Yesterday, it was discovered that both John Cook and Michael Mann are headed to the Stephan Lewandowsky’s current place of trough feeding academic residence at the University of Bristol to give talks on Sept. 19th and 23rd. Since the talks are both free and open to the public, a number of people have already registered to attend. Yours truly is one of those people. If you have not already registered, you can do so here at this WUWT story: Calling all UK Skeptics – Free Talk with 97% Bias – plus the ability to ask questions.
Some people wondered why I’d bother to make such a trip, especially since both Cook and Mann aren’t likely to talk about anything of substance, but simply their own brand of science and consensus as they interpret it, plus Mann’s usual book plugs. It has some of the people over at “wackadoodle central” in a tizzy that I’m attending, and they want to know why I’m going. Well, that’s for me to know and them to find out.
In the meantime, I did the planning, I’ve reserved a flight to London, and I’ll make my way up to Bristol from there. The cost of the RT flight, accommodations, food, sundries, and rubber chicken props needed for attending these talks looks to easily top $2700.00.
So, I’m asking for some help to make this trip.
The silver lining here is that while I have met with climate skeptics at many conferences, and even did a speaking tour in Australia in 2010, I’ve never met any of the UK skeptics save Monckton, Delingpole, and briefly some in Brussels as Climategate was breaking, which caused me to spend much of that time locked in my room on the Internet working out what to do about it all and speaking to nobody about it. With the exception of a short layover at Heathrow in 2009, I haven’t been to the UK since I spent time doing some consulting for television weather presentation back in 1989 with the international company Weathernews, when I spent some time in London and also in Aberdeen. So, it is long overdue for me to visit, and this seemed as good a time as any.
This time, there will be time for a skeptics gathering in the UK, and I aim to help that happen while I’m there, as has been suggested on yesterday’s thread. Plus I will come fully equipped to make a presentation or two, should the opportunity present itself.
For me, this is a working trip, and I have a couple of goals to meet while I’m there. I’ll be in touch with some of your privately. Of course I’ll bring my video camera and post items of relevance here at WUWT along the way.
So, if you kind folks can pitch in to help defray travel expenses, because sadly, Exxon, B.P. and the Koch brothers STILL have not stepped up (though I keep hearing they have been sending scads of money my way, but for some reason I never see those checks in the mail), I can make this trip and accomplish a few things, have our own meeting, and see some people that I’m long overdue to meet and discuss business with.
Here’s the PayPal button- 
UPDATE: Goal reached! THANK YOU EVERYONE!
You know what to do. Just a bunch of small donations is all that is needed to add up. For example if I got 100 people to give $30.00, that would do it. I wish I didn’t have to beg, but either all those claims about money I’m getting from big oil are bogus, or my postman is redirecting those checks in the mail elsewhere.
Thanks for your consideration, and as always, thanks for reading WUWT and standing up for climate reality.
Anthony
£18.09 donated. I am not going to Bristol, but I will wait to see if there is a real climate science debate elsewhere.
Very first thing that popped into my mind was that Mr Mann and co. will do everything in their power to make sure Mr Watts is banned from attending, or that they do not have to confront him.
Would it be possible for them to get a court order barring him from the premises as a known agitator and disruptive influence? I have seen nothing in Mr Mann’s past actions that would make me think he would not take this avenue.
On the other hand, also giving past performance, I can easily see him telling the organizers he will not attend as long as Mr Watts is in the same room. As he is a serious scientist and has no inclination to subject himself to the sort of abuse Mr Watts is well known for.
Not my opinion, in case it’s not clear from the way I expressed myself.
Seems to me in the past that many of the big names in the alarmist camp have ducked out of such confrontation at the last second.
Done. Just $30, I am a little embarrassed to say. Anyway, thanks.
Done.
Done. I hope you will have a very pleasant (equinoctial) trip over here – but it can get quite chilly in early September so bring some warm gear!
Done. Look forward to your reporting.
Mike
Done – have great trip Anthony.
What about all of your Exxon money? 😉
Since you are going to face John Cook I thought you would be interested in how he handles opposing arguments. On 27 January 2010 he had an article on his web site with the title “The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely.” I judged it to be a straw man argument and put in a comment demolishing it and a few other things he had been saying. The comment was posted as No. 30 on January 28th and I made a copy of it. But next time I looked he had erased half of it, leaving a distorted picture of what I had said. I protested and the entire comment was erased. Below is a copy of that comment. All statements in it are backed up in my book.
Comment submitted to the Skeptical Science on January 28th 2010 and erased by John Cook
30 • Arno Arrak at 11:13 AM on 28 January, 2010
An interesting straw man but I never saw anything in it. We live in an inter-glacial age and the next ice age will arrive in due course of time but not anytime soon. And AGW will not postpone it for a second because it doesn’t exist. I say this because the warming we have been told about is faked and the global temperatures published by NASA, NOAA, and the Met Office are all cooked. There is no anthropogenic global warming that is going to cook us and there never was any. Not even anthropogenic arctic warming. The present arctic warming is a result of a rearrangement of North Atlantic currents hundred twenty years ago that directed warm currents north and initiated the warming that is still going on. At present we have accurate global temperature records for the last thirty years measured by satellites. They are available from UAH MSU and RSS and both can be downloaded from the web. These records show that in the eighties and nineties global temperatures oscillated in a multiyear pattern, up and down by half a degree, but did not rise until 1998 showed up. But the same period is shown by NASA, NOAA, and HadCRUT3 from the UK as a period of steadily rising temperatures known as the “late twentieth century warming.” It is this warming whose continuation we are supposed to fight that is totally phony. But in 1988, right in the middle of it, James Hansen gets up and announces that global warming caused by the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide has arrived. With over ten television cameras trained on him he showed frightening temperature projections up to 2020, scared the press, the public, and the politicians, and put global warming on every TV set that night. That same year IPCC was established and the religion of global warming had its start. Checking the NOAA temperature chart we see that there was indeed warming that had started in 1977. But carbon dioxide had already been in the air for years by then and nothing special had happened in 1977 to change its behavior. It must have just opened its eyes one morning and decided that 1977 was a good year to start warming up the world. Natura non facit saltum as Newton used to say, but here is an exception right in front of the world. Science it is not, a miracle maybe, the founding miracle of the global warming cult. But Hansen apparently felt that ten years was a bit skimpy to base an earth-shaking theory on so he claimed that the warming had been going on for twenty five years. This is not what the NOAA temperature curve shows. Before 1975 no one had heard of global warming and people were worried about a coming ice age. But this problem does not exist if you realize that the warming itself is phony. To show that it actually is phony you must download the satellite temperature curves and the ground-based temperature curves as well and put both of them side by side on the same graph. The oscillations in satellite curves trace out the El Nino (warm) and La Nina (cool) phases of the ENSO system in the Pacific Ocean because ENSO has a global climate influence. Comparing them with ground based data you see that they all started by cherry picking the warm El Nino peaks. And then they raised up the intervening cool La Nina valleys to turn a horizontal temperature curve into a rising temperature curve. There is more falsification involved but to present these curves as “Global Temperature” curves is scientific fraud. And since all three organizations are doing it, in slightly different ways, it amounts to a criminal conspiracy as well. Some part of the billions of dollars spent on “climate research” should go towards investigating this climate change fraud. Climategate is only the tip of the iceberg but they do talk casually about altering temperature curves. The fraud involved in changing world temperatures is much bigger and obviously well hidden up to now. If you want all the details they are available in “What Warming?” on Amazon.com.
I just sent to your surfacestations thingy 3 Mazuldars that I had I recently acquired from a dwarf by means of a game of chance. Works out to approximately 30 Murican dollars.
Even if you don’ t end up going I ‘m sure this will be put to good use. I usually only give to Christian-based charities, but this will be one of the exceptions. I believe the implications of this stuff goes well, well beyond just climate change and scientific fraud. Whatever youse can do to pound on these clowns is good by me.
Anthony Watts – surfacestations.org $20.00 USD
I’m in for $50
Donation completed. Safe travels Anthony!
Cheers. Have a great trip…give ’em hell!
done
Anthony,
Another excursion recommendation, since you’ll be in the general area: after your w/e tour of the Cornwall and Devon countryside, consider making a stop in Exeter, home of the Met Office, on Monday (a charming town in its own right). Perhaps you could get an audience with Professor Dame Julia Slingo OBE, to ask her a few topical questions about the science. I am SURE your readers would appreciate it!
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/people/julia-slingo
first.last@metoffice.gov.uk
Kurt in Switzerland
Small donation made. I have also telephoned the GWPF and asked them if they would consider inviting Mr Watts to give a lecture.
“bobj62 says:
Cheers. Have a great trip…give ‘em hell!”
Agreed.. Give ’em Mordor, Anthony, and hopefully more than 3k can be collected and you can have a nice well-deserved vacation while you are there as well. Doing things culturally significant and fullfilling , like visiting every pub you can find (solely to observe the natives, of course ).
Have a pint on me, Anthony. Looks like the minimum cost is covered. Hope we can up your hotel a star or two.
Wasn’t much, but done.
Wait, I hope you’re not all tax payers, else this could get dangerously ironic…
Done. Well worth a couple movies worth of popcorn and soda. THIS will be much better entertainment, cheaper and less calories and sodium.
Done. Have a great trip
Glad to help. Thanks for your dedication and good work–much appreciated!
I donate a bit this morning – put my money where my mouth is. WUWT has been such a great site to stay connected to for so many years now. Your work, Anthony, has done so much to counter the craziness of the Globaloney industry. Thanks.