tlambert | June 23, 2008The punditariat at the Australian has lashed out at bloggers yet again (see here and here for previous examples). This time it's David Burchell, whose thesis is that all bloggers provide is a "vast outpouring of pseudo-expertise and vituperation". Naturally bloggers have responded, with Gary Sauer-Thompson writing
There is no attempt by Burchell to engage with any Australian political blogger. All are condemned and tossed into the waste bin without any argument. Burchell's position is one in which the reasoned arguments of Australian political bloggers on public issues is characterised by…
tlambert | June 20, 2008Remember the wacky satellites cause global warming theory? Maria Brumm has found another one. Global warming has caused a fivefold increase in seismic activity. And this one was published by CBS news (though it's now been deleted) and picked up by Matt Drudge. Brumm comments:
Cursory examination reveals that Dr. Tom Chalko is a complete wackaloon! Even if you do not know the first thing about seismology, consider the warning signs that this "research" may actually be an attractive organic fertilizer:
Research article is published in a journal where 5/5 articles in the current issue are…
tlambert | June 19, 2008In his latest column, which is about polar bears or something, Andrew Bolt quote mines the NSIDC:
And ssshhh. Don't mention that the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre says the extent of Arctic ice is in fact "greater than this time last year".
That quote was brutally ripped from its context on this page, which says:
Arctic sea ice still on track for extreme melt ...
Although ice extent is slightly greater than this time last year, the average decline rate through the month of May was 8,000 square kilometers per day (3,000 square miles per day) faster than last May. Ice extent as the month…
tlambert | June 18, 2008Last year the Tennessee Center for Policy Research made quite a splash with a press release on Al Gore's energy usage:
In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh--more than 20 times the national average.
They've just released figures for the past year
In the past year, Gore's home burned through 213,210 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, enough to power 232 average American households for a month.
Feel free to check my calculations, but I think that 213,210 is less than 221,000. Honest folks who report this but want to criticize Gore might write something like: "Gore doesn't reduce his…
tlambert | June 17, 2008Eli Rabett has been looking at Joel Kauffman who has published some HIV/AIDS denial in JPANDS and some AGW denial in the Journal of Scientific Exploration. I've mentioned JPANDS here before, but JSE is even further out on the fringe, promoting stuff like UFOs and parapsychology.
Rabett has some choice quotes from Kauffman's piece:
Either Warmers or Skeptics may accept that primordial ionizing radiation from within warms the Earth.
Later in the article Kauffman elaborates, arguing that undersea volcanoes are warming the oceans. I debunked that theory here. And he believes E-G Beck's…
tlambert | June 16, 2008John Mashey points me to this site, which claims that microwaves from satellites are causing global warming!
Satellite antennas transmit UHF and higher microwaves frequencies all over the planet. Because orbiting Satellites are in the vacuum of space, the microwave transmissions are scattered through our atmosphere at an accelerated rate. The Earth is a rotating electromagnetic field containing a dielectric material called water. Sending oscillating microwaves from an antenna inside a vacuum through an electromagnetic field through a dielectric material, such as water, creates radio frequency…
tlambert | June 12, 2008Via John Quiggin, Rudy Baum, the editor-in-chief of Chemical & Engineering News has JPANDS number.
JAPS [usually abbreviated as JPANDS for obvious reasons] is a curious entity. It is not indexed by Chemical Abstracts Service, Pubmed, or ISI's Web of Science. It has published articles that question the link between HIV and AIDS and that link abortion to increased incidence of breast cancer and thimerosal-containing vaccines to autism. It is, in fact, the purveyor of utter nonsense. As far as I could ascertain, the Robinson paper is JAPS's only foray into climate-change research.
OISM is a…
tlambert | June 11, 2008Andrew Bolt should have been embarrassed with his unthinking linking, but he is unrepentant:
If someone claims to find 24 mistakes in your work and you manage to kind-of defend just three, it might be wiser to actually stay quiet. If you don't actually have the integrity to admit and repent, that is.
I picked three representative examples from the 24 mistakes Beck alleges I made to show that not only is Beck wrong, he is obviously wrong and he won't admit it no matter how absurd a position he ends up in. The other 21 aren't any better and it would be extremely foolish to give Beck any…
tlambert | June 10, 2008Eli Rabett has written a how-to guide for climate trolls. If you think of some troll tactics that he missed, add them in comments.
tlambert | June 10, 2008
On the essential Missing Link, Ken Parish links to my post of yesterday:
Tim Lambert ably defends himself on scientific grounds against a concerted attack by anti-science RWDB "heavyweights".
And explains the scare quotes:
I wrote that extract. Blair and Bolt might be heavyweights in audience size terms, but in intellectual terms neither of them could power a flashlight globe. Or perhaps it's more wilful stupidity than lack of capacity. Certainly that's how Harry Clarke explains it on climate change:
The science on climate change is overwhelmingly accepted. Why are the right so vehemently…
tlambert | June 9, 2008Glenn Reynolds, Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt are prolific bloggers, posting several posts each day. With such frequent posting they don't seem to have time to check to see if they stuff they link to is correct. They don't accept the scientific consensus on AGW so they link to every thing that comes along about cold weather or global cooling -- for example, the misrepresentation of Tapping's views on the solar cycle got linked again and again and again and again.
Since I've been critical of Glenn Reynolds, Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt it's no surprise that all three linked to this post where JF…
tlambert | June 5, 2008Matt Nisbet reports:
A new study by a team of political scientists and sociologists at the journal Environmental Politics concludes that 9 out of 10 books published since 1972 that have disputed the seriousness of environmental problems and mainstream science can be linked to a conservative think tank (CTT). Following on earlier work by co-author Riley Dunlap and colleagues, the study examines the ability of conservative think tanks to use the media and other communication strategies to successfully challenge mainstream expert agreement on environmental problems.
(Clarification: A couple of…
tlambert | May 30, 2008Sideshow Roy Spencer writes:
Our environmental protection practices have already caused the deaths of millions of people, mainly in poor African countries. By far the most humans -- mostly women and children -- have been sacrificed in the mistaken belief that the use of any amount of the pesticide DDT would harm the environment. As a result, the preventable disease malaria has continued to decimate Africa.
Only recently has this genocide disguised as environmentalism been partly reversed through the reinstituted practice of twice-yearly DDT treatments of the entryways to homes. While most…
tlambert | May 29, 2008Chris Mooney reviews a new book about the war on science
Doubt is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health by David Michaels (Oxford University Press, 359 pages, $27.95) ...
Tobacco companies perfected the ruse, which was later copycatted by other polluting or health-endangering industries. One tobacco executive was even dumb enough to write it down in 1969. "Doubt is our product," reads the infamous memo, "since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a…
tlambert | May 28, 2008Since Tilo Reber's comments always seem to take discussion off topic, all further comments from Tilo should be posted to this thread as well as any replies to any comment by Tilo.
tlambert | May 28, 2008In 2006 Exxon said that they would no longer fund organizations like the Competitive Enterprise Institute that misrepresent the science of global warming?
Last year we found out that they were still funding the George Marshall Institute and others.
Now Cindy Baxter reports that Exxon's latest Corporate Citizenship report says:
"in 2008 we will discontinue contributions to several public policy interest groups whose position on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion on how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in an environmentally…
tlambert | May 27, 2008John Quiggin has some comments on Roger Bate's response to our article in Prospect on Rachel Carson. My response to Bate will take more than one post.
Let's start with this paragraph:
I was never a tobacco lobbyist. After I wrote two articles on tobacco-related topics in 1996 and 1997, I consulted for Philip Morris, at their request, on international health for a total of about a month in 1998. I never lobbied for the company or promoted cigarettes in any way. I subsequently wrote to Philip Morris asking them to provide funding for a campaign to rehabilitate the use of DDT. This letter,…