Going cool on cool futures or one last, desperate effort?

Earlier today Andy Skuce asked how things were going with the Cool Futures Fund, set up by a bunch of skallywags associated with the dubious and little known Lord Monckton Foundation. Things are not going very well, from the look of things. In 15 months the backers have managed to raise  $57,605 of the $375,000 it wants to pay for the costs of setting up the fund. None of that money is going into the fund itself, it's just to pay the setup or launch costs, or so they say. (They say different things in different places.)

James Delingpole claimed to have contributed, but I couldn't find his donation on the GoFundMe list of 285 donors. (Yes, I looked through the whole list. Maybe he was so humble, for a change, that he donated anonymously.)

If you don't know what the Lord Monckton Foundation is, it's based in Melbourne Australia. A chap by the name of Chris Dawson is the CEO. An article on the Lord Monckton Foundation website said the fund was set up by "friends" of the foundation, including some board members. Not that the foundation seems willing to admit who is on its board.

The Cool Futures Fund isn't based in Melbourne. It says it's being set up in the Cayman Islands, which is where Australia's Prime Minister and other people like to put their extra cash. The project has a number of people associated with it:

Buyer Beware: Cool Futures global cooling fund and crowd sourcing

If you've got some money to throw away and you feel like betting that global warming is a hoax, you can give it to Jo Nova, David Evans and Chris Dawson. They have set up crowd-sourcing with the stated purpose of setting up a Cayman Islands bank account to "invest and divest, to hedge, donate, and fund research". They also want to "grow a philanthropic hedge fund management company". While they don't say whose research they are going to fund, it's a fair bet that it is aimed at helping Jo and David's blog "research" on Force X, N, and D and the Notch.

The project is called the Cool Futures Funds Management and the target is now $375,000. So far they've collected $43,030, up from $41,130, $38,505, and $16.025 six months ago when James Delingpole wrote about their money-making idea.

Betting the planet will cool and that coal will make a comeback, an endorsement from James Delingpole, the team including a rocket scientist from Luna Park - must be a sure thing, right?

Force X = Force N + Force D, and a Notch (maybe)

Over at Jo Nova's blog, the Rocket Scientist from Luna Park, David Evans, and his long-suffering partner Jo Nova, ran into a spot of bother. They'd written something like 30 articles about Force X and The Notch, promising a big freeze is about to hit the world. Then they hit a brick wall. They couldn't figure out where to go next, how to string things out a bit longer.

David has been looking for a magical mysterious invisible Force X from an imaginary notch he thought he'd found. He's creating this alternative theory of climate for science deniers of the extremely gullible kind. His Force has magical and conflicting properties:

• it's undetectable
• its effect is delayed by the length of the solar cycle that comes after the Force is with us
• it appears as flickers of sunlight
• it comes out of the sun
• it is ten or twenty times stronger than incoming solar radiation
• it controls how much sunlight is reflected to space from earth, without changing the temperature on Earth
• it also controls how much sunlight comes into Earth
• the mechanism could be by UV, magnetic field effects, solar wind, or other form of electrical field.

We will feel the effect as major cooling either in 2014, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 or 2024. The drop in temperature will be 0.3 C, or it will drop to that of the 1950s, or maybe it will drop to that of the 1920s.

The reason we know it's there is because "the dog didn't bark". That is, it's because we can't see it, we can't hear it, we can't smell it, we can't feel it, and we've no way of detecting it, that we know it has to be there.

Another cool prediction from the Force X duo from downunder: David Evans and Jo Nova

Today there's another in the current multi-year series from David Evans (archived here). I wonder if Jo's been on his back to produce something, anything at all, so she can fill their coffers. The article doesn't have anything new to add to what's been written in the multiple articles to date. Or not that I can see. This is article 22 in the current series, and there were eight articles in their first series. By my count that makes 30 episodes altogether so far, with precious little to show for it. They are now banking on a La Niña developing later this year or next, so they can drag things on a bit longer. (Their latest prediction is that massive cooling will start in 2017.)

In case you missed it, David Evans and Jo Nova are science deniers from Western Australia who make a living from gullible skeptics. David and Jo claim it's going to get very cold very soon because of an undetectable, mysterious, magical Force X that lives in the sun. I don't know if that's what they really think or if they know it's a big sham and are scammers. (Given they both claim some scientific education, the latter is quite likely. The fact that they have been stringing their fans along for so long without giving them anything much new makes it even more likely.)

To summarise, as I understand David Evans' "theory":

Jo Nova's Solar Force be With You - if you're a wacko science denier

...solar and volcanic forcings, the two dominant natural contributors of climate change since the pre-industrial time.

I was pointed to Jo Nova's wacky blog today. Jo Nova is the screen name of a born again science denier from Western Australia, who comes up with some of the more outlandish "theories" you'll see about global warming (ie crazy, unscientific nonsense of the wackadoodle variety).

She was waxing sarcastic about the influence of the sun on climate (archived here). Jo was trying to tell her readers that climate scientists ignore the impact of the sun on the earth. So I thought that while WUWT is deep in conspiracy theory land, I'd hit Jo's silliness on the head.

A memorial to "The Notch" - RIP

In the comments earlier, Don Brooks asked:

Is the "Force X" stuff really RIP? Nova and Evans don't seem like the types to give up easily, even when it's shown beyond doubt that they're talking tosh. 

And I couldn't believe they came up with that self-parodying term for it.

The Notch is RIP, dead but not quite buried. It was a muted announcement by Jo Nova and David Evans back on 21st July 2014. No "Big News" fanfare about it's passing, in contrast to its birth. I believe it died quietly, surrounded by family and close friends and is mourned greatly and will be treasured in denier memories.

In order for Force X to rise from the ashes, the rocket scientist from Luna Park is relying on David "funny sunny" Archibald and similar nutters to come up with a plausible explanation of their predicted rapid cooling over the next six years. Joanne wrote:

...the notch doesn’t guarantee a delay as we had previously thought. But there is independent evidence suggesting temperatures on Earth follow solar activity with a one cycle delay — the lag seen in studies like Archibald, Friis-Christainsen and Usoskin is still a lag.

David Evans wrote (archived here) that he's going to come up with some new parameters to replace The Notch (RIP) and forecast imminent global cooling:

So what does this mean for the notch-delay model? Possibly not much, but there will be a delay (ahem) while I recompute things and update the model and graphs.

The causality of a notch doesn’t support the mandatory nature of the delay that I thought I had established, but there is plenty of other evidence to suggest a delay is needed. There are half a dozen independent findings of a delay around about 11 years in the literature, and a solar influence fits better with a delay (e.g. Lockwood and Froehlich 2007 — they show that solar influence doesn’t fit without a delay). Either the sun has little effect beyond the small TSI variations, and we’re left with CO2-driven climate models that don’t work and a mystery about all the warming before 1900, or there is some solar effect that appears to be delayed from TSI changes. While the notch does not *necessarily* mean a delay, certainly the *possibility* of a delay is strong. So there is sufficient reason to include a delay in the solar model — so the model remains as before, with no change. (Clarification: the form stays the same, the parameters will vary).

David Evans is quite determined to throw good money after bad (donations from denier suckers are paying for it so what the heck).  He is also determined to reject climate science that explains changes in climate over the years. He is a greenhouse effect denier stuck on "it's the sun".

Click here and here for previous articles about Force X and The Notch.

Quote of the Day from David Evans, the Rocket Scientist from Luna Park

Wondering how David Evans was tracking with his Force X from the Sun, now that he's been challenged by some of the locals at WUWT. You may recall that for the last eighteen months he's been building a "model" in an Excel spreadsheet.  Force X and the notch were the subject of BIG NEWS - with eight plus articles and a 170 page paper, yet to be released. I guess he hasn't made much progress after all or he's not a very organised modeller, because I came across this comment from David Evans:

July 5, 2014 at 9:51 pm
Leif – I’ll get to it, but finding the parameters for the model is complicated and slow, takes a few days. Might be a few weeks before I can get to it.

Is it any wonder that he's not willing to share his workings? Sounds as if he's got himself into a real mess.  All that was suggested was that he replace his TSI data (an Evans Special concoction from multiple sources) with a single set. His comment was in reply to this suggestion by Leif Svalgaard, quoting David Evans (extract)

July 5, 2014 at 3:23 pm
...“Running the model (parametrized for the composite TSI data I use, basically Lean/PMOD/ACRIM) on your reconstruction of TSI also shows a hefty temperature fall in 2015 ”

This is the wrong way of doing this. You must parameterize using the same reconstruction as for running the model.

So, the valid test would be:
1) parameterize using ‘my’ TSI
2) run the model on ‘my’ TSI
3) compare with the temperature record

I await your agreement to this collaborative work with anticipation. Science should be [as generally is, except for fringe pseudo-science] building on each other’s work, so please join me in this venture.

I'm not the only one who finds David Evans' comment very strange after the grand build up to the Big News. Leif Svalgaard does too (extract):

July 6, 2014 at 3:11 am
Is your computer code that slow? Or is it just a manual process? If so, that would explain your reluctance to reveal the process. 

Before David Evans does plug in Leif Svalgaard's TSI data and runs the model again, I'd say he also needs to sort out his temperature concoction. From what I've read he didn't just mess with TSI, he also cobbled together temperature data from multiple sources combining surface and lower troposphere temperature data sets. Then he smoothed his temperature cocktail, quite inexplicably, with a 25 year running mean.

Nova and Evans present ForceX: "It would be better if there was a known mechanism of course..."

Update: The Notch has passed away, peacefully, in the presence of family and close friends, with little fanfare. RIP. [Sou 1 August 2014]

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Someone suggested I preserve this for the record. It shows how some deniers will waste an inordinate amount of time and energy in the fruitless pursuit of ABCD (anything but carbon dioxide). From Joanne Nova (Codling) and her partner David "not a rocket scientist" Evans, (h/t John Mashey) - Deniers in Residence, Australia.

This is a record of all their blog posts on the subject so far. I've already written about their Part VIII. In this complete set (so far), they set out why they reckon it's not really CO2 that's causing global warming, it's Force X from the sun. Force X, by a strange coincidence, has about the same radiative forcing as greenhouse gases.

Update: The WUWT article by David "funny sunny" Archibald on this subject has earned 533 comments so far, so here's the archive - latest here, with 638 comments. More than any article for years, I'd say. But it's not listed in as one of the "top four active stories". Wonder why (not)! Watch for the match between Christopher Monckton and Leif Svalgaard and comments by Wondering Willis Eschenbach. Sou 2 July 2014

The mechanism for Force X is not known at this time, we're told. Which they agree is a shame. It could be anything from UV light to puppy dog tails. All they know is that it can't be CO2 and, to prove it, the world is about to get very cold, any day now. David's very meticulous 18-month modeling effort allows him to make this extremely precise, extremely falsifiable prediction:  it will cool by 0.8°C, or maybe 0.6°C, or maybe 0.1°C - next year, or maybe in ten or even twenty years.

Or, if you are David "funny sunny" Archibald, by two degrees:

Data source: Marcott13 and WUWT

If you're on the home page and you want to read about all their zany articles to date, click "read more". If you click on the title to their blog articles, it'll take you to the archived versions complete with comments.

Denier Weirdness: Magical mysterious Force X and the Notch

Note: You can read a step by step account of the Big News here. In more recent news, it has been announced that The Notch has passed away, peacefully, in the presence of family and close friends. RIP. [Sou 1 August 2014]

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If you ever wondered just how much a fake sceptic is willing to be duped, here's an example.

Until today there was only been one minor mention of the scam at WUWT that I noticed. Anthony Watts chastised Wondering Willis for not giving Jo Nova a plug, in another of his "it's not the sun" articles. Today it's being promoted by Anthony Watts in an article by David "funny sunny" Archibald (archived here, latest here, and very latest here, with 532 comments. Some of the stouches (battles) are hilarious).

I mean, you've got to wonder at how deniers can be so darned gullible.

If you're wondering what this is all about, apparently Jo Nova and her partner David Evans have found a Notch. What this Notch does is delay solar energy reaching the earth by eleven years, or something like that. That's a long time for light to wait in the queue. Einstein would be amused.

There's more. There is also a mysterious Force X that is affecting the climate. This Force X comes from the sun. It's just that no-one's noticed except David Evans and Jo Nova.

This is a long account. If you're on the home page click read more for the rest.

Fifty to One Moncktonian Codswallop!

I was going to refute the Monckton "facts" parroted by Topher, an actor who conned tens of thousands of dollars out of readers of denier blogs, but there are no facts to refute.  I can't believe anyone put their name to this 50 to 1 video. I can't even credit Jo Nova would - and she's as batty as they come.  It's even worse than the typical Monckton diatribe.

For starters Monckton uses unusual units.  The science is kaput and so divorced from reality you'd think he was talking about a planet in a far off universe.  On the "economics" he assumes Australia is the only country to price carbon, which is a pile of nonsense.  We were late to the party.  For another thing he assumes no benefits.  And then he makes up a pile of numbers out of thin air.  None of it makes any sense at all.  It's utter garbage.  Full of wrong numbers.  Full of fake references.  I picked out a couple of quotes from the video in my previous article if you're interested.

Did I say it's a pile of codswallop?  Topher will be laughing all the way to the bank.

Deniers are bloody barmy.

If anyone wants to read the Monckton diatribe it I've put the document up on google docs here, so neither Topher nor Watts will get any hits.

So far the response on WUWT has been underwhelming.  Anthony posted his article about seven and a half hours ago and so far only 30 responses.  There might be a few more as people in the USA wake up and start bashing away at their keyboards.  There aren't too many tweets either.  (An article bashing Professor Mann or John Cook gets a much more vigourous response and at no cost to deniers.)  The youtube video has around 1700 hits FWIW.

The deniers who have written comments reckon they got their moneys worth.  Goodness knows why.  I guess they like coloured cartoons.

Sorry to disappoint you all.  But truly.  There is nothing to refute.  It's a dogs breakfast.

Oh, there is a heap of very long one hour videos with the various interviewees, too.  It would take someone of much sterner stuff than I'm made of to wade through those.  I'll just list the deniers interviewed and if any are familiar to you then you can guess what they say.

• "Jo Nova" and her partner her partner David Evans.
• Anthony Watts - oops, sorry wrong one - it's this Anthony Watts
• Donna Laframboise
• Marc Morano
• Fred Singer
• Henry Ergas

Give me insects any day :)



PS A humorous note, the mods at WUWT weren't briefed on WUWT fund-raising for the Topher video atrocity.  This from the tips on WUWT.

Tom in Texas says:

September 1, 2013 at 7:02 pmThe 50 : 1 website & video is now up at:
http://topher.com.au/50-to-1-video-project/

[You have not explained what the 50:1 project is, and why Anthony should spend his time researching your link. Mod]