Free Republic

World leaders must act as “ringmasters” to transition the global economy away from fossil fuels in order to combat the supposed impending doom of climate change, the United Nation’s top climate scientist has argued. Professor Jim Skea, who was recently installed as the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the top UN body on climate change science, said that political leaders need to act as the “ringmasters or ringmistresses” of ushering in the globalist green agenda and force people into shifting away from a fossil fuel-based economy. Speaking to London’s Evening Standard newspaper, Skea said that climate...

Talk about being sold a bill of duds. Michael Shellenberger (that wonderful, courageous man) had a series of tweets this afternoon and I could not believe my eyes. "People say solar panels don't produce carbon emissions, but they do. And now, a major new investigation by Environmental Progress, drawing on the research of @enricomariutti, finds that solar panels made in China produce at least 3x more carbon emissions than IPCC claims." The report from Environmental Progress points out a fatal flaw in the solar panel data all of this frenzied switch to renewables is based on: it’s either industry sourced,...

"Each mine usually consists of thirty-five to forty humongous 797 Caterpillar haul trucks along with hundreds of other large equipment," he writes. "Each 797 uses around half a million gallons of diesel a year. So, with an inventory of just thirty-five the haul trucks alone are using 17.5 million gallons of fuel a year for just one lithium site." A typical EV battery, Stein notes, weighs 1,000 pounds, contains 25 pounds of lithium, 60 pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds of cobalt, 200 pounds of copper and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel and plastic. Inside are over...

I read something very sad recently. It seems a 68-year-old climate-change activist in British Columbia has been under a doctor's care since 2017 with "eco-anxiety and biosphere-related depression" to the point where his condition has become "debilitating." He is now seeking a medically related death (assisted suicide) to stop the pain. Until this point, this man's request for assisted suicide had been denied because "his condition was not an 'acceptable, permissible malady.'" However, in March of 2023, someone whose only medical condition is mental illness will be eligible, so this man is reapplying. And see, this is what concerns me...

The Pacific Northwest was hit with a record-shattering heat wave in June, with temperatures over 35 degrees higher than normal in some places. On June 28, Portland, Ore., reached 116 degrees. Late last week the region suffered another blast of hot weather, with a high in Portland of 103 degrees. The New York Times didn’t hesitate to pronounce the region’s bouts of extreme weather proof that the climate wasn’t just changing, but catastrophically so. To make that claim, the Times relied on a “consortium of climate experts” that calls itself World Weather Attribution, a group organized not just to attribute...

There's nothing like a smarmy hypocrite getting exposed, and North Face, the virtue-signaling outdoor clothier, just got called out as an emperor with no clothes on, following its declaration of war on Big Oil. Here's the must-see smackdown video, done by a think tank and featuring a Big Oil employee, exposing the company in all its naked glory. North Face had declared war on Big Oil by sanctimoniously refusing to make custom jackets with their label on them for the employees of an oil firm that tried to give them some business. The oil and gas extractors wanted to give...

Happy Memorial Day weekend, everything is awful! That was the message of doom from CBS This Morning on Friday as the show’s hosts offered “dire” new warnings and that Earth is going to just get “worse and worse” as we spiral downward. Guest host Enrique Acevedo warned, “Our Eye on Earth coverage continues with a new warning about climate change that has potentially dire consequences.” Climate specialist Jeff Berardelli admitted that the “disturbing threshold” of a rise in 15. degrees Celsius was arbitrary. But he predicted doom: The intensity of these extreme weather events will pick up. We'll see compounded...

Tesla CEO Elon Musk — whose company makes electric cars and has a new solar roof panel division — reminded more than 30 state governors at the National Governors Association meeting this weekend exactly how much real-estate is needed to make sure America can run totally on solar energy. “If you wanted to power the entire United States with solar panels, it would take a fairly small corner of Nevada or Texas or Utah; you only need about 100 miles by 100 miles of solar panels to power the entire United States,” Musk said during his keynote conversation on Saturday...

Many oil companies succumb to the pressure from environmental activists and the media and join the fight against ‘climate change,’ or at least make motions to appear to do so. Not Exxon Mobil. In a previous column, I applauded CEO Rex Tillerson for refusing to climb on the climate change band wagon and for focusing on producing energy from fossil fuels—on which all of us depend—instead. Tillerson and Exxon have not lost their integrity: they are steadfastly holding on to the principles they know their existence and successful value creation depend on, such as the right to liberty, and more...

Sometimes the truth is much sweeter than the syrupy environmentalism of the national media. While hyping the alleged effects on climate change, NBC’s May 6 “Nightly News” tried to localize the impact by citing a different problem in each region. The broadcast played a clip of Burr Morse, a seventh-generation maple syrup producer from Montpelier, Vermont, stating that this season’s weather had been too warm. Contrary to this clip’s implications, Morse told the MRC’s Business and Media Institute that cold weather actually did more to harm this year’s maple syrup season.

In early 2013, the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) released their new figures for the “levelized cost” of new power plants. I just came across them, so I thought I’d pass them on. These are two years more recent than the same EIA cost estimates I discussed in 2011 here. Levelized cost is the average cost of power from a new generating plant over its entire lifetime of service. The use of levelized cost allows us to compare various energy sources on an even basis. Here are the levelized costs of power by fuel source, for plants with construction started...

Judge Confirms $600,000 Libel Award and Finds Fault with Environmentalists (Tucson) Judge Richard Fields entered formal judgment on March 2, 2005 against the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental activist corporation, and found that they must pay $600,000 in actual and punitive damages to Arizona rancher Jim Chilton and the Chilton Ranch and Cattle Company. The formal judgment confirmed a Tucson jury’s verdict, delivered on January 21, 2005, finding the Center for Biological Diversity guilty of making “false, unfair, libelous and defamatory statements” against Jim Chilton, a fifth generation Arizona rancher whose pioneering ancestors drove cattle into Arizona in the...