December 26, 2010 
File this in the “I read the stupid so you don’t have to” and the “A little levity” categories.
I am continually amazed at how much pure unadulterated stupid takes place on Watts Up With That. I mean, it takes the stupid cake, doesn’t it? Reading over at WUWT is a guilty pleasure of mine, like eating a McD’s Big Mac — you know it’s junk food, greasy, no nutrition beyond empty calories, but you can’t help yourself.
The commentary there is just a comedienne’s dream — a goldmine of yuks. It’s almost too easy, it’s so full of juicy stupid.
I’d personally be embarrassed to admit that so much stupid followed my blog and posted in the comments. Take the most recent post: “Do We Care if 2010 is the Warmest Year in History?”
WTF?
First, it must be really hard for the denier to keep a stiff upper lip, given the records set for high temperature in the past few years. The only solution is to — why, to deny, of course. The whole global warming phenom is just a hoax, a lie, a big scam by the socialists hoping to create a one-world order to destroy the US of A. Besides it’s really cold in Europe and the eastern seaboard of the USA, right? Besides, in the USA, 1934 is really warmer than 1998, so there must not be any global warming. Hansen is just a liar.
And Al Gore is fat.
The guest poster at WU diverts attention from the global temperature to US temperature, which accounts for only 2% of the surface temperature for the globe. He then focuses on the 1934 / 1998 debate, as if that is evidence of anything.
Then comes this gem:
Keep in mind that this is US-only data, gathered and analyzed by Americans. Therefore, there is no possibility of fudging by the CRU (Climategate Research Unit) at East Anglia, England, or bogus data from Russia, China, or some third-world country. (If there is any error, it was due to home-grown error-ists :^)
Also note that total Global Warming, over the past 131 years, has been, according to the IPCC, GISS and CRU, in the range of 0.7ºC to 0.8ºC. So, if 1934 was more than 0.5ºC warmer than 1998, that is quite a significant percentage of the total.
Is he serious? Where does Watts get his guest posters? This is just stupid on too many levels. Then there’s the line about US data analysed by Americans…
US data analyzed by Americans… who does he think Hansen is? An alien? Isn’t NASA an American institution? I guess if it isn’t warmer in the US, the ROTW doesn’t really matter…
Stupid.
Then in the comments, teh stupid breaks out in force:
Ronald S says:GISS may well declare 2010 to be the warmest year in history. Those of us sharing the current northern hemispere winter know better.
Of course, northern hemisphere winters are cold. It’s winter. It’s the northern hemisphere. Duh.
Where does Watts get these commenters?
Here’s more:
“But, whatever they declare, should we believe it? What do you think?”
Absolutely not. Hansen isn’t a scientist. He’s a political activist masquerading as a scientist.
Here we see the fruits of decades of anti-science propaganda and attacks on science on the part of denialists. It’s shocking and frightening to see how anti-science Americans have become.
DirkH says:They just want to save the planet, they think they know CO2 is the problem, so they adjust the data until it fits their preconceptions. They should be absolved from their duties to find fulfillment as street fundraisers for GreenPeace.
Sometimes, the stupid is so exquisite, that I have to wonder if it isn’t fake:
Curiousgeorge says:Of what possible use is this kind of data from GISS or others? I mean other than providing fodder for slow news days, and grist for the political mill? Nobody gives a hoot’n hell about 1/10th degree or even 1 whole degree. Nor does anyone (except possibly their immediate families) care what a bunch of obscure, number crunching, cubicle rats say about the weather/climate a hundred years from now. Bunch of wannabe 007′s is all.
This is just too pure stupid to be real. This must be a joke, a post by someone hoping to draw out the stupid, right?
Of course Hansen is the target of much vitriol. In fact, I wonder if WUWT isn’t a kind of anti-science provocateur:
Grrrr! In reality, Hansen and Schmidt et al. should be prosecuted.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Jae is positively glad at the prospect of Republican witch hunts.
jae says:“But, whatever they declare, should we believe it? What do you think?”
This is a holliday joke, right? Given all the “adjustment games” that NASA has played over the years, plus all the obviously biased rhetorical CRAP that Hansen has been spewing, who of all the whos that have been following this stuff could possibly give a damn what NASA is saying today? I think it is gonna be very funny when the conservatives call ole’ Jim and his cronies into hearings this next year. LOL.
Yep, that damn inconvenient science — if we don’t like it because the solution would go against our political ideology, we can just prosecute the scientists!
There’s so much more gooey stupid goodness in this post, picking excerpts is like shooting fish in a barrel. I’ll be doing a year-end wrap up of the stupid over at WUWT and Climate Audit in the new year but I just had to post this after reading over there this morning.
The Policy Lass 
The stupid on WUWT get stupider by the day. My theory is that any skeptical posters gave up on WUWT long ago, recognising the site for what it is.
Just for posterity, there’s an ex-computer tech by the name of McLean in Australia, who posted on the Australian ABC site Unleashed a few days ago. His claim to fame is his adulation of deniers Bob Carter and Ian Plimer (of the volcano belching fame)), and for getting some rubbish article in a scientific journal. In the comments McLean posted this gem:
“Oh dear, you still think that water vapour is a positive feedback. That was discredited months ago, maybe even years. Evaporation followed by convection takes heat into the upper atmosphere where it is released and radiates to space, ergo evaporation causes cooling and is a negative feedback.”
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/42392.html#comments (See his comment time stamped 21 Dec 2010 10:05:47pm)
I pictured all these little steam chimneys shooting heat into space – lol.
So Australia has its share of weirdos as well. It’s not restricted to the USA.
(BTW – the McLean article is no longer listed on the Unleashed site index for December 2010. Maybe someone from the ABC thought that given all the record-breaking extremes of weather in Australia and the obviously changing climate here, it was all just too much nonsense, even for Unleashed, where anything goes.
OMG reading over at that thread hurt my head with the stupid! Luckily, there was a lot of sanity produced as by posters, including you. Really, someone should write a book on climate denial stupidity. Most of their research could be done at three websites…
It’s always worth following solar threads on WUWT!
Leif Svalgaard defends science against the electric universe, iron sun, unknown solar heating “forces” e.g.
December 25, 2010 at 8:19 pm
Geoff Sharp says:
December 25, 2010 at 7:48 pm
My theory stands alone and is quite different from those you mentioned, but you would need an understanding to appreciate that.
L.S.:
That is not the point. The point is that the others are equally adamant that they are correct and that they will be proven correct in the next two cycles. Understanding of your idea is difficult due to its hand waving nature, lack of numerical expression, and reliance on eye-balling of wiggly lines. These things disqualify it as a ‘theory’ in the usual meaning of the concept.
I wonder if people like Svalgaard are serious or consciously disinforming — it’s hard to imagine they are sincere. I see you putting in a yeoman’s effort over at WU and CA, Ford. I’m sure it’s largely wasted on the regular posters, but the unknowing layman who happens by might learn a thing or two based on your posts and the way you are received and your comments treated.
Svalgaard is a Good guy! a debunker of pseudo science so I think your response may be in error!
I have not posted under this name at wuwt for a year – banned! posting asother aliases is very time consuming as watts looks at ip addresses (have to use a proxy)!
I’ve been reading old posts and have seen yours there and at CA. I remember you from way back when I first found CA. You were banned by Anthony? Badge of honour, that. 🙂 I don’t often post there. Rarely. As in maybe twice.
As to Svalgaard, people sure do genuflect over him on skeptic sites, don’t they.
I just wish my skeptics were better. 😦
I know… It’s sad, really, how stupid some of them are. But it takes intelligence to recognize stupidity and unfortunately, many people aren’t up to it and they get taken in by the shiny graphs and common-sense misinformation.
BTW TCO, I was reading over at CA, specifically the comments you made about ARIMA and ARFIMA and McI’s paper. You were onto him way back when and had the brass to not let up. I, for one, appreciate it.
🙂
I’ve got a little list……….This is the sixth in WUWT’s series of articles downplaying 2010’s potential hottest year status.
Nobody likes stupidity. Nobody wants to write stupid things. But denier desperation in the face of rising temperatures has no other option.
For more guilty pleasures, take another look at the others in this series.
1. Warmest year ever? 2010: an Unexceptional El Nino Year…Dec6
2. Hansen feels the need to explain why GISS is high in the midst of frigid air…Dec12
3. Tisdale K.O.’s GISS latest “warmest-year nonsense”…Dec12
4. Arctic Oscillation spoiling NASA GISS party”…Dec15
5. How Germany’s weather team views the ‘hottest year ever’…Dec18
6. Do we care if 2010 is the Warmest year in History?…Dec25
In January we’ll get the results from the legitimate criticisms of a ‘hottest 2010’. How close, how statistically significant, are the GISS results? In which data sets isn’t 2010 #1?
I think I saw these characters before. Yes, in **Jaws**:
http://denialdepot.blogspot.com/2010/11/jaws-movie-review.html
Enjoy,
w
OMG Willard — that is hilarious! So accurate as well.
Seriously, this isn’t really funny at all, but if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry sometimes at the stupid.
The comments are great too. An Internet meme is born? Modesty makes me exclude my own contribution from the “great” tag though.
TCO,
I’d like you to contact me by email if possible.
You can find my email on my site.
email sent, Will.
Meh we get hoardes of the zombies over at the Guardian. I used to have a bit thing about how even tempered I was with various sceptics, these days I just cant hide my caustic scathing at some of the stupidity they post.
But today I had a good day online.
One of our enthusiasts posted this article
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1234515/Copenhagen-climate-change-summit-The-world-COOLING-warming-says-scientist-Peter-Taylor—prepared.html
So I went a googling and found the other book he had written.
Remote viewing and being stalked by masonic ninjas.
I was in stiches, pity the story is a year old, The Mail deserves dragged over the coals for letting someone with those kind of views on its science section.
Seems the writer or copywriter didn’t do a logic check along with the spell check — anthropomorphic global warming????
“So I went a googling and found the other book he had written.”
Yep, that was a nice find. 😉
Actually it does get worse than WUWT, although IMHO this sort of thing explains rather a lot about Watts’ commenters. (Taylor seems like another member of that crowd.) Watts himself seems to want to exclude such material in order to maintain a little mainstream credibility, which seems to have worked somewhat with journalists like Revkin and Kloor.
Re LS, he is a for-real solar scientist, but has attracted a little bit of a denialist fan club since he persists in participating at WUWT and so has become part of its claim of credibility. This is despite the fact that AW himself is a solar crazy, and Leif instantly demolishes such talk every time it crops up over there. At least in the past (I stopped following WUWT closely a couple years ago) he’s also occasionally made mildly disparaging remarks about the IPCC/consensus, although I think those were ploys.
Yup. I recall LS seemed to work at ticking Tamino off. Seemed like ‘my daytime star beats your nighttime stars’ attitude stuff more than facts.
FYEO, Vaughan Pratt with his own way to deal with the likes of Ron Cram:
Thanks Willard, that was worth the read.
Dorlomin, reading that book review endowed me with extraordinary powers.
I transformed my OH into an open-mouthed statue as I read a couple of paragraphs aloud. Unfortunately this magic couldn’t last. He collapsed into a chair once he started laughing.
Chinese New Year is a Chinese festival that celebrates the beginning of a new year on the traditional Chinese calendar. The festival is commonly referred to as the Spring Festival in China as the spring season in the lichen calendar traditionally starts with lichen, the first of the twenty-four solar terms which the festival celebrates around the time of.