Free Republic

A recent subcommittee hearing before the House Committee on Natural Resources heard testimony regarding alleged influence by unelected non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on important federal government policy decisions. The Biden administration was called out for permitting activist environmental groups, many funded by billionaires and the Chinese Communist Party, to inappropriately influence US energy policy at the Department of the Interior. Committee members are investigating the degree to which Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and others are working with green activist groups to shape policies that undermine the decision-making of state and federal officials, divert oil production to less eco-friendly sources...

If April showers bring May flowers then what does May bring? Apparently significant snow at higher elevations. The National Weather Service in Reno has issued a winter weather advisory for the greater Lake Tahoe basin and parts of the high Sierra. The NWS says snow accumulations up to three to six inches are expected around Lake Tahoe and six to 12 inches over higher Sierra passes, with up to 10 to 14 inches across the Sierra crest above 7,000 feet. The bulk of the storm moves through Saturday and wraps up by 8 a.m. on Sunday, May 5. Roads, especially...

All across California, residents are being told to scrimp and save water because of historic drought conditions. Meanwhile, state officials are dumping freshwater into the ocean while intentionally depriving rice farmers of the water they need to grow food. Colusa County in Northern California is the top producer of rice in the Sacramento Valley. The area generates more than 150,000 acres of rice in a normal year – but as you can probably tell by now, 2022 is anything but a normal year. Officials there say that only a fraction of the usual rice crop will be grown there this...

The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) last week released its next five-year plan for the State Water Project—Update 2023. After years of meetings, California’s premier water agency has decided to focus on “three intersecting themes: addressing climate urgency, strengthening watershed resilience, and achieving equity in water management.”Lake Shasta Dam in Shasta Lake, Calif., on Feb. 14, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)Water supplies for California’s 40 million people and the planet’s most productive agriculture have third- to fifth-level priority.There is nothing new here, except to publicly admit to betraying the public trust. Really?Over several decades, the public has been deceived...

On the cold dead surface of Mars, something remarkable happens each spring. The red planet becomes infested with giant black spiders. At least, that’s what it looks like. In reality, vast fields of dark, spider-like formations become etched into the Red Planet’s landscape. No, they are not alive, nor actually spiders, but instead a geological phenomenon that occurs nowhere else in the solar system. With the recent orbital passes of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express and the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), scientists are now closer than ever to understanding these mysterious features known as “araneiforms.” Araneiforms are...

On Thursday, Biden's Environmental Protection Agency announced a new set of rules aimed at reducing pollution from natural gas and coal-fired power plants by 90 percent by 2039. About 42,000 Americans work in the coal industry. Under the regulations, the nation's 200 or so coal-fired power plants will be forced to abide by strict new emissions standards unless they stop burning coal within ten years, in which case they will be allowed to follow the less stringent existing standards. According to the rules, a "new compliance path" for coal-fired power plants means they "will be able to continue meeting existing...

On Thursday’s broadcast of “NewsNation Now,” White House National Climate Adviser Ali Zaidi denied that the Biden administration is attempting to shut down the coal industry or slow any industry down, and stated that the issue is “about how do we speed up to a stronger economy, a more durable economy, and one that, frankly, puts less pollution into the sky?” Host Connell McShane asked, “[C]oal executives, for the most part, are coming out and saying this — we can’t meet this. So, the real goal here is to kind of shut our industry down. Is that what’s happening?” Zaidi...

Gillette-based L&H Industrial, a 60-year-old industrial machinery company in the coal-rich Powder River Basin, has partnered with nuclear technology innovator BWX Technologies as part of a blockbuster deal to launch a multibillion-dollar industry in the micro nuclear reactor field. A Wyoming company with international clout that’s bolstered the state’s energy industries for decades is jumping into the nuclear business. Gillette-based L&H Industrial Inc., a 60-year-old stalwart industrial machinery company in the coal-rich Powder River Basin, has partnered with nuclear technology innovator BWX Technologies Inc. (BWXT) as part of a blockbuster deal to launch a multibillion-dollar industry in the micro nuclear...

Moments like the one we live in now come along from time to time, providing the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of the past. For instance, key takeaways from the Deepwater Horizon incident of April 2010 and how they apply to today are clear except to those who deny them. On Apr. 20, 2010, an explosion occurred on the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico. The explosion, which killed 11 men, caused the rig to sink into the deep and started a devastating oil leak from the well. Prior to it being capped three months afterward,...

The New York HEAT Act might not make the final budget. The bill reduces the state’s reliance on natural gas and cuts ratepayer costs by eliminating certain rules. It was in both legislative chambers’ one-house budgets, but last-minute scrambling could remove it. New York League of Conservation Voters Policy Director Patrick McClellan said, aside from people’s preference for natural gas, other challenges have made the bill hard to pass. “I think that there has also been some irresponsible fear-mongering against this bill from some people who oppose it,” said McClellan, “basically telling people this means that their natural gas service...

Caltech and JPL scientists suggest the fingerprints of early photochemistry provide a solution to the long-standing mystery. Mars is blanketed by a thin, mostly carbon dioxide atmosphere—one that is far too thin to prevent large amounts of water on the surface of the planet from subliming or evaporating. But many researchers have suggested that the planet was once shrouded in an atmosphere many times thicker than Earth's. For decades that left the question, "Where did all the carbon go?" Now a team of scientists from Caltech and JPL thinks they have a possible answer. The researchers suggest that 3.8 billion...

A recent study has found that global warming is causing apples to lose some of their crunch. The study which was published on Scientific Reports, analysed data gathered from 1970 to 2010 at two orchards in Japan and ...

Earth's changing spin is threatening to toy with our sense of time, clocks and computerized society in an unprecedented way — but only for a second. For the first time in history, world timekeepers may have to consider subtracting a second from our clocks in a few years because the planet is rotating a tad faster than it used to. Clocks may have to skip a second — called a "negative leap second" — around 2029, a study in the journal Nature said Wednesday.

Global warming has slightly slowed the Earth’s rotation — and it could affect how we measure time. A study published Wednesday found that the melting of polar ice — an accelerating trend driven primarily by human-caused climate change — has caused the Earth to spin less quickly than it would otherwise.

A wave anomaly captured by a weather-mapping system sparked a global mystery this week—with some internet sleuths even claiming it proves the existence of aliens. A giant cluster of waves over 80 feet high and spanning 2,000 miles—an area larger than Texas—appeared to move through the ocean off the coast of Africa on April 10 in a journey that lasted about 24 hours before it vanished. Some online commentators said the formation could only have been created by something moving under the surface of the sea—making it an "unidentified submersible object," the ocean equivalent of a UFO. A graphic of...

Let’s check in on the not exactly impressive energy and inflation results of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)...Data from the BLS, chart by MishBiden’s energy policy has been an inflationary disaster. And make no mistake, the IRA was nothing but energy policy, more precisely, climate policy.The Inflation Reduction Act Is a Climate BillBloomberg flashback, August 15, 2022: The Inflation Reduction Act Is a Climate Bill. Just Don’t Call It One.“It does seem kind of wacky and counterintuitive for the most consequential climate legislation ever to be called the ‘Inflation Reduction Act,’” says Angela Bradbery, a professor of public interest communications...

The USS Hornet may be a decommissioned aircraft carrier, yet it has nevertheless become the launch-site for a controversial new war in the skies. The Marine Cloud Brightening Program's Coastal Atmospheric Aerosol Research and Engagement project, led by researchers from the University of Washington, took to the deck of the Hornet Tuesday to launch streams of particles into the sky above the San Francisco Bay. Their ultimate objective is apparently to block and reflect sunlight in hopes of limiting "global warming." CAARE researchers behind the geoengineering scheme opted not to announce their experiment, reportedly citing concerns that there might be...

April 9 Letter from FERC to KRRC, ‘… Kiewit has aborted the Iron Gate Development drilling program in its entirety…’ .. This is part of a series about the Klamath Dam Removal project in Siskiyou County. The removal of dams along the Klamath River in Siskiyou County, Northern California was sold as necessary to save salmon – specifically, “to restore habitat for endangered fish.” The dams are part of the Klamath project, a series of seven dams built in the 1910’s and 1920’s in the Klamath Basin to bring electricity and agricultural water mitigation for Southern Oregon and Northern California,...

In a far-reaching new essay in The New Atlantis, the environmental researcher Ted Nordhaus makes a damning and authoritative case that while the basic science of CO2 and climate is solid, it has been abused by the activist class in service of a wildly irresponsible and unscientific climate catastrophism. This reckless alarmism, saturated across the mainstream media and endlessly amplified by it, has had profound societal consequences. It has both distorted public understanding of the massive benefits the carbon economy makes possible and grossly exaggerated the risks of extreme events it allegedly makes more likely. As a result it has...

Let’s face facts; some people are getting richer off the removal of the Klamath River dams. Glen Spain member [formerly] of Klamath River Renewal Corp. ‘KRRC’ board and fisherman’s advocate said “Economics Not Salmon Is the Reason PacifiCorp is Removing the Dams” It is now estimated by some experts that the total direct cost for the Klamath River dam removal project, will reach $800-million dollars, not the $450-million cost estimate projected over tens years ago. And then we have the costs related to the liabilities that are already arising from what is seen by many as an ill-fated project. According...