I just don’t have the heart or the energy to wade into the nonsense from the climate change denialists. Not content to distort stuff anymore, they are apparently seizing upon an interview made by one of the scientists and stating that he said completely the opposite of what he actually said.
The source of their latest charge? Not the interview, which clearly does not support the gibberish they are pedlling, and certainly not the scientific record, but instead it is all based on the charges from a right wing tabloid. A foreign right wing tabloid.
At least it wasn’t French.
Plus, you can learn everything you want to know about Dannii Minogue’s “baby bump” while getting Rush Limbaugh’s talking points today.
earlofscruggs
The fact remains: millions of scientists around the globe are proponents of a well-covered-up conspiracy, and were it not for the brave efforts of noted climate experts like Sean Hannity, we would be duped into giving up our technology and living like hippies.
Carrie
What are you talking about, the Daily mail rocks.
Where else can i get my daily fix of what the Wags, Yobs and celebrity chavs are up to?
Kryptik
Speaking of Relentless Bullshit, John…
Liz Cheney blames 9/11 on the fact that we tried the ’93 WTC bombers in court, rather than military tribunals. Apparently, the fact that we don’t shoot terrorists in the head immediately upon capture, or lock them in solitary without trial is the real cause of terrorism.
And the worst fucking part of it is that this is gonna get swallowed wholesale by the media, under the guise of a ‘debate’ over the role of trials in terrorism.
scav
If only we’d thought to name it al- methane …. that 1% rule might have worked in our favor for once.
General Winfield Stuck
I swear, these drooling jackals are going to end up causing Phil Jones to eat his gun. We need a wingnut open season, at least till the population becomes manageable again. They are reproducing way to fast and there isn’t enough horseshit to feed them.
Mnemosyne
Fred Clark has some interesting thoughts about why people become so defensive when we talk about global warming.
Comrade Jake
If you read Jones’ interview with the BBC, and then the Daily Mail piece interpreting the interview, the level of stupidity really is quite frightening.
Robin G.
Stewart and Colbert so thoroughly destroyed the “but it’s snowing!” nuts last week that you don’t have to worry about doing it yourself. I refuse to call them anything but Peekaboo-ologists from now on.
LuciaMia
God, how I hate that term. One of the more odious expressions coined in the last few years.
Comrade Jake
Real Climate’s latest is also worth a read. The Times online has been spinning plenty of BS lately. What the hell got into the water in the UK?
jl
Hypothesis testing 101 fail.
The null hypothesis of no warming since 1995 was not rejected at the 5% signficance level, so there has been no global warming since 1995.
There you go, open and shut.
Except what was the ‘power’ of the hypothesis test?
Power is the probability of rejecting the null hypothesis of no warming since 1995, if the null hypothesis is in fact NOT true (in other words, that the alternative hypothesis of global warming since 1995 is true).
In designed experiments in bench science and clinical trials a power (calculated before the experiment is started) of 80% is usually the minimum acceptable for putting any money or other resources into it. Except for special cases.
In observational studies, you can’t change the ‘design’ of the observations much to increase power. You can choose the statistical estimator or test that delivers the most power, that is about all. So power could range from 5% on up.
If you accept the null hypothesis with a test that has, say, 50% power, then it is a toss up whether you would accept the alterntive hypothesis of global warming, if global warming in fact was true.
The climate people need to catch on to how their statements are abused, and start doing things to prevent it like explaining and reporting the power of their tests.
But, the power of a test is sometimes very difficult to calculate for observational studies, and requires a lot of assumptions about the data.
So, what we have here is a failure to reject the null hypothesis of no global warming, but no information about the power of the test, other than a qualitative statement that it might be quite low and will increase as we do tests with more data.
Students should learn this in introductory statistics, if they have a professor who is doing something besides grinding through hideous opaque formulas in class (which, is kind of common actually).
Accepting a null hypothesis when you do not know the power does not mean much, and every student who finishes an intro course should know this, and why.
So, maybe explaining power and reporting the estimated power would just lead to another bogus scandal.
But the scientists should at least explain the idea of power to avoid nonsense like this.
jl
@Comrade Jake: Mudoch still owns the London Times, I think. It reads like British tabloid sometimes, except a lot snottier.
Robin G.
@Mnemosyne: That was great. Thanks for the link.
Kobie
@Kryptik: Liz Cheney’s got some brass ones on her to try to sell that line of utter horseshit.
twolaneflash
You probably also believe in astrology, scientology, and the health benefits of a vegan diet. Loons. Climate changes, that’s a fact. ClimateChange is a New Age religious belief founded on monkeyed up data points that purport to predict the future, and from which billions of dollars are to be fleeced from the public by teh High Priests of Global Warming. What you want to believe is that you are somehow more highly evolved than the rest of us who actually have degrees in hard sciences and have actually done years of field work in environmental sciences. I actually understand the science, and this stuff is unworthy of an alchemist of the Dark Ages. You make me laugh at your arrogance.
cat48
Don’t worry, John, Obama’s got this. Per NYT today, he will use an Executive Order for EPA Regulations:
“And the Environmental Protection Agency is moving forward with possible regulations on heat-trapping gases blamed for climate change, while a bill to cap such emissions languishes in the Senate.”
Then, after he does this, you can deal with it. Scientists say it is now harmful to our health so something should be done.
Delia
I don’t even know who Dannii Minogue is and I will make no effort to find out. It’s bad enough that I have to plow through all the winger trash talking points to stay on top of current events. Now it gets loaded up with fake celebrities, too.
cat48
@Kryptik:
No, no, no, you must not kill the terrorists. Did you not see the WashPo today where Obama is killing too many terrorists??? What’s wrong with you?
Mumphrey
How can American high schools be churning out this many boobs who don’t understand the scientific method? I’m not a scientist; the last science class I tok was a geology course in college that I chose since it had no math, and I hate math, and I needed a science course on my transcript, and I even know what the scientific method is and how it works.
These are people who don’t know what a “theory” is, or how a “theory” and a “hypothesis” are not the same thing, or what “peer review” is, or anything at all about science. (I might also throw in that these are likely the people who can’t tell you who their U.S. senators are or how many branches of government there aree or how many justices sit on the Supreme Court.)
We really need to begin doing a better job of schooling our children in this country. I guess jettisonning Texas would be a good start, so their choice of schoolbooks wouldn’t have to pollute the rest of the country, but I don’t know how likely that would be.
I really hate feeling like we’re doomed as a country, but reading shit like this makes me fear for the worst.
gwangung
So, basically, you’re saying you’re too stupid to prove the fraud you know MUST be there and you can’t crack a conspiracy that spans thousands of climate scientists.
I very much doubt you’re much of a scientist, let alone working in the physical sciences.
You might be an engineer, though.
Satanicpanic
Debating the deniers requires knowing each and every one of their BS “scandals” inside and out. And it doesn’t matter how many you swat away, they always have more, each more arcane and nonsensical than the last. And if you ever did succeed in refuting all of their talking points, they still would disagree. The fact is they hate hippies, and no amount of reason or logic will ever change that.
Jim C
I enjoyed the Dannii link, just because of the John Terry and Ashley Cole news on the sidebar.
Is Dannii the UK version of Ashlee? Or Don Swayze?
gwangung
@Delia: Well, actually she’s one of these fake European type of celebrities…she has a better claim to celebrity than anyone on American Idol…
dmsilev
@twolaneflash:
Picture me sitting here rolling my eyes.
Yes, the High Priests of Global Warming are responsible for a grand conspiracy, and billions of dollars will be sucked out by Big Climate.
Right.
And I note with amusement that you carefully chose “environmental sciences” rather than “climatology” as your claimed area of expertise.
-dms, holder of degrees (plural) in the hard sciences (condensed matter physics, to be precise)
J. Michael Neal
@Kryptik:
This is . . . bizarre. If we make it clear that any terrorist that we catch will die, we would create a huge disincentive for people who want to die committing a terrorist act. Did the 9/11 attackers not do a good enough job convincing Liz Cheney that fear of death wasn’t high on their list of worries?
Cassidy
Tech degree for those who’ve moved up in “enviromental services”?
Delia
@twolaneflash:
I’m trying to decide whether this entity is a rather average troll or an exceeding stupid spoof. It’s a sad day on the internets when you can’t tell your spoofs from your trolls.
Mojotron
LuciaMia: I was going to post the same thing, except with a lot more “fuck”s and maybe a “punch the next twat who uses the phrase”
Citizen_X
Do tell. Warms, cools? Cyclically? In a linear fashion? Non-linear? A combination of the three? Due to solar output? Orbital forcing? Biological activity? Tectonics?
Please inform us about when climate has changed, in what manner, and give us some hypotheses why. You should be able to to some informed degree, if this
isn’t complete and utter bullshit.
chopper
ann althouse is a moron. news at 11.
seriously, if she were any dumber we’d have to water her twice a day. to listen to her with regards to anything scientific should be against the law.
Delia
@chopper:
Please, your words are an insult to decent, well-behaved house plants everywhere.
Ash
I’m forgoing clicking on links that take me too douchey sites, but the Daily Fail? SERIOUSLY? God, at least they could’ve gone semi-respectable and found something in the Telegraph.
Unabogie
It’s just another right wing mythology that precludes us from ever discussing solutions. Want to have a discussion of solutions to CO2 emissions? Can’t, because the other side just claims the earth is actually cooling, but if it is warming, it’s not man made, and if it is man made, then it’s not much, and if it is man made, and it is significant, it may not be that bad to have sunny winters, so why do anything?
Terry Schiavo, WMD, Global Warming, the tactic is always the same. They believe in a fundamentally different framework of reality than the rest of us do, so discussion is effectively stifled and I don’t see how we can bridge the gap.
BDeevDad
What’s ridiculous is the chart that they are using with the missing stations comes from this paper that captions the chart:
twolaneflash
Thousands of Climate Scientists? Surely, you jest. Or do you just don’t know that the joke is on you. God deliver us from such idiots and their “consensus science”. Tomorrow on Oprah….
gwangung
@twolaneflash: Yeah. Troll.
Booooooorrrriiiing.
ricky
Jees, all the things you could highlight from that link and you went with a baby bump? Thumper with a thyroid problem was my personal fave.
Dirk
The Telegraph is the lair of James Delingpole, I imagine to the chagrin of their actual science writers, but this isn’t about the science. The Times chundered this tattered excuse for actual research on Sunday.
The Guardian have been insufferable with their hand-wringing ‘balance’ re the CRU espionage. Basically, we have The Independent.
Debbie(aussie)
Danni is an Aussie exapt. More money to be made in Europe, asa famous for being famous person.
valdemar
If the Daily Mail were a human being, it would have been put in a secure facility under the Mental Health Act years ago. I’m deeply ashamed that a British newspaper – even a manifestly loony one edited by a Catholic bigot like Paul Dacre – should be helping the denialists.
What’s most depressing, though, is how all those non-investigative ‘reporters’ are failing to ask the two questions that ought to set real journalists’ antennae twitching: who hacked the East Anglia emails, and why?
Once, that would have been quite a story. Now the ‘news’ is mostly op-ed bullshit and actually finding stuff out is obviously too much like hard work. Much easier to simply pick your ‘facts’ from the internet buffet and have a good old fulminate.
slightly_peeved
To save you the effort, she is the younger sister of Kylie Minogue, an Australian former soap actress, long-time popstar and is such a beautiful being she could be considered as Australia’s compensation to the rest of the world for giving you Rupert Murdoch. Dannii had a couple of songs in the early 90s I think which didn’t really do too well, almost married Jaques Villneuve, had a boob job, appeared in a few musicals and now co-hosts the X-factor in England or something. Which for UK celebrities, is actually a reasonable body of work (see Price, Katie for an example of your Paris Hilton/Kim Kardashian kind of celebrity).