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December 22, 2005 |
| Climate & Environment Weekly is
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(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. Americans advised to eat seafood twice a week NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - New guidelines recommend that all Americans -- especially pregnant and nursing women and children -- eat seafood twice a week, despite the current concern about pollution contamination... >>Read More<< Bye-Bye, Kyoto THE YEAR JUST ended was a fateful time for the Kyoto Protocol. It was the year in which the treaty, negotiated in 1997 as a way to slow global warming, formally took effect. That was in February. It was also the year in which Kyoto became operational, i.e., a whole bunch of rules were adopted at a conference in Montreal. That was in November. Finally, 2005 was the year in which it became painfully obvious that the treaty was a fiasco... >>Read More<< Climate change claims another peer "It is necessary to guard ourselves from thinking that the practice of the scientific method enlarges the powers of the human mind. Nothing is more flatly contradicted by experience than the belief that a man distinguished in one or even more departments of science, is more likely to think sensibly about ordinary affairs than anyone else."... >>Read More<< Utopian solutions versus real corporate social responsibility Every morally responsible company must reflect carefully on how its core business impacts the communities where it operates, and how it can ensure practices that are ethically and economically sound. This means understanding, assessing and acting upon employee well-being, legal and political realities, environmental impacts, cultural considerations, and religious and moral imperatives. One company making just such a serious effort is The Doe Run Company of St. Louis, Missouri and its subsidiary, Doe Run Peru... >>Read More<< EDITORIAL - HOT AIR IN MONTREAL Every year, parties to the Kyoto Protocol meet. Every year the future of the protocol is very much in question. And every year the meeting ends with environmental crusaders falsely claiming that the world has finally united behind the goal of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. This year's conference in Montreal followed the tired old pattern... >>Read More<< Energy in the UK With prices for oil and natural gas reaching record highs, the British government and Prime Minister Tony Blair have suddenly woken up to the fact that, for all its day-dreaming about climate change, it has no real energy policy. Now with Britain in HYPERLINK "http://www.techcentralstation.com/120505A.html" imminent danger of shutting down for lack of natural gas, common sense on nuclear power is in short supply. Decades of vilification by environmentalists has left nuclear power with a severe image problem... >>Read More<< Glacial Gains in Global Talks on Cleaner Air Ever since the first international meeting on the changing atmosphere in 1988, negotiations over what to do about rising levels of heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe gases have proceeded at a pace similar to that of climate change itself... >>Read More<< Global Warming, Global Goverance The European Parliament this week adopted a resolution on a report authored by one of its MEPs. Entitled, "Winning the Battle Against Global Climate Change," it offers a new example of the institutionalized scare-mongering so characteristic of the current climate debate... >>Read More<< Groups Sue to Protect Polar Bears Three environmental groups sued the federal government Thursday, seeking to protect polar bears from extinction because of disappearing Arctic sea ice... >>Read More<< I BLAME GLOBAL WARMING - 'TORNADOES MILDER IN 2005 - CALMEST YEAR IN TWO DECADES' About four times this year, Bob Jones packed his ham radio, flashlights, binoculars and foul-weather gear into his Ford Explorer and headed off to a grocery store parking lot in Richardson... >>Read More<< KEEPING KYOTO ON LIFE SUPPORT The nature of the agreement has been heavily spun. UK environment secretary Margaret Beckett described it as 'a diplomatic triumph'. In truth, all that was agreed was that there would be more talks in the future with no deadlines, no targets and no obligations. The real reason for the triumphalism is that the Americans didn't walk out altogether. The Kyoto process is not dead, but it may be in a permanent vegetative state... >>Read More<< KYOTO VS JOBS - 'CLIMATE TAX IS DESTROYING BRITISH JOBS AND BUSINESSES' THE leader of a manufacturing pressure group is calling on the Government to lift a 'green' tax which he claims could destroy thousands of businesses. Stan Hardy, the projects director of the Confederation of British Metalforming (CBM), will tomorrow urge Environment Minister Elliot Morley to impose a moratorium on the Climate Change Levy... >>Read More<< Mercury Drops to Year's Lowest The mercury dropped to the lowest level of the season Sunday, with Seoul's morning lows reaching minus 14 degrees Celsius and parts of the Han River freezing over... >>Read More<< Mercury might make N.D. lignite coal uncleanable Thanks to Forum editorial page editor Jack Zaleski (Sunday, Dec. 18, column) for asking North Dakota's lignite coal industry to clean up its rhetorical act. Despite what special interest groups such as Partners for Affordable Energy and Touchstone Energy Cooperatives like to claim, North Dakota's lignite coal is unlikely to become "increasingly clean" for a long time, as Zaleski points out... >>Read More<< Mining firm's studies show high level of chemical The deepest waters of the Great Salt Lake may contain even more toxic mercury than previously known. That's according to water tests done by Kennecott Utah Copper last summer, two years after samples that triggered alarms about mercury throughout Utah... >>Read More<< NEW SCIENTIST AND THE AUBREY MEYER MUSICAL ZEN METHOD Many environmental groups were pleased with the outcomes. Steve Sawyer of Greenpeace International called the meeting "historic" and said it had delivered "just about everything" the pressure group wanted... >>Read More<< Newspeak in Montreal “I am proud of the outcome of the Montreal Conference. Montreal is a watershed in the fight against climate change. More than 180 countries accepted sometimes difficult compromises to launch a stronger and forward-looking global effort to fight climate change. This inspiring collaboration and readiness to accommodate each other’s concerns is in line with the gravity of the threat and the need for all nations to close ranks and tackle climate change together... >>Read More<< One Flu from the Cuckoo's Nest This August, the White House told the press that the President's reading list for his stay at his Texas ranch included the book, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John Barry. The book tells the story of the flu pandemic following World War I that killed several times the number who died in the war itself, perhaps 100 million people. The consensus within the scientific community is that new strains of flu, first spotted in wild birds and farm poultry in Asia, and hence known as bird flu, threaten to evolve into a global plague that could kill millions... >>Read More<< Opinion - Environmental Movement Has Lost Its Way How Sick Is That? Environmental Movement Has Lost Its Way I am often asked why I broke ranks with Greenpeace after fifteen years as a founder and full-time environmental activist. While I had my personal reasons—spending more time with a growing family rather than living out of a suitcase most of the year—it was on issues of policy that I found it necessary to move on... >>Read More<< People in Taiwan free from mercury poisoning, [Taiwan] EPA says People in Taiwan are free from mercury poisoning, according to a year-long study conducted by the Environmental Protection Administration... >>Read More<< Population Decline – Good or Bad for Envirnoment? And not just any old hags, either -- residents of this northern English town would prefer strapping young things who aren't afraid to get dirty. "Quite frankly, old people are not going to give us the vitality that we need," says Vince Peart, the cheerful if lovelorn spokesperson for the town's matchmaking campaign. "We're looking for young people who will work."... >>Read More<< Refinery lawsuit text... >>Read More<< Sierra Club News release Refineries in the United States should be required to reduce hazardous emissions, groups say... >>Read More<< Scientizing politics The Republican War on Scienc offers a catalog of Republican-led confrontations with mainstream science,... >>Read More<< Are we running out of Oil? "This time it's for real," says the cover story of the June 2004 issue of National Geographic... >>Read More<< The Booming Solar Market California policymakers have taken off their shades and are looking to the sun to help ease their electric supply problems... >>Read More<< The wisdom of Arctic oil - The luxury of running water If you listened only to the news media and environmentalists, you'd think the debate over oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was about caribou and ecology. It's not... >>Read More<< Unsustainable Climate Research The environmental debate in recent years has centered on the concept of ‘sustainability’. The basic idea is that our use of natural resources (or the production of greenhouse gases that are infamously blamed for global warming) should be at a slower rate, one that is sustainable... >>Read More<< WIND FARM INSTALLED NEAR PARLIAMENT SOLVES BRITISH ENERGY CRISIS Scientists who set up a wind farm next to the Houses of Parliament were surprised to discover that the four wind turbines installed produce more than enough electricity to end the British energy crisis... >>Read More<< |
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