Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Around the traps

I've two excuses for the lack of new articles the last couple of days. There's really been nothing exciting happening on denier blogs, and I've been otherwise occupied (on matters unrelated to climate).

Regular blogging will resume shortly. In the interim, here's a rundown on some of what's been happening at WUWT and elsewhere:

A coordinated approach to climate action: A scandal (not really) has been uncovered by Chris Horner. He's a chap who's employed by a right wing lobby group to submit FOI requests of all kinds for emails and text messages - as long as they are not about what right wing lobby groups get up to. What he's discovered is that in the USA governments and NGOs and others have been talking to each other on ways to make the world and the USA safer - by getting some coordination and agreement on climate action. It's being shaped as the scandal of the year in denier-land. Chris Horner didn't compare it to the right wing shenanigans of ALEC, by which large corporations get together to draft legislation and instruct governments to pass it - and there's no comparison. This wasn't closed door meetings drafting legislation like ALEC. It was people talking to each other by email about climate action. (I think Chris Horner thought right wing lobbyists had governments all to themselves.) It's not clear what shocks deniers more - that there are people who don't want to destroy the environment, or that there are people who communicate by email.

Willis Eschenbach has been posting his various thoughts at WUWT - here and here and here. One day it's fry pans or non-solar cycles and the next day he's writing about comments to what he wrote the day before. Either corrections to his article or some other random thought that pops into his head. Not too many at WUWT are following or understanding what the heck he's on about. It's filling what would otherwise be empty spaces I suppose. I couldn't see any good reason to spend any more time on his latest wonderings than this short para.

Tony Brown, a UK denier who likes to boast how he can talk with UK scientists, has been busy biting the hand that feeds him. That's in the context of the BBC not renewing the contract with the UK Met Office for weather services. (Most people (and the UK Met Office) wouldn't agree with Tony's take on the subject.)

For the conspiracy nutters: Then there's the usual same-old same-old climate conspiracy hoax from Tim Ball, who can't think of anything new to write about. Anthony Watts has to keep all his readers happy and as long as there's a demand for wacky paranoid conspiracy theories of the anti-semitic kind, he'll oblige.

On denier scientists: Some scientists are only now waking up to how far ex-scientist Judith Curry has moved across into denier-land, with her calling the theft of scientists' personal emails "responsible" - or it's roll out; and spreading fibs about the content of the emails themselves.

It's been a slow few days in the blogosphere.

10 comments:

  1. Judith didn't link to the Daily Caller this week, instead she gave Newsmax the nod. Nice.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sou

    Why didn't you scroll down five comments where you would have seen what I really thought of the Met Office as opposed to the truncated comment that Anthony posted in the headline as he built a story from a number of comments sent to him by people who alerted him to the story?

    I said I admired their scientists AND that I did not believe they were party to a fraud. I say that on numerous occasions in a variety of places I visit. Its not always a popular message as many sceptics (but by no means all) are convinced there is some huge hoax, fraud or conspiracy being perpetrated.

    My main problem with the Met Office is that their day to day forecasts are not as accurate as might be reasonably expected. In this tourist area a bad forecast makes a big difference to the local economy.

    The Met Office are a fine organisation with many fine scientists and whilst I do not always agree wit them I am concerned that the BBC intends to replace them for reasons that are still not clear.

    tonyb

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "AND that I did not believe they were party to a fraud"

      How big of you. I'm sure that the UK Met Office is relieved to hear it :( (/sarc)

      Delete
    2. Tonyb will now tell us what those "reasonable" expectations are, why they are "reasonable", and by what objective measures the Met Office did not meet those expectations.

      I also wish him good luck with the new forecasters, considering that the Met Office is consistently among the group of best forecasters.

      Delete
    3. From what I can read in the quality end of MSM the BBC is not replacing the Met Office on grounds of accuracy. The BBC is under pressure to cut costs. The BBC feels it can get a cheaper, if less accurate, forecast from elsewhere.

      My own take on this: the BBC is a bloated, inefficient organisation if ever there was one. But every cost cutting exercise like this they can make has (to them) the benefit of hurting the consumer; so the consumer gets to feel that cutting costs at the BBC is a bad thing.

      But I am glad to hear that tonyb does not believe in Met Office fraud. Is it just the Met Office he exonerates? Or does he agree that the daily claims of fraud made at WUWT are puerile gobshite?

      Delete
    4. If the BBC is predicating its weather reporting on cost rather than accuracy, they could do it for just a pound - by tossing a coin.

      Delete
    5. "Why didn't you scroll down five comments where you would have seen what I really thought of the Met Office as opposed to ..."

      ... what I actually served up in the main article for the WUWT numpties:

      "Its local forecasts are often hopeless and inaccurate and sometimes I feel they would get it right more often if they looked out of their window instead of at their computer screens."

      Delete
    6. If you want to see how low the BBC has sunk, how about this for some impartial research:

      "“I now think the BBC is incredibly good value. I’d probably willingly pay even more. I’m actually quite a good ambassador for the BBC now,” he added."

      I will spend the long, long, night wondering how I manage to survive without a TV in the house.

      Delete
  3. Ten years ago we had the death and destruction from Hurricane Katrina. Amazing how EVERY Bush administration anniversary is a remembrance of incompetence and disaster.

    ReplyDelete
  4. While Chris Horner is berating organisations for working to make the world a safer place, he's found himself busy trying to tell people that the fact he's on the payroll of coal companies is neither here nor there.

    https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/08/25/chris-horner-coal/

    http://climatecrocks.com/2015/08/25/news-flash-chris-horner-leading-climate-de-nihilist-funded-by-big-coal/

    ReplyDelete

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.