Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe
To begin with, staggering sums of money are channeled to researchers who emphasize the human role in global warming. The greater the sense of anthropogenic crisis, the greater the flow of research grants to address it. Our global-warming debate is contentious enough as it is. The last thing we need is to be disparaging the integrity of every scientist who takes a strong stand either way. Tempting though it may be to think otherwise, not every true believer is a scoundrel—and not every heretic is a shill.
Read article here
Richard S. Lindzen’s article on why alarm over climate change is unwarranted (”“Why So Gloomy” NEWSWEEK International, April 16-23 issue) drew comments from many readers. Some letters were laudatory, others were critical. Richard responds to some of the letters. Read follow-up article here
Richard Lindzen, MIT in Newsweek International
Judging from the media in recent months, the debate over global warming is now over. There has been a net warming of the earth over the last century and a half, and our greenhouse gas emissions are contributing at some level. Both of these statements are almost certainly true. What of it? Recently many people have said that the earth is facing a crisis requiring urgent action. This statement has nothing to do with science. There is no compelling evidence that the warming trend we’ve seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe. Read article here
Environmental News Agency
An order has been issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce that controls what federal government climate, weather and marine scientists can say to the media or in public, even when they are speaking as private citizens. Under rules posted Thursday, these federal scientists must obtain agency pre-approval to speak or write, whether on or off-duty, concerning any scientific topic deemed “of official interest,” according to agency documents released by a national association of government employees in natural resources agencies. See Full Story Here
Roger Pielke Jr.
NASA’s Jim Hansen has discovered STS (science and technology studies, i.e., social scientists who study science), and he is using it to justify why the IPCC is wrong and he, and he alone, is correct on predictions of future sea level rise and as well on calls for certain political actions, like campaign finance reform. See Prometheus Blog
Fred Singer in reports on Marc Sheppard’s review of Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press’s truly frightening little sci-fi piece entitled Warming Report to Warn of Coming Drought in American Thinker
Lloyd’s of London, the world’s biggest insurance market, on Thursday reported a pretax profit of 3.66 billion pounds (€5.4 billion, US$7.2 billion) in 2006, a year of few global catastrophes
Another global warming face-off