Ian Plimer’s ‘Heaven + Earth’ — Checking the Claims
Ian G. Enting
Version 2.0
ARC Centre of Excellence for
Mathematics and Statistics of Complex Systems
The University of Melbourne
Accessing this document
The intention is that the most recent version of this document will be accessible from:
http://www.complex.org.au/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=91
Overview
Ian Plimer’s book, Heaven + Earth — Global Warming: The Missing Science, claims to demolish
the theory of human-induced global warming due to the release of CO2
and other greenhouse
gases. Overall:
•
it has numerous internal inconsistencies;
•
in spite of the extensive referencing, key data are unattributed and the content of references
is often mis-quoted.
Most importantly, Ian Plimer fails to establish his claim that the human influence on climate can
be ignored, relative to natural variations.
Ian Plimer’s claim that the human influence on climate can be ignored, relative to natural
variations, seems to rest on three main strands of argument:
a: the extent of natural variability is larger than considered in ‘mainstream’ analyses;
b:
changes in radiative forcing from greenhouse gases have less effect than determined in
‘mainstream’ analyses;
c:
the IPCC uses a range of misrepresentations to conceal points a and b.
Among the many errors made in attempting to establish these claims, are cases where Plimer:
•
misrepresents the content of IPCC reports on at least 15 occasions as well as misrepresenting
the operation of the IPCC and the authorship of IPCC reports;
•
has at least 28 other instances of misrepresenting the content of cited sources;
•
has at least 2 graphs where checks show that the original is a plot of something other than
what Plimer claims and many others where data are misrepresented;
•
has at least 10 cases of misrepresenting data records in addition to some instances (included
in the total above) of misrepresenting data from cited source.
Details of these various types of flaw can be obtained via the relevant entries in the index.
A guide to how readers can independently check my claims is given on page 40.
1
Breadth of Science
In Plimer’s public appearances he has made the claim that climate scientists are ignoring geology.
This is untrue. Some of the geologists who are important in developing understanding of
climate and climate change have been:
•
H¨ogbom – who worked with Arrhenius;
•
Eric Sundquist of the USGS (with Sarmiento, resolved carbon budget ambiguity);
•
the many geologists who have contributed to the paleo-climate studies that Plimer misrepresents;
•
Henry Pollack, a borehole specialist, who has published an excellent book, Uncertain
Science ... Uncertain World, (CUP), pointing out that uncertainty about climate is much
less than the uncertainty surrounding many other important decisions;
•
and of course the American Geophysical Union which covers the gamut of Earth sciences
– atmospheric, oceanic, solid earth, space sciences and most recently biogeochemistry —
has strongly endorsed the reality of human-induced global warming:
http://www.agu.org/outreach/science policy/positions/climate change2008.shtml
Point by point
This list has been evolving, in part due to input from colleagues. The items are listed in order of
pages in Heaven + Earth and the page noted — the item numbering is changing as the document
is extended. An index for various topics is given, identifying both the item number and the page
in the present document. If you wish to quote items here, quote using the page number in
Heaven + Earth.1 Better still, don’t quote me at all — use this document as a guide to check it
out for yourself, even if you have to resort to buying the book. In cases where colleagues have
advised me of flaws in the book, this is acknowledged by noting initials after the particular item.
The acknowledgements section below identifies those involved. Material that is underlined is
presented as an exact quote from Heaven + Earth, except that Plimer’s footnote references have
only been retained when they are important for indicating misrepresentation of cited sources.
When I refer to ‘footnotes’ or ‘references’ this means Plimer’s footnotes not mine, unless I
explicitly indicate otherwise.2
1. In spite of Plimer being praised for the extensive referencing, many of the controversial
assertions have no supporting citation. These include: the claim that 102 studies found
that 78% found earlier periods, lasting at least 50 years, that were warmer than any period
in the 20th century [page 86]; frequent claims that the Medieval Warm Period was 2 to
3 degrees warmer than the present (for which some of the cited references do not even
address the Medieval period); and the repeated claim that the climate sensitivity is 0.5C.
1Page numbers and reference numbers refer to the Australian edition. I have not (as of September 3, 2009)
been able to establish whether these also apply to American and UK editions.
2There are no explicit references to my own footnotes in versions through to 2.0.
2
2. In his efforts to down-play the extent of warming from CO2, and exaggerate the relative
role of water vapour, Plimer ends up implicitly attributing so much warming to water
vapour, that the planetary temperature in the absence of water vapour would be nearer
the temperatures of the outer planets. In some cases the numbers given by Plimer are
exaggerated to such an extent as to imply that without water vapour, Earth’s temperature
would be below absolute zero — a physical impossibility. The exaggerations fall into two
groups: those that relate to anthropogenic CO2
and those that relate to total CO2. In each
case, inconsistency arises when the exaggeration in the relative proportions is combined
with values for absolute warming.
i: exaggerations concerning anthropogenic CO2:
The implications of the claim that CO2
derived from human activity produces 0.1% of
global warming is analysed in item 90.
ii: exaggerations concerning total CO2:
The inconsistency in attributing 18C of warming to total CO2
[page 366] while stating
in the caption of figure 44: About 98% of the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere is due
to water vapour, is noted in item 60.
3. A large fraction of the graphics are given without any attribution of the sources of the
data. Figures 2, 22, 36, 41, 43, 45 are schematics, where a citation is not needed, unless
to acknowledge authorship by others (e.g. Figure 45 should be acknowledged as a minor
variant from Figure 1.2 in the IPCC TAR (WG1 report), or preferably by referring to the
Keihl and Trenberth reference cited therein). Figures 6, 7, 14, 17, 30, 32, 33, 35, 46, 47,
53 do include explicit citations while in figures 4, 19, 27, 28, 34, 38, 39, 40, 42, 48, 49,
51, 54 relevant data might be traceable by those with a reasonably good knowledge of
the relevant field (e.g. when there is a unique data set held in an established central data
repository).
Appropriate citations should be either for the graphic as a whole or for the data sets that
are plotted (or both). Cases where neither of these is done are figures 1, 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11
(particularly for lower part), 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 31, 37, 42,
44, 50 and 52. Problems with axis labelling (wrong numbers, missing numbers, incorrect
labels) occur in figures 5 [item 16], 8 [item 17], 12 [item 30] and 14 [item 32]. (For
comparison, the comparable issues with graphics in An Inconvenient Truth are a totally
unquantified graph on page 89, no units on the plot on pages 78–79, and no temperature
scale for the lower line on pages 66–67.)3
4. In general the graphics are poorly linked to the text, with the text making no explicit
mention of the graphics in virtually all cases. Apart from the issues of lack of citations
and mislabelling of axes, noted in item 3, there are significant problems with the content
of many of the graphs. By figure number, these are:
1: Misrepresents the HadCRUT data set and uses fabricated data for 2008 — [see item
6].
3: The data are distorted — [see item 13].
5: Falsified time axis, thus giving no indication of the Younger Dryas, in contradiction
3Comments on An Inconvenient Truth refer to the book unless otherwise indicated.
3
with text — [see item 16].
10: Lack of specifics makes the plot meaningless — [see item 18].
11 (upper): ‘Hockey stick’ data have been distorted — [see item 26].
11 (lower): values for 20th century have been distorted, end of MWP inconsistent with
abrupt end described in text — [see item 26].
14: While a citation is given, comparison with the cited source shows that one of the
curves is not what Plimer claims it to be [see item 32].
15: Time series truncated to shift relative degrees of correlation — [see item 34].
29: The content is misrepresented — [see item 47].
38, 39, 40: Plotted on different scales to support the assertion that different time-averaging
leads to different trends (an assertion that violates the basic laws of arithmetic) — [see
item 56].
5. In analysing the details that follow, remember that Heaven + Earth is being promoted4 as
a scrupulous and scholarly analysis.
6. p. 11, figure 15: This graphic has several misrepresentations. The bold line purports to
be temperature data from the HadCRUT data set (see page 30 below). This is not true.
The HadCRUT data are closer to the lighter solid line which is labelled, UAH LT (adj to
Sfc).6 More seriously, at least for the HADCRU data7, the 2008 data that are shown are
fabrications. The HadCRUT data set shows 2008 as being only 0.081C lower than 2007
— [BB].
7. p. 21: (referring to Ben Santer) The lead author then added references to his own work
which showed warming from 1943 to 1970.17
However, when a full set of data from 1905
to after 1970 was analysed by others, no warming was seen.18
. Here Plimer is misunderstanding
the argument and misrepresenting both sides.
i: The argument is not about warming per se, but mainly about the stratosphere-troposphere
temperature difference as an indicator that the mechanism identified by Arrhenius is operative,
and the corresponding pattern of temperature change from aerosols;
ii: Reference 17 refers to the period 1963 to 1987, not 1943 to 1970 as claimed by Plimer.
This misrepresentation falsely implies that Santer et al were claiming warming at a time
of relative cooling.
iii: Reference 18 (by Michaels and Knappenberger) analyses the period 1958 to 1995,
not the period from 1905 onwards. The primary claim by Michaels and Knappenberger
was that Santer et al. were cherry-picking by choosing a start-date around the time of
cooling from the eruption of Mt. Agung. An additional criticism published following
reference 18 made similar comments suggested that the role of ozone depletion had been
neglected. Immediately following this was the response by Santer et al. noting that both
these comments used a questionable data set.
4Cover ‘blurb’ by Lord Lawson of Blaby, on paperback edition.
5Until version 2.0, this was incorrectly noted as figure 11.
6Presumably: University of Alabama Huntsville, Lower Troposphere (adjusted to surface).
7See page 30.
4
8. p. 21–22: Biased comparison of IPCC ‘balance of evidence’ vs a survey that found only
10% of scientists certain that global warming is a process that is underway.
9. p. 22: asserts that during the Medieval Warming, the global temperature was a few degrees
warmer than today. This claim is asserted in various forms at many places through Heaven
+ Earth, mostly without any justifying citation. Many examples of changes for various
regions are noted with citations, but there is no analysis of the overall results. The main
places where the claim for a large and widespread Medieval warming is backed with citations
are on page 63 [citing footnote 239] and page 490 [citing footnotes 2282 and 2283].
As noted in item 20, reference 2398 shows only a single time series for temperature. Item
109 notes that reference 2282 makes no mention of the MWP and reference 2283 (the
first IPCC report) contains only a schematic with no temperature scale assigned. Similarly,
item 21 notes that reference 255, cited in support of 2C cooling from MWP to LIA
only analyses the period 20,000 BP to 10,000 BP.
10. p. 22: Misrepresents IPCC treatment of Little Ice Age (LIA), Medieval Warm Period
(MWP). (See later — item 27).
11. p. 22: Referring to the ‘hockey stick’ in the 2001 IPCC WG1 report: It was highlighted
on the first page of the Summary for Policymakers and was shown another four times in
the 2001 Summary for Policymakers. Since there are only five figures in the 2001 WG1
SPM, this would imply that all figures in the SPM include the ‘hockey stick’. This is quite
simply false.
12. p. 22:
The IPCC, without explanation, quietly withdrew the “hockey stick” from the
Summary for Policymakers in subsequent publications and had it buried in a scientific
chapter of the 2007 report. with the footnote 24 noting as one of the reconstructions
of past climate. The reconstructions, including that from Mann et al., are also in the
technical summary (figure TS.20) of the 2007 report — [DK].
13. p. 25, figure 3: The graph has been distorted and misplotted. The line has the 1998 peak
in about the right place relative to the scale, but the 1940 peak (labelled as such) appears
in the 1950’s and the 1975 trough is plotted nearer to 1979. (The Brave New Climate web
site identifies this fabrication as coming from The Great Global Warming Swindle).
14. p. 25: There is no problem with global warming. It stopped in 1998. The last two years
of global cooling have erased nearly thirty years of temperature increase. The last 30
years of temperature increase have not been erased. The HADCRU data set9 shows that
both 2007 and 2008 have annual temperatures higher than any year prior to 1997 in the
instrumental record.
15. p. 32: within a glacial period that has already lasted tens of millions of years, identified
in footnote 38 as Pleistocene glaciation, sometimes called the Quaternary glaciation —
implying a tens of millions of years duration for the ‘Pleistocene’ and ‘Quaternary’ that
might surprise Plimer’s geological colleagues.
8Version 1.6 incorrectly referred to reference 9 at this point.
9File hadcru3gl.txt, see description on page 30.
5
16. p. 33, figure 5: Caption reads:
The amount of temperature and temperature change ....
This is two different things, but only one line is plotted. In addition, this unattributed
graphic lacks any indication of the rapid cooling and warming associated with the beginning
and end of the Younger Dryas [c.f. pages 42–44 and figure 10)]. Since the graph
extends to the point labelled Today at 2000 on the time-scale, the description Time (years
ago) is incorrect. However,10 comparisons with other publications indicates that this is
rates of change from the GISP-2 ice core. However, in the ‘original’ graphic the time-
scale was non-linear (possibly linear in depth), and the linear time-scale has been imposed
by Plimer (with, as noted, the endpoint being inconsistent with the labelling). This is one
of the weirder cases of distorted graphics since Plimer’s falsification of the time axis acts
counter to his argument by removing the changes around the Younger Dryas.
17. p. 40, figure 8: lower part lacks numbers on horizontal axis.
18. p. 43, figure 10:
The plot of ice accumulation is meaningless without saying where.
Clearly, 0.2 metres/year for the last 10,000 years is not a global average.
19. p. 59: In the section on The Roman Warming Plimer states By 300 AD, the global climate
was far warmer than at present.217. Reference 217 is a 1977 book by H. H. Lamb which
says little about Roman times. The strongest statement seems to be on page 4 saying
that By late Roman times, particularly in the fourth century AD, it may well have been
warmer than now, with ‘now’ meaning the mid 1970s.
20. p. 63: In the Medieval warming, it was far warmer than the present and the warming was
widespread.239
The citation for this (reference 239) is the book: The Little Ice Age. The
index identifies four references to the MWP. One is a passing reference, one refers to sea
level and one notes a subsequent cooling of 0.7C to 1500. The most detailed discussion
is on page 376 which presents only one time series of temperature estimates — 1000 years
from central England. In addition, proxy series from Greenland and North America are
shown without any temperature calibration, and combined into a ‘North Atlantic index’
again without any temperature scale assigned.
21. p. 66:
Boreholes give accurate temperature histories for about 1000 years into the past
because rock conducts past surface temperatures downward only slowly. In the Northern
Hemisphere, borehole data shows the Medieval Warming and a cooling of about 2C from
the Medieval Warming to the Little Ice Age.255
— comparison with reference 255, a paper
by Steig et al., reveals multiple misrepresentations by Plimer:
i: the paper refers to data from a core extracted from ice, not a hole drilled into rock;
ii: the ice core is from the southern hemisphere, not the northern hemisphere;
iii: the paper does not analyse the Medieval Warm Period. All data plots refer to the
period from 20,000 BP to 10,000 BP — there appears to be absolutely no discussion of
the Medieval period.
22. p. 66–67:
A study of 6000 bore holes on all continents has shown that temperature in
the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than today and that the temperature fell 0.2 to
10Clarification added in version 1.9.
6
0.7C during the Little Ice Age.256
The cited reference (footnote 256) actually says that
temperature declined until about 200 years ago, reaching a minimum of about 0.2–0.7 K
below present-day. (i.e. the 0.2 to 0.7 K is the amount of offset from ‘present-day’, not
the amount of fall from the MWP). The words that Plimer completely ignores are in the
preceding passage, saying (relative to the period 1300–1600 BP): A warming followed,
yielding temperatures that averaged 0.1–0.5 K above present-day in the interval 500–
1000 years ago. The reference does not specify the time interval that represents ‘presentday’,
but this global-scale estimate clearly differs from Plimer’s repeated unsubstantiated
assertion that the MWP was 2 to 3 degree warmer than present. A later paper (by the
authors of reference 256) A late Quaternary climate reconstruction based on borehole
heat flux data, borehole temperatures data and the instrumental record. in Geophysical
Research Letters, 35, L13703 (2008) states As the authors of HPS97 we can be criticized
for not stating explicitly in HPS97 that the ‘present’ (the zero on the time axis) really
represents something like the end of the 19th century, rather than the end of the 20th
century. The range of reconstructions in the 2008 paper, show a peak warming between
500 and 800 years ago, whose peaks, relative to to 1961–1990 mean, range from about
-0.4C to 0.3C.11
23. p. 87: If it is acknowledged that there have been rapid large climate changes in the past,
then human production of CO2
cannot be the major driver for climate change. This makes
the false assumption that there is an either/or choice between human and natural causes
that applies at all times and on all time-scales.
24. p. 87: In the IPCC Second Assessment Summary for Policy Makers in 1996, a diagram
showing the past 1000 years of Earth temperatures from tree rings, ice cores and thermometers
showed the Medieval Warm period, the Little Ice Age and the Late 20th Century
Warming. The SAR SPM does not include any diagrams. The temperature reconstruction
in the Technical Summary of the SAR only goes back to 1400.
25. p. 88: Essentially repeats (in a slightly less specific form) the earlier false claim (on page
22) that ‘hockey stick’ occurs a total of 5 times in the IPCC 2001 SPM, [see item 11] —
[DK].
26. p. 89, figure 11:12 In the upper part, the ‘hockey stick’ curve has been displaced upward
relative to the version shown in the 2001 IPCC report, in spite of claiming to be the same
reference period and having the 1998 instrumental values the same. In the lower part of
figure 11, the depiction of the Medieval Warm Period is inconsistent with the claim on
page 128 that The Wolf minimum heralded the end of the Medieval Warming and the
beginning of the 600 year Little Ice Age. It took only 23 years to change from a warm
climate to a cool climate. In addition the 20th century temperature data have been falsified
by showing the 2000 temperature as almost exactly the same as the peak circa 1940 rather
then 0.6C higher.
11The main issue here is that Plimer misrepresents reference 256, not that he failed to appreciate the significance
of the upper 100 metres of data not being used.
12Prior to version 1.7, the page was incorrectly given as 99.
7
27. p. 91: This makes a succession of claims about IPCC treatment of the Medieval Warm
Period (MWP) , Little Ice Age (LIA) and hockey stick:
i: the 1996 IPCC report showed the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age
ii: Mann’s “hockey stick” was used in the IPCC’s 2001 report and the Medieval Warm
Period and the Little Ice Age were expunged
iii: In the next IPCC report the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age mysteriously
re-appeared (i.e. the 2007 report).
In reality, the only reconstruction in the 1996 report appears to be the Bradley estimates
(figure 10 in the technical summary, reappearing with thermometer measurements superimposed
as figure 3.20, page 175 in WG1 SAR) which only went back to 1400 (i.e.
after Plimer’s definition of the end of the MWP). (Figure 3.21 shows proxies without any
temperature relation and with poor coherence around the time of the MWP). Thus the
MWP was not in the 1996 report to be ‘expunged’ in 2001. The ‘reappearance’ in 2007
is to have multiple reconstructions, none of which show a MWP even 1C warmer than
the second half of the twentieth century, let alone the 2C that Plimer claims. The LIA
can be seen in all 3 reports, with most reconstructions suggesting about 0.5C below mid
20th century levels. In the 2007 report, a small number of reconstructions suggest LIA
temperatures nearer to 1C cooler and MWP a few tenths of a degree cooler. (Note that
all this refers to the northern hemisphere).
28. p. 98:
The GISS director398
claimed that nine of the ten warmest years in history have
occurred since 1995, . . . Since reference 398 is a paper published in 1999, the misrepresentation
is obvious.
29. p. 99: Following soon after the previous passage . . . NASA had to reverse its position . . . .
NASA now states that the top four years of high temperatures are from the 1930s (1934,
1931, 1938 and 1939). The warmest year was 1934. Shortly afterwards: Similarly the
UK’s Meteorological office has now confirmed a fall in global temperatures. . . . Nowhere
in this discussion of global temperatures is the acknowledgement that interpolation about
the high temperatures in the 1930s (the subject of the NASA revision to statements about
extremes) refers to the USA and not the whole world. The revision to the USA data
changes the global numbers by a few thousandths of a degree. 13 — [also in TL list].
30. p. 110, figure 12: The lower plot on this figure has a label referring to late twentieth
century warming, with a time line in ‘years before present’. However the line ends at
about 60 years ago. Maybe Plimer is anticipating the book being in print, without revision
in 2060! However the real howler in this plot is that the temperature increase is shown
as about 40C. In addition, the relation between upper (10000 years of C-14) and lower
(1100 years of temperature) parts of the figure is unclear.
31. p. 121: the sun rotates around the centre of gravity of the solar system about every 11.1
years. Plimer is confusing rotation (about once every 25 days) with orbital motion around
the center of gravity. According to Einstein’s principle of general relativity, such orbital
13The transcript of the Lateline interview where Ian Plimer tries to evade this issue, can be found on:
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2008/s2554129.htm
8
motion can have no detectable effect. There can be tidal effects, but these will have a
frequency given by the difference: 1=25
-
1=(365
×
11:1)
per day, i.e. not much less than
once every 25 days.
32. p. 126, figure 14: A correlation of cycles over less than 2 cycles is of no significance.
Many proposed correlations between climatic variations and sunspot cycles have failed
as additional data became available (A.B. Pittock, formerly of CSIRO: personal communication
based on published work and work in progress). Note that the curves are
labelled ‘sunspot numbers’ and ‘Grain price’ while the vertical axes are labelled ‘number
of sunspots’ (meaningless unless the time interval specified) and ‘W/m2’ — a novel unit
for grain prices. However, Tim Lambert’s comparison with the original source [figure
7.41 in reference 550] reveals a more complicated degree of falsification:
i: The curve reproduced as Sunspot numbers is ‘solar insolation’ (Sonneneinstrahlung in
the reference 550) and is quantified on the right-hand axis which has the same numerical
values as in Heaven + Earth in W/m2
.
ii: In the original, the left hand axis is prices, Getreidepreise (Mariengroshchen pro
100 kg), with the range 100 to 200, i.e. the numbers that Plimer relabels as Number
of sunspots.
33. p. 131, figure 15: This has multiple problems:
i: unidentified source and data;
ii: selective data use;
iii: Incorrect description in caption [item 34];
iv: highly smoothed CO2
record added for comparisons;
v: erroneous statement about correlations.
34. p. 131, figure 15 (caption): Plot of the last 140 years . . . no it isn’t. The plots, starting
at 1860 end a little after 1980 (although the time axis extends beyond 2000). Truncating
the plots in this way serves to reduce the correlation between temperature and CO2
and
enhance the correlation between temperature and sunspot cycle length.
35. p. 132:
Greenhouse gases act only as amplifiers. In using the word only, Plimer fails
to explain how greenhouse gases can have a (amplifying) warming effect when the gas
increase is due to other climate change (as in the mainstream interpretation of glacial-
interglacial cycles) and yet not have a warming effect when the gas increases are due to
human inputs.
36. p. 133: States: Ice cores from Greenland show the temperature was warmer at 1000 AD.
while the cited reference (footnote 595) indicates that the data are not from the ice core
(i.e. the ice extracted from the drill-hole), but are from measurements of temperatures in
the hole — [contributed suggestion].
37. p. 148: Earth has less carbon and water than other planets, asteroids and comets A very
strange statement, particularly for Mercury, Mars and the asteroids — [DK].
38. p. 195: On the global scale satellite measurements of vegetation between 1982 and 1999
showed that plant growth increased by 6% in response to slightly increased rainfall and
9
slightly increased temperature, but the major change was due to slightly increased CO2.
There is no reference directly associated with this passage but the preceding passage cites
the paper Climate-driven increases in global terrestrial net primary production from 1982
to 1999 [footnote 936] by Nemani et al. (2003). This paper did not provide any specific
satellite-derived estimate of the effect of CO2.
39. p. 198: In fact the sea-ice has expanded and high winds during an Arctic storm killed four
polar bears .. Indeed saying sea-ice has expanded may well be true if one writes during the
northern winter. The end-date of the record shown as the lower curve in Figure 29, suggests
such ‘cherry-picking’. However, the purported Arctic data are a misrepresentation
of the source. The curve is a global anomaly — see item 47.
40. p. 217: Mt Pinatubo . . . released 20 millions tonnes of sulphur dioxide .... and very large
quantities of chlorofluorocarbons. . . . The reference cited for this [footnote 1075] makes
no such claims and is not reporting observations of anything. It is about a modelling study
that compares the chemical effects of Pinatubo emissions to the effect of chlorofluorocarbons
— [also in TL list].
41. p. 219:
An almost entirely eruption-free period from 1912 to 1963 coincided with an
average global warming of 0.5C. It is quite possible that the atmosphere warmed due
to the lack of a normal quote of volcanic aerosols. Precisely. This statement completely
undermines Plimer’s arguments that CO2
can’t be causing later warming because there
was too little CO2
increase at the time of early 20th century warming.
42. p. 229: In about 9000 years time, perihelion will occur in the Northern hemisphere and
aphelion will occurs in the Southern hemisphere, the reverse of today. This is absurd.
Perihelion and aphelion are points on the Earth’s orbit and do not occur in a specific
hemisphere.
43. p. 230: claims that climate models don’t do seasonal variation of insolation, i.e. neglect
the ellipticity of the Earth’s orbit. The mean figure of 1367 watts per square metre is
used in climate models, thereby omitting the effects of orbit on the change in solar input.
This is untrue (personal communication from CSIRO climate modellers). An older, but
verifiable and more accessible reference is CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research
Technical Paper no. 26, available on-line from the CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research
website. Numerous studies have been done with climate models using different
values of ellipticity (and different orientations of the Earth’s axis) in order to study other
stages of the Milancovi´
c cycle. Such studies would be impossible of the shape of the
earth’s orbit is ignored.
44. p. 237: There is neither a significant loss nor a gain to polar ice, alpine valley glaciers, and
sea ice. One of many unsupported claims in introductory sections, which the subsequent
detailed discussion justifies on the basis of flawed assertions. See item 46 regarding cited
reference on alpine glaciers. — [DK].
45. p. 277:
The initial analysis of the Vostok ice core used samples spaced at intervals of
hundreds of years. The initial conclusions were that high CO2
in the atmosphere led to
10
high temperatures. This is untrue. The initial conclusions over 20 years ago were that
the cycles were initiated by orbital changes with changes in CO2
having a consequent
amplifying role. In the relevant paper, the abstract (quoted in full in the discussion below
on the Vostok core, see page 33) says CO2
changes have had an important climatic role
.... in amplifying the relatively weak orbital forcing.
46. p. 281:
The good news is that alpine valley glaciers are not retreating. Measurements
of retreats and advances from glaciers in the period 1946–1995 for 246 glaciers show
that there is no sign of any recent global trend towards increased glacier melting.1441
The
first sentence does not follow from the first: reference 1441 does find that glaciers are
retreating, but fails to find evidence of an increased rate of retreat — [TL].
47. p. 287, figure 29: A graph that claims to be area of global sea ice with total area of
Antarctic sea ice (upper curve) and Arctic sea ice variations (lower graph) shows negative
values for the arctic. In reality, the curve seems to be taken from the site:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
This identifies the lower curve as daily global sea ice anomaly and not Arctic sea ice
variations (lower graph).
48. p. 297 (also on p. 294):
El Ni˜no events are not factored into models of future climate.
This is untrue. In the WG1 AR4 report, figure 8.13 shows the performance of a range
of the climate models in simulating the statistical characteristics of El Ni˜no. Since the
El Ni˜no is recognised as part of the chaotic behaviour of the climate system (in spite of
Plimer’s claim, item 97, that the IPCC denies this) the sequence of individual El Ni˜
no
events is unpredictable and the relevant test is of the intensity and frequency distribution
— [DK].
49. p. 303: In the three years before the flooding associated with hurricane Katrina devastated
New Orleans in August 2005, the city and surrounding area had undergone rapid subsidence
of about one metre. There is no reference associated with this claim. However, when
the claim is repeated on page 409 a reference is cited, but the subsidence reported in that
reference represents an average of 16:8
±
7:5
mm over the three years — see item 73.
50. p. 312:
Al Gore’s Oscar winning movie predicted that sea level would increase by 6
metres in the near future Gore does not put a date on when a 20 foot rise would happen
(nor specify what circumstances). In my view this is one of the serious omissions in
Gore’s book. My recollection is that a similar view of this omission was taken by the
judge in the UK court case over Gore’s film and book.
51. p. 324, caption of figure 34:
These bottom waters are undersaturated in CO2
hence can
dissolve the monstrous amounts of CO2
emitted by submarine volcanoes. This fails to account
for what happens when this water is upwelled to the surface, become oversaturated
due to the lower pressure.
52. p. 325:14 The sentence An upper limit on how much CO2
concentration in the atmosphere
will rise if all the available fossil fuel is burned can be calculated. Is followed immediately
14In versions prior to 1.6, this issue was incorrectly noted as being on page 235.
11
by In order to permanently double the current level of CO2
in the atmosphere and keep
the oceans and atmosphere balanced, the atmosphere needs to be supplied with 51 times
the present amount of atmospheric CO2. The shift in the argument is the inclusion of
the word permanently, making the comparison misleading. Indeed without specifying
the time-scales, the comparison is meaningless. On the time-scales of tens of millions of
years, the geological evidence suggests that the factor of 51 is too small. On timescales
of millennia, geological analysis suggests that the factor is in the range 5 to 10. On
the century timescale, the factor is closer to 2. A good conceptual analysis of these
issues is given by Eric Sundquist of the US Geological Survey in his chapter Geological
perspectives on carbon dioxide and the carbon cycle [Plimer’s footnote 2117].
53. p. 325:
If humans burned all the available fossil fuels over the next 300 years there
would be 15 turnovers of CO2
between oceans and atmosphere and all the additional
CO2
would be consumed by ocean life and precipitated as calcium carbonate in sea-floor
sediments.1682
Reference 1682 is a one-page comment from 1990, discussing uncertainties
in climate sensitivity, projected emission rates and satellite-derived temperature data.
It mentions neither CO2
turnover, nor sediments.
54. p. 332: Claims: If any more CO2
were added to the oceans then calcium carbonate would
precipitate.1738
Reference 1738 is about carbon budgets and its analysis of sediments is
about the possibilities of sediments dissolving, not new sediment forming. The relevant
chemical reaction is:
H2CO3
+ CO=
3
3
.
2HCO-
so that increasing CO2
(and thus H2CO3) tends to shift the balance to increasing 2HCO-
3
by removing CO=
3
and so making carbonate sediments more soluble. (The conclusion
in reference 1738 was that this was not an immediate threat over significant areas of the
ocean floor.)
55. p. 338: There is no such thing as a “tipping point” (or even a “precautionary principle”)
in science. The precautionary principle is proposed for the conduct of human affairs.
No-one seriously proposes it as a scientific principle. (If it was a scientific principle
there would be no need to argue for its use — it would just happen). There is such a
thing as a “tipping” point in science, but the more technical name is “catastrophe”. An
accessible account is given in the book Catastrophe Theory by V. I. Arnold (Springer-
Verlag, 1984, 1986). Since not all things that are catastrophes in the mathematical sense
are catastrophic in the human sense, the use of a less ambiguous term such as “tipping
point” seems desirable for public communication.
56. p. 346–347, figures 38, 39, 40:
Annual averages show sea surface temperature rises
whereas monthly averages do not. and in the caption of figure 40: The three diagrams
show that the data can easily be manipulated to create a desired outcome. Actually no.
In particular the linear trend will be almost the same in each case, with small differences
coming from a few months at the end. Fitting a trend to monthly, 5-monthly or
12-monthly averages involves (apart from the ends and some rounding of times) the same
sums over the same months, whether or not one deals with averages. Using 5-month averages
just means that each month gets added in 5 times (and divided by 5). From the
12
basic laws of arithmetic, the sum of a set of numbers does not depend on the order in
which they are added. So why do the graphs seem to have different trends: because they
are plotted on different scales. Each actually shows about 0.7C increase over the 40-odd
years. This same scam was used by Michael Crichton in State of Fear comparing US and
global data — see section 3.2 of Twisted.
57. p. 350: The El Ni˜no most commonlyoccurs inlate December, lasts for a month or so ...
compared to p. 352 El Ni˜no lasts for 1 to 2 years.
58. p. 365: Clouds are not factored into climate models. Untrue. See for example sections 12
and 13 of CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research Technical Paper no. 26, available online
from the CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research website. Also many textbooks.
59. p. 366: assertion of the 0.5C climate sensitivity with no citation and contradicting other
values given by Plimer [items 93, 112] — [TL].
60. p. 366:
The Earth has an average surface temperature of about 15C, followed a few
sentences later by If the atmosphere had no CO2
far more heat would be lost and the
average surface temperature would be about –3C. The implication of attributing 18C of
warming to CO2
while saying [caption of Figure 44] About 98% of the greenhouse effect
in the atmosphere is due to water vapour is to imply that in the absence of CO2
and H2O,
the temperature would be 900C lower, i.e. well below the physical limit of absolute zero.
61. p.
367: However, Arrhenius was not aware of the carbon cycle . . . . Arrhenius’ 1896
paper explicitly includes geological aspects of the ocean carbon cycle, drawing on the
work of geologist Arvid H¨
ogbom, going to the extent of providing a summary translation
of some of H¨ogbom’s work at the end of his own paper.
62. p. 370, figure 44: As noted in item 60, the exaggerated proportion of warming attributed
to water vapour in the graphic and caption, implies that water vapour is warming the
planet from a temperature below absolute zero — [also in TL list].
63. p. 371: assertion of the 0.5C climate sensitivity with no citation and contradicting other
values given by Plimer [items 93, 112] — [TL].
64. p. 374:
Once there is 400 ppm of CO2
in the atmosphere, the doubling or tripling of
CO2
content has little effect on atmospheric temperature because CO2
has adsorbed all
the infra-red it can adsorb. The term ‘adsorb’ is defined (Macquarie Dictionary) as “ to
gather a gas, liquid or dissolved substance) on the surface of a condensed layer . . . ”, c.f.
‘absorb’ for which the same dictionary’s definitions include: 5. to take or receive in by
chemical or molecular action while Chambers Twentieth Century dictionary’s definition
of ‘absorb’ includes: “to suck in, to swallow up, ... to take up and transform (energy)
instead or transmitting or reflecting”. An consistent failure [see item 83] to distinguish
between ‘adsorb’ and ‘absorb’ does not inspire confidence.
13
65. p. 375, figure 50:15 As with many of the graphics, this is poorly described with no attribution
of the numbers (see item 3). However above 100 ppm the values seem to be inversely
proportional to concentration as expected for incremental change when temperature has a
logarithmic dependence on concentration (which Plimer acknowledges on p. 338). Thus
a better label for the vertical axis would be ‘incremental warming’. This means that
the claim in the caption once the atmosphere is at its present 385 ppm, a doubling or
quadrupling will have very little effect on the atmospheric temperature is untrue. (Note
also similar statement on previous page — item 64). Each doubling will have the same
effect on temperature until concentrations get so high that the logarithmic relation breaks
down. The trend in Figure 50 shows no sign of this happening around 400 ppm. The
bars would imply that the increments correspond to each additional 20 ppm of CO2. This
would imply a climate sensitivity of 0.35C. While the origin of the numbers is not given,
the discussion on page 30 below notes that they can be explained by using 0.5C for the
climate sensitivity (the lowest of Plimer’s other values) and then having a factor of 1.44
error through neglecting to consider the change of base of logarithms.
66. p. 379:
In fact, satellites and radiosondes show that there is no global warming.1910
.
Reference 1910 is a 2007 overview by Charles F. Keller which updates his 2003 report
(CFK03). The words in reference 1910 are: The big news since CFK03 is the first of
these, the collapse of the climate critics’ last real bastion, namely that satellites and radiosondes
show no significant warming in the past quarter century. Reference 1910 describes
the issues with the satellite and sonde data that gave the incorrect appearance of
no trend.
67. p. 382: In fact, satellites and radiosondes show that there is no global warming.1918
Reference
1918 is the same reference as 1910 and so the comments in item 66 apply equally
here — [TL].
68. p. 398:
attempts to use only stalagmite ring widths to ascertain climate variation shows
that there is no relationship between stalagmite ring width and tree rings in the same
area.1990
when in fact reference 1990 makes no mention of tree rings — [email contribution].
69. p. 401: Ice cores also record human activity. ... The increase in CO2
2001
and methane2002
is also recorded. Reference 2001 refers to measurement of samples from the atmosphere,
not from bubbles in an ice core.
70. p. 402: There was no “tipping point” and the temperature-CO2
plots clearly showed that
the rise in temperature was stopped by something other than CO2. 2007
— comparison with
reference 2007, a paper by Wunsch, reveals that the paper does not discuss any aspect of
CO2.
71. p. 402: New high resolution studies over the last 450,000 years of Vostok core show that
at all times of cold to warm transitions, temperature rise is followed by a rise in CO2
some
800 years later.2009
Reference 2009 only analyses a period between 230,000 and 255,000
15Prior to version 1.4, this was incorrectly noted as fig 5.
14
years ago (spanning ‘Termination III’), thus does not analyse the last 450,000 years and
so does not justify claims about all times of cold to warm transitions.
72. p. 407:
Actual measurements for 2007 show that it was one of the coldest years this
century and the coldest since 1995. Compare to figure 1 on page 11 of Heaven + Earth.
The claim ‘coldest since 1995’ is clearly untrue. Calling it ‘one of the coldest this century’
(i.e. not even the coldest) is fairly insignificant with only 8 or 9 years (depending on
whether you regard the century as beginning on 1/1/2000 or 1/1/2001).
73. p. 409:
New Orleans sunk rapidly by about 1 metre in the three years before Katrina
struck. This time (unlike page 303, item 49) a reference is cited: by Dixon and others Nature,
441, 587–588 (2006) from radar satellite altimetry. They report a three-year average
of ..5:6
±
2:5
mm/year, with a maximum of ..29
mm/year (negative values indicating
subsidence). They note that if the motion is interpreted as purely vertical, the mean and
maximum subsidence become 6.4 mm/year and 33 mm/year.
74. p. 411:
Carbon dioxide is a colourless odourless non-poisonous gas. If taken literally,
this is dangerously misleading. Some of the relevant toxicity data from Chemwatch #1003
(1999)16 are:
7% to 10%: unconsciousness within minutes;
5% fatal dose for inhalation;
2% adverse pulmonary effects;
and various adverse effects from continuous exposure at lower concentrations around 1%.
75. p. 412: Plimer notes that limestone contains 65,000,000 billions tonnes of carbon (65,000,000
GtC) forgetting that his own figure of 200 GtC per year in CO2
from volcanoes would imply
that limestone sediments are, on average, being turned over every 325,000 years.
•
The 200 GtC/year figure is from A sceptical look at greenhouse, by Ian Plimer in
The Skeptic17, vol. 13, pp 11-17, 1994.
•
In Heaven + Earth, Plimer seems to evade the issue of giving an estimate of volcanic
CO2
emissions, but on p. 413 says Volcanoes produce more CO2
then the world’s
cars and industries combined — [DK, TL]. and
•
Volcanoes add far more CO2
to the oceans and atmosphere than humans (p. 328) —
[DK]. and
•
p. 472: massive volcanic eruptions (e.g. Pinatubo) emit the equivalent of a years’
human CO2
emissions in a few days. No citation is given. Actual data shows that
the CO2
growth rate declined after the Pinatubo eruption — [TL].
76. p. 413:
Animals produce 25 times as much CO2
as cars and industry. Irrelevant and
untrue. A common irrelevant argument used by doubt-spreaders. Animal CO2
production
doesn’t affect climate because it is putting back carbon taken out of the atmosphere by
plants. However 25 by 7 GtC/year is exaggerated. Even if no plant material decayed
16The summary is for illustrative purposes. Health and Safety issues should be addressed by reference to the
full chemical data sheets.
17Publication of the Australian Sceptics Society.
15
directly to CO2, or decomposed by bacteria or burnt by wild-fire, Plimer’s figures would
have animals chomping through plant material at about 2 or 3 times the rate (the Global
Net Primary Production of 50 to 100 GtC per year) at which plants remove the carbon
from the atmosphere — thus eating all the world’s biomass in a few decades.
77. p. 415: The C14
proportion of total carbon in the atmosphere is decreasing, suggesting that
there is an increased biological contribution of CO2
to the atmosphere. The proportion of
atmospheric 14C is decreasing because atmospheric CO2, with 14C from nuclear testing is
being taken up into the oceans and replaced by (old) CO2
upwelled from the deep oceans
and so uninfluenced by the nuclear testing. Note that this interpretation of the 14C data
lies behind some of the estimates of air-sea gas exchange that Plimer mis-interprets as
estimates of ‘CO2
lifetime’.
78. p. 417: ..the observatory was evacuated for a few months and there was a gap in the data
record which represented a period of no measurements. There are now no gaps in the
Mauna Loa data set. To refer to the Mauna Loa (CO2) data set, is misleading since there
are three main records: The Scripps in-situ IRGA measurements established by C. D.
Keeling; the NOAA in-situ IRGA measurements and the NOAA flask program which is
part of a global network for which flasks of air are shipped back to the central NOAA
laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. The main archive/access location for CO2
data is the
Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Center (CDIAC), in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
Other programs such as CSIRO also produce records from Mauna Loa as part of the ongoing
validation activity. The graphic at:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/graphics/Mauna Loa CO2.jpg shows extensive gaps in
the early part of the Scripps record.
79. p. 417:
The annual mean CO2
atmospheric content reported at Mauna Loa for 1959
was 315.93 ppmv. This was 15 ppmv lower than the 1959 measurements for measuring
stations in northwestern Europe. Measured CO2
at Mauna Loa increased steadily to
351.45 ppmv in early in 1989. The 1989 value is the same as the European measurements
35 years earlier by the Pettenkofer method.... Plimer’s references for the European program
are two papers by Bischof in 1960 and 1962 [footnotes 2094 and 2095 respectively].
The 1960 paper quotes annual means of — 1955: 326 ppm; 1956: 321 ppm; 1957: 323
ppm; 1958: 315 ppm; 1959: 331 ppm. For such a short passage, Plimer is showing a
remarkably high number of errors:
i: 1959 to 1989 is 30 years, not 35 years;
ii: 15 ppm above 315.9 ppm is 330.9 ppm, close to the annual mean reported for Mauna
Loa for 1975, not 1989.
iii: during 1959 the Swedish group switched to the more precise Infra-Red Gas Analyser
(IRGA) with precision determined as 1
ppm, while they found the precision of the
chemical method to be 3
ppm — thus the 1959 data were not all from the chemical
method;
iv: the whole comparison is biased by comparing a high altitude site with surface data.
The relevant comparison is with the data reported by Bischof (1962), sampling air during
aircraft flights. The values for air from above about 1km are from 308 ppm to 320 ppm
with a mean of 314 ppm, very close to the 315 ppm at Mauna Loa.
16
80. p. 417–8: Furthermore, the measurement at Mauna Loa is by infra-red analysis and some
of the ice core measurements of CO2
in trapped air were by gas chromatography. Exactly.
There are two techniques, IRGA and GC, with good precision and which agree with each
other, and a third (chemical) technique with inherently lower precision which requires
great experimental skill to achieve accuracy.
81. p. 418: land-derived air blowing across the sea loses about 10 ppm of its CO2
as the CO2
dissolves in the oceans. High-CO2
air from over land often has the concentration drop
due to vertical mixing. A more realistic estimate of how much drop can be caused by the
oceans (over large areas) is obtained by comparing measurements of CO2
at Cape Grim
Tasmania which, when measured in air coming off the ocean averaged about 1 ppm lower
than air measured by CSIRO on flights over Bass Strait.
82. p. 419:
The lowest figure measured since 1812, the 270 ppm figure, is taken as the
pre-industrialisation yardstick. The IPCC want it both ways. They are prepared to use the
lowest determination by the Pettenkofer method as a yardstick yet do not acknowledge
Pettenkofer method measurements showing CO2
concentrations far higher than now many
times since 1812. The IPCC does not use 270 ppm as the pre-industrial CO2
concentration.
The value used is 280 ppm. In the various WG1 reports, see SPM table 1 in 1990,
technical summary (TS) table 1 in SAR, TS table 1 in TAR, and page 2 in SPM of AR4.
This number is based in measurements of air in ice bubbles (mainly using IR techniques)
and excluding anomalously low values from the time of the Little Ice Age. For ice cores,
the volume of air available is too small to use the less precise chemical (Pettenkofer)
method.
83. p. 421:
CO2
molecules will be removed fast from the atmosphere to be adsorbed in
another reservoir — inability to distinguish ‘adsorbed’ from ‘absorbed’ yet again — see
item 64.
84. p. 421: For CO2, The IPCC asserts that the lifetime is 50–200 years. The IPCC has been
criticised because the lifetime is not defined. In reality the IPCC (1990) says in the SPM
The way in which CO2
is absorbed by the oceans and biosphere is not simple and a single
number cannot be given and in the footnote to table 1: The “lifetime” of CO2
is given
in the table is a rough indication of the time it would take CO2
concentrations to adjust
to changes in emissions. (see section 1.2.1 for further details), with section 1.2.1 stating
The turnover time of CO2
in the atmosphere, measured as the ratio of content to the fluxes
through it is about 4 years. ... This short time scale must not be confused with the time
it takes for the atmospheric CO2
level to adjust to a new equilibrium of sources or sinks
change.
85. p. 422: Calculations of the lifetime of atmospheric CO2
based on natural C14
give lifetime
values of 3 to 25 years (18 separate studies), dilution of the atmosphere from fossil fuel
burning a lifetime of 2 to 7 years (two separate studies), atomic bomb C14
lifetime value
of 2 to more than 10 years (12 separate studies) . . . . This is referenced by footnote 2117
at the beginning and footnote 2118 after additional cases not quoted above. This makes
it difficult to identify which citation applies to which group of claims. In the case of reference
2117 (Eric Sundquist’s article Geological perspectives on carbon dioxide and the
17
carbon cycle, noted above in connection with item 52), the misrepresentation is particularly
clear. Sundquist describes carbon balance and the decay of perturbations in terms of
competition between the flux to and from the atmosphere. In these terms his estimates are
of the one-way fluxes, i.e. Plimer is omitting half of Sundquist’s calculation, thus turning
approximate balance into a claim of rapid net loss of CO2
from the atmosphere.
86. p. 422: There is considerable difference in the atmospheric CO2
lifetime between the 37
independent measurements and calculations using six different methods and the IPCC
computer model. This discrepancy has not been explained by the IPCC. As noted in
item 84, Plimer is misrepresenting estimates of turnover time as being estimates of a
characteristic lifetime for CO2
perturbations. The difference has been explained in IPCC
reports — see in particular section 2.1.4 of the WG1 Second Assessment Report. (Of
course, in criticising the IPCC computer model, Plimer is referring to something that
doesn’t actually exist).
87. p. 422:
If the CO2
atmospheric lifetime were 5 years, then the amount of the total
atmospheric CO2
derived from fossil fuel burning would be 1.2% not the 21% assumed
by the IPCC. This would appear to conflict with Oceans, soils and plants already absorb
at least half the human CO2
emissions on page 472. In fact both statements are roughly
true — the conclusion that resolves this apparent conflict is that a 5-year ‘atmospheric
lifetime’ does not characterise atmospheric CO2.
88. p. 422: In order to make the measurements of the atmospheric CO2
lifetime agree with the
IPCC assumption, it would be necessary to mix all the CO2
derived from the world’s fossil
burning with a different CO2
reservoir that was five times larger than the atmosphere.2123
— Reference 2123 (which is also reference 1738) does not support such a claim. It gives
an outline of the atmosphere-ocean-biosphere carbon dynamics which is quantitatively
similar to current mainstream understanding, even though this 1979 analysis pre-dates
both the IPCC (and its alleged ‘assumptions’) and the availability of CO2
concentrations
from ice cores. Indeed, the ability to understand the carbon cycle using radiocarbon
data, without reference to CO2
concentrations from ice-cores, seriously undermines the
significance of attacks on the ice-core data. As a measure of the accuracy, endnote 13
of reference 2123 estimates that human activity had increased CO2
by 35 ppm. Ice-core
data would indicate that the increase to that time was nearer to 45 ppm. This is about a
30% error, not the factor of 5 or more claimed by Plimer.
89. p. 425: The IPCC 2007 report stated that the CO2
radiative forcing had increased by 20%
in the last 10 years. Radiative forcing puts a number on increases in radiative energy
in the atmosphere and hence the temperature. In 1995, there was 360 ppmv of CO2
whereas in 2005 it was 378 ppmv, some 5% higher. However each additional molecule
of CO2
in the atmosphere causes smaller radiative forcing than its predecessor and the
real increase in radiative forcing was 1%. The IPCC have exaggerated the effect of CO2
20-fold. As Plimer notes, radiative forcing is about increases. The IPCC (see AR4
WG1 glossary) defines radiative forcing as the change relative to the year 1750. This is
also noted in footnote 2 of the SPM when the concept of radiative forcing is introduced.
Using the logarithmic formula to account for the diminishing effect of additional CO2,
18
=log(378/280)/log(360/280)
in a spreadsheet, gives a 1.194 multiplier from 1995 to
2005, i.e. a 19.4% increase. This does not depend on the value of the climate sensitivity.
The same result is obtained with any of Plimer’s 3 values (0.35C from figure 50, the
0.5C that he asserts without citation, or the 1.5C to 1.6C from the long-term historical
data that he cites, e.g. item 93). (A value of 20% is obtained if the 1750 concentration is
taken as 282 ppm.) — [also in TL list].
90. p. 425: IPCC does not acknowledge that CO2
derived from human activity produces 0.1%
of global warming.18 Using Plimer’s preferred (but unrealistically low) climate sensitivity
of 0.5C, typing =1.44*0.5*LN(385/280)*1000
into a spreadsheet gives a warming of
229C, implying that without human and natural greenhouse gases, the temperature of the
earth would be like that of the outer planets. Using the empirical (but still unrealistically
low) estimate of 1.5C quoted by Plimer on page 426 would imply that without human
and natural greenhouse gases, the temperature of the Earth would be below the physical
limit of absolute zero.
91. p. 425:
During times of ice ages such as 140,000 years ago, the CO2
content of the
atmosphere was higher than the pre-industrial revolution figure of 270 ppmv.2134
This is
‘cherry-picking’ from two different estimates of the Vostok dating. According to reference
2134 (published in 1990), 140,000 years ago, the CO2
concentration was around
270 ppm, but the world was no longer in an ice age. According to more recent dating19,
140,000 years ago CO2
was below 200 ppm and significant warming did not begin until
about 500 years later — [DK].
92. p. 425:
The current CO2
content of the atmosphere is the lowest it has been for thousands
of millions of years, .. which is clearly inconsistent with noting a current concentration
around 385 ppm and many occasions noted by Plimer (e.g. on p278) with CO2
around
180 ppm within the last millions years.
93. p. 426:
The variation in CO2
shows that a climate sensitivity of greater than 1.5C has
probably been a robust feature of the Earth’s climate system for over 420 million years.
This contradicts his frequent undocumented assertion [items 59, 63, 106] that the climate
sensitivity is 0.5C.
94. p. 432: When discussing ozone depletion and the Montreal Protocol, Plimer asserts: One
of the critical molecules, dicholorine peroxide, appears to break down far slower than was
though[sic].2158;2159;2060
Reference 2060 is the paper announcing the discovery of the ‘Ozone hole’ and so is not
directly relevant to the global-scale ozone depletion which the Montreal Protocol aims to
mitigate. In particular, reference 2060 makes no mention of dichlorine peroxide.20
95. p. 437: If governments had read the fine print of the crucial chapter 5 of the IPCC AR4
(Humans responsible for climate change) they would have realised that it was based on
18The summary in versions up to 1.5 incorrectly gave Plimer’s number as 1%.
19Using the dataset described on page 33.
20Cl2O2
or ClOOCl, also termed chlorine peroxide.
19
the opinions of just five independent scientists. This implies that the chapter is called
Humans responsible for climate change. This is untrue. In the AR4 WG1 report chapter
5 is called Observations: Oceanic Climate Change and Sea Level. The words Humans
responsible for climate change are not the title of any section or subsection of chapter 5
(nor the title of any other chapter in the AR4 WG1 report). The executive summary of
chapter 5 does not include any discussion of attribution of responsibility for the changes
that are described. The total number of authors is 13, coming from 9 different countries
with Corrinne Le Qu´er´e spending part of her time in a 10th country. Similarly, in the AR4
reports from working groups 2 and 3, neither chapter 5 nor any other chapter has the title
Humans responsible for climate change — [also in TL list].
96. p. 438: The IPCC has essentially ignored the role of natural climate variability. In reality
the various IPCC WG1 reports have chapters entitled: 7: Observed Climate Variations
and Change (1990); 3: Observed Climate Variability and Change (1996); 2: Observed
Climate Variability and Change (2001); 6: Paleoclimate (2007).
97. p. 439: referring to the 2001 report the report of the IPCC claimed that, based on computer
model simulations, climate has only limited variability and hence was not dynamic,
non-linear and chaotic. Actual words [page 95, WG1 report, TAR] are: Since the pioneering
work of Lorenz in the 1960s, it is well known that complex non-linear systems
have limited predictability, even though the mathematical equations defining the time evolution
of the system are perfectly deterministic. The climate system is, as we have seen
such a system ....
98. p. 439: In discussing the role of chaos: Five simulations were undertaken for the period
1860–2000 using the same general circulations models that are used by the IPCC. Each
simulation had slightly different initial conditions, but otherwise was the same. Very
small differences in the initial conditions of climate resulted in large differences in large
variations in later climate.2178
This has minor misrepresentations: there was only one
model, and the initial conditions were different weather ‘snapshots’ from a control run
with only internal climate variability21. The serious misrepresentation is that of large
differences in later climate. There were, as expected, large differences in subsequent
weather variations, but the later climates (i.e. multi-decadal averages and trends) were
quite similar.
99. p. 443 [footnote 2181]: repeats Monckton’s claims about An Inconvenient Truth without
mentioning that most were rejected by the court.22 More precisely, what the judgment23
says of the plaintiff’s counsel is that Mr. Downes produced a long schedule of such alleged
errors and waxed lyrical in that regard. and later: In the event I was persuaded that
only some of them were sufficiently persuasive to be relevant for the purposes of his
argument, and it was those matters — 9 in all — upon which I invented Mr Chamberlain24
21and as always, the false claim that the IPCC ‘uses’ the models
22The first sentence of this item was included as a contribution from Tim Lambert and temporarily dropped until
I had time to expand on the word ‘rejected’.
23Available from http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/admin/2007/2299.html
24For the defence.
20
to concentrate. There-after, the judgement uses quotation marks around the word “errors”.
100. p. 450: There was a statistical study to show that the 20th century was unusually warm2185
... and .. another paper showing that appropriate tests that link climate proxy records to
the observational data were not utilised and, as a result, the unusual warmth of the 20th
century disappeared2186
. What reference 2186 actually says is that the significance of
the 20th-century warming anomaly disappears. — the change is not in the 20th century
warming but rather in the level of statistical significance (95% rather than over 99% as
suggested in reference 2185).
101. p. 472:
Oceans, soils and plants already absorb at least half the human CO2
emissions
Uptake of just over half of human emissions by the oceans, soils and plants is the view of
mainstream science. The reason to note this statement by Plimer is that it is inconsistent
with Plimer’s claims about CO2
lifetimes and large emissions from volcanoes. In particular,
with the 4-year lifetime that Plimer claims, the only way half of human emissions
can be in the atmosphere is if most emissions have occurred within the last few years.
102. p. 477–478: The discussion of Stern’s work quotes a paper by Klyashtorin and Lubushin
(footnote 2221) when referring to data from many sources. The Klyashtorin and Lubushin
paper is often cited (and mis-quoted) by pseudo-sceptics/doubt-spreaders. It finds no
correlation between detrended series for temperature and fuel use. It is not comparing
temperature to fossil carbon emissions. It is comparing temperature to what the carbon
emissions would have been if all energy use (including nuclear) had come from oil. As
described in Twisted, a number of other aspects of the fit act to reduce the type of correlation
that would be obtained. However, in Heaven + Earth the citation is essentially
irrelevant.
103. p. 479: Footnote 2235 is a repeat citation of footnote 2221, the Klyashtorin and Lubushin
paper [see item 102]. Since its sole climate analysis is comparing temperature to energy
use (and finding no true linear correlation in the detrended series), this citation provides no
meaningful support for the statement that the next major climate change will be cooling.
104. p. 484: The 2007 IPCC SPM showed cooling for 100 of the last 160 years, during which
time greenhouse gases were increasing. Up to version 1.4, my response was: Possibly
true but irrelevant — what matters is if net year-to-year increase is significantly positive.
However, on the basis of random walk statistics, my vague scepticism in saying possibly,
should be changed to highly unlikely and irrelevant. A more complete comment is highly
unlikely, irrelevant and yet another fabrication. The SPM figure is repeated in chapter 3
(in the FAQ section) of WG1 AR4, where the source of the numbers is identified as the
HadCRU3 data set. Looking at the year-to-year changes25 reveals 80 increases and 78
decreases. (The ‘variance reduced’ HadCRU3 set has 78 decreases and 80 increases) —
[also in TL list].
105. p. 485: The Montreal Protocol used the precautionary principle to attempt to ban chlorofluorocarbons
because these gases destroy ozone. However we use chlorine every day to
25File hadcru3gl.txt, see description on page 30.
21
make water fit to drink and yet chlorine also destroys ozone. There is no such thing as the
precautionary principle in science. This misrepresentation of the precautionary principle
is discussed in item 55. The passage misrepresents the role of chlorine, in that reactive
chlorine compounds are removed in the lower atmosphere (mostly ending up as water
soluble compounds that dissolve in rainwater) while unreactive compounds such as CFCs
are only destroyed in the stratosphere (due to higher UV levels) and where rain-out does
not occur. It is the chlorine from CFC breakdown that destroys ozone — Plimer’s use of
the word ‘also’ suggests that he doesn’t understand this — [also in TL list].
106. p. 488: another undocumented assertion of the 0.5C climate sensitivity.
107. p. 488: the IPCC models just don’t do clouds — false — see item 58.
108. pp. 489–493: Choosing to end with a summary from someone (Viscount Monckton) who
is not a scientist is a strange choice. Some of the points [items 109, 111] are particularly
questionable.
109. p. 490: present temperature is ..
up to 3C below the Minoan, Roman and Medieval
warmings2282;2283. The cited references (2282 is for Vostok ice core data and 2283 is the
1990 IPCC report) do not support this claim of up to 3C. The Vostok paper does not refer
to the MWP and the IPCC report has only a schematic [figure 7.1] with no units on the
temperature scale.
110. p. 490: The January 2007–January 2008 fall was the steepest since 1880. 2298
where footnote
2298 reads GISS, Hadley, NCDC, RSS, UAH: all 2008. If the steepest is taken as
the largest drop over a 12-month period, then Plimer’s statement is false. In the Hadley
record, larger decreases over 12 months occur from Dec. 1891 to Dec. 1892 [0.647C],
Aug. 1945 to Aug. 1946 [0.639C] and Feb. 1973 to Feb. 1974 [0.681C] – [thanks to
AJG].
111. pp. 491–492: Sea level may rise by 1 foot to 2100, not 20ft as Gore claims. A variant on
the incorrect claim made on page 312, see item 50. Gore does not put a date on when a
20 foot rise would happen (nor specify what circumstances). My recollection is that this
omission was noted by the judge in the UK court case over Gore’s film and book, a case
in which Monckton was involved.
112. Plimer asserts that the world was only 7C warmer with 20 times the amount of atmospheric
CO2. This give impression that the effect of CO2
on climate is small, but ignores
the logarithmic dependence. This dependence has been known since Arrhenius, acknowledged
by Plimer on p. 338 (with the consequent incremental changes illustrated in figure
50) and often cited by greenhouse pseudo-sceptics such as Bob Carter as a reason for not
worrying. If taken at face value, this assertion would imply a climate sensitivity of 1.6
degrees — just over half Hansen’s estimate and below the lower end of the IPCC range,
but still not insignificant. This can be easily checked by typing =
7.0*log(2.0)/log(20.0)
into a spreadsheet.
22
Cherry picking
Cherry-picking is the common term of selective use of data to achieve a pre-intended result
(or for comparable selective citing of references). The distinction between when a reference
is being ‘cherry-picked’ and when it is being outright misrepresented is of course somewhat
arbitrary.
Various forms of cherry picking include:
•
selecting subseries from a data record when the full record fails to support the claim;
•
using old data, when newer data fail to confirm the claim;
•
selective quoting from references.
113. p. 26, footnote 25: The use of a newspaper as the source of the claim that 2008 was an
exceptionally cold year, rather than use any of the data records plotted in figure 4 on the
same page.26
114. Item 22 notes the selective quoting of reference 256, ignoring the words A warming
followed, yielding temperatures that averaged 0.1–0.5 K above present-day in the interval
500–1000 years ago.
115. An example of cherry-picking terminology is with respect to acidification.
Acidity is
measured on the pH scale with a pH of 1 meaning highly acidic, a pH of 14 meaning
highly alkaline and pure water having a pH of 7. The two possible meanings of ‘acidification’
are (a) a reduction in pH (the usual meaning in discussions of impacts of CO2),
and (b) reducing the pH to below 7 (apparently Plimer’s usual interpretation).
•
p. 338: reference 1786, gives change in pH (i.e. they are using meaning (a)) while
Plimer asserts that the studies claim that oceans will become acid (i.e. meaning (b))
— thus Plimer is ‘cherry-picking’ the alternative meanings in order to misrepresent
the study.
116. p. 402: New high resolution studies over the last 450,000 years of Vostok core show that
at all times of cold to warm transitions, temperature rise is followed by a rise in CO2
some 800 years later.2009
. Apart from the misrepresentation noted in item 71, reference
2009 is ’cherry picked’. The abstract states The sequence of events during Termination
III suggests that the CO2
increase lagged Antarctic deglacial warming by 800 ±
200
years and preceded the Northern Hemisphere deglaciation Plimer ignores and preceded
the Northern Hemisphere deglaciation. — [DW].
117. p. 425: Item 91 notes Plimer’s use of two different estimates of the dating the Vostok ice
core, to support the claim that CO2
was over 270 ppm in a glacial time.
26As an aside, the link given in footnote 25 was no longer accessible on 2009/9/1.
23
Contributed comments
This section contains contributions from Tim Lambert from the list on his Deltoid blog [TL],
Steven Sherwood [SS]. The source of each item is indicated by the author’s initials. This section
and the following section have comments in outline form. Where I have expanded this type of
contribution to a more complete version it is in the main list.
118. Figs. 1, 3 and 4 are all very inconsistent, esp. 1 and 4 which purport to use the same
dataset (HadCRU3). [SS]
119. p. 113: claim that research shows cosmic rays are important for cloud formation are
not supported by the cited studies; some of the studies (Udelhofen and Cess) claimed to
support relationship between cloud and cosmic rays actually refute it — [SS].
120. p. 286: claims IPCC has no evidence to support statement that glaciers are retreating –
see section 4.5 in TAR for evidence — [TL].
121. p. 316: claims that 1-m sea level rise would be consistent with post-glacial rise rate, but
a few sentences later says that has been dropping for the last 3000 years not rising at all.
In the next paragraph he claims that rates of change of several metres per century were
common during the holocene, but the references quoted actually show that 1-m changes
occurred in parts of Australia and that global sea level fell steadily over the last 6000
years by a total of 2m — [SS].
122. p. 367: confused about how the earth warms. How does he think a blanket works?
—
[TL].
123. p. 421: claims only 4% of CO2
in atmosphere is from humans — [TL].
Conduct of science
This section and the following section are split off in response to critics of early versions of this
document, who felt that this sort of thing dilutes the arguments about science. Misrepresentations
of the operation of the IPCC and the authorship of its reports are included here, while
misrepresentation of the content of IPCC reports is in the main section.
124. p. 14: Hypotheses are invalidated by just one item of contrary evidence ... yes but only
once it has been ascertained that the contrary evidence is being correctly interpreted.
125. p. 15: Studies of the Earth’s atmosphere tell us nothing about future climate — so much
for Plimer’s claim that an inclusive approach is needed.
126. p. 15:
Collection of new scientific data by observation, measurement and experiment
is now out of fashion — patently ridiculous, given NASA budget, NOAA, CMAR, EU
CarboEurope etc.
24
127. p. 15: Aristotle’s principle quoted as First we must seek the facts, then seek to explain is
one view — it contrasts to Charles Darwin’s view that a fact is of no value unless it is for
or against some theory [approximate wording].
128. p. 19: In the 2007 report, the health effects of global warming were expertly dealt with
by two lead authors, one of whom was a hygenist and another a specialist in coprolites
(fossil faeces).
The relevant chapter is Human Health, chapter 8 of the Working Group 2 contribution
to AR4. The eight lead authors are: Ulisses Confalonieri, Bettina Menne, Rais
Akhtar,Kristie L. Ebi, Maria Hauengue, R. Savi Kovats, Boris Revich and Alistair
Woodard.
129. p. 25, footnote 25: Given Plimer’s past interactions with religious groups, choosing the
Washington Times as a source of his climate data seems strange.
130. p. 112:
IPCC computers don’t do clouds — totally unsurprising — IPCC computers
don’t do climate modelling — presumably they do things like e-mail, desktop publishing,
accounting etc. The climate modelling used by the IPCC is done by major research groups
using models that do include clouds — see item 58.
131. p. 437: Item 95 notes misrepresentation of the authorship of WG1 chapter 5 in the IPCC
AR4 as well as misrepresentation of content.
132. p. 444: The IPCC claims that its reports are written by 2500 scientists. In fact they are
written by 35 who are controlled by an even smaller number. As described in page 34 the
IPCC gives specific directions as to who should be acknowledged as the authors. This is
far fewer than 2500 people — the IPCC reports make no such claim as 2500. However,
these acknowledged authors total far more than 35 people. The ‘control’ is unspecified.
The real control on IPCC authors is the knowledge that their work will be widely read by
scientific peers and that any errors will be widely publicised. — [also in TL list].
133. p. 445
the growth of the global warming industry has replaced the collection of primary
field data, measurement and experiment. — essentially a repeat of the risible claim noted
in item 126.
134. p. 454: On the subject of tide data: it is hard to market a publication to a journal editor
on the basis that nothing has happened. The one time that a ‘nothing happened’ result
is readily ‘marketable’ is when there is a wide-spread expectation that something would
happen. The Michelson-Morley experiment (failure to detect Earth’s motion through the
ether) is a famous example. If the tide-gauge data really cast significant doubt on the
mainstream view of human-induced climate change, then publication would be much
easier.
135. p. 454: No scientific journal today would have published a paper submitted by an unknown
patent clerk on a fundamental breathtaking new concept of physics. Einstein did have a
few things going for him, beyond being an unknown patent clerk when he submitted his
paper on relativity:
25
i: he had several papers previously published;
ii: much of the mathematics already existed — Einstein’s great insight was to understand
what it meant. Indeed so much of the mathematics already existed that (a) the equations
still carry the name ‘Lorentz transformations’; (b) one strand of ‘Aryan Science’ argued
that relativity was discovered by Lorentz rather than the Jewish Einstein (although the
more common ‘Aryan Science’ view was to dismiss relativity as ‘Jewish superstition’);
iii: Einstein had under simultaneous consideration a paper on the photo-electric effect
that appeared less confronting, but of a quality that gained Einstein the Nobel Prize in
physics.27
136. p. 454: Some 50 or 100 years ago, great science breakthroughs were common events. Not
so today. This seems to ignore the sequencing of the genome of homo sapiens (and other
species); discovery of a new state of matter (the Bose-Einstein condensate); discovery of
extra-solar planets; cloning mammals; new allotropes of carbon (buckey-balls etc.) and
the proof of Fermat’s last theorem.
Some silly stuff
137. p. 20: [on IPCC authors, apparently meaning the ‘contributing authors’] Some of them
used their given name in one part, used an initial in another part and an abbreviation in
another. Apart from the incorrect assertion that these people ‘used’ their names (it was
the lead authors — those who wrote the chapters — or the editors, who would ‘use’ the
names of contributors), this sort of ambiguity is extremely common. For example, the
book Heaven + Earth by Ian Plimer, cites as reference the books A Short History of
Planet Earth — [footnote 564] and Telling Lies for God — [footnote 2202] both by one
I.R. Plimer.
138. p. 83, footnote 345: Deducing climate trends from paintings of clouds is fraught with
problems (and essentially restricted to Europe). Previous studies of cloud paintings have
analysed fractal dimension to show bias in representation — painters choose ‘interesting’
clouds, reflecting what Plimer notes as the role of artistic license. Also fashions change.
Turner’s Val d’Aosta would probably not have been painted in an earlier time and prior
to Mark Rothko and like-minded artists, a painting of marine stratus would be unlikely to
have been regarded as art.
139. p. 362–363: The story of ‘Graham bank’, the volcanic island that rose and sank, adds
nothing to the argument. The claim The rock is worth nothing, is of no use as a territorial
possession. . . is questionable. Territorial possession of various small outcrops around
the world is asserted as the basis of exclusive economic zones, e.g. for fishing and oil
extraction — [PW].
140. p. 464:
Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for supporting the Copernican theory
of a Sun-centred universe. This one is trotted out from time to time by those who try to
27The ‘less confronting’ was only appearance — what followed from work such as Einstein’s analysis of the
photo-electric effect was so weird that Einstein never fully accepted it.
26
claim that rejection of their claims represents prejudice rather than reasoned arguments.
An article, The Copernican Myths, in the December 2007 of Physics Today notes that
Bruno was condemned mainly for theological heresies. The follow-up correspondence
in Physics Today captured more of the complexity of the myths of science vs. religion,
containing the hint that the myths were fostered by Catholics and Protestants each trying
to paint the other side as the ‘bad guys’.
141. p. 467:
The environmental religion has no music ... — how could anyone forget about
Peter Garrett??
142. p. 468:
Sustainability creates a miserable existence, poverty, disease, depopulation and
ignorance. Historical evidence would suggest that these are the consequences of unsustainabilty.
143. p. 468: Self-denial and a return to the past led to the 600-year Dark Ages. . . — a remarkable
assertion of human influence on climate?
Other critiques
•
The book review No Science in Plimer’s Primer by Michael Ashley picks up on issues
such as the temperature data, CO2
measurements and in particular some of Plimer’s
weirder claims about the composition of the Sun, (page 116). I have noted some such
issues on CO2
measurements as items 78, 79, 80 and 82 — see also index. The index also
indicates various issues regarding temperature data.
•
Robert Manne, writing in the Weekend Australian of 25–26/4/2009 as Zealotry not in
the public interest, presented the view of someone who, like most of the public and the
editors of the Australian, is not an expert on climate science. He suggested that the
public (and editors) cannot rationally choose to believe the views of a handful of pseudo-
sceptics rather than those of tens of thousands of scientists researching and publishing
in this field. Noting the role of industries that rely on fossil fuel emissions he asserted
that Pseudo-sceptical scientists such as Plimer, who falsely help convince citizens that the
scientific knowledge in this field is fiercely disputed and basically unsettled, are among
their most valuable assets.
•
Professor Kurt Lambeck, president of the Australian Academy of Science, was interviewed
on Ockham’s Razor on 7 June 2009. Transcript at:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor/stories/2009/2589206.htm
Going straight to the point, he noted Heaven + Earth is not a work of science. He identifies
a number of issues which, while in isolation could be seen as minor, collectively indicate
carelessness at best, and at worst an attempt to undermine the integrity of the science
case.
•
The transcript of a Lateline interview (where Ian Plimer tries to evade this issue of US vs.
global temperatures — see item 29) can be found on:
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2008/s2554129.htm
27
•
From Tim Lambert’s blog:28 I cross referenced Ian’s list of 33 problems [i.e. version 1 of
the present document] with my own list of 59 and there were only 5 things in common. So
I can estimate the total number of errors if I assume that we have produced independent
samples from the population of Plimer errors: (33x59)/5 = 390 problems. Almost one for
every page! Blogged at:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/ian enting is checking plimers.php
As well as 5 being a small sample, there are a lot of reasons why the samples are not
independent — some would lead to lower estimates, some to higher estimates. There are
additional comments by Tim and myself on Tim’s blog, but the bottom line is not to take
the number seriously. (Of course after version 1.2, the lists stop being independent.)
Defences of Plimer
In Australia, much of the media support for Heaven + Earth came from The Australian.
•
A extensive supporting statement on the back cover by V´aclav Klaus (at the time President
of the European Union) praises the book as powerful clear understandable and extremely
useful.
•
Similarly, on the back cover Nigel Lawson (Lord Lawson of Blaby) describes the book as
a scrupulous and scholarly analysis of both the climate science and what is truly known
of climatic history. . .
•
In the Brisbane launch (19/5/2009), Senator Ron Boswell observed29 Regardless of Copenhagen
our ETS will impose a carbon cost on our business which our trading competitors
will not have to pay. We have to move heaven and earth to stop this happening. Reading
‘Heaven and Earth’ is one way to begin.30
•
Writing in The Australian on 18/5/2009, Janet Albrechtsen attacked criticisms of Plimer,
saying to cast his book aside as an unworthy contribution to this debate tells you something
about the stifling consensus and what Plimer rightly calls the ‘demonisation of dissent’
on this critical issue.
•
In a press release on 21 April 2009, the National Farmers’ Federation welcomed Prof
Ian Plimer’s contribution to the climate change discussion and debate concluding Rigour
underpins getting the science right ... Prof Plimer is part of the mix.
Plimer’s responses
•
Plimer’s op-ed Hot-air doomsayers in (The Australian) 5/5/2009) has the subheading Geologist
Ian Plimer argues that critics of his climate change book should respond with
28In his series on The Australian’s War on Science.
29Downloaded from ronboswell.com, 26/06/2009.
30Far from promoting open discussion of the claims, launching Heaven + Earth in the context of a current party
political debate had the effect of precluding some of the largest groups of climate scientists in Australia, those in
CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, from commenting, except as individuals in their private capacity.
28
science. He asserts that No critic has argued science with me. He rejects David Karoly’s
claim that the book is not supported by sources.31
•
In Vitrolic climate in academic hothouse (May 29, 2009 in The Australian) Plimer attacks
his critics. Using almost exactly the same words as in the Kininmonth and Aitken letters
to Lambeck he asserts There has never been a climate debate in Australia. Only dogma.
His response to criticisms32 is In my book I correctly predicted the response. The science
would not be discussed, there would be academic nit-picking and there would be vitriolic
ad hominem attacks by pompous academics out of contact with the community.
Additional information
The RealClimate website provides links to various critiques of Heaven + Earth.
http://www.realclimate.org/wiki/index.php?title=Ian_Plimer
The Wikipedia article on Heaven + Earth has links to many comments on the book.
31Karoly has particularly noted the lack of attribution of sources in most of the graphics.
32Like many of the footnotes of Heaven + Earth this ‘quote’ is quite non-specific and I have been unable (as at
September 3, 2009) to find such a prediction.
29
Temperature data
Normal practice, appropriate for a scrupulous and scholarly analysis, is to reference the original
sources of data that are used. One reason for this is to simplify the process of checking —
facilitating the usual and genuine scepticism in science. The other reason is to ensure that those
who did the real work get the credit. This is becoming increasingly important as computer-
generated metrics are increasingly applied to decisions on funding and career advancement.
Several of the analyses in this document use data downloaded from:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/
•
file hadcru3gl.txt, downloaded 1/6/2009, is monthly global mean temperature anomalies.
The website from which the data were downloaded indicates that the appropriate scientific
citations for these data are:
•
Brohan, P., J.J. Kennedy, I. Harris, S.F.B. Tett and P.D. Jones, 2006: Uncertainty estimates
in regional and global observed temperature changes: a new dataset from 1850. J.
Geophysical Research 111, D12106, doi:10.1029/2005JD006548 — Available as PDF.
•
Jones, P.D., New, M., Parker, D.E., Martin, S. and Rigor, I.G., 1999: Surface air temperature
and its variations over the last 150 years. Reviews of Geophysics 37, 173-199.
•
Rayner, N.A., P. Brohan, D.E. Parker, C.K. Folland, J.J. Kennedy, M. Vanicek, T. Ansell
and S.F.B. Tett, 2006: Improved analyses of changes and uncertainties in marine temperature
measured in situ since the mid-nineteenth century: the HadSST2 dataset. J. Climate,
19, 446-469.
•
Rayner, N.A., Parker, D.E., Horton, E.B., Folland, C.K., Alexander, L.V, Rowell, D.P.,
Kent, E.C. and Kaplan, A., 2003: Globally complete analyses of sea surface temperature,
sea ice and night marine air temperature, 1871-2000. J. Geophysical Research 108, 4407,
doi:10.1029/2002JD002670.
Climate sensitivity
The climate sensitivity is defined as the amount of equilibrium warming caused by a doubling of
CO2
(or equivalent change in radiative forcing). Over the concentration range of most interest,
this relation can be approximated as a logarithmic function (as Plimer acknowledges on page
338). Thus about the same warming is expected for doubling from 200 ppm to 400 ppm as from
300 ppm to 600 ppm. Denoting the climate sensitivity as X, means that the temperature change
as a function of concentration change from C1
to C2
can be written as:
T1;2
=
T
(C2)
-
T
(C1)=
X[log2(C2)
-
log2(C1)]
=
X
×
log2(C2=C1)
This logarithmic relation has been known since the time of Arrhenius (1896) (who estimated
X= 5C). It can be written in terms of natural logarithms (logarithms to base e) as
T1;2
=
X[loge(C2)
-
loge(C1)]
×
log2
e
˜
1:44X
×
loge(C2=C1)=1:44X
×
ln(C2=C1)
30
The IPCC has given a range of 1.5C to 4.5C. James Hansen (e.g. Bjerknes lecture at 2008
AGU Fall Meeting) estimates X
=3:0
±
0:5C. The logarithmic relation won’t apply at low
concentrations — a linear dependence is expected. The logarithmic dependence will also break
down at sufficiently high concentrations.
Plimer’s treatment of this lacks consistency. On a number of occasions he claims X
=
0.5C
(e.g. page 488), while on page 426 (see item 93) he claims 1.5C, and his example above (see
item 112) of 7C for 20 times CO2
implies 1.61C. (Note that since a division of logarithms is
involved, the result of the calculation 7
×
log(2:0)/
log(20:0)
does not depend on what base is
used for the logarithms, as long as the same base is used in both cases).
For a fixed initial concentration C1, one can look at how much the temperature increases for
each unit increase in the concentration, C2:
.
1:44X
T2
=
@C2
C2
This will have units of degrees C per unit of CO2. Plimer’s plot in figure 50 (page 375) which
lacks any supporting citation, seems to reflect this (remembering that the @T
.
1=C
relation
@C
won’t apply at low concentrations) with:
•
taking the CO2
unit as 20 ppm jumps as implied by the bars (i.e. the plot is of temperature
increase for each extra 20 ppm CO2);
•
assuming that X
=0:5C;
•
incorrectly omitting the factor of 1.44 (i.e. log2
e) that comes from going from base-2 to
base-e
logarithms.
Accuracy Precision and Standards
All scientific measurements are subject to error. Even when an instrument repeatedly measures
the same object or sample, the results will not all be the same. For example Bischof [reference
2094] reported a precision of 3
ppm for measurements of CO2
made by the chemical method.
In contrast using the Infra-Red Gas Analyser (IRGA), they found a precision of 1
ppm for
measurements of CO2.
While precision quantifies the measurement-to-measurement repeatability, a serious concern
for any measurement is the question of ‘accuracy’. Do all the measurements exhibit a
systematic bias, such that the (average) measured value differs from the true value of what is
meant to be measured?
Many measurements actually involve comparison of a sample to a standard. Consequently
the accuracy of such a measurement is tied to the accuracy of the standard. Thus when Bischof
switched to using the more precise IRGA method, he could cross-calibrate with the chemical
method. (Averaging multiple chemical measurements of the standard will overcome the inherently
lower precision of the chemical method). Thus Bischof’s agreement between chemical
and IRGA measurements could be essentially guaranteed. However in producing standards for
their IRGA program, Bischof’s group used an independent approach bases manometric techniques
— mixing gases from precisely calibrated volumes (described in the same issue of Tellus
31
as Bischof’s paper). Bischof’s ability to merge results from the two techniques represents a validation
of the type that Plimer claims did not exist. The independent check on the accuracy
is provided by the agreement of the Bischof’s higher altitude results [see reference 2095] and
Keeling’s results from Mauna Loa — both indicating about 315 ppm. Keeling also prepared his
standards using manometric techniques.
The ‘Hockey Stick’
The term ‘hockey stick’ refers to the climate reconstruction, produced by Michael Mann and
colleagues and featured in the 2001 IPCC report. This was criticised by McIntyre and McKitrick
on methodological grounds. In response to requests from US legislators the ‘hockey stick’
analysis was reviewed by two expert panels. Although considerable partisanship was involved
in establishing the panels, the core mathematical conclusions of the panels are essentially the
same.
For the most part, my criticisms of Heaven + Earth will address the issue of whether Plimer
has exaggerated the conclusions of the more critical of the reports, i.e. the Wegman report.
Plimer usually settles for describing the ‘hockey stick’ as infamous. However, on a number
of occasions he explicitly describes it as fraud, a charge not sustained by either of the expert
reviews. Plimer’s claim that the IPCC knowingly included results that were known to be wrong,
is disproved by comparing his account on page 91 with what is actually in the IPPC reports [see
item 27].
32
Temperatures, CO2
concentrations and methane concentrations from
the Vostok ice core. The horizontal axes are in years before present.
Graphic from Twisted: The Distorted Mathematics of Greenhouse Denial
(figure 27). The vertical scales of the concentration curves are in
approximate proportion to the amount of warming expected from each
gas in the absence of feedbacks between climate and gas concentrations.
These should be taken as indicative — the main uncertainties are in the
value of the climate sensitivity used to scale the curves and the global
representativeness of the estimated temperatures.
The abstract of 1987 paper on this data (back when the analysis only reached back to the
previous interglacial) said Vostok climate and CO2
records suggest that CO2
changes have had
an important climatic role during the late Pleistocene in amplifying the relatively weak orbital
33Petit, J.R., et al., 2001, Vostok Ice Core Data for 420,000 Years, IGBP PAGES/World Data Center for Paleoclimatology
(NOAA/NGDC Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder CO, USA). Data Contribution Series #2001-076.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/vostok/vostok.html
33
forcing. The existence of the 100-kyr cycle and the synchronism between Northern and Southern
Hemisphere climates may have their origin in the large glacial-interglacial CO2
changes.
[Genthon et al., Nature, 329, 414–418 (1987)].
This interpretation essentially reflects the mainstream climate science interpretation over the
ensuing decades: the climate CO2
connection is that of a feedback loop with CO2
changes amplifying
the effects of changes in insolation due to orbital changes. The reasons for regarding
this as a two-way interaction rather than direct causality in either direction are:
Why CO2
changes are not the sole cause of ice ages:
i: The gas changes are too small. In preparing the diagram for Twisted... I followed a suggestion
from the RealClimate website and plotted the concentration curves in proportion to the expected
temperature changes.
ii: There are no plausible mechanisms for linking concentrations to orbital changes, except via
climate changes over large regions.
Why orbital changes are not the sole cause of ice ages::
iii: The changes in insolation are too small:
iv: Many of the insolation changes act with opposite signs in the two hemispheres and so the
approximate hemispheric synchronisation is hard to account for except through an amplifying
factor (such as greenhouse gas concentrations) that is common to both hemispheres.
Thus having concentration changes lag behind temperature is entirely to be expected under
this mainstream view, while the opposite result would have been extremely difficult to account
for.
In addition to the reasons noted above:
v: the abrupt nature of the deglaciation, unlike the smooth variations in orbital forcing, points
to ‘tipping point’ behaviour characteristic of a non-linear coupled system.
Al Gore’s book largely ducks the issue and calls the relation complicated.34
The IPCC
Plimer’s overall approach to the IPCC reports is one of “shoot the messenger”. This attack
involves extensive misrepresentation of the content of the IPCC reports [items 10, 11, 24, 27,
82, 86, 89, 95, 96, 97, 104].
One aspect of the IPCC reports that Plimer repeatedly misrepresents is the authorship of the
chapters. The IPCC’s instructions on how chapters should be cited give a specific definition of
authorship, i.e. those who should get the credit (or take the blame) for what is in the chapter
and who are responsible for addressing review comments. These are those people listed as ‘lead
authors’ and ‘convening lead authors’. These people a characterised by Plimer as scientists and
environmental extremists [page 98] without actually naming any people in the latter category.
34In the interests of precision and ability to check issues, I mainly work with the book version of An Inconvenient
Truth. My recollection is that the content of the book (i.e excluding the preface) and film are very similar apart
from the film’s early line I used to be “The next president of the United States”, and, of course, the stunt with the
hoist.
34
Summing up
Ian Plimer’s claim that the human influence on climate can be ignored, relative to natural variations
seems to rest on three main strands of argument:
a: the extent of natural variability is larger than considered in ‘mainstream’ analyses;
b:
the effects of changes in radiative forcing are smaller than values used in ‘mainstream’
analyses;
c: the IPCC uses a range of misrepresentations to conceal points a and b.
The most obvious point to note is that if there was a valid case to be made for any of these
claims, then there would have been no need for Plimer to resort to systematic misrepresentation.
a:
The extent of natural variability is being misrepresented, particularly through an exaggerated
emphasis on the Medieval Warm Period (MWP). The cited references for large-scale
Medieval warming fail to support the claim and in several of these cases seem not to
mention Medieval warming at all — [items 20, 21, 109]. The one reference that seems
most relevant to global-scale changes (at least over land) is the paper on the borehole data
[footnote 256]. The quote from this paper is selective and inaccurate [see item 22]. The
main results of the paper indicate MWP temperatures higher by 0.1 to 0.5C, rather than
the 2 to 3C claimed by Plimer [item 22].
b:
The effect of radiative forcing is being misrepresented by repeated claims of a climate sensitivity
of 0.5C [items 59, 63, 106] even when Plimer’s own examples show climate
sensitivities of 1.5C to 1.6C [item 93], his denial of an effect beyond 400 ppm [items
64, 65] even when he acknowledges the logarithmic relation [page 338] and presents a
graph [figure 50] consistent with that relation [item 65].
The human contribution to changes in the Earth’s radiation balance are extensively misrepresented
through misrepresentation of CO2
measurements and misrepresentation of
carbon exchanges.
c: For the IPCC there is extensive misrepresentation of:
— the content of the IPCC reports [items 10, 11, 24, 27, 82, 86, 89, 95, 96, 97, 104];
— the operation of the IPCC assessment process and the authorship of reports [items 130,
95]; and
— the characteristics of climate models that form the basis of some of the science presented
in the IPCC reports [items 43, 58, 107].
In support of these three main strands of argument are presented extensive references, many
of which either fail to support the claims [items 20, 21, 22, 38, 40, 79, 109]; explicitly contradict
the claims [items 66, 67, 73, 89]; are irrelevant to the claims [items 70, 102]; or otherwise
misrepresent the cited reference.
In addition the various misrepresentations of the IPCC and the content of IPCC reports in
Heaven + Earth, the introduction above noted:
35
•
it has numerous internal inconsistencies [items 57, 87] as well as the inconsistencies noted
above regarding climate sensitivity;
•
in spite of the extensive referencing, key data are unattributed, particularly for the graphics,
and the content of references is often mis-quoted [items 40, 73]. Simply citing entire
books (or entire IPCC reports) for a specific point, without giving section or page numbers
does not reflect a well-referenced book.
Finally, as well as the inconsistencies and misrepresentations there are also a modest number
of minor errors that should ideally have been picked up by adequate editing. Author’s names are
given incorrectly: should be G. S. Callender on p 17, Bacastow, Keeling and Whorf, in footnote
2093. Footnote 1253 (page 251) gives title only, with no bibliographic details. The confusing
of ‘absorbs’ and ‘adsorbs’ is noted in items 63 and 83. Footnote 2237 gives the wrong page
number. On page 299, ‘interannular’ should be ‘interannual’. Furthermore, the editing process
should have detected the various problems identified in item 3 to do with labelling of axes.
Probably a careful editor would have removed most of the things identified in the section on
‘Silly Stuff’ [items 137 to 143].
Acronyms and abbreviations
AR4 Fourth Assessment Report (of the IPCC).
BP Before present.
CDIAC Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Center. (Oak Ridge, USA).
GISS Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
GC Gas chromatograph(y). An instrument/technique used to measure greenhouse gases (and
many other things).
GGWS The Great Global Warming Swindle.
GtC Gigatonnes of carbon. One gigatonne is one billion (109) tonnes.
IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
IRGA Infra-red gas analyser.
LIA Little Ice Age.
MSU Microwave Sounding Unit. Instrument for measuring atmospheric temperature from
satellites.
MWP Medieval Warm Period.
NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (USA).
NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (USA).
36
SAR Second Assessment Report (of the IPCC).
SPM Summary of Policy Makers, i.e. summary of an IPCC report.
TAR Third Assessment Report (of the IPCC).
TS Technical Summary, i.e. summary of an IPCC report.
UAH University of Alabama, Huntsville.
WDCGG World Data Centre for Greenhouse Gases. (JMA, Japan).
WG1 Working Group 1 (of the IPCC).
Acknowledgements
This analysis draws on the work of various colleagues. Many errors in Heaven + Earth were
brought to my attention by Barry Brook, A.B. Pittock, A.J. Guttmann, Michael Ashley, Tim
Lambert, Steven Sherwood, David Karoly and Penny Whetton. This input is acknowledged
by initials after various items. Generally this does not cover cases where several of us have
independently noted the same flaw. My grateful thanks for this input should not be taken as
implying that they agree with every detail of how I have discussed the concerns that they identified.
Item 13 includes a comment from the Brave New Climate website. Particular thanks are
due to Richard Brak who organised a ‘re-direct’ when The Australian inserted an extra dash in
the URL that I sent them.
Version history
Typeset September 3, 2009
The intention is that the published URL shall always refer to the most recent version of this
document.
The current version is:
Version 2.0, with my itemised and indexed discussion of 112 items and a number of other
contributed items giving a total of 123, still with ‘conduct of science’ and ‘silly stuff’ split off.
The various versions (with approximate times of availability) have been:
•
Version 1.9 with a total of 106 ‘science’ items, with ‘conduct of science’ and ‘silly stuff’
split off: MASCOS 12:00, 29/6/2009.
•
Version 1.8 with a total of 96 ‘science’ items, with ‘conduct of science’ and ‘silly stuff’
split off: MASCOS 15:10, 9/6/2009.
•
Version 1.7 with a total of 92 ‘science’ items, with ‘conduct of science’ and ‘silly stuff’
split off: MASCOS 09:00, 2/6/2009.
37
•
Version 1.6 with a total of 77 ‘science’ items, with ‘conduct of science’ and ‘silly stuff’
split off: MASCOS 16:00, 25/5/2009.
•
Version 1.5 with a total of 61 items concerning the science with additional discussions
relating to conduct of science (and some silly stuff) split off from the main discussion.
MASCOS 08:17, 22/5/2009.
•
Version 1.4, with my itemised and indexed discussion of 46 items and other contributions
bringing the total to 58 (plus comments on some silly stuff): about 18:00 on 16/5/2009
(BNC site) and about 10:40, 18/5/2009 (MASCOS).
•
Version 1.3, with itemised and indexed discussion of 40 of my items and 3 other contributions:
15/5/2009 (BNC site only).
•
Version 1.2, with itemised and indexed discussion of 39 items: 14/5/2009.
My letter about this document was published in The Australian on 15/5/2009 with the
underscore character in the the URL that I sent in my letter replaced by a ‘dash’ in the
printed version and a double hyphen in the electronic version. A ‘re-direct’ was established
at the University of Melbourne so that the document could be accessed from the
published address, but did not deal with the fact that the two forms of publication involved
two different incorrect URLs. My posts to the Australian’s letters blog were not accepted.
•
Version 1.1, with itemised and indexed discussion of 34 items was uploaded for test purposes
about 16:30 13/5/2009, unfortunately resulting in a failed test, with the URL not
being preserved (but removing version 1).
•
Version 1, with itemised and indexed discussion of 33 items, was submitted to the MASCOS
website on 12/5/2009 and available from mid-morning 13/5/2009.
Due to problems on the MASCOS site and the incorrectly published links in The Australian,
various versions were mirrored on the Brave New Climate website.
•
version 1.9: 13:00, 29/6/2009;
•
version 1.8: 01:10, 10/6/2009;
•
version 1.7: 17:50, 1/6/2009;
•
version 1.6: 21:30, 25/5/2009;
•
version 1.5: 01:45, 22/5/2009;
•
version 1.4: at about 18:10, 16/5/2009;
•
version 1.3: late on evening of 15/5/2009;
•
version 1.2: on 14/5/2009;
•
version 1.1: from about 21:00, 13/5/2009.
38
Response to criticism of my analysis
A number of these criticisms come from the letters blog of The Australian. Since The Australian
did not accept my posts of replies, even when I kept my comments separate from the URL issue,
a few short comments are given here:
Why didn’t I attack Al Gore in the same way?
i: I wasn’t engaged in public debate until early 2007 when I started writing Twisted: The
Distorted Mathematics of Greenhouse Denial.
ii: Plimer claims to be writing as a scientist and his op-ed Hot-air doomsayers (5/5/2009 in The
Australian) challenges scientists to address the science. I am taking him at his word. As noted
above, Heaven + Earth is being promoted as a scrupulous and scholarly analysis.35 Gore is a
politician and An Inconvenient Truth is largely a political book, arising from the difficulties of
responding to ‘politically-inconvenient’ science.
iii: Even if one thinks that Justice Burton was wrong and one accepts all the errors claimed in
the UK court case, Gore’s book has many fewer scientific errors than Heaven + Earth. (This
assessment was based on my own notes. Earlier versions, 1 to 1.3, did not document enough of
the errors in Heaven + Earth to demonstrate that claim.)
Concentrating on Plimer’s inconsistencies is nit-picking that doesn’t address scientific
issues
A theme that I tried to get across is Twisted is that for a scientific theory, a lack of internal
consistency is even more fatal than discordant observations. Thus, to the extent that Plimer
claims to be proposing an alternative theory36, his own lack of consistency becomes an issue of
science and not just an issue of editorial quality.
My literal interpretation of ‘IPCC computers’ (in item 130) is disingenuous (or silly)
Part of Plimer’s ‘shoot the messenger’ attack on the IPCC is to portray is as a corrupt ‘bogeyman’.
Creating a bad impression about something that exists only in Plimer’s (and others’)
imagination frees him for nasty constraints like facts. In talking about ‘IPCC models’, ‘IPCC
climate models’ or ‘IPCC climate modellers’ he is talking about something that doesn’t actually
exist. The IPCC doesn’t:
•
run climate models,
•
develop climate models, or
•
fund climate models.
When Plimer adopts this approach of criticising something that doesn’t really exist, I go for
closest meaning — presumably the one he is hinting at. Mislabelling the models as ‘IPCC
models’ gives him a two-fold attack — he not only misrepresents the content of the models,
but by mis-attributing them he also links them to his various misrepresentations of the IPCC
(see page 34). However, unlike ‘IPCC climate models’, ‘IPCC computers’ really do exist and
so rather than interpret an indirect implication (which is done elsewhere), I interpret his actual
words. The real issue is Plimer’s bogey-man approach — it is of course nice and safe — you
can say all sorts of nasty stuff about a group that doesn’t exist — since the group doesn’t exist,
they won’t sue you.
35From cover blurb on paperback edition, by Lord Lawson of Blaby.
36as opposed to spreading doubt and confusion for political purposes
39
Checking my claims
If you can’t accept the assessments of the IPCC after all the care and detailed review, then there
it would seem unlikely that you would take my word for the claims above without checking.37
The selection of flaws described in this document is intended to maximise the extent to which
individuals can check my claims for themselves.
Plimer’s inconsistencies: Here the only resource that you need is a copy of Heaven + Earth,
and maybe a calculator (or a spreadsheet). This will allow you to check the claims that
I make in items 26, 35, 41, 48, 57, 60, 77, 87, 90 and the various inconsistent values for
climate sensitivity discussed in items 59, 63, 65, 93, 106, 112.
Other flaws: Similarly, a copy of the book is all that is need to check various graphics flaws
such as axis labelling, [see item 3 for summary] and things such as items 8, 23, 28, 32, 35,
37, 42, 64 (with the aid of a good dictionary) as well as most of the things in the section
on ‘Silly Stuff’ (page 26).
Plimers misrepresentation of the IPCC: Many of these are easily checked, since the full Third
and Fourth Assessment Reports are available as downloads from the IPCC website. A
figure such as 8.20 indicates a figure in chapter 8 (with TS indicating the Technical Summary).
This will enable you to check (at least in part) items 10, 11, 12, 27, 82, 25, 89,
95, 96, 97. Checking items 24, 86 requires obtaining access to one or both of the first two
assessments as do some aspects of items 27, 82, 96, 109.
Using other internet resources: Most of the data sets discussed in this document can be freely
accessed.
•
The various HadCRU temperature data sets are available from:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/
This will enable you to check items 6, 14, 72, and (with reference to IPCC report to
verify my identification of the data set) 104.
•
The plot, http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/graphics/Mauna Loa CO2.jpg, from the
Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Center (CDIAC) shows that at the primary
repository for these data, the gaps in the Mauna Loa data set have not somehow
mysteriously disappeared — item 78.
•
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
will show that the lower plot in figure 29 is not what Plimer claims [item 47].
In addition:
•
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/admin/2007/2299.html is the judgment in the
UK court case on An Inconvenient Truth, enabling you to check item 99.
Libary references: A number of Plimer’s references are to books and journals that are only
found in specialist libraries. However the journals Science and Nature are quite widely
37After all, I have been a lead author of an IPCC chapter.
40
available and so much of my checking of references inHeaven + Earth has concentrated
on these journals.38
Access to Nature will enable you to check 39 references 17, 18 [item 7], 2056 [item 73],
2134 [item 91].
Access to Science will enable you to check references 255 [item 21], 595 [item 36], 1075
[item 40], 1682 [item 53], 1738 [item 54], 1990 [item 68], 2009 [item 71], 2123* [item
88], 2178 [item 98].
Other journal access Some scientific journals make older material freely available on-line.
In addition, a number of journals allow authors to post copies of their articles on their
personal web-sites.
Disclaimer
This discussion, its contents and style, are the responsibility of the author and do not represent
the views, policies or opinions of The University of Melbourne.
38A * after the reference number indicates that this reference is the same paper as one earlier in the list.
39In version 1.9, several citations of papers in Science were incorrectly listed in this section as being in Nature.
41
Index
-In this document
Accuracy, precision and standards, 31
Acknowledgements, 37
Acronyms and abbreviations, 36
Additional information, 29
Breadth of Science, 2
Checking my claims, 40
Cherry picking, 23
Climate sensitivity, 30
Conduct of Science, 24
Contributed comments, 24
Defences of Plimer, 28
Disclaimer, 41
Other critiques, 27
Overview, 1
Point by Point, 2
Response to criticism, 39
Some silly stuff, 26
Summing up, 35
Temperature data, 30
The hockey stick, 32
The IPCC, 34
The Vostok ice core, 33
Version history, 37
An Inconvenient Truth
far fewer errors than Heaven + Earth, 39
flawed graphics
item 3, 3
future sea level
item 50, 11
item 111, 22
UK court case
item 99, 21
item 111, 22
Vostok data ‘complicated’, 34
acknowledgements, 37
acronyms and abbreviations, 36
adsorb vs absorb
item 64, 13
item 83, 17
Arrhenius, Svante
item 61, 13
cherry-picking, 23
data source
item 113, 23
deglaciation
item 116, 23
selective quote on MWP
item 114, 23
terminology
item 115, 23
Vostok ice core dating
item 117, 23
chlorine
item 105, 22
chlorofluorocarbons (CFC)
item 40, 10
item 105, 22
citation doesn’t support claim
item 88, 18
item 94, 19
item 102, 21
item 103, 21
climate data from art
item 138, 26
climate sensitivity, 30
incremental plot
item 65, 14
Plimer’s inconsistency
claims 0.5C: item 59, 13
claims 0.5C: item 63, 13
claims 0.5C: item 106, 22
claims above 1.5C: item 93, 19
implies 1.6 C: item 112, 22
plot implies 0.35C: item 65, 14
CO2
measurement, 31
validation: IRGA vs chemical, 32
CO2, pre-industrial
item 82, 17
conduct of science, 24
contradicts own case
CO2
measurement
42
item 80, 17
early 20th century warming
item 41, 10
Younger Dryas missing/moved
Fig. 5, item 16, 6
cooling
item 104, 21
cosmic rays
item 119, 24
Dark Ages
caused by self-denial
item 143, 27
distortion of data plots
item 13, 5
El Ni˜
no
inconsistent about duration
item 57, 13
misrepresents models
item 48, 11
geology
input to climate science, 2
item 52, 12
item 61, 13
item 85, 18
graphics, falsified axes
fig 5: item 16, 6
graphics, falsified content
fig 1: item 6, 4
fig 14: item 32, 9
fig 29: item 47, 11
graphics, falsified data
fig 1: item 6, 4
fig 3: item 13, 5
fig 11: item 26, 7
graphics, inconsistent with description
fig 5: item 16, 6
graphics, inconsistent with text
fig 5: item 16, 6
fig 11: item 26, 7
fig 44: item 62, 13
graphics, meaningless
fig 10: item 18, 6
fig 14: item 32, 9
graphics, mislabelled axes
fig 8: item 17, 6
fig 12: item 30, 8
fig 14: item 32, 9
graphics, misleading comparison
figs 38, 39, 40: item 56, 13
graphics, misrepresents content
fig 15: item 34, 9
graphics, no citation
listed in item 3, 3
HADCRU temperature data, 30
hockey stick, 32
item 11, 5
item 27, 8
howlers
40 degree warming
fig 12: item 30, 8
grain prices in W/m2
fig 14: item 32, 9
less water than asteroids
item 37, 9
perihelion in Northern Hemisphere
item 42, 10
self-denial led to Dark Ages
item 143, 27
hypothesis testing
item 124, 24
inconsistency
Aryan science
item 135, 26
importance of consistency, 39
inconsistency by Plimer
abrupt end of MWP
item 26, 7
absolute vs. relative warming
item 60, 13
item 90, 19
summary: item 2, 3
climate sensitivity
claims 0.5C: item 59, 13
claims 0.5C: item 63, 13
claims 0.5C: item 106, 22
claims above 1.5C: item 93, 19
implies 1.6 C: item 112, 22
43
plot implies 0.35C: item 65, 14
CO2
lifetime
item 87, 18
early 20th century warming
item 41, 10
El Ni˜no duration
item 57, 13
greenhouse gas warming
item 35, 9
interpretation of 14C decrease
item 77, 16
past CO2
item 92, 19
IPCC, 34
hockey stick
item 27, 8
key claims undocumented
listed in item 1, 2
lifetime vs turnover time
item 84, 17
Little Ice Age
IPCC is misrepresented
item 10, 5
Mauna Loa
item 78, 16
Medieval Warm Period
item 9, 5
item 20, 6
misrepresents boreholes
item 22, 7
misrepresents IPCC
fig 11: item 24, 7
item 27, 8
misrepresents Taylor Dome
item 21, 6
mis-applied logic
assumes single cause
item 23, 7
misleading comparisons
item 8, 5
item 52, 12
item 56, 13
item 79, 16
misrepresents astronomy
item 37, 9
item 42, 10
misrepresents carbon exchanges
item 76, 16
item 77, 16
item 81, 17
misrepresents cited sources
analysis of proxy data
item 100, 21
borehole data
item 22, 7
carbon sediments
item 53, 12
item 54, 12
CFCs from Pinatubo
item 40, 10
chaotic variability
item 98, 20
CO2
measurements
Europe: item 79, 16
South Pole: item 69, 14
CO2
turnover time
item 85, 18
cosmic rays
item 119, 24
deglaciation
item 71, 15
ice-core comparison
item 70, 14
Medieval Warm Period
item 9, 5
item 20, 6
item 109, 22
New Orleans subsidence
item 73, 15
ocean pH changes
item 115, 23
paleo-data
item 21, 6
item 36, 9
item 68, 14
pattern analysis
item 7, 4
Roman warming
44
item 19, 6
satellite vegetation data
item 38, 10
temperature changes
item 104, 21
temperature data
item 66, 14
item 67, 14
temperature extremes
item 28, 8
Vostok data
item 91, 19
misrepresents CO2
toxicity
item 74, 15
misrepresents data records
20th century temperatures
item 26, 7
item 110, 22
1934
item 29, 8
European CO2
item 79, 16
glacial retreat
item 46, 11
Mauna Loa CO2
item 78, 16
sea ice
item 47, 11
temperature changes
item 6, 4
item 14, 5
item 104, 21
misrepresents IPCC
authorship of reports
item 95, 20
item 132, 25
content of reports
item 11, 5
item 9, 5
item 12, 5
item 10, 5
item 24, 7
item 25, 7
item 27, 8
item 82, 17
item 86, 18
item 89, 19
item 95, 20
item 96, 20
item 97, 20
item 104, 21
item 109, 22
role
item 130, 25
misrepresents laws of arithmetic
item 56, 13
misrepresents models
chaos
item 97, 20
clouds
item 58, 13
item 107, 22
CO2
lifetime
item 86, 18
El Ni˜
no
item 48, 11
insolation
item 43, 10
misrepresents UK court case
item 99, 21
Monckton
item 108, 22
Montreal Protocol
item 105, 22
New Orleans
item 49, 11
item 73, 15
other critiques of Heaven + Earth, 27
Pinatubo
item 40, 10
precautionary principle
item 55, 12
item 105, 22
questionable data sources
2008
item 129, 25
radiative forcing
45
item 89, 19
radiocarbon (14C)
item 77, 16
item 85, 18
response to criticisms, 39
sea ice
incorrect data plotted
item 47, 11
item 39, 10
sea level
future
item 50, 11
item 111, 22
solar wobble
item 31, 9
Stern report
item 102, 21
summary, 35
sunspots
item 32, 9
temperature data, 30
misquoted
item 72, 15
tipping point, 34
item 55, 12
uptake of CO2
item 101, 21
version history, 37
Vostok ice core, 33
item 45, 11
no support for MWP in paper
item 109, 22
Wegman report, 32
Younger Dryas
item 16, 6
Monday, September 21, 2009
Thursday, September 10, 2009
A Power Station in Your Basement
By Frank Dohmen
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
Mini Power Stations
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.
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.
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.
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.
'A Real Revolution'
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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?"
A Breakthrough for Eco-Friendly Energy
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
URL:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,647435,00.html
RELATED SPIEGEL ONLINE LINKS:
Leaders In Alternative Energy: Germany Turns On World's Biggest Solar Power Project (08/20/2009)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,643961,00.html
The World From Berlin: New Energy Projects 'Not a Magic Bullet' (07/14/2009)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,636090,00.html
Going Greener?: German Energy Roadmap Steers Towards Renewables (02/13/2009)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,607412,00.html
SPIEGEL 360: Our Full Coverage of Energy and Natural Resources
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,k-6944,00.html
© DER SPIEGEL 37/2009
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
Mini Power Stations
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.
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.
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.
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.
'A Real Revolution'
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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?"
A Breakthrough for Eco-Friendly Energy
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
URL:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,647435,00.html
RELATED SPIEGEL ONLINE LINKS:
Leaders In Alternative Energy: Germany Turns On World's Biggest Solar Power Project (08/20/2009)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,643961,00.html
The World From Berlin: New Energy Projects 'Not a Magic Bullet' (07/14/2009)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,636090,00.html
Going Greener?: German Energy Roadmap Steers Towards Renewables (02/13/2009)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,607412,00.html
SPIEGEL 360: Our Full Coverage of Energy and Natural Resources
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,k-6944,00.html
© DER SPIEGEL 37/2009
Monday, September 7, 2009
Carrots are better than sticks ~ science news
Carrots are better than sticks for building human cooperation
Published: Thursday, September 3, 2009 - 13:44 in Psychology & Sociology
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.
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.
"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."
"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."
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.
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.
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.
"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."
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.
"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."
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2009/09/03/carrots.are.better.sticks.building.human.cooperation
Published: Thursday, September 3, 2009 - 13:44 in Psychology & Sociology
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.
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.
"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."
"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."
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.
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.
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.
"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."
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.
"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."
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2009/09/03/carrots.are.better.sticks.building.human.cooperation
Solar Hot Water big in China
latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-fi-china-solar6-2009sep06,0,7213756.story
latimes.com
China, green? In the case of solar water heating, yes
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.
By David Pierson
September 6, 2009
Reporting from Rizhao, China
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.
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.
The device has become a symbol of China's rising standard of living and its leap into the era of clean energy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Manufacturers are eyeing foreign markets, including customers in Southern California.
"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."
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.
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.
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.
"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."
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.
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.
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.
"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."
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.
"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.
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.
Each manufacturer touts its product's ability to heat water within hours and insulate that heat for days.
"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.
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.
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.
Many of the older or cheaper Chinese models are far from perfect, lacking auxiliary heating elements to warm the water on cloudy days.
"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."
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.
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.
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.
"We're only at the bottom of a big mountain," Huang said. Solar "can push a change in lifestyle."
david.pierson@latimes.com
Nicole Liu in The Times' Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
latimes.com
China, green? In the case of solar water heating, yes
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.
By David Pierson
September 6, 2009
Reporting from Rizhao, China
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.
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.
The device has become a symbol of China's rising standard of living and its leap into the era of clean energy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Manufacturers are eyeing foreign markets, including customers in Southern California.
"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."
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.
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.
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.
"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."
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.
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.
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.
"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."
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.
"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.
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.
Each manufacturer touts its product's ability to heat water within hours and insulate that heat for days.
"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.
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.
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.
Many of the older or cheaper Chinese models are far from perfect, lacking auxiliary heating elements to warm the water on cloudy days.
"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."
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.
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.
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.
"We're only at the bottom of a big mountain," Huang said. Solar "can push a change in lifestyle."
david.pierson@latimes.com
Nicole Liu in The Times' Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Artic warmer than for 2000 years...
The Arctic is now warmer than at any time during the last 2,000 years, according to a major new study.
Temperatures around the North Pole have dramatically increased in the last 50 years - reversing a long-term natural cooling trend, scientists say.
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.
Researchers secure a floating platform in Alaska to take sediment cores. They reported finding yet more proof that global warming was a dangerous reality
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.'
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.
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.
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.
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.
The decade between 1999 to 2008 was the warmest in the last 2,000 years, the research found.
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.
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.
Today, temperatures are around 1.4C higher than they should be, the authors say.
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.
'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.
'Greenhouse gases are overtaking a natural cycle.'
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.
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.
The Arctic appears to be particularly vulnerable to changes to the Earth's climate.
Previous research has shown that Arctic temperatures rose three times faster during the 20th century than the rest of the Northern Hemisphere.
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
Temperatures around the North Pole have dramatically increased in the last 50 years - reversing a long-term natural cooling trend, scientists say.
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.
Researchers secure a floating platform in Alaska to take sediment cores. They reported finding yet more proof that global warming was a dangerous reality
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.'
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.
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.
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.
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.
The decade between 1999 to 2008 was the warmest in the last 2,000 years, the research found.
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.
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.
Today, temperatures are around 1.4C higher than they should be, the authors say.
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.
'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.
'Greenhouse gases are overtaking a natural cycle.'
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.
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.
The Arctic appears to be particularly vulnerable to changes to the Earth's climate.
Previous research has shown that Arctic temperatures rose three times faster during the 20th century than the rest of the Northern Hemisphere.
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
Friday, September 4, 2009
Supkis on vaccine hysteria...
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:.
Sinovac Shares Rose After Chinese Government Approved Vaccine (SVA) – FOXBusiness.com
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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New hope for Aids vaccine as scientists find ‘Achilles heel’ – Times Online
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. .
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. .
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. .
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.
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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.
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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.
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anti-vaccination moevment – The Skeptic’s Dictionary – Skepdic.com
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. .
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. .
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.
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timeline of the autism caused by vaccines scare – The Skeptic’s Dictionary – Skepdic.com
[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.] .
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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To immunize or not? | PressDemocrat.com | The Press Democrat | Santa Rosa, CA
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. .
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. .
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. .
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. .
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. .
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.
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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.
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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.
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Autism Blog – Autism, scientology and the moonies « Left Brain/Right Brain
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. .
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.
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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!
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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.
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Sarah Palin Adviser’s Secret Scientology Plot to Take Over Washington – sarah palin – Gawker
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. .
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.” .
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…. .
…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.”
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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.
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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.
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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:
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Pfizer to pay record $2.3bn settlement | Business | guardian.co.uk
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. .
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. .
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…. .
…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. .
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. .
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
http://emsnews.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/aids-vaccine-possible-at-last
Sinovac Shares Rose After Chinese Government Approved Vaccine (SVA) – FOXBusiness.com
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.
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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.
.
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.
.
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.
.
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.
.
New hope for Aids vaccine as scientists find ‘Achilles heel’ – Times Online
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. .
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. .
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. .
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.
.
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.
.
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.
.
anti-vaccination moevment – The Skeptic’s Dictionary – Skepdic.com
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. .
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. .
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.
.
timeline of the autism caused by vaccines scare – The Skeptic’s Dictionary – Skepdic.com
[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.] .
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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To immunize or not? | PressDemocrat.com | The Press Democrat | Santa Rosa, CA
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. .
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. .
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. .
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. .
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. .
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.
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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.
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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.
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Autism Blog – Autism, scientology and the moonies « Left Brain/Right Brain
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. .
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.
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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!
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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.
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Sarah Palin Adviser’s Secret Scientology Plot to Take Over Washington – sarah palin – Gawker
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. .
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.” .
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…. .
…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.”
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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.
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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.
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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:
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Pfizer to pay record $2.3bn settlement | Business | guardian.co.uk
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. .
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. .
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…. .
…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. .
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. .
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
http://emsnews.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/aids-vaccine-possible-at-last
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