Free Republic

This is the summer when, for many, climate change got real. The future looks fiery and dangerous. Hot on the heels of Trump, fake news and the parlous state of the Brexit negotiations, despair is in the air. Now a new scientific report makes the case that even fairly modest future carbon dioxide emissions could set off a cascade of catastrophe, with melting permafrost releasing methane to ratchet up global temperatures enough to drive much of the Amazon to die off, and so on in a chain reaction around the world that pushes Earth into a terrifying new hothouse state...

In a scene unlikely to be replicated in Congress anytime soon, members of the Canadian Parliament gave President Obama repeated standing ovations and chanted “four more years” at the outgoing U.S. Commander in Chief on Wednesday. Obama was visiting Canada for the North American Leaders’ Summit between the U.S. President, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a meeting that has been dubbed variously the “Three Amigos Summit” and “dude-plomacy.” …

While 1492 may have been the year Columbus sailed the ocean blue, it also marks the start of a mass swapping of species between the Old World and the New World as Europe began colonizing the Americas. Research published Wednesday from University College of London (UCL) and Leeds University Professor Simon Lewis and UCL Professor Mark Maslin argues that just over 100 years later -- 1610 -- is when those actions dramatically changed the planet Earth. As a result, they say, 1610 deserves to be designated as the start of the Anthropocene Epoch.