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May 2012 Open thread

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Posted by Tim Lambert at 12:11 PM • 10 Comments

April 2012 Open thread

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More thread.

Posted by Tim Lambert at 1:54 AM • 648 Comments

March 2012 Open Thread

Category: Open Thread

Posted by Tim Lambert at 1:19 AM • 463 Comments

Wegman Heartland update

Category: Global Warming • Wegman

John Mashey, in comments writes:

It has been a busy week or so, with more to come.

1) See Fakery, p.3 and p.12. In ~2009, Heartland+SEPP+CSCDGC got ~$8M. The other 9 on p.3 got ~$39M.The additional 36 501(c)(3) on p.12 added another $283M.

Now, only some of that is for climate disinformation, but some of it is for tobacco advocacy and other science disinformation, such as on environmental issues. In addition, these entities cross-support each other in various ways. One often finds them cross-quoting, cross-writing articles, signing petitions, together.

It is far cheaper to create confusion than to actually do science and improve understanding. Still, there's a $330M in 2009 for these folks.

2) Wegman. In addition to the prime site where this all started over 2 years ago Deep Climate, where there have been recent updates, and USA Today, where story broke, but as gotten updates, there is:

Retraction Watch,

Chronicle of Higher Education

Rabett

Stoat.

I can assure you that this story ... is only starting again. It only took 709 days to reach this conclusion, and people might ponder this passage from Strange Inquiries at GMU (SIGMU), p.21, from GMU's policy:

'In conducting the investigation, the committee - (a) Uses diligent efforts to ensure that the investigation is thorough and sufficiently documented and includes examination of all research records and evidence relevant to reaching a decision on the merits of the allegations;
(b) Interviews each respondent, complainant, and any other available person who has been reasonably identified as having information regarding any relevant aspects of the investigation, including witnesses identified by the respondent; and
(c) Pursues diligently all significant issues and leads discovered that are determined relevant to the investigation, including any evidence of additional instances of possible research misconduct, and continues the investigation to completion.'

Now, inquiring minds might want to know:

1) Was there any other information that a diligent committee might have found? Like Strange Scholarship? Wegman certainly knew about it. Maybe the diligent commiteee somehow didn't notice it?

2) Did the committee ever check Deep Climate to see if anything else came up? Guess not.

3) Did the committee ever get anything like this graph of the various alleged plagiarisms with Wegman and students?

4) Are Roger Stough (VP Research), Peter Stearns (provost) and Alan Merton (GMU PResident) involved?

Anyway, main conversation is at Deep Climate for the latest news, but others should know.

Here's a theme.

Posted by Tim Lambert at 6:59 PM • 44 Comments

Robert Manne on Monckton's plan for the Australian media

Category: Monckton

Over at the Monthly, Robert Manne writes about Monckton's plan for a super-rich person to establish a Fox News for Australia. I thought we already had that in the Australian.

Posted by Tim Lambert at 11:52 PM • 71 Comments

February 2012 Open Thread

Category: Open Thread

Posted by Tim Lambert at 12:52 AM • 1047 Comments

More fraud from Pat Michaels

Category: patmichaels

Pat Michaels is infamous for his fraudulent graph presented to Congress in 1998. Dana Nuccitelli at Skeptical Science details some more fraudulent graphs from Michaels.

Posted by Tim Lambert at 11:40 AM • 104 Comments

The Australian's War on Science 76: Dad Jokes

Category: The War on Science

Whenever we had bean salad, my Dad would always ask "What's that?" When told what it was, he would say "Don't tell me what it's been, tell me what it is now!" That's a Dad joke. The defining properties of a Dad joke are that it is not funny and that Dad keeps repeating it. In their ongoing war on science The Australian is now committing war crimes by deploying Dad jokes (which I recall were banned by the Geneva Convention in 1949).

Imre Salusinszky, who declared global warming to be dead in January of last year has repeated the same unfunny joke this January:

Last year, other parts of the globe followed suit. According to the World Meteorological Organisation: "The most significant area of below-normal temperatures in 2011 was in northern and central Australia, where temperatures were up to 1C below average in places . . . Other regions to experience below-normal temperatures in 2011 included the western United States and southwestern Canada, and parts of east Asia."

Read on »

Posted by Tim Lambert at 9:58 AM • 60 Comments

January 2012 Open Thread

Category: Open Thread

Posted by Tim Lambert at 8:51 PM • 573 Comments

Better late than never at The Australian

Category: Plimer

The Australian finally publishes Mike Sandiford's correction of the false claims from Plimer that The Australian published two weeks earlier:

Deliberately misrepresenting data or making it up is just not on.

Here's an example. In a section from his new book, How To Get Expelled from School, as reprinted in The Weekend Australian recently, Plimer claims: "Antarctic ice core (Siple) shows that there were 330 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the air in 1900; Mauna Loa Hawaiian measurements in 1960 show that the air then had 260ppm carbon dioxide."

Plimer goes on to say: "Either the ice core data is wrong, the Hawaiian carbon dioxide measurements are wrong, or the atmospheric carbon dioxide content was decreasing during a period of industrialisation."

Read on »

Posted by Tim Lambert at 12:08 AM • 50 Comments