State of Fear

Kaser, Georg, Douglas R. Hardy, Thomas Molg, Raymond S. Bradley, and Tharsis M. Hyera. "Modern Glacier Retreat on Kilimanjaro as Evidence of Climate Change: Observations and Facts."International Journal of Climatology 24 (2004): 329-39.

 

Kieffer, H., J. S. Kargel, R. Barry, R. Bindschadler, M. Bishop, D. MacKinnon, A. Ohmura, B. Raup, M. Antoninetti, J. Bamber, M. Braun, I. Brown, D. Cohen, L. Copland, J. DueHagen, R. V. Engeset, B. Fitzharris, K. Fujita, W. Haeberli, J. O. Hagen, D. Hall, M. Hoelzle, M. Johansson, A. Kaab, M. Koenig, V. Konovalov, M. Maisch, F. Paul, F. Rau, N. Reeh, E. Rignot,A. Rivera, M. Ruyter de Wildt, T. Scambos, J. Schaper, G. Scharfen, J. Shroder, O. Solomina, D. Thompson, K. Van der Veen, T. Wohlleben, and N. Young. "New eyes in the sky measure glaciers and ice sheets."EOS, Transactions, American Geophysical Union 81, no. 265 (2000): 270-71.

 

Kline, Wendy. Building a Better Race: Gender, Sexuality and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby Boom. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2001.

 

Koshland, Daniel J. "Credibility in Science and the Press."Science 254 (1 Nov. 1991): 629. Bad science reporting takes its toll; the former head of the American Association for the Advancement of Science complains about it.

 

Kraus, Nancy, Trorbjorn Malmfors, and Paul Slovic. "Intuitive Toxicology: Expert and Lay Judgments of Chemical Risks." InSlovic, 2000. The extent to which uninformed opinion should be given a place in decision making is highlighted by the question of whether ordinary people have an intuitive sense of what in their environment is harmful--whether they are, in the words of these authors, intuitive toxicologists. As I read the data, they aren't.

 

Krech, Shepard. The Ecological Indian: Myth and History. New York: Norton, 1999. An anthropologist carefully reviews the data indicating that native Americans were not the exemplary ecologists of yore. Also reviews recent changes in ecological science.

 

Kuhl, Stevan. The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

 

Kuran, Timur. Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995.

 

Landsea, C., N. Nicholls, W. Gray, and L. Avila. "Downward Trend in the Frequency of Intense Atlantic Hurricanes During the Past Five Decades."Geophysical Research Letters 23 (1996): 527-30.

 

Landsea, Christopher W., and John A. Knaff. "How Much Skill Was There in Forecasting the Very Strong 1997-98 El Nino?"Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 81, no. 9 (September 2000): 2017-19. Authors found the older, simpler models performed best. "The use of more complex, physically realistic dynamical models does not automatically provide more reliable forecasts.... [Our findings] may be surprising given the general perception that seasonal El Nino forecasts from dynamical models have been quite successful and may even be considered a solved problem." They discuss in detail that the models did not, in fact, predict well. Yet "others are using the supposed success in dynamical El Nino forecasting to support other agendas...one could even have less confidence in anthropogenic global studies because of the lack of skill in predicting El Nino.... The bottom line is that the successes in forecasting have been overstated (sometimes drastically) and misapplied in other areas."

 

Lave, Lester B. "Benefit-Cost Analysis: Do the Benefits Exceed the Costs?" In Robert W. Hahn, ed.,Risks, Costs, and Lives Saved: Getting Better Results from Regulation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. A critical review of problems in cost-benefit analysis by an economist who supports the tool but acknowledges that opponents sometimes have a point.

 

Lean, Judith, and David Rind. "Climate Forcing by Changing Solar Radiation."Journal of Climat e 11 (December 1988): 3069-94. How much does the sun affect climate? These authors suggest about half the observed surface warming since 1900 and one-third of the warming since 1970 may be attributed to the sun. But there are uncertainties here. "Present inability to adequately specify climate forcing by changing solar radiation has implications for policy making regarding anthropogenic global change, which must be detected against natural climate variability."