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…I couldn't but surmise that the devil, looking at the cruel wars that Christianity has occasioned, the persecutions, the tortures Christian has inflicted on Christian, the unkindness, the hypocracy, the intolerance, must consider the balance sheet with complacency. And when he remembers that it has laid upon mankind the bitter burden of the sense of sin that has darkened the beauty of the starry night and cast a baleful shadow on the passing plesures of a world to be enjoyed, he must chuckle as he murmurs: give the devil his due.
[W. Somerset Maughman, "The Razor's Edge"]
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More articles by PZ Myers can be found on Freethoughtblogs at the new Pharyngula!
Category: Kooks
Posted on: July 24, 2009 8:50 AM, by PZ Myers
The other day, I mentioned the silly anti-global-warming argument of Alan Quist: he claims a 16th century map shows Antarctica in accurate detail, revealing that 500 years, the continent was completely ice-free. Therefore, he kookles, the world is currently in a deep freeze and a little warming would be good for us, and entirely tolerable.
John McKay takes a closer look at the old map. Would you believe it's not so accurate after all? That in fact, it's not even close?
Physical ScienceHTML commands: <i>italic</i>, <b>bold</b>, <a href="url">link</a>, <blockquote>quote</blockquote>
Comments
Posted by: kryptonic | July 24, 2009 9:00 AM
"kookles"
Ha!
Posted by: Mr p | July 24, 2009 9:04 AM
Wow, looks like Antartica was much larger in the past. So big in fact it almost touches South America.
Posted by: MAJeff, OM | July 24, 2009 9:04 AM
Allen Quist is an insane liar?
I'm shocked! Shocked, I say!
Posted by: MrFire | July 24, 2009 9:05 AM
I would say you're giving this ridiculous pile of sub-kindergarten horseshit too much of your time...and then I reflect that he could try making my future kids learn it.
*shivers*
Posted by: SC, OM, Blogmistress | July 24, 2009 9:11 AM
OT:
I've posted a HONDURAS UPDATE on my blog:
http://saltycurrent.blogspot.com/2009/07/honduras-latest-news-and-where-to-go.html
Posted by: Blaidd Drwg | July 24, 2009 9:13 AM
It's amusing that Antarctica currently has a cover of ice over a mile thick - naturally this formed over the last 500 years - but the removal of all that water from the rest of the Earth had virtually no effect on the relative coastlines of the planet. In particular, London, Holland, Florida, New Orleans, etc. would have ALL been completely submerged if the water currently locked up in ice had been previoulsy in circulation.
What would the salinity of the oceans be if the Antarctic ice were to melt? Would it have any significant effect?
Posted by: MadScientist | July 24, 2009 9:18 AM
Why do people use euphemisms like "intellectually dishonest"? What happened to phrases like "lying moron"?
Posted by: tsg | July 24, 2009 9:20 AM
I wonder what he thinks of the places marked "Here there be dragons".
Posted by: MAJeff, OM | July 24, 2009 9:24 AM
I wonder what he thinks of the places marked "Here there be dragons".
Well, since his mindset predates the maps, he's likely afraid to venture into such places.
Posted by: AMalaproposMale | July 24, 2009 9:25 AM
I wonder what happened to the dragons in the last 500 years, extinction event or just nifty at hiding?
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
|
July 24, 2009 9:27 AM
I think they are very good at being just beyond the map. Right Puff?Posted by: Zeno | July 24, 2009 9:32 AM
Oh, no! That map proves that ocean levels have dramatically risen, wreaking havoc on Antarctica's coastlines!
...
Of course, it's strange that other continents weren't similarly affected.
...
Aha! Antarctica is sinking! I just discovered the source of the Atlantis legend! (The slo-mo version.)
Another knotty problem solved.
Posted by: Mozglubov | July 24, 2009 9:35 AM
I'm not going to lie, "kookle" made me giggle... and then choke on my gum.
Posted by: CEMBguy | July 24, 2009 9:37 AM
For more kookiness check out the discussion board on this page:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32090918/ns/technology_and_science-science/
It's an article about living organisms giving off visible light. (Though I'm pretty sure I've known about exothermic chemical reactions giving off light for a very long time now.) Anyway the crazies have come out of the woodwork on this one saying how they knew that they could see peoples aura!
Posted by: daveau | July 24, 2009 9:38 AM
It is close in the sense that it is located in the antarctic...
Aren't there like, you know, varves or something that might show the age of the ice to be greater than 500 years? Or did god put those there to fool us, like he did with all those fossils.
Do you think Quist might want to buy a bridge? I just happen to have one for sale...
(And how the hell come does the TypeKey sign on fail now?)
Posted by: raven | July 24, 2009 9:40 AM
I'm not seeing that the Antarctic map has to be wrong. Antarctica must have shrunk a lot.
Next you will be telling me my old map of Mars with all the canals is wrong too.
Actually it is a lot worse that PZ's blog diagram. IIRC, if the polar continent was ice free, it would consist of a smaller land mass and a very large archipelago sort of like Indonesia. Much of the interior of part of it is below sea level.
Posted by: Spanish Inquisitor | July 24, 2009 9:41 AM
C'mon. Everyone knows that reality is a work in progress, even for God.
500 years ago, God was still working on perfecting Antarctica, so of course it looked a little different than today. It was the last continent for him to work on. Back then he was only up to version 3.7. He's on version 9.2 today.
Does Windows 3.0 look anything like Vista?
Posted by: Alan Bombria | July 24, 2009 9:55 AM
Kookle: v. To expound on a subject using "teh crazy"
Do we have a new submission for the OED?
Posted by: eric | July 24, 2009 9:57 AM
At first those two big lobes of made me think the 16th c. mapmakers had mistakenly joined Australia and New Zealand to Antarctica. But on second thought the lobes are too far west, its probably just coincidence.
Posted by: Wowbagger, OM | July 24, 2009 10:02 AM
They don't need evidence; they know it via a 'special way of knowing', just like religious people know that their god exists and Jesus was magic and did all those cool tricks.
Posted by: raven | July 24, 2009 10:08 AM
A lot of Antarctica consists of ice covering an island archipelago, the West ice sheet. The kook map doesn't even hint at this.
Posted by: Gilian | July 24, 2009 10:08 AM
"In particular, London, Holland, Florida, New Orleans, etc. would have ALL been completely submerged if the water currently locked up in ice had been previoulsy in circulation."
In Holland's example we'd have build even bigger dikes and used more little boys to plug possible holes in said dikes. But otherwise I agree ;)
Posted by: eddie | July 24, 2009 10:09 AM
I've got a Mappe Of Ye Diskworlde that looks not too different to that. Ankh-Morpork is somewhere near the top IIRC.
Posted by: KCS | July 24, 2009 10:09 AM
I sure hope this Quist guy doesn't find any of Ptolemy's old maps, or we'll really be screwed. (Phil Plait will be out of a job.)
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 24, 2009 10:12 AM
Kind of makes me think of Ultima I or II
Posted by: Alex Ess | July 24, 2009 10:15 AM
I like "kookle".
Posted by: slugboi | July 24, 2009 10:22 AM
@ #19 Dude, that is totally Australia. I the mapmaker was bad enough to place it as Antarctica, then of course he would get the details off. We've all seen early maps of North America, and while they resemble the map we know today, they are clearly distorted. I posit that this is the case here as well. The mapmaker mistook Australia for Antarctica and made a poor map to boot.
Posted by: slugboi | July 24, 2009 10:23 AM
IF the mapmaker... dammit.
Posted by: Anri | July 24, 2009 10:30 AM
Wait - where's Lemuria?
Posted by: eric | July 24, 2009 10:42 AM
@27 yeah on third thought you're probably right.
If we keep S. America at 5 o'clock like on the map, an accurate projection would have Africa at 8 and Australia at 11. For the 15th c., what's on the map is a pretty good fit.
Posted by: Ron Broberg | July 24, 2009 10:45 AM
Here is what an ice-free Antarctica looks like.
Note that everything in blue is water:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AntarcticBedrock.jpg
Posted by: James F | July 24, 2009 10:47 AM
Next you'll be telling us that James Ussher's calculation of the age of the earth was off....
Posted by: NewEnglandBob
|
July 24, 2009 11:04 AM
What I am amazed about is that I am no longer amazed about the stupidity and lying of these kooks.
Posted by: xebecs | July 24, 2009 11:15 AM
So we have, in fact, experienced Global Shrinking?
Posted by: perdurabo | July 24, 2009 11:18 AM
@30
All projections engender distortion, whether it be distance, direction, or scale. You cannot wrap a piece of paper around a sphere without folding it somewhere.
Most maps of this century were used for navigation purposes, so direction would be relatively correct, but distances(especially polar) were normally grossly oversized, and led to land being represented as larger than it was to preserve accurate direction.
Posted by: xebecs | July 24, 2009 11:20 AM
I do love that we have a thread that includes the words kookle, varve, Ankh-Morpork, Lemuria, and Quist.
The name Quist looks quite at home there, doesn't it...
How long before "kookle" shows up in the Urban Dictionary? The Daily Show? the OED? I predict not long.
Posted by: Greg Peterson | July 24, 2009 12:05 PM
Related topic: So yesterday I get two global climate change books, "Climate Change: Observed impacts on Planet Earth," which is a highly technical collection of monographs, and "What's the Worst That Can Happen?", which is a breezy uber-pop exploration of the "controversy," and while the technical stuff might be necessary to understanding what's going on, we absolutely need more books like Greg Craven's "Worst." Not just because it beautifully outlines the crisis and what our response to it should probably be, but because it is a paradigm of clear scientific thought...of methodology put into action. Highly recommended on the topic. Oh, and if you love equations with Greek symbols, you'll also love "Observed Impacts."
Posted by: chancelikely | July 24, 2009 12:24 PM
I'm going to third (or fifth or whatever) the vote for "kookle". This should prove to be a tremendously useful neologism.
Now we just need to integrate the Quist idea of Antarctic ice retreat with the Hovindian thing about the ice canopy.
Posted by: littlejohn | July 24, 2009 12:41 PM
As I understand it, early cartographers assumed there had to be a huge continent at the South Pole, to balance the amount of land in the Northern Hemispere. As to its shape and characteristics, they just guessed. There are a lot of old maps like this one.
Posted by: Tom Coward | July 24, 2009 12:56 PM
So, the short (approximate) answer to the "Oronteus Finaeus map accurately shows Antartica" meme is that it actually shows Australia? Or, is that a too short summary of the execellent article linked above?
Posted by: djd | July 24, 2009 1:00 PM
If I understand him correctly, McKay argues that the extents of Antartica in early maps just correspond to the southernmost known lands, e.g. Tierra del Fuego wasn't known to be an island which is why Antarctica almost touches South America. Basically the unknown area was assumed to be mostly land.
Speaking of Ankh-Morpork, the "balance" presumption ties into the Discworld again: since the Discworld really does need to have its balance point in its center, the "last continent" Fourecks is known to esist well before its official discovery (as always, the fact that its inhabitants know it's there doesn't count).
Since we've had Lemuria, may I add a reference to R'lyeh? When I first read Lovecraft, I thought he'd invented both of them.
Posted by: Rich Webb | July 24, 2009 1:00 PM
Actually, the Finaeus map is remarkably accurate for its time. Hop over to the site linked in the original article for more views.
Polar regions are tough to chart accurately. Recall that in the 16-th century they were still 200 years away from solving the longitude problem (see: Harrison, John and the wikipedia entry on the History of Longitude) and even latitude is tough given the instruments they had to hand.
Add to that the distortion resulting from the unusual projection and, yes, it looks kind of weird to our GPS-enabled, WGS-84 eyes but for the time and place it's a damn good effort.
Interior features? Meh. Throw in some mountains to fill in the blank spots and there is bound to be something, from low hillocks to alpine peaks, that can be seen as a match, so any claim that it shows an ice-free continent is bollocks. But for the overall coastline? Really not that bad, considering.
Posted by: John McKay | July 24, 2009 1:16 PM
Something I didn't include in my piece, because it was wandering too far off topic, is that Quist does believe in dragons. One of his home-schooling "Curriculum Modules" explains that dragons were the dinosaurs that Noah saved on the ark. They went extinct a few hundred years ago. This is right out of one of Ken Ham's books. He probably covers that in his museum.
I only looked at couple of the modules, so there is plenty of material to mine for anyone else who wants to blog about it. I didn't want hog all the fun.
Posted by: bullofthewoods | July 24, 2009 1:17 PM
Quist, get in the feckin sack.
Posted by: ryk
|
July 24, 2009 1:32 PM
as to the antarctic land below sea-level, do you know how much of that is due to the weight of the ice? I forget the term, isostatic something or other? It's been a while since I have had a geology class, but I thought both Antarctica and Greenland had enough ice piled up on top of them to noticeably deform the crust.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 24, 2009 1:37 PM
I love biblical dragons. They're so cute.
Posted by: Ron Sullivan | July 24, 2009 1:45 PM
We have the word of no less an authority than JBS Haldane for the recent existence of dragons. Of course, the stories in that book mention djinns and such, and include an octopus with a towel as a most excellent waiter.
Posted by: Dahan | July 24, 2009 1:49 PM
I'm a collector of antique maps of the polar regions. I mainly focus on the north pole, but have some of the southern one as well. Mr. Quist should come over to my house, I've got some other maps he might be interested in as well. Including a 1618 Mercator Map of the North Pole. A similar one is shown here:
http://www.raremapsandbooks.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=8823&zenid=efd6c9e41eca3f7f45a106ced02a69cd
I'm sure he'll be surprised at how the continents have moved around in the last 400 years and how we've lost some islands (including Frisland) but gained some others since then.
Feckin' Edjit!
Posted by: Jon H | July 24, 2009 2:08 PM
FYI, McKay seems to tranpose 'Australia' where he means 'Antarctica' in a few spots.
He shows a map and writes: "The above map from Out of Antarctica by Robert Argod is a fairly typical example of how lost world writers line up Finaeus' Terra Australis and our Australia to maximize the similarities."
Except the map he's referring to, and which he displays, clearly notes in the legend that it is comparing Terra Australis and our modern mapped shape of Antarctica, not Australia. McKay makes the same error in his caption for the map.
I assume he just had a brain fart and "Terra Australis" turned "Antarctica" into "Australia".
Posted by: frog | July 24, 2009 2:55 PM
Appears to me pretty damn close, if you assume that the data was collected from other maps, from other maps...
You see massive distortions in proportion while keeping the underlying shape in all old maps where the data collection was basically hearsay.
Of course, that's interesting but irrelevant, being that it's physically impossible for Antarctica to have been ice free 500 years ago without a massive shift in sea levels. Maybe there's magic pockets underground that inhale and expel huge volumes of water? Or a purple giant who drinks the ocean and then pees them back up on the century scale? Or fairies in the sky who hide excess ocean levels on the moon?
Physics trumps historical analysis everytime. It's a better argument for alien visitors or a lost civilization than for an ice-free Antarctica.
Posted by: John McKay | July 24, 2009 3:10 PM
Jon H @ 49
Thanks for the catch. The brain fart is exactly what happened.
I sould have known what was going on when my brain got all stinky. I think I've corrected them all.
Posted by: Xenithrys | July 24, 2009 3:29 PM
If it's not Australia, then you'd have to ask where is Australia on this map? Europeans knew the north coast of Australia at that time. I think it's pretty clear this mapmaker put in the north coast of Australia, including the Gulf of Carpenteria (the big bay in "Antarctica"), and made up the rest. The west coast of New Zealand was mapped by Tasman in 1643, but I don't see anything like Tasman's wiggly line on this map.
It's irrelevant the longitudes are inaccurate; they had no good way to measure it.
Posted by: Dahan | July 24, 2009 3:32 PM
Frog @ 50,
There's a legend where Thor, tricked by Loki, drinks from a horn which is connected to the ocean. He drinks a rather large portion of it, as I remember. Sounds to me like that's the best answer concerning where all that water went.
Posted by: Faithless | July 24, 2009 3:50 PM
This is just super-dumb.
One of the things they've been doing assiduously in Antarctica is taking core samples of the ice. It is known exactly how quickly the ice builds up, and so therefore the age of the cores can be calculated. The ice goes back tens of thousands of years.
But, apparently, because of some map (and having studied the medieval world picture at university, I can vouch for just how not-accurate the maps can be) some fuckwit has found, he feels confident in saying that the ice wasn't there a few hundred years ago.
I wonder where it went, while these early cartographers visited to find a lush and verdant continent?
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
|
July 24, 2009 3:54 PM
Faithless #54
The AGW deniers are doing their thing for purely politico-economic reasons. However, with very few exceptions, they won't admit why they're pretending global warming doesn't exist. As a result, they grasp any straw that comes along to bolster their pretense.
Posted by: the heat | July 24, 2009 4:09 PM
After reading Myers' earlier post, I tried following through some of the links to the discussions and debunkings of this map. I was a bit puzzled about where the map came from, since, allowing for distortion, rotation, and incomplete information, the Finneus map is reminiscent of Antarctica to my eyes.
From what I was able to glean from the discussions, this map is a synthesis of partial surveying of Northern and Western Australia with Tierra del Fuego, all under the millennium-old theoretical assumption that there had to be a large land mass at the south pole. All of these factors have been mentioned in the above comments, but I find it helpful to see all of them simultaneously producing the map.
Posted by: Katkinkate | July 24, 2009 4:53 PM
If you compare the coastline of the old map with the current one a bit at a time you will see, apart from a few differences in detail, they are actually pretty much the same. The only really big problem is they got the scale wrong. Someone did get to circumnavigate Antarctica and drew a mostly accurate picture of the shape of it, but really muffed the size in comparison to the other continents.
Posted by: Katkinkate | July 24, 2009 5:00 PM
OK, maybe not that accurate, but definitely reminiscent. I would suppose they've mapped the shape of the ice, which would vary a bit year to year and probably a lot over the last 500 years. I don't see anything that looks like Australia in it.
Posted by: John McKay | July 24, 2009 5:40 PM
Katkinkate @ 58
The part that comes from Australia is the big gulf at the top of the map. It matches the Gulf of Carpintraria on the north coast of Australia. I have some other maps in my original post that show a little better where the coast of Finaeus' map come from. The guy I stole that map from, has some side by side comparisons of parts of the coast.
http://www.diegocuoghi.it/Piri_Reis/Finaeus_eng.htm
The site is in Italian, but that page has been translated into English.
Posted by: limes | July 24, 2009 6:41 PM
Man, it's a good thing Scott and Amundsen didn't have to sledge/hike that far only ~250 years after that map was made (also before global warming really started to kick butts). We might still have not reached the South Pole.
Posted by: Crudely Wrott | July 24, 2009 6:53 PM
John Mckay's takedown of Quist includes an informative overview of cartographic evolution and plausible reasons for Antarctica being portrayed as a huge continent. Here is the relevant paragraph:
Once again we can observe that the root cause of error is inextricably bound up with religious faith.
Posted by: Crudely Wrott | July 24, 2009 6:55 PM
Snag-free commenting in 22 seconds!
Somebody monkey with the code?
Posted by: amphiox | July 24, 2009 7:15 PM
#60 "it's a good thing Scott and Amundsen didn't have to sledge/hike that far only ~250 years after that map was made"
On the other hand, if Scott had seen that map, perhaps he might have been persuaded that the trek was too difficult and foolhardy to attempt, and he might have lived.
Posted by: Sylvanite | July 24, 2009 7:44 PM
Ryk at # 45 - it's isostasy. I was wondering what isostatic rebound would do to Antarctica. I'm guessing a lot of it would cease to be below sea level!
Posted by: Cath the Canberra Cook | July 24, 2009 8:28 PM
John McKay #59: your brain is farting again. The gulf is Carpentaria. You gotta stop feeding your brain so many beans :)
Posted by: Chakolate | July 24, 2009 10:30 PM
I *love* 'kookles' but you'd better give it a definite definition.
If we say, 'Nothing fails like prayer', then can we also say 'Nothing confuses like kookles'?
You used it as a verb, but can't it also be a noun? Kookle: process used by kooks in place of thinking.
Posted by: Dan W | July 25, 2009 12:43 AM
An anti-global warming loon who doesn't know what he's talking about? *gasp* I'm shocked! :P
Posted by: Dan W | July 25, 2009 12:46 AM
On a serious and unrelated note, given what I've read on this blog about how the comments tend to be rather slow at showing up, I been surprised to find that mine have been showing up, with no error messages, in about 30 seconds after I click "post".
Posted by: Isabel | July 25, 2009 3:35 AM
I read about this map, and several others, years ago in a book called Fingerprints of the Gods. The author suggested they were based on much older maps (many 1000's of years old) and provided additional evidence for this that I have forgotten, and that they showed evidence of a much older, technologically-advanced civilization.
Posted by: John Morales | July 25, 2009 5:11 AM
Isabel, you're on the internet: Fingerprints of the Gods.
Posted by: Isabel | July 25, 2009 5:13 AM
In case that was unclear, I think the book was dating the civilization to the time when the Antarctic is actually estimated to have been ice free. 13,000 years or something.
Also the scale and position being off doesn't seem so surprising for an old map - I've seen worse. When you follow the link and see it repositioned, it actually looks like it can't be coincidence. So I'm voting for the lost civilization theory!
Posted by: John Morales | July 25, 2009 5:14 AM
Dan, the preview function is broken, but the posting is about the same as before, best as I can tell.
Loading might be quicker, though.
Posted by: Isabel | July 25, 2009 5:15 AM
John,
And how is that helpful?
Posted by: raven | July 25, 2009 6:38 AM
Who said it is lost? We just migrated to a higher plane/other dimension and stuck all the furniture in the deep freeze. Occasionally the Lost Civilization checks back but it is never very interesting. Too many morons running around trying to recreate a civilization in the first place much less one worth getting lost.
Posted by: John Morales | July 25, 2009 6:40 AM
Isabel, you don't find the external links there helpful?
Ah well.
Posted by: sikiş izle | July 25, 2009 6:50 AM
An anti-global warming loon who doesn't know what he's talking about? *gasp* I'm shocked! :P
Posted by: seks | July 25, 2009 6:52 AM
Dan, the preview function is broken, but the posting is about the same as before, best as I can tell.
Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | July 26, 2009 11:32 AM
45 million years.
If you're content with a little tundra at the coast, with the rest being covered by ice, something like 3 million years might suffice. But 0.013 million years is just ridiculous.
You know... inland ice consists of yearly layers. You can put your finger and them and count them. The deepest drill cores made so far have 740,000 such layers, and they haven't reached the bottom...
To me it's completely obvious that comment 56 is right: the north coast of Tierra del Fuego is shown, the north coast of Australia is shown, and all the rest is made up based on the oh-so-obvious theoretical assumption of terra australis incognita. I've seen other ancient maps that were made when the Magellan Straits were already known but the Drake Passage was not; all of them show Tierra del Fuego as merely a tip of Terra Australis.
It's just another monument to the fact that it's not possible to solve questions of nature by just thinking about them.
Posted by: Imrryr
|
July 27, 2009 12:27 PM
I've got to agree with David M. I don't think it's anything more than a coincidence that the Southern Continent on that map resembles Antarctica as we know it today. The idea that someone circumnavigated Antarctica in the early 16th century, mapped it, and got the latitudes horribly wrong seems a bit of a stretch. Two full centuries later, Captain James Cook's 2nd voyage (1775ish) involved an exhaustive search for a southern continent, but even though he sailed below the Antarctic Circle on a few occasions, Cook never actually found what he was looking for. The weather below 40 degrees south is notorious for being terrible, and even during the southern summer Cook had to contend with harsh winds, snow, fog, and icebergs. I doubt that an early 16th century navigator could have, or would have bothered exploring such an inhospitable place unless there was the potential for a useful discovery (like the Northwest Passage, for example).
Posted by: woodsong | July 27, 2009 12:51 PM
One other thing to keep in mind (yes, I know I'm late to the thread, but I think this bears pointing out to those who see the resemblance as remarkable): John McKay quotes Quist:
In other words, this wasn't the only map, nor one chosen at random. Quist pawed through probably thousands of antique maps looking for exactly what he wanted, discarding the rest. It's a classic case of cherry-picking and nothing more.
Posted by: John McKay | July 27, 2009 5:17 PM
Woodsong mentions an important point about cherry-picking, but missed a significant detail. It wasn't Quist who took the time to look at the old maps at the LOC, it was Charles Hapgood back in 1960. Hapgood wrote a book about super mariners of a lost civilization. He cherry-picked the map as support for his theory. He died in 1982, but his books remain in print and are highly influential in Atlantis and catastrophist circles.
Quist picked up the idea from reading Hapgood or one of his disciples (most likely Graham Hancock). Quist's cherry-picking involved seizing on Hapgood as proof of an ice free Antarctica to support Quist's climate change denial. To me, Quist's cherry-picking looks far more cynical and dishonest than Hapgood's.