Free Republic

Okay; repeat after me: fracking does not pollute your drinking water. As Sean Hackbarth over at the Chamber of Commerce noted, a Yale study found no evidence that fracking, which is used in the process of extracting natural gas, causes drinking water to become undrinkable: Organic compounds found in drinking water aquifers above the Marcellus Shale and other shale plays could reflect natural geologic transport processes or contamination from anthropogenic activities, including enhanced natural gas production. Using analyses of organic compounds coupled with inorganic geochemical fingerprinting, estimates of groundwater residence time, and geospatial analyses of shale gas wells and...

Why did one of the world's top physicists—ever—sign the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation's Open Letter to Pope Francis on Climate Change, which challenges climate alarmism, though he's a liberal, a Democrat, likes President Obama, and has a strong background in climate science? His interview with the UK Register and his foreword to a new study titled Carbon Dioxide: The Good News reveal some of his reasons. Freeman Dyson believes increasing atmospheric CO2 content does more good than harm and that President Obama "chose the wrong side" in the climate debate. He explains that climate change "is not a...

The New York Times (10/6, Chang, Subscription Publication) posts a feature on NASA Planetary Protection Officer Catharine Conley, whose job “is not so much protecting Earth from aliens as protecting other planets from Earth.” Conley is responsible for making sure than NASA missions to Mars and elsewhere do not pollute or contaminate alien worlds.

City-parish president candidates Joel Robideaux and Dee Stanley navigated questions on coal-generated power, the disruption an elevated interstate might cause in Lafayette and whether the city has too many traffic signals — all posed at a Thursday evening forum sponsored by the local chapter of the Sierra Club. In a campaign season where the candidates have often found themselves repeatedly addressing the same issues in the string of debates and forums leading up to the Oct. 24 election, Stanley and Robideaux covered some new ground at the environmental group’s forum at the Lafayette Public Library downtown. Robideaux, a longtime state...

Paris’s “day without cars” last week led to such a dramatic drop in both air and noise pollution that the mayor’s office is now planning more vehicle-free days in the French capital. Airparif, which measures city pollution levels, said levels of nitrogen dioxide dropped by up to 40% in parts of the city on Sunday 27 September... Najdovski, a member of the Europe Ecology-Green (EELV) party, admitted he was disappointed that only one third of Paris was handed over to pedestrians and cyclists on 27 September... added: “My dream Paris would be a city without cars.

The second of two Los Angeles beaches closed after hypodermic needles, condoms and tampon applicators washed ashore has reopened. [Snip] Excessive bacteria levels were also found in the water. Sanitation District spokeswoman Tonya Durrell said crews collected at least 200 pounds of waste from the beaches.

Volkswagen is confronted with a monumental challenge. The company has admitted that 11 million of its cars used illegal software to cheat emissions standards. Now, many owners are demanding that the offending cars be fixed. That's easier said than done, and Volkswagen has already tried — and failed — twice. Here's the issue, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency: Cars with Volkswagen's 2-liter TDI turbo-diesel four-cylinder engines include software that detects when the car is undergoing emissions testing and turns on a suite of pollution-control systems. But as soon as the test ends, the controls switch off, leaving the...

Erin Brockovich is joining Navajo Nation's political battle against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The famed environmental activist will visit Navajo Nation on Sept. 8 to view the affects of a devastating EPA mining leak and could potentially testify on Capitol Hill later this month.

Some irresponsible employees of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency may have given Donald Trump an issue that could put him in the White House. Even those of us who didn’t regularly watch Trump’s television show “The Apprentice” know his signature phrase is “You’re fired”.

The “unfortunate accident” that the EPA had near Silverton, Colorado recently has raised all sorts of questions, not the least of which is why it took the agency 24 hours to tell anyone about it. (The folks who draw water off the river are particularly interested in that one.) But hey… accidents happen, right? I mean, it’s not like anyone could have seen it coming. Except that the EPA actually did see it coming. During a late Friday night document dump the Environmental Protection Agency lifted the mask just a bit and revealed that they knew what they were...

Pope Francis & Barack Obama: The world-dominating current global warming/climate change movement is way off base: It is not man-made global warming from CO2 that is the problem, it’s man-made pollution which the global warming gang all but patently ignore. It’s not exaggerated beyond belief man-made global warming that should have Al Gore acolytes sending out sky-is-falling alarmism, but ongoing and unattended to man-made pollution putting human lives at risk. But of course, it’s easier to cash in on global warming as a catch all for all issues the Al Gores count on for election and re-election survival than it...

Progress slashing unhealthy ozone in the western United States has largely been undone by pollution wafting across the Pacific from China, according to a study published Monday. Scientists have long suspected this might explain why ozone levels along the U.S. west coast remained constant despite a significant local reduction in ozone-forming chemicals. The study, published in Nature Geoscience, is the first to make the case using satellite observations coupled with computer models of how air-borne molecules travel in the lower atmosphere, the authors said. “The dominant westerly winds blew this air pollution straight across to the United States,” explained lead...

BEIJING — Air pollution is killing an average of 4,000 people a day in China, according to researchers who cited coal-burning as probably being the main cause. Deaths related to the main pollutant, tiny particles known as PM2.5 that can trigger heart attacks, strokes, lung cancer and asthma, total 1.6 million a year, or 17 per cent of China’s mortality level, according to the study by Berkeley Earth, an independent research group funded largely by educational grants. It was published on Thursday in the online peer-reviewed journal PLOS One from the Public Library of Science. “When I was last in...

A week before The EPA disastrously leaked millions of gallons of toxic waste into The Animas River in Colorado, this letter to the editor was published in The Silverton Standard & The Miner local newspaper, authored by a retired geologist detailing verbatim, how EPA would foul the Animas River on purpose in order to secure superfund money...

The so-called Environmental Protection Agency will face no fines over some of its regulators accidentally dumping a million gallons of mining waste containing heavy metals, as orange as Donald Trump, into the Animas River in Colorado (and points beyond), potentially poisoning fish and livestock alike. Needless to say, when some organization that isn’t government causes a disaster like this, there’s outrage and there are calls for harsh punishments, even demands that we fundamentally alter our relationship to the earth and renounce greed, devise a whole new economic system run by Al Gore or someone, that sort of thing. In this...

In a scathing rebuke of the importance of U.S. manufacturing in The New Yorker ("What's So Great About Manufacturing?") James Ledbetter attempted to dismantle the benefits of manufacturing in our transformational age. Ledbetter, who is editor of Inc. Magazine and this website, is wrong. Here are 8 reasons U.S. manufacturing is great for America and critically important to focus policy solutions to help this job machine thrive. 1. Manufacturing creates strong middle-class jobs. 2. Manufacturing jobs create dignity. 3. Manufacturing creates wealth for a nation. 4. Manufacturing is critical during wars. 5. Factories are safer than ever before. 6. U.S....

WASHINGTON (AP) — Heat-trapping pollution from U.S. power plants hit a 27-year low in April, the Department of Energy announced Wednesday. A big factor was the long-term shift from coal to cleaner and cheaper natural gas, said Energy Department economist Allen McFarland. Outside experts also credit more renewable fuel use and energy efficiency. Carbon dioxide — from the burning of coal, oil and gas — is the chief greenhouse gas responsible for man-made global warming. "While good news for the environment, we certainly would not want to assume that this trend will continue and that we can simply relax," said...

It turns out that because of the emissions of extraordinarily potent greenhouse gases NF3 and SF6 and energy during the manufacture of solar modules, solar energy ends up being worse for the climate than burning coal (assuming the global warming hypothesis is valid). A Swiss engineer has made a thorough analysis of the greenhouse gas emissions caused by the manufacture, transport and operation of solar panels. His conclusion: Ferrucio Ferroni writes here how China is the number 1 manufacturer of solar panels globally and that the production of solar panels there requires immense amounts of electricity, which in China is...

You may have a "green" car, but it could be causing black rain in China from the graphite mined and used in its lithium ion battery. Two academics at Toronto's York University, Carla Lipsig-Mumme and Caleb Goods, applaud many of the new advances in green technology in recent years, but at the same time warn that those very technologies may come with a host of environmental issues. The pair issue a caution about “superindustrialization” in which the answer to climate change is a matter of “technological adjustment.” In an article recently published in The Conversation and picked up by the...

The American tradition of celebrating Independence Day with fireworks and barbeques may be living on borrowed time. The Environmental Protection Agency is working on new regulations that could put a serious dent in the festivities. Strict new standards for ozone could bar most fireworks displays and some backyard BBQs. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy derided the idea that traditional modes of celebrating July 4th merited any special consideration. "Clean air is too important to play second-fiddle to abuses that result in needless pollution," McCarthy contended. "Given our modern technology there are surely more environmentally-friendly ways of celebrating this annual event." The...