Deltoid

May 8, 2008

Open Thread

Category: Open Thread

Because the previous Open Thread has dropped off the sidebar

Posted by Tim Lambert at 1:41 PM • 29 Comments

How many climate sceptics does it take to change a light bulb?

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 • 42 Comments

May 7, 2008

The Australian's War on Science XIII

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 • 53 Comments

May 5, 2008

I must be psychic

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 • 89 Comments

A tip from Bug Girl

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

No, global warming didn't stop in 2002

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 • 111 Comments

May 2, 2008

Arnold Kling spreads DDT ban myth

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 • 129 Comments

April 30, 2008

Maybe getting public policy advice from SF writers is not a good idea

Category: politics

Via Sadly No!, we find out the latest from the SF authors who helped bring us Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative

Now a fixture at Department of Homeland Security science and technology conferences, SIGMA is a loosely affiliated group of science fiction writers who are offering pro bono advice to anyone in government who want their thoughts on how to protect the nation.

The group has the ear of Department of Homeland Security Undersecretary Jay Cohen, head of the science and technology directorate, who has said he likes their unconventional thinking. Members of the group recently offered a rambling, sometimes strident string of ideas at a panel discussion promoting the group at the DHS science and technology conference.

Among the group's approximately 24 members is Larry Niven, the bestselling and award-winning author of such books as "Ringworld" and "Lucifer's Hammer," which he co-wrote with SIGMA member Jerry Pournelle.

Niven said a good way to help hospitals stem financial losses is to spread rumors in Spanish within the Latino community that emergency rooms are killing patients in order to harvest their organs for transplants.

Which, I think, was actually the plot of one of his stories.

Posted by Tim Lambert at 3:12 PM • 26 Comments

April 29, 2008

Heartland's bogus list of 500 scientists

Category: Global Warming

Richard Littlemore reports:

Dozens of scientists are demanding that their names be removed from a widely distributed Heartland Institute article entitled 500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares. ...

DeSmogBlog manager Kevin Grandia emailed 122 of the scientists yesterday afternoon, calling their attention to the list. So far - in less than 24 hours - three dozen of those scientists had responded in outrage, denying that their research supports Avery's conclusions and demanding that their names be removed.

Click on the link to see some of the responses.

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.

Posted by Tim Lambert at 2:49 PM • 60 Comments

Robot sumo

Category: personal

Here's a cool video of my first year class in Engineering Design. One of their projects is to build and program a Lego robot to compete in robot sumo...

Posted by Tim Lambert at 5:42 AM • 10 Comments

April 28, 2008

Latest on Listener vs free speech

Category: meta

frankbi has the latest on the Listener against free speech. Pamela Stirling, after using dubious legal threats to shut up a critic says:

So that, we're not into censorship of any kind. As we discussed with Brian Leyland, the Voltaire quote, you know: "I disagree with what you say, but I would defend to the death your right to say it."

Also worth checking out at the link is an interview with BBC journalist Alex Kirby on "balance" in reporting on climate change.

Posted by Tim Lambert at 3:10 PM • 1 Comments

April 27, 2008

Et tu, Ockham's razor?

Category: Global Warming

ABC's normally excellent Ockham's razor has taken a refreshing change from presenting the thoughts of scientists on science based on peer-reviewed research to presenting the opinion of a political scientist on global warming based on stuff he found on denialist web sites. Yes, they had Don Aitkin on. Now just because Aitkin isn't a scientist and his sources weren't scientists either it doesn't necessarily follow that he would get his facts wrong, but that would be the way to bet. And if you had bet that way you would have won. Look:

It warmed again from 1975 to 1998, and then it stopped warming again.

No, warming did not stop in 1998.

Read on »

Posted by Tim Lambert at 3:03 PM • 32 Comments

April 26, 2008

The Australian's War on Science XII part 3

Category: The War on Science

The Australian wasn't content to publish Phil Chapman's silly ice-age article, but also published a news story that treated it like a legitimate scientific paper. Now, instead of publishing a correction to Chapman's falsehoods from a climate scientist they have an article by Christopher Pearson. Even though it was the Australian which published Chapman's piece a few days earlier, almost half of Pearson's article was a quote or paraphrase of Chapman.

Pearson also gives the view of climate science you get from the Australian's bunker:

Read on »

Posted by Tim Lambert at 3:07 PM • 52 Comments

April 25, 2008

Lott's appeal of the dismissal of his case against Freakonomics

Category: Levitt

Ted Frank has the latest on Lott's appeal of the dismissal of his case:

Lott is now claiming that the case should have been decided under the allegedly more friendly Virginia libel law than the Illinois law under which his claim fails, but that is generally an argument for (at best) a claim of legal malpractice, rather than for a do-over for an expressly waived argument in federal court. Lott has posted the briefs; David Glenn blogs about the 2-year mark in the case. Not that I think Lott has a valid legal malpractice claim, either, unless his attorneys told him he had a good shot at winning more than he would spend in legal fees.

Posted by Tim Lambert at 2:21 PM • 3 Comments

Survey: climate scientists agree that humans are causing warming

Category: Global Warming

Robert Lichter reports on a survey of American climate scientists commissioned by STATS at GMU. Some of the findings:

In 1991 the Gallup organization conducted a telephone survey on global climate change among 400 scientists drawn from membership lists of the American Meteorological Association and the American Geophysical Union.

We repeated several of their questions verbatim, in order to measure changes in scientific opinion over time. On a variety of questions, opinion has consistently shifted toward increased belief in and concern about global warming. Among the changes:

• In 1991 only 60% of climate scientists believed that average global temperatures were up, compared to 97% today.

• In 1991 only a minority (41%) of climate scientists agreed that then-current scientific evidence "substantiates the occurrence of human-induced warming," compared to three out of four (74%) today.

Read on »

Posted by Tim Lambert at 9:22 AM • 84 Comments

April 24, 2008

Open Thread

Category: Open Thread

Because we haven't had an open thread for a while.

Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:53 PM • 40 Comments