“Friday Funny: Dr. Michael Mann keeps interesting company” (2012-07-13). What are the chances that Anthony Watts, after years of alternately wailing about imagined personal attacks and launching them himself will be correct when he “accuses” his regular critic “caerbannog666” of being… a Goth!!!!!!!! The only things Anthony manages to “out” are his own scientific hypocrisy and his pathetic inability to see past his own prejudices.
But, you say, every single occurrence of “caerbannog666” in a Google search can only be related to the target of his mini-McCarthyist rummaging!
I wondered who is this guy? A well known climate blog regular, he’s been bloviating all over the climate blogs for years. After finding him though about a minute’s worth of Googling public information, I wish I could unsee what I found. Meet [name of Brazilian bystander redacted] (Caerbannog)
That 31 year-old Brazilian goth’s MySpace page is clearly proof of the identity of a 57 year-old American who’s a critic of Anthony’s denialism. And everyone knows that Goths are creepy and dumb, so “caerbannog666” is a creep and dumb! Therefore no Global Warming. Also, every “citizen-scientist” should go to that MySpace page and post insults.
Turns out the chances of Anthony correcting his foolish error are pretty low. In fact about as low as the chances of him even admitting it (you really owe it to yourself to watch Anthony flounder stiffly in the comments, preserved here as a PDF for posterity):
I’m not the least bit interested in what a few anonymous cowards think I should do/not do. ‘Caerbannog666′ has to make the request and he’s the only one whose opinion matters. He can use the contact form, or he can leave a comment on tips and notes. So far he’s done nothing. And since I’m tiring of the usual anonymous people who think that their opinion matters more on this issue, I’m closing comments. As stated, if ‘Caerbannog666′ wants a correction, he can ask for one and show why, and if he can demonstrate why he’s not the same person, I’ll gladly make a correction.
It’s pretty comical that Anthony thinks his inaccurate (and irrelevant) “outing” would be a legitimate way to diminish his scientific critics. Anthony tries to walk that back a bit in an update, mumbling about his proclaimed acceptance of people who choose to dress “in the dark style”. This post really boils down to impotent, frustrated, lashing out by A. Watts.
This self-congratulatory comment by David Ball sums up the Watts Up WIth That hypocrisy best: “Tolerance is one of the magic ingredients of WUWT IMHO.” I think that last bit of tech lingo is “In My Horse-shit Opinion”.
Wott's Up With That? 
Classic Watts. Try to attack someone, make a huge mistake and then think of as petty a reason as possible for not correcting it. And then the old classic “lighten up, it was only a joke” justification as well!
He’s really painfully immature. I am sure he was bullied when he was young, probably for being a know-it-all blowhard who doesn’t know when to shut up. The problem seems to have been that he wasn’t bullied enough.
[Sorry, this fell into the spam filter! Don’t know Anthony’s psychological background, but i do wonder sometimes… – Ben]
Watts seems to make a habit of ‘googling for a minute’ to find the answer to life, the universe and everything. Anyone who disagrees with his conclusions from his one minute of googling is, needless to say, dismissed as an anonymous coward.
[Anthony jumps to conclusions with Ninja-like speed, and forgives himself even faster. – Ben]
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: every time that Anthony reaches a new low, I can’t imagine how he could possible sink any lower. Yet he does.
[That’s what makes him so fascinating! – Ben]
When did Watt ever retract one of his nonsense claims?
One of the more spectacular epic fails among Watt’s assortment of them is his early 2010 claim that arctic ice was recovering.
Recently I had a denier cite that failed bluff as “proof” that arctic Ice was recovering.
By 2010 Ice Minimum Arctic Ice Volume had reached a (then) Historic Minimum Low
That turned out to be the tipping point for a series of even lower minimums in 2011 and now in 2012. I don’t see any evidence that Watt admitted he got that backwards.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2.png?%3C?php%20echo%20time%28%29%20?
The McClure Parry NW passage will be opening soon and could already be navigated by ships such as the “Ice Ramming” MV Manhattan, which failed to break through 20 meter pressure ridges in 1968 and 1969, giving up and using a more dangerous and difficult passage farther south. The escorting USA Coast Guard Ice Breaker Staten Island developed engine trouble and could not free itself from the deep ice. Manhattan had to be freed from the ice repeatedly by the Canadian Coast Guard Ice Breaker sent along as an uninvited and unwelcome escort.
Manhattan limped into port on the Alaskan North Shore in 1968 with holes in the outer hull big enough to drive a freight truck through.
IMHO you, Tamino, etc are falling for the fact that as WUWT has no scientific credibility left – not that it had any to start – Anthony is publishing more and more bizarre claims so as to keep his enterprise noticed. Without stuff like this his audience would get board and it’d all be over.
And posting articles like this only helps him.
[I’ve often thought about your point, but feel that someone needs to go on the record about his deceptions and irresponsible actions. – Ben]
Take care not to upset admitted Prat for Profit Monckton with your proifle icon. Aristocrat admits tale of lost home was stunt to boost puzzle sales
A couple of months ago I noticed an error on WUWT that clearly demonstrated how Anthony cant do attribution. So I posted a comment on the relevant page on WUWT . I had in the previous few days changed my Avatar to the pic of Trayvon Martin. Anthony wouldn’t allow the comment until I changed the Avatar, claiming it was race-baiting !
http://muchachoverde.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/anthony-watts-cant-do-attribution.html
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/16/usas-record-warm-march-not-caused-by-global-warming/#comment-958026
One of the first things you learn when you’re new to the internet is that many people can use the same handle (or in this case, a similar handle), and the “So-and-So” posting on one forum is not necessarily the same “So-and-So” posting on another. What a putz.
[Every day is Groundhog Day, but without the slow dawning of perception, for poor Anthony. – Ben]
Well, I am the evil caerbannog666 —
First, a bit of background info that will help highlight the silliness of whole WUWT enterprise.
About a year-and-a-half ago, I decided to try my hand at crunching the global temperature data myself (two motivations — first, I wanted to get up to speed with C++/STL, and second, I wanted to see what I kind of results I could get by crunching the global temperature data myself).
Here’s a quick summary of what I found:
You can find the whole series of posts here: http://forums.utsandiego.com/ — the posts show the evolution of my little “hobby project”, including mis-steps as well as new results as I tried different experiments with the data. The thread includes lots of good “eye candy” results, accompanied by not-too-technical explanations of how I generated them. I definitely encourage other folks here to check it all out. (I also got in a fair bit of Watts/denier-bashing “soapbox time”, for which I won’t apologize).
A number of other folks (tamino, Nick Stokes, etc.) have also confirmed the NASA results. But my approach was much simpler and more “dumbed down” than theirs — i.e., much less rigorous, and much easier for non-technical folks to follow.
A few denier wingnuts showed up and dropped a few turds in the thread — they were amusing at first, but quickly became boring.
OK, so with that out of the way, back to the WUWT “goth” thread.
One of the WUWT discussion participants (who had apparently run across the above material earlier) posted links to the that Union-Tribune discussion thread, and suggested that the other participants focus on the science I presented, rather
than whether or not I was some sort of kinky goth.
You can guess how that turned out.
Anyway, if you want a few cheap laughs, skim through some of the UT posts of mine, and then go see how those really bright WUWT’ers reacted when they were given links to my posts.
And as for that goth dude? I will neither confirm or deny that I’m that guy (I don’t have the heart to shoot down Anthony’s harmless little leather ‘n’ chains fantasy).
[Another good comment that fell into the spam hole. (Spam? Spam. Spam!) Thanks for your comment, your efforts, and the entertaining consequences! PS Love the new avatar. :-) – Ben]