Free Republic

After last weekend’s East Coast blizzard, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said “we’re in an age of extreme weather.” I’ve been studying and forecasting the weather since I was 12 years old in the mid 1970s and have come to the conclusion that I agree with de Blasio. I’ll add to de Blasio’s comment that not only do I think we’re in an age of extreme weather, but I think that “age” started more than 20 years ago when Hurricane Andrew hit south Florida in 1992, followed by the “storm of the century” in 1993. Perhaps some could...

Is the “green” movement too white? According to former Obama administration green jobs czar Van Jones, it is. Jones told the news site Grist that the environmental movement has a diversity problem. “The mainstream donors and environmental organizations could be strengthened just by recognizing the other ‘environmentalisms’ that are already existing and flourishing outside their purview,” Jones said. Historically, many environmental organizations have been mostly white, and organizations tying environmentalism to social justice received a much smaller amount of funding than mainstream groups. But Jones said that a movement that welcomed more diversity would flourish. “If you go to Detroit,...

The academic boycott against Israel continues to broaden, with a new petition signed by 168 academics and researchers in Italy calling to suspend all agreements with Israeli universities as well as the Technion, Israel's Institute of Technology in Haifa. The petition comes three months after 343 British academics signed another petition calling for an academic boycott of Israeli universities on the grounds that they participate in violations of international law and support the occupation. [...] Among the boycott measures proposed by the petition are the cessation of all collaboration with the Technion and other Israeli universities, including academic and cultural...

We need an estimated $1tn per year to stay below a global temperature rise of 2C. Creating new money might be the only way to meet this financial challenge. The international community has agreed on an ambitious agenda to curb climate change. Some 195 countries have decided to try and cut greenhouse gas emissions to a level that will limit the rise in average global temperatures to well below 2C. The question we now face is: how are we going to finance the changes needed to reach this goal? Quantitative easing - creating new money - might just be the...

Leonardo DiCaprio has officially met the Pope. The actor had a private meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Thursday morning. "Leo explained that he wanted to discuss a subject they both have very much at heart: protecting the environment and climate change," a source tells PEOPLE. DiCaprio, 41, arrived at the Vatican at 11:15 a.m. local time and was accompanied by his father, George DiCaprio, and Milutin Gatsby, global fundraising chair for the actor's namesake charity, the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation. During the 15-minute meeting, the actor presented the pontiff with a check from his environmental philanthropy for him...

ROME (RNS) Controversy over Italy's decision to cover nude statues during the visit of Iran's president continued to spark debate as the leader of the Syrian Catholic Church criticized the episode, saying it pains persecuted Christians in Syria who feel forgotten. "This is our culture. If you don't want to see it, close your eyes!" an exasperated Patriarch Youssef III Younan told journalists in Rome on Thursday (Jan. 28). The head of the Syriac Catholic Church was speaking two days after ancient nude statues were covered by staff at Rome's Capitoline Museums in a bid to avoid offending the Iranian...

In January, 2006 - when promoting his Oscar-winning (yes, Oscar-winning) documentary, An Inconvenient Truth - Gore declared that unless we took "drastic measures" to reduce greenhouse gasses, the world would reach a "point of no return" in a mere ten years. He called it a "true planetary emergency." Well, the ten years passed today, we're still here, and the climate activists have postponed the apocalypse. Again.

Politicians and environmentalists concerned about global warming are pushing policies to cut carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector. It's too bad they are pushing costly green energy technologies. ExxonMobil's annual energy report shows just how expensive it is to use green energy to cut CO2 emissions. Replacing coal power, for example, with wind or solar energy costs upwards of $100 and $200, respectively, per ton of CO2 reduced. That’s much more expensive than replacing coal with natural gas or simply improving vehicle engine efficiency. Pushing electric cars, however, is the most expensive way to reduce CO2 emissions, costing $800...

The campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is raising questions about the involvement of Microsoft in the Iowa Caucuses, now just five days away, and has built a independent system to check the official results. For the first time this year, Microsoft partnered with the Iowa Democratic and Republican Parties to provide a technology platform with which the parties will run their caucuses. The software giant created separate mobile apps for each party, which officials at hundreds of caucuses across the state will use to report out results from individual precincts to party headquarters for tabulation. The arrangement has...

Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco insists the bishops are united, but questions exist about how supportive Pope Francis is of open opposition to controversial legislation supporting same-sex partnerships The pressure to subvert traditional ethics on issues pertaining to life, the family and education, which has been sweeping through the European Union from West to East, is currently being halted by the former "Iron Curtain" countries, and in Italy, where the struggle has been pitting grassroots movements against the European Establishment for at least a dozen years now. As befits the country that has hosted the papacy for almost all of the twenty...

Should government officials be able to cut off donations to groups because they employ people disparaged as "climate change deniers," even if the group in question is a think tank that studies a wide range of topics, only a few of which relate to climate change at all, and the "denial" in question includes telling politically inconvenient truths about the cost of proposed climate change legislation? Only a single-issue zealot with ideological blinders and a contempt for the First Amendment would think so. But that hasn't stopped New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and California Attorney General Kamala Harris investigating...

Blizzards, like the one that battered the East Coast this weekend, have doubled in number over the past 20 years. From 1960-94, the US had an average of nine blizzards per year. Since 1995, that annual average has risen to 19. And it's not just their frequency that's increasing. More blizzards are forming outside the normal storm season of October to March, scientists have found.

Al Gore's Armageddon. Any sketchy weather to report from freeper land

Two of the most dangerous apocalyptic Muslim groups-that strongly believe in establishment of a global Islamic state and believe in annihilation of non-Muslim nations-are the Islamic State and the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran. They both share the same fatal ideology and mission with some minor differences. They believe that this is the end of the times for non-Muslims, and that they should prepare the world for the coming of the Imam Mahdi (also known as Muhammad al Mahdi) who would establish Islamic rule around the world and clean up the planet from those who do not...

The Romans have censored themselves to make visiting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani feel more comfortable during his historic stop in Italy. Rouhani -- the first Iranian leader to visit Europe in almost 20 years -- met Tuesday with Pope Francis at the Vatican, but another stop on his agenda was the famed Capitoline Museum, where classic Italian nude sculptures were covered with plain white boards to avoid offending the Muslim president.

A decision by Italian officials to cover up ancient nude statues to not offend Iran's visiting president is drawing ridicule in Rome. Ahead of a news conference Monday with Premier Matteo Renzi and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, wooden panels were erected around some Roman statues in Rome's Capitoline Museums. When images of the cover-up made the Italian media Tuesday, politicians from across the spectrum decried and derided the decision. The museum said Tuesday that the premier's office wanted the statues along Rouhani's path to the news conference covered up. Renzi's office declined to comment. ...

Linky only.

From the “fresh melt water will disrupt the planet” department, except that this ongoing alarm has already been debunked by NASA, see: NASA refutes Mann and Rahmstorf – Finds Atlantic ‘Conveyor Belt’ Not SlowingIllustration depicting the overturning circulation of the global ocean. Throughout the Atlantic Ocean, the circulation carries warm waters (red arrows) northward near the surface and cold deep waters (blue arrows) southward. Image credit: NASA/JPL Melting Greenland ice sheet may affect global ocean circulation, future climateUniversity of South Florida and international scientists find influx of freshwater could disrupt the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, an important component of global...

The first month of the year isn't even over yet and as people in the Northeast are digging their way out of one of the biggest snowstorms in recorded history, Time magazine has a message for you: "2016 Expected to Be the Warmest Year on Record." Yes, they couldn't even wait for the temperature readings to be evaluated in the months to come to make that prediction. Just as much of the mainstream media have already declared 2014 and 2015 based on highly questionable evidence, they are already declaring 2016 to be even hotter based on absolutely no evidence other...

The clearest example comes from a tweet sent by Trump on Nov. 6, 2012. "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive." On Jan. 18, after Sanders had attacked Trump's climate change views in the Democratic debate, Trump told Fox & Friends, "Well, I think the climate change is just a very, very expensive form of tax. A lot of people are making a lot of money. I know much about climate change. I'd be -- received environmental awards. And I often joke that this is done for the...