I had planned another topic but felt obliged to correct the misinformation in the letters by Mr. Atwood the last two weeks. He obviously spends a lot of time mining the web for information and knows more than the average person but as you know, you can find on the web, information that can support your ideas. He frequently mentions Wikipedia, which he says he trusts because it is ‘moderated’.

Wikipedia is a useful resource but should come with a disclaimer - user beware!

Many of us use Wikipedia to recall the name of an actor, a favorite movie, the name or year of a song, find out how old an actor or singer we like is. You need to be careful though about biographies, history, politics and science, because the material is open source and often not true or at least slanted.

In a story this April ”Wikipedia: where truth dies online” ,"Spiked on-line” warned that not all Wikipedia publishes can be trusted. “There are over 21 million editors with varying degrees of competence and honesty...Many teachers warn their students to exercise extreme caution when using it. (Note: some teachers forbid citing Wikipedia in a paper).”

Lawrence Solomon for CBSNEWS wrote how some issues like climate have the information controlled by editors or administrators who have a clear bias.

“Kim Dabelstein Petersen is a Wikipedia “editor” who seems to devote a large part of his life to editing reams and reams of Wikipedia pages to pump the assertions of global-warming alarmists and deprecate or make disappear the arguments of skeptics.

Holding the far more prestigious and powerful position of “administrator” is William Connolley...a software engineer and sometime climatologist (he used to hold a job in the British Antarctic Survey), as well as a serial (but so far unsuccessful) office seeker for England’s Green party.

And yet by virtue of his power at Wikipedia, Connolley, a ruthless enforcer of the doomsday consensus, may be the world’s most influential person in the global warming debate… William Connolley rode shotgun on just about any climate related article on that website.”

As of a year ago Mr. Connolley had edited 5,428 Wikipedia articles, almost all on climate and complaints about his zealotry ultimately earned him a suspension. 

There are other sites like Skeptical Science that Mr. Atwood references, but they have the same bias (here and here).

Now to address the Bruce’s other claims with facts.

The grand maximum did not occur 50 years ago but over the period from 1950 to 1990 with multiple peaks around 1958, 1980, 1990.  Ilya G. Usoskin of the Sodankyla Geophysical Observatory at the University of Oulu, Finland published in Living Reviews of Solar Physics a paper examining records from two isotope proxies (Be10 and C14) and found that solar activity at the end of the 20th century was at the highest levels of the past 1200 years.

The IPCC and warmists like to use the solar brightness (the visible part of the solar spectrum) which changes only 0.1 to 0.2% during the 11 year solar cycle to try and discount the solar climate connection, but they ignore other solar variables which greatly amplify the small change in the visible light like ultraviolet (which changes 6-8%), geomagnetic and the effect of the solar wind on cloud enhancing cosmic rays.  You have to consider the total solar effect.

UK Professor Lockwood in 2013 found the measurement of the solar wind and record low magnetic fields during the long and record low minimum 2007 to 2009 provided some important clues for understanding the solar dynamo and explaining both the Dalton minimum near 1800 and the deeper Maunder Minimum (1640-1700). Lockwood, the Russian Pulkovo Observatory, NASA’s Hathaway and many, many other solar scientists predict a turn to much colder as we dive deeper into the upcoming next Grand Solar Minimum. The cooling winters after 1995 (2.26F for the last 20 years for the US) reflect the initial decline that began after the final 1990 peak (there is a lag of 5-8 years).

A 2014 paper by Chinese scientists (Zhao etal) reported the impact of carbon dioxide on climate change may have been overstated with the total solar activity giving a better explanation of changes in the Earth’s temperature. Indeed, the greenhouse models are all failing miserably. The IPCC admitted to low understanding of water vapor, clouds, solar and ocean cycles, all far more important than CO2, so that is no surprise. 

The greenhouse theory is falsified by the facts warming is not global, that the so called atmospheric tropical hot spot, the signature feature of the heat trapping theory was absent and that the greenhouse models have failed.

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Yes at the surface, there was model predicted warming in higher latitudes, but that has been observed only in the Northern Hemisphere (and ended 17 years ago - see last link) and the arctic (which is also cyclical.

Satellites, weather balloons and ocean buoys have all shown there has been no warming in the tropics from the high atmosphere all the way down 300 meters int the tropical oceans.

Finally the health study Bruce mentioned was one the EPA found impossible to defend in congress. Health claims do not relate to CO2 but to soot, which is why they no longer talk CO2 but ‘carbon pollution’.  With every breathe, we exhale 100 times the CO2 than the air contains so it obviously doesn’t cause premature deaths or children’s asthma.

Soot is a problem in China but no longer in the US.  Small particulates have declined 50% the last 15 years here and are below the EPA standard. 

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Real data suggests they are not a health hazard. See this story debunking the role particulates had even when they were more prevalent.  The famous pollution episodes in Donora, PA in 1948 occurred due to trapping of other chemical pollutants and in London in 1952 from sulfuric acid mist from burning of high sulfur coal in a pea-soup inversion fog.

I had lunch with Dr. John Dale Dunn, an emergency physician with experience in epidemiology at Fort Hood and saw his presentation at the recent ICCC9 Heartland Institute conference where over 600 real scientists from over 14 countries convened to report on the real truth about climate change.

John and I agreed the EPA health risk claims are totally bogus and what is ignored is the far more serious threat due from the cold where countries (like the UK) abandoned coal and fossil fuel to chase the environmental dream of unreliable wind and solar and where prices rose so much as to make energy unaffordable for those on fixed incomes and the poor. See the deadly results of cold homes.  That is where we will be going, if we ‘buy insurance’ and allow the EPA to run amuck ‘just in case’.

By Megan Toombs

August 18, 2014

A new American Lung Association (ALA) television ad supports the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed new rule requiring a 30% reduction in CO2 emissions from power plants by 2030, pushing the lie that CO2 emissions are harmful to human health.

The ALA ad, entitled “a mother’s instinct,” shows a child’s toy, a baby monitor, and a sleeping baby, then cuts to a shot of a power plant and states, “The Clean Air Act stops polluters from poisoning his air with arsenic, lead, and mercury. Now the loophole that lets them pump unlimited carbon pollution into his air is closing too...”

For such a short ad (31 seconds), the ALA managed to pack it with lies and misinformation.

First, the ad mentions a “loophole that lets them pump unlimited carbon pollution,” leading one to believe that there are previous regulations on CO2.

There aren’t!

The ALA ad mentions “carbon pollution.” This, of course, is referring to CO2 (carbon dioxide), not plain carbon.

Big difference!

Carbon is an element and, in the form of grit and smog, really is pollution. But in developed countries its levels have fallen tremendously in the past 40 years and are now so safe that the costs of reducing them further outweigh the benefits. Carbon dioxide is a compound of carbon and oxygen and not only is non-toxic to humans and other animals but also is essential to life! In fact, humans and other animals exhale it, and plants “inhale” it.

As the Capitol Research Center’s Maria Gerard reports in her August 7 article, “at any given time there is a greater concentration of carbon dioxide in someone’s lungs (12,500 per parts million) than is found in the air surrounding him (400 ppm).”

That point bears expanding: CO2 concentration in a person’s lungs is over thirty times higher than in the surrounding air.

No matter the reductions in CO2, there will be no improvement in air quality. None! Zero! Zilch! Nada!

The ALA has been coopted by the EPA, spouting the rhetoric as effectively (or more so) than the EPA.

Why?

$20 million. That’s the amount of taxpayer money paid by the Environmental Protection Agency to essentially buy the American Lung Association.

As Gerard points out in her article, “James Bennet of George Mason University writes in Pandering for Profit: The Transformation of Health Charities to Lobbyists that ‘the ALA has responded by using every possible means to advance the agency’s (EPA) regulatory authority by advocating tougher air quality standards.’”

The ALA even participated in a joint conference callpress conference supporting the Clean Air Act CO2 proposal with President Obama and Gina McCarthy (EPA Administrator).

This type of behavior, by both the ALA and the EPA, is unethical. They are intentionally misleading the public, and it needs to stop.

Reference: Usoskin, I.G., Hulot, G., Gallet, Y., Roth, R., Licht, A., Joos, F., Kovaltsov, G.A., Thebault, E. and Khokhlov, A. 2014. Evidence for distinct modes of solar activity. Astronomy and Astrophysics 562: L10,

What was done

According to Usoskin et al. (2014), the Sun “shows strong variability in its magnetic activity, from Grand minima to Grand maxima, but the nature of the variability is not fully understood, mostly because of the insufficient length of the directly observed solar activity records and of uncertainties related to long-term reconstructions.” Now, however, in an attempt to overcome such uncertainties, in a Letter to the Editor published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, Usoskin et al. “present the first fully adjustment-free physical reconstruction of solar activity” covering the past 3,000 years, which record allowed them “to study different modes of solar activity at an unprecedented level of detail.”

What was learned

As illustrated in the figure below, the authors report there is “remarkable agreement” among the overlapping years of their reconstruction (solid black line) and the number of sunspots recorded from direct observations since 1610 (red line). Their reconstruction of solar activity also displays several “distinct features,” including several “well-defined Grand minima of solar activity, ca. 770 BC, 350 BC, 680 AD, 1050 AD, 1310 AD, 1470 AD, and 1680 AD,” as well as “the modern Grand maximum (which occurred during solar cycles 19-22, i.e., 1950-1996),” which they describe as “a rare or even unique event, in both magnitude and duration, in the past three millennia.”


Figure 1. Reconstructed decadal average of sunspot numbers for the period 1150 BC-1950 AD (black line). The 95% confidence interval is shown by the gray shading and directly measured sunspot numbers are shown in red. The horizontal dashed lines demark the bounds of the three suggested modes (Grand Minimum, Regular, and Grand Maximum) as defined by Usoskin et al.

Further statistical analysis of their reconstruction revealed the Sun operates in three distinct modes of activity (1) a regular mode that “corresponds to moderate activity that varies in a relatively narrow band between sunspot numbers 20 and 67,: (2) a Grand minimum mode of reduced solar activity that “cannot be explained by random fluctuations of the regular mode” and which “is confirmed at a high confidence level,” and (3), a possible Grand maximum mode, but they say that “the low statistic does not allow us to firmly conclude on this, yet.”

What it means
Usoskin et al. (2014) write their results “provide important constraints for both dynamo models of Sun-like stars and investigations of possible solar influence on Earth’s climate.” They also illustrate the importance of improving the quality of such reconstructions, in light of the fact that previous reconstructions of this nature “did not reveal any clear signature of distinct modes” in solar activity.

Unfortunately, it was beyond the scope of this paper to address the potential impact of solar activity on climate. Yet the reconstruction leaves a very big question unanswered—What effect did the Grand maximum of solar activity that occurred between 1950 and 2009 have on Earth’s climate? As a “unique” and “rare” event in terms of both magnitude and duration, one would think a lot more time and effort would be spent by the IPCC and others in answering that question. Instead, IPCC scientists have conducted relatively few studies of the Sun’s influence on modern warming, assuming that the temperature influence of this rare and unique Grand maximum of solar activity, which has occurred only once in the past 3,000 years, is far inferior to the radiative power provided by the rising CO2 concentration of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Is It The Sun?
By Jack Dini August 6, 2014

We may be witnessing the sun’s last dying gasps before entering into a long slumber. The impact of that slumber on Earth’s climate remains the subject of growing scientific speculation. (1)

In 2008 William Livingston and Matthew Penn of the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, in a controversial paper that contradicted conventional wisdom and upset global warming theorists, predicted that sunspots could more or less disappear after 2015, possibly indicating the onset of another Little Ice Age. They stated, “The occurrence of prolonged periods with no sunspots is important to climate studies, since the Maunder Minimum was shown to correspond with the reduced average global temperatures on the Earth.” The Maunder Minimum lasted for approximately 70 years from about 1645 to 1715, and was marked by bitter cold, widespread crop failures, and severe human privation. (2)

There has been increasing evidence in recent years to support this supposition that global warming is linked with solar activity. In 2011, three papers suggested the Earth could be heading for a ‘little ice age’ as solar activity drops once again. (3)

Solar effects could bring on little ice ages

Other research also confirmed that solar effects could bring on little ice ages. Sarah Ineson and her colleagues report that changes in the Sun’s emissions of ultraviolet radiation coincided with observed cold winters over southern Europe and Canada between 2008 and 2011. (4)

And Katja Matthes and colleagues report that simulations with a climate model using new observations of solar vulnerability suggests a substantial influence of the Sun on the winter climate in the Northern Hemisphere. (5)

A 2014 paper by Chinese scientists reported the impact of carbon dioxide on climate change may have been overstated with solar activity giving a better explanation of changes in the Earth’s temperature. The paper found ‘a high correlation between solar activity and the Earth’s averaged surface temperature over centuries,’ suggesting that climate change is intimately linked with solar cycles rather than human activity. Indeed, the study says that the ‘modern maximum’ - a peak in solar activity that lasted much of the last century corresponds very well with an increase in global temperatures. (6)

Russian scientists foresee an even more dramatic situation. They predict that a little ice age will begin in 2014. (7)

In their book, The Neglected Sun, authors Fritz Vahrenholt and Sebastian Luning pose that temperatures could be two-tenths of a degree lower by 2030 as a result of an anemic sun, which would mean warming getting postponed far into the future.

Note that these reports are from researchers around the world.

Nick Hallet observes, “The research shows that the current warming models of the IPCC seem to underestimate the impact of natural factors on climate change, while overstating that of human activities. Solar activity is an important ingredient of natural driving forces of climate. Therefore, it is valuable to investigate the influence of solar variability on the Earth’s climate change on long time scales.” (6)

Add to all this a very recent paper that says the modern Grand maximum of the sun (which occurred during solar cycles 19-23, i. e., 1950-2009) was a ‘rare or even unique event in both magnitude and duration in the past 3,000 years.’(8) Unfortunately, it was beyond the scope of this paper to address the potential impact of solar activity on climate. Yet the reconstruction leaves a very big question unanswered - What effect did the Grand maximum have on Earth’s climate? As a ‘unique’ and ‘rare’ event in terms of both magnitude and duration, one would think a lot more time and effort would be spent by IPCC and others in answering that question. Instead, as noted earlier, IPCC scientists have conducted relatively few studies of the Sun’s influence on modern warming, assuming that the temperature influence of this rare and unique Grand maximum of solar activity, which has occurred only once in the past 3,000 years, is far inferior to the radiative power provided by the rising CO2 concentration of the Earth’s atmosphere. (9)

Lawrence Solomon sums this up well, “The upshot for scientists and world leaders should be clear, particularly since other scientists in recent years have published analyses that also indicate that global cooling could be on its way. Climate can and does change toward colder periods as well as warmer ones. Over the last 20 years, some $80 billion has been spent on research dominated by the assumption that global temperatures will rise. Very little research has investigated the consequences of the very live possibility that temperatures will plummet. Research into global cooling and its implications for the globe is long overdue.” (2)

References
1. "Sun has weakest solar max in over 200years,” the gwpf.org, December 16, 2013
2. Lawrence Solomon, “Chilling evidence,” financialpost.com, September 16, 2010
3. Lewis Page, “Earth may be headed into a mini ice age within a decade,” theregister.co.uk, June 14, 2011
4. Sarah Ineson et al., “Solar forcing of winter climate variability in the Northern Hemisphere,” Nature Geoscience, (2011), doi: 10.1038/ngeo1282
5. Katja Matthes et al., “Atmospheric science: solar cycle and climate predictions,” Nature Geoscience (2011), doi: 10.1038/ngeo1298
6. Nick Hallet, “Solar activity not CO2 could cause global warming,” breitbart.com, July 29, 2014
7. Sebastian Luning and Fritz Vahrenholt, “Will the solar doldrums of the coming decades lead to cooling? A look at the latest scientific publications,” notrickszone.com, May 10, 2014
8. I. G. Usoskin et al., “Evidence for distinct modes of solar activity,” Astronomy and Astrophysics, 562: L10, doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/201423391
9. "A 3,000 year record of solar activity,” co2science.org, August 6, 2014

Update: See more here in the Washington Examiner on The hidden persuaders of the environmental elite by Ron Arnold.

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5 WAYS THE ‘BILLIONAIRES’ CLUB’ RUNS THE EPA
By Ben Shapiro

According to a new report from the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, a “club of billionaires” including Tom Steyer and Hank Paulson has effectively hijacked the Environmental Protection Agency for its own purposes to grow the EPA and regulate the economy from stem to stern.

Here are the top five takeaways from the report regarding the billionaire takeover of the EPA:

Agency “Capture.” According to the report, billionaires work with former colleagues in the non-profit sector who are specifically placed at key points within the agency. The report explains, “the Obama EPA has been deliberately staffed at the highest levels with far-left environmental activists who have worked hand-in-glove with their former colleagues.” Furthermore, the EPA sends “grants to their former employers and colleagues.”

The Revolving Door. The report reveals a huge number of EPA officials shuttling into and out of the agency and into and out of associated non-profits funded by the so-called Billionaires’ Club. These include Bob Sussman, Senior Policy Counsel at the EPA under former administrator Lisa Jackson; he came from the Center for American Progress. Other revolving door EPA staffers: Michelle DePass, former Assistant Administrator for the Office of International and Tribal Affairs, who came to her position from the Ford Foundation and actually worked for both organizations simultaneously at one point; Michael Goo, former Associate Administrator of EPA, who worked for Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA); Dr. Al Armendariz, Region 6 Administrator, who worked for the Environmental Integrity Project.

The Secret Emails. Jackson was caught using her private email address to send sensitive material, but she was hardly the only one. Sussman was caught using “his personal email to communicate with environmentalists in violation of EPA policy.” James Martin, former Region 8 Administrator, was similarly caught “using his personal email account to communicate with environmentalists...about official agency business in violation of official EPA policy.” Michael Goo, former Associate Administrator of EPA, also emailed member so the Sierra Club about how to sink Keystone XL.

The Funding. The report shows that EPA regulators have used their influence to send money back to the Billionaires’ Club charities. Grants from the EPA have totaled $3 billion over the last decade; Obama’s EPA “has given more than $27 million in taxpayer funded grants to major environmental groups.” Organizations like the American Lung Association have received $14 million since 2009, even though ALA has repeatedly sued the Agency.

Special Treatment. The report suggests that Region 2 Administrator Judith Enck violated the EPA’s standards and ethics by giving EPA grantees “special treatment.” For example, even though the activist group El Puente had been ruled out of bounds thanks to breaking the terms of its grant, Enck delayed the killing of its grant for ten months. Enck is currently under inquiry by the Office of the Inspector General. Similarly, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade (LABB, a former project of the Tides Foundation) grabbed cash from Jackson. That cash went to fighting oil and gas projects in Louisiana.

Americans have long known that the regulatory state is a complete disaster area, and that the EPA is one of the worst regulatory agencies in government. The new report confirms that fear and suggests that for all their complaints about money in politics, leftists are quite comfortable with it so long as it serves their ends.

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How a Club of Billionaires and Their Foundations Control the Environmental Movement and Obama’s EPA

A new report was released today by the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, and it is damning. All this time that climate skeptics are accused of being in the employ of “big oil” is nothing more than a projection of their own greed.

Some excerpts:

Over 7.9 BILLION in funding between these groups.

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Bill McKibben caught in a lie, he might be “scruffy” be he isn’t nearly broke as he once claimed:

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The “epicenter” of funding disclosed:

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The NRDC “mafia”

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Josh wasn’t far off the mark:

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Read the entire report here, then demand action from your legislators.

That is why Podesta and Obama/McCarthy are so aggressive on this watermelon (green on the outside red in the middle) agenda. It is the biggest fundraising scam.

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See Alan Carlin’s comments on receiving the whistleblower award at the Heartland ICCC9.

My Remarks on New Proposed EPA Power Plant Regulations at ICCC9
Alan Carlin | July 18, 2014

On July 8 I received the Climate Science Whistleblower Award at the Ninth International Conference on Climate Change sponsored by the Heartland Institute and other cosponsoring organizations held in Las Vegas, Nevada. The following are remarks I prepared for my acceptance statement:

I greatly appreciate receiving this award and for the efforts of the many people involved at many levels in making the award possible. I consider it a great honor and thank you for it. I wrote my negative comments on the Endangerment Finding support document because I believed EPA was using bad science and that EPA’s proposed Endangerment Finding would be easier to stop at that stage than later. But it is very encouraging to find that others agree with my decision to do so, which EPA clearly did not.

My offending comments to EPA led to my being immediately muzzled at the same time that Obama was spinning his transparency and scientific integrity line. The Endangerment Finding was issued later that year without any of my suggested changes in the support document, of course. This finding is the legally definitive EPA statement on climate science. It has been tested in the courts and is legally no longer an issue; this is what I hoped to avoid by my challenge to the support document.

For the last few years I have been working on a book-length manuscript describing everything touched on here and much more, including my skeptic efforts, how the environmental movement lost its way since my days as a Sierra Club activist and leader, and the main legal, journalistic, governmental, scientific, environmental, and economic aspects of the climate issue. This manuscript is now complete and up-to-date. If any of you know a good way to get it published so that it will be read, please let me know since I think it has some vital messages for everyone as we approach the showdown over the proposed EPA regulations.

The Endangerment Finding led directly to EPA’s proposed regulations for reducing CO2 emissions from power plants earlier this year. The new EPA proposed regulations are even worse than I expected in 2009, perhaps because the blueprint for them was actually written by an environmental organization. First of all, they are illegal, as per any reasonable reading of Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act. They impose many aspects of the Waxman-Markey bill despite Congress’ rejection of it, and try to force red states to adopt the usual market-distorting preferences for power generation promoted by radical environmentalists. The regulations will have major adverse effects on the US economy, all for no or more likely negative benefits, and will result in higher costs for electric ratepayers, with particularly adverse effects on lower income groups. They will also lead to potentially extremely costly electric grid instability and load shedding when electric power is most needed. EPA is effectively trying to rewrite the Clean Air Act without consulting Congress or observing the law or the Constitution.

John Boehner calls Obama’s behavior in this and other areas “aggressive unilateralism;” I call it dictatorial. Even if EPA’s science were correct, which it is not, the regulations should be rejected on the basis of EPA’s illegal power grab. I believe that skeptics need to place greater emphasis on this aspect of the situation. The powers of the Presidency have been an issue since the founding of the Republic and are much more readily understood than climate science will ever be.

So what started out as a scientific issue concerning a proposed Endangerment Finding has now escalated into a major legal and even Constitutional issue concerning Presidential powers. The President roams the country calling us “flat-earthers” and science-deniers. Perhaps it is time to characterize his behavior as illegal and even dictatorial.

Currently the public favors the EPA regulations by 67 to 29 percent so there appear to be many possible recipients for better information if we are to succeed in avoiding the future that radical environmentalists want to impose on our country through unjustified Federal intervention in still another vital sector of the economy. If their efforts should succeed, we can reasonably look forward to much higher levels of mandated CO2 reductions in this sector and probably many others as well. It is better to stop this mission creep now before it metastacizes even further.

We must not fail for the sake of the country’s economic and environmental future and the preservation of the rule of law. These new power plant regulations will happen unless a way is found to stop them. There are only three possible ways to do this: A president who will withdraw them, Republican control of both houses of Congress, or rejection by the courts. Obama will not willingly withdraw the regulations before he leaves office in 2017. Rejection by the courts has not proved a dependable strategy to date, but the proposals are becoming increasingly outrageous legally. Congress is the only somewhat dependable avenue in the near term, and there is an election in 2014. A number of environmental groups are already very hard at work trying to influence this election so as to promote their proposed EPA regulations. They have already even sent me two thinly disguised such appeals, probably because I live in a state with a Democratic senator up for reelection!

At the Heartland Institute ICCC9, Anthony Watts announced the launching of a new society that has been in the works for many month.

Welcome to The Open Atmospheric Society, known as “The OAS”.

We give you a voice where other societies may not.

The OAS is a international membership society for the purpose of studying, discussing, and publishing about topics in atmospheric related earth sciences, including but not limited to meteorology, hydrology, oceanography, and climatology. It is open to anyone with an interest at the associate level, but student and full memberships also are offered.

The purpose of the society is to foster quality atmospheric science and atmospheric science communications through outreach, member education, member publishing, and electronic media. We see the differences highlighted on the web site home page (http://theoas.org)

Our motto: verum in luce means “truth in the light”.

Open science - a transparent online peer review process. Publishing peer reviewer comments (not names), will illuminate the process.

Open membership - Associate members, anyone who has an interest in atmospheric science, can join at a basic rate, providing interdisciplinary membership.

Professional full members, will require a degree in atmospheric sciences or related earth disciplines, or three published papers in these subjects.

Student members get a reduced rate, similar to associate members with option to full member elevation.

Open journal - The Journal of the OAS will be free to read by the public.

Author account - each author and co-author will have accounts for collaboration, submitting papers , making edits, and responding to reviewers.

No other journal asks this upfront: strict OAS Journal submission requirements, technical submissions to the Journal by members must include all source data, software/code, procedures, and documentation to ensure reproducibility of the paper’s experiment or analysis by external reviewers.

Emphasis on reasonable publication turnaround, generally three months or less.

Press releases will be sent with each publication, author assistance is offered in preparation.

Video production assistance for authors to explain papers and post to the journal page with your paper.

Organizational activity will be conducted entirely online - This means no costly brick and mortar infrastructure, no costly postal mailings journals, and no need for warehousing paper files and publications.

Online meetings conducted via Skype for organizational purposes.

Nomination/Voting for officers and other issues conducted online.

Monthly email newsletters and special online webcasts.

To learn what The OAS is all about, go to the main page: http://theoas.org

To join, please go to The OAS Membership Portal

The initial setup of The OAS was made possible by a grant from Stephen and Dr. Mary Graves. We thank them for their foresight and generosity.