House of Lords to impersonator: 'cease and desist'

Looks like the House of Lords has rebuked “Lord” Monckton and sent him a ‘cease and desist’ letter, in an unprecedented fit of annoyance at his grandstanding:

Climate sceptic Lord Monckton told he’s not member of House of Lords

Clerk of parliaments publishes letter on Lords’ site saying peer is not and has ‘never been a member of the House of Lords’

The House of Lords has taken the unprecedented step of publishing a “cease and desist” letter on its website demanding that Lord Christopher Monckton, a prominent climate sceptic and the UK Independence party’s head of research, should stop claiming to be a member of the upper house.

The move follows a testy interview given by Monckton to an Australian radio station earlier this month in which he repeated his long-stated belief that he is a member of the House of Lords. When asked by ABC Sydney’s Adam Spencer if he was a member, he said: “Yes, but without the right to sit or vote … [The Lords] have not yet repealed by act of parliament the letters patent creating the peerage and until they do I am a member of the house, as my passport records. It says I am the Right Honourable Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. So get used to it.”

Oh, and you’ve heard about his nobel laureate he allegedly received? This is his from his biography on his own think tank website, and has been up there for years:

His contribution to the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 - the correction of a table inserted by IPCC bureaucrats that had overstated tenfold the observed contribution of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets to sea-level rise - earned him the status of Nobel Peace Laureate. His Nobel prize pin, made of gold recovered from a physics experiment, was presented to him by the Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester, New York, USA.

When challenged on Australian radio about this Monckton said it was a joke. AGW deniers swallow any swill, don’t they? Of the accumulated biomass that the good “Lord’s” supporters make-up, there is not one sceptical neuron firing. “Lord” Monckton. More a symptom of an exhausted decay of the last rump of the British aristocracy.

This is the same fraud who has been bankrolled by Alan Jones, the shadowy patron of the Galileomovement.com.au astro-turf outfit.

Andy Pitman mops up misinformation mess

The proposed Carbon Dioxide tax has caused big fossil fuel to put a lot of misinformation about carbon dioxide out into radio-land. Every shock-jock around the country is plugging denier talking points. It's clear Big Denial is in campaign mode, facilitating Tony Abbott's "people's revolt".

Luckily, we have Professor Andy Pitman, Centre director for ARC Centres of Excellence for Climate System Science at the University of New South Wales, to help us with clean up some of the misinformation.

Professor Andy Pitman talks to Drive with Louise Maher:
666 ABC Radio, Canberra, 3:00pm - 6:00pm

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Dumb, dumber, and dumbed right down

I doubt my challenge to Andrew Bolt Blog's winged monkeys will be published in the readers' comments section following another post about Tim Flannery's alleged failed climate change "predictions". This time Bolt is piggy-backing off Clive James, a part time denier.

So here it is for posterity:

Except it's a lie, a denier's canard, a propagandist's fit-up. It’s a lousy deception that relies on an uncritical audience's poor brain-power and poorer prejudice to evade challenge.

Flannery never once said that a particular city would unconditionally and certainly run out of water by a certain date since passed, which is what he is regularly charged with. Tellingly, no one can produce a quote to this effect. Repeat: I predict with absolute certainty that no one will be able to produce this mythical quote that agitates deniers so.

What they will find are quotes about potential scenarios and probabilities, sometimes containing conditional logic. Quotes containing auxiliary verbs carefully used to express possibility, such as "may", and "could", but not the predictive "will" that Andrew Bolt and other deniers sadly waste much of their productive lives accusing Flannery of. Quotes with "if... then" statements of such pure logic that they can be understood by computers and children, but not by ABB readers. E.g., something like, "If Perth doesn't build a desalination plant soon, then the city could run out of water within XXX years." "If the drought continues for XXX years, then city Y will be a ghost-town by ZZZZ.

In these working examples, intelligent people would investigate whether the condition had been not met before declaring the 'prediction' wrong or right - did Perth build a desalination plant, or not? Did the drought break or not?

How insulting that these fossil-fuel pimps lie so brazenly to push their poisonous merchandise on us, our children and grandkids. How miserable that they gut language of its logic. There is a special place reserved in infamy for these failed human-beings, these manipulators, these doubt-merchants. And it is filling up fast.

Yes, I am stirring. But the highly respected Laurie Oakes is not stirring about the sad turn to US style politicking that scummier elements of the Australian polity are taking:

WINGNUTS are coming out of the woodwork. The mad and menacing phone calls to independent MP Tony Windsor are just one indication.

There are plenty of others, especially online. The carbon tax and Tony Abbott's call for a people's revolt have crazies foaming at the mouth.

You see it on the "Revolt Against the Carbon Tax" Facebook page, for example.

Like this message from a Gillard-hater about a rally in front of Parliament House being planned for March 23.

"Just like Egypt we stay there and protest continuously until she and her cronies, Bob Brown greens etc, are ousted! We have got to get rid of this Godless mistress of deceit."

Hosni Mubarak was a dictator while the Gillard Government is democratically elected, but it doesn't seem to matter to the fanatics.

Rather, he is worried. Personally, I don't think Australia is close to being that far gone yet. Mind you, Laurie is the guy with his finger on the national pulse and I'm just a stirrer in blog-land tilting at wind-bags.

UPDATE:

I did get my challenge published in comments (alias "Big Ted") and, as predicted, no one could provide evidence to support Andrew Bolt and Clive James. I, therefore, took the opportunity to stick the knife in further and deeper. I am starting to see how denial is such a fascinating condition where deniers know they are being lied to but are ok with it as long as their world-view is reinforced. We see this with religion, for example, where two or more internally logically contradictory positions may be held at the same time (e.g., homosexuality is asserted to be 'evil' yet homosexuals are also part of God's creation, so how could homosexuality be evil?), but the honesty here is that religion is premised on faith, or suspended disbelief.

But with climate change denial, it's the deniers themselves who charge their stated enemy with being part of a 'green faithful'. Why, even our esteemed Opposition leader, Tony Abbott, makes that charge. From his own website, in a speech against unions, he says: "...People who think that unions are just another sectional interest, who heed climate change science rather than green religion, "

As we have seen from our experiment on the denizens of Andrew Bolt Blog, deniers clearly are projecting, in the psychological sense of the word, when they fling accusations around against the alleged 'global warming religion'. It is their own irrational beliefs that they are refusing to countenance when they attack others. They should be called-out every single time, until this debate is characterised by common sense, and common courtesy. I know I do my bit ;-) even though I stirr.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

IPCC attack: US house Republicans win day, risk epoch

US Republicans may have won the day in the recent house vote to cut all their funds to the UN IPCC, the planet's leading climate science synthesis body, but they risk losing the Holocene. For everybody.

America is to cut off all funding to the United Nations climate science panel under sweeping Republican budget cuts that seek to gut spending on environmental protection.

The funding ban to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – stripping $2.3m (£1.31m) from an international organisation that relies heavily on volunteer scientists – was among some $61bn (£38bn) in cuts voted through the Republican-controlled House of Representatives on Saturday.

Driven by the mad-hatter Tea Party astroturf outfit who, as ignorant of their own history as of science, seemingly don't see the irony of taxing future generations without representation by burdening them with an increasingly dysfunctional global climate, let alone environment:

If enacted, the cuts package would reduce spending on environmental protection by nearly one-third, or about $3bn (£1.85bn), advancing a key objective of the conservative Tea Party of dismantling government regulation.

The cuts also exhibit the strong hostility to climate science among the Tea Party activists with funding bans on the IPCC and a newly created climate information service under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – a reorganisation which was to be funded out of existing budgets.

Instead of throwing crates of British East India tea overboard, the Tea Party of today plots to arrest knowledge, understanding and accumulating know-how and throw climate predictability overboard. All without a native American Indian costume in sight.

I'm not one to tell folks how to be, but that's not a good narrative for a proud nation to build on, going forward. What kind of example does it set to other nations in their funding decisions? What if all give up?

In proposing the ban on IPCC funding, Blaine Luetkemeyer, a Missouri Republican, called the UN panel "nefarious".

"The IPCC is an entity that is fraught with waste and fraud, and engaged in dubious science, which is the last thing hard-working American taxpayers should be paying for," Luetkemeyer said in a statement.

He claimed the US funds to the IPCC were $13m, but Henry Waxman, the California Democrat, told Congress the figure was $2.3m. He argued that the contribution helped the US get access to global scientific body of work – that would not exist without American support.

This has to be stopped in the US senate. I'd like to think that, in a world where we see Wikileaks fanning freedom in Tunisia, Twitter toppling tyrants in Egypt, and Facebook defriending dictators in Libya, that we, the world, can find a way to get our say in decisions affecting our global climate, wherever they are held. Overseas friends and family of American citizens should encourage them to tell the flat-earthlings among their numbers not to impose their ignorance on the rest of us.

And to make their voices heard by their representatives. Can the US people marshal and overthrow the tyranny of big fossil-fueled ignorance? I am encouraged to think so when I look at the success of Wikileaks in promoting transparency, and Sea-Shepherd, in defeating the Japanese government-subsidised whaling industry. What Julian Assange and Capt. Watson have in common is that they are hard-core; all Davids need a bit of that to triumph over Goliath. Their results speak for themselves. It's hard not think that more of that is what is needed.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Fox News journos directed to promote AGW denial

While News Corp proudly advertised three years ago that it would be carbon neutral by now, Fox News can't even serve up a neutral report on the state of climate science.

Literally.

They are not simply not allowed to, as an email edict from Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon to all Fox News producers now proves:

From: Sammon, Bill
To: 169 -SPECIAL REPORT; 036 -FOX.WHU; 054 -FNSunday; 030 -Root (FoxNews.Com); 050 -Senior Producers; 051 -Producers; 069 -Politics; 005 -Washington
Cc: Clemente, Michael; Stack, John; Wallace, Jay; Smith, Sean
Sent: Tue Dec 08 12:49:51 2009
Subject: Given the controversy over the veracity of climate change data...

...we should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies.

This happened during reporting on the pivotal climate change conference, COP15 Copenhagen, in December 2009. The "controversy over the veracity of climate change data" Bill was referring to here is the 'Climategate CRU hacked emails scandal' that was much puffed-up by biased media outfits like Fox News as evidenced of a disinformation conspiracy by climate scientists, and subsequently debunked all too late.

The catch-all "critics" turn out to be fossil-fuel funded think-tank spokesmen, such as American Enterprise Institute's Kenneth Green. Not peer-reviewed climate scientists.

And, the rest is rather depressing history.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Wikileaks, eat your heart out

I may soon have in my hands hot evidence that suggests The Climate Sceptic (TCS) party is not a political party, but a covert black-pr operation designed to influence the public into thinking there is more support for the denial of the science of climate change than there really is.

In the meantime, this morning I have been sent the following mass-broadcast email from my tame and obedient TCS leaker; it's self-explanatory, really:

Will the real TROLL stand up?

From:
To:

---

G'day all

There is a traitor in our midst.

Do you know that the people calling us deniers are to be despised. They are using a term to hint at Holocaust deniers. In fact, they are the deniers.

The AGW hypothesis has been falsified, but they deny it. They tried to eliminate the MWP and the LIA in a denial effort with their flawed hockeystick.

What cretins! And the idiot posting cannot even spell.

Now, one among their number is among this contact list. He is handing my emails on to the REAL DENIERS, the promoters of the flawed AGW hypothesis.

http://tinyurl.com/2fkabct

Not Happy.....

Geoff

I notice that Geoff seems not to be happy, but this is his own fault, and I hear that some people are just like that. If he wants to roll about in the stench of 'Holocaust denial' and complain that he is being linked to this disgusting phenomena when I call him and his ilk "AGW deniers", or "science-deniers", then that is his own victimisation at play here and I take no back-step.

I am only interested in the accuracy of my language, not the histrionics of the AGW denial movement and their shame at their own reason-adverse tactics. The Shoah stands in its own category and shouldn't be used as a gambit by AGW deniers.

Mr Brown and his winged monkeys, and his 'party' are AGW deniers, not sceptics, because a sceptic is one who comes to their conclusion after full consideration of all the facts. In this case the facts are found in the body of peer-reviewed, climate science journals. And we know that deniers go there like vampires go to church.

UPDATE

Geoff Brown replies on behalf of TCS, in comments. He's in a topsy-turvey upside-down space, where the cart pulls the horse when the sun rises in the west, at the moment:

Geoff Brown said...

Hey Ted, (or is it ShyTed?)

What makes you think I am not happy? If you want to illegally post my correspondence, go ahead.

All I opst is the TRUTH.

So, by posting my emails, you are spreading the TRUTH amongst your denialists. Is that not great, or what?

Spread ing the truth to your deniers makes me very happy.

Yhanks ShyTed~!

1:47 PM EST

Ted, huh? How did you know, Geoff? I realise you are lining-up for the standard ad hominem tactic favoured by professional AGW deniers and, pop - "ShyTed".

But you are in upside-down land at the moment so really it's "Bold". That is, "BoldTed"where the first 'd' is silent. You know... as in, "It's no use giving me your permission to publish your mass-broadcast emails, because that horse has BoldTed!"

As for why I think you are "not happy", why you say so yourself at the bottom of your 'traitor' email I posted above. I know you are not into evidence-based reasoning, but having said so, then reinforced it with the name-calling, "Troll", "cretin", "despised", "idiot", "ShyTed", etc., makes me think you are unhappy.

Either way, you are still RudeTed. With the first 'd' being silent of course.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

A professional climate denier replies

I have received a nice comment from Geoff Brown of the Climate Skeptic Party (TCS) astroturfing outfit in my comments section of my piece about their covert astroturfing campaign:

Geoff Brown said...

To the misguided individual who unfortunately does not seem to feel a need to put her/his name to this blog.

I invoke the time-honoured WWW (Woof Woof Woof) defence: On the Internet, know one knows you are a dog. It seems you are not up with the protocol, Geoff. What cave have you been living in?

So, what is your defence for siccing your winged monkeys onto websites and newspaper letters pages, and radio shows and telling them what to say? Do you think it's ethical?

Are you aware that to post some-one's private e-mail without permission of the author is an offence.

So, rather than name you as a criminal for this offence, I belatedly give you permission to reproduce the private e-mail that you have already published.

In future, if you receive and want to publish one of my private e-mails, please ask permission first.

1:36 PM EST

Pffft. Soft. So soft you would think it's double-ply.

I'm not sure that a broadcast email to your network of agitating winged monkeys, on behalf of the "political party", TCS, can be considered private, Geoff, when the intent is that the winged monkeys get your emails published multiple times.

Even if so, I am not worried about my legal position here.

I claim 'truth' and 'public interest' in my publishing the emails you sent on behalf of TCS, and all the ones from your organisation that I have been promised by my source. (Readers, please keep coming back).

Yep, all emails that you mass-broadcast in order to inspire (what I believe are activist winged monkeys) to republish in letters to the editors of newspapers.

I believe that all voting Australians should know that there is an organised, orchestrated attempt by AGW deniers to mislead the public into thinking there is a big support for anthropogenic climate denial. Particularly when the misleaders are entering state politics. That is, the beneficiaries of this campaign are not the grass-roots, but... well... you... and the other nine candidates of TSC. Tut, tut.

Talking about offence though, I do take offence at what I regard as cheap duplicity, hence my going public. Do you know that your behaviour is proscribed by every reputable public relations company and PR industry association? Do you realise the murky practice of Astroturfing has a been long-tarred with the pro-smoking brush, for example? You know, those proto-deniers whose actions you mimic.

So, thank you for your kind permission to publish your emails (and the long bow it came with) but I don't need it for the future.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

AGW deniers' astroturfing campaign underway

First it was picked up in the MSM by Andrew Bolt, climate denial's Don Quixote.

Why are schools promoting this deceitful film?
220 Comments
Andrew Bolt
Wednesday, October 27, 2010 at 11:46am


The film is error-riddled and alarmist, and the work of a prize hypocrite and deceiver who dodges any attempt to hold him to account. Even an otherwise sympathetic British judge says the film contains so many errors that it should not be used in classrooms without a health warning.

But in Australia....

But in Australia, the Education Department is introducing 'An Inconvenient Truth' into the national curriculum to teach students about environmental sustainability across all subjects.

This is what has Andrew Bolt, and other activist AGW deniers, rather exercised.

Other activist AGW deniers include Geoffrey Brown of the Climate Skeptic Party. They are really an astroturf outfit. As I shall show.

I have in my hot little hands, a few emails, forwarded to me by someone on his mailing list.

Fw: Re Schools Curricula and Al Gore

From:	Add to Contacts
To:	<>
	2 Files Download All MPs.pdf (320KB); Senators.pdf (78KB)

---

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Geoffrey Brown
To: Geoff Brown
Sent: Wed, 27 October, 2010 10:04:04 AM
Subject: Re Schools Curricula and Al Gore

G'day All

I find it very disturbing to read today that AL Gore's Science Fiction Movie is to be included in Australian Schools Curricula. I sure that you will remember that the British High Court ruled that it was Alarmist and contained nine significant errors. Mr Justice Burton......said that some of the claims were wrong and had arisen in “the context of alarmism and exaggeration”. Quotes from The Times which goes on to detail errors.

Today we read in the MSM that it is going to be included in the curricula of schools around the country. The reports include:

The Herald-Sun (letters hsletters@heraldsun.com.au)

Al Gore film An Inconvenient Truth included in school curriculum

There is an on-line poll on that Herald-Sun Page.

The Daily Telegraph (Letters letters@dailytelegraph.com.au )

Climate change film An Inconvenient Truth for Australian schools

I suggest that we all write to the newspapers, but I also suggest that we contact MPs (at least your own local MP) and Senators. Lists attached.

How dare they!

Geoff

How dare they educate the future's biggest stakeholders? Fancy that? So I am going to get all members of my AGW denial activist group to write to all and sundry pollies and complain, lists attached.

Then, I am going to get my winged monkeys to reverse newpaper polls:

TCS Thinkers and Writers

Hey all,

As Bill tells me: Another day another poll.

Do you think that Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth should be shown to Australian school children?

http://www.smh.com.au/polls/environment/an-inconvenient-truth-for-schools/20101027-1732i.html#poll

It's going the wrong way at the moment.

Cheers

Geoff

The wrong way for Geoff's "TCS Thinkers and Writers" is where it ended. But, he tried:

Poll: An Inconvenient Truth for schools

Do you think that Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth should be shown to Australian school children?

Yes

61%

No

39%

Total votes: 5133.

Poll closed 29 Oct, 2010

Share this poll:

• Email (opens in new window)
• Facebook (opens in new window)
• Twitter(opens in new window)

Disclaimer:

These polls are not scientific and reflect the opinion only of visitors who have chosen to participate.

Related coverage

MPs divided on educational value of An Inconvenient Truth

The Climate Skeptics Party has just been caught out attempting to manipulate public opinion. Not by engaging in debate, but by trying to deceive the public about that debate.

And the account of their underhandedness has been preserved on the Intertubes Memory forever, particularly for interested students of the future to wonder at the motivations of such miserable people.

How climate denial really works #2: 50% of news is spin

We learned in the first post that by just turning up in a media report, skeptical views gain enough credibility to influence audiences' views. But, how do they turn up in the first place?

Crikey has published their six month long investigation into how much news is pr spin, like that of climate deniers and skeptics:

Hard questions, because this is what came out in the wash: after analysing a five-day working week in the media, across 10 hard-copy papers, ACIJ and Crikey found that nearly 55% of stories analysed were driven by some form of public relations. The Daily Telegraph came out on top of the league ladder with 70% of stories analysed triggered by public relations. The Sydney Morning Herald gets the wooden spoon with (only) 42% PR-driven stories for that week.

So, the question is, do climate skeptical writers like Ackerman, Bolt, Devine, et al, do original research? Or do they get their stuff from PR outfits like WUWT, CEI Institute, The Heartland Institute, etc?

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

How climate denial really works

Desmogblog carries the results of Stanford study which shows how including a "skeptic" view to balance a climate science news report affects the audience.

Providing climate skeptics a voice in “balanced” mainstream media coverage skews public perception of the scientific consensus regarding climate change, leaving viewers less likely to understand the threat of climate disruption and less likely to support government actions to address global warming, according to the results of a Stanford University research effort.

That is, just by being in the same report, the fringe can be seen as more respectable.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

China pings climate denial as extreme, Aussies agree

ABC - The Drum:

Current Poll Results

Do you agree with China's view that man-made climate change denial is an extreme stance and out of touch with mainstream thought?

Yes	73%
No	27%
3000 votes counted

That's pretty clear.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Deconstructing climate denial — #1. De cudgel

Forearmed is forewarned.

Argumentum ad baculum (Latin for argument to the cudgel or appeal to the stick), also known as appeal to force, is an argument where force, coercion, or the threat of force, is given as a justification for a conclusion. It is a specific case of the negative form of an argument to the consequences.

Mix with some argumentum ad hominem, and you get this thick paste:

“Mr. xxx, this is John Q. Public out here. Perhaps you don’t understand there’s no such thing as man-made global warming. I don’t care if you call it f!@%$#%@ing climate change, I don’t f!@%$#%@ing care what you call it. The same thing you communists tried in the 1970s. I’ve got a f!@%$#%@ing 75 articles from Newsweek Magazine stating we were making the earth freeze to death and we would have to melt the f!@%$#%@ing ice caps to save the earth. You, sir, and your colleagues, are progressive communists attempting to destroy America…Your f!@%$#%@ing agenda-driven, money-f!@%$#%@ing grabbing paws and understand there’s no such thing as global warming, you f!@%$#%@ing idiot and your f!@%$#%@ing colleagues.”

That free character assessment emailed to a colleague of climate scientist, Dr. Peter Gleick, is indicative of a claimed rampant cyber-bullying campaign that these scientists are subject to during their working day. On top of these in-box intrusions, work includes dealing with bandwidth-consuming FOI data requests responses, clearing up misrepresentations, IPCC 5AR preparation - and when there is spare time - doing what they signed-up for: climate research.

I can only think of one other lifesaving profession that has to put up with all that incoming? You could forgive our scientists if they chose to develop similar coping mechanisms.

Argumentum ad baculum takes this form:

Person L says accept argument A or event x will happen.

Event x is bad, dangerous, or threatening.

Therefore, argument A is a good argument.

Until the climate scientist accepts "there’s no such thing as man-made global warming" as true, they will be cyber-bullied.

Cyber-bullying includes being spammed with:

• the discrediting of their work — ("I don’t care if you call it f!@%$#%@ing climate change, I don’t f!@%$#%@ing care what you call it.")
• an incoherent babble attack of fossil-fuel funded talking-points taken from climate denier echo-chamber web-sites — ("The same thing you communists tried in the 1970s. I’ve got a f!@%$#%@ing 75 articles from Newsweek Magazine stating we were making the earth freeze to death and we would have to melt the f!@%$#%@ing ice caps to save the earth."), and
• common insults — ("You, sir, and your colleagues, are progressive communists attempting to destroy America…Your f!@%$#%@ing agenda-driven, money-f!@%$#%@ing grabbing paws..."), ( "...you f!@%$#%@ing idiot and your f!@%$#%@ing colleagues.”)

Therefore, "understand there’s no such thing as global warming"

Argumentum ad baculum is the second best argument against global warming . You can read Climate Progress give The best argument against global warming, here.

If you come across it in the wild: 1) identify it by name, and 2) dismiss it as a logical fallacy. Or, 1) identify it, and 2) take the threatening cudgel away (in this case, by hitting the talk to the firewall button).

Hat tip to Catchblue22's comment on CP's post.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

It's the quick and the dead in the climate wars with this killer iPhone app

Ever reached an impasse in an argument about climate change, for want of accurate knowledge?

Science's answers to the common climate deniers' talking-points, painstakingly assembled by John Cook over many years, are now available at the tips of your fingers and right before your opponent's lying eyes, right when you need them next:

The app, published by Skeptical Science and Shine Technologies, has been praised and promoted around the climate change blogosphere.

Deltoid's readers are amused at the responses of the seemingly less tech-savvy deniers, and iTunes perceived 'lack of balance', that set off a round of complaints. Crikey's Pure Poison is the same.

Eli of Rabbett Run has promoted it above footage of rabbits. That's got to say something.

And the Guardiancovers the reportedly panicked responses from skeptics blogs.

If you come across a new deniers' talking-point, you can upload it to skepticalscience.com to keep feeding John Cook's labour of love, and help him continue to set the record straight.

"How cool would it be to track the spread of the memes in real-time? And what's the hint from Shine Technologies about 'heatmaps'?", are my only two questions.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Monboit vs Plimer: We've had the debate, finally

Watching Lateline on ABC tonight was a treat. Host Tony Jones has immersed himself in both the science and politics of climate change, and it is great to see a mainstream journo so well across the on-again, off-again, much threatened debate between Guardian science journalist, George Monboit and retired geologist turned avid AGW denial megaphone, Ian Plimer, that he managed to get them both on his show to bash it out in public.

I am always wary of reducing a complex area like climate-science to a televised debate format, so I settled into the debate with some apprehension.

So how did it go? More to the point, who won?

Jones opened asking Monboit to explain why he recently pessimistically claimed that AGW deniers are 'winning' ("There is no point in denying it: we're losing. Climate change denial is spreading like a contagious disease..."), which he did by elucidating the profound irony that poll after poll shows that, as the scientific evidence hardens (e.g., the IPCC says that they are 90% confident that man is causing dangerous global warming), the public is more and more gripped by climate change doubt. He believes this is because people simply don't want to face "the writing that's now on the wall".

Jones made the interesting point that the very conference Monboit was joining the debate from, COP15 Copenhagen, shows that world leaders are out touch with their faltering public. Monboit agreed, and made the equally interesting point that this is because governments are taking their lead from their scientific advisors, so they know they have to do something.

Plimer parried this, claiming that it is because governments can't resist the idea of a tax, and went on to accuse their scientific advisors of being "dodgy", citing the recent University of East Anglia so called 'climategate' hack. Monboit agrees that he as been let down by what he says the emails show in terms of keeping certain papers out of the IPCC process. But he pointed out that this did not make the science a "hoax or a con". Not taking Plimer's bait, he made the fair point that Phil Jones' indiscretions (in private emails I might add) do not debunk the consistent message coming from tens of thousands of peer-reviewed scientists.

Plimer argued that the two or three CRU scientists involved in using "mafia-style tactics"were the main people the IPCC relied upon. Further cracks in Plimer's credibility appeared, when he claimed this is the "biggest scientific fraud in history". What about the work of your intellectual antecedents Ian, the pro-smoking, 'no link to cancer' lobby?

The rest of the debate was devoted to Monboit successfully taking Plimer to task over inaccuracies in his Plimer's book, Heaven + Earth, and his subsequent evasiveness over his real "scientific fraud". He mentioned two specifically — Plimer's claim that the world has cooled since 1998 (page 383 of Plimer's book referring to the Charles F.Keller paper), and that volcanoes emit more co2 than mankind.

Once presented with the the facts, that the WMO claims the last decade to be the hottest on record yet, and the US Geological Survey claim Pilmer to be wrong by an order of magnitude of 130 times, Plimer ducked and weaved. When asked to detract or stand by his claims, Plimer squirmed and distracted, obfuscated and attacked. But he just would not answer the question. Oh, look, a unicorn!

After it was clear that Monboit was not going to let him off his left-hook, Plimer jumped out of the ring to run away, and Tony Jones pulled him right back into it by his scruff. It was like watching an exorcism; his charm gave way to smarm, and viewers witnessed a denier being expertly dissected.

When Plimer accused Monboit of being rude for interjecting (when trying to get a straight answer out of Plimer), Monboit returned by pointing out it was rude to wittingly lie on television, and bad manners to not answer the question.

Monboit kicked Plimer's arse between Heaven + Earth, hell and high water. Deniers will pick on Monboit's aggression, but that's because they cannot fall back on Plimer's arguments. I was left with the impression that Plimer is aware and unconcerned about the irony of the full title of his book, "Heaven + Earth: The Missing Science of Global Warming" — it's clear that it's his book that is missing the science.

In short, Plimer got pwned.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Joyce hoist on his own petard

One of the most useful sayings that French, that fabulous language, has given us is 'hoist on his own petard' - to be blown up by your own bomb (pronounced 'bembh' for ze Pink Panther fans).

Petard also handily translates to 'fart' -- the same noise emanating from Malcolm Turnbull's opposition backbench whenever he tried to push the Coalition's promised bipartisan message on climate change action. One of the main culprits was the National's climate change denier-in-chief, Barnaby Joyce, and for his noisy efforts in the plot to install Tony Abbot as the new opposition leader in his recent climate denier coup, he has been promoted to the shadow cabinet.

You would think Barnaby would now conduct himself with polite restraint, but no. He wasted no time farting in the general direction of China, and America, only to be told by Abbot to now stop his public emissions.

Ironically, one of the best outcomes of promoting Barnaby to the front bench, is that he may finally prevented from airing his more off-tune, odorous odium.

UPDATE - it ain't gonna work out...

Phillip Coorey on the dillema facing the retail Liberal party:

Joyce rose with the full imprimatur of Minchin and Abbott but he drove a hard bargain. He wanted the key portfolio and demanded the shadow ministry be expanded by one so his entry did not result in a fellow National being punted. There are 14 Nationals in Parliament - nine MPs and five senators. Nationals make up 15 per cent of the Coalition caucus and 20 per cent of its shadow cabinet.

If the idea of promoting Joyce was to get him into the tent to curb his excesses, it failed miserably in week one.

....

There will be no reining in of Joyce. As he told the Herald on Tuesday: "It's not as though you have a personality transplant when you go into cabinet."

Being a practical peoples, I think Australians would just settle for a brain-transplant.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy