Climate & Environment Review: January 11, 2007

Climate & Environment Review
January 11, 2007

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.

Why the green lobby must be treated as a religion
“Business should treat the environmental movement as it treats other forms of religious belief. Business leaders do not themselves have to believe its doctrines. Indeed we should be wary if they do: business linked to faiths and ideologies is a sinister and unaccountable power”... >>Read More<<

20th-Century Climate-Model Simulations of ENSO
"Climate system models [were] evaluated," in the words of the authors, "by examining the extent to which they simulate key features of the leading mode of interannual climate variability: El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)," which they describe as "a dominant pattern of ocean-atmosphere variability with substantial global climate impact," based on "the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) simulations of twentieth-century climate... >>Read More<<

Floods of Northeast Spain Since the Fourteenth Century
"Starting from historical document sources, early instrumental data (basically, rainfall and surface pressure) and the most recent meteorological information," the authors say they analyzed "the temporal evolution of floods in NE Spain since the 14th century," focusing particularly on the river Segre in Lleida, the river Llobregat in El Prat, and the river Ter in Girona... >>Read More<<

Accelerated Melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet?
In introducing Chen et al.'s new study, Science magazine (where it was published) says "satellite measurements of gravity variations show that the Greenland Ice Sheet now is disappearing at the rate of about 240 cubic kilometers per year," stating as factual what is really only suggested by the authors' analysis, and that only tenuously. But why take our word for it? Simply consider what the three researchers themselves have to say about the subject... >>Read More<<

Drought (North America - United States: Central) – Summary
Climate alarmists contend that most regions of the world will experience more frequent, severe and longer-lasting droughts as the earth continues to warm in response to rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations. But do they have any real-world evidence to support their climate-model-based claims? We here explore this question as it pertains to the central United States by presenting brief summaries of the findings of pertinent scientific studies we have reviewed on our website... >>Read More<<

And I'm focused on adaptation?
An excellent and eye-opening story from Keith Bradsher in yesterday's NYT provides a new angle on the economics of the Kyoto Protocol... >>Read More<<

Day Two at AGU" Day Two at AGU
It is impossible to convey the overwhelming number of papers and presentations here. Through the week, my notes have invariably deteriorated. By the time you get home, they are unintelligible. I’ m going to diarize them a little – so I don’t forget totally and to share a bit of the experience. (And since CA readers have in effect paid for the trip, I’ll try to report as well as make my own presentation)... >>Read More<<

A Christmas Caribou Story
Santa has his sleigh pulled and magically flown each year by Rudolph and his reindeer buddies, but Santa could just as easily select the local caribou for the same job. Given that global warming is expected to impact high latitude locations of the Northern Hemisphere more than the rest of the world, one might fairly asked how the herds of animals of Santa’s world are coping with the elevated carbon dioxide levels... >>Read More<<

Diabetes breakthrough
In a discovery that has stunned even those behind it, scientists at a Toronto hospital say they have proof the body's nervous system helps trigger diabetes, opening the door to a potential near-cure of the disease that affects millions of Canadians... >>Read More<<

After Shell, Russia now turns on BP
The Kremlin has moved decisively to take back ownership of Russia's oil-and-gas assets, taking effective control of Royal Dutch Shell's Sakhalin-2 project and issuing a chilling warning to BP about its future in the country... >>Read More<<

Global warming is not confirmed
A strongly worded letter from Sens. Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe to the head of ExxonMobil has sparked a debate on global warming and what to do about it... >>Read More<<