SCIENCE IN THE NEWS WEEKLY
United Nations Plans Review of IPCC Errors
Last week the United Nations announced that an international team of leading scientists will conduct an independent review of errors made by its climate change advisory body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in an attempt to restore its credibility.
Those errors have been seized on by global warming skeptics, and in recent weeks, Texas, Virginia and Alabama officials have filed challenges to the EPA's finding that manmade greenhouse gases threaten public health.
In other environmental news, Wired magazine looked at compressed-air energy storage plants, which used abandoned mines to "bottle the wind." Combining cheap wind energy and compressed-air storage could create "a potent new force in the electricity markets."
A Boston Globe story pointed out that how Massachusetts, the nation's eighth-most-forested state, resolves a conflict between logging interests and conservationists could serve as an example for other states.
Scientists say that the rediscovery in rural Australia of the yellow-spotted bell frog, thought to have been extinct for 30 years, is a reminder of the need to protect natural habitats so "future generations can enjoy the noise and color of our native animals."
And the Obama administration cited the need to address higher-priority species first in announcing that it will not place the imperiled sage grouse on the Endangered Species list. Also mentioned several times was the need for energy development on public and private lands in the West, where the sage grouse makes its home.
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