Free Republic

Going a bit farther. At the Federalist this week, I wrote about the truly amazing debate between the top candidates in CA-11, competing to see who will replace Boxwine Pelosi: “The California Primary Election Season Is Screaming A Warning For The Nation.” And I said that “if you have a couple of hours to clearly understand the dark future of the Democrat Party, this is it.” It really is, if you feel like torturing your brain for two hours. But, excerpts follow the big video, I think I can give you the whole flavor in just a couple of minutes....

A panel of judges handed a setback this month to New Mexico auto dealers attempting to derail mandates requiring manufacturers to deliver more electric vehicles to the state. The ruling by a three-judge panel of the New Mexico Court of Appeals means that the state remains on track to steadily increase the share of zero- and low-emission vehicles in new car showrooms between now and 2032. For vehicle year 2027, which starts this year, the state mandate requires that electric vehicles comprise 43% of new passenger cars and light-duty trucks delivered to New Mexico. That requirement is set to increase...

Europe is the fastest-warming continent on Earth, the European State of the Climate Report for 2025 has found. From the Mediterranean to the Arctic Circle, its climate is shifting in ways that are no longer subtle, no longer gradual, and no longer distant. The consequences are cascading across Europe’s environment, economy, and ecosystems. With hotter air, warmer seas, shrinking ice, drying soils, and stressed ecosystems, the warning signals are screaming from every part of the climate system. Europe has been warming at a rate of 0.56°C per decade throughout the past 30 years. This is more than twice as fast...

In the middle of the Antarctic winter, during months of darkness when temperatures often dip below −30°C, the continent warmed dramatically. In July and August 2024, temperatures in parts of East Antarctica rose by up to 28°C above average and stayed high for more than two weeks. To put that in perspective, a similar anomaly in the UK would push January temperatures into the mid-30°Cs. In a recent study, colleagues and I show the Antarctica heatwave was not simply unusual weather. It was a rare atmospheric disturbance, amplified by human-caused climate change, offering a glimpse of what could become more...

I spent the past couple of days attending the International Conference on Climate Change, put on by the Heartland Institute in Washington. There was a good deal of material that will be of interest to readers. A major issue addressed by multiple presenters goes under the heading “What is the proof?”, and in particular what is the proof that there is some kind of climate “crisis” coming our way. You will not be surprised to learn that for most every claim of the climate cabal, the proof is lacking. The most interesting presentation on this subject came from John Clauser....

It’s the end of the world as we know it — a lot sooner than we think. A team of researchers have drastically scaled back the going estimate of how long it will be until the universe ceases to exist. Previously, scientists believed it would be 10¹¹⁰⁰ years until the very last objects in the cosmos would disappear forever — that’s a 1 followed by 1,100 zeroes, in layman’s terms. But a new study published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics by a trio of researchers at Radboud University in the Netherlands posits the real figure as closer...

As Australia wakes up to the Iran War reality we still need fossil fuel, King Charles chooses now to push his climate obsession. The letter from King Charles; ... Bad timing Charlie. Greens have been noticeably pulling back their usual Net Zero rhetoric in the last few weeks, in the face of Aussie fury at wholly inadequate preparation for Iran war fuel shortages. People are asking questions like whether political Net Zero obsession led to our refineries being closed, forcing our green Prime Minister to try to defend his non-existent record of keeping refineries open. The obvious question, will the...

In response to the intensifying European energy crisis, the green lobby in Brussels and Berlin is accelerating the pace of transformation. Pressure generates counterpressure. In response to the intensifying European energy crisis, the green lobby in Brussels and Berlin is accelerating the pace of transformation. Politics lacks the imagination for a real energy crisis scenario. Civil society submits, nearly paralyzed, to its fate. Anyone who expected that empty gas storage in Germany and the escalating energy crisis in Iran would silence the green lobby in the country must think again. The political representation and its media apparatus -- the extended...

They’re running up the bill. Bronx residents in state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie’s district decried spiking utility bills Monday — as the state Legislature pushes back on Gov. Kathy Hochul’s cost-saving bid to delay New York’s controversial climate law mandates. The complaints come as lawmakers, led by Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, are poised to split with Hochul over her push to delay the climate law, as well as to reform car insurance — two major sticking points in state budget talks. “Anything that you pay less is better for everybody,” said Francisco Perez, 36, a Baychester resident...

New data from drilling in the ice cores proves the exact opposite of what climate alarmists have been saying. There are many historical examples of scientific evidence being uncovered, but not fully recognized for its significance. Gregor Mendel published his work on inheritance in 1866, showing clear numerical patterns in how traits passed from one generation to the next. The paper largely sat unnoticed for decades before being rediscovered around 1900, when it became foundational to genetics. Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson detected persistent microwave noise in 1964, and initially treated it as an annoying background signal. It turned out...

If you don’t like fossil fuels — and who does? — our betters in academia and environmental NGOs have the perfect answer: we can just get our energy in the form of electricity from the wind and sun. The fuel is abundant and free for the taking. The New York Times has reported that the cost of electricity generated from wind and sun is now lower than the cost of generation from fossil fuel sources. And even as we save money on electricity, we’ll be saving the planet! All the sociology and gender studies majors agree that we have a...

As New York approaches the Green Energy Cliff, developments are starting to come more quickly. When last I addressed the subject on March 6, there had just been “leaked” a three-page memo from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to the Governor’s office, revealing that implementation of what New York calls its “cap and invest” program — actually, an artificial scarcity program intentionally designed to drive prices up and impoverish the people — would cost every New York household thousands of dollars in increased energy costs. (I put the word “leaked” in quotes because most knowledgeable...

Facts are a harsh mistress. And nobody seems more incapable of grasping facts than Democrats in general, and New York's Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul in particular. In her latest embarrassing slip-up, the climate law she supported, and the Empire States ever-more-onerous taxes are driving all the wealthy people, the people who start and run businesses and provide jobs, out of the state. Now, because of the green policies, utility rates are climbing, meaning that a big chunk of the rest of the residents of New York are looking to the exits as well. Now Governor Hochul wants to delay full...

Gov. Kathy Hochul is finally admitting that the “climate” law she’s long supported is toxic to New York’s economy and to “affordability” — but she only wants to delay the death sentence. We’ve warned for years that the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act is leading the state to disaster — and for no purpose except to honor the delusions of green extremists and further the political ambitions of first Gov. Andrew Cuomo and now Hochul. Neither one ever admitted the fundamental idiocy; even now, when she says “a climate policy that leaves working families behind is not a...

Kick up your recliner chairs because you’re not going to believe this one! TIME magazine is out with a new report prophesying that climate change threatens to make us all lazy slobs! “Scientists Warn of Health Risks As Climate Change Reduces Physical Activity,” read the knee-slapper headline from TIME reporter Simmone Shah. Shah waved around a new wacky study published in Lancet Global Health to foam at the mouth over how “rising global temperatures due to climate change could lead millions of people to be less physically active” and will supposedly lead to an increase of half a million deaths...

Lies, disinformation and fictional accounting are the order of the day as a desperate hard-Left UK government, aided by its pet Climate Change Committee, tries to keep its impossible Net Zero controlling agenda intact. The bedrock unproven science claims surround the suggestion that recent limited global warming presents an existential threat to the planet. Statistics are routinely tortured to produce claims of up to 1.7°C warming from the pre-industrial age, notable as reported in a recent silly ‘Trump’s brave new world’ article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Telegraph. In fact, temperatures have only risen by around 1.1°C over the last...

The Oscars 2026 might be over, but fans’ fury over “dirty” celebrities is just getting started. A picture showing trash, including discarded water bottles and snack packets, strewn across Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre has gone viral on social media — sparking backlash over the hypocrisy of the elite, who grandstand about the environment. “Aren’t some of them environmentalists?” one critic pointed out. “Where’s all that ‘protect the planet’ energy now?” “Save the mountains, keep them clean, blah blah blah … but look at the mess they leave,” another chimed in of the hypocrisy.

The Oscars 2026 might be over, but fans’ fury over “dirty” celebrities is just getting started. A picture showing trash, including discarded water bottles and snack packets, strewn across Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre has gone viral on social media — sparking backlash over the hypocrisy of the elite, who grandstand about the environment. “Aren’t some of them environmentalists?” one critic pointed out. “Where’s all that ‘protect the planet’ energy now?” “Save the mountains, keep them clean, blah blah blah … but look at the mess they leave,” another chimed in of the hypocrisy. “Nobody’s buying it anymore. As the saying goes:...

Much has been written recently about the death of expertise in America. On one subject after another, those claiming to be experts have proved to be completely wrong. Covid provided multiple examples: from the origins (did it come from a lab leak?), to the efficacy of vaccines, to the necessity of lockdowns and “social distancing.” Another famous example was the Hunter Biden laptop, stated by 50+ “experts” from the intelligence community to carry “the classic earmarks” of “Russian disinformation.” But has there been any area where self-proclaimed experts have more made fools of themselves than the area of “climate change”?...

A photo taken on October 25, 2025, shows the controlled demolition of the second of the cooling towers of the decommissioned nuclear power plant Gundremmingen in Gundremmingen, southern Germany. KARL-JOSEF HILDENBRAND / AFP. To simultaneously obliterate Germany’s nuclear sector and to cut off energy ties with Russia wasn’t simply foolish—it was self-sabotage of the highest and most unforgivable order. Europe is once again readying itself for the bitter pill of mass inflation. International energy markets are facing one-in-a-generation levels of disarray following the launch, by the United States and Israel, of Operation Epic Fury against Iran. At the time of...