Beat surrender

The Jam's farwell hit in 1982 has an apposite lyric:

That bulls**t is bulls**t, it just goes by different names

A guest post by full time denier Paul Driessen at WUWT tells me that Paul Weller would have been more poetic if he had used the Lakota language:

tatonka chesli

Driessen, himself, could have chosen Klingon for all the good his stream of consciousness rant does him.  Facts are lacking.  But that's not the point here.  His op-ed piece is about misleading the blind rather than enlightening them.

To enlighten my readers, let me quote Mr Driessen:

We “skeptics” and “deniers” have never questioned the reality of climate change. We know global warming, global cooling and climate change are “real,” and have been throughout Earth’s history. What we deny are assertions that human CO2 emissions have replaced the complex solar, planetary and cosmic forces that caused previous changes, and that what we are experiencing now is unprecedented and likely to be catastrophic. What we insist on is solid evidence that alarmist claims have merit.

We believe in the scientific method. Hypotheses, assertions, models and scary scenarios must be supported by actual evidence, data and observations – before we acquiesce to demands that we hogtie our energy system, economy, jobs and living standards. Up to now they have presented no such evidence.

If only those two paragraphs represented a version of the truth that exists on this planet.  I don't think any climate scientists have ever suggested that complex solar, planetary and cosmic forces that caused previous changes are not still playing a part.  They just note that putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is unlikely to have no effect at all, especially as it has a very obvious effect when experiments are performed with it in the lab. This has been known for the best part of 150 years.  If Driessen wants solid evidence, it is there from 1860s onwards.  Or was there a conspiracy all the way back then? 

And as for the scientific method.  That's a bit rich coming from a contribution to a website as determinedly antiscientific as WattsUpWithThat.  The rich crop of failed hypotheses that get posted there show how little the scientific method holds them up and just how sure of their own fantasies these posters seem to be.  It is not, nor has it ever been, sufficient for someone to posit a hypothesis that is removed from physical reality the like of which Willis Eschenbach has been posting for years.  If the Earth has a homeostatic mechanism as he would have us believe, he needs to give evidence for that.  If he has none, then his claim should be labelled as just a claim. 

When some bad science is uncovered by the readers at WUWT, site master Anthony Watts is at a loss of what to do.  He cannot bring himself to denounce the science.  Yet when some good science that contradicts his personal point of view comes into his eyeline, he is hypocritical in his treatment of it.  Science is not perfect, but it has a way of correcting itself and it is by scrutiny and replication.

Driessen is nothing if not a persistent misinformer:

31,500 American scientists have signed the Oregon Petition dismissing fears of “catastrophic” global warming and climate disruption; over 1,000 international scientists dissent from manmade global warming claims. Claims of a “97% consensus” with the IPCCare pure baloney.

 Wow, the Oregon Petition.  Isn't that the one with characters from MASH and Ginger Spice in it?  Yes, it is.  And while we're about it, science doesn't proceed by petition.  So even if 31,500 American scientists, fictional characters and has been singers signed it, that doesn't actually make a difference to the veracity of the scientific claims.  It doesn't take much to turn up the fact that this petition is a pile of  tatonka chesli.

An American scientist, allegedly

And there's more:

The new NIPCC report – Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science – makes a compelling case that the IPCC hypotheses, models and scares have no basis in reality. The 1,018-page report convincingly and systematically debunks IPCC claims that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions are causing “dangerous” global warming and climate change – and that its computer models can be relied on as a credible basis for alarming climate forecasts and scenarios.

The NIPCC Summary for Policymakers is illuminating and easy to understand; its 14 pages should be required reading for legislators, regulators, journalists and anyone interested in climate change science.

For those not alert to this, NIPCC stands for Non-Governmental International something or other.  What it really means is Heartland Sort Of International Put Up Job On Climate Change and they have put out a thing called Climate Change Reconsidered II.  Compelling is hardly how it is being described.  Sunk without trace is more like it.  Is anyone actually reading it?  I doubt it.  Why?  Because it misrepresents science, leaves out inconvenient facts and is more like a Janet and John version of denial. 

Printed on absorbant paper, I hope

I often wonder if climate science deniers, science deniers of any hue, actually believe what they write.  I don't know.  It just feels like Driessen just doesn't have the heart to go, actually, boys, I've been wrong all these years.  He sounds like a prize fighter going into the ring for one last pay day, punch drunk, glass jawed, hoping he won't be humiliated, that he leaves the ring on his feet and not a stretcher.  He must know that very few believe what he says.  That the echo chamber of WUWT will sound with tepid praise and tired old cliches.  After all, he must get tired of being given the latest bits of research that point in the same direction, the other way to the one he is facing. 

So back to Paul Weller.