Free Republic

You’ve probably never heard of Sebring, Ohio. Despite tainted water, which the EPA knew about for months before the public did, shipments of water bottles for the angry residents, two EPA employees being put on leave, and all the other elements of a scandal, it was missing something.

Opponents of the Obama administration’s landmark climate change rule will have to wait three more months to argue their case in federal court. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said Monday that oral arguments in the case over the Clean Power Plan will be held Sept. 27, rather than June 2, when they were originally scheduled earlier this year. Additionally, the case will be heard by a full panel of nine of the court’s judges. Chief Judge Merrick Garland, who President Obama has nominated to sit on the Supreme Court, has recused himself from all cases,...

The University of Illinois maintains a website monitoring global sea ice. Recent data is unprecedented (in my experience) in its strangeness.

Today, on the Feast of Pentecost, I called Fr. Ingo Dollinger, a German priest and former professor of theology in Brasil, who is now quite elderly and physically weak. He has been a personal friend of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI for many years. Father Dollinger unexpectedly confirmed over the phone the following facts: Not long after the June 2000 publication of the Third Secret of Fatima by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger told Fr. Dollinger during an in-person conversation that there is still a part of the Third Secret that they have not published!...

President Barack Obama probably needed his gown to keep him warm as he delivered a commencement speech at Rutgers University amid historically cold temperatures in New Jersey. But as he touted global warming, Obama denied that colder than usual temperatures meant that climate change didn’t exist. “Now, I recognize it doesn’t feel like the planet is warmer right now. I understand,” he said, acknowledging that there was hail when he landed on Air Force One in Newark. But Obama insisted that it was still a reality, citing “overwhelming consensus” from the scientific community to back his claim. He also mocked...

Employing his college degree in fiction writing, White House communications strategist Ben Rhodes wrote deceitful talking points on the Benghazi attack and one-sided Iran nuclear deal – and later bragged about manipulating “clueless reporters.” Perhaps he’s also orchestrating administration climate spin. Rising ocean tides will bring “waves of climate refugees” to America and Europe, President Obama has declared. “Environmental migrants” are already fleeing shrinking islands in the Pacific, and it is a “dereliction of duty” for military officers to “deny the reality” of dangerous manmade climate change. Even if we act in accord with the Paris climate “accords” (none dare...

The Swedish government is taking an extremely bizarre commitment to fighting climate change by spending large sums of taxpayer money to develop 'meat' made from mealworms and crickets. Vinnova, the Swedish government agency that distributes money for research and development, is spending some 2.7 billion kronor ($261 million) to replace conventional meat with 'climate-friendly' insect 'meat' and other strange alternatives. Yum… Breitbart News reports: Green activists and the United Nations are behind such political initiatives as 'Meat Free Mondays' — a gateway to full vegetarianism — which are based on the premise that meat consumption is driving man-made climate change....

Two thousand environmental protesters blockaded a coal mine in Germany on Friday as part of an international campaign against the use of fossil fuels. The activists, dressed in white overalls and equipped with breathing masks, blocked access to the open cast Proschim mine close to the Polish border, according to an AFP journalist at the scene. The group unfurled banners on excavation machinery, with slogans including “Keep it in the ground” and “Climate crime scene” as organizers said that the action would last all weekend. […] The “Break Free” campaign was the brainchild of several environmental lobby groups including Greenpeace...

Republican presidential contender Donald Trump has asked one of America's most ardent drilling advocates and climate change skeptics to help him draft his energy policy. U.S. Republican Congressman Kevin Cramer of North Dakota - a major oil drilling state - is writing a white paper on energy policy for the New York billionaire, Cramer and sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Cramer was also among a group of Trump advisers who recently met with lawmakers from western energy states, who hope Trump will open more federal land for drilling, a lawmaker who took part in the meeting said. Cramer...

Hijacking the Environmental Movement What makes 350 so devious, is that they hijack public emotions (and ignorance) using phony “divestment” as a disorganizing tool to redirect activism away from effective work.—Jay Taber A coalition of environmental activist groups, led by 350.org, is promoting a series of “Break Free From Fossil Fuels” training sessions and protests during May 4-15, 2016, at locations involved in fossil fuel production or transportation. The protests will occur at key sites related to production and transport of fossil fuels, including rail lines and yards, in the United States and Canada. The problem? 350.org only cares about...

Bill Nye Is A Huckster The Science Guy diminishes his nickname by resorting to scaremonger-y nuggets of easily dismissible ideologically-motivated nonsense May 12, 2016 By David Harsanyi Bill Nye fashions himself a voice of rational thought and scientific inquiry. His shtick has gotten him into classrooms and on an endless loop of evangelizing TV appearances. Yet nearly every time he speaks these days, Nye diminishes genuine science by resorting to scaremonger-y nuggets of easily dismissible ideologically-motivated nonsense.Take this tweet he sent out to his nearly three million followers: More severe weather. More suffering. More expense. Let’s all take climate change...

In the 1950s, it was: “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?” Today, it’s: “Are you now, or have you ever been, a climate-change denier?” I’m not referring simply to the fact that it’s politically incorrect to question assertions of man-made global warming. That’s bad enough, but no -- I mean that if some powerful individuals get their way, it could soon be a federal crime to do so. “The bottom line is simple,” New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said at a recent press conference. “Climate change is real.” He was joined...

I am so sorry I am only finding out about this now, a day late. I would have flown across the country to attend. Imagine the acrobatics Ghassan Hage had to perform in order to make this even remotely plausible, even with the audience so eager to be fooled that he undoubtedly had. On the other hand, if the dim-bulb “Islamophobia”-fearmonger Haroon Moghul (that’s right, “Dwayne”) could sell Time Magazine on the idea that “Islamophobia” is responsible for America’s crumbling infrastructure, academic audiences these days may be even stupider than I thought. “Is ISLAMOPHOBIA accelerating global warming?,” MIT Global Studies...

ATHENS, Ohio (April 15, 2010) – A new study led by Ohio University scientists suggests that early Native Americans left a bigger carbon footprint than previously thought, providing more evidence that humans impacted global climate long before the modern industrial era. Chemical analysis of a stalagmite found in the mountainous Buckeye Creek basin of West Virginia suggests that native people contributed a significant level of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere through land use practices. The early Native Americans burned trees to actively manage the forests to yield the nuts and fruit that were a large part of their diets. “They...

Archbishop Bruno Forte, Pope Bergoglio’s handpicked Special Secretary for both sessions of the Phony Synod, is a supremely arrogant man. For only supreme arrogance could explain his reported insertion into the midterm report of Phony Synod 2014 (with Francis’s full approval) those infamous statements about “valuing” the “homosexual orientation” and recognizing that “homosexual unions” can provide “precious support in the life of the partners” as they habitually engage in sodomy. And only supreme arrogance could explain Bruno’s matter-of-fact revelation of what we have long known anyway: that the entire “synodal process” was stage-managed by Francis to advance his pet project...

Porsche unveiled a new V-8 engine at the 37th Vienna Motor Symposium that will eventually power the range-topping variants of the upcoming second-generation Panamera and the next Cayenne SUV. In addition to powering the larger vehicles in Porsche’s lineup, the new V-8 will also be used by other Volkswagen Group brands including Audi and Bentley. Featuring two twin-scroll turbochargers, the new 4.0-liter V-8 is rated at 550 hp and 568 lb-ft of torque (up from 520 hp and 516 lb-ft), which puts it just shy of the current 4.8-liter twin-turbo V-8 utilized in the 570-hp Porsche Panamera Turbo S. Despite...

(CNSNews.com) – Former Vice President Al Gore said on Thursday that the news reports of extreme weather, which he believes is caused by climate change, is like the end days described in the Bible’s New Testament’s Book of Revelation.“The climate-related extreme weather events – and I won’t go through all of them – but every night on the television news now is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation,” Gore said at the Climate Action 2016 summit in Washington, D.C.

The attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands is targeting dozens of conservative and libertarian organizations in a racketeering lawsuit against climate change skeptics that has been widely described as an effort to silence political opponents. In a subpoena issued in March, the office of USVI attorney general Claude Walker demanded from Exxon Mobil copies of communications between the oil company and 90 different political and policy organizations “and any other organizations engaged in research or advocacy concerning Climate Change or policies.” The subpoena was part of a national, coordinated legal campaign by state attorneys general and left-wing advocacy groups...

From ample references to peer-reviewed works and based on NIPCC reports “drawn from its extensive review of the scientific evidence,” Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming argues that “any human global climate impact is within the background variability of the natural climate system and is not dangerous.” Scientists have a long way to go to sufficiently understand the workings of the atmospheric environment. So, a terrific disservice is done to the discipline of science, when power-seeking politicians and narrow-minded individuals of all stripes seek to foreclose reasonable investigation with their claims of settled science and demands for immediate action that...

At a meeting to discuss the apostolic exhoration Amoris Laetitia, Archbishop Bruno Forte revealed new insights into the mind of Pope Francis on one of the most controversial issues facing the Church: communion for the divorced and “remarried.” Forte was the man personally chosen by Pope Francis as the Special Secretary for the synods on marriage and family, and he is widely believed responsible for the insertion of the explosive language pertaining to homosexuals in the 2014 Synod’s mid-term relatio. During his presentation, the details of which were published on 3 May on the Italian news website, Zonalocale.it, Forte recalled...