Icy climate fakery from Philip Lloyd in Cape Town, @wattsupwiththat

This time I'm going to keep it short so you can get back to watching the nasty shenanigans of Donald Trump, who seems very keen to start another war. Some chap called Philip Lloyd has written an article for Anthony Watts about temperature trends in Cape Town (archived here). (Anthony must have written the headline because he changed Cape Town to Capetown.)

Never mind about that. The article is by Philip Lloyd, who's been denying science for a long time. He's another engineer. Not the decent sort of engineer. He's the type you'll see in droves at climate conspiracy blogs like WUWT and Judith Curry's place. I've written about his particular brand of denial, e.g. in 2013 and 2015.

Philip was wanting to distract deniers from the hottest year on record by claiming that the historical temperature of Cape Town was fraudulent or something. Temperature data expert, Nick Stokes disabused him of that notion e.g. here and here. (Yes, I'm joking. Nick Stokes disabused any reasonable reader of that notion. However, deniers are not reasonable, and there's no sign that Philip Lloyd was the slightest bit interested in researching the subject.)

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.

Something went wrong at WUWT. Is Anthony Watts ceding his title?

Anthony Watts has just discovered, more than two weeks after everyone who is anyone in climate-land knew about it, that Dr John Cook is moving from Queensland to take up a new post at George Mason University. He's been appointed as Research Assistant Professor in the GMU Center for Climate Change Communication, and will take up his post in January 2017.

Congratulations, Dr Cook.

The reason I say that something went wrong at WUWT isn't that Anthony has only just got the news, or at least is only just spreading it to his disciples. He's shown before that he's out of the loop when it comes to climate news. No, it's because a comment from ATTP got past the WUWT sentinels.

Settled science: there is a scientific consensus that humans are causing climate change

You probably think this topic has been done to death, however there are still people who won't or can't accept that there is a strong scientific consensus on climate change. Even people who accept the strong scientific consensus keep coming up with claims that it isn't. The science on the consensus is "settled science". (I say that to annoy science deniers who don't understand the difference between settled science and ongoing research.)

There are two new papers about the extent to which there is a consensus that humans are causing global warming. One is a rather silly comment by Richard Tol (who can't let it go). The other is a reply to Richard's comment by a team of heavy hitters, including many of the people who have already published papers quantifying the consensus, plus more. The reply is much more than a mere reply. It's a synthesis of the consensus papers and something that you'll no doubt find useful the next time you come across a climate science doubter.

Anthony Watts weakly protests Recurrent Fury

The reaction from WUWT deniers to Recurrent Fury so far is fairly ordinary, though chock full of conspiracy ideation (archived here). It's not clear whether any denier has actually read the paper. Evidence suggests most haven't - they are too busy complaining about it. There is only one article at WUWT and it's dominated by Barry Woods. Barry has spent the past few years scouring the internet for any mention of Professor Lewandowsky and writing endless overly-long, over-hyped complaints mixed with general disinformation. That's because a comment from him was included (buried deep) in the data for the original paper, and Barry maybe regretted making his public comment publicly, and so he took it out on Professor Lewandowsky. (Barry found a paper written by a couple of deniers that he thinks refutes the moon-landing paper. It didn't.)

Many deniers might be nutters, but that's not what Recurrent Fury is about

Anthony Watts himself insists that Recurrent Fury demonstrates that "“people who question the veracity of global warming/climate change are nutters”. It doesn't. That's just what Anthony Watts wants you to think but it's not what the paper shows. Recurrent Fury is about the way that conspiracy theories evolve when facts emerge that force changes to the original conspiracy theory. It isn't a psychological diagnosis of individuals and never was. In any case, as Dr. Katharine Blackwell wrote: "believing in a conspiracy theory is not a psychological disorder, any more than a religious belief is."

Curses! It's a conspiracy! The Fury is Back Thrice Over

I don't know if you saw the wonderful conspiracy theory from the sockpuppeting ex-mod at WUWT, dbstealey (who has also posted as Smokey, D Böehm, D Böehm Stealey, and 'dbs, mod').  Anthony's staunchest ally, fan and WUWT moderator and attack dog, dbstealey, wrote not long ago that the KGB inserted Pope Francis as the head of the Catholic Church:

June 15, 2015 at 7:23 pm
...After Pope John Paul II faced down the Soviet Union, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church was targeted by the KGB/FSB. They have a lot of patience. The current Pope is the result. Now they have their puppet in the Vatican.

His notion that Pope Francis is a KGB sleeper agent is right up there with the best of the multitude of zany conspiracy theories that Anthony Watts promotes on his denier blog.

Why 97% is important - Yale US survey on public perceptions of climate change

Fake sceptics, hard core deniers, are pretty well unshiftable in their "belief".

Click here for more of Collin Maessen's excellent videos

As you know, most people who comment at WUWT, for example, already made up their mind well before they heard evidence about climate and what's causing it to change. If they do search for evidence - it's to find "evidence" that they think will support their "belief" - and stop right there. You may recall the confessions of deniers at WUWT (see here and here and here) and at Judith Curry's blog (see here).

But as John Cook said in that short interview, that's not the audience...

Strange results from people in the USA

I'd say at least half the people in the USA still don't have much of a clue about climate change. Yet a majority, in some instances only a very small majority:

• Do understand the global warming is happening (63% agree, 18% disagree)
• Are worried about it (52% agree, 48% disagree)
• Believe it will harm people in the USA (51% agree, 39% disagree)
• Believe it will harm people in developing countries (52% agree, 35% disagree)
• Believe it will harm future generations (61% agree, 26% disagree)

Deconstructing the 97% self-destructed Richard Tol

If you're a mediocre academic who yearns to be in the spotlight, what do you do? If you've burnt your bridges academically and cemented a reputation as a bit of a hack who isn't too fussed about accuracy.  If you aren't too worried that you'll end your lack-lustre career on a third-rate public speaking circuit, talking to a handful of doddering deniers in seedy back rooms of government buildings, then you might consider a career as a climate science denier.

That's the image that comes to mind when I consider the antics of Richard Tol over the past few years. Richard managed to snag a position as Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex in the UK. He specialises in the economics of climate, sort of, though he's had mixed success. That's mainly because he's not a detail person. He isn't too fussed when he lets mistakes slip through - unless, that is, someone catches him out.

On Antarctic ice: The ongoing ignorance of deniers at WUWT

Some people will put down the disinformation spread by Anthony Watts to him being plain dumb and ignorant. Others will say that he's not really as dumb as he looks and sounds, he's just deceitful and has made a business out of conning the ignorant.

I don't know where on the idiot-liar scale Anthony Watts lies.

These past couple of days Anthony Watts has:

• Complained that responsible journalists don't go to flat earthers for science
• Failed ocean chemistry
• Failed surface temperatures 101

Now he's claiming (archived here) that John Cook at SkepticalScience.com said that Antarctic sea ice is the result of the Southern Ocean getting warmer. He even linked to the web page where John Cook gave the following reasons for the increase in Antarctic sea ice:

1. the drop in ozone levels over Antarctica, resulting in stronger winds, which creates polynas, which freeze up and add to sea ice.
2. a change in ocean circulation with top layer of the ocean being colder and fresher, which freezes more easily than more saline water at the same temperature. It's colder at the top because of more snow and rain as a result of warmer air temperatures.

Some sciency questions, plus a note on etiquette

Update 2: see below for Anthony's excuses.

Update: see below for Anthony Watts' "report" of Professor Mann's Bristol lecture.

---

Some sciency questions

I added a note about the new stadium wave paper at the end of my last article. I do have some question for readers. On page two of the paper (subs req'd), when talking about their pattern searching, the authors write:

Following Tsonis et al. [2007], Wyatt et al. [2012] considered a network of climate indices associated, geographically and dynamically, with different climatic subsystems, and used an objective filtering method to isolate secular multidecadal variability within this network during the 20th century. On top of a uniform linear trend, they identified an oscillatory-looking wiggle with a common multidecadal time scale, but with different phases across the different indices of the climate network, thus manifesting a signal that propagates in the space of climate indices. The authors termed this propagating signal the “stadium wave,” reflecting a speculation that it dynamically originates in the North Atlantic and spreads over the remainder of the Northern Hemisphere via a hypothesized sequence of delayed dynamical feedbacks. However, search for the stadium wave in a suite of simulations by multiple global climate models only returned stationary, in-phase signals [Wyatt and Peters, 2012], in sharp contrast with the observational analysis of Wyatt et al. [2012].

There were a few questions that popped into my mind when I read that. Perhaps a reader can help out and explain the scientific jargon:

• What is a network of climate indices?  
• What is the difference between an objective filtering method and a non-objective filtering method?
• What does an oscillatory-looking wiggle look like?
• What does a non-oscillatory-looking wiggle look like?
• What makes an oscillatory-looking wiggle distinguishable from an oscillatory-looking waddle?
• How much space is required for climate indices?
• How do you tell the difference between a dynamic origination and a non-dynamic origination?
• What is the difference between a dynamical feedback and a regular feedback?

Thanks in advance, all you science aficionados.

A note on etiquette

On a separate topic, I notice that Anthony Watts is feeling a bit put upon that people have noticed that he doesn't have what it takes when it comes to the crunch. (That's non-science jargon for, well, you can guess.)

Anthony, full of bravado and egged on by his adoring hangers-on, jumped on a plane paid for by those same adoring hangers-on, full of promise to put those supposed miscreant scientists on the spot and ask them some hard-hitting questions.

When Anthony arrived, he found himself confronted, in person, face to face, by the three people in the entire world who, out of all the scientists he rubbishes, he has probably spent more time viciously attacking and telling lies about than any others. (See here and here and here and particularly here for the background.)

Anthony went to water.

Cowed by the reality that there he was, in a university of all places, a place that doesn't just like knowledge it actually creates knowledge. The very antithesis of Anthony Watts' world. Not only that but he was in a foreign country, surrounded by people who not only spoke a different language, they knew a lot more about climate science than he ever could hope to know.  And to top it off he discovered the lectures were being recorded on video. Anthony probably had visions of Paul Nurse and James Delingpole. Cowed, he shrank into his chair and could barely wait until the ordeals ended.

Tail between his legs, he slunk back to his Californian basement, turned on his computer terminal and mumbled: "I only went to watch." Which didn't faze his hard-core supporters, who assured him "You're the man!"

Well, that was too much. Being mocked even by his hard-core supporters. With a monitor shielding him from his nemeses, his cyber-self finally donned the bravado he is known for, he strode over to Facebook and bravely wrote: "May I ask a question?"

He was feeling up again. No longer worried that he might have to look someone in the eye.

Buoyed by his courage at being able to venture into the lion's cyberden, he boldly took a snapshot. Next visited Twitter and boasted to all and sundry that his bravado had returned, now that he didn't have to face anyone in person. Now that he could hide behind his monitor, getting lots of retweets and replies of support from supposed friends and allies. ("That means I must be right" thinks Anthony.)

Now Anthony wasn't invited into the personal log of this scientist. He barged in uninvited. Needless to say he was swiftly and politely shown the door. And just so you know:

If you have a habit of making false, inflammatory, and/or defamatory statements about climate scientists in public then, no, you're not welcome at this facebook page. There are other outlets for you in that case. Thanks!

(Just so you know - it's the same here at HotWhopper.)


Anthony is satisfied. He breathes a sigh of relief. Order has been restored and he didn't even have to think up a dumb question. Saved by etiquette. He is once more king of denialism. He has shown his fans that scientists refuse to debate fake sceptics. He is the Man. (Oops!)


The few climate bloggers who noticed the exchange might have thought of Anthony and his charade: "What a bunch of mindless yobbos".

The rest of the world thinks - umm, nothing. If asked they'd say "Who? Who is Anthony Watts? Oh, you mean the rugby player/bikie/boxer? Not his style."

Update

Anthony Watts has finally written his "report" of Dr Mann's presentation. Showing two things. First: Anthony Watts is incapable of writing a report. Secondly, his fans wouldn't know a report if they tripped over one and are easily pleased. His "report" is nothing more than a collection of photos of Dr Mann's presentation, with very short comment/description underneath.

With no hint that he understands the meaning of intellectual property, under one of his photos he wrote: "I wonder if he got permission from Accu-Weather to use that graphic?" One may ask, "I wonder if Anthony Watts got permission to post all Dr Mann's slides". (In response to a question about this, Anthony claimed it is "fair use". I'd question that. One or two slides maybe, to illustrate a point. But not all of them with barely a word of analysis. I've not linked to the WUWT page or an archived version for obvious reasons.)

And again, with no hint of duplicity he claims, about a photo of Dr Mann's own child: " I don’t think children should be used as props.". This the day after Anthony himself stole a photo of a mother and child to persuade his readers to sign up to a fake religion's repulsive "declaration"! (h/t CM)

Update 2: The gutless wonder - excuses, excuses

Anthony Watts admits he's a gutless wonder (archived here, latest update here). In the process describes his paranoid conspiracy ideation, among other things.

First he tries to foist the blame on Michael Mann claiming he has a "record of hostility". WTF! It's Anthony Watts who hasn't let up on defaming Dr Mann and telling lies about him and his work.  (Didn't he realise when he made the booking that Michael Mann would be there, to answer his "many questions"?)

Next he blames Professor Lewandowsky. [Edit: Just for being there, mind you. Not for anything he did or didn't do there.] Yeah, it's all his fault - not! Remember Anthony's fake bravado when he boasted he was "Headed into ‘Lew-world’" and begged for money? What happened?

Anthony's still behaving exactly as I described above. Words like worthless, slimeball and cowardly come to mind.

He confesses he wasted his readers' money and got it under false pretences, but no-one's asked for a refund, yet.

Anthony was too chicken to admit that his "big brave question" to Michael Mann on Facebook was nothing more than:

"...will you take my question now?"

From Monty Python

.h/t Raoul :)

From the WUWT comments

Anthony's sycophants supported him, boosting his fragile ego, muttering stuff like of course you did the wise thing, oh wise one and I see now you did the right thing. There was one person who had sufficient independence of mind to buck the trend. Velcro wrote:

September 28, 2014 at 10:54 am
The venue was the venue. Nothing Mann could do about the separation between podium and audience. Seems to me that the sceptic community criticise the warmists for not being prepared to debate, yet on this occasion, when there was the opportunity to question, we sceptics passed up the chance. I would have been inclined to ask something like ‘ do you attach any significance to the fact that if one plots annual global temperature against year for the past 18 odd years, one gets a horizontal line? And if you don’t then why not?

This is for Velcro. And this, too. And don't forget this from Gavin Schmidt.


Finally, one slipped by the mods - for everybody, from tz

September 28, 2014 at 1:47 pm
The Mann-o-sphere v.s. Kochtopussy.

Anthony Watts can't help himself. Was he born a liar?

And finally finally, for anyone who has fallen for Anthony's fairytale that he "booted me off WUWT for being overly disruptive". He didn't. He banned me over a fairly mild tweet. This "clueless female eco-nut" who is "isolated, lonely" and petless or is she a "crazy, nasty,spiteful witch" posted only about 30 comments in four years at WUWT, none of which could be described as "overly disruptive" by any stretch of the imagination. Some of my mild comments annoyed Anthony and Smokey/DB Stealey, for some reason. Too sciency I expect. (I'm wondering if Anthony thinks any blogger who ridicules others, be they anti-science or pro-science, must be isolated, lonely and petless.)

[Update to an update: No-one at WUWT commented on what I write but there are lots of theories as to why I write. The latest theory is that I have a all the hallmarks of being a child abuse victim. (Deniers apparently cannot fathom why people would poke fun at their anti-science efforts and pseudo-science and replace it with science. First time I've heard "alarmism" blamed on child abuse though. Is this intended as a milder form of Steyn-abuse?) Sou 29 September 2014]

Nor was I ever kicked off any discussion board for being overly disruptive. (When Anthony wrote in the plural, he was using what passes for blog licence on disinformation blogs. There is no plural. There is only one other instance that he is referring to.) However it wasn't for disruption. I was scarcely ever even modded on that share trading website (a site where deleting comments is the norm, not the exception). They just decided they didn't want a woman in their 'men only' club, after she once commented on the misogyny prevalent there - still, going by the comments here. Much like the way Anthony Watts soon bans almost everyone who prefers climate science to pseudoscience.

More on John Cook in Bristol, what WUWT won't tell you

Earlier I wrote a short article about the presentation John Cook gave at Bristol University last night. His talk had the title:

Dogma vs Consensus: Letting the Evidence Speak on Climate Change

I figured you might be interested to know that you can now download the presentation from SkepticalScience.com. I believe it's a slightly cut-down version.

Source: John Cook Bristol Presentation

John used a mixture of science, humour and serious thought-provoking examples. Of course, he threw a couple of curved swinged? swung? lobbed? some cricket balls along the way, from the look of the presentation.

Understanding the science

To illustrate how valuable are public meetings on climate change, one thing John commented on was how few people can explain the greenhouse effect. In his presentation, he said that earlier this week he gave a talk elsewhere and had one person who could explain it, and they had an American accent. I gather from a tweet, at his Bristol talk it was someone from U Bristol who was able to explain it to the audience.

John Cook's brilliance in Bristol and the sound of silence at WUWT

I see that John Cook's talk was very well received in Bristol. By all accounts he gave his usual brilliant presentation.

#johncook explaining #globalwarming @BristolUni @cabotinstitute talk this evening. Interesting stuff! pic.twitter.com/feMNT05MKl
— Anne-Marié (@ElapidxTamer) September 19, 2014

This is the sort of #science I like! #johncook @cabotinstitute #globalwarming #climatechange @skepticscience pic.twitter.com/L2zsy7P6rU
— Anne-Marié (@ElapidxTamer) September 19, 2014

#johncook great comparison I think! #globalwarming @BristolUni @cabotinstitute @UoBris_WUN @skepticscience pic.twitter.com/WJh6ongNjP
— Anne-Marié (@ElapidxTamer) September 19, 2014

I'll write more when I can. As you can guess, the topic of communicating science is of great interest to me, as a blogger who tries to demolish disinformation. I learn a lot from John Cook.

One thing that's interesting is that a prominent global warming "skeptic" blogger was in attendance (see bottom RHS of top photo above). He was followed out of the lecture by a strange crocodile entourage of 13 blokes, I've been told :)

Deniers stunned into silence

Anthony had his trip paid for by his readers, but so far not a peep from him.  Not a tweet, no WUWT article at the time of writing this article - some hours after the end of the lecture. I hear he didn't even put up his hand to ask a question. And not for want of prompting from his fans.

Below is a record of Anthony's tweeting frenzy while at the Bristol talk. A big fat zero!. (Click to enlarge.)

After the lecture, Anthony Watts and his mates went off to drown their sorrows at a local pub. I don't know if his backers will be disappointed or if they had no expectations.  I didn't see any complaints about his similar failure to deliver when they paid him to go to #AGU13, so they are probably not very discerning about where they spend their hard earned dollars - as long as it's not to help mitigate global warming.

Anthony Watts fails to save face, pretending not to be excited

Remember a couple of days ago how Anthony Watts was itching to "sue the pants off" skeptical science? How he just knew that they were up to something nefarious. How he figured that John Cook and his team were going to defame deniers? (Would that even be possible?)

He was wrong.

To hedge his bets Anthony later added that perhaps they were going to say something about science itself but if they were, they'd do it in Monty Python style like the 10 out of 10 video that some group came up with (not SkepticalScience), which deniers pretend "shock horror" about. He was wrong about that, too.

A failure to predict - and more

In a pathetic attempt to save face, today he wrote:

The latest propaganda stunt from the Skeptical Science Kidz is underway and it is about as exciting as it is predictable. 

If it was as exciting as it was predictable by Anthony, then he's saying he failed to find it exciting just as he failed dismally in his attempt to predict it.

At least he's owning up to his failure to predict. Or did he make another gaffe and was wanting to make out that he did predict it, when he didn't, but messed up and said it was very exciting.

The SkepticalScience initiative was exciting enough for Anthony to write two articles about it, wasn't it.

What other dismal failures does he achieve in his delayed reaction to 97 hours?

Anthony Watts mistakes Greenland for the entire world - and gets even Greenland wrong

Anthony probably likes to think he deceives his readers well. Perhaps he does, but that's because his readers are only too willing to be deceived not because Anthony is any good at deception.

His deception today is that he presents the ice sheet way up on a freezing cold summit in central Greenland as a good proxy for the entire world.  That's as ridiculous as presenting the Simpson Desert as a proxy for the entire world.

Anthony put up a chart of GISP2 temperatures and couldn't even get that right, labeling it as stopping in 2000, when in fact it stopped in 1950 and shows the temperature up to 95 years before 1950. In other words, it doesn't show any temperatures past 1855.

Flawed chart from WUWT, annoted by HotWhopper

See if you can spot other things wrong with the chart. I mean the chart itself, not just the fact that the average global temperature on earth is quite a bit higher than minus 30 degrees Celsius. Or the fact that temperatures in any one spot on land will fluctuate more than the average temperature over the entire earth.

Anthony Watts thinks weather happens by magic

Then Anthony disputes the fact that all weather now is affected by the amount of energy in the system. He seems to think that physics doesn't apply with some weather. Quoting climate scientist Kevin Trenberth, Anthony wrote:

“all weather is now connected to climate change” – Yikes, every cloud is hiding a climate change boogie man now?

Yes, Anthony. If there was less energy in the system then weather would be different. What do you think. Is some weather governed by magic?

Anthony knows he's a loser, so invokes Godwin's Law

Then he sees a Nazi salute in a friendly wave. He wrote:

I had to chuckle though, because the SkS kids went to all this trouble to make this page where when you mouse over one of the cartoon character climate scientists, their arm goes up in the air to say “hey, I’m part of the consensus!”. That sort of high salute reminds me of the Nazi dress up photos we found last year on the Skeptical Science website. 

Can you believe that Anthony sees a Nazi salute in this sort of pose? What a warped mind he must have.

Professor J Marshall Shepherd. Credit: SkepticalScience

The dress up photos he refers to are about how some people at SkepticalScience coped with Anthony Watts and other lowlifes calling them Nazis in the past. Instead of letting it get to them they made light of the disgusting name-calling. In private. On a private website. Then the images were stolen.


Oh, and it looks as if HotWhopper is getting to Anthony too. Excellent!


PS While I was writing this article, readers were commenting about Anthony's recent effort and picked out other points of interest.

From the WUWT comments

biff33 thinks it was predictable. Maybe, but Anthony failed to predict it.

September 8, 2014 at 3:21 am
Don’t you mean as boring as it is predictable?

Kit Carruthers wonders what goes on in Anthony's twisted mind when he sees children waving.

September 8, 2014 at 3:44 am
Anthony, so do school kids remind you of Nazis? They put their hands up too!

knr decides to act the fool and writes:

September 8, 2014 at 3:56 am
Trenberth ‘missing heat ‘ is a result of poor science not of good theory.
For if temperatures had increased in the way they said they would, STELLED SCIENCE, with increases in CO2 , then there would be no need for any ‘missing heat ‘ in the first place . The fact he cannot justify or even remotely prove his ‘missing heat’ idea is the reason why he tried to reverse the null hypothesise in the first place. And approach which results in a total fail for any undergraduate handing in an essay, would seem to be an acceptable standard with climate ‘science’ professionals . And they wonder why they consider a joke. 

Oatley finds it rather odd that Anthony Watts claims the average global temperature of earth is around minus 30 degrees Celsius, and asks:

September 8, 2014 at 4:05 am
Help me understand the RH scale on the graph…

jmrSudbury doesn't comment on Anthony's major mistake, but answers Oatley's question:

September 8, 2014 at 4:50 am
The air temperature of Greenland averages near -30 C. — John M Reynolds

richard verney looks again at Anthony's chart and wonders how the settlers survived in ancient Greenland:

September 8, 2014 at 6:03 am
I do not disagree with your summary of the charts, but is the reconstruction of the past temperatures accurate?

How could the Vikings with their primitive technology (and no mechanical aids such as mini diggers and tractors) have farmed Greenland for a couple of hundred years if the temperatures were only about 1 or so degrees warmer than today? That is the question that should be asked when tuning the proxies.

Where they were located (and I accept that their settlements were not spread right accross Greenland), it must have been about 4 degrees (and possibly more) warmer than it is today, if not just 1 or 2 harsh winter would have wiped them out.

Greg is a bit worried that Anthony Watts is giving publicity to proper science communicators (instead of the usual WUWT fare of paranoid conspiracy theories):

September 8, 2014 at 4:54 am
This is too feeble to even bother trying to counter it.
Don’t flatter thier sorry efforts by reading and commenting on them. 

JLC is baffled that anyone would be interested in what climate scientists have to say about climate. It just goes to show how out of touch with reality are deniers. JLC - most people aren't very interested in the pseudo-science quackery and paranoid conspiracy theories, which is the normal fare at WUWT.

September 8, 2014 at 5:30 am
This baffles me. It might increase the number of hits on their website and entertain the true believers but I can’t see that it would achieve anything else. 

Not in god's image: head vice material from unscrupulous E. Calvin Beisner

E. Calvin Beisner's been mentioned before on HotWhopper recently. He's reared his ugly rejection of science again at WUWT today (archived here), right after an article in which Anthony celebrates Australia's backflip on the carbon price.

This is an article exposing the deceit of E Calvin Beisner. He's not clever about it. He's like the classroom sneak. Everyone despises the sneak. Everyone knows the sneak will tell lies at the drop of a hat and will blame someone else for his actions. The sneak is a liar and a coward.

Calvin hides behind his god, too. For me, I don't care normally care what a person believes about religion. I think religion can be a great help and comfort to a lot of people. It's when people present themselves as religious on the one hand while being dishonest in the extreme that they lose my respect.Calvin presents as an elder in the orthodox presbyterian church (whatever that his) and a spokesperson for the pseudo-religious cult, the Cornwall Alliance. But on climate science he specialises in twisting the truth, distorting facts and misrepresenting them.  I have nothing but contempt for the E. Calvin Beisner's of the world.

Calvin probably thinks he's being clever in much the same way as a child does when lying to his teacher. He doesn't come across as very clever. He comes across as one of the dumber variety of deniers with no scruples. Calvin cannot point to any evidence to support his rejection of climate science so he resorts to wordplay.

A most fascinating aspect of climate change denial

Calvin's main article is a belated response to a rather good article Phil Plait wrote back in January, after James Powell updated his tracking of science denial vs science papers. Phil Plait starts with an observation:

To me, one of the most fascinating aspects of climate change denial is how deniers essentially never publish in legitimate journals, but instead rely on talk shows, grossly error-laden op-eds, and hugely out-of-date claims (that were never right to start with). 

Ironically, rather than address the issue by doing a scientific study, E. Calvin Beisner relies on the anti-science blog WUWT to boast about his denial of climate science, with a "grossly error-laden" blog article.

(If you're on the home page, click the "read more" link for an analysis of the "tricks" Calvin tries on.)

Anthony Watts and others are heading off to England to hear John Cook and Michael Mann

Update: see below how Anthony was mulling his choices and evaluating his options. Flattery will get him nowhere.


This is cute. Anthony Watts is going to take a trip to England in September (archived here). He's arranged it specially because he saw that John Cook is speaking for an hour and a half (including question time) at the University of Bristol. Apparently Anthony prefers to try to get in "some questions" at the end of the lecture in Bristol rather than sending John Cook an email.

Anthony wrote:

Note: I registered since I’ve always wanted to come to England anyway, and this was as good as an excuse as any…plus I have many questions to ask. Note also that while the event is free, there are a limited number of tickets available.

Not long after he wrote about John Cook's lecture, Anthony discovered that Michael Mann is also speaking there four days later in September. Anthony decided to take the opportunity to go to his session and see if he can ask him a question or two as well. Here's the updated archive.

For anyone in Bristol in September, here are the dates and times:

John Cook: Dogma vs. consensus: Letting the evidence speak on climate change 19 September 2014, 6 pm - 7.30 pm, Victoria Rooms, Queens Road, Bristol, BS8 1SA

Michael E Mann: Cabot Institute Lecture: The Hockey Stick and the climate wars - the battle continues 23 September 2014, 6 pm - 7:00 pm plus question time, The Victoria Rooms, Queen's Rd, Bristol, BS8 1SA

You might even get to meet a real celebrity, Anthony Watts, blog owner of the crackpot blog, WUWT. After all, now Anthony Watts has now made the public lectures with John Cook and Michael Mann all about Anthony Watts. Narcissism in extremis.

Reading the comments there could be an opportunity for US-based deniers to cobble together and charter a plane :) You'd think that John Cook and Michael Mann never spoke in public in the USA. Do the WUWT-ers know where Bristol is, I wonder? Seems a long way to go to sit in a lecture theater for three hours. Not that I don't think that John Cook and Michael Mann aren't worth listening to. But to fly half-way around the world for two one-hour lectures? To stopover in Bristol for four or five days? (Oh, I'm sure it's a lovely town. Yep, quit while I'm ahead - I'm just grovelling to the fine people from Bristol now :D.)

Click "read more" if you're on the home page and want to see the reaction of deniers at WUWT.

Anthony Watts blows his dog whistle to round up the cosmic ray lynch mob

Ha ha ha. This is hilarious. There's an article by Anthony Watts on his climate science denier blog WUWT where he writes (archived here):

A peer reviewed Nuccitelli smackdown
Posted on June 19, 2014 by Anthony Watts
Reply to “Comment on ‘Cosmic-ray-driven reaction and greenhouse effect of halogenated molecules: Culprits for atmospheric ozone depletion and global climate change’ by Dana Nuccitelli et al.”

Anthony copies the abstract of the reply to the comment but nothing else apart from the above and a link to the reply. He leaves it up to readers to try to find the original paper, figure out who wrote it and see if they can lay their hand on the comment. (The reply was published a month ago, so Anthony is losing his touch.)

Click "read more" to read the rest :)

Anthony Watts @wattsupwiththat must thank his lucky stars that Brandon Shollenberger is a science denier

Update: See below for typical denier double standards. Brandon Shollenberger says his own misquoting is merely "awkward" and "embarrassing" and "understandable" whereas he calls John Cook's "mind-boggling" and "fabricated".

---

I expect everyone who visits WUWT today, except the utter nutters, will be bemused by what they read.

Today at WUWT, Anthony Watts allows Brandon Shollenberger to post an obsessive pedantic and vitriolic venting of spleen at John Cook of skepticalscience.com - over nothing at all as it turns out - archived here.  I bet Anthony is thanking his lucky stars that Brandon is one of the bad guys like him and isn't an editor at HotWhopper:)

How Brandon Shollenberger gets a quote wrong while accusing John Cook of doing the same

The gist of Brandon's wailing and gnashing of teeth is that John Cook had these words in a small box in a diagram of one of his papers, attributing it to Western Fuels Association as guiding their $510,000 climate science obfuscation campaign:

"reposition fact as theory"

Which Brandon himself messes up and misquotes, writing:

“This quote is apparently a bastardization of an actual quote which suggested people "reposition global warming as theory (rather than fact).” ”

Would you believe it.  For all his ranting and raving about "mind-boggling" and "fabrication" and "bastardization" - Brandon himself has bastardised the actual quote, which in the actual source document, as presented by Naomi Oreskes, the words were:

1. Reposition global warming as theory (not fact). 

Here is what I understand to be the original document in context.

Source: Naomi Oreskes' Presentation

Here is the source of the above, which is on the left hand side of Naomi Oreskes' MS PowerPoint slide below. Click the image to enlarge it.

Source: Naomi Oreskes' PowerPoint Presentation

 Here's the diagram from John Cook's paper, which Brandon is mindlessly obsessing over:

Yes, you have to look hard to find the bit that so enraged Brandon Shollenberger.  Its on the left hand side second from the bottom just above the mention of the faked Oregon Petition and just below the mention of the deniers' false SEPP statement.  If it didn't have quotation marks, Brandon would have nothing to complain about.  What an obsessive Brandon must be.  Poring over every word ever written by John and some John didn't write himself.  Picking each phrase to pieces and cross-checking.

The diagram is Figure 2 in a three page paper entitled "Combating a two-decade campaign attacking the scientific consensus on climate change".

Brandon finds John Cook's misquote "mind-boggling".  I find Brandon's over-reaction mind-boggling.  Brandon has put his own spin on his own misquote.  He reckons what Western Fuels Association meant was:

And this isn’t a trivial matter like Cook claimed his last misquotation was. The difference between the quotes is enormous. Many people don’t believe global warming is a fact (by definition, it isn’t one). If they’re right, repositioning global warming as a theory rather than fact is a good thing because its true. Even if one doesn’t agree with those people, their behavior is still honest and well-intentioned.

John Cook’s quote requires the opposite. A person cannot seek to “reposition fact as theory” without seeking to intentionally mislead people. That means Cook accuses those people of being lying bastards by making **** up.

Well, as you can see, Western Fuels Association can chalk up at least one success from their disinformation campaign :) (Does Brandon really think it's possible that the world isn't warming?)

Brandon's entitled to his interpretation but neither his interpretation, nor his over-reaction make me think Brandon is "honest or well-intentioned".  The fact that Brandon himself misquoted the line doesn't give me any confidence either.

Naomi Oreskes interprets the line differently, based on her power point slide (see above), which puts it into some context. I'm with her when she interpreted it as intending that global warming be downplayed as "just a theory".  Take particular note of the word "reposition".  In other words, the campaign recognises it as fact but their PR strategy is to "reposition" it in the mind of the general public, to shift the perception away from "global warming is real and happening now" to that of being a "theory".  Most people don't understand that a scientific theory is as good as fact.  I find John's misquote a lot closer to that interpretation than Brandon's interpretation of Brandon's misquote. (I hope you're following all that.  I don't blame you if you're getting tangled in quotes, misquotes and meanings :D)


Added for clarification for people like Brandon Shollenberger, who thinks global warming is "just a theory". You can nitpick and say that RSS and UAH aren't completely global and aren't strictly comparable to GISTemp and HadCRUT, but you've got to admit, all the data series - all surface and lower tropospheric temperatures, they all show the globe is warming. [Sou: 8:02 am 19 Dec 2013 AEDST]

Data Sources: NASA, RSS, Hadley Centre, UAH

There's more misplaced vitriol from Brandon

What else is Brandon obsessing over?  Well, he's really got his knickers in a twist. So much so that some of his links are broken.  As far as I can tell, he's foaming at the mouth because John Cook, in a short article on a website, quoted John Howard.  John Cook wrote:

Last week, former Australian Prime Minister John Howard gave a speech on climate change for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a conservative think-tank opposed to policies that mitigate climate change. Howard characterised scientists who accept the evidence that humans are disrupting climate as “religious zealots”. Consequently, he is not so convinced of the scientific evidence. On what does he base his views? Howard states that “…I instinctively feel that some of the claims are exaggerated.”

Brandon wasn't happy.  He was most upset that John didn't link to the source of the last quote in the paragraph.   The bit where John Howard said: "...I instinctively feel that some of the claims are exaggerated".

Brandon went further than that.  He has accused John Cook of "of lying about evidence....and fabricating a quote".  This is after John Cook responded to a query from Brandon in the comments to that very same article, linking to the source of his quote in The Australian - which I've archived here.  Here is the quote in context:

"I've always been agnostic about it (climate change)," Mr Howard told reporters in London before his address.

"I don't completely dismiss the more dire warnings but I instinctively feel that some of the claims are exaggerated.

"I don't accept all of the alarmist conclusions."

But Brandon is like a denier with a bone to pick.  He doesn't care for explanations or rectification.  He insists that John Cook is making "fabrications".  He's not.

Sheesh.  John Cook may be human after all and not always dot all his i's and cross all his t's when he's blogging.  He might even miss verifying the exact words of a quote in a diagram someone else made for him. Nevertheless, he doesn't make a habit of making stuff up.  His quote was real.  John Cook didn't claim the quote was from the speech itself, he provided it as evidence of what Howard bases his view upon.  Something John Howard said immediately before making his silly speech to the silly disinformation lobby group, the GWPF.

The fact is that while he didn't put a link to the Australian in the blog article, or if he did it fell off when climasphere.org posted it, John Cook was quick to provide it when Brandon asked about it.  Was Brandon polite and appreciative? Not on your nelly. Brandon wrote about another quote that got him riled up:

To this day, that fabricated quote remains in the piece. John cook has made no indication he thinks it needs to be changed (though he has fixed the quote elsewhere). 

Brandon is telling fibs.  In fact, John Cook replied to Brandon explaining that he did change the quote where he was able to do so but that he isn't able to edit the climasphere blog article:

Finally, I have made one change to the version of the article hosted at skepticalscience.com (that I have the ability to edit, unlike this blog) 

John's polite reply is still there for all the world to see what sort of a drongo Brandon Shollenberger is.  In fact I've archived the blog and comments for posterity.  It shows remarkable restraint on the part of John Cook, plus the fact that while he didn't have access to the climasphere post, he did amend the skepticalscience.com version of his article in line with Brandon's nit-pickery - or the part that made sense at any rate.

But that's not good enough for Brandon Shollenberger.  Brandon has his own private vendetta against John Cook.  Vendetta is not quite the right word, because a vendetta implies that John Cook did something to Brandon and as far as I'm aware, John Cook has never done Brandon any harm.  That doesn't stop an obsessive denier who doesn't need any excuse to rant and rave at imagined wrong-doings.  Brandon ventures further into la la land than does your typical denier.

I know what you're thinking :)

Now I bet you are thinking along the lines I was, when I read Brandon's "mind-boggling" hyperbole and false accusations.

You'll be asking:

• Why does Brandon Shollenberger focus on (mis)correcting that snippet in the diagram above, when there are much more glaring issues in the article that are worthy of comment.  Even in the diagram there are more glaring issues, like the fake Oregon Petition.  Why isn't Brandon Shollenberger foaming at the mouth in protest at someone "fabricating" a petition - deliberately setting out to deceive people that it came from the National Academy of Sciences.  Why isn't Brandon Shollenberger up in arms at all the disinformation in the NIPCC "report"? 

• Why does Brandon Shollenberger go bananas because a quote in a blog article didn't have a link to the source, even though John Cook provided the link as soon as he was asked for it?  Why instead isn't he doing something as a result of what John Cook wrote about.  Why isn't Brandon Shollenberger urging everyone to write to ex-PM Howard telling him to read science?  Why isn't Brandon Shollenberger strongly criticising Tony Abbott and John Howard for misleading the Australian public about global warming?  Why isn't he irate at the government for absconding their responsibilities to Australians and the world at large, and steering Australia towards a four degree plus future?

• Why does Brandon Shollenberger nitpick and misrepresent John Cook and not rant and rave at all the misleading articles, the pseudo-science and disinformation peddled at anti-science websites like WUWT?  

Well, I won't claim to understand disturbed minds.  I don't believe there is any rational explanation. However he could be encouraged by the reaction of some WUWT readers, although it's a tepid reaction overall to a WUWT rant. Especially for a rant directed at John Cook, who deniers love to hate.  I guess it'll heat up when North Americans wake up. (Archived here.)


gopal panicker says:

December 18, 2013 at 12:13 am
best way to deal with Cook is to ignore him…..very few people read his blog

Henry Galt. who is convinced that all the science is wrong and all the world is conspiring against him or some such nonsense and says:

December 18, 2013 at 2:45 am
Must agree with Brandon and most comments so far (esp CtM).
This very much needs to be done because the web is polluted beyond imagining by links to the SS idiots and their idiocy. Quoted by every activist, deluded dramagreen and vested interest as gospel. 

“It’s on SS … it must be true … those guys wouldn’t lie to us … would they?”
It appears they have and do. They will continue to do so for many non-scientific, psychological reasons.

PS Why the asterisks in the headline?

Does anyone know why Brandon wrote the headline as:

"Skeptical Science’s John Cook – Making **** Up" 

...which I took to mean "Skeptical Science’s John Cook – Making Stuff Up"? although it's missing an asterisk.  Brandon explains it as:

David, UK, I did that because I don’t feel comfortable cursing. When I use that phrase out loud, I censor the word as well. (December 18, 2013 at 12:28 am)

If he means "stuff" is a curse then he's really nuts.  Stuff is a perfectly acceptable word in that context.  It's a synonym for "things" or "matter" or "substance".

If he is hiding the F-word then it doesn't make sense.  It's got the right number of asterisks but the word usage is wrong.  At least it's not in any context I've ever heard it. I've heard of "F*** all", but not "making f*** up".  I'd have thought he would have had to write something like  "Skeptical Science’s John Cook – Making a **** Up", adding an "a".  Or maybe "Skeptical Science’s John Cook – ****s Up".

Am I missing something?  Maybe it's another swear word that I'm too ladylike to have ever heard?  It's possible I guess, but I doubt it.  Or maybe it's a common expression in some countries or social circles unfamiliar to me.

Update

1. Apparently **** means shit.  Well, no shit! Isn't Brandon quaint.

2. Brandon may have come here already.  He maintains that his misquote is merely "awkward" and "embarrassing" and "understandable", whereas John Cook's misquote is "mind-boggling" and "fabrication".  See the comments below that point out that when Anthony Watts misquotes it's called "acceptable paraphrasing" even though Anthony changed the meaning in his misquote. John Cook didn't.  Brandon Shollenberger invented his own unique and wrong meaning to his quote and his misquote and it's perfectly fine or merely awkward and embarassing.  Deniers are nothing if not inconsistent.  From Brandon:

Brandon Shollenberger says:

December 18, 2013 at 7:12 am
Welp, this is awkward. It turns out while criticizing Cook for getting the quotation wrong, I got it wrong too. The parenthetical should say “not fact” instead of “rather than fact.” A little time with Google shows this is a common mistake, and it’s even made in Al Gore’s, An Inconvenient Truth. I saw the phrasing I used on Wikipedia (which has had that phrasing for six years), used Google to search for it, found dozens of sources using it (including Al Gore’s), and copied and pasted.

This doesn’t change anything I said, and it is certainly understandable how I made the mistake. Still, it’s embarrassing.

3. At WUWT, Izen points out that to say global warming is a theory not a fact shows complete blindness to all the world's temperature records. Well, that's par for the course with some deniers.

4. Click here for the latest updated archive of the WUWT article and comments.

Sou 7:10 am Thursday 19 December 2013 (AEDST)


Update:

Almost six weeks have elapsed and misguided Brandon Shollengberger is still stewing over this.  Given his obsession over a couple of misplaced quotation marks (though the meaning was intact), how the hell he copes with all the mistakes in the daily newspaper or the zillions of misquotes and fabrications at WUWT and Bishop Hill and every other denier blog we may never know.  They don't seem to bother him in the slightest, which suggests, maybe, a pathology? Sou 30 January 2014.

Bombing out: Christopher Monckton goes in to bat for two professors at WUWT

Update - click here for a follow up article demolishing disinformation from Murry Salby.

This is still "utter nutter" week at WUWT.  Today Anthony Watts has posted an article by the potty peer from the UK, Christopher Monckton.  Christopher writes in his usual "schoolboy" fashion, using words such as "schoolboys at the University of Queensland", probably referring to John Cook, who runs the award-winning climate website, SkepticalScience.com.

Christopher is resurrecting a couple of old and utterly silly denier memes arguing that the CO₂ we emit somehow disappears by magic and goes goodness knows where.  It's a very mixed up article altogether.

One of the main difficulties I had with the WUWT article is that Christopher keeps referring to other articles and comments but doesn't provide any links to what he is talking about.  I guess he has the WUWT target audience summed up well.  He'd have assumed that no fake sceptic would ever follow a link - that would be heresy to the fake sceptic creed.  They might be mistaken for a real sceptic.  However - in this case Christopher would have assumed wrongly.  His article generated much discussion and got lots of people doing lots of sums.  (Archived here)

Two wrongs don't make a right

As far as I can tell, Christopher Monckton is trying to make a whole out of two disparate denier memes.  One is propagated by an older retired professor Gösta Pettersson.  The other is some convoluted hypothesis or two or three of a younger retired ex-professor Murry Salby.  The two hypotheses don't make any sense on their own.  Try to put them together and you end up with a helluva mess.  But that's what Christopher Monckton is proposing.

The short version is as follows:

Gösta Pettersson

AFAIK, Gösta tries to claim that all the extra CO₂ will only stay in the air for a very short time.  He bases this on flawed deductions from analysis of  ¹⁴CO₂. (Note: In the comments, Lars Karlsson says that Gösta Pettersson has acknowledged he made an error in his analysis.)

Following the bomb testing of the 1950s and 60s, analysis has been done to work out how quickly CO₂ circulates between the atmosphere and the surface.  You can think of it as how long it takes for individual molecules of atmospheric carbon dioxide to disperse through the atmosphere and surface.  This time is quite short.  A matter of a few years.  By contrast, if we stopped adding any CO₂ to the air altogether, it would take around 300 years to remove something like 65% to 80% of the extra we've added in the last 150 years or so, and hundreds of thousands of years to completely remove all the carbon we've added to the air.

Murry Salby

I think, based on what Christopher Monckton has written, that Murry has things completely back to front.  I believe he tries to claim that rising temperature has caused CO₂ to outgas from the ocean and that's why atmospheric CO₂ is rising.  He reckons it's not from burning fossil fuels.

I gather that Murry doesn't have any answer to what happens to all the waste CO₂ we've been tossing into the air.  Nor does he seem to understand that the oceans are getting more acidic - because they are absorbing more CO2 than they are outgassing.

If carbon dioxide is not going into the ocean (it is), in fact if as Murry apparently maintains, CO₂ was coming out of the ocean (it's not), and since biomass on earth hasn't increased that much, then where is all that fossil fuel CO₂  ending up?

That's it in a nutshell.  Murry Salby and Gösta Pettersson both have it wrong.  Christopher Monckton is trying to argue that "two wrongs make a right".

There's more - if you're game :)

Researching this article I found myself delving into all sorts of interesting areas and learnt a heap of new stuff.  This article evolved into a longer post reflecting my meandering travels.  It's probably the longest article I've written and I won't blame anyone for not reading it.  If you've landed on the home page and you're not deterred by my sloppiness in not cutting back to bare bones, you can click here to read more.

IPCC: reaction from fake sceptics. Another "science is wrong because they got tired" protest from WUWT!

Anthony Watts' biggest protest at the new AR5 IPCC Summary for Policy Makers is his repetition of two tweets from the Vice-chair of the IPCC.  At the IPCC meeting this week, scientists were working around the clock to make sure the Summary for Policy Makers was finished on schedule.  Anthony Watts sez that means "all the world's top scientists are wrong" or similar.

Nowhere does he mention the 9,000 plus scientific papers that formed the basis of this latest report.  He is not very interested in what the science finds.  He is much more concerned to try to keep up his end of his bargain to be a Merchant of Doubt.

Anthony's dismally weak protests at this latest and most rigorous compilation of climate science so far consists of his own assertion that they "blew it", without saying why or how he thinks they "blew it" except maybe for this list of non-bulleted bullet points in his sticky post (archived here):

• two tweets from the IPCC Vice-Chair sending then apologising for and correcting a mis-typed link,
• the fact that the IPCC report did not specify a best estimate for climate sensitivity,
• a denialist blogger writing that the AR5 report didn't say what he wanted - a line by line comparison with AR4 (maybe he can do one, using this article to help him)
• various other denialist bloggers like Donna Laframboise and Judith Curry hand-waving vagueness without any substance at all
• still other deniers like Perennially Puzzled Bob Tisdale telling big fat lies about climate models
• meaningless comments from WUWT readers, eg "Let’s all hope this is the last IPCC report. There is nothing useful here."
• Denialist duo Pat 'n Chip boasting they will be denying science in every right wing rag that will publish their rubbish
• An opinion piece on FoxNews.com by another denier who I haven't heard of before, Marlo Lewis and who is probably this Marlo Lewis, The Dirty Energy Industry’s Best Friend, from the pro-tobacco anti-science lobby group, the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
• A weak protest from blogging denialist scientist Roy Spencer
• A strongly worded emotional article, devoid of facts, from another science-denying blogger Pierre "ice age" Gosselin.

What the science says and what it means for society

Anthony did decide to cover other bases by providing links to articles that explain the science or take it further, such as:

• An Associated Press article by Karl Ritter and Seth Borenstein, published on FoxNews and elsewhere
• A Stefan Rahmstorff article on realclimate.org (a good read which hits on some of the main points)
• A blog article by Simon Donner, Professor at the University of British Columbia, discussing recent global surface temperatures
• An article by Brenda Ekwurzel, climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, discussing recent climate change indicators
• An article by Brian Walsh at Time magazine - though Anthony linked to that article via another denialist blogger.

From the WUWT comments

None of the 239 commenters have pointed to any error in the science, but they sure don't like what they read (or probably for the most part haven't read).  They are as "all over the place" as Anthony Watts and other fake sceptics.  There's a new commenter called Grey Oz who's so far been allowed to comment about the science - so that the WUWT lynch mob have someone to attack, no doubt. (Comments are archived here with the main WUWT article.)

Other_Andy says:

September 27, 2013 at 10:16 pm
“Burning fossil fuels creates C02. Increasing C02 in an atmosphere traps in heat. No scientists dispute this. It is the increasing heat, i.e., temperature that will make the environment inhospitable to life on Earth.”

And that’s why planet Earth burned to a crisp during the Late Ordovician Period when CO2 concentrations were nearly 12 times higher than today.

We are now living in Oz’ alternate universe.

Actually it was most probably a glacial event that played a big role in part of the second biggest extinction in the history of earth at the end of the Ordovician period.  From Wikipedia "a significant and rapid draw down of CO2...coincided with a rapid and short ice age".


RACookPE1978 subscribes to the world's most improbable and impossible paranoid conspiracy theory and says:

September 27, 2013 at 5:40 pm

Grey Oz says: September 27, 2013 at 4:55 pm …. And if it’s so debunked, why aren’t the world’s scientists on it?

Because the world’s climate so-called scientists are being paid billions of dollars to make CO2 and CAGW the propaganda campaign that it started as, stayed, and will likely remain until those so-called scientists stop denying the science and the measurements. Governments program their money to support the agencies and the scientists and the research that will provide those governments the answers they want and the taxes they are desperate for.

fobdangerclose might be a Poe or trying for the "Guinnes Book of dumb" (sic) or might be a sign of WUWT to come when he says:

September 27, 2013 at 5:22 pm
We have a 70% chance for rain tomorrow, 90% Sat. nite and Sunday. So had to take off a few and get all the epuipment in out of the dreaded CO2 and acid rain that Al Gore makes when he sweats to much. Now that I am back and have reviewed Grey Oz’s post it seems he came here to get baned and make screen shots of said baning to use aginst this blog. It can not be that any one is this uninformed. So be careful of this one. Now if it is this dumb it may set a record for the Guinnes Book of dumb.

Maybe it is a sign of the future quality of WUWT - here is another of similar "mindless ignorant" quality from tonys who says:

September 27, 2013 at 4:03 pm
greyoz..dead parrot squawking..greenhouse effect,the cornerstone of the IPCC’S CONJECTURE IS FICTION..as it violates 2 nd L.O.T….a cold upper atmosphere cannot transfer heat to a lower warmer one…also c02 is not pollution,,there is no problem to solve or money to spend
billions spent…nothing to show and you squawk about “doing something”
yet ,real people ,crying out for help with food/shelter/homes..
are bypassed and the money handed out for more research…more whatever
mindless ignorant..are you able to think for yourself?

WUWT deniers prediction: John Cook will become the Chair of the IPCC

Eugene WR Gallun holds SkepticalScience's John Cook in very high regard, he says:

September 27, 2013 at 4:58 pm
i read somewhere that Pachauri will soon leave his position as head of the IPCC. Dishonest yes, but Pachauri is no fool. The jig is up and he knows it. He is looking for a soft landing.
To accomplish that, before he goes, he will have to set someone up as his “fall guy” — someone to take over as head of the IPCC who will be so loud mouthed and obtusely committed to ACGW (not to mention “serially dishonest”) that he will become the center of all attention and Pachauri can, like an old soldier, “just fade away”.

The ideal person who meets Pachauri’s needs comes to mind immediately — John Cook-The-Books of Skeptical Science. Can anyone think of a more appropriate person to head the IPCC than John Cook-The-Books? And dimwit that he is John Cook-The-Books will think he is being honored.

Eugene WR Gallun

He's not the only one.  Billy Liar says:

September 27, 2013 at 10:07 am
I predict that AR6 will find the IPCC, led by Professor John Cook, is 97% confident that climate change is caused by humans..