Tuesday, June 12, 2012

The study was peer reviewed by Emily Latella

Oh good grief:
The paper might have been scientifically invalid, but it was a box-office success.

The headlines were everywhere

“1000 years of climate data confirms Australia’s warming” said the press release from University of Melbourne. It  was picked up by  The Guardian: “Australasia has hottest 60 years in a millennium, scientists find”; The Age and  The Australian led with “Warming since 1950 ‘unprecedented’. The story was on ABC 24  and ABC news where Gergis proclaimed:” there are no other warm periods in the last 1000 years that match the warming experienced in Australasia since 1950.” It was all over the ABC including ABC Radio National, and they were “95% certain“!  On ABC AM, “the last five decades years in Australia have been the warmest. ” Plus there were pages in Science Alert,  Campus Daily  Eco newsThe Conversation, Real Climate* and Think Progress.

Blog review is where the real science gets tested

Skeptics have been looking through the paper, and three weeks after it was published a team at Climate Audit (kudos to Jean S and Nick Stokes) uncovered a problem so significant that the authors announced that this paper is “on hold”. It has been withdrawn from the American Meteorological Society website. Bishop Hill has probably the best summary of what this means, and how it unfolded.
The blogosphere - doing the jobs that scientists wont ...

So the government funded a study to the tune of $300,000, and the study was so shabby that bloggers shot it to pieces in two weeks.  But all you Deniers need to just shut up because the Scienciness is Settled™

7 comments:

Alan said...

I want to know who was running the weather station in Austrailia 1000 years ago.

ASM826 said...

The ironclad assumption that every weather event is a direct result of human activity is an irritant. Because even if you somehow could prove that a particular century/decade/year/day was the warmest one ever, it wold still be part of a cycle, wouldn't it? That great big nuclear furnace in the sky still seems to be a measurable factor in how warm the days are.

New Jovian Thunderbolt said...

But it HAS to be Catastrophic Anthropogenic Greenhouse Induced Climate Change and a Hockey Stick graph. It just HAS to.

I have the perfect prescription to that ill. It's called Socialism. It's comes in 500mg caplets or liqui-gels.

kx59 said...

And the caplets only cost 87% of your income to support the vunnables that refuse to work.

Lissa said...

Bring on the Army of Davids! Next thing you know, we'll be vetting the President and stuff :)

ProudHillbilly said...

A study for which the result was pre-determined, leading to shoddy science.

Jake (formerly Riposte3) said...

I see an interesting trend: lots of climate "scientists" seem to make a habit out of hiding the raw data they used.

I propose that we stop calling these people "scientists", and instead call them what they are - frauds and charlatans.