Free Republic

QUINAULT tribal members can attest to the urgency of climate change from an up-close and personal perspective. We're being forced to relocate part of our village of Taholah on the Washington coast. Ocean encroachment, increasingly severe storm surges and flooding are forcing more than 1,000 of our people to permanently move to higher ground. Tribes are not primary contributors to weather changes. Blame it on industrial smoke stacks, thousands of cars that clog the freeways and exploiters who destroy natural habitat. But we're often the first to feel the impact because of our proximity and connection with rivers, inland seas...

The lights of the Cupola atop St. Peter’s Basilica are to go dark on the evening of Saturday, March 19th, along with those that illumine Bernini’s colonnade embracing St. Peter’s Square. From 8:30 PM to 9:30 PM in the evening, the lights shall remain dark on the occasion of the 2016 iteration of Earth Hour – an initiative promoted by the World Wildlife Fund International, in which the Vatican City State is participating. The lights illuminating the two fountains in the Square and the four candelabra surrounding the central obelisk will remain shining, however, along with those that light the...

Ten of the world’s largest food production companies sent a letter to the U.S. Congress on Thursday, encouraging them to take action on climate change. The letter was signed by the chief executive officers from Unilever, Mars, Kellogg, General Mills, Nestle, New Belgium Brewing, Ben & Jerry’s, Clif Bar, Stonyfield Farm, and Dannon. “The challenge presented by climate change will require all of us – government, civil society and business – to do more with less. For companies like ours, that means producing more food on less land using fewer natural resources. If we don’t take action now, we risk...

Marvel at the science and engineering that keeps these planes flying, and remarkably safely:Planes in the sky with half a million people in the air at any one time | Guardian & Flightstats How many flights are in the air at once? NOAA estimates that 5,000 planes are in the sky over the United States. On any given day, more than 87,000 flights travel through US airspace… globally estimates seem to be that there are around 8,000 – 13,000 though I didn’t happen to find an authoritative source.This youtube shows the dots in motion:  This youtube works  better in a...

The Washington Post reports: "During an April visit to the San Francisco home of billionaire and environmental activist Tom Steyer, who created a political action committee in March to target lawmakers supporting the Keystone pipeline, Obama noted that the issue of climate change “is near and dear” to Steyer and his wife, Kat Taylor. “But — and I mentioned this to Tom and Kat and a few folks right before I came out here — the politics of this are tough,” Obama added, according to a White House transcript. “Because if you haven’t seen a raise in a decade; if...

Nearly four in ten U.S. residents say the severity of recent natural disasters such as Superstorm Sandy is evidence the world is coming to an end, as predicted by the Bible, while more than six in ten blame it on climate change, according to a poll released on Thursday. The survey by the Public Religion Research Institute in partnership with the Religion News Service found political and religious disagreement on what is behind severe weather, which this year has included extreme heat and drought. Most Catholics (60 percent) and white non-evangelical Protestants (65 percent) say they believe disasters like hurricanes...

"Political pressure" by a White House eager to tout its stimulus agenda was largely to blame for fast-tracking the ill-fated $535 million Solyndra loan guarantee, according to findings in a massive new congressional report released Thursday morning. The report, by Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, caps a nearly yearlong investigation by the panel into why the government allegedly ignored red flags to approve the loan. Solyndra, a solar-panel firm, filed for bankruptcy last year. "It is clear DOE should never have issued the loan guarantee to Solyndra," the report said, adding that a subsequent decision to restructure...

Down, down, down.

In a move that could reshape the American automobile industry, California regulators Thursday are expected to approve sweeping new rules requiring that 15 percent of new cars sold in California by 2025 run on electricity, hydrogen or other systems producing little or no smog. The regulations by the California Air Resources Board, dubbed the "advanced clean car rules," would start in 2018, ramping up each year and ultimately resulting in 1.4 million "zero emission" vehicles on California roads by 2025. Today there are only about 10,000 such vehicles in the state. "This is a really large step. It's transformational," said...

On Thursday, President Barack Obama brought Michigan more talk of cutting edge “green” technology and the future jobs he insists it will create. Obama's visit centered on the Johnson Controls Inc. advanced battery facility in Holland. Two years ago JCI got $299 million in federal stimulus grants to convert a Holland warehouse into an advanced battery plant. This week the Obama administration announced $175 million in new federal grants to "accelerate the development and deployment of advanced vehicle technologies.” JCI is getting a $3 million piece of that funding. “At a time when Americans are rightly focused on our economy,...

CNSNews.com) – Media mogul Ted Turner says climate change is “probably the most serious--and, in all fairness, the most complex--problem that humanity has ever faced.” He added: “It is really easy to understand how some people don’t get it, because it’s so complex and complicated.” Turner took part in a telephone news conference on Thursday, held by his United Nations Foundation on the island of Svalbard, one of the northernmost regions of Norway. His comments came in response to a question posed by reporter Sunny Lewis of the Environment News Service about how to change the minds of climate change...

A frothing Chris Matthews on Wednesday excoriated Rush Limbaugh as "evil" for spreading "lies" about global warming. The Hardball host highlighted a new Rolling Stone article by Al Gore that chides Barack Obama for not doing enough on climate change. Matthews, however, chose to attack Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh: "These people are evil in what they're doing. I'm not saying their souls are evil, but what they're doing is really, really wrong and it's not the President." [See video below. MP3 audio here.] The MSNBC host declared no room for debate on global warming, announcing, "But here is a...