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Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Anthony Watts can't get enough conspiracy theories at WUWT

Sou | 6:55 AM Go to the first of 23 comments. Add a comment
There's another article protesting the moon-landing paper - the initial reaction to which spawned a wealth of material for further research. Some right wing journalist in the Sydney Morning Herald wrote some nonsense about the paper that he either didn't read or didn't understand. It brought out some beaut conspiracy theories from Anthony Watts' conspiratorial "believers" (archived here).

Honestly, you'd think Anthony had learnt his lesson many times over by now. Every time he protests that academic research into conspiracy theories and climate science denial are linked, he brings out a heap more conspiracy theories from his clan. It's not just motivated rejection of climate science, WUWT has motivated rejection of cognitive science. (Perhaps Anthony just wanted his readers to post their conspiracy theories under an "on topic" article.)


Julian Williams in Wales is for real with his conspiracy theory, as far as I know:
January 12, 2016 at 9:58 am
This sort of story is very dangerous for the CAGW promoting fraternity: For years people (my brothers included) have been laughing at (and never listening to) people like myself who have tried to put the case against CAGW alrmism. They have been told again and again by the establishment communities of science, politics and media that the science has been honestly and rigorously assessed and opponents are a loony right-wing fringe minority that have been misled by oil funded pseudo-science.

CAGW works on two assumptions

1. that the public are idiots.
2. that the reputation of the establishment will sustain lies forever.

Ordinary people will react very badly when get a sniff that they have been set up by rich people in the establishment to believe something that is basically lies, especially if poorer people have been hurt or cheated. This situation reminds me of how in Britain we were taken into the 2nd Iraq war on a concoction of made up alarm stories, people who were taken in then are now the most aggressive towards Blair (who has become hugely rich) who they call a war criminal.

The CAGW alarmism has been concocted and hyped to mislead ordinary people, the alarm stories have destroyed jobs and lives. Other People have become rich and powerful on the back of the alarmism. They could well find themselves on the wrong side of a witch hunt.


dp's comment is rife with recurrent fury
January 12, 2016 at 9:12 am
A journal that tolerates and publishes obvious rubbish is itself rubbish. The message that cannot be unsent is we will publish rubbish when it suits our purposes. A journal that sends such a message cannot be listed among journals of science. Such a message is at odds with the very definition of science and is better defined at fiction tabloid. 

hunter seems to think that Stephan Lewandowsky and John Cook are one and the same person, and hints at his own conspiracy theory:
January 12, 2016 at 9:10 am
Lewandowsky and his sock puppet Cook deserve all of the opprobrium they are getting and then some.
The publications and faux science societies and politicians who have promoted their bilge deserve a good share as well.  
They really are a treat these conspiracy theorising climate science deniers, aren't they.


References and further reading


Lewandowsky, Stephan, Klaus Oberauer, and Gilles E. Gignac. "NASA faked the moon landing—therefore,(climate) science is a hoax an anatomy of the motivated rejection of science." Psychological Science 24, no. 5 (2013): 622-633. doi: 10.1177/0956797612457686 (pdf here)

Lewandowsky, Stephan, John Cook, Klaus Oberauer, Scott Brophy, Elisabeth A. Lloyd, and Michael Marriott. (2015). "Recurrent fury: Conspiratorial discourse in the blogosphere triggered by research on the role of conspiracist ideation in climate denial." Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 3 (1). doi: 10.5964/jspp.v3i1.443. (open access)

From the HotWhopper archives

23 comments:

  1. "Ordinary people will react very badly when get a sniff that they have been set up by rich people in the establishment to believe something that is basically lies, especially if poorer people have been hurt or cheated."

    Indeed. The climate change denial endgame may well be very nasty.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I wonder how the sky dragons are taking the infrared images of the methane leak in California!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sou's Some right wing journalist in the Sydney Morning Herald
    is senior columnist Paul Sheehan.

    When Sheehan was the Washington Correspondent for the SMH in the mid 1990's he wrote this extraordinary piece that damaged the SMH's reputation and angered many of its very fine staff.
    In a gutless and in my view unethical action, The Sydney Morning Herald deleted the piece from its archives and so we are reduced to reading it (and read it we bloody-well should) on white supremacist hate sites.
    I discovered it republished in 1995 on Storm Front, a KKK affiliated site.

    I am not implying that Sheehan had any control over the re-publication by, or any association with hate sites. I'm saying that those sites know what a fine piece of writing looks like. Storm Front had Sheehan's piece as lead article in its "Library" section for at least 12 years. Yes I checked.

    It's sad that the Fairfax press gives Sheehan such a prominent position in its otherwise decent publications, but at least we can remind people of the author's body of work. Here's another

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Fairfax presumably retain Mr Sheehan to provide an appearance of 'balance', and to deflect accusations of leftist bias. He periodically kicks an own goal or two ('activated water' anybody?) but is mostly harmless.

      Given that most of the SMH readership is better-versed on the issues on which he sticks his neck out, he regularly gets a pasting in the comments section of his articles- when he allows comments, that is.

      Delete
  4. I've never liked Sheehan when he's turned up on various ABC panel discussions. It's not the nastiness-off-the-scale of a couple of others, but there's always _something_ unsettling or off-putting about him.

    Maybe hints of this dogawful ghastliness leaks through.

    (I'm not volunteering to watch him just to test the theory. I'm happy to have an explanation for my own uneasiness with him and leave it at that.)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Reminds me of the old saying: "Never let the facts get in the way of a good story".

    ReplyDelete
  6. I've never seen a climate denier, or "skeptic" as so many of them want to call themselves, say that the moon landing was faked, although I think that there are likely some. That, however, is immaterial to the thrust of the paper. One need only wade into any sort of debate with such people, and one will encounter the conspiracy theories soon enough.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. See the Boxing Day Special link at the bottom of the above article, Raymond. (It's rare but happens. The paper's title is to titillate rather than indicate that climate conspiracy theorists/deniers all think the moon landing was faked. It worked!)

      Delete
    2. Thanks. I mean who would have thought that people who believe in the climate change conspiracy theory would possibly have other nutty views?

      Delete
  7. I think it' recursive (not recurrent) fury.

    In any case, any day now, people will realize that the final nail in the coffin of AGW theory has finally been driven -- for approximately the zillionth time. And in a related story, Joe Cargo will arrive on those remote islands in the South Pacific, bearing riches beyond imagining.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's as valid as any other religion.

      Delete
    2. Palindrom, the paper is called "Recurrent fury: Conspiratorial discourse in the blogosphere triggered by research on the role of conspiracist ideation in climate denial". It was the previous paper that was called Recursive Fury.

      Delete
    3. Thank you to Sou my muse...



      ... now is the perfect time to square the circle and use Willard's malicious minions to our advantage.

      Delete
    4. Sou -- Ah, I hadn't remembered "Paper II"! Thanks!

      Delete
  8. Give the weatherman a break. There's a few comments that just beg to be tested...

    I'm not ticklish.

    I'm not bad-tempered.

    I do have a sense of humor.

    I'm not stupid, you know.

    I'm not a paranoid conspiracy theorist.

    ReplyDelete
  9. As the atmosphere continues to warm - sorry - pause-shorten, the list of possible start dates for Monckton's 'Great Pause' lengthens:
    August 1996
    September 1996
    October 1996
    November 1996
    December 1996
    January 1997
    February 1997
    March 1997
    May 1997

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I started to put together an animation showing Christopher Monckton's shifting and wobbling "pause". It just won't keep still :)

      Maybe I'll wait till it starts leaping out of its boots and doing a fast-paced highland jig before I post it.

      Delete
  10. "A journal that tolerates and publishes obvious rubbish is itself rubbish. The message that cannot be unsent is we will publish rubbish when it suits our purposes. A journal that sends such a message cannot be listed among journals of science. Such a message is at odds with the very definition of science and is better defined at fiction tabloid."

    Is it just me, or does Energy and Environment" come to mind after reading that paragraph?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Pattern Recognition in Physics? Now where did that go?

      Delete
    2. The Journal of Scientific Exploration immediately springs to mind.

      http://rabett.blogspot.com/2010/11/journal-of-scientific-exploration-is.html

      Delete
  11. Atlantic Hurricane Alex.
    (yes, north Atlantic).

    ReplyDelete

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