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Republican leaders in Congress think so, and they are calling for an overhaul of the entire federal pay system to help slash government spending. Democrats and other defenders of the government work force say federal workers are actually underpaid compared with their private counterparts. A closer look at the data shows that both sides have a point but that supporters of federal workers are a bit closer to reality.... That argument is backed up by a 2002 study of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. It found that federal salaries for most professional and administrative jobs lagged well behind compensation offered...

It is possible that such a phenomenon could occur when matter around a newborn star forms into planets. In a planet's orbit around a star, there are two places where a third body can safely orbit. These spots, known as Lagrange points, are 120 degrees in front of and behind whichever body is smaller. The discovered co-orbiting planets, located in the four-planet system KOI-730, are always 120 degrees apart, permanent fixtures in each others' night skies. Fifty million years after the birth of our solar system, the moon may have formed from the debris of a collision between Earth and...

UK Conservative party leader David Cameron has been urged to condemn "breathtaking" comments about gay people by Tory MEP Roger Helmer. On Sunday, Helmer tweeted: "Why is it OK for a surgeon to perform a sex-change operation, but not OK for a psychiatrist to try to 'turn' a consenting homosexual?" He was responding to an article at the weekend in the Sunday Telegraph newspaper about how a British psychotherapist who tried to "convert" a gay man to become heterosexual now faces being struck off. Lesley Pilkington, 60, a psychotherapist for 20 years, faces being stripped of her accreditation to the...

Even if humans stop producing excess carbon dioxide in 2100, the lingering effects of global warming could span the next millennia. The results? By the year 3000, global warming would be more than a hot topic - the West Antarctic ice sheet could collapse, and global sea levels would rise by about 13 feet (4 meters), according to a new study. Using a computer model, researchers looked at two scenarios - an end to humans' industrial carbon dioxide emissions by 2010 and by 2100 - stretched out to the year 3000.

Washington: The US National Weather Service has issued a blizzard warning for parts of New York, New Jersey and other states along the east coast of the United States as a major winter storm bears down on the area on Sunday. A band of frigid weather was snaking up the East Coast on Sunday, promising blizzards and a foot of snow for New York City and New England, while several states made emergency declarations as the storm caused crashes on slick roads. Heavy snow and blizzards in parts of North Carolina were making driving conditions difficult, and there were dozens...

Christmas trees 'make non-Christians feel excluded' Christmas trees should be removed from public places to avoid making non-Christians feel “excluded”, scientists have suggested By Andy Bloxham 11:43AM GMT 20 Dec 2010 Researchers at Simon Fraser University in Canada, found non-Christians feel less self-assured and have fewer positive feelings if a Christmas tree was in the room. The scientists conducted the study using 77 Christians and 57 non-believers, including Buddhists and Sikhs. The participants did not know the survey was about Christmas, and were asked to fill in questions about themselves both when a 12-inch Christmas tree was in the room...

SALT LAKE CITY -- Two Salt Lake City residents committed to telling the public about dangers of global warming are walking 350 miles. Ryan and Jamie Pleune say their "Pilgrimage for Hope" calls attention to the number 350. It represents 350 parts per million -- the level of carbon dioxide beyond which global warming will become intolerable. The Pleunes say our current carbon dioxide level measures in at 392 parts per million, and in an effort to bring it back down to 350, they are taking personal action. "One of the things about climate change is it's just this hopeless...

PARIS (AFP) – Men whose index fingers are longer than their ring, or fourth, fingers run a significantly lower risk of prostate cancer, according to a study published Wednesday in the British Journal of Cancer. The chances of developing the disease drop by a third, and even more in younger men, the study found. "Our results show that relative finger length could be used as a simple test for prostate cancer risk, particularly in men aged under 60," said Ros Eeles, a professor at the Institute of Cancer Research in Britain and co-author of the study. Finger pattern could help...

Narcissistic personality disorder, characterized by an inflated sense of self-importance and the need for constant attention, has been eliminated from the upcoming manual of mental disorders, which psychiatrists use to diagnose mental illness. As Charles Zanor reports in today’s Science Times, the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — due out in 2013 and known as D.S.M.-5 — has eliminated five of the 10 personality disorders that are listed in the current edition. The best known of these is narcissistic personality disorder. It is a puzzle why the manual’s committee on personality disorders has decided...

Just because the motives of many climate change advocates are questionable, even evil, does that mean the entire global warming proposition is a fraud? It is an article of faith among many conservatives that climate change is sham science. Even worse, it is the nexus of a vast conspiracy involving governments, the UN, and climate scientists that is seeking to destroy the industrial economies of the West, create a one world government, and enrich people like Al Gore who have bet a bundle on a reduced carbon emissions future. They believe that either the earth is not warming at all,...

One year ago today, after returning from a conference in Brussels, I sat down in Dulles airport, connected to WiFi, researched and wrote this article, called two people, CEI’s Chris Horner to check legality issues, and Marc Morano (who was traveling in car on the PCH in California) to give him a heads up, and pressed the “publish” button just seconds before they closed the door to my flight back to Sacramento. When I landed five hours later, I immediately got back on WiFi and found the the story had exploded, and we lived in a different world. I...

The Global Warming hearing today on C-SPAN included Dr. Richard Lindzen, Dr Judth  Curry, Dr. Pat Michaels, Dr. Ben Santer, and Dr. Heidi Cullen, among others. Many didn’t get a chance to watch (to see if Ben Santer “beat the crap out of Pat Michaels“) but we have the video here. C-SPAN: House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment heard from a dozen witnesses about how the public and private sectors are approaching climate change. Washington, DC : 3 hr. 47 min.It is now online and can be watched in full at this link:http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2010/11/17/HP/A/40918/House+Science+Technology+Subcommittee+Hearing+on+Climate+Change+Science.aspxh/t to WUWT reader Rational Debate

Dr. Bradley Schaeffer is a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. This video of his "astronomy class", which is actually an indoctrination session on global warming, was posted to YouTube Monday.

reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society. It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so...

A decade of commercial space flight would have a devastating impact on climate change and global temperatures, according to a new study.Scientists believe that vast amounts of black soot created by a new generation of spacecraft could lead to temperatures in polar regions rising by as mush as one degree Celsius.The study comes as the dream of whisking tourists edged closer to reality with the official opening of the runway at the world's first commercial spaceport by Sir Richard Branson.The billionaire said he expects flights for space tourists to begin in nine to 18 months,

"A few may genuinely believe global warming is a left-wing plot. Others may be singing the tune of corporate benefactors. And many Republicans have seized on the cap-and-trade climate bill as another way to paint Democrats as out-of-control taxers. "In one way or another, though, all are custodians of a strategy whose guiding principle has been to avoid debate about solutions to climate change by denying its existence — or at least by diminishing its importance. The strategy worked, destroying hopes for Congressional action while further confusing ordinary citizens for whom global warming was already a remote and complex matter....

Hey, in an entertainment universe where a blood-soaked psychopath can be a hero and flesh-munching zombies can be hilarious (to me, too), what’s a few exploding schoolchildren? Late last week, a British climate group released “ No Pressure,” a mini-film aimed at rounding up new recruits to its “10:10″ movement, in which people, schools, companies and other participants pledge to cut their greenhouse gas emissions 10 percent in a year. On paper, the project had everything going for it — the screenwriter of “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” music by Radiohead, on-screen talent including Gillian Anderson,...

"If governments spent only one per cent of what is spent on armies, they would change the face of the world for poor people." Osama bin Laden, October 1, 2010. OSAMA bin Laden believes climate change is more damaging than war. An audio recording attributed to the al-Qaeda leader and broadcast on the internet yesterday expresses concern about the devastating floods in Pakistan and calls on Muslims to provide relief for the victims. "The number of victims caused by climate change is very big... bigger than the victims of wars," says the recording. If genuine, the recording would be...

How hot was it? The National Weather Service's thermometer downtown reached 113 degrees for the first time since records began being kept in 1877 — and then stopped working. The record highs follow a summer of record lows. It was so hot Monday that it broke the all-time record — and the weatherman's thermometer. The National Weather Service's thermometer for downtown Los Angeles headed into uncharted territory at 12:15 p.m. Monday, reaching 113 degrees for the first time since records began being kept in 1877. Shortly after that banner moment, the temperature dipped back to 111, and then climbed back...

THE United Nations was set today to appoint an obscure Malaysian astrophysicist to act as Earth�s first contact for any aliens that may come visiting. Mazlan Othman, the head of the UN's little-known Office for Outer Space Affairs (Unoosa), is to describe her potential new role next week at a scientific conference at the Royal Society’s Kavli conference centre in Buckinghamshire. She is scheduled to tell delegates that the recent discovery of hundreds of planets around other stars has made the detection of extraterrestrial life more likely than ever before - and that means the UN must be ready...