If everyone thought the way Rud Istvan thinks, civilisation would soon crumble

There's an article at WUWT that gives some insight into the minds of the ideologically-constrained at WUWT. Rud Istvan wrote why he doesn't want his tax going to assist in recovery efforts in Texas and Louisiana (archived here). It boils down to him being able to afford to live in a fancy apartment that was designed to withstand Cat 5 storms. Those who can't afford that should suffer the consequences, according to Rud.

This is symptomatic of all that is wrong in the deniosphere and some "free market" survival of the fittest thinkers. It's ideologically opposed to the fundamentals of most of the world's religions, and society as a whole. Society functions best when we look out for each other, not when we worship money, greed and selfishness.

Hypocrisy alert: Don't make us pay for Harvey floods sez Eric Worrall at WUWT. We paid for his, though.

Credit: Trudy Lampson

I made a comment the other day about paying for floods. I was remarking about how Roger Pielke Jr likes to view the cost of disasters as a function of GDP. He says that GDP is going up faster worldwide than the big spike in the cost of weather disasters and implies that therefore the world can afford to pay for them.

There are flaws in Roger's GDP argument. One I didn't mention was that the cost of the clean up and restoration is part of GDP. The other is that I think a lot of wealthy people will object to their money being paid to recover from disasters unless they themselves are the victims. Remember how many Republicans voted against aid after Sandy.

Anthony Watts wants coral reefs to face extinction - again

Photo: Toby Hudson

Coral reefs are critically important to the marine ecosystem. Despite this, there's another attempt to make corals extinct at Anthony Watts' blog wattsupwiththat.com (WUWT) (archived here). Anthony wrote an article saying how it was hilarious for scientists to want to study corals, because they've been made extinct a number of times before and came back hundreds of millennia later. Or something like that.

As Phil Clarke pointed out in a comment here, Anthony started his strange plea to stop studying corals by referring to an article on the website of the Global Reef Project. Anthony quoted the first sentence of the article, and decided to not post any more of it. Here is the first sentence, plus a bit more (my emphasis). The part that Anthony quoted is in italics. The part that contradicted his whole article is in bold:

Corals are 500 million years old, and date back to the late Cambrian period, during the Paleozoic era (Fig. 1). Evidence suggests that they started as simple, solitary organisms but, in response to changes in their environment, later evolved into the coral reefs we know today. It is also known that over the 500 million years, during which corals are known to have existed, they have experienced a number of extinction events. These extinction events were largely the result of dramatic changes in their environment, such as we are seeing today. 

We can't say Hurricane Harvey caused climate science deniers but it certainly worsened them

Harvey. Credit: NASA

Science deniers were so put out by the deadly rains from Hurricane Harvey that they lost their sense of sight. Now we can't say that Hurricane Harvey caused climate science deniers, they've existed since we changed climate in a big way. We can say that Hurricane Harvey hasn't improved them.

Joe Bastardi, a science denying weather forecaster, got all excited and wrote a dumb article that was copied and pasted in the deniosphere. Danny Hayes first alerted us here at HotWhopper. It took some time before it was copied and pasted at WUWT (archived here). It was in response to an article in the Guardian, by Professor Michael Mann. The Guardian article had the following:

Club of Rome conspiracies from Timothy Ball at WUWT

Timothy Ball is Anthony Watts' most conventional conspiracy theorist, and an utter nutter. Anthony decided for his blog audience he would target the crank end of cyberspace and Tim fits the bill admirably. His latest theory is that the Club of Rome invented climate science, and as a nefarious plot.

Some might call WUWT fans wackadoodles, others will think of the funny farm. Wattsupwiththat is a natural meeting place for paranoid conspiracy theorists who think that efforts to protect humanity and nature are a satanic plot.

Tim is a greenhouse effect denier who wrote the first chapter in an obscure book that gained modest popularity among climate conspiracy nutters a few years ago, called "Slaying the Sky Dragon - Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory".  There was no death, of course, but the book is a bible of some of WUWT's "climate hoax" conspiracy theorists. Not that they understand anything in it (who would? It's gobbledegook.) Nor would they understand anything about physics, chemistry, climate or mathematics. They just get some comfort from seeing they are not the only weirdos in the world.

Stefan Rahmstorf wins the AGU Climate Communication Prize, so WUWT compares him to Hitler

Is it the horrors of Hurricane Harvey that have unhinged deniers at WUWT? I don't know, but something has.

There have been two articles bashing Stefan Rahmstorf, one of the world's leading ocean scientists. He is Professor of Physics of the Oceans at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). The AGU is awarding him the Climate Communication Prize, which he richly deserves. As some sort of payback, deniers are using the Serengeti Strategy to defame Dr Rahmstorf in two (so far) ugly and ridiculous articles at WUWT.

In the first WUWT article, Charles the Moderator has copied and pasted an unhinged article by someone called Duane Thresher, who has a huge chip on his shoulder against climate scientists. Charles the Moderator included a photo of Hitler because that's what deniers do when they want to smear and defame. It's a Law of Deniers. That article is a nasty denier take on how Dr Rahmstorf took a newspaper to task way back in April 2010, after it published false information about an IPCC report. You can read about this on Dr. Rahmstorf's blog (if you don't read German you'll need to translate).

See the update below for more context.

Hurricane Harvey through the eyes of science deniers

This image of Hurricane Harvey from NOAA and GOES shows water vapour is, in parts, almost off the scale.

The recent 5:00 am CDT statement from the National Hurricane Center includes these tidbits:

A NOAA tide gauge at Port Lavaca, Texas, recently measured a water level of 6.6 feet above Mean Higher High Water.

An automated mesonet rain gauge near Victoria, Texas, is reporting a 24 h precipitation total of 16.43 inches.

From the deniosphere

It's wrong to regard climate science deniers as being harmless idiots. It's not enough for them to deny, lie and play down the dangers of climate change. Not acting on climate change will cause a lot of death and destruction and ruin the livelihoods of many. It will also threaten world food supplies in future.

As can be seen today, climate science deniers are a threat to people in the here and now. In the last day or so, prominent climate disinformers have been playing down the dangers of Hurricane Harvey. Their motive seems to be, as always, because they want people to reject the fact and risks of climate change. Why they would want to downplay an immediate risk for ideology is unfathomable.

Hurricane Harvey - realising the worst

Hurricane Harvey is fulfilling the worst case predictions and is now a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale. This is equivalent to a Category 5 cyclone on the Beaufort scale, used to categorise cyclones in Australia.

Hurricane intensity is measured by wind strength. Although winds are hugely destructive, Harvey brings bigger problems. As with all hurricanes, Hurricane Harvey is likely to dump huge amounts of rain and bring storm surges. Harvey will be worse than most because it is expected to hang around for several days. Below is the quantitative prediction forecast from the National Hurricane Center of NOAA as at 4:08 pm Central Daylight Time (USA). It shows horrific rain in Texas. Although the scale goes to 20 plus inches (500 plus mm), see how big that area is. There are warnings that the rainfall may be much higher in parts of that purple area. (I wouldn't want to be in the middle of it.)

Figure 1 | Rainfall potential from Hurricane Harvey: 120-hour Day 1-5 rainfall forecast (inches). Source: National Hurricane Centre, NOAA.

When extreme weather hits these days, it often breaks all records. This prompts science deniers to become more vocal, shrieking their denial of science. They seem to think that if they yell loudly enough, then some idiot will believe them and they'll be able to keep the coal fires burning a bit longer.

I'll write more about this, with despicable examples, shortly. (I am only able to write in short bursts at the moment, as I am dealing with other commitments. This might be a good thing, as some articles in the past have ventured into the TLDR category.)

Meanwhile, you can read more from the Cat6 team at Wunderground.com.

My thoughts are with everyone in the path of the hurricane and its effects, and with all the volunteers and agency workers who will be assisting with response and recovery.

Roy Spencer's latest silly conspiracy theory at WUWT. Delusions, including of grandeur

Roy Spencer feels he is being attacked. It's all because he wrote an ebook in two weeks and put it up for sale on Amazon. Anthony Watts promoted his conspiracy theory at WUWT (archived here). His headline and opening sentence were:

After publishing new book critical of Al Gore, climate scientist has website shut down by attacks 

This is the equivalent of a modem day book burning.

Is poor little Roy Spencer being singled out by Al Gore for attack or has Roy found a novel way to get people to buy his little ebook?

I'm sceptical. However, let's look at his claim that was echoed and amplified by climate conspiracy theorist Anthony Watts. I've mixed up the facts with Roy and Anthony's hypothesis, which demonstrates (again) the foolishness of deniers. It also demonstrates their delusions of grandeur and their paranoia.

Don Easterbrook asks a question about global surface temperature

Remember Don Easterbrook? He's the retired geology professor who knows less than nothing about climate science. He is the one who falsely claims the temperature on the summit of Greenland is a proxy for the temperature of the entire world.

Today at WUWT he posed a question in response to an article about recent global temperatures. Don Easterbrook wrote:

August 20, 2017 at 5:15 pm
And where do 1936 and 1934 fit in these ‘record temps?’ Before blatant tampering by NOAA and NASA, they were easily the hottest years (and probably still are!)