Free Republic

Highlighting seas that are rising at an accelerating rate, especially in the far more vulnerable Pacific island nations, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued yet another climate SOS to the world. This time he said those initials stand for “save our seas.” The United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization Monday issued reports on worsening sea level rise, turbocharged by a warming Earth and melting ice sheets and glaciers. They highlight how the Southwestern Pacific is not only hurt by the rising oceans, but by other climate change effects of ocean acidification and marine heat waves. Guterres toured Samoa and Tonga...

It is a testament to how utterly extraordinary the past couple weeks have been that the Microsoft-CrowdStrike computer catastrophe was not even the second most important story in the news cycle. On Friday, July 19th, the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike implemented a botched update that crashed Microsoft devices on which it was installed, ultimately inflicting the dreaded “blue screen of death” on over 8.5 million devices worldwide. Banks, businesses, hospitals, and airlines were hit particularly hard, and to this day, some of these institutions are having difficulty restoring functionality to their systems. Video compilations such as the one below offer arresting...

It is now little more than a “developing country”. Its stock market is a “junk shop” selling old tat. And its reputation as a place to do business has “never been so bad’. In the middle of the UK’s dismal election campaign, it would be easy to imagine that Britain was the country under discussion. But Theodor Weimer, the head of the once mighty Deutsche Börse, was describing his native Germany. And he was absolutely right. After a series of catastrophic policy mistakes by centrist leaders, there is no way back for Germany – and its decline is only going...

April 9 Letter from FERC to KRRC, ‘… Kiewit has aborted the Iron Gate Development drilling program in its entirety…’ .. This is part of a series about the Klamath Dam Removal project in Siskiyou County. The removal of dams along the Klamath River in Siskiyou County, Northern California was sold as necessary to save salmon – specifically, “to restore habitat for endangered fish.” The dams are part of the Klamath project, a series of seven dams built in the 1910’s and 1920’s in the Klamath Basin to bring electricity and agricultural water mitigation for Southern Oregon and Northern California,...

A well-funded environmentalist group played a key role in the push to remove dams in the Pacific Northwest’s Klamath River ahead of premature deaths of thousands of salmon. American Rivers — an organization that has received millions of dollars from left-of-center environmentalist grantmaking organizations in recent years — was “the orchestrator of the Klamath dams removal project,” according to Siskiyou News, a local outlet in Northern California. The drawdowns of several reservoirs pursuant to the scheduled removal of four dams in the river preceded the deaths of “hundreds of thousands” of young salmon in the waterway, according to Oregon Public...

Let’s face facts; some people are getting richer off the removal of the Klamath River dams. Glen Spain member [formerly] of Klamath River Renewal Corp. ‘KRRC’ board and fisherman’s advocate said “Economics Not Salmon Is the Reason PacifiCorp is Removing the Dams” It is now estimated by some experts that the total direct cost for the Klamath River dam removal project, will reach $800-million dollars, not the $450-million cost estimate projected over tens years ago. And then we have the costs related to the liabilities that are already arising from what is seen by many as an ill-fated project. According...

Immigration was already bound to be a pivotal issue in this year’s elections. The standoff between Texas and the federal government, however, emphasizes just how egregious the problem has become—and highlights an especially glaring vulnerability for President Biden in November. Here’s a recap of the escalating standoff. Last week, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the Supreme Court’s liberal minority in a 5-4 ruling that allows U.S. Border Patrol agents to dismantle razor wire along the river in Eagle Pass, Texas, which the state had built to prevent illegal border crossings. The federal government claimed that...

The surprise victory in Louisiana’s open gubernatorial primary for Governor-Elect Jeff Landry (R-LA) on Saturday is an encouraging sign for Republicans heading into the 2024 elections, GOP insiders tell Breitbart News. Landry, who is currently the Bayou State’s attorney general and had the endorsement of former President Donald Trump, won the open primary with a nearly 52 percent majority on Saturday night. In other words, he won the governorship outright without having to face another rival in a November runoff.

In the course of almost four years, and really dating back a decade and a half, I’ve managed to read most of the writings of the intellectuals, titans of industry, and government officials who constructed the strange reality of 2020 and after. They wanted to conduct a science experiment on the human population. Because infectious disease knows no borders, they knew for sure it would have to be a global one. They had every detail worked out in their models. They knew how far apart people would need to stand. They knew that the best way to stop any common...

Colonel Douglas Macgregor Straight Calls - Analysis of breaking news and in-depth discussion of current geopolitical events in the United States of America and the world.

Experts have warned UK pet owners about the potential consequences of a deadly coronavirus outbreak in Cyprus that has killed 300,000 cats. It is a result of the feline infectious peritonitis (FIP) virus that they caught on the island since January, according to Dinos Ayiomamitis, head of Cats PAWS Cyprus. The main worry for British owners is the "long history" between Cyprus and ex-pats travelling to and from the island, with many people rehoming cats to the UK. But what is FIP and why have so many cats died? Coronavirus killing felines on 'cat island' Cyprus. "We have lost 300,000...

Researchers can’t tell you if coffee, salt, or alcohol are good or bad for you, but a climate scientist can tell you the exact date on which the world is going to end, despite not even having the ability to do comparative experiments or even much useful observational analysis.A climate scientist can tell you the exact temperature on a date in 1066 AD and draw a hockey stick showing the apocalypse occurring at 12:01 A.M. on February 2nd, 2032, but a scientist studying Vitamin C intake can’t tell you whether it can really make a cold go away a day...

ROME — U.N. General Secretary António Guterres warned Thursday that the world is headed for a “global catastrophe” thanks to manmade climate change. “Droughts, floods, storms, and wildfires are devastating lives and livelihoods across the globe,” declared the U.N. chief, adopting some of his most alarmist rhetoric to date. “Loss and damage from the climate emergency is getting worse by the day.” In a video circulating on social media, Guterres lamented that “global and national climate commitments are falling pitifully short” while asserting that the “window to limit global temperature rise to 1.5° is closing fast.”

When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir? – JM Keynes Climate Policy is in crisis. This month, the G20 Climate Conference in Bali collapsed in confusion – preceded by the flops of both COP26 in Glasgow and COP25 in Madrid. Three decades of climate talks (52 weeks of Conferencing) have failed dismally – and the global objective of stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions is no nearer being attained than it was at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. The initial hopes engendered by the tepid Paris Agreement of 2015 (Paris15) have been dashed. No...

Lawmakers are under pressure to avert a rail worker strike as soon as this week that would batter the nation’s economy just before November’s midterm elections. Republican senators introduced a resolution to impose a new contract if negotiations between railroads and unions collapse, while Democrats say they would pass legislation to block a rail shutdown if necessary. More than 115,000 rail workers will be legally allowed to strike on Friday. The cooling-off period expires 30 days after the White House-appointed Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) released contract recommendations that call for 24 percent raises, back pay and cash bonuses. The two...

For its many flaws, the world of cryptocurrency has bequeathed to the English language a vivid new verb: rug-pulling. As its idiom-derived name suggests, rug-pulling is when a crypto developer hypes up a new coin or new project, gets ordinary people to invest in it, and then - all at once - shuts it down in such a way that they take all of their investors’ cash with them. It is a spectacular act of bad faith, a breach of trust so severe that it casts doubt on the entire cryptocurrency community, so-called. Yesterday, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia...

The Chernobyl accident in 1986 was the result of a flawed reactor design that was operated with inadequately trained personnel. The resulting steam explosion and fires released at least 5% of the radioactive reactor core into the environment, with the deposition of radioactive materials in many parts of Europe. Two Chernobyl plant workers died due to the explosion on the night of the accident, and a further 28 people died within a few weeks as a result of acute radiation syndrome. The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation has concluded that, apart from some 5000 thyroid...

The first significant lake-effect snow of the season dropped nearly a foot of snow near the shores of the Great Lakes Tuesday into Wednesday. The snowfall was enough to transform parts of Michigan's Lower Peninsula into a winter wonderland and break into the record books at one weather station in Michigan. Snow totals topped 11 inches in northern parts of northern Michigan. Gaylord, Michigan, picked up 11.7 inches of snow on Tuesday, which set a record for the heaviest snowfall in a calendar day in November. That amount also ranked as the sixth highest single-day snowfall in any month. Records...

No matter how the Evergrande drama plays out – whether it culminates with an uncontrolled, chaotic default and/or distressed asset sale liquidation, a controlled restructuring where bondholders get some compensation, or with Beijing blinking and bailing out the core pillar of China’s housing market – remember that Evergrande is just a symptom of the trends that have whipsawed China’s property market in the past year, which has seen significant contraction as a result of Beijing policies seeking to tighten financial conditions as part of Xi’s new “common prosperity” drive which among other things, seeks to make housing much more affordable...

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — U.S. State Department urges U.S. citizens to leave area of Kabul airport immediately, citing specific, credible threat.