New on the Web: Some Evangelicals are becoming concerned about Global warming (Item #1) - but not the mainstream.. They were "converted" by IPCC poo-bah Sir John Houghton who apparently dazzled them with brilliant scientific erudition, somewhere in England (which would be on the road to Damascus, as seen from the US - but still quite some distance away).
The chickens are coming home to roost: During the Clinton era, the EPA provided grants to faith-based groups to set up bureaucracies for "saving the Earth." Mostly liberal denominations eagerly accepted the money. But once started, they could not be stamped out and are now thriving thanks to foundation support. Those funds could have gone to social services; but feeding starving people is not as fashionable as fighting Global Warming, which has spawned so many wonderful international meetings in exciting locales.
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The newly-established International Panel to Stop the Incipient Ice Age (IPSIIA) will celebrate its founding in a Baltic Cruise this summer with series of mini-symposia aboard ship and in various ports in a region that was covered with kilometer-thick sheets of ice during the first half of the Holocene - as recently as 5000 years ago. Building on a successful "dry run" in 2004 with co-founder of IPSIIA Dr. Klaus Heiss, we will start and return to Copenhagen, visiting all or some the following ports: Stockholm, Helsinki, St. Petersburg, Tallin, Gdansk, and Oslo in a 10-day cruise (most likely Aug 23 to Sept. 2).

For planning purposes, pls indicate yr interest and preferred alternate time frame. Cost per person will be about $2000, depending on date and type of cabin. We may also be able to get special transatlantic airfares to Copenhagen.

Further news: For those who are professionally inclined, the European Meteorological Society meets in Ljubljana, Slovenia, Sept 4-8, 2006.

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The Annual Report of SEPP presents 2005 highlights (Item #2). We are doing great, thanks to your generous support

The NY Times reports (Item #3) that leading science journals are losing credibility with the media and general public. No big surprise:
"…the more fundamental issue is that journals do not and cannot guarantee the truth of what they publish," said Nicholas Wade, a science reporter for The New York Times. "Publication of a paper only means that, in the view of the referees who green-light it, it is interesting and not obviously false. In other words, all of the results in these journals are tentative."
"The growing competition for the most important research among the journals may contribute to mistakes and fabrications, even in the most prestigious of the bunch." Ashley Dunn of The Los Angeles Times.

The New Atlantis (Journal of Technology & Society - and highly recommended) comments on the Korean stem-cell fiasco (Number 11--Winter 2006, p.115):
"It is hard to avoid the conclusion that in no small part the editors of Science accepted Hwang's deceptions because they wanted to believe them, and that they wanted to believe them because, for various social, cultural, and political reasons they wanted human cloning, rather than any scientific alternative, to be the future of stem cell research. From now on, perhaps they should look into the mirror before screeching about the politicization of science."
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Don Kennedy, editor of Science, is at it again, refusing to publish a paper on gender differences - even after it had been accepted and put into galleys. "A lame excuse" says the author, a noted developmental biologist and Fellow of the Royal Society (Item #4). Ah yes, you have to be politically correct to get published in Science these days. Now if one could only argue that limiting greenhouse gases would stop such gender differences …

Meanwhile at The New Republic, editor John Judis is encouraging scientific McCarthyism, accusing NOAA scientists of quoting their own peer-reviewed papers on hurricanes [Horrors!] and of expressing scientific opinions he disagrees with [even worse horrors!]. He smells a conspiracy, driven by the political views of the Administration. In this, he is joined by Don Kennedy, editor of Science (see Item #5). They just know that hurricanes are caused by Global Warming, and all would be well if only George Bush were to endorse the Kyoto Protocol.

Actually, there is a valid scientific debate about the intensity of hurricanes -- not their frequency - and both sides may be right. Here is my personal view:
1. First, the physics of the problem: There is no question that hurricanes derive their energy from the latent heat of water vapor evaporated from the sea surface. Therefore, a warmer sea-surface temperature should produce a stronger hurricane.
2. But the Gulf of Mexico is generally warmer than the Atlantic - a well-known geographic anomaly. So it is only necessary for the North Atlantic Oscillation to shift the hurricane track into the Gulf. This may account for the observed cyclical pattern of intensity, which seems to match that of the NAO.
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Happy Anniversary, Kyoto! Only six more years left to meet those pesky emission limits. Except none of the ratifiers are likely to make it (see Item #6). What to do? Cheat, of course, and buy unused emission rights from Belarus - or just cheat.

The answer for Europe is to forget about Kyoto and import cheap and secure coal from South Africa, Australia, and the US as quickly as possible to free up natural gas supplies for home heating. And build nuclear plants over the longer term. To a large extent, this shift on energy policy applies also to the US.
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And now we turn to the monumental effort in Britain, the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change. It was set up to follow on from the unusually good and balanced House of Lords report on the same issue. However, it has gotten off to a poor start (Item #7). Sir Nicholas Stern's Oxonia Lecture on Jan. 31 was a fiesta of bad science and disaster scenarios,
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/213/56/Oxonia_Lecture_Notes.pdf
and the discussion papers now issued are no better. All are available at www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/Independent_Reviews/stern_review_economics_climate_change/sternreview_index.cfm or just punch "Stern Review" on Google.

Riley Still rileystill@mindspring.com writes : "Paraphrasing the lecture's meaning as best I can: We've got a colossal, very complex problem, that fortunately the scientific community of computer modelers has discovered for us, that involves everybody and everything, and we've got to study every economic, scientific, and political alternative, using our collective brilliance and political strength to collaborate internationally, involving developed countries, developing countries, and other countries to find and implement every solution that game theorists, economists, scientists, and politicians everywhere can devise to be instituted to adapt to and to mitigate effects of this coming global catastrophe."

Apparently, Sir Nick buys into catastrophic climate science. Can something be done to inform him? Yes, there is. You can send in a comment by March 17. Good luck!
You will find some ideas in my letter to the Financial Times (Item #7) and below::

** Nature (Jan 26) is beginning to question the economic assumptions underlying emission scenarios used by IPCC ( a victory for IPCC critics David Henderson and Ian Castles) -- but not yet the costs and benefits of emission controls.
** From an article for The Green Room, the BBC News website's weekly series of opinion pieces on environmental issues:
Reporting previously undisclosed figures, Andrew Simms writes: "Our new calculations … based on Treasury statistics, show that UK government income from the fossil-fuel sector -- conservatively estimated at £34.9bn ($61bn) -- is greater than revenue from council tax, stamp duty, capital gains and inheritance tax combined. Policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions could therefore have a major impact on the government coffers; a serious disincentive to action."
** Finally, assuming that the studies of Prof Robert Mendelsohn (and 23 co-authoring resource economists) are correct -- and I have no doubt they are. Then a modest warming should produce POSITIVE NET BENEFITS. For detail, see their volume published by Cambridge Univ Press, 1999.
If so, then a cost-benefit analysis has no meaning. It argues instead for adding MORE CO2 to the atmosphere to achieve even greater net benefits.

Mendelsohn et al have not performed a sensitivity (or marginal) analysis; so we cannot yet define an optimum CO2 level. But there is no reason to think that the present level of 380ppm -- or even the pre-industrial level of 280ppm -- is optimum. Nor is there reason to believe that the present climate is optimum. Was the cooler climate of 1850 really better?
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The ethanol scam is far worse than Abramoff, writes Dan Mitchell. It has been producing millions in donations to members of Congress and is costing the taxpayers billions in subsidies (Item #8). But ethanol is "politically correct" - even for the Bush administration. And of course, Science is touting ethanol, because biofuel is "renewable energy." The Jan 27 issue carries an editorial (p.432), a review of biofuels (p.484), and a research paper (p.506) that claims positive net energy (and therefore some saving in imported oil) - but, alas, no reduction in CO2 emissions. But even this Panglossian outlook admits that large-scale use of ethanol cannot be based on corn and requires cellulosic technology.

The real way to address the energy crunch is through freeing up natural gas for transportation and other uses by increasing coal/nuclear electric generation (Item #9). I was glad to see my Letter paired with one from Senator Lugar (WSJ Feb. 13) who argues that ethanol is already competitive with oil if one factors three externalities into oil prices. But his claims should raise much discussion:
1. Does the US really need to "safeguard Mideast oil fields"?
2. Wouldn't ME oil producers sell oil to the world and get rich -- even if we reduce imports somewhat?
3. Doesn't Clean Air legislation address pollution -- whether from fossil fuels or from the manufacture of ethanol?
And if ethanol is really competitive with gasoline (before taxes), why don't we just import the stuff from Brazil were it is said to be even cheaper?

[It was a nice coincidence that Ambassador Ushakov's adjacent article touted Russia's first deliveries of LNG. Do we really need this additional dependence if a better energy policy can do away with LNG imports altogether? I wonder what the contract details are for Russian LNG imports and who pays for the infrastructure ?]
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"Greenland ice cap breaking up at twice the rate it was five years ago, says scientist Bush tried to gag" What a great headline in The Independent (UK) (Feb 17) for drawing attention to an interview: "Jim Hansen, the director of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, is President George Bush's top climate modeller. He was speaking to Fred Pearce."
And consider the lurid story in the Washington Post (Item #10), which reports on a paper in Science (where else?) on melting glaciers . Apparently, it is causing sleepless nights for staffers of the Pew Center But just last year Science published a paper by Ole Johannessen that reported a thickening of the Greenland ice sheet. Ah how quickly we forget.

There are good reasons why I pay little attention to these scare stories about ice suddenly melting and raising sea level: We had many warm periods during the Holocene, most recently around AD 1100. The polar ice sheets survived nicely and -- more important-- SL rise data showed no acceleration.
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The WP story was reprinted on Feb. 18 in the Melbourne Age, Australia, headlined: "Flooding fears as glaciers melt faster."
Alarming satellite images show seas rising far faster than expected.
A sharp rise in the volume of water produced by melting ice in Greenland has prompted scientists to warn of faster-than-expected rising sea levels. Etc, etc.

So how much rise in sea level from 100 km3 of ice? Well, it is 100, divided by the surface area of the ocean ~0.7[4pR2], where R is ~6400 km. It works out to be 0.3 mm or 0.01 inch.
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1. Evangelicals Urge Action on Global Warming
By Alan Elsner, Reuters

WASHINGTON (Feb. 9) - A group of 85 evangelical Christian leaders on Wednesday backed legislation opposed by the White House to cut carbon dioxide emissions, kicking off a campaign to mobilize religious conservatives to combat global warming.

The group which included mega-church pastors, Christian college presidents, religious broadcasters and writers, also unveiled a full-page advertisement to run in Thursday's New York Times and a television ad it hopes to screen nationally. "With God's help, we can stop global warming for our kids, our world and our Lord," the television spot declared.

The campaign by evangelicals coincided with a call on Wednesday by a leading U.S. think tank for the United States to take immediate steps to fight global warming, including working with other nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The Pew Center for Global Climate Change said in a report that America has waited too long to seriously tackle the climate-change problem and spelled out 15 steps the United States could take to reduce emissions it spews as the world's biggest energy consumer and producer of greenhouse gases.

The campaign by the evangelical leaders represented a possible split in President George W. Bush's political base, in which Christian evangelical voters are heavily represented.
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2. Annual Report of the Science & Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) for 2005

The year 2005 was dominated by the subject of global warming. Although SEPP scientists also dealt with other topics (e.g., nuclear radiation, science and regulation at EPA, energy policy, space exploration), climate change occupied the main stage, in terms of university seminars, presentations at scientific conferences, briefings here and abroad, interviews for TV and radio, as well as publications in scientific and popular journals.

Highlights follow; a fuller account is found on website www.sepp.org.

1. A detailed examination of how radiation contributes to sea-surface temperature (SST). Since downwelling IR radiation from atmospheric greenhouse gases is absorbed within a 10-micron thick "skin," the details of energy transfer to the ocean "mixed layer" are of paramount importance. Research on this topic was presented in invited papers at the AGU Spring meeting (New Orleans) and at a climate conference in Erice, Sicily.

2. Following up on two papers published in GRL (July 9, 2004), we compared the (updated) observed temperature trends with predictions from 19 climate models. GH models uniformly predict trends increasing with altitude; however, observations from surface stations, balloon-borne radiosondes, and microwave instruments in satellites give a contrary result. We presented our conclusions at the AGU Fall meeting in San Francisco and are preparing a detailed publication. This topic is judged to be of the greatest importance by the US-CCSP since it bears on the question of whether current warming is mainly of natural origin or due to increases in GH gases.

3. Especially noteworthy were invited semi-popular presentations on climate issues at conferences organized by the Scientific Alliance (at the Royal Institution, London), by the Rafael del Pino Foundation (in Madrid), by ECO (in Reno, NV) and by DDP (in Las Vegas, NV).

4. Scientific briefings on climate problems were given to top officials of DOE and of NOAA.

5. Individual briefings to political, civic, professional and industrial groups on problems of climate change and energy policy, incl to the international Le Cercle group chaired by Lord Norman Lamont.

6. Organization of an international scientific project to prepare a report on climate change to counter the forthcoming IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.

7. Seminar talks to student groups and participation in a working group setting standards for high-school science teachers.

Outreach: SEPP does not lobby on behalf of political candidates or legislation. We do provide scientific information upon request in testimony to Congress or to other groups.
We expanded our web site. Readers, including students, journalists, and lawmakers, find it a good source of sound scientific information. Our weekly bulletin "The Week That Was" reaches over 2000 addressees: scientists, policymakers, the media and the public. We spent much time replying to comments and questions and were guests at some dozen radio talk-shows. TV interviews on CNN Headline News, Fox News, and BBC.

Financial: SEPP does not solicit support from government or industry. Major contributions came from several charitable foundations; contributions from individuals ranged from $25 up to $12,000. SEPP still pays no salaries and relies on student help and volunteers. We ended 2005 with a small surplus.
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Respectfully submitted S. Fred Singer, President, SEPP
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3. Reporters Find Science Journals Harder to Trust, but Not Easy to Verify
By JULIE BOSMAN, NY Times February 13, 2006

When the journal Science recently retracted two papers by the South Korean researcher Dr. Hwang Woo Suk, it officially confirmed what he had denied for months: Dr. Hwang had fabricated evidence that he had cloned human cells.

But the editors of Science were not alone in telling the world of Dr. Hwang's research. Newspapers, wire services and television networks had initially trumpeted the news, as they often do with information served up by the leading scientific journals. Now news organizations say they are starting to look at the science journals a bit more skeptically.

"My antennae are definitely up since this whole thing unfolded," said Rob Stein, a science reporter for The Washington Post. "I'm reading papers a lot more closely than I had in the past, just to sort of satisfy myself that any individual piece of research is valid. But we're still in sort of the same situation that the journal editors are, which is that if someone wants to completely fabricate data, it's hard to figure that out."

But other than heightened skepticism, not a lot has changed in how newspapers treat scientific journals. Indeed, newspaper editors openly acknowledge their dependence on them. At The Los Angeles Times, at least half of the science stories that run on the front page come directly from journals, said Ashley Dunn, the paper's science editor. Gideon Gil, the health and science editor for The Boston Globe, said that two of the three science stories that run on a typical day were from research that appeared in journals.

Beyond newspapers, papers from journals are routinely picked up by newsweeklies, network news, talk radio and Web sites.

"They are the way science is conducted, they're the way people share information, they're the best approximation of acceptance by knowledgeable people," said Laura Chang, science editor for The New York Times. "We do rely on them for the starting point of many of our stories, and that will not change."

There are limits to the vetting that science reporters, who are generally not scientists themselves, can do. Most journal articles have embargoes attached, giving reporters several days to call specialists in the field, check footnotes on an article and scrutinize the results.

"Scientific discoveries are more difficult because they often require in the generalist reporter a good deal of study, follow-up interviews and some guidance on how to make sense of technical matters," said Roy Peter Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, which studies journalism. "But I think the scandals do require both a new level of skepticism on the part of the reporter and also maybe some new protocols between scientists and journalists."

The Hwang case was not the first time journals had been duped: recently, editors at The New England Journal of Medicine said they suspected two cancer papers they published contained fabricated data. In December, the same journal said that the authors of a 2000 study on the painkiller Vioxx had omitted the fact that several patients had had heart attacks while taking the drug in a trial. A study on the painkiller Celebrex that appeared in The Journal of the American Medical Association was discredited when it was discovered that the authors had submitted only six months of data, instead of the 12 months of data they had collected.

While the journals have a peer review process that is in part meant to filter out fallacious papers by checking research techniques and conclusions, perhaps the greatest difficulty for science reporters is trying to catch what journal editors have missed.

After hearing the news of Dr. Hwang's fabrications, Mr. Gil of The Globe said he immediately remembered his newspaper's coverage of the stem cell papers.

"We were blown away, in part because we had written those stories on Page 1," Mr. Gil said. "And when we wrote them, we called the leading experts in the world on all this embryonic stem cell stuff, who are here in Boston. And they were as hoodwinked as anybody else."

Despite the fraud cases, most of what the journals publish is basically credible, said David Perlman, the science editor of The San Francisco Chronicle. Among the most prestigious science journals that reporters consult regularly are Nature, Science, The New England Journal of Medicine and The Journal of the American Medical Association.

"I think they and we have been burned enough that they're making efforts," Mr. Perlman said. "They're being more careful now, and I think reporters are too. I definitely have more of a 'Hey, let's look more carefully' attitude now that I did 5 or 10 years ago."

Donald Kennedy, the editor of Science, said in a statement in December that the journal itself was not an investigative body. But when reporting on journal findings, most news outlets fail to caution that studies must be replicated to be truly authenticated.

"Beyond Hwang, the more fundamental issue is that journals do not and cannot guarantee the truth of what they publish," said Nicholas Wade, a science reporter for The New York Times. "Publication of a paper only means that, in the view of the referees who green-light it, it is interesting and not obviously false. In other words, all of the results in these journals are tentative."

The journals' own peer review processes, which are intended to be the first barrier against fraud, have come under criticism lately. A cover story in the February issue of The Scientist said that the top-tier journals were receiving more submissions every year, overtaxing peer reviewers and weakening the screening process.

After the Hwang scandal, Science announced it was considering a set of changes to better prevent fraud: Dr. Kennedy said in January that new rules could include "requiring all authors to detail their specific contributions to the research submitted, and to sign statements of concurrence with the conclusions of the work," as well as "implementing improved methods of detecting image alteration, although it appears improbable that they would have detected problems in this particular case." (Through a spokeswoman, Dr. Kennedy declined to be interviewed and said the editors were currently conducting a review of the episode.)

Some newspapers have adopted guidelines of their own to check for conflicts of interest involving authors of journal articles. The Globe instituted guidelines last July requiring reporters to ask researchers about their financial ties to studies, and to include that information in resulting articles. In its weekly health and science section, The Globe outlines any shortcomings of a study under the heading "Cautions."

Kit Frieden, the health and science editor for The Associated Press, said: "We've always had our own peer review process, where on the major studies we seek outside expert comment. We've always regarded scientific research cautiously because mistakes can be made, and I don't think that's changed."

The growing competition for the most important research among the journals may contribute to mistakes and fabrications, even in the most prestigious of the bunch. But in the end, the severe consequences of presenting fraudulent research generally act as a deterrent, said Mr. Dunn of The Los Angeles Times.

"Unlike financial fraud, where you can bamboozle somebody of their money and disappear and then start over again, in science the researchers are in one place," he said. "If they get caught in this type of thing, their careers are over."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/13/business/media/13journal.html
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4. Scientists are split on the different ways men and women think
Daily Telegraph (UK), Filed: 07/02/2006
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml;jsessionid=R2SCQNKZZJTYJQFIQMFCFGGAVCBQYIV0?xml=/connected/2006/02/07/ecnthink07.xml&%5C1sSheet=/connected/2006/02/07/ixconn.html

An academic row has erupted after one of the world's leading scientific journals refused to publish an article which claims that men and women think differently. Peter Lawrence, a biologist and fellow of the Royal Society, accused Science of being "gutless" after it explained that its decision was because the piece did not offer "a strategy on how to deal with the gender issue".

In his paper, Mr Lawrence questioned why, when 60 per cent of biology students are female, only 10 per go on to become professors. This "leaky pipeline" has been blamed on discrimination and a lack of choice which, if corrected, will produce equal numbers of men and women in science. But Mr Lawrence dismissed "the cult of political correctness" that insists men and women are "equivalent, identical even" and argued that "men and women are born different".

The journal considered the article for seven months and, after making a number of changes, gave Mr Lawrence a publication date, proofs and a chance to order reprints.
But at the last minute he received an e-mail from Donald Kennedy, the editor-in-chief, in which he said that the journal was not going to publish the article. The piece "did not, at least for us, lead to a clear strategy about how to deal with the gender issue," said Kennedy. "So much has been written on all sides of this problem that it sets a very high bar for novelty and persuasiveness, and although we liked your essay we have had to decide to reject it."

Mr Lawrence, a developmental biologist who works at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, said: "It was a lame excuse. I could not get it published for reasons that I think were political."

Mr Lawrence's piece - Men, Women, and Ghosts in Science - has since been published online by the Public Library of Science Biology and has become one of the most popular articles over the past few days, attracting about 60 e-mails, almost all from women.

One woman reader said that the men who want to avoid the issues the article raises "are simply running scared of getting lynched like Larry Summers", a reference to the Harvard president who caused a furor with a speech in which he raised the issue of whether women have less innate scientific ability.

The most vociferous criticisms of Mr Lawrence's ideas have come from Nancy Hopkins, a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who accused him of "mashing together true genetic differences between men and women with old- fashioned stereotypes. In so doing, he perpetuates the very problem he is trying to address about why so few women get to the top in science".

Science is reeling from having published two papers that contained the most notorious fraud of recent years, Prof Hwang Woo-Suk's human embryonic stem cell research.

Over two years ago, the journal was also criticised for trying to influence a Congressional debate by publishing a widely reported paper linking the drug ecstasy to brain damage, which was subsequently retracted.

rhighfield@telegraph.co.uk
(c) Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2006.
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5. Is Government Politicizing Science?

John B. Judis, a senior editor for The New Republic, and a founding editor of the Socialist Revolution in 1969 ( now called Socialist Review) alleges that scientists and political appointees in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are together conspiring to suppress scientific knowledge about a linkage of hurricanes and global warming.

Paraphrasing his allegations:
Many respected climate scientists, including some who work for NOAA, believe the organization's official line on the link between global warming and hurricanes is wrong. What's more, there is reason to believe that NOAA knows as much. In the broader scientific community, there is grumbling that NOAA's top officials have suppressed dissenting views on this subject--contributing to the Bush administration's attempt to downplay the danger of climate change. Says Don Kennedy, the editor-in-chief of Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, "There are a lot of scientists there who know it is nonsense, what they are putting up on their website, but they are being discouraged from talking to the press about it."

The notion that NOAA has an "official line" on hurricanes put up on their website apparently comes from this press release from 29 November 2005, which includes the following statements:

The nation is now wrapping up the 11th year of a new era of heightened Atlantic hurricane activity. This era has been unfolding in the Atlantic since 1995, and is expected to continue for the next decade or perhaps longer. NOAA attributes this increased activity to natural occurring cycles in tropical climate patterns near the equator. These cycles, called "the tropical multi-decadal signal," typically last several decades (20 to 30 years or even longer). As a result, the North Atlantic experiences alternating decades-long (20 to 30 year periods or even longer) of above normal or below normal hurricane seasons. NOAA research shows that the tropical multi-decadal signal is causing the increased Atlantic hurricane activity since 1995, and is not related to greenhouse warming.

There is consensus among NOAA hurricane researchers and most academic experts that recent increases in hurricane activity are primarily the result of natural fluctuations in the tropical climate system known as the tropical multi-decadal signal.

Judging by a quote in the Judis article, Donald Kennedy of Science thinks that this issue is important enough to violate his own magazine's embargo policy when he says that, "According to Kennedy, forthcoming papers by Emanuel and by Kevin Trenberth of NCAR could strengthen the case for a link between hurricanes and global warming." Of course it seems obvious that even if such papers are soon to appear, it makes no sense for scientists who are unaware of them to reflect what they say. But I suppose that the logic here is that such studies would confirm what those evil NOAA scientists should have known in the first place.

TNR's Judis appears to acknowledge a "scientific debate" but then writes as if the previous scientific paradigm has been overturned and anyone who says differently must be in cahoots with the Bush Administration's spin machine or conservative commentators. Bizarrely, Judis criticizes NOAA scientists for making statements fully supportable by peer-reviewed science, and in some cases work that those scientists have published.

"NOAA officials have sometimes included carefully crafted caveats designed to deflect criticism from scientists who know about the controversy. But, because they don't acknowledge the debate explicitly, the general public is likely to miss the caveats' significance. Appearing before a subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee on September 20, for instance, Max Mayfield, the director of NOAA's National Hurricane Center, said, "The increased activity since 1995 is due to natural fluctuations and cycles of hurricane activity, driven by the Atlantic Ocean itself along with the atmosphere above it and not enhanced substantially by global warming." NOAA officials also resort to clever ambiguities that elude the public."

If there is a scientific debate, as Judis suggests, should Mayfield have the right to express his views on the science? Didn't we just go through this with James Hansen? Is it that Mayfield's views are not politically correct and so therefore he must be lying to the public? Judis is encouraging scientific McCarthyism.
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6. Kyoto's First Anniversary Provides Little Reason to Celebrate
Despite Bitterly Nagging the U.S. to Adopt Kyoto, Europe Fails to Meet Kyoto Targets

The glaring failure of Europe's nations to meet Kyoto Treaty targets has dimmed celebrations over the treaty's first anniversary, says Dana Joel Gattuso, a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research.

In a National Center for Public Policy Research National Policy Analysis paper released today, Gattuso notes the Kyoto Protocol requires industrialized countries to cut carbon dioxide emissions by an average 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-2012.

But, Gattuso says, 13 of the 15 original members of the European Union have increased their emissions since 1990. New data by the EU's own European Environmental Agency show that by 2010, the 15 nations' emissions collectively will exceed 1990 levels by seven percent.

A key problem, Gattuso says, is that "the Kyoto treaty is economic suicide, and most European nations know it."

According to the Brussels economic research organization International Council for Capital Formation, Kyoto would cause the UK's gross domestic product to fall more than 1 percent in 2010 from what it otherwise would be, Italy's by more than 2 percent, and Spain's by more than 3 percent. The UK, Italy, and Germany each would lose at least 200,000 jobs; Spain would lose 800,000.

Gattuso further notes that even if European nations did comply with the Kyoto targets, for all the economic hardship, they'd achieve a paltry reduction in carbon dioxide emissions of just 0.1 percent by 2010: "The harsh reality of an economic plunge with little to show for it has caused some key European political leaders to do an about-face on Kyoto," she says.

The paper can be read online at ww.nationalcenter.org/NPA537EuropeKyoto206.html.
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World Leader In Climate Alarmism Will Fail To Meet Its Kyoto Obligations
The Independent, 18 February 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article346162.ece
By Michael Harrison, Business Editor

The [UK] Government admitted yesterday that Britain will miss its global warming targets by a huge margin because of rising levels of greenhouse gas emissions from heavy industry.

Figures published by the Department for Trade and Industry reveal carbon emissions from the power generation industry and heavy users of energy such as iron and steel, chemicals and glass manufacturers are likely to be far above the targets the UK has signed up to, both voluntarily and under the Kyoto Protocol.

The DTI's projections show carbon dioxide emissions from industry are likely to average at least 263 million tons and possibly as much as 270 million tons a year between 2008 and 2012. That compares with the 245 million tons UK industry is allowed to emit under the European Union's current emissions scheme.
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One Year Later, Kyoto-Enthusiasts Struggle To Meet Targets

CNSNews.com, 17 February 2006 http://www.crosswalk.com/news/1379048.html
Patrick Goodenough International Editor

(CNSNews.com) - Europe's top environment official marked the one-year anniversary of the Kyoto Protocol on Thursday by accusing the U.S. of not doing enough to combat climate change -- despite the fact that many of the treaty's most enthusiastic supporters have done significantly worse than America in dealing with "greenhouse gas" emissions.

The U.S. rejected Kyoto, saying the treaty's emission-reduction targets would harm the American economy and workers. Instead the U.S. is exploring alternatives with Asia-Pacific partners focusing on developing cleaner technology.

"The U.S. still thinks that technology will find the answer," the Associated Press quoted European Union (E.U.) environment commissioner Stavros Dimas as telling reporters in Brussels. "But we know we need [emission] reductions."

Washington says it shares the Kyoto goal of reducing emissions of CO2 and other pollutants blamed for climate change, but that its partnership with China, Japan, South Korea, India and Australia is a better way to achieve it.

Environmental groups are highly skeptical of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, calling it an attempt by the U.S. and Australia to undermine Kyoto. The State Department said last week the initiative "will complement, but not replace, the Kyoto Protocol."
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7. The Stern review of climate economics
Letter to Financial Times
SFS/ February 7, 2006

When the Economic Affairs Committee of the House of Lords issued its report on global warming last July, suggesting a much-needed input from the Treasury, I had high hopes that this might provide Tony Blair and Britain a graceful exit from the strictures of the Kyoto Protocol. Alas, I had not counted on the bureaucracy, which seems to be inextricably wedded to the myth of a coming climate disaster. Apparently, Sir Nicholas Stern, directing the Treasury study, draws his scientific information from Defra. His Oxonian lecture (reported on in FT of 3 Feb) commences, ominously, with: "Climate change is a serious and urgent issue." It continues with alarmist statements about possible impacts.

** However, there is no hard evidence that a current warming trend is caused by human-produced carbon dioxide; it is likely a natural fluctuation of the climate. In any case, it is small and non-threatening. The so-called evidence for major anthropogenic warming comes entirely from mathematical models. But such model results are not evidence. The data, imperfect as they are, do not support the model calculations; and therefore we are dealing really with non-validated models, which disagree even with each other in significant respects.

** Experienced resource economists have concluded that a modest global warming would provide substantial benefits. In 1999, Cambridge University Press published these conclusions of a team of 23 specialists led by Yale University resource expert Prof Mendelsohn. The major benefits of a warmer planet accrue to agriculture and forestry, leading to a greener and richer world. These results have never been challenged.

**It is quite generally agreed, even by Kyoto enthusiasts, that stabilization of atmospheric greenhouse-gas (GHG) levels requires emission reductions of 60 to 80 percent by all nations. The Kyoto Protocol, while prohibitively costly, aims for only a five-percent cut by industrialized nations and does not cover China, India, and other rapidly developing nations. Models show that such GHG stabilization would still lead to a climate warming.

The conclusion should be obvious: The answer to a possible climate change is adaptation. Mitigation beyond any economically sensible energy conservation is both costly and ineffective. Finally, the exaggerated concern about global warming is a serious diversion from important threats facing the world: poverty, disease, and terrorism.
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Atmospheric physicist S. Fred Singer is professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and a former director of the US Weather Satellite Service.
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8. The ethanol scam is far worse than Abramoff.
By Dan Mitchell
The political elite in Washington are making a big deal about the dealings of one lobbyist, but the real scandal is the corruption that takes place in full view. Ethanol subsidies are a great example. Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute exposes the absurd economic rationale for ethanol and then explains the real reason why politicians shower money on this wasteful energy source:
Growing and harvesting the corn, and heating and reheating the fermented corn to produce ethanol of a high enough quality to replace some of the gasoline in your car requires an enormous amount of energy. How much? A recent careful study by Cornell University's David Pimentel and the University of California at Berkeley's Tad Patzek added up all the energy consumption that goes into ethanol production. ....Putting it all together, they found that it takes 29 percent more energy to make ethanol from corn than is contained in the ethanol itself. It's not that corn is a bad source for ethanol. The other sources mentioned by the president look even worse. Wood biomass takes 57 percent more energy to produce than it contains. Switch grass takes about 50 percent more. Ethanol is just a highly uneconomical product. ...no matter how expensive fossil fuels become, ethanol will never be economical because it takes so much fossil fuel to produce. It might be possible that someday technological processes will emerge that make production of ethanol less reliant on fossil fuels, but the billions in subsidies to this point have left us with a process that is still a disgrace and an absurd waste of energy and taxpayers' money. ...The arguments against ethanol are so persuasive you have to ask yourself: Why does Congress keep throwing money at it? The answer appears to be that elected officials from corn- growing states such as Iowa and Illinois see it as a cash cow for their constituents. The ethanol business is a pretty good source of cash for the lawmakers too. The political action committee of Archer Daniels Midland Co., the world's largest producer of corn-based ethanol fuel, gave $69,000 to federal candidates for the 2004 elections, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In 2002, before such unlimited "soft money" donations were outlawed, ADM gave $1.8 million to political parties. Its political action committee gave close to $200,000 to individual campaigns and committees.
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9. Easing the Energy Crunch
Letter to WSJ, published Feb. 13, 2006

Peter Huber (WSJ op-ed Feb. 3) has it exactly right. Our oil problems would be eased and imports reduced, if natural gas (methane) could be freed up as a boiler fuel and became available for transportation. As a result of stringent controls and crippling lawsuits against new coal and nuclear plants, utilities over the past two decades rushed to build so many gas-burning plants that demand has now badly outstripped domestic supply. The use of methane for electric generation has grown from zero to 23% in a few years, raising its price seven-fold, from $2 per MCF to roughly $14. [In heat-value equivalents, this means going from $12 to $84 per barrel of oil.] One of the chief factors driving this transition has been environmental: The concern that coal burning would greatly increase pollution, plus the irrational fear of global warming from carbon-dioxide emission. But coal already supplies over 50% of US power and nuclear plants generate no pollution or carbon dioxide whatsoever. The White House should use its bully pulpit to make these facts clear to the American public.

Unless the present situation is reversed quickly by pushing natural gas off the grid, we may soon be forced to import large amounts of costly and insecure LNG (liquefied natural gas) -- much of it from the Middle East. LNG lacks the easy fungibility of oil since there are only a few sources that have invested in complex liquefaction plants. Supply cut-offs, whether accidental, by sabotage, or politically inspired, can therefore be effective. Further, LNG's specially designed tanker vessels and unloading terminals provide ready targets for terrorists. Of course, these arguments may not persuade environmental groups and others that have been against all practical forms of energy and insist on touting "sustainable" generation, like wind mills.
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S. Fred Singer is professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and the co-author of Free Market Energy (Universe Books).
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10. Changes in the Velocity Structure of the Greenland Ice Sheet
Eric Rignot and Pannir Kanagaratnam
Science 17 February 2006: Vol. 311. no. 5763, pp. 986 - 990 DOI: 10.1126/science.1121381

Using satellite radar interferometry observations of Greenland, we detected widespread glacier acceleration below 66° north between 1996 and 2000, which rapidly expanded to 70° north in 2005. Accelerated ice discharge in the west and particularly in the east doubled the ice sheet mass deficit in the last decade from 90 to 220 cubic kilometers per year. As more glaciers accelerate farther north, the contribution of Greenland to sea-level rise will continue to increase.
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Glacier Melt Could Signal Faster Rise in Ocean Levels
By Shankar Vedantam, Washington Post, February 17

Greenland's glaciers are melting into the sea twice as fast as previously believed, the result of a warming trend that renders obsolete predictions of how quickly Earth's oceans will rise over the next century, scientists said yesterday.

The new data come from satellite imagery and give fresh urgency to worries about the role of human activity in global warming. The Greenland data are mirrored by findings from Bolivia to the Himalayas, scientists said, noting that rising sea levels threaten widespread flooding and severe storm damage in low-lying areas worldwide.

The scientists said they do not yet understand the precise mechanism causing glaciers to flow and melt more rapidly, but they said the changes in Greenland were unambiguous -- and accelerating: In 1996, the amount of water produced by melting ice in Greenland was about 90 times the amount consumed by Los Angeles in a year. Last year, the melted ice amounted to 225 times the volume of water that city uses annually.

"We are witnessing enormous changes, and it will take some time before we understand how it happened, although it is clearly a result of warming around the glaciers," said Eric Rignot, a scientist at the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The Greenland study is the latest of several in recent months that have found evidence that rising temperatures are affecting not only Earth's ice sheets but also such things as plant and animal habitats, coral reefs' health, hurricane severity, droughts, and globe-girdling currents that drive regional climates.

The ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are among the largest reservoirs of fresh water on Earth, and their fate is expected to be a major factor in determining how much the oceans will rise. Rignot and University of Kansas scientist Pannir Kanagaratnam, who published their findings yesterday in the journal Science, declined to guess how much the faster melting would raise sea levels but said current estimates of around 20 inches over the next century are probably too low.

While sea-level increases of a few feet may not sound like very much, they could have profound consequences on flood-prone countries such as Bangladesh and trigger severe weather around the world.

"The implications are global," said Julian Dowdeswell, a glacier expert at the University of Cambridge in England who reviewed the new paper for Science. "We are not talking about walking along the sea front on a nice summer day, we are talking of the worst storm settings, the biggest storm surges . . . you are upping the probability major storms will take place."

The study also highlights how seemingly small changes in temperature can have extensive effects. Where glaciers in Greenland were once traveling around four miles per year, they are now moving twice as fast. While it is possible that increased precipitation in northern Greenland is somehow compensating for the melting in the south, the scientists said that is unlikely.

There are multiple ways warming might be causing glaciers to accelerate. The scientists said increased temperatures may loosen the grip that glaciers have on underlying bedrock, or melt away floating shelves along the shore that can hold ice in place.

Whatever the mechanism, the phenomenon seems widespread. At a news conference organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science at its annual meeting in St. Louis, glacier scientists Vladimir Aizen from the University of Idaho and Gino Casassa of Chile's Centro de Estudios Cientificos said they were seeing the same thing happen to glaciers in the Himalayas and South America.

"Glaciers have retreated systematically and in an accelerated fashion in the last few decades," Casassa said. One glacier that provided Bolivia with its only ski slope five years ago has splintered into three and cannot be used for skiing, the scientist added.

Rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers also raises concerns for the large portion of humankind that gets its fresh water from glacier-fed rivers in South Asia, Aizen noted.

Most climate scientists believe a major cause for Earth's warming climate is increased emissions of greenhouse gases as a result of burning fossil fuels, largely in the United States and other wealthy, industrialized nations such as those of Western Europe but increasingly in rapidly developing nations such as China and India as well. Carbon dioxide and several other gases trap the sun's heat and raise atmospheric temperature.

"This study underscores the need to take swift, meaningful actions at home and abroad to address climate change," said Vicki Arroyo, director of policy analysis at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

The data highlight the lack of meaningful U.S. policy, she added: "This is the kind of study that should make people stay awake at night wondering what we're doing to the climate, how we're shaping the planet for future generations and, especially, what we can do about it."
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