Free Republic

With the ongoing media coverage of a well-known scientist lying to get confidential documents from the Heartland Institute regarding global warming, there’s been consistent reporting in the media about the “scientific consensus” that climate change is manmade. Numerous articles on blogs and news sites cite that scientific “consensus” of man-made global warming without citing any reference. The phrase may be a reference to the body of work done over the years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which involves work done by thousands of scientists from more than 120 governments. John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center...

I've been holding this post in the hope of finding video of Lara Friedman's appearance on James Zogby's Viewpoint on Sunday night in which this issue was discussed. I haven't found it yet. In an earlier post, I reported that 'Peace Now's Lara Friedman attended the 'International Conference to Save Jerusalem' in Qatar. At the time, I was appalled by Friedman's attendance and apparent support for the disgusting pretense that there is something wrong with Israel exercising sovereignty in its own capital. But maybe some good will come out of Friedman's attendance. On Sunday night, Friedman wrote a piece for...

...The statement I made that the ethnic groups of all the types at the Upper Cave does not mean they are adjacent on the chart: instead I was drawing attemtion to the fact that skull "B" of the robust series is one such out of the ethnic groups represented at the Upper cave Choukoudian, the (male) Capelinha skull separted out of the bottom row at right represents another group, represented by a (female) Upper Cave skull (The "Melanesian" one) and one of the CroMagnon-mixes is closest to the Upper Cave male skull (The skull C here is just a bit...

I have spent a good amount of time researching modern environmentalism, its rabid enthusiasts and its choke-hold on the economy. I didn't ever plan to until a coal plant was proposed in my town, and I watched as government and environmental groups worked shoulder to shoulder to stop it from happening, no matter what accommodations the energy company proposed. So, this video of Mitt Romney means so much to me, and when accidentally finding it a few weeks ago, I dug a little deeper until I realized what a pickle Romney would be in if he becomes President. Romney says...

Newt Gingrich has a double-digit lead over the rest of the GOP field in his home state of Georgia, according to a Landmark-Rosetta Stone poll released late Friday. Gingrich took 38 percent, followed by Rick Santorum at 25 percent, Mitt Romney at 19 percent, and Ron Paul at four percent, the poll found. Gingrich held a nine-point lead in the same poll taken earlier this month. The poll could be an outlier – Gingrich leads by only two points in Georgia according to the latest Insider Advantage survey and leads by five points according to Rasmussen. Both of those polls...

James Delingpole of The Telegraph reports that the British Parliament heard devastating testimony overturning the global warming hoax from MIT's Richard Lindzen who is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. Prof. Lindzen sounded the alarm early over the systematic subversion of Climate Sciences in North America and Europe by a cabal centered around Al Gore and the UN's Maurice Strong. The Telegraph has published Prof. Lindzen's presentation here as the House of Commons undertakes to "Reconsider the Climate Change Act" --the provisions of which have decimated the British economy.

Good grief! A Maryland state legislator has filed a bill that would allow surrogate decision makers to “donate” kidneys and liver lobes. From HB 449: THIS SUBSECTION APPLIES ONLY TO A PATIENT WHO HAS BEEN CERTIFIED UNDER § 5–606(B) OF THIS SUBTITLE TO BE IN A PERSISTENT 8 VEGETATIVE STATE. (3) A PERSON AUTHORIZED TO MAKE HEALTH CARE DECISIONS FOR ANOTHER UNDER THIS SECTION MAY AUTHORIZE THE DONATION OF A NONVITAL ORGAN IF THE DONATION IS BASED ON: (I) THE WISHES OF THE PATIENT AS PREVIOUSLY EXPRESSED BY THE PATIENT; OR (II) A DETERMINATION BY THE SURROGATE THAT THE DONATION...

This is the second of several installments on Iran’s missile and nuclear programs. The first is here. Subject: Parchin Military Complex Coordinates: 35° 31.915'N 51° 45.116'E The Parchin Military Complex has been in the news lately because for the second time since the beginning the year, Iran has refused to allow IAEA inspectors to go there. Parchin is important because the IAEA and intelligence agencies of several nations have evidence that it was used to conduct tests of a dummy implosion device. These tests are important because they measure the accuracy and the degree of compression of the nuclear “pit”,...

We’ve noted many times how those costly electric cars (even after factoring in taxpayer subsidies for manufacturers, sellers and buyers) are hugely reliant on cheap fossil fuel. How else do you think they get the electricity they run on? Windmills? And this cartoon pretty much sums up the absurdity of that predicament: . . .

That’s right – all those Greenpeace activists performing agitprop street theatre all over the world are partly financed mainly by western governments. The “activists” are, of course, front line cannon fodder, a mixture of idealistic young students and seasoned agitators who happily block pavements, trespass onto private property and perform acts of vandalism for the “cause”. They do it for the kicks and cost little money. Above them, however, are the Greenpeace executives who jet around the world, hang out in luxury hotels and drive around in expensive limos, hobnobbing with politicians and bureaucrats. There function is twofold – to...

My endless rants here about the hot field of multiverse studies are mainly motivated by concern about the effect this is having on particle theory. Multiverse scenarios all too often function as an excuse for not admitting that string theory/extra-dimensional ideas about unification have failed. Such an admission would encourage people to move on to more promising ideas, but instead hep-th is stuck in an endless doldrums with the high profile public face of the subject dominated by excited claims about what a wonderful discovery this region is.Independently of the string theory problem, I’m personally a skeptic that multiverse...

As members of Georgia’s House of Representatives debate whether to prohibit abortions for women more than 20 weeks pregnant, House Democrats introduced their own reproductive rights plan: No more vasectomies that leave "thousands of children ... deprived of birth." Rep. Yasmin Neal, a Democrat from the Atlanta suburb of Jonesboro, planned on Wednesday to introduce HB 1116, which would prevent men from vasectomies unless needed to avert serious injury or death. The bill reads: "It is patently unfair that men avoid the rewards of unwanted fatherhood by presuming that their judgment over such matters is more valid than the judgment...

Is gasoline getting too costly for you? Are you already cutting back on your trips to the store, to the theater, to grandma’s? What did you expect? Remember President Barack Obama’s energy secretary Steven Chu saying he wanted much higher gas prices – because it’s good for you? “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” Chu said in 2008. . .

Our friends up the freeway at that Los Angeles newspaper courageously have come out against asking “teachers to lie to” students about global warming. We agree. Teachers should stop repeating the Al Gore mantra that the world has a fever and that it’s our fault. Except, sadly, that’s not what the L.A. Times meant...

We wrote over the weekend about the “Global-warming skeptics gaining upper hand” and heard from readers who agree with and applaud the news, which always is good to hear. Then we were delighted to see the latest in the back-and-forth dueling columns in the Wall Street Journal advance the cause with clarity and truth. In short, the esteemed scientists who sparked the back-and-forth commentary in the Journal’s pages, summed up their case against global warming alarmism thus: . . .

A blast from the past animated the blogosphere earlier this month when a buddy of famed "Fire in the Sky" UFO abductee Travis Walton accused a dead debunker of attempted bribery. Steve Pierce said he -- Pierce -- had been offered $10k to say Walton had hoaxed the whole thing back in 1975... Klass was a prolific writer who dismissed the Walton controversy as confabulation in his 1983 book UFOs: The Public Deceived... Klass' take on what became known as the Cash-Landrum incident stopped me cold. Because I'd actually done my homework on that one. And that's when I got...

The Chevy Volt's batteries hold the same amount of energy as one gallon of gasoline—one single gallon. Would you buy a car that held only one gallon of gasoline? Neither would I. Yet, we've invested billions of dollars developing and promoting a car with a “gas tank” (the batteries) that only holds one gallon's worth of energy. I've heard that new super batteries are just around the corner. All we have to do is invest enough money and they'll appear. Just like computers (in the 1950's they were the size of rooms, today they can be held in the...

ATLANTA — In every state where he campaigns, Newt Gingrich weaves local issues into his stump speech, and in Georgia he aimed at a sweet spot: “Let’s be clear what this election is all about,” he told supporters. “We believe in the right to bear arms, and we like to bear the arms in our trucks.” His audience burst into laughter and applause. Mr. Gingrich repeated the line during two days of Georgia rallies on Friday and Saturday, where he met large, enthusiastic crowds,.... ....He raised an aggressive argument with President Obama over energy, framing it as a policy disagreement...

Hi , Our cars and trucks account for 20 percent of our country's greenhouse gas emissions. The Obama administration knows this -- that's why they fought for better fuel economy standards. But the rules that would go into effect don't go far enough. In fact, loopholes for SUVs mean that, even with higher standards, our greenhouse gas emissions will still continue to rise. The European Union, Japan and even China are far ahead of the United States when it comes to fuel efficiency. By carving out loopholes for big, gas-guzzling vehicles, we're giving automakers an out to keep the status...

The United States has massive deposits of petroleum locked in shale. Government estimates are there are two trillion barrels of oil, and perhaps 800 billion barrels could be recovered. That's about three times the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. The problem is finding an efficient way to get that petroleum out of the rock. It's a challenge that's frustrated scientists for decades. Two North Dakota State University researchers are taking a different approach to the problem, and they believe the key to extracting oil from shale is in understanding the material at the nano scale. Nano is breaking materials down...