Category Archives: Gubmint

Regulatory Czar wants to use copyright protection mechanisms to shut down rumors and conspiracy theories

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“Regulatory Czar wants to use copyright protection mechanisms to shut down rumors and conspiracy theories“ (2012-01-20). Anthony Watts loves to give a platform to libertarian crackpots. Wild incendiary ideas get promoted, people Anthony doesn’t like get slandered, but he can stand back with his hands clean.

Here we have Alex Rawls, a climate change denier who’s also obsessed with, for example, the Flight 93 memorial (it is, of course, a “terrorist memorial mosque”), how the Beijing Olympics Closing Ceremony depicted an orgasm, and of course “Republicanism’. He tells us that Obama wants to suppress rumors and conspiracy theories such as claims that global warming is a deliberate fraud or that Barack Obama “pals around with terrorists.”

Strangely, these are precisely the wild claims that Alex, a “simple public-spirited blogger”, likes to shout from the rooftop.

Sorry Anthony, who you pass the megaphone to says a lot about you.

A little security help for my friends

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“A little security help for my friends” (2011-12-16). Anthony Watts, that paragon of transparency and objectivity, passes on a b-grade security tip to his fellow sneaks now that British denialist Roger Tattersall (aka “Tallbloke”) has had his computers seized as part of the criminal investigation into the second release of old “Climategate” e-mails.

Keep everything important on a USB thumb drive and be ready to smother it with mayonnaise and swallow same on a moment’s notice. This includes your chemtrail studies and skynet preparations.

Because everything you’re doing is totally on the up-and-up.

Quote of the Week – what Durban is really about

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“Quote of the Week – what Durban is really about” (2011-12-11). Anthony Watts thinks that esteemed climate scientist “Cal65″ (aka random anonymous commenter) has managed to get to the core truth about the purpose of the Durban climate conference which has, infuriatingly, achieved positive results:

The UN plan will shift wealth from the first world’s poor to the third world’s rich without making any difference in climate control.

That was a real stretch, huh? The invisible hand of the secret commie world government revealed again!

Those “whiny grifters known as the Maldives” are building airports, which clearly means they know that the sea-level won’t actually change for at least eleventy hundred years. Therefore:

“Anything coming out of the mouths of Maldives officials related to climate, CO2, or sea level is pure bullshit.”

I love the nuance of Anthony’s usual noisy arguments:

  1. “Tuvalu and many other South Pacific Islands are not sinking, claims they are due to global warming driven sea level rise are opportunistic.” Good lead! This is as close as Anthony can get to a verifiable claim. Too bad the authors of the paper he’s trying to misconstrue have been summarized thus: “Webb and Kench warn that while the islands are coping for now, any acceleration in the rate of sea-level rise could overtake the sediment build up. Calculating how fast sea levels will rise over the coming decades is uncertain science, and no one knows how fast the islands can grow.“
  2.  ”The Maldives can’t take a joke.” Yeah, that’s it! Anthony’s spittle is a joke! Roll with it, dudes.
  3. Willis Eschenbach are smart and he says islands FLOAT! Really Anthony? You’re trying to show that the reaction of the Maldives government to rising sea-levels is “FAIL” and you cite Willis? You should have saved him for last and hoped that your readers wandered away before reading this bit.
  4. “The sea level is actually dropping.” It’s called statistics, Anthony. You’re not using them right. (But you know that.)
  5. Lorne Gunther (a virulent right-wing columnist) says that kooky Nils-Axel Mörner can prove that sea-level ”hasn’t risen in 50 years.” Yes, ignore the sea-level charts you shoved in our faces in point 4, Anthony.
  6. The Maldives government is building things! So is Iceland, and they gots volcanoes. Not everything is intended to last eleventy hundred years.
  7. Airports too! So is the US military in Afghanistan.
  8. The Maldives tricked the USA into giving them $30 billion! Maybe you should change the battery in your Casio.

Anthony, you’re experiencing a panic attack. Frankly we were all a bit surprised that the Durban conference managed to achieve something. Please breathe into a paper bag for the rest of the day, OK?

Hansen rakes it in

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“Hansen rakes it in” (2011-10-04). A braying Republican lobbyist, Christopher Horner from the “American Tradition Institute”, has discovered that NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen is getting money from people! Why, he’s a “millionaire bureaucrat”! Anthony Watts is naturally all-in with the dumpster-diving. The ATI is busy harassing NASA left, right, and center (although naturally mostly “right”) for their scientific activities with various lawsuits. I guess that’s the their idea of ‘tradition’.

God forbid that a renowned scientist should receive awards and speaking invitations for his research and his expert knowledge, that’s reserved for people like Christopher Horner. Since the money all flows in, somehow, as a result of his “taxpayer-funded employment” he is clearly an indentured servant who needs his chains tightened just a tiny bit.

Funny how just a few days ago Anthony was again trying to claim the high ground with his “heartfelt” post about how nasty the phrase “denialist” is, especially when used by the Skeptical Science website (which he subtly reminds his readers has sometimes been abbreviated to “SS”). To prove his sincerely Anthony spent a whole hour changing his “Al Gore is an idiot” tags to just “Al Gore”. Now here he is giving two thumbs up to personal attacks by a partisan operative.

New Aussie skeptic movement

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“New Aussie skeptic movement“ (May 16, 2011). Anthony Watts promotes the comical Galileo Movement, founded by Australian “retirees Case Smit and John Smeed”.

Although once “they simply accepted politicians’ claims of global warming”, they were so “incensed” to discover that “climate claims by some scientists and politicians contradict observed facts” that they felt they had to “[risk] their personal finances” and bring Lord Monckton, “famous for explaining the scientific data, the statistics and the UN bureaucracy’s political fabrication of global warming alarm”, to tour Australia. Their background page is a sea of ad hominem claims, straw-men arguments and libertarian paranoia.

The purpose of “Case’s and John’s apolitical public campaign”?

  • Protect freedom – personal choice [the hell with everyone else] and national sovereignty [because no country's climate is related to another's];
  • Protect the environment [by doing nothing];
  • Protect science and restore scientific integrity [two words - Lord. Monckton.];
  • Protect our economic security [by impeding rational preparation for climate impacts on same];
  • Protect people’s emotional health by ending Government and activists’ constant destructive bombardment of fear and guilt on our kids and communities [instead bombarding them with right-wing conspiracy theories].

Famous climate denialist. From Wikipedia.

Why invoke Galileo Galilei? Well, apparently he ”stood up publicly… to ensure [that] objective science replaced superstition, ideology, ignorance and state control.” Just like them, bravely espousing the radical new idea that CO2 has no climate consequences! Except of course that they are really defending an old idea that has been progressively replaced by new knowledge (gosh, CO2 increases do have climate consequences). Um guys, this analogy makes you the Catholic Church not the courageous scientist... You’re resisting change in your own short-sighted self-interest.

Sometimes the jokes just write themselves.

Get a load of the Galileo Movement’s collection of “independent advisers”, which apparently “includes diverse opinions”. It’s a Who’s Who of denialists and their apologists: Professor Tim Ball, Warwick Hughes, Professor Fred Singer, Professor Dick Lindzen, Professor Bill Kininmonth, Professor Bob Carter, Professor Ian Plimer, David Archibald, Professor Peter Ridd, Professor Garth Paltridge, Dr Vincent Gray, Dr Jennifer Marohasy, Jo Nova, Des Moore, John Nicol, David Flint, Andrew Bolt, John McLean, David Evans and Viscount Monckton. Don’t forget to include Alan Jones, whose “innate[?] expertise straddles the fields of politics, sport and the media.”

2011-08-15 Update: Scientific American has take notice of these bozos, posting Why Carbon Dioxide is a Greenhouse Gas.

In making a case against CO2 as a greenhouse gas, the Galileo Movement relies on irrelevant facts while omitting pertinent ones.

The SmartMeter backfiring privacy issue

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“The SmartMeter backfiring privacy issue“ (May 12, 2011). Hmm. Is revealing details of an individual’s utility bill a privacy issue? Apparently not when Anthony could delight in partisan intrusions into Al Gore’s private life back in 2007 and 2009 (Gore snubs Earth Hour). Now of course it’s about institutional intrusion, which makes it a bad thing.

Here’s Anthony’s take on “smart meters”:

The promise was to help you control your electricity bill by becoming more aware of your energy use. The downside is that with the data gathered, other people and businesses can also become more aware of your habits, like when you go to work, go on vacation, etc. Is the potential energy savings worth the invasion of privacy trade-off? I sure don’t think so. I really don’t want PG&E or anyone else for that matter knowing how I live my life inside my own home.

Well, here’s something I agree with Anthony, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, on: commercial entities have a responsibility to protect the personal information of their customers. That means securing the data transmissions and protecting the gathered information.

But what about the intended purpose of smart meters, enabling consumers to save money by identifying their most significant energy usages and by better aligning their usage with low-demand periods? After-all even Anthony drives a hybrid car and has a wind turbine; efficiency and self-sufficiency are positive characteristics in themselves.

The surfacestations.org paper – accepted

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“The surfacestations.org paper – accepted“. (May 8, 2011)  Holy moly, Anthony Watts are a scientist! Well, “Corresponding Author” Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. is a scientist. Anthony announces that Roger and he will have a paper in an upcoming American Geophysical Union publication. I guess the AGU forgot Al Gore’s instructions about maintaining “the consensus.”

Anthony’s even managed to avoid the taint of public funding by getting fellow citizen-scientists (aka blog readers) to cover the page charges. Anthony and Roger have used the color crayons for this one and that’s expensive.

I have to shake my head at the hate-on Anthony has for government grants and the real scientific community. Of course he’s still on the watch for double-crossin’ warmist sneaks:

If you are wondering why I blurred the [DOI] number, it is simply that given what has transpired, with preemptive strikes by NCDC, and the recent BEST ambush before Congress, I’m simply being cautious.

Gosh, I thought it was hard to get papers confirming previous analyses published these days. Another myth demolished.

Will this paper be laced with accusations and faulty logic like his Science and Public Policy Institute pamphlets? Maybe it will just be, well, boring when he has to stay factual and reality-based.

Expect the denialosphere to kick into high gear over this regardless. I’m looking forward to it.

One word: “plastics”

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“One word: “plastics”. (May 5, 2011) Another half-the-story from Anthony Watts, linking to a Guardian article about the European Union paying fishers to “catch” plastic.

What does this have to do with climate change, or even just science? Nuthin’. It’s just reflexive regulation bashing and tax whining. Funny how there’s nary a peep on Anthony’s blog about the billions in tax cuts that oil companies receive…

So what’s really going on? Reading the Guardian article might help.

The move is intended as a sweetener to fishermen who have bitterly opposed the European commission’s plans to ban the wasteful practice of discarding edible fish at sea. Fleets fear they will lose money by not being able to throw away lower-value catch.

“Ending this practice of throwing away edible fish is in the interest of fishermen, and consumers,” Damanaki told the Guardian in an interview. “It has to happen – we cannot have consumers afraid to eat fish because they hate this problem of discards.”

Fishermen who clear plastic will be subsidised initially by EU member states, but in future the scheme could turn into a self-sustaining profitable enterprise, as fleets cash in on the increasing value of recycled plastics. Cleaning up the rubbish will also improve the prospects for fish, seabirds and other marine species, which frequently choke or suffer internal damage from ingesting small pieces of non-biodegradable packaging.

Outrageous!

Are biofuel policies to help Mother Earth killing her most vulnerable children instead?

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“Are biofuel policies to help Mother Earth killing her most vulnerable children instead?” Indur M. Goklany returns to Anthony Watts’ blog to tell us about his paper in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. Could Biofuel Policies Increase Death and Disease in Developing Countries? reveals how “global warming policies may be helping kill more people than it saves.” OMG, stop everything! We’re killing poor people!

I always think it’s a bit dodgy when a scientific paper title is in the form of a question. Maybe because the author is ever so slightly overreaching? “Could” is about as close as Indur gets to any kind of supporting evidence. He calls his research an “exploratory analysis”. With, apparently, exploratory conclusions.

Who reviewed and published it? Oops, The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons is a “politically conservative non-profit organization“. They are anti-vaccination, anti-universal healthcare, pro-gun, don’t think HIV causes AIDS, try to link abortion to breast cancer and claim that illegal immigrants are bringing leprosy to America. Nice.

But is Indur Goklany right? Are biofuel production consequences the result of AGW policies? As I recall American ethanol production began as a response to the “energy crisis” in the Seventies. Nothing whatsoever to do with climate. Some current forms of biofuel production can reduce global food availability and increase global food prices. This says more about the enthusiasm of agribusiness for government subsidies than it does about attempts to reverse AGW. Biofuels are primarily an economic issue.

Indur Goklany illustrates a linear process as a circle, but leaves something out.

This is just another one of Indur’s right-wing think-tank revisionist efforts. Based on a fast-and-loose numbers, with an exaggerated connection to climate policy and used to infer imaginary negative future consequences. This time, instead of understating the consequences of AGW we get an overstatement of AGW’s alleged political power.

Zeroed out: NOAA Climate Service funding axed in budget CR

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“Zeroed out: NOAA Climate Service funding axed in budget CR“. Anthony Watts and his readers gloat over successful Republican maneuvering to cut funding to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s new Climate Service. Funny, until they managed to grasp the levers of power the denialists chorus sang constantly of the need for more and better information. This of course required prolonged waiting.

Suddenly, ignorance is again bliss.

Next up, those communists at the EPA. How dare they tell us what’s safe? If we want lead in our drinking water and gasoline, or prefer to chew our air, we’ll do it! It’s how we raise new Republican voters.