tlambert | December 22, 2008Today's salvo in the Australian is a quote from Christopher "White asbestos is harmless" Booker. Booker writes:
Last weekend, US meteorologist Anthony Watts noticed that something very odd had happened to the daily updated website that shows how much sea ice there is in the Arctic.
Without explanation, a half million square kilometres of ice vanished overnight.
This might have brought cheer to Al Gore and the BBC, who have been obsessively telling us that the Arctic ice will soon disappear altogether. They were dismayed enough last winter when, after reaching its lowest point in 30 years, the…
tlambert | December 22, 2008As well as his work on guns, John Lott has produced some bizarre claims about the Florida 2000 election. For example:
African-American Republicans who voted were 54 to 66 times more likely than the average African American to cast a non-voted ballot (either by not marking that race or voting for too many candidates). To put it another way: For every two additional black Republicans in the average precinct, there was one additional non-voted ballot. By comparison, it took an additional 125 African Americans (of any party affiliation) in the average precinct to produce the same result.
So 50%…
tlambert | December 21, 2008The down side of the link exchange between ScienceBlogs and the New York Times is that in the side bar there is now a link to John Tierney's attack on John Holdren, using such stellar authorities as Bjorn Lomborg, Roger Pileke Jr and the Competitiive Enterprise Institute.
Joe Romm has written an excellent post correcting Tierney. Click through to also read Holdren's opinions on global warming.
I must, however, disagree with one of Romm's points:
Tierney is easily the worst science writer at any major media outlet in the country. Pretty much every energy or climate piece he writes is riddled…
tlambert | December 21, 2008So, I after looking at who was on Inhofe's list of scientists that he claims dispute global warming and on the Discovery Institute's list of Darwin dissentors, I thought I should see who was Inhofe's list and this list of HIV/AIDS "rethinkers". The HIV/AIDS list seems to be even dodgier than Inhofe's, including chiropracters, homeopaths, poets and this Lovecraft-inspired entry:
Ivy Shoots. PhD student, Miskatonic University, Massachusetts; Fulbright Scholar
Anyway, there were five names on both lists:
Eduardo Ferreyra. President of the Argentine Foundation for a Scientific Ecology, which…
tlambert | December 20, 2008Back in July, David Evans had on opinion piece in the Australian claiming:
The greenhouse signature is missing. ... The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics.
This is wrong. The hot spot is not the signature, since you get a hot spot, no matter what the cause. The signature is stratospheric cooling combined with tropospheric warming and that has been detected.
Despite being told this, Evans repeated his false claim on ABC radio prompting Barry Brooks to explain again that:
the hotspot was not a signature of the greenhouse…
tlambert | December 18, 2008The Australian seems to have realized that their delight over Rudd's ETS was a giveaway and they are trying to provide some cover. Today we have a piece from Henry Ergas opposing the scheme:
As for the emissions trading scheme, if the main emitters are not reducing their emissions -- as the Government's 5 per cent target assumes -- why go it alone?
And a piece from Bob Carter with some almighty whoppers about the science.
First, global temperature warmed slightly in the late 20th century and has been cooling since 2002. Neither the warming nor the cooling were of unusual rate or magnitude…
tlambert | December 18, 2008Gareth Renowden on the confused mess that is New Zealand's climate policy:
When the ETS was first launched, National supported it. Then they withdrew support for the legislation in the run-up to the election, but campaigned on keeping the basic ETS structure while tinkering with (also known as watering down) the settings. Post-election, to pacify Rodney and his pack of cranks, the ETS was to be put on hold while a select committee considered, amongst other things, whether a carbon tax might be better. Now, on the last day of this session, we learn they're not going to do that, and the…
tlambert | December 17, 2008I haven't read David Archer's "The Long Thaw" yet, but it comes highly recommended. John Mashey:
This concise (180-page), clearly-written book is an excellent first book on climate science for the general audience, generally not requiring knowledge beyond that of high school. ...
Of the 50 or so books I own that discuss climate, this has jumped into the small group I recommend to people who ask "where should I start?"
Chris Mooney
I've never seen the planet's climate history explained so sweepingly and lucidly, arcing back deep into past, and looking out distantly to the almost…
tlambert | December 17, 2008Greenfyre has a nice roundup of corrections to Inhofe's list of 650 604 scientists that he claims dispute the consensus on global warming. Eli Rabett notes some resume inflation in the list, while Bob has a blog doing an entry on each name on the list
Reporters seem to have wised up to Inhofe's game and the list has been mostly ignored in the media. Here in Australia, that means that all the AGW denialist columnists will write about it, and sure enough, here's Miranda Devine in today's paper
They include Japanese scientist Dr Kiminori Itoh, who was an expert reviewer for last year's United…
tlambert | December 16, 2008Jim Prall has compiled a list of the authors of the IPCC Working Group 1 report for AR4. There are 618 WG1 authors, which is more than the 604 names on Inhofe's list. There are just three names on both lists, which is no surprise given the shortage of climate scientists on Inhofe's list.
First Erich Roeckner. He's not a sceptic at all. Brad Plumer explains how Inhofe quote mined Roekner:
I see Inhofe's "Gang of 650" also includes Erich Roeckner, a renowned climate modeler at Germany's Max Planck Institute, who's quoted as saying there are still kinks in current climate models. But that's…
tlambert | December 15, 2008The quick way to see if the Australian government's CO2 emission targets are adequate is to check the reaction from The Australian. Since The Australian believes that it's not warming and we're not causing it and it will not be harmful and we can't do anything about it, they're not going to approve of any targets that will do anything. So what's the verdict?
the Prime Minister's policy response to the Garnaut report is largely balanced, prudent and cautious. While honouring his promise to act on climate change, it is mindful of the need to protect jobs in challenging economic times.
Ouch.…
tlambert | December 14, 2008I'm afraid the very silly editorial in the Weekend Australian about how environmentalists hate the proletariat, already taken to pieces by Glenn Albrecht doesn't qualify as part of their War on Science because it doesn't include anything on the science, but they can't resist taking another shot at climate science, so today's Australian has an article by political scientist Bjorn Lomborg:
Obama went on to say why he wants to prioritise global warming policies: "The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear. Sea levels are rising. Coastlines are shrinking. We've seen record drought,…
tlambert | December 13, 2008Inhofe's list of 650 scientists that supposedly dispute the consensus on AGW reminded me of another list: The Discovery Institute's list of scientists who dissent from Darwinism, so I thought I'd compare the two lists.
First, numbers. The Discovery Institute's list has 751 names, while Inhofe's has only 604. (Not "More Than 650" as he claims -- there are many names appearing more than once.)
Second, how do you get on the list? Well, you have to sign up to get on the Discovery Institute's list, but Inhofe will add you to his list if he thinks you're disputing the global warming consensus and…
tlambert | December 12, 2008Looks like our favourite fabulist (or someone who writes and thinks exactly like him) is busy editing the Wikipedia page on Christopher Monckton. William Connolley (or "failed Green Party candidate in the pay of a convicted internet-gaming fraudster and money-launderer") has the details.
tlambert | December 11, 2008Last year Inhofe released a list of 400 scientists who disputed mainstream climate science. But as Joe Romm and Andrew Dessler observed, the list was padded with TV weathermen, economists and so on and contained very few actual climate scientists. Now he's back with more of the same in a new list that adds 250 more names. Update: Joe Romm takes apart the new list. My favorite entry (reproduced in full so you can get the full nutty flavour):
Field Geologist Louis A.G. Hissink is the editor of The Australian Institute of
Geoscientists Newsletter and is currently working on the ore-reserve…
tlambert | December 10, 2008Michael, whose response to the graph showing the global average sea level going up was
There's no such thing as a global average sea level.
The awesome thing about this response is that it really is a corollary to McKitrick's Theorem that there is no such thing as a global average temperature since average sea level is an intensive quantity.
tlambert | December 9, 2008How would you describe this graph of global sea level from the University of Colorado?
Well if you're Jennifer Marohasy, you call it a "dip in global sea level" and say that "since 2005 the steady upward trend has stumbled".
The most recent observation is right on the long term trend line.
You can get a better idea of trends with this version, which removes the effects of changes in air pressure and seasons:
Who are you going to believe, Marohasy, or your lying eyes?
tlambert | December 9, 2008The NEJM reports some extremely promising results on a vaccine against malaria:
In this trial, RTS,S was given along with other vaccines for children (a vaccine containing diphtheria and tetanus toxoids, whole-cell pertussis vaccine, and conjugated Haemophilus influenzae type b vaccine), according to the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) schedule. There was no interference with immune responses to the EPI vaccines. This result suggests that it will be feasible to provide RTS,S together with other routine children's vaccines, making its delivery in endemic areas much easier and less…
tlambert | December 6, 2008The Sydney Morning Herald has printed another letter correcting Michael Duffy's wrongheaded column. Bob Beale writes
Accusing a scientist of falsifying data is a grave and professionally damaging charge, about the worst one can make. Michael Duffy was careless and wrong to allege that Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "fudged" climate data during his recent public lecture in Sydney ("Truly inconvenient truths about climate change being ignored", November 8).
Duffy said he was shocked that Dr Pachauri displayed a graph of average global…