Congrats to WUWT and Poptech

I've been poking fun at all the pseudo-science, conspiracy nuttery and fake scepticism that goes on at WUWT.  Now I'll give some credit where credit is due:

Congratulations!

Congratulations to WUWT for garnering 1 million 'I don't understand it but it's brilliant ... that proves we are heading for an ice age ... climate science is a hoax' comments from the tin foil hat brigade.

And special congrats to Poptech, who arch-denier and moderator DB Stealey (aka Smokey aka D Boehm aka dbs) selected as posting the one millionth comment.

The dubious honour couldn't have gone to a more suitable person.  Poptech typifies what WUWT is all about.

Poptech's winning comment didn't include the word 'scam' or 'hoax'.  However it was  in the conspiracy ideation ballpark (linking 'fiat money' and government 'threat' and 'coercion') and it was one of the 800+ comments on the "someone stole some emails therefore climate science is a hoax" thread, so close enough.


Update: 20/6/13 Poptech in the comments has kindly provided a link to a link to another take down of his list at the Carbon Brief - Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 and a link to his rebuttal of the rebuttals in the comments.

Has Anthony Watts Become a Leftist-Warmist?

Has Anthony Watts* done an about face?  Is he now advocating for regulations to cut emissions of waste CO2?

Judge for yourself.  Anthony has put up an article in which he mocks the right wing fear campaign against environmental regulations and the global cooling 'scare', that some newspapers in the USA were engaged in during the 1970s.

1. Anthony Watts mocks anti-regulation rant from the 1970s

Right up the top of the article, Anthony Watts has posted an old clipping from the early 1970s.  The clipping illustrates the extremist right wing 'fear campaign' against the environmental regulations (Eg President Nixon's Clean Air Act), which were introduced back then to control smog and other pollutants that were becoming a huge problem in the industrialised world.  It includes fear-mongering statements like this:

pollution, or the effort to control it, could be fatal to our concept of a free society

and he even highlighted this bit:

"We will be forced to sacrifice democracy by the laws that will protect us from further pollution."

Watts says the article "reads almost like some of the manifestos we get from warmists today", but that was probably a typo.  More accurately, it "reads almost like some of the manifestos we get from right wing shock jocks today".

It's extreme right wingers who are scared stiff of regulation.  These people are mostly deniers (it's the reason many people deny reality), but may include some 'warmists'.

Watts himself has said the reason he backed off from viewing global warming as a threat was because he feared that policies to address the problem might involve a rise in taxation.  (See about 58 seconds into this video interview.)

2. Anthony Watts mocks 'global cooling scare'

In his article, Anthony included a list of US newspapers (courtesy poptech) that speculated about global cooling back in the early 1970s during a couple of long snowy winters in the USA.  Watts is mocking them.

Logical conclusion?

One can only conclude that:

• Anthony Watts now fully accepts the popular press was way out in the 1970s and that, as we know now, the world is warming dangerously.
• Anthony no longer fears regulation designed to reduce CO2 emissions, (agreeing that the environmental regulations of the 1970s weren't 'fatal to our concept of a free society' and definitely preferable to suffering a perpetual asian-style smog).

Will Watts stop posting articles speculating that the world is about to enter an ice age?

Will he now start strongly advocating for regulations to cut CO2 emissions?

(Will he talk to his his dog and ask Kenji what the science says?)

Time will tell.

* Anthony Watts is blogger and a (former?) denialist of global warming.