Article

NZ Baptist

3 August 2010  by Maryanne Wardlaw

Visionnetwork’s “Clearing the Air” forum July 16-17 was a great exercise in viewing the phantom behemoth that is climate change from many useful angles.

The stated goal was to “provide a forum which connects science and faith on the issue of climate change and provide the framework for a joint statement by national church leaders.” It was precipitated by the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) that took effect July 1 and the ongoing debate around climate change.

Glyn Carpenter, who heads up visionnetwork, and Unitec Institute of Technology associate professor Jonathan Leaver convened and helped organise the forum.

Attendance varied from about 40 to 55. Most of those who came are involved in either church leadership, such as the Salvation Army’s public policy staff, or work in science or policy realms affected by climate change issues.

The variety of expertise and views was broad, especially considering that the platform assumed a Christian worldview. Speakers included Matthew Flannagan, adjunct lecturer at Laidlaw College; Ralph Sims, director of the Centre for Energy Research at Massey University; James Renwick, principal climate scientist at NIWA; Ian Wishart, editor of Investigate magazine; Jonathan Boston, director of the Institute of Policy Studies at Victoria University; Barry Brill, president of NZ Climate Science Coalition (pictured); Andy Reisinger, senior research fellow at NZ Climate Change Research Institute, Victoria University; Liza Storey, research officer at the International Global Change Centre, University of Waikato; Stephen Tollestrup, executive director of Tear Fund; and Ralph Sims, director of the Centre for Energy Research at Massey University.

he leaking of the East Anglia “Climategate” e-mails and data last November shattered the appearance of a scientific consensus on supposed “man-made global warming” and provided a disturbing insight into the corruption of the scientific process as it relates to the “man-made global warming” hypothesis. The spectacle of scientists stonewalling freedom of information requests, destroying records, hiding unwelcome results, colluding to keep dissenting viewpoints out of scholarly journals, and even suppressing their own acknowledged doubts — all of this made it perfectly clear that other interests were at stake than the pure pursuit of knowledge. The centrality of the quest for funding in the e-mail exchanges made it equally clear that for the scientists in question, money, unsurprisingly, was first and foremost among those interests.

The Atlantic 17 August 2010

by Clive Crook

Joe Romm tells me to "retract [my] libelous misinformation and apologize to Michael Mann". He is complaining about my suggestion that the various inquiries supposedly vindicating the Climategate emailers have further diminished the credibility of climate science, rather than restoring it.

I think the only issue of substance in his complaint is the charge that I failed to notice that there were two Penn State investigations of Mann, not one, and that both had cleared the accused. Of course I was aware of the form of the inquiry, though I concede that the post was not as clear about the two phases as it should have been.

Yahoo Finance- David Mercer, 2 August 2010

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (AP) -- Advances in conventional agriculture have dramatically slowed the flow of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, in part by allowing farmers to grow more food to meet world demand without plowing up vast tracts of land, a study by three Stanford University researchers has found.

The study, which has been embraced by many agricultural groups but criticized by some environmentalists, found that improvements in technology, plant varieties and other advances enabled farmers to grow more without a big increase in greenhouse gas releases. Much of the credit goes to eliminating the need to plow more land to plant additional crops.

By Perry Bacon Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 22, 2010

Conceding they can't find enough votes for the measure, Senate Democrats on Thursday abandoned efforts to put together a comprehensive energy bill that would seek to limit greenhouse gas emissions, delivering a potentially fatal blow to a proposal Democrats have long touted and President Obama campaigned on.