The spectacular failure of the 2007 climate "bet" by denier J. Scott Armstrong

Today at WUWT there's a rambling, indecipherable article about some bet that a science denier called J. Scott Armstrong unsuccessfully tried to make with Al Gore way back in 2007. It's a tale of a failed denier prediction, and worse. Having failed so spectacularly, J. Scott Armstrong is doubling down and betting on a drop of up to 4.5 °C in global temperature over the next decade.

Armstrong was wanting to bet that there'd be no change in global average surface temperatures between 2008 and 2017. He figured, wrongly, that Al Gore would bet there would be warming. Al Gore didn't take the bet. Why would he deal with a nincompoop denier like J Scott Armstrong.

Armstrong's first draft of the bet was a bit weird. The essence of it was this:

Roy Spencer's latest silly conspiracy theory at WUWT. Delusions, including of grandeur

Roy Spencer feels he is being attacked. It's all because he wrote an ebook in two weeks and put it up for sale on Amazon. Anthony Watts promoted his conspiracy theory at WUWT (archived here). His headline and opening sentence were:

After publishing new book critical of Al Gore, climate scientist has website shut down by attacks 

This is the equivalent of a modem day book burning.

Is poor little Roy Spencer being singled out by Al Gore for attack or has Roy found a novel way to get people to buy his little ebook?

I'm sceptical. However, let's look at his claim that was echoed and amplified by climate conspiracy theorist Anthony Watts. I've mixed up the facts with Roy and Anthony's hypothesis, which demonstrates (again) the foolishness of deniers. It also demonstrates their delusions of grandeur and their paranoia.

Desperate Deniers Part 8: Conman Anthony Watts goes for broke at WUWT

Anthony Watts is getting reckless again. No, not restless, but reckless. He's making a stand as a hard core wanna-be professional science disinformer who has become unhinged in his desperate denial.

Poor Anthony will never make it as a professional climate disinformer. The elite of the disinformation world see him as a useful idiot at best, but don't use him much these days. That's putting people like Pat Michaels in the "elite disinformer" category, with organisations like the George C Marshall Institute. They are followed by freelancers such as Marc Morano (I think he's landed a paid gig, but I class him as a freelancer), who'll say anything he's paid to say at double speed while wearing a cheesy grin. Then there are the "science" hacks for the GOP - Judith Curry, followed a long way behind (and dropping) by the unChristian duo from Alabama. Then there are all the faded jaded right wing lobby groups stacked with old white conservative men, getting older and probably fewer year by year. The pseudo-religious anti-environment groups don't count for much, but they do manage to wheedle funds from various vested interests. Way down the bottom of the disinformation totem pole are the climate conspiracy bloggers, Anthony Watts, Jo "Nova" and her rocket scientist from Luna Park and a straggle raggle taggle of other wanna-bes. Some of them are managing to stay a few inches ahead of "Steve Goddard"/Tony Heller and the twit, Tom Nelson.

Today Anthony Watts has a second article about something that former US Vice President, Al Gore may or may not have said back in 2006 (archived here). Anthony was delighted to see his previous version of the same thing all over various dumb blogs. He thinks he's on a winner but I'd guess he's despondent that it didn't hit the mainstream media. (In your dreams, Anthony.) He didn't write this all by himself (he rarely does). He says he pinched it from a blog on some financial website and added some embellishments of his own.

What could go wrong?

Anthony Watts does an "algoreisfat", making it too easy...

Anthony Watts makes it far too easy to mock his blog and his band of science deniers. He's just posted an article (archived here) that he wrote all by his little self (for a change). It's an "algoreisfat" type of article. Seriously?

He's saying that there've been no catastrophes. Of course Anthony has ignored all the incredible extreme weather of the past few months and weeks - not a mention in any article on his blog. In this particular article he didn't mention that 2015 was a record hot year by a wide margin (he played it down and blamed it on El Nino), after the record hot year in 2014, and the likelihood of 2016 breaking the record again, or getting close to doing so. He completely forgot about Sandy, Haiyan, Yasi, Pam, Katrina etc and the Big Wet, and the disastrous Californian drought. I don't know if he even knew about the recent tornados in Texas, or the heat wave in India last year, and doesn't seem to have heard about the deadly European heat waves, or massive floods over the past few years.

It's a trifecta with "Al Gore is Fat"! And is Anthony Watts owning up to science fakery?

Talk about old times, Anthony Watts is going for the trifecta at his denier blog, wattsupwiththat. He might even make the quadrella.  Here's what he'd done in the past day or so:

1. Climategate resurrection: I've already mentioned his resurrection of a stolen email from "climategate" - dated January 2005, more than nine years ago.
2. Greenland greening? I've just written about that one too. It got a mostly hostile response because, of course, one of the denier memes is that Greenland used to be so much greener.
3. Al Gore is fat: not quite but almost.

All that's needed to win the quadrella would be an "ice age cometh" article by someone like David "funny sunny" Archibald.

Might as well tell you about how wrong Al Gore is, according to Anthony Watts.  Apparently Mr Gore went to Hawaii where he "dupes 9000 people" and "insults the rest" - or at least that's what Anthony Watts says. (Archived here.)

How Al Gore is a Hypocrite!

First up, Mr Gore was hypocritical because he didn't insist on turning off the stage lights and microphone when he spoke to 9,000 people in  Honolulu’s Stan Sheriff Center. Not only that, but he allowed the use of a image of himself speaking to be projected onto a large screen, which would have used up more electricity. 

Anthony said he even let the organisers turn on air-conditioning!  There's a photo of the stadium below, set up for sports. 

Source: Wikipedia Credit: ElChibo808

Anthony would say Mr Gore was a hypocrite for not swimming to Hawaii and talking to a crowd from a mountain top or at the beach.  In the daytime. Eating salad (to avoid using fuel) and cupping his hands and drinking water from a stream, so as to avoid using any utensils that might have been manufactured using energy.  Oh and he probably should have been starkers, too. It takes energy to make clothes.

Who's duping who?

Now that we've got that out of the way, let's see how Al Gore duped 9,000 people.  Anthony copied bits from an article at Honolulu Civil Beat.  I'll copy some of it here:

The “barriers” to doing something about climate change are business and political interests that profit off of fossil fuels — “dirty energy that causes dirty weather.” 

Then Anthony wrote:

What. A. Liar.

Both the IPCC and Nature say there is no link between climate change aka global warming and severe weather, and so it follows about Gore’s “dirty energy” claim.

Anthony's second statement is wrong. In the IPCC AR5 WG1 Summary for Policy Makers, for example, it states that "it is likely that human influence has more than doubled the probability of occurrence of some observed heat waves in some locations" and has a similar finding for heavy precipitation.

Maybe Anthony has decided to reject the greenhouse effect after all, and this is a tentative step he's taking before "coming out" and rejecting the link between global warming and fossil fuel burning.

So as it turns out, Al Gore isn't lying.  He's using strong imagery for emphasis with his "dirty energy causes dirty weather".  But he's spot on.  Heat waves are the pits.  So are floods. So is drought. All of these will be exacerbated by global warming - in some areas more than others.

Anthony takes offence on behalf of polluters who promote fake science

Now for the bit where Al Gore supposedly insults the rest.  This part of the write-up that Anthony copied might be what he's referring to:

He compared fake science from polluters stating that humans are not to blame for the climate to tobacco companies that used to hire actors to play doctors who denied cigarettes were dangerous. 

“That’s immoral, unethical and despicable,” he said of both.

Now it's not that likely that Anthony Watts approves of tobacco companies hiring actors to play doctors to deny that cigarettes are dangerous.  He has often indicated that he's very sensitive to discussion of tobacco for personal reasons. So that leaves him deciding to take offence at any suggestion that there's something wrong with fake science coming from polluters.  Maybe in Anthony's book that's a noble undertaking.

The only other bit that might have got Anthony upset was this quote, about "game-changers":

The first is the growing realization from even climate-change deniers that something seems to be strange with the weather. 

Perhaps Anthony is insulted because he can't find anything strange about the weather and as a diligent denier he should. Or shouldn't. Or something.

Whatever it was that upset Anthony, I reckon he must be either owning up to the fact that he's a climate science denier or else he's owning up to fake science and claiming to be a polluter.

There is one more clue, right at the bottom of the article.  Anthony wrote:

So while Mr. Gore calls climate skeptics (which seems to be the majority of the population these days) ‘Immoral, Unethical and Despicable’ ... 

But look again at what Al Gore said was ‘Immoral, Unethical and Despicable’.  It wasn't sceptics. It wasn't fake sceptics. It was "fake science from polluters" and actors playing doctors and denying cigarettes are dangerous.

So that brings us back to my first supposition.  Anthony must be owning up to producing fake science and being a polluter.  I bet you're glad to have that settled.

From the WUWT comments

There wasn't much usual stuff about mansions and oil in the comments. In the main, WUWT-ers came across as being disinterested, bored even. Just making comments for the sake of it. No passion. I get the sense their hearts aren't in it. "Al Gore is fat" has run its course with the denialati.  It was also the lowest common denominator of WUWT-ers.  (Yes, there's a definite hierarchy of commenter at WUWT. Different people comment on different types of articles.)

Latimer Alder was a smarty pants like me and says:

April 18, 2014 at 12:11 am
No doubt Al just walked across the Pacific to get there form his seaside home on the mainland.
He’d have been a hypocrite if he resorted to fossil-fuel powered aeroplane or boat.
;-)

David L says:

April 18, 2014 at 1:24 am
Why does anyone at all listen to this idiot anymore????

Christopher Hanley says:

April 18, 2014 at 1:28 am
“The first is the growing realization from even climate-change deniers that something seems to be strange with the weather …”

Has it been raining frogs and toads in Hawaii recently?

DirkH, one of the resident conspiracy theorists, says:

April 18, 2014 at 2:27 am
They didn’t pay to listen to his drivel; they paid to stay or move up in the crony hierarchy of the Obama regime. 

Another WUWT conspiracy theorist, Santa Baby, says:

April 18, 2014 at 1:40 am
Al Gore, Gro and several others helped set up the UNEP/UNFCCC/IPCC scheme. The real Agenda is international Marxism trough a climate treaty and UNEP Global Government.
Maybee he is hoping to become the first undemocratic elected President of Earth?