May 20, 2008
Category: Global Warming
Last year RealClimate reported that there had been another mass mailing to get more signatures on the notorious Oregon Petition. They are now announcing that they've increased the number of signatures from 19,000 to 31,000. The original objections to the Oregon Petition still apply -- most of the signers do not have PhDs and are not practising scientists. Just 40 of the signers claim to be climatologists, and since they don't tell you their names, it's impossible to check whether they are, in fact, climatologists.
Bigcitylib decided to test their quality control by signing using a fake name and fake qualifications.
He's on the list.
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:21 AM • 82 Comments
May 19, 2008
Category: stupidity
Last year Graham Young, accused me of being blatantly dishonest for writing that Peiser had admitted to making multiple errors, even though Peiser had confirmed this in an email to Young. He ended up writing 20 comments denying Peiser's admission.
Now Young has lashed out at me in a post at On Line Opinion. He calls me a "bully" and a "tick" and claims I use "brown-shirt tactics". (If you don't know what brown-shirt tactics are, see Sturmabteilung.) My crime?
Read on »
Posted by Tim Lambert at 12:40 PM • 33 Comments
Category: Global Warming
More carriages have come off the rails in the Roger Pielke Jr train wreck. Pielke finally does a hypothesis test. Trouble is, it's an unpaired t-test, which would only make sense if GISS and HADCRU were independent of each other, i.e. temperature measurements of different planets. Which, uh, they're not.
James Annan explains it here.
And another Pielke carriage comes off the rails here.
Posted by Tim Lambert at 11:11 AM • 2 Comments
May 17, 2008
Category: Global Warming
In the second part of his Ockham's razor talk Aitkin said:
I gave a public address on this subject a few weeks ago, which was picked up in the daily newspapers, the text of the address was put on one newspaper's website, and a vigorous correspondence developed. In all, I received, well, 150 or so communications. The majority of them were positive. The negative ones fell mostly into one or other of two groups: either I was trespassing on someone else's patch, that is, only scientists are allowed to talk about these issues, and I am not a scientist; or I was a 'denier', someone who, in spite of the authority of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, and the weight of scientific opinion, was persisting in error. Some of these critiques had an almost religious tone to them, as though I was challenging fundamental spiritual beliefs. But none of the critics took issue with my three central issues, or provided their own evidence that in each case I was wrong. A number provided me with their own papers, or pointed to other work that they felt to be decisive, but my three central issues remained there, virtually unchallenged.
Well I wrote to him about his use of the argument from incredulity and suggested he read the IPCC reports for an explanation of the greenhouse effect. Here's part of our exchange as he explains why he doesn't trust the IPCC assessments of the science:
Read on »
Posted by Tim Lambert at 1:30 PM • 16 Comments
May 16, 2008
Category: Global Warming
If you haven't been watching the Roger Pielke Jr train come of the rails and the carriages smashing into each other and exploding, I suggest you look at this post from James Annan:
Roger Pielke has been saying some truly bizarre and nonsensical things recently. The pick of the bunch IMO is this post. The underlying question is: Are the models consistent with the observations over the last 8 years?
Hey, hypothesis testing. First year stats stuff. So Annan carefully explains how it's done.
Marvel at Pielke Jr's response:
Read on »
Posted by Tim Lambert at 6:31 AM • 164 Comments
May 13, 2008
Category: Global Warming
What Mark Kleiman says
John Tierney, demoted from the NYT op-ed page and now continuing his libertarian propagandizing in the guise of "science writing," points out that flying around to climate-change conferences creates a large carbon footprint for high-profile environmental activists. That allows Tierney to claim the sort of faux-populist gotcha! so beloved among glibertarians and greedhead conservatives. (The theocrat, nativist, and imperialist wings of conservatism prefer their faux-populist gotcha!s on different topics.)
If you travel frequently by air, even on commercial flights, you can't escape having a huge carbon footprint. Yet many of the most vocal advocates of cutting emissions -- politicians, environmentalists, journalists, scientists -- are continually jetting off to campaign events and conferences and workshops. Are they going to change the way they operate? If not, how are they going to persuade anyone else to cut back emissions? (My advice to the peripatetic preachers: Do not try explaining why your work is more important than everyone else's.)
Where to start?
Read on »
Posted by Tim Lambert at 1:49 PM • 103 Comments
May 12, 2008
Category: DDT
I think this article in Prospect on Rachel Carson and DDT is quite good.
Update: John Quiggin has posted the director's cut.
Posted by Tim Lambert at 2:54 PM • 31 Comments
Category: Global Warming
Jeff Poor of Business & Media Institute spliced the audio of an Al Gore interview to turn a statement that Arctic melting was a consequence of global warming:
And we're seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming. The entire north polar ice cap, normally the size the lower 48 states, give or take an Arizona, is melting before our eyes. 40 percent melted in the last twenty years. And in the summer months, it could be completely gone, in one scientific estimate, in as little as five years.
into a claim that Gore never made, that the cyclone that hit Burma was a consequence of global warming.
the death count in Myanmar from the cyclone that hit there yesterday has been rising from 15,000 to way on up there to much higher numbers now being speculated. And last year a catastrophic storm from last fall hit Bangladesh. The year before, the strongest cyclone in more than 50 years hit China - and we're seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming. It's also important to note that the emerging consensus among the climate scientists is although any individual storm can't be linked singularly to global warming - we've always had hurricanes. Nevertheless, the trend toward more Category 5 storms - the larger ones and trend toward stronger and more destructive storms appears to be linked to global warming and specifically to the impact of global warming on higher ocean temperatures in the top couple of hundred feet of the ocean, which drives convection energy and moisture into these storms and makes them more powerful.
After Poor's fraudulent story was linked by Drudge lots of Gore haters blogged about it. So how many of them have posted corrections?
Read on »
Posted by Tim Lambert at 8:16 AM • 29 Comments
May 10, 2008
Category: Global Warming
Tim Blair declares:
Global cooling is now a flight-safety hazard.
The post he links speculates on a cause of the crash of BA flight 38:
But it would appear that the major contributory factor could have been the extreme cold. In other words, global cooling can kill.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Al!
and
After the aircraft crossed the Ural mountain range in Russia it climbed further to 38,000 where the ambient temperature dropped to as low as minus 76°C.
But 38,000 feet is in the stratosphere. And while greenhouse gases warm the surface of the Earth, they cool the stratosphere.
Read on »
Posted by Tim Lambert at 1:51 PM • 21 Comments
May 8, 2008
Category: Open Thread
Because the previous Open Thread has dropped off the sidebar
Posted by Tim Lambert at 1:41 PM • 175 Comments
Category: Global Warming
Via Gareth Renowden:
Q: How many climate sceptics does it take to change a light bulb? A: None. It's too early to say if the light bulb needs changing.
Though I think the answer should be: None. The light bulb isn't broken and it will recover by itself and sitting in the dark is better than in the light.
Posted by Tim Lambert at 12:35 PM • 48 Comments
May 7, 2008
Category: The War on Science
The first four words in this Wednesday's article in the Australian :
In 1633 Galileo Galilei
There is no point in reading further.
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:39 AM • 77 Comments
May 5, 2008
Category: Global Warming
A week ago I wrote
I predict that Avery will maintain that all the scientists are wrong about their own work and refuse to remove any names from the list.
And look what they wrote:
In response to the complaints, The Heartland Institute has changed the headlines that its PR department had chosen for some of the documents related to the lists, from "500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares" to "500 Scientists Whose Research Contradicts Man-Made Global Warming Scares." ...
We plan to make no further changes to the articles or to the lists. ...
Many of the complaining scientists have crossed the line between scientific research and policy advocacy. They lend their credibility to politicians and advocacy groups who call for higher taxes and more government regulations to "save the world" from catastrophic warming ... and not coincidentally, to fund more climate research. They are embarrassed -- as they should be -- to see their names in a list of scientists whose peer-reviewed published work suggests the modern warming might be due to a natural 1,500-year climate cycle.
Possibly because their work does not suggest that at all...
Hat tip: The International Journal of Inactivism.
Posted by Tim Lambert at 2:16 PM • 155 Comments
Category: funny
A handy tip from Bug Girl
Also, a tip: if you walk into your new workplace brandishing a container of putative pubic lice and sand, you may want to provide a more detailed back story than "I bought them on the internet." Just some advice.
Posted by Tim Lambert at 11:56 AM • 15 Comments
May 4, 2008
Category: Global Warming
There really is no excuse for this, from Michael Duffy:
Global warming stopped six years ago. It might start again tomorrow, but from 2002 until now, average global temperatures have remained fairly constant. This is in contrast to the previous period when, as everyone knows, the temperature trend was upwards.
Look at the graph below, showing 8-year trends for each 8-year period in the data. (Graph is from RealClimate.) Notice that the eight year trend is sometimes negative. That's because an eight year trend can be greatly affected by an unusually warm or cold year or two. But Duffy doesn't say that warming stopped in the 80s and again in the 90s. Instad he says "the temperature trend was upwards". Which is only true if you look at trends longer than ten years.
Oh and notice that the current 8-year trend is for strong warming -- you have to go to just six years if you want to find a trend that doesn't show warming.
Read on »
Posted by Tim Lambert at 2:51 PM • 115 Comments
May 2, 2008
Category: DDT
Arnold Kling decides to spread the DDT ban myth:
According to Iain Murray's new book, the worst disasters come from environmental policy. It is remarkable the magnitude of the harm caused by government relative to the harm caused by the private sector from which it protects us. ...
The total death and illness caused by all of the chemical pollution ever created vs. the death and illness caused by the ban on DDT.
After he was corrected by commenters he added an update, but did not correct his false claim. To justify this he just made more more false claims:
The term "banned" may not be correct, but countries can be punished in many ways for using DDT--they can lose foreign aid, they can have imports of their crops banned, etc. The restrictions on crop imports apply even when a country uses DDT on homes, not on crops.
Of course, that's not true either, but even when a commentor told him the truth, citing scientific papers and the World Health Organization, Kling did not correct his post. Instead he trumped the WHO and peer-reviewed science with:
Read on »
Posted by Tim Lambert at 2:08 AM • 130 Comments
Tim Lambert (deltoidblog AT gmail.com) is a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales.
