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Climate Change: A peer-reviewed study by a respected Canadian physicist blames the interplay of cosmic rays and chlorofluorocarbons for 20th-century warming. The CFCs are now gone, and so is warming — perhaps for the next 50 years. Much of the nation got a white Christmas this year, some in unprecedented quantities. A record-breaking storm deposited 12 to 30 inches of snow in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. Many places set records for the most snow in a single December day as more than 50% of the U.S. was covered by the white stuff. Scientists (and here we use the word...

the list of all 690,114 trade-ins.

Some Surprised By 'Clunker' Tax Posts The Cash For Clunkers program is adding to the activity at treasurers' offices all around South Dakota. First, people were asking for proof of ownership, so they could show they owned their vehicle for a full year, allowing them to cash it in. Now, they'll be returning to register their new vehicle. And when they do, new owners need to bring every bit of paperwork provided to them by their dealer. "That means they need their title, their damage disclosure, their bill of sale and the dealers have 30 days to get that to...

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, better known as NASA, said in July that it had found the "smoking gun" that caused the space shuttle Columbia to break apart as it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere on Feb. 1: a piece of foam that had peeled off the external fuel tank and struck the shuttle's wing 1 minute and 22 seconds after liftoff. But many experts looking at the tragedy that killed seven astronauts say there is a deeper cause. They say that the metaphorical smoking gun should be painted green. Because of demands that the agency help to front for...

From error to error one discovers the entire truth.” Sigmund Freud. The Issue The US Congress is currently discussing the Obama climate change strategy and Cap and Trade. One part of the plan says, “Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.” The term “greenhouse gas emissions” is either deliberately misleading or indicates complete ignorance of the science, or both. What they really mean is CO2, yet it is less than 4% of greenhouse gases and the human portion a fraction of that. Why do they want it reduced? It is not a pollutant...

It sounds like such a simple thing: Buy some new light bulbs, screw them in, save the planet. But a lot of people are finding the new compact fluorescent bulbs anything but simple. Consumers who are trying them say they sometimes fail to work, or wear out early. At best, people discover that using the bulbs requires learning a long list of dos and don’ts. Take the case of Karen Zuercher and her husband, in San Francisco. Inspired by watching the movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” they decided to swap nearly every incandescent bulb in their home for energy-saving compact fluorescents....

Beginning January 1, 2009, millions of asthma sufferers will no longer legally be able to obtain the low-cost albuterol inhalers that enable them to breathe. The inhalers have been outlawed by FDA regulations under the UN Montreal Protocol on Ozone Deplation.  Few things are more terrifying than being smothered, yet millions of Americans who suffer from asthma and other respiratory ailments experience this sensation on a regular basis. For many it is not just an unpleasant and debilitating experience, but a life-threatening one. For decades, these sufferers have received emergency relief from albuterol metered-dose inhalers (MDIs). These traditional MDIs, however,...

Yes, kids, science is a wonderful thing. But not nearly as wonderful as climate modeling, which can perform supernatural miracles. Honest! Climate modeling can raise the level of the oceans (even without Obama's intervention), it can burn up the planet a hundred years from now, and Shazzam! -- the models can save us again -- all without leaving your video games, and without the benefit of the real-world data that you need for boring old regular science. At least, that's what Nature -- the oldest science journal in the world, going back to Isaac Newton -- now claims. According to...

WASHINGTON - An aide to President Bush has resigned because of an alleged misuse of grant money from U.S. Agency for International Development and his former employer, a Cuban democracy organization. Felipe Sixto was promoted on March 1 as a special assistant to the president for intergovernmental affair and stepped forward on March 20 to reveal his alleged wrongdoing and to resign, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said on Friday. The matter has been turned over to the Justice Department for investigation, Stanzel said. He said Bush was briefed on the case and felt that the approriate action was being...

Excerpt - WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration and major financial institutions are close to agreeing on a plan that would temporarily freeze interest rates on certain troubled subprime home loans, according to people familiar with the negotiations. An accord could reassure investors and strapped homeowners, both of whom are anxious as interest rates on more than two million adjustable mortgages are scheduled to jump over the next two years. It could also give a boost to the Bush administration, which is facing criticism for inaction amid the recent housing turmoil. The plan is being negotiated between regulators including the Treasury...

Fr. Conde denying communion to one of the abortion supporters (photo: La Prensa) Managua, Oct 1, 2007 / 11:51 am (CNA).- Just yesterday, feminists and pro-abortion supporters interrupted Mass at the Cathedral of Managua in Nicaragua and attempted to receive Holy Communion.  When they were refused, according to church law, they reacted violently and forced the celebrant to end the Mass.The decision by the celebrant, Father Bismark Conde, to deny them Communion bothered the women, some of whom are members of “Catholics for a Free Choice.”  They remained in the church and demanded to receive the Eucharist.According to the Nicaraguan...

QUESTION: Does anybody here on FR have a subscription at NATURE.COM? I have been furiously trying to find the article: "Chemists poke holes in ozone theory" that RUSH referenced on his show today about the OZONE depletions may NOT be caused by CFC's after all! Every Google link I find is tied back to NATURE.COM and no excerpts are found.............. If you have a NATURE.COM subscription, please post the article, if possible......

Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday named Cardinal Claudio Hummes, who heads Brazil's largest Roman Catholic diocese, to head the Vatican office in charge of priests around the world.Hummes, 72, succeeds another South American, Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos as prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy. The Vatican said Hoyos, a 77-year-old Colombian, was retiring.In addition to dealing with supervision of priests around the world, the Vatican clergy office has a watchdog role over local church finances.Hummes is considered a leading church figure in the Third World and was seen candidate for the papacy in the conclave that elected Benedict last...

PARIS (Reuters) - A satellite has detected record losses of ozone over Antarctica this year, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Monday, further damaging the shield that protects the Earth from cancer-causing ultraviolet rays. In the past decade, the level of ozone in the Earth's atmosphere has fallen by about 0.3 percent, increasing the risk of skin cancer, cataracts and harm to marine life, ESA added. The presence of a hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic was first recognized in 1985. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said earlier this month that the hole was nearing its record...

An environmental effort to protect the earth's ozone layer could mean disruptions for the nation's millions of asthma patients. A federally mandated shift to a more ozone-friendly version of the hand-held inhalers used to quell asthma attacks is creating spot shortages of the devices, because production of the older versions has declined even before producers of the new inhalers ramp up fully. The shift is also giving a few drug makers the rare chance to introduce brand-name medicine into a market long dominated by low-cost generics. The drug at issue is albuterol, the leading prescription treatment used to open constricted...

AB 651 (FORMERLY AB 654) Physician Assisted Death (Berg, D-Eureka and Levine, D-Van Nuys) Using a procedural ploy, called “gut and amend”, the authors of the physician-assisted suicide bill avoided certain defeat of AB 654 during the last week of the mid-session deadline. Instead of placing the bill before the full Assembly for a vote, authors Patty Berg, (D-Santa Rosa) and Lloyd Levine (D-Van Nuys) pulled the bill and took AB 651, a bill that has already passed the Assembly, gutted (removed) the language from that bill and replaced it with language from AB 654. By using “gut and amend”...

A dramatic thinning of Earth's protective ozone layer above the Arctic last year was the result of intense upper-level winds and an extra dose of space weather, scientists said Tuesday. Ozone, which screens out some of the Sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation, declined by up to 60 percent in the stratosphere over high northern latitudes in the spring of 2004. Officials issued a health warning earlier this year for residents of the far North. In a new study, scientists conclude that an intense round of solar storms around Halloween in 2003 was at the root of the problem. Charged particles from...

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is inclined to believe it not only invented integrity, but holds the patent, has decided it is too ethical to worry about whether or not it is subsidizing terrorism. The organization was about to get kicked off the list of charities to which Federal workers could contribute under the government's payroll-deduction donation program, which is called the Combined Federal Campaign. So it withdrew first. "You can't fire me, I quit." Through the CFC, Federal workers can select their favorite charities and designate an amount to be withheld from their checks and sent on to...

WASHINGTON, D.C., Aug 13 (OneWorld) - The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has launched a campaign to oppose policies of the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) that require some 10,000 non-profit groups that raise money through the CFC program to check their employees against federal "watch list" of terrorist suspects. The campaign, which has already drawn 15 other non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including Amnesty International, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the Sierra Club, will pursue a variety of possible challenges to the CFC program's new requirements, possibly including a lawsuit regarding its constitutionality. "The government's 'war on terror'...

The New York Times August 1, 2004 A.C.L.U. to Withdraw From Charity Drive By ADAM LIPTAK The American Civil Liberties Union withdrew from a federal charity drive yesterday, rejecting the $500,000 it expected to receive through it this year. The move was prompted, the civil liberties group said, by an article in The New York Times yesterday. The article reported that the group had signed a certification saying it would not knowingly employ people whose names appeared on several government terrorism watch lists. Since October, all of the thousands of charities that participate in the drive, called the Combined Federal...