Dr. Roy W. Spencer has a blog and a facebook page, is a famous climate science denier, and, it turns out, an unmitigated ass.
Peter Sinclair notes,
Roy Spencer is of course, most famous for consistently misreading his own data for some decade or more, insisting that the planet was cooling, even during some of the fastest warming trend of the last millennium.
He remains the “official climatologist of the Rush Limbaugh Show”.
Must be a good gig. The wronger you are, the more fans and funding you attract.
And now, following hard on the Paris attacks, he wrote this:
Why ISIS Should Support COP21 in Paris…
After the horrific terror attacks in Paris last night, there is considerable speculation over the possible cancellation of the COP21 climate talks in Paris in a couple of weeks.
I will remind you that President Obama has stated that the threat of climate change is greater than the threat of terrorism. I will also remind you that many believe that ISIS would not have arisen if not for climate change, specifically, drought in Syria caused by your SUV.
It is only logical that ISIS should be supportive of COP21 in Paris, and that the conference should go on as planned. To enlightened minds, terrorism is clearly just a consequence of climate change. Fix the weather, and terrorism will go away.
If terrorism is such a minor, contained threat (as Obama just stated yesterday), and global warming is really the overriding threat facing humanity, how can we consider cancelling – or even postponing – COP21?
After all, isn’t COP21 our last, final, last chance to Save the Earth?
Just ignore centuries of history which demonstrates that the strict followers of the Koran have a holy mandate to take over the world for Islam, killing anyone who will not submit.
Yes, all of the world’s politicians who have supported a COP21 agreement should still plan on attending. And they should reach out to ISIS to join them in building a better world…a world without droughts.
In fact, in solidarity with the gun-control measures many of those politicians support (and which French law follows), any personal security personnel accompanying them should be unarmed.
The twisted logic of this screed speaks accurately of how Dr. Spencer’s mind works. What is most astonishing here is equating a global effort to save the planet and at the same time make the energy we need from cleaner and more sustainable sources to a terroristic mass killing in Paris.
Look especially at the last two paragraphs. He is suggesting sarcastically that those concerned about climate change should join with Isis to create a world without droughts. Never mind the absurdity and misrepresentation. Spencer is trying to swing part of the climate change narrative around from one of its more serious conclusions, that one outcome of change may be failed states, unsettled populations, and heightened danger in parts of the world. He is, essentially, making fun of the refugees streaming across Europe. Could a person be more thoughtless and callous? Also, as we have seen on this very blog recently, he reifies the idea that those working against developing and using good science are gun nuts, at least some times. In case that question has occurred to you, there is your answer.
Most troubling is Spencer’s apparent call for ISIS terrorists to attack the actual peace talks. Or is hope that they do so. Hard to say how this demented fantasy plays out in his mind.
Spencer is an Islamophobe. He is a mean spirited fanatic.
ADDED: And it isn’t just Spencer.
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Roy’s entire post is appalling in every way. The timing is deeply offensive to all who are saddened and shocked by the attacks in Paris. As well as that, Roy’s article would be offensive to people of all religions including Muslims (he misrepresents the Koran.)
It’s worse than you’ve portrayed it though. I read the last two paras differently. He seems to be wanting the people attending COP21 killed by ISIS terrorists.
Roy Spencer’s mind does not work. It has obviously been lollygagging for many years now, lying around popping Conservative bon-bons and occasionally belching up foulness to feed Rush L. and his nefarious intent.
The most casual observer would note that the root of the problem that brought us ISIS is not drought, but the failure to leave the oil in the ground and the resulting invasion of the Middle East to take it.
And then suppressing every attempt since its discovery there to prevent the development of non-fossil fuel sources of energy. Plus feeding the corruption, political strife, etc. in that region to keep it weak & pliable, so as to ensure the flow of oil out of the ground.
Of course he gleefully supports failed states, unsettled populations, and heightened danger in parts of the world due to climate change. He’s already been in support of the same thing to sustain fossil fuel extraction.
Georges Clemenceau got it right, about 100 years ago, when he told Woodrow Wilson,
“There will come the day when every drop of oil will be worth a drop of blood.”
Reviewing Spencer’s drivel in that light, you may add the descriptor hypocrite to the list.
And those terrorist-loving hippies are mostly vegans, but they’re blind to the rank hypocrisy of meeting in a country that makes 600 types of cheese! And they’re going there in airplanes which emit CO2 and which terrorists use to commit terror when they aren’t terroristically shooting them down with missiles that emit CO2!!! Benghaaazzziiii!!!!!!
A fitting verse for Spencer from the book he claims to follow: “For ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.”
At this very moment, over one billion people are grieving with France, in sympathy over their dead and wounded. And here we see Reverend Roy Spencer using the horrific crime committed by monsters as a serendipitous public relations event he gleefully and happily used to further his political agenda.
It appears Reverend Roy Spencer still has a learning impairment, complete with poor reading comprehension skills, to go along with him morals and ethics impairments. It is an observed fact, which the USA military’s several report on the subject agreed with, that human-caused climate change is a vastly greater threat to human life, and USA national security, than the Bush1 Regime’s creation (the ISIS).
I wonder if Reverend Roy Spencer would approve of the ISIS being left alone, unregulated, if the ISIS filed incorporation papers in the USA as a fossil fuel corporation. Burning coal and diesel fuel and gasoline kills more humans every year than ISIS has or ever will.
It seems to me that deniers of the evidence for human-caused climate change tend to be homicidal sociopaths, lacking all sense of empathy for human beings; Reverend Roy Spencer appears to be a fine example.
Spencer jumps the shark.
Did he seriously make that argument?
I believe that climate change and resulting droughts are a contributing factor to the current destructive wars in the Mideast. Therefore I should embrace aggressors and terrorists and make no effort to resist them?
David Appell replied on Roy’s FB thread:
“”From the Stupid to the Revolting,” David Appell, 11/14/15″
And on his blog with a post with the same title:
http://davidappell.blogspot.com
I thought Roy’s piece was funny.
Ricka: “I thought Roy’s piece was funny.”
Er, doesn’t that make you a sociopath?
No surprise that RickA thinks abusing a horrible situation resulting in more than a hundred dead people is funny.
#9 Think harder next time, Rick
Roy Spencer worst person in the world? Ricka shows there is always room for one more at the top.
dean: “Roy Spencer worst person in the world? Ricka shows there is always room for one more at the top.”
More like at the bottom.
RickA
Why?
Reading into the situation the resentful, banal sarcasm of the narcissist not getting his way funny? Only if the situation provides some kind of larger perspective taking–with a twist.
RickA. Obvious. Mean. Clueless. And most of all boring.
RickA:
“I thought Roy’s piece was funny.”
Roy didn’t write it to be funny. Something tells me that he’s be offended by your interpretation, too … he’s serious.
Funny? To suggest that terrorists kill climate scientists and policy makers because Roy Spencer lost track of his big boy pants?
Greg Laden: “Funny? To suggest that terrorists kill climate scientists and policy makers because Roy Spencer lost track of his big boy pants?”
Given what the USA Republican Party “talking heads” are saying about the crime that happened in Paris yesterday, “Ricka” must be rolling on the floor with laughter at the moment.
I see in the news that the same “talking heads” are livid with rage over the fact that President Obama said he would wait for the facts to be known, and give the victims of the crime time to grieve and assess, before he acted. That is, Obama said he would use his brain. DAMN HIM! If the balloting fraud of year 2000 had been successful, Mitt Romney would be bombing Sweden right now in retaliation.
“Ricka’s” comment makes me think my observation is correct: denialists tend to be sociopaths.
BBD #13 asked why I though Roy’s piece was funny.
Not because of the horrific terror attacks, of course.
It is silly to say climate change is more serious than terrorism (to me anyway).
Of course the security people will be armed – more armed after this attack than before.
I thought the whole piece was a bit tongue in cheek.
But if you really think Roy Spencer wants climate scientists and policy makers killed – well everyone is entitled to their opinion.
RickA, if you can’t see that using a slaughter as a platform to promote anything, humor or political point of view, or in the case of Spencer and you, is disgusting, you deserve to be called all the things you have been, and worse. Your stupid little “I didn’t mean it” is incredibly hollow.
Ricka: K“It is silly to say climate change is more serious than terrorism (to me anyway).”
Er, the issue is not “more serious.” The issue is “the greater threat.” Compared to human-caused climate change, terrorism is the vastly smaller threat. In the past 30 hours I have seen USA fascists (your political peers) bitching about how Obama is “ignoring terrorism” and is instead “taxing people for global warming.” These stupid shits really do lack the mental ability to understand that it is possible to address both problems at the same time, which Obama has been doing for seven years. They (you) really are too stupid to grasp the fact that Obama is too intelligent and educated for them to understand.
Take, for example, this lunatic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9mDgrFmDww
It is not funny; it’s sad, frightening, and pathetic.
They are (at least locally here in MI) complaining about how he isn’t dealing with terrorism the way President Bush did.
I’m not sure why they want President Obama to take attention off where the problem is and start yet another war that has nothing to do with terrorism, simply to make that new country a breeding ground for more problems.
RickA
Desertphile has explained why your first sentence reflects Spencer’s egregious misrepresentation of what has *actually* been said regarding AGW and terrorism.
Do you really think it is acceptable of Spencer to use the mass murder in Paris as a platform for peddling his contraranism? Does this not strike you as exceptionally insensitive and opportunistic? As for the ‘tongue in cheek tone’, well, that makes it even worse.
For a person who established himself as having no qualms about causing the deaths of large groups of people in order to further his cherished lifestyle, it’s no surprise at all that RickA laughs at the thought of people dying. No surprise at all.
“Spencer is an Islamophobe. He is a mean spirited fanatic.”
Unforgivable though his incompetence as a satirist may be, he rivals Singer and Delingpole as a source of raw material for the genre.
Like most others here, I find Spencer’s attempt to link attacks on innocent people who were enjoying themselves in the company of others with COP 21 reprehensible and typical of Spencer’s style of argumentation. Furthermore, it’s not at all surprising that he, like Donald Trump, would embrace the tragedy as an opportunity as to weaken gun regulation.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/11/14/donald-trump-says-tough-gun-control-laws-in-paris-contributed-to-tragedy/?tid=pm_pop_b
I do think, though, that it’s a bit of an illogical stretch to claim that he wants the scientists and policy makers who’ll be attending the meeting to be killed by ISIS, and thereby be transformed into martyrs whose deaths would facilitate strong climate legislation. It would be far more like Spencer to claim that proponents of anthropogenic climate change and ISIS are equally destructive, have common interests, and should be seen as natural allies.
Greg deserves a break from saving the world for preventive maintenance on his sense of the sardonic.
The theater of cruelty has been squeezing laughs out of humorless monomaniacs since John Gay sent up Newton in 1717.
“I will also remind you that many believe that ISIS would not have arisen if not for climate change, specifically, drought in Syria caused by your SUV.”
In all fairness, just as Ronald Reagan deserves some of the credit for the rise of Al Qaeda, George W. Bush deserves some for ISIS.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/11/fighting-terrorism-was-dubyas-biggest-weakness.html
Interesting to see these attempts at backpedaling and providing excuses.
Russell, Spencer’s weak & ill-considered attempt at wit is not sardonic; it is sardinic. As are his attempts at intellect.
It would be far more like Spencer to claim that proponents of anthropogenic climate change and ISIS are equally destructive, have common interests, and should be seen as natural allies.
That would be the peak of irony –and hypocrisy– for Spencer to suggest that, given he & his ilk are the closest things to allies of ISIS right now.
Spencer and his anti-science group, like ISIS, seek to indulge themselves at a great and terrible cost to mankind, for which they have no respect or regard, and comport themselves like savages while claiming moral superiority.
The difference is that one wields a pen, while the other wields a sword. Which indeed is mightier?
I’ll go with the sword.
Cue “have you no sense of deceny?” subroutine .
The cue card says: “Spoken like a true Conservative.”
Brainstorms is funny.
He keeps trying to give me a lavish lifestyle and keeps trying to spin me as a bad guy.
I am the one against making everything more expensive for no good reason.
And RickA is funny — in not a humorous way.
He keeps trying to deny science in a way that desperately tries to paint himself as naive & innocent, to mask that he’s a denier.
We are the ones against incurring expensive destruction of life and property “for no good reason”.
(“I don’t want my cost of living to go up, and I don’t want to give up the advantages that fossil fuels give me, wah!” is NOT a ‘good reason’ — RickA’s incessant protestations notwithstanding.)
That’s the oddest wording of “I’m the one who strongly denies the science and so I make groundless assertions about how dealing with the problem will destroy the economy” I’ve seen in a long time.
Another thread about RickA?
It’s a thread about deniers who reveal themselves to be rather callous about the destruction of property and the loss of lives that will be caused by global overheating.
RickA fits right in. I’m sure he has a photo of Roy Spencer on his wall at home. (Probably another one at work.)
Brainstorms: “RickA fits right in. I’m sure he has a photo of Roy Spencer on his wall at home. (Probably another one at work.)”
Why, I fucking *LOVE* that idea! Oh, man, I would love to have a poster of Christopher Monckton, Fake Lord and 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley! I would have the poster in the back ground of every YouTube video I make. I wonder if I can write to Fake Lord Monckton and ask for a poster of him; I’d be willing to pay a fiver for it.
What “Ricka” wrote: “I am the one against making everything more expensive for no good reason.”
What “Ricka” meant: “Everyone else but me can suffer, die, and go to Hell for all I care. The billions of people adversely effected by my behavior from now until the next 3,000 years or so is their problem, not mine.”
It is an observed fact that changed and changing climates cause fatal conflicts between cultures and sub-cultures. We see this happening now, and we saw it in the past. Spencer does not give a shit for the same reason “Ricka” does not give a shit: there appears to be a lack of even the most rudimentary sense of human empathy.
It makes me wonder. If President Obama had written what Roy Spencer wrote, I suspect “Ricka” would be outraged at such a blinding show of depraved indifference to the Paris victims. But because it was a “free market” cultist peer of his, “Ricka” is leaping through hoops to justify Spencer’s behavior.
It seems to me that no emotionally healthy human being could have written what Dr. Roy Spencer wrote in his Facebook page.
CC,
“It would be far more like Spencer to claim that proponents of anthropogenic climate change and ISIS are equally destructive, have common interests, and should be seen as natural allies.”
Thus ginning up the hate even framed that way. Not sure how familiar you are with talk radio here, Limbaugh in particular, but this is rabid dog whistle politics. I know that there are those who hold collegial feelings for Spencer. Fair enough if that’s your thing, but don’t be fooled about what’s going on here. He doesn’t inhabit the same niche, for instance, that Russell has carved out for himself.
“Another thread about RickA?”
Yeah, no doubt about it by now — just a troll.
DNFTT
Is Obstreperous Applesauce Archimedes Plutonium’s nom de climate guerre?
No.
150,000 people per annum might disagree.
BTW, it’s only a matter of time before RIckA spits the dummy and disappears from this thread in a huff.
Chris #45:
You know that number has nothing to do with climate change right?
That is just the deaths from all extreme weather events – which even the IPCC says cannot be shown to be caused by climate change.
#41
I’m slightly familiar with American talk radio, but it’s not something that I’ve ever tuned in to. At this point very little about the U.S. would surprise me. I’m not a scientist, have no scientific background, and have no feelings of collegiality toward Spencer. What I do know about him* doesn’t speak to his advantage. We can certainly agree that equating COP21 with ISIS is an attempt to vilify climate scientists and policy makers who don’t share his view.
The text itself is irrational and incoherent, and is based on two hatreds. The one is hatred of the great climate conspiracy that, among other things, belittles his work and prevents his papers from being published in respectable climate journals. The other is hatred of Islam. I see his main argument as an attempt to combine these and show that they’re mutually supportive. I see the last paragraph, not as a logical conclusion, but as a crazed afterthought enabled by a Spencer specialty – the manipulation of data, in this case, the insinuation that gun control also implies disarming security personnel.
*Three examples:
http://environmentalforest.blogspot.dk/2014/08/roy-spencer-and-95-of-models-are-wrong.html
http://scholarsandrogues.com/2011/09/06/spencer-braswell-paper-editor-dessler/
http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/roy-spencer-persecuted-by-own-data/
“Spits the dummy.” I love it! Thank you Australia, I’m adding it to my repertoire!
🙂
I read this yesterday, and was taken aback that a scientist would use such a poor argument. It has numerous logical fallacies, non-sequiters, and even appears to conflate weather and climate even though he would know, absolutely know, this is wrong and is also a strawman point.
Also it seems strange he would lend his name to Limbaugh’s show. I checked with some of my fundamentalist friends and family (I’m talking 6,000 yr old earth fundies), and of those that have heard of Limbaugh, they’re unanimous in their expression of distaste for the show (and the man). They think he’s a liar, a hate-monger (and one called him a divisive man….referring to Titus 3:10 where you are to warn a divisive person a couple of times and then have nothing to do with him). When I asked them if they, as Christians, would appear on his show they were quite firm in saying ‘no’.
I’m really starting to think Christians in the states are a completely different sect (or even religion) to Christians in the rest of the world as they seem to be comfortable being misleading and associating with people/causes/policies that should be an anathema to them.
RickA:
“You know that number has nothing to do with climate change right?”
From the linked source:
“Climatic changes already are estimated to cause over 150,000 deaths annually.”
Of course, RickA has the advantage in denying everything regarding climate science, so since climate science is a fraud, obviously, estimates of excess mortality due to climate change must also be fraudulent.
RickA’s world is so circular it makes my head spin.
dhogaza #50:
The linked source also says:
“That estimate includes deaths as a result of extreme weather conditions, which may be occurring with increased frequency.”
Note the use of the word “may”!
Yeah, they’re occurring with increased frequency in June, July, August, and September, too!
I never did get a rational response from RickA to this point:
RickA: “This means that it is NOT very likely that most (> 50%) of the observed increase in global average temperatures BEFORE mid-20th century (before 1950) is caused by humans.”
Me: “No it does not mean that. It just means they do not want to claim that most of the observed increase in global average temperature in the first half of the 20th century is very likely (>90% IPCC definition) due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. It just means they are not making any claims about likelihood in that period. That doesn’t mean they are making a claim about proportions in that period. They’re just leaving that open with the proviso that the anthropogenic part is (significantly) greater than zero.
You have some problems with logic RickA. Not something I’d want to have in a lawyer.
BTW, you could look up what the IPCC means by “very likely” etc. sometime.”
The link was http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2015/10/19/september-was-warm-2015-is-warm/#comment-626242
44
Suffering Succotash, yo sure fuled me.
@~55
I don’t know how to process that.
Spencer starts right off with the (is there any polite way to say this?) huge honking LIE that it was Obama who called climate change a bigger threat than terrorism.
In fact it was the Pentagon, starting in the last couple of years of the Bush Administration.
Every five years, the Pentagon issues a document that provides a look-ahead on strategic threats and their implications for our defense planning. An unclassified version is made available to the public. You can probably find it (and subsequent versions) by going to http://www.ixquick.com and putting in the search terms “pentagon climate change.”
It was in one of those documents that our military planners first said explicitly that climate change is a bigger threat than terrorism. This because climate change drives resource competition, local and regional conflicts that can become wars, mass refugee migrations, and the spread of fanatical ideologies. On all of these fronts they were spot-on, as we see today.
There comes a point where _we the people_ have to trust the expertise of those whose task is to protect us from very real threats that could kill us in large numbers or destroy our society. Almost always, there are key facts that we do not know, usually because they are classified: and if we knew these facts we would agree with the policies and decisions that followed from them. Anyone here who has had access to “that type of information” knows this is true.
Spencer and his ilk constitute a very real threat to our national security, and to global security as well. They play right into the hands of groups such as ISIL. They are what Stalin called “useful idiots,” and what we should call _traitors_.
Meanwhile, as for the useful idiots and traitors who have shown up in this blog: Do not feed the trolls. Ignore them.
Lastly, re. Cosmicomics @ 47, I hope you don’t take the rantings of these sociopaths on the radio and elsewhere as representing the whole of the American public. Most of us are downright ashamed of them. “Some day there’ll be a cure.”
This is what Spencer said about Bill Nye on November 8:
“Pandering, simple-minded, exploitative, science half-truth pushing, poverty-exacerbating, job- and prosperity-killing faux-scientific shill for crony capitalist boutique energy scams, Mr. Bill Nye.”
And his fans eat it up…
SPENCER actually has a lot in common with the DAESH / ISIS / ISIL / Iceholes. He appears to share the same kind of all-or-nothing, my-way-or-the-highway, “my religion justifies whatever I feel I need to do to advance my religion” attitude of the jihadists. All sorts of incivilities are excusable to Spencer as they are to DAESH. In fairness to Spencer, he does not engage in execution of his opponents, at least not in the literal sense, as far as we know. But both Spencer and DAESH probably hold compatible views about so called “end times”.
To me, the similarity between Spencer and DAESHists ( DAESHITs?) is quite high in terms of their ability to put illogical beliefs on top of their hierarchy of values. I suspect, also, that this type of susceptibility to the illogical has its roots at a very young age. Through punishment and reward, through blinding fear or through hope of religious ecstasy, people are molded to support ideologies that are divorced from reality.
There is obviously no way to know how many people will ultimately suffer and die from fossil fueled climate disaster, or to know how much Spencer, through the powerful influence of that arse, Rush Limbaugh, will help facilitate said disaster. But Spencer and DAESH both have the blood of innocents on their hands. Spencer is just too much of a dumb cluck to realize it.
I look forward to a day when the world has conquered not only DAESH, but also the idiocy promulgated by the Roy Spencers and Rush Limbaughs of the world. May they all fall soon.
May they all fall soon.
They shall !
Bad news: They are taking us down with them.
I guess if you can’t argue the science you attack the man. Good job!! LOL
WattsWrongHere?,
Sometimes one must take time off from being the Jolly Scientist explaining the science to members of an inquisitive public…
…and perform the public service of slapping the shit out of assholes who posit themselves an enemy of mankind.