As wildfires in the US and Europe rage the folks over at climate denial blog “Watts up at that?” think the most pressing issue is to dig up some old emails they’ve sourced from a FOI request:
First look: ‘Hit on the head with a hockey stick’ – some selected emails from the recent NOAA FOIA release 2 years later
Posted on August 22, 2012 by Anthony Watts
Readers may recall this yesterday: NOAA releases tranche of FOIA documents – 2 years later. I have a few to share from CEI now.
Here’s one email, right after Climategate1, that is uproariously funny, given NRO’s response to Dr. Michael Mann today.
Apparently – gasp! – Mr Watt’s has found out that an individual that refuses to read the blog of Andrew Revkin:
The Team is unhappy with Andrew Revkins post CG1 questions on IPCC, one refuses to look at his blog anymore.
Yes, how salacious.
It’s the process of “chumming” – throwing out bits of offal as bait to attract sharks. In this instance, the “chum” is some rather innocuous emails between scientists and journalists who are saying the same things they’ve said in public for years.
But the regular readers of WUWT are lovin’ it, thrashing about in an orgy of “OMG this proves everything dunnit!?!”
No doubt the world will take little note of this attempt to generate sound and fury that actually signifies nothing…
Watching the Deniers 
sounds like the next source for my comment of the day…*yawn*
I take it back, Mike. I went for a look and you know, there really is something mentally wrong with those people. I get the feeling that they could swim over a dead Great Barrier Reef, ride a boat over the north Pole and sit at the coast watching a category 6 cyclone come in and hold up some crappy email and claim global warming is a scam. They are seriously deluded. Denial is a disease. How do you counter that sort of stupidity?
The tragedy is that the media, politicians and segments of the public listened to these people because it suited their world views, or it provided entertainment, or helped them deal with fear by staying in denial. History will pass judgement.
I doubt I’ve read more examples of extreme delusion from the same source in the same few days. It rivals prisonplanet and infowars.
This week might mark the turning point where WUWT goes from silliness and stupidity to fully-fledged delusion.
It’s incredible that they’d highlight a section of an email that quotes the hockey stick as an example of how people don’t understand science. For Watts to highlight his own ignorance makes him appear even more stupid.
And do they really expect the science to ‘unravel’ if Mann sues people for defamation or libel? Don’t they understand firstly that lawyers and particularly courts of law are not qualified nor do they generally make judgements on scientific matters (eg recent EPA verdict was not based on science but on a legal technicality), and secondly that the matter is equally likely to allow discovery of all the emails that go on behind the scenes such as the Morano network (of which AFAIK Watts is a part)?
I believe this week’s misplaced excitement from WUWT and probably elsewhere in the deniosphere is worth a look by any high school student doing an essay on confirmation bias – especially the extreme confirmation bias exhibited by conservative white men.
When put together with Anthony thinking that rising temperatures in Antarctica are from urban heat islands (from all the cities in Antarctica), looks like they have shifted from the ordinary run-of-the-mill science denial camp to the more extreme paranoid conspiracy camp.
As our PM would say “lunar”!
You bet, the chum will be coming thick and fast…
In the weirdly jubilant article about Mann’s threat to sue for defamation (that Watts discovered very belatedly – did it take him that long to try to find a positive spin?), one commenter is already going for ‘the justice system is corrupt’ argument – well before any case has gone to court. Paranoid conspiracies know no bounds.
Reminiscent of the ‘whitewash’ cries.
I saw that Tweet from Watt’s and replied to it…
Stunning, because every time the denial movement goes up against the courts it loses: witness the two EPA endangerment rulings in the US and the attempt to block the screening of “An inconvenient truth” in UK schools.
They never learn. Well, that’s not surprising…
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