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There are so many deep flaws in the "Endangerment Ruling" announced Monday by President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency that it is quite possible the worst of them will escape notice. After all, it's hard to top the drama of the millions of lost jobs and the crippling energy crisis that will result if the agency begins regulating greenhouse gases -- mainly CO2. The agency unilaterally awarded itself authority to do just that with the ruling. But even worse will be the terrible damage this ruling will inflict upon one of the most basic of American constitutional pillars, the separation of...

Here is a new Naked Emperor News video that catches former Vice-President Al Gore in making a concession that in the past, rising temperatures have PRECEDED a rise in C02 levels, not the other way around. The video makes the case that since Gore concedes that has sometimes been the case, then there is "no one to blame" and no need to regulate anything with Cap and Trade legislation. He made the concession during testimony before Congress in 2007, while being questioned by Texas Rep. Joe Barton. . . (VIDEO)

Demand for an EPA offset for CO2 We the petitioners demand the EPA provide farmers, ranchers and dairymen with an Oxygen generaton offset against any CO2 fee or tax because oxygen is NOT a greenhouse gas. Example: A Christmas tree plantation uses fuel to plant and harvest however no credit is issued for their crop reducing the CO2 in the air with their trees nor is any credit given for the oxygen generated by the trees for the years between planting and harvest. Any green crop removes CO2 and generates oxygen.

There are certain facts and figures in the course of daily life that should be instinctive common knowledge (e.g. There are 50 states in the United States, Obama!). This is particularly true for those who not only present themselves as experts in a given field (e.g. provocateurs of the globalclimatewarmingchange hysteria), but also those who present themselves as responsible, intelligent adults capable of leading others. On a consistent basis, “Algore” laughably proves himself to be neither. CONAN O'BRIEN: Now, what about ... you talk in the book about geothermal energy... AL GORE, NOBEL LAUREATE: Yeah, yeah. O'BRIEN: ...and that is,...

New Missions for Pilotless Aircraft by W. Thomas Smith Jr. (more by this author) Posted 12/09/2009 ET Two-and-a-half years ago when I was in Iraq, I remember -- among the sound of mortars, crackling gunfire, thundering helicopters, roaring jets, and the occasional (thankfully distant) IED explosions -- the somewhat-comforting sound of the remotely piloted little reconnaissance airplanes we’ve come to know as UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles). Comforting, I say, because I knew that as long as those UAVs were up there, bad guys on the ground (who I and others could not see) were either being watched, having their freedom-of-movement...

Most of the light from stars and other objects like planets in the universe is doubly invisible. It comes in the form of infrared, or heat radiation, with wavelengths too long for our eyes to pick up. Moreover, most infrared wavelengths do not penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere to get to our unseeing eyes.

Merry Christmas my fellow Space Freepers...

Bird influenza viruses have a variety of strategies to cross the species barrier and spreadThe 2009 H1N1 influenza virus used a new strategy to cross from birds into humans, a warning that it has more than one trick up its sleeve to jump the species barrier and become virulent. In a report in this week's early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, researchers show that the H1N1, or swine flu, virus adopted a new mutation in one of its genes distinct from the mutations found in previous flu viruses, including...

APRIL 17 2009 NEW YORK TIMES: The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday formally declared carbon dioxide and five other heat-trapping gases to be pollutants that endanger public health and welfare, setting in motion a process that will lead to the regulation of the gases for the first time in the United States. DECEMBER 7 2009 AP: The Obama administration took a major step Monday toward imposing the first federal limits on climate-changing pollution from cars, power plants and factories, declaring there was compelling scientific evidence that global warming from manmade greenhouse gases endangers Americans' health.

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday formally declared carbon dioxide and five other heat-trapping gases to be pollutants that endanger public health and welfare, setting in motion a process that will lead to the regulation of the gases for the first time in the United States.

Long life may stem from a proper imbalance of dietary nutrients. A new study in fruit flies suggests that the life-extending properties of caloric restriction may be due not only to fewer calories in the diet, but also to just the right mix of protein building blocks, called amino acids. The study, published online December 2 in Nature, may help explain some of the health benefits of restricted-calorie diets. Coupled with other data, the new study should prompt researchers to reevaluate whether it is calorie count or the nutrient composition of a diet that is most important for regulating lifespan...

When Minneapolis artist Janey Westin first came across the runes near the town of Kensington, she assumed they were left behind by the same Norse explorers who created the so-called Kensington Runestone, found nearby in 1898. The infamous 200-pound rock is covered with runes that describe the travails of a party of Scandinavians beset by Indians in 1362. Though most scholars doubt the stone's authenticity, it continues to fuel debate about a Norse presence in the Midwest. Excited by the new find, the Kensington Runestone Museum paid for archaeological testing at the site, which yielded only a few Native American...

His administration formally declared that the gases "endanger the public health and welfare of the America people" empowering its Environment Protection Agency to regulate them across the country under the country's Clean Air Act, without having to get a hotly-contested climate bill through the US Congress.

Single-minded and with a high opinion of his scholarly abilities, Beringer was wide open for a simple, but devastating hoax... Beringer "wholly, publicly committed himself to the belief that fossils were merely the capricious fabrications of God, hidden in the earth by Him for some inscrutable purpose; possibly, thought Beringer, merely for His own pleasure; possibly as a test for human faith" and proceeded to write a book on them... historians Melvin E. Jahn and Daniel J. Woolf, who in 1963 produced the first English translation of Beringer's book, showed the truth behind the tale lies not in farcical student...

Many archaeological finds are accidentally unearthed by construction crews, as was the discovery of a 1.8 million-year-old skull of a giant ground sloth in Southern California. Buried in the ground since the Ice Age, the skull was found by a construction crew and could be on its way to be displayed at the San Bernardino County Museum. Work on a new site for a Southern California Edison sub-station was immediately halted when the ancient bones were discovered while earthmovers were flattening out a hilly area west of Beaumont, which is a few miles from the low desert community of Palm...

A crofter... Graeme Mackenzie, 47, made the find after hiring an excavator to open the drain on rough pastureland 50yds (48m) from his home near Sleat. Rain had partly washed away the bottom of the drain and exposed a corroded 4in (10cm) iron spike. Mr Mackenzie levered it out and was "stunned" as the ancient anchor gradually emerged. The Treasure Trove Unit at the National Museums of Scotland said the anchor will probably be claimed by the Crown. Measuring 4ft high and a similar distance from tip to tip, the artefact is undergoing dating and metallurgical testing. Preliminary results...

At no point, Low says, did he sign an agreement to sell or give the tablet to the historical society. He always considered it a loan. "I never intended for them to keep it," he said. "I told them it's not for sale." Low said the artifact has great sentimental value for him, not only because he found it as a child, but also because he has American Indian ancestors who could be related to the ancient Adena people who made the carving. Two years ago, Low decided he wanted to get the tablet back so he could donate it...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One of the most systematic looks yet at the swine flu pandemic confirms that it is at worst only a little more serious than an average flu season and could well be a good deal milder, researchers said on Monday. ... Lipsitch's team calculated a potential range of 7,800 to 29,000 deaths. This compares to seasonal flu, which kills 36,000 people a year and puts 200,000 into the hospital.

Trying to find this with no luck - I figure someone (or twenty) on FR will know the answer. Thanks in advance.

Step aside, Tesla -- we've just spotted the hottest Earth-lovin' supercar since the Lightning GT. Shown off to wide-mouthed onlookers at the LA Auto Show this month, the Capstone CMT-380 prototype is an automotive beast unlike anything we've ever seen. Rather than mixing batteries and a conventional engine, this whip combines the former with a diesel / biodiesel-powered microturbine, which is -- for all intents and purposes -- a jet engine. Reportedly, the car can reach 60MPH from a standstill in just 3.9 seconds, hit 150MPH before being cut off by the electronic limiter, cruise 80 miles on battery power...

In fatal cases of 2009 H1N1 influenza, the virus can damage cells throughout the respiratory airway, much like the viruses that caused the 1918 and 1957 influenza pandemics, report researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner. The scientists reviewed autopsy reports, hospital records and other clinical data from 34 people who died of 2009 H1N1 influenza infection between May 15 and July 9, 2009. All but two of the deaths occurred in New York City. A microscopic examination of tissues throughout the airways revealed that the virus caused damage...

Since the Tiger Woods incident was thrust upon us there have been 112 threads; 8,486 comments and 304,787 views recorded on FR. This data was collected from topic counts using TIGER WOODS as the SEARCH TITLE. The data is deemed dense, but dubious.

Stephen C. Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, fights to show that all lives have eternal value because they are the work of a Creator and not the product of chance. WORLD's 12th annual Daniel of the Year does not save lives abroad, as Britain's Caroline Cox and Sudan's Michael Yerko do. Nor does he regularly save lives of the unborn, as Florida's Wanda Cohn does through her pregnancy center work. No, Stephen C. Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, fights to show that those lives have eternal value because...

After five years of secret construction, the cloak is coming off a privately funded spacecraft designed to fly well-heeled tourists into space. The long-awaited glimpse of SpaceShipTwo, slated for rollout Monday in the Mojave Desert, could not come sooner for the scores of wannabe astronauts who have forked over part of their disposable income for the chance to float in zero gravity. "We've all been patiently waiting to see exactly what the vehicle is going to look like," said Peter Cheney, a 63-year-old potential space tourist from Seattle who was among the first to sign up for suborbital space rides...

Do you have a high-efficiency front-loading washing machine? If so, be on the lookout for mold. This recently-published MSNBC.com piece investigates the increased likelihood of mold growth in front-loaders. Unlike top loaders, which see most water evaporate after a cycle, front loaders experience water collection, particularly on the Rubber gasket around the glass window.

The Earth's temperature may be 30-50 percent more sensitive to atmospheric carbon dioxide than has previously been estimated, reports a new study published in Nature Geoscience this weekIn the long term, the Earth's temperature may be 30-50% more sensitive to atmospheric carbon dioxide than has previously been estimated, reports a new study published in Nature Geoscience this week. The results show that components of the Earth's climate system that vary over long timescales – such as land-ice and vegetation – have an important effect on this temperature sensitivity, but these factors are often neglected in current climate models. Dan Lunt,...

NASA Potato Chips — Holy what the f***? This was the most out there skit of SNL I think I’ve seen in years, and that includes the digital shorts. This was so absurd that it must be based on something that I haven’t seen before…? I’ve gotta say, though, I thought it was pretty freakin’ funny in just how weird it was, even if I almost threw up in my own mouth a little at the thought of what happened.

Look down a long stretch of highway on a summer afternoon and in the distance a pool of water seems to wait for you, glistening under the hot sun. It’s only an illusion—Mother Nature’s version of a practical joke. The difference in density between the asphalt-heated air near the surface and the cooler air above acts like a lens, bending light waves as they pass from one layer to the next to reflect the blue sky and hide both the blacktop and any vehicles at the far end of the road behind a shimmering curtain. Scientists and engineers are trying...

The City of Calgary introduced its blue box, curbside recycling program this year, and there was rejoicing. Calgary, the last major Canadian city to offer it, had, until recently, asked citizens to deliver their own recyclables to green bins located every few blocks, or to hire, at $10 a month, a private pickup service. To those concerned about environmental appearances, it was embarrassing. "It means something to me that we're the last large city in Canada to implement curbside recycling," said Druh Farrell, the alderman championing the program. Approving the $50-million plan (plus another roughly $50-million a year recycling tax...

Revealing info that most versions of this story omit: "Obama had said that he would travel to the Copenhagen conference if his appearance would help clinch a deal." "The White House now says Obama, after talks this week with European leaders, has come up with an "emerging consensus" on how much money - $10 billion a year - polluting rich countries should pay by 2012 to poorer countries, which are more often the victim of global warming." "Gibbs said the U.S. would pay its "fair share" of the $10 billion amount but did not identify what that was or from...

Is all this space travel worthwhile? Will it really contribute to our civilization or our touchingly naive way of life? Will it even lift our spirits? I cannot be sure about the first two, as I feel these might be permanently floating somewhere out there. But I have some space-sourced spirit lifting to share. Japan's Sapporo Breweries, the entity that brings you those large silver tins of beer to complement your rainbow roll, announced this week that it is launching space beer.

Shortly after the first of the year (if not already), the Large Hadron Collider — the most powerful particle accelerator ever built — will smash protons together at record energies. If the Earth remains intact, doomsayers will once again have been falsified. Every time they forecast the demise of the planet, those prophets of Earthly annihilation prove themselves no more foresightful than mortgage bankers or phony psychics.

It seems there really is water on the moon, a major discovery that, like every answer to a great question, trails thousands of unanswered questions in its wake. Let us review the facts, or, at least, the facts as I understand them from my in-depth academic perusal of the headline crawl across the bottom of the screen on CNN. The lunar craft Chandrayaan-1, launched by India in October 2008, revealed a small amount of water on the moon, concentrated at the lunar poles. The craft wasn't manned , so presumably some kind of instrument relayed the news.

You won’t want to miss an interview with Debra Fischer now available on the MarketSaw site. The latter is a blog focused on 3D motion pictures, and thus the interest in Fischer’s work on Alpha Centauri draws from a cinematic base. Specifically, James Cameron’s new movie Avatar depicts a gas giant with a habitable moon around it, and the MarketSaw editors are interested in whether such a planet could exist around one of the Centauri stars. The interview that follows, discussing Fischer’s ongoing hunt for Centauri planets, is prime reading. I’ll quote from it, but you’ll want to read the...

Wei-Chyung Wang is a climate researcher at the University at Albany, State University of New York. He has co-authored with Phil Jones and provided data used to prepare the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC (2007). The accuracy of his work is dubious: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/03/climate-science-fraud-at-albany-university/ http://www.informath.org/pubs/EnE07a.pdf http://www.informath.org/apprise/a5620.htm FReepers living in NYS are encouraged to contact their senator and assemblyman and demand an accounting of the policies concerning academic honesty at the University at Albany. And tax dollars are being used for Wang's salary and pension fund. Why?

ROCHESTER, Minn. — A new study has found that the amount of vitamin D (http://www.mayoclinic.org/news2008-mchi/4904.html) in patients being treated for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (http://www.mayoclinic.org/non-hodgkins-lymphoma/)was strongly associated with cancer progression and overall survival. The results will be presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology (http://www.hematology.org/) in New Orleans. "These are some of the strongest findings yet between vitamin D and cancer outcome," says the study's lead investigator, Matthew Drake, M.D., Ph.D., (http://www.mayoclinic.org/bio/13726218.html) an endocrinologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester. "While these findings are very provocative, they are preliminary and need to be validated in other studies....

Prof. Rick Trebino Georgia Institute of Technology School of Physics Atlanta, GA 30332 rick.trebino@physics.gatech.edu www.physics.gatech.edu/frog The essence of science is reasoned debate. So, if you disagree with something reported in a scientific paper, you can write a “Comment” on it. Yet you don’t see many Comments. Some believe that this is because journal editors are reluctant to publish Comments because Comments reveal their mistakes—papers they shouldn’t have allowed to be published in the first place. Indeed, scientists often complain that it can be very difficult to publish one. Fortunately, in this article, I’ll share with you my recent experience...

Please try to resist the childish jokes, but the fact is that the odd tilt of Uranus may be the result of a particularly large moon. Uranus spins on an axis almost parallel with the plane of the solar system, rather than perpendicular to it -- though why it does this nobody knows. One theory is that the tilt is the result of a collision with an Earth-sized object, but this "hasn't succeeded in explaining much of anything", says Ignacio Mosqueira of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. Why, for example, are the orbits of Uranus's 27 known moons...

The cool climate of Antarctica was a refuge for animals fleeing climate change during the biggest mass extinction in Earth's history, suggests a new fossil study. The discovery may have implications for how modern animals will adapt to global warming. Around 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, about 90 per cent of land species were wiped out as global temperatures soared. A cat-sized distant relative of mammals, Kombuisia antarctica, seems to have survived the extinction by fleeing south to Antarctica. Jörg Fröbisch, a geologist at the Field Museum in Chicago, and colleagues rediscovered fossils of...

Behind the scenes, large financial houses are moving in stealthily. In 2008, carbon trading worldwide reached $126 billion and is projected to grow to become a $2-$10 trillion dollar market, or “The largest commodity traded world wide”. The largest. That’s bigger than oil, coal, gas, or iron.Banks want us to trade carbonJP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, BNP Paribas, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, Credit Suisse are just a few financial houses calling for emissions trading schemes. (None of them seem to be calling for a tax?) Those who broker the trades are guaranteed to make money.Journalists who repeat IPCC press releases...

Machine operator John Rutherford is used to digging objects out of the ground, but he was shocked when he came face-to-face with an 8,000-year-old beast. For the Thompsons of Prudhoe employee has unearthed a complete auroch's skull -- a species of large wild cow that became extinct in Britain during the Bronze Age... The quarry is located on land, owned by Nunwick Estates, on a bend in the North Tyne river. The skull has been identified by a Durham University expert as a large elderly male auroch, which was possibly cast out of its herd before dying in secluded wetland....

Google has added Pompeii to its Street View application, allowing internet users to take a 360-degree virtual tour of the ancient Roman city. Italy's culture ministry says it hopes the move will boost tourism to the site, state news agency Ansa reports. Among the ruins visible on the search engine's free mapping service are the town's statues, temples and theatres. The city was buried in ash after Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD79 and was not discovered until the 18th Century. The volcanic debris preserved many of the city's buildings, frescos, silverware, mosaics and other artefacts. "Giving people a chance to...

Newborn babies start learning language in the womb -- and are born with what you might call accents, a new study of crying babies says. That fetuses hear and become accustomed to language is nothing new. Several studies have shown that, when exposed to different languages shortly after birth, a baby will typically indicate a preference for the language closest to the one he or she would've heard during gestation... For the new study, a team led by Kathleen Wermke at the Center for Prespeech Development and Developmental Disorders at Würzburg University in Germany studied the cry "melodies" of 60...

Italian archaeologists have discovered the remains of an ancient Roman city submerged off the coast of Libya. The remains of the city date back to the 2nd century A.D. and were found by archaeologists and experts from Sicily and the University Suor Orsola Benincasa of Naples, involved in the ArCoLibia archaeology project. The discovery took place on the Cape of Ras Eteen on the western side of Libya's Gulf of Bumbah, as archaeologists were searching the area for shipwrecks and the remains of ancient ports. Archaeologists instead found walls, streets, and the remains of buildings and ancient tombs. After a...

It's been a terrible week for Tiger Woods, but the golf star's moment of madness at the steering wheel has brought a surge in sales for a book written by a science writer teaching at Sussex University. A series of pictures released by Florida police of Woods's wrecked SUV includes a shot of the back seat, complete with waterbottle, towel and furled umbrella. But there among the shards of tinted glass in the footwell sits a well-thumbed copy of a paperback with the golf-appropriate title clearly visible: Get a Grip on Physics. This incidental role in Woods's domestic drama has...

New research has heated up the debate over whether dinosaurs were ectothermic (cold-blooded) or endothermic (warm-blooded like us). The topic is addressed in this week's Johns Hopkins News-Letter and a recent PLoS One paper. The prevailing view for decades was that dinosaurs were cold-blooded, as reptiles, fish and amphibians are today. Now support is leaning toward the warm-blooded dinosaur theory, which opens up a slew of intriguing questions: Did dinosaurs sweat? Were they able to live in very cold regions? Did they have to eat a lot to fuel their lifestyle? and more. Herman Pontzer at Washington University in St....

The first stage of a five-year (2009-2013) excavation project in Ancient Tegea, near Tripolis, has been completed by an international team of archaeologists led by the Norwegian Institute in Athens in Collaboration with the Greek culture ministry's 38th Ephoria for Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities and 25th Ephoria of Byzantine Antiquities. The area of excavation is a field located to the west of the theatre and the Basilica of Thyrsos, where magnetometer survey 2003-2004 documented the probable location of a major north-south street and a stoa bordering the agora... Tegea was a settlement in ancient Greece, and it is also a...

The well-preserved remains of a Roman tower used by guards patrolling Chester’s City Walls has been discovered by archaeologists repairing a section which collapsed near the Eastgate Clock. Interval towers were placed regularly every 65m or so along the rear of the main fortress wall and acted as lookout points and as bases for roman artillery. The tower has been found beneath the foundation of the city wall... Restoration specialist Maysand is undertaking the work to repair the Walls section, joined by a team of specialists from Giffords, English Heritage, Chester Renaissance and Cheshire West and Chester Council... The webcam...

At a settlement in what is now southern Germany, the menu turned gruesome 7,000 years ago. Over a period of perhaps a few decades, hundreds of people were butchered and eaten before parts of their bodies were thrown into oval pits, a new study suggests. Cannibalism at the village, now called Herxheim, may have occurred during ceremonies in which people from near and far brought slaves, war prisoners or other dependents for ritual sacrifice, propose anthropologist Bruno Boulestin of the University of Bordeaux... A social and political crisis in central Europe at that time triggered various forms of violence, the...

Massive supernova produced rainbow of elements for months. Bang! The collapse of a massive star created a previously unseen type of supernova.NASA Astronomers have watched the violent death of what was probably the most massive star ever detected. The supernova explosion, which lasted for months, is thought to have generated more than 50 Suns' worth (1032 kilograms) of different elements, which may one day go on to make new solar systems. The explosion — dubbed SN2007bi — was spotted as part of a digital survey to hunt for supernovae at the Palomar Observatory near San Diego, California. One supernova in...