tlambert | May 8, 2007What did Steve McItyre when he discovered that his post claiming that Bob Ward's complaint was discredited was completely wrong? He originally wrote:
My main point here is that the RMS [actually by Bob Ward - TL] letter, publicly endorsed by the 37 profs, all supposedly experts in climate science, contains a statement about the course of sulphate emissions that is trivially seen to be inconsistent with the recently expressed IPCC AR4 view on the matter.
After I pointed out that it was trivially seen to agree with the IPCC AR4 view, McIntyre comes up with:
I had specifically referred to the…
tlambert | May 8, 2007Christopher Monckton gets profiled in the Observer:
From those momentous words on, in his own head, Christopher Monckton appears always to have been starring in a Boy's Own adventure entitled 'Monckton Saves the Day!' ...
For a start, in this adventure, in which he routinely wore a bowler hat, Monckton won the Falklands conflict from his armchair after suggesting, he claims, to the Prime Minister that the best way to undermine the Argies was to have the SAS introduce a mild bacillus into the water supply in Port Stanley. 'I can tell you from experience there is nothing more demoralising than…
tlambert | May 6, 2007Steve McIntyre attempts to defend Martin Durkin against Bob Ward's criticism:
In a legal complaint about inaccuracies in Swindle, one would expect meticulous accuracy, but once again in their statements about sulphates, RMS and the 37 profs [actually Bob Ward -TL] make claims in their complaint that are inaccurate according to the recent IPCC AR4. They say:
It has been well-established in the scientific literature that the period of cooling that was most evident over North America and Europe between about 1940 and 1976 was largely due to increased concentrations of aerosols (particularly…
tlambert | May 5, 2007John Berlau has responded to my post on his accusations that environmentalists were racists. Berlau starts by describing me as:
a computer science professor who fancies himself an expert on everything from DDT to climate change.
Berlau, I should note, is a journalist with (to my knowledge) no scientific training who fancies himself as an expert on everything from DDT to hurricanes. Berlau also thinks he knows more about biology than Rachel Carson, who was an actual biologist:
Lambert is one of the "DDT deniers" I reference in my book Eco-Freaks: Environmentalism Is Hazardous to Your Health…
tlambert | May 3, 2007Nature has started Climate Feedback, a blog on climate change. One of the first posts is by Roger Pielke Jr, who claims
Even the venerable New York Times is prone to completely botching a discussion of the science of climate change. In a front page article today, the NYT reports on how the National Arbor Day Foundation has updated plant hardiness maps to reflect recent changes in climate. (A plant hardiness map presents the lowest annual temperature as a guideline to what plants will thrive in what climate zones.) The NYT misrepresents understandings of variability and trend and in the…
tlambert | May 3, 2007In 2005 I wrote about a survey of "renowned scientists" conducted by spiked (if you've never heard of spiked, read this) that included 14 global warming skeptics and only three from the mainstream of climate science.
Now they've conducted another survey, asking "key thinkers in science, technology and medicine ... what they see as the greatest innovation in their field". They do have responses from great scientists, but once again climate science is represented by global warming skeptics: Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, John Brignell, Kenneth Green, Nils-Axel Mörner, Todd Seavey, and S Fred…
tlambert | May 3, 2007David Glenn reports:
The economist Steven D. Levitt's colleagues at the University of Chicago might be tempted to cancel their classes and wander down to Chicago's federal courthouse on October 1. That's the date that has been set for the trial in John R. Lott Jr.'s defamation suit against Mr. Levitt. At a status hearing on Wednesday, a federal judge penciled in the trial date and ordered the parties to complete their discovery process by the end of July.
You'd think that Lott would have given up since all has left is the claim that he was libeled in a private email, but I guess not.
In…
tlambert | May 2, 2007Gareth Renowden has started a blog about climate change and New Zealand. He's going to use the term "climate cranks" for those people. Plus he has the latest from Ringworld.
tlambert | May 2, 2007Nexus 6 notes that Andrew Bolt has come another cropper after he posted a graph showing a cool April in Australia and implied that this was evidence against global warming. Unfortunately for Bolt, the cool April was in 2006.
Nexus 6 also reminds of an earlier episode where Bolt posted a graph showing that the stratosphere was cooling, clearly unaware that that was exactly the thing that climate models predicted.
For the April debacle Bolt credits:
(Thanks to reader John McLean.)
And for his stratospheric bungle Bolt credits:
(Thanks to reader John McLean.)
Good work, John McLean!
Update:…
tlambert | May 1, 2007The Nation Post's Lawrence Solomon has been writing a series of articles falsely casting scientists such as Nigel Weiss and Sami Solanki as deniers. His latest target: Roger Revelle:
Then in 1991, Dr. Revelle wrote an article for Cosmos, a scientific journal, with two illustrious colleagues, Chauncey Starr, founding director of the Electric Power Research Institute and Fred Singer, the first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite. Entitled "What to do about greenhouse warming: Look before you leap," the article argued that decades of research could be required for the consequences of…
tlambert | May 1, 2007Australian talkback radio host John "Cash for comment" Laws on global warming:
Yeah. It's interesting to note that in the last 17 years there has not been the slightest increase in temperatures in the world. Over 100 years there's been less than one degree of temperature rise. Over the last 17 years it hasn't risen at all. Where's the climate warming? ...
Prior to 1940 the world was warmer than it is now and there were certainly less CO2 emissions prior to 1940. We didn't have too many cars. We've got plenty of those now. So how could that happen? ...
Julia the scientists that Al Gore wants…
tlambert | April 30, 2007Chris and Mark Hoofnagle's denialism blog has joined ScienceBlogs. Check out Mark's post on the Unified theory of the crank. Sound like anyone we know?
tlambert | April 29, 2007
After Team Blair was beaten by six year old Ryan Gwin, Tim Blair tried to rewrite history:
Nine-year-old Sydney boy Ryan Gwin suffers anxiety over the fuel consumed by his father's bus;
Because if Ryan had really been nine it would have been less embarrassing to lose to him...
Then Blair lets his commenters loose on a quote from me:
Computer instructor Tim Lambert explains:
If the law disarms attackers, then it can make self defence possible where it would have been impossible if the attacker was armed.
Team Blair came up with stuff like this (and these are the more rational ones):
A…
tlambert | April 28, 2007A kill file is a feature of most Usenet news readers that allowed to permanently discard all posts from a particular user without even having to look at them.
A couple of my readers have asked about a kill file for comments here. Daniel Martin has a script that provides a kill file. You need Greasemonkey and Firefox to use it.
I'm going to follow PZ Myers's example and list all the commenters that are banned or on moderation. For definitions of the terms, see PZ Myers. The list below is the current list -- changes since the original post are not indicated.
Banned
Commenter
Why…
tlambert | April 28, 2007The Globe and Mail has a story about Riyadh Lafta:
Riyadh Lafta, who co-authored a controversial study that estimated the war-related deaths at more than half a million, had planned to tell students at Simon Fraser University about his work and then spend a week in retreat near West Vancouver, writing a paper about an alarming rise in cancers among Iraqi children.
He would have left Canada today. Instead, he taught to all-but-empty classes at al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, with students fearful of attacks choosing to not leave their homes.
"This country is a killing machine," said Dr…
tlambert | April 27, 2007You may recall how Alex Robson demonstrated his ignorance of basic statistics and of climate research. Now he has written an op-ed in Sydney's Daily Telegraph where he claims that there is no research at all that contradicts John Lott:
Laws for the concealed carrying of guns are present in some form or another in 48 US states, and serious research (most notably by Professor John Lott of the State University of New York) consistently demonstrates their deterrent effect.
Robson seems to be unaware that the National Academy of Sciences reviewed the research and conducted its own analysis and…
tlambert | April 27, 2007Eli Rabett has the sordid tale of how S Fred Singer took advantage of Roger Revelle to put his name on a paper which expressed skepticism about global warming. Justin Lancaster has a web page with all the supporting documents and evidence.
tlambert | April 26, 2007The Financial Times reports:
One of Paul Wolfowitz's two handpicked deputies, Juan José Daboub, tried to water down references to climate change in one of the World Bank's main environmental strategy papers, the bank's chief scientist has told the Financial Times.
Mr Daboub, a conservative former finance minister from El Salvador, was brought into the bank by Mr Wolfowitz. He is already under fire for allegedly trying to take out references to family planning in the bank's Madagascar country assistance strategy and reduce its prominence in its new health sector strategy.
Robert Watson, the…