Free Republic

In the spring, during their prime hunting season, polar bears need an insanely large amount of food to stay healthy — over 12,000 kilocalories a day, or roughly 6,000 times what humans need, according to new research. That’s a lot more than what scientists previously thought these predators needed to stay healthy. And that means that, as Arctic ice keeps melting because of rising temperatures, polar bears may be in more trouble than we had anticipated. In April of 2014, 2015, and 2016, researchers tracked nine female polar bears living on the sea ice of the Beaufort Sea, off the...

The prime minister is to call on investors to boycott social media platforms that do not delete and censor perceived “extremist” views. Speaking at the Davos World Economic Forum, Theresa May will argue that not enough is being done to fight terrorism and paedophiles online. However, right-wing opinions are already frequently censored on social media and other schemes championed by Mrs. May, such as the Prevent count-terror programme, have been used to target critics of Islam and members of UKIP. “Technology companies still need to go further in stepping up to their responsibilities for dealing with harmful and illegal online...

Why Humans Left Africa: Our Ancestors Watched Climate Change To Cold, Dry BY ELANA GLOWATZ @ELANAGLOW ON 10/05/17 AT 3:09 PM Early humans may have left Africa and spread all over the globe because their home climate was drying up. The idea comes from samples of marine sediment taken from northeastern Africa that show the area was cold and dry around 60,000 years ago, which is around the time humans might have migrated off that continent and into Europe and Asia. A team of scientists wrote in the journal Geology that after warm and wet conditions between 120,000 and 90,000...

Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is settled science, proclaim the predictors of weather doomsday. Settled Science? Science evolves continuously and can never be settled, unless, of course, the ‘settled’ subject is dogma, not science. Is it just a ‘my way or the highway’ attempt by vested interests to close discussion on their terms? Consider the term “peer reviewed”. Science evolves through the contribution of new ideas which are published so that their peers (other scientists) can review, validate, contribute, or argue with them. If we had accepted Niels Bohr’s version of the atom as settled science, there would have been no...

Glacial archaeologists are racing melting ice in Norway to rescue thousands of ancient artifacts exposed by climate change—revealing something surprising about a mysterious and little-known ice age. A team of scientists from Norway and the United Kingdom working in the mountains of Oppland, Norway, have discovered more than 2,000 artifacts, including Iron Age and Bronze Age weapons, remains of pack horses and even prehistoric skis. According to lead author Lars Pilø, co-director of the Glacier Archaeology Program at Oppland County Council, the skis differ from the modern-day version considerably. They're broader, and might have at one point been partly covered...

More than 2,000 remarkably well-preserved hunting artefacts have emerged from melting ice in Norway's highest mountains, dating as far back as 4000 BC. The incredible finds were made by 'glacial archaeologists' in Jotunheimen and the surrounding areas of Oppland, which include Norway’s highest mountains. They looked at the edge of the contracting ice and recovered artefacts of wood, textile, hide and other organic materials. Included in the archaeologists' haul is a ski with preserved binding from 700 AD - only the second one to be preserved globally - as well as a Bronze Age shoe from 1300 BC.

Is climate change losing its luster as an issue for the Hollywood left? Or have so many "Inconvenient Truths" about global warming been debunked that it has forced Hollywood into an embarrassed silence? The sequel to Al Gore's 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth released in 2017 and titled An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, failed to pick up a single Oscar nomination. The 2006 film won "Best Documentary" and "Best Song."

France failed to meet its targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions in 2016, the government said Monday, just a month after President Emmanuel Macron warned that “we are losing the battle” against global warming. The environment ministry said the country emitted 463 tons of greenhouse gases, measured as carbon dioxide equivalents, or 3.6 percent more than its goal. It attributed the slip in part to lower oil prices, which can prompt people and businesses to consume more in areas such as transportation or heating. But emissions were down 15.3 percent from 1990 levels. […] … [T]he disappointing 2016 results show...

Last year, the planet was plagued by powerful hurricanes, blistering fires, and temperatures that ranked as some of the hottest on record—ratcheting up concern that we’re already knee-deep in climate change. To stave off the heat, some scientists have proposed blanketing Earth in a sheet of sunlight-reflecting particles called aerosols. This solar shield could cool the planet and buy us time, but a new study suggests that if politicians turned off the hypothetical cloud, they could plunge the planet into a sudden ecological Armageddon. “Gradual climate change, which is happening now, is bad enough, but if we do something that...

Canadian climate science is facing a looming crisis whose repercussions could be felt far beyond the country’s borders, hundreds of scientists have warned, after the Canadian government failed to renew the country’s only dedicated funding program for climate and atmospheric research. In an open letter addressed to Justin Trudeau, more than 250 scientists from 22 countries highlight their concern over the imminent end of the C$35m Climate Change and Atmospheric Research program. Launched in 2012, the program funded seven research networks that explored issues such as the impact of aerosols, changing sea ice and snow cover, as well as atmospheric...

Trust in social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter has reached a new low, a major credibility survey has warned, over concerns they do not do enough to tackle bullying, illegal activities and the spreading of extremist content on their sites. Most people think the online companies are not regulated enough (64 percent) and lack transparency (63 percent), according to the Edelman Trust Barometer. Just over half (57 percent) believe social media firms take advantage of users’ loneliness, and 62 percent think they are selling people’s data without their knowledge. A third (34 percent) do not think social media...

Many people awaited last Sunday’s Falcon 9 launch from Cape Canaveral of a highly classified US payload. The launch had been delayed for weeks, speculation as to the satellite’s purpose was rampant, and successfully delivering national security satellites to orbit is an important part of SpaceX’s business. The launch, however, remains shrouded in mystery.Shortly after the launch, Bloomberg reported that the satellite was lost, due to US Strategic Command saying they were not tracking any objects. The Wall Street Journal suggested that Congress was being briefed on a failure, and that it was due to a failure of the satellite...

Earth’s surface will almost certainly not warm up four or five degrees Celsius by 2100, according to a study released Wednesday which, if correct, voids worst-case UN climate change predictions. A revised calculation of how greenhouse gases drive up the planet’s temperature reduces the range of possible end-of-century outcomes by more than half, researchers said in the report, published in the journal Nature. “Our study all but rules out very low and very high climate sensitivities,” said lead author Peter Cox, a professor at the University of Exeter. How effectively the world slashes CO2 and methane emissions, improves energy efficiency,...

Shortly after taking office, Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt set out to permanently limit the agency’s regulatory power in what he billed as a “Back to Basics” agenda focusing on cleaning up toxic waste and providing safe drinking water ― but not curbing new industrial pollution.

Apparently Trump's recent letter to the Energy Department, which included very pointed questions about climate change research, and/or his appointment of former Texas Governor Rick Perry to lead that department going forward (a department that Perry proposed shutting down back in 2012 for those who may have forgotten), "triggered" California's head snowflake, Governor Jerry Brown, into an epic climate change rant before a gathering of scientists at the American Geophysical Union's national conference in San Francisco. Vowing to defy Trump's efforts to undermine the "progress" made by California on climate change regulations, Brown promised that his state is "ready to...

TUCSON — Wildfires, extreme storms and major weather events can seem like a distant threat, but for those whose lives have been directly impacted by these events, the threat hits much closer to home. As reports of such incidents continue to rise, researchers at the University of Arizona set out to learn more about how people's perception of the threat of global climate change affects their mental health. They found that while some people have little anxiety about the Earth's changing climate, others are experiencing high levels of stress, and even depression, based on their perception of the threat of...

In the mountains of western Iran, the province of Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari is known for mile-high lagoons, flowing rivers and wetlands that attract thousands of species of migratory birds. But years of diminishing rainfall have shriveled water sources. Conditions worsened, residents say, after Iranian authorities began funneling water 60 miles away to the lowland city of Esfahan, sparking protests as far back as 2014. The uprising — in which at least 21 people died and thousands were arrested before authorities reimposed order — had many sparks: rising prices, persistent unemployment, bank collapses, a wide wealth gap, corruption in the theocracy. But an...

Manmade climate change is now dwarfing the influence of natural trends on the climate, scientists say. The acting director of the UK Met Office, Prof Peter Stott, told BBC News: "It's extraordinary that temperatures in 2017 have been so high when there's no El Niño. In fact, we’ve been going into cooler La Niña conditions. "Last year was substantially warmer than 1998 which had a very big El Niño. "It shows clearly that the biggest natural influence on the climate is being dwarfed by human activities – predominantly CO2; emissions." “The record temperature should focus the minds of world leaders,...

MOSCOW - Even thermometers can't keep up with the plunging temperatures in Russia's remote Yakutia region, which hit minus 67 degrees Celsius (minus 88.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas Tuesday. In Yakutia - a region of 1 million people about 3,300 miles (5,300 kilometers) east of Moscow - students routinely go to school even in minus 40 degrees. But school was canceled Tuesday throughout the region and police ordered parents to keep their children inside. Over the weekend, two men froze to death when they tried to walk to a nearby farm after their car broke down. Three other men...

There could be no starker illustration of the profound differences that exist between Washington and London -- despite alignment on many other issues -- than comments this week by our two leaders on climate change and the environment. For President Trump, the Paris Agreement is a bad deal that will close US businesses -- perhaps even has closed some already. Meanwhile, in London last week, Prime Minister Theresa May was launching the UK's 25-year Plan for Nature. Its flagship pledge is to "leave the environment in a better state than we found it". The evidence is entirely against the world...