Friday, 4 June 2010
David Lynch's Interview Project
Watch all the interviews on the Interview Project website, become a fan on Facebook, check out the Twitter feed, read the Interview Project blog, and visit David Lynch’s own official site.
Monckton takes scientist to brink of madness at climate change talk
It takes a lot to make a scientist mad – even today, when it seems that science and scientists are under siege, particularly over the topic of climate change.
But everyone has a breaking point, one straw too many that inspires them to act.
For me, that time came last October when I learned about a British import we have had the displeasure of experiencing here in the United States.
That import, Christopher Monckton, Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, had given a rousing speech to a crowd at Bethel University in Minnesota, near where I live.
His speech was on global warming and his style was convincing and irreverent. Anyone listening to him was given the impression that global warming was not happening, or that if it did happen it wouldn't be so bad, and scientists who warned about it were part of a vast conspiracy.
I know a thing or two about global warming. I have worked in the field of heat transfer and fluid mechanics and I have published more than 80 papers on these topics.
I am a university professor and also an active consultant in the energy and environment industry. What I heard in his talk surprised me.
Monckton cited scientist after scientist whose work "disproved" global warming.
He contended that polar bears are not really at risk (in fact they do better as weather warms); projections of sea level rise are a mere 6cm; Arctic ice has not declined in a decade; Greenland is not melting; sea levels are not rising; ocean temperatures are not increasing; medieval times were warmer than today; ocean acidification is not occurring; and global temperatures are not increasing.
If true, these conclusions would be welcome. But there is a problem with this kind of truth – it is not made by wishing.
So I began a journey of investigation (the full results of which you can view here).
I actually tracked down the articles and authors that Monckton cited. What I discovered was incredible, even to a scientist who follows the politics of climate change. I found that he had misrepresented the science.
For instance, Monckton's claims that "Arctic sea ice is fine, steady for a decade" made reference to Alaskan research group (IARC).
I wrote to members of IARC and asked whether this was true. Both their chief scientist and director confirmed that Monckton was mistaken.
They also pointed me to the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) for a second opinion.
A scientist there confirmed Monckton's error, as did Dr Ola Johannessen, whose work has shown ice loss in Greenland (Monckton reported that Johannessen's work showed that Greenland "was just fine".)
Next, I investigated Monckton's claim that the medieval period was warmer than today. Monckton showed a slide featuring nine researchers' works which, he claimed, proved that today's warming is not unusual – it was hotter in the past.
I wrote to these authors and I read their papers. It turned out that none of the authors or papers made the claims that Monckton attributed to them. This pattern of misinterpretation was becoming chronic.
Next, I checked on Monckton's claim that the ocean has not been heating for 50 years. To quote him directly, there has been "no ocean heat buildup for 50 years".
On this slide, he referenced a well-known researcher named Dr Catia Domingues. It turns out Domingues said no such thing. What would she know? She only works for the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia.
In one last, and particularly glaring example, Monckton referred to a 2004 statement by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) which stated that solar activity has caused today's warming and that global warming will end soon.
The president of the IAU division on the sun and heliosphere told me that there is no such position of the IAU and that I should pass this information on to whomever "might have used the IAU name to claim otherwise".
After learning all of this, and much more than can be written about in this limited space, I felt like Alice who fell down the rabbit hole and emerged in an alternate reality.
How can such misrepresentations be made without public recourse? I cannot answer that. I can say that scientists are listening and though our voices are small, we will use them to hold people like Monckton and others to account for their public claims.
The science community is slowly learning that if we don't perform this service, no one will.
Tough decisions are going to have to be made and the public deserves accurate information about the science so they can help make those decisions.
John Abraham @'The Guardian'
Gone...
Rafael Benitez told the club's official website: "It is very sad for me to announce that I will no longer be manager of Liverpool FC. I would like to thank all of the staff and players for their efforts.
"I'll always keep in my heart the good times I've had here, the strong and loyal support of the fans in the tough times and the love from Liverpool. I have no words to thank you enough for all these years and I am very proud to say that I was your manager.
"Thank you so much once more and always remember: You'll never walk alone."
Canadian DMCA Introduced; Digital Lock Provision Trumps Any And All User Rights
As was widely expected, Canadian politicians have introduced their version of the DMCA, dubbed the "Copyright Modernization Act" (or Bill C-32 if you want to get technical). Michael Geist runs down the good and the bad at the link above, but it appears there's a lot more that's bad than good. While the plan tries to add "balance" by extending fair dealing provisions just slightly wider than before (though, still pretty limited), it undermines that very concept with a heavy anti-circumvention clause. This is the worst aspect of the DMCA exported north to Canada. Basically, as long as a rights holder puts some form of DRM/copy protection on their work, all those exceptions go out the window. You can't circumvent, even for non-infringing reasons. What this does is change the basic contours of copyright law. It gives the rights holders the ability to define the exceptions, and take away the right of users. It's this very aspect of the DMCA that needs to be fixed, not expanded to other countries. It goes against the core principles of copyright law, which include exceptions for the sake of important modes of expression. By letting the rights holder determine what is and what is not allowed as an exception, simply by letting the rights holder put any kind of digital lock (no matter how weak) is a travesty of copyright law. It's not copyright law at all, at that point. It's really a law to lockdown content away from the public, and to have the government declare a particular business model as supreme and protected by the government.
Mike Masnick @'techdirt'
Thursday, 3 June 2010
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