THE AGNATOLOGY MONSTER

                    NOTHING IN, CERTAINTY OUT

Virgin Islands  radio personality &  polar bear expert Kip Hansen branches out into communications theory in the pages of WUWT:

Science journalism is hard to get right. There is the constant struggle to clearly explain one’s topic without over-simplifying or misrepresenting by dumbing-down the details in hopes of communicating better and on the opposite side, explaining the topic in far too great an esoteric technical detail and far above the general understanding of one’s readers...

Readers [viewers and listeners] should be aware that they are often seeing only one side of an issue, a result of their own choice of what outlet to read — here, at WUWT, you will not find essays promoting CAGW panic or alarm — that’s not what gets published here. I think that’s a good thing — but I am aware of it, not fooling myself with the idea that reading here keeps me fully informed on the topic... 

If we have journalists reading here, I’d like to hear your personal experiences on the topic of Editorial Narratives and their equivalents in your field.  You can count on the anonymity of the Web to obscure your identity.

This  gives rise to some cognative dissonance, as none of the journals he customarily cites,  from The Daily Caller and  Breitbart  to WUWT  and the WSJ  have science editors to begin with,  preferring less labor  and content-intensive editorial modes, like:

  

THE MINOAN WARMING PERIOD LOOKS A LOT LIKE THE MYCENAEAN WARRING PERIOD

AN  ARCHAEOLOGICAL  DISCOVERY  IN  GREECE :  

HAS SET  THE  CLIMATE  WARS 

BACK  ANOTHER  THOUSAND  YEARS

THIS GRAVEN IMAGE OF CLIMATE SCIENCE AS A CONTACT SPORT SHOWS
 ACHAEAN & TROJAN SCIENCE ADVISORS LOCKED IN MORTAL COMBAT 
 TO DECIDE IF  CASSANDRA OR  ATHENA  WILL CHAIR  THE RED TEAM

The discovery confirms the hypothesis set forth here in 2014, that  climate modeling controversies antedate  the Trojan Cold  War
(Unless  we've been Piltdowned. Faking carbonate patinas is one of the darker arts of the antiques trade, and this anachonistic masterpiece combines prop design and choreography from Hollywood's 2004 remake of Troy with such diamond-tooled exactitude that one wants to eyeball the isotope systemics of the crust removed to reveal it.)

CHINA COUNTS DOWN TO THE YEAR OF THE DOG

AS HE OBTAINED  THE MANDATE OF HEAVEN AS GREATEST INFLATABLE ROOSTER OF THE YEAR OF THE ROOSTER 2016

THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF  THE PEOPLES REPUBLIC HAS 
APPOINTED THE RUNNING DOG OF THE BOURGEOISIE AS 

 TOP  DOG OF  THE  YEAR OF  THE  DOG 

         THIS TREND COULD LEAD TO A HUGE  WHITE HOUSE FRANCHISING OPPORTUNITY

SO COLD THAT THE SCIENCE EDITOR HIBERNATES ALL YEAR

Canada is really cold right now.Below, a series of shocking statistics to bolster your indignance that somebody thought it was a good idea to put a country here.

It’s colder in Winnipeg than it has ever been in Scotland (ever)

Scotland is famous for its harsh conditions. How else to explain a culture built around fried food and wool? Regardless, the coldest ever temperature recorded in Scotland is only -27.2 C — and even then it was a rare occurrence that occurred on the country’s northernmost tip. In Winnipeg on Boxing Day, meanwhile, it approached -30 C. This is food for thought when considering the shock of Scottish immigrants who came to settle the prairies.

Honestly, we should never have trusted the cold weather credentials of a nation of kilt-wearers.

Approximately 0.00003 per cent of Canada isn’t freezing right now
Canada has more land than almost anyone on earth: 10 million square kilometres of it. Right now, all of that land is frozen save for a few small patches of southwestern B.C.

Saskatoon is colder than both the north and south poles
the Norwegian Meteorological Institute... estimate for this week was that the top of the world was no colder than  -23 C; six degrees warmer than Saskatoon’s Wednesday low of -29 C. Meanwhile, the South Pole — which is consistently the colder of the two poles — is -23 C.
Alberta’s warmest place was almost as cold as Mars...on Boxing Day... all of Alberta was about as cold as Mars’ Gale Crater... this week, the highest temperature experienced by the rover were -23 C.A Calgary Boxing Day shopper, therefore, might have found themselves getting into a car that was literally colder than a Martian spacecraft. 
Most of the world’s animals would die if left in Montreal

...load up two of every animal on a modern  Noah’s Ark and unload them in Montreal...the vast majority of  them  would  freeze  to  death within  hours...  the  world’s  most devastating mass-extinction since the disappearance of the dinosaurs. 

The  frozen  mounds  of  corpses would technically include humans... outside in Montreal without your coat at -20 C and you’ll be lucky to last a few hours.

WHAT COLOR IS YOUR PIG'S LIPSTICK ?

CALLING THE SALVATION ARMY KETTLE BLACK

WHY  CAN'T  WATTS  KEEP HIS  SIDEBAR  ON  THE SAME PAGE?
Al Gore bilks people at Christmas – asking

for ‘climate crisis’ money

Anthony Watts / 1 day ago 

December 25, 2017

The true mark of a shyster is to take advantage of every opportunity to milk a person for money, and especially when emotions and sympathy run high. Christmas is one of those times. I give you exhibit A, Al Gore’s “Climate Reality Project”. I got this in my inbox this morning.

Of course, when you click on that donate button, Al doubles

down:

Yes, send money to Al Gore to “end the climate crisis”. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

He has quite a payroll to support, just look at all the employees here

Anybody stupid enough to fall for this, especially on Christmas, deserves everything they are going to get back from Mr. Gore, which as my inbox shows, is nothing but requests for more money. Just look at all the emails I’ve received in the last 30 days:

Al Gore, climate shyster.

RUDOLPH, DASHER, DANCER, PRANCER, COMET, VIXEN, CUPID, DONNER AND BLITZEN MISSING AND FEARED EATEN AFTER POLAR SLEIGH TRAIN CRASH

               BLIZZARD A FACTOR, BUT NUNAVUT  RCMP REPORTS PILOT FAILED  EGGNOG TEST 

YULETIDE DIPLOMATIC SURPRISE : TRUMP APPOINTS NEW AMBASSADOR TO NORTH POLE

WILL  EPA  TAKE LUMPS OF  COAL  OFF  THE ENDANGERED  SPECIES  LIST?

HER TRANSPARENT AIRPLANE BURNS FAIR TRADE BIOFUEL

At Medium, Climate Reality Communicator Genvieve Guenther channels Wonder Woman  and Sir Philip Sidney: 

What Renaissance Literary Theory Tells Us about Climate Communication 

As they develop stories meant to inspire the public to engage with climate change and resist the social forces preventing us from decarbonizing, climate advocates often turn to sociological research to shape their narrative models. I wonder whether... Renaissance literary criticism, in particular, might be especially relevant here, because... Taking a historical leap... we can envision climate campaigns that activate people’s tribal identifications to give them deeply-felt reasons, and role models, for climate heroism...

Let’s think for a moment about the public response to the Wonder Woman film of earlier this year. 

I realize that at this point it’s not entirely clear what this means for climate communication. Am I recommending that environmental NGO’s run ads on Facebook showing women who look like Wonder Woman putting solar panels on their roofs? Well, not exactly — or at least not only. 

The goal is to visually and artfully convey what those effects would feel like in the bodies of the people represented in the campaign. Yes, the idea is to scare people. The goal is to enact vivid scenarios that, as Sidney puts it, “strike, pierce, and possess the sight of our souls.”Of course, as social-science research tells us, we shouldn’t just scare people and then leave them hanging... 

Rather, we should scare people with the truth, and then show them what to do — ... As Sidney himself insists, paraphrasing Machiavelli: “the only means of avoiding contempt are love and fear.” We need stories that inspire these emotions as fuel for the climate heroism of our ideal selves.

Wasn't it Sidney who warned  credulity is the only disadvantage of an honest heart ? 

SOME ICEBERGS ARE FAR TOO GOOD FOR POLAR BEARS

THE COLOR OF WATER IS PROTEAN:
WITNESS  THIS  TRANSPARENT AQUAMARINE  MASS 
OF  ANCIENT GLACIAL ICE  IN THE  ANTARCTIC:

Standing ten meters proud of the water, it weighs ~100,000 tonnes

HE'S MAKING A LIST AND CHECKING IT TWICE, YOU WON'T BE ON IT IF YOUR SCIENCE IS NICE

The latest leak from The Heartland Institute is a go-to list of fellow travelers, scientific and otherwise that  has morphed into a  Who's Who  for Scott Pruitt's minions, as they try to find colorful characters enough to  flesh out the Red Team.

I use the word colorful advisedly, as Heartland's  list notes of one:

Bahr, David A.	Bemidji State University Bemidji, MN	(contact info     redacted)	Associate Professor of Physics at Bemidji State University, in MN. Former chair of Physics Department from 2003 to 2009, college reorganization in 2008 and university-wide cuts in 2010 eliminated the physics program.  Linkedin: “Coordinator of Mozilla-style 3Suns, a broad-based non-corporate network of participating independent researchers and engineers concerned about development of the science and technology most critical to human sustainability. 3Suns represents a part of what can be done by concerned professionals outside the corporate structure.”  He’s pretty colorful looking. NOAA Letter Signatory

And as seen below, Heartland's own Science Director, Jay Lehr PhD:

Lehr, Jay	Environmental Education Enterprises Ostrander, OH		Heartland Institute’s science director, a hydrologist by training, and speaks frequently to agribusiness meetings and other audiences in farm areas. Author or editor of many books and hundreds of articles, including several reference books and encyclopedias for Wiley Interscience series. Has spoken frequently at ICCCs. (NOAA Letter Signatory) https://www.heartland.org/about-us/who-we-are/jay-lehr-phd Ph.D. Arizona State University, B.S. Princeton University

Is colorful as a Tinseltown Christmas tree or a Federal prison uniform:

                                                        Jay Lehr Ph.D.

The hydrologist turned Heartland Director  speaks from the heart on the global warming hoax & hockey stick fraud,   having himself been convicted and jailed for defrauding the EPA of $200,000 of the taxpayer's money.

The good doctor must be ahead of the pack on the EPA Red Team short list of Heartland Homies and Watts contributors, but  will Heartland's other colorful Climate Wars characters will make the final cut ?

Manuel, Oliver K.			Emeritus Professor, University of Missouri, Former NASA Principal Investigator for Apollo, PhD - Nuclear Chemistry, Postdoc - Space Physics, Fulbright - Astrophysics. (NOAA Letter Signatory)

Prof. Oliver K. Manuel

Celebrated Missouri ' Cold fusion' chemist noted for his theory that the sun is a ball of iron. Prof. Manuel's career at WUWT  and Heartland Institute  International Climate Conferences has been cut short by his arrest for child molestation.

Wanliss, James			Professor of Physics at Presbyterian College, Clinton, SC. He is a Senior Fellow and Contributing Writer for The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, and author of Resisting the Green Dragon: Dominion, Not Death. https://www.heartland.org/about-us/who-we-are/james-wanliss

On a more uplifting note, Dr. James Wanliss directs 

Er. I mean the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, and is author of   Resisting the Green Dragon: Dominion, Not Death  in which the ' Christian physicist ...explores and corrects the religious and scientific errors of the radical Green movement. '

Heartland's portrait of the doyen of Canadian hockey stick fitters speaks for itself:

McIntyre, Stephen			Coauthor, with Ross McKitrick, of Taken by Storm, a 2003 book on the hockey stick. McIntyre is the primary author of the blog Climate Audit, noted for its many articles skeptical of climate change. He is a prominent critic of scientific studies of temperature records of the past 1000 years that show increasing global temperatures. He worked in mineral exploration for 30 years, much of that time as an officer or director of several public mineral exploration companies.  “I’ve spent most of my life in business, mostly on the stock market side of mining exploration deals,”  he said in 2009. He has also been a policy analyst for both the governments of Ontario and of Canada.  He spoke at ICCC-1.