Copernicus Publications, “the innovative open access publisher,” recently announced it was terminating one of its journals, Pattern Recognition in Physics due to concerns about the journal’s editorial practices. PRP was not even one year old. It seems the problems began when the journal’s editors agreed to a special issue on “Pattern in solar variability, their planetary origin and […]
Archive | Climate Change
Hoffer is Confused About the Implications of Falsifying Climate Models
At Watts Up With That, David M. Hoffer has an odd essay on peer review: [I]s the notion of climate science today as easily falsified by simple observation? I submit that it is. We have the climate models themselves to upon which to rely. For what are the climate models other than the embodiment of […]
Mann v. Steyn Mulligan
By Jonathan H. Adler on December 27, 2013 8:41 am in Climate Change, Defamation, Freedom of Speech, Politicizing Science
On December 19, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals effectively erased Michael Mann’s initial court victory in his defamation lawsuit against Mark Steyn, National Review, Rand Simberg and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Here’s how Mark Steyn pithily summarizes the developments: 1. Dr Michael Mann’s lawyer, John Williams, filed a fraudulent complaint falsely representing his client as […]
How a Talking Point Is Born: $1 Billion Against Action on Climate Change
“Conservative groups spend up to $1bn a year to fight action on climate change,” reads the headline of an article in the Guardian on a new study, that purports to show the extent of foundation funding opposing action on climate change. Only the study shows no such thing. The study, “Institutionalizing delay: foundation funding and […]
Climate Change Goes Back to Court
This morning, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA concerning the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. This is quite significant. Although the grant is limited, it focuses on one of the most important legal questions raised by this litigation, and puts some of […]
Conservatives and Environmental Regulation
There is fairly broad opposition to centralized environmental regulation within the Republican Party today. Conservative activists in particular focus their ire on the Environmental Protection Agency and federal efforts to maintain or enhance environmental quality. It was not always so. The American conservation movement has roots on the right side of the political spectrum and […]
EPA Proposes New Carbon Standards for Power Plants
Today the Environmental Protection Agency is proposing carbon dioxide emission standards for new power plants that will, in effect, bar the construction of new coal-fired power plants without costly carbon capture technology. The proposed standards would require both natural gas and coal-fired power plants to meet stringent new limits — limits that most new natural […]
Could Global Warming Reduce the Threat Posed by Atlantic Hurricanes?
National Geographic reports on a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that suggests that climatic warming could actually reduce the likelihood that hurricanes make landfall along the Atlantic Coast. Here’s the abstract: Superstorm Sandy ravaged the eastern seaboard of the United States, costing a great number of lives and billions of dollars in […]
Mann v. Steyn — Mann Wins Round One
Last year, the noted (and controversial) climate scientist Michael Mann sued National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress for blog posts written by Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg and posted on National Review Online and CEI’s OpenMarket blog, respectively. I blogged about the case in these four posts: 1, 2, […]
How Not to Convince Republicans to Address Climate Change
It’s fair to say that only one political party today considers climate change to be a problem worth addressing. As readers know, I wish it were otherwise and believe there is a conservative case for addressing climate change. I welcome others to this cause. This NYT op-ed, “A Republican Case for Climate Action,” is not the sort […]
Shultz and Becker Urge Revenue-Neutral Carbon Tax
Former Secretary of State George Shultz and Nobel laureate economist Gary Becker take to the pages of the WSJ to urge a revenue-neutral carbon tax. we propose a measure that could go a long way toward leveling the playing field: a revenue-neutral tax on carbon, a major pollutant. A carbon tax would encourage producers and consumers […]
The “Marcott Mess”
A recent paper in Science reconstructing climate records for the Holocene received substantial media attention because it showed a gradual cooling for several thousand years followed by a dramatic uptick in temperature in the past 100 years. This uptick seemed to replicate the blade of Michael Mann’s “hockey stick,” and was highlighted in media reports on the […]
Prizes to Change the World
Andy Kessler argues that the greater use of technology-inducement prizes could reap dramatic social benefits — far greater benefits that the sorts of prizes given out to recognize past achievement. On the recently awarded Breakthrough Prizes in Life Sciences. This type of prize is commendable, its generosity admirable. But it prompts a question: Will such […]
D.C. Circuit Rejects Challenges to Polar Bear Listing
This morning the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit handed down a unanimous opinion rejecting both industry and environmentalist group challenges to the Fish & Wildlife Service’s decision to list the polar as a “threatened” species. Environmentalist groups argued the FWS should have listed the polar bear as “endangered. Industry groups and their […]
Is the Climate Less Sensitive than We Thought?
At DotEarth, Andrew Revkin summarizes recent research that is leading to some to conclude that the climate is less sensitive to greenhouse forcing than previously thought. He writes: on one critically important metric — how hot the planet will get from a doubling of the pre-industrial concentration of greenhouse gases, a k a “climate sensitivity” […]