http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/another_pielke_train_wreck.php
The thing about a Roger Pielke Jr train wreck is that you just can't look away. Check this one out. Pielke claims that there were 1,264 times as many news stories about a Michael Mann study that suggests that hurricanes are at a 1,000 year high as about a Chris Landsea study that found no increase in hurricanes over the past century. (Mark Morano , of course, links to Pielke's post.)
The fun is in the comments as folks try to explain to Pielke that there is a film director called Michael Mann and that maybe Pielke shouldn't count those stories. Pielke comes back with the claim that restricting the search to "Michael Mann" + nature + hurricanes + Aug 13-15 gives 1,412 stories. Some folks might wonder how restricting the search gives you more results, but not Pielke. In fact, if you read what Google says at the link Pielke gave it says that there are "about 20", and if you look at all the results there are just 11. A similar search for the Landsea paper gives 5 news stories. This difference may be due to one paper being published in Nature and the other in The Journal of Climate.
Update: Soon after I posted this, Pielke finally made a correction, allowing that being out by a couple of orders of magnitude was a "bit sloppy". Heaven knows how wrong he would have to be before he admitted to being sloppy or very sloppy.
Comments