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Showing posts with label nuttery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nuttery. Show all posts

Friday, June 21, 2013

Anthony Watts promotes more nuttery. Has he lost all his senses?

Sou | 12:29 AM Go to the first of 3 comments. Add a comment

More fruitcake anyone?

Nutty fruitcake
Anthony Watts is serving up nutters again.  The lunacy keeps coming.  Do you reckon Anthony is really after this after all?

He's promoting a third abomination from Ronald D Voisin.  This retired engineer boasts he got a BSEE degree from the Univ. of Michigan – Ann Arbor in 1978 and has held various management positions at both established equipment companies and start-ups, helped initiate and has authored/co-authored 55 patent applications, 24 of which have issued.


Just kill off all the insects, microbes and mammals!


You can see why he apparently had such a hard time holding down a job.  This very same Ronald D Voisin maintains all of these notions apparently at the same time:
  • burning hydrocarbon doesn't produce carbon dioxide
  • humans are not mammals
  • there is no greenhouse effect, the earth stays warm by magic
  • there is a greenhouse effect and it's caused by insects
  • it is trivially within our means to reduce the world's microbes and insects by six per cent
  • if there is a greenhouse effect, it's easier to control it by killing off other mammals, insects and microbes than by shifting to clean energy
  • people who accept science will be 'embarrassed' if global warming doesn't result in catastrophe.

Here is one of Ronald D Voisin's tables, setting out his hit list in order of preference:



At least one WUWT-er is having trouble believing this one.  TomB says:
June 20, 2013 at 6:48 am  I was assuming by the “trivially within our means to further control microbes and insects” quote to just be poorly worded. I’ve worked with engineers throughout my career and I have great respect for them. But the overwhelming majority can’t write very well. What I’m assuming he meant was that we have no ability whatsoever to control microbes or insects. But I’ll wait for clarification from the author.

Nope, Tom.  Going by Ronald D Voisin's previous articles he meant exactly what he wrote.

It's taken three posts from Ronald D Voisin before the deniers object or even notice his crazy insect theory.
Ian H says:
June 20, 2013 at 6:53 am  Where did the microbe and insect thing come from? This is the first time I’ve ever heard this mentioned. I’m actually extremely sceptical :-) that you could cut the population of microbes and insects by six percent in a controlled way without causing immense disruption to the entire ecology.

johnmarshall says:
June 20, 2013 at 6:58 am  The BBC interviewed a microbiologist from Edinburgh who ststed that she had identified hundreds of bacteria living in soil and absolutely no idea what 95% of them actually did. So a good idea to leave them alone since they might even be, odds on, beneficial.
Man should learn more about his planet and not try to change things he little understands. The law of Unintended Consequences looms large and wide.

WasteYourOwnMoney says:
June 20, 2013 at 7:07 am
Engineers are wired to solve problems. However this proposed solution has “law of unintended consequences” written all over it. It is in fact, just the type of solution we are accustomed to expect from our green friends.

Is it a Poe?  Margaret Hardiman suggests it might be.  I don't believe it is.
Margaret Hardman says:
June 20, 2013 at 9:34 am  I know all too well the mentality of most commenters on this site. Perhaps this series of post are an elaborate Poe since even some of the faithful think this idea is rubbish. But why did it take three incoherent episodes to do so?


Clean energy is a killer?


Talk about alarmist, this from cba who seems to think that a shift to clean energy would "cause the extermination of 90% of the human race"! (excerpt):
June 20, 2013 at 9:47 am  ...It is interesting how so many Malthusians have come out about how impossible and potentially catastrophic eliminating 6% of the bugs would be yet advocate positions that would cause the extermination of 90% of the human race evidently without ever having a single thought as to the consequences of their position.

How many more?


How many more utter nutteries is Anthony Watts going to promote?  What with making a whole heap of the potty peer Monckton's posts "sticky", embracing David Archibald's funny sunny prediction that before seven years is out the earth will get colder than the coldest period in the entire Holecene, and a whole host more like these crackpot ideas, just in the past six months.  Plus all his conspiracy ideation, his straight up bald faced lies, I'm thinking Anthony Watts has either given up because he realises he's lost too many rounds and has decided to specialise in the 8% only, or he's gone around the bend.

And there are people alive that take WUWT seriously?  Seriously?

PS Just in case Anthony Watts finds his marbles, I've saved this one for posterity.



Right wing authoritarians, among other attributes, are characterised by their:
  • Illogical thinking
  • Compartmentalised brains - are able to hold contradictory thoughts at the same time as if they are all true at once.

Monday, April 29, 2013

An Utter Nutter: Anthony Watts has "Gone Lysenko" in a Bout of Recursive Fury

Sou | 11:00 AM Feel free to comment!
Anthony Watts comes up with two nutty conspiracy theories in one day on WUWT.

Anthony Watts is in Full On Whacko Conspiracy Theory Mode

Research suggests that conspiracy ideation is (weakly) linked to rejection of science. Today Anthony Watts has 'come out' as a whacky paranoid conspiracy theorist of the Lysenko kind.  See below for his whacky paranoid conspiracy of the Lewandowsky kind.

Anthony is touting the "Lysenko" theory.  At its extreme this theory is that climate science is a hoax that involves:

  • hundreds of thousands of scientists keeping a 'secret'
  • millions of scientific observations and experiments being coordinated across space and centuries and disparate scientific disciplines and "faked" so well that results all point to the same conclusion
  • cooperation by all nations, including nations at war with each other, of opposing ideologies, whether democratic, autocratic or somewhere in between
  • all scientific publishing houses as well as all the world's mainstream media keeping the 'secret'
  • the majority of ordinary laypersons in every nation in the world.  Seven generations of the majority of the world's population are members of this secret cult and have managed to keep a secret from seven generations of the eight per cent of the population, since the early 1800s.

Click here for an example of how such people think (it's not as uncommon as one might think).

About the paranoid conspiracy theory of "Lysenko-ism"

Lysenko was a Stalinist bureaucrat who, by coercion and worse, prevented genetic research in agriculture - particularly in relation to plant breeding.  Anthony is promoting a whacky "Lysenko" conspiracy theory that's going the rounds in various guises - this time in Forbes in relation to climate science.  (The theory can be adapted to any subject with which paranoid conspiracy theorists disagree.  For example - feminism is also a Lysenko Plot!)

What Tony thinks?

Here are some excerpts from WUWT:
  • This same practice of Lysenkoism has long been under way in western science - I don't know how they explain the same results being obtained in all nations of the world
  • billions from government grants and neo-Marxist environmentalist largesse, and official recognition and award - note the similarity of language with this post and the obsession with money.  If only scientists themselves got some of those "billions" - they could retire!
  • promoting vastly increased government powers and control over the private economy. - now we get to the heart of the matter, suggestive of extremist 'right wing' nuttery
If you took Tony for something of a nutter, now you can see just how much of a nutter he really is.

More evidence that Anthony has completely "lost it" and is just an utter nutter

From Greg Laden - Tony is demonstrating Lewandowky-style recursive fury:

The Recursive Fury paper explores how conspiracy theories evolve as hard facts emerge.

Anthony writes a "smear" article about Professor Lewandowsky.  As Simon Donner has noted, it is reminiscent of The Onion.

Anthony moans about papers co-authored by Professor Lewandowsky that explore connections between conspiracy ideation and (climate) science denial.  Conspiracy theorists don't like such things being examined so they make up conspiracy theories! Anthony adds to the weight of evidence.

Professor Lewandowsky won a grant from the prestigious Royal Society and a 'mobility award', which requires him to relocate from UWA to Bristol University.  Anthony spins this move as a "furtive exit", conspiracy ideation much!.  When a commenter makes clear that the move is required, Anthony doesn't step back and say - Oh - it's for research purposes.  Oh no, instead he evolves his conspiracy theory to "following the money".  Doubling down on "conspiracy ideation".  (As someone has pointed out, the move won't necessarily involve more "money".)

You couldn't wish for a better example of recursive fury in action!

(Can't help wondering if Anthony thinks Foxgoose's "complaint" - namely "they got my conspiracy theory wrong" is his version of "professional".)