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It is now a known fact that at least one journal (Climate Research), when publishing papers that the "top dog" climate scientists didn't like, then faced retribution from those same "top dogs" who conspired to then boycott said publication (to not publish in it, or even cite any publications in it) to manipulate its editorial staff.

What crap. Been reading Cato.org much recently? http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11022

Try http://climateprogress.org/2010/01/05/cato-institute-patrick-michaels-falsehood-stolen-emails-climategate-michael-mann-peer-review/ and follow the links, notably to the statement of the Editor-in-chief of "Climate Research", here: http://coast.gkss.de/staff/storch/CR-problem/cr.2003.htm

"Climate Research" was indeed manipulated, but but the "skeptics", not the "warmists". One editor slipped in some crap papers (which have since been comprehensively demolished). When the other editors complained and requested that an editorial explaining what happened be printed the "skeptic" refused, so the other editors resigned.

You know that those "thousands of climate scientists" don't exist, don't you? Like the CRU's dataset, your statement was pulled from the place only your proctologist knows well.

There are at most 40 climate scientists involved in the IPCC and some of them are calling for chief protagonists of AGW scares to be barred from the IPCC. We're in a long term warming trend since the nadir of the Little Ice Age of the early 17th Century. Long before carbon dioxide began to rise, temperatures in Central England rose by 3 degrees in about 36 years.

But then, where's the grant money going to come from if the world isn't in crisis?

In Plastics Day in Surgery, Red Herring reports that an international team of U.S. and German researchers has developed a new kind of plastic that can shift between three different shapes when the temperature increases. Even if these polymeric triple-shape materials have not emerged from the lab, they could eventually be employed as removable stents and self-closing fasteners used by surgeons and more generally by the healthcare industry. But read more

This research work has been done partially at the MIT in Professor Robert Langers research lab. Please note that Ive already covered a previous Langers project in "Light Used to Design Shape-Shifting Plastics" (April 14, 2005).

For this new kind of plastic, Langer worked with Professor Andreas Lendlein, director of the Institute of Polymer Research at the GKSS Research Center in Teltow, Germany, and his team.

This research work has been published online before print by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) under the name "Polymeric triple-shape materials" (November 20, 2006). Here is a link to the abstract.

Shape-memory polymers represent a promising class of materials that can move from one shape to another in response to a stimulus such as heat. Thus far, these systems are dual-shape materials. Here, we report a triple-shape polymer able to change from a first shape (A) to a second shape (B) and from there to a third shape (C). Shapes B and C are recalled by subsequent temperature increases. Whereas shapes A and B are fixed by physical cross-links, shape C is defined by covalent cross-links established during network formation.

The triple-shape effect is a general concept that requires the application of a two-step programming process to suitable polymers and can be realized for various polymer networks whose molecular structure allows formation of at least two separated domains providing pronounced physical cross-links. These domains can act as the switches, which are used in the two-step programming process for temporarily fixing shapes A and B. It is demonstrated that different combinations of shapes A and B for a polymer network in a given shape C can be obtained by adjusting specific parameters of the programming process.

Below is a series of photographs illustrating this triple-shape effect. On the left is a tube which could be used as a stent and on the right is fastener consisting of a plate with anchors. From top to bottom, you can see the shape evolution when the temperature increases to 40C (in B) and 60C (in C). (Credit: MIT/GKSS Research Center). This image has been extracted from the PNAS paper mentioned above.

Picture

In "Morphing Materials Take On New Shapes," Technology Review describes this process in plain English.

Lendlein says the key to the new structures was developing two types of polymers that have distinct melting points. At room temperature, the material holds its first shape. But when heated above a certain temperature, areas throughout the material soften, allowing it to change to an intermediate shape. At a yet higher transition temperature, the rest of the material softens, allowing the structure to take its final shape.

But what would be these

In Plastics Day in Surgery, Red Herring reports that an international team of U.S. and German researchers has developed a new kind of plastic that can shift between three different shapes when the temperature increases. Even if these polymeric triple-shape materials have not emerged from the lab, they could eventually be employed as removable stents and self-closing fasteners used by surgeons and more generally by the healthcare industry. But read more

This research work has been done partially at the MIT in Professor Robert Langers research lab. Please note that Ive already covered a previous Langers project in "Light Used to Design Shape-Shifting Plastics" (April 14, 2005).

For this new kind of plastic, Langer worked with Professor Andreas Lendlein, director of the Institute of Polymer Research at the GKSS Research Center in Teltow, Germany, and his team.

This research work has been published online before print by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) under the name "Polymeric triple-shape materials" (November 20, 2006). Here is a link to the abstract.

Shape-memory polymers represent a promising class of materials that can move from one shape to another in response to a stimulus such as heat. Thus far, these systems are dual-shape materials. Here, we report a triple-shape polymer able to change from a first shape (A) to a second shape (B) and from there to a third shape (C). Shapes B and C are recalled by subsequent temperature increases. Whereas shapes A and B are fixed by physical cross-links, shape C is defined by covalent cross-links established during network formation.

The triple-shape effect is a general concept that requires the application of a two-step programming process to suitable polymers and can be realized for various polymer networks whose molecular structure allows formation of at least two separated domains providing pronounced physical cross-links. These domains can act as the switches, which are used in the two-step programming process for temporarily fixing shapes A and B. It is demonstrated that different combinations of shapes A and B for a polymer network in a given shape C can be obtained by adjusting specific parameters of the programming process.

Below is a series of photographs illustrating this triple-shape effect. On the left is a tube which could be used as a stent and on the right is fastener consisting of a plate with anchors. From top to bottom, you can see the shape evolution when the temperature increases to 40C (in B) and 60C (in C). (Credit: MIT/GKSS Research Center). This image has been extracted from the PNAS paper mentioned above.

Picture

In "Morphing Materials Take On New Shapes," Technology Review describes this process in plain English.

Lendlein says the key to the new structures was developing two types of polymers that have distinct melting points. At room temperature, the material holds its first shape. But when heated above a certain temperature, areas throughout the material soften, allowing it to change to an intermediate shape. At a yet higher transition temperature, the rest of the material softens, allowing the structure to take its final shape.

But what would be these

No he's not talking about Politicians, Enviornmentalists and other activists grous.

He's talking about amongst climatoligists and other real scientists who realize repeating Consensus over and over again doesn't make it real.

People amongst who realize that there is a scientific debate, and that peer review is an important part of scientific debate.

The Wall Street Journal article woefully misrepresents the situation, unfortunately. See this link and compare with the article's claim that In 1998, Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics published a paper in the journal Climate Research, arguing that there really had been a Medieval warm period. The result: Messrs. Soon and Baliunas were treated as heretics and six editors at Climate Research were made to resign.

This is plainly wrong. The ewditors found themselves resigning because the journal refused to retract the article, which they believed was not up to scientific standrads. They were not fired because they published the article. They quit becuase the journal prevented them form retracting it!

The rest of the article is just as misleading, though not in ways that can be summarized as quickly.

Unfortunately the editorial page of the WSJ has been consistently irresponsible on this matter. This is hardly the first time they have published anti-scientific nonsense about climate change. Having such an influential platform, one would hope for more responsible behavior from the editorial staff.

Also, theirs is not the only paper that supports the 'hockey stick' graph anyway -- there's quite a few others, too.

But anyway -- we're jumping the peer-review process heavily here. USA Today stories are supposed to happen after the peers do the reviewing ;)