Free Republic

The collapse of the ethanol boom continues as a Pratt-based ethanol producer is the latest to file bankruptcy. Gateway Ethanol LLC has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, estimating it owes between $50 million and $100 million. The filing comes weeks after Minneapolis-based Dougherty Funding LLC sought to have Gateway placed in emergency receivership to preserve any money being returned to creditors. It moved to foreclose on the company’s plant in May, saying Gateway defaulted on a $54.3 million loan used to build the facility. In a motion field in the U.S. District Court of Kansas in September, Dougherty noted...

“Kill your air conditioner,” wrote Joe Klein in Time Magazine. “The unnecessary refrigeration of America has become a chronic disease.” What? I’m tempted to laugh at the lunacy. It’s as silly as banning the light bulb in an attempt to save the planet. Who could be that stupid? Well, in a few years incandescent light bulbs will be illegal. We’ll be forced to buy compact fluorescents, which require Hazmat disposal teams when broken. In today’s green environment, nothing is too insane. Frighteningly, our industry is increasingly considered politically incorrect. A decade ago, the New York Times reported that an Italian...

Al Gore called Wednesday for "civil disobedience" to combat the construction of coal power plants without the ability to store carbon, Reuters reported. The former vice president, whose efforts to raise awareness of global warming have made him the most prominent voice on that issue, made the comment during a session at the fourth annual Clinton Global Initiative in Manhattan.

Pamela Anderson must be floating on air right about now. As of this week, anti-meat activists have a new standard-bearer: United Nations chief climate expert and staunch vegetarian Rajendra Pachauri. On Monday, Pachauri basically put the UN seal on environmental vegetarianism when he recommended that everyone on Planet Earth begin cutting meat out of their diets to combat climate change. And vegan advocates can hardly contain their excitement. But PETA and company had better savor the flavor, because Pachauri’s rationale has already come under fire. And vegetarian groups are having a pretty tough time coming up with answers to some...

THE GLOBAL WARMING MONEY PIT The charade that is global warming continues to rear its ugly face. That greatest boon to pseudo-scientists such as Al Gore is getting a new lie on life with vicious Hurricanes Ike, Hanna, and Gustav lately, not for any other reason than that they happened, as they always do. After all, isn’t that why we have a “hurricane season,” simply because there is a season for all things and not because they’re some freaks of nature caused by human industry? Nevermind that 2006 and 2007 were virtually hurricane free. And nevermind that the nameless hurricane...

Is Al Gore nuts? I’m serious. Is it possible that the disappointment of losing the presidential campaign eight years ago destabilized him? If you think about it, since then, he’s been a changed man. First he got fat. He went through a dramatic physical change. He put on a significant amount of weight and grew a beard and got reclusive. Then he lost the weight and found a cause. Manmade global warming. It absolutely became his theme in life. After being largely silent on the issue during eight years as the vice president and a good run in the Senate,...

A whole new industry is springing up that will dwarf Al Gore's ripping off of the population through Global Warming. Companies are figuring out how to work the ridiculous "Carbon Credits" debacle to make big bucks. Rhodia, is a French Company, makes adipic acid which is a chemical used in the production of nylon. They have moved their operation to South Korea and Brazil. Why? A by-product of their manufacturing process is the creation of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that is over 300 times more potent as an atmospheric warming agent than carbon dioxide. Rhodia destroys the nitrous oxide...

Due to pending disasters predicted because of global warming, government scientists are urging the creation of a new Earth Systems Science Agency -- by merging the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Geological Survey... 'The United States faces unprecedented environmental and economic challenges in the decades ahead,' the group warns. 'Foremost among them will be climate change, sea-level rise, altered weather patterns, declines in freshwater availability and quality and loss of biodiversity'... Developing...

Pictured: The floating cities that could one day house climate change refugees An architect has come up with an innovative answer to rising sea levels - a city that floats around the world. The self-contained 'Lilypad' city will be home to around 50,000 'climate refugees' from the worst hit areas - including London. {snip} The 'Lilypad' cities would be powered by renewable energy sources {snip} But now a visionary architect has found a solution which will see people in the affected cities making a new home for themselves on the futuristic-looking Lilypad. {snip} As land-based cities flood, the Lilypad will...

Evidence of serious flaws in the multi-billion dollar global market for carbon credits has been uncovered by a BBC World Service investigation. The credits are generated by a United Nations-run scheme called the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The mechanism gives firms in developing countries financial incentives to cut greenhouse gas emissions. But in some cases, carbon credits are paid to projects that would have been realised without external funding. The findings reinforce doubts that the CDM is leading to real emission cuts, which is not good news for the effort to combat climate change. And in one case a company...

It's a staple of the glossy magazine: the eye-catching spread selling the latest Chelsea tractor or high-performance German road machine. But the luxury car advert looks likely to become much less attractive under green advertising rules being drafted by the EU. As a packet of cigarettes carries a mandatory health warning, a Mercedes C-class advert may be forced to carry a climate hazard alert within months. Manufacturers would be forced to stop supplying pollution information in barely readable small print at the bottom of ads. The European commission is believed to be considering a "traffic lights" system whereby red dots...

Take a look at this web page. Find out when you should DIE: http://www.abc.net.au/science/planetslayer/greenhouse_calc.htm Propaganda to brain wash Australian children. A questionnaire to calculate your carbon footprint and predict how long you will/should live on the planet.

Anyone who doubts that liberalism is a death cult needs to check out the taxpayer-funded Australia Broadcasting Corporation's kiddy-oriented Greenhouse Calculator, which helps little kids calculate how soon they should die so as to stop being a burden on the planet.

Iadmit it: I'm no environmentalist. But I like to think I'm something of a conservationist. No doubt for millions of Americans this is a distinction without a difference, as the two words are usually used interchangeably. But they're different things, and the country would be better off if we sharpened the distinctions between both word and concept. At its core, environmentalism is a kind of nature worship. It's a holistic ideology, shot through with religious sentiment. "If you look carefully," author Michael Crichton famously observed, "you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian...

"May we live long and die out" is the unofficial motto of a new movement that seeks to improve the Earth's ecosystem by ensuring that the human species does not survive. The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, or VHEMT, consists of volunteers who have made active life decisions to remain childless for the benefit of the Earth, thereby preventing the extinction of millions of species of plants and animals. While no one person takes credit for being the founder, Les U. Knight created its name and is the spokesperson for the movement. "We've already exceeded Earth's carrying capacity for humans by...

Decades after most countries stopped spraying DDT, frozen stores of the insecticide are now trickling out of melting Antarctic glaciers. The change means Adélie penguins have recently been exposed to the chemical, according to a new study. The trace levels found will not harm the birds, but the presence of the chemical could be an indication that other frozen pollutants will be released because of climate change, says Heidi Geisz, a marine biologist at Virginia Institute of Marine Science in Gloucester in the US. She led a team that sampled DDT levels in the penguins. She worries that glaciers could...

You knew this was coming. Global Warming is to blame for everything these days, including Global Cooling. From The Guardian: Two deaths in the waters off California and Mexico last week and a spate of shark-inflicted injuries to surfers off Florida’s Atlantic coast have left beachgoers seeking an explanation for a sudden surge in the number of strikes. In the first four months of this year, there were four fatal shark attacks worldwide, compared with one in the whole of 2007, according to the International Shark Attack File at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville. Of course, these...

Emily Derke looked surprised when she was asked why she was attending church on Earth Day. In her mind, the question was not "why" but "why not?" "I see Earth Day as a spiritual thing," said Derke, who drove from her home in Coon Rapids to St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral in downtown Minneapolis for an interfaith celebration. "God made the Earth, and now it's up to us to protect it. Everybody here [at the service] is here for the same purpose. It's all about the Earth." Indeed, the faith community has become one of the major players in environmental issues....

Farewell the age of reason, welcome the idiocracy. Only George Orwell could have invented - and named - the government's Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) that came into operation yesterday. It is the latest in a long line of measures intended to ease the conscience of the rich while keeping the poor miserable, in this case spectacularly so. The consequences of the RTFO have been much trumpeted on these pages. It says enough that one car tank of bio petrol needs as much grain as it takes to feed an African for a year, or that a reported one-third of...

When it comes to all things "green", common sense seems to have been abandoned. Our failure to think clearly about such matters would be amusing if the potential consequences were not so serious. Consider the recent "lights out" campaign that supposedly should energise the world about the problems of climate change by urging citizens in 27 big cities to turn out their lights for an hour... -Nobody, it seemed, wanted to spoil the party by pointing that the event was immensely futile, that it highlighted a horrible metaphor, or that it caused much higher overall pollution. -Ironically, the lights-out campaign...

To fight global warming, a bill in Sacramento would enable Los Angeles County transit officials to increase taxes on motorists. It's a bad idea that may foreshadow even worse to come. Billed as a "climate change mitigation and adaptation fee," the measure would cost motorists either an additional 3 percent motor fuel tax, or up to a $90 annual flat fee, based on vehicle emissions. The new charges would be on top of taxes already paid at the pump. Either option requires a majority approval by a vote of the people. Climate has changed as long as the Earth has...

Talk about a civics lesson: A high-school senior has raised questions about political bias in a popular textbook on U.S. government, and legal scholars and top scientists say the teen's criticism is well-founded. They say "American Government" by conservatives James Wilson and John Dilulio presents a skewed view of topics from global warming to separation of church and state. The publisher now says it will review the book, as will the College Board, which oversees college-level Advanced Placement courses used in high schools. Student Matthew LaClair of Kearny, N.J., recently brought his concerns to the attention of the Center for...

Yesterday, Post readers were moved by the image of our Prime Minister, in Poland on April 5, kneeling at the Death Wall of Auschwitz, the worst of the Holocaust extermination camps. In the museum guest book he wrote, "Lord, bless the souls of those who suffered and perished here, and deliver us from evil." Prime Minister Stephen Harper pays tribute to Holocaust victim at Auschwitz.Peter Andrews/Reuters. Stephen Harper's prayerful posture and traditional words of commemoration for the lost souls of a barbaric era reveal a sensibility noticeably out of sync with the religion of environmentalism that presently dominates our culture....

COLLEGE STATION – The more you know the less you care – at least that seems to be the case with global warming. A telephone survey of 1,093 Americans by two Texas A&M University political scientists and a former colleague indicates that trend, as explained in their recent article in the peer-reviewed journal Risk Analysis. “More informed respondents both feel less personally responsible for global warming, and also show less concern for global warming,” states the article, titled “Personal Efficacy, the Information Environment, and Attitudes toward Global Warming and Climate Change in the USA.” The study showed high levels of...

Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them. "I suspect that we'll able to put this together with a little bit more perspective and further analysis," Trenberth says. "But what this does is highlight some of the issues and send people back to the drawing board." Trenberth and Willis agree...

Drinking bottled water should be made as unfashionable as smoking, according to a government adviser. "We have to make people think that it's unfashionable just as we have with smoking. We need a similar campaign to convince people that this is wrong," said Tim Lang, the Government's naural resources commissioner. Phil Woolas, the environment minister, added that the amount of money spent on mineral water "borders on being morally unacceptable". Their comments come as new research shows that drinking a bottle of water has the same impact on the environment as driving a car for a kilometre. Conservation groups and...

As Hong Kong shivers through its second-longest cold spell since 1885, scientists point to global warming to explain the abnormal cold weather phenomenon worldwide. "We are seeing extremely unusual weather across the world," said polar researcher Rebecca Lee Lok-sze.

Among the collections of classes I am tasked with is one called “Advisement”, which is a character ed/decision making class. The theme of the class is (I came up with this) “Enabling students to make good decisions”. Anyway - one of the tools I use is debate. While the students in my section of this class are 7th graders, they are rather bright. The subject of global warming came up in a question about their concerns. So last week, for an exercise in thinking and researching before coming to conclusions, we researched, planned, and conducted a debate (was Friday). I...

It may sound like science fiction, but it’s only a matter of time before the world’s militaries learn to wield the planet itself as a weapon. Preventing global warming from becoming a planetary catastrophe may take something even more drastic than renewable energy, superefficient urban design, and global carbon taxes. Such innovations remain critical, and yet disruptions to the Earth’s climate could overwhelm these relatively slow, incremental changes in how we live. As reports of faster-than-expected climate changes mount, a growing number of experts worry that we might ultimately be forced to try something quite radical: geoengineering. Geoengineering involves humans...

British people are now convinced about the dangers of global warming but are either baffled about how to stop it or are ignoring the issue. Analysts say few people are taking action to deal with the threat of climate change, although over the past 12 months the vast majority have come to accept that it poses a real threat to the world. Opinion polls reveal much confusion among the public about what Britain should do to combat the problem. A backlash is now a real threat, said Phil Downing, head of environmental research for Ipsos Mori. 'There's cynicism because on...

You don't have to be religious to qualify as a fundamentalist. You can be Al Gore, the messiah figure for the global warming cult, whose followers truly believe their gospel of imminent extermination in a Noah-like flood, if we don't immediately change our carbon polluting ways. One of the traits of a cult is its refusal to consider any evidence that might disprove the faith. And so it is doubtful the global warming cultists will be moved by 400 scientists, many of whom, according to the Washington Times, "are current or former members of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate...

Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate-change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology. The leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics suggested that fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering. The German-born Pontiff said that while some concerns may be valid it was vital that the international community based its policies on science rather than the dogma of the environmentalist movement. His remarks will be made in...

DETROIT — When General Motors Corp. pulls the cover off a new supercharged version of the Corvette at the Detroit auto show next month, it will unveil a performance car designed to rival or better even the fastest, most expensive exotic cars from Europe. But the Corvette's chief engineer says the 2009 Corvette ZR1 may be the last in a long tradition of Detroit performance cars, endangered by stronger federal fuel economy regulations and limits on carbon dioxide emissions.

In addition to raising auto fuel efficiency standards 40 percent, an energy bill passed by Congress yesterday bans the incandescent light bulb by 2014. President Bush signed the 822-page measure into law today after it was sent up Pennsylvania Avenue in a Toyota Prius hybrid vehicle. The House passed the bill by a 314-100 vote after approval by the Senate last week.

He is known as the "hard man" of climate-change negotiation. But after 12 exhausting days of trying to reach a worldwide agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it was suddenly all too much for Yvo de Boer. As the 200-nation Bali conference wrangled over a minor procedural matter, the Dutch diplomat in charge of the talks burst into tears and had to be led away by colleagues. Moments earlier, Mr de Boer had been warning delegates that failure to reach an agreement on global warming could "plunge the world into conflict". Officials from China, which feels Western countries should do...

Forget about having your own printer, coffee pot or a mini-refrigerator in your office. Heck, you can forget about having your own office, too, because you’ll probably get assigned a modular desk in a big, open space. That’s what it’s like to work in a green data center. IT workers are finding that they have to make sacrifices for the greater good of cutting back on energy usage in these facilities. Read the latest WhitePaper - Challenges and Solutions for Centralized Remote Office Management Operators of the nation’s greenest data centers say it takes time for employees to get used...

BALI, Indonesia - World powers meeting at a UN climate change conference in Indonesia this week won't be able to craft a meaningful plan to address global warming without co-operation from the United States, the top emitter of greenhouse gases, the UN's climate chief said Sunday. The United States refused to sign the last major international treaty on reducing greenhouse gases, undermining its effectiveness. Delegates from 190 countries will gather on the resort island of Bali on Monday for one of the largest global warming conferences ever, bringing together about 10,000 people including Hollywood luminaries, former vice-president Al Gore, fishermen...

To stop climate change, the nation must "stop coal," a top environmental architect urged during a speech at Ramapo College's conference on climate change. Edward Mazria, who has led efforts nationwide to build more-energy-efficient buildings, said the only way to control global warming is "an immediate moratorium on all new coal-fired power plants in the United States" and a phaseout of older coal plants. "Climate change is the greatest challenge we have ever faced," he told an audience of more than 400 at the conference. "Either we get it under control or we face very dramatic consequences." Mazria is the...

DETROIT (AP) — The Detroit Lions say they'll take on the Green Bay Packers without warming the globe, buying a stake in a replanted rain forest in Ecuador to offset the up to 933 tons of carbon dioxide the Thanksgiving Day game is expected to generate. The Lions will follow the standards for greenhouse gas offsets laid down by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, according to the environmental engineering company handling Thursday's "green game" at Ford Field. It may seem odd to plant trees in South America because of U.S. football fans' tailpipe emissions, but there is strong logic to it,...

Had Toni Vernelli gone ahead with her pregnancy ten years ago, she would know at first hand what it is like to cradle her own baby, to have a pair of innocent eyes gazing up at her with unconditional love, to feel a little hand slipping into hers - and a voice calling her Mummy. But the very thought makes her shudder with horror. Because when Toni terminated her pregnancy, she did so in the firm belief she was helping to save the planet. Incredibly, so determined was she that the terrible "mistake" of pregnancy should never happen again, that...

New satellite imaging has revealed that hurricanes Katrina and Rita produced the largest single forestry disaster on record in America - an essentially unreported ecological catastrophe that killed or severely damaged some 320 million trees in Mississippi and Louisiana. The die-off, caused initially by wind and later by the pooling of stagnant water, was so massive that researchers say it will add significantly to the greenhouse gas buildup - ultimately putting as much carbon from dying vegetation into the air as the rest of the American forest takes out in a year of photosynthesis. In addition, the downing of so...

WASHINGTON - Just days after the Nobel prize was awarded for global warming work, an alarming new study finds that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing faster than expected. Carbon dioxide emissions were 35 percent higher in 2006 than in 1990, a much faster growth rate than anticipated, researchers led by Josep G. Canadell, of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Increased industrial use of fossil fuels coupled with a decline in the gas absorbed by the oceans and land were listed as causes of the...

EAST MONTPELIER, Vt. — Every fall, Marilyn Krom tries to make a trip to Vermont to see its famously beautiful fall foliage. This year, she noticed something different about the autumn leaves. "They're duller, not as sparkly, if you know what I mean," Krom, 62, a registered nurse from Eastford, Conn., said during a recent visit. "They're less vivid." Other "leaf peepers" are noticing, too, and some believe climate change could be the reason.

Carbon health warnings for all new cars Ben Webster, Transport Correspondent All advertising for new cars will have to carry cigarette-style “health warnings” about their environmental impact, under a European plan to force manufacturers to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Companies that produce the most polluting cars will also have to pay penalties of up to £5,000 per vehicle, with the proceeds used to reduce the cost of the most efficient cars.Advertisements in newspapers and magazines, will have to devote at least 20 per cent of the space to details about fuel economy and CO2 emissions. At the moment manufacturers have...

A Different Dialogue for 'Values Voters' (by Jim Wallis) I'm preparing for a dialogue with Richard Land at the FRC Action's Values Voter Summit tomorrow. This has caused me to reflect on how the definition of "moral values" has changed. Evangelical activism to protect God's creation is now publicly visible in a new way, including Christian concern over global warming. A host of other issues are now part of a broadened and deepened evangelical agenda—most connected to poverty, human rights, and social justice. Even American military and foreign policy has begun to come under critique by Christian scholars (including evangelicals),...

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama said Sunday that his religious beliefs influence his plans for how to protect the environment. Speaking before religious leaders and others at what he called an "interfaith forum on climate change," the Illinois senator said God has entrusted humans with the responsibility of caring for the earth, and "we are not acting as good stewards of God's earth when our bottom line puts the size of our profits before the future of our planet." "It is our responsibility to ensure that this planet remains clean and safe and livable for...

Al Gore Called Away Unexpectedly for 'Exciting and Urgent Mission' Thursday , October 11, 2007 A simple phone call by Al Gore to Sen. Barbara Boxer's office has touched off widespread speculation that the former vice president is getting ready to make an even bigger splash — perhaps as a Nobel Peace Prize winner. The politician-turned-environmental-crusader contacted the California Democrat to beg out of a Thursday fundraising event for her, where he was to headline alongside musicians Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne, the political blog SFGate.com reported. Click here to read the SFGate.com blog. In a note sent to event...

(LONDON) - Eating less meat could help slow global warming by reducing the number of livestock and thereby decreasing the amount of methane flatulence from the animals, scientists said on Thursday. In a special energy and health series of the medical journal The Lancet, experts said people should eat fewer steaks and hamburgers. Reducing global red meat consumption by 10 percent, they said, would cut the gases emitted by cows, sheep and goats that contribute to global warming. "We are at a significant tipping point," said Geri Brewster, a nutritionist at Northern Westchester Hospital in New York, who was not...

For all the money spent, nobody can say if the offsets have done much to alleviate global warming.... Without government regulation and mandatory caps on emissions, all that is left to drive offset sales is guilt and marketing. Offset companies charge what the market will bear. "How much are you willing to spend to feel good or to impress your neighbors?" asked Marland, of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. For Katy Hansen, a 29-year-old law school student, the answer was $429.99. She wanted to offset the travel of the guests to her May wedding in Madison, Wis., and paid San Francisco-based...