Former IPCC lead author Raymond T. Pierrehumbert has a real zinger this time. You have to read this one to believe it. From an interview in Slate magazine via Tom Nelson:
Mitt Romney coal jobs: Romney talks about jobs, but the coal industry is dying.
By now we know that Paul Ryan has more or less declared himself to be a full-blown climate change denialist. But what are we to make of Mitt Romney?
Perhaps we should call him a Climate Clown, since he seems to think global climate catastrophes are a laughing matter.
…
Last time I checked, America was part of the globe, so if the globe warms, America warms with it, and every ton of carbon dioxide America adds to the atmosphere adds to the collective warming we all suffer. [Hey Raymond: Where I live, the average year-round temperature is 45 F. If the average temperature rises to 47 F, why would that make me “suffer”?]
….
Whatever you call Romney, it’s clear he has a coal complex as big as the Powder River Basin. He just can’t stop trumpeting his love affair with Satan’s Rock. ”
…As expanded natural gas supplies continue to cut into domestic demand for U.S. coal, the next big fight will be over vastly expanded coal exports to Asia, and it will make the fight over the Keystone XL pipeline look like a minor skirmish. I know who I want on my side in that fight, and it is not the coal industry’s dream candidate.
Satan’s Rock, really?
Funny that Ray should bring up the image of climate clown. We have a few.
Ray Pierrehumbert playing accordion at the liquidus. Source: http://geosci.uchicago.edu/people/faculty.shtml
How appropriate though, given the politics employed by Ray and The Team, that they say “We are climate scientists, Chicago style”.
It is worth recalling what Dr. Ray Pierrehumbert wrote of skeptics:
McIntyre, McKittrick, and Watts are the Andrew Breitbarts of climate. Occasionally they may out something that is technically true, but it is always of minor consequence compared to the noise, and always a distraction from the truly important questions facing society. That’s why, big as the IPCC tent may be, I hope there will never be a place in it for any of these clowns.
Josh sees it this way:
Please, please, someone get Dr. Pierrehumbert a mirror.
I played Pierrehumbert’s song backwards and guess what I heard,……
Bob Tisdale
Yes there is a photo of you on the net, its here. (was it taken recentrly?)
http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://usahitman.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/poseidon-a.jpg&imgrefurl=http://usahitman.com/genetic-history/&h=768&w=1024&sz=208&tbnid=BRbDZprtGgNHnM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=120&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dphoto%2Bof%2Bposeidon%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=photo+of+poseidon&usg=__6m4r2ETSeUJKnE6UzI3B2uEeMmw=&docid=FZ2E7i6c87dNWM&sa=X&ei=KLqGUInuLKTs0gXFx4HQCQ&ved=0CCsQ9QEwAw&dur=92
tonyb
Ray P. writing on RealClimate in 2005 on why he loves the Mann Hockey Stick…… It is such a good propaganda, er, educational tool:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/02/dummies-guide-to-the-latest-hockey-stick-controversy/comment-page-1/#comment-1448
Jimmy Haigh… allow me to introduce you to one “Weird Al Yankovich”… Accordion meets Rock. I’ll wait.
Seriously. Satan’s rock. Awesome.
And I have a personal rule about mocking: I don’t mock someone about things they have no control over, like facial shape or scars or bald spots or anything like that, but I have no mercy when it comes to being unkempt and ungroomed while in a position of disseminating information while representing an organization or position.
I spent years working with someone who seemed to relish his nickname of “Einstein”. I still can’t figure out if he was unkempt to fit the nickname or got the nickname for being ungroomed. Try sharing an office with someone like that. This guy reminds me of that guy. A lot. And I can’t even BEGIN to express how arrogant and CERTAIN my guy was, even in the face of being clearly wrong.
In the end I lost that job because this monster of arrogance and certainty allowed the office servers to fail, in spite of me begging for two years to replace aging and failing components. I even hung an external drive on the server for backups IN DIRECT DEFIANCE OF ORDERS… a drive that, in the end, was the ONLY reason no data was lost, because Mr. Right was certain that the backup drives (in the same server) would save everything. They didn’t.
That experience seems to have taught me all I need to know about climate scientists and others who are absolutely CERTAIN of their beliefs, with virtually no chance of ever confirming them and all current evidence pointing away from them.
Please, to all the Pierrehumberts and Einsteins out there: take a shower using soap, use a comb and razor, brush your teeth, and consider that what you KNOW might possibly not be the whole story.
If he wants to criticize ‘technically true points among the noise’, how about coal exporting? That’s an issue where both extremes have a ‘technically true’ opinion but the real problem is somewhere in the ‘noise’.
Technically true right-wing opinion: Anything that makes money for American companies is good.
Technically true left-wing opinion: Anything that makes pollution is bad.
The ‘Noise’ includes: (1) Moving pollution to China means more pollution overall. (2) Rail lines are already overburdened. Do we need a huge new set of heavy shipments through fire-prone areas, increasing derailments and obstruction to other freight? (3) Should we be using up our own natural resources for short-term gain?
The guy looks like a bum.
Yes, but the tons of emissions from China, India, or anywhere else in the developing world don’t count, do they?
China is building coal plants left and right. Which countries coal plants are cleaner, American’s or China’s?
There is a website listing some of the skeptic climate clowns appearing on J.C’s blog.
My entry:
Vukcevic: Another iron curtain survivor, Vukcevic is mild by the standards of the other crackpots listed, and claims that all climate changes are due to natural variations from solar activities. To his credit he creates very elaborate slides, but the curve fits are in the eye of the beholder.
“He just can’t stop trumpeting his love affair with Satan’s Rock. ”
Did he actually imply that coal is Satan’s rock? Astonishing.
Many people suggest that climate alarmism is a quasi-religion with its earth god Gaia, devil CO2, sinful climate emissions and impending climate apocalypse.
Now coal is Satan’s rock, wow.
I guess that would make Pierrehumbert a climate evangelist?
Most climate scientists have an Ego problem, this clown has a simple god complex.
He has to denigrate to promote his god complex.
The nemesis of god, Satan coal.
No Klem, that would make Pierrehumbert a hypocrite and a fool. As a previous poster noted try living in Chicago without the benefit of coal produced electricity.
Is it better to freeze or boil? Ask a climatologist they have all the answers.
Who pays this guy’s salary again?
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/BikePicSmall.jpg
If coal is “Satan’s Rock”, what is my wife wearing on her finger?
Anthony, I don’t know your opinion of the late Mr. Breitbart, but I consider it a great compliment. The man was fearless at calling BS where he saw it. As are you.
Didn’t Hansen (or Suzuki?) call oil “Satan’s Excrement”? At least they’re consistent with their devilish name calling. ;->
@Craig Loehle
Craig, have you considered updating your paper from 2009?
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/05-loehleNEW.pdf
A righteous view from his perch on the ash heap.
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I am reminded of the Far Side cartoon, where the upper panel has an angel saying “Welcome to Heaven. Here’s your harp” and in the lower panel a devil says “Welcome to Hell. Here’s your accordion”.
REPLY: I located the cartoon – Anthony
The Old Crusader says:
October 23, 2012 at 7:53 am
Nearly! – I think he is just backwards
Old fashioned definition of A Gentleman
‘One who can play the accordion…but doesn’t’
Accordions were invented for Particle Man.
Accordion solo: 0:32
Dang, I thought that “We are climate scientists, Chicago style” would be a spoof on the Gangnam Style video. I couldn’t watch it all the way through. Elmer! ELLLLLMER! Do something!
Bob Tisdale says: “And that’s why there are no pictures of me on the internet!!!”
LOL! Bob, I have an “accordeen” pic, poised and ready to photoshop, should one of you show up.
Vuk: I still read your comments.
Thomas Kuhn wrote a book called the Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In it he said that a current scientific paradigm (eg Catastrophic AGW) will persist until such times that it is displaced by a new paradigm. Even when the existing paradigm is shown to be deeply flawed (eg Catastrophic AGW), it will persist. Those who advocate said paradigm will go through increasingly elaborate contortions to support the unsupportable; proposing more and more outlandish and tenuous extensions to the paradigm and engaging in increasingly vitriolic attacks on its detractors, to try and keep it afloat. Even when many eventually realise that the paradigm is simply unworkable, and fails to explain the natural phenomenon it purports to understand, it will still persist, until a new paradigm displaces it.
James Lovelock recently had the courage to say that he thought he understood the climate back in the eighties, but the departures of models from reality over the last few decades make it obvious that real understanding of the climate is currently lacking. Welcome though such candour may be, it represents a theory void, and such a void (probably correct) can not displace the current paradigm (probably incorrect). Human beings simply refuse to admit that they do not know what is going on. Once a theory is in place, even though said theory might have more holes than an outback road sign, it takes on a life of its own and will not die until another theory stakes it though the heart.
So, I am afraid we must put up with a very flawed paradigm (CAGW) and the proponents thereof making increasingly bizarre and outlandish pronouncements, until a new theory on climate gains the ascendency. That may take decades. In the meantime we can point out flaws, holes, errors, inconsistencies, deceit, mendacity, corruption, graft, malice, greed, naivety and plain old foolishness from here till the planet freezes over, and jolly good fun it is too, but the current CAGW paradigm will still persist. All we can hope is that we encourage bright minds to come up with a new paradigm sooner rather than later. In the meantime, sit back, relax and enjoy the freak show.
Hairy bugger, ain’t he?
Satan’s Rock, Death Trains, Super Mandia …. these guys are the gift that keeps on giving.