- Bishop Hill blog - Civil servants protect their own

When pondering the ethical contortions of the various inquiries into the Climatic Research Unit, I sometimes wonder whether there was ever any chance of anyone being found guilty of anything. As Doug Keenan has pointed out, there are tens of thousands of scientists in the UK and none has been found guilty of research fraud in the last twenty years. The idea that the scientific community here is populated entirely by choirs of seraphim and cherubim is, of course, not credible, so we are left to conclude that bad behaviour by scientists is, in the normal run of things, completely ignored. And it's not just the scientists, of course. It has been pointed out that only 18 teachers have been fired in England in the last 40 years.

National Resources are no longer National | The SPPI Blog

We are sleep walking into a world of UN control, led by our own politicians.

Researchers don't mean to exaggerate, but lots of things can distort findings | Ben Goldacre | Comment is free | The Guardian

It's possible people are not bothering to report a negative result alongside positive ones they found

What a surprise – mandated CFLs leap in price | JunkScience Sidebar

The cost of energy saving light bulbs is rising sharply ahead of the European Union ban on the traditioanl 60-watt bulbs. (TDT)

The Sahel Is Greening

However, in sharp contrast to this gloomy outlook, it seems that global warming has exactly the opposite effect on the Sahara and the Sahel. The Sahara is actually shrinking, with vegetation arising on land where there was nothing but sand and rocks before. The southern border of the Sahara has been retreating since the early 1980s, making farming viable again in what were some of the most arid parts of Africa.