Free Republic

This year, during the heat of summer, when temperatures in New York surpassed 90°F, the 22 solar panels on the roof of my house were doing absolutely nothing. This is not something I learned until September, four months after my husband and I bought this house with a purportedly functional leased solar system in upstate New York, months after logging into a website that inaccurately told us that the panels were working, months after we forked over $6,000 to prepay the remainder of the 20-year lease to the company supposed to be maintaining the solar panels, Spruce Power, which happens...

Student organizers at 50 different high schools across the country are banding together to launch the “Green New Deal for Schools Campaign.” The hope of the campaign is to get district-wide climate policies enacted, with the ultimate goal of obtaining federal legislation to change schools across the country. The campaign has been set up by the Sunrise Movement, a youth climate justice organization that says this initiative is “in response to attacks from the Right on the American education system.” “The Green New Deal for Schools will transform public schools in America to face the climate crisis and ensure all...

Tens of millions of people — more than live in the entire state of Florida — are now exposed to toxic water runoff from metal mining, a new study has found. The report lays bare the devastating impacts that can follow a reckless transition to 'green' energy, compounding the ecological damage wrought by over 150 years of drilling and mining for fossil fuels. The researchers found that 23 million people worldwide, as well as 5.72 million in livestock, over 16 million acres of irrigated farmland and over 297,800 miles worth of rivers have been contaminated by mining's toxic byproducts seeping...

Concerned New Yorkers and industry leaders are warning that the giant “green” delivery e-bikes currently being planned by the city’s Department of Transportation (DOT) will kill cyclists and crowd bike lanes. “If this passes, there is no doubt this will end in dead cyclists,” community member Joel Gelb warned at a public hearing last week regarding New York City’s DOT proposal, according to a report by W42ST. In an effort to cut carbon emissions, the NYC’s DOT is planning to bring 500-pound, four-wheeled cargo bikes — that can be up to 48 inches wide and will have a maximum speed...

A Tesla burst into flames on a busy highway on Monday in the Southern Highlands region of Australia, sending firefighters on a difficult mission to battle the blaze. The fire started after the electric vehicle built by Elon Musk’s company hit debris that fell off another vehicle. The Tesla Model 3, which costs upwards of $60,000, likely caught on fire due to a lithium battery that was damaged after a piece of debris fell from a truck onto the battery shell, according to a report by Daily Mail. Both the driver and passenger of the Tesla were thankfully able to...

A New Jersey business owner used a drone to drop damaging dye into pools at homes and a motel in Atlantic County in recent weeks, authorities said. Patrick Spina IV, 45, of Absecon, was arrested at his business in Galloway on Friday after Absecon police and other law enforcement agencies tracked the drone back to Comfort Solutions Heating and Cooling, officials said. Absecon police began investigating Aug. 13 after homeowners called to say a drone hovering over their pool dropped a dye into it. The dye turned the pool water “an alarming shade of green.” Police then got reports from...

We’re on the precipice of a radical experiment with a national electricity grid The AEMO (manager of the Australian grid) has finally released the major report on problems coming in the next ten years on our national grid, and it’s worse than they thought even six months ago. They euphemistically refer to the coming “reliability gaps”. They could have said “blackouts” instead, but a gap in reliability sounds so much nicer. Bizarrely, the lead graph of the 175 page AEMO report goes right off the scale, mysteriously peaking in the unknown and invisible real estate off the top of the...

Barack Obama’s first White House chief of staff famously declared: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” His point has become a cynical tactic of the left ever since. Any time there is a tragedy — capitalize on people’s suffering and despair to advance your political agenda. It’s in keeping with this doctrine that we hear the rant that climate change was the match that lit the fires. ... Four years ago, the utility company said it needed to do more to prevent its power lines from emitting sparks. It made little progress, focusing on a shift...

When Hunter Biden was driving 172 miles an hour while smoking crack on the way to meet prostitutes in Las Vegas, the son of a future president was driving a Porsche 911.Devon Archer, Hunter’s closest partner, told the House Oversight Committee that the car had been paid for by an oligarch from Kazakhstan. “I believe it was a Fisker first and then a Porsche.”Kenes Rakishev, the banker for Kazakhstan’s dictator and a close associate of Ramzan Kadyrov, Putin’s ruthless Chechen warlord, had allegedly bought Hunter the sports car after a meeting with Joe and Hunter at Cafe Milano: an exclusive...

Earlier this week Texas grid operator ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) asked residents to reduce energy usage amid a sweltering heat wave to avoid rolling blackouts. ERCOT manages electric power to more than 26 million Texas customers and represents 90% of the state’s electric load, according to the company. Temperatures soared to 115+ degrees with the heat index in parts of Texas on Thursday amid an excessive heat warning. ERCOT issued the voluntary conservation notice due to extreme temperatures, forecasted high demand and lower reserves due to low wind generation. ... The wind turbines aren’t producing enough energy. Texas...

Hawaiian Electric is under scrutiny for allegedly slow-walking modernization and repairs of its electrical grid before the fire that ripped through the island of Maui last week. Hawaiian Electric is Hawaii’s principle electric utility, providing power to roughly 95% of the state. Financial disclosures and reports show the company worried about the state of its electrical grid, and specifically the risk of wildfires, but devoted resources to building out the utility’s green energy network with limited action to mitigate fire risk, according to The Wall Street Journal. The scrutiny on the company’s past priorities comes as it faces allegations in...

On Thursday, Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez announced that an investigation had been launched into the response to the wildfires that have killed at least 110 people and led to widespread destruction across the island of Maui. The review, set to be conducted by an independent third party, will analyze why state and county officials made the decisions they did both in the lead-up to the fires and while they ravaged the area. "This will be an impartial, independent review," Lopez said in a statement. "Having a third-party conduct the review will ensure accountability and transparency and reassure the people...

Britons have never been given a proper say over our draconian, punishing climate laws. ‘I’ve knocked on hundreds, literally thousands of doors, and had tens of thousands of conversations with voters… and I just don’t have conversations about climate change.’ So said an anonymous MP, despairing at the British public’s lack of interest in climate change. He was quoted in a 2018 report by the environmental think-tank, the Green Alliance. The findings were stark. Ten years after the UK had passed the Climate Change Act, which commits the British government to stringent, legally binding decarbonisation targets, there was no sign...

Bidenomics, the term for “Government Gone Wild! in terms of spending and EPA regulations, is a disaster for the US middle class and low wage workers. Even the 1% are now hurting if bought into Biden’s green lunacy. Ford is now down -48% since January 14, 2022 as The Fed started raising rates to fight inflation. GM is down “only” -40%. Ford is slated to lose $4.5 billion from its EV segment this year, a $1.5 billion larger loss than the company had expected. So far this year, the division has lost $1.8 billion and this year’s $4.5 billion loss...

Background: Pennsylvania allows you to choose electricity providers. It used to be, years ago, that you had no choice. Whatever company that served your area was the only choice. Now people have a default billing company and then you can choose a provider other than the default, if desired. I take a few minutes every three to six months when my contract is about to expire to search a database of providers and select the best available rate. I suspect most people in PA don’t do this. People are generally lazy. Now I usually don’t open junk mail, but I...

Ford Motor Company projects it will lose a staggering $4.5 billion on electric vehicles (EVs) in 2023, up from its previously predicted loss of $3 billion earlier this year. Ford, which has recently reduced the price of its electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck, announced Thursday that the company is projected to lose $4.5 billion from EVs this year, according to a report by Fortune. The company’s EV division, called “Ford Model e,” has already lost about $1.8 billion so far this year. The projected loss of $4.5 billion reportedly stems from slower-than-expected adoption of the new battery-powered vehicles.

Although it's reported the world is going through a transition away from fossil fuels to so-called 'green energy,' the data doesn’t support it. The use of coal in China has exploded thereby making overall coal consumption increase. As much as it’s reported that the world is going through a transition away from fossil fuels to wind and solar energy, the data doesn’t support it. The International Energy Agency released its 2023 Coal Market Update on Thursday, which shows that global coal consumption in 2022 rose by 3.3% to a record 8.3 billion tons. While the use of coal in European...

Without truckers, America would grind to a halt. There’s no doubt about it. Truckers work a demanding job delivering our food, clothes and other necessities. But rather than support our hard-working men and women behind the wheel, President Joe Biden continues to empty their wallets and force them to drive electric trucks for his radical climate-change agenda. Well, we are pushing back. The Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and California have no right or legal justification to force truckers to follow their radical climate-change policies. That’s why I, along with 18 other state attorneys general, are taking Biden to...

One of the few advantages that come with age – and believe me, there aren’t many – is that one can look back at all the predictions made by futurists that turned out to be wrong. I am still waiting to travel in my flying car or by jet pack. Unless I missed the news, we still have not colonized the moon or Mars. And those colonies at the bottom of the ocean have yet to materialize. One area where it seems that seems particularly wrought with inaccurate predictions is climate. In the 1960s we were all going to die...

The U.S. military is in decline and now faces a peer competitor, China, that vastly outmatches the United States in terms of military–industrial capacity. And in research, China has a “stunning lead” over the United States in 37 out of 44 critical and emerging technologies, many of which are directly defense related. Yet our military is spending an increasing percentage of its time, money, and mindshare on so-called green initiatives. One of the latest of these initiatives is the Army’s plan to run a series of field tests on a multi-ton, wheeled battery pack as part of its efforts to...