Jury finds in favor of Michael Mann in defamation lawsuit against Mark Steyn, Rand Simberg

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Well isn’t this post on wattsupwiththat.com enlightening? Renowned climate scientist Michael Mann has prevailed in his decade-long defamation suit against unqualified climate denialists Mark Steyn and Rand Simburg.

I had to laugh at the screenshot above, trying to imply with the “Climate Ugliness” tag that the jury was a bunch of dumbasses (thanks A.I. for inventing the 13 member jury!). Of course the reality is that Steyn and Simburg were the horn-squeezing clowns here, smearing Mann with invented suggestions of pedophilia (a Penn State football coach was convicted of sexually assaulting children, that dastardly Penn State scientist MUST have the same morals!!!) This classic ad hominem was always the true, malicious, “climate ugliness”.

Mark Steyn and Rand Simburg thought they could win through class clown strutting and repeating their idiot “climate science” claims rather than proving their defamatory statements were justified. Spoiler Alert: hoping to trigger a truculent MAGA jurist was a looooong shot, but these two clowns were always playing to their own audience of ignorant zealots.

More chuckles:

  • Steyn admitted that he had not read Mann’s ‘Hockey Stick’ paper before emphatically rejecting it. He “did not appraise [himself] of the details of [the] American investigations before I wrote my entirely truthful piece.”
  • Similarly, Simburg hadn’t read Mann’s two reports on the hockey stick graphs before accusing Mann of scientific misconduct.
  • Also, Mann was a “vanity plaintiff” and a “humbug with no case.” There’s the burn!

Still far more worrisome than global warming: solar coronal mass ejections

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“Still far more worrisome than global warming: solar coronal mass ejections” (2017-02-01). Space climate alarmist Anthony Watts reminds his readers about space weather (Coronal Mass Ejections) and tells them that we can’t pay any attention to climate change (which is a commie lie anyway) until every other risk has been averted first.

A CME “would plunge our society into darkness and chaos as our sensitive electronics, networks, and power systems fail world-wide”!!! But “global warming worriers” are apparently “blind to this looming and certain threat and prefer squabbling over a few tenths of a degree change in temperature that may or may not be entirely man-made.”

Coronal Mass Ejections are scary!

Anthony presents a Coronal Mass Ejection in cartoon form.

A significant CME aimed at Earth could undoubtably cause serious trouble for our electricity transmission networks and the devices connected to them, as well as affecting commercial satellites. This is a serious matter in electrical engineering circles.

But methinks Anthony’s space climate alarmism is more concerned his own smug energy-intensive technology bubble than he is about humanity in general. How will Anthony receive President Trump’s tweets? Your average African or Southeast Asian subsistence farmer would ride out this kind of transient tech disaster easily, assuming they haven’t already watched their soil blow away or be poisoned by relentless anthropogenic global warming.

Friday Funny – “gone in an instant” – climate edition

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Friday Funny – “gone in an instant” – climate edition (2017-01-20). In which Anthony Watts celebrates the deletion of the whitehouse.gov page about Climate Change as soon as Donald Trump became President. Because hiding information is how you prove your case, I guess.

beforeafter

Silly me, I thought it was by proving the opposing position is wrong. Something that Anthony has never been able to do in a decade of whining and maligning.

But for Anthony, ignorance is bliss. Like the Grinch atop Mt. Crumpit, he vengefully imagines that “heads will explode” but I think it’s the denialist pants that are most at risk. At least temporarily.

Barack Obama, Climate Scientist

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Barack Obama, Climate Scientist (2017-01-09). Anthony Watts’ buddy Willis Eschenbach thinks Science magazine has “beclowned” itself by publishing President Barack Obama’s climate policy paper, The irreversible momentum of clean energy.

Sez Willis, sneering at the President’s “deathless prose”, “January 20th … could you hurry up please?” Yes, all signs point to the Trump presidency as a glorious era of intelligence, respect and rational behaviour. Not to mention a flood of inspirational tweets.

Willis may mock the current President’s interest in the future economy (even though I thought we can’t afford it was a staple denialist stalling tactic since forever ago) but I’ll highlight this viciously partisan paragraph by Obama:

We have long known, on the basis of a massive scientific record, that the urgency of acting to mitigate climate change is real and cannot be ignored. In recent years, we have also seen that the economic case for action—and against inaction—is just as clear, the business case for clean energy is growing, and the trend toward a cleaner power sector can be sustained regardless of near-term federal policies.

In the meantime, try not to let your jealousy eat you from the inside out Willis-the-NOT-racist. We know that Anthony Watts and yourself are the only True Scientists with the only education that counts: a year or two of Community College for Anthony and a B.A. in Psychology for yourself.

Aussie Chief Scientist: Renewable Energy Push Hurts the Poor

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Aussie Chief Scientist: Renewable Energy Push Hurts the Poor (2017-01-02). In which a mendacious idiot, Anthony Watts’ fellow-traveller Eric Worrall, falsely claims that Australia’s Chief Scientist is against renewable energy because it, somehow, hurts the poor. Rugged denialist free-marketers like Anthony and Eric spend their nights worrying about the poors, don’t you know?

Sez Eric the half-brain (that’s a Monty Python reference):

“Australia’s Chief Scientist Alan Finkel has strongly criticised the impact of renewable energy policies on the poor, working class people and migrants.”

etc.

Shorter Eric: The poors want coal, haven’t you read Dickens? Also, a water desalination plant somewhere didn’t work very well, so neither will renewables. I read it in a newspaper!

Sez Dr. Alan Finkel:

“It will be important to address the barriers to active engagement in the [renewable energy] transition underway, as experienced by vulnerable groups.”

I’ll summarize Dr. Finkel’s real position as this: renewables are the immediate future and Australia must ensure that renewables are integrated into the national grid so that everyone benefits, not just the wealthy who can, and are, taking care of themselves.

If you buy Eric’s crocodile sympathy, clean out your ears. Hotwhopper is the expert at unpacking Anthony Watts’ whoppers, you can read her more detailed response at her excellent website.

Aside: Sorry for the long absence here, I still roll my eyes at Anthony’s rabid stupidity but rarely have time to post about it.

Climate Clash: Aussie Senator Malcolm Roberts Owns TV Physicist Brian Cox

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“Climate Clash: Aussie Senator Malcolm Roberts Owns TV Physicist Brian Cox” (2016-08-16). In which Anthony Watts’ stand-in Eric Worrall trumpets racist Australian science-denier Senator Malcolm Roberts getting laughed at as a triumph. Perhaps that’s as good as it gets for denialists these days?

Strange that Senator Roberts, who Worrall boasts has “expert knowledge of climate datasets” is unaware that the raw temperature datasets have been available for decades and that they closely mirror the maliciously falsified corrected-for-station-errors version.

Senator Roberts is (was?) part the loopy Galileo Movement (because they, and only they, are as s.m.r.t and insightful as that old Italian). He wants to ban muslim clothing and put surveillance cameras in mosques and has alluded to both UN and jewish world conspiracies. Damn, I picking him next time I play Denialist Bingo!

Here are a couple of amusing links:

Realclimate.org goes dark – is it permanent?

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“Realclimate.org goes dark – is it permanent?“ (2015/11/21). It’s nice to see that Anthony Watts’ jumping-to-conclusions/wish-fulfilment muscles are still in top shape! RealClimate.org had some momentary domain registration problems last week (I love the denier comments there – a momentary website technical problem is proof that PhD climate scientists are incompetent in climate research!).

While few have noticed, since hardly anyone but the handful of extreme faithful visit there anymore [this reminds me of the old restaurant joke: no-one goes there any more, it’s too busy! – Ben], it seems that the website run by the climate alarmist cabal of Dr. Gavin Schmidt, Dr. Michael Mann, Dr. Stephan Rahmstorf, and others has gone dark this week.

In exactly the same way that snow fall, anywhere for any reason, is proof that global warming is a hoax (or is over, or has reversed, or has paused) so too does Anthony trumpet that RealClimate must be shutting down in despair:

‘Tis a puzzle, did Gavin or EMS forget to pay the hosting bill, have they given up, or is something else going on?

I’ll just take a moment to remind Anthony that RealClimate is a website run by highly qualified climate scientists for the purpose of rational communication on their subject of expertise, not an angry firehose blast of ill-informed accusations, paranoia and flat-out lies like Watts Up With That.

Anthony finishes up with a bit of stalker truculence; boasting that he can read Dr. Gavin Schmidt’s Twitter feed even though Dr. Schmidt has blocked him (“Help! Help! I’m being repressed!”). Here’s a hint, Anthony: Twitter blocking means you can’t pester him, can’t piggyback on his tweets to spread your bullshit. It’s about dealing with trolls.

Is It Time To Stop The Insanity Of Wasting Time and Money On More Climate Models?

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“Is It Time To Stop The Insanity Of Wasting Time and Money On More Climate Models?” (2015-09-14). Wait a second. Hasn’t the only faintly credible denialist argument been that all the climate modelling and climate projections are too preliminary? We should keep waiting, twiddling our thumbs, until perfect data and projections are in hand? Then, presumably, the denialists will swing into righteous eco-warrior action. No, for Dr. Tim Ball it’s now about wasteful funding. Apparently ignorance is again bliss.

I still flick a bored eye over to Anthony Watts’ clown convention every now and then, and this post made me laugh enough to spend a moment scrolling through the “science.”

Today Anthony has loaned his dunce’s pulpit to Sky Dragon kook Dr. Tim Ball so he can mutter that climate projections aren’t as precise as he requires, that there aren’t enough “stations”, and that if you copy and paste carefully enough even the IPCC can be made to admit that the data is awful. Shut the whole thing down!

Hard to put much credence in Dr. Ball’s “career as a climatologist” (actually he’s a retired geographer and semi-pro Letter to the Editor writer) when he’s still trying to sell the out-of-context “hide the decline” source code quote from 2009. That dog won’t hunt. Also, does he really think that climatologists are trying to forecast climate? Ball seems to have a very rudimentary notion of how his alleged profession gathers climate data, or how it is used. Most of his gotcha quotes stop just before the actual meaning is explained, but this can possibly be put down to a short attention span.

Hell, Dr. Ball seems to have even forgotten that “stations” aren’t the only way we gather climate data. Maybe he should dust off those National Geographic magazines and look for articles about “satellites.” They’re brill. They go everywhere!

Actually, Dr. Ball seems to hold Australian garden-variety denialist and conspiracy enthusiast (ask her about the Rothschilds) Joanne Nova in high esteem, so perhaps he’s hidden an admission of poor judgement amongst his contemptuous bluster.

Smear campaign: “His judgment cometh and that right soon”

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Smear campaign: “His judgment cometh and that right soon” (2015-02-23). Dr. Willie Soon is an aerospace engineer affiliated (part-time) with the Harvard Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics who publishes weak climate papers (always, always, with the same unsubstantiated “it’s all just natural solar variation” chant). He’s now been caught out by communists Greenpeace researchers. Seems Dr. Soon rarely discloses his fossil fuel industry backing in his publications, but boasts of his “deliverables” to the same buddies. Research to order, on the Q.T.

Dr. Willie Soon, rehydrating.

Anthony Watts has often snuggled up to Dr. Soon. Hand-waving about solar climate influences has been a great side-show for denialists, but it’s been hard for them to find a reliable figurehead for their obstruction. Being able to whisper “HArvard! SmithSONian!” must have been just irresistible. Dr. Soon’s work, while widely discredited, had a “sciencey” look and he made a great tame Republican witness in kangaroo court Senate Hearings.

The best Anthony can do is suggest that the benighted Dr. Soon is the victim of a smear campaign because, well, facts are smears. Then the usual Morris Dance ensues: invoke the malevolent “compliant media” and immediately talk about something else.

Did you know that “climate science is a huge money machine”? So what if Willie wanted a taste! Anthony tries to play the herd mentality card (I guess that makes Dr. Soon our latest Galileo, funny how he’s always reincarnated as a denialist these days) but doesn’t notice that each ‘overturned consensus’ came about through considering new evidence, not through pig-headed repetition of the same crap.

Butter wouldn’t melt in Anthony’s mouth though when he brazenly tries to invoke the e-mails of mainstream climate scientists targeted in the false “Climategate” uproar. They solicited funds from the energy industry too, although without the flirtatious promises, Willie’s just the latest nose in the trough! What were once vices are now virtues, the denialist outrage during Climategate is so yesterday.

Remember the whole “97% of climate scientists accept the evidence of global warming” thing? Guys like Willie Soon are the 3%.

“Follow the money” Anthony sagely advises, but he really wants to lead us down the garden path.

Bigger problems than global warming – NASA discovers 8 new dangerous near Earth asteroids

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“Bigger problems than global warming – NASA discovers 8 new dangerous near Earth asteroids“ (2015-01-19i). Red Alert! Anthony Watts wants us to know about Eric Worrall’s shocking discovery that there’s something we should all really be worried about! Meteors! Meteorites? NEOs? Stop worrying about so-called climate change (which is already affecting everyone on Earth and will steadily increase in impact) and start worrying about meteors, which may or may not strike the Earth and would have effectively no prolonged climate influence.

“[T]he risk of a damaging meteor impact is not a possibility which should be neglected” says Eric. Somehow Eric’s caution doesn’t extend to the undeniable (except by, you know, denialists) fact that man’s industrial activity is already measurably altering Earth’s climate in a negative way. That should be neglected as well as vigorously denied.

Riiiiight.

Eric also manages to throw in a heaping plate of sneering at NASA for the work they’ve done to study the risks posed by Near Earth Objects while being careful not to explain that low funding for the work is because of cost-cutting anti-science Republicans.

Eric’s apparent belief that satellites should be able to refuel as easily and often as the average family sedan is just cute.

 I’m mildly horrified that a project this important appears to be so far down the list of priorities, that the project was mothballed for a year while the survey satellite stood waiting for a refuel.

Buy why are political cranks like Eric and Anthony bothered with public safety? Surely all handsome, virile, brilliant, libertarians will have made their own personal arrangements to either leave the planet for an extended vacation or activated their bunker networks. Anyone unable to do the same surely deserves what they get!

P.S. Does Eric Worrall actually rely on The Register for breaking scientific news?