Author Archives: Ben

About Ben

I trained as a sedimentary geologist at a Canadian University, but have worked in the I.T. field as a programmer and manager for many years.

Mark Steyn makes motion to dismiss Mann’s libel claim

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“Mark Steyn makes motion to dismiss Mann’s libel claim“ (201-01-24). Anthony Watts suggests that “noted human righters activist” right-wing zealot Mark Steyn’s defamation of Dr. Michael Mann was an act of moral bravery. Don’t block the freedom of speech “sunlight” that only right-wing demagogues can give! Also, Steyn’s motion to dismiss the libel claim is NOT trying to wriggle off the hook of his own actions.

Steyn’s defence lawyers ditching him is just proof that there’s no more defending needed, right? As citizen-lawyer Anthony says eyes firmly locked in the mirror, that;

Mann would be a fool to pursue the case further, but then again, his ego is often so large that I surmise the state department of transportation must be forced to put out orange traffic cones ahead of him when he travels, so I doubt it will happen.

Strip away all the posturing, self-serving invocation of free speech, rabid contempt for legal process and the specific judges ruling in this matter and what’s left?

Steyn, and Anthony’s readers, think that Dr. Mann is a “public figure” and therefore they have the right to fabricate and spread any utter bullshit about him or his repeatedly confirmed research that they please. And oh, do they please.

My take on this is that Mark Steyn, Rand Simberg, the National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute have designed their attacks on climate science to take advantage of every legal fig leaf they can pull together to shield them from responsibility for their lies and misrepresentations. Now that they’ve been caught they are complaining hypocritically about the legal system that was their best weapon. Sucks to be them, but maybe they can scuttle back under their rock.

That Anthony Watts and company are convinced Steyn and friends should be able slip off the hook on a technicality says much about their own ethical foundations.

So how did it turn out? Steyn’s motion was rejected by the judge.

“For many of the reasons discussed in Judge Combs Greene’s July 19 orders, to state as a fact that a scientist dishonestly molests or tortures data to serve a political agenda would have a strong likelihood of damaging his reputation within his profession, which is the very essence of defamation.

Monckton says he’ll take over the shuttered Pattern Recognition in Physics Journal

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“Monckton says he’ll take over the shuttered Pattern Recognition in Physics Journal“ (2014-01-23). Anthony Watts praises an “emotional commentary” in World Nutter Daily by the rabid Lord Monckton, who wants to relaunch the catastrophically failed journal Pattern Recognition in Physics. Remember the denialists who appointed themselves editors and approved each other’s nonsense papers and then got caught red-handed?

Because scientific cranks not being allowed to pretend their rants have passed objective  review is proof that “The Age of Reason and Enlightenment is over. The Dark Ages are back.”

From this quote, it sounds like Anthony has realized what side of his bread the butter’s on (that would be the conspiracy theory right-wing lunatic side):

All I can say is that I hope the people that tried to publish in the first PRP journal (now closed) find a friendly home there. It will be interesting to watch it evolve and I wish them all the success they deserve.

All is right in the world again.

HotWhopper has some entertaining observations, such as noting the comments of non-scientist (but pretend journal editor) Roger “Tallbloke” Tattersall:

Roger reckons he’s going to use Christopher’s mighty shoulder to heave the stone of ignorance off the path of knowledge and straighten the road

January 30th update: I can’t believe I didn’t click through to Monckton’s own post! It’s the most awesome example of Monckton in full raging, foaming, comic, flight I’ve seen! Funniest thing I’ve seen in months, and I watch a lot of cute cat videos.

Resentful, thin-skinned PRP editor-in-chief Mörner is apparently a “charming and lively man, with a soul and a wit that are eternal youth personified” while the blind-sided publisher is “formless lump of lard” and “appalling”. Naturally the phrases “Nazi-era book-burning”, “Galileo”, “New Dogma”, “Communist” and “criminal organization” are also thrown about with vigour. Monckton’s supporters try to reach the same comic heights in their comments, but the bar is just set too high. Good times, good times.

Friday Funny – Mann Overboard!

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“Friday Funny – Mann Overboard!” (2014-01-24). Anthony Watts laughs that Michael Mann has dismissed Patrick Moore as a “garden variety troll” in tweet. Even though Moore calls himself “The Sensible Environmentalist” and a co-founder of Greenpeace! The nerve.

How can Dr. Mann say such poisonous things when even Greenpeace says “Patrick Moore, a paid spokesman for the nuclear industry, frequently cites a long-ago affiliation with Greenpeace to gain legitimacy in the media.”  and that “Patrick Moore Did Not Found Greenpeace.”

Wait, that ruins Anthony’s punchline and Friday’s the day that Anthony thinks he’s hilarious! Forget you read that.

Just remember that climate scientists are nasty and hateful and that “climate skeptics” are innocents under attack.

Antarctica Has Sea Ice Rabbit Ears, a V for Victory or Maybe It’s a Peace Sign?…

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“Antarctica Has Sea Ice Rabbit Ears, a V for Victory or Maybe It’s a Peace Sign?…” (2014-01-19). Anthony Watts’ friend “Just The Facts”, better known as “Just the Ignorance” has a keen scientific eye, based on no education whatsoever, and has noticed that Antarctica has bunny ears. Ice, anywhere, means cooling everywhere!

Funny how “Just The Facts” manages to ignore so many of them. Maybe he meant just a fact, not the relevant ones. Do glaciers float when the reach the sea, for instance? Do they become thinner? Something for JTF to ponder.

Antarctic Ice Extent 14-01-19

Sea Ice bunnies have ears, but not toes. Great science,”Just The Facts”! Image Credit: NSIDC

California’s drought situation in pictures – what a difference one year makes

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“California’s drought situation in pictures – what a difference one year makes” (2014-01-18). Anthony Watts is in anguish over the California droughts (there’s been plenty of wild fires too). Click through to see Anthony rue the delay in government intervention and put his faith in climate models! No, this is not Bizarro Earth.

Why won’t someone do something! We needed government intervention last year!

Yesterday, Governor Brown declared a drought emergency, which is probably a bit too late.

But don’t worry, climate models show that everything will be A-Ok next year.

if the Nino 3.4 model ensemble is to be believed, then California will likely see a strong precipitation rebound in 2014/2015.

Naturally Anthony maintains his confidence that every instance of cold weather, anywhere, is proof of no global warming ever while every instance of hot weather or drought is just a sticky patch. But it’s getting hard to do it with a straight face.

HotWhopper takes Anthony to task nicely: Finally, if a “bit too late” – Anthony Watts talks about the drought in California.

The Copernicus-PRP fiasco: predictable and preventable

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“The Copernicus-PRP fiasco: predictable and preventable” (2014-01-19). Anthony Watts concludes that playing the “censorship!” card in defence of the terminated climate denialist journal Pattern Recognition in Physics is too much of a stretch even for him and that amputation is required.

[Update: I just saw the uncorrected RSS summary for Anthony’s post, a desperate a plea for guidance – what should he believe? “Post on the Copernicus – Tallbloke fiasco please advise” The rats are truly running in all directions.]

Otherwise the dishonest scamming hypocritical denialists who tried to start a fake science journal (see yesterday’s post about the inglorious life and death of Pattern Recognition in Physics) will make dishonest scamming hypocritical denialists like Anthony look like the same kind of dishonest scamming hypocritical denialists as the first group of dishonest scamming hypocritical denialists!

“[Pattern Recognition in Physics’ implosion] has painted all climate skeptics with a broad brush.”

Yes, Anthony, you’ve been tarred by the same brush even though you’re flinching away as fast as you can. Because you’re exactly the same kind of intransigent, politically motivated science denier trying to lie your way to “credibility.” Scrutiny – it’s a bitch.

No doubt their shared conviction that communist conspiracies underlie all climate science will reunite the climate denialists, but for now the denial-sphere is dissolving into factional conflict. Dip into the comments at Anthony’s initial coverage of the journal’s cancelation. When even stalwart followers are complaining about “fighting like ferrets in a sack” you know it’s worth the time.

What hasn’t changed? Non-denialists are still thugs;

the “panic” [Copernicus Publications] were under after getting hit with an [imagined] email campaign from James Annan’s “various people”.

and lust to censor is still the unslaked desire of the ‘mainstream’ scientific community;

 “this looked like another case of suppression due to the anti-IPCC message conveyed in the PRP Special Edition”.

Open Letter to Jon Stewart – The Daily Show

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“Open Letter to Jon Stewart – The Daily Show” (2014-01-17). I LOVE these denialist “open letters”! Anthony Watts seems to love ’em too, but for different reasons. Anthony loves the chance to act as if he’s initiating a great public debate. When The Letter lands like a tiny pebble in a reeeeeally deep well he can pretend it was so beautifully argued that the (oblivious) target was shamed into silence. Me? I love the hubris.

Here we have Bob Tisdale lecturing Jon Stewart about his coverage of right-wing “weather!” whoppers on January 6th. Anthony Watts has had a pickle up his ass on the same topic; the recent deep cold snap should have been the final nail in the Global Warming hoax, right? But at least weatherman Anthony learned what the Polar Vortex is.

Bob lists his credentials up front so that Jon will sit up and take notice. He’s an “independent climate researcher” (code for “not a climate researcher”) and author of three ebooks!

I quite enjoyed Ingenious Pursuits‘ deconstruction: “Dr” Bob in retirement – just keep churning it out, check it out.

Like most denialists, Bob seems to consider himself a blend of Galileo and Martin Luther. Fierce intellect, incredible moral integrity, and probably the strength of ten men. Yeah, right. Bob’s just rattling through the usual tired and debunked denialist claims, misrepresenting evidence, demonstrating his ignorance of real scientific process or squawking “the models are wrong!”

I note that Anthony seems A-OK with the anti-Semitic undercurrent in his carefully moderated comments sandbox. Did you know Jon Stewart’s real surname is Leibowitz? This is apparently important to know.

The ‘planetary tidal influence on climate’ fiasco: strong armed science tactics are overkill, due process would work better

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“The ‘planetary tidal influence on climate’ fiasco: strong armed science tactics are overkill, due process would work better” (2014-01-18). Hey Anthony, this is just like that day the football team locked themselves in the school office and replaced morning announcements with fart sounds and declarations that “art class sucks”. Eventually the adults pulled the plug and it slowly dawned on the jocks that they’d made a laughingstock of themselves.

So, in the here and now, a little cabal of denialists managed (with just a smidgen of misrepresentation) to launch a “peer-reviewed” journal they titled  Pattern Recognition In Physics under the legitimate auspices of Copernicus Publications. They even managed to pull off two issues, stacked with their own papers, before the bullshit detectors pegged and their journal was abruptly terminated.

Says Copernicus Publications about the editorial conniving:

the editors selected the referees on a nepotistic basis, which we regard as malpractice in scientific publishing and not in accordance with our publication ethics we expect to be followed by the editors.

and

Therefore, we at Copernicus Publications wish to distance ourselves from the apparent misuse of the originally agreed aims & scope of the journal as well as the malpractice regarding the review process, and decided on 17 January 2014 to cease the publication of PRP.

Anthony Watts can merely sniff about unsubstantiated external pressure from “team climate science”, “strong-arm gang tactics” and how, if they’d only been given a chance to ‘splain, “due process would have been the right way to approach the issue”. This has to be done carefully though, because even Anthony is backing away from the stupid as fast as he can and admits, as meekly as possible, that their claims of a “planetary tidal influence on climate is likely a bit of overkill”.

Anthony sniffs that Astronomy and Astrophysics didn’t collapse after publishing a similarly poor paper by Abreu et al. entitled Is there a planetary influence on solar activity? so why should this journal?

Anthony, there’s a difference between a bad paper getting through review at a reputable journal and a dishonest journal created for the purpose of giving a stream of bad papers the appearance of credibility. Perspective’s a bitch.

Still, celebrated scientist denialist blogger Joanna Nova trumpets that “the new line in the sand is to write a paper so hot they have to terminate the whole journal!” I guess Pattern Recognition in Physics’s science jujitsu is so strong that Jo’s cute idea of flooding the Copernicus Publications inboxes with hate mail is only a polite suggestion. It just looks like editorial and scientific deception!

Too bad for Roger Tattersall, aka “Tallbloke”, a truculent denialist blogger engineer/historian and regular commenter at Watts Up With That. He’s wearing two conflicting hats here; appointed to the journal’s rigged editorial board on the basis of no qualification whatsoever (denialist blogging?)  and also tagging along as a delighted junior author of one of the papers that broke the camel’s back. Now he wails about the harsh fist of censorship while his readers sagely drop the Hitler bomb.

This new comedy is just another instance of resentful, impotent, denialists clustering together like cockroaches in a little backwater hoping to boil forth and startle a small child into dropping their ice-cream. Remember the Climate Research misfire? Energy & Environment also has a long history of slipping denialist boners into the mix.

Follow the new bouncing ball at Open Mind and Rabett Run.

There’s also a good perspective at And The There’s Physics

A bit more on this juicy incident;

  • Greg Laden’s blog: Science Denialists Make Fake Journal, Get Shut Down.
    Greg coverage brought this statement by Copernicus Publications, from Roger Tattersall’s own bitter post, which kind of puts the whole matter in perspective:

    We were alarmed by the authors’ second implication stating “This sheds serious doubts on the issue of a continued, even accelerated, warming as claimed by the IPCC project”. Before the journal was launched, we had a long discussion regarding its topics. The aim of the journal was to publish articles about patterns recognized in the full spectrum of physical disciplines. PRP was never meant to be a platform for climate sceptics. In addition to our doubts about the scientific content of PRP, we also received information about potential misconduct during the review process.

  • Science magazine: Alleging ‘Malpractice’ With Climate Skeptic Papers, Publisher Kills Journal

Michael Mann forced into a “do-over” in Mann -vs- CEI & Steyn

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“Michael Mann forced into a “do-over” in Mann -vs- CEI & Steyn” (2013-12-23). This is why prejudiced idiots like Anthony Watts should avoid legal interpretation as well as stay out of science. Did Dr. Mann’s libel case against Mark Steyn, Rand Simberg CEI, and the National Review suffer a serious blow, or has irrelevant legal posturing by the defence been swept aside? Anthony doesn’t seem to actually know.

Sez “citizen scientist”/playground lawyer Anthony about Dr. Michael Mann’s libel lawsuit against denialist hacks (he seems to have forgotten about a couple of the defendants);

What a great Christmas present for Mike. It is back to square one for him with his lawsuit over what he views as libel by Mark Steyn and CEI.

What really happened was that defendant Steyn and his lobbyist pals were told that their appeal was about something that was no longer part of the libel suit. What was that something, you ask? Dr. Mann’s lawsuit initially described him as an Nobel Laureate when in fact he merely received a certificate of thanks from the IPCC for his lead role in their climate change report. It was the IPCC as an organization that actually received the Nobel Prize and they in turn thanked Dr. Mann, therefore everything Dr. Mann has ever said is a lie and so is Global Warming! Or some such Hail-Mary argument.

Lacking from the defence appeal was anything relevant to Steyn’s assertion that Dr. Mann’s research was “fraudulent”.

Here’s another more thoughtful comment on the antics of the defendants from the ;

If I was a judge, and someone filed an appeal with me that lacked jurisdiction due to mootness, and counsel admitted they knew it was moot when they filed it, I would sanction counsel for abuse of process.

You can read Steyn’s own ironically titled legal analysis on the National Review website: Mumbo-Jumbo for Beginners. Or try Rabett Run for a bit more perspective: The Appeals Fairy Declines Jurisdiction

My take on this is Anthony Watts and the defendants are simply expressing a variation of Goreaphobia. Their actions are governed by personality and resentment and all they can do here is squawk about scientific awards.

Funny how Anthony’s silent about denialists trying to use the meaningless “IPCC Reviewer” tag for their own vanity. Or Lord Monckton actually making a fake “Nobel Prize pin.”

Discussion thread: Reddit Bans Climate Change Skeptics

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“Discussion thread: Reddit Bans Climate Change Skeptics“ (2013-12-20). This is rich; Anthony Watts, who uses his website’s commenting policy to impede and frustrate critics of denialism, has suddenly noticed that Reddit banned “climate change skeptics” from its /r/science forum. A year ago.

Anthony excerpts an article from that bastion of honesty and impartiality, Fox News, to ‘splain it. Strange though that Anthony’s copy-and-paste fails to include this bit:

While there is a subreddit dedicated to climate skeptics, it has far less research than the larger science board.

I love the quote from famously dishonest denialist journalist James Delingpole that Anthony seems to want to highlight. it’s a beautiful example of free-floating, illogical, baseless political resentment:

“The greenies — and their many useful idiots in the liberal media — are terrified of open debate on climate-change because the real world evidence long ago parted company with their scientifically threadbare theory,” Delingpole told FoxNews.com, arguing that Allen’s tactic is part of a “classic liberal defense mechanism: If the facts don’t support you, then close down the argument.”

Seems pretty clear that Reddit moderator Nathan Allen understands readers of Watts Up With That? well:

They had no idea that the smart-sounding talking points from their preferred climate blog were, even to a casual climate science observer, plainly wrong.”

Have a look at the comments in Anthony’s post for the delusional nonsense Nathan recognizes as so poisonous to intelligent conversation.