Bill McKibben must have been doing something right during his New Zealand tour: he’s drawn the ire of the local climate cranks in no uncertain fashion. Perhaps it was the packed houses he addressed in Auckland, Dunedin and Wellington, or his interview on RNZ National’s high-rating Saturday Morning show with Kim Hill, but the clarity and certainty of his message drew a vituperative response from “Climate Conversation” blogger Richard Treadgold. In an ill-tempered personal attack, Treadgold described McKibben as a “climate nutcase” and “a madman”.
His voice is engaging, almost reasonable, but his wild eyes cannot help but flash his burning lunacy at the camera.
It’s par for the course for Treadgold, whose tenuous claim to fame is as the man who kicked off the climate cranks’ losing attempt to sue the National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) ((They still haven’t paid a brass farthing of the costs awarded against them.)), but his fact-free and ill-informed rant was not the only attempt to counter McKibben’s message.
At Stuff Nation, Joe Fone teamed up with the executive director of the International Climate Science Coalition, Canadian PR man Tom Harris to string together a lengthy list of standard crank nonsense. It’s the usual stuff — long debunked factoids and misrepresentations — but the pair set new standards for incoherence.
It is also important to recognise that commercial greenhouse operators routinely run their internal atmospheres at up to 1500 ppm CO2. This is more than four times McKibben’s so-called “safe” limit. Yet there is no hint of any consequent temperature rise, while the plants inside grow far more efficiently than at the 400 ppm in the outside atmosphere. This is not surprising. Grade school students understand that CO2 is plant food and so anything but “climate pollution” as former Vice President Al Gore wrongly labels it. In fact, CO2 concentrations on submarines can reach levels well above 10,000 ppm, thirty times the “safe” limit, with no harmful effects to the crew.
Quite remarkable, as stupid arguments go.
Words might fail me in dealing with Fone et al, but they never fail former ACT Party leader Rodney Hide, who uses his National Business Review column this week to claim that the Green Party has started downplaying the importance of global warming.
The down rating is huge. Green co-leader Russel Norman in his speech to this month’s annual conference never once mentioned global warming.
Hide did manage to notice that the following week the Greens hosted a one day conference on climate change in Parliament, bringing together scientists, activists and politicians for a discussion on how to make progress on climate action, but claimed that Norman’s speech there confirmed his view, because it lacked “fire and brimstone”.
As fatuous arguments go, Hide’s takes the biscuit. But it is confirmation, if any were needed, that the delusional denialists on the crank fringe have to continually reassure themselves that they’re winning, however pathetic the case they make, because reality is telling a rather different story…
Gareth. – You should place a warning on this post!
“Drinking hot coffee and reading this post could be hazardous to ones Health.”
🙂
What a pairing! And, indeed, what, for the sake of argument, we’ll call an argument. Did we ever get to review Joe’s, um, book?
Hey, Tom Harris – McKibben and his people managed to organise a ‘Do the Maths’ tour here in the Antipodes (re-read carefully if you don’t get it), yet you lecture us about the putative – and suitably unsophisticated – knowledge of ‘grade school’ kiddies. Despite supposed co-authorship with a Kiwi (great proofing there, Joe). Whose team is smarter?
What else is to be expected from Treadgold and Co? He has to be seen by his little posse of half baked (quarter baked more likely) fellowship of dimwits to be saying something ‘appropriate’ to the appearance of McKibben.
Plus Treadgold certainly has has nothing left to loose. I guess if you sit naked in winter in a glass house, throwing rotten tomatoes (nothing else left to throw, and the glass already broken from a time when there were still rocks at hand….) at people on the outside, then really how much more damage to your own reputation can you accomplish. With no upside left in regards to anybody outside of the echo chambers of denial blogs and limited to preaching to a few faithful, grandiose, delusional and failed characters, he must feel rather desperate at times.
Also this shall pass. But given what is at stake, slapping their rotten arguments back them when and where possible still remains a yuck but necessary task to do, as sadly, there are always lost souls about who are impressionable to their kindergarten way of thinking.
Joe Fone sets a new record on the open ended Bonkers scale…. 😉
Re the High Court case, does anyone know if NIWA is taking up the cudgels to have the NZCSET trustees held personally liable for the $90K of taxpayers’ money they wasted?
I don’t know Rob, but the shonky “trust” must be pushing its luck by now. If they fold that, the trustees could find themselves under some pressure.
And speaking of The Denialist Circus, seems HI’s latest would-be triumphalist outing – we’re now endorsed by The Commies! – has degenerated into a clanger of titanic proportions! Quelle surprise! AND Diddums…
Great stuff 🙂
Titanic indeed, even in the Chinese Shipyards thanks to Clive Palmer….
Somebody must be paying these guys to be this stupid. Fone’s misrepresentation of the ‘safe limit’ notion has to be deliberate it’s so absurd, and ‘C02 is just plant food’ argument is old and tired and has been so often refuted I can’t believe it’s sincere.
You can’t be born this stupid. You either have to work very hard at it, or somebody’s making it worth your while.
On the other hand, I’ve heard the the human mind finds it harder to comprehend information it is predisposed to reject, than information that accords with the individual’s world view. Fone et al certainly seem to have trouble comprehending the most basic facts. Imagine being so braindead you don’t need to be bought – your soul already sold.