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.

Judith Curry hides the decline . . . in her own self-respect

In hindsight, the way the Climategate emails was rolled out, after very careful scrutiny by the targeted bloggers, was handled pretty responsibly.  Lets face it – “Mike’s Nature trick to hide the decline” means . . . “Mike’s Nature trick to hide the decline.[1]”

Wow. Judith Curry, ladies and gentlemen and deniers. Former serious person. What a joke.

In hindsight, we can say the Climategate witch hunt failed utterly. Michael Mann is better-known and better-regarded than he would have been without the denier crusade. Deniers humiliated themselves trying to discredit a "hockey stick" that has now been reproduced dozens of times.

The criminals who stole the emails passed them to their denier allies who used them deceptively, using every variety of quote sniping and ridiculous double standards -- hateful vicious right-wing crusaders picking through thousands of pages of emails, looking for a few lines where responsible scientists, in the course of private communications with each other, said mean things about idiots.

This was used by right-wingers already in denial of the facts to craft a mythology for their gullible dittoheads. Said dittoheads went on to threaten working scientists with imprisonment, murder, the rape of their children, lynchings in the street -- such was the fruit of the handling of stolen emails, to morons by way of liars.

"Pretty responsibly" . . . keep telling yourselves that.

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.

Despite years of "auditing" science, McIntyre doesn't know what "replicate" means

Fresh off comparing blog moderating to genocide, McIntyre is back with another denialist home run:

If you find it surprising that our former minerals consultant/professional pseudoscientist has already proclaimed the failure of attempts to replicate a study that has not even been published yet, there's a catch. Mr. McIntyre doesn't know what "replicate" means.

Replicating a scientific experiment means doing it again, and seeing if you get the same results. But McIntyre, who startled observers yesterday by not knowing what a pogrom was, is equally at sea when it comes to replication. He thinks it means repeating the analysis of the results. Really:

Is Lewandowsky et al 2012 (in press) replicable? Not easily and not so far. Both Roman M and I have been working on it without success so far. Here’s a progress report (on the first part only).

Lewandowsky carried out factor analysis on three groups of questions: free markets, CO2 and conspiracy, each of which will be discussed below. He used structural equation modeling (SEM) on the other science questions (cause and consensus).

Of course people can and do question and tweak the statistical analysis of scientific results. But to call that "replication" -- that's willful ignorance. Really replication, in this case, means that you conduct your own survey and see if your results show a positive correlation between climate denial and other conspiracy theories.

Source

But of course real replication requires you to do some actual science. You might have to get up out of your chair, do some actual work, rather than endlessly carping about the choices other people made in their research. McIntyre instead chooses to pretend that science is simply playing with the data collected by others. That is basic science illiteracy from one of the "grand old men" of climate denial. I award him three and a half Goddards.

What on earth is Criag Idso doing for Heartland's $11,600 a month?

Making Dad proud

From the annals of corruption:

Funding for selected individuals outside of Heartland. 

Our current budget includes funding for high-profile individuals who regularly and publicly counter the alarmist AGW message. At the moment, this funding goes primarily to Craig Idso ($11,600 per month), Fred Singer ($5,000 per month, plus expenses), Robert Carter ($1,667 per month), and a number of other individuals, but we will consider expanding it, if funding can be found.

This is all the more disturbing because I am not entirely sure who Craig Idso is. And yet he's pulling down six figures courtesy of the denialosphere? I am wasting my life.

As to who this guy is:

Craig D. Idso is Chairman, founder and former President of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, a contrarian Arizona-based group funded in part by ExxonMobil. He is the son of its president, Sherwood B. Idso^[1], and the brother of its vice president, Keith E. Idso.^[2]

 Thus Sourcewatch, raising more questions than they answer. How many denialist think tanks are running on the mom-and-pop family business model, where the kids go off to college to secure their degrees in Agronomy and Geography before taking up the mantle of pretending to be a scientist? Is the Idso clan grooming the grandkids? When in 2030 the Arctic flips over into an ice-free state, are we going to be subjected to the analysis of William Howell Keith Idso the Third, on the strength of his degrees in Sports Marketing and Biblical Anthropology?

Maybe we'll get lucky and young William will be the black sheep of the family. "I'm leaving all this behind, Dad, and when you see me again, I'm going to have a degree in atmospheric physics!" "No son of mine!" "You can't stop me!" "Two weeks on a grad student stipend grading papers and you'll come crawling back!" "You can change the biometric security settings for the Compound, because I'm never coming back!"

Alternately, the rebellious young William could chose a career as a male escort, which would be more of a lateral move.



 

Jo Nova: nonsense headline of the day

From Jo Nova's spiteful-stupid slanderous slurry come this gem:

. . .

. . .

A Christmas Carol guide to denial

It's global cooling! Or not.

It hasn't changed much:

'I wish to be left alone,' said Scrooge. 'Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned-they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.'

   'Many can't go there; and many would rather die.'
   'If they would rather die,' said Scrooge, 'they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides-excuse me-I don't know that.'
   'But you might know it,' observed the gentleman.

Choosing not to know -- choosing not to see. Deliberate ignorance in the face of unwelcome insight. And if someone pushes that insight upon you, what then?

[1]"Deny it!' cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city.[2] 'Slander those who tell it ye! [3] Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse! And abide the end!' 

Threat of the day: Spencer & Braswell retrospective edition

I was looking back at the history of the online reaction to the Spencer & Braswell paper, which has been so thoroughly exposed as worthless and dishonest that the editor that published it has now resigned in disgrace. Amongst the backslapping at WUWT, I came across this:

Enneagram says:
August 28, 2010 at 5:07 pm

Don´t you think “they”are in urgent need of a “feedback”, a direct hit on the plexus would work? :-)

Classy. That comment can be read in the context of another a ways further down:

JER0ME says:
August 28, 2010 at 7:01 pm

Loved the book, Dr Spencer, and I am sure I shall find the article fascinating, although much may go over my head.

I would also be very interested to see the history of the single hostile reviewer, should you feel able to release this information (and I fully understand if you are either unable or unwilling).

I also agree with Amino Acids: “This question occurs to me: where are the works validating positive feedback?”

Even in their moment of triumph, getting some of their crap past a napping editor, the petty, vindictive attitude, and menacing rhetoric of deniers stands out. Who dared to question the great and powerful Spencer! Track them down!

Apart from those that can't keep their hatred in check even when things appear to be going their way, check out the whole comment thread for many hilarious examples of premature celebration and pompous uncritical hyperbole.