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Tipper Gore accepts the Best Documentary Award for her husband Vice President Al Gore at the 2006 National Board of Review of Motion Pictures awards ceremony in New York, Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2007. Gore won the award for his role in 'An Inconvenient Truth'. (AP Photo/Jeff Christensen)

; The News Tribune Published: January 10th, 2007 01:38 PM The Federal Way School Board Tuesday night put the brakes on schools showing Al Gore’s global warming movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.” The board required that an opposing view be presented in order for teachers to present the film. Board president Ed Barney said he’s received about a half-dozen complaints from parents that their child was taking the film as fact after viewing it at school. “We have to ensure that our schools are not being used to politically indoctrinate anyone,” said board member Dave Larson. The board voted 3 to...

Our understanding of climate change began with intense debates amongst 19th century scientists about whether northern Europe had been covered by ice thousands of years ago. In the 1820s Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier discovered that "greenhouse gasses" trap heat radiated from the Earth's surface after it has absorbed energy from the sun. In 1859 John Tyndall suggested that ice ages were caused by a decrease in the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide. In 1896 Svente Arrhenius showed that doubling the carbon dioxide content of the air would gradually raise global temperatures by 5-6C - a remarkably prescient result that was...

Temperatures in rugged Tibet have hit record highs in recent days, China's state press has reported, as a scientific survey warned of the impact of global warming in the Himalayan region. Friday's temperature in the Qamdo area of eastern Tibet was 21.8 degrees Celsius (71 degrees Fahrenheit), 1.7 degrees higher than the previous record set for the same day in 1996, Xinhua news agency reported. In Dengqen county, also in eastern Tibet, the mercury reached 16.6 degrees Celsius on Thursday, 2.5 degrees higher than the previous record for the same day set in 2001, it said. Eight other places across...

A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists offers the most comprehensive documentation to date of how ExxonMobil has adopted the tobacco industry's disinformation tactics, as well as some of the same organizations and personnel, to cloud the scientific understanding of climate change and delay action on the issue. According to the report, ExxonMobil has funneled nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of 43 advocacy organizations that seek to confuse the public on global warming science. "ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused...

Con job at The Weather Channel -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: January 5, 2007 1:00 a.m. Eastern This week Americans observed a national day of mourning (I'm speaking not of President Ford's funeral, but rather the day that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi seized power in Congress). Far-left political ideologies are being promulgated through ever-increasing mediums, and recently I noticed that a once-vaunted American television network, The Weather Channel, had succumbed to the cancerous spread of liberalism. The Weather Channel debuted in 1982 and went on to earn a reputation as a well-known and respected cable network. The explosive success of the cable...

Foreshadowing potential climate chaos to come, early global warming caused unexpectedly severe and erratic temperature swings as rising levels of greenhouse gases helped transform Earth, a team led by researchers at UC Davis said Thursday. The global transition from ice age to greenhouse 300 million years ago was marked by repeated dips and rises in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and wild swings in temperature, with drastic effects on forests and vegetation, the researchers reported in the journal Science. "It was a real yo-yo," said UC Davis geochemist Isabel Montanez, who led researchers from five universities and...

Accusing ExxonMobil of funding a "disinformation campaign" against global warming, an environmental activist group said Wednesday the oil giant has been paying advocacy groups to create confusion about climate change. The corporation and two of the organizations targeted by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) dismissed the allegation, variously calling it a smear, "junk," and motivated by a left-wing agenda. In a new report, the UCS charged that ExxonMobil "doesn't want you to know the facts about global warming" and that it "vehemently opposes any governmental regulation that would require significantly expanded investments in clean energy technologies or reductions in...

As the year draws to a close, columnists, pundits and reporters trot out their “Best Of” and “Top 10” lists – no doubt cobbled together earlier in the month so as to facilitate an early departure from the office this afternoon. But there’s only one that really matters, because the items on this list directly and indirectly affect your personal freedoms and your pocketbook: Top Ten Junk Science Moments for 2006. JunkScience.com publisher Steve Milloy defines junk science as “faulty scientific data and analysis” used by the media, tort lawyers, activists, government agencies, pols and publicity-seeking scientists to “advance special...

10. California’s Not-so-deadly Air. Bill Clinton and Julia Roberts stumped for California’s Proposition 87 which would tax oil to fund alternative energy research. Mr. Clinton and Ms. Roberts claimed that California’s air is the “worst in the nation” and that it was linked with more asthma, bronchitis, lung cancer, heart disease, lung disease and premature death. But data (as opposed to political rhetoric) indicate that California’s public health is generally better than that of states which fully meet federal air quality standards. Maybe that’s one reason why voters rejected Proposition 87. 9. Food police indict SpongeBob Squarepants. Several anti-fun food...

As the human population continues to multiply -- and our biological footprint on the planet becomes larger -- so do all the things associated with us, including our livestock, says the New York Times. For example, according to a new report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: At present, there are about 1.5 billion cattle and domestic buffalo and about 1.7 billion sheep and goats in the world. Global livestock grazing and feed production use 30 percent of the land surface of the planet. Livestock -- which consume more food than they yield -- also compete...

I teach eleventh-grade religion at a respected and flourishing Catholic college-prep high school in the state of New York. My students are bright and talented kids, the children of some of the most successful people in this part of the state. Our discussions on morality are a window into the culture that nurtures them at least as much as most of their families do. We recently tackled abortion. A few students tried to make abortion a feminist issue, but interestingly, only a very few. Most, including the young women, react to the idea of feminism with disdain and jokes, and...

Sen. John McCain has signed a letter for the Environmental Defense Action Fund, in which the Arizona Republican emphasizes the group's support for his bill that aims to place "the first-ever national cap on global warming pollution." Mr. McCain, in his letter, mentions no specific type of "pollution," although carbon dioxide has been the main target of anti-global-warming lobbyists. Carbon dioxide is produced in large part by human breathing and cattle flatulence. The Environmental Defense Action Fund sent out the mailing, including Mr. McCain's letter, in which it asked for contributions and for recipients to sign and mail a prewritten...

Lately I’ve been hearing more and more about people living a carbon neutral lifestyle. Recently the owner of an upscale restaurant wrote an “As I see it” column (the local paper’s term for a glorified letter to the editor) explaining that her gift (Christmas I assume) to others is that she is going to do her best to live a carbon neutral lifestyle. She’s been on the globalwarming bandwagon for a while, earlier in the year she lectured us (in a letter to the editor) that she now owns a Prius to help us out. So after reading her missive...

Global Warming The Real Agenda Editorial by Terrence Corcoran Copyright 1998 Financial Post (Canada) December 26, 1998 http://www.junkscience.com/dec98/corcoran.htm What is the most important problem facing Canada? When the annual Maclean's/CBC year-end poll asked that question, there was at least one clear answer: Not the environment; in fact, anything but the environment. Ranked by percentage of people who identified one subject or another, the top worry among Canadians is unemployment (15%), followed by government spending, the economy, health care, national unity, taxes, poverty, education and crime. At the bottom of the list, garnering only 2% support, is the environment. The possibility...

Testimony by Daniel Weiss, Senior Analyst for Media and Sexuality, Focus on the Family, at the May 19, 2005, Summit on Pornography: Obscenity Enforcement, Corporate Participation and Violence against Women and Children.  Good morning. I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this forum. My name is Daniel Weiss and I serve as Focus on the Family’s Senior Analyst for Media and Sexuality. As we consider pornography and the law, we must answer a foundational question: Does the state have a compelling interest in protecting people from obscene materials?  Folks on this panel may agree that the state does have...

In November economist and former British Lord Chancellor Nigel Lawson in Maggie Thatcher's government rose to give an address at the Centre for Policy Studies in London. What his audience were privileged to experience was nothing less than a rare phenomenon: sheer force of reason in public debate. I adjure anyone concerned about the lack of emphasis on reason in current public debate to read the text of Lawson's address: The Economics and Politics of Climate Change: An Appeal to Reason in full here.  However, for those who struggle to read even eighteen reason-injecting pages.... Lawson's paper addresses the key...

A “top 10” list that may make you think that 1007, rather than 2007, is just around the corner. 1. Some Real Inconvenient Truth. Gore whipped the world into a global warming frenzy. I personally asked Mr. Gore to help arrange a debate. He declined (twice). 2. Board of Health or Bored of Science? NYC’s Board of Health banned restaurants from serving foods cooked with vegetable oils containing transfats. It mattered little to the Board that the FDA classifies trans fats as “generally recognized as safe.” 3. What Hurricane Season? The NOAA predicted a 5% chance of a below-normal hurricane...

It’s time again for JunkScience.com’s review of the most notable junk science events of the year – a “top 10” list that may sometimes make you think that the year 1007, rather than 2007, is just around the corner.

Frequently dismissed as cranks, their fussy eating habits tend to make them unpopular with dinner party hosts and guests alike.But now it seems they may have the last laugh, with research showing vegetarians are more intelligent than their meat-eating friends. A study of thousands of men and women revealed that those who stick to a vegetarian diet have IQs that are around five points higher than those who regularly eat meat. Writing in the British Medical Journal, the researchers say it isn't clear why veggies are brainier - but admit the fruit and veg-rich vegetarian diet could somehow boost brain...