Another fall from grace.

From Sourcewatch:

John Cook, on his website Skeptical Science, states that “the usual suspects in natural climate change – solar variations, volcanoes, Milankovitch cycles – are all conspicuous in their absence over the past three decades of warming.

Let’s see:

Solar variations? New Scientist.

Volcanoes? Ever heard of Pinatubo’s temperature dip ? FYI June 15, 1991

Milankovitch Cycles? Ummm much longer time scale than three decades John.

Yet the smugness of believing you are somehow more knowledgeable and better than others shows through loud and clear in this botched attempt at satire:

From the Skeptical Science “about” page:

About the author Skeptical Science is maintained by John Cook. He studied physics at the University of Queensland, Australia. After graduating, he majored in solar physics in his post-grad honours year. He is not a climate scientist. Consequently, the science presented on Skeptical Science is not his own but taken directly from the peer reviewed scientific literature.

Unless peer reviewed science is now accepting the ugly word “denier” in manuscripts, I’d say the “science” of this article shown above comes from John’s own opinionated disdain of people who have a different viewpoint on the science, and not any peer reviwed literature.

I at one time applauded John Cook for what I called “his scholarly demeanor”. Since he has clearly descended from that position (with his blog content from John Bruno), I now withdraw any such praise. – Anthony

Addendum: I should add that what is doubly insulting to me is that the author of the content on John Cook’s website, John Bruno, came up to me after my presentation in Brisbane, where he acted as compatriot to Ove Hoegh-Guldberg (which John Bruno runs the website “climateshifts” of) who made a fool of himself by abusing his rights as an audience member. Bruno told me how he respected my tone and my right to say it. He also said to me that I seemed “more open” than other people he’s talked to that are on the skeptical side.

John Bruno reiterated his moderate view of me in comments on that article:

John Bruno says: says: June 16, 2010 at 10:11 pm Interesting post and comments. I am writing in to identify myself as the guy in the green shirt. (I am a prof of marine ecology at UNC Chapel Hill, NC, USA, http://www.brunolab.net). Like I told Anthony, in person he was very calm and pleasant in his talk. A nice change. I don’t agree at all with his broader views about the patterns and causes of climate change, but I really got a kick out of his slide show of poorly (to put it lightly) placed weather stations. A very funny yet sad commentary on something-not sure what. I am also a big supporter (and consumer) of the type of citizen-science that Anthony has been doing and promoting (and I don’t mean that in a critical way). A fair amount of the work I do relies on data from citizen volunteers that do coral reef surveys, e.g., ReefCheck.

Full comment at this link

And the kicker from the main article at SkepticalScience.com:

And yet, here he is today, calling me a “denier”. “…as respectfully as is done here at SkepticalScience” This is “respectfully”? I’d hate to see your “disrespectful” Mr. Cook and Mr. Bruno. – Anthony

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