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Weekly John Locke Foundation research division newsletter focusing on environmental issues.

The newsletter highlights relevant analysis done by the JLF and other think tanks as well as items in the news.

1.  Drought Trends Overstated, new study from Nature

This should have been big news but it wasn’t. I saw it here at CBSlocal.com. Not exactly the evening news. The article opens with the following:

An index frequently used by scientists to predict drought trends — trends whose increased frequency and intensity were blamed on global warming — may have been misused, resulting in possibly inaccurate findings.

Well, that’s pretty interesting, given that every time there’s been a water restriction anywhere we have been told that it must be global warming. (By the way, I’m impressed by the fact that the article used the more accurate "global warming" rather than the more broad and essentially meaningless "climate change.")

And where is this new research found? Well it turns out that it’s from the journal Nature (I wonder how it sneaked through their refereeing process.) Apparently an index called the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) is the standard used for assessing issues including projections of future drought problems. But here’s what this latest research has to say:

The simplicity of the PDSI, which is calculated from a simple water-balance model forced by monthly precipitation and temperature data, makes it an attractive tool in large-scale drought assessments, but may give biased results in the context of climate change.

And here’s the last line from the CBS online article that sums up the study, again quoting directly from Nature:

The study noted in Nature that "[m]ore realistic calculations, based on the underlying physical principles that take into account changes in available energy, humidity and wind speed, suggest that there has been little change in drought over the past 60 years."

WHOOPS!

2. An excellent primer on the EPA’s Utility MACT Rule (in pictures)

This is an excellent summary of the new Mercury and Air Toxics (MACT) standards that the EPA wants to impose on coal fired power plants. And it is perfect for people like me who need their stories told in pictures and drawings. Just click through this presentation to see how extreme and costly these rules are.

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