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Sunday, July 29, 2018

This crazy climate! What do Anthony Watts and Alex Jones have in common? Prison Planet.

Sou | 2:20 PM Go to the first of 11 comments. Add a comment
Some of you might think HotWhopper may on occasion go overboard reporting the lies, duplicity and straight up weirdness of deniers. That's not so. If anything, the articles here underplay the weirdness of deniersville. Some of what goes on in climate conspiracy land is not fit for publication on normal blogs.

WUWT has recently reinvigorated its crusade to libel or solicit libel of prominent climate scientists and climate hawks. In the last couple of days there have been articles about Michael Mann and Ben Santer, for example. When all else fails, disinformers turn to lying smears.

But that's not all.

WUWT is now using US conpiracy theorist Alex Jones' Prison Planet as a source!

In among all his deluded ranting about "anthropogenic global warming deception" and "false climate stories", Tim Ball regurgitated disinformation about the world-renowned scientist, Ben Santer, among other lies (cached here).

Ben Santer refers to fantasies like Tim's in an article at RealClimate.org. He said of some of the crazy articles in the press: "This was my first close encounter of the absurd kind.".

Tim Ball, being a classic paranoid conspiracy nutter, makes up stuff as a matter of pride, and wrote:
Santer did not admit the changes at the time and got his “discernible human influence” message on the world stage. According to one source, he later admitted that
“…he deleted sections of the IPCC chapter which stated that humans were not responsible for climate change.”
The link is to wildly wrong claims from, yes, Prison Planet.



WUWT and its lies - the evidence


In case you're tempted to think "maybe there's something to it" - don't! Ben Santer is of impeccable character, which is why disinformers can only resort to ugly lies when they want to defame him. Incredible that WUWT has to dredge up lies first touted more than twenty years ago.

You can read the facts at RealClimate.org. There is also a letter worth reading, with attachments. It is an open letter from the Executive Committee of the American Meteorological Society and and Trustees of UCAR, written in 1996 in response to an article filled with lies published by the Wall Street Journal. It shows that unwarranted despicable attacks on scientists and climate science are nothing new.


Conspiracy fruitcakes abound


Anthony Watts, who has on occasion claimed he accepts the reality of the greenhouse effect (not recently that I've seen), has for years promoted the disgusting, 'warped beyond all reason' conspiracy theories of Tim Ball. Tim is a greenhouse effect denier. He was the first-listed author in a book claiming the greenhouse effect isn't real. (The authors like to think of themselves as dragon-slaying heros - ha ha.)

Against all evidence, WUWT promotes the notion that CO2 cannot keep the planet liveable. Tim has called on Hitler and Osama bin Laden in support of his wacky ideas. He is a ridiculous figure, and has been subject to more than one lawsuit for his defamatory ravings.

I've sometimes wasted a few moments wondering why Anthony Watts promotes Tim's crazed ramblings when, until recently at least, Anthony clearly craved some sort of acknowledgement (if not respect) from real scientists. Is it extortion or is it just that Anthony wants to rope in delusional conspiracy nutters from across the spectrum of wacky?

I may never know the answer.


WUWT cites Prison Planet conspiracy madness


Let's get back to how WUWT is now resorting to citing Alex Jones' Prison Planet as a reference.

That's crazy, I know, but it's in keeping with the purpose of WUWT, which seems to me to be twofold:
  1. to keep up the click count at WUWT. With climate science denier numbers falling, Anthony has to spread his net to encompass a wider spectrum of full-on nut cases; and 
  2. as a platform for climate disinformers and nutjobs, to try to stop the world from addressing the problem of global warming so Anthony Watts can avoid paying tax.

Many of you will have never heard of Prison Planet. It's at the absurd and ugly end of the cyberspectrum which most normal people would be blissfully unaware of. It's one of Alex Jones' outlets. He's the chap who spread the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which nearly got lots of innocent people murdered. He's the chap who claimed the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax and the murdered toddlers were "crisis actors", prompting grieving families of murder victims to go into hiding because of attacks from Jones' dangerous fans. He's an evil person who invents and/or promotes dangerous conspiracy theories for the weak-minded.

He's like Anthony Watts on steroids.

Oops - apologies for that imagery!

Before the internet, most people would never have known how many people there are who harbour the craziest of notions. These weird individuals don't just harbour them, they seek them out and can even act on them. They used to gather in smaller groups as lynch mobs. These days we call them conspiracy nutters. They throng together in cyberspace in places like WUWT and various sites run by Alex Jones, such as Prison Planet, InfoWars and others less well-known outside of cyberweird.

Bottom line: when you have to turn to Prison Planet to support your lies and defamation, you deserve all the contempt and ridicule you get.

Unfortunately, it's a bit like Trump-reality. If another US President had done just one of the many sins and errors Trump has inflicted on the world, she or he would be gone in an instant. Because it is in the interests of enough other corrupt politicians, Trump has survived endless lies, pussy-grabbing, kidnaping children fleeing terror, kow-towing to Putin and other tyrants, starting trade wars then making taxpayers pay farmers who have lost markets, calling allies foes and enemies friends, and that's not the half of it.

My guess is WUWT will survive as long as there are enough mugs in the world who can't accept reality and need wacky conspiracy theories to grab hold of, or until Anthony Watts gives it up.




11 comments:

  1. The connedspiracy crowd will often cite the same circular referenced sources for this disinformation (or if necessary, just make it all up themselves, and thereby start another circular round of quotations from other connedspiracy sites).

    I've exposed Jones many times, as have many others. He's one of the biggest schills out there. You can go to YouTube also and read / watch about his lies, scams, frauds and deceptions. But none of this seems to matter anymore, there is no longer any acceptable minimum standards for reporting or Presidents. Anything goes, no matter how ugly, wrong, despicable or deceptive that it may be.

    But the take-away in all this is when source information comes from con-artists, expect to be conned. Jones has made over $10 million dollars now from his con-game, but he's a despicable, vile person who has had his crimes exposed in divorce / child custody court and in numerous articles about him.

    Jones has defrauded millions of people now (look up his Money Bomb scam as just one of these scams) and looks set to keep doing this until he's stopped.

    When I read last year that Infowars was given a press pass to the Whitehouse, I nearly threw up, but it was a strong indication just how screwed up this country has become. It is not truth and facts that matter now, just propaganda and appearances. ~JR~

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Notions such as fairies living at the bottom of the garden, and Santa Claus, are at worst harmless.

      Damaging lies such as those promoted by Alex Jones, Tim Ball, Anthony Watts and others (e.g. Donald Trump) are at *best* evil.

      What sort of person decides to devote their lives to destroying all that is good in the world? What went wrong?

      Delete
  2. Here is some fact checking on Infowars and what kind of a scam operation this really is:

    https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/infowars-alex-jones/

    And Prison Planet:

    https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/prison-planet/

    Both sites land squarely in the connedspiracy / nutter realm of deception, dishonesty and disgusting (if you are a thinking intelligent person).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. IMO it doesn't take deep thinking or any special intelligence to see the utter nuttery.

      It does take a fundamentally flawed thinking process to fall for it. (Some people are intellectually disabled when it comes to wacky notions, yet could score highly on an IQ test.)

      To knowingly promote the nuttery as "fact" takes an evil mind.

      Delete
  3. I guess the good news is that these days you don't get to read about climategate style fabrications in MSM: that kind of garbage is recognised for what it is by real journalists.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, Andy.

      That's probably why Anthony Watts has taken to promoting another pet uber-conspiracy theorist, Ari Halperin aka Leonid Goldstein (use the search bar here).

      He claims not only are search engines part of the conspiracy, but pretty well all of mainstream media and social media, too.

      Visiting WUWT is like landing in a cuckoo's nest.

      Delete
  4. For you to say that one of the two main purposes of WUWT is:
    " so Anthony Watts can avoid paying tax."
    is misleading I think.
    I watched the video link and he just briefly mentions tax, which means he is not happy about new carbon taxes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What a plonker, Geoff. From the transcript it's what bothers him *the most* about the science:

      Interviewer: "What bothers you the most about the arguments that there is serious global warming?"

      Anthony Watts: "They want to change policy, they want to apply taxes"!

      It says a lot that you don't seem to have a problem with the whole of it, including how Anthony Watts' aim is to spread lies to harm the world.

      "as a platform for climate disinformers and nutjobs, to try to stop the world from addressing the problem of global warming so Anthony Watts can avoid paying tax."

      I've noticed that Anthony has lately claimed to be so unafraid of fire that he'll walk toward it. I guess he's hoping he's far enough away from Californian fires that his claim won't be tested this season.

      Delete

  5. Just to recap on Dr Ball's legal travails... Back in 2006 Dan Johnson, a professor of environmental science at the University of Lethbridge, wrote to the Calvary Herald contesting claims Ball had made about his qualifications and credentials in an earlier article. Ball in turn filed a $250k Canadian defamation lawsuit against Johnson and the Herald who responded with a robust defence:-
    50. The Defendants (the Calgary Herald) state that the Plaintiff (Ball) never held a reputation in the scientific community as a noted climatologist and authority on global warming. The particulars of the Plaintiff's reputation are as follows:

    (a) The Plaintiff has never published any research in any peer-reviewed scientific journal which addressed the topic of human contributions to greenhouse gas emissions and global warming;

    (b) The Plaintiff has published no papers on climatology in academically recognized peer-reviewed scientific journals since his retirement as a Professor in 1996;

    (c) The Plaintiff's credentials and credibility as an expert on the issue of global warming have been repeatedly disparaged in the media; and

    (d) The Plaintiff is viewed as a paid promoter of the agenda of the oil and gas industry rather than as a practicing scientist.

    For some reason, Ball withdrew the suit and paid costs.

    More recently Ball was sued by Andrew Weaver over claims Ball made about Weaver's credibility and scientific competence. The suit was dismissed, which Ball and his supporters claimed as a victory, but the reason for dismissal was that the Judge concluded that no libel had occurred basically because nobody would believe a word of Ball's nonsense...

    "The judge noted that Ball's words "lack a sufficient air of credibility to make them believable and therefore potentially defamatory" and concluded that the “article is poorly written and does not advance credible arguments in favour of Dr. Ball’s theory about the corruption of climate science. Simply put, a reasonably thoughtful and informed person who reads the article is unlikely to place any stock in Dr. Ball’s views.."

    Such is the credibility of Anthony Watts' 'network of experts'.

    LOL.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Ball#Controversies_and_lawsuits
    https://www.desmogblog.com/tim-ball-vs-dan-johnson-update

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Phil.

      Now about his version of the "secret totalitarian takeover of the world by the CRU" conspiracy...

      Delete
  6. With Trump being a general-purpose Watts or Watts being a climate Trump one starts to wonder what compromising material Ball has on Watts.

    I hope it is not a sex tape or at least that it will never be released.

    ReplyDelete

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