[asa] Rush Falls for Global Warming Denier Hoax

<Gomer Pile voice> Surprise, surprise, surprise </Gomer Pile voice>,
Rush fell into a global warming denier hoax on November 8. Even his
fellow skeptics quickly smelled a rat (by the name of David Thorpe).
The hoaxer's classification of two kinds of climate skeptics is a good
one and why we should not be reposting freepers because many of them
do not have a "good and transparent understanding of science and
economics".

Here's some of the "math":

δ161x Λ³Жญ5,6,1,8Φ-4 = {(ΣΨ²Њyt3-14๖P9) x 49}/2β x
⅜kxgt-§

How about some geological eras:

  "Miocene, Pliocene and Plasticine"

First, the hoaxer.

http://lowcarbonkid.blogspot.com/

The sceptics can be divided into two camps: those who base their
arguments on a good and transparent understanding of the science and
economics; and those who don't, instead attacking the proponents on
personal grounds. And they do get extremely vituperative.

I recently collaborated in an elaborate hoax - called "a spoof that
puts the fun back into lying about science" by desmogblog - that was
intended to smoke out the latter sort. It was so successful it was
syndicated across 600 radio stations in the US.

A client wrote a fake paper, purporting to 'prove' that rather than
fossil fuel burning it was the previously undetected emissions from
undersea bacteria which were responsible for the last 140 years'
increase in atmospheric concentrations.

We said it was from a fake 'Journal of Geoclimatic Studies', based at
a fake Institute of Geoclimatic Studies at Okinawa University, in
Japan. We had a fake Editorial Board, back issues, editorial and other
papers.

The 4000 word paper itself, Carbon dioxide production by benthic
bacteria: the death of manmade global warming theory? contained graphs
and numerous references, and was launched on its own website late
afternoon on 7 November. (It has since been taken down.)

Within a few hours, the blogosphere was ablaze with the news, and a
number of bloggers fell for the scam. However, we had deliberately
made it fairly transparent, and easy to see that it was not a genuine
paper. After all, a simple 'whois' look-up revealed my name as the
domain owner, and Googling the contributors or the institution drew a
blank.

That his hoax was transparent and obvious was quickly shown by looking
at traditional climate skeptics. The following showed up on Roy
Spencer's site:
http://www.weatherquestions.com/Roy-Spencer-on-global-warming.htm

SPECIAL NOTICE: (11/08/07)
TO: Listeners of Rush Limbaugh on Thursday, November 8, 2007
FROM: Roy W. Spencer
RE: GLOBAL WARMING STUDY HOAX

Yesterday (11/7/07), a "research study" was circulating on the
internet which claimed to have found the "real" reason for global
warming. Even though the hoax was quite elaborate, and the paper
looked genuine, a little digging revealed that the authors, research
center, and even the scientific journal the study was published in,
did not exist. I sent an e-mail to Rush about the issue regarding the
hoax, with a copy of the "research study". Unfortunately, my very
brief note to Rush was not very clear, and he thought that I was
calling global warming a hoax, rather than the study. Even though Rush
has told me not to worry about it, and that "the buck stops here" with
him, I just wanted to apologize to everyone for this misunderstanding,
as I feel that better wording on my part would have prevented this
from happening.

-Roy W. Spencer

Roger Pielke chimed in here:

http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/001258sokal_revisited_i_.html

Benny Peiser sent around on his CCNet list a link to the following
paper:

Carbon dioxide production by benthic bacteria: the death of manmade
global warming theory? Journal of Geoclimatic Studies (2007) 13:3.
223-231.

It has the following statement within the text:

Moreover we note that there is no possible mechanism by which
industrial emissions could have caused the recent temperature
increase, as they are two orders of magnitude too small to have
exerted an effect of this size. We have no choice but to conclude that
the recent increase in global temperatures, which has caused so much
disquiet among policy makers, bears no relation to industrial
emissions, but is in fact a natural phenomenom.
These findings place us in a difficult position. We feel an obligation
to publish, both in the cause of scientific objectivity and to prevent
a terrible mistake - with extremely costly implications - from being
made by the world's governments. But we recognise that in doing so, we
lay our careers on the line. As we have found in seeking to broach
this issue gently with colleagues, and in attempting to publish these
findings in other peer-reviewed journals, the "consensus" on climate
change is enforced not by fact but by fear. We have been warned,
collectively and individually, that in bringing our findings to public
attention we are not only likely to be deprived of all future sources
of funding, but that we also jeopardise the funding of the departments
for which we work.

We believe that academic intimidation of this kind contradicts the
spirit of open enquiry in which scientific investigations should be
conducted. We deplore the aggressive responses we encountered before
our findings were published, and fear the reaction this paper might
provoke. But dangerous as these findings are, we feel we have no
choice but to publish.

Shocking, it seems. But call me a skeptic skeptic - I'm calling this a
hoax.

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Mon Nov 12 10:02:02 2007