Here are a few news items that caught my eye today…

Museum uses Bible to tell Earth's history (AP via Yahoo News):

Like most natural history museums, this one has exhibits showing dinosaurs roaming the Earth. Except here, the giant reptiles share the forest with Adam and Eve…

…”If the Bible is the word of God, and its history really is true, that's our presupposition or axiom, and we are starting there,” museum founder Ken Ham said during recent tour of the sleek and modern facility, which is due to open next year.

Ham, an Australian native who started the Christian publishing company Answers in Genesis in the late 1970s, said the goal of his privately funded museum is to change minds and rebut the scientific point of view.

“We're going to show you that we can make sense of the different people groups, we can make sense of fossils, we can make sense of what you see in the world,” he said.

Visitors to the museum, a few miles from Cincinnati, will be able to watch the story of creation unfold in a 180-seat special-effects theater, see a 40-foot-tall recreation of a section of Noah's Ark and stare into the jaws of robotic dinosaurs.

“It's education, but it's also doing it in an entertaining way,” Ham said…

Shit like this makes my head hurt. Why can't these people keep their bullshit in their churches and stop masquerading it as science?

Report faults EPA on clean air regulation (AP via Yahoo News):

The government is failing to reduce health risks from toxic air pollution as required by law, congressional investigators said Wednesday.

The Environmental Protection Agency has not met 30 percent of the Clean Air Act's requirements and regularly misses deadlines, they said…

…The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said the EPA largely has failed to regulate air pollutants from small sources, including dry cleaners and trucks. The GAO report said the EPA has not yet met 239 of the law's requirements; of those the agency did fulfill, only 12 were met on time.

“EPA has not reduced human health risks from air toxics to the extent and in the time frames envisioned in the Act,” according to the report by the investigative arm of Congress…

Meanwhile I'll keep sucking on my inhaler. Thanks EPA. Is it 2008 yet?

Scientists: Warming triggers 'dead zone' (AP via Yahoo News):

Bottom fish and crabs washing up dead on Oregon beaches are being killed by a recurring “dead zone” of low-oxygen water that appears to be triggered by global warming, scientists say.

The area is larger and more deadly than in past years, and there are signs it is spreading north to Washington's Olympic Peninsula…

…”If we continue like we are now, we could see some ecological shifts,” [professor of oceanography at Oregon State Jack] Barth said. “It all depends on what happens with the warming and the greenhouse gases.”…

Ah what happy days we've wrought during Bush's tenure as the steward of our land.

Cape Cod wind power backers confident of US approval (Reuters via Yahoo News):

Backers of a plan to build the first large U.S. offshore wind-power farm said on Thursday they were confident the project would clear a regulatory review after being nearly derailed in Washington…

…It was revived after U.S. Senate and House leaders agreed last month to remove provisions in a bill that would have empowered Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to block the $900 million project.

“There were those who assumed that Cape Wind was dead,” project spokesman Mark Rodgers said in a telephone interview. “We're certainly gratified with the swell of support from around the country that ultimately succeeded in changing the language.”…

Well there's some good news for a freaking change. Let's hope that it actually gets built.

Beauty and mystery in rare Antarctic clouds (Australian Antarctic Division):

A rare and spectacular cloud formation has been seen at the end of the polar night at Australia's Mawson station in Antarctica.

These so-called nacreous clouds were situated high in the stratosphere, some 20km above the ground, and reveal very cold temperatures in the rarefied atmosphere.

Photographs taken by Renae Baker, a meteorological officer with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology at Mawson, on July 25 show delicate colours produced when the fading light at sunset passed through tiny water-ice crystals blown along on a strong jet of stratospheric air…

…Nacreous clouds show colours similar to those on the inside of a Mother-of-Pearl shell. The clouds only occur at high polar latitudes in winter, requiring temperatures less than approximately -80ºC to form…

This sounds pretty cool. Actually it sounds downright freezing cold. Check the site, they have some interesting pictures of these weird clouds.