- Bishop Hill blog - Gleick "cleared"

It appears that all details about the alleged inquiry, including who conducted it, are to be withheld. I think they had to clear him so as not to give any "fodder to the sceptics".

At 118 mpg, Honda Fit is most fuel-efficient in the US, but steep cost to buy electric car | StarTribune.com

DETROIT - At 118 miles per gallon, the Honda Fit electric vehicle is the most fuel-efficient in the United States. But getting that mileage isn't cheap — and it isn't always good for the environment.

...The electric Fit has an estimated price tag nearly twice as high as the gasoline-powered version. It would take 11 years before a driver makes up the difference and begins saving on fuel.

Evidence of impending tipping point for Earth uncovered

The Nature paper, in which the scientists compare the biological impact of past incidences of global change with processes under way today and assess evidence for what the future holds, appears in an issue devoted to the environment in advance of the June 20-22 United Nations Rio+20 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil....The paper by 22 internationally known scientists describes an urgent need for better predictive models that are based on a detailed understanding of how the biosphere reacted in the distant past to rapidly changing conditions, including climate and human population growth. In a related development, ground-breaking research to develop the reliable, detailed biological forecasts the paper is calling for is now underway at UC Berkeley. The endeavor, The Berkeley Initiative in Global Change Biology, or BiGCB, is a massive undertaking involving more than 100 UC Berkeley scientists from an extraordinary range of disciplines that already has received funding: a $2.5 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and a $1.5 million grant from the Keck Foundation. The paper by Barnosky and others emerged from the first conference convened under the BiGCB's auspices.

...Currently, to support a population of 7 billion people, about 43 percent of Earth's land surface has been converted to agricultural or urban use, with roads cutting through much of the remainder. The population is expected to rise to 9 billion by 2045; at that rate, current trends suggest that half Earth's land surface will be disturbed by 2025. To Barnosky, this is disturbingly close to a global tipping point.

"Can it really happen? Looking into the past tells us unequivocally that, yes, it can really happen. It has happened. The last glacial/interglacial transition 11,700 years ago was an example of that," he said, noting that animal diversity still has not recovered from extinctions during that time. "I think that if we want to avoid the most unpleasant surprises, we want to stay away from that 50 percent mark."

Forcing or Feedback? | Watts Up With That?

...before I discuss that, let me digress for a moment to say that I think there are two simple changes in the reviewing process that would help it immensely.

1. Double blind reviewing. Right now, reviewing is just single blind, with the reviewer knowing the identity of the author but not the other way around. This is a huge, huge violation of the scientific norms, and it leads and has led to problems. A recent proposal to use double-blind reviewing in the awarding of grants by the National Science Foundation makes for interesting reading … http://www.nsf.gov/nsb/publications/2011/meritreviewcriteria.pdf This would put the focus back onto the ideas rather than the author.

2. Publish the reviews and the reviewer’s names along with the paper when it is published. This sunshine, this transparency, will have several benefits.  First, if a reviewer still has strong reservations about the paper, or if their objections have led to improvements or changes in the paper, this will be made visible when the reviews are published (presumably online) along with the paper. Second, we get to see who agrees that the paper is valid science, and who might not. Third, in the fullness of time, we will have a record of who was right and who was wrong. But I digress … the anonymous Reviewer wanted Lindzen to show that clouds respond to SST.