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What is going on at Google? I only ask because last night when I typed “Global Warming” into Google News the top item was Christopher Booker’s superb analysis of the Climategate scandal. It’s still the most-read article of the Telegraph’s entire online operation – 430 comments and counting – yet mysteriously when you try the same search now it doesn’t even feature.

Breaking news last week featured in the Wall Street Journal and Fox News has featured the story and data released by an unknown hacker or whistleblower that appears to be obtained from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, England. There has been confirmation from Steve McIntyre, a climate scientist who is featured and attacked in the leaked information that seems to verify its authenticity. McIntyre was not one of the elite group from the CRU, but one of many scientists who has been seeking data and facts through a freedom of information request. Requests for data...

Some facts: 1998 was a warm year. But since then, two years – 2005 and 2007 – have had higher global average temperatures. Two others, including this year to date, have been average. Four others were just a tad cooler. This current decade has been warmer than the 1990s, the warmest of the past century. Yet those who deny climate change claim the planet has been cooling since 1998. Black, they thunder, is white, and – skilled and persistent communicators that they are, with plentiful political, media and industry backing – they manage to convince, or at least confuse, many...

No commentary (laughing too hard??)... just a link and the summary below for those of you interested in the Copenhagen talking points, conveniently titled The Copenhagen Diagnosis, brought to you by: Citation: The Copenhagen Diagnosis, 2009: Updating the world on the Latest Climate Science. I. Allison, N. L. Bindoff, R.A. Bindoff, R.A. Bindschadler, P.M. Cox, N. de Noblet, M.H. England, J.E. Francis, N. Gruber, A.M. Haywood, D.J. Karoly, G. Kaser, C. Le Quéré, T.M. Lenton, M.E. Mann, B.I. McNeil, A.J. Pitman, S. Rahmstorf, E. Rignot, H.J. Schellnhuber, S.H. Schneider, S.C. Sherwood, R.C.J. Somerville, K.Steffen, E.J. Steig, M. Visbeck, A.J. Weaver....

GREENBELT, Md. - A new NASA study has found that an important counter-balance to the warming of our planet by greenhouse gases - sunlight blocked by dust, pollution and other aerosol particles - appears to have lost ground.

PARIS (AFP) – The planet could warm by seven degrees Celsius (10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) and sea levels could rise by more than a metre (3.25 feet) by 2100, scenarios that just two years ago were viewed as improbable, scientists said on Tuesday. In the widest overview on global warming since a landmark report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report in 2007, the authors said manoeuvering room for tackling the carbon crisis was now almost exhausted. The 64-page "Copenhagen Diagnosis" aims at the December 7-18 UN conference in Denmark, tasked with forging a planet-wide deal on greenhouse-gas...

Join us for a lively chat during the show. "V" returns in Spring 2010, after the Winter Olympics.

I thought I would start a thread for all of you Science Fiction and Fantasy readers. I know it has been done in the past, but it seemed like a good time to run it again. If you have any favorite books or stories to recommend post it for others to share. I have received some excellent advice on some good reads. Maybe you have a good title or author to recommend.

Imagine this. At a time of political turmoil, a charismatic, telegenic new leader arrives virtually out of nowhere. He offers a message of hope and reconciliation based on compromise and promises to marshal technology for a better future that will include universal health care. The news media swoons in admiration. The public is likewise smitten, except for a few patriots who circulate disturbing rumors on the Internet about the leader's origins and intentions. The leader, undismayed, offers assurances that are soothing, if also just a tiny bit condescending: "Embracing change is never easy." So, does that sound like anyone...

I made this as soon as I heard the remake of the old "V" mini-series goofs somewhat on Obama's galactic personality cult. Feel free to spread this virally and contribute your own versions. I could definitely see Michelle swallowing a few hampsters.

Here are my selections for the most pretentious science fiction - fantasy TV shows (RELAX - THE CYNICISM IS ALL IN FUN!): 5. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997 - 2003) - Pretty much a chick series. 4. V (original - including miniseries' - 1983 - 1985) - Nazi lizard people invade the earth. 3. Alien Nation (1989 - 1990) - A message series with one message - racism is evil. We get it. Next. (amazingly enough, this series spawned five made for TV movies, which were viewed by all 500 of its fans) 2. Beauty and the Beast (1987 -...

"How could he think otherwise?" Alhamid asked. "To him, or to Tarnhorst, the notion of deliberately tailoring a program so that it would kill off the fools and the incompetents, setting up a program that will deliberately destroy the men who are dangerous to society, would be horrifying. They would accuse us of being soulless butchers who had no respect for the dignity of the human soul." "We're not butchering anybody," St. Simon objected. "Nobody is forced to go through two years of anchor setting. Nobody is forced to die. We're not running people into gas chambers or anything like...

There is so much competition for “best television show ever” that continuing the argument is probably pointless. Also, apples-to-apples comparisons are difficult to make. Is The Simpsons better than The Sopranos, or are they so different that, apart from both being shown on TV, they have nothing meaningful in common? “Most influential” is a little easier. And there can be no question that the top handful of contenders must include The Twilight Zone — first aired 50 years ago, on Oct. 2, 1959. It remains one of the best-loved shows of all time, and in the subsequent half-century, it has...

John Scalzi's Guide to Epic SciFi Design FAILs - Star Trek Edition So, before I bang on bad design choices in Star Trek, let's recap what happened last week when I discussed bad design choices in Star Wars:Me: Star Wars design is so bad that people have to come up with elaborate and contrived rationales to explain it. Star Wars Fanboy: YOU ARE SO VERY WRONG AND I WILL SHOW YOU WHY WITH THESE ELABORATE AND CONTRIVED RATIONALES. It's a little much to hope for (or fear) the same result two weeks in a row, but nevertheless I promised everyone...

John Scalzi's Guide to the Most Epic FAILs in Star Wars Design I'll come right out and say it: Star Wars has a badly-designed universe; so poorly-designed, in fact, that one can say that a significant goal of all those Star Wars novels is to rationalize and mitigate the bad design choices of the movies. Need examples? Here's ten. R2-D2 Sure, he's cute, but the flaws in his design are obvious the first time he approaches anything but the shallowest of stairs. Also: He has jets, a periscope, a taser and oil canisters to make enforcer droids fall about in...

James Cameron’s Avatar Teaser Trailer Posted on Thursday, August 20th, 2009 by Russ Fischer The teaser trailer for James Cameron’s new film Avatar has arrived. The clip isn’t yet properly live at Apple, the site meant to be hosting it in the US, but you can see it in 1080p with this link, or at the French MSN site.Here’s the quick recap: Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) arrives (in his wheelchair) on Pandora. He sees the planet’s beauty and, though him, we’re quickly introduced to the ten-foot tall alien Na’vi avatars. Implanted in his Na’vi body, Jake leads us on...

Newly released documents show that UFO sightings in the UK leapt five-fold in the same year that the alien invader blockbuster Independence Day was released. So is there a link between UFOs and science-fiction? In 1996, the Earth was under attack from an alien mothership. Do you remember? Fortunately, Will Smith was on hand to save the planet. This did happen. At least in cinemas. Independence Day was the blockbuster film of the year, but the fiction it portrayed may have had an impact on the real world - a huge jump in the number of reported sightings of UFOs....

Best Novel: The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins; Bloomsbury UK) Click the link for the rest.

Almost as if Lou Dobbs had taken over the network, ABC plans to debut a series in the fall about aliens who come to Earth promising "hope," "change" and universal health care, but who actually want to infiltrate our government and our businesses and, to that end, have rallied the country's youth behind their nefarious campaign. Morena Baccarin plays the good-looking, charismatic leader of the Visitors, one remarkably knowledgeable about human culture and media manipulation. The series is called "V" and it's a re-envisioning of an old miniseries... "V" is debuting on Nov. 3...a.k.a. the one-year anniversary of Barack Obama...

A 260-million-year-old fossil is the oldest known tree-dwelling creature, according to researchers. Scientists described the finding as the earliest evidence in the fossil record of an "opposable thumb"... they described how the animal's elongated hands and fingers would have helped it to grip and climb... The fossilised creature, named Suminia getmanovi, has been dated to late Permian period, 100 million years earlier than the first known tree-dwelling mammal. It was first discovered in Russia in 1994. But for lead author Jorg Frobisch, from the Field Museum in Chicago, US, said this study was the first opportunity to examine its whole...

The Jews settled the moon in 2053, just about five years after the end of the Islamic Wars of the 40’s, where the Middle East, and Israel , of course, had been obliterated by nuclear weapons. The two million Jews remaining throughout the rest of the world – less than 100,000 total in all the Islamic countries – banded together and purchased the dark side of the moon, which no other companies or people wished to colonize. Great transports were arranged via the 62,000 mile space elevator and the Space Shuttle and every Jew on Earth – including anyone who...

Ever since I was a child, I have enjoyed watching aliens assault our planet Earth on both the small and large screens.  It all started when I first witnessed Ming the Merciless project a deadly Nitron Ray from planet Mars onto the Earth, causing horrific changes in our atmosphere and threatening the lives of mankind. In The Blob, I saw a baby "blob" arrive on a meteor and grow with every human it consumed. In Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I beheld strange seedpods from outer space replicate the human forms of the doomed while they peacefully slept.  In War...

Penguins "Fed Up" With Media Attention Angry penguin named "Pete" seen rushing toward arriving scientists and ordering them to return home. (Penguin Island, Antarctica) With public interest in Antarctic penguins at an all-time high, it now appears that future scientific research into the habits of these fascinating creatures could be threatened by legal troubles. The first team of penguin researchers of the 2006 season were met by a single representative of the "Darwin" brood who rushed the startled scientists, yelling "Get out! We are fed up with you foreigners spying on us every year!". With the flip of a flipper,...

SHAME ON you for publishing two creationist op-eds in two years from the Discovery Institute, a well-funded propaganda factory that aims to sow confusion about evolution. Virtually no scientist takes “intelligent design’’ seriously, and in the famous Dover, Pa., trial in 2005, a federal court ruled that it is religion in disguise. The judge referred to the theory’s “breathtaking inanity,’’ which is a fine description of Stephen Meyer’s July 15 op-ed “Jefferson’s support for intelligent design.’’ Well, yes, Thomas Jefferson died 33 years before Darwin published “The Origin of Species.’’ And Meyer’s idea that the DNA code implies a code...

Biologically speaking, many animals besides dogs bark, according to Kathryn Lord at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, but the evolutionary biologist also says domestic dogs vocalize in this way much more than birds, deer, monkeys and other wild animals that use barks. The reason is related to dogs 10,000-year history of hanging around human food refuse dumps, she suggests.....she and colleagues say barking is the auditory signal associated with an evolved behavior known as mobbing, a cooperative anti-predator response usually initiated by one individual who notices an approaching intruder. A dog barks because she feels an internal conflict an urge...

Forty years ago this week, science fiction writers were media celebrities—at least for a few hours. When Neil Armstrong stepped on to the surface of the moon on July 21, 1969, his “giant leap for mankind” was not just a fulfillment of President Kennedy’s promise of a lunar expedition before decade’s end. It also validated the starry-eyed dreams of a legion of pulp fiction writers. Long before NASA was founded, the ABCs of sci-fi (Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke) and others of their profession had been chronicling the exploration of the universe in works of imaginative fiction. The moon landing was their...

For example, we now know that: Birds adapted to the diverse environments several distinct times because many birds that now live on water (such as flamingos, tropicbirds and grebes) did not evolve from a different waterbird group, and many birds that now live on land (such as turacos, doves, sandgrouse and cuckoos) did not evolve from a different landbird group.Similarly, distinctive lifestyles (such as nocturnal, raptorial and pelagic, i.e., living on the ocean or open seas) evolved several times. For example, contrary to conventional thinking, colorful, daytime hummingbirds evolved from drab nocturnal nightjars; falcons are not closely related to hawks...

The most complete skeleton of a type of pot-bellied dinosaur, a therizinosaur, has been discovered in southern Utah. Such remains shed light on the evolution of leafy and meaty diets back in paleo times, suggesting that iconic predators like Velociraptor may have evolved from less fearsome plant-eating ancestors. The newly discovered dinosaur, dubbed Nothronychus graffami, lived some 93 million years ago. When alive, the animal would have stood at 13 feet (4 meters) and sported a beaked mouth and forelimbs tipped with 9 inch- (22 cm)-long sickle claws. Its stumpy legs, large gut and other features suggest the lumbering giant...

-- Scientists have confirmed the oldest penis-like structure in an ancient fish specimen. The discovery of the 400 million-year-old reproductive organ is one of the earliest examples of internal fertilization in vertebrate animals. Understanding the anatomy of these ancient fish could reveal further details in the evolution of vertebrates -- including humans. The research is published in today's advanced online ahead of print edition of Nature. Earlier this year the team, led by Australian palaeontologist Dr John Long, predicted some ancient fish from the Devonian era, had an attachment to their pelvic bone, which were used by males to fertilize...

Modern glaciers, such as those making up the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, are capable of undergoing periods of rapid shrinkage or retreat, according to new findings by paleoclimatologists at the University at Buffalo... The proof of such rapid retreat of ice sheets provides one of the few explicit confirmations that this phenomenon occurs. Should the same conditions recur today, which the UB scientists say is very possible, they would result in sharply rising global sea levels, which would threaten coastal populations...The researchers used a special dating tool at UB to study rock samples they extracted from a large fjord...

What is portrayed as the debate between religion and science feels increasingly like watching the very bitter dissolution of a doomed marriage. The relationship started out all roses and kisses, proceeded to doubts and regrets, then fights and silences, a mutually agreed separation, and finally to curses and maledictions: “I wish you were dead!” In a recent Wall Street Journal opinion article, cosmologist Lawrence Krauss declared “the inconsistency of belief in an activist god with modern science.” Krauss’s essay was the latest eruption of a vituperative argument going on in the scientific community over “accommodationism.” Accommodationists hold that even atheists...

Sediment column at the mouth of the Amazon River. Credit: NASA The Amazon River has been around for 11 million years ago and in its shape for the last 2.4 million years ago, according to a study on two boreholes drilled in proximity of the mouth of the Amazon River by Petrobras, the national oil company of Brazil. Until recently the Amazon Fan, a sediment column of around 10 kilometres in thickness, proved a hard nut to crack, and scientific drilling expeditions such as Ocean Drilling Program could only reach a fraction of it. Recent exploration efforts by Petrobras lifted...

Did dark matter destroy the universe? You might be looking around at the way things "exist" and thinking "No", but we're talking about ancient history. Three hundred million years after the start of the universe, things had finally cooled down enough to form hydrogen atoms out of all the protons and electrons that were zipping around - only to have them all ripped up again around the one billion year mark. Why? Most believe that the first quasars, active galaxies whose central black holes are the cosmic-ray equivalent of a firehose, provided the breakup energy, but some Fermilab scientists have...

An exam board has scrapped a GCSE biology question about creationism after admitting it could be misleading. The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance paper asked pupils how the Bible's theory of creation seeks to explain the origins of life. AQA stressed that pupils taking its biology GCSE were not required to study creationism as a scientific theory. But it admitted that describing it as a "theory" could be misleading, and said it would review the wording of papers. The review was prompted by a complaint from teachers and a university lecturer. 'Misleading' In a statement, AQA said: "Merely asking a question...

Is American mega pop star Britney Spears set to return to the big screen, seven years after starring in the box office flop Crossroads? According to reports, Spears has been offered a part in the upcoming Holocaust film The Yellow Star of Sophia and Eton, which integrates time travel, concentration camps and a love story.

The remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) was quite a disappointment to sci-fi fans. Viewers gave it just over 2 stars at Amazon.com. That’s slightly worse than Assignment: Outer Space (1960) and more than a point and a half behind Kronos (1950). If you haven’t heard of either, don’t worry about it. The point is that there are probably better movies at the outdoor even if you’re not planning to watch the movie.

The accidental death of an elephant which had become bogged in mud 200,000 years ago led to the perfect preservation of its skeleton -- and a remarkable scientific discovery... the skeleton of the prehistoric ancestor to the modern Asian elephant which was fossilised in an abandoned sand quarry in East Java, Indonesia. The ancient bones were discovered after land collapsed at the sand quarry on the Indonesian island, adjacent to the Solo River, which killed two men in April. Researchers from the University of Wollongong in Australia and the Geological Survey Institute spent four weeks excavating the bones of the...

THURSDAY, June 25 (HealthDay News) -- A 54-million-year-old skull has yielded the first detailed images of a primitive primate brain. The 1.5-inch-long skull was from an animal species called Ignacius graybullianus, part of a group of primates known as plesiadapiforms. They evolved in the 10 million years after dinosaurs disappeared from the Earth.

After the dinosaurs perished, life on Earth didn't take long to bounce back, a new study suggests. A newfound 60-million-year-old creature called Eritherium azzouzorum—the oldest known elephant ancestor—bolsters the case that whole new orders of mammals were already around less than 6 million years after global catastrophe ended the age of reptiles some 65.5 million years ago. Paleontologist Emmanuel Gheerbrant discovered the rabbit-size proto-elephant's skull fragments in a basin 60 miles (100 kilometers) east of Casablanca, Morocco. Elephant ancestors, he said, now join the likes of rodents and early primates as some of the first known mammals to walk the...

The largest animals ever to have walked the face of the earth may not have been as big as previously thought, reveals a paper published June 21 in the Zoological Society of London’s Journal of Zoology.

Bird wings clearly share ancestry with dinosaur "hands" or forelimbs. A school kid can see it in the bones. But paleontologists have long struggled to explain the so-called digit dilemma. Here's the problem: The most primitive dinosaurs in the famous theropod group (that later included Tyrannosaurus rex) had five "fingers." Later theropods had three, just like the birds that evolved from them. But which digits? The theropod and bird digits failed to match up if you number the digits from 1 to 5 starting with the thumb. Theropods looked like they had digits 1, 2 and 3, while birds have...

Darwin-Only Advisors Hunker Down to Re-Strategize June 12, 2009 — Strict Darwinian materialists are a minority in the United States, yet they enjoy autocracy in educational policy, complete control of scientific institutions, and nearly complete unquestioned support from the mainstream media. Nevertheless, they have to face living in a country that is predominantly religious. Once in awhile they suffer setbacks, like the recent changes in textbook policy in Texas that will require more scrutiny of the claims of evolution. What do they say amongst themselves when strategizing how to handle the public?...

Guppies are small fresh-water fish that biologists have studied for long. UC Riverside-led study shows wild Trinidadian guppies adapted in less than 30 generations to a new environment RIVERSIDE, Calif. – How fast can evolution take place? In just a few years, according to a new study on guppies led by UC Riverside's Swanne Gordon, a graduate student in biology. Gordon and her colleagues studied guppies — small fresh-water fish biologists have studied for long — from the Yarra River, Trinidad. They introduced the guppies into the nearby Damier River, in a section above a barrier waterfall that excluded all...

According to Benjamin Wiker’s provocative new biography, The Darwin Myth: the Life and Lies of Charles Darwin, Charles Darwin was an honorable and likable man, a family man. He loved his siblings; he was devoted to his wife; he loved his children and grieved deeply over his daughter’s death. But Darwin was also someone who presented to the public an elaborate and even deceptive story about himself and his work to advance a philosophical agenda. While there are many biographies of Charles Darwin, Wiker’s deserves attention because...

June 9, 2009 — In the artwork, it looks so simple: dust clumps into planets that grow into nice, orbiting solar systems – like ours. It’s not so simple when you try to nail down the real physics. Planet-building models have to contend with a host of variables and barriers to growth (accretion). Another barrier was discussed in Astrophysical Journal this month: the electric barrier...

Opinion What 'Ida' give for a missing link By: Casey Luskin, OpEd Contributor 6/8/08 As a follower of the evolution debate, I love it when new “missing links” are found. Not only does the media plunge headfirst into a crusade for Darwin, but suspiciously, it is only after unveiling the breakthrough that evolutionary biologists admit how precious little evidence they previously held for the evolutionary transition in question. Take the recent media coverage of a fossil primate named “Ida,” hailed as the “eighth wonder of the world,” whose “impact on the world of palaeontology” is being compared to “an asteroid...

This will be the firs in what will hopefully be regular threads dedicated to the discussion of Sci Fi Literature.How many times have you bought what appeared to be a promising Science Fiction novel, only to discover it laden with heavy liberal bias or overt enviro wacko propaganda?Here's the place to get and give recommendations, and warnings for all the FR Sci Fi book readers out there.I have no idea if this will work, or how frequent these threads will be, but let's just give it a shot and see how it goes.So if you'd like to be on the...

Millions of years ago, rivers ran in Antarctica through craggy mountain valleys that were strangely similar to the modern European Alps, Chinese and British scientists reported on Wednesday. In a study published by the British journal Nature, the scientists described a vast terrain that had been hidden beneath ice up to two miles thick for eons, until new imaging technology recently uncovered them. "The landscape has probably been preserved beneath the ice sheet for around 14 million years," the paper said. The imaging revealed "classic Alpine topography" similar to Europe's Alps, showing that rivers had once existed on Antarctica and...

Migrating peoples were sophisticated in sea harvesting, Jon Erlandson says The Pacific Coast of the Americas was settled starting about 15,000 years ago during the last glacial retreat by seafaring peoples following a "kelp highway" rich in marine resources, a noted professor of anthropology theorized Wednesday. Jon Erlandson, director of the Museum of Natural and Cultural History at the University of Oregon, suggested that especially productive "sweet spots," such as the estuaries of B.C.'s Fraser and Stikine rivers, served as corridors by which people settled the Interior of the province. Erlandson said in an interview these migrating peoples were already...

AUSTIN – Senate Democrats say they have more than enough votes to remove Don McLeroy as chairman of the State Board of Education Tuesday when McLeroy’s confirmation reaches the Senate floor.