Tim Lambert
tlambert
Posts by this author
March 1, 2010
A story on climate change by Jonathan Leake that is reprinted in the Australian is pretty well guaranteed to misrepresent the science. And it does -- you only have to compare the headline for Leake's story "Cyclone climate link rejected" with Nature Geosciences headline "Tropical cyclone projection…
March 1, 2010
This Jonathan Leake story on the evolution of Polar Bears broke the embargo on this PNAS paper. Ivan Oransky quotes PNAS media and communications manager Jonathan Lifland:
The majority of our infrequent embargo violations are accidental and typically the result of mislabeled copy that does not…
March 1, 2010
Via Skeptical Science, Peter Sinclair's video on the evidence for man-made global warming.
February 28, 2010
Andrew Bolt responded to my debate with Monckton by defaming me, calling me "vituperative, deceptive, a cherrypicker, an ideologue, a misrepresenter and a Manichean conspiracist only too keen to smear a sceptic as a crook who lies for Exxon's dollars". You'll be glad to hear that Bolt now says I…
February 26, 2010
Satoshi Kanazawa has an interesting post about how British Newspapers Make Things Up:
I hope American and British readers (and readers throughout the world) will finally wake up to the reality of British journalism: You just cannot believe what you read in British newspapers. I'd further call on…
February 26, 2010
The IPCC fourth assessment report did not give any upper bound to sea level rise this century. But in a spectacularly bad piece of science communication they gave a range of 18 to 59cm excluding effects from accelerating ice sheet flows. Which are potentially the biggest contributors to sea level…
February 26, 2010
The Economist tells it like it is
This led to a Daily Mail headline reading: "Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995."
Since I've advocated a more explicit use of the word "lie", I'll go ahead and follow my own advice: that Daily Mail…
February 25, 2010
Ron Bailey reflexively jumps to the defence of Bjorn Lomborg:
Begley cites three examples from Friel about Lomborg's errors, e.g., polar bear population trends and climate change, human deaths from heat versus cold, and the implications of Antarctic ice shelf disintegration. You can read Begley's…
February 25, 2010
Clive Hamilton has written a five part series on the attacks on climate science in Australia:
Bullying, lies and the rise of right-wing climate denial. I already mentioned this one
Who is orchestrating the cyber-bullying?. Andrew Bolt gets a special mention for his hate mongering.
Think tanks, oil…
February 23, 2010
John Cook's Skeptical Science iPhone app has really taken off. So much so that Andrew Bolt has incorporated it into his conspiracy theories.
February 22, 2010
I've noted before that Bjorn Lomborg systematically misrepresents the science. Sharon Begley has reviewed Howard Friel's book The Lomborg Deception:
But when Friel began checking Lomborg's sources, "I found problems," he says. "As an experiment, I looked up one of his footnotes, found that it didn'…
February 22, 2010
Coverage of the Leakegate scandal is spreading.
Media Lens has published a media alert about the disinformation about climate science being published by British newspapers. Leake, as the worst offender, gets special mention. They quote James Hansen:
"The media have done a great disservice to the…
February 21, 2010
Clive Hamilton describes the hate mail campaign against climate scientists:
Australia's most distinguished climate scientists have become the target of a new form of cyber-bullying aimed at driving them out of the public debate.
In recent months, each time they enter the public debate through a…
February 21, 2010
Last September Jonathan Leake wrote a story Heart attacks plummet after smoking ban in which he stated:
The ban on public smoking has caused a fall in heart attack rates of about 10%, a study has found. ...
The research into heart attack rates in England is being led by Anna Gilmore of Bath…
February 20, 2010
We've already seen how Jonathan Leake fabricates his stories by quote mining his sources andstovepiping claims from Global Warming deniers. His story on "Africagate" provides another example:
The most important is a claim that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop production by up…
February 19, 2010
The Australian Government has set up a Coasts and Climate Change Council to plan how to adapt to increases in sea levels and cyclone intensity that global warming will most likely bring. Since its about adaption to climate change and planning for the future, in a rational world even on opponent of…
February 19, 2010
Leakegate, the scandal about the dishonest reporting of Sunday Times reporter Jonathan Leake has grown into Timesgate. Deltoid can reveal that two more reporters for The Times
have been implicated in another case of fabrication. Look at this story by Ben Webster and Robin Pagnamenta:
UN must…
February 18, 2010
Oh look! Another Jonathan Leake story
Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.
While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical…
February 18, 2010
Here's a game you can play at home. All you need is a search engine. Take a Jonathan Leake science story with a dramatic headline. For example, Facebook fans do worse in exams. Then do a search on the headline. You win if you can find complaints by scientists that their research was…
February 17, 2010
Via PZ Myers I find Bruce M Hood's story of how Jonathan Leake misrepresented Hood's work:
Well, what did I expect? A fair representation in the press and a balanced view from commentators? Come off it. ...
First, most of the articles in the press are based on the original article in The Sunday…
February 17, 2010
Ian Musgrave explains how the Snowball Earth proves the opposite of what Christopher monckton claimed:
Moncktons' claim that this shows that climate sensitivity to CO2 must be low in this scenario is dead wrong, in fact simulations show that with the sensitivity most researchers claim for CO2, you…
February 17, 2010
Piers Akerman's response to being busted for fabricating a quote is simply dishonest. For instance:
The little Crikey website had a defamatory reference to The Independent and me, clearly unsupported by any research.
If you read the story in The Independent, you will see that The Independent…
February 16, 2010
World Exclusive!
Must Credit Deltoid!!
Deltoid can reveal David Rose's fan letter to Christopher Monckton written after Monckton published his famous Chinese navy disproves global warming article. Rose gushes:
Congratulations on your very important and fascinating article. I have two questions. 1…
February 16, 2010
Andrew Bolt, Media Watch is overheating in its climate jihad:
All sentences that contain the word "disaster" mean the same thing.
'Shorter' concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.⢠Acknowledgement copied from Sadly, No!.
Update: The…
February 16, 2010
This story by Heidi Blake in the Telegraph about how Anthony Watts' findings show that surface temperature records are wrong might sound familiar. That's because it's blatantly plagiarised from Jonathan Leake's story touting Watts' report. Every element in Blake's story was drawn from Leake's…
February 16, 2010
If you think his misrepresentations about what climate scientists told him were bad, check out what Jonathan Leake did to Richard Dawkins:
Top Scientist Gives Backing to Astrology
However, Seymour's theories won qualified support from an unexpected source. Richard Dawkins, professor for the public…
February 15, 2010
By now I'm sure you're all familiar with Jonathan Leake's practice of misrepresenting what his sources by quote mining them. In his story that misrepreseted what the IPCC report says about natural disasters, Leake quotes Muir-Wood:
Muir-Wood himself is more cautious. He said: "The idea that…
February 15, 2010
The Independent tracks down the person who fabricated a fake quote used by folks like Christopher Monckton and Benny Peiser to attack John Houghton and scientists in general and it turns out to Piers Akerman in Sydney's Daily Telegraph.
That's bad enough, but look at Akerman's response when…