Free Republic

Having heard it straight from President Obama last Monday, the “devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms” looming in our immediate future are all imminent catastrophes fueled by rapid climate change about which we simply must do something right away — but this is exactly the type of alarmist rhetoric that ensures we pursue the types of ineffective, top-down, big-government, expensive, and internationalist solutions that will actually have very little net effectiveness in sincerely addressing the issue.One of environmentalists’ favorite past-times includes whipping up a certain amount of global-warming frenzy as an excuse to implement...

Let's look at experts. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was a mathematician and scientist. Newton has to be the greatest and most influential scientist who has ever lived. He laid the foundation for classical mechanics, and his genius transformed our understanding of science, particularly in the areas of physics, mathematics and astronomy. What's not widely known is that Newton spent most of his waking hours on alchemy; his experiments included trying to turn lead into gold. Though he wrote volumes on alchemy, after his death Britain's Royal Society deemed that they were "not fit to be printed." Lord William Thomson Kelvin...

Guest post by Dr. Tim BallIn a comment on the WUWT article about the abject failure of UKMO weather forecasts, “Slingo Pretends She Knows Why It’s Been So Wet!”, Doug Huffman wrote, “Each forecast must be accompanied by the appropriate retro-cast record of previous casts” (January 6, 2013 at 7:06 am). I pointed out years ago that Environment Canada (EC) publishes such information. They expose a similar horrendous story of absolute failure. This likely indicates why it is not done by others, but provides adequate justification for significantly reducing the role of the agency.Both EC and UKMO predictions fail. The...

Have you ever experienced the feeling at work that everyone around you is unstable? That you're the only level-headed worker in a workplace populated by colleagues whose fits and outbursts are unpredictable, or even psychopathic? The experience might be common to many workers, but according to a recent book, The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success, certain fields are more likely to attract actual psychopaths than others. The book by Oxford psychologist Kevin Dutton argues that "a number of psychopathic attributes [are] actually more common in business leaders than in so-called disturbed...

There is a correlation between watching porn and support for gay marriage among men, Dr. Mark Regnerus, associate professor of sociology at University of Texas at Austin, found. Exposure to diverse and graphic sex acts, he believes, may undermine a traditional view of marriage. Using data from The New Family Structures Study, a project for which he was the principal investigator, Regnerus found statistically significant positive correlation between porn use and support for same-sex marriage among men, even after controlling for other predictors, such as political party, religiosity, marital status, age, education and sexual orientation. In the full sample, 42...

[Full title: "Psychiatry goes insane: Every human emotion now classified as a mental disorder in new psychiatric manual DSM-5 "] (NaturalNews) The industry of modern psychiatry has officially gone insane. Virtually every emotion experienced by a human being -- sadness, grief, anxiety, frustration, impatience, excitement -- is now being classified as a "mental disorder" demanding chemical treatment (with prescription medications, of course). The new, upcoming DSM-5 "psychiatry bible," expected to be released in a few months, has transformed itself from a medical reference manual to a testament to the insanity of the industry itself. "Mental disorders" named in the DSM-5...

A decade ago, a British philosopher put forth the notion that the universe we live in might in fact be a computer simulation run by our descendants. While that seems far-fetched, perhaps even incomprehensible, a team of physicists at the University of Washington has come up with a potential test to see if the idea holds water. The concept that current humanity could possibly be living in a computer simulation comes from a 2003 paper published in Philosophical Quarterly by Nick Bostrom, a philosophy professor at the University of Oxford. In the paper, he argued that at least one of...

Scientists may have finally solved the puzzle of what makes a person gay, and how it is passed from parents to their children. A group of scientists suggested Tuesday that homosexuals get that trait from their opposite-sex parents: A lesbian will almost always get the trait from her father, while a gay man will get the trait from his mother.

Climate.gov’s Brian Kahn interviews Cynthia Rosenzweig, a climate impacts expert at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, co-chair of the New York City Panel on Climate Change, and director of the NOAA-sponsored Consortium for Climate Risk in the Urban Northeast. Why should New Yorkers care about sea level rise? First of all, sea level rise is a big issue for millions of people in the U.S., not just New Yorkers. Twenty-three of the 25 most densely populated U.S. counties are on the coast. In New York, the full brunt of Hurricane Sandy has shown how powerful and damaging the effects...

Pyongyang, November 29 (KCNA) -- Archaeologists of the History Institute of the DPRK Academy of Social Sciences have recently reconfirmed a lair of the unicorn rode by King Tongmyong, founder of the Koguryo Kingdom (B.C. 277-A.D. 668). The lair is located 200 meters from the Yongmyong Temple in Moran Hill in Pyongyang City. A rectangular rock carved with words "Unicorn Lair" stands in front of the lair. The carved words are believed to date back to the period of Koryo Kingdom (918-1392). Jo Hui Sung, director of the Institute, told KCNA: "Korea's history books deal with the unicorn, considered to...

There have been several supposedly “scientific” studies published this year that either disparaged people of faith or insidiously mocked religion. That includes a study, published in the journal Science, which asserted that people who believe in God are not analytical thinkers. There also was a study, published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, which claimed that “highly religious” folk are less compassionate toward the needy than atheists. Now comes yet another study, published this week in the Journal of Sex Research, which claims that adult film actresses are actually more religious than women who don’t get paid to...

What makes us human? Some say that it is the development of language, though others argue that animals have language as well. Some say that it is our ability to use tools, though many animals are able to use rocks and other objects as primitive tools. Some say that it is our ability to see death coming. Now, researchers believe that they have found the definitive difference between humans and other primates, and they think that the difference all comes down to a single gene. Researchers from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland attribute the split of humanity from apes...

Denmark has decided to abolish its fat tax after barely a year, citing too many negative side effects hitting businesses. A proposed sugar tax that was meant to be introduced in 2013 has also been scrapped. In October 2011, Denmark became the first country in the world to introduce a fat tax on meat, dairy products and cooking oil. The centre-left government now plans to abolish the tax in January 2013. The previous right-wing government introduced the fat tax to limit the population's intake of fatty foods. The Danish National Health and Medicines Authority says 13% of the Danes are...

The world will have to cut the rate of carbon emissions by an unprecedented rate to 2050 to stop global temperatures from rising more than 2°C this century, a report released by PwC on Monday (5 November) showed. PwC’s annual Low Carbon Economy Index report examined the progress of developed and emerging economies towards reducing their carbon intensity, or their emissions per unit of gross domestic product. Global temperatures have already risen by about 0.8 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. Almost 200 nations agreed in 2010 at United Nations climate talks to limit the rise to below 2°C (3.6°F) to...

With the U.S. presidential election just days away, new research from the University of South Carolina provides fresh evidence that choosing a candidate may depend more on our biological make-up than a careful analysis of issues. That's because the brains of self-identified Democrats and Republicans are hard-wired differently and may be naturally inclined to hold varying, if not opposing, perceptions and values. The USC study, which analyzed MRI scans of 24 USC students, builds on existing research in the emerging field of political neuroscience. "The differences are significant and real," said lead researcher Roger D. Newman-Norlund, an assistant professor of...

TORONTO — A single junk-food meal rich in saturated fat is detrimental to the health of the arteries, researchers in Canada said. Dr. Anil Nigam and colleagues at the University of Montreal-affiliated EPIC Center of the Montreal Heart Institute compared the effects of a junk-food meal and a typical Mediterranean meal on the vascular endothelium, the inner lining of the blood vessels. Endothelial function is closely linked to the long-term risk of developing coronary artery disease.

Full Title:This Is Your Brain On Politics: Neuroscience Reveals Brain Differences Between Republicans and Democrats ScienceDaily (Nov. 1, 2012) — New research from the University of South Carolina provides fresh evidence that choosing a candidate may depend largely on our biological make-up. That's because the brains of self-identified Democrats and Republicans are hard-wired differently and may be naturally inclined to hold varying, if not opposing, perceptions and values. This study showed a strong link with broad social connectedness with Democrats, and a strong link with tight social connectedness with Republicans. With the U.S. presidential election just days away, new research...

A new study released this past week has once again linked the consumption of processed foods to health complications, giving food safety advocates even more cause for concern. The April 10th publication of the Clinical Epigenetics Journal reported a link between high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and autism in the United States. According to the study, the rise in autism rates "is not related to mercury exposure from fish, coal-fired power plants, thimerosal, or dental amalgam but instead to the consumption of HFCS.” The study, led by former FDA toxicologist and whistleblower Renee Dufault, found that a deficiency of zinc,...

Federal officials on Friday approved a plan that sets aside 445 square miles of public land for thedevelopment of large-scale solar power plants, cementing a new government approach to renewable energy development in the West after years of delays and false starts. At a news conference in Las Vegas, Interior Secretary Ken Salazarcalled the new plan a "roadmap ... that will lead to faster, smarter utility-scale solar development on public lands." The plan replaces the department's previous first-come, first-served system of approving solar projects, which let developers choose where they wanted to build utility-scale solar sites and allowed for land...

CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama warned his supporters about the threat of global warming and vowed that more money to subsidize green energy firms would prevent it. “By the way, yes, my plan will reduce the carbon pollution that is eating our planet because climate change is not a hoax,” Obama said at a campaign rally at the Bank United Arena at the University of Miami. “More droughts and hurricanes and wildfires, that’s not a joke. That’s a threat to our children’s future, and we can do something about it.” Obama said that he planned to spend more money to...