How to annoy a climate scientist – a guide

How annoying can you be?

The Guardian helpfully provides a handy cut-out-n-keep guide for how to get up your local climate alarmist’s nose.

Graham Readfearn gives the poor little lambs a platform to wail about all the injustices they have to put up with. Here are the edited highlights:

Andy Pitman

From our very own doorstep, UNSW Sydney. Andy doesn’t like unqualified people saying the moon is made of cheese (as all climate sceptics believe of course), and should basically shut up. Freedom of expression doesn’t rate very highly at UNSW, clearly.

Everyone knows sceptics don’t believe the moon is made of cheese… they believe the moon landings were faked, stupid! Duh!

Michael Mann

The infamous Mann, he of Hockey Stick fame, believes that the more uncertain something is, the more urgently we have to deal with it. So that presumably means extra-galactic alien invasions should be humanity’s top concern?

Michael Raupach

From ANU in Canberra, resorts to raiding a 19th century dictionary to convey his frustration, referring to the ‘finitude’ of our planet, whilst trivialising those who fear the poverty that will follow a massive tax on energy that will do nothing for the climate.

Steve Sherwood

Believes that tackling the dangers of CO2 (plant food) is comparable to dealing with other ‘pollutants’ like lead, mercury and asbestos. Steve does however believe that CO2 stays in the atmosphere for ‘hundreds of generations’, which means anything we do now is even more pointless than we previously thought. So thanks for that.

Stephan Rahmsdorf

Complains that journalists not linking extreme weather events to climate change is ‘misleading’. Because as we all know, every weather event, anywhere in the world, at any time, is due to climate change.

Roger Jones

Goes off the deep end, posing the question “Who am I?”:

I can buy disaffected scientists to deny sound science with a plane fare to a bogus conference and a little publicity.

I can anonymously threaten researchers online, especially the female ones.

If anyone threatens me with facts, I can call them an antidemocratic, anti-jobs, McCarthyist, communist, anti-freedom, pagan environmentalist.

Everyone says there is no consensus.

I deny everything.

Answer: a bizarre, caricatured figment of your warped imagination, perhaps?

Sophie Lewis

Sophie, from the Parkville Asylum (Melbourne University), complains that lack of action on climate change will leave us ‘vulnerable to a warmer climate’. Like humanity is ‘vulnerable’ to the ability to grow more crops, or ‘vulnerable’ to not dying from cold.

Andrew Glikson

Bemoans the fact that the media aren’t alarmist enough. No, really:

I think the scale of the changes being seen now when compared to the Earth’s history is something the media and the public do not appreciate.

Wow. How much more could we take?

Special mention must go to Richard Betts, the only scientist amongst the bunch who didn’t take the bait that Readfearn dangled in front of their faces. Richard rightly commented that journalists rarely give links to academic papers they cite in articles. I’m surprised Readfearn even bothered including that response at all…