cranks

Prat watch #5: Ignorance is bliss

by Gareth March 29, 2012

What happens when you deny things? Well, if you deny the reality of global warming, and if you are to be in any way self-consistent, then you have to deny every bit of evidence that it might be happening. Here’s a classic example, drawn from New Zealand’s very own little corner of the climate crank [...]

103 comments Read the full article →

Prat Watch #4: Foundation and Empire

by Gareth March 20, 2012

While the noble Lord, Viscount Christopher “I’m no potty peer” Monckton tours the USA and Canada at the behest of his friends at the Heartland-lite Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (aka the Billionaire Liberation Front), his Australian admirers, led by former Climate Sceptic Party candidate Chris Dawson, have announced the creation of… wait for it… [...]

90 comments Read the full article →

How Heartland lied to me and illegally recorded the lies

by cindy March 15, 2012

4 a.m. Bali, December 2007, the first Tuesday of the two-week UN climate talks. My phone rings, waking me up. Blearily, and a little crossly, I answer it. I was in Bali to run Greenpeace International’s media for the meeting. The caller was someone called “John” who said he was an intern for a US [...]

79 comments Read the full article →

Inhofe’s “Hoax”: foolish and dangerous

by Bryan Walker March 3, 2012

I decided to take a look at Senator Inhofe’s newly published book The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future, thinking I might get a better understanding of what impels a politician like him into aggressive denial of climate science and opposition to any moves to tackle the climate crisis. It wasn’t [...]

4 comments Read the full article →

Doonesbury on denial

by Gareth February 7, 2012

I‘ve been following Garry B Trudeau’s Doonesbury strip for 30 years or more — the latest cartoon is one of the first emails I read every day. Looks like this week’s strip will be worth following. Meanwhile, out in the real world, the Republican would-be candidates for the Presidency of the United States continue to [...]

3 comments Read the full article →

The catechism of climate crank cliché

by Gareth January 29, 2012

“A cliché,” according to the late

15 comments Read the full article →

Climate ethics and the reckless endangerment of denial

by Bryan Walker January 18, 2012

An interesting-looking series of posts has begun on the climate ethics blog of Penn State’s Rock Ethics Institute. The series plans to put the the climate change disinformation campaign under the ethical spotlight. The introductory post written by Associate Professor Donald Brown examines some of the broad issues before planned subsequent posts look at the [...]

1 comment Read the full article →

Prat Watch #3: through the looking glass

by Gareth January 15, 2012

Sunday morning laughs: over at his Climate Conversation Club, Richard “no warming in NZ” Treadgold fulminates about about the contents1 of a stolen email: Appalling. It’s a free world, so even the “leaders” in climatology are entitled to express the opinion they like. But I draw attention to those who willingly follow these atrocious examples. [...]

3 comments Read the full article →

Jim Hopkins: vapid, vacuous, pretty vacant

by Gareth December 18, 2011

There’s a terrible tyranny in being a columnist for a national newspaper, required to produce entertaining and informative copy every week. It’s a hard job, having an opinion and expressing it cogently. Some writers struggle and succeed, others strive and fail dismally. The NZ Herald — the newspaper of record for NZ’s biggest city — [...]

32 comments Read the full article →

Prat Watch #1: columnated ruins domino

by Gareth December 12, 2011

Being the first in an occasional series in which we monitor the wilder excesses of climate denial. Warning: reading and/or viewing the original material referenced herein may cause uncontrollable mirth. Hot Topic accepts no responsibility for any adverse effects that may result, but recommends a good micro fibre cleaning cloth for removing coffee/tea/wine from computer [...]

11 comments Read the full article →

← Previous Entries