The Daily Kos has reported on an interesting development in the efforts of the Heartland Institute, an organization that opposes environmental regulations, to cast doubt on some of the science of global warming and the projections climate scientists have made.

Dennis T. Avery (a fixture among climate-change skeptics and listed as a senior fellow at the Heartland Institute) wrote an article originally published last fall by the Hudson Institute, “500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares.” It turns out that the list might not hit such a nice round number, according to DeSmogBlog.

Avery’s article purports to list scientists whose work contradicts the evidence that global warming poses a major threat to us and other species. DeSmogBlog manager Kevin Grandia emailed 122 of the scientists to notify them of their inclusion on the list, and less than 24 hours later, he had 45 responses from rather unhappy scientists, many of whom have demanded to be taken off the list. An example:

“I am horrified to find my name on such a list. I have spent the last 20 years arguing the opposite.” - Dr. David Sugden, Professor of Geography, University of Edingburgh

There are of course uncertainties inherent in climate model projections — I don’t know a climate scientist who would say otherwise. But the fact that human-induced greenhouse gas emissions are driving the current rise in global temperatures is certainly not disputed by any credible climate scientist, and we are already seeing some of the effects of this climate change.

Articles like Avery’s are sadly misleading, and bring up many of the skeptic arguments that scientists have refuted again and again.

Some ill-informed members of the Florida House of Representatives voted this week to pass a bill that would bring creationism into schools. A different version in the Senate would have to be reconciled for any new law to be made.

The evolution bill (SB2692) would require that alternatives to evolution be taught in public schools.

Here’s the core of the problem: There are no viable alternatives. Yet Florida Governor Charlie Crist has tacitly bought into the naiveté. Asked whether he believes in evolution, Crist said: “I believe in a lot of things. We should have the freedom to have a good exchange of ideas, right?”

That’s a stupid answer and an even stupider question, and Crist fuels irrational creationist flames by failing to give a square answer. Evolution is not something to believe in or not believe in. It is something to realize (or dismiss or perhaps not understand).

Religion is something one believes in. The rightness or wrongness of the Iraq war is something you can believe in. The certainty of a pay raise next year is something you can believe in.

The theory of evolution is one of the most well-established scientific theories, rooted in facts and observations from multiple tests and investigations on several scientific fronts over many decades. There’s absolutely zero credible evidence to support any other explanation for the incredible diversity of life and the changes that we see happening right before our eyes.

Do you “believe” that deadly superbugs are evolving to resist antibiotics? The question is irrelevant to the rapidly evolving bugs, but ignorance of facts could leave you just as dead.

According to the Sun-Sentinel, the bill is likely to die for lack of action anyway, as the legislative session ends Friday But don’t be surprised though to see the bill re-emerge in the future. Like organisms, bad legislation on this topic has a habit of evolving into new forms and surviving like a superbug.

BBC News online ran an interesting article today on the potential health effects faced by the children born to the woman held captive and raped by her father for 24 years, both by the nature of the incestuous relationship and as the result of growing up in windowless cellar.

Without exposure to sunlight, the children developed a deficiency of vitamin D, according to the article, which plays a role in bone formation and could help protect against cancer, diabetes and heart disease. Vitamin D is formed by photochemical reactions in the skin that occur when ultraviolet B light hits it. The vitamin is then converted into an active form in the liver and kidney and circulated through the blood, where it regulates calcium and phosphorus levels.

A lack of vitamin D could also compromise their immune systems, which have likely already been weakend because they have never been exposed to the outside environment and the usual childhood illnesses that help build up immunity.

The low ceilings of the cellar have also reportedly given the older children a permanently hunched posture.

The BBC report says that all six surviving children born of the daughter-father relationship seem to have escaped the potential genetic defects that can occur because of incest. The article has a good explanation of why these defects are more likely in children born out of incestuous relationships.

The Coalition for Space Exploration has a new digital look after giving their online home a makeover to better reach out to the public.

The coalition, a collaborative group of space advocacy and industry groups, overhauled its Web site to include lesson plans for educators, provide better access to industry experts and showcase new events and book releases on space-related issues, the group said.

“Our goal is to inspire our visitors about the wonder of space, educate them about the people and programs involved and equip them to share the benefits of space exploration,” Coalition chair Mary Engola said in a statement.

In addition to the spotlight on industry and education, the coalition also included sections on space-themed social networking, a look at the economic benefits of spaceflight and a special subsection for children.

And for you die-hard SPACE.com fans, you might just see a few familiar names tucked amid the coalition’s blog team, which includes SPACE.com special correspondent Leonard David and former Cape Canaveral bureau chief Jim Banke.

The Coalition’s new Web site can be found here: http://www.spacecoalition.com

A recent survey in the news showed that the war in Iraq had dropped to number 3 on a list of issues currently obsessing potential voters in the ongoing presidential campaign season.

That war trailed the economy and gas prices on the list of items clearly furrowing the brows of the American electorate. Oddly enough in the reams of coverage devoted to oil prices, the Iraqi insurgency, the mortgage crisis, the credit crunch and all the ensuing economic upheaval attached, the war in Afghanistan barely creates a ripple.

Sure, we’re concerned that Pakistan’s role in the War on Terror could be a little more one-sided–with that nation’s government, army and secret service preferably falling on OUR side of the fence–but all-in-all Afghanistan has become a kind of “limbo war”; not as concrete as the one in Iraq, but a place where all the success since the routing of the Taliban has become dimmer, their resurgence a grim reminder of how unfinished the job is over there.

I would get more sanctimonious about this issue if in truth I wasn’t as guilty of my own–at best, amnesia; at worst, indifference–towards the situation. I worry about gas and the economy, too.

Yet earlier this week I received the most wonderful e-mail in my “Letters to the Editor” mailbox.

Typically, it overflows with bargain Viagra and/or Cialis pitches, angry missives from Creationists or UFOlogists and for some reason of late, irked Raëlians. But on Wednesday I received an e-mail from SFC William H. Ruth of the U.S. Army 101st Airborne Division stationed somewhere in Afghanistan.

Sgt. Ruth wrote in response to SPACE.com Senior Editor Tariq Malik’s story Monday about Prof. Stephen Hawking’s belief in extraterrestrial life and he has a suggestion for NASA:

“Please forward this to the proper channels. I have read Stephen Hawking’s latest remarks on space travel and the importance of it to human survival. The problem is, NASA is going about it all the wrong way.

Here is an idea: Send battle-hardened, strong-minded soldiers and marines on the long trips into space. We are conditioned to live with the bare minimal (of) life’s necessities and are trained to be prepared for … the worst conditions that any environment could throw at us.

Hell, me and my men will go, set up a colony somewhere and await colonists to arrive.

Me and most of my men are on our 3rd or 4th deployment into a combat area. We are scouts, reconnaissance specialists. We go before everyone else and spend time living off the land. Sounds just like the type of men needed for a long colonization journey.

Please pass this message on to anyone you know in the space program. (T)here are many men already trained and prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country and the human race.

Thank you for your time.

SFC Ruth, 101st Airborne Division. Afghanistan”

I don’t know what impressed me more, Sgt. Ruth’s enthusiasm, his selflessness or his commitment to his country and all humanity. We traded e-mails throughout the week and I pointed out that many in NASA’s astronaut program are pulled from the U.S. Air Force and Navy.

Still, the idea of sending scout parties with years of practical experience seems obvious to me. As Dennis Tito, the first civilian space tourist has shown us, you don’t have to have extra-special skills to go into space, just the desire to go there.

Sgt Ruth sent me a pic of he and his fellow soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan:

Sgt. Ruth’s e-mail put Afghanistan in the forefront of my mind as one of the most important issues of the day. Last time I checked, Osama bin Laden is still cavorting there in the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

For anyone at NASA reading this, take a serious look at Sgt. Ruth’s proposal, it’s a brave out-of-the box idea. In all humility, I realize that this is what real heroes do: They protect their country, their fellow soldiers and the defenseless. They tolerate impossible conditions and the very real risk of injury and possible death.

And when they have some free time, they look to the stars and dream of saving humanity.

If you would like to reach Sgt. Ruth and his troops to thank them for their service and wish them well, please e-mail me here at this address. All appropriate e-mails will be forwarded.

There is a huge divide in this nation between digital immigrants and digital natives, it is said by many, one way or another. Maybe Candidate Obama can heal it.

The issue is that digital immigrants, who started using the Web, PCs, mobile phones etc. as adults, still have most of the power in the nation, while natives, who started using IT as toddlers, are the sweet spot and major influencers of the current market.

Some immigrants are madly trying to keep up with and communicate with the natives. Others are resistant.

Aedhmar Hynes, CEO of Text 100 International, a leading PR agency specializing in the tech industry, issued a gentle scolding last night to a gathering of communications types (journalists and PR/marketing folks) at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., whom she addressed as “immigrants.” She was probably right.

“Who would *want* to spend time in a virtual world?” one attendee decried during the Q&A session, after asking for a definition of Second Life, a fairly popular 3-D online virtual world.

Hynes’ talk was aimed at publicity folks, but the non-flacks in the audience listened closely too for trends and tidbits.

Digital immigrants grew up trusting institutions, trusting the media, she said (as an Irish immigrant to the United States in 1997, perhaps she missed the Watergate incident). Meanwhile, for digital natives, trust is eroding in institutions (even newspapers) while trust is growing in their peer group, she said.

So for natives, digital technologies such as mobile phones, online social networking and blogs, empower them to have a voice, to make choices and to get their information from peers.

The influence of online media on consumers is 70 percent and the rest goes to mainstream media — newspapers, TV and radio, Hynes said, but publicity tends to focus all its resources on the latter.

Her company encourages clients to get into the mix. Comment on blogs, use RSS to monitor what is said about you online. For the more adventurous, her agency would probably hold corporate PR’s hand while they create or participate in a machinima, a CGI animation rendered in real-time. (She showed a machinima her agency created to promote itself.)

Trends in digital communication, she said, include consumerization, which means consumers control the message (witness send-offs of the Dove evolution video as part of its campaign for real beauty video) and that’s a good thing; virtualization, which means we hang out and chat in virtual domains (Cisco’s virtual meetings); and visualization, which means we like to see who we’re on the phone with or see more on our phone (iPhones, Skype, quik.com videos like the one Scobleizer snagged and streamed of Michael Dell).

The new media audience wants participation, authenticity, connectedness, conversation, community and openness in real-time, she said.

For now, “it’s fair to say that the adoption rate [of digital PR platforms by corporations] is slow. Companies that are dealing with it fast are strongly in the consumer domain already,” Hynes said.

The “no. 1 headache is the concept of losing control [of the message] and the fear that that is creating,” she said. But that control was always an illusion, she said.

Since Hynes mentioned Twitter and it’s one of my guilty pleasures to send text messages about “what I’m doing now!” I posted to Twitter that Hynes had just mentioned it at the SIT talk.

I soon thereafter received this email notification: “Text 100 is now following you on Twitter.” I walked right into that one.

The Ewart brothers in Chicago claim to have adapted a Prius to get 100 mpg.

That’s double what you get from the most fuel-efficient production car (powered at least partly gas or a variant fuel) sold in the United States, according to fueleconomy.gov. The Toyota Prius, at No. 1, gets 48 city, 45 highway

Next up is the ultra tiny smartfortwo (shown at right, actual size) which tops out at 33/41 and holds two French people and a bag of peanuts.

You’d think we’d come a lot farther, what with all the hybrid hoopla of late.

The Ewart’s figure if two guys can hit 100 mpg — they stuck some batteries in the trunk — car companies should be able to, too. (See the video story on this low-flying Orville and Wilbur duo.)

Okay, so record gas prices have awoken the feds: Fuel efficiency standards will rise more quickly than had been planned, we learned this week, but the fed plan is still convoluted, less than what’s technically feasible (Ewart Motor Company?), and rollout is phased and delayed. Meantime, an LA Times article says reasonably priced, mass-produced electric cars really are coming. Of course, we won’t be able to rely too heavily on nuclear power plants for their electricity because uranium is running out.

For the record, the least efficient vehicle: Lamborghini Murcielago, regardless of whether you can’t afford the regular one or the Roadster version: 8/13.

There’s a growing buzz in the astrobiology community that ancient hydrothermal springs may have been spotted on Mars.

Thanks to the eagle-eyed work of Carlton Allen and Dorothy Oehler of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, “spring-like” mounds have been found in Vernal Crater in Arabia Terra on the red planet.

The high-powered zoom lens of NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has picked up the features - two possible ancient hydrothermal springs are viewed as light-toned, elliptical structures.

The martian features have a striking similarity to spring mounds here on Earth, such as those in Dalhousie, Australia.

The potential big news here is that, if true, hydrothermal spring deposits on Mars might preserve evidence of martian life. These features would not only have supplied energy-rich waters in which martian life may have evolved, but also would have provided warm, liquid water to martian life forms as the climate on the red planet became colder and drier.

Allen told me that more work is needed to better analyze these features - and also look for other similar spots on Mars. In particular, use of MRO’s Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) can sort out the composition of the features in Vernal Crater. However, due to the dusty nature of Arabia Terra, that has crimped mineralogical assessment of the mounds. So more work to do there - or hope for strong winds to blow clarity into the picture.

Meanwhile, the prospect of identifying ancient thermal springs on Mars would be a boost for astrobiologists, Allen and Oehler report.

These could be sites where martian life evolved, sought refuge as the climate on Mars became colder and drier…and where evidence of that life may be preserved.

Think Mars…think really Old Faithful.

This New Scientist article has an interesting list of the books that have inspired some of the world’s most well-known scientists, such as Jane Goodall and Michio Kaku. Click on any scientist in the list and it goes to an explanation of why they found the book they picked so inspirational.

You can even add your story of literary inspiration in the comments.  I think I’d have to say that Carl Sagan’s “Contact” would have to be my pick. I devoured it in high school and was hooked on astronomy from that point on. It may be fiction, but it’s such an interesting portrayal of what might happen if we really did make contact with alien beings. (Sagan’s other, non-fiction, works are equally as fascinating.)

We’ve done some of our own polling of scientists at LiveScience, most notably with our “Greatest Mysteries” series, where we asked a bunch of scientists what they thought the greatest mystery in science was. We got answers from “How did the universe begin?” to “How many species are on Earth?”

The voters of Sierra County, New Mexico gave a thumbs up on April 22 to increase a local gross receipts tax tied to construction of the state’s Spaceport America.

Voters turned out in record numbers to okay the 1/4 of 1 percent gross receipts tax increase - giving Spaceport America officials the funding and ability to form a tax district the state requires to construct the facility. Voter turnout for the special election was high.

Sierra County has now joined adjacent Dona Ana County in forming a Tax Development District.

In November, voters in adjacent Otero Country will head for the polls to decide on a similar tax in that county.

Meanwhile, the New Mexico Spaceport Authority continues to press ahead to acquire a site operator’s license from the FAA…along with a finalized agreement from Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic as the spaceport’s anchor tenant.

Virgin Galactic would fly passengers on suborbital jaunts at an initial pay-per-Earthview seat price of $200,000. Space travelers would buckle up aboard SpaceShipTwo now under construction at Scaled Composites in Mojave, California.

If all keeps on track, Spaceport America would be completed sometime in 2010.