A short primer on global energy flows, for the twitter deniers

Energy balancing when no forcing

There have been two or three people on the climate denial conversation on Twitter who cannot conceptualise global energy flows. Remember, almost all the deniers in this particular conversation are greenhouse effect deniers who don't "believe" physics and chemistry. Nonetheless they've discovered a wonky diagram in the deniosphere somewhere and have asked how it works. The short answer is, it doesn't. Not the way it's portrayed in their diagram.

Dr Kevin Trenberth has kindly allowed me to publish this updated global energy flow schematic, which is about to be published. (I'll post the doi when it is available.) Here it is, with an explanation below:

Things that scare Anthony Watts at WUWT: Air-conditioning, Oklahoma City, and rising seas

Arguably, one good explanation for why people reject climate science is that it scares them. Today Anthony Watts, who runs the climate conspiracy blog WUWT, said he was scared by air-conditioners, and Oklahoma City. He also said he was scared of rising seas. He often rejects the fact that seas will rise as ice melts.

I'd say that being scared is probably one of the main reasons for deniers denying. It fits with the research on the conservative brain. It's been shown already that free market ideology is a predictor of climate science denial. Pair this with the research on the conservative brain and it is apparent that emotions are more likely to get in the way of reason for people who are politically conservative than for others. In particular, fear rather than reason is probably what drives a lot of people to reject climate science.

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.

Guess what disinformer Anthony Watts isn't telling his readers

Talking about spin. A short while ago I wrote about how a blog article on WUWT by Rachel DeJong misquoted Gina McCarthy of the EPA. Anthony Watts is doing the same thing (archived here).

He's gloating over some US poll, by Rassmussen Reports, which is regarded by some people as being somewhat to the right politically. But that is not the point. Earlier this week Rasmussen Reports asked several questions of 1,000 likely voters:

1. * How closely have you followed recent news reports about global warming?
2. * How serious a problem is global warming?
3. * An increasing number of news organizations are now banning articles or TV appearances by those who think global warming is not a serious, man-made problem. Do you favor or oppose the decision by some news organizations to ban global warming skeptics?
4. * Is the scientific debate about global warming over?
5. * Does the media make global warming appear to be worse than it really is, better than it really is or do they present an accurate picture?

NOTE: Margin of Sampling Error, +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence

Only 14% believe global warming to be "not at all serious"

Anthony Watts was very selective in what he told his readers. This is some of what he didn't tell his readers. The stereotype of a climate science denier is supported by the poll.

• Based on the results reported by Rassmussen, deniers are more likely to be older, male and vote Republican.
• Although only 60% of respondents agreed global warming is a serious problem, 35% thought it very serious.  Another 35% thought it wasn't all that serious. 
• What deniers won't like is that only 14% of respondents believed global warming to be not at all serious.

You can read the write up of the survey results here. It includes some results from previous surveys as well, such as the results of a May poll, which found that  "just 30% of voters think the president should take action alone if necessary to deal with global warming.  Twice as many (59%) say the federal government should only do what the president and Congress jointly agree on."

Looking back at past Rasmussen poll results, it appears that there could be an upward trend in the number of people in the USA who think global warming is a serious problem.

What Anthony Watts did tell his readers

This is how Anthony Watts reported the results, quoting directly from Rasmussen Reports:

From Rasmussen Reports:

Voters strongly believe the debate about global warming is not over yet and reject the decision by some news organizations to ban comments from those who deny that global warming is a problem.

Only 20% of Likely U.S. Voters believe the scientific debate about global warming is over, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Sixty-three percent (63%) disagree and say the debate about global warming is not over. Seventeen percent (17%) are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Forty-eight percent (48%) of voters think there is still significant disagreement within the scientific community over global warming, while 35% believe scientists generally agree on the subject.

The BBC has announced a new policy banning comments from those who deny global warming, a policy already practiced by the Los Angeles Times and several other media organizations.  But 60% of voters oppose the decision by some news organizations to ban global warming skeptics. Only 19% favor such a ban, while slightly more (21%) are undecided.
But then 42% believe the media already makes global warming appear to be worse than it really is. Twenty percent (20%) say the media makes global warming appear better than it really is, while 22% say they present an accurate picture. Sixteen percent (16%) are not sure.
Still, this is an improvement from February 2009 when 54% thought the media makes global warming appear worse than it is. Unchanged, however, are the 21% who say the media presents an accurate picture.

That's where he stopped. He didn't let on about findings that might be disturbing to the fragile egos of his audience. Such as that only 14% of respondents believe global warming is not at all serious.

The US public is ignorant of the science

The finding that almost half of those surveyed mistakenly think that there is significant disagreement in the scientific community about global warming shows the importance of studies of scientific consensus. More importantly, it highlights the importance of communicating the findings of those studies.

Las Vegas Denier Fest: Awards for best con artists, denial propagandists and plodders for hire

I've read that this is the list of the science deniers who are getting bravery awards being patronised by the Heartland Institute at an upcoming denier festival in Las Vegas.

The awards are for mostly well-paid work, which involves pretending to be extremely stupid at best and/or deliberately conning the gullible about climate change. It's the equivalent of the Academy Awards I guess, where deniers pat each other on the back and put their hands up for more speaker engagements at denier festivals. Like the Academy Awards, it focuses on a person's ability to present fiction to the hoi polloi rather than, say, scientific documentaries. It involves a fair amount of acting and there are separate categories.

One category is script-writing. One or two of this motley lot run a blog and a couple even manage to write the occasional paper or popular science-denying book. They have even been known to get published in the scientific literature. Well not in the best journals. Nor usually in mediocre journals. But deniers can't be choosers. Often they have to resort to vanity publications.

Another category is best comedian/make-up artist - you can guess who won that award.

Another is best pseudo-religious characterisation. That award was shared this year.

The Heartland Institute also awarded some prizes for trying, to dull plodders in their dotage.

Here are the people being paraded by the Heartland Institute, probably hoping to attract more funds from individual deniers who have more money than sense, and to faceless corporations with an agenda:

• Sherwood B. Idso - who is part of the Idso family, denialist shills for hire  
• Arthur B. Robinson, one of those who was behind the fake "Oregon Petition"
• Roy Spencer, a member of a science-denying alarmist cult called the Cornwall Alliance
• Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (I think it should be The Viscount Monckton aka the potty peer)
• S. Fred Singer,  another denier for hire 
• Willie Soon, another denier for hire
• Patrick Moore,  another denier for hire who falsely claims to have founded Greenpeace
• Tom Harris, a very weird person who can't even lie straight, and runs the Canadian branch of the anti-climate science coalition
• Alan Carlin, another American denier
• E. Calvin Beisner from the science denying alarmist cult, the Cornwall Alliance. 

Not all of the above have graced these pages yet. If they ever let women into denier festivals, maybe Judith Curry will get a guernsey when she's old enough.  She's been doing her bit for the denier cause these past few years.

Putting on an old EPA hat, WUWT revisits peer review

Anthony Watts has another copy and paste (archived here), this time from some right wing crowd that calls itself the National Association of Scholars, not to be confused with the National Academy of Sciences.

In short, the article is just another denier diatribe, long on insinuation and short on substance.

I checked out the National Association of Scholars at SourceWatch and they don't sound like the sort of crowd that any self-respecting person would want to be associated with. I'm surprised that Anthony Watts would promote them. Publicly at any rate, he frowns upon racist bigotry (not so much sexism). I guess beggars can't be choosers. This is from SourceWatch:

The National Association of Scholars (NAS) is a non-profit organization in the United States that opposes multiculturalism and affirmative action and seeks to counter what it considers a "liberal bias" in academia.[1]

In 2010 and 2011, its president was espousing climate contrarianism under the group's auspices, with no evident expertise in the climate science field.[2]

The rest of the SourceWatch article makes interesting reading. It looks as if National Association of Scholars has an extremely large (unwieldy) board that rarely if ever meets. Is it just another organisation providing plum posts for a small number of ideologues?

This is another long article, because the WUWT article is about another article which is in turn about yet another article. This HW article features the National Association of Scholars, the ITSSD, and the EPA and its Office of Inspector General as well as some WUWT comments.  I don't want to dissuade you, but I'll warn you that apart from introducing organisations new to HotWhopper, it's simply more of the same old hat denier nonsense - largely about peer review.  Still, if you're interested and you're on the home page, click here to read on...

Help wanted: Mr Bloggie is open to suggestions.

The outcome: The Bloggies have committed hari kari.

Tallbloke won the best European blog, GWPF won the best politics blog, ClimateAudit won the best topical blog, JoNova the lifetime achievement and WUWT a couple of equally ridiculous categories!

Sou 31 March 2014

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Yesterday I wrote about how I wrote to Mr Bloggie.  I was making the point that last year's infestation of Bloggie awards by climate science deniers has spread rapidly this year.

This year Anthony Watts is urging his fans to vote up climate denier blogs in seven categories.  (Last year they mostly flocked just to the now defunct science and technology category).

A problem needing a fix

Mr Bloggie (Nikolai) replied to my email and said that he is:

open to suggestions of what can be done to fix this.

The process at the moment is described on the Bloggie website here.  It's a fairly simple two-step process that currently involves no input from experts.

I can't think of any sure-fire simple fixes off the top of my head.  More fundamental changes would work, but that would change the nature of the Bloggies.  Things like disqualification or independent vetting before announcing finalists, with stricter criteria for entry into each category.  It's too easy to game the system when it's purely based on popular vote at every step in the process.

Ideas wanted

I know that Greg Laden and others offered Mr Bloggie some suggestions last year, when the situation became so ludicrous that the only finalists in the science and technology category were climate science deniers.

So put on your thinking caps and give Mr Bloggie a hand!

Taxpayer-funded fake sceptics - public confession time

Seems that not only will Australian taxpayers be forking out for adaptation and recuperation instead of mitigation, now we're paying science deniers.  The Institute for Public Affairs - arguably Australia's number one climate science denial machine, gets subsidised by taxpayers in all sorts of ways.

It's used the taxpayer-funded ABC as its own personal free publisher and public relations organisation.  It gets a free pass on paying taxes.  And anyone who sends it money gets a tax deduction for doing so.

This, mind you, is a right wing lobby group that rants and raves about government overspending, government subsidies and urges small government.  You'd think the last thing it would be doing is wasting our hard earned tax dollars.  But no.  Apparently it's a matter of "do what we say not what we do".  They survive with the help of taxpayer's contributions and tax breaks.

Now it's got a new scam going.  On the back of a who's who of science denying shysters, the IPC is threatening offering to publish for all the world to see, the names of anyone dumb enough to send them $400 or more to chop down trees to make door stops - or loo paper if you're extra tough.

It looks as if they can't get a publisher to pay for their trashy book so they have to resort to panhandling. You can read all about it here at Renew Economy.

I can't wait to see who are the most disreputable among the Establishment, who are willing to tattoo their names on the backside of such disreputable ratbags as Andrew Bolt, James Delingpole, Donna Laframboise, Mark Steyn,  Nigel Lawson. "Jo Nova", Jennifer Marohasy, Richard Lindzen, Anthony Watts, Ian Plimer, Bob Carter and other climate science deniers from Australia and around the world.

Willis Eschenbach goes for Andy Revkin and misses, but rallies a lynch mob at WUWT

This is a story so often told about how a climate science denier, in trying to play "gotcha", got "gotcha'd" himself.

Willis Eschenbach is a self-confessed climate science denier

Today Willis Eschenbach (archived here, later update here, later update here and latest here) had a shot at Andy Revkin for an article about climate science deniers.  He didn't like the word "deniers" probably, though what he wrote was:

I went over to Andy Revkin’s site to be entertained by his latest fulminations against “denialists”. Revkin, as you may remember from the Climategate emails, was the main go-to media lapdog for the various unindicted Climategate co-conspirators. His latest post is a bizarre mishmash of allegations, bogus claims, and name-calling. Most appositely, given his history of blind obedience to his oh-so-scientific masters like Phil Jones and Michael Mann, he illustrated it with this graphic which presumably shows Revkin’s response when confronted with actual science:

"This graphic" being a photograph of a sculpture, showing two of the three wise monkeys, Mizaru and Kikazaru.  Notably Iwazaru is absent from the photo.  Hobbyist science deniers will refuse to read the science or look at what's happening in the world around them.  They'll refuse to listen to scientists.  But just try to get them to shut up!

Credit: Andrew C. Revkin

As you'll have read above, Willis has his nose still buried in the trough of stolen emails, wishing there was something in there that showed his view of science and scientists was correct.  There isn't. Willis obviously sees himself as a climate science denier or he wouldn't have written what he did.  He doesn't like allegations made by other people, or name-calling, but in that short paragraph count the terms:

• media lapdog
• unindicted
• Climategate
• co-conspirators
• blind obedience
• oh-so-scientific masters
• etc

And does Willis seriously think that that Andrew Revkin is denying the actual science Willis is constantly denying?

Willis Eschenbach passes number lookup but fails arithmetic

Thing is, Willis' next comment was about the "about me" section - which looks like it hasn't been changed since 2010 and even then the bit that Willis objected to was probably written earlier.  The bit that Willis objected to was this:

By 2050 or so, the human population is expected to reach nine billion, essentially adding two Chinas to the number of people alive today. 

Willis doesn't know anything about climate science but he can check population numbers.  He wrote:

Revkin’s error is not insignificant. From the present population to 9 billion, where the population is likely to stabilize, is an increase of about 1.75 billion. IF Revkin’s claims about two Chinas were correct, the increase would be 2.8 billion. So his error is 2.8/1.75 -1, which means his numbers are 60% too high. A 60% overestimation of the size of the problem that he claims to be deeply concerned about? … bad journalist, no cookies.

Willis might have the current population numbers correct.  I haven't bothered to check.  However he isn't correct when he talks about "a 60% overestimation of the problem".  He used the wrong denominator. Anyway, he got away with that at WUWT.  He might have come across as more credible if he'd acknowledged that the "about me" was written years ago and would have been correct at the time.   All he's showed is that it's probably the first time he's read that blurb at Dot Earth, and that he's not good at working out percentages.

Willis Eschenbach fails reading comprehension

Willis also might have avoided looking like an idiot if he hadn't made a big blue of an error himself.  In his very first paragraph he wrote about "his latest fulminations", meaning Andy Revkin's.  But Andy didn't write the article Willis took exception to.  Andy said quite clearly that the article was written by David Victor of the University of California, San Diego.  He even tweeted Anthony Watts, who could have corrected Willis' article, but hasn't.  (One has to scroll down the WUWT comments to see this moderate response from Andrew Revkin.)

Why bother with what a climate science denying hobbyist says?

Willis Eschenbach could have come across as more credible in a small way, he could have avoided looking like an idiot.  Then again, who takes seriously a man whose hobby is climate science denial?

The article at Andrew Revkin's blog is about climate science deniers including those like Willis who've taken it up as a hobby.  David Victor makes some good points and some that I don't completely agree with.  It's a solid article though and worth reading if you're interested in people's view of what makes a climate science denier tick.  (It's in fashion at the moment.  William Connolley at Stoat wrote a good article about the same subject just a couple of days ago.)

As one might have predicted, it brought all the ratbag climate science deniers who, by their comments, showed the accuracy of what David Victor wrote.

From the WUWT comments

Andrew Revkin has a reputation for being a moderate in the "climate blog wars".  Sometimes he comes across as a "lukewarmer" though I think he's been giving the science a better hearing of late.  I'm no longer a regular reader of Dot Earth so I can't really say.  So Willis' attack didn't get universal approval from the band of deniers at WUWT.  Nevertheless he manages to rally a lynch mob to verbally attack Andy Revkin and anyone and everyone who accepts climate science and wants a future for the world. Latest archive here, with Willis Eschenbach showing his true (murky) colours over and over again in the comments.

Addendum: With what Anthony Watts is allowing in the comments (eg here), plus his recent article on Mark Steyn, I almost get the impression he is angling to be named in a defamation lawsuit. Or daring one. Maybe he's seeking fame and notoriety or maybe he's feeling left out and ignored by anyone who counts. Or maybe he figures he's safe because he cries poor so often.
Sou 8:45 pm 23 February 2014 AEDST

Eric Barnes says:

February 22, 2014 at  

Alan Robertson says:

February 22, 2014 at 12:03 pm
The sad part of it is, Andrew Revkin is one of the least worst of the alarmists.

Chad Wozniak says:

February 22, 2014 at 12:06 pm
Revkin is a perfect illustration of who the REAL denialists are: the alarmists who ignore the new Holocaust caused by carbon policies (33,000 dead from hypothermia in the UK last year, 2 million Africans dead from starvation thanks to the ethanol program).
@Charles Battig – this is also the program proposed by der Fuehrer’s witchcraft advisor, John Holdren, except that he wants to knock the population down to 1 billion.
Global warming alarmism is MASS MURDER. Global warming alarmism is GENOCIDE.

pokerguy sums up Willis Eschenbach well when he says:

February 22, 2014 at 12:29 pm
“…particularly when he is nothing but a pathetic PR shill for bogus science and disingenuous scientists …”
Seems that everyone you disagree with is a contemptible slime, Willis. I disagree with Revkin on just about everything, and marvel at his apparent credulity in climate matters, but on a personal level he’s never struck me as anything but sincere and well meaning. For a warmist, he’s quite willing and open to discuss opposing points of view.

Roger A. Pielke Sr. says (is he also having a dig at Roy Spencer?):

February 22, 2014 at 12:31 pm
Willis – I strongly disagree with you on your post. While I do not agree with all of Andy’s views, he is one of the most objective and open journalists in the mainstream media. He has provided a much needed forum for debate.
I have no idea why you choose to attack him when there is plenty of science to discuss and analyze.
I also prefer that WUWT not post personal attacks on anyone. This only demeans the website which is otherwise an outstanding forum for a much-needed debate on climate science which is not available at most other venues..
Roger Sr.

b4llzofsteel is no friend of Willis' either and says:

February 22, 2014 at 12:40 pm
Well said Dr.Pielke. Eschenbach is the last person to judge over other persons, while Revkin is certainly pro AGW, he is one of the more moderate people in the discussion.

Andy Revkin (@Revkin) says:

February 22, 2014 at 1:01 pm
Thanks, Roger.
And a note to Willis Eschenbach about carelessness (I agree that my 2007 population math – there from the first day of the blog – badly needs updating; leaving it up unchanged this long was careless).
Despite repeated references to David Victor in the introduction to the Denialism post, you somehow missed that it was the text of a lecture by him at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
All of the assertions you complain about are his.
This is a guest post – kind of like yours here at WUWT.
I’m sure Anthony doesn’t agree with everything you wrote. I don’t agree with everything David said. But it’s important in open forums to air a range of views.
As for your lapdog references, etc., sheesh….
(Accidentally posted under an unrelated WordPress ID a minute ago.)

[Thank you for the response. If so, to maintain traceability and accountability, should the "unrelated" item be deleted? Mod]

dp says:

February 22, 2014 at 1:05 pm
This is 2014 and he is talking about conscripting the people of 2050 to our vision of future needs. That is the equivalent of our being handed a world designed by the futurists of 1978. If one could bring the most brilliant of minds forward from 1978 to today that person would be a babe in the woods around our contemporary technology and the way time has change our world. Nobody would listen.
Mr. Revkin – you sir are an imperious ass and a moron today and you would considered the same in 2050 should any of your vacuous screeds survive.

Max Erwengh is over-optimistic when he says he knows that Willis could do better:

February 22, 2014 at 1:17 pm
Sorry I really don’t see the sense of this post. He made a rule of thumb estimate, and it is a quite acceptable approximation. So, no matter if it is silly to be a afraid about rising population or not, the calculation is fine. And guess what, natural science is all about approximations (ye of course not that silly ones about population growth), we don’t do pure science which applies only to mathematics.
Back to the topic, this is just a very disturbing ad-hominem attack. I know you could do better.

cynical_scientist makes some observations on the use of the word "denier" and variations (see here) and says:

February 22, 2014 at 1:46 pm
What I find most interesting about Revkin’s article is the language. He consistently uses “Denialist”, “Denialism” instead of “Denier”, “Denial”. And it isn’t just Revkin doing it – most of the people he quotes are doing it too. This looks to me like yet another orchestrated language shift along the lines of global warming –> climate change –> climate weirding –> etc. It is bizarre the way they keep switching language. Who decides these things?

Anyway, as people do not speak of Holocaust denialists or Holocaust denialism, this looks to me like an attempt to hide their tracks and make the smear less obvious. The new language is close enough to the old to still be offensive. But the slight distance gives plausible deniability so that if someone takes them to task over the use of the D word they can pretend we are too sensitive and it is all just a coincidence.

(I suspect this is headed for the moderation queue due to use of the D word.)

What is it with science denying organisations wheeling out ageing astronauts to make fools of themselves in public?

Poor old Walt Cunningham, an astronaut who studied physics, was wheeled out by CFACT to give a talk to a stunned audience - umm, I mean a DuKE** of deniers -  at a pseudo-science conference in Warsaw.  Anthony Watts put up a video of his talks at WUWT (archived here).  Not everyone was impressed enough to pay attention.

Audience of DuKEs at CFACT, Warsaw
Source: WUWT

Walt and the history of human evolution

One of Walt's first claims was how humans have adapted to "continuous climate change".

Now our whole planet may appear kind of fragile from space but it is really plain, ah, how well humans have adapted to the continuous climate change over the last million years.

Homo erectus (Wikipedia)

Ha ha.  Not just continuous climate change but humans over the last million years?  Lets see now.

A million years ago there was Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis.  I don't see too many of them prowling around today.  Do you?

There aren't too many Homo sapiens neanderthalensis who survived to tell the tale either.  And they weren't even around a million years ago.

If Walt is referring to modern humans, then he is about 800,000 years out of sync.

On the other hand, if he is referring to recent thinking that climate change spawned modern humans, maybe he is thinking outside the square and predicting that with this new climate, a new species of Homo is just around the evolutionary corner.

Not here to argue the scientific case against human-caused global warming?

Early on Walt reckons he's not going to argue the science.

I'm not here to argue the scientific case against human-caused global warming, or anthropogenic warming, or AGW, or climate change or climate disruption or whatever is the current phrase that are being used by the alarmists to claim human-caused global warming. 

And immediately launched into his reasons for rejecting science - it's all about the money:

Now these are all code words for governmental control of energy consumption and consequently our standard of living. ...

...While scientists are best qualified to deal with the scientific and academic aspects of this question, we all of us here have to deal with the financial consequences of any actions taken based on bad science. And today's war on global warming is a fight to avoid the economic destruction of our society and the lowering of our standard of living.

Walt doesn't like being labeled a science denier or a fake expert saying:

Those of us who are sceptical of the alarmist claims are characterised as climate deniers or fake experts or against climate change. When everyone I know believes in climate change. Climate has been changing.

But in almost every sentence he utters he labels climate scientists as "alarmists".

Then, after saying he wasn't going to discuss the science, Walt starts putting up all the silly WUWT charts that people like denier Don Easterbrook uses and starts chanting the denialist mantras like "climate has been changing for 4.5 billion years" and "correlation does not mean causation".  I don't think he even once mentioned the words "greenhouse gas" or "greenhouse effect" though I admit I didn't watch it all the way through.  Maybe he hasn't heard of the terms.

Boring, boring...

Just another climate denier.

Here are Walt's conclusions - as if you couldn't guess.  Denial plus:

His final words were "Now it's up to you to come up with your own answers".  I don't agree.  If it were just up to us to come up with whatever answers that suited us we'd never learn anything.  Answers have to be grounded in evidence and fit with physics, chemistry and biology.  Just because you are anxious about your hip pocket is no reason to reject 200 years of science.

It's all a bit sad really.  Walt Cunningham reduced to being wheeled out sputtering science denial nonsense for a "destroy the environment" lobby group like CFACT.

Mother Jones had an article about Walt Cunningham a few months back:- Climate Denier at CPAC: Trust Me, I'm an Astronaut.  From reading that article it looks as if it was exactly the same speech as he gave at CFACT's talk in Warsaw.

From the WUWT comments

The comments are a mix of adoration of the astronaut and moaning that less than 3% of of the thousands of scientists who study the earth system share his opinions.  (I wonder why that could be - not!) (Archived here.)

Resourceguy wonders where all the science denying physicists have got to and says:

November 25, 2013 at 8:57 am
We need a lot more efforts like this. Where are the physicists? Surely Feynman would have stepped up to counter the junk science in proportion to the need for defense of the scientific method. Is everyone else hiding in fear with their grants?

lurker, passing through laughing says his voice is worth listening to (pity about the sounds he makes):

November 25, 2013 at 8:57 am
He is a truly interesting man, and has accomplished what the vast majority can only dream of. His credible and reasoned voice is one worth listening to.

omnologos thinks Walt is heroic for rejecting science for ideological reasons and says:

November 25, 2013 at 9:13 am
It’s got to have something to do with Cunningham’s lack of fear of alienating the NASA bosses during Apollo 7, something that costed him the Moon.

philjourdan points out that even though he rejects two centuries of climate science, at least he doesn't think NASA faked the moon landing and says:

November 25, 2013 at 9:23 am
And he denies the moon landings? I guess in Lewandowsky’s mind he does.

Ed_B is astonished to find that ice cores prove climate science.  Oops, I'm wrong there - deluded Ed_B thinks they prove the opposite and says (excerpt):

November 25, 2013 at 9:47 am
I am in agreement with his presentation. I would add that I was persuaded back in the 1980s by the early “science”, where the rise in CO2 was asserted to be causing a rise in temperature(A Scientific American article). I never checked the data myself until nearly 20 years later after someone challenged me.(I trusted “scientists” to keep me informed) I was astonished to find that I had never heard that the more accurate ice core analysis had disproved that early assertion. Why not? Ditto the missing hot spot, and ditto on the nearly identical temperature swings back over the last 100 years.

Leonard Weinstein notes that there are a few retired astronauts who can't accept climate science and says:

November 25, 2013 at 9:59 am
It is not just Cunningham, Harrison Schmitt and Buzz Aldrin, among many others, are also skeptics.

Like I said.  It's sad more than anything.  And someone at WUWT agrees. Simon says:

November 25, 2013 at 11:09 am

J. Swift says…”Courage, rationality and intelligence are rare commodities. Walter Cunningham has an abundance of all three plus a clear eye and a sharp mind. He’s the kind of man politicians fear and loathe and avoid debating at all cost.”

Sorry but I see a very different man here. I clearly don’t have the same sense of patriotism as do the US readers. I just see a sad old man fumbling around reciting hackneyed old sayings.

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Shultz, Susanne, and Mark Maslin. "Early Human Speciation, Brain Expansion and Dispersal Influenced by African Climate Pulses." PloS one 8.10 (2013): e76750.

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**DuKE - a collective noun eg A DuKE of deniers TM Lotharsson.

Talking to contrarians. Why do you do it? Or why not?

My short and "boring/mundane" article a couple of days ago generated a lot of interesting discussion, some of which related to the hows, whys and wherefores of directly engaging with people who reject climate science.  I hope the people I quote here don't mind my doing so.  Let me know if you do.

What are you hoping to accomplish?

Don Brooks asked a question, which a lot of us ask ourselves whenever we respond to contrarian comments:

...what is it that you're hoping to accomplish by engaging with the contrarians? 

What are your experiences?

K.a.r.S.t.e.N echoes some of my experience in face to face discussions with climate science deniers about science.  Some extracts:

... Being a working scientist in the UK (but not British), I do have the impression that many of my colleagues are fairly open-minded when it comes to discussion with "Sceptics". I admire their patience, but I haven't figured what keeps them going. I started to engage with "Sceptics" more than three years ago, and it took me quite a while to get into the "game". Tried polite, tried snarky, tried ironic ... to no avail in most cases. Went further meeting one of the self-proclaimed "lukewarmers" (twice) in order to figure how they think. Despite the fact that we get along very well on a personal level, it's a hopeless enterprise when it comes to the science. He just wouldn't trust me. That's the point where I finally gave up. I don't see any point in discussing the science with someone who clearly doesn't know the science well enough, but isn't willing to learn (regardless of the reason) at the same time. Hence my strict rule: No science argument with ANYONE who is unwilling to listen, while I can't learn a shred for myself from them in return. Ruthless ignorance! Works very well for me. There are other things than science which we can still talk about ;-). ...

I've had (short) discussions about climate science with people with whom I've worked who reject climate science, including people for whom I have a lot of respect.   I found the same as K.a.r.S.t.e.N.  We are talking at cross-purposes.  I find their thinking process on that topic is emotional, trapped by their ideology or world view or whatever, which makes reasoned discussion impossible.  If I were a climate scientist I would be wary of having any discussion about climate science with a professional disinformer like David Rose or Andrew Montford or Marc Morano.  I would assume ulterior motives based on what they've done in the past.

When it comes to virtual conversations, here is K.a.r.S.t.e.N's comment about "sceptic" blogs:

However, I have to point out one important aspect: I never even bothered to go to a "sceptic" blog to have a "discussion". Rather, I kept engaging in a fairly neutral forum (knowing that at least lurkers will learn something). How some colleagues endure the hostile tone in "sceptic" blogs or on twitter towards mainstream science and scientists is waaaaaaaay beyond me. Based on the experience I had in the past couple of years, I would probably watch the "sceptics" in their "home ground" a while in order to learn more about particular psychological conditions, but I would certainly not waste my time trying to have some sort of reasoned debate. Ideology and reason is mutually exclusice. If other people have a more optimistic point of view in that regard, fine with me. I'm afraid I can't share it. Most importantly, I am not willing to accept the smear and the utter disrespect from many contributors there. Smear and disrespect against the science, the scientist, and, sure enough, myself. Again, if some of my colleagues don't have a problem with it, perfectly fine with me. I do have a problem with it! And they shouldn't be surprised that others have a problem with it too. Disclaimer here: The problem is not with the particular person who makes weird claims, but with their opinion, which I am sure you agree are two seperate things....

What tactics work and do they "really" work?

John Russell also raised some good questions:

...I'm interesting in exploring why some scientists like Tamsin Edwards and Richard Betts have, let's say, a 'working relationship' with contrarian/sceptic/denial websites; while the relationship, both ways, between those sites and scientists like Mike Mann is akin to warfare.

Let's say first that I completely understand why the latter warfare exists. I guess I've been part of it myself as I cannot (I readily admit) keep my cool when dealing with people who are in denial, once they start making snide comments in my direction. For Mike Mann, to read the vitriol heaped on him by people who are frequently uneducated must be unbearable. To me his robust stance is very understandable.

When it comes to scientists like Tamsin and Richard Betts who are willing to engage, I have always admired their willingness to, let's say, 'build bridges' with the bloggers and commenters who create/frequent those sites. I think I understand their tactic and indeed I hope they are successful.

I'll interrupt here to ask Don Brooks question again.  For people who engage with climate science deniers on their own turf, what is it you are trying to achieve and how do you judge whether or not you've achieved it?

John continues:

But it does raise the question as to what gives them the ability to interact with these sites when other scientists cannot/will not. Given their unquestionable scientific knowledge and their input into the IPCC reports they surely must accept that one possible outcome—should the long-term worst-case climate projections turn out to be the most accurate—is a prognosis for society that is, at least, somewhat compromising. I know they won't be drawn on policy as scientists but do they, just as members of society, have concerns and worries about what the future might hold in a worst-case scenario? And if they do, how do they manage to keep civil when dealing with people whose agenda is to play down the possibility of human caused climate change doing it's worst and stall action to deal with it?

In my case, I credit engagement with "contrarians" for learning much of what I have about climate science. (My disposition is such that I have a thick skin when it comes to being attacked.  Got much thicker through lots of flames from climate science deniers.  These days I'm more able to choose whether or not to be civil rather than let my emotions dictate.)  I began discussing climate science on a share trading website, HotCopper, until eventually being banned from there (basically for not conforming to management's right wing extremism).  That led directly to HotWhopper.

My experience with WUWT is known to some of you.  It takes very little for Anthony Watts to ban people.  I speculate (based on observation) that he has an unwritten quota for people who accept science. No more than two at any one time.  Any more and he picks them off and bans them.  It's simply a numbers game with him.  He needs one or two because it helps stoke the flames of denial.  It gives his mob an extra target.  Much more than that and he fears losing control, so he bans people he deems least useful for his purpose.

Nick Stokes is an example of someone who manages to post comments at WUWT and only rarely responds to all the vile comments and personal taunts directed at him, and even then he responds in a calm manner and refers to science.  He doesn't sink to the level of the WUWT regular.

When I thought about it, the reason for my commenting at HotCopper was twofold:

• Researching comments was a really good way to learn about climate science.  The denier myths provided a focus for my reading.  
• I figured it would help inform lurkers who were interested in climate science. Not everyone at HotCopper was an extremist science denier, though you would not know that if you went by the comments on the board or by the attitude of the forum moderators.  

I learnt a few things, some to my chagrin.  For example:

• Lurkers do learn from good comments.  I got some positive feedback from people who said I helped expand their knowledge and prompted them to learn more about climate science.
• Don't be fooled.  I'd often respond to people's questions and get into a long discussion in which they hinted that they understood and accepted a facet of climate science.  I'd give myself a pat on the back.  But it's like finding mica and mistaking it for gold.  Next thing those same people are back to libelling climate scientists and talking nonsense.  It's like their minds sometimes bend a little to accommodate a rational thought only to have their brain spit it back out again at a later time.  Climate science doesn't fit their ideology so it's rejected. I doubt I made any difference at all to the ideas of hardened science deniers.

So although more than one of my staunchest foes at HotCopper were subsequently complimentary, in private and in public, and said they missed my posts, being "liked" or "admired" is not sufficient to affect the opinions hard-core deniers have about climate.

There are a lot of theories being bandied about in the cognitive science arena, including research by Stephan Lewandowsky and Dan Kahan.  "Talking with contrarians" may or may not do anything to change the mind of contrarians but, depending on the topic, it might make a difference to people who haven't much knowledge of the subject.

I think the best fora these days for public comment are probably the discussions sections of mainstream media or letters to the editor.  As well as adding to discussions on proper climate discussion boards at places like realclimate.org and skepticalscience.com.  Discussions on climate blogs help tease out the details of climate science.  For climate impacts, climate policy and climate solutions there are lots of excellent avenues like ClimateProgress, the Conversation, mainstream media etc.  In Australia two good places are ClimateSpectator and RenewEconomy.

In my view, commenting at niche denier blogs does not provide a lot of "value for money".  I rarely visit them except for WUWT.    Having said that, I'm not suggesting they be avoided.  For example, it pays to keep Anthony Watts' quota filled if only because sometimes normal rational people accidentally stray there  :)

How do you judge success? What works and what doesn't?

Getting back to Don Brooks' question - why do other people engage with contrarians and where?  What do you hope to achieve? What have you found that works and what doesn't? If you don't engage, then is that a deliberate decision and if so, why don't you?

I'm not referring to outlets that are primarily an information resource on climate science.  I'm referring more to people who do more proactive outreach.  Who comment on contrarian/disinformation blogs (eg Judith Curry, CA), science rejecting/conspiracy blogs (like WUWT or Jo Nova or Bishop Hill) or in the mainstream media, or who respond to tweets from hard-core "skeptics".

Finally, if you do engage with contrarians, how do you judge how successful your efforts are?  That question pre-supposes you've got a specific objective for your engagement, so it would be good see the different objectives people have too.  For example:

• To change people's thinking - that of lurkers or posters
• To change the "flavour" of a thread - playing the numbers game by inserting posts about science into an anti-science discussion - shifting the "balance"
• Other reasons.

Climatology Professor, David Legates, fails Climatology 101 at WUWT

It's odd how fake sceptics complain when research shows that conspiracy ideation is a predictor of science denial, albeit not as strong a predictor as more extreme free market ideology.  Anthony Watts protests quite loudly and at the same time posts articles that are rife with conspiracy ideation and right wing alarmism.

Today it's an article at WUWT by Dennis M. Mitchell and David R. Legates (archived here).  Their protest at climate science comprises the following:

Constructing a conspiracy theory of deception and incompetence

...climate alarmists are now scrambling to find new shelter from the stress coming from a public that increasingly realizes their doom-and-gloom predictions of climate chaos are based on shoddy data, faulty computer models and perhaps outright deception. The alarmist scientists have put themselves in a climate cataclysm box, and are desperate to protect their reputations, predictions and funding.

It's not uncommon for fake sceptics when faced with the evidence to say the evidence must be wrong.  Thing is though, it presupposes that all the scientists throughout the world who research anything relating to climate and earth systems are conspiring.  Otherwise how could all the evidence point to the same thing:-  that CO2 is increasing and the world is warming.  Never mind the fact that shipping companies must be involved in the conspiracy, pretending that they've been cutting across the Arctic in summer.  Photographers and news outlets must be in on the scam, too. Not to mention the birds and the bees who've shifted their domain, the glaciers and ice sheets and fish in the oceans.

The world is heating up

This dubious pair, we shall see, are knowingly engaged in disinformation.  Or at least one of them is doing it knowingly.

Disinformation

Despite the absence of warming in actual measured temperature records over the last 16 years, and near-record lows in hurricane and tornado activity, they still cry “wolf” repeatedly and try to connect every unusual or “extreme” weather event to human emissions of plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide. (Actually, people account for only 4% of all the CO2 that enters Earth’s atmosphere each year.)

There is no "absence of warming" over the last 16 years.  Take a look for yourself:

And that's just the surface temperature.  93% of heat is accumulating in the oceans.  Fake sceptics deny this fact, with this pair claiming:

Year after year, alarmists have changed their protective shells for more absurd answers regarding where the Earth has mysteriously stashed all the energy that greenhouse gases supposedly trapped. For years, alarmists said ocean waters were storing the missing energy. But when the ARGO project demonstrated that the heat was not in the ocean, at least down two kilometers (1.2 miles) beneath the surface, one prominent alarmist responded, “We are puzzled at the results.” We are not puzzled.

They are wrong of course as this chart illustrates:

Fig 3.21 Source: IPCC AR5 WG1

 The only way that seas can rise is by ocean warming and/or melting ice, both of which means the oceans are getting warmer.  The above chart from Chapter 3 of the IPCC report shows that sea levels are rising and the oceans are getting warmer.

As for the bit about the four per cent.  I presume they are talking about the carbon cycle and the annual exchange with the biosphere, land surface and oceans. I don't know if that's accurate or not.  But you'd have thought that even if Professor David Legates isn't crash hot at arithmetic, Dennis Mitchell, being a CPA, would be familiar with the notion of compound interest.  What we add to the air stays there for a very long time.  So far we've increased the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide by 40%. Not only that, but half of the waste CO2 that we're tossing into the air ends up in the ocean.  And now the ocean pH is dropping at an alarming rate.

Oceans are heating up

Of course most fake sceptics don't have a clue about science.  This pair, for example, write this sort of nonsense, knowing that many WUWT readers will fall for it, being science illiterate:

The “puzzling” facts triggered the predictable alarmist tactic of attacking the data and claiming the heat was hiding in the really deep ocean. Ignoring the physics of the problem – how the asserted heat was transferred from atmospheric carbon dioxide, through the sea surface, and beyond the first mile of ocean waters, without being detected – they expect us to believe that fluid thermodynamics is akin to magic.

First, I don't know what David and Dennis mean by "really deep ocean".  They couldn't be more wrong about the oceans heating up.  The heat is accumulating in the top two kilometres as the chart below shows.  I don't know if it's getting warmer at lower depths or not.

Source: NOAA/NODC

It doesn't get "beyond the first mile" without being detected.  It is indeed detected in the top 700 metres as well.  Just look at the chart below.  Do they honestly think otherwise?  I'd say not.  This is just another denier meme. Probably picked up when deniers used to claim there are a lot of undetected underwater volcanoes and people said, how come the top ocean is getting warmer but it's not as hot at depth.

Data Source: NOAA/NODC

Rhetorical strawman fallacy

It's a common tactic of disinformers to make up stuff.  For example, they write:

Have we forgotten that 1998 was to be the “tipping point,” after which Earth would warm uncontrollably? 

Who said that?  When? Where?  I've never even seen deniers try to claim that one before.  It's a load of codswallop.

Deniers reject the greenhouse effect

And this one is so worn out I'm surprised that any denier is still wearing it.

 increasing temperatures always preceded higher CO2

Fancy Anthony Watts allowing such an idiotic statement on his blog :)  Everyone knows that when CO2 is a feedback it has to come after the initial forcing.  This time it's happening as a forcing.  We're adding it to the air.  Whether CO2 rises as a forcing or a feedback doesn't matter.  It will raise the temperature of earth both times.

Now I can understand someone like Dennis Mitchell, who's just a CPA, not understanding climate science.  But I have to ask where he gets his disinformation from and why he doesn't accept science from scientists.  What makes him, a non-expert, think that he knows more than all the world's experts on the subject?  Is he a conspiracy theorist or is it extreme free market ideology that's motivating him to tell lies? I cannot accept that even extremist right wing views mean that one has to toss ethics out the window.  No, it's probably a character defect.

Judge them by their company

And you can judge a man by the company he keeps.  In this case, Dennis the Menace keeps company with known climate disinformer David Legates.  Now David has no excuse for spreading lies about climate science.  He is apparently a Professor of Climatology at the University of Delaware.  There is no way that he isn't aware of the greenhouse effect.  A professor.  Someone who purports to study climate. And he doesn't know the first thing about the properties of greenhouse gases?

I don't buy it.

PS You may remember that David Legates was a co-author with Christopher Monckton and Willie Soon. What did I say about judging a man by the company he keeps?  Anthony Watts, David Legates, Willie Soon, Christopher Monckton, Tim Ball - all denying science in a most ridiculous fashion.

Bob Tisdale rejects the greenhouse effect (again)

Perennially puzzled Bob Tisdale is a bit of a nutter.  He doesn't accept that carbon dioxide, water vapour and other gases like methane absorb long wave radiation and prevent earth from turning into a block of ice.  Anthony Watts has banned from WUWT a number of people who don't accept the greenhouse effect but he gives a platform to greenhouse effect deniers Bob Tisdale and the appalling Tim Ball (who co-authored the silly slayers book) and other people who indulge in pseudo-science and quackery.

Bob Tisdale has a "thing" for Dana Nuccitelli, who is a scientist who writes for SkepticalScience.com and the UK Guardian.  Bob's article is a dismal attempt to refute a recent blog article Dana wrote for the Guardian newspaper.  Dana irritates Bob because Dana writes sensible articles explaining different aspects of climate science.  Bob doesn't understand climate science.  He doesn't understand, for example, that the world's oceans hold a lot of water.  To heat them up by even a few tenths of a degree needs an awful lot of energy.

Bob denies global warming outright in his article (archived here).  The title of his post is:

Dana Nuccitelli Can’t Come to Terms with the Death of the AGW Hypothesis

And in a comment Bob writes this:

For the past few years in numerous blog posts, I’ve illustrated and discussed how the ocean heat content data and satellite-era sea surface temperature data both indicate they’ve warmed, but they’ve warmed due to naturally occurring, naturally fueled ocean-atmosphere processes—not manmade greenhouse gases. (October 18, 2013 at 7:27 am)

"Naturally fueled" is Bob's code word for "magic".  Bob is one of the utter nutters. He thinks that the physics of the greenhouse effect is a hypothesis and he thinks it doesn't hold up.  These days he's in the minority of deniers.  Most fake sceptics these days accept that there are such things as greenhouse gases and that the world is warming.  They'll argue various things like how much the world is warming and what the future climates will be like, but they realise they'd look pretty stupid if they denied any warming at all.  Bob Tisdale looks pretty stupid.

In order to fool his readers at WUWT, Bob has to fudge quite a lot.  For example, he writes about the ocean:

The warming of the top 700 meters has also slowed to a crawl, and is nonexistent in the North Atlantic and North Pacific, but more on that later.

What Bob doesn't mention at all is the Indian Ocean.  Nor does he mention the change in global ocean heat content for the top 2000 m of ocean.  He tries to persuade his readers that as long as they ignore the global data and only look at the parts of the earth system he wants them to look at, they can pretend that the world isn't warming.

It's like saying that if you measure the temperature of the inside of your refrigerator you can pretend that it's not 42° Celsius in the shade outside.

Here is a chart showing the ocean heat content down only as far as 700 metres, including the Indian Ocean that Bob Tisdale doesn't want his readers to know about:

Data Source: NOAA/NODC

The heat accumulating in the different oceans is added together to get the total heat accumulating in all the oceans.  The chart above shows just how much the system is heating up.

The chart below shows the top two kilometres of ocean.  It's accumulating more and more heat.  The heat from the top 700 metres is heating the layers below.  Bob doesn't want his readers to know that.

Bob's final contribution is a chart with surface temperature anomaly plotted on the same chart as temperature changes in the oceans!  I don't know how many of his readers fall for that trick.  Bob is ever hopeful that there are enough dumb readers who don't consider how much energy the ocean has to absorb to raise it by a degree Celsius, compared to the land surface.  (If any readers are grappling with that concept, think of the last time you spent at the beach on a hot day.  The temperature of the sea doesn't rise nearly as much as the sand does, despite getting the same amount of energy from the sun.)

On energy being accumulated on earth, from the AR5 WG1 IPCC report page TS-7 (my bold italics and paras):

It is virtually certain that Earth has gained substantial energy from 1971–2010 — the estimated increase in energy inventory between 1971 and 2010 is 274 [196 to 351] ZJ (1 ZJ = 1021 J), with a rate of 213 TW from a linear fit to the annual values over that time period (Box 3.1, Figure 1).

Ocean warming dominates the total energy change inventory, accounting for roughly 93% on average from 1971–2010. Melting ice (including Arctic sea ice, ice sheets, and glaciers) accounts for 3% of the total, and warming of the continents 3%. Warming of the atmosphere makes up the remaining 1%.

The 1971–2010 estimated rate of oceanic energy gain is 199 TW from a linear fit to data over that time period, implying a mean heat flux of 0.55 W m–2 across the global ocean surface area. Earth's net estimated energy increase from 1993–2010 is 163 [127 to 201] ZJ with a trend estimate of 275 TW. The ocean portion of the trend for 1993–2010 is 257 TW, equivalent to a mean heat flux into the ocean of 0.71 W m–2.

Sad Lindzen, Surprised Tisdale and another Mann-Bash on a dull day at WUWT

I don't know if it's just the mood I'm in but Anthony Watts' blog WUWT seems rather dull today.  Here's a quick rundown.

How the mighty have fallen

Richard Lindzen has had to resort to publishing his non-science at WUWT (archived here).  How long is it since he published anything himself?  It must be quite a while.  His article is not original. It's just a repeat of denier talking points, with stuff like:

arctic sea ice is suddenly showing surprising growth

Lindzen's wrong!

Sea ice this year isn't growing as fast as it did last year!  It was almost a year ago when deniers were enthralled at the growth of sea ice in the Arctic, observing "2012 is the fastest refreeze ever!".   This year they'll have to admit that 2013 won't be breaking that record.  This day last year ice added 36% to the minimum whereas today it's only added 31% to the minimum, and it had longer to do so (via JAXA)! /sarc

Tisdale on oceans

Perennially Puzzled Bob Tisdale is surprised that he found a chart he likes in the IPCC report (archived here).  I'm surprised at how short Bob's article is, compared to his usual fare.  He still manages to say really dumb stuff like this:

I’ve noted this a number of times before: the NODC should be commended for the amount of work that went into assembling all of the data required for their ocean heat content datasets.

But the NODC cannot be praised for their portrayal of their ocean heat content data as a globally complete dataset with little uncertainty.

"Little uncertainty"?  Bob must only look at the pictures without reading the text, where there is a strong emphasis on uncertainty and its measurement.  Even if he only looked at the pictures, he can't have understood them.  For example, from page 3-93 of Chapter 3 of the full report - note the gray bars:

Fig 3.21 Time series of changes in large-scale ocean climate properties. From top to bottom: global ocean inventory of anthropogenic carbon dioxide, updated from Khatiwala et al. (2009); global mean sea level (GMSL), from Church and White (2011); global upper ocean heat content anomaly, updated from Domingues et al. (2008); the difference between salinity averaged over regions where the sea surface salinity is greater than the global mean sea surface salinity (“High Salinity”) and salinity averaged over regions values below the global mean (“Low Salinity”), from Boyer et al. (2009).

Another Mann-bash

Anthony Watts hasn't done too much scientist-bashing lately, or not on a personal level.  He was probably getting twitchy, because he came up with an excuse that he figured probably wouldn't land him in court.

Anthony decided to fake some outrage at an image used as part of an election campaign (archived here).  He writes:

The imagery is dishonest.

Anthony Watts accusing someone of being dishonest.  Now there's irony in action.

Norfolk Virginia is a flood-prone city and there was an image highlighting the risks of rising sea level, over which Anthony decided to take personal offense.  It probably took him a while to figure out it wasn't "real" and he when he did he felt very foolish.  Enough to get real mad.  I can see him now, googling away looking for a picture of the house under beautifully clear water.  I doubt anyone else thought the picture was anything but illustrating a point.  But then, Anthony isn't all that bright.

Here's the picture, it's got a caption saying seas have risen by 14.5 inches since 1930.  I wonder if Anthony thought at first it was a very very tiny house, before he realised it was an illustration?

From the WUWT comments

Nope, sorry.  The Mann-bashers let forth their pent up fury in the usual fashion.  It's not repeatable. I barely scanned them myself because the ones I did read are so distasteful.  Ignorance at its worst, fuelled by the lack of opportunity Anthony's provided lately to come together as a lynch mob or vent their various spleens.  It's archived here for the ghouls.

Attacks on science are getting weaker but there is no room for complacency

Every time there is an important event relating to climate science, the disinformers try to wage a coordinated attack.  This time around, the attacks on climate science have been coordinated but weak (so far).  The disinformation machine has given up on outright denial that humans are causing global warming and restricting themselves to making up lies about what is written in past IPCC reports and the yet-to-be-released IPCC report.  Plus throwing in a lie about a fictional IPCC event.  Their argument these days has shifted from "it isn't happening" to "it's real but it won't be bad".

Australia's Prime Minister ignores science (and women)

The incoming Australian government under Tony "climate change is crap" Abbott has decided that climate change doesn't matter.  He has got around his "problem" of denying science by ignoring it.  He has decided to not appoint a Science Minister at all!  (That's better than appointing rabid science denier Dennis Jensen I suppose.)  No science Minister, no science portfolio.  What are you thinking, Tony?

He's also got around his problem in regard to women - by appointing only one - out of nineteen Ministerial appointments.  One!  He says he's disappointed there aren't two.  TWO out of NINETEEN!  What about aiming for ten out of nineteen, Tony?

Leading the charge against science

The disinformation charge began with Matt Ridley with an article in the Wall St Journal.  There were also two articles by David Rose in the Daily Mail (discussed here and here), which in turn were regurgitated by anti-science editor Graham Lloyd in The Australian.

There were some preliminaries.  For example anti-science campaigner and blogger, Donna Laframboise, put together articles from her silly little blog and published it as a book.  But that seems to have fallen flat.  I've not seen much on it apart from an equally silly article on WUWT.  Steve "mad, mad, mad" Goreham wrote on WUWT about a new Heartland Institute report by science deniers (an updated NIPCC report), but that didn't get much cyber-play either.  Which isn't surprising given the "arguments" these "not a climate" scientists put up in the past.

Anthony Watts is trying to get mileage by blowing the lies up into a ridiculous sounding sound-byte with an empty: "the IPCC edifice is crumbling".  His tweets are equally moronic. For example:

• Tweeting to Brad Johnson of Forecast the Facts: your religion just died.
• Tweeting to no-one in particular that: Amazed watching response 2 David Rose article. Warmists really DO want a catastrophe & are angry with anyone who suggests there might not be

Anthony Watts thinks climate science is a religion.  He joins economist Richard Tol (here and here) and others who protest climate science is a "religion" (see HotWhopper's Law of Science Denial).  And does he really think that people are pointing out his lies because they don't want the world to take action to mitigate global warming?  Talk about spin!

Deniers are shifting towards science

What is interesting is that the science deniers are accepting the IPCC report.  Instead of pretending it's wrong, they are misrepresenting what it contains.  That could be called progress of a sort and shows that the science maybe ahead in this war being waged on it by the anti-science crowd.

The list of most prominent deniers this time around is a bit different from George Monbiot's compilation back in 2009.  Some of his list have fallen by the way.  The one thing this current crop seems to have in common is an ideological opposition to doing anything to mitigate global warming.  They prefer a pay-after-disaster scheme, like the flood levy imposed on Australian taxpayers last year.  Here are some of the events that will require a "pay-after-disaster" rather than a cheaper preventative approach:

• Colorado floods 2013
• Sandy 2012
• Heat wave in China 2013
• Alberta floods 2013
• Catastrophic fires in Victoria 2009
• Russian and Eastern European heat wave 2010
• European heat wave 2003
• Bangladesh floods
• and many more like the above all around the world.

No room for complacency

Despite the fact that disinformers are showing signs of weakening there is no room for complacency.  For everyone's sake, it's important to take a strategic and multi-pronged approach to combating the people and organisations that want to destroy the world as we know it.  We need to keep "demolishing disinformation" when and where we find it.  Otherwise this new era of civilisation that showed such promise will be "stillborn".