Tag Archives: Press Release

Despite posited ‘threats of extinctions caused by global warming’, 221 new species described by the California Academy of Sciences in 2014

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“Despite posited ‘threats of extinctions caused by global warming’, 221 new species described by the California Academy of Sciences in 2014″ (2014-12-29). Hello again! Idling at home over the holidays my curious fingers couldn’t resist Anthony Watts’ latest gum-flapper, a grotesque and deliberate misreading of a California Academy of Sciences press release (which Anthony didn’t bother linking to).

According to biology idiot savant Anthony Watts (you know where the emphasis lies), we shouldn’t care if species are going extinct because we’re finding news ones so fast it doesn’t matter!

Also, some of them ain’t going extinct because of global warming like them lyin’ scientists say because their tiny heads ain’t been found crushed under actual lumps of coal.

The true question here is whether Anthony understands that the rate of species discovery and the rate of species extinction are almost entirely unrelated. Is he too stupid to know this, or is he just playing his readers again? The rate of extinction has skyrocketed since the industrial age, but that got nuthin’ to do with us I guess.

Heartland’s NIPCC report to be accepted by Chinese Academy of Sciences in special ceremony

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“Heartland’s NIPCC report to be accepted by Chinese Academy of Sciences in special ceremony“ (2013-06-12). Too funny to resist this one. Anthony Watts informs us that he’s ‘been aware of this effort being underway for sometime” as he copy-and-pastes a Heartland Institute press release. But it’s just another example of Anthony over-selling himself while pimping for his political allies. I think Anthony tried to jump on a passing bandwagon but still doesn’t realise that he’s grasped a honeywagon.

To hear Heartland tell it, they’re in the final stages of a major scientific collaboration with their new Best Friends Forever, the Chinese Communist Party. A collaboration that proves the denialist “scientific” position has momentum. The Chinese Academy of Science is totally on their side and Craig Idso (Ph.D.), Bob Carter (Ph.D.) and Fred Singer (Ph.D.) are going to Beijing to get their medals!

Perhaps Rabett Run has it right though, the CAS’s comedy translation division has finished puzzling out the Heartland Institute’s Climate Change Reconsidered and Climate Change Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report, authored by the NIPCC, a denialist sound-alike to the United Nation’s IPCC (their “report” is a look-alike too). You gotta read the hilarious things these round eyes say!

Too bad this is the reality:

 “this is only a book cooperation between the Lanzhou Branch of the National Science Library and Heartland Institute, and is limited only to copy right trading, with no academic research work involved.”

I guess this is a close to a win as denialist “science” gets. Anthony’s followers are giddy with delight in comments even as “Plain Richard” tries to peel the wool back.

A few other links on this:

2013-06-14 Update: I couldn’t resist poking the ant nest and commented on Anthony’s post failing to reflect the instant collapse of the Heartland Institute and his claims. The result was exactly what you would expect from inquiring website devoted to informing the public about controversial subjects. Not.

Anthony Watts NEVER avoids criticism.

Anthony Watts NEVER avoids criticism.

Newsbytes: New Research Reveals IPCC In Bed With Green Lobbies

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“Newsbytes: New Research Reveals IPCC In Bed With Green Lobbies“ (2011-11-03). Oh my gosh, a carefully fact-checked newswire story proves that the IPCC are incompetent commie eco-facists! It’s a “scathing new expose“!

Oh, wait. It’s just another wild one-sided press release rehash from the denialist Global Warming Policy Foundation’s Benny Peiser. He’s uncovered a Fox News screed that trumpets how young some of the IPCC report authors are, and has found a few other semi-random news links. Also Donna Laframboise is a feminist, so we should have complete faith in her 43 recruits and their “audit” of the IPCC 2007 report. Go buy her book The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert! It’s sciencey.

The “green lobbies” accusation is somehow implicit, but of course everything is a “green lobby” to paranoid libertarians because it’s all part of the secret communist world government.

Thanks madcap paranoid libertarians, I knew you’d clear everything up!

It does seem a bit odd though that there’s no mention of atmospheric physics.

“Snowball Earth” ended by methane – now an impossible theory

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““Snowball Earth” ended by methane – now an impossible theory“ (May 26, 2011). It seems that, like the White Queen in Through the Looking-Glass, Anthony Watts tries to believe six impossible things before breakfast. We see how hard he tries pretty much daily, but his apparent copy and paste delight here over a Caltech paper in Nature is just routine self-delusional over-interpretation.

“A hydrothermal origin for isotopically anomalous cap dolostone cements from south China” is about cap dolostone sediments overlying 600 million year-old glacial deposits and controversially thought to be associated with microbial consumption of abundant methane. The paper concludes that the cap dolostone was deposited after the abrupt end of a prolonged glacial period (aka Snowball Earth), not as it ended. Also, those rocks seem to have been formed under abiotic high-temperature hydrothermal conditions.

Thus, in Anthony’s fixated mind, it is impossible for greenhouse gases to cause abrupt ancient warming. Some other unspecified thing did.

Strangely the primary theory of how Snowball Earth ended doesn’t revolve around ocean sediment methane discharge, which this research seems to disprove. The primary theory is based on evidence of increased volcanic CO2 and methane emissions (greenhouse gases!) which this research can be inferred to support. Hydrothermal environments are associated with volcanism.

Note to Anthony: arguing over “abrupt” ancient natural climate change, taking place over millions of years, is a weak criticism of evidence for man-made climate change taking place thousands of times faster.

“Ant colony optimisation” for wind farms

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“Ant colony optimisation” for wind farms. (May 4, 2011) Anthony Watts makes another ‘thinking is stupid’ blog post and his free-thinking readers scramble to match his wit.

Anthony found a University of Adelaide press release about increasing wind farm productivity using evolutionary modeling. The researcher happens to mention ant colonies as natural example of achieving efficiency that we can emulate with incrementally optimized simulations.

Here’s the hilarious trigger for Anthony’s derision:

“Ant colony optimisation” uses the principle of ants finding the shortest way to a source of food from their nest.

“You can observe them in nature, they do it very efficiently communicating between each other using pheromone trails,” says Dr Neumann. “After a certain amount of time, they will have found the best route to the food – problem solved. We can also solve human problems using the same principles through computer algorithms.”

Isn’t improving a technology, any technology, a worthwhile thing? This kind of gleeful ignorance, and the vapid enthusiasm with Anthony’s readers join in, reveals a disheartening narrow-mindedness.

Garbage: Another environmental claim proven to be hyped

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“Garbage: Another environmental claim proven to be hyped“. Anthony Watts finds an Oregon State University press release that says the Pacific Ocean’s “Great Garbage Patch” isn’t the size of Texas after-all.

From the press release:

“There is no doubt that the amount of plastic in the world’s oceans is troubling, but this kind of exaggeration undermines the credibility of scientists,” White said. “We have data that allow us to make reasonable estimates; we don’t need the hyperbole. Given the observed concentration of plastic in the North Pacific, it is simply inaccurate to state that plastic outweighs plankton, or that we have observed an exponential increase in plastic.”

This, of course, proves that environmentalists are liars and that there is no Global Warming. But what about the disgruntled claim that “mainstream” scientists always cover up for each other and make the data fit the desired result? I guess Assistant Professor of Oceanography Angelicque White is the only honest scientist out there.

Quick, somebody slap a carbon tax on this new planet

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“Quick, somebody slap a carbon tax on this new planet“. Oh, I see what you did there, Anthony. You used a completely un-related NASA astronomy news report to make fun of carbon taxes! That is so clever! It’s like you’ve jumped all the way to Class Clown with a rank of Grade Six!

Is your headline the only thought you had? Apparently yes.

SOHO – 15 years today

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“SOHO – 15 years today“. Another bald press release copy-and-paste from Anthony Watts. NASA announced that December 2nd is 15th anniversary of the SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) spacecraft.

 

Artist's concept of the SOHO spacecraft. Learn more on NASA's website unless you're stupid enough to rely on Watts.

Researchers find mathematical patterns to forecast earthquakes

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“Researchers find mathematical patterns to forecast earthquakes“. Anthony offers a copy-and-paste of a Eurekalert press release about Spanish earthquake forecasting paper titled “Pattern recognition to forecast seismic time series”.

Why? To ‘prove’ that he has a roving scientific intellect I guess. It wouldn’t be so transparent if you actually made an intelligent statement about it, Anthony. Instead, we get not even a single word.

Couldn’t you even type “Wow!” or something?