A phony scientific paper has the blogosphere and global warming skeptics in an uproar.
The Nov. 3 online publication in the "Journal of Geoclimatic Studies" is attributed to Daniel Klein and colleagues in the Dept. of Climatology at the University of Arizona and elsewhere. Klein, his colleagues, the Dept. of Climatology, and the journal, however, don't exist. They are the apparent creation of David Thorpe, a UK-based journalist and web-site designer, who posted the phony report online to "test the scientific illiteracy and credulity of global warming skeptics" (see his description of the hoax at http://pranks.com/2007/11/12/geoclimatic-studies-hoax/).
The phony study claimed that global warming is caused by large quantities of CO2-emitting bacteria on the sea floor, and not by humans.
Reuters News Agency put out a story (http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/2007/11/08/bacteria-hoax-briefly-fools-climate-sceptics /) about skeptics being taken in by the hoax, at least briefly, spreading the word that, "This could not be more damaging to manmade global warming theory..."
The blogosphere is rife with stabs at the skeptics, including Rush Limbaugh, for being so gullible, while the skeptics are claiming to have spotted the hoax very quickly and grumbling about 'black ops' tactics by the other side.
There is a nice summary of the hoax at http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/the-life-and-death-of-a-climate-hoax/.
The hoax paper is now posted as a pdf at http://www.cyberium.co.uk/downloads/Journal%20of%20Geoclimatic%20Studies.pdf
Dear Mr. Allison:
ReplyDeleteOut of topic. But this is regarding your blog article on May 21, 2007
I agree with your basic opinion on tellurium. However I want to double check all the numbers. Upon careful examination I did not find anything on USGS that suggested tellurium price was at $3.82 a pound in 2000. There was a meantioning of selenium price at $3.82. Maybe you confused the two because they talk about the two elements in the same document.
Tellurim price did raise a lot, but I just want to get the numbers correct.
Where do you get the 215 tons number? The numbers I see from USGS is way less. See also this doc.
You were also quoted in a recent newspaper article: "World production is only a couple hundred tons, but there is a lot more sitting in the copper being produced. It is just that nobody is recovering it," Allison said.
That statement is basically correct. But the reason "nobody is recovering it" is to improve recovering efficiency, you need to spend time, money, do research and purchase new equipment. Current tellurium price is way too low to provide incentive to copper refineries. Tellurium price needs to reach some where near gold price, then they may be interested in trying to recover 100% of the tellurium. So that really doesn't help low end tellurium users like First Solar.
You might be interested in reading my recent article on tellurium:
Tellurium: A Supernova in the Making