Science Links - 7/17/15

The theme of today's science links is frauds and lies.

Article: Why are greens so keen to destroy the world’s wildlife?

When Professor David MacKay stepp ed down as chief scientific adviser to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) last year, he produced a report comparing the environmental impact of a fracking site to that of wind farms. Over 25 years, he calculated, a single “shale gas pad” covering five acres, with a drilling rig 85ft high (only needed for less than a year), would produce as much energy as 87 giant wind turbines, covering 5.6 square miles and visible up to 20 miles away. Yet, to the greenies, the first of these, capable of producing energy whenever needed, without a penny of subsidy, is anathema; while the second, producing electricity very unreliably in return for millions of pounds in subsidies, fills them with rapture

Additional antienvironment environmentalism

1) windmills destroying birds and bats
2) biomass to biomass fuels causing deforestation
3) hydroelectric power plants in the Amazon destroying rain forests.

Article: The Climate Wars’ Damage to Science

A history of the take over of climate science, greens/environmentalists, the media, and bureaucrats by catastrophic anthropogenic global warming activists

The organisations that did the most exaggeration trousered the most money.

Garth Paltridge, distinguished Australian climate scientist:

We have at least to consider the possibility that the scientific establishment behind the global warming issue has been drawn into the trap of seriously overstating the climate problem—or, what is much the same thing, of seriously understating the uncertainties associated with the climate problem—in its effort to promote the cause. It is a particularly nasty trap in the context of science, because it risks destroying, perhaps for centuries to come, the unique and hard-won reputation for honesty which is the basis for society’s respect for scientific endeavour.

Long and well worth the read.

Article: Nature Rebounds – the world is getting better, not worse

References a deep, and long, study by one of the founders of the IPCC. I did not read the study.

Article: Study claims 1 in 4 cancer research papers contains faked data

Scientists, desperate for grant money, puffs up research.