Sunday
Jul182010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Another HSI review
Jul 18, 2010 Books Climate: HSI The Maui News has a review of The Hockey Stick Illusion.
The Hockey Stick Illusion deserves space on the shelf of classic books about science fraud like Peter Medawar's The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice. Montford, though not a scientist, is a good choice to tell this story, for, as Medawar said, "There is poetry in science but also a lot of bookkeeping."
Reader Comments (19)
another rattling good story I found on a Graun posting , about nuclear fusion
brussard google presentation
This is a presentation from a (probably -the-) top expert,77y old, in nuclear fusion , at the root of the tokamaks designs, who forfeited on the latter and then struggled through all kinds of tabletop variants for cold fusion (resulting in the electrostatic gridless polyhedra well fusor, the polywell)
Unfortunately the chap died 2 years ago, but his invention is been discretely furthered by some rich Americans. Rumour has it the Chinese are also on it.
Everybody except us. again.We are focusin the billions on the nincompoops, as ever.
Great comment on WattsUpWithThat
@phinniethewoo,
That Robert Bussard presentation is well worth a watch, and he is a remarkable man. The ongoing research however, is actually being funded by the U.S. Navy. I'm sure they would love scores of well heeled philanthropists banging at the door.
@Jack Hughes,
Let's not malign the yeoman kazoo players, too subtle. Me, I say vuvuzela players?
Jack Hughes quotes WattsUpWithThat :
'climate science is to science what kazoo players are to classical musicians'
Please, noone tell Thomas Pynchon - else we will get a 3,200 page novel ('Inherent Ice') about an aeronautic group of Kazoo Players, led by a permanently stoned hippie private eye, saving the world from Republican Global Corporations plundering the earth's mineral resources for one last giant party before entropy finally engulfs us all in a tidal wave of warming!
And from a comment at Klimazwiebel:
"Homeopathy is to orthodox medicine as climate science is to orthodox science"
Oh dear, Prince Charles will take that as praise indeed!
Folks if you didnt get an e-mail from David Cameron, asking for your ideas to help save money. You can go and give them anyway at
http://spendingchallenge.hm-treasury.gov.uk/comment-page-1/
Oh Dear
Front Page of the Times:
“Oil Giant gave £1million to fund climate sceptics”
exxon mobil at it again… WHERE IS MY CHEQUE !!!!
Leading Article page 2 of THE Times:
Research Interests: Research into climate change needs to be independent and beyond approach…
ie the tiny amount funding ‘sceptics’ is questionable,
but the billions funding the bandwagon, is independant and beyond approach..
Page 5:
“‘Climategate Scientists’ still under fire over research’
“AFTER being CLEARED of scientific fraud by three seperate enquiries, the climate sceintists at UEA might have hoped that they would be able to quietly resume studying the growth of tree rings…
BUT they continue to be HOUNDED by climate sceptics – mostly based in Britain and the US – who REFUSE to accept the outcome”
it goes on…
Could someone tell the Times, that in one of the inquiries, the accused sipplied their FAIR representaive papers as evidence… NONE of which were the criticalk ones in question!!!!
Look like the MEDIA big boys are out in force protecting the vested CAGW financial interests…
Yes, The Times Leader starts well be saying that science is interesting only if it is disinterested (nice to see somebody knows the meaning of the word!) but then goes badly off the rails when it claims that the IPCC reports have an open review process to which anyone can contribute (competely untrue).
Ben Webster's article says that some blogger comments can be dismissed as the rantings of obsessive individuals - I wonder who he is thinking of. It is strange that he seems to think these right-wing American think-tanks ("The Heritage Center", the "Media Research Center") are sufficiently important to make them front-page headline news here in the UK.
My cheque from Exxon must have got lost in the post, like Barry's.
"Leading Article page 2 of The Times"
Shame so few people will read it, now it's behind *Old Rupe's paywall.. :-)
(* As in 'money for Old Rupe' , h/t Private Eye)
This is REALLY funny :) You can't make this stuff up:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Al+Gore
Bill Clinton: (march 2010)
Noting that it was spring: "otherwise known to Al Gore as proof of global warming."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/7495834/Bill-Clinton-pokes-fun-at-Al-Gore-during-Gridiron-dinner.html
Humph! I thought peeps would like to go tell Mr C to stop building wind farms hehe
Letter to the Times:-
Compare and contrast the following items from your July 19 edition:-
Banner headline, front page “Oil Giant gave £1 million to fund climate sceptics”
Authoratative source – why, it is Bob Ward, PR guy from the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change (whose only activity seems to be peddling global warming propaganda). Where the ExxonMobile money went? The Media Research Centre, the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, the Pacific Research Institute and the Heritage Foundation (and “some other 21 sceptic groups”, unspecified).
And page 42, Business News, half way down a piece headed “Carbon Trust steps up its search for business gems”.
“The Trust has has its annual central funding reduced to less than £88 million, from £100 million.”
So, £1 million from a big oil company for a bunch of business oriented think tanks = bad.
£100 million from taxpayers money to one Quango (out of hundreds!) set up specifically to peddle cAGW alarmism = good.
I also note that whilst you correctly state "Lord Monckton was caught on camera during the Copenhagen summit describing students campaigning for emissions cuts as "Hitler Youth" and "Nazis", unaccountably you forgot to mention that, at the time, the students were breaking up a public meeting and trying to grab the microphone. Judge for yourself. The clip is on YouTube.
And this is balanced and responsible journalism? I remember now why I cancelled my subscription to the Times."
Martin Brumby
Even more rattling is the Focus Fusion Society and its Eric Lerner's Google video presentation.
He even asks for less money(2M usd) for an even more economy transforming solution (he would build small microwave type lamps ,in an overall contraption the size of a cabinet and at cost of 300K)
Allthough Brussard's a classic and worth the view allready for his final Human Resources , and funding remarks, Lerner's presentation is easier to follow. He compares the various Hydrogen Boron combustion ideas (which are waste free). Note he calls Brussards Bremmsstrahlung a more modern Xray ion cooling radiation.
http://focusfusion.org/
if u think The Times is bad -
UK Telegraph Homepage today:
Climate Change report sets out impact on British seas
Acidic oceans: fish lose ability to smell danger
Britain at risk of being left behind in low carbon future
from yesterday's homepage:
18 July: UK Tele: Richard Gray: Coral reefs suffer mass bleaching
Climate scientists have also warned that bleaching will become more common as global temperatures continue to rise.
Research published on Friday in the journal Science showed that coral growth in the Red Sea has declined by a third over the past 12 years due to rising temperatures and warned that coral there would cease growing entirely by 2070 if warming continues...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7896403/Coral-reefs-suffer-mass-bleaching.html
Earth Section - Most Viewed Today:
Photos show dramatic shrinking of Mount Everest glaciers
Earth Section Links to:
Act on Copenhagen (UK Government site)
Al Gore: solutions to the climate crisis
Stern review of climate change economics
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Google Ads:
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Also on Homepage today. funny how McEwan doesn't get a hint that it's surely the "satire" that results in the negative reviews from CAGW papers of record NYT and WaPo. or maybe he does get it cos he does the grovelling at the end of this article:
Ian McEwan says Americans are 'profoundly bored' by climate change
Americans are “profoundly bored” with the notion of climate change, according to the writer Ian McEwan, whose latest novel has been poorly received in the US
McEwan blamed American apathy for the negative reviews afforded to Solar, his satire about global warming.
The New York Times critic dismissed Solar as one of McEwan’s “lesser efforts” while the Washington Post called it “flaccid” and advised readers to “let Solar pass and wait for his next book to eclipse it”...
“I was knocked off my pedestal. It was amazing,” he said. “It was odd because I did a book tour in the States then crossed the border to Canada and got the best press I had ever had for a novel. It was so entirely different...
The main character in Solar is Michael Beard, a deeply unlikeable Nobel Prize-winning physicist engaged in the battle against global warming.
McEwan took his inspiration from the people he encountered at the 2007 Potsdam Nobel Laureate Symposium on climate change.
He said: “I was invited to give an after-dinner speech. I saw in a room, all at once, these men – and they were all men – with this ultimate intellectual accolade.
“Many were elderly, all were quite boring, and they gave off this glow of ego. All had a tinge of tragedy in that their best work was behind them and they lived in this cloud of celebrity – not the celebrity we associate with television or football, but within science, and it’s a powerful thing. These men move like colossi. They are giants.”...
“I did spend a lot of time with the science, and read an enormous number of papers, and it would seem to me there’s a fairly powerful consensus. About three-quarters of the papers I read thought we had a man-made problem and there was some urgency.
“At the same time, there are some very good sceptics out there. Sceptics are completely different from ideologically-driven deniers, who have no evidence but have interests to protect. It’s a very important distinction to make. Some of my best friends are climate change sceptics. The denial camp are really not scientists at all, they are very well-funded, particularly in the States, and they have specific agendas.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7895747/Ian-McEwan-says-Americans-are-profoundly-bored-by-climate-change.html
"Climate Change" Page:
Google's climate map
The impact of climate change is illustrated on Google Maps.
Gods, floods – and warming
Geomythology links ancient legends and natural disasters - and supports climate change, writes Steve Jones
Prince of Wales opens new front in global warming fight
also check out "earth pulse" on "climate change" page with each topic - (top three) carbon capture, biolfuels, emissions, linking to more CAGW propaganda.
NOWHERE on "earth" or "climate change" pages does the Telegraph link to James Delingpole's blog! says it all really.
I'm dying for an e-book version of The Hockey Stick Illusion! Any inroads into that process? I know you had discussed it a bit at one point, but is there any e-text in any format?
[Not as yet AFAIK. I will have a word with the publisher]
Acidic Oceans? Ohmygod, did me peeing in the ocean at Santa Cruz do that!
As for carbon dioxide, I refer you to the White Cliffs of Dover and
this
And from a comment at Klimazwiebel:
"Homeopathy is to orthodox medicine as climate science is to orthodox science"
PaulM
This reminds that the solution to global warming is simple: we just need to start using homeopathic petrol (ie water) for all our energy needs. Problem solved.