Free Republic

Climate change is real, it's caused largely by human activities, and it poses significant risks for our health. Some members of Congress disagree with this simple, scientifically proven fact. We need to work to curb climate change, and a big step is to raise our voices to change the conversation in Washington. Call these deniers out. Hold them accountable. Ask them if they will admit climate change is a problem. We will continue updating the list below as supporters get answers to the basic question of whether their representatives in Congress accept the science on climate change. We hope that...

It’s not a stretch to suggest that Americans are over medicated. In 2011 doctors across the nation wrote an astounding four billion medical prescriptions, amounting to an average of 13 prescriptions for every man, woman and child in the United States. In the next few weeks the American Psychiatric Associations is releasing their updated fifth version their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5); the so-called ‘bible’ of psychiatric diagnoses. The new manual promises to take mental illness and the use of prescription drugs to a whole new level. You may not be considered “crazy” or “mentally ill” today,...

Junk Science: Despite no evidence that devastating tornadoes have increased in frequency or intensity due to fossil fuel use, another warm-monger blames the Moore, Okla., disaster on GOP "polluters and deniers." Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., thought the devastation of Moore was a crisis that should not be wasted as he took to the Senate floor Monday to rail against his Republican colleagues for denying the theory of anthropogenic (man-caused) global warming (known by its acronym, AGW). Other Democratic leaders like Al Gore, who profited handsomely off the manufactured hysteria, and President Obama, who promised the sea level would stop rising and...

Since 1998, there has been an unexplained "standstill" in the heating of the Earth's atmosphere. Writing in Nature Geoscience, the researchers say this will reduce predicted warming in the coming decades. But long-term, the expected temperature rises will not alter significantly. The slowdown in the expected rate of global warming has been studied for several years now. Earlier this year, the UK Met Office lowered their five-year temperature forecast. But this new paper gives the clearest picture yet of how any slowdown is likely to affect temperatures in both the short-term and long-term. An international team of researchers looked at...

An overwhelming 97 percent of climatologists endorse the idea of human-caused global warming. As if the backing of NASA, 18 independent American scientific societies, and an intergovernmental panel established under the United Nations weren't enough to quell the protests popping up in comment sections across the Internet, a new study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters confirms — once again — that climatologists almost unanimously believe that climate change is directly related to human-made carbon emissions. Researchers pored over nearly 12,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers from 1991 to 2011. These papers, according to Michael Todd at Pacific Standard, represented the...

Scans of a normal brain, left, beside that of murderer Antonio Bustamante, who was spared the death penalty after a jury was shown these pictures. Photograph: Public domain Adrian Raine, who describes himself as a neurocriminologist, moved from Britain to the US. In Britain, the causes of crime were allowed to be exclusively social and environmental, the result of disturbed or impoverished nurture, rather than fated and genetic nature. To suggest otherwise ... was to doom yourself to an absence of funding. Raine cites two very recent brain-imaging studies to back this up. One is a study in New...

A funny thing happened on the way to the global warming apocalypse. First, temperatures stopped rising, defying the projections of supposed environmental experts. Then, increased oil-and-gas drilling, opposed by climate change true believers, helped reduce U.S. production of carbon dioxide emissions. While environmental alarmists should express relief in being proven wrong, we doubt they'll take that tack. Even some global warming proponents now acknowledge that warming trends stalled beginning in the late 1990s, in spite of increased carbon dioxide emissions. The cause-and-effect link argued by climate-change believers has come under question. New data show the revolution created by hydraulic fracturing...

But he was most animated, his voice pitching higher and lower and the volume steadily increasing, when he spoke of global warming. "This is for real. It is not made up. The scientists are not in a conspiracy to lie to us," Gore nearly shouted. "The generation of people alive today will be held accountable," he said. "Our children and grandchildren ... if they exist in a world that has been devastated by these consequences that have been predicted and are beginning to unfold -- they would be well justified in asking of us: 'What in the hell were you...

(CNN) -- At the start of the 1980s there were more than a million elephants in Africa. During that decade, 600,000 were destroyed for ivory products. Today perhaps no more than 400,000 remain across the continent, according to Samuel Wasser of the University of Washington, who is widely recognized as an authority on the subject. If this level of killing continues, if elephants continue to be slaughtered for trinkets and statuettes, in 10 years' time most of Africa's elephants will be gone and an ineffable symbol of majesty and wonder -- and the linchpin in the ecology of an entire...

Scientist claims to invent 'time machine' to see into the future with 98 per cent accuracy • He says his device can detail any individual’s life between five and eight years in advance after taking readings from the user's touch An Iranian scientist claims he has invented a time machine that allows you to predict the future with 98 per cent accuracy. Ali Razeghi says his device can produce a print-out detailing any individual’s life between five and eight years in advance after taking readings from the user's touch. He claims the Iranian government, whose nuclear programme has caused concern...

Associate Director of College Communications, Unity College claims in a press release this month: “Every college or university that claims to be holding a ‘green’ commencement needs to have divested from investments in fossil fuels, or admit that they cannot truly make that claim.” “As the first college in the United States to adopt sustainability science as its central focus, Unity College ascended to the leading-edge of higher education, training the next generation of environmental leaders to pursue trans-disciplinary solutions to the earth’s most pressing problems including global climate change.” “With a unanimous vote by the Board of Trustees in...

A California billionaire is pledging to spend as much of his fortune as necessary to make climate change “the defining issue of our generation.” Tom Steyer, who made his riches as a hedge fund manager, told The Hill on Tuesday that he wants to make climate change a campaign issue for years to come and Democratic support for environmental protections as widespread as support for gay marriage and immigration reform. “The goal here is not to win. The goal here is to destroy these people. We want a smashing victory,” Steyer said of candidates he judges to be on the...

DEBATE about the reality of a two-decade pause in global warming and what it means has made its way from the sceptical fringe to the mainstream. ... But the fact that global surface temperatures have not followed the expected global warming pattern is now widely accepted.

In Washington, everyone has their issue. But it's probably safe to say that Stephen Bassett's is a little more colorful. Bassett, the executive director of the Paradigm Research Group, wants the U.S. government to lift what he calls the "truth embargo" and acknowledge that extraterrestrials are real and are engaging the human race. "Think of me as a very committed political activist like any other, whether it's the civil rights movement, or the gay rights movement, or the women's rights movement, or any other," he told Yeas & Nays. Though his movement is a wee bit more alien. Bassett and...

The list of amici contains several names that will be familiar to anyone whose has had the bad habit of following American politics. Beyond their political coloration, which in many instances seems quite changeable, they do present a typical Washington motley: underemployed lobbyists, society hostesses, TV gasbags, defenestrated politicians, and political hangers-on, most of them draping themselves in the phony-baloney job titles that only our preposterous political culture can pretend to endow with authority (“adviser,” “consultant,” “commentator,” “advocate”). In other cases there are references to real jobs—former special assistants, speechwriters, undersecretaries—that the amici once held and abandoned several administrations ago,...

NYT's Krugman: Skeptics 'punished in the afterlife' --- McKibben: 'White America' has failed

Believe it or not—and I suspect most readers will not—there’s a liberal war on science. Say what? We are well aware of the Republican war on science from the eponymous 2006 book (Basic Books) by Chris Mooney, and I have castigated conservatives myself in my 2006 book Why Darwin Matters (Henry Holt) for their erroneous belief that the theory of evolution leads to a breakdown of morality. … The left’s war on science begins with the stats cited above: 41 percent of Democrats are young Earth creationists, and 19 percent doubt that Earth is getting warmer. These numbers do not...

A few salient facts are known about the Americans whose lives might be changed by a Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage expected this summer. About one in five gay and lesbian couples are raising children that are under age 18. Same-sex couples are less likely than traditional married couples to have health insurance covering them both. One in 10 men with a male partner or spouse is a military veteran. As many as 6 million Americans, roughly 2 percent of the population, have a parent who is lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. These nuggets of demographic insight into same-sex...

President Obama has put salvation from dreaded climate catastrophes on his action agenda hot list. During his inaugural address he said: “We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.” He went on to shame anyone who disagrees with this assessment, saying, “Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires and crippling drought and powerful storms.”

The Earth has been getting warmer -- but how much of that heat is due to greenhouse gas emissions and how much is due to natural causes? A leaked report by a United Nations’ group dedicated to climate studies says that heat from the sun may play a larger role than previously thought. “[Results] do suggest the possibility of a much larger impact of solar variations on the stratosphere than previously thought, and some studies have suggested that this may lead to significant regional impacts on climate,” reads a draft copy of a major, upcoming report from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental...