DNA Study Finds Deeper Antiquity of Polar Bear Species - NYTimes.com

A fascinating new paper makes a strong case, using new genetic clues, that polar bears have been around a lot longer, and thus endured more climate vagaries, than most previous estimates...Those questioning the vulnerability of this species to warming will point to its successful survival through two previous warm intervals between ice ages as evidence the bear can deal with reduced ice and other big environmental shifts.

Coyote Blog » Blog Archive » When the Media Loses Its Skepticism – High Speed Rail Edition

I have said for a long time that I don’t really think there is a lot of outright media bias in the sense of conspiring to bury or promote certain memes.   But there are real issues with the leftish monoculture of the media losing its skepticism on certain topics.

For example, high speed rail is one of those things we are just supposed to do, from the Leftish view.  Harry Reid’s justification for a high speed rail line is typical:  he wants to see  ”America catch up with the rest of the world”.  Everyone else has these things, so it must be some failing of ours that we don’t.  For the left, the benefits of high speed rail are a given, they are part of the liturgy and not to be questioned.  Which means that it is up to outsiders to do the media’s work of applying some degree of skepticism whenever a high speed rail project is proposed.

THE HOCKEY SCHTICK: New paper finds Urban Heat Island effect should not be 'considered exclusively a nighttime phenomenon anymore'

A paper published today in the Journal of Climate uses a new method comparing satellite and surface temperature observations to assess the Urban Heat Island [UHI] effect. The paper finds "UHI is stronger during the day and summer than during nighttime and winter," which is the opposite of the predictions of computer models and assumption of most climate scientists heretofore that UHI is a "nocturnal phenomenon."

Burn those deniers houses down « JoNova: Science, carbon, climate and tax

Dear Steve,

I’ve got great news for you, all you have to do to avert a global catastrophe is to find peer reviewed papers that support the models. I’ve been asking for two years, three months and four days, and no one can find one that suggests CO2 will cause much more than 1 degree of warming at most.

A Vivid Reminder of How The Climate Debate is Broken - Forbes

I was  working on an entirely different column about entrepreneurship and state tax policy when I read another Forbes contributor (Steve Zwick) this morning suggesting my house should be allowed to burn down in response to my global warming views.