"A WikiLeaks-style Web dump of drafts of the 2013 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change provides fresh evidence that the organization’s policies and procedures are a terrible fit for an era in which transparency will increasingly be enforced on organizations working on consequential energy and environmental issues."

"MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- It didn't take long for the new associate professor at West Virginia University to give the state's most powerful industry a bad case of heartburn."

"Spurred by mounting scientific evidence, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is initiating a new effort to examine whether low doses of hormone-mimicking chemicals are harming human health and whether chemical testing should be overhauled."

"Jerry Mahlman, a leading climatologist who for many years headed the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dyamics Lab, died on November 28. In the 1990s I saw him play a pioneering role in interpreting the science of global warming to policymakers and the public. In 2006, in comments we posted, he called out NOAA Administrator Lautenbacher for political interference with science communication at his agency. A sad loss of a terrific guy and a great asset to the community."

"NOAA’s leader, Jane Lubchenco, announced [Wednesday] morning she is leaving the agency at the end of February (2013)."

"As scrutiny increases over the relationship between oil and gas industry funding and academic research, universities are likely to take a second look at their conflict-of-interest guidelines."

"A blue-ribbon panel of scientific and technology advisers to President Obama warns that the nation risks losing its longstanding supremacy in food production because research in agriculture has not kept up with new challenges like climate change, depleted land and water resources and emerging pests, pathogens and invasive plants."

"The University of Texas said today that it has accepted the findings of a damning independent review of the preparation of a report on potential impacts of shale gas drilling by the school’s Energy Institute. The school said it will undertake six recommended actions, the most significant being the withdrawal of papers from the Energy Institute’s Web site related to the report until they are submitted for fresh expert review."

"Checking 20 years' of projections by the foremost global climate science panel against reality finds that the group has consistently underestimated the pace and impacts of climate change – with severe consequences for the public it is tasked to inform."

Don't believe everything you read in the news media. A new study of 13,950 peer-reviewed scientific articles published between 1 January 1991 and 9 November 2012 reports that only 24 of them, or 0.17% rejected the idea that human activity was causing global warming. It was self-published by geologist-blogger James Lawrence Powell.

"Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), a skeptic of man-made global warming, is set to take over the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology in the 113th Congress."

"JUNGFRAUJOCH, Switzerland -- On a clear day at the Sphinx, a legendary atmospheric observatory 11,000 feet up in the snowed-in peaks of the Bernese Alps, the blue sky runs down green hills and white glaciers toward seemingly all of Europe beyond. On a lucky day here, though, there's only gray. There are only clouds."

"Most people try to avoid ticks. But not Tom Mather. The University of Rhode Island researcher goes out of his way to find them."

"For drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline, the 17-page article in the New England Journal of Medicine represented a coup. The 2006 report described a trial that compared three diabetes drugs and concluded that Avandia, the company’s new drug, performed best. ... What only careful readers of the article would have gleaned is the extent of the financial connections between the drugmaker and the research."

"Pennsylvania's environmental protection chief is defending his agency's controversial system for testing water wells near Marcellus Shale operations by saying other states work the same way. But regulators in those states say that's not true."