I get some of my best compliments from climate deniers, actually.
Last year it was Neo-nazi not-so Breitbart, taking exception to my vid that fried Senator Cruz’s climate denial. Writer James Delingpole allowed “..The video is well produced and cleverly constructed – designed to look measured and reasonable”-
I couldn’t have said it better myself. That is my process, Jimmy.
Now comes the right-wing fossil fuel shill Cato Institute, who apparently thought it made sense to leap to the defense of a cartoon with a comically bad piece by long discredited denialist for hire Ross McKitrick, a right wing boob and purported economist with no climate science background. Good choice!
On the plus side, Mckitrick gives the devil (me) his due:
“The video is full of impressive-looking scientists talking about charts and data and whatnot. It probably cost a lot to make and certainly involved a lot of time and effort.”
Well, I’ll just say, cleverly designed to look like it cost a lot.
If you haven’t seen the video, the very first line, from atmospheric expert Andrew Dessler, is “….the people who know the least about climate science are the ones most fixated on models.” Cato/McKitrick set about to prove just that, once again.
Ross McKitrick for Cato Institute:
Fine, let’s go to the 2:38 mark and watch someone named Sarah Myhre tell us what this inarguable science says.
“It’s irrefutable evidence that there are major consequences that come with climate warming, and that we take these Earth systems to be very stable, we take them for granted, and they’re not stable, they’re deeply unstable when you perturb the carbon system in the atmosphere.”
How does she know this? From models of course.
Well, yeah, that, and 200 years of physics, plus 4 billion years of earth history that tells us most of what we know about how the earth responds to greenhouse gases.
By the way, “..someone named Sarah Myhre” is a PhD paleoecologist/paleoclimatologist
– in other words, someone with a PhD’s worth more training in the field than Mr. McKitrick, but who, because she’s a woman, he feels he can diss. Classy.
Mckitrick’s point seems to be that saying deniers are overly fixated on models is a “straw man”. He then goes on paragraph after paragraph fixating on … models.
Key point of the video comes when Ben Santer explains that the observations we now have are unexplainable by natural causes. Most notably, tho not in the scope of this vid due to time constraints, are the changes in the vertical structure of the atmosphere, i.e. warming low down, cooling up high, which are ONLY possible in a world where human released greenhouse gases are changing the atmospheres radiative profile.
(Anyone with any doubts about how well the models have performed should watch another piece from a few months ago.)
Bottom line, if Cato Institute is reduced to defending climate denial comic strips, it’s an indicator of how little ground they have left to defend.
I’m betting Myhre is a paleoecologist rather than a mere paleoecologis. Feel free to delete this post.
BRAVO!!! I’ve had it with these loud mouths!
https://sites.google.com/site/irelandclimatechange/The%20Greenhouse%20Effect%20-%20Cooling%20the%20Startosphere%20and%20Heating%20the%20Troposphere.jpg
The whole clip of the series:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V2HYZbFLn8&w=560&h=315%5D
Deniers are behaving like 4-year-old kindergarten kids and have a learning aptitude like 80-year-old dementia patients.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DBIMnmvXkAQ8N0u.jpg
Or whatever kind of press covfete that’s out there. Bet you fellows spent all day glued to your TVs waiting to hear what the Paris decision was, though. Did you hear he also plans to announce that ██ ███████ █████████ is going to be his Science advisor during this announcement?
Diane N. Sevenay @Diane_7A
“Of course #covfefe is real word. It was coined during the Bowling Green Massacre.”
Cookie, you ain’t a very pleasant sight clothed, so do stop this strip now for nearly naked you are. Any incoming science advisor that Trump is likely to appoint will already have been exposed as a fraud on climate.
What strip? Inquiring minds want to know. If you, Peter, and “dumboldguy” have got devastating info on exactly what I am, by all means, pen a post here and get it all out already. What is holding you back? Same thing goes for your choice of ‘guilty’ potential Science advisors. But think carefully: none of you guys are climate scientists that I’m aware of, thus your declarations on what the ‘lies’ would be are already undermined right there. Then there is the basic problem I’ve brought up from my first arrival here. None of you can point to evidence that would hold up in a courtroom evidentiary hearing proving a pay-for-performance arrangement exists between skeptic scientists and industry people. If you could, you would have done so already, hitting me over the head with it in virtual 2×4 fashion.
Based on “The video is full of impressive-looking scientists” I ploughed through that video in hopes of seeing how many pairs of pants in non-primary colours were being worn this time. No luck and my brain hurts from masses of charts and data. I’m fine with whatnot but I’ll never grasp molecules and I don’t entirely see rays either.
And the ultra right want you to become even dumber and sicker…
=> Trump budget would slash science programmes across government
Proposed cuts include 11% at the National Science Foundation, 18% at the National Institutes of Health and 30% at the Environmental Protection Agency.
Why waste money on science when you can just make stuff up? Or when science discovers something, ignore it anyway? It’s sound economic management to know nothing. 🙂
https://sites.google.com/site/irelandclimatechange/Climate%20Change%20-%20What%20Makes%20More%20Sense.jpg
http://gelbspanfiles.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/SkeptInfoGr.jpg
Yeah. Those scientists are making so much money.
Why risk your life traveling to Anarctica to gather climate data for a salary with a mere average of $83,841, when you can work as a petroleum geologist using state of the art equipment in state of the art facilities for a FF company making $178,900 (10+ years exp.)?
http://www.allstarjobs.com/careers/Environmental_Science/Glaciologist
http://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2015/11/22/make-degree-geology-salary-survey-reports
Do you really think money is the issue? There is more money in science in the private sector.
@funslinger62 The big bucks in the smear campaign aren’t going to the scientists. You haven’t noticed that yet? When you guys say there is a well-financed, well-organized disinformation campaign going on, that is yet another example of sheer psychological projection on your side’s part. The thing you will have to watch out for is which folks within the effort are going to roll on their handlers just save their own skins when this whole ship sinks.
Russell Cook
“The big bucks in the smear campaign aren’t going to the scientists.”
Then what is their incentive to lie, to hide the “truth”?
Science doesn’t care where the money goes. Science is truth.
Russell Cook
“The thing you will have to watch out for is which folks within the effort are going to roll on their handlers just save their own skins when this whole ship sinks.”
It’s already started to sink. The fossil-fuel-supported disinformation campaign is already collapsing. The problem is that it may not collapse fast enough for us to save many millions of lives.
A few weeks ago Scott “Dilbert” Adams wrote some wacky essay claiming (at some length) what his cartoon later said: it’s all models. Not only climate models, it is also economic models.
Having created this straw bull, he proceeds to slay it with a cardboard sword.
Then when the above video came out, Adams took credit for forcing Sinclair to produce it. He yammered about “cognitive dissonance” shown by the people featured in it. And then crowed victory because of some convoluted reasoning about the scientists being reduced to arguing in absolutes.
It is not a pretty sight. I was drawn in by some Adams posts on climate change last year. But after a few of them, and engaging with the Adams Family acolytes on the comments, I started feeling dirty. So now I don’t do it very often.
Just saw an interview on CNBC with Larry Summers. One of the items discussed was the withdrawal from the Paris agreement. It was nice to see Summers squash Joe “I’m not a supporter of catastrophic AGW” Kernen with facts. Kind of left loud mouth Kernen floundering for a change.
Hah hah! I love it! Good on you, Peter. 😅
So funny. Did you read the last line of the cartoon before you wrote “long discredited denialist for hire”?