Climate & Environment Weekly (2nd edition): January 5, 2006

Climate & Environment Weekly
January 5, 2006

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.

Blog post – when cooling is warming
I'm quite disappointed by this latest scare story I just came up with. Especially because typically Thai people have had the most sane approach to GW hype.... >>Read More<<

Catastrophic Climate Change – Science or Religion?
Two days ago, we had interesting discussions about "physical" situations where even the probabilities are unknown. Reliable quantitative values of probabilities can only be measured by the same experiment repeated many times. The measured probability is then "n/N" where "n" counts the "successful measurements" among all experiments of a certain kind whose total number is "N"... >>Read More<<

End of the world isn't nigh
FROM APOCALYPTIC media to the Queen’s Christmas message, 2005 is seen as the annus horribilis of anni horribiles. So what would they have made of 1816? Drastic climate change afflicted Europe after the eruption of the Tambora volcano in Indonesia the previous year (92,000 people died)... >>Read More<<

Environment pays price for Nevada gold
Toxic mines: Facing little regulation, they are blamed for spreading deadly mercury and depleting the region's water supply
ELKO, Nev. - Just outside the chasm of North America's biggest open-pit gold mine, the... >>Read More<<

Environmental Critics Get EPA Grants
The same environmental groups that lobby and sue the government over protecting air, water and human health also are collecting federal grant money for research and technical work, documents show... >>Read More<<

EUROPE WARMS UP TO NUCLEAR POWER
LONDON - It's the core question radiating across Europe today: How can governments fight global warming while continuing to meet their populations' growing demands for energy? Facing few viable answers, Europe's leaders are showing greater willingness to buck the trend toward environmental correctness and utter that politically unspeakable N-word: nuclear power... >>Read More<<

Heart attacks rise as mercury falls
TORONTO (CP) -- It has been dubbed the Merry Christmas coronary and the Happy New Year heart attack. More people have heart attacks in the early winter than any other time of year, and not just in cold, snowy countries like Canada... >>Read More<<

Is Tennessee Melting
Anyone reading the latest Associated Press article in the Tennessean titled "State follows world with warmer temperatures" might be led to believe that our beautiful state is turning into one giant oven. The article, which claims that Tennessee cities are "hotter than normal," is based on information and statistics provided by a political organization based in Washington, D.C. So, yes, I was a bit skeptical when reading the findings... >>Read More<<

Laurie David global warming “hypocrite”?
The news that Larry David's wife, Laurie, will appear on a CBS soap opera warning of the evils of global warming strikes some as funny... >>Read More<<

Media bias
"If a consumer believes this to be highly unlikely a priori, she will rationally infer that the paper probably has poor information or exercised poor judgment in interpreting available evidence," explain Gentzkow and Shapiro. "A media firm concerned about its reputation for accuracy will therefore be reluctant to report evidence at odds with the consumer's prior beliefs."... >>Read More<<

Most published findings are false
Article analyzed various things like the publication bias (attempts to get a signal even though there is no signal and select the findings that have found one); the reverse bias (less frequent; tendency to hide signals); the probability that a finding is published as a function of the previous probability estimate that the result is correct, and some other factors. Insert these variables into some matrix differential equations and look at the outcome.... >>Read More<<

Oregon global warming report is deceptive
Last month, the Institute for a Sustainable Environment at the University of Oregon published a report titled, "The Economic Impacts of Climate Change in Oregon: A Preliminary Assessment" ( HYPERLINK "http://ri.uoregon.edu/" \t "linkWin" http://ri.uoregon.edu/ publicationspress/Consensus_report.pdf)... >>Read More<<

Particle Civics – PM Standards
When the Environmental Protection Agency cuts allowable particle pollution levels more than 45 percent, you might expect commendations from environmentalists and the press. You’d be disappointed. EPA recently proposed reducing allowable daily levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) from 65 micrograms per cubic meter (ug/m3) down to 35 ug/m3. The change would nearly double the number of pollution monitoring locations that violate federal PM2.5 standards... >>Read More<<

Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false... >>Read More<<