Free Republic

When the head of the Environmental Protection Agency announced a wide-ranging rollback of environmental regulations, he said it would put a “dagger through the heart of climate-change religion” and introduce a “Golden Age” for the American economy.What Lee Zeldin didn’t mention: how ending the rules could have devastating consequences to human health.The EPA-targeted rules could prevent an estimated 30,000 deaths and save $275 billion each year they are in effect, according to an Associated Press examination that included the agency’s own prior assessments as well as a wide range of other research.It’s by no means guaranteed that the rules will...

A new World Meteorological Organization report spells the end of the goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.Seven years ago, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that the world wouldn’t warm 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels until 2040.Then two years ago, the group predicted the world would pass that threshold between 2030 and 2035.Now, new data from the World Meteorological Organization released Wednesday indicates that the Earth will cross this point in just two years.The accelerated timeline is due to higher-than-expected temperatures over the past few years, diminishing air pollution that cooled the...

…However, no president has pushed fossil fuels more aggressively or at greater cost than President Trump. He has imposed an energy policy that denies the addiction’s real costs, ranging from lung cancers to deadly weather disasters. All the while, America’s future — in fact, the world’s — depends on replacing “all of the above” with the “best of the above.” Many of the best options are market-ready today, and much less expensive than fossil fuels, especially when we compare their real costs and benefits to those of oil, natural gas and coal. America’s most secure and prosperous future will be...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom released his revised state budget proposal for FY 2025–2026 on Wednesday. After having a roughly balanced budget in January, the state must now "close an estimated $12 billion shortfall to balance the budget" because of President Donald Trump's tariffs, which have "driven a downgrade in both the economic and revenue forecasts" and increased spending for the state's Medicaid program. Despite this shortfall, Newsom's budget calls for maintaining or extending expensive government programs, including the state's cap-and-trade program, which was set to expire in 2030. Launched in 2013 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in the state,...

The Trump administration this week summarily dismissed more than 400 scientists and other experts who had begun to write the latest National Climate Assessment report, informing them by email that the scope of the report was being reevaluated. The report, mandated by Congress, is prepared every four years under a 1990 law. It details the latest science on climate change, and also reports on progress in addressing global warming. Scientists said they fear the Trump administration could seek to shut down the effort or enlist other authors to write a very different report that seeks to attack climate science —...

Gone are the days when “Global warming isn’t real” was the primary claim of those most vocally opposed to climate action. ... ...Rather than outright deny the problem, today, the most popular online influencers focus on other false or misleading messages like “Climate solutions don’t work,” “Climate change has some benefits,” and pollution reduction policies are “tools for governments to control people.”... ...Of the 10 most popular online shows, eight have spread false or misleading information about climate change, a Yale Climate Connections analysis found. That analysis builds on recent work by........ Media Matters for America, a journalism watchdog organization....

Plan to eliminate $307 million ecosystem program could face obstacles in Congress... The email, sent yesterday by Anne Kinsinger, associate director of ecosystems at USGS, notified colleagues that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has ordered the agency to design a plan to slow and then cease all activities in its Ecosystems Mission Area in the next fiscal year, which begins in October... USGS scientists study how ecosystems respond to climate change...

Oil and gas companies would be liable for damages caused by climate change -related disasters in California under legislation introduced Monday by two Democratic lawmakers. The proposal claims that the oil industry intentionally deceived the public about the risks of fossil fuels on climate change that now have intensified storms and wildfires and caused billions of dollars in damage in California. Such disasters have also driven the state insurance market to a crisis where companies are raising rates, limiting coverage or pulling out completely from regions susceptible to wildfires and other natural disasters, supporters of the bill said. Under state...

With 2024 going down as the globe's hottest year on record, and with devastating fires in California signaling a new climate-changing normal, President Donald Trump and his administration are doing exactly the thing a warming planet doesn't need. Trump is withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, again. Ten years ago, 195 countries thought it prudent to protect their populations from the increasingly deadly consequences of climate change. And that's why they joined the Paris Agreement, to work together to limit fossil-fueled global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius if possible. That warming limit was breached in 2024 for...

CNN senior political data reporter Harry Enten said Monday on “News Central” that Americans don’t understand the connection between climate change and wildfires. Host John Berman said, “Just a few minutes ago, you heard FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell talking about the role that climate change has in helping create the conditions for these wildfires burning out of control, the most destructive in some ways that we’ve ever seen in and around Los Angeles. So how do Americans feel about climate change and the danger it poses? Do they feel the same way that they used to?” Enten said, “I mean,...

California has focused on fortifying communities against wildfires. But with growing threats, that may not be enough. This week’s fires around Los Angeles present a puzzle: Why is California, the state best equipped to deal with wildfires, seemingly unable to prevent blazes from consuming entire chunks of the country’s second-largest city?California’s building code for wildfires is among the most protective in the nation. Its local fire departments are backed up by CalFire, the state fire agency, which has a $4 billion budget and some of the best trained firefighters in the world. The state’s huge tax base generates effectively unlimited...

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is blaming the raging California wildfires on climate change. “80,000 people told to evacuate. Blazes 0% contained. Eight months since the area has seen rain. The scale of damage and loss is unimaginable,” the senator began before blaming the devastation not on poor fire management but on climate change. “Climate change is real, not ‘a hoax,'” he said, demanding President-elect Donald Trump to “treat this like the existential crisis it is.”

Firefighters are battling multiple fast-growing wildfires in Los Angeles that have destroyed buildings and forced thousands of people to flee their homes. Almost 3,000 acres have burned in the city's Pacific Palisades neighborhood after a fire broke out on Tuesday morning. About 30,000 residents were ordered to evacuate. Fire photos show Palisades destruction—"Looks like Mars" Read more Fire photos show Palisades destruction—"Looks like Mars" Two more blazes broke out later on Tuesday. The Eaton Fire has since burned 1,000 acres in the hills above Altadena, prompting evacuation orders for parts of Altadena and Pasadena. The Hurst First has burned at...

Recently President Biden and some Democrat-controlled states have taken what they claim are decisive steps to combat climate change. But in the end, it was all nonsense, hypocrisy, and wasteful spending — with taxpayers picking up the tab. The Biden administration put the final touches on a new regulation that will ban most types of domestic water heaters that use natural gas. Under the new regulations, approximately 40% of the tankless water heaters in production today would be banned by the year 2029 and replaced with less efficient models. The Department of Energy claims that the new regulations will reduce...

Frigid air that normally stays trapped in the Arctic has escaped, plunging deep into the United States for an extended visit that is expected to provoke teeth-chattering but not be record-shattering. It’s a cold air outbreak that some experts say is happening more frequently, and paradoxically, because of a warming world.

The Arctic Ocean may see its first ice-free day before 2030, earlier than scientists predicted. While most projections of the Arctic’s sea ice have focused on month-by-month conditions, a new study has revealed possible predictions down to the day. Previous expectations had the Arctic Sea loss predicted around 2030, but these results reveal that an ice-free day could occur as early as late summer 2027. Nine other simulations, while less likely, predict that it could occur within the next three to six years. Scientists, from the study published in Nature Communications, say the Arctic’s first ice-free day is now inevitable...

The Biden administration’s “climate envoy,” John Kerry, claimed that the United States was “on the brink of needing to declare a climate emergency.” During a forum hosted by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics last week, when asked what people who care about the climate and are concerned about the future “should be doing,” Kerry stated that people needed to “start focusing” on the arguments that went with President-elect Donald Trump’s transition. Kerry added that there were “seven million people” who were dying each year due to poor air quality.

In 1989, Shell published an internal report analyzing two possible futures, one in which fossil fuels were brought under control and one in which they weren't. In the former, which they called the "sustainable world" scenario, greenhouse gas emissions began declining rapidly around the year 2000 and global warming was kept in check. In the other, where fossil fuel production continued apace, Shell researchers predicted a world of climate chaos—one with massive increases in "violent weather," particularly "more storms" and "more deluges." These disasters, Shell concluded, would create crises of such severity that "[c]ivilization could prove a fragile thing."....... If...

"No one can deny the impact of climate crisis anymore. At least I hope they don't. They must be brain dead if they do. Scientists report that with warming oceans powering more intense rains, storms like Helene are getting stronger and stronger. They're not going to get less; they're going to get stronger." -- President Joe Biden, Oct. 2, 2024 Three years ago, Science News published an article with the following headline: "Hurricanes may not be becoming more frequent, but they're still more dangerous -- There aren't more of the storms now than there were roughly 150 years ago, a...

Surface ocean temperatures are plunging rapidly around the world with scientists reported to be puzzled at the speed of the recent decline. Less puzzlement was to be found when the oceans were ‘boiling’ during the last two years. Plebs flying to Benidorm for an annual holiday and causing ‘global heating’ was a favourite explanation, although mainstream media put it in marginally more polite terms. For almost two years, this boiling ocean trope has been a reliable standby for every alarmist spiv promoting the Net Zero insanity. But expect the scare to be parked for a while along with coral reefs,...