Open Thread 13 -- million comments contest edition

Well I'm in then.

If you haven't ever commented here, this open thread is a good opportunity to enter the millionth comment contest:

Thing is, I've already commented here (Deltoid presumably). So consider this comment not to be an entry (if it should be the millionth comment), as I'd hate to take the chance of that glorious prize away from someone who hasn't ever commented here. ;-)

Although I was at first wincing at the idea of such a promotion, on reflection I can see that it'd be a great science-geek trip. Personally, I'd especially love the museum visits. I could lose myself for weeks...

I have this awful vision though that one of our more infamous trolls would be the 10^6th commenter.

What a waste that would be...

Geek me up spotty!

Tim, isn't this just a way for one of us to name you as their favourite science blogger so that you get an all-expenses paid trip to the US in order to attend the requested dinner?

Regular, and enthusiastic, reader, but I've never felt I have enough to add to most of the discussion here, so alart and erudite are its content and readers.

On the other hand, I have quoted it TO people many times.

Psst! sotto voce What's a "Thead"?

OK, Open Thread 13 then.

Alas, while a NY trip would be fun, I can't spare the time to go that weekend.

Technically, that should probably have been "(10^6)th"...

Weird. The scienceblogs page describing the contest that has an "opt out" option doesn't have a way to submit the form!

lolz

Drill, baby, drill...

> As Congress prepares to debate expansion of drilling in taxpayer-owned coastal waters, the Interior Department agency that collects oil and gas royalties has been caught up in a wide-ranging ethics scandal including allegations of financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct.

(via The Poor Man)

I want to win!

Sorry, but if you are a chad, you just don't count.

A million already? What's the doubling time on this thing?

Just so you all know (if you can't be bothered to follow Tim's link, as of this time stamp, the comment count stood at 993,780 (plus this one).

Come on. We can easily do this tonight!

So I join in by recomending a post over att Climate Progress: http://climateprogress.org/2008/09/10/interior-sex-for-oil-scandal-plea…

Here's another one, because I've just had a "Well I never" moment.

In all the time I've visited here, I'd never noticed the live count at the top of the page, not until I posted my previous comment that is! Still, this adds another to the count. :-)

P. Lewis:

I think the live count was added for this special occasion.

Drill deep, drill deep! ... :-B

The way the counter's going, most of Australia might still be asleep when 10^6 ticks.

Poop.

Whazza bet that the boards go all spammy in the last few hundred before? Not by Deltoids though, of course!

More CO2 in the air, hotter ground, all else being equal.

Hi Tim, I have commented twice and this isn't motivated by greed it's scientific endeavor, yeah that's what it is.

What if 'c' 'a' 't' really spelled dog?

With a simple substitution cypher, 'c' 'a' 't' really does spell dog :-)

Can't remember if I've commented here or not before. But I can add to the fun if ya want.

At this rate it's going to take about a week to get to the big six "0"s.

Time for bed ...

A comment.

Another comment.

Commenty commenty comment :)

Another comment

I really hope that some troll does not wins this, how unfair would that be.

http://climateprogress.org/2008/09/10/interior-sex-for-oil-scandal-plea…

Yes, I saw that story too. People may be surprised, but that's how government operates. Sleaze, sleaze and more sleaze, then the favors are handed out, palms are greased, cover stories are laid, and the taxpayers suffer. And there are those that would call for "more government" to resolve social, economic and environmental issues.

Oh, and I can't wait to see the gov't carbon trading bureaucracy. THAT will be different, won't it?

"By submitting a comment with a valid email address, you'll be automatically entered to win."

Hmmm ... so whose email address can I put here?

Tim I'm wondering how you're going with that follow up post on Roger Bate you promised us a couple of months back.

Your enemies think you've backed down. Have you?

Comment ça va?

Très bien! Très bien! J'aime ce beaucoup.

that's how government operates.

No, that's only how the Bush government operates.

Political scandals of the United States

Having pointed at that, virtually anything that n_g_s spouts I automatically think the opposite of on principle ;-)

I of course got that wrong on purpose, just to bump up the comment count.

I did not mean n_g_s, I meant n\_g\_s.

Honest! Well, OK then, I boobed.

James Haughton valiantly gave a neat basic lesson (or several) in physics, as it pertains to AGW, over at Marohasy's Kininmonth thread (12 September 2008 at 11:29am).

Graeme Bird then procedes to outdo even himself with his subsequent Dunning-Krugering, and I am forced to recall once again the population of 'High-Brasil' in Eric the Viking. Some people will not see the errors of their thinking even as they sink beneath the waves...

And whilst on the maritime theme, consider this pearler of a paragraph, one amongst many, from the aspiring politician:

You ignore the effect of day and night. The effect of the perturbation on strata of the rotation of the planet. The effect of solar cycles. The effect of the planets rotation around the sun as to the timing of its release of energy. The effect of cumulative energy as a result of higher than normal solar activity. The effect of the changing rotation of the moon on atmospheric pressure zones has comes under particular derision.

I snorted my tea out through my nose at that last sentence.

This must be New New Physics...

Kudos though for James, for leaving a little message of sanity in an otherwise rabid cesspit of anti-science.

Yet another comment ...

We live in a time of war and grave danger. The war is between the provisional truth of science and the certainty of public relations. Public relations is winning, and we are losing big time. As for the grave danger - David Letterman gets it.

ben:

And there are those that would call for "more government" to resolve social, economic and environmental issues.

Let us know if you ever find a government that does none of these.

ben, sucks, what's the difference.

For all of the hype about the Arctic ice meltback either breaking or nearly breaking the 2007 record, it is not about record-breaking.

Rather, what will be the impact on western North America's agricultural output as that massive expanse of open ocean impacts temperture and precip in WNA. Add to that the continuing and increasing Amazon deforestation and the world's grain basket could collapse.

John McCormick

I've always wanted to say how much I appreciate your blog, but haven't had an excuse to comment before.

Would love to go to NY. I might even take in a play.

Well, why not use the opportunity to advertise my new blog a little bit?
Has anyone seen the new "hockey stick" paper by Mann et al. already, and the first response it got from the skeptics? Might evolve into an interesting debate...

Uhh, c'mon! Chad (#11 & 12) should count unless he's dangling.

Let us know if you ever find a government that does none of these.

The US government through 1865, and to a lesser extent through about 1913. The native americans prior to reservations.

Invariably, in response to this, someone will bring up slavery in some context. My reply will be please read DiLorenzo.

995,526th!!!!

'trip for two to New York City'
Great prize! I wonder how much CO2 that would produce or does the winner travel by sailboat? Seems a tad hypocritical to me!!

Let us know if you ever find a government that does none of these.

The US government through 1865

Good luck ever finding another one again.

Yes, even concern trolling comments are eligible.

The US government through 1865

I don't need to bring up slavery. The founding of the US was itself a blatant act of Big Governmentâ¢. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights was determined by government fiat. Benjamin Franklin petitioned the PA assembly to stop waste dumping -- if this is not Big Government⢠to resolve an environmental issue, then what is? The Militia Act of 1792 was another act of Big Governmentâ¢, to resolve an economic issue.

It's surprising that nanny-govt-sicks didn't use the Bush administration as an example, given how he thinks it's so good and pure...

Chris O'Neill:

> > The US government through 1865

> Good luck ever finding another one again.

Dude, he's a libertarian. If he can't find a pre-1865 government here in 2008, he can always make one up.

> Great prize! I wonder how much CO2 that would produce or does the winner travel by sailboat?

How much CO2 is produced by Gore's private jet which doesn't exist? Beats me, eh...

>>> And there are those that would call for "more government" to resolve social, economic and environmental issues.

>> Let us know if you ever find a government that does none of these.

> The US government through 1865, and to a lesser extent through about 1913.

So in your mind ownership is not a social or economic policy? Is it some kind of a natural phenomenon?

"The US government through 1865, and to a lesser extent through about 1913."

Yes, oh for the good old small-government days of the Dred Scott case and the Trail of Tears.

Can I comment that I wouldn't comment except for the prizes?

;)

This is not a comment.
(signed) Epeminedes the Cretan.

Liar! And you can't spell your own name, Epiminedes. :-)

Clearly I should win, since I'm within easy train distance of New York. I'm the low-carbon choice!

Ian,

Don't forget Shay's Rebellion and the Mexican War. Which brings to mind H. D. Thoreau. There is a much nobler strain of libertarian thought braided through US history of which the Randroid, Rothbard, Austrian School blowhards are pointedly oblivious.

An apt simile:

> Like a chameleon, McCain's new little friend [Palin] shifts her views to suit her surroundings.

Why would I want to have a meal with you?

"... and dinner with your favorite ScienceBlogger"

Why would I want to have a meal with you?
Posted by: Dave Andrews

Well - why not tell us Dave why Tim is your favorite ScienceBlogger? And for fun, why he should be keen to eat with you - something to do with your brilliance, the sparkling wit and repartee you normally offer your dining companions? an extraordinary degree of personal hygiene?
c'mon and share!

"Like a chameleon, McCain's new little friend [Palin] shifts her views to suit her surroundings."

You can put lipstick on a lizard.....

z, in this case I think it's more like putting a lizard on a tube of lipstick.

Lipstick? Personally, I never wear it.

I hope no one from the itty bitty shitty government committee wins.

Dopey,
Did I say Tim was my "favourite science blogger"?

And as I know nothing of his eating habits, and he knows nothing of mine, it could be that if we meet we may totally fail to hit it off gastronomically and both end up with indigestion.

An interesting idea that painting all roofs white will increase the planet's reflectivity to a point where temperatures could decline to pre-industrial levels despite higher CO2 emissions has been suggested by several observers (e.g. http://tigerhawk.blogspot.com/2008/09/bermuda-everywhere-paint-rooftops…).

Hashem Akbari of the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory suggested that re-roofing 100 global cities could stop 44 metric gigatons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere. This is more than the current combined emissions of countries and the amount could be substantially increased by whitewashing parking lots, road surfaces and any exposed flat surfaces.

Apart from the relative very low costs compared with closing down coal fired power stations and building new energy sources, there would be no need for an expensive and untested Emissions Trading Scheme and it could be reversed if the climate prediction models are wrong.

not entirely sure how the reflective roof thing would work out... has more appeal in the hot climates than in the wintry ones. I reflect upon my childhood in Canada when the average air conditioning expenditures of most people was zero, in that nobody's house had air conditioning.

secondly, i'm not sure how that competes with just adding the vast quantities of insulation now recommended for attics, which would not only reduce the air conditioning load in the summer, but also the heatin load in the winter.

finally, i'm not entirely sure how much reducing the temp of the parking lot asphalt will reduce the temperatures of nearby houses. not saying it won't, just saying i wonder.

and like any good skeptic, i'm posting my skepticism without even looking up the original publication to find answers....

Rationing returns: a solution to global warming?

Jennifer Marohasy won't post my comment! Graeme Bird has the run of the joint while I don't get even a taste of the sweet action going down over there!! As the thread I posted to is worth a visit just for the spectacle that is poor Bill Kininmonth, here's the link and what Our Jennifer refuses to print (perhaps for fear of the explosion of Graeme Bird droppings it could produce?)
Theme of the week there is, again, Examples of the Dunning-Kruger Effect in Contemporary Oz Blog Practice.

http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/09/bill-kininmonth-requests-expla…

Does Bill Kininmonth think that Wikipedia's excellent explanation of the Greenhouse Effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect is wrong or does he believe that the IPCC and FASTS are not able to comprehend something like a Wikipedia page? This is what Kininmonth is saying - either he can prove an error in something as clear and well-presented as the Wikipedia account or he asserts that it is different to what the majority of climate scientists could explain to him were he to ask. The third possibility would be that he doesn't understand what he's talking about - clearly not to be countenanced!

Who here knows of the Peter Principle and its corollary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle: "... Peter's Corollary states that "in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out his duties" and adds that "work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence" and the Dilbert Principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dilbert_Principle: "... a 1990s satirical observation by Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams stating that companies tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to management (generally middle management), in order to limit the amount of damage they're capable of doing."

Jennifer are you aware of the Dunning-Kruger effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect

"... ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" (as Charles Darwin put it).[3]

....

1. Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill.
2. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others.
3. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.
4. If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill ...."

and do you have an opinion of its validity as it may apply to you and to posters at this site? (I'm sure it applies to me in areas where I'm either ill-educated or just plain naturally daft).

Finally as Eli asks above, would somebody please suggest to Bill Kininmonth that he give careful consideration to the "space blanket" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_blanket which is a simple real life rebuttal of his argument to FASTS that "... a blanket acts as an inhibitor of conduction and not radiation ... ". If he's wrong in his blanket assertion (thank you, thank you!) should he, too, sit down quietly somewhere away from the limelight for long enough for him to contemplate the message of the Dunning-Kruger effect? Is it unavoidable that empty vessels will always make the most sound?

The University of Rhode Island will be hosting an online chat on global warming at Tuesday 1:30pm EDT.

There should be a fifth point pertaining to the D-K effect:

5. Incompetent individuals tend to perceive, to great excess, incompetence in others, even where such other individuals are in fact highly competent, and where they have carefully explained the incompetence of the incompetent individuals to said incompetent individuals.

This is perhaps better posed as a corollary to the second point, but in any case it's something I've taken to refering to in my own mind as Dunning-Kruger irony...

The other concept I use as a personal reference is the idea of Dunning-Kruger resistance, where a D-K afflicted individual actively refuses to acknowledge his or her condition of ignorance and/or incompetence, and hence refuses to elevate themselves above their incompetence.

Without naming names, there are several very rude and 'alternatively-scienced' people who spring immediately to mind...

It's just got even darker on the Dark Side of the Moon. :-(

This is funy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0djLA8bCiT0

:)

Sorry to go completely off-topic here but I have a question that I would love to get an answer for...

Regarding the Greenland ice sheet and the estimates that it contains enough ice to raise sea levels by nearly 7 metres I need to find out how the researchers came to that figure - the best I can find is that it was put forward by Church et. al (2001) but can only access the abstract to that report which isnt much help.

Basically I am engaged in one of those pointless internet forum debates where some genius believes that it is a fraudulent figure but I lack the understanding of physics and arithmitic to properly put him down.

His argument goes something like this:

"Your quoted figure is 2.85 m cubic Km for total ice associated with Greenland. I do not dispute that although it is only an estimation. It may well be more.

The sea surface is approx 350 m sq km - This is a fact that I have not seen disputed and although I have seen figures up to 361 sq km I am working on approx figures only as that is all that is needed.

Now the arithmetic.

A 1 (one) metre rise in sea level requires 350 m cubic kilometres of water (or melted ice) That is 350 m sq by 1 metre deep.

The Greenland ice you have quoted is only short by 347.15 m cubic kilometres.

Please explain why this arithmetic is wrong."

If anyone can give me a quick rundown on why his assumptions are incorrect it would be a HUGE help. I cant let a denialist win an argument, not on the internet!

:)

Oh, why not. You would think that ScienceBlogs would set some condition that states that the winning comment would have to have some actual content, but I suppose that would be too hard to objectively determine.

Not that I'm complaining, mind you.

Bernard and P.Lewis it's very true - the dark side of the moon to be seen at Jennifer's and some other denialist sites boasts some of the rudest D-K exemplars you'll ever have the pleasure to meet!

Connor:

The sea surface is approx 350 m sq km .... a 1 (one) metre rise in sea level requires 350 m cubic kilometres of water

No, no it doesn't. That would raise sea level by 1km not 1m - surprise!

SLR\_GIS = (Vol\_GIS * ~0.9)/SA\_Ocean

= 2.56e6 km^3/361e6 km^2

= 0.007 km

= 7 m

All figures approximate

Jemima, when I wrote about the Dark Side of the Moon being even darker, I was referring to the sad news that Pink Floyd keyboard player Richard Wright had died today.

As it happens, I did follow your link to the Kininmonth bird droppings over at JM's and there is a certain appositeness about my Floyd comment. There is evident Brain Damage:

Got to keep the loonies on the path
...
You shout and no one seems to hear

The lunatics should certainly be on something, but it's certainly not the grass.

And open thread? Dood, this is totally cheating.

Isis the Scientist> And open thread? Dood, this is totally cheating.

I absolutely agree, and I intend to comment on this as much as possible until the contest is over.

Jemima, I stared at those figures for ages without seeing the (now) obvious error. Crowdsourcing works again!

I am amazed.

For the last hour, the rate of posting has been linear, with an r^2 ~ 0.999.

Who'd have thought?

Has anyone else noticed that Marohasy has buried her search field way down her front page, and put a 'donate' button immediately below it rather than the traditional 'search' button or 'go' button?

It's almost enough to make one cynical...

Having played with the ideas of Dunning-Kruger irony and Dunning-Kruger resistance, I can't help but wonder if it is not possible to establish a Dunning-Kruger index (if one does not already exist).

It would be interesting to see how various folk 'fit' into a population spectrum, and if one could establish such a representative index, one could then perhaps give various blogs a Dunning-Kruger weight.

Oh, what fun!

Bingo!

> Official Comment Count: 1,000,142

Is the contest over yet? Who's the winner?

Yes, I'm curious too. I had a couple of friends over at the time and we watched the numbers tick, but we missed the actual 1 million because we were pushing each other from the keyboard!

With the way the count was going I suspect that it won't be a Deltoid poster actually, although it would have been nice for Tim if it had been.

As long as it wasn't a troll.

This ad already rocks like a rocking thing that rocks, but this comment just tops it off:

> John McCain was helping to invent many new technologies. It's no coincidence that cell phones and blackberries rose while John McCain had a lot of influence in the technology field.

In fact the entire field of berrry horticulture began when McCain was first in college.

I've heard it's true that he, McCain, also invented oven chips (fries for our US cousins)!

Heh, the Heartland Institute seems to be trying to delete freedom-away portions of their March `conference' proceedings.

I wonder if this has anything to do with McCain's many inventions...

Is this another instance of Socratic irony I see?

Also, for extra Socrates, read the above together with this.

So, when does the competition close? I see that the count is 1,004,206 as I type this.

So, when does the competition close? I see that the count is 1,004,206 as I type this.

I'm seem to recall that the closing date for entry is September 30.

Continuing from the Monckton thread... Dano s3z,

> there's a new study that used a small group of people to study political affiliations, and the scaredy-cats are conservatarians.

Which makes me think... people keep talking about 'reaching out' to conservatarians (or conlibertarians). If the above result is true, does it mean that an effective way of 'reaching out' to conlibertarians is to show them pictures that scare the hell out of them? That'll be somewhat depressing.

No, scaring them just causes them to circle the wagons resulting in rejecting The Other.

Best,

D

Dano: oh well.

In other news... thanks to Anthony Watts, another idiotic conspiracy theory is born.

A hypothetical question.

If it turned out that the warming was 100% natural, should we take steps to stop it?

another hypothetical question:
If it turned out that global warming was an attempt by the Russians to warm up Siberia, increase agricultural production, and end world hunger, would we view it as an unbelievably provocative act of war and proceed to nuke them?

BillBodell asked:

If it turned out that the warming was 100% natural, should we take steps to stop it?

If it turned out that smallpox was 100% natural, should we take steps to stop it?

Bill Bodell.

If warming was '100% natural' then there would be no anthropogenic greenhouse gas process operating, which would have rather a disconcerting implication for the physics of the temperature of the planet.

But this rewriting of physics aside, if warming were 100% natural it would then be operating via a process about which humans could do much less of substance than emissions reduction, short of the science fiction scenarios of shading the planet or moving it a few million km further away from the sun. Heaven help our ecology if we decided to use sulphate particulates in any attempt to do so...

But it was only a leading question anyway, wasn't it?

z,

Since I'm in favor of ending world hunger, I'd tend to support Russia in this, but want to make sure that knew what they were doing.

Robert,

Yes.

Bernard J.

It was a thought experiment (but no one wants to participate, sigh). I'm trying to determine how much of the worry about GW is due to concern for the welfare of mankind versus a "don't mess with Mother Nature" point of view.

Bill Bodell.

If you are serious in your thought experiment you would be better served by posing your question in a fashion that distinctly separates it from the AGW Denialist position. To this end you would explicitly need to acknowledge, and ask people to ignore, the physics of greenhouse gases, and specifically the contribution that humans make to the GHG content of the atmosphere.

The trouble is, if one conducts such a thought experiment, with the assumption that humans haven't contributed to the GHG content of the atmosphere, one would rapidly run into the inconvenience that it is extremely unlikely that we would have the technology with which to tackle a natural cause for warming.

Without establishing a whole lot of exceptions and 'what if's', the exercise is a bit of an oxymoron.

Bernard J.

Well, I should just drop this because it isn't going anywhere or gathering any response, but things are slow, so I'll plod on.

I ask that, for arguement's sake, we accept two unlikely premises. That current warming is 100% natural and that there would exist methods by which humans could reverse it.

The point is that I believe that some Hard Green environmentalists care more about "nature" than humans (which I disagree with, but that's a valid opinion). These people might well me "selling" the threat to mankind simply because they know it's a more effective arguement. I would expect these people to be against interferring with nature even if such interference would be a boon to mankind.

Others, no doubt, truly care about the damage GW may bring to humanity. I would expect these people to be in favor of reversing GW even if it was not due to man.

I was just trying to get a feel for how many here are in which camp.

> I was just trying to get a feel for how many here are in which camp.

You know, whenever someone tries to "get a feel" of public opinion, and the responses don't make for a good PR story like "Greenies Hate Mankind! Oh Noes!", the someone tends to simply ignore the responses and move on to other crap.

Now really, give us a good reason why we should believe you're not just looking for an opportunity to score cheap points.

Also, since it's a slow day, I'll mention that I just uploaded Tom Harris's "coordinated local activism" talk segment to YouTube.

"I was just trying to get a feel for how many here are in which camp."

oh well then count me firmly in the i hate mankind camp. it's all i can do each day to keep from strangling everyone i meet. my family has to sleep behind a locked steel door, with a doberman standing guard. i am registered in 16 states with the local police as a highly dangerous character. therefore, even though i firmly believe that global warming will usher in a utopian age for mankind, since i know that it will devastate every other species i must oppose it.

wow, i feel so much better. i'm glad you asked.

opening the thread a bit: having given up hope on the complexity of climate, i now merely hope that future presidents' physics education includes the very simple rules governing the reflection of light rays

... we accept two unlikely premises. That current warming is 100% natural ...

If wishes were horses then beggars would ride

> I believe that some Hard Green environmentalists care more about "nature" than humans

Your point of departure is misconceived: humans are part of "nature" - caring about the former is part of caring about the latter.

Lindzen has recently unveiled the Mother of All Climate Conspiracies.

"Wall Street crisis" has just been cancelled, my friends... as far as I know. :)

This definitely needs a lot of "coordinated local activism":

> Sen. John McCain and his Republican allies are readying a newly aggressive assault on Sen. Barack Obama's character, believing that to win in November they must shift the conversation back to questions about the Democrat's judgment, honesty and personal associations, several top Republicans said. [...]

> Moments after the House of Representatives approved a bailout package for Wall Street on Friday afternoon, the McCain campaign released a television ad that challenges Obama's honesty and asks, "Who is Barack Obama?" The ad alleges that "Senator Obama voted 94 times for higher taxes. Ninety-four times. He's not truthful on taxes." The charge that Obama voted 94 times for higher taxes has been called misleading by independent fact-checkers, who have noted that the majority of those votes were on nonbinding budget resolutions.

> A senior campaign official called the ad "just the beginning" of commercials that will "strike the new tone" in the campaign's final days. The official said the "aggressive tone" will center on the question of "whether this guy is ready to be president."

Of course -- my friends -- this "new tone" is all the fault of the liberals.

... Uh-oh.

Anthony Watts is waiting for Science 2.0.

Interesting greenwash announcement today...

Don Bourke is to have 'open access' to timber company Gunns' books in order to comment (objectively, apparently) on the company's environmental thoughtfulness.

Trouble is, Bourke was until recently the chairman of the Australian 'Environment' Foundation, a lobby group established to counter the effectiveness of real environmental organisations (especially where they bring to public attention the negative impacts of forestry), and a co-inhabitant of the same address as the Institute of Public Affairs.

Bourke was recently replaced at the EAF by none other than Jennifer Marohasy.

For those Australians who might not be quite up to speed, this appears (to me at least) to be an attempt to counter the well-respected ABC gardener extraordinaire, Peter Cundall, who has been an outspoken critic of the Gunns pulp mill, which is to be contructed in the Tamar Valley where Cundall lives.

Bourke himself hosted a garden home 'improvement' program on a commercial channel, although by many accounts his focus was more on celebrity and his own ego than about horticulture - very much the diametric opposite of the remarkable Cundall. For anyone not familiar with either man, especially Cundall, have a bit of a Google.

It will be interesting to see how science might be mangled in Bourke's foray into Tasmanian forestry.