NOAA said on Sept. 8, 2011, that the La Niña weather pattern has returned already, after the last La Niña cycle ran from June 2010-May 2011, causing extraordinarily frequent and damaging extreme weather. If typical patterns pan out in the new cycle, that could lead to more drought and fires in the south, and blizzards and flooding in the north.
Top officials at the Bureau of Ocean Energy, Management, Regulation and Enforcement have been charged with scientific misconduct regarding a possible cover-up over the suspension and sudden reinstatement of Dr. Charles Monnett, who authored a paper suggesting climate change was harming polar bears.
In formal comments on EPA's August 5, 2011, draft Scientific Integrity Policy, submitted September 2, SEJ recommended that EPA adopt portions of a model policy drafted by the Union of Concerned Scientists in addition to affirming that "media have a right to interact with EPA staff, including scientists, without having agency staff and/or political minders listening in or otherwise taking part."
"Taking on controversial claims that clouds are a main driver of temperature changes across the globe, a Texas A&M University atmospheric scientist finds evidence of cherry picking and errors. New findings published Tuesday appear to undermine a controversial study - oft-cited by those who downplay the human impacts of climate change - that claimed variations in cloud cover are driving temperature changes across the globe."
The Tevatron particle collider near Chicago -- once the largest such device in the world -- will be closing down this month. It is being superseded by the Large Hadron collider in Switzerland.
Nell Greenfieldboyce reports for NPR's Morning Edition September 6, 2011.
"The editor of the journal Remote Sensing resigned [Friday], saying in an editorial that his journal never should have published a controversial paper in July that challenged the reliability of climate models used to forecast global warming. The paper, by Roy Spencer and William Braswell of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, proposed that climate researchers have likely made a fundamental error by overestimating the sensitivity of the climate to greenhouse-gas pollution."
"President Barack Obama put a stop on Friday to new rules that would limit smog pollution, unexpectedly reversing course on a key policy measure after businesses said it would kill jobs and cost them billions of dollars."
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