More denier weirdness: scientists are not real people...

...according to one science denier

According to HotCopper's Hanrahan, now scientists aren't REAL PEOPLE.  Here are some excerpts from a thread on Hotcopper (in which I got a mention):

Hanrahan, who has been actively denying global warming for years, doesn't seem to know that:

• the IPCC reports list contributors who are real people, or that
• each IPCC chapter has a list of references like this with each paper written by real people, or that 
• Google Scholar allows you to search papers on climate change that are authored by real people , or that 
• SkepticalScience has a facility to search for abstracts and authors of scientific papers of the past twenty years or so, written by real people.  

He writes in HotCopper's S&M club (subs req'd), making sure he gets his denial in early in case someone responds:

To sceptics the consensus is non-existent and meaningless even if it were so.  I am asking for something more like NAMES of who comprises this so-called consensus.  You cannot even prove there are more than a few fanatics. I can show thousands who disagree. Over to you.

Tinnitus does respond and writes:

Well you could ring up each of the authors of the 32.6% of the 11944 climate abstracts that endorsed AGW in the Cook survey. I am sure that will keep you busy for a while. Or you could ring up the authors of the 0.7% of the 11944 climate abstracts that didn't endorse AGW.
That will not take you long at all.

To which Hanrahan replied - but scientists aren't PEOPLE:

Tin, you talk about statistical analysis of papers I am talking PEOPLE.

A consensus comprises people and I claim you don't actually have many. You have dodged this for years PRETENDING you don't need real people.

Here ya go Hanrahan.  These people are REAL climate scientists:

These media reports are REAL, too, and prepared by REAL people:

This is REAL as well:

Visit The Consensus Project

And a bonus for Hanrahan who, despite having had the case proven to him over and over and over again, also wrote earlier in the same thread:

If you think it is getting hotter, prove your case, don't try to censor me.

A real global land and sea temperature chart, based on data collected and analysed by real people and plotted by a real blogger:

There is plenty of other evidence for young Hanrahan, if only he wanted to see it!

What makes fake skeptics tell such Whoppers?

A body of research is building to try to determine what it is that motivates some people to make stuff up, particularly about topics like climate science.

A lie is different to a mistake.  Mistakes can be corrected.  When people deliberately tell lies they generally have to dig deeper holes for themselves as aspects of the lie are revealed. (In a similar vein, later in this post I make reference to a paper that deals with attempts to construct fantasy conspiracy theories, and how the theories are altered as facts become too obvious or contradictory.)

For example, what drives someone to tell a whopper as blatantly false as this, referring to global surface temperatures and claiming they aren't rising :



Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

Does he even know he is telling fibs or is he lying to himself as well as to everyone else?  It can't be called a simple mistake.  The youngster has to be aware that the science shows that global temperatures are rising.  Even though he has often boasted (on a science forum!) that he refuses to read science from scientific sources (eg Nature, CSIRO etc), he can't help but have seen one of the dozens of global temperature charts posted on HotCopper similar to this one from NASA (with my markings showing the temperatures of 100 years ago).

Incidentally the lad's promise to not post as much in the future may or may not be a lie.  It might be classed as a broken promise or might even be true.  He still seems to be posting an awful (sic) lot, but the posts are not worth counting (or reading, except for entertainment value.  They are of similar caliber to the above (and these).)

Stephan Lewandowsky and colleagues have been doing some related research, particularly on how some people have a tendency to lie to themselves; and how they find comfort and support in building on each other's lies - a group approach to fabricating Whoppers.  This paper on motivated reasoning drew considerable attention from fake skeptics, many of whom manufactured complex conspiracy theories in an attempt to reject the findings.  In doing so they helped prove them.  So much so that it spawned a follow-up paper (by Lewandowsky and different colleagues), which has just been accepted for publication.

There are some revealing comments on related articles on Shaping Tomorrow's World and elsewhere.  (Unfortunately many of the silliest responses to those articles were removed.)

The recent Lewandowsky paper proposes conspiracist ideation may go some way to explaining how people kid themselves and others and includes some interesting analyses, using the examples in the blogosphere to break down the processes involved in developing conspiracies.  It reveals how those conspiracies change shape (or not) when irrefutable contradictory evidence emerges.  The authors also include some provisos, such as:

Although there appears to be ample evidence to classify the response to LOG12 at least in part as conspiracist, one must guard against overextending this conclusion: There are other streams of science denial that are detectable in the response to LOG12. For example, the repeated re-analysis of data, involving the elimination of \inconvenient" subsets of data points based on fairly fluid criteria, has a long-standing history in other contentious arenas.

Fake skeptics often lack self awareness.  Ironically, a blogger called Watts last week posted an article about the Lewandowsky follow up paper on conspiracy ideation immediately after posting an article about the attempts by ATI to uncover what they believe to be a fantastic conspiracy (which they 'believe' will be uncovered in scientists' emails).

Watts is not quite as bad a conspiracist as Jo Nova and her partner David Evans, who subscribe to anti-semitic conspiracies involving gold and fiat money among other weird ideas.  Or the peer Monckton, who is a self-confessed 'birther' (and who has such 'batshit crazy' ideas that even the hard-boiled science denier, Andrew Bolt, distances himself).  However Watts continues to publish articles by the mad monk and supports Jo Nova.

Many people who reject climate science will try to tell you about the giant world-wide conspiracy that presumably began about 200 years ago.  According to them, scientists are perpetrating a 'hoax'.  This 'hoax' must involve not only thousands of scientists throughout the world, past and present, but engineers, manufacturers and all humankind who make use of or benefit from the knowledge that CO2 absorbs radiation of particular wavelengths.

Humans as a species are quirky.

(To whom it may concern - that is, anyone who might have been too scared to post a comment: I expect to rarely have to resort to deleting comments from this blog. Nor would I expect to ever 'disappear' entire threads, especially not ones in my honour :D. The blog doesn't attract many comments.  It's mainly just a bit of fun.  So far some comments have been remarkably revealing, others comical, others informative, others correcting my errors (both real and imagined) and some - thanks people - personally supportive; and some all of the above.)

How to be a Denier Troll

Another lesson in the crude art of trolling from Hanrahan, the resident expert on HotCopper's Science and Medicine S&M forum.

These are the only posts of Hanrahan's (to date) in a thread that began with a copy of this article on climate change from the Washington Post.

You will note the absence of: a) science and b) any reference to the substance of the original post.

(Hanrahan has been by far the most prolific poster on the thread making six posts so far.  I'll leave it to the reader to decide the value of his contribution except to point out that 6 x 0 = zero.)

1. Religion and Al Gore

Post an inane comment, carefully avoiding anything that could be construed as 'scientific'.  Throw in religion and Al Gore for good measure:

Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

2. The Sky is Falling 1 

Check a map to see where in the world is China.  Observe that air quality elsewhere is improving.  (Remain unaware that it was strong environmental regulations that led to cleaner air and that sulphur emissions can mask warming.)  Finish off with labelling as 'fools' anyone who understands science.

Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

3. The Sky is Falling 2 

Note the accolades that your previous post drew.  Repeat the last line hoping for more applause.  Finish off by having a go at the farmers whose cherry crops were badly damaged in the Big Aussie Heat.

Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

4. Return to Religion - with No Sense of Irony 

Happy that your previous comment got lots of applause, return to the 'religion' refrain.  Then proceed to call scientist Younglogga a 'clear liar' - while at the same time complaining about imagined insults and about being called a troll.

Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

5. Shift the topic to guns

Keep shifting the topic away from the original one about climate change, this time to guns:

Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

6. It's all about ME

Finally (maybe or maybe not), Hanrahan gets to the crux of the matter.  It's all about him.  (Bemoaning the fact that his post number 4 above was moderated).

Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

End of lesson.

A Whopper of a Heatwave II: HotCopper Deniers

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

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

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

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

Reaction from deniers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HotCopper Dumbest Post Award

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

An alien view?

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

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

Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

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

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

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

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

Denmor says science is 'alarmist claptrap'.

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

Climate science denier (knee) jerks

Stephan Lewandowsky does research in one of the more fascinating areas of science - human cognition.  In this article on independentaustralia.net, he writes about two different modes of reasoning: rapid reasoning and deliberative reasoning.

Rapid reasoning "relies on relatively shallow analysis of stimuli, which allows us to respond in situations in which time is at a premium".

Deliberative reasoning "requires slow deliberation but is guided by more complex rules".

Lewandowsky writes that: "Arguably, the former may be triggered by emotive stimuli, because emotion may serve as a “stopping rule” for reasoning — in a nutshell, the more emotion, the less deliberation."

Now that's not to say that emotion can't play a useful role in reasoning.  What Lewandowsky was writing about was the tricks some people play to confuse.  For example by triggering an emotion using some word or phrase quite unrelated to the subject at hand in proximity to the topic.  (Many deniers will say they don't accept climate science because of taxation!)

An example of 'rapid reasoning'

I'll stick my neck out here and say that when it comes to some topics, like climate science, there are people whose emotional triggers are so sensitive that they don't get to exercise their 'deliberate reasoning' capability. Here's an example of an emotive reaction - Hanrahan confuses a critique of a book with the 'assassination' of a character. 

Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

(Tin - or tinnitus, is one of the mildest-mannered most polite contributors to the S&M forum.  He rarely lets the trolls rattle him.  To deniers he's a bad guy because of his science background - and to make things worse, he has an economics degree as well.)

Rapid reasoning vs no reasoning

Using 'rapid reasoning' seems to me to be different to having limited reasoning.  For example, Moondoong in a recent comment here uses the argument that human species survived the last glacial maximum therefore humans will survive global warming.  That's not an uncommon argument from science deniers.  Moondoong goes further than most and talks blithely about humans surviving constant 47C without plants and animals and almost no rain, as if all humankind could still be fed, clothed and housed!

Moondoong is probably right that the human species would survive - albeit in small refuges on the planet - even if the average global surface temperature goes above 4 degrees of warming.  Humans as a species are very adaptable.  But although our species may survive as it survived climate change in the past, most of the world's population probably wouldn't just as it didn't in the past.  (That becomes a 'definitely wouldn't' if we let the earth warm six degrees or more.) 

The argument of 'we'll adapt' is neither rapid reasoning nor deliberate reasoning.  Maybe it's self-deception - trying to rationalise the irrational.

Deliberative reasoning

The average science denier who comments on websites generally leaves their deliberative reasoning behind.  Some professional deniers use it to great effect.  Anthony Watts uses deliberative reasoning, though often too transparently, to tweak his readers' emotional response and get a knee jerk reaction to his latest 'bombshell'.  Many of his readers are so well trained their emotional response acts as a block preventing deliberative reasoning whenever Watts mentions leading climate scientists by name. 

Believe it or not, I didn't even have to search the site.  The latest WUWT article is in response to a post by Greg Laden who listed the top climate stories of 2012.  (Eli Rabett has a poll going on this.) 

The WUWT article is a guest post by Joe Bast of the Heartland Institute in which he tries to justify his equating serial killers with acceptance of climate science, among other things. The article is headed with an image of Peter Gleick's name and uses Gleick's name in the title. (Peter Gleick exposed some of the shenanigans of the Heartland Institute.)  To make sure he gets the 'right' response, Anthony adds a postscript, interpreting Greg Laden's 'about' page as illustrative of a "strange and hateful mind". (If you read Greg's page you'll see Anthony's comment is more an indictment on WUWT readership than on Greg Laden. Greg doesn't pull his punches and his dry humour is lost on climate science deniers.) 

Back to knee jerks.  Here is the second comment to Bast's article - classic WUWT.  Exactly the sort of emotional response Anthony and Joe were hoping for:

The article, the title, the image at the top and Anthony's post script are an example of deliberative reasoning aimed at evoking an emotional response.  In this instance my guess is that it would only work with true denialists.

Further reading

If you want to read more on the subject of emotion and its role in reason, this paper by Muramatsu and Hanoch to which Stephan Lewandowsky linked looks interesting. Neat title: Emotions as a mechanism for boundedly rational agents: The fast and frugal way.

PS Happy 2013 - the millennium has hit its tumultuous teens!