The Global Warming Email Controversy

The environmental community has been abuzz this week over emails and other documents hacked from a UK climate-change research center. The documents suggest a deliberate campaign to exclude from scientific journals opinions that challenge global warming as being human caused.

Cato scholar and climatologist Patrick J. Michaels, mentioned prominently and negatively in the emails, has been consistent in his view: "Global warming is indeed real, but it is also a very complicated and difficult issue that can provoke very unwise policy in response to political pressure. The lack of recent warming and projections that this will continue for several years reinforce the notion that warming will be modest, at least in coming decades. Drastic action is unwarranted at this time."

• Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don't Want You to Know, by Patrick J. Michaels and Robert C. Balling, Jr.
• "Global Warming and Climate Change," Cato Handbook for Policymakers
• Additional Cato Research on Global Warming

Three Decades of Politics and Failed Policies at HUD

Since the housing and financial meltdowns, federal intervention in housing markets has substantially increased, thus paving the way for further troubles down the road for taxpayers and the economy. In a new study, Cato scholar Tad DeHaven discusses how HUD officials operate within a highly politicized environment, which is heavily influenced by the groups that HUD subsidizes and regulates, including the housing industry, financial institutions, and community activists.

• "Three Decades of Politics and Failed Policies at HUD," by Tad DeHaven

Why America Leads the World in Medical Innovation

Studies that compare America's health care sector to other countries typically omit any measure of innovation. A new study by Glen Whitman and Raymond Raad shows that America far and away leads the world in medical innovation. Since American innovations improve health world-wide, that is a virtue of the American system that is not reflected in comparative life-expectancy and mortality statistics. The authors argue that innovation should play a central role in the health care debate, and that the legislation before Congress could hinder the ability of creative individuals to innovate.

• "Bending the Productivity Curve: Why America Leads the World in Medical Innovation," by Glen Whitman and Raymond Raad