Decisions! Decisions!

Every three years I face a difficult decision - shall I renew my subscription to Scientific American? 

I have now subscribed for over 50 years, and am constantly amused by re-reading the stories that were current 50 years ago, now repeated in the 50, 100 and 150 years ago feature. So why would the decision be difficult?

A journal is known by its editor.  Over ten years ago, the then editor was an eco-maniac.  When Bjorn Lomborg produced his Skeptical Environmentalist, the editor hired four hacks to do a hatchet job. Lomborg's book had criticized their weak science. 

The attacks were vicious and self-serving.  They did not address the criticisms.  Instead they criticized back using the worst of all arguments, the ad hominem.  Lomborg was not a biologist/ climatologist/ etc, but a mere statistician. The fact that the mere statistician had used official statistics to convincingly destroy their theses was immaterial.  40 000 species would disappear annually even if the official statistics put the loss rate at ~400 per century.

To add insult to injury, the SciAm editor then refused to allow Lomborg to respond. It was at that point that I seriously began to doubt whether I could ever support the publication again.

But bad habits persist.  I renewed my subscription, and in due course the offending editor left, unmourned.  There were some changes, a few for the worse such as an increasing reliance on science journalists.  Journalists usually have political viewpoints to advance, and it shows. But some changes were for the better. Unchanged was the belief that climate change was proven, but that is part of the overall Nature policy, and SciAm is part of Nature.  

So to the point of decision. This year, it was not made any easier by the collapse of the rand against the dollar.  With just over a month to go, I opened the latest issue with trepidation. For once, I was able to read it cover to cover.  

There was indeed a bit of journalism, but it was a great story about the salvage of the Costa Concordia, that 300-metre long cruise ship wrecked when the captain went to wave to his girlfriend.  The fact that the salvage master is a South African, Nick Sloane, made the tale all the more interesting to me.

There was a great investigation of MOOCs, massively open online courses.  Some really fascinating things are happening, like closing the learning cycle automatically, much like customer profiling in the retail trade.  This frees the teachers and allows them to interact with the more difficult questions personally - so that courses of hundreds of students can come close to the real classroom experience.

But the tale that really grabbed me was an end piece about how storm damage is likely to increase in the US over the next 35 years, not, they stress, because of "climate change" but because more people will put more material in harm's way. For SciAm to confess that carbon dioxide is not the absolute root of all evil has made me resolve to renew my subscription for another three years - and to hell with the rand/dollar exchange rate! 

 

A REALLY inconvenient truth!

I get REALLY cross when my trust is broken.  For over 50 years, I have subscribed to Scientific American. It used to be a reliable source, reporting science by scientists.

About 10 years ago, it started to lose my trust when it treated the Skeptical Environmentalist, Bjorn Lomborg, with contempt. Having given four environmentalists the freedom to trash Lomborg's book (and to do so very badly, I might add), they then refused to allow Lomborg to respond. I was very glad to see the last of that particular editor.

In the latest issue, July 2012, Scientific American has gone wildly wrong again. "Witness to an Antarctic meltdown - as glaciers collapse toward the sea, scientists struggle to figure out how fast the southern continent is melting and what that means for sea level rise" is a piece by a freelance journalist, Douglas Fox.

Strike One - the piece was not about the continent, but about the Antarctic Peninsula, that finger which points north from the continent towards South America. It is not typical of the continent, because nowhere on it are you more than about 20km from the sea.  This means, of course, that it is naturally warmer than the continent proper.

Strike Two - there was a graphic showing how glaciers were supposed to be accelerating towards the sea, and to my surprise there was an arrow showing the sea providing a "Bracing force that resists creep." Now my comparatively brief close encounters with glaciers has convinced me of one thing - they will overcome! Nothing can ultimately withstand them. The resistance offered by the sea can be nothing, nada, niks.

By now my hackles were truly up, for the piece was all about the collapse of the Larsen ice shelves.  Who can forget La Gore, emoting over their collapse in An Inconvenient Truth? So I went to check the evidence on Google Earth - it is a really useful source of ground truth, made all the better by the fact that you can get historical images as well as current ones.

Indeed, back in 1999, all was looking fine:

 You can see the Larsen B Ice Shelf on the left and Larsen A on the right quite clearly. 

By 2002, Larsen A had done the disappearing act, and Larsen B was looking much the worse for wear.

By 2006, Larsen B had joined its brother, and gone to the great iceberg in the sky! 

And then came 2010!! Voila, they had reappeared! If global warming had made them disappear, had global cooling now made them reappear?? 

The ice shelf isn't perfect - it's repair still shows a few cracks - but back it is. (Imagery Date 30 Sept 2010, location Lat.65.59, Lon. -60.81 Altitude 14km)

Strike 3 - Fox was well and truly out, and Scientific American with him.  What gets into these people, that Global Climate Change has to be The Phenomenon That Changes All?? Do the glaciologists really have nothing to say about the movement of sheets of ice? 

Back I went into the article.  It got worse. "The disappearance of the heavy glaciers is allowing the earth's crust below to rebound."  Now look at the 2006 view.  Where the ice shelves had been, there was now open sea.  So the shelves were floating - the crust was not bearing their weight!

And then the article's map - "Former Larsen A Ice Shelf", "Former Larsen B Ice Shelf."  Hubris? Spelling mistake - should have been "Reformed"? You be the judge.

But whatever way you look at it, science has really lost the plot, and Scientific American with it, when the political correctness of  Global Warming distorts the truth to this extent.