Free Republic

The Paris agreement obviously is a treaty requiring ratification by the U.S. Senate, but because it was doomed to defeat had it been so submitted by President Obama, he pretended that it was merely an administrative agreement, agreeing to its terms in September 2016 by sending a letter to the UN. That this is clearly unconstitutional should be obvious: If presidents can decide unilaterally which international agreements require Senate ratification and which do not, the presidential “power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur” becomes unconstrained,...

New York Times media reporter Jim Rutenberg branches off into global warming alarmism (while still mocking conservatives) on the front of Monday's Business Day with an oddity about a freelance environmentalist going viral with emotional videos of dead dolphins on the beach in Naples, Fla. that she blames on global warming: “Filling a TV News Gap With Just an iPhone.” The online headline: “News Networks Fall Short on Climate Story as Dolphins Die on the Beach.” Note how the Times steals a base, equating climate to the dead dolphins as if there is a clear, proven linkage (there isn’t). But...

Key California legislators have reached an agreement that could lead to a statewide ban on carry-out plastic bags at supermarkets, liquor stores and pharmacies by 2016, officials said Thursday.

Cameron says he plans to complete principal shooting on the three movies at one time, perhaps over a period of about nine months.

Dear Barbie, it’s over, from Ken. Last Tuesday, the Greenpeace environmentalist organization staged a protest outside of Mattel Inc.’s head office in El Segundo, California near Los Angeles. Activists hung a giant poster with a picture of a sad Ken doll with the message: “Barbie, it’s over. I don’t date girls that are into deforestation.” Although the California protest was expected to be much more powerful and theatrical, it did elscalate enough for firefighters to arrive and police officers to make 10 arrests. One of the people arrested was a woman by the name of Elise Nabors, who was dressed...

The Virginia Department of Transportation is considering composting roadkill, a move boosters say will save money and improve the environment. The agency spends $4.4 million annually removing and disposing of thousands of animal carcasses found on the 57,867 miles of road it maintains. [snip] The remainder typically bury the animals along the roadside. That's a problem because nutrients and bacteria, such as fecal coliform, released by the carcasses can reach waterways, Donaldson said. "It's like super-concentrated fertilizer," she said. "It all goes into the [Chesapeake] Bay ultimately." Also, landfills are sources of methane, a greenhouse gas that most climate scientists...

Saw this article today from a link a friend sent me. He thought it was cool. Apparently, the University of Stuttgart has designed a house that generates enough power that you can charge your electric vehicle without plugging into the power grid.

...How big a space do two people need?” asked Philip Dowds, a Massachusetts Sierra Club official and professional architect. “A 20,000 square-foot house - the resources that it takes to put it together and the land that it needs, this just can’t happen anymore.”

(snip> Now comes word that nuclear batteries may actually become an honest-to-God reality, no foolin'. Researchers at the University of Missouri say they've achieved the unthinkable, and that a pint-sized power cell based on radioactive decay can last a ridiculously long time: a million times as long as a conventional battery, enough to keep putting out a charge for hundreds of years. Nuclear batteries already exist, but historically they have been quite large (and used only on things like spacecraft). The new design involves the use of a liquid semiconductor, which is less susceptible to damage from nuclear radiation than...

A Ketchikan jury correctly convicted a Greenpeace ship's captain of criminal negligence for sailing in Alaska waters without the proper oil spill response plan, the state appeals court ruled Thursday. The opinion partly cancels a 2005 decision by a Ketchikan judge to overturn guilty verdicts against Greenpeace Inc. and Arctic Sunrise Capt. Arne Sorensen of misdemeanor charges. At the time of its anti-logging campaign, the ship was carrying more than 70,000 gallons of "petroleum products," according to district court documents. In Alaska, non-tank vessels larger than 400 gross tons must file an oil spill response plan application five days before...

Shell says it's giving up on plans to drill in the Beaufort Sea this year due to an unresolved court challenge. This marks the second straight year the Dutch oil giant has been forced to shelve its offshore-drilling plans over the court case. The decision comes only a day after Shell won a hard-fought air pollution permit for its drilling operations from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The North Slope Borough, the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission and environmental groups last year blocked Shell's drilling plans in a court challenge aimed not at the company directly but at the U.S. Minerals...

Last night, Al Gore preached to the choir. The polar ice caps are melting at an alarming rate, droughts are dragging on, floods are getting stronger and today alone, an additional 170 million tons of carbon dioxide has been dumped into the Earth's atmosphere, he told a crowd of believers at Value City Arena. "The planet has a fever," he said. It needs to be saved, to be fixed immediately. "This is our home. We don't have another planet to go to. Don't let anybody tell you we're going to get on rocket ships and go to a new planet....

(edit)   Nickels and City Council President Richard Conlin proposed a 20-cent "green fee" Wednesday on all disposable bags to encourage customers to carry their milk and eggs home in their own bags. Forget the canvas sacks at home? Shoppers at grocery, convenience and drug stores will pay the price starting Jan. 1, if the City Council approves. A family buying six bags of groceries a week would spend $62.40 a year in bag fees. The city will issue one free reusable shopping bag to each household."The answer to the question 'Paper or plastic?' should be 'Neither,' " Nickels...

The captain and first officer of the anti-sealing ship the Farley Mowat were due to appear in court in Sydney, N.S., on Sunday, a day after their arrest off the west coast of Newfoundland. They have been charged with interfering with the seal hunt after a confrontation with a Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker two weeks ago. Their vessel was boarded and seized Saturday in the Gulf of St. Lawrence by RCMP officers, working with officials from the federal Fisheries Department and the coast guard... Paul Watson of the international group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which owns the vessel, said its...

Japan on Wednesday released a video in a bid to prove Greenpeace targeted its whaling ship in an Antarctic collision this week and accused the environmentalists of violent tactics. Japan's main whaling body put a video on its website that showed Greenpeace's Arctic Sunrise moving steadily forward before hitting the whaling ship Nisshin Maru, whose movement was impeded by another whaling vessel nearby. "It was a deliberate action to get media coverage," Japan's Institute for Cetacean Research said in a statement. "The Arctic Sunrise could have avoided this collision. Instead the skipper turned the boat into the path of the...

“We’re not a protest organization, we’re a policing organization,” Paul Watson...of his Sea Shepherd... A pirate organization is more like it. Sporting the skull and crossbones, his black or battleship-gray ships sail menacingly through the waves. They are painted with the names of the boats Watson has rammed and sunk. The ships are fitted with...a concrete-filled bow made for ramming, and an attachment dubbed the “can opener” that can tear open a boat’s hull. In his book Earth Warrior, David Morris writes that Watson wears a long bowie knife at his side and carries AK-47s on board. He blasts Richard...

Japanese whalers seize British protester and tie him to harpoon shipBy RICHARD SHEARS - More by this author » Last updated at 23:00pm on 15th January 2008This is the moment a British anti-whaling activist was taken captive on a Japanese harpoon ship. Giles Lane appears to be crying out in pain as the sailors surround him and bind him. In the dramatic pictures his companion, an Australian, is wrapped around with rope and seems powerless to help. Scroll down for more... Captured: Giles Lane, left, appears to cry out while his Australian companion (right) looks on Colleagues of the pair...

Duncan Hunter, arepresentative in Congress for Southern California and Republican presidential candidate in 2008, seems to hardly have ever met an environmental cause that he gave a damn about. In fact, in 2006, Congressman Hunter didn’t meet a single piece of environmental legislation that he was willing to support. His rating in the League of Conservation Voters National Environmental Scorecard for 2006 was zero percent. Duncan Hunter didn’t vote in favor of keeping the environment clean one single time. That kind of extremist, stubborn refusal to act as a steward of the Earth has no place in the White House...

Euroweenies mad? Aw.

Oscar Hopeful May Be America's Coolest Ex-Vice President Ever "The Goracle" will arrive by hybrid eco-limo and, surrounded by fellow Hollywood greenies Cameron Diaz and Leonardo DiCaprio, will stroll down the red carpet at the Academy Awards to answer the immortal question: "Al, who are you wearing?" Incredible as it may seem, Al Gore is not only totally carbon neutral, but geek-chic cool. No velvet rope can stop him. He rolls with Diddy. He is on first-name basis, for real, with Ludacris. But what does this mean? And how did it happen? Did Gore change? Or did the climate --...