There is no excuse for spreading disinformation about climate

This is a personal note about how I consider hard-core deniers and disinformers to be as bad as the worst of the worst of humanity. They are comparable to Charles Manson, Timothy McVeigh and other horrors in that they want to harm people and take pleasure in the thought of civilisation destroying itself.

There is no excuse for anyone these days to doubt climate change or to not accept that we are causing it. In simple terms which everyone should know by now, we are burning more fossil fuel and adding more greenhouse gases to the air. This results in less energy going to space than is coming in from the sun. Our planet is heating up. Ice is melting, seas are rising, storms are more intense and heat waves are hotter. This is killing people, reducing our capacity to grow food, and causing a great deal of harm already. It will get worse before it gets better.

If a serial climate disinformer doesn't like being compared to mass murderers, then they should ask themselves why they are working so hard to bring about death and destruction. Or, they can change their behaviour and stop acting as if they want to. (Today there was a very unpleasant denier who objected to this comparison. He is a long term disinformer about climate change and has now been banned from this blog, so you won't see his comments or my response.) [Update: That particular disinformer just sent a comment to let me know he and his hard-core denier bloggers follow in the footsteps of "Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot...", or words to that effect.]

Just wanted to put that out there.

(See also: Marginalised, alienated and put upon: climate science deniers are not innocent)

Climate strike in Albury, Australia

There are climate strikes all around the world in a wonderful display of unity and hope, tinged with hopelessness. In Albury, there were school students, infants, and adults of all ages and from all walks of life. The day was sunny and, as if it was sending a message, was the warmest day of September so far, recording 24.9 C (77F) at 2:30 pm, which is around 7 C above the average maximum for the month.

The students were an inspiration. They were knowledgeable and committed to taking Australians to task for not addressing climate change. The crowd was enthusiastic and supportive. After the event, you'd not know hundreds of people had assembled there - the lawns were probably more spotless after the event than before.

Denier twittery weirdness, with CO2 is a very cold gas

CO2 sublimation

Over the last few days I've been spending some time on a long-running denier thread on Twitter. It was an opportunity to interact with the types you see at the climate conspiracy blog WUWT, but in an environment where it's much less likely anyone will be banned for posting science.

This article is to let you know about some of what I've learned about denier twitterers, with a new "theory" as a bonus.

Deniers yearn for attention from sciency types

One thing struck me above everything else. Fake sceptics are starved for attention.

As soon as a science type enters a room full of deniers, they get pounced on. Anyone who's followed comments at WUWT would have noticed the same thing. (Anthony Watts, the owner of WUWT, himself has demonstrated a yearning for recognition from scientists. That he can't get the type of recognition he wants has been a source of frustration to him.)

We need to save the Amazon, but not for the sake of oxygen

There's been a crazy meme circulating in the media about oxygen. Let's fix that.

To their credit, quite a number of media outlets have been writing about the apparent reversal of the decline in the destruction of the Amazon rainforests.

Okay, that was a mouthful. Back in past decades the Amazon rainforest was being destroyed at a phenomenal pace. Local people became concerned and eventually they were heard around the world. Finally there was an turnaround or, I should say, the rate of destruction slowed substantially. Now it's picking up again and this is a very bad thing.

The problem with many of the reports is that they include a phrase (sometimes a headline): "The Amazon is often referred to as the planet's lungs, producing 20% of the oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere". That's way wrong!

Wildly untruthful at WUWT - Tim Ball did not "win" anything

Over at WUWT there's jubilation in the air over...nothing. Anthony Watts is falsely claiming that Tim Ball won a court case. In fact, what happened was Tim Ball got the Court to dismiss the lawsuit because of delay. There was no finding. Tim got a lucky break (so far) and the case was dismissed without any judgement. Professor Mann may (or might not) appeal. Tim's going to be disappointed that Mann won't pay his legal fees. (See update below.)

I'll let Michael Mann correct the fake news.

There have been some wildly untruthful claims about the recent dismissal of libel litigation against Tim Ball circulating on social media. Here is our statement:

The defendant Ball did not “win” the case. The Court did not find that any of Ball’s defenses were valid. The Court did not find that any of my claims were *not* valid.

The dismissal involved the alleged exercise of a discretion on the Court to dismiss a lawsuit for delay. I have an absolute right of appeal. My lawyers will be reviewing the judgment and we will make a decision within 30 days.

The provision in the Court’s order relating to costs does NOT mean that I will pay Ball’s legal fees.

This ruling absolutely does not involve any finding that Ball’s allegations were correct in fact or amounted to legitimate comment. In making his application based on delay, Ball effectively told the world he did not want a verdict on the real issues in the lawsuit.

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UPDATE

The reason Tim Ball requested the court stop the case due to "delay" is because he says he's old and sick. He supported his request by claiming no-one listens to his ravings. No-one takes any notice of his defamatory words. The Alexa rating for his blog is low, he says. So he sees himself as an old, sick nobody (or so he claims to the court). A man who's lived a life of no consequence (except to Anthony Watts and his band of inconsequential conspiracy nutters). See here and here.

If global surface temperature keeps rising at the current rate

I'm not going to go full-on with some wide-ranging projections, this article is mainly about temperature. It was prompted by something silly written in an article at WUWT, by a random blogger who goes by the name of Larry Kummer.

Larry was musing about how fast it's warming. He nicely put up some facts, based on the NOAA temperature report but then showed the extent of his ignorance about climate change.

Desperate Deniers head for the clouds at WUWT

My last article was a report of the latest surface temperature, from NASA. This one is about the lower troposphere changes - and denier dross from WUWT.

I've not spent much time at WUWT in recent months (or here at HotWhopper). The articles there have changed a bit since Anthony Watts took time off. There are a lot more political articles and fewer science articles. Charles the Moderator is in charge but doesn't have a lot of people to write - it's mainly childish Eric Worrall and a petrol-head called David Middleton. Most of the regular WUWT contributors from days gone by have disappeared (justthefacts, Bob Tisdale, Tim Ball etc., and Anthony Watts himself.)

These days, when Charles copies and pastes a press release about a scientific publication, he doesn't have to add the dog-whistling word "claim" at the front of the headline. WUWT readers are now very well trained and understand that if there's a scientific press release it means they are expected to add comments along the lines of "climate science is a hoax" (repeated 100 times or they are put in detention).

Hottest July and hottest month on record

Summary: July 2019 was the hottest July on record and the equal hottest month on record. The 12 month period to July 2019 was the third hottest  such period on record.

According to GISS NASA, the average global surface temperature anomaly for July was 0.93 °C, which is 0.08 °C warmer than the previous hottest - July 2016.

Below is a chart of the average of 12 months to July each year. 2019 averaged 0.93 °C above the 1951-1980 mean, which was 0.12 °C cooler than the 12 months to July 2016.

This makes it the third hottest August to July 12 month period on record after 2016 and 2017.

IPCC Climate Change and Land - on food waste (and diet)

Local vineyard

The most recent IPCC report, Climate Change and Land, was released last week.  The report covers a lot of ground (pardon the pun), including desertification, land degradation and food security.

I've been reading it, slowly. (It's no easier to read than any other IPCC report.) I've also seen a few articles that came out at the same time or shortly after its release.

Over time, I hope to cover more aspects of the IPCC report. Today I'll just comment on one issue that's been picked up around the traps, and that's food waste, and I'll make passing mention of diet. The food waste issue has been raised a few times since the report was released and, in my view, the articles range from fairly good to overly simplified to plain wrong. I'm not about to give easy answers or point to specific articles, just offer some food for thought (don't waste it).

Don't kill climate deadlines

I'm taking some time out from my time out to write about deadlines. Oddly, very oddly IMO, there are objections to deadlines coming from a number of quarters. Deadlines are essential for us to combat climate change. It should be obvious and it seems silly to have to argue the point. But it seems I do.

We are on a collision course with nature, a collision course of our own making. We need to change course. We've started, but we've not done nearly enough yet to prevent major damage. We need to do more and we need to keep planning how and set timelines and targets, otherwise known as deadlines. Then we have to carry out those plans.

We've missed opportunities and are suffering the consequences, with places running out of water, suffering unprecedented heat waves, drought and floods. That's with just over 1 C of warming. Urgent action is needed to avoid much greater harm.

Want to stay below 1.5 C? Then we'll need to cut emissions by 45% by 2030 and to net zero by 2050. Willing to accept an overshoot or let the world get a bit hotter? Then adjust those numbers accordingly and prepare to pay even more for disaster recovery and adaptation.