Climate & Environment Review: September 6, 2006 (2nd Edition)

Climate & Environment Review: 2nd Edition
September 6, 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.

TIME Magazine Archive Article -- Another Ice Age?
In Africa, drought continues for the sixth consecutive year, adding terribly to the toll of famine victims.
During 1972 record rains in parts of the U.S., Pakistan and Japan caused some of the worst flooding in centuries. In Canada's wheat belt, a particularly chilly and rainy spring has delayed planting and may well bring a disappointingly small harvest... >>Read More<<

USHCN Temperature Record of the Week: Ellsworth, KS
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<<

A load of hot air?
Amphibians are dying out the world over
Hardly a day goes by without a new dire warning about climate change. But some claims are more extreme than others, giving rise to fears that the problem is being oversold and damaging the issue... >>Read More<<

Statisticians blast Hockey Stick
The recently released final report of a panel of three independent statisticians, chaired by an eminent statistics professor, Edward Wegman, chairman of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences committee on theoretical and applied statistics, has resoundingly upheld criticisms of the famous "hockey stick" graph of Michael Mann and associates... >>Read More<<

Science tempers fears on climate change
THE world's top climate scientists have cut their worst-case forecast for global warming over the next 100 years.
A draft report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, obtained exclusively by The Weekend Australian, offers a more certain projection of climate change than the body's forecasts five years ago... >>Read More<<

Russian Scientists Forecast Global Cooling in 6-9 Years
Global cooling could develop on Earth in 50 years and have serious consequences before it is replaced by a period of warming in the early 22nd century, a Russian Academy of Sciences astronomical observatory report says, the RIA Novosti news agency reported Friday... >>Read More<<

Sen. Kerry calls for new National Climate Change Assessment
[The Climate Science Watch blog returns to action after an August hiatus.]
In a letter to Bush administration officials Sen. John Kerry has called for the production of the now-overdue second National Climate Change Assessment... >>Read More<<

Worst is yet to come, hurricane chief says
MIAMI (Reuters) - If you thought the sight of the great American jazz city New Orleans flooded to the eaves -- its people trapped in attics or cowering on rooftops -- was the nightmare hurricane scenario, think again... >>Read More<<

Physics Wars [and Climate Wars]
[CSPP Note: If something as complex as string theory can have “hill defenders” who just may be missing the truth elsewhere; people who consider themselves the mainstream and disparage the work of others who disagree with them, then why not climate science? Such an approach can be expected from the media – who are trained to act this way - but in reputedly trained scientists, this sort of “consensus – circle the wagons” posturing is deeply troubling. And how familiar is this approach in the climate community?... >>Read More<<

The Rapidly Cooling Ocean
As I pen this article, I'm packing for vacation-- an extended cruise through the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, in the very peak of this year's hurricane season. Am I worried? Not in the least. Storm activity is well below normal, with the season half over and not one single hurricane yet formed. How is this possible, with our SUV emissions supposedly worsening storm activity year after year? The answer is more news the media will never tell you... >>Read More<<

Schwarzenegger Explains Why He Went Green
LOS ANGELES, Sept. 2, 2006 — - Just days after California passed legislation restricting greenhouse gas emissions, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said fighting for environmental issues is important, even if that meant opposing the president... >>Read More<<

Science in the Media Sausage Grinder
Recent weeks have offered a rich harvest of new "health" threats with splashy headlines warning us about the supposed dangers from processed meats, hair dyes, and tanning parlors... >>Read More<<

Russian scientist predicts global cooling
MOSCOW, Aug. 25 (UPI) -- A Russian scientist predicts a period of global cooling in coming decades, followed by a warmer interval. Khabibullo Abdusamatov expects a repeat of the period known as the Little Ice Age. During the 16th century, the Baltic Sea froze so hard that hotels were built on the ice for people crossing the sea in coaches... >>Read More<<

PEER-REVIEWED PAPERS SUPPORT OCEAN COOLING DIAGNOSIS
A 2004 Science article by E. Pallé, P. R. Goode, P. Montañés-Rodríguez, and S. E. Koonin entitled "Changes in Earth's Reflectance Over the Past Two Decades" (see; subscription required) and a follow-on 2005 Geophysical Research Letters paper by Pallé E., P. Montañés-Rodriguez, P. R. Goode, S. E. Koonin, M. Wild, and S. Casadio entitled "A multi-data comparison of shortwave climate forcing changes" (see; subscription required) provide support as a reason for the recent observed upper ocean cooling that is reported in Lyman et al (see)... >>Read More<<

Simulating the Past: A Test of State-of-the Art Climate Models
Lau et al. "explore the roles of sea surface temperature coupling and land surface processes in producing the Sahel drought in CGCMs that participated in the twentieth-century coupled climate simulations of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change [IPCC] Assessment Report 4," in which the 19 CGCMs "are driven by combinations of realistic prescribed external forcing, including anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosols, long-term variation in solar radiation, and volcanic eruptions... >>Read More<<