Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Andrew Bolt: smear merchant

I like the way Andrew Bolt posts about a Watts Up With That item which quotes some programmer's comments found amongst code that skeptics thinks sounds like more "tricks".

Andrew quotes with approval Watts saying that they (the climate scientists) can't "spin" this, yet at the end of this long post, Bolt says:
This is not proof of malpractice or anything untoward. But it does require explanation.
Oh I see then.

And in fact, quite a large number of software people in comments at WUWT are saying that it means precisely nothing. Gavin Schmidt says it is completely uncontroversial. But conspiracy skeptics will seize on anything, whether they understand it or not, and crap on about "conspiracy proved".

It's Watts and Bolt who are engaging in spin, in fact the only word for their posts is smear.

The more I read the way skeptics are crowing that they have proved a global conspiracy as a result of these emails, the more I understand why climate scientists on the AGW side simply can't stand the time wasting, muddy-the-water, fingers-in-the-ear tactics of the great bulk of skeptics.

And Bolt has no common sense when it comes to seeing how his own promotion of skepticism has virtually made it politically impossible for Turnbull to credibly delay the Coalition dealing with the government's ETS legislation. (If Turnbull wants to position the Liberals as not being dominated by do-nothing conspiracy mongers, he has to force a decision now.)

UPDATE: Andrew Bolt and his minions are now all very excited about a George Monbiott column which, I have to admit, is pretty strange.

Monbiott, who showed some smarts in setting rules before he would debate Ian Plimer, seems to have throw all PR knowledge to the wind by writing a column that both involves wringing of hands about how "bad" the CRU emails are, and insisting that this goes absolutely no where near disproving global warming.

Surely he realised that conspiracy-skeptics would dance around the first two paragraphs, claim victory and ignore the bulk of his column?

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