Photosynthesising in a CO2-enriched world
Posted in Denialism on Mar 24th, 2010
Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. [...]
Posted in Denialism on Feb 16th, 2010
For your enjoyment, three global warming-related peoples and their celebrity doppelgangers. 1. Fred Seitz Frederick Seitz had a stellar career as a scientist, working in solid state physics and becoming president of the United States National Academy of Sciences from 1962-1969, and the president of Rockefeller University from 1968 to 1978. In 1979, Seitz went [...]
Posted in Denialism, Scientific skepticism on Feb 12th, 2010
That’s ‘skeptics’ in the true sense of the word. The Center for Inquiry (CFI), affiliated with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), took a look at the ‘United States Senate Minority Report on Global Warming’. This Senate report came out in January 2009 with the tagline “More Than 700 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global [...]
Posted in Denialism on Jan 30th, 2010
“The science is settled” is a slogan attributed by opponents of the Kyoto Protocol and global warming theory to supporters notably in the Clinton administration. There are no known examples of its use outside the skeptic press, though some of the statements that were made have similar implications. The slogan itself has therefore become a [...]
Posted in Denialism on Jan 16th, 2010
How to cherry pick data Here’s the banner image for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Nigel Lawson’s ‘think’ tank. On the left of the image, that’s a cute data plot of 21st Century global mean temperature (2001-2008), and, plainly, it shows that the temperature is in decline over the seven year period. But why only [...]
Posted in Denialism on Nov 29th, 2009
If you have just learned that global warming was all a massive fraud being perpetuated by Commie scientists in East Angular, your blood is all angried up and you can’t wait to just jump right in and start SHOUTING about it - but don’t quite know where to start – then this post is for [...]
Posted in Communication, Denialism on Nov 26th, 2009
Is there really a place where the denialists aren’t? Here’s hoping. And let’s hope that CRU can get back to work soon. We’ll all benefit. Except maybe the denialists, who will have to find something else to misrepresent. Oh look, Kiwis! Okay, that was quick. In the meantime, this happened: “Vast ice sheets across the [...]
Posted in Climate change, Denialism on Nov 21st, 2009
If you own any shares in companies that produce reflecting telescopes, use differential and integral calculus, or rely on the laws of motion, I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the calculus myth has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after volumes of Newton’s private correspondence were compiled and published. When you [...]
Posted in Climate change, Denialism on Nov 17th, 2009
There’s a list of 450 “peer reviewed papers supporting skepticism of ‘man-made’ global warming” making the rounds on the internet. Let’s take a closer look at it. When peer review doesn’t mean peer review Take a glance at that list, and it just leaps out at you: so many of the papers are all from [...]