New on Web: Steve Milloy's adaptation of Dickens' Christmas Carol makes it clear that faked scientific results can easily pass the peer-review process of Science magazine. Within the past year, Science has also hyped a paper by James Hansen, claiming that ocean heat storage was the "smoking gun" of anthropogenic global warming and an article by Naomi Oreskes, claiming that there were no published papers ("none") that disagreed with the so-called "consensus" on global warming. In both cases, the editor refused to publish letters that pointed out obvious errors.

Under a previous editor, Science did publish corrections -- for example after it published and hyped the claim that ozone depletion was causing solar UV radiation to increase at the unbelievable rate of 35% per year. Alas, peer review is often skewed by ideology. [See, P.J. Michaels, S.F. Singer, P.C. Knappenberger. "Analyzing UV-B radiation: Is there a trend?" Science 264:1341-2. 1994. Answer: There isn't]
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The Kyoto Protocol is an economic disaster: http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Kyoto_Count_Up.htm
In Britain, four leading economists address the IPCC problem in a memo to the review currently conducted by the UK government
http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/Stern-Review-19-12-05.htm

The Kyoto Protocol is really a sham. Emission trading is a legalized method of cheating. Using up unused emission rights leads to no global reduction in emitted GH gases -and, of course, has absolutely no effect on climate.
The Montreal meeting (Dec 2005) did nothing to fix the problem. Its "flexibility" simply expands the supply of unused emission rights by including forests, thus lowering the price of carbon credits and removing any incentive to actually cut emissions. However, a country can decrease its CO2 emissions by reducing production and increasing trade (Item #1). This creates other problems.

Is Europe Due For a Big Chill? A Letter to Time Magazine from Timo Hameranta tries to clarify (Item #2): No problem as long as the Earth turns and the Rocky Mountains stand.
Was 2005 the warmest year? Perhaps; but so what? (Item #3). More quotes (Item #4).

Environment and cancer: The links are elusive (Item #5)

Court decision on Intelligent Design: It's not science (Item #6)
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Dear Readers

It is December and I ask for donations to SEPP. As you know, we don't solicit support from industry or government but depend on friends like you to keep our operation going. We have no membership dues; everything is voluntary. Pls be as generous as you can and send a check to SEPP at
1600 S. Eads Street, #712-S, Arlington, VA, 22202-2907

SPECIAL: If you pay income tax in the US, the "Katrina law" allow you to use 100% of your charitable deductions (instead of the normal max of 50%). But you must donate before Dec. 31, 2005. We will send appropriate receipts to donations of $250 or more (yes, please!) --- as required by law.

If you intend to donate in currency other than US dollars, or with checks drawn on non-US banks, pls notify us first - and we will advise you on how to avoid high bank fe

A MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL

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1. Trade can 'export' CO2 emissions
By Richard Black Environment Correspondent, BBC News website http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/4542104.stm Published: 2005/12/19

Researchers found that US imports of goods from China cause a greater production of carbon dioxide than if the goods were made in the US. Factories in developing countries tend to use more energy than in the west. The researchers say emissions control measures such as the Kyoto Protocol could "export" carbon-intensive industries to the developing world. This has long been a contention raised by critics of the Protocol.
In a briefing just before the UN climate negotiations in Montreal, President Bush's chief environmental advisor James Connaughton told reporters that setting targets for emissions may "...cause a shift offshore of some energy-intensive industries. "This probably equates to a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions, as it's a shift to countries which are probably less efficient than the US," he said.
This issue of "carbon leakage" is matched in controversy potential by another related argument; that western countries own up to emissions produced within their shores, when in fact they should be responsible for all emissions connected with the goods and products which they consume. They are "saving" their own emissions, the argument goes, at the expense of developing countries.

The US has put itself outside the Kyoto treaty, but conventional trade issues are inducing a shift towards imported goods and away from domestic manufacturing. "The US cannot compete with China on prices, so the US trade deficit with China is increasing," said Shui Bin from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado.
"The US has the largest trade deficit of any country in world, so we suspected it might be responsible for a larger proportion of emissions than normally seen," Dr Shui told the BBC news website. In October, the deficit stood at a record $20.5bn (£11.6bn).

Between the years 1997-2003, she found, the US "saved" 1,711 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions by importing goods from China rather than making them within US borders. That equates to a reduction of just over 3% in US emissions across the seven-year period, with the exact proportion rising year on year as the trade deficit increased. But this reduction in US emissions was more than matched by an increase in Chinese emissions. In 1997, exports to the US accounted for seven percent of Chinese CO2 output; by 2003, the figure had risen to 14%.
Dr Shui calculates that global emissions were higher by around 720 million tonnes during the seven-year period. If anything, this analysis may underestimate the true picture as it excludes fuel used to transport goods halfway around the world.
Global traffic
If this is happening to a trade unaffected by the Kyoto Protocol, what are the implications elsewhere? Could the European Union, through its financial instrument, the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), be playing a dangerous game?
"Frankly I haven't studied this, so it's just a rough thought; but it is possible that Kyoto countries could import more goods from overseas and see a rise in global CO2," said Dr Shui. "That is what we are worried about, and why we want to stimulate more discussion about flaws in the global carbon accounting system."
Michael Grubb from Imperial College London believes rates of "carbon leakage" are likely to be small. "The idea that there are leakage effects has been comprehensively discredited," he told the BBC News website.
The Carbon Trust, a UK government-backed company of which Professor Grubb is policy director, has researched the likely impact of emissions trading on European business. "What people do talk about is 10-15% leakage - that's the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimate - but those are model-based estimates, and in reality, you don't even get that," he said
"As a reality check, Europe has had more expensive energy than just about everywhere for decades, yet we still produce virtually all our own steel and our own cement." Professor Grubb also points up the difficulties involved in measuring and calculating emissions according to end user rather than producer.
Nevertheless, Shui Bin is adamant that the global community should have a try; the way carbon emissions are measured currently is flawed, she believes, and could penalise developing countries unfairly.
"The equity issue should be addressed in the Kyoto Protocol," she said, "but the current Protocol is based on a flawed accounting system… "A country can intentionally or unintentionally decrease its CO2 emissions by reducing its domestic production but increasing its trade. "Total CO2 emissions would increase, but the current carbon accounting framework will show a decrease."
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2. "Is Europe Due For a Big Chill?" NO
Letter to TIME by Timo Hameranta

In your issue of Dec 12, you publish an article "Is Europe Due For a Big Chill?" by Michel D. Lemonick. You argue about warm Europe " thanks to the Gulf Stream".

Actual measurements show that the Gulf Stream is too weak to warm Europe alone. Ref: Columbia University media release January 22, 2003, referring to the study by R. Seager, D. S. Battisti, J. Yin, N. Gordon, N. Naik, A. C. Clement and M. A. Cane, 2002. Is the Gulf Stream responsible for Europe's mild winters? Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society Vol. 128, Part B, No 586, pp. 2563-2586, October 2002, online <http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~david/Gulf.pdf>

Seager and co-workers found that much of the difference in temperature between eastern North America and Western Europe can be explained by the simple and well-known fact that the ocean stores heat in the summer and gradually releases it in winter. When winds blow from west to east, as across the North Atlantic, the heat released in winter preferentially warms the land areas to the east of the ocean. That this is a big effect is well known, but the new research shows that the winter temperature contrast is much bigger than can be accounted for by this simple difference between a warm 'maritime' climate in Europe and a frigid 'continental' climate in North America.

The Rocky Mountains play a major role. Analogous to an island in a stream, the Rockies set up a persistent wave in the winds downstream that brings cold winds from the north into eastern North America and warm winds from the south into Western Europe. This pattern of movement of heat by the winds accounts for half of the total difference in winter temperatures between the two regions, with much of the other half attributable to the release of heat stored in the ocean.

"That the Gulf Stream heat transport has a minor effect while the Rocky Mountains loom large in causing the differing winter conditions of Western Europe and eastern North America will 'certainly require some rewriting of textbooks as well as tourist guides' says Seager. "But now we must also look differently at theories of climate change, which in the past have revolved around water circulation in the Atlantic Ocean."
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3. Is 2005 Warmest Ever Year In Northern Hemisphere?
By Richard Black Environment Correspondent,
BBC News, 15 Dec 2005 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4532344.stm

This year has been the warmest on record in the northern hemisphere, say scientists in Britain. It is the second warmest globally since the 1860s, when reliable records began. Ocean temperatures recorded in the northern hemisphere Atlantic Ocean have also been the hottest on record. The researchers, from the UK Met Office and the University of East Anglia, say this is more evidence for the reality of human-induced global warming.

Their data show that the average temperature during 2005 in the northern hemisphere is 0.65 Celsius above the average for 1961-1990, a conventional baseline against which scientists compare temperatures. The global increase is 0.48 Celsius, making 2005 the second warmest year on record behind 1998, though the 1998 figure was inflated by strong El Nino conditions.

The northern hemisphere is warming faster than the south, scientists believe, because a greater proportion of it is land, which responds faster to atmospheric conditions than ocean. Northern hemisphere temperatures are now about 0.4 Celsius higher than a decade ago.

"The data also show that the sea surface temperature in the northern hemisphere Atlantic is the highest since 1880," said Dr David Viner from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA). "We're right, the sceptics are wrong," he told the BBC News website. "It's simple physics; more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, emissions growing on a global basis, and consequently increasing temperatures."

However, Fred Singer from the Science & Environmental Policy Project in Washington DC, a centre of the "climate sceptics" community, disputed this interpretation.

"If indeed 2005 is the warmest northern hemisphere year since 1860, all this proves is that 2005 is the warmest northern hemisphere year since 1860," he told the BBC News website. "It doesn't prove anything else, and certainly cannot be used by itself to prove that the cause of warming is the emission of greenhouse gases. It requires a more subtle examination to know how much of warming is due to man-made causes - there must be some - and how much is down to natural causes."
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4. More quotes

Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, editor of Energy & Environment, on "Sustainability":

"The lack of precise meaning of 'sustainability' is of great political importance…… a paper compromise between the green lobby and the development lobby at UN." Intended to give environment ministries, which eschew counting, more clout and influence over the Treasury…. "Any group can get together and decide what it means, and agree or not. The term has helped to politicise much decision-making. To the Norwegians at the time 'sustainable' meant selling their gas and replacing British coal... "
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In a BBC interview, when asked why birds fly further north:
"If you want to measure temperatures, you use a thermometer, not a bird," said Fred Singer, who heads the U.S. Science and Environmental Policy Project. "Birds have all sorts of reasons for moving north, south, sideways or whatever."

And this angry reaction: "That has got to be one of the most asinine statements I have heard this year. Sounds like something that idiot in the White House would say. Obviously SEPP has nothing whatsoever to do with science or the environment, but is just another toady to the business interests that want to turn back the clock to the 1950s when industry could just dump their crap any- and everywhere with impunity.
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5. Environment And Cancer: The Links Are Elusive

Trying to determine the relationship between the environment and cancer has proven to be vexing. The main problem is trying to decide which chemicals might be causing cancer, and in whom, says the New York Times' Gina Kolata.
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Since 1993, researchers have studied farmers and their spouses in Iowa and North Carolina, including what pesticides and herbicides they use, when did they use them and how much did they use; they also obtained information on other risk factors like smoking, says Kolata.

According to researchers, few associations have been found, but nothing is definitive:

o None of the results are large enough for any regulatory agency to take action or to say they are a human carcinogen.

o They are just leads, including: a slightly higher rate of lung cancer and leukemia in farmers who used the insecticide diasinon and a possible increase in prostate cancer among farmers who used methyl bromide to fumigate the soil.

o Investigators also looked for an association between pesticides, herbicides and breast cancer, but they didn't find one.

Moreover, even if the researchers found that some chemicals have increased farmers' cancer rates, it would still remain unclear what that means for the general population where exposures are usually much lower, and whether or not those chemicals should be banned, says Kolata.

Furthermore, in the last 50 years, cancer rates have steadily dropped and what appears to be increases in breast and prostate cancer are just the results of increased screenings; pollution is not a major determinant of U.S. cancer rates, says Kolata.

Source: Gina Kolata, "Environment and Cancer: The Links Are Elusive," New York Times, December 13, 2005. Courtesy of NCPA
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6. Court Decision on Intelligent Design: It is not science

By now you know that the Federal District Court in the Middle District of Pennsylvania has ruled the Dover School Board's insistence upon students hearing a statement explaining that Intelligent Design is a competing scientific theory about the origin of the species is unconstitutional. A copy of the Court's Opinion is attached. It's 139 pages long. The New York Times electronic edition will be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/21/education/21evolution.html. Page A21 in the print edition. Both contain an excerpt from the court's opinion (brief). For those of you who can't access either here's an amusing quote, unusual in a judicial decision:

"The breathtaking inanity of the board's decision is evident when considered against the factual background which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources."

The Court also found that two of the school board Intelligent Design proponents lied under oath.

Three or four more cases are due: Minn., Kansas (again), and two other jurisdictions where challenges may be forthcoming to similar school board actions.

I might add, though I am sure you know, that the Court's opinion does not discuss and certainly has no bearing on the validity or utility of the philosophical/religious theory of intelligent design.
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