Free Republic

There are wind farms being put up all over the place these days, including in many rural areas of the United States. But the offshore wind farms that have been constructed in the North Sea by various European power companies have created a forest of towers rising up over the waves. But that’s not a problem, right? After all, this is the “clean energy” we were all promised and we’re saving the planet so everyone can feel better about themselves. The Biden administration recently announced plans to accelerate offshore wind farm construction in the name of “environmental justice, biodiversity, and...

Finally, some good news.In very, very good news for seahorses, Sydney Harbour, and Sydneysiders, for the first time in recorded history, scientists have discovered an endangered seahorse species living quietly beneath the Opera House. In 2019, the Opera House installed a series of artificial modular reefs on the underside of their building, with scientists hoping to increase marine biodiversity across the entirety of Sydney Harbour. In early August, marine scientists inspected the living artificial reefs for the first time in a year, and happened across a pretty remarkable discovery: an endangered White’s Seahorse, a tiny species that generally lives closer...

Honolulu (HawaiiNewsNow) -- A Hawaii lab has detected a petroleum product in a water sample collected from the Pearl Harbor-Hickam system -- a worrisome finding that comes as the investigation into the source of the fuel-like odor and oily sheen from the water continues. It’s the first confirmation of what military households and other impacted residents have been reporting for days: That their water smells like fuel and has made them sick. But the results also raise more questions, including how much petroleum is present and what kind it is. Environmental Health Deputy Director Kathleen Ho stressed the results are...

The annual data on coral cover for the Great Barrier Reef, produced by the Australian Institute of Marine Science, was released on Monday showing the amount of coral on the reef is at record high levels. Record high, despite all the doom stories by our reef science and management institutions. Like all other data on the reef, this shows it is in robust health. For example, coral growth rates have, if anything, increased over the past 100 years, and measurements of farm pesticides reaching the reef show levels so low that they cannot be detected with the most ultra-sensitive equipment....

Pope Francis is considering adding ‘ecological sin’ to the official teachings of the Catholic Church. He said there are plans to update the Catechism of the Catholic Church to include environmental damages that risk “the common home” of humanity. The spiritual leader called on the global community to recognise ecocide as a “fifth category of crime against peace” and stressed corporations must not go unpunished if they cause harm to the planet. He said the term ‘ecocide’ covers “the massive contamination of air, land and water resources, the large-scale destruction of flora and fauna and any action capable of producing...

Trump was particularly agitated that the rest of the world, particularly developing countries such as China and India, had corralled Washington into the Paris Accord on climate change and put the onus on the US to clean up the planet while themsel... (This story originally appeared in The Times of India https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/donald-trump-raises-stink-claiming-garbage-from-india-reaches-los-angeles/articleshow/72043638.cms on Nov 13, 2019) WASHINGTON: As if its own woes with air pollution is not enough of a headache, New Delhi has to deal with another pointless stink bomb: US President Donald Trump claimed on Tuesday that garbage from India is floating all the way to Los Angeles....

Catholic bishops of California have released a major pastoral statement calling for statewide ecological conversion... ...call to action on how all residents of the state are able to live out particular “ecological vocations”... ...consider ways to divest from fossil fuels and to pursue more energy efficient practices...

AUSTIN, Texas— The Center for Biological Diversity and Save Our Springs Alliance today filed a notice of intent to sue the Texas Department of Transportation and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over an Austin highway construction project’s threats to the federally endangered Austin blind and Barton Springs salamanders. The conservation groups recently learned that the MoPac Intersections Project has exposed at least 21 underground caves, sink holes and other karst features that provide habitat for the endangered salamanders. There is a high risk that construction will pollute the two species’ habitat by introducing silt and pollutants to the subsurface. The...

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is weighing in on the proposed wall on the U.S. border with Mexico, claiming it would be “death-inducing” for a number of species. [Snip] PETA opposes a border wall because it spells certain death by starvation and thirst and the end of access to foraging and nesting ground—as well as blocking the migratory paths. [Snip] Even the conservative National Wildlife Federation called the wall "one of the biggest potential ecological disasters of our time." [Snip] "You think a bird's just going to fly over a wall, but that's not necessarily the case,"...

In this episode, we talk with Mark Musser who is the author of "Nazi Ecology." His work connects many aspects of our current ecological movements to the early German Green movement together with its surprising ties to National Socialism. He also outlines the various theoretical approaches that influenced ecology under National Socialism which persist throughout the environmental movement(s) even today ...

The nation's largest grocery chain will be plastic-bag free at all of its nearly 2,800 stores by 2025. Kroger Co., which orders about 6 billion bags each year, will begin phasing out their use immediately at one of its chains based in Seattle, a city that has been proactive on reducing plastic use. The company, based in Cincinnati, operates 2,779 stores in 35 states and the District of Columbia, serving almost 9 million people daily through two dozen different grocery chains. Kroger is seeking customer feedback and will be working with outside groups throughout the transition. It will begin phasing...

Full title: Researchers report that chemical weapons dumped at sea are corroding but have not yet released toxic contents KyleJuly 28, 2010DMZ Hawaii http://www.dmzhawaii.org/dmz-legacy-site-two/?p=7485  University of Hawai'i researchers have concluded a three year research project to determine whether chemical munitions dumped at sea off O'ahu pose a threat to the health of humans or the environment. Documents disclosed by the Army in 2007 reported that approximately 16,000 munitions containing 2,558 tons of chemical agents were dumped at three deep-water sites off Oahu.   The chemical agent included lewisite, mustard, cyanogen chloride and cyanide. According to the Honolulu Star Advertiser article: http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/breaking/99399389.html...

Finding a cheap and effective water purification process would have global implications. A research team from the University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering has developed a new cost-effective and compact technology that combines gel-polymer hybrid materials to improve the purification process for drinking water. The new materials possess both hydrophilic—an attraction to water—qualities and semiconducting, or solar-absorbing properties. This enables the hydrogel to produce clean, safe drinking water from virtually any source, whether it's from the oceans or contaminated supplies. “We have essentially rewritten the entire approach to conventional solar water evaporation,” Guihua Yu, associate professor of...

Scientists will fan out across a California desert valley this weekend to take an inventory of everything there that flies, hops, runs, swims or grows in the dirt. It's been 45 years since researchers last scoured Amargosa Valley near the northern edge of the Mojave Desert. That accounting of species led to federal protections within the remote region and new scientific understanding of its biodiversity. Over three days, experts in a variety of fields will once again tally birds, bats, toads, crickets, coyotes, lichen and native plants, said Sophie Parker, a senior scientist with the Nature Conservancy.

It’s the grand, exotic trees that especially call to Julianne Skai Arbor — the ones with gnarled outgrowths, tangled roots or hollows into which she can crawl. She likes to drape herself across swooping branches or ease herself into small spaces, exploring the habits, curves and textures of the different species she seeks out around the globe and absorbing their life force. The Sebastopol resident’s affection for the trees of the world has evolved into a unique vocation, one that forms the basis of a new coffee table book that features photographs of the author posing nude, enmeshed or intertwined...

@JackiDailyShow talks with Marc Morano of @ClimateDepot discusses his movie Climate Hustle @climate_hustle. https://soundcloud.com/jacki-daily/jacki-talks-with-marc-morano-about-the-movie-climate-hustle

Weekly Column (via email) Parameters are measurable factors that define a system, in the sense of a criterion or framework - like the parts that make the whole. The parameters of religion and science complement and serve each other, but are not to be confused. Thus, Cardinal Baronio told his friend Galileo that the Bible tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go. The Third Sunday of Advent is about heaven, and our Lord commissioned his Church to make people fit for it. The parameters of religion cannot estimate how many people can fit into heaven,...

Right now, Chennai-India's fourth-largest city with a metro area the size of Chicago-is paralyzed. Flooding from record rainfall-the heaviest in more than a hundred years-has cut off more than 3 million people from basic services for days. At least 270 people have died, and what's happening should provide a cautionary tale to the world: Chennai is a new type of "natural" disaster, a preview of the Anthropocene, the idea that humans have become a geological-scale force of nature. November was Chennai's rainiest calendar month in history: An unimaginable 47 inches fell. Then, this week, things got worse. Wednesday's rains brought...

In the opening chapters of “Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning,” Yale professor Timothy Snyder forcefully acknowledged what he calls the “ecological” Anti-Semitism of the Fuhrer, “An instructive account of the mass murder of the Jews of Europe must be planetary, because Hitler’s thought was ecological, treating Jews as a wound of nature.” In spite of such an assertion, however, the great caveat of Snyder’s book is he inexplicably fails to discuss the Nazi ecological historical record that should have informed his thesis ...

The unique display, on one of the world's most recognisable structures, was aimed at sparking conversations about mass extinction. Pictures of snow leopards, tigers and various sea creatures were shown. A 350ft (106m) image of Cecil, the famous lion killed in Zimbabwe earlier this month, also appeared. [Snip] In all 160 species were shown, including marine mammals, insects, and even the shadow of King Kong climbing up the building.