Andrew Bolt: liar, denier, and father

Andrew Bolt really is a piece of work, of the guilty, paranoid kind:

Today he is having a go at Clive Hamilton for trying to "trying to turn my children against me":

Leave my children alone, Hamilton

This is seriously creepy. Is Green extremist Clive Hamilton now trying to turn my children against me - and by warning them I’m a corrupt killer?

Hi there,

There’s something you need to know about your father.

Your dad’s job is to try to stop the government making laws to reduce Australia’s carbon pollution. He is paid a lot of money to do that by big companies who do not want to own up to the fact that their pollution is changing the world’s climate in very harmful ways.

Because of their pollution, lots of people, mostly poor people, are likely to die. They will die from floods, from diseases like dengue fever, and from starvation when their crops won’t grow anymore. The big companies are putting their profits before the lives of people.

And your dad is helping them.

There is something sick about a man who, having failed to convince the adults, feels his best option is to terrify their children

When you read all of Clive's piece, you realise that there is no mention of Andrew Bolt. But, Bolt is so convinced that Clive is specifically writing to his children, he dedicates his headline to the notion.

Wondering why he protests too much?

Maybe this can explain it--here is Andrew Bolt over a year ago:

ANOTHER week, and another student tells me of a teacher who’s turned preacher instead.

This student, a very honest boy, tells me he was asked on Tuesday to give a summary on global warming.

Naturally, he included one plain fact: the planet hadn’t warmed since 1998, according to satellite measurements.

Check with Britain’s Hadley Centre. Or with Dr Roy Spencer, US head of the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite.

No, no, no, said the teacher, brought in by the school to give a few lessons on learning techniques. You mustn’t believe such a thing. That was just put out by that Andrew Bolt, and, ha!, he was in a room of his own.

“Really?” replied my son.

Putting aside the obvious deception of using atmospheric measurements to make claims about the entire planet, to me this is clear evidence that Bolt not only sees himself as an AGW denial propagandist, but he also propagandises same to his son.

That he takes such umbrage at Hamilton's piece, yet takes his foul future-eating work home with him, just shows me how rank a hypocrite he is. That he doesn't dispute "he is paid a lot of money to do that by big companies who do not want to own up to the fact that their pollution is changing the world’s climate in very harmful ways" is his loudest admission yet.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Thought Experiment: Getting hot feet over cool headedness

In response to this:

Sydney is warm in theory, though
Andrew Bolt
Monday, November 02, 2009 at 12:09am


Still waiting for that warming:

SYDNEYSIDERS are repacking their winter woollies after the coldest October in 17 years.

I left this:

Imagine getting into a bathtub half filled with water at body temperature. Turn on the hot water tap so there is a little pressure, but not enough to scald you and lay back, so your ears are in water.

After a minute or so, as your feet and calves start to warm up, ask yourself whether your average body temperature has gone up.

Of course, it has gone up. You know that more heat has entered the bath, and the law of thermodynamics tell us the heat is going to transfer to our now relatively cooler body.

It would be pretty silly to argue that because our head is relatively cooler than our feet that the warming (increase in average body temperature) isn't happening.

Wonder how it will go? Will the snippers come out, or will I be given the the big B? Or will my proposed thought experiment be greeted with the vigorous curiosity of the open minded?


Global Warning Climate Change Energy

AGW deniers deny World Vision children

By day Andrew Bolt pumps out AGW denial propaganda that has its genesis in a handful of Exxon-Mobil supported think-tank workshops. By any measure it's distasteful stuff, with Andrew regularly branding 9 out of 10 Australians as alarmist, pagan, lefty, earth-worshipping, green-fascists who have fallen for the great global warming hoax.

Then he takes his work home with him, teaching his ten year old child to teach his classmates the cheap tricks of the AGW denial trade.

ANOTHER week, and another student tells me of a teacher who’s turned preacher instead.

This student, a very honest boy, tells me he was asked on Tuesday to give a summary on global warming.

Naturally, he included one plain fact: the planet hadn’t warmed since 1998, according to satellite measurements.

Check with Britain’s Hadley Centre. Or with Dr Roy Spencer, US head of the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite.

No, no, no, said the teacher, brought in by the school to give a few lessons on learning techniques. You mustn’t believe such a thing. That was just put out by that Andrew Bolt, and, ha!, he was in a room of his own.

“Really?” replied my son.

If that not enough of a cynical use of children, starting with his own son, to peddle fossil-fuelled climate-change denial, then today's effort sets his high water mark:

I’ve been a donor to World Vision for more than a decade. I’ve helped to publicise its work and urged you to support it, praising above all its commitment to giving the poor the direct help they need.

That’s now over. When my current sponsorships end, I will not renew. I will not donate a dollar more than I’ve already promised. An organisation I once admired for pragmatism has now fallen for the giddiest ideology of all. Under Tim Costello, so ignorant and alarmist that he blames global warming even for tsunamis, donors’ money is now being wasted on a great sham. A once-Christian organisation is now switching its focus from saving people to saving Nature, as it follows a neo-pagan gospel.

The latest evidence? From World Vision’s jobs page:

What are these offending job vacancies that would cause Bolt to preach that more poverty-struck children must not be helped now? Strategic Technical Advisor (Carbon and Poverty Reduction Facility - Asia Pacific), Campaigns Leader - Climate Change, and Project Manager.

Andrew Bolt: affirmed yet cognition challenged

Who still does not appear to understand that the definition of climate change can take in extreme cold?

Oops. I made a mistake in today’s column when I said that despite all this alleged global warming, Australia’s record temperatures had not been broken for decades. Reader Cameron says I’ve been proved wrong - and on the very day my column appeared:

A new Australian record was set early this morning, a temperature of minus 13 degrees, at Charlotte Pass on the Snowy Mountains. This is the lowest temperature recorded anywhere in Australia in April and is 13 below the average.

I stand both corrected and affirmed.

Affirmed as a dummy.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Andrew Bolt: The climate concerned are Nazis

Andrew Bolt reckons "the Global Day of Climate Action, which, to judge from this Friends of the Earth ad requires greenshirts to stage rallies eerily similar to the ones once seen at Nuremberg".



What an uncut dick-head! What a prize scumbag this Andrew Bolt is. Only he can be flippant about 6 million murdered Jews and Gypsies, and 80 million dead all up. Put it down to the evidential success of his self-lobotomy.

Here we see the outcome of the operation -- watch closely as he misinterprets a straight-forward graph: 

UPDATE

And with sea levels now refusing to rise, too, I guess the Rudd Government can ice its policy and plans to take in the Tuvalu islanders as “environmental refugees”. 

See, lobotomy successful. What? More proof, I hear you say:

UPDATE 2

Global warming theory is still being questioned, despite the efforts of the mainstream media and the Left to declare the debate closed. From a new study published in Climate Dynamics:

Evidence is presented that the recent worldwide land warming has occurred largely in response to a worldwide warming of the oceans rather than as a direct response to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) over land… Although not a focus of this study, the degree to which the oceans themselves have recently warmed due to increased GHG, other anthropogenic, natural solar and volcanic forcings, or internal multi-decadal climate variations is a matter of active investigation.

And in news just at hand, Bolt's demonstrated ability to survive without a brain has thrown the whole medical ethical area of when to turn off a life-support system into chaos.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

LOLdenialists goes vrial

My entry... LOLlronbolt

moar funny pictures

Inspired by Tim Lambert, who was inspired by Jennifer Ouellette of Cocktail Party Physics who came up with LOLdenialists.

Update: Thread has been picked up by Nexus 6, who is always good for a laugh



Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Starbucks downsizes — Australia froths

Much has been written in media and blogs about Starbucks' retreat from their strategy of market saturation. A fresh announcement about the closure of 61 Australian stores from tomorrow has awakened Australian punditry, and everyone is excitedly offering their opinions. The thread is buzzing on the bus, by email, in letters to the editor, on opinion blogs, over talk-back radio, the lot.

Is this coming out of a collective caffeination? Seems seems the whole country is slightly over-protective — first sign of an addiction — about the morning wake-up shot. With the threat of the take-over drug-gang receding, coffee-crazed citizens are vocally seeing them off their local turf.

It's unbelievable who is leaping out of the cappuccino closet: Andrew Bolt shows, underneath it all, he is privately a latte-lover. A self-congratulating, chattering-class connoisseur.

Our coffee culture has two elements fatal to Starbucks. First, influenced by the Italians and Greeks in particular, we like our coffees stronger and straighter. Second, coffee for us is as much about relationships as a product. Which means boutique beats supermarket every time.

You get that roasting every day on, Lygon Street, Melbourne, or Rundle Mall, Adelaide, or Victoria Street Sydney, what a surprise to know Australia's premier AGW denier is a sipper who sinks the slipper into US cultural and commercial imperialism.

OK, that's a stretch, I've had a coffee, but you get the drift.

And talking about Melbourne, they can't hide their conceit in claiming single-handed victory:

And now, with the American coffee giant announcing the closure of 61 Australian stores from tomorrow — 16 of them in Melbourne, including the Lygon Street venture — Australia's home of discerning coffee drinkers appears to have been vindicated.

"Melburnians would argue to their death that you can get a better coffee in Melbourne than anywhere else in Australia," says Andrew Brown-May, a senior lecturer in history at Melbourne University and author of a book on Melbourne's coffee past. "We've actually got, not just superficially but deep in our culture, a great knowledge and appreciation of coffee and certainly a mythology about it."

Hmmm, wonder where most of the other 35 stores were locally out-competed, Melbourne? Well, 17 of them were in Sydney. Put that in your double-shot and froth Mebl. What snobs you all are.

Going back to the thread, much of the Australian chatter has been a triumphant cultural rejection of the US franchise mentality viz coffee. Others rejected the palate; "tastes cr@p", too much choice, no cappuccinos on the menu. But Andrew Brown-May, an author on the Melbourne coffee scene and history, gives reasons to be cautious about gloating:

But don't think the downsizing of Starbucks has been all thanks to you. The trimming down of the Seattle-based coffee goliath, not just in Australia but in the 600 stores to be closed in the United States, may not have entirely been a result of the anti-brand, anti-consumer revolution. Nor was it especially about coffee.

"In the US they were new; there wasn't anybody else doing this. I think Australia
has had a lot of cafes well established, so I think there was just more entrenched competition," Deakin University marketing professor Michael Polonsky says. "Any street in Melbourne you could get a good coffee, so (Starbucks) had to be substantially different."

Starbucks had attempted the Coca-Cola strategy of being available wherever people looked, Polonsky says. But it was its market saturation that was its undoing.

Writing in The Christian Science Monitor, Temple University historian Bryant Smith argues that when Starbucks began, it offered Americans an entree into a status-filled world with is own language of ventis, grandes, Tazo teas and special-blend coffees, all stamped with the company's distinctive green logo.

But by becoming too common — Starbucks first opened in Australia in 2000 and expanded to 84 stores in eight years — the company "violated the economic principles of cultural scarcity", Smith says.

So the novelty just wore off.

But in a city steeped in coffee, and coffee of a particular preparation, Andrew Brown-May thinks it may also have to do with taste.

"Starbucks coffee does taste different, and to many Australian palates has an over-roasted, almost burnt taste to it," he says. "And all the syrups and additives and so on, I think we're more sophisticated than that, actually."

Snobs? Us? Never.

Dewi Cooke is an Age reporter.

Since everyone has had their shot, I might as well have one too. My theory why Starbucks failed is because their standard lowest wages 17 / 18 year old coffee-person just does not cut it against a trained barista. When you find one who can make the perfect cup for you, and remember each time without you asking, that's gold. And because they are around coffee all the time, they usually can talk. I guess this is pretty much the relationship point Bolt was making.

L. Ron Bolt hits one million eyeballs

Credit where due, Andrew Bolt has been the MSM journalist to cross over into blogland most successfully. July saw his blog break the one million page impressions mark. Big in anyone's language.

So of course he is asserting his bragging rights, using something that is fast becoming his latest shtick — the Andrew Bolt Graph:



This one even has a trend-line. Congratulations on that too, and no, the plateau at the end of the trend-line is not 12 months of cooling.

L. Ron Bolt denies AGW thrice (today)

L. Ron Bolt bashes his pulpit, berating anyone who prints politically on climate change:

Global warming believer Tim Colebatch in The Age today tries to bat away an inconvenient truth - that the world hasn’t actually warmed for a decade. But more fervent than informed, he simply proves he doesn’t understand the argument, and probably doesn’t want to.

AS THE Liberal Party turns into a battleground between those who believe Australia should do its share to tackle global warming and those who deny that global warming exists....

Actually, that’s not the line of battle at all, Tim. For instance, you can believe global warming exists, but still think it crazy to try to stop it (the Bjorn Lomborg line until recently). Or, as in my case, you can think global warming indeed existed, at least until 1998, and may well resume - yet still think it’s important to consider the fact that there hasn’t been any warming for a decade, against all predictions. And then doubt, therefore, that man caused what warming has occured.

That, in fact, is the real argument that you so crassly define and try to dismiss.

...the graph at right is worth seeing.

I don’t have access to your graph as it appeared in The Age, Tim, but it is essentially this one below, and from exactly the same source:

But there is one modification. See that predicted spike in temperature for 2007, Tim? Didn’t happen, did it? Compare that prediction to the real data of 2007 in your own graph, Tim. Turned out to be a colder year, as is this one. Yet the organisation that produced this graph, and that prediction, is the one you rely on to assure us the great global warming apocalypse continues its relentless course. Still trust them, Tim?

That organisation that produced that graph turns out not to be the UK Meteorological Office and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia that Tim says he sourced his graph from:

The data comes from the UK Meteorological Office and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia… It’s one of just three data sources on global temperatures, but the one deniers like to use.

It happens to be a BBC produced graph L. Ron. If you click on the link, you will find this nugget that you withheld from your readers:

The 60% probability that 2007 would set a new record meant that it "was more likely than not", he concluded.

So the BBC editorialised the graph, it was not produced by the Met, as L. Ron unhappily thunders on about. There were no predictions offered by them, just probabilities.

Technorati Tags: global warming, climate change

Rocket scientist brought back to earth

In the comments section of the blog of L. Ron Bolt, a cry of dissent. Or was it a straight-out diss?

Ezzthetic replied to Alan of Sydney
Mon 21 Jul 08 (06:20pm)

I would have asked asked her to address the statement Dr. David Evans posed in last Friday’s The Australian

She might have asked you why you are relying on the views of someone who is just a computer programmer.

Evans was a “consultant” a the Australian Greenhouse Office, but not as an environmental expert (which he isn’t). He was merely writing a Windows desktop application for them.

Google cache will get you every time. What a poseur "rocket scientist" this Dr Evans is.

Now what I just is did is called argumentum ad hominem, and this is perfectly legitimate — but only when used against specific denialists, like AGW deniers.

On the other hand, Tim Lambert has chosen to reply to the argument itself, and the not attack the person making the argument.

UPDATE
Desmogblog clear the air: Evans is a self-promoting computer geek, not a science geek.


Technorati Tags: Global warming, climate change

Garnaut Draft: Critic discounts it by 33%

The 537 page Garnaut CLIMATE CHANGE REVIEW DRAFT REPORT is out today, and already we know it's hurting Australians.

We know exactly who, too. L. Ron Bolt is already clawing at the report, and he hasn't even got to the Table of Contents:

Garnaut goes for the scare

UPDATE

Ross Garnaut’s 360-page blueprint for tackling the urgent crisis of the end of the warming world is printed on paper. But, says Garnaut on page 2, it’s environmentally kind paper:

9Lives80, composed of 80 percent post-consumer fibre....

Pity that this is paper that’s actually made in Italy, requiring lots of gassy transport to bring here. What hope of purity for the rest of us, then, when the gurus set this example?

(Thanks to reader Owen.)

Or should that be reader Pwn?

Don't it jest drive you nuts when deniers spear us well-meaning non-deniers with such sharp shards of perspicacity? Here is the whole statement that Andrew's playing Gotcha Garnaut with.

This report is printed on 9Lives 80, a paper composed of 80% post-consumer fibre and 20% totally chlorine-free pulp? 9Lives 80 is a Forest Stewardship Council mixed-source certified paper identifying that all virgin pulp is derived from well-managed forests and manufactured by ISO 14001 certified mills?
All inks used in the printing of this report are vegetable based.

Of course Andrew knows that ISO 14001 is the environmental management planning ISO certification? The Italian paper company, Burgo Group, must have strict compliance and reporting standards. In a trice I was downloading their Paper Field 2007 Environmental Report for an statement on their transport, logistics and distribution.

Eureka.

The path towards sustainable growth also includes responsible logistics and transport management: moving and storing goods, in fact, produces noise, consumes energy and creates traffic, therefore, emissions into the environment. We have organised an approach to tackle these problems that leads to benefits in terms of savings, efficiency, safety and less pollution. Movement of materials arriving at and leaving our mills, production planning and warehouse management is controlled at Group level.

Thanks to precise coordination of goods and raw material flows we have managed to limit movements, so reducing the noise this creates, emissions from vehicles (fork-lifters and trucks) and risks of damage to finished products.

As far as possible we at the Burgo Group try to reduce road transport by resorting to alternative methods. We use railways, the multimode system that consists in a combination of truck, ship and rail transport, and short-range coastal sea transport, also encouraged by the European Commission. During the year the PM9 was installed at Verzuolo we expanded rail facilities from 6,500 to 19,000 wagons per year, both arriving and departing.

Our Duino mill has an internal railway line to handle arrival of raw materials and is linked directly to already organised major European printing centres and those that will be connected in the future.

So Andrew's caught out again, and rightly so. If a company bothers enough about customers and the environment enough to implement costly ISO 14001 compliance, is it too much to ask newspaper opinion journalists to implement simple research before snidely sniping from the sidelines?

I note he didn't even download the Garnaut Draft before criticising: It's a 537 page blueprint, not a 360 page blueprint. Andrew's discount is by 33% — before even reading the table of contents.

What hope of an honest debate for the rest of us, then, when the L. Ron Bolt sets this example?

Technorati Tags: global warming, climate change

Bolt's gay-baiting, homophobic base

But he's not having any of it.

No really, in a Darwin was a Christian thread today, Andrew Bolt let slip that he thinks his conservative Christian readership 'base' is 'gay-baiting' and homophobic, when asked why he promotes Christianity as an agnostic.

Andrew, aren’t you an agnostic? So why are you coming out swinging for the Christian faith?
AJFA of Moorooka
Mon 30 Jun 08 (02:05pm)

Andrew played a straight bat.

Have I? I’ve simply let someone state some facts, and added a logical conclusion of my own. Nothing more can be inferred than that I prefer facts over propaganda, regardless of what side of the argument main gain or lose.

Andrew Bolt
Mon 30 Jun 08 (02:42pm)

But another commenter smoked Andrew out of hiding.

Tom replied to AJFA
Mon 30 Jun 08 (03:04pm)

To AJFA

Andrew has claimed to be agnostic, but is also very careful not to offend his Christian conservative base by pushing it too hard.

In the same way he accuses artists of lacking courage in attacking Christianity rather than Islam, so too Andrew himself generally attacks the easier targets (which around here is Islam) whilst playing to his base.

Then something bizarre happened.

ANDREW REPLIES: Wow. Suddenly I understand myself. Everything I thought I said because I believed it is now revealed to me as the merest populist positioning. I’m so ashamed I think I’ll just retire right now. One thing still puzzles me though.
Why, given my crude pampering of my “base”, am I so damning of gay-baiting and homophobia? Why not simply announce I’ve found God? Why criticise so strongly The Passion of Christ? But you’ll have a theory for that too, right?

And, then it was too late.

Nick replied to AJFA

Mon 30 Jun 08 (03:36pm)

Who suggested Andrew’s base was gay-baiting homophobes? Looks like a very convincing response... to the wrong argument.

You know you’ve hit a raw nerve when the sarcasm-meter hits 11!

Cheers

Tom replied to AJFA
Mon 30 Jun 08 (04:01pm)

LOL

Good point Nick...it seems Andrew has a very narrow view of this “base” that he apparently doesn’t go out of his way to appeal to...no-one else identified them as gay-baiting homophobes

His own words have damned him (or in this case them)...reminds me a little of this anti-Obama rant a couple of months ago

Dave replied to AJFA
Mon 30 Jun 08 (04:03pm)

Why, given my crude pampering of my “base”, am I so damning of gay-baiting and homophobia?

Did Andrew just throw his base under a bus?

Ooooppppssss.

Andrew's indication he hold parts of his readership in contempt, "damning" is his description, could also explain why he is so sloppy with logic when pimping for big fossil-fuel.

But of course: hiking prices of such a necessity to “stop” a warming that actually stopped in 1998 and would be unstoppable anyway is hardly something a sane person could support.

In passing off multiple yet contradictory positions on AGW as an appeal to sanity, AB is also saying that he thinks his readers are a bunch of dumb-arses who won't notice so he can get away with laziness.

And they don't. And he does. But, if someone does highlight the contradiction, they are derided by the pink dot skeptic gang as a lefty, Al Gore / Castro lover, or the like.

Don't mean anything by any of this... I'm just saying...

Truth brought to bear on Bolt's hypocricy

In another Andrew Bolt signature piece of twisted green-hate tenuously stuck together with gnarled logic, Hypocrisy - Hard to Bear, we get this beauty:

And ssshhh. Don’t mention that the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre says the extent of Arctic ice is in fact “greater than this time last year”.

Tim Lambert picks him up: Andrew Bolt goes quote mining

That quote was brutally ripped from its context on this page, which says:

Arctic sea ice still on track for extreme melt ...

Although ice extent is slightly greater than this time last year, the average decline rate through the month of May was 8,000 square kilometers per day (3,000 square miles per day) faster than last May. Ice extent as the month closed approached last May's value.

And this month it's been running neck and neck with last year's melt.

A hand-full of Bolt's commentators point out the fault in his argument.

Hmmm, is the author’s point that environmentalists and journalists have an environmental impact, and therefore scientists are wrong if they think increased greenhouse gas concentrations won’t enhance the greenhouse effect? Or that polar bears can kill people, so therefore we shouldn’t care if they go extinct? Or that some people writesilly things on the internet, therefore it’s okay to quote the US National Snow and Ice Data Center out of context?

Link to Lambert's piece

Steve L of Canada (Reply)
Fri 20 Jun 08 (09:23am)

Andrew Bolt says: ‘Don’t mention that the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre says the extent of Arctic ice is in fact “greater than this time last year”.’ It does and the same report, published on its website http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ , also says the ice is thinner and more likely to melt. The NSIDC also states: ‘Although ice extent is slightly greater than this time last year, the average decline rate through the month of May was 8,000 square kilometers per day (3,000 square miles per day) faster than last May.’ The report adds: ‘Average Arctic Ocean surface air temperatures in May were generally higher than normal. While anomalies were modest (+1 to 3 degrees Celsius, +2 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit) over most of the region, temperatures over the Baffin Bay region were as much as 6 degrees C (11 degrees F) above normal.’ Oh such irony, when you point your accusing pen at others for selective reporting. Hypocrisy? Pretentious? Moi?

Stuart Nuttall of Exeter, England (Reply)

And ssshhh. Don’t mention that the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre says the extent of Arctic ice is in fact “greater than this time last year”.

Tim Lambert provides some balance for this cherry picked from context.

strange days indeed (Reply)

Arctic sea ice is on a long-term downward trend. There is a bit more this year because of an exceptionally warm 2007 which caused a decline even greater than the norm. This year the coverage has reverted to the normal downward trend, which means a temporary increase over 2007.

Exactly the same argument applies to 1998, which was abnormally hot because of the El Nino fluctuation. It’s only by picking 1998 that Andrew is able to make this “it hasn’t warmed” claim. It has warmed since 1997 and since 1999.

Polar bear populations are increasing because hunting them has been forbidden. This has nothing to do with the extent of the ice. Just as it is a mistake to focus on one year (2008 ice or 1998 temperature) it is a mistake to focus on one species. Most studies say that large numbers of species are headed for extinction if global warming cannot be mitigated.

James (Reply)

Arctic sea ice melt ‘even faster’

Arctic sea ice is melting even faster than last year, despite a cold winter.

Data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) shows that the year began with ice covering a larger area than at the beginning of 2007.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7461707.stm

ANDREW of Melbourne (Reply)

The only sign of a possible response from Bolt was this.

Can someone please tell me why my comment from earlier today did not make it onot Andrew’s Blog??? Or was it censored when he was proven to be a liar.

Trebby of Sydney (Reply)

Not bearing up well under your own hypocrisy, AB,?

Also looks like you may have suffered a spate of White Hat Trolling! Good to see your argument being opened like a tin can, calmly, rationally, and indisputably. The only honourable thing left for you to do is retract.

But, I am not bullish about that. In fact, I'm positively...

Technorati Tags: global warming, climate change, denialists, skeptics

Flooded with pink dots of deceit

In L. Ron Bolt's latest ministering to his Carbon Pinkies, he uses the three dot trick favoured by sceptics:

Greenpeace drowns the truth, and now may be made to pay:

Greenpeace gets pink spot #1, straight up. Truth — #2. Prospect of comeuppance for imagined slight — pink spot in 3rd spot.

But who is really drowning the truth? Here's Bolt's take.

A group of real estate developers and property owners in La Manga del Mar Menor - a spit of sandy, low-lying coastal land and Murcia’s premier beach resort - are threatening to take Greenpeace to court over its graphic predictions of what global warming may do to the area, which they say have caused house prices to plummet.

The lawsuit, which the plaintiffs plan to present unless Greenpeace agrees to an out of court settlement of almost EUR 30 million in damages, comes more than six months after La Manga featured prominently in a photo book published by the environmental organisation…

(T)he book, Photoclima, shows digitally modified photos of La Manga submerged in water with only the tops of hotels, apartment blocks and palm trees emerging from the blue Mediterranean…

“We want to create alarm and a call to action,” Juan López de Uralde, Greenpeace’s director in Spain, said when the book was published.

I’ll say it did. The truth, of course, that even the UN’s alarmist IPCC predicts sea level rises at the unlikely worst this century of just 59 cms. Let’s hope Greenpeace is brought to account for such deceptive and alarmist nonsense.

Next: Al Gore.

And here's what google shows he and his source have left out.

Greenpeace hopes to spur Spain and other industrial nations into action with the publication, which also uses statistics from the UN panel on climate change and visually examines the potential of reduced crop yields, parched waterways, coastal flooding, land loss, salination of ground water, forest fires, and glacial retreat.

Greenpeace’s director in Spain, Juan López de Uralde, said the intention of the book was not to use “scientific rigour” but to “create alarm and a call to action” via visuals. Europe projects an average rise in its sea levels of up to .9 meters by 2100. Photoclima features one of Europe’s premier destinations to dramatize the landscape of the future and the subsequent shape-shifting dilemmas of global proportions.

That post was dated November 29, 2007. Over six months ago. If Greenpeace claimed up front that it was art, I see no cause for complaint by Bolt, or the real estate developers. Rising sea levels has been on the cards for 20 years. Caveat emptor.

The omission is pointed out by one of his commenter, AJ, but to no avail. An rash of pink spots breaks out amongst the sceptics, and nobody can wait for Greenpeace to get what's owing.

There could be some interesting implications depending on which way this action goes. If denialist use hyperbole to claim mitigating climate change will ruin the economy, why shouldn't Greenpeace use hyperbole to claim climate change will ruin our habitats? Why shouldn't the real estate developers sue the denialists for pushing their misleading propaganda?

Bolty's dotty deniers play with pink swirls

L. Ron Bolt and his Carbon Pinkies are organising quickly. They have a bumper-sticker, a t-shirt design, and now this poster.

From their recently savaging of the arts community, you would think this bunch were creative savages. But no. It's good to see they are not so literal that they are going to be constrained by the tight pink dot brief given to them by their Sceptic-In-Chief.

And that the SIC is not so inflexible he can't recognise a good, out-of-brief idea when it is staring him in the face. A tight pink swirl can pass for pink dot when it's spinning... so thumbs up from Bolt. It's ruled in, and it's on.

Decisive leadership bears fruit, and Australia's new army of sceptics now have their version of Al Gore's evil documentary poster upon which to proclaim their position.

Which is that AGW scepticism is a convenient untruth!

?

Not so bright, these pink dots, are they?

Spotted by Bolty's dotty denialists

Spotted a fair bit of traffic coming in from Andrew Bolt Blog today, after posting my piece on his pink spot campaign last night. Turns out one of his regular commenters, strange days indeed, spotted that I captured his comment in my piece, and had gone back and bragged about it.

Any feedback is good, and the only complaint about my blog seems to be the Global Warming Watch line, "THE ONLY SAFE NUCLEAR POWER PLANT IS 150,000,000 KILOMETERS AWAY” by Boltite grumbler, "The Greek". No faulting of my logic, though. Just didn't like me saying it.

UPDATE:

Spotted that the steady traffic from Andrew Bolt Blog stopped after 7:00pm, which is when one of the Boltites must have spotted this post and lagged to Andrew, who removed strange days indeed's boast post, 'n cut me off. Easy come, easy go.

Tackle a climate change troll

The most effective thing you can do to fight climate change is not to buy efficient-energy appliances, convert to green energy, or walk to the shops, etc. Though don't let me dissuade you. Nor is glaring at that poor 17 year old checkout chick for offering you non biodegradable plastic bags, angry as they make you.

Nah, the best thing you can do to expedite the revolution, and bring on the carbon economy is to go and take on a AGW denial propagandist, on their own turf.

It's these people that have been at the forefront of the well-documented, fossil-fuel industry campaign to create doubt in the publics mind about the link between co2 emissions. And they have been successful, the extent to which they have can be shown by the late ratification of Kyoto by Australia,and the non-ratification by the US. And more recently, by the 0.5% increase in carbon dioxide levels between 2006 to 2007 over the 30 year trend of 1.65 ppm.

So how do you take on a Denier, and to what end?
If you are a normal person with a good work-life balance, the following is not for you. But the secret suburban subversive, or debating champion, or reformed hacker, might like to break out at an AGW denial blog, like (in Australia) Jennifer Marohasy, Andrew Bolt Blog, or Tim Blair, and expose their fossil-fuel propaganda for what it is. How?

Seize their myths. Squeeze hard
Check out their latest global warming posts, and you will quickly identify which recycled myth the author is peddling. Read a few post to get a sense of their style, before deconstructing their myth. You can do this with the aid of the diagnostics from specialised AGW denial myth-busting bloggers, some who are listed below:

Flex that Deltoid
Coby Beck had great success with his original blog, A Few Things Ill Considered, which had a great series on How to Talk to a Sceptic on a myth by myth basis. He was then was invited to blog at Science Blogs. His new home: A Few Things Ill Considered.

John Cook, an ex-physicist (majoring in solar physics at the University of Queensland) has a neat list of every skeptic argument encountered online as well as how often each argument is used in his excellent Skeptical Science blog.

These two bloggers can help you easily identify the basic argument, and simply explain how to busted the myth. Desmog blog, by Kevin Grandia, a PR industry insider, breaks the denialist spin down, simply. Or as they say, the are Clearing the PR Pollution that Clouds Climate Science.

Once you have busted a few myths and have a repertoire you can confidently (but politely) bust, you may be ready to read the more scientific blogs.

Andrew Lambert Of the University of Technology, Sydney, runs Deltoid, where he occasionally eviscerates the denialist meme du jour for a bit of fun. Eli Rabbit has more fun doing this more often with his Rabett Run. Real Climate is a blog providing commentary on climate science news by working climate scientists for the interested public. They recently debunked a favourite of the deniers: that the majority of scientist in the 70s predicted a coming ice age. Tamino is the alias of a working, formidable climate scientist who runs Open Mind.

Yea, but Why?
Because they did it first. And, they are still doing it. This denial is funded by big fossil-fuel, manufactured by thinktanks like the Heartland Institute, CEI, (see Exxon-Secrets.org) and the myths are disseminated by their shills, usually opinion journalists or professional deniers like our own Professor Robert (Bob) Carter.

If you can't stop them at the source, and the Royal Society couldn't stop them, you can bust the myth at its endpoint. Expose it where you see it, politely but firmly. Stop the misinformation in its track. Let me know if you do, and I'll post your efforts up. I'm want an army of well-informed bloggers prepared to spend 5 minutes every other day identifying genuine AGW denialist propaganda, and 10 minutes politely debunking any inaccuracies. The object is to neutralise the impressions created by the fossil-fuel indsutry's 20 year campaign that may help delay tackling the problem with all haste.

Hook-up for White Hat Trolling
Director of the Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability at the University of Adelaide, Professor Barry W Brook, has pinged these climate change 'sceptics, denialists, contrarians, delayers or delusionists' as Internet trolls. It's not original, The Ergosphere argues that the collective noun is an irritation of trolls. These climate trolls slink into science sites with a public interface, and loudly pretend there still is a scientific debate about what causes global warming, intending to mislead.

White Hat Trolling is the reverse: It is fronting up at junk-science blogs and news groups, in this case those campaigning to confuse the public about climate change, to rebut and debunk their unsound arguments, in this way exposing their campaigns.

Expose the Deniers' Tactics
Remember: The purpose is to expose the tactics of the deniers by attacking their logic not their persons. A White Hat Troll never gets personal. The desired impression to leave, is that the 'debate', that deniers say still rages, is really an astroturfing campaign funded by the fossil-fuel industry to give the impression the scientific jury is still out on the causes on global warming.

Where to next? Well, put you hand up and leave a comment or a question before you take on a denier, and I'll keep posting more on the subject, and hopefully some of your efforts.

Trolling the climate trolls

Professor Barry W Brook is Director of the Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability at the University of Adelaide. He warns against engaging with climate change deniers on science blogs, likening them to Internet trolls:

"Don't feed the troll!" This is a common admonition in the expanding science blogosphere - at least the rational quarters.

Trolls, in the internet vernacular, are people who intentionally post false or controversial messages to gain attention or foment a conflicting style of debate. Most remain shielded within the anonymous confines of their online pseudonym. A rare but vocal few are sufficiently emboldened by self-confidence (or hubris) to speak out in public.

For the long-standing "debate" over the relative merits of evolution versus creationism, they usually style themselves as "creation scientists" or "intelligent designists". In climate science and policy, those few apparently well-educated people who continue to deny the now vast body of scientific knowledge and analysis on the causes and consequences of global warming are variously called sceptics, denialists, contrarians, delayers or delusionists. Whatever the label you attach to them, they are all cut of the same anti-intellectual cloth.

Their business is the dissemination of disinformation, doubt and unscientific nonsense. One of their most regular ploys is to leverage the widespread lack of public appreciation of how science operates. The scientific process of theoretical postulates, hypothesis testing, critical evaluation (and re-evaluation) of ever accumulating empirical evidence, model validation and peer review is inherently complex and often technical.

Quick diversion to a bugbear of mine: "Internet" is capitalised.

Meanwhile, back under the bridge at Andrew Bolt Blog, the good Professor's characterisations has Andrew raising his hand to say, 'Who me?':

UPDATE

Reader Elsie notes the Professor’s word for those who disagree on apocalyptic man-made global warming:

Trolls.

I notice that Andrew has finally accepted man-made global warming, and now seems to only be against people saying man-made global warming could be apocalyptic. A cartoon at the excellent Skeptical Science blog (as recommended by the good Prof. himself) exposes the logic supporting Andrew's numerous positions on the subject over the years. And it's a clever parody of the processed meat he throws to his gaggle murder irritation of climate trolls, on a daily basis:



Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Berks in our backyard

Looks like we have our very own astroturfing outfit in Australia called the Australian Environment Foundation (AEF). Don Burke of Burk's Backyard is the chairman, and he chairs a quality crew — some of whom are presenting at their Rydges Carlton meeting in Melbourne over the next two days. Andrew Bolt is pumped and pumping (tyres apparently).

Prof Bob Carter, the environmental scientist, will talk on the “myths of climate change”, showing it’s not clear man is to blame for any warming.

Entomologist Rick Roush will explain the benefits of biotechnology in a state that has—for no rational reason—banned genetically modified food crops that have been grown safely by our big competitors for years.

Ziggy Switkowski, who led an inquiry into nuclear power, will again prove that if we want electricity that doesn’t emit greenhouse gases, we can’t beat nuclear, so ignore the scares.

And Gunns’ resources manager will tell why the $2 billion pulp mill it hopes to build in Tasmania’s Tamar Valley is not the poisonous menace that green crusaders are trying to paint.

Wonder if we can reverse engineer the list of industries and special interest groups that provide funding for the AEF? Let's see, Bob Carter... well, he does not believe in global warming, so that would be a fossil fuel industry link. Then we have the GM industry, the nuclear industry and, well, Gunns. I didn't want to mentions companies they are well known, but there you go, Gunns. They are linked to the Institute of Public Affairs. Hardly your environmentally minded group. More your right-wing think tank.

Here's the programme. Oh, and here are the sponsors: Monsanto (GM), and Auscott Limited among them.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Global warming denialist scrambles for Bolt hole

It had to happen at some time. That people who make a living casting doubt about the scientific consensus of global warming realise the wheels are falling off their bandwagon. Witness this pitiful bleat that Andrew Bolt concludes with, in his latest carping, and tell me how moved you were.

Face facts: There’s no place now for my kind of petty carping. Just go to campaign central and read the inspiring words of Tim Flannery, Al Gore and others. Join today’s chat with Peter Garrett.

Be improved, and come back here to tell me how moved you were. And who might employ me now that I’ve done my dash.

My god, it's finally sinking in! Poor Bolt. Hope it was all worth it in terms of your children's education fund, if 'Still Not Sorry' flops. There, I plugged it for you, you have to relax the ban and post my comment now. It is going to be fascinating to follow up on how you survive your credibility self-immolation. Tell your sponsors there may still be a few more pennies in the Boltskeptics yet. Schadenfreude ain't pretty, but it can pay the bills. And, you know it makes sense, there are more of us than Boltstrokers when it comes to climate change.

On the other hand, you could strike out on your own (i.e., approach the fossil-fuel funded think-tanks to finance your own blog). Don't forget, you first read it here.


Global Warning Climate Change Energy