Friday, November 09, 2007

The Left Out-FREEPS The Right: Climate Audit Rejected As Best Science Blog

I try to pay as little attention to these on-line polls as possible, but since the weblog awards give a site a certain amount of real world credibility, it is a good thing that Bad Astronomy won, and a good that Climate Audit lost, in the category of best science blog.

And, let me point out that Steve's lament over at CA, where he expresses surprise that this has become a left/right issue, is either incredibly naive or disingenuous. His own politics are identifiably right, he has spent his career been courted/used by a Republican congress, and his "scientific" results generally only get play on Fox news and sites like Newsbusters, where the motto is "Exposing and Combating Liberal Media Bias".

In fact, it is probably a mistake to consider Climate Audit (and sites like it) a science blog in the first place. It is more like an on-line social gathering point for, as I like to call them, "wing-nuts with spreadsheets": anti-science Conservatives with rudimentary math skills. Cyber-caves where Conservatives may go and let the world pass them by while they spin out the conspiracy theory of the day.

PS: Don't know if I just missed it earlier, but the folks at weblog have written:

RESULTS ARE NOT FINAL FOR THIS POLL! This poll is still being checked for excessive voting from individual machines. If excess voting is found it will be noted and the votes will be removed. The winner should be announced Monday.

So hold the bubbly.

PPS. Some folks at CA are claiming that the poll got hacked. Of course it got hacked! It's a online poll! The only question is how many times and in how many different ways? Tellinya blog has the scoop on one possible method used. It's owner tells me he could deliver about 2,500 votes per minute.

PPPS. Welogs is officially calling it a tie.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Weather Channel Founder: Global Warming ‘Greatest Scam in History’

Intro by Joe D’Aleo, Icecap, CCM
I was privileged to work with John Coleman, the founder of The Weather Channel in the year before it became a reality and then for the first of the 6 years I was fortunate to be the Director of Meteorology. No one worked harder than John to make The Weather Channel a reality and to make sure the staffing, the information and technology was the very best possible at that time. John currently works with KUSI in San Diego. He posts regularly. I am very pleased to present his latest insightful post.

By John Coleman

It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create an illusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental whacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the “research” to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus.

Environmental extremists, notable politicians among them, then teamed up with movie, media and other liberal, environmentalist journalists to create this wild “scientific” scenario of the civilization threatening environmental consequences from Global Warming unless we adhere to their radical agenda. Now their ridiculous manipulated science has been accepted as fact and become a cornerstone issue for CNN, CBS, NBC, the Democratic Political Party, the Governor of California, school teachers and, in many cases, well informed but very gullible environmentally conscientious citizens. Only one reporter at ABC has been allowed to counter the Global Warming frenzy with one 15 minute documentary segment.

I do not oppose environmentalism. I do not oppose the political positions of either party. However, Global Warming, i.e. Climate Change, is not about environmentalism or politics. It is not a religion. It is not something you “believe in.” It is science; the science of meteorology. This is my field of life-long expertise. And I am telling you Global Warming is a non-event, a manufactured crisis and a total scam. I say this knowing you probably won’t believe a me, a mere TV weatherman, challenging a Nobel Prize, Academy Award and Emmy Award winning former Vice President of United States. So be it.

I have read dozens of scientific papers. I have talked with numerous scientists. I have studied. I have thought about it. I know I am correct. There is no run away climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril. I am incensed by the incredible media glamour, the politically correct silliness and rude dismissal of counter arguments by the high priest of Global Warming.

In time, a decade or two, the outrageous scam will be obvious. As the temperature rises, polar ice cap melting, coastal flooding and super storm pattern all fail to occur as predicted everyone will come to realize we have been duped. The sky is not falling. And, natural cycles and drifts in climate are as much if not more responsible for any climate changes underway. I strongly believe that the next twenty years are equally as likely to see a cooling trend as they are to see a warming trend. See John’s full blog story here.. See John’s forecast blog on the KUSI site here.

Anonymous said...

Andrew Bolt comments from Australia:

The telling thing about the global warming faith is that it's preached almost entirely by hypocrites. As you're about to see in tropical technicolour next month. You see, more often than not a global warming prophet is a frequent flyer who's just stepped out of business class to demand you cut the very gases he's just blasted out the back of his jet. Or her jet, of course. I'm thinking here of Laurie David, a producer of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, the indoctrination tape for the warming faithful which demands we Use Less to save the world from choking on our filthy emissions.

As it turned out, Use Less David was not quite so eager to Use Less herself, confessing: "Yes, I take a private plane on holiday a couple of times a year." But she had the proper attitude: "I feel horribly guilty about it." And since global warming is more about how you feel than what you'll do, that made it all right.

Until this week I thought David - or Gore, who uses more electricity each month in just one of his three homes than the average American family uses in a year - couldn't be beaten for the title of Grand Hypocrite of the Warming Faith. Until this week they'd beaten off even the most shameless of challengers, including Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who attends celebrity global warming conferences to debate ways to make suburban types dim their lights, despite having a wide-body Boeing 767-200 for his private plane.

Australia's finest warming worriers also failed to topple Gore and David, despite a great late effort by Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, the ABC's celebrity science spruiker now campaigning for the Climate Change Coalition. Kruszelnicki's coalition demands we "introduce energy efficiency standards for motor vehicles", yet Dr Karl chooses to drive a V8 Holden Monaro - but only on the freeway, he insists. And no doubt he also feels properly guilty, so that's all right, too.

Mind you, our Alarmist of the Year, Tim Flannery, did come close for his consistent record of demanding we cut the emissions that "can threaten civilisation as we know it", while showing few signs of cutting his extravagant own. His more recent - and best - effort has been to release yet another doom-preaching book (sales please!) in which he describes his eager travels by jet to conferences, treks and luxury resorts on tropical islands. Some extracts:

"I left Europe to return home via Africa. A mate had started an ecotourism venture in Kenya and had asked me to come along on a 14-day safari ... my next trip was to Necker Island in the Caribbean.

"The place is a tropical paradise and we stayed in a pavilion perched above a reef ... I left Necker Island for Borneo ... I'd promised to lead a group on a trek up Mount Kinabalu in Sabah."

And so on, with Flannery criss-crossing our skies with contrails, while sitting in business class composing yet another speech demanding we cut what he's busily belching. Or else. What is it with global warming prophets and jets? And luxury? And tropical islands? I ask because what Flannery is doing on his luxurious lonesome, entire jet-loads of global warming activists are about to do in a gluttonous mass-orgy - the most spectacular demonstration of warming hypocrisy yet seen. The gold medal performance.

I'm talking about the United Nations' Climate Change Conference 2007, to be held next month at Bali's luxury tourism precinct of Nusa Dua. How wonderful it will be there in balmy Bali - with its beaches, its shopping, its tennis courts, its golf courses, its balmy weather, its five-star service and its high-minded chatter about how to make people back home go without for the sake of the planet. No wonder the conference has been extended to last a leisurely fortnight. Even better for UN staff, they may travel to Bali in business class, where no doubt they'll bump into many other delegates off for a little pre-Christmas conference cheer, courtesy, in most cases, of taxpayers.

Now guess how many people are jetting to this Balinese paradise to demand we cut our emissions? Let me quote a newspaper report in which Indonesian Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar gives the startling numbers: "He said 189 countries to be represented by some 10,000 delegates and 2500 foreign journalists had officially registered to take part." That's right, 12,500. To fly to a conference that will cost more than $70 million to stage. I can hear the oinking from here. This gathering of jet-set hypocrites is guaranteed not to cut emissions, but increase them, Al Gore-style.

In fact, I've worked it out on the Climate Care emissions calculator: just flying all those people to the conference and back will send around 30,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the air. That's more than the greenhouse gases that 7000 family cars typically emit in an entire year. You'd think these warming alarmists would set an example by staying at home and, say, video-conferencing instead. If they really believed our gases were killing the planet, that is. Al Gore could even have arranged something for them, being a director of Apple.

But the new green faith was always for the privileged to enjoy, and the masses to endure, wasn't it? Hypocrisy is too small a word for so monstrous a circus. If it wasn't for the fact the planet actually hasn't warmed for nine years now, I'd cry.

Oxford County Liberals said...

The climate-change deniers are out today again, I see. You sure draw them like magnets over here, BCL.

Their vehemence on this issue kind of reminds me of the Catholic Church back in the Renaissance denying in the face of overwhelming evidence that the earth did indeed rotate around the sun, rather then the other way around.

That denial wouldnt cost us anything (well, it cost Galileo his freedom) but dragging feet on this front has serious implications for the planet, which we're already seeing in the Arctic.

It is incumbent upon the public to remove those politicians who are captive to special interests like Big Oil, and put in those leaders willing to take a stand and make the sacrifices needed to sustain the longterm viability of the planet.

Anonymous said...

Here's my prediction. The anti-science enviro-wingnut site of leftards with spreadsheets but no math skills, will have more votes taken away from it because of improper voting. It will come in second.

Ti-Guy said...

You sure draw them like magnets over here, BCL.

It's the same dozen or so trolls and sock-puppets you see all over progressive blogs. They come here so often under "anonymous" to avoid the contradictions they create when they spout off elsewhere.

Anonymous said...

And what's your expertise area of climatology, mike?

Ti-Guy said...

And what's yours, anony-tard?

...etc.

Anonymous said...

Somebody light your fuse, ti-guy? I was addressing mike, not you, so piss off. mike is the one who say's weathermen aren't real climate scientists, so I wanted to see exactly what his expertise was to make such a judgement. He's a big boy, he can speak for himself. Unless he's out destroying the planet on his motorcycle.

Anonymous said...

Oh MIKE! You ride a Harley?! OMG! I don't know which is worse; the fact that a neo-enviroliberal such as yourself owns a planet-killing luxury toy (you have too much money - we should tax that away from you in order to make the world better), or the fact that you pissed away so much money on such a crappy bike!

Ti-Guy said...

Somebody light your fuse, ti-guy? I was addressing mike, not you, so piss off.

No you weren't, you liar. Anonymous addressed Mike, not you.

Anonymous said...

Quick question,

isn't New York supposed to be at least under a couple of feet or so under water by now?

Or how bout even a foot,

or even an inch?

How bout Holland. Several years ago they were predicting the dikes being overwhelmed right about now Kind of hard why with the Earth's oceans levels not increasing at all, let alone the meters rise which was supposed to have happened already.

Silly concrete facts getting in the way of a computer model telling us how it is.

Another question? How come they can't build a computer model to tell us what the whether will be like in only one city one month from now? One would assume that the number of variables (and thus number of potential errors in the modelling) is exponentially less than modelling the entire earth's weather, fifty years from now.

Here's the answer:

They can, but it would be proven useless in about a week (the point at which reality was tested against the model prediction).

Which brings me to my first point,

how many times will history be revised, the cataclymic predictions be downgraded, or mitigating excuses made,

before you all realize that this little future predicting model is discarded for good?

Oh, and how's that "worst hurricane season ever" going for you all. As the season winds down.....well you know, kind of a wimper. Whoops, they should've kept the predictions safely enough into the future to allow for the ease of historical revisionism.

Silly us....."deniers".

LOL.

Anonymous said...

As more and more slowly and descreetly walk away from this rediculous "man made" global warming hysteria,

it'll be interesting to watch those last few who continue to hang on.

A few regulars here will be included of course.

Anonymous said...

I don't see it matters if he is right or left in his politics. Republican versus Democrat, or in Europe Social Democrat versus Christian Democrat versus Conservative, in the UK Labour, Liberal or Conservative - these are all mainline, reasonable choices between parties that differ only somewhat, and a basically moderate person may vote either way. In fact, many do vote different ways at different elections.

It is as relevant as proclaiming that Steve likes curry, or doesn't like it. Or prefers couscous to rice. Or wears pinstripes versus solid color suits. Irrelevant.

What counts is whether he is right on issues. Now here, Wegman is the test. And Wegman's answer was, yes, Steve was right, and Mann was wrong.

I don't know why BCL keeps on and on about this stuff. Its totally obsessive. And in case you are thinking, how different Republicans really are from Democrats, and this is a right wing post... Let me tell you. I demonstrated against the Vietnam War. Guess which adminstration was in power at the time? Johnson. Guess who was in power the next time? Nixon. How different were they?