tlambert | February 23, 2010John Cook's Skeptical Science iPhone app has really taken off. So much so that Andrew Bolt has incorporated it into his conspiracy theories.
tlambert | February 22, 2010I'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't support what he said, and then did another, and kept going, finding the same pattern." He therefore took on the Augean stables undertaking of checking every one of the hundreds of citations in Cool It. Friel's conclusion, as per his book's title, is that Lomborg is "a performance artist disguised…
tlambert | February 22, 2010Coverage 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 public. This mess should be cleared up in the next year or so, although the damage may linger a while, because some people who paid attention to sensationalism may not bother with accurate explanations of the truth.
The impression left from this affair is that there are some parts of the media that…
tlambert | February 21, 2010Clive 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 newspaper article or radio interview these scientists are immediately subjected to a torrent of aggressive, abusive and, at times, threatening emails. Apart from the volume and viciousness of the emails, the campaign has two features - it is mostly anonymous and it appears to be orchestrated.
I'm not…
tlambert | February 21, 2010Last 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 University. "There is already overwhelming evidence that reducing people's exposure to cigarette smoke reduces hospital admissions due to heart attacks," she said.
Gilmore's research is incomplete and she emphasises the final results for England will not be published for several months.
Action on…
tlambert | February 20, 2010We've already seen how Jonathan Leake fabricates his stories by quote mining his sources and
stovepiping 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 to 50% by 2020, a remarkably short time for such a dramatic change. ...
The African claims could be even more embarrassing for the IPCC because they appear not only in its report on climate change impacts but, unlike the glaciers claim, are also repeated in its Synthesis Report.
I guess this is…
tlambert | February 19, 2010The 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 mitigation like The Australian would be on board, but they are not. The Australian is certain that scientists are wrong about sea level rise and they have an impeccable authority:
Bondi veteran Lee Boman has swum at the beach for more than 30 years and was adamant he had seen "no change" to the…
tlambert | February 19, 2010Leakegate, 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 investigate warming 'bias', says former climate chief
The UN body that advises world leaders on climate change must investigate an apparent bias in its report that resulted in several exaggerations of the impact of global warming, according to its former chairman.
In an interview with The Times Robert…
tlambert | February 18, 2010Oh 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 search generates about 7g of CO2 Boiling a kettle generates about 15g. "Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power," said Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist whose research on the environmental impact of computing is due out soon. "A Google…
tlambert | February 18, 2010Here'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 misrepresented by Leake. Like this.
However, researchers Aryn Karpinski, a doctoral student in education at Ohio State, and Adam Duberstein, an academic adviser at Ohio Dominican University, didn't examine the influence of Facebook on grades. Facebook may be a symptom of a big procrastination habit, not a…
tlambert | February 17, 2010Via 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 Times by Jonathan Leake and Andrew Sniderman. Jonathan did have the courtesy to phone me on Friday afternoon to talk about the piece. He had not read the book but had a copy of SuperSense sent to him. I thought I made my position relatively clear as we discussed the evidence and studies that indicate…
tlambert | February 17, 2010Ian 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 still need a huge amount of CO2 to melt a Snowball Earth with a fainter Sun (1,2 and the measured CO2 after the glaciation ended was around 12,000 ppm, not 300,000 as was apparently claimed in Moncktons' talk, 3). With a low climate sensitivity, the Earth would never unfreeze.
tlambert | February 17, 2010Piers 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 verified that the bogus quote did not appear in Houghton's book as Akerman claimed. They also contacted Houghton who emphatically denied saying anything like it. They also searched for all mentions of the bogus quote on the Internet and found that the very first one was by Akerman. They also…
tlambert | February 16, 2010World 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. You write: 'They also found that the graph's authors had excluded from their calculations a single dataset covering the later mediaeval warm period, which had been stored in a computer file marked 'CENSORED_DATA' Where and how did they find this file? Is there any more known (or discoverable) about…
tlambert | February 16, 2010Andrew 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 Australian runs with the Bolt line. Just how stupid does the Australian think its readers are?
tlambert | February 16, 2010This 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 story -- it's just been rearranged and reworded slightly. It looks like it would have taken her about 15 minutes to do the whole thing. To be fair to Blake, she has actually improved the story -- her version is tighter and flows more naturally, so if the Telegraph fires her for plagiarism she could…
tlambert | February 16, 2010If 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 understanding of science at Oxford University, who once suggested that astrologers be prosecuted under the trades descriptions act, said that although he had not read the book Seymour's ideas sounded interesting.
Dawkins responded
"No. I most emphatically did NOT give my support to Percy Seymour. I…
tlambert | February 15, 2010By 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 catastrophes are rising in cost partly because of climate change is completely misleading. "We could not tell if it was just an association or cause and effect. Also, our study included 2004 and 2005 which was when there were some major hurricanes. If you took those years away then the significance of…
tlambert | 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 contacted by Media Watch:
there was an error in The Independent report. I have responded to The Independent.
Now that has to be one of the most pathetic lies ever. If there really was an error, why not tell them what it was? And, sure enough, The Independent confirm that Akerman hasn't told them about…