Josh writes: David Appell, a freelance writer in Salem, Oregon, has been hard at work commenting on BishopHill. Although highly diverting I am not sure anyone learned a great deal except that Mr. Appell is keen on circular arguments.
Josh writes: David Appell, a freelance writer in Salem, Oregon, has been hard at work commenting on BishopHill. Although highly diverting I am not sure anyone learned a great deal except that Mr. Appell is keen on circular arguments.
Did he also commented here?
The name sounds familiar.
Yes, if you can label his insipid spewing of billious nonsense as commentary.
It’s hard to tell. By his own admission, he comments under several names but we’re too stupid to tell.
Pointman
Pointman, Appell channels Lewindowski, Cook and Orsekis. He’s doing the work of three scientists.
The hockey schtick is broken; he plays with just the blade now. His rules.
The exchanges on BH were fantastic. Never have I seen one individual spout so much rubbish based on the immovable belief that because CO2 gives a theoretical climate forcing the only possible result is warming. He was destroyed but just kept repeating the same propagandist lines. His waffling on superexponential series set new standards for me.
He came here first.
And he was outclassed on this blog too.
He’s just doesn’t believe in the scientific method. Instead he has faith in a hypothesis as it wouldn’t be a hypothesis if it weren’t true.
This is a failing in a science writer
I have no idea what Apple was saying and have no interest in finding out, but this term super-exponential came up in a paper several years ago and widely misunderstood by many climate sceptics who took it to mean something like humongous-mega-exponential.
If fact, it is a mathematical description that means that a function rises quicker than an exponential. Super as a prefix simply means greater or large.
The case in point was the research had suggested that global temps were rising in a way that could better be represented by a quadratic ( or square law ) than an exponential.
Since a quadratic out-paces an exponential , it is accurately described as a “super-exponential” function. It is neither alarmist nor exaggerating, it is an accurate, mathematical description.
Now I’m sure that some alarmists thought that it meant : OMG, it’s worse than we thought, climate is going super-exponential. In much the same way as many uninformed sceptics thought: oh no! Here we go again.
Apologies to Mary Poppins.
Since a quadratic out-paces an exponential
really?
Robert
Dociousalleyeckspeeisticfragicalientialexporepus is going a bit too far, don’t you think?
Indubitably!
Auto harbouring memories of a movie seen about fifty years ago . . .
Sorry exponentials will dominate (eventually overtake) polynomials.
If a > 1 and M (is an element of ) N are fixed then the sequence sn := (a^n) / (n^M) diverges to positive infinity.
or
Lim (as x > infinity) (x^a) / (b^x) = 0 for any a > 0 and b > 1
Regards
Climate Heretic
Awesome, Robert. Just my thought when I first read Mike’s post.
So someone was wrong on the internet. Is this international news for the worlds most read climate blog?
Who the hell is Apple and why is he worth Josh doing cartoons about him? Seems to be taking one idiot far too seriously, to me.
He’s a journalist for Scientific American (SciAm).
That’s the US equivalent of New Scientist. And like NS it has sunk into paranoid fantasies.
Which saddens those of us who remember when popular science magazines promoted a thirst for knowledge.
And it’s Appell’s fault, in part.
He’s been clogging up the comments section over at Pierre Gosselin’s NoTricksZone.com of late as well. He’s not only scientifically and technically illiterate – he also clearly has WAY too much time on his hands.
and will be delighted that he is important enough to merit someone drawing a cartoon to ‘dis’ him. Now he gets a whole thread at WUWT.
I’m sure he’s delighted that he is drawing enemy fire. He must be over the target if he’s drawing flak.
Remember rule #1 on the internet is : don’t feed the trolls.
Yeah, right. That’s the rule no one remembers.
My guess is that he is being paid quite handsomely for his time spent spreading uniformed, unscientific, alarmist, circular, non sequiturs.
Yep. He’s got business partners, not friends.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/MobergMannLjungkvist.gif
Phil Clarke,
As long as you’re posting bogus charts, here’s another one:
http://www.realclimate.org/images//Marcott.png
The Ljunqvist paper was from 2010, and , unlike the earliest Mann paper it acknowledged the MWP as equal or greater in mean decadal temperature to the present . I wondered what the climate science establishment thought of the paper – perhaps you have answered my question.
That Hokey Schtick is going to follow Marcott round for the rest of his life.
That’s what he’s got for falling in with the Cook the (failed) comedian and the rest of the SS Crusher Crew.
Oh dear. How sad. Never mind.
At least this bogus chart notes the HadCRU line in a different color, unlike what Mann did.
So Mann 2008 is an extreme outlier in the recent period… OK – it may use proxies that are atypical without a few decades of curing. Just ignore the recent uptick as junk. We have a reason for exclusion.
But Mann 2008 also goes weird around 400AD.
That was also a cold period according to the written records (plague hit the western parts of the UK and the cold made the Romano-Brits more susceptible).
Why is it weird in that period?
What kind of liar did you say?
It is odd that you forgot to mention that Mann did the splice, which he said should never be done. Ljundquist did the same “never to be done” splice.
Mark Steyn’s “Disgraceful Mann” book should be required reading. It is just wonderful.
http://www.steynstore.com/product133.html
David Appell posted a comment a month or so ago on WUWT where he stated that he has commented at WUWT over the years under other names than his own name. Can someone locate that comment and post a link to it here on this thread?
I have tried to find it, but have had not success so far.
It would be useful for to have it for future exchanges with David Appell.
[John, is this the comment? ~mod.]
John
This is that link.</a?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/08/07/friday-funny-mann-gets-real-time/#comment-2002711
And for fun, here is proof he's a hypocrite – a comment on Bishop Hill where he denied he said that.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2015/8/28/away-with-the-fairies.html#comments
At Aug 29, 2015 at 7:15 PM.
Actually, that would make him a liar. Not unusual among the people he hangs with.
~mod & MCourtney,
Yes, that is the comment I was referring to . Thanks to both of you.
MCourtney, his denying the comment is special.
BUT, how did you locate it so quickly? I need to learn how.
John
[Reply: John, I can’t speak for MC, but a moderator has a more thorough search engine. ~mod.]
Well, it caused much amusement at Bishop Hill.
And it also peeved me greatly.
So I remembered and recalled his hypocrisy.
~mod,
OK. Makes sense. I realize that on my own WordPress blog I can do some types of searches that visitors to my site can’t do.
John
MCourtney,
It caught my sharp attention too! But, it seems you have a young one’s memory about where it was made and I have an ‘old man’s memory.
John
All trolls begin to sound alike after awhile.
MarkW,
Your use of the word troll aside, you make an good point.
Appell was doing numerous sockpuppeting at WUWT by his own admission.
No wonder that many of the ‘settled’/ ‘consensus’ / ‘CAGW’ commenters sounded alike here at WUWT. If a commenter smelled like Appell, sounded like Appell, was circular like Appell, and felt like Appell . . . . it was very probably Appell.
John
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/08/07/friday-funny-mann-gets-real-time/#comment-2002711
@WUWT
David Appell (@davidappell)
August 7, 2015 at 1:09 am
I comment here all the time, usually using a pseudonym. And none of you ever realize it.
@BISHOP HILL
I comment under my own name, always. I have nothing to hide and am not ashamed of my opinions.
Aug 29, 2015 at 7:15 PM | Unregistered CommenterDavid Appell
Aug 29, 2015 at 8:42 PM | Unregistered CommenterIvor Ward
Thanks, Ivor.
I am convinced that David Appell has something seriously wrong with him. (Or as Jimmy Haigh says on Bishop Hill: I think we can safely say that Mr Appel has what are politely termed “issues”…
Normal folks don’t comment like David Appell does.
That is not to excuse him though. It’s just that the David Appell types seem to populate the alarmist side of the fence. I’m sure Dr. Leon Festinger would have a good explanation for that.
Please keep in mind that Salem, OR is a hotbed of progressive ideology, as is the rest of the Willamette Valley. I’m a native Oregonian, and I retired to Central Oregon, which is a much more rational part of the state.
@ Skidance I am sorry to hear that, I was told they grow some great Pinot Noir there ( or was that in Hollywood? or is that wood with holes in it? …..oh forget it!)
Ivor Ward,
Thank you.
John
He likes to write on Judith Curry’s site as well.
Unfortunately. Fares no better.
And he contacted also me privately after I posted a long negative formal review comment on Copernicus concerning Hansen’s new SLR abomination. Have no idea what he was doing there. It mentioned en passant that Greenland was likely now gaining ice. He pulled the peer review trick, wanting sources. I pointed him to DMI ice sheet mass 2013, 2014, 2015 ytd (the gain part of the equation) and NASA GIS 2014 summary (net, three estimates) showing essentially zero net loss for 2014, and that so far 2015 was both colder and snowier so likely gaining as Arctic ice begins its cyclical increase for the next 30 years or so (Akasofu). He disappeared under his troll bridge.
He also likes to post on Roy Spencer’s site too, and appears to be posting under the pseudonym of Jack Dale.
Yikes!
When I left the good Bishop’s site last night, his comedy gold post still had only one page of comments. Now that page has reached a fourth page.
And yes, appyhell should be dizzier than a tornado with all of his spinning. Plus appyhell is still resorting to frequent childish insults while complaining about any derisions aimed at him..
Appell once claimed that climate scientist in Australia were receiving death threats. Turns out that what he perceived as threats against climate scientist were a few emails and a conversation that had to do with culling kangaroos. When that was made known he didn’t say “OOPS! My bad!”. He claimed he wasn’t wrong because people had come into their offices from off the street.
I wrote this in his honor some time ago.
To the tune of “Stuck in the Middle with You”
Well I don’t know why I caused such a fright,
I had the feeling that something ain’t right,
I made a scare of some emails out there,
And I’m wondering how my rep now will fare,
Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am,
Stuck in Yamal on a yew.
Yes I’m stuck in Yamal on a yew,
The “threats” were against kangaroos,
It’s so hard to keep this egg off my face,
I’ll say, yeah, “Someone invaded their space,”
Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right,
Here I am, stuck in Yamal on a yew.
Nice turn of phrase – every bit as good as the original lyrics!
+ 10 Thanks.
At least Josh made him green.
several old references from/to Appell here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/22/eco-group-calls-for-volunteers-to-get-arrested-with-james-hansen-to-stop-mtr/#comment-148212
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/04/the-great-imaginary-ice-barrier/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/29/bizarre-nyt-follow-aaas-lead-on-foia-requests-equate-to-death-threats/#comment-691447
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/24/david-appell-denies-he-has-any-class/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/11/climate-skeptic-instructor-fired-from-oregon-state-university/#comment-1007223
http://wattsupwiththat.com/tag/david-appell/
I hope you’re not suggesting he’s red, instead.
We lefties do not deserve to be tarred with the same brush as Appell.
Not only is it insulting to our integrity, it also implies we are incompetent.
“At least Josh made him green.”
Jaundice and pockmarked would be better.
You can’t be that rotten to the core and it not show on the outside.
Bishop Hill:
‘In his latest offering he announces a “long and useful list of studies that find a hockey stick from reconstructions of paleoclimate data” … ‘.
Ljungqvist 2010 is one of them.
The ‘Appellian Method’ is pre-Baconian, he doesn’t rely on proxies, he admits it himself.
It’s a simple syllogistic proposition: ‘physics’ demands all reconstructions present as hockey sticks, Ljungqvist, Moberg etc. are reconstructions, therefore they must be hockey sticks.
I don’t think there is such a thing as “superexponential”.. All these functions raised to a power are exponential by definition. and in no way does a quadratic (power of 2) outpace logarithmic (power of e). Idiots abound!
SuperExponential
Having the properties that f(0) = 1 and that f(g)f(h) ≤ f(g+h) ∀ g, h ≥ 0.
To the mathematical illiterate that said that a quadratic is super-exponential… wrong !
Not sure what he has a grip on, but it’s not science nor a hockey stick or it’s blade.
My comments on the Ljundquist article are:
The proxy portion of this reconstruction does not have Mannian flatness from 1,000 through 1850. It shows the Roman and Medieval warm periods and the Maunder minimum. In this regard, it is substantial improvement over Mann’s hockey stick. It shows the Medieval Warm Period to be warmer than the Roman Warm Period, whereas other proxy reconstructions show the opposite. The problem is that in the late 19th Century, the authors appear to have done a Mannian splice of instrument data into the proxy data. This “hides the decline” in post 1990 proxy data, which is “Mann’s Nature trick.” This splicing also brings with it all the UHI impacts as well as the adjustments which are part and parcel the major problems with the articles of Mann and his “hockey team.”
Sounds like he has Connolley’s pathetic and psychotic need for attention:
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2014/05/29/the-scorning-of-william-connolley/
I once sent him a comment by Robert Brown (PhD) from Duke, he threatened to “report me to the police” for harassment.
Appell is a notorious liar who embellishes the indefensible.
Like most ideas adopted by the Left for advancing socialism, it is more about adherence to the religion than anything else. AGW Alarmism reminds me of Scientology.
Jeff B.:
Please say if your comment was one of the posts Davis Appell says he makes under false names with intent to disrupt discussion.
Richard
Jeff B:
Climate change is a left vs right issue only in the USA and nowhere else. And it has nothing to do with Scientology.
Your silly post waved several red herrings. I am still not convinced that you are not another of David Appell’s fake personas attempting to deflect the thread from its subject.
Richard
IMO it’s also a Left/Right issue in Australia and Canada. There are political conservatives who buy into the lie in both countries, but there are few leftwingers there who don’t support catastrophic man-made “climate change”.
Richard,
The issue may not be exclusively Left/Right everywhere, however the Left typically are the ones who blindly support the IFCC agenda, call the science settled and call anyone who dissents “deniers.” This does not mean that there are people on the Right who support the IFCC, but I’ve not heard any of them calling for the jailing of those who disagree with them.
Brooks
isthatright:
It is silly to pretend that the global warming scare is a left vs right issue.
The scare was deliberately started by a right wing politician (i.e. Margaret Thatcher) and is promoted by politicians of both left and right throughout the West while in the East Communist China refuses to join in the scare-mongering. In the USA the scare was made a left vs right issue by Al Gore.
Pretending the scare is a promotion of the left against the right alienates all left-wingers – including me – who oppose the scare.
Richard
I’ve gone through the exchange at Bishop Hill. It is amazing that someone can be as obtuse as David Appell appears to be. He says he is only talking about the blade. However, what he is saying about the blade is that the blade is unprecedented. It’s beyong humorous that he thinks that this can be claimed regardless what the “shape” of the handle is.
Richard,
This is a real comment. The Left has adopted many issues that are more about expansion of power than the alleged issues. Climate, Energy, Poverty, Immigration, etc. And the adherents of these messages are often religious in their fervor. Witness the prolific postings of a guy like Appell. He’s either getting paid, or fervently, almost religious dedicated to the cause that he would spend that much time desperately trying to protect the cause.
And this is very relevant to the discussion, because it is not enough to challenge religious devotees with facts, numbers, graphs and so forth. The have proven they are willing to lie and distort facts. In short anything for the cause.
Regards, Jeff
Jeff,
I went on Appell’s blog. He is commenting on many issues beloved by the Left. Based on this, I would think that he is a true believer.
It does make me wonder how Mr. Appell puts food on the table. William Connolley writes code for a living.
Regards,
Brooks
Jeff B.:
My reply has appeared in the wrong place: it is here.
Richard