Climate & Environment Review: August 23, 2006

Climate & Environment Review
August 23, 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.

"Fake But Accurate" Science?
The so-called “hockey stick” graph appears in the 2001 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations organization that dominates climate change discussion... >>Read More<<

CLIMATE MODELS IN TROUBLE AS UPPER OCEAN COOLS SIGNIFICANTLY
Many advocates for action on climate change, including the IPCC assessments and recent documentaries have promoted a view that global warming will continue through the 21st century, with global warming defined as a steady increase in global average temperatures... >>Read More<<

Climate Oscillations (Millennial Variability - Europe) – Summary
Much of the early evidence for a global millennial-scale oscillation of climate originated in Europe. Newer studies employing a number of different techniques and covering a variety of time spans continue to confirm the existence of this natural phenomenon in diverse parts of the continent, all of which evidence suggests that 20th-century global warming is merely a manifestation of this ubiquitous non-CO2-induced climatic cycle... >>Read More<<

HEAT WAVE OR BIG FREEZE, WE JUST LEARN TO ADAPT
In my work, I look at how societies throughout history have dealt with climate change... >>Read More<<

For ultra-green Vermont, wind power question hangs in breeze
When farmer Greg Bryant first heard about plans for windmills along a swath of mountain ridges in this northeastern Vermont hamlet, he was all for it. The idea of tapping a plentiful natural resource for power was appealing. Now he's dead set against it, one of many people here who fear the prospect of 400-foot tall windmills sprouting from the tops of picturesque mountains... >>Read More<<

Effects of Global Warming on El Niños
In a model study designed to explore this inconsistency, Meehl et al. used two global coupled climate models: the Parallel Climate Model (PCM, described by Washington et al., 2000) and the Community Climate System Model version 3 (CCSM3, described by Collins et al., 2006), which they say "have been shown to simulate El Niño reasonably well... >>Read More<<

2006 Tropical Storm Season Now Below Normal
What a difference a year makes. After the record-breaking 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, the 2006 season is now below normal... >>Read More<<

A Fifty-Year Reconstruction of Antarctic Snowfall
The authors derived a fifty-year time series of snowfall accumulation over Antarctica by combining climate model simulations and snowfall observations derived from "scores of new ice core records" plus snow pit and snow stake data... >>Read More<<

A Brief History of North American Drought: Comparing the 20th Century with the Prior Millennium
Climate alarmists typically claim that CO2-induced global warming will lead to more extreme meteorological phenomena, such as droughts, floods and storms; and, therefore, whenever one of these phenomena occurs, they are quick to attribute it to the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 content... >>Read More<<

Governor Says No Mercury Emissions From Coal-Fired Power Plants In Idaho
Idaho Governor Risch Says No Mercury Emissions From Coal-Fired Power Plants In Idaho... >>Read More<<

A practical, urgent call for change in America's environmental policy
James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, warned recently that global warming is melting the Greenland ice sheet at twice the rate of just five years ago... >>Read More<<

Greenland's glaciers have been shrinking for 100 years - study
Greenland's glaciers have been shrinking for the past century, according to a Danish study, suggesting that the ice melt is not a recent phenomenon caused by global warming... >>Read More<<

HOLOCENE THERMAL MAXIMUM UP TO 3°C WARMER THAN TODAY
The magnitude and timing of Holocene maximum warmth in the Arctic and sub-Arctic has been the subject of considerable recent interest, particularly in the context of future climate change. Although lying at a crucial location in the North Atlantic close to significant atmospheric and oceanic boundaries, terrestrial Holocene climatic data from Iceland are few and predominantly derive from glacial and palaeoecological evidence... >>Read More<<