Climate & Environment Review: September 14, 2006

Climate & Environment Review
September 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.

New Paper On The Climate of Mount Kilimanjaro
CSPP NOTE: According to the most recently published research findings, the melting of ice and snow fields on Mount Kilimanjaro – erroneously attributed to 20th century, human-induced global warming is actually the result of regional climate variability in the 19th century, aided perhaps by local agricultural practices... >>Read More<<

Gore predicts shift in Bush climate policy
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore predicted on Tuesday that President George W. Bush would shift to do more to fight global warming, under Republican pressure from California to New York... >>Read More<<

USHCN Temperature Record of the Week - Leitchfield, KY
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<<

Vast oil pool tapped in Gulf of Mexico
A trio of oil companies led by Chevron Corp. has tapped a petroleum pool deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico that could boost the nation's reserves by more than 50 percent... >>Read More<<

Kilimanjaro Glaciers: Recent areal extent from satellite data and new interpretation of observed 20th century retreat rates
Recent and long term variations in ice extent on Kilimanjaro are investigated in the context of 20th century
climate change in East Africa. Quickbird satellite data show that the areal extent of glaciers on Kilimanjaro is 2.51 km2... >>Read More<<

MODERN GLACIER RETREAT ON KILIMANJARO AS EVIDENCE OF CLIMATE CHANGE: OBSERVATIONS AND FACTS
In recent years, Kilimanjaro and its vanishing glaciers have become an ‘icon’ of global warming, attracting broad interest. In this paper, a synopsis of (a) field observations made by the authors and (b) climatic data as reported in the literature (proxy and long-term instrumental data) is presented to develop a new concept for investigating the retreat of Kilimanjaro’s glaciers, based on the physical understanding of glacier–climate interactions... >>Read More<<

Melting of Antarctic Ice Margins
Based on more than twenty years of data from the Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer and the Special Sensor Microwave Imager sensors carried aboard polar-orbiting satellites that have provided almost full spatial and daily or semi-daily coverage of Antarctica, the authors derived a history of cumulative melting surface for the last two decades of the 20th century... >>Read More<<

A Half-Century of Snow Cover Data from Western China
In a study designed to explore this belief, Dahe et al. examined spatial and temporal variabilities of snow cover in western China between 1951 and 1997, based on data obtained from the Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer six-day snow-depth charts, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weekly snow extent charts, and daily snow depth and number of snow cover days from 106 meteorological stations scattered across western China (27-50°N, 70-105°E), including its two major regions: northwestern China and the Qinghai-Xizang (Tibet) Plateau... >>Read More<<

Oil industry spokesman's car blown up
MONTREAL - As a spokesman for Canada's petroleum industry, whether defending soaring gasoline prices or arguing against the Kyoto accord, Carol Montreuil knew he was not the most popular person in Quebec. But he never dreamed his position would expose him to terrorist attack... >>Read More<<

Possible Future Global Change Effects on Seawater Salinity and Acidity
The author notes that "seawater acidity and salinity are of biological, physical, and chemical significance," and that "the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (1976) recommended a range of pH in seawater between 6.5 and 8.5 for marine aquatic life, but not more than 0.2 pH units outside the normally occurring range... >>Read More<<

Millennial-Scale Climate Cycling in North-Central China
Eighteen radiocarbon-dated aeolian and paleosol profiles (some obtained by the authors and some by others) within a 1500-km-long belt along the arid to semi-arid transition zone of north-central China were used to determine variations in the extent and strength of the East Asian summer monsoon throughout the Holocene... >>Read More<<

Chevron scratches surface (five miles down) of first of many new domestic energy reserves
Issue: Chevron Corp. and its partners have announced the first successful oil production miles under the Gulf of Mexico, 270 miles southwest of New Orleans, according to the Wall Street Journal... >>Read More<<

Global Warming and Plant Respiration
In a "Perspective" article recently published in Science, King et al. (2006) say "it has been predicted that plant respiration, and leaf respiration in particular, will increase in a future warmer world." But, as they rhetorically ask, "are these predictions consistent with observations from modern experimental studies?.. >>Read More<<