Forbes is not a credible source for climate information

There they go again
[Via CEJournal]

I’m talking about Forbes magazine, which today published another howler

Yesterday, Real Climate deconstructed a post at Forbes in which Larry Bell bludgeoned journalists for failing to report “good news” about climate change. The trouble was, almost all the alleged good news Bell referred to was absolutely bogus.

Today, Forbes is at it again, this time with a blog post by William Pentland (that’s him to the left) in which he asks:

Does a liberal democracy have sufficient resolve to stomach the economic and political sacrifices required to stabilize global warming?

Here’s his answer:

A growing number of climate scientists believe the answer is “no.” In their view, democratic institutions are perpetuating climate change by precluding implementation of the politically unpalatable actions needed to reduce the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

His evidence that a “growing number” of climate scientists believe this? The text from the jacket blurb of a book published three years ago and co-authored by a man who appears to be an Australian MD. I’m not kidding. That’s it.

Here’s what Pentland says:

The back-of-the-book blurb, which I would strongly urge readers NOT to buy, describes the author’s argument like so:

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The basis for the Forbes writer’s premise is a book jacket blurb. Wow. Cutting edge reporting there. Perhaps next time they can use quotes from urinal walls.

This is after they published an article whose ‘good’ news was pretty much debunked as wrong. Using a variation of the Gish Gallop, this author actually did a pretty poor job of discussing facts but a masterful job using false rhetorical flourishes to make their point.

Misreporting. Something Forbes seems happy providing.

Eventually the truth catches up with denialists

by FontShop

: BMJ calls Andrew Wakefield a fraud

[Via Bad Astronomy]

This is HUGE: The BMJ, an online medical journal, has accused Andrew Wakefield — the hero of the modern antivaccination movement — of being “a fraud”.

The skeptic and medical community have been hammering Wakefield for years; his study linking vaccines and autism was shaky from the start, and he suffered a series of humiliating defeats last year: the Lancet medical journal withdrew his paper, he was struck off the UK General Medical Council’s register, and was found to have acted unethically.

Of course, the word “fraud” implies intent; when writing about Wakefield I had my suspicions, but always wrote as if he were just wrong, and not deliberately lying to vulnerable parents.

But deliberate fraud is what he’s now accused of. Brian Deer, an investigative journalist, has written a multi-part series on the BMJ site which slams Wakefield. Fiona Godlee, BMJ’s editor-in-chief, also writes about this… and just to be clear, she uses the word “fraud” nine times in her editorial. Not surprisingly, it’s been picked up by several news outlets like CNN, MSNBC, and ABC.

Deer has been on Wakefield’s case a long time, and has been critical in exposing Wakefield’s shenanigans. Wakefield and the antivaxxers have attacked Deer many times, but their accusations are as hollow as the claims of links of autism to vaccinations. And let’s be clear: vaccines don’t cause autism.

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The anti-vaccine movement gained a lot of momentum from Wakefield work, now described as fraudulent. How much money was wasted on work trying to debunk his unethical work? He received over $600,000 by lawyers for producing these results.

But I expect him to still make quite a bit of money off of the anti-vaccine movement. I guess Barnum was correct.

Tablets, phones and computers live in a complex ecosystem now

CES: Analysts grow skeptical of iPad competitors due to iTunes
[Via AppleInsider]

Two analysts monitoring the tablet extravaganza at CES have issued reports indicating that euphoria about new tablets outside of Apple’s iPad may fall short of expectations because those products lack the iPad’s extensive App Store software library and access to the wide range of media in the “digital ecosystem” of iTunes.



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Apple has created a single ecosystem that can support devices from phones to tablets to laptops to desktops. There are app stores for each, with developers able to write to each. No other tablet manufacturer has anything similar. Nor a phone maker. Nor a PC maker.

This is the added bonus to what Apple has created. If some great new app is developed for an iPhone, it can easily be moved to every other type of mobile device as well as laptops with minimal effort. We cab play Angry Birds on iPods, iPhones, iPads and Macs.

No other ‘environment’ can accomplish this.

Someone else discusses Microsoft’s difficulties

by Microsoft Sweden

Microsoft’s tablet could take years, stirring doubts about Windows tablets beating out Apple’s iPad
[Via MacDailyNews]

“Instead of unveiling an elegant response to the iPad, Microsoft came to the tech industry’s premier gadget show with a collection of exposed computer guts,” Jessica Mintz reports for The Associated Press.

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And they weren’t very nice about it either. As I mentioned earlier, MS is doing great in the gaming world. Not so well elsewhere. This analyst does not seem impressed by the virtual demo of a tablet which may still be years away. Their phone strategy is a mess and the duopoly of Wintel may be at an end.

But here is why a lot of analysts are pretty stinging int heir criticisms:

Mintz continues, “It’s hard for anyone to applaud Microsoft without noting the threats posed by the growing popularity of Apple Inc.’s iPad. It’s also hard to see Windows as a tablet contender amid an onslaught of new tablets running Google Inc.’s Android software… Those concerns have been weighing on Microsoft stock, which has hovered around the $20 to $30 range for the past decade. Apple, on the other hand, has seen its share price more than triple since the first iPhone was announced in early 2007. Last year, Apple’s market capitalization surpassed Microsoft’s, making Apple the second-largest U.S. public company after Exxon Mobil Corp.”

It always comes down to stock price. Since 2007, MS is down almost 3% and Apple is up 255%. Since Ballmer took over in 2000, MS stock has lost half its value while Apple’s has gone up 10-fold.

I wonder who they will get to replace him, as if that would really make any difference.

I imagine some Mac App Store developers are very happy also

by Rob Boudon

Apple Mac App Store downloads top 1 million in 1st day; Steve Jobs ‘amazed at incredible response’
[Via MacDailyNews]

Apple today announced that over one million apps have been downloaded from the Mac App Store…

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Considering everyone had to also download a new update to OS X in order to even access the Mac App Store, this is pretty amazing. I expect I will overcome my normal hesitancy about new OS updates and download 10.6.6 later today.

And 1 million downloads with only 1000 apps available. What happens when the app environment really takes off and there are 100,000 apps.

But as one of the commenters mentioned, even people who have been buying software for the Mac since the 80s are now easily finding apps they had not heard about. I think some of the social networking aspects of this (yop 10 lists, etc.) will drve a lot of sales.

That plus the impulse pricing.

What will Adobe’s response to the Mac App Store be?

Apple’s Mac App Store takes dead aim at Adobe
[Via MacDailyNews]

Apple’s launch of the Mac OS X App Store appears to be an instant success…

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So, Aperture is now on the Mac App Store for almost 1/3rd the cost of the equivalent Adobe application. And Pixelmator for $29.99 does much of what Adobe Photoshop Elements (about $80). Apple is slowly killing Flash. iMovie for $15 versus Adobe Premiere Elements for $80.

As good or better products for much lower prices. Will Adobe start cutting its prices? Offer better bundles?

I expect it will do what it has done the last decade or so – buy some other company’s technology and try to market that.

Just a few more weeks until a Verizon iPhone

Verizon iPhone launch set for February 3 – Rumor
[Via Edible Apple]

Well the cat’s out of the bag. Hot on the heels of a report that Apple has prohibited retail employees from taking vacation time in February comes some sleuthing from BGR suggesting the iPhone on Verizon will launch on Feb. 3.

BGR has confirmed with a source close to Apple that the company has blacked out employee vacation requests between February 3rd and February 6th — Thursday through Sunday. The four-day vacation freeze has been confirmed to be in effect in several regions in the United States. A recent report suggested the vacation black-out would cover a period of three weeks beginning in late January and extending into February, which still could be true in some regions.

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This could really nice but I’m thinking it had better be an LTE iPhone. Verizon just announced all these new phones it will be selling in 6 months that are the latest Android and are also LTE. A CDMA iPhone will seem old fashioned.

We shall see.

The PC era ends with MS as a gaming company?

This:

Microsoft Sold 8 Million Kinects in 60 Days
[Via Daring Fireball]

Very impressive. Seems like Xbox has taken a decided lead over PS3. But announcing this makes it all the more glaring that they still haven’t released any sales numbers for Windows Phone 7.

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Coupled with this:

Microsoft’s Tablet Strategy

[Via Daring Fireball]

Matt Rosoff:

Earlier today, computer maker Asus kicked off the Consumer Electronics Show a day early by announcing four upcoming tablet computers. Three of them run Google’s Android operating system. One runs Windows 7. See if you can guess which one is the outlier:

• Eee Pad MeMO: starts at $499
• Eee Pad Slider: starts at $499
• Eee Pad Transformer: starts at $399
• Eee Slate: starts at $999

I get the feeling Microsoft knows they have a big problem here. They need to shut up, get to work, and build a real tablet OS — and they know it. The problem is they can’t completely shut up. The iPad is too big a sensation, and is attracting a bunch of competitors, almost none of which are using a Microsoft OS. But they were way more blustery about “slates” at last year’s CES than they were at this year’s.

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Leads to this:

Horace Dediu on the Real News From CES
[Via Daring Fireball]

Horace Dediu:

At this year’s CES two unthinkable things happened:

1. The abandonment of Windows exclusivity by practically all of Microsoft’s OEM customers.
2. The abandonment of Intel exclusivity by Microsoft for the next generation of Windows.

Many of Microsoft’s customers chose to use an OS product from Microsoft’s arch enemy. Some chose to roll their own. Microsoft, in turn, chose to port its OS to an architecture from Intel’s arch enemy.

These actions confirm the end of the PC era.

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They are doing great in the video game hardware/software side of things but no word on how their phone is doing. Their tablet strategy is not competitive. The exclusivity of the PC era – which provided them much of their profits – is at an end.

What happens when the new environment and innovation that will come from the various app stores destroys their Office dominance?

Seems like the only thing they have that people want are Xboxes, kinect and ancillary software. But about 90% of Microsoft’s revenues come from other areas.

I wonder what Ballmer is going to do about it?