Free Republic

For those who seek to panic the public into handing control of all economic activity to the state, the prospect of rising sea levels inundating coastal cities has been the most useful tool. By propagating the theory that your SUV, air conditioning and jet travel will drown New York and Miami, and submerge Pacific island out of existence, the warmists plan to extract trillions of dollars from advanced economies, and distribute them to cronies making solar cells, electric cars, windmills, and other expensive substitutes, and to the rulers of third world countries allegedly to be devastated (with “administrative costs” sticking...

An Italian politician on Wednesday gave 17-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg some fatherly advice to go back to school. Pietro Fiocchi, a member of the European Parliament, said Thunberg should consider going back to school during a meeting of the Environment Council at the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium. The Italian politician began by thanking Thunberg for her “important role in raising public awareness on this fundamental topic.” “At the same time, I would like to give an advice as a father gives an advice to a daughter — go back to school and go back to a normal...

Climate change and sea level rise are currently on track to wipe out half the world’s sandy beaches by 2100, researchers warned Monday. Even if humanity sharply reduces the fossil fuel pollution that drives global warming, more than a third of the planet’s sandy shorelines could disappear by then, crippling coastal tourism in countries large and small, they reported in the journal Nature Climate Change. “Apart from tourism, sandy beaches often act as the first line of defence from coastal storms and flooding, and without them impacts of extreme weather events will probably be higher,” lead author Michalis Vousdoukas, a...

Jeff Bezos’ $10 billion commitment to fight climate change, which he announced last week, brings to mind an episode of “South Park” that aired during the financial crisis. A succession of characters put their money into the market only to see it go instantly to zero before their eyes. Based on the best science, or at least the most officially condoned, Mr. Bezos would have only the vaguest idea what he was getting for his money. That’s because scientists can estimate only within a giant, squishy margin of error how much warming might be avoided from a given cut in...

If atmospheric science is not science, what is it? It is the nearest thing to a religion, particularly for the liberal secular humanists, atheists, and agnostics of the left. It has a pretty close copy of the concept of original sin and drips with guilt. It is the lever that politicians on the left will use to change our economy, violate our constitution, and restrict our freedoms. It is offered as the "big problem" that only "big government" or maybe "world government" can solve. This stuff is "junk science." These folks read ice core samples and tree rings the way...

Greta Thunberg’s mother, Malena Ernman is promoting her family’s new book, “Our House is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis.” She is using her daughter’s story as a tool for publicity. If the phrase “our house is on fire” is familiar it is because Greta frequently uses it when speaking in public about climate change. The parents of Greta work in the entertainment industry so they crave the stage. Ernman is a well-known opera singer in Europe and Svante Thunberg, Greta’s father, is an actor. Both parents have essentially all but given up their own...

It's cold tonight, and I sit at my desk, wishing it were warmer. Even with central heat and air, winter is a difficult time. My sinuses are inflamed, my knuckles are dry and red, and my joints are sore with the cold. Every year I dread it more. And now environmentalists like Jeff Bezos want to make it colder. It's no accident that Shakespeare wrote of "the winter of our discontent" (Richard III) and of "the icy fang / And churlish chiding of the winter's wind" (As You Like It). Shakespeare, who lived through some of the coldest decades of...

On Sunday's What's Eating America?, hosted by celebrity chef Andrew Zimmern, the second episode of the new food-focused MSNBC series engaged in scaremongering with predictions about the food industry being hurt by climate change, and indicted "deniers" for not believing climate change is caused by human activity. The show used several sources who are liberal activists critical of conservatives who are skeptical of climate alarmist views, with one even calling it "criminal" for skeptics to dispute the claims of alarmists. The new MSNBC host teased the show holding a plate of food he had prepared containing Alaskan salmon, summer sweet...

The U.S. Energy Information Administration just announced some spectacular news that should be banner headlines across the country: The price of natural gas has fallen to its lowest February level in 20 years. The data shows that natural gas prices fell to $1.77 per million British thermal units. In inflation-adjusted terms, the price of gas has plunged by some 80% since its high of $13.60 12 years ago. The price is down 90% since 2005, when prices hit nearly $20.

Counter-protesters tore down a barricade Wednesday in front of Canadian National (CN) railway tracks near Edmonton, Alberta, after environmental activists erected it. The activists who blocked the tracks are opposed to the Coastal GasLink pipeline in British Columbia. But the blockade was not up for long as another group soon had the barrier down and in the back of a truck. Environmentalists have brought railway traffic to a standstill now for two weeks across Canada, bringing the threat of food and fuel shortages closer every day. The activists behind the protest are claiming to represent the interests of the Wet’suwet’en...

Martin Heller is one of those people. He’s an engineer at the University of Michigan’s Center for Sustainable Systems and one of several researchers who published a paper in Environmental Research Letters assessing how much variability there is in the greenhouse gas emissions of American diets. And it turns out the answer is: a lot. Forty six percent of the total emissions from food came from the diets of just one-fifth of the population. Mostly that’s because those people eat a lot more meat than the others, especially methane-spewing beef. Animal protein jacks up the emissions for the top consumers,...

An international organization of environmental protestors dug up the lawn of Trinity College, Cambridge, as part of a week-long series of demonstrations for fossil fuel divestment. Extinction Rebellion protestors dug channels into the turf of Trinity College’s 16th-century great gate with shovels and pitchforks and planted their flags. “Trinity College must cut ties with fossil fuel companies and stop trying to hawk off nature for profit,” the organization’s Facebook page says. “Oh, and it should take the opportunity to replace the lawn with flowers. Spring is just around the corner after all.”

Giving birth to a child is “the worst thing you can do” to the climate, says philosophy professor Patricia MacCormack of Anglia Ruskin University. The professor, author of The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene who describes herself as an “old school goth,” says that the only way to save the planet is to stop having children and allow humans to become extinct. According to the official description of the book, MacCormack “actively embraces issues like human extinction, vegan abolition, atheist occultism, death studies, a refusal of identity politics, deep ecology, and the apocalypse as an optimistic...

The Guardian newspaper famously predicted back in 1999 that by the year 2020, “Spain will be ridden with malaria, the eastern Mediterranean will be as hot as the Sahara desert, flash floods will swamp parts of the American coastline and there will be almost no snow in the Alps.” While there is no way to definitively debunk current predictions of a coming climate apocalypse, fortunately we do possess failed past predictions to help put things in perspective. In a Guardian article titled “Tourist spots could be too hot to handle,” Jamie Wilson — since promoted to “head of International news”...

The theory for those pushing the green new deal or some other radical energy policy that will destroy tens of millions of jobs and greatly harm the poor and middle class is that humans, CO2, and fossil fuels cause warming and climate change. This warming causes the ice to melt in Alaska, then the melting ice causes sea levels to rise and the rising sea levels will cause coastal cities to under water. They have predicted the coastal cities to disappear for the last 100 years and they have been wrong for 100 years. Meanwhile, Alaska has been exceptionally cold...

Actor Joaquin Phoenix spoke at actress's Jane Fonda's weekly climate change protest outside of the Capitol building on Friday and expressed sadness that he's unable to avoid activities that contribute to climate change. "Something that I think isn't oftentimes talked about in the environmental movement or in the conversation about climate is that the meat and dairy industry is the third leading cause of climate change," Phoenix said. "I think sometimes we wonder what can we do in this fight against climate and there is something you can do today right now and tomorrow by making a choice what you...

All three networks devoted reports Wednesday to hyping radical Swedish teen climate change activist Greta Thunberg being honored by Time Magazine today with their “Person of the Year” award. Journalists from ABC, NBC, and CBS all praised the “deserving” “good choice” and touted the teen “taking on” world leaders while “inspiring” other teens to become climate evangelists. NBC spent the most time groveling over Greta. They even had Time’s editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal on to puff up the teen as “the biggest voice on the biggest issue facing the planet this year,” leading a “worldwide movement.” Today show co-host Hoda Kotb...

Kids are great tools for big money and major powers lurking in the shadows, attempting to enact a political agenda. The latest instance, and it's a doozy, is young Greta Thunberg, the Swedish child climate activist who's coming to the states (with a big carbon footprint, according to today's piece by Thomas Lifson) to persuade us all to jump in on the global warming cavalcade of green laws to restrict our own freedoms — which, as it happens, will just coincidentally make the green elites even richer. No wonder they're the shadowy forces bankrolling her peregrinations. According to a report...

On Thursday, a group called Moms Clean Air Force hosted a rather unique climate change protest. A group of mothers flew in to Washington, D.C., and rented a space near the U.S. Capitol for a "play-in." They created a "sit-in" style protest that allowed their kids to do what they always do — run around and play — but made it seem like a demonstration. "I'm here at the [Play-In for Climate]! Kids can't stay still long enough for a Sit In, so we are having a Play In! Thank you [Clean Air Moms] for calling for 100% clean energy,"...

Search didn't turn this up. Inventiveness plus boldness equals progress. Liberal “activists” who want to revolutionize the nation’s energy resources demonstrate political moxie, but if their campaign to substitute renewable sources for fossil fuels — oil and gas — succeeds it will take more than happy thoughts to keep the lights on. Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City, pledges to donate $500 million to a campaign to shutter the nation’s remaining coal-fired power plants by 2030. The billionaire told the Class of ‘19 at Massachusetts Institute of Technology the other day that his Bloomberg Philanthropies, in...