We’ve had issues with Mr. Laden before, and being called on it hasn’t changed his bad behavior, hopefully he’ll learn something this time. This is a pretty simple black and white issue, so I’ll do it with bullet points.
- Yesterday, Mr. Laden claimed WUWT had sunk to a “new low” for daring to question the wind speeds of Typhoon Haiyan hyped in the media with ground measurements reported by the Philippine Meteorological Agency. Our position was the media poorly reported on the storm, made egregious errors that we documented, and that this led to inflated wind speed numbers given to the public, such as 235 kilometers per hour being reported as 235 miles per hour, to give an example.
- He further claimed that we were “disrespectful” for not immediately updating the death toll to the new estimate of 10,000, which was the result of a political meeting in the governor’s office. I said we’d stick with the last report of the Red Cross number of 1200 as I trust them because their mission has no agenda other than aid. The 10,000 estimate may be met, or even exceeded, and if so we’ll report it then. (Now at 1774 as of 1015AM 11/11) UPDATE: 11/12 7AM Philippine president Aquino says to CNN: Typhoon Haiyan deaths likely 2,000 to 2,500 — not 10,000
- He added in a comment:
Let me ask you this but you better answer quick because the ground is sliding from underneath you as I type this. How important is 1,200 vs. tens of thousands? If it turns out to be tens of thousands instead of 1,200 will you STFU forever? Please?
- He then proceeded to write a long winded blog post at “ScienceBlogs”, and launch a Twitter tirade, from the position that he had some sort of moral high ground. As one WUWT commenter put it: The leftie pose of “We care more about real people than you do” is on full display.
- Yet, despite that angry posturing from that self-imagined moral high ground, Mr. Laden never once offered to help the people of the Philippines as WUWT has with the links to the Philippine Red Cross in the side bar graphic and in blog post links. Other bloggers such as Bob Tisdale have followed my lead with links in postings. Even 350.org’s Bill McKibben has thanked WUWT for providing him this info as he was pushing the “Save the Children Organization”, which isn’t disaster equipped.
- I waited over 24 hours to see if Mr. Laden had a conscience, and if he would offer his blog to help the people of Philippines or was simply interested in his holier than thou tirade against WUWT. So far, he has not.
- I made a donation to the Philippine Red Cross.
I chose 5000 Philippine Pesos (PHP) from the menu, which works out to $118 USD as it allows Mr. Laden and others who may donate to easily match the contribution. The maximum value on the Red Cross donation page in the menu is 10,000 PHP, or about $230 USD.
Between his donation (assuming he makes one), his readers donations (assuming he pitches it to them), and my donation along with WUWT reader donations, that should add up to a significant and useful sum, but any amount people may choose is useful and appreciated. Feel free to note your donation in comments if you choose.
The challenge:
I challenge Mr. Laden to meet or exceed my donation, and to post a link and graphic on his blog to the donation page for the Philippine Red Cross, and encourage his readers to contribute.
He is welcome to use this graphic I created:
Give Generously
The link is: http://ushare.redcross.org.ph/
Be sure to select the campaign first in the menu pulldown to be Supertyphoon Yolanda (Haiyan), then select the monetary amount and the payment method.
I also encourage WUWT readers to donate if they feel so inclined. It will be interesting to see if any other blogs who have been critical of WUWT pitch in to help. I’m betting few will as it isn’t in their nature but would be happy to be proven wrong.
Full disclosure: My wife’s maternal side of family is from the Philippines, and we have learned that one of her relatives there has lost a home in the storm. We have no word on the others there at this time.
==============================================================
UPDATE: Laden’s claims in his tirade aren’t supported by actual science and data, he writes:
But Watts and Homewood don’t want storms to be important for the simple reason that the best models strongly suggest that there will be more storms … especially in the Pacific, where Haiyan struck, over coming decades because of the changes to climate that humans are carrying out and that Anthony Watts and Paul Homewood deny to be real.
This paper shows the reality from data – no trend:
Kubota, H. and Chan, J.C.L. 2009. Interdecadal variability of tropical cyclone landfall in the Philippines from 1902 to 2005. Geophysical Research Letters 36: 10.1029/2009GL038108.
“Despite global warming during the 20th century the number of tropical cyclones annually making landfall in the Philippines did not experience any net change. All variability was merely oscillatory activity around a mean trend of zero slope”
The numbers that the blogger is posting are outdated, as of right now the NDRRMC have reported officially 1,774 confirmed fatalities
http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/334950/news/nation/ndrrmc-confirms-1-774-fatalities-most-are-from-eastern-visayas
REPLY: updated, thanks – Anthony
I have donated as well. Perhaps Laden should redirect his anger at Al Gore whose Climate Reality Facebook page tried to capitalize on the human misery with this picture posted to their blog.
http://landscapesandcycles.net/image/77530779.jpg
In case the Philippine Red Cross is as corrupt as the US organization, I donated to the Salvation Army:
https://donate.salvationarmyusa.org/TyphoonHaiyan
Excellent point. The SA did amazing work in New Orleans and were there long after the headline seekers had gone. Everyone should use their judgment on which fund is most likely to do the most good with the funds donated.
I too have donated 5000 PHP thanks for making it easy.
I donated through the US Red Cross Typhoon Appeal (see their website).
In December 1980 I spent a week in Cebu on a business trip – my company had a plant there on Mactan Island – which is right in the middle of the worst-hit area of the Philippines. It’s heart-rending to see the damage and the evidences of suffering, and I’m wondering if the people I met while I was there came through OK – I sure hope they did. Wonderful people there – you can’t help but fall in love with them all.
A pox upon Greg Bin Laden, and especially upon Bloody Mess, trying to make money off people’s suffering. How low can you go? People ()if that is the correct word for these reptiles) like them have to look up to look down. Because I’ve had acquaintance with people in the stricken area, I take their insults and lies personally.
The following post on Laden’s blog will give you some idea of the type of moronic plot to expect here. It is to be expected of AGW to resort to tactics where they THINK that they will be able to argue based on conspiracy theories. It is the warmists that are clearly educationally challenged. Does ‘G’ not realise that the people that believe in conspiracies came from pro AGW sites by people PRETENDING to be skeptics. As for the original post screw it up and put it in the bin, Laden.
”G
California USA
November 10, 2013
Greg, re #3, you’re not obligated to “respect” his decision to censor you for criticizing him. You’d be well within your rights to call him a censorious arse-haul right here, and dare him to let you post at length lest his refusal to do so expose him for what he is.
Here’s a tactic I think is useful when fighting these types of battles: “prescribe the symptom.”
Get on his site under a pseudo, and post comments that appear to agree with him, but take it to the logical conclusion and bring in other issues that will make the postings seem absurd or paranoid or otherwise objectionable.
For example make reference to “the truth about 9/11″, and “the New World Order,” and refer to the President by a derogatory name with vague racist overtones, and so on. This needs to be done subtly in order to work, and it’s best done by a group of people working together.
The net impact is to associate the objectionable blog article with a range of other content that average readers will find objectionable, so their emotional reaction against the postings carries over to the blog article itself.
Also useful, if he comes over here and sees this post, it will leave him wondering how many posts on his blog are of this type. That will in turn alter his censorship behavior, either to make him more paranoid and censorious (and alienate a portion of his audience), or to make him more likely to let other stuff stay up (in which case take advantage by shooting down his denialism and sounding far more reasonable than the crazy-posts).
This sort of tactic is a no-no in polite debate, but IMHO it’s justified when dealing with extremist content that poses a clearly foreseeable threat of harm to others. Climate denialism, anti-vaccination conspiracy theory, and overt hate speech fall into that category, along with the more obvious cases such as support for terrorism.
”
sadly I have nothing to give. I will however put a link on my site ( http://www.theconservativevoices.com/index ) to donations in a few moments.
for those that were able to donate, thank you.
Good work Anthony!
I just matched your donation
-Jeremy
If someone makes a factual error because they misunderstood or were sloppy, it can be corrected.
If someone takes a position because of “tribal identity,” all you can do is point out the flaw and let the “tribal warfare” continue.
Unfortunately, it seems most people still operate on that basis.
1,000 PhP on the way now from me and my wife. Great work, Anthony.
Hey Pat,
Thanks for mentioning Greg Laden and his desire to install a catergory 6 for cyclones in the age AGW. I am reminded of the movie “Spinal Tap” where one dude purported that his amp was more powerful than the other guys because it went up to 11 on the volume knob.
The WSJ has a good and frightening overview of things on the ground.
Philippines Typhoon Death Count Rises to 1,774
Toll Exceeds Red Cross Estimates of 1,200; Likely to Rise Much Higher
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303914304579191821439194290
One bright spot in an otherwise sad report …
At the airport, flanked by fellow officers, U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Mike O’Neil said some 200 marines were preparing to help provide humanitarian aid, including assisting in flying some 90,000 tons of relief supplies waiting in Manila. Other planes laden with aid were likewise landing throughout the day.
That’s 180 million pounds. By plane. FedEx reports that their average daily volume in more than 3.9 million packages and 11 million pounds of freight. And they have 634 aircraft.
http://about.van.fedex.com/fedex_express
ok got links up in multiple spots on my end, hope it helps somewhat.
these poor people 🙁
Michael Larkin says: “…[O]ne shouldn’t take pride in being kind to fellow human beings. It diminishes the giver and the receiver alike.”
There’s no harm in being a little proud of a good deed, Michael. Judgmentalism, on the other hand, has no good side to it at all, and yet you seem proud of your finger-pointing. Proud enough to repeat it.
Speed says:
November 11, 2013 at 12:42 pm
Despite The Philippines kicking us out of Subic Bay Navy & Clark Air Force bases in 1991, there are quite a few US assets still in the islands, supporting the federal government’s poorly publicized war against militant Muslim separatists in the south, descendants of the Moros whose amok attacks inspired the Colt Browning .45 cal semi-auto pistol.
Laden:
============================================================================
No.
“The best models”? How good are they? Name them.
Most here are not indifferent to the personal loss a weather event may cause to real people.
We are also not indifferent to the “hype” and PR that is driving a political agenda that would keep nations impoverished and/or make the citizens of nations in a position to help impoverished for “The Cause”.
Laden, be honest. What have you done to help anyone now or in the future? Set them up to be ruled by the “benevolent elite”?
I may just be beating a dead horse here, and I really hope that I do not come off as some troll, but there really needs to be a correction to the assertions made in both these blogs.
PAGASA uses a 10-minute sustained wind standard to measure winds in a tropical cyclone.
This is different than the 1-minute sustained wind standard used by the National Hurricane Center, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, and for the scale commonly used in the citation of past windspeeds of tropical cyclones in the meteorological record.
This difference in standard means that PAGASA frequently measures the windspeeds of tropical cyclones of Cat 4-Cat 5 intensity, to be 30-50 mph lower than what they would be measured in the 1-minute sustained windspeed level.
For example, both recent typhoons Megi and Bopha, universally recognized by the meteorological community and by posterity as Category 5-equivalent cyclones (a fact confirmed by satellite, and in the case of Megi aircraft recon data) were stated by PAGASA has packing winds of 130-140 mph on the 10-minute sustained windspeed scale.
The reporting by the news media of Haiyan containing winds sustained at 195 mph, with gusts to 235 mph, was in no way an attempt by them to inflate the numbers. They were simply reporting the advisories issued by the JTWC using the scale most commonly used by reporting on tropical cyclones.
The fact that, again, there is a discrepancy between the PAGASA advisories, and the JTWC advisories is simply because they use different ways of measuring the wind speeds.
Admitting that you made a mistake does not reflect in any negative way your pass blog reports, or your cause, and will likely strengthen it. However, if you choose to continue this notion, that Haiyan was “only” a Catergory 4 hurricane, it will look like one of three things, either you are too stubborn to admit you are wrong, you do not know enough about hurricanes to know that you are wrong, or that you are deliberately trying to mislead people for whatever reason, and you have been doing so from the first post.
I do not think you are a bad person, and I think you just made a mistake, so simply issue a correction, and this fight will not have to go any further (if you want to see some sourcing to my points, look at my previous post).
dbstealey thank you for being brave enough to acknowledge a correction. I’ve been wrong on the internet before and I know it hurts.
It takes a man to speak out for what he believes in.
It takes a good man to accept when he mis-speaks.
Good work, Sir.
Mr. Laden sounds rather pathetic and disconnected from reality. All of the deaths, 1200 or 12,000, are tragic. The destruction in the surge area is devestating, matching anything on the Mississippi coast after Katrina. His fixation on this storm being part of some larger, sinister, CO2 driven trend is dramatic rhetoric but sadly short on supporting facts. Storm trends are flat, where they are not down, world wide. Laden’s assertions to the opposite are products of his desperately wishingit were otherwise.
And why not point out that major news organizations confused mph and kph in order to hype the storm? The major media distortions of weather related events cheapens weather events, making them political. It is not a mistake to call out so-called major media on this stuff. It is time we held media reports to reasonable qa/qc standards.
“My lefty friends are the ones crying for all sorts of gov’t handout programs and yet they don’t give a dime to charity.”
“No Oxfam is not a good way to give. Oxfam is a leftist ONG political institution which mission is to indoctrinate trough giving.”
“The leftie pose of ‘We care more about real people than you do’ is on full display.”
“The truth is, the lefties do not care more about real people, they only care about how bossy and how idealistic they can be, they do not give a tinkers cuss about real people!”
“The left always likes to claim the moral high ground, I guess they are so accustomed to such nasty under-handed behavior that they don’t even think about it anymore.”
Oh dear. Lefties like Mahatma Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, Albert Einstein? Obviously donations from lefties not welcome…
What would annoy the most people most often? That is the true left-wing test of government intervention. — P. J. O’Rourke
Donation completed.
Laden has posted a link on Twitter where donations can be made. He claims to have donated $50. I wouldn’t expect him to return to WUWT to donate. He is also claiming that AW is ‘looking for revenge’ by posting this challenge.
Before the typhoon even made landfall, the MSM was crowing about ‘biggest storm in earth’s history!’ or something. We all knew where that was going … and that’s exactly what they’ve done. Many of them are now claiming that this was a man-made typhoon. Somebody had to counter the hyperbole … and quickly. That’s what AW is doing. Many thanks.
Is it my imagination or are AGW believers some of the dumbest clucks on the planet … or, at least, the most gullible?
Thank you Anthony for leading by example and encouraging others to follow as many of us did(and were otherwise unlikely to give had it not been for your example). Seeking truth, as you do, has always been harder, it’s followers more blessed even when persecuted. “Give and it shall be given unto you; good measure,pressed down, and shaken together, and running over shall men give into your bosom.”
As far as Laden and his ilk are concerned , It reminds me of the words… Do not let the bastards grind us down!
Man Bearpig says at November 11, 2013 at 11:16 am
Interesting. This has happened here on WUWT.
A fellow called “temp” claimed that all Socialists were racist – not just wrong which many here would have agreed with but RACIST!.
It was pointed out that 25% of EU citizens vote that way; are a quarter of the EU racist?
On he or she went claiming yes…
In the end I called him out as a false flag operation.
Many on the right-wing strongly dislike us socialists but they don’t use those arguments. It’s all about liberty and individualism (fair enough), not politically correct dog-whistles.
Sadly, I can’t find the thread right now. It seems that “temp” is a name that is hard to search for on a website where “temperature” occurs often.
Curious, that is.
Anthony, you are a force for good.
Another GBP 100 (PHP 7000) donated which I wouldn’t have thought of doing had it not been for your suggestion.
Thank you.
Robin