Calls are mounting for President Barack Obama to fire James Hansen, the controversial figure in charge of climate studies at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Hansen has a record of allegedly doctoring temperature data to hype his argument that global warming is a crisis. The new calls for his resignation or termination come following his appearance in a video calling for civil disobedience at a protest at a power plant in Washington, DC.
"It is plainly improper for someone on the U.S. government payroll to advocate civil disobedience on behalf of a non-government advocacy group," said Dan Miller, executive vice president of The Heartland Institute and former chairman of the Illinois Commerce Commission. "As long as a public official is on the public payroll, his first loyalty is to his constituency, not to some outside pressure group calling on people to break the law," Miller said.
Earth Changes
Eco-warriors and media hype aside, the fact is, as we head into 2009, that the world's ice mass has been expanding not contracting. Which will surprise evening news junkies fed a diet of polar bears floating about on ice floes and snow shelves falling into the oceans. But if a whole series of reports on ice growth in the Arctic, the Antarctic and among glaciers are right, then it is truth in the mainstream media (MSM) that's in meltdown not the polar ice caps.
The problem for the MSM is that it long ago nailed its colors to the climate alarmist mast. No ice cap meltdown, no rising waters. No disappearing islands, no reason for alarm. No alarm, no story. Worst of all having called yet another global apocalypse wrong: No credibility. So the MSM has a significant stake in running highly selective warm-mongering headlines. Not to mention disparaging those scientists who have the temerity to disagree as 'holocaust deniers' and 'pseudo-scientists'.
The problem for the MSM is that it long ago nailed its colors to the climate alarmist mast. No ice cap meltdown, no rising waters. No disappearing islands, no reason for alarm. No alarm, no story. Worst of all having called yet another global apocalypse wrong: No credibility. So the MSM has a significant stake in running highly selective warm-mongering headlines. Not to mention disparaging those scientists who have the temerity to disagree as 'holocaust deniers' and 'pseudo-scientists'.
© FMA Research
Sprites over thunderstorms in Kansas on August 10, 2000, observed in the mesosphere, with an altitude of 50-90 kilometers as a response to powerful lightning discharges from tropospheric thunderstorms.
Sprites over thunderstorms in Kansas on August 10, 2000, observed in the mesosphere, with an altitude of 50-90 kilometers as a response to powerful lightning discharges from tropospheric thunderstorms.
While there is much debate over the cause or function of these mysterious flashes in the sky, Price says they may explain some bizarre reports of UFO sightings.
Sprites are described as flashes high in the atmosphere, between 35 and 80 miles from the ground, much higher than the 7 to 10 miles where regular lightning bolts usually occur.
"Lightning from the thunderstorm excites the electric field above, producing a flash of light called a sprite," explained Price, head of the Geophysics and Planetary Sciences Department at Tel Aviv University. "We now understand that only a specific type of lightning is the trigger that initiates sprites aloft."
© AP/R. Robert
His audience Saturday, small and elite, had been stranded here by bad weather and were talking climate. They couldn't do much about the one, but the other was squarely in their hands. And so, Lord Nicholas Stern was telling them, was the potential for mass migrations setting off mass conflict.
"Somehow we have to explain to people just how worrying that is," the British economic thinker said.
Stern, author of a major British government report detailing the cost of climate change, was one of a select group of two dozen - environment ministers, climate negotiators and experts from 16 nations - scheduled to fly to Antarctica to learn firsthand how global warming might melt its ice into the sea, raising ocean levels worldwide.
© Mark Jobling / Wikimedia Commons
Wandering albatrosses like this one are critically endangered, partly as a result of getting snagged on fishing lines, but a new scheme is changing that.
Wandering albatrosses like this one are critically endangered, partly as a result of getting snagged on fishing lines, but a new scheme is changing that.
Gaudy strips of pink fluorescent tubing are helping to save albatrosses from extinction. They frighten the birds away from baited hooks on fishing lines, which attract, snag and drown some 100,000 albatrosses and petrels a year.
In South African waters in 2008, 85% fewer albatrosses died this way than a year earlier, thanks to the introduction of the pink strips on vessels fishing there for tuna and swordfish.
Flapping in the wind, the strips frighten the birds away from fishing vessels reeling out the lines.
"They form a visible deterrent and a no-go zone close to the bait and fishing gear as it's reeled out," explains Graham Madge of the UK Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which co-launched the Albatross Task Force in 2006 with BirdLife International to stop albatrosses being snagged on hooks and drowning as they try to steal bait.
Melbourne - Several hundred Australians fled their homes on Monday as wildfires that killed more than 200 people flared again, destroying at least one home and injuring two firefighters.
The deadly combination of strong winds and searing temperatures that whipped up the most deadly fires in Australia's history returned to drive flames toward towns to the east and northwest of Victoria's state capital, Melbourne.
The deadly combination of strong winds and searing temperatures that whipped up the most deadly fires in Australia's history returned to drive flames toward towns to the east and northwest of Victoria's state capital, Melbourne.
A 5.8-magnitude earthquake shook an area between Indonesia and the Philippines early Monday, geologists said, but there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.
The US Geological Survey said the epicentre was about 310 kilometres south-southeast of General Santos in the southern Philippines.
The US Geological Survey said the epicentre was about 310 kilometres south-southeast of General Santos in the southern Philippines.
Federal officials have upgraded Friday's earthquake in The Geysers area to a magnitude of 3.7 from the initial 3.3.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the 2:30 a.m. quake was was centered about one mile north of The Geysers and five miles southwest of Cobb in Lake County.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the 2:30 a.m. quake was was centered about one mile north of The Geysers and five miles southwest of Cobb in Lake County.
Lake Mead, Nevada - It took some of America's best engineers, thousands of laborers and two years of around-the-clock concrete pouring to build the 726-foot-high Hoover Dam back in the 1930s. It took less time than that for the tiny, brainless quagga mussel to bring operators of this modern wonder of the world to their knees.
While federal lawmakers continue to squabble over how to stop overseas ships from dumping unwanted organisms into the world's largest freshwater system, the Great Lakes' most vexing invasive-species problem has gone national.
While federal lawmakers continue to squabble over how to stop overseas ships from dumping unwanted organisms into the world's largest freshwater system, the Great Lakes' most vexing invasive-species problem has gone national.
© Unknown
A U.S. researcher has used historic photographs as evidence of fishing's impact on marine ecosystems and the decline of "trophy fish."
Graduate student researcher Loren McClenachan of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California-San Diego accessed archival photographs spanning more than five decades to describe an 88 percent decline in the estimated weight of large predatory fish imaged in black-and-white 1950s sport fishing photos compared with the relatively diminutive catches photographed in modern pictures.
"These results provide evidence of major changes over the last half century and a window into an earlier, less disturbed fish community ..." she said.
