tlambert | September 9, 2010Alden Griffiths has another excellent presentation, this time dissecting Christopher Monckton's claim that temperatures are below the IPCC's projections.
tlambert | September 6, 2010John Cook has the details on a TV show on SBS tonight where the late Stephen Schneider answered questions from a room full of skeptics, followed by a live chat with David Karoly.
One of the skeptics was blogger Legal Eagle who writes about it here. I don't think she was correct about the science and the coverage of skeptics as I put in this comment to her post. Also worth a read are Roger Jones' comments here and here.
Robert Merkel argues that Legal Eagle was being intellectually lazy while Sinclair Davidson cranks the rhetoric up to 11, accusing those that disagree with Legal Eagle of…
tlambert | August 29, 2010Stephan Lewandowsky is conducting a survey on attitudes towards climate science and related issues and is interested in responses from readers of pro-science blogs. Go here if you are interested.
tlambert | August 26, 2010Hey, remember how the Sunday Times retracted that bogus Jonathan Leake story which was based on "Research by Richard North"? Now the Sunday Telegraph has retracted and apologized for a bogus story by Christopher Booker and Richard North alleging that Rajenda Pachauri was making millions from his links with carbon trading companies. George Monbiot has the details.
Anyone noticing a pattern here?
tlambert | August 22, 2010Barry Bickmore is compiling a list of the politicians, journalists etc who have damaged their credibility by relying on Christopher Monckton as a source of infomration about climate science.
Also well worth a look is Alden Griffith's lucid explanation of what is wrong with Monckton's claim that "Arctic sea ice is just fine".
tlambert | August 19, 2010Arthur Smith details a pattern of deception in Keith Kloor's writing. Kloor's response in comments completes the case -- he takes offence at the very first sentence and uses that as pretext for avoiding the criticism.
Update: Kloor responds again, projecting:
I sense their intent is to harm my reputation
tlambert | August 16, 2010Seems that there's some excitement about a new paper A Statistical Analysis of Multiple Temperature Proxies: Are Reconstructions of Surface Temperatures Over the Last 1000 Years Reliable? to be published in Annals of Applied Statistics. Their reconstruction appears to be closest match to a hockey stick shape yet seen:
Also:
Using our model, we calculate that there is a 36% posterior probability that 1998 was the warmest year over the past thousand. If we consider rolling decades, 1997-2006 is the warmest on record; our model gives an 80% chance that it was the warmest in the past thousand…
tlambert | August 15, 2010The discussion involving Judith Curry and The Hockey Stick Illusion has continued at Collide-a-Scape, with posts on the views of Judith Curry (Curry did admit to getting one of her ten points wrong, but not the other nine) and those of Gavin Schmidt.
Steve McIntyre's comments in the second thread provides another case where readers can judge the reliability of his claims without having to delve into the mathematics. He wrote:
The non-Stickness of Mann-style reconstructions without bristlecones+Gaspe or with reduced bristlecone+Gaspe weight - a point conceded by Wahl and Ammann - was…
tlambert | August 14, 2010The University of Queensland has surveyed Australian politicians (press release here, results here) on their attitude to climate change:
"Labor politicians are more influenced by scientists than Liberal/National politicians - 85 per cent of Labor politicians are highly influenced by this group compared to 44 per cent of Liberal/National politicians," Dr Fielding said.
Note this poll was conducted in October last year when Liberal Party policy was to adopt an emissions trading scheme and before the media beat up of anti-IPCC stories.
There is discussion of the survey on ABC's Lateline,…
tlambert | August 11, 2010Monckton's fight with the House of Lords continues, with The Guardian reporting
Last month, Michael Pownall, clerk of the parliaments, wrote to Lord Monckton, a hereditary peer, stressing that he should not refer to himself as a member of the House of Lords, and nor should he use any emblem representing the portcullis. ...
Buckingham Palace confirmed it is "aware of this matter", but said it "can not disclose any details on private correspondence between Buckingham Palace and an individual". It did, though, guide the Guardian towards a document on its website which says misuse of the emblem…
tlambert | August 8, 2010Following in the foot steps of the Sunday Times' retraction of their bogus Jonathan Leake story, the BBC has apologized for falsely stating that UEA researchers had "distorted the debate about global warming to make the threat seem even more serious than they believed it to be". The BBC offers the excuse "that this was a live programme being put together under the pressure of events", which is fair enough, except that it has taken over nine months to make this simple correction, for which, surely, there is no excuse.
Hat tip: BCL.
tlambert | August 7, 2010Anthony Watts has guest post by Ferdinand Engelbeen (the guy Plimer plagiarised) explaining how we know that the increase in CO2 is not natural. Good on Watts for putting some accurate science on his blog. Mind you, the comments include folks like Richard Courtney arguing against it.
Hat tip: TrueSceptic
tlambert | August 4, 2010Christopher Monckton is now threatening to sue Scott Mandia as well:
I also note that you have publicly accused me of "fraud", and have widely circulated that accusation on the internet, and have expressed the intention to invite the mass media to repeat it. Since this is a serious charge, do you have any evidence to back it up, or should I add your name to that of Professor Abraham in the libel case that will be filed shortly?
Gareth Renowden responds with:
On the evidence, it is clear that Monckton is a shameless humbug, a proven liar and a hypocrite, who intentionally misrepresents the…
tlambert | August 4, 2010I guess if the wind is going to blow the big tree in my back yard down, I should be grateful that it fell in the direction that minimized the damage -- only the fence and our clothesline were crushed.
tlambert | July 31, 2010In a column at the New York Times (or is it an advertorial for Watts up With That?), Virginia Heffernan uses the Pepsi affair to refight the postmodernist Science Wars. It seems that she's still upset by the Sokal hoax and wants some payback against the scientists.
Heffernan writes (and if you are wondering what this has to do with Derrida, I don't know either, but this is what she wrote after she donned "the old Derridean cloak"):
I was nonplussed by the high dudgeon of the so-called SciBlings. The bloggers evidently write often enough for ad-free academic journals that they still fume…
tlambert | July 30, 2010
Thingsbreak has produced a graphic illustration of how lazy journalists mislead in the name of "balance". On right is his colour coding of her story on the NOAA report on the State of the Climate in 2009, with red marking coverage of "Climategate" and contrarians and green marking coverage of the report that the story is ostensibly about. This, from the red coverage, quite takes your breath away:
David Herro, the financier, who follows climate science as a hobby, said NOAA also "lacks credibility".
Tim Lambert, the blogger, who follows climate journalism as a hobby, says Harvey lacks…