Writing in Environmental Health Perspectives (2005), Booth and Zeller [hereafter BZ05] embark on the highly ambitious task of applying ecosystem modeling to the difficult problem of tracing the flow of methylmercury (MeHg) - the biologically active, potentially toxic form of mercury - in the Faroe Island marine ecosystem as changing functions of both fish mortality (commercial catch rates) and climate. The paper further attempts to estimate weekly MeHg intake by the Faroese from consumption of mainly pilot whale meat and cod fish - two key sources of MeHg exposures in Faroese diets. BZ05 displays the risk inherent in favoring computer modeling results over real world data. Such an exercise, increasingly common and problematic in climate science, often produces tenuous outcomes. More specifically, Booth and Zeller, with their minimal “what if” modeling efforts, cobble together a grab-bag of speculative assertions, problematic statements, harm attributions and over-reaching conclusions.

Comments related to EPA’s April 15, 2009 Notice of Data Availability (NODA) on Ocean Acidification and Marine pH Water Quality Criteria.

Submitted by Craig Idso and Robert Ferguson

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd spewed out a rhetorical barrage on climate skeptics worldwide. See: Australian PM warns skeptics 'are too 'dangerous to ignore' and are 'holding the world to ransom' – November 6, 2009.

Also see: here and here for more coverage of Rudd's speech. Climate Depot has undertaken a point by point rebuttal to Rudd's claims. The full text of Rudd's speech is available here.

Early last January, when the final 2008 numbers were in for the U.S. annual average temperature, we ran an article titled “U.S. Temperatures 2008: Back to the Future?” in which we noted that “The temperature in 2008 dropped back down to the range that characterized most of the 20th century.”

2009 seems to be following in 2008’s footsteps.

The national average temperature had been elevated ever since the big 1998 El Niño, which was leading some folks to clamor that global warming was finally showing up in the U.S. temperature record. “Finally,” because prior to 1998, there was little sign that anything unusual was going on with U.S. average temperatures (Figure 1). The end of the record was hardly any different than any other portion of the record. The slight overall trend arose from a couple of cool decades at the start of the 20th century rather than any unusual warmth towards the end.

The world is considering a new financial market larger than any commodity, it’s “based on science”, but if you ask for evidence, you’re called names—“Denier”, and by our Prime Minister, no less. This is supposed to pass for reasoned debate?

In the April/May 2009 Journal of the Chartered Insurance Institute of London, Paul Maynard and I published an article entitled Let Cool Heads Prevail, expressing grave scientific doubt about the supposed magnitude of the anthropogenic effect on global temperature, and providing substantial evidence from the published data and from the peer-reviewed literature.

Our article caught the insurance industry by surprise. Lloyds of London had publicly issued blood-curdling warnings of the climatic terrors allegedly to come. The Prince of Wales had established Climate Wise, a group of leading figures in the insurance market committed, in effect, to peddling and promulgating the scare, and to silencing all dissent. The market was sewn up. How, then, could no less an organ of academic opinion than the Journal have allowed two heretics – one of them a very senior and widely-respected in the insurance world – to publish a substantial and well-referenced paper demonstrating that the scare was scientifically baseless?