Dumbest Post Comp on HotCopper

Is there a competition among deniers on HotCopper to see who can win the dumbest post award?

Two examples from a single thread in the HotCopper science and medicine S&M club.

There's astrayalien (he already has one dumbest post award plus a dishonourable mention) who, in response to a post reporting the BoM announcement of Australia's record hot summer, asks:

Why is the Bureau of Meteorology changing past data?

Astrayalien thinks a day somewhere = summer all over Australia

Apparently astrayalien has Watt's disorder and doesn't know the difference between the Australian national aggregate for an entire summer season and a local daily maximum at a single site.

The 'evidence' he submits, presumably originating from BoM itself, is a list of places and the date they set a high temperature record.  His point apparently being that not every single individual location in Australia had its temperature record (for the hottest day or longest heat wave) broken this past summer.

Going by astrayalien's comment, he thinks a single day is equivalent to a summer.  And he thinks a single site is equivalent to a nationwide aggregate of sites.

Here's a gif animation of the record-smashing January heat wave that covered the continent:

Ronsterm compares a denier blogger with some of the world's leading experts in a miscellany of fields

Ronsterm tries to compete for the worst denier, by asking why Jo Nova (a holder of nasty conspiracy theories and science denier blogger) should not be considered as 'credible' as this assortment of renowned and highly respected leading academics, political leaders and government advisers (most of whom do not have any relationship with the Bureau of Meteorology).

• Algore (sic) (I think Ron might have meant Al Gore, past vice-President of the USA, who advocates for action to reduce global warming; rather than algor or algorithm)
• Professor Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, UK and one of the world's leading experts on the historical surface temperature record and paleoclimate.
• Professor Michael Mann is Distinguished Professor of Meteorology and Director, Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, and one of the world's leading paleoclimatologists.
• Sir Nicholas Stern is a leading economist who has held a number of posts in government and academia.  He is also a Member of the House of Lords in the UK. Prof Stern led the Stern Review, an examination of economic implications of global warming.
• Dr Rajendra K Pachauri is Chief Executive of TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute) and holds numerous other academic and directorial positions internationally, including Chairing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 
• Professor Tim Flannery is Chief Commissioner of the Australian Government Climate Commission, Chair of Environmental Sustainability at Macquarie University and has held numerous other positions nationally and internationally.  In 2007 he was honoured by the then Prime Minister of Australia, Mr John Howard, as Australian of the Year.
• Jo Nova is the pseudonym of a climate science denier and paranoid conspiracy theorist.

None of the above work for the Bureau of Meteorology. Professor Tim Flannery would have close dealings with the Bureau, particularly in his role as Chief Commissioner of the Australian Government Climate Commission.

HotWhopper of the Week - A Gutful of Brainless!

If you've ever wondered how climate science deniers can keep getting it so wrong, this might give a clue.

           Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

Caution: Going by the number of 'thumbs up', most amateur share traders on HotCopper agree the gut is their organ of choice for intellectual exercise.  Pays to treat any discussion on HotCopper with a big pinch of (epsom) salt.

Unfortunately high school physics doesn't cut it when it comes to anatomy.  Now if astrayalien (who is currently leading the pack when it comes to hot whoppers) had also studied biology he might have learnt that the gut is used for digestion of food, not digestion of science.  (You've got to wonder how astrayalien went in his physics class!)

If he had thought to exercise his brain instead of his bowel, he might have questioned some of those 'predictions' he talks about.

If he'd used his eyes as well, he would have seen that earth's temperature keeps rising.  Note: The original video I had here has since disappeared so here's something else instead. Sou 27 Jan 2014:

A Whopper of a Heatwave II: HotCopper Deniers

Australia's heat wave is getting some attention.  Not just here in Australia, we can't ignore it, but from elsewhere as well.  It's a real doozy.  You can read about it on MotherJones, and in the UK Guardian, The Telegraph and in many places on the blogosphere, like here and here.

One of the big problems is that we've had a lot of rain this past year or two - aka the 'big wet', when large areas of the continent were covered in water - to the north, south, east, west and in the centre of Australia.  2010-11 was the wettest summer on record in Victoria and in Darwin and no-one can forget the tragic loss of life in the Lockyer Valley when Queensland flooded in the same season.  Once the water evaporated, sank into the ground or flowed to the sea the plants started growing again.  (If you remember, the 'big wet' followed the 'great drought', which didn't end till 2010.)  That means lots of fuel for fire.

In 2009 more than 179 people died in a fire that started in catastrophic conditions on a day known locally as Black Saturday.  Most of us knew some of them or knew people who knew some of them.  It was a bad day that affected the whole nation.

Now it's 2013 and in this 'big heat', fires have taken hold, burning out almost entire small towns and hamlets in Tasmania and continuing to rage in our island state as well as in many parts of the mainland.  NSW had the worst fire danger conditions on record - and fires took hold and are still burning out of control.

Reaction from deniers

This blog pokes fun at the silliness that pervades a share trading site, HotCopper, from top management down.  (It's a microcosm of the world that science deniers and conspiracy theorists inhabit, seeing the conservative old white male as its target market.)  But there's nothing silly about the weather extremes in Australia over the past few years.  There have been too many tragedies.  Yet there are still a few people who simply cannot accept that our climate is changing.  While the continent has been sweltering in a record heat event, they write things like this, in response to a post about this article from The Age about the record heat (bear in mind that these are posts on a Science and Medicine forum):

You can grow things in 'Hot-Houses'... But you can NOT grow things in a Deep-Freezer. Birdman29

What a waste of bandwidth this thread is, started I notice by an alarmist, one of the group who tell us that science rules. Hanrahan, the resident troll, dismisses the freak conditions and its consequences as not worth writing about, as well as flaming the poster and denying science in the same keyboard attack.

Ever thought of simply making your point without denigrating those who don't accept your gloomy outlook? And more: Grow up, stop sulking, learn how to debate civilly. Troll Hanrahan again, king of denigration who often has sulking fits and will never learn how to 'debate'.

Do you think that it being summer could have anything to do with it? BenBradley, resident paranoid conspiracy theorist, disagrees with the Bureau of Meteorology.  He thinks this freak heat wave is normal summer weather.

The Earth's climate varies. We need to adjust. astrayalien, recent winner of the HotWhopper dumbest post award, who thinks our atmosphere cools the planet rather than keeping it warm, but nevertheless thinks we will need to adjust.  Yes we do!

People who go on about global warming because its hot outside during summer just show thier (sic) extreme ignorance re climate change. Idiots. From 'CO2 is plant food' muzzarati, who thanks god for poor, much maligned CO2.

That sums up the majority of HotCopper S&M-ers.  Not merely ignorant but wilfully ignorant and proud of it!

HotCopper Dumbest Post Award

This week astrayalien receives the dumbest post award for a thread he started on HotCopper science and medicine S&M forum.

An alien view?

Astrayalien promotes beliefs alien to science.  He provides a link to John O'Sullivan (another denier crank) who believes that the atmosphere has a cooling effect and that without it, earth would be 121 degrees Celsius.  (Yes, that's actually on his website!)  O'Sullivan's ideas are so ridiculous that I doubt anyone has ever bothered to refute them. (I stopped reading once I got to the bit about the atmosphere having a 'cooling effect'.)

And if you were in any doubt about the collective IQ on HotCopper, six more HotCopper-ites agree with astrayalien than disagree.

Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

Not only that, but astrayalien also links to the website of a software developer, Christian evangelist, wedding photographer called Douglas Cotton, who he believes has overturned more than two hundred years of scientific research by 'proving' there is no such thing as a greenhouse effect. Doug doesn't publish in peer reviewed journals but that doesn't deter astrayalien.

Younglogga gallantly tried to restore credibility to HotCopper and bring the thread back to some semblance of scientific decency by referring people to skepticalscience.com and its links to peer-reviewed science, but to no avail.  Astrayalien thinks such peer-reviewed science is "complete drivel".  He only accepts 'science' from evangelical wedding photographers/software developers.  Anyone who accepts peer-reviewed science suffers 'cognitive dissonance' according to astrayalien.  (Does he know what cognitive  dissonance is?)

Resident troll Hanrahan supports astrayalien, referring to skepticalbloodyscience.com.  (Young Han cannot abide the site because it uses science to refute the 'arguments' of his mate Bob Carter.)

Genericmicrobe can't understand skepticalscience.com and wants HotCopperites to explain it!

Denmor says science is 'alarmist claptrap'.

Denial from HotCopper seems to be keeping pace with Earth's temperature. Correlation does not necessarily mean causation, but ...