Interview in Spiegel On-line International

Biologist Josef Reichholf discusses the benefits of a warmer climate for animals and plants, large cities as centers of biological diversity and the myth of the return of malaria.

Why has it become a dogma that we should be afraid of warmer times?  “It is a mystery to me. As recently as the 1960s, people were more concerned about a new ice age—and that would indeed pose a great danger to us. The most catastrophic eras were those in which the weather became worse, not phases of warmer climates. Precisely because we have to feed a growing population on this planet, we should in fact embrace a warmer climate. In warmer regions it takes far less effort to ensure survival.”
See full story here

Also Bruce Hall on the blogspot Hall of Record has three blogs touching on this same theme: Do People Fear Warmer Climates? and The Effect of Not Warming and Avoid Global Warming - Why?

Senate Environment & Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have proposed the “Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act” aimed at combating climate change. The proposed partisan bill (S.309) is supported by another 15 senators, including: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY); Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL); Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-CT); Sen. Joseph R. Biden (D-DE); Sen. Daniel K. Akaka (D-HI); Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-WI); Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-HI); Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA); Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ); Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT); Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ); Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI); Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI); Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-MD), and Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD).

FACT: A new MIT study concludes that the Sanders-Boxer approach would impose a tax-equivalent of $366 billion annually, or more than $4,500 per family of four, by 2015. And the annual costs will grow after 2015. [Read full MIT study]

The Kyoto Protocol would have imposed an equivalent tax of over $300 billion a year, 10 times the size of the Clinton-Gore tax increase of 1993. In addition to the MIT study, a new Congressional Budget Office study released recently, details how a carbon cap-and-trade system would result in massive wealth redistribution from the poor and working class to wealthier Americans. [Read more on CBO study]

Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), EPW Ranking Member, said today: “Carbon caps would artificially and needlessly raise the cost of energy the most on the people least able to afford it. It astounds me that any Senator could support such a proposal.”

By Noel Sheppard, Newsbusters

Senior Fellow in Political Economy for the Independent Institute, Dr. Robert Higgs, published an article at George Mason University’s History News Network “I have served as a peer reviewer for more than thirty professional journals and as a reviewer of research proposals for the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and a number of large private foundations. So, I think I know something about how the system works. It does not work as outsiders seem to think”.

“Peer review, on which lay people place great weight, varies from important, where the editors and the referees are competent and responsible, to a complete farce, where they are not. Any journal editor who desires, for whatever reason, to knock down a submission can easily do so by choosing referees he knows full well will knock it down; likewise, he can easily obtain favorable referee reports.”

At any given time, consensus may exist about all sorts of matters in a particular science. In retrospect, however, that consensus is often seen to have been mistaken. As recently as the mid-1970s, for example, a scientific consensus existed among climatologists and scientists in related fields that the earth was about to enter a new ice age. Drastic proposals were made, such as exploding hydrogen bombs over the polar icecaps (to melt them) or damming the Bering Strait (to prevent cold Arctic water from entering the Pacific Ocean), to avert this impending disaster. Well-reputed scientists, not just uninformed wackos, made such proposals. How quickly we forget.” See full interview here