10. Massive Moisture-Driven Extreme Precipitation During Warmest Winter in the Satellite Record–and the Deniers Say It Disproves (!) Climate Science — Joseph Romm
9. The Fetishism of Morality — Jonathan Rée and Doing What Comes Supernaturally: Stanley Fish on Fact and Value — Russell Blackford
8. The Making of a Euromess — Paul Krugman and California Death Spiral — Paul Krugman
7. Child Slavery in Uzbekistan — Craig Murray
6. Questions and Answers about the Financial Crisis — Gary Gorton, Due North: Canada’s Marvelous Mortgage and Banking System — Mark J. Perry, and The Troubling Resolution Revolution — Peter J. Wallison
5. “Too Big to Fail” Is No Redemption Song — Avinash Persaud and How to Make a Bank Raise Equity — Oliver Hart & Luigi Zingales
4. Blair: Gaza’s Great Betrayer — Avi Shlaim
3. Eric Holder and the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Trial — Jane Mayer and Susan Collins Spreads Central Myth about the Constitution — Glenn Greenwald
2. The World Needs All Kinds of Minds — Temple Gradin and How Brains Learn to See — Pawan Sinha
1. State of Denial: Searching for Peace in Israel — Robert Fisk, Arieli Is a Man with a Plan. The Trouble Is, It’s a Map of Israel — Robert Fisk, and Gaza’s Defiant Tunnellers Head Deeper Underground — Robert Fisk
BONUS: Let’s Not Create More Debris in Haiti — Anthony W. Orlando

10. Letting Perfect Be the Enemy of the Good? — J. Michael McWilliams and All You Ever Wanted to Know about the Research on Health Insurance and Health–and More — Stan Dorn
9. The Origins of Religion: Evolved Adaptation or By-Product? — Ilkka Pyysiäinen & Marc Hauser
8. GSE Losses as Shadow Bailout — Mike Konczal and Dividend Restrictions as Macroprudential Regulation — Charles A. E. Goodhart, Udara Peiris, Dimitri Tsomocos, & Alexandros Vardoulakis
7. NOAA: Warmest January in Both Satellite Records — Joseph Romm, An Amazing, Though Clearly Little-Known, Scientific Fact: We Get More Snow Storms in Warm Years! — Joseph Romm, and An Ominous Warning on the Effects of Ocean Acidification — Carl Zimmer
6. The End of Obama’s Vision of a Nuke-Free World — Scott Ritter and The Best Way to Get Rid of the World’s Nukes — Barry Blechman
5. The Rape of American Prisoners — David Kaiser & Lovisa Stannow
4. Greece Should Approach the IMF — Simon Johnson and Try a European Fiscal Fund — Mark Thoma
3. Why Chuckles Greeted Hillary’s Gulf Tour — Rami G. Khouri
2. The Fetishism of Morality — Jonathan Rée
1. The Making of a Euromess — Paul Krugman and California Death Spiral — Paul Krugman
BONUS: The Enemy of My Enemy — Steven Strogatz

10. Cyber Warriors — James Fallows
9. The Wonder Drug Myth — Thomas Goetz and Why Adult Cells Won’t End the Stem-Cell Wars — Sharon Begley
8. The Eurozone Debt Crisis: Facts and Myths — Charles Wyplosz
7. Republicans–Not Obama–More Often on Wrong Side of Public Opinion — Nate Silver
6. Blair, Bush, Israel and Iraq — Stephen M. Walt
5. Listen to the Iranian People — Robert Wright and Salehi: Iran Would Back Down If West Supplies LEU; Khamenei Vows Self-Defense Against “US-Backed Saboteurs” — Juan Cole
4. Yanukovych Is Back — Owen Matthews
3. Massive Moisture-Driven Extreme Precipitation During Warmest Winter in the Satellite Record–and the Deniers Say It Disproves (!) Climate Science — Joseph Romm & Jeff Masters
2. “Too Big to Fail” Is No Redemption Song — Avinash Persaud and How to Make a Bank Raise Equity — Oliver Hart & Luigi Zingales
1. State of Denial: Searching for Peace in Israel — Robert Fisk, Arieli Is a Man with a Plan. The Trouble Is, It’s a Map of Israel — Robert Fisk, and Gaza’s Defiant Tunnellers Head Deeper Underground — Robert Fisk
BONUS: Rock Groups — Steven Strogatz

11. Is “the Process” Driving Opinion about Health Care? — John Sides and Policy Compromise Is Easy. Political Compromise Is Impossible. — Ezra Klein
10. Hottest January in UAH Satellite Record — Joseph Romm and Groundhog Decade: We’re Stuck in a Bad Movie, Where It’s Always the Hottest Decade on Record — Joseph Romm
9. Iran, China, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization — Flynt Leverett & Hillary Mann Leverett, Analysis of Multiple Polls Find Little Evidence Iranian Public Sees Government as Illegitimate — World Public Opinion, and Regime Change in Iran Will Come from the Centre — Tony Karon
8. With Raw Recruits, Afghan Police Buildup Falters — Rod Nordland, U.S., Karzai Clash on Unconditional Talks with Taliban — Gareth Porter, Peace Talks May Follow Ex-Taliban Mediators’ Plan — Gareth Porter, Taliban Take on the U.S.’s Surge — Syed Saleem Shahzad, How to End the War in Afghanistan — Ahmed Rashid, Not for Sale — Ron Moreau, and A Look at America’s New Hope: The Afghan Tribes — Ruhullah Khapalwak & David Rohde
7. Five Myths about America’s Credit Card Debt — Robert D. Manning
6. A Very Productive Congress, Despite What the Approval Ratings Say — Norman Ornstein
5. Seeking a Safer Way to Securitization — Floyd Norris
4. All Bark, No Bite — Clay Risen
3. Finding a Better Way to Grieve — Meghan O’Rourke
2. Blair: Gaza’s Great Betrayer — Avi Shlaim
1. Eric Holder and the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Trial — Jane Mayer and Susan Collins Spreads Central Myth about the Constitution — Glenn Greenwald
BONUS:  From Fish to Infinity — Steven Strogatz

10. PANIC!!! — Jonathan Chait, What Will Make People Trust Government Again? — John Sides, and A Formula for Futility — Ronald Brownstein
9. Iran, the Competition Over Eurasian Natural Gas, and the Revival of Classical Diplomacy in the 21st Century — Flynt Leverett & Hillary Mann Leverett
8. If It’s That Warm, How Come It’s So Damned Cold? — James Hansen, Reto Ruedy, Makiko Sato, & Ken Lo
7. A Bank Levy Will Not Stop the Doomsday Cycle — Peter Boone & Simon Johnson, Engineering Financial Stability — Robert J. Shiller, Who Bears the Costs of Post-Crisis Recovery? — Barry Ritholtz, and A Bomb Squad for Wall Street — William D. Cohan
6. What Toronto Can Teach New York and London — Chrystia Freeland, The Little-Known Reason Why Investment Banks Got Too Big, Too Greedy, Too Risky, and Too Powerful — Daniel Gross, and For Wall Street, Tough Talk, but Weak Reforms — William D. Cohan
5. The Tree-Lined Bunkers That Could Change the Face of the Middle East — Robert Fisk
4. Obama’s Secret Prisons — Anand Gopal & Tom Engelhardt
3. Nothing to Fear — John R. Bowen
2. A Deal with the Taliban? — Ahmed Rashid
1. The Year Climate Science Caught Up with What Top Scientists Have Been Saying Privately for Years — Joseph Romm
BONUS: What Isn’t the Weatherman Telling You? — Anthony W. Orlando

Wow, talk about falling behind in the news! It’ll probably take me a couple weeks to catch up. I apologize for the delay, but I will pump out the “Best of the Week” posts as quickly as possible, amid everything else on my desk. — AWO

10. What Makes a Great Teacher? — Amanda Ripley
9. Kiev Chameleon — Julia Ioffe
8. The Life of Justice Sonia Sotomayor — Lauren Collins
7. Panic Over Teen “Sexting” Eclipses Bigger Threat — Jesse Singal
6. Prisoners of Parole — Jeffrey Rosen
5. Obama to Fix Security Flaws; but Could He Please Fix Stupid Racial Profiling? — Juan Cole, The Real Reason Profiling Fails — Matthew Yglesias, and The Wrong Kind of Profiling — Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Zaid Jilani, & Alex Seitz-Wald
4. Cracks in the Jihad — Thomas Rid, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula: A Primer — Michelle Shephard, and A Summer in Yemen — Kent Davis-Packard
3. Gay Marriage, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, and the Supreme Court — Margaret Talbot
2. Russia, China, Iran Redraw Energy Map — M. K. Bhadrakumar, The Peace Imperative — Francesco Sisci, Letter From New Delhi — Basharat Peer, and How America Can Rise Again — James Fallows
1. The Year Climate Science Caught Up with What Top Scientists Have Been Saying Privately for Years — Joseph Romm
BONUS:  Suicide as Spectator Sport: What Does That Say About Us? — Robert Fisk

Yesterday, we talked about John Coleman and his sorry excuse for a climate change lesson. As a reader pointed out to me, one piece of evidence in particular has generated another climate news scandal recently. As a refresher:

…according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, global glacier thickness has declined every year for the past 4+ decades. The most recent academic research I’ve seen was published 2 months ago, and it concluded that Antarctic ice loss has been vaster and faster than the IPCC predicted. Another paper published around the same time found that, based on historical evidence, Antarctica is more sensitive to greenhouse gases than previously thought.

When many people hear “glaciers,” they think of the Himalayas. One of the most startling predictions of the 2007 IPCC report was that this gorgeous region in South and East Asia will lose all its glaciers by 2035. If you trace that claim back to its original source, you find quotes in New Scientist and Indian magazine Down to Earth by Syed Hasnain, who studied the Himalayan glaciers for the International Commission on Snow and Ice. Hasnain, it turns out, made the prediction based on “speculation,” not evidence.

Let’s be clear about what this means: Nothing.   Read more…

John Coleman is a TV weathercaster, best known for being one of the founders of The Weather Channel. Nowadays he hangs out at KUSI-TV in San Diego, where he has recently taped a segment on the great hoax of global warming. Coleman’s credentials make him a hero of global warming skeptics, but don’t confuse him with The Weather Channel itself. The Weather Channel’s official position is that greenhouse gas emissions are causing a “significant warming trend”:

The potential exists for the climate to reach a “tipping point,” if it hasn’t already done so, beyond which radical and irreversible changes occur.

They are very careful about not predicting too much, but their statement is 180 degrees different from Coleman’s video clip.

Coleman’s disagreement with the scientific consensus on climate change has been known for some time. As a result, he has said many things that are flat wrong. (Click here for examples.)   Read more…