Climate & Environment Weekly (Science edition): December 22, 2005

Climate & Environment Weekly
December 22, 2005

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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.

A 300-Year Multi-Proxy Hydro-Ecological Record from Spruce Island Lake, Canada
Spruce Island Lake (58°51'N, 111°29'W) is a shallow, isolated, upland lake in a bedrock basin located in the northern Peace sector of the Peace-Athabasca Delta in northern Alberta, Canada... >>Read More<<

CLIMATE SCIENTISTS STRUGGLE TO DECIPHER WINDS OF CHANGE
A cluster of studies over the past two years links the increasing number of violent hurricanes in our tropical oceans to warming water. (In fact, the possibility was first suggested, though not thoroughly studied, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1987.)... >>Read More<<

COMMENTS ON THE MEDIA REPORT THAT 2005 IS (OR IS NEARLY SO) A RECORD HOT YEAR
“Four separate temperature analyses released Thursday varied by a few hundredths of a degree but agreed it was either the hottest or second-hottest year since the start of record-keeping in the late 1880s.”
This is a misleading statement. The “four separate temperature analyses” are mostly from all or a subset of the same raw data!... >>Read More<<

Congressional Testimony - Patrick Moore endorses nuclear energy before US Congress
“Nuclear energy is the only non-greenhouse gas-emitting power source that can effectively replace fossil fuels and satisfy global demand.”... >>Read More<<

Cracks In the ‘Knowledge Monopoly’
This past July the UK House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs issued its report on “The Economics of Climate Change”... >>Read More<<

Effects of Bleaching and Cyclones on Coral Reefs of French Polynesia
In 1992 the authors "initiated a monitoring program that includes 13 islands (eight atolls and five high volcanic islands) in four of the five archipelagoes in French Polynesia, with the goal of documenting the effects of natural perturbations on coral assemblages."... >>Read More<<

GLOBAL COOLING - ONE OF THE COLDEST MONTHS FOR 100 YEARS
A weather expert says December 2005 is on pace to become one of the 10 coldest in more than 100 years, despite claims at a global conference on climate change this week that the Earth is getting warmer... >>Read More<<

Late Holocene Glacial Variations in Italy
The author studied various properties of alternating layers of organic-matter-rich soils and alluvial, glacial and periglacial sediments on higher Apennine massifs in Italy, located at approximately 42°23'N, 13°31'E, reconstructing a history of relative changes in temperature for this region over the past 6000 years... >>Read More<<

Late-Holocene Drought on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula
Based on a single sediment core retrieved in 1993 from Lake Chichanacanab in the center of the northern Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico (19°50'-19°57'N, 88°45'-88°46'W), Hodell et al. (1995) provided evidence for a protracted drought during the Terminal Classic Period of Mayan civilization (AD 800-1000)... >>Read More<<

LEADING BRITISH ECONOMISTS QUESTION CURRENT CLIMATE CHANGE POLICIES
In a significant development, four leading British economists have just made an important contribution to public debate on issues of climate change. In evidence submitted to the government-appointed "Stern Review" on the economics of climate change, they argue for a critical examination of both British and international policies and procedures in this area... >>Read More<<

Little Ice Age (Conterminous United States) – Summary
Working within the Tappan Zee area of the Hudson River estuary (New York, USA), HYPERLINK "http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V8/N2/C2.jsp" Carbotte et al. (2004) located fossil oyster beds via chirp sub-bottom and side-scan sonar surveys, after which they retrieved sediment cores from the sites that provided shells for radiocarbon dating... >>Read More<<

More Confusion About the Ocean's Thermohaline Circulation
In our Editorial of HYPERLINK "http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V8/N50/EDIT.jsp" 14 Dec 2005, we discussed the study of Bryden et al. (2005), wherein the trio of scientists from the UK's National Oceanography Centre describe real-world measurements they interpret as implying that "the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation has slowed by about 30 percent between 1957 and 2004," primarily over the last quarter of that period... >>Read More<<

"THE HOTTEST YEAR"
The Hadley Climate Centre of the University of East Anglia has claimed that the year 2005 was the hottest year in the Northern Hemisphere since records began... >>Read More<<

THE TREATMENT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ISSUES - EVIDENCE SUBMITTED TO THE STERN REVIEW
We very much welcome both the setting up of the Stern Review and the chance to submit evidence to it. The Review could open up a new phase in the treatment by British governments of issues relating to climate change, and we hope that it will do so... >>Read More<<

USHCN Temperature Record of the Week - Coldwater, KS
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<<

Warming Arctic Sees Return of Blue Mussels After 1,000 Years
After a thousand years, blue mussels “helped along by warmer water temperatures” have returned to high-Arctic seas... >>Read More<<

What is Statistical Significance?
All results obtained by statistical methods suffer from the disadvantage that they might have been caused by pure statistical accident... >>Read More<<