“One item that may attract the Brits’ attention,” reports the July newsletter of Arizona-based Doctors for Disaster Preparedness (www.oism.org/ddp/) “is the recommendation by academics at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute that 3.2 million homes be demolished by 2050. Households account for 30 percent of Britain’s total energy use, and there is a ‘desperate need’ for a clear strategy to deal with old, inefficient housing stock to bring about the 60 percent reduction in emissions that Tony Blair wants to see by 2050,” the good doctors report, citing a May 30 article in London’s Daily Telegraph.

In an article headlined “Theory Dead; Hype Marches On,” the newsletter reports “Inflated rhetoric about the global climate scare continues -- as does the energy rationing agenda -- despite the fact that the theory behind the Kyoto Protocol has been demolished. The various climate models -- German, British, Canadian, American -- are mutually inconsistent and disagree with each other by 400 percent. Not one of them agrees with actual observations.

“To affect future climate, we might just as well launch a campaign to ‘Stop Continental Drift!’ ...

“Nevertheless, the public gets its view of the latest (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report -- an 800-page document with no index -- from reporters, who read the news release about the Executive Summary, which does not accurately reflect the actual content of the document,” the DDP newsletter goes on.

“The influence of the famous ‘hockey stick’ graph -- purportedly showing the unprecedented nature of current temperature trends -- lives on. While the critics published all their computer code, the original authors, after seven years, still refuse to release theirs, telling the Wall Street Journal that to do so would be ‘giving in to intimidation.’ ”

But “The ‘hockey stick’ shape depends on the use of controversial U.S. bristle-cone records,” the medicos report.

“If they are removed from the data, the hockey stick shape disappears,” wrote Oxford University graduate Steven McIntyre, coauthor of “Corrections to the Mann et. al. (1998) Proxy Data Base and Northern Hemispheric Average Temperature Series,” in Toronto’s June 17 Financial Post. “We showed that the authors had discovered this themselves and they not only failed to disclose it, they claimed the opposite in a later commentary on their own work.”

The IPCC is funded by the United Nations Environment Programme. And the outfit’s own Web site admits the IPCC “does not carry out research nor does it monitor climate related data or other relevant parameters. It bases its assessment mainly on peer reviewed and published scientific/technical literature.”

So what did Steve McIntyre learn about “scientific peer review” from his research into the curiously persistent hockey-stick graph?

“People generally have the wrong idea about journal peer review,” McIntyre explained in the above referenced piece for Toronto’s Financial Post. “Users of scientific research for policy-making generally assume that when an article is published in a peer-reviewed journal it means someone checked the data, checked the calculations and checked that the stated conclusions are supported by the evidence presented. But peer review does not guarantee any of this.

“Influential papers in climate research can go for years without the data or methods even being disclosed, let alone independently checked, even as huge policy investments are based on them. So we have urged policy-makers to put into place formal processes to ensure complete disclosure of data and methods for any scientific work that is being used to drive policy debates. ... We believe such innovations would be good for science and good for the policy-making process. ...

“One of the first places we would recommend such procedures is the temperature data set used by the IPCC. Other researchers have tried without success to get access to the supporting data. One of them shared with us the response he received from the principal author of the dataset: ‘We have 25 years invested in this work. Why should we let you look at it, when your only objective is to find fault with it?’

“So much for the self-correcting mechanism of science in America today.”

###

I was accused of goofiness, in some quarters, for bringing the underrated 1970s Cleveland rockers The Raspberries back to life in Chapter Nine of my latest opus, “The Black Arrow.” But -- while I won’t claim sole credit -- others seem to have thought it was a good idea, as well. Eric Carmen, Wally Bryson and the gang have defied all expectations and (after 31 years) launched a critically acclaimed reunion tour.

“The Raspberries are one of the more remarkable stories in the history of American pop music, a notion they reaffirmed in a brilliant two-hour show Saturday night at (Chicago’s) House of Blues,” the Chicago Sun Times wrote back on Jan. 17. “Lead singer Eric Carmen is in fine shape, hitting all the dramatic notes throughout innocent ballads like 1973’s ‘Ecstasy’ -- back when the word was amorous and not an amphetamine -- and ‘Let’s Pretend,’ a track influenced by ‘Pet Sounds’-era Beach Boys.”

See , and http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,163537,00.html.

The guys are scheduled to play Atlantic City Sept. 17, and you haven’t lived till you’ve tried to book air fares to that particular hub of mirth and merriment. But Kay Bryson, wife of guitar legend Wally Bryson, informs me “I think they’re working on some west coast gigs in October,” though the “talent” staff at our local House of Blues has so far declined to confirm any details. Stay tuned.

###

Speaking of “The Black Arrow,” a college professor who aims to start teaching the novel this year at a best-unnamed College Back East writes “I’m guessing my (mostly male) techie students will eat it right up. ... I know that a lot of my enjoyment stems from the fact that I’m a libertarian and recognize so many of the ‘true life’ stories in the book (fun to teach, I imagine, as so many of my students will be blown away by finding out that these incidents have already taken place in THEIR own time and been ignored by the Main Stream Media).

“Funniest line in the book so far: ‘The tax man jotted a note in his notebook, recording this valuable admission as though Andrew had just admitted being the last person to see Jimmy Hoffa or Jane Fonda alive.’ bwahahahaha! ...

“I’ll do my best to teach it,” she concludes, “assuming I am correct in my understanding that instructors have full autonomy to assign texts without first having them vetted by any departmental harpy. ... One detriment to the cover being so, uh, campy and salacious, is that it SCREAMS to be investigated by anyone who sees it in the college bookstore. I certainly won’t be able to lie low in the department once THAT makes the rounds. ...”