tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32527730558765534272024-03-05T09:18:44.384-08:00Science Kontentkevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05331047626419936198noreply@blogger.comBlogger95125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252773055876553427.post-28240210170709398662009-12-16T13:32:00.000-08:002009-12-16T13:34:48.150-08:00A Fish Oil Story<span style="font-style:italic;">A Fish Oil Story <br />By PAUL GREENBERG<br />Published: December 15, 2009 <br /><br /><br />If you are someone who catches and eats a lot of fish, as I am, you get adept at answering questions about which fish are safe, which are sustainable and which should be avoided altogether. But when this fish oil question arrived in my inbox recently, I was stumped. I knew that concerns about overfishing had prompted many consumers to choose supplements as a guilt-free way of getting their omega-3 fatty acids, which studies show lower triglycerides and the risk of heart attack. But I had never looked into the fish behind the oil and whether it was fit, morally or environmentally speaking, to be consumed. <br /><br />The deal with fish oil, I found out, is that a considerable portion of it comes from a creature upon which the entire Atlantic coastal ecosystem relies, a big-headed, smelly, foot-long member of the herring family called menhaden, which a recent book identifies in its title as “The Most Important Fish in the Sea.”<br /><br />The book’s author, H. Bruce Franklin, compares menhaden to the passenger pigeon and related to me recently how his research uncovered that populations were once so large that “the vanguard of the fish’s annual migration would reach Cape Cod while the rearguard was still in Maine.” Menhaden filter-feed nearly exclusively on algae, the most abundant forage in the world, and are prolifically good at converting that algae into omega-3 fatty acids and other important proteins and oils. They also form the basis of the Atlantic Coast’s marine food chain. <br /><br />Nearly every fish a fish eater likes to eat eats menhaden. Bluefin tuna, striped bass, redfish and bluefish are just a few of the diners at the menhaden buffet. All of these fish are high in omega-3 fatty acids but are unable themselves to synthesize them. The omega-3s they have come from menhaden.<br /><br />But menhaden are entering the final losing phases of a century-and-a-half fight for survival that began when humans started turning huge schools into fertilizer and lamp oil. Once petroleum-based oils replaced menhaden oil in lamps, trillions of menhaden were ground into feed for hogs, chickens and pets. Today, hundreds of billions of pounds of them are converted into lipstick, salmon feed, paint, “buttery spread,” salad dressing and, yes, some of those omega-3 supplements you have been forcing on your children. All of these products can be made with more environmentally benign substitutes, but menhaden are still used in great (though declining) numbers because they can be caught and processed cheaply.<br /><br />For the last decade, one company, Omega Protein of Houston, has been catching 90 percent of the nation’s menhaden. The perniciousness of menhaden removals has been widely enough recognized that 13 of the 15 Atlantic states have banned Omega Protein’s boats from their waters. But the company’s toehold in North Carolina and Virginia (where it has its largest processing plant), and its continued right to fish in federal waters, means a half-billion menhaden are still taken from the ecosystem every year. <br /><br />For fish guys like me, this egregious privatization of what is essentially a public resource is shocking. But even if you are not interested in fish, there is an important reason for concern about menhaden’s decline.<br /><br />Quite simply, menhaden keep the water clean. The muddy brown color of the Long Island Sound and the growing dead zones in the Chesapeake Bay are the direct result of inadequate water filtration — a job that was once carried out by menhaden. An adult menhaden can rid four to six gallons of water of algae in a minute. Imagine then the water-cleaning capacity of the half-billion menhaden we “reduce” into oil every year. <br /><br />So what is the seeker of omega-3 supplements to do? Bruce Franklin points out that there are 75 commercial products — including fish-oil pills made from fish discards — that don’t contribute directly to the depletion of a fishery. Flax oil also fits the bill and uses no fish at all.<br /><br />But I’ve come to realize that, as with many issues surrounding fish, more powerful fulcrums than consumer choice need to be put in motion to fix things. President Obama and the Congressional leadership have repeatedly stressed their commitment to wresting the wealth of the nation from the hands of a few. A demonstration of this commitment would be to ban the fishing of menhaden in federal waters. The Virginia Legislature could enact a similar moratorium in the Chesapeake Bay (the largest menhaden nursery in the world). <br /><br />The menhaden is a small fish that in its multitudes plays such a big role in our economy and environment that its fate shouldn’t be effectively controlled by a single company and its bottles of fish oil supplements. If our government is serious about standing up for the little guy, it should start by giving a little, but crucial, fish a fair deal.<br /><br />Paul Greenberg is the author of the forthcoming “Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food.”</span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/16/opinion/16greenberg.html?em">http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/16/opinion/16greenberg.html?em</a>kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05331047626419936198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252773055876553427.post-33672796050544975642009-12-11T13:38:00.000-08:002009-12-11T13:43:13.624-08:00Marijuana might cause new cell growth in the brain~ New Scientist<span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="font-style:italic;">A synthetic chemical similar to the active ingredient in marijuana makes new cells grow in rat brains. What is more, in rats this cell growth appears to be linked with reducing anxiety and depression. The results suggest that marijuana, or its derivatives, could actually be good for the brain.<br /><br />In mammals, new nerve cells are constantly being produced in a part of the brain called the hippocampus, which is associated with learning, memory, anxiety and depression. Other recreational drugs, such as alcohol, nicotine and cocaine, have been shown to suppress this new growth. Xia Zhang of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, and colleagues decided to see what effects a synthetic cannabinoid called HU210 had on rats' brains.<br /><br />They found that giving rats high doses of HU210 twice a day for 10 days increased the rate of nerve cell formation, or neurogenesis, in the hippocampus by about 40%.<br />Just like Prozac?<br /><br />A previous study showed that the antidepressant fluoxetine (Prozac) also increases new cell growth, and the results indicated that it was this cell growth that caused Prozac's anti-anxiety effect. Zhang wondered whether this was also the case for the cannabinoid, and so he tested the rats for behavioural changes.<br /><br />When the rats who had received the cannabinoid were placed under stress, they showed fewer signs of anxiety and depression than rats who had not had the treatment. When neurogenesis was halted in these rats using X-rays, this effect disappeared, indicating that the new cell growth might be responsible for the behavioural changes.<br /><br />In another study, Barry Jacobs, a neuroscientist at Princeton University, gave mice the natural cannabinoid found in marijuana, THC (D9-tetrahydrocannabinol)). But he says he detected no neurogenesis, no matter what dose he gave or the length of time he gave it for. He will present his results at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington DC in November.<br /><br />Jacobs says it could be that HU210 and THC do not have the same effect on cell growth. It could also be the case that cannabinoids behave differently in different rodent species - which leaves open the question of how they behave in humans.<br /><br />Zhang says more research is needed before it is clear whether cannabinoids could some day be used to treat depression in humans.<br /><br />Journal reference: Journal of Clinical Investigation (DOI:10.1172/JCI25509)</span></span>kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05331047626419936198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252773055876553427.post-38654079791950412362009-11-21T14:39:00.000-08:002009-11-21T14:40:36.318-08:00Record High Temperatures Far Outpace Record Lows Across U.S.BOULDER—Spurred by a warming climate, daily record high temperatures occurred twice as often as record lows over the last decade across the continental United States, new research shows. The ratio of record highs to lows is likely to increase dramatically in coming decades if emissions of greenhouse gases continue to climb. <br /><br />"Climate change is making itself felt in terms of day-to-day weather in the United States," says Gerald Meehl, the lead author and a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). "The ways these records are being broken show how our climate is already shifting."<br /><br /><a href="http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2009/maxmin.jsp">http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2009/maxmin.jsp</a>kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05331047626419936198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252773055876553427.post-11453968476144580072009-10-19T12:48:00.000-07:002009-10-19T12:50:40.316-07:00Marijuana isn't so good for the brains of children but otherwise a universal panacea, imo<span style="font-style:italic;">Marijuana opponents in the federal government are up against the wall and the wall is crumbling. The feds have fought marijuana use for decades, disregarding its medicinal applications, in a senseless war against the herb.<br />The demonized killer weed is turning out to be anything but that. As myths about this ancient herb are dispelled, scientists are using it to treat everything from chemotherapy-induced nausea to different cancers.<br />In August, The British Journal of Cancer published the results of a study that found THC (the main active component in marijuana) is effective in fighting prostate cancer. Reportedly, pot attacks prostate cancer cell types that do not respond to the usual hormone treatments.<br />A recent study by a team of Spanish researchers discovered THC kills various brain cancer cells by a process known as autophagy. Michigan's new law regarding marijuana use went into effect in April. Patients, with doctor's prescriptions, get a state-issued ID Card (a lot like California's) which allows them to grow and use marijuana to treat pain and other symptoms of cancer and multiple sclerosis.<br />In October 2003, the University of California, San Francisco, released the results of a study that said pot was effective when used in combination with opiate pain medications. Dr. Donald Abrams, MD, UCSF professor of Clinical Medicine and chief of the Hematology-Oncology Division at SF General Hospital Medical Center, told the press, “Marijuana uses a different mechanism than opiates and could augment the pain relief of opiate analgesics.”<br />The Marijuana Policy Project recently reported on a study that suggests moderate amounts of marijuana use reduces risk of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). This study suggests cannabinoids have potential anti-tumor properties.<br />A study released in July, “White matter in adolescents with history of marijuana use and binge drinking,” says marijuana use actually protects brain cells. The study involved adolescents with alcohol use disorders.<br />One group had just alcohol-drinking teens. The other group drank alcohol and used marijuana. The report said that binge drinkers who used marijuana retained more white matter than the other group. In other words, alcohol destroyed more brain cells when a person didn't use marijuana.<br />How many times have you heard someone say, “Pot destroys your brain cells”? If that's true, what about this study? Why do doctors use marijuana to fight brain cancer if it destroys brain cells? Remember the Spanish study?<br />In April of 2007, Harvard University researchers released the results of a study that concluded THC cuts tumor growth in common lung cancers and reduces the ability of the cancer to spread.<br />A study conducted by UCLA's medical school in June 2005 concluded smoking marijuana did not cause lung cancer. That impressive piece of news, along with the Harvard study, seems to have been ignored by most mass media outlets.<br />Fred Gardner, editor of the medical marijuana research journal, O'Shaughnessy's, recently wrote an article, “Smoking Marijuana Does Not Cause Cancer,” about this groundbreaking UCLA study that barely made headlines.<br />Gardner reported that an investigative team was contracted with the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) in 2002 “to conduct a large, population-based, case-controlled study that would prove definitively that heavy, long-term marijuana use increases the risk of lung and upper-airway cancers.”<br />Guess what? This study backfired! It turned out that increased marijuana use did not result in higher rates of lung and pharyngeal cancer. The study also concluded that tobacco smokers who also puffed on pot were at a slightly lower risk of getting lung cancer than those who didn't!<br />Perhaps the icing on the cake is the fact that UCLA Medical professor Donald Tashkin led the investigation. Tashkin has led government studies on marijuana since the 1970s and is well known for his belief that heavy marijuana use causes lung and upper-airway cancers. To his credit as a professional, he ended up disproving his own original hypothesis.<br />Despite the government's efforts to keep it illegal, it's apparent that marijuana does offer help in the battle to treat cancer. The facts about marijuana's medical potentials are finally causing cracks in the government's wall of lies built up over the years.<br />As It Stands, it's time to bring down that wall.<br />Dave Stancliff is a columnist for The Times-Standard. He is a former newspaper editor and publisher. Comments can be sent to richstan1@suddenlink.net or www.davesblogcentral.com</span>kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05331047626419936198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252773055876553427.post-15386104398638292782009-10-04T13:15:00.000-07:002009-10-04T13:17:38.401-07:00Such lies......<object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/TxCQHn-w0Bw&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/TxCQHn-w0Bw&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object><br /><br />The man behind the latest entry to the climate legislation wars is H. Leighton Steward, a veteran oil industry executive, co-author of the “Sugar Busters!” dieting books, and winner of an Environmental Protection Agency award for a report on damage being done to Mississippi wetlands. Now retired, he says he wants to “get the message out there” that carbon dioxide, which the Supreme Court has ruled a pollutant and which most scientists regard as a dangerous greenhouse gas, “is a net benefit for the planet.”<br /><br />Well, thank the Great Flying Spaghetti Monster that we have oil company bigwigs to steer us in the right direction, not only with these super-intelligent and truthful ads, but by pumping as much CO2 into the atmosphere as humanly possible.kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05331047626419936198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252773055876553427.post-53822713691531105262009-09-21T21:50:00.000-07:002009-09-21T23:46:04.747-07:00Pilmer reference cred shattered here!Ian Plimer’s ‘Heaven + Earth’ — Checking the Claims <br />Ian G. Enting <br /><br />Version 2.0 <br /><br />ARC Centre of Excellence for <br />Mathematics and Statistics of Complex Systems <br /><br />The University of Melbourne <br /><br />Accessing this document <br /><br />The intention is that the most recent version of this document will be accessible from: <br /><br /><a href="http://www.complex.org.au/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=91 ">http://www.complex.org.au/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=91 </a><br /><br /><br />Overview <br /><br />Ian Plimer’s book, Heaven + Earth — Global Warming: The Missing Science, claims to demolish <br />the theory of human-induced global warming due to the release of CO2 <br />and other greenhouse <br />gases. Overall: <br /><br />• <br />it has numerous internal inconsistencies; <br />• <br />in spite of the extensive referencing, key data are unattributed and the content of references <br />is often mis-quoted. <br />Most importantly, Ian Plimer fails to establish his claim that the human influence on climate can <br />be ignored, relative to natural variations. <br /><br />Ian Plimer’s claim that the human influence on climate can be ignored, relative to natural <br />variations, seems to rest on three main strands of argument: <br /><br />a: the extent of natural variability is larger than considered in ‘mainstream’ analyses; <br />b: <br />changes in radiative forcing from greenhouse gases have less effect than determined in <br />‘mainstream’ analyses; <br />c: <br />the IPCC uses a range of misrepresentations to conceal points a and b. <br />Among the many errors made in attempting to establish these claims, are cases where Plimer: <br /><br />• <br />misrepresents the content of IPCC reports on at least 15 occasions as well as misrepresenting <br />the operation of the IPCC and the authorship of IPCC reports; <br />• <br />has at least 28 other instances of misrepresenting the content of cited sources; <br />• <br />has at least 2 graphs where checks show that the original is a plot of something other than <br />what Plimer claims and many others where data are misrepresented; <br />• <br />has at least 10 cases of misrepresenting data records in addition to some instances (included <br />in the total above) of misrepresenting data from cited source. <br />Details of these various types of flaw can be obtained via the relevant entries in the index. <br />A guide to how readers can independently check my claims is given on page 40. <br /><br />1 <br /><br /> <br />Breadth of Science <br /><br />In Plimer’s public appearances he has made the claim that climate scientists are ignoring geology. <br />This is untrue. Some of the geologists who are important in developing understanding of <br />climate and climate change have been: <br /><br />• <br />H¨ogbom – who worked with Arrhenius; <br />• <br />Eric Sundquist of the USGS (with Sarmiento, resolved carbon budget ambiguity); <br />• <br />the many geologists who have contributed to the paleo-climate studies that Plimer misrepresents; <br />• <br />Henry Pollack, a borehole specialist, who has published an excellent book, Uncertain <br />Science ... Uncertain World, (CUP), pointing out that uncertainty about climate is much <br />less than the uncertainty surrounding many other important decisions; <br />• <br />and of course the American Geophysical Union which covers the gamut of Earth sciences <br />– atmospheric, oceanic, solid earth, space sciences and most recently biogeochemistry — <br />has strongly endorsed the reality of human-induced global warming: <br />http://www.agu.org/outreach/science policy/positions/climate change2008.shtml <br />Point by point <br /><br />This list has been evolving, in part due to input from colleagues. The items are listed in order of <br />pages in Heaven + Earth and the page noted — the item numbering is changing as the document <br />is extended. An index for various topics is given, identifying both the item number and the page <br />in the present document. If you wish to quote items here, quote using the page number in <br />Heaven + Earth.1 Better still, don’t quote me at all — use this document as a guide to check it <br />out for yourself, even if you have to resort to buying the book. In cases where colleagues have <br />advised me of flaws in the book, this is acknowledged by noting initials after the particular item. <br />The acknowledgements section below identifies those involved. Material that is underlined is <br />presented as an exact quote from Heaven + Earth, except that Plimer’s footnote references have <br />only been retained when they are important for indicating misrepresentation of cited sources. <br />When I refer to ‘footnotes’ or ‘references’ this means Plimer’s footnotes not mine, unless I <br />explicitly indicate otherwise.2 <br /><br />1. In spite of Plimer being praised for the extensive referencing, many of the controversial <br />assertions have no supporting citation. These include: the claim that 102 studies found <br />that 78% found earlier periods, lasting at least 50 years, that were warmer than any period <br />in the 20th century [page 86]; frequent claims that the Medieval Warm Period was 2 to <br />3 degrees warmer than the present (for which some of the cited references do not even <br />address the Medieval period); and the repeated claim that the climate sensitivity is 0.5 C. <br />1Page numbers and reference numbers refer to the Australian edition. I have not (as of September 3, 2009) <br />been able to establish whether these also apply to American and UK editions. <br /><br />2There are no explicit references to my own footnotes in versions through to 2.0. <br /><br />2 <br /><br /> <br />2. In his efforts to down-play the extent of warming from CO2, and exaggerate the relative <br />role of water vapour, Plimer ends up implicitly attributing so much warming to water <br />vapour, that the planetary temperature in the absence of water vapour would be nearer <br />the temperatures of the outer planets. In some cases the numbers given by Plimer are <br />exaggerated to such an extent as to imply that without water vapour, Earth’s temperature <br />would be below absolute zero — a physical impossibility. The exaggerations fall into two <br />groups: those that relate to anthropogenic CO2 <br />and those that relate to total CO2. In each <br />case, inconsistency arises when the exaggeration in the relative proportions is combined <br />with values for absolute warming. <br />i: exaggerations concerning anthropogenic CO2: <br />The implications of the claim that CO2 <br />derived from human activity produces 0.1% of <br />global warming is analysed in item 90. <br />ii: exaggerations concerning total CO2: <br />The inconsistency in attributing 18 C of warming to total CO2 <br />[page 366] while stating <br />in the caption of figure 44: About 98% of the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere is due <br />to water vapour, is noted in item 60. <br />3. A large fraction of the graphics are given without any attribution of the sources of the <br />data. Figures 2, 22, 36, 41, 43, 45 are schematics, where a citation is not needed, unless <br />to acknowledge authorship by others (e.g. Figure 45 should be acknowledged as a minor <br />variant from Figure 1.2 in the IPCC TAR (WG1 report), or preferably by referring to the <br />Keihl and Trenberth reference cited therein). Figures 6, 7, 14, 17, 30, 32, 33, 35, 46, 47, <br />53 do include explicit citations while in figures 4, 19, 27, 28, 34, 38, 39, 40, 42, 48, 49, <br />51, 54 relevant data might be traceable by those with a reasonably good knowledge of <br />the relevant field (e.g. when there is a unique data set held in an established central data <br />repository). <br />Appropriate citations should be either for the graphic as a whole or for the data sets that <br />are plotted (or both). Cases where neither of these is done are figures 1, 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11 <br />(particularly for lower part), 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 31, 37, 42, <br />44, 50 and 52. Problems with axis labelling (wrong numbers, missing numbers, incorrect <br />labels) occur in figures 5 [item 16], 8 [item 17], 12 [item 30] and 14 [item 32]. (For <br />comparison, the comparable issues with graphics in An Inconvenient Truth are a totally <br />unquantified graph on page 89, no units on the plot on pages 78–79, and no temperature <br />scale for the lower line on pages 66–67.)3 <br /><br />4. In general the graphics are poorly linked to the text, with the text making no explicit <br />mention of the graphics in virtually all cases. Apart from the issues of lack of citations <br />and mislabelling of axes, noted in item 3, there are significant problems with the content <br />of many of the graphs. By figure number, these are: <br />1: Misrepresents the HadCRUT data set and uses fabricated data for 2008 — [see item <br />6]. <br />3: The data are distorted — [see item 13]. <br />5: Falsified time axis, thus giving no indication of the Younger Dryas, in contradiction <br />3Comments on An Inconvenient Truth refer to the book unless otherwise indicated. <br /><br />3 <br /><br /> <br />with text — [see item 16]. <br /><br />10: Lack of specifics makes the plot meaningless — [see item 18]. <br />11 (upper): ‘Hockey stick’ data have been distorted — [see item 26]. <br />11 (lower): values for 20th century have been distorted, end of MWP inconsistent with <br />abrupt end described in text — [see item 26]. <br /><br /><br />14: While a citation is given, comparison with the cited source shows that one of the <br />curves is not what Plimer claims it to be [see item 32]. <br />15: Time series truncated to shift relative degrees of correlation — [see item 34]. <br />29: The content is misrepresented — [see item 47]. <br />38, 39, 40: Plotted on different scales to support the assertion that different time-averaging <br />leads to different trends (an assertion that violates the basic laws of arithmetic) — [see <br />item 56]. <br />5. In analysing the details that follow, remember that Heaven + Earth is being promoted4 as <br />a scrupulous and scholarly analysis. <br />6. p. 11, figure 15: This graphic has several misrepresentations. The bold line purports to <br />be temperature data from the HadCRUT data set (see page 30 below). This is not true. <br />The HadCRUT data are closer to the lighter solid line which is labelled, UAH LT (adj to <br />Sfc).6 More seriously, at least for the HADCRU data7, the 2008 data that are shown are <br />fabrications. The HadCRUT data set shows 2008 as being only 0.081 C lower than 2007 <br />— [BB]. <br />7. p. 21: (referring to Ben Santer) The lead author then added references to his own work <br />which showed warming from 1943 to 1970.17 <br />However, when a full set of data from 1905 <br />to after 1970 was analysed by others, no warming was seen.18 <br />. Here Plimer is misunderstanding <br />the argument and misrepresenting both sides. <br />i: The argument is not about warming per se, but mainly about the stratosphere-troposphere <br />temperature difference as an indicator that the mechanism identified by Arrhenius is operative, <br />and the corresponding pattern of temperature change from aerosols; <br />ii: Reference 17 refers to the period 1963 to 1987, not 1943 to 1970 as claimed by Plimer. <br />This misrepresentation falsely implies that Santer et al were claiming warming at a time <br />of relative cooling. <br />iii: Reference 18 (by Michaels and Knappenberger) analyses the period 1958 to 1995, <br />not the period from 1905 onwards. The primary claim by Michaels and Knappenberger <br />was that Santer et al. were cherry-picking by choosing a start-date around the time of <br />cooling from the eruption of Mt. Agung. An additional criticism published following <br />reference 18 made similar comments suggested that the role of ozone depletion had been <br />neglected. Immediately following this was the response by Santer et al. noting that both <br />these comments used a questionable data set. <br />4Cover ‘blurb’ by Lord Lawson of Blaby, on paperback edition. <br />5Until version 2.0, this was incorrectly noted as figure 11. <br />6Presumably: University of Alabama Huntsville, Lower Troposphere (adjusted to surface). <br />7See page 30. <br /><br /><br />4 <br /><br /> <br />8. p. 21–22: Biased comparison of IPCC ‘balance of evidence’ vs a survey that found only <br />10% of scientists certain that global warming is a process that is underway. <br />9. p. 22: asserts that during the Medieval Warming, the global temperature was a few degrees <br />warmer than today. This claim is asserted in various forms at many places through Heaven <br />+ Earth, mostly without any justifying citation. Many examples of changes for various <br />regions are noted with citations, but there is no analysis of the overall results. The main <br />places where the claim for a large and widespread Medieval warming is backed with citations <br />are on page 63 [citing footnote 239] and page 490 [citing footnotes 2282 and 2283]. <br />As noted in item 20, reference 2398 shows only a single time series for temperature. Item <br />109 notes that reference 2282 makes no mention of the MWP and reference 2283 (the <br />first IPCC report) contains only a schematic with no temperature scale assigned. Similarly, <br />item 21 notes that reference 255, cited in support of 2 C cooling from MWP to LIA <br />only analyses the period 20,000 BP to 10,000 BP. <br />10. p. 22: Misrepresents IPCC treatment of Little Ice Age (LIA), Medieval Warm Period <br />(MWP). (See later — item 27). <br />11. p. 22: Referring to the ‘hockey stick’ in the 2001 IPCC WG1 report: It was highlighted <br />on the first page of the Summary for Policymakers and was shown another four times in <br />the 2001 Summary for Policymakers. Since there are only five figures in the 2001 WG1 <br />SPM, this would imply that all figures in the SPM include the ‘hockey stick’. This is quite <br />simply false. <br />12. p. 22: <br />The IPCC, without explanation, quietly withdrew the “hockey stick” from the <br />Summary for Policymakers in subsequent publications and had it buried in a scientific <br />chapter of the 2007 report. with the footnote 24 noting as one of the reconstructions <br />of past climate. The reconstructions, including that from Mann et al., are also in the <br />technical summary (figure TS.20) of the 2007 report — [DK]. <br />13. p. 25, figure 3: The graph has been distorted and misplotted. The line has the 1998 peak <br />in about the right place relative to the scale, but the 1940 peak (labelled as such) appears <br />in the 1950’s and the 1975 trough is plotted nearer to 1979. (The Brave New Climate web <br />site identifies this fabrication as coming from The Great Global Warming Swindle). <br />14. p. 25: There is no problem with global warming. It stopped in 1998. The last two years <br />of global cooling have erased nearly thirty years of temperature increase. The last 30 <br />years of temperature increase have not been erased. The HADCRU data set9 shows that <br />both 2007 and 2008 have annual temperatures higher than any year prior to 1997 in the <br />instrumental record. <br />15. p. 32: within a glacial period that has already lasted tens of millions of years, identified <br />in footnote 38 as Pleistocene glaciation, sometimes called the Quaternary glaciation — <br />implying a tens of millions of years duration for the ‘Pleistocene’ and ‘Quaternary’ that <br />might surprise Plimer’s geological colleagues. <br />8Version 1.6 incorrectly referred to reference 9 at this point. <br />9File hadcru3gl.txt, see description on page 30. <br /><br /><br />5 <br /><br /> <br />16. p. 33, figure 5: Caption reads: <br />The amount of temperature and temperature change .... <br />This is two different things, but only one line is plotted. In addition, this unattributed <br />graphic lacks any indication of the rapid cooling and warming associated with the beginning <br />and end of the Younger Dryas [c.f. pages 42–44 and figure 10)]. Since the graph <br />extends to the point labelled Today at 2000 on the time-scale, the description Time (years <br />ago) is incorrect. However,10 comparisons with other publications indicates that this is <br />rates of change from the GISP-2 ice core. However, in the ‘original’ graphic the time-<br />scale was non-linear (possibly linear in depth), and the linear time-scale has been imposed <br />by Plimer (with, as noted, the endpoint being inconsistent with the labelling). This is one <br />of the weirder cases of distorted graphics since Plimer’s falsification of the time axis acts <br />counter to his argument by removing the changes around the Younger Dryas. <br />17. p. 40, figure 8: lower part lacks numbers on horizontal axis. <br />18. p. 43, figure 10: <br />The plot of ice accumulation is meaningless without saying where. <br />Clearly, 0.2 metres/year for the last 10,000 years is not a global average. <br />19. p. 59: In the section on The Roman Warming Plimer states By 300 AD, the global climate <br />was far warmer than at present.217. Reference 217 is a 1977 book by H. H. Lamb which <br />says little about Roman times. The strongest statement seems to be on page 4 saying <br />that By late Roman times, particularly in the fourth century AD, it may well have been <br />warmer than now, with ‘now’ meaning the mid 1970s. <br />20. p. 63: In the Medieval warming, it was far warmer than the present and the warming was <br />widespread.239 <br />The citation for this (reference 239) is the book: The Little Ice Age. The <br />index identifies four references to the MWP. One is a passing reference, one refers to sea <br />level and one notes a subsequent cooling of 0.7 C to 1500. The most detailed discussion <br />is on page 376 which presents only one time series of temperature estimates — 1000 years <br />from central England. In addition, proxy series from Greenland and North America are <br />shown without any temperature calibration, and combined into a ‘North Atlantic index’ <br />again without any temperature scale assigned. <br />21. p. 66: <br />Boreholes give accurate temperature histories for about 1000 years into the past <br />because rock conducts past surface temperatures downward only slowly. In the Northern <br />Hemisphere, borehole data shows the Medieval Warming and a cooling of about 2 C from <br />the Medieval Warming to the Little Ice Age.255 <br />— comparison with reference 255, a paper <br />by Steig et al., reveals multiple misrepresentations by Plimer: <br />i: the paper refers to data from a core extracted from ice, not a hole drilled into rock; <br />ii: the ice core is from the southern hemisphere, not the northern hemisphere; <br />iii: the paper does not analyse the Medieval Warm Period. All data plots refer to the <br />period from 20,000 BP to 10,000 BP — there appears to be absolutely no discussion of <br />the Medieval period. <br />22. p. 66–67: <br />A study of 6000 bore holes on all continents has shown that temperature in <br />the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than today and that the temperature fell 0.2 to <br />10Clarification added in version 1.9. <br /><br />6 <br /><br /> <br />0.7 C during the Little Ice Age.256 <br />The cited reference (footnote 256) actually says that <br />temperature declined until about 200 years ago, reaching a minimum of about 0.2–0.7 K <br />below present-day. (i.e. the 0.2 to 0.7 K is the amount of offset from ‘present-day’, not <br />the amount of fall from the MWP). The words that Plimer completely ignores are in the <br />preceding passage, saying (relative to the period 1300–1600 BP): A warming followed, <br />yielding temperatures that averaged 0.1–0.5 K above present-day in the interval 500– <br />1000 years ago. The reference does not specify the time interval that represents ‘presentday’, <br />but this global-scale estimate clearly differs from Plimer’s repeated unsubstantiated <br />assertion that the MWP was 2 to 3 degree warmer than present. A later paper (by the <br />authors of reference 256) A late Quaternary climate reconstruction based on borehole <br />heat flux data, borehole temperatures data and the instrumental record. in Geophysical <br />Research Letters, 35, L13703 (2008) states As the authors of HPS97 we can be criticized <br />for not stating explicitly in HPS97 that the ‘present’ (the zero on the time axis) really <br />represents something like the end of the 19th century, rather than the end of the 20th <br />century. The range of reconstructions in the 2008 paper, show a peak warming between <br />500 and 800 years ago, whose peaks, relative to to 1961–1990 mean, range from about <br />-0.4 C to 0.3 C.11 <br /><br />23. p. 87: If it is acknowledged that there have been rapid large climate changes in the past, <br />then human production of CO2 <br />cannot be the major driver for climate change. This makes <br />the false assumption that there is an either/or choice between human and natural causes <br />that applies at all times and on all time-scales. <br />24. p. 87: In the IPCC Second Assessment Summary for Policy Makers in 1996, a diagram <br />showing the past 1000 years of Earth temperatures from tree rings, ice cores and thermometers <br />showed the Medieval Warm period, the Little Ice Age and the Late 20th Century <br />Warming. The SAR SPM does not include any diagrams. The temperature reconstruction <br />in the Technical Summary of the SAR only goes back to 1400. <br />25. p. 88: Essentially repeats (in a slightly less specific form) the earlier false claim (on page <br />22) that ‘hockey stick’ occurs a total of 5 times in the IPCC 2001 SPM, [see item 11] — <br />[DK]. <br />26. p. 89, figure 11:12 In the upper part, the ‘hockey stick’ curve has been displaced upward <br />relative to the version shown in the 2001 IPCC report, in spite of claiming to be the same <br />reference period and having the 1998 instrumental values the same. In the lower part of <br />figure 11, the depiction of the Medieval Warm Period is inconsistent with the claim on <br />page 128 that The Wolf minimum heralded the end of the Medieval Warming and the <br />beginning of the 600 year Little Ice Age. It took only 23 years to change from a warm <br />climate to a cool climate. In addition the 20th century temperature data have been falsified <br />by showing the 2000 temperature as almost exactly the same as the peak circa 1940 rather <br />then 0.6 C higher. <br />11The main issue here is that Plimer misrepresents reference 256, not that he failed to appreciate the significance <br /><br />of the upper 100 metres of data not being used. <br />12Prior to version 1.7, the page was incorrectly given as 99. <br /><br />7 <br /><br /> <br />27. p. 91: This makes a succession of claims about IPCC treatment of the Medieval Warm <br />Period (MWP) , Little Ice Age (LIA) and hockey stick: <br />i: the 1996 IPCC report showed the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age <br />ii: Mann’s “hockey stick” was used in the IPCC’s 2001 report and the Medieval Warm <br />Period and the Little Ice Age were expunged <br />iii: In the next IPCC report the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age mysteriously <br />re-appeared (i.e. the 2007 report). <br />In reality, the only reconstruction in the 1996 report appears to be the Bradley estimates <br />(figure 10 in the technical summary, reappearing with thermometer measurements superimposed <br />as figure 3.20, page 175 in WG1 SAR) which only went back to 1400 (i.e. <br />after Plimer’s definition of the end of the MWP). (Figure 3.21 shows proxies without any <br />temperature relation and with poor coherence around the time of the MWP). Thus the <br />MWP was not in the 1996 report to be ‘expunged’ in 2001. The ‘reappearance’ in 2007 <br />is to have multiple reconstructions, none of which show a MWP even 1 C warmer than <br />the second half of the twentieth century, let alone the 2 C that Plimer claims. The LIA <br />can be seen in all 3 reports, with most reconstructions suggesting about 0.5 C below mid <br />20th century levels. In the 2007 report, a small number of reconstructions suggest LIA <br />temperatures nearer to 1 C cooler and MWP a few tenths of a degree cooler. (Note that <br />all this refers to the northern hemisphere). <br /><br />28. p. 98: <br />The GISS director398 <br />claimed that nine of the ten warmest years in history have <br />occurred since 1995, . . . Since reference 398 is a paper published in 1999, the misrepresentation <br />is obvious. <br />29. p. 99: Following soon after the previous passage . . . NASA had to reverse its position . . . . <br />NASA now states that the top four years of high temperatures are from the 1930s (1934, <br />1931, 1938 and 1939). The warmest year was 1934. Shortly afterwards: Similarly the <br />UK’s Meteorological office has now confirmed a fall in global temperatures. . . . Nowhere <br />in this discussion of global temperatures is the acknowledgement that interpolation about <br />the high temperatures in the 1930s (the subject of the NASA revision to statements about <br />extremes) refers to the USA and not the whole world. The revision to the USA data <br />changes the global numbers by a few thousandths of a degree. 13 — [also in TL list]. <br />30. p. 110, figure 12: The lower plot on this figure has a label referring to late twentieth <br />century warming, with a time line in ‘years before present’. However the line ends at <br />about 60 years ago. Maybe Plimer is anticipating the book being in print, without revision <br />in 2060! However the real howler in this plot is that the temperature increase is shown <br />as about 40 C. In addition, the relation between upper (10000 years of C-14) and lower <br />(1100 years of temperature) parts of the figure is unclear. <br />31. p. 121: the sun rotates around the centre of gravity of the solar system about every 11.1 <br />years. Plimer is confusing rotation (about once every 25 days) with orbital motion around <br />the center of gravity. According to Einstein’s principle of general relativity, such orbital <br />13The transcript of the Lateline interview where Ian Plimer tries to evade this issue, can be found on: <br />http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2008/s2554129.htm <br /><br />8 <br /><br /> <br />motion can have no detectable effect. There can be tidal effects, but these will have a <br />frequency given by the difference: 1=25 <br />- <br />1=(365 <br />× <br />11:1) <br />per day, i.e. not much less than <br />once every 25 days. <br /><br />32. p. 126, figure 14: A correlation of cycles over less than 2 cycles is of no significance. <br />Many proposed correlations between climatic variations and sunspot cycles have failed <br />as additional data became available (A.B. Pittock, formerly of CSIRO: personal communication <br />based on published work and work in progress). Note that the curves are <br />labelled ‘sunspot numbers’ and ‘Grain price’ while the vertical axes are labelled ‘number <br />of sunspots’ (meaningless unless the time interval specified) and ‘W/m2’ — a novel unit <br />for grain prices. However, Tim Lambert’s comparison with the original source [figure <br />7.41 in reference 550] reveals a more complicated degree of falsification: <br />i: The curve reproduced as Sunspot numbers is ‘solar insolation’ (Sonneneinstrahlung in <br />the reference 550) and is quantified on the right-hand axis which has the same numerical <br />values as in Heaven + Earth in W/m2 <br />. <br />ii: In the original, the left hand axis is prices, Getreidepreise (Mariengroshchen pro <br />100 kg), with the range 100 to 200, i.e. the numbers that Plimer relabels as Number <br />of sunspots. <br />33. p. 131, figure 15: This has multiple problems: <br />i: unidentified source and data; <br />ii: selective data use; <br />iii: Incorrect description in caption [item 34]; <br />iv: highly smoothed CO2 <br />record added for comparisons; <br />v: erroneous statement about correlations. <br />34. p. 131, figure 15 (caption): Plot of the last 140 years . . . no it isn’t. The plots, starting <br />at 1860 end a little after 1980 (although the time axis extends beyond 2000). Truncating <br />the plots in this way serves to reduce the correlation between temperature and CO2 <br />and <br />enhance the correlation between temperature and sunspot cycle length. <br />35. p. 132: <br />Greenhouse gases act only as amplifiers. In using the word only, Plimer fails <br />to explain how greenhouse gases can have a (amplifying) warming effect when the gas <br />increase is due to other climate change (as in the mainstream interpretation of glacial-<br />interglacial cycles) and yet not have a warming effect when the gas increases are due to <br />human inputs. <br />36. p. 133: States: Ice cores from Greenland show the temperature was warmer at 1000 AD. <br />while the cited reference (footnote 595) indicates that the data are not from the ice core <br />(i.e. the ice extracted from the drill-hole), but are from measurements of temperatures in <br />the hole — [contributed suggestion]. <br />37. p. 148: Earth has less carbon and water than other planets, asteroids and comets A very <br />strange statement, particularly for Mercury, Mars and the asteroids — [DK]. <br />38. p. 195: On the global scale satellite measurements of vegetation between 1982 and 1999 <br />showed that plant growth increased by 6% in response to slightly increased rainfall and <br />9 <br /><br /><br /> <br />slightly increased temperature, but the major change was due to slightly increased CO2. <br />There is no reference directly associated with this passage but the preceding passage cites <br />the paper Climate-driven increases in global terrestrial net primary production from 1982 <br />to 1999 [footnote 936] by Nemani et al. (2003). This paper did not provide any specific <br />satellite-derived estimate of the effect of CO2. <br /><br />39. p. 198: In fact the sea-ice has expanded and high winds during an Arctic storm killed four <br />polar bears .. Indeed saying sea-ice has expanded may well be true if one writes during the <br />northern winter. The end-date of the record shown as the lower curve in Figure 29, suggests <br />such ‘cherry-picking’. However, the purported Arctic data are a misrepresentation <br />of the source. The curve is a global anomaly — see item 47. <br />40. p. 217: Mt Pinatubo . . . released 20 millions tonnes of sulphur dioxide .... and very large <br />quantities of chlorofluorocarbons. . . . The reference cited for this [footnote 1075] makes <br />no such claims and is not reporting observations of anything. It is about a modelling study <br />that compares the chemical effects of Pinatubo emissions to the effect of chlorofluorocarbons <br />— [also in TL list]. <br />41. p. 219: <br />An almost entirely eruption-free period from 1912 to 1963 coincided with an <br />average global warming of 0.5 C. It is quite possible that the atmosphere warmed due <br />to the lack of a normal quote of volcanic aerosols. Precisely. This statement completely <br />undermines Plimer’s arguments that CO2 <br />can’t be causing later warming because there <br />was too little CO2 <br />increase at the time of early 20th century warming. <br />42. p. 229: In about 9000 years time, perihelion will occur in the Northern hemisphere and <br />aphelion will occurs in the Southern hemisphere, the reverse of today. This is absurd. <br />Perihelion and aphelion are points on the Earth’s orbit and do not occur in a specific <br />hemisphere. <br />43. p. 230: claims that climate models don’t do seasonal variation of insolation, i.e. neglect <br />the ellipticity of the Earth’s orbit. The mean figure of 1367 watts per square metre is <br />used in climate models, thereby omitting the effects of orbit on the change in solar input. <br />This is untrue (personal communication from CSIRO climate modellers). An older, but <br />verifiable and more accessible reference is CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research <br />Technical Paper no. 26, available on-line from the CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research <br />website. Numerous studies have been done with climate models using different <br />values of ellipticity (and different orientations of the Earth’s axis) in order to study other <br />stages of the Milancovi´<br /><br />c cycle. Such studies would be impossible of the shape of the <br />earth’s orbit is ignored. <br /><br />44. p. 237: There is neither a significant loss nor a gain to polar ice, alpine valley glaciers, and <br />sea ice. One of many unsupported claims in introductory sections, which the subsequent <br />detailed discussion justifies on the basis of flawed assertions. See item 46 regarding cited <br />reference on alpine glaciers. — [DK]. <br />45. p. 277: <br />The initial analysis of the Vostok ice core used samples spaced at intervals of <br />hundreds of years. The initial conclusions were that high CO2 <br />in the atmosphere led to <br />10 <br /><br /><br /> <br />high temperatures. This is untrue. The initial conclusions over 20 years ago were that <br />the cycles were initiated by orbital changes with changes in CO2 <br />having a consequent <br />amplifying role. In the relevant paper, the abstract (quoted in full in the discussion below <br />on the Vostok core, see page 33) says CO2 <br />changes have had an important climatic role <br />.... in amplifying the relatively weak orbital forcing. <br /><br />46. p. 281: <br />The good news is that alpine valley glaciers are not retreating. Measurements <br />of retreats and advances from glaciers in the period 1946–1995 for 246 glaciers show <br />that there is no sign of any recent global trend towards increased glacier melting.1441 <br />The <br />first sentence does not follow from the first: reference 1441 does find that glaciers are <br />retreating, but fails to find evidence of an increased rate of retreat — [TL]. <br />47. p. 287, figure 29: A graph that claims to be area of global sea ice with total area of <br />Antarctic sea ice (upper curve) and Arctic sea ice variations (lower graph) shows negative <br />values for the arctic. In reality, the curve seems to be taken from the site: <br />http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg <br />This identifies the lower curve as daily global sea ice anomaly and not Arctic sea ice <br />variations (lower graph). <br /><br />48. p. 297 (also on p. 294): <br />El Ni˜no events are not factored into models of future climate. <br />This is untrue. In the WG1 AR4 report, figure 8.13 shows the performance of a range <br />of the climate models in simulating the statistical characteristics of El Ni˜no. Since the <br />El Ni˜no is recognised as part of the chaotic behaviour of the climate system (in spite of <br />Plimer’s claim, item 97, that the IPCC denies this) the sequence of individual El Ni˜<br />no <br />events is unpredictable and the relevant test is of the intensity and frequency distribution <br /><br />— [DK]. <br />49. p. 303: In the three years before the flooding associated with hurricane Katrina devastated <br />New Orleans in August 2005, the city and surrounding area had undergone rapid subsidence <br />of about one metre. There is no reference associated with this claim. However, when <br />the claim is repeated on page 409 a reference is cited, but the subsidence reported in that <br />reference represents an average of 16:8 <br />± <br />7:5 <br />mm over the three years — see item 73. <br />50. p. 312: <br />Al Gore’s Oscar winning movie predicted that sea level would increase by 6 <br />metres in the near future Gore does not put a date on when a 20 foot rise would happen <br />(nor specify what circumstances). In my view this is one of the serious omissions in <br />Gore’s book. My recollection is that a similar view of this omission was taken by the <br />judge in the UK court case over Gore’s film and book. <br />51. p. 324, caption of figure 34: <br />These bottom waters are undersaturated in CO2 <br />hence can <br />dissolve the monstrous amounts of CO2 <br />emitted by submarine volcanoes. This fails to account <br />for what happens when this water is upwelled to the surface, become oversaturated <br />due to the lower pressure. <br />52. p. 325:14 The sentence An upper limit on how much CO2 <br />concentration in the atmosphere <br />will rise if all the available fossil fuel is burned can be calculated. Is followed immediately <br />14In versions prior to 1.6, this issue was incorrectly noted as being on page 235. <br /><br />11 <br /><br /> <br />by In order to permanently double the current level of CO2 <br />in the atmosphere and keep <br />the oceans and atmosphere balanced, the atmosphere needs to be supplied with 51 times <br />the present amount of atmospheric CO2. The shift in the argument is the inclusion of <br />the word permanently, making the comparison misleading. Indeed without specifying <br />the time-scales, the comparison is meaningless. On the time-scales of tens of millions of <br />years, the geological evidence suggests that the factor of 51 is too small. On timescales <br />of millennia, geological analysis suggests that the factor is in the range 5 to 10. On <br />the century timescale, the factor is closer to 2. A good conceptual analysis of these <br />issues is given by Eric Sundquist of the US Geological Survey in his chapter Geological <br />perspectives on carbon dioxide and the carbon cycle [Plimer’s footnote 2117]. <br /><br />53. p. 325: <br />If humans burned all the available fossil fuels over the next 300 years there <br />would be 15 turnovers of CO2 <br />between oceans and atmosphere and all the additional <br />CO2 <br />would be consumed by ocean life and precipitated as calcium carbonate in sea-floor <br />sediments.1682 <br />Reference 1682 is a one-page comment from 1990, discussing uncertainties <br />in climate sensitivity, projected emission rates and satellite-derived temperature data. <br />It mentions neither CO2 <br />turnover, nor sediments. <br />54. p. 332: Claims: If any more CO2 <br />were added to the oceans then calcium carbonate would <br />precipitate.1738 <br />Reference 1738 is about carbon budgets and its analysis of sediments is <br />about the possibilities of sediments dissolving, not new sediment forming. The relevant <br />chemical reaction is: <br />H2CO3 <br />+ CO=<br />3 <br />3<br /><br />. <br />2HCO- <br />so that increasing CO2 <br />(and thus H2CO3) tends to shift the balance to increasing 2HCO- <br />3 <br />by removing CO=<br />3 <br />and so making carbonate sediments more soluble. (The conclusion <br />in reference 1738 was that this was not an immediate threat over significant areas of the <br />ocean floor.) <br />55. p. 338: There is no such thing as a “tipping point” (or even a “precautionary principle”) <br />in science. The precautionary principle is proposed for the conduct of human affairs. <br />No-one seriously proposes it as a scientific principle. (If it was a scientific principle <br />there would be no need to argue for its use — it would just happen). There is such a <br />thing as a “tipping” point in science, but the more technical name is “catastrophe”. An <br />accessible account is given in the book Catastrophe Theory by V. I. Arnold (Springer-<br />Verlag, 1984, 1986). Since not all things that are catastrophes in the mathematical sense <br />are catastrophic in the human sense, the use of a less ambiguous term such as “tipping <br />point” seems desirable for public communication. <br />56. p. 346–347, figures 38, 39, 40: <br />Annual averages show sea surface temperature rises <br />whereas monthly averages do not. and in the caption of figure 40: The three diagrams <br />show that the data can easily be manipulated to create a desired outcome. Actually no. <br />In particular the linear trend will be almost the same in each case, with small differences <br />coming from a few months at the end. Fitting a trend to monthly, 5-monthly or <br />12-monthly averages involves (apart from the ends and some rounding of times) the same <br />sums over the same months, whether or not one deals with averages. Using 5-month averages <br />just means that each month gets added in 5 times (and divided by 5). From the <br />12 <br /><br /><br /> <br />basic laws of arithmetic, the sum of a set of numbers does not depend on the order in <br />which they are added. So why do the graphs seem to have different trends: because they <br />are plotted on different scales. Each actually shows about 0.7 C increase over the 40-odd <br />years. This same scam was used by Michael Crichton in State of Fear comparing US and <br />global data — see section 3.2 of Twisted. <br /><br />57. p. 350: The El Ni˜no most commonlyoccurs inlate December, lasts for a month or so ... <br />compared to p. 352 El Ni˜no lasts for 1 to 2 years. <br /><br />58. p. 365: Clouds are not factored into climate models. Untrue. See for example sections 12 <br />and 13 of CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research Technical Paper no. 26, available online <br />from the CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research website. Also many textbooks. <br />59. p. 366: assertion of the 0.5 C climate sensitivity with no citation and contradicting other <br />values given by Plimer [items 93, 112] — [TL]. <br />60. p. 366: <br />The Earth has an average surface temperature of about 15 C, followed a few <br />sentences later by If the atmosphere had no CO2 <br />far more heat would be lost and the <br />average surface temperature would be about –3 C. The implication of attributing 18 C of <br />warming to CO2 <br />while saying [caption of Figure 44] About 98% of the greenhouse effect <br />in the atmosphere is due to water vapour is to imply that in the absence of CO2 <br />and H2O, <br />the temperature would be 900 C lower, i.e. well below the physical limit of absolute zero. <br />61. p. <br />367: However, Arrhenius was not aware of the carbon cycle . . . . Arrhenius’ 1896 <br />paper explicitly includes geological aspects of the ocean carbon cycle, drawing on the <br />work of geologist Arvid H¨<br />ogbom, going to the extent of providing a summary translation <br />of some of H¨ogbom’s work at the end of his own paper. <br /><br />62. p. 370, figure 44: As noted in item 60, the exaggerated proportion of warming attributed <br />to water vapour in the graphic and caption, implies that water vapour is warming the <br />planet from a temperature below absolute zero — [also in TL list]. <br />63. p. 371: assertion of the 0.5 C climate sensitivity with no citation and contradicting other <br />values given by Plimer [items 93, 112] — [TL]. <br />64. p. 374: <br />Once there is 400 ppm of CO2 <br />in the atmosphere, the doubling or tripling of <br />CO2 <br />content has little effect on atmospheric temperature because CO2 <br />has adsorbed all <br />the infra-red it can adsorb. The term ‘adsorb’ is defined (Macquarie Dictionary) as “ to <br />gather a gas, liquid or dissolved substance) on the surface of a condensed layer . . . ”, c.f. <br />‘absorb’ for which the same dictionary’s definitions include: 5. to take or receive in by <br />chemical or molecular action while Chambers Twentieth Century dictionary’s definition <br />of ‘absorb’ includes: “to suck in, to swallow up, ... to take up and transform (energy) <br />instead or transmitting or reflecting”. An consistent failure [see item 83] to distinguish <br />between ‘adsorb’ and ‘absorb’ does not inspire confidence. <br />13 <br /><br /> <br />65. p. 375, figure 50:15 As with many of the graphics, this is poorly described with no attribution <br />of the numbers (see item 3). However above 100 ppm the values seem to be inversely <br />proportional to concentration as expected for incremental change when temperature has a <br />logarithmic dependence on concentration (which Plimer acknowledges on p. 338). Thus <br />a better label for the vertical axis would be ‘incremental warming’. This means that <br />the claim in the caption once the atmosphere is at its present 385 ppm, a doubling or <br />quadrupling will have very little effect on the atmospheric temperature is untrue. (Note <br />also similar statement on previous page — item 64). Each doubling will have the same <br />effect on temperature until concentrations get so high that the logarithmic relation breaks <br />down. The trend in Figure 50 shows no sign of this happening around 400 ppm. The <br />bars would imply that the increments correspond to each additional 20 ppm of CO2. This <br />would imply a climate sensitivity of 0.35 C. While the origin of the numbers is not given, <br />the discussion on page 30 below notes that they can be explained by using 0.5 C for the <br />climate sensitivity (the lowest of Plimer’s other values) and then having a factor of 1.44 <br />error through neglecting to consider the change of base of logarithms. <br />66. p. 379: <br />In fact, satellites and radiosondes show that there is no global warming.1910 <br />. <br />Reference 1910 is a 2007 overview by Charles F. Keller which updates his 2003 report <br />(CFK03). The words in reference 1910 are: The big news since CFK03 is the first of <br />these, the collapse of the climate critics’ last real bastion, namely that satellites and radiosondes <br />show no significant warming in the past quarter century. Reference 1910 describes <br />the issues with the satellite and sonde data that gave the incorrect appearance of <br />no trend. <br />67. p. 382: In fact, satellites and radiosondes show that there is no global warming.1918 <br />Reference <br />1918 is the same reference as 1910 and so the comments in item 66 apply equally <br />here — [TL]. <br />68. p. 398: <br />attempts to use only stalagmite ring widths to ascertain climate variation shows <br />that there is no relationship between stalagmite ring width and tree rings in the same <br />area.1990 <br />when in fact reference 1990 makes no mention of tree rings — [email contribution]. <br />69. p. 401: Ice cores also record human activity. ... The increase in CO2 <br />2001 <br />and methane2002 <br />is also recorded. Reference 2001 refers to measurement of samples from the atmosphere, <br />not from bubbles in an ice core. <br />70. p. 402: There was no “tipping point” and the temperature-CO2 <br />plots clearly showed that <br />the rise in temperature was stopped by something other than CO2. 2007 <br />— comparison with <br />reference 2007, a paper by Wunsch, reveals that the paper does not discuss any aspect of <br />CO2. <br />71. p. 402: New high resolution studies over the last 450,000 years of Vostok core show that <br />at all times of cold to warm transitions, temperature rise is followed by a rise in CO2 <br />some <br />800 years later.2009 <br />Reference 2009 only analyses a period between 230,000 and 255,000 <br />15Prior to version 1.4, this was incorrectly noted as fig 5. <br /><br />14 <br /><br /> <br />years ago (spanning ‘Termination III’), thus does not analyse the last 450,000 years and <br />so does not justify claims about all times of cold to warm transitions. <br /><br />72. p. 407: <br />Actual measurements for 2007 show that it was one of the coldest years this <br />century and the coldest since 1995. Compare to figure 1 on page 11 of Heaven + Earth. <br />The claim ‘coldest since 1995’ is clearly untrue. Calling it ‘one of the coldest this century’ <br />(i.e. not even the coldest) is fairly insignificant with only 8 or 9 years (depending on <br />whether you regard the century as beginning on 1/1/2000 or 1/1/2001). <br />73. p. 409: <br />New Orleans sunk rapidly by about 1 metre in the three years before Katrina <br />struck. This time (unlike page 303, item 49) a reference is cited: by Dixon and others Nature, <br />441, 587–588 (2006) from radar satellite altimetry. They report a three-year average <br />of ..5:6 <br />± <br />2:5 <br />mm/year, with a maximum of ..29 <br />mm/year (negative values indicating <br />subsidence). They note that if the motion is interpreted as purely vertical, the mean and <br />maximum subsidence become 6.4 mm/year and 33 mm/year. <br />74. p. 411: <br />Carbon dioxide is a colourless odourless non-poisonous gas. If taken literally, <br />this is dangerously misleading. Some of the relevant toxicity data from Chemwatch #1003 <br />(1999)16 are: <br />7% to 10%: unconsciousness within minutes; <br />5% fatal dose for inhalation; <br />2% adverse pulmonary effects; <br />and various adverse effects from continuous exposure at lower concentrations around 1%. <br />75. p. 412: Plimer notes that limestone contains 65,000,000 billions tonnes of carbon (65,000,000 <br />GtC) forgetting that his own figure of 200 GtC per year in CO2 <br />from volcanoes would imply <br />that limestone sediments are, on average, being turned over every 325,000 years. <br />• <br />The 200 GtC/year figure is from A sceptical look at greenhouse, by Ian Plimer in <br />The Skeptic17, vol. 13, pp 11-17, 1994. <br />• <br />In Heaven + Earth, Plimer seems to evade the issue of giving an estimate of volcanic <br />CO2 <br />emissions, but on p. 413 says Volcanoes produce more CO2 <br />then the world’s <br />cars and industries combined — [DK, TL]. and <br />• <br />Volcanoes add far more CO2 <br />to the oceans and atmosphere than humans (p. 328) — <br />[DK]. and <br />• <br />p. 472: massive volcanic eruptions (e.g. Pinatubo) emit the equivalent of a years’ <br />human CO2 <br />emissions in a few days. No citation is given. Actual data shows that <br />the CO2 <br />growth rate declined after the Pinatubo eruption — [TL]. <br />76. p. 413: <br />Animals produce 25 times as much CO2 <br />as cars and industry. Irrelevant and <br />untrue. A common irrelevant argument used by doubt-spreaders. Animal CO2 <br />production <br />doesn’t affect climate because it is putting back carbon taken out of the atmosphere by <br />plants. However 25 by 7 GtC/year is exaggerated. Even if no plant material decayed <br />16The summary is for illustrative purposes. Health and Safety issues should be addressed by reference to the <br />full chemical data sheets. <br />17Publication of the Australian Sceptics Society. <br /><br />15 <br /><br /> <br />directly to CO2, or decomposed by bacteria or burnt by wild-fire, Plimer’s figures would <br />have animals chomping through plant material at about 2 or 3 times the rate (the Global <br />Net Primary Production of 50 to 100 GtC per year) at which plants remove the carbon <br />from the atmosphere — thus eating all the world’s biomass in a few decades. <br /><br />77. p. 415: The C14 <br />proportion of total carbon in the atmosphere is decreasing, suggesting that <br />there is an increased biological contribution of CO2 <br />to the atmosphere. The proportion of <br />atmospheric 14C is decreasing because atmospheric CO2, with 14C from nuclear testing is <br />being taken up into the oceans and replaced by (old) CO2 <br />upwelled from the deep oceans <br />and so uninfluenced by the nuclear testing. Note that this interpretation of the 14C data <br />lies behind some of the estimates of air-sea gas exchange that Plimer mis-interprets as <br />estimates of ‘CO2 <br />lifetime’. <br />78. p. 417: ..the observatory was evacuated for a few months and there was a gap in the data <br />record which represented a period of no measurements. There are now no gaps in the <br />Mauna Loa data set. To refer to the Mauna Loa (CO2) data set, is misleading since there <br />are three main records: The Scripps in-situ IRGA measurements established by C. D. <br />Keeling; the NOAA in-situ IRGA measurements and the NOAA flask program which is <br />part of a global network for which flasks of air are shipped back to the central NOAA <br />laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. The main archive/access location for CO2 <br />data is the <br />Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Center (CDIAC), in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. <br />Other programs such as CSIRO also produce records from Mauna Loa as part of the ongoing <br />validation activity. The graphic at: <br />http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/graphics/Mauna Loa CO2.jpg shows extensive gaps in <br />the early part of the Scripps record. <br />79. p. 417: <br />The annual mean CO2 <br />atmospheric content reported at Mauna Loa for 1959 <br />was 315.93 ppmv. This was 15 ppmv lower than the 1959 measurements for measuring <br />stations in northwestern Europe. Measured CO2 <br />at Mauna Loa increased steadily to <br />351.45 ppmv in early in 1989. The 1989 value is the same as the European measurements <br />35 years earlier by the Pettenkofer method.... Plimer’s references for the European program <br />are two papers by Bischof in 1960 and 1962 [footnotes 2094 and 2095 respectively]. <br />The 1960 paper quotes annual means of — 1955: 326 ppm; 1956: 321 ppm; 1957: 323 <br />ppm; 1958: 315 ppm; 1959: 331 ppm. For such a short passage, Plimer is showing a <br />remarkably high number of errors: <br />i: 1959 to 1989 is 30 years, not 35 years; <br />ii: 15 ppm above 315.9 ppm is 330.9 ppm, close to the annual mean reported for Mauna <br />Loa for 1975, not 1989. <br />iii: during 1959 the Swedish group switched to the more precise Infra-Red Gas Analyser <br />(IRGA) with precision determined as 1 <br />ppm, while they found the precision of the <br />chemical method to be 3 <br />ppm — thus the 1959 data were not all from the chemical <br />method; <br />iv: the whole comparison is biased by comparing a high altitude site with surface data. <br />The relevant comparison is with the data reported by Bischof (1962), sampling air during <br />aircraft flights. The values for air from above about 1km are from 308 ppm to 320 ppm <br />with a mean of 314 ppm, very close to the 315 ppm at Mauna Loa. <br />16 <br /><br /> <br />80. p. 417–8: Furthermore, the measurement at Mauna Loa is by infra-red analysis and some <br />of the ice core measurements of CO2 <br />in trapped air were by gas chromatography. Exactly. <br />There are two techniques, IRGA and GC, with good precision and which agree with each <br />other, and a third (chemical) technique with inherently lower precision which requires <br />great experimental skill to achieve accuracy. <br />81. p. 418: land-derived air blowing across the sea loses about 10 ppm of its CO2 <br />as the CO2 <br />dissolves in the oceans. High-CO2 <br />air from over land often has the concentration drop <br />due to vertical mixing. A more realistic estimate of how much drop can be caused by the <br />oceans (over large areas) is obtained by comparing measurements of CO2 <br />at Cape Grim <br />Tasmania which, when measured in air coming off the ocean averaged about 1 ppm lower <br />than air measured by CSIRO on flights over Bass Strait. <br />82. p. 419: <br />The lowest figure measured since 1812, the 270 ppm figure, is taken as the <br />pre-industrialisation yardstick. The IPCC want it both ways. They are prepared to use the <br />lowest determination by the Pettenkofer method as a yardstick yet do not acknowledge <br />Pettenkofer method measurements showing CO2 <br />concentrations far higher than now many <br />times since 1812. The IPCC does not use 270 ppm as the pre-industrial CO2 <br />concentration. <br />The value used is 280 ppm. In the various WG1 reports, see SPM table 1 in 1990, <br />technical summary (TS) table 1 in SAR, TS table 1 in TAR, and page 2 in SPM of AR4. <br />This number is based in measurements of air in ice bubbles (mainly using IR techniques) <br />and excluding anomalously low values from the time of the Little Ice Age. For ice cores, <br />the volume of air available is too small to use the less precise chemical (Pettenkofer) <br />method. <br />83. p. 421: <br />CO2 <br />molecules will be removed fast from the atmosphere to be adsorbed in <br />another reservoir — inability to distinguish ‘adsorbed’ from ‘absorbed’ yet again — see <br />item 64. <br />84. p. 421: For CO2, The IPCC asserts that the lifetime is 50–200 years. The IPCC has been <br />criticised because the lifetime is not defined. In reality the IPCC (1990) says in the SPM <br />The way in which CO2 <br />is absorbed by the oceans and biosphere is not simple and a single <br />number cannot be given and in the footnote to table 1: The “lifetime” of CO2 <br />is given <br />in the table is a rough indication of the time it would take CO2 <br />concentrations to adjust <br />to changes in emissions. (see section 1.2.1 for further details), with section 1.2.1 stating <br />The turnover time of CO2 <br />in the atmosphere, measured as the ratio of content to the fluxes <br />through it is about 4 years. ... This short time scale must not be confused with the time <br />it takes for the atmospheric CO2 <br />level to adjust to a new equilibrium of sources or sinks <br />change. <br />85. p. 422: Calculations of the lifetime of atmospheric CO2 <br />based on natural C14 <br />give lifetime <br />values of 3 to 25 years (18 separate studies), dilution of the atmosphere from fossil fuel <br />burning a lifetime of 2 to 7 years (two separate studies), atomic bomb C14 <br />lifetime value <br />of 2 to more than 10 years (12 separate studies) . . . . This is referenced by footnote 2117 <br />at the beginning and footnote 2118 after additional cases not quoted above. This makes <br />it difficult to identify which citation applies to which group of claims. In the case of reference <br />2117 (Eric Sundquist’s article Geological perspectives on carbon dioxide and the <br />17 <br /><br /><br /> <br />carbon cycle, noted above in connection with item 52), the misrepresentation is particularly <br />clear. Sundquist describes carbon balance and the decay of perturbations in terms of <br />competition between the flux to and from the atmosphere. In these terms his estimates are <br />of the one-way fluxes, i.e. Plimer is omitting half of Sundquist’s calculation, thus turning <br />approximate balance into a claim of rapid net loss of CO2 <br />from the atmosphere. <br /><br />86. p. 422: There is considerable difference in the atmospheric CO2 <br />lifetime between the 37 <br />independent measurements and calculations using six different methods and the IPCC <br />computer model. This discrepancy has not been explained by the IPCC. As noted in <br />item 84, Plimer is misrepresenting estimates of turnover time as being estimates of a <br />characteristic lifetime for CO2 <br />perturbations. The difference has been explained in IPCC <br />reports — see in particular section 2.1.4 of the WG1 Second Assessment Report. (Of <br />course, in criticising the IPCC computer model, Plimer is referring to something that <br />doesn’t actually exist). <br />87. p. 422: <br />If the CO2 <br />atmospheric lifetime were 5 years, then the amount of the total <br />atmospheric CO2 <br />derived from fossil fuel burning would be 1.2% not the 21% assumed <br />by the IPCC. This would appear to conflict with Oceans, soils and plants already absorb <br />at least half the human CO2 <br />emissions on page 472. In fact both statements are roughly <br />true — the conclusion that resolves this apparent conflict is that a 5-year ‘atmospheric <br />lifetime’ does not characterise atmospheric CO2. <br />88. p. 422: In order to make the measurements of the atmospheric CO2 <br />lifetime agree with the <br />IPCC assumption, it would be necessary to mix all the CO2 <br />derived from the world’s fossil <br />burning with a different CO2 <br />reservoir that was five times larger than the atmosphere.2123 <br />— Reference 2123 (which is also reference 1738) does not support such a claim. It gives <br />an outline of the atmosphere-ocean-biosphere carbon dynamics which is quantitatively <br />similar to current mainstream understanding, even though this 1979 analysis pre-dates <br />both the IPCC (and its alleged ‘assumptions’) and the availability of CO2 <br />concentrations <br />from ice cores. Indeed, the ability to understand the carbon cycle using radiocarbon <br />data, without reference to CO2 <br />concentrations from ice-cores, seriously undermines the <br />significance of attacks on the ice-core data. As a measure of the accuracy, endnote 13 <br />of reference 2123 estimates that human activity had increased CO2 <br />by 35 ppm. Ice-core <br />data would indicate that the increase to that time was nearer to 45 ppm. This is about a <br />30% error, not the factor of 5 or more claimed by Plimer. <br />89. p. 425: The IPCC 2007 report stated that the CO2 <br />radiative forcing had increased by 20% <br />in the last 10 years. Radiative forcing puts a number on increases in radiative energy <br />in the atmosphere and hence the temperature. In 1995, there was 360 ppmv of CO2 <br />whereas in 2005 it was 378 ppmv, some 5% higher. However each additional molecule <br />of CO2 <br />in the atmosphere causes smaller radiative forcing than its predecessor and the <br />real increase in radiative forcing was 1%. The IPCC have exaggerated the effect of CO2 <br />20-fold. As Plimer notes, radiative forcing is about increases. The IPCC (see AR4 <br />WG1 glossary) defines radiative forcing as the change relative to the year 1750. This is <br />also noted in footnote 2 of the SPM when the concept of radiative forcing is introduced. <br />Using the logarithmic formula to account for the diminishing effect of additional CO2, <br />18 <br /><br /><br /> <br />=log(378/280)/log(360/280) <br />in a spreadsheet, gives a 1.194 multiplier from 1995 to <br />2005, i.e. a 19.4% increase. This does not depend on the value of the climate sensitivity. <br />The same result is obtained with any of Plimer’s 3 values (0.35 C from figure 50, the <br />0.5 C that he asserts without citation, or the 1.5 C to 1.6 C from the long-term historical <br />data that he cites, e.g. item 93). (A value of 20% is obtained if the 1750 concentration is <br />taken as 282 ppm.) — [also in TL list]. <br /><br />90. p. 425: IPCC does not acknowledge that CO2 <br />derived from human activity produces 0.1% <br />of global warming.18 Using Plimer’s preferred (but unrealistically low) climate sensitivity <br />of 0.5 C, typing =1.44*0.5*LN(385/280)*1000 <br />into a spreadsheet gives a warming of <br />229 C, implying that without human and natural greenhouse gases, the temperature of the <br />earth would be like that of the outer planets. Using the empirical (but still unrealistically <br />low) estimate of 1.5 C quoted by Plimer on page 426 would imply that without human <br />and natural greenhouse gases, the temperature of the Earth would be below the physical <br />limit of absolute zero. <br />91. p. 425: <br />During times of ice ages such as 140,000 years ago, the CO2 <br />content of the <br />atmosphere was higher than the pre-industrial revolution figure of 270 ppmv.2134 <br />This is <br />‘cherry-picking’ from two different estimates of the Vostok dating. According to reference<br /> 2134 (published in 1990), 140,000 years ago, the CO2 <br />concentration was around <br />270 ppm, but the world was no longer in an ice age. According to more recent dating19, <br />140,000 years ago CO2 <br />was below 200 ppm and significant warming did not begin until <br />about 500 years later — [DK]. <br />92. p. 425: <br />The current CO2 <br />content of the atmosphere is the lowest it has been for thousands <br />of millions of years, .. which is clearly inconsistent with noting a current concentration <br />around 385 ppm and many occasions noted by Plimer (e.g. on p278) with CO2 <br />around <br />180 ppm within the last millions years. <br />93. p. 426: <br />The variation in CO2 <br />shows that a climate sensitivity of greater than 1.5 C has <br />probably been a robust feature of the Earth’s climate system for over 420 million years. <br />This contradicts his frequent undocumented assertion [items 59, 63, 106] that the climate <br />sensitivity is 0.5 C. <br />94. p. 432: When discussing ozone depletion and the Montreal Protocol, Plimer asserts: One <br />of the critical molecules, dicholorine peroxide, appears to break down far slower than was <br />though[sic].2158;2159;2060 <br />Reference 2060 is the paper announcing the discovery of the ‘Ozone hole’ and so is not <br />directly relevant to the global-scale ozone depletion which the Montreal Protocol aims to <br />mitigate. In particular, reference 2060 makes no mention of dichlorine peroxide.20 <br /><br />95. p. 437: If governments had read the fine print of the crucial chapter 5 of the IPCC AR4 <br />(Humans responsible for climate change) they would have realised that it was based on <br />18The summary in versions up to 1.5 incorrectly gave Plimer’s number as 1%. <br />19Using the dataset described on page 33. <br />20Cl2O2 <br />or ClOOCl, also termed chlorine peroxide. <br /><br /><br />19 <br /><br /> <br />the opinions of just five independent scientists. This implies that the chapter is called <br />Humans responsible for climate change. This is untrue. In the AR4 WG1 report chapter <br />5 is called Observations: Oceanic Climate Change and Sea Level. The words Humans <br />responsible for climate change are not the title of any section or subsection of chapter 5 <br />(nor the title of any other chapter in the AR4 WG1 report). The executive summary of <br />chapter 5 does not include any discussion of attribution of responsibility for the changes <br />that are described. The total number of authors is 13, coming from 9 different countries <br />with Corrinne Le Qu´er´e spending part of her time in a 10th country. Similarly, in the AR4 <br />reports from working groups 2 and 3, neither chapter 5 nor any other chapter has the title <br />Humans responsible for climate change — [also in TL list]. <br /><br />96. p. 438: The IPCC has essentially ignored the role of natural climate variability. In reality <br />the various IPCC WG1 reports have chapters entitled: 7: Observed Climate Variations <br />and Change (1990); 3: Observed Climate Variability and Change (1996); 2: Observed <br />Climate Variability and Change (2001); 6: Paleoclimate (2007). <br />97. p. 439: referring to the 2001 report the report of the IPCC claimed that, based on computer <br />model simulations, climate has only limited variability and hence was not dynamic, <br />non-linear and chaotic. Actual words [page 95, WG1 report, TAR] are: Since the pioneering <br />work of Lorenz in the 1960s, it is well known that complex non-linear systems <br />have limited predictability, even though the mathematical equations defining the time evolution <br />of the system are perfectly deterministic. The climate system is, as we have seen <br />such a system .... <br />98. p. 439: In discussing the role of chaos: Five simulations were undertaken for the period <br />1860–2000 using the same general circulations models that are used by the IPCC. Each <br />simulation had slightly different initial conditions, but otherwise was the same. Very <br />small differences in the initial conditions of climate resulted in large differences in large <br />variations in later climate.2178 <br />This has minor misrepresentations: there was only one <br />model, and the initial conditions were different weather ‘snapshots’ from a control run <br />with only internal climate variability21. The serious misrepresentation is that of large <br />differences in later climate. There were, as expected, large differences in subsequent <br />weather variations, but the later climates (i.e. multi-decadal averages and trends) were <br />quite similar. <br />99. p. 443 [footnote 2181]: repeats Monckton’s claims about An Inconvenient Truth without <br />mentioning that most were rejected by the court.22 More precisely, what the judgment23 <br />says of the plaintiff’s counsel is that Mr. Downes produced a long schedule of such alleged <br />errors and waxed lyrical in that regard. and later: In the event I was persuaded that <br />only some of them were sufficiently persuasive to be relevant for the purposes of his <br />argument, and it was those matters — 9 in all — upon which I invented Mr Chamberlain24 <br />21and as always, the false claim that the IPCC ‘uses’ the models <br />22The first sentence of this item was included as a contribution from Tim Lambert and temporarily dropped until <br /><br />I had time to expand on the word ‘rejected’. <br />23Available from http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/admin/2007/2299.html <br />24For the defence. <br /><br />20 <br /><br /> <br />to concentrate. There-after, the judgement uses quotation marks around the word “errors”. <br /><br />100. p. 450: There was a statistical study to show that the 20th century was unusually warm2185 <br />... and .. another paper showing that appropriate tests that link climate proxy records to <br />the observational data were not utilised and, as a result, the unusual warmth of the 20th <br />century disappeared2186 <br />. What reference 2186 actually says is that the significance of <br />the 20th-century warming anomaly disappears. — the change is not in the 20th century <br />warming but rather in the level of statistical significance (95% rather than over 99% as <br />suggested in reference 2185). <br />101. p. 472: <br />Oceans, soils and plants already absorb at least half the human CO2 <br />emissions <br />Uptake of just over half of human emissions by the oceans, soils and plants is the view of <br />mainstream science. The reason to note this statement by Plimer is that it is inconsistent <br />with Plimer’s claims about CO2 <br />lifetimes and large emissions from volcanoes. In particular, <br />with the 4-year lifetime that Plimer claims, the only way half of human emissions <br />can be in the atmosphere is if most emissions have occurred within the last few years. <br />102. p. 477–478: The discussion of Stern’s work quotes a paper by Klyashtorin and Lubushin <br />(footnote 2221) when referring to data from many sources. The Klyashtorin and Lubushin <br />paper is often cited (and mis-quoted) by pseudo-sceptics/doubt-spreaders. It finds no <br />correlation between detrended series for temperature and fuel use. It is not comparing <br />temperature to fossil carbon emissions. It is comparing temperature to what the carbon <br />emissions would have been if all energy use (including nuclear) had come from oil. As <br />described in Twisted, a number of other aspects of the fit act to reduce the type of correlation <br />that would be obtained. However, in Heaven + Earth the citation is essentially <br />irrelevant. <br />103. p. 479: Footnote 2235 is a repeat citation of footnote 2221, the Klyashtorin and Lubushin <br />paper [see item 102]. Since its sole climate analysis is comparing temperature to energy <br />use (and finding no true linear correlation in the detrended series), this citation provides no <br />meaningful support for the statement that the next major climate change will be cooling. <br />104. p. 484: The 2007 IPCC SPM showed cooling for 100 of the last 160 years, during which <br />time greenhouse gases were increasing. Up to version 1.4, my response was: Possibly <br />true but irrelevant — what matters is if net year-to-year increase is significantly positive. <br />However, on the basis of random walk statistics, my vague scepticism in saying possibly, <br />should be changed to highly unlikely and irrelevant. A more complete comment is highly <br />unlikely, irrelevant and yet another fabrication. The SPM figure is repeated in chapter 3 <br />(in the FAQ section) of WG1 AR4, where the source of the numbers is identified as the <br />HadCRU3 data set. Looking at the year-to-year changes25 reveals 80 increases and 78 <br />decreases. (The ‘variance reduced’ HadCRU3 set has 78 decreases and 80 increases) — <br />[also in TL list]. <br />105. p. 485: The Montreal Protocol used the precautionary principle to attempt to ban chlorofluorocarbons <br />because these gases destroy ozone. However we use chlorine every day to <br />25File hadcru3gl.txt, see description on page 30. <br /><br />21 <br /><br /> <br />make water fit to drink and yet chlorine also destroys ozone. There is no such thing as the <br />precautionary principle in science. This misrepresentation of the precautionary principle <br />is discussed in item 55. The passage misrepresents the role of chlorine, in that reactive <br />chlorine compounds are removed in the lower atmosphere (mostly ending up as water <br />soluble compounds that dissolve in rainwater) while unreactive compounds such as CFCs <br />are only destroyed in the stratosphere (due to higher UV levels) and where rain-out does <br />not occur. It is the chlorine from CFC breakdown that destroys ozone — Plimer’s use of <br />the word ‘also’ suggests that he doesn’t understand this — [also in TL list]. <br /><br />106. p. 488: another undocumented assertion of the 0.5 C climate sensitivity. <br />107. p. 488: the IPCC models just don’t do clouds — false — see item 58. <br />108. pp. 489–493: Choosing to end with a summary from someone (Viscount Monckton) who <br />is not a scientist is a strange choice. Some of the points [items 109, 111] are particularly <br />questionable. <br />109. p. 490: present temperature is .. <br />up to 3 C below the Minoan, Roman and Medieval <br />warmings2282;2283. The cited references (2282 is for Vostok ice core data and 2283 is the <br />1990 IPCC report) do not support this claim of up to 3 C. The Vostok paper does not refer <br />to the MWP and the IPCC report has only a schematic [figure 7.1] with no units on the <br />temperature scale. <br />110. p. 490: The January 2007–January 2008 fall was the steepest since 1880. 2298 <br />where footnote <br />2298 reads GISS, Hadley, NCDC, RSS, UAH: all 2008. If the steepest is taken as <br />the largest drop over a 12-month period, then Plimer’s statement is false. In the Hadley <br />record, larger decreases over 12 months occur from Dec. 1891 to Dec. 1892 [0.647 C], <br />Aug. 1945 to Aug. 1946 [0.639 C] and Feb. 1973 to Feb. 1974 [0.681 C] – [thanks to <br />AJG]. <br />111. pp. 491–492: Sea level may rise by 1 foot to 2100, not 20ft as Gore claims. A variant on <br />the incorrect claim made on page 312, see item 50. Gore does not put a date on when a <br />20 foot rise would happen (nor specify what circumstances). My recollection is that this <br />omission was noted by the judge in the UK court case over Gore’s film and book, a case <br />in which Monckton was involved. <br />112. Plimer asserts that the world was only 7 C warmer with 20 times the amount of atmospheric <br />CO2. This give impression that the effect of CO2 <br />on climate is small, but ignores <br />the logarithmic dependence. This dependence has been known since Arrhenius, acknowledged <br />by Plimer on p. 338 (with the consequent incremental changes illustrated in figure <br />50) and often cited by greenhouse pseudo-sceptics such as Bob Carter as a reason for not <br />worrying. If taken at face value, this assertion would imply a climate sensitivity of 1.6 <br />degrees — just over half Hansen’s estimate and below the lower end of the IPCC range, <br />but still not insignificant. This can be easily checked by typing = <br />7.0*log(2.0)/log(20.0) <br />into a spreadsheet. <br />22 <br /><br /> <br />Cherry picking <br /><br />Cherry-picking is the common term of selective use of data to achieve a pre-intended result <br />(or for comparable selective citing of references). The distinction between when a reference <br />is being ‘cherry-picked’ and when it is being outright misrepresented is of course somewhat <br />arbitrary. <br /><br />Various forms of cherry picking include: <br /><br />• <br />selecting subseries from a data record when the full record fails to support the claim; <br />• <br />using old data, when newer data fail to confirm the claim; <br />• <br />selective quoting from references. <br />113. p. 26, footnote 25: The use of a newspaper as the source of the claim that 2008 was an <br />exceptionally cold year, rather than use any of the data records plotted in figure 4 on the <br />same page.26 <br />114. Item 22 notes the selective quoting of reference 256, ignoring the words A warming <br />followed, yielding temperatures that averaged 0.1–0.5 K above present-day in the interval <br />500–1000 years ago. <br />115. An example of cherry-picking terminology is with respect to acidification. <br />Acidity is <br />measured on the pH scale with a pH of 1 meaning highly acidic, a pH of 14 meaning <br />highly alkaline and pure water having a pH of 7. The two possible meanings of ‘acidification’ <br />are (a) a reduction in pH (the usual meaning in discussions of impacts of CO2), <br />and (b) reducing the pH to below 7 (apparently Plimer’s usual interpretation). <br />• <br />p. 338: reference 1786, gives change in pH (i.e. they are using meaning (a)) while <br />Plimer asserts that the studies claim that oceans will become acid (i.e. meaning (b)) <br />— thus Plimer is ‘cherry-picking’ the alternative meanings in order to misrepresent <br />the study. <br />116. p. 402: New high resolution studies over the last 450,000 years of Vostok core show that <br />at all times of cold to warm transitions, temperature rise is followed by a rise in CO2 <br />some 800 years later.2009 <br />. Apart from the misrepresentation noted in item 71, reference <br />2009 is ’cherry picked’. The abstract states The sequence of events during Termination <br />III suggests that the CO2 <br />increase lagged Antarctic deglacial warming by 800 ± <br />200 <br />years and preceded the Northern Hemisphere deglaciation Plimer ignores and preceded <br />the Northern Hemisphere deglaciation. — [DW]. <br />117. p. 425: Item 91 notes Plimer’s use of two different estimates of the dating the Vostok ice <br />core, to support the claim that CO2 <br />was over 270 ppm in a glacial time. <br />26As an aside, the link given in footnote 25 was no longer accessible on 2009/9/1. <br /><br />23 <br /><br /> <br />Contributed comments <br /><br />This section contains contributions from Tim Lambert from the list on his Deltoid blog [TL], <br />Steven Sherwood [SS]. The source of each item is indicated by the author’s initials. This section <br />and the following section have comments in outline form. Where I have expanded this type of <br />contribution to a more complete version it is in the main list. <br /><br />118. Figs. 1, 3 and 4 are all very inconsistent, esp. 1 and 4 which purport to use the same <br />dataset (HadCRU3). [SS] <br />119. p. 113: claim that research shows cosmic rays are important for cloud formation are <br />not supported by the cited studies; some of the studies (Udelhofen and Cess) claimed to <br />support relationship between cloud and cosmic rays actually refute it — [SS]. <br />120. p. 286: claims IPCC has no evidence to support statement that glaciers are retreating – <br />see section 4.5 in TAR for evidence — [TL]. <br />121. p. 316: claims that 1-m sea level rise would be consistent with post-glacial rise rate, but <br />a few sentences later says that has been dropping for the last 3000 years not rising at all. <br />In the next paragraph he claims that rates of change of several metres per century were <br />common during the holocene, but the references quoted actually show that 1-m changes <br />occurred in parts of Australia and that global sea level fell steadily over the last 6000 <br />years by a total of 2m — [SS]. <br />122. p. 367: confused about how the earth warms. How does he think a blanket works? <br />— <br />[TL]. <br />123. p. 421: claims only 4% of CO2 <br />in atmosphere is from humans — [TL]. <br />Conduct of science <br /><br />This section and the following section are split off in response to critics of early versions of this <br />document, who felt that this sort of thing dilutes the arguments about science. Misrepresentations <br />of the operation of the IPCC and the authorship of its reports are included here, while <br />misrepresentation of the content of IPCC reports is in the main section. <br /><br />124. p. 14: Hypotheses are invalidated by just one item of contrary evidence ... yes but only <br />once it has been ascertained that the contrary evidence is being correctly interpreted. <br />125. p. 15: Studies of the Earth’s atmosphere tell us nothing about future climate — so much <br />for Plimer’s claim that an inclusive approach is needed. <br />126. p. 15: <br />Collection of new scientific data by observation, measurement and experiment <br />is now out of fashion — patently ridiculous, given NASA budget, NOAA, CMAR, EU <br />CarboEurope etc. <br />24 <br /><br /> <br />127. p. 15: Aristotle’s principle quoted as First we must seek the facts, then seek to explain is <br />one view — it contrasts to Charles Darwin’s view that a fact is of no value unless it is for <br />or against some theory [approximate wording]. <br />128. p. 19: In the 2007 report, the health effects of global warming were expertly dealt with <br />by two lead authors, one of whom was a hygenist and another a specialist in coprolites <br />(fossil faeces). <br />The relevant chapter is Human Health, chapter 8 of the Working Group 2 contribution <br />to AR4. The eight lead authors are: Ulisses Confalonieri, Bettina Menne, Rais <br />Akhtar,Kristie L. Ebi, Maria Hauengue, R. Savi Kovats, Boris Revich and Alistair <br />Woodard. <br /><br />129. p. 25, footnote 25: Given Plimer’s past interactions with religious groups, choosing the <br />Washington Times as a source of his climate data seems strange. <br />130. p. 112: <br />IPCC computers don’t do clouds — totally unsurprising — IPCC computers <br />don’t do climate modelling — presumably they do things like e-mail, desktop publishing, <br />accounting etc. The climate modelling used by the IPCC is done by major research groups <br />using models that do include clouds — see item 58. <br />131. p. 437: Item 95 notes misrepresentation of the authorship of WG1 chapter 5 in the IPCC <br />AR4 as well as misrepresentation of content. <br />132. p. 444: The IPCC claims that its reports are written by 2500 scientists. In fact they are <br />written by 35 who are controlled by an even smaller number. As described in page 34 the <br />IPCC gives specific directions as to who should be acknowledged as the authors. This is <br />far fewer than 2500 people — the IPCC reports make no such claim as 2500. However, <br />these acknowledged authors total far more than 35 people. The ‘control’ is unspecified. <br />The real control on IPCC authors is the knowledge that their work will be widely read by <br />scientific peers and that any errors will be widely publicised. — [also in TL list]. <br />133. p. 445 <br />the growth of the global warming industry has replaced the collection of primary <br />field data, measurement and experiment. — essentially a repeat of the risible claim noted <br />in item 126. <br />134. p. 454: On the subject of tide data: it is hard to market a publication to a journal editor <br />on the basis that nothing has happened. The one time that a ‘nothing happened’ result <br />is readily ‘marketable’ is when there is a wide-spread expectation that something would <br />happen. The Michelson-Morley experiment (failure to detect Earth’s motion through the <br />ether) is a famous example. If the tide-gauge data really cast significant doubt on the <br />mainstream view of human-induced climate change, then publication would be much <br />easier. <br />135. p. 454: No scientific journal today would have published a paper submitted by an unknown <br />patent clerk on a fundamental breathtaking new concept of physics. Einstein did have a <br />few things going for him, beyond being an unknown patent clerk when he submitted his <br />paper on relativity: <br />25 <br /><br /> <br />i: he had several papers previously published; <br />ii: much of the mathematics already existed — Einstein’s great insight was to understand <br />what it meant. Indeed so much of the mathematics already existed that (a) the equations <br />still carry the name ‘Lorentz transformations’; (b) one strand of ‘Aryan Science’ argued <br />that relativity was discovered by Lorentz rather than the Jewish Einstein (although the <br />more common ‘Aryan Science’ view was to dismiss relativity as ‘Jewish superstition’); <br />iii: Einstein had under simultaneous consideration a paper on the photo-electric effect <br />that appeared less confronting, but of a quality that gained Einstein the Nobel Prize in <br />physics.27 <br />136. p. 454: Some 50 or 100 years ago, great science breakthroughs were common events. Not <br />so today. This seems to ignore the sequencing of the genome of homo sapiens (and other <br />species); discovery of a new state of matter (the Bose-Einstein condensate); discovery of <br />extra-solar planets; cloning mammals; new allotropes of carbon (buckey-balls etc.) and <br />the proof of Fermat’s last theorem. <br />Some silly stuff <br /><br />137. p. 20: [on IPCC authors, apparently meaning the ‘contributing authors’] Some of them <br />used their given name in one part, used an initial in another part and an abbreviation in <br />another. Apart from the incorrect assertion that these people ‘used’ their names (it was <br />the lead authors — those who wrote the chapters — or the editors, who would ‘use’ the <br />names of contributors), this sort of ambiguity is extremely common. For example, the <br />book Heaven + Earth by Ian Plimer, cites as reference the books A Short History of <br />Planet Earth — [footnote 564] and Telling Lies for God — [footnote 2202] both by one <br />I.R. Plimer. <br />138. p. 83, footnote 345: Deducing climate trends from paintings of clouds is fraught with <br />problems (and essentially restricted to Europe). Previous studies of cloud paintings have <br />analysed fractal dimension to show bias in representation — painters choose ‘interesting’ <br />clouds, reflecting what Plimer notes as the role of artistic license. Also fashions change. <br />Turner’s Val d’Aosta would probably not have been painted in an earlier time and prior <br />to Mark Rothko and like-minded artists, a painting of marine stratus would be unlikely to <br />have been regarded as art. <br />139. p. 362–363: The story of ‘Graham bank’, the volcanic island that rose and sank, adds <br />nothing to the argument. The claim The rock is worth nothing, is of no use as a territorial <br />possession. . . is questionable. Territorial possession of various small outcrops around <br />the world is asserted as the basis of exclusive economic zones, e.g. for fishing and oil <br />extraction — [PW]. <br />140. p. 464: <br />Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for supporting the Copernican theory <br />of a Sun-centred universe. This one is trotted out from time to time by those who try to <br />27The ‘less confronting’ was only appearance — what followed from work such as Einstein’s analysis of the <br />photo-electric effect was so weird that Einstein never fully accepted it. <br /><br />26 <br /><br /> <br />claim that rejection of their claims represents prejudice rather than reasoned arguments. <br />An article, The Copernican Myths, in the December 2007 of Physics Today notes that <br />Bruno was condemned mainly for theological heresies. The follow-up correspondence <br />in Physics Today captured more of the complexity of the myths of science vs. religion, <br />containing the hint that the myths were fostered by Catholics and Protestants each trying <br />to paint the other side as the ‘bad guys’. <br /><br />141. p. 467: <br />The environmental religion has no music ... — how could anyone forget about <br />Peter Garrett?? <br />142. p. 468: <br />Sustainability creates a miserable existence, poverty, disease, depopulation and <br />ignorance. Historical evidence would suggest that these are the consequences of unsustainabilty. <br />143. p. 468: Self-denial and a return to the past led to the 600-year Dark Ages. . . — a remarkable <br />assertion of human influence on climate? <br />Other critiques <br /><br />• <br />The book review No Science in Plimer’s Primer by Michael Ashley picks up on issues <br />such as the temperature data, CO2 <br />measurements and in particular some of Plimer’s <br />weirder claims about the composition of the Sun, (page 116). I have noted some such <br />issues on CO2 <br />measurements as items 78, 79, 80 and 82 — see also index. The index also <br />indicates various issues regarding temperature data. <br />• <br />Robert Manne, writing in the Weekend Australian of 25–26/4/2009 as Zealotry not in <br />the public interest, presented the view of someone who, like most of the public and the <br />editors of the Australian, is not an expert on climate science. He suggested that the <br />public (and editors) cannot rationally choose to believe the views of a handful of pseudo-<br />sceptics rather than those of tens of thousands of scientists researching and publishing <br />in this field. Noting the role of industries that rely on fossil fuel emissions he asserted <br />that Pseudo-sceptical scientists such as Plimer, who falsely help convince citizens that the <br />scientific knowledge in this field is fiercely disputed and basically unsettled, are among <br />their most valuable assets. <br />• <br />Professor Kurt Lambeck, president of the Australian Academy of Science, was interviewed <br />on Ockham’s Razor on 7 June 2009. Transcript at: <br />http://www.abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor/stories/2009/2589206.htm <br />Going straight to the point, he noted Heaven + Earth is not a work of science. He identifies <br />a number of issues which, while in isolation could be seen as minor, collectively indicate <br />carelessness at best, and at worst an attempt to undermine the integrity of the science <br />case. <br /><br />• <br />The transcript of a Lateline interview (where Ian Plimer tries to evade this issue of US vs. <br />global temperatures — see item 29) can be found on: <br />http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2008/s2554129.htm <br />27 <br /><br /> <br />• <br />From Tim Lambert’s blog:28 I cross referenced Ian’s list of 33 problems [i.e. version 1 of <br />the present document] with my own list of 59 and there were only 5 things in common. So <br />I can estimate the total number of errors if I assume that we have produced independent <br />samples from the population of Plimer errors: (33x59)/5 = 390 problems. Almost one for <br />every page! Blogged at: <br />http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/ian enting is checking plimers.php <br />As well as 5 being a small sample, there are a lot of reasons why the samples are not <br />independent — some would lead to lower estimates, some to higher estimates. There are <br />additional comments by Tim and myself on Tim’s blog, but the bottom line is not to take <br />the number seriously. (Of course after version 1.2, the lists stop being independent.) <br /><br />Defences of Plimer <br /><br />In Australia, much of the media support for Heaven + Earth came from The Australian. <br /><br />• <br />A extensive supporting statement on the back cover by V´aclav Klaus (at the time President <br />of the European Union) praises the book as powerful clear understandable and extremely <br />useful. <br />• <br />Similarly, on the back cover Nigel Lawson (Lord Lawson of Blaby) describes the book as <br />a scrupulous and scholarly analysis of both the climate science and what is truly known <br />of climatic history. . . <br /><br />• <br />In the Brisbane launch (19/5/2009), Senator Ron Boswell observed29 Regardless of Copenhagen <br />our ETS will impose a carbon cost on our business which our trading competitors <br />will not have to pay. We have to move heaven and earth to stop this happening. Reading <br />‘Heaven and Earth’ is one way to begin.30 <br />• <br />Writing in The Australian on 18/5/2009, Janet Albrechtsen attacked criticisms of Plimer, <br />saying to cast his book aside as an unworthy contribution to this debate tells you something <br />about the stifling consensus and what Plimer rightly calls the ‘demonisation of dissent’ <br />on this critical issue. <br />• <br />In a press release on 21 April 2009, the National Farmers’ Federation welcomed Prof <br />Ian Plimer’s contribution to the climate change discussion and debate concluding Rigour <br />underpins getting the science right ... Prof Plimer is part of the mix. <br />Plimer’s responses <br /><br />• <br />Plimer’s op-ed Hot-air doomsayers in (The Australian) 5/5/2009) has the subheading Geologist <br />Ian Plimer argues that critics of his climate change book should respond with <br />28In his series on The Australian’s War on Science. <br /><br />29Downloaded from ronboswell.com, 26/06/2009. <br /><br />30Far from promoting open discussion of the claims, launching Heaven + Earth in the context of a current party <br />political debate had the effect of precluding some of the largest groups of climate scientists in Australia, those in <br />CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, from commenting, except as individuals in their private capacity. <br /><br />28 <br /><br /><br /> <br />science. He asserts that No critic has argued science with me. He rejects David Karoly’s <br />claim that the book is not supported by sources.31 <br /><br />• <br />In Vitrolic climate in academic hothouse (May 29, 2009 in The Australian) Plimer attacks <br />his critics. Using almost exactly the same words as in the Kininmonth and Aitken letters <br />to Lambeck he asserts There has never been a climate debate in Australia. Only dogma. <br />His response to criticisms32 is In my book I correctly predicted the response. The science <br />would not be discussed, there would be academic nit-picking and there would be vitriolic <br />ad hominem attacks by pompous academics out of contact with the community. <br />Additional information <br /><br />The RealClimate website provides links to various critiques of Heaven + Earth. <br /><br />http://www.realclimate.org/wiki/index.php?title=Ian_Plimer <br /><br /><br />The Wikipedia article on Heaven + Earth has links to many comments on the book. <br /><br />31Karoly has particularly noted the lack of attribution of sources in most of the graphics. <br /><br />32Like many of the footnotes of Heaven + Earth this ‘quote’ is quite non-specific and I have been unable (as at <br />September 3, 2009) to find such a prediction. <br /><br />29 <br /><br /> <br />Temperature data <br /><br />Normal practice, appropriate for a scrupulous and scholarly analysis, is to reference the original <br />sources of data that are used. One reason for this is to simplify the process of checking — <br />facilitating the usual and genuine scepticism in science. The other reason is to ensure that those <br />who did the real work get the credit. This is becoming increasingly important as computer-<br />generated metrics are increasingly applied to decisions on funding and career advancement. <br /><br />Several of the analyses in this document use data downloaded from: <br />http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/ <br /><br />• <br />file hadcru3gl.txt, downloaded 1/6/2009, is monthly global mean temperature anomalies. <br />The website from which the data were downloaded indicates that the appropriate scientific <br />citations for these data are: <br /><br />• <br />Brohan, P., J.J. Kennedy, I. Harris, S.F.B. Tett and P.D. Jones, 2006: Uncertainty estimates <br />in regional and global observed temperature changes: a new dataset from 1850. J. <br />Geophysical Research 111, D12106, doi:10.1029/2005JD006548 — Available as PDF. <br />• <br />Jones, P.D., New, M., Parker, D.E., Martin, S. and Rigor, I.G., 1999: Surface air temperature <br />and its variations over the last 150 years. Reviews of Geophysics 37, 173-199. <br />• <br />Rayner, N.A., P. Brohan, D.E. Parker, C.K. Folland, J.J. Kennedy, M. Vanicek, T. Ansell <br />and S.F.B. Tett, 2006: Improved analyses of changes and uncertainties in marine temperature <br />measured in situ since the mid-nineteenth century: the HadSST2 dataset. J. Climate, <br />19, 446-469. <br />• <br />Rayner, N.A., Parker, D.E., Horton, E.B., Folland, C.K., Alexander, L.V, Rowell, D.P., <br />Kent, E.C. and Kaplan, A., 2003: Globally complete analyses of sea surface temperature, <br />sea ice and night marine air temperature, 1871-2000. J. Geophysical Research 108, 4407, <br />doi:10.1029/2002JD002670. <br />Climate sensitivity <br /><br />The climate sensitivity is defined as the amount of equilibrium warming caused by a doubling of <br />CO2 <br />(or equivalent change in radiative forcing). Over the concentration range of most interest, <br />this relation can be approximated as a logarithmic function (as Plimer acknowledges on page <br />338). Thus about the same warming is expected for doubling from 200 ppm to 400 ppm as from <br />300 ppm to 600 ppm. Denoting the climate sensitivity as X, means that the temperature change <br />as a function of concentration change from C1 <br />to C2 <br />can be written as: <br /><br /> T1;2 <br />= <br />T <br />(C2) <br />- <br />T <br />(C1)= <br />X[log2(C2) <br />- <br />log2(C1)] <br />= <br />X <br />× <br />log2(C2=C1) <br /><br /><br />This logarithmic relation has been known since the time of Arrhenius (1896) (who estimated <br />X= 5 C). It can be written in terms of natural logarithms (logarithms to base e) as <br /><br /> T1;2 <br />= <br />X[loge(C2) <br />- <br />loge(C1)] <br />× <br />log2 <br />e <br />˜ <br />1:44X <br />× <br />loge(C2=C1)=1:44X <br />× <br />ln(C2=C1) <br /><br /><br />30 <br /><br /><br /> <br />The IPCC has given a range of 1.5 C to 4.5 C. James Hansen (e.g. Bjerknes lecture at 2008 <br />AGU Fall Meeting) estimates X <br />=3:0 <br />± <br />0:5 C. The logarithmic relation won’t apply at low <br />concentrations — a linear dependence is expected. The logarithmic dependence will also break <br />down at sufficiently high concentrations. <br /><br />Plimer’s treatment of this lacks consistency. On a number of occasions he claims X <br />= <br />0.5 C <br /><br />(e.g. page 488), while on page 426 (see item 93) he claims 1.5 C, and his example above (see <br />item 112) of 7 C for 20 times CO2 <br />implies 1.61 C. (Note that since a division of logarithms is <br />involved, the result of the calculation 7 <br />× <br />log(2:0)/ <br />log(20:0) <br />does not depend on what base is <br />used for the logarithms, as long as the same base is used in both cases). <br />For a fixed initial concentration C1, one can look at how much the temperature increases for <br />each unit increase in the concentration, C2: <br /><br />. <br />1:44X <br /><br /><br />T2 <br />= <br /><br /><br />@C2 <br />C2 <br /><br /><br />This will have units of degrees C per unit of CO2. Plimer’s plot in figure 50 (page 375) which <br />lacks any supporting citation, seems to reflect this (remembering that the @T <br />. <br />1=C <br />relation<br /><br />@C <br /><br /><br />won’t apply at low concentrations) with: <br /><br />• <br />taking the CO2 <br />unit as 20 ppm jumps as implied by the bars (i.e. the plot is of temperature <br />increase for each extra 20 ppm CO2); <br />• <br />assuming that X <br />=0:5 C; <br />• <br />incorrectly omitting the factor of 1.44 (i.e. log2 <br />e) that comes from going from base-2 to <br />base-e <br />logarithms. <br />Accuracy Precision and Standards <br /><br />All scientific measurements are subject to error. Even when an instrument repeatedly measures <br />the same object or sample, the results will not all be the same. For example Bischof [reference <br />2094] reported a precision of 3 <br />ppm for measurements of CO2 <br />made by the chemical method. <br />In contrast using the Infra-Red Gas Analyser (IRGA), they found a precision of 1 <br />ppm for <br />measurements of CO2. <br /><br />While precision quantifies the measurement-to-measurement repeatability, a serious concern <br />for any measurement is the question of ‘accuracy’. Do all the measurements exhibit a <br />systematic bias, such that the (average) measured value differs from the true value of what is <br />meant to be measured? <br /><br />Many measurements actually involve comparison of a sample to a standard. Consequently <br />the accuracy of such a measurement is tied to the accuracy of the standard. Thus when Bischof <br />switched to using the more precise IRGA method, he could cross-calibrate with the chemical <br />method. (Averaging multiple chemical measurements of the standard will overcome the inherently <br />lower precision of the chemical method). Thus Bischof’s agreement between chemical <br />and IRGA measurements could be essentially guaranteed. However in producing standards for <br />their IRGA program, Bischof’s group used an independent approach bases manometric techniques <br />— mixing gases from precisely calibrated volumes (described in the same issue of Tellus <br /><br />31 <br /><br /><br /> <br />as Bischof’s paper). Bischof’s ability to merge results from the two techniques represents a validation <br />of the type that Plimer claims did not exist. The independent check on the accuracy <br />is provided by the agreement of the Bischof’s higher altitude results [see reference 2095] and <br />Keeling’s results from Mauna Loa — both indicating about 315 ppm. Keeling also prepared his <br />standards using manometric techniques. <br /><br />The ‘Hockey Stick’ <br /><br />The term ‘hockey stick’ refers to the climate reconstruction, produced by Michael Mann and <br />colleagues and featured in the 2001 IPCC report. This was criticised by McIntyre and McKitrick <br />on methodological grounds. In response to requests from US legislators the ‘hockey stick’ <br />analysis was reviewed by two expert panels. Although considerable partisanship was involved <br />in establishing the panels, the core mathematical conclusions of the panels are essentially the <br />same. <br /><br />For the most part, my criticisms of Heaven + Earth will address the issue of whether Plimer <br />has exaggerated the conclusions of the more critical of the reports, i.e. the Wegman report. <br /><br />Plimer usually settles for describing the ‘hockey stick’ as infamous. However, on a number <br />of occasions he explicitly describes it as fraud, a charge not sustained by either of the expert <br />reviews. Plimer’s claim that the IPCC knowingly included results that were known to be wrong, <br />is disproved by comparing his account on page 91 with what is actually in the IPPC reports [see <br />item 27]. <br /><br />32 <br /><br /><br /> <br />Temperatures, CO2 <br />concentrations and methane concentrations from <br />the Vostok ice core. The horizontal axes are in years before present. <br />Graphic from Twisted: The Distorted Mathematics of Greenhouse Denial <br />(figure 27). The vertical scales of the concentration curves are in <br />approximate proportion to the amount of warming expected from each <br />gas in the absence of feedbacks between climate and gas concentrations. <br />These should be taken as indicative — the main uncertainties are in the <br />value of the climate sensitivity used to scale the curves and the global <br />representativeness of the estimated temperatures. <br /><br />The abstract of 1987 paper on this data (back when the analysis only reached back to the <br />previous interglacial) said Vostok climate and CO2 <br />records suggest that CO2 <br />changes have had <br />an important climatic role during the late Pleistocene in amplifying the relatively weak orbital <br /><br />33Petit, J.R., et al., 2001, Vostok Ice Core Data for 420,000 Years, IGBP PAGES/World Data Center for Paleoclimatology <br />(NOAA/NGDC Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder CO, USA). Data Contribution Series #2001-076. <br />http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/vostok/vostok.html <br /><br />33 <br /><br /> <br />forcing. The existence of the 100-kyr cycle and the synchronism between Northern and Southern <br />Hemisphere climates may have their origin in the large glacial-interglacial CO2 <br />changes. <br />[Genthon et al., Nature, 329, 414–418 (1987)]. <br /><br />This interpretation essentially reflects the mainstream climate science interpretation over the <br />ensuing decades: the climate CO2 <br />connection is that of a feedback loop with CO2 <br />changes amplifying <br />the effects of changes in insolation due to orbital changes. The reasons for regarding <br />this as a two-way interaction rather than direct causality in either direction are: <br /><br />Why CO2 <br />changes are not the sole cause of ice ages: <br /><br />i: The gas changes are too small. In preparing the diagram for Twisted... I followed a suggestion <br />from the RealClimate website and plotted the concentration curves in proportion to the expected <br />temperature changes. <br />ii: There are no plausible mechanisms for linking concentrations to orbital changes, except via <br />climate changes over large regions. <br />Why orbital changes are not the sole cause of ice ages:: <br /><br />iii: The changes in insolation are too small: <br />iv: Many of the insolation changes act with opposite signs in the two hemispheres and so the <br />approximate hemispheric synchronisation is hard to account for except through an amplifying <br />factor (such as greenhouse gas concentrations) that is common to both hemispheres. <br />Thus having concentration changes lag behind temperature is entirely to be expected under <br />this mainstream view, while the opposite result would have been extremely difficult to account <br />for. <br /><br />In addition to the reasons noted above: <br /><br />v: the abrupt nature of the deglaciation, unlike the smooth variations in orbital forcing, points <br />to ‘tipping point’ behaviour characteristic of a non-linear coupled system. <br />Al Gore’s book largely ducks the issue and calls the relation complicated.34 <br /><br />The IPCC <br /><br />Plimer’s overall approach to the IPCC reports is one of “shoot the messenger”. This attack <br />involves extensive misrepresentation of the content of the IPCC reports [items 10, 11, 24, 27, <br />82, 86, 89, 95, 96, 97, 104]. <br /><br />One aspect of the IPCC reports that Plimer repeatedly misrepresents is the authorship of the <br />chapters. The IPCC’s instructions on how chapters should be cited give a specific definition of <br />authorship, i.e. those who should get the credit (or take the blame) for what is in the chapter <br />and who are responsible for addressing review comments. These are those people listed as ‘lead <br />authors’ and ‘convening lead authors’. These people a characterised by Plimer as scientists and <br />environmental extremists [page 98] without actually naming any people in the latter category. <br /><br />34In the interests of precision and ability to check issues, I mainly work with the book version of An Inconvenient <br />Truth. My recollection is that the content of the book (i.e excluding the preface) and film are very similar apart <br />from the film’s early line I used to be “The next president of the United States”, and, of course, the stunt with the <br />hoist. <br /><br />34 <br /><br /><br /> <br />Summing up <br /><br />Ian Plimer’s claim that the human influence on climate can be ignored, relative to natural variations <br />seems to rest on three main strands of argument: <br /><br />a: the extent of natural variability is larger than considered in ‘mainstream’ analyses; <br />b: <br />the effects of changes in radiative forcing are smaller than values used in ‘mainstream’ <br />analyses; <br />c: the IPCC uses a range of misrepresentations to conceal points a and b. <br />The most obvious point to note is that if there was a valid case to be made for any of these <br />claims, then there would have been no need for Plimer to resort to systematic misrepresentation. <br /><br />a: <br />The extent of natural variability is being misrepresented, particularly through an exaggerated <br />emphasis on the Medieval Warm Period (MWP). The cited references for large-scale <br />Medieval warming fail to support the claim and in several of these cases seem not to <br />mention Medieval warming at all — [items 20, 21, 109]. The one reference that seems <br />most relevant to global-scale changes (at least over land) is the paper on the borehole data <br />[footnote 256]. The quote from this paper is selective and inaccurate [see item 22]. The <br />main results of the paper indicate MWP temperatures higher by 0.1 to 0.5 C, rather than <br />the 2 to 3 C claimed by Plimer [item 22]. <br />b: <br />The effect of radiative forcing is being misrepresented by repeated claims of a climate sensitivity <br />of 0.5 C [items 59, 63, 106] even when Plimer’s own examples show climate <br />sensitivities of 1.5 C to 1.6 C [item 93], his denial of an effect beyond 400 ppm [items <br />64, 65] even when he acknowledges the logarithmic relation [page 338] and presents a <br />graph [figure 50] consistent with that relation [item 65]. <br />The human contribution to changes in the Earth’s radiation balance are extensively misrepresented <br />through misrepresentation of CO2 <br />measurements and misrepresentation of <br />carbon exchanges. <br /><br />c: For the IPCC there is extensive misrepresentation of: <br />— the content of the IPCC reports [items 10, 11, 24, 27, 82, 86, 89, 95, 96, 97, 104]; <br />— the operation of the IPCC assessment process and the authorship of reports [items 130, <br />95]; and <br />— the characteristics of climate models that form the basis of some of the science presented <br />in the IPCC reports [items 43, 58, 107]. <br />In support of these three main strands of argument are presented extensive references, many <br />of which either fail to support the claims [items 20, 21, 22, 38, 40, 79, 109]; explicitly contradict <br />the claims [items 66, 67, 73, 89]; are irrelevant to the claims [items 70, 102]; or otherwise <br />misrepresent the cited reference. <br /><br />In addition the various misrepresentations of the IPCC and the content of IPCC reports in <br />Heaven + Earth, the introduction above noted: <br /><br />35 <br /><br /> <br />• <br />it has numerous internal inconsistencies [items 57, 87] as well as the inconsistencies noted <br />above regarding climate sensitivity; <br />• <br />in spite of the extensive referencing, key data are unattributed, particularly for the graphics, <br />and the content of references is often mis-quoted [items 40, 73]. Simply citing entire <br />books (or entire IPCC reports) for a specific point, without giving section or page numbers <br />does not reflect a well-referenced book. <br />Finally, as well as the inconsistencies and misrepresentations there are also a modest number <br />of minor errors that should ideally have been picked up by adequate editing. Author’s names are <br />given incorrectly: should be G. S. Callender on p 17, Bacastow, Keeling and Whorf, in footnote <br />2093. Footnote 1253 (page 251) gives title only, with no bibliographic details. The confusing <br />of ‘absorbs’ and ‘adsorbs’ is noted in items 63 and 83. Footnote 2237 gives the wrong page <br />number. On page 299, ‘interannular’ should be ‘interannual’. Furthermore, the editing process <br />should have detected the various problems identified in item 3 to do with labelling of axes. <br />Probably a careful editor would have removed most of the things identified in the section on <br />‘Silly Stuff’ [items 137 to 143]. <br /><br />Acronyms and abbreviations <br /><br />AR4 Fourth Assessment Report (of the IPCC). <br />BP Before present. <br />CDIAC Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Center. (Oak Ridge, USA). <br />GISS Goddard Institute for Space Studies. <br />GC Gas chromatograph(y). An instrument/technique used to measure greenhouse gases (and <br /><br /><br />many other things). <br /><br />GGWS The Great Global Warming Swindle. <br /><br />GtC Gigatonnes of carbon. One gigatonne is one billion (109) tonnes. <br /><br />IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. <br /><br />IRGA Infra-red gas analyser. <br /><br />LIA Little Ice Age. <br /><br />MSU Microwave Sounding Unit. Instrument for measuring atmospheric temperature from <br /><br />satellites. <br /><br />MWP Medieval Warm Period. <br /><br />NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (USA). <br /><br />NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (USA). <br /><br />36 <br /><br /> <br />SAR Second Assessment Report (of the IPCC). <br /><br />SPM Summary of Policy Makers, i.e. summary of an IPCC report. <br /><br />TAR Third Assessment Report (of the IPCC). <br /><br />TS Technical Summary, i.e. summary of an IPCC report. <br /><br />UAH University of Alabama, Huntsville. <br /><br />WDCGG World Data Centre for Greenhouse Gases. (JMA, Japan). <br /><br />WG1 Working Group 1 (of the IPCC). <br /><br />Acknowledgements <br /><br />This analysis draws on the work of various colleagues. Many errors in Heaven + Earth were <br />brought to my attention by Barry Brook, A.B. Pittock, A.J. Guttmann, Michael Ashley, Tim <br />Lambert, Steven Sherwood, David Karoly and Penny Whetton. This input is acknowledged <br />by initials after various items. Generally this does not cover cases where several of us have <br />independently noted the same flaw. My grateful thanks for this input should not be taken as <br />implying that they agree with every detail of how I have discussed the concerns that they identified. <br />Item 13 includes a comment from the Brave New Climate website. Particular thanks are <br />due to Richard Brak who organised a ‘re-direct’ when The Australian inserted an extra dash in <br />the URL that I sent them. <br /><br />Version history <br /><br />Typeset September 3, 2009 <br /><br />The intention is that the published URL shall always refer to the most recent version of this <br />document. <br />The current version is: <br />Version 2.0, with my itemised and indexed discussion of 112 items and a number of other <br />contributed items giving a total of 123, still with ‘conduct of science’ and ‘silly stuff’ split off. <br /><br />The various versions (with approximate times of availability) have been: <br /><br />• <br />Version 1.9 with a total of 106 ‘science’ items, with ‘conduct of science’ and ‘silly stuff’ <br />split off: MASCOS 12:00, 29/6/2009. <br />• <br />Version 1.8 with a total of 96 ‘science’ items, with ‘conduct of science’ and ‘silly stuff’ <br />split off: MASCOS 15:10, 9/6/2009. <br />• <br />Version 1.7 with a total of 92 ‘science’ items, with ‘conduct of science’ and ‘silly stuff’ <br />split off: MASCOS 09:00, 2/6/2009. <br />37 <br /><br /> <br />• <br />Version 1.6 with a total of 77 ‘science’ items, with ‘conduct of science’ and ‘silly stuff’ <br />split off: MASCOS 16:00, 25/5/2009. <br />• <br />Version 1.5 with a total of 61 items concerning the science with additional discussions <br />relating to conduct of science (and some silly stuff) split off from the main discussion. <br />MASCOS 08:17, 22/5/2009. <br />• <br />Version 1.4, with my itemised and indexed discussion of 46 items and other contributions <br />bringing the total to 58 (plus comments on some silly stuff): about 18:00 on 16/5/2009 <br />(BNC site) and about 10:40, 18/5/2009 (MASCOS). <br />• <br />Version 1.3, with itemised and indexed discussion of 40 of my items and 3 other contributions: <br />15/5/2009 (BNC site only). <br />• <br />Version 1.2, with itemised and indexed discussion of 39 items: 14/5/2009. <br />My letter about this document was published in The Australian on 15/5/2009 with the <br />underscore character in the the URL that I sent in my letter replaced by a ‘dash’ in the <br />printed version and a double hyphen in the electronic version. A ‘re-direct’ was established <br />at the University of Melbourne so that the document could be accessed from the <br />published address, but did not deal with the fact that the two forms of publication involved <br />two different incorrect URLs. My posts to the Australian’s letters blog were not accepted. <br />• <br />Version 1.1, with itemised and indexed discussion of 34 items was uploaded for test purposes <br />about 16:30 13/5/2009, unfortunately resulting in a failed test, with the URL not <br />being preserved (but removing version 1). <br />• <br />Version 1, with itemised and indexed discussion of 33 items, was submitted to the MASCOS <br />website on 12/5/2009 and available from mid-morning 13/5/2009. <br />Due to problems on the MASCOS site and the incorrectly published links in The Australian, <br />various versions were mirrored on the Brave New Climate website. <br /><br />• <br />version 1.9: 13:00, 29/6/2009; <br />• <br />version 1.8: 01:10, 10/6/2009; <br />• <br />version 1.7: 17:50, 1/6/2009; <br />• <br />version 1.6: 21:30, 25/5/2009; <br />• <br />version 1.5: 01:45, 22/5/2009; <br />• <br />version 1.4: at about 18:10, 16/5/2009; <br />• <br />version 1.3: late on evening of 15/5/2009; <br />• <br />version 1.2: on 14/5/2009; <br />• <br />version 1.1: from about 21:00, 13/5/2009. <br />38 <br /><br /> <br />Response to criticism of my analysis <br /><br />A number of these criticisms come from the letters blog of The Australian. Since The Australian <br />did not accept my posts of replies, even when I kept my comments separate from the URL issue, <br />a few short comments are given here: <br /><br />Why didn’t I attack Al Gore in the same way? <br /><br />i: I wasn’t engaged in public debate until early 2007 when I started writing Twisted: The <br />Distorted Mathematics of Greenhouse Denial. <br />ii: Plimer claims to be writing as a scientist and his op-ed Hot-air doomsayers (5/5/2009 in The <br />Australian) challenges scientists to address the science. I am taking him at his word. As noted <br />above, Heaven + Earth is being promoted as a scrupulous and scholarly analysis.35 Gore is a <br />politician and An Inconvenient Truth is largely a political book, arising from the difficulties of <br />responding to ‘politically-inconvenient’ science. <br />iii: Even if one thinks that Justice Burton was wrong and one accepts all the errors claimed in <br />the UK court case, Gore’s book has many fewer scientific errors than Heaven + Earth. (This <br />assessment was based on my own notes. Earlier versions, 1 to 1.3, did not document enough of <br />the errors in Heaven + Earth to demonstrate that claim.) <br />Concentrating on Plimer’s inconsistencies is nit-picking that doesn’t address scientific <br />issues <br />A theme that I tried to get across is Twisted is that for a scientific theory, a lack of internal <br />consistency is even more fatal than discordant observations. Thus, to the extent that Plimer <br />claims to be proposing an alternative theory36, his own lack of consistency becomes an issue of <br />science and not just an issue of editorial quality. <br /><br />My literal interpretation of ‘IPCC computers’ (in item 130) is disingenuous (or silly) <br />Part of Plimer’s ‘shoot the messenger’ attack on the IPCC is to portray is as a corrupt ‘bogeyman’. <br />Creating a bad impression about something that exists only in Plimer’s (and others’) <br />imagination frees him for nasty constraints like facts. In talking about ‘IPCC models’, ‘IPCC <br />climate models’ or ‘IPCC climate modellers’ he is talking about something that doesn’t actually <br />exist. The IPCC doesn’t: <br /><br />• <br />run climate models, <br />• <br />develop climate models, or <br />• <br />fund climate models. <br />When Plimer adopts this approach of criticising something that doesn’t really exist, I go for <br />closest meaning — presumably the one he is hinting at. Mislabelling the models as ‘IPCC <br />models’ gives him a two-fold attack — he not only misrepresents the content of the models, <br />but by mis-attributing them he also links them to his various misrepresentations of the IPCC <br />(see page 34). However, unlike ‘IPCC climate models’, ‘IPCC computers’ really do exist and <br />so rather than interpret an indirect implication (which is done elsewhere), I interpret his actual <br />words. The real issue is Plimer’s bogey-man approach — it is of course nice and safe — you <br />can say all sorts of nasty stuff about a group that doesn’t exist — since the group doesn’t exist, <br />they won’t sue you. <br /><br />35From cover blurb on paperback edition, by Lord Lawson of Blaby. <br />36as opposed to spreading doubt and confusion for political purposes <br /><br /><br />39 <br /><br /> <br />Checking my claims <br /><br />If you can’t accept the assessments of the IPCC after all the care and detailed review, then there <br />it would seem unlikely that you would take my word for the claims above without checking.37 <br />The selection of flaws described in this document is intended to maximise the extent to which <br />individuals can check my claims for themselves. <br /><br />Plimer’s inconsistencies: Here the only resource that you need is a copy of Heaven + Earth, <br />and maybe a calculator (or a spreadsheet). This will allow you to check the claims that <br />I make in items 26, 35, 41, 48, 57, 60, 77, 87, 90 and the various inconsistent values for <br />climate sensitivity discussed in items 59, 63, 65, 93, 106, 112. <br /><br />Other flaws: Similarly, a copy of the book is all that is need to check various graphics flaws <br />such as axis labelling, [see item 3 for summary] and things such as items 8, 23, 28, 32, 35, <br />37, 42, 64 (with the aid of a good dictionary) as well as most of the things in the section <br />on ‘Silly Stuff’ (page 26). <br /><br />Plimers misrepresentation of the IPCC: Many of these are easily checked, since the full Third <br />and Fourth Assessment Reports are available as downloads from the IPCC website. A <br />figure such as 8.20 indicates a figure in chapter 8 (with TS indicating the Technical Summary). <br />This will enable you to check (at least in part) items 10, 11, 12, 27, 82, 25, 89, <br />95, 96, 97. Checking items 24, 86 requires obtaining access to one or both of the first two <br />assessments as do some aspects of items 27, 82, 96, 109. <br /><br />Using other internet resources: Most of the data sets discussed in this document can be freely <br />accessed. <br /><br />• <br />The various HadCRU temperature data sets are available from: <br />http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/ <br />This will enable you to check items 6, 14, 72, and (with reference to IPCC report to <br />verify my identification of the data set) 104. <br />• <br />The plot, http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/graphics/Mauna Loa CO2.jpg, from the <br />Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Center (CDIAC) shows that at the primary <br />repository for these data, the gaps in the Mauna Loa data set have not somehow <br />mysteriously disappeared — item 78. <br />• <br />http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg <br />will show that the lower plot in figure 29 is not what Plimer claims [item 47]. <br />In addition: <br /><br />• <br />http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/admin/2007/2299.html is the judgment in the <br />UK court case on An Inconvenient Truth, enabling you to check item 99. <br />Libary references: A number of Plimer’s references are to books and journals that are only <br />found in specialist libraries. However the journals Science and Nature are quite widely <br /><br />37After all, I have been a lead author of an IPCC chapter. <br /><br />40 <br /><br /> <br />available and so much of my checking of references inHeaven + Earth has concentrated <br />on these journals.38 <br /><br />Access to Nature will enable you to check 39 references 17, 18 [item 7], 2056 [item 73], <br />2134 [item 91]. <br /><br />Access to Science will enable you to check references 255 [item 21], 595 [item 36], 1075 <br />[item 40], 1682 [item 53], 1738 [item 54], 1990 [item 68], 2009 [item 71], 2123* [item <br />88], 2178 [item 98]. <br /><br />Other journal access Some scientific journals make older material freely available on-line. <br />In addition, a number of journals allow authors to post copies of their articles on their <br />personal web-sites. <br /><br />Disclaimer <br /><br />This discussion, its contents and style, are the responsibility of the author and do not represent <br />the views, policies or opinions of The University of Melbourne. <br /><br />38A * after the reference number indicates that this reference is the same paper as one earlier in the list. <br />39In version 1.9, several citations of papers in Science were incorrectly listed in this section as being in Nature. <br /><br />41 <br /><br /><br /> <br />Index <br /><br />-In this document <br /><br />Accuracy, precision and standards, 31 <br /><br />Acknowledgements, 37 <br /><br />Acronyms and abbreviations, 36 <br /><br />Additional information, 29 <br /><br />Breadth of Science, 2 <br /><br />Checking my claims, 40 <br /><br />Cherry picking, 23 <br /><br />Climate sensitivity, 30 <br /><br />Conduct of Science, 24 <br /><br />Contributed comments, 24 <br /><br />Defences of Plimer, 28 <br /><br />Disclaimer, 41 <br /><br />Other critiques, 27 <br /><br />Overview, 1 <br /><br />Point by Point, 2 <br /><br />Response to criticism, 39 <br /><br />Some silly stuff, 26 <br /><br />Summing up, 35 <br /><br />Temperature data, 30 <br /><br />The hockey stick, 32 <br /><br />The IPCC, 34 <br /><br />The Vostok ice core, 33 <br /><br />Version history, 37 <br />An Inconvenient Truth <br /><br />far fewer errors than Heaven + Earth, 39 <br /><br />flawed graphics <br /><br />item 3, 3 <br /><br />future sea level <br /><br />item 50, 11 <br /><br />item 111, 22 <br /><br />UK court case <br /><br />item 99, 21 <br /><br />item 111, 22 <br /><br />Vostok data ‘complicated’, 34 <br /><br />acknowledgements, 37 <br />acronyms and abbreviations, 36 <br />adsorb vs absorb <br /><br />item 64, 13 <br /><br />item 83, 17 <br />Arrhenius, Svante <br /><br />item 61, 13 <br /><br />cherry-picking, 23 <br />data source <br />item 113, 23 <br />deglaciation <br />item 116, 23 <br />selective quote on MWP <br />item 114, 23 <br />terminology <br />item 115, 23 <br />Vostok ice core dating <br />item 117, 23 <br />chlorine <br />item 105, 22 <br /><br /><br />chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) <br />item 40, 10 <br />item 105, 22 <br /><br /><br />citation doesn’t support claim <br />item 88, 18 <br />item 94, 19 <br />item 102, 21 <br />item 103, 21 <br /><br /><br />climate data from art <br />item 138, 26 <br />climate sensitivity, 30 <br /><br /><br />incremental plot <br />item 65, 14 <br /><br /><br />Plimer’s inconsistency <br />claims 0.5 C: item 59, 13 <br />claims 0.5 C: item 63, 13 <br />claims 0.5 C: item 106, 22 <br />claims above 1.5 C: item 93, 19 <br />implies 1.6 C: item 112, 22 <br />plot implies 0.35 C: item 65, 14 <br /><br />CO2 <br />measurement, 31 <br />validation: IRGA vs chemical, 32 <br />CO2, pre-industrial <br /><br />item 82, 17 <br />conduct of science, 24 <br />contradicts own case <br /><br /><br />CO2 <br />measurement <br /><br />42 <br /><br /> <br />item 80, 17 <br />early 20th century warming <br />item 41, 10 <br />Younger Dryas missing/moved <br />Fig. 5, item 16, 6 <br />cooling <br />item 104, 21 <br />cosmic rays <br />item 119, 24 <br /><br />Dark Ages <br />caused by self-denial <br />item 143, 27 <br />distortion of data plots <br />item 13, 5 <br /><br />El Ni˜<br /><br />no <br />inconsistent about duration <br />item 57, 13 <br />misrepresents models <br />item 48, 11 <br /><br />geology <br /><br />input to climate science, 2 <br />item 52, 12 <br />item 61, 13 <br />item 85, 18 <br /><br />graphics, falsified axes <br />fig 5: item 16, 6 <br /><br />graphics, falsified content <br />fig 1: item 6, 4 <br />fig 14: item 32, 9 <br />fig 29: item 47, 11 <br /><br />graphics, falsified data <br />fig 1: item 6, 4 <br />fig 3: item 13, 5 <br />fig 11: item 26, 7 <br /><br />graphics, inconsistent with description <br />fig 5: item 16, 6 <br /><br />graphics, inconsistent with text <br />fig 5: item 16, 6 <br />fig 11: item 26, 7 <br />fig 44: item 62, 13 <br /><br />graphics, meaningless <br />fig 10: item 18, 6 <br />fig 14: item 32, 9 <br /><br />graphics, mislabelled axes <br />fig 8: item 17, 6 <br />fig 12: item 30, 8 <br />fig 14: item 32, 9 <br /><br /><br />graphics, misleading comparison <br />figs 38, 39, 40: item 56, 13 <br />graphics, misrepresents content <br />fig 15: item 34, 9 <br />graphics, no citation <br />listed in item 3, 3 <br /><br /><br />HADCRU temperature data, 30 <br /><br />hockey stick, 32 <br />item 11, 5 <br />item 27, 8 <br /><br /><br />howlers <br />40 degree warming <br /><br /><br />fig 12: item 30, 8 <br />grain prices in W/m2 <br />fig 14: item 32, 9 <br /><br /><br />less water than asteroids <br />item 37, 9 <br />perihelion in Northern Hemisphere <br />item 42, 10 <br />self-denial led to Dark Ages <br />item 143, 27 <br />hypothesis testing <br />item 124, 24 <br /><br />inconsistency <br />Aryan science <br />item 135, 26 <br />importance of consistency, 39 <br />inconsistency by Plimer <br />abrupt end of MWP <br />item 26, 7 <br /><br /><br />absolute vs. relative warming <br />item 60, 13 <br />item 90, 19 <br />summary: item 2, 3 <br /><br />climate sensitivity <br />claims 0.5 C: item 59, 13 <br />claims 0.5 C: item 63, 13 <br />claims 0.5 C: item 106, 22 <br />claims above 1.5 C: item 93, 19 <br />implies 1.6 C: item 112, 22 <br /><br />43 <br /><br /> <br />plot implies 0.35 C: item 65, 14 <br />CO2 <br />lifetime <br />item 87, 18 <br />early 20th century warming <br /><br />item 41, 10 <br />El Ni˜no duration <br />item 57, 13 <br /><br /><br />greenhouse gas warming <br />item 35, 9 <br />interpretation of 14C decrease <br />item 77, 16 <br />past CO2 <br />item 92, 19 <br />IPCC, 34 <br />hockey stick <br />item 27, 8 <br /><br />key claims undocumented <br />listed in item 1, 2 <br /><br />lifetime vs turnover time <br />item 84, 17 <br />Little Ice Age <br />IPCC is misrepresented <br />item 10, 5 <br /><br />Mauna Loa <br />item 78, 16 <br /><br />Medieval Warm Period <br />item 9, 5 <br />item 20, 6 <br />misrepresents boreholes <br /><br />item 22, 7 <br /><br />misrepresents IPCC <br />fig 11: item 24, 7 <br />item 27, 8 <br /><br /><br />misrepresents Taylor Dome <br />item 21, 6 <br />mis-applied logic <br />assumes single cause <br />item 23, 7 <br /><br />misleading comparisons <br />item 8, 5 <br />item 52, 12 <br />item 56, 13 <br />item 79, 16 <br /><br />misrepresents astronomy <br />item 37, 9 <br />item 42, 10 <br /><br /><br />misrepresents carbon exchanges <br />item 76, 16 <br />item 77, 16 <br />item 81, 17 <br /><br />misrepresents cited sources <br />analysis of proxy data <br />item 100, 21 <br />borehole data <br />item 22, 7 <br /><br /><br />carbon sediments <br />item 53, 12 <br />item 54, 12 <br /><br />CFCs from Pinatubo <br />item 40, 10 <br />chaotic variability <br />item 98, 20 <br /><br />CO2 <br />measurements <br />Europe: item 79, 16 <br />South Pole: item 69, 14 <br /><br />CO2 <br />turnover time <br />item 85, 18 <br />cosmic rays <br />item 119, 24 <br />deglaciation <br />item 71, 15 <br />ice-core comparison <br />item 70, 14 <br /><br />Medieval Warm Period <br />item 9, 5 <br />item 20, 6 <br />item 109, 22 <br /><br />New Orleans subsidence <br />item 73, 15 <br />ocean pH changes <br />item 115, 23 <br /><br />paleo-data <br />item 21, 6 <br />item 36, 9 <br />item 68, 14 <br /><br /><br />pattern analysis <br />item 7, 4 <br />Roman warming <br /><br />44 <br /><br /> <br />item 19, 6 <br />satellite vegetation data <br />item 38, 10 <br />temperature changes <br />item 104, 21 <br /><br />temperature data <br />item 66, 14 <br />item 67, 14 <br /><br /><br />temperature extremes <br />item 28, 8 <br />Vostok data <br />item 91, 19 <br />misrepresents CO2 <br />toxicity <br />item 74, 15 <br />misrepresents data records <br /><br />20th century temperatures <br />item 26, 7 <br />item 110, 22 <br /><br />1934 <br /><br />item 29, 8 <br />European CO2 <br />item 79, 16 <br />glacial retreat <br /><br /><br />item 46, 11 <br />Mauna Loa CO2 <br />item 78, 16 <br /><br /><br />sea ice <br />item 47, 11 <br /><br /><br />temperature changes <br />item 6, 4 <br />item 14, 5 <br />item 104, 21 <br /><br />misrepresents IPCC <br /><br />authorship of reports <br />item 95, 20 <br />item 132, 25 <br /><br />content of reports <br />item 11, 5 <br />item 9, 5 <br />item 12, 5 <br />item 10, 5 <br />item 24, 7 <br />item 25, 7 <br />item 27, 8 <br />item 82, 17 <br /><br /><br />item 86, 18 <br />item 89, 19 <br />item 95, 20 <br />item 96, 20 <br />item 97, 20 <br />item 104, 21 <br />item 109, 22 <br /><br /><br />role <br />item 130, 25 <br />misrepresents laws of arithmetic <br />item 56, 13 <br />misrepresents models <br />chaos <br />item 97, 20 <br /><br /><br />clouds <br />item 58, 13 <br />item 107, 22 <br /><br /><br />CO2 <br />lifetime <br />item 86, 18 <br />El Ni˜<br /><br /><br />no <br />item 48, 11 <br />insolation <br />item 43, 10 <br />misrepresents UK court case <br />item 99, 21 <br />Monckton <br />item 108, 22 <br />Montreal Protocol <br />item 105, 22 <br /><br /><br />New Orleans <br />item 49, 11 <br />item 73, 15 <br /><br /><br />other critiques of Heaven + Earth, 27 <br /><br />Pinatubo <br />item 40, 10 <br /><br /><br />precautionary principle <br />item 55, 12 <br />item 105, 22 <br /><br /><br />questionable data sources <br />2008 <br />item 129, 25 <br /><br /><br />radiative forcing <br /><br />45 <br /><br /> <br />item 89, 19 <br /><br />radiocarbon (14C) <br />item 77, 16 <br />item 85, 18 <br /><br />response to criticisms, 39 <br /><br />sea ice <br />incorrect data plotted <br />item 47, 11 <br />item 39, 10 <br />sea level <br /><br />future <br />item 50, 11 <br />item 111, 22 <br /><br /><br />solar wobble <br />item 31, 9 <br />Stern report <br /><br />item 102, 21 <br />summary, 35 <br />sunspots <br /><br />item 32, 9 <br /><br />temperature data, 30 <br />misquoted <br />item 72, 15 <br />tipping point, 34 <br />item 55, 12 <br /><br />uptake of CO2 <br />item 101, 21 <br /><br />version history, 37 <br /><br />Vostok ice core, 33 <br />item 45, 11 <br />no support for MWP in paper <br /><br />item 109, 22 <br /><br />Wegman report, 32 <br /><br />Younger Dryas <br />item 16, 6kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05331047626419936198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252773055876553427.post-50527537494431804312009-09-10T16:38:00.001-07:002009-09-10T16:38:50.805-07:00A Power Station in Your BasementBy Frank Dohmen <br /><br />Green-energy provider Lichtblick and German automaker Volkswagen are joining forces and promising to stir up the energy market with an unusual plan. Instead of relying on massive energy facilities, the average consumer may soon have a miniature power station in their basement.<br /><br />Chief executives of Germany's major energy suppliers usually don't have much time for their junior counterpart, Lichtblick. The Hamburg-based green-electricity provider's half a million customers may be "impressive," they say, but Lichtblick works in a niche market and is no competition for the larger companies in the industry. <br /><br />But things may be about to change. In the next couple of days, the relatively small company is due to reveal a new business model that could shake up the energy market quite a bit -- and not only in Germany. So, despite the fact that they currently have large power plants and considerable power over the market, things may soon turn a little less comfortable for energy giants like E.on and RWE.<br /><br />Lichtblick -- the name translates as "glimmer of hope" -- is no longer content with distributing eco-friendly gas and electricity. Ten years after entering the market, the group wants to take a shot at the electricity-generation business as well -- and to do so while collaborating with a unusual partner on a completely new idea.<br /><br />Unlike Germany's well-established energy giants, the Hamburg-based company isn't planning to build a few colossal wind farms or solar-panel systems. Instead, it wants hundreds of thousands of buildings and private households to get their own highly efficient mini "home power stations."<br /><br />Mini Power Stations <br /><br />The ambitious new project could be worth billions of euros and generate enough electricity to replace up to two nuclear power stations or even coal-fired power plants in the near future. The technology required to put this plan into practice is highly complex, but -- depending on demand and the market situation -- the new setup could network 1,000, 10,000 or even 100,000 small natural-gas-powered thermal power stations and, in effect, instantly create a virtual large one. <br /><br />A giant quantity of electricity could be generated by such a system. Channelled straight from the basements of individual houses, where Lichtblick plans on installing the mini power stations, it could then be fed into the public powergrid. Likewise, the mini stations could also provide a source of cheap thermal energy and warm water for each household.<br /><br />It may all still sound like a fairy tale, but developers at Lichtblick have actually been testing the system as part of a field trial in Hamburg. What's more, now one renowned company has shown an interest in becoming a partner in this pilot project: the Wolfsburg-based motor- and auto-manufacturing giant, Volkswagen.<br /><br />For many years, Volkswagen engineers based in the central German town of Salzgitter have been tinkering with different ways to build a highly efficient thermal power plant. And there are good reasons why VW is looking into the field. "Much of what you need to manufacture a mini powerplant" is already found in ultra-modern automobiles, says Rudolf Krebs, a director of Volkswagen's powertrain-development division. <br /><br /><br />'A Real Revolution'<br /><br /><br />The centerpiece of the new mini powerplant system is a natural-gas-powered engine used in some Volkswagen Golf models. Thanks to the engine's highly intelligent design -- and the fact that the heat it produces can be directly used to heat the house -- the efficiency factor of the Volkswagen mini thermal powerplant lies at around 94 percent. <br /><br />To understand how that is an improvement over the current situation, you first have to know that the efficiency factor of your average nuclear power plant is only between 30 percent and 40 percent and that even modern coal- and gas-fired powerplants only reach an efficiency factor of between 40 percent and 60 percent. <br /><br />Volkswagen engineers have long suspected that the mini thermal stations could prove incredibly promising. Until now, though, they just haven't had the technical know-how and familiarity with the electricity industry they needed. Nor did they have a concrete idea of how the relatively expensive (€20,000 or $29,000) mini thermal plants would be able to survive in a competitive energy market. <br /><br />But now these problems are being solved by Lichtblick. As Werner Neubauer, a member of VW's executive board, told SPIEGEL, the company's proposal was so convincing that its managerial board agreed to collaborate with Lichtblick on the project almost immediately.<br /><br />This week, Volkswagen and Lichtblick plan to sign a contract giving the auto manufacturer exclusive global rights to produce the mini thermal plants. If all goes according to plan, Volkswagen's auto-production facilities in Salzgitter will be able to churn out 10,000 mini powerplants every year.<br /><br />"This will be a real revolution for the electricity market," says Lichtblick CEO Christian Friege. But there is still one question that remains unanswered: Will there be enough customers willing to give up space in their basement and foot the bill for their very own "home power station?"<br /><br />A Breakthrough for Eco-Friendly Energy <br /><br />The new concept may prove particularly appealing to homebuilder associations and homeowners who may already have toyed with the idea of replacing their aging central-heating systems. For an all-inclusive fee of around €5,000, Lichtblick technicians promise to tear out and dispose of any old system and replace it with a new Volkswagen mini thermal powerhouse. Repair and maintenance costs from then on are covered by the company, and the customer only has to pay for the energy actually used -- a sum significantly lower (or so Lichtblick claims) than the cost of heating with gas. <br /><br />Under this arrangement, Lichtblick is effectively paying the homeowner rent for being able to use their basement, while homeowners benefit from getting cheap thermal energy. As an added incentive, homeowners will also receive a bonus at the end of the year based on the revenue the system generates for the companies. After all, the system will not only generate thermal power, but also electricity, which it can sell for a tidy profit.<br /><br />Thanks to a carefully devised monitoring system centrally linking the system via the Internet, the network will be set up to optimize its functioning. According to this system, water will be heated up more often in the homeowners' basements when there is more demand for electricity on the energy market. This would happen, for example, when there's a change in the weather and thousands of windmills can simply not provide enough energy to meet a sudden surge in demand. In such cases, as Lichtblick executive Gero Lücking explains, Lichtblick will be able to react very quickly and channel the missing amount of energy into the national powergrid. <br /><br />Such an arrangement would be a breakthrough for eco-friendly energy as well. Owing to the fast reaction rate of the system of small powerplants, a lot more sustainable energy could be used than has been the case until now. <br /><br />More-established energy suppliers, on the other hand, will not benefit from the new arrangement and might soon feel its sting. Their multi-billion-euro back-up power plants, which the energy companies currently use to compensate for fluctuations in the electricity supply, making a nice profit in the process, may soon be displaced by the cheaper and more flexible VW power stations. <br /><br />And then it might just be time for the chief executives of Germany's major energy suppliers to give their little Hamburg-based competitor a bit more respect, instead of the occasional condescending glance. <br /><br />URL:<br />http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,647435,00.html<br />RELATED SPIEGEL ONLINE LINKS:<br />Leaders In Alternative Energy: Germany Turns On World's Biggest Solar Power Project (08/20/2009)<br />http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,643961,00.html<br />The World From Berlin: New Energy Projects 'Not a Magic Bullet' (07/14/2009)<br />http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,636090,00.html<br />Going Greener?: German Energy Roadmap Steers Towards Renewables (02/13/2009)<br />http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,607412,00.html<br />SPIEGEL 360: Our Full Coverage of Energy and Natural Resources<br />http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,k-6944,00.html<br /><br /><br />© DER SPIEGEL 37/2009kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05331047626419936198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252773055876553427.post-21165844016707787022009-09-07T20:49:00.000-07:002009-09-07T20:52:01.066-07:00Carrots are better than sticks ~ science news<span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="font-style:italic;">Carrots are better than sticks for building human cooperation<br />Published: Thursday, September 3, 2009 - 13:44 in Psychology & Sociology <br /><br />Rewards go further than punishment in building human cooperation and benefiting the common good, according to research published this week in the journal Science by researchers at Harvard University and the Stockholm School of Economics. While previous studies have focused almost exclusively on punishment for promoting public cooperation, here rewards are shown to be much more successful. The new study, which finds that rewards robustly build compliance and cooperation, could help in developing solutions for thorny problems requiring the cooperation of large numbers of people to achieve a greater good. It was conducted using a computer-based public goods game, a classic experiment for measuring collective action in a laboratory setting. The study contradicts previous research, which has stated that peer punishment is the only effective mechanism for promoting public cooperation. <br /><br />Lead author David G. Rand, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard's Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, says the work has implications far beyond subjects' behavior in a computer game.<br /><br />"All of us engage in public goods games, on both large and small scales," Rand says. "Climate change is a huge public goods game: If each person does his or her part to conserve energy and reduce CO2 emissions, it benefits us all. On a more local level, public goods games include volunteering on school boards, helping to maintain public facilities in your community, or cleaning up after yourself and doing your share of work at the office." <br /><br />"In these types of domains, where people interact repeatedly with each other to solve a group social dilemma, our work suggests that rewards result in better outcomes than punishment," Rand says. "Rewards can change individuals' behavior and encourage cooperation without the destructive negative consequences that come with punishment."<br /><br />Rand and his colleagues, headed by Martin A. Nowak of Harvard's Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, examined cooperation among 192 participants in a public goods game probing the fundamental tension between the interests of an individual and a group. <br /><br />Over 50 rounds of interaction, each of four participants in a group would decide how much to contribute toward a common pool that benefited all four equally. Each participant was then able -- at a cost to him or herself -- to either reward or punish each of the three other subjects for their contributions to the group, or lack thereof. <br /><br />As in real life, Rand says, study subjects tend to resent "free riders" who fail to contribute to a group yet reap the benefits of membership in it.<br /><br />"But despite this anger at free riders, rewarding good behavior is as effective as punishing bad behavior for maintaining public cooperation and leads to better outcomes for the group," Rand says. "When both options are available, reward leads to increased contributions and payoff for the group, while punishment has no effect on contributions and leads to lower payoff for the group."<br /><br />Previous research has suggested that punishment can compel cooperation in anonymous two-time interactions where individuals need not worry about reputation or retaliation -- a scenario Rand, Nowak, and colleagues find unrealistic, since most of our real-life interactions are recurring, with our reputations always at stake.<br /><br />"Sometimes it is argued that it is easier to punish people than to reward them," the researchers write. "We think this is not the case. Life is full of … situations where we can help others. These sorts of productive interactions are the building blocks of our society and should not be disregarded."</span></span><br /><br />http://esciencenews.com/articles/2009/09/03/carrots.are.better.sticks.building.human.cooperationkevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05331047626419936198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252773055876553427.post-56529467189238199192009-09-07T04:46:00.000-07:002009-09-07T04:48:29.112-07:00Solar Hot Water big in China<span style="font-style:italic;">latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-fi-china-solar6-2009sep06,0,7213756.story<br /><br />latimes.com<br /><br />China, green? In the case of solar water heating, yes<br /><br />In a nation known more for its belching smokestacks, solar water heaters are on nearly every roof in some cities. Manufacturers are eyeing foreign markets, including Southern California.<br /><br />By David Pierson<br /><br />September 6, 2009<br /><br />Reporting from Rizhao, China<br /><br /><br />Before her family bought a solar water heater, Liu Yan would bathe the way many working-class Chinese have for generations: boil water, dampen a rag and wipe away the dirt.<br /><br />Today, the 40-year-old mother and her family shower every day and wash their dishes with hot water. The stainless steel heater affixed to her red-tiled roof cost about $220. <br /><br />The device has become a symbol of China's rising standard of living and its leap into the era of clean energy.<br /><br />In the seaside city of 2.8 million where Liu lives in Shandong province, 99% of households use solar water heaters. The mattress-sized contraptions dominate Rizhao's skyline, resting haphazardly on almost every residential rooftop.<br /><br />In the global race to develop green technology and stem climate change, China has quickly become a leading producer of solar panels and wind turbines. It also dominates the lesser-known technology of solar water heaters.<br /><br />Using principles of solar heating more than a century old, the humble, low-cost devices consist of an angled row of cola-colored glass tubes that absorb heat from the sun. The most common models fill the tubes with cold water. As it heats, the water rises into an insulated tank where it can remain hot for days.<br /><br />The devices have improved so much over the years that some don't need direct sunlight -- all the more valuable in China's often hazy and smoggy cities. Newer models have electrical heaters inside the water tanks that switch on if the water gets too cold on frigid days.<br /><br />Popular in some parts of the United States around the turn of the 20th century before being made obsolete by cheap natural gas, solar heaters are now hailed as one of China's greatest environmental success stories. More than 30 million homes have the devices, accounting for two-thirds of the world's solar water heating energy. <br /><br />Manufacturers are eyeing foreign markets, including customers in Southern California. <br /><br />"China absolutely dominates the global market and they've done it relatively quietly and without a lot of fanfare," said Christopher Flavin, president of the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute. "It's an interesting example of their ability to take technology that was developed elsewhere and adapt it to their market on a scale no one had conceived of." <br /><br />The widespread development of solar heaters in China can appear paradoxical in a country that leads the world in carbon dioxide emissions and where two-thirds of the rivers and lakes are contaminated. <br /><br />Such is the nature of China's push to tackle climate change. In this rapidly developing economy, some of the nation's biggest polluters reside alongside the biggest renewable energy projects.<br /><br />Scenes like Rizhao's crowded, energy-efficient rooftops are repeated all over China, often in the shadows of carbon spewing smokestacks and noxious chemical plants. Rizhao is one of a small but growing number of Chinese cities requiring solar heaters to be installed or subsidized.<br /><br />"There are two different stories in China," said Barbara Finamore, director of the National Resources Defense Council's China Program. "There's dramatic progress. There's no denying that. At the same time, they're still building, on average, a new coal-fired plant every week."<br /><br />The heating of water accounts for a quarter of a typical building's energy usage. The Chinese solar heaters are estimated to have prevented more than 20 million tons of carbon dioxide that would have been emitted annually using electrical units.<br /><br />The heaters will be much needed if Beijing is to meet its goal of reducing its reliance on coal, which supplies 80% of the country's energy. The central government aims to meet 15% of its energy needs through renewable sources by 2020. Beijing hopes to triple its solar heater capacity by the same year, according to Greenpeace China.<br /><br />The technology's gains here lie in its affordability, the dearth of residential natural gas service and the modest expectations of consumers, many of whom had never enjoyed hot water at home before. The starting price for one of the clunky devices is around $220, about the same as an electric heater in China. In the United States, where labor costs are higher and systems tend to be larger and more elaborate, solar water heaters can easily cost $1,500 or more.<br /><br />"The key to the success in China is that the low price enables people to have an instantaneous payback," said John Perlin, a solar energy historian and author of "From Space to Earth: The Story of Solar Electricity."<br /><br />A thriving, hyper-competitive industry of 5,000 manufacturers has grown up in the last decade or more, driving costs down and widening the range of quality. <br /><br />"The market is huge, but the competition is fearsome," said Bi Bangquan, president of Ri- zhao Gold Giant Solar Power, one of 150 manufacturers based in the city.<br /><br />To find new customers, he's turned to rural areas. That can mean sending sales teams to villages, where stages are erected for singing and dancing performers to promote the virtues of his solar heaters.<br /><br />Each manufacturer touts its product's ability to heat water within hours and insulate that heat for days.<br /><br />"I guarantee my water's hot enough to take the feathers off a chicken," said one of Bi's rivals, Zhang Shouqin, founder of Rizhao Qin Naier Solar Power.<br /><br />Some Chinese companies hoping to boost sales are looking to other countries, including the United States. Only about 1% of the world's solar water heating energy is produced in the U.S., but climate change is spurring interest in the technology. The California Public Utilities Commission has recommended the establishment of a $300-million incentive program to encourage homeowners to install units.<br /><br />Bi dreams of exporting, but he's concerned that his heaters would be no match for Western habits. A typical American uses 100 gallons of water daily, both hot and cold, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In China, an urban resident uses half that, and a rural dweller about a fifth. <br /><br />Many of the older or cheaper Chinese models are far from perfect, lacking auxiliary heating elements to warm the water on cloudy days.<br /><br />"I have to look outside and make sure it's been sunny before I decide to take a shower," said a 53-year-old retiree in Rizhao who gave only his surname, Xiao. "Otherwise you'll get a cold surprise." <br /><br />About 225 miles northwest of Rizhao is the headquarters of Himin Solar Energy Group, China's largest and most advanced solar water heater maker, which recently garnered a $50-million investment from Goldman Sachs. <br /><br />Himin's influence runs deep in its hometown, Dezhou. The streets of the city of 5.5 million are illuminated with solar-powered lights; 90% of its households have solar water heaters. <br /><br />Company founder Huang Ming is building an expansive residential development in Dezhou called Utopia Garden to showcase the potential of solar technology. Scheduled for completion in 2013, the row of high-rise buildings will be crowned with a ribbon of solar thermal tubing and photovoltaic panels that will supply much of the complex's energy needs.<br /><br />"We're only at the bottom of a big mountain," Huang said. Solar "can push a change in lifestyle." <br /><br />david.pierson@latimes.com<br /><br />Nicole Liu in The Times' Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.<br /><br /><br />Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times</span>kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05331047626419936198noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252773055876553427.post-2117221612615543042009-09-06T02:05:00.000-07:002009-09-06T02:11:29.396-07:00Artic warmer than for 2000 years...<span style="font-style:italic;">The Arctic is now warmer than at any time during the last 2,000 years, according to a major new study.<br /><br />Temperatures around the North Pole have dramatically increased in the last 50 years - reversing a long-term natural cooling trend, scientists say.<br /><br />The study, based on an analysis of ice cores, lake sediments and tree rings, provides compelling evidence that greenhouse gases released since the start of the industrial revolution are triggering global warming, the researchers say.<br /> <br /><br />Researchers secure a floating platform in Alaska to take sediment cores. They reported finding yet more proof that global warming was a dangerous reality<br /><br />Lead author Darrell Kaufman of Northern Arizona University said: 'Scientists have known for a while that the current period of warming was preceded by a long-term cooling trend. But our reconstruction quantifies the cooling with greater certainty than before.'<br /><br />The research - published in the journal Science - comes from a team of British and American geologists who tracked summer Arctic temperatures to the time of the Romans by studying natural signals in the landscape. <br /><br />Their reconstruction found that the Arctic got cooler in the summer months between 1AD and 1900, thanks to a natural 'wobble' in the Earth's orbit around the Sun.<br /><br />The wobble slowly increased the distance between the Earth and the Sun during the Arctic summer, reducing summer temperatures by around 0.2C every thousand years and causing the 'Little Ice Age' that led to freezing winters in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.<br /><br />But during the 20th century, temperatures began to rise dramatically - even though the amount of sunlight reaching the Arctic during the summer was continuing to fall. <br /><br />The decade between 1999 to 2008 was the warmest in the last 2,000 years, the research found.<br /><br />The researchers say the Arctic should still be cooling because the Earth is now about 600,000 miles farther away from the Sun than it was in 1BC.<br /><br />They estimate that by the middle of the century, summer Arctic temperatures were about 0.7C higher than would have been expected if the cooling trend had continued.<br /><br />Today, temperatures are around 1.4C higher than they should be, the authors say.<br /><br />Dr David Schneider, from the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, said: 'This result is particularly important because the Arctic, perhaps more than any other region on Earth, is facing dramatic impacts from climate change. <br /><br />'This study provides us with a long-term record that reveals how greenhouse gases from human activities are overwhelming the Arctic's natural climate system.<br /><br />'Greenhouse gases are overtaking a natural cycle.' <br /><br />The temperature reconstruction looked at the amount of algae in sediments in Arctic lakes - which reflect the length of the growing season - and the thickness of annually deposited layers of sediment which increase during warmer summers when deposits from glacial melt water increases.<br /> <br /><br />They also looked at records of tree rings. The amount of new growth of a tree each year is strongly linked to the temperature of the growing season.<br /><br />The Arctic appears to be particularly vulnerable to changes to the Earth's climate. <br /><br />Previous research has shown that Arctic temperatures rose three times faster during the 20th century than the rest of the Northern Hemisphere.<br /><br />Some experts have predicted that the Arctic could be free from sea ice in the winter within the next few decades if the temperatures continue to rise</span>kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05331047626419936198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252773055876553427.post-64039747595439102222009-09-04T14:49:00.000-07:002009-09-04T14:51:55.095-07:00Supkis on vaccine hysteria...<span style="font-style:italic;">I am increasingly concerned about the anti-vaccination movement. It seems, on the surface, to be simply irrational. But when we dig deeper into this issue, we detect some rather frightful matters attached like barnacles to the bottom of this particular boat. First, some good news concerning vaccinations, especially the very wonderful news that we may eventually see a real vaccination against that terrible scourge, AIDS:.<br /><br /><br />Sinovac Shares Rose After Chinese Government Approved Vaccine (SVA) – FOXBusiness.com<br /><br />Sep 03, 2009 (SmarTrend(R) News Watch via COMTEX) —-9/3/2009 – Sinovac Biotech Ltd. (NYSE:SVA) shares rose 6.6% in afternoon trading Thursday after the Chinese government approved its one-shot swine flu vaccine and issued a production license to the company to start making the drug. The vaccine is the first to be approved by the Chinese regulators. Sinovac and Novartis AG are the only company’s who have said their vaccine may protect people with one shot instead of two.<br /><br />.<br /><br />OK: one of the favored conspiracy theories of the radicals who hate vaccinations is the mythology that governments want to kill you and me with a shot to the arm. Now, logically speaking, why would the Chinese government want to kill off all the Chinese people? True, the LDP in Japan seemed awfully indifferent to whether or not the Japanese people even survived or reproduced. But I assure everyone, China’s government wants its own people to be healthy and strong.<br /><br />.<br /><br />Of course, the profits from pollution means ignoring health issues. But this seems to be rapidly clearing up as the government is responding to both international outrage but even more, internal fury over pollution. The good parents of Chinese children do not want them poisoned by factory or energy plant wastes just like, they want to have safe schools in earthquake zones. There is tremendous pressure on the communist leadership to protect the children and this pressure grows as China’s wealth increases.<br /><br />.<br /><br />I would suggest that China is very intent on a safe vaccination that will protect the Chinese people from swine or any other flues. Historically, many of the worst viral outbreaks that killed millions originated in China. This is because, even 100 years ago, China had one quarter of the planet’s population and many of these people lived very closely with pigs, ducks, chickens and oxen. The intensive farming methods using these animals to grow, fertilize, crop and fallow farmlands is a huge intersection between germs and humans. The mutation rates of various diseases were very high due to the intermix of populations which were extremely close in proximity due to pens, leashes and flock control methods.<br /><br />.<br /><br />The US government is doing exactly the same thing the Chinese communists are doing: trying to stop any possible pandemic. This is because, millions of deaths would be a grave problem for the US especially if it is children and young adults. If anyone imagines that vaccinations are being deviously designed to kill us, this begs the logical question, why? That is, if the germs will kill us, why use other methods? I find this illogical systematic thinking to be a key characteristic of many conspiracy belief systems. Indeed, the seem addicted to this sort of illogical thinking. If a government protect people, the irrational believers in conspiracies think this is a tricky way to really kill us. And if the government does nothing when danger approaches, ditto! This is beyond silly, it is stupid.<br /><br />.<br /><br />New hope for Aids vaccine as scientists find ‘Achilles heel’ – Times Online<br /><br />The search for an HIV vaccine has taken a major step forward with the discovery of a potential Achilles heel of the virus that causes Aids. . <br /><br />Two powerful antibodies that attack a vulnerable spot common to many strains of HIV have been identified, improving the prospects for a vaccine against a virus that affects an estimated 33 million people and kills over 2 million each year. . <br /><br />The discovery is important because it highlights a potential way around HIV’s defences against the human immune system, which have so far thwarted efforts to make a workable vaccine. The hope is that a vaccine that stimulates the production of these antibodies could remain effective against HIV even as the virus mutates. . <br /><br />Scientists from the International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) are already examining the antibodies for clues to vaccine design. The new techniques used to discover the antibodies also promise further progress, as they should reveal other weaknesses in HIV that a vaccine might exploit.<br /><br />.<br /><br />Hooray! This is good, good news! Africa and many island communities like Haiti are being ravaged by AIDS. It is destroying entire communities, literally. It is a slow death so people get sicker and sicker and can do less and less and this leads to a collapse in farming, trading and raising families. It is a complete disaster for the third world! And for anyone else! This disease has killed many millions of people and is a major plague. And I hope, will be terminated by a vaccination. We must thank the many scientists who devoted their careers to understanding this viral menace and mapping its internal structure.<br /><br />.<br /><br />The anti-vaccination people will fight this one, tooth and nail. I can see it coming: they are irrational, dangerous and DEADLY. Many obvious liars take refuge within the antiviral community and work tirelessly to convince people to do something deadly to themselves. This is criminal.<br /><br />.<br /><br />anti-vaccination moevment – The Skeptic’s Dictionary – Skepdic.com<br /><br />The anti-vaccination movement (AVM) is at least two-pronged: one prong denies a causal connection between vaccines and the eradication or significant reduction of diseases like smallpox, polio, measles, and rubella; the other prong perceives vaccines as causing diseases, e.g., it claims that the MMR (mumps-measles-rubella) vaccine causes autism. Either way, the AVM proponents oppose vaccination against disease. . <br /><br />One might consider a third prong of the AVM to be those who advocate homeopathic “vaccines” or isopathic preparations for such things as meningococcal disease, the “flu”, childhood illnesses, malaria, and HIV. Such people offer magic water in place of an actual vaccine developed and properly tested by scientists. They believe the water has been energized and has a selective “memory” of molecules long gone in the homeopathic dilution process. Most homeopathic vaccines are nothing but water or inert substances and cannot protect anyone from anything. They endanger people’s lives when they are offered as protection against diseases like malaria. They are sought out by people who do not trust real vaccines and who live according to the principles of vitalism and magical thinking. Thus, we might well say that those who recommend homeopathic vaccines are part of the AVM since, in effect, they oppose real vaccination against disease. . <br /><br />One thing that unites these three prongs of the AVM is that each is selective in its picking of evidence to support its viewpoint and to denigrate one of scientific medicine’s major contributions to public health.<br /><br />.<br /><br /><br />timeline of the autism caused by vaccines scare – The Skeptic’s Dictionary – Skepdic.com<br /><br />[This timeline is in response to Sharon Begley's Newsweek article that gives the impression that there has been a significant amount of publication in reputable journals in support of the vaccine/autism link. It is important to emphasize the need to look at all the evidence and accept what the preponderance of the data supports. All of us are susceptible to confirmation bias and too many of us go with our gut instinct rather than with the data. Your "mommy instinct" or gut feeling isn't as reliable as you think it is when it comes to complex causal matters.] . <br /><br />Background: The anti-MMR-vaccine movement has two camps: one sees the vaccine as harmful, the other sees thimerosal (an ethylmercury based preservative) as harmful. In the US, the anti-vaccine movement began as one aspect of a larger movement that blames mercury and other neurotoxins in the environment for most neurological disorders. After thimerosal was removed from vaccines, the focus shifted to the quantity of shots given to children and to the speculation that some children are “especially sensitive” to vaccines. The evidence, as you can see for yourself by following this timeline, is overwhelmingly in favor of the notion that neither the vaccines nor their preservatives are harmful, but that not getting children vaccinated has harmful, sometimes deadly, consequences.<br /><br /><br />.<br /><br />I have gone from being annoyed by the anti-vaccination commentators who have posted one fake story after another here on my blog. Now, I will tell them all who they really are: FOOLS. I am utterly outraged by this movement and I recommend that everyone read the above timeline in the Skeptic article. Don’t worry about clicking on this story, it won’t rip your heads off. It is important to read because a lot of it is about the false calumny about autism and vaccinations. Autism is most likely a genetic problem. And incidentally, could also be aggravated by pollution. As I detailed in my mercury in fish story the other day.<br /><br />.<br /><br />Some of my readers hate science. I can’t fix this problem. People love illogic and prefer magic, over science and can’t be fixed via arguments or logical expositions. If someone wants to be crazy, they will be crazy! But the problem is deep: people basically have a poor understanding of what science actually is. It is an ongoing logic systems argument which settles debates via assembling and then examining from all angles, all information relevant to the issues. Double blind testing is one area in science which is most important. Non-scientists who want to make ideological points, often ignore the double blind tests. They want to assemble ‘facts’ and then draw conclusions based on their pet facts.<br /><br />.<br /><br />Also, if someone discovers something and no one can reproduce it or find it again, it is discounted. Since it isn’t happening twice. People seeking to have singular events hate this rule. Another tool of science is to test things over and over again, in a bigger and bigger pool and with more and more people participating. This way, hoaxes and misunderstandings are revealed.<br /><br />.<br /><br />A great number of investigators took the autism/vaccination story very seriously. And after many years of hard work, have decided there is NO connection whatsoever. I lost one good commentator here, David, because he and his sister were convinced, based only on their singular observations, that the vaccinations caused his sister to deliver an autistic baby. David believes this business despite being told by professionals that the condition appears right after the third month, probably triggered by hormone changes, which happens to coincide with the first vaccinations. When it comes to family relations, people’s emotions overwhelm them and they have to react and then cling to the reaction.<br /><br />.<br /><br />So the story spreads, vaccinations are evil. Despite the fact that the diseases these vaccinations protect us from kill, maim and create autistic-like damage to healthy babies! That is, these diseases can paralyze, kill, render deaf, put holes in hearts, etc and thus, are a grave danger in themselves.<br /><br />.<br /><br />To immunize or not? | PressDemocrat.com | The Press Democrat | Santa Rosa, CA<br /><br />The percentage of fully immunized students entering Sonoma County kindergarten classes has steadily dipped from 91.6 percent in 2002 to 87.7 percent last fall, according to state records. The statewide average is down by only 0.6 points over the same period. . <br /><br />Roughly half of this year’s kindergartners who are not fully vaccinated have exemptions that cover all diseases. The other half are missing some vaccinations. . <br /><br />The county’s nearly 4-point drop in the vaccination rate might seem small, but officials say it comes close to the level — about 85 percent — at which “herd immunization,” the safety in numbers from widespread inoculation, breaks down. . <br /><br />In nine county school districts, six of them in the west county, the percentage of fully immunized kindergartners is below 80 percent, a Public Health Department analysis said. The figures exclude private schools. . <br /><br />At six North Bay schools, all charter or private schools, more than half the families had received exemptions from the required vaccination regimen. Such concentrations of partially immunized or unimmunized students pose “a significant risk of an outbreak of a vaccine-preventable disease,” Maddux-Gonzalez said. . <br /><br />State law allows parents, by merely signing a waiver form, to gain exemption from the vaccinations required to enter kindergarten at public and private schools.<br /><br />.<br /><br />One child gets sick in the private schools and we get a mini-epidemic! Already, the rate of death and impaired health from lack of vaccinations is rising rapidly in ‘educated’ countries due to this global push to get parents to stop immunizing their children! If anyone is paranoid, wouldn’t they be upset that dangerous people are convincing gullible parents to expose their children to possible DEATH??? I used to live in northern California. This is where people believe the ridiculous idea that if you eat certain foods, viruses and bacteria will leave you alone or not hurt you. This is pure hogwash.<br /><br />.<br /><br />I got a number of emails from enraged readers who did NOT want to hear this news. They wanted desperately to believe that if they ate carrots every day, they would never get very sick. I can’t help it: if I know something, I will say it out loud. History is crystal clear: no matter what you eat, you can be struck down by the Viral Kingdom in a flash.<br /><br />.<br /><br />Autism Blog – Autism, scientology and the moonies « Left Brain/Right Brain<br /><br />I never imagined when I started blogging about autism just how deep the rabbit hole of quackery went. It never ceases to amaze me how the relationships between some of the people deeply involved in the mercury militia start to unravel with some occasionally disturbing results. . <br /><br />Over the last few weeks, I’ve come across some of the most disturbing relationships yet. As the title suggests, there seem to be disturbing links between some mercury militia members and the Unification Church (the moonies) and there are definite links between established scientologists and DAN! as well as other non-DAN! mercury militia resources. Most disturbing of all is the suggestion of a relationship between The Moonies and Scientology with an apparent agenda to encourage the mercury militia and possibly even help finance or otherwise aid the legal fight some parents are undergoing with relation to vaccines and autism.<br /><br />.<br /><br />If anyone is paranoid, the words ‘Moonies’ and ‘Scientologists’ should make you scream and run like hell! And guess what, everyone: both of these groups work hand in glove with a number of the damn ‘NWO’ people you guys are blaming for everything! Why not connect some dots here? The movement to expose yourselves and your poor children to dangerous and deadly viral diseases….are these guys. And if you are truly paranoid, google ‘Scientologists’ and see what real darkness looks like! GAH! Get a grip!<br /><br />.<br /><br />This is what happens when people are lured into cults. The anti-vaccination groups are CULTS. So are the Moonies and the Scientologists. There are many cults out there that want us to not take medicines and to not get vaccinations. I know that a number of Buddhist cults are the same way. As well as born again Christian cults or cults like the Mennonites, the list is very long. The fear of vaccinations is a key element in irrational religious cults. It taps into a dark part of the brain which is where religious beliefs lurk and it a grave danger to any rational consideration of reality.<br /><br />.<br /><br />Sarah Palin Adviser’s Secret Scientology Plot to Take Over Washington – sarah palin – Gawker<br /><br />John Coale, currently advising Sarah Palin on running for president in 2012, is a Scientologist. And according to a memo obtained by Gawker, Coale once plotted to use friendly politicians to advance the power-hungry cult’s agenda. . <br /><br />Coale is a prominent Washington power broker and husband to Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren. According to the Washington Post, he is running Palin’s political action committee behind the scenes and “guiding [her] political image in Washington.” . <br /><br />In 1986, he masterminded a plan—which was never executed—for Scientology to get into the “MONEY and VOTES game” in order to “create power” for Scientology and win influence Washington, D.C…. . <br /><br />…Coale denies playing any role in Palin’s political career aside from that of a friend who e-mails her once a week or so. And he insists that he has never used his political influence—in addition to Palin, his friends include the Clintons and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, among many others in Washington—to advance the aims of Scientology. “I don’t think I have ever said, to the Clintons or Nancy Pelosi, or anyone else, a word about Scientology. Not a word.”<br /><br />.<br /><br />Read this and weep. Fox TV is big on cult beliefs. It encourages all sorts of irrational or outright stupid behavior. For example, in the healthcare debate, it promotes the false story about ‘death panels’ which is exactly what the Scientologists love. Fox TV is big on taking over normal outrage like the Tea Baggers who were turned on their heads and shoved into being anti-healthcare. A number of people who get government healthcare are screaming about healthcare reforms thanks to these creeps who run Fox TV. And the Scientologists know that if they sow fear and paranoia, they can harvest fools to use as tools.<br /><br />.<br /><br />Ditto, a number of religious organizations. Religions love to pretend they heal people. So, while doctors toil using modern science and medicine to save lives of believers, their brethren stand around pray and then, if the doctors succeed, always crow that their particular god or belief was the true cure. Some religions are very doctrinaire and forbid modern medications and their believers die. Of course, when inflicted on innocent children who have no choice in the matter, this becomes criminal.<br /><br />.<br /><br />Now, to round out the health news (before the regular crew here begins howling at the moon rather than at the Moonies) here is some news about the biggest pharmaceutical corporation breaking the law:<br /><br />.<br /><br />Pfizer to pay record $2.3bn settlement | Business | guardian.co.uk<br /><br />The government said Pfizer had promoted four prescription drugs, including a painkiller, Bextra, as treatments for medical conditions – but, crucially, the ailments were not ones for which those drugs had been federally approved. . <br /><br />Use of drugs for so-called “off-label” medical conditions is not uncommon, but drug manufacturers are prohibited from marketing drugs for uses that have not been approved by the food and drug administration. . <br /><br />Bextra, one of a class of painkillers known as Cox-2 inhibitors, was pulled from the US market in 2005 amid mounting evidence it raised the risk of heart attack, stroke and death…. . <br /><br />…The government said Pfizer had promoted four prescription drugs, including a painkiller, Bextra, as treatments for medical conditions – but, crucially, the ailments were not ones for which those drugs had been federally approved. . <br /><br />Use of drugs for so-called “off-label” medical conditions is not uncommon, but drug manufacturers are prohibited from marketing drugs for uses that have not been approved by the food and drug administration. . <br /><br />Bextra, one of a class of painkillers known as Cox-2 inhibitors, was pulled from the US market in 2005 amid mounting evidence it raised the risk of heart attack, stroke and death.<br /><br /><br /><br />.<br /><br />I happen to be a believer (yes, this is religious!) that people should feel pain. I was dying once and I heard a voice (yes, I have the same brain as everyone else) telling me, ‘If you feel pain, you are alive.’ So I muttered that to the nurse who told me about this, later. Well, pain is life! We need pain to feel the other feelings in our bodies. All pain killers also kill other feelings and this is very bad for us.<br /><br />.<br /><br />So pain killers have to be used sparingly. I will endure immense pain in order to continue feeling my other feelings! But most people don’t like pain and want to live sans any pains at all. So they pop pills or use other substances to stop feeling ANYTHING at all! Since this is all about addictions, governments outlaw one painkiller (opium was an early one!) after another. But all of them are addictive because many humans love to avoid pain. I can’t get addicted to painkillers because I hate them.<br /><br />.<br /><br />The Holy Grail is a painkiller that isn’t addictive. I think this will never be found due to humans loving painkillers too much. So here is a paradox: to really live life, you have to suffer lots of pain. And this is an unhappy thing. But then, all the real joys in life involve alertness and focus and nothing makes us more alert and focused than some pain.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://emsnews.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/aids-vaccine-possible-at-last">http://emsnews.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/aids-vaccine-possible-at-last</a>kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05331047626419936198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252773055876553427.post-58176803818373466162009-08-31T17:56:00.000-07:002009-08-31T18:01:04.958-07:00On the post carbon die-off; a rebuttal....We don't innovate with energy because it is too cheap...but we will all be innovating big time sooner or later......not starving in the dark.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;"> <br /><br />“Leibig’s Law” states that growth in a system is controlled not by the total of resources available, but by the scarcest resource (limiting factor). How does this apply energy production? I have about 7.20E+03 pounds of lead in my home PV system. Global production of lead is about 3.88E+06 tonnes per year. The 1.30E+08 homes in the US would require 9.36E+11 pounds (4.25E+08 tonnes) of lead every eight or so years. For alternate energy storage in homes, the US alone would need 100 times the current global production of lead – six times the global reserves of lead – just for US home electrical storage (that number DOES NOT include transportation or business)! Therefore, we know that it’s literally impossible for alternative energy to replace fossil fuels. It’s literally true that “peak oil” is equivalent to “peak everything.” More on scarce minerals at http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5559 http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/5239<br /><br /> <br /><br /><br />I send your post to my engineering friend, Here are his comments:<br /> <br />This guy is living the standard brainless clueless USA energy hog existence with 7000 lb. worth of batteries. In contrast Barbara Kerr (Kerr-Cole Sustainable Living Center) gets by on 480 lb. and I live happily with 240 lb. of batteries. Nonetheless he has the right idea regarding lead. According to globalleadnet.com STRONG>/ STRONG> /FONT> STRONG>/ STRONG> /file_download/17/5.pdf the US production was from 477,000 metric tonnes of 65% ore concentrate, which works out to 680,000,000 lb. in primary lead (not from recycling) sources (mining) in 1991. This is enough to supply 1000 lb of batteries to 680,000 new installations. Presumably existing installations will recycle lead, and therefore will neither add nor subtract from the lead supply. This guy forgot that lead is not consumed in batteries in 8 years; it is nearly 100% recyclable. He forgets that there are other battery technologies that will come into the mix: nickel-metal-hydride (my Prius for example) and lithium ion (the coming plug-in Prius for example). The future probably lies in running your house partially off the car battery using grid-tie EV technology - and learning to live with severe electrical energy rationing (by today's standards). This guy is also ignorant of compressed air automotive technology. And of power grid storage options such as hydrogen, ammonia (a much more practical offshoot of hydrogen), compressed air, flywheels and pumped hydro for on-demand electricity production. Not everybody needs batteries in a renewable, alternative technology. One can use the grid via net metering to store what one generates, or just buy the alternative juice from the utility.<br /> <br />Most important, he is neglecting geothermal energy which is a base load technology (runs 24/7 and therefore does not require any storage whatsoever). I am right now at one of the most advanced geothermal plants in the world, Chena Hot Springs near Fairbanks. The maverick entrepreneur owner of this spa put in a cutting edge power plant a three years ago on his own nickel (well 2.5 megabucks, actually) for 1/5 the cost of conventional technology, mainly by modifying a standard industrial chiller to operate in reverse using mostly off-the shelf components (with concomitant economies of scale using reliable mature design equipment that has been in production for decades). He has cut his electrical energy cost by $500,000 dollars a year because he has replaced diesel ($0.50 per kWh operating cost) with geo ($0.02 per kWh operating cost). The key innovation is that it runs off low relatively low temperature hot water, making it operable from deep earth heated water from depleted oil wells. This the "geothermal anywhere" (GA) concept. He is now going into the business of putting 200 kW mobile power plants on a semi trailers and leasing them out to wherever waste heat or easy geothermal is available. The first two mobile units are supplying power to this community and my computer right now as they undergo pre-delivery testing (they are temporarily replacing the on-site power plant). Very soon they will take a 6000 mile trip to Florida to run on oil well waste heat.<br /> <br />The installed plant here produces twice the power the community needs (for emergency backup redundancy for service down-time or failure of one of the generators). So he just put in a hydrogen electrolysis plant to transport "stranded" excess energy capacity to market. Waste heat warms four-season greenhouses (the tomato plants are 14 months old and producing like gangbusters). He has all the lighting he wants to keep the grow lights on in the winter 24/7, 100 miles from the arctic circle. He plans to become self-sufficient in food.<br /> <br />Interesting, huh? You might think about relocating to a community with hot spring or depleted oil well. There may be a future in it.<br /> </span>kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05331047626419936198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252773055876553427.post-11069108222512347682009-08-26T14:26:00.000-07:002009-08-26T14:30:03.761-07:00Holding heavy objects makes us see things as more importantIts like Taleb says, we only think we are thinking and our judgement is very weak, it can only be strong if we always remain aware of just how weak it is...<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Gravity affects not just our bodies and our behaviours, but our very thoughts. That's the fascinating conclusion of a new study which shows that simply holding a heavy object can affect the way we think. A simple heavy clipboard can makes issues seem weightier - when holding one, volunteers think of situations as more important and they invest more mental effort in dealing with abstract issues. <br /><br />In a variety of languages, from English to Dutch to Chinese, importance is often described by words pertaining to weight. We speak of 'heavy news, 'weighty matters' and 'light entertainment'. We weigh up the value of evidence, we lend weight to arguments with facts, and our opinions carry weight if we wield influence and authority. These are more than just quirks of language - they reflect real links that our minds make between weight and importance. <br /><br />Nils Jostmann from the University of Amsterdam demonstrated the link between weight and importance through a quartet of experiments. In each one, a different set of volunteers held a clipboard that either weighed 1.5 pounds or 2.3 pounds. <br /><br />The extra 0.8 pounds were enough to make volunteers think that a foreign currency was worth more money. Forty volunteers were asked to guess the conversion rates between euros and six other currencies, indicating their estimate by marking a straight line. Those who held the heavier clipboard valued the currencies more generously, even though a separate questionnaire showed that they felt the same about the euro. <br /><br />Money, of course, does have its own weight, so for his next trick, Jostmann wanted to stay entirely within the abstract realm. He considered justice - an area that is free of weight but hardly free of importance. Jostmann showed 50 volunteers a scenario where a university committee was denying students the opportunity to voice their opinions on a study grant. It was a potentially weighty issue, but more so to the students who held the heavy clipboard. They felt it was more important that the university listened to the students' opinions. <br /><br />Jostmann also showed that people are less likely to take matters lightly if they're holding something heavier. In his third task, he asked 49 recruits to rate the mayor of Amsterdam in terms of his competence, likeability, powerlessness, trustworthiness, intelligence, corruption, importance and charisma. They also had to give their opinion about Amsterdam itself - whether it was a great city and how much they enjoyed being in it. The weight of the clipboards didn't affect the evaluations of either the mayor or the city. However, the two sets of scores were more strongly correlated among the volunteers who held the heavier board. <br /><br />Jostmann thinks that the extra weight made people invest that little bit more mental effort in awarding their scores - hence the more consistent rankings across the mayor- and city-based questions. This result, I feel, is a bit more tenuous. Jostmann argues the case that satisfaction with the mayor is an indirect measure of satisfaction with the city, so the two scores should match to some extent. That seems reasonable, but it hasn't been demonstrated, which makes interpreting the study a bit more difficult. <br /><br />In the final task, 40 visitors were asked to say whether they agreed with six statements about the construction of a controversial new subway that was big news at the time. The list included three arguments that previous volunteers had deemed as weak (e.g. the building of the subway is a sign of courage to handle large-scale projects) and three arguments that were stronger (e.g. the subway will make the city more accessible). <br /><br />In all cases, the volunteers agreed more with the strong arguments but especially so if they held the heavier clipboards. This group were also more confident in their opinions and were more likely to be clearly in favour of the subway or against it, rather than dawdling on the fence. Again, the results suggest that under the influence of the weightier board, people make stronger and more polarised judgments, and they do so more confidently. <br /><br />The effects of the clipboards were small but statistically significant - unlikely to have arisen by chance. The boards didn't affect the moods of the volunteers, and with a weight of just 2.3 pounds, no one felt that the heavier board was actually burdensome to hold. <br /><br />Instead, Jostmann reasons that the link between weight and importance is rooted in our early childhood experiences, when we rapidly learn that heavy objects require more effort to deal with, not just in terms of strength but planning too. Our brain relies on these concrete physical experiences when it represents more abstract concepts, like importance. The two are then joined, so that physical experiences can affect abstract thought. <br /><br />This is far from the first study that has supported this "theory of embodied cognition". Jostmann's explanation can also account for why thinking clean thoughts can soften moral judgments and why immoral thoughts trigger a need for physical cleanliness. It's why warming our hands can make us socially warmer, why social exclusion literally feels cold. <br /><br />Update: Just realised that I've been totally scooped by Vaughan at Mind Hacks. Go over there for another take.<br /><br />An aside: I love academia. The paper says, "Being hit by a heavy object generally has more profound consequences than being hit by a light object." I will remember this the next time I'm hit by a heavy object. Instead of a primal scream, I will opt for a more dignified, "Lo. I am struck. The consequences are most profound." <br /><br />Reference: Jostmann, N., Lakens, D., & Schubert, T. (2009). Weight as an Embodiment of Importance Psychological Science DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02426.x</span><br /><br />http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/08/holding_heavy_objects_makes_us_see_things_as_more_important.php?utm_source=nytwidgetkevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05331047626419936198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252773055876553427.post-60810827910129153232009-08-23T14:37:00.000-07:002009-08-23T14:38:31.065-07:00Mexico Legalizes Drug PossessionMEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico enacted a controversial law on Thursday decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs while encouraging government-financed treatment for drug dependency free of charge. <br /><br />The law sets out maximum “personal use” amounts for drugs, also including LSD and methamphetamine. People detained with those quantities will no longer face criminal prosecution; the law goes into effect on Friday. <br /><br />Anyone caught with drug amounts under the personal-use limit will be encouraged to seek treatment, and for those caught a third time treatment is mandatory — although no penalties for noncompliance are specified.<br /><br />Mexican authorities said the change only recognized the longstanding practice here of not prosecuting people caught with small amounts of drugs. <br /><br />The maximum amount of marijuana considered to be for “personal use” under the new law is 5 grams — the equivalent of about four marijuana cigarettes. Other limits are half a gram of cocaine, 50 milligrams of heroin, 40 milligrams for methamphetamine and 0.015 milligrams of LSD. <br /><br />President Felipe Calderón waited months before approving the law.<br /><br />http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/world/americas/21mexico.htmlkevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05331047626419936198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252773055876553427.post-19349897153034466672009-08-21T20:10:00.000-07:002009-08-21T20:13:23.375-07:00Addiction to stimulants may be undiagnosed ADDI've thought so for awhile, also.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">The definitions of addiction have changed over the years, according to Barry Everitt, Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge. He and his colleagues have done research into addiction, identifying the kind of person who is more likely than others to become addicted to substances, and they have looked at new ways to help people overcome their addictions.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2009/08/hrt_20090817.mp3">Health Report Audio</a>kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05331047626419936198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252773055876553427.post-5013039431744803572009-08-13T14:46:00.000-07:002009-08-13T14:52:58.736-07:00a theory of consciousness and a brain the size of a planet<span style="font-style:italic;">A "Complex" Theory of Consciousness<br />Is complexity the secret to sentience, to a panpsychic view of consciousness?<br /><br />By Christof Koch <br /> <br /><br />Do you think that your newest acquisition, a Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner that traces out its unpredictable paths on your living room floor, is conscious? What about that bee that hovers above your marmalade-covered breakfast toast? Or the newborn who finally fell asleep after being suckled? Nobody except a dyed-in-the-wool nerd would think of the first as being sentient; adherents of Jainism, India’s oldest religion, believe that bees—and indeed all living creatures, small and large—are aware; whereas most everyone would accord the magical gift of consciousness to the baby.<br /><br />The truth is that we really do not know which of these organisms is or is not conscious. We have strong feelings about the matter, molded by tradition, religion and law. But we have no objective, rational method, no step-by-step procedure, to determine whether a given organism has subjective states, has feelings.<br /><br />The reason is that we lack a coherent framework for consciousness. Although consciousness is the only way we know about the world within and around us—shades of the famous Cartesian deduction cogito, ergo sum—there is no agreement about what it is, how it relates to highly organized matter or what its role in life is. This situation is scandalous! We have a detailed and very successful framework for matter and for energy but not for the mind-body problem. This dismal state of affairs might be about to change, however.<br /><br />The universal lingua franca of our age is information. We are used to the idea that stock and bond prices, books, photographs, movies, music and our genetic makeup can all be turned into data streams of zeros and ones. These bits are the elemental atoms of information that are transmitted over an Ethernet cable or via wireless, that are stored, replayed, copied and assembled into gigantic repositories of knowledge. Information does not depend on the substrate. The same information can be represented as lines on paper, as electrical charges inside a PC’s memory banks or as the strength of the synaptic connections among nerve cells.<br /><br />Since the early days of computers, scholars have argued that the subjective, phenomenal states that make up the life of the mind are intimately linked to the information expressed at that time by the brain. Yet they have lacked the tools to turn this hunch into a concrete and predictive theory. Enter psychiatrist and neuroscientist Giulio Tononi of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Tononi has developed and refined what he calls the integrated information theory (IIT) of consciousness.<br /><br />An Integrated Theory<br />IIT is based on two axiomatic pillars.<br /><br />First, conscious states are highly differentiated; they are informationally very rich. You can be conscious of an uncountable number of things: you can watch your son’s piano recital, for instance; you can see the flowers in the garden outside or the Gauguin painting on the wall. Think of all the frames from all the movies you have ever seen or that have ever been filmed or that will be filmed! Each frame, each view, is a specific conscious percept.<br /><br />Second, this information is highly integrated. No matter how hard you try, you cannot force yourself to see the world in black-and-white, nor can you see only the left half of your field of view and not the right. When you’re looking at your friend’s face, you can’t fail to also notice if she is crying. Whatever information you are conscious of is wholly and completely presented to your mind; it cannot be subdivided. Underlying this unity of consciousness is a multitude of causal interactions among the relevant parts of your brain. If areas of the brain start to disconnect or become fragmented and balkanized, as occurs in deep sleep or in anesthesia, consciousness fades and might cease altogether. Consider split-brain patients, whose corpus callosum—the 200 million wires linking the two cortical hemispheres—has been cut to alleviate severe epileptic seizures. The surgery literally splits the person’s consciousness in two, with one conscious mind associated with the left hemisphere and seeing the right half of the visual field and the other mind arising from the right hemisphere and seeing the left half of the visual field.<br /><br />To be conscious, then, you need to be a single, integrated entity with a large repertoire of highly differentiated states. Although the 60-gigabyte hard disk on my MacBook exceeds in capacity my lifetime of memories, that information is not integrated. For example, the family photographs on my Macintosh are not linked to one another. The computer does not know that the girl in those pictures is my daughter as she matures from a toddler to a lanky teenager and then a graceful adult. To my Mac, all information is equally meaningless, just a vast, random tapestry of zeros and ones.<br /><br />Yet I derive meaning from these images because my memories are heavily cross-linked. And the more interconnected, the more meaningful they become. Indeed, Tononi’s IIT postulates that the amount of integrated information that an entity possesses corresponds to its level of consciousness.<br /><br />These ideas can be precisely expressed in the language of mathematics using notions from information theory such as entropy [see box on next page]. Given a particular brain, with its neurons and axons, dendrites and synapses, one can, in principle, accurately compute the extent to which this brain is integrated. From this calculation, the theory derives a single number, Φ (pronounced “fi”). Measured in bits, Φ denotes the size of the conscious repertoire associated with any network of causally interacting parts. Think of Φ as the synergy of the system. The more integrated the system is, the more synergy it has, the more conscious it is. If individual brain regions are too isolated from one another or are interconnected at random, Φ will be low. If the organism has many neurons and is richly endowed with specific connections, Φ will be high—capturing the quantity of consciousness but not the quality of any one conscious experience. (That value is generated by the informational geometry that is associated with Φ but won’t be discussed here.)<br /><br />Explaining Brain Facts<br />The theory can account for a number of puzzling observations. The cerebellum, the “little brain” at the back of the brain that contains more neurons than the convoluted cerebral cortex that crowns the organ, has a regular, crystallinelike wiring arrangement. Thus, its circuit complexity as measured by Φ is low as compared with that of the cerebral cortex. Indeed, if you lose your cerebellum you will never be a rock climber, pianist or ballet dancer, but your consciousness will not be impaired. The cortex and its gateway, the thalamus—the quail egg–shaped structure in the center of the brain—on the other hand, are essential for consciousness, providing it with its elaborate content. Its circuitry conjoins functional specialization with functional integration thanks to extensive reciprocal connections linking distinct cortical regions and the cortex with the thalamus. This corticothalamic complex is well suited to behave as a single dynamic entity endowed with a large number of discriminable states. Lose one chunk of a particular cortical area, and you might be unable to perceive motion. If a different area were lesioned, you would be blind to faces (yet could see the eyes, hair, mouth and ears).<br /><br />When people are woken from deep sleep, they typically recall experiencing nothing or, at best, only some vague bodily feeling; this experience contrasts with the highly emotional narratives our brains weave during rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep. What is paradoxical is that the average firing activity of individual nerve cells does not differ that much in deep sleep and quiet wakefulness. At the whole system level, though, electroencephalographic electrodes on the skull pick up slow, large and highly synchronized waves during deep sleep. Because these waves are quite regular, they will disrupt the transfer of specific information among brain cells.<br /><br />Every day, in tens of thousands of surgical operations, patients’ consciousness is quickly, safely and transiently turned off and on again with the help of various anesthetic agents. There is no single mechanism common to all. The most consistent regional finding is that anesthetics reduce thalamic activity and deactivate mesial (middle) and parietal cortical regions. Twenty years of electrical recording in anesthetized laboratory animals provided ample evidence that many cortical cells, particularly in primary sensory cortical regions, continue to respond selectively during anesthesia. What appears to be disrupted is large-scale functional integration in the corticothalamic complex.<br /><br />IIT explains why consciousness requires neither sensory input nor behavioral output, as happens every night during REM sleep, in which a central paralysis prevents the sleeper from acting out her dreams. All that matters for consciousness is the functional relation among the nerve cells that make up the corticothalamic complex. Within this integrated dynamic entity can be found the dream of the lotus eater, the mindfulness of the meditating monk, the agony of the cancer patient and the Arcadian visions of your lost childhood home. Paraphrasing Oscar Wilde, I would say it is the causal interactions within the dynamic core that make the poppy red, the apple odorous and the skylark sing.<br /><br />Consciousness Is Universal <br />One unavoidable consequence of IIT is that all systems that are sufficiently integrated and differentiated will have some minimal consciousness associated with them: not only our beloved dogs and cats but also mice, squid, bees and worms.<br /><br />Indeed, the theory is blind to synapses and to all-or-none pulses of nervous systems. At least in principle, the incredibly complex molecular interactions within a single cell have nonzero Φ. In the limit, a single hydrogen ion, a proton made up of three quarks, will have a tiny amount of synergy, of Φ. In this sense, IIT is a scientific version of panpsychism, the ancient and widespread belief that all matter, all things, animate or not, are conscious to some extent. Of course, IIT does not downplay the vast gulf that separates the Φ of the common roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans with its 302 nerve cells and the Φ associated with the 20 billion cortical neurons in a human brain.<br /><br />The theory does not discriminate between squishy brains inside skulls and silicon circuits encased in titanium. Provided that the causal relations among the transistors and memory elements are complex enough, computers or the billions of personal computers on the Internet will have nonzero Φ. The size of Φ could even end up being a yardstick for the intelligence of a machine.<br /><br />Future Challenges<br />IIT is in its infancy and lacks the graces of a fully developed theory. A major question that it so far leaves unanswered is, Why should natural selection evolve creatures with high Φ? What benefit for the survival of the organism flows from consciousness? One answer that I hope for is that intelligence, the ability to assess situations never previously encountered and to rapidly come to an appropriate response, requires integrated information. Another possible answer, though, could be that high-Φ circuits do not have any special status in terms of their survival. Just as electrical charge is a fundamental feature of the universe without a function, consciousness might also lack any specific evolutionary role. It just is.<br /><br />A second stumbling block with IIT is that Φ is exceedingly difficult to compute even for very small systems. To accurately evaluate Φ for the roundworm is utterly unfeasible, even if using all of Google’s more than 100,000 computers. Can we find other algorithms to more easily compute Φ?<br /><br />A third issue to understand is why so much brain processing and so many of our daily behaviors are unconscious. Do the neural networks that mediate these unconscious, zombielike behaviors have lower Φ than the ones that give rise to consciousness?<br /><br />Tononi’s integrated information theory of consciousness could be completely wrong. But it challenges us to think deeply about the mind-body problem in a novel, rigorous, and mathematically and empirically minded manner. And that is a great boon to this endeavor.<br /><br />If Tononi’s equation for Φ proves to plumb the hitherto ineffable—consciousness itself—it would validate the ancient Pythagorean belief that “number is the ruler of forms and ideas and the cause of gods and demons.”<br /><br />Note: This article was originally printed with the title, "A Theory of Consciousness."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">And from that brainy girl, Zoe.......</span><br /><br /><a href="http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2009/08/artificial-brains-within-10-years.html">http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2009/08/artificial-brains-within-10-years.html</a><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">As I've blogged about before, there are two approaches to AI - analytic and synthetic.<br /><br />Here's some news on the progress made in the Analytic approach, where instead of trying to "grow" and AI, we analyse what happens at the cellular level of existing intelligences, and try building a brain out of simulated cells. From RedOrbit : <br />A leading scientist has claimed that a detailed, functional artificial human brain could be built within the next 10 years, BBC News reported.<br /><br />Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project, has already simulated elements of a rat brain.<br /><br />A synthetic human brain would be of particular use finding treatments for mental illnesses, Markram told the TED Global conference in Oxford.<br /><br />He said some two billion people are thought to suffer some kind of brain impairment and that it is not impossible to build a human brain within 10 years time.<br /><br />Launched in 2005, the Blue Brain project aims to reverse engineer the mammalian brain from laboratory data, particularly focusing on the neocortical column – the repetitive units of the mammalian brain known as the neocortex.<br />...<br />He likened it to cataloguing a bit of the rainforest, as in how may trees does it have, what shape are the trees, how many of each type of tree do we have, what is the position of the trees.<br /><br />"But it is a bit more than cataloguing because you have to describe and discover all the rules of communication, the rules of connectivity," he added.<br /><br />His team has been able to digitally construct an artificial neocortical column with a software model of "tens of thousands" of neurons - each one of which is different.<br /><br />They have found that the patterns of circuitry in different brains have common patterns even though each neuron is unique.<br /><br />Markram said we do actually share the same fabric even though each brain may be smaller, bigger, or may have different morphologies of neurons.<br /><br />"And we think this is species specific, which could explain why we can't communicate across species.<br /><br />The team feeds the models and a few algorithms into a supercomputer to make the model come alive and Markram said since you need one laptop to do all the calculations for one neuron, they would need ten thousand laptops.<br /><br />But instead they use an IBM Blue Gene machine with 10,000 processors and the simulations have started to give the researchers clues about how the brain works.<br /><br />For example, they can show the brain a picture of a flower and then follow the electrical activity in the machine, where it creates its own representation.<br /><br />He said the ultimate goal is to extract that representation and project it so that researchers could see directly how a brain perceives the world.<br />One thing - the Human brain cas about 100 Billion neurons. However, today's average desktops can simulate maybe a dozen each. <br /><br />I don't know whether to be amazed at how complex the human brain is, or how simple. Because we'll soon have 10 Billion people on the planet. And if each one had an average desktop of the time, each communication with the 20 or so in the local area... yes, there would exist a network capable of modelling at a fine-scale a human brain. With about the same reaction times too. <br /><br />A Brain the size of a planet.<br /><br />I wonder...</span><br /><object width="340" height="285"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/q4P3pvKmbsg&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/q4P3pvKmbsg&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="340" height="285"></embed></object>kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05331047626419936198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252773055876553427.post-80722561937384487912009-08-13T14:38:00.000-07:002009-08-13T14:39:37.264-07:00Antarctic glacier 'thinning fast'Antarctic glacier 'thinning fast' <br />By David Shukman <br />Science and environment correspondent, BBC News <br /><br />One of the largest glaciers in Antarctica is thinning four times faster than it was ten years ago, according to research seen by the BBC. <br /><br />A study of satellite measurements of Pine Island glacier in west Antarctica reveals the surface of the ice is now dropping at a rate of up to 16m a year. <br /><br />Since 1994, the glacier has lowered by as much as 90m, which has serious implications for sea-level rise. <br /><br />The work by British scientists appears in Geophysical Research Letters. <br /><br />The team was led by Professor Duncan Wingham of University College London (UCL). <br />“ We've known that it's been out of balance for some time, but nothing in the natural world is lost at an accelerating exponential rate like this glacier ” <br />Andrew Shepherd, Leeds University <br /><br />Calculations based on the rate of melting 15 years ago had suggested the glacier would last for 600 years. But the new data points to a lifespan for the vast ice stream of only another 100 years. <br /><br />The rate of loss is fastest in the centre of the glacier and the concern is that if the process continues, the glacier may break up and start to affect the ice sheet further inland. <br /><br />One of the authors, Professor Andrew Shepherd of Leeds University, said that the melting from the centre of the glacier would add about 3cm to global sea level. <br /><br />"But the ice trapped behind it is about 20-30cm of sea level rise and as soon as we destabilise or remove the middle of the glacier we don't know really know what's going to happen to the ice behind it," he told BBC News. <br /><br />"This is unprecedented in this area of Antarctica. We've known that it's been out of balance for some time, but nothing in the natural world is lost at an accelerating exponential rate like this glacier." <br /><br />Pine Island glacier has been the subject of an intense research effort in recent years amid fears that its collapse could lead to a rapid disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet. <br /><br />Five years ago, I joined a flight by the Chilean Navy and Nasa to survey Pine Island glacier with radar and laser equipment. <br /><br />The 11-hour round-trip from Punta Arenas included a series of low-level passes over the massive ice stream which is 20 miles wide and in places more than one mile thick. <br /><br />Back then, the researchers on board were concerned at the speed of change they were detecting. This latest study of the satellite data will add to the alarm among polar specialists. <br /><br />This comes as scientists in the Arctic are finding evidence of dramatic change. Researchers on board a Greenpeace vessel have been studying the northwestern part of Greenland. <br /><br />One of those taking part, Professor Jason Box of Ohio State University, has been surprised by how little sea ice they encountered in the Nares Strait between Greenland and Canada. <br /><br />He has also set up time lapse cameras to monitor the massive Petermann glacier. Huge new cracks have been observed and it's expected that a major part of it could break off imminently. <br /><br />Professor Box told BBC News: "The science community has been surprised by how sensitive these large glaciers are to climate warming. First it was the glaciers in south Greenland and now as we move further north in Greenland we find retreat at major glaciers. It's like removing a cork from a bottle."<br /><br />http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8200680.stmkevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05331047626419936198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252773055876553427.post-83644426968975186582009-08-10T14:18:00.000-07:002009-08-10T14:21:59.927-07:00Alternate health strategies work, you got that! ~ in praise of Vitamin D and sugarHat tip to <a href="http://www.learntotradefutures.com/dcforum/DCForumID27/888.html">Duncan</a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">NewsTarget.com 10/08/2009 08:00<br />(NaturalNews) Jerome, a 53-year-old high school teacher, was in the hospital awaiting amputation of his left leg. He'd been receiving IV antibiotics to treat a diabetic ulcer, a wide, oozing open wound on his ankle, but this didn't halt the steady advance of gangrene, and he was told they had no choice but to take his leg.<br /><br />About five hours before he was scheduled for surgery, Jerome talked to the teacher who was substituting for him to tell him he'd probably be out for the rest of the year. The substitute had heard about the Whitaker Wellness Institute and the work we do here, so he suggested that Jerome check us out. Jerome immediately phoned his wife, who called the clinic and asked if there was anything we could do to save his leg. I said we would certainly try. Figuring he had nothing to lose, Jerome left the hospital-against strongly worded medical advice-and came to my clinic that same day.<br /><br />"I Wouldn't Be Walking Today" We immediately started Jerome on two therapies. First, he began a course of EDTA chelation, an IV treatment that improves circulation. Second, we dressed his ulcer with sugar. That's right, white table sugar. We simply poured sugar into the wound, wrapped it up, and changed the dressing regularly. Within days he noticed a difference.<br /><br />"I could see the sores were starting to get better and the swelling had gone down. At first the leg was almost all black. Then it started to get pinkish. It was just amazing how it continued to feel so much better." Within three weeks, Jerome's ulcer was healed, and he was able to resume teaching and coaching the girl's softball team.<br /><br />"I didn't know anything about alternative medicine when I went to see you. I guess I was skeptical because I had no idea what to expect. I just felt that it was my last hope. I wouldn't be walking today if it weren't for you. I've often thought about sending a card to the doctor who wanted to amputate, with a picture of my leg, and say, 'I still have it.'"<br /><br />5,000 Years of Success Chelation is an amazing treatment, however, in this article I want to focus on sugar because it is an incredibly powerful therapy that was instrumental in saving Jerome's leg. I've been using sugar to dress open wounds for 20-plus years, but this therapy has been around for much longer-at least 5,000 years.<br /><br />Honey (which works just like sugar) is mentioned in the world's earliest known medical document, discovered in Luxor, Egypt, in 1862. Known as the Edwin Smith Papyrus, it was written around 1600 BC and is believed to be based on materials from as early as 3000 BC. This ancient manuscript is essentially a textbook on traumatic surgery, and it describes anatomy, examination, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of a variety of injuries in great detail. In particular, it tells how honey, along with animal fat, herbs, roots, bark, spices, and cat dung, can be used to treat open wounds and burns.<br /><br />Pedanius Dioscorides, a Greek physician who lived in Rome in the first century AD, also extolled the therapeutic powers of honey. In his five-volume De Materia Medica, which was the primary pharmacopeia in Europe and the Middle East for 16 centuries, he described honey as "good for all rotten and hollow ulcers." In fact, honey-and later, sugar-continued to be widely used to treat wounds well into the twentieth century. Then antibiotics came along.<br /><br />Better Than Antibiotics Today, antibiotic ointments are the treatment of choice for ulcers, cuts, scrapes, and burns. Yet honey and sugar are far superior to any antibiotic ointment ever used. Antibiotics aren't as effective as they once were, because bacteria rapidly becomes resistant to them. While an antibiotic kills most of the bacteria, the stronger ones-those with some genetic variation that allows them to withstand the effects of the drug-survive and reproduce. Over time, that strain of bacteria becomes completely resistant to the effects of the antibiotic. Another antibiotic comes on the market that kills most of these "superbugs," and the process starts over again.<br /><br />Today, antibiotic resistance has reached a critical mass: Many infections do not respond to any antibiotics at all. This is what happened to Jerome and the 82,000 other Americans who lose a leg or foot to non-healing diabetic ulcers annually. It's also what affects the two million patients who acquire an infection while they're in the hospital and the 90,000 who die from these infections every year.<br /><br />Wounds are particularly prone to infection because the gauze used to dress them absorbs fluid from the wound and becomes a breeding ground for bacteria and fungus. Drug companies are working around the clock to come up with antibiotics that stay one step ahead of microbes. Yet, the solution is as near as your sugar bowl. The reason? Bacteria cannot become resistant to the killing effects of sugar or honey.<br /><br />Sweet, Powerful Medicine When sugar or honey is packed on top of and inside of an open wound, it dissolves in the fluid exuding from the wound, creating a hyperosmotic, or highly concentrated, medium. Bacteria cannot live in a hyperosmotic environment any more than a goldfish could survive in the Great Salt Lake. Scientists have tested the viability of many types of bacteria, including Klebsiella, Shigella, Staphylococcus aureus, and Streptococcus pyogenes, and none of them have been able to survive in a honey or sugar solution.<br /><br />In addition to curbing infection, this therapy facilitates healing in other ways. It draws fluid out of the wound, which reduces edema (swelling). It provides a covering or filling and therefore prevents scabbing. It encourages the removal of dead tissue to make way for new growth. It promotes granulation, the formation of connective tissue and blood vessels on the surfaces of a wound. Finally, it supports the growth of new skin covering the wound. The net result is rapid healing with minimal scarring.<br /><br />This Doctor Has Treated 7,000 Wounds The country's, if not the world's, leading expert on the use of sugar as a wound dressing is Richard A. Knutson, MD, now retired but for many years an orthopedic surgeon at the Delta Medical Center in Greenville, Mississippi. Dr. Knutson first learned about the healing power of sugar from an elderly nurse who worked in the hospital where he was making rounds to check on his patients. When he expressed concern about a patient's bedsore that was so deep it was down to the bone, she told him, "In the old days, we used to put sugar on them wounds."<br /><br />Although he was dubious, he gave it a try. To his surprise, it worked like a charm. Within a couple of days the wound was free of pus, and with continued use of sugar dressings, healing was complete. Dr. Knutson, a meticulous record keeper, went on to treat and document nearly 7,000 wounds of all sizes and degrees of severity: ulcers, abrasions, lacerations, amputations, abscesses, gunshot wounds, frostbite, punctures, post-operative incisions, cat scratches, burns, and bites (dog, human, snake, spider, and, believe it or not, one lion bite).<br /><br />He told me about a patient who had accidentally shot himself in the foot at close range with a shotgun. I saw pictures of this, and it was incredible: a perfectly round, inch-and-a-half diameter hole right through his foot. After the bleeding was stopped and the wound cleaned, Dr. Knutson packed it with sugar and wrapped it up. Seven weeks later it had healed completely, and today the patient is fully functional.<br /><br />Burns: No Skin Grafts, No Scarring Sugar dressings are also great for burns. Most burn centers insist on using silver sulfadiazine, an antibiotic ointment, to treat burns, but it doesn't work nearly as well as sugar or honey.<br /><br />In a study published in the Annals of Burns and Fire Disasters, 900 patients who presented with second-degree burns were treated with either honey or an antibiotic ointment. All burns were then covered with gauze and bandaged, and the dressing was changed every other day. The 450 patients treated with honey fared much better than those receiving the usual treatment. They healed faster, in an average of nine days compared to 13.5 days in the antibiotic group. They had fewer infections, 5.5 percent versus 12 percent. And minor scarring occurred in only 6.2 percent of the honey-treated patients, while a whopping 20 percent of those receiving conventional treatment ended up with scars.<br /><br />Dr. Knutson's experience mirrors the results of this study. He has treated 1,622 burns with sugar dressings, and virtually all of them were infection-free and required no antibiotics or skin grafts. He told me about one patient with extensive burns who received antibiotic treatment on some areas of his body and sugar on others. The sugar-treated burns healed faster and scarred less.<br /><br />If It's So Good, Why Isn't It Used? Trying to figure out why inexpensive, effective therapies like sugar and honey dressings aren't being used is an exercise in futility. That's because there is no rational explanation. Some physicians claim it would cause elevations in blood sugar, which is nonsense because sugar or honey used on an open wound does not enter the bloodstream. Others think it's unscientific or just plain weird.<br /><br />I suspect it's because, like so many other overlooked therapies, it doesn't fit into the model of conventional medicine. It isn't a drug. It costs pennies. It can be administered by the patient as easily as by a nurse or doctor, so it doesn't require many return office visits. Whatever the reason, do not expect your doctor to offer this therapy or even be open to it. But next time you get a cut, scrape, or burn, give it a try, and let me know how it works.<br /><br />Protocol for Treating Wounds With Sugar Sugar or honey dressing may be used to treat any kind of open wound or burn. (We use sugar at the clinic because it's less messy.) It will not work on abscesses or pustules that are covered with skin. Do not use on a bleeding wound as sugar promotes bleeding.<br /><br />1)Unravel a 4" x 4" piece of gauze into a long strip and coat it with Vaseline. Place it around the outside edges of the wound, like a donut. 2)Cover the wound with 1/4-inch of sugar. (The Vaseline "donut" will keep it in place.) 3)Place a 4" x 4" sponge on top of the wound. Bandage it firmly but not too snugly with a cling dressing. 4)Change the dressing every one or two days. Remove, irrigate with water, saline, or hydrogen peroxide, pat dry, and repeat steps 1-3.<br /><br />Reference Subrahmanyam M. Honey dressing for burns-an appraisal. Annals of Burns and Fire Disasters. 1996;IX:33-35. <br /><br />About the author<br />Reprinted from Dr. Julian Whitaker's Health and Healing with permission from Healthy Directions, LLC. For information on subscribing to this newsletter, visit www.drwhitaker.com Dr. Whitaker founded the Whitaker Wellness Institute. Today, it is the largest alternative medicine clinic in the United States. To learn more, visit www.whitakerwellness.com or call (800) 488-1500.<br /><br />(NaturalNews) Sufficient vitamin D intake may play a critical role in maintaining brain function later in life, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Manchester and published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.<br /><br />"This is further evidence from observational studies that vitamin D is likely to be beneficial to reduce many age-related diseases," said Tim Spector of King's College London, who was not involved in the study. "Taken together with similar data that shows its importance in reducing arthritis, osteoporotic fractures, as well as heart disease and some cancers, this underscores the importance of vitamin D for humans and why evolution gave us a liking for the sun."<br /><br />Researchers measured blood levels of vitamin D in more than 3,000 European men between the ages of 40 and 79 then had the men undergo various tests of mental function, including memory and information processing. They found that the men with the highest blood levels did best on the test, while those with the lowest levels performed worst.<br /><br />Another study earlier this year also found that higher levels of vitamin D appeared to protect against age-related cognitive decline.<br /><br />The researchers were not able to determine which biological pathways vitamin D might act through to protect the aging brain, but they hypothesized that it might increase levels of protective antioxidants, increase key hormone levels, or suppress a hyperactive immune system that can lead to brain degeneration.<br /><br />The researchers warned that vitamin D deficiency is widespread, especially among the elderly, who have decreased absorption from both food and sun sources.<br /><br />Vitamin D is synthesized by the body when the sun is exposed to the sun's ultraviolet rays. The average light-skinned person can get enough vitamin D from roughly 15 minutes of sun on their face and hands per day, significantly less than the time it takes to burn. Darker skinned people, the elderly, and those living far from the equator (particularly during the winter) may need more sun to synthesize the same amount.<br /><br />Sources for this story include: news.bbc.co.uk</span>kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05331047626419936198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252773055876553427.post-38037843898882782222009-08-08T14:59:00.000-07:002009-08-08T15:01:42.632-07:00“A Short Course On Synthetic Genomics”LAWRENCE KRAUSS<br />Physicist, Director, Origins Initiative, ASU; Author, Hiding In The Mirror<br /><br />What struck me was the incredible power that is developing in bioinformatics and genomics, which so resembles the evolution in computer software and hardware over the past 30 years. <br /><br />George Church’s discussion of the acceleration of the Moore’s law doubling time for genetic sequencing rates,, for example, was extraordinary, from 1.5 efoldings to close to 10 efoldings per year. When both George and Craig independently described their versions of the structure of the minimal genome appropriate for biological functioning and reproduction, I came away with the certainty that artificial lifeforms will be created within the next few years, and that they offered great hope for biologically induced solutions to physical problems, like potentially buildup of greenhouse gases. <br /><br />At the same time, I came away feeling that the biological threats that come with this emerging knowledge and power are far greater than I had previously imagined, and this issue should be seriously addressed, to the extent it is possible. But ultimately I also came away with a more sober realization of the incredible complexity of the systems being manipulated, and how far we are from actually developing any sort of comprehensive understanding of the fundamental molecular basis of complex life. The simple animation demonstrated at the molecular level for Gene expression and replication demonstrated that the knowledge necessary to fully understand and reproduce biochemical activity in cells is daunting. <br /><br />Two other comments: (1) was intrigued by the fact that the human genome has not been fully sequenced, in spite of the hype, and (2) was amazed at the available phase space for new discovery, especially in forms of microbial life on this planet, as demonstrated by Craig in his voyage around the world, skimming the surface, literally, of the ocean, and of course elsewhere in the universe, as alluded to by George. <br /><br />Finally, I also began to think that structures on larger than molecular levels may be the key ones to understand for such things as memory, which make the possibilities for copying biological systems seem less like science fiction to me. George Church and I had an interesting discussion about this which piqued my interest, and I intend to follow this up.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />THE NEW YORK TIMES — TIERNEY LAB<br />August 3, 2009, 8:00 AM <br /><br />Synthetic Life<br />By JOHN MARKOFF<br /><br />There is a growing consensus (at least in Silicon Valley) that the information age is about to give way to the era of synthetic genetics. That was underscored recently when Harvard geneticist George Church and J. Craig Venter — of the race to decode the human genome fame — gave lectures before a small group of scientists, technologists, entrepreneurs, and writers in West Hollywood.<br /><br />The event, billed as “A Short Course on Synthetic Genetics”, was organized by John Brockman, the literary impresario (and book agent for several New York Times reporters, including this one) who publishes the cybersalon-style website www.edge.org, a forum dedicated to scientists (many of whom are his clients) and their ideas.<br /><br />In roughly six hours of lectures both scientists tried to convey how the world will be changed by the ability to routinely read genetic sequences into computing systems and then store, replicate, alter and insert them back into living cells.<br /><br />The rate at which this technology is now improving puts silicon to shame. Dr. Church noted that between 1970 and 2005 gene sequencing had taken place on a Moore’s Law pace, improving at about 1.5 times per year. Since then it has improved at the rate of an order of magnitude, or ten times annually.<br /><br />In the process the cost of sequencing the human genome has plunged from $3 billion to $5 thousand and continues to fall. Dr. Church identified 17 companies and one “open source” project all pursuing different technologies to further push down cost and speed up the pace of sequencing.<br /><br />As a consequence, the structure of the emerging synthetic genetics industry is beginning to mirror that of the semiconductor and computer industries, which are based on modular components and design tools.<br /><br />The key to the vast growth of the computer industry took place during the 1970s when physicist Carver Mead helped give the industry a standard design approach based on modular components. Now that appears to be happening in the synthetic biology world as well.<br /><br />For someone who has spent the past three decades writing about computing, Dr. Venter’s talk was eye-opening.<br /><br />“I view DNA as an analog information system,” he said. ” and I hope to convince you in fact that it is absolutely the software of life.”<br /><br /><a href="http://luckybogey.wordpress.com/2009/08/08/life-evolution-genomics-and-clouds-from-outer-space/">http://luckybogey.wordpress.com/2009/08/08/life-evolution-genomics-and-clouds-from-outer-space/</a>kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05331047626419936198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252773055876553427.post-70687193746393448032009-08-08T14:38:00.000-07:002009-08-08T14:39:59.907-07:00Asperger’s Syndrome, on Screen and in LifeAsperger’s Syndrome, on Screen and in Life <br />By NEIL AMDUR<br /><br />The three new movies would seem to have little in common: a romantic comedy about Upper West Side singles, a biopic about a noted animal science professor, and an animated film about an extended pen-pal relationship.<br /><br />But all three revolve around Asperger’s syndrome, the complex and mysterious neurological disorder linked to autism. Their nearly simultaneous appearance — two open this summer, and the third is planned for next year — underscores how much Asperger’s and high-functioning autism have expanded in the public consciousness since Dustin Hoffman’s portrayal of an autistic savant in “Rain Man” 21 years ago.<br /><br />“The more I learned about Asperger’s,” said Max Mayer, the writer and director of the romance, “Adam,” which opened last week, “the better metaphor it felt like for the condition of all of us in terms of a desire for connection to other people.”<br /><br />People with Asperger’s may have superior intelligence and verbal skills, and they often have an obsessive interest in a particular topic (astronomy, in the case of the title character in “Adam,” played by Hugh Dancy). But they tend to be self-defeatingly awkward in social situations, and romantic relationships can leave them at sea.<br /><br />The syndrome is generally considered a high-functioning form of autism, which in recent years has been diagnosed in more and more children. While the reasons for the explosion in diagnoses are unclear, increased awareness may be part of the explanation, and one reason for the growth in awareness is the rise of online parent communities.<br /><br />Parents are “willing to get out there and talk about it,” said Dr. Fred R. Volkmar, director of the Yale Child Study Center in New Haven and a leading expert on Asperger’s and the autism spectrum. <br /><br />“If you go on the Internet,” he added, “you will discover there are all these people trying to connect with each other online.”<br /><br />Mr. Mayer, 54, grew up on the Upper West Side and was interested in developmental psychology before being drawn into theater and film. He says the inspiration for “Adam” came when he heard a radio interview about Asperger’s while driving in California and became so “emotionally involved” that he had to pull off the road. <br /><br />The movie was awarded this year’s Alfred P. Sloan Prize at the Sundance festival, for outstanding feature film focusing on science and technology. It is being distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures, whose recent credits include “Little Miss Sunshine,” “Juno” and last year’s Oscar winner for best picture, “Slumdog Millionaire.”<br /><br />Mr. Dancy plays a young man with Asperger’s who is left to fend for himself after his father dies. One day a woman played by Rose Byrne — a “neurotypical,” as people with Asperger’s call almost everyone else — moves into the apartment upstairs. Romance ensues, along with misunderstanding and confusion.<br /><br />“Adam is about life, not his disability,” said Jonathan Kaufman, the founder of the Manhattan-based consulting agency DisabilityWorks Inc., who worked as a technical adviser on the film. “It uses his Asperger’s as the lens that colors his life, not the central focal point. It’s about relationships, love, family. The illness is not separate from the person.” <br /><br />Mr. Kaufman, who was born with cerebral palsy, founded DisabilityWorks nine years ago to help corporations and agencies develop ways to improve the quality of life for people with disabilities. He also served as an adviser on an HBO film about Temple Grandin, a woman with high-functioning autism who became a professor at Colorado State University and a pioneering designer of humane livestock facilities. That film, starring Claire Danes, is to make its debut in 2010. <br /><br />Members of the Sloan Prize jury praised “Adam” as lifelike and believable. “The portrayal of someone who is enthusiastic about science rather than dismissed as geeky was very genuine,” said Fran Bagenal, a professor of astrophysical and planetary sciences at the University of Colorado. <br /><br />And Raymond F. Gesteland, a professor of human genetics at the University of Utah, said “ ‘Adam’ will help the rest of the world look at Asperger’s with a new realistic light.”<br /><br />Dr. Gesteland also screened the animated feature, “Mary and Max,” which opened the Sundance festival. It deals with the pen-pal relationship of a 44-year-old New Yorker, who has Asperger’s and lives on chocolate hot dogs, and a lonely 8-year-old Australian girl. The motivation for the film came from hundreds of letters, spanning 20 years, between Adam Elliot, a young Australian, and a middle-age pen pal in Staten Island who he later learned had Asperger’s. <br /><br />“I wanted to tell a film about my friend,” Mr. Elliot, now 37 and an award-winning writer and director, said in a phone interview from Australia, where “Mary and Max” has grossed more than $1 million since its opening in April. “Asperger’s is a part of him; it’s the way he’s hot-wired. If I had ignored him, it would have offended him.” <br /><br />Besides the movies about Asperger’s there are several new books, adding to a growing library that includes “Pretending to Be Normal” by Liane Holliday Willey, which is mentioned in “Adam,” and the best-selling memoir “Look Me in the Eye,” by John Elder Robison. Jessica Kingsley Publishers released three books this spring: “22 Things a Woman Must Know If She Loves a Man With Asperger’s,” by Rudy Simone; “The Love-Shy Survival Guide,” by Talmer Shockley; and “The Imprinted Brain,” by Christopher Babcock. <br /><br />Ms. Simone, 45, who lives in upstate New York, was dating someone with Asperger’s several years ago when she learned that she, too, had the disorder. In an interview, she said she had just completed a second book, “Working With Asperger’s,” which she said she hoped would help people with the syndrome in the workplace. And she has begun researching a third about Asperger’s and females, a subject that she says is underreported and misunderstood. While four times as many boys as girls get the diagnosis, she said, “I’m absolutely certain that’s incorrect.” <br /><br />Mr. Kaufman, of DisabilityWorks, said people were becoming more tolerant of Asperger’s “because it is front and center.” <br /><br />“Awareness has been raised, and it’s fascinating to me,” he continued. “Is it acceptance? You could make the argument ‘yes.’ It is true that as it becomes the work of daily life, as we see people who have Asperger’s, it’s becoming less of a threat and part of our culture.”<br /><br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/health/04aspe.html?em=&pagewanted=print">http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/health/04aspe.html?em=&pagewanted=print</a>kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05331047626419936198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252773055876553427.post-54218451132893054762009-08-08T14:18:00.000-07:002009-08-08T14:19:33.145-07:00Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. SecurityClimate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security <br />By JOHN M. BRODER<br /><br />WASHINGTON — The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.<br /><br />Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.<br /><br />Recent war games and intelligence studies conclude that over the next 20 to 30 years, vulnerable regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia, will face the prospect of food shortages, water crises and catastrophic flooding driven by climate change that could demand an American humanitarian relief or military response.<br /><br />An exercise at the National Defense University, an educational institute overseen by the military, last December explored the potential impact of a flood in Bangladesh that sent hundreds of thousands of refugees streaming into neighboring India, touching off religious conflict, the spread of contagious diseases and vast damage to infrastructure.<br /><br />“It gets real complicated real quickly,” said Amanda J. Dory, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy, who is working with a Pentagon group assigned to incorporate climate change into national security strategy planning.<br /><br />Much of the public and political debate on global warming has focused on finding substitutes for fossil fuels, reducing emissions that contribute to greenhouse gases and furthering negotiations toward an international climate treaty — not potential security challenges. <br /><br />But a growing number of policy makers say that the world’s rising temperatures, surging seas and melting glaciers are a direct threat to the national interest. If the United States does not lead the world in reducing fossil-fuel consumption and thus emissions of global warming gases, proponents of this view say, a series of global environmental, social, political and possibly military crises loom that the nation will urgently have to address.<br /><br />This argument could prove a fulcrum for debate in the Senate next month when it takes up climate and energy legislation passed in June by the House.<br /><br />Lawmakers leading the debate before Congress are only now beginning to make the national security argument for approving the legislation.<br /><br />Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who is the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and a leading advocate for the climate legislation, said he hoped to sway Senate skeptics by pressing that issue to pass a meaningful bill.<br /><br />Mr. Kerry said he did not know whether he would succeed but that he had spoken with 30 undecided senators on the matter.<br /><br />He did not identify the senators he had approached, but the list of undecideds includes many from coal and manufacturing states and from the South and Southeast, which will face the sharpest energy price increases from any carbon emissions control program.<br /><br />“I’ve been making this argument for a number of years,” Mr. Kerry said, “but it has not been a focus because a lot of people had not connected the dots.” He said he had urged President Obama to make the case, too. <br /><br />Mr. Kerry said the continuing conflict in southern Sudan, which has killed and displaced tens of thousands of people, is a result of drought and expansion of deserts in the north. “That is going to be repeated many times over and on a much larger scale,” he said.<br /><br />The Department of Defense’s assessment of the security issue came about after prodding by Congress to include climate issues in its strategic plans — specifically, in 2008 budget authorizations by Hillary Rodham Clinton and John W. Warner, then senators. The department’s climate modeling is based on sophisticated Navy and Air Force weather programs and other government climate research programs at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. <br /><br />The Pentagon and the State Department have studied issues arising from dependence on foreign sources of energy for years but are only now considering the effects of global warming in their long-term planning documents. The Pentagon will include a climate section in the Quadrennial Defense Review, due in February; the State Department will address the issue in its new Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review.<br /><br />“The sense that climate change poses security and geopolitical challenges is central to the thinking of the State Department and the climate office,” said Peter Ogden, chief of staff to Todd Stern, the State Department’s top climate negotiator. <br /><br />Although military and intelligence planners have been aware of the challenges posed by climate changes for some years, the Obama administration has made it a central policy focus.<br /><br />A changing climate presents a range of challenges for the military. Many of its critical installations are vulnerable to rising seas and storm surges. In Florida, Homestead Air Force Base was essentially destroyed by Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and Hurricane Ivan badly damaged Naval Air Station Pensacola in 2004. Military planners are studying ways to protect the major naval stations in Norfolk, Va., and San Diego from climate-induced rising seas and severe storms.<br /><br />Another vulnerable installation is Diego Garcia, an atoll in the Indian Ocean that serves as a logistics hub for American and British forces in the Middle East and sits a few feet above sea level. <br /><br />Arctic melting also presents new problems for the military. The shrinking of the ice cap, which is proceeding faster than anticipated only a few years ago, opens a shipping channel that must be defended and undersea resources that are already the focus of international competition.<br /><br />Ms. Dory, who has held senior Pentagon posts since the Clinton administration, said she had seen a “sea change” in the military’s thinking about climate change in the past year. “These issues now have to be included and wrestled with” in drafting national security strategy, she said.<br /><br />The National Intelligence Council, which produces governmentwide intelligence analyses, produced the first assessment of the national security implications of global climate change just last year. It concluded that climate change by itself would have significant geopolitical impacts around the world and would contribute to a host of problems, including poverty, environmental degradation and the weakening of national governments. <br /><br />The assessment warned that the storms, droughts and food shortages that might result from a warming planet in coming decades would create numerous relief emergencies.<br /><br />“The demands of these potential humanitarian responses may significantly tax U.S. military transportation and support force structures, resulting in a strained readiness posture and decreased strategic depth for combat operations,” the report said. <br /><br />The intelligence community is preparing a series of reports on the impacts of climate change on individual countries like China and India, a study of alternative fuels and a look at how major power relations could be strained by a changing climate.<br /><br />“We will pay for this one way or another,” Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a retired Marine and the former head of the Central Command, wrote recently in a report he prepared as a member of a military advisory board on energy and climate at CNA, a private group that does research for the Navy. “We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today, and we’ll have to take an economic hit of some kind. <br /><br />“Or we will pay the price later in military terms,” he warned. “And that will involve human lives.”kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05331047626419936198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252773055876553427.post-34690220346981086622009-08-03T14:28:00.000-07:002009-08-03T14:39:59.657-07:00The wicked witch of the west ~ Jo (drongo) Nova<span style="font-style:italic;">The handbook is obviously attractive to skeptics. It is a list of arguments that skeptics make, including counters to the counter arguments made by people who believe AGW is real. Many of these points have been argued on this and other web sites. I didn't find anything that I haven't seen before in it.<br /><br />It seems to me that Joanne Nova is not up on the science. There are many inaccurate statements about the status of the science in her handbook. It is not a surprise, since she is not a climate scientist, or any kind of scientist. Her advanced degree is in communications or public relations.<br />http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=62<br />Joanne Nova, BSc (Hons, Microbiology, University of Western Australia), Grad Cer. (Sci Comm, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia), Director, ScienceSpeak, Science presenter on TV, radio, and professional conference keynote speaker, Perth, Western Australia, Australia<br /><br /><br />Science speak is a software company headed by David Evans, that specializes in analysis of gold stocks.<br />http://www.sciencespeak.com/</span><br /><br />She is a right winger with a big ax to grind and her science sucks, the idea that she regards herself as a "science educator" is cringeworthy.<br /><br />There is nothing credible about this <a href="http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/2009/0731.html">rubbish</a>, nothing.kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05331047626419936198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252773055876553427.post-46883048040107079982009-08-02T14:46:00.000-07:002009-08-02T14:50:03.893-07:00D Generation<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh94JSxTABJCD2T1EGs303ecBDKhe2GwWo25Ityq6wgFrHTkiX0tk4Wj4fAXpZ9djrgLezcX0O8EZ3y1T2BznzgN2Q2InIfZPtKjTQ_kUIUfHhm_PZUggaotBHO9wk7JRAe_Jfo72kEtxDL/s400/420vitamind-420x0.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 207px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh94JSxTABJCD2T1EGs303ecBDKhe2GwWo25Ityq6wgFrHTkiX0tk4Wj4fAXpZ9djrgLezcX0O8EZ3y1T2BznzgN2Q2InIfZPtKjTQ_kUIUfHhm_PZUggaotBHO9wk7JRAe_Jfo72kEtxDL/s400/420vitamind-420x0.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />I take 4000IU a day of Vit D3, Blackmores Fish Oil and drink green tea. It works for me...<br /><br /><a href="http://pensionpulse.blogspot.com/2009/08/d-generation.html">http://pensionpulse.blogspot.com/2009/08/d-generation.html</a><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">In a country as dazzled by sunlight as Australia, the idea that a GP should check your vitamin D levels seems bizarre. Yet that is what some doctors are now suggesting – that along with routine checks for blood pressure and cholesterol, we have a test for vitamin D deficiency, says Rebecca Mason.<br /><br />Vitamin D deficiency was once something most younger adults did not have to worry about – at least if they were light-skinned. It was considered mainly a problem of housebound, sick or elderly people with little exposure to sunlight, of women who wear concealing clothes and people with dark skin.<br /><br />But studies across all ages in different parts of Australia, including sunny Queensland and Perth, have found that some younger adults have mild to moderate deficiencies, especially if they live in cities, says Mason, professor of physiology at the Bosch Institute, University of Sydney.<br /><br />The cause of what she calls an epidemic of vitamin D insufficiency is a combination of two things. One is that health experts have raised the bar of how much vitamin D is enough. The other is probably changes in the way we live that have reduced our exposure to sunlight, our main source of vitamin D.<br /><br />We are not only savvier about skin protection, but we also have longer working hours; lunch breaks spent at our desks and long commutes in the confines of cars and buses – all conspiring to keep us from the sun.<br /><br />Vitamin D, which is really a building block for a hormone, is best known for its link to bone health – without it you cannot absorb enough calcium. But the other reason why vitamin D is a hot topic is the evidence linking the lack of it to a surprisingly mixed bag of health problems. The tally so far: multiple sclerosis, Type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, muscle weakness, high blood pressure, memory loss – and even weight gain. But the strongest evidence so far is for cancer, Mason says.<br /><br />"The most consistent evidence links insufficient vitamin D to colon cancer," she says. "There’s evidence for breast, prostate, and ovarian cancer and melanoma too, but it’s limited."<br /><br />As for how vitamin D might help protect against cancer, some studies have shown it helps slow the proliferation of cancer cells. It may also improve the immune system’s defence against some cancers and may reduce the growth of blood vessels that nourish cancer cells, she says.<br /><br />More intriguing still is the idea that sunlight, the bringer of skin cancer, might also help prevent the disease, according to preliminary research at the Bosch Institute. The theory is that vitamin D compounds that accumulate in skin when it is exposed to sunlight may help reduce UV damage to the DNA of skin cells, Mason explains.<br /><br />But for people who already have some forms of cancer, including colon or oesophageal cancer, healthy levels of vitamin D may influence their survival. Some studies show that the more vitamin D, the better the outcome, the professor says.<br /><br />That is why the NSW Breast Cancer Institute is investigating the vitamin D levels of women newly diagnosed with breast cancer, says Kellie Bilinski, a dietitian and the project leader of the institute’s vitamin D research program.<br /><br />Where you live, and therefore how much sunlight you get, might also influence your risk of some diseases. Overseas studies suggest that women living furthest from the equator are more at risk of breast cancer, Bilinski says. A study by the Breast Cancer Institute is trying to find out if the latitude where a woman lives in Australia affects her chances of developing the disease.<br /><br />As for multiple sclerosis, the risk is seven times higher if you live in Tasmania than if you live in tropical areas of Queensland, says Associate Professor Bruce Taylor of Hobart’s Menzies Research Institute. To understand the sunlight-MS connection it helps to know that MS is an auto-immune disease – one where the immune system mistakenly attacks the body’s own tissues. Researchers now believe that having sufficient vitamin D may help prevent MS by making the immune system less trigger-happy.<br /><br />"This may also mean that vitamin D has a role to play in other auto-immune disease such as Crohns disease, rheumatoid arthritis and Type 1 diabetes," Taylor says.<br /><br />So how do you get enough vitamin D from sunlight without boosting your risk of skin cancer?<br /><br />"It’s a fine line between usefulness and damage," says Mason. "There’s some evidence that small amounts of UV damage are relatively easily repaired in most people and that short exposures to UV sunlight are also more efficient at producing vitamin D. So the recommendation for UV exposure is little and often. It’s certainly not frying your skin, which is very damaging and not particularly useful for making vitamin D either. Vitamin D compounds in skin can actually be destroyed by too much UV exposure."<br /><br />The time of day spent in the sun matters too, she adds, recalling a couple who were regular walkers, but walked separately at different times of the day, and had different vitamin D levels as a result. The woman walked about midday in winter and her levels were healthy. The man walked in the early morning and evening and was mildly deficient.<br /><br />In winter, the advice for those in NSW and Victoria is to expose 15 per cent of your body surface – meaning either hands, face and arms, or legs for about 15 minutes as close to noon as possible, and minus sunscreen. In summer, it is to expose the same areas for six to eight minutes either just before 11am or just after 3pm, again without sunscreen because sunscreen reduces vitamin D production.<br /><br />"This exposure isn’t enough to cause redness in summer, but it’s enough to cause DNA damage from UV radiation and raise the risk of skin cancer, so it’s a trade-off," Mason says.<br /><br />‘‘But this is only the recommendation for light-skinned people - melanin, the pigment that makes skin dark, makes it harder to produce vitamin D, so dark-skinned people need three to six times more exposure, depending on how dark your skin is."<br /><br />But if vitamin D looks so promising, why don’t health authorities recommend we all take a supplement and then see if levels of colon cancer and MS drop? Because we still need more answers about the long-term safety of taking vitamin D supplements, says Taylor. But it is worth getting a test to check your level, especially if there is a family history of MS, he adds.<br /><br />"If the levels are inadequate, your GP can recommend the right supplement. GPs, especially in Tasmania, are becoming better informed about vitamin D and are measuring patients’ levels more often," Mason says.<br /><br />Weight gain may also be linked to vitamin D. Results of a small study at the University of Minnesota reported in June that adding vitamin D to a kilojoule-controlled diet increased weight loss in people, most of whom had low levels of the vitamin. But the researchers stressed that more research was needed to be sure that vitamin D had any role in weight loss.<br /><br />Earlier research, including a large study from the Harvard School of Public Health, suggests that obesity boosts the risk of being low in vitamin D – which may be partly due to being less active outdoors, says Mason.<br /><br />It could be that fat tissue acts as a ‘‘sink’’ for vitamin D which is only released when a person loses weight, according to other studies from Boston University School of Medicine.<br /><br />This, Mason adds, could have given our hunter gatherer ancestors an advantage. "Food, like sunshine, was plentiful in summer, so people put on weight and some of the vitamin D they made would have been stored in that fat,’’ she says.<br /><br />‘‘In winter, food was less plentiful, so they would have lost weight, releasing fuel for energy – along with vitamin D at a time of the year when there was less sunshine. But these days, losing fat, and releasing stored vitamin D, is a difficult process."<br /><br />Earlier this week I found out that the MS drug trial I was on was scrapped because the results showed the drug was ineffective. I was disappointed but not surprised. It didn't bother me as much because I just enjoyed three weeks in Crete where I spent time with my family, got plenty of sun, swam like a dolphin and ate incredibly healthy food, including fresh fruits and real delicious salads doused with plenty of olive oil and with red tomatoes that do not taste like cardboard paper.<br /><br />So while I worry about deflation and D-process, I am more concerned about how our lifestyles are unleashing an epidemic of diseases that will define the D Generation. If you have not checked your vitamin D levels, please do so and you should be taking a minimum of 1,000 IUs a day (one small cheap pill) and get out of the office in mid day for a little walk in the sun.<br /><br />Finally, I added some links to MS box at the bottom of my blog, including Tricia Chandler's story of Multiple Sclerosis (see video below) and her and Jake's donation page for the Pacific South Coast MS chapter. There are many MS profiles out there like Tricia's and I find inspiration in each and every one of them as well as the stories of millions of people who are fighting their respective diseases.<br /><br />These people know that in life, your health and the health of your loved ones is the most important thing. So while we talk about finance as the end all and be all of life, we need to take a step back and get some perspective on what really matters: health, family and friends.<br /></span>kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05331047626419936198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252773055876553427.post-79865628005216088962009-08-01T15:59:00.000-07:002009-08-01T16:01:56.172-07:00Urban agriculture is going to be big....Cityscape Farms, a greenhouse based urban farming initiative, promotes their mission with the slogan, “An idea whose time has come.” Whether it’s San Francisco’s new aggressive regional food policy or the famous organic garden on the White House lawn, the local food movement—specifically the urban local food movement—is garnering increasing media attention and validity. Yet, for Cityscape founder and CEO Mike Yohay, executing the launch of their pilot program has proven that where eco-entrepreneurship intersects with urban farming, there’s new ground to break.<br /><br />Based in San Francisco, Cityscape Farms is a young company, currently in the initial stages of implementation. One could amend their slogan to read, “An idea in the making.” Yohay, a graduate of Dominican University’s Green MBA program, may be the next poster boy for the hipster meets locavore movement. Born in Brooklyn to a family of backyard farmers, his commitment to urban gardening evolved, paradoxically, when he left the city. When living in the Midwest, studying art and computer science, he observed industrial agriculture to be “massive and inefficient” and a stark contrast to the low-impact farming he participated in years later, in Costa Rica. There, he was impressed with the emphasis on recycling wastewater and its role in creating a self-sustaining food community.<br /><br />The confluences of these experiences solidified Yohay’s vision. He has embraced, “the creative environment inherent in agriculture and horticulture,” and wants to seed cities with greenhouses, which he equates to “installations with a critical use.”<br /><br /><br />Yohay and his team have spent the last year researching every aspect of the Cityscape Farms project, from their target audience to the planned greenhouse design. They’re committed to hydroponic farming, a soil-less growing process in which minerals are dissolved in water where produce roots and then grows. For decades, hydroponics was the focus of the DIY crowd, though TV viewers may recognize hydroponic farming from Showtimes’s Weeds (season two). Increasingly, it’s celebrated not only for high crop yields, but also for its successful application in non-conventional settings.<br />In explaining hydroponics, Yohay grows animated: “At a time when 70% of the world’s fresh water is used for agriculture, more people should be paying attention to water. We need to care deeply about it – it’s a resource we are drastically mismanaging, one which we have a huge chance to reshape.”<br /><br />Once Cityscape Farms has their pilot up and running, they face the challenge of advertising their produce in a market saturated with food labeling ambiguities. As our friends at TreeHugger remind us, hydroponic is not necessarily organic. Yohay asserts that their produce will be pesticide free, that in greenhouses, “By using fans and cross ventilation we can keep the air moving at such a pace that it is difficult for pests to settle on the plants.” Still, he recognizes that organic certification is, “the holy grail” for many consumers and is in conversation with certifiers in both California and Oregon.<br /><br />The Cityscape model is similar to Gotham Greens and both aim to “close a loop in the food economy,” and highlight the insane amount of food imports (Did you know California imports as many strawberries as it exports?” Yohay asks).<br /><br />What distinguishes Cityscape Farms, Yohay asserts, is their involvement in a community with “a specific ethos, slow food, sustainable food, and interaction between health and food,” The Cityscape team is vying for a role in San Francisco’s new policy and find it validating to see local government recognizing agriculture’s role in timely issues from the state of the economy to health care as they plan their launch.<br /><br />The impact Cityscape Farms offers is still unknown but they identify with the food justice movement and want to embrace it with business acumen. As they scout lots, Yohay is pouring over maps of food distribution and access. He is focused on low-income neighborhoods and underutilized land, hoping to create green jobs as they grow.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.triplepundit.com/2009/07/cityscape-farms-the-evolution-of-a-new-agricultural-model/">http://www.triplepundit.com/2009/07/cityscape-farms-the-evolution-of-a-new-agricultural-model/</a>kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05331047626419936198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3252773055876553427.post-40305120927968239362009-07-31T01:55:00.000-07:002009-07-31T01:59:55.182-07:00Boeing 787 wing flaw extends inside plane<span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="font-style:italic;">Boeing 787 wing flaw extends inside plane<br /><br />The wing damage that grounded Boeing's new composite plastic 787 Dreamliner occurred under less stress and is more extensive than previously reported.<br /><br />By Dominic Gates<br /><br /><br />An engineer familiar with the details said the damage happened when the stress on the wings was well below the load the wings must bear to be federally certified to carry passengers.<br /><br />In addition, information obtained independently and confirmed by a second engineer familiar with the problem shows the damage occurred on both sides of the wing-body join — that is, on the outer wing as well as inside the fuselage.<br /><br />The structural flaw in the Boeing design was found in May during a ground test that bent the wings upward. Stresses at the ends of the long rods that stiffen the upper wing skin panels caused the fibrous layers of the composite plastic material to delaminate.<br /><br />The damage at the end of each of the 17 long stiffening rods, called stringers, on each wing's upper skin happened just beyond the aircraft's "limit load," which is the maximum load the wing is expected to bear in service.<br /><br />Last week, The Seattle Times mistakenly reported that the damage occurred later in the test, just beyond "ultimate load." That is defined as 50 percent higher than the in-service limit load and is the Federal Aviation Administration's test target. The tearing at the end points of the stringers well before the wing reached ultimate load means the problem is worse than suggested in last week's story.<br /><br />Because the wing test fell short of the ultimate load target, the plane could have flown only under restrictions that would have severely limited the usefulness of a test flight.<br /><br />It also helps explain why Boeing canceled the first flight planned for the end of June.<br /><br />The fact that there is corresponding damage on the fuselage side of the wing join adds to the complexity of any fix and the time and cost involved in implementing it.<br /><br />The wings of the 787 are made by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in Japan.<br /><br />Inside the fuselage, on the other side of where each wing joins the jet's body, there is a structure called the "center wing box," made by Fuji Heavy Industries, also in Japan.<br /><br />This center box is constructed much like the outer wing, with composite-plastic skin panels stiffened by composite-plastic stringers.<br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />The stringers on the fuselage side mate at the wing join, fitting with those on the wing side.<br /><br />Because the wings are designed to transfer the loads into the fuselage box, the damage that occurred in the test was mirrored on either side of the join.<br /><br />Though a single fix, once designed and tested, will work on both sides of the join, mechanics performing the necessary modifications inside the airplanes already built will have to duplicate the work inside the wing and inside the fuselage.<br /><br />According to the engineers, Boeing is focusing on a solution that will require mechanics to create a U-shaped cutout in the end of each upper wing-skin stringer.<br /><br />This would have the effect of transferring part of the excess load into the titanium fitting at the wing-body join instead of into the wing skin.<br /><br />The mechanics must then fasten the reshaped stringer ends with newly designed parts to the titanium fitting.<br /><br />The goal is to reduce the stress-point loads enough to prevent future delamination.<br /><br />The delamination of the composite-plastic material isn't likely to lead to catastrophic failure of the airplane, but it would require constant monitoring and potentially costly repairs by the airlines.<br /><br />Any tear would have to be promptly fixed to prevent it from spreading.<br /><br />The way the stringers terminate and mate at the join, the focus of the problem, is Boeing's responsibility and not that of its Japanese partners. Boeing will have to pay for the cost overruns.<br /><br />Engineers will have to validate Boeing's chosen solution in tests before they modify the wings and center wing boxes already built.<br /><br />Company spokeswoman Yvonne Leach said 10 Dreamliners have been completed, including two ground-test airplanes. About 30 more are in various stages of production. <br /><br />The Dreamliner is already two years late.<br /><br />CEO Jim McNerney said last week that a new schedule for first flight and delivery will be ready within the next two months.<br /><br />Estimates by the two engineers of the minimum time needed to fix the problem suggest the plane is now unlikely to fly until next year.<br /><br />Until the new production timetable is announced, Wall Street analysts are unable to calculate the precise additional cost of this latest delay.<br /><br />Analyst Joe Campbell, of Barclays Capital, this week downgraded Boeing's stock. He cited an increased risk that the company will book a large accounting loss this year to cover the extra expense of the repeated delays.<br /><br />In a note to clients, Campbell estimated the total cost overrun of the Dreamliner program so far — extra startup and engineering costs, penalties owed to customers for delivery delays and contractual obligations to suppliers for engineering changes — as "in the vicinity of $11 billion."<br /><br />Because 850 Dreamliners have already been ordered, Campbell still believes the jet can be "highly profitable" over two decades of full production.<br /><br />But with that level of cost overrun, Campbell said, "Boeing is highly likely to lose large sums of money on the first 400 to 600 aircraft."</span><br /><br />This is a large-scale case of the chickens coming home to roost. Along about the time of the McDAC acquisition, or shortly thereafter, Boeing began the process of converting itself from an engineering / technical company to a company that emphasizes administrative, legal, and "soft" technical work. Consequently, one of the changes I noticed in the Boeing corporate culture was that -- not all at once, of course, but over time -- people who practice "hard" technical disciplines began to be devalued. I mean people like software programmers, data base developers, server administrators -- as well as the engineering disciplines themselves (aeronautical, mechanical, electrical, etc.). Boeing gradually began to convert itself into a company composed of accountants, lawyers, administrators -- in general, people who specialize in building paper empires -- instead of people involved in the creation, manufacturing, and tangible support of an end-item product. Along with this trend, there was a parallel and corresponding trend toward allowing the core technical competencies (engineering, but not just engineering) to atrophy, and for the "paper-empire" disciplines to be nurtured and to flourish. This trend was rather explicitly signalled when Harry Stonecipher, early in this process of corporate self-lobotomization, said that Boeing was no longer an engineering company. That statement was neither hyperbole nor any other kind of merely rhetorical device calculated to gain attention, not at all. He meant what he said. He was quite, quite serious. That is how Boeing rolls now. The 787 wing / fuselage problem is one -- but I predict, not the only -- result. JC<br /><br />http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/boeingaerospace/2009565319_boeing30.html</span>kevinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05331047626419936198noreply@blogger.com0