...such a shame he can't understand Twitter
Anthony Watts is crowing that he put one over Peter Gleick, who he really doesn't like. The reason he's so jealous of Dr Gleick is that Anthony, despite pretending(?) to be a Dog and paying the annual subscription, didn't find anything worth exposing at the Union of Concerned Scientists, while Peter Gleick didn't even have to pay the subs to expose the Heartland Institute. (Though one could argue that he had to pretend to be a dog.)Anthony thinks he is victorious because he saw Dr Gleick tweeting this photo of melted traffic lights:
Note the time: 9:25 am
About half an hour later , in his very next tweet, Dr Gleick tweeted that it was "no doubt from some fire..."
Note the time: 10:04 am
Anthony says in his gotcha article (my bold italics):
I took one look at that photo and the 110°F temperature, and my bullshit detector alarm went off. My next thought was “how could Gleick be so dumb as to fall for this?”. I mean GMAFB, if it was air temperature doing it, all parts of the stoplight would show a nearly equal melting effect, and not be lopsided. Surely geniuses like Gleick understand the basic of thermodynamics enough to get this? Apparently not.
I immediately replied to Gleick and explained how this just wasn’t possible:
Now be advised, dear reader. Don't ever count on Anthony for punctuality, will you.
Note the time of Anthony's first tweet: 10:22 am, Anthony's "immediate" was almost one whole hour after Dr Gleick's first tweet and twenty minutes after he qualified it with "No doubt some fire...." (which was at 10:04 am).
Dr Gleick very sensibly didn't reply to Anthony. Which probably put Anthony's nose out of joint. But Anthony had up a head of steam and undeterred he immediately tweeted again:
...and caught up in the heat of the moment, Anthony excitedly shot off more in quick succession:
...and then, the pièce de résistance.
Finally Anthony had it all figured out. It was a dog water bowl what melted them traffic lights! Well waddaya know!
Anthony really has a thing for dogs. He sends his own dog off to become a scientist, now he's blaming poor Fido for burning down a set of traffic lights in Kuwait.
As for the fire in Northern California - not too many Huff Post readers were impressed.
Q 1: Could the authorities be correct and a dog dish start a verandah smouldering? I'll leave that to the physicists and fire experts out there. This report suggests they could be. Living in a fire prone area as I do, stranger things have happened.
Q 2: The more pertinent question is: could a doggie dish have melted traffic lights in Kuwait as Anthony suggested? Well that's about as plausible as direct sunlight being able to melt them :D
You will marvel at Anthony Watts' humility
Funny thing is, Anthony proudly posted all his clever tweets to @PeterGleick on WUWT - except the really, really clever inspiration that it was the doggy dish wot dun it. (Scratches head in wonder at how someone of such genius as Anthony can show such humility.)
Post Script
Sorry Peter, I couldn't resist. The burning traffic lights by doggy dish was just too good to pass up.
Thus proving that Watts is as confused about humour as he is about science - which is to say, a lot...
ReplyDeleteBJ.
But why did Mr Gleick feel the need to post this pic with the insinuation that it was somehow connected to a world that is "hotter than it used to be, and getting hotter every year" ? This is what happens when the line gets blurred between scientist and crusading activist.
ReplyDeleteBecause it is hot all over the US west and this seemed funny?
DeleteWhy? To illustrate a point with humour?
ReplyDeleteI don't think it would have been his intention to make a denier look foolish. Anthony's "doggy dish did it" response was an unexpected bonus;-)
As for acting on knowledge, that indicates he is concerned for the future of humanity and is prepared to act to protect us. Unlike denier activists who aim to see the harm we are doing continue.
The funny thing about the doggie dish theory is that I was watching a US home repair show -- Ask This Old House -- a few months back and something similar came up. The homeowner was having trouble with melting vinyl siding and it turned out the problem was related to a window reflecting hot afternoon sun onto the area which was melting. A screen over the window diffused the sunlight and fixed the melting.
DeleteI certainly hope Peter Gleick isn't dumb enough to believe that a traffic signal in Kuwait, where temps reach 120 degrees, would melt because at 110 degrees. Why doesn't he simply admit he was wrong to assume it melted due to the temperature?
ReplyDeleteHuh? Reading comprehension has never been a strong suit of the denialati :-(
DeleteAn anonymous numpty said:
Delete"Why doesn't he simply admit he was wrong to assume it melted due to the temperature?
Why? Because he did not in fact assume that it had melted "due to the temperature". Rather, Gleick explicitly noted that it was the result "no doubt from some fire...", and he did so before Watts had a splatty hissy-fit about the original tweet.
This anonymous numpty seems to have a reading comprehension problem because Sou explains all of this very clearly in her original post. It seems that going off half-cocked is a favoured strategy of most denialati, and not just Willard Watts.
Oh, and technically the lights did melt from "the temperature" - a very high temperature. And this was Gleick's point all along - high temperatures are undesirable in the wrong context.
Bernard J.
Not only has Watts had a humour-bypass (except for the sort of 'humour' he deals in, i.e. that which he proclaims as humour and which his eager followers lap-up), he also sees insults where he wants to.
ReplyDeleteExample : I left a comment at his site praising one of the other comments for posting facts and figures and rebutting Watts's biased blog-post about the WMO. I also wrote that it was a shame that a so-called scientific website would then allow other posters to either ignore our divert attention away from those facts and figures (in other words, not rationally discuss them), or to insult the poster.
Result? "Take your insults elsewhere. We are not obligated to put up with them. — mod." !
(http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/03/u-n-world-meteorological-organization-report-pans-the-idea-that-severe-weather-and-severe-weather-deaths-can-be-linked-to-climate-change/#comment-1354054)
Insults? Just above my comment, to the poster who had the audacity to post facts and figures : "You have, however, CLEARLY proven that you are jerk." (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/03/u-n-world-meteorological-organization-report-pans-the-idea-that-severe-weather-and-severe-weather-deaths-can-be-linked-to-climate-change/#comment-1354054)
It's an amazing bubble world there. Read, if you missed it or can stomach it : http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/03/u-n-world-meteorological-organization-report-pans-the-idea-that-severe-weather-and-severe-weather-deaths-can-be-linked-to-climate-change/#comment-1354024
But Josh's cartoons are very funny, right?
Deletehttp://wattsupwiththat.com/?s=josh
Aren't they? Aren't they? Always make me roll on the floor, they do! Oh yes! Ha ha ha ha ha!
We also have this endearing non-insult to the factual poster:
Delete"And one more thing…. you have an arrogant, repulsive, personality.
Must be absolutely LOVELY working in a small company with an angry, paranoid, narcissist like you."
Yes, that Janice Moore is a real piece of work. As dumb as, as smarmy as and as viciously malicious as...
DeleteFor an avowed bible basher she demonstrates a great deal of the unholy :(
she's like that mad religious woman in the mist movie
DeleteWhen the dust has long settled on this debate, and the trials, prosecutions and truth-and-reconciliation commissions are long gone, one great mystery will remain to baffle future generations -
DeleteHow did anyone ever manage to find a Josh cartoon funny?
Posting at WUWT is pretty much a waste of time, but if you insist, might I recommend Copy-pasting your remarks into Notepad or something and retaining a copy? That way, if 'the site that doesn't censor' snips or disappears your text you can post it here and we can build up collection of Watts' hypocrisy and bias.
ReplyDeleteHere's an oldie but goldie, by me posting under the name John Philip (back then anonymity was a necessary precaution), a post of mine that got pulled, with enough of the thread to enable it to make sense … the text in italics was deleted by a moderator…
ME: Either Prof Lindzen is unaware of the correction, which I find impossibly unlikely, or he has knowingly circulated incorrect information to support his case, an act that one might normally expect would attract severe opprobrium from the posters of an objective science blog such as this. Neither possibility does much for the pursuasiveness of his argument, in my view. Certainly if the Professor were to submit this article for publication, it would be rejected on these grounds alone.
REPLY: There is a third option, perhapss he doesn’t trust the “correction”. I know that many of us here don’t trust “corrections” applied to data.
ME: The correction was largely the result of step in the computer code that caters for satellite altitude being effectively ’switched off’. Details were published in the Journal of Climate and also by the Data Product provider. All other researchers who use this dataset use the revised version. The onus is therefore on anyone citing the 2002 version to at least mention that the originators of the dataset have revised it and explain why they prefer the ‘uncorrected’ dataset, especially if the corrected version removes a central plank of their argument. From Prof Lindzen, not even a footnote. Does this qualify as the good and transparent science quite rightly promoted by WUWT?
REPLY: John I have deleted your response, and I resent the smear you made against me for publishing this informal essay from Dr. Lindzen. You get a 24 hour timeout. If you wish to continue, lose the ad homs. Otherwise off to the troll bin permanently for you. – Anthony
Point 1 – anyone seeing Watt’s response would have been left with the impression that I had made some personal insult against him, and engaged in ad hominem argument and trolling. In fact the post contained the mildest of rhetorical questions and no ad hominem content at all.
Once I posted the deleted text at The Air Vent, Mr Watts responded …
REPLY to John Philip and to Raven. I understand where you are coming from. But John Philip leaves out what he said and what was removed from the original post by a snip.
Point 2. This is completely untrue, the text I posted at AV was complete and verbatim. After wrongly accusing me of a personal attack, he then accused me of lying by ommission. Ironically the only dishonesty and personal remarks in the exchange came from Watts.
I don't bother much these days, the place is a carcrash.
I did some checking and the melted traffic light was due to a nearby car fire. However, many people who saw it in Kuwait really did think it melted due to the heat.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bananaq8.com/activities/melt-down/
ReplyDeleteThe second dumbest man on the internet, Steve Goddard, is working hard to wrest the number one position away from Jim Hoft.
How to Upset a Global Warming Skeptic
http://econnexus.org/how-to-upset-a-global-warming-sceptic/
L