Climate & Environment Review: March 23, 2006

Climate & Environment Review: 1st Edition
April 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.

Comments on “Impacts of CO2-Induced Warming on Simulated Hurricane Intensity and Precipitation: Sensitivity to the Choice of Climate Model and Convective Scheme”
In a signal paper on atmospheric chemistry, Ellsaesser (1982) asked the question: “Should we trust models or observations?”... >>Read More<<

Let them eat precaution: What the WTO decision on GMOs really means
Call it “the spin wars”. In a leaked interim report in February, the World Trade Organisation sided with Canada,
Argentina, and the US, ruling that the European-wide ban on bio-engineered crops has more to do with protectionism than precaution. But that’s not what you’d believe if you relied on the hysteria-grams flooding the internet... >>Read More<<

Opinion - MORE ORIGINAL SIN IN THE GARDEN, WITH A HOSEPIPE IN THE ROLE OF THE SERPENT
BRITAIN APPEARS to be suffering from an outbreak of water on the brain. A shower of wet greens are apparently attacking golf-course greens in an attempt to make the clubs cut their water use... >>Read More<<

CLIMATE POLICY: AMERICANS DO IT BETTER. KEY FINDINGS
* The Kyoto Protocol is an ineffective instrument to face the challenge of climate change... >>Read More<<

Hydrological and Agricultural Responses of China's Loess Plateau to Predicted Climate Change
Comprising some 380,000 square kilometers of semiarid to sub-humid land in the middle reaches of the Yellow River, China's Loess Plateau "is one of the most eroded regions in the world because of highly erodible soils, steep slopes, heavy storms, and low vegetation cover," according to Zhang and Liu (2005)... >>Read More<<

A 250-Year Ice-Edge History of the Nordic Seas
The authors used historical April through August ice observations made in the Nordic Seas - comprised of the Iceland, Greenland, Norwegian and Barents Seas, extending from 30°W to 70°E - to construct time series of ice-edge position anomalies spanning the period 1750-2002, which they analyzed for evidence of long-term trend and oscillatory behavior... >>Read More<<

Arctic ice pack losing ground
Monday, April 10, 2006 - The Arctic Ocean ice pack has not rebounded from record minimums recorded last summer, causing scientists to worry that the planet's global warming "canary in the coal mine" is in a tightening spiral of decline... >>Read More<<

Dialing in your own climate
This week an interesting paper was published in Geophysical Research Letters by climate modelers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. They estimated future temperature changes if the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) were held constant at current levels (well, actually 2000 levels)... >>Read More<<

Climate of Fear
There have been repeated claims that this past year's hurricane activity was another sign of human-induced climate change... >>Read More<<

Health Effects (Temperature - Hot vs. Cold - South America) – Summary
Climate alarmists claim that global warming will lead to an increase in human death rates. Consequently, whenever a heat wave occurs somewhere in the world, they are quick to blame any deaths above the norm for that place and time of year on the high temperatures associated with the unseasonable warmth... >>Read More<<

'Muzzled' Bush critic hardly silent
Basketball junkies watching March Madness on CBS March 19 may have been enticed by promotions for ''60 Minutes'' to stay tuned for a tale of impending global doom that the Bush administration was suppressing... >>Read More<<

Gallup - Most Americans Don't See Global Warming as Urgent Issue
NEW YORK - With warnings about global warming reaching a fever pitch in recent weeks--Vanity Fair is about to come out with a story featuring George Clooney and Julia Roberts on its cover--Americans are more convinced than ever that the Earth is being affected, but they have still not grown urgently concerned about it, according to a Gallup poll released today... >>Read More<<

Kyoto is pointless, say 60 leading scientists
Canada's new Conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper, has been urged by more than 60 leading international climate change experts to review the global warming policies he inherited from his centre-Left predecessor... >>Read More<<

Late Holocene Climate Fluctuations in the Eastern Mediterranean
The authors analyzed high-resolution δ18O values from a speleothem in Soreq Cave, central Israel (31°45'N, 35°03'E), as well as from planktonic foraminifera in two marine sediment cores retrieved just off the Ashdod coast (31°56.41'N, 34°22.13'E and 31°56.61'N, 34°19.79'E), to obtain a record of climate in this region over the past 3600 years... >>Read More<<