Ken Ring pontificates on climate change

Another of Ken Ring’s “self help” books – Pawmistry: How to Read Your Cat’s Paws

Ken Ring runs a business predicting the weather. Apparently in that sort of business, and with the clients he has, conflict with evidence-based science and scientists is good for business. So,  it isn’t not surprising to find him trolling the internet debating issues from weather and climate change to earthquakes.

But his contribution to a recent debate on the NZ Skeptics Facebook page is a shocker. Here is his simple experiment proving that carbon dioxide does not influence climate and anthropogenic climate change is a fraud:

• Ken Ring “Christopher, no, CO2 does not affect temperature at all. A bottle of Coke won’t warm a room, but a warmer room will increase the pressure of CO2 in the bottle. 

And just to dig the hole even deeper he adds:

• Ken Ring “Ok William, just shake the bottle of Coke in a cold room and then open it. See if it warms the room. Then shake one in a warm room and open it. Note the difference. James, there is hardly any CO2 in the atmosphere. Roughly 99% of all the CO2 in the world is in the ocean or in the ground. Tiny fact you may have overlooked.”

Not the sort of thing that should inspire confidence of his scientific skills amongst prospective customers. But then again, with some people this sort of thing goes down well.

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The ethics of exploitation

A cartoon in the current issue of the NZ Listener magazine says it all. It portrays New Zealand politicians lining up to pass through the cordon around the earthquake damaged city of Christchurch. The policeman on duty is saying “No politics past this point.”

New Zealanders don’t think well of people who seek to exploit a tragedy for their own political, ideological or monetary purposes.

The web site that attempted to explain the earthquake as divine punishment for homosexuals and prostitutes in Christchurch offended us. (Whether genuine or a very bad joke that site seems to have now been taken down).

Respectful and secular

Making sense of Ring gate?

Here is some sense on the Ring Gate  – the controversial interview of Ken Ring on Campbell live about prediction of earthquakes. Radio Wammo presented this interview with media commentator Russell Brown. He makes some important points

It does raise a lot of questions, though.

• Why can people like King Ring get such large support and garner a dedicated following?
• What does this say about the prevalence, or lack of, critical thinking in the population at large?
• It look like Ring has taken advantage of the current understandable concern about earthquakes in New Zealand.
• Is this ethical of him? Is it any more ethical than those who take advantage of human tragedies to claim they were caused by their gods. (Incidentally, the website http://www.christchurchquake.net/html/theWarning.html which claimed the Christchurch earthquake was cause by our naughty behavior seems to have been taken down).

See also:

For some scientific analysis of this issue see SciBlogs NZ and the posts Running rings around the Moon Man? and Ken Ring can’t predict earthquakes either.

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