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Two months ago, James Lovelock, the godfather of global warming, gave a startling interview to msnbc.com in which he acknowledged he had been unduly “alarmist” about climate change. The implications were extraordinary. Lovelock is a world-renowned scientist and environmentalist whose Gaia theory — that the Earth operates as a single, living organism — has had a profound impact on the development of global warming theory.

As the nation remembers the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, experts are warning that the U.S. effectively is defenseless against an electro-magnetic pulse attack or a far less expensive radio frequency attack on the nation's critical military and civilian electric and electronic infrastructure, according to Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin. Two experts – one a communications systems engineer involved in classified programs who works on EMP vulnerabilities and the other a U.S. Defense Department analyst knowledgeable of their impact – said that the nation's sensitive telecommunications and the electronic systems embedded...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health)-If the trends of the past three decades continue, it's possible that every American adult could be overweight 40 years from now, a government-funded study projects. The figure might sound alarming, or impossible, but researchers say that even if the actual rate never reaches the 100-percent mark, any upward movement is worrying; two-thirds of the population is already overweight....

(CNN) -- Kicking off a week-long push seen as outreach to independent and Democratic voters in crucial swing states, John McCain on Monday will deliver a speech outlining his vision for combating global warming. "We stand warned by serious and credible scientists across the world that time is short and the dangers are great," McCain will say in Portland, Oregon, according to prepared remarks. "The most relevant question now is whether our own government is equal to the challenge." McCain's commitment to fight global warming puts him at odds with some Republicans in Congress and with the Bush administration, which...

NEW ORLEANS - A top hurricane forecaster called Al Gore "a gross alarmist" Friday for making an Oscar-winning documentary about global warming. "He's one of these guys that preaches the end of the world type of things. I think he's doing a great disservice and he doesn't know what he's talking about," Dr. William Gray said in an interview with The Associated Press at the National Hurricane Conference in New Orleans, where he delivered the closing speech. A spokeswoman said Gore was on a flight from Washington, D.C., to Nashville Friday; he did not immediately respond to Gray's comments. Gray,...

In one of the strongest signs yet that U.S. industry anticipates government curbs on global-warming emissions, Exxon Mobil Corp., long a leading opponent of such rules, is starting to talk about how it would like them to be structured. Exxon, the world's largest publicly traded oil company by market value, long has been a lightning rod in the global-warming debate. Its top executives have openly questioned the scientific validity of claims that fossil-fuel emissions are warming the planet, and it has funded outside groups that have challenged such claims in language sometimes stronger than the company itself has used. Those...

Just a headline so far.

The environmental activist group Greenpeace wanted to be prepared to counter President Bush's visit last week to Pennsylvania to promote his nuclear energy policy. "This volatile and dangerous source of energy" is no answer to the country's energy needs, shouted a Greenpeace fact sheet, decrying the "threat" posed by the reactors Bush visited in Limerick. But after that assertion, the Greenpeace authors were apparently stumped while searching for the ideal menacing metaphor. "In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE]," the sheet said. The...

Day one of GTC week began with the "C-Level Summit" at a downtown Sacramento hotel. State CIO Clark Kelso set the tone by outlining a few "global population demographics and their approaching impact on government and society," while preparing the audience for the keynote by former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy G. Thompson. We are growing older as a population, Said Kelso, and that trend will continue through the 21st Century. "The number of people over 65 will more than double by mid century, and the number of those over 85 will quadruple." As a result,...

A terrorism symposium featuring leading experts will begin with presentation of "tangible proof" al-Qaida not only has developed an arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons but also has begun to deploy them for use in its jihad against the United States and Israel. Paul L. Williams, author of "The Al Connection" and "The Dunces of Doomsday," will present his findings at the National Press Club in Washington at the conclusion of a public debate with Wall Street Journal correspondent Richard Miniter on al-Qaida's nuclear weaponry. The debate, Friday at 10 a.m., will be moderated by Fred Barnes, executive editor of The...

"Clearwater, Florida - It's been two weeks since Jessica Lunsford’s father discovered his daughter was missing from her room. The family is holding out hope the nine-year-old girl will be found safe, despite days of searching that turned up nothing.The case is a lot like that of Zachary Bernhardt who disappeared on September 11, 2000. Like Jessica, the eight-year-old Clearwater boy was home at bedtime, but gone by morning. As with Jessica's disappearance there was an all-out search, still Zachary remains missing....

The Federal Bureau of Investigation briefly detained four AirTran Airways passengers Monday after two fellow passengers complained that one of them tore a Coke can, creating sharp metal edges, a spokesman for the airline said. The detained passengers, who included three men of Middle Eastern descent, were questioned and released after it was determined they were no threat. The incident involved AirTran Flight 273, after it arrived in Atlanta from Boston. Two business-class passengers became concerned when they saw one of the questioned men tear apart a Coke can and walk up and down the aisle talking to the others....

More people were killed last year in rollover-type accidents involving pickup trucks and SUVs than in previous years--statistically speaking, about 1.51 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled. But despite alarmist reportage by the major media and SUV-haters in the punditocracy, that is still pretty low by historical standards. (There were 5.5 million deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled in the mid-1960s, and 1.75 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled in 1992.) Moreover, it's rarely mentioned in anti-SUV rants that rollover-type accidents account for just 2.5 percent of all crashes. Or that the actual number of people killed...

As the world gets warmer, it is getting wetter. And one of the main conclusions reached at Europe's largest ever earth sciences conference was that we are less prepared for it than ever. While some delegates were still reeling from the catastrophic floods that hit the continent in August 2002, others warned that the risk of future flooding has been vastly underestimated. And studies of past episodes of climate change suggest that a wetter world may be not only a consequence of global warming but a trigger for further, more dramatic temperature rises. The first task was to take stock,...