Saturday, December 14, 2013

Watts Fesses Up

It is reassuring to see how far I've gotten under the skin of Anthony Watts -- I must be doing something right.

Does anyone else get the impression his "coverage" of the AGU meeting seems to have been mostly about lurking around looking at people and daring them to look back, while imagining they actually care?

Watts now admits he was lying had no evidence when he accused me of "grunting" when a presenter showed a slide with one of his blog entries (as, remember, an example of poor science), because (pick your excuse):
If Appell isn’t the one who grunted when the WUWT slide came up, I’ll certainly take his word for it.

Maybe it was somebody behind me I couldn’t see or maybe it was somebody stifling a cough. All I know is that I heard something at that time that sounded like a grunt, and I thought the most likely candidates were Appell and Somerville, since they both have expressed strong disdain in the past for climate skeptics, and with Appell, me in particular.
Actually I had my digital recorder running for the entire lecture, sitting on the chair right beside me. I've only listened to a snippet of it -- my notes were sufficient for writing my article on YFCC&M -- and while the speaker sounds quite distant, I suspect it would have picked up any noises close to me.

But I'm rather busy right now, and I know the answer anyway.

PS: An alias is, of course, the only way many people can comment on Watts' site, otherwise you are censored for not toeing the denier line. This is common knowledge.

8 comments:

Dano said...

seems to have been mostly about lurking around looking at people and daring them to look back, while imagining they actually care?

Similar to "panty-sniffing", if you ask me. Creepy.

Best,

D

Victor Venema said...

David, when you link to WUWT and Co. you may want to add a NoFollow tag. Otherwise your links have the unintended consequence of herding people towards them by giving them better rankings for Google and Co.

Not much AGU science at WUWT up to now. Had I donated money for his SF trip, I would be disappointed.

Fixed Carbon said...

It was a long drive back to Chico.

Mogumbo Gono said...

Well, I read the entire WUWT article and all the comments, in which David Appell claims that A. Watts "lied".

There was not one example which could possibly support that false claim.

The only thing Mr. Watts wrote was:

...Mr. Appell has created false persona and fake email addresses to get around his being banned for serial bad behavior (at WUWT).

Mr. Appell has used fake email addresses with several aliases here at WUWT:

Edd Ward
Mughal
Phobos
Stan W.
Sedron L ...among others.


I have found that pejoratives like Appell's are almost universally on the side of the climate alarmist crowd. The endlessly repeated insults of "deniers", "denialists", etc. are found throughout alarmist comments. Truthfully, they are found in a majority of such comments. The use of such mindless insults takes the place of thinking, no?

The scientific skeptics of dangerous man-made global warming have repeatedly asked: What, exactly, are we 'denying'?

That the climate changes? We have always known that.

That man-made CO2 is rising? Likewise.

That there has been a minuscule, ≈0.7ÂșC global warming during the 20th Century? Likewise.

We know all those things, and more.

But as always, the alarmist crowd argues in bad faith, using pejoratives, insults, ad hominem attacks, and false accusations, rather than acknowledging what everyone knows:

All of the endless, wild-eyed predictions of runaway global warming and climate catastrophe were wrong. Not one alarming prediction has come true. Global warming has essentially stopped. And not just for a little while, but for many years now.

So the same people who were flat wrong label honest people as "liars", without a shred of evidence. Did Mr. Appell really believe that no one would look to verify his accusation?

I expected to find at least some corroboration that Mr. Watts "lied". But there was none at all.

Mr. Appell has a problem. He is not the kind of person I would associate with. But, to each his own, I guess.

David Appell said...

Mogumbo: It's clear Watts did indeed lie, claiming that I grunted at a presentation slide when I did not.

A few days later he admitted that he made it up.

David Appell said...

PS: Of course I (and many others) use pseudonyms at WUWT, because he blocks anyone who dissents from his nonsense. He's blocked many people who get in the way of his construction of an alternate reality.

Mogumbo Gono said...

Appell says:

"It's clear Watts did indeed lie, claiming that I grunted at a presentation slide when I did not. A few days later he admitted that he made it up."

That is NOT at all what was said! That makes you the dishonest one.

And your claim that "he blocks anyone who dissents" is so provably preposterous by anyone who reads the comments, that you can be dismissed as a crank.

David Appell said...

MG: It's clear what Watts said -- he made up something ("lied") to try to make me look bad.

I called BS on him, and he took back his lie.

BTW, lots of people are banned from WUTH; here are just a few:

http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2015/01/banned-at-wuwt-add-your-name-to-list.html