“Climate Craziness of the Week: Global Warming Activist Freezes to Death in Antarctica“. That last sentence is a dead link. Anthony Watts fell for a lame hoax article on Eco Enquirer about an Antarctic tragedy but has since deleted the post. I have it here so you can wonder at Anthony’s powers of critical thinking.
From the Eco Enquirer, tragic news that I hope is not repeated by other activists.
Famed global warming activist James Schneider and a journalist friend were both found frozen to death on Saturday, about 90 miles from South Pole Station, by the pilot of a ski plane practicing emergency evacuation procedures.
“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing”, recounted the pilot, Jimmy Dolittle. “There were two snowmobiles with cargo sleds, a tent, and a bright orange rope that had been laid out on the ice, forming the words, ‘HELP-COLD’.”
One friend of Prof. Schneider told ecoEnquirer that he had been planning a trip to an ice sheet to film the devastation brought on by global warming. His wife, Linda, said that she had heard him discussing the trip with his environmental activist friends, but she assumed that he was talking about the Greenland ice sheet, a much smaller ice sheet than Antarctica.
“He kept talking about when they ‘get down to chili’, and I thought they were talking about the order in which they would consume their food supplies”, Mrs. Schneider recounted. “I had no idea they were talking about Chile, the country from which you usually fly or sail in order to reach Antarctica.”
Apparently, while all of Prof. Schneider’s friends were assuming that the July trek would be to Greenland, during Northern Hemisphere summer, his plans were actually to snowmobile to the South Pole – which, in July, is in the dead of winter.
Mr. Dolittle related how some people do not realize that, even if there has been warming in Antarctica, the average temperature at the South Pole in July still runs about 70 degrees F below zero. “Some people think that July is warm everywhere on Earth.”
Wott's Up With That? 
Well done, Ben! I can confirm that Anthony’s original post was really up at one time because I found the link at Google (unfortunately, they don’t appear to have it cached).
How Anthony could put up an article where the pilot’s name is Jimmy Dolittle and not stop for a moment and say to himself “wait a minute, there’s something odd here” is beyond me. I guess we can add U.S. history right below science to the list of subjects that Anthony does not know.
Keep up the good work. Bets on whether Anthony ever admits he fell for a hoax?
[Yeah, those activists sure are stupid! :-) Anthony has never admitted anything yet, so I wouldn’t take that bet. – Ben]
Nice catch. The power of confirmation bias is truly amazing. A person can only do so much to avoid being conned. The real test of character is whether you can admit, directly and forthrightly, that you were wrong. This is the test Watt’s fails over and over.