Paul Driessen at WUWT suggests Australia remove its forests

Wildflowers & snowgum

The weird get weirder. A bloke called Paul Driessen, whose job includes telling lies about climate change and bringing back smog to the USA, has come up with a wild idea and it's been posted at WUWT. This time he's really gone bananas. What he's saying is that Australia should get rid of all its trees, or those of the eucalypt species which is pretty much the same thing, and that would stop fires. In other words, he's suggesting we get rid of almost all our forests. That's one solution to stopping fires, though not original.

Don't believe me? Here's what he wrote:

In both California and Australia, people bemoan the loss of eucalyptus trees in fires. But many don’t want them removed or even thinned out.

Reaction to Trump taunting "Drop Dead, World!" from @wattsupwiththat

Over at WUWT, eight of the nine most recent articles are celebrating Trump's decision to abdicate his responsibilities to people in the USA (see here). As you'll have heard, he has declared his intention to isolate the USA even further than he has already. In particular, at WUWT they are celebrating Trump declaring that he refuses to fulfil US obligations to mitigate global warming.

Let America and the world go jump, is the cry at WUWT. We live for the moment. If tomorrow we drown, starve or burn, at least we'll have shown those libtards what we think of them. We don't give a damn about people in far flung places, or the fact that the USA is responsible for more global warming to date than any other country on Earth.

(The picture shows how Trump's recklessness is viewed elsewhere in the world, by Der Spiegel. H/t Brian L Kahn.)

Paul "destroyer" Driessen from CFACT is outraged the Rusty Patched Bumble Bee isn't (yet) extinct

Source: USFWS

The anti-environment activists are impatient with Donald Trump because he hasn't yet managed to destroy all the trees and cover the USA in tar, cement and smog. Paul Driessen thinks that Donald Trump and his administration dropped the ball by not killing off the Rusty Patched Bumble Bee before it could be declared endangered - or something.

It seems that there are some people who care about this bee, which is native to north America. Some government authorities don't want to see it disappear, which is incomprehensible to Paul Driessen of CFACT.

Paul Driessen and CFACT promote climate "hoax" conspiracy theories at WUWT

Anthony Watts loves a good conspiracy theory, particularly the one about climate science being a hoax. He would probably claim that he doesn't "believe in" conspiracy theories, yet he constantly posts them on his blog.

Today it was Paul Driessen, who's employed by CFACT to lobby against environmental protection, in one of his more blatant articles (archived here). Usually he is moaning about clean air and water, wishing the USA would resurrect the smog and dirty water of decades past. Paul wrote stuff like this today:

The notion that manmade carbon dioxide now drives climate and weather – and we can predict climate and weather by looking only at plant-fertilizing CO2 and other “greenhouse gases” – is just as absurd now as before.

The quotes are a giveaway, even if you knew nothing about the subject. Putting the words "greenhouse gases" in quotes shows that Paul is a greenhouse effect denier. He doesn't believe in physics and chemistry.

The Spanish Inquisition, conflict of interest and free speech

Still nothing from denier blogs. All is quiet. Have deniers given up the battle? Are they gearing up for a concerted attack on science? Looking for that final, final, final, final, final nail in some coffin or other? Anthony Watts is still focusing on extremist right wing lunacy. He's not got anything to offer the centrist WUWT-ers.

Today's contribution (archived here, latest here) is from Paul "bring back smog" Driessen, who is moaning that an economist should be allowed to breach the rules of the Brookings Institution, and blames it on Elizabeth Warren. Nothing to do with climate science, although Paul did manage to mention Senator Whitehouse in the same article. Chastising him for wanting scientists to declare the entities funding their research, and any potential conflict of interest. He opened in his usual highly exaggerated and misplaced fashion:

As Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition for 15 years, Tomas de Torquemada presided over the interrogation, torture, imprisonment and execution of thousands, for the “crimes” of religious heresy and pretended conversion to Christianity. Historian Sebastián de Olmedo titled him “the hammer of heretics.”

Today Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) are pursuing their own inquisition against perceived “heretics.” 

WUWT's Latest Alarmism: The Climate Hoax Collapsing Civilisation Global Governance Hypothesis

Just after an article about reproducibility of psychological research, Anthony Watts has put up an article from Paul Driessen from CFACT (archived here), which is full of irreproducible nonsense. Paul is one of those people who wants to get rid of any and all environmental regulation. He won't rest until the USA brings back smog.

As you'd expect from a person whose job is to spread disinformation (Paul is employed as the "senior policy analyst" for CFACT, which I gather is code for "propaganda officer"), his article is full of falsehoods.

Anthony Watts, CFACT and the Cornwall Alliance

Anthony Watts allows his anti-science blog to be used to promote wacky conspiracy theories about climate science, One World Government, New World Order and other weird stuff. He also posts articles by CFACT and the Cornwall Alliance. These two organisations have linkages as described in an article at ThinkProgress back in 2010. There was an article at WUWT a while back in which CFACT was promoting the Cornwall Alliance.

I'm not suggesting that Anthony Watts is part of the Cornwall Alliance or CFACT. He claims to be Catholic and I doubt the Catholic Church would have a bar of the Cornwall Alliance. He is obviously sympathetic to the politics of CFACT and the Cornwall Alliance or he wouldn't be publishing their nonsense.

Paranoia runs riot at CFACT and WUWT: conspiracy nuttery doesn't describe it

On WUWT today (archived here), Paul Driessen of CFACT, has gone overboard (putting it mildly). In a very strange article he has gone full on Godwin's Law (21st Century-style), comparing people who accept science to fundamentalist militant butchers from the middle east. Paul Driessen has featured here before (eg here). Today he wrote a piece that would make Christopher Monckton green with envy.

This is the headline and opening paragraph:

Climatic Jihad?
ISIL and other Islamist jihad movements continue to round up and silence all who oppose them or refuse to convert to their extreme religious tenets. They are inspiring thousands to join them. Their intolerance, vicious tactics and growing power seem to have inspired others, as well.

Weirdly, and in a display of religious ignorance, Anthony Watts accompanied an article based on the militant group ISIS, with a cartoon showing a character wearing a Christian bishops' mitre.

Paul Driessen and CFACT want to send Americans back to the Smog Age

After an article about the Bronze Age, now Anthony Watts is touting the delights and health benefits of the smog age (archived here). Many Americans probably don't remember that golden era (dirty pink-yellow haze era?) all that well. When I was in primary school, we learnt about the smog in Los Angeles, where the topography collided with the vehicle exhausts and factory emissions and made the air downright dangerous to human health and well-being.

Anyway, Paul Driessen wants the USA to get rid of clean air regs and allow factories and cars to smother his fellow citizens in smog and pollutants. He wrote about:

...concerns about the effects the tsunami of regulations is having on the livelihoods, living standards, health and welfare of millions of American families.

Bring back SMOG - Yay!

Yep. Get rid of that tsunami of regulations. Bring back smog. 

Smog - Credit: Reuters, I think. It's all over the Internet.

What's getting him all irate now is that the EPA is looking to tighten controls to reduce ground-level ozone in the USA. He's rolled this gripe into an article about environmental regulations all up. It's Paul's job to complain about clean air. He works for CFACT, which AFAIK is an anti-environment lobby group for polluters in the USA.

So if you want unhealthy air, go over to WUWT and pledge your support for Paul Driessen and his dirty air pro-smog campaign.

Paul is complaining that the EPA is wanting to reduce the permissible ozone levels to "70 or 60 ppb", Well, this is old news. There's a paper from 2010 with the proposed changes:

The EPA is proposing to strengthen the 8-hour “primary” ozone standard, designed to protect public health, to a level within the range of 0.060-0.070 parts per million (ppm). 

In Australia, the national air quality standards restrict ozone to 0.10 ppm of ozone measured over a one hour period and 0.08 ppm of ozone measured over a four hour period, which isn't too different from what's being proposed by the US EPA. I haven't heard of anyone complaining about them. We like our clean air in Australia.

For more on ozone, here's a handy guide for you if you've got an ozone detector.

From the WUWT comments

There aren't a lot, only four so far and none worth reporting.

Science deniers are consistently inconsistent...

Take this article on WUWT today (archived here).  By my count Anthony Watts has now posted more than twenty articles about the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, which means that to science deniers it's almost as significant as scientific papers - Marcott13, Cook13 and Lewandowsky12.

Paul Driessen is a science denier who works for CFACT, a science denying lobby group in the USA that sells itself as a committee for the destruction of tomorrow in deed if not in name.  In his first two sentences Paul implies that scientists don't look outside their windows and at the same time complains that they travel to dangerous places to see at first hand what is happening.  Typical science denier - can't make up his mind.  First he wrote this:

Will global warming alarmists ever set aside their hypotheses, hyperbole, models and ideologies long enough to acknowledge what is actually happening in the real world outside their windows? 

So he wants them to find out what's happening in the real world.  Then in his very next sentence he writes this:

Will they at least do so before setting off on another misguided adventure? 

Complaining that they do get out in the real world to see what  is happening.  Paul goes to great lengths about how people shouldn't take risks, but at the same time expects scientists to either know or find out about conditions in dangerous parts of the world.  And seems to think it was fine for people long ago to take risks. Science deniers are seriously illogical.

Paul also tells a few fibs along the way - like the one Anthony Watts told - how he claimed to give the Expedition a weather forecast - when Anthony did no such thing.

And writing that:

He and 51 co-believers set out on the (diesel-powered) Russian charter ship Akademik Shokalskiy to prove manmade global warming is destroying the East Antarctic ice sheet.

Not so.  The aims of the scientific expedition were to:

1. gain new insights into the circulation of the Southern Ocean and its impact on the global carbon cycle
2. explore changes in ocean circulation caused by the growth of extensive fast ice and its impact on life in Commonwealth Bay
3. use the subantarctic islands as thermometers of climatic change by using trees, peats and lakes to explore the past
4. investigate the impact of changing climate on the ecology of the subantarctic islands
5. discover the environmental influence on seabird populations across the Southern Ocean and in Commonwealth Bay
6. understand changes in seal populations and their feeding patterns in the Southern Ocean and Commonwealth Bay
7. produce the first underwater surveys of life in the subantarctic islands and Commonwealth Bay
8. determine the extent to which human activity and pollution has directly impacted on this remote region of Antarctica
9. provide baseline data to improve the next generation of atmospheric, oceanic and ice sheet models to improve predictions for the future.

People like Paul Driessen lie for a living.  Here are some more - posted at Anthony Watts disinformation blog:

Despite steadily rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, average global temperatures have been stable or declining since 1997. 

Wrong! In fact, except for 1999 and 2000, every one of the sixteen years since 1997 has been hotter than 1997.  And the surface temperature is definitely not declining.

Data Source: NASA

You can see global warming more clearly on a decadal timeframe, which is getting closer to climatology timelines:

Source: Fig 2.19 IPCC AR5 WG1 

Paul would have you believe that in relatively recent times the Arctic sea ice was comparable to what little has been there in the past ten years, writing:

In 1903, during the first year of his three-year crossing of the Northwest Passage, Roald Amundsen noted that his party “had made headway with ease,” because ice conditions had been “unusually favorable.”

Sure - but it took Amundsen two years or more in a shallow bottomed boat hugging the shoreline to make it through the passage.  It's different these days.  Now there are large commercial ships that can get through the Arctic in a few days, because there is much, much less ice in summer.

Paul finishes with this complex question to which he provides a simplistic answer:

The fundamental issue is this: Are humans causing imminent, unprecedented, global climate change disasters? And can we prevent those alleged disasters, by drastically curtailing hydrocarbon use, slashing living standards, and imposing government control over industries and people’s lives? If you look at actual evidence – instead of computer model forecasts and “scenarios” – the answer is clearly: No.

Let me break it down into simple terms a typical WUWT denier might understand:

• Are humans causing imminent, unprecedented, global climate change?  Yes.
• Can we limit the extent of climate change? Yes, by cutting CO2 emissions.
• If we don't take action, will there be consequences? Yes - seas will rise a lot, large areas of earth will become uninhabitable because of periods of temperatures too hot to handle, food production will suffer, species will die out etc etc.

People like Paul Driessen who earn a living by rejecting science are too transparent.  They work for their paymasters not for society.  That's clear from the evidence of the lies that they tell.  Anthony Watts is quite happy to promote their disinformation.  He doesn't have the well-being of humanity in mind either.  Only his ideology, advertising revenue and blog hits, and whatever dollars he can beg from his loyal denier base.

WUWT, Heartland Institute and CFACT advocate global suicide by CO2

Anti-science blogger Anthony Watts didn't write much on the Not the IPCC report himself.  He put up an article by Steve "mad, mad, mad" Goreham before it was released.  He mentioned it in one of his hot sheet postings and now he's put up some nonsense by someone called Paul Driessen, who is a senior policy adviser for CFACT and, from what I read is a lobbyist for various similar organisations that are part of the "destroy the environment" movement.  (Archived here for posterity, but it's not worth reading.)

Science deniers and disinformers are splitting into two main factions.  There are those like Heartland Institute who've chosen to act like lunatics, saying they aren't satisfied with doubling CO2, now they want to shoot for more, advocating 800 ppm.   They are the ones who think Ross McKitrick's recent fiasco is "brilliant".

Then there are the ones who are admitting the world is warming but have shifted to trying to argue that we shouldn't try to prevent worse and more frequent floods, catastrophic wildfires, sea level rises of up to a meter this century, killer heatwaves and extended drought.

Anthony Watts is doing the splits, trying to keep one leg in both camps.  This time he's promoting global suicide by speeding up CO2 emissions.

Some of the regulars at WUWT think Heartland Institute has gone too far, pointing out that it is wrong and that, for example, the earth has indeed got warmer in the past 17 years; and that the Arctic sea ice is not recovering.

The most recent report is just as silly as all the other reports. Is it any wonder that, as Paul Driessen moans:

...the “mainstream” media and climate alarm industry have no interest in reading the report, debating its contents or even letting people know it exists.

Click here to read the main points listed in the NIPCC report to find out why.  If it were to get any airplay it would be along the lines of "what a bumbling pile of stupidity".