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“Preoccupied” and “fearful” types use Facebook for partner surveillance

August 23, 2013

Yet another Facebook survey. This time to try and discern types of people who use Facebook to monitor their partners. It’s all data I suppose. But I’m not sure if a plethora of little surveys such as this one (328 college students surveyed) allows greater insight or just muddies the ever expanding pool of “data”.

It is probably advisable to keep a large bucket of salt handy when looking at the conclusions of Facebook surveys.

In any case there are some new terms to show up my ignorance. IES stands for Interpersonal Electronic Surveillance and SNS stands for Social Networking Sites. There are apparently four distinct attachment styles: secure, preoccupied, dismissing, and fearful. Relationship Uncertainty ia also a parameter to bear in mind.

The authors surveyed 328 college students who were Facebook users and tested 3 hypotheses:

  1. H1: Higher levels of relationship uncertainty will be associated with greater IES of the current or ex-partner.
  2. H2: Preoccupied individuals will report greater relationship uncertainty than secure, dismissing, or fearful individuals.
  3. H3: Preoccupied individuals will report greater IES than secure, dismissing, or fearful individuals.

It seems that Relationship Uncertainty – surprisingly – was not a predictor for IES. However preoccupied and fearful types were more likely to carry out surveillance of their partners via Facebook.

Jesse Fox and Katie M. Warber, Social Networking Sites in Romantic Relationships: Attachment, Uncertainty, and Partner Surveillance on Facebook, Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, doi:10.1089/cyber.2012.0667

Abstract:Social networking sites serve as both a source of information and a source of tension between romantic partners. Previous studies have investigated the use of Facebook for monitoring former and current romantic partners, but why certain individuals engage in this behavior has not been fully explained. College students (N=328) participated in an online survey that examined two potential explanatory variables for interpersonal electronic surveillance (IES) of romantic partners: attachment style and relational uncertainty. Attachment style predicted both uncertainty and IES, with preoccupieds and fearfuls reporting the highest levels. Uncertainty did not predict IES, however. Future directions for research on romantic relationships and online surveillance are explored.

It will not perhaps come as a complete surprise that for preoccupied and fearful types, their surveillance of their partners may well reinforce their preoccupations and their fears.

From Discussion:

This study contributed to recent research on attachment and new media technologies, and revealed that attachment theory is an effective framework for understanding interpersonal electronic surveillance between romantic partners and ex-partners on Facebook. Likely due to their high levels of relationship anxiety, preoccupied and fearful individuals experienced the highest levels of relational uncertainty and engaged in the highest levels of IES. Previous studies have noted the prevalence of using Facebook to monitor partners, and this study shed light on those findings by recognizing the role of attachment style in this process.It is important to recognize who engages in IES because it may affect levels of satisfaction, stability, and security within the relationship. Preoccupied and fearful individuals often identify or create problems in their relationship due to their levels of anxiety. Given the additional information available about one’s partner and their social interactions, Facebook may exacerbate preoccupieds’ and fearfuls’ anxiety about the relationship. For example, they might be more likely to interpret ambiguous content on Facebook in a negative way, which may create conflict or strain the relationship. ……

….. The lack of a relationship between uncertainty and IES was surprising. However, Muise et al. also found no relationship between relational uncertainty and Facebook-related jealousy. This finding may be an artifact of the sample, however; many college students may perceive their relationships as transient. Thus, although they are uncertain about the relationship, it may not concern them or influence their Facebook behaviors. Future studies should investigate different variables such as the desire to be in a relationship with the partner.

It was interesting that preoccupieds did not differ from fearful individuals in their levels of uncertainty or IES, but it may be because it is attachment-related anxiety rather than avoidance that predicts these outcomes. Our findings mirror previous studies on attachment which have shown that anxious attachment leads to more distress and partner monitoring after breakups. Facebook may appeal to these two types for different reasons. Preoccupieds might feel more control and closeness by using Facebook. Because fearfuls are both anxious and avoidant, Facebook may provide them with the perfect opportunity to monitor the partner and perceived relational threats passively without having to interact with or confront him or her directly. Future research should investigate different attachment styles’ motivations to engage in IES.

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Update on the Dorta-Drinkel paper

August 20, 2013

To “close” the story on my previous posts (here and here), this post at the Chemistry blog brings a kind of “closure” though some more details will no doubt surface.

Prof Dorta has apparently responded recognising that his “just make up an elemental analysis..” comment was “inappropriate”. The Editor of Organometallics has also made a lengthy response – quite unusual for an Editor to be so forthcoming and to “step-up”:

….

Best wishes,

John Gladysz
(on whose desk “the buck stops” for everything, good and bad, at Organometallics)

He also leaves a comment at ChemBark (which itself is worthy of note as an interaction between the Editor of a Peer-reviewed Journal and a blog)

…..

Thus, with respect to the Dorta manuscript and Drinkel thesis, we will be focusing (apart from many other questions) on whether the reported procedures give solvated or unsolvated products (it cannot be both), and then whether the yields given are correct (we have done the calculations both ways, and also looked at the NMR spectra per the group handout).

Quite possibly there has been carelessness and there are clearly some mistakes, but – hopefully –  not much in the way of “underhand behaviour” or misconduct.

The full responses from Prof. Dorta and John Gladysz are over at the Chemistry blog.

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Posted in Academic misconduct, Media, Science | Comments Off on Update on the Dorta-Drinkel paper

Using Facebook undermines well-being

August 18, 2013

The Facebook phenomenon continues with more studies and some idiot “research”. But the phenomenon is real. Narcissism is on the rise, circles of acquaintances are apparently getting very wide, perceptions of having many friends way beyond the Dunbar Number is increasing, anonymous bullying has found a new medium to exploit and we know more useless things about more people than ever before. We believe we are “in communication” with many people but that may just be an illusion.

Another “study” addresses “whether Facebook use influences subjective well-being over time is unknown. We addressed this issue using experience-sampling, the most reliable method for measuring in-vivo behavior and psychological experience. We text-messaged people five times per day for two-weeks to examine how Facebook use influences the two components of subjective well-being: how people feel moment-to-moment and how satisfied they are with their lives”.

Kross E, Verduyn P, Demiralp E, Park J, Lee DS, et al. (2013) Facebook Use Predicts Declines in Subjective Well-Being in Young Adults. PLoS ONE 8(8): e69841. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0069841

Abstract: Over 500 million people interact daily with Facebook. Yet, whether Facebook use influences subjective well-being over time is unknown. We addressed this issue using experience-sampling, the most reliable method for measuring in-vivo behavior and psychological experience. We text-messaged people five times per day for two-weeks to examine how Facebook use influences the two components of subjective well-being: how people feel moment-to-moment and how satisfied they are with their lives. Our results indicate that Facebook use predicts negative shifts on both of these variables over time. The more people used Facebook at one time point, the worse they felt the next time we text-messaged them; the more they used Facebook over two-weeks, the more their life satisfaction levels declined over time. Interacting with other people “directly” did not predict these negative outcomes. They were also not moderated by the size of people’s Facebook networks, their perceived supportiveness, motivation for using Facebook, gender, loneliness, self-esteem, or depression. On the surface, Facebook provides an invaluable resource for fulfilling the basic human need for social connection. Rather than enhancing well-being, however, these findings suggest that Facebook may undermine it.

Facebook well being doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0069841.g001

Facebook well being doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0069841.g001

Figure 1. Facebook use predicts declines in affect and life satisfaction over time.

Interacting with Facebook during one time period (Time1–2) leads people to feel worse later on during the same day (T2) controlling for how they felt initially (T1);  Average Facebook use over the course of the 14-day experience-sampling period predicts decreases in life satisfaction over time.

The more participants used Facebook, the more their life satisfaction levels declined over time, B = −.012, β = −.124, t(73) = −2.39, p = .02, …

The human need for social connection is well established, as are the benefits that people derive from such connections. On the surface, Facebook provides an invaluable resource for fulfilling such needs by allowing people to instantly connect. Rather than enhancing well-being, as frequent interactions with supportive “offline” social networks powerfully do, the current findings demonstrate that interacting with Facebook may predict the opposite result for young adults—it may undermine it.

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Posted in Behaviour, Media | 2 Comments »

Observer’s political correspondent caught plagiarising

August 14, 2013

Picture of Andrew Rawnsley

Andrew Nicholas James Rawnsley (born 5 January 1962, Leeds), according to his Guardian profile, is the Observer’s award-winning chief political commentator. He is also a critically acclaimed broadcaster and author.

But – and in the best tradition of Johann Hari’s  techniques and ethics – he is not above lifting a few paragraphs of text from others when it suits his purpose.

The revelations about Rawnsley came 2 weeks ago from Guido Fawkes on his blog (run by Paul Staines and is probably the most read right-of-centre political blog in the UK):

Catching up with Andrew Rawnsley’s “award winning” column yesterday, Guido could not help think he had read the same points being made, with all the same examples and the same anecdotes, somewhere before. Rawnsley tackles the great North/South divide debate with a remarkable similarity to Jeremy Cliffe, the Economist’s UK politics correspondent, who wrote extensively on the issue in April. Cliffe’s two pieces are online here and here.

Guido first smelt a rat at the mention of Alastair Campbell, who Rawnsley writes “secured his two, even more whopping landslides in 1997 and 2001 by winning for Labour in places that had been previously thought unreachable. On the night of his first victory, he thought his staff were pulling his leg when they reported that Labour had won St Albans.”Something Economist readers would know from April, minus the insider anecdote.

“Alastair Campbell, Mr Blair’s spin doctor, recalls the party’s astonishment at the results: “seats were falling that we would never have imagined standing a hope in hell of winning.” The greatest swing was in the south-east and eastern regions, where Labour won 44 constituencies, including such leafy, middle-class suburbs as St Albans (now comfortably Tory once more).”

A coincidence, surely? So Guido started compare the rest of Rawnsley’s column to the Economist pieces, and it does not look good. See if you can spot the differences here:

Economist:

“Of the 158 seats that make up the three northern English regions, only 43 are Conservative […] Of the 197 MPs representing the English south beyond the capital, just ten are now Labour. The Tories hold only two seats in the north-east and one in Scotland.”

Rawnsley:

“Of the 158 seats in the three northern English regions, only 43 have a Conservative MP. The Tories hold just two seats in the north-east and have only one MP in the whole of Scotland. […] Under a line drawn from the Wash to the Bristol Channel, there are 197 seats outside London. Just 10 of those seats are represented by a Labour MP.”

Lifting statistics from the Economist is one thing, but what about whole chunks of analysis?

Economist:

“well-off people in the north are more likely to vote Labour than the poor are in the south […] northerners from the highest social class are more likely to vote Labour than are southerners from the lowest social class.”

Rawnsley:

“Well-heeled parts of the north are these days much more likely to vote Labour than their counterparts in the south. […] Affluent northerners (the As and Bs of pollsters’ jargon) are more likely to vote Labour than poorer southerners (the Ds and the Es).” 

The Guide Fawkes post contains many more examples of the filching of text/ideas

Somebody else filled in for Rawnsley last week and Guido reports that he is still away and may be replaced for next week’s column as well.

Perhaps he is on extended gardening leave!

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Posted in Ethics, Media, UK | 1 Comment »

Social media anonymity encourages and nurtures the herd mentality

August 14, 2013

It seems to me that the anonymity afforded by social media encourages and nurtures the “herd” mentality in human behaviour. A herd mentality is the essence of “mob behaviour” and it would seem that social media – like mobs – remove or suppress the controls and judgement calls that individual behaviour is usually subject to. I suspect that it is the anonymity available together with the potential for a “flash, online crowd”  which together contribute to reaching the “critical mass” needed for the establishment of an “unthinking mob”.

Mob behaviour is characterised by being reactive and where individuals try to “outdo” the behaviour of their fellows under the cover of being anonymous. But it needs a sufficient number of individuals to reach some critical mass to qualify as a mob. It is visible in the positive sense during rapturous calls for an encore after a concert and in the reaction to high oratory. Or it shows up in a negative way in the behaviour of a lynch mob or in the reaction to the speech of a demagogue. It has shown up in the on-line, “mob-bullying” by social media of some vulnerable teenagers which has even led to their suicides. It shows up with the internet trollls hovering on the fringes looking for a “mob” to join on-line.

A member of a mob gains anonymity in the crowd and his individual actions – while contributing to the behaviour of the mob as a whole – are no longer identifiable as the actions of a specific individual. More importantly the individual behaviour is not subject to identification or to being sanctioned. Just as with a stampeding herd of impala being chased by a predator, it is anonymity and running faster than your neighbour but still staying within the mob which provides this perception of protection. It is this feeling of being protected – I think – which switches off the normal human need for risk assessment and rational judgement to be applied before actions and which shifts behaviour away from the conscious plane. Aping and “outdoing” your “neighbour” from within the mob is then prioritised over the exercise of mind and judgement.

A new study shows that what we “like” on social media clearly exhibits a “herd mentality” and depends mainly on what others before us and around us have “liked”. It seems that random “dislikes” however are compensated for.

Lev Muchnik, Sinan Aral and Sean J. Taylor, Social influence bias: a randomized experiment. Science. Vol. 341, 9 August 2013, p. 647. doi: 10.1126/science.1240466

(The paper is paywalled but there is a related discussion here  with the authors about “The effect of free access on the diffusion of scholarly ideas”)

Abstract: Our society is increasingly relying on the digitized, aggregated opinions of others to make decisions. We therefore designed and analyzed a large-scale randomized experiment on a social news aggregation Web site to investigate whether knowledge of such aggregates distorts decision-making. Prior ratings created significant bias in individual rating behavior, and positive and negative social influences created asymmetric herding effects. Whereas negative social influence inspired users to correct manipulated ratings, positive social influence increased the likelihood of positive ratings by 32% and created accumulating positive herding that increased final ratings by 25% on average. This positive herding was topic-dependent and affected by whether individuals were viewing the opinions of friends or enemies. A mixture of changing opinion and greater turnout under both manipulations together with a natural tendency to up-vote on the site combined to create the herding effects. Such findings will help interpret collective judgment accurately and avoid social influence bias in collective intelligence in the future.

ScienceNews writes:

When rating things online, people tend to follow the herd. A single random “like” can influence a comment’s score at a social news site, researchers report in the Aug. 9 Science.

Users of the site discuss news articles and rate each other’s comments with “up votes” (positive ratings) and “down votes” (negative ratings). Votes affect each comment’s overall score. To test whether previous ratings sway users, Sinan Aral of MIT and colleagues randomly assigned all comments submitted to the site over a five-month period an up vote, a down vote or no vote.

An unearned up vote packed a surprising punch. The first person to view a randomly liked comment was 32 percent more likely to rate it positively than to do the same with a comment that had received no vote. In the long run, boosted comments’ final scores were 25 percent higher than scores of untouched comments. Random negative votes did not affect a comment’s final rating because users compensated with extra up votes.

The findings may help researchers analyze herding behavior or manipulation in other kinds of rating systems, including electoral polls and stock market predictions, the authors suggest.

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Twitter effectively accepts that it is a publisher and responsible for content

August 3, 2013

I have no doubt in my mind that social media such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are – in fact – publishers. They benefit from the advertising revenues raised on the back of their “reach” and must be responsible – and accountable – for the content they publish.

The abuse of a number of women on Twitter in the UK has now led the head of Twitter UK to personally apologise and for Twitter to now take a number of steps to prevent this kind of abuse. It is a tacit admission of responsibility for their content and completely undermines their previous stand that they are not a publisher. Even though Twitter is “requesting” its users to exercise restraint, their “commitment” makes it clear that Twitter is taking responsibility – even if only implicitly – for ensuring that their users exercise the proper restraint.

A well deserved pat on the back for Twitter (assuming they don’t back away from this commitment and later try to pin the blame on irresponsible users).

Tony Wang apology (Twitter UK)

Tony Wang apology (Twitter UK)

BBC: The boss of Twitter UK has said sorry to women who have experienced abuse on the social networking site. Tony Wang said the threats were “simply not acceptable” and pledged to do more to tackle abusive behaviour.

The apology came as Twitter updated its rules and confirmed it would introduce an in-tweet “report abuse” button on all platforms, including desktops. Police are investigating eight allegations of abuse including bomb and rape threats made against women.

Two people have been arrested in relation to Twitter rape threats against Labour MP Stella Creasy and feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez, who received the threats after a campaign to have Jane Austen on the new £10 note.

Three female journalists said they were subjected to bomb threats on the site.

The revelations sparked a backlash online, with a petition calling for Twitter to add a “report abuse” button to tweets attracting more than 124,000 signatures. In a series of tweets, Twitter UK general manager Mr Wang said: 

  • “I personally apologize to the women who have experienced abuse on Twitter and for what they have gone through. The abuse they’ve received is simply not acceptable”.
  • “It’s not acceptable in the real world, and it’s not acceptable on Twitter”.
  • “There is more we can and will be doing to protect our users against abuse. That is our commitment.”

In an earlier message posted on its blog, Twitter’s senior director for trust and safety Del Harvey and Mr Wang said the company had clarified its anti-harassment policy in light of feedback from customers.

They said: “It comes down to this: people deserve to feel safe on Twitter.”

The company has clarified its guidance on abuse and spam – reiterating that users “may not engage in targeted abuse or harassment”.

The “report abuse” button already available on the iOS Twitter app and mobile site will also be rolled out to the main website and Android app from September, Twitter said.

Ms Harvey and Mr Wang wrote in their blog: “We want people to feel safe on Twitter, and we want the Twitter rules to send a clear message to anyone who thought that such behaviour was, or could ever be, acceptable.”

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Posted in Behaviour, Media, UK | 2 Comments »

Facebook and Twitter are “publishers”, not merely “couriers”

July 30, 2013

Social media like to claim that they merely provide a “platform” or  are just “communication enablers” or only provide “communication media” and therefore that they are not responsible – and should not be held responsible – for the content they disseminate.

But they protest too much.

It is quite wrong to compare Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn to a telecommunications enterprise or a postal service or a courier service or an e-mail service provider. In all of these a specific identifiable “sender” directs a communique to a specific, identified “receiver”. The carrying of the communique to the specific receiver is the service provided by the communications enterprise and is not in any sense “publishing”. The service provided by the social media is more than just the provision of a soap box in Hyde Park (a platform) or the provision of a Board or a Wall in a town square onto which a newspaper could be appended. Any website could be a platform for comments but the website owner must take ultimate responsibility for the content published on the web-site.

Facebook and Twitter disseminate their users communiques to a general audience without discriminating as to who may receive the communique. Their business models rely on this audience being as large as possible. Their advertising revenues depend upon the dissemination being as wide and as “indiscriminate” as possible. They are not so different to a radio or a TV broadcast where the broadcaster tries to reach as large an audience as possible. The broadcaster is clearly responsible and accountable for the content of the broadcast. A free newspaper being distributed at all Metro stations but where revenues are dependent upon advertising also has a responsible publisher. Any advertising revenue accrues to the publisher.

The clincher for me is that the placement of advertisements based on circulation is decisive proof of the existence of a publisher. All published material does not contain advertising. Not all advertising is proof of the existence of a publisher. A billboard or sandwich-board owner for example, is not a publisher. But the mere existence of advertising based on circulation numbers or “reach” or any similar parameter is conclusive proof – I think – of the existence of a publisher. And it is the person or organisation responsible for the circulation who takes the advertising revenues and in consequence must be the responsible and accountable publisher.

Freedom of speech does not really enter the argument. The publisher may choose to publish whatever he pleases. He may refrain from “censoring” his users if he so wishes. Or he may – at some cost – ensure that the content he publishes meets criteria that he sets himself. But he remains responsible and accountable for what he publishes. Facebook and Twitter cannot abdicate their responsibility because they choose not to exercise the quality control they could.

It seems to me to be self-evident that Facebook and Twitter are not “billboards” or “sandwich-boards” but are full fledged “broadcasters”. And a broadcaster is a publisher. They could take responsibility for the content they disseminate if they wanted to. It just costs. They can be held accountable for what they indubitably do publish – and they should.

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Posted in Behaviour, Ethics, Media | 1 Comment »

A retraction can achieve more publicity than the original paper

July 30, 2013

A jaundiced view of retractions and questions of a cynical kind:

  1. Could an article or paper be deliberately written so as to be retracted later for the ensuing publicity?
  2. Can a deliberate retraction be managed so as to generate credit for the journal or the author who requests the retraction?
  3. And is it not “perfectly correct” to cite a retracted paper in a subsequent paper as a  “publication (retracted)”?

A retraction – if sufficiently “interesting” – can get more publicity than the original paper. It may be a cliche but it is nonetheless true  that there is no such thing as bad publicity. And if the retraction is at the “request of the authors” the author may actually demonstrate and even build a reputation for integrity!

This story at Retraction Watch of an article pulled by Slate raises my suspicions that just publicity was actually the objective.

RetractionWatch: 

Slate has retracted an essay they published as part of a partnership with Quora, an online question-and-answer site, after acknowledging that they “did not vet the piece properly.”

The piece garnered hundreds of comments, many of which questioned whether its claims were legit, and some of which pointed out that the author may have posted questionable material on the web before.

This now appears where the article, originally published at 5:01 p.m. on Thursday, July 25, originally did:

Editor’s note: On July 25, Slate published in this space an essay from its partner site Quora titled “Are Doctors Biased Against Obese People?” Because the piece did not meet our editorial standards, we have taken it down.

On Friday at 6:09 p.m., brandchannel started a post about the article with a quote from the piece:

When I was pregnant, one OB called me disgusting and told me to have an abortion.

brandchannel doesn’t mention the retraction, which Slate tells us happened Friday night, just over 24 hours after it as originally posted. But brandchannel anticipated that move, including the entire Slate-Quora piece saved for posterity, …..

I note also from Professor Debora Weber-Wulff’s blog that retracted papers still show up being cited – as retractions – in other papers. The paper is in PLoS and is supposedly a peer-reviewed online publication.

36. Rathinam C, Klein C (2012) Retraction: transcriptional repressor gfi1 integrates cytokine-receptor signals controlling B-cell differentiation. PLoS One 7.

Retraction? Are they citing the retraction of the article as a reference for what had been stated in the article retracted? 

Retracted papers are also being included in CV’s! I suppose that the paper was accepted for publication – even if later retracted – is some kind of an achievement!

It reminds me of the old story where CV’s in India would regularly include something like

“BA, 1943, University of Aligarh (fail)”.

This was considered – socially and academically – acceptable as proof that the author had at least done the course and had appeared for the examination!

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Rebranding of Narendra Modi is well under way

July 26, 2013

Back in 2011 I posted about the rebranding of Narendra Modi being orchestrated by Steven King and APCO Worldwide and which had started in 2009. His chances then of overcoming his Gujarat-riots reputation to become the BJP’s candidate for Prime Minister  were small at that time.

That has all changed now and the odds of his being the PM candidate are very high and his chances of becoming the next PM of India must be better than 50%.

Modi is not only the leading candidate to be the BJP’s candidate for PM for the 2014 elections, he has also been appointed the head of BJP’s campaign. He has started his efforts to gain acceptance across the country and regional parties are beginning to position themselves and even if they are not all rushing to show their support for him, they are certainly busy getting onto the fence so that they could support him if it becomes necessary or it could be beneficial. (Indian political parties all strictly follow the ideology of Opportunism).

Steven King – after his plagiarism fiasco – is no longer shown on APCO Worldwides’s website. If APCO are still working for Modi they are not doing it directly. During the floods in Uttarakhand a rather stupid effort was made to show Modi as a hero in the rescue of flood victims. This quickly backfired as in this article in the Times of India. The article mentioned APCO Worldwide  and led to APCO denying that they had anything to do with the rescue story or that they were working for Modi.

India is a big market for APCO and they are going to very careful in the run-up to the election to keep their ties to all political parties alive.  APCO India Brochure

Whatever the truth of APCO’s involvement (and I think the rescue story was a little crude for APCO) some PR group is certainly trying to orchestrate the rebranding of the Modi image. I would not be at all surprised that such a PR Group had – or has – links to APCO.

The latest story about 65 MP’s writing to Obama to ensure that Modi was not granted a US visa followed by 9 MP’s claiming that their signatures on the letter were forged is sufficiently convoluted to make me suspect the guiding hand of a well experienced PR exponent. The result of the circus is that the 65 MP’s look petty and vindictive and are all on the defensive. The Congress Party and the Left parties are busy distancing themselves from the writing of such a letter. Even the BJP has had to point out that they have no significant differences in foreign policy from that of the present government. Modi comes out very nicely with the faint glow of a halo beginning to appear.

Even the reports in the media that Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has stated that he does not believe in Modi’s economics and does not want him to be his Prime Minister are actually working to Modi’s advantage. (Sen’s attack on the real achievements in Gujarat is particularly silly – but I note in passing that it is not at all uncommon for Nobel laureates in Economics to make idiots of themselves). In fact, Sen now being “associated” in the public mind with Rahul Gandhi, is to Gandhi’s disadvantage. In my suspicious mind I see the hand of a skilled PR man again, who has successfully provoked Sen into making a silly – almost stupid – attack on Modi – to Modi’s eventual benefit. If Amartya Sen is really opposed to Modi, he has just scored an own goal – or three.

If the 2014 election becomes a personality contest between Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi, it would – I think – be a walk-over for Modi. The real skill of Modi’s PR strategists will show in their ability to marshall the diverse regional parties behind Modi. Exactly how they can mobilise and align the different caste groups will be particularly convoluted and fascinating to watch.

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“Lull in warming even as greenhouse gases have accumulated at a record pace”

June 11, 2013

It’s old news but it is heretical and fundamentally undermines the fanciful notion that man-made carbon dioxide emissions cause global warming. Plain denial of reality is no longer credible though the most orthodox of the warmists continue to maintain their beliefs. The real scientists just get back to work and try to understand what the models have missed and try to improve the models. The New York Times which has been one of the most ardent adherents to the orthodox line can no longer ignore reality.

The rise in the surface temperature of earth has been markedly slower over the last 15 years than in the 20 years before that. And that lull in warming has occurred even as greenhouse gases have accumulated in the atmosphere at a record pace. …

… in a climate system still dominated by natural variability, there is every reason to think the warming will proceed in fits and starts.

Of course the NYT cannot admit it was wrong or that the heretics were right. Instead it commends the “practitioners of climate science” for being “puzzled”. It will take much more before the NYT will reveal that many of these “practitioners” are little more than “charlatans of climate science”

But given how much is riding on the scientific forecast, the practitioners of climate science would like to understand exactly what is going on. They admit that they do not, even though some potential mechanisms of the slowdown have been suggested. The situation highlights important gaps in our knowledge of the climate system, some of which cannot be closed until we get better measurements from high in space and from deep in the ocean.

And then they make their most fundamental error when they write:

We certainly cannot conclude, as some people want to, that carbon dioxide is not actually a greenhouse gas. More than a century of research thoroughly disproves that claim.

But that is a fallacy. There is no direct evidence that carbon dioxide causes global warming. That is a conclusion reached because there was “no better explanation” given the assumption that man was causing global warming. This assumption came first as some kind of religious tenet and the rest has followed.

In fact the carbon cycle itself  is not very well understood as some would claim. We do not actually know how much is absorbed by the oceans. The number – and it is a very large number – used for that comes from equating carbon dioxide production and absorption in some assumed pre-industrial equilibrium which itself has never existed.

Instead of coming to the the most parsimonious explanation which is that the effect of carbon dioxide itself – let alone man-made carbon dioxide – on climate has been grossly exaggerated, the NYT repeats some of the most convoluted fantasies regarding the “lost heat”.

So the real question is where all that heat is going, if not to warm the surface. And a prime suspect is the deep ocean. Our measurements there are not good enough to confirm it absolutely, but a growing body of research suggests this may be an important part of the answer.

Exactly why the ocean would have started to draw down extra heat in recent years is a mystery, and one we badly need to understand. But the main ideas have to do with possible shifts in winds and currents that are causing surface heat to be pulled down faster than before.

The deep-ocean theory is one of a half-dozen explanations that have been proffered for the warming plateau. Perhaps the answer will turn out to be some mix of all of them. And in any event, computer forecasts of climate change suggest that pauses in warming lasting a couple of decades should not surprise us.

Perhaps the NYT would at least concede that the “science” is very far from being settled.

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Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Media | Comments Off on “Lull in warming even as greenhouse gases have accumulated at a record pace”

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