Climate & Environment Weekly (2nd edition): January 19, 2006

Climate & Environment Weekly
January 19, 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.

Heat-Related Deaths in London, Sao Paulo and Delhi
To test this hypothesis, Hajat et al. studied the history of heat-wave related deaths in three cites of contrasting wealth (gross national income per capita) - Delhi (India), Sao Paulo (Brazil) and London (England) - based on daily counts of all-cause mortality (excluding violent deaths) plus counts by age and cause-of-death... >>Read More<<

Historical Floods and Droughts in the Yangtze Delta
The Yangtze Delta, located in Eastern China (30 to 33°N, 119 to 122°E), is a nearly-level plain with an elevation that averages only 2 to 7 meters above sea level across 75% of its area... >>Read More<<

River Discharge into Canada's Hudson, James and Ungava Bays -- 1964-2000
In a study that investigated the validity of these claims for a big part of high-latitude North America, Dery et al. examined the characteristics and trends of river discharge into the Hudson, James and Ungava Bays (HJUBs) for the period 1964-2000... >>Read More<<

The Little Ice Age in Bolivia
The authors conducted, in their words, "the first systematic and high-resolution pollen analysis of a tropical ice core." Specifically, they worked with two long cores to bedrock extracted from the summit of the Sajama Ice Cap (18°06'S, 68°53'W), which sits atop Bolivia's highest peak on the western side of the Bolivian Altiplano.... >>Read More<<

Donald Kennedy - Setting Science Back
His editorial page rants on global warming are as predictable as the content of most of the climate change articles in his journal. It hasn’t been lost on many in the science community that he simply refuses to print any “perspectives” piece that doesn’t go along with his take on climate change. If other points of view are so uninformed, why doesn’t he let them out so that they can be held up to ridicule... >>Read More<<

The GISS GCM - Moving in the Right Direction
It is surely no secret that we have long been critical of climate models and what they suggest about earth's response to anthropogenic CO2 emissions, but that is only because we believe they do not yet adequately incorporate all factors of significance to the chief purpose for which they were created, i.e., the providing of realistic insight into the long-term future consequences of our past, current and projected activities; and in this regard we have primarily complained about their neglect of biological factors that may be key to achieving this ultimate objective... >>Read More<<

Does Donald Kennedy Read Science?
In an editorial in the 6 January 2006 issue of Science editor Donald Kennedy HYPERLINK "http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/311/5757/15" writes, "The consequences of the past century's temperature increase are becoming dramatically apparent in the increased frequency of extreme weather events ... >>Read More<<

Irrigation most likely to blame for Central California warming
Irrigation has turned much of the San Joaquin Valley's dry, light-colored soil dark and damp, says Dr. John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). While the valley's light, dry desert ground couldn't absorb or hold much heat energy, the dark, damp irrigated fields "can absorb heat like a sponge in the day and then, at night, release that heat into the atmosphere... >>Read More<<

On Donald Kennedy in Science, Again
In this week’s Science magazine editor Donald Kennedy opines that “Not only is the New Orleans damage not an act of God; it shouldn’t even be called a “natural” disaster.” Could it be that he sees the significance of millions of people and trillions of dollars of property in locations exposed to repeated strikes from catastrophic storms? Unfortunately, not at all... >>Read More<<

Climate Model Inadequacies (Radiation) – Summary
One of the most challenging and important problems facing today's general circulation models of the atmosphere is how to accurately simulate the physics of earth's radiative energy balance. Of this task, Harries (2000) says "progress is excellent, on-going research is fascinating, but we have still a great deal to understand about the physics of climate."... >>Read More<<

USHCN Temperature Record of the Week - Fosston, MN
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<<