So the fat lady sang, but I guess she hit just the right note and  shattered some more ice.  Or it could be those pesky greenhouse gases, which  always seem to be causing trouble….

That plot is from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (click to enlarge), whose latest value for sea ice extent (yesterday) is 4,832,813 km².  There appears to be a chance JAXA’s extent will drop below the 2008 level.

Their data for the last ten days shows how sharp this new downturn is:

Read more

She disputed evolution because it contradicts the Bible, but told Bill Maher, “One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar”

You just can’t make this stuff up.  Christine O’Donnell — the anti-science, pro-Bible, Tea Party darling who won the Delaware Republican Senate primary — was “the ing©nue sensation and the It Girl of the Values Voter Summit, the Family Research Council’s annual gathering of roughly 2,000 social conservatives from across the country.”

Back in 1996, O’Donnell was actually spokeswoman for a conservative Christian policy organization Concerned Women of America, which is “built on prayer and action” — where she argued God’s creation of the world in “six 24-hour periods” is fact.  But in a must-see 1999 video, she makes clear to Bill Maher she wasn’t always so Bible and family-friendly.  Think Progress has the unbelievable story in this cross-post:

Read more

Plus a must-see video of the winner’s acceptance speech

Three design teams from Mooresville, North Carolina, Lynchburg, Virginia and Winterthur, Switzerland have succeeded in building extremely fuel efficient vehicles that are capable of traveling at least 100 miles per gallon of gasoline (or equivalent, MPGe).  The teams survived a series of performance lab and road tests that eliminated 133 other vehicles from the first ever Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize competition.

Read more