Free Republic

Dr Anthony Fauci has said he would have supported more extreme measures to force Americans to be vaccinated against COVID-19 - describing President Joe Biden's plan as 'moderate'. Biden on Thursday announced that all companies employing more than 100 people must insist on either proof of vaccination or regular COVID tests. His policy was greeted with anger by many Republicans, who described it as heavy-handed and an infringement on their personal freedoms.

As 1968 began, Paul Ehrlich was an entomologist at Stanford University, known to his peers for his groundbreaking studies of the co-evolution of flowering plants and butterflies but almost unknown to the average person. That was about to change. In May, Ehrlich released a quickly written, cheaply bound paperback, The Population Bomb. Initially it was ignored. But over time Ehrlich’s tract would sell millions of copies and turn its author into a celebrity. It would become one of the most influential books of the 20th century—and one of the most heatedly attacked. The first sentence set the tone: “The battle...

A Cambridge academic has proposed a radical new way to solve climate change – letting humanity become extinct. Patricia MacCormack, a professor of continental philosophy at Anglia Ruskin University, has just released her new book The Ahuman Manifesto, which will officially be launched in Cambridge today (Wednesday, February 5). The book argues that due to the damage done to other living creatures on Earth, we should start gradually phasing out reproduction. But rather than offering a bleak look at the future of humanity, it has generated discussion due to its joyful and optimistic tone, as it sets out a positive...

In the 1973 movie “Soylent Green,” Earth is grossly overpopulated and broiled by global warming. “How can anything survive in a climate like this?” asks Thorn, a New York cop played by Charlton Heston. “A heatwave all year long. A greenhouse effect. Everything is burning up.” It’s a fable, not a forecast, but it gets some things disturbingly right. As for “burning up,” 2014-2018 were the five hottest years in observed weather history, and last July was the hottest month. In the last decade Greenland melting has doubled, Antarctic melting tripled, sea-level rise accelerated. Civilization won’t end tomorrow, but its...

An Etobicoke mother is upset that seven-and eight-year-old kids were shown a library presentation consisting of an emotional speech by child climate activist Greta Thunberg and a carbon clock predicting humans have eight years left to act before the point of no return for saving humanity from climate change. During the presentation at least one child shouted out something to the effect of “We’re all going to die!” or “I don’t want to die!” in response to a clock showing two scenarios of global temperatures rising above the point of no return, the direr one showing a clock ticking down...

Humans ruined everything. They bred too much and choked the life out of the land, air and sea. And so they must be vaporized by half, or attacked by towering monsters, or vanquished by irate dwellers from the oceans’ polluted depths. Barring that, they face hardscrabble, desperate lives on a once verdant Earth now consumed by ice or drought. That is how many recent superhero and sci-fi movies — among them the latest Avengers and Godzilla pictures as well as “Aquaman,” “Snowpiercer,” “Blade Runner 2049,” “Interstellar” and “Mad Max: Fury Road” — have invoked the climate crisis. They imagine postapocalyptic...

You are greeted at the airport by Mustang, by New Mexico artist Luis Jiménez, was one of the earliest public art commissions for Denver International Airport in 1993. Standing at 32 feet tall and weighing 9,000 pounds “Mustang” is a blue cast-fiberglass sculpture with red shining eyes. Jiménez died in 2006 while creating the sculpture when the head of it fell on him and severed an artery in his leg.3 The murals are fairly shocking. Here we have efugees living in a basement and the Lord of Death, brandishing an AK-47, killing the dove of peace. Gray waves pulse from...

Former NASA climate scientist James Hansen famously warned Congress almost 30 years ago to the day that human activities had put the world on the path to disaster, but two scientists now say the global warming “godfather’s” predictions were wrong. Cato Institute scientists Patrick Michaels and Ryan Maue compared Hansen’s temperature predictions to real-world observations and found his supposedly “highly unlikely” forecast with the least amount of warming was the most accurate. “Global surface temperature has not increased significantly since 2000, discounting the larger-than-usual El Niño of 2015-16,” Michaels and Maue wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “Assessed by...

We live in times where moral ambiguity can have devastating and even deadly consequences. When it comes to the reality of climate change, there is no ambiguity of the disastrous impact of human degradation of the planet. Just in the past two weeks, a Harvard University study estimates that over 4,500 lives were lost as a consequence of Hurricane Maria. Well over a decade following Hurricane Katrina, white New Orleans has recovered; black New Orleans has not. See a pattern here? The devastating effects of climate change are undeniable, as is this disproportionate impact on the most vulnerable communities throughout...

Even if humans could instantly turn off all emissions of greenhouse gases, Earth would continue to heat up about two more degrees Fahrenheit by the turn of the century, according to a sophisticated new analysis published today in the journal Nature Climate Change. The new assessment, co-authored by Pincus and Thorsten Mauritsen of the Max Wanker Institute for Meteorology, is unique in that it does not rely on computer model simulations, but rather on observations of the climate system to calculate Earth’s climate commitment. Their work accounts for the capacity of oceans to absorb carbon, detailed data on the planet’s...

Several media outlets are reporting the world’s largest repository of seeds, acting as a “backstop” against global catastrophe, has been compromised by global warming. Well, the news turned out to be little more than media hype. Here’s why. The left-leaning Guardian was the first to report the Global Seed Vault located in the Svalbard archipelago was “breached after global warming produced extraordinary temperatures over the winter, sending meltwater gushing into the entrance tunnel.” Vox and Wired echoed the Guardian’s reporting. Vox reported the Norwegian designers of the seed vault that was supposed to operate without human assistance for “eternity” had...

No more petrol or diesel cars, buses, or trucks will be sold anywhere in the world within eight years. The entire market for land transport will switch to electrification, leading to a collapse of oil prices and the demise of the petroleum industry as we have known it for a century. This is the futuristic forecast by Stanford University economist Tony Seba. His report, with the deceptively bland title Rethinking Transportation 2020-2030, has gone viral in green circles and is causing spasms of anxiety in the established industries. Seba’s premise is that people will stop driving altogether. They will switch...

[1]I’m not currently underwater and looking out the window, there doesn’t seem to be a massive wall of water headed this way, but if that changes, I’ll do my best to let you know [2]. On June 12, 2008, correspondent Bob Woodruff revealed that the program “puts participants in the future and asks them to report back about what it is like to live in this future world. The first stop is the year 2015.”As one expert warns that in 2015 the sea level will rise quickly, a visual shows New York City being engulfed by water. The video...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says the Group of Seven wealthy democracies have agreed that the world should phase out the use of fossil fuels by the end of this century. Merkel said Monday that the G-7 leaders committed themselves to the need to “decarbonize the global economy in the course of this century.” That is a technical term for ending the use of oil, gas and coal – but not nuclear power – and replacing them with alternative sources of energy such as wind and solar power.

The clock has run out on the climate change debate. It's time for predictions to give way to radical action.For most of my career, I've been a trend spotter, sometimes referred to as a futurist. I've divined trends for companies seeking to innovate; anticipated consumer appetites; and kept pioneering brands ahead of the pack. My work has been a passion, a calling, never just a job. So, it was fundamentally disorienting when I realized recently, I'd lost my feeling for the future.Gradually, over a period of I don't know how long -- months? -- my usually strong connection with intuition...

Dear EarthTalk: What is the best way to measure how close we are to the dreaded "point of no return" with climate change? In other words, when do we think we will have gone too far? — David Johnston, via EarthTalk.org While we may not yet have reached the “point of no return” - when no amount of cutbacks on greenhouse gas emissions will save us from potentially catastrophic global warming - climate scientists warn we may be getting awfully close. Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution a century ago, the average global temperature has risen some 1.6 degrees...

San Francisco activist Tom Steyer’s NextGen Climate Super PAC Monday announced the billionaire Democrat will wage a campaign to put Republicans on the “hot seat” about climate change and spend “what it takes” for an aggressive new high-tech “war room” to track — and attack — GOP candidates in 2016. The program, based at the NextGen headquarters in the Financial District — with satellite offices in Washington, D.C., and other cities — aims to make climate change a “top tier” issue next year. It will focus its firepower on turning environmental concerns into a “wedge issue,” especially with young voters,...

Last year, government scientists tell us, was the hottest year on record. This news is terribly — what's the word? — inconvenient. No, not for polar bears or drought victims or coastal dwellers. It's inconvenient for politicians across the country who, despite whatever data or overwhelming scientific consensus might be proffered, insist on denying global warming. In recent weeks, West Virginia has snatched national headlines for its attempts to doctor school science standards to discredit climate change. The sixth-grade science curriculum, for example, was amended so that, rather than having students "clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the...

THE North and South Poles are “not melting”, according to a leading global warming expert. In fact, the poles are “much more stable” than climate scientists once predicted and could even be much thicker than previously thought. For years, scientists have suggested that both poles are melting at an alarming rate because of warming temperatures – dangerously raising the Earth’s sea levels while threatening the homes of Arctic and Antarctic animals. But the uncertainty surrounding climate change and the polar ice caps reached a new level this month when research suggested the ice in the Antarctic is actually growing. And...

NEW YORK - Over three hundred thousand activists walked through Manhattan on Sunday, warning that climate change is destroying the Earth - in stride with demonstrators around the world who urged policymakers to take quick action. Starting along Central Park West, most came on foot, others with bicycles and walkers, and some even in wheelchairs. Many wore costumes and marched to drumbeats. One woman played the accordion. But their message was not entertaining: "We're going to lose our planet in the next generation if things continue this way," said Bert Garskof, 81, as a family member pushed his wheelchair through...