Fossil evidence of Earth’s oldest sea turtle

The sea turtle in its habitat, as it might have looked 120 million years ago. © Jorge Blanco. Via Senckenberg.

Researchers at the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt, Germany have discovered fossil evidence of the Earth’s oldest sea turtle. Nmaed Desmatochelys padillai sp, the fossilized shells and bones were uncovered in two sites near Villa de Leyva, Colombia. The findings, published in the journal PaleoBios, dates the reptile at 120 million years old – 25 million years older than any previously known specimen of turtle.

Dr. Edwin Cadena, scholar from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the Senckenberg Research Institute, and his colleagues examined an almost complete skeleton of Desmatochelys padillai sp, alongside four additional skulls and two partially preserved shells.

The fossil originates from sediments settled in Earth’s Cretaceous period, a period of warm climates, which resulted in higher sea levels and numerous shallow inland seas. Fossil evidence surrounding reptiles during this period is sparse, which makes dating discoveries difficult to verify. Cadena said in a Senckenberg release:

This lends a special importance to every fossil discovery that can contribute to clarifying the phylogeny of the sea turtles.

An almost completely intact skeleton of the newly discovered fossil sea turtle, Desmatochelys padillai sp. This specimen was almost 2 feet (0.6 meters) long. © PaleoBios / Cadena. Via Senckenberg.

This unique discovery provides a new perspective on the evolutionary development of terrestrial turtles. Upon analysis, Cadena and team placed the fossils in the turtle group Chelonioidea, based on a variety of morphological characteristics like skull and shell shape.

Turtles in the Chelonioidea group dwelt in tropical and subtropical oceans, and are represented in modern Hawksbill and Green Sea Turtles. Cadena concluded:

Based on the animals’ morphology and the sediments they were found in, we are certain that we are indeed dealing with the oldest known fossil sea turtle.

Bottom line: Scientists in Germany have uncovered fossilized shells and bones of an ancient sea turtle at two sites in Colombia. They’ve named it Desmatochelys padillai sp and date the remains at 120 million years old, 25 million years older than any previously known specimen of turtle.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1QL6MlG

The sea turtle in its habitat, as it might have looked 120 million years ago. © Jorge Blanco. Via Senckenberg.

Researchers at the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt, Germany have discovered fossil evidence of the Earth’s oldest sea turtle. Nmaed Desmatochelys padillai sp, the fossilized shells and bones were uncovered in two sites near Villa de Leyva, Colombia. The findings, published in the journal PaleoBios, dates the reptile at 120 million years old – 25 million years older than any previously known specimen of turtle.

Dr. Edwin Cadena, scholar from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the Senckenberg Research Institute, and his colleagues examined an almost complete skeleton of Desmatochelys padillai sp, alongside four additional skulls and two partially preserved shells.

The fossil originates from sediments settled in Earth’s Cretaceous period, a period of warm climates, which resulted in higher sea levels and numerous shallow inland seas. Fossil evidence surrounding reptiles during this period is sparse, which makes dating discoveries difficult to verify. Cadena said in a Senckenberg release:

This lends a special importance to every fossil discovery that can contribute to clarifying the phylogeny of the sea turtles.

An almost completely intact skeleton of the newly discovered fossil sea turtle, Desmatochelys padillai sp. This specimen was almost 2 feet (0.6 meters) long. © PaleoBios / Cadena. Via Senckenberg.

This unique discovery provides a new perspective on the evolutionary development of terrestrial turtles. Upon analysis, Cadena and team placed the fossils in the turtle group Chelonioidea, based on a variety of morphological characteristics like skull and shell shape.

Turtles in the Chelonioidea group dwelt in tropical and subtropical oceans, and are represented in modern Hawksbill and Green Sea Turtles. Cadena concluded:

Based on the animals’ morphology and the sediments they were found in, we are certain that we are indeed dealing with the oldest known fossil sea turtle.

Bottom line: Scientists in Germany have uncovered fossilized shells and bones of an ancient sea turtle at two sites in Colombia. They’ve named it Desmatochelys padillai sp and date the remains at 120 million years old, 25 million years older than any previously known specimen of turtle.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1QL6MlG

Is the fossil fuel industry, like the tobacco industry, guilty of racketeering?

ExxonMobil has become infamous for its secretive anti-climate science campaign, having spent $30 million funding groups denying the scientific evidence and consensus on human-caused global warming.

Last week, after an eight-month investigation, InsideClimate News revealed that from the late-1970s to the mid-1980s, scientists at Exxon were in fact at the cutting edge of climate science research.

Exxon documents show that top corporate managers were aware of their scientists’ early conclusions about carbon dioxide’s impact on the climate. They reveal that scientists warned management that policy changes to address climate change might affect profitability. After a decade of frank internal discussions on global warming and conducting unbiased studies on it, Exxon changed direction in 1989 and spent more than 20 years discrediting the research its own scientists had once confirmed.

In an internal September 1982 document, Exxon scientists summarized the expert consensus on human-caused global warming, and the consistency of their own research with that expert consensus.

The consensus is that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 from its pre-industrial revolution value would result in an average global temperature rise of (3.0 ± 1.5)°C … There is unanimous agreement in the scientific community that a temperature increase of this magnitude would bring about significant changes in the earth’s climate, including rainfall distribution and alterations in the biosphere … the results of our research are in accord with the scientific consensus on the effect of increased atmospheric CO2 on climate.

It’s ironic that 33 years ago, the world’s largest oil company accepted and concurred with the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming thatmany people continue to deny to this day.

In another internal company document in November 1982, Exxon scientists illustrated the rapid global warming they expected to occur over the following century due to rising carbon pollution from burning fossil fuels. A year earlier, Exxon scientists were discussing the distinct possibility that the consequences of climate change could become catastrophic in the near future.

Exxon’s 1982 projections of how human carbon pollution would cause global temperatures to rise.

Climate scientists call for investigation of the fossil fuel industry

Coinciding with the InsideClimate News revelations, a group of climate scientists sent a letter to President Obama, his science advisor John Holdren, and Attorney General Lynch, calling for an investigation “of corporations and other organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change, as a means to forestall America’s response to climate change.”

In 1999, the Justice Department filed a civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) lawsuit against the major tobacco companies and their associated industry groups. In 2006, US District Court Judge Gladys Kessler ruledthat the tobacco industry’s campaign to “maximize industry profits by preserving and expanding the market for cigarettes through a scheme to deceive the public” about the health hazards of smoking amounted to a racketeering enterprise. 

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has noted that the fossil fuel industry’s efforts to cast doubt on climate science closely mirror those by the tobacco industry. As Senator Whitehouse said in May 2015,

Imagine what a little discovery into the beast would reveal about the schemes and mischief of the climate denial apparatus—about what they’re telling each other in private while they scheme to deceive the public. The truth will eventually come to light. It always does.

Indeed, as the InsideClimate News investigation subsequently revealed, Exxon’s own scientists were warning of the dangers of human-caused climate change nearly 40 years ago. The parallels to the tobacco industry’s public deception are striking. It appears that many climate scientists have become fed up, and are encouraging the government to embark on a similar RICO investigation into fossil fuel industry efforts to mislead the public.

Senator Whitehouse and 11 colleagues also sent a letter to 108 CEOs of all member companies of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors asking about their positions on the Chamber’s efforts to undermine the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan. The New York Times reported that the Chamber of Commerce was holding meetings with a group of about 30 corporate lawyers, coal lobbyists and Republican political strategists to devise a plan to dismantle the Clean Power Plan, months before it was even introduced.

Some Republicans are showing climate leadership

There is also some good news in recent American reactions to climate change. 

Click here to read the rest

from Skeptical Science http://ift.tt/1N18Ubd

ExxonMobil has become infamous for its secretive anti-climate science campaign, having spent $30 million funding groups denying the scientific evidence and consensus on human-caused global warming.

Last week, after an eight-month investigation, InsideClimate News revealed that from the late-1970s to the mid-1980s, scientists at Exxon were in fact at the cutting edge of climate science research.

Exxon documents show that top corporate managers were aware of their scientists’ early conclusions about carbon dioxide’s impact on the climate. They reveal that scientists warned management that policy changes to address climate change might affect profitability. After a decade of frank internal discussions on global warming and conducting unbiased studies on it, Exxon changed direction in 1989 and spent more than 20 years discrediting the research its own scientists had once confirmed.

In an internal September 1982 document, Exxon scientists summarized the expert consensus on human-caused global warming, and the consistency of their own research with that expert consensus.

The consensus is that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 from its pre-industrial revolution value would result in an average global temperature rise of (3.0 ± 1.5)°C … There is unanimous agreement in the scientific community that a temperature increase of this magnitude would bring about significant changes in the earth’s climate, including rainfall distribution and alterations in the biosphere … the results of our research are in accord with the scientific consensus on the effect of increased atmospheric CO2 on climate.

It’s ironic that 33 years ago, the world’s largest oil company accepted and concurred with the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming thatmany people continue to deny to this day.

In another internal company document in November 1982, Exxon scientists illustrated the rapid global warming they expected to occur over the following century due to rising carbon pollution from burning fossil fuels. A year earlier, Exxon scientists were discussing the distinct possibility that the consequences of climate change could become catastrophic in the near future.

Exxon’s 1982 projections of how human carbon pollution would cause global temperatures to rise.

Climate scientists call for investigation of the fossil fuel industry

Coinciding with the InsideClimate News revelations, a group of climate scientists sent a letter to President Obama, his science advisor John Holdren, and Attorney General Lynch, calling for an investigation “of corporations and other organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change, as a means to forestall America’s response to climate change.”

In 1999, the Justice Department filed a civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) lawsuit against the major tobacco companies and their associated industry groups. In 2006, US District Court Judge Gladys Kessler ruledthat the tobacco industry’s campaign to “maximize industry profits by preserving and expanding the market for cigarettes through a scheme to deceive the public” about the health hazards of smoking amounted to a racketeering enterprise. 

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has noted that the fossil fuel industry’s efforts to cast doubt on climate science closely mirror those by the tobacco industry. As Senator Whitehouse said in May 2015,

Imagine what a little discovery into the beast would reveal about the schemes and mischief of the climate denial apparatus—about what they’re telling each other in private while they scheme to deceive the public. The truth will eventually come to light. It always does.

Indeed, as the InsideClimate News investigation subsequently revealed, Exxon’s own scientists were warning of the dangers of human-caused climate change nearly 40 years ago. The parallels to the tobacco industry’s public deception are striking. It appears that many climate scientists have become fed up, and are encouraging the government to embark on a similar RICO investigation into fossil fuel industry efforts to mislead the public.

Senator Whitehouse and 11 colleagues also sent a letter to 108 CEOs of all member companies of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors asking about their positions on the Chamber’s efforts to undermine the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan. The New York Times reported that the Chamber of Commerce was holding meetings with a group of about 30 corporate lawyers, coal lobbyists and Republican political strategists to devise a plan to dismantle the Clean Power Plan, months before it was even introduced.

Some Republicans are showing climate leadership

There is also some good news in recent American reactions to climate change. 

Click here to read the rest

from Skeptical Science http://ift.tt/1N18Ubd

Drought stunts tree growth for four years, study says

This is a re-post from Carbon Brief by Robert McSweeney

Trees could take up to four years to return to normal growth rates in the aftermath of a severe drought, a new study finds. 

With the frequency and severity of droughts likely to increase with climate change, we might not be able to rely on forests to absorb as much of our carbon emissions, the researchers say.

Drought stress

Forests hold almost half of the carbon found on the Earth's surface, storing it in their woody trunks and branches. Studies show that forests are sensitive to droughts, causing tress stress and limiting how much they can grow and store carbon.

During the European heatwave in 2003, for example, tree and plant growth fell by 30%. That meant the land surface in Europe actually produced more carbon dioxide than it absorbed that year.

The new study, published in Science, suggests that it takes longer for trees to recover after a severe drought than previously thought.

Tree rings

Using data from the International Tree Ring Data Bank, researchers analysed tree growth at over 1,300 sites across the northern hemisphere countries. The sites are predominantly in North America and Europe, and oak and pine trees make up the majority of the species the researchers considered.

Tree rings provide a handy estimate of how quickly a tree has grown. As a tree grows, it puts on extra layers of wood around its trunk, creating a new ring each year. The quicker a tree grows, the bigger the gap between tree rings from one year to the next. 

Tree rings. Creative Commons 2.5: Arnoldius

The researchers selected tree ring records that covered at least 25 years between 1948 and 2008. They measured tree growth under normal conditions and during periods following a severe drought, and calculated an index that indicates whether growth has sped up or slowed down. This is known as the drought's "legacy" effect. A positive legacy means growth increased, while a negative one means it slowed down.

The results show that tree growth took as long as four years to return to normal after a drought. Growth was, on average, 9% slower than expected during the first year of recovery, and 5% slower in the second year.

Slower growth means the trees are absorbing and storing less carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the researchers say.

Drought legacy effects

The map below shows how the drought legacy effect varies across the northern hemisphere. Red dots identify sites where tree growth stayed low after a drought; the more severe the effect, the darker the red.

The researchers found the most severe effects in southwestern and midwestern US, although this is where most of the data were collected from. They also found that pine trees typically had longer negative drought legacies.

Drought legacy effects on northern hemisphere trees (this is calculated as an index, which doesn't have units). Red dots show sites where trees growth slowed after a drought, and blue dots show where it increased. Source: Anderegg et al. (2015).

Some trees showed positive after-effects of droughts - in parts of California and the Mediterranean region, for example (blue dots in the map above). It's hard to know exactly these benefits without more data, says Anderegg:

"One plausible scenario could be that drought killed off branches or even whole trees in that forest and that the remaining surviving trees were able to access more light and nutrients after drought, leading to higher growth rates."

Delayed recovery

Why is growth slower even after the drought has ended? Lead author Dr William Anderegg, a researcher at Princeton University in the US, says he and his colleagues don't yet fully understand why the recovery takes so long, but it's likely to be because of damage caused to the trees during the drought. He explained to Carbon Brief:

"Drought can cause embolisms in the millions of pipe-like cells that transport water in plants. These are tiny air bubbles that block these pipes and cut a tree off from water in the soil, leading to eventual desiccation and death."

Leaves lost during a drought may impair growth afterwards, the paper says, and trees may also be left more vulnerable to pests and diseases.

These impacts have implications for how well trees might cope with extreme weather in the future, Anderegg says:

"Droughts are projected to become more frequent and more severe with climate change. This implies that forests in many regions will spend more time recovering from drought and likely will be more vulnerable to drought-driven mortality."

Current carbon cycle models assume that trees bounce back as soon as a drought ends. But if trees recovering from droughts take up less carbon, these models could be overestimating how much of a "carbon sink" forests are, says Anderegg:

"There's a lot more work to be done here, but determining whether forests will continue to be carbon sinks in the coming decades or whether they could become a carbon source to the atmosphere, greatly accelerating climate change, is absolutely crucial."

Stressed forests in southwestern US. Credit: Leander Anderegg

Tropical trees

There is an important caveat to the study, says Dr David Galbraith, a lecturer in earth system dynamics at the University of Leeds, who wasn't involved in the study. He tells Carbon Brief:

"There is a complete absence of data from tropical regions, which house the vast majority of global tree species."

Anderegg agrees this is an important gap in scientists' knowledge:

"We desperately need to assess if drought legacies occur in tropical forests too, which we weren't able to do in this study. Most tropical trees don't form tree rings, which makes tree ring analysis quite difficult there."

Looking at growth isn't the only way to assess how droughts affect trees, Galbraith says. Experiments in the Amazon rainforest suggest that higher numbers of tree deaths is a major factor in how droughts affect the carbon storage of forests, he says. So this could be another way to fill this knowledge gap.

Anderegg, W.R.L. et al. (2015) Pervasive drought legacies in forest ecosystems and their implications for carbon cycle models, Science, doi:10.1126/science.aab1833

from Skeptical Science http://ift.tt/1N18Rfs

This is a re-post from Carbon Brief by Robert McSweeney

Trees could take up to four years to return to normal growth rates in the aftermath of a severe drought, a new study finds. 

With the frequency and severity of droughts likely to increase with climate change, we might not be able to rely on forests to absorb as much of our carbon emissions, the researchers say.

Drought stress

Forests hold almost half of the carbon found on the Earth's surface, storing it in their woody trunks and branches. Studies show that forests are sensitive to droughts, causing tress stress and limiting how much they can grow and store carbon.

During the European heatwave in 2003, for example, tree and plant growth fell by 30%. That meant the land surface in Europe actually produced more carbon dioxide than it absorbed that year.

The new study, published in Science, suggests that it takes longer for trees to recover after a severe drought than previously thought.

Tree rings

Using data from the International Tree Ring Data Bank, researchers analysed tree growth at over 1,300 sites across the northern hemisphere countries. The sites are predominantly in North America and Europe, and oak and pine trees make up the majority of the species the researchers considered.

Tree rings provide a handy estimate of how quickly a tree has grown. As a tree grows, it puts on extra layers of wood around its trunk, creating a new ring each year. The quicker a tree grows, the bigger the gap between tree rings from one year to the next. 

Tree rings. Creative Commons 2.5: Arnoldius

The researchers selected tree ring records that covered at least 25 years between 1948 and 2008. They measured tree growth under normal conditions and during periods following a severe drought, and calculated an index that indicates whether growth has sped up or slowed down. This is known as the drought's "legacy" effect. A positive legacy means growth increased, while a negative one means it slowed down.

The results show that tree growth took as long as four years to return to normal after a drought. Growth was, on average, 9% slower than expected during the first year of recovery, and 5% slower in the second year.

Slower growth means the trees are absorbing and storing less carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the researchers say.

Drought legacy effects

The map below shows how the drought legacy effect varies across the northern hemisphere. Red dots identify sites where tree growth stayed low after a drought; the more severe the effect, the darker the red.

The researchers found the most severe effects in southwestern and midwestern US, although this is where most of the data were collected from. They also found that pine trees typically had longer negative drought legacies.

Drought legacy effects on northern hemisphere trees (this is calculated as an index, which doesn't have units). Red dots show sites where trees growth slowed after a drought, and blue dots show where it increased. Source: Anderegg et al. (2015).

Some trees showed positive after-effects of droughts - in parts of California and the Mediterranean region, for example (blue dots in the map above). It's hard to know exactly these benefits without more data, says Anderegg:

"One plausible scenario could be that drought killed off branches or even whole trees in that forest and that the remaining surviving trees were able to access more light and nutrients after drought, leading to higher growth rates."

Delayed recovery

Why is growth slower even after the drought has ended? Lead author Dr William Anderegg, a researcher at Princeton University in the US, says he and his colleagues don't yet fully understand why the recovery takes so long, but it's likely to be because of damage caused to the trees during the drought. He explained to Carbon Brief:

"Drought can cause embolisms in the millions of pipe-like cells that transport water in plants. These are tiny air bubbles that block these pipes and cut a tree off from water in the soil, leading to eventual desiccation and death."

Leaves lost during a drought may impair growth afterwards, the paper says, and trees may also be left more vulnerable to pests and diseases.

These impacts have implications for how well trees might cope with extreme weather in the future, Anderegg says:

"Droughts are projected to become more frequent and more severe with climate change. This implies that forests in many regions will spend more time recovering from drought and likely will be more vulnerable to drought-driven mortality."

Current carbon cycle models assume that trees bounce back as soon as a drought ends. But if trees recovering from droughts take up less carbon, these models could be overestimating how much of a "carbon sink" forests are, says Anderegg:

"There's a lot more work to be done here, but determining whether forests will continue to be carbon sinks in the coming decades or whether they could become a carbon source to the atmosphere, greatly accelerating climate change, is absolutely crucial."

Stressed forests in southwestern US. Credit: Leander Anderegg

Tropical trees

There is an important caveat to the study, says Dr David Galbraith, a lecturer in earth system dynamics at the University of Leeds, who wasn't involved in the study. He tells Carbon Brief:

"There is a complete absence of data from tropical regions, which house the vast majority of global tree species."

Anderegg agrees this is an important gap in scientists' knowledge:

"We desperately need to assess if drought legacies occur in tropical forests too, which we weren't able to do in this study. Most tropical trees don't form tree rings, which makes tree ring analysis quite difficult there."

Looking at growth isn't the only way to assess how droughts affect trees, Galbraith says. Experiments in the Amazon rainforest suggest that higher numbers of tree deaths is a major factor in how droughts affect the carbon storage of forests, he says. So this could be another way to fill this knowledge gap.

Anderegg, W.R.L. et al. (2015) Pervasive drought legacies in forest ecosystems and their implications for carbon cycle models, Science, doi:10.1126/science.aab1833

from Skeptical Science http://ift.tt/1N18Rfs

Was Broecker really the first to use the term Global Warming?

"Global warming" is a term that is most commonly used to describe an increase in global mean surface temperature. Sometimes global warming has been used more broadly to also include temperature evolution in troposphere. In some cases the term has been falsely used in the place of the term "climate change", which has a different meaning. "Climate change" can be any change in climate parameters (for example rainfall or wind) and it doesn't have to be global.

J. Murray Mitchell, Jr. at his home weather station. Photo from Emilio Segrè Visual Archives via AIP website.

The usage of global warming can be traced back at least to 1961 by J. Murray Mitchell Jr. (more on this below). However, NASA has a page by Eric Conway on the terminology which mistakenly claims on the origin of the term global warming:

"Its first use was in a 1975 Science article by geochemist Wallace Broecker of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory: "Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?""

Let us see what earlier papers we can find that used the term. What is interesting, among other things, in Broecker's paper is that it uses both climate change (in the form of climatic change) and global warming in its title. Going further back from the claimed originating year of the term global warming, we somewhat interestingly find Idso (1974):

"Thus, the potential effects of a mean global warming trend upon other climatic elements and some of the earth's established agro-ecosystems are investigated."

What is interesting is that S. B. Idso is well-known by his rejection of anthropogenic global warming, and based on the abstract, this paper seems to be affirming anthropogenic global warming.

Next we encounter Wilkniss and others (1973):

"Increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have been suggested as a cause of ground level global warming through the “greenhouse” effect."

And then Orheim (1972):

"Models proposed to explain climatic changes must account for a global warming from late last century to about 1940, and an antiphase cyclic relationship, characterized by dominant periods of about 11 and about 20 years, in the climatic elements that affect glacier mass balances in middle to high latitudes in the two hemispheres."

Going back further, we find Frisken (1971):

"Sellers [1969] has estimated that by the time we reach the 5% level we should have experienced global warming by more than 10°C, and eventual melting of the polar ice caps."

Going back further still, Park (1970):

"This closely coincided with a distinct global warming trend that led to an increase in world temperature by as much as 1.0°C."

From the same year, Jablonski (1970):

"All of these problems are minimized in the youngest part of the fossil record: the last 5.2 million years since the start of the Pliocene, with their oscillations between glaciations and global warming trends, are being explored in increasing stratigraphic, geochemical, and paleobiological detail (12, 50)."

And then Fletcher (1969):

"Thus, an increase in CO2 increases the so-called "greenhouse effect" and causes global warming."

Malkin (1968):

"But as soon as the ice sheet retreated northward (say, as a result of a global warming trend) and vacated the depression, it again became the site of storm tracks."

Still going further back, and this time taking a larger leap in years, we finally find Mitchell (1961):

"In attempting to identify the ultimate causes of secular climatic variation, it should be ascertained whether this global warming trend has actually leveled off in recent years, as suggested by latter-day studies of Arctic data in the Scandinavian sector (WallCn and Ahlmann, 1955; Hesselberg and Johannessen, 1958) where the warming in earlier years was particularly noticeable."

And this is as far back as I can go. So, we find that global warming has been used at least as early as 1961. As a sidenote, Mitchell uses also the term climatic change in this 1961 paper, and he also uses it in his earlier paper (Mitchell, 1953), so even this limited analysis shows that climatic change/climate change was around earlier as a term than global warming. This of course addresses the false claims that global warming was supposedly switched to climate change in 2000s.

But who was this J. Murray Mitchell Jr.? In his climate research he studied different factors affecting climate, such as aerosols, greenhouse gases, and natural variability. Here are some of the titles and quotes of his papers to give you an idea of his work:

• "On the causes of instrumentally observed secular temperature trends" (Mitchell, 1953). "Except in the period of rapid climatic temperature change occurring since about 1890, observed temperature records, with few individual exceptions, are concluded to be very misleading as direct measures of macroclimatic change over periods longer than a few decades. With their use in climatic studies, particularly those extending back of 1900, isolation of the effects of widespread urban development and frequent thermometer relocation is imperative. At average stations in the United States, urban development has contributed local temperature rises at the rate of more than 1F in a century. The influence of very large cities has not been in proportion."
• "The Temperature of Cities" (Mitchell, 1961b). "That certain cities are warmer than their environs has been known for a very long time. London's heat island was documented by Luke Howard (1) as long ago, apparently, as 1818. More than a century later, Vienna's was described in great detail, among others by Wilhelm Schmidt (2) who in 1927 was the first to use an automobile to obtain thermal cross-sections of a city."
• "The Effect of Atmospheric Aerosols on Climate with Special Reference to Temperature near the Earth's Surface" (Mitchell, 1971). "Suggestions by several previous authors to the effect that the apparent worldwide cooling of climate in recent decades is attributable to large-scale increases of particulate pollution of the atmosphere by human activities are not supported by this analysis."
• "The natural breakdown of the present interglacial and its possible intervention by human activities" (Mitchell, 1972). "The principal effects of man's activities on present-day climate are then reviewed. and the thermal effects of anticipated future increases of atmospheric carbon dioxide and particle loading are compared. It is concluded that the net impact of human activities on the climate of future decades and centuries is quite likely to be one of warming, and therefore favorable to the perpetuation of the present interglacial."
• "An overview of climatic variability and its causal mechanisms" (Mitchell, 1976). "The overall spectrum suggests the existence of a modest degree of deterministic forms of climatic change, but sufficient nonsystematic variability to place significant constraints both on the extent to which climate can be predicted, and on the extent to which significant events in the paleoclimatic record can ever manage to be assigned specific causes."

Also, his obituary from The New York Times (1990) reveals a scientist who saw that there was something to worry about in mankind's intrusion on the climate system long before global warming really started happening.

References

Broecker, Wallace (1975), Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?, Science, vol. 189 (8 August 1975), 460-463.

Conway, Eric (2008), What's in a Name? Global Warming vs. Climate Change, NASA website, May 12, 2008.

Fletcher, J.O. (1969), MANAGING CLIMATE RESOURCES, DTIC Document AD0684386, Feb 1969.

Frisken, W.R. (1971), Extended industrial revolution and climate change, Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union, Volume 52, Issue 7,  pages 500–508, July 1971, DOI: 10.1029/EO052i007p00500.

Idso, S.B. (1974), Climatic effects of increased industrial activity upon the world's established agro-ecosystems, Agro-Ecosystems, Volume 1, 1974, Pages 7–17, doi:10.1016/0304-3746(74)90003-1.

Jablonski, David (1970), Extinctions: A Paleontological Perspective, Science 16 August 1991: Vol. 253  no. 5021  pp. 754-757, DOI: 10.1126/science.253.5021.754.

Malkin, N.R. (1968), The Retreat of the North American Ice Sheet and Shifts in Cyclone Tracks, Soviet Geography, Volume 9,  Issue 10, 1968, DOI:10.1080/00385417.1968.10771051.

McFadden, Robert D. (1990), J. Murray Mitchell, Climatologist Who Foresaw Warming Peril, 62, The New York Times, October 8, 1990.

Mitchell, J.Murray Jr. (1953), On the causes of instrumentally observed secular temperature trends, Journal of Meteorology, 10, 244–261, doi: http://ift.tt/1Ghcgiq.

Mitchell, J.Murray Jr. (1961), Recent secular changes of global temperature, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Volume 95, Solar Variations, Climatic Change, and Related Geophysical Problems, pages 235–250, October 1961, DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.1961.tb50036.x.

Mitchell, J.Murray Jr. (1961b), The Temperature of Cities, Weatherwise, Volume 14,  Issue 6, 1961, pages 224-258, DOI:10.1080/00431672.1961.9930028.

Mitchell, J.Murray Jr. (1971), The Effect of Atmospheric Aerosols on Climate with Special Reference to Temperature near the Earth's Surface, Journal of Applied Meteorology, 10, 703–714, doi: http://ift.tt/1Ghcia1.

Mitchell, J.Murray Jr. (1972), The natural breakdown of the present interglacial and its possible intervention by human activities, Quaternary Research, Volume 2, Issue 3, November 1972, Pages 436-445, doi:10.1016/0033-5894(72)90069-5.

Mitchell, J.Murray Jr. (1976), An overview of climatic variability and its causal mechanisms, Quaternary Research, Volume 6, Issue 4, December 1976, Pages 481–493, doi:10.1016/0033-5894(76)90021-1.

Orheim, Olav (1972), A 200-Year Record of Glacier Mass Balance at Deception Island, Southwest Atlantic Ocean, and Its Bearing on Models of Global Climatic Change. Institute of Polar Studies Report No. 42, Research Foundation and the Institute of Polar Studies, The Ohio State University, 118 pages.

Park, G.N. (1970), Palaeoclimatic Change in the Last 1,000 Years, Tuatara: Volume 18, Issue 3, December 1970.

Wilkniss, P.E., Lamontagne, R.A., Larson, R.E., Swinnerton, J.W., Dickson, C.R., Thompson, T. (1973), Atmospheric Trace Gases in the Southern Hemisphere, Nature, 245, 45-47 (17 September 1973) | doi:10.1038/physci245045a0.

 

from Skeptical Science http://ift.tt/1N18QYU

"Global warming" is a term that is most commonly used to describe an increase in global mean surface temperature. Sometimes global warming has been used more broadly to also include temperature evolution in troposphere. In some cases the term has been falsely used in the place of the term "climate change", which has a different meaning. "Climate change" can be any change in climate parameters (for example rainfall or wind) and it doesn't have to be global.

J. Murray Mitchell, Jr. at his home weather station. Photo from Emilio Segrè Visual Archives via AIP website.

The usage of global warming can be traced back at least to 1961 by J. Murray Mitchell Jr. (more on this below). However, NASA has a page by Eric Conway on the terminology which mistakenly claims on the origin of the term global warming:

"Its first use was in a 1975 Science article by geochemist Wallace Broecker of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory: "Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?""

Let us see what earlier papers we can find that used the term. What is interesting, among other things, in Broecker's paper is that it uses both climate change (in the form of climatic change) and global warming in its title. Going further back from the claimed originating year of the term global warming, we somewhat interestingly find Idso (1974):

"Thus, the potential effects of a mean global warming trend upon other climatic elements and some of the earth's established agro-ecosystems are investigated."

What is interesting is that S. B. Idso is well-known by his rejection of anthropogenic global warming, and based on the abstract, this paper seems to be affirming anthropogenic global warming.

Next we encounter Wilkniss and others (1973):

"Increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have been suggested as a cause of ground level global warming through the “greenhouse” effect."

And then Orheim (1972):

"Models proposed to explain climatic changes must account for a global warming from late last century to about 1940, and an antiphase cyclic relationship, characterized by dominant periods of about 11 and about 20 years, in the climatic elements that affect glacier mass balances in middle to high latitudes in the two hemispheres."

Going back further, we find Frisken (1971):

"Sellers [1969] has estimated that by the time we reach the 5% level we should have experienced global warming by more than 10°C, and eventual melting of the polar ice caps."

Going back further still, Park (1970):

"This closely coincided with a distinct global warming trend that led to an increase in world temperature by as much as 1.0°C."

From the same year, Jablonski (1970):

"All of these problems are minimized in the youngest part of the fossil record: the last 5.2 million years since the start of the Pliocene, with their oscillations between glaciations and global warming trends, are being explored in increasing stratigraphic, geochemical, and paleobiological detail (12, 50)."

And then Fletcher (1969):

"Thus, an increase in CO2 increases the so-called "greenhouse effect" and causes global warming."

Malkin (1968):

"But as soon as the ice sheet retreated northward (say, as a result of a global warming trend) and vacated the depression, it again became the site of storm tracks."

Still going further back, and this time taking a larger leap in years, we finally find Mitchell (1961):

"In attempting to identify the ultimate causes of secular climatic variation, it should be ascertained whether this global warming trend has actually leveled off in recent years, as suggested by latter-day studies of Arctic data in the Scandinavian sector (WallCn and Ahlmann, 1955; Hesselberg and Johannessen, 1958) where the warming in earlier years was particularly noticeable."

And this is as far back as I can go. So, we find that global warming has been used at least as early as 1961. As a sidenote, Mitchell uses also the term climatic change in this 1961 paper, and he also uses it in his earlier paper (Mitchell, 1953), so even this limited analysis shows that climatic change/climate change was around earlier as a term than global warming. This of course addresses the false claims that global warming was supposedly switched to climate change in 2000s.

But who was this J. Murray Mitchell Jr.? In his climate research he studied different factors affecting climate, such as aerosols, greenhouse gases, and natural variability. Here are some of the titles and quotes of his papers to give you an idea of his work:

• "On the causes of instrumentally observed secular temperature trends" (Mitchell, 1953). "Except in the period of rapid climatic temperature change occurring since about 1890, observed temperature records, with few individual exceptions, are concluded to be very misleading as direct measures of macroclimatic change over periods longer than a few decades. With their use in climatic studies, particularly those extending back of 1900, isolation of the effects of widespread urban development and frequent thermometer relocation is imperative. At average stations in the United States, urban development has contributed local temperature rises at the rate of more than 1F in a century. The influence of very large cities has not been in proportion."
• "The Temperature of Cities" (Mitchell, 1961b). "That certain cities are warmer than their environs has been known for a very long time. London's heat island was documented by Luke Howard (1) as long ago, apparently, as 1818. More than a century later, Vienna's was described in great detail, among others by Wilhelm Schmidt (2) who in 1927 was the first to use an automobile to obtain thermal cross-sections of a city."
• "The Effect of Atmospheric Aerosols on Climate with Special Reference to Temperature near the Earth's Surface" (Mitchell, 1971). "Suggestions by several previous authors to the effect that the apparent worldwide cooling of climate in recent decades is attributable to large-scale increases of particulate pollution of the atmosphere by human activities are not supported by this analysis."
• "The natural breakdown of the present interglacial and its possible intervention by human activities" (Mitchell, 1972). "The principal effects of man's activities on present-day climate are then reviewed. and the thermal effects of anticipated future increases of atmospheric carbon dioxide and particle loading are compared. It is concluded that the net impact of human activities on the climate of future decades and centuries is quite likely to be one of warming, and therefore favorable to the perpetuation of the present interglacial."
• "An overview of climatic variability and its causal mechanisms" (Mitchell, 1976). "The overall spectrum suggests the existence of a modest degree of deterministic forms of climatic change, but sufficient nonsystematic variability to place significant constraints both on the extent to which climate can be predicted, and on the extent to which significant events in the paleoclimatic record can ever manage to be assigned specific causes."

Also, his obituary from The New York Times (1990) reveals a scientist who saw that there was something to worry about in mankind's intrusion on the climate system long before global warming really started happening.

References

Broecker, Wallace (1975), Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?, Science, vol. 189 (8 August 1975), 460-463.

Conway, Eric (2008), What's in a Name? Global Warming vs. Climate Change, NASA website, May 12, 2008.

Fletcher, J.O. (1969), MANAGING CLIMATE RESOURCES, DTIC Document AD0684386, Feb 1969.

Frisken, W.R. (1971), Extended industrial revolution and climate change, Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union, Volume 52, Issue 7,  pages 500–508, July 1971, DOI: 10.1029/EO052i007p00500.

Idso, S.B. (1974), Climatic effects of increased industrial activity upon the world's established agro-ecosystems, Agro-Ecosystems, Volume 1, 1974, Pages 7–17, doi:10.1016/0304-3746(74)90003-1.

Jablonski, David (1970), Extinctions: A Paleontological Perspective, Science 16 August 1991: Vol. 253  no. 5021  pp. 754-757, DOI: 10.1126/science.253.5021.754.

Malkin, N.R. (1968), The Retreat of the North American Ice Sheet and Shifts in Cyclone Tracks, Soviet Geography, Volume 9,  Issue 10, 1968, DOI:10.1080/00385417.1968.10771051.

McFadden, Robert D. (1990), J. Murray Mitchell, Climatologist Who Foresaw Warming Peril, 62, The New York Times, October 8, 1990.

Mitchell, J.Murray Jr. (1953), On the causes of instrumentally observed secular temperature trends, Journal of Meteorology, 10, 244–261, doi: http://ift.tt/1Ghcgiq.

Mitchell, J.Murray Jr. (1961), Recent secular changes of global temperature, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Volume 95, Solar Variations, Climatic Change, and Related Geophysical Problems, pages 235–250, October 1961, DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.1961.tb50036.x.

Mitchell, J.Murray Jr. (1961b), The Temperature of Cities, Weatherwise, Volume 14,  Issue 6, 1961, pages 224-258, DOI:10.1080/00431672.1961.9930028.

Mitchell, J.Murray Jr. (1971), The Effect of Atmospheric Aerosols on Climate with Special Reference to Temperature near the Earth's Surface, Journal of Applied Meteorology, 10, 703–714, doi: http://ift.tt/1Ghcia1.

Mitchell, J.Murray Jr. (1972), The natural breakdown of the present interglacial and its possible intervention by human activities, Quaternary Research, Volume 2, Issue 3, November 1972, Pages 436-445, doi:10.1016/0033-5894(72)90069-5.

Mitchell, J.Murray Jr. (1976), An overview of climatic variability and its causal mechanisms, Quaternary Research, Volume 6, Issue 4, December 1976, Pages 481–493, doi:10.1016/0033-5894(76)90021-1.

Orheim, Olav (1972), A 200-Year Record of Glacier Mass Balance at Deception Island, Southwest Atlantic Ocean, and Its Bearing on Models of Global Climatic Change. Institute of Polar Studies Report No. 42, Research Foundation and the Institute of Polar Studies, The Ohio State University, 118 pages.

Park, G.N. (1970), Palaeoclimatic Change in the Last 1,000 Years, Tuatara: Volume 18, Issue 3, December 1970.

Wilkniss, P.E., Lamontagne, R.A., Larson, R.E., Swinnerton, J.W., Dickson, C.R., Thompson, T. (1973), Atmospheric Trace Gases in the Southern Hemisphere, Nature, 245, 45-47 (17 September 1973) | doi:10.1038/physci245045a0.

 

from Skeptical Science http://ift.tt/1N18QYU

Urban Composting: It’s Always Worth It

By Barbara Pualani

Any household organic material can be composted (and used again!).

Earth-friendly urban dwellers know just how precarious composting in the city can be. Storage bags of frozen food waste in the freezer, the subway ride overloaded with multiple bags, sometimes difficult-to-find drop-off sites. I have shared countless stories with friends about urban composting. Shenanigans abound, but we always agree that in the end it’s worth it.

Take a friend of mine that I met as a student at Columbia University. Every week she would bring her compost from New Jersey to the campus farmer’s market. She would carry a week’s worth of food waste one train ride and two subway rides every Thursday. But one day, running late, the farmer’s market closed before she could get there, leaving her stuck with the compost. She wasn’t too worried–until a student meeting ended up lasting four hours. By that time, the forgotten compost was stinking up the room and annoying her fellow students. Luckily, she eventually found a fridge to store it in. Her friends laughed it off.

Composting can sometimes seem pretty inconvenient, so why do it at all? Because food waste is actually a really big problem.

Rotting food in landfills is a substantial source of methane—a greenhouse gas with 21 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. In the U.S., landfills account for more than 20 percent of all methane emissions. Organic materials make up the largest portion of this waste. Paper materials comprise 27 percent while yard trimmings and food comprise 28 percent. This means that 55 percent of all waste in this country can potentially be composted rather than rotting in our landfills.

The story sounds dire, but it’s not all doom and gloom. Composting has made substantial headway in recent years.

According to EPA’s Advancing Sustainable Materials Management study released this year, Americans recycled and composted over 87 million tons of waste in 2013, which in carbon dioxide equivalent terms is equal to removing emissions for over 39 million passenger vehicles from the road in one year. The most recent numbers show that 5 percent of food is now composted annually. Over 2.7 million households are served by food composting collection programs nationwide. Even in the city, composting is becoming more convenient. New York City recently mandated composting for all hotel restaurants, arenas and wholesalers, and there are various organics collection services & drop off points for residents in all five boroughs.

On a different Thursday, my friend was again dropping off her compost. She mentioned to the man running the booth that she brought it all the way from New Jersey. Upon hearing this, he bowed his head with his hands folded in prayer and said, “You are an inspiration to us all.” Although we giggled about this later, he’s absolutely right.

This is why we compost—to inspire, to reduce our carbon footprint, and to do our fair share in taking care of this planet.

The biggest lesson we can learn is it’s not just for green-thumbed hippies. One of my favorite stories comes from a former colleague who told me (facetiously, of course) that composting had taken a toll on her marriage. After a year of picking his organics out of the garbage, she finally confronted her husband about his incorrect trash disposal methods. He explained how he didn’t really care about it, and even though he knew she had already explained how to do it, he was still unsure. Because her husband is very Catholic, she resorted to quoting the Pope who believes “everyone has a moral obligation to care for the planet.” Now her husband puts his organics in the compost bags; if he is unsure if the item is compostable, he asks. My colleague ended this story with an assurance and a wink: “I am happily married.”

I like to collect these anecdotes—laughter is the best medicine after all—but they serve to amplify the real problem: organic waste is a serious contributor to climate change, and we all need to do our part to address it. If you’re confused about what’s compostable and what’s not, check out your city’s local web page.  Or, like my friend’s husband, if you’re confused, just ask. It never hurts to research or ask around until you do find someone who knows. And it’s always worth it.

About the author: Barbara Pualani serves as a speechwriter for EPA Region 2. Prior to joining EPA, she served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Dominican Republic. She resides in Brooklyn and is a graduate of University of Northern Colorado and Columbia University.

from The EPA Blog http://ift.tt/1N15s07

By Barbara Pualani

Any household organic material can be composted (and used again!).

Earth-friendly urban dwellers know just how precarious composting in the city can be. Storage bags of frozen food waste in the freezer, the subway ride overloaded with multiple bags, sometimes difficult-to-find drop-off sites. I have shared countless stories with friends about urban composting. Shenanigans abound, but we always agree that in the end it’s worth it.

Take a friend of mine that I met as a student at Columbia University. Every week she would bring her compost from New Jersey to the campus farmer’s market. She would carry a week’s worth of food waste one train ride and two subway rides every Thursday. But one day, running late, the farmer’s market closed before she could get there, leaving her stuck with the compost. She wasn’t too worried–until a student meeting ended up lasting four hours. By that time, the forgotten compost was stinking up the room and annoying her fellow students. Luckily, she eventually found a fridge to store it in. Her friends laughed it off.

Composting can sometimes seem pretty inconvenient, so why do it at all? Because food waste is actually a really big problem.

Rotting food in landfills is a substantial source of methane—a greenhouse gas with 21 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. In the U.S., landfills account for more than 20 percent of all methane emissions. Organic materials make up the largest portion of this waste. Paper materials comprise 27 percent while yard trimmings and food comprise 28 percent. This means that 55 percent of all waste in this country can potentially be composted rather than rotting in our landfills.

The story sounds dire, but it’s not all doom and gloom. Composting has made substantial headway in recent years.

According to EPA’s Advancing Sustainable Materials Management study released this year, Americans recycled and composted over 87 million tons of waste in 2013, which in carbon dioxide equivalent terms is equal to removing emissions for over 39 million passenger vehicles from the road in one year. The most recent numbers show that 5 percent of food is now composted annually. Over 2.7 million households are served by food composting collection programs nationwide. Even in the city, composting is becoming more convenient. New York City recently mandated composting for all hotel restaurants, arenas and wholesalers, and there are various organics collection services & drop off points for residents in all five boroughs.

On a different Thursday, my friend was again dropping off her compost. She mentioned to the man running the booth that she brought it all the way from New Jersey. Upon hearing this, he bowed his head with his hands folded in prayer and said, “You are an inspiration to us all.” Although we giggled about this later, he’s absolutely right.

This is why we compost—to inspire, to reduce our carbon footprint, and to do our fair share in taking care of this planet.

The biggest lesson we can learn is it’s not just for green-thumbed hippies. One of my favorite stories comes from a former colleague who told me (facetiously, of course) that composting had taken a toll on her marriage. After a year of picking his organics out of the garbage, she finally confronted her husband about his incorrect trash disposal methods. He explained how he didn’t really care about it, and even though he knew she had already explained how to do it, he was still unsure. Because her husband is very Catholic, she resorted to quoting the Pope who believes “everyone has a moral obligation to care for the planet.” Now her husband puts his organics in the compost bags; if he is unsure if the item is compostable, he asks. My colleague ended this story with an assurance and a wink: “I am happily married.”

I like to collect these anecdotes—laughter is the best medicine after all—but they serve to amplify the real problem: organic waste is a serious contributor to climate change, and we all need to do our part to address it. If you’re confused about what’s compostable and what’s not, check out your city’s local web page.  Or, like my friend’s husband, if you’re confused, just ask. It never hurts to research or ask around until you do find someone who knows. And it’s always worth it.

About the author: Barbara Pualani serves as a speechwriter for EPA Region 2. Prior to joining EPA, she served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Dominican Republic. She resides in Brooklyn and is a graduate of University of Northern Colorado and Columbia University.

from The EPA Blog http://ift.tt/1N15s07

September Pieces Of My Mind #2 [Aardvarchaeology]

I’m a closeted boardgamer.

• Is the gents’ loo in the new Stonehenge visitors’ centre fitted with Aubrey holes?
• Heh. Here’s a nice piece of home-made Scandy English: “the people living in the castles would spend their days doing chores, quarrelling, sleeping and eating”. The author probably means that castle dwellers would often “quarrel” with attacking troops.
• The Kings of Leon have a very odd singer. I can’t decide if he’s interesting or just bad.
• Borrowed one of the more recent Pratchetts that I haven’t read yet. Realised that it’s about a quarter-century old.
• Twitter just suggested that I follow this guy who describes himself as “Archaeologist / Powerlifter / Ambassador for Viking Warrior Nutrition”. Yep.
• OK music lovers, check out this detail in “Whole Lotta Love”. Plant doesn’t come in on the beat with the chorus, “Y’ wanna whole lotta love”. He’s intentionally like a quarter beat late every time. Micro-syncopation, says my musicologist friend.
• Listening to the Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” for the first time. Was convinced at first that it was a Soundtrack of Our Lives song that I’d forgotten about. Then the female background singer came in and it started sounding like Primal Scream. That’s what it means to establish a style, I guess.
• Both the drummer and the bass player for the Jimi Hendrix Experience died from alcoholism at about age 60. )-:
• Ran the roleplaying exercise about the ethics and urban planning issues around burial excavations again. This year the random number generator assigned the role of Satanists to a born-again Pentecostal student and a Muslim student. They thought it was a blast. (-;
• I don’t have impostor syndrome. That’s when you’re an expert at something but feel like a fraud. I’ve quite a realistic perspective on my strengths. But imagine being given a university course to teach, and it’s been conceived and prepared by someone else whose skill set has almost no overlap with yours…
• Elderly relative likes something I’ve written on-line, wants to share it on a web site for people with similar interests. Does not post a link to my piece: instead creates a PDF file containing my piece and has the keeper of the web site put the PDF in their repository. Um… Well… That works, I guess.
• I commute several 100 kms once a week to teach. This of course costs me money for air tickets, bus rides and hostel stays. And though I can get a lot of work done during the commute, it does cost me a certain amount of time = more money. But it also costs me considerable time = money spent in simply booking all the air tickets and hostel nights. So though the gross salary is fine, my net income ain’t.
• It’s Godt-haab. Not God-thaab. No sibilant there.
• Wife vacuumed a lot of spilled instant coffee pellets. Now the vacuum cleaner makes the house smell like stale coffee.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1KKPvYq

I’m a closeted boardgamer.

• Is the gents’ loo in the new Stonehenge visitors’ centre fitted with Aubrey holes?
• Heh. Here’s a nice piece of home-made Scandy English: “the people living in the castles would spend their days doing chores, quarrelling, sleeping and eating”. The author probably means that castle dwellers would often “quarrel” with attacking troops.
• The Kings of Leon have a very odd singer. I can’t decide if he’s interesting or just bad.
• Borrowed one of the more recent Pratchetts that I haven’t read yet. Realised that it’s about a quarter-century old.
• Twitter just suggested that I follow this guy who describes himself as “Archaeologist / Powerlifter / Ambassador for Viking Warrior Nutrition”. Yep.
• OK music lovers, check out this detail in “Whole Lotta Love”. Plant doesn’t come in on the beat with the chorus, “Y’ wanna whole lotta love”. He’s intentionally like a quarter beat late every time. Micro-syncopation, says my musicologist friend.
• Listening to the Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” for the first time. Was convinced at first that it was a Soundtrack of Our Lives song that I’d forgotten about. Then the female background singer came in and it started sounding like Primal Scream. That’s what it means to establish a style, I guess.
• Both the drummer and the bass player for the Jimi Hendrix Experience died from alcoholism at about age 60. )-:
• Ran the roleplaying exercise about the ethics and urban planning issues around burial excavations again. This year the random number generator assigned the role of Satanists to a born-again Pentecostal student and a Muslim student. They thought it was a blast. (-;
• I don’t have impostor syndrome. That’s when you’re an expert at something but feel like a fraud. I’ve quite a realistic perspective on my strengths. But imagine being given a university course to teach, and it’s been conceived and prepared by someone else whose skill set has almost no overlap with yours…
• Elderly relative likes something I’ve written on-line, wants to share it on a web site for people with similar interests. Does not post a link to my piece: instead creates a PDF file containing my piece and has the keeper of the web site put the PDF in their repository. Um… Well… That works, I guess.
• I commute several 100 kms once a week to teach. This of course costs me money for air tickets, bus rides and hostel stays. And though I can get a lot of work done during the commute, it does cost me a certain amount of time = more money. But it also costs me considerable time = money spent in simply booking all the air tickets and hostel nights. So though the gross salary is fine, my net income ain’t.
• It’s Godt-haab. Not God-thaab. No sibilant there.
• Wife vacuumed a lot of spilled instant coffee pellets. Now the vacuum cleaner makes the house smell like stale coffee.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1KKPvYq

Three dozen dead macaque monkeys later: Vaccines still don’t cause autism [Respectful Insolence]

One of the limitations constraining those of us who do human subjects research is that ethical considerations often prevent us from designing our clinical trials in what would be, from a strictly scientific standpoint, in the most methodologically rigorous way. For example, we can’t intentionally infect human beings with known inocula of deadly bacteria in order to cause a reproducible severity of disease to be treated with a new antibiotic.

One thing that antivaccinationists seem unable to understand is this very point with respect to vaccine trials. They will call for a “vaxed versus unvaxed” study in which children are randomized to receive the full vaccine schedule or saline placebo. Of course, such a design would be highly unethical because the placebo control group would be left unprotected from potentially deadly vaccine-preventable diseases, which violates the all-important principle of clinical equipoise, which mandates that there be genuine scientific uncertainty over which group is receiving the more efficacious and/or safer treatment. Obviously, leaving half of the children in a “vaxed-unvaxed” study would grossly violate that principle. Heck, even from the warped viewpoint of an antivaccinationist, such a trial would violate clinical equipoise, because an antivaccinationist would believe it was the vaccinated group that would be receiving the harmful interventions. Some of the less clueless antivaccine activists have enough understanding of this concept to grudgingly accept that a randomized trial of this sort is totally unethical and therefore cannot be done. As a result they’ll call for an epidemiological study of vaccinated versus unvaccinated children, not realizing that such a study is methodologically far more complex than it sounds, would be enormously expensive, and would likely require nearly as many unvaccinated children as there are in the United States. Such a study would require compelling evidence to justify it, and, as we all know, the evidence that vaccines cause autism, asthma, GI issues, neurodevelopmental disorders, sudden infant death syndrome, or the other problems antivaccinationists blame them for is at best not compelling and at worst nonexistent.

One way to try to get answers when you can’t use humans is to use animals. However, this approach has problems as well, because, depending on the animal model and the disease, the relevance of such experiments can be questioned. One way to try to maximize the relevance to human physiology is to use nonhuman primates, but such experiments are incredibly expensive to do and must be held to very high ethical standards given how human-like they are. I mention these considerations for two reasons. First, one of the most infamous experiments trying to prove that vaccines cause autism—and failed, of course—using Rhesus Macaque monkeys. It was an experiment done by Laura Hewitson, who was at the University of Pittsburgh at the time. Ever since then, periodically, investigators have done experiments with nonhuman primates looking for neurodevelopmental disorders due to vaccines. For instance, Laura Hewitson followed up her first study with another one in 2009 and yet another in 2010. All were bad science. All claimed to relate the pediatric vaccine schedule to neurodevelopmental disorders. All were touted by antivaccinationists. One was withdrawn.

Finally, the other day, a good monkey study was released by Gadad et al in PNAS entitled Administration of thimerosal-containing vaccines to infant rhesus macaques does not result in autism-like behavior or neuropathology. Personally, I consider the study to be highly unethical to have done, given that there is no compelling evidence to justify subjecting 79 macaque monkeys to a bunch of injections and killing a large fraction of them to study their brains, all in the service of testing the long discredited hypothesis that vaccines cause autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders. I mean, seriously. The University of Washington IACUC, which approved this study, should be ashamed of itself. Ethically, the study is a travesty. It was also a waste of a lot of money, again, because this question did not need to be studied yet again. Despite the lack of a compelling scientific rationale for the study, it was nonetheless done, and done competently; so we have to consider its results which—surprise! surprise!—were completely negative. Let’s take a look at the details.

The design was quite simple. There were 79 infant macaque monkeys subjected to six different vaccination schedules: (i) Control (n = 16), in which animals received saline injections in place of vaccines; (ii) 1990s Pediatric schedule (n = 12), in which animals received vaccines following the pediatric schedule recommended in the 1990s; (iii) 1990s Primate (n = 12), in which animals received vaccines recommended in the 1990s but on an accelerated schedule; (iv) thimerosal-containing vaccines (TCV, n = 12), in which animals received all TCVs but no MMR vaccines following the accelerated schedule; (v) MMR (n = 15), in which animals only received the MMR vaccine but no TCVs following the accelerated schedule; and (vi) 2008 (n = 12), in which animals received vaccines recommended in 2008 but on an accelerated schedule. Infants were assigned to a peer group of four animals, with multiple study groups being tested each year for neurodevelopmental outcomes.

The investigators then assessed social behavior, with testing being carried out by a social tester blinded to the experimental group. The testers were well-trained and experienced; they were also tested for reliability and used standard testing methods:

Infants underwent testing as follows: from birth to 20 d, infants were assessed for the development of neonatal reflexes and perceptual and motor skills; from postnatal day 14 to ∼3.5 mo of age, infants were examined for the development of OCP; from ∼3 to 6 mo of age, animals underwent discrimination learning assessments; from ∼5 to 8 mo of age, animals were assessed for learning set development; and from 30 d to 12 mo of age, animals underwent assessments of behavior before group living. These developmentally appropriate tests are measures of neurodevelopment, learning, cognitive abilities, and social behavior in young macaques (45). At ∼13 mo of age, animals were transferred to juvenile caging where they were group housed (n = 4 males per group) with animals from within their peer group for the duration of the study. All subsequent behavioral data were collected while animals were in their home cage.

Behaviors were defined as passive, exploring, playing, sex, aggression, withdrawal, fear-disturbed, rock-huddle-stop-clasp (strong clasping/grasping of another monkey without play behavior, or self-clasping with arms, legs, hands, or feet, without locomotion and no active inspection of own or other’s body), and stereotypy (repetitive body movements, with or without locomotion, requiring three or more consecutive, repetitive movements). It might be a cliche, but there were no statistically significant differences detected in any of the behaviors measured in any of the experimental groups.

Then, at the conclusion of the experiment, brains from monkeys in the control (N=12), 1990s (N=12), and 2008 groups (N=8) were sectioned for histological and immunohistological examination. The authors examined the brains for neuropathology in parts of the brain previously shown in humans to have changes in autism: the cerebellum, hippocampus, and amygdala. Try as they might to find differences, Gadad et al failed to find any differences between controls and either of the two vaccinated groups examined. There were no changes in the neurons in these regions. There were no changes in protein levels. Basically, there were no differences from control in the two experimental groups in the volume of the cerebellar hemispheres, the number or density of Purkinje cells in the cerebellum. There was no difference in the size of the Purkinje cells. Western blots (a means of detecting proteins with antibodies) failed to find differences in certain Purkinje-cell associated proteins calbindin, GAD-67, and proteins that are markers for different cell types, such as Iba1 (a microglial marker) and GFAP (astrocyte marker). Again, these were all negative. Gadad et al measured these proteins up, down, right, left, and sideways (so to speak), but failed to find any differences.

Why, you might ask, didn’t Gadad et al examine the brains from the monkeys in the other experimental groups? The authors justify this decision thusly:

The neuroanatomical analyses were first performed in brains from the 1990s Primate and 2008 groups, as animals in these groups received the highest amount of EtHg exposure (1990s Primate) or the most extensive vaccine exposure (2008). Because no neuronal differences were found in either of these vaccine groups compared with the control group, no additional vaccine groups were fully studied.

This is a reasonable compromise. If the groups that received the most extensive thimerosal exposure and the highest vaccine exposure showed no detectable differences in brain structure in regions relevant to autism pathophysiology, then there really isn’t a good reason to kill the rest of the monkeys to look at their brains. Even with that compromise, 36 monkeys paid for this information with their lives (16 control + 12-1990s schedule, and 8-2008 schedule) and brains. It might be one thing if this resoundingly negative study would convince antivaccinationists that vaccines do not cause neurodevelopmental disorders or induce pathological changes in the brain.

Indeed, Dr. Paul Offit, after listing all the studies that have failed to find a correlation between vaccines and autism, alluded to a similar same concern in an accompanying editorial, although characteristically he was nowhere near as blunt as I am. Characteristically, he refrained from calling the study unethical and a waste of money and tried to find something good about this waste of money and primates:

One could reasonably wonder whether it is necessary to continue to spend more money chasing this fruitless, dead-end hypothesis. However, the constant drumbeat of negative studies has made a difference. Unlike 10 y ago, the media no longer covers the vaccine– autism controversy by telling both sides of the story when only one side is supported by the science; for the most part, they have chosen perspective over false balance. Legislators are also stepping up; both California and Vermont recently eliminated their philosophical exemptions to vaccination.

I will admit that Dr. Offit has a point. There certainly is a value in negative studies. No one, least of all I, would dispute that. The question—and reasonable scientists can disagree over the answer to this question—is: What is the point where we can say that enough is enough, that the question being studied has settled to a sufficient degree of certainty that it is no longer worth spending large sums of money on or killing intelligent primates to ask and study the question yet again? An animal study like this might be considerably less expensive and complex than large epidemiological studies, but it’s still an animal study. It’s not a human study. Human epidemiological studies, on the other hand, are much more expensive and require controlling for confounders that don’t need to be controlled for in the highly controlled world of animal studies.

Unfortunately, I would argue that the relentless drumbeat of negative studies about vaccines and autism has probably played less of a role in how the press has changed its tune in the way it covers vaccine-autism pseudoscience to a far less credulous one than the discrediting of the chief architect of the MMR-autism scare, Andrew Wakefield, did. As much as I really, really wish it were the science alone that finally turned the tide and persuaded reporters and much of the general public that vaccines do not cause autism, I tend to think that was less of a factor than Wakefield’s disgrace. From my perspective, seeing Wakefield lose his medical license, be dismissed as the medical director of the quack clinic he used to run in Texas, have his Lancet paper that launched the MMR scare retracted, and be shown to have been a scientific fraud practicing what Brian Deer so aptly called “Piltdown medicine” probably played a far greater role in changing public perception. Add to that the string of outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases that culminated in the Disneyland measles outbreak early this year. These things, more than anything else, were likely what shifted public opinion. That’s why it’s my opinion that, barring new compelling evidence that demands that we study the question further, studies such as this one are unnecessary.

Particularly annoying to me was the way that the authors of this study basically twisted themselves into pretzels to justify doing the study. For example:

Several epidemiological studies sought to determine whether TCVs resulted in neurodevelopmental disorders including autism; however, both nonsignificant and significant associations have been reported (8–12). Significant associations have been reported by Thompson et al. (11), who investigated the association between TCVs and immune globulins early in life and neuropsychological outcomes in children at 7–10 y of age. The data included the evaluation of 1,047 children and their biological mothers and 24 neuropsychological tests. The only variable that was statistically significant was tics; children who were exposed to higher doses of thimerosal were more likely to exhibit tics. In a follow-up study by Barile et al. (12) examining a subset of the data from Thompson et al. (11), they found a significant association between thimerosal dosage and tics, but only in boys. They found no statistically significant associations between thimerosal exposure from vaccines early in life and six of the seven neuropsychological constructs examined.

William Thompson, as you might recall, is the “CDC whistleblower,” and the above is a total cherry pick job on Thompson’s studies. While Thompson’s 2007 study did show a statistically significant association between thimerosal-containing vaccines and ticks, what Gadad et al totally fail to mention is that the study didn’t correct for multiple comparisons and that it also showed positive associations between thimerosal-containing vaccines and positive outcomes. That’s why the overall conclusion is that the pattern of associations was most consistent with random statistical noise. Funny how Thompson (and Gadad et al) mention the ticks but ignore the seemingly positive associations.

In the abstract, studies like this one do have value—to a point. Given the evidence we have and what we already know about the relationship between vaccines and autism (namely that there isn’t one), however, I really have to question the very necessity for such a study. Sure, it shows what every other well-designed study asking whether vaccines, be they thimerosal-containing or not, are associated with autism, but surely the investigators must have known before they started that that’s what it would show.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1iKvPu2

One of the limitations constraining those of us who do human subjects research is that ethical considerations often prevent us from designing our clinical trials in what would be, from a strictly scientific standpoint, in the most methodologically rigorous way. For example, we can’t intentionally infect human beings with known inocula of deadly bacteria in order to cause a reproducible severity of disease to be treated with a new antibiotic.

One thing that antivaccinationists seem unable to understand is this very point with respect to vaccine trials. They will call for a “vaxed versus unvaxed” study in which children are randomized to receive the full vaccine schedule or saline placebo. Of course, such a design would be highly unethical because the placebo control group would be left unprotected from potentially deadly vaccine-preventable diseases, which violates the all-important principle of clinical equipoise, which mandates that there be genuine scientific uncertainty over which group is receiving the more efficacious and/or safer treatment. Obviously, leaving half of the children in a “vaxed-unvaxed” study would grossly violate that principle. Heck, even from the warped viewpoint of an antivaccinationist, such a trial would violate clinical equipoise, because an antivaccinationist would believe it was the vaccinated group that would be receiving the harmful interventions. Some of the less clueless antivaccine activists have enough understanding of this concept to grudgingly accept that a randomized trial of this sort is totally unethical and therefore cannot be done. As a result they’ll call for an epidemiological study of vaccinated versus unvaccinated children, not realizing that such a study is methodologically far more complex than it sounds, would be enormously expensive, and would likely require nearly as many unvaccinated children as there are in the United States. Such a study would require compelling evidence to justify it, and, as we all know, the evidence that vaccines cause autism, asthma, GI issues, neurodevelopmental disorders, sudden infant death syndrome, or the other problems antivaccinationists blame them for is at best not compelling and at worst nonexistent.

One way to try to get answers when you can’t use humans is to use animals. However, this approach has problems as well, because, depending on the animal model and the disease, the relevance of such experiments can be questioned. One way to try to maximize the relevance to human physiology is to use nonhuman primates, but such experiments are incredibly expensive to do and must be held to very high ethical standards given how human-like they are. I mention these considerations for two reasons. First, one of the most infamous experiments trying to prove that vaccines cause autism—and failed, of course—using Rhesus Macaque monkeys. It was an experiment done by Laura Hewitson, who was at the University of Pittsburgh at the time. Ever since then, periodically, investigators have done experiments with nonhuman primates looking for neurodevelopmental disorders due to vaccines. For instance, Laura Hewitson followed up her first study with another one in 2009 and yet another in 2010. All were bad science. All claimed to relate the pediatric vaccine schedule to neurodevelopmental disorders. All were touted by antivaccinationists. One was withdrawn.

Finally, the other day, a good monkey study was released by Gadad et al in PNAS entitled Administration of thimerosal-containing vaccines to infant rhesus macaques does not result in autism-like behavior or neuropathology. Personally, I consider the study to be highly unethical to have done, given that there is no compelling evidence to justify subjecting 79 macaque monkeys to a bunch of injections and killing a large fraction of them to study their brains, all in the service of testing the long discredited hypothesis that vaccines cause autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders. I mean, seriously. The University of Washington IACUC, which approved this study, should be ashamed of itself. Ethically, the study is a travesty. It was also a waste of a lot of money, again, because this question did not need to be studied yet again. Despite the lack of a compelling scientific rationale for the study, it was nonetheless done, and done competently; so we have to consider its results which—surprise! surprise!—were completely negative. Let’s take a look at the details.

The design was quite simple. There were 79 infant macaque monkeys subjected to six different vaccination schedules: (i) Control (n = 16), in which animals received saline injections in place of vaccines; (ii) 1990s Pediatric schedule (n = 12), in which animals received vaccines following the pediatric schedule recommended in the 1990s; (iii) 1990s Primate (n = 12), in which animals received vaccines recommended in the 1990s but on an accelerated schedule; (iv) thimerosal-containing vaccines (TCV, n = 12), in which animals received all TCVs but no MMR vaccines following the accelerated schedule; (v) MMR (n = 15), in which animals only received the MMR vaccine but no TCVs following the accelerated schedule; and (vi) 2008 (n = 12), in which animals received vaccines recommended in 2008 but on an accelerated schedule. Infants were assigned to a peer group of four animals, with multiple study groups being tested each year for neurodevelopmental outcomes.

The investigators then assessed social behavior, with testing being carried out by a social tester blinded to the experimental group. The testers were well-trained and experienced; they were also tested for reliability and used standard testing methods:

Infants underwent testing as follows: from birth to 20 d, infants were assessed for the development of neonatal reflexes and perceptual and motor skills; from postnatal day 14 to ∼3.5 mo of age, infants were examined for the development of OCP; from ∼3 to 6 mo of age, animals underwent discrimination learning assessments; from ∼5 to 8 mo of age, animals were assessed for learning set development; and from 30 d to 12 mo of age, animals underwent assessments of behavior before group living. These developmentally appropriate tests are measures of neurodevelopment, learning, cognitive abilities, and social behavior in young macaques (45). At ∼13 mo of age, animals were transferred to juvenile caging where they were group housed (n = 4 males per group) with animals from within their peer group for the duration of the study. All subsequent behavioral data were collected while animals were in their home cage.

Behaviors were defined as passive, exploring, playing, sex, aggression, withdrawal, fear-disturbed, rock-huddle-stop-clasp (strong clasping/grasping of another monkey without play behavior, or self-clasping with arms, legs, hands, or feet, without locomotion and no active inspection of own or other’s body), and stereotypy (repetitive body movements, with or without locomotion, requiring three or more consecutive, repetitive movements). It might be a cliche, but there were no statistically significant differences detected in any of the behaviors measured in any of the experimental groups.

Then, at the conclusion of the experiment, brains from monkeys in the control (N=12), 1990s (N=12), and 2008 groups (N=8) were sectioned for histological and immunohistological examination. The authors examined the brains for neuropathology in parts of the brain previously shown in humans to have changes in autism: the cerebellum, hippocampus, and amygdala. Try as they might to find differences, Gadad et al failed to find any differences between controls and either of the two vaccinated groups examined. There were no changes in the neurons in these regions. There were no changes in protein levels. Basically, there were no differences from control in the two experimental groups in the volume of the cerebellar hemispheres, the number or density of Purkinje cells in the cerebellum. There was no difference in the size of the Purkinje cells. Western blots (a means of detecting proteins with antibodies) failed to find differences in certain Purkinje-cell associated proteins calbindin, GAD-67, and proteins that are markers for different cell types, such as Iba1 (a microglial marker) and GFAP (astrocyte marker). Again, these were all negative. Gadad et al measured these proteins up, down, right, left, and sideways (so to speak), but failed to find any differences.

Why, you might ask, didn’t Gadad et al examine the brains from the monkeys in the other experimental groups? The authors justify this decision thusly:

The neuroanatomical analyses were first performed in brains from the 1990s Primate and 2008 groups, as animals in these groups received the highest amount of EtHg exposure (1990s Primate) or the most extensive vaccine exposure (2008). Because no neuronal differences were found in either of these vaccine groups compared with the control group, no additional vaccine groups were fully studied.

This is a reasonable compromise. If the groups that received the most extensive thimerosal exposure and the highest vaccine exposure showed no detectable differences in brain structure in regions relevant to autism pathophysiology, then there really isn’t a good reason to kill the rest of the monkeys to look at their brains. Even with that compromise, 36 monkeys paid for this information with their lives (16 control + 12-1990s schedule, and 8-2008 schedule) and brains. It might be one thing if this resoundingly negative study would convince antivaccinationists that vaccines do not cause neurodevelopmental disorders or induce pathological changes in the brain.

Indeed, Dr. Paul Offit, after listing all the studies that have failed to find a correlation between vaccines and autism, alluded to a similar same concern in an accompanying editorial, although characteristically he was nowhere near as blunt as I am. Characteristically, he refrained from calling the study unethical and a waste of money and tried to find something good about this waste of money and primates:

One could reasonably wonder whether it is necessary to continue to spend more money chasing this fruitless, dead-end hypothesis. However, the constant drumbeat of negative studies has made a difference. Unlike 10 y ago, the media no longer covers the vaccine– autism controversy by telling both sides of the story when only one side is supported by the science; for the most part, they have chosen perspective over false balance. Legislators are also stepping up; both California and Vermont recently eliminated their philosophical exemptions to vaccination.

I will admit that Dr. Offit has a point. There certainly is a value in negative studies. No one, least of all I, would dispute that. The question—and reasonable scientists can disagree over the answer to this question—is: What is the point where we can say that enough is enough, that the question being studied has settled to a sufficient degree of certainty that it is no longer worth spending large sums of money on or killing intelligent primates to ask and study the question yet again? An animal study like this might be considerably less expensive and complex than large epidemiological studies, but it’s still an animal study. It’s not a human study. Human epidemiological studies, on the other hand, are much more expensive and require controlling for confounders that don’t need to be controlled for in the highly controlled world of animal studies.

Unfortunately, I would argue that the relentless drumbeat of negative studies about vaccines and autism has probably played less of a role in how the press has changed its tune in the way it covers vaccine-autism pseudoscience to a far less credulous one than the discrediting of the chief architect of the MMR-autism scare, Andrew Wakefield, did. As much as I really, really wish it were the science alone that finally turned the tide and persuaded reporters and much of the general public that vaccines do not cause autism, I tend to think that was less of a factor than Wakefield’s disgrace. From my perspective, seeing Wakefield lose his medical license, be dismissed as the medical director of the quack clinic he used to run in Texas, have his Lancet paper that launched the MMR scare retracted, and be shown to have been a scientific fraud practicing what Brian Deer so aptly called “Piltdown medicine” probably played a far greater role in changing public perception. Add to that the string of outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases that culminated in the Disneyland measles outbreak early this year. These things, more than anything else, were likely what shifted public opinion. That’s why it’s my opinion that, barring new compelling evidence that demands that we study the question further, studies such as this one are unnecessary.

Particularly annoying to me was the way that the authors of this study basically twisted themselves into pretzels to justify doing the study. For example:

Several epidemiological studies sought to determine whether TCVs resulted in neurodevelopmental disorders including autism; however, both nonsignificant and significant associations have been reported (8–12). Significant associations have been reported by Thompson et al. (11), who investigated the association between TCVs and immune globulins early in life and neuropsychological outcomes in children at 7–10 y of age. The data included the evaluation of 1,047 children and their biological mothers and 24 neuropsychological tests. The only variable that was statistically significant was tics; children who were exposed to higher doses of thimerosal were more likely to exhibit tics. In a follow-up study by Barile et al. (12) examining a subset of the data from Thompson et al. (11), they found a significant association between thimerosal dosage and tics, but only in boys. They found no statistically significant associations between thimerosal exposure from vaccines early in life and six of the seven neuropsychological constructs examined.

William Thompson, as you might recall, is the “CDC whistleblower,” and the above is a total cherry pick job on Thompson’s studies. While Thompson’s 2007 study did show a statistically significant association between thimerosal-containing vaccines and ticks, what Gadad et al totally fail to mention is that the study didn’t correct for multiple comparisons and that it also showed positive associations between thimerosal-containing vaccines and positive outcomes. That’s why the overall conclusion is that the pattern of associations was most consistent with random statistical noise. Funny how Thompson (and Gadad et al) mention the ticks but ignore the seemingly positive associations.

In the abstract, studies like this one do have value—to a point. Given the evidence we have and what we already know about the relationship between vaccines and autism (namely that there isn’t one), however, I really have to question the very necessity for such a study. Sure, it shows what every other well-designed study asking whether vaccines, be they thimerosal-containing or not, are associated with autism, but surely the investigators must have known before they started that that’s what it would show.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1iKvPu2