HotCopper Whopper: Dead Heat!

The heat is affecting deniers on HotCopper, new ones keep climbing out of the woodwork as more extreme events are reported.

Dead Heat

Speaking of dead heat, Muzzarati and Nihilism seem to want to head in both those directions!

500 million years ago...

First off, Muzza (of Dog's Breakfast fame) yearns for the hot lifeless deserts of more than 500,000,000 years ago when CO2 levels were 7000 ppm.  Life did start to flourish in the late Cambrian - just not on land.  It wasn't till CO2 dropped and oxygen increased in the atmosphere that the land was colonised with plants and animals.

Source: HotCopper.com

It was later in the Cambrian Period after atmospheric CO2 dropped a lot and the air filled with oxygen that evolution picked up a pace (before being set back by subsequent glaciations).  While there still wasn't any life on land, in the ocean there evolved all sorts of different multicellular organisms, including the precursors to insects and spiders.  Needless to say all this took place over millions of years, not a few centuries, so there was plenty of time for evolution and adaptation.

Muzza says people who know science are 'human haters'.  Muzza's willing to let CO2 surge to levels that virtually no current living organism could survive - not on land certainly.

You'll have noticed that muzzarati is also a 'communist-socialist-cultist' conspiracy theorist.

...or 5,000 years ago

Nihilism on the other hand knows the earth is at least 5,000 years old, might even be much more if you 'trust the science' like he does ...

Source: HotCopper.com

adding in a later post...

...psst even creationism says 10000 years.

Neither of them will entertain the idea that it's most unwise to keep pouring huge amounts of waste CO2 into the air day after day, year after year.

So who wins the HotWhopper of the week award?  The Cambrian Period enthusiast who wants to send us back 500,000,000 years, or the Young Earther who knows nothing existed till 5,000 years ago?

I'll call it a dead heat!

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!

A Whopper of a Dog's Breakfast

Today's doggie dish is Muzzarati from HotCopper, who presents a delightful mishmash of science, nonsense, politics and drivel all wrapped up in a single post.

Muzza on water vapour

Muzza starts off well enough, if a bit sloppily:

                        Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

Indeed.  As Gavin Schmidt writes here in attributing absorption of long wave radiation:

We find that water vapor is the dominant substance — responsible for about 50% of the absorption, with clouds responsible for about 25% — and CO2 responsible for 20% of the effect. The remainder is made up with the other minor greenhouse gases, ozone and methane for instance, and a small amount from particles in the air (dust and other "aerosols").

At this point, muzzarati could have continued to show off a basic understanding of climate science with something along the lines of:

Unlike CO2, water vapour has a very short lifetime in the atmosphere - a matter of hours to days.  From early human civilisation to the beginning of the industrial revolution, when CO2 was fairly steady at around 285 ppm, the main causes of fluctuations in climate were things like large volcanic eruptions and changes in the amount of incoming solar radiation.    

Now that we've added another 40% of CO2 to the atmosphere, earth is getting hotter.  Warmer air means more water vapour in the atmosphere.  The extra water vapour is what's known as a positive feedback. The more carbon dioxide we put in the air the hotter earth gets and the more water evaporates and the more it can stay in the air before precipitating.  Earth warms not just from the extra CO2 but also from the extra H2O.  Not good!

But no.  Muzza decides to take the low road - to denialism.

Muzza comes to the defense of an inanimate gas

Muzza makes a special plea on behalf of atmospheric CO2, saying it isn't BAD.  P'raps maudlin from too much of whatever is mixed with his Soda stream?

                      Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

I won't quibble over referring to the CO2 absorbed by plants for photosynthesis as 'plant food'.  But 'a life giving gas'? Only if you are a plant.  Try inhaling pure CO2 to see if it's a life 'giver' or a life 'taker'.

Muzza's religious experience

              Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

Muzzarati gives God thanks for creating CO2.  Fair enough if religion is your thing.  We wouldn't be here if not for CO2.  Earth would be a frozen desert.

Muzza on causation and temperature trends

                   Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

Muzza has a senior's moment, forgetful of saying right up front that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.   What greenhouse gases do is absorb some of the long wave radiation leaving the surface, which would otherwise go straight out to space.  Increase carbon dioxide and for a long time you'll get more energy coming in than going out, resulting in global warming. QED. But Muzza does a complete about face and now rejects the science.

As for 'cooling' - the last decade is the hottest in the temperature record.  Here's a chart of global temperatures showing the earth is very much in a warming trend:

Muzza on terminology:

             Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

Yes, climate change is most definitely real and caused by global warming. We see evidence every day.

Muzza probably knows that the term 'global warming' refers to the rise in global average surface temperatures and ocean temperatures.  This heating up of the earth will change climates around the world.  (Or maybe Muzza confuses changeable weather with a changing climate.)

On the other hand, Muzza could be an old dog with a short term memory problem, who thinks this 1975 paper by Wallace S Broecker was published only yesterday: Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?

Finally Muzzarati steps right in the denialist dog poo:

                                                          Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

Muzzarati should take his/her own advice.  Here are a few pointers for free:

Nature Climate Change
IPCC reports
Science
Journal of Climate
PNAS

And many more besides - perhaps Muzzarati could wander through Google Scholar.