Free Republic

White House officials barred a State Department intelligence agency from submitting written testimony this week to the House Intelligence Committee warning that human-caused climate change is “possibly catastrophic.” The move came after State officials refused to excise the document’s references to federal scientific findings on climate change. The effort to edit, and ultimately suppress, the prepared testimony by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research comes as the Trump administration is debating how best to challenge the fact that burning fossil fuels is warming the planet and could pose serious risks unless the world makes deep cuts in greenhouse...

The National Park Service (NPS) quietly removed a visitor center sign saying the glaciers at Glacier National Park would disappear by 2020 due to climate change. As it turns out, higher-than-average snowfall in recent years upended computer model projectionsfrom the early 2000s that NPS based its claim glaciers “will all be gone by the year 2020,” federal officials said.

Climate change represents “a near-to midterm existential threat to human civilization,according to an analysis by the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration. The paper, published by the Australian think tank last week, gives one scenario in which by 2050 "accelerating climate-change impacts pose large negative consequences which might not be undone for centuries." If policymakers fail to act on evidence presented in the current Paris Agreement, in which global human-caused greenhouse emissions will not peak until 2030, this will lock in about 3 degrees Celsius of warming, according to the scenario presented in the report. There is "broad scientific acceptance"...

At a campaign event in Detroit, Michigan, on Tuesday, 2020 Democrat presidential candidate and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren said that climate change is an even bigger challenge than World War II. “America has faced huge challenges before, WWII and putting a man on the moon,” Warren said. “This environmental catastrophe bearing down on us may be the biggest challenge yet.” Warren’s disconcerting comparison to WWII must mean her plans to prevent climate change are drastic indeed. To handle this global threat, Warren weirdly implies we must have to mobilize a greater American industrial base than was in place during WWII,...

Growing up in Fairbanks, Alaska, Nathan Baring has seen the signs of a warming world all around him. The winters have begun to lose their infamous chill. Thawing permafrost is shifting the ground beneath his feet. And some years, there isn’t even enough snow to ski. “If you have eyes and you walk out your back door, you can see the changes that have taken place over only my short childhood,” said Baring, 19, who already has six years of climate activism under his belt. So when lawyers asked Baring if he’d like to sue the federal government for failing...

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is facing claims that his campaign plagiarized at least five parts of the climate platform released on Tuesday. The apparent similarities were first flagged on Twitter by a progressive activist. By Tuesday afternoon, most of the examples in the Biden campaign platform had been updated online to include attribution to a third party.

For years, Tesla Inc. has hauled in revenue by selling credits to other carmakers that needed to offset sales of polluting vehicles to U.S. consumers. These sorts of transactions have largely been shrouded in secrecy—until now.

As Amazon Synod approaches, Vatican’s claims about environment deserve scrutiny Editor’s Note: Steve Mosher has written a two-part series on the upcoming Amazonian Synod. Part I, below, addresses certain scientific claims about the Amazon made by the synod organizers, chiefly Cardinal Barreto. Part II will address the cardinal’s new proposals — purportedly based on lessons learned from the indigenous peoples of the Amazon — on how the Church can achieve gender equality, alleviate the priest shortage, and use environmentally appropriate matter in the celebration of the Eucharist. May 30, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — Preparations are in full swing for the Special...

**SNIP** De Blasio - known in New York City for being shuttled from his mayoral mansion in an SUV, albeit a hybrid model, to his gym in another part of town - has made a recent habit of making grand pronouncements on his climate accomplishments. “It’s a priority unlike any other because we deal with, obviously, the health care issues, we deal with education, we deal with so many other issues, but nothing compares to survival,” de Blasio said during recent campaign swing through Iowa. But whether it's building emissions, organic waste collection or even protections in the event of...

<p>It’s hard to follow a stunt like setting a globe aflame and proclaiming the world is “on fucking fire” because of global warming, but Bill Nye “The Science Guy” managed in it a CNN podcast interview.</p> <p>With less theater and showmanship than his “heartfelt,” expletive-laden performance on HBO’s Last Week Tonight, Nye still made outrageous claims about natural disasters and global warming on Brian Stelter’s Reliable Sources podcast May 30.</p>

Orange County Commissioner Mark Marcoplos told the INDY Thursday that he’ll ask his colleagues to raises taxes to fund projects aimed at mitigating the effects of climate change. The property tax hike he’s proposing for the county’s 2019–20 budget—which commissioners will vote on June 18—isn’t likely to cause sticker shock: It’s only a quarter-cent increase for every $100 in assessed value, or about $5 a year for a $200,000 property. (Orange County’s current millage rate, 85 cents per $100 of value, is higher than those of Durham and Wake Counties—78 cents and 65 cents, respectively—though that comparison does not include...

This has been a spring of angry weather across the U.S. as heat, flooding, and hail pummel the eastern half of the country. But along with the garden variety suffering, devastating tornadoes have also spread across the U.S. from Texas to Pennsylvania. Twisters have ripped through communities across the U.S., killing at least three in Missouri last week, injuring nearly 100 on Monday in Ohio, and upending thousands of people’s lives. On Thursday, nearly 78 million Americans still faced increased odds of tornadoes touching down, according to the Storm Prediction Center, including major metro areas like New York, Washington, D.C.,...

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden ranks near bottom of the field of 2020 hopefuls on environmental issues, according to the left-leaning environmental group Greenpeace USA. In a newly released climate scorecard, Greenpeace USA gave Biden a "D-", the second-worst among Democrats. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee received the highest score, an "A-", followed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who both were awarded "B+". "Even though Biden introduced the first-ever climate bill in Congress back in 1987, he has yet to release a plan that tackles the climate crisis if elected in 2020," Greenpeace said. "Biden...

UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. climate chief says world leaders must recognize there is no option except to speed-up and scale-up action to tackle global warming, warning that continuing on the current path will lead to “a catastrophe.” Patricia Espinosa stressed in two recent interviews with the Associated Press that climate scientists are saying there’s still a chance to make things right “but the window of opportunity is closing very soon” and the world has 12 years until carbon emissions reach “a point of no return.” That means the world needs to accelerate all efforts to keep from reaching that...

Strasbourg (France) - Sweden's teenage activist Greta Thunberg choked backed tears on Tuesday as she warned of climate disaster and urged Europeans to vote in next month's elections to press for decisive action on cutting greenhouse gases. In a speech to a packed committee of the European Parliament, Thunberg, 16, warned time is running out to stop the ravages of global warming. "I want you to panic, I want you to act as if the house was on fire," Thunberg told the environment committee of the assembly in the French city of Strasbourg. Citing scientific reports endorsed by the United...

Former Secretary of State John Kerry defended freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday for offering "more leadership in one day or one week than President Trump has in his lifetime" on climate change. The House Oversight and Reform Committee meeting where Kerry testified was meant to address the intersection of climate change and national security, but several Republicans on the committee used their opening remarks to critique Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) Green New Deal plan to tackle climate change. Kerry also criticized Republicans for a failure to offer up a proposal of their own.

[Barf Alert] Listen to young climate strikers-Vatican (ANSA) - Vatican City, May 24 - The Vatican on Friday called on international leaders to listen to the young people in Italy and around the world who staged the latest in a a series of school strikes on Friday calling for action to address the climate crisis. "We need to appeal to political leaders to be far more courageous and to listen to the dramatic cry raised by the scientific community and the climate youth movement," said Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson, the prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development....

Your diet may have more impact on your cancer risk than you might think, a new study has found. An estimated 80,110 new cancer cases among adults 20 and older in the United States in 2015 were attributable simply to eating a poor diet, according to the study, published in the JNCI Cancer Spectrum on Wednesday. "This is equivalent to about 5.2% of all invasive cancer cases newly diagnosed among US adults in 2015," said Dr. Fang Fang Zhang, a nutrition and cancer epidemiologist at Tufts University in Boston, who was first author of the study. "This proportion is comparable...

Remember when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claimed that if we don’t do something about climate change the world will end in 12 years, and then she faulted the GOP for taking her literally and not being able to take a joke? "You’d have to have the social intelligence of a sea sponge to think it’s literal," she tweeted earlier this month. Well, apparently Democrats can’t take a joke either because according to a Rasmussen poll released today, a staggering 67 percent of Democrats believe Ocasio-Cortez’s climate change warning to be completely legit. According to the poll, 48 percent of all likely voters...

Global sea levels could rise more than two meters (6.6 feet) by the end of this century if emissions continue unchecked, swamping major cities such as New York and Shanghai and displacing up to 187 million people, a new study warns. The study, which was released Monday, says sea levels may rise much faster than previously estimated due to the accelerating melting of ice sheets in both Greenland and Antarctica. The international researchers predict that in the worst case scenario under which global temperatures increase by 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100, sea levels could rise by more...