The Ice Age is Coming

[boutons_deux]

Wegman scandal rocks cornerstone of climate denial

USA Today: Evidence of plagiarism and complaints about the peer-review process have led a statistics journal to retract a federally funded study that condemned scientific support for global warming



Climate science is a solid edifice built around the work of thousands of scientists, vast amounts of data, and countless peer-reviewed publications. As the National Academy of Sciences report put it, “Although the scientific process is always open to new ideas and results, the fundamental causes and consequences of climate change have been established by many years of scientific research, are supported by many different lines of evidence, and have stood firm in the face of careful examination, repeated testing, and the rigorous evaluation of alternative theories and explanation.”

Climate denial is a house of cards, built around the sleight of hand of a few disinformers, deniers, and pseudo-scientists — who keep repeating the same falsehoods no matter how many times they have been debunked. One of the most important, yet flimsiest, cards holding up the house is the attack on the so-called Hockey Stick research — multiple, independent lines of data and analysis that demonstrate recent global warming is unprecedented in magnitude and speed and cause (see “Two more independent studies back the Hockey Stick and below). Indeed, as WAG notes, within a few decades, nobody is going to be talking about hockey sticks, they will be talking about right angles or hockey skates (see chart above).

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/0...limate-denial/

[boutons_deux]

Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto equates science with religion


m on May 24, 2011 at 12:30 pm

I suppose it was inevitable that some anti-science extremist would compare the doomsday claims of evangelical broadcaster Harold Camping with the overwhelming body of scientific evidence that says unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions risks multiple simultaneous catastrophes for human civilization.

It’s just sad that this extremist was the editor of The Wall Street Journal‘s online editorial page, James Taranto. His inane, defamatory piece, “The Christian Al Gore: The eternal appeal of doomsday cults,” makes one question the factual basis of every thing that appears in the WSJ. After all, if an astrologer and Flat-Earther can rise to such prominence at the leading financial newspaper in the country, and publish pure anti-science nonsense, then on what basis is there to believe that the rest of the staff is any more rational?

Oh yes, I forgot. There’s an impenetrable firewall between editorial and news at the WSJ. No doubt it’s as impenetrable as the firewall in Wall Street investment banks between the corporate-advisory group and the brokerage department.

Taranto’s money graf is:

To reject traditional religion is not, as the American Atheists might have it, to transform oneself into a perfectly rational being. Nonbelievers are no less susceptible to doomsday cults than believers are; Harold Camping is merely the Christian Al Gore. But because secular doomsday cultism has a scientific gloss, journalists like our friends at Reuters treat it as if it were real science. So, too, do some scientists. It may be that the decline of religion made this corruption of science inevitable.

Yes, because science has a scientific gloss, real journalists treat it as if it were real science. So, too, do some scientists.

Of course Taranto doesn’t actually cite any science in his piece, just two news articles he doesn’t understand:

“Decline in Snowpack Blamed on Warming”–headline, Washington Post, Feb. 1, 2008
“Record Snowpacks Could Threaten Western States”–headline, New York Times, May 22, 2011


http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/0...with-religion/

[RandomGuy]

Wegman scandal rocks cornerstone of climate denial

USA Today: Evidence of plagiarism and complaints about the peer-review process have led a statistics journal to retract a federally funded study that condemned scientific support for global warming



Climate science is a solid edifice built around the work of thousands of scientists, vast amounts of data, and countless peer-reviewed publications. As the National Academy of Sciences report put it, “Although the scientific process is always open to new ideas and results, the fundamental causes and consequences of climate change have been established by many years of scientific research, are supported by many different lines of evidence, and have stood firm in the face of careful examination, repeated testing, and the rigorous evaluation of alternative theories and explanation.”

Climate denial is a house of cards, built around the sleight of hand of a few disinformers, deniers, and pseudo-scientists — who keep repeating the same falsehoods no matter how many times they have been debunked. One of the most important, yet flimsiest, cards holding up the house is the attack on the so-called Hockey Stick research — multiple, independent lines of data and analysis that demonstrate recent global warming is unprecedented in magnitude and speed and cause (see “Two more independent studies back the Hockey Stick and below). Indeed, as WAG notes, within a few decades, nobody is going to be talking about hockey sticks, they will be talking about right angles or hockey skates (see chart above).

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/0...limate-denial/

Interesting bit.

And one final note, the finding of ‘plagiarism’ may also be an indicator of other possible questionable ethical issues such as conflict-of-interest, haste vs. scientific rigor and bias, which may need to be investigated.

Sounds like this paper belongs in the category "pseudo-science".

Color me unsurprised.

[RandomGuy]

Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto equates science with religion


m on May 24, 2011 at 12:30 pm

I suppose it was inevitable that some anti-science extremist would compare the doomsday claims of evangelical broadcaster Harold Camping with the overwhelming body of scientific evidence that says unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions risks multiple simultaneous catastrophes for human civilization.

It’s just sad that this extremist was the editor of The Wall Street Journal‘s online editorial page, James Taranto. His inane, defamatory piece, “The Christian Al Gore: The eternal appeal of doomsday cults,” makes one question the factual basis of every thing that appears in the WSJ. After all, if an astrologer and Flat-Earther can rise to such prominence at the leading financial newspaper in the country, and publish pure anti-science nonsense, then on what basis is there to believe that the rest of the staff is any more rational?

Oh yes, I forgot. There’s an impenetrable firewall between editorial and news at the WSJ. No doubt it’s as impenetrable as the firewall in Wall Street investment banks between the corporate-advisory group and the brokerage department.

Taranto’s money graf is:

To reject traditional religion is not, as the American Atheists might have it, to transform oneself into a perfectly rational being. Nonbelievers are no less susceptible to doomsday cults than believers are; Harold Camping is merely the Christian Al Gore. But because secular doomsday cultism has a scientific gloss, journalists like our friends at Reuters treat it as if it were real science. So, too, do some scientists. It may be that the decline of religion made this corruption of science inevitable.

Yes, because science has a scientific gloss, real journalists treat it as if it were real science. So, too, do some scientists.

Of course Taranto doesn’t actually cite any science in his piece, just two news articles he doesn’t understand:

“Decline in Snowpack Blamed on Warming”–headline, Washington Post, Feb. 1, 2008
“Record Snowpacks Could Threaten Western States”–headline, New York Times, May 22, 2011


http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/0...with-religion/

That is the joy of op-eds. You can bull without having to add meaningful context.

Using data collected over the past 50 years, the scientists confirmed that the mountains are getting more rain and less snow, that the snowpack is breaking up faster and that more rivers are running dry by summer

And of course the second article was simply one year of data.

This is no different than any of the other myriad strawman attacks on the science.

Scientist: "Based on these studies that analyse decades and centuries of data, we conclude that, on average the earth is getting slightly warmer."

Denier op-ed: "Look it snowed today!, That must mean the Earth is not getting warmer"



Lie, spin, repeat.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Try to tell the alarmists things like this.

Someone does not know how to interpret simple time differentials by looking at a graph.