The Denialist’s barrel has no bottom

More from 'The Telegraph'

BPSDBA few days ago Tim Lambert at Deltoid discussed Christopher Booker‘s latest contribution to climate ignorance as “Denialists scraping the bottom of the barrel”; little did he know.  

The Telegraph continues it’s war on reality, intelligence and science with “Global warming: Reasons why it might not actually exist.”

The piece is a farce and easily exposed as nonsense, but it reveals something interesting for our collective attempts to educate people about the reality of climate change, and a particular challenges we face in doing so.

The article starts by referring to Booker’s article which Deltoid debunked as nonsense. In that respect it is like the rest of Booker’s writings (see here and here).

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Death by fire and ice

One of the climate change Denier claims that keeps resurfacing is that more people die from cold than from heat, therefore warming is a good thing.

I am not sure who started this one, but there is little question Bjorn Lomborg popularized it (and here).

Recently this meme is turning up again thanks to a new posting at that font of climate wisdom The Cato Institute (also here and here) viz  “The Deadliest U.S. Natural Hazard: Extreme Cold” and another three posted at the equally reliable (so to speak) Watts Up With That?

All of them seem to a response to the recent Reuters piece saying heat was the biggest natural cause of death in the US, and all are authored by Indur Goklany.

Goklany is one of the Heartland Institute‘s “experts“, has work hosted by the Fraser Institute (also here and here), but darned if I can find where he currently hangs his hat. Even ExxonSecrets doesn’t seem to know.

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Climate change ignorance caused by humans!

BPSDB

• Climate change ignorance caused by humans
• This weeks stupidity harvest
• Some Useful Tools
• Old memes, new life

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Climate change ignorance caused by humans

It has been confirmed, climate change ignorance is caused by humans! The belief that it could be due to natural causes probably applies to only 10-15% of the population.

Study Links Global Warming to Right-wing Media Hot Air Emissions: “SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Earlier this week, the Environmental Protection Agency released the highly anticipated results of a year-long study, confirming a long suspected link between right-wing media blowhards and current global warming trends.”

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Hey Weatherman – where’s the beef?

BPSDBThe Business and Media Institute reports that “CNN Meteorologist: Manmade Global Warming Theory ‘Arrogant’, and of course the freepers and other Denier wingnuts are off!

As one would expect Chad Myers’s statements are devoid of any factual basis, consisting of the usual moronic “aw shucks” barroom tales spiced with a few irrelevant factoids. This nonsense is then “substantiated” by Jay Lehr from the much discredited Heartland Institute who tries to push the global cooling fable.

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WMDs: The Poisoned Post

BPSDBIn their war on science Deniers rely heavily on Weapons of Mass Deception. One such weapon is the “Poisoned Post”.

To understand how this weapon works it is necessary to have the 30 second understanding of news sharing sites.

News sharing sites are places that you can submit a link to a site with a short description and it is then visible to many other users as being “of interest.”

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Ice and Inhofe’s List – both melting fast

James 'Ko-Ko' Inhofe

BPSDB

• Good news
• Denier Watch
• Arctic melt
• Senator Ko-Ko

Good News’

‘gas 2.0’ announced “America’s Love Affair With Cars is Ending” which is a short description of a new report out of the Brookings Institute “The Road…Less Traveled: An Analysis of Vehicle Miles Traveled Trends in the U.S.”

According to ‘gas 2.0’ the report states that “the US is experiencing its longest and quickest decline in the amount of driving since World War Two — a decline which the report’s authors claim marks a permanent shift away from the automobile and towards other forms of transportation.”

I confess I skipped to the conclusions and that does indeed seem to be what it is saying. Let’s hope so.

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Climate News: Crude and Screwed

• Crude
• Hopping down the Bunny Trail
• Screwed
• Christmas shopping

Crude

The Way Things Break has posted Crude – The Incredible Journey of Oil which  turned out to be much better than I anticipated.  Good, accessible presentation of the carbon cycle, geological history, anoxic oceans, and the last 30 min are quite heavy hitting on climate change.  Ninety minutes not wasted and excellent for educating your friends and family

Cavet, as you are warned at the site “there are some sound issues for the first few minutes. Things clear up around 3:33 …” They do clear up, but for three and a half minutes you are really annoyed.

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Inhofe’s “Mauvais Blague”

BPSDB

• The Inhofe files
• More corpses
• Changing Planet
• It takes a cyber-village

The Inhofe Files

(in this instance “files” being an anagram of “F’ Lies”)

Beau Geste is a classic story about French Foreign Legionnaires who successfully defend a fort by propping corpses and dummies up in the parapets to make the enemy believe the fort is fully manned.

Inhofe’s mauvais blague is trying to attack climate science with dummy scientists and the corpses of ideas. The blogosphere has responded quickly to the assault and as far as I have been able to tell, been reasonably successful at containing the pestilence.

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Climate change and your lying eyes

BPSDB

• Your lying eyes
• Climate change performance index
• Climate Safety: In case of emergency…

Your lying eyes

Let’s begin with a simple visual presentation using graphs of where we are with respect to climate change:

Global Temperature

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I am Ngudima Madriguru, Climate Minister of …

BPSDBI am Ngudima Madriguru, Climate Minister of my country. On behalf of my  family (the Abacha’s), my country and the Free World  I would like to seek your advice and help.

I have data that proves human caused climate change is a hoax, but UN thugs intent on world domination are keeping me from sharing it with you.

There is proof that I dare not reveal yet. The earth is cooling even though all of the science shows it is not. The sun is what is making the Earth warmer even though the sun is in a cool phase. The Arctic ice is expanding even though there is less of it. The sea is shrinking even as it rises. The glaciers are advancing even though they appear to be shrinking. I have the evidence!

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Fooled ’em once, trying twice … who’s the fool?

BPSDBAs promised yesterday James Inhofe released his list of  ‘650 climate skeptics‘ this morning, and it caused far less of a furor than the promise of it did. Small wonder, even for Inhofe it is pretty pathetic. In fairness this is done in Inhofe’s name, but undoubtely most of the work is actually that of Marc “Wormtongue” Morano.

Thankfully others have done the lion’s share of the work debunking it (OK, I spent half the day doing things others have done faster and better …. sigh), so I will confine myself  to noting the different types of frauds Inhofe uses to try and give a dead pig a complete make over.

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Mene, Mene, Tekel u-Pharsin: Verse 1

מנא ,מנא, תקל, ופרסין

Verse 1: The Denier Scientists

BPSDB“you have been weighed (counted) on the scales and found wanting”

In a recent attempt to mock this site a Denier blog  stated:

“My favorite part is when he links to a Wikipedia page in an attempt to convince us that there are only a “few dozen” skeptics.”

My reply was  “When I make that sort of statement I include facts/evidence that show the claim is questionable, if not actually false … why haven’t you?

Since it IS Wikipedia, why aren’t you/others posting all of the names and credentials of these alleged other skeptic scientists?”

Aye, there’s the rub. The Denialosphere is constantly referring to large numbers of skeptical scientists, with more jumping off of the bandwagon all of the time. The trouble, where to find them?

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Clutching at Straws

BPSDB Clutching/grasping at Straws: 1. to try any method, even those that are not likely to succeed, because you are in such a bad situation. He’s hoping that this new treatment will help him but I think he’s clutching at straws. (usually in continuous tenses)

2. to try to find reasons to feel hopeful about a situation when there is no real cause for hope. She thinks he might still be interested because he calls her now and then but I think she’s clutching at straws. (usually in continuous tenses)

TheFreeDictionary

Perhaps in an attempt to atone for it’s “coldest in the decade“ faux pas The Guardian brings us this video interview:

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Vox Populi: Blogs I

Personally I do not find many blogrolls and link lists are as helpful as I think they are intended to be. In most cases they have too many links with no indication of how to distinguish them. Moreover, they almost inevitably reward “Aaron’s Aardvark” Blog by being alphabetical.

And of course now I am falling into the same trap, and I am doing so for the same reasons everyone else does, viz you want people to know about the good blogs, but there’s just too damn many of them (or not enough, depending on your point of view).

One solution would be to just pick the

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They’ll bet your life, but not their money!

BPSDBWhen it comes to climate change the stakes for humanity are high in the extreme, so you might think the people advising a laissez faire approach (aka Deniers) to the problem would want to be absolutely certain of their facts.

Betting what exactly?

Something they would be willing to bet their money on for example.

Not phony challenges like Milloy’s Carny Scam, but actually risk their own money as well as your life.

Turns out not to be the case.

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“I did not have sex with that red herring”

BPSDBThe last post looked at the presentation of the 2008 temperature records as “coolest in a decade” and sea levels as “shrinking” as truth being reported in such a way as to lead to false conclusions. Let’s continue with the “William Jefferson Clinton” Climate Denial Series, ie telling the truth in such a disingenuous and grossly misleading way as to be basically lying.

It could also be called the “Red Herring” series since the statements usually made are true, but irrelevant (also here for many examples). A far more detailed and subtle example of this Denier tactic is the  Climate Change Quiz put out by “Smart Green Frontier”, actually the industry funded Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

Their online Quiz consists of 10 multiple choice questions accompanied by “facts” that supposedly help “educate you” about climate change.

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2008 will probably be 10th Hottest year on record

Will be Tenth Hottest on Record

BPSDB

• New and improved old memes
• New debunkings
• Arctic Update

New and improved old memes

2008 will probably be 10th Hottest year since 1880. Of course that is not how the Guardian reported it, they said “2008 will be coolest year of the decade“, but in this case those are the same thing.

Already the Deniers are spreading the “coolest of the decade” (ie ‘Climate change has ended‘) meme, a classic example of how the Deniers want you to look at the data, but not too closely.

Three things they do NOT want you to look at in this case:

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Global Warming is over! once every decade or so …

It’s true, just like the Deniers say, Global Warming is over … again, and again, and again. Not as often as they claim it is, but pretty often!

Global Warming ends every decade or so ...

As any fool can see climate change ended at least 15 times in the last 150 years, even before it started. I just don’t understand why the Deniers only point to the most recent ending … they like “global warming has ended” so much you’d think they’d want everyone to know about all of them.

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Each one teach one

BPSDB

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• This blogs for you
• What do you want to see?
• It’s a tool
• Be a part of it

This blogs for you

Well, yes and no. In trying to address the huge amount of misinformation being spread by the Deniers I kept a collection of links, then created a small wiki, and then this blog.  So it’s a tool to help educate about the facts when responding to Denierism, but a tool anyone and everyone can use.

Seriously – what topics should I cover? Bearing in mind that the goal of this blog is to educate about the misinformation that has gotten popular circulation, are there particular topics you would find useful to have covered? either because you are uncertain about the science, or you would just like a place you can link people to for explanations.

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The scope and scale of climate science

Climate science coming through

BPSDB

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Time and again climate Deniers parade how little they understand climate science when they claim that some “new study has proven climate change theory is wrong”.  Two reasons for this, both relating to the scale and scope of climate science.

The Deniers seem to think that climate science is a three legged stool, and if they could only knock out one leg it will fall over. Wrong metaphor; it is more like an 18 wheeler. Even if they managed to puncture one tire (which they have yet to do) it would make no noticeable difference. Two, even three wouldn’t change much.

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