Free Republic

Republican lawmakers have unveiled their 2016 budget proposal, which looks eliminate the budget deficit in the next decade and that means spending cuts. One place, in particular, the GOP is looking to cut: federal defense spending on global warming research.Republicans have proposed cutting global warming research programs at the Defense Department and the CIA.“The Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency, two of the most important agencies in our national security apparatus, currently spend part of their budget studying climate change,” the GOP’s budget notes in a section detailing ways to “eliminate redundancies and end the abuse or misuse...

… The government predicts that the renewable energy surcharge added to every consumer’s electricity bill will increase from 5.3 cents today to between 6.2 and 6.5 cents per kilowatt hour—a 20-percent price hike. German consumers already pay the highest electricity prices in Europe. But because the government is failing to get the costs of its new energy policy under control, rising prices are already on the horizon. Electricity is becoming a luxury good in Germany, and one of the country’s most important future-oriented projects is acutely at risk. After the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan two and a half years...

Pollution Control: From cars to coal mines, the imposition of economy-killing restrictions is under way. Are the new EPA regulations on auto emissions the precursor to regulating carbon dioxide by executive order? In announcing the Environmental Protection Agency's first regulations on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from cars, Administrator Lisa Jackson has promised they won't be the last such rules stemming from the EPA's "endangerment finding" that carbon dioxide, six pounds of which every human being exhales every day, is a dangerous pollutant. "These are the first regulations that cover greenhouse gas emissions in the United States," Jackson told reporters in...

AUSTRALIA had the second warmest year on record last year, the Bureau of Meterology confirmed today in a finding the Rudd government has seized on as fresh evidence of climate change. The BOM said 2009 “will be remembered for extreme bushfires, dust-storms, lingering rainfall deficiencies, areas of flooding and record-breaking heatwaves”. Extreme heatwaves across southern Australia during late January/early February set a new Melbourne maximum temperature record of 46.4C, new State maximum temperature records for Victoria (48.8C at Hopetoun) and Tasmania (42.2C at Scamander), and contributing to the Black Saturday bushfires. Victoria, South Australia and NSW also recorded their warmest...

The European Union's new figurehead believes that climate change is a dangerous myth and has compared the union to a Communist state. The views of President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic, 67, have left the government of Mirek Topolanek, his bitter opponent, determined to keep him as far away as possible from the EU presidency, which it took over from France yesterday.