Free Republic

Pope Francis: World Nearing ‘Breaking Point’ from Climate ChangeClimate change has brought the world to the “breaking point,” Pope Francis asserted in his introduction to a 3-day climate summit to be held in the Vatican in May.A firm believer in the climate “crisis,” the pontiff wrote that he has “heartfelt concerns” for “our suffering planet,” contending that “the world in which we live is collapsing” because of humanity’s failure to adequately address the crisis.It is “indubitable” that the impact of climate change will increasingly prejudice the lives and families of many persons, he contends, adding that its effects are already...

CNN — The Chevrolet Malibu, the last sedan still sold by General Motors’ biggest selling brand, will end production this year, the company announced. Malibu production will end in November as the factory that builds it, the Fairfax Assembly Plant in Kansas City, Kansas, is reconfigured to build a new generation of the Chevrolet Bolt EV. With the Malibu’s demise, General Motors’ mainstream Chevrolet brand will sell only trucks, SUVs, and the Corvette, a two-seat sports car, in the United States. Chevy’s close competitor, Ford, made a similar move years ago when it stopped selling the Taurus and Fusion sedans,...

Three years after reports of indigenous mass graves triggered the torching or vandalism of 85-plus churches, no graves have been found.Three years ago, a major story broke in Canada that seemed to confirm every left-wing prejudice against Christians imaginable: A mass grave containing the remains of indigenous children was supposedly discovered on the grounds of what had once been a government boarding school run by the Catholic Church.It turns out the whole thing was a hoax, a modern-day blood libel against Christians that ended with at least 85 Catholic churches across Canada destroyed by arson, vandalized, or desecrated. Canadian political...

It looks like the ‘strongest’ legal case against Trump is based on yet another set of lies from corrupt federal agencies.On May 7, Florida Judge Aileen Cannon postponed former President Donald Trump’s classified documents trial after explosive information dropped late Friday afternoon. Several new pieces of evidence indicate it’s even possible federal employees planted classified documents to frame Trump. Even if what happened isn’t that nefarious — although exactly that scenario has already been deployed against Trump several times — not only could the case be thrown out of court, but some federal lawyers may have risked their licenses for...

The world just experienced its hottest April on record, extending an 11-month streak in which every month set a temperature record...[I urge readers to scroll through the Comments. At least 70% are well informed and well written criticism. It feels like the political tide has turned on this hugely expensive and completely bogus crisis.]

Rep. Jamaal Bowman and his campaign were duped by the parody social-media account of the fake “Chief Rabbi of Gaza.” The phony X account of “Rabbi Linda Goldstein” is infamous for spouting anti-Zionist vitriol to ensnare unsuspecting progressives unaware that it is satirical. The rabbi messaged Bowman about sponsoring a fundraiser for his Democratic primary campaign.

Climate hustlers have yet another moneymaking boondoggle lined up. I’ve been hearing a lot of commercials on my favorite local conservative radio station from BP about their Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) projects (CCUS for “underground” storage), so my natural curiosity got aroused and decided to investigate it. The World Economic Forum reports: “While such technologies have been commercially available for decades, only 30 CCUS projects are currently in operation across the globe, according to the Global CCS Institute. Another 11 are in construction and 153 are in development (in 2022 alone, 61 new CCUS projects were initiated).” What is...

A pretty dramatic story out of Baltimore today which reveals what may be the first hate hoax perpetrated with the help of artificial intelligence. The principal of Pikesville High School, Eric Eiswert, was accused in January of making blatantly racist comments behind closed doors after an inflammatory audio file was posted on a popular Instagram account.In the recording, the person speaking refers to “ungrateful Black kids who can’t test their way out of a paper bag.”The speaker goes on to question how hard it is to get those students to meet grade-level expectations. He uses names of people who appear...

Pope Francis: ‘Deniers of climate change’ are ‘foolish’Pope Francis, in a recent CBS interview, labeled skeptics of the climate change narrative as ‘foolish’ for not believing ‘research.’Pope Francis has stated that “deniers of climate change” are “foolish” as they don’t believe “research,” and insisting that “climate change exists.”In comments made to CBS Evening News and aired April 24, the 87-year-old Pontiff decried those whom CBS’s Norah O’Donnell described as “deniers of climate change.” “There are people who are foolish, and foolish even if you show them research, they don’t believe it,” responded Francis. “Why? Because they don’t understand the situation...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is spreading a hoax about a “mass grave” supposedly discovered at a Gaza hospital where Israeli soldiers had recently been fighting terrorists. AOC cited a post on Twitter / X by Nick Kristof, a radical left-wing columnist for the New York Times, who has spread doubts about Hamas’s documented use of hospitals, but treats Hamas claims about Israeli atrocities as proven facts. How are news outlets dedicating wall-to-wall coverage to campus protests, but not the discovery of mass graves in Gaza of people with their hands tied & clothing stripped? Why do we not know more?...

No need to make a stink: Controlling bovine flatulence could be key to helping curb global warming. New research suggests that breeding dairy cows to fart less — and, therefore, release less methane — could cut down on greenhouse gases. The team from Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute in Australia combed through 27 reports, drawing conclusions about various ways to curb methane emissions in the dairy and beef sectors in the country. Food production is one of the leading causes of climate change — livestock farming accounts for about 10% of greenhouse gas emissions — with one 2020 study finding...

Artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency and remote work – all of these buzzy trends depend on processing power delivered by a sprawling worldwide network of data centers. As demand surges for the power-intensive complexes, which typically span 100,000 square feet, the increased energy usage could jeopardize the fight to reduce carbon emissions and address climate change, experts told ABC News. "The growth trend is super-fast," Fengqi You, an energy engineering professor at Cornell University, told ABC News. "This is something I'm concerned about." In 2022, roughly 2,700 data centers in the U.S. accounted for over 4% of the nation's electricity use, according...

In battleground states across the country, environmental activists like Dr. Emily Church are canvassing on behalf of an organization called the Environmental Voter Project in an effort to turn out people who care the most about climate change -- but who haven't shown up for past elections. During a recent effort in Pittsburgh, Church, a biology professor who leads local canvasses for the project, recalled to ABC News how she used to lobby lawmakers directly to take action on climate change, but they told her voters don't care about the issue. She said she's now trying to prove them wrong....

The Scottish government has rescinded its 2030 target of a 75% emissions cut to greenhouse gas emissions, relative to 1990. The target was statutory, meaning it had been set in law in the Emissions Reduction Targets Act of 2019. Scotland is still subject to the 2030 carbon target for the UK as a whole. This was set in law by the UK parliament in 2016. Still, Scotland's move raises questions about the credibility of national (or in this case subnational) carbon targets and the usefulness of putting them into law. Climate policy experts have maintained that a crucial way to...

CNN — In a sweeping win for climate and environmental advocates, the Biden administration on Friday finalized a rule to ban fossil fuel drilling on nearly half of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, alongside other major conservation actions. The Interior Department will block oil drilling on over 13 million acres in the Western Arctic, including about 40% of the land of the NPR-A – a remote area that is home to protected animal species including polar bears and caribou. The reserve is more than 23 million acres of public land and an underground emergency oil supply for the US...

Europe’s plunging electric vehicle sales are painful proof the market isn’t ready to stand on its own, putting governments on notice for more support until affordable EVs become a reality. The glut is clogging up ports and factories are cutting production — a red flag for the region’s climate goals and risk of job cuts after Tesla’s mass layoffs this week. Without subsidies, the cost of EV ownership no longer makes sense for many drivers. Insurance and repairs are more expensive than for combustion-engine cars, and many would-be customers still bristle at limited charging infrastructure. At the same time, rapid...

BISBEE, Ariz. — Boots dusty, lungs heaving, Dr. John Wiens searched the boulders of a desolate Arizona mountaintop for the last survivors of a 3-million-year-old lizard population — then said the words that both confirmed his life's work and broke his heart. "They're not there," he said. "It seems like the species is now extinct." The loss of plant and animal species on Earth is happening at a speed never seen in human history, according to the United Nations. That includes the likely extinction of the lizards Wiens has studied for 10 years — the population of Yarrow's spiny lizards...

Scientists have created an interactive map that shows how parts of Illinois may be swallowed up by Lake Michigan as climate change bites. The Great Lakes in the Midwest comprise the largest unfrozen freshwater stores on Earth, but experts have forecast that rising water levels could have serious consequences. More than 30 million people live along the lakes' roughly 4,500 miles of coastline, which stretches across the U.S. and Canada, and touches upon the cities of Chicago, Detroit and Buffalo, New York. That means millions of families could be hit hard by new, higher water levels, which could potentially wash...

How odd it is that America is wasting billions of dollars hiring DEI czars and electing woke politicians, who so often accuse others of a multitude of sins, largely as a way of enriching themselves. When ideology replaces meritocracy or provides immunity from the consequences of illegal behavior, systemic mediocrity follows. Under toxic National Socialism, Stalinism, and Maoism, millions of cronies and grifters mouthed party lines in hopes that their approved ideology would allow them to advance their careers and excuse their lawbreaking. The same thing has happened with the woke movement and the now-huge Diversity/Equity/Inclusion conglomerate. Grifters and opportunists...

OXFORD, England (AP) — Humanity has only two years left “to save the world” by making dramatic changes in the way it spews heat-trapping emissions and it has even less time to act to get the finances behind such a massive shift, the head of the United Nations climate agency said. With governments of the world facing a 2025 deadline for new and stronger plans to curb carbon pollution, nearly half of the world's populations voting in elections this year, and crucial global finance meetings later this month in Washington, United Nations executive climate secretary Simon Stiell said Wednesday he...