The Great Barrier Reef: an unmitigated disaster - if only the Australian public knew...

Here is the video from the Climate Council, with Tim Flannery, Amanda McKenzie and Dean Miller on the disastrous bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef.

Graham Readfearn has written about how Ben Webster at the anti-environment newspaper, The Australian, tried to downplay the disaster.

Some good news from WUWT - climate change is getting more airplay

We've had years of WUWT drought about the Californian drought, with very few articles at WUWT. Now that the drought is being alleviated by El Niño rain and snow Anthony Watts has written two articles in three days about the weather in California (see here). The good news is that Anthony tells us that "some pundits" are "declaring all of this as being driven by “climate change” and claiming that “severe weather is getting worse due to climate change”." I take that to mean that some people in the media are now talking about climate change when extreme weather is being discussed.

Unfortunately Anthony didn't give any examples, so I don't know if he was making that up or if he did find people on television or the radio or on the internet talking about climate change. That means I also don't know what anyone said. Given that Anthony decided to not give any examples, it's more likely that climate change was mentioned in the context of, um, climate change than that people were saying that climate change causes El Niño storms in California.

Whatever, it could be that people are talking about climate change more - and that would be a good thing. It would help offset the ramp up in science disinformation campaigns of the past few years, reported by Constantine Boussalis and Travis G. Coan in the journal Global Climate Change. Graham Readfearn has written about that study at the Guardian.

Denier reaction to cancellation of Bjorn Lomborg's post at UWA

There’s nothing “smart” about spending $4 million of taxpayer cash on a highly questionable methodology that by design downgrades climate change.

Graham Readfearn

You may have seen in the comments or news that the University of Western Australia has thought better of its decision to provide a much-needed home for the wandering Bjorn Lomborg. The Vice Chancellor, Paul Johnson, has written a convoluted article explaining his reasons, mixed up with various excuses for appointing him in the first place.

Science denier Bob Carter comes out as an ice age comether

Bob Carter, one of Australia's own climate science deniers, has written a letter to The Australian (h/t MB). Extract follows:

Heading for ice age

...we have a report by Sue Neales that the size of our grain harvest remains in doubt following severe frosts in southern NSW killing large areas of early wheat crops and also damaging wheat and canola crops in South Australia and Victoria (“Trifecta of calamities to deplete. crop harvest”, 12/9)

See below for more on the frost damage.

Is it unreasonable to be surprised that none of your writers, much less the government, has noticed that leading solar astrophysicists, such as Habibullo Abdussamatov from Pulkovo Observatory in St Petersburg, have for years been commenting on the declining activity of the sun?

Not true. In May last year Graham Lloyd wrote about the ice age comether, Habibullo Abdussamatov, with derision from anyone who read it. Graham Readfearn tells all.

These scientists are projecting a significant cooling over the next three decades, and perhaps even the occurrence of another little ice age.

Bob only mentions one "solar astrophysicist". Who are the others? Where are they hiding? Why can't Bob name any? Maybe because reputable solar researchers know that a dip in solar activity won't herald an ice age, little or big.

Obsessed as they are with a gentle global warming trend that stopped late last century, should the expected solar cooling eventuate, policy makers will rue the day they failed to heed the advice of independent scientists on climate change issues.

Bob Carter, Townsville, Qld

Habibullo Abdussamatov is a government scientist who heads up a space research division in Russia. It seems he favours lesser scientific "journals". Bob Carter used to be a researcher at a university, paid by government funding. He's paid a stipend by the Heartland Institute and is affiliated with a number of climate science denying groups. He's not an independent scientist.

Neither of them are climate scientists.

Both of them are "ice age comethers".

Both of them are in a tiny minority of scientists who deny climate science and not on any scientific grounds. The overwhelming majority of climate scientists know that humans are causing global warming. Whose advice should policy makers take?

Frost damage to winter crops in part because of the mild winter!

This is from an article by Lisa Castleman, Riverina Local Land Services (NSW Government)

...The occurrence of ‘Stem Frost’ in cereal crops such as wheat, barley, oats and triticale or pulse crops such as lupins, field peas and faba beans is rare but not impossible. Stem Frost can occur when a severe frost (less than -2°C) occurs shortly after a rainfall event and water has settled inside the boot only to be frozen by the frost which then damages the sensitive stem tissue in close proximity....  

...Frosts in winter are not unusual but an early sowing window this season and milder temperatures through winter has meant that many crops have developed quickly, making them more vulnerable to severe frost events. “Advanced crops with a run of severe frosts coinciding immediately after rainfall events is a combination that we rarely experience” said Ms Castleman who is based in Wagga Wagga.  

So the reason the winter frosts wrought such devastation is because the milder temperatures in winter (consistent with global warming, you'll note) meant that the crops were more developed when the frosts hit. The rain made the damage worse.

Bob Carter is not only not a climate scientist, he's not an agricultural scientist either.

Another con job: the Galileo Movement put their hand out for Patrick Moore in Australia

Is Australia becoming a breeding ground for science-denying con men?

You may have heard (or not) of the "Galileo Movement" in Australia. It's a very small "organisation" of two rather nutty Queenslanders, Case Smit and John Smeed, who can't even understand what their own people are arguing. I think it probably still only numbers those two people plus a few hangers on.

As an example of how dumb they are, they couldn't accept that one of their mob were spouting a lot of anti-semitic conspiracy theories as part of a very garbled (to the point of incomprehensible) nonsense a year or so ago. I'm talking about the screed from Malcolm Roberts which Graham Readfearn wrote about, and which prompted journalist Ben Cubby to ask:

how does one critically analyse a pile of horse shit?

Australia's home grown deniers aren't up to the job?

You'd have thought this pair would be happy enough with seeing the opinions of Australia's resident supposed business leader turned fruitcake, Maurice Newman, occasionally plastered all over The Australian newspaper. Or the various efforts of people like Ian "iron sun" Plimer and Bob "agnostic" Carter. This mob have sponsored Christopher Monckton to tour Australia in the past. Christopher's latest visit was notable only for the absence of its coverage in the media.

Setting their sights low

This time the Galileo duo are angling for another small fish, Patrick "not a founder of Greenpeace" Moore. He's some Canadian who spends much of his time promoting golden rice. When he's not doing that he spends time rejecting climate science, if the fee is right, apparently.

The "value" of science denial - $100,000

I doubt too many people in Australia have ever heard of the chap. He seems to be a pseudo-environmentalist for hire. His fees are big. He's charging the Galileo Movement $100,000 for a short trip to Australia. (It rivals the ten minute video that went absolutely nowhere, by which some chap in Perth fleeced a bunch of deniers from all around the world of their hard earned dollars.)

Anthony Watts is lending a hand by putting the latest scam on his blog (archived here), which invites his readers to send their big fat cheques to Australia.

What are they paying for? Well, the article is short on detail. Apart from telling everyone that they need $100,000, the only details about what people will get for their investment are:

Rather than lecturing to the “converted”, the principal purpose of this visit is for him to meet with opinion leaders in the media, politics and business to convey a rational environmentalist’s views on why policies instituted because of the “catastrophic climate change” scare need to be realistically addressed.

Cheques can be deposited in the National Australia Bank account of the Galileo Movement Pty Ltd.

Sounds like a right lark. No details. No indication of who he'll be meeting with or why. No objectives other than to "convey" views. As if deniers' views aren't already well known. All zillions of them :)

I can't imagine who they'll manage to line up to meet with Patrick Moore. Maybe he'll find a couple of politicians willing to put up with his company in exchange for wine and pasta. You never know, Patrick might sell them some of his golden rice.

Anyway, I wonder how peeved Christopher Monckton is right now. He had to traipse across the country from one mediocre gathering of doddering old deniers to another, staying in who knows what lodgings along the way.  I don't know what he earned from his trip, but it wouldn't have been the most pleasant journey. More like a hard slog for any entertainer and especially so for someone who's no longer a spring chicken.

And along comes Patrick Moore. He manages to get someone willing to pay $100,000 and gets the high life. He can probably spend most of his time feasting in sumptuous surrounds. All he has to do is entertain a few bored politicians and anyone else who's willing to be taken out to dinner.

From the WUWT comments

It took a little while before any comments surfaced. Are they struck dumb? Are they a bit shy after the video fiasco? I've popped back in to see if they've hooked any suckers. (Archive here, latest archive here.)

davidmhoffer is the first to comment and says:

August 17, 2014 at 12:41 pm
$100K?
Seems a bit steep?

Johna Till Johnson says:

August 17, 2014 at 12:52 pm
Anthony,
You might let him have a share of your big oil money. :-) That plus $5 could get him a cup of coffee at Starbucks…

John piccirilli says:

August 17, 2014 at 12:56 pm
100k is a bargain if it can help stop the not so green machine which
Spent a 100k of taxpayers money as I wrote this. Goon luck MM

outtheback says:

August 17, 2014 at 12:59 pm
Sadly “believers” are not likely to come as their mind is made up and Dr. Moore is viewed as a heretic. No conversions will take place.

A few fence sitters and the rest are going to be people who like/need confirmation of their thoughts and findings.

I venture to guess that not too many politicians want to be seen with Dr Moore. 

Recursive furies, hurt feelings or confected outrage

Update: I've been getting a few visitors from ClimateAudit so I had a peep.  Not satisfied with his previous rants and false accusations of "fake" and "scam" when he failed his attempt at stats, one of the most unethical people in the blogosphere, Steve McIntyre, is manufacturing yet another conspiracy theory out of emails - ha!  It looks as if he's hoping to take centre stage in another cognitive science paper! (Archived here) I won't bother unpacking his diatribe. Suffice to say when you look past Steve's rhetoric at the content and break it down, his analysis is all bluster and ethics free.  He doesn't have a leg to stand on.

---

Today Stephan Lewandowsky announced that his Recursive Fury paper is being retracted by a journal.

Why?  It was not because of any problem with the paper itself from a scientific or ethical perspective.  In fact, the journal did an investigation and "did not identify any issues with the academic and ethical aspects of the study".

No, it was because a "small number" of deniers harassed the journal.  The journal made a vague reference to "legal context" and insufficient clarity of same.  In other words, it caved when bombarded with complaints from a small number of deniers (see below).

On its website page showing the abstract, there is this statement, which has been there for some time - here is the link.

This article, first published by Frontiers on 18 March 2013, has been the subject of complaints. Given the nature of some of these complaints, Frontiers has provisionally removed the link to the article while these issues are investigated, which is being done as swiftly as possible and which Frontiers management considers the most responsible course of action. The article has not been retracted or withdrawn. Further information will be provided as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.

(The journal needs to hire a webmaster, it keeps messing up the page.  Compare the earlier archive here and the "fix", archived here.)


I finally found the retraction notice on another page here, which states:

Retraction of the Original Research Article: Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation by Stephan Lewandowsky, John Cook, Klaus Oberauer and Michael Marriott Front. Psychol. | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00073

In the light of a small number of complaints received following publication of the original research article cited above, Frontiers carried out a detailed investigation of the academic, ethical and legal aspects of the work. This investigation did not identify any issues with the academic and ethical aspects of the study. It did, however, determine that the legal context is insufficiently clear and therefore Frontiers wishes to retract the published article. The authors understand this decision, while they stand by their article and regret the limitations on academic freedom which can be caused by legal factors.

As Stephan Lewandowsky writes:

The authors were involved in drafting the retraction statement and sanction its content: We understand the journal’s position even though we do not agree with it. 

Stepping away from the Grand Vision

Frontiers in Psychology is an open access journal that says:

Our grand vision is to build an Open Science platform that empowers researchers in their daily work and where everybody has equal opportunity to seek, share and generate knowledge.

By all accounts the journal could be viewed as taking a step backwards from that "grand vision" by caving into people who object to research.  I can appreciate that it's not a large publishing house and doesn't want to risk a lengthy (or any) legal battle.  On the other hand, it doesn't set a good precedent.  Deniers may well take it into their heads to employ similar tactics against any paper for any reason or no reason at all.  I expect IOP got loads of complaints about the 97% paper - we know that Richard Tol did his best to discredit that - although his best wasn't worth a cracker.  That paper ended up at the top of the list of IOP papers for 2013.

The Recursive Fury has been viewed almost 40,000 times in total - even though the full text version was taken down some time ago.  Compare that with a well-cited article (81) published in the same journal the previous year, about video action games, perception and cognition, which has had less than 22,000 views in total.  Or this one, which also got lots of citations (51) which has less than 1,400 views in total.  You'd think the journal would want to hang onto papers that attract the public's attention.


You can download the paper now at the University of Western Australia's website - or if you prefer, you can get the paper as it stood "after rigorous peer review" from the journal's own website.

...but perhaps impacting the goal

The journal website has a goal to increase the impact of articles and their authors:

We are the first – and only – platform that combines open-access publishing with research networking, with the goal to increase the reach of publications and ultimately the impact of articles and their authors.

This action has made a bit of an impact in the deniosphere and it will be interesting to see the impact it has on the journal's authors and potential authors.  Whether the action has had an impact on the authors of Recursive Fury has yet to be seen.  If anything it will probably lead to more publicity for the paper, which will also be publicity for the paper's authors.  I don't know if this will "increase the reach of publications" of Frontiers in Psychology, but it will most like increase the reach of publications by Professor Lewandowsky and his colleagues.  And this publication in particular.

Deniers squeak and squeal "defamation" and threaten legal action

Recursive Fury is being furiously discussed all over the deniosphere.  Anthony Watts has written about it (archived here) - to add to the 25 plus WUWT recursively furious protest articles on Professor Lewandowky and his work.

Graham Readfearn has written about it from a different angle.  He obtained by FOI request the swag of furious emails and other correspondence sent to the University of Western Australia, where Professor Lewandowsky used to work.  It won't be any surprise to inhabitants of climate blogs to see that deniers are big fat sooks and have double standards as well as being conspiracy nutters. They will write arguably libelous articles against scientists ad infinitum but as soon as the spotlight is shone on their antics they scream blue murder. Even, in some cases, threatening legal action.  I guess they think government institutions aren't all bad after all.

At WUWT, Anthony wrote (archived here):

We are all scratching our heads at the “threat of libel” narrative. As far as I know,  nobody in the climate skeptic community has instigated a libel lawsuit or even gotten a lawyer involved over the Lew paper. Mostly we just laugh about it. 

You'd think dour old Anthony Watts spent all his time "laughing".  A google search of Lewandowsky at WUWT yields 5,850 results!

Anthony doesn't know very much in any case. As Graham Readfearn wrote:

In FOI documents another climate sceptic blogger forwards a complaint they had made to the Frontiers journal. The complaint said: “I have sought legal advice which has confirmed that, as long as a reasonable number of blog readers are aware of my true identity and professional reputation (which is the case), I could potentially have a defamation action against the authors and publishers of this paper for an outright lie that was told about me.”

Later in the letter, the blogger added: “I hope that you will see that this was a clear case of quote falsification, academic misconduct and defamation and that the paper will now be permanently withdrawn.”

Graham also wrote about how Steven McIntyre made up stuff, including falsely accusing the scientists of not get ethics approval (which they did).  Steven is prone to conspiracy ideation quite often, for example, the first thought that enters his mind when he can't access a website is that people are deliberately blocking his ip address! He's also very quick to falsely accuse scientists of faking and scamming.

The University of Western Australia didn't cave

The University of Western Australia is standing by the paper.  It's probably a lot bigger than the Frontiers in Psychology journal and almost certainly has more expertise in law.  Here is what Stephan Lewandowsky wrote, including a quote from the University's legal counsel:

Given its popularity, and given that approximately 29,300 viewers did not complain about our work, it would be a shame to deprive the public of access to this article. Because the work was conducted in Australia, I consulted with the University of Western Australia’s chief lawyer, Kim Heitman, who replied as follows:

“I’m entirely comfortable with you publishing the paper on the UWA web site. You and the University can easily be sued for any sorts of hurt feelings or confected outrage, and I’d be quite comfortable processing such a phony legal action as an insurance matter.”
— Kimberley Heitman, B.Juris, LLB, MACS, CT, General Counsel, University of Western Australia

Update: Dana Nuccitelli has a well-written piece about this at the Guardian.

Update 2: John Timmer has an article about this at ArsTechnica.  Plus there are some interesting tweets including this one.

Update 3: Michael Halpern has a good article about this at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

From the WUWT comments

Despite all the articles on WUWT about the Recursive Fury paper and the Moon Landing paper, there are a lot of deniers who don't know anything about either.  There are also a few WUWT commenters who are angling for a place in the follow-up to Recursive Fury, though not as many as there were when the Moon Landing paper was published. Here are some comments:


Cold in Wisconsin doesn't know what s/he is talking about but says something irrelevant anyway:

March 20, 2014 at 6:37 pm
I do think that using information for research without informing the subjects is questionable. Call it a poll or something else, but what’s to keep people from being non-serious with their answers when the intentions of the question have to be obvious? Also, how can you tell that your subjects are randomly chosen and representative when you use blogs as your population? Really to represent that type of material as Academic research is kind of laughable. I’m not sure that a high school class couldn’t improve on that scheme.

rogerknights is a conspiracy theorist who opts for "nefarious intent" (see the Recursive Fury paper) and says:

March 20, 2014 at 7:05 pm
It looks to me as though this libel-threat is a cover story to enable a face-saving distancing from the poo-paper.

Mac the Knife seems to think that Professor Lewandowsky is a climate scientist and says:

March 20, 2014 at 7:39 pm
Since when are climate pscientists qualified to conduct psychology research? Are psychologists equally qualified to conduct climate research? Is psychology required course work for climate pscientists????

It may be more appropriate and enlightening for theologists to conduct research on the climate pscientists and their true believers, m’thinks…

kcom says:

March 20, 2014 at 8:49 pm
The paper is actually published in full (as far as I can tell) on the US government’s NIH (National Institute of Health) website:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3600613/

It gives all the appearance of having been there for a year, showing the March 18, 2013 publication date of the original paper.

I'm not sure why Fabi made this comment in this particular thread, but I think it's cute and wonder if the penny dropped about the difference between the fake Oregon Petition and the much heralded Cook13 paper when s/he says:

March 20, 2014 at 9:13 pm
Something I noticed above and it relates to the much-abused 97% figure. As referenced (correctly), it claims that 97% of climate ‘papers’… How ‘papers’ got translated to ‘scientists’ is beyond me. Not that I ever liked the 97% figure to begin with, but it should also be argued that it is research paper abstracts, and certainly not scientists.

Whereas conspiracy theorising Barry Woods theorises some more and says:

March 21, 2014 at 2:47 am
Ben was tipped off about that Skeptical Science web page, being in the google cache..

Was it a Skeptical Science insider, was it their hacker, or was there a more simple explanation to who tipped Ben Off about it…….

I wonder why SkS withdrew it, the page said embargoed to the 20th March, I wonder what happened (now the 21st) 

Barry Woods is claiming some credit for harassing the journal and says (excerpt):

March 21, 2014 at 3:00 am
I complained to Frontiers about the ethical conducts and conflicts of interest and vested interest of the authors. I requested my name to be removed from the paper. Because one of the authors Marriott, (Watching the Deniers blog) had been writing over a dozen articles attacking the critics of LOG12 during the research period (ie not neutral as claimed) and more particularly, had personally attacked me, naming me (and others) on his blog Watching the Deniers.. and as such I said this compromised the paper.

Here's a link to the article that Barry took exception to.  It's nothing to do with the Recursive Fury paper. Barry wrote a dumb article at WUWT protesting the findings of Doran and Zimmerman's survey of scientists about global warming.  I wonder why Barry thinks that it's okay for him to attempt to blog-refute Doran and Zimmerman but it's not okay for someone else to blog-refute Barry's "arguments".


jauntycyclist hasn't bothered to read any science and is waiting for someone to read it to him or her.  jauntycyclist also has strange ideas about the study of psychology and says (excerpt):

March 21, 2014 at 3:50 am
i don’t see people inventing conspiracy or in a fury. I just see people waiting for proof to claims co2 is the main driver of temps and will result in catastrophic change.

if people want to talk psychology then the word cult comes to mind? Patrick Moore uses the term cult.

En Passant queries whether it really is just "harmful fun":

March 21, 2014 at 4:46 am
Stop laughing as this is not funny. Every week these clowns collect a paycheck, many of them paid by we taxpayers.
Still think it is just harmful fun?

---

Stephan Lewandowsky, John Cook, Klaus Oberauer and Michael Marriott-Hubble (2013) "Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation" Available at UWA

Meteoric Research at Lake E and The DuKEs™** Feeble Battle

Meteoric Research at Lake El'gygytgyn: the most continuous archive of information about past climate change from the entire Arctic borderlands

There has been some "meteoric research" done at Lake El'gygytgyn (bit of a tongue-twister), which is in the Arctic in Russia.  Looks to be a wealth of information and I can't wait to read this second paper on the sediment core from Lake E in Science next Friday (?).  (The first one is here.) For those of you who can access it, it's pre-released in Science Express.  Otherwise, you can read about it in the Guardian and ScienceDaily and probably elsewhere.

The paper is called: Pliocene Warmth, Polar Amplification, and Stepped Pleistocene Cooling Recorded in NE Arctic Russia.

There were 16 authors of the paper, led by Julie Brigham-Grette, Professor of Quaternary/ Glacial Geology and Arctic Paleoenvironments in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Like reading a detective novel: the most continuous archive of information about past climate change from the entire Arctic borderlands - from ScienceDaily:

"While existing geologic records from the Arctic contain important hints about this time period, what we are presenting is the most continuous archive of information about past climate change from the entire Arctic borderlands. As if reading a detective novel, we can go back in time and reconstruct how the Arctic evolved with only a few pages missing here and there," says
Brigham-Grette.

A huge meteorite, perhaps a kilometer in diameter! Telling a story going back more than 3 million years...

"Lake E" (that's easier) was formed 3.6 million years ago when a meteorite, perhaps a kilometer in diameter, hit the Earth and blasted out an 11-mile (18 km) wide crater. It has been collecting sediment layers ever since. Luckily for geoscientists, it lies in one of the few Arctic areas not eroded by continental ice sheets during ice ages, so a thick, continuous sediment record was left remarkably undisturbed. Cores from Lake E reach back in geologic time nearly 25 times farther than Greenland ice cores that span only the past 140,000 years.

The Arctic was very warm way back in time, when CO2 was not much higher than those of today...a sign of things to come:

"One of our major findings is that the Arctic was very warm in the middle Pliocene and Early Pleistocene [~ 3.6 to 2.2 million years ago] when others have suggested atmospheric CO2 was not much higher than levels we see today. This could tell us where we are going in the near future. In other words, the Earth system response to small changes in carbon dioxide is bigger than suggested by earlier climate models," the authors state.

The research doesn't just provide answers it raises some intriguing new questions, the answers to which will add to knowledge about past climatic events:

The sediment core also reveals that even during the first major "cold snap" to show up in the record 3.3 Million years ago, temperatures in the western Arctic were similar to recent averages of the past 12,000 years. "Most importantly, conditions were not 'glacial,' raising new questions as to the timing of the first appearance of ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere," the authors add.

An Incredible Achievement, Phenomenal and Difficult

The Guardian article gives a glimpse into the difficulties faced by the scientists (my bold):

"It's a phenomenal record," said Prof Peter Sammonds, at University College London. "It is also an incredible achievement [the study's work], given the remoteness of the lake." Sixteen shipping containers of equipment had to be hauled 90km over snow by bulldozers from the nearest ice road, used by gold miners.

But this incredible achievement, this phenomenal, difficult and dangerous work was all for nothing if you follow the deniosaurs.  They could have just asked Tony!

DuKE™ 1: Anthony Watts Dimly DuKEs** it Out

Anthony draws on his years of anti-science blogging and solid paleo research (not!) and decides that the "researcher" (he doesn't say which of the 16 researchers) forgot about the Isthmus of Panama. (Read together with Lunt et al (2008) here.)  This researcher, according to Anthony "simply skipped over this important detail is pushing the idea that CO2 was the only issue."  

Scientists "don't know nuffin'" - if only they'd asked Tony

I expect Anthony's trying to say that not only all the specialists conducting this research, but the editors of Science and the paper's reviewers "don't know nuffin'".  Oh my! If only they'd remembered (or just asked Tony). It would have saved them years of work.

Warning: The Auditor is on the warpath

Anthony goes on to issue this dire warning that The Auditor is On the Warpath, which will no doubt leave all the scientists quaking in their boots and wishing they'd never embarked on such a foolish venture:

I’m sure Steve McIntyre will be interested in getting a look at the sediments and the dating methods to see if there are errors there.

 He finishes by telling his rabble that scientists should do what he does, ignore all prior knowledge of physics, chemistry and biology and instead make up stuff out of thin (but CO2-enriched) air (my bold).

Lately, it seems that paleo research has made some very broad assumptions, and almost always in the favor of the theory.

Duh!

DuKE™ 2: The Australian Raises the White Flag

On another front, Graham Readfearn has devoted some space to pointing out how Graham Lloyd of/and The Australian are so far into science denial that they are now "too fringe for Monckton".  Earlier this week Lloyd wrote a piece regurgitating some idiocy promoted five years ago by the Dragon Slayers (who don't 'believe in' greenhouse gases).  He reckons we might be "heading for an ice age". Wow!

Can they fall any lower?

Tim Lambert kept up with The Australian's War on Science for many years.  Seems to me The Australian has raised the white flag and signalled it has lost its war.  Now they are reduced to pushing fantasies that are even too much for the potty peer.

Time for Barry Bickmore to come up with the First and Second Laws of Graham Lloyd and The Australian.

---

**DuKE™ - Collective noun for science deniers suffering from the Dunning Kruger Effect.

Liars in the MSM are called to account

It's good to see more and more people speaking out against lies, odious rants, rampant misogyny and disinformation on the internet, particularly when it comes from 'personalities' and mainstream media. 

Climate Progress has a report by Graham Readfearn about the Australian Press Council findings in relation to lies written by Andrew Bolt and offensive articles penned by James Delingpole (speaking of odious).

More and more people are starting to take action against disinformation of the type The Australian revels in.  Tim Lambert from Deltoid continues to act as a watchdog, reporting its frequent untruths about climate science.  In his latest piece, he writes about a particularly disgusting and false headline in The Australian.

I wonder if it's because as global warming gets worse, science deniers are decreasing in numbers and it's left to the more extreme ratbags to write stuff.

Crikey - it's the sun (not really)

Too much time in the sun, poor things...

The deniers on HotCopper have worked themselves in a tizzy over someone posting an early draft of the IPCC report online.  They are under an illusion that the denialist blogger (who got the draft by registering himself as an 'expert reviewer', which anyone can do - even Monckton registered himself as such) has found the one sentence in that mammoth document that in his mind shows 'it's the sun' or 'it's cosmic rays' that's causing global warming.  (He ignores the surrounding sentences in true denier fashion.)

Suddenly deniers are touting the IPCC as the reliable source of information on climate science!

(Mind you, yesterday HotCopperites were saying the earth isn't warming, and some have been arguing that an ice age cometh!)

Ridiculous

However one of the lead authors of the chapter in question, Professor Steve Sherwood (who wrote the paper on heat stress), said the claims were 'ridiculous'.  From the ABC report:

Professor Steve Sherwood, the director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of NSW, was the lead author of the chapter in question. He says the idea that the chapter he authored confirms a greater role for solar and other cosmic rays in global warming is "ridiculous"....

..."Even the sentence doesn't say what they say and certainly if you look at the context, we're really saying the opposite."

Truly ridiculous

Not a single one of the HotCopper deniers has shown that they understand what the denialist blogger was talking about. Here's a link to the thread (subs req'd).  They've just made the usual cut and paste posts from denier blogs, or made comments like this one from one of the resident paranoid conspiracy junkies:

UN Agenda 21 plan for enslavement of us all? What has Ben been smoking?

And another for good measure, from poor little laddie Hanrahan who has a 'thing' for the shape of the global surface temperature record.  (Can some please tell him that making up stuff won't win him admiration from any quarter?)

Finally, an angry comment from Mr Misogynist himself, thalweg:

(HotCopper's share discussion board is really classy - Not!)

Denialist reading score - Fail!

For the back story, see John Byatt's post here, a report on ABC PM here, an article in the Guardian and an article from Graham Readfearn.  Graham's closing para says it all:

What this leak also shows is the tendency by some to dishonestly engage in an open process and to cherry-pick “facts” about climate change to suit their own arguments, while failing to consider the full body of evidence. Or in this case, failing to bother to read the very next paragraph.