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Climate change putting seals in the mood for love 14 December 2006 Male seals are reaping the benefits of climate change by having more sex, scientists have discovered. Subordinate grey seals are taking advantage of rising temperatures and falling rainfall to mate more often. Due to climate change female grey seals are being forced to travel further for drinking water - removing them from the watchful eye of the dominant males and allowing the subordinate males to take advantage. The research has been conducted by Dr Sean Twiss, from Durham University, who studied the mating patterns of grey seal colony...

(12-14) 04:00 PST Ashland, Ore. -- In the natural world, animals take cues about when to migrate and when to mate from the hours of daylight, the temperature and the amount of rain and snow. Here in the Applegate Valley, for example, every spring the yellow-and-black anise swallowtail emerges from its cocoon just as the wildflowers it feeds on bloom. That's the way it's supposed to work: a natural synchronicity between seasons and species, born of evolution and adaptation. But now nature's timing is off. After three decades of warming not seen in more than 1,000 years, spring arrives earlier...

December 12, 2006 Global Warming Good for Mediterranean Tits? Filed under: Adaptation, Animals — When some people think of a trip to the Mediterranean, they think there is a good chance to see a wide variety of tits, and for those of you interested in global warming, you might fairly wonder how climate change in the Mediterranean might change this situation. Well, you are in luck given an article in the most recent issue of Global Change Biology that specifically addresses potential climate impacts on Mediterranean tits. There are certainly many tits to study in that region, and there is...

A November cold snap prompted Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day to dismiss Al Gore's climate change crusade in a website article brimming with mockery. Day's letter to his constituents in the British Columbia riding of Okanagan-Coquihalla constituents last week opened with a shot at the former U.S. vice-president. "Hey who knows, maybe Al Gore is right,'' Day wrote in the post dated Dec. 6. "Maybe all my constituents living high up on the West Bench, or Lakeview Heights, or the hills of Logan Lake will soon be sitting on lakeside property as one of the many benefits of global warming.''...

SAN FRANCISCO—A small-scale, regional nuclear war could disrupt the global climate for a decade or more, with environmental effects that could be devastating for everyone on Earth, researchers have concluded. [snip] The lingering effects could re-shape the environment in ways never conceived. In terms of climate, a nuclear blast could plunge temperatures across large swaths of the globe. "It would be the largest climate change in recorded human history," Alan Robock, associate director of the Center for Environmental Prediction at Rutgers' Cook College and another member of the research team. [snip] They discovered the smoke emissions would plunge temperatures by...

Small nuclear war could lead to cooldown By ALICIA CHANG, AP Science Writer 15 minutes ago Some of the scientists who first advanced the controversial "nuclear winter" theory more than two decades ago have come up with another bleak forecast: Even a regional nuclear war would devastate the environment. Using modern climate and population models, researchers estimated that a small-scale nuclear conflict between two warring nations would cause 3 million to 17 million immediate casualties and lead to a dramatic cooldown of the planet that could lead to crop failures and further misery. As dire as the predictions seem, they...

On October 27 Sens. Rockefeller (D., W.Va.) and Snowe (R., Maine) sent a letter to ExxonMobil's CEO requesting that ExxonMobil end its financial assistance and support of groups and individuals who reject global warming claims, and urging it to "publicly acknowledge both the reality of climate change and the role of humans in causing or exacerbating it." "This letter constitutes an outrageous violation of ExxonMobil's right to free speech," said Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. "Whether or not one believes there is a threat of catastrophic global warming, the government has no right to tell ExxonMobil...

A collective “I told you so” will ripple through the world of Bush-bashers once news of Christopher Lohse’s study gets out. Lohse, a social work master’s student at Southern Connecticut State University, says he has proven what many progressives have probably suspected for years: a direct link between mental illness and support for President Bush. Lohse says his study is no joke....

Tomatoes don't agree with John. He is sick within an hour of eating them and becomes sweaty and panicky. But worse than this, they also make him irritable and aggressive and liable to commit violent crimes. Jason has a similar reaction to bread. He has always loved doorsteps smothered in butter for breakfast. But it gives him diarrhoea and a weird kind of depressed 'hangover'. This makes him crave the heroin that once put his life on the skids. It may sound implausible, but a controversial theory is gathering momentum: that one explanation for crime may be found on our...

t is the hi-tech tool that has revolutionised home and office alike - but a growing band of campaigners claim wi-fi is a major threat to health. Sufferers say the electro-magnetic waves emitted by wireless computer networks - wi-fi - leave them feeling exhausted, nauseous and sleepless. Author Kate Figes, spent hundreds of pounds installing wireless internet in her Stoke Newington home, then found it made her so ill she had to scrap it. Ms Figes, 49, claims she is so sensitive to wi-fi's electro-magnetic waves she can instantly tell whether it is installed in a particular room. [Snip] Chris...

Penguins, dog vomit and human sexuality -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: November 21, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern By Gary DeMar "And Tango Makes Three" is an illustrated children's book about two male penguins that raise a baby penguin. It's based on a true story of two male penguins in New York City's Central Park Zoo that "adopt" a fertilized egg and raise the chick as their own. Some concerned parents see the book as a homosexual propaganda piece and want it removed from the library's regular shelves. A parent would have to consent before his or her child could check out the book....

There are signs that key U.S. officials are ready to take on global warming, even as much of the world community failed to show its will to deal with the impending threat at a recent global conference. Despite intense calls for new and radical actions, last week delegates at the UN-sponsored meeting in Kenya agreed on many outstanding issues, but not on further cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. Environmental groups widely described the outcome as a failure, but not all were expressing despair. Though equally unhappy with the results, some believe that meaningful global action on climate change is not...

From male killer whales that ride the dorsal fin of another male to female bonobos that rub their genitals together, the animal kingdom tolerates all kinds of lifestyles. A first-ever museum display, "Against Nature?," which opened last month at the University of Oslo's Natural History Museum in Norway, presents 51 species of animals exhibiting homosexuality. "Homosexuality has been observed in more than 1,500 species, and the phenomenon has been well described for 500 of them," said Petter Bockman, project coordinator of the exhibition. The idea, however, is rarely discussed in the scientific community and is often dismissed as unnatural because...

For some subscribers to the New Yorker, this week's edition brought an added bonus to the customary fill of cartoons, fiction, and news features: Stuck in the middle was a free DVD of Vice President Gore's documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth."

TRENTON, Nov. 15 — A lesbian couple in South Jersey won court approval this week to have both of their names listed as parents on the birth certificate of their newborn, and the attorney general’s office said it will no longer oppose such applications. The decision, in Family Court in Burlington County, stems from an Oct. 25 ruling by the New Jersey Supreme Court holding that same-sex couples are entitled to the same legal rights and protections as heterosexual couples. The court gave the Legislature 180 days either to bring gay couples within the state’s marriage laws or establish a...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate's most vocal global warming skeptic, James Inhofe, on Thursday dismissed a U.N. meeting on climate change as "a brainwashing session."Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who will step down as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee in January, told a news conference, "The idea that the science (on global warming) is settled is altogether wrong."A majority of scientists, many in the U.S. government, accept that global warming is spurred by human actions and the emission of greenhouse gases. President George W. Bush said as much in July at a summit of industrialized nations. Inhofe...

AIRLINE passengers would pay up to £27 extra for a return ticket to cover the environmental damage caused by their flights, under European Commission proposals to address climate change.Draft legislation, to be published next month, would require all flights arriving or departing from European Union airports to buy permits to cover their carbon dioxide emissions. The document, a copy of which has been obtained by The Times, says that airlines would join Europe’s emissions trading scheme by 2011 and predicts that they would pass on the costs to their passengers. The report estimates that passengers on flights within Europe would...

In the last couple of years, a number of conservative writers have urged conservatives to embrace Darwin's theory of evolution. Some of these "Darwinian conservatives" have even argued that Darwinism will help rescue conservatism. I happen to think that that the Darwinian conservatives are wrong, and in a new book to be released this month, I explain why. The book is titled Darwin's Conservatives: The Misguided Quest, and it is being published this month by Discovery Institute Press. Below is an excerpt from the book's introduction. * * * * * * *DARWIN'S CONSERVATIVES: THE MISGUIDED QUEST INTRODUCTION The debate...

TOKYO — Japanese researchers said Sunday that a bottlenose dolphin captured last month has an extra set of fins that could be the remains of back legs, a discovery that may provide further evidence that ocean-dwelling mammals once lived on land. Fishermen captured the four-finned dolphin off the coast of Wakayama prefecture (state) in western Japan on Oct. 28, and alerted the nearby Taiji Whaling Museum, according to museum director Katsuki Hayashi.

A bottlenose dolphin has been found with an extra set of fins, providing further evidence that ocean-dwelling mammals once had four legs and lived on land, scientists have claimed.