Free Republic

Some neuro-scientists see evidence that man is genetically hard-wired to be disposed to religious conviction. If this is so, it might explain why amongst even the French — the most secular culture on Earth — only 25 percent claim to be atheists, and a full 60 percent believe in a spiritual component to life. It might also explain why the environmental movement tends to veer toward a religious, rather than a scientific, sensibility. This oft-observed aspect to environmentalism in general, and global warmingism in particular, has been shrewdly analyzed in a new book, "The Future of Everything: The Science of...

Following two recent studies on changes to Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, NASA is touting a survey that it says confirms “climate warming is changing how much water remains locked in Earth’s largest storehouses of ice and snow.” In a press release for the survey, NASA directly tied the changes to warming and described the survey as “the most comprehensive” ever in both regions. That stand can in part be explained by lead author Jay Zwally’s warning. “If the trends we’re seeing continue and climate warming continues as predicted, the polar ice sheets could change dramatically,” he said in the...

We’ve all been had. The bottom has long since fallen out of the key group that master-minded the Kyoto Protocol credit scheme, but nobody seemed to have joined the dots. It all began with the flight of Canadian Maurice Strong’s Earth Council from Costa Rica as noted by the National Post’s Peter Foster in May, 2004. With no fanfare, the Earth Council landed in CH2M Hill’s Consumer Road Toronto office towers. The Costa Rican government has been pursuing the Earth Council for payment of U.S.$1.65 million, for the wrongful sale of a tract of land it imprudently donated to the...

THE GREAT DIVIDE | RURAL WASTELANDS UANGMENGYING, China - Wang Lincheng began his accounting at the brick hut of a farmer. Dead of cancer, he said flatly, his dress shoes sinking in the mud. Dead of cancer, he repeated, glancing at another vacant house. Mr. Wang, head of the Communist Party in this village, ignored a June rain and trudged past mud-brick houses, ticking off other deaths, other empty homes. He did not seem to notice a small cornfield where someone had dug a burial mound of fresh red dirt. Finally, he stopped at the door of a sickened young...

John McCain has failed in his first attempt to persuade his Republican colleagues in the Senate to give the issue of global warming the urgent attention it deserves. By a margin of 55 to 43 on Thursday, the Senate rejected a proposal he sponsored with Joseph Lieberman to impose mandatory caps on the emissions from utilities and other industries that scientists believe are heavily responsible for global warming. But Mr. McCain, as we know, does not give up easily. He started his quest for campaign finance reform in 1995 and prevailed six years later. He promises to be just as...