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Second-hand smoke globally kills more than 600,000 people each year, accounting for 1% of all deaths worldwide, according to a new study. The alarming findings - published on Thursday in the British medical journal Lancet - are based on a survey of 192 countries in 2004. Researchers estimated that annually second-hand smoke causes about 379,000 deaths from heart disease, 165,000 deaths from lower respiratory disease, 36,900 deaths from asthma and 21,400 deaths from lung cancer. Children account for about 165,000 of the deaths, according to the researchers. "This helps us understand the real toll of tobacco," said Armando Peruga, of...

Browner says hacked e-mails don't change anything Stephen Dinan Obama administration climate czar Carol Browner on Wednesday rejected claims that e-mails stolen from a British university show climate scientists trumped up global warming numbers, saying she considers the science settled. "I'm sticking with the 2,500 scientists. These people have been studying this issue for a very long time and agree this problem is real," said Ms. Browner, who President Obama has tapped as his chief of policy on global warming. The e-mails were hacked from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and have come to light...

The hundreds of e-mails being made public after someone hacked into Phil Jones’ Climatic Research Unit (CRU) computer system offer a revealing peek inside the IPCC machine. It will take some time before we know whether any illegal activity has been uncovered (e.g. hiding or destruction of data to avoid Freedom of Information Act inquiries). Some commentators even think this is the beginning of the end for the IPCC. I doubt it. The scientists at the center of this row are defending themselves. Phil Jones has claimed that some of the more alarming statements in his e-mails have been taken...

...The most interesting part of the Paper is where Akasofu questions whether there is enough scientific proof for the Climate Change theory to start messing with the world economy: One problem in this particular discipline of science is that scientists who base their research on computer simulations have become too arrogant, saying that they can predict the temperature in 2100, although too much is still unknown about the earth system. Ignoring natural causes of climate change and even unknown aspects of cloud physics, they rely on computer work in predicting the temperature rise in 2100. However, a computer is like...

German and UK scientists have challenged the idea that the climate was significantly influenced by the absence of contrails when the US FAA grounded flights after the events of 11 September 2001. According to US scientists who studied US skies after the temporary grounding, the absence of contrails triggered variations in the Earth's temperature range by 1.1°C each day. But follow-up work by a number of scientists working independently has shown that the observed change in the daily temperature range was more likely to be a statistical quirk associated with the weather, and that contrails by themselves are likely to...

Klein slams Al Gore interview on oil sands JIM MACDONALD Canadian Press EDMONTON — Alberta Premier Ralph Klein has criticized former U.S. vice-president Al Gore for comments he made in a magazine interview in which he attacked the massive oil-sands industry in northern Alberta. Mr. Gore told an interviewer in the latest issue of Rolling Stone that oil-sands processing is a huge waste of energy and creates an eyesore on the landscape of Western Canada. “For every barrel of oil they extract there, they have to use enough natural gas to heat a family's home for four days,” Mr. Gore...

See for example this thread first. The Times let itself in for flame When it published that aspartame was involved in a suit but their point, it is moot: There's neither case, lawyers, plaintiff, nor blame!

That the institution of marriage has been on the decline in Europe for quite some time is hardly news. More and more couples choose to live out of wedlock. Assorted factors, from the unique demands of modern living to independent, working women, have been cited to explain away the popularity of what would have been uncommon a generation back. But now, researchers have come up with a new explanation. A recent survey of over 10,000 people across Europe says wedding rings should come with a health warning, especially for women. Apparently, wedlock shortens a woman's life by over a year....

An international group of scientists have filed a "friend of the court" brief with federal Judge John E. Jones III advising him that "the identification of intelligent causes is a well-established scientific practice" and asking him to allow "the freedom of scientists to pursue scientific evidence wherever it may lead." Jones is presiding over the Dover intelligent design trial. The 24-page brief — carrying the names of 85 scientists in fields including chemistry, molecular biology, mathematics, neurological surgery and environmental science — states "the definition of science and the boundaries of science should be left to scientists to debate." "Any...

Millions 'wasted' planting trees that reduce water By Charles Clover, Environment Editor (Filed: 29/07/2005) Millions of pounds in overseas aid are wasted every year planting trees in dry countries in the belief that they help attract rainfall and act as storage for water, scientists said yesterday. In fact, forests usually increase evaporation and help to reduce the amount of water available for human consumption or growing crops, according to a four-year study. Research on water catchments on three continents says it is "a myth" that trees always increase the availability of water. Even the cloud forests of tropical Costa Rica...

CHICAGO (AP) -- New research highlights a frustrating fact about science: What was good for you yesterday frequently will turn out to be not so great tomorrow. The sobering conclusion came in a review of major studies published in three influential medical journals between 1990 and 2003, including 45 highly publicized studies that initially claimed a drug or other treatment worked. Subsequent research contradicted results of seven studies -- 16 percent -- and reported weaker results for seven others, an additional 16 percent. That means nearly one-third of the original results did not hold up, according to the report in...

CHICAGO - It's no secret that size matters in the National Football League, but a new study suggests that a whopping 56 percent of NFL players would be considered obese by some medical standards. The NFL called the study bogus for using players' body-mass index, a height-to-weight ratio that doesn't consider body muscle versus fat. The players' union said that despite the familiar sight of bulging football jerseys, there's no proof that obesity is rampant in the league.

Andrew Wakefield prize for preposterous extrapolation from a single unconvincing piece of scientific data With its place at the kernel of Bad Science reporting in the news media, this was bound to be a hotly contested category. Were there any sense in the world, a small army of media studies graduates would be carefully documenting the number of "science" or "health" stories that related to genuine published data rather than overheard rumour, and diligently measuring how closely these stories kept to the facts. In the absence of such quantitative academic work, it was sadly left to our panel to select...

Global warming hitting home Inland cities will adjust more easily, but deaths will rise, study says By Edie Lau -- Bee Science Writer Published 2:15 am PDT Tuesday, September 14, 2004 People accustomed to scorching summer days in Sacramento, Fresno and other inland cities will endure the heat of global warming better than those who live on the coast, a projection on the health effects of climate change in California suggests. But being used to hot weather can go only so far. Scenarios released Monday by an environmental advocacy group show that heat-related deaths in Sacramento could double, triple or...

Russia Puts Global Climate Pact in Doubt MOSCOW - A senior adviser to President Vladimir Putin outlined strong reservations Tuesday about ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, saying the pact to limit greenhouse gas emissions is not sufficiently grounded in science and would harm Russia's economic growth. Although Putin's economic adviser, Andrei Illarionov, stopped short of ruling out Russia's ratification of the protocol, which is necessary for it to take effect, his strong criticism of the agreement appeared to leave little hope for approval of the document. Illarionov, an influential adviser, spoke to reporters on the sidelines of the U.N. World Climate...

Not everyone was surprised this past weekend when Dr. George A. Ricaurte of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine published a retraction in the journal Science of an earlier paper asserting that MDMA, a.k.a. Ecstasy, negatively affected dopamine function in two species of nonhuman primates. Writing with four other authors, including his wife, Una D. McCann, Ricaurte admitted that “the drug used to treat all but one animal . . . came from a bottle that contained d-methamphetamine [a known dopamine toxin] instead of the intended drug, racemic MDMA.” Ricaurte et al. blamed the lab for mislabeling the two...

ITHACA -- A Cornell University professor has published a study he says cements his assertion that ethanol is a less efficient, more environmentally harmful fuel than gasoline. David Pimentel, an emeritus professor of ecology, has been studying ethanol for about 25 years, leading a Department of Energy study on the subject in 1980. Ethanol is a corn byproduct that is combined with gasoline to make gasohol, a gasoline substitute that proponents claim lowers pollution and eases demand for foreign oil. Because corn production uses more pesticides than any other field crop, and because millions of dollars in government subsidies are...

This week, scientists claimed that chimps are so close to mankind that they should be reclassified as practically human. So should they have the same rights as us? Tim Radford reports on a debate that could help save them from extinction, while Stephen Moss visits them in 'person' at London Zoo Chimps have language. They can, and do, communicate with humans. There is a linguist chimp called Nim Chimpsky with a vocabulary of 125 signs, all used correctly. Chimps can solve problems, use tools and when they lose their teeth, even improvise a makeshift food blender. Two observers have now...

Who Killed Kyoto? by Iain Murray [ 20/05/2003 ] TCS We've heard it now for so long that it's drummed into our heads. President George W. Bush soured relations with the E.U. by refusing to accept the Kyoto Protocol. In doing so, he took the U.S. into unilateralism and demonstrated his disdain for world opinion. That's what is at the root of the current divide between Europe and America. We're hearing that argument trotted out by various contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, most notably Senators Joe Lieberman and John Kerry. The trouble is, it just isn't true. The Kyoto...

Chimpanzees are more closely related to people than to gorillas or other monkeys and probably should be included in the human branch of the family tree, a research team says. The idea, sure to spark renewed debate about evolution and the relationship between humans and animals, comes from a team led by Morris Goodman at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit. CURRENTLY, HUMANS are alone in the genus Homo. But Goodman argues, “We humans appear as only slightly remodeled chimpanzee-like apes.” He says humans and chimps share 99.4 percent of their DNA, the molecule that codes for life.