Trump was only joking - sez WUWT. (Global warming is happening)

Are climate science deniers' opinions changing? (Short answer, No, but they are very confused little mites.)

Eric Worrall, a nondescript but prolific "guest" on the conspiracy blog WUWT said that when Donald Trump tweeted about snow and global warming he was only joking. Eric wrote (archived here):

Climate change activists simply cannot seem to handle even a joke which contradicts their obsession, without getting riled about it and providing long boring monologues about why they disagree with whatever was said.

It was a warm, dry July in Canberra (and kangaroos have fur)

Eric Worrall says there are "Kangaroos Dying of Cold" in Canberra. That's a good one. Eric doesn't know much about Australia and less about kangaroos. I don't know how long he's lived here, but you'd think he'd have picked up some knowledge about the place.

Did you know that when kangaroos can't find enough food where they normally go, they'll look elsewhere? It's the same for for a lot of animals - yeah, really.

There's a bad drought in parts of Australia at the moment. This is affecting wildlife as well as farmers and their stock. I'll talk about the Australian Capital Territory where Australia's capital city, Canberra, is located because there is a bit of idiocy about it being put about by deniers.

Pseudoscience in black and white, from Eric Worrall at WUWT

Here's a small example of why one should avoid getting their science from pseudo-scientists. Eric Worrall is criticising an experiment that was designed to determine the impact of higher daytime temperatures on bees.

The scientists put some bees into boxes painted white and some into boxes painted black and monitored them for a couple of years.

Eric thought he found a fatal flaw. His criticism was this:

The team seem to have logged daily maximum temperature inside the boxes, but I didn’t see any attention to daily minimum temperature. Painting the boxes black would have caused higher maximum temperatures from absorption of sunlight in the daytime, but the black painted boxes would also have radiated heat faster at night.

Just in case you thought, maybe Eric was talking about the faster rate of cooling as the sun went down, he's not. He added a sentence so you'll not make any mistake:

So it seems possible that much of the damage to the bees in the black boxes was caused by colder night time temperatures, rather than warmer daytime temperatures.

Wrong! Both boxes would have around the same minimum temperature during the night.

Hypocrisy alert: Don't make us pay for Harvey floods sez Eric Worrall at WUWT. We paid for his, though.

Credit: Trudy Lampson

I made a comment the other day about paying for floods. I was remarking about how Roger Pielke Jr likes to view the cost of disasters as a function of GDP. He says that GDP is going up faster worldwide than the big spike in the cost of weather disasters and implies that therefore the world can afford to pay for them.

There are flaws in Roger's GDP argument. One I didn't mention was that the cost of the clean up and restoration is part of GDP. The other is that I think a lot of wealthy people will object to their money being paid to recover from disasters unless they themselves are the victims. Remember how many Republicans voted against aid after Sandy.

Eric Worrall denounces criticism of Trump, who he knows little about

I just noticed an article at WUWT by Eric "eugenics" Worrall (archived here). This is someone who for years likened climate scientists to eugenicists. He's a bit upset at Jeffrey D. Sachs, who wrote a strongly worded piece denouncing Trump for pulling out of the Paris agreement. Eric, who is a Brit now living in Australia, was quite irate and keen to show off his double standards.

What I think upset Eric the most was when Sachs wrote that Trump's actions were anti-society. I think it was the word "sociopathic" that he regarded as "hate speech", not so much the "willfully inflicting harm" part:

President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of the United States from the Paris climate agreement is not just dangerous for the world; it is also sociopathic. Without remorse, Trump is willfully inflicting harm on others. 

(It's telling that climate science disinformers regard their audience as being so illiterate that they don't come up with any alternative to "hate" as a word to describe opposition to their efforts to ruin the world.)

WUWT pushing climate lies (again), this time from Scott Pruitt

There is a predictability to climate science disinformers like Anthony Watts and his guest authors at WUWT. They can't keep their story straight but they can and do lie and promote lies about climate. Why they want to speed up global warming - I doubt even they know the answer to that one.

Some of them do it because they are paid to do it. Others do it for a mix of dubious motives. Money is one factor. Climate science deniers are predominately right wing extremists who worship the golden calf. They are obsessed with money. For some, greed appears to be their only motivation in life.

Yet that doesn't explain it either. Not logically. Climate change is bad for the economy, meaning that climate science deniers will find it hurts their hip pocket as much as it will hurt the fortunes of normal, rational people.

Will we tip or turn? Michael Mann vs thick-as-a-brick Eric Worrall at WUWT

Eric Worrall is one of Anthony Watts' frequent guest writers for his climate conspiracy blog wattsupwiththat (WUWT). Eric's practically taken over WUWT this past few months, with Anthony Watts all but disappearing from the scene.

Now Eric isn't all that smart when it comes to climate, which is why his only outlets are right wing nutter and conspiracy websites. He hasn't had an article published in Time, that I'm aware of.

Today Eric showed his lack of critical reading skills once again, and his lack of follow through, and his lack of morals (archived here). He was wanting to disparage one of the world's leading climate scientists, Professor Michael Mann (which is a favourite pastime of climate disinformers. Since they can't dispute the science they try to disparage the scientists.)

Eric Worrall is deeply offended by the New York Times *and* wants to trash the world

Climate disinformer Eric Worrall took a short quiz at the New York Times (on WUWT archived here). The quiz was a few simple questions about what decisions Donald Trump should take in regard to oil, gas and protecting the planet Earth and the people who live on it.

Eric chose to tell Donald Trump to trash the planet, and then pretended to be deeply offended when he was told by the New York Times in response to his choices:

You did a very bad job protecting the environment and may have made many of the worst effects of climate change more likely. It could hardly have been worse.

On the upside for President Trump, Republicans in Congress and many of the people who voted for him will support most of your decisions. We guess it’s true what they say about dark clouds (something about silver linings?).

What does he expect? That anyone but his fellow planet wreckers would thank him for more floods, more drought, more heat waves, poorer crops, more wildfires, more skin cancer and faster global warming?

Annual large scale coral bleaching: Eric Worrall @wattsupwiththat sez - who cares?

Coral feeding at night. Credit: Laszlo Ilyes  via Wikipedia

Once again the "climate hoax" conspiracy theorists at WUWT show that they are also fake sceptics. Eric Worrall has written an article (archived here) about another paper in Nature's open access journal, Scientific Reports. This one is about the bleaching of coral reefs, looking at the likelihood of what they term annual severe bleaching (ASB), which should be self-explanatory. The paper is by a nine-person team led by Ruben van Hooidonk from NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami.

Annual coral bleaching will probably happen fairly soon

Using statistically downscaled models to get a picture of what is likely to happen in particular areas, the authors found that before this century is out, practically all coral reefs will suffer severe bleaching every year. That's if we continue on the current emissions path. Given that it takes five years or more to recover from a severe bleaching, that means that coral reefs are in dire danger - which you knew already, I expect.

Luddite Eric Worrall huffs and puffs and wants to bring back smog @wattsupwiththat

This is interesting. Probably without knowing it, Eric Worrall at WUWT is arguing for a national strategy for the shift to renewable energy. He was writing about an anti-renewables article in The Australian. In part, the article was about how, in the absence of a national electricity strategy, more people will leave the grid. However, the article was clearly propaganda against the shift to renewables, as is the norm for The Australian and it's war against humanity.

That article in The Australian was a Murdoch slant on the preliminary report released last month by the Energy Expert Panel, chaired by the Chief Scientist, Dr. Alan Finkel: Independent Review into the Future Security of the National Electricity Market (saved here).

Cycling disinformers: A mini update of denier waffle at WUWT

I admit to being bored with the petty deniers and conspiracy theorists at WUWT. What's happening at the political level in the USA and Australia is much more fascinating in a grim way. Still, until I have a bit more time to focus on the blog, you'll have to make do with this mini-update about the goings on in deniersville - from Eric Worrall, Andy May, Willis Eschenbach and Ira Glickstein, PhD.

It's pretty much the blind leading the blind in the sense that there's none so blind...(nothing to do with vision-impairment).

Denier Irony: Climate denial support group, WUWT, mocks climate "Good Grief" support group

The "world's biggest" climate conspiracy support group is today mocking a group that meets once a month to talk about climate change, how it affects them, and what can be done about it.

Some years ago, Anthony Watts set up a support group for climate science deniers called wattsupwiththat - or WUWT for short. He made it a denier-friendly zone that propagates fake news by banning almost everyone who is a friend of science. A few months ago he handed the reins to a nonentity called Eric Worrall from Australia (formerly of the UK), who has been writing several disinformation articles a week - often several a day, to keep up the spirits of dim deniers while global temperatures sky rocket.

This is typical behaviour from climate deniers. They are oblivious to irony. The support group Eric is mocking meets only once a month. The WUWT support group meets several times a day.

WUWT sez let Africans starve, and implies Trump has single-handedly stopped climate change

I don't know if it's the Trump effect or if something else is causing denier blogs to be weirder and nastier than their normal weird and nasty. As you may have figured out, science deniers seem to think that global warming will stop now that Donald Trump has been elected (archived here). There's no rationale for this.

For years many science deniers have been arguing that "man" is too puny to have any discernible effect on the vast forces dominating Earth's climate. All of a sudden they've changed their tune, and many of them think that just one puny little man can change the direction of climate change and has stopped global warming dead in its tracks.

Weird, huh?

Why did the researchers base their volcanic study on a model?

In an article at WUWT today, Eric Worrall asks what he claims is an obvious question (archived here), but wasn't - at least not to me (see below). He was writing about an article published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmosphere. The paper was by a team led by Thomas J Aubry from the University of British Columbia. The scientists were exploring the impact of global warming on future volcanic eruptions.

Eruption at Eyjafjallajökull April 17, 2010. Credit: Árni Friðriksson

What the authors found was that under two of three Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5, but not so much under RCP2.6), global warming will likely have the effect of reducing the cooling effect of volcanoes.

The reason for this is, as the authors write: "the critical mass eruption rate required to reach the tropopause will increase as a consequence of:

• a decrease in the heights of tropospheric plumes driven by a decrease of the tropospheric temperature lapse rate; and 
• an increase of the tropopause height."

Where are the clowns?

There is not a lot to report from denialists this week. Their repetitive denial is boring. Judith Curry is not very busy, merely posting things that caught her eye to give voice to her Trump fans (politics), her core anti-science brigade (science), and her luddites (energy and policy), interspersed with silly guest articles by deniers. She's given up on science altogether and is now a hard core climate science disinformer.

At WUWT, Anthony Watts has been posting articles saying the reason no debates had a climate question was because no-one in the USA is interested in climate change. Given that Anthony touts his blog as "the world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change", this raises the question of whether he is rethinking the point of his anti-science efforts of the past nine years or so.

Climate Science Denial: A rational activity built on incoherence and conspiracy theories

Climate science denial is therefore perhaps best understood as a rational activity that replaces a coherent body of science with an incoherent and conspiracist body of pseudo-science for political reasons and with considerable political coherence and effectiveness.

That is the closing sentence of a new paper called: "The ‘Alice in Wonderland’ mechanics of the rejection of (climate) science: simulating coherence by conspiracism". Great title! The work is by Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, Dr John Cook and Professor Elisabeth Lloyd. It's another wonderful read about the lack of coherence in the arguments put forward by climate science deniers as their reasons for rejecting mainstream science.

"Something must be wrong". Four words. "Something is wrong". Three words.

Do either of the above have any meaning on their own? Not really. However they do invite questions.

SciAm article gets climate science deniers to shout denial about their denial...

Over at WUWT Eric Worrall has posted his take on an article in Scientific American (archived here). The article is by Margaret Hetherman, and she's written about climate change. Her article is about how we are reacting and coping with it, wondering how future generations will regard us, and speculates about why deniers think climate change is a hoax.

Eric wrote above a slab of copy and paste:

Scientific American thinks we are all so worried about climate change, our minds have snapped – that we’ve all turned to “climate denial” as a coping mechanism.

I read the article and there was no talk of snapping minds, or melting brains.

Persil-brains: with James Inhofe, Eric Worrall, Andy May and WUWT

There used to be a laundry detergent called Persil, that advertised "whiter than white". I thought of it when I saw more evidence that climate science deniers have an strange aversion to washing. First it was whitewashing, now it's brainwashing that sends them into a spin cycle. Seems as if a lot of climate conspiracy theories revolve around washing, or should I say complaints about washing.

Washing Inhofe's Brain

I'd say that Senator James "snowball" Inhofe's brain would benefit from a thorough cleaning to get rid of all the rubbish floating about in there. Eric Worrall has written about the latest bit of idiocy being circulated (archived here). Senator Inhofe, a committed science denier in the USA, talked about his grand-daughter asking him why he doesn't understand global warming. Eric copied part of an article from the Washington Post:

Un-American witch hunts: Karl Rove Tactic #3 from WUWT

If there is one thing that defines climate science deniers it is that they are conspiracy theorists. Some wilful deniers believe the disinformers who claim that climate science is a hoax and that scientists are committing fraud. WUWT is full of it. Today it's Eric Worrall's turn (archived here). This time he's doing a Karl Rove, and accusing Senator Whitehouse of being a conspiracy theorist because he is exposing the deliberate disinformation campaigns allegedly paid for in part by fossil fuel companies.

Some background. Over time, more and more evidence has been compiled showing that fossil fuel companies have paid money to climate denying organisations in the USA. This includes ExxonMobil, Peabody coal and others. Today Eric Worrall copied from the Guardian:

The Senate heard how fossil fuel companies such as ExxonMobil, Peabody Energy and the billionaire oil brothers Charles and David Koch had funnelled millions into groups that had spread doubt about the causes of climate change.

The Guardian article has a lot of detail, including the role of paid disinformers like Bob Carter. It also has links to other documentation of the deliberate campaigns to spread climate science denial, including in Australia.

Beware deniers wanting plant food - or - If science deniers were in charge

Over at WUWT, Anthony Watts has put up another article from his main contributor Eric Worrall (archived here). Eric is thinking of sending the world to hell in a handbasket by adding enough CO2 to the air to bring it to 1000 ppm in the next ten years. He says he wants to feed plants. His plan is to burn limestone.

Eric knows as much about atmospheric science and arithmetic as he does about climate change. His calculations are wonky. He thinks that there is only 920Gt of CO2 in the atmosphere at present. There's about 3,250 Gt or about 8 Gt per ppmv of CO2. So when he works out that he needs another 600 ppm, he thinks he only needs another 1,380Gt of CO2. In fact he needs to find about 4,800 Gt CO2. That means instead of just using 3,136Gt of limestone, he'll have to find nearly 11,000 billion tonnes of pure limestone.