Home » Posts tagged 'Featured'
Tag Archives: Featured
From Nonsense to Fraud or What?
On August 13, President Anote Tong of Kiribati sent a letter to all the world’s governments where he urged for a moratorium for coal mining under the assumption that CO2-emision affects global climate and under the claim that his islands are serious threatened by a rising sea level. He ended his letter by saying that it is a matter of ”moral obligation”.
In Science and Geoethics, we, too, have obligations – and this is to ensure that all claims are based on a solid scientific ground, and are in harmony with physical laws.
Because of this one of us sent an Open Letter to President Anote Tong of Kiribati dated November 26, 2015 (and posted on ResearchGate under DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.2766.4723 where it is accessible).
This letter demonstrates that the existing tide gauges (ten) “fail to support your idea of a rapidly rising sea level”, and the all over ending conclusion reads:
So, indeed, what you claim with respect to sea level rise and CO2-effects is not founded in facts and physics. This means that it violates both science and geoethics.
If President Tong’s August letter is nonsense, we now come to the Fraud issue.
“I’m not a great one for shouting fraud, but I can’t see that there is any other conclusion that one can draw”(from the blogger Bishop Hill).
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2016/1/25/how-is-this-not-fraud.html
Somebody on Kickstarter is trying to raise funds for a film about Kiribati called “ANOTE’S ARK: What if our homeland was swallowed by the sea”.
The promoters claim “Kiribati faces the unstoppable rise of sea level, which will engulf it before wrong. Can these people survive as their country disappears?
Their argument is false (see the Open letter). Still, the promoters have attracted “50 backers” providing a total amount of 25,166 USD (by January 26).
In conclusion, false statements are being used to raise money. Isn’t this what we normally label “fraud”?
For the principles of Science & Geoethics
Nils-Axel Mörner and Willie Soon
James Hansen’s climate models versus observations 1958-2015
James Hansen’s climate models versus observations 1958-2015
Jan-‐Erik Solheim, professor (emeritus), University of Tromsø, Norway
Projections based on climate models are used to convince politicians to reduce the emissions of CO2 to save the world from overheating. The latest warning is that a global temperature increase of 2.7K is the lower limit possible in 2100, if the emission control works as proposed for the Paris meeting.
I will describe how climate models developed by James Hansen et al. (1988) have failed to predict how the global temperature has changed until now.
If we cannot stop the building of more coal-fired power plants, those coal trains will be death trains – no less gruesome than if they were boxcars headed to crematoria, loaded with uncountable irreplaceable species.
James Hansen, 2007, in “Super Models, Old King Coal II, & Civil Disobedience”
Coal-fired power stations are death factories. Close them. James Hansen, 2009. theguardian.com
Figure 1. Global temperature predictions based on 3 scenarios (A, B and C) as described in the text. The hatched area represents the maximum temperature in the present (Holocene – 6000 yr ago) and previous (Eemian-120 000 yr ago) interglacials (1). The solid black curve represents observations.
Philip Foster: On the impossibility of ‘ocean acidification’
Why, oh, why do people like the government’s chief scientific adviser Sir Mark Walport, who really don’t understand the basic science, go on about ‘acid’ oceans? Such a condition is well nigh impossible in the real world.
The oceans are PERMANENTLY buffered to maintain pH fluctuating between around 7.6 and 8.2 (this means they are always slightly alkaline; pH7 is neutral)
- The oceans are always saturated with CO2. There is liquid CO2 in the deep ocean trenches (that is the chemical definition of a saturated solution by the way). Surface layers tend to fluctuate a bit more due to their ‘restless’ condition. The warmer the oceans become the LESS CO2 they can hold.
- The oceans could only ever become acidic, that is have a pH of less than 7, IF the earth were to run out of rocks.
Independent Committee on Geoethics founded
Founded, October 17, 2015, in Prague
at the International Conference on Geoethics
The principles of ethics – to know what is right and what is wrong – are simple. They are deeply rooted in our cultural heritage and education and personal integrity. To live up to those principles is another thing: here we often fail badly. The ethical principles that refer to nature and natural sciences are covered by the term “Geoethics”.
We realize that ethical principles are often violated in Science as well as in Society and Politics. Increasingly, in connection with marketing and lobbying for large projects, ethical principles have become set aside. Backbiting, ‘book-burning’, career blighting, obstruction in publication and personal attacks have no place in science, where physical laws and observational facts must always be foremost. There are no goals that justify unfair means of fighting “dissidents”.
Therefore, there is an urgent need for an Independent Committee on Geoethics to promote ethical principles in the Earth and planetary sciences and their correct reflection in social and political life.
Aims and Methods:
We will formulate geoethical recommendations and work for their wider acceptance and application in science.
We will speak up and “use the sword of truth” when scientific facts, observational evidence and physical laws are being set aside, and when geoethical principles are violated.
Geoethical principles:
Keep to science – always being ready for new findings and concepts
Always anchor your ideas in observational facts – from nature and firm experiments
Beware of advocacy and lobbying – by or on behalf of special interest groups
Never let your opinion be influenced – by money, promotion, or easy publication
Some relevant quotations:
Virtue is knowledge. What I don’t know, I don’t pretend I know – Socrates (470-399 BC)
Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you – Jesus Christ (~0–34 AD)
You have to read the book written by Mother Nature – Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science – Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
Independent Committee on Geoethics 