I was all excited at the prospect that humans aren’t causing global warming after all, that it’s really benthic bacteria. Then Roger Pielke Jr., suspicious bastard that he is, had to go and pour cold water over the whole deal. Turns out that the University of Arizona doesn’t really have a “Department of Climatology,” as near as I can tell from talking to folks there who study, um, climatology. And whatever the “Journal of Geoclimatic Studies” is, Vol. 23 No. 3 seems to be the first time they’ve thought of posting their work on the intertubes:
Domain ID:D21379999-LRMS
Domain Name:GEOCLIMATICSTUDIES.INFO
Created On:02-Nov-2007 14:50:19 UTC
Expiration Date:02-Nov-2008 14:50:19 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:Tucows Inc. (R139-LRMS)I’ll leave it to others to follow the trail of breadcrumbs back to its source, but I’d suggest that whoever did this has “the skills to interpret complex information in an imaginative and engaging way”.
The indented text shows that the "journal" website was first registered only a few days ago. Clearly it is not a reputable site. The lesson is that you need to check these things out yourself, not take them at face value. We probably will never know who put it up, with what agenda. The thing is, the people who publish real articles comprise a small community. They know each other. If a real climatologist sees something like this and does not recognize the name of the author, the institution, or the journal, it is going to attract immediate suspicion.
Environment
Comments
SSSHHHHH!!!! Let it get some legs first.
The lapse in time between the delighted proclamation and the embarassed correction is going to be very interesting as a measure of credulosity.
Posted by: Hank Roberts | November 7, 2007 9:44 PM
I got a particular laugh out of this when I tried Googling one of the "researchers" who
The search term was "Arne FR Jansson". The result?
That's it - one result. LOL Gee some reputation to stake eh - never published before, not listed any academic sites or journals. Uh huh.
ROFLMAO
Posted by: Doug Alder | November 8, 2007 12:02 AM
What's the point of such a hoax? There are worse genuine articles to be found if you look around in scientific journals.
Posted by: Thomas | November 8, 2007 5:32 AM
I like the idea the reason behind the hoax was to show how gullible some AGW-denalists are. The hoax paper has been blogged on several such sites (and, credit where credit due, subsequently pulled or amended on some of them). But as many people are pointing out, nothing checks out: Not the "journal", not the authors, not the institutions, and so on; plus the weird references and other articles mentioned on the faux-journal's site. And it takes only a few minutes of searching to raise serious doubts. And those doubts are raised without paying too much attention to the contents of the faux-paper. A few minutes checking and you really started to wonder about the "paper" -- and some AGW-denialist sites (at least) clearly failed to apply even a simple sanity check.
There's definitely some loonies who have gone off the deep end after discovering it's a hoax. As an example (ignoring what I think are parodies (it can be hard to tell!)), the best fruitloop response I've seen so far is the following comment in response to:
http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2007/11/this-paper-could-not-be-more-damaging.html
(Spelling and punctation are as in original.)
That's got just about all: Doubts the hoax is a hoax; asserts people concerned with AGW are all nazis, and are losing the argument; and it's all a CIA plot; yada yada yada. Plus a large dose of paranoia.
FWIW, the best parody(?) comment I've seen, on a different AGW-denialist blog, was someone claiming "this was turned into a hoax *way too fast*".
Posted by: blf | November 8, 2007 9:27 AM