Thursday, October 07, 2010

Developing

UPDATE: John Nielson Gammon provides additional information and links to source materials for his estimate that summer temperatures in Texas will be ~115 F

Now what could possibly be as annoying as Drudge's siren hailing the latest development in the Wegman scandal? As all the folks at Rabett Labs know, George Mason University has been, shall we say, tardy in coming to grips with the plagiarism scandal surrounding Edward Wegman, his colleagues and his students. Not only has the Wegman report to Congress been shown by Deep Climate to have large plagiarized sections, but the gang that couldn't copy straight stated conclusions that were in direct contradiction to those of the sources they were copied from. Some of the source, as John Mashey has pointed out, were not sources, others simply were not.

But there is more, John Mashey and Deep Climate have now presented strong evidence that some of Wegman's students plagiarized large sections of their doctoral theses.

But still, GMU does nothing. Why? Well some, not Eli he hastens to add, might think it has to do with funding from the Koch bros. and such? Still you can only keep the cork so long in the bottle, and Eli hears that it may pop. Perhaps Ken Cuccinelli might start to pay attention.

UPDATE: A large explosion can be found here. Rumor is that the splatter is spreading

And oh yes, Michael Mann has an op-ed column in the Washington Post

We have lived through the pseudo-science that questioned the link between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer, and the false claims questioning the science of acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer. The same dynamics and many of the same players are still hard at work, questioning the reality of climate change.

The basic physics and chemistry of how carbon dioxide and other human-produced greenhouse gases trap heat in the lower atmosphere have been understood for nearly two centuries. Overloading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is heating the planet, shrinking the Arctic ice cap, melting glaciers and raising sea levels. It is leading to more widespread drought, more frequent heat waves and more powerful hurricanes. Even without my work, or that of the entire sub-field of studying past climates, scientists are in broad agreement on the reality of these changes and their near-certain link to human activity.

He doesn't much respect Ken Cuccinelli either.

But there is more, John Nielson Gammon thinks it's gonna get real hot in Texas

Texas A&M University atmospheric sciences professor John Nielsen-Gammon said recently that models he's analyzed show temperatures rising as much as 1 degree each decade, meaning that by 2060, temperatures around the state would be 5 degrees hotter than now.

Every region of the state will become warmer, although East Texas is expected to be less affected than the rest, he said. Temperatures have been rising since the 1970s, which was the coldest decade in Texas' recorded history, he said.

"Decade by decade it's been getting warmer," Nielsen-Gammon said. "From here going forward, if temperatures keep rising as the models project they will, it will certainly be in large part due to global warming."

Two unusually warm summers — in South Texas in 2009 and North Texas this year — are signs of what's ahead, he said.

Developing

7 comments:

John Mashey said...

Bunnies might want to remember that Ken Cuccinelli and sidekick Wesley Russell were both at GMU law school together. Don't leave Russell out of this, he is the one who signs these things. Exactly who writes them, well that remains to be seen. It is gratifying, if odd, to see legal eagles take strong interest in bristlecone pines and such.

On can hope the VA GA will investigate GMU, but I hold my breath not.

Meanwhile, I hope Eli was not too subtle with:

"Some of the source, as John Mashey has pointed out, were not sources, others simply were not."

That looks like a missing phrase ... but is not.

Anonymous said...

Michael Mann seems to be feeling a bit cheeky these days. I wonder if it has anything to do with the ammo that John Mashey, Deep Climate, et al. have so kindly made available to him....




--caerbannog the anonybunny

Anonymous said...

Those truths of the historic situations regarding CFCs and the ozone hole, tobacco and cancers, and sulfur and nitrogen emissions and acid rain bear repeating over and over in contact with the media as an opening gambit in countering the usual septic memes. Indeed, it should be the last thing Joe Public hears, too: that the same people have been wrong once before, or twice, or more times. Then that'll be their take-home message, whatever else has been said in between.

And I'd name names, rather than use "many of the same players", especially when those names raise their heads above the parapets.

Cymraeg llygoden

Anonymous said...

JOINT STATEMENT ON THE RE-ASSESSMENT OF THE TOXICOLOGICAL TESTING OF TOBACCO PRODUCTS"
7 October, the COT meeting on 26 October and the COC meeting on 18
November 2004.

http://cot.food.gov.uk/pdfs/cotstatementtobacco0409

"5. The Committees commented that tobacco smoke was a highly complex chemical mixture and that the causative agents for smoke induced diseases (such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, effects on reproduction and on offspring) was unknown. The mechanisms by which tobacco induced adverse effects were not established. The best information related to tobacco smoke - induced lung cancer, but even in this instance a detailed mechanism was not available. The Committees therefore agreed that on the basis of current knowledge it would be very difficult to identify a toxicological testing strategy or a biomonitoring approach for use in volunteer studies with smokers where the end-points determined or biomarkers measured were predictive of the overall burden of tobacco-induced adverse disease."

In other words ... our first hand smoke theory is so lame we can't even design a bogus lab experiment to prove it. In fact ... we don't even know how tobacco does all of the magical things we claim it does.

The greatest threat to the second hand theory is the weakness of the first hand theory.

Professor McQuack

turboblocke said...

Professor McQuack: if you fall off a tall building, it will be impossible to predict which organ fails first and the precise cause of its failure when you hit the ground. That doesn't stop us from predicting pretty well the overall effect.

frank -- Decoding SwiftHack said...

Professor McQuack: Indeed, you're right:

Galileo: From these, I theorize that it's not the sun that moves around the earth, but it's in fact the earth that moves around the sun.

Pope Think-Tankus VIII: How did you test your theory, Signior Galileo? Can you put the sun into a laboratory, or squeeze the sun into a test tube?

Galileo: Your Holiness, I must admit I cannot.

Pope Think-Tankus VIII: Then your theory is nothing but a piece of untestable freedom-hating pseudo-science. Burn, infidel!!!

-- frank

John Mashey said...

But McQuack's comments are relevant, in a weird way:

Cigarette smoke is so complicated, and human biological differences strong enough, that we really don't understand the exact mechanisms ... despite the overpowering statistics.

On the other hand, we actually understand many fo the basic mechanisms behind AGW. I sometimes tell people skeptical of AGW: make sure your kids start smoking at 12, it's good for the economy, and why not? Smoking has a lower probability of killing them than the likelihood that AGW will negatively affect their lives, at least in most places.