Charles Battig shows signs of hysteria at WUWT

Denier's are a weird mob, rife with contradictions. Anthony Watts has an article at WUWT, written by someone in an hysterical funk (archived here). His name is Charles Battig, and this time the weird is that his article appears under the title:

Climate Change Hysteria and the Madness of Crowds

You'd think that if someone wanted to claim that scientists or the general public are hysterical, that person would avoid sounding hysterical himself. Instead his article is full of hyperbole and flowery rhetoric. As well as all the usual insinuations and fake allegations you will have come to expect from science deniers. I've highlighted some of Charles' own words:

Years of relentless doomsday prognostications by a variety of public voices spanning the political-scientific spectrum have found their mark in a gullible and guilt-prone public. There is a Medusa-like quality in the serpentine web of doomsday prophets, including members of the Club of Rome, Paul Ehrlich’s “Population Bomb,” and the current White House science advisor, John Holdren.

That's given me an idea for a novel. Maybe it's already been written. The plot would be against a background of a twentieth century minus the warnings from the Club of Rome. A twentieth century without Paul Ehrlich. And slipping into a twenty-first century where a government has no science adviser. (That last one could be modeled on the Australian Government, which is the first government in 83 years where there is no science portfolio.)

Imagine a world where breakthroughs in medical and agricultural science have increased the life span of humans - but a world without any family planning. A world of ten or 12 billion or more people. Imagine a world where there was no government cooperation in waste management or resource use. A world in which there were no limits on pollution or growth or exploitation of natural resources. A world that was permanently under a shroud of thick smog, full of sulphur dioxide and other noxious gases. A world devoid of national parks and state forests. A concrete world where a forest, perhaps even a tree was a rarity. A world where the hole in the ozone layer spread to the mid-latitudes and medical and agriculture science could not prevent genetic aberrations.

Would some people get hysterical in such a world, I wonder?

Would they act as hysterically as Charles Battig when he waves his arms in protest at science, with his banal hockey stick protests and clichéd "Al Gore is fat" comments?

Al Gore’s contribution to making climate change a co-equal amongst the four horsemen of the apocalypse is matched by M. Mann’s reinterpretation of global temperature history. Repeated refutations of “faulty” science and failed predictions of climate calamities have not deterred these marketers of doom. Cut the head off, yet it lives on.

Poor old Charles. He's in a real tizz. He is despondent because he reckons not enough people are taking any notice of the fake sceptics and their attempts to confuse. He makes a point of listing some of his favourite fake sceptics and disinformers, letting us know about his own paranoid conspiracy theories:

Countering this climate doomsday propaganda has been a number of scientists and independent organizations. Manipulation of the historical temperature record by our own government agencies has been documented. Such revisions serve to make the historical record conform to the political aims and views of our Federal government, that global warming is occurring and is linked to fossil fuel use.  Proliferation of internet access has provided the new open public soap box, independent of traditional media, itself fully in the climate panic mode. Web sites maintained by Anthony Watts, Marc Morano, and Steve Milloy are just a few of many striving to get the unpoliticized science before the public.

Independent organisations? That's a joke. As John Mashey's investigations reveal, funding for many of those so-called "independent" organisations are funneled through the same "independent" source and sing from the same hymnal. Some of them share people too.  They have to. There aren't enough deniers to go around to not share them.  Denier Bob Carter, for example, gets wheeled out by various different organisations as one of their own.

Update: I'd never come across Charles Battig before, but it's ironic that he talks about "independent organisations". You can read on desmogblog about him and his own organisation:

VA-SEEE, described as a “grassroots organization,” was founded by climate change skeptic Fred Singer who is also president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP). The VA SEEE appears closely related to SEPP and is also connected to the “Climate Chance Reconsidered” report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).

As for Charles' "manipulations" - that pure denier tripe, trying to make out that temperature records of growing metropoli that have shot up higher than the surrounding areas should not be adjusted downward to account for the effects of urbanisation. Or that there should not be corrections made when a weather station is moved or read at a different time of day from the norm.

Anthony Watts is not political? Pull the other one. As for swiftboater Marc Morano - the person who promoted falsehoods about John Kerry so he wouldn't be elected President. Or Steve Milloy, who writes "junk science".

As you know, with many deniers it all comes down to their hip pocket. Money and self-interest is what drives a lot of people to reject science. Charles' article is no different. He weaves his money-mania throughout and ends up comparing climate science to the tulip bubble of the seventeenth century.

By the way, on Charles Battig's own website, he's shown that Anthony's "guest essay" was actually written for the right wing website "American Thinker" not for WUWT. Anthony Watts only gets thrown (or pinches) the crumbs these days.

From the WUWT comments

Well, it appears that Anthony Watts' readers like hyperbole, rhetoric and flowery language. Most of all they like it when they come across someone who'll feed their paranoia about "evil guvmint", which is why WUWT exists after all. It's the market in action - a niche product for a niche market. The wilfully ignorant who can feed off each other's delusions. Conspiracy theorists who believe that climate science is a hoax.

Justthinkin says:

July 10, 2014 at 8:23 pm
Well written and simple,informative article. Thank you.

Brute says:

July 10, 2014 at 8:27 pm
For sure, climate change (whatever it means to the choir) will go and a new delusion will take its place. In fact, I reckon it’s been ready to go for a while but there is nothing as “exciting” yet available to take its place.

(What has Paul Sagan to do with Cosmos?) cnxtim says:

July 10, 2014 at 8:32 pm
Not forgetting Paul Sagan’s protege and the otherwise excellent Cosmos series infecting a new generation of students with the CAGW myth.

 johanna says (excerpt from a much longer comment about conspiracies and money):

July 10, 2014 at 9:20 pm
Nice article – concise, clear and uncluttered.

Pollution advocate Rachel DeJong and her unsavoury smear campaign at WUWT

At WUWT today there's another good example of a right wing extremist misrepresenting facts. Anthony Watts was sent an email by Ashley Thorne, Executive Director, National Association of Scholars. This association promotes the work of another right wing, anti-science lobby group (dressed up as a "charity"), called the ITSSD or the "Institute for Trade, Standards and Sustainable Development". I've written about both these dubious entities before.

I guess the email was about an article by Rachel DeJong because that's what Anthony copied and pasted (archived here). The article was just more of the same faked up insinuations and allegations about the EPA. Rachel DeJong apparently favours dirty air and polluted water. She doesn't want pollution to be regulated.

I won't go through her entire spin. I'll pick out one point to illustrate her unsavoury smear tactics. It's typical of pro-pollution advocates everywhere.

Denier weirdness: Wondering Willis takes to beer, not understanding the Kaya Identity

Update 3

Willis Eschenbach has written another article on this topic (archived here), this time showing he doesn't understand economics. He thinks that driving his car doesn't contribute to a nations gross domestic product. It does.

I'll leave it to readers to figure out the multiple ways Wondering Willis could contribute to GDP while driving his car along the Lincoln Highway.

Sou 13 July 2014


Update 2

Very strange goings on at WUWT. The article by Willis Eschenbach, which looked as if it was intended as a mild if misplaced "gotcha" of no particular noteworthiness, has suddenly generated a whole heap of comments - 473 as of now. Anthony has replaced one of the additions with another (archived here). This is his latest, in which Anthony has decided to straddle the fence and agree with everyone. Is his grip slipping? This is what he added:

[UPDATE: Comment from Anthony: There has been a tremendous amount of discussion and dissent on this topic, far more than I ever would have imagined. On one hand some people have said in comments that Willis has completely botched this essay, and the Kaya identity holds true, others are in agreement saying that the way the equation is written, the terms cancel and we end up with CO2=CO2. It would seem that the cancellation of terms is the sort of thing that would rate an "F" in a simple algebra test. But, I think there's room for both views to be right. It seems true that *technically* the terms cancel, but I think the relationship, while maybe not properly technically equated, holds as well. Here is another recent essay that starts with Willis' premise, where CO2=CO2 and expounds from there. See: What is Kaya's equation?

Further update: from the post readers know that Willis has been returning from ICCC9 and had travel issues. I was finally able to reach him by phone tonight about 10PM. It seems that to add insult to misery his laptop hard drive didn't survive the travel and he's been working to restore it. He'll be back online and respond when he is able. - Anthony]

I suspect this over-the-top reaction by the idiots at WUWT is not unrelated to the fracas at WUWT over David Evans' Force X from Luna Park. (Willis was a very outspoken critic of Force X and the notch, which didn't endear him to the ignorant masses.) Might bear watching to see if this is a sign that the fake sceptics are teaming up, battling with each other. Or it might just be a temporary venting of frustration that the ice age still hasn't cometh.

You can see the earliest version here (with 22 comments), then the interim version here (132 comments) and now the latest version here (473 comments).

Sou Friday 11 July 2014, 8:09 pm AEST

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Update - see below for how Willis piles stupid on incompetent


I reckon there must have been something strange in the beverage served up to deniers at their recent gabfest in Las Vegas. I've just written about some stupid from Anthony Watts. Now it's the turn of Wondering Willis Eschenbach (archived here).

Funnily enough, Wondering Willis' article was on the theme of my recent observation about Anthony Watts being a stubby short of a six pack. Willis wrote about beer.

Willis wrote about a newly-released interim report: Pathways to Deep Decarbonisation. It's put out by The Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI). From the Preface:

The Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project (DDPP) is a collaborative initiative to understand and show how individual countries can transition to a low-carbon economy and how the world can meet the internationally agreed target of limiting the increase in global mean surface temperature to less than 2 degrees Celsius (°C). Achieving the 2°C limit will require that global net emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) approach zero by the second half of the century. This will require a profound transformation of energy systems by mid-century through steep declines in carbon intensity in all sectors of the economy, a transition we call “deep decarbonization.”

Currently, the DDPP comprises 15 Country Research Teams composed of leading researchers and research institutions from countries representing 70% of global GHG emissions and different stages of development: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, the UK, and the USA. 

Denier weirdness: On cutting CO2 emissions - Anthony Watts is a stubby short of a six pack

Sometimes Anthony Watts appears to be thick as a plank, a stubby short of a six-pack, a screw loose (archived here).  He thinks that the following are contradictory:

• Currently proposed CO2 emission cuts won't be enough to limit global warming to 2°C
• The only way to limit global warming is to cut CO2 emissions.

The statements are not contradictory. They are different aspects of the same thing. The very same message that we've been told for something like fifty years or more.

It's perfectly clear to a clear thinker. It should be perfectly clear even to someone like Anthony Watts, who does not excel at clear thinking (to put it mildly).

Media Matters on the Las Vegas Denier Fest

Alexander Zaitchik of Media Matters has a very funny sendup of the Las Vegas denier fest that is being put on by the Heartland Institute. Given the articles from WUWT over the next week are bound to be nothing more than deadly dull faded denier tripe, being rehashed one more time, the Media Matters article is like a little ray of sunshine peeping through the thick fog of denial. It's also informative.

Climate Denial Goes Vegas

The Heartland Institute hits the Strip with some much-needed comedic relief

There's a rather nice illustration:

A sample:

...The biggest sign the genre is maturing hums with neon. Today, Chicago's Heartland Institute, the kings of unintentional climate-comedy, will hit the Vegas strip with a three-day show at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, featuring a chorus line's worth of hilarious climate rejectionists. The line-up will collectively perform the energy-policy equivalent of a Henny Youngman routine: "Take my planet capable of supporting civilization. Please!"

The think tank that flacked for Big Tobacco against the science of lung cancer will perform off the same playbook to flack for Big Carbon against the science of greenhouse gases. Tickets to see these self-styled climate researchers and political operatives -- almost none of whom are climate or earth systems scientists and nearly all of them funded at one- or two-degrees remove by oil and coal interests -- run $129, including meals.

On the Strip, Heartland speakers will pretend to be qualified to dissent from the equivalent to the National Academy of Sciences of every industrial country. Against the faint ring of slot machines, they'll dismiss the stark warnings of experts from 130 countries who contribute to the authoritative assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Because the first rule of improv comedy is "Yes, and...", some Heartland speakers will concede that, yes, man-made warming is occurring. The kicker comes when they echo Heartland's April report concluding that this is a net positive for all carbon-based life forms. With this pivot toward "Yes, and...", Heartland is ensuring they'll continue to have topical comedy fodder for years to come, even after their carbon denial becomes as outdated as their lung cancer material....

You can read the full article here at Media Matters.  It includes a rundown of the Las Vegas denier fest performers.

Zeke Hausfather: Understanding adjustments to surface temperature data

This is a first. I am recommending an article that has appeared at Judith Curry's blog (archived here). It's a very good article about adjustments to surface temperature data, written by Zeke Hausfather. I couldn't see it anywhere else on the internet so Zeke may have written it for Judith and her readers. (Judith certainly needed the education. She has posted Zeke's article without comment, which is also a rare event.)

Unfortunately it means a lot of people who would benefit from reading it might miss out, because they avoid Judith's blog like the plague. On the upside, Judith panders mainly to the denialati and her readers might learn something. - Update: Note I said "might". Even at this early stage, most of Judith's readers are not interested in what Zeke actually wrote. Going by the comments they are too deep in denial and paranoid conspiracies. Updated archive is here. Sou. 12:44 am AEST Tuesday 8 July 2014

Here is an archived version of the article.

Understanding adjustments to temperature data

Zeke deals with a lot of the points raised in the recent idiocy started by "Steve Goddard" (Tony Heller) and perpetuated by Anthony Watts. He also promises two more parts, which I'll promote here when they appear, writing (my dot points):

This will be the first post in a three-part series examining adjustments in temperature data, with a specific focus on the U.S. land temperatures.

• This post will provide an overview of the adjustments done and their relative effect on temperatures. 

• The second post will examine Time of Observation adjustments in more detail, using hourly data from the pristine U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN) to empirically demonstrate the potential bias introduced by different observation times. 

• The final post will examine automated pairwise homogenization approaches in more detail, looking at how breakpoints are detected and how algorithms can tested to ensure that they are equally effective at removing both cooling and warming biases.

Zeke Hausfather is a researcher with the Berkeley Earth temperature analysis project.  He writes a lot for Yale Climate Connections.  If you visit some denier websites you may have seen Zeke injecting a dose of reality to contrast with the normal conspiracy theorising and other idiocy that takes place. He is known for his integrity and for being straightforward and polite with one and all. He also writes very clearly so that even people without any scientific education should be able to follow what he writes.

Understandably, Anthony Watts doesn't always get along well with Zeke. Anthony prefers FUD and denial, which Zeke doesn't do at all.

Update: Comments from Judith Curry's blog

The comments are flying thick and fast, with the emphasis on commenters being "thick", as you'd expect given the location. Here is a representative sample. Judith Curry must be very proud of herself:

David Springer is a paranoid conspiracy theorist who prefers lies to facts. I'd say he's a right wing authoritarian who distrusts any and every "official" source. He also seems to want people to believe the entire edifice of climate science rests on the weather in Washington on one day in 1988 and his lie about James Hansen. Judith does cater for weirdos, doesn't she:

 | July 7, 2014 at 10:01 am |
Good faith was undermined about the time James Hansen sabotaged the air conditioning and opened the windows to scorching outside temperatures in the congressional hearing room in 1988. Good faith collapsed completely with the Climategate emails two decades later.

Good faith my ass.

sunshinehours1 is another crank who doesn't understand Zeke's article, despite it being written so elegantly, and who doesn't know that data is available - all kinds of data including raw data as well as gridded data. Nothing is "hidden".

| July 7, 2014 at 9:55 am | 
Why do climate scientists hide the raw data? Why do they use anomalies and 5 years smoothing to hide the data?
You can’t spell anomalies with LIES.

In fact almost all of Judith's readers seem to be certifiable. Rob Bradley is no exception. From what he writes, he thinks that scientists are fudging the data. That would be a bigger hoax than could conceivably be maintained. He's an utter nutter.

| July 7, 2014 at 9:48 am |
The author states: “Their methods may not be perfect, and are certainly not immune from critical analysis, but that critical analysis should start out from a position of assuming good faith and with an understanding of what exactly has been done.”
But surely incentives matter. Peer pressure matters. Government funding matters. Beware of the ‘romantic’ view of science in a politicized area.

Scottish Sceptic is now blatantly implicitly accusing Zeke Hausfather, who is an "outsider" to climate science, of being in on the imagined "hoax". Well, we already know Scottish Sceptic is just an other utter nutter.

 | July 7, 2014 at 10:37 am | 
When an auditor checks accounts, they do not assume bad faith.
Instead they just assure the figures are right.

So, why then when skeptics try to audit climate figures do they immediately assume we are acting in bad faith?

Because academics don’t have a culture of having their work checked by outsiders

The simple fact is that academics cannot stomach having outsiders look over their figures. And this is usually a symptom of an extremely poor quality regime

claimsguy is another right wing authoritarian who distrusts scientists because they are the go-to source for science. Would he go to a barber to get an expert opinion on his medical condition?

  | July 7, 2014 at 10:47 am |
Oh geez. You’ve poisoned the well by saying Gavin liked the post.

A lesson in statistics with E. Calvin Beisner and J.C. Keister at WUWT

In a variation of the denier memes "CO2 is only a trace gas" and "it's not happening", Anthony Watts has a silly article about ice. Actually it's an article about "trillions of dollars", which is at the heart of most denier protests about global warming. (Archived here.)

Many deniers take the position that we can't afford to stop the sixth major extinction and we can't afford to make the world bearable for future generations. What they really mean is that they've got a lot invested in fossil fuels and they don't want to shift to clean energy.

The other common theme that you'll find on denier blogs is a fear of fear. Studies show that people in the USA who vote conservative are more likely to be hypersensitive to threats. In extreme cases like you'll find with inhabitants of denier blogs, they'll do anything to avoid what they perceive as threatening, even rejecting facts. (Judging by the number of articles denying melting ice and rising sea levels that Anthony Watts posts on his blog, the thought of it scares him more than anything else. Maybe even more than an increase in taxation.)

To cut to the chase, WUWT "guests", E. Calvin Beisner and J.C. Keister wrote an article under the title "Lying with Statistics: The National Climate Assessment Falsely Hypes Ice Loss in Greenland and Antarctica"

What they are pretending is that it doesn't matter if the ice keeps melting and sea levels rise by one or two metres this century, and six to ten metres in coming centuries. All the ice in Greenland and Antarctica is tiny compared to the size of the world, didn't you know?

Actually, it's not quite that. What these two are arguing is that more ice won't melt as the world heats up. They reckon that ice will only keep melting at the same rate as it's melting today - or should I say, as it melted last century. They are rejecting basic physics. I expect they are surprised every time ice cubes melt in their bourbon.

Here are two charts they put up to PROVE the scientists are "lying with statistics":

See - in nine years the ice melted as a percentage of total ice was miniscule and "nothing to worry about".

Even NASA knows that if all the ice melted it would barely bother anyone (as long as they didn't live in Bangladesh or London or the Netherlands or China or Florida or anywhere near the coast). And NASA scientists, as every WUWT-er knows, "don't know nuffin'". The image below is not just all the water currently bound up in ice. It's all the water at or near the surface on earth - compared to the size of Earth.

Source: APOD NASA

Compared to that, what's the point of complaining about the ice melting? Even if it all melted it would only raise sea levels by 66 metres (216 feet). What's to worry about?

Nothing to worry about

That's only about 0.6% of the depth of the deepest portion of the Mariana Trench. It's like health fanatics (such as the guvmint) arguing that if you ingested 0.00029% of your body weight in arsenic it'd kill you. What do they think we are? Stupid sheeple?

Think about how "warmists" try to scare the poor little dears at WUWT about rising temperatures. Here's a chart to prove that a piddly rise of 6C wouldn't hurt a fly. Heck, the temperature here can change by more than that here in 12 hours.

Data Source: Bureau of Meteorology

Needless to say you shouldn't trust the above temperature chart. It was obviously tampered with to make the oldest temperature readings colder and the later temperatures hotter! Here's another one. Not quite six degrees:

Adapted from Jos Hagelaars

Oops! How did that chart get there?

Anyway, here's a couple of charts to prove that a sea level rise of sixty six metres is nothing at all. If all the ice melted it might take 5,000 years - that's what I've put in the chart.  First of all let's see how those deceiving scientists would probably portray it, just to scare the folk at WUWT:

Deceptive "scientific" chart

Now look at how it really should be presented:

True "statistical" chart - WUWT-style

Think about that for a while, scientists!


E. Calvin Beisner is not a climate scientist. No, he's an orthodox presbyterian elder and a member of the pseudo-religious cult, the Cornwall Alliance. His denial of science is to be recognised by the Heartland Institute, so we've been told.

J.C. Keister Jr is also associated with the Cornwall Alliance. He claims a PhD in something or other but I guess he gave that up for his crank religion.

The Cornwall Alliance forbids its members from accepting climate science. It's probably a mortal sin. Not sure about evolution - that might be forbidden too. At least one of its members, Roy Spencer, rejects biological science.

From the WUWT comments

Bernd Felsche says:

July 6, 2014 at 9:07 am
Alarmism is a characteristic of having lost a sense of proportion.

nickreality65 doesn't like it when someone tickles his amygdala and says:

July 6, 2014 at 9:21 am
Now do the same w/ 100,000 years of co2 plotted next to keeling. And scores of temps, sea levels plotted w/ exaggerated scales to maximize the fear factor.

Dave confuses sea ice with land ice and says:

July 6, 2014 at 9:36 am
How can Antarctica be losing ice if it just recently reached an all time greatest extent?

UnfrozenCavemanMD says:

July 6, 2014 at 9:05 am
Thus my maxim:
“Anyone who is giving you numerators without denominators is trying to deceive you.” 

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Schreiber, Darren, Greg Fonzo, Alan N. Simmons, Christopher T. Dawes, Taru Flagan, James H. Fowler, and Martin P. Paulus. "Red brain, blue brain: Evaluative processes differ in Democrats and Republicans." PloS one 8, no. 2 (2013): e52970. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0052970

Anthony Watts shames former Apollo Astronaut, Walt Cunningham

Update

This tweet from @rubiginosa sums up Anthony Watts' article better than anything:

pic.twitter.com/Hp6C4G6A7j #climate MT @wattsupwiththat Apollo Astronaut: Climate Alarmism Is the ‘Biggest Fraud in the Field of Science’
— rubiginosa (@rubiginosa) July 6, 2014

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Anthony Watts is mocking the 84 year old Apollo astronaut, Walt Cunningham. He's posted a rather embarrassing article about the poor chap, written by Eric "eugenics" Worrall** (archived here, latest here). Anthony's headline was: "Apollo Astronaut: Climate Alarmism Is the ‘Biggest Fraud in the Field of Science’".

Walt is wheeled out by the professional disinformers from time to time and made to perform in public. I've written about it once before.

If Walt wanted to, he could be remembered for his glory days. Instead he spends part of his retirement waving his hands about, weakly protesting climate change muttering paranoid conspiracy theories and making inane, nonsensical comments such as these, quoted on Anthony Watts blog:

“Since about 2000, I looked farther and farther into it,...I found that not one of the claims that the alarmists were making out there had any bearings, whatsoever. And, so, it was kind of a no-brainer to come to the conclusion.”...

...“The media are largely to blame for public misconceptions – not because they’re intentionally misleading the public, but because they “just don’t want to go into the time and trouble to find out.” “If they do go into it and look at it for themselves, they become a lot more neutral in their presentation,” 

...“I can only tell you that, even back in the days of Apollo, we didn’t have to face this kind of nonsense” 

Full of substance, eh? Just what he has looked into, neither Anthony Watts nor Eric Worrall is saying.  I doubt Walt has a clue.  He just knows that the Arctic can't be melting, the oceans can't possibly be getting more acidic, the surface temperature can't be going up and the seas couldn't possibly be storing more heat. Nor could the seas be rising.

Data sources: NODC/NOAA, PIOMAS, NASA (GISTemp), CU Sea Level Research Group University of Colorado

I suppose this is the first of a series of empty, meaningless protests at global warming and climate change that will be paraded at the denier festival at Las Vegas this week. Fodder for HotWhopper.

I do think it's a bit unfair of the science denial brigade to take advantage of a former astronaut who's lost the plot. Still, he's his own person and if he wants to make a fool of himself in his old age, then there will always be unscrupulous people waiting to make the most of the opportunity.

**Eric Worrall earned the nickname "Eugenics" because he made a habit of likening climate science to the study of eugenics in the 1930s, particularly when he commented at Watching the Deniers. It's his version of Godwin's Law.

From the WUWT comments

Sweet Old Bob says he wishes mainstream media was as cruel to the poor chap as Anthony Watts is:

July 6, 2014 at 6:22 am
If only the MSM would cover this speech…

Is Jeremy taking a swipe at the Rocket Scientist from Luna Park and his Force X? He says:

July 6, 2014 at 6:24 am
So true! Climate science is not rocket science – it is BS for Geography types – those people with coloring crayons who incapable of logical scientific enquiry and deduction. 

John piccirilli has been studying climate science in depth for a whole "twenty minutes" and says:

July 6, 2014 at 7:56 am
Follow the money..skeptics make $0 while alarmists and so called “green” energy scams are making millions. I looked into this “debate” for myself, it took all of 20minutes to know the truth.

Quote of the Day from David Evans, the Rocket Scientist from Luna Park

Wondering how David Evans was tracking with his Force X from the Sun, now that he's been challenged by some of the locals at WUWT. You may recall that for the last eighteen months he's been building a "model" in an Excel spreadsheet.  Force X and the notch were the subject of BIG NEWS - with eight plus articles and a 170 page paper, yet to be released. I guess he hasn't made much progress after all or he's not a very organised modeller, because I came across this comment from David Evans:

July 5, 2014 at 9:51 pm
Leif – I’ll get to it, but finding the parameters for the model is complicated and slow, takes a few days. Might be a few weeks before I can get to it.

Is it any wonder that he's not willing to share his workings? Sounds as if he's got himself into a real mess.  All that was suggested was that he replace his TSI data (an Evans Special concoction from multiple sources) with a single set. His comment was in reply to this suggestion by Leif Svalgaard, quoting David Evans (extract)

July 5, 2014 at 3:23 pm
...“Running the model (parametrized for the composite TSI data I use, basically Lean/PMOD/ACRIM) on your reconstruction of TSI also shows a hefty temperature fall in 2015 ”

This is the wrong way of doing this. You must parameterize using the same reconstruction as for running the model.

So, the valid test would be:
1) parameterize using ‘my’ TSI
2) run the model on ‘my’ TSI
3) compare with the temperature record

I await your agreement to this collaborative work with anticipation. Science should be [as generally is, except for fringe pseudo-science] building on each other’s work, so please join me in this venture.

I'm not the only one who finds David Evans' comment very strange after the grand build up to the Big News. Leif Svalgaard does too (extract):

July 6, 2014 at 3:11 am
Is your computer code that slow? Or is it just a manual process? If so, that would explain your reluctance to reveal the process. 

Before David Evans does plug in Leif Svalgaard's TSI data and runs the model again, I'd say he also needs to sort out his temperature concoction. From what I've read he didn't just mess with TSI, he also cobbled together temperature data from multiple sources combining surface and lower troposphere temperature data sets. Then he smoothed his temperature cocktail, quite inexplicably, with a 25 year running mean.

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.