Tim Ball, already facing libel action from Canadian climate scientist Andrew Weaver, has been hit with another suit. This one comes from Dr. Michael Mann who is suing Ball and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy for an interview in which Ball stated that “Michael Mann at Penn State should be in the State Pen, [...]
Category Archive for 'Denialism'
After Canada Free Press posted an apology and a retraction to climatologist Andrew Weaver for comments made by denialist Tim Ball, we learn that Professor Weaver is in fact now suing Tim Ball for libel. The suit claims Tim Ball libeled Weaver in his article “Corruption of Climate Science Has Created 30 Lost Years”, published [...]
Qualifications creep
Posted in Denialism on Dec 6th, 2010
Meet Gavin Cooke. He is “a former journalist and television researcher. He studied Energy and Environment while at University in Newcastle and is based in the North East Of England.” That’s the author description for his 2009 book “2025: Ice Bound Britain.” Meet Gavin Cooke a year later, on the publication of his new book [...]
Is it science or consensus? The Michael Crichton science/not science methodology
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. [...]
Doppelgangers
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 [...]
Skeptics tackle global warming denial
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 [...]
“The science is settled”
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 [...]
Getting cute with graphs
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 [...]
How to comment on ClimateGate: a handy reference guide
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 [...]
CRU email theft perspectives
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 [...]