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Friday, June 21, 2013

Anthony Watts promotes more nuttery. Has he lost all his senses?

Sou | 12:29 AM Go to the first of 3 comments. Add a comment

More fruitcake anyone?

Nutty fruitcake
Anthony Watts is serving up nutters again.  The lunacy keeps coming.  Do you reckon Anthony is really after this after all?

He's promoting a third abomination from Ronald D Voisin.  This retired engineer boasts he got a BSEE degree from the Univ. of Michigan – Ann Arbor in 1978 and has held various management positions at both established equipment companies and start-ups, helped initiate and has authored/co-authored 55 patent applications, 24 of which have issued.


Just kill off all the insects, microbes and mammals!


You can see why he apparently had such a hard time holding down a job.  This very same Ronald D Voisin maintains all of these notions apparently at the same time:
  • burning hydrocarbon doesn't produce carbon dioxide
  • humans are not mammals
  • there is no greenhouse effect, the earth stays warm by magic
  • there is a greenhouse effect and it's caused by insects
  • it is trivially within our means to reduce the world's microbes and insects by six per cent
  • if there is a greenhouse effect, it's easier to control it by killing off other mammals, insects and microbes than by shifting to clean energy
  • people who accept science will be 'embarrassed' if global warming doesn't result in catastrophe.

Here is one of Ronald D Voisin's tables, setting out his hit list in order of preference:



At least one WUWT-er is having trouble believing this one.  TomB says:
June 20, 2013 at 6:48 am  I was assuming by the “trivially within our means to further control microbes and insects” quote to just be poorly worded. I’ve worked with engineers throughout my career and I have great respect for them. But the overwhelming majority can’t write very well. What I’m assuming he meant was that we have no ability whatsoever to control microbes or insects. But I’ll wait for clarification from the author.

Nope, Tom.  Going by Ronald D Voisin's previous articles he meant exactly what he wrote.

It's taken three posts from Ronald D Voisin before the deniers object or even notice his crazy insect theory.
Ian H says:
June 20, 2013 at 6:53 am  Where did the microbe and insect thing come from? This is the first time I’ve ever heard this mentioned. I’m actually extremely sceptical :-) that you could cut the population of microbes and insects by six percent in a controlled way without causing immense disruption to the entire ecology.

johnmarshall says:
June 20, 2013 at 6:58 am  The BBC interviewed a microbiologist from Edinburgh who ststed that she had identified hundreds of bacteria living in soil and absolutely no idea what 95% of them actually did. So a good idea to leave them alone since they might even be, odds on, beneficial.
Man should learn more about his planet and not try to change things he little understands. The law of Unintended Consequences looms large and wide.

WasteYourOwnMoney says:
June 20, 2013 at 7:07 am
Engineers are wired to solve problems. However this proposed solution has “law of unintended consequences” written all over it. It is in fact, just the type of solution we are accustomed to expect from our green friends.

Is it a Poe?  Margaret Hardiman suggests it might be.  I don't believe it is.
Margaret Hardman says:
June 20, 2013 at 9:34 am  I know all too well the mentality of most commenters on this site. Perhaps this series of post are an elaborate Poe since even some of the faithful think this idea is rubbish. But why did it take three incoherent episodes to do so?


Clean energy is a killer?


Talk about alarmist, this from cba who seems to think that a shift to clean energy would "cause the extermination of 90% of the human race"! (excerpt):
June 20, 2013 at 9:47 am  ...It is interesting how so many Malthusians have come out about how impossible and potentially catastrophic eliminating 6% of the bugs would be yet advocate positions that would cause the extermination of 90% of the human race evidently without ever having a single thought as to the consequences of their position.

How many more?


How many more utter nutteries is Anthony Watts going to promote?  What with making a whole heap of the potty peer Monckton's posts "sticky", embracing David Archibald's funny sunny prediction that before seven years is out the earth will get colder than the coldest period in the entire Holecene, and a whole host more like these crackpot ideas, just in the past six months.  Plus all his conspiracy ideation, his straight up bald faced lies, I'm thinking Anthony Watts has either given up because he realises he's lost too many rounds and has decided to specialise in the 8% only, or he's gone around the bend.

And there are people alive that take WUWT seriously?  Seriously?

PS Just in case Anthony Watts finds his marbles, I've saved this one for posterity.



Right wing authoritarians, among other attributes, are characterised by their:
  • Illogical thinking
  • Compartmentalised brains - are able to hold contradictory thoughts at the same time as if they are all true at once.

3 comments:

  1. I see that Voisin has said he doesn't think the insects should be exterminated. Not the message I think most people got from his load of bull. He now suggests that since his three questions are all going to be answered as No, there is no need for any crackpot ideas. Why go to those lengths to set it up then?

    As for the three questions (my comments in brackets):
    1 Human emissions account for the increase?
    (Let's assume he means increase in CO2 - I think the real answer is "partly, almost certainly a large proportion of the increase in CO2 is the result of human activities" and I don't know there is any real doubt in that.)
    2 CO2 controls the climate?
    (One thing among many but it is an important one and it is one that we do have a bit of control over.)
    3 Continued rising CO2 will bring catastrophe?
    (Depends where you are and what happens there - I wouldn't want to be on a low lying island, or somewhere that might be inundated by rising sea levels - oh, wait, I am - but the consequences are unlikely to be anything good, considering how we currently live, over the long term.)

    Whoops. I failed to give yes/no answers because the questions aren't realistic ones. So not only is it ants with flatulance but strawmen as well. I'd like to have those three questions put to real climate scientists to see what answers they came up with. I don't think there would be a yes or a no amongst them.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The real climate scientists have already answered those questions in the IPCC technical reports (and elsewhere), but the deniers reject those answers.

      Dennis

      Delete
  2. SO this was the third post about insects by Voisin. The man clearly has got a bee in his bonnet.

    ReplyDelete

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