A Place to Stand

UPDATE & SPOILER WARNING I put up the undernoted article last night. As the numerous comments have pointed out it is a hoax. Indeed according to desmoblog:

"Hat's off (we think) to UK writer and consultant David Thorpe, the apparent creator for the impressive web-based spoof - a definitive bit of climate change denial as reported in The Journal of Geoclimatic Studies.

Although the "journal" lists two volumes and some very tempting content*, the only research paper on the website is titled: "Carbon dioxide production by benthic bacteria: the death of manmade global warming theory?" The paper reports that rising volumes of CO2 are actually caused "by saprotrophic eubacteria living in the sediments of the continental shelves fringing the Atlantic and Pacific oceans."

Unfortunately, this wonderful news is attributed to a group of scientists who can't be found, working at a series of institutions or departments that don't exist."

Well Mr Thorpe I think the chance of this being mentioned by the BBC has just increased massively - they haven't reported the fact of 1998 being found no longer to be the warmest year on record, but would not be surprised to find them willing to report a hoax. There was a similar incident when "environmentalists" sent a signature to the 17,000 strong Oregon Petition of scientists denying catastrophic warming, in the name of Dr Geri Halliwell. Elsewhere I said that all that that proved is that the Oregon scientists weren't followers of the Spice Girls & that warming alarmists had no compunctions about fakery - neither of which reflect worse on the victims of the hoax than the perpetrators.

This is a much more subtle hoax but the point still stands. The speed of the reaction to their successful hoax is interesting. I would hope that more responsible alarmists, if that is not a contradiction in terms, will advise Mr Thorpe, assuming he is indeed the author, that this is not how science is done.

On the other hand they didn't object to the hoaxed "facts" in Mr Gore's film, which he may be about to assure us were also deliberate :-)

FURTHER UPDATE

Pete North has sent me the undernoted links from Australia.

"You were quite right about the hoax study now going to be all over the news worldwide- since it is obviously trying to make ALL of the GW sceptics look stupid & discredit them.

I think it may seriously BACKFIRE on the pro-GW crowd in the long run. I sincerely hope it does!


I picked up The Age newspaper (a nation wide Aussie paper) today (Friday) and your name was in the article sourced from Reuters!


http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSL0887458220071108

http://www.theage.com.au/news/World/Hoax-study-tricks-some-climate-sceptics/2007/11/09/1194329503770.html

The Reuters piece quotes me as having made the "could not be more damaging" remark which, in fact was me quoting the spoof article itself. The second link shows how easy journalism can be when you just rewrite press releases - reminiscent of the way the media carelessly reports not what James Watson & Hasiltow actually said but what other media say they said.

Apparently Rush Limbaugh fell for it too.
This link suggests suggests some widespread alarmist conspiracy which I suspect is overstating it - Mr Thorpe may have had some help in producing what is a well produced hoax but I don't think we have to assume a massive conspiracy.
But
Numberwatch on the other hand was less impressed having immediately spotted that the formula given was nonsense.

No mention from the BBC, but I just heard somebody on Radio Scotland talking about the supermodel who demands to be paid in Euros not realising that it has already been proven a hoax so I guess I can be pleased to have been able to match their journalistic standards.

FURTHERER UPDATE

The hoax seems to have run its full cycle & it looks, as Pete said, that it has, on balance discredited the alarmists more than the sceptics as the editorial line in the New York Times article shows, precisely because it was so quickly rumbeled.

The article quotes Thorpe saying

"What we wanted to emphasize is that it’s necessary to achieve scientific validity using the peer-review model. Proper climate science makes every attempt to do this, and is a constantly evolving and self-refining process, as all science is.”

The use of the plural does indeed mean a certain level of conspiracy.

I commented on the NYT article that the discovery of this hoax compares very favourably with the Hockey Stick graph, used by the IPCC as their prime exhibit surviving for years, despite peer review, befors McIntyre proved it fraudulent.

Thorpe's own reaction on his blog quotes me saying the "could not be more damaging" which presumably means I am the most prominent blogger to have fallen for this, even for a short time. I do not fool myself as to my prominence. I have replied on his comments section.

"David it appears you are falling for part of your own hoax.

You quote me, Neil Craig at 'A Place to Stand' said "this paper could not be more damaging to manmade global warming theory" - now this comes from various newspaper articles which, in turn, are rewrites of the Reuters report in which it does indeed quote me as saying this. However a more careful reading of my post would have shown that I was not claiming this as my view but was instead taking it as a quote from your own article. You are therefore quoting the quote of the quote of myself republishing your quote, which you apparently didn't recognise.

I note you have said that "we" arranged this hoax & since it is indeed well constructed in the style of a genuine paper perhaps the other alarmist conspirators involved might like to take a public bow." We shall see if they do.


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This just received via CCNet so even if the MSM were going to report it the blogsphere would have it first. I somehow doubt if this is going to be on the BBC news.

Daniel A Klein*, Mandeep J Gupta*, Philip Cooper**, Arne FR Jansson**.
*Department of Climatology, University of Arizona;
**Department of Atmospheric Physics, Göteborgs Universitet (University of Gothenburg, Sweden.)

Received: 18 February 2007 / Accepted: 9th August 2007 / Published online: 3rd November 2007

Abstract
It is now well-established that rising global temperatures are largely the result of increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The "consensus" position attributes the increase in atmospheric CO2 to the combustion of fossil fuels by industrial processes. This is the mechanism which underpins the theory of manmade global warming.

Our data demonstrate that those who subscribe to the consensus theory have overlooked the primary source of carbon dioxide emissions. While a small part of the rise in emissions is attributable to industrial activity, it is greatly outweighed (by >300 times) by rising volumes of CO2 produced by saprotrophic eubacteria living in the sediments of the continental shelves fringing the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Moreover, the bacterial emissions, unlike industrial CO2, precisely match the fluctuations in global temperature over the past 140 years. If under ocean bacteria are producing 300 times more CO2 than us then clearly our effect cannot dominant or even important.

Less importantly, since it is merely politics not science, are these remarks.

It was not our intention in researching this issue to disprove manmade global warming theory. We have received no funds, directly or indirectly, from fossil fuel companies and have no personal interest in the outcome of the debate. We simply noticed an anomaly in the figures used by those who accept the "consensus" position on climate change and sought to investigate it. But the findings presented in this paper could not be more damaging to manmade global warming theory or to the thousands of climate scientists who have overlooked - sometimes, we fear, deliberately - the anomaly. We have found a near-perfect match between the levels of carbon dioxide produced by benthic eubacteria and recent global temperature records. By contrast we note what must be obvious to all those who have studied the figures with an open mind: a very poor match between carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels and recent global temperature records......

These findings place us in a difficult position. We feel an obligation to publish, both in the cause of scientific objectivity and to prevent a terrible mistake - with extremely costly implications - from being made by the world's governments. But we recognise that in doing so, we lay our careers on the line. As we have found in seeking to broach this issue gently with colleagues, and in attempting to publish these findings in other peer-reviewed journals, the "consensus" on climate change is enforced not by fact but by fear. We have been warned, collectively and individually, that in bringing our findings to public attention we are not only likely to be deprived of all future sources of funding, but that we also jeopardise the funding of the departments for which we work.
We believe that academic intimidation of this kind contradicts the spirit of open enquiry in which scientific investigations should be conducted. We deplore the aggressive responses we encountered before our findings were published, and fear the reaction this paper might provoke. But dangerous as these findings are, we feel we have no choice but to publish.