Anthony Watts, Tim Ball, Christopher Monckton, and Willie Soon and chemtrails, HAARP, and the New World Order

I'm of the view that one shouldn't get on the same platform with people who aren't credible. It gives them an undeserved legitimacy and you'll end up confusing anyone ignorant of the subject.

Anthony Watts, who runs a  "climate hoax" conspiracy blog wattsupwiththat.com, doesn't agree. He gives a platform to greenhouse effect denying "sky dragon slayers", despite weakly protesting on occasion that he "believes in" the greenhouse effect. However if you've read about Tim Ball and Christopher Monckton of Brenchley before, you know they are more than mere science quacks, they are wacky conspiracy nutters. Anthony Watts frequently promotes them and their silly ideas on his blog. Today I discovered they are associated with a whole society of utter nutters. A group, or if you like, a collective of individualists, wanting to take over the world. (Seriously.)

At WUWT, Anthony posted another conspiracy-laden article by Tim Ball, where he said: "Recently I spoke at the Freedom Force Conference in Phoenix on Climate Change. " So off I trotted to see what this "Freedom Force" group was all about.

Freedom Force - a conspiracy collective to get rid of collectivists

Freedom Force was founded and is run by a chap called G. Edward Griffin. I'd never come across him before. He's a strange one. Media Matters wrote about him, and he has a Wikipedia entry, which starts with:

G. Edward Griffin (born November 7, 1931) is an American conspiracy theorist, author, lecturer, and filmmaker. He is the author of The Creature from Jekyll Island (1994), which promotes conspiracy theories about the motives behind the creation of the Federal Reserve System.[1][2] Griffin's writings put forth a number conspiracy theories regarding various political, defense and health care interests. His book World Without Cancer argues that cancer is a nutritional deficiency that can be cured by consuming amygdalin, a view regarded as quackery by the medical community.[1][3][4] He is an HIV/AIDS denialist, supports the 9/11 Truth movement, and supports a specific John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory.[1] Also, he believes the actual geographical location of the biblical Noah's Ark is located at the Durupınar site in Turkey.[5]

His group must surely suffer perpetual collective cognitive dissonance. They are a bunch of people who have come together to, among other things:

remove collectivists from control of the power centers of society and replace them with individualists.

That's right. This group of individualists have formed a collective to get rid of collectivists!

That's not all.  They are setting themselves up as the "who's who" of fruitcakes. They tout all the usual conspiracy theories, ranging from HAARP and chemtrails to control people, through "New World Order" and onto "climate science is a hoax".

Freedom Force's Climate Hoax Speakers

Here is what the speakers at the climate change conference were talking about:

• Global Warming Is A Monstrous Hoax (Christopher Monckton)
• CO2 is plant food and there is no greenhouse effect (William Happer)
• Global Warming Is the Biggest Deception in History (Tim Ball)
• Global warming is a tactic to frighten us into accepting total government (G. Edward Griffin, founder of the Freedom Force collective)
• Global Warming and Political Indoctrination (Holly Swanson)
• Agenda 21 is a blueprint for tyranny aimed at bringing all human activity under control of government, and global warming is a myth (Dan Happel)
• Environmentalism, the green economy, and sustainable development is a drive for world power and an all-out attack on private property and financial independence (Patrick Wood)
• Global warming is a hoax, citing Hitler (Alex Newman)
• Agenda 21 is to impose an unbearable yoke of taxation on developed countries (Debbie Bacigalupi)
• The government is funding the rise of tribalism to reorganize local political subdivisions into regional governments to be recognized by the UN as sovereign nations (Elaine Willman)
• Chemtrails and HAARP - proof of your worst fears about weather modification for warfare, geoengineering for profit, steering tornados with HAARP antennas, adding sulfur, bio-fuel, aluminum, barium, strontium, and carbon dust to jet fuel, and much more (Jim Lee)
• Agenda-21 is creating a Soviet-style totalitarian governance system to America (Michael Shaw)
• It's the sun (Willie Soon)
• CO2 is plant food (Istvan Marko)

Let's ask Anthony Watts to post a guest article by Jim Lee. I bet his fans would just love it.

A power grab to stop people who care about people

Now I said up top how these Freedom Force people must suffer hugely from cognitive dissonance. I said that not just because they have to deal with multiple conspiracy theories (global warming isn't happening, CO2 is plant food, it's the sun, it's a soviet plot, it's bankers, etc). The other reason is that these are a group of people who claim to be individualists and loathe collective action, fear people in power, and oppose those who they think want to control them and the world, and this is what they propose as a solution.

Form a collective and take over the world.

They've even got a "Creed of Freedom", which is about property and power (taking it not using it). Their threefold mission is:

1. To be keeper-of-the-flame for the ideals expressed in The Creed of Freedom. 
2. To bring unity to the global freedom movement. 
3. Using parliamentary action, to remove collectivists from control of the power centers of society and replace them with individualists. 

So far this mob hasn't been very successful at wresting power from politicians, from the look of things. I don't recognise any names outside the known climate conspiracy theorists. I don't know if they took delight in the election of Donald Trump, but I cannot imagine that they approve of everything he represents, like his worship of Russia (going by the Russia comment on the website). On the other hand, they'd probably be very pleased to see that Donald Trump is appointing a bunch of war-mongering anti-science types to key posts, poised to destroy the United States and the world.

If you want to explore the depths of the delusions of the Freedom Force collective, here's a direct link.

If you've time, you can watch a video debunking chemtrails, by WarblesOnALot from Australia.

Tim Ball goes on a conspiratorial Gish gallop

Tim's WUWT article was the usual mishmash of conspiracy theories and outright lies. For example, he claimed (my links): "CRU was creation of RealClimate". What?

He also seems to think that he is entitled to all the information produced by years of hard work by scientists. Sure, scientists and research organisations make a lot of data freely available but I've yet to see Tim Ball make good use of it. He wouldn't know where to start even if he wanted to.

Mostly, though, his article was about how America is the only place on earth where people are free and can own land, and how the election of Trump is the final stage of the Revolution. He puts it down to the Internet, where people were free to look for and find whatever lie they felt like believing, and ignore reputable sources of information. He's not far wrong about that last point, and I'd say that was his meaning though he might not know it. On his "revolution" notion I'd argue that it's not the final stage of the Revolution (with a capital R), it's the early stages of the Devolution (with a capital D).

I've written enough about Tim Ball in the past and really cannot be bothered spending any more time on him today. Such a grubby little man.