Category Archives: Gore Derangement Syndrome

Quote of the week #34: NASA doubts climate model certainty

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“Quote of the week #34: NASA doubts climate model certainty“. Anthony Watts wants you to believe that because a NASA pamphlet from 1998 is not “completely certain” about Global Warming, they must now be taking orders from the secret Al Gore gubmint. It’s called science, Anthony. Better data, better understanding, better conclusions. Is that a difficult concept?

It’s the denialist mind that is frozen in time and unable to process new information. That’s why they’re called denialists.

Anthony’s also jumping onto this month’s denialist theme that “historic temperatures can be modeled with a constant linear trend + a 60 year cycle.” Too bad they can’t actually explain the correlation, too bad the correlation doesn’t persist, too bad the “constant linear trend” is up (what’s behind that I wonder).

Gore associate said to be named in brewing ethics scandal

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“Gore associate said to be named in brewing ethics scandal“. Anthony Watts is excited that a Republican operative is promising a scandalous revelation about a Gore Obama associate on talk radio today.

Update:

Surprising documents made available to this author reveal that Assistant Secretary of Energy Cathy Zoi has a huge financial stake in companies likely to profit from the Obama administration’s “green” policies.

Those “surprising documents”? Disclosure forms submitted by Zoi when she was hired by the Department of Energy. Ooooh, good sleuthing.

Not a joke: Gore’s “Inconvenient Youth”

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Not a joke: Gore’s “Inconvenient Youth” Anthony Watts ‘subtly’ alludes to the Hitler Youth when talking about a training program called “Inconvenient Youth” that Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection has initiated.

Just a copy and paste of the press release with a few poorly thought-out comments appended, like this sneer about a vegetable oil-powered VW seen in a video clip. It “still produces CO2 when the oil is burned.” The difference, of course, is that vegetable oil is carbon neutral because it is derived from a component (plants!)of the active carbon cycle. CO2 released by coal or petroleum has been sequestered from the carbon cycle for millions of years.

Oh and don’t buy Apple products, because Al Gore is on their Board of Directors!

New weekly feature: WUWT Sea Ice News

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“New weekly feature: WUWT Sea Ice News“. Anthony Watts give obsessive denialists a weekly destination for wild statements about current sea ice extents. There’s nothing Anthony likes better than to talk about the weather when the topic at hand is actually climate.

In the opening installment, Steven Goddard starts with juvenile remarks about Al Gore and then throws up the usual spray of Arctic sea ice maps. It’s almost “average”! No talk about sea ice volume of course because that’s not a helpful statistic.

Reply to: “Ice cap thaw may awaken Icelandic volcanoes”

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Reply to: “Ice cap thaw may awaken Icelandic volcanoes” Steven Goddard tugs on his alleged “volcano researcher and igneous petrologist” hat to declare that melting Icelandic ice caps will actually make the volcanoes less dangerous. Of course it’s always easier to nit-pick over a magazine article than it is to do the same to the scientific paper it is based on.

Steven discusses the melting point of basaltic minerals (failing to recognize that Icelandic magma also contains the more explosive rhyolitic minerals) and estimates that losing 500m of ice would only lower the magma melting point by about 0.5°C. Then he wanders off into an irrelevant discussion of ash and steam. With less ice/water around there would less volcanic plume and more bubbling, so Global Warming would be good! Like most denialist arguments, this is both inconsequential and irrelevant.

As it turns out, in Iceland the magma is rising at roughly 5 cm/yr and the glacial mass loss equates to removing  5 cm/yr of rock. Thus the effective rate of magma ascent has doubled due to de-glaciation. Doesn’t seem inconsequential to me…

Nice try, Steven. But I’m glad to see you didn’t miss the chance to make a snide allusion to Al Gore’s recent misstatement about the temperature of the earth’s core. Snap!

We knew, it was only a matter of time…

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“We knew, it was only a matter of time…“. Anthony Watts sneers at Scientific American, with a side dish of Goreophobia, for suggesting that thawing ice caps in Iceland many trigger future volcanic eruptions.

I suggest Anthony and his pseudo-geologist friends Google “isostatic rebound”. It’s not likely to be a big factor, but it’s also not just theoretical.

See Gore Run: “I’m having lunch!”

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See Gore Run: “I’m having lunch!” More Gore Derangement Syndrome from Anthony Watts. Why shouldn’t Gore’s days be completely filled with political harassment? Nothing wrong with that.

The denialist obsession with Al Gore is pretty convincing evidence that they’re driven by political paranoia. I don’t think that many of them can even admit it to themselves.

Lindzen: “Earth is never in equilibrium”

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"Whenever I see that smiling face, I have to smile myself"

Lindzen: “Earth is never in equilibrium”. Denialist favorite Dr. Richard Lindzen has published an opinion piece in Fredericksburg, Va’s renowned Free Lance-Star and Anthony Watts wants you to know about it! I guess this is a close as it gets to peer-reviewed denialist science.

Here’s some samples of the Professor’s argument.

“we experience temperature changes of tens of degrees in a single day”. We shouldn’t worry about a permanent 2° rise I guess.

“no statistically significant warming for the past 14 years”. I guess Lindzen hasn’t got the bulletin on that boner yet…

“The interests of the environmental movement in acquiring more power, influence and donations are reasonably clear.” and “It is probably no accident that Al Gore himself is associated with such activities.” Ah, Gore Derangement Syndrome and conspiracy theories! Always good for a chuckle.

There’s similar misrepresentative bunk scattered throughout. He finishes with a sneer:

Finally, there are the well-meaning individuals who believe that in accepting the alarmist view of climate change, they are displaying intelligence and virtue. For them, psychic welfare is at stake.

Yale to greens: “abandon climate change, focus on energy”

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Yale to greens: “abandon climate change, focus on energy”. Anthony Watts has petty criticisms of the cover art for Al Gore’s new book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis. How dare Gore have a fabricated image of the Earth as seen from space? Earth to Anthony: every single useful image of the Earth from space has been manipulated for visual impact.

He also touts the ‘advice‘ from Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger of the right-wing Breakthrough Institute, presented here as a “green think tank” to climate change activists. ‘Greens’ should apparently stop “trying to link energy policy to climate science.” Um, the Global Warming controversy has been driven by the energy industry’s tooth and nail fight to protect their profits! Yes, “science has been harmed as a result” but it is by the dishonest denialist attacks, not by the evidence reported by climate scientists. Yesh.

‘Foamenting’ climate change

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“‘Foamenting’ climate change“. Anthony Watts finds, and pastes in, a geo-engineering article in AAAS that suggests that even if global warming is happening (it isn’t of course because it’s all a trick) we can fix it by spreading micro-bubbles throughout the oceans. Thus solving the Global Warming problem once and for all.

I can’t believe that Anthony set himself up for a punch-line from Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth!

Solving Global Warming once and for all!

There are good reasons for caution about geo-engineering solutions. Here are a few.

  • We have little idea of what the unexpected consequences might be for these interventions.
  • They will almost certainly be wildly expensive and/or disruptive.
  • They encourage increased CO2 generation that will eventually overwhelm the each geo-engineering solution.