Thursday 18 December 2008

Svante Björck, Karl Ljung and Dan Hammarlund

An April 2007 study revealed the Earth’s climate “seesawing” during the last 10,000 years, according to Swedish researchers Svante Björck, Karl Ljung and Dan
Hammarlund of Lund U
niversity.

These scientists appear to have been wrongly included on the 650 list just because someone thought their research was skeptical of manmade global warming. From the blog Uppsalainitiativet we learn that these scientists are not too happy about their inclusion on the list:

Cited Swedish Researchers in Inhofe 650 are upset

http://uppsalainitiativet.blogspot.com/2008/12/cited-swedish-researchers-in-inhofe-650.html

Here is a press release they made about the paper, as listed on sciencedaily in April 2007:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070428170229.htm

The citations on the EPW List don't come from nowhere. They are always based on some media article or blog post somewhere. So on a hunch I went over to wattsupwiththat.com and went back to April 30th 2007, the day that the sciencedaily article was released and started flipping forward.
Aha:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/05/02/earths-climate-is-see-sawing/

So here's the story of how Svante Björck, Karl Ljung and Dan Hammarlund got onto the EPW list. Or rather here's my guess at how it really happened:
  1. Svante Björck, Karl Ljung and Dan Hammarlund announce their research which appears on a number of online news sites.
  2. Because it contains the statement "These results imply that Europe may face a slightly cooler future than predicted by IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change" it gets jumped on by the skeptic blogs.
  3. The skeptic blogs load it with words it doesn't even say or support.
  4. Because it's been featured on skeptic blogs it gets auto-collected onto the EPW list of 650, probably without a second check.
I bet this research was "interpreted" at some point by icecap.us as well.

3 comments:

  1. A few quick comments:

    First of all, you know full well that these scientists (Svante Björck, Karl Ljung and Dan Hammarlund) are not and were never part of the 650 plus or last years 400 plus. Your own list does not even include them. Your blog post implies they are part of the 650 plus dissenting scientist count and that is clearly not the case.

    As to the scientists’ complaint of being in the 650 plus scientists report -- they were merely included under the category entitled:

    “Sampling of inconvenient scientific developments in 2007 for proponents of catastrophic man-made global warming: [Updated - 12-24-2007]”

    Their report was cited as an example of the above, nothing more, nothing less.

    As for your overall count of the scientists, ( http://650list.blogspot.com/2008/12/names-on-650-list.html ) it was mostly correct, but you made at least one critical error which shows a lack of thoroughness on your part. You included several scientists in your overall count as “skeptical” who were very clearly noted to be “non-skeptics.”

    You included scientists: Frappier, Patzert, Pilkey, etc. in your total count. But alas, these scientists all appear in a separate category in the report titled:

    “The following scientists may not be referred to as "skeptical" but they make very important and noteworthy points: (Note: The below scientists are not included in total tally of skeptical scientists)”

    Please pay more attention to detail.

    But at least you are light years ahead of Tim Lambert's embarrassing rants at Deltoid blog. Lambert, the “computer scientist” fails basic arithmetic. The poor hapless math challenged Lambert has now claimed twice that the Senate report of 650 plus scientist actually included only 604 scientists!
    ( http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/12/more_on_inhofes_alleged_list_o.php )

    Lambert even linked to your blog noting well over 650 scientists in one of his blog entries claiming there was only 604 scientists! Perhaps when Lambert figures out how to do simple addition, he may be able to improve his ability to run a smear blog more effectively.

    Sincerely,
    Marc Morano
    Communications Director
    EPW Minority

    ReplyDelete
  2. I can make the case for them either being on or off the list. I am not entirely sure who should decide. For now I'll just compromise and leave things how they are.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Marc, you can't have it both ways. You object to Bob's list because he included the ones in the category of non-skeptical scientists. But you object to my count because I left these ones out.

    ReplyDelete