The Manufactured Doubt industry and the hacked email controversy
In 1954, the tobacco industry realized it had a serious problem. Thirteen scientific studies had been published over the preceding five years linking smoking to lung cancer. With the public growing increasingly alarmed about the health effects of smoking, the tobacco industry had to move quickly to protect profits and stem the tide of increasingly worrisome scientific news. Big Tobacco turned to one the world's five largest public relations firms, Hill and Knowlton,...<br /><a href="http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1389">Read More</a>

QuikSCAT, 1999 - 2009: R.I.P.
The QuikSCAT satellite is no more. The sad new of QuikSCAT's demise came yesterday in a terse message from NASA:Several hours ago, shortly past 7:00Z today (23Nov), telemetry received from QuikSCAT indicates that the antenna rotation rate has dropped to zero and remains at zero. The motor remains powered. The system can be operated safely in this state for an indefinite period. The QuikSCAT operations team will be meeting later this morning, but in all likelihood t...<br /><a href="http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1388">Read More</a>

Globe has 2nd - 7th warmest October on record; U.S., 3rd coldest
The globe recorded its sixth warmest October since record keeping began in 1880, according to NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies rated October 2009 as the 2nd warmest October on record, falling 0.06°C short of the record set in 2005, while the UK HADCRUT3 data set rated October the 7th warmest (this data set does not include most of the Arctic, Antarctic, and Africa, where there are few land stations). NOAA rated the y...<br /><a href="http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1387">Read More</a>

Is more CO2 beneficial for Earth's ecosystems?
We should emit as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as possible and oppose efforts to regulate CO2 emissions, because more CO2 is good for the Earth. That's the take-home message of an audacious TV ad that was run this fall by the advocacy group, CO2isgreen.com. "Higher CO2 levels than we have today would help the Earth's ecosystems, and support more plant and animal life", the ad proclaims.It's the brainchild of H. Leighton Steward, a retired oil industry ex...<br /><a href="http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1386">Read More</a>

A new record minimum for arctic sea ice
Arctic sea ice reached a new record minimum during the first half of November, according to data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (Figure 1). The record low ice extent this month is the first extended period of record minimum arctic sea ice since 2007. The new record minimum suggests that the gains in ice seen over the past two years were probably a temporary fluctuation due to normal year-to-year variability in the weather, and that the long-term arctic s...<br /><a href="http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1385">Read More</a>