Free Republic

Rejecting “carbon” talk. As for those knowingly using the term for propaganda purposes, they should have a huge carbon footprint placed firmly on their carbon-based posteriors The side that defines the vocabulary of a debate, wins the debate. So we could ask: as we fight the global-warming scam, why are we using the language of the scammers? It’s harder to combat “carbon” taxes, “carbon” credits and callow “carbon” appeals if we accept that at issue is “carbon.” Calling CO2 “carbon” is like calling H2O “hydrogen.” Carbon is about as useful to a plant aspiring to photosynthesize as a tank of...

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is officially launching her personal private jet, even allowing reporters to ride with her on the trip to Cleveland, Ohio. Several photos and details of the plane quickly dubbed “Hill Force One” were revealed by reporters as they waited to board the flight. The plane is a 14-year-old Boeing 737 that used to fly for Air Berlin, OrenAir and Corendon Dutch Airlines, according to CNN’s Dan Merica. The plane is separated into four cabins, one for Clinton, one for staff, one for the Secret Service and one for the press. The media have more than...

It sounds simple: If something has a big carbon footprint and you get rid of it, you eliminate those carbon dioxide emissions. Right? But it’s not always that easy. In a recent study published in The Journal of Industrial Ecology, researchers at the Center for Environmental Strategy at the University of Surrey in England estimated the annual carbon footprint of crime in England and Wales, and found that reducing crime could actually cause society’s overall carbon footprint of society to increase. The findings illustrated the rebound effect, which describes how reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases in one area can...

CO2 is only a bit-player in the drama of world climate, while the main characters are ice, dust and albedo....Ice age cycles have something to do with precession: the slow wobble of the axis of the Earth. The ancient Egyptians and Greeks knew of precession and called it the Great Year, because it gives warm and cool seasons over its approximate 23,000-year cycle. But there is a problem with invoking the Great Year as the regulator of ice ages, because we should really get an interglacial warming every 23,000 years or so. And we don’t – they only happen every...

Dr. Patrick Moore sent me this last week, and after reading it, I agree with him in his initial note to me that This is probably the most important paper I will ever write. Moore looks at the historical record of CO2 in our atmosphere and concludes that we came dangerously close to losing plant life on Earth about 18,000 years ago, when CO2 levels approached 150 ppm, below which plant life can’t sustain photosynthesis. He notes: A 140 million year decline in CO2 to levels that came close to threatening the survival of life on Earth can hardly be...

In fact, deep ocean circulation slowed down to such an extent that the heavy, saline water mass below a depth of 2000 metres was not in contact with the surface for almost 3000 years. "During this time, so much bound carbon in the form of animal and algae remains trickled down from the more intermixed sea surface into the deep water layer that we were able to identify it as the major carbon reservoir that we have looked for so intensively," says Thomas Ronge. The data also showed that the already old age of the water masses was artificially increased...

There was a time in America — and it wasn't even so long ago — that liberals cared a lot about working-class people. They may have been misguided in many of their policy solutions — e.g., raising the minimum wage — but at least their hearts were in the right place. Then a strange thing happened about a decade ago. Radical environmentalists took control of the Democratic Party. These leftists care more about the supposed rise of the oceans than the financial survival of the middle class. The industrial unions made a catastrophic decision to get in bed with these...

Al Gore is back in the news, prominently seen in a March 29 press conference led by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, where Schneiderman and his fellow AGs announced the latest effort to use racketeering laws to prosecute ‘climate change deniers.’ Minutes after first thanking Gore for attending and noting how his 2006 movie galvanized the world’s attention about the urgency to act on climate change, Schneiderman spoke of how the group was working to find creative ways to “enforce laws being flouted by the fossil fuel industry and their allies in their short-sighted efforts to put profits...

Hillary Clinton owes Bernie Sanders’ campaign an apology, the campaign said Friday. Clinton on Thursday accused Sanders’ camp of “lying,” alleging that his campaign has been claiming Clinton accepts money from the fossil fuel industry — a statement she forcefully rejected when confronted by an environmental activist. “I think she probably owes the senator an apology for that because the senator is not lying about her record,” Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver told MSNBC. “He’s talking about her record. He’s talking about her practices. She obviously doesn’t like it, but that doesn’t make it lying because you don’t like it.”...

If all the countries do their bit then the total reduction in global warming – by the year 2100 will be 0.170 degrees Centigrade. As a climate sceptic friend of mine pointed out at the time, you’d experience a bigger temperature increase than that just walking down from the top to the bottom of the Eiffel tower. So there’s your deal folks: you – and taxpayers like you – are paying $1.5 trillion a year to reduce the world’s temperatures by the end of this century by 0.170. It’s so perfectly ridiculous it’s almost funny. And I suppose on a...

If you still own shares in solar energy it’s probably a sign that you’ve been in the sun too long: the sector is tanking – and deservedly so – as reality dawns that this is a Potemkin industry, an Enron of a con-trick, whose survival depends not on the energy it generates but on the subsidies it squeezes from the taxpayer. Consider Exhibit A: the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the California desert. This $2.2 billion project, heavily backed with federal grants by the Obama administration, is absolutely brilliant at killing birds. According to some estimates it accounts for...

Take a look at this abstract from the journal Progress in Human Geography: ………………………………………………………………………Glaciers, Gender, and Science:A FEMINIST GLACIOLOGY: framework for global environmental change research Mark Carey, M Jackson, Alessandro Antonello, Jaclyn Rushing ABSTRACT Glaciers are key icons of climate change and global environmental change. However, the relationships among gender, science, and glaciers – particularly related to epistemological questions about the production of glaciological knowledge – remain understudied. This paper thus proposes a feminist glaciology framework with four key components: 1) knowledge producers; (2) gendered science and knowledge; (3) systems of scientific domination; and (4) alternative representations of glaciers. Merging...

Renewable energy advocates like to point out that the cost of renewable fuels, like solar power, have dropped substantially in the last few years. The cost of solar power for instance has fallen by more than two-thirds since 2009. Yet for all the excitement about renewable power, the reality is that the entire energy sector has essentially been in a state of deflation for the last decade. The notable drop in oil prices over the last two years aside, costs of producing oil both in the U.S. and in many parts of the world have fallen dramatically. The phase out...

Washington could become the first state in the nation to impose a direct tax on carbon emissions from fossil fuels such as coal, gasoline and natural gas. A ballot measure before the state Legislature would create a carbon tax of $25 per metric ton of fossil fuel emissions burned in Washington, while reducing taxes. ...

Wood Mackenzie's report, cited by the energy news service Platts, said about 3.4 million barrels' worth of oil a day was not profitable below $35 a barrel. According to the International Energy Agency, the world's supply is 97.07 million barrels a day. While today's oil prices are below this threshold, the report suggests the price at which US shale and other producers would be forced out of the market is lower than previously thought. As Platts writes, "For many producers, being cash negative is not enough of an incentive to shut down fields as restarting flow can be costly and...

When Obama carried out his Solyndra con game, he broke the same law that Martha Stewart went to prison for breaking In 2009 the Obama administration gave $535 million to Solyndra, claiming that it would create 4,000 new jobs. However, instead of creating those 4,000 new jobs, the company went bankrupt. It was later revealed that the company’s shareholders and executives had made substantial donations to Obama’s campaign, that the company had spent a large sum of money on lobbying, and that Solyndra executives had had many meetings with White House officials. It was also revealed that the Obama administration had...

As world leaders gathered in Paris last month for the United Nations climate summit, many seemed surprised that several large oil companies, including BP and Shell, endorsed a carbon tax as a "key element" of any international climate deal. Less surprising was the preference of those in the renewable energy sector to see a tax on carbon. The implication was of course that if major companies - oil companies in particular - want to tax themselves, who are we to stand in the way? It must be an indication that the climate crisis is so acute that even they have...

From the “fresh melt water will disrupt the planet” department, except that this ongoing alarm has already been debunked by NASA, see: NASA refutes Mann and Rahmstorf – Finds Atlantic ‘Conveyor Belt’ Not SlowingIllustration depicting the overturning circulation of the global ocean. Throughout the Atlantic Ocean, the circulation carries warm waters (red arrows) northward near the surface and cold deep waters (blue arrows) southward. Image credit: NASA/JPL Melting Greenland ice sheet may affect global ocean circulation, future climateUniversity of South Florida and international scientists find influx of freshwater could disrupt the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, an important component of global...

Last year, 42 North American drillers filed for bankruptcy, according to law firm Haynes and Boone. It's only likely to get worse this year. Experts say there are a lot of parallels between today's crisis and the last oil crash in 1986. Back then, 27% of exploration and production companies went bust. Defaults are skyrocketing again. In December, exploration and production company defaults topped 11%, up from just 0.5% the previous year, according to Fitch Ratings. That's a 2,000%-plus jump. It's just the beginning, says John La Forge, head of real assets strategy at Wells Fargo. If history repeats, people...

Those who think the political war on carbon will cool the globe or keep climate stable need to study climate history. Temperatures on Earth dance to a cyclic rhythm every hour, every day, every month, every season, every year, and to every beat of the sun-spot and glacial cycles. The daily solar cycle causes continual changes in temperature for every spot on Earth. It produces the frosts at dawn, the mid-day heat and the cooling at sunset. It is regulated by rotation of the Earth. Superimposed on the daily solar cycle is the monthly lunar cycle, driven by the orbit...