Free Republic

“Both the authors and the press need to retract these alarmist and unsupported claims — especially the authors, since such gross over-interpretation of a lab study is inexcusable among academic scientists. They seem to be grasping for headlines and promoting some anti-fructose political agenda.” Gilbert Ross, M.D., Executive Director and Medical Director of the American Council on Science and Health August 4, 2010, HealthFactsAndFears.com WASHINGTON, DC – A study published in the August issue of Cancer Research1 has resulted in several premature and potentially misleading conclusions when it comes to fructose and its effect on pancreatic tumor cells. Unfortunately, the...

NASA has just voiced its concern over the threat that our modern technological society is now facing from "solar storms." Now it's true of course, that our society has become quite dependent on new technology, such as satellite communications and GPS mapping, that is vulnerable to the effects of major solar storms, but NASA seems to be a bit too worried about how big the threat really is. Fortunately for us, legitimate climate scientists believe the next solar "maximum," which is due in four to five years, is not expected to be anything unusual. In any event, while major solar...

It looks like president-elect Obama will name John P. Holdren as his science advisor. Holdren is a professor of environmental policy at Harvard and former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. As Ron Bailey points out, he has been an activist on the ecological left and no friend of free markets. Perhaps more striking is his activism well beyond his own academic specialty, arguing, for instance, that scientists have a responsibility to advance the cause of the elimination of all nuclear weapons and seeking controls on population growth. And he didn’t say all this in the...

Ask a believer: What's the difference between climate alarmism and child abuse? If he pauses to think for more than one second, then that's too long. Conservatives are American thinkers. Liberals are American feelers. Remember Earth Day, 1970? Here's Dan Rozek, writing in the Daily Herald, Sunday 22, 1990: "On the eve of Earth Day 1970, gloomy scientists and environmentalists questioned whether humanity would be around for this year's 20th anniversary celebration. Some worried mankind could not long survive without fatally fouling the planet and predicted mass deaths from pollution in 15 to 30 years. Even if man managed to...

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Jack Bogle published "The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism" four years ago. The battle's over. The sequel should be titled: "Capitalism Died a Lost Soul." Worse, we've lost "America's Soul." And worldwide the consequences will be catastrophic. That's why a man like Hong Kong's contrarian economist Marc Faber warns in his Doom, Boom & Gloom Report: "The future will be a total disaster, with a collapse of our capitalistic system as we know it today." No, not just another meltdown, another bear market recession like the one recently triggered by Wall Street's "too-greedy-to-fail" banks....

The alliance between politicians, their supporters with agendas and the news media is an unholy union, one that does not need elaborate conspiracies to consummate. Hysteria and alarmism in the news is a business-driven matrimony and, in spite of proclamations of safeguarding the public's right to know, it has little to do with knowing the truth. For us westerners our press was supposed to be one of the main institutions that separated us from the rest of the world, made us be smug about the superiority of our political system. It was supposed to be different from totalitarian regimes where...

Haven't seen so much media-generated hysteria since forever. But it's all bull. Smoke. All of it. Every. Single. Year. 30,000 Americans are killed by this exact same Flu. Type A. How many Americans have succumbed to this one? (that's a rhetorical question) I suspect, this is all an elaborate ruse. To cover up our "dear leader's" plummeting approval numbers. Someone, has been doing some polling. That's what I think.

A new document meant to help Missouri law enforcement agencies identify militia members or domestic terrorists has drawn criticism for some of the warning signs mentioned. The Feb. 20 report called "The Modern Militia Movement" mentions such red flags as political bumper stickers for third-party candidates, such as U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, who ran for president last year; talk of conspiracy theories, such as the plan for a superhighway linking Canada to Mexico; and possession of subversive literature. "It seems like they want to stifle political thought," said Roger Webb, president of the University of Missouri campus Libertarians. "There are...

By James M. Taylor Calls are mounting for President Barack Obama to fire James Hansen, the controversial figure in charge of climate studies at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Hansen has a record of allegedly doctoring temperature data to hype his argument that global warming is a crisis. The new calls for his resignation or termination come following his appearance in a video calling for civil disobedience at a protest at a power plant in Washington, DC(click to see video). “It is plainly improper for someone on the U.S. government payroll to advocate civil disobedience on behalf of...

Yet another example of the ‘research’ masquerading as science that is used to reinforce the man-made global warming fraud. One of the difficulties the green zealots have had is that Antarctica has been not warming but cooling, with the extent of its ice reaching record levels. A few weeks ago, a study led by Professor Eric Steig caused some excitement by claiming that actually West Antarctica was warming so much that it more than made up for the cooling in East Antarctica. Warning bells should have sounded when Steig said What we did is interpolate carefully instead of just using...

Mann-made science does not support the hypothesis that global warming is man-made A good scientist, like a good journalist, checks his facts, if for no other reason than to spare himself embarrassment and to immunize himself from charges that he’s casual with the truth, lazy or just plain dishonest. Michael Mann has not checked his facts. Mann’s article has two main thrusts. First, he attempts to discredit me and others who have criticized his work. Then, he attempts to defend his reputation by claims that distinguished authorities, especially the National Academy of Sciences, have endorsed his hockey stick graph. His...

Global aging, combined with plummeting birth rates, is a catastrophically dangerous menace that only a few people seem to be waking up to. You may not be familiar with terms like “global aging” and “demographic winter,” but you will be soon. I've been giving public lectures on the problem of global aging for the past 7 years or so, and my audiences are always shocked and dumbfounded as I explain how the West's ever expanding population of old people (due, thank God, to the ever-improving capabilities of bio-medical science), while a good thing in itself, will soon become a prime...

WASHINGTON – More than 2 trillion tons of land ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska have melted since 2003, according to new NASA satellite data that show the latest signs of what scientists say is global warming. More than half of the loss of landlocked ice in the past five years has occurred in Greenland, based on measurements of ice weight by NASA's GRACE satellite, said NASA geophysicist Scott Luthcke. The water melting from Greenland in the past five years would fill up about 11 Chesapeake Bays, he said, and the Greenland melt seems to be accelerating. NASA scientists planned...

Any guesses where Al Gore points the blame for the June floods and tornadoes that ravaged Iowa?  Yep! As reported by the Des Moines Register, the world's most famous Chicken Little told attendees of a Saturday night Democrat fundraiser in that city that the devastating floods were due "to man-made emissions causing more water to evaporate from oceans, increasing average humidity worldwide."   He went on say that: "In 66 of your 99 counties, the flood damage was truly historic. No one has ever seen a flood like this." Wrong. Then he pulled one of his favorite lies from his quiver...

Bills Force Family Out Of Home, Into Tent Parents, 3-Year-Old Daughter Staying At Campsite POSTED: 10:25 pm CDT October 1, 2008 UPDATED: 10:42 pm CDT October 1, 2008KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A local family is having such a difficult time making ends meet that they can't find the money for housing. Kathy Mankey and Brian Fears said they've hit rock bottom. They've been living out of their car and are desperate to find a place to live. "We're trying -- day to day. It's all you can do," Fears told KMBC's Jere Gish. Mankey and Fears are engaged, but...

John McCain, who has thrown himself in to negotiations for a $700 billion legislative package to address the current economic turmoil, continued to sell the proposal to voters today with a distinct populist tone and stern warnings of what congressional inaction could mean for the U.S. economy. McCain has sought to communicate the risks of doing nothing as opposed to passing the unpopular bill that failed by a 205-228 vote in the U.S. House on Monday. The Senate will take up the package tonight and both McCain and rival Barack Obama are scheduled to return to Washington, D.C., to vote...

Much has been said and written in recent days about how “The liberal uses crises, real or manufactured, to expand the power of government at the expense of the individual and private property.” The current financial situation is surely no different. What is striking is how brazen are the attempts we are seeing to attach pet schemes to the bailout’s coattails.  For example, Legal Newsline notes that California attorney general Jerry Brown and Al Gore told a group of investors waiting for the government to make them rich in the name of global warming — that, in the words...

How much in additional taxes are you willing to pay now in order to ensure that the Earth would not be 3 degrees warmer 100 years from now (assuming the science is even possible) - $100 or $1,000 or $10,000 or more? Should the government prevent us from selling some of our body parts to allow others to live or have better lives? Are we likely to get better health care in the future with more or less government involvement? Are the advances in information technology, such as the Internet, increasing or reducing the power of governments to monitor and...

Northern Ireland environment minister Sammy Wilson is taking heat for saying environmentalists' views on global warming amount to a "hysterical psuedo-religion," the BBC reports. "Resources should be used to adapt to the consequences of climate change, rather than King Canute-style vainly trying to stop it," Wilson said. The article states Mr Wilson said he refused to "blindly accept" the need to make significant changes to the economy to stop climate change. "The tactic used by the "green gang" is to label anyone who dares disagree with their view of climate change as some kind of nutcase who denies scientific fact,"...

UN Cuts AIDS Estimates, Will Global Warming Projections Follow? As NewsBusters readers are aware, one of the positions of those not buying into the manmade global warming hysteria is that the United Nations -- whose Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a large part of the alarmism -- is an organization that has seen more than its share of malfeasance and corruption. The recent scandal surrounding the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food program is one example, with problems that eventually plagued UNICEF another. Now, it has been revealed that the U.N. has been exaggerating the AIDS epidemic for many years. As reported [1]...