With Old Man Winter knocking again, EPW Policy Beat is packing up and heading to shelter. But before we leave town, we pause to wonder: Will global warming slash crop production in North Africa by 50 percent by 2020? The IPCC once thought so, but now it's thinking again. The question is: Will EPA?

As London's Sunday Times reported on February 7, Professor Chris Field, "the new lead author of the IPCC's climate impacts team," said "he could find nothing in the [IPCC's Fourth Assessment] report to support" the North Africa crop claim. "The revelation," the Times noted, "follows the IPCC's retraction of a claim that the Himalayan glaciers might all melt by 2035, dubbed 'Glaciergate' by commentators."

As we noted in a recent blogpost, the Himalayan claim was based not a peer-reviewed study, but on a 1999 magazine article, which itself was based on a speculative conversation with an Indian scientist. The more interesting tidbit from our standpoint was the fact that EPA's Technical Support Document (TSD), the scientific basis of EPA's endangerment finding for greenhouse gases, uses the Himalayan example as evidence cited by the IPCC of "regional impacts" caused by global warming. On page 162, EPA states: "Glacier melt in the Himalayas is projected to increase flooding and rock avalanches from destabilized slopes and to affect water resources within the next two to three decades. This will be followed by decreased river flows as the glaciers recede."

UPDATE: The following Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works hearing have been postponed due to inclement weather this week:

- The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife, will hold a hearing entitled, "Collaborative Solutions to Wildlife and Habitat Management."

- The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works will hold a hearing entitled, "Global Warming Impacts, Including Public Health, in the United States."

Once the hearings are rescheduled information will be posted at www.epw.senate.gov

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While most Washingtonians took cover during the Blizzard of 2010 (or Snowpocalypse, or Snowmaggedon - whatever you want to call it) Sen. James Inhofe's family braved the storm to poke fun at former Vice President Al Gore.

The Oklahoma Republican's daughter, Molly Rapert; her husband, Jimmy; and their four children built an igloo - roomy enough to fit several people inside - at Third Street and Independence Avenue Southeast.

They officially dedicated the humble abode in honor of global-warming crusader Gore, even posting a cardboard sign on the igloo's roof reading "AL GORE'S NEW HOME" on one side and "HONK IF YOU [HEART] GLOBAL WARMING" on the other.

Inhofe, the ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, is famously one of Congress' most vocal critics of global warming. And he told HOH that he found his family's ironic tribute to Gore - which came during one of Washington's snowiest winters on record - "really humorous."

Inhofe was so proud of the construction effort, in fact, that he posted several pictures to his official Facebook page. Inhofe noted he wasn't the only person who liked the igloo - several people honked to show support.

Scientists Say Small Errors Do Not Change the Reality of Global Warming; But Errors Have Given Traction to Warming Deniers

(CBS) The U.N.'s climate chief admitted Thursday that scientists made mistakes in a major study of melting glaciers in the Himalayas. It's the latest example of scientific errors in climate reports. Experts insist they don't change the overall conclusion - that climate change is real. But as CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips reports, they're providing ammunition for skeptics.

You know you're in trouble when you're being spoofed on YouTube.

The subject of the spoof is Michael Mann of Penn State University, who was accused of tampering with climate data to produce his famous hockey stick graph which shows that the rise in man-made greenhouse gasses corresponds to a rise in world temperatures.

An academic board today cleared Mann, saying his science holds up - but the damage may have already been done. (INHOFE EPW PRESS NOTE: Penn State Also Launched a Full Investigation of Mann)

The biggest splash these days in the global warming argument may not be caused by the world's melting glaciers. It may be caused by a series of gaffes by climate change scientists.

We kick off our series on the Obama Administration's FY 2011 budget, paying special attention to those provisions affecting energy and environmental policies. One such is the proposed reinstatement of the Superfund Tax. The aim of the Superfund program-to clean up hazardous waste sites-is no doubt a worthy one, but the tax is punitive, its reach widespread, and its ultimate cost borne by consumers. This probably explains why the proposed reinstatement of the tax is buried in page 175 of the budget's "Analytical Perspectives" document.

If you own a small business, take heed: the tax is assessed at a rate of 0.12 percent on corporate "alternative minimum taxable" income in excess of $2 million-regardless of whether a corporation is responsible for polluting a site. This "corporate environmental income tax" comes on top of a 40 percent corporate tax rate that is already nearly 15 percentage points higher than most corporate rates in Europe. And for consumers concerned about prices at the gas pump, prepare to pay more: the re-imposition of the Superfund tax would mean an excise tax of 9.7 cents per barrel on crude oil and imported petroleum products (which, incidentally, would come on top of other taxes the Administration wants to impose on the oil sector).

University Park, Pa. - An internal inquiry by Penn State into the research and scholarly activities of a well-known climate scientist will move into the investigatory stage, which is the next step in the University's process for reviewing research conduct.

A University committee has concluded its inquiry into allegations of research impropriety that were leveled in November against Professor Michael Mann, after information contained in a collection of stolen e-mails was revealed. More than a thousand e-mails are reported to have been "hacked" from computer servers at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in England, one of the main repositories of information about climate change.

During the inquiry, all relevant e-mails pertaining to Mann or his work were reviewed, as well as related journal articles, reports and additional information. The committee followed a well-established University policy during the inquiry (http://guru.psu.edu/policies/ra10.html).

A trio of House lawmakers yesterday introduced a bill to block U.S. EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases, marking the latest in a string of bipartisan attacks against forthcoming climate rules.

The measure from Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) and Missouri Reps. Ike Skelton (D) and Jo Ann Emerson (R) would amend the Clean Air Act to prohibit EPA from regulating greenhouse gases based on their effects on global climate change.

The bill would also advance several of the farm state lawmakers' other priorities by stopping EPA from calculating land-use changes in foreign countries for determining U.S. renewable fuels policy, and broadening the definition of renewable biomass.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change depends for its influence upon the confidence of the public. It can only assist policymakers if its work is seen to be based upon rigorous inquiry.

Recent events have shown the IPCC falling short of this ideal. It has been seriously shamed by the revelation that it included an unsubstantiated claim about the future disappearance of the Himalayan glaciers in its 2007 report. The claim came from a paper produced by a lobby group, which was itself repeating a quote once given to some journalists. This is the scientific equivalent of dodgy dossier land. To compound the error, the IPCC's head, Rajendra Pachauri, then obfuscated when challenged.

This Himalayan gaffe comes on the heels of "climategate" - a British scandal in which scientists at the University of East Anglia were accused of deflecting requests for information and data from known climate sceptics. It has also stirred up a series of further allegations about other claims contained in the IPPC's report. This drumbeat of criticism threatens to undermine trust in the good faith of the climate science community.

It was bad enough last month watching Washington politicians merrily flying off to the U.N. climate change Conference of Parties in Copenhagen (or COP-15 for short), ostensibly to draft a global-warming treaty, when all the players knew that no meaningful pact would result and the only sure outcome was that much energy would be squandered.