“Bastardi: Science and reality point away, not toward, CO2 as climate driver” (2011-08-12). You know when Joe Bastardi guest-posts on Anthony Watts’ blog you’re in for a chuckle. Here he’s trying to expand on (spin?) his whopper-fest on Fox News a few nights ago.
With the coming Gorathon to save the planet around the corner (Sept 14) , my stance on the AGW issue has been drawing more ire from those seeking to silence people like me that question their issue and plans. In response, I want the objective reader to hear more about my arguments made in a a brief interview on FOX News as to why I conclude CO2 is not causing changes of climate and the recent flurry of extremes of our planet. I brought up the First Law of Thermodynamics and LeChateliers principle.
“Brought up” in the sense of vomited, I guess. Joe has no clue what the First Law of Thermodynamics is (hey, Joe, the greenhouse effect doesn’t create heat) or LeChatelier’s principle (how a chemical equilibrium responds to changing conditions). In the first paragraph alone of his Fox News commentary everything he says is provably false. Five sentences, five boners. (Thanks tamino for holding your nose long enough to spell it out so clearly.)
After years of smack-downs he’s still pushing the “since 1997” lie, still trying to fake it. Here’s an example of Joe Science.
The Bastardi supercomputer works overtime providing detailed statistics.
There’s an outraged analysis at Scientific American titled Fox Commentator Distorts Physics, and Climate Progress gives us Joe Bastardi Pulls a Charlie Sheen on Fox News, Pushing “Utter Nonsense” on Climate Science.
Anthony assures us that “a follow up post – more technically oriented will follow sometime next week.” So don’t pick on poor Joe! Presumably his “follow-up” walk back most of his wild errors…
2011-08-16 Update.
Still waiting for Joe’s re-explanation, although he does add his own meandering comment that suggests we wait 30 years to see that he was right all along. Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait scrutinizes Joe’s so-called arguments at Big Picture Science: climate change denial on Fox News.
There are some real whoppers in the Watts Up With That comments, but this early one really caught my attention for self-serving justification (stunned italics mine):
@Chris_Colose: you have to pick your battles a little better. Joe Bastardi is not an academic researcher but a private sector meteorologist. He is an advocate for his point of view based upon the knowledge he accumulates. He is putting out his opinions for public consumption but there is no accountability implied…
REPLY: Yes, this is the same silly claim that comes up again and again, one one hand when a they lose a point in an argument they’ll claim “but he’s not a climate scientist, so his opinions don’t matter” then when they feel they have the upper hand we’ll hear, “he’s not scientifically rigorous enough, his arguments pale in comparison to our best climate scientists”. – Anthony
So… ignorant or deceitful “advocates” should get a free pass? Also, please show me a climate science argument “won” by someone like Joe, Anthony. Shorter version of Ryan and Anthony’s argument: “We don’t know anything, but every time we flap our gums we win. Unless the other guys cheat.”
2011-08-18 Update.
Climate Progress piles on: Joe Bastardi is ‘Completely Wrong’ and ‘Does Not Understand the Very Basics of the Science’, Climatologists Explain
Wott's Up With That? 
There’s a flaw in the Scientific American piece. It says:
I have no idea how many atmospheric ppm an addition of 30.6 billion tons represents; do you? It’d be nice if the writer made the connection; otherwise denialists are going to assume he’s pulling a Limbaugh.
[A failure to usefully visualize our CO2 output is not a flaw so much as a missed opportunity. What do you think of Joe’s boner claiming that “we contribute 3 percent” of the recent 1.5 ppm/year increase? We actually contribute 200% of that!]
Surely as they stick their heads up over the parapet of stupidity their rubbish slowly gets shot away, of course, this process is taking too long.
There’s also an extensive take down of Joe Bastardi’s arguments made on FoxNews and in a comment on tamino’s Open Mind, at Skeptical Science.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/one-confusedi-bastardi.html
Will his public embarrassments in Physics affect the financial value of his weather advice? Subscribers who neither know nor care about climate science may still recognize the elemental nature of the conservation of energy.
Notice how Joe invents a downward slope at the end of his graph above, and ignores the fact that the actual trend for that data over that time span is about .008 C of warming a year, leading to about .12C of warming over the entire period. Forget “hide the decline”; he’s doing “invent the decline”. His dishonesty is so blatant.
The comments on that thread are truly and staggeringly stupid. I’ve wrestled a few pigs on that thread, and I must say I feel dirtier for having done so. One or two more posts and my patience will have been spent. The best is the claim that the MWP is what is causing the CO2 rise, because there’s an 800 year lag in CO2 with temp rises. Later one of the same people says that the rise in CO2 can be almost instantaneous with temp rise, on the scale of months even. He can’t explain how far warmer periods than the MWP did not produce anything close to the CO2 rise we are seeing; when I ask I get deflection and evasion. One “skeptic” says the ice core data “doesn’t lie”, while another says the ice core data is crap and stomata data is the thing to go by. Any and all positions can be taken simultaneously, as long as the correct answer is reached – the CO2 rise is not caused by us.
If you’ll now excuse me, I think I need to take a shower.
[Reminds me of the Queen in Alice in Wonderland. “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” These guys will lurch from one illogical argument to the next trying to justify themselves. Good work calling them on it, but I understand your reluctance! – Ben]
Who was it that said “breathtaking ignorance”? Because that guy was spot on.
What a zoo over there. Note the replies to Chris Colose:
Richard Courtney: It is way past time that the egregious Colose got his bottom smacked in public and this could be it.
Richard Courtney: Colose is young, he lacks any real world experience (he has never left school) and has an extreme form of the arrogance of youth, but you do not have those excuses for your actions. Learn from the example of Joe Bastardi: look at the evidence instead of believing your gurus.
Smokey: Are you really that unaware of the fact that Climategate exposed the fraud and self-serving gaming of the climate peer review system by Mann and his pet journals?
John Whitman: Chris, with your attitude, is it a wonder supporters of CAGW are increasingly not trusted?
Venter: For somebody who’s published nothing, Chris Colose talks a lot of crap.
Theo Goodwin: Warmista continually trumpet your simple-minded view because all they have ever created is Radiation Only Gaia Models, magical statistics, and some historical reconstruction that has to hide the decline.
Theo Goodwin: You are completely ignorant of scientific method.
Theo Goodwin: If you want to take Al Gore as your career model, you are free to do so here in the USA.
Smokey: Chris Colose is a naive young know-it-all, literally wet behind the ears.
Rational Debate: I’d strongly suggest that Chris Colose spend some serious time studying the very basis of science itself for a bit
Rational Debate: It’s very distressing to see someone working on a graduate degree in the sciences who appears so blinded by bias and a serious lack of understanding of some of the most basic scientific tenets.
And my personal favorite:
u.k. (us): You can wrap yourself in the cloak of your studies.
The rest of us are concerned that, research has been driven by funding to deliver results which favor the current political agenda.
It’s not personal, it’s becoming a matter of survival.
That’s actually scary!
And Chris does have a publication, which is one more in the field of climate change than any of those idjot commenters at WUWT.
[WUWT comments are either delusional paranoia or wish fulfillment. Sad. – Ben]
It’s also nice to know that Ryan Maue believes skeptics shouldn’t be held accountable for any garbage they say in the media. Wonderful set of standards they have.
So, what Joe is really trying to tell me, is that virtually everything we have learned about the natural world is wrong ! In addition, all the science technology we use today in our every day lives, should not exist as we speak, as it is based purely on faulty science and improbable mathematics.
Hmmm, so why can I and Joe, both use our so called imaginary computers and modern communication devices created by the very same faulty science, he claims to be fictional?
For, back in the real world, in the 21st century, we all can easily communicate to anywhere in the world, or view all the news/weather reports in real time, as it happens, almost instantaneously at the speed of light.
An interesting contradiction in terms, of using technology that should not exist, all because of faulty science and yet it does actually exist in the real world!
Knowledge that is not used is abused.(Cree)
[epic face palm]
PS I guess he didn’t get Scott Denning’s message then:
Scott Denning: Reaching Across the Abyss
A most interesting message he delivers, to those living in the heartland of denial.
Hmmmmm…… I was hoping you’d have more up-to-date
info on the status of Irene than WUWT. Ya know, like “science stuff….?”
Nothing since August 8th?
Are you on a cruise, or something? (I hope not.) …Lady in Red
[Still here, still laughing at Anthony and company making fools of themselves while patting themselves on the back. Just doing it in my head at the moment as I’m busy in real life. – Ben]