Sunday 31 January 2016

When will climate deniers admit the game is up?

There's a handful of committed climate change deniers around the world who are both publicly visible and notoriously wrong.  The "famous" ones you can easily list: Watts, Delingpole, Monckton, Spencer, Jim Steele, Nigel Lawson, Willis Eschenbach, Tim Ball...  There's some more but my keyboard is already feeling sullied by merely having those letters typed.

I am guessing that, since 2015 didn't conform to their expectations, that 2016 will probably bury them.  Senator Cruz, currently in second place in the Republican Ugly Contest and likely to be disappointed in his attempt to make Hillary Clinton electable, held a mock trial in the Senate at which it was repeatedly claimed that the satellite data was the best for knowing how the temperature of the planet and that didn't work so well.  Even the people, well some of them, that work on the satellite data came out to tell the world how unreliable it really is.
Who'd have thought?

Not the usual suspects.  They are clinging to the last vestige of denial.  As global temperatures go up, the avenues for denial get closed off.  A year ago, the poor pickings for the deniers focussed on the idea that there was some uncertainty over whether 2014 was the hottest year on record.  When 2015 smashed the previous best, the uncertainty thing was no argument at all.  Cruz got the denial rebuttal in early, but it went like a failed firework.  A bit of fizzing noise, a little smoke then nothing.  I wonder if they will adhere to the firework code and not return to a firework once lit.

As temperatures go up and it becomes more obvious as time goes by that the global temperature is increasing, all that is really left for deniers is simple abuse.  Even the insane ramblings of Lord Monckton and his endlessly repetitive non-pause articles are likely to have to end soon.  No warming since.... will be replaced by warming.  Nick Stokes has calculated what increases in RSS figures is needed to make a significant warming trend.  As we know, Monckton's non-pause is a non-physical reality based maths thing.

Time will tell but when the last pillars of denial fall, so will the denial empire.  Antony Watts will be left with a handful of deluded deniers for company, endless sockpuppeting their comments.  Their last remaining hope is to elect a climate science denying president who can legislate that pi = 3 and win their false argument that way.

1 comment:

  1. American politicians will blow with the wind, of course.

    If you are talking about faux-rational deniers like George Will or Bjorn Lomborg, the answer is still "never." Events may force them to more nuanced versions, but their position must remain "there's nothing to worry (regulate) about." AGW presents a problem with solutions fatal to their world view. They cannot accept its danger, no matter what.

    As for Watts, denialism fills his rice bowl. He will hang on to the last.

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