Tag: Wishart

Stairway from Heaven

Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science

I popped into my local Paper Plus at the end of last week, and noted that were a few copies of Ian Plimer’s Heaven + Earth stacked up in the pre-Christmas display. Described by the NZ publisher (Ian Wishart’s Howling At The Moon imprint) as “the world’s #1 climate change book”, it makes a good companion for Air Con on any crank’s Christmas wish list. Unlike Air Con, however, Plimer’s book has been extensively reviewed in Australia and elsewhere, and so — as a public service — here are a few extracts that may help members of the reality-based community to decide whether to buy a copy…

Professor Michael Ashley, in The Australian:

It is not “merely” atmospheric scientists that would have to be wrong for Plimer to be right. It would require a rewriting of biology, geology, physics, oceanography, astronomy and statistics. Plimer’s book deserves to languish on the shelves along with similar pseudo-science such as the writings of Immanuel Velikovsky and Erich von Daniken.

Professor Barry Brooke, at Brave New Climate:

Ian’s stated view of climate science is that a vast number of extremely well respected scientists and a whole range of specialist disciplines have fallen prey to delusional self interest and become nothing more than unthinking ideologues. Plausible to conspiracy theorists, perhaps, but hardly a sane world view — and insulting to all those genuinely committed to real science.

Professor Kurt Lambeck, president of the Australian Academy of Science, on ABC’s Ockham’s Razor:

If this had been written by an honours student, I would have failed it with the comment: You have obviously trawled through a lot of material but the critical analysis is missing. Supporting arguments and unsupported arguments in the literature are not distinguished or properly referenced, and you have left the impression that you have not developed an understanding of the processes involved. Rewrite!

Professor David Karoly, on ABC’s Science Show:

Given the errors, the non-science, and the nonsense in this book, it should be classified as science fiction in any library that wastes its funds buying it. The book can then be placed on the shelves alongside Michael Crichton’s State of Fear, another science fiction book about climate change with many footnotes. The only difference is that there are fewer scientific errors in State of Fear.

Bob Ward in the Times (London):

It is easy to see why this book has attracted attention, particularly from right-wing commentators who have long believed that man-made climate change is a conspiracy theory. But this book is so full of errors that readers who believe its content could be seriously misled about the causes and consequences of climate change.

Tim Lambert at Deltoid has much, much more. Plus: you can download a 46 page document prepared by Professor Ian Enting detailing all of Plimer’s errors and misrepresentations.

No surprises, then, if I reveal that it won’t be on my Christmas list…

[The 2:40 version]

…Keep out of the kitchen

It appears that Ian Wishart is back on the climate beat, with a couple of posts in the last week attacking Hot Topic. One goes so far as to accuse me of incompetence and dishonesty, which is a bit rich coming from someone who was threatening to sue me for libel a few months ago… Anyway, his latest offering attempts to chastise me for stating in a comment that global temperatures were not falling. That gives me a welcome opportunity to post on the subject and introduce a nifty little gadget programmed by a Hot Topic reader. Here’s Wishart:

Virtually all the major datasets are now acknowledging atmospheric warming has slowed to a crawl or stopped over the past ten years, and even some leading climate alarmists scientists are publicly suggesting we’ve entered a climate shift and may not see warming return for a further decade or more. The data clearly shows temperature anomalies trending down despite CO2 emissions rising:

He appends a graph of UAH monthly temperature anomalies from 2002 to some point earlier this year, with a descending trend line. Lo and behold, “cooling”!

Continue reading “…Keep out of the kitchen”

Such ignorance must not be allowed to go uncontradicted (*)

homer.jpgLast week an essay — Why I Am A Climate Realist — by NZ CSC “science advisor” Dr Willem de Lange started popping up all over the crank web. I first spotted it at Muriel Newman’s NZ CPR site, and it has since appeared at Monckton’s US lair (complete with a pretty cover). De Lange, a senior lecturer in the Dept of Earth & Ocean Sciences at Waikato Unversity, has not had many starring roles as a climate crank — his biggest claim to fame was a place on the panel discussion after Prime’s showing of The Great Global Warming Swindle last year. But this time he has really stuck his neck out, channelling Wishart’s delusions in this sentence:

It is more likely that the warming of the oceans since the Little Ice Age is a major contributor to the observed increase in CO2.

To show just how wrong he is, I asked Doug Mackie, who is a researcher in chemical oceanography at the University of Otago and regular commenter here, to point out the flaws in de Lange’s essay. Over to Doug:

When Gareth invited me to write a guest post about Willem de Lange’s Why I am a climate realist I knew it was going to be hard. Most of the article is wibble and he really only makes 2 serious points:
– About sea level
-The oceans as the main source of CO2.

(*) Katherine Mansfield, The Advanced Lady.
Continue reading “Such ignorance must not be allowed to go uncontradicted (*)”

Do you feel lucky?

Airconcover.jpgOnce again, Ian Wishart is working himself up into a fine frenzy over at his blog, responding to a perceptive post by Bomber Bradbury at Tumeke! In the comments there he claimed to have “pointed out numerous mistakes in Gareth’s snide and out of context ‘review'”, and — funnily enough — I didn’t feel inclined to let that pass. So I suggested a little wager, and drew this furious response. So, knowing it will make precious little difference in the strange version of reality that Wishart occupies, here’s my (final) response…

Continue reading “Do you feel lucky?”

How many times can you shoot yourself in the foot and still walk to work?

Airconcover.jpgI do enjoy Wishart’s attempts at ripostes to my debunking of his nonsense. Last time, you may recall, he got confused between volcanoes beneath the ocean and the ones you can see — like Ruapehu. This afternoon he shoots from the hip in response to my post, and confuses himself yet again…

And in case Truffle doesn’t explain it properly, Wouters et al’s paper is helpfully entitled “GRACE observes small-scale mass loss in Greenland” [my emphasis on small scale]. The paper was not called “Panic Stations: All Hands To The Pumps!”.

He claims to have read the paper, but hasn’t noticed that in this context, small-scale means regional — that is, differentiating between mass loss in the various bits of Greenland. It’s all there in the abstract…

…we examine changes in Greenland’s mass distribution on a regional scale.

Remember, this is a man who claims to have investigated the whole field, and determined that “anthropogenic global warming theory is nothing more than a propaganda stunt” (p227). And “behind all the scare stories on a number of fronts — from the need to give up the war on drug trafficking to the need to tax you thousands of dollars more per year because of your “carbon footprint” — lies a left-wing billionaire (one of several in his group) with an agenda and the means to pull it off.” (p242).

Schoolboy howlers and conspiracy theories. A heady mix for some, a laughing stock to others.

Chortle!

[PS: The former NZ champion trufflehound has fully working teeth.]