Free Republic

A new Minnesota bill could ban most weekday and nighttime driving for classic cars A Minnesota bill would sharply limit when classic cars can legally be driven. Collector vehicles may only be allowed on weekends or at organized events. Critics warn the proposal could hurt car culture and local businesses. Seeing a classic car on the road is one of those rare moments that still brings a smile to anyone who appreciates such machines. That experience might be about to become even rarer in Minnesota. A new law there would limit classic cars to driving only on weekends or at...

The Trump administration will celebrate the groundbreaking of a controversial new natural gas pipeline in New York City on Tuesday — with the project set to run off the coast of the city to boost the region’s energy supply. President Trump strongly backs the Northeast Supply Enhancement pipeline and used his influence to persuade Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul to approve the permits allowing the project to proceed, despite fierce opposition from anti-fossil fuel environmentalists. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Environmental Protection Secretary Lee Zeldin will attend the event at Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field, hosted by Williams...

In an arid valley near the village of Kourtimale in southern Djibouti, a tattered chain link fence marks the boundaries of what was once Abdi Guelleh's farm. Within it, there's not a speck of greenery in sight. Broken lengths of irrigation piping lie scattered in the dust. A derelict weather station stands in a corner amid a tangle of cables. Here and there, taps that haven't seen water in years protrude from the earth. There's little to hint at the fact that this lifeless 2.5-acre plot was once meant to be one tiny brick in one of the world's most...

In an arid valley near the village of Kourtimale in southern Djibouti, a tattered chain link fence marks the boundaries of what was once Abdi Guelleh's farm. ...was once meant to be one tiny brick in one of the world's most ambitious environmental projects: Africa's Great Green Wall. ... This multi-billion dollar project was launched by the African Union in 2007. The plan: to plant a "wall" of trees spanning the entire width of Africa — 4,350 miles long and 10 miles wide — to fight desertification in the Sahel, the arid region to the south of the Sahara desert....

The front page of today’s New York Times features a big article clearly intended to get the readers riled up about the latest environmental horror that must be stopped. The headline is “The Illegal Airstrips Bringing Toxic Mining to Brazil’s Indigenous Land.” Subheadline: “The Times identified hundreds of airstrips that bring criminal mining operations to the most remote corners of the Amazon.” Wow, this is bad. The airstrips are “illegal.” The mining is “toxic,” and not only toxic but also “criminal.” And it’s all happening in the most pristine place left in the whole world, the “remote corners of the...

Europe bets on California’s Gavin Newsom as a strategic counterweight to the Trump agenda. Donald Trump’s opposition to climate policy and mass immigration is putting massive pressure on Europe. There, preparations are underway to support California governor Gavin Newsom. He is expected, as the 48th president, to prevent a continuation of Trump’s policies. America remains a country of high social mobility and upward opportunity -- something we no longer see on today’s European continent. It may sound kitschy to many Europeans, yet America's vibrant economic centers, high geographic mobility, and the flexibility of its people still create the conditions for...

It’s keeping scientists up at night. Scientists around the world are sounding the alarm over an ambitious plan to install thousands of mirrors and myriad satellites in space, claiming that it will impact sleep and various ecosystems on a global level. “The proposed scale of orbital deployment would represent a significant alteration of the natural night-time light environment at a planetary scale,” leaders of the European Biological Rhythms Society (EBRS), the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms, the Japanese Society for Chronobiology and the Canadian Society for Chronobiology declared in letters to the US Federal Communications Commission The Guardian reported....

Kick up your recliner chairs because you’re not going to believe this one! TIME magazine is out with a new report prophesying that climate change threatens to make us all lazy slobs! “Scientists Warn of Health Risks As Climate Change Reduces Physical Activity,” read the knee-slapper headline from TIME reporter Simmone Shah. Shah waved around a new wacky study published in Lancet Global Health to foam at the mouth over how “rising global temperatures due to climate change could lead millions of people to be less physically active” and will supposedly lead to an increase of half a million deaths...

VIDEOYes, just enroll in Neil deGrasse Tyson's MasterClass on Objective Truth and perhaps you too can attain the same high regard for objective truth that Mr. Tyson so hilariously displays.

As if dating in this tech-obsessed era wasn’t difficult enough, women on social media have decided that those who favor meat as a pizza topping are walking red flags. As surface level as that sounds, women like Esme Hewitt (@esmehewitt) have a strong case for this way of thinking, stressing that their views on pizza toppings are more about a person’s empathy toward the environment and the state of our climate. In a TikTok video with almost 500,000 views, the content creator elaborated, saying, “I personally think that if you can’t reduce your meat intake, then you are selfish. What...

Key Takeaways: NASA satellite imagery analysis shows significant plant growth globally over the past 35 years. Research from NASA as well as multiple other studies conclude that the increased plant growth is a response to rising carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere creating better growing conditions.

The rate of global warming has surged since 2015 and is now nearly double what it was in the 1970s, according to a study1 that tackles one of the hottest debates among climate scientists. Because the past three years have shattered temperature records (see ‘Temperature boost’), researchers have been exploring whether global warming is accelerating, and if so, why. Many scientists agree that the rate at which it is increasing has picked up. This is mainly because of a reduction in air pollution following the introduction of fuel regulations for international shipping (which has resulted in fewer pollutant particles that...

For a few years now, it has been blindingly obvious that New York had over-promised and over-committed on impossible “climate” goals that could not be achieved. In various posts I have referred to this as an approaching “cliff,” or perhaps as the “green energy wall.” It has been entertaining to ponder what the final disaster might look like. This week has had a lot of developments. Most interesting is the growing split among the governing Democrats between, on the one hand, those who see disaster coming and are looking for some kind of graceful exit and, on the other hand,...

A small cadre of activist judges and environmentalist litigators wields outsized power, crippling industries, mismanaging forests, and undermining America’s interests. With the world anxiously watching the conflict in Iran, it was no surprise that the first segment in the March 1 edition of CBS’s 60 Minutes featured an interview with Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last Shah. The second segment, however, returned to a staple theme of the CBS news team. It presented a perspective on a current issue calculated to discredit the Trump administration and its supporters. In this case it was threats leveled against activist judges...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said his administration is monitoring and preparing for the impacts the war in Iran could have on the state's public safety and gas prices.

Critics, including us, have been warning that New Yorkers’ energy costs are about to soar even higher, thanks to the state’s insane 2019 climate law. Now, a state agency itself is confirming those warnings — and has even put a price tag on the pain: a whopping $4,100 a year extra per household by 2031. That’s just for electricity, reports the New York State Energy Research and Development Agency; the bill for gas for home heating, as well as gasoline costs, are also set to shoot up. At the pump a gallon of gas is expected to go up an...

Elite fashions harden into dogma, dissent becomes taboo, institutions fall in line—and only when reality intrudes does yesterday’s madness begin its overdue collapse. How do destructive ideas and bouts of collective madness so quickly become policy, law, and the status quo? After all, most have little public support—and are not Western nations supposedly rationally governed? There is usually a multi-step process on the road to these self-destructive fits of society-wide insanity. The suicidal impulse so often begins with left-leaning researchers in elite universities (i.e., the tenured in search of a novel, grant-getting theory). They begin insisting that a new existential...

Researchers from the Romanian Academy have discovered a bacterial strain that has been frozen in Romania's Scarisoara Ice Cave for 5,000 years. Carefully extracting a sample, the researchers tested it against 10 common antibiotics, including those used to treat tuberculosis, colitis, and UTIs. 'The Psychrobacter SC65A.3 bacterial strain isolated from Scarisoara Ice Cave, despite its ancient origin, shows resistance to multiple modern antibiotics and carries over 100 resistance–related genes,' said study author Dr Cristina Purcarea. Previous research has shown that other strains from this genus are known to cause infections in humans, as well as animals. In their new study,...

Irresponsible Trump, responsible China: that is the message the BBC’s climate editor seemed to be sending us by juxtaposing the news that the President had repealed Barack Obama’s “endangerment finding” and that China’s carbon emissions fell slightly last year. Trump’s critics like to portray him as a rogue figure in a world which is otherwise committed to reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. But is there any truth in that? The endangerment finding was a piece of legalese issued in a 2009 ruling by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It stated that six greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide,...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom called on world leaders attending the Munich Security Conference in Germany to think about a future without President Donald Trump. Newsom's comments on climate policy reflected the larger theme of his message for Europe. "I hope if there is nothing else I communicate today: Donald Trump is temporary. He'll be gone in three years," Newsom said. He added, "It's important for folks to understand the temporary nature of this current administration in relationship to the issue of climate change and climate policy." He slammed the Trump administration's rollback of the 2009 "endangerment finding" and accused the...