tlambert | March 22, 2011Media Watch examines the coverage of climate change on commercial talkback radio. While Ian Plimer and Bob Carter are frequently on talkback radio,
Not one orthodox climate scientist - not one - has been interviewed by any of the climate sceptics on Fairfax stations.
As for 2GB, its management said it didn't have time to respond to our questions. But we've been able to find no evidence that Alan Jones or Chris Smith have interviewed any orthodox climate scientists this year.
Talkback radio personality Andrew Bolt comes back with
Chris Smith: Out of our journey of one kilometre there are…
tlambert | March 20, 2011Ian Enting, author of Twisted: The Distorted Mathematics of Greenhouse Denial and the definitive list of errors in Plimer's Heaven and Earth has a talk on Ockham's Razor on the public debate on climate science:
the central issue is that if there was a real case against a significant human influence on climate, why is so much of what passes for public debate based on fabrication? If Ian Plimer had a real case, why does he misrepresent the contents of dozens of his cited references and fabricates so many of his graphics? More importantly, since Plimer is only one individual, if his fellow…
tlambert | March 19, 2011After arguing that people should trust the scientists about nuclear power, Andrew Bolt is back with a post advancing the claim that
anyone exposed to excess radiation from the nuclear power plants is now probably much less likely to get cancer.
Said claim comes not from a scientist but from Ann Coulter, a creationist.
PZ Myers, who is an actual scientist, writes:
I only know about hormesis from my dabbling in teratology; a pharmacologist or toxicologist would be a far better source. But I know enough about hormesis to tell you that she's wrong. She has taken a tiny grain of truth and mangled…
tlambert | March 15, 2011Here's the original story on March 4:
An Israeli model has been hospitalised after being bitten on the breast by a snake during an ill-fated radio stunt. ...
She received a tetanus shot and stayed for observation, but has suffered no long-term damage from the incident.
Here's the Daily Mail version on Mar 15 after being sexed up:
But surgically enhanced Israeli model Orit Fox got more than she bargained for when the massive boa constrictor took objection to her over familiarity and reacted by biting into her breast.
However, it was the snake who came off worse because, while Ms Fox need a…
tlambert | March 15, 2011Andrew Bolt writes
Question: why do people who think their government and scientists would always lie about nuclear power also think green groups would always tell the truth? How can you be so cynical about the one and so gullible with the other?
Why do people who think their government and scientists lie about climate change also think brown groups would always tell the truth? How can you be so cynical about the one and so gullible with the other?
Ben Heard has a good summary of the situation in Japan at Brave New Climate.
tlambert | March 15, 2011Scienceblogs management informs me:
Let me apologize again for the problems that many of you and your readers are experiencing. The attack is ongoing, originating from Turkey and Qatar, and until it stops, Rackspace must block IP ranges in order for the site to be accessible to anyone. They are also unwilling to manually unblock hundreds upon hundreds of individual IPs. They have advised that we invest in a firewall and additional services from them, but we are still working out what these will cost and how effective they will be. I am not sure if I was correct in thinking that these…
tlambert | March 14, 2011Cardinal Pell's response to the Greg Ayers dissection of Pell's parroting of Plimer is telling -- he is unable to offer any sort of scientific argument and just blusters:
"Ayers, when he spoke to the House, was obviously a hot-air specialist. I've rarely heard such an unscientific contribution."
"I regret when a discussion of these things is not based on scientific fact," Cardinal Pell said. "I spend a lot of time studying this stuff."
Cardinal Pell told the Herald statements by Dr Ayers to the hearing were "all abuse and waffle about poor old Plimer", before defending the geologist as a man…
tlambert | March 14, 2011By popular request Flying Binghi has his/her own thread. This is the only thread that FB can post to, and all replies to any comment to FB should go here.
I can't move comments, so I will delete comments that do not follow these rules.
tlambert | March 8, 2011In this piece Roger Bate, Donald Roberts and Richard Tren accuse the UN of "Scientific Fraud against DDT". Their Accusation is based on an Opinion paper by Roberts and Tren published in Research and Reports in Tropical Medicine. So let's look at their paper and see where the "Scientific Fraud" is.
Roberts and Tren's key argument is that reductions in malaria in the Americas were not the result of Global Environmental Facility interventions but were caused by increased use of antimalarial drugs. In their own words:
"However, their successes were not a
result of the interventions we describe…
tlambert | March 8, 2011With Donald Roberts about to give testimony before Congress it is instructive to look at his Senate testimony on October 6, 2004.
Just as the use of DDT in house spraying brought spectacular reductions in malaria,
declining use of house spraying brought spectacular increases in malaria. ... Data from Asian countries show similar
relationships. Figures 2-5 contrast malaria rates in recent years with the years when DDT was
used. The data represent annual parasite indexes (a population-based index of malaria
prevalence) during the period from 1995-99 compared with identical data from 1965-69.…
tlambert | March 6, 2011Shorter Clive James on Queensland floods:
I get my climate science from poems.
'Shorter' concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.⢠Acknowledgement copied from Sadly, No!.
tlambert | March 4, 2011The Australian has printed an opinion piece by Mark Hendrickx (who presents his own views on global warming in this stunning multimedia presentation alleging that comment moderation at an ABC blog demonstrated bias. I'm guessing that you are thinking that Hendrickx is complaining because he had an off-topic, inaccurate comment removed. But no, his comment wasn't removed and his complaint is that a response to his comment wasn't removed fast enough.
Here's Hendrickx:
In late November last year Sara Phillips, ABC's environment editor, posted an opinion piece about climate negotiations at…
tlambert | March 2, 2011Barry Bickmore's three part review of Roy Spencer's Great Global Warming Blunder is well worth a read. In Part 1 he examines Spencer's model that supposedly shows that climate sensitivity is low. In Part 2 he looks at Spencer's claim that climate scientists ignore natural sourcs of climate variation. And Part 3 takes apaprt Spencer's claim that his climate model, which has four fitted parameters, shows that the PDO and not an increase in greenhouse gasses is the major cause of climate change since 1900.
I'm reminded of the quote from John von Neumann:
With four parameters I can fit an…
tlambert | February 26, 2011Julia Gillard has done a backflip and agreed to introduce a budget-neutral carbon tax after last year promising not to introduce one.
In a matching backflip John Humphreys has come out against the tax, describing it as a "grab for cash" after writing a report in 2007 that favoured a carbon tax:
Our government is currently using an approach of regulation and
subsidy while considering the possibility of implementing a carbon
trading scheme. We would be better served if the government replaced
all of these options with a revenue-neutral carbon tax. A carbon tax
is preferable to a carbon trading…
tlambert | February 25, 2011Graham Readfern explains how a thorough demolition of Ian Plimer is now in Hansard:
Back in October last year, the Senate's Environment and Communications Legislation Committee agreed to table a letter from Cardinal Pell which quoted heavily from Heaven and Earth to claim there were "good reasons for doubting that carbon dioxide causes warmer temperatures".
After an early battle with Senator Ian McDonald, who didn't want to give Dr Ayers time to respond, the bureau's director finally managed to get his frustrations off his chest and onto the Hansard record. Dr Ayers' explained how Cardinal…
tlambert | February 23, 2011In Richard's Bean play The
Heretic
anthropogenic global warming is a hoax perpetrated by a worldwide
conspiracy of climate scientists.
In David Williamson's play Heretic the role of nurture in
anthropology is a hoax perpetrated by two young Samoan women on March 13, 1926.
When you boil down the premise of each play down to its essence, it
sound ridiculous and it is. It does make for a good story -- the lone
heretic standing up to the scientific orthodoxy and proving them
wrong. And from most accounts each play was enjoyable to those who
swallowed the premise, but it each a case a good story…
tlambert | February 22, 2011Bill Hughes, Director of Multi-Science Publishing threatens to sue Gavin Schmidt unless he retracts this statement:
"The evidence for this is in precisely what happens in venues like E&E that have effectively dispensed with substantive peer review for any papers that follow the editorâs political line."
In comments, let's compile a list of E&E papers that would not have been published as they were had they been given substantive peer review.
tlambert | February 20, 2011This video by potholer54 demolishing Monckton's claims about climate sensitivity is very good, and not just because I'm in it.
Also worth a look is his video where Monckton is refuted by ... Monckton himself.
Update:
Update 2: