Climate & Environment Review: December 28, 2006

Climate & Environment Review
December 28, 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.

Recent record coldperiods across the globe
Writes one commentator, “In spite of the records, enlightened and concerned journalists immediately
explain to us that the cooler weather and fewer hurricanes do not lessen global warming trends because weather is not climate, just like religion is not faith... >>Read More<<

Can we go on building roads and runways and save the planet?
Concern about climate change is dominating the discussion of transport policy.But what course is policy now likely to take? Social anthropologist Benny Peiser says politicians will find it impossible to deliver policies that match the threat that they say climate change presents... >>Read More<<

Media Shows Irrational Hysteria on Global Warming
David Deming, an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma and an adjunct scholar with the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), testified this morning at a special hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The hearing examined climate change and the media. Bellow are excerpts from his prepared remarks... >>Read More<<

NAIROBI WAS A SUCCESS
Many of us in this part of the world noted the developments prior to the Nairobi Conference with increasing concern. Our concern was based on two grounds. The first was that actions to control undesirable greenhouse gas emissions (GGEs) would have disproportionate adverse effects on the economies of the African nations. The second and even more important reason was the fundamental error in the underlying science... >>Read More<<

The population contraction
A senior fellow at the liberal New America Foundation, Longman specializes in demography. If you're a romantic, demography is the science of love, writ large. If you're a cynic, it is the sausage factory of civilization. Whatever your disposition, demography is, if not destiny, then a subject of paramount importance. In the long run, no weapon, no technology, no economic system is more powerful... >>Read More<<

Reactions to Report on Al Gore at AGU
This news report of Al Gore’s speech at the American Geophysical Union yesterday is interesting for at least three reasons. Here is the relevant excerpt from the news story: "We have somehow persuaded ourselves that we really don't have to care that much about what we're doing to future generations," he said... >>Read More<<

Losing It
What's behind the shameless demagoguery and character assassination being heaped on climate change "deniers"? What's behind the chilling calls for "Nuremberg trials" for dissenting scientists? Why has the green rhetoric escalated to lynch-mob proportions?... >>Read More<<

Out on a Ledge
On a recent Monday morning, at exactly 8 a.m., a dozen global-warming activists converged in Washington, D.C., at the main entrance to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration... >>Read More<<

Quick Reactions to Arguments Today before the Supreme Court on Mass. vs. EPA
The transcript of arguments before the Supreme Court is available here in PDF. A good overview of the hearing from an expert on the Supreme Court can be found here. In what follows I provide some excerpts from the oral arguments and my reactions to them. In my judgment neither side did a particularly effective job on the substantive issues associated with climate impacts, and the issue of redressibility in particular. I do not have any opinions worth considering on the legal aspects of the case, nor do I have any strong views on what will happen. Please read on for my comments on the oral arguments... >>Read More<<

Methane quashes green credentials of hydropower
At the time, it must have sounded like a sensible case of sustainable development. During the 1980s, about 2,500 square kilometres of Amazonian rainforest was flooded to create the Balbina dam to feed the energy demands of the Brazilian city of Manaus. A sizeable chunk of rainforest was lost, but Brazil gained access to a non-polluting energy source. It's a compromise Brazil has made many times; more than 80% of the country's domestic electricity is generated by hydropower plants... >>Read More<<