Yesterday, the climate blogosphere reached critical mass of Cotton. Douglas J. Cotton. And with that critical mass, as such things go, they go boom. Lucia has previously announced why Doug Cotton is banned at her place. Undeterred, and fully advised he has been banned for bad behavior (here at WUWT also), Mr. Cotton continues to use his Cotton Socks™ to sockpuppet his presence throughout the climate blogosphere, and today, Lucia has had enough and has decided to provide Doug his own thread for entertainment purposes called: The Fullness of Time: Doug Cotton Comments Unveiled!
Lest you think this is a problem exclusive to Lucia’s shop, I can advise you that just about every sceptical climate blog has had similar problems with Mr. Cotton posting his own brand of physics under his real and/or list of sockpuppet names and fake emails. We’ve heard that even the Prinicipia/Slayers have un-welcomed him, and over the weekend, it seems critical mass has been achieved as new blogs weighed in via emails behind the scenes. With that, I offer this short play:
Doug J. Cotton orders a pizza (A play in one act)
[The stage is split in half. On the left, Cotton’s study–a room full of books, piles of books, thousands upon thousands of books. In the center a desk covered in manuscripts. Cotton occupies the chair, quill in hand, dashing out another screed. Outside it is snowing, or raining, or sleeting or roasting hot.
On the right, a telephone on a card table. Seated at the table a youth, gender unimportant. Maintains perfect stillness until the phone rings–as it must.]
Cotton: It is a frigid night, and possibly raining, snowing, sleeting perhaps, definitely hot due to atmospheric pressure. In five strokes of the quill I will have completely gutted the Greenhouse Effect and replaced it with the Autonomous Thermal Gradient! Ah… but I am faint with hunger. To the telephone, anon! [He digs under stacks of manuscripts to find the phone. Success.] Hello, Domino’s? I’d like to order a pizza. [to self] Damn these tiny buttons.
Youth: [picking up phone] Thank you for calling Domino’s. How may I be of service?
Cotton: I would like to order a pepperoni pizza. Extra cheese. Oh, and with olives.
Youth: Is that all?
Cotton: That’s about it. What’s the total?
Youth: Nineteen eighty including tax. Your phone number?
Cotton: 555-6219. 234 5th Ave Southeast, Sydney… My name is Doug… Doug Cotton… Doug J. Cotton… I will not soon be forgotten. [awkward pause] I have my own blog. I have a paper describing a new paradigm coming out.
Youth: [nonplussed] Uh… great. That pizza will be delivered in about a half hour. [tries to hang up]
Cotton: Hold on there, youngster. Is it finished yet?
Youth: We’ve hardly had–
Cotton: Okay… well… is it finished now?
Youth: Sir, I haven’t even called the order in–
Cotton: How about now?
Youth: No.
Cotton: Now?
Youth: Still no.
Cotton: I’ve changed my mind. I want salami instead of pepperoni. Genoa salami. With the fatty parts cut out.
Youth: I’m afraid we’re–
Cotton: Is it done yet?
Youth: Look, Mister Doug J. Cotton, you have no idea how this works. Pizza doesn’t appear magically when you say the word. It’s a process. It takes time and heat. Three hundred seventy five degrees, twenty minutes, plus driving time. Got it? Goodbye. [Youth and Cotton hang up simultaneously]
Cotton:[Cotton picks up the phone again, dialing.] I have completely eviscerated the Greenhouse Effect, you know.
Youth: You again? Look, Mr. Cotton, the cheese is finished, and it’s going in the oven, so–
Cotton: Is it done?
Youth: Uh, no.
Cotton: Then we have time to chat. You see, we deal here with fundamental differences in the way we view the world which I believe are rigidly fixed in our flawed interpretations of The Second Law of Thermodynamics. There is also the problem of pride. Does anyone really expect those who have dedicated their professional lives to a phantom magic gas to easily come to grips with just that? Yet that is exactly what the situation boils down to. Can you imagine Roy Spencer conceding that everything he has ever written is meaningless drivel? In a way it is a blessing that he is spared that realization but I am have no compassion for him whatsoever. It will be interesting to see how he responds to the inevitable. We shouldn’t have to wait much longer.
Youth: I’m not sure exactly what you’re talking about–
Cotton: Well I guess nobody wants to hear about how the Stefan-Boltzmann Law is applied in flawed ways. That is too bad. I may present that evidence anyway. For the moment let me explain how I intend to go about it…
Youth: [Slams phone down] Asshole.
Cotton: [not missing a beat] …as long as there exists simple criteria sufficient to account for all planetary atmospheres. I have also explained why Spencer is wrong in his assumptions about pressure, bank vaults exploding and internal energy generation on Uranus. Ah… What’s that beeping noise? [Looks quizzically at the phone. Hangs up the receiver. Pauses. Picks it up again.]
[masking voice with an atrocious accent.] Ees thees Daw-mee-nose?
[Fadeout]
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Credit: This bit of humor was originally created for a troll with a similar M.O., the late John A. Davison who also once graced the pages of WUWT some years ago. Jim Anderson at decorabilia, who also experienced Davison, originally wrote this satire in John A Davison Orders a Pizza.
Since that satirical play describes Mr. Cotton’s present day trolling antics and claims about the greenhouse effect equally well, I decided to adapt it with some changes. Readers might note that some phrases (like bank vaults exploding) are borrowed from this thread at Roy Spencer’s.
You can watch Mr. Cotton’s video, and decide for yourself if his ideas have any merit.
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Mr. Cotton has received a significant amount of publicity now.
John
When bloggers have to make posts like this because of one person’s behavior you know it is a problem,
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2012/04/03/the-air-vent-on-moderation/
Yes. But then people who use that term begin using the concept of net radiation to claim that cooler objects don’t warm up warmer objects, because the warmer object has net outgoing radiation in that direction.
Not to start that whole food-fight again, but some people in that discussion seemed a lot like Mr. Cotton.
The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination. – Albert Einstein
Slartibartfast
“cooler objects don’t warm up warmer objects”
More accurate to say that cooler objects can slow the cooling of warmer objects as there are themselves warmer than the alternative.
Crispin in Waterloo says:
March 10, 2014 at 8:52 pm
Okay I recognize this guy of many guises. Someone misled him early on saying that a hot body can’t absorb an IR photon from a colder object, as if radiation was the same as conduction. It that were true then a digital camera would not be able to take a photo of a snowman. Well, I have several such photos so I have cottoned onto the fact his physics are loopy.
========
Doug maybe off the wall, but this example is odd. The snowman photo is not heat transfer it is reflected light. I am sure you can take a IR photo of a snowman, but you have not made that clear.
https://ecogirlcosmoboy.wordpress.com/category/photography-2/page/4/
The link is to an IR photo of a snowman.
RichardLH says:
March 11, 2014 at 9:10 am
“More accurate to say that cooler objects can slow the cooling of warmer objects as there are themselves warmer than the alternative.”
Exactly. A colder object cannot, on its own, heat a warmer one, because it is sending out fewer photons to the warm object than it is receiving from it. But, if there is an additional source of heat coming in, it can impede the heat loss from the warmer object, resulting in a greater level of retained heat within the warmer object.
mkelly says:
March 11, 2014 at 9:32 am
When a photon is received, there is by definition a transfer of energy. Some photons manifest as heat, others as electrical current to be recorded to form the picture. But, Crispin’s example is incomplete, because the snowman is also receiving photons from the camera and its user.
The question is, what is the net flow of photons between the snowman and the camera.
A passively warm object cannot receive net energy manifesting as heat from a colder one – it is sending out more photons than it is receiving. Its temperature will decrease rapidly regardless of the colder object, though at a slower rate, i.e., the colder object impedes the heat loss from the warmer one. Were that not the case, Eskimos never would have built igloos.
If there is an additional heat source continuously feeding energy into the system (e.g., a warm Eskimo body, or the Sun), the warm object will settle out at a higher temperature than it otherwise would have, because the cold object temporarily imposes a new balance on the rate of heat being received and lost. The retained heat is the net accumulation of any imbalance between the input and output heat flux.
Bart says:
March 11, 2014 at 10:29 am
mkelly says:
March 11, 2014 at 9:32 am
Thanks, Bart. I know all that I am at work and was going for brevity. I think he should get the point.
Anthony. Has Mr Cotton used his ideas to scare kids, abuse, sue and rip-off taxpayers while demanding others back to ice-age in public? If not, I fail to see the fun in this.
mkelly says:
March 11, 2014 at 11:00 am
I was sort of polishing my bona fides in case the lack of response to my rambling at March 10, 2014 at 3:37 pm was that I was being perceived as having flaked out and joined the Cotton brigades.
I’ve neglected really looking very far into the GHE because of the surface plausibility, and the steep uphill battle in changing any perceptions. But, I really do not see any reason that adding a GHG should necessarily heat the planet’s surface in every situation. Given that the warming observed to date is merely a repeat of what happened before there was a significant uptick in atmospheric CO2, there appears to be no evidence that it works as commonly hypothesized, either.
Is this because of cloud feedback, as some suggest, which retains respectability because of the self-admitted lack of understanding of clouds by the climate establishment? Or, is it more fundamental? Could Cotton, et al., be right, even if for the wrong reasons?
There is this fundamental disconnect for me, which as I admit, I have not spent a lot of time pondering. But, fundamentally, a GHG is analogous to a radiator. It allows escape of heat energy at a lower energy level than it otherwise could escape. How can such activity actually lead to heating? It’s like adding an auxiliary radiator to your car, and expecting it to run hotter.
Something just doesn’t add up. This is all a bit inchoate, and I will have to research further really before forming a coherent opinion, but I thought I’d toss it out and see if anyone else has a perspective they’d like to share.
@Jaakko, since you have not had the “fun” in dealing with Mr. Cotton’s comment spamming then you may not appreciate the fun now.
[snip, Doug, you still don’t get it, You’re BANNED. -mod]
Congrats for proving that you can make it through the filter.
[snip banned -mod]
Crispin in Waterloo says:
March 10, 2014 at 8:52 pm
Okay I recognize this guy of many guises. Someone misled him early on saying that a hot body can’t absorb an IR photon from a colder object, as if radiation was the same as conduction. It that were true then a digital camera would not be able to take a photo of a snowman. Well, I have several such photos so I have cottoned onto the fact his physics are loopy.
Does your camera warm because it is taking the photograph?
This thread is a disgraceful display of internet bullying. If people don’t like DC, ignore him. Or ban him. No need for a circus. George Orwell would love it.
Talk about insanity, “Internet Bullying” what is this the PC police? Please explain how you can “bully” someone whom YOU are trying to get to leave YOU alone? It is Mr. Cotton’s obsessive refusal to abide by these blog’s commenting guidelines or engage in rational debate that has caused this post.
Poptech,
You, Anthony Watts, Lucia and everyone else don’t have to read DC’s posts.
I defend his right to post as long as he is not being defamatory or rude.
I also defend your right not to read them.
I also defend Anthony and Lucia’s right to ban DC from their blogs.
Ganging up on someone just because he has a different view is typical groupthink behaviour. This is a blog. It’s Anthony’s blog. He can do what he wants. I disagree with orchestrating an internet crusade against DC based on a dislike of his views. It is, frankly, pathetic and – IMO – it amounts to the internet equivalent of schoolyard bullying. I have read hundreds of posts from DC and hundreds from others in the blogosphere. I don’t have to like the posts. I don’t have to respond.
That is my opinion. Like it or not. It is that simple. Get over it.
NOTICE of LITIGATION
I don’t threaten legal action. I just believe in giving people notice of what I will initiate.
You will be hearing Watts if this thread is not removed and if you continue to disallow right of reply. This time you have gone too far.
Signed: you -know-who.
Potential out of court settlement
(1) You remove this whole thread with a published apology
(2) You run a blog with an article that I write, allowing me to mention my book, and you agree to my answering questions on the thread
The book has been reviewed positively by a well qualified physics educator – you can read what he said if you search Roy Spencer for “physics educator.”
Several scientists now agree the grvity effect is valid. See also BigWaveDave’s comment two years ago at the end of your invalid rebuttal. (The wire outside the cylinder develops a gradient also, preventing PPM – all of which proves to me you don’t understand thermodynamics, let alone what happens wit radiation. My March 12 paper on that stills stands unrebutted, and physics are accepting the hypothesis therein.
I am right, Watts, and the GH / CO2 conjecture is false.
REPLY: Mr. Cotton, you are most certainly entitled to your opinion, you have a blog and YouTube channel, go expound there, just not here, as it is my right, just as it is the right of others to dis-inivite you from my home on the Internet after you’ve repeatedly broken the Ground Rules. I don’t respond to threats from bullies who think their opinion is so important that it supersedes the rights of everyone else to have an on-topic conversation without your interference, especially when they have to make those threats under a false name and a bollixed email address.
If your theory has merit, send it to an accredited peer reviewed journal listed in the Web of Science for publication. If you succeed at getting it published on its merits in one of those, I will then offer a full retraction and apology for doubting your theory. In the meantime, you are still banned at WUWT, Lucia’s, and other places. I suggest you try this new tactic rather than the one that has brought you to this point. – Anthony