Free Republic

ROANOKE, Va. (AP) — A federal appeals court has refused to revisit a ruling that struck down a key permit for a proposed natural gas pipeline running through Virginia and West Virginia. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Friday that it would not revisit a February ruling by a three-judge panel that invalidated the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s opinion that the Mountain Valley Pipeline would not jeopardize two endangered fish species. The panel found “serious errors” with the agency’s conclusion that construction of the pipeline wouldn’t pose a threat to the Roanoke logperch or the candy darter....

... The Yale and Stanford graduate, and his brother Jim, a law professor, have been dubbed “The Koch Brothers of the left.” Mr. Steyer rejects the comparison because he claims that the fossil fuel-rich Kochs speak only for their own interests, while he speaks for the people and the planet. In fact, the Kochs speak out against subsidies. He speaks for them.... The public appears less and less convinced of, or concerned about, climate catastrophe, and appears positively gung ho for Keystone XL. A poll for the American Petroleum Institute, released last week, indicated strong support for the pipeline from...

... Final say on the 1,177-kilometre pipeline now rests with the federal cabinet, which has 180 days to decide the project’s fate. Gateway, if built, would allow up to 525,000 barrels of oil sands-derived crude to reach new markets in Asia and on the U.S. West Coast. A twinned pipeline would import 193,000 bpd of bitumen-thinning condensate. Enbridge has said the project could be up and running by 2018, although the company is expecting costs to rise. It said during final public hearings the pipeline could cost $7.9-billion, according to the panel.... Reaction from opponents was swift. Greenpeace vowed on...

Could the global warming hypothesis meet the rigorous evidentiary standards of a legal trial? The answer, according to Jason Scott Johnston, is clearly negative. Johnston is the Robert G. Fuller, Jr. Professor of Law, and Director of the Program on Law, Environment and Economy of the University of Pennsylvania Law School. His 79 page essay, Global Warming Advocacy Science: A Cross Examination, published by the Institute of Law and Economics, examines a broad range of evidence both for and against the conclusions drawn by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). http://icecap.us/images/uploads/stonJason10-May10-CO2ClimateTheoryCannotSurviveLegalExam.pdf After a comprehensive examination of the...

Washington (AP) - Ditching its past cautious tone, the nation's top scientists urged the government Wednesday to take drastic action to raise the cost of using coal and oil to slow global warming. The National Academy of Sciences specifically called for a carbon tax on fossil fuels or a cap-and-trade system for curbing greenhouse gas emissions, calling global warming an urgent threat. The academy, which advises the government on scientific matters, said the nation needs to cut the pollution that causes global warming by about 57 percent to 83 percent by 2050. That's close to President Barack Obama's goal. "We...

How do you get 6,000 college students whipped up into a lather? Here's one way: Secretly install low-flow, eco-shower heads in their dorms over winter break. The slow drip has triggered a deluge of complaints in bathrooms all over Stanford University. But a compromise may be ending the water wars. Officials now promise to retrofit hundreds of showers with politically incorrect, higher-pressure nozzles. With a fury normally reserved for the University of California-Berkeley, students complained in an e-mail petition, a letter-writing campaign, a newspaper editorial and meetings with Stanford officials. "It is like showering under a sink faucet," said Christian...

Where are the Hurricanes? I blame global warming...http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1155133659.shtml Scott Kirwin Aug 9, 2006 Nearly a year ago the country was being slammed by hurricanes. As Americans suffered some claimed that the ferocity of Katrina and Rita was due to global warming. A search of Dean's World shows that this site is one of the few that argued against that idea over the course of 2005. So here we are, a year later. Where are the hurricanes? Where is the fury of Mother Nature? Where are her righteous swirls of rain and wind that shall smite the evil non-Kyoto Protocol signing...

VIENNA, Austria – Vienna's subway tracks cracked, German authorities shut a key canal to ships after it iced up, and a zoo moved its penguins indoors Tuesday as a deadly deep freeze tightened its arctic grip on much of Europe. The killer cold wave, which has been blamed for more than 50 deaths in Russia, claimed at least 13 lives in the past five days in the former Soviet republic of Moldova, where authorities said another 30 people – many of them homeless – were hospitalized with hypothermia. Romanian authorities reported 15 deaths in the past few days, five of...

Could Air America's radio hosts possibly be in a stickier situation? While they rail endlessly against Bush and "corporate America", more damning revelations are uncovered almost daily about their own company's sleazy actions. Yet the network's personalities continue to pretend nothing is happening. Compounding the on-air dishonesty: fiery public speeches filled with especially ironic ethical allegations. Don't they feel guilty, knowing their own hands are unclean in the integrity category?

Heavy suitcases are not the only things weighing down airplanes and requiring them to burn more fuel, pushing up the cost of flights. A new government study shows that airlines increasingly have to worry more about the weight of their passengers.Heavier fliers have created heftier fuel costs, according to the government study.Through the 1990s, the average weight of Americans increased 10 pounds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The extra weight caused airlines to spend $275 million to burn 350 million more gallons of fuel in 2000 just to carry the additional weight, the federal agency estimated...