Saturday, March 2, 2013

Dumbest Post Comp on HotCopper

Is there a competition among deniers on HotCopper to see who can win the dumbest post award?

Two examples from a single thread in the HotCopper science and medicine S&M club.

There's astrayalien (he already has one dumbest post award plus a dishonourable mention) who, in response to a post reporting the BoM announcement of Australia's record hot summer, asks:
Why is the Bureau of Meteorology changing past data?

Astrayalien thinks a day somewhere = summer all over Australia

Apparently astrayalien has Watt's disorder and doesn't know the difference between the Australian national aggregate for an entire summer season and a local daily maximum at a single site.

The 'evidence' he submits, presumably originating from BoM itself, is a list of places and the date they set a high temperature record.  His point apparently being that not every single individual location in Australia had its temperature record (for the hottest day or longest heat wave) broken this past summer.

Going by astrayalien's comment, he thinks a single day is equivalent to a summer.  And he thinks a single site is equivalent to a nationwide aggregate of sites.

Here's a gif animation of the record-smashing January heat wave that covered the continent:


Ronsterm compares a denier blogger with some of the world's leading experts in a miscellany of fields

Ronsterm tries to compete for the worst denier, by asking why Jo Nova (a holder of nasty conspiracy theories and science denier blogger) should not be considered as 'credible' as this assortment of renowned and highly respected leading academics, political leaders and government advisers (most of whom do not have any relationship with the Bureau of Meteorology).

  • Algore (sic) (I think Ron might have meant Al Gore, past vice-President of the USA, who advocates for action to reduce global warming; rather than algor or algorithm)
  • Professor Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, UK and one of the world's leading experts on the historical surface temperature record and paleoclimate.
  • Professor Michael Mann is Distinguished Professor of Meteorology and Director, Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, and one of the world's leading paleoclimatologists.
  • Sir Nicholas Stern is a leading economist who has held a number of posts in government and academia.  He is also a Member of the House of Lords in the UK. Prof Stern led the Stern Review, an examination of economic implications of global warming.
  • Dr Rajendra K Pachauri is Chief Executive of TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute) and holds numerous other academic and directorial positions internationally, including Chairing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
  • Professor Tim Flannery is Chief Commissioner of the Australian Government Climate Commission, Chair of Environmental Sustainability at Macquarie University and has held numerous other positions nationally and internationally.  In 2007 he was honoured by the then Prime Minister of Australia, Mr John Howard, as Australian of the Year.
  • Jo Nova is the pseudonym of a climate science denier and paranoid conspiracy theorist.
None of the above work for the Bureau of Meteorology. Professor Tim Flannery would have close dealings with the Bureau, particularly in his role as Chief Commissioner of the Australian Government Climate Commission.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Instead of commenting as "Anonymous", please comment using "Name/URL" and your name, initials or pseudonym or whatever. You can leave the "URL" box blank. This isn't mandatory. You can also sign in using your Google ID, Wordpress ID etc as indicated. NOTE: Some Wordpress users are having trouble signing in. If that's you, try signing in using Name/URL. Details here.

Click here to read the HotWhopper comment policy.