People Listen to This Awful Crap? Like, uh, Daily?!

Like a lot of idiots, Rush doesn't understand the difference between foundational and frontier science:



Here's a livescience.com article on the study. I just gotta chuckle at how stupid Rush and his listeners are. Some of the most ignorant and predictably arrogant examples of the Dunning Kruger effect we, as Americans, have the "pleasure" of bumping into each day. Unfortunately for us, they're so numerous they're difficult to avoid. In this sound bite, Rush demonstrates why his terrible show is a misinformation-fest. He'd have us believe that because a computer model simulating the nascent universe — most likely 10^−33 seconds after the universe's birth, a time when we know so little for sure about the state of the cosmos study of it represents the very epitome of frontier research — needs refinement, it doesn't incriminate cosmological science, nope, it incriminates climate science.

What.

The.

Fuck.

Figure that one out, folks.

If Rush had more than two functioning brain cells, he'd realize that when a scientist puts it out there that an ambitious simulation needs more work, it doesn't even affect the reputation of his or her own area of study, let alone the unrelated one Rush has ignorantly chosen, for no good reason, out of the blue, to obsess over. Why the hell choose climatology as the field that needs to shoulder the "blame" for how models attempting to expand the borders of human knowledge work? Frontier theories are in constant need of tinkering. That's why they're called frontier theories, and not established science. This is THIRD GRADE shit. Eight year-olds fully comprehend the difference between scientific fact and things we don't yet know to a high degree of certainty, Rush, you senseless twit.

And the Godidit crap at the end is just priceless. God didn't need a model, huh? Take a look around at how f'd up the world is. Disease, terrorism, war, starvation, natural and man-made disasters, etc. A supreme being made this chaotic mess of a planet we live on? Seems to me like He did in fact use models, and they were a whole hell of a lot worse than Hogan's.

Listening to this radio brain rot on a regular basis has to shave IQ points. No wonder all you Rush fans are so bloody fucking stupid. Just a total national embarrassment every last one of you.

But Why Is There so Much Science Denial?

Climate change denial, though extremely dangerous, is but a symptom of a greater sickness that has long afflicted human civilization and still persists today. Our progress as a society is challenged every day by climate denialists and their close cousins...antivaxxers, creationists, homeopaths, tobacco risk deniers, ufologists, HIV/AIDS deniers, and on and on and on.

These people believe they have been granted the authority to question and defame experts who employ the best method we humans have developed for understanding the world around us (i.e.: science), because they have indeed succeeded in plying their despicable wares. Unfortunately, the sad fact of the matter is our own human failings have enabled this bravado. Unlike their snake oil remedies, scientific truths necessitate our patience because they come to us slowly, over decades or centuries, through a dogged, deliberate process of repeated verification. Individual instances of peer-reviewed research can be a long, difficult path, and scientific consensus, such as that behind climate change, can take even longer to establish. Anti-science, on the other hand, is the quick and easy path leading ultimately to failure and darkness. And people are often so desperate for answers they will risk this darkness, or so deluded they can't see the inevitability of their choice, or even go so far as to deny the outcome. It's really that simple. Science denial is nothing more than a dead-end shortcut offered by the devious that can and will fool people, because who wants to hear, "Well, the solutions are complicated, time-intensive, and laborious," rather than, "Sure, I got exactly what you need right here, so step right up?"

This is the deceitful bait anti-science screwballs set on their hooks to snag people with very little self-control, attention span, and education. They encourage and capitalize on ignorance. They promise immediate, unfailing results for dispelling the "frightening" unknown, whereas scientists, if they are honest, must give long, nuanced explanations, and complicated probabilities, and ask for more research dollars and time to solve the difficult problems we face.

This is the constant vigil those who seek provable, testable results must maintain on a daily basis, and throughout their careers; the constant temptation with which they are ever at odds. The fictional circumstances in the Garden of Eden pale in comparison. Science denial is the real fall from grace.

But is there more to it? Do denialists thrive and achieve influence simply because we are too impatient to wait for published agreement and well-researched answers? Because we are too lazy/busy to read, and too scientifically-illiterate to understand the journal findings on our own? There has to be more to it. Even when the plain, inarguable facts are delivered on a gleaming, silver platter, as with climate science, they are received with suspicion and distrust, and all too often the snake oil is preferred. Where does this lack of trust come from? Why do entire segments of society as well as, at times, all of human civilization backslide into such counterproductive behavior when it is so clearly wrong and self-destructive? It all boils down to the success of one historical example. One bit of persistent science denial (and it's a doozy, folks) has repeatedly proven since antiquity that it is a reliable means of seizing societal control. It is a potent tool that can be wielded by a determined, rapacious few to gain power over many. Unlike the hard slog of science, against which it is often pitted, it is the easy way out, and therefore incredibly seductive and menacing to our prosperity. But let's allow a much more gifted cultural expositor to explain the elephant in the room here...



Religion is the Godfather, if you will, of all pseudoscience. Long before we had logic, reason, and peer review to show us the way, religion attempted to answer the great questions. Who are we? How did we get here? What made all the animals, plants, terrain, and oceans we see? What made the stars? What are the stars? What exists above the clouds besides the Sun, Moon, and stars? And so on. In a way, religion can be forgiven for these early transgressions and displays of arrogance. After all, we had nothing else to guide us. But when philosophy and reason crept into our consciousness, thought processes, and public discourse, it should have bowed out. It did not. Instead, it raged. And it won. And these successes, these grand victories of the ultimate pseudoscience, which were meaningfully curtailed only during and after the Enlightenments, are what inform the charlatans we still deal with to this day. The modern-day diálymancers.

If you are looking for a reason why we have to deal with ignorant climate change deniers, you need search no further than religion. It is still everywhere. It is still influential to a troubling degree. And its sensational, historical triumphs still instruct the mentally and morally bankrupt.

Nitwit-Picking

A couple weeks ago, Mark Frauenfelder, the founder of Boing Boing, posted an interesting and illustrative graphic from Desertec's wiki page:



For those too lazy to click on the image and/or Desertec link, the red squares represent the area of land in the Sahara that would need to be blanketed with solar panels at approximately 20% efficiency to satisfy the electricity needs for the entire world, the EU, and Germany, from largest to smallest, or left to right.

Pretty simple concept intended to give you a general (not an exact!) idea of the small coverage involved relative to the large surface area of the Earth, right? I mean, you'd think this would be a no-brainer comparison, but unfortunately the real no-brainers feel constantly compelled to shart their dipshit, semantical, hair-splitting two worthless cents all over everything.

From the Boing Boing comment page:

gellfex
Terrible piece of reportage, and bad headlining. What little there is at the end of the line fails to define at what solar efficiency they're talking about: current practical or theoretical 100%. Addtionally the graphic is not actually "to power the world" but to supply worldwide electricity. A large amount of power yes, but not the same thing. According to wiki it's about 1/7 total power used.

Apparently gellfex's lack of trust is so intense that IT'S TERRIBLE REPORTING WHEN HIS OR HER DEEPEST FEARS OF A DECEPTIVE 100% EFFICIENCY CALCULATION ARE NOT ASSUAGED! What a paranoid ass bucket. Lazy, too. Go do some research/calculations on your own, gellfex. And the bellyaching semantics that Frauenfelder's headline said "...power the world...", rather than, I guess, electrify the world is a nice, meaningless touch, lemme tell ya. Thank God gellfex has a venue to share such an "important" observation with the world. Meanwhile, the caption and its link make it clear what is being indicated in the image, and the last I checked the two terms were synonymous, but don't let all that get in the way of failing to read past the headline, gellfex.

daneel
http://www.withouthotair.com/c25/page_178.shtml

“All the world’s power could be provided by a square 100 km by 100 km in the Sahara.” Is this true? Concentrating solar power in deserts delivers an average power per unit land area of roughly 15 W/m2. So, allowing no space for anything else in such a square, the power delivered would be 150 GW. This is not the same as current world power consumption. It’s not even near current world electricity consumption, which is 2000 GW.World power consumption today is 15 000 GW. So the correct statement about power from the Sahara is that today’s consumption could be provided by a 1000 km by 1000 km square in the desert...

Again, with the "power" versus "electrical." Does anyone read? Anything? Ever? Jaezuz Cheeeeroist. As for the "100 km by 100 km" gripe... Bust out Google Earth, people, and spin the world around until you are staring at Algeria. Click on the ruler feature, and select "kilometers." Try to reproduce the world power (oops, I said power!) square. It's more like 300 km by 300 km, which is in fact the area that would supply electricity for all of us.

Do these people ever take ten seconds to evaluate their own flawed reasoning? Or is there some set of "I'm always right no matter what" neurons that only they have constantly firing off inside their brains? The Dunning-Kruger effect is alive and well.

brindalin

xrayspx said:
when we build them, can we please put them anywhere other than Libya and Algeria

andy_hilmer said:
Why? Because a few of the people who live there are "bad"? Given that vast panel farms would improve the local climate and create huge numbers of jobs on land that is currently unused and hostile to all life, I can't think of anywhere better.

How 'bout because they'll be blown up?

If I were going to embark on a multi-trillion* dollar project, I would want to minimize the risk that some ethnic/religious/political faction wouldn't destroy it because it represents Western imperialism or hold it hostage on an occasional basis.

Dunno, maybe it's just me, but if we're gonna be browbeaten about all the energy above and beyond electricity required to run human civilization, then it's a bit late to worry about the stability of the regions from which we get our fuel, isn't it? And, frankly, that's Desertec's problem, so forget that right now, and let its higher-ups lose sleep over such particulars. Frauenfelder posted this image, not to argue in favor of some literal application of Desertec's power generation plans, not to argue that the red squares are placed EXACTLY WHERE THE PANELS SHOULD GO IN REALITY, but, rather, for the very same reasons I recently posted a defense of electric cars: reduction of a fairly complex argument or technology down to a few simple calculations or images for the sake of helpful perspective.

Problem is, the trolls can't resist patting themselves on the back for overstating any impracticalities or outstanding technical hurdles, real or imagined, you didn't list exhaustively.

crenquis
How much area would be required for the storage "batteries"?

See what I mean? At least have the decency to moan and groan about something that matters, crenquis, huh? Like maybe the transmission lines, which, again, are for Desertec to work out, not the problem of someone posting a summarizing, non-exegetic graphic. If you are really so concerned that Desertec is overlooking a fatal flaw, then email the organization a hair-on-fire warning. Route your nitpicking through the proper channels instead of making a pointless ass of yourself online every five seconds.

Look, this graphic simply amounts to another way of looking at the inarguable fact that the Sun rains more energy down on the Earth in an hour than all of us use in a year, and we just need to figure out how to harness it. That's all. It's not an opportunity to prove you have OCD of the semantics variety.

Get.

Over.

Yourself.

Already.

That's about the Size of It

Never watched this show, but I'm thinking I should. :)

Ridiculously Good

An excellent and informative series of videos from the NRC and the NAS.



And I just love, love, love that they disabled comments, so deniers can't pollute the videos with their idiocy. See, the NRC and the NAS are nice, polite people, so they don't wanna bother addressing and correcting your unscientific stupidity, deniers. They do you the favor right from the start of not giving you a chance to humiliate yourself. I, on the other hand, am not so nice. I welcome the opportunity to hang you from my castle walls as a lesson to other numbskulls. So g'head. Spew your toothless bromides below in my comment section, so I can turn you inside out. Thanks in advance, you idiots.

Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA - Supreme Court of the United States Docket No. 12-1146 - But Who Are the Petitioners?

The conservative justices on the SCOTUS wasted valuable court time today nitpicking away at the EPA's ability to use the Clean Air Act (CAA) for regulating new and expanded power plants. When you consider that the previous 2007 decision determining the CAA definition of "air pollutant" did indeed include CO2 and other GHGs so therefore they fell under the EPA's regulatory purview went unchallenged, and that the real fight over existing power plants is yet to come, you gotta wonder why they even bothered. It's almost like accepting a legal challenge against universal healthcare just so you can split hairs over whether it's a tax or a penalty, while allowing it to remain the law of the land.

Gee, thanks for that.

Anyway, if you care to learn more, here are the majority and minority court opinions, and a decent breakdown of events/arguments leading up to and included in the case.

What I'm mainly interested in, however, is the identity and motivations of the EPA's major challengers in this silly case.

First, the American Chemistry Council (ACC) would seem to have good intentions. That is, until you delve a little deeper and find out how its bread gets buttered, and what the president of the organization has to say about the EPA's regulatory powers.

Well, we're very concerned that EPA taking action under the Clean Air Act is really like taking a sledgehammer to what is one of the most complicated and complex public policy issues we're confronted with in terms of how to manage and reduce greenhouse gases, while ensuring that our economy can continue to grow.

Funny how these proponents of fracking like to gush about the environmental benefits of the process/fuel until push comes to shove. What happened to this strong declaration from the "products of chemistry empower our nation’s efforts to improve energy efficiency" link above, Prez Dooley?

Three energy sources—domestic natural gas from shale formations, energy efficiency and energy recovery from plastics—can help America reach energy security and environmental goals.

Hmmm, all of a sudden when domestic natural gas has to face the emissions regulation music, all that green confidence withers away, and it's the environmental goals of the nation that have to change or be filtered through more industry-friendly channels.

...it ought to be the Senate and working with the House that is developing the policy which identifies the targets in terms of the reduction and emissions in the United States, the timing of those reductions, because that is going to be consistent with the popular will of the constituency in this country. EPA is basically circumventing what I think is the legitimate authority and jurisdiction of Congress and, again, taking a very aggressive approach that, unfortunately, is going to have dire and significant adverse consequences on the health of this economy.

Turns out fracking our way to a carbon-free utopia ain't quite as certain as previously advertised. Gosh, how shocking.

Second, the Utility Air Regulatory Group. Since it seems to have such a diffuse membership there is no single Web site, let alone public declarations on climate change, I will let its lawyers do the talking.

The Utility Air Regulatory Group (UARG) is a not-for-profit association of individual electric utilities and electric generating companies and national trade associations that participates on behalf of its members collectively in administrative proceedings under the Clean Air Act, and in litigation arising from those proceedings, that affect electric generators.

The UARG's interests are rather obvious and self-evident, so I will say no more.

Third, the Energy-Intensive Manufacturers Working Group (EIMWG), another nebulous, Web site-free organization, seems preoccupied with the possibility that the EPA will show up at their job sites, demand they change cafeteria light bulbs, Darth-Vader their plans, or, say it ain't so, make them upgrade their boilers.

At one extreme, the microscopic, the Agency confirms that control options could reach the selection of light bulbs in a factory cafeteria...At the other extreme, with respect to the most fundamental matters, EPA states that permitting authorities can demand changes that would “fundamentally redefine the source,” as otherwise defined by the facility owner’s “goal, objectives, purpose or basic design of the facility”...One example of regulation between these extremes of light-bulb selection and facility-redefinition involves the commercially and industrially ubiquitous “natural gas boiler.”

Ooooooooooooookay then.

Fourth, the Southeastern Legal Foundation. From a page on their site with the charming browser tab and search engine result title "Global Warming?"...

We have developed the SLF Global Warming Litigation Project to challenge the climate change alarmists and the Obama Administration's agenda for radical, costly regulation - based, as we maintain, on flawed science, political agendas, and the multi-billion dollar carbon trading giants waiting in the wings.

At stake are hundreds of billions of dollars that will come from your 401(k), show up in your energy bills, and will result in the loss of tens of thousands of American jobs. Al Gore’s profit-making enterprise – the selling of billions of dollars in so-called “carbon credits” – is based on fraudulent science and a politically driven environmental extremist agenda bent on destroying the American economy.

Do you have hundreds of billions of dollars in your 401(k)? Because I don't. But, seriously, you just gotta laugh at dopes who write these ridiculous Chicken Little right-wing apocalyptic fantasies and then have the nerve to call others "alarmists." The fook is that all about? As if such awful denier pap weren't bad enough, look who is serving as this group's informal legal counsel. LOL.

Fifth and final (because we're starting to venture into some serious nut-job territory), the State of Texas. Who is the governor there again? Oh, that's right...

“I do believe that the issue of global warming has been politicized. I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. I think we’re seeing it almost weekly or even daily, scientists who are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change. Yes, our climates change. They’ve been changing ever since the earth was formed. But I do not buy into, that a group of scientists, who in some cases were found to be manipulating this data.”

—Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Aug. 17, 2011

Yup, nut-jobs, like I said.

Well, that should give you a pretty good idea why a conservative-dominated SCOTUS was eager to entertain such a frivolous lawsuit delivered to its door by clown car.

Bjørn Lomborg Is a Troll and a Shill

Last year, Bjørn Lomborg posted another miserably misinformed article.

In it, he posts a broken link (I'm thinking maybe intentionally so) to a Journal of Industrial Ecology study, and then proceeds to misrepresent its findings:

A life-cycle analysis shows that almost half of an electric car’s entire CO2 emissions result from its production, more than double the emissions resulting from the production of a gasoline-powered car...If the car is driven less than 32,000 miles on European electricity, it will have emitted more CO2 overall than a conventional car.

Less than 32,000 miles. Oh, brother. Can you hear everyone's eyes rolling, Lomborg, you half a demented and desperate shill?

The 2011/12 Leaf's battery was initially guaranteed by Nissan for eight years or 100,000 miles (160,000 km)[39][40]

Anyway, here's the properly-formed link to the full article, and if Lomborg is too incompetent to form simple anchor tag links, maybe he should think about keeping his blockheaded commentary off the Web.

Let's delve a bit into the study, and I think we'll see rather quickly why Lomborg probably doesn't want you to actually find/read it, and instead wants you to take his twisted version of it as reality.

Here's the low-ball estimate from the study:

We find that EVs powered by the present European electricity mix offer a 10% to 24% decrease in global warming potential (GWP) relative to conventional diesel or gasoline vehicles assuming lifetimes of 150,000 km (~93,200 miles).

You can get larger decreases if your electric car lasts longer, but let's just stick with these numbers. So...there are approximately 1 billion cars on the planet (the vast majority of which are fossil fuel-powered), and, if, for convenience sake, we assume an EPA passenger car's annual output for them, and that their CO2 dwarfs the other gases they emit in both weight and impact, they each emit about 9,700 lbs of critical GHGs each year. Sure, there are minor difficulties in projecting American passenger car numbers onto the world vehicle population, and in neglecting the other tailpipe gases, as well as air, rail, and marine transportation, but for our purposes here they are far from show-stopping, and certainly less so than the stupid assumptions Lomborg made in his piece.

OK, let's do some simple math...

1,000,000,000 * 9,700 lbs/yr = 9,700,000,000,000 lbs/yr or about 4.4 gigatonnes per year (Gt/yr)

With an estimated global output of 31Gt CO2 in 2010, that puts our back of the envelope vehicle discharge calculations at about 14% of total annual human emissions. Hmmmm, a bit inflated, considering the means of transportation that were left out, but not too terrible awful bad.

That means if we could be visited by a magic wand-waving miracle, the likes of which Lomborg actually seems to be arguing we wait for (more on that below), and have all the vehicles on our planet supernaturally transformed into electric cars today, when we are still hitching and sputtering away from an addiction to fossil fuels largely due to the stifling political influence of well-funded naysayers, using the lower estimates of the very study Lomborg himself tried linking to, we reduce global CO2 emissions by 0.44Gt to 1.1Gt each year. And if we double the life expectancy of the electric vehicles, according to the journal article, we get something more like a 1.3Gt reduction annually. Going from 31 to 29.7 Gt/yr by transforming a sector that is only 13-14% of our total GHG production is not worth doing, Lomborg? Come again? And if we somehow figure out other ways to similarly reduce outputs in the other four major GHG-producing sectors (agriculture, industry, energy, and forestry) in the EPA graph I linked to above, then we as a society are down to about 25 Gt/yr. I'll take that as a present-tech, "what's available to us now," starting-point reduction scenario any day.

Sure, the study rightly brings up environmental issues surrounding the EV supply chain, but it also mentions the increased CO2 reductions we will enjoy once we get serious about improving our electrical infrastructure and means of production, because, again, these are today's numbers, which will improve dramatically in the future, as long as we don't follow Lomborg's dumb-balls advice and abandon the effort. Notice that the study, unlike Lomborg, doesn't bellyache about the investment required until it seems the idea is to just sit around until the Electric Vehicle Fairy shows up and waves his or her magic wand.

Someday, the electric car will, indeed, be a great product...But lavish subsidies today simply enable an expensive, inconvenient, and often environmentally deficient technology.

There ya have it, folks. According to Lomborg, EVs are such a great idea we should make no effort now to facilitate their popular usage.

Wot?

And "lavish subsidies" my ass. They are nowhere near those enjoyed by fossil fuel companies due to the fact that we taxpayers open our wallets to clean up their messes.

As usual, if you want a completely lopsided, cherry-picked version of the facts, read Bjørn Lomborg's Slate blog.

And shame on Slate for providing a platform for such a biased nitwit to spread misinformation that so clearly benefits one rapacious industry.

Moore's Guffaw

From the latest wattsupwiththat bilge:

“Climate change” is a theory for which there is “no scientific proof at all” says the co-founder of Greenpeace.

It’s really sad when you can’t get past the first sentence of a post without laughing at how ignorant and incorrect the assertions are. For fook sakes, Watts, you can’t even get out of the starting gate without merrily falling on your idiotic face? But forget that for a moment, because I’m wondering how long we have to wait before Moore changes his screwy, irresolute mind on this topic like he has others in the past.

I was against nuclear energy when I was with Greenpeace, but I've changed my mind.

Indeed, he used to believe nuclear power would usher in a holocaust, but, ya know, poof he just changed his mind, so, meh, let’s all forget it ever happened. Which we could, if it were just nukes about which he has difficulty deciding where he stands one moment to the next. The guy is nothing if not a champion of self-contradiction, so don’t go accusing me of taking a cheap shot by mentioning the nuclear about-face.

From his company Web site (emphases mine for reasons that will become clear shortly):

Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. helps companies create effective sustainability strategies that minimize and mitigate the environmental footprint of essential industrial activity...we help connect the dots between strong, sustainable economic activity, a robust natural environment and thriving urban and rural communities...Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. helps companies ensure a detailed and measurable plan for corporate social responsibility is at the heart of its development activities...For example, local program initiatives that teach long-term, sustainable skills to community members – even beyond the life of the development project – invariably provide real benefits for the community, the surrounding environment and the company itself.

Wait, so now it’s OK to be concerned about the environment again, Moore? And capitalist profits as well as social welfare? What the hell?! That was a really quick turn around, unlike your nukes transformation which took several decades. I thought, only a couple years ago, these were all evil “isms.”

“Environmentalism” is an “ism” like capitalism and socialism. In that sense it connotes an ideology...But one must dig deeper to find if they are misanthropic...This is really a question of attitude rather than facts...Ideology is negative in so far as it tends to divide people into warring camps with no possible resolution.

What happened to all that oppositional conviction you had regarding the very “isms” your company now somehow magically is all too ready and eager to embrace? Furthermore, how do we know you’re not just some human-hating, fact-trampling environmentalist/socialist/capitalist ideologue trying to divide people into warring camps, Moore? In fact, after browsing your firm’s site, I get the distinct impression that you are all three of these terrible evils – environmentalist, capitalist, and socialist – wrapped into one, since you run a for-profit company advising others on the societal benefits of environmentally-sustainable activities.

Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. (GSL) is a firm whose sole focus is corporate social responsibility (CSR) development and sustainability communications.

Christ, you can’t craft a corporate charter with clearer socialist, capitalist, and environmentalist aims and intentions. We should just assume you’re not an evil ideologue hell-bent on anarchy, Moore? Why is that exactly? Why should we take your word for it that you’re on the up and up unlike those other environmentalists/socialists/capitalists you’ve carried on about elsewhere, Moore? Hmmmm?

Seriously, who the fuck decries socialism, capitalism, and environmentalism, and then starts a goddamn company SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO PROMOTE AND PROFIT FROM THOSE VERY SAME THINGS????!!!! I mean, Jaezuz fooking wot thah fooking Cheeeeeroist, Moore. Hello?! Anyone home up in that empty, self-contradicting head of yours?

You have a lot of explaining to do, Moore, which I’m sure will only result in you shoving your foot deeper into your mouth.

What a certifiable whack job you are. No wonder Anthony Watts is in love with you.

hockeyschtick.blogspot.com

Complete and utter bullshit. Every last post. Every one is total unscientific, nitpicking GARBAGE. Absolute spineless, squeaky, impotent, troll-athon NONSENSE. And that's being kind.

If you think I'm wrong, then link to whatever scary-"impressive" post you think is the best argument that bullshit blog has made against the established scientific fact that our emissions are warming the planet. Go ahead. Give it your best shot, meatballs. Post one. ONE. Don't bother with flooding, because I'll cut your childish crap down to one for you.

ONE.

And I will destroy it.

Lotsa luck, you ignorant idiot fans of that awful blog.

Complete waste of IP packets, every last senseless word.

Shut up and Watch It

Have you seen any Origins Project videos? No?! What the hell have you been watching instead? Dancing with the Stars? The Voice? Fox News?!

Jaezuz Cheeeeeeeeroist, people, shut off the idiot box for a while, and start filling your head with something other than vapid trash. You pay for your Internet connection, so get something worthwhile out of it. YouTube is loaded with interesting, mind-expanding stuff. Far more interesting than what J Lo, or Gwen Stefani, or whoever, has to say about dancing or singing or whatever frivolous nonsense that should entertain you not completely consume your every waking moment, conversation, and last drop of mental energy. You can go back to flatlining in front of reality TV and after you've eaten your intellectual peas.

Really, you should watch all the Origins Project videos on YouTube. They're great, and Krauss is a science-promoting champ. If you haven't seen any yet, you might as well start with one that pertains to the greatest known threat we face as a species.

Part 1: Part 2:

Arctic Sea Ice Extent on Google Earth

Similar things have been done before, certainly, but I added some trend data/graphs at the end of the video for perspective. Oh, and Meniscus for ear candy. :)

Happy to Be at Your Aggravating Service, Deniers

Every second of the IPCC video below pisses you off, doesn't it, you science-challenged screwballs? The slick editing, the artful camera work, the sweeping pans, the epic scenery, the money that went into such an informative production, the classically-inspired electronic score—lilting and ethereal one moment, deep, jarring, and dramatic the next—the international accents, the eloquent narration, the well-researched facts, the academic settings, the scholarly language, and even the professorial attire...it all just irritates the living shit out of ignorant tosspots like you, I'm sure.

And, LOL, they disabled comments, so you can't spew your witless vitriol under such a well-made video. That's gotta hurt the most. Aaaaaaahhhh, poor wittle cwybabies got a big, fat cork stuck in their misinformed blowholes before they could start wailing, and moaning, and carrying on about how wet and icky their diapers are. G'head and let it all out below, you piddling infants. My comment section is here for ya. And so am I. Can't wait to escalate your frustration and blood pressure by humiliating you with peer-reviewed evidence you're too stupid to understand.

I'm like that, ya know?

Never Meta Cherry Pick They Didn't Like

Surely, you are familiar with the intellectually-dishonest practice of "cherry-picking." If you're not, Shirley, then take a moment to brush up here. With nearly equal certitude, I will assume you have seen deniers cherry-pick the bits of climate science they like, while sticking their fingers in their ears over the stuff they don't like. Of course, even the stuff that's cherry-picked often turns out to be flat-out wrong and/or incomplete research, because they're ignorant idiots who fall for just about any unscientific nonsense, but that's not important right now (you can find the appropriate, overused Airplane! clip on YouTube yourself this time, so there).

What I'm gonna bet you have not considered is that climate deniers' fascination with climate science alone is in fact a massive cherry pick. Let's call it a meta cherry pick, to coin a term which should indicate a level of abstraction above cherry-picking data from within one field of science.

Think about it. How many scientific fields have humans developed? Hundreds? Thousands? I honestly don't know the true number, but I know it's too many to become fixated on one. If you've become incurably entranced by and critical of one area of research, the problem most likely lies with you and your own childish preconceptions/misconceptions/biases/etc., not the science.

That brings us to modeling the climate using computers. If you pay attention to the idiots, which you shouldn't other than maybe for laughs, you'd think climate science was the only branch of study which uses computer models. Look at all the articles in that keyword/tag search I just linked for you. And that's only one screwball misinformation site out of many. Climate deniers' sheer fascination with climate modeling is matched only by their level of misunderstanding about how the process works. Oh, and maybe their undying love for Grandpa Al, but we've covered that already, haven't we?

How many other scientific fields use computer modeling? Again, I don't know the number, but by now it's probably the majority. Do you ever see these harebrained deniers going ballistic over computer models used to simulate and predict how galactic collisions work? Or screaming and bellyaching that biologists use them? Where are the cries of denier anguish that computer models used to simulate the brain ARE NOT COMPLETELY INERRANT AND EXACT SO THEREFORE THEY ARE USELESS?

Do you ever see climate deniers commenting about models at such a frenzied pace in online articles for astronomy, biology, medical research, etc.? Why is that, hmmmm? Why do they ignore these other fields? Does anyone have a quote for me from one of the idiotic denier Boss Trolls like Anthony Watts which assaults the use of computer models elsewhere in science?

...cricket...cricket...cricket...

Gosh, shucks, and gee willikers, I just can't figure out why dipshit deniers only despair senselessly over computer models used to predict the climate, while completely ignoring their usage in other fields. Oh so stumped here. How about you?

Notes from Underground

My anonymous sources at the Dept. of Interior have leaked some critical mining industry intelligence. :)

You can often catch the PowerPoint presentation creator contributing over at Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy blog under the user name tokodave. He's a lifelong outdoorsman, backcountry skier and mountaineer, and one of many who try to stem the inexorable tide of ignorant climate denial in the comment section (NOT in Phil's articles), while the powers that be at Slate remain asleep at the switch, letting deniers infest the site and pollute the conversation for whatever silly reason.

Insight inside the Beltway

Kudos to those who voted for this guy. My only quibble is the predictable faith-pandering at about 5:55. The problem with relying on or courting faith-based thinking is it can backfire on you right quick. Faith is, after all, belief without evidence, so, by definition, it's a total roll of the dice on which side of this, or any issue really, religious people will land. If their beliefs were based on evidence, especially that of the scientific variety, it wouldn't be such a crapshoot trying to involve them. But I digress. Watch the video. He makes sense.

Gazing into the Past

Yup, there is over a century of science behind today's consensus among researchers that our emissions have warmed and will continue to warm the Earth to a level that threatens our civilization.

Listening to deniers moan and groan and carry on, you'd think it was a conspiracy the IPCC presto'd into existence a few decades ago.

As proof of the age of the knowledge that our fossil fuel habit endangers us, I present for your consideration Svante Arrhenius.

Now, if you're as strange as my high school chemistry teacher was, your response will be, "Svante Arrhenius? Gesundheit."

Arrhenius was, in arguably equal measure, both a physicist and a chemist, so it should come as no surprise that he was one of the founders of physical chemistry. It can also be argued that he was a mathematician, a geologist, an astronomer, an astrophysicist, a cosmologist, and a genuine ole jack-of-all-scientific-trades. Among his many notable qualifications and achievements, he became the first Swede to receive the Nobel Prize in chemistry, a vocal defender and legitimizer of the theory of panspermia, a likely atheist (a quality near and dear to my heart), and, most importantly (as far as this blog is concerned, anyway), a developer of a theory to explain ice ages, which ultimately led him to be the first scientist to conclude that the burning of fossil fuels and industrial production of CO2 were enough to cause the entire planet to warm. Arrhenius made his CO2/global surface temperature calculations way back in 1896.

It is essential to distinguish Arrhenius' work from the discovery of the greenhouse effect itself, which predated him by many years. It is also worth noting what he got right (water vapor feedbacks, and latitudinal effects), as well as what he got wrong (omission of cloud cover, rate of atmospheric build-up, overstating the beneficial effects, etc.).

Of course deniers, if they even know about Arrhenius and his scientific contributions, will desperately cling to that last part about the benefits, but the most critical takeaway message of his climate change research is that the temperature-increasing effects of pumping CO2 into the air have been known for far longer than the anti-science wingnuts would have you believe.

Denialarrhea of the Mouth

The overwhelming scientific consensus regarding man-made climate change

I'm sure you've seen something similar to this crap from deniers before...

Consensus is irrelevant in science. There are plenty of examples in history where everyone agreed and everyone was wrong.

G'head and read the blog post. See if even one of these supposedly bountiful examples is given. Woops. Looks like witless Watts "forgot" to provide them. Scare quotes, because it's not a mistake. Know why? There are few recent historical examples available to Watts from the last couple centuries, a time when science had matured enough to propel civilization into modernity. Most examples are very nearly prehistoric in a sense (at least as far as science is concerned, anyway), because they're all from way back when people still wrongfully believed the Earth was flat, or the center of the solar system and/or universe, and so on.

And frontier debate within an area of research does not count, because it rarely alters core findings (i.e.: the consensus opinion within the field). When Einstein established relativity, it did not change the fact that Newton's equations would still get us to other worlds, and, if you jump off a cliff, you go DOWN. Equally, when Wilson and Dawkins go at it, Darwin's basic principles are still right in every important way.

Why would anyone judge today's established scientific truths based on the fact that most Greeks were wrong about stellar parallax over two millenia ago, Watts? Or that countless people in medieval times believed disease was due to miasma, or some divine punishment? Why would anyone care, and how do errors of antiquity incriminate the very system that was designed to eliminate them? Seriously, what is your brainless problem here, Watts?

Take a moment, dear reader, to consider just how far your empty denier head has to be shoved up your impacted posterior to make the statement that consensus is irrelevant in science. It's so ignorant it boggles the mind, and it's truly indicative of how desperate deniers have become.

To believe it, we have to dismiss the scientific consensus behind gravity, evolution, the standard model of particle physics, HIV causing AIDS, and on and on and on.

And Anthony "Boss Troll" Watts is not the only one sharting this nonsense all over the Internet...

"IMO, the main point of all this is that [t]he concept of a ‘consensus’ surrounding climate change is becoming increasingly meaningless."

-Judith Curry

"There is no such thing as a “scientific consensus”, except in a very limited sense."

-Christopher Moncton (no, I'm not including his crappy, aristocratic title)

"The talk show hosts against these 97 to 98% of all these scientists, and the talk show host is winning."

-Rush Limbaugh (sentence-building difficulties all his)

"In ancient times, the notion of a flat Earth was the scientific consensus, and it was only a minority who dared question this belief. We are among today's scientists who are skeptical about the so-called consensus on climate change."

-Richard McNider and John Christy

Hey, at least McNider and Christy fessed up to one of the only stupid, anachronistic examples available to them, unlike Watts.

The consensus has spread well beyond the one field of climate science. Let's all of us laugh at and make fun of these consensus-denying dinosaurs, while we draft up some meaningful GHG-reducing policies.

Cosmos, The World Set Free, Episode 12 Revisited

Deniers, this is all that is left for you to say on this subject.

GinaBones 184 points 5 days ago
Just finished the episode, and there are a few things I want to say. I am a conservative libertarian(not that it really matters what my political ideology is lol), and I have always kind of doubted that us humans are the cause of the warming. I've always thought that we have just been going through another cycle that the earth has always gone through. And I thought this issue was just so politicized(which to be fair, it is highly politicized) that I just didn't know how to even begin to get a straight answer on this issue.

This one episode has totally changed my mind on this issue. There was no political rhetoric to try to sift through. It was JUST the science, explained in a simple way so anyone can understand. Neal DeGrasse Tyson went through all of the reasons that earth could be heating up, and explained why they could or couldn't be a contributing cause. There was one graph that really shocked me. It was the one showing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and it showed how insanely high it sky rocketed in the 20th century.

This is exactly what I needed to be able to see that yes, we are doing this, and we need to fix it. I love this show, and I learn something every time I watch it. I never thought my mind would be changed on such a polarized issue like this.

You may now capitulate totally and completely, or return to the previously scheduled, sad seclusion of your pathetic, poorly-lit, science-denying cave. That is all. Thank you.

Shut up and Watch It

Climate models aren't useful or accurate, my ass.



Perhaps the most important statement from the video:

"If we had observations of the future, we obviously would trust them more than models, but unfortunately observations of the future are not available at this time."

-Knutson and Tuleya

When you hear or read clueless denier trolls demanding smugly that climate models be exact or perfect, ask them one simple question, "What do you offer the world as an alternative for predicting climate, hmmmmmm?"

And sit back and watch the awkward, scrambling, question-dodging troll ballet. At best, they'll just respond with idiotic, unhelpful things like, "Duh, tea leaves are better than climate models," because they're ass-backward crackpots who lack the mental acuity to absorb lessons about modeling accuracy like Schmidt's video above.

Oh, and, deniers, if you're not too childish to understand this issue and have something worthwhile to add, then here's your chance. Do tell, what is the great, wonderful, unerring alternative to climate models you've been keeping secret all these years while senselessly bellyaching about them instead?

And make it good, because we've all had enough of the mindless, infantile tea leaves comments, mmmmkay?

WattsUpWithThat Drive By

Solar Roadways

From time to time, if bored, I will stop in over at wattsupwiththat for a good laugh at the expense of the ridiculous trolls who author and comment at the site. It's a haven for anti-science wingnuts (Anthony Watts being their High King), so when they make fun of stuff based on bad science I find it particularly rich, ironic, and amusing.

On this particular visit, we find the Watts chuckle patch stumbling and bumbling their way through a critique of solar roadways. Now, this is one of those very rare occasions where I happen to agree with Watts and Spencer to a degree, in as much as they are a terrible idea for our roadways. However, Thunderf00t over on YouTube has posted a much more skillful dismantling than Watts and Spencer are capable of whipping up:



Here's where I quickly part ways with the pseudoscience-loving circus over at wattsupwiththat...that a bad idea like solar roadways in any way, shape, or form calls into question the peer-reviewed research behind climate change. Does homeopathy or acupuncture tarnish modern medicine at all? Nope, and notice how Thunderf00t doesn't go there. He's smart enough to focus on the real problems with the idea, rather than make ones up.

Watts, Spencer, and their intellectually-challenged minions can't control their illogical selves, however...

Dr. Roy Spencer and I have been watching this project with amusement combined with incredulity...The best part? The impetus was for this idea was global warming.

Yup, Watts, only an idiot troll like you would find that to be the "best part." Is the best part of Kevin Trudeau's snake oil the fact that it's a fake remedy for real medical conditions? Did I mention you're an idiot troll, you idiot troll?

Dr. Roy Spencer felt the need to shoot off an ironic rocket of a comment...

Roy Spencer says:
June 4, 2014 at 6:18 am
this was one of the most controversial posts I ever had. The popular support for “solar roadways” is amazing, the shallowness of the supporters arguments for it equally amazing.

Hmmm, speaking of amazing shallowness, how about signing your name onto this bullshit?

We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence —are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory.

Prominent Signers of An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming...scientists and medical doctors like Dr. Roy W. Spencer...

Oh, brother, the absurdity of moments like these really calls for at least two faces to palm. One just isn't enough.



And then the trolls that comment at this brainless black hole begin trying to outdo one another...

Myron Mesecke says:
June 4, 2014 at 6:34 am
The same lack of common sense, little education and no real interest in science is why both the solar roadway and the global warming scam are so popular.

Ric Werme says:
June 4, 2014 at 6:37 am
This is something I posted on a couple FaceBook groups, including “Scientific Mensa” that has a several member convinced that AGW is going to destroy us all but buy into this scheme without doing the most rudimentary calculations...

grayjohn says:
June 4, 2014 at 6:39 am
Bullshit derived from the fantasy of alternative energy. Awesome.

Do I really need to post more of these? You can go scroll through the comments, if you have an urge for self-torture, but, remember, if you don't laugh at this overflowing clown car turned Web forum, you'll probably end up despairing for your own species. If it turns out wattsupwiththat contributors actually belong to the same species as the rest of us, that is...

The Unending March of Denier Straw Men

(Image courtesy of AP Photo/dapd//Jean-Christophe Bott)

A straw man argument, if you don't know already, which you should, is a made-up opponent position. When your adversary's real point is too difficult to tackle, you simply transform what he or she said into something more easily refuted. For instance, when I say there is no evidence for the existence of a supreme being, many people twist my words into something like, "He said he can prove God doesn't exist," which I obviously can't conclusively (I also can't conclusively prove Bertrand Russell's teapot, Zeus, Odin, Ba'al, Cthulhu, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, et al, don't exist either, but somehow magically my inadequacies here are never brought up so smugly...shocking, I know). That dishonest formulation of my actual statement can be countered much more handily, hence the reason why it's formulated that way. The idea behind the straw man metaphor is that real people are harder to push over than lightweight, straw effigies made of them. Get it?

Now that we've had our little review, we can move on to the point of this post...

The curious case of Hurricane Sandy.

It has been over a year and a half since Hurricane Sandy hit, and, like New Orleans after Katrina, many towns are still struggling to rebuild. Many will continue to do so for years to come, and some will never return to the same communities they once were before Sandy hit. Simply put, the storm was amazingly powerful, and it came at the end of the hurricane season when the northeastern US normally breathes a collective sigh of relief.

If you've read or taken part in online climate change debates, you've undoubtedly seen Sandy enter the discussion. And maybe, like me, you've seen this priceless straw man countless times...

Enamored twits at Fox invoke Al Gore for no reason other than their undying love for him, and then predictably set up the straw man. I mean, if you're in love with someone, the least you could do is try to understand what he or she is actually saying, even if you've been turned down repeatedly for a date.

Monckton couldn't help his confused self...

And, gee, wattsupwiththat gleefully promoted this straw man...imagine that...

Clearly, I could go on forever.

When I point out that not even the most dyed-in-the-wool climate hawks make the claim that climate change caused Sandy (like CO2 molecules intentionally started spinning over warmer Caribbean waters in an effort to whip up a cyclone, or something), and that what they do claim in reality is that climate change undeniably amplified Sandy's strength and damage, I either get the halfwit, idiotic "yes, they do" response (sorry, they don't, and repeating nonsense ain't a very convincing argument), or the standard subject change, "well, there was nothing special about Sandy."

Nothing special about Sandy? Is that so...?

The nation's largest mass transit service shut down all stops for only the 2nd time in the system's history. What was the 1st time? Irene, the year before.

Though Irene "fizzled" (as some put it), Sandy precautions were justified as the NYC subway flooded and pumps were overwhelmed in November.

Largest diameter of any Atlantic cyclone ever recorded.

Lowest barometric reading ever recorded for an Atlantic storm (940 millibars or 27.76 inches), a sign of its troubling strength.

Highest sea level ever recorded at Battery Park in New York (13.88 feet).

Anywhere from 186 to 285 total fatalities. Whatever the actual number, it's too many.

And so on.

So there ya go. "Nothing special about Sandy," according to deniers. Never mind the fact that none of these spineless gits have the guts to say that to the faces of people still rebuilding for a moment, because here is the challenge I've given them many times before without receiving one, single, solitary, satisfactory, sensible answer: if Sandy was such a ho-hum, run-of-the-mill, uninteresting storm, untouched by climate change, then name me one historical North Atlantic cyclone that did what it did when it did it, at the tail-end of hurricane season in November.

Just one. ONE. That's all you gotta give me, ya senseless screwballs.

G'head, lemme have it. I'll be waiting right here for your answer. But I won't be holding my breath.

Abject Morons Respond to Cosmos, The World Set Free (Episode 12, June 1, 2014)

In case you're the one remaining person who doesn't know by now, Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist, an author, the director of the Hayden Planetarium, and the star of the newest Cosmos reboot. But more than that, like Sagan before him, he is an intellectual titan, an incredibly gifted and charismatic defender of science, a testament to our country's institutions of higher learning, and an outright national treasure.

Now, does that mean you can't question him? No. But it does means that, if you do, you had better bring your goddamn A game, or shut your silly, thoughtless mouth. Plain and simple. So let's see what kinda "A game" deniers brought after this week's Cosmos...

Here's a clueless meatball who thinks because CO2 is such a small percentage of the atmosphere it just can't have a major effect:

.@NASA @ClimateOfGavin Think CO2 hysteria harder to sell if you plot CO2 on a fair scale? #cosmos #actonclimate pic.twitter.com/umlwmXBJed

— Tom Nelson (@tan123) June 2, 2014

Somebody take away the ozone, which is a significantly smaller portion of the stratosphere where its concentration is greatest (up to 15 parts per million or 0.0015%) let alone the entire atmosphere (0.6 ppm or 0.00006%) than CO2 (400 ppm or 0.04%), over Tom Nelson's empty head, and see how quickly he changes his two functioning brain cells about the impact small amounts of molecules in our air can have. As Neil pointed out in the episode, the volume and mass of our atmosphere are enormous, so "small," a relative term here, gives you something equivalent to the size of the White Cliffs of Dover each year. That is to say, not really small at all.

Here's a bit of idiotic tone-trolling from someone who is obviously no relation to the executive producer of Cosmos (or, if he is, is probably no longer invited to family barbecues):

"Cosmos" is great but you'd think during the shilling for solar and wind power that @neiltyson would note we don't know how to store it.

— Emmett Macfarlane (@EmmMacfarlane) June 2, 2014

Neil is a shill for solar and wind power. Rrrrrriiiiigggggghhhhhttttt. Uh, dopey, we have many means of storage: hydrogen, batteries, thermal oil, thermal salt, etc. But, like, OMG, they're not perfect and might require more R&D, right, Emmett? Well, Neil was pretty clear about how solar technology was unfortunately abandoned for the very energy sources which have caused the planet to warm. Had it not lost research funding, we would have perfected storage options by now.

The world is full of people who are just plain fucking stupid and more than eager to advertise it apparently:

@ezralevant Funny how NATURAL #climatechange ended Mayans, Incans, Sumerians, but NOW it's all humanity's fault.

— Clay Johanson (@clayjohanson) June 2, 2014

Jaezuz fookin' Cheeeeeeroist, the Mayan collapse was natural? Natural?!

Why did the Mayan civilization collapse?

Because cleared land absorbs less solar radiation, less water evaporates from its surface, making clouds and rainfall more scarce. As a result, the rapid deforestation exacerbated an already severe drought—in the simulation, deforestation reduced precipitation by five to 15 percent and was responsible for 60 percent of the total drying that occurred over the course of a century as the Mayan civilization collapsed. The lack of forest cover also contributed to erosion and soil depletion.

Something calling itself "tkondaks" over at Salon thinks it's clever:


If halfwit Internet trolls like this tkondaks actually asked Santa for subscriptions to Science instead of Wrestling News, this stupidity would be self-correcting and not exist for me to highlight for your face-palming pleasure.

And I suspect that, only 24 hours since its airing, there will be many more attacks on Neil and Cosmos yet to come from some more high-profile and infamous sources, especially since it coincides with the release of a related Obama administration policy.

Look, you pathetic trolls, here's what you wanna do from now on... Assume you are an idiot, which you are, and intelligent people like Ann Druyan and Neil deGrasse Tyson actually know what the hell they're talking about, which they do. That way you don't give me endless opportunities to humiliate the shit out of you.

Climate change deniers, another way of saying "complete fucking idiots."