Scientists might not have human behavior to blame for global warming, according to the president of the World Federation of Scientists. Antonio Zichichi, who is also a retired professor of advanced physics at the University of Bologna, made this assertion today in an address delivered to an international congress sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. The conference, which ends today, is examining “Climate Change and Development.”

Zichichi pointed out that human activity has less than a 10% impact on the environment. He also cited that models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are incoherent and invalid from a scientific point of view. The U.N. commission was founded in 1988 to evaluate the risk of climate change brought on by humans. Zichichi, who is also member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, showed that the mathematical models used by the IPCC do not correspond to the criteria of the scientific method. Read more here.

Is the carbon-neutral movement just a gimmick?  On this, environmentalists aren’t neutral, and they don’t agree. Some believe it helps build support, but others argue that these purchases don’t accomplish anything meaningful — other than giving someone a slightly better feeling (or greener reputation) after buying a 6,000-square-foot house or passing the million-mile mark in a frequent-flier program.

See Revkin’s story here

Vatican officials closed a conference on climate change Friday that heard from scientists, ministers and religious leaders about the negative — and sometimes positive — impacts of climate change.

“Not all the scientific world is crying disaster,” Cardinal Renato Martino, who heads the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, told Vatican Radio at the start of the two-day conference he hosted.  “There are a good number of scientists who consistently don’t view these climactic changes in a negative light, and in fact say that these phenomena recur over the course of years and eras and sometimes they can have favorable results for agriculture and development.”
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In a Detroit Sun Story by a fine architerecture writer and blogger. Michael Hodges, he described how one Detroit mom, Margaret Hetherman, a Roseville native now living in New York City, got tired of explaining to her 4-year-old that there just wasn’t enough snow to go sledding.  Hetherman sat down, coined an advertising campaign, and—at her own expense—mounted five billboards around the Detroit area, all with the tagline, “Take Back the Weather.” In the story the writer noted a string of snowless New York winters led Margaret to worry that her daughter, Lily, will only know snow in fairy tales.

That struck a chord with me as I knew that New York City, though seeing below normal snowfall this year, had experienced a record 4 consecutive winter with over 40 inches of snow ending last winer for the first time since records began in the 1860s. And I also know variations in snowfall and temperatures in Michigan tie to the PDO and its effect on the frequencies of El Nino and La Nina and have little to do with ‘global warming’. See some of the exchange with the writer in the following E-mail_Exchange.doc

Dr. William Gray of the Tropical Meteorology Project at Colorado State University believes strongly in the role that the multidecadal behavior of the thermohaline circulation and the resultant Atlantic ocean temperatures has on hurricane frequency, strength and landfall potential. He downplays the role of greenhouse gases or global warming in hurricane activity. See his PPT presented at the Bahamas Weather conference here.

Dr. William Gray has headed up the The and has has worked in the observational and theoretical aspects of tropical meteorological research for more than 40 years. He has pioneered in making hurricane season forecasts for 24 years now which won him the Neil Frank Award at the National Hurricane Conference in 1995. His Atlantic basin hurricane forecasts are published here.

UK climate scientists are trying to block the DVD release of a controversial Channel 4 programme that claimed global warming is nothing to do with human greenhouse gas emissions. Sir John Houghton, former head of the Met Office, and Bob May, former president of the Royal Society, are among 37 experts who have called for the DVD to be heavily edited or removed from sale.

According to Mr Durkin, head of WAG TV which produced the documentary “This contemptible attempt at gagging won’t work. The reason they want to suppress The Great Global Warming Swindle is because the science has stung them. By comparison look at the mountains of absurd nonsense pedalled in the name of ‘manmade climate change’. Too many scientists have staked their reputations and built their careers on global warming. There’s a lot riding on this ridiculous theory. The DVD will be on sale shortly at a shop near you.”

As Benny Peiser of CCNET so aptly noted, “Welcome to the Dark Ages”.  See full story here

This Earth Day, Professor Richard Lindzen, an atmospheric physicist and the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT, wants you to calm down. The Earth, he says, is in good shape. “Forests are returning in Europe and the United States. Air quality has improved. Water quality has improved. We grow more food on less land. We’ve done a reasonably good job in much of the world in conquering hunger. And yet we’re acting as though: “How can we stand any more of this?” A leading critic on the theory of man-made global warming, Professor Lindzen has developed a reputation as America’s anti-doom-andgloom scientist. And he’s not, he says, as lonely as you might think. Read full interview here

Saving the tropical rain forest is well and good, for cutting down trees in the tropics means less long-term water transfer from soils to the atmosphere, leading to fewer clouds and a warmer planet. But planting trees where none exist in northern areas may actually hasten global warming. See full story here