Denier blogs are shifting to the extreme end of nuttery

If you're wondering why I haven't been posting quite as many articles lately, it's partly because the deniers have dried up. (And partly because real life has been making demands.)

Judith Curry canvassed the views of her readers, of which the vast majority are deniers. I've also written about the two recycled paranoid conspiracy theories Anthony Watts posted in the past day or so - the Agenda 21 plot and the World Domination plot.

A couple of days ago Bob Tisdale tried to dismiss an updated publication by the Australian Academy of Science, muttering "models, models", then writing about internal variability instead of climate. (Bob doesn't understand the first thing about climate models. You can read about them here at Ars Technica.) I wonder how many quiz questions Bob would have answered correctly?

In an article today at WUWT (archived here), some American bloke called David Deming, who's a mate of Denier Don Easterbrook, complained that he was tired of reading about climate science, weakly protesting:

Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and the Earth’s climate is not changing. So please, give it a rest. We’re tired of the array of tendentious claims and the endless litany of hysterical doom-mongering.

Yeah, right - David. What planet do you live on?

So, what do you think? Have science deniers run out of steam? Are they weary of recycling the same tired denier memes? Was the record hot 2014 too much for them? Have denier bloggers decided to shift their audience, getting rid of the merely ignorant or deluded deniers, to pander to the extremely nutty?

Rob's Gallop

This is for Rob Ellison to continue his various thoughts. Other people can join in if they want to. I'm closing the other thread to further comments, and have transferred some of the latest comments here, to set the ball rolling.

Sou. 19 February 2015 1:08 pm

The World Domination Conspiracy Theory at WUWT

As if Viv Forbes paranoid conspiracy theory wasn't enough, Anthony Watts trots out David "funny sunny" Archibald, starting off an article (archived here) with (my emphasis):

“Everybody Wants To Rule The World” was a 1985 song by Tears For Fears. Now in 2015, a number of parties are doing their best to that end – ISIS in the Middle East, Russia chewing up the Ukraine, China in the East and South China Seas and the UN Climate Change Commission. A draft document out of Geneva gives details of the UN plan to rule the world.

Does conspiracy theorists' paradise, WUWT, beat Judith Curry's denier heaven?

Not wanting to be outdone by Judith Curry's recent demonstration of her blog as denier heaven, Anthony Watts decides to prove that his blog is conspiracy theorists' paradise. (A lot more fodder for Professor Lewandowsky.)

In a wonderful display of paranoia, Anthony Watts has posted another article (archived here) by Stanmore Coal director, Viv Forbes.

Confessions of deniers at Judith Curry's blog

Note: This thread is closed for comments. The discussion that was taking place can be continued here at Rob's Gallop.

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Addendum: see below for Judith trying to defend her denier fans, and her own conspiracy ideation.

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You may remember when Anthony Watts at WUWT posted a self-portrait of a denier, which brought out a whole host of other self portraits - predominately from engineers. Now Judith Curry has invited deniers to write about why they reject climate science (archived here). I think it was an open invitation to all, but since her blog is denier paradise, most of the comments are from - you guessed it, climate science deniers.

There were several people who wrote more than one of the 133 comments (as archived). I counted only eight people who accept the science. The rest rejected science (a couple were non-committal). Some described themselves as lukewarmers or fence-sitters. Others were more hard-core.

WUWT claims (again) that global warming is a giant conspiracy of mammoth proportions

Anthony Watts, who runs a wacky conspiracy theory blog, WUWT, has another article (archived here) claiming that global warming isn't happening and it's all a giant conspiracy. Anthony posted a "guest essay" by someone called Ralph Park, who is a conspiracy nutter.

Science deniers try to change the facts about climate

Anthony Watts has finally written a promo for a book put out last month by the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) (archived here). The book is called, somewhat ambiguously: Climate Change the Facts 2014. Given the publisher and the contributors, the meaning is pretty obvious: Climate - change the facts - 2014.

Paul Homewood and Christopher Booker are wrong about global surface temperatures

For some odd reason, arch-science denier Christopher Booker has been getting some play in the media. He's been broadcasting false claims about the surface temperature records.

Every so often a science denier will scour the temperature records to unearth some that have been adjusted upwards. They'll then shout to the world "fraud" "scam" "it's all a hoax". What I've never seen from any denier is them scouring the records for temperatures adjusted downwards. That would totally spoil their propaganda.

This sort of thing happens from time to time, often when the UN is meeting to discuss action on global warming. The timing of the denier attacks in this case coincide with the UN meeting in Geneva.

Rampant alarmism at WUWT (again) about UN climate talks in Geneva

WUWT is veering once again into rampant alarmism. Eric Worrall (he's just a run-of-the-mill denier from Australia, one of Anthony Watts' useful idiots) has written one of his very short "guest essays" (archived here), most of which is a copy and paste of a segment from the Sydney Morning Herald. It's a contrast to the tedious verbose "guest essays" by some other contributors I suppose.

The SMH article was about how, for the Geneva talks, the draft UN agreement to combat climate change has now swollen to 100 pages, from the 38 page document drafted at Lima.

Eric sets the ball rolling with alarmism, writing:

Given the fact that countries are free to write their own terms, including joke effort’s like China’s agreement to do nothing until the 2030s, in return for America agreeing to commit economic suicide, the greatest contribution to CO2 reduction Paris is likely to produce, will be the sequestration in some dusty filing cabinet, of all the carbon copies, of what promises to be the longest climate agreement ever written.

Eric just made up the part about China - out of thin air. China is reportedly bringing forward its plan for carbon trading. As for America agreeing to "commit economic suicide" - I don't see that happening any time soon.

(Is this really the best that people who want the globe to warm faster have to offer? Seems pathetically weak to me. Thankfully, many world leaders are taking the UN meetings very seriously.)

Framing climate policies for public support

Now all this rampant alarmism gives me a good reason for alerting readers to a new paper by Mark Hurlstone and his colleagues.  Mark and one of his co-authors, Stephan Lewandowsky, have written about the paper at Shaping Tomorrow's World.  The research was exploring how best to frame messages to build support for climate policies.

Some people at WUWT agree with climate scientists: let's not go "howlingly barking mad"

In the absence of anything much at WUWT, I was going to write about the proposed Geoengineering research program. Slate published an article by the eminent climate scientist, Professor Raymond Pierrehumbert, with the headline and sub-head:

Climate Hacking Is Barking Mad

You can’t fix the Earth with these geoengineering proposals, but you can sure make it worse. 

Opposing geoengineering of climate does not equate to not exploring options

Prof Pierrehumbert, a fierce opposer of geoengineering, has co-authored an NRC proposal that a research program be established to consider geoengineering proposals. As he wrote:

This week, the National Research Council (NRC) is releasing a report on climate engineering that deals with exactly those proposals I found most terrifying. The report even recommends the creation of a research program addressing these proposals. I am a co-author of this report. Does this mean I've had a change of heart?

No.

The nearly two years' worth of reading and animated discussions that went into this study have convinced me more than ever that the idea of “fixing” the climate by hacking the Earth’s reflection of sunlight is wildly, utterly, howlingly barking mad. In fact, though the report is couched in language more nuanced than what I myself would prefer, there is really nothing in it that is inconsistent with my earlier appraisals.

Geoengineering and public opinion

Before I got to write about this, I saw that WUWT has picked up on the subject of geoengineering with two articles. Many science deniers don't want geoengineering any more than scientists do.