EPA endangerment report leaked

The draft of EPA’s endangerment report has been leaked. As EPA is preparing to rule everyones life in the US, this report makes interesting reading: it is practically a copy/paste exercice, copying mostly from the IPCC and the ACIA reports (and the CCSP = Climate Change Science Program). So do not expect anything new, just a hotch-potch from here and there. I shudder when reflecting that this will be the exemplary climate science laying the foundations for EPA’s future activities in GHG control.

Sulfur dioxide initiates global climate change

I was sent a very interesting preview of an upcoming  paper by Dr. Peter L. Ward,  soon to be published in the journal “Thin Solid Films” (Elsevier, doi:10.1016/j.tsf.2009.01.005). Dr Ward writes that there are 4 “cardinal rates” of SO2 emissions, each having a different influence on global climate: low (->cooling for longer periods), moderate (-> short-time cooling), high (-> global warming) and extreme (->extreme global warming with mass extinctions). He finds good examples in past geological times, and his hypothesis works well with the observations of global temperature over the last 100 years. He says that the peaking of CH4 during the last 10 years is a sign that the oxidizing capacity of the atmosphere has begun to recover (stopping the warming trend and leading to a possible cooling). He also thinks that if you want to avoid a possible global warming, the best strategy is lowering SO2 emissions (which will be far easier than avoiding CO2 emissions).
The authors home-page is http://www.tetontectonics.org/

A conference on the psychology of climate change denial

Most of us still have the reflex in considering everything coming out of academia as robust, well researched and scientifically correct. We should get rid of this reflex, as more and more complete nonsense is pouring out from (often) psycho-social-enviro oriented university departments. A good example is the conference on the psychology of climate change denialists, organized by the University of West England.
Read a very revealing article by Brendan O’Neill in spiked online here!