[Guest post by DRJ]

Who says nothing good comes from Texas? Zombie Fire Ants.

— DRJ

Via Instapundit comes a link to a bunch of amazing pictures of sharks leaping out of the water as they attempt to chomp on seals and such.

I didn’t even know they did that.

If these pictures weren’t backed by the seal of authenticity provided by an Official Big Media Outlet, I’d say they were all fakes. But Telegraph.co.uk would never allow such a thing, so I’ll merely declare the pictures amazing and leave it at that.

Oh, the shark has pretty teeth dear, and he shows them pearly white.

[Guest post by DRJ]

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Ok) has released a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Minority Report that lists 400 reputable scientists who deny there is a consensus on global warming:

“In the wake of the Dec. 3-14 conference, where delegates worked to draft a successor to the failed Kyoto Protocol on global warming, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., ranking member on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has released a report that lists scientists who challenge both Al Gore’s assertion that the debate is over and the Bali conclusion that the planet is in imminent danger.

Many of the 400 scientists have taken part in the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose climate change reports tout consensus but which critics charge are heavily edited to support pre-defined conclusions.”

Here are a few examples of the global warming skeptics:

“Among the IPCC’s warming “deniers” is atmospheric scientist Hendrik Tennekes, former research director at the Netherlands’ Royal National Meteorological Institute.

“I find the Doomsday picture Al Gore is painting — a six-meter sea level rise, 15 times the IPCC number — entirely without merit,” he said. “I protest vigorously the idea that the climate reacts like a home heating system to a changed setting of the thermostat: Just turn the dial, and the desired temperature will soon be reached.”

Physicist John W. Brosnahan, who develops remote-sensing tools for clients like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, says: “Of course I believe in global warming, and in global cooling — all part of the natural climate changes that the Earth has experienced for billions of years, caused primarily by cyclical variations in solar output.”

Brosnahan says he has “not seen any sort of definitive, scientific link to man-made carbon dioxide as the root cause of global warming, only incomplete computer models that suggest that this might be the case.” Those models, he says, leave out too many variables.

Indeed, a study in the Royal Meteorological Society’s International Journal of Climatology looked at 22 computer models used by the IPCC. Most of the models couldn’t even predict the past.”

There was also a claim that scientists who question global warming were censored at the Bali proceeding:

“Heartland Institute senior fellow James Taylor has noted that more than 600 scientists at the Bali gathering could have debunked Gore’s warming theories, but the U.N. “censored” them.”

Here is the summary page of the Minority Report that has links to the introduction and the full report, along with this overview of the featured scientists:

“The distinguished scientists featured in this new report are experts in diverse fields, including: climatology; oceanography; geology; biology; glaciology; biogeography; meteorology; oceanography; economics; chemistry; mathematics; environmental sciences; engineering; physics and paleoclimatology. Some of those profiled have won Nobel Prizes for their outstanding contribution to their field of expertise and many shared a portion of the UN IPCC Nobel Peace Prize with Vice President Gore.

Additionally, these scientists hail from prestigious institutions worldwide, including: Harvard University; NASA; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR); Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the UN IPCC; the Danish National Space Center; U.S. Department of Energy; Princeton University; the Environmental Protection Agency; University of Pennsylvania; Hebrew University of Jerusalem; the International Arctic Research Centre; the Pasteur Institute in Paris; the Belgian Weather Institute; Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute; the University of Helsinki; the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S., France, and Russia; the University of Pretoria; University of Notre Dame; Stockholm University; University of Melbourne; Columbia University; the World Federation of Scientists; and the University of London.”

It’s so inconvenient when scientists refuse to toe the global warming line.

— DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

Scientists have learned that cockroaches are smarter in the evening than in the morning.

(more…)

At bedtime tonight, our daughter asked my wife what eats sharks. My wife said that people do, and she said: “I know that, Mom. But what else eats sharks?” My wife didn’t know, but promised she’d look on the computer.

Turns out this octopus eats sharks. Quite an amazing video.