Category Archives: Laugh it off

I’ve been Lenfesteyed

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“I’ve been Lenfesteyed“ (2012-01-03). Anthony Watts thinks the only remedy needed for people who disagree with his version of science and politics is to just change the radio station when a partisan “radio personality” starts regurgitating Anthony’s lies.

Yes, as long as Anthony’s misinformation isn’t heard by me it will have no consequence.

Anthony pretends he’s laughing off James Lenfestey’s January 2nd commentary (“The state of fear at the new year“) in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, but he has to go completely off-topic to find something irrelevant to attack his critic with. James writes poetry! (Note to commenter “Chris Smith” this is an actual example of ad hominem.)

Lord Monckton, who positively lives for strutting about and stirring things up, has also decided to respond. He’s sent a weaselly letter to the paper containing his usual collection of debunked assertions that he simply expects will not be checked before publication. I howled at his characterization of Professor John Abraham’s truly epic take-down of Monckton’s presentation at Bethel University as a “driveling attempted rebuttal of it by a non-climatologist at a local bible college”. That’s the sign of a puffed-up poser who knows he’s been publicly thrashed. The references to the usual tiny circle of denialist personalities and “supporting links” to his denialist scienceandpublicpolicy.org website and Ken Cuccinelli’s shameful legal assault on Dr. Michael Mann are weak tea indeed.

Anthony and Lord Monckton, face it: Being invoked by an ignorant blow-hard partisan talk-show host is the pinnacle of your achievements.

Be careful today and tonight, billions may die

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“Be careful today and tonight, billions may die” (2011-12-31). Anthony Watts makes a fart joke! Somehow a rather sensational 2007 article about methane clathrates, on a left-wing political website called The Canadian, has exposed all those climate scientists as lily-livered Chicken Little worrywarts. The article said 4.5 billion people would could die from Global Warming-related causes by 2012, and they didn’t! Well, not yet. Hah! Thus ending Global Warming once and for all.

Then Anthony makes the witty fart joke:

If it happens, it will be the gaia fart heard round the world.

What’s actually funny is that “pesky” methane clathrates have been a legitimate scientific concern for years (see Real Climate in 2005, 2010, and 2012 and the IPCC website) but the denialist response has largely been to try to dismiss it with witty fart jokes.

If the Arctic clathrates did outgas abruptly I don’t think it would be comparable to a harmless frat house prank as Anthony tries to imply. I predict that Anthony, dripping with empathy, would offer up “My bad! I never dreamed this could really happen” and switch to arguing about how the secret world government controls survival shelter funding.

Update on Jan 8th, 2012: More RealClimate wild methane alarmism on January 7th! Read this with denialist disgust:

But the methane worst case does not suddenly spell the extinction of human life on Earth. It does not lead to a runaway greenhouse. The worst-case methane scenario stands comparable to what CO2 can do. What CO2 will do, under business-as-usual, not in a wild blow-the-doors-off unpleasant surprise, but just in the absence of any pleasant surprises (like emission controls). At worst comparable to CO2 except that CO2 lasts essentially forever.