Free Republic

The controversial migrant encampment at Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field will remain for another year, The Post has learned. The National Parks Service, which oversees the historic former airfield off Flatbush Avenue, notified city officials Friday it has agreed to the Adams administration’s request for a lease extension to continue operating the 2,000-bed tent city. The original lease was set to expire Saturday. “This extension request was thoroughly reviewed and responds to the State of New York’s continued emergency declaration,” wrote Jennifer T. Nersesian, superintendent of Gateway National Recreation Area, a part of the National Park Service. “As stewards of this...

Araneiform features on the surface of Mars, as imaged by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2009. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona) ====================================================================== Mars has spiders unlike anything else in the Solar System. Between the ocher dunes, across the scars of impacts, long-legged shadows appear to scuttle across the dust. They aren't actual, living spiders. These tendrilled shapes that appear in satellite images of the red planet are made, like almost everything on Mars, from dust. They're known as araneiforms, small systems of dark troughs that appear only in the southern polar region of Mars in the planet's spring. Exactly how the araneiforms...

ALMA images of the star R Doradus, taken on different days, show the movements of giant convection bubbles each as big as 75 Suns...ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/W. Vlemmings et al. ================================================================================== The Sun is the biggest fish in our small pond of a solar system, but it’s a mere minnow compared to the whales that dwell out in the cosmos. New telescope images show a gigantic star casually blowing bubbles 75 times bigger than our Sun. The matter in our neighborhood is distributed pretty unevenly – the Sun hogs some 99.8% of all mass in the solar system, making our planets look...

Did the eruption of Thera cause the Ten Plagues of Egypt, such as the transformation of the Nile into blood?The eruption of the Minoan island of Thera, or Santorini, has popularly been linked to the legend of Atlantis. However, many researchers also attempt to connect it to another famous story: the Ten Plagues. The Bible tells the story of the Ten Plagues of Egypt in the Book of Exodus. Is it possible that the eruption of Thera really could have resulted in these famous Ten Plagues? How the eruption of Thera supposedly explains the Ten Plagues According to advocates of...

Ireland needs to do more to adapt to climate change, according to the Climate Change Advisory Council (CCAC) which says investment is urgently needed to avoid the worst damage and higher costs that it can bring in future years. The council published its annual progress report on how Ireland is preparing for the impacts of climate change. It said coastal erosion and flooding are the biggest risks. The report suggests part of the budget every year should be ring-fenced for adaptation measures, including making road and electricity networks more resilient to climate change. It predicts coastal flooding will cost €2...

Three new species of walnuts have been found above the Arctic Circle, remnants of a time when the North and South Poles were covered in forests. Credit: Florida Museum photo by Jeff Gage =============================================================================== The discovery of extinct walnuts in the Arctic suggests a warmer historical climate with dense forests, extending our knowledge of walnut evolution and geographic spread. Scientists have discovered three new species of extinct walnuts on an island above the Arctic Circle. The fossils were discovered further north than any known walnut species, living or extinct, and represent some of the oldest-known records of this group. A...

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — The National Hurricane Center is monitoring three tropical disturbances as of Sunday morning. One disturbance, located in the Central Tropical Atlantic is showing a 60% chance of development over the next week, while another in the Eastern and Central Atlantic has a 50% chance. The wave that is slightly more westward has a 40% chance of development over the next 48 hours, as the area of low pressure begins to show gradual signs of organization, the NHC said. A tropical depression could form on Monday, as it moves through the waters at about 10 mph.

Hurricane forecasters are bewitched, bothered, and bewildered. The Atlantic hurricane season was supposed to be epic. Instead, it's turned into a real dud. Huge storms wreaking havoc on coastlines from Aruba to Long Island were supposed to line up in the Eastern Atlantic in June and hit us one at a time until late September. The damage was going to be historic and the TV coverage was going to give climate change fanatics plenty of air time to vent that "this is just a foretaste" of what's to come. But something puzzling occurred on the way to hurricane Armageddon: not...

It has been the longest stormless streak in the Atlantic Basin in over 50 years, and AccuWeather meteorologists point to several factors that have put a temporary pause on the 2024 hurricane season.

[The European climate service Copernicus says Earth just sweltered to its hottest summer on record] Summer 2024 sweltered to Earth's hottest on record, making it even more likely that this year will end up as the warmest humanity has measured, European climate service Copernicus reported Friday. And if this sounds familiar, that's because the records the globe shattered were set just last year as human-caused climate change, with a temporary boost from an El Nino, keeps dialing up temperatures and extreme weather, scientists said. The northern meteorological summer — June, July and August — averaged 16.8 degrees Celsius (62.24 degrees...

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"Rhea," NOAA's new high-performance computer will join the HPC Hera supercomputer, which is currently operating at the NOAA Environmental Security Computing Center in Fairmont, W.V. Photo courtesy of NOAA Sept. 3 (UPI) -- A new $100 million high-performance computer system will advance research and development efforts by NOAA on a number of scientific and weather-related tasks, the federal government announced Tuesday. The high-performance computer called "Rhea" will advance NOAA research on weather, climate, and ocean and ecosystem prediction at its new modular facility in Fairmont, W.Va., at NOAA's Environmental Security Computing Center, currently home of the Hera HPC supercomputer. NOAA's...

PHOENIX — Cam Ferguson gets to his spot on the street adjacent to Chase Field — home of Major League Baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks — about four hours before first pitch to set up his usual display of cold water, sports drinks, peanuts and candy. By game time, it’s about 103 degrees Fahrenheit on this Labor Day afternoon in downtown Phoenix. Business is brisk. “Two for five, but it’s eight inside!” shouts another vendor, hawking water bottles. “Plus, they’re having some problems with the air conditioning in there.” It’s always hot this time of year in central Arizona, but 2024 is...

On Monday afternoon, Burning Man’s exodus line snaked for miles through the Black Rock Desert, but a raging dust storm often prevented drivers from seeing more than a few cars in either direction. Updates to Burning Man Traffic’s account on X suggested wait times of between 4 and 6 hours for much of the day, but that was only from “Greeters to blacktop.” Getting to the Burning Man staff at the event’s perimeter was an hours-long endeavor in itself, as the line was backed up all the way into Black Rock City and moving at a glacial pace. I had...

A new method developed by Northwestern University uses electrical currents to solidify marine sand, creating durable, rock-like structures that could replace costly traditional coastal defenses like sea walls. Researchers from Northwestern University have demonstrated that a zap of electricity can strengthen a marine coastline for generations, mitigating the rising threat of erosion in the face of rising sea levels and climate change. In their study, recently published in Communications Earth and the Environment, the researchers took inspiration from clams, mussels, and other shell-dwelling sea life, which use dissolved minerals in seawater to build their shells. Similarly, the researchers leveraged the...

Surface ocean temperatures are plunging rapidly around the world with scientists reported to be puzzled at the speed of the recent decline. Less puzzlement was to be found when the oceans were ‘boiling’ during the last two years. Plebs flying to Benidorm for an annual holiday and causing ‘global heating’ was a favourite explanation, although mainstream media put it in marginally more polite terms. For almost two years, this boiling ocean trope has been a reliable standby for every alarmist spiv promoting the Net Zero insanity. But expect the scare to be parked for a while along with coral reefs,...

Highlighting seas that are rising at an accelerating rate, especially in the far more vulnerable Pacific island nations, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued yet another climate SOS to the world. This time he said those initials stand for “save our seas.” The United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization Monday issued reports on worsening sea level rise, turbocharged by a warming Earth and melting ice sheets and glaciers. They highlight how the Southwestern Pacific is not only hurt by the rising oceans, but by other climate change effects of ocean acidification and marine heat waves. Guterres toured Samoa and Tonga...

The climate activist groups that spent more than a year staging protests against President Joe Biden’s energy policies are pursuing a new strategy with his would-be successor: Get Kamala Harris elected now, ask questions later. Green activists are taking a do-no-harm approach to Harris’ candidacy, ditching demands for policy details and muting potential criticisms over reversing her past opposition to fracking. They say that’s because Harris has excited their base in ways Biden never did — never mind that he signed the biggest climate law in U.S. history. Stoking that activist fervor was one of the main goals behind the...

The body of British tech tycoon Mike Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter was retrieved from the wreckage of the Bayesian superyacht Friday — as Italian authorities reportedly launched a manslaughter probe into what caused the tragedy. Hannah Lynch was the last remaining person still unaccounted for after the yacht sank off the coast of Sicily after being struck by a storm on Monday – sparking a massive search and rescue operation. “The Lynch family is devastated, in shock and is being comforted and supported by family and friends,” a family spokesperson said in confirming her body had been found Friday. “Their thoughts...

A Killer Hurricane Our Country Will Never Forget Hurricane Katrina (August 2005) became a large and extremely powerful hurricane that caused enormous destruction and significant loss of life. It is the costliest hurricane to ever hit the United States, surpassing the record previously held by Hurricane Andrew from 1992. In addition, Katrina is one of the five deadliest hurricanes to ever strike the United States. In all, Hurricane Katrina was responsible for 1,833 fatalities and approximately $108 billion in damage (un-adjusted 2005 dollars). On August 23rd, a tropical depression formed over the southeastern Bahamas, becoming Tropical Storm Katrina on August...