Category Archives: Tone

Smear campaign: “His judgment cometh and that right soon”

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Smear campaign: “His judgment cometh and that right soon” (2015-02-23). Dr. Willie Soon is an aerospace engineer affiliated (part-time) with the Harvard Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics who publishes weak climate papers (always, always, with the same unsubstantiated “it’s all just natural solar variation” chant). He’s now been caught out by communists Greenpeace researchers. Seems Dr. Soon rarely discloses his fossil fuel industry backing in his publications, but boasts of his “deliverables” to the same buddies. Research to order, on the Q.T.

Dr. Willie Soon, rehydrating.

Anthony Watts has often snuggled up to Dr. Soon. Hand-waving about solar climate influences has been a great side-show for denialists, but it’s been hard for them to find a reliable figurehead for their obstruction. Being able to whisper “HArvard! SmithSONian!” must have been just irresistible. Dr. Soon’s work, while widely discredited, had a “sciencey” look and he made a great tame Republican witness in kangaroo court Senate Hearings.

The best Anthony can do is suggest that the benighted Dr. Soon is the victim of a smear campaign because, well, facts are smears. Then the usual Morris Dance ensues: invoke the malevolent “compliant media” and immediately talk about something else.

Did you know that “climate science is a huge money machine”? So what if Willie wanted a taste! Anthony tries to play the herd mentality card (I guess that makes Dr. Soon our latest Galileo, funny how he’s always reincarnated as a denialist these days) but doesn’t notice that each ‘overturned consensus’ came about through considering new evidence, not through pig-headed repetition of the same crap.

Butter wouldn’t melt in Anthony’s mouth though when he brazenly tries to invoke the e-mails of mainstream climate scientists targeted in the false “Climategate” uproar. They solicited funds from the energy industry too, although without the flirtatious promises, Willie’s just the latest nose in the trough! What were once vices are now virtues, the denialist outrage during Climategate is so yesterday.

Remember the whole “97% of climate scientists accept the evidence of global warming” thing? Guys like Willie Soon are the 3%.

“Follow the money” Anthony sagely advises, but he really wants to lead us down the garden path.

White House science adviser attacks Roger Pielke Jr. for his Senate testimony, Pielke responds with a skillfull counterstrike

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“White House science adviser attacks Roger Pielke Jr. for his Senate testimony, Pielke responds with a skillfull counterstrike“ (2014-03-01). Anthony Watts actually thinks Dr. Roger Pielke Jr., “skeptical” political scientist, can teach Dr. John P. Holdren, the American President’s Science Advisor as well as Past President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, about climate science!

Is this truculent hubris, or just plain old Dunning–Kruger syndrome? You can decide, but I’ll just whisper this to Anthony: “skillfull” is spelt “skillful”. I know, I know, it takes a lot of fingers to keep track of the “l”s. Also, “counterstrike” should have a dash in there somewhere.

I first read about this on HotWhopper, and was reminded by a post on Climate Progress. Thanks guys!

Republican Senator Jeff Sessions had recently tried to use Pielke’s testimony from July 2013 to run the old “nothing’s changed”/”warming is good anyway!” shell game while questioning Dr. Holdren (linked on Rabett Run). Dr. Holdren testified that increased drought in the American West and Southwest has been a consequence of anthropogenic climate change. Sessions tried to dispute this irritating fact using Pielke’s – totally honest-broker, like, fer sure – testimony claiming there hasn’t been a change in drought trends. Dr. Holdren promised to back up his testimony and put Pielke’s in context and did so a few days later. It makes for an amusing read, unless you’re Roger Pielke Jr.

When Dr. Holdren cited research confirming his testimony and exposed Pielke’s classic quote-mining, Pielke revealed his debating ninja skills a blog post titled John Holdren’s Epic Fail. First, the right-wing nutters at The Daily Caller oversold Pielke’s argument in its partisan coverage of the testimony and Dr. Holdren thought they were quoting Pielke directly. Oh, that’s terrible! But more importantly, while Pielke had written that there was no change in drought trends, he put a little footnote-y thing to a journal paper that if you bothered to track down out of idle curiosity and then read through the whole thing shows that there has in fact been an increase in drought in the West and Southwest. That’s how you win the internets. Otherwise it’s all hurt feelings and wailing about politicizing the purity of collegial science. “Tone” is a favourite fall-back position for Pielke.

So no, Anthony: shouting a lie (Pielke’s “Take Home Points”from his 2013 testimony) and then whispering the 180° opposite truth (in a completely opaque footnote) doesn’t count as a “skillfull counterstrike.” It’s just building an escape hatch into the lie.

Mind blowing: Apple CEO tells ‘deniers’ to get out of Apple stock

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“Mind blowing: Apple CEO tells ‘deniers’ to get out of Apple stock“ (2014-03-03).  Anthony Watts publishes so many dumb/nasty things on his blog I often decide the toxic exposure just isn’t worth the time. His blog is like a TV stuck on an endless loop of carnival hucksters extolling the magical healing powers of magnetic bracelets (except that Big Pharma is suppressing clinical trials), but now and then a stray squawk catches my ear and makes me laugh.

Here we have Anthony echoing the so-called National Center for Public Policy Research, “a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think-tank” dedicated to “expos[ing] efforts by left-wing interest groups to divert businesses away from best practices and into left-wing advocacy.” They were smacked down pretty hard when they tried to ask Apple’s CEO a question about the resolution they had submitted (devastatingly rejected) at Apple Inc’s recent AGM. Like Apple’s previous CEO, Tim Cook doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Especially stubbornly short-sighted, hypocritical ones who only get their knickers in a twist when a corporation’s political bias doesn’t match their own.

The “National Center” wanted Apple to pollute more and use more child labour so shareholders could make more money. Also, Apple should stop supporting equality and justice. The disgusted rebuff from Apple’s CEO is now being spun as proof that liberals and environmentalists are mean and secretive.

Anthony has long nurtured an irrational hatred for Apple, probably driven by the company’s long record of supporting liberal causes. His contribution to the self-pity party is below, with my annotations. And you thought Anthony was just mule-headed wrong on environmental issues!

Hmmm. This is the best argument I’ve ever heard for not using Apple products (besides the overinflated prices). [False claim. Same price as equal quality competitors. – Ben] Being flush with cash is probably why the CEO says he doesn’t care about the ROI (return on investment) [Misrepresentation. “When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind,” he said, “I don’t consider the bloody ROI.” He said that the same thing about environmental issues, worker safety, and other areas where Apple is a leader.” Apple has a highest profit margins in the industry so only an idiot – paging Anthony & Co. – would conclude that Apple doesn’t care about ROI. – Ben] and won’t make the costs transparent per a shareholder request [What cost is Apple concealing? – Ben]. Seems like a sensible business request to me. [Yeah, Anthony and these libertarian dick-wads have SO MUCH to teach one of America’s most successful corporations! – Ben]

This whole thing is playing out like run-of-the-mill libertarian posturing. How is even Anthony’s feeble mind “blown”?

“Watching the Deniers” makes hilarious goof while accusing WUWT of “doctoring” NSIDC images

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“Watching the Deniers” makes hilarious goof while accusing WUWT of “doctoring” NSIDC images (2013-07-05). If Anthony ever happens to be right about something, which like a stopped clock is about once every 43,200 instances, you can be sure he’ll beat it to death (or is it more strut about like a rooster?). When Anthony’s Aussie ditto head Eric Worrall spotted an accusation at Watching the Deniers (WtD) that Anthony had doctored an Arctic Sea Ice Extent graph to conceal the fact that the decline in Arctic ice extent was more than 2 standard deviations away from Anthony went .

Silly Mike, Anthony only by pure chance used the option on the NSIDC charting web page that suppressed the display of statistical significance! That’s just misrepresentation, not dishonesty, the kind of thin line that Anthony spends his life dancing back and forth over.

Anthony Watts likes to use the version of this chart that excludes statistical context. Makes it easier to imply that every wiggle is “just natural”.

Anthony Watts likes to use the version of this chart that excludes statistical context. Makes it easier to imply that every wiggle is “just natural”. Click to see the difference.

After a short display of indignation Anthony runs quickly through the gamut of blogging postures.

  • Victim card: WtD is driven by “hatred”!
  • Anticipation of censorship: “I’ve left a comment explaining Mr. Marriott’s absurd misconception and asked for an apology. We’ll see if it passes moderation, and if he lives up to his “professional services” label.” Oh, it made it along with all the other denialist ditto head attacks. Mike ain’t you, Anthony.
  • Megalomania: The king of the interwebs commandeth and threatens – “Change it sir. I won’t ask again.”
  • Ad hominem digging.
  • Dog whistle: “In the meantime, you can leave comments here.“
  • An update to the whining: Anthony contentedly reports that WtD has been forced to change their post, retracting the “photoshop” claim. Funny I can’t recall Anthony ever doing the same, I guess he’s always been right.

Thus ending Global Warming. Which was natural anyway if it was happening. Which it wasn’t.

University of Graz Responds to Parncutt’s calls for death penalty for “deniers”

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University of Graz Responds to Parncutt’s calls for death penalty for “deniers” ()2012-12-27). Yeah! Denialist outrage has led the University of Graz to censor their music professor’s ill-advised ramblings about climate change! Freedom from speech is victorious! Nothing more satisfying than a bit of successful bullying, is there Anthony? Monckton, of course, also got his stick in there.

Also, Skeptical Science and DeSmogBlog haven’t explicitly disavowed Professor Parncutt’s essay suggesting the execution of denialists, so that clearly means they support it.

UPDATE2: 2:55:PM PST In an email received today from Skeptical Science contributor Dana Nuccitelli, he has flat out refused to distance himself or the SkS website publicly from the Parncutt essay. Readers may recall that Parncutt used SkS as a reference in his essay calling for the death penalty. No word yet on whether John Cook (owner of the website) agrees and no word yet from DeSmog blog. – Anthony

Funny, I happen to have Mr. Nuccitelli’s actual response here, which was also posted as a comment that was blocked by Anthony’s censors, which seems a bit more nuanced than Anthony’s “reporting”:

From: Dana Nuccitelli
To: Anthony <xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2012 2:47 PM
Subject: Re: still waiting…
We of course don’t agree with giving denialists the death penalty, but we’re also not going to waste our time commenting on what some German musicologist said just because he happens to (correctly) cite SkS as a factually accurate source on climate science.

Given than you frequently allow WUWT guest posts from people like Christopher Monckton, who aside from being a total nutjob (to put it as kindly as I can), says some pretty horrible things on a regular basis, I really don’t think you’re in a position to expect more than that.

-Dana

Friday Funny – David Suzuki goes postal

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“Friday Funny – David Suzuki goes postal” (2012-11-09). Anthony Watts re-blogs the Heartland Institute’s A Polite Discourse with Professional Climate Alarmist David Suzuki, where right-wing political hack Jim Lakely pretends that sending a Heartland Institute published rant on climate science (Roosters Of The Apocalypse: How The Junk Science Of Global Warming Nearly Bankrupted The Western World) was an attempt at “polite discourse.” (“Roosters” didn’t exactly make a splash back in February, this Bismarck Tribute review is the first real analysis that shows up in Google.)

Here’s Lakely’s attempt at polite discourse:

  1. He publishes and attacks a private correspondence.
  2. He calls Dr. Suzuki a “Professional Climate Alarmist”.
  3. He calls Dr. Suzuki childish.
  4. He puts “esteemed scientist” in sneer-quotes.
  5. He dismisses a renowned environmental scientist as expressing “faith-based climate views”.
  6. He ignores the entirety of environmental science to write “defaming people who disagree is the only trick aging alarmists like him have left.”

Here’s the note Dr. Suzuki wrote on his return-to-sender package:

“I am a scientist and I take great umbrage at being sent such a load of crap from a bullshit shill organization for the oil industry. You are the most anti-science group I can imagine.

David Suzuki.”

Seems pretty accurate to me, Anthony. In fact it applies equally to you, although I suspect your motivation is garden-variety incoherent libertarianism.

Why I no longer subscribe to Popular Science

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“Why I no longer subscribe to Popular Science” (2012-110-03). Anthony Watts reminds us that he holds grudges. Popular Science is still on his long list of subversive publications with which he will have no truck. National Geographic and Scientific American are also on his list.

What re-warmed the fire in Anthony’s belly? Popular Science reported on the controversy of a denialist Wikipedia volunteer Ken Mampel spending a week feverishly expunging references to climate change from the Hurricane Sandy Wikipedia page. The PopSci article was really about the randomness and wildly varying credentials of Wikipedia editors, but it’s the wiki page subject that woke Anthony up.

Where’s PopSci’s coverage of the William Connolley Wikipedia controversy? Equal time! Credentialed climate scientist versus “Joe Blow”!

Friday Funny: Dr. Michael Mann keeps interesting company

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“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”.

Anthony Watts Defeats Himself

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“Hump day hilarity: Chris Mooney’s abby-normal post modern science” (2011-11-09) and “Mooney pulls a Muller” (2011-11-10). After years of announcing how he was going to prove Global Warming was a lie (but utterly failing to do so), Anthony decides to castigate anyone else who talks about their conclusions before formal publication. Only the targets of his hypocrisy have simply released drafts of submitted papers (the previously beloved Dr. Muller) or described a book they are still writing (Chris Mooney’s The Republican Brain). Anthony, you may recall, loudly and repeatedly announced that he was going to prove that the temperature record was both inaccurate and tampered with, and that climate scientists were corrupt socialists. You may also recall that he was 99 44/100%  wrong.

So what has twisted Anthony’s shorts this time? You’re going to love this: He’s attacking a book that hasn’t been finished yet, claiming that it portrays conservatives as idiots who jump to conclusions! Nice stick-work there, Anthony.

Seems like finishing your book is kind of redundant now, Chris! You can read his take on the response is here: Conservatives Attack and Misunderstand A Book They Haven’t Read… A Book About Flawed Conservative Reasoning.

Bill Nye is the anti-science guy when it comes to global warming and hurricanes

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“Bill Nye is the anti-science guy when it comes to global warming and hurricanes” (2011-08-30). Dr. Ryan Maue seems annoyed with how little traction with his denial science is getting, so he’s going to give political whining a try at his Policlimate blog. Why? Because as he says “Anthony typically avoids political issues” (I still rubbing my eyes over that). Luckily Anthony Watts seems willing, this one time, to dabble in politics by cross-posting Ryan’s rant about Bill Nye’s recent appearance on Fox News.

You know the denialists have had their asses publicly handed to them when they try to re-write an event after the fact by nit-picking someone’s live TV responses intended for a general audience (and when we talk about Fox audiences we’re talking really general) and then declare post facto victory because of imperfect grammar or getting a measurement wrong. They can also be reliably expected to complain about “tone”.

The title of this YouTube copy is “Bill Nye insists the earth is warming though data shows it is not.” and has comments disabled. Denialism writ tiny.

Seems Bill Nye didn’t play along with Fox News “Freedom Watch” guest host Charles Payne’s attempt to describe concern about our changing climate as “apocalyptic”, “irresponsible”, or to assert that there’s a bit of warming “but that’s not from man”. When Payne realized that Bill Nye wasn’t serving as a fig-leaf for Fox News’ preferred scientific assertions he pulled out the patented Fox News escape hatch of but… Al Gore! ending thus:

“We brought you on because we knew you could connect the dots,” Payne interrupted. “Although the route you’ve taken is still confusing some of the viewers.” – Fox Business Host Accuses Bill Nye of ‘Confusing Viewers’ with Science

So six minutes of interrupted reality-based answers to leading questions balances endless hours of Glenn Beck conspiracy theories? That’s “Fair and Balanced” for you.