David Archibald: Orator. Genius.

I've gone off all this global warming stuff.

What changed my mind, you may well ask.

To you I would say two words: Archibald. David.

The following searingly incisive lecture was presented to a hugely appreciative audience of...I dunno.....at least 10 million (with untold billions watching on the box).

It's uplifting stuff, bringing to mind a younger version of a Barak Obama / Tom Cruise hybrid.

For your pleasure, I present:



There's a few more of these vids, but the first one is so good, there's no point seeing the rest. However, there is one little excerpt I found interesting in part 4:

Prof. Bob Carter (1:45): "[David Archibald], I completely agree with you and support your analysis."

Way to go, Bob!!!! I knew you were an important and eminently sensible contributor to the so-called climate debate. Kind of reminds me how Edward Wegman supported you and your absolutely proven hypothesis that global warming ended in 1998. What a feelgood world we live in!!

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Common attributes

The denialist is an easy creature to spot. Well, for starters, he or she denies a theory that is a strong, well studied and consistently supported and reinforced by experimental data. There are, however, numerous other characteristics that can be used to accurately identify the shill.

Tim Lambert's Global Warming Sceptic Bingo nicely covers many of the individual pieces of guff they're commonly known to spout.

There are a few other traits, however, that I've noticed of late that have crept into the denialist genome. Evolution? Nah.....devolution caused my numerous uncorrected mutations, I reckon.

Al Gullon, a writer for transport magazine Thinking Highways, demonstrates:

1. Get those credentials out there. Doesn't matter what they are or whether they have anything to do with climatology. Somehow, the mere fact of a few letters after the name must add weight to the argument.

Says Al, BSc., PEng:

I hasten to add that it is not 'another opinion piece'. I put many hours (and my two undergraduate degrees) into an analysis of the IPCC and NASA data on trends in "global warming" and solar radiation.

Wow....not one, but two whole degrees!!!! And not just sitting back doing nothin'. They were put right there in that analysis.

2. When drawing a graph, make sure the axes are adjusted so that it if one doesn't actually look too closely, it appears to support a conclusion that the raw data it is based on clearly doesn't.


Al shows us how it's done (click for full size):

Check that delta [CO2] out!!!

3. Go with what you want to be right, rather than what is.

Al discusses how he came up with the previous figure:

However, while researching on the ‘net I was reminded that volcanoes can have a lengthy impact on global temperatures and so explored both them and El Ninos. As you can see at the bottom of Figure 2 it was an Eureka moment. Actually several moments, because each of these extreme events locked into one of the aforementioned irregularities, until finally all of them were covered. They are colour-coded so that blue indicates an event which pulls the temperature down in their year(s) of operation and red indicates one which tends to raise global temperatures. By mentally moving the temperature line back to where it would have been without each event one can clearly see that the global temperature line has a great visual correspondence with the solar irradiance line.

Mentally moving, hey? Kind of like what happened in the last X-Men movie (and we know how that panned put).

4. And finally, pretend to really, really care:

Now all this is most definitely NOT to say that we should do nothing about the energy consumption of the automobile or more generally the energy consumptive nature of today’s human society. What the environmentalists are forgetting is that engineers, including automotive engineers, are the original conservationists. As a personal example, I shudder every time I see a two tonne SUV with only the driver on board.

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Select members of the 400 club

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The end is nigh?

Denialists hate facts. Don’t like first-hand science. Too difficult. That’s why most of their huffery and puffery is directed at secondary sources rather than original scientific papers. Easier to muddy the waters.

Sites such as RealClimate do a commendable job in explaining the science behind our understanding of climate and climate change in a clear and concise fashion. Their arguments are rarely rebutted and they’ve exposed many a loopy scientific theory, thankfully before they’ve extended too far past the Right-wing blogsphere.

Denialists hate RealClimate and similar sites.

Accordingly, blogs such as the Institute of Public Affair’s www.jennifermarohasy.com have now banned RealClimate links in all posts relating to climate change.

Please don't quote non-objective sources like RC -they will now be deleted..........etc.

Even the fig-leaf that is the ‘discuss all points of view’ meme, the so-called debate, is gone. The retreat is on. We’ve hit the “Nah-nah-nah-nah” stick the fingers in the ears stage (which has been privately occurring from time immemorial, put rather publicly for the past year or so).

All rather unedifying. And unsurprising.

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An Auditor's Resolutions

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