Tag: Morano

Prat Watch #1: columnated ruins domino

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 screens…

However gloomy I may be about the prospects for serious international action to reduce carbon emissions, I did find a few things to enjoy amongst the events in Durban, not the least of them being the fact that the only way Mark Morano and potty peer Christopher Monckton could draw attention to their CFACT-sponsored trip was by jumping out of an aeroplane in an attempt to attract the attention of the world’s press.

From the CFACT web site:

Multiple media outlets showed up to record the event, including the AP, BBC, and South Africa’s national news network. It was a huge success! Climategate 2.0 can not be ignored!

Shows, I suppose, just how desperate the denial campaign is to make mileage out of yesterday’s emails. But Monckton and Morano weren’t finished…

Continue reading “Prat Watch #1: columnated ruins domino”

Easterbrook’s wrong (again)

Over the holiday period I’ve had a number of people point me at the latest “essay” by Don “Cooling-gate” Easterbrook — it was featured in full at µWatts, translated into German and Dutch, and made headline material for Morano: Geologist: 9,099 Of Last 10,500 Years Warmer Than 2010. I was a little surprised. I thought that recent temperatures were the warmest for at least hundreds, and probably thousands of years. But this is Easterbrook, and he’s up to his old tricks. He’s “hiding the incline” in temperatures by mangling the data from Greenland ice cores. Has he learned nothing since I last looked at his “work”? Apparently not.

Easterbrook’s argument is so flimsy and his presentation of data so dodgy that even the normally uncritical crowd at µWatts voiced grave doubts about his analysis. But there were a number of loose ends left over from my last look at Greenland ice core data, and so I took the opportunity to do a little more research. Playing fast and loose with the facts, and making schoolboy errors in the process, is not a good look for a professor emeritus. But that’s what Easterbrook’s been doing…

Continue reading “Easterbrook’s wrong (again)”

Fools rush in…

At the Heartland climate crank conference in Chicago a speaker predicts global cooling, and immediately becomes headline news for Morano and the denial echo machine. At the very same time, NOAA releases its global climate report for April, and notes that not only is April the warmest in the long term record, but that January to April is also the warmest start to any year. If you were gambling on 2010 becoming the undisputed warmest year ever, the odds just shortened considerably. As Joe Romm noted yesterday, the last 12 months is already warmer than any other 12 month period…

On the other hand, this is what Don Easterbrook thinks will happen:

Easterbrookcooling.jpg

Interesting graph. It might need some work, given that he seems to start all his blue lines almost 0.5ºC below where 2010 is likely to end up. I’ll bet it got warm applause from the crank crowd…

Meanwhile, Jeff Masters notes the continuing high sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic: “an eye-opening 1.46°C above average during April.” Not good news for the hurricane season…

Hat tip to Andy Revkin, first to note the delicious irony.

[Ricky Nelson]

In the land of Gray (and pink)

homer.jpgI have been asleep at the wheel of the good ship Hot Topic, for it appears that I have missed the latest pearls of wisdom to emanate from that grand old man of New Zealand science, Vincent Gray. Vincent’s latest Envirotruth Newsletter (#244) has been a lead item at Climate Realists, and received headline treatment at Mark Morano’s Climate Depot. Michael Tobis even catches Morano describing Vincent as a “UN IPCC Scientist”, which is somewhat stretching the truth, given that his major input has been diligent proof-reading. So what is Vincent’s great revelation? That climate scientists think the earth’s flat.

He starts with a schematic of the earth’s energy budget, and notes:

The attached graph is in all of the Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change, and it is fundamental to all their activities.

It assumes that the earth can be considered to be flat, that the sun shines all day and all night with equal intensity, and that the temperature of the earth’s surface is constant.

Then he inserts a later version of the diagram, commenting:

The earth is now thoroughly flattened, as if it had been run over by a cosmic steamroller. […] It ought to be obvious. The earth does actually rotate. The sun does not shine at night. The temperature is not constant. Every part of the earth has a different energy input from its output.

Unfortunately for Vincent, climate science has noticed that we’re standing on a planet that’s evolving and revolving at nine hundred miles an hour, that’s orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it’s reckoned, a sun that is the source of all our power. And that’s reflected in the calculations. But let’s not let that little truth get in the way of a good story. Here’s Vincent’s coup de grace:

The currently promoted greenhouse theory is dead and its consequences have to be removed at once.

And of course that’s good enough for Climate “Realists” and Scaife-funded Morano. Where’s the peer review when you need it most? Deciding not to stand for the UK parliament, it seems. Dr Gray will be 89 next birthday.

[Big hat tip to Michael Tobis who did all the work, via Stoat]

[Caravan (takes me back, way, way back…)]

Esquire on Morano: inside the denial machine

US mens magazine Esquire has published an excellent profile of of Marc Morano — formerly James Inhofe’s chief of staff, the man who started the Swiftboat attack on John Kerry, now running the climate denial news hub Climate Depot (funded by Richard Mellon Scaife). Author John H Richardson runs through Morano’s role in promoting the CRU email hack (a useful addition to DeSmogBlogs “Climategate” autopsy), and then describes the trip he took with Morano to Copenhagen. It’s a fascinating insight into the operations of the tight little cabal of inactivists that run the denial campaign. At one evening event he encounters the cream of the crop: Steven Milloy (“the godfather” according to Morano), Tom Harris and (how could he miss him), serial fabulist Christopher Monckton:

Morano drifts over to Monckton, who is telling a story about a trip to the University of Rochester. “I was there to give a speech on the application of probabilistic computronics to the identification and quantification of phase transitions and bifurcations in a chaotic object, as one does… .”

After a TV interview in which Morano outfoxes a climate scientist, Richardson describes the tactics being used in this information war:

So that’s how it’s done, Morano says later. He’s the turd in the punch bowl, that’s all he is and all he can be. But that might be enough. If they can use the echo chamber to reach enough people, they can confuse them enough to change the narrative. It’s asymmetrical warfare updated for the age of the Internet.

That’s what reality is up against: a happy little band of people skilled in the new techniques for derailing debates and delaying effective action, and unashamed of using them to their utmost extent. It’s a chilling article, required reading for anyone who wants to understand who is framing “debate” in this field.