A study in memetics (or how to Chinese whisper)

I didn't know until today that my sister had a blog. Its called Alice-Mutton and I wonder if that inadvertently describes what its all about. There certainly is some Wonderland stuff in there. One post caught my eye. Its on Global Warming.

Now I know its against the rules to criticise one's sibling, but there is a tale for the telling in this one.

Quite by reflex, the English teacher in me noticed a jarring attempt at what is called parallelism in writing. You repeat a structure using an antonym of synonym. Poets use it to great effect. Its quite compelling. "I am Australian" overuses it.

"Anthropogenic or heliocentric."

Now, if you are using the literary device properly, you say:

"Anthropogenic or heliogenic."

If you were thinking "heliocentric", you might be discussing world view of the Middle Ages.

Odd, indeed. This led me to wonder if my sister had written that at all. So, I Googled the next bit, which seemed to suggest that 8000 scientists were challenging climate change. 8000. That's a lot. And from CERN. That gives it a bit of a clout.

So the first item in the search comes up with a tasty conspiracy theory site called Red Ice Creations. Amongst its recommended sites is The Conspiracy Archive. Scroll down to the bottom of the page on Red Ice Creations. Don't laugh out loud. This is serious. The FBI is out to get you. If they don't, the United Nations will.

Back to the 8000. Of course, CERN employs a lot of scientists. How many have been involved in the CLOUD research? There they are, smiling at you, all 14 of them. So why say 8000? Oh, well, that's to get your attention. If the meme is to get traction, it has to have big numbers. But, to be fair, this is a fairly large scale international collaboration, as this CERN publication shows.

So what did they actually say? You know that someone is hiding something when they won't link to the original work, but selectively quoting instead. Its a sure sign of memetics at work. Andrew Orlowski at Red Ice Creations doesn't want you to read:

"Atmospheric aerosols exert an important influence on climate¹ through their effects on stratiform cloud albedo and lifetime² and the invigoration of convective storms³. Model calculations suggest that almost half of the global cloud condensation nuclei in the atmospheric boundary layer may originate from the nucleation of aerosols from trace condensable vapours⁴, although the sensitivity of the number of cloud condensation nuclei to changes of nucleation rate may be small^{5, 6}. Despite extensive research, fundamental questions remain about the nucleation rate of sulphuric acid particles and the mechanisms responsible, including the roles of galactic cosmic rays and other chemical species such as ammonia⁷. " (Article in Nature, Kirkby et al., Nature, 25 August 2011, my red highlight added)

Note the proper scientific wording using the appropriate modality of certainty. That's because their conclusions are tentative. As Kirby explains:

“It was a big surprise to find that aerosol formation in the lower atmosphere isn’t due to sulphuric acid, water and ammonia alone,” said Kirkby. “Now it’s vitally important to discover which additional vapours are involved, whether they are largely natural or of human origin, and how they influence clouds. This will be our next job.”

The Royal Society of Chemistry had a somewhat different conclusion to Orlowski.

"Scientists have studied in detail how human activity influences global warming, but humanity also contributes to cooling effects, for example releasing light reflecting aerosols. Kirkby says that aerosols are the biggest gap in our understanding of humanity's contribution to climate change.
'I think these are quite exciting results, it's certainly a step change paper,' says Christian Pfrang, an atmospheric aerosol specialist at the University of Reading, UK. 'What we have here is a capability of bridging the gap between laboratory experiment and field measurement in the environment. It's a unique facility which can address a number of controversial and longstanding issues.'
The CLOUD team will now try to identify which organic species are responsible for aerosol nucleation. Kirkby says they have already been conducting experiments which might answer this question and are analysing the data now. "

But, then again, they bypassed the meme. Must have been immunised against its invasion by reason and logic.

And Kirby, in another Nature press release says:

"But, Kirkby adds, those particles are far too small to serve as seeds for clouds. "At the moment, it actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it's a very important first step," he says."

Just for your edification, here's the CERN release. Read it and see if you think you agree with the chinese whisper propogated on my sister's blog.

Scientists modify current thinking in the face of new data. Skeptics pounce on any doubt to make it seem as if the whole theory is in doubt. This is the insidious nature of the meme.

Cheshire Cat: Oh, by the way, if you'd really like to know, he went that way.
Alice: Who did?
Cheshire Cat: The White Rabbit.
Alice: He did?
Cheshire Cat: He did what?
Alice: Went that way.
Cheshire Cat: Who did?
Alice: The White Rabbit.
Cheshire Cat: What rabbit?
Alice: But didn't you just say - I mean - Oh, dear.