Climate & Environment Review: August 17, 2007

Climate & Environment Review
August 17, 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.

A Report from the Global Warming Battlefield
In case you hadn't noticed, the global warming debate has now escalated from a minor skirmish to an all-out war. Although we who are skeptical of the claim that global warming is mostly manmade have become accustomed to being the ones that take on casualties, last week was particularly brutal for those who say we have only 8 years and 5 months left to turn things around, greenhouse gas emissions-wise...

Global Warming and James Hansen’s Hacks
In retrospect, you knew there would be trouble when you put the people responsible for the Space Shuttle program in charge of tracking U.S. temperatures. So perhaps it shouldn’t have come as a big surprise when it was revealed that NASA committed a bit of an oopsie regarding data constantly used by the mainstream media and other global warming proponents...

James Hansen online letter: A Light On Upstairs?
Sorry to send another e-mail so soon. No need to read further unless you are interested in temperature changes to a tenth of a degree over the U.S. and a thousandth of a degree over the world...

Steve McIntyre: “Lights Out Upstairs”
James Hansen has published an online letter entitled A Light On Upstairs?...I haven’t seen the original letter and don’t know who the comment was about. However, it certainly sounds like an ad hominem remark and one that is highly inappropriate for a federal civil servant. I have a number of comments about other aspects of the letter...

James Hansen: The Real Deal: Usufruct & the Gorilla
Fox, Washington Times, and their like have gone bananas over a flaw discovered in the computer program that produces global temperatures at GISS each month. They have even managed to get Congress and NASA Headquarters involved. Now we know what mom meant when she said “don’t make a federal case out of it.” Hey, what is really going on here?...

Steve McIntyre: Does Hansen’s Error “Matter”?
There’s been quite a bit of publicity about Hansen’s Y2K error and the change in the U.S. leaderboard (by which 1934 is the new warmest U.S. year) in the right-wing blogosphere. In contrast, realclimate has dismissed it a triviality and the climate blogosphere is doing its best to ignore the matter entirely...

Positive Feedback: Have We Been Fooling Ourselves?
There are three main points/opinions/issues I’d like to explore, which are all interrelated...

Samuelson: A Different View of Global Warming
We in the news business often enlist in moral crusades. Global warming is among the latest. Unfortunately, self-righteous indignation can undermine good journalism. Last week's HYPERLINK "http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20122975/site/newsweek/" NEWSWEEK cover story on global warming is a sobering reminder. It's an object lesson of how viewing the world as "good guys vs. bad guys" can lead to a vast oversimplification of a messy story. Global warming has clearly occurred; the hard question is what to do about it.

Dingell sets proper long-term priorities
U.S. Rep. John Dingell appears determined, and wisely so, to have Congress adopt a broad national energy policy, rather than just order the auto industry to build higher-mileage vehicles and call that a plan. As the venerable chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where such legislation must go, Dingell has in recent weeks talked up higher gas taxes in the context of a "carbon tax" and suggested that the tax deduction for mortgage interest be eliminated on large homes that require more heating and cooling. Now that would be hitting some people where they live...

The Cost of Cooling the Climate
A non-alarmist guide for policymakers
United Nations General Secretary Ban Ki Moon is convening a high level meeting on global warming at the U.N. headquarters on September 24. The idea is to jump-start the climate change negotiations for the 13th Conference of the Parties (COP-13) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). COP-13 is scheduled for December 3-14 in Bali, Indonesia...

Revealed: cover-up plan on energy target
Ministers urged to lobby for get-out on renewables
Government officials have secretly briefed ministers that Britain has no hope of getting remotely near the new European Union renewable energy target that Tony Blair signed up to in the spring - and have suggested that they find ways of wriggling out of it...

Drive for biofuels could send food prices soaring
A global shift toward renewable energy could jack up food prices by up to 80 percent as crops and farmland are diverted to producing biofuels, an international agricultural think tank warned yesterday...

Orang-utans home destroyed for bio-diesel
The Orang-utans of Borneo are facing an unprecedented threat as their habitat is destroyed to satisfy increasing global demands for bio-fuel...