Rancid wine in cracked bottles: The Tim Ball story

Tim Ball is spinning his wheels at WUWT, pushing this long-discredited, mendacious presentation of Greenland ice core data:

This deception was previously employed by Don Easterbrook:

. . . regarding which, Skeptical Science has already pointed out the rather glaring denier falsehood:

Easterbrook plots the temperature data from the GISP2 core, as archived here. Easterbrook defines “present” as the year 2000. However, the GISP2 “present” follows a common paleoclimate convention and is actually 1950. The first data point in the file is at 95 years BP. This would make 95 years BP 1855 — a full 155 years ago, long before any other global temperature record shows any modern warming. In order to make absolutely sure of my dates, I emailed Richard Alley, and he confirmed that the GISP2 “present” is 1950, and that the most recent temperature in the GISP2 series is therefore 1855. . . .

Unfortunately for Don, the first data point in the temperature series he’s relying on is not from the “top of the core”, it’s from layers dated to 1855. The reason is straightforward enough — it takes decades for snow to consolidate into ice.

Of course both Easterbrook and now Ball are also playing that ever-popular denier game of pretending one regional temperature record can stand as a proxy for global temperatures. But what really touches the nonsense into immortality is treating 1855 temperatures as modern-day temperatures, and denying global warming on that basis.

Have the razor-sharp critical intellects at WUWT picked up on this rather obvious deception? Not in the first hundred comments, which are mostly deniers arguing about whether warming is caused by a 100,000-year-cycle (rather than CO2) or a 21,000-year-cycle (rather than CO2). Tom Dayton points out the obvious, but "AndyG55" is ready with his unanswerable comeback: Michael Mann is a stupidhead LOL:

 Steve McIntyre splits the baby in his own inimitable style, warning deniers away from the data set without stating the obvious point that YOU CAN'T REFUTE GLOBAL WARMING WITH A RECORD THAT STOPS IN 1855.

 Other than that, it's the same old nonsense. Someone introduces the idea of a 41,000-year-cycle, so they chase that tennis ball for a while. Then, in response to some mealy-mouthed word salad by Easterbrook himself, Nick Stokes, who is somehow not banned from the monkey house, owns him and Steve McIntyre in one go:

. . . and that actually shuts up these venerable patriarchs of weaponized ignorance. Bravo, Nick. Bravo.

Punch-drunk with warming, WUWT branches out to being wrong about Palestine

2014 was the warmest year on record. Until 2015. 2015 looks to hold the title until 2016 goes in the books. Massive coral bleaching, accelerated sea level rise. To paraphrase Cedric Coleman, it's hard out there for a denier.

Eric Worrall of the monkey house tries to paper over the gaping hole in the movement's foundation with a "jazz hands" routine about Mahmud Abbas, who took the opportunity presented by a UN signing ceremony for a climate accord to call out Israeli settlements in the occupied territories:

"The Israeli occupation is destroying the climate in Palestine and the Israeli settlements are destroying nature in Palestine," Abbas told the gathering of 175 countries signing a landmark climate deal.

Eric chooses to pretend that Abbas claimed Israeli settlements cause global warming:

 Regardless of your position on the Israel / Palestine situation, suggesting that Israeli settlements contribute significantly to global warming is utterly implausible.

Which of course is probably why he didn't say that. He said the occupation was damaging the environment in Palestine, which it most certainly is. Israelis have established over 200 illegal settlements in the West Bank alone. These communities establish themselves strategically to control resources or strategic points and to restrict the development of Palestinian communities. They are not established via any rational planning process, which would certainly not place hundreds of tiny towns, some just campers and trailers running off diesel generators, scattered over thousands of square kilometers. This is indeed destructive to the environment in the West Bank.

Announcement of new elements allows WUWT dittoheads to flex their ignorance

Every now and again, Anthony likes to cut-n-paste a science press release, to try and delude himself and his readers into thinking his website has something to do with science other than whining about it. Unfortunately, changing the subject merely serves to illustrate the pathetic science illiteracy and reactionary politics of his little band.

Recently actual scientists were able to synthesize four new elements -- creating materials never seen on earth before. And Anthony, "citizen scientist," was able to copy their press release!

This should be easy. Not much is required of the commentors by way of response here. Scientists toiled for years in obscurity and today they leave their mark on history. Yay science! Unfortunately, this simple PR exercise is beyond the ken of Tony's tinfoil hat brigade.

Needless to say, "just get past…around 110" is not anyone's idea of how to synthesize stable superheavy elements, which is still very much a thing. But perhaps I am getting sidetracked from "JPS"'s main point, which seems to be: Scientists were wrong about an island of stability (wrong) so global warming is a lie!

Multiple dim bulbs simply reject the idea that anything has been discovered. It's just another hoax!

"Mark" one goes off on a weird tangent about element names, but "Mark" two stands ready to pull the discussion back to what the site is all about:

Having belittled homosexuals, the tinfoil hats decide it's time to bring up slavery and the New World Order:

I'd like to reiterate: this is a puff piece about a feel-good story about the discovery of new elements. But these deniers can't get through a simple press release on a totally non-climate-related subject without devolving into an anti-intellectual, homophobic, paranoid cri de coeur. It does not make one hopeful for their output of the course of the rest of this, an election year.

Denier comment of the day: undermedicated at WUWT

So, let's talk about what went wrong here. First question: what is it about the mentally ill that makes them adverse to paragraph breaks? Really, I sincerely wonder this. Lots of great writers and artists in general have been pretty nutty, yet skilled at their craft. But if you wander into the dark corners of the internet where aliens built the pyramids, vaccines cause autism, or "the Greenies" cooked up the global warming scare, you get headache-inducing rambling like this, the written equivalent of pressured speech. At a certain point horror gives way to pity, and I just wish I could help.

The CO2 numbers are wrong in predictable and boring way, debunked by better men than I here and here. But I do find this interesting: "CO2 naturally is . . . ."

Essentialism is, of course, not a scientific concept. It's interesting to me that for all their hostility to "greenies," many deniers partake in this idea of a natural world with a fixed set of characteristics which is set apart from humans and our influence. This set of assumptions clashes with many other parts of their Weltanschauung, but it creeps in over and over.

A trace gas in our atmosphere being blamed for as we all know here, everything bad. Somehow my civilian intellect is screaming WTF? That on the surface does not make any sense to me.

The denier has a high regard for his own intuition, which he confuses with rational thought. They form a false idea of the subject which emerges from their lack of understanding of the physical world and is animated by paranoia. The reminder of their process of deduction will involve seeking out confirmatory evidence and ideas and shunning other facts and arguments as the pleas of the condemned.

I have complained before to the CAGW Alarmists, I want them to explain exactly

Like a particularly obnoxious child, the denier firmly believes that other people owe him "exact" answers to any question he might be able to formulate, and that a free education is his right. Meanwhile, with ignorance his holy shield, he will beat off any effort to actually help him bring his thoughts in line with reality.

When I read these reports and NOAA comes out saying warmest winter ever, I get crazy.

 Your words, man. Your words.