Free Republic

Floods on the Rio Blanco these past few days demonstrate the link to climate change, but not in the way you think. It was a horrible Memorial Day weekend in Hays County, Texas. At least three people died from the worst flooding seen since 1922. The Rio Blanco crested at 43 feet, 30 feet over flood stage. Over 400 homes were destroyed and the interstate (I-35) was under water. The flood warning posted on the San Marcos, Texas website identifies the areas of evacuation. One area is that in the Blanco Vista neighborhood nearest to the river. Police officers and...

Conservative climate champions are often laughed off or ignored. But what’s happening within the American political right could change everything, and fast.Each year since 1989, the JFK Library bestows its Profile in Courage award to a public servant who takes a principled but unpopular position. This year,the award went to Bob Inglis, a former congressman from South Carolina who’s turned into America’s best hope for near-term climate action. Oh, he’s also a Republican.As you might expect, Inglis wasn’t always a climate campaigner. In his acceptance speech last week at the JFK Library in Boston,he described how and why he changed...

The GOP’s destructive Vietnam mythology: How the right’s self-glorifying delusions led to decades of avoidable war It only took about five years from the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, for the American right to succeed in burying the moment under mounds of revisionist horse shit. Ronald Reagan, speaking at a campaign appearance in the summer of 1980, said, It is time that we recognized that [the American War in Vietnam] was, in truth, a noble cause… We dishonor the memory of 50 thousand young Americans who died in that cause when we give way to feelings of guilt...

US Secretary of State John Kerry assumed the chairmanship of the Arctic Council, and immediately made it clear that despite worrisome Russian military moves in the Arctic, the US would not challenge them. Washington Examiner: >>>>In assuming the leadership role, Kerry laid out a robust agenda to face the threat of climate change in the Arctic, which he says is being affected by global warming more than anywhere else in the world. But when faced with questions over whether the U.S. will use its new leadership position to address threats posed by Russia, Kerry said no. Kerry said the idea...

".....For decades the National Geographic Society has engaged in serious exploration and scientific inquiry and has earned the confidence of thousands of members/readers. That makes it worrisome that key people there seem to have become followers of the concept of Deep Ecology proclaimed by Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess in 1973. The concept holds that all life, from human to dust mites, should be safe to live and pursue happiness. Although we humans are the only species with the ability to reason, this gives no special privileges; rather, the responsibility for all the others. To do this, we must not exploit...

Take a lesson, climate deniers and Fox News know-nothings Here's a history of knowledge and science that far too many Tea Partyers need to grapple with now The origins of the Royal Society lie in a so-called invisible college of natural philosophers who began meeting in the mid-1640s for discussions of the new methods of seeking knowledge of the natural world through observation and experiment. On November 28, 1660, twelve men met at Gresham College after a lecture by Christopher Wren, then the Gresham Professor of Astronomy, and decided to found “a Colledge for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematicall Experimentall Learning.”...

Humanity’s ongoing contribution to climate change didn’t get any worse last year, the International Energy Agency reports. We did it! Global carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector stalled in 2014, the IEA found, news that the group’s Chief Economist Faith Birol called “both a very welcome surprise and a significant one.” The big news is that this was the first time in forty years that emissions have stalled while the economy grew 3 percent — suggesting, said Birol, that the two are “decoupling.” And it means, the IEA said in a press release, that our efforts to mitigate our...

Roger Pielke, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, and six others are under investigation by Congress regarding testimony they've given on the subject of climate change.Pielke, a believer in man-caused global warming, can't quite figure out why he's the object of a witch hunt....................... What am I accused of that prompts being investigated? Here is my crime: Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr., at CU’s Center for Science and Technology Policy Research has testified numerous times before the U.S. Congress on climate change and its economic impacts. His 2013 Senate testimony featured the claim, often repeated, that it...

On Monday, Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson took a tilt at climate skeptics. “The assumption that the vast majority in a scientific field is engaged in fraud or corruption is frankly conspiratorial,” Gerson wrote. As a non-scientist, he decided that the answer to the question of whether humans had warmed the planet was to trust scientists. The article’s timing was unfortunate. Three weeks ago, Lennart Bengtsson, a leading Swedish meteorologist approaching his 80s, announced that he was joining the avowedly skeptical Global Warming Policy Foundation think tank. In an interview with Speigel Online, Bengtsson spoke of the need for climate-model...

Charles Krauthammer says it right up front in his Washington Post column: “I’m not a global warming believer. I’m not a global warming denier.” He does, however, challenge the notion that the science on climate change is settled and says those who insist otherwise are engaged in “a crude attempt to silence critics and delegitimize debate.” How ironic, then, that some environmental activists launched a petition urging the Post not to publish Krauthammer’s column on Friday. Their response to opinions they disagree with is to suppress the speech. Brad Johnson (@ClimateBrad), the editor of HillHeat.com and a former Think Progress...

Women who suffer stress during pregnancy increase the chance of their child being gay, according to a controversial new book. The lifestyle of pregnant mothers affects the sexuality of their unborn child, altering their hormones and the formation of their brains, it claims. Smoking or taking drugs can also result in a child who grows up to be gay, according to the book by Dutch neuroscientist Dick Swaab, which is yet another chapter in the debate about the origins and causes of homosexuality. Professor Swaab believes that a child’s sexuality is determined in the womb and cannot be altered, while...

Philadelphia city council members have approved a resolution that calls for socialist historian Howard Zinn’s book “A People’s History of the United States” to be taught in public high schools. The resolution was backed by council members Jim Kenny and Jannie Blackwell, who believe that Zinn’s far-left socialist vision of American history is currently missing from high school textbooks. “Howard Zinn’s ‘A People’s History of the United States’ emphasizes the role of working people, women, people of color, and organized social movements in shaping history; not simply the version retold by those powerful enough to ensure history remembers their actions...

Thanks to the wonder that is the Internet, you don’t have to actually live in San Diego to watch a 30-minute special that aired in that city last Sunday that gives a thorough debunking of the climate scare. At this link you will see what the lucky residents of San Diego enjoyed via the great KUSI-TV and the Founding Father of The Weather Channel, John Coleman … without the other benefits of living in one of the most pleasant cities on the planet. You’ll just have to count all your other blessings. Coleman interviewed two of the lead authors of...

On June 23, 1988, a young and previously unknown NASA computer modeller, James Hansen, appeared before a United States Congressional hearing on climate change. On that occasion, Dr. Hansen used a graph to convince his listeners that late 20th century warming was taking place at an accelerated rate, which, it being a scorching summer's day in Washington, a glance out of the window appeared to confirm..... Hansen's testimony was taken up as a lead news story, and within days the great majority of the American public believed that a climate apocalypse was at hand, and the global warming hare was...

In the first experiment of its kind conducted in nature, a University of British Columbia evolutionary biologist has come up with strong evidence for one of Charles Darwin's cornerstone ideas -- adaptation to the environment accelerates the creation of new species.

The evolution of novel characteristics within organisms can be enhanced when environments change in a systematic manner, according to a new study by Weizmann Institute researchers. Merav Parter, Nadav Kashtan and Uri Alon suggest that in environments that vary over time in a non-random way, evolution can learn the rules of the environment and develop organisms that can readily generate novel useful traits with only a few mutations. Details are published November 7 in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology In this study Parter, Kashtan and Alon began with the observation that environments in nature seemingly vary according to common...

Obama wants to reshape the agriculture industryIf he is willing to "bankrupt" the coal industry over global warming, what's he going to do to the agriculture sector which "actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector"? Don't forget about biden's EVIL corn syrup...evil corn syrup

Trofimko Lysenko is not a household name; but it should be, because he was the model for all the Politically Correct "science" in the last hundred years. Lysenko was Stalin's favorite agricultural "scientist," peddling the myth that crops could be just trained into growing bigger and better. You didn't have to breed better plants over generations, as farmers have been doing for ages. It was a fantasy of the all-powerful Soviet State. Lysenko sold Stalin on that fraud in plant genetics, and Stalin told Soviet scientists to fall into line --- in spite of the fact that nobody really believed it....

In Stalin's Russia any dissenter from the Party Line was guilty. Innocence had to be proved. It's a standard tyrant's trick. During the reign of Oliver Cromwell in England, witchhunters did not have to prove that their victims were guilty. The accused witches had to prove their innocence. That's what Al Gore has done to science: He and his friends have flipped innocence and guilt from normal science to Stalinist science. In Al Gore's America, any "global warming denier" is guilty until proven innocent. He or she must have been bought off by Big Oil.   Skeptics, no matter how well-qualified,...

On October 27 Sens. Rockefeller (D., W.Va.) and Snowe (R., Maine) sent a letter to ExxonMobil's CEO requesting that ExxonMobil end its financial assistance and support of groups and individuals who reject global warming claims, and urging it to "publicly acknowledge both the reality of climate change and the role of humans in causing or exacerbating it." "This letter constitutes an outrageous violation of ExxonMobil's right to free speech," said Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. "Whether or not one believes there is a threat of catastrophic global warming, the government has no right to tell ExxonMobil...