In his efforts to promote fake #climate news, Anthony Watts censors Nick Stokes

While you're waiting for more in-depth articles, here's something you don't see every day at WUWT. Anthony Watts has put Nick Stokes on moderation (again).

Jim Steele's "yellow journalism" at WUWT, and coastal erosion

Jim Steele is one of those science deniers who can't get his stuff published anywhere except climate conspiracy blogs like WUWT and in his own vanity-published denier book. Today, he wrote an article (archived here) about the collapse of cliffs in his home town Pacifica, in California. Jim could have just written a straight piece about what is contributing to coastal erosion and it might have been an informative article. However, as is usual for Jim Steele, he spoilt his article and further reduced his credibility by using it as a platform to tout his climate science denial. His article was a good example of the techniques of climate science denial. It was peppered with disinformation, twisting and misprepresenting others.

Jim Steele's yellow "journalism"

Jim's article seems to have been little more than a pretext so he could once again imply that climate science is a hoax. He accused two leading science journalists of being "yellow journalists". (Yellow journalism is where facts take a back seat to sensationalism.) Jim  wrote:

Rampant alarmism at WUWT (again) about UN climate talks in Geneva

WUWT is veering once again into rampant alarmism. Eric Worrall (he's just a run-of-the-mill denier from Australia, one of Anthony Watts' useful idiots) has written one of his very short "guest essays" (archived here), most of which is a copy and paste of a segment from the Sydney Morning Herald. It's a contrast to the tedious verbose "guest essays" by some other contributors I suppose.

The SMH article was about how, for the Geneva talks, the draft UN agreement to combat climate change has now swollen to 100 pages, from the 38 page document drafted at Lima.

Eric sets the ball rolling with alarmism, writing:

Given the fact that countries are free to write their own terms, including joke effort’s like China’s agreement to do nothing until the 2030s, in return for America agreeing to commit economic suicide, the greatest contribution to CO2 reduction Paris is likely to produce, will be the sequestration in some dusty filing cabinet, of all the carbon copies, of what promises to be the longest climate agreement ever written.

Eric just made up the part about China - out of thin air. China is reportedly bringing forward its plan for carbon trading. As for America agreeing to "commit economic suicide" - I don't see that happening any time soon.

(Is this really the best that people who want the globe to warm faster have to offer? Seems pathetically weak to me. Thankfully, many world leaders are taking the UN meetings very seriously.)

Framing climate policies for public support

Now all this rampant alarmism gives me a good reason for alerting readers to a new paper by Mark Hurlstone and his colleagues.  Mark and one of his co-authors, Stephan Lewandowsky, have written about the paper at Shaping Tomorrow's World.  The research was exploring how best to frame messages to build support for climate policies.

Charles Battig shows signs of hysteria at WUWT

Denier's are a weird mob, rife with contradictions. Anthony Watts has an article at WUWT, written by someone in an hysterical funk (archived here). His name is Charles Battig, and this time the weird is that his article appears under the title:

Climate Change Hysteria and the Madness of Crowds

You'd think that if someone wanted to claim that scientists or the general public are hysterical, that person would avoid sounding hysterical himself. Instead his article is full of hyperbole and flowery rhetoric. As well as all the usual insinuations and fake allegations you will have come to expect from science deniers. I've highlighted some of Charles' own words:

Years of relentless doomsday prognostications by a variety of public voices spanning the political-scientific spectrum have found their mark in a gullible and guilt-prone public. There is a Medusa-like quality in the serpentine web of doomsday prophets, including members of the Club of Rome, Paul Ehrlich’s “Population Bomb,” and the current White House science advisor, John Holdren.

That's given me an idea for a novel. Maybe it's already been written. The plot would be against a background of a twentieth century minus the warnings from the Club of Rome. A twentieth century without Paul Ehrlich. And slipping into a twenty-first century where a government has no science adviser. (That last one could be modeled on the Australian Government, which is the first government in 83 years where there is no science portfolio.)

Imagine a world where breakthroughs in medical and agricultural science have increased the life span of humans - but a world without any family planning. A world of ten or 12 billion or more people. Imagine a world where there was no government cooperation in waste management or resource use. A world in which there were no limits on pollution or growth or exploitation of natural resources. A world that was permanently under a shroud of thick smog, full of sulphur dioxide and other noxious gases. A world devoid of national parks and state forests. A concrete world where a forest, perhaps even a tree was a rarity. A world where the hole in the ozone layer spread to the mid-latitudes and medical and agriculture science could not prevent genetic aberrations.

Would some people get hysterical in such a world, I wonder?

Would they act as hysterically as Charles Battig when he waves his arms in protest at science, with his banal hockey stick protests and clichéd "Al Gore is fat" comments?

Al Gore’s contribution to making climate change a co-equal amongst the four horsemen of the apocalypse is matched by M. Mann’s reinterpretation of global temperature history. Repeated refutations of “faulty” science and failed predictions of climate calamities have not deterred these marketers of doom. Cut the head off, yet it lives on.

Poor old Charles. He's in a real tizz. He is despondent because he reckons not enough people are taking any notice of the fake sceptics and their attempts to confuse. He makes a point of listing some of his favourite fake sceptics and disinformers, letting us know about his own paranoid conspiracy theories:

Countering this climate doomsday propaganda has been a number of scientists and independent organizations. Manipulation of the historical temperature record by our own government agencies has been documented. Such revisions serve to make the historical record conform to the political aims and views of our Federal government, that global warming is occurring and is linked to fossil fuel use.  Proliferation of internet access has provided the new open public soap box, independent of traditional media, itself fully in the climate panic mode. Web sites maintained by Anthony Watts, Marc Morano, and Steve Milloy are just a few of many striving to get the unpoliticized science before the public.

Independent organisations? That's a joke. As John Mashey's investigations reveal, funding for many of those so-called "independent" organisations are funneled through the same "independent" source and sing from the same hymnal. Some of them share people too.  They have to. There aren't enough deniers to go around to not share them.  Denier Bob Carter, for example, gets wheeled out by various different organisations as one of their own.

Update: I'd never come across Charles Battig before, but it's ironic that he talks about "independent organisations". You can read on desmogblog about him and his own organisation:

VA-SEEE, described as a “grassroots organization,” was founded by climate change skeptic Fred Singer who is also president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP). The VA SEEE appears closely related to SEPP and is also connected to the “Climate Chance Reconsidered” report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).

As for Charles' "manipulations" - that pure denier tripe, trying to make out that temperature records of growing metropoli that have shot up higher than the surrounding areas should not be adjusted downward to account for the effects of urbanisation. Or that there should not be corrections made when a weather station is moved or read at a different time of day from the norm.

Anthony Watts is not political? Pull the other one. As for swiftboater Marc Morano - the person who promoted falsehoods about John Kerry so he wouldn't be elected President. Or Steve Milloy, who writes "junk science".

As you know, with many deniers it all comes down to their hip pocket. Money and self-interest is what drives a lot of people to reject science. Charles' article is no different. He weaves his money-mania throughout and ends up comparing climate science to the tulip bubble of the seventeenth century.

By the way, on Charles Battig's own website, he's shown that Anthony's "guest essay" was actually written for the right wing website "American Thinker" not for WUWT. Anthony Watts only gets thrown (or pinches) the crumbs these days.

From the WUWT comments

Well, it appears that Anthony Watts' readers like hyperbole, rhetoric and flowery language. Most of all they like it when they come across someone who'll feed their paranoia about "evil guvmint", which is why WUWT exists after all. It's the market in action - a niche product for a niche market. The wilfully ignorant who can feed off each other's delusions. Conspiracy theorists who believe that climate science is a hoax.

Justthinkin says:

July 10, 2014 at 8:23 pm
Well written and simple,informative article. Thank you.

Brute says:

July 10, 2014 at 8:27 pm
For sure, climate change (whatever it means to the choir) will go and a new delusion will take its place. In fact, I reckon it’s been ready to go for a while but there is nothing as “exciting” yet available to take its place.

(What has Paul Sagan to do with Cosmos?) cnxtim says:

July 10, 2014 at 8:32 pm
Not forgetting Paul Sagan’s protege and the otherwise excellent Cosmos series infecting a new generation of students with the CAGW myth.

 johanna says (excerpt from a much longer comment about conspiracies and money):

July 10, 2014 at 9:20 pm
Nice article – concise, clear and uncluttered.

Anthony Watts got the Quadrella with an outdated clichéd caricature of a climate science denier

Deniers must be in an out and out panic for some reason.  I don't know why that is.  Yesterday I wrote about how Anthony got the trifecta, putting up articles in quick succession on the much caricatured denier memes of:

1. Climategate
2. Greenland and
3. Al Gore is fat.

Now he's added another one to make the quadrella! (Archived here.) Anthony's posted the most stereotypical clichéd conspiracy theorising slimy article from the grubby Tim Ball. Replete with resurrecting ancient attacks on some of the world's leading scientists - which are sick and twisted and false and would be laughable if they weren't such ugly smear attacks:

• "they turned off the air-conditioning in 1988 in Congress"
• falsely accusing Dr James Hansen, one of the world's living treasures and a modern day hero, of not declaring income
• Ben Santer, who is one of the most respected and trustworthy of climate scientists, "altered" the IPCC report when it was Ben Santer who ensured that the IPCC report included appropriate wording about uncertainty and ensured the report was an accurate reflection of the science of the day
• claiming 24 years ago Ben Santer was too "green" to write for the IPCC (he was 35 years old at the time and had received his doctorate three years earlier) - He was admired by his peers back then and look at how he is revered worldwide today
• Dredging up a dumb claim about the Medieval Warm Period, from arch denier David Deming of all people
• Implying there was something shonky about Michael Mann writing for the IPCC and, laughably, that there was something shonky about this triple graduate degree holder getting his doctorate

I've not seen such a gish gallop of old, disgusting ad hominem attacks on scientists since 2010.  Which in turn were in part a resurrection of the failed Fred Seitz attack from way back in 1996.  Here is the open letter of support for Ben Santer from the American Meteorological Society - from way back in 1996. And here is a more recent article by Ben Santer himself, covering these and other issues. 

Is something about to happen that I'm missing?  Why this resurrection of worn out clichéd denier disinformation?  Is Tim Ball wanting to provide more material for the court to consider at the various law suits he's got to defend? Is he trying to rope Anthony Watts into one or more of them?

And why is Anthony stuck for guest authors that he has to rely on people like the slime Tim Ball, the clown Christopher Monckton and Eric "eugenics" Worrall (can you get more obsure than Eric Worrall?).

Not only that but yesterday he dragged out a chap called Tim Tom Harris who is the "Executive Director" of the two-bit operation that grandly calls itself the "International Climate Science Coalition".  TimTom visited here and twice denied writing exact quotes I took from his article at WUWT.  One of which he'd repeated in slightly different words in a press release published on his own website - talking about "the most expensive hoax in the history of science".

Not only that, but earlier today, Anthony proclaimed to the world that the "biggest threat" to humankind is an asteroid strike.  He's made similar claims before.  He's nuts.  Even his most rabid deniers dispute him on that score.

It's as if there's something big in the wind to send Anthony Watts around the twist like this.  Utterly more Utter Nuttery than usual.

Vessel trapped off Antarctica - it's a conspiracy, sez anti-science campaigner Anthony Watts

Anthony Watts, conspiracy theorist promoter at WUWT, is now heralding another conspiracy theory.  That there was an international plot to create a blizzard off Antarctica right at the very spot and time when MV Akademik Shokalskiy was most likely to get caught in the pack ice. I gather he believes the plot was hatched by the scientists on the ship, and the captain and his crew were only too willing to participate along with, presumably the Australian and Russian governments, the media and all the passengers.  Anthony reckons it's all a "publicity stunt"!

For more Anthony Watts' conspiracy theories at WUWT, see here and here and here.

Anthony Watts has a habit of capitalising on the misfortune of others

Anthony Watts has a reputation for mocking the misfortune of others to get blog hits and make believe he's "clever".  He downplayed the tragic deaths of thousands of people (latest toll is at least 6,111 people dead and 1,779 still missing) in the deadliest disaster in the Philippines. He tried to downplay the severity of the record-breaking typhoon - in several articles, which in itself shows that the storm was regarded by the rest of the world as a major catastrophe.

The troubles of the ice-bound Australasian Antarctic Expedition are nothing compared to the disaster wrought by Haiyan, but the reaction of Anthony Watts and some of his followers can be put in the same category.

Anthony delights in the misfortune using terms like "circus", "hilarity" in his malicious taunting of the plight of MV Akademik Shokalskiy and the 74 people on board.  Some of his followers have wished the scientists and passengers dead - literally.

Here is the latest from Australia's ABC news.  Here is the live blog from the Guardian.  And for background, here is an interview with Professor Chris Turney on Lateline - from last November; and a link to the expedition website.

This short clip shows, in fast-motion, research on board the Aurora Australis, to give some idea of what scientists do in the oceans around Antarctica:

The video was filmed by Antarctic researcher Dr Frederique Olivier onboard the recent voyage of the Australian Antarctic Division's icebreaker the Research Supply Vessel Aurora Australis.  It encapsulates some of the incredible amount of work undertaken by researchers working in shifts continuously throughout the voyage to learn more about the Antarctic Ocean and its relationship to the rest of Earth's environment.

It's a Russian/Australian conspiracy, sez Anthony Watts

Back to the plight of MV Akademik Shokalskiy.  Now Anthony has moved to "it's a conspiracy".  Not satisfied with mocking the expedition, cracking jokes, telling fibs and trying to make mileage out of their situation, now he speculates that being trapped in ice was a "publicity stunt" (archived here, latest update here):

Now, with such a fantastic failure in full world view, questions are going to start being asked. For example, with advanced tools at their disposal (that Mawson never had) such as near real-time satellite imaging of Antarctic sea ice, GPS navigation, on-board Internet, radar, and satellite communications, one wonders how these folks managed to get themselves stuck at all. Was it simple incompetence of ignoring the signs and data at their disposal combined with “full steam ahead” fever? Even the captain of the Aurora Australis had the good sense to turn back knowing he’d reached the limits of the ship on his rescue attempt.  Or, was it some sort of publicity stunt to draw attention? If it was the latter, it has backfired mightily.

I'm not quite sure why he thinks that all that equipment can accurately predict the future and even  if it did give an indication they were about to be hemmed in by sea ice, how the captain and navigator could have avoided it.  Nor how Anthony is so convinced that no sea-going vessels ever gets into strife, given all that equipment.

As you can see, Anthony also doubles down on his disinformation, calling the scientific expedition a "nothing more than a party":

And when the trip is nothing more than a party for your friends and media, disguised as a “scientific expedition”, one wonders if there shouldn’t be some moratorium on such trips.

That means that he regards the scientists here and here and here are mere party-goers. Not only that but Anthony Watts regards any reporting of science and nature as frivolous frippery.  Anthony cannot abide science or nature.

How ships get stuck in thick ice

Sea ice moves.  It is blown by the wind.  I'm not an expert on the Antarctic or sea ice, but here is some information I've gathered from various places:

First, a short description of what happened to Shackleton's Endurance, in 1915, from Wikipedia:

On January 18 the gale began to moderate and Endurance set the topsail with the engine at slow. The pack had blown away. Progress was made slowly until hours later Endurance encountered the pack once more. It was decided to move forward and work through the pack, and at 5pm Endurance entered it. However it was noticed that this ice was different from what had been encountered before. The ship was soon amongst thick but soft brash ice. The ship became beset. The gale now increased its intensity and kept blowing for another six days from a northerly direction towards land. By January 24, the wind had completely compressed the ice in the whole Weddell Sea against the land. Endurance was icebound. All that could be done was to wait for a southerly gale that would start pushing, decompressing and opening the ice in the other direction. Instead the days passed and the pack remained unchanged.

Endurance drifted for months beset in the ice in the Weddell Sea. The changing conditions of the Antarctic spring brought such pressure that Endurance was crushed over the period from October 27, 1915. On the morning of November 21, 1915, the Endurance's bow began to sink under the ice and it was abandoned. [2]

Here is a video taken from a ship going through pack ice in the Arctic. The sea ice moves on the ocean and different bits crash into each other, piling up.  This video is just normal ice motion, it's not pack ice being blown in one direction, packed tightly by the strong winds off East Antarctica and thickening around a ship:

The Arctic is mostly ocean surrounded by land.  In the Antarctic it's the opposite.  It's a large continent surrounded by ocean.  This raises the matter of fast ice.

As Alok Jha, science correspondent at the Guardian who is on the ship, wrote a couple of days ago:

We arrived at Commonwealth Bay more than a week ago, dropping anchor at the edge of a glistening sheet of fast ice – so called because it is stuck fast to the edge of the land mass of Antarctica. In front of us was an alien landscape of pure, flat white. The expedition's scientists began their work. 

After Commonwealth Bay, the ship continued to follow the path of the Mawson expedition and set off for the Mertz Glacier. It got as far as Cape de la Motte.  As Alok Jha wrote in the same article:

We are at Cape de la Motte in East Antarctica, on our way to the Mertz glacier, in a sea covered in ice floes up to four metres thick and several years old, making them dense and tough. Winds have pushed these floes towards the Antarctic mainland and pinned us in. The Xue Long arrived on Friday evening and spent 12 hours pushing its way through the dense ice before its captain decided enough was enough. We were only two nautical miles from the ocean before Christmas, but that distance has now swelled to around 20 nautical miles as the blizzards and winds have continued. If the joint efforts of the Aurora Australis and Xue Long don't work, the only other option will be to evacuate the ship by air, though this would be the absolute worst case scenario.

This is a map showing where the ship is now:

Fast ice is stuck to the land, the ice pack isn't.  Winds have pushed the pack ice towards the coast, trapping the ship.  And it's got worse.  Not only has the ice covered more of the ocean, blocking any route in or out, it's being compressed and is getting thicker as the wind keeps pushing the pack ice against itself.  It has nowhere to go so it banks up. The latest is that the ice around the ship is three to four metres thick.  Too thick for any ice-breaker and the pressure could be too thick for the ship to survive intact, though I don't know about the latter.  The ship is designed for the Arctic and Antarctic.

Anthony Watts' conspiracy theory

Anthony Watts prefers a conspiracy theory.  He speculated: Or, was it some sort of publicity stunt to draw attention?

That would have required some or all of the following:

• An international conspiracy involving Russia and Australia with or without the connivance of governments of nations whose citizens are part of the expedition
• Foreknowledge of the change in wind and how it would blow the pack ice forcing it to bank up around the ship and the coast
• The ship's captain being central to the conspiracy - willingly, by coercion or by enticement such as bribery
• The ships crew being complicit and following the Captain's orders
• The scientists being willing to put their own lives and that of their colleagues, passengers, and the ship's crew at risk
• The scientists having at their disposal the means by which to coerce (by brute force, bribery or other means) the ship's captain to deliberately put himself, his crew, all his passengers and his ship in harm's way
• The scientists being so all-powerful that they could control the winds of the Antarctic and the sea ice.

WUWT-ers are willing to believe that Adelaide scientist Tom Wigley rules the world, with or without Kevin Trenberth, who they believe is arguably the most politically powerful climate scientist on earth. So it should come as no surprise that Anthony Watts' followers would swallow his yarn that one or two scientists can force the captain of a Russian ship and command the winds of the Antarctic to trap their ship behind 20  nautical miles of ice.

As others have pointed out, Anthony knows almost nothing about science and less about Antarctica.  Do you recall when he wrote about UHI disease in remote Antarctica, claiming that rising temperatures in Antarctica were caused by a couple of researchers freezing their butt off in a remote temporary camp, thousands of kilometres from the weather station?

Why didn't Anthony do any research on the subject of sea ice in Antarctica?  That should be obvious.  If he had he wouldn't have been able to spin his malicious yarns.

And does he really think that the captain of the Russian-flagged ship would deliberately get stuck in ice that is now 3 to 4 meters thick and risk it being destroyed on purpose?  Does he really think that scientists can command the winds around the Antarctic coastline? Perhaps he thinks that the scientists or passengers forced the Captain just so that he, Anthony Watts, could mock the fact that the ship got stuck in ice in a world that is warming.  Probably not.  He doesn't care about such matters.  All he cares about is trashing science and scientists and thereby getting the lowest of the low readers to his blog.

Other ships that have been trapped or sunk by Antarctic ice

Many ships have been trapped by ice in the Antarctic.  This vessel is by no means unique.  Here are just a few examples:

In January 1986, the british Antarctic expedition ship, Southern Quest, "sank in the Ross Sea Saturday night, trapped and crushed by pack ice while on its way to pick up three men who spent a year walking and skiing to the South Pole".  This was a private expedition and the aftermath is described here by John Elder.

In November 2009, a tourist ship, the Russian ice-breaker Kapitan Khlebnikov, was trapped by ice in the Antarctic for several days.  It included a BBC team who were filming for the well-known documentary "Frozen Planet".

Several fishing vessels have been sunk in Antarctic waters.  Did they, too, do it "as a publicity stunt"?

And of course there are the pioneering expeditions that battled the perils of the Antarctic waters.

How this ship got trapped

Early reports suggest the ship became trapped because the wind pushed the pack ice toward the fast ice and when it could move no further it piled up.  There will be a report of the events prepared by AMSA and maybe others after the dust has settled.  I'll leave it to the experts to apportion blame to the captain, crew, passengers, scientists, the media, global warming, WUWT's coming ice age, Tom Wigley, Kevin Trenberth, Al Gore, the IPCC, the UN, Agenda 21 or the fickleness of Antarctic weather - in whatever proportion they see fit.

All I can say is that I expect the scientific team, the captain and crew and the passengers to come out looking a whole lot better than the despicable reaction of Anthony Watts and his anti-science fans.  It's not just good people who look like saints compared to Anthony Watts.  A lot of villains in the world would appear to smell of roses if put next to the people who worship anti-science.

Worth a "Sticky"

Anthony has made his mocking article a "sticky" to make sure his readers can see just how clever and insightful he is.  How you can't fool Anthony Watts.  This is probably what he and his nasty followers think:

Credit: Gabby's Playhouse

Addendum: I'd say this little section had a prophetic component.  Anthony has put up a detailed analysis of his blog stats for the year.  Do they "prove" he is "right"?  ha ha ha. (His article is archived here.  I can't be bothered archiving his actual report.  If readers are interested please make a request in the comment section and I'll make a copy and post a link.)

Meanwhile, in other news

From India:

Survivors of the flash floods in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand in north India are still recovering from the calamity, six months on.
The floods, which has also been called the Himalayan Tsunami, left over 1,000 dead and more than 6,500 missing.

In Indonesia:

Around 18,000 people in western Indonesia have had to leave their homes after two rivers burst their banks and flooded thousands of houses, an official said.

In the Pilbara, Western Australia:

Authorities are assessing the damage after Tropical Cyclone Christine brought torrential rain and destructive winds to Western Australia's Pilbara, with residents of one town saying it was the worst in memory.

In the UK

A record number of women have appeared in the Queen's New Year's honours list...Some 1,195 people have received an award this year, and for the first time since the list was founded in 1917 there were more women (51 per cent) named than men.

(Oops - that's not terribly relevant, is it.)

From the WUWT comments

Anthony Watts really does bring out the nastier of the nasties. The worst of the comments are on his previous articles (eg as archived here, but the site seems to be slow at the moment) and are not suitable for printing on HotWhopper.  For readers who have a strong stomach comments on this latest WUWT diatribe are archived here at webcitation.org and updated here at archive.is, latest here.

Michael Ronayne says:

December 30, 2013 at 10:47 am
Question: What do you call a ship load of trapped Global Cooling Deniers who are in danger of freezing to death?
Answer: A good start!

Man Bearpig says:

December 30, 2013 at 11:14 am
This must have been the best entertainment that Penguins and Seals have seen in a long time.

Dobes says:

December 30, 2013 at 11:28 am
Why is it such a surprise the people who routinely ignore real world observation are stuck in a real world observation. I’m sure their models said the ice wasn’t there

David Becker is "not sure" about Adelie penguins being near people in Antarctica says:

December 30, 2013 at 11:28 am
The penguins in the first photo appear to be photoshopped in. I am not sure there would be a bunch of penguins right at the location at which the ship is stuck, unless they were just having a good laugh. (I will look at later pictures for a sad polar bear, just in case the biologists aboard are as competent as the “climate scientists.”)

I wonder how all these photos were taken if not by people.


Leo G gets into the spirit of Anthony's festivities and says:

December 30, 2013 at 8:14 pm
Have I got this right? A pair of Australian professors whose names sound like Christmas Turkey and Fogwilly use research funds to organise a tourist trip PR stunt in Antarctica by chartering a ship with a name that sounds like MV Academic Shocks-are-likely. A bipolar expedition?

En Passant notices the wealth of material at WUWT for psychologists and, contributing to it, says:

December 30, 2013 at 8:12 pm
At any moment Professor Lewandowsky (formerly of the University of WA and now of Bristol University) will issue a peer/pal reviewed paper entitled “Cognitive dissonance of Deniers mocking heroic CAGW pseudo-scientists trapped in global warming ice”
I cannot wait.

One interesting point of dissonance is that before they set off Professor Turkey blogged that Commonwealth Bay has been blocked for the past three years by a giant (75-mile long) iceberg that has lodged there. If he already knew that, how did this Band of Boonies intend to land? A Moses act of parting the ice and waters perhaps. Yet another mystery to be solved. I mean, Google maps would have told them it was a bad idea before they set off with my taxes in their pockets.

Let’s hope the UNSW picks up the costs as this will mean they have to close some unnecessary departments (probably medicine, engineering and physics) as this disaster shows just how important the Department of Climate Mythology really is.

Frank Kotler apparently thinks that Douglas Mawson is okay but people adding to his legacy of scientific observations are not okay, and says:

December 30, 2013 at 11:29 am
Rather arrogant for these folks to compare themselves to Douglas Mawson, IMO. Mawson was apparently a rugged guy, but he lost two crew members and nearly died himself. I guess if no one dies in this fiasco, it proves “global warming”. “Global Warming is real and dangerous.” Okay, scratch “dangerous”. “Global Warming is real and a lifesaver!” How’s thar?

Talk about deluded deniers. Gail Combs is vying for the dual awards of "biggest loonie" and "nastiest web denizen" and talks of "spin".  At the same time she is blaming the scientists on the vessel for "food riots in over 60 countries", the "real deaths of thousands in the UK" and potentially causing early deaths of millions". She says of the scientists and passengers (excerpt - with my bold italics):

December 30, 2013 at 5:55 pm
I have every sympathy for the crews and I hope like heck the Russian skipper and his 17 volunteers makes it out alive. The others, given their attitude, I have no sympathy for what’s so ever.

These are not a bunch of innocent befuddled tourists but a bunch of campaigning activists who combined with their brethren have cause food riots in over 60 countries (2008 biofuel -food crisis) the real deaths of thousands in the UK (fuel poverty), not to mention undermining the economies of several nations and potentially causing the suffering and early deaths of not thousands but millions.

If Mother Nature wants to deliver a hard object lesson to activists so be it.

The unfortunate problem is they will just find a way to spin it.

DirkH and Mervyn are busy building up their reputations as a Conspiracy Theorists First Class:

December 30, 2013 at 6:55 pm
Mervyn says: December 30, 2013 at 6:20 pm
“The media are doing an atrocious job reporting the truth about this ‘expedition’ ”

You are doing them injustice. The media are doing a splendig job lying about this expedition.

You have to know the job description.

Not all of Anthony's science deniers are getting completely caught up in Anthony Watts' hysteria.  Laurie says:

December 30, 2013 at 9:01 pm
I don’t see these people as enemies… just wrong thinking. The ice? Well, it was there and someone made a mistake. I don’t really care how they want to spin this when it’s over. I would just like to see them all safe. Ignorant and safe is …okay. Truth will win out in the end.

I wonder if this latest episode at WUWT will make anyone reassess their rejection of science and reconsider their opinion of Anthony Watts?