Free Republic

75% support for the ban on minarets in London Daily News poll Londoners support the Swiss government’s decision to ban minarets and mosques according to a new poll in The London Daily News, further highlighting the "sensitivities" and concerns in the capital at the growing influence of Islam. Callers to London's leading early morning radio show, the Nick Ferrari programme on LBC, also expressed their concerns with one caller citing how "out of character" a minaret would be if built in London. London is the home to one of the largest number of mosques in the western world,apart from Turkey,...

Director admits emails about apparent warming deception "do not read well" Supporters of warming have sought to minimize the results. While they have not necessarily questioned the authenticity of the leaked archive, they argue that the leak is a smear campaign. Jones has personally endorsed this theory, writing, "One has to wonder if it is a coincidence that this email correspondence has been stolen and published at this time. This may be a concerted attempt to put a question mark over the science of climate change in the run-up to the Copenhagen talks." The leak indeed offers unfortunate tidings for...

Meeting the demand for family planning in poor nations is a cheap and effective way to cut CO2 emissions, a new website initiative claims. The UK-based Optimum Population Trust says fast-rising population levels lead to growing emissions. The website is urging wealthy people to offset their own CO2 emissions by funding contraception programmes

The "ClimateGate" affair - the publication of e-mails and documents hacked or leaked from one of the world's leading climate research institutions - is being intensely debated on the web. But what does it imply for climate science? Here, Mike Hulme and Jerome Ravetz say it shows that we need a more concerted effort to explain and engage the public in understanding the processes and practices of science and scientists. Robot Practising scientists know that they do not simply follow a rulebook to do their science, otherwise it could be done by a robot As the repercussions of ClimateGate reverberate...

Britain's special relationship 'just a myth' Toby Harnden in Washington A senior American official has spoken of "the myth of the special relationship" between the United States and Britain, arguing that Tony Blair got "nothing, no payback" for supporting President George W Bush in Iraq. Kendall Myers, a leading State Department adviser, suggested that Mr Blair should have been ditched by Labour but the party had lacked the "courage or audacity" to remove him. David Cameron, the Conservative leader, was "shrewd, astute" to have distanced himself from America. In candid comments that will embarrass Mr Bush and Mr Blair, the...

With a week to go before key climate talks in Copenhagen there is another dire warning about how our environment is changing. New evidence suggests sea levels could rise by 1.4m which would be a potential disaster for some countries. However, opinion polls show large numbers of people are still unconvinced that man is to blame for climate change. David Shukman has been finding out why. READ MORE: Antarctic to feed major sea rise

Some of the biggest names on the web have written to Peter Mandelson to express "grave concerns" about elements of the Digital Economy Bill. Facebook, Google, Yahoo and eBay object to a clause that they say could give government "unprecedented and sweeping powers" to amend copyright laws. "We urge you to remove Clause 17 from the bill," the letter read.... The consortium believe that if Clause 17, as it is known, is approved it will give "any future Secretary of State" the ability to amend copyright laws as they see fit. "This power could be used, for example, to introduce...

Warming Scandal: The architect of climate fraud steps down, the creator of the infamous "hockey stick" is investigated, and Australia's parliament defeats cap-and-trade. We love the smell of truth in the morning. As the high priests of what Czech President Vaclav Klaus has called a "religion" prepare their pilgrimage to worship the earth goddess Gaia in Copenhagen, complete with humanity being sacrificed, the heresy of climate truth is finally being heard. The gospel of climate change, once expressed with the messianic fervor of an Elmer Gantry by Al Gore, is now expressed with the stammering incoherence of an Elmer Fudd...

Dec 2, 2009 — Field geologists have revisited a site Darwin visited on the voyage of the Beagle, and found that he incorrectly interpreted what he found.  A large field of erratic boulders in Tierra del Fuego that have become known as “Darwin’s Boulders” were deposited by a completely different process than he thought.  The modern team, publishing in the Geological Society of America’s December issue of the GSA Today,1 noted that “Darwin’s thinking was profoundly influenced by Lyell’s obsession with large-scale, slow, vertical movements of the crust, especially as manifested in his theory of submergence and ice rafting to...

Samples of a colony of Martians have been put on display in the Natural History Museum, in London. A scanning electron microscope (SEM) image of a series of partly filled pits on the surface of a mineral grain from the Nakhla meteorite Photo: NASA/David McKay The microscopic aliens are on a slice of a meteorite in the museum. Nasa scientists, who used a scanning electron microscope to take snaps, say the bumpy surface resembles a fossilised colony of microbacteria – a simple form of life.