Free Republic

A new “grass to gas” agricultural biomethane plant is set to provide enough energy to heat two pharmaceutical manufacturing sites by the end of next year. The state-of-the-art plant is being launched by Carbon AMS in Duleek in County Meath today. The plant is a partnership between the anaerobic digestion company, local farmers and biopharmaceutical company Alexion, AstraZeneca Rare Disease. Carbon AMS is focused on the production of biomethane in Ireland by converting “grass to gas” through anaerobic digestion. When operational, the plant will cover 100% of the heating needs of Alexion’s two manufacturing sites in Dublin and Athlone by...

A major highlight of Thanksgiving is the menu, but the big meal can come with a lot of wasted food. Experts say a pinch of extra planning can ensure more gets eaten. Roughly 320 million pounds (145 million kilograms) of food will be wasted at Thanksgiving this year, according to ReFED, a nonprofit that tracks food waste. ReFED says that’s largely because people prepare more food than is needed for the meal and then don’t finish the leftovers. “That is essentially like five meals each for all of the food insecure people in the U.S.,” said Yvette Cabrera, food waste...

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — Pope Leo XIV on Monday urged countries at United Nations climate talks to take “concrete actions” to stop climate change that is threatening the planet, telling them humans are failing in their response to global warming and that God’s creation “is crying out in floods, droughts, storms and relentless heat.” In a video message played for religious leaders gathered in Belem, Leo said nations had made progress, “but not enough.” “One in three people live in great vulnerability because of these climate changes,” Leo said. “To them, climate change is not a distant threat, and to...

"Don't kill it, don't squish it, don't cut it up," Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller warned residents via NBC as a toxic flatworm spreads across North Texas. While this invasive species has been in the US for years, the state's fatally heavy rains, fueled by climate change, are enabling the hammerhead flatworm (Bipalium kewense) to thrive and spread. This brown and black-striped, flattened land planarian with a distinctive half-moon-shaped head can reach lengths of up to 40 cm (15.7 inches). Like many flatworm species, it can regenerate a whole new worm from slices of itself. Decapitating the worm will only...

Tens of thousands of trees in the heart of the Amazon rainforest have been wiped out to prepare for a global summit on saving the environment. Over the weekend, President Donald Trump slammed the creation of a multi-lane highway that tore straight through the ancient rainforest for this month’s COP30 climate summit. Approximately 100,000 trees across eight miles have been removed to ferry 50,000 world leaders, climate change activists, journalists, and other high-profile guests to the conference in Belém, Brazil. “They ripped the hell out of the Rainforest of Brazil to build a four-lane highway for Environmentalists to travel. It’s...

A senior EU official has said he expects the US "not to interfere" in global climate negotiations in Brazil next week, citing aggressive behavior at last month’s International Maritime Organization (IMO) meetings in London. At those talks, US officials reportedly intimidated diplomats from Africa and the so-called Small Island States, warning some they might lose US transit rights or face entry restrictions for themselves and their families if they did not help block the UN-backed Net Zero Framework for shipping. The official said they were unaware whether commission staff had been targeted directly. “We have no indication our colleagues were...

Officials have said the prospects of EU environment ministers agreeing ambitious targets to reduce carbon emissions by 2040 will go down to the wire when they gather for an emergency meeting in Brussels. Member states have been tasked with agreeing on a 2040 target at today’s meeting so that they could in turn agree on an interim target for 2035, which the EU would then bring to the United Nations COP30 summit in Brazil on Thursday. However, officials have said securing an agreement will be “challenging”. The European Commission had proposed a target of cutting carbon emissions by 90% by...

Why are people panicking about the weather? Climate doomer Bill Gates thinks everyone should just calm down. He believes “climate change” is a serious problem but it won’t be the end of humanity as we know it, a 17-page memo released Tuesday by the billionaire reveals. Gates now thinks scientific innovation will curb any threats — real and perceived — to the planet’s climate and it’s instead time for a “strategic pivot” away from focusing on limiting rising temperatures to fighting poverty and preventing disease. The 70-year-old said in the memo the world’s primary goal should now work to prevent...

The planet is grappling with a “new reality” as it reaches the first in a series of catastrophic and potentially irreversible climate tipping points: the widespread death of coral reefs, according to a landmark report produced by 160 scientists across the world. As humans burn fossil fuels and ratchet up temperatures, it’s already driving more severe heat waves, floods, droughts, and wildfires. But there are even bigger impacts on the horizon. Climate change may also be pushing Earth’s crucial systems — from the Amazon rainforest to polar ice sheets — so far out of balance they collapse, sending catastrophic ripples...

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday for their development of new molecular structures that can trap vast quantities of gas inside, laying the groundwork to potentially suck greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere or harvest moisture from desert environments.The chairperson of the committee that made the award compared the structures called metal-organic frameworks to the seemingly bottomless magical handbag carried by Hermione Granger in the “Harry Potter” series. Another example might be Mary Poppins’ enchanted carpet bag. These containers look small from the outside but are able to hold surprisingly large quantities within.The committee...

Terradot, a carbon removal company, is using “enhanced rock weathering” to sequester carbon by spreading crushed volcanic rock over farmland.STATE OF SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Across vast stretches of farmland in southern Brazil, researchers at a carbon removal company are attempting to accelerate a natural process that normally unfolds over thousands or millions of years. The company, Terradot, is spreading tons of volcanic rock crushed into a fine dust over land where soybeans, sugar cane and other crops are grown. As rain percolates through the soil, chemical reactions pull carbon from the air and convert it into bicarbonate ions that...

Inhalers that provide fast-acting treatment for people with certain respiratory conditions are contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, which can worsen both climate change and the conditions themselves, according to new research. In the study, published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers found inhalers approved for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, generated an estimated 24.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions in the United States from 2014 to 2024. This is equivalent to the emissions of about 530,000 gas-powered cars each year, according to the study. "Scaled across tens of millions of...

The European Union is poised to fully implement the world's first carbon border tax from Jan 1st...The EU is poised to implement the climate policy as part of an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote cleaner production processes outside the bloc.

No Republican is safe from CBS and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’s wrath, not even former President and quintessential moderate George H.W. Bush. According to Colbert and actor Jeremy Strong on Thursday, “we risk losing essentially everything” to climate change, and it is Bush’s fault. Colbert teed up Strong, “You have a documentary about our burning world.” An appreciative Strong took the opportunity to promote the project, “Yeah, I executive produced an incredible documentary called The White House Effect that is coming out on Netflix at the end of next month. It’s coming out on Netflix on October 31,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Record-breaking heat continues for parts of the desert Southwest into the weekend, with sweltering temperatures beginning to expand east into the Heartland.Extreme heat warnings remain in effect for parts of the desert Southwest -- including Palm Springs, California; Phoenix; and Tucson, Arizona.High temperatures are expected to reach well into the 100s and up to 115 in spots.

The Trump administration has announced a plan to scrap a landmark finding that greenhouse gases are harmful to the environment, severely curbing the federal government's ability to combat climate change. Known as the "Endangerment Finding", the 2009 order from then-President Barack Obama allowed the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to create rules to limit pollution by setting emissions standards. ... The Endangerment Finding stemmed from a 2007 Supreme Court case in which the court ruled that greenhouse gases are "air pollutants" - meaning that the EPA has the authority and responsibility to regulate them under the US Clean Air Act....