples are now ready for transport to distributors and trees have been cleared of fruit, according to the report. “It has been a good season. The quality is also good. We can see that in both the color...

A town hall event hosted by Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took a turn for the bizarre on October 3 when a woman speaking from the floor urged the eating of babies as a necessary step in the fight against climate change. “We only have a few months left,” the woman said, continuing: “I love that you support the green deal, but it’s not getting rid of fossil fuel, it’s not going to solve the problem fast enough. A Swedish professor [said] we can eat dead people but that’s not fast enough. So I think your next campaign slogan has to be...