In the process of monitoring the upside-down world of disinformation, every once in a while we come across good news or accurate content. But it's rare when it's twice in one day, so today we're looking at two good pieces from the Bad Places.
The first is from Dr. Roy Spencer, the University of Alabama-Huntsville researcher who runs a satellite temperature data project that used to justify Spencer's skepticism that it was warming- until other (better) scientists repeatedly corrected his (and John Christy's) errors. Now it shows plenty of warming, but Spencer remains one of the last remaining actual climate scientists who rejects the consensus that warming is bad, which is why his blog has been demonetized by Google for spreading for climate disinformation.
That said, in denial-land, there are layers of wrong-ness, and on Tuesday, Spencer debunked someone who's regularly even more wrong than he is: Christopher Monckton. Though Spencer politely refers to Monckton as "Lord," despite the actual House of Lords telling Monckton to quit doing that, Spencer is not kind to Monckton's latest pet theory, that "climatologists forgot the sun was shining."
Given that Monckton also claims to have cured AIDS and the common cold, and loves to harass people with legal-looking threats to sue, it's rare for serious people to waste their time on Monckton's ramblings. But Spencer's apparently isn't worth very much so he took the time to "try to explain, based upon actual atmospheric processes, why [Monckton's] argument does not make physical sense."
Spencer concludes the lengthy explanation of why something stupid is stupid by saying that he considers "Christopher Monckton a friend, and I implore him to stop chasing this rabbit. I am asked about his ideas from time to time, and as a result I must, once again, attempt to explain why I believe he is wrong." Turns out climate scientists do actually know about the sun!
Great to see that instead of wasting the time of someone doing useful work advancing the science, Monckton's reached a level of wrong so incredible that even his peers are reviewing it negatively.
Peer review, of sorts, is also the subject of the second fun piece we want to talk about: Steve Milloy posted that the EPA won its case against deniers trying to force their way back on to the EPA's advisory committees. "EPA clearly rigged its air quality science peer review with paid-off cronies. Congress never intended to allow EPA to rig scientific peer review," Milloy wrote on his site when posting the court order confirming that the EPA can use real experts instead of Milloy's hand-picked nuclear radiation-risk denier.
As those who remember the Trump administration might recall, polluters stacked the EPA's advisory boards with people who think pollution is good for you. Unsurprisingly, the Biden administration cleared them out of the advisory boards, but a couple of them sued. Unsuccessfully.
Please excuse our joy here, because while it's not great that they wasted the court system's time with this lawsuit, it is great that they lost! And like Spencer's debunking of Monckton, it's always nice to see someone else confirm that deniers are losers!
