Free Republic

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,...

A weekend spring storm that drenched the San Francisco Bay area and closed Northern California mountain highways also set a single-day snowfall record for the season on Sunday in the Sierra Nevada. The wet weather system had mostly moved out of the state by Sunday morning, but officials warned that roads would remain slick after around two feet (60 centimeters) of snow fell in some areas of the Sierra. “Did anyone have the snowiest day of the 2023/2024 season being in May on their winter bingo card?” the University of California, Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab asked on the social...

A problem is coming for global timekeeping, according to a paper published in the March 27, 2024 issue of Nature by Duncan Agnew, a geophysicist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, and global warming is influencing when that problem might arrive. Worldwide coordination of timekeeping is how all smartphones and computers can keep the same time. This timekeeping includes, every so often, an extra second, called a leap second, which makes a particular minute last for 61 seconds. Anyone who has forgotten the change to or from daylight saving time and found themselves an hour early (or...

President Biden will touch on a wide range of issues and policy priorities in his State of the Union address Thursday night, and he will need to thread the needle on his track record of climate change legislation, environmental protection and energy policy. The stakes for climate change couldn't be higher than they are in the 2024 presidential election, and Mr. Biden and former President Donald Trump couldn't stand farther apart on the issue if they tried. While climate change may not be the most pressing concern for voters, research has found that the issue can influence the outcome of...

California is bracing for a powerful winter storm that could bring up to 10 feet of snow and high winds to the Sierra Nevada. “A second winter storm will impact the West Coast on Thursday and Friday,” the National Weather Service’s (NWS) Weather Prediction Center said in a forecast discussion Thursday. “The storm will create heavy mountain snow that will affect many passes. Multiple feet of snow are likely (over 80% chance) for higher elevations, especially above 5000 feet, including many Cascade and Sierra Nevada Mountain passes,” the notice added. “Extremely heavy snow rates surpassing 3 inches per hour are...

White House adviser John Podesta will replace John Kerry as the nation’s lead climate diplomat, the White House announced on Wednesday. “We need to keep meeting the gravity of this moment, and there is no one better than John Podesta to make sure we do,” White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, in a written statement shared with reporters. Podesta will remain at the White House and will get the title of senior advisor to the president for international climate policy. In that role, he will lead the Biden administration’s international climate policy agenda and will coordinate with other officials...