Tag Archives: Misdirection

The Climate Crash of 2009

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“The Climate Crash of 2009“. Anthony Watts points us to denialist Pierre Gosselin’s website called “NoTricksZone“. Naturally the page Anthony especially likes is reporting on how “leading scientists and professors are calling for a completely new direction in climate policy“. Naturally this is denialist bullshit, “tricks” from top to bottom.

“The Hartwell Paper, A new direction for climate policy after the crash of 2009” is published by the Institute for Science, Innovation & Society, part of Oxford University’s Saïd Business School. The Institute opposes the Kyoto Protocol, thinks we can adapt to climate change anyway, and considers “Climategate” a real ethical issue. The authors, mainly economists, sociologists and industry representatives, include rabid denialist Roger Pielke Jr. Effectively the Hartwell Paper advocates reducing or dropping proposed carbon taxes and crossing our fingers that non-carbon energy sources become cost-competitive.

Yeah, that’ll work.

Taiwan sinking: Subsidence or Global Warming Induced Sea Level Rise?

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“Taiwan sinking: Subsidence or Global Warming Induced Sea Level Rise?“. Anthony Watts wants you to think that rising sea-levels anywhere on Earth are due to subsidence and subsidence alone. Especially in Taiwan. And if anyone, such as in this AFP news report Rising sea levels threaten Taiwan, suggests that it could be sea-level rise due to Global Warming, they should be flooded with hostile correspondence.

It’s certainly true that uncontrolled groundwater (or oil) extraction can produce significant local subsidence. The problem with Anthony’s attempt at misdirection is that this kind of subsidence is highly variable, even within the affected locality. So it’s kind of hard to use as an excuse to wave away regional sea-level changes.

Come to think of it, this is exactly like Anthony’s discredited obsession with surface station temperature records. Cherry-picked instances invoked in the hope of discrediting the wider trend. We’ll be hearing more mutterings on this topic, I think.

Singer on Climategate Parliamentary Inquiry

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Singer's denialist project.

“Singer on Climategate Parliamentary Inquiry“. I love it when Anthony Watts quotes Fred Singer. Trained as an electrical engineer, this guy has spent the last thirty years collecting contrarian, anti-regulation causes. CFC’s and UV damage, DDT risks, second-hand smoke, etc, etc. He’s associated with fourteen different anti-regulation “foundations”, he was behind the debunked Leipzig Declaration, and he or his organizations receive significant financing from oil interests and far-right ‘libertarian’ benefactors. When Fred opens his mouth you know that nothing but beautifully constructed bullshit will flow out. He loves the sound of his own voice.

This post is an ‘editorial’ titled “ClimateGate Whitewash” tries to inject some energy into the denialist chant about the British House of Commons’ Science and Technology Committee’s ‘Climategate’ Inquiry. The Inquiry was pretty conclusive that the fabricated accusations against Dr. Phil Jones and the Climate Research Unit were groundless. This leaves the denialists with only the tactic of waving their hands wildly and talking loudly about things that the Inquiry didn’t talk about because they weren’t relevant. A pretty low-percentage play if your audience is paying attention.

Singer flails away enthusiastically and completely without evidence:

Only a thorough scientific investigation will be able to document that there was no strong warming after 1979, that the instrumented warming record is based on data manipulation, involving the selection of certain weather stations, [and the de-selection of others that showed no warming], plus applying insufficient corrections for local heating.

Thirty years and he still hasn’t proven a thing.