- Bishop Hill blog - Another confounding factor?

Interestingly, the new paper's conclusion is that livestock can reduce tree ring widths by a factor of three or so, but according to the press release, "past densities of herbivores can be estimated from historic records, and from the fossilised remains of spores from fungi that live on dung". In other words, you can control for the effect.

Rick Perry to run for president; climate deniers cheer | Grist

The climate skeptics can finally get excited about the 2012 election: Rick Perry, their candidate of choice, is about to officially throw his hat in the ring.

Perry calls global warming "all one contrived phony mess that is falling apart under its own weight." Unlike many of the other GOP presidential candidates, he hasn't expressed concern about climate change in the past, so he won't have to do any back-pedaling.
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But plugging your ears and going "la la la la" doesn't make global warming disappear.

NZ unaffected by human-caused global warming | Scoop News

No temperature increase in the last hundred years

The current emissions trading scheme (ETS) has no justification, because New Zealand has not been affected by global warming, whether of natural origin or human causes, in the last 100 years. When corrected with accepted scientific techniques, the official New Zealand Temperature Record (NZTR) shows that there has been no measurable change in mean temperatures during 1909-2009.

The historical data shows a warming rate of 0.29°C per century, while the corrected figure is 0.26°C per century. But both amounts are within the margins of error, and are effectively zero.

Luboš Motl finds an ice-free Arctic by 2100 plausible | JunkScience Sidebar

Had I any such expectation of longevity I’d bet against it because indications are that the ice pack survived in a reduced state during the Holocene Thermal Maximum when temperatures were 2-4°C warmer. While the good professor makes a case for enhanced greenhouse (in the Arctic) I think cloud cover and albedo far more important and that the ice will largely survive. Nonetheless, LuMo is always interesting: