Søppelvitenskap/Pseudovitenskap/Junk Science

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The Wall Street Journal, August 10, 2011: It was the kind of study that made doctors around the world sit up and take notice: Two popular high-blood-pressure drugs were found to be much better in combination than either alone. "There was a 'wow' reaction," recalls Franz Messerli, a New York doctor who, like many others, changed his prescription habits after the 2003 report. Unfortunately, it wasn't true. Six and a half years later, the prestigious medical journal the Lancet retracted the paper, citing "serious concerns" about the findings. The damage was done. Doctors by then had given the drug combination to well over 100,000 patients. Instead of protecting them from kidney problems, as the study said the drug combo could do, it left them more vulnerable to potentially life-threatening side effects, later studies showed. Today, "tens of thousands" of patients are still on the dual therapy, according to research firm SDI. When a study is retracted, "it can be hard to make its effects go away," says Sheldon Tobe, a kidney-disease specialist at the University of Toronto. And that's more important today than ever because retractions of scientific studies are surging - Mistakes in Scientific Studies Surge

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University of Canterbury, August 10, 2011: A University of Canterbury academic’s research on the political aspirations and well-being of future generations has been recognised with an international research grant of more than NZ$1million and an appointment to a London-based think tank. Senior Lecturer Dr Bronwyn Hayward (Social and Political Sciences) was one of three co-applicants who have won a prestigious Norwegian research grant worth NZ$1.18 million to investigate how youth perceive their future in a changing climate. The NORKLIMA (Climate Change and Its Impacts in Norway) grant will fund a study of young people’s political agency or sense of responsibility and engagement. Dr Hayward will work on the project with Professor Karen O’Brien and Dr Elin Selboe from the University of Oslo. Called “Voices of the Future: Values and Visions of Norwegian Youth on Climate Change”, the project will begin in February 2012 and its aim is to understand the beliefs, values and world views of young people growing up in Norway and how these vary across different ethnic/minority, religious, class and gender backgrounds. The overall objective is to help governments understand the fundamental social, cultural and institutional prerequisites that have to be in place to develop effective responses to dangerous environmental change - Million dollar research boost for UC academic

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Robert Gordon University, August 5, 2011: Researchers at the university have completed a study that addresses the link between climate change and obesity. The academics suggest that global weight loss would result in a drop in the production of the major greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO(2)). The study was carried out by a trio of researchers within the university's Centre for Obesity Research and Epidemiology (CORE). It suggests that if every obese and overweight person in the world lost 10 kilograms (or 1.58 stone), the resulting drop in greenhouse emissions would be the equivalent of 0.2% of the CO(2) emitted globally in 2007 (49.560Mt) - Researchers Suggest Link between Obesity and Global Warming

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Via The Guardian:

Cornell University Library, August 16, 2011: ...humanity should avoid giving off the appearance of being a rapidly expansive civilization. If an ETI perceives humanity as such, then it may be inclined to attempt a preemptive strike against us so as to prevent us from growing into a threat to the ETI or others in the galaxy. Similarly, ecosystem-valuing universalist ETI may observe humanity’s ecological destructive tendencies and wipe humanity out in order to preserve the Earth system as a whole. These scenarios give us reason to limit our growth and reduce our impact on global ecosystems. It would be particularly important for us to limit our emissions of greenhouse gases, since atmospheric composition can be observed from other planets - Would contact with extraterrestrials benefit or harm humanity? A scenario analysis

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Jøss, dyrene tilpasser seg skiftende omstendigheter, men påstanden om at marginale temperaturendringer er årsaken må nok tas med noen romslige klyper salt:

University of York, August 18, 2011: New research by scientists in the Department of Biology at the University of York shows that species have responded to climate change up to three times faster than previously appreciated. These results are published in the latest issue of the leading scientific journal Science - Further, faster, higher: wildlife responds increasingly rapidly to climate change

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Nature, August 21, 2011: Climate change represents a threat not only to the existence of individual species, but also to the genetic diversity hidden within them, researchers say. The finding promises to complicate assessments of how climate change will affect biodiversity, as well as conservationists' task in preserving it - Climate change will hit genetic diversity

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JunkScience.com, August 24, 2011: Weather causes war, a new study claims. So should we limit CO2 emissions and give peace a chance? Make love not CO2? The study published in this week’s Nature claims to correlate El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycles with wars around the world during 1950-2009. The study’s intended implication, then, is that if only we can stop climate change (i.e., limit CO2 emissions), peace will be at hand - Will climate change cause war?

Another coat of Climategate whitewash

[simon]

Men her er jo fakta en tydige til støtte for teorien ! Før bilismen var jo verden fredelig og kun sporadiske kamper om arveoppgjør brøt idyllen.

[QIQrrr]

Før bilismen var jo verden fredelig og kun sporadiske kamper om arveoppgjør brøt idyllen.

Helt korrekt. Den hypotetisk-deduktive metode er forøvrig et fabelaktig redskap. Finner man en samvariasjon kan man rasjonalisere seg frem til omtrent hva det skal være.

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Apropos korrelasjon:

WUWT, August 25, 2011: People send me things. Today it is a curious graph of the number of supernovae (dying stars) discovered versus the HadCRUT temperature data since 1960. There’s a good correlation. So at first glance you might conclude two things, 1) GCR’s, which are known to be the result of supernovae thanks to data gathered by the Chandra Space Telescope, are indeed influencing Earth’s temperature or 2) Earth’s AGW is killing stars, and aliens are correct to be concerned about Earth and may need to wipe us out to protect the Universe - Global warming is killing the stars

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The Hockey Schtick, August 27, 2011: The September 2011 edition of Nature Climate Change claims biodiversity is on the brink and that we "cannot wait for greater certainty in our estimates of extant biodiversity and predictions of its fate." The same article admits we are not even close to being able to measure biodiversity, with only 2 million species identified out of a total of "5.5 million to tens of millions" of species yet to be identified. Furthermore, the article admits "assessing the extent to which regional changes in biodiversity are caused by greenhouse-gas warming has proven particularly intractable, not least because of the need to disentangle the effects of climate change from those of other drivers such as pollution or overexploitation." Nonetheless, the article claims "one in every species could face extinction by 2100 from climate change alone" and that this "startling figure may well be conservative." This highly-speculative conclusion is based on subdividing each species based upon differences in mitochondrial DNA. In this same sense, one could say "one in the Homo sapiens species could face extinction by 2100," since just like the genome is unique to each human, the DNA of human mitochondria is also highly variable between individuals - Biodiversity alarmism on the brink

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The Sydney Morning Herald, August 29, 2011: Rates of mental illnesses including depression and post-traumatic stress will increase as a result of climate change, a report to be released today says. The paper, prepared for the Climate Institute, says loss of social cohesion in the wake of severe weather events related to climate change could be linked to increased rates of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress and substance abuse. As many as one in five people reported ''emotional injury, stress and despair'' in the wake of these events. The report, A Climate of Suffering: The Real Cost of Living with Inaction on Climate Change, called the past 15 years a ''preview of life under unrestrained global warming'' - Mental illness rise linked to climate

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NoTricksZone, October 21, 2011: The online German-language Die Presse reports here on new climate research out of Stanford. Did this get picked up in the US press? Too nutty probably. According to the new research, Christopher Columbus was likely the cause of the Little Ice Age. How, you may ask? Columbus, a really dirty European, and his fellow colonizers sailed the ocean blue in 1492, just before the LIA began in earnest. He brought along with him some nasty diseases which quickly spread across the new world and wiped out the indigneous population. As so after a very short time, there was no one left to burn down trees, and so tree growth exploded, sucked up huge amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere in the process, which in turn lowered global CO2 concentrations, which led to global cooling, and thus the production of the Little Ice Age - Christopher Columbus Caused Massive Climate Change, And Not The Sun, Says Stanford Professor

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JunkScience.com, October 31, 2011: A myth that lasted a month. Last month we spotlighted a study that claimed global warming would shrink animals by causing them to grow faster and stop growing sooner, leaving them smaller. Scarcely 30 days later, however, San Francisco State University researchers report that global warming is making birds get bigger - Debunked already: Global warming makes animals shrink

The incredible story of bigger shrinking birds, courtesy of global climate change

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Våre venner trærne har i tillegg til den øvrige virkeligheten store vanskeligheter med å tilpasse seg d̶o̶m̶m̶e̶d̶a̶g̶s̶p̶r̶o̶f̶e̶t̶e̶n̶e̶s̶ ̶d̶a̶t̶a̶g̶e̶n̶e̶r̶e̶r̶t̶e̶ ̶s̶k̶r̶ø̶n̶e̶r klimamodellene:

Duke University, November 1, 2011: More than half of eastern U.S. tree species examined in a massive new Duke University-led study aren’t adapting to climate change as quickly or consistently as predicted. “Many models have suggested that trees will migrate rapidly to higher latitudes and elevations in response to warming temperatures, but evidence for a consistent, climate-driven northward migration is essentially absent in this large analysis,” says James S. Clark, H.L. Blomquist Professor of Environment at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment. Nearly 59 percent of the species examined by Clark and his colleagues showed signs that their geographic ranges are contracting from both the north and south. Fewer species – only about 21 percent – appeared to be shifting northward as predicted. About 16 percent seemed to be advancing southward, and around 4 percent appeared to be expanding in both directions - Forests Not Keeping Pace with Climate Change