We mentioned before how we thought John Cook’s Hiroshima bomb global warming comparator sidebar widget for websites was ridiculous propaganda. True to form, yesterday the SkS Kidz tried to elevate the application status by creating what appears to be a fake “hack”, complete with a gussied up timeline of them supposedly solving the issue.
Of course, from my viewpoint, there was no hack at all, it was simply a juvenile attempt to draw attention to their widget by adding a collection of bogus metrics such as kitten sneezes, bovine flatulence, Santa chimney excursions, cheeseburgers, and yes, even “twerking” as these energy expenditures supposedly relate to heat collecting in the atmosphere. The hope was that it would generate some concern, maybe some outrage, which would translate to some news coverage. I’ve seen PR tricks like this before, and this wasn’t even a good one.
The dead giveaway is the way they describe the hack in the post about it. Gone are the concerned, simmering hushed condemnations we are used to hearing with their last embarrassment on the Internet, instead we get descriptions of each metric added with this bit of praise:
The bovine flatulence metric appears to get the total methane production from Methane Emissions from Cattle, by Johnson and Johnson, 1995, which puts the figure at 80 teragrams per year. The energy released by combusting methane is easy to find. Of course, this doesn’t account for increases in cattle populations in the past twenty years.
Other figures are easier to verify. The hacker at least seems to have done his (or her) homework.
But twerking by itself is just plain wrong. Mixing twerking with science is an abomination.
The comments left on the post also indicate some, but not all, figured out this “hack” was bogus. This was co-written by the same Bob Lacatena that supposedly had the previous SkS hack all figured out, only to be mocked by Lucia in six parts.
As Mark Steyn described in his uncertainty over Bill McKibben’s recent call for climate scientists to go on strike:
But I had to read this piece twice just to make sure it wasn’t one of those leaden April Fool’s jests the author can’t quite pull off.
In the case of this post from the SkS kids “…leaden April Fool’s jests the author can’t quite pull off.” sums it up pretty well in my opinion.
This PR widget was already ridiculous with Hiroshima bombs, now this lame attempt to bring attention to it on April Fools Day simply elevates their work to desperation status.
As Mark Steyn described in his uncertainty over Bill McKibben’s recent call for climate scientists to go on strike:
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Seems Mark Steyn is finding within the climate field a treasure trove of “interesting” personalities he can mock and ridicule. What fun this will be.
Ooops wrong thread.
Not content with trying to scare people with their end of world cries, they now try to scare their own patrons into stopping using their widgets … bizarre.
If you had a widget that reportedly (joke or no joke) had been hacked, would you keep it on your site?
I thought the Hiroshima bomb widget was the April Fool, am I wrong?
I thought the kitten sneezes was a p155take! Ah well, perhaps I failed the gullibility test there.
Science Killing Scoundrel says:
April 2, 2014 at 9:52 pm
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Yep, that’s a CHICOM copy of the Soviet SKS. CHICOMS are Commies, too. You went to a lot of trouble to deflect my hint that Greens are watermelons, Red inside.
I won’t say it’s always fun when
CommiesGreens drive by, but it’s always obvious.It’s probably sensible that somebody read and keep an eye on them, for their own safety if nothing else. But it’s not going to be me. Even here I won’t read most articles about that website.
How many cremations a day? Or is that too Hollocausty?
If you think your site has been compromised in any way you would take it down, or your ISP would. If a hacker can change a widget there is no telling what other nasties they can drop on the site. Leaving it up while it is being secured is no less that irresponsible. PowerDNS provide domain name resolution. I have informed them that for a period of time they were providing DNS for a compromised site. I don’t expect a response.
“”leaden April Fool’s jests the author can’t quite pull off.” sums it up pretty well in my opinion.”
I’m fairly convinced that somebody was pulling something off…..
Well at least SkS manages to occasionaly get above the 100,000 page rank mark.
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/skepticalscience.com
Pierre is slowly catching up on them though.
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/notrickszone.com
Steve smokes them.
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/stevengoddard.wordpress.com
Yes, if i followed SKS then I suppose I would continue to host the widget even after i thought it had been hacked.
The SKS have a strong following of true believers. After Bob Lacatena’s lengthy tale disclosing the hilarious details of a second incident in which user names and passwords were stolen their readers reacted oddly. Here’s an example,
“MP3CE at 08:16 AM on 24 March, 2014
Realy KUDOS to you, guys !!! What a great job you do here!”
I bet Cook couldn’t stop giggling when he thought of that.
OT. The BBC & the Wet Office in the UK are making hay whilst the Sun doesn’t shine about the weather conditions over here. For the first time I have heard them in the last couple of days down drone on about “pollution” over Britain, referring to UK emissions & EU emissions being blown over to us by winds from north Africa, aclong with vast dust clouds of sand particles, whipped up by well known meteorological phenomena, & being deposited on the ground, streets, & cars. They don’t miss a trick. The emission are ALWAY there ALL year round, not that they are significant in any case. So, what do they do? Classically, they get spokespersons/come-drama-queens to spout about “health” & “risk” telling us all that we should stay indoors all day, don’t do any strenuous exercise especially if you have a chest condition, coupled with the statements like We don’t (yes we do) want to panic or frighten people just make them aware (read scared)!” The good old Precautionary Principle is always good for a scare story! Where I live in Devon in the South-West of England, we have beautiful iron rich & fertile clayey soil, & it’s ALL mud when wet (as it is now), & ALL dust when dry as the tractors roar around the lanes! We’re used to it. Just letting you know what is coming your way re-ramping up the pollution scares as AGW is clearly dying in Europe, it’s just going to be a long lingering death. On Channel 4 News last night, Richard Tol, dissenting UNIPCC professor advising the GWPF & other organisations, was hung out to dry by biased anchorman/woman letting loose the Grantham Institute’s rabid dog Bob Ward unfettered rantings against Professor Tol, & very little opportunity for redress the balance, yet more not-so-impartial” reporting in the UK! Details over at Bishop Hill’s blog. AtB
PS the soil is red due to the iron I should have added!
… Pass ‘often wrong john’ a brown paper bag so that he can re-breathe some of his own co2 contribution to stop his giggling before he wets himself.
The stupid still burns. American cattle herds are at low levels not seen since 1953.
They can’t even do humor properly. And they expect people to take them seriously?
How about a widget to track the accumulation of bogus climate science? This could be represented in terms of m^3 of flatulence, gallons of acid reflux, pounds of manure, …
How many Krakatoas is that? 0.002?
Kitten sneezes divided by Hiroshima bombs times the cube root of pigs in a poke at half past a monkeys ass will equate to AGW logic about something…go figure…or not.
Quadrillion Kitten-Sneezes thus can be entered in the annals of the List of Humourous Measurements:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_units_of_measurement
Kitten sneezes is a feature not a hack. Also more appropriate for the the mind numbed CACCA (CATastrophic anthropogenic climate change alarmist) crowd.