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rather stunning proof that solar based electricity might just be great investment http://bit.ly/2xaUGF... 6 hours ago |
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Google Interviews http://is.gd/4W1SR 5 days ago |
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Sokal's Classic Article - Unmitigated balderdash http://is.gd/4W1SR 5 days ago |
Loose Feathers #210
A DC Birding Blog —
... a severe threat to the 80% of Australia's population that lives in coastal areas. The Senate started hearings on cap and trade legislation this week. A scientist has been studying black bears up close and claims they are less dangerous than advertised. In British Columbia there have been 48 control kills of grizzly bears per year over the past fifteen years. Most deaths were probably preventable. RealClimate has an open letter to Steve Levitt regarding the problems with the climate change chapter of ...
Pwnage Made Easy
The Loom —
... , who, like Levitt, is a professor at the University of Chicago, shows why that’s wrong–not with calculus or some other fancy-schmancy mathematics, but with some embarrassingly simple arithmetic. ...
An open letter to Steve Levitt
3quarksdaily —
... in effect, that it was pointless to try to solve global warming by building solar cells, because they are black and absorb all the solar energy that hits them, but convert only some 12% to electricity while radiating the rest as heat, warming the planet. Now, maybe you were dazzled by Mr Myhrvold’s brilliance, but don’t we try to teach our students to think for themselves? Let’s go through the arithmetic step by step and see how it comes out. It’s not hard.
More here. [Thanks to Carl Zimmer.] ...
Fellow Univ of Chicago Professor Owns Super Freaky Economist Levitt
Get Energy Smart! NOW! —
Professor Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, Louis Block Professor [image] in the Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago Geosciences, has published An Open Letter to Steven Levitt , the nation’s ...
Geology Links for October 30th, 2009
The Geology News Blog —
Links from del.icio.us, tagged with geology for October 30th, 2009:
Eurozine – The climate of history: Four theses – Dipesh Chakrabarty
RealClimate: An open letter to Steve Levitt
Marcia’s Science Teaching Ideas
Antes q todo mejor que es un variograma? – Yahoo! Argentina Respuestas Respuestas
ANÁLISIS DE LAS METODOLOGÍAS HABITUALES PARA LA GENERACIÓN DE MODELOS DIGITALES DEL TERRENO – Mapping Interactivo ...
Dogs, SUV's, and Freaks
Only In It For The Gold —
Ray's excellent takedown of Freakonomics in RealClimate has me shaking my head about people's abilities to discuss even the arithmetic, never mind the algebra or calculus or statistics, of global sustainability issues. ...
The Real Problem with Real Global Warming being thought of as Real. Or not.
Greg Laden's Blog —
... By now there have been many detailed dissections of everything that is wrong with the treatment of climate in Superfreakonomics , but what has been lost amidst all that extensive discussion is how really simple it would have been to get this stuff right.... Please read this post at Real Climate and pass it on. Find more posts in: ...
Ouch … more Superfreakonomic Uber-Pwnage (all sorts)
Greenfyre's —
... has written an “An open letter to Steve Levitt” that is well worth the read. In it he demonstrates just how easy it would have been for Superfreakonomics to get it right, and by implication, how inexcusable it is that they got it so badly wrong. ...
Another week of GW News, November 1, 2009
A Few Things Ill Considered —
... really scary -- I continue to cringe at the SuperFreakonomics reviews, but... 2009/10/30: CJR: More On Super Freaks and Troubling Temps 2009/10/30: ClimateP: Rep. Jay Inslee slams SuperFreakonomics: "People are still trying to write books to deceive the American public" on climate science. 2009/10/30: JQuiggin: Unforgivable, at least by me [superfree] 2009/10/29: Deltoid: Dubner falsely claims that ocean acidification is addressed in Superfreakonomics 2009/10/29: RealClimate: An open letter to Steve Levitt 2009/10/29: BSD: My last, somewhat ...
Climate Progress is Technorati’s top-ranked “Green” website, but …
Climate Progress —
... should in fact be slow changing — the “Authority” and influence of a blog or website.
No doubt my exceedingly high Authority right now is partly due to the phenomenal amount of traffic and linking I’ve gotten from breaking the story on the Error-riddled book Superfreakonomics — a post that has been read by more than 50,000 people and, whose analysis, I’m happy to say, has been vindicated by major journalists and leading climate scientists.
That said, Technorati is hurting its own credibility by not ...
One error retracted, 99 to go. Superfreaknomics authors will, in future editions, correct their claim that Caldeira believes “carbon dioxide is not the right villain”
Climate Progress —
... , the Louis Block Professor in the Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago, on RealClimate, in an”An open letter to Steve Levitt.” Pierrehumbert accuses his U of C colleague of “academic malpractice in your book.” ...
Steven Levitt takes a beating
Pleiotropy —
... , University of Chicago professor in geophysics, thoroughly dismantles Steven Levitt's claim* as presented in Superfreakonomics that "it [is] pointless to try to solve global warming by building solar cells, because they are black and absorb all the solar energy that hits them, but convert only some 12% to electricity while radiating the rest as heat, warming the planet." In an open letter to Levitt , Pierrehumbert uses very simple math to make it clear how bogus that claim is. Along the way we learn how pathetically small an area of the globe would have to be covered with ...
Why solar energy trumps coal power: Exclusive new Caldeira analysis explains “the burning of organic carbon warms the Earth about 100,000 times more from climate effects than it does through the release of chemical energy in combustion.”
Climate Progress —
... ) — Levitt brought upon himself the detailed and devastating takedown by Geophysicist Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, which focused on the same exact paragraph in the book that I debunked: ...
Superfreaka-something-or-other
Swans on Tea —
... Elizabeth Kolbert has some not very flattering things to say about Levitt and Dubner’s new book. (along with RealClimate and several other blogs) According to Levitt and Dubner, the story’s message is a simple one: if, at any particular moment, things look bleak, it’s because people are seeing them the wrong way. “When the solution to a given problem doesn’t lie right before our eyes, it is easy to assume that no solution exists,” they write. “But history has shown again and again that such assumptions are wrong.” Solutions do exist. But there’s money to be made ...
George Will, low hanging fruitcake?
Greenfyre's —
... As Pierrehumbert’s brilliant open letter to Steve Levitt documents, many people would rather travel across the continent to be misled rather than walk two blocks to get the facts. In a nutshell, the vested interests are only too happy to employ willing propagandists to write nonsense for a public, many of whom are only too eager to believe the fiction as it does not threaten their life style. ...
Mike Treder The Sharp Sword of Rationality
Ethical Technology —
... Take for example, this superb skewering by University of Chicago Professor Raymond T. Pierrehumbert of the disappointing new book, Superfreakonomics, and the badly flawed positions of its authors: ...
Superfreakonomics coauthor replies to “scathing review” by Elizabeth Kolbert: “she somehow accomplished all this with a degree from Yale in … literature.”
Climate Progress —
... is, factually speaking, wrong. Among the many matters they misrepresent are: the significance of carbon emissions as a climate-forcing agent, the mechanics of climate modelling, the temperature record of the past decade, and the climate history of the past several hundred thousand years. Raymond T. Pierrehumbert is a climatologist who, like Levitt, teaches at the University of Chicago. In a particularly scathing critique, he composed an open letter to Levitt, which he posted on the blog RealClimate. ...
Blasphemy
Open the Future —
... going after him for the many, many mistakes in (at least) the global warming section of the book. Interestingly, a phrase that keeps coming up in his ...
Rabett Run — ... . The question before the assembled long ears is how to discuss stuff, and no, Eli is not really very interested in the civil discourse thing. The kids read, or hear something. They think about it (maybe) and then talk to others around the carrot juice bar. Some bunny throws out a half baked comment, if you are lucky. Another sneeringly points out that it "needs more work" and finally, after a while, sometimes after dad shows up , the issues become a lot clearer. This is what is happening on a number of blogs. The problem comes when the originators dig in. Then it gets, very ...
Melting Ohio Daily
Only In It For The Gold —
... I'll defer to Ray Pierrehumbert on this one. "by the time a hundred years have passed, the heat trapped each year from the CO2 emitted by using coal instead of solar energy to produce electricity is 125 times the effect of the fossil fuel waste heat." According to a neutral arbiter (a ...
