Letters, I get letters, and even though the WUWT contact page says clearly:
Contacts made under this form (especially hate mail and threats) are considered to be fair game for publishing, just like the “submit story” form.
Some people just can’t help themselves. For example, today the story Seven Earth Day predictions that failed spectacularly by Andrew Follett of the Daily Caller got quite a bit of attention, and one David Corgan thinks I’m a “villain” for calling attention to failed Earth Day predictions of the past. The farce is strong with this one:
Name: David Corgan
Email:[redacted]@hotmail.com
Website: http://Astropunks.com
Subject: [Watts Up With That? – Earth Day Post] Contact
Message: Are you insane? It is only through MASSIVE efforts and huge expenditures by numerous governments that the Earth Day predictions have been averted. If not for the warnings, sentiments, and efforts of the scientists you denounce, we very well could all bestarving to death right now.
There are no scientists, or anyone that pays attention to actual data, that doesn’t believe we are rapidly heading for a global collapse. As a astrophysicist, I know how fragile and special our planet is, and shame shame shame on you for trying to promote such a horrible and destructive agenda.
The scientists, volunteers, authors, and more that you feebly attempt to debunk are champions of our planet and the human race. You are a villain.
Hmmm. Paul Ehrlich prevented us from starving to death? Somehow, Mr. Corgan just doesn’t strike me as a real astrophysicist…yet. Seems I’m right.
As for global collapse? We’ve heard it all before, that’s what the article points out. Here’s a few more Earth Day predictions that failed.
Name: David Corgan
Message: Are you insane? ((what does this question even ask, more emotion)) It is only through MASSIVE ((emotion)) efforts and huge expenditures by numerous governments that the Earth Day predictions have been averted (unsupported assertions vague references no substance). If not for the warnings, sentiments, and efforts of the scientists you denounce, we very well could all bestarving to death right now. ((General rambling and shaming tactic again with no substance))
There are no scientists, or anyone that pays attention to actual data, that doesn’t believe we are rapidly heading for a global collapse ((generalisation, absolutes and appeal to authority and again absolutely no support for assertions). As a astrophysicist (false claim, overstated pretense of authority, likes to see himself in the 3rd person perspective as an authority, David lacks integrity\ moral ethics)), I know how fragile and special our planet is (general meaningless emotional statement), and shame shame shame on you for trying to promote such a horrible and destructive agenda. ((Genetic fallacy reference and more shaming))
The scientists, volunteers, authors, and more that you feebly attempt to debunk are champions of our planet and the human race. You are a villain. ((Appeal to authority, avoids ANY salient points, shaming and personal attack))
David, pppplease respond to me, I soo want to talk with you 😀
So Mark, what kind of grade would you give Mr. Corgan’s effort?
Depends, if you turned in a whiny rant for your thesis on any subject, how would you do grading wise? 😀
it is scary that Mr Corgan might actually get his PhD and publish, given how his mind works, that is truly concerning!
Well, I think the assignment (probably self assigned for extra credit) was to write hate mail, not a critical thesis on skeptical positions. I think it should be evaluated in that light.
Well is that was the assignment, your hate mail must serve a purpose, and as such cold hard inconvenient truths are effective hail main constituents, of which there were none provided by Mr Corgan.
So that would be a critical failure and instant massive F
Oh my fracking typos grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Well done, Anthony. Keep holding their feet to the fire because everybody else lets them get away with their nonsense.
Yeah David, real scientist have played a great part in our food surplus, but, politicians and activists are destroying the credibility of science with their climate change shenanigans.
Food is more abundant in spite of all the bad things, such as pesticide and GMO’s, that left-tards like imaginary astrophysicist David Corgan have kittens over.
That’s clearly satire. Can’t be anything but.
Sadly, David Corgan is operating with a serious mental handicap; an inability to think for himself. This is of course true of all CAGW True Believers, who have invested themselves emotionally in an ideology pretending to be science. Having their ideology challenged in any way thus results in emotional outbursts like the one displayed by his letter. Unfortunately, they can’t be reached by logic or facts as their belief system has built-in defense mechanisms against them. All we can do is pity them.
Chiefs and Sargents wince when a freshly minted Ensign or Second Lieutenant starts an order with “In my experience…”
This is the only page in my new science book just published on line
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CAGW.gif?0.gif
I am suing you for optical damage caused by looking for the CO2, can you give you your lawyer’s contact details please… 😛
Hi Mark
Instruction is clear, ‘magnify to see it’; however do not ignore the next one abut the saving humanity from the inevitable catastrophe.
Vuk, now that is an excellent graph.
Thanks Ms Gray, but do take note of the warnings.
@vukcevic
If CO2 is such a small fraction of the air and so therefore can have insignificant affect on temperature then how come it has such a magnificent beneficial effect on the greening of the planet when it has gone up by only a few 10s of ppm. Ae you therefore not contradicting the general consensus on here concerning plant rowth?
Surely if it is insignificant it is insignificant always?
Hi Sergey, thanks for your enquiry.
The CO2 molecule is tiny but it is a hard worker, as it is said in this unique ‘one page book’, a nature’s miracle you might say. You may have miss-read effect on the temperature. Of course plants love CO2 as acknowledged at the bottom of the page, a biologist might give you a more agreeable explanation.
sergiMK,
If you investigate, you may find that photosynthesis is functionally quite different than radiative physics.
@ur momisugly sergeiMK i did read that actually 300 PPM of CO2 is very “near starving value” for plant life and for this reason a rise of 100 ppm has this effect. also that the increase in greening goes logarithmicly down by each doubling of CO2 concentration. i also did read that plant life dies if CO2 concentration goes below 160 ppm for most plant species.
if i remember well it was a link that was put on this blog btw but i did not keep it but i guess a bit of searching will get you to the studies and papers that confirm what i say…
Indeed, I am baking bread as we speak.
Thanks Bruce
correction is in the pipeline.
Oh, d.amnit the WordPress will not let corrected page through, but if you click on it you can see it is corrected.
Yes Bruce, not enough research has been done on the effects of gluten on global temperature. If it can make human temperature increase through its inflammatory effects why not a whole planet indeed!
Hi Jon
It is only by chance that I didn’t write:
“It is not advisable either for any human being or any other creature to stop breeding to save humanity from the inevitable climatic catastrophe.”
but of course that would make a lot more sense.
It would be interesting to do game of ‘Chinese Whispers’ using computer typos.
I’ve tried to use the football stadium analogy in the past. Take aerial view of Penn State’s football stadium, with 100,000 home fans wearing white for the day’s game (I know its a little odd, but just for today’s game everybody wore white or light colored shirts). Now, disperse 30 dark blue shirted Michigan fans throughout the stadium (can you see ’em); then after halftime add another 30 Michigan fans (all dressed in blue).
Now give a thermometer and an appropriate amount of grant money to the Penn State climate studies department and ask them to show that the new Michigan fans are dressed so inappropriately that it is going to ruin the game. (They can even make assumptions that the game goes on for another 30 years … but if they can’t prove it they have to give the grant money back and go to jail)
vuk, that looks a lot like my graph. I just made up my graph after seeing your graph. My graph has all of those black dots, and only one lone red dot. But in my graph the black dots represent water, and the red dot is a molecule of cyanide … would you drink a cup of that water?
The argument you are making is that because something is small it is meaningless, or incapable of causing changes, effects, or harm. But ozone, which is only a minuscule fraction of the atmosphere, protects us very well from ultraviolet …
And as the cyanide example shows, even a very small concentration of some molecules can make a huge difference in a large and complicated system.
Finally, most everyone agrees that the small change in CO2 has greened up the planet by 10% or so …
I fear that your argument, which boils down to “CO2 can’t do anything because there’s not much of it”, is totally meaningless and is well contradicted by our experience of the world. Sometimes, really small stuff is really important …
w.
Mr Eschenbach
Thanks for the comment.
I’m sorry to say, but I am not familiar with your graph, I can assure you it is not plagiat. I was tempted to say ‘great minds think alike’ but to my everlasting disappointment I do not qualify for such an epithet.
I rarely read your articles or comments unless they are sunspot related or of literary kind (which I do like) so it’s no surprise I missed it, perhaps you can post the link, so I can see what it is about.
It was prompted by Dr. Svalgaard’s comment about Greenland’s ice and the Noah’s arc, and my similar experience
See here https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/04/20/ceemd-and-sunspots/#comment-2196784.
Dear heavens, Vuk, my apologies. I was being sarcastic, not serious, and you did not and (in my opinion) never would steal my or anyone else’s work.
It was merely an (obviously failed) attempt to show that your underlying premise is wrong. That premise is that if something is small (one dot among thousands) we can ignore it because it can’t have a significant effect.
In fact, one cyanide molecule among many can have a huge effect … and the same is true about CO2.
Again, my apologies. I’ll change my comment to correct the misunderstanding.
w.
it is not worth a bother to offer the apology, but since you have done it, it is appreciated.
Thank you for clearing the matter so promptly.
DON’T DRINK IT! A cup at 400 mg/l can be a lethal dose (for salts … which I assume is what he might have access to).
Seems an analogy that includes significant negative acute response condition does not quite make sense when discussing the slow growth of CO2. Maybe chronic type analogy with a good long term exposure to lead would be better suited, although still inappropriate. Maybe arsenic … gotta have arsenic (like CO2 can’t live without it) … but then there’s the slow growth difference problem again. I don’t know fer sure, but I think considering CO2 as a problem is a stand alone concept that doesn’t have a good mirror image somewhere, and trying to say that it does is a bit, well … meaningless.
“vuk, that looks a lot like my graph. I just made up my graph after seeing your graph. My graph has all of those black dots, and only one lone red dot. But in my graph the black dots represent water, and the red dot is a molecule of cyanide … would you drink a cup of that water?”
interesting Willis but Vuk didn’t just add the image, in the context of his accompanying text, your analogy doesn’t work, water is not air CO2 is not cyanide.
For your analogy to work, CO2 must be to warming as Cyanide is to poisoning.
Surely you see this my man
Mark it’s about the logic not the content
Jon,
There is no logic there either. The CO2 stays in the air, diluted, and it does whatever it does.
Cyanide DOES NOT DO ANYTHING at all as it sits there, diluted to 400ppm in a cup of water; when the “system” is significantly changed through filtration of the cyanide by the human body (if enough is filtered and retained) it causes problems.
Plants filter and retain CO2 in very high concentrations for the good of the plant … there is no reason to even try to assign a maximum acute level for harm … the more the better.
Humans filter and retain cyanide … there is a problem level (200 mg +/-). The analogy is misleading. Cyanide DOES NOT DO ANYTHING at all as it sits there, diluted to 400ppm, in a cup of water.
CO2 does do something as is “floats around” in the air diluted to 400 ppm, the question is … what?
The analogy is misleading (weather intended or not), and meaningless (except as a tool to further confuse the ignorant, or further embolden the willfully ignorant).
Willis,
If you think my last sentence of the above post is incorrect please tell me why. If you don’t think so, then stop using the cyanide analogy … find another one that doesn’t include death and destruction.
DonM April 25, 2016 at 10:09 am
Don, if you think 2 + 2 = 4 is incorrect, please tell me why. If you don’t think it is incorrect, then please stop posting here ….
Do you see how foolish that threat sounds? Gotta say, amigo, I don’t respond well to threats.
In any case, your last sentence was:
Don, the claim in question was that CO2 one molecule among ten thousand air molecules is harmless because the concentration is so tiny.
My analogy was to a small concentration of cyanide in water, one part in ten thousand … is that concentration meaningless because it is tiny? Well, no, because even a tiny concentration can kill you dead.
Now, no analogy holds all the way down, that’s why it is an analogy … and my analogy is no different. It breaks down at some point. However, it is neither misleading nor meaningless.
Finally, as to whether it is a “tool to further confuse the ignorant”, if you think I don’t do well with threats, I do even less well with accusations of bad faith.
However, it’s a lovely morning, sun shining in a rain-washed sky, so I won’t bother with a listing of the faults of your forbearers, the probable number of single-celled creatures in your immediate patrimony, the chances that your parents had living children, and the odds of you avoiding prosecution for criminal stupidity … so this time, let me just invite you to be a bit more cautious with your tongue.
It might be the habit of you or your friends to set out to “confuse the ignorant” or to “further embolden the willfully ignorant”. I don’t know, because I don’t know you. Perhaps you are accustomed to people doing that, so you throw such ugly accusations around with abandon.
Me, I don’t do that kind of thing … I do my utmost to conduct myself as an honest and honorable man, and as a result I really don’t like being accused of such underhanded actions.
Sake my advice and next time, stick to the science, or I will reveal the number of your cousins who are actual planaria …
w.
Wow …
… there were no threats …??? (and are still no threats from me, I don’t know where else to go with that)
… there were no accusations with respect to intent (“whether or intended or not”); wasn’t trying for a nerve.
… I do agree that 2+2 does equal 4, so I will continue to use that statement.
… and since you very obviously think cyanide (concentration) is an apt comparison to CO2 (concentration), with respect to active consequences, then keep on telling everyone that it is (and here is my only threat … If you do I will try to point out how silly it is to do so)
oh, and I forgot, I’ll do it for you.
I have two cousins that could reasonably be compared to worms.
DonM April 25, 2016 at 12:33 pm says
Dang. OK. Don, thanks for the reply. Well, I guess a man could be that insensitive to the effect his words might have. To start with, the interchange was when you said:
Let me see if I can clarify this for you. When you tell a man “If you can’t tell me why X is incorrect, then you need to stop doing Y …” to me that is a most unpleasant anonymous internet popup telling me what I need to do. I called that a “threat”.
And you’re right, perhaps that is not the correct description. So let me say, I don’t respond to anonymous strangers telling me what I “need to do”. I generally don’t let my friends tell me what I need to do, so why should I let you do it? I hope that makes my meaning clear.
Regarding the other question, you said:
Saying “whether intended or not” is just a weaselly candy-assed and totally deniable way to make an accusation, which is why I took it poorly. It’s like me standing up at your graduation and saying “Hey, everyone, from what we know DonM could easily be a child molester … or not, so keep that in mind if you’re thinking of hiring him”. It’s called an “implied accusation”, and the beauty part?
Like you just did above, I can claim I’m totally innocent because hey, I said you might not be a child molester, so there was no accusation …
Do you see how thin that is? And if you didn’t know that about implied accusations before now … well, they say “Good judgement comes from experience … and experience comes from bad judgement” ….
Finally, saying that the only way you can find meaning in my words is if they are interpreted as a ‘tool to further confuse the ignorant, or further embolden the willfully ignorant”, well, that’s just plain nasty. Cleverly underhanded and totally deniable as well, but nasty nonetheless.
Now, is it possible that you are just so clueless that you wander through life unintentionally insulting people? Sure, and I strongly suspect that is exactly what is happening here.
All I do know is that it’s not pleasant to be on this end of it, whether you realize you are doing it or not. Let me invite you to re-read your words as though you were writing to a surly bear just awakened from hibernation … because when you start questioning the honesty of an honorable man, well, that’s who you are gonna be talking to …
Regards,
w.
The analogy is misleading (Whether intended or not),
The analogy is misleading (good intentions not withstanding)
The analogy is misleading (even if you didn’t mean it to be)
All of the above mean the same thing to me.
How about, “The analogy is misleading, even though you probably didn’t mean it to be; And it will only confuse the ignorant (by, in their minds, equating something lethal & deadly like cyanide to CO2 which is neither); and it will embolden the willfully ignorant because the analogy is provided by someone of such great stature. So, please stop using it.”
Its a bad analogy, but is an attention getter.
Disclaimer:
As you may have seen above Mr. Eschenbach has in past produced similar or even identical graph but on an unrelated matter, which I had no opportunity to see as yet. I can assure Mr. Eschenbach and any other reader that it is not plagiat, and it is an odd coincidence. If it is shown that similarity is over-whelming I am happy to apologise to Mr. Eschenbach and if possible to delete it, in case Mr. Eschenbach feels that he owes authorship of the above idea.
Signed: M.A. Vukcevic
vuk, as I said above, my apologies for the misunderstanding. You did NOT plagiarize anything of mine, and in my opinion, you would not plagiarize anyone’s work. Like me, you do your own independent thinking, and are justifiably proud of that fact. I’ve changed my comment to avoid further misunderstanding by making it clear that the idea was yours, not mine.
Regards and regrets,
w.
As it was phrased it is not worth a bother to offer the apology, but since you have done it, it is appreciated.
Thank you for clearing the matter so promptly.
Mike the Morlock et. al.
In case you are not aware of it, the Obama administration considers people who
grow their own food potential terrorists as am I, a card caring member of Tea Party.
and people who store emergency food.
I read a while back courts were used to stop a couple raising chickens on their own land.
Ah heck, didn’t one old guy get time for building a lake on his own property, and then bought fish and added them to it, and then was charged with illegal fishing on his own lake with his own bought fish.
The Fed government is nothing less than any other bureaucratic communist monster, regulations dont do people, nuance, reason nor understanding.
The Oregon farmer jailed under terrorism laws for accidentally buring some fed land when making fire breaks. Wasn’t that the whole thing about the Oregon shutin, and of course the Feds ambushed and murdered the leader.
When your own gov is putting snipers in the woods to ambush and kill citizens who stanbd up for each other, is it any different than Stalinist russia, just because the feds and commies told you you cant do different things the outcome is still the same.
of course they are trying to do the same thing to Europe.
Not just Europe:
Gary Pearse
April 22, 2016 at 8:37 pm https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/04/22/friday-funny-earth-day-hate-mail/#comment-2197454
Soros and Bloomberg are awarding mysterious prizes to cities for their efforts in developing the alternative american economy.
That made me laugh out loud!
Poor Mr Corgan has some grave reality issues.
Things aren’t like they used to be….and they never were….and never again will be….
This argument also works as a defense of the persecution of witches.
With minimal tweaking, as follows:
Are you insane? It was only through MASSIVE efforts and huge expenditures of the medieval church that the spread of witchcraft has been averted. If not for the warnings, sentiments, and efforts of the inquisition you denounce, we very well could all be possessed by demons, right now.
Which all goes to show that there’s no substitute for natural intelligence.
and the fact that demonic possession has NOT been proved to have been eradicated just goes to show you that the efforts (of what some call persecution) were not as massive as they should have been.
If we don’t ramp up our efforts to eradicate, from our societies, the emissaries of evil (commonly referred to as witches) immediately, we will reach a tipping point (probably around 2023). At this point we will all be subject to the potential for the possibility of the certainty of demonic possession … AND YOUR GRANDCHILDREN TOO!
I myself have, on occasion encountered those miscreants who claim to reject the entire principle that magical crimes and witchery threaten the fabric of our society.
And – so, it is clear that they too are devil worshipers and must have the demons cast from them, using all tools that we have available to us.
Bring me – the comfy chair.
Some of these “kids” like Mr. Corgan, need to understand that Anthony and WUWT have been in this game somewhat longer then they have been in the pursuit of an education…
I think that this short educational video may help to shed some light on what may have occurred here:
Frog, I’d like to buy your rock. How much? 😀
Oh? So another liar? Wow….who would have guessed?
LOL. Mr. Corgan is a communtiy college student! He should put aside the science courses for awhile, and concentrate on freshman English. After all, he’s “a astrophysicist”.
For lunch every day, he probably eats “a apple”.
Usually by the time enough political will has been generated to “fix” the problem via government, civil society has already evolved to make it less of an issue. Government passes laws or regulations and take credit for what is already on a downward slope. The classic example is the automobile. We didn’t need Ralph Nader to get government to force manufacturers to make cars safer. We already wanted safer cars and the manufacturers were providing them. We started with the flimsy Model T and by the time Nader got involved in the 1960s, we already had cars as solid as tanks. That was because each subsequent generation of car was designed to be bigger and safer than the one that preceded it because that is what the market demanded. We didn’t care about fuel efficiency until the Arab oil embargo, then as soon as that created a scarcity of gasoline and drove fuel prices higher, we suddenly cared about fuel efficiency. So the manufacturers retooled and created smaller, more fuel efficient cars.
Industry, generally, becomes more efficient driven by competitive pressures. They are constantly striving to improve processes to reduce waste and use fuel more efficiently. It is hard to believe for people who lived in NYC or LA during the late 60s/early 70s and ate smog for breakfast on their way to work, but pollution emissions per unit of GDP were already declining BEFORE the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act were enacted and the EPA was created. Further, as economies evolve, develop and mature, they naturally gravitate toward less carbon intense fuel sources. Dung/Wood is used in primitive societies and it is the most carbon intensive. Then coal, which is more carbon intensive than oil, which is more carbon intensive than natural gas, which is more carbon intensive than nuclear.
By the time the politicians act to regulate, the issue the regulations are intended to address are usually already being addressed by civil society in the market.
Absolutely. And for anyone who is in doubt of this principle – then they only need to make a comparison between the free-market (relatively speaking) U.S. and the communist USSR or former communist China.
Countries where the government was in total control of the economy and industry.
These were perhaps the most inefficient, wasteful and environmentally destructive regimes on the planet, ever.
More government does not equate to more efficiency or high standards or good environmental stewardship, it seems. The evidence is in. We just spent an entire century conducting a longitudinal trial to confirm that point.
Russia, Eastern Europe and China are still suffering from the catastrophic mismanagement of the communist era. And so is their environment.
As you point out – if you get government out of the way, then people actual prefer efficiency.
Since efficiency equates to higher profits and lower prices.
Obviously regulation of some sort is needed to drive industry to clean up it’s own mess and factor in externalities. But we should be careful to consider that the power to regulate is power.
And power corrupts.
Good point. After re-reading what I wrote it sounded like I implied regulation isn’t necessary. It is necessary. And I am not saying regulation did not speed up the processes that were already underway. It probably did. We can’t run the counter-factual scenario. I just wanted the letter writer to know (if he reads the comments) that he is giving government more credit than it deserves. He sees the “benefits” of regulation, but I’m not sure he appreciates the costs. There are the costs to government to administer and enforce the regulation and the costs to business to comply with the regulation. Both of which get passed to consumers. And then there are the anti-competitive costs of regulation. The more complex and costly government makes it for business to comply and compete, the more it inhibits competition. It makes it too costly for potential new entrants to enter the market and drive prices down to benefit society.
As for the points you made, here is a terrific essay with lots of embedded links. I lived in NYC when the wall came down. I remember how shocked everyone was to find the utter ecological devastation the Soviets left behind.
http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/13/if-you-think-communism-is-bad-for-people-check-out-what-it-did-to-the-environment/
OT — I was a little bit apprehensive about going to the web site with the hate mail (virus or worse?). Recently, I installed Lynx on my PC (a text-only browser). So I went to the site using Lynx, and the frame info that came up confused Lynx.
All my posts go into the sin bin, I am in “moderation”?
No
No point hanging around where one aint wanted.
Later anthony, keep up the good work
If it worked so well, why do we still need drastic measures? And why is the earth still warming if the previous efforts worked?
Asking for a friend.
David is an undergraduate waiting for a PhD opportunity to materialise. He is, therefore, a student. Students, look it up in the dictionary, have a lot to learn.
Let’s hope David enjoyed his 15 minutes of fame … it could be all downhill from here.