In a hilarious claim, Gleick proves once again his genius label is eclipsed by his own dogma.
A couple of days ago I got pulled into the Twitter feed of Dr. Peter Gleick, we’ll get to that shortly. You know him, he’s the guy from the Pacific Institute who posed as a board member for Heartland so he could steal documents. The plan was so badly conceived that it quickly unraveled, partly because of a ridiculous fake document that many say Gleick authored to get the media interested in the story of what he found. But, it was laughably transparent, and Gleick’s tendentious forgery was characterized by Megan McArdle of the Atlantic as reading “like it was written from the secret villain lair in a Batman comic. By an intern.”
One of the things I dislike about Dr. Peter Gleick (besides the fact that he’s a thief) is his condescending attitude towards others that he considers intellectually inferior. Part of this has to do with him being labeled a ‘genius’ with a MacArthur Fellow “Genius Award” in 2003. One of the problems of being labeled a genius is the ego boost that it conveys, and that ego boost tends to set the stage for epic cartoon like failures much like we used to see in the classic Warner Brothers cartoon where Wile. E. Coyote presents his card:
![Wile-E-Coyotes-card1[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/wile-e-coyotes-card11.jpg?resize=525%2C384)
This week, we had another episode where Peter H. Gleick, GENIUS was on display in full public view. This is what got it started:
The picture linked in his tweet is from this Mother Nature News article:
I took one look at that photo and the 110°F temperature, and my bullshit detector alarm went off. My next thought was “how could Gleick be so dumb as to fall for this?”. I mean GMAFB, if it was air temperature doing it, all parts of the stoplight would show a nearly equal melting effect, and not be lopsided. Surely geniuses like Gleick understand the basic of thermodynamics enough to get this? Apparently not.
I immediately replied to Gleick and explained how this just wasn’t possible:
And after waiting, I got no reply from Gleick…
I suppose that’s normal, after all, we can’t have a ‘stupid denier’ schooling a ‘genius’ on how the physical world works, can we?
This isn’t the first time a global warming activist has fallen for a photo of something melting in the street, and immediately pouncing on “global warming” as the cause. Last year it was Al Gore and Bill McKibben:
Note the street lamps are only melted on one side. Why? Because it was a dumpster fire that did the work, not the natural air temperature.
From: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/02/alarmist-fact-checking-street-lights-dont-melt-at-115f/
Picture provided by KFOR-TV via Inhofe’s Press Office you can see the street lamp next to the burning dumpster:
Senator Inhofe had a field day with this witless assertion by Gore and McKibben, and you can read it about it here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/02/inhofe-exposes-another-epic-fail-by-global-warming-alarmists-thursday/
So when I saw Gleick was pushing a similar photo from Kuwait, it was deja vu all over again.
I noted in my tweets back to Gleick that either solar reflection or fire might be at work due to the lopsidedness of the melting. That explanation apparently flew right over Gleck’s head, and I wasn’t going to waste any more time with him waiting for him to acknowledge me.
Sure enough, later I learned it was just as I posited. Barry Woods found a news article on the incident and left a comment on the MNN story, the only comment, and a comment that apparently they have not heeded since the ridiculous story is still there.
Barry Woods wrote:
Here’s the story from 248AM.com
Jo Nova found this photo:
Yep, just like last year with Gore and McKibben, a fire, not global warming, melted a street fixture. We can forgive Al and Bill, because they’ve demonstrated time and again that they are dumber than lampposts when it comes to understanding how the physical world actually works.
But a McArthur “genius” like Gleick should know better. He should have been able to pick up on the same physical clues us “stupid deniers” did.
But alas, just like our Wile E. Coyote, Genius, his intellect is eclipsed by his dogma, and he gets run over by physical reality.
I live in Phoenix, and I’ve never seen a traffic light melt. It really does say something if ONE set of traffic lights melt in a city and you can use that as a reason to claim global warming when they say one single weather event can’t be blamed on global warming. I beginning to think the genius just has a lot of hot air himself and probably shouldn’t take temperature readings.
Ahh. A genius, or flash-in-the-pan? Either way, Dr Gleick is a legend in his own mind. My, but PhD’s are cheap, nowadays.
Imagine all the time wasted by Al, Peter, and similar folk. Al sits down at his computer, accidentally turn it off, and calls the computer repairman.
Didn’t his brother write one of the first great books about the emerging field of Chaos theory? Had large sections about the unpredictability of weather. I wonder whether Peter’s trying to prove something to James.
I particularly enjoyed his attempted backtrack, forty minutes after the initial post, when someone on-side had presumably had a quiet word. Air temperature might have, after all, only been a contributing factor. Although still, apparently, a factor.
And then the followup tweets blustering that “it was all a metaphor”. Yes Peter, I’m sure it was.
In light of Gleick’s puerile, pusillanimous performances, it kinda makes one wonder what exactly those who determine who might be deserving of the MacArthur “Genius Award” might have been thinking (or smoking?!) when they bestowed it on Gleick.
Until I saw the burning car picture my first thought was that that traffic light melted from the voluminously carbonated hot exhaust of Air Force One since it might have flown over Kuwait for the Prez’s trip to Africa. Silly me.
I have found,through careful consideration,that the main cause of this debacle where a majority believe humans can control a complex system like planetary climate is the quality of responses to that pernicious assertion.It is not possible to restore stability to climate research based on contending with people who would literally become ill before they would change their conclusions and it for this reason that people here are more accountable for the material they are responsible for.
The talk of atypical weather conditions has now turned into ‘unprecedented climate extremes’ signifying a lowering of standards to the point that the normal terminology such as ‘climate’ has become rabid in the hands of modelers –
http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_976_en.html
Until climate is determined astronomically in that inclination determines what sort of climate a planet has within a spectrum of 0 degrees (equatorial climate) to 90 degrees inclination (polar climate) the likelihood is that awful terminology like ‘climate extremes’ will gain traction.In short,the problem is the inability to raise the standard of discussion rather than dealing with people who will look for every chance to demonstrate their conclusions are right –
” I know; such men do not deduce their conclusion from its premises or
establish it by reason, but they accommodate (I should have said
discommode and distort) the premises and reasons to a conclusion which
for them is already established and nailed down. No good can come of
dealing with such people, especially to the extent that their company
may be not only unpleasant but dangerous.” Galileo
He wears his stupidity with pride.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A2XYU6ZBJOG200/ref=cm_cr_pr_auth_rev?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview
According to Peter Gleick, Donna Laframboise’s book “The Delinquent Teenager” is a pack of lies (even though she has carefully documented her sources to show that every statement in the book is entirely factual).
According to Peter Gleick, Michael Mann is “a world class scientist”.
It really is really quite amazing that he has not retracted these statements after hundreds of comments by people who point out that he has his facts completely wrong.
It is really incredible that he is still invited as a guest speaker when any self respecting conference organizer can easily confirm with google that Peter Gleick is not only a THIEF but a LIAR.
“And then the followup tweets blustering that “it was all a metaphor”. Yes Peter, I’m sure it was.”
So the IPCC reports are all a metaphor?
Peter H. Gleick – ‘genius’ … no! Legend in his own mind … yes!
Someone should calculate how much atmospheric CO2 it would require to melt traffic lights. My extensive research on Wikipedia using the example of Venus yields a figure of 965,000ppm.
So some way yet to go.
Perhaps Gleick will point out that something must have made the car catch fire, and that’s probably AGW.
Marvelous effort from Glieck. Puts his previous efforts into even greater context. I tried arguing with a troll on Weatherzone about his criminal activities and his only come back was that he wasn’t charged with a crime so it didn’t happen.
I often wonder where we would be if the inflated egos that run the whole cAGW meme had employed a couple of professional spin doctors at the very start and where would we now be? Thankfully they didn’t or we would be in a much worse position now.
Would a traffic authority really be so stupid as to erect traffic lights from a black material that melts at only 50C?
The ‘genius’ awarders probably confused him with brother James. Which doesn’t say much about their abilities either……
Is that person still chairman of the committee for scientific integrity?
Earlier this year it was 47c in NSW, Australia, and the bitumen was going liquid. One day only!
All the plastic I encountered that day hadn’t melted. I am amazed how well cars perform in this heat.
“Someone should calculate how much atmospheric CO2 it would require to melt traffic lights. My extensive research on Wikipedia using the example of Venus yields a figure of 965,000ppm.
So some way yet to go.”
Don’t agree. I think what you really need is a denser atmosphere and very dry air, moist air leads to clods and rain that hinders further warming. The dry adiabat is 9,78 °C/km. so for every km you added with dry air over the surface in a dry place you would get a 10 deg C increase?
@ Ashby Manson
Well spotted. He is indeed brother to James, a noted science writer with a string of excellent books behind him, among them “Chaos – Making A New Science” and, fittingly, “Genius – Richard Feynman And Modern Physics”.
Oh, the irony is almost too delicious!
You could very well be on to something with your thoughts about sibling rivalry.
Needs your vote – bottom right of page.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/science/8878320/Last-decade-the-warmest
Yeah, yeah, ok, but why did the car catch on fire, people?! It’s loaded with carbon.
AB says:
July 3, 2013 at 10:07 pm
Needs your vote – bottom right of page.
==========================================
Classic warmist propaganda poll. Split the NO votes into two options so that they can claim YES gets the most votes – when the majority vote NO.
I would tend to steer away from using traffic lights as a proxy temperature record anyway. Too many confounding factors.
LOL, here’s how it came about that big brother James, naively showed Peter the dunce how to create a fake fire effect. [for his next CAGW scam — watch for it next week: spontaneously combusting dog dishes]
Petie: [scowl] Oooo, James! I — just — CAN’T — DO — IT! [throws his attempt at fake fire down on floor and stomps on it]
James: Hey, hey, little brother, give me that… [bends down and picks up pieces]…. you know…. I can fix this…. . Ah, now, Petie, don’t cry. We’ll get you some fake fire I no time. [hands Petie a Kleenex]
Petie: B-b-but, can you, uh, you know, make it work so I can leave it … if….. if I need to…… uh… to go to the bathroom all of a sudden?
James: [smiling] Of course! Okay, now, let’s see here… [works at project in garage at work bench while Petie goes inside and plays video games]
Okay. Peter? Come on out here and look at what I did.
[Note: James calls Peter “Warren” by mistake because James is tired and a guy at work named Warren has been a real pain lately.]
The committee who awarded Gleick a genius award were probably helpless on laughing gas at the time.
The absurdity of all this is ridiculous. Even their precious CFLs get about 110 F…just try touching one after it’s been on for a few minutes. Even my new Cree LEDs (which I really like) get warm to the touch…almost assuredly 110 F or warmer–and the cooling fins get much hotter. So I wouldn’t be surprised if the local temperature of stop lights using traditional incandescent bulbs gets well over 110 F even in 70 F weather. Even LED stop light bulbs would be significantly warmer than air temperature unless the AC/DC conversion was done away from the light itself. At least for the incandescent bulbs, the temperature of the closest plastic to the bulb is probably not terribly dependent on the air temperature. Heck, the wind velocity might have as much if not more of an effect on its temperature than the air temp.
-Scott
Can we expect to read about Manns Paleo-traffic light reconstruction?
GLEICK IS A GENIUS…among his peers, that is. Look at him, think what the average IQ of an alarmist has to be… 😉
“AB says:
July 3, 2013 at 10:07 pm”
From the article you link to;
“From 1971 to 2010, global temperatures rose by an average rate of 0.17 degrees Celsius per decade. But going back to 1880, the average increase was .062 per cent degrees Celsius per decade.”
A rise of .062 per cent degrees Celsius per decade since 1880?? Ok, lets assume they actually mean .062C per decade, that’s .0062C per year. An annual global average with an accuracy to 2 10 thousands of a degree? Really? Laughable!
Lew Skannon at 10:59PM — LOL.
I hope we will be reading before long about Plaintiff Mann’s LOSING the argument against the defense’s Motion to Dismiss (a Civil Rule 12(b)(6) motion) in his utterly frivolous lawsuit against N.R.O., Mark Steyn, et. al.. [Even if Mann wins on that (so case not dismissed), he will certainly LOSE AT TRIAL, that rotten, lying, piece of slug bait).]
Makes you wonder just what he would do for a Klondike bar… doesn’t it..
HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY, EVERYONE!
God, bless America, my home sweet home.
THANK YOU, ANTHONY WATTS, TRUTH-IN-SCIENCE HERO, FOR ALL YOU DO FOR THE CAUSE OF FREEDOM!
The pro-AGW crowd should beware of Gleiks bearing gifts.
There always seems to be a downside to accepting anything he offers.
omnologos says:
July 3, 2013 at 11:00 pm
GLEICK IS A GENIUS…among his peers, that is. Look at him, think what the average IQ of an alarmist has to be… 😉
================================
GENIUS + 110
is my guess
Bill H., LOL, ….. Steal it, of course! #[:)]
A naturally skeptical and intelligent person would ask the following questions:
What type of material was the traffic signal housing made of? Typically they are either aluminum or polycarbonate. What is the melting point of each of those materials? Aluminum: about 1200 degrees F. Polycarbonate: 300 degrees F. (working temperature -40 F to 240 F). Hello, McFly!
“A few compliant third-rate scientists were catapulted blinking mole-like out of obscurity and up into that media firmament of stardom. ”
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2013/06/28/know-your-enemy-the-alarmist-scientist/
Gleick aspires to 3rd rate …
Pointman
It really is mind blowing that some alarmists fall for this kind of stuff. Well maybe it shouldn’t be surprising since it fits their beliefs and therefore they *want* it to be true.
But it would be incredibly silly and quite dumb of the Kuwait government to install traffic lights that melt at 110F when the temperature can reach 120F+ (50C) according to the Kuwait government website.
And they wonder why they have a credibility problem…
StuartMcL says:
July 3, 2013 at 10:22 pm
AB says:
July 3, 2013 at 10:07 pm
Needs your vote – bottom right of page.
==========================================
Classic warmist propaganda poll. Split the NO votes into two options so that they can claim YES gets the most votes – when the majority vote NO.
==========================================
Exactly, keep voting folks!
As for the article, What Patrick says is right on the money.
What’s the fuss? Meltdown was still caused by burning fossil fuels (along with car), was not it?
/sarc off
Could not agree more – some of my friends drive graders and direct traffic and even they know that the melting point of the plastics used in traffic lights is considerably greater than any possible natural ambient temperature – at least here on earth. Not least because they need to be able to withstand the heat generated by the globes (bulbs).
This sort of arrant nonsense severely discredits the AGW cause.
Genius indeed, but hey how did the dumpster and car burst into flames. Maybe that was because of Global Warming!
I wonder what model they used to conclude Gleick is a genius?
Giving the guy his due, Peter Gleick is something of a comedic genius…
Note how the thermal damage is more to one side than the other. This is clearly a consequence of a badly sited traffic-light.
We shouldn’t be too harsh on Prof Gleick; he’s not the first academic to be fooled by the UHI (Urban Hazard Indicator) effect!
And remember…genius spelled backwards is jackass.
I am still confused as to how the alarmist crowd can get away with continually ‘denying’ evolution.
More particularly the one part of Darwin’s theory that is (almost) universally accepted and completely non-controversial. I refer of course to Natural Selection which we can see all around us.
Natural Selection is how a species adapts (or doesn’t) to thrive in an ecological niche – some of which are so extreme that a plant removed from one (say a cactus) is swapped with one from another (a Mangrove Tree), neither will survive.
It appears to be incontrovertible that plants thrive with much higher Co2 rates than have been naturally present for many years and also animals and humans also.
So for them to say higher amounts are harmful, while most plants are still limited by Co2 much lower than optimum is their Achilles Heel, yet nobody seems to be making much noise about it.
This was the most hilariously written article that I’be had the pleasure reading! Love the relation to the most idiot of cartoon characters. It usually just gets me madder than hell that these self-proclaimed “geniuses” think were so stupid – to beleive their own nonsense, no bullcrap! Like the rest of the Gov. thinks we don’t stuff and Snowden spilled all the beans! REALLY? If it weren’t so serious for this poor Guy, it would be laughable. Geez.
I think the point is that although Gleick is clearly a buffoon, he is also a dangerous buffoon – and a very useful idiot for the climate evangelists – a man who finds himself (despite himself) lauded and celebrated within their incestuous, self-congratulatory cliques. This gives him license to strut and preen before policy-makers and thus permits bad law based on falsehood, shonky science and political agenda to be enacted on the ‘advice’ of individuals such as Gleick and his ilk.
The man is a public menace, but like so many of his CAGW fellow-travelers, all with their snouts in the trough of public finance, he will continue to be rewarded for his bad behaviour until the vicious circle of wilful pro-CAGW disinformation and spin is finally broken.
Lil Fella from OZ says:
July 3, 2013 at 9:51 pm
Earlier this year it was 47c in NSW, Australia, and the bitumen was going liquid. One day only!
All the plastic I encountered that day hadn’t melted. I am amazed how well cars perform in this heat.
*
Where and when was it 47C in NSW? I must have missed that, are you sure it was reported right (not just a MSM claim)? I live in NSW and I don’t remember it. And, no, I wasn’t in air conditioning at the time, we don’t have it.
I DO remember bitumen melting when I was a kid in the ’70s in Perth, Western Australia, so I know it happens. 🙂 I remember sand at the beach getting so hot it would burn your feet before you got into the ocean, too, that was in the same era. Ah, you’ve brought on some memories…
As for this story and Gleick being labelled a genius – Anthony, are you sure he didn’t steal it? /sarc.
Should I say, What’s up with the melting traffic light? 😀 Well, Mr. Gleick is really genius of creating that.
I wonder what happened to all the other traffic lights in the city.
First one tree, then one street lamp now one traffic light = proof of AGW? Got it!
It appears he banned me from his Twitter feed for commenting on this. Never replied though, which is in itself telling.
Beep Beep now you B…….D
The problem that Peter H. Gleick, ‘genius’, is having is that he lives in a fantasy world all the time. He stopped being a rational scientist long ago (if he ever was one) and became an activist for a religious cause. I wonder if Gleick can really look at a historical chart of temperatures like those posted here often and see the utter failure of his beliefs. I figure that even if he saw New York under 5 km of ice he would yell “see, more evidence of Global Warming!”.
I fear most, if not all of the “team” are exactly like Gleick.
I am so happy that I’m not the only one using Wile E. Coyote, SuperGenius to make my point, well into my 40’s. 🙂
The only genius that crook Gleick displays is the genius of self-destruction.
For all remaining NatGeo fans, NatGeo hosts Gleick as a science blogger.
http://scienceblogs.com/significantfigures/
here he pontificates about droughts as cause of the Syria conflict.
http://scienceblogs.com/significantfigures/index.php/2013/06/10/syria-water-climate-change-and-violent-conflict/
and blames Co2 emissions:
“If we want to reduce the risks of local and international political conflicts and violence over water, we must recognize these risks and improve the tools needed to reduce them. And we need to stop assuming that our political stability is independent of what we do to our atmosphere or our water. It isn’t.”
Stay classy. Warmunist dancing on graves.
I lived a few miles from Kuwait for a few years in the 70s. It wouldn’t cool down to 110 degrees until it was too dark to take a picture like that.
BTW I think the Genius calling card is justified. Gleick provides no service, produces no goods except for books full of conjecture, yet manages to live high on the hog. He’s one of the more successfull criminals I heard of and runs his scheme for years now. Not quite a Paul Ehrlich or a Lester R. Brown but he’ll get there; he knows how to play the media. So, a genius.
See how dangerous the carbon is, it burns cars and melts traffic lights!
I am reminded of a cartoon from Larsen – The Far Side.
“Midvale School for the gifted”
I found it at:
http://slightlychristopher.com/2010/11/03/navels-justice-a-stripper-named-coco/
I’m not gifted enough to insert photographs Sorry
What would Feynman say of Gleick? Or of the state of climate “research” for that matter?
Does anyone really expect a response when he gets caught in something pretty silly?
Genii non sunt quid erant.
But, surely the frequency and intensity of car fires has increased?
It’s obvious, and has been since “An Inconvenient Truth” , that global warmists are
making their pitch to a very intellectually mediocre crowd. To those with an IQ larger than their
belt size, claims of global warming require examination of global temperatures, not pictures
of something melting.
Gleick is an expert. Someone who knows more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing!
The Climatist religion thrives on symbols. What matters is the emotive force behind those symbols, not the truth behind them. Thievery and lies are all just SOP for Gleick and his brethren, since it’s for the Cause. Gleick’s problem isn’t with intelligence, although one could debate what that word even means. It is with morality. Note the absolute lie in his tweet: “getting hotter every year”. His statement that it’s “hotter than it used to be” is also dishonest, since it means absolutely nothing, but it implies that our temps today are somehow unprecedented.
Gleick is oddly useful in his role as AGW advocate and compulsive liar.
I hope he never shuts up.
The funny thing about the streetlight is… only one is melted. The other looks just a bit bashed. If the reason for it was climate change, wouldn’t both have melted? Nope, that was another accident, or some loonies set fire to something. Happens all the time.
PS, you can see the fire damage on the plastic. That bubbling it shows, classic for fire meeting plastic. Seen it often enough.
Isn’t this article a little dishonest. As Gleick immediately followed up the tweet with “No doubt from some fire…But you get the idea” before anyone else responded.
The wannabe ‘Team boy’ genius continues his peerless cruise thro’ the Major League of World Misanthropes, and given recent sustained form who’d bet against him reaching at least the semi-finals? Still, the competition nowadays for that much-coveted title and a deserved place for all time in the Annals of Shame can’t be easy. Must be real tough being a front-running elitist like Peter. And Mikey. And Gav. And Stephen. And…
Here’s Gleick’s award he has deserved.
http://umweltluege.de/images/h/award.jpg
“Someone should calculate how much atmospheric CO2 it would require to melt traffic lights. My extensive research on Wikipedia using the example of Venus yields a figure of 965,000ppm.
The atmospheric pressure of the CO2 laden atmosphere of Venus at the planet’s surface is the same as the water pressure on Earth at a depth of 10 miles!. When CAGW was first put forward, the “believers” stated in all seriousness that if mankind continued putting CO2 into the atmosphere, then our planet would become a second Venus. This was the turning point for my attitude to CAGW or even AGW, because it is nonsensical, there is not anywhere near enough C + O2, HCO3 or CO3 to cause this to happen. They have kept quiet about this since because they realised it just demonstrated their own stupidity. However people, however intelligent they are, or think they are, look for things that back up their pet theories. Tongue and fingers engage Drive but the brain is still in Neutral! They want AGW to be true; so much so, that they disregard anything that demonstrates it isn’t and latch on to anything no matter how tenuous that demonstrates it is
This is why AGW is a belief, NOT a science and it will never be anything else!
All time record cool for July in parts of Texas. Ask the genius if the coolest so early ( or late..which one is it) is part of the warming. Bet he says hes
All time record cool for July in parts of Texas. Ask the genius if the coolest so early ( or late..which one is it) is part of the warming. Bet he says yes. ( hes is not a word as in above..see I’m a genius)
Joseph Bastardi says: July 4, 2013 at 5:39 am
All time record cool for July in parts of Texas. …
Not these parts, Joe.
Mike in Houston
“metaphor” – heh. Wile E. Coyote is the best metaphor of all, congrats!
It occurred to me recently, having always had older relatives around for much of my life (and who II loved and helped take care of) that sooner or later all of them get to where they love to sit in a rocker and complain about the weather, on and on and on. It’s NEVER as good as it used to be, and even if it happens to be good at the moment, it won’t be for long, don’t cha know!!
So this is “global warming” in a nutshell – the baby boomer generation is sliding into their geriatric stage, and all they have left is to sit out on the porch and gripe about how bad the weather was and how much better it all used to be, and what they’ve added is how this of course is everyone else’s faults.
Shadddup and go to bed, grandpa!
I’ll just wait until they complain the tarmac is melting! Never did that before.
No Gleick’s listed in the Merit Scholar database. Probably an oversight, since they missed Hillary and Barack, too.
p.s. – I’m in East Texas and we’ve had magnificently cool mornings for 3 days in a row now! That don’t happen much in July, sonny boy! Now let me go get my shawl…
As a member of Mensa I find the term “genius award” a bit odd. What the MacArthur Foundation really awards are “Fellowships” for people who “show exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work” (from Wikipedia). Over 700 Fellowships have been awarded. I don’t know about Gleick’s merit but he has clearly shown that he can be creative.
BTW, Janice Moore, thank you for your patriotic comment (11:14PM). I hope it does not get you on the Homeland Security watch list.
Gleick will reject all the data provided by Anthony and insist that it doesn’t disprove that global warming wasn’t a contributing factor to the melting of that traffic light. The dice are loaded for more traffic light melting and there are models that show that the traffic lights will melt completely by the year 2150. Anthony is just a traffic light melting from global warming denier! 😉
THat’s it! Another proxy record. If we can just figure out what pressure caused the tire track depresions and on what day we have a proxy record ot temperature stretching make to when tarmac roads were introduced. Need ones that haven’t been resurfaced thouugh! And we need to measure the load/temperature deformation strcuture.
The Gleick affair is further proof of the warmists’ endless credulity, This is FRAUD
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/greenpolitics/9105330/The-Gleick-affair-is-further-proof-of-the-warmists-endless-credulity.html
Just another example of what happens when the liberal mind attempts to do science.
Genius awards aren’t handed out by geniuses and in this day and age it is his ideology that has been rewarded. This is true nowadays for the Nobel Prize – look at recipients for the last 20-30 years. Obama got one as an inducement to enlist in the fun at Copenhagen 2009 and Gore, Pachauri….the committee is boosting the new world order and geniuses need not apply. It is a shame that this erstwhile honor, now a Crackerjack^TM prize, taints the great ones who received it for great things done. I noted my children and all their friends began to get awards at school for no apparent reason. I now realize that it is used as a leveler to haul the brights ones down and make a thin gruel of achievement.
Maybe he didn’t reply because he had already explained that it was probably from a fire, and not just air temps…
“Isn’t this article a little dishonest. As Gleick immediately followed up the tweet with “No doubt from some fire…But you get the idea” before anyone else responded.”
It’s only dishonest if Anthony actually knows about the other tweet. As we’ve seen multiple times, he doesn’t really have a handle on how twitter works.
Add another tactic to the warmista battle plan:
When propaganda is exposed as lies, it becomes: ” a metaphor”
Let us not be too hard on Peter Gleick.
He is useful to the sceptic cause.
The more he talks, the less people are likely to take him and his fellow travelers seriously.
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”
Peter Gleick IS that mistake.
Has been unusally cool on top of the Ozarks, lack of rain though, we’re turning into dust. We had pretty good rain this spring and even first snow in May, then it sure turned dry. Looks like maybe a little more than half the trees that turned brown last summer died and didn’t emerge this spring. So many trees were lost or severely mangled during the January, 2009 ice storm and these droughts are thinning them way out even more. We’ll begin to start to look like southern Arizona & New Mexico if this keeps up long.
People have been getting a lot of work repairing house foundations. Your house needs a thick foundation to withstand see sawing ground moisture.
It’s just hilarious that these geniuses so easily forget what the melting points of basic metals and glasses are. Just about the only common construction material that humans use that could possibly melt in surface temperatures is plastic. I’ve never seen plastic street signals.
My B.S. detector went off when I looked at the post holding the traffic lights up. It looks like nothing more than a 1×2 WOOD post. They don’t put traffic lights up on wood post because they rot over time and their is no place to run the power wires. Also look at how the back panels on the lights overlap. If they were real, the contractor who installed the lights should never get a public job again!
Pity the poor Warmunists this time of year. Spontaneously-combusting pants and hot weather don’t seem to be a good combination.
Dena says: “My B.S. detector went off when I looked at the post holding the traffic lights up. It looks like nothing more than a 1×2 WOOD post. They don’t put traffic lights up on wood post because they rot over time and their is no place to run the power wires. Also look at how the back panels on the lights overlap. If they were real, the contractor who installed the lights should never get a public job again!”
Look again, with your glasses on. It’s very clearly a standard octagonal tapered (“swaged”) traffic light pole, approx. 3″ x 3″ at the base. Probably steel, judging from the rust where the yellow coating is abraded.
A larger size, possibly aluminum, can be seen here:
http://sell.pakuya.com/upload/20111214/Street_light_pole.jpg
Gary Hladik says:
July 4, 2013 at 12:21 am
Giving the guy his due, Peter Gleick is something of a comedic genius…
You beat me to the punch(line)
Just to continue with RichardLH’s observation of the use od ‘proxies’ to prove whatever they wish, I suspect the poll mentioned above will receive a lot of proxy voting just before it is closed and reported. Ethics and honesty have not been shown to be hallmarks of those pushing manmade climate disruption, or whatever it is being called this year.
He’s a Lying Liar who Lies…
@Bob – As the holder of a Ph.D. myself who scrupulously and proudly dealt in facts, it’s disgusting and infuriating to see the degree cheapened by the likes of Gleick. But then I left academia (taught history at U of Utah and U of Wisconsin-Parkside) after encountering much the same disconnect from reality among my historian colleagues.
@Gary Young – No, they ain’t what they used to was.
@AllanJ – How much you wanna bet all of us who post here are in the NSA database and on the IRS BOLO list – and maybe even der Fuehrer’s enemies list? (A pox upon their houses!)
@Janice Moore – Beautifully and simply said. Today I am playing music by Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Charles Ives and Scott Joplin – great American composers all – on my CD player, to celebrate this extraordinary day.
a lot of people misread things – like genius when it might be genus – as in genus stupidicus – in the case of glick
I can’t help but think Shea Gunther is a failed eco entrepreneur.
But we all know global warming means an increase in car and dumpster fires. It’s worse than we thought!!
/snark
I think he could take a lesson from an axiom in the movie “Forest Gump”
‘Stupid is as stupid does’
It sounds like Peter Gleick has been spending too much time in the sun, if not the spotlight. Much more and he could expire from sunstroke.
In private correspondence with several of the more moderate “action required” warmists, I’ve asked many times, “why do you believe the science these guys are telling you, when the stuff you can actually check (melting lights, hurricane incidence, etc.) is never correct”.
I don’t know why any of these guys have any credibility with anybody.
Ryan says:
July 4, 2013 at 6:16 am
““Isn’t this article a little dishonest. As Gleick immediately followed up the tweet with “No doubt from some fire…But you get the idea” before anyone else responded.”
It’s only dishonest if Anthony actually knows about the other tweet. As we’ve seen multiple times, he doesn’t really have a handle on how twitter works.”
You did realize that Gleick tweeted his handwaving only after someone pointed him to the burning car photo? fine. Everybody else did as well. So what do you hope to achieve? Hey I got an idea. Spread your lies on Daily Kos, that’s where the gullible live.
REPLY: Until this thread, I hadn’t seen any other Tweet from Gleick on the issue. I was watching the conversation thread and saw no replies to mine. The “just kidding” came well after mine as pointed out below. I don’t believe Gleick was kidding in his original Tweet, because he’d have to know that he’d look stupid doing it. all he had to add was “JK” in his original if that was his intent. But that didn’t come until much later. It suggests he was finally persuaded that he’d pushed a story that was preposterous. – Anthony
@Chad Wozniak
Thanks for the comment, but as retired Marine, a libertarian and Constitutionalist, A life member of the NRA and of two gun collector organizations, and a 30 year veteran of the Intelligence world I am very confident of my position on a lot of lists.
But of what use is liberty if you don’t use it?
The great scientist Alexander Von Humboldt laid out what the lineaments of scientific genius ,not in an explicit way,but hinting at its tendencies when looking at the terrestrial and celestial arena.By definition, a scientific genius cannot manufacture a conclusion and collate information to support that conclusion but rather expand the field of view thereby raising the standard for everyone else.
“This assemblage of imperfect dogmas bequeathed by one age to another— this physical philosophy, which is composed of popular prejudices,—is not only injurious because it perpetuates error with the obstinacy engendered by the evidence of ill observed facts, but also because it hinders the mind from attaining to higher views of nature. Instead of seeking to discover the mean or medium point, around which oscillate, in apparent independence of forces, all the phenomena of the external world, this system delights in multiplying exceptions to the law, and seeks, amid phenomena and in organic forms, for something beyond the marvel of a regular succession, and an internal and progressive development. Ever inclined to believe that the order of nature is disturbed, it refuses to recognise in the present any analogy with the past, and guided by its own varying hypotheses, seeks at hazard, either in the interior of the globe or in the regions of space, for the cause of these pretended perturbations. It is the special object of the present work to combat those errors which derive their source from a vicious empiricism and from imperfect inductions.” Von Homboldt ,Cosmos
He could be referring to climate but he is not,he refers to a vicious strain of empiricism that nobody wants to know about because it is so dominant in this era.
So can anyone be awarded and pronounced a genius if they like you? I thought it was based on intellect.
As for this;
Needs your vote – bottom right of page.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/science/8878320/Last-decade-the-warmest
The last answer has ~3 percent … (100 – 3) = that magic number. So 97 percent of everyone in the world disagrees with answer 3 meaning that we are all going to die again.
Obama got a Nobel peace prize before he came to office and before he did anything. Turns out he has committed acts of war, not peace. But hey, he is a man of peace, because he got the Nobel peace prize.
My point is that we are now living in a world where up is down – and if you disagree then you are a “denier”, a “racist” and every other off-topic ad hominem they can think of. These are dark, dark, times. But the people seem to want it. They seem to really, really want it to be like this.
Man Bearpig,
I voted. Took about 5 seconds.
Skeptics are winning.
Dear Allan J., U. S. Marine (ALWAYS a Marine, they never retire and you know that!) #[:)],
Re: “… thank you for your patriotic comment (11:14PM). I hope it does not get you on the Homeland Security watch list.”
I have made several WUWT comments specifically aimed at getting me on “the list.” LOL. AND I HOPE THAT I AM ON YOUR LIST, D’OH!BAMA, YOU L-I-A-R!
And, you’re welcome and HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY from one N.R.A., concealed-carry permit, U.S. Constitutional originalist to another.
THANK YOU, SO MUCH, FOR YOUR SERVICE (in the U.S. Marine Corps … NOT “corpse”, lol — now THERE’s a “genius” for you).
Janice
Hi, Chad,
Good for you. Being a history professor, no WONDER you picked such perfectly-tailored-to-the-day music. LOL, if I had a stereo and 4 powerful speakers hooked up right now, I would be much more conventional. “Stars and Stripes Forever” (and lots of Sousa) and (more Sousa) and Tchaikovsky’s “William Tell Overture” and….. you guessed it — MORE SOUSA! #[:)]
No stereo, just the piano. You’ve inspired me (felt kind of blue today) to go sit down and sing a few melodies…. Here I go………….
“My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims’ pride,
From every mountainside,
LET —– FREEDOM ———- RING!”
Enjoy your day.
Janice
Hmm, think I’ll go find a more appropriate thread (NOT on one about a stote like Gleick) to post a patriotic music video!
Most plastics are made from Hydrocarbons.
If Man didn’t use Hydrocarbons then the streetlight wouldn’t have been made from plastic.
If it wasn’t made from plastic it wouldn’t have melted.
Therefore, Man using Hydrocarbons is the reason it melted.
It is Man’s fault!
Peter H. Gleick, Forger, Thief, Liar and Genius, will be very disappointed by this “metaphorical” experiment by the BBC. You see it is unfortunate that even with all the hot air from catastrophic global warming alarmism, the “hot enough to fry an egg” metaphor doesn’t actually work – even in one of the hotest places in the world (Death Valley)!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23174535
Alarmists – Watch the video and weep.
Sorry Forger,Thief, Liar and Genius but the climate really isn’t materially any hotter or unprecedented than before and metaphorically speaking, extremist eco-alarmists are drowning in the sea of their own lies.
Two brothers with real genius? Try Click and Clack, the auto mechanics.
Instead of just admitting that he was wrong about the pic and it wasn’t due to climate change (or just a really hot day in Kuwait) he’s crowing about how he mentioned the fire in a second tweet before Anthony responded. As if that makes it okay that it stupidly assumed the melting was due to the 110 degree heat.
It’s obvious that Gleick is not one to just man up and admit he was wrong.
If it came to a vote… OK. I’d have to go with Wile E. Coyote. Gleick is a distant second.
I live in Phoenix and I’ve seen signs melt. I saw a freeway sign made of 1 foot diameter metal pipe melt in about 1984. Of course a GASOLINE tanker had overturned and was burning underneath it.
Anthony, give Peter Gleick some time, please!
A million years from now, he will discover fire…
Peter Gleick’s brother James wrote in 1992 a book that I’ve read called “Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman”. I note that he didn’t write a book called “Genius: The Life and Science of my Brother Peter”.
Mr. G gave a bad review to this book: Why Energy Conservation Fails
Evidently he has never heard of Jevons’ Paradox.
http://www.ecnmag.com/blogs/2013/01/us-energy-usage-and-jevons-paradox
Reblogged this on The GOLDEN RULE and commented:
It pays to not believe everything you read. This applies to all information. However, when the information is either confirmed by reliable reporting or, as in this case, proven to be wrong, the reader can make a sensible assessment.
The fact that blatant lies, including pathetic ones such as revealed here, are offered in order to support the AGW fallacies, should make most people sit back and think. Hopefully to keep reading with an open mind rather than accept being brainwashed.
Is there an Acme Corp. catalog to which Peter “Genius” Gleick should be subscribing?
I just looked on Twitter and the original posting was at 9:25 AM on 01 July. The followup was posted at 10:04 AM. Watt’s posting was at 10:22 AM. So technically Gleick beat Watt to the punch, but it was almost 40 minutes from the time Gleick posted his original until he posted the “just kidding” followup. Plenty of time to have someone contact him with a “you’re an idiot” message.
Hilary Ostrov (aka hro001) says:
July 3, 2013 at 9:25 pm
In light of Gleick’s puerile, pusillanimous performances, it kinda makes one wonder what exactly those who determine who might be deserving of the MacArthur “Genius Award” might have been thinking (or smoking?!) when they bestowed it on Gleick.
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Actually, Gleick is a cut above many MacArthur Award winners. These days, the MacArthur Award, like the Nobel Peace Prize, is right up there with the Darwin Awards.