Free Republic

MSNBC’s host Joe Scarborough said Thursday on his show “Morning Joe” that he believes Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) will “melt” if he goes up against former President Donald Trump at a Republican presidential primary debate. Scarborough said, “The more I see, the more I read, the more I talk to people, they don’t care. They don’t care that Donald Trump tried to overthrow American democracy. They don’t care he tried to throw out a presidential election. They don’t care that he wanted to terminate the Constitution of the United States. This Democrat is who you’re going to face.”

Cheetahs are the fastest animals on land, and they owe their speed in part to the design of their skeletons — the tibia and fibula in their legs are fused, helping them maintain stability while sprinting after prey. However, this unique characteristic also prevents cheetahs from being effective climbers like many other cats. If it could somehow separate its leg bones at will, the animal would be far more formidable. In a new paper published in the journal IEEE Robotics & Automation Letters, the CSU [Colorado State University] team describes how it gave its robot the ability to adapt to...

A new look at the melting of Greenland's ice sheet more than 115,000 years ago reveals that even though the climate was much warmer than today's, the ice was only a few hundred feet thinner than in modern times. Given that sea level was also much higher during this long-ago period, the findings mean that Antarctica must have experienced major melt to boost the oceans. These results could hint at what's to come in today's warming world, the researchers report Thursday (Jan. 24) in the journal Nature. "Even though the warm Eemian period was a period when the oceans were...

Scientists have identified thousands of sites in the Arctic where methane that has been stored for many millennia is bubbling into the atmosphere. The methane has been trapped by ice, but is able to escape as the ice melts. Writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, the researchers say this ancient gas could have a significant impact on climate change. Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas after CO2 and levels are rising after a few years of stability. There are many sources of the gas around the world, some natural and some man-made, such as landfill waste disposal sites...

Now however, new research by a team from Université Laval in Canada, led by Dermot Antoniadesa, have found, after studying sedimentary material on the bottom of the Disraeli Fiord, created by backup from an ice shelf in Northern Canada, that it experienced a major fracture that resulted in an overall reduction of the ice shelf some 1,400 years ago. Which means this isn’t the first time that the shelf ice has melted and broken apart. The team has published the results of its survey in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Japan has asked the US for help to stop a quake-damaged nuclear reactor plunging into uncontrollable meltdown. The plea comes after a second hydrogen explosion occurred at a nuclear plant where officials warned that three nuclear rods in a cooling-starved reactor appeared to be melting. Plumes of grey smoke billowed into the air after the blast at the Fukushima Daiichi plant's number 3 unit, injuring 11 people. Japan's chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano confirmed the fear of rods melting inside all three of the site's most troubled reactors. "Although we cannot directly check it, it's highly likely happening," he said....

How Terahertz Waves Tear Apart DNAA new model of the way the THz waves interact with DNA explains how the damage is done and why evidence has been so hard to gather. Great things are expected of terahertz waves, the radiation that fills the slot in the electromagnetic spectrum between microwaves and the infrared. Terahertz waves pass through non-conducting materials such as clothes , paper, wood and brick and so cameras sensitive to them can peer inside envelopes, into living rooms and "frisk" people at distance. The way terahertz waves are absorbed and emitted can also be used to determine...

New York - Ever wondered how you could stuff a little more cheese into a grilled cheese sandwich? Wonder no more - Denny's has done it. The answer: Deep-fried mozzarella cheese sticks smothered in American cheese and grilled between two slices of sourdough bread. (Snip) However, CBS News correspondent Jeff Glor reported the cost to your diet is 895 calories and 34 grams of fat. This is the latest extreme meal to be released -- and it might be a little tame. Other chains have come up with a variety of diet-busting concoctions. KFC has the Double Down, a "sandwich"...

MILWAUKEE – Cities around the country that have installed energy-efficient traffic lights are discovering a hazardous downside: The bulbs don't burn hot enough to melt snow and can become crusted over in a storm — a problem blamed for dozens of accidents and at least one death. "I've never had to put up with this in the past," said Duane Kassens, a driver from West Bend who got into a fender-bender recently because he couldn't see the lights. "The police officer told me the new lights weren't melting the snow. How is that safe?" Many communities have switched to LED...

WASHINGTON – There's a new burger in town, and it's got Michelle Obama's name on it. The "Michelle Melt" turkey burger at Good Stuff Eatery was unveiled Thursday by chef Spike Mendelsohn, a former contestant on Bravo's "Top Chef" competition. He developed it in collaboration with White House chef Sam Kass, who previously cooked for the Obama family in Chicago. What makes a turkey burger qualify as a "Michelle Melt?" Fresh, organic, locally grown ingredients that promote healthier eating, and the same herbs that are found in the White House garden started by Mrs. Obama.

The recent dramatic melting and breakup of a few huge Greenland glaciers have fueled public concerns over the impact of global climate change, but that isn't the island's biggest problem. A new study shows that the dozens of much smaller outflow glaciers dotting Greenland's coast together account for three times more loss from the island's ice sheet than the amount coming from their huge relatives. In a study just published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, scientists at Ohio State University reported that nearly 75 percent of the loss of Greenland ice can be traced back to small coastal glaciers....

Glaciologists for the first time observed the sudden drainage of meltwater from the top of the Greenland ice sheet to its base, a phenomenon that can help speed up summer ice movement, a report said Thursday. The scientists discovered what they described as a natural plumbing system on the glacier by which meltwater penetrates deeply in the kilometer (0.62 mile) thick ice mass, wrote glaciologists Sarah Das of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Ian Joughin of University of Washington at Seattle. Thousands of lakes form on top of the Greenland ice sheet each summer. Satellite pictures show that the lakes...

Scientists have discovered a huge active volcano under Antarctica. - The BAS team says data from the volcano will help it predict future rises in sea-levels caused by melting ice.

Depleting oil supplies threaten 'meltdown in society' 29 October 2007 NewScientist.com news service It is downhill all the way for oil, according to a study by the Energy Watch Group (EWG) in Berlin, Germany. It reported this week that world oil production peaked in 2006 - far earlier than expected. EWG analysed oil production figures and predicted it would fall by 7 per cent a year, dropping to half of current levels by 2030. The announcement comes as oil prices reached record highs last week, at more than $90 a barrel, and contradicts optimistic projections by the International Energy Agency...

New data released Monday shows that the melting of mountain glaciers worldwide is accelerating, a clear sign that climate change is also picking up, the UN environmental agency and scientists said. Thirty reference glaciers monitored by the Swiss-based World Glacier Monitoring Service lost about 66 centimetres (two feet) in thickness on average in 2005, the UN Environment Programme said in a statement. "The new data confirms the trend in accelerated loss during the past two and a half decades," it added. The set of glaciers located around the world have thinned by about 10.5 metres (34.6 feet) on average since...

Fulgurites! The second is the world record holder.

A new analysis of 50 years of changes in freshwater inputs to the Arctic Ocean and North Atlantic may help shed light on what's behind the recently observed freshening of the North Atlantic Ocean. In a report, published in the August 25, 2006 issue of the journal, Science, MBL (Marine Biological Laboratory) senior scientist Bruce J. Peterson and his colleagues describe a first-of-its-kind effort to create a big-picture view of hydrologic trends in the Arctic. Their analysis reveals that freshwater increases from Arctic Ocean sources appear to be highly linked to a fresher North Atlantic. "The high-latitude freshwater cycle is...

UNH Scientist Announce New Beginning of Natural Spring The sun will still cross the equator on March 20th marking the vernal equinox and the official start of spring, but Mother Nature is increasingly getting a jumpstart on the celestial movements. Over the last 150 years, scientific measurements show that events signifying the beginning of spring have all shifted. These events now happen about a week earlier on average in the northeast United States, according to a new report, Evidence of Early Spring, from the group Clean Air-Cool Planet (CA-CP), which today announced the new, first day for "natural spring," March...

Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) have found evidence in eastern North America that the snow is melting and running off into rivers earlier than it did in the first half of the 20th century. According to a USGS study published in the most recent issue of Geophysical Research Letters, winter-spring flows in many rivers in the northern United States and Canada are occurring earlier by 5-10 days. "We studied rural, unregulated rivers with more than 50 years of USGS and Environment Canada river flow data," explained Glenn Hodgkins, lead author and hydrologist at the USGS Maine Water Science...

LONDON (AFP) - Global warming could cause ice at both poles of the Earth to start melting this century, driving up sea levels, according to a major study published by the British government. The study, "Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change", collates evidence presented by scientists at a conference staged a year ago ahead of the 2005 Group of Eight (G8) summit, where Britain placed global warming high on the agenda. British Prime Minister Tony Blair added his voice to the warning on Monday. "It is clear from the work presented that the risks of climate change may well be greater than...