Free Republic

During a special meeting on Tuesday, the Los Angeles Unified School District's Board of Education will consider an amendment to the 2020-2021 budget that would reduce 133 positions from the LAUSD Police Department, including 70 sworn officers. The officers at secondary schools would be replaced with a new "climate coach" role, in addition to psychiatric social workers, counselors and restorative justice advisors. "We can’t ignore the legitimate concerns and criticisms that students and other members in the school community have about all forms of law enforcement," Superintendent Austin Beutner said Monday during his weekly message to the community. "No person...

Ending the coronavirus pandemic is 'very, very easy' when compared to the challenges involved in tackling the climate change crisis, warns Bill Gates. The billionaire co-founder of Microsoft has a new book out called How to Avoid a Climate Disaster where he sets out the 'urgency of addressing climate change'. In his book Gates says he is an 'imperfect messenger' due to his wealth, houses and travel, admitting he even took a private jet to the 2015 Paris climate summit.

A massive national cheerleading competition is descending on downtown Atlanta this weekend. Around 40,000 youth cheerleaders, coaches and spectators from across the country are expected to attend -- prime conditions, according to CDC guidelines, for a possible Covid-19 superspreader event.

Despite the dangers of the coronavirus pandemic, no one at a crowded grocery store in Naples was wearing a face mask. That’s because Alfie Oakes, the owner of Oakes Farms - Seed to Table Market, is not enforcing customers or employees to do so, News 6 partner WPLG reported. “Customers can wear a full bodysuit, and if you’re afraid of bumping your head, wear a football helmet,” Oakes said. His posts on Facebook referred to the deadly pandemic as a hoax. It’s a position that cost him a contract with the Collier County School Board. It is not hurting business...

...No human beings were involved in this study. And yes, it was that simple. The CDC sprayed aerosols at mannequins and slapped a science™ label on their experiments. There are endless amounts of clear, immediate, obvious issues with this “study” that causes a rational-minded person to send it to the dumpster. First and foremost, it is not a completed study at all. These are mere experiments conducted on mannequins, not humans. A proper study on the efficacy of masks needs to be a randomized controlled trial involving human beings in their normal settings — such as the Danish mask study...

Indian rescue crews struggled to reach trapped victims Feb. 7 after part of a glacier in the Himalayas broke off and released a torrent of water and debris that slammed into two hydroelectric plants. At least nine people were killed and 140 were missing in a disaster experts said appeared to point to global warming. Video from India’s northern state of Uttarakhand showed the muddy, concrete-gray floodwaters tumbling through a valley and surging into a dam, breaking it into pieces with little resistance before roaring on downstream. The flood turned the countryside into what looked like an ash-colored moonscape. More...

Residents in the Midwest are bracing for a 'flash freeze' set to send temperatures plummeting as low as -35 degrees Fahrenheit (-37 Celsius). The severe cold snap will be caused by a polar vortex pushing arctic winds down into the US, where all 50 states - even Hawaii - are expected to experience below freezing temperatures next Monday. More than 212 million Americans will affected by the bitterly cold conditions, CNN reports. However, the icy weather will be at its most extreme in the Midwest, where preparations are already in place to close schools and roads for fear of fatalities....

Joe Biden just put me out of business by suspending new oil and gas leases and drilling permits. I am a petroleum geologist and generate drilling prospects in the Rocky Mountains on federal lands. I worked six years to get a prospect ready to drill and Biden just illegally broke the terms of the lease, killing the deal. This action was done under the guise of helping climate change but will not stop one CO2 molecule from being released, as there is nothing in the executive order to reduce consumption. No one is going to drive less, fly less or...

A new forecast from the University of Washington's pandemic forecasting team is frightening. Even in a best-case scenario, close to another 200,000 Americans are likely to die between now and May 1. More than 430,000 Americans have already died in the pandemic, and even if the entire population started doing everything right -- wearing masks, avoiding gatherings, staying two arms' lengths away from one another -- the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation predicts at least 130,000 more people would die in the next three months. And now the new variants are here. Virologists predicted from the beginning that the...

John Kerry, whom President Joe Biden appointed as the United States special presidential envoy for climate, said in an interview with the BBC on Wednesday that only nine years remain to save the planet from so-called manmade climate change. Kerry was asked about the United Nation’s COP26 conference in Glasgow, Scotland, scheduled for November. “Glasgow will be extremely important,” Kerry said. “In fact, I would say that in my judgment, it is the last best chance the world has to come together in order to do the things we need to do to avoid the worst consequences of the climate...

h/t Breitbart; Libertarians rejoice! Thanks to President Biden’s latest climate brainstorm, in the future the US Federal Government will only function within 200 miles of the nearest operational EV charging station, and only when a fully charged EV is available in the car pool.From the Biden White House;Leverage the Federal Government’s Footprint and Buying Power to Lead by ExampleConsistent with the goals of the President’s Build Back Better jobs and economic recovery plan, of which his clean energy jobs plan is a central pillar, the order directs the federal agencies to procure carbon pollution-free electricity and clean, zero-emission vehicles to...

Anthony Fauci warned Thursday that the coronavirus situation in the United States “potentially could get worse,” despite recent improvements, citing the threat from new, more contagious variants of the virus. “I think it potentially could get worse,” Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” He said that while “we certainly are seeing, thankfully, a plateauing in cases,” on the other hand, “the thing that’s troublesome now, that we really need to keep our eye on, are these variants.”

Last week, Biden’s newly appointed White House climate czar Gina McCarthy said, “Biden has committed to 100% clean power by 2035.…We are going to get there because we will not be stopped.” Wind, especially, is touted as a symbol of clean power. It is common to see the image of a wind turbine on pamphlets or reports that address the transition to clean energy. But the shocking truth is that wind energy is impossible without fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are not merely a supporting source, but the very foundation of wind turbines and the energy derived from them. The Institute...

While Biden only signed two executive orders, his first order, “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad Executive Order,” proved a monstrosity with no fewer than seven separate aspects. The order directs the federal government to place the so-called “climate crisis” at the center of U.S. foreign policy and national security concerns. This involves: committing the U.S. to the Paris climate agreement; scheduling a Leaders’ Climate Summit on Earth Day, April 22, 2021; creating a new climate envoy (John Kerry) for the National Security Council; and directing the Director of National Intelligence to prepare a report on climate change....

ROME — The Vatican has called for a “responsible, unprecedented collective response” to the “momentous challenge” of climate change. Speaking on behalf of Pope Francis, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said in an online address Monday to the Climate Adaptation Summit taking place in the Netherlands that climate change “represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day.” “The scientific data at our disposal clearly show the urgent need for swift action,” Cardinal Parolin said. “The transition to a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is a problem not only of the domain of technology, but also...

A pair of top incoming White House environmental aides has blamed "systemic racism" as a driver of climate change in an attempt to justify a government-led economic overhaul. President-elect Joe Biden named progressive policy adviser Maggie Thomas as Office of Domestic Climate Policy chief of staff and climate advocate Cecilia Martinez as "senior director for environmental justice" on Thursday. Both Thomas and Martinez have cited racial inequality as perpetuating climate change, arguing that the Biden administration's environmental policy must be centered on "racial and economic justice." "Unless intentionally interrupted, systemic racism will continue to be a major obstacle to creating...

The pompous idiots on the political left act as if their belief in “science” confers unimpeachable credibility on whatever disastrous policy they’re bloviating about at any given time. Whether it’s man-made global warming or the efficacy of lockdowns, face masks or hydroxychloroquine for fighting COVID-19, they shut down debate, insisting that their version of “science” has all the definitive answers — even when it doesn’t. And yet when it comes to their asinine social justice agenda, anything remotely scientific, rational or commonsense is quickly replaced with whatever the prevailing political winds are blowing toward at the moment. The worst of...

WASHINGTON—The Keystone oil pipeline’s developer plans to announce a series of overhauls—including a pledge to use only renewable energy—in a bid to win President-elect Joe Biden’s support for the controversial project. Aides to Mr. Biden have previously said he plans to revoke the permit, and Canada’s CBC News reported late Sunday that Mr. Biden plans to do so in one of his first actions after taking office this week. Mr. Biden’s team declined to discuss that report, but has said his position on the pipeline hasn’t changed. In a bid to save the project, Canada’s TC Energy Corp. is committing...

Xcel Energy wants to stop buying electricity from the world’s largest high-concentration solar energy plant, located in the San Luis Valley, and it will pay $41 million to the federal government to do it. The utility company has been purchasing power from the 30-megawatt solar plant in southern Colorado since 2012, when the federally backed project was one of the first of its kind and the largest using the technology anywhere. But parts on the solar farm have been starting to fail and there are no ready replacements — and the project’s owner, Kepco Solar of Alamosa LLC, tells Xcel...

LONDON - Companies must listen to scientists and align their plans to reach net zero targets with a global pact to fight climate change, executives told a Reuters Next conference on Monday. But time is running out and scientists have delivered stark warnings that society as a whole needs rapid and unprecedented change to curb global warming and avoid catastrophic climate change. “Governments and companies need to be thinking about what the scientists are telling us. COVID-19 teaches us that,” said Sean Kidney, Chief Executive Officer, Climate Bonds Initiative. “Look at the mess made in Britain and the United States...