A Place to Stand: 04/11/2007

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

"this paper could not be more damaging to manmade global warming theory"

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.

###########################################

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.

// posted by neil craig @ 6:54 pm 193 comments

Monday, November 05, 2007

WHAT HASTILOW ACTUALLY SAID

The Observer & other media have pounced on the Tory candidate who said "Powell was right" on immigration but have been careful not to really say what they are criticising. Yesterday David Davis was interviewed & the interviewer asked him to denounce Hastilow not on the basis of the original article but on what the Observer had said combined with the remark "grinning picanninies" from Powell's speech 40 years ago. Criticism should be of what is actually said. The Full article is available here. In fact he very carefully did not say Powell was right but expressed it as a commonly held opinion:

When you ask most people in the Black Country what the single biggest problem facing the country is, most people say immigration. Many insist: “Enoch Powell was right”.

In fact his only criticism of a racial group is of the British

It’s claimed we couldn’t survive without immigrants to work in our hotels, pubs and restaurants, to pick our fruit and clean our hospitals.

But that’s because we make life too easy for the five million or more people who could be working but enjoy life too much living off the state.

Why are 1.65 million people unemployed when it seems as if there’s a job for more or less anyone who wants one? Why are 2.4 million people claiming incapacity benefit when society is getting healthier?

In the past they would have been accused of “swinging the lead”, “skiving”, “scrounging” or “cheating”. Now we’re told they need “up-skilling” and then they would be only too happy to work (but for their bad backs).

The real question is

And no wonder. Does anybody in the country really want to see our population grow by almost half a million every 12 months so that in 24 years’ time it will have increased by almost 11 million?

And if any media critics wish to answer this, or the rest of what he actually said, I will be very surprised.

// posted by neil craig @ 1:28 pm 3 comments

Saturday, November 03, 2007

SHOULD WE TRUST THE PAPERS OR BLOGS?

An article here supporting James Watson's position on race, or more accurately going into specifics on how so many of his "respectable" academic critics who have said that there is no scientific evidence for IQ differences are clearly being deliberately 100% dishonest. There are in fact a vast number of IQ tests of subsaharan Africans showing a massive difference. One may argue that the IQ tests aren't conclusive proof but to say they do not exist is clearly incompatible with any form of honesty, scientific or otherwise.

One thing that annoys me is that this article, which is clearly better written & far better researched than any of the numerous newspaper articles, unanimously on one side, can be published only on the blogsphere.

"Professional" journalists regularly disparage bloggers as merely amateurs & the net as nest of conspiracy theories (excluding the theories that the Russians/Chinese/Iranians/Iraquis are conspiring to hide their WMDs which are acceptable in the MSM). Perhaps they should acknowledge that the best of the blog is far & away more informed & informing than they are & the worst not much worse.

Any newspaper that cared to publish this article could do so after negotiating an appropriate fee (or even after getting its journalists to rip it off & take out long words) but they don't do so which shows they are quite deliberately seeking not to inform.

// posted by neil craig @ 5:45 pm 0 comments

ALL GOD'S CHILLUN ARE LIBERALS EXCEPT THE LIBERALS

From the Spectator

....global capitalism has won the political argument, rendering the old distinction between left and right almost meaningless. Today, the divisions that count are the ones between libertarianism and statism; between the hard-headed empiricism of the Enlightenment and the (currently more fashionable) touchy-feely romanticism of the New Age.

....I’m thinking mainly of the way in the last decade we’ve lost so many of our traditional liberties — perhaps more of them in one go than in any era since the days of Cromwell or the Norman terror. By exploiting fashionable concerns like ecological correctness, equality and the dreaded health ’n’ safety, the state now feels it has a right to interfere with almost everything we do: what we eat and drink, whether we smoke, what we get up to in our bedrooms, how fast we drive on empty roads, how many bedrooms we have and with how nice a view, how many cheap flights we can afford, what our children’s view is to be on climate change, whether our kids get to learn anything useful, whether or not we can hunt.

If opposing the tyranny of the state, upholding the rights of the individual and standing up for scientific rigour, rationalism and empiricism makes me a Marxist, then a Marxist is what I am. Now can all those of my Tory MP friends who’ve been nervous about defending these things please pull their finger out? They’re universal values, not exclusively right-wing ones.

Which puts it well. I consider my values to be classic liberal ones & they are certainly the ones on which the Liberal party was founded (individual freedom, equality under the law, freedom of speech & scientific enquiry) yet I find the same values held, on the same intellectual basis, by self styled conservatives like Jerry Pournelle & Marxists (the Spiked crowd) but absolutely opposed by many who call themselves liberals such as the Liberal Democrat Party & the Guardian as well as movements such as Greens, radical feminists & other single issue types who call themselves "leftist" but whose programmes have virtually nothing in common the labour theory of value on which the mass urban working class socialist movement was built.

Part of this is also inspired by the speech of Ken Macleod, GoH at Glasgow's recent science fiction convention Satelite One who, as a previously avowed Marxist & still an avowed socialist, made a speech unambigously saying that free markets work more productively than state planning. He regreted that Stalin had ever come to power in the USSR (with which few would disagree) believing that they got a paranoid leader purely because paranoia was the natural result of the fact that the western powers had indeed been constantly plotting against them (which they certainly had) & that without this pressure Bukharin would have come to the top & restored substantial free enterprise in the way China is doing now. Alternate histories are always fascinating & it certainly fits. He believed the western side in the cold war had largely been the aggressors, as do I.

We are certainly in a political melting pot. Whether the libertarian side ends up being called liberalism, or conservatism or social democracy or even communism & the statist side ends up called liberalism or environmentalism or socialism or conservatism I am on the side that believes in progress through individual freedom rather than stability through controls.

// posted by neil craig @ 2:02 pm 0 comments

COMPARE & CONTRAST

I wish to introduce my US readers to Melanie Phillips & my UK readers to Peggy Noonan.

Both are "conservative" intelligent, realistic, tough minded, principled & understanding that the law is not a dispensable luxury.

I was introduced to Peggy by Jerry Pournelle's site where he said she was "always worth reading" & to Melanie by John Brignell of Numberwatch as "a new heroine of common sense in the British press".

On of the advantages of the net is that we are not limited to our own national press (though the parochialism of the US media in concentrating on the US may be as wearing to us as the impartiality of the UK media in concentrating on Britain must be to Americans) & I think we could all benefit from a wider perspective. I know I have quite a high proportion of my readership from the US.

http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/archive/

// posted by neil craig @ 12:55 pm 2 comments

Thursday, November 01, 2007

VAMPIRES - ECOLOGICAL VICTIMS

According to all the films vampires are not only incredibly powerful & long lived but able to reproduce themselves at a great rate (theoretically one per night). I have never seen an explanation of why, like Fermi's question about alien civilisations, we are not hip deep in them.

Reading something else about the number of human diseases which we got because we started living by farming animals it struck me vampires must be susceptible to human diseases, since we are so closely related to them, & totally unable to to avoid picking them up in their most energetic form, due to the vampire's total dependence on humanity. Rather as if all eucalyptus bushes suddenly became infected with Koala fever. The Black Death must have come as a worse tragedy to them than to us because they are exposed to so many & such energetic disease vectors (ie suck the blood of so many people). Unlike humans being more long lived they would not have so quickly evolved (we are all descended from generations who survived bubonic plague & earlier, measles which is partly why we survive them now).

They may be impervious to bullets but I have never seen a film where a vampire successfully recovered from the flu.

By the time Vald Tepes (born 1431) became a vampire the entire vampire population must have been down to a handful. Being at the top of the food chain means being at the bottom of the disease chain. Poor creatures.

// posted by neil craig @ 5:31 pm 0 comments

PETS IN PRISONS

I was at the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow yesterday for a lecture by Professor Aubrey Manning on animals & humanity. Not nearly as touchy feely as I had expected.

A point he made in passing was that pensioners with pets live significantly longer than those without, which I have not been able to find a link to but seems very likely & that people in prison allowed pets have a lower recidivism rate , which I have.

The dog’s and the inmate’s day starts at 6:00AM when the inmates get their dogs up and ends when they bed them down at 10:30Pm. The inmates and the dogs work hard, but the rewards and benefits are great for both.

The program allows the inmate to perform community service while incarcerated, build self-esteem, self discipline and confidence, and maybe learn to love and be loved UNCONDITIONALLY for the first time in their lives.

Transition back into society is much easier for those who have participated in the program. Research on programs with inmate/trainers training rescue dogs document almost a zero recidivism rate of the prisoners participating in the programs.

Almost 100% of the dogs participating in the program are adopted into permanent homes

Now some scepticism is worthwhile because no figures are given as to the size of the sample population - an almost zero recidivism rate could mean one person out of a total of 6 - & it is likely this was tried with fairly reasonable prisoners in the first place.

Still there are quite a few sites saying the same. It depends how much prison is for punishment & how much for rehabilitation & I would prefer the latter, if & only if it really produces rehabilitation. All the experiments here seem to have been in the US & I think a trial here would be useful.

I would also like to see pets being encouraged in retirement homes. My suspicion is that our regulators are actively preventing this on hygiene terms. However such rules are there to keep people alive longer & if pets would instead do this better & make life considerably happier then I think rules should be amended accordingly.

The other place I could see this being worthwhile is for children taken into "care". Care homes, disgracefully, produce a very high proportion of those in prison & homeless. The state is a very poor provider of such "care" . If there is any group in society we have failed it is such children & if this could go a little way to helping we should.

// posted by neil craig @ 1:08 pm 2 comments

A Place to Stand

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

"this paper could not be more damaging to manmade global warming theory"

Monday, November 05, 2007

WHAT HASTILOW ACTUALLY SAID

Saturday, November 03, 2007

RECENT COMMENTS

Friday, November 02, 2007

SHOULD WE TRUST THE PAPERS OR BLOGS?

ALL GOD'S CHILLUN ARE LIBERALS EXCEPT THE LIBERALS

COMPARE & CONTRAST

Thursday, November 01, 2007

VAMPIRES - ECOLOGICAL VICTIMS

PETS IN PRISONS

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