Entrapment?

Here's the best comment on that other blog: Two of the authors claim to be from department of Atmospheric physics at Göteborg University, Sweden. As an employee of that university I have never heard of that department. It simply does not exist. And there are no employees at the university with these names.

Plus, there is not Department of "Climatology" at University of Arizon, where another of the authors supposedly works. There is a Department of Geosciences, but not Climatology.

I only wish it hadn't been revealed quite so quickly. It would have been enjoyable to see nutters trip over themselves to spread this around. Apparently, ReasonOnline, Inhofe's office, and numerous blogs posted and quickly 'disappeared' the article.

I especially enjoyed the perfectly sinusoidal graphs pruporting to show the cycles of bacterial growth and then the perfectly correlated rise in atmospheric CO2.

Seems like more of a prank that a hoax.

The editorial board also consists of a bunch of people who don't actually exist.

On my blog a few months ago, I used a real article to point out how people are willing to jump to conclusions that support their prejudices.

In this case, a preliminary result about the possible role of solar effects on the brightness of Neptune led people to say that GW on Earth is primarily a solar phenomenon, disputing the IPCC consensus that it is primarily due to human activity.

Click my name or here:

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/neptunes-brightness-and-solar-variation-…

Read the comments as well as the main entry for the full picture.

The WHOIS information for the "journal" does seem to lead to what appears to be a real person ... http://www.davidthorpe.info/

I would call it a spoof rather than a hoax. Saying that used P (rather than R) software was a nice touch.

I would have to say it's a hoax more than spoof. A spoof is meant to have some comedic value, right? And besides the perfection of their data, there's nothing humorous about it. The few references I checked don't exist: the journal itself doesn't exist or they've made up fake citations (years, pages, and volume numbers don't match up). All of the references are made to look real, not funny. I think someone is trying to see if this will propagate through the anti-global warming blogosphere.

"I think someone is trying to see if this will propagate through the anti-global warming blogosphere."

Harry, that's the whole point. Anybody with any sort of science background (including people who purport to be following climate science on an amateur basis) would have realized within a minute or two (and that span of time is not figurative) that the paper was fake. That Morano, Limbaugh etc. fell for it is perfect proof that they don't care about the science at all. Of course we knew that, but it's sweet indeed to see it demonstrated like this.

I need to send the author an admiring email.

The charts are a real hoot with their perfect correlations and sine wave cycles

The ultra-perfect charts are a dead giveaway, yes. The nonsense equations and descriptions are awfully darned cute. But the very best tidbit is in the references:

Tibbold, WR and JD Rawsthorne (1998). Miocene, Pliocene and Plasticine fossil records for eukaryotic mass on the West African continental shelf. Journal of Submarine Research 18:5. 196-203.

The Plasticine Era? I LOVE IT!

I wonder how many right wing conservabots and global warming denialists (the overlap isn't total, although it is substantial) will be suckered in by this obvious fake?

If you start reading at the beginning, and you don't know much about science, and you don't check your sources (and aren't tipped off to do so by the strange URL unlike any other peer-reviewed journal link I've ever seen), you could probably get all the way down to the "Methodology" section without catching on. But if you look at that first equation and its description without twigging to the fact that THIS IS A JOKE, you're an ignoramus and deserve all the ridicule that will probably be heaped on you.

Okay, tell you what. I can be more charitable than that. Let's pretend the reader is math-phobic and they just skim or skip the "Methodology" section entirely: But could anyone with a working prefrontal cortex be fooled by those obviously faked graphs? What data from real experiments and measurements in the history of science has ever looked so gosh-darned pristine and perfect? No, I can't be that charitable. Those charts make this an ultra-super-duper-obvious hoax, and no one gets off the hook for not spotting it. If you read this paper and don't spot it for a fake, you're a grade-A moron. And if you pass along a link to this paper making very obviously radical and controversial (not to mention wildly implausible) claims without reading it, you're still a grade-A moron.

Apparently, ReasonOnline, Inhofe's office, and numerous blogs posted and quickly 'disappeared' the article."

I always thought ReasonOnline was Senator Inhofe's online office.