Free Republic

The CO2 red line for plant death on Earth is around 150 ppm...During the last Glacial Maximum (20,000 years ago) CO2 was 180 ppm...The optimum CO2 level for plants is around 1,000 ppm...CO2 today is 422 ppm...

It looked like the Sun was heading toward a historic lull in activity. That trend flipped in 2008, according to new research. The Sun has become increasingly active since 2008, a new NASA study shows. Solar activity is known to fluctuate in cycles of 11 years, but there are longer-term variations that can last decades. Case in point: Since the 1980s, the amount of solar activity had been steadily decreasing all the way up to 2008, when solar activity was the weakest on record. At that point, scientists expected the Sun to be entering a period of historically low activity....

Turns out, as much money as those Biden bozos blew through, prepaying for electric buses up front that were never and will never now be delivered?EPA head Lee Zeldin says the Biden administraiton sent $160 million dollars to a Canadian electric vehicles company.... which then pocketed the money, didn’t send the school buses promised and then declared bankruptcy!“There was $160 million that went to a Canadian electric… pic.twitter.com/hANBqhFPfm— Mike Netter (@nettermike) August 16, 2025...“There was $160 million that went to a Canadian electric vehicle bus manufacturer. The Biden administration sent all of the money — They gave all the money...

The US power grid is under significant stress due to rapidly increasing electricity demand from AI data centers and electric vehicles, coupled with the retirement of traditional power plants.The grid faces mounting vulnerabilities from extreme weather events, cybersecurity threats, and physical sabotage, while policy gridlock and infrastructure delays hinder necessary upgrades.Despite challenges, the situation presents investment opportunities in grid modernization, diversified generation, and solutions for energy storage and load management.America’s power grid is straining under the weight of a fast-changing energy landscape. Beyond the usual summer hum of air conditioners, power demand is surging from electric vehicle chargers and sprawling...

As I have written many times, with New York’s fantasy “net zero” energy plans, it is not a question of whether they will fail, but only when and how. The Democrats, who dominate state politics, and their environmentalist allies, are firmly committed to the impossible. Thus, they are caught in a trap of their own making, and from which there is no good escape. The fact that they are caught in this trap is obvious to anyone with basic arithmetic skills, but almost all of our politicians and environmentalists lack those. However, a small handful of them are starting to...

India's oil demand is likely to outpace China's this year, according to Trafigura Group. The prediction was made by Chief Economist Saad Rahim during an event hosted by S&P Global Commodity Insights on Monday. He said that "this year, Indian demand is set to outstrip China's if you exclude strategic stockpiling." Market dynamics Role in global demand growth India and China, the region's top crude importers, are major contributors to demand growth. The two countries are at the center of how producers and traders adapt to economic changes and the rise of renewable energy. India's growth is fueled by urbanization...

It is something like central heating for north-west Europe: the North Atlantic circulation ensures that the winters are milder than elsewhere in northern latitudes. It brings warm water from the tropics up to the North Atlantic in the upper ocean layers. The warm surface of the sea in front of the European coasts heats up the atmosphere. This mild air flows to us and ensures a temperate climate. However, there are increasing indications that climate change is turning this heating off slowly but irrevocably. The Atlantic current is one of the tipping points of the global climate system - among...

President Trump is making many valid changes. A major one is doing away with politically deceptive Department of Education (which Reagan wanted to do), thus returning our children’s learning back to the states and counties – where it belongs. The President has also eliminated the Evolution centric UNESCO education. Now, if we are going to have any hope of finishing the job, of removing the Marxist dumbing-down of our children those states and counties should, next destroy every textbook on every subject and start again from scratch. If (most likely the case) they do not, Trump’s action will be worthless...

A groundbreaking study reveals that human activities have pushed Earth's biosphere to a critical tipping point, threatening the planet's ability to sustain life and prompting urgent calls for immediate global action. The integrity of Earth’s biosphere is under unprecedented threat, according to a recent study that sheds light on the planet’s declining ability to maintain ecological balance. Conducted by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and BOKU University in Vienna, the research highlights critical challenges facing the plant kingdom’s capacity to regulate essential ecosystem functions. The study, published in the journal One Earth, examines the energy flows derived...

European leaders are not driving a bandwagon onto which the world is jumping, but rather a hearse toward self-destruction...Fossil fuels - coal, oil and natural gas - accounted for 87% of the world's energy in 2024...despite more than $5 trillion being spent on wind and solar in the last 20 years.

During Wednesday’s Democratic presidential debate, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) stated that scientists are saying that “if we don’t get our act together within the next eight or nine years,” major cities will go underwater because of climate change. Sanders said, “We don’t have decades. What the scientists are telling us, if we don’t get our act together within the next eight or nine years, we’re talking about cities all over the world, major cities going underwater. We’re talking about increased drought. We’re talking about increased extreme weather disturbances. The United Nations is telling us that in...

Wilmington, Ohio – Spotty morning showers will give way to a dramatic shift in Ohio’s weather pattern, with fall-like conditions expected to settle across the state beginning Sunday. A strong push of cooler and drier air will bring a noticeable drop in temperatures through the final week of August. According to the National Weather Service in Wilmington, outlooks from the Climate Prediction Center show a high probability for below-normal temperatures across Ohio from August 25 through early September. The shift will be most pronounced Sunday as a reinforcing cold front ushers in the cooler air mass.

Record heat waves, blazing wildfires and oppressive humidity are transforming the world’s tourism industry as holidaymakers struggle to deal with the havoc wrought by climate change. That’s seen a growing number look beyond traditional hotspots like Greece and Portugal in favour of ‘coolcations’ – visiting parts of the world that offer milder climes. Already, nearly half of Virtuoso’s luxury travel advisers say their clients are altering plans due to climate change. Heat waves in Europe saw tourist sites including the Acropolis in Athens and the Eiffel Tower in Paris shut this summer, and the region is tipped to see a...

It was back in 2021 that I started to ask which country or U.S. state would be the first to hit the “Green Energy Wall.” It has long been obvious to anyone who looks at the situation that the fantasy of a fully de-carbonized energy system, with everything run on electricity generated by intermittent wind and sun, could never happen. But what would be the limiting condition that would put a stop to the madness? Would it be confronting the absurd costs of grid-scale battery storage? Or perhaps a string of blackouts caused by insufficient backup of the wind and...

Work has begun to lay the underwater cable for the first electricity interconnector between Ireland and mainland Europe. It marks a major milestone in the €1.6 billion ($1.9 billion) Celtic Interconnector project, which will link the electricity grids of Ireland and France to ensure security of power supply. A specialist marine vessel Calypso, from Norway, has begun cable-laying along an 84-km (52-mile) section of the route. Once fully installed, the entire 575-km (357-mile) interconnector will run from east Cork to the northwest of Brittany. It will allow for the exchange of 700 MW of electricity, enough to power some 450,000...

Three Canadian provinces have outlawed woodland access due to concerns over wildfire risk and are now threatening massive fines or jail for Canadians who violate the lockdown and who go out into nature. The restrictions in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland are prompting calls of warning as well as acts of civil disobedience from Canadians who view the bans as a tyrannical attempt to restrict the movements of the populace, using climate change as justification. The region’s extended drought and continuing hot, dry weather are being blamed on climate change and the restrictions are evoking a strong reaction among...

The U.S. military and Coast Guard are monitoring the simultaneous appearance of five Chinese icebreaking vessels in the Arctic region near Alaska. That unprecedented presence represents two and a half times the number of icebreakers currently capable of being operated in the entire Arctic region by the U.S. Coast Guard. Another is scheduled to be commissioned on Sunday and plans are underway to build dozens more. The Chinese icebreakers, which include a number of research-focused types, are being monitored by North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), a NORTHCOM spokesperson told The War Zone Thursday evening....

When my friend Rebecca in Highland Park, NJ, opened her PSE&G gas and electric bill last month, she almost fell out of her seat: It had tripled. It’s now costing her more than $1,000 a month to keep her modest home running. “It’s been creeping up for months, in spite of the fact that nothing about our house has changed,” she told me. “In years past, it was averaging about $300 a month.” “I don’t know how we’re expected to absorb these new bills,” she posted on Facebook. Her neighbor Felix Urman wondered the same as he ticked off his...

Ireland’s 40-year-long era of burning coal — the dirtiest fossil fuel imaginable — to generate electricity came to an end in June. That was when ESB announced it had ceased burning coal at its Moneypoint power station in County Clare, six months ahead of schedule. Throughout those 40 years, the coal was transferred on noisy conveyer belts through what must surely have been the longest, ugliest, sequence of brown tunnels in the country. They ran from the jetty at Moneypoint, where the coal ships pulled up, to a huge coal storage yard and then right into the powerplant and furnaces...

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, along with 22 other AGs, sent a letter demanding answers from the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) over its Financial Institutions Net-Zero Standard. The letter, addressed to SBTi CEO, David Kennedy, demands documents on member commitments, funding sources, and insurer actions tied to the Financial Institutions Net-Zero Standard, which may violate the law, and have harmed consumers. Bird posted on social media: “Making net-zero a goal actively harms Americans, creates risk for energy independence, and increases the cost of safe, healthy, nutritious food." ... Specifically, the AGs argue that SBTi's Standards are unlawful and raise...