Climate & Environment Review: February 14, 2006

Climate & Environment Review
February 14, 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.

Climate change and civilization collapse
Like most things, collapse explanations are subject to fashion, and the one most in the limelight today is climatic change... >>Read More<<

Global warming has U.S. rethinking polar bear status
Climate change is forcing the U.S. to consider protecting the polar bear under its endangered species act... >>Read More<<

A (Mis)informed Public
In the February 8 New York Times, NASA’s Jim Hansen again complained that his ideas on climate change are being suppressed by the Bush Administration, which is destroying our democracy by censoring climate science... >>Read More<<

Kyoto Proponents Should Hail Nuclear Energy
Politicized science aside, it isn't clear that this is uniformly bad, nor is it established that human activity is more than a trivial contributor... >>Read More<<

Low-Fat Diet Does Not Cut Health Risks, Study Finds
The largest study ever to ask whether a low-fat "Recent and archival health news about Diet and Nutrition."... >>Read More<<

On the long-term context for late twentieth century warming
Tree-Ring Laboratory, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Palisades, New York, USA [1] Previous tree-ring – based Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstructions portray a varying amplitude range between the ‘‘Medieval Warm Period’’ (MWP), ‘‘Little Ice Age’’ (LIA) and present. We describe a new reconstruction, developed using largely different... >>Read More<<

Scientist predicts 'mini Ice Age'
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia, Feb. 7 (UPI) -- A Russian astronomer has predicted that Earth will experience a "mini Ice Age" in the middle of this century, caused by low solar activity... >>Read More<<

The End Is Not Nigh?
British Prime Minister Tony Blair told a parliamentary committee earlier this month that the "world has seven years to take vital decisions and implement measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions or it could be too late... >>Read More<<

NATIONAL ACADEMIES SET UP PANEL TO ASSESS TEMPERATURE RECONSTRUCTION
The National Research Council of the National Academies has empanelled a blue-chip committee to study "Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Past 1,000-2,000 Years"... >>Read More<<

Review of Osborn and Briffa [2006]
Osborn and Briffa [2006] , published today in Science, cannot be considered as an “independent” validation of Hockey Stick climate theories, because it simply re-cycles 14 proxies, some of them very questionable, which have been repeatedly used in other “Hockey Team” studies, including, remarkably, 2 separate uses of the controversial bristlecone/foxtail tree ring data... >>Read More<<

TONY BLAIR REASSURES PUBLIC - I WON'T TAX YOUR HOLIDAYS TO CURB GREENHOSE GAS EMISSIONS
U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair ruled out raising taxes on airlines to curb emissions of greenhouse gasses, climbing down from his previous ambition to force the industry into pollution cuts... >>Read More<<

Mars Emerging from Ice Age, Data Suggest
Scientists have suspected in recent years that Mars might be undergoing some sort of global warming. New data points to the possibility it is emerging from an ice age... >>Read More<<

Evangelical Christians launch campaign on limiting emissions
WASHINGTON - A group of evangelical Christian leaders kicked off a national campaign Wednesday to urge Congress to pass legislation to limit carbon-dioxide emissions, contending that decreasing the human role in global warming was central to putting faith into action... >>Read More<<

Academy to Referee Climate-Change Fight
Scientists' Group Agrees To Congressional Request to Study Temperature-History Charting... >>Read More<<

Bingaman-Domenici Climate Plan Proposes To Regulate Upstream
Senate energy honchos Pete Domenici (R-NM) and Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) are proposing to regulate the energy and automotive industries for greenhouse-gas-emissions-producing-potential, instead of regulating GHG emitters themselves, according to a recently released “white paper.”... >>Read More<<

Blessed are the Greens?
This week some evangelical Christian groups issued "a call for their faithful to press the Bush administration into action on climate change," the Guardian newspaper reported... >>Read More<<

G-8 nations cite threat of energy costs
MOSCOW -- Finance ministers from the world's wealthiest nations yesterday singled out soaring energy costs as the greatest threat to global economic growth this year... >>Read More<<