Free Republic

AUGUST 20, 2013 AT 9:56 AM A draft of the next IPCC climate report has arrived, and it is more of the same: We are all gonna die! An international panel of scientists has found with near certainty that human activity is the cause of most of the temperature increases of recent decades, and warns that sea levels could conceivably rise by more than three feet by the end of the century if emissions continue at a runaway pace. The scientists, whose findings are reported in a draft summary of the next big United Nations climate report, largely dismiss a...

Insect sex may seem fairly simple: fluttering dances, clasping abdomens, a quick mount on a forest floor. But a new review of homosexual insect encounters suggests the acts may not be that straightforward for the individuals involved. Researchers have widely examined homosexual behavior in mammals and birds, but have addressed it less frequently in insects and spiders. To assess the range of evolutionary explanations for same-sex intercourse in the invertebrate world, a team of biologists from Tel Aviv University in Israel examined roughly 100 existing studies on the topic and compiled the first comprehensive review of homosexuality in invertebrates. The...

Dr. Benny Peiser at The Australian: Europe pulls the plug on its green future Slowly but gradually, Europe is awakening to a green energy crisis, an economic and political debacle that is entirely self-inflicted.The mainstream media, which used to encourage the renewables push enthusiastically, is beginning to sober up too. With more and more cracks beginning to appear, many newspapers are returning to their proper role as the fourth estate, exposing the pitfalls of Europe’s green-energy gamble and opening their pages for thorough analysis and debate. Today, European media is full of news and commentary about the problems of an...

U.S. Committee on Science, Space and TechnologyHand it over. Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX), chairman of the House science committee, signs a subpoena ordering the Environmental Protection Agency to hand over sensitive health data. In a rare step, the science committee of the U.S. House of Representatives voted yesterday to subpoena the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for data from key studies used to justify air pollution regulations.Following a heated exchange of letters between Committee Chair Lamar Smith (R-TX) and ranking member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), the committee approved its first subpoena in 21 years. The vote was strictly along party lines,...

EACH of us took turns over the past 43 years running the Environmental Protection Agency. We served Republican presidents, but we have a message that transcends political affiliation: the United States must move now on substantive steps to curb climate change, at home and internationally. There is no longer any credible scientific debate about the basic facts: our world continues to warm, with the last decade the hottest in modern records, and the deep ocean warming faster than the earth’s atmosphere. Sea level is rising. Arctic Sea ice is melting years faster than projected. The costs of inaction are undeniable....

Shifts in climate are strongly linked to increases in violence around the world, a study suggests. US scientists found that even small changes in temperature or rainfall correlated with a rise in assaults, rapes and murders, as well as group conflicts and war. The team says with the current projected levels of climate change, the world is likely to become a more violent place.

... A new study comes to a startling conclusion: Among primates, including perhaps humans, monogamy evolved because it protected infants from being killed by rival males. Living in pairs, what researchers call social monogamy, has repeatedly evolved among animals, although in widely varying proportions among different groups. Thus, about 90% of bird species are socially monogamous, probably because incubating eggs and feeding hatchlings is a full-time job that requires both parents. But in mammals, females carry the babies inside their bodies and are solely responsible for providing milk to young infants—and only about 5% of species are socially monogamous.

As you squeegee out your basement, replace your blown-off roof tiles, bury your heat-withered tomato crop and think about moving to a house on higher ground, you will be forgiven if you want to step out onto the street, tilt your head toward those odd-shaped clouds massing on the horizon, and scream, “Fix it! And that might be a reasonable request. The weather is broken. To some degree, this is because we broke it: While it is foolish to link any individual extreme-weather event to the larger climate, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the growing frequency and intensity of...

Say what you will about us millennials—we’re a wilting bouquet of narcissistic, socialistic, overeducated, underemployed, tatted-up hipsters who still live at home—but, from this day forward, don’t you dare say we’re climate change deniers. A strong majority (66 percent!) of young independent voters, ages 18 to 34, accept as dogma that man and his dirty deeds are causing, and will continue to cause, climate change—this according to a study conducted by a bipartisan pair of political strategy groups for the League of Conservation Voters.

The latest evidence that climate change is already causing massive damage Extreme weather patterns spawned by global warming are a serious threat to the nation's energy infrastructure, according to a new report from the Department of Energy, and their destructive effects are already being felt nationwide. "Increasing temperatures, decreasing water availability, more intense storm events, and sea level rise will each independently, and in some cases in combination, affect the ability of the United States to produce and transmit electricity from fossil, nuclear, and existing and emerging renewable energy sources," the report states. In the most striking example, the report...

Last year, I showed an image of evolutionary stages that was so accurate that it would earn approval even from many strict creationists. Here’s a new image of evolutionary stages that sets the stage for today’s discussion. Simply stated, Americans are becoming bigger. In some cases, a lot bigger. Is this trend toward greater obesity a bad thing? As a reader asks, is it something that requires a government response? The answer is yes…and no. Libertarians believe people should be free to make their own decisions so long as they’re not infringing on the rights of others. And that includes...

Chemical analysis links methane in drinking wells to shale-gas extraction. As shale-gas operations expand across the United States, industry officials and environmentalists are at loggerheads over whether or not shale-gas extraction can contaminate groundwater. Now researchers have traced low levels of methane and other contaminants to a source of shale gas: the sprawling Marcellus Formation, which lies beneath much of New York state, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio (see ‘On tap’) . The study, led by researchers at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, expands on an earlier analysis of drinking water in northeastern Pennsylvania, where energy companies have used...

In the near future, Americans who own or want guns likely will be subject to rafts of new questions from social scientists, medical researchers and law enforcement officials intent to discover just what guns they own, why they own them and what they intend to use them for — not to mention where and how they keep them. They will also likely have more researchers poring over such issues as whether childhood education programs against gun violence actually work; whether there actually is any relationship between violence in the media and in real life; and whether the safety plans that...

After five years of referring to climate change as a long-term climate and humanitarian problem, President Obama is trying a new strategy. In a speech Tuesday to sell a package of regulations to limit greenhouse gases from power plants, Obama will list the ways a warming planet impacts human health now, White House officials say. The strategy may have legs. The administration has directed several government agencies to work together on a wide-ranging effort to try to quantify the "social costs" of climate change, including health effects. How is climate change expected to affect human health? The Centers for Disease...

“In a world that's warmer than it used to be, all weather events are affected by the warming planet,” Obama said before giving a speech on his proposals to limit climate change.

LONDON, June 19 (Reuters) - The world should stop arguing about whether humans are causing climate change and start taking action to stop dangerous temperature rises, the president of the World Bank said on Wednesday. Kim Jim Yong Kim said there was 97 to 98 percent agreement among scientists that global warming was real and caused by human activity. "If you disagree with the science of human-caused climate change you are not disagreeing that there is anthropogenic climate change. What you are disagreeing with is science itself," Kim told a Thomson Reuters newsmaker event in London.

Global warming alarmists have been caught doctoring the results of a widely cited paper asserting there is a 97 percent scientific consensus regarding human-caused global warming. After taking a closer look at the paper, investigative journalists report the authors’ claims of a 97 percent consensus relied on them misclassifying the papers of some of the world’s most prominent global warming skeptics. At the same time, the authors deliberately presented a meaningless survey question that allowed them to twist the responses to fit their own preconceived global warming alarmism. Misleading Question Global warming alarmist John Cook, founder of the misleadingly named...

TORONTO – Theories abound as to why women go into menopause, but the latest hypothesis being put forward suggests it may be men — or specifically their preference for younger mates —that has led to women’s loss of fertility at a certain age. Researchers at McMaster University believe that over tens of thousands of years, a lack of reproduction among older women has given rise to menopause as an unintended result of evolutionary natural selection. Using computer modelling, the researchers found that over time, competition among men of all ages for younger mates left older females with much less chance...

One of the more effective arguments used by those arguing for same-sex marriage and sexual orientation anti-discrimination laws is that homosexuals have no choice in the matter -- that sexual orientation is something that you are born with, and you can't change it. The claim is that this is a natural part of human variability, no different from skin color or hair color or how tall you are. As an acquaintance -- a generally conservative, gay high power rifle shooter (talk about being a member of the world's smallest cross-section of identity groups) told me once, "Why would anyone choose...

Would you like to know what America's young people are actually learning while they are away at college? It isn't pretty. Yes, there are some very highly technical fields where students are being taught some very important skills, but for the most part U.S. college students are learning very little that they will actually use out in the real world when they graduate. Some of the college courses listed below are funny, others are truly bizarre, others are just plain outrageous, but all of them are a waste of money. If we are going to continue to have a system...