Arctic seed vault

Work is beginning on a giant vault full of seeds for food crops in a mountain in the Arctic circle.
Built inside a mountain 80m above the high sea level mark (if all polar ice melts) and 18 degrees below freezing lies a vault of over 1.5 million varieties of agricultural seeds. This vault is designed and funded by Norway and the yearly cost will be covered by the Global Crop Diversity Trust. With the threat from Global Warming increasing this vault will act as a safety net for the words agricultural diversity.

"An Inconvenient Truth" restricted in Washington schools

For schools in Federal Way, Washington, "An Inconvenient Truth" has been restricted in the classroom. For a school teacher to show the movie they must first get approval from the Superintendent and must also show an opposing viewpoint.
This came about after parents who are also proponents of Creationism and do not want condoms in schools complained to school board members that "Condoms don't belong in school and neither does Al Gore."
Board member Dave Larson said, "We have to ensure that our school are not being used to politically indoctrinate anyone."

I would personally love to see what opposing scientific evidence they can come up with to teach the "opposing view" that does not involve politics. I believe there are still a handful of people who aren't convinced the Earth is not the center of the Universe. Perhaps we should require teaching the opposing view of that as well.

Exxon takes a step in the right direction

Exxon Mobil Corp. is finally stepping up to the plate and is talking with others in the industry about regulating green house gases. They have also stopped funding groups that are skeptical of Global Warming. Read more here.

Virgin announces new contest to combat greenhouse gases

Richard Brandon of the Virgin Group and Al Gore have announced a new challenge to scientists and inventors.
"The Virgin Earth Challenge is a prize of $25m for whoever can demonstrate to the judges' satisfaction a commercially viable design which results in the removal of anthropogenic, atmospheric greenhouse gases so as to contribute materially to the stability of Earth’s climate. "
Good to see that some people are putting up the money to encourage people to work on this serious problem. There's nothing like $25 million to make a lot of people try to accomplish something!

Welcome!

I suppose the last thing I need is another blog but I figure this way I can move my science rants and ramblings over here and away from my personal journal.
I'll try to update several times a week with science news, the occasional update on my research, and likely many rants about the mass media's attempt at bringing their version of science to the general public.
Politics are more than likely to move into this blog many times.