Climate & Environment Weekly: September 15, 2005

Climate & Environment Weekly
September 15, 2005

Climate & Environment Weekly is brought to you by The Center for Science and Public Policy (CSPP). CSPP is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy organization.

CSPP relies on scientific experts in many nations and the vast body of peer-reviewed literature to help lawmakers, policy makers, and the media distinguish between scientific findings that are agenda-driven and those that are based on accepted scientific methods and practices. In a timely manner, the Center's Science Watch Team alerts policy makers, the media, and the public to unreliable scientific claims and unjustified alarmism which often lead to public harm. We strive for a fair and balanced examination of science.

AND FINALLY - TIME TO REMEMBER AARON WILDAVSKY
We are living in an age when we should all do well to remember the challenging work of Aaron Wildavsky (see: Wikipedia, 16 August, 2005; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Wildavsky). Aaron Wildavsky (1930-1993) was a political scientist. He was most noted for his work on risk. From 1962, until he died, he researched at the University of California, Berkeley... >>Read More<<

Recent Trends in Northern Canada River Discharge Rates
A statistically significant mean decline of 10% in the discharge rates of the 64 Canadian rivers was found over the four decades of study, which was nearly identical to the observed decline in precipitation falling over northern Canada between 1964 and 2000... >>Read More<<

The Meteorologist's role in society
Science was once considered as purely the pursuit of knowledge. One scientist is quoted as saying "May it be of no use to anyone"!... >>Read More<<

Manufactured Controversy - Comments on Today's Chronicle Article
Richard Monastersky has a lengthy article in the Chronicle of Higher Education that discusses at length our forthcoming paper in BAMS on hurricanes and global warming. Monasterky's article includes some very good reporting, particularly at the end, but it also contains some very significant errors and mischaracterizations in the early sections that I address below... >>Read More<<

Correction of Errors in Fortune Story
Over this past week as the horrific disaster along the Gulf coast has developed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we have both been quoted extensively in the media based on our various work on hurricanes. For the most part the reporting of our views has been accurate and responsible. With this short post, we'd like to correct some significant mischaracterizations and errors in a Fortune news story... >>Read More<<

BACK TO THE DARK AGES: EXTREMISTS ARE DRIVING LABS AND DRUG COMPANIES OUT OF UK
EVIDENCE that animal rights extremists are driving drug companies out of Britain emerged yesterday, with figures revealing a collapse in investment in new laboratories and the first fall in research spending in the UK for 15 years... >>Read More<<

6200 Years of ENSO Activity Derived from Galápagos Data
The Galápagos Archipelago is a small group of volcanic islands located about 1000 km off the coast of Ecuador within the core of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) region, and as such is home to numerous studies of ENSO phenomena... >>Read More<<

Elevated Carbon Dioxide - Does It Boost Forest Growth?
The title of a brief review posted on the website of Scientific American (sciam.com) on 26 August 2005 says "Researchers Find That Carbon Dioxide Does Not Boost Forest Growth." The claim is made again at the end of the review's first paragraph: "A four-year study of a forest in Switzerland indicates that additional carbon dioxide does not boost tree growth." And with that announcement, many radical environmentalists are claiming the case is closed, asking us to turn our backs on literally hundreds of other studies that suggest otherwise... >>Read More<<

Frequently Asked Questions about Global Warming and Hurricanes
1.) Q: Is global warming causing more hurricanes?
A: No. The global, annual frequency of tropical cyclones (the generic, meteorological term for the storm that is called a tropical storm or hurricane in the Atlantic region) is about 90, plus or minus 10. There is no indication whatsoever of a long-term trend in this number... >>Read More<<

Scientists Take On EPA's Linear Models for Dioxin
Scientists recently challenged the way EPA has been modeling the health risk of dioxin, an argument that could call into further question the accuracy of the agency's draft dioxin risk assessment. The assessment is currently under review by the National Academy of Sciences... >>Read More<<

Green hotheads who exploit hurricane tragedy
"The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name was global warming." So wrote environmental activist Ross Gelbspan in a Boston Globe op-ed that one commentator aptly described as "almost giddy." The Green group Friends of the Earth linked Katrina to global warming, as did Germany's Green Party Environment Minister... >>Read More<<

As CO2 Emission Rise, Europe Closes Its First Factory Due To Kyoto Treaty
The Valencian regional government ordered the temporary closure of a glass factory on Tuesday, alleging that it failed to comply with the regulations set by the Kyoto Treaty, which came into effect in February. It is the first time that the Spanish government has taken such a stringent action against an alleged environmental violation.
... >>Read More<<

Hurricanes and Global Warming
This paper reviews recent research on tropical cyclones and climate change from the perspective of event risk – the physical behavior of storms, vulnerability – the characteristics of a system that create the potential for impacts, but independent of event risk, and also outcome risk – the integration of considerations of vulnerability with event risk to characterize an event that causes losses... >>Read More<<

Sierra Club joined other environmental groups to sink New Orleans
In 1996 the Sierra Club and other environmental groups sued the Army Corps of Engineers to block a project to raise and fortify levees around New Orleans so that they could withstand a storm surge such as the one that flooded the city during Hurricane Katrina. (Fox News)... >>Read More<<

Nile River Revelations
Several statistically significant periodicities were noted throughout the 1300-year record, including cycles at 256, 64, 19, 12, 7, 4.2 and 2.2 years... >>Read More<<

A Plea for Nuclear Power
93% of all power plants now on order or under construction will burn natural gas. Gas power plants still emit CO2, about half as much per kilowatt-hour as a coal plant, maybe more, depending on the design. How are we going to cap-and-trade without just burning more costly gas?... >>Read More<<

INFLUENCE OF THE 11-YEAR SOLAR CYCLE MORE SIGNIFICANT THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT
The monthly sunspot number (SSN) for January 1749-August 2004, the global sea-surface temperature (gmSST) and the regional SSTs in the northern N. Pacific (npSST) and the Nino3.4 (ninoSST) areas for the winters of 1870-2004 are analyzed by a wavelet transform to show their multi-scale nature... >>Read More<<

Storm Stretches Refiners Past a Perilous Point
For the nation's oil refiners, Hurricane Katrina was a disaster long in the making.
Analysts and industry executives had for years feared the consequences of a storm ramming into the country's largest energy hub - a complex infrastructure that spans most of the coastline between Texas and Alabama, where nearly half of the nation's refineries are located... >>Read More<<

USHCN Temperature Record of the Week: Colville, WA
To bolster our claim that "There Has Been No Net Global Warming for the Past 70 Years," each week we highlight the temperature record of one of the 1221 U.S. Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) stations from 1930-2000... >>Read More<<

Greenland Temperature Trends – Summary
A number of scientific studies have produced proxy air temperature histories of various durations for various parts of Greenland and the surrounding seas. We here review what they reveal, beginning with the longest time period studied and ending with the shortest... >>Read More<<