Tag: Don Easterbrook

Wrapped up in books: Don Easterbrook drags Elsevier through the mud

Don Easterbrook, the retired geology professor with an unhealthy obsession about Greenland ice cores, is back. His latest book, the punchily titled Evidence-Based Climate Science – Data opposing CO2 emissions as the primary source of global warming, was published last month by Elsevier, “the world’s leading provider of science and health information” (they publish The Lancet, Grey’s Anatomy, and are part of the same group as the publishers of New Scientist). Don has penned an introduction, the opening chapter, and contributed to a couple of others, but he leaves the rest of the book to a hand-picked team of “leading climate scientists”. Here’s how the Elsevier blurb describes the book’s “key features”:

  • An unbiased, evidence-based analysis of the scientific data concerning climate change and global warming
  • Authored by 8 of the world’s leading climate scientists, each with more than 25 years of experience in the field
  • Extensive analysis of the physics of CO2 as a greenhouse gas and its role in global warming
  • Comprehensive citations, references, and bibliography
  • Adaptation strategies are presented as alternative reactions to greenhouse gas emission reductions

Regular readers will know that I have been following Don’s career as a climate expert with some interest, having caught him out stealing and altering other people’s work, misrepresenting the Greenland ice core evidence, and generally behaving in a manner unbecoming of a would-be distinguished academic. Imagine my surprise therefore when a little digging into the contents of Evidence-Based Climate Science (EBCS) showed that every one of the key features being trumpeted by Elsevier appears to be a gross misrepresentation of the content of the book. Let’s dig a little deeper…

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Umm, a Gummer and carbon nonsense

Twenty years ago I’d have crossed the street to avoid meeting John Selwyn Gummer, then agriculture minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government, chiefly famous for having attempted to feed his young daughter a beefburger at the 1990 Ipswich Boat Show to demonstrate his understanding of the risks of contracting bovine spongiform encephalopathy (aka mad cow disease) from contaminated meat. It has since killed 166 people in Britain, Cordelia Gummer not among them. I now find myself in the strange position of agreeing rather wholeheartedly with Baron Deben, as he is currently styled, in an article headlined Climate change doubters are endangering our common future published in The Australian (!) last week. And his musings on the politics of climate action provide a useful counterpoint to the astonishing submission on the NZ government’s intention to gazette a “50 by 50” target for carbon emissions made earlier this month by an Australian organisation calling itself The Carbon Sense Coalition.

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Core blimey, Easterbrook’s at it again

Don Easterbrook’s strange obsession with the Greenland temperature record and the GISP2 ice core data series continues. Despite his last effort having been shown to be completely clueless (though still good enough for Bob Carter and “potty peer” Chris Monckton to reference approvingly), he continues to (snow)plough a lonely furrow. This time it’s in a guest post at µWatts headlined (rather poorly) Easterbrook on the magnitude of Greenland GISP2 ice core data. It’s BIG data, obviously, for Don, but sadly he shows no signs of actually doing any proper research, or developing any real understanding of the issues he feels so free to write about.

So where are the errors this time?

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Bob Carter: untroubled by hobgoblins

It is always a privilege to follow the development of a great man’s thinking, and the Australian public — or at least that portion of it that listens to the ABC’s AM news show (“sets the agenda for the nation’s daily news and current affairs coverage”) — was lucky enough to witness evolution in action last Friday, when the programme chose to “balance” a report on the World Meteorological Organisation’s announcement of record temperatures in 2010 by talking to Bob Carter. Readers with long memories will recall that Carter has been louder than most in insisting that the planet’s been cooling for the last ten years, so the programme had a marvellous opportunity to make the great man squirm. Sadly, they blew it.

Here’s what he had to say in April 2009:

First, there has been no recent global warming in the common meaning of the term, for world average temperature has cooled for the last ten years. Furthermore, since 1940 the earth has warmed for nineteen years and cooled for forty-nine, the overall result being that global average temperature is now about the same as it was in 1940.

So how did he cope with the bad news that warming continues? Here’s the transcript & podcast:

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The Climate Show #5: on a hot wet green roof

The Climate Show returns with the first show of the new year, and it’s a cracker. Our guest is Dr Brad Bass, an expert in “green” roofing who joined Glenn in the Auckland studio to discuss the many advantages of growing things (even trees!) on our buildings. John Cook from Skeptical Science gives us an eye-witness account of the Queensland flooding, and explains the climate and weather background to the event. We also discuss last year’s record setting temperatures, the fakery of Don Easterbrook, and an interesting breakthrough in solar power technology.

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Show notes below the fold.

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