Say, about that cholesterol – “a move that could undo almost 40 years of government warnings about its consumption.”
h/t Kevin B.
The Sound Of Settled Science
The new peer-reviewed paper, authored by a team of prominent researchers led by Dr. Corrine Keet of John’s Hopkins Children’s Center, studied over 23,000 U.S. children and found no statistically significant difference in asthma rates between those who live in inner-city neighborhoods (and are thus subject to higher pollution levels) and those who do not (once controlling for other factors). Instead, researchers concluded that poverty was a greater predictor for higher asthma rates than outdoor air pollution.
The study still points to air pollution as a cause for asthma, only it’s indoor air pollution–think second hand smoke, rodents, mold, etc.–that may be the main culprit.
It’s a radical finding. The study upends more than half a century of research that assumed outdoor air pollution in cities was to blame for higher asthma rates–a hypothesis repeatedly used by EPA regulators to justify the agency’s regulations.
The study couldn’t come at a worse time for the agency. EPA is preparing to tighten national standards for ground-level ozone (the main ingredient in smog) by as much as 20 percent. To justify the move, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy argued she was “following science” to “protect those most at-risk–our children, our elderly, and people already suffering from lung diseases like asthma.”
The Sound Of Settled Science
Science: Constrained work output of the moist atmospheric heat engine in a warming climate
Incoming and outgoing solar radiation couple with heat exchange at Earth’s surface to drive weather patterns that redistribute heat and moisture around the globe, creating an atmospheric heat engine. Here, we investigate the engine’s work output using thermodynamic diagrams computed from reanalyzed observations and from a climate model simulation with anthropogenic forcing. We show that the work output is always less than that of an equivalent Carnot cycle and that it is constrained by the power necessary to maintain the hydrological cycle. In the climate simulation, the hydrological cycle increases more rapidly than the equivalent Carnot cycle. We conclude that the intensification of the hydrological cycle in warmer climates might limit the heat engine’s ability to generate work.
I’ll let the engineers race to explain in the comments.
Update. Or try this.
Y2Kyoto: Revisionist Temperature
Suppose say, that for the last 100 years my family have been maintaining a weather station at the bottom of our garden, diligently recording the temperatures day by day, and that what these records show is this: that in the 1930s it was jolly hot – even hotter than in the 1980s; that since the 1940s it has been cooling.
What conclusions would you draw from this hard evidence?
Well the obvious one, I imagine, is that the dramatic Twentieth Century warming that people like Al Gore have been banging on about is a crock. At least according to this particular weather station it is.
Now how would you feel if you went and took these temperature records along to one of the world’s leading global warming experts – say Gavin Schmidt at NASA or Phil Jones at CRU or Michael Mann at Penn State – and they studied your records for a moment and said: “This isn’t right.” What if they then crossed out all your temperature measurements, did a few calculations on the back of an envelope, and scribbled in their amendments? And you studied those adjustments and you realised, to your astonishment, that the new, pretend temperature measurements told an entirely different story from the original, real temperature measurements: that where before your records showed a cooling since the 1940s they now showed a warming trend.
Y2Kyoto: Planetary Fever Update
The National Weather Service (NWS) in New York City is calling the potential for epic snowfall “historic,” while the Boston office says the incoming storm is a “textbook case for a major winter storm/blizzard.” Three-day snow totals could reach 24-36 inches in each city–good enough to rival the biggest Northeast snowstorms on record.
[…]
What’s making this particular storm so potent? In sharp contrast to last week’s nor’easter, there’s no shortage of cold air this time around. A blocking high-pressure system to the north will slow the storm’s advance to a crawl–with the center spending up to 24 hours just off Long Island–right as it is peaking in strength. Combine that with a roaring, perfectly kinked jet stream, and you have all the ingredients for an explosive storm that will reach “bomb” criteria, funneling Arctic air southwards and converting it into a thick blanket of wind-whipped white. All the extra cold air may also boost snow totals, because “drier,” colder snow is up to 50 percent fluffier than “wet” snow that falls with temperatures nearer the freezing point.
The Sound Of Settled Science
Peer-reviewed pocket-calculator climate model exposes serious errors in complex computer models;
The paper, Why models run hot: results from an irreducibly simple climate model, by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, Willie Soon, David Legates and Matt Briggs, survived three rounds of tough peer review in which two of the reviewers had at first opposed the paper on the ground that it questioned the IPCC’s predictions.
When the paper’s four authors first tested the finished model’s global-warming predictions against those of the complex computer models and against observed real-world temperature change, their simple model was closer to the measured rate of global warming than all the projections of the complex “general-circulation” models…
The link provided for download is broken, you can find it here instead. Click “pdf”.
The Sound Of Settled Science
“Artificial Amplification of Warming Trends Across the Mountains of the Western United States”
The Sound Of Settled Science
Protein deniers defy consensus;
Open any introductory biology textbook and one of the first things you’ll learn is that our DNA spells out the instructions for making proteins, tiny machines that do much of the work in our body’s cells. Results from a study published on Jan. 2 in Science defy textbook science, showing for the first time that the building blocks of a protein, called amino acids, can be assembled without blueprints — DNA and an intermediate template called messenger RNA (mRNA). A team of researchers has observed a case in which another protein specifies which amino acids are added.
“This surprising discovery reflects how incomplete our understanding of biology is,” says first author Peter Shen, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in biochemistry at the University of Utah. “Nature is capable of more than we realize.”
The Sound Of Settled Science
Newly released research, primarily from NASA and the GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences, indicates that melting of selective Greenland Glaciers is related to geologically induced heat flow, and not manmade atmospheric global warming.
The Sound Of Settled Science
… plays a major role in determining who gets cancer and who does not, according to researchers who found that two-thirds of cancer incidence of various types can be blamed on random mutations and not heredity or risky habits like smoking.
The researchers said on Thursday random DNA mutations accumulating in various parts of the body during ordinary cell division are the prime culprits behind many cancer types.
Or good luck. It depends upon your point of view.
The Sound Of Settled Science
Long-term oscillations in rainfall extremes in a 268 year daily time series
These results suggest that, because long-term periodicities may likely be present elsewhere, in the absence of observational time series with length comparable to such periodicities (possibly exceeding one century), past observations cannot be considered to be representative of future extremes.
The Sound Of Settled Science
Mike Wallace is a hydrologist with nearly 30 years’ experience, who is now working on his Ph.D. in nanogeosciences at the University of New Mexico. In the course of his studies, he uncovered a startling data omission that he told me: “eclipses even the so-called climategate event.” Feely’s work is based on computer models that don’t line up with real-world data — which Feely acknowledged in email communications with Wallace (which I have read). And, as Wallace determined, there is real world data. Feely, and his coauthor Dr. Christopher L. Sabine, PMEL Director, omitted 80 years of data, which incorporate more than 2 million records of ocean pH levels.
Feely’s chart, first mentioned, begins in 1988 — which is surprising as instrumental ocean pH data has been measured for more than 100 years since the invention of the glass electrode pH (GEPH) meter. As a hydrologist, Wallace was aware of GEPH’s history and found it odd that the Feely/Sabine work omitted it. He went to the source. The NOAA paper with the chart beginning in 1850 lists Dave Bard, with Pew Charitable Trust, as the contact.
Wallace sent Bard an email: “I’m looking in fact for the source references for the red curve in their plot which was labeled ‘Historical & Projected pH & Dissolved Co2.’ This plot is at the top of the second page. It covers the period of my interest.” Bard responded and suggested that Wallace communicate with Feely and Sabine–which he did over a period of several months. Wallace asked again for the “time series data (NOT MODELING) of ocean pH for 20th century.” Sabine responded by saying that it was inappropriate for Wallace to question their “motives or quality of our science,” adding that if he continued in this manner, “you will not last long in your career.”
Emphasis mine. I’ll leave it to you to guess how it ends. (h/t TimR)
What Would We Do Without Peer Review?
Restoring science to its rightful place…
The GOP study researched the federal government’s peer review process for 13 different endangered species listings made by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) since July 2013 and found examples of a lack of transparency and consistency.
The agency, according to the report, sometimes employs peer reviewers who authored studies on the species they are reviewing. The GOP staff determined that the peer review process as currently employed by the FWS “relies on a network of scientists who, if nothing else, have a professional and academic interest in the outcome of the ESA listing decisions they are being asked to review.”
“In recruiting peer reviewers, the FWS appears to favor scientists whose views on a species are already well known rather than more independent scientists in other academic or professional fields who would be able to bring a fresh perspective to the science the FWS is citing to support its ESA listing decisions,” it said.
Y2Kyoto: I’ll Miss The Polar Ice Caps
Arctic sea ice is almost exactly normal, 5 days after @algore ice-free forecast date
http://t.co/7bTupRYaRb pic.twitter.com/fkoL5JJIQ1
— Steve Goddard (@SteveSGoddard) December 15, 2014
Related! BBC Changes Their Story, Slightly
The Sound Of Settled Science
Mother’s Milk, Literature Sleuths, and Science Fairies;
I had that sinking feeling yesterday as I read a killer review. In the text the authors described an exciting dynamic; high food intake, high cortisol concentrations in mother's milk, and high activity in kittens covary while low food intake, low cortisol concentrations in mother's milk, and low activity in kittens covary. Neat. Tidy. Compelling. And there was a gorgeous figure to reinforce this awesomeness! Now, don't get too excited here, because, spoiler alert, none of this turns out to be an accurate representation of the papers they are citing.
The Sound Of Settled Science
AUSTRALIA is lucky to possess the high-quality, 128-year-long tide gauge record from Fort Denison (Sydney Harbour), which since 1886 indicates a long-term rate of sea-level rise of 0.65mm a year, or 6.5cm a century. […]
Similarly low rates of local sea-level rise have been measured at other tide gauges along the east coast. National Tidal Centre records reveal variations between about 5cm and 16cm/century in rates of relative rise. The differences between individual tide gauges mostly represent slightly differing rates of subsidence of the land at each site, and differing time periods.
For example, measurements at Sydney between 2005 and 2014 show the tide gauge site is sinking at a rate of 0.49mm/yr, leaving just 0.16mm/yr of the overall relative rise as representing global sea-level change. Indeed, the rate of rise at Fort Denison, and globally, has been decreasing for the past 50 years.
The Sound Of Settled Science
As somebody who has championed science all his career, carrying a lot of water for the profession against its critics on many issues, I am losing faith. Recent examples of bias and corruption in science are bad enough. What’s worse is the reluctance of scientific leaders to criticise the bad apples. Science as a philosophy is in good health; science as an institution increasingly stinks.
The Nuffield Council on Bioethics published a report last week that found evidence of scientists increasingly “employing less rigorous research methods” in response to funding pressures. A 2009 survey found that almost 2 per cent of scientists admitting that they have fabricated results; 14 per cent say that their colleagues have done so.
This month has seen three egregious examples of poor scientific practice. The most recent was the revelation in The Times last week that scientists appeared to scheme to get neonicotinoid pesticides banned, rather than open-mindedly assessing all the evidence. These were supposedly “independent” scientists, yet they were hand in glove with environmental activists who were receiving huge grants from the European Union to lobby it via supposedly independent reports, and they apparently had their conclusions in mind before they gathered the evidence. Documents that have recently come to light show them blatantly setting out to make policy-based evidence, rather than evidence-based policy.
But read it all.
The Sound Of Settled Science
Mark Steyn: Climategate Five Years On
Research Corruption Disorder
Post by Bjørn Lomborg.
Y2Kyoto: Disruption Interruptus
The stroke of midnight this morning closed the record books on yet another quiet hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean. We only saw a handful of newsworthy storms, but the real story is what didn’t happen. It’s been nine years–3,326 days–since the last major hurricane hit the United States.
