Sharp eyed WUWT reader Rick K spotted this advertisement on Yahoo News:
I double checked what Rick K reported, and yes, they are running this ad. Either they just don’t care that they are running ads for “results” prior to any hard data being published or this is some sort of advertising scheduling slipup. Given how sloppy this laughable facade of a scientific expedition has been so far, publishing “live” biometric readings that were actually 30 days old, I’m guessing the latter.
Readers, feel free to witness this yourself, double check the experience. Here is the URL:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20090422/sc_space/darkgulpingcouldexplainblackholes
You may have to refresh a few times since ads in the spot rotate. Here is the full sized advertisement:
The link simply goes to their main website, I’m betting though that there is some sort of “results” page that it was supposed to be linked to. And what sort of advice could some Arctic ice trekkers possibly give me about my business related to “global warming” anyway? The absurdity of such advertised advice is mind boggling.
This is what happens when you mix the following ingredients:
1) An insurance company (Catlin)
2) Environmental zealots willing to stage an expedition in exchange for money on the premise that “science will be done”(Pen Hadow et al)
3) Gullible celebrity sponsors (Charles, Prince of Wales)
4) Gullible real scientists, like Ron Kwok of NASA Jet Propulsion Lab who was lured into making statements like this one, proudly displayed on their web site:
Tell me, Dr. Kwok, just how will Catlin Arctic Survey tell me how soon “global warming will affect my business’?
A better question might be, “how soon will your association with these people ruin your career”? Do you already have the results of the data analysis ready to go with the advertising campaign?
Perhaps we should let Mr. Kwok know what is going on, because the sooner he distances himself from these people, the less chance that JPL will be tarnished further. As a US taxpayer I am concerned that our publicly funded science programs have anything to do with the Catlin farce. Fortunately, our scientists are required to keep their contact info in the public domain
The results of a Google Search tell us how to warn Mr. Kwok of this Catlin farce, perhaps he is unaware:
R. Kwok, is with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, 91109-. 8099, USA telephone: 818-354-5614, e-mail: ronald.kwok@jpl.nasa.gov
Perhaps their media relations people and director would be interested to know what Mr. Kwok has gotten himself and JPL connected with also.
I respect the work of the fine men and women at JPL, there is still time to step away before real damage is done. In the meantime, I weep for science.
Any bets that Insurance company’s will use the threat of “Manmade” Global Warming to raise rates (ie it’s your fault rates are going up), but will argue “Act of Nature” when it comes time for someone to make a claim.
snip off topic
Saved you the trouble
The ad is still there on Yahoo. Recycled maybe 15-20 times before it appeared.
One can only imagine the level of one-sided Catlin Arctic Survey media propaganda we would all be exposed to in a pre-World Wide Web society. There would be little opportunity to take a skeptical look at their selectively released details and data, let alone make any type of widespread rebuttal available to balance any debate.
I would assert that the worst thing that ever happened to the AGW industry was the popularization of the Web beginning in 1994-95. While the Web has certainly and immensely helped with the spread of biased AGW dogma, the ability of those not easily swayed by a “near consensus” of scientific opinion (“The science is settled”) to correspond and refute the former near-monopoly of information has left the those not accustomed to widespread challenge scrambling and ever more desperate in their discrediting of their intellectual opponents.
Unfortunately, there will be a lot of pressure for the ‘data’ to show something relevant. Therefore I won’t be surprised to hear this expedition has discovered its existing conclusion…. well, except it will surely be “worse than expected”.
According to RC commenters Acrtic sea ice is vanishing faster than ever.
Smokey (10:30:23) :
I agree about RC, but I was surprised Gavin left my pretty hefty critiquing up. Two rather lengthy ones.
The responses are just rich. More than the usual and I triggered a nearly complete sampling of their most extreme notions.
It’s something to see. Their take on who we are, who’s “behind” our skepticism and what we have is reaching new levels of bizarre.
It’s as if they have never witnessed ANY discussions that happen here or CA.
And mixed with more claims that AGW has already caused extinctions and that Arctic sea ice is more rapidly vanishing there appears to be no limits to their imaginations and pandemonium.
That is one strange phenomenon.
Too strange to ignore.
While we proceed here I think it is and will be instructive to occasionaly watch that strange behavior as well.
Jack Green (07:51:45) :
How soon will Global Warming affect your business? Soon if your name is Catlin because Catlin offers highly speculative securities in disaster insurance swaps. Scare people and they buy insurance.
http://www.investegate.co.uk/Article.aspx?id=200609270700355217J
…………….
That’s a very interesting link.
Surely, though, their deal with Bay Haven is hedging against their main position, which is that there won’t be many catastrophes. Maybe they’re starting to get nervous now that the latest Catlin expedition data has been fed into their risk assessment models.
Will I be able to buy a swap on your house getting washed away?
I’ve told you I ‘ve smelled a rat!
Rich (09:26:33) :
“National Geographic is reporting on the expedition and the single-year ice.
Apr. 22 article.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/090422-arctic-ice-survey-video-ap.html”
Rich, thanks for the link, I have send them an e-mail:
I would like to know which ice melt the Catlin Expedition has encountered during their expedition?
In the mean time I would like to thank your National Geographic Team for their contribution pushing the the AGW/Climate Change doctrine.
Thanks to these contributions we now know which scientists have sold out on their scientific integrity, only to serve a political scam.
The latest Rasmussen Pole has revealed that after twenty years of Global Warming Scare only 34% of public believes it is true.
The number is sinking.
And now even our sun has developed into a climate denier, maybe the time has arrived for NG to return to the honest science and fact finding in her programs and publications we were used to.
I am very confident that you will gain a bigger audience if you do.
With kind regards,
Ron de Haan
P.s. a link to your site and reports and comments on the Catlin Expedition have been published at http://wattsupwiththat.com
It’s surprising the kind of relaxed job NASA people have, they are everywhere except where expected to do their job? Can some explain how is it possible?
the insurance industry produces massive profits from the scare mongering through increased rates.
plenty of consequences-of-climate-change-jobs have been created and these people just have to compute and preach disaster, because otherwise, they would make themselves unnecessary.
Why not let the readers decide if something is off topic or not? (SNIP!)
Reply: See blog policy ~ charles the moderator
Alright then: Did the Catlin insurance ads appear shortly before, or shortly after the recent Rasmussen poll results … showing that public acceptance of the anthropogenic global warming message is in freefall?
And, this rush to put the Catlin Survey on the ice … have they also perhaps been following the sequence of poll-results, showing … not melting ice, but a progressive meltdown of public credence in their premises?
The insurance company & the survey company may be dashing to get in under the wire, before the whole human-caused climate-warming performance folds up the tent, eh?
Bravo Paul M for your excellent reminder that the meter was based on the distance from the equator to the pole. I guess the scientists missed that little lesson. Remind me not to ever fly with these guys. For the benefit of the metric “deniers” that still use nautical miles and knots, the distance to the pole in nautical miles is even simpler, 60x(90-L in degrees) – L minutes -L seconds/60.
Why don’t we have an intergovernmental organization to ban those pesky minutes and seconds from coordinates? Better yet, why don’t we decimalize the whole thing and pass a law to move the tropic and arctic circles.
Given the Keystone Cops-like aspects of the Catlin Expedition, I would see it as another unintended slip up – remember folks, the only conspiracy we have hard data on was Watergate, and it blew up with a few months because humans are just not that good a keeping quiet.
It’s just what happens to a belief system that isn’t based on solid scientific fact. It’s a consensus thing, and when consensus is grounded in fiction, all sorts of unpredictable things happen.
Having written that, it’s none the less sad and another page to the book of human follies.
And what sort of advice could some Arctic ice trekkers possibly give me about my business related to “global warming” anyway? The absurdity of such advertised advice is mind boggling.
Particularly since your business is weather measurement devices and software! (If it’s no use to you, how could it be of any use to anybody?)
[snip – thread is about Catlin Arctic survey, not ozone, , not Antarctica, feel free to repost on a relevant thread]
Well, one might argue that the entire Catlin expedition is out in the ozone . . .
As a result of the Catlin sponsorship of this scientific abomination, anyone who has any connections whatsoever with Catlin, should cancel all coverage with them. Hit them where it hurts, and then tell them why.
I know how Global Warming will affect your business… it is going to cause your taxes to go up on energy and commodities and put a limit on the amount of production and growth that you can have with a downward sliding target.
End result your business will be smaller, less profitable or non-existent.
I did not even have to freeze my a__ off to figure that one out.
The only insurance you need is your vote and your voice, use both to mitigate the damage to your business.
Catlin Arctic Ice Survey Puts Their Lives on the line for their beliefs in Global Warming, watch out for thin ice along with thin science.
Hey you guys, leave Catlin alone! I bought a very good Y2K insurance policy from them in 1999.
How fitting that the advertisement for disappearing ice which is not happening
appears on a Web page about black holes that don’t exist. Just as the Earth’s
climate is driven to a great extent by the electrical currents between the Sun
and the Earth, so are the large-scale structures in the universe (galaxies,
galaxy clusters, etc.) created through plasma phenomena. This theory,
well developed by Hannes Alfvén and others, has no need for singularities in
space (black holes) or time (Big Bang). The universe is 99.9% plasma and
is largely driven by electromagnetic phenomena.
The beautiful irony is that the Catlin ad came up with a real science story. Note this quote from astrophysicist Kinwah Wu in the article:
“[‘Dark gulping’ is] a viable, possible scenario,” Wu told SPACE.com. “The model works, but it doesn’t mean that nature behaves like that. We need more observational proof or disproof of this.”
Isn’t this the basic drum that most of us have been beating in the AGW debate?
Does anybody else think it is somewhat irrelevent for them to report their longitude. We can tell their distance from the pole knowing only their Latitude; and that in fact is true anywwhere on earth.
Of course they appear to be not heading for the pole, but seem bound and determined to circumnavigate it instead.
Actually, I’m not against any group of individuals trying to doa dash to the pole; it’s just another version of an Iron Man Triathlon. Adn if you are going to stress yourself like that, why not try and do something useful. Apparently their organisers didn’t think of anything useful for them to do.
Some places up there are only 30 metres deep to the bottom, so I would want to try ice fishing in those holes to see what species I could catch in those waters.
Does anybody else think that it is a little weird to call it complete ice coverage, if only 15% of an area was actually covered in ice. 85% coverage, I could buy, but 15% sounds like being in the middle of a school of portuguese man of war Jellyfish, blowing around on the surface of the ocean.
This expedition reminds me of an article I read many years ago in an electronic magazine. Someone had donated an hour of computer time (IBM 1103) to the authors, so they decided to do a Monte Carlo analysis of a two transistor amplifier, which was supposed to have been worst case designed to have a voltage gain of 10, with a range of 9-11. Their analysis said that one particular resistor was the critical element in determining the gain, and the gain wasn’t centrered on 10 at all so the computer suggested they change that resistor value to another value. The Monte Carlo even claimed to get gains outside the range of the worst case design limits.
Well the point was that it was a lousy amplifier design anyway, and any technician could have told them which resistor value was critical, and told them to change that value to center the gain at 10.
But they could have rearranged the same number of components into a better feedback amplifier configuration and made the gain dependent on only two resistors, and pretty much independent of the transistors.
The computer resource was wasted on what was fundamentally a lousy design.
The Catlin money is being wasted on what was a lousy expediction design; right from the start.
OT [snip but thank you]
A rather fine actor called Kwok played the character Cato (sometimes Kato) alongside Peter Sellers’ bumbling and incompetent Inspector Clouseau in a number of the Pink Panther films. How very appropriate.