Free Republic

During Wednesday’s Democratic presidential debate, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) stated that scientists are saying that “if we don’t get our act together within the next eight or nine years,” major cities will go underwater because of climate change. Sanders said, “We don’t have decades. What the scientists are telling us, if we don’t get our act together within the next eight or nine years, we’re talking about cities all over the world, major cities going underwater. We’re talking about increased drought. We’re talking about increased extreme weather disturbances. The United Nations is telling us that in...

Abstract The prevailing idea so far about why the rainfall occurs was that after agglutination of water droplets with condensation nuclei, the size of the particle formed by the condensation nuclei connected with droplets of water increased considerably and caused its fall. This idea has led to numerous scientific publications in which empirical distribution functions of clouds’ water droplets sizes were proposed. Estimates values provided by these empirical distribution functions, in most cases, were validated by comparison with UHF Radar measurements

A new global study reveals that ancient carbon, once thought securely stored in soils and rocks, is leaking into the atmosphere via rivers. For the first time, researchers have confirmed that carbon trapped in landscapes for thousands of years or longer can return to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide escaping from river surfaces. The study, led by scientists from the University of Bristol and featured as the cover story in Nature, suggests that plants and upper soil layers may be absorbing about one additional gigaton of CO2 annually to balance this release. This highlights an even more critical role for...

Ireland’s 40-year-long era of burning coal — the dirtiest fossil fuel imaginable — to generate electricity came to an end in June. That was when ESB announced it had ceased burning coal at its Moneypoint power station in County Clare, six months ahead of schedule. Throughout those 40 years, the coal was transferred on noisy conveyer belts through what must surely have been the longest, ugliest, sequence of brown tunnels in the country. They ran from the jetty at Moneypoint, where the coal ships pulled up, to a huge coal storage yard and then right into the powerplant and furnaces...

A violent eruption under Greenland’s ice exposed a secret lake and left a crater the size of a city. Credit: ESA | The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel A hidden lake beneath Greenland’s Harder Glacier unexpectedly erupted, unleashing a powerful surge of water that carved a massive crater in the ice. The dramatic event caught researchers off guard, as water surged upward through thick ice, creating a profound impact on the glacier. Over just ten days, the lake released 23.8 billion gallons (90 million cubic meters) of water, equivalent to nine hours of Niagara Falls’ full-force flow. A Violent Flood...

Record-breaking heat continues for parts of the desert Southwest into the weekend, with sweltering temperatures beginning to expand east into the Heartland.Extreme heat warnings remain in effect for parts of the desert Southwest -- including Palm Springs, California; Phoenix; and Tucson, Arizona.High temperatures are expected to reach well into the 100s and up to 115 in spots.

An eastern Russian volcano has erupted for the first time in more than 500 years, which may have been related to an 8.8 magnitude earthquake last week... The Krasheninnikov Volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula emitted a plume of ash 3.7 miles into the sky overnight. The last recorded eruption of the volcano happened in the 15th century.. ... Last week's massive earthquake was the latest in a series of seismic events in the region, including another temblor that shook a region 11 times zones away from Moscow on the Pacific peninsula ... Krasheninnikov is one of 8 volcanoes nestled among...

Obesity elevates the risk of cancer. But it has long been unclear whether these effects stem from the fat in people or from dietary fats they consume. Now, Lydia Lynch has provided a compelling answer. "Our study reveals that the source of dietary fat, not adiposity itself, is the primary factor that influences tumor growth in obese mice," said Lynch. "We found that high-fat diets derived from lard, beef tallow or butter compromise anti-tumor immunity and accelerate tumor growth in several tumor models of obese mice. Diets based on coconut oil, palm oil or olive oil, meanwhile, do not have...

In the world's first comprehensive study to evaluate both the nutritional quality and environmental footprint of food served in health care institutions using detailed, food-level data, researchers assessed menus and food procurement data from two hospitals and three nursing homes of average size in Germany. These institutions' foodservice likely reflects that of many health care institutions in high-income countries. "We found that meals contained too few healthy plant-based foods such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains and legumes, and too many refined grains, added sugars, salt and saturated fats," says Lisa Pörtner. "This leads to an inadequate provision of nutrients and...

The Carbon Dioxide Endangerment Finding, first enacted in 2009, rested on claims that rising levels of CO2 posed a dire threat to public health and welfare...By removing the Endangerment Finding, the EPA is signaling a long-overdue return to rational, evidence-based policy.

In A Nutshell * Marine heat waves in 2023 reached record-breaking intensity, duration, and global coverage, affecting 96% of the world’s oceans. * The North Atlantic experienced a 525-day heatwave with a 276-year return period, and similar long-lasting events occurred in the Southwest Pacific and Tropical Eastern Pacific. * Researchers linked these events to region-specific drivers such as reduced cloud cover, weakened wind systems, and El Niño conditions. * Scientists suggest these extremes may represent an early warning sign of a potential climate tipping point. ================================================================================= ZHEJIANG, China — The world’s oceans experienced their most extreme fever ever recorded in...

VIDEORight now President Donald Trump is easily the most popular political leader in Great Britain, far outshining their hapless Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Watch as Starmer is brutally mocked by British commentators for his hilarious reactions as Trump read the riot act on windmills which Starmer supports as part of his doomed-to-fail Net Zero project for Britain. This video is revelatory because it shows closeups of Starmer's awkwardness and extremely uncomfortable face as Trump speaks embarrassing windmill truths.

Some Thoughts on Our DOE Report Regarding CO2 Impacts on the U.S. Climate July 31st, 2025 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D. PREFACE: What follows are my own opinions, not seen by my four co-authors of the Dept. of Energy report just released, entitled A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate. Starting sometime tomorrow, the comment docket at DOE will be open for anyone to post comments regarding the contents of that report. We authors will read all comments, and for those which are substantiative and serious, we will respond in a serious manner....

No, your car isn’t running on liquefied dinosaurs. The good stuff, unless you want a stable environment, of course. Image Credit: Alexander Knyazhinsky/Shutterstock.com At some point, you have probably heard somewhere that oil comes from dinosaurs, as if every time you fill up at the gas station, you are pumping refined velociraptor into your Volvo. It’s a vivid image, but it’s not true. Despite how widespread the belief is, oil isn’t made from decomposed dinosaurs. “For some strange reason, the idea that oil comes from dinosaurs has stuck with many people," geologist Reidar Müller from the University of Oslo explained...

The invaluable Mike Rowe pointed me to this article yesterday. Well, not me, exactly. Mike doesn't know me from Adam, but he shared it online with 7 million other people, and I count myself among them. It's a piece in The New York Times--for him, it was the international version with a different headline--that argues that several decisions by various international courts amount to outlawing the extraction and use of fossil fuels. It's hard to argue with their conclusion because I am not an international lawyer, but let's assume that the claim is true, as it appears to be on...

MIAMI (AP) — Trawling near Antarctica for krill — a crustacean central to the diet of whales and a critical buffer to global warming — has surged to a record and is fast approaching a never before reached seasonal catch limit that would trigger the unprecedented early closure of the remote fishery, The Associated Press has learned.The fishing boom follows the failure last year of the U.S., Russia, China and two dozen other governments to approve a new management plan that would have mandated spreading out the area in which krill can be caught and creating a California-sized reserve along...

The Trump administration has announced a plan to scrap a landmark finding that greenhouse gases are harmful to the environment, severely curbing the federal government's ability to combat climate change. Known as the "Endangerment Finding", the 2009 order from then-President Barack Obama allowed the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to create rules to limit pollution by setting emissions standards. ... The Endangerment Finding stemmed from a 2007 Supreme Court case in which the court ruled that greenhouse gases are "air pollutants" - meaning that the EPA has the authority and responsibility to regulate them under the US Clean Air Act....

EPA employees staged a political stunt, tried to take it back when it bombed, and revealed just how deeply entitlement and arrogance run through the federal workforce. The Information Age brought rapid technological progress and unprecedented access to knowledge. But one rule still holds true: Once it’s on the internet, it’s there forever. Some EPA employees are now learning that the hard way. The signatories of the now-infamous “Stand Up for Science” declaration — an act of open defiance against the Trump administration — are scrambling to erase their names after their stunt blew up in their faces. The petition,...

A flurry of mainstream media reports, from Bloomberg, The Guardian, Financial Times, and CNN, among other outlets, claim that climate change is causing rising food prices “worldwide,” based on a single new study. This is false. Bad weather has always impacted crop production, and there is no actual evidence that extreme weather is increasing. Globalization of media coverage is simply making it easier to hear about bad weather elsewhere in the world, meanwhile crop production and yields globally continue to set records – a fact the same media outlets largely ignore. Focusing on the coverage by Bloomberg, in an article...

Every time you ask ChatGPT a question, to generate an image or let artificial intelligence summarize your email, something big is happening behind the scenes. Not on your device, but in sprawling data centers filled with servers, GPUs and cooling systems that require massive amounts of electricity. The modern AI boom is pushing our power grid to its limits. ChatGPT alone processes roughly 1 billion queries per day, each requiring data center resources far beyond what’s on your device. In fact, the energy needed to support artificial intelligence, cloud computing and even crypto mining is rising so quickly that it...