cite as: F. Bi. 2008. Crapmill back in action on May Day. Intl. J. Inact., 1:23–25

Well, understandably, the global warming inactivist blogosphere blogocave¹ has decided not to report on the “Heartland 500” fiasco at all. Instead, Anthony Watts and the folks at Jennifer Marohasy have quickly latched on to a new talking point, this time from US Senator James Inhofe regarding a Nature article. So I decided to ask them via blog comments why they weren’t talking about the Heartland list:

Dear Ms. Marohasy,

I deeply regret to observe that, despite your reporting of the “global cooling to 2015″ story, you have failed to make any mention in your blog of Heartland Institute’s recent list of scientists who have cast doubts on global warming. Here is a sample of the list, available via http://tinyurl.com/6zjxy4:

… Rahmstorf, Stefan, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany; Randall, David, A., NASA; Ratto, N., University of Buenos Aires, Argentina; [...lots more names...] Schilman, Bettina, Geological Survey of Israel; Schmidt, Gavin J., University of Virginia; Schmith, Torben, Danish Meteorological Institute; [...yet more names...] Tappa, Eric, University of South Carolina; Thomas, Chris D., University of Leeds; Thompson, L.G., Ohio State; …

http://tinyurl.com/6zjxy4

As a concerned citizen and defender of freedom and all that it stands for, I have a few questions I need to ask. May I know why you are being silent on the Heartland 500 list, and the oppression from the scientific inquisiton against the academics that are mentioned on the list? Has your good self been intimidated by the forces of the Left into keeping quiet as well? Is your blog now selling out to the freedom-destroying agenda of Al Gore?

I would appreciate it if you can offer me answers to my humble questions. Thank you.

– Frank Bi, International Journal of Inactivism, http://frankbi.wordpress.com/

What happened was this: the Marohasy folks decided to simply drop my comment, and Watts — after a few exchanges — offered the following explanation:

well I mostly deal with weather stations and weather/climate data here, and the list just hasn’t been as interesting as what’s been happening in the real world lately.

Ho hum. Given that Watts was actually at the inactivist ’science’ conference sponsored by the Heartland Institute and with Heartland honcho Joseph Bast giving the opening speech, I can only wonder what that means! Maybe Watts is in Gore’s pocket after all?

* * *

In the meantime, here’s a quick summary of the discussion regarding Inhofe’s take on the Nature article:

“Research shows the world will cool until 2015!”

“Hey, the research uses climate models. Didn’t you say models are unreliable?”

“Argh, I’m going to throw smoke bombs!”

Footnote

1. Thanks to VJ for the suggestion!