A combination of toxic chemicals and pathogens are probably to blame for colony collapse disorder in honeybees, according to a study conducted by researchers at Washington State University.

Researchers conducted careful studies to uncover contributors to the disorder, in which seemingly healthy bees simply vanish from a hive, leaving the queen and a handful of newly hatched adults behind.

"One of the first things we looked at was the pesticide levels in the wax of older honeycombs," researcher Steve Sheppard said.

The researchers acquired used hives from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, finding that they had "fairly high levels of pesticide residue." When bees were raised in these hives, they had "significantly reduced longevity," the researchers said.

Who's in charge? Who's got food? The brain region responsible for learning and memory is bigger in social bee queens who may have to address these questions than in solitary queens, report scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute who study the tropical sweat bee species, Megalopta genalis in Panama.

Their study is the first comparison of the brain sizes of social and non-social individuals of the same species.

"The idea is that to maintain power and control in groups you need more information, so the bigger the group, the bigger individuals' brains need to be." says William Wcislo, Smithsonian staff scientist. "This is called the 'social brain hypothesis' also known as the 'Machiavelli hypothesis'."

Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky - A belching of ash to the altitude of seven kilometers above sea level has been registered over the crater of the Shiveluch, Kamchatka's northernmost active volcano, experts at the regional affiliation of the Geophysical Service of the Russian Academy of Sciences said.

The exuding of ash does not pose any risks for nearby population centers, as no data on the fallout of volcanic dust there has been reported.

The belching was not seen visually and scientists drew a conclusion that it had taken place on the basis of information from seismic observation stations located in the vicinity of the volcano.

They registered "a surface seismic event at the volcano" having a four minutes' duration.

The Shiveluch has the elevation of 3,283 meters and the highest point of its activity, the Young Shiveluch, is located at the elevation of 2,800 meters.

The volcano's basis has a diameter of 45 kilometers to 50 kilometers. It occupies an area of no less than 1,300 sq kilometers.

They've been compared to "flat earthers" and even "Holocaust deniers". And, as the recent "Climategate" email scandal reveals, they have been blacklisted in certain professional circles. Scientists who disagree with the current consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) are dismissed by some colleagues and politicians as ignorant and irrelevant. Though there are certainly cranks out there who lend credence to this stereotype, not everyone who rejects the idea that global warming is a planetary crisis brought about by burning fossil fuels deserves to be vilified.

There are numerous myths surrounding those who are wrongly labeled "deniers". Most of them can be distilled into six basic accusations:

1. "Deniers" believe the climate has not warmed.

No one questions that there has been a slight, but unmistakable increase in global temperature since the end of the "Little Ice Age" in the early nineteenth century. Global average surface temperature has risen approximately 0.9°C since 1850. But not all scientists attribute this change to the human addition of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases to the air. Those who oppose the prevailing view on AGW point out that since temperatures began to increase well before CO₂ levels were considered significant (c. 1940), a considerable part of this warming is due to natural variations in the climate. Such variations in the past have brought about abrupt climate changes with large swings in temperature.

Numerous articles have appeared in scientific journals over the last several years documenting a warm bias in official temperature measurements. This bias, which may account for up to half of the reported warming, is due largely to changes in land cover - especially the geographic expansion of cities which creates "urban heat islands." An ongoing survey of over 1000 climate reporting stations in the United States, shows that 69% are poorly sited resulting in errors of 2°C to 5°C or more (www.surfacestations.org). Surface data has also been impaired from station dropout. Over two-thirds of the world's stations were dropped from the climate network around 1990. Most of them were colder, high latitude and rural stations.

Can you hear me? You've been incognizant, but it's over and you're going to be OK. Take deep breaths and relax until your vision clears.

The world is not going to end because of climate change, at least not in the near future.

You are a most fortunate individual. You have been a participant in the biggest inter-dimensional cross rip since the Tunguska blast of 1909! No wait, that's Ghostbusters.

Let me put it differently: There has never been anything quite like this - ever.

The entire world has been embroiled in a persistent, free-floating global fervor (and a really nasty one, too) allegedly based on fervor-less, dispassionate science.

Recently, there was a huge explosion in the climate change orthodoxy factory that was set off by objective evidence we have been deceived and manipulated.

The evidence was the leaked e-mails of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU), which are now subject to several official investigations, forcing the head of the CRU to step aside. The e-mails tell a lurid tale of unbecoming, unwarranted, organized and fierce hostility to skeptical climatic researchers, as well as data tampering, anti-scientific secrecy, manipulations of scientific journals, and distortions of peer review that make George Orwell look like a prophet.

Jack and Jill and a bucket of weather

It is rather sad, and pathetic, that we have to go to the British press to find robust investigative reporting about the theory of man-made global warming. Apart from this country's national newspaper, The Australian, you could almost believe that the mantra that "the science is settled", is true. If you follow the line of the ABC and much of the mainstream press, to question the science of climate-change is to be un-Australian and un-Earth. Well, the science isn't settled - not by a long shot - and the battle continues.

Having been mugged at Copenhagen, embarrassed out of their wits by the scandal that was Himalaya-glacier-Gate, and facing a planet that doesn't seem to want to respond to the dire predictions of the most learned­ - the lads and lasses at the IPCC have been desperate in their attempts to block the rising tide of public sceptisism. So we have waited, with our breath bated, for a indication as to how they will deal with a growing, non-believing public.

Apart from the "science is settled" spin, which is code for "don't question us", the other side of the debate has been the "Outrageous-Claims Department". This is where the dedicated followers of climate let pass for science any outrageous claim made by any of their front-line "experts". Al Gore, Tim Flannery, James Hansen, Penny Wong, Kevin Rudd and Dr Pachauri. What do you do when scientists and political leaders blindly allow false claims to go uncorrected. When they must know that there isn't a "new" change-in-climate because the climate has always changed. It's what climate does. Sea-levels have always risen or dropped, ice-caps have always built up or shrunk, river systems have always developed, and in certain periods in history, just simply disappeared.

Living things on planet Earth have done what the have always done as climate changes naturally - adapted.

Cutting back on consumption of meat and dairy products will not have a major impact in combating global warming - despite repeated claims that link diets rich in animal products to production of greenhouse gases. That's the conclusion of a report presented here today at the 239th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society.

Air quality expert Frank Mitloehner, Ph.D., who made the presentation, said that giving cows and pigs a bum rap is not only scientifically inaccurate, but also distracts society from embracing effective solutions to global climate change. He noted that the notion is becoming deeply rooted in efforts to curb global warming, citing campaigns for "meatless Mondays" and a European campaign, called "Less Meat = Less Heat," launched late last year.

Record-breaking rain means huge Australian arid-land lakes are visible from space.

Australia has one of the most unpredictable rainfall patterns in the world, and this is one of those unpredictable years. For the past few months, the repeated downfalls have left large pools of water lying in arid lands in Western Queensland. It's great news for farmers. The water will, over the next year, flow south through the Darling River system, restoring parched watercourses, swamps, and dams. The Darling River system flows from Queensland through New South Wales and into South Australia.

Earlier this month, the Bureau of Meteorology announced that the rains were "exceptional":

The most remarkable aspect of this event was the area covered by the heavy rainfall and the total volume of rainfall that fell. Daily totals exceeded 100 mm over 1.7% of Australia on 1 March and 1.9% on 2 March. The latter is the largest area of 100 mm-plus daily totals on a single day in the Australian meteorological record, breaking the previous record of 1.7% set on 22 December 1956. 28 February was the wettest day on record for the Northern Territory with an NT-wide average of 29.23 mm, while 2 March set a new record for Queensland with a Statewide average of 31.74 mm1.

And after that record-breaking rain, the rain kept falling .

Hong Kong - China was ravaged by extreme forces of nature as the country's south wrestled with the worst drought in decades that has brought hardship to 51 million people, while a powerful sandstorm in the north turned Beijing's sky orange.

The drought in the provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan, as well as the Guangxi Autonomous Region and the city of Chongqing, has forced local governments to tap underground water sources and use cloud seeding to produce rain for agricultural production.

More than 20 million people throughout the southern region are dealing with water shortages and about 16 million acres of cropland are suffering from drought, the China Daily newspaper reported. Many areas have declared a state of emergency.

China's State Commission of Disaster Relief said the drought had left more than 16 million people and 11 million livestock with drinking-water shortages.

Reykjavik - A small volcano eruption that forced more than 600 people to flee their homes in Iceland over the weekend could conceivably set off a larger volcano, experts warned Monday.

"Historically, we know of three eruptions in (the large volcano) Katla linked to eruptions in Eyjafjallajokull," Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson, a professor of geophysics and civil protection advisor, told AFP, adding however that there so far was no indication of volcanic activity at Katla.

A volcanic eruption near the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in southern Iceland forced hundreds to flee their homes early Sunday, but no casualties were reported.

It was the first volcanic eruption in Iceland since 2004, and the first in the vicinity of the Eyjafjallajokull glacier since 1823.