Thursday, November 14, 2013

How's that Polish exaggeration going, Anthony Watts?


After numerous posts complaining about "exaggeration" of one of the most powerful storms in recent times and maybe even the fiercest storm on landfall on record, Anthony Watts of the fake sceptic blog WUWT has decided to take a short break from downplaying weather disasters and do some exaggerating instead (archived here).

Anthony Watts posted this headline:
50,000 at rally against climate agenda in Poland
Not Welcome: UN climate summit in Poland greeted by 50,000 angry Poles rallying against UN

50,000 people rallying against a climate agenda?  In Poland? Well, that doesn't sound too plausible.  If there were 50,000 angry Poles they weren't "rallying against the UN". The rally had nothing to do with the UN Climate Change Conference in Warsaw.  No, it was a rally celebrating Independence Day.

Anthony, on the other hand, decides to spin it differently.  He pretends that the crowd was there to listen to some goon from CFACT, who was invited to speak on one of the right wing platforms.  Anthony posted a CFACT video with lots of dubbed music to hide the fact that no-one was taking any notice of what the CFACT bloke was saying.

Do you want to know what the CFACT man said?  Below is the entire speech I transcribed from the video, and picked out some key words:-

We in America watched as brave Polish workers took to the streets to demand political and economic freedom. Today on my first visit to your wonderful country I am proud to stand with you in a new battle for freedom against those who would use environmental and climate alarmism to steal away our liberties and to give international bureaucrats control over our energy sources, our daily lives, our prosperity and our national sovereignty. Last year the head of the UN climate conference said that the goal of the United Nations was a complete economic transformation of the world. That is what they desire. But that is not good news for those of us who love freedom. And it is not good new for the people of Poland. The Old Testament Book of Proverbs it says that the wicked flee they run away.  The wicked run away. Even when no-one is chasing them. But the righteous good people they are bold as a lion. The environmentalists and the bureaucrats they don't want to debate these issues. Because they know they are deceiving the world. There hasn't been any global warming in more than 15 years and this is simply an excuse for more government oppression. But thankfully you and I are not deceived. We stand for freedom. We stand for opportunity. We stand for our families. And we stand for a strong and prosperous future. Together let us be bold as a lion. Thank you for the privilege of speaking here today. And may god bless Poland.

Eloquent?  Nope.  Make sense? Nope.  Lots of conspiracy ideation and god-fearing nonsense? Yep.


Angry Poles


When Anthony wrote there were 50,000 angry Poles he was exaggerating.  There may have been 50,000 people but they weren't all "angry".  From the reports the rally did attract some extremist groups who could be described as angry (but very few of the crowd was involved in the violence).  If the louts weren't angry they were acting like it.  The violence made headlines around the world from Germany to Wall Street New York and Russia.  The latter because the mob attacked the Russian Embassy in Warsaw.

Maybe some of the violent mob listened to the CFACT rabble rouser and thought they'd pretend to be lions battling for freedom, prosperity and national sovereignty.  Though it's much more likely that nobody gave a damn about this weird American who spoke about proverbs and righteous wicked people who want to take over the world and flee - or whatever he was going on about.


Hey, wait a minute Anthony!


In a rare display of scepticism, some WUWT-ers called for Anthony to change his headline to reflect the real story.  Anthony changed the headline but he couldn't manage to go quite as far as his fans requested.  He changed it from this:
50,000 at rally against climate agenda in Poland
Not Welcome: UN climate summit in Poland greeted by 50,000 angry Poles rallying against UN

to this:
50,000 attend rally with speech against climate agenda in Poland
Not Welcome: UN climate summit in Poland greeted by 50,000 angry Poles rallying against UN

See much difference in meaning? No, neither do I.  But that's as far as Anthony would go.  He only went that far because his loyal fake sceptics decided to be sceptical for a change.


Some WUWT regulars don't buy Anthony's spin...


omnologos is the first to query Anthony and says:
November 12, 2013 at 3:39 pm
Do we have independent verification for this? Where the people out there for something else, to which somebody attached climate skepticism, a topic maybe of minimal interest to the mass of people in the square?
I am afraid we need to be more skeptical about this kind of claims than any of Gore’s or Romm’s.

saltspringson says:
November 12, 2013 at 4:16 pm
I hate to be a wet rag, but I didn’t see many people in the audience clapping, let alone cheering…Great that the message is getting out, but I don’t know how much of it actually soaked in….


pokerguy says:
November 12, 2013 at 4:25 pm
Yes, they barely seemed to know what was being said. Most of them looked puzzled.


J. Fujita doesn't buy it either and says:
November 12, 2013 at 4:29 pm
I am truly in line with the aim of CFACT but I have to agree with omnologos in his earlier post – I, too, am puzzled by the seemingly unenthusiastic response to Rothbard’s speech. Is that typical of the Poles, or were they restrained by the presence of police due to previous acts of random violence at gatherings? Or were they there primarily to celebrate their National Independence Day? I’m just looking for accuracy here. The exaggerations often put out by warmists only hurt their claims of support of the masses; I wouldn’t want to be found to be in the same boat as they.

omnologos suggests a better heading for Anthony's article:
November 12, 2013 at 4:35 pm
Perhaps the title of the post should change to “50,000-strong rally hear speech about the UN’s dangerous and oppressive climate agenda”


Bill Parsons reckons the people at the rally didn't exactly warm to the CFACT goon and says:
November 12, 2013 at 4:40 pm
Bravely done by CFACT president David Rothbard. I say this because he’s speaking to a crowd clearly not very receptive. The chilly response doesn’t jibe with the headline and sub-head for this post. Scattered applause is covered by the overdubbed Polish national anthem.


Madman2001 isn't convinced and says:
November 12, 2013 at 4:44 pm
I agree that the title is misleading. A better title might be “50,000 Poles rally for independence, hear impassioned CFACT speech against UN climate agenda”


Leo Morgan says:
November 12, 2013 at 4:50 pm
Anthony, please edit the headline for accuracy. That sort of misleading spin is a significant reason why the alarmists are losing credibility- lets not do the same thing to climate realism!
The story says the facts are that 50,000 Poles who gathered in downtown Warsaw on Monday to celebrate National Independence Day were addressed about Climate. That’s a very different thing from the headline.
REPLY: Sure no problem…was a quick posting -A


Mike Bromley the Kurd says:
November 12, 2013 at 7:27 pm
I’m with omnologos on the impression that this article gives. As much as I’d love there to be a popular uprising against the COP’s and their agenda, this wasn’t it.


Jeef says:
November 12, 2013 at 8:47 pm
There’s more hype here than in the 10.,000 philippine typhoon deaths. Sorry. I don’t buy it.


David, UK says - "oh dear":
November 13, 2013 at 12:36 am
Oh dear. Barely a reaction from the crowd at all, except a look that says “meh.”


Other WUWT-ers go 'rah 'rah - let's destroy the planet!


milodonharlani says:
November 12, 2013 at 4:27 pm
Yesterday Australia! Today Poland! Tomorrow the world!
¡Ojalá!

High Treason says:
November 12, 2013 at 4:47 pm
This is great news. Of course, the most important thing is that it gets picked up by mainstream media. May there be more such rallies in Poland to expose the UN.

Zeke writes from the conspiracy theory play book and says:
November 12, 2013 at 5:06 pm
CFACT is the only website I know of that provided the draft text of the document agreement from Rio +20. And we learn from CFACT that they were not allowed access to the final draft.
You all will remember Rio+20, the international meeting attended by Hilary Clinton and Lisa Jackson, the unelected, unaccountable ex-head of the unelected, unaccountable EPA. What was she doing at an international meeting? She has no authority to agree with international leaders on domestic energy generation and use issues.
Zeke thinks that an unelected politically-motivated group that lobbies against environmental protection should have more influence than the US Secretary of State and the Head of the US Agency responsible for environmental protection?  At a major international conference on sustainable development?  Really?


Does Eric Worrall really think violence is okay if you don't like the representatives elected by a majority vote?  He says:
November 12, 2013 at 5:30 pm
JMurphy, when people can no longer vote their politicians out of office, they turn to violence.


Mark Urbo says:
November 12, 2013 at 6:39 pm
Love the Polish people !!! Kick these eco-freak “green” whack-a-doos of the CAGW agenda driven cult religion off the planet.


Janice Moore says, ahem...wait for it, put down your cup of coffee - the science giants of WUWT - ha ha ha ha he he he guffaw:
November 12, 2013 at 6:41 pm
Dedicated to All the Heroes of Truth in Science –
Carter, Salby, Soon, Watts, … and all the Science Giants of WUWT:

Bruce Cobb trots out all the right buzz words (pun intended) and says:
November 12, 2013 at 4:02 pm
The UN climate agenda is a giant, freedom-killing, economy-trashing machine waging war against all of humanity. We must rage, rage against the machine.

John Lord says:
November 12, 2013 at 3:51 pm
Great news! Having had to stomach 40 years of socialist propaganda, they can easily spot something similar coming down the track. Green is the new red!

More comments are archived here if you aren't already bored out of your brain...

14 comments:

  1. "Does Eric Worrall really think violence is okay if you don't like the representatives elected by a majority vote?"
    Of course, as his ilk, like W's, Singer et cetera.
    The violence, the actual fascism, the will for censorship and all those other typical symptoms glare through every line of climate revisionism.
    Includes e.g. Abott.

    In free Holland I just got banned for calling a fascist group 'fascist'. Probably from someone who never read Mussolini (I did, of course - so I found how facts are taboo aging). Said 'so either they will win because you wish to remain blind, or you will post a 'surprised' discovery next year or so as to which political group our neonazis and antisemites have turned to and then it's my time again'.
    That political group, our own fascist party (but no-one is allowed to say so, also we must forget how Breivik was for this party) leading the polls. Even the party structure is fascist, by the way: a single person movement.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Eric Worrall: "JMurphy, when people can no longer vote their politicians out of office, they turn to violence."

      He does not say that he advocates violence. It could just be descriptive.

      Delete
    2. Eric often says a lot of things while actually saying nothing. It's his schtick but he is also a denier of extraordinary proportions. Before being banned at WtD (a very difficult thing to achieve) he had managed to utter 60 of the top 100 denier canards found at SkS along with aligning climate science with eugenics.

      Delete
  2. I can imagine Watts at a football match thinking "Wow! All these people here just to see me!". Talk about free-riders.

    Did someone write that speech, I wonder, or was it generated by a cheap piece of software? There's plenty of it around. 'We stand for {"Freedom", "Strength", "Prosperity", "Family Values", "Free Beer", "Truth"}'. "They stand for {"Taxes", "Lies", "Taxes", "Tyranny", "Taxes", "Sodomy", "Taxes", "Immigrants"}'.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Proper headline: Paranoid harangue inflicted on 50,000 people who just happened to be there for something else.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  5. OT, I know, and another reader already posted an alert to the post about it on Michael Tobis' site in the previous thread, but:

    http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/11/global-warming-since-1997-underestimated-by-half/

    Watts is going to go foaming-at-the-mouth *ballistic* over this. If Marcott et. al. got, what, 27 sticky thou-dost-protest-too-much posts, just imagine how many this will garner :-)

    Even better, can't wait for McIntyre's reaction: FOIA them for their data? Oh, wait, it's already in the public domain? OK, then I can torture this data to get completely different results, which no one can contest because I don't publish in a journal. Muhahahaha!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm flat out for the next 24 hours, but thanks for the heads up, MM. The reaction will be something to watch out for :)

      Delete
  6. t_p_hamilton nails it!

    This is truly ludicrous, even by the standards at Watts'! In fact, it positively reeks of desperation.

    As for the 'readership' - well if you can't manage to question something as blatantly ridiculous as this, I reckon you're lost to rationality. Calling them 'skeptics' has never seemed more ironic...

    ReplyDelete
  7. Interesting, EIKE, the German ostrich blog that tries to rival the quality of WUWT has the same post.

    The title is: Über 50.000 Polen demonstrieren gegen IPCC und Klimavertrag

    Translated: More than 50.000 Poles protest against IPCC and climate treaty.

    And then it also admits in the first sentence that the title is bogus and that the people were there to celebrate independence day. Also the rest of the article is very similar.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. EIKE, CFACT, WUWT et cetera (we in Holland are familiar with 'klimaatfraude', 'climategate.nl', 'Groene Rekenkamer' -> http://climategate.nl/2013/11/13/50-000-polen-protesteren-tegen-vn-klimaathype-als-cop-19-warschau-begint/) are all the same thing. Exxon climate revisionism.
      Astroturfing.

      Delete
    2. And ClimateGate is even worse. This version does not even acknowledge Independence Day in the text.

      And when called out in the comment, the author acts as if he first has to research whether it was really Independence Day. As if he had not read WUWT, EIKE or the CFACT release.

      Delete
    3. Someone called the bluff, there? Impressive. Like WUWT or Bob 'Drivel' they hate my guts, total ban, so 't wasn't me :)

      Delete
  8. OK: Janice Moore's comment would *indeed* have caused me to spit coffee on my keyboard..."Science Giants of WUWT." thanks for the warning to put my cup down, first!

    Oy vey!

    ReplyDelete

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