Tag Archives: Character Assassination

Al Gore’s ‘drowning polar bear’ source reprimanded

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“Al Gore’s ‘drowning polar bear’ source reprimanded“ (2012-09-29). A lying scientist has been caught red-handed! We’ll get those guys, one at a time. That’s a check mark on the good guy’s side! No need to read further.

You can always count on Anthony Watts to baldly misrepresent the facts. To put this plainly, Dr. Charles Monnett was accused of corruption (helping a scientist apply for a grant) and scientific malpractice (reporting his observation of drowned polar bears). This appears driven largely by political irritation over how other information he disclosed “helped reveal that Bush administration Arctic offshore drilling reviews illegally suppressed adverse environmental consequences.” Also, his observations were mentioned in that Communist Al Gore’s filthy propaganda, An Inconvenient Truth.

After an incompetent investigation that focused obsessively on the irrelevant dead polar bears, Dr. Monnett was only “reprimanded” because he had “improperly disclosed internal government documents”. Isn’t that the kind of thing that Anthony has been demanding more of? Transparency, letting in the light, resisting persecution, citizen-science, etc.

As usual Anthony falsely holds his target to a higher standard than he could ever live up to. Dr. Monnett is just collateral damage in Anthony’s Gore-ophobia.

REPLY: The issue is mostly with Gore’s ridiculous claims, AGW had noting to do with the dead polar bear and a dead polar bear does not a trend make. Monnet didn’t speak out when Gore took his observation and turned into into a bogus sympathy pitch -Anthony

Here’s an enlightening quote from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management press office that Anthony didn’t manage in include in his conveniently partial copy-and-paste of the Seattle Times article (this is called burying the lede):

A BOEM spokeswoman, Theresa Eisenman, said the findings in the report do not support a conclusion that the scientists involved engaged in “scientific misconduct.”

I note that Google Ads still sees Anthony’s readership as prime targets for Brain Training Games. Indeed, indeed.

Trenberth: null and void

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“Trenberth: null and void“ (2011-11-03). Anthony Watts finds an excuse to make insulting references to a climate scientist. Will wonders never cease? Seems hard to reconcile with his regular calls for niceness.

This time Anthony’s decided that the scientific insights of a British publicist named Ben Norman will be his means of unraveling the global warming fraud. Anthony throws in references to Eurekalert and Wiley-Blackwell to give the appearance of scientific legitimacy, but I think he’s hoping no-one actually reads past his misleading headline.

Norman simply grouped together three recent papers, Ken Trenberth’s provocative “null hypothesis” paper and responses by Dr. Judith Curry (you know, the sciencey wiz who’s decided that eyeballing trends and muttering vaguely about uncertainty is as hard as anyone should have to work) and Dr. Myles Allen (who thinks that Trenberth’s idea is too radical but “Curry’s counter proposal to abandon hypothesis tests is worse”).

I know that Anthony’s mainly trying to smear Dr. Trenberth, but it seems odd that he’s mocking the idea that the default scientific presumption should be that humans are affecting our environment. That’s what underpins his juvenile “surface stations” project! Yeah we’re warming the Earth, but only in a few tiny spots and only in a way that hides the real climate trend (anything other than warming).

His readers comments are the usual assortment of ignorant profundities and jealous paranoia.

NASA’s Hansen asked to account for outside activities

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“NASA’s Hansen asked to account for outside activities“ (June 21st, 2011). Here’s another whopper from Christopher Horner of that home of scientific inquiry, the American Tradition Institute (an arm of the Competitive Enterprise Institute). Anthony Watts naturally jumps to endorse the accusation that “taxpayer-funded global warming activist” James Hansen receiving a “prize” is an ethical violation and that government scientists are clock-punching shift-workers…

Sez Anthony, “Gavin Schmidt’s time spent on editing realclimate.org during working hours apparently was the trigger for a broader investigation.”

Tip to Anthony: scientists are salaried employees, not hourly assembly line workers. The “broader investigation” Anthony tries to imply is simply think tank thug Christopher Horner speaking out of both sides of his mouth at once. Previously, Dr. Hansen’s involvement with the RealClimate website was decried as “advocacy” on government time, now it’s an “outside activity” that must be “accounted for”. Which is it? Do he really care?

ATI seeks to learn whether NASA approved Hansen’s outside employment, which public financial disclosures and other documents reveal to have brought him at least $1.2 million in the past four years. This money comes on top of and, more troubling from an ethics and legal perspective, is all “related to” and sometimes even expressly for his taxpayer-funded employment, all of which outside employment commenced when Hansen stepped up his “global warming” activism from his perch at NASA. – ATI press release.

I guess the attempts to undermine Hansen’s scientific claims are running out of steam; the harassment and personal attacks will continue though, they’re pretty much reflexive.

Joe Romm at Climate Progress has a more detailed look (who would have ever thought that Fox News would jump on a story like this?): Fox News Compares James Hansen’s Prizes for Truth Telling to Big Tobacco Paying a Doctor to Deny the Risks of Smoking.

Climate Progress blog shuts down – disappears all previous comments

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“Climate Progress blog shuts down – disappears all previous comments“ (May 30, 2011). Nothing like a measured response, eh Anthony? The Think Progress website underwent a redesign over the weekend and Anthony Watts is eager to give a definitive assessment:

It appears the mendacious Joe Romm has been given new marching orders by Center for American Progress Big Brother Blog: “Think Progress”. From what I make of it, it seems the management realized that CP just wasn’t holding much readership, as it looks like the same 30 commenters or so frequent the place.  Sooo…the spin is on. Joe’s doing his best to make his forced merger under Think Progress look like a win.

So none of the cool kids read Climate Progress, Anthony’s blog is way better anyway, and Joe Romm took his ball home (“disappears all previous comments”) because of all the mean things the cool kids, who never go there, were saying.

Reality: It was a website redesign! Sometime comments take a while to reconnect. It’s not a nefarious tactic to suppress the vigorous triumph of denialist criticisms. Climate Progress and Think Progress have always been closely linked, if anything it seems that “Think” will be promoting “Climate” more, not absorbing it.

Christ! Anthony’s grasp of website management is even worse than of climate science. And that is truly saying something. Anthony sounds like a kid who can’t best his school-yard rival hoping their parent will do it for them.

Here are a few Climate Progress posts about the process:

2011-08-24 Update: It took a while, but the old comments are finally up again. So much for Anthony’s accusations.

Five years of “An Inconvenient Truth”

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Five years of “An Inconvenient Truth” (May 24th, 2011). Anthony Watts wears his fingers down to tiny nubs hammering out Yet-Another-Criticism-of-An_Inconvenient_Truth, this time a true opus:

Executive Summary: Science Fiction

After-all Julia A. Seymour of the Business and Media Institute (staff of four) says so. And if you can’t trust an organization “devoted solely to analyzing and exposing the anti-free enterprise culture of the media“ then who can you trust? No-one, that’s who.

Denialist fixation with Al Gore and his documentary film has been both obsessive and compulsive since the first screening of the Oscar-winning documentary, and five years on it’s still “inconvenient”. Denialists have leveled every insinuation and nit-pick they can, but it still stands unbowed. As a rational person though I have to say “so what?” Even if it was proven beyond a doubt that it was filmed on the same soundstage as the Apollo Moon Landings, the abundant evidence and knowledge that supports scientific concern over Global Warming will remain. An Inconvenient Truth is simply a popular presentation of that concern.

So what do we find in 5 Years After: Networks Celebrate Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth,’ Ignore Scientific Flaws, Criticism? A sullen regurgitation of denialist attempts to undermine a popular documentary and teach them scientists a thing or two. Empty-headed gum-flapping. Here’s a few highlights:

  • Personal attacks on Al “Apocalypse Al” Gore as a “movie star”, etc.
  • Allegations that Gore predicted 20 ft sea-level rise by 2010 (he didn’t).
  • Climate Depot’s “lengthy list of more than 1,000 scientists who dissent in some way from those claims” (classic fake survey).
  • The claim that Gore’s “mentor” oceanographer Roger Revelle had “second thoughts” about CO2 and climate change late in life (misrepresenting a dead man. Read his own words).
  • Accusations that the media buried a High Court of London ruling that there were “nine significant errors” in AIT (but primarily ruled that it was clear that the film was substantially founded upon scientific research and fact).
  • Climategate!
  • A pitch for next month’s Heartland Institute conference on “Restoring the Scientific Method.”

Wegman paper retraction by Journal

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“Wegman paper retraction by Journal” (May 16, 2011). Anthony Watts tries to dismiss the retraction of the denialist’s beloved Wegman Report because of “the caterwaulings of the anonymous Canadian named Deep Climate and his accusations of plagiarism”. Anthony sneers: “congratulations to Deep Climate for being able to attack a man in another country without having having [sic] to put your name behind it. Such courage. You must be proud.”

I always get a chuckle when Anthony’s howls for blood flip to whimpers of pain. It’s purest irony when a victim-bully accuses someone of cowardice.

Unfortunately, Deep Climate’s accusations were true. Wegman’s Report to Congress in 2006 was a sloppy piece of work produced to meet the political needs of the denialist Republican Congressman Joe Barton. Although widely rebutted, denialists held the Report up as evidence of both faulty statistical underpinnings for Dr. Mann’s so-called global temperature “hockey-stick” and of corruption in the scientific publication process. That Report[‘s” social network” accusations were] hastily reworked as Said, Wegman, et. al. (2008) in the un-related journal Computational Statistics and Data Analysis which has now, to their undoubted reluctant embarrassment, retracted it.

This is not a little technical “oops”, this is academic incompetence and ethical failure. Still, it’s an easy “spoonful of sugar” fix according to Anthony:

So, no problem from my view. I expect the report will be rewritten, with citations where needed, maybe even adding extra dictionary definitions of words and their origins to satisfy the imagined slights against our lexiconic ancestors envisioned by DC and Mashey man,  and they’ll resubmit it with the very same conclusions. That’s what I would do.

It sucks when something that denialists like yourself have been falsely clinging to for years is pulled down by a couple of intelligent observers, doesn’t it Anthony?

Extra irony: The Said, Wegman, et. al. (2008) paper was “personally reviewed” by CSDA chief editor Stanley Azen. Exactly the kind of cosy ‘social network’ peer-review manipulation they tried to accuse Dr. Mann and his co-authors of.

Update on May 18, 2011: Anthony has elaborated on his “no problem” plagiarism assessment, clarifying that he is in fact opposed to plagiarism. Also, Anthony has been the victim of it so he knows what he’s talking about. Anthony’s referring to the fact that someone (Dr. Menne) discourteously took his loud allegations of poor surface station data quality and proved him wrong using his own claims (this is now confirmed by Anthony’s own lame-duck paper). And then Menne failed to attribute a photo of a weather station to Anthony’s website!!!!!!!! Horrors. But that’s “attribution” not “plagiarism”.

NASA’s Hathaway issues new solar cycle prediction

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“NASA’s Hathaway issues new solar cycle prediction“. Anthony Watts draws attention to the difficulty experts are having predicting the course of the current sunspot cycle. He also says “let us not be too critical of Dr. Hathaway, unlike some scientists we know, he has the integrity and courage to admit when his forecasts and models don’t work, and to revise them in the face of reality.” Ah yes, the mythical corrupt scientist. Who is the cowardly scientist that refuses to admit any error in their theories?

Of course if we can’t accurately predict something as ‘simple’ as the number of sunspots how can we possibly trust any climate predictions, right?

P.S. That was a lousy “blink comparator” graphic, Anthony. Try using the same scale and date range for both version next time. Or were you just pasting together two jpgs?

Delivering Messages Is Not Communicating

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“Delivering Messages Is Not Communicating“. Thomas Fuller rambles on in an “op ed” guest post about how “they” are losing the battle of “messages”. “They” need over-dramatize because:

there really isn’t enough data to make a definitive case for the type of climate change the establishment needs to command immediate and decisive action. (emphasis mine)

Andrew Montford’s book The Hockey Stick Illusion? Not defeated by a blog! Hah! Stephen Schneider’s paper about the credibility of climate change authors? Somehow, libelous! Environmental videos featuring exploding children? In poor taste! (I’ll give you that one.) Hair-splitting denialist scientists like Lindzen, Spencer, Christy? Still splitting hairs!

But what is the denialist messaging, Thomas? Climategate fraud accusations – proven to be fabricated. Political and legal attacks on scientists – proven to be unjustifiable. Statistical evidence disputing global warming – proven to be misreprentative.

Your ‘message’ is one of insinuation about their motives. “Their” message is that denialists are provably lying. Pick a side.

Booker: “anomalies” in Pachauri’s accounting

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“Booker: “anomalies” in Pachauri’s accounting“. ‘Honest broker’ and denialist Christopher Booker’s latest fabricated attack of Dr. Pachauri in The Telegraph is an attempt to blow irrelevant accounting irregularities at a research institute into a new “-gate” crisis. Anthony Watts is naturally breathless with excitement, but restricts his intellectual contribution to a quick copy-and-paste.

No mention of the apology that The Telegraph had to issue over earlier fabrications about Dr. Pachauri by Booker.

Naturally, this all proves that there is no Global Warming.

Quote of the Week – David Suzuki, a farce of nature

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“Quote of the Week – David Suzuki, a farce of nature“. Anthony Watts is irritated that renowned Canadian biologist David Suzuki has the nerve to say that “we have joined God, powerful enough to influence these [hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, drought, forest fires, earthquakes, volcanic explosions] events.” Maybe he’s just alarmed that someone is stating the obvious: humanity’s actions can and do affect our weather and our climate. Never! It’s all natural!

Come on Anthony, you might well argue about the intensity of our influence, but you’re just being sullen if you try to deny it altogether with nothing but links to your own lame blog as evidence.