Free Republic

In his first address to Congress, President Donald Trump rattled off a litany of supposed threats to the United States – immigrants, Muslims and regulations among them. But on climate change – the greatest real existential threat facing humanity – Trump didn't say a single word. In short, denying the reality of climate change is now the official policy of the United States government. If there was ever any doubt, Trump's Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt made it explicit when he told reporters recently that he "would not agree" that carbon emissions are "a primary contributor to the global...

<p>Unusual weather in the Southwest could cause a nationwide salad shortage later this month. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg (lettuce): Scientists say the weird weather is probably caused by climate change - which means these sorts of problems are likely to happen again.</p>

February’s quarterly auction of carbon dioxide emission allowances under California’s cap and trade program was another financial washout for the state. Results for last week’s auction were posted Wednesday morning, revealing that just 16.5 percent of the 74.8 million metric tons of emission allowances were sold at the floor price of $13.57 per ton. The paltry auction revenues will likely stall Gov. Jerry Brown’s 2017-18 budget plan to spend $2.2 billion on a variety of climate-related programs and projects, including $800 million on his bullet train project.

Californians are in shock that after five years of too little water, the problem now is too much. Some are calling this a wake-up call for California as climate change could bring similar damage. But this shouldn't be a surprise, says Noah Diffenbaugh, a climate scientist at Stanford University. "It's actually exactly what has been predicted by scientists for at least 30 years," he says. He says California is likely to see more extreme flooding with climate change. And the reason is pretty simple. If it's warmer, storms produce more rain instead of snow. But that's not what California's water...

Climate change is taking an obvious physical toll on earth: from depleted farmland to the rise of toxic pollution to the degradation of long-stable ecosystems to the disappearance of biodiversity and endangered species. But looking beyond the physical, experts are also trying to sound the alarm about the quieter, more insidious effects of climate change: namely, that global warming is threatening the emotional health of humans worldwide. “We see a sense of despair that sets in as inevitably Mother Nature, who we think of as our nurturing force, tells us we’re not going to be able to survive the conditions...

BERKELEY — UC Berkeley will host a “guerrilla archiving” event Saturday to save federal data in the public interest from a presidential administration that has expressed scorn for science and claims climate change is a hoax. The event, run by a group of Bay Area information technology experts, scientists, researchers and activists, is co-sponsored by UC Santa Cruz’ Science and Justice Center. DataRescue events feature the downloading of data, from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) and Department of Energy (DOE), related to climate change, alternative energy, and toxic...

Soak up these rainy days. They are not going to last forever. Summer will be here before you know it, and if recent trends continue, it will likely be a hot one. Globally, 2016 was the warmest year on record. Here in Los Angeles, temperature records were shattered last summer during scorching heat waves that saw highs of 100 degrees for five days straight. If you think the city is too hot, you’ve got company at City Hall. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti agrees, and he wants to do something about it. As part of a sweeping plan to help...

If there were any lingering doubts over Donald Trump’s enthusiasm for shoving the US back into the smoggy embrace of fossil fuels, his decision to revive the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines banishes them utterly. Trump has thrown down the most provocative gauntlet possible to the environmental movement, which now sees its worst fears crystalizing within a few days of the inauguration. This will be an aggressively pro-oil and gas administration, even if that means boiling the planet. “Donald Trump has been in office for four days and he’s already proving to be the dangerous threat to our climate...

The Mainstream Media's reporting of Trump's interview with the New York Times says in that meeting he changed his mind on climate change. And if you read the transcripts, he didn't. If you read the transcripts, he spoke like Trump always speaks. He didn't commit himself to anything, and some of his answers were innocuous. Trump actually cited ClimateGate, restated skepticism of ‘Global Warming’.

GENEVA - The U.N. weather agency is warning of "fundamental change" afoot in the global climate and continued warming, accompanied recently by unusually high rainfall in parts of the US and Europe. The World Meteorological Organization was pointing Tuesday to data released by NASA a day earlier showing that this May was the hottest on record, and the Northern Hemisphere spring has been the hottest spring ever.

The Paris floods, that saw extreme rainfall swell the river Seine to its highest level in decades, were made almost twice as likely because of the manmade emissions driving global warming, scientists have found. As artworks in the Louvre were moved to safety and Paris's cobbled walkways were submerged, the French president, Francois Hollande, blamed the floods on climate change. Now a preliminary analysis by a group of scientists, including the Dutch weather agency and the University of Oxford, has concluded the risk of the flooding event in Paris was almost doubled - multiplied by a factor of 1.8 -...

Currently, about 40% of Americans support Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, and about 40% of Americans are not worried about global warming. While short of a majority, this is a substantial fraction of the American public failing to grasp the risks associated with a Donald Trump presidency and potentially catastrophic climate change impacts. The threat of catastrophic climate change isn't as tangible as a burning house, car accident, or lung cancer. Americans tend to view climate threats as distant in both time and space. We can only hope that the fraction of Americans failing to grasp the immense...

Former GE CEO Jack Welch said Thursday the Obama administration's heavy focus on combating climate change is "radical behavior" that's holding back the economy. "You get a reduced military," Welch said. "You get an economy that won't move. You get ozone regs that are wacky."

The devastating rise in Alaska's wildfires is making global warming even worse than scientists expected, US government researchers said on Wednesday. The sharp spike in Alaska's wildfires, where more than 5 million acres burned last year, are destroying a main buffer against climate change: the carbon-rich boreal forests, tundra and permafrost that have served as an enormous carbon sink. Northern wildfires must now be recognised as a significant driver of climate change - and not just a side-effect, according to the report from the US Geological Survey. The USGS warned last year that Alaska could lose about a quarter of...

There's no putting a chill on the worldwide air conditioning boom that's expected to heat up to historic levels over the next decade. Nations with emerging economies and spiking populations - including India, Indonesia and Brazil - are seeing air conditioner sales grow 10 to 15 percent a year. That means the world's supply of A/C units could nearly double from about 900,000 million in 2015 to roughly 1.6 million by 2030, according to a recent Berkeley National Laboratory study. So instead of simply trying to shut off the inexorable growth, scientists are working to find fresh energy-efficient technologies that...

The latest auction in California's cap-and-trade market for greenhouse gases fell sharply below expectations, as buyers purchased just 2% of the carbon credits whose sale funds a variety of state programs -- notably, the proposed high-speed rail project. The quarterly auction, conducted May 18 and announced Wednesday, will provide just $10 million for state programs, including $2.5 million for the bullet train. The rail authority had been expecting about $150 million. Whatever prompted the lack of buyers, the auction is a stark example of the uncertainty and risk of relying on actively-traded carbon credits to build the bullet train. The...

Study forecasts global temperature increases of up to 9.5 degrees C. The unmitigated burning of Earth's remaining fossil fuels would cause global warming on a scale bigger than previously anticipated, according to a new study out of the University of Victoria. Katarzyna Tokarska, a PhD student at the university, is the lead author of a new paper titled "The climate response to five trillion tonnes of carbon". Previous modelling, including those used by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, use projections that assume just two trillion tonnes of carbon would be released.

Donald Trump has said he doesn't believe in man-made climate change and has called global warming a "hoax," but he's trying to protect a golf course he owns on the coast of Ireland from its effects. The presumptive GOP nominee applied for a permit to build a seawall next to Trump International Golf Links & Hotel Ireland in County Clare to prevent erosion, according to Politico. His application included an environmental impact statement that explicitly mentions "global warming and its effects." According to Politico's report, that statement says that rising sea levels in that region could accelerate erosion. The statement...

Donald Trump will have a climate plan and it will be ugly. For now, the Republican frontrunner is pedaling the kind of denialism his party loves, having called global warming everything from a "hoax" to a "con job" to a Chinese plot. But an interview with his energy adviser hinted that Trump might endeavor to Make Atmospheric Carbon Levels Great Again. "My advice would be, while I'm a skeptic as well", Trump energy honcho Kevin Cramer [said], "he is a product of political populism, and political populism believes that there needs [to be] some addressing of climate change". Cramer has...

The dodgy scientists who wrote to resident Obama and Attorney General Loretta Lynch demanding that RICO laws be used to prosecute climate skeptics just got even more badly screwed. Already one of them — George Mason University professor Jagadish Shukla — is under Congressional investigation for what has been described as the “largest science scandal in US history.” Now the background to their footling conspiracy has been exposed thanks to a FOIA request by the Competitive Enterprise Institute which has forced them to release their private letters and emails. Like Climategate, it makes for some fascinating reading, mainly because —...