TO SUBSCRIBERS AND READERS

The TWTW-SEPP Survey of Jan. 7 brought many good suggestions. No change in content or coverage but a new format. Accordingly, the e-mail going to subscribers will carry Summary and Editorial Comments in the body of the letter, with the complete TWTW in the attachment. As before, the html version can be accessed on www.sepp.org by clicking New on Web and TWTW Archive.

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.

For planning purposes, pls indicate yr interest and preferred 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.

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(Not quite) New on the Web: We reprint a review, entitled Failed Predictions, of the Ehrlich book that attacked climate skeptics. The book was hyped at a press briefing at AAAS headquarters by its then-president Jane Lubchenco - all orchestrated by Fenton Communications, the folks who brought you the Alar scare.
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The oil-refinery situation is tight. New ones are planned in Asia, none in US (Item #1).

Like Science, Nature won't publish corrections to papers that promote GW scares (Item #2)

Alister McFarquhar comments on Illarionov and on the Royal Society (Item #3)

Massive cold waves in Asia (Item #4). Note that the Kyoto crowd and the news media are not making the same song and dance about this as they did with the European heat wave last summer. And, contrary to scary reports, Siberia is not melting (Item #5).

Nir Shaviv's value of climate sensitivity is much lower than IPCC's (Item #6)

Frogs croak because of climate change: Nature reports startling results about the disappearance of frogs and blames GW (Item #7). A must-read: Pat Michaels shows how he would have reviewed this research paper:
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2006/01/11/jumping-to-conclusions-frogs-global-warming-and-nature/

Another paper in Nature (Jan 12) reports (Item #8) that plants contribute significantly to the global methane budget. This strange result should have little influence on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) since it is an ongoing process not strongly connected to human activities. The claim that deforestation can explain the recently observed slowdown in atmospheric methane increase does not stand up to quantitative analysis. More likely, it is caused by an increase in methane sinks, like an increase in atmospheric OH molecules.
Most disturbing is the fact that such an important effect has only now been discovered. Are there other holes on the science? asks Robert Matthews in the Financial Times:
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/08423a00-83da-11da-9017-0000779e2340.html

The finding does pose a dilemma for the Kyoto crowd: Should you plant tree farms to soak up CO2, knowing that they will emit methane? Was Ronald Reagan right when he talked about "killer trees"?

Steve Milloy asks: Could it be that celebrities are planting the forests that are emitting methane that is causing the global warming that is growing the bacteria that are wiping out the frogs? The full column is at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,181513,00.html

Joel Schwartz examines the health effects of fine particulates and throws scientific doubt on proposed EPA regulations (Item #9) http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=011206A.
This is the second of two parts on EPA's new particulate matter standards (the first of which can be found in TWTW of Jan .7).
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Finally, some letters from our readers in response to the Survey: praise from Jo Bloemendal (Netherlands), suggestions from Jim Marusek and Mike Hollinshead, a correction from Peter Scheffler, and satire from Craig Townsend (Item #10).
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1. Refineries being built in Asia and Middle East but few planned for U.S.
By Gretchen Randall
Issue Alert from Winningreen, January 9, 2006

Industry analysts predict oil prices will stay between $55 and $65 per barrel for the next five years because of continued growth in worldwide demand while supply of finished product grows more slowly. According to a recent study by Friedman Billings Ramsey, an investment banking firm, fourteen new refinery projects are planned worldwide with only two in the U.S. and they won't be finished for another 4 or 5 years. China has plans to build two refineries while India, Indonesia, Taiwan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Qatar, Angola, Brazil, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia plan to build one refinery each. (E&ENews)

Reportedly U.S. companies are not building new refineries due to the difficulty in getting approvals to build near communities, regulatory red tape, and the low profit margin of refining. With the price of gasoline near its peak, oil companies are being criticized for putting profit margins above the needs of the U.S. economy and the consumers.

Barclay's analyst Paul Horsnell is quoted by the BBC: "There are no firm expansions in refining capacity, not just in the U.S. but in North America, South America and Europe. All of the expansions are in the Middle East and Asia."

Suggested solutions:
**Have the U.S. government contract to build a few refineries on closed military bases located close to both supply and pipelines to transport finished goods. This should eliminate or reduce the delays due to environmental lawsuits. Sell them to the highest bidder with the understanding they must be kept open.
**Provide loan guarantees to companies to build new refineries or plants.
**Provide incentives to companies to finish oil shale test production that can provide the U.S. with up to sixteen trillion barrels of high-grade oil.
**Provide incentives to build coal to gas to liquid plants that turn coal into a gas for home heating or a liquid fuel for transportation.
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2. Global Warming and Health: More hype

Revised Letter To Nature, Dated 12-12-2005
To: Hutchinson, Madeline" <M.Hutchinson@nature.com>

Dear Ms. Hutchinson,

Thank you for your prompt response to my letter. I recognize that pressure
on space in your journal is excessive, and my letter was quite long.
However, I believe that you owe your readers a warning that the review
article on the impacts of climate change and human health (Patz, J.A., et
al., Nature 438, 310; 2005) derived its major conclusion from an analysis
whose authors themselves acknowledge did not "accord with the canons of
empirical science" -- and given Nature's exalted status among science
journals, you also owe it to your own reputation.

Accordingly, I am resubmitting my letter so that it only addresses the
above issue. The revised letter, shorn of comments on the shaky basis for
the policy recommendations advanced in the review, is appended below.

Sincerely,
Indur Goklany
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Revised letter follows:

Sir: It is astonishing to find a review article in Nature (Patz, J.A., et al., Nature 438, 310; 2005), henceforth "the Review", whose major conclusion is taken from an analysis whose authors themselves acknowledge did not "accord with the canons of empirical science." Specifically, its estimate, that anthropogenic climate change already claims over 150,000 lives annually, is based on the Review's reference 57 which notes (on p. 1546)[1] that:

"Empirical observation of the health consequences of long-term climate change, followed by formulation, testing and then modification of hypotheses would therefore require long time-series (probably several decades) of careful monitoring. While this process may accord with the canons of empirical science, it would not provide the timely information needed to inform current policy decisions on GHG emission abatement, so as to offset possible health consequences in the future."

In other words, science was sacrificed in pursuit of a pre-determined policy objective. But, absent serendipity, one cannot base sound policy on poor science. Sound science is a necessary, although not sufficient, condition for sound policy.

Indur M. Goklany*
US Department of the Interior, Washington, DC 20240,e-mail: igoklany@ios.doi.gov (The views expressed here are not necessarily those of any branch of the US Government)

[1] McMichael, A. J. et al., in Comparative Quantification of Health Risks:
Global and Regional Burden of Disease due to Selected Major Risk Factors
(eds Ezzati, M., Lopez, A. D., Rodgers, A. & Murray, C. J. L.) Ch. 20,
1543-1649 (World Health Organization, Geneva, 2004).
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3. Goodbye Illarionov
By Alister McFarquhar in: Environment o
http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/

Reuters reports the resignation of Andrei Illarionov, who, until last January, headed Russia's team at the G8 group of industrialized nations. This helps explain the denouement of the Kyoto Treaty, which I rate among the greatest global scams in history. Russia first rejected Kyoto on the advice of its scientists, but subsequently joined after pressure from Britain no doubt involving appropriate sweeteners.

"..it is one of the paradoxes of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change that companies in Russia and other Eastern European countries, which are among the world's largest producers of greenhouse gases, are poised to earn hundreds of millions of dollars through trading their rights to release carbon dioxide into the air. The potential value for Russia ranges from $20 billion to $60 billion." [Andrew E. Kramer, The New York Times, 28 December 2005]

Illarionov has compared Kyoto to an "economic Auschwitz". He says "The Kyoto protocol is destructive for science and the environment, for public health and safety, for economic growth, and for the international fight against hunger and poverty.... Like fascism and communism, Kyotoism is an attack on basic human freedoms behind a smokescreen of propaganda. Like those ideologies of human hatred, it will be exposed and defeated." [Financial Times, 15 November 2004]

Benny Peiser on CCNet explains how "The international scientific community was plunged into disarray as news emerged yesterday how Britain's Royal Society has been orchestrating a political campaign behind the back of the Russian Academy of Science. In a calculated attempt to overthrow the well-known skeptical position of the Russian Academy of Science on climate change, the Royal Society appears to have pressured its president, Yuri Osipov, into signing a politically motivated document against the expressed stance of its own organization.

The activities of Lord May, President of the Royal Society, appear to have backfired: "Instead of providing evidence of an international 'scientific consensus' on climate change, the public retraction by the Russian Academy of Science from the Royal Society's unduly political G8 statement has exposed the whole exercise as a complete farce. As a result, the reputation and integrity of the world's leading scientific academies have been severely damaged."

My skepticism on Kyoto has been recorded here many times. When realpolitik dominates science we are truly in trouble. Can scientists any longer be trusted? And what have we learned? Post Kyoto the EU and UK energy policy continues to assume incorrectly that carbon emissions account for a significant proportion of current warming and that the contribution by man is large enough to be relevant. Actually there is a better case for conserving energy based on likely supply difficulty and cost, rather than on carbon pollution.
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4. Cold Wave: We need Global Warming

BBC, 6 Jan. 06 -- Almost 250,000 people in north-western China have been trapped by heavy snowfall, as the country faces its worst winter in 20 years.
Temperatures have plummeted to -43C, and snow is blanketing large parts of Xinjiang province. Almost 100,000 people have been evacuated after their homes collapsed under heavy snow. But forecasters are warning this is just the beginning of a cold freeze, and that China needs to brace itself for the chilliest winter in 20 years.
There has also been heavy snow in Japan in the past few weeks - killing dozens of people and paralysing the transport system. The snowfalls have been among the heaviest the country has ever seen.
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5. Siberia Is Not Melting

In the past year, many environmental activists and left-leaning media groups have made claims stating that the global climate change is causing significant warming of the Siberian permafrost and resulting in a large-scale release of potent methane gas, but truth be known: those claims are false, says the Heartland Institute's James Taylor.

According to Russian researchers:

o The annual temperature of soils (with seasonal variations) has been remaining stable; if anything, the depth of seasonal melting has decreased slightly.

o The ecological structure of Siberia is balanced and is not about to harm people with gas discharges.

o The "melting" permafrost is not causing the formation of small lakes in Siberia; they actually result from irregularities when laying oil and gas pipes and other engineering systems.

o At the same time, the permafrost is several hundred meters deep and for methane, other gases and hydrates to escape to the surface it would have to melt at tremendous depths, which is virtually impossible.

Unfortunately, as long as governments hand out billions of dollars each year for climate research, there is no incentive to report the truth, says Taylor; the only sure way to keep receiving climate research funding is to keep claiming impending climate catastrophe.
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Source: James M. Taylor, "Russians Debunk Permafrost Scam," Environment and Climate News: Heartland Institute, November 2005. Courtesy of NCPA
For text: http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=17978
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6. Climate Response to Changes in the Cosmic Ray Flux

Nir Shaviv's paper estimates Climate Sensitivity (temperature increase for a doubling of GH forcing) empirically by comparing different historic temperature changes to estimated changes in the radiative forcing. The bottom line is:

1) Sensitivity to changes in the radiative budget is close to that of a black-body Earth (1.3 +/- 0.35 deg change for CO2 doubling), not 1.5 to 4.5 C as quoted by IPCC (used in their numerical simulations upon which the doomsday scenarios are based).

2) This implies that solar activity increase over the 20th century is responsible for 0.47+/-0.19 deg increase, i.e., about two thirds of the observed global warming.

3) The analysis give "circumstantial evidence" to support the cosmic ray flux climate link. This is because the sensitivities obtained on different time scales without the radiative forcing of Cosmic-Rays/ Clouds are inconsistent with each other. Once the cosmic-ray-flux radiative forcing is included, it adds different numbers on different time scales (because of the different importance it has). After adding those "random" numbers, lo and behold, all the sensitivities on 6 different time scales become consistent with each other.

The article: http://www.phys.huji.ac.il/~shaviv/articles/2004JA010866.pdf
N. J. Shaviv, On Climate Response to Changes in the Cosmic Ray Flux and Radiative Budget. J. Geophys. Res.Space Phys., 110 (A8), A08105, doi:10.1029/2004JA010866, 2005
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7. Frog Catastrophe Blamed on Global Warming
Frogs croak due to climate change (Nature, Jan 12, 2006. pp161-167)

Global warming is promoting the growth of infectious diseases and thus causing widespread extinctions of amphibian species, according to a study published in Nature this week. The new research shows a strong correlation between the widespread disappearances of harlequin frogs (Atelopus) throughout tropical Central and South America and changes in sea surface and air temperatures.

J. Alan Pounds and colleagues set out to determine the relationship between epidemic disease and global warming. They demonstrate direct links between outbreaks of a pathogenic chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, triggered by warming conditions, with the extinction of the frog. It is estimated that 67% of the approximately 110 species of Atelopus have suffered the same fate.

The authors propose that global warming accelerates cloud formation in the American tropics, decreasing daytime temperatures but increasing nocturnal temperatures. These are optimal growth conditions for the fungus, which becomes more pathogenic in cooler temperatures and more lethal in moist conditions. This study demonstrates that global warming is already causing the extinction of species, and that climate-driven epidemics are an immediate threat to biodiversity.
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8. Natural natural gas plants: emitting the GH gas methane
Editor's Summary. Nature 12 January 2006
Nature Plants Methane 1-12-06.pdf

The unexpectedly high levels of the greenhouse gas methane over tropical forests, and the recent decline in the atmospheric growth rate of methane concentrations, cannot be readily explained with the accepted global methane budget. Now a genuinely surprising discovery provides a possible explanation for these phenomena, and may have implications for modelling past and future climates. It was thought that methane formed naturally only in anaerobic conditions, in marshes for instance. In fact, living plants, as well as plant litter, emit methane to the atmosphere under oxic conditions. This additional source of methane could account for 10-30% of the annual methane source strength and has been overlooked in previous studies

Plants exhale methane and affect global warming (pp187-191; N&V)

Plants account for a substantial amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. According to research published in this week's Nature they may release enough methane to account for 10-30% of the annual flow of this greenhouse gas.

The finding is surprising because scientists had previously thought that plants could generate methane only in the absence of oxygen. But Frank Keppler and colleagues found that a wide range of plants released the gas under normal, oxic conditions. Methane also seeps from dead plant material, they add.

"The identification of a new source should prompt a re-examination of the global methane budget," comments David Lowe in a related News and Views article.

The findings may help to explain the large plumes of methane observed above tropical forests. They also suggest that the rapid deforestation of the Earth may be linked to a slow-down of methane accumulation in the atmosphere. "We now have the spectre that new forests might increase greenhouse warming through methane emissions rather than decrease it by being sinks for CO2," comments Lowe.

CONTACT

Frank Keppler (Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, Heidelberg, Germany)
Tel: +49 6221 516575; E-mail: frank.keppler@mpi-hd.mpg.de

David C. Lowe (National Inst of Water and Atmospheric Research, Wellington, New Zealand) Tel: +64 4386 0399; E-mail: d.lowe@niwa.co.nz
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9. EPA's Faith-Based Pollution Standards
By Joel Schwartz, 13 Jan 2006

There is no question that high levels of air pollution can kill. About 4,000 Londoners died during the infamous five-day London Fog of December 1952, when soot and sulfur dioxide soared to levels tens of times greater than the highest levels experienced in the United States today, and visibility dropped to less than 20 feet. [[1]] The question now is whether current, historically low levels of air pollution can also be deadly.

The Clinton administration adopted the nations first standards for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in 1997. The Environmental Protection Agency claims its new more stringent standard will save thousands of additional lives each year. [[2]] On the other hand, environmentalists and many air pollution researchers claim EPA is killing thousands of people by not clamping down even further.[[3]] As I detail below, both views are mistaken.

EPA based its annual PM2.5 standard mainly on the American Cancer Society (ACS) study, which followed more than 500,000 Americans in 50 cities from 1982 to 1998.[[4]] In their most recent report, the ACS researchers concluded that each 10 ug/m3 increase in long-term PM2.5 levels is associated with a 4 percent increase in risk of death.[[5]]

But the detailed ACS results are biologically implausible. For example, the ACS study reported that PM2.5 apparently kills men, but not women; those with no more than a high school degree, but not those with at least some college; and those who said they were moderately active, but not the very active or the sedentary.[[6]]

When migration rates into and out of various cities over time were added to the analysis, the apparent effect of PM2.5 disappeared. [[7]] Cities that lost population during the 1980s -- Midwest rust-belt cities -- also had higher average PM2.5 levels. People left these economically depressed areas in search of work in more prosperous regions. But people who work and have the wherewithal to migrate also tend to be healthier than the average person. Hence, what appeared to be an effect of PM2.5 was more likely the result of differential migration.

Migration was just one of several confounding factors that diminished or erased the apparent harm from PM2.5, but that were not accounted for by the ACS researchers. The Harvard Six Cities study, another cohort study cited in support of PM-mortality claims, suffers from similar problems.[[8]]

A third long-term study of PM2.5 and mortality has been ignored by proponents of PM2.5 regulation, probably because it didn't find any harm from PM2.5 exposure. The study followed 50,000 male veterans with high blood pressure for 21 years. [[9]] These men's poor cardiovascular health should have made them more susceptible than the average person to any pollution-related health effects, so the study provides particularly strong evidence against a PM2.5-mortality link.

These long-term studies were based on PM levels during the 1970s and 1980s, which in many cities were two or three times greater than EPA's 15 ug/m3 annual PM2.5 standard. Thus, long-term PM2.5 exposure is unlikely to be killing people today -- even in areas that exceed the annual PM2.5 standard.

While there are only three major studies of long-term PM effects, literally thousands of studies have examined the association between daily fluctuations in PM levels and health outcomes. These studies typically report that daily fluctuations in PM levels are associated with a few tenths of a percent increase in daily deaths. But these studies suffer from their own set of challenges.

One key problem is publication bias -- the tendency for researchers and journal editors to publish studies that find an air pollution-health association rather than studies that fail to find such an association.[[10]] The National Morbidity and Mortality Air Pollution Study (NMMAPS) has revealed how large the effect of publication bias can be.

NMMAPS does not suffer from publication bias, because it evaluated the association of air pollution and mortality in 95 cities using the same statistical methods, and all the results were published. Based on NMMAPS, the apparent average risk from PM was only about one-third the typical level reported in single-city studies. Furthermore, for about one-third of the NMMAPS cities, higher daily PM levels were associated with a lower risk of death. [[11]]

Proponents of the study have made much of the fact that pooling the results from all 95 cities gives a statistically significant PM effect. But it isn't clear that a pooled result has any meaning when the individual city results suggest, implausibly, that PM protects people in some places and kills them in others. Furthermore, it turns out that removing just two outlier cities from the dataset reduces the pooled result to statistical insignificance. [[12]]

Another concern related to publication bias is known as model-selection bias or data mining. When researchers model the health effects of air pollution, in order to avoid spurious results they must control for potential confounding factors like weather and season. And since the effects of air pollution (or weather) might not show up until, say, a day or two after exposure, models need to include exposures over several days.

Once all potential combinations of variables are accounted for, there are literally millions of plausible statistical models relating air pollution to health outcomes, and no objective way to choose among them. Under these circumstances, researchers have a tendency to select those models that give the largest or most statistically significant effects. [[13]] But such a procedure risks turning up chance correlations even if no real cause-effect relationships exist. As two air pollution epidemiologists recently cautioned:

Estimation of very weak associations in the presence of measurement error and strong confounding is inherently challenging. In this situation, prudent epidemiologists should recognize that residual bias can dominate their results. Because the possible mechanisms of action and their latencies are uncertain, the biologically correct models are unknown. This model selection problem is exacerbated by the common practice of screening multiple analyses and then selectively reporting only a few important results. [[14]]

A recent study concluded that the air pollution-mortality association disappears once model-selection bias is accounted for. [[15]]

Toxicology studies also fail to corroborate the epidemiological claims. Laboratory studies with both animals and human volunteers provide little reason to believe PM2.5 is killing people at the low levels found in ambient air. [[16]]

Thus, the entire PM2.5 regulatory enterprise rests fundamentally on the results of small and inconsistent statistical associations that are likely the spurious result of publication and model-selection biases. The result is unwarranted public fear, an ever-expanding regulatory state, and large amounts of Americans income squandered on minute or perhaps non-existent risks.
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Joel Schwartz is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
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[1] I. M. Goklany, Clearing the Air: The Real Story of the War on Air Pollution (Washington, DC: Cato, 1999).

[2] EPA's press release and related materials can be downloaded here: http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/4d84d5d9a719de8c85257018005467c2/1e5d3c6f081ac7ea852570de0050ae2b!OpenDocument.

[3] See, for example, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5064021 and http://www.cleanairwatchpressroom.blogspot.com/.

[4] C. A. Pope, 3rd, M. J. Thun, M. M. Namboodiri et al., "Particulate Air Pollution as a Predictor of Mortality in a Prospective Study of U.S. Adults," American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine 151 (1995): 669-74.

[5] C. A. Pope, 3rd, R. T. Burnett, M. J. Thun et al., "Lung Cancer, Cardiopulmonary Mortality, and Long-Term Exposure to Fine Particulate Air Pollution," Journal of the American Medical Association 287 (2002): 1132-41.

[6] D. Krewski, R. T. Burnett, M. S. Goldberg et al., Reanalysis of the Harvard Six Cities Study and the American Cancer Society Study of Particulate Air Pollution and Mortality (Cambridge, MA: Health Effects Institute, July 2000); Pope, Burnett, Thun et al., "Lung Cancer, Cardiopulmonary Mortality, and Long-Term Exposure to Fine Particulate Air Pollution."

[7] Krewski, Burnett, Goldberg et al., Reanalysis of the Harvard Six Cities Study and the American Cancer Society Study of Particulate Air Pollution and Mortality.

[8] Ibid.; F. W. Lipfert, "Estimating Air Pollution-Mortality Risks from Cross-Sectional Studies: Prospective vs. Ecologic Study Designs," Health and Regulatory Issues, Proceedings of the International Specialty Conference, Air and Waste Management Association, 1995; F. W. Lipfert, "Commentary on the HEI Reanalysis of the Harvard Six Cities Study and the American Cancer Society Study of Particulate Air Pollution and Mortality," Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part A 66 (2003): 1705-14; S. H. Moolgavkar, "A Review and Critique of the EPAs Rationale for a Fine Particle Standard," Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology 42 (2005): 123-44; J. Schwartz, Particulate Air Pollution: Weighing the Risks (Washington, DC: Competitive Enterprise Institute, April 2003), http://www.cei.org/pdf/3452.pdf.

[9] F. W. Lipfert, H. M. Perry, J. P. Miller et al., "The Washington University-EPRI Veterans' Cohort Mortality Study," Inhalation Toxicology 12 (suppl. 4) (2000): 41-73.

[10] Publication bias is a well-documented problem in a range of disciplines. See, for example, H. Anderson, R. Atkinson, J. Peacock et al., Meta-Analysis of Time-Series Studies and Panel Studies of Particulate Matter (PM) and Ozone (World Health Organization, 2004), www.euro.who.int/document/e82792.pdf; V. M. Montori, M. Smieja and G. H. Guyatt, "Publication Bias: A Brief Review for Clinicians," Mayo Clinic Proceedings 75 (2000): 1284-8; A. Thornton and P. Lee, "Publication Bias in Meta-Analysis: Its Causes and Consequences," Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 53 (2000): 207-16.

[11] F. Dominici, A. McDermott, M. Daniels et al., Revised Analyses of the National Morbidity, Mortality, and Air Pollution Study, Part II (Boston: Health Effects Institute, May 2003).

[12] Moolgavkar, "A Review and Critique of the EPAs Rationale for a Fine Particle Standard."

[13] Anderson, Atkinson, Peacock et al., Meta-Analysis of Time-Series Studies and Panel Studies of Particulate Matter (PM) and Ozone; G. Koop and L. Tole, "Measuring the Health Effects of Air Pollution: To What Extent Can We Really Say That People Are Dying from Bad Air?" Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 47 (2004): 30-54; T. Lumley and L. Sheppard, "Time Series Analyses of Air Pollution and Health: Straining at Gnats and Swallowing Camels?" Epidemiology 14 (2003): 13-4; Moolgavkar, "A Review and Critique of the EPAs Rationale for a Fine Particle Standard."

[14] Lumley and Sheppard, "Time Series Analyses of Air Pollution and Health: Straining at Gnats and Swallowing Camels?"

[15] Koop and Tole, "Measuring the Health Effects of Air Pollution: To What Extent Can We Really Say That People Are Dying from Bad Air?"

[16] L. C. Green and S. R. Armstrong, "Particulate Matter in Ambient Air and Mortality: Toxicologic Perspectives," Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology 38 (2003): 326-35; Moolgavkar, "A Review and Critique of the EPAs Rationale for a Fine Particle Standard."
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10. Letters from Readers

General remark: It gives me more information than any other source known to me in the world. It is not suitable to convince environmental fanatics, misinformed political policy makers in government, and junk science in the media because it is too lengthy. However is it very suitable to make short "sweeping statements" like: There is no significant global warming. CO2 is no greenhouse gas. Even if there were a climate change we cannot stop it. The enormous costs of measures recommended to comply with Kyoto are pure waste, etc.
and then refer to the relevant TWTW subject

Regards, Jo Bloemendal.
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A correction from Peter Scheffler

Re: TWYTW of Jan 7: The Perception and Valuation of the Risks of Climate Change: A Rational and Behavioral Blend <http://www.aei-brookings.org/about/advisorybio.php?id=3>W. Kip Viscusi, <http://www.aei-brookings.com/author/page.php?id=39>Richard J. Zeckhauser. Related Publication 05-35. Dec 2005. <http://www.aei-brookings.com/admin/authorpdfs/page.php?id=1229> [] <http://www.aei-brookings.com/admin/authorpdfs/page.php?id=1229>View PDF

My Comment: I think you miss the point about the observed correlations between global warming and earthquakes and heart attacks. The report indicates the researchers were searching for evidence about overall attitudes toward risk and were not asserting true connection between the types of risks. Now it also seems that the researchers didn't try to find out whether the respondents thought there was a connection, so perhaps the respondents did, but I think no conclusions can be drawn about that from the report.]
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Letter from James Marusek (edited)

… broader than just Global Warming, TWTW gets into subjects such as DDT, CFCs etc. A good example is in your current TWTW, you discuss Methyl Bromide. I tend to believe that many of the environmental doctrines are not rooted in solid science. Focusing on only the one in hand (global warming) without refuting the others is a poor battle plan. All their doctrines must be continually placed under an intense microscope. Because such an approach will weaken their entire structure.

One of the things I like is the ability of individuals to contribute in the Letters to the Editor section. It helps to form more of a community. I believe it might help your service by adding that feature.
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Letter from Mike Hollinshead

I thought the following and attached would interest you.

One aspect of Global Warming as a social phenomenon is that it is a form of political correctness. Anthony Browne, the Times' European Correspondent has written an interesting pamphlet about it. [As an antidote to political correctness, you might want to read "Retreat from Reason," obtainable from book@civitas.org.uk]

Global Warming is not just a scientific squabble, as I know you are quite aware. It is much more a social and cultural phenomenon. Browne and his allies in the epidemiological community won out in the UK AIDS debate (see preface) by sticking to and writing about, the facts. Which is what you are doing and Steve McIntyre and Vincent Gray and John Daly and Sally Baliunas et al and I in my own small way in my own small corner.

Mike
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Craig Townsend sends a Satire:

Dateline Europe

Today European union leaders decided to give up the CO2 trading scheme and open a new exchange trading in pixie dust -- the mythical compound so sought after by dreamers and romantics. When asked about the new scheme, the EU head of environmental policy said, "since global warming is a myth anyway and the CO2 trading-scheme just a way for us elites to redistribute income from the pockets of the tax payer to our own Swiss bank accounts, we decided to adopt a more positive approach to the whole thing. Since the public cannot get their minds around CO2 anyway, but can emotionally grasp pixie dust and more readily jump on a pixie-dust trading band-wagon, we have gone to that modality."

It is unclear how this trading scheme will pan out, as no one has found out what pixie dust consists of, or how to trade it. But the EU and the UN seem overly enthusiastic about this new plan. There is also talk of a plan to trade in moon beams and donut holes, but no explicit plans have come out as of yet.
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