Free Republic

A groundbreaking new analysis has emerged, challenging the mainstream narrative on “global warming” and throwing a wrench in the radical climate agenda.According to researchers from the University of Exeter, the biggest factor driving global warming since 2001 isn’t the rise in carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, but rather a reduction in sulfur dioxide (SO2) pollution.The revelation has major implications for the “global warming” debate and for the “environmental” policies that push for costly regulations and collectivist government control.The researchers found that the decline in SO2 emissions, which have been linked to industrial and maritime pollution, has resulted in darker clouds, causing...

"This boondoggle, led by the incompetent Governor of California, Gavin Newscum, has cost Taxpayers Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we have received NOTHING in return except Cost Overruns."

Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom claimed the “one big, beautiful bill” will spike electricity costs on Sunday, seemingly ignoring the fact that ratepayers in state are drowning under some of the most exorbitant utility bills in the U.S. Newsom took to X and listed several grievances he has with the GOP reconciliation bill, including concerns that its passage would lead to rising electricity costs because it would limit subsidies for green energy. California has some of the highest energy prices in the U.S., and they are projected to keep climbing, according to multiple reports and energy sector experts. “Electricity costs...

California Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom’s presidential aspirations are Washington’s worst-kept secret. More than three years before the next election, he’s on the campaign trail in South Carolina, protesting immigration raids on cannabis farms and even politicizing the Second Family’s visit to Disneyland. Before Newsom gets anywhere near Washington, he must "confront his California problem," as even Politico observed. Blessed with incredible natural resources, the Golden State has the highest living costs in the nation. Nowhere is this trend more evident than in energy, where there is a direct correlation between Newsom’s wrong-headed policies and overall unaffordability. Here are three examples....

California’s high-speed rail had a $9.95 billion bond measure back in 2008 that was supposed to link up LA, San Francisco and the Central Coast by 2020. It’s 2025 and the budget has shot up to $128 billion. Sorry, let me correct that, it has shot up to $135 billion. By the time you read this, it’ll probably be up another few billion. The Trump administration is pulling funding from the ‘train to nowhere’ because well, just look at the Gov. Newsom press release. “The Authority has met every obligation, as confirmed by repeated federal reviews, as recently as February...

I last wrote about California’s high-speed rail to nowhere in Democrat’s dying and dead mass people movers in June: Approved by California voters in 2008, it was supposed to have run from San Francisco to Los Angeles by 2030 at a cost of a mere $33 billion. Eventually, it was downscaled to a very short route in the Central Valley, and the costs are over $100 billion and still rising [it’s now around $130 billion]. All that and not a single foot of rail—for a railroad!—has been laid. A variety of bridges and other concrete and steel monoliths have been...

Amid disastrous green diktats and crippling cuts to farmers’ livelihoods, the out-of-touch elites in Brussels seem to have forgotten where their food comes from. This afternoon, farmers from all over the European Union met outside the European Parliament to march on the Berlaymont, the European Commission’s HQ. Organised by COPA-COGECA, the umbrella body for 22 million European farmers, the demonstration should by all rights be a wake-up call for Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The unions will hand over a petition signed by 6,335 organisations, along with a symbolic pair of boots, in protest of the EU’s plans to...

Researchers have identified the oldest known glacier ice in the European Alps, originating from the last Ice Age.US-based Desert Research Institute (DRI) conducted a detailed analysis of a 131 feet (40-meter) ice core extracted from Mont Blanc's Dôme du Goûter glacier in the Alps.This ice core provides the oldest known record of aerosols and climate in the European Alps, stretching back at least 12,000 years to the last Ice Age...The ice core showed a 3-degree Celsius temperature disparity between the last Ice Age and the current Holocene Epoch.The phosphorus record in the ice core also unveiled a 12,000-year history of...

The New York Times leadership actually attempted to sell readers on the dimwitted notion that stripping tax dollars from leftist public media is just as nutty as defunding police departments. This is the same newspaper that largely rationalized nixing police funding across a number of stories over the past few years. The Times editorial board went to bat for lefty outlets NPR and PBS, which are on the verge of possibly getting $1.1 billion cut from their mothership Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). The newspaper had the utter audacity to argue in a June 16 editorial that continuing literal government-funded...

Thousands of businesses and households are waiting to connect to the Dutch grid, forcing network operators to ration power in an early indicator of what other European countries are likely to suffer as the speed of electrification increases. . . . The Netherlands is among the countries in Europe to have moved fastest to electrify critical parts of the economy after it in 2023 ended production at its giant onshore gasfield, Groningen.

As a warming planet delivers more extreme weather, experts warn that the Trump administration is dismantling the government’s disaster capabilities.In an effort to shrink the federal government, President Trump and congressional Republicans have taken steps that are diluting the country’s ability to anticipate, prepare for and respond to catastrophic flooding and other extreme weather events, disaster experts say. Staff reductions, budget cuts and other changes made by the administration since January have already created holes at the National Weather Service, which forecasts and warns of dangerous weather. Mr. Trump’s budget proposal for the next fiscal year would close 10 laboratories...

Two women have been arrested after climate protesters spray-painted over the grave of Charles Darwin inside Westminster Abbey. Climate protest group Just Stop Oil (JSO) said two activists used chalk paint on the grave of the famous naturalist, who is best known for his theories on evolution. The Met Police was called after the incident on Monday at 09:30 GMT and said two women were arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage and remained in police custody. Westminster Abbey said it was taking "immediate action" to clean the memorial. Alyson Lee, 66, a retired teaching assistant from Derby, and...

Lake Eyre (also called Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre) sits in the heart of the Australian outback, the continent's most arid area. Receiving an average of 140 millimeters (5.5 inches) of rain each year, the lake is a dry, salty plain much of the time. But every once in a while, it transforms into an expansive inland sea.Approximately one-sixth of the Australian continent drains toward Lake Eyre, rather than to an ocean. Water often evaporates before it makes it there, although some will end up in the lake every few years. In 2025, extreme autumn rainfall in Queensland flooded several rivers that...

A new study published in the journal Science suggests that humans might have played a significant part in the sudden deforestation of rainforests from Central Africa. This work contradicts the prevailing view that the expansion of farming practices was the root cause as well as the increased incidence of long, severe dry spells.Germain Bayon, a geochemist at the French Research Institute for Exploration of the Sea in Plouzané, and his colleagues examined the weathering of sediment samples that were drawn from the mouth of the Congo River. Deforestation intensifies weathering; therefore the clay samples would provide a continuous record of...

The country that invented “flight shaming”, a concept championed by climate activist Greta Thunberg, has scrapped its air tax in a bid to boost its ailing economy. As of July 1, Sweden has dropped the levy of 76–517 kroner (£5.50–£37.40) per passenger per flight, an eco measure introduced by the centre-left government in 2018. The U-turn will be seen as a disaster by environmentalists, and it exposes a tension at the core of the aviation versus climate debate. When jumbo jets disappear emissions drop, but other things begin to dwindle too: regional growth, connectivity and – it appears in Sweden...

Dan Simmons comments -- The deeper question here is whether we want to turn major political decisions and huge efforts at terraforming Terra over to scientists (as Kim Stanley Robinson fictionally argues is necessary in his series of much-applauded global warming novels.) I love science. I consider it one of the few decent thought-systems ever created by the human species. Its very reliance on self-correction is what sets it apart from all the myriad of religions, political systems, ideologies, and self-help creeds that begin with "self-evident" propositions and go downhill from there. On the other hand, just as real democracies...

The quintessential ice cream flavour is under threat, and many other dessert staples along with it, according to climate change researchers at the University of Costa Rica and Belgium's KU Leuven university. Increasing climate extremes are changing the habitats of wild vanilla species — primarily found in the tropical regions of Central America — and their mainly animal pollinators, the researchers say. This, in turn, is putting global production of vanilla at risk. In some regions, the plants may find more favourable conditions, but the insects that pollinate them may no longer find suitable habitats, according to the study published...

One person is reported injured after a wind turbine blade broke loose from a truck and crashed into traffic on Interstate 70 in Maryland. It happened early Monday morning in Washington County, the Maryland State Highway Administration (SHA) confirmed to Fox News Digital. "At approximately 5:30 a.m., a tractor trailer traveling westbound on I-70 was pulling a wind turbine blade that struck the guardrail causing the blade to go partially into the eastbound lanes," a statement said. "The blade was then clipped by a tractor trailer traveling eastbound." The crash resulted in the closure of all westbound lanes of I-70...

Far-left Democrats are tickled pink that radical Islamic socialist Zohran Mamdani beat former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in yesterday’s Big Apple mayoral primary. Indeed, top Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), are apparently not concerned about Mamdani’s obviously crazed views and plans, including arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should he visit New York. The victory means Mamdani will almost certainly become the next mayor. Mamdani’s BackgroundMamdani is an Indian Muslim from Uganda who was naturalized in 2018. He takes his middle name, Kwame, from Ghanian communist Kwame Nkrumah. Added to that problematic past are his views,...

U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright is slamming the Biden administration for what he calls an “absolutely infuriating” last-minute spending spree, revealing that more than $90 billion in green energy loans were pushed through by the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office in the weeks between President Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection and his January inauguration. In an interview with Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matt Boyle, Wright detailed the results of a newly completed review of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, revealing that “more than $90 billion in loans were closed or committed in the 76 days between...