The strange madhouse of climate science denial - defaming Einstein at WUWT

Anthony Watts, a long-time denier blogger, is pushing the notion that Albert Einstein would likely have been a climate skeptic.

Really? Resorting to impugning the integrity of a long dead scientist to justify his anti-science propaganda?

Anthony is claiming that Einstein would have been a fake sceptic or worse, a science disinformer, a liar denier, like Anthony himself is. That's a big idea and one for which he offers no support. Oh he posted an article underneath his headline, which was written by some bloke called David Shapter, or was it Will Happer?

Disinformer for Hire: Four Minute Dumb Denial by William Happer at WUWT

Note: I'm told by someone I regard as a reliable source that William Happer really and truly believes the dumb denierisms he comes up with. In which case, he's not so much a denier for hire as just another self-deluded climate science denier. Here's an old article about him and his skepticism from The Daily Princetonian. You'd think someone who's managed to attain a professorship at Princeton would have the ability to do some research on the subject before rejecting the entire field of climate science. But apparently not. Pity he didn't take up something like young earth creationism or flat earth-ism for his hobby, where he could do little harm to others and we could put his delusions down to eccentricity.

Sou 16 November 2014

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William Happer is a climate science denier in his other job as Chairman of the George C Marshall Institute. He also "advises" the UK climate disinformation lobby group the Global Warming Policy Foundation. In his supposed full time job (has he retired already? The video says he's gone "Emeritus" - update - yes, he's Emeritus, though you can't tell from his website), it looks as if he works mainly in biophysics (medical). Nothing to do with climate science or atmospheric physics. He might even earn more money from the Marshall Institute than from his job at Princeton, but he doesn't have to do much to earn it. He certainly doesn't have to learn any climate science let alone do any climate research. All he has to do is mouth a few dumb denierisms to keep his Board and donors happy.  He doesn't have to believe the rubbish he talks. He just has to be willing to put aside his scruples (if he has any) and behave like a charlatan. He's a denier for hire [see updated note above - he apparently really believes his rubbish and is probably not in it for the money].

William Happer did a four minute video interview that was posted at WUWT (archived here - with the video itself on YouTube here). The video is ambitiously called "Will Happer, Princeton's Galileo", though AFAIK William Happer has never done any research in astronomy (or climate science) and he is no Galileo. His entire argument is pathetic, to say the least. It consisted mostly of denier memes chosen from SkepticalSciences' list of "Most used climate myths":

• CO2 is plant food, ignoring the fact that droughts and heat waves and floods and changing climates will probably more than offset any benefits CO2 may bestow.
• CO2 is invisible. William seems to think that a colourless gas cannot be a pollutant or do any harm and he's a physicist, would you believe. That's almost as good as the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott's "carbon dioxide is invisible, it's weightless and it's odourless" - still up on the Liberal Party website!
• William wrongly claims it hasn't warmed since the super-El Nino of 1998 and ignores the record hot years of 2005 and 2010 and now this year, 2014, all of which were hotter than 1998. And ignoring the melting ice and the hotter oceans. He completely ignores all that's been happening in the last sixteen years.
• William claims that a "little bit" of warming won't hurt, ignoring that we're on track for ten times faster warming than has occurred in 65 million years.
• William claims that fossil fuels help the poor even while he acknowledges the immense harm the associated polluting smog is causing in Asia.

Luverly! Judith Curry supports "the GWPF objectives"

Oh, this is just luverly!  Judith Curry today:

In the midst of all this noise I wasn’t sure what GWPF was all about.  Now I have a better idea, and I certainly support their objectives.

Weirdly, Judith implies that she did no investigation before effectively endorsing the GWPF by writing a foreword to a report of theirs.

Nigel Lawson offers a sample of "what the GWPF" is all about, which I expect would delight Judith Curry, knowing her views on the IPCC.  And I wonder would Judith agree with GWPF Director Benny Peiser who seemed to be suggesting that we might be heading for an ice age?

Do you reckon she's angling for a job on the GWPF's Academic Advisory Council with science deniers: Bob Carter and William Happer and Richard Lindzen and Ross McKitrick and Ian Plimer and Matt Ridley and Nir Shaviv and Henrik Svensmark and David Whitehouse and others?

What's next? An endorsement of James Delingpole, interpreter of interpretations?

(It's more likely she's angling for a job with the GWPF's US cousin, the Heartland Institute.)

Does WSJ want to flood NY under 60m of sea? - And surprising insight from Bob Tisdale

Anthony Watts has put up part of another ridiculous Happer/Schmitt article from the Wall Street Journal of the type "CO2 is plant food".

Get the headline:

Harrison H. Schmitt and William Happer: In Defense of Carbon Dioxide

Talk about anthropomorphising!  Poor little CO2.

They start with: Of all of the world's chemical compounds, none has a worse reputation than carbon dioxide.  I wouldn't have described CO2 as a 'chemical compound' - I'd call it a plain old molecule. But that's okay. I can also think of a few other 'chemical compounds' that have a poor 'reputation' - or at least ones that I'd not be touching, drinking, eating or breathing.

Update: Happer and Schmitt and Anthony Watts are idiots

Anthony Watts (or is it Tom Nelson) on WUWT can't let it go and in a second article goes on and on about 'emotions' and 'raw emotions' through to 'raw religious emotions'. When you sift through the hyperbole (who is the emotional one?) you find he is arguing that Gavin Schmidt is wrong when he tweets:

DDT? Parabens? Sulphuric acid? CFCs? Napalm? Agent Orange?(2/2) #HapperandSchmittareidiots
— Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) May 9, 2013

Anthony's evidence? A google count of the number of times each term is mentioned in books and the news! Let's try another search and see what lousy reputations other 'chemical compounds' have:

Happer and Schmidt want to flood New York, the home of the Wall St Journal?

Happer and Schmidt seem to be wanting to send CO2 shooting up to 3000 ppm, which according to them was the level until the Paleogene - though I'm not sure that's correct.  In any case, with all the ice melted, sea levels would rise by more than 60 meters.  Yes, that's right.  (That's about 200 feet for the metrically-challenged.) About the only plus would be that New Yorkers wouldn't need to worry about another Sandy.

Surprising insight from Bob Tisdale

While scrolling through the idiotic comments (my brain was starting to atrophy) I came across one that made me laugh.  I don't know if Bob Tisdale meant to be funny having a shot at himself as well as WSJ - or if he was really and truly serious.  This is what he wrote (my bold):

Bob Tisdale says:
May 9, 2013 at 7:26 am  Hmmm. Not expecting to be published but giving it a shot, I sent an op-ed to the NYT, and was turned down–or if you prefer rejected–but so are 90-95% of submissions. Looks like I should try the WSJ.

Some samples of Bob's work - here and here.  What do you reckon?  I say go on, Bob.  Give it a shot.  The Wall Street Journal has no quality control when it comes to articles about the climate.  (You might need to join up with an ageing NASA engineer or astronaut, don't know.)

CO2 is Plant Food

Peter Sinclair has made a good video about CO2 and plant food, starring the one and only potty peer!

Update: I see Peter Sinclair has written a take-down of Happer and Schmitt.  So has MediaMatters, which goes into some detail.

Knock me down with a Happer! Anthony Watts Builds a Strawman

"When I look at this data, the trend is perfectly in line with a temperature increase of 6 degrees Celsius, which would have devastating consequences for the planet," Fatih Birol, IEA.

Anthony Watts builds another strawman

Anthony Watts of WUWT is running out of things to write about and is recycling.  He picks a quote from Fatih Birol, International Energy Agency's chief economist, about how we are heading for six degrees of warming.  (The IEA is not the only independent organisation warning about this.  Click here for a similar warning from PwC.)

A trip back in time and across the seas

Anthony had to cross the Atlantic and go back in time to get to the Reuters UK website from May 2012 for the uncorrected version of the quote.  He had to go to such lengths in order to avoid US Reuters where the quote was (sort of) corrected. (See below for different versions.)

Anthony keeps a close eye on Joe Romm and there is no chance he doesn't know what he quoted was wrong (six degrees referred to the end of this century, not 2050).

Let Anthony himself prove what I'm alleging. Anthony writes in the same article:

such as the 6c by 2050 Joe Romm claims, when parroting Fatih Birol in Reuters:

Go on, click the Romm article Anthony links to and read it for yourself! Joe Romm claims nothing of the sort.  In the linked article Romm tells you why - and shows how disinformers like Anthony operate. (How many of Anthony's readers click links? None - going by the comments. Update: - one person finally did. How about giving him a thumbs up for encouragement.  Anthony's dismissives seem to object strenuously to facts.)

Here's Eli Rabett on the denier shenanigans before Reuters made the correction.

Anthony Goes to a Non-Expert

Maths has never been Anthony's strong point, neither is climate science.  Instead of going to a climate expert, Anthony goes to a climate science denier and leader of "clueless geriatrics" William Happer, to ask him to work out some sums.

Instead of thinking about different emissions scenarios, Happer waves his magic natural logarithms and pronounces that it would take 12,800 years for the temperature to hit the plus 6 degree mark. (Yes, really! That's what he says. He fudges the climate sensitivity to the lowest he thinks he can get away with (1 degree), assumes a constant increase in CO2 of  2ppm/year, and even then messes up the calculation so badly that he decides that to get to six degrees of warming, CO2 would need to be 25,600 ppm.  I kid you not.)

Anthony writes:

The answer may surprise you

Well, it doesn't surprise me. Happer is not known for getting things right when it comes to global warming. As for Anthony - well, we know he'll publish just about any denier nonsense on his blog to fool the 8% Dismissives.

My Question: Was it worth the trip back in time and all the way to the UK, Anthony, just to prove how reckless you are with the truth (and how clueless Happer is)?

More Questions:
How much will earth warm in the future? It depends on us and which future we choose.

How long before we decide to stop pouring CO2 into the air?  This is the Critical Decade.

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The Quote and MisQuotes

What Fatih Birol actually said:

"When I look at this data, the trend is perfectly in line with a temperature increase of 6 degrees Celsius, which would have devastating consequences for the planet,"

Michel Rose of Reuters first reported:

"When I look at this data, the trend is perfectly in line with a temperature increase of 6 degrees Celsius (by 2050), which would have devastating consequences for the planet,"

And later, with a correction notice, changed it to:

"When I look at this data, the trend is perfectly in line with a temperature increase of 6 degrees Celsius (towards the end of this century), which would have devastating consequences for the planet,"