Climate change. It’s big news at the moment, mostly due to the Climate Change Skeptics who either think that there isn’t climate change going on or that it is occurring but we can’t say for sure that it’s the result of human endeavour. I suspect that a lot of the skepticism comes from a misunderstanding of consensus in the Natural Sciences and that as scientists themselves are so specialised these days that it is possible for someone who is qualified in one area to be absolutely unqualified in another (but act otherwise). Still, this is the first paragraph and thus it is about to turn out that climate change is the ephemera of today’s post.
No, today it’s a slip into the weird and the wacky (well, okay, I think climate change skepticism is weird and wacky, but that’s not the point). It’s to do with reports; especially reports that support anomalous conclusions. (more…)