Deltoid

The Australian's War on Science XXV

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 11:37:12 -0500

On Saturday the Australian published a story by John Stapleton offering as evidence against global warming the fact that "the Arctic ice is expanding". Something that happens every winter. Anyway, Stapleton's piece is about biased reporting on global warming. Stapleton is oblivious to the extraordinary bias displayed by the Australian -- he's alleging that it is the ABC and Fairfax who are biased.

The sole piece of evidence that Stapleton offers for this is their reporting on the question of whether global warming is reducing the Southern Ocean's ability to soak up carbon dioxide. Last year a study found that it was, but a new study published last week found that it wasn't. The first study was ("breathlessly according to Stapleton) reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, but the second was not. To Stapleton, this is an example of Fairfax bias. But Stapleton does not mention that three News Limited papers (the Herald Sun, The Courier Mail and The Advertiser) did exactly the same thing -- reporting on the first study and not the second one. In any case, one single example is hardly enough to support a claim of bias. For that you would need evidence of a pattern in the reporting.

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Open Thread 16

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 11:02:09 -0500

Time for a new open thread.

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Gregg Easterbrook is an idiot

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:42:32 -0500

Gregg Easterbrook is an idiot who is a science expert at the Brookings Institute.

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Windschuttle's vote of no confidence in Quadrant's climate science articles

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 01:53:59 -0500

Last week Keith Windschuttle, editor of Quadrant declared:

People who are really confident [of their facts] relish debate.

It seems that Windschuttle has no confidence in the articles on climate science he has been publishing. Windschuttle rejected without even looking at it, an article by David Karoly correcting the errors and misinformation in those articles. His reply to Karoly (quoted with permission):

Thanks for your offer but at the moment Quadrant is focusing on offering a platform for the sceptical position on this issue. We find that the pro-IPCC position is very well represented in almost every media outlet in the country, including academic journals and websites, but it is very difficult for sceptics to find any outlet for their voices to be heard. Hence, in the interests of balance, we believe the sceptics deserve a fair go in a little journal like ours. If the current position changes, we will be glad to consider pro-IPCC articles such as yours.

If Windschuttle had any confidence at all in the accuracy of the articles he published, then he would have accepted Karoly's article. His case would be greatly strengthened if the articles he published promoting it could take Karoly's best shot and remain standing. It seems he is frightened that Karoly would score a few knockouts on them.

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The Australian's War on Science XXIV

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 08:52:24 -0500

On Tuesday the Australian had a piece by David Bellamy claimed to be victimized for his dissent:

The sad fact is that since I said I didn't believe human beings caused global warming, I've not been allowed to make a television program. ...

It was in 1996 that I criticised wind farms while appearing on children's program Blue Peter, and I also had an article published in which I described global warming as poppycock. ...

At that point, I was still making loads of TV programs and I was enjoying it greatly. Then I suddenly found I was sending in ideas for TV shows and they weren't getting taken up. I've asked around about why I've been ignored, but I found that people didn't get back to me.

Now that gives the impression that he described global warming as poppycock in 1996, but his article was actually published in 2004. Before that date, while he was loudly opposed to wind farms, he accepted mainstream climate science. For example, in May 2001 in Geographical Magazine he wrote (my emphasis):

In the March issue of Geographical the opinion piece "Out of Sink" argued against planting trees to offset CO2 emissions. However, at a time when the world is waking up to the fact that global warming is real, I feel it would be a tragedy if an unholy alliance of ideology and short-term self-interest were to throw away the chance to avoid catastrophe while doing something to repair our poor planet.

And in 2002 Bellamy was claiming that he was banned from TV in 1997 because he stood for election against John Major:

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Silenced Plimer somehow appears on TV, on radio, in newspapers. A lot.

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 10:45:13 -0500

Miranda Devine, in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald brings us the sad story of how Ian Plimer is being shouted down and silenced:

Human-caused climate change is being "promoted with religious zeal ... there are fundamentalist organisations which will do anything to silence critics." ...

It is difficult for non-scientists to engage in the debate over what causes climate change and whether or not it can be stopped by new taxes and slower growth, because dissenting voices are shouted down by true believers in the scientific community who claim they alone have the authority to speak.

The same day in Sydney's Daily Telegraph Piers Akerman also carried Plimer's message

Professor Plimer asks why this science is ignored. He would also like to know why the IPCC's models, used by Rudd and Garnaut to justify policies, do not include the heat and C02 emissions from 85 per cent of the world's volcanoes, those under the oceans lying along 64,000km of mid-ocean ridges?

He says volcanoes on the floor of the Arctic Ocean heat the Arctic waters, that subglacial volcanoes in Antarctica erupt and exhale heat beneath the ice from hot gas vents and hot springs, but we don't hear about them or the subglacial lakes and river systems in Antarctica.

Possibly because the total heat flux from the Earth's interior amounts to just 0.075 Watts per square metre, while incoming solar radiation is 342 Watts per square metre, about 5000 times as much. And human emissions of CO2 are one hundred times that from volcanoes on land and under the sea.

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Move over, Gregg Easterbrook

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 04:18:44 -0500

Erika Lovley, on the curious phenomenon that when Gore gives a speech, about half of the time the weather is colder than average:

While there's no scientific proof that The Gore Effect is anything more than a humorous coincidence, some climate skeptics say it may offer a snapshot of proof that the planet isn't warming as quickly as some climate change advocates say.

See David Roberts and Joe Romm for more details on Lovley's stenography.

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The Iraq war - A humanitarian disaster

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 10:19:56 -0500

The Iraq Family Health Survey, conducted by the Iraqi government and the World Health Organization, found that there were about 400,000 excess deaths in Iraq up to June 2006 associated with the invasion. The second Lancet survey conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins and Al Mustansiriya University found that there were about 650,000 over the same time period. Both surveys missed the most violent period in Iraq -- if we project forward to the current day I estimate that the net cost of the war so far has been between 750,000 (using IFHS) and 1,250,000 (using Lancet2) deaths.

So how on earth does Eric Posner come up a net benefit for the war? Let's see:

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Deaths in Iraq

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:42:44 -0500

I think it is worthwhile to update James Wimberly's comparison of surveys of deaths in Iraq. In the table below death tolls have been extrapolated to give a number of deaths due to the war up to Oct 08.

Survey	Violent deaths	Excess deaths
ILCS	160,000
Lancet 1	350,000	510,000
IFHS	310,000	740,000
Lancet 2	1,200,000	1,300,000
ORB	1,200,000

It is interesting to see that the IFHS ends up right in the middle, between the two Lancet studies. If you think that the IFHS study is reasonable then you must conclude that Lancet 1 has been confirmed and the critics of Lancet 1 were wrong.

What about the comparison between Lancet 2 and the IFHS? Some folks are arguing that the larger sample size of the IFHS meaning that its estimate trumps Lancet 2, but the larger sample size just reduces the sampling error. The top of the IFHS confidence interval for violent deaths (220,000) is much smaller than the bottom end of the Lancet 2 interval (420,000) so the difference can only explained by non-sampling error, and here the IFHS isn't necessarily better. It was too dangerous to visit 11% of their clusters and in the ones they could visit they say that as many of 50% of the violent deaths may have gone unreported. They have attempted to correct for these problems, but the corrections may be not be enough. For example, they use the IBC numbers to estimate the violence in the unvisited areas relative to those they visited. But the most violent areas are going to be too dangerous for reporters as well, so the IBC will tend to undercount deaths in those areas relative to less violent areas. This doesn't mean that the Lancet 2 estimate doesn't have non-sampling errors as well -- Iraq at present is just a really difficult place to survey. I think that the best we can do is guess that the real number of violent deaths in Iraq to date is somewhere in the range 300,000 to 1,000,000. Even the lowest number in the range is a horrendous death toll.

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Violent war deaths: Surveys vs passive surveillance

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:02:33 -0500

I've been remiss in not commenting on Obermeyer, Murray and Gakidou's paper in the BMJ, Fifty years of violent war deaths from Vietnam to Bosnia: analysis of data from the world health survey programme. OMG derive estimates of violent war deaths in thirteen countries from the World Health Survey and compare them with counts from passive surveillance (like the Iraq Body Count). Here's my graph of their results, showing 95% confidence intervals for the ratio between the survey estimate (WHS) and the passive count (Uppsala/PRIO). The green line is the weighted average of the ratios (2.6).

As you can see, surveys generally give a much higher estimate, but not always. In a commentary on OMG, Richard Garfield argues that OMG's survey estimates are likely too low:

Despite rigorous efforts to correct for under-reporting, Obermeyer and colleagues could not correct for household members who chose not to report deaths. How the relevant questions were asked in face to face interviews can greatly influence the results obtained. Similarly, the total number of deaths in war may be grossly underestimated by multiyear demographic modelling. Half a million deaths can occur unnoticed when demographic models do not count actual deaths but depend on projections from count data that are decades old.

Finally, the study only includes violent deaths. In the poorest countries, where most conflicts now occur, a rise in deaths from infectious diseases often dwarfs the number of violent deaths during a conflict. For all these reasons, Obermeyer and colleagues' study is likely to underestimate the importance of conflict as a cause of death.

But the part of OMG that I want to comment on is this:

As a final point of comparison, we applied our correction method, derived from the comparison of survey estimates with Uppsala/PRIO data, to data from the Iraq Body Count project's most recent report of 86 539 (the midpoint of the 82 772 to 90 305 range reported in April 2008) dead in Iraq since 2003.27 Our adjusted estimate of 184 000 violent deaths related to war falls between the Iraq Family Health Survey estimate of 151 000 (104 000 to 223 000)9 and the 601 000 estimate from the second Iraq mortality survey by Burnham and colleagues.1

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Quadrant's war on science

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:19:18 -0500

Quadrant follows the fashion of much of the rest of the right in Australia in making war on science. It has promoted Creationism, HIV/AIDS denial, the DDT ban myth and, of course, global warming denial. But ever since new editor Kieth Windschuttle took over earlier this year, Quadrant has cranked the attacks on climate science up to 11. Harry Clarke reports:

Recent issues of Quadrant contain a number of 'denialist' views on climate change issues that will leave those concerned with the implications of climate change troubled. Quadrant could analogously act as an outlet for the flat earth society and the outcome of supporting such a similar sustained attack on scientific logic would make no more sense than supporting climate change denialists without offering anything in the way of the majority accepted-science contrary view.

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More on Booker

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 04:48:35 -0500

It seems that Christopher Booker as well as being a global warming denier, is also an asbestos-is-harmful denier. George Monbiot has the story (links added by me):

This week Richard Wilson's book Don't Get Fooled Again is published. It contains a fascinating chapter on Booker's claims about white asbestos. Since 2002, he has published 38 articles on this topic, and every one of them is wrong. He champions the work of John Bridle, who has described himself as "the world's foremost authority on asbestos science". Bridle has claimed to possess an honorary professorship from the Russian Academy of Sciences, to be a consultant to an institute at the University of Glamorgan, the chief asbestos consultant for an asbestos centre in Lisbon, and a consultant to Vale of Glamorgan trading standards department. None of these claims is true. Neither the institute at the University of Glamorgan nor the centre in Lisbon have ever existed. His only relationship with the Glamorgan trading standards department is to have been successfully prosecuted by it for claiming a qualification he does not possess. ...

It is hard to think of any journalist - Melanie Phillips included - who has spread more misinformation.

That's harsh.

There is some more commentary on Booker's false claims about NASA and October temperatures by John Matson at the Scientific American:

The fact remains that October was significant for its high temperatures relative to the historical record. In other words, the example that climate skeptics seized upon to poke holes in the evidence of climate change served only to confirm that the world is warming because of humans' actions.

and Coby Beck has addressed it as part of How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic.

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Open Thread 15

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:22:03 -0500

Time for a new open thread.

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Mountains out of molehills

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 13:46:41 -0500

It was entirely predictable that the denialists would hype up the glitch in the surface temperature record for last month. This opinion piece by Christopher Booker was picked up by Drudge, so the usual collection of global warming denialists have been fulminating about how this proves you can't trust the science. For example, at the Discovery Institute

But computer modeling is not pure science and at its best it is only as good as the information programed into it. That is true for wild claims made for computer models of evolution and it is true of climate modeling.

While all of this was predictable, it is still interesting to see exactly how Booker misrepresented what happened. Watch Booker spin:

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The Australian's War on Science XXIII

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:14:13 -0500

The Australian has a daily column called Cut and Paste which is usually a collection of quotes from recent opinion columns in other papers. But like every other part of the paper, it has been used in their unending war on science. Look at the November 12 edition of "Cut and Paste":

ABC Radio's Peter Cave reports the IPCC claim the island nation is in imminent danger of climate-induced flooding

Mohamed Nasheed (the new Maldives President) has named battling the effects of rising sea levels as a key priority. He's hatched an audacious plan to buy his people a new homeland and one of the destinations he's considering is Australia. ...

But is the Maldives really about to be flooded because of climate change? Not according to a project conducted by Nils-Axel Morner, former head of the department of paleogeophysics and geodynamics at Stockholm University:

The Maldives have a unique position in sea-level research. In the past decade they have attracted special attention because, in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenario, the Maldives would be condemned to become flooded in the next 50 to 100 years.

Our research data does not lend support to any such flooding scenario, however. On the contrary, we find no signs of any ongoing sea-level rise. Our results comes from visits to numerous islands ... and includes coring, levelling, sampling and carbon dating.

Present sea level was reached about 4500BC. In the past 4000 years, sea level oscillated around the present. In the past decade, there are no signs of any rise in sea level. Hence, we are able to free the islands from the condemnation to become flooded in the 21st century.

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