tlambert | July 8, 2005Oh, great. After getting his bogus claims about climate models into the Australian, Kininmonth now has them in the Age:
The IPCC radiative forcing hypothesis ignores the atmospheric and ocean circulations that transport surplus solar energy from the tropics to polar regions. Nowhere are local temperatures due solely to radiation processes, a fact that goes to underscore the fallacy of the hypothesis.
It takes about two minutes with Google for anyone to find out that global climate models do include atmospheric and ocean circulations. What's disappointing about this is that back in November…
tlambert | July 8, 2005William Connolley has been reading the House of Lords report on The Economics of Climate Change and he's not impressed:
Because they decided to talk nonsense about the Great Hockey Stick debate. They manage to say: "We sought evidence that refuted the claims of McIntyre and McKitrick, but have not come across any detailed rebuttal." But this is where they have degenerated into bald-faced lying. Because had they contacted Mann (clearly they didn't) he would have pointed them to such. For heavens sake, its on the web at RC: Dummies guide to the latest "Hockey Stick" controversy has some info…
tlambert | July 7, 2005I'm in favour of this suggestion from Kevin Drum.
If I could have one small wish for today, it would be for the blogosphere on both left and right to refrain from political point scoring over the London attacks. Just for a day. Isn't tomorrow soon enough to return to our usual arguments?
Tim Blair isn't
COMEDY RELIEF WITH DR STUPID
Dear old Chris Sheil. He just canât help himself:
Last I heard it was at least 30-something dead and thousands insured. Very grim, etc.
Well, not really. Not so long as they were insured. Very forward-thinking of them.
That's not even a spelling flame. It's…
tlambert | July 5, 2005If you are using WordPress you urgently need to upgrade to version 1.5.1.3 (released last week). This is why. Update: OK, apparently that hole had already been fixed, but there was another vulnerability. You should still upgrade.
tlambert | July 3, 2005The Jargon Dictionary says:
spelling flame: n.
[Usenet] A posting ostentatiously correcting a previous article's spelling as a way of casting scorn on the point the article was trying to make, instead of actually responding to that point (compare dictionary flame). Of course, people who are more than usually slovenly spellers are prone to think any correction is a spelling flame. It's an amusing comment on human nature that spelling flames themselves often contain spelling errors.
I wonder if people realize just how lame they look when they try to score points off a spelling mistake? Which…
tlambert | July 1, 2005Actually that's an undercount since some people read my blog via the RSS feed. My thanks to everyone who has dropped by.
tlambert | July 1, 2005Blogwise have used the Google Maps API and GeoURL to get a map showing locations of blogs (If you follow the link you'll have to click on the satellite button to see anything).
Those shadows don't look quite right. How could the sun be shining from the south?
tlambert | June 30, 2005For years now global warming skeptics have been using satellite measurements to argue that global warming isn't happening, For example (from 1998):
Surface-based temperature records are too few in number and too unevenly spaced to generate accurate global temperature maps. Only 30 percent of the world's surface is land, so land-based temperature stations measure less than one-third of the Earth's climate. Urban stations, which are influenced by city heat anomalies, are over-represented; deserts, mountains, and forests are under-represented.
The global temperature record produced from…
tlambert | June 30, 2005Kevin Drum is not pleased that the LA Times has yet again published a piece by John Lott. You generally expect some dodgy statistics from Lott and he duly delivers:
Well, more than nine months have passed [since the assault weapons ban ended] and the first crime numbers are in. Last week, the FBI announced that the number of murders nationwide fell by 3.6% last year, the first drop since 1999. The trend was consistent; murders kept on declining after the assault weapons ban ended.
Even more interesting, the seven states that have their own assault weapons bans saw a smaller drop in murders…
tlambert | June 29, 2005
HangLeft:
"it fits the pattern we've come to know and expect from the Republicans: when facts get in the way of their bankrupt ideology, they cover up those facts and intimidate the messenger."
Coturnix: "With all the misuse of science by the current Administration I still never expected the Lysenko-style persecution of scientists whose data do not support the party line. Yet, this day has come. The USA has its Lysenko, and his name is Joe Barton."
Will: "Barton is known for being a staunch opponent of the Kyoto Protocol and referring to climate change provisions as "odorous" measures…
tlambert | June 27, 2005On his blog, Lott writes:
Penn & Teller will be airing a show on their television series name "Bullshit" that examines gun control and apparently focuses on my research. The show will first air on June 27th. The show airs at 10 PM and is replayed at 11 PM. I have been told that the show comes across very well.
In other words, Penn and Teller will uncritically swallow everything Lott says and savagely mock anyone on the other side of the question. Steve Milloy on second hand smoke, Lott on guns -- they sure can pick their experts, can't they?
tlambert | June 27, 2005Chris Mooney reports on the latest attack on the hockey stick. Joe Barton, chair of the Committee on Energy and Commerce has sent out a set of letters, supposedly "requesting information regarding global warming studies". However, if you look at the letters, you will find that the only study he is interested is Mann, Bradley and Hughes from way back in 1998 (the "hockey stick" study); and the questions are loaded ones of the form: "Can you explain why you made all the errors detailed in Mcintyre and McKitrick's Energy and Environment paper?"
It is probably just a coincidence that Joe Barton…
tlambert | June 26, 2005Last week, in response to more repetition of the false claim that
environmentalists had killed many millions of people with a ban of DDT.
John Quiggin set out the facts of the matter:
DDT has never been banned in antimalarial use. The main reason for
declining use of DDT as an antimalarial has been the development of
resistance. Antimalarial uses have received specific exemptions from
proposals to phase out DDT, until alternatives are developed. Bans on
the use of DDT as an agricultural insecticide, promoted by Rachel
Carson and others, have helped to slow the development of resistance,
and…
tlambert | June 23, 2005The 11th Skeptic's Circle is out. Don't miss the tag-team debunking by Orac and co of an awful "Thimerosal causes autism" piece by Robert F Kennedy Jr.
tlambert | June 23, 2005The World Bank is the largest funder of Eritrea's anti-malaria program.
The Eritrea Daily
reports on
the good results:
But today Eritrea, one of the poorest countries in the world, stands out as a success story in controlling malaria.
The statistics are compelling. The number of people dying from malaria has dropped by between 55 to 65 percent since 1999. Mortality of children under five years of age dropped by 53 percent, while there was a 64 percent drop in the death rate for older children and adults.
"In 1991, our death toll among pregnant women from malaria was very high" Eritrea's…
tlambert | June 22, 2005Is this Wall Street Journal editorial clueless or dishonest? Read RealClimate's detailed rebuttal.
Update: David Appell calls it "intellectually dishonest". Sounds about right.
Update 2: Chris Mooney piles on.
tlambert | June 21, 2005From the gentleman (and this time I'm not being sarcastic) who wrote to me earlier:
I'm sorry I acted the way I did in the email. It was wrong of me and only hope
you accept my apologies. Behaving the way I did shows me in a pretty bad
light.
Some of us have built some pretty strong pre-conceived ideas about issues and
when the opposite argument turns up which in your case seems well-thought out
I have to offer my grudging admiration. In my job, rigidity means an early
grave career wise at least.
Case in point- Climate change.
I spent some time reading your stuff fairly extensively and I have…
tlambert | June 20, 2005Last week I wrote about
how Bob Carter was out by a factor of 20 in an estimate of how much
warming could be attributed to human activity. He has now posted the
text of another
talk where he
gives a source for his bogus claim. It's
href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,123013,00.html"
rel="nofollow">this FOXNews opinion piece by Steve
Milloy. Carter is a
Research Professor at James Cook University, so you would have thought
he would be aware that opinion columns by non-scientists aren't the
best source of scientific information, but I guess not.
Some highlights of his talk: He…
tlambert | June 19, 2005John Quiggin catches Miranda Devine spreading the DDT Hoax in the Sun Herald. If DDT is banned, how come this company will sell you some? They say:
In the past several years, we supplied DDT 75% WDP to Madagascar, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, South Africa, Namibia, Solomon Island, Papua New Guinea, Algeria, Thailand, Myanmar for Malaria Control project, and won a good reputation from WHO and relevant countries' government.
I was particularly impressed by this argument from Devine:
Advertisements of the time, which today seem preposterous, extolled it as a benefactor of all humanity, with…