tlambert

Actually the headline on the New York Times story says Study Says Minicar Buyers Sacrifice Safety. But the study looked at head-on collisions between minicars and larger cars (twice as heavy in the case of Smart vs Mercedes C class). Since momentum is conserved, a car weighing half as much…

The Guardian has two stories about a poll they conducted of the people who attended the recent Copenhagen Climate Change Conference. Almost nine out of 10 climate scientists do not believe political efforts to restrict global warming to 2C will succeed, a Guardian poll reveals today. An average…

Some folks suggested the Windschuttle hoax was too subtle, that the claims in the hoax article were not outrageously false. Well it seems that Windschuttle has been tricked into publishing an article by one Bob Carter which has the outrageously false thing covered: First, there has been no recent…

Ben Goldacre has posted the chapter he was forced to leave out of earlier editions of Bad Science because of a lawsuit from charlatan Matthias Rath: Although the publishers make a slightly melodramatic fuss about this in the promo material, it is a very serious story about the dangers of…

The collapse of the Wilkins Ice Shelf has prompted the Australian to launch yet another attack on scientists -- it seems they are "tabloid media ambulance-chasing" and the ice shelf collapse was entirely natural. every natural phenomenon, such as the ice shelf split this week, is interpreted as a…

In my post on the Washington Post's refusal to correct this false statement by George Will: According to the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979" I also referred to the "University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center". But…

Back in 2001 The Discovery Institute paid for advertisements with a list of a hundred scientists who disputed the theory of evolution via natural selection. A notable feature of their list is that the vast majority of the people were not biologists. Now The Cato Institute has paid for…

Time for a new open thread.

Folks are commenting on John Shimkus' act with Monckton at the Congressional hearing on adaptation to climate change. For example, PZ Myers: Shimkus explain how he knows CO2 is not a problem. It's because the Bible is the inerrant word of his god, and he knows god isn't going to end the world with…

George Will's shameless dishonesty about global warming continues. Will responds to the very tardy publication by the Washington Post of a letter from the WMO correcting Will's misrepresentation of their data by again misrepresenting WMO data. Carl Zimmer: Does the Post read its own letters?…

Like several other bloggers here (e.g. Coby Beck), I have been interviewed by The Reef Tank.

George Monbiot has the latest on David Belllamy's descent into crankdom: Among other gems, Bellamy's interview contained the following marvellous assertion of independence: "peer-reviewed journals - it's the last thing I would use now."

I was looking through my grandmother's scrapbooks and found this picture of her grandfather -- he's the one standing (click to enlarge). I found the history of the lifeboat he is on: In 1879 a new British-built lifeboat, designed by the RNLI and built by Forrest & Co. Ltd in London, arrived in…

It's tough to shorten a post that's already shortened itself with the title above, but Tintin at Sadly, No! is equal to the task. And he fixed a video from Craig Idso as well.

Glenn Reynolds declares that a private listserv run by Ezra Klein is a "scandal". Which is interesting, because I first ran into Glenn Reynolds on a private listserv run by Eugene Volokh. The members included pro-gun law professors like Reynolds, an NRA staffer and at least one journalist. I do not…

The Washington Post has published Chris Mooney's reply to George Will's misinformation. Mooney corrects some of Will's false and misleading claims and finishes with: Readers and commentators must learn to share some practices with scientists -- following up on sources, taking scientific knowledge…

Gerlich and Tscheuschner managed to get their stupidity published in the International Journal of Modern Physics B, which is embarrassing for the editors of that journal. Eli Rabbett is working on a reply, and is looking for coauthors.

By request here is a new thread for folks to argue with Tim Curtin. Tim, this is the only thread you are allowed to post on.

Time for a new open thread.

Allow me to shorten Heartland's 2009 International Conference on Climate Change for you. Joseph L. Bast: Bray's survey shows that there is no consensus. Vaclav Klaus: Environmentalists have a secret plan to "return mankind centuries back". Richard Lindzen: It is an error to say "It's the sun!" Tom…

Gareth Renowden notices that Monckton has corrected the misattribution on his graph. Unfortunately, Monckton has preserved the number of errors in his graph by replacing that error with another one. (And yes this graph appeared in his presentation to the Heartland conference. I also see that…

Heartland's International Conference on Climate Change is on again. I can't help but be impressed by the number of Australian organizations co-sponsoring the conference. Sponsors don't pay any money -- instead they get free admission to all meals and sessions for up to 20 people. And with 58…

George Will has in an interview in the Pittsburgh Tribune where he repeats the whoppers from his column: A: The critics completely ignored -- as again, understandably -- the evidence I gave of the global cooling hysteria of 30 years ago. Q: They like to pretend that there really wasn't any hysteria…

As promised, the Lancet has published a correction to the 2nd Lancet study: Burnham G, Lafta R, Doocy S, Roberts L. Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey. Lancet 2006; 368: 1421--28--The Methods section of this Article (Oct 21, 2006) stated that "…

In Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander's column on George Will he notes that he received thousands of emails demanding corrections to Will's column, and eventually concedes that Will's sea ice claim was false and should have caught by the fact checkers, The editors who checked the Arctic…

Carl Zimmer tells the whole story of how the Washington Post declared that George Will was entitled to his own facts. The latest development since my previous post is that instead of a correction, Will has produced a new column with more misrepresentations of the science. Joe Romm has already…

This post contains some more notes on a reply to the badly flawed "Main Street Bias" paper. In my previous post I showed that the MSB papers was wrong to claim that it was plausible that the unsampled regions was 10 times as large as the sampled region. In this post I look at their model. Their…

The Johns Hopkins press release states: Data Collection An examination was conducted of all the original data collection forms, numbering over 1,800 forms, which included review by a translator. The original forms have the appearance of authenticity in variation of handwriting, language and manner…

More open thread.

I didn't write about George Will's recent global warming denial piece, because his numerous errors have been well documented. Even Nate Silver joined in. But I can't let the latest development pass. The Washington Post has refused to make any corrections to his column. Why not?: Alan Shearer, the…