Free Republic

Australia’s conservative coalition government will put jobs and the economy ahead of any U.N. demands for it to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said Sunday. Cormann said Australia’s government will work to set new long-term plans addressing greenhouse gas emissions ahead of yet another global climate summit in Glasgow year, however it won’t pursue any net-zero emissions policies that hurt workers in key economic areas.

A top U.N. scientist on Thursday shrugged off an online quip from U.S. President Donald Trump that questioned global warming, saying a U.S. government report will show the “fundamental impacts of climate change on the U.S. continent.” Officials at the World Meteorological Organization also said environmentally minded efforts by the state of California, in parts of the financial sector, among grassroots activists and others will have more of an impact to help the fight against climate change than “political disturbance” and “discourse” will impede it. The science, they said, will have the last word. Some of that science comes Friday...

Utah Sen.-elect Mitt Romney signaled he may focus on climate change when he's sworn in in January. In a brief interview with E&E News yesterday, the former Republican presidential nominee said he sees climate change as a "critical area." ....snip Last year, Romney told college students in St. Louis that he was "concerned about the anti-scientific attitude" expressed by some of his Republican colleagues and that he was convinced humanity has played a part in global warming (Climatewire, Oct. 3). "I happen to believe that there is climate change, and I think humans contribute to it in a substantial way,...

The latest report from the world’s climate scientists has made clear the size of the challenge if the world is to stay below the global warming limit hoped for in the Paris climate agreement. Unfortunately, with current trends we are likely to cross this threshold within the next two decades because we are already two-thirds of the way there. But how do we know what is driving these climate trends? It comes down to the same kind of detective work that typifies a crime scene investigation, only here we are dealing with a case that encompasses the whole world. Let...