Free Republic

Leading environmental activist and lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gave a lecture to a packed Call Auditorium yesterday entitled "Our Environmental Destiny." As the inaugural speech in the Kaplan Family Distinguished Lecture in Public Service series and organized in part by the Cornell Public Service Center (CPSC), Kennedy sent a strong message concerning recent government actions and the meaning of being an environmentalist, which seemed to inspire some students such as Dana Hall '06. "I was quite impressed," Hall said. "I'm going to join an environmental club now." President Hunter R. Rawlings III gave opening remarks to Kennedy's lecture,...

The largest solar energy rooftop system in New Jersey was dedicated at Janssen Pharmaceutica April 15. Company's system is comprised of 2,856 electric tiles that cover 40,000 square feet of the roof of the firm's main building, located in the Titusville section of Hopewell Township.    The largest solar energy rooftop system in New Jersey was dedicated at Janssen Pharmaceutica April 15, with state Bureau of Public Utilities (BPU) President Jeanne Fox, U.S. Rep. Rush Holt, state Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Bradley Campbell, Hopewell Township Mayor Fran Bartlett and other officials on hand for the ceremonies.   Janssen's system is comprised...

Looking like exotic space flowers, these vivid images reveal vagaries in a star's output of heat. The images help astronomers determine how natural changes in the sun's energy output influence global warming on Earth. (Staff photo by Jon Chase) Global warming is not so hot: 1003 was worse, researchers find By William J. Cromie Gazette Staff The heat and droughts of 2001 and 2002, and the unending winter of 2002-2003 in the Northeast have people wondering what on Earth is happening to the weather. Is there anything natural about such variability? To answer that question, researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian...

As the world gets warmer, it is getting wetter. And one of the main conclusions reached at Europe's largest ever earth sciences conference was that we are less prepared for it than ever. While some delegates were still reeling from the catastrophic floods that hit the continent in August 2002, others warned that the risk of future flooding has been vastly underestimated. And studies of past episodes of climate change suggest that a wetter world may be not only a consequence of global warming but a trigger for further, more dramatic temperature rises. The first task was to take stock,...

On CNN's live webcast earlier this morning this was the view. Little while later the feed is Peter Arnot putting on makeup, practicing his lines unaware that he is brodcasting to the world via the webcast. To see the feed on Real Player past the following into your browser. rtsp://live1.stream.aol.com/farm/*/encoder/cnn_webcast2_low

A storm of particles and radiation from the Sun, a kind of disturbance that has disabled or destroyed satellites on dozens of occasions, crossed the path of the space shuttle Columbia just as it was making its descent to Earth, scientists said yesterday. The disturbance was detected by at least two NASA space probes as it passed from deep space toward Earth on Feb. 1, said Dr. Devrie S. Intriligator, director of the space plasma laboratory at the Carmel Research Center, a private laboratory in Santa Monica, Calif., who discovered the event by examining data from the probes. Experts...

Results so far 3 responses Yes 67% No 33%

"We Report, You Decide," Fox News' catchy slogan, definitely isn't the way the mainstream papers report on global climate change. Two recent examples demonstrate their egregious lack of rigor (or dare we say purposeful lack of balance) surrounding this important issue. Is climate change getting worse? On December 12, Usha Lee McFarling wrote in the Los Angeles Times that "groups that are concerned about climate change point out that the rate of warming is steeply increasing," something which would (and perhaps should) alarm every reader. Her source? Lester Brown, author of about 25 consecutive annual "State of the World"...

How much of an influence the sun has exerted on earth's climate during the 20th Century is a topic of heated discussion in the area of global climate change.  The primary reason for differing opinions on the subject derives from the fact that although numerous studies have demonstrated significant correlations between certain measures of solar activity and various climatic phenomena (Reid, 1991, 1997, 1999, 2000), the magnitude of the variable solar radiative forcing reported in these studies is generally so small it is difficult to see how it could possibly produce climatic effects of the magnitude observed (Broecker, 1999).  Supporters...

Sen. Don Nickles (Okla.), the second-ranking Senate Republican, this morning said Republicans should consider ousting Sen. Trent Lott as their party leader. Nickles-who considered challenging Lott for his leadership job well before the Mississippian made his racially divisive comments-said in a television interview this morning, "Trent has been weakened to the point that may jeopardize his ability to enact our agenda and speak to all Americans."

A long succession of climate models has consistently suggested that CO2-induced global warming should be amplified in earth's polar regions and that the first signs of man's predicted impact on the world's weather should thus be manifest there. Many people have consequently accepted recently-reported high temperatures from various parts of the Arctic as evidence of the validity of contemporary climate model predictions and an indisputable sign that the dreaded climatic effects of mankind's CO2 emissions have in very fact arrived at the world's doorstep. Actual temperature data, however, tell a vastly different story. Following the recent release of Russian...

A federal appeals panel has revived Gennifer Flowers's defamation suit accusing Hillary Rodham Clinton of masterminding a campaign to discredit her claim of an affair with Bill Clinton. The panel ruled 3-0 that Flowers could try to prove the former first lady, now a senator from New York, conspired against her with two presidential aides, George Stephanopoulos and James Carville. Still, the court said Flowers faces an uphill battle and must convince a Nevada judge there is evidence of a conspiracy before the case could proceed to a jury. The controversy dates to 1992, when a supermarket tabloid wrote that...

Carbon is the basic building block of life - at least as we know it - and it becomes so when CO2 is withdrawn from the atmosphere by photosynthesizing plants that use it to construct their tissues.  Because of this fact, and because literally thousands of laboratory and field experiments have demonstrated that the more CO2 there is in the air the better plants grow and the more efficiently they utilize water, it has been postulated that continued anthropogenic CO2 emissions will lead to a significant "greening of the earth" (Idso, 1986).  This suggestion constitutes a great hypothesis, because the...

The Internet is abuzz with rumors about Paul Wellstone's death. According to syndicated cartoonist Ted Rall and Dr. Michael Niman, a media professor at Buffalo State College (New Yorkers' tax dollars at work!), Wellstone was killed by "government gangsters" acting on the orders of the "unelected" Bush and his corporate masters. Whatever, dudes. I salute your courage in exposing this conspiracy but, now you have, I figure, about 20 minutes to get across the Niagara bridge. Bush's gangsters may have killed Paul Wellstone, but it was the Democrats who turned him into a laughingstock. I don't know about you, but...

The Earth system - comprising atmosphere, ocean, land, cryosphere and biosphere - is an immensely complex system, involving processes and interactions on a wide range of space- and time-scales. Thus begins the abstract of an enlightening essay on the many shortcomings of today's climate models (O'Neill and Steenman-Clark, 2002) in which the implications of this situation are discussed within the context of developing "reliable numerical models that can be used to predict how the Earth system will evolve and how it will respond to man-made perturbations." The challenge of this enterprise, as the authors describe it, is truly daunting. They...

Volume 5, Number 30: 24 July 2002 The query imbedded in the title of this week's Editorial is borrowed from a provocative new paper that suggests humanity should have some idea of the answer to this question before we rush headlong into adopting expensive and economy-wrenching measures to battle what could well turn out to be an imaginary enemy.  The author - C.J. van der Veen of the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University - puts it this way: "for purposes of formulating policies, some of which could be unpopular or costly, it is imperative that probability density...

Predicted Shutdown of the Marine Thermohaline Circulation Volume 5, Number 28 The Kyoto Protocol is based on the premise that the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 content must be slowed as soon as possible, and ultimately stopped altogether, in order to avoid an increase in mean global air temperature of sufficient magnitude to inflict serious damage on the biosphere.  Consequently, those who believe in the conceptual foundation of the Protocol - as well as some who don't (but who promote its adoption for political or philosophical reasons) - would like to see its provisions implemented as soon as is...

The Kyoto Protocol is based on the premise that the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 content must be slowed as soon as possible, and ultimately stopped altogether, in order to avoid an increase in mean global air temperature of sufficient magnitude to inflict serious damage on the biosphere .  Consequently, those who believe in the conceptual foundation of the Protocol - as well as some who don't (but who promote its adoption for political or philosophical reasons) - would like to see its provisions implemented as soon as is practicable, in order to prevent the presumed deleterious consequences (or,...

Houston will be lowering speed limits in an eight-county area to 55 mph in May 2002. Dallas area drivers have already had to endure this. Texas is the only state in the country implementing this nonsense. The EPA has forced it on us. It is the contention of the NMA that these speed limits are illegal. The state is superceding the Federal Highway Administration (FHwA) mandates because of EPA blackmail. The EPA contends that car emissions will be "substantially reduced" if people would drive slower. They manufacture these benefits using a computer model that the Government Accounting Office said had...

Chrysler's concept van gives new meaning to "clean fuel."by Dan Carney Borax may prove useful in a lot more than laundry detergent. DaimlerChrysler engineers believe a variant of the innocuous white powder provides a safe, compact way to contain hydrogen. The lack of such storage for the notoriously flammable gas has been a key obstacle to the development of fuel-cell-powered cars. Borax's first performance is in a concept minivan called the Chrysler Town & Country Natrium (Latin for sodium, an element in borax). A fairly simple chemical process joins borax and hydrogen in a manner that renders the gas nonflammable....