Free Republic

Washington, D.C. may have the highest number of certified green buildings in the country, but research by Environmental Policy Alliance suggests it might not be doing much good.The free-market group analyzed the first round of energy usage data released by city officials Friday and found that large, privately-owned buildings that received the green energy certification Leadership in Energy Design (LEED) actually use more energy than buildings that didn’t receive this green stamp of approval.LEED is the brainchild of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), a private environmental group.

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration is driving ahead with a dramatic reduction in sulfur in gasoline and tailpipe emissions, declaring that cleaner air will save thousands of lives per year at little cost to consumers. Public health groups and automakers cheered the new rules, finalized Monday by the Environmental Protection Agency, with some insisting they could prove to be President Barack Obama's signature environmental accomplishment in his second term. The oil and gas industry, meanwhile, panned the move, calling it gratuitous and accusing the government of grossly underestimating the increased cost at the pump. "The benefits far outweigh the costs," said EPA...

Will the Supreme Court permit EPA climate decisions to stand?If it does, the impacts on our lives, livelihoods, liberties and living standards will be enormous Guest opinion by Paul Driessen The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. Environmental Protection Agency. The case will determine how far EPA can extend its regulatory overreach, to control “climate changing” carbon dioxide from power plants and other facilities – by ignoring the Constitution’s “separation of powers” provisions, rewriting clear language in the Clean Air Act, and disregarding laws that require the agency to consider both the costs...

February 27, 2014 10:04 AM Climate Change Will Cause Rape and Murder and Assault and Robbery and Larceny and Make People Steal Your Car By Charles C. W. Cooke This, from Mother Jones, is what people who are losing the argument look like: Study: Global Warming Will Cause 180,000 More Rapes by 2099 Global warming isn’t just going to melt the Arctic and flood our cities—it’s also going to make Americans more likely to kill each other. That’s the conclusion of a controversial new study that uses historic crime and temperature data to show that hotter weather leads to more...

A co-founder of Greenpeace told lawmakers there is no evidence man is contributing to climate change, and said he left the group when it became more interested in politics than the environment. Patrick Moore, a Canadian ecologist and business consultant who was a member of Greenpeace from 1971-86, told members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee environmental groups like the one he helped establish use faulty computer models and scare tactics in promoting claims man-made gases are heating up the planet. “There is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are the dominant cause of...

There is no scientific evidence that human activity is causing the planet to warm, according to Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore, who testified in front of a Senate committee on Tuesday. Moore argued that the current argument that the burning of fossil fuels is driving global warming over the past century lacks scientific evidence. He added that the Earth is in an unusually cold period and some warming would be a good thing. “There is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are the dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 100...

How did global warming discussions end up hinging on what's happening with polar bears, unverifiable predictions of what will happen in a hundred years, and whether people are "climate deniers" or "global warming cultists?" If this is a scientific topic, why aren't we spending more time discussing the science involved? Why aren't we talking about the evidence and the actual data involved? Why aren't we looking at the predictions that were made and seeing if they match up to the results? If this is such an open and shut case, why are so many people who care about science skeptical?...

February 14, 2014, 06:39 am Obama to pitch $1B climate change 'resilience fund' By Laura Barron-Lopez President Obama will pitch a new $1 billion climate change resilience fund during a visit Friday to California. The fund, which would need to be approved by Congress, is intended to help communities dealing with negative weather that's the result of climate change. Obama is touting the fund during a trip to California, which has been devastated by a drought that is threatening the Central Valley's agriculture production and has led Gov. Jerry Brown (D) to call on Californians to conserve water. During a...

In the past few years we have seen a dramatic demonstration of the deadly effects of prolonged cold weather. From Chicago to China, Egypt to Argentina, India to the Antarctic, new low temperature and snowfall records have been set.This has led to severe hardship for millions — and increased death rates.The first half of this year’s Northern Hemisphere (NH) winter season was especially brutal. December 2013 and January 2014 were the third-coldest Decembers and Januaries in the past 30 years averaged over the contiguous 48 United States, with temperatures plummeting to −10°C in Atlanta and −26°C in Chicago. Residents...

President Barack Obama will ask Congress to set up a $1 billion “Climate Resilience Fund” in his proposed budget next month. Obama travels to Fresno, Calif., today to discuss the drought plaguing most of California and the Western U.S. and to announce new administration actions, including the proposed billion-dollar fund. According to the White House, the fund would go to research on the projected impacts of climate change, help communities prepare for climate change’s effects and fund “breakthrough technologies and resilient infrastructure.” […] As another snowstorm socks the East Coast, the coal industry has a message for the nation’s electricity...

The United Nations estimates it would cost $30 billion a year [1] to end world hunger. That sounds like a lot, but the world spent more than ten times that amount in 2012 on global warming mitigation, according to a recent Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) study [2]. And the U.N. says the world needs to spend even more on global warming mitigation. Much more.According to the Reuters analysis [3] of the Summary for Policymakers of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report, due to be released this April, the UN is calling on the world to...

CBS Blames Global Warming for Harsh Winter Weather By Kyle Drennen Created 02/13/2014 - 11:11am As a snow storm beared down on the east coast on Thursday, CBS This Morning sought to lay blame on global warming, with the headline on screen fretting: "Extreme Weather; Are These Kinds of Storms, Droughts Unprecedented?" Co-host Charlie Rose turned New York City College physics professor Michio Kaku and wondered: "What's causing all this?" [View video after the jump] Kaku proclaimed: "Well, the wacky weather could get even wackier. What we're seeing is that the jet stream and the polar vortex are becoming unstable....

John Podesta, the former Clinton Administration chief of staff who is spearheading President Barack Obama’s aggressive strategy of government-by-regulation, has also been helping United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon with an even more ambitious job: setting the stage to radically transform the world’s economic, environmental and social agenda.

I’ve always told you what global warming is really about. Expansion of government. It’s an excuse for government to “take action” on the premise that something is threatening our future and they and only they can do anything about it. This is the only reason liberals tout belief in global warming. It is merely a means to an end - the end being a new set of taxes and regulations that will expand government control over industry and over people’s day-to-day habits, and will empower bureaucrats to enforce these rules and make up new ones. And now, because we have...

Geneva (AFP) - Last year tied for the sixth-hottest on record, confirming that Earth's climate system is in the grip of warming that will affect generations to come, the UN's weather agency said Wednesday. "This is confirmation of the trend of global warming of the planet," World Meteorological Organization (WMO) chief Michel Jarraud told AFP. Last year equalled 2007 as the sixth-warmest year since reliable records began in 1850, with a global land and ocean surface temperature that was 0.5 degrees Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 1961-1990 average, the WMO said in a statement. Last year equalled 2007 as...

John Robson isn't a climate scientist, nor does he claim to be. But he's a very smart, reasonable guy. On Friday's Byline show ( see video at link ) he presented a layman's overview of the history of the Earth's climate in relation to CO2 and the chaotic nature of the climate system. John's main points were: (1) historically, temperature is completely uncorrelated with atmospheric CO2 levels (2) atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have been far above today's level for most of the planet's history (more than 20 times higher at one point) (3) today's CO2 concentrations are near historic lows...

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks as he unveils his plan on climate change June 25, 2013 at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. President Obama laid out his plan to diminish carbon pollution and prepare the country for the impacts of climate change. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) When President Obama leaves office three years from now, the major policy story of his second term — barring some kind of unforeseen invasion — is likely to be climate change. I made this argument at feature length last year, and the evidence continues to mount. Coral Davenport reports today about Secretary of...

The EPA’s highest-paid employee and a leading expert on climate change deserves to go to prison for at least 30 months for lying to his bosses and saying he was a CIA spy working in Pakistan so he could avoid doing his real job, say federal prosecutors. John C. Beale, who pled guilty in September to bilking the government out of nearly $1 million in salary and other benefits over a decade, will be sentenced in a Washington, D.C., federal court on Wednesday. In a newly filed sentencing memo, prosecutors said that his “historic” lies are “offensive” to those who...

Critics of those who claim that man-made global warming is a serious threat to the planet and settled science frequently point to the fickleness of scientists on the issue, noting that in the 60s and 70s scientists were warning of just the opposite. It now appears the critic’s claims may have merit as a new consensus is beginning to once again return to the global cooling model. Adherents of man-made global warming have supported the issue in a way akin to that of religious zealots, even to the point of attempting to cover up evidence that runs contrary to their...

News from Santa’s Grotto: Global warming hysterics at the BBC warned us in 2007 that by summer 2013, the Arctic would be ice-free. As with so many other doomsday predictions by warmists, the results turn out to be quite the opposite. Meanwhile, down the other end at Santa’s summer vacation condo: Antarctic sea ice has grown to a record large extent for a second straight year, baffling scientists seeking to understand why this ice is expanding rather than shrinking in a warming world. Antarctic ice is now at a 35-year high. But scientists are “baffled” by the planet’s stubborn refusal...