Posts Tagged ‘Denialism’

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97 of the top 100…

July 26th, 2010

Science Daily reports on a Stanford analysis which looked at the correlation of views on climate change with academic status amongst climate science researchers:

The small number of scientists who are unconvinced that human beings have contributed significantly to climate change have far less expertise and prominence in climate research compared with scientists who are convinced, according to a study led by Stanford researchers.

and

The Stanford team also determined the top 100 climate researchers, based on the total number of climate related publications each had, which produced an even more telling result, Anderegg said.

“When you look at the leading scientists who have made any sort of statement about anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change, you find 97 percent of those top 100 surveyed scientists explicitly agreeing with or endorsing the IPCC’s assessment,” he said.

Read more at Science Daily

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More on the potty peer, Christopher Monckton

April 11th, 2010

Via Deltoid

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“Lord” Monckton continues to be reality challenged

February 9th, 2010

Media Watch made its welcome return to ABC1 last night, and they devoted some time to the visit to Australia by the potty peer Christopher Monckton. He’s true to form, lying about the IPCC and about the Great Barrier Reef. Check out Media Watch’s website for details and video.

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Mike Carlton on “Lord” Monckton

February 6th, 2010

The Age is carrying a rather nice smack down of “Lord” Christopher Monckton, who is peddling his climate change denialist crap in Australia at the moment. An excerpt:

Monckton is a mathematician. Baloney. He has a Cambridge degree in Classics, ie Latin and Ancient Greek, and a diploma in journalism (whatever that means) from Cardiff. He can blather mathsy stuff in TV interviews, but that doesn’t mean he’s a mathematician. I know every song the Rolling Stones ever wrote, but that doesn’t make me Mick Jagger.

Monckton was a science adviser to Margaret Thatcher. Wrong. Thatcher has a science degree herself; she hardly needed a science adviser who didn’t. Monckton was hired in 1982 as a low-level drone in her policy unit, working on public housing and the like.

Read the rest at the Age. The cartoon is particularly nice.

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Lateline: Monbiot vs Plimer – Plimer’s straightforward scientific fraud

December 16th, 2009

The paranoid and laughable Ian Plimer has appeared on Lateline opposite George Monbiot, who has pwned Plimer in the past over the blatant dishonesty in his book, Heaven and Earth. Plimer misrepresents the University of East Anglia emails, lies, repeats previously debunked denialist claims, and generally acts as the usual denialist. Particularly interesting is Plimer’s response to Monbiot pointing out Plimer’s lie about volcanos. You can see the episode on the ABC Lateline website. You can also read about the exchange at Deltoid.

I can’t believe Ian Plimer continues with the absurd claim about the world cooling since 1998, nor his claim that because there have been periods of warming before and periods where the temperature has been higher in the distant past it means that the current warming can’t be anthropogenic. Plimer also confuses localised climate with global. Basic errors from someone who should, and I suspect does, know better.

Plimer really has become a dishonest scumbag. I once respected Plimer for his stance against Creationism, but he’s now no better than the Creationists.

From another article about Plimer’s denialism:

He (Plimer) likes to argue that his position on global warming is dismissed by mainstream scientists because they are part of a “fundamentalist religion” and a “mafia”. In fact, his arguments are rejected because they are just plain wrong.

At one point in the Lateline debate Plimer says “Get some manners, young man”  to Monbiot. My response would have been “Get some integrity, old man”.

Update: Monbiot has posted his thoughts about the the Lateline episode.

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George Monbiot drops in to CairnsBlog

December 11th, 2009

Cue a little blog jealousy…

George Monbiot seems to have dropped in to Michael Moore’s CairnsBlog to comment on a video by the potty peer Christopher Monckton. Here’s Monbiot’s comment in full:

Even if you were to exclude every line of evidence that could possibly be disputed (regarding Climategate) – the proxy records, the computer models, the complex science of clouds and ocean currents – the evidence for man-made global warming would still be unequivocal. You can see it in the measured temperature record, which goes back to 1850; in the shrinkage of glaciers and the thinning of sea ice; in the responses of wild animals and plants and the rapidly changing crop zones.

No other explanation for these shifts makes sense. Solar cycles have been out of synch with the temperature record for 40 years. The Milankovic cycle, which describes variations in the Earth’s orbit, doesn’t explain it either. But the warming trend is closely correlated with the accumulation of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. The impact of these gases can be demonstrated in the laboratory. To assert that they do not have the same effect in the atmosphere, a novel and radical theory would be required. No such theory exists. The science is not fixed – no science ever is – but it is as firm as science can be. The evidence for man-made global warming remains as strong as the evidence linking smoking to lung cancer or HIV to Aids.

It’s a nice brief summary of where climate science stands. I wonder if Michael Moore recognised Monbiot’s name. Monbiot has, in recent times, gained a lot of attention for pwning Ian Plimer, possibly Australia’s second best known climate change denier behind Andrew Bolt.

I do like Moore’s CairnsBlog, particularly for a bit of local government gossip, but why did he have to put Monckton on it? Argh! I also don’t think the word Lord should ever be used to prefix the potty peer’s name.

I also couldn’t help noticing one simpleton stepping up to claim the “Mike’s Nature trick” email was a smoking gun despite the fact I had explained it away in an earlier comment in the very same thread. Anthropocentric climate change deniers are starting to annoy me almost as much as Creationists.

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More on the East Anglia CRU hack… Denier dishonesty

December 8th, 2009

Steve Novella, from the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe, also has a good post about the misrepresentation of the CRU emails at SkepticBlog.

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Climategate

December 6th, 2009

Here’s a nice video discussion of the “Climategate” affair, in which hackers released emails from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit. Denialists are blabbering on about it being proof of a huge secret conspiracy. Is it? No.

Via Pharyngula

Update: Also, check out articles at New Scientist, Nature, and Scientific American.

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Coming soon to a paper near you

November 22nd, 2009

The climate change deniers are twittering like mad at the moment about some emails that were stolen from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit. Andrew “the world has been cooling since 1998″ Bolt is trumpeting it, the denier blogosphere is going ballistic, and I’m sure it will soon appear on the letters page of the Cairns Post.

A lot of attention is focussed on one email (bolding mine):

From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@[snipped], mhughes@
[snipped]
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@[snipped],t.osborn@[snipped]
Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,

Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow. I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [sic] from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers, Phil

What is actually said in the email? Let’s translate for the cerebrally challenged deniers out there… The words “Mike’s Nature trick” are the giveaway. It says that the author used a technique previously used in a paper in the scientific journal Nature to correct a dataset with known and understood errors. That’s all.  Think “trick shot” in snooker – it doesn’t mean you pick up the ball and drop it in a pocket by hand.

The denier noise is all about taking small fragments out of context, and getting hyperactive about the snark displayed in some emails (in one of the hacked emails very much so). Yes, even scientists can be snarky in emails about their critics. They are human after all.

If the deniers were right and there was some global conspiracy to lie about climate change, the University of East Anglia CRU emails should give them something a damned sight more convincing than what they have released so far.

Instead, all we find is evidence that the denier community is fond of trolling through large amounts of information for anything that can be taken out of context in order to slime climate change research.

Now, which of the local deniers will be the first to squawk about it in the Cairns Post?

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More climate change denialism

October 18th, 2009

I’ve commented before on Ian Plimer’s Heaven and Earth and the questions being raised not only about its science (or lack thereof) but also the “mistakes” that are hard to think were accidental.

Now economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner, authors of the previously best selling and generally respected Freakonomics, have penned a new book titled SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and why Suicide Bombers should buy life insurance. The climate change chapter was briefly available as a sample on Amazon, and it has been ripped apart by critics before the book has even been officially released. The sample chapter has since been removed.

Once again, amongst the poor quality science, there seems to be examples of “mistakes” that are hard to understand, including claiming Ken Caldeira does not believe CO2 to be the villain behind climate change. Caldeira has responded:

Carbon dioxide is the right villain, insofar as inanimate objects can be villains.

and

Every carbon dioxide emission adds to climate damage and increasing risk of catastrophic consequences. There is no safe level of emission. I compare CO2 emissions to mugging little old ladies.

and

If you talk all day, and somebody picks a half dozen quotes without providing context because they want to make a provocative and controversial chapter, there is not much you can do.

Some suggest that Levitt and Dubner have gone from writing about Levitt’s own work, which they did understand, to other people’s work, which they don’t. Perhaps it was just knowing that denialism sells. It’s hard to say.

The thorough fisking the climate change chapter and the chapter on drink driving have already received suggests that Levitt and Dubner have released another poor book that will be quoted by denalists, and misunderstood by the public as indicative of a genuine doubt about anthropogenic CO2-caused climate change.

I suspect the howlers they have committed in these two chapters will result in the other chapters getting a careful examination by experts in the relevant fields, and SuperFreakonomics will be somewhat less respected than its predecessor.

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