Free Republic

The Open Championship celebrated its 146th edition last summer at Royal Birkdale. The rotation of 10 different courses has been mostly the same for the last few decades, but a recent report noted that the event might not make it 146 more tournaments with the current venues. According to the BBC, which reviewed a report by the Climate Coalition, various courses on the coasts of the UK are in peril because of climate change and a rising North Sea. To its credit, the R&A is taking this future seriously. "It [climate change] is certainly becoming a factor" Steve Isaac, Director...

Imagine a group of activists so powerful that they could beam their propaganda directly into your brain. Now also imagine that they’re so sophisticated, they actually get you to pay them to do it. Unfortunately, you don’t have to imagine it. It’s real. It’s Hollywood. As big as the internet has become, Hollywood—and here, I’m talking specifically about television—is still king. Not only does it reach hundreds of millions of people with its messaging, it embeds that messaging in seemingly innocuous stories—stories that distract us from the hardships of daily life; stories that make us feel good, compassionate, and decent....

CINCINNATI -- In national news, there hasn't been much lately for those concerned about the environment to cheer about. The Trump administration appears determined to roll back regulations on coal-fired power plants, offshore oil drilling and coal mining. Locally, however, the city of Cincinnati and Hamilton County government are treating global warming as a real thing -- a thing they can do something about. With input from Hamilton County government, Cincinnati is updating the Green Cincinnati Plan, a set of recommendations for addressing global climate change and for powering the city with 100 percent renewable energy. The city is paying...

The political fight over global warming has extended to science education in recent years as several states have attempted to weaken or block new teaching standards that included information about climate science. But only in Idaho has the state legislature stripped all mentions of human-caused climate change from statewide science guidelines while leaving the rest of the standards intact. Now teachers, parents and students are pushing back, hoping to convince the Republican-controlled Idaho Legislature to approve revised standards, which science proponents say are watered down but would still represent a victory for climate change education in the state. The Idaho...

Warmer temperatures and declining snow are making it tougher to host the games. It’s no surprise for climate researchers that training for the Winter Olympics, and the games themselves, have run into trouble. For sports contests that rely on snow and ice, a warmer global climate is no friend. The same week in January that Women’s Cup races stalled, the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, released a study concluding that climate change is increasingly threatening the viability of the Winter Olympics, held once every four years. The updated study, which includes contributions from Canadian, Austrian, and Chinese researchers, concludes...

The University of Colorado is teaming up with 12 other North American research universities with a common goal: tackling climate change. The University Climate Change Coalition bands together 13 campuses and university systems from the United States, Canada and Mexico to work with their respective communities conquering climate-related challenges. The coalition plans to spearhead local and national action in areas such as climate modeling, regulation and policy solutions and more, CU said. In 2015, the U.S.-based universities of the coalition accounted for nearly a quarter of environmental research done by all U.S. institutions, according to data collected by the National...

Climate myths are often contradictory – it’s not warming, though it’s warming because of the sun, and really it’s all just an ocean cycle – but they all seem to share one thing in common: logical fallacies and reasoning errors. John Cook, Peter Ellerton, and David Kinkead have just published a paper in Environmental Research Letters in which they examined 42 common climate myths and found that every single one demonstrates fallacious reasoning. Cook has previously published research on using ‘misconception-based learning’ to dislodge climate myths from peoples’ brains and replace them with facts, and beating denial by inoculating people...

The most recent Politifact story “fact-checking” President Trump is a perfect example of why no one should trust this organization — other than liberals looking to buttress their beliefs with partisan hackery. Sorry, it’s just really that bad. This sort of breakdown can be done on fact-check after fact-check after fact-check. The assessment ranges from overtly biased negativity for Republicans and Trump and positivity for Democrats and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. This is measurable below. During the presidential campaign, Politifact rated well-known truth-purveyor Clinton as true or mostly true 51 percent of the time. Trump came in at a...

House Intel's top Democrat: Declassified GOP memo 'is Impeaching the FBI'

Coca-Cola's advertisement for the 2018 Super Bowl again highlights the diversity of both the world and its clientele. The 60-second advertisement, called The Wonder of Us, was shot at various locations in Mexico and features people holding and drinking varieties of Coke including Coke Zero and the stevia-flavored Coke Life. Shown in the advertisement are women, men and a person who uses the 'they' pronoun. A biracial couple, a lesbian couple and a person in a wheelchair also appear in the spot.

SEATTLE – When President Trump was candidate Trump, he called climate change a hoax. Since taking the Oval Office, he’s said very little about greenhouse gasses and their impact on the planet. But he did issue a statement that he plans to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement, which aims to reduce emissions as a way to stop global warming. But West Coast states are driving in the opposite direction, with designs of erecting a green wall built on taxing carbon. “This is both an economic benefit for the state of Washington and a job creator,” said...

Statement by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in response to President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address, which he attended last night: Last night, President Trump painted an everything-being-great picture of America that while optimistic, is not the reality for most working families. That may be how his friends are living, but the working men and women we represent aren’t seeing the same America; and his policies are making it worse. The truth is many of the things he says are undermined by the actual policies he supports. While he’s rightly acknowledged problems in trade, America’s workers are still...

In President Trump’s “State of the Union” (SOTU) address on Tuesday, the president said his “bipartisan approach to immigration reform” will offset an amnesty for potentially millions of illegal aliens by ending chain migration and the Diversity Visa Lottery program. Fact Check: HALF TRUE . . . . . As Breitbart News has reported, Trump’s immigration plan — crafted by a slew of White House advisers — does not immediately end the importation of foreign relatives who are mostly low-skilled. The White House plan, instead, would allow for the entire potentially 4 million chain migrants waiting in the backlog to...

Star Trek: Discovery 1x13 -- Lorca Attempts a Coup Forget redshirts: Captain Lorca might as well be wearing a red hat in this Sunday’s Star Trek: Discovery (CBS All Access, 8:30/7:30c). In the sneak peek posted above, Lorca — who, you’ll remember, is actually the mirror-universe Lorca, and has been concealing his true identity all season long — taunts his rival Emperor Georgiou over the palace ship’s intercom, railing against her lack of leadership: “I’ve watched for years as you’ve let alien races spill over the borders and flourish in our backyard.” Hmmm… sound like any real-life leaders we know? Asking Georgiou’s...

As President Trump announced his 2017 "Fake News Awards," phrases and terms popularized over the years, such as "liberal media"; "mainstream media"; and, more recently, "fake news," were bandied about by those on both the left and the right (especially from that extra-froth frother from the mouth Jim Acosta of CNN). With a new political year underway, my sincere hope is that pundits and Americans retire these labels. The mainstream media? Most major legacy American media, particularly newspapers and cable television news networks, are Pravda-esque publicists and cover-uppers for the Democratic Party. As evidenced by how red the 2016 election...

Can the simple act of eating a sandwich really be bad for the environment? New research by British scientists suggests a shocking response: Depends on the sandwich. Researchers at the University of Manchester Thursday announced the results of what they claim to be "the first ever study looking at the carbon footprint of sandwiches, both home-made and pre-packaged." Perhaps not surprisingly, the results are bad news for meat-eaters. The study found that sandwiches containing pork meat (that's bacon, ham and sausage), cheese and prawns contained the highest carbon footprints. The worst of the lot, the so-called "all-day breakfast" sandwich containing...

Jeff Zucker’s CNN continues to grow stranger by the day and is now being mocked across social media for publishing an article declaring that cuckolding can be positive. The bizarre piece starts off by explaining that “the term ‘cuck’ -- short for ‘cuckservative’ -- has become an insult of the so-called alt-right, aimed at men they view as spineless and emasculated.” Cuckold is defined as “the husband of an adulteress.” However, CNN seemingly doesn’t think cuckolding would be so bad.

Embarrassment for NBC News after Lester Holt apparently falls for North Korean propaganda By Brian Flood NBC News is reeling after “Nightly News” anchor Lester Holt appears to have been badly fooled by North Korean propagandists -- giving a cheery report from a ski resort in the Hermit Kingdom that looked to be bustling when it was widely known to actually be a ghost town. Holt -- who returned early from North Korea after scathing reviews -- reported for “Nightly News” from the Masikryong ski resort on Monday, a facility that is the brainchild of Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un...

The most important news story of the 21st Century is the blatant censorship by the mainstream media news reporters. They pretend to news organizations, but the do not cover stories they don't like. Rush mentioned this today. He said half of the American people don't know about the FBI corruption, since the mainstream media will not cover it. Likewise, half the American people don't know that Hillary destroyed evidence, since the media did not cover it. Half the American people don't know that the IRS was weaponized to go after organisations based on their political beliefs.

"Now that the pro-Europe challenger’s campaign in a second-round runoff against incumbent Milos Zeman, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strongest allies in central Europe, is in full swing, the disinformation gloves have come off once again. Within days of the start of the runoff, which will culminate in balloting on January 26-27, pro-Zeman websites and social media were sending out messages and publishing ads accusing the 68-year-old scientist of seeking to open the country’s borders to immigrants, playing on local fears of a possible influx of Muslim extremists."