Free Republic

Scientists say the plant enset, an Ethiopian staple, could be a new superfood and a lifesaver in the face of climate change. The banana-like crop has the potential to feed more than 100 million people in a warming world, according to a new study. The plant is almost unknown outside of Ethiopia, where it is used to make porridge and bread. Research suggests the crop can be grown over a much larger range in Africa.

Climate anxiety is becoming more and more widespread. Taking direct positive action can help you cope with your eco-anxiety while helping to address the climate emergency. Climate anxiety is not a pathology but a healthy response to a real threat. Inaction is related to feeling powerless whereas action is about taking control. My team of social psychologists recently surveyed over 1,200 people in collaboration with charity GlobalGiving UK. This research focused on eco-anxiety and other drivers of donations to provide disaster relief for climate-related disasters. So, if you want to act but don’t know where to start, here are three...

he edge of Greenland’s ice sheet looked like a big lick of sludgy white frosting spilling over a rise of billion-year-old brown rock. Inside the Twin Otter’s cabin, there were five of us: two pilots, a scientist, an engineer, and me. Farther north, we would have needed another seat for a rifle-armed guard. Here, we were told to just look around for polar-bear tracks on our descent. We had taken off from Greenland’s west coast and soon passed over the ice sheet’s lip. Viewed from directly above, the first 10 miles of ice looked wrinkled, like elephant skin. Its folds...

Climate change deniers have found a new champion in Kenyan farmer Jusper Machogu. On social media, he has become known as a flagbearer for fossil fuels in Africa, but there is more to his campaign than meets the eye. Since he began posting debunked theories about climate change, he has received thousands of dollars in donations – some of which came from individuals in Western countries linked to fossil-fuel interests. Mr Machogu insists this has not influenced his views, saying they are genuinely held. Scientists have proven that the Earth is heating up because of greenhouse gases that are emitted...

Wealthy beach lovers are left devastated as they're forced to slash prices of their luxury seaside homes by millions due to climate change. Climate experts believe the rise in sea levels and unforgiving storms, intense rainfall and coastal flooding and erosion are the culprits putting homeowners in a precarious position - and the unpredictability of it all. The areas with some of the priciest real estate that have been hit the hardest include, Dana Point, California, to Long Island, New York, and Nantucket, Massachusetts, CNBC reported. In September, a beach front home on Nantucket that listed for $2.3 million, fell...

The Supreme Court seemed to signal interest this week in taking up a challenge launched by Hawaii against big oil companies to hold them liable for climate change, and some Democrats are suggesting the high court is "captured" for the fossil fuel industry. The Supreme Court on Monday asked the Justice Department to weigh in on a petition to hear a lawsuit brought by the City of Honolulu against major fuel companies including Sunoco, Exxon and Chevron, claiming the companies’ products cause greenhouse gas emissions and global warming without warning consumers about the risks. The city employed a series of...

Vacationing in Chicago this week from Europe, Jelle den Burger and Nirusa Naguleswaran grabbed a bite at the Dog House Grill: a classic Italian beef sandwich for him, grilled cheese for her. Both think the way their genders lined up with their food choices was no coincidence. Women, said Naguleswaran, are simply more likely to ditch meat, and to care about how their diet affects the environment and other people. […] Now, scientists can say more confidently than ever that gender and meat-eating preferences are linked. A paper out in Nature Scientific Reports this week shows that the difference is...

A Pentagon-funded company is seeking proposals to feed America’s soldiers lab-grown meat in a bid to "reduce the CO2 footprint" at Defense Department outposts. BioMADE, a public-private company that has received more than $500 million in funding from the Defense Department, announced earlier this month that it is seeking proposals to develop "innovations in food production that reduce the CO2 footprint of food production at ... DoD operational environments," according to an online announcement. These include "novel cell culture methods suitable for the production of cultivated meat/protein," or lab-grown meat, a product that is still in its experimental phases. This...

A House Judiciary Committee released a report Tuesday that alleges a ‘climate cartel’ comprised of left-wing environmental activists and major financial institutions colluded to force American companies to adopt anti-fossil fuel policies, which have in turn, harmed U.S. consumers. The interim report was the product of a two-year investigation by House Judiciary Republicans into whether “woke” companies were engaging in behaviors that violate antitrust laws. “Today’s report demonstrates a clear violation of antitrust laws among the companies cited. It indicates both an agreement and a reduction of output – the two standards necessary to establish antitrust,” Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo.,...

A “climate cartel” made up of left-wing advocacy groups and Wall Street firms have colluded to force American companies to reduce carbon emissions, a congressional committee charged in a scathing report Tuesday. The interim report is the first of its kind produced by the Republican-led Judiciary Committee in the House since it launched an investigation in late 2022 into whether corporate efforts to tackle climate change violate antitrust laws. It accused business groups and advocacy organizations of “muzzling corporate free speech” and “handcuffing company leadership” through “ever-escalating pressure tactics,” which included “taking out” directors at firms that are deemed “recalcitrant.”...

The amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere has hit a new record, as humanity struggles to rein in emissions of greenhouse gasses from burning fossil fuels. The new record comes as tens of millions of people are grappling with extreme weather in the United States. Much of the western U.S. is experiencing the first major heat wave of the year, which is driving temperatures 20 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than what is normal for June. In the Southwest, temperatures are lingering well above 100 degrees. Such extreme, prolonged heat is directly related to human-caused climate change,...

Planet Earth hit 12 consecutive months where the global average temperature reached a record high, according to new data released on Wednesday. In addition, last month was the hottest May on record, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). The data from European climate scientists showed that it was also the 11th consecutive month during which the global average temperature reached or eclipsed 1.5 degrees Celsius. The global average temperature in the last 12 months was 0.75 Celsius above the 1991–2020 average and 1.63 Celsius higher than the pre-industrial average.

The world of climate science is in shock following extraordinary findings from a team of high-powered NASA scientists that suggest most of the recent global temperature increases are due to the introduction of draconian fuel shipping regulations designed to help prevent global warming. The fantasy world of Net Zero is of course full of unintended consequences, but it is claimed that the abrupt 80% cut in sulphur dioxide emissions from international shipping in 2020 has accounted for 80% of global warming since the turn of the decade. Although the extra heat is described as “transient”, the warming is extraordinary and...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Many Americans still aren’t sold on going electric for their next car purchase. High prices and a lack of easy-to-find charging stations are major sticking points, a new poll shows. About 4 in 10 U.S. adults say they would be at least somewhat likely to buy an EV the next time they buy a car, according to the poll by The Associated Press, while 46% say they are not too likely or not at all likely to purchase one. The poll results, which echo an AP-NORC poll from last year, show that President Joe Biden’s election-year plan...

Spirit Airlines Inc. is losing its chief financial officer to another troubled company — Hertz Global Holdings Inc. — as the carrier works to restructure a crushing debt load and the car rental company reboots after a failed bet on electric vehicles. Hertz is rebuilding after acquiring a fleet of mostly Tesla EV models that renters didn’t want and that cost more to repair than the company anticipated. Hertz also has been hurt by plummeting values for the EVs it bought after Tesla cut prices, resulting in higher-than-expected first-quarter losses of $392 million.

Human activities affect the Earth’s climate through modifying the composition of the atmosphere, which then creates radiative forcing that drives climate change. The warming effect of anthropogenic greenhouse gases has been partially balanced by the cooling effect of anthropogenic aerosols. In 2020, fuel regulations abruptly reduced the emission of sulfur dioxide from international shipping by about 80% and created an inadvertent geoengineering termination shock with global impact. Here we estimate the regulation leads to a radiative forcing of Wm−2 averaged over the global ocean. The amount of radiative forcing could lead to a doubling (or more) of the warming rate...

Fake studies have flooded the publishers of top scientific journals, leading to thousands of retractions and millions of dollars in lost revenue. The biggest hit has come to Wiley, a 217-year-old publisher based in Hoboken, N.J., which Tuesday will announce that it is closing 19 journals, some of which were infected by large-scale research fraud. Paywall.

Most people by now are familiar with the narrative that our planet faces a dire crisis due to rising temperatures.In January 2023, former Vice President Al Gore provided a graphic depiction during a World Economic Forum summit, informing attendees that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are “now trapping as much extra heat as would be released by 600,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs exploding every single day on the Earth.“That’s what’s boiling the oceans, creating these atmospheric rivers, and the rain bombs, and sucking the moisture out of the land, and creating the droughts, and melting the ice, and raising the sea level,...

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg faulted climate change for the increase in severe turbulence on commercial airline flights while citing estimates that it has shot up by double digits over recent decades. “The reality is, the effects of climate change are already upon us in terms of our transportation,” Buttigieg told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “We’ve seen that in the form of everything from heat waves that shouldn’t statistically even be possible threatening to melt the cables of transit systems in the Pacific Northwest,” he went on before citing “indications that turbulence is up by about 15%.” Since taking...

The massive "doomsday glacier" known for its rapid destabilization is undergoing a "vigorous ice melt" that scientists say could reshape sea level rise projections. In a new study, glaciologists from the University of California, Irvine, found that warm, high-pressure ocean water is seeping beneath West Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier, making it more vulnerable to melting than previously thought. The glacier is roughly 80 miles across, the widest on Earth. It packs so much ice that if it were to completely collapse, it could singlehandedly cause global sea levels to rise by more than two feet, according to the International Thwaites Glacier...