Writing the wrongs

I've been away for a few days in Edinburgh and it looks like I've missed all the fun on Curly's blog, where I've become an opprobrium magnet for daring to criticise a spook book written by Mike Hallowell and Darren Ritson. Presumably the posters are the book's authors Hallowell and Ritson, or maybe it's a mischievous poltergeist. You never know on t'internet.

I could respond on Curly's blog, but I don't want to further damage my welcome there - and I wish to avoid being slapped with another 'use your own blog' yellow card.

However, I wasn't sure how to respond, or if I should. Would a response feed their apparent self-righteous indignation or would a challenge provide them with a sense of credibility they don't deserve? Or both?

The whole episode is a bit odd. A couple of short tongue-in-cheek critical comments lit the touch-paper and attracted such fury and lengthy, pained replies. Imagine the phone call between the "two battle-hardened paranormal investigators" (seriously, that's what they call themselves):

"Darren? Yeah, it's Mike. We got trouble on the internet."

"What's up Mike?"

"Some guy has posted on Curly's Corner Shop. He says our book is shit."

"He did? Let's get spooky on his ass. I'll post with awful grammar just so no one thinks I'm a poltergeist."

"Good stuff Darren. I'll try and look outraged, and I'll rope Dave in to blow off his usual anti-blogger angst."

"What about BA Baracus?"

"He won't let no fool get him on no plane."

"Pity. But it's still a good plan."

"Go team paranormal!"

I know I should have gone for a Scooby/Shaggy thing, but the A-Team is way cooler.

Anyhow, I resolved I shouldn't go for a full blow by blow response to their desperate attempts to avoid looking like complete tits, and decided to just concentrate on one whopping howler. Ritson provided a classic and quaintly amusing example of fatuous ignorance in this misconception:

"Did’nt [sic] people once mock and ridicule Christopher Columbus after telling people the world was in fact round and not flat?"

No Darren, they didn't, but chances are that if there were such people, those doing the mocking would have believed in the supernatural too.

However, a conscientious and objective researcher (or a history head like me) would know that during Columbus' time most scholars and navigators worked on the basis that the world was spherical. It wasn't a new concept: the ancient Greeks had provided observational and mathematical proofs and even local boy Bede described the characteristics of a spherical world at least 750 years before Columbus. The main contention with Columbus' adventure was over his estimation of the planet's circumference, and over that, Columbus was wrong. This isn't to take anything from Columbus' achievements: history is made by such risk-takers.

Even without referencing Ritson's historical inaccuracy, his argument is based on a creaking non sequitur fallacy - mockery or ridicule has no value in establishing the truth or otherwise of the statements being mocked. And yes, I am aware of the faint irony.

Fair due to Ritson, the 'Columbus was mocked' assertion is a common misconception, fed by reliance on poor source material. Perhaps next time though, before accusing someone of knowing nothing, Ritson could employ some intellectual rigour first and check his facts before making himself look like a complete numb-nuts.

Columbus should have texted to put him straight.

Desperate cries of a dinosaur

This Guardian interview with former chancellor Nigel Lawson revealed a man riling against climate change, but without a rational or coherent argument. Relying on the clichéd accusation of climate change as a religion (but presumably the only religion based on science) and portraying sceptics as martyrs, Lawson attempts to paint the issue as taking place in an Inquisitorial environment.

He seems to be running a multi-tiered denial strategy: it isn't happening; it is but it's not as bad as everyone says it is; it's too late to stop it. I wouldn't be surprised if this attitude was buried deep in the dark hearts of both the Conservative and Labour parties.

Even taking into account the possibility of the Guardian presenting a hostile case, a most revealing indicator of Lawson's moral attitude to the effects of climate change is revealed in the article:

"He is very drawn to what he says is the underrated upside of climate change. In his book, he says the hot summer of 2003, which killed 15,000 elderly people in France, was "perfectly tolerable" at his own house in Armagnac."

Qu'ils mangent de la brioche, I suppose.

No doubt Lawson does make some valid comments on the cynical politics of climate change being employed by the main political parties, but anyone who dares to disagree with Lawson's view, like NASA or the Met Office Hadley Centre, are accused of being cheats. This has all the hallmarks of an almost religious paranoia.

Poor bloke.

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Bjorn and bears

Statistician and darling of climate change deniers Bjorn Lomborg today tried to make a point about global warming 'hype'. There's nothing wrong with tackling hype, but when it's discussed in terms of climate change, it's usually used as a tool to dismiss the subject like you would the next boy band or fad food. Today Bjorn put his foot in it. Big time.

After berating green groups and the media for using polar bears as the poster child for climate change, he then conceded that for polar bears it would be that "likely disappearing ice will make it harder for polar bears to continue their traditional foraging patterns", so many can turn to the lifestyles of brown bears, "from which they are evolved". He concludes that polar bears "may eventually decline, though dramatic declines seem unlikely."

Essentially he's saying that polar bears can adapt as some kind of reverse evolutionary technique, back to the state of their forebears (no pun intended), as if bears are like some kind of migrant worker, changing skills and moving around for work. I wouldn't doubt the resourcefulness of polar bears, but it's reasonable to expect that any creature that has become highly specialised in adapting to a particular environment would have difficulty if that environment changed drastically. Extinctions are made of such things.

Let's ignore that he's not a biologist. He's a statistician. But for someone who trades on his credentials as an objective observer and interpreter of statistics, he has made a frighteningly subjective and unquantifiable statement, using an unqualified term such as "unlikely".

We need people to challenge preconceptions, even if they are wrong. But with gems like hoping polar bears will 'evolve out of trouble', Lomborg will lose further credibility, so much so that at some point even the most fundamentalist climate change sceptics grasping at any shred of justification for inaction won't listen to him.