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Panel Absolves Climate Scientist By JOHN M. BRODER WASHINGTON — An academic board of inquiry has largely cleared a noted Pennsylvania State University climatologist of scientific misconduct, but a second panel will convene to determine whether his behavior undermined public faith in the science of climate change, the university said Wednesday. The scientist, Dr. Michael E. Mann, has been at the center of a roiling dispute arising from the unauthorized release of more than 1,000 e-mail messages from the servers of the University of East Anglia in England, home to one of the world’s premier climate research units. While the...

In looking at four "possible allegations" of research misconduct against meteorology professor Michael Mann, a Penn State University panel has determined that further investigation is warranted for one of them.

The Penn State University Collegian newspaper reported Monday that a panel of university faculty and staff had concluded its inquiry of Penn State meteorology professor Michael Mann and would release its "ClimateGate" findings later in the week.

They say truth is stranger than fiction. Since 2008, Iraq’s military and police have utilized a divining rod (err, a “bomb detection device”) known as the ADE 651 to detect explosives. With no electrical components and no scientific basis for its effectiveness, the ADE 651 has undoubtedly cost countless lives. Thus, justice was served when its creator, Jim McCormick, was arrested on suspicion of fraud. The 53-year-old former UK police officer was taken into custody last week, and his device banned for export. ADE 651The ADE 651 looks like a barcode scanner with a rod attached to the end. Truth...

Global Warming: If we're serious about restoring science to its rightful place, the head of the U.N.'s panel on climate change should step down. Evidence shows he quarterbacked a deliberate and premeditated fraud. The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been forced to back off its now-discredited claim that the Himalayan glaciers would soon disappear. But it's not true, the panel's vice chairman, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, told the BBC, that it was simply a "human mistake." The panel's chairman, Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, who was forced to admit the claim had no basis in observable scientific fact, said its...

A U.N. warning that Himalayan glaciers were melting fast and may be gone by 2035 was not backed up by science, U.N. climate experts admitted Wednesday Global Warming: The scientists who said that Himalayan glaciers will be gone by 2035 have admitted the claim has as much credibility as sightings of the mythical Yeti. It's their fraudulent claims that are melting away. We hesitate to call it Glacier-gate, but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.N. body tasked with scaring us to death about global warming, has admitted that the claim in its 2007 report about the Himalayan...

January 17, 2010 World Misled Over Himalayan Glacier Meltdown A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it. Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035. In the past few days the scientists...

This record-breaking cold is no joke. Yet, along with frozen pipes and bitter complaining, this Arctic front has swept in plenty of watercooler humor, including the wintry variation on the unfortunate summertime classic, “Hot enough for ya?” “Cold enough for ya?” Ugh. No, actually it's not cold enough, now that you've got me thinking about how miserable I am. It's not cold enough for me until my nerves freeze so I can no longer feel the cold. Then there's this trendier line: “All this cold weather. Must be global warming, right?” Ha ha ha. I'm sure all the sad-looking polar...

A battle is brewing in the Senate over the power of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, is poised to move forward with a proposal that would block the EPA--at least temporarily-- from imposing new regulations to limit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. She could force a vote on the issue as early as Jan. 20, as part of the Senate's debate of unrelated legislation to raise the nation's debt ceiling. In December, the EPA formally issued an "endangerment declaration" that greenhouse gases threaten the public...

Bioethics: Five years after a budget-busting $3 billion was allocated to embryonic stem cell research, there have been no cures, no therapies and little progress. So supporters are embracing research they once opposed. California's Proposition 71 was intended to create a $3 billion West Coast counterpart to the National Institutes of Health, empowered to go where the NIH could not — either because of federal policy or funding restraints on biomedical research centered on human embryonic stem cells. Supporters of the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, passed in 2004, held out hopes of imminent medical miracles that were...

Celebrity “Scientists” Prescribe Bad Medicine The British Sense About Science charity trust just released its annual report Celebrities and Science 2009 debunking the absurd health claims of celebrities who think their pop culture status gives them the right to play doctor. Sense About Science reviews celebs’ bogus advice, from special diets to miracle cures, and asks real scientists what the “stars” should have said. Among this year’s gems, actor Roger Moore told the Daily Mail that “eating foie gras can lead to Alzheimer’s, diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis.” A real shocker -- except that it’s false. Dietician Lucy Jones corrects the...

Michael Mann switched from physics to climate science back in graduate school because he thought climate offered a better chance to work "on a frontier." He got his wish, and now, as the director of Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Center, he has experienced an aspect of frontier life more like the Wild West - a bounty on his head

'Frozen Gore' sculpture fuels debate in Alaska Posted: Wednesday, January 6, 2010 12:55 pm Another two-ton ice sculpture of former Vice President Al Gore is back in front of a Fairbanks liquor store. "Frozen Gore" is a dig at Gore's beliefs about climate change. The first statue went on display last year. This year's version is hooked up to the exhaust of a pickup truck to make it appear Gore is spouting hot air. The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reports the smoke drew laughs from a crowd Tuesday as a Gore speech on climate change played over a loudspeaker. The sculpture...

Here are the top weather stories around the world from Drudge Report today: Winter Could Be Worst in 25 Years for USA 3 Deaths Due To Cold in Memphis PAPER: Gas Supplies Running out in UK Vermont sets ‘all-time record for one snowstorm’ Iowa temps ‘a solid 30 degrees below normal’ Seoul buried in heaviest snowfall in 70 years Historic ice build-up shuts down NJ nuclear power plant Beijing — coldest in 40 years Miami shivers from coldest weather in decade

Frankfurt, Germany, December 6 -- A rather bizarre study carried out by German researchers suggests that staring at women's breasts is good for men's health and increases their life expectancy. According to Dr. Karen Weatherby, a gerontologist and author of the study, gawking at women’s breasts is a healthy practice, almost at par with an intense exercise regime, that prolongs the lifespan of a man by five years. She added, "Just 10 minutes of staring at the charms of a well-endowed female, is roughly equivalent to a 30-minute aerobics work-out." A five-year research on 500 men Researchers at three hospitals...

Second of two parts. The pending federal effort to lessen carbon emissions, especially from coal-fired power plants – called the “cap-and-trade program” – has one single goal: To improve air quality and slow down global warming – if, that is, global warming actually exists. As environmentalists favor cap-and-trade as an incentive to decrease harmful emissions, while the bill moves from the House of Representatives to the U.S. Senate, opponents say it will cause nothing but an economic disaster, especially for Pennsylvania’s coal industries. And there are two extreme views on global warming. From the National Geographic: “Glaciers are melting. “Sea...

Climate Change: A peer-reviewed study by a respected Canadian physicist blames the interplay of cosmic rays and chlorofluorocarbons for 20th-century warming. The CFCs are now gone, and so is warming — perhaps for the next 50 years. Much of the nation got a white Christmas this year, some in unprecedented quantities. A record-breaking storm deposited 12 to 30 inches of snow in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. Many places set records for the most snow in a single December day as more than 50% of the U.S. was covered by the white stuff. Scientists (and here we use the word...

You've heard it before, how the pharmaceutical industry has a giant "revolving door" through which corporations and government agencies frequently exchange key employees. That reality was driven home in a huge way today when news broke that Dr. Julie Gerberding, who headed the CDC from 2002 through 2009, landed a top job with Merck, one of the largest drug companies in the world. Her job there? She's the new president of the vaccine division. How convenient. That means the former head of the CDC was very likely cultivating a relationship with Merck all these years, and now comes the big...

During the 70 years that the communists controlled the Soviet Union, they had a peculiar way of teaching history to the people. They would teach things as historical fact that never happened. If you were one of those who took umbrage with their revisionist history lessons, you would soon find yourself living in a tiny apartment in a part of the country where they laugh at anyone who claims the world is getting warmer. In a communist country this is the only way to convince the masses that they are actually better off than anyone in the history of...

California: While Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger worries about rising seas, his state sinks below the waves. Don't mess with Texas, they say. But California and the nation could follow its lead. Last Wednesday, Gov. Schwarzenegger released a new report based on research compiled by the California Energy Commission claiming that by 2100 San Francisco Bay would be more bay than San Francisco, with Fisherman's Wharf and Treasure Island under the rising waters of climate change. His show-and-tell, which included a new Google Earth application the commission spent $150,000 to help develop, goes a long way toward explaining the once-Golden State's slide...