Speaking of Not Responding, Ladies and Gentlemen, I Give You the Suspicious0bservers

A couple days ago, I left the following comment, which has yet to be approved, on a Suspicious0bservers video:

This is the graph image I linked to in the comment:

Now, there are only about 1,000 "sciency"-sounding, cherry-picked points in that video which have little or nothing to do with climate change, and certainly don't add up to the nonsensical conclusions that Ben Davidson, narrator and owner of the YouTube channel, draws. For instance, at this point in the video, he claims CO2 is NOT the main driver of the observed modern warming, and, instead, our planet's diminishing magnetosphere combined with high solar activity are the real climate change culprits, since, according to him, we had less protection from the Sun's radiation at the same time we witnessed temperatures rising after the Industrial Revolution. While it's true the magnetosphere has been and is weakening slightly, here's the problem with teaming it up with the Sun to make some new global warming dynamic supervillain duo: the magnetosphere prevents charged particles from reaching the Earth, not visible light and infrared energy—that is, the electromagnetic radiation which has interacted with greenhouse gases to cause the greenhouse effect historically and modern climate change more recently. In other words, a weakened magnetosphere may cause more intense auroras at the poles, or endanger satellites and electronics, but it won't let in more sunlight, brighten the daytime hours, and create a spike in the sunglasses industry. Is anyone anywhere complaining of global brightening? When the magnetosphere strengthens again, which it will, will days grow darker? NO!

Almost all of the Suspicious0bservers' videos are like this. A classic case of "Jaezuz, there's so much wrong here, where do I even begin?" So I thought I'd pick just one mistake, rather than frighten Ben into blocking a comment with a barrage of counterpoints (besides, my personal ethics are against flooding...yes, even when the target is a flood of misinformation), but it seems like Ben is a little too skittish to let even one strong challenge fly on his channel. Click on the link to the video above, toggle the comments filter to "Newest first", and I'm pretty sure you'll see my comment hasn't been approved yet.

I even went so far as to tweet at him yesterday to no avail:

Will Ben @TheRealS0s approve this comment/challenge to the claims in his YouTube video? http://t.co/tnABSqhfb7 pic.twitter.com/7qvmLSajrp

— Planet Evans (@ExoplanetEvans) October 4, 2015

So how about it, Ben? Gonna allow some criticism and debate on your channel? Or are you going to block and hide from it?

Suspicious 0bservers: Disingenuous and Despicable

Ben Davidson of the YouTube channel Suspicious 0bservers is at it again, spreading complete fabrications about climate science.

Yeah, yeah. I know what you're thinking...

"With all the screwball denier trolls on YouTube, why should I care that one channel misleads its followers?"

Well, maybe you shouldn't. But before you make up your mind, at least read my last Suspicious 0bservers post where I explain why I believe the site's misinformation should not go unanswered.

Anyway, here's Mr. Davidson's latest suspicious climatology observation, and "suspicious" is putting it lightly (click on the still image below to be taken to the relevant point in the video...you can stop it at about 1:31 when this specific climate change part ends, unless you can't help but watch the train wreck run its full course).



Where to begin with this blatant bullshit-fest... First of all, I have no idea where Ben Davidson got the screen capture with that headline, because when I go to the UW-Madison report on the study, I see...



Ben Davidson's misleading headline:

A global temperature conundrum: Cooling or warming climate?

Versus the actual headline:

Climate conundrum: Conflicting indicators on what preceded human-driven warming

Big difference.

And that brings me to my second point, which is exactly what Ben Davidson of Suspicious 0bservers wants to purposefully misconstrue: when the cooling/warming indicators conflict. They do NOT conflict now, or over the modern observed warming, as Davidson shamelessly and deceitfully tries to dupe his audience into believing. The article and the researchers who conducted the study could not be any clearer on this point.

The scientists call this problem the Holocene temperature conundrum. It has important implications for understanding climate change and evaluating climate models, as well as for the benchmarks used to create climate models for the future. It does not, the authors emphasize, change the evidence of human impact on global climate beginning in the 20th century.

The conundrum is over what happened before our emissions started warming the planet, and it is a debate over what a pre-Industrial Revolution 20 ppm increase in CO2 caused (cooling or warming), not the 120 ppm increase and undeniable warming that we humans initiated afterward.

Here's how the article states it:

Over the last 10,000 years, Liu says, we know atmospheric carbon dioxide rose by 20 parts per million before the 20th century, and the massive ice sheet of the Last Glacial Maximum has been retreating. These physical changes suggest that, globally, the annual mean global temperature should have continued to warm, even as regions of the world experienced cooling, such as during the Little Ice Age in Europe between the 16th and 19th centuries.

The three models Liu and colleagues generated took two years to complete. They ran simulations of climate influences that spanned from the intensity of sunlight on Earth to global greenhouse gases, ice sheet cover and meltwater changes. Each shows global warming over the last 10,000 years.

Yet, the bio- and geo-thermometers used last year in a study in the journal Science suggest a period of global cooling beginning about 7,000 years ago and continuing until humans began to leave a mark, the so-called “hockey stick” on the current climate model graph, which reflects a profound global warming trend.

You have got to be a snake oil-selling slimeball of epic proportions to suggest the cooling/warming debate is occurring over what we see happening now.

And that brings me to my final dope slap for Ben Davidson who claims...

"And most who get through the climate change series with an open mind agree our star calls the shots."

Sorry, Little Confused Benny. When it comes to the modern observed warming, the relatively stable nuclear fusion furnace at the center of our solar system has little or nothing to do with it.

More recently, satellite observations of solar activity from space suggest a slight increase in solar activity, but the change can't account for more than 10 percent of the warming trend seen during the past century.

Give the pseudoscience madness a rest, Ben, huh?

Pseudoscience Vlogging

A while back, I was doing some serious head-scratching after stumbling upon an odd conspiracy and pseudoscience-laden YouTube channel called Suspicious0bservers.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking: "Crackpots on YouTube, you say? It just can't be! Alert the media!"

And I would ignore it like we all do most bizarre Net content, but this channel's videos are uploaded on a fairly regular basis, get tens of thousands of views and hundreds of likes, and employ a rather effective snake oil salesperson technique (which I will explain shortly). Apparently, many people are buying this crap, and, if you read some of the comments under the videos, you get a clear sense of the disturbingly uncritical acceptance (clicking on the comment screen-capture images will take you to the video from whence they sprungeth):



The entire planet is cooling down, and we can only assume it's just a case of Ben Davidson from Suspicious0bservers being right about that, and all these thousands of scientists being wrong about the fact that it is actually and unequivocally warming, ya know?



Start off the new year during summer in the northern hemisphere? Dunno, I guess KingChrist ofEarth still uses the Alexandrian or Julian calendar, or maybe relies on a fiscal calendar, or something, and the creator of this Suspicious0bservers account is a scientist, dontchya know (in actuality a legal professional with a low-level law degree)? KingChrist is somehow certain that anyone who disagrees with the Suspicious0bservers channel might be very smart, but is definitely dangerously stupid at the same time. If you find any one sensible thing in that comment, lemme know.



Main source for space news?! What the...? I can only therefore suspect that James Doakes relies primarily on his horoscope for financial and investment decisions as well.



Wow. "No fearmongering, no disinformation, no bullshit. Just what is happening and why." Sounds SPECTACULAR. I mean, we should all make the Suspicious0bservers channel our main source for space and climate news, right? Well, except for the fact that the fearmongering, disinformation, and bullshit in reality gets wrapped up with legitimate-sounding reporting, so that people fail to recognize it. For example (click on the video still image to go to the pertinent point in the video)...



Sure, we get a halfhearted mention of humans changing climate, but if suggesting that solar prominences, or coronal mass ejections (CMEs), or the Sun's magnetic field itself are affecting the recent changes in climate to any noticeable degree is NOT disinformation and bullshit, then I don't know what is. They can be a very serious problem for us, but a fairly stable Sun has had little or no effect on the observed global temperature increase, be it a trend-reversing cooling influence (as I assume Ben Davidson of Suspicious0bservers would have us all believe), or a warming one.

And then we have this doozy (click on the video still image to go to the pertinent point in the video)...

"Antarctic sea ice [is] setting record high marks, growing faster than the Arctic is melting up north."

Mind you, that part about Antarctic sea ice increases outpacing Arctic sea ice losses is NOT part of any argument that Ian Eisenman makes. He is not trying to refute or support that assertion, and would most likely call it utter nonsense that even his scientific rivals would have the good sense to avoid stating. Eisenman is only saying what increases in ice we calculate over southern seas may not be as great as we believe due to errors in data processing, and, whether or not you, Davidson, the science community at large, and I agree with him, he really makes no comparison at all between the melt/expansion rates at either pole. That nonsensical assertion is Ben Davidson's alone, and it marches in line with the standard denier tunnel vision-style malarkey regarding polar ice conditions. They cherry-pick the things that agree with their climate change ignorance, and reject everything else. However, this particular claim is a straight-up fallacious twist that I must admit I haven't seen much...Antarctic sea ice is growing faster than Arctic sea ice is shrinking...hmmmm, lemme think about that one for a moment...

Ummm, wot?

Once again, we find ourselves forced to make a decision. Either Ben Davidson of Suspicious0bservers is right, and the entire climate science community is wrong, or it's the other way around:



Gee, tough choice, I know.

And, finally, Davidson would like us all to take seriously the Thunderbolts Project's kookiness, some of which I addressed in my last Suspicious0bservers post (click on the video still image to go to the pertinent point in the video)...



It must be Davidson's "scientific" opinion that the dust covering a comet is magically impenetrable and somehow prevents the outflow of material from its nucleus, rather than encourages it, and/or that the dust just can't be the material left over after the coma was produced. From the "comet nucleus" wikipedia page:

It is thought that complex organic compounds are the dark surface material. Solar heating drives off volatile compounds leaving behind heavy long-chain organics that tend to be very dark, like tar or crude oil. The very darkness of cometary surfaces allows them to absorb the heat necessary to drive their outgassing.

Therefore, for Davidson, people who think planets shoot lightning bolts at one another and their moons are right about some other oddball "static sublimation via solar wind interaction" theory of theirs. Once more, about all I can muster in response to this convoluted pseudoscience merry-go-round is a weary wot?

Yup, great place to get all yer space and climate change news, I gotta tell ya. One-stop, screwball shopping.

Notice how these videos make totally unscientific pronouncements, like the ones I highlight, and then move on to mumbo-jumbo-style, sciency-sounding coverage of earthquakes, sun spots and solar activity, terrestrial and space weather, NASA and ESA missions, and so on. Bouncing all over the research map, like this proves or accomplishes something interconnected and important. This strange YouTube channel uses the same intellectually-dishonest tactic upon which charlatans like Deepak Chopra base entire lucrative careers: toss the bullshit in with the rest of the word salad to hide it. This is the snake oil-selling trick I mentioned earlier. If you babble somewhat coherently about real discoveries in legitimate science to portray yourself as a knowledgeable expert, you can then use the trust you've just established with your audience to convince them that they should also believe your batshit insane nonsense, like "human quantum-body essence" remedies, or CMEs/solar magnetic field causing the Earth's climate to dramatically change/cool/whatever, is real as well.

To formally and informally educated people who think critically and know better, sites like Suspicious0bservers may seem harmless, absurd, and a bountiful source of unending chuckles, but we have to consider how uneducated and credulous people, like those I mention above, see them. These content sources are not without their seductive dangers. In fact, I would argue that their Trojan horse-style strategy of hiding the pseudoscience inside the science is not that far off — at least conceptually so — from how some terrorist organizations spread and gain popularity. Present a helpful facade of goodwill to the public, while initially tempering or concealing your true agenda, until you're in a position of authority and control. We have to fund an educational system which prioritizes critical thinking skills, so that people are armed with the intellectual weaponry necessary to fight off the bewitching temptations of the charlatans on their own, or we will only sink deeper into, as one great science advocate once put it, a combustible mixture of ignorance and power.

I think the full quote, as well as a few more salient and germane ones, ought to reinforce the point here.

"We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science and technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. Who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don’t know anything about it?"

-Carl Sagan, "Charlie Rose: An Interview with Carl Sagan," May 27, 1996

"Science is [...] a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along."

-Carl Sagan, "Charlie Rose: An Interview with Carl Sagan," May 27, 1996

"[Science] urges on us a fine balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything — new ideas and established wisdom. We need wide appreciation of this kind of thinking. It works. It’s an essential tool for a democracy in an age of change. Our task is not just to train more scientists but also to deepen public understanding of science."

-Carl Sagan, "Why We Need To Understand Science" in The Skeptical Inquirer Vol. 14, Issue 3 (Spring 1990)

"...if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones."

-Carl Sagan, "The Burden of Skepticism" in Skeptical Inquirer Vol. 12, Issue 1 (Fall 1987)

Who Is This Person, and Why Is He Pretending to Stand in Front of an Audience?

After about a minute of this guy's overacting...



...it hit me that he's standing in front of basically NO ONE. Well, besides the dope with the camera and maybe his mom and dad who probably still have to do his dishes, laundry, and clean his room for him, and a smattering of other relatives who got reluctantly dragged along. Don't videographers at talks usually point the camera at the audience every now and then? Jussayin.

So I figured I'd try to find out who he is, and where the hell he gave this nonsensical talk. I mean, he got asked to give a dissertation on climate change in front of an (LOL) "audience," uh, somewhere, right? So he must be someone with serious credentials, right? Checked the vid description. Nothing on him or the location. So I went over to the Suspicious0bservers site, and found out that his name is Ben Davidson, he has a low-level "Juris Doctorate" law degree, a BA in economics, and was on the Denison U. golf team. The location is indicated not-so-clearly on the podium in the video, and with a little more description in the credits. Something called the "The Thunderbolts Project: 2014 EU Conference Forum" which took place in a hotel in Albuquerque, NM, USA. No, I don't understand the "conference forum" redundancy in the title, either, but "EU" stands for "electrical universe" apparently, and not the European Union, as I'm sure Ben Davidson was hoping people would think when he posted the video on YouTube with no event details (you know, like he got called over to some IPCC review in Copenhagen, or something). This is from the project's about-synopsis page (more inexplicable redundancy):

Planetary Science

In the recent history of the solar system, its electrical environment changed. Under changing electrical conditions planetary orbits changed as well.

Close approaches of planets led to powerful electric arcing between planets and moons. All rocky bodies in the solar system show the massive scars of these kinds of electrical events.

Electric discharge scarring is occurring even now on Jupiter’s closest moon, Io, and on Saturn’s moon, Enceladus.

A half-baked lawyer who knows where to find the cheapest golf courses gave a climate change talk in front of nutcases who think planets get close enough to shoot lightning bolts at one another and their moons, and Io was scarred by lightning bolts from Jupiter (he was the Roman thunder god, after all) not volcanic activity. You can't even make this crap up, people. Is there no end to the pseudoscience insanity out there? No wonder the hall was so "packed" the camera person opted to not show it. Oh, brother.

And I swiped this really precious pic off good ole Ben's site:

Yup, you got it, folks. "Climate change expert" and amateur golfer, Ben Davidson, would like you to know that if anyone tells you the Earth has a climate, IT'S A LIE. And people wonder why I call all you bozos "climate deniers" from time to time, leaving the "change" part out. It's because you either deny we have the climate we have presently and in reality, or, when you're really feeling demented, you evidently make images that deny we have any climate at all. Gotta tell ya, that last part was news to me. I had no idea you went this far.

Oh, and the rest of us have to remember that we need to pump CO2 into the atmosphere to save us from the impending cosmic ray ice age, or whatever screwball nonsense the Suspicious0bservers are trying to get at in this absurd video:



Look, if you mentally-unhinged deniers are going to pull embarrassing shenanigans like faking a serious climate change talk and putting it on YouTube, I'm gonna stop confronting you directly here in this blog, and start calling out your parents instead. It's well past time the whole lot of you got kicked out of the basement, and sent out into the real world to face the music.

And learn how to use the washer machine, and cut Mom a break, huh? You're out of college now and getting invitations to speak in front of five people at "electrical universe" conferences in Albuquerque hotels for cripes sake.