AP & CBS pwned by aura-reading charlatan (Updated)

UPDATE: Commenter Gary tells us that CBS has pulled the story after AP told them they didn’t write it. That is true – the link to the story gives a “Page Not Found” error. Hopefully Gary can keep us apprised of events as they unfold.

I’m kind of an agnostic on global warming, because I think it has been a poster child for bad science. The politicization of the field has corrupted the research so badly that I despair for the ethics of the profession.

But today we have something much, much sillier than bad research. What we have instead is the AP and CBS news being completely duped by a new age guru from Australia:

New research compiled by Australian scientist Dr. Tom Chalko shows that global seismic activity on Earth is now five times more energetic than it was just 20 years ago.

The research proves that destructive ability of earthquakes on Earth increases alarmingly fast and that this trend is set to continue, unless the problem of “global warming” is comprehensively and urgently addressed.

You might be wondering how global warming can possibly affect seismic activity. Here’s his explanation:

“NASA measurements from space confirm that Earth as a whole absorbs at least 0.85 Megawatt per square kilometer more energy from the Sun than it is able to radiate back to space. This ‘thermal imbalance’ means that heat generated in the planetary interior cannot escape and that the planetary interior must overheat. Increase in seismic, tectonic and volcanic activities is an unavoidable consequence of the observed thermal imbalance of the planet,” said Dr. Chalko.

The Nonsense. Now, if you know anything about heat transfer, this is complete idiocy. If you don’t, then consider this: the temperature of the top of the Earth’s mantle is about 1600 F, and the temperature at the Earth’s surface is around 100 F. The temperature rise since the 1990’s is about 1 degree Fahrenheit. That will have an immeasurably tiny effect on the heat loss from the mantle to the surface (~0.1%).

Or look at it this way: if his theory were true, we would have many more earthquakes in summer than in winter. But in fact, the opposite is true. And the reason has nothing to do with heat loss – it has to do with water level variations with the seasons.

The Pwnage: I don’t really expect the AP and CBS to know anything about heat transfer. But I do expect them to do a rudimentary background check on their source. A quick Google search reveals one of his biographies, where we find:

He plays classical guitar exceptionally well, enjoys windsurfing (he calls himself a speed addict here), takes time to practice meditation, telepathy and astral travel. His hobbies include challenging paradigms and paradoxes in geophysics, studying puzzling properties of electro-photonic glow (Auras) using Kirlian camera, learning to see human aura, discovering purpose of life, as well as organizing controversial seminars.

His PhD, by the way, is in laser holography. Not climatology, geology, or heat transfer.

The AP and CBS were so eager to jump on the global warming bandwagon that they allowed a telepathic astral-projecting aura reader sell them on some hokum that can’t pass the scientific laugh test.

Layers and layers of fact-checking – wasn’t that the phrase?

UPDATE (Just for DaveinTX): Dave wasn’t happy with the lack of scientific-type knowledge here, so he demanded a real live equation. So here you go, Dave:

For the less erudite and Texans among us, that there is the equation for how much heat gets out of a spherical shell, i.e., how much heat gets through the crust of the Earth.

Just looking at the equation you can see that: given that (T1-T2) is about 1500 F, if T2 (the temperature at the Earth’s surface) changes by one degree, the heat escaping will change by 1/1500 = 0.067%.