Free Republic

LINES of dragons’ teeth bollards protect Ukraine from Russian attacks in the “fortress belt” tyrant Vladimir Putin insists must be surrendered before any ceasefire can be agreed. The Sun on Sunday’s Defence Editor Jerome Starkey visited to see the barricades and tank trap trenches that President Volodymyr Zelenksy says would take four years to breach. The UK’s Defence Intelligence experts predict 1.9million Russian troops would become casualties in the time it would take to overcome the belt — the best defended position in war-ravaged eastern Donbas. It stretches 30 miles from Slovyansk to Kostyantynivka in Donetsk Oblast [province] of which...

MOUNT RAINIER, Wash. - A new study has revealed that Mount Rainier is experiencing a significant reduction in size due to shifting climate patterns. The findings, published in the "Arctic Antarctic and Alpine Research" journal, indicate that since 1950, Mount Rainier has decreased by more than 20 feet. Researchers attribute this shrinkage to the melting of snow and ice over the years. Researchers have been tracking the height decline using satellites, laser measurements and historical photographs.

Former US Secretary of State John Kerry was knighted Wednesday by King Charles III, receiving England’s highest honor in a closed-door reception at Buckingham Palace. Kerry, 81, was formally awarded the Knight Commander award of the Order of St. Michael and St. George, which is typically bestowed to recognize foreign diplomats and is the highest honor that a noncitizen of the United Kingdom can receive. The former Massachusetts senator received the honor for “services to tackling climate change.” During the Biden administration, Kerry served as the US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate and pushed countries to phase out fossil fuels....

Donald Tusk emphasized that the European Union would not be able to impose anything on Warsaw on this issueMOSCOW, November 26. /TASS/. The European Union cannot impose its court decision on recognizing same-sex marriage on Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk told a cabinet meeting. "I would like to reassure everyone - the European Union will not be able to impose anything on us on this issue (an EU Court decision on recognition of same-sex marriages in other countries of the union - TASS)," Tusk said as broadcast on the social media of the office of the head of government. He...

The pollution from food is sneaky. Because the apple sitting on your kitchen counter isn’t really causing any harm. But chances are good that you didn’t pick it from a tree in your backyard. It required land and water to grow, machines to harvest and process, packaging to ship, trucks to transport and often refrigerators to store. Much of that process releases planet-warming greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. That’s why the global food system makes up roughly a third of worldwide, human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, roughly a third of the U.S. food supply is lost or wasted without being...

Classrooms across the European Union are about to change. A new decision folds climate education into the EU’s 2025 climate plan, from kindergarten through the end of high school in all 27 member countries. Students will not just hear about distant ice melt or heat waves. They will learn how climate science, local impacts, and job skills fit together as part of the European Union’s official response to the climate crisis. For young children, future lessons are likely to connect local weather, food, and energy use to simple climate ideas, instead of treating the subject as a one off event...

A major highlight of Thanksgiving is the menu, but the big meal can come with a lot of wasted food. Experts say a pinch of extra planning can ensure more gets eaten. Roughly 320 million pounds (145 million kilograms) of food will be wasted at Thanksgiving this year, according to ReFED, a nonprofit that tracks food waste. ReFED says that’s largely because people prepare more food than is needed for the meal and then don’t finish the leftovers. “That is essentially like five meals each for all of the food insecure people in the U.S.,” said Yvette Cabrera, food waste...

… U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has been slashing spending for science services at a time of surging demand for analytics due to escalating climate change and extreme weather. That is helping to drive a data industry boom for private data companies like Climate X that are providing everything from drought or pollution risk assessments to locations for untapped mineral reserves. Revenues for the earth intelligence sector should rise at least 10% to $4.2 billion by 2030, market analysis firm Gartner said, teasing the industry in July as a "new revenue growth opportunity." The industry's impact could be even more...

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — United Nations climate talks in Brazil reached a subdued agreement Saturday to deliver more money to countries hit hardest by climate change to help them adapt to extreme weather’s wrath. But the agreement doesn’t include an explicit detailed map to phase out fossil fuels or strengthen inadequate emissions cutting plans.

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — Several nations and environmental groups on Friday slammed proposals in the final stages of this year’s U.N. climate talks for failing to explicitly mention the cause of global warming — the burning of fuels such as oil, gas and coal — with one top negotiator warning the talks are on “the verge of collapse.” Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez, a top negotiator for Panama, said the decades-long United Nations process risks “becoming a clown show” for the omission.

As climate change threatens our planet, AP climate choices reporter Caleigh Wells is explaining what readers can do. Here’s what she said: Climate change stories can be devastating — frustrating policy fights, environmental destruction, public health disasters — and my fellow AP climate reporters are great at telling them. That’s not my job. I cover “climate choices.” I tell readers how their actions impact the planet. It’s important for two reasons: First, if we’re going to tackle this big existential climate threat, we have to know how, and 2) climate news sparks dread and anxiety. And the best antidotes I’ve...

If heat-trapping pollution from burning coal, oil and gas continues unchecked, thousands of hazardous sites across the United States risk being flooded from sea level rise by the turn of the century, posing serious health risks to nearby communities, according to a new study. Researchers identified 5,500 sites that store, emit or handle sewage, trash, oil, gas and other hazards that could face coastal flooding by 2100, with much of the risk already locked in due to past emissions. But more than half the sites are projected to face flood risk much sooner — as soon as 2050. Low-income, communities...

Germany, France, Canada, and Belgium are among 12 nations that signed on to the “Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change,” documenting the so-called “threats” that free speech and the free press pose to what U.S. President Donald Trump refers to as the climate “con job.”Signed at the United Nations’ COP30, the UN’s annual climate confab, the declaration marks the first time that “information integrity” has been on the docket for COP’s Action Agenda.The rise of independent media, social media, and the internet has created a source of non-establishment news that has elevated legitimate criticism of the so-called man-made climate-change...

Britons' anxiety about climate change plays a big role in many mental health struggles among the country's youth and can trigger guilt about having children, a new report has claimed. The report by the United Kingdom Health Security Agency (UKHSA) also suggests that yoga and visiting "climate cafés" could help stave off this "eco-anxiety" and build emotional resilience in times of change. "An awareness of climate and environmental change can also lead to emotional or psychological responses, such as eco-anxiety," it reads, defining the term as distress caused by the threat of climate change. The authors also reference "solastalgia," which...

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — Pope Leo XIV on Monday urged countries at United Nations climate talks to take “concrete actions” to stop climate change that is threatening the planet, telling them humans are failing in their response to global warming and that God’s creation “is crying out in floods, droughts, storms and relentless heat.” In a video message played for religious leaders gathered in Belem, Leo said nations had made progress, “but not enough.” “One in three people live in great vulnerability because of these climate changes,” Leo said. “To them, climate change is not a distant threat, and to...

Could Great Britain have crushed the American rebellion? An expert argues that, while better generalship and politics might have delayed defeat, the odds were stacked against London from the start. Holding a vast, underdeveloped continent with a small population, across an ocean, was a nightmare even for Europe’s strongest navy and army. Saratoga and French intervention made things worse, forcing Britain to fight a global war while trying to subdue the colonies. In the end, distance, imperial overreach, and political inflexibility meant the empire was likely to lose North America sooner or later.

BELEM, Brazil (Reuters) -With the United States absent from the U.N. annual international climate summit for the first time in three decades, China is stepping into the limelight as a leader in the fight against global warming. Its country pavilion dominates the entrance hall of the sprawling COP30 conference grounds in Brazil's Amazon city of Belem, executives from its biggest clean energy companies are presenting their visions for a green future to large audiences in English, and its diplomats are working behind the scenes to ensure constructive talks. Those were Washington's roles, but they now reside with Beijing. China’s transformation...

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — The world’s climate leaders are conceding that Earth’s warming will shoot past a hard limit they set a decade ago in hopes of keeping the planet out of a danger zone. But they’re not conceding defeat. United Nations officials, scientists, and analysts are pinning their hopes on eventually forcing global temperatures back below the red line they set in the 2015 Paris Agreement, which sought to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) since preindustrial times. Busting that limit and then coming back down is called “overshoot.” In the way climate science uses the term,...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Chamber of Commerce asked the Supreme Court on Friday to pause new California laws expected to require thousands of companies to report emissions and climate-risk information. The laws are the most sweeping of their kind in the nation, and a collection of business groups argued in an emergency appeal that they violate free-speech rights. The measures were signed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023, and reporting requirements are expected to start early next year. Lower courts have so far refused to block the laws, which the state says will increase transparency and encourage companies...

A skewed Trump speech edit, a Gaza film built around a Hamas operative’s son, and repeated factual distortions have plunged the BBC into a credibility crisis. Conservatives are celebrating, Trump is threatening a major lawsuit, and the network faces a steep political cost There is no need to attribute superpowers to Donald Trump. No American president, not even a narcissist in White House mode, can shake a public broadcaster in another country and continent and trigger the resignation of its director general and head of news. The BBC misled the public about Trump. It deceived viewers who had always regarded...