Free Republic

Abundant, reliable, affordable oil and natural gas empower people. They support job creation, mobility, modern agriculture, homes and hospitals, computers and communications, lights and refrigerators, life and study after sundown, indoor plumbing, safe drinking water, less disease and longer lives. Hydrocarbons make plastics, pharmaceuticals and synthetic clothing. They create fertilizers and pesticides, to improve crop yields, reduce food prices and improve nutrition. But Sierra Club, 350.org and other radicals want to keep America’s oil and natural gas bounties in the ground. They block leasing, drilling and fracking. They block pipelines that transport oil and gas to refineries, power plants, factories...

Epic Fail: ‘Climate Change Voters’ Attempt To Protest Scott Walker NH Cruise With ‘Floating Iceberg,’ People Dressed As Moose Before Walker went on a fundraising cruise on Lake Winnipesaukee, Americans United For Change (AUFC)—a liberal organization—announced it would be organizing a counter-protest to Walker’s cruise. A couple things made this different than any normal protest, however. First off, the people “protesting” Walker on global warming—who they called “climate change voters”—would be dressed as moose. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, they’d be on a “floating iceberg” behind Walker.................................. ...........In fact, the protest was so successful that Sirius XM’s The David Webb...

“Green” started as the stand against pollution. To the “greenies,” that pollution seldom seemed small enough, especially when the pollutants were made by evil humans rather than by nature itself. Green is no more good for saving the environment than it is for protecting the people. Green wears the badge of hypocrisy. Being green requires minimizing pollutants in products, places, people, and the environment. But it depends on what is a pollutant and how little of it is little enough. The EPA, for example, has declared CO2 a pollutant, the invisible, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic substance that sustains all life on...

Imagine, for just a moment, the following scenario: The year is 2019 — two years into the first term of President Scott Walker. The Royal Dutch Shell corporation proposes a massive expansion of its existing drilling operation in the Arctic Ocean. Shell officials note that there have been no major accidents since their first exploratory wells became operational, and that doing so will provide a big boost to an American economy sliding into recession. President Walker, whose base is furious that he has only eliminated half of all federal food stamp and welfare programs, jumps into action. He orders Interior...

The green energy movement in America is dead. May it rest in peace. No, a majority of American energy over the next 20 years is not going to come from windmills and solar panels. One important lesson to be learned from the green energy fad’s rapid and expensive demise is that central planning doesn’t work. What crushed green energy was the boom in shale oil and gas along with the steep decline in the price of fossil fuel that few saw coming just a few years ago. An International Energy Agency report concedes that green energy is in fast retreat...

“Todd Myers is an eco-mythbuster. He exposes trends among modern environmentalists that are based more on ‘feel-good’ sentimentality than on scientific reality. If you truly care about the environment, then you should read this book.” Alex B. Berezow, Ph.D., Editor of RealClearScience.com Wherever we turn, politicians, businesses and activists are promoting the latest fashionable “green” policy or product. Green buildings, biofuels, electric cars, compact fluorescent lightbulbs and a variety of other technologies are touted as the next key step in protecting the environment and promoting a sustainable future. Increasingly, however, scientific and economic information regarding environmental problems takes a back...

The GOP’s destructive Vietnam mythology: How the right’s self-glorifying delusions led to decades of avoidable war It only took about five years from the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, for the American right to succeed in burying the moment under mounds of revisionist horse shit. Ronald Reagan, speaking at a campaign appearance in the summer of 1980, said, It is time that we recognized that [the American War in Vietnam] was, in truth, a noble cause… We dishonor the memory of 50 thousand young Americans who died in that cause when we give way to feelings of guilt...

For the 45th annual Earth Day on Wednesday, President Obama will elevate global warming to the top of the list of environmental threats currently facing Americans, in a speech at the Everglades National Park. The trip, his first to the fragile but vital "river of grass" that, following decades of human interference now occupies a fraction of its former sprawling range in southern Florida, also comes with a heavy dose of politics. Winning the state will be key for any presidential candidate in the 2016 race, and two leading contenders for the Republican nomination, former governor Jeb Bush Senator Marco...

Lexus liberals ignore how their climate change agenda hurts the less fortunateBarack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren and the whole gang of Democratic leaders claim that one of their highest priorities is to lift up the middle class and reduce the income gap between rich and poor.That goal collides with what they admit is their very highest priority: stopping climate change. Their agenda is driven by the millionaire and billionaire Democratic donors who make the party possible. But the agenda also involves making energy, home heating, transportation and just about everything else less efficient and more expensive to the middle...

Jake Pultorak chuckles at the mention of “range anxiety,” the fear among some electric vehicle owners that their car's battery will run out of juice before the driver can find a charger. “I had that as a gas-car driver, but the anxiety was over how much I had to pay to get where I was going,” said Pultorak, 44, of Franklin Park, who has owned an all-electric Tesla Model S for about two years. Worries at the gas pumps have diminished over the past nine months as the global crash in oil prices brought the cost of gasoline to its...

Popular astrophysicist and anointed spokesperson for science Neil deGrasse Tyson is not impressed by the recent antics of Republican leaders, from Sen. Ted Cruz’s directive that NASA stop focusing on Earth to Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s reported ban on the term “climate change.” “I don’t know if our country has any precedent for emergent scientific truths to be debated on political grounds,” he said during a live appearance in Sarasota, Florida, referring to the aforementioned censorship. “I’m astonished by that. Astonished and disappointed. I thought as a nation we were above this.” Tyson, who is the director of the Hayden...

Scott Walker is killing it with Republicans. The Wisconsin governor is one of his party's rising stars—thanks to his ongoing and largely successful war against his state's labor unions, a fight that culminated Monday with the signing of a controversial "right-to-work" bill. Now (for the moment, anyway), he's a leading contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. At the Conservative Political Action Conference a couple weeks ago, he polled a close second to three-time winner Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), beating the likes of Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush by a significant margin. It probably won't...

Live in California and looking for more money in your wallet upon purchasing a green vehicle? The state’s legislature just might make that wish come true. The Los Angeles Times reports a bill sponsored by Assemblyman Phil Ting of San Francisco would reduce the sales tax on so-called clean vehicles from 7.5 percent to 3.06 percent. The reduction would be applied to EVs, PHEVs, FCVs and CNG-powered models. Should the legislation become law, over $92 million in tax revenue would disappear between 2016 and 2020, when the law rides off into the sunset; the figure is based on 60,000 PHEVs...

Swiss voters Sunday overwhelmingly rejected an initiative that would have scrapped the Alpine country’s value-added-tax system and replaced it with a carbon tax. Roughly 92% of voters opposed the initiative while 8% supported the measure. The initiative would have encouraged Swiss households to use renewable energy sources, including solar and wind, which would have been exempt from taxes. The initiative, which was introduced by the Green Liberal Party of Switzerland, was designed to help lower carbon emissions and reduce global warming. A proposal replacing the main consumer tax with a new levy on non-renewable energy has suffered a blistering defeat...

Des Moines—Only weeks after taking this key state in the presidential race by surprise, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker returns to Iowa Saturday to defend his front-runner status at a major Republican event focused on 2016 and agricutural issues.The GOP governor and a line-up of other major White House contenders—including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush—will take the stage at the Iowa Ag Summit on Saturday at the state fairgrounds here.A key point to watch will be whether Walker, an early favorite among conservatives for 2016, will stick to his past opposition to government intervention to aid the ethanol industry or moderate...

......UW officials say that Walker's proposal to end funding for the bioenergy program would cripple broader energy-development research that is receiving $25million annually from the federal Department of Energy."I can't honestly say how we would replace it at this point,"said Michael Corradini,director of the Wisconsin Energy Institute at UW-Madison,which derives 90% of its funding from the bioenergy program...In 2007,Wisconsin landed the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center—the first federal research center the state had attracted in decades. The center received an initial five-year,$125 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.It was part of a $375 million package by the administration...

Roger Pielke, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, and six others are under investigation by Congress regarding testimony they've given on the subject of climate change.Pielke, a believer in man-caused global warming, can't quite figure out why he's the object of a witch hunt....................... What am I accused of that prompts being investigated? Here is my crime: Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr., at CU’s Center for Science and Technology Policy Research has testified numerous times before the U.S. Congress on climate change and its economic impacts. His 2013 Senate testimony featured the claim, often repeated, that it...

Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber is expected to resign Friday, perhaps in the early afternoon, multiple sources told KOIN 6 News. The decision came after intense debate among the governor and those close to him. These sources say Kitzhaber has wanted to pursue that course since the weekend but had been dissuaded by his fiancée, Cylvia Hayes, and his legal team.

"This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history. This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for the, at least, 150 years, since the industrial revolution." Those were the words spoken on Feb. 4 by Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), under the auspices...