And the domino newscloning effect continues…
UPDATE: At 5:30PM PST, it appears SciAm finally realized they’d been had and pulled it.
Of course earlier today, the Guardian and other publications saw the problem and pulled this story:
AAAS withdraws “impossible” global warming paper
Hours later here’s the story still running on SciAm:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=climate-change-crop-shortfall
h/t to WUWT reader “interglacial”.
This just goes to illustrate how one unchecked story, gets into the top science news publications, with apparently nobody questioning the claims.
Appalling.
What in the world happened to Scientific American? It used to be *the* science publication, with a history stretching back into the 19th century. But then it turned into the science equivalent of People magazine, and now they just rush to print any ol’ flashy-trashy thing they can find. It’s sad, really.
Scientific American has not been a “top science publication” for almost 20 years. Just a propaganda rag posing as a scientific magazine.
But your point is well taken, many news agencies are on such tight time dead lines and the drive to “scoop” the other organizations is so high, that only the most absurd gets filtered out at the editors desk (if they even have someone that performs that function other than in name only).
The hard nosed news editor that would send a reporter back to their desk to do some fact checking on the phone before approving a story seems to becoming a myth seen only in old movies.
Larry
Scientific American doesn’t deserve any readers at all. It’s one thing for a minor error to scrape through without question, but blatant errors are unforgiveable – still, I suppose thats the ‘cut and paste’ mentality of the journos involved, plus of course, half of them don’t even understand the subject matter!
Story still being run in some of Murdoch’s papers in Australia.
I gave up on ‘Scientific” American quite a while ago. Actually not too long after they dropped The Amateur Scientist section.
In addition to the poor quality of the reporting, what’s even more apparent is the clueless commenters. A couple of them pointed out the ridiculous magnitude of the number, but most blithly blather on.
The story was covered, with banner headlines in the UK Metro. (free paper read by masses of commuters) Herewith my letter to the Metro Editor; it will be interesting to see the response.
—-
Will we see banner headlines, equally large, retracting and apologising now that the ridiculous claim on page 17 (Wed 19 Jan) has been “debunked as false and impossible”?
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20110119/climate-change-study-110119/
A reminder of the PCC Code that Metro adheres to is included, below, for your easy reference.
Looking forward to the truth being told.
Yours,
Murray Grainger
Accuracy
i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, including pictures.
ii) A significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distortion once recognised must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and – where appropriate – an apology published. In cases involving the Commission, prominence should be agreed with the PCC in advance.
http://www.pcc.org.uk/cop/practice.html
I guess we just have to refer to them as “Unscientific Uncritical American” from now on.
Sadly, I gave up on SA a LOOOOONNNGGG time ago.
As far as I am concerned, they are so bad that even PopSci and PopMech are better.
Truly a sad sad day.
Supermarket science.
I wonder what their take is on this.
http://tinyurl.com/4s7dkl3
The sad reality is that only a few of these publication’s will print update’s to this story explaining the “error”. I’m sure people are already talking about how, by 2021, climate change will have us shooting each other outside the bakery,with the last man standing getting the last loaf of bread.
so they obviously know – they quote the source, that this study comes from a politically active and one sided eco group, you’d’ think they would challenge the study, not promote it.
SA has sunk to new depths of desperation and stupidity.
2.4deg C warmer within 9 years ….
I wish – here in cold old england it would be nice to be back to the temperatures of the Roman Warm period and even better if they could stretch that bit further to get as high as the Minoan warm period.
As a chap who used to work for me would have said ‘ what are they on – where can I get some’.
The ‘tipping point’ when Scientific American became obviously non-scientific was when they jumped on Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist’ when it came out. Looked more like a lynch mob.
So this latest blunder is perfect for alerting more people to what SA has become, and predictable. They certainly are eager to print anything that fits their agenda.
Don’t you understand the papers still going ahead so they can still run the story.
Even if it has not been through anything like the scientific method.
I’m not surprised that SA is still running the story….
…I am surprised that SA didn’t invent it in the first place
Dr. Osvaldo F. Canziani is former Co-Chair of Working Group II, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the outfit that erroneously predicted Himalayan glacier melt-down by 2035. He is also on the Science Advisory Panel of the World Wildlife Fund, from which the bogus “2035” claim was sourced by IPCC.
The climate science community seems to have much in common with the Augean Stables.
The comments at SA are really funny; the acolytes haven’t yet heard that even St. Gavin said “Oh Please” on this one.
Is anyone keeping score on how many “separate” publications are copying this?
I gave up on Sci-AM a very long time ago. I travel extensively for a living, and couldn’t wait until the new issue came out at the airport bookstore. But after years of suffering through seemingly every single story no matter what it was about having some tie-in to global warming, I couldn’t take it anymore. The straw that finally broke the camels back for me was during the Bush-Kerry election, when Sci-AM did a profile on the environmental bona-fides of both candidates. Each and every single time senator Kerry was mentioned, the title “Senator Kerry” was used. Each and every single time President Bush was mentioned, he was refered to simply as “Bush”. Not to mention that under Kerry the environment would be all rainbows and unicorns, and 4 more years of Bush would make the planet a molten ball, with a few islands of radioactive bubbling vines hanging off the dead trees (exaggeration only slightly)
Which is why I dropped out of the AAAS and am not renewing Scientific American or National Geographic. They have been hijacked by the loons.
The more outrageous the claim the more stupid the Warmistas look.
SA and NG went south (sorry to all you reversed coriolis folks) sometime back in the 1980’s as I recall. Used to read both, but stopped reading SA about 1985 and NG soon afterward.
Dang shame though, I remember SA as a good general science mag (no depth but plenty of breadth) and NG had wonderful photography.
I used to love the magazine. Science has been replaced by unscientific advocates for the latest doomsday cult. They are trashing the name of science and are an embarrassment.
ShrNfr National Geographic has been a rag for quite some time, but I keep getting it, because in 1965 or so my grandmother gave me a lifetime subscription , I figure I might as well bleed them dry. (if you can say bleed or blood anymore in this new age of civility).
What “rising temperatures”?
The Hadcrut3 data for December is now out. You can check the numbers here where it shows 2010 was tied for third spot:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3gl.txt
Or you can check the graph here where it is in second place:
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/
So 1998 is still the mark to beat according to Hadcut3.
You have to go back to the 1940s to find a time according to the Hadcrut3 data where the previous high mark was not beaten in ten years or less.
This could turn out well: it’s much better for warmists to make short-term predictions (e.g. 2020 instead of 2100) and wild predictions. This way their clearly ridiculous claims are exposed more quickly (cf. ‘mild’ winter in Britain, worsening drought in Australia). Of course I hope that the warming scam is over by 2020, but this will be a funny one to look back on!
SA has found a “memory hole” for this article as of 1730 PST
They yanked it. Page not found. No explanation, no nothing. Just evaporated due to the heat apparently.
As of 5:32 pm, the page on “Scientific” “American” is down. Some of the comments were risible.
The link to SA doesn’t work now. I guess they finally came to grips with reality.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=climate-change-crop-shortfall
Change the name to Unscientific American and you’ll never have to apologize or retract anything ever again.
Looks like they wised up. The link is dead now and a search of the site shows nary a trace, except a scattering of defunct links.
I doubt there are any “scientific” people associated with Scientific American. Just more of the same radical journalism graduates. I had to quit reading it quite some time ago.
This is off topic, but carbon trading has been suspended on the EU market.
http://www.bluegrasspundit.com/2011/01/cap-and-trade-fail-european-union.html
I did however enjoy the web poll they conducted of their readers!
Not many votes there for man made global warming.
Of course they claimed that WATTS UP rigged the poll.
Is WATTS UP Really that powerful?
Jin Petrie
They’ve pulled the page.
Funny. It is actually the climate science community that pointed out the errors, not the [snip] community, which never admits their errors. It is real climate scientists that alerted the report’s authors to their errors (they went ahead and published anyway, to the detriment of their reputation). It is real climate scientists that alerted AAAS new feed and Scientific American of the error. It is real climate scientists that pointed out to the public the mistake. Not you [snip]
[Reply: Strike one… strike two… ~dbs, mod.]
They may run crap like this for the same reason MSNBC does: Nobody is watching/reading it any way. So, what difference does it make what they run?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-gleick/a-brief-lesson-in-the-int_b_811295.html
Reply: That would be strike three, banned ~ ctm
Article has now been removed but it still ‘shows’ a link on the latest headlines section of the Climate section of SciAm but that link also does not work.
I think we have to face facts – the establishment is not going to let go of AGW and the potential windfall of carbon trading until hell literally freezes over. They will continue to lie and push the propaganda. Our only recourse is to engage individuals, reason with them one on one , tell them of the law of unintended consequences and that the road to hell is paved with the best intentions.
I still think they’re going to round us all up for re-education through labour at the big gulags they seem to be building all over the place.
And what is the Deal with Denver Airport underground?
Can anyone point me towards a Science Journal which is as good as Scientific American used to be?
I too used to almost worship Scientific American. First thing I’d read when I got in to the University Library.
Not any more, sadly
Jim Petrie
Well I have the Jan 2011 issue of SciAm on my desk, which proudly proclaims it is my Last issue in two inch high block letters on a red background. That’s a promise I intend to hold them to; although they are already offering me gingerbread cookies and candies, to get me to put my head in the oven to see if the cakes are done.
It’s too bad, because they do carry lots of articles quite out of my field; which I will keep up on by other means now.
Has anybody done a back of the envelope calculation based on the total thermal mass of the climatic environment of the earth; to figure out just how much continuous “forcing” it takes to heat the whole darn thing by 2.4 deg C in 10 years; well nine years now. And don’t forget that simply astronomical heat sink known as the latent heat of melting ice, that has to be supplied to melt the right amount of ice.
Say doesn’t the story say that albedo loss feedback is the big cause to be for this unprecedented sudden flash warming.
So they can’t say they don’t need to melt any ice; that is what is going to make this thing happen.
Good luck on that. Well Willis or Ferdinand should be able to come up with the required continuous global forcing from here on out, to meet the new deadline.
Peter Gleick says:
January 19, 2011 at 5:40 pm
Funny. It is actually the climate science community that pointed out the errors, not the climate denier community, which never admits their errors. It is real climate scientists that alerted the report’s authors to their errors (they went ahead and published anyway, to the detriment of their reputation). It is real climate scientists that alerted AAAS new feed and Scientific American of the error. It is real climate scientists that pointed out to the public the mistake. Not you deniers.
There’s a 1st time for everything.
das75428 says:
January 19, 2011 at 4:48 pm
“The comments at SA are really funny; the acolytes haven’t yet heard that even St. Gavin said “Oh Please” on this one.”
I disappoint. – gavin.
Would someone explain to me how warming would not extend the growing season? And why it would not make vast areas of land more suitable to agriculture? And if warming is indeed CO2-induced, hey free plant food!
Possibly this is a deliberate effort by extremely sophisticated skeptics to publish absurd claims, in order to win private bets within their small, deluded cabal. I believe that one of the most accomplished participants in such taxpayer funded high jinks is named Michael E. Mann. He has collected a small fortune from impressed colleagues as a result of his extreme claims.
Take heart, all you catastrophe whipstocking jockeys- SA pulled that one particularly bogus story and gave you this:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=casualties-of-climate-change
Sci Am is not a credible scientific journal. It touts the tree hugger ideology and has nothing to do with the scientific principle. Good science is conducted when a hypothesis is formulated based on unbiased data, and able to withstand SKEPTICAL review. I guess, as a SKEPTIC, that I am contributing to the advancement of good science. I too subscribed to Sci Am in the past, but will never again.
Funny to see the perpetuation of Gavin’s “2.4C by 2020 (which is 1.4C in the next 10 years” arithmetical nonsense – even in the spin control article.
See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-gleick/a-brief-lesson-in-the-int_b_811295.html
Do the activists in this field have really no appreciation of arithmetic? Or is it just that PCA typically indicates that 2.4=1.4?
Here is the cached copy of the article:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.scientificamerican.com%2Farticle.cfm%3Fid%3Dclimate-change-crop-shortfall
Look everyone, a sheep!
Peter Gleick says:
January 19, 2011 at 5:42 pm
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-gleick/a-brief-lesson-in-the-int_b_811295.html
Peter Gleick says:
January 19, 2011 at 5:40 pm
?Funny. It is actually the climate science community that pointed out the errors, not the climate denier community… […]”
I don’t think anyone who’s ever visited Anthony’s blog has ever denied climate. You wanna’ rephrase that slur for the folks in Rio Linda? Thanks.
Peter Gleick says:
January 19, 2011 at 5:42 pm
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-gleick/a-brief-lesson-in-the-int_b_811295.html
_______________________
Ummmm, Mr Gleick, what exactly was the analysis that was done that demonstrates to you the “integrity” of the climate “scientists”? That they could spot an absurd claim from a mile away and speak up. Wow, YOUR standards are pretty low, eh?
H.R. says:
January 19, 2011 at 6:22 pm
###
Don’t hold your breath. Dr. Gleick is almost as nuts as Hansen.
Peter Glieck-
Sadly, your comments above are not an accurate representation of the facts.
Check the original Guardian article, linked below. It appears that the reporter (Suzanne Goldenberg), contacted AAAS and then AAAS contacted the Gavin, not the other way around. The reporter obviously has access to at least one of the Gavin’s emails, so it could be she contacted him directly also. Your claim that the Gavin “alerted” the AAAS and SCAM is hardly representative of what actually happened. When questioned about it, the Gavin gave his opinion of the article. That is hardly proactive intervention to stop the article.
Do you play this fast and loose with the facts in the articles that publish on that website of yours?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/19/false-climate-change-study
Rich says:
January 19, 2011 at 5:44 pm
Article has now been removed but it still ‘shows’ a link on the latest headlines section of the Climate section of SciAm but that link also does not work.
I’m not sure whether to be impressed or not. It’s “withdrawn” more than eight hours ago (prior to 10:00 a.m. Anthony’s time) – is still on-line six hours later and then disappears a little less than two hours after being spotlighted here. Just like the abysmal Anderegg et al paper, this piece of work is going to be cited for years. It’s getting harder and harder to ascribe tactics like this to simple incompetence.
“This just goes to illustrate how one unchecked story, gets into the top science news publications, with apparently nobody questioning the claims. ”
The story was pulled. Now we see how mainstream science and science reporting can correct themselves. There are no such checks and balances in the ‘skeptical’ blog sphere. Utter nonsense is spread about routinely. Just the other day a blogger showed a graph of sea level rising and then said it was declining. Hysterical. But folks in the ‘skeptical’ blog-sphere bought it.
I guess the bias at Newsweek and Time had to go somewhere.
Peter Gleick says:
January 19, 2011 at 5:40 pm
“It is real climate scientists that alerted the report’s authors to their errors (they went ahead and published anyway, to the detriment of their reputation). It is real climate scientists that alerted AAAS new feed and Scientific American of the error. It is real climate scientists that pointed out to the public the mistake. Not you deniers.”
Oh Peter, first off it was Gavin Schmidt, a plagiarist who pointed it out – and his degree is in mathematics.
Second, this was simply to avoid embarrassment on their part. Just like with wikipedia they scrub their most obvious mistakes and don’t even make retractions because that would show them to be fallible.
Amusingly, I added the IPCC’s projection about the Himalayan glaciers being gone in 2035 to the wikipedia article “2035” but Connolley deleted it since he enjoyed stalking and harassing people of opposing viewpoints. It really is too bad since that, and this prediction, would be good things for people to see in the future.
Try not to be so gullible Peter.
Peter Gleick says:
January 19, 2011 at 5:40 pm
Funny. It is actually the climate science community that pointed out the errors, not the climate denier community, which never admits their errors. It is real climate scientists that alerted the report’s authors to their errors (they went ahead and published anyway, to the detriment of their reputation). It is real climate scientists that alerted AAAS new feed and Scientific American of the error. It is real climate scientists that pointed out to the public the mistake. Not you deniers.
————————
Peter,
Look at how many times your comment is being repeated.
Rightly so! This is very good news to us ‘deniers’, since it suggests that the Real Climate Science Community(PBUT) is aware that an increase of a degree and a half in the thirty-year average global temperature is unlikely to occur in the next nine years.
Personally, I’m taken aback by this as I rather thought that the global average temperature at 1.5 m from the rocky, grassy or watery surface could be just about anything you wanted it to be.
Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic Magazine, does a “skeptics” column in each issue of S.A. He admitted to being persuaded about the validity of AGW after seeing Gore’s movie. For a skeptic of his caliber that was a real come-down. Skeptic Magazine does some very credible stuff. I guess that was the price Shermer had to pay to become a regular in S.A.
Mike says:
January 19, 2011 at 6:36 pm
If you mean this
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/17/sea-level-may-drop-in-2010/
I guess you missed that he was referring to in 2010. You know, it’s in the title.
Hysterical indeed.
Peter Gleick says:
January 19, 2011 at 5:40 pm
Hang on, what’s that. It’s not a chip on your shoulder at all is it?
Oh … yep, that’ll be it!
“He was a man with a chip on his shoulder. Everyone seemed in a conspiracy to slight or injure him.”
Somerset Maugham
The faithful will lap it up. Retraction bottom right hand corner of page 23.
Mission accomplished. 🙁
DaveE.
Terror stories in Scientific America… sad, sad day. 🙁
But I agree with hotrod, they lost it right at two decades ago.
Along with many other WUWT regulars I’ve stopped reading SA. It was an excellent general science magazine in the 1960’s and 1970’s and my favorite sections were the Amateur Scientist and Mathematical Games. If I want to read SA, I can pull out one of my 1970’s issues and enjoy it again. October 1970 introduced the Life game in Mathematical Games and resulted in my spending vast amounts of computer time looking how various initial configurations of cells developed.
What mystifies me is that how is a 2 degree C increase in mean temperature of the world a bad thing? Right now the Kamloops outside temperature is -5 C and not much is happening in my garden. This area is semi-desert but has been getting unusual amounts of rain recently; not what was predicted by the climate alarmists.
It seems very simple; the earth warms and rate of evaporation from the oceans increases. That water has to come out of the atmosphere eventually and it will come out as rain. Thus, an increase in mean temperature should increase rainfall: where that rain may fall requires detailed measurements, but I think that it is reasonable to assume that a 2 C degree mean temperature increase will result in an increase in the earths average rainfall (a statistic almost as useless as the earth’s average temperature).
Also, increased atmospheric CO2 levels will boost crop yields and there was no mention of CO2 fertilization of plants in the paper. What amazes me is that people will uncritically accept scientifically implausible doomsday climate predictions whereas only a bit of analysis is required to consign the study in question to the dustbin. Either it reflects a dramatic decrease in the population’s level of scientific knowledge or people are too lazy to critically read alarmist papers.
Dropped my SA subscription ten years ago. The rag had become little more than a crackpot group, citing ridiculous social experiments proving their preconceived notions, and, of course AGW galore.
Just their editorials were enough to cause nausea in anyone with an smidgeon of critical faculties.
It’s basically a “Political Science” publication nowadays, although from time to time some real science creeps in, usually in the Astrophysics area, which is one of the few areas of science that has managed to remain unpoliticized. So I’ll read it in the doctor’s waiting room, but they will not get my money.
Peter Gleick says:
January 19, 2011 at 5:40 pm
I guess every once in awhile, an arsonist stumbles across somebody else’s fire.
Luther Wu says:
“Take heart, all you catastrophe whipstocking jockeys- SA pulled that one particularly bogus story and gave you this:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=casualties-of-climate-change ”
Thanks, Luther. The first comment following that SciAm article is well worth reading.
I was a member of AAAS for 25± years, but pulled my subscription in 2008. I stopped reading S.A. 10 years ago because of its supermarket sensationalism.
Yup, looks like they pulled it.
But I noticed this interesting science article on their site…
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=how-many-massacres-will-it-take-for-2011-01-12
The same thing happened to National Geographic.
This just might be the time for Scientic America to fire their content staff and what’s left of their subscibers (we all know who they must be) and jump to the factual science side.
Toss the “could be’s”, “might be’s”, “think’s”, “possibly’s”, “feeling’s”, tag your own on and the computer generated trash science and come clean.
But I have a feeling it’s but a day dream.
In a comment following his last scientifically illiterate rant, a WUWT moderator challenged Peter Gleick to write an article for WUWT. It was predicted that Gleick lacked the “stones” to write an article.
As predicted, Gleick put his tail between his legs and skedaddled. So I would like to personally issue the same challenge: write an article for WUWT. I predict you don’t have the balls, Mr Gleick.☺
You’ve been slapped across the face with a glove. In public. The gauntlet is down.
What a *RAG*!!!
a dood says:
January 19, 2011 at 7:33 pm
Yup, looks like they pulled it.
But I noticed this interesting science article on their site…
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=how-many-massacres-will-it-take-for-2011-01-12
Heres how the media works:
Journalists have to produce “x” stores a day and are under imense time pressure to do this – they no longer have the time to even make a two minute phone call to check facts, theres no way they can do any real journalism or even follow up hot stories from the public – the only way they can meet the daily quota is to become a “copy and paste” robot that blindly copies stories from AP etc…
The stories on AP are often inserted by PR companies and AP themselves do limited fact checking. So if a crap story gets inserted into AP, its immediatly picked up and copy pasted all over the world.
The uptake of online news is also a key driver behind this, its all about whos first and time is everything, no longer do we have time to wait until the morning news – everything must be instant and the downside is immediate meets unchecked.
Quality has been replaced with quantity whilst the overall cost of running a media outlets has been slashed. Nearly all the great investigative journalist are dead – but there is a plus side….
Now there is a number of blogs such as this one that take the time to fact check and ask questions – and via the internet this data can quickly be shared around the world. The smarter journalist have started or will come to realise that they can use these blogs as a source of copy and past material which has actually checked the facts or called BS on a story – and this is how I can see the media working in the near future, at least until the blogs become like media outlets themselves, simply copying and pasting to save time and meet demand.
Heres hoping that WUWT will remain a source of good quality stories, despite what must be a massive drain on Anthony’s time, and at times probably his mental well being!
Smokey says:
You’ve been slapped across the face with a glove. In public. The gauntlet is down.
============================
In addition to Gleick, Smokey, the gauntlet is thrown down for every coward and troll on this site!
Trolls and cowards….you know who you are.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
People the AGW community are behaving more erratically as the organizing principle in their lives crumbles into dust. Think how these people must feel. Their entire self esteem and reason for existence is tied to their “heroic” efforts to “save the world” from Global Warming. They face a future where they are seen as clowns rather than courageous and brilliant heroes. Many of them have wasted their lives on this nonsense. I almost feel sorry for them.
@John M says:
January 19, 2011 at 6:54 pm
One year does make a trend. The trend in sea levels is up. Up is not the same as down. See “1984” for details.
Dave D. says on January 19, 2011 at 6:54 pm
IMO, Shermer is no skeptic. He is just an establishment shill and a wanker.
Thanks Smokey. That first comment WAS well worth reading.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=casualties-of-climate-change ”
Simple study on S.A.
Check out the 1905 “On the Wright Aeroplane and Its Fabled Performance”.
Then check out the 1908 article after the public display (simultaneous, advertised, witnessed by over 1000 people) of the “Fabled Aeroplane”. (I.e., after it became so obvious that you’d be a LAUGHING STOCK for denying it!)
No apology. No retraction, nada.
One of the benefits of having a “looney/left/hoity toit scientist” existence is NEVER HAVING TO SAY YOU ARE SORRY! Just re-write history or say, “We knew that, of course we knew that…what do you think we are, stupid?” (Nervous laugh, worn down cigarette in hand, H.T. to SNL.)
Chris Riley says:
January 19, 2011 at 8:05 pm
People the AGW community are behaving more erratically as the organizing principle in their lives crumbles into dust. Think how these people must feel. Their entire self esteem and reason for existence is tied to their “heroic” efforts to “save the world” from Global Warming. They face a future where they are seen as clowns rather than courageous and brilliant heroes. Many of them have wasted their lives on this nonsense. I almost feel sorry for them.
============================
I would almost feel sorry for them too, if they would just “man up” (or “woman up” as the case may be) and admit they were wrong.
But it looks like these are people in high places who are pathologically incapable of admitting such.
And that is a pity.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Looks like an excellent story for the New Scientist, I wonder if they have the will power to resist using it.
We are more in danger of food shortage from federal laws and regulations than from hot weather.
I saw Korean women standing in water in their bare feet planting rice in a snow storm, so rice can be planted in cold weather but does not rice grow well in warm climates. Yes. And so does corn and wheat.
Perhaps Scientific American should have talked to farmers and especially old farmers. Then they might avoid the embarrassment of having their articles pulled.
That is the way I see it, un scientifically that is. Since the article was not available I am shooting in the dark.
I wonder if Scientific American can use the story of Korean women planting rice in winter.
Mike says:
“One year does make a trend. The trend in sea levels is up. Up is not the same as down. See ‘1984’ for details.”
Yes, and see 1984 for “doublethink.” It’s Orwell’s term for cognitive dissonance.
The sea level trend has been up since the last Ice Age.
But the trend is decelerating…
Another AGW scare falsified.
Chris Riley says:
January 19, 2011 at 8:05 pm
People the AGW community are behaving more erratically as the organizing principle in their lives crumbles into dust. Think how these people must feel. Their entire self esteem and reason for existence is tied to their “heroic” efforts to “save the world” from Global Warming. They face a future where they are seen as clowns rather than courageous and brilliant heroes. Many of them have wasted their lives on this nonsense. I almost feel sorry for them.
____________________________________________
Not much to worry about, Chris. Save your tears.
There are those young proselytes with their natural, albeit naive liberal proclivities who’ve accepted the pretzel logic of the high priests of doom, but as they develop their own capacities for critical analysis, they will learn their lesson and just move on. Life’s nothing but new lessons for them, anyway.
Most older zealots will never give up their beliefs and see the light of truth, since it’s out- shined by their own brilliance.
Don’t forget the “peak oil” bullshit, Smokey; http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911
Little Petey Gleick needed someone to care about his story…. so he came over here to the big dog traffic, threw around some insults and the link to his puff piece.
Peter Gleick says:
January 19, 2011 at 5:40 pm
Funny. It is actually the climate science community that pointed out the errors, not the climate denier community, which never admits their errors. It is real climate scientists that alerted the report’s authors to their errors (they went ahead and published anyway, to the detriment of their reputation). It is real climate scientists that alerted AAAS new feed and Scientific American of the error. It is real climate scientists that pointed out to the public the mistake. Not you deniers.
Funny, Gleick seems to think that he has scored some kind of point for the good guys, the “real climate scientists”. The “real climate scientists” could not afford remain silent and let such an egregiously flawed report stand even though the message aligned with their cause. So am happy that the “real climate scientists” are on the ball because science has suffered enough damage to its reputation already. Conclusion? The rapid response by the “real climate scientists” is more like damage control. Not something to brag or crow about. But one can’t expect much cerebration from someone who uses the pejorative “denier”.
Also read in SciAm the statement: “Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group”. New to me but that explains it all.
another one…
SciAm: »Can ecological models explain global financial markets–and make them more stable?
OMG! Aim these eco computer models now on the global markets to attempt to “correct them”? God have mercy on us all. I wouldn’t trust the models I’ve seen lately to fix my car’s engine let alone fly the world’s markets. The answer: no.
This might work better; http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911
I wonder if there’s a connection here to something else which does put our food production at risk, a sort of distraction for the real reason we may have these crop problems in 10 years. Covered on Sky’s preview of next day papers, Bayer’s pesticide to blame for the wide spread deaths of honey bees. Sorry, can’t recall the paper it was in, but found this:
http://www.globalanimal.org/2010/12/20/wikileaks-says-epa-is-a-buzz-kill-for-bee-colonies/26984/
EPA was well-aware that the pesticide Clothianidin posed some serious risks to honey bees. There have been concerns about this chemical from as far back as 2003, and it’s already been banned in Germany, France, Italy and Slovenia because of its toxicity. But the EPA chose to sweep all that undert the rug to keep the pesticide on the market.
Found it, http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/exclusive-bees-facing-a-poisoned-spring-2189267.html
This is nutty. “Earth may be 2.4 degrees Celsius warmer by 2020, potentially triggering global scrambles for food supplies, according to a new analysis”.
Equally true:
“Earth may have 10000000000 more seagulls by 2020, potentially triggering global scrambles for food supplies, according to a new analysis”.
“Earth may be invaded by aliens by 2020, potentially triggering global scrambles for food supplies, according to a new analysis”.
“Earth may experience unprecedented volcanic activity by 2020, potentially triggering global scrambles for food supplies, according to a new analysis”.
“Earth may endure a nuclear conflict by 2020, potentially triggering global scrambles for food supplies, according to a new analysis”.
“Earth may have a global crop failure by 2020, potentially triggering global scrambles for food supplies, according to a new analysis”.
The list goes on and on.
Scientific American has become nothing more than noise. For more than 20 years they have — in search of a larger reader base, and hence advertisers — published something more properly called “populist science”…which is to say not science at all.
It is instead a pure form of political … science.
Good business strategy…lousy credibility plan.
Hope that works out for you, SA. (wink / nodd)
Read all about Climate Change in “The Economist”
Get the “whole picture”… yeah right… check out this ad…
http://ds.serving-sys.com/BurstingRes///Site-24281/Type-2/ec8265ab-b68f-4687-8245-bdc711cd7841.swf
This AGW bias has become ubiquitous. So now EVERY disaster, (even financial it seems), is caused by that damned man-made excess of CO2 molecules.
The guy standing in the flood waters wants your money…. just say no way !
This organization would rather die than abandon it’s political philosophy of left-wing, frankly disturbingly nonsensical, beliefs that the world is Warming exponentially and the only thing that we can do is destroy America and capitalism.
I guess this means we won’t be seeing this story again until the IPCC publishes its next report.
On Monday I wrote a brief but stern letter to CTV as soon as I saw this load of delusional alarmist fantasy:
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20110118/climate-change-crop-shortages-110118/
CTV runs BS climate stories frequently and has absolutely no ability to assess feedback from climate-literate readers, so it is interesting to see the (to my knowledge unprecedented) update added on Wednesday.
the main problem is the. ,y, give me , x generations belives in this crap the most of the baby boomers and older have some commonsence to weight it up and come up to the fact it is the biggest load of crap of all time
Tom Bakewell said on January 19, 2011 at 4:17 pm:
Such is perfectly understandable on SciAm’s part. Amateurs, lacking appropriate funding and proper support from the official scientific community, do things that are very embarrassing to their professional counterparts. Like authoritatively debunking (C)AGW with a mere laptop.
The global mean temperature data for 2010 is out.
It is 0.475 deg C.
The previous maximum of 0.548 deg C for 1998, 13 years ago, has not been exceeded.
http://bit.ly/f2Ujfn
Global warming has stopped for 13 years, and we continue to count the number of years that the previous maximum has not been exceeded.
The number now is 13!
How many more years is required to declare global warming has stopped?
2? 5? 10?
Sorry if I offend anybody but I stopped buying SciAm when the editorial board was taken over by the girls some years ago. It seemed to be an attempt to be more inclusive or politically correct. When that happened there was a spate of pseudoscience and it all just turned my stomach.
This is from a guy who bought his first copy in 1966 and received each issue with great excitement.
When they brought back some balance into the articles I re-subscribed but dropped out again in 2005 when the AGW propaganda got to be just too much.
Likening it to People magazine is a little unfair to People, they seem to carry a lot of truthful stuff in their articles.
Thank goodness for the Internet in general and WUWT in particular.
The SA article in question seems to have disappeared – the link in the article above no longer works.
I sure miss the Scientific American of my youth.
It used to be reliable and informative.
I’ve put it in the category as Time magazine; arrogant editors trying to tell me I should quit believing my lying eyes and believe them instead.
Smokey says: January 19, 2011 at 7:25 pm
Luther Wu says:
“Take heart, all you catastrophe whipstocking jockeys- SA pulled that one particularly bogus story and gave you this:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=casualties-of-climate-change ”
Thanks, Luther. The first comment following that SciAm article is well worth reading.
Thanks Smokey, that comment is great.
I gave up on SciAm and NG twenty years ago, when they started editorializing instead of reporting. I still get Science News which is all too happy to blather on about climate crap. I’ve half a mind to dump it too but I hate the idea losing the references to so many fields. I’ve read over sixty years worth of SN, in the early 60s I tucked into my dad’s stack of them from the 40s on.
So where can I lay a bet on this prediction? I’ll definately be taking the under.
I’m embarrassed to say I’ve been a long time subscriber of Scientific American. Even though they have infuriated me time and time again with their extreme positions on climate, nuclear power, politics, environment, and on and on, I’ve continued because there were some good nuggets. This year I’ve finally let my subscription lapse.
I think their current editor-in-chief, Mariette DiChristina, is a huge improvement over the previous one, but their regular contributors have become even more extreme. I used to think their skeptic Michael Shermer was on the far edge, but he seems quite mainstream compared to others like Lawrence Krauss and Jeffery Sachs — those guys are the worst of the worst.
MikeEE
Peter Gleick is correct. The Climate Science Rapid Response Team was contacted by more than one journalist two days before the report was made public. These journalists suspected the +2.4C value by 2020 was innaccurate. Gavin Schmidt was alerted to the issue and he immediately contacted the author, Liliana Hirsas, to explain her error. Unfortunately, Hirsas, was either unable to or chose not to stop the presses.
Several scientists also contacted Science Magazine via email before the report was published but apparently that message did not get read quickly enough.
Finally, last night when Scientific American posted the report, several scientists contacted the reporter for that article and within 15 minutes the story was pulled.
Lessons learned:
1) Scientists will point out errors regardless of who makes them.
2) The Food Gap Report, written by a journalist (Hirsas), was not vetted by the scientific peer review process. If more than one scientist had looked at this report it would never have been released.
3) Journalists do have services such as AGU’s Climate Q&A and The Climate Science Rapid Response Team available to them to help avoid making these types of mistakes.
[Question: What true skeptical scientists are on the “Rabid Response Team”?]
Correction: Gavin Schmidt did not directly contact Hirsas although he did provide information to a reporter who then contacted Hisas. Several other scientists did contact her via email and one spoke to Hisas on the phone before the report was released. Sorry for the confusion.
REPLY: Thanks
It’s a hard choice sometimes, between Oprah and SciAm… There are days though, when Oprah has an attractive woman on her show, that she makes it easy for me.
/of course its sarcasm.
There is more “science” in the comments at SA than there is in the rest of the publication combined. it is sad, but mostly because it taints both “Science” and “American” in one phrase.
I have wanted to receive Scientific American for years now, and last year at this time I finally got a subscription. But over the past 12 months there has been so many pages devoted to climate change hype and talk in the magazine that I have decided to let the subscription lapse. I can’t take anymore of it; I don’t just want to pay for it. I’m deeply disappointed. The final issue arrived this month.
Scott Mandia says:
January 20, 2011 at 6:31 am
Scott – thanks for the time line. But you did forget one lesson learned.
4. SA is not a science magazine, but rather a tabloid that happens to post things that have the word science in the article.
Sadly abandoned SA years ago although I occasionally buy astronomy issues. They started to lose it going hysterical with ant-missile defense with many articles proving (sic) that it was technically impossible to destroy an incoming warhead with a missile. Then Carl Sagan’s articles asserting that Iraq’s burning oil fields would bring on ‘nuclear winter’ pre Gulf War One. I do subscribe to Science News which continues to annoy me with their AGW propaganda. Time to start annoying them back with complaints to the editor-in-chief.
Science Diet is a top of the line dog food.
Scientific American is the top of the line for bird cage liner.
From Scott Mandia on January 20, 2011 at 6:31 am:
Thus, given how often the likes of Trenberth, Hansen, Schmidt, and Jones have criticized Mann’s work and his flawed Hockey Stick graph, in numerous peer-reviewed scientific journals, and especially in the IPCC assessment reports… We must conclude they are not scientists.
Thanks for clearing that up.
Even in a cooling world AGW will not give up without a fight.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12241692
“Agencies including the UK Met Office suggest 2011 is likely to be cooler on average than 2010, as La Nina conditions dominate.
The variation between El Nino and La Nina can alter the global temperature by half a degree or so.
But the variations it produces sit on top of a slow, steady warming trend dating back half a century, ascribed to the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from industry, agriculture, deforestation and other human activities”
Scott Mandia says:
January 20, 2011 at 6:31 am
“1) Scientists will point out errors regardless of who makes them.
2) The Food Gap Report, written by a journalist (Hirsas), was not vetted by the scientific peer review process. If more than one scientist had looked at this report it would never have been released.”
Uh oh, Scott and his team might cause a shortfall of material for the next IPCC report…
Oh, i forgot: The IPCC isn’t important anymore anyway; the globalists will use the Biodiversity scam now…
Scientific American flipped 180° when a German publisher bought it in 1986.
Since most Germans are hopeless Greens, and since Greens are Lysenkoist watermelons, they ruined the science aspect of Scientific American.
dear Philip Finck
I find it very interesting that the goobermint of Nova Scotia has officially adopted a sea level rise of between 1.0 and 1.4 metres over the next century, that rate of relative sea level rise is clearly preposterous. You mention a government report, is there somewhere one might find a copy of said report?
The Scientific American article is back up again:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=climate-change-crop-shortfall
Will Climate Change Cause Crop Shortfalls by 2020?
Editor’s Note: This story from Climatewire is informed, in part, by a press release that was subsequently retracted by the online news service of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The study itself has not been retracted. It presents an aggressive scenario for future warming under climate change that many climate scientists question. We will publish an Observations blog post later this afternoon to offer more background on the issues surrounding this story.
Scott Mandia says:
January 20, 2011 at 6:31 am
“Peter Gleick is correct.”
So you agree that Gleick was correct in his use of the term “denier”?
gavin at realclimate is currently saying that the report has errors.
Meantime Scientific American have republished the report.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/01/getting-things-right/
gavin @ 20 January 2011
Last Monday, I was asked by a journalist whether a claim in a new report from a small NGO made any sense. The report was mostly focused on the impacts of climate change on food production – clearly an important topic, and one where public awareness of the scale of the risk is low. However, the study was based on a mistaken estimate of how large global warming would be in 2020. I replied to the journalist (and indirectly to the NGO itself, as did other scientists) that no, this did not make any sense, and that they should fix the errors before the report went public on Thursday. For various reasons, the NGO made no changes to their report. The press response to their study has therefore been almost totally dominated by the error at the beginning of the report, rather than the substance of their work on the impacts. This public relations debacle has lessons for NGOs, the press, and the public.
The erroneous claim in the study was that the temperature anomaly in 2020 would be 2.4ºC above pre-industrial. This is obviously very different from the IPCC projections:
[Snip. You know why. ~dbs, mod.]
“”””” Gavin Schmidt, for example, a NASA climatologist, quickly wrote: “2.4C by 2020 (which is 1.4C in the next 10 years – something like six to seven times the projected rate of warming) has no basis in fact.” “””””
The above was found under Peter Gleick’s name over on some web site he linked to; well it had a ghastly green background to the web page; almost made me sea sick.
So I presume (lacking any explanation) that Gavin Schmitt actually said :- “2.4C by 2020 has no basis in fact.” and that also presumably Peter Gleick; also lacking further explanation said :- “Gavin Schmidt, for example, a NASA climatologist, quickly wrote: “…” (which is 1.4C in the next 10 years – something like six to seven times the projected rate of warming) ”
Now my Gregorian adjusted Calendar says that this is the year 2011, so that means in 9 years it will be 2020, so the Temperature will go up 2.4 deg C in nine years, and then drop a whole degree in the next year to get down to only 1.4 deg C rise in ten years.
Yes that sound pretty reasonable to me Peter. Now how did you do that analysis ?
I am not the least bit surprised that Scientific American is telling lies. They, and their supported Forum Physics have an appalling attitude to anything that goes against the established ‘science’. My interest is in the Electric Universe. This is a part of Plasma Cosmology of which the Physics Forum ‘mentor’ (read Mod) had to say…..
This is the link to the post where it was said.
We have seen this time and time again is so many spheres, especially where a new idea threatens the funding and livelihood, and cosy club atmosphere, of the mainstream scientists who have completely forgotten that science is about questioning all that is around us. I was appalled.
Lindzen made basically the same mistake as the Argentinian NGO did. He said:
(http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/17/richard-lindzen-a-case-against-precipitous-climate-action/ )
“the greenhouse forcing from man made greenhouse gases is already about 86% of what one expects from a doubling of CO2 (with about half coming from methane, nitrous oxide, freons and ozone), and alarming predictions depend on models for which the sensitivity to a doubling for CO2 is greater than 2C which implies that we should already have seen much more warming than we have seen thus far, even if all the warming we have seen so far were due to man.”
He makes the same two errors as the NGO – neglecting the negative aerosol forcings and the ‘warming in the pipeline’ in this calculation (except using a different time window: 2010 vs 2020).
My commentary is here:
http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/food-gap-ngo-2-4-degrees-2020-no-way/
I noted that too when it happened. I wrote to him expressing my dismay at his lack of skepticism, but the letter went unanswered.
Which just goes to show that even the most prominent climate scientists don’t have a good handle on what really goes on with climate.
Bad idea–sequestering CO2 out of the immediate carbon cycle precludes it from participating in renewable energy, practically forever. Their whole premise is based on the false theory that CO2 is the only global-warming culprit. In other words, they have their ladder against the wrong wall.
“This just goes to illustrate how one unchecked story, gets into the top science news publications, with apparently nobody questioning the claims. ”
What it goes to show is that everyone is human and that it was climate scientists themselves that corrected the mistake, and quickly. In fact it was noticed before publication but it still got out. Climate Science integrity is intact and shows that it will correct and learn from its mistakes.
In stark contrast, has their been a correction and apology from Richard Lindzen and everybody who ran his story? Hypocritical much? He has made the same exact error, and even though it has been pointed out in the past has made the same claims for 3 years. But the skeptic religion never question what their evangelists say so he can continue doing it, no such integrity on that side.
Smokey says:
January 20, 2011 at 11:18 am
Scientific American flipped 180° when a German publisher bought it in 1986.
Since most Germans are hopeless Greens, and since Greens are Lysenkoist watermelons, they ruined the science aspect of Scientific American.
—
Great! So it’s really been Scientific Deutsch magazine since I dropped my subscription?
One more thing I thought that was… now isn’t. ;•)
Michael says:
“Climate Science integrity is intact and shows that it will correct and learn from its mistakes.”
What a load of horse manure. Michael Mann’s Hokey Stick has been thoroughly debunked. Thirteen years after he published MBH98, he still refuses to disclose his data, methodology and metadata. Where’s his “integrity”??
If it were not for projection, Michael wouldn’t have anything to say.
There is no such thing as “Climate Science integrity.” None. It doesn’t exist.
Smokey you love using the word debunked without any actual proof. Michael Manns hockey stick has been proved correct numerous times by different studies with different data. Heres one (I could provide more). Data is freely available for you to make your own.
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/ammann/millennium/refs/Wahl_ClimChange2007.pdf
Contrast this to Lindzen using IPCC information to prove them wrong by leaving out anything that does not prove his point. Conveniently selective. Also where does he get the wild assumption that we are in a natural warming period? From what I understand our current orbit, solar and volcanic activity means we should be in a cooling period (so our warming is doubly concerning). Wheres your proof for that?
Climate Science integrity 1
Skeptic science integrity 0
One possible reason for some of the amateurish garbage printed in the likes of SA (e.g. – they are not alone), is that the latter can no longer find scientists to become journalists. It is far easier today to recruit young people who have attained high class degrees in “journalism” whilst at university (college); not so 20 years ago.
Michael says:
January 22, 2011 at 8:47 pm
<Michael Mann's hockey stick has been proved correct numerous times by different studies with different data. Heres one (I could provide more). Data is freely available for you to make your own.
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/ammann/millennium/refs/Wahl_ClimChange2007.pdf
Good grief. You declare victory with Wahl and Ammann!?!?!? The paper that had to be resurrected using all the strength and power of the hockey machine?
You must be joking.
http://en.wordpress.com/tag/wahl-and-ammann/
On the other hand, keep bringing it up. It’s the gift that keeps on giving!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/25/case-study-climate-science-integrity
A quote from the above link:
” Ironically, Watts’ blog also ran a story which was highly critical of Scientific American for initially publishing an article containing the FEU errors. However, just a few hours later, Scientific American ran a new story correcting the FEU errors. One wonders when Watts will correct his own blog’s propagation of Lindzen’s errors. ”
Has there been a retraction here at WUWT? I looked, but maybe I am missing it. If somebody finds it, give me the link.
[Reply: To get current, read the article comments. This has already been discussed. ~dbs, mod.]
Quote:
“And the domino newscloning effect continues…
UPDATE: At 5:30PM PST, it appears SciAm finally realized they’d been had and pulled it. ”
No, SciAm realized that a genuine mistake was made. And sarcastic comments like the newscloning remark above are incredibly hypocritical when this blog often posts news articles as well. There appears to be a strong bias when statements like this are made.