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Folks who sweated through last month's blistering heat wave may be surprised to know it was only the second hottest July on record for the United States. More than 2,300 daily temperature records were broken from coast to coast, and the average temperature for the 48 contiguous states was 77.2 degrees Fahrenheit, the National Climatic Data Center reported Monday. July 1936 still holds the record at 77.5, while July 1934 fell to third place at 77.1, the agency said. The average July temperature is 74.3 degrees based on records going back to 1901. Overall, the first seven months of 2006...

The 2006 Atlantic hurricane season should be slightly less active than originally predicted, federal forecasters said Tuesday. Forecasters now expect there to be 12 to 15 named storms and seven to nine hurricanes, the National Hurricane Center and other National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration agencies said. Three or four could be major hurricanes with sustained winds of at least 111 mph, forecasters said. Government scientists made their first prediction in May, saying the season could produce 13 to 16 named storms, and eight to 10 hurricanes, four to six of which could become major. There have been only three tropical...

10 Ways Darwinists Help Intelligent Design (Part II) [Note: This is the second part in the list of ways in which neo-Darwinist critics are helping to promote the theory of intelligent design.] See : 10 Ways Darwinists Help Intelligent Design (Part I) #6 By invoking design in non-design explanations. Anyone who wonders why so many people find intelligent design explanations plausible need only to listen to scientific community discuss the evolutionary process. Scientists have a complete inability to talk about and explain processes like natural selection without using the terms, analogies, and metaphors of design and teleology. Take, for instance,...

The Human Factor :A man of science face Darwin and the Deity. by David Klinghoffer The Language of God A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Francis S. Collins Free Press, 304 pp., $26 ------------------------------------- Head of the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins is among the country's foremost author ities on genetics, a staunch Darwinist, and a prominent critic of Intelligent Design. He's also an evangelical Christian who dramatically describes the moment he accepted Jesus as his personal savior. If that sounds like it might be a paradox, read on. Collins was hiking in the Cascade Mountains of western Washington...

Apocalyptic visions of climate change used by newspapers, environmental groups and the UK government amount to "climate porn", a think-tank says. The report from the Labour-leaning Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) says over-use of alarming images is a "counsel of despair". It says they make people feel helpless and says the use of cataclysmic imagery is partly commercially motivated. However, newspapers have defended their coverage of a "crucial issue". 'Nobody knows' The IPPR report also criticises the reporting of individual climate-friendly acts as "mundane, domestic and uncompelling". The style of climate change discourse is that we maximise the problem...

A professor frequently identified as a global warming skeptic has tried to distance himself from that label and a scientist skeptical of that theory questions that shift. “The Antarctic has been cooling (Doran et al)—while climate models all predict a strong warming,” S. Fred Singer for the Science & Environmental Policy Project reports. “It is comical—and also a little sad—to watch the lead author try to explain away his own results in order to maintain a politically correct position on global warming.” A climatologist, Dr. Singer is a professor emeritus at the University of Virginia. He was the first director...

SACRAMENTO Over the past year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has sought to position himself as a leader on climate change issues. He outlined a broad program to reduce air pollution during a speech at a United Nations summit a year ago and last week reached a publicity-generating agreement with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The Republican governor now faces a dilemma that threatens to undermine his environmental credentials at the same time he is trying appeal to moderate voters as he seeks re-election. This month, the Democrats who hold a majority in California's Legislature plan to send Schwarzenegger a bill that...

An Indian state has banned the sale of soft drinks as the country's highest court told the US beverage giants Pepsico and Coca-Cola to reveal the ingredients of their products."The ban will be in force in all educational institutes, including medical and technical colleges and universities and offenders will be punished," a spokesman from the administration of northern Rajasthan state announced Friday.

Aug. 3, 2006 -- In contrast to claims that children are being overmedicated for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a team of researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has found that a high percentage of kids with ADHD are not receiving treatment. In fact, almost half of the children who might benefit from ADHD drugs were not getting them. "What we found was somewhat surprising," says Richard D. Todd, M.D., Ph.D., the Blanche F. Ittleson Professor of Psychiatry and professor of genetics. "Only about 58 percent of boys and about 45 percent of girls who had a diagnosis...

The June 27, 2006 Associated Press (AP) article titled “Scientists OK Gore’s Movie for Accuracy” by Seth Borenstein raises some serious questions about AP’s bias and methodology. AP chose to ignore the scores of scientists who have harshly criticized the science presented in former Vice President Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth.”

WASHINGTON, July 27 — Coal-burning utilities are contributing money to one of the few remaining climate scientists openly critical of the broad consensus that fossil fuel emissions are intensifying global warming. The critic, Patrick J. Michaels, is a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute and Virginia’s state climatologist. Dr. Michaels told Western business leaders last year that he was running out of money for his analyses of other scientists’ global warming research. So a Colorado utility organized a collection campaign for him last week and has raised at least...

As many as 60,000 people a year die from too much sun, warns the World Health Organization. The bulk of the deaths are from skin cancers caused by excess exposure to the sun's harmful rays, ultraviolet radiation, says WHO. UVR also causes sunburn, triggers cold sores and ages the skin, according to its report, the first to outline the global health burden of sun exposure. Simple measures, such as covering up when in the sun, could cut the deaths. Death toll Dr Maria Neira, Director for Public Health and the Environment at WHO, said: "We all need some sun, but...

One way to curb global warming is to purposely shoot sulfur into the atmosphere, a scientists suggested today. The burning of fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. It also releases sulfur that cools the planet by reflecting solar radiation away from Earth. Injecting sulfur into the second atmospheric layer closest to Earth would reflect more sunlight back to space and offset greenhouse gas warming, according to Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego. Crutzen suggests carrying sulfur...

A very suspicious (and perhaps a tad demented) person might see more than just evidence of global warming in this heat wave that's crisping up the country of late. Clearly, there's a mysterious scheme afoot to get Al Gore elected — or, re-elected if you like — as president of the United States in 2008. Laugh if you like, but chew on this: Can it be mere coincidence that a “An Inconvenient Truth,” a movie about a PowerPoint presentation that consists of mostly scientific exposition, by a guy once so stiff he made John Kerry seem like a drag queen,...

President Bush's veto of a bill to ease restrictions on federally funded embryonic stem-cell research will hinder California's $3 billion voter-approved effort to turn stem cells into cures, backers of the state-funded research effort said Wednesday. Bush's rejection of the legislation -- his first-ever veto in his 5 1/2 years in office -- shows his continued support for those who oppose, on moral grounds, destroying human embryos to create stem cells in research intended to develop new treatments for grave conditions such as Parkinson's, diabetes and spinal cord injuries. --snip-- The veto was a crushing blow for advocates who hoped...

MARK COLVIN: A gathering of the world's Antarctic researchers has heard predictions that trees might grow on the frozen continent within a century or two. Eight hundred and fifty scientists are in Hobart for the combined meetings of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research and the Council Managers of National Antarctic Programs. Over the next week, they'll share their research findings and discuss future scientific studies. Already, one climate researcher believes carbon dioxide levels will double over the next century. Another scientist believes change will be evident within decades. Sabra Lane reports. SABRA LANE: Twenty-nine nations have scientists on Antarctica,...

WASHINGTON — The House on Wednesday failed to override President Bush's first veto of his five-and-a-half-year administration, cast earlier in the day when he rejected a bill that would have provided more federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. The vote, 235-193, was less than the two-thirds needed to forward the bill to the Senate for its consideration. "If this bill were to become law, American taxpayers for the first time in our history would be compelled to fund the deliberate destruction of human embryos. Crossing this line would be a grave mistake and would needlessly encourage a conflict between...

July 18, 2006, 5:27 p.m. Science’s Stem-Cell ScamIt should change its name to Pseudoscience. By Michael Fumento Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) receive tremendous media attention, with oft-repeated claims that they have the potential to cure virtually every disease known. Yet there are spoilsports, self included, who point out that they have yet to even make it into a human clinical trial. This is even as alternatives — adult stem cells (ASCs) from numerous places in the body as well as umbilical cord blood and placenta — are curing diseases here and now and have been doing so for decades....

WASHINGTON (AP) President Bush has issued the first veto of his presidency, rejecting a bill to expand federal research on stem cells obtained from embryos.

Few will know this genetic truth, because the 5-year-old's parents and school administrators have agreed that it's in his best interest to blend in as a female. Mental health professionals have diagnosed Pat - not his real name - with gender dysphoria, a condition in which a person believes that he or she is the opposite gender. After two years of examination, they have determined that he is not simply effeminate or going through a phase. "Gender dysphoria can take place during a fetus' development in the womb," said noted gender specialist and sexologist Marilyn Volker, Ph.D., of Miami. While...