Free Republic

BERLIN (AP) — Officials from the Group of Seven wealthy nations announced Friday that they will aim to largely end greenhouse gas emissions from their power sectors by 2035, making it highly unlikely that those countries will burn coal for electricity beyond that date. Ministers from the G-7 countries meeting in Berlin also announced a target to have a “highly decarbonized road sector by 2030,” meaning that electric vehicles would dominate new car sales by the end of the decade. And in a move aimed at ending the recurring conflict between rich and poor nations during international climate talks, the...

The philanthropist argues that the West must "mobilize all our resources" to defeat Putin-as the war is setting back urgent action against climate change. The invasion of Ukraine "may have been the beginning" of the Third World War, according to the philanthropist and financier George Soros. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he argues that even if this is outcome averted, the war has relegated the fight against climate change to second place-and we have "already fallen far behind". This damagw is on the verge on being irreversible-meaning that our civilization "may not survive". Such high stakes demand...

The world’s biggest fossil fuel firms are quietly planning scores of “carbon bomb” oil and gas projects that would drive the climate past internationally agreed temperature limits with catastrophic global impacts, a Guardian investigation shows. The exclusive data shows these firms are in effect placing multibillion-dollar bets against humanity halting global heating. Their huge investments in new fossil fuel production could pay off only if countries fail to rapidly slash carbon emissions, which scientists say is vital. The oil and gas industry is extremely volatile but extraordinarily profitable, particularly when prices are high, as they are at present. ExxonMobil, Shell,...

Australian voters have delivered a sharp rebuke to the center-right government, ending nine years of conservative rule, in favor of the center-left opposition that promised stronger action on climate change. Australian Labor Party leader Anthony Albanese appeared certain to form a minority government, though it was unclear as counting continued if the party would have enough seats for a majority, according to projections from three news networks. Parties need a majority of 76 seats to form a majority government. Labor is currently sitting on around 70, according to the Australian Electoral Commission. Early counting showed a strong swing towards Greens...

Earth's oceans are feeling the wrath of human-induced climate change. Glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising and reefs are dying – and now, according to a new study published in Science Advances, the sea is losing its memory altogether.

The Department of Justice is establishing a new “Office of Environmental Justice.” Attorney General Merrick Garland made the announcement at a press conference with EPA Administrator Michael Regan Thursday. Garland said that the new office, which will also be known by the initialism OEJ, would “oversee and help guide the Justice Department’s wide-ranging environmental justice efforts.” The office was created as part of the Department’s “comprehensive environmental justice enforcement strategy,” in compliance with the Biden administration’s January 2021 executive order directing the Attorney General to develop such a strategy in conjunction with the EPA. Garland said that OEJ would initially...

Computer models that project future climates are widely used for adaptation, mitigation and resilience planning. More than 50 such models were assessed and compared in the latest round of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, phase 6 (CMIP6), run by the World Climate Research Programme1. It is crucial that researchers know the best way to use those outputs to provide consistent information for climate science and policy. We are climate modellers and analysts who develop, distribute and use these projections. We know scientists must treat them with great care. Users beware: a subset of the newest generation of models are ‘too...

The drive to declare a “climate emergency” has swept much of the world. According to the Climate Emergency Declaration website:“2,094 jurisdictions in 38 countries have declared a climate emergency. Populations covered by jurisdictions that have declared a climate emergency amount to over 1 billion citizens.”But the “emergency” is nowhere to be found in the real world.After all, the so-called “Global Average Temperature” has only risen about 1.2 degrees Celsius since 1880 despite a nearly 50% rise in CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Yet, it was during this period when one would expect the most temperature increase due to CO2 rise....

Ten red states, led by Louisiana, asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to block a Biden administration rule for figuring the costs of greenhouse gas pollution when the government makes decisions affecting the environment. A January 2021 White House executive order directs an interagency working group to generate estimates for the societal costs of increased emissions of carbon, methane and nitrous oxide. The estimates are to be used to figure the monetary value of changes in these emissions resulting from government actions. The states said the federal formulas inflate the estimated costs of oil and gas leasing and a host...

Link only - https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/wind-power-s-colossal-market-failure-threatens-climate-fight

Swapping animal products for future foods such as insect protein or cultured milk could reduce global warming, water and land use by over 80 per cent, a new study suggests. Researchers used computer modelling to find the optimal diet combination to meet nutritional needs, while also minimising global warming potential, water and land use. They found that if people in Europe replaced meat and dairy with foods produced through new technologies, such as making fake steak out of bovine cells, it could significantly reduce all environmental impacts. Not only that, but it would be nutritionally adequate and meet the constraints...

BERLIN (AP) — Twitter says it will no longer allow advertisers on its site who deny the scientific consensus on climate change, echoing a policy already in place at Google. “Ads shouldn’t detract from important conversations about the climate crisis,” the company said in a statement outlining its new policy Friday. The announcement coinciding with Earth Day came hours before the European Union agreed upon a deal requiring big tech companies to vet their sites more closely for hate speech, disinformation and other harmful content. Twitter said it would provide more information in the coming months on how it plans...

Newly discovered temperature data from the 1970s moon landings, released in the Journal of Geophysical Research in April, reveals that NASA astronauts probably warmed up the moon's surface temperature by as much as 6 degrees Fahrenheit by walking around and poking into the lunar surface. The data comes from so-called heat-flow experiments that were installed on the moon in 1971 and 1972 during the Apollo 15 and Apollo 17 missions. For the experiments, astronauts on each mission drilled two holes into the surface of the moon at depths ranging from 3.2 feet to 7.5 feet deep. The astronauts inserted fiberglass...

Democrat congressional candidate Alexandra Hunt recently admitted she had an abortion at age 18 because she did not want to bring a baby into a world with a “climate emergency” crisis. Hunt, who is running for a U.S. House seat in Pennsylvania, pointed to the environment and other “crises” to justify her decision to abort her unborn baby, Fox News reports. She is challenging incumbent U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans, a Philadelphia-area Democrat, in the primary election. “I as a person was not ready to bring a child into this world, but also the world was not in a state —...

Hundreds of scientists from around the world took part in protests last week to apply pressure on government agencies to make “rapid and deep” cuts to greenhouse gas emissions before it’s too late. In London, 25 scientists glued pages of scientific papers, along with their hands, to the windows of the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to force the agency to look at the climate research they say the British government has been ignoring, The Guardian reported. In Madrid, over 50 protesters were arrested after taking to the streets and throwing fake blood on the steps of the...

... Though biofuels have been touted for their ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, assessing the environmental impact of bioethanol requires including greenhouse gas emissions related to the crops needed for its production. And "the carbon balance of ethanol relative to gasoline isn't as good as it was originally anticipated," Tyler Lark, a scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison told AFP. In 2005, Congress passed a "Renewable Fuel Standard," which required transportation fuel to include a volume of biofuel that increased over time. The law was further expanded in 2007. As a result, 2.8 million additional hectares of corn were...

OXFORD, England (CNS) — France’s Catholic bishops have stepped up calls for an “integral ecology” to protect the environment while also warning citizens not to “expect a savior or messiah” after the first round of presidential elections April 10. “Our Western societies are aware their remarkable development has taken place at the cost of other world regions — that their race forward in growth has been possible only by polluting or destroying other spaces,” Archbishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort of Reims, France, president of the French bishops’ conference, said April 8 at the close of the bishops’ plenary meeting in Lourdes....

The best possible future — the one with fewer climate disasters, extinctions, and human suffering — involves limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. But for this to happen, a new report warns, greenhouse gas levels must start dropping by 2025. “We are on a fast track to climate disaster,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said on Monday while announcing the new report by the United Nation’s preeminent climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “This is not fiction or exaggeration,” he added. “It is what science tells us will result from our current energy policies. We are on...

The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered a live public broadcast urging all western nations to quickly adopt so called “green energy policies” which he says will undermine the influence of Russia in Europe. In the new video Zelensky urges the NATO alliance, specifically western Europe, to quickly adopt the WEF’s “Build Back Better” climate change agenda as it helps his country. He advocates for “Green Energy” as a top priority so that NATO alliance members are not reliant on Russian energy sales. Zelensky’s proposal to stop the war is basically so-called Green Energy. It seems a bit odd, doesn’t it?...

The city of San Diego has catapulted off a cliff in woke climate change stupidity. City officials, without consultation or announcement, redesigned a two-lane road along a stretch of Gold Coast Drive in the Mira Mesa suburb that accommodates two lanes of bike traffic but only one center lane for vehicles. But the road remains a two-way street for vehicular traffic, throwing every ounce of common sense out of the window. The city’s reckless actions have even confused and angered some liberal residents. But it isn’t a one-way road; it’s still a two-way traffic road with a single lane. Vehicles...