Free Republic

On the evening of 23 March, 1983, Ronald Reagan delivered a televised address about defence and national security. "Let me share with you a vision of the future," the president began in what was a last-minute addition to the half-hour speech. In Reagan's vision, we would "embark on a program to counter the awesome Soviet missile threat with measures that are defensive." It was the first mention of Reagan's Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI), the plan to change America's nuclear posture from offensive to defensive. His goal was to render the Soviet nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete." Reagan's admirers praised SDI...

In the Wayne-Westland Community Schools, high school math teachers are the lowest paid as a group and make on average almost $25,000 less a year than the physical education teachers. The high school science teachers make $11,000 less than the district’s gym teachers on average. The salaries are set by a six-year teacher’s contract Wayne-Westland agreed to in 2008 and runs through 2014. The salary schedule determines pay solely by years of experience and education background. On average, physical education teachers were the highest paid group and made $78,675 a year. Teacher gross salaries can also include pay for extracurricular...

Ayn Rand was no fan of C.S. Lewis. She called the famous apologist an “abysmal bastard,” a “monstrosity,” a “cheap, awful, miserable, touchy, social-meta­physical mediocrity,” a “pickpocket of concepts,” and a “God-damn, beaten mystic.” (I suspect Lewis would have particularly relished the last of these.) These insults and more can be found in her marginal notes on a copy of Lewis’ Abolition of Man, as printed in Ayn Rand’s Marginalia: Her critical comments on the writings of over 20 authors, edited by Robert Mayhew. Excerpts appear below, with Lewis’ writing (complete with Rand’s highlighting and underlining) on the left and...

People like Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion (Amazon USA) , (Amazon UK) , and Christopher Hitchens, who wrote God Is Not Great (Amazon USA) , (Amazon UK) , et al, when attacking “religion”, play on various ambiguities. They create ambiguities in their choice of terms and then these ambiguities are convenient for them. The first instance of ambiguity is the use of the term “religion”. It puts together all sorts of people and doctrines which may have very little in common. To give an analogy, the flat earth theory is undoubtedly a theory of physics. It says something...

According to data being gathered at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, which has been monitoring atmospheric carbon dioxide since 1958, the CO2 concentration in the Earth’s atmosphere officially exceeded the 400 parts per million mark last week, a value not attained on Earth since humans were first human. This ominous milestone comes at a time when the evidence that human activity is resulting in unprecedented climate change is now overwhelming. More important, perhaps, even if all greenhouse gas production ceased immediately, this elevated carbon dioxide level would persist in the atmosphere for thousands of years. (snip) So in addition...

The Government has forced Cody Wilson’s company, Defense Distributed, to take down his designs for 3D printed firearms. I can’t say I’m surprised, and if you had read my other article earlier in the week you would understand why: This is a blatant attack on the first amendment. Forget, for a minute, that these plans can be used to create guns. What is the difference between banning these plans from distribution, and banning a book? There are quite a few books out there that could be considered just as dangerous. I downloaded a PDF book on building machine guns last...

Roy Spencer is a climate scientist at the University of Alabama-Huntsville who may be the world’s most important scientist. He has discovered scientific insights and theories that cast great doubt on global warming doctrine. That doctrine has always been dubious and is often defended by attacking the integrity of anyone who dares to raise questions. Spencer is a rare combination of a brilliant scientist and a brave soul willing to risk his livelihood and reputation by speaking plainly. The global warming promoters say we must scrap the world’s energy infrastructure in favor of green energy. They say that burning coal,...

I’d like to bring some points to the attention of your readers that were raised in an article in the Independent published on 11th May 2013 It would appear to indicate a major shift in the UK’s government attitude to climate change. “The Government is facing an exodus of senior energy and climate change advisers amid growing concerns that decisive action to tackle global warming is falling victim to Treasury intransigence.” … “A Government offshore energy industrial strategy document, due to have been published this month, is understood to have been delayed after Treasury objections. At the same time as...

A camera hidden inside of a coat jacket, controlled by a hand held mechanism. A wrist–gun that is attached to a glove, can be hidden under a sleeve. A special listening device. A 4.5mm gun hidden inside of a lipstick. A gun hidden inside of a tobacco pipe. A camera hidden inside of a pen. This gun fires a dual cyanide charge that can kill almost instantly. Cufflinks with recessions to hide things An ancient coin that has a recess in it to hide things. A jacket button that can be turned into a compass. A transmitting device inside of...

“It is customary to define psychiatry as a medical specialty concerned with the study, diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses.” But according to prominent psychiatrist and academic Thomas Szasz MD (1920-2012) “…this is a worthless and misleading definition.” “Mental illness is a myth. Psychiatrists are not concerned with mental illnesses and their treatments. In actual practice they deal with personal, social, and ethical problems in living.” (1) Szasz write that “…the notion of a person ‘having a mental illness’ is scientifically crippling. It provides professional assent to a popular rationalization—namely that problems in living experienced and expressed in terms of...

Children like dinosaurs. Actually, lots of people like dinosaurs; they are the epitome of exotic creatures with their size and diversity. Also, they died out some 65 million years ago, likely the victims of a large meteor that fell onto modern day Mexico. The Alvarez Hypothesis is an fascinating story, but altogether irrelevant to day to day life. If a planet-threatening meteor or comet has not hit Earth in 65 million years, mankind can take its chances. Most people dismiss the lessons of the past century, so nearly everyone dismisses lessons from the K-T Boundary. Do not tell that to...

“We discovered that organic compounds such as those formed from forest emissions or from vehicle exhaust, affect the number of droplets in a cloud and hence its brightness, so affecting climate,” said study author Professor Gordon McFiggans, from the University of Manchester’s School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences. “We developed a model and made predictions of a substantially enhanced number of cloud droplets from an atmospherically reasonable amount of organic gases. “More cloud droplets lead to brighter cloud when viewed from above, reflecting more incoming sunlight. We did some calculations of the effects on climate and found that the...

From the UK’s BBC comes this news item: Trillion-euro shortfall facing EU energy sector – Lords Committee Under the obligatory photo of chimneys spewing steam, is a totally uncritical article on the final report from an eight-month inquiry by the UK’s House of Lords into the EU power sector. The report accuses the EU of having a muddled energy policy, but the horribly disturbing aspect of this report is that their lordships are the ones that are muddled. For example, they say that a muddled Brussels energy policy is putting off big investors. Well, they really got that wrong. Brussels’...

I have made an 82% correlation between the sunspot cycle and the Global Temperature Anomaly. The correlation is obtained through a non linear time series summation of NASA monthly sunspot data to the NOAA monthly Global Temperature Anomaly.

At the two-thirds mark for meteorological spring, 2013 was the second coldest spring on record – slightly warmer than 1975. But 1975 had an unusually warm May at 17C. The two warmest months of May were in 1934 and 1896. Both graphs above show the average of all daily temperatures at all US HCN stations, calculated per year. The forecast for the first two weeks of May is well below normal, so odds are that the spring of 2013 will be the coldest on record in the US. This is what Fort Collins looked like at 7pm today (May 1.)

Excerpt: The Equator Principles are ten principles for lending by international banks that work to the detriment of poor nations. Under pressure from environmental groups, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, and 76 other banks in 32 countries adopted the Principles. These principles demand that banks lend in an “environmentally and socially responsible manner,” which sounds good. But a top objective of the Equator Principles is “to promote the reduction of emissions that contribute to climate change.” Lending capital is restricted for coal mines, oil refineries, and other hydrocarbon projects desperately needed to build the economies of developing nations....

Note that either this new 'Sustainability' merit badge -to be released in July 2013- OR 'Environmental Science' is now required for attainment of the top Eagle Scout rank (makes me feel better about just getting to 'Life') So as with American schools, KGB-initiated leftist infiltration of our country is nearly complete- as is demoralization of the populace.  Continuing to force this junk science down our -and our childrens'- throats does nothing but distract the entire society from reality while NWO statists take the reigns... might as well offer an 'Alchemy' MB while they're at it: MeritBadge.org   h/t Doug Powers-

Don’t expect to see this story in the Democrat controlled media. All the bleating and hand wringing from the liberal psychopaths about America’s wasteful and gluttonous use of natural energy resources are lies. According to the US Energy Information Administration America’s total energy consumption per Real Dollar of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is lower than it has ever been and less than half of what it was in 1973. The EIA has released a report proving America is now the most energy efficient country in known history. The ratio of energy used to the cost of Gross Domestic Product (GDP)...

Nice catch by Ace: The three who were arrested today in connection with the Boston bombing disposed of items that belonged to the Tsarnaev brothers. Here’s a list. Three days after the blasts, on April 18, the three men allegedly removed Tsarnaev’s backpack, which contained fireworks that had been opened and emptied of gunpowder, from his dormitory room. Suspecting that Tsarnaev was involved in the bombing after authorities released surveillance video of the bombers that afternoon, the trio decided to throw the backpack and fireworks in the trash “because they did not want to get Tsarnaev into trouble,” according to...

The climate is changing. Coal will one day be used up. We want to live in a clean environment. But the fact is that the imperatives of economic development often pose environmental challenges. Despite this, environmental protection remains important because we need jobs, security, better education and good quality of life. Natural resources are not our property – we took out a loan from future generations – and we should use resources sparingly and think about how our children will heat their houses and cook their food in 20 – 30 years. The rush for cheap, reliable, clean energy resources...

Theories that can be easily tested should have a high degree of consensus among researchers. Those involving chaotic and less testable questions – climate change or economic growth, physiology or financial markets – ought to have a greater level of scientific disagreement. Yet this is hardly the case for climate science. In the Paradox of Consensus, we illustrate that the greater the level of consensus for certain classes of hypotheses (those that are difficult to test) the less truth we should assign to them. ------------------------------------------------------- In our view, the fact that so many scientists agree so closely about the earth’s...

A vote at the European Commission on Monday means a continent-wide ban on pesticides linked to bee deaths could be in place later this year. Neonicotinoid chemicals in sprays are believed to harm bees, whose numbers have been falling across Europe. The European Commission says they should be restricted to crops not attractive to bees and other pollinators, but many farmers and crop experts have argued that there is insufficient data. The Commission will impose a two-year restriction on neonicotinoids after 15 countries voted in favour of a ban on Monday - not enough to form a qualified majority, but...

Right now, way too many lawmakers in Washington flat-out refuse to face the facts when it comes to climate change. We're never going to make real progress on this issue unless members of Congress get serious. Instead, some of them have made a habit of publicly mocking it. We thought it was time to call them out for denying what's basic science. Watch this embarrassing video of climate deniers in Congress -- and say you're ready to help hold them accountable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=biUc0D6_UPA The science matters in this. That's the message way too many people in Washington need to hear right...

Following my article Effects of Atheist Propaganda Come Home to Roost, - although on Free Republic the comments were favourable to my position - readers of my blog have posted comments that need a more analytical and detailed answer than allowed in the comments section. Complex subjects require complex treatment. Furthermore, there seems to be much confusion about the theme of Christianity and ethics. For example, an anonymous reader calling himself "roger in florida" wrote: "I believe you are very misguided if you equate Christianity with morality or cannot understand that atheists, such as myself, are incapable [he then explained that he...

On April 22, in cities across America, some environmental activists will celebrate Earth Day, claiming only increased government control can protect the environment. Those celebrations will expose a couple ironies. First, many activists will arrive in a Toyota Prius, which has become the symbol of environmental consciousness. Ironically, however, the Prius is not a triumph of political planning but of the free market. In the 1990s, while California was requiring "zero-emission" vehicles, leaders at Toyota and Honda saw an opportunity to sell cars to people who want to spend less on gasoline, drive a car that emits less carbon dioxide,...

Tom Horn sees demons everywhere. The Assembly of God pastor and author of numerous works of anti-Catholic theology-fiction such as “The Ahriman Gate,” “Nephilim Stargates” and “As It Was in the Days of Noah,” is now accusing the Catholic Church, the Church founded by Jesus Christ, as preparing to welcome “an alien savior.” In his new book entitled ‘Exo-Vaticana: Petrus Romanus, Project L.U.C.I.F.E.R., and the Vatican’s Astonishing Plan for the Arrival of an Alien Savior,” Mr. Horn warns that “Rome is busy now hypothecating the astonishing doctrines that will facilitate the coming of a Galactic Savior.” Horn’s thesis (and that...

To begin with I was the only critical voice in New Zealand. Last week I attended a packed meeting of the Press Club in Wellington to hear Lord Monckton tear apart the IPCC and everything connected with it. The University scientists will not listen to him. But one of the organisers of the meeting was from the Music Department. But, surely, we are at the beginning of the end. The globe has stopped warming; even when measured by the botched-up biased system that they favour. The Kyoto Protocol is dead. Emissions by former members are in steady decline compared with...

There is so much good news about the collapse of the EU's carbon trading scam, that I'm not sure where to begin. But let's start with the fact that it has really, really annoyed Bryony Worthington - the activist from the hard-left anti-capitalist pressure group Friends of the Earth who wrote the most economically suicidal piece of legislation in British history, the Climate Change Act. ------------------------------------------------------- When Cameron came into power he took what some of us recognised straight away as a massive gamble with the UK economy: he decided to stake all on a revival driven by green jobs,...

The European Parliament just voted down a measure that would have attempted to revive its carbon market, likely dooming it to a slow and undignified death. This was a last-ditch effort to drive the EU’s carbon price back to a level that would incentivize green reforms. And it failed. --------------------------------------------------- The EU has been the global laboratory testing the green agenda to see how it works. Today’s story means that the guinea pig died; the most important piece of green intervention in world history has become an expensive and embarrassing flop. It’s hard to exaggerate the importance of this for...

The share of shale oil in the total global production will reach 9 percent by 2020, BP Senior Economist Lev Freinkman says. Freinkman said while presenting BP's "Energy Outlook by 2030" in Baku on Wednesday that the growth in production volume will account for shale oil which will be produced in the United States. As early as this year, the U.S. will take the lead in the world in terms of production and will retain its position in the next decade. As for shale gas production, Freinkman said that by 2030 the share of shale gas in total global production...

More and more likely that double CO2 means <2°C: New study Yes, it warms the planet – just not as much as thought The results of a new approach to calculating the effect of CO2 – using empirical observations – suggest it has a lower impact on the climate than previously thought, and its effects are being over-estimated by the IPCC. Publishing in the American Meterological Society’s Journal of Climate, a new paper called An improved, objective Bayesian, approach for applying optimal fingerprint techniques to estimate climate sensitivity, Nicholas Lewis applies objective Bayesian techniques and uses more up-to-date observational data...

A group of 17 Northern Michigan residents have filed a lawsuit claiming a new Consumers Energy wind farm has been making people sick. According to the lawsuit, the $250 million Lake Winds Energy Park wind farm, south of Ludington in Mason County, was built too close to homes. The lawsuit says residents are suffering from dizziness, sleeplessness, headaches and other physical symptoms because of the noise. The 56 turbines (some as far away as a half mile) also are causing vibrations and flickering lights in houses, the lawsuit says. Economic losses are also claimed in the suit. The Shineldecker house...

This report positively concludes that an alleged near unanimous scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW), that “the science is settled”, is overstated. The report finds a robust, critical scientific discourse in climate related research, yet it highlights that a “consensus-building” approach to science might represent a politicised and unscientific belief in science – a belief in tension with the ethos of “normal science”. The report calls for a continuing questioning, critical, and undogmatic public debate over man-made global warming, and a clearer separation between science and policy. –Consensus and Controversy, SINTEF April 2013 By insisting on scientific consensus and...

"Wow," exclaims the visitor from New Zealand, a place, after all, with a human history shorter than most. For from a wooden walkway we’re gazing down at an archaeological site of giddying age. Built about 9000 BC, it’s more than twice as old as Stonehenge or the Pyramids, predating the discovery of metals, pottery or even the wheel. This is Göbekli Tepe in south-eastern Turkey, generally reckoned the most exciting and historically significant archaeological dig currently under way anywhere in the world, and there are neither queues nor tickets to get in. Wow for a number of reasons, then, though...

While oil has been the motivating factor for US-led wars in the Middle East, many are wondering what might be behind their constant belligerence towards Pyongyang. But while North Korea may not have oil, the estimated value of their mineral deposits is a staggering $6 trillion, according to the South Korean government. North Korea is sitting on world’s second-largest supply of rare earth metals, which are essential for modern electronics like laptops, smartphones, solar electricity panels and precision missiles. The US, along with their allies Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, three major producers of sophisticated electronics, are surely interested in...

From The Earth Institute at Columbia University comes another tree ring hockey stick. I have to laugh though at the choice of graphic for the press release, which shows a weather event (Euro heat wave) in 2003, rather than showing us the science, like maybe a reconstruction. I wonder what absurd assumptions or tricks (like Zombie proxies) Mr. McIntyre will find in this one that he hasn’t already – Anthony Fueled by industrial greenhouse gas emissions, Earth’s climate warmed more between 1971 and 2000 than during any other three-decade interval in the last 1,400 years, according to new regional temperature...

Who Is America’s Best Climate Prediction Expert? It’s a fair enough question, given all our government and the mainstream media have been telling us about the threats we all face from climate change (a.k.a. man-made global warming). With twenty five years and tens of billions of dollars spent by the US government alone on understanding what the causes and effects of climate change are, surely someone has risen to the top in terms of making accurate climate change predictions, right?

After a foray in a cult, one of the first steps on the path back to reality is the process of deprogramming. Could it be that this step is now being self-administered by the German mainstream media? It appears so. Now that the global mean temperature curve has drifted out of and below the IPCC’s projected range, panic is breaking out. The mother of German green weeklies, Die Zeit, appears to be taking measurements at the back of the house in preparation for the installation of a back door! Rahmstorf is back there with them, trying to talk them out...

In a surprise move, the CPUSA (Communist Party USA) has announced a lawsuit against the Democratic Party and its leadership for the alleged theft of intellectual property. The plaintiffs claim that the entire so-called "new" Democratic agenda is, in fact, the product of a decades-long, painstaking campaign by CPUSA theorists, agitators, and underground subversive cells - which makes it the intellectual property of the Communist Party USA, protected by American copyright laws. "They stole our entire platform, rebranded it 'progressive', and claimed it as their own," declared a CPUSA spokesperson at a press conference in San Francisco. "And we communists...

If you are old enough to have experienced it, you probably had that moment in the ’90s or early 2000s when you realized everything was about to change. The sweeping Internet was changing music, reading, how we processed information, even the words we used to communicate. The change was fundamental and it happened so quickly, many of us had to catch our breath and keep ourselves from getting dizzy when we realized its significance. It may sound like hype, and I’ll try to avoid overstating it, but a lot of us who write about where technology is going are starting...

Scientists have found a way to cool houses without air conditioning — and without using any power at all. Shanhui Fan, professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University, and graduate students, Aaswath Raman, and Eden Rephaeli, are working on a cooling panel that could possibly replace your air conditioner. How? By radiating the vast majority of incoming sunlight into the outside world. “The structure basically does two things: It radiates the heat out in the atmosphere into outer space, and the device reflects sunlight to ensure that the sunlight does not heat up the device itself,” explained professor Fan, a...

Explosion on the day of the Boston Marathon, the brief speech President Obama on Monday night, did not give any clues about the progress of the investigation. Who can not hastily conclude: Who are the perpetrators? But it must be found and brought to justice. Counter-terrorism expert, said that the explosion caused three people were killed and over 200 injured, "lone wolf" type of terrorist attack, or a feature of a particular family groups attacked but exclude perpetrators under the "Al Qaeda" or a religious organizations, or by their instigation, is premature. Former U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Juan Zarate...

“[Drones are a] game-changing technology, akin to gunpowder, the steam engine, the atomic bomb—opening up possibilities that were fiction a generation earlier but also opening up perils that were unknown a generation ago.”—Peter Singer, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution America will never be a “no drone zone.” That must be acknowledged from the outset. There is too much money to be made on drones, for one, and too many special interest groups—from the defense sector to law enforcement to the so-called “research” groups that are in it for purely “academic” reasons—who have a vested interest in ensuring that drones...

Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has condemned President Obama’s $3.77 trillion budget as “just another left-wing wish list.” It raises spending and offsets these increases with additional taxes, such as a proposed 94 cents per pack additional tax on cigarettes. It also proposes additional funding for “basic research.” “The administration’s 2014 spending plan includes a total of $33.2-billion for basic research, an increase of about 4 percent over fiscal-2012 levels,” reports Paul Basken for The Chronicle of Higher Education (emphasis added). “It proposes total research-and-development spending of $143-billion, about 1.3 percent more than the fiscal-2012 amount.” “The White House,...

There’s no money to run White House tours, but apparently there’s money to pull one of Al’s pet projects out of mothballs. Satellite shelved after 2000 election to now fly By SETH BORENSTEIN WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is proposing dusting off and finally launching an old environmental satellite championed by Al Gore but shelved a dozen years by his 2000 rival George W. Bush. Obama proposed Wednesday spending nearly $35 million in his 2014 budget to refurbish a satellite, nicknamed GoreSat by critics, that’s been sitting in storage after it was shelved in 2001, months after Bush took...

Some people wonder if Michael Mann is simply an activist masquerading as a scientist, this lends credence to that idea. I wonder if Dr. Mann has ever visited weather stations in China to understand what is going on there? I have. I had to laugh when I saw this quote from Mann in Seth Borenstein’s most recent AP article: “The study is important because it formalizes what many scientists have been sensing as a gut instinct: that the increase in extreme heat that we’ve witnessed in recent decades, and especially in recent years, really cannot be dismissed as the vagaries...

Tomorrow the world marks 52 years since Yuri Gagarin's historic flight into space and 32 years since the first launch of the Space Shuttle. Scientists, artists, educators, and fans of space will be celebrating these milestones at over 320 parties and events in 50 countries on all 7 continents. Dubbed 'the World Space Party,' Yuri's Night is in its 13th year. "The level of interest and enthusiasm this year has been just amazing," said Dr. Ryan Kobrick, Executive Director of Yuri's Night. "We've already hit 300 events, and we expect to register many more by Friday. This is officially our...

I read somewhere that while both George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World contained dystopian futures, Huxley's world, where humans are made in "hatcheries" and the people were kept compliant, not by the threat of Big Brother, but by the numbing of their senses with the pleasure-inducing drug "soma," was a more plausible scenario. After reading "In vitro eugenics" by Dr. Robert Sparrow in the Journal of Medical Ethics, I have to agree. Dr. Sparrow explores the possibility of creating embryos in the lab, then using the stem cells from those embryos to create egg and sperm cells,...

New York Times food writer Mark Bittman seems to have a “thing” about biotechnology — the same sort of thing that Creationists have about Darwinism. Relentlessly negative and increasingly bizarre, he rationalizes his prejudices with misrepresentations and complete falsehoods. Although the statement has become something of a cliché, it is nevertheless true that Bittman is entitled to his own opinions but not to his own facts. His latest screed, “Why Do GMO’s Need Protection” (April 2), contains one factual error after another: – Bittman refers to Section 735, a provision in the Farm Bill passed by Congress and signed into...