Confronting Malicious Ignorance (1/2) - a look at Poptech's game

Another diversion, but so it goes.  My YouTube profile must be growing, as reflected by the creepy clowns crawling out of the woodwork to take pot shots at me, reminds me of some cheap zombie horror movie.

A favorite meme is: CO2 levels were greater in the deep distant past, as though that has anything to do with today's world and the reality of adding ~3 billion metric tons of CO2 on top of the natural flux into our climate system every month after month.  One would think Republican types would know all about accumulating compounding interest and what that can do to numbers in a hurry - it doesn't just work that way in the financial world.  Why they ignore such simple rational fundamentals, is beyond me.

Another favorite, goes like this:

CC writes:  

Great so you object.  Now do you have any objective evidence to support what you believe.

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Dude (I'll going to start using the generic Dude for multiple YouTube characters) writes: 

A lot, actually.

http://www.co2science.org/subject/c/co2climatehistory.php

Here's a small (but informative) collection of evidence. If needed, I can provide a lot more.

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CC writes:

All you folks seem to point to co2science, watts up with that, has it become your bible or something?  It's run by the Idso Clan who are paid spokesmen for Heartland Institute and ExxonMobil - it has been shown to dishonestly represent the science.  But that's all you got - and you refuse to look beyond your smug little certitude.

But, learning requires some times getting out and assessing the reality going down on this one and only planet of ours - that we depend on for everything.  A bit of healthy self-skepticism would go a long way too.

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What about all the information and detailed explanations and the hundreds of referenced papers that are collected in there???

https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter05_FINAL.pdf - 

also see:

Heartland Institute and its NIPCC report fail the credibility test 

Posted on September 9, 2013 by Climate Science Watch 

http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2013/09/09/heartland-institute-nipcc-fail-the-credibility-test/

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Dude writes: 

The IPCC? You are really going to reference people who still believe in the hockey stick graph and a 97% consensus? OK.

Here's a lot more papers (1,350+):

www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html

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Apparently Dude doesn't understand that IPCC is not some 'people', but a gathering and summarizing of the serious climate science that has been published in the preceding years.  It involved all told hundreds of scientists who volunteer their time to put together the science summary.  Nor does he appreciate that the 97% comes from various studies and not the IPCC.  But then Dude and pals conveniently reject IPCC outright (along with everyone else in the world who does serious all-inclusive science) - Thus the Dudes can comfortably wallow in their self-imposed ignorance about our planet's physical realities. 

Excuse my irritation, here you can learn about the IPCC, followed by a series of links to articles looking into this PopularTechnology.net's Poptech character and his game, I'll catch up to co2science in another post.

The IPCC: Who Are They and Why Do Their Climate Reports Matter?

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/ipcc-backgrounder.html#.VqUlAulyHww

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Understanding the IPCC Reports

http://www.wri.org/ipcc-infographics

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FAQ: IPCC's Upcoming Climate Change Report Explained

By Denise Chow, Staff Writer   |   September 18, 2013 

http://www.livescience.com/39763-ipcc-report-faq.html

Yup, poptech is an affirmed member of the self-certain echo-chamber.  I suppose next one of my new pals will pull out the Oregon Petition of 31,000 questionable signatories, as yet more evidence for their unskeptical self-certain conviction.  

Back to Poptech, he has a way of classifying papers differently from the papers own authors' assessment of their work.  

If you want a look at the way Poptech plays, check out his "Global Cooling in 2009" - it's a perfect example of his style of über-gish-gallop, it looks very impressive, and it's too long and overwhelming except for the most dedicated, with tons of free time, to wade into.  I'm not going to do that, all I needs to do is look at the record since 2009 to realize there has been no global cooling, and that Poptech is weaving incoherent tidbits, and ignoring masses of evidence to create his false narrative.

Unfortunately such maliciously false conclusions are easy when one has no interest in learning about how our 'global heat and moisture distribution engine' operates. 

Such as the reality that our increasingly erratic jet stream (which pushes and pulls weather systems around the globe), and which is the boundary between the frigid Arctic air mass and temperate zone air mass, and is subject to making increasingly extreme meanders that shove our warm air into the Arctic, forcing cold Arctic air masses into temperate zone.  All part and parcel of Global Warming's cascading consequences.  Confusion explained - but will any of them listen to reason?

For a little hard evidence about "cooling" see, Global Analysis - Annual 2009 - https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/200913
and https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/why-did-earth's-surface-temperature-stop-rising-past-decade (Here we have an example of "seepage" since surface temps never actually stopped rising, it was just the rate of increase that moderated, but that's all over now, sadly no one on that side of the aisle has the courage to look at the evidence and admit what is happening.  Way too entrenched in their self-certain convictions.  The more the evidence diverges from their mind's eye convictions - the more they will get pissed at other people who do accept the obvious.  Frightening times we are entering.)

Some folks have put in a lot of time and effort to expose this Poptech's über-gish-gallop of supposed evidence that leads to no increase in understanding whatsoever - but than Poptech's only goal is to sow doubt and apathy.  
Here I share a sampling:
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Eli Rabett, recalls his excursion into Poptech's world and does a fine job of describing Poptech's technic. 

 "RTFR Pops" - http://rabett.blogspot.com/2013/02/rtfr-pops.html
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9 out of 10 top climate change deniers linked with Exxon Mobil

Mihai Andrei  |  May 10, 2011

http://www.zmescience.com/ecology/climate-change-papers-exxon-mobil/

A recent analysis conducted by Carbon Brief investigated no less than 900 published papers, all of which cast doubts on climate change, or even speak against it. After concluding this investigation, they found that 9 out of 10 of the most prolific ones had some sort of connection with Exxon Mobil. You can find a link to these papers at the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

The results showed that out of the 938 papers cited, 186 of them were written by only ten men, and foremost among them was Dr Sherwood B Idso, who personally authored 67 of them. Idso is the president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, an ExxonMobil funded think tank. The second most prolific was Dr Patrick J Michaels, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, who receives roughly 40% of his funding from the oil industry.

This goes in parallel with the ‘work’ of the Koch industries; even though you probably haven’t heard of them, Koch industries is the second largest privately held company in the US, and in the past 50 years, they have invested more than 50.000.000 dollars in spreading doubts about climate change, according to Greenpeace.

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Carbon Brief's review of Poptech's list:

Part 1 - Analyzing the 900 papers supporting climate skeptics 9 out of top 10 authors linked to ExxonMobil

http://www.carbonbrief.org/analysing-the-900-papers-supporting-climate-scepticism-9-out-of-top-10-authors-linked-to-exxonmobil

Part 2 - Using our paper to support skepticism of anthropogenic global warming is misleading.

http://www.carbonbrief.org/using-our-paper-to-support-skepticism-of-anthropogenic-global-warming-is-misleading-part-ii-of-our-analysis-of-the-900-climate-skeptic-papers

Part 3 - Energy and Environment – “journal of choice for climate skeptics”

http://www.carbonbrief.org/using-our-paper-to-support-skepticism-of-anthropogenic-global-warming-is-misleading-part-ii-of-our-analysis-of-the-900-climate-skeptic-papers

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1350+ Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skeptic Arguments Against ACC/AGW Alarmism

https://itsnotnova.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/poptechs-list-of-confusion/

Poptech’s list of Confusion

800 papers disputing the theory of climate change!! Can it be true, or is this an over-reaction?

joannenova-com-au/2010/08/800-peer-reviewed-papers-to-deny/

Joanna Nova, known for her hatred of anyone on her website calling deniers a denier, invokes the use of this term for anyone willing to question a list of papers.

This is also another straw man argument, no one needs to deny the existence of these papers, because quite obviously they do exist, but they don’t destroy AGW as some people might be fooled into thinking.  Nova’s words

Who are the deniers now? 800 Peer Reviewed Papers in support of skepticism of AGW or the negative environmental or economic effects of AGW.

Seeing this list people might be fooled into thinking these papers somehow rebut the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). Nova seems fooled into thinking we need to “deny” them all. In fact as we’ll see, the author of these papers likes to categorise this list in his unique way, thus making it appear there are a lot of papers that dispute the science of AGW.

“Merchant of doubt” Nova blindly promotes the list in several of her posts, but misses out on one of the nuances of Poptech’s criteria, ALARM! Poptech will list papers if HE decides they rebut an alarming claim made by “someone” on the Internet. A paper doesn’t have to dispute the mainstream climate science found in the IPCC report in order to be included.

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Meet The Denominator

Posted on 13 February 2011 by Rob Honeycutt

http://www.skepticalscience.com/meet-the-denominator.html

As most here have followed the climate issue for some time I'm sure we have each been faced with climate skeptics throwing out big numbers related to different aspects of climate science.

There is the ever present "31,000 Scientists Who Challenge Global Warming," the infamous Oregon Petition.

And then many of us have run into the ever ravenous PopTech (Andrew) and his, now, 850 Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of "Man-Made" Global Warming (AGW) Alarm ...