“Trust and Mistrust“. Willis Eschenbach claims he’s “weary of the vague statements that characterise many of the discussions about climate change”, but he has no problem making them himself…

This post is 14 questions Willis poses to himself so he can plant his flag on a series of unsupported, and in many cases conclusively debunked, statements. Thanks for going ‘on record’ with your intellectual manifesto Willis, this will make great ‘claim-chowder’ in the future.

“Ice Station Ztupid“. Anthony Watts tries to put words into the mouths of the Catlin Arctic Survey and mocks them for reporting about arctic weather conditions. Nothing he hates more than someone reporting real field data, even if it is just anecdotal.

Anthony provides this quote “they want us to think that carbon dioxide caused the “recently refrozen open water” that they’ve seen“, but its a bogus accusation. He also points out that they’ve been dealing with intense cold. Why does he think that “global warming” means that it should be warm everywhere? Oh, Anthony.

Can anyone see a surface station?

“French give up on carbon tax plan – for now“. Anthony Watts points out another carbon tax failure! Oh, the French just feel that it should be Europe-wide.

Why that’s… sensible.

“Flowers Losing Scent Due to Climate Change“. Anthony Watts is incensed (get it?) that an admittedly odd newspaper article about Malaysian flowers hasn’t been peer-reviewed and contains no statistical evidence, which we recently learned should never be trusted anyway.

Just flip back to your Sudoku and everything will be OK, Anthony.

Climate craziness of the week: global warming “leads to more violence”. Even psychologists are talking about global warming. Anthony Watts tells us that uninformed people (except himself) should stick to their own areas of expertise. They certainly shouldn’t try to postulate implications of expected climate changes in those areas.

“Corned grief: biofuels may increase CO2“. Well here’s something that I agree with Anthony Watts on! The American biofuel industry is to my eye more of an agricultural subsidy for corporations with large biomass resources that a real energy strategy. For me, the best case is partial replacement of hydrocarbon fuels, but at a high production cost. It is however something politicians of both stripes are happy to play along with as they can pass on benefits to their corporate supporters.

Anthony assigns this to the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t department”. So I guess he’s treating this as another bullet-point for the denialist tactic of that didn’t work, so we should stop trying.

If this report in BioScience is true, maize-derived ethanol may produce more CO₂ than simply burning hydrocarbons! This estimate is largely due to land-use changes. There are possible technological breakthroughs that may make this economical, but the real numbers just aren’t there yet.

“Hathaway on the solar conveyor belt and deep solar minimum“. This is as close as Anthony Watts comes to credible scientific information: a copy and paste job from an real science source, in this case NASA – Solar ‘Current of Fire’ Speeds Up. It’s interesting stuff, with some apparent contradictions in measurements. How he misreads it is up to him though, as Anthony hasn’t met a loony solar theory yet that he doesn’t like.

Anthony Watts has gone to ground this weekend, giving me a blessed vacation from his scattergun approach to denialism.

He claims to have a bad cold, but I think it has more to do with licking his wounds over “The Stockholm Initiative”. Anthony made a particularly aggressive claim that a false parliamentary submission by some Swedish denialists was actually the impartial opinion of a legitimate scientific organization. This was immediately shot down in flames.

So I’ll highlight a few positive developments in Climate Change instead.

Skeptical Science has been a great place to find straight-forward unravelling of regular denialist claims. Not long ago they got together with Australian software developers Shine Technologies to produce an iPhone app that gives quick access to their list of predictable “skeptic” arguments. Nice!

Joe Romm at Climate Progress talks about Merchants of Doubt, a book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway that will be released in May, 2010. It exposes the decades-long maneuvering of “a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry.” The same players, but an ever-changing game:

For half a century, the tobacco industry, defenders of the Strategic Defense Initiative, and those skeptical of acid rain, the ozone hole, and global warming strove to ‘maintain the controversy’ and ‘keep the debate alive’ by fostering claims that were contrary to the mainstream of scientific evidence and expert judgment.

Climate Cover-Up, by James Hoggan with Richard Littlemore has been available for a while now. It’s another good look at the political backstory of Global Warming denial. It “spotlights premeditated prevarications about the threat of greenhouse gas emissions by the oil and coal industry, in league with junk scientists, compliant conservative politicians and unsavory public relations practitioners.”