Climate scientists face political barbs | Philadelphia Inquirer | 03/22/2010

There are no scientists pointing out instances of cheating on the part of Mann, who is director of Penn State's Earth System Science Center. Instead, the complaints are coming from people angry over statements about Mann's work made in a series of e-mails stolen from a server in England in November. Critics interpreted those e-mails as admissions by scientists that important data fundamental to the climate-change debate were falsified.
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University spokesman Bill Mahon says this case is indeed unprecedented. "We've never had a case in all my 26 years at Penn State where there's been such an incredible amount of politics outside the university interjected into it."

Wind contributing to Arctic sea ice loss, study finds | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Much of the record breaking loss of ice in the Arctic ocean in recent years is down to the region's swirling winds and is not a direct result of global warming, a new study reveals.

Climate change uncertainty is no reason for inaction since we can't rule out risk | Tim Palmer | Environment | guardian.co.uk

We don't have to believe that our house will burn down in the coming year to take out insurance. Similarly we don't have to believe that dangerous climate change will occur to take action to cut emissions. A key question that everyone concerned by the climate change issue should ask, particularly those who are sceptical, is this. How large does the probability of serious climate change have to be before we should start cutting emissions? To be specific, how large does the probability have to be that by the end of this century, large parts of Bangladesh will under water because of sea level rise and a substantially more intense monsoon system? Or that the Amazonian rainforest will die because of shifts in rainfall patterns over South America? Or that the type of drought that plagued sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s will become a quasi-permanent feature? 0.1%, 1%, 10%, 50%? Considered this way, it's clear that the dichotomy between the "climate believers" vs "climate sceptics" is indeed a false one.

The scientific method is sometimes described as "organised scepticism", and this, rather than some logical progression from one certainty to the next, that characterises the inherently uncertain path of scientific progress. As one leading climate scientist put it: "In truth, we are all climate sceptics." However, despite the climate scientists' best efforts at scepticism, it simply has not been possible to rule out the risk of the sort of climate changes discussed above.

Hot wheels on a frozen highway - The Globe and Mail

When Paul (Iceman) Mondor was lying in a ditch, hearing his frozen lungs crinkling as he gasped for breath in the -40 C air, he realized he had overestimated his abilities.

"I was so frozen I couldn't push the 911 buttons. It wouldn't matter anyway. I thought I'd be dead in two minutes," he says.

But he survived by making a paper filter that helped thaw his lungs, and he finished that 2008 solo trip across Labrador on his motorcycle - in January.

Just think: In 100 years, a motorcyclist may be lying in the same spot, frozen lungs crinkling in -39.5 C air.