tlambert | February 8, 2009Russell Seitz sends me a poster he made for Heartland's denialist conference.
I wonder how long before Heartland put in on their own page?
tlambert | February 8, 2009As promised a little while ago, I've copied everything here and shut down the old blog. I've set up redirects so links to the old blog end up at the right place. Links to
http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/guns/lott98update0.html#0112 Deltoid 0.0, using straight html, which looked like this,
http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/2003/01/#0112 Deltoid 1.0, using Blosxom,
http://timlambert.org/2003/01/0112/ Deltoid 2.0, using WordPress, and
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2003/01/0112.php Deltoid 3.0 using Movable Type
all take you to the same post (my first ever blog…
tlambert | February 6, 2009Debora Mackenzie, in the New Scientist reports on the AAPOR censure:
AAPOR charges that by refusing "to answer even basic questions" about data and methods, Burnham is preventing other researchers from evaluating his conclusions.
According to New Scientist's investigation, however, Burnham has sent his data and methods to other researchers, who found it sufficient. A spokesman for the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins, where Burnham works, says the school advised him not to send his data to AAPOR, as the group has no authority to judge the research. The "correct forum", it…
tlambert | February 6, 2009Unfortunately, the Journal of Peace Research has published the badly flawed "Main Street Bias" paper. My earlier criticisms still apply, so I'm reposting them. Consider this the first draft of a reply to their paper.
The authors argue that main street bias could reasonably produce a factor of 3 difference.
How did they get such a big number? Well, they made a simple model in which the bias depends on four numbers:
q, how much more deadly the areas near main street that were sampled are than the other areas that allegedly were not sampled. They speculate that this number might be 5 (ie…
tlambert | February 6, 2009Bug girl writes about a new paper on insecticide resistance of bedbugs. It turns out the resistance mechanism (kdr) means that they are resistant to DDT and pyrethroids. She concludes:
DDT will be utterly useless against bed bugs, so people should stop asking for it.
We're going to need a lot more research on ways to kill bedbugs other than just poisoning them with the usual pesticide suspects.
In cities where there are active bed bug populations, insecticide choice for resistance management will be very important in urban entomology.
Bedbugs are not going to go away, and you should…
tlambert | February 4, 2009I asked Mary Losch (chair of AAPOR's Standards Committee) to comment on my previous post
I have read your entry and would note that the links you provided did
not supply the questionnaire items but rather a simple template (as
noted in the heading). The Johns Hopkins report provides only
superficial information about methods and significantly more detail
would be needed to determine the scientific integrity of those methods
-- hence our formal request to Dr. Burnham. The Hopkins website
refers to data release but, in fact, no data were provided in response
to our formal requests.…
tlambert | February 4, 2009The American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) has put out a press release alleging that Gilbert Burnham (who is not a member of the AAPOR) violated the AAPOR's code of ethics. What did he do? Their press release states:
Mary E. Losch, chair of AAPOR's Standards Committee, noted that AAPOR's investigation of Burnham began in March 2008, after receiving a complaint from a member. According to Losch, "AAPOR formally requested on more than one occasion from Dr. Burnham some basic information about his survey including, for example, the wording of the questions he used,…
tlambert | February 3, 2009Now featured in the news section for Heartland's Denialist Conference is Frank Bi's parody video.
Check it out before they take it down!
Update: Show's over. They replaced the video.
tlambert | February 3, 2009Last year I wrote about Roger Pielke Jr's abuse of draft reports for point-scoring purposes. Coby Beck catches him doing it again:
His latest effort at sabotaging productive discourse on climate science and policy is a really low blow, putting to rest any lingering hopes one might have had that he still had some integrity stashed away in there somewhere. Now I know these are strong words, but I have to confess this really gets my blood pressure up, it is just the slimiest of tactics.
John Fleck noticed the same thing, but is more charitable:
There's a significant difference between ideas…
tlambert | February 2, 2009Jim Prall writes:
I've been updating my 'faces of climate science' website, with an ever growing list of names and citation stats. I've just completed a big update in which I've tracked down nine open letters and declarations on climate - five 'inactivist' and four 'activist' - and added tags showing who signed which statements. Not surprisingly, a large share of the top tier signed activist declarations, while signers of the pleas for inaction add up to fewer than 5% of the top 500 most cited sources, and are mostly concentrated near the 'never cited' end of the scale:
table of climate…
tlambert | January 29, 2009The usual denialists (e.g. The Register) are excited because some guy they never heard of before has joined Inhofe's merry band, writing:
"I appreciate the opportunity to add my name to those who disagree that global warming is man made."
M. J. Murphy has some information about Theon. It seems that Inhofe's claim that Theon was Hansen's supervisor is completely untrue:
Theon wrote to the Minority Office at the Environment and Public Works Committee on January 15, 2009. "I was, in effect, Hansen's supervisor because I had to justify his funding, allocate his resources, and evaluate his…
tlambert | January 28, 2009I asked the Bond University registrar about Marohasy's claim that:
For his opinion,
Professor Jenkins received an official reprimand from the Bond
University Registrar and then was informed last Friday that his
adjunct status had been revoked.
The registrar replied:
Dr Jenkins was a member of staff here for some considerable time and
resigned to enter the NSW Parliament.
Dr Jenkins was asked to keep an association with University as an
adjunct but indicated in 2008 that serious health problems would
probably prevent him taking an active role. As a result Dr Jenkins was
removed from the…
tlambert | January 28, 2009It seems like only yesterday we got to 10,000 comments and now John Mashey has posted the 50,000th comment, with more content than most blog posts. And here's his acceptance speech:
Thanks to all. I always hoped my efforts would be rewarded, although I never expected this!
CafePress is HQ'd about 20 miles away, although who knows, the T-shirt might come from China for all I know. There is at least hope that it's a short truck ride away.
My forthcoming Deltoid T-shirt will take its proud place amongst some other rare T-shirts I own:
-- SGI "Building a better dinosaur" Jurassic Park dino,…
tlambert | January 28, 2009Gareth Renowden tells the story of Monckton & the case of the missing Curry.
tlambert | January 25, 2009Remember Jon Jenkins and his sixth degree polynomial fit? Well, Jennifer Marohasy is presenting him as a martyr for the denialist cause.
Interestingly Bond University has a new name for its business and IT faculties, The Faculty of Business, Technology & Sustainable Development, but apparently didn't like Professor Jenkins' very public opinion on the subject of sustainable development. For his opinion, Professor Jenkins received an official reprimand from the Bond University Registrar and then was informed last Friday that his adjunct status had been revoked.
And sure enough, he's not…
tlambert | January 24, 2009There are less than 100 comments to go before we reach 50,000 comments here at Deltoid. The tradition around here is for some sort of award, so if you are number 50,000 and you include a valid email address you will a prize something like this.
tlambert | January 24, 2009Who, who has won the coveted Creamy Baileys No-Bell Peace Prize for Science? I'm not going to give the surprise away, so click here to find out!
tlambert | January 20, 2009Eos has just published the results of a survey of 3146 Earth Scientists conducted by Peter Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman. The graph below shows the results for this question:
Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?
The 97% of active climatologists is 75 out of the 77 in the survey. Doran and Zimmermann say:
While respondents' names are kept private, the authors noted that the
survey included participants with well-documented dissenting opinions
on global warming theory.
I'm guessing that Lindzen and Spencer are the two…