Collide-a-scape

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross famously coined the five stages of grief:

1) Denial, 2) Anger, 3) Bargaining, 4) Depression, 5) Acceptance

Anthony Watts appears to be stuck at stage 2. Oh sure, he’s still very much in denial over this, but make no mistake, he’s also fuming and furiously spinning. It is highly doubtful that any amount of peer review–when that final threshold is crossed–will be enough to get him through the final three stages of grief.

So Watts, his WUWT minions, and the Moranos, will always be the hold-outs. As Donald Rumsfeld would say, they are the dead-enders.

This is rich:

So after being bombarded with all the news stories about how offensive this term is, and noting that some of the same people doing reporting lambasting Perry over the name of a ranch called “niggerhead” have absolutely no trouble at all calling people like me and the readers of WUWT “deniers” (Think Progress, Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, among others) which is also an ugly and offensive term due to the connection to “holocaust deniers”.

Yes, Anthony, I’m sure black people feel your pain. And the “Jewish race” too.

Well, I have no idea if that’s true.

But Anthony Watts needs to stop crying crocodile tears about being called a “denier” if he’s going to put up posts like this one. Here’s the headline:

Charles Manson becomes an advocate for global warming

You climate skeptics get the point? What about you, Anthony?

It would be so entertaining, wouldn’t it?

Can someone please cut through the BS for me and explain what is going on with their dueling posts on this Berkley Earth Temperature Station business?

Romm’s latest contains not one but two “bombshells,” a “wow” and a “double wow.” He also says that he meant all along to “smoke out the deniers.” It’s like he’s doing his own psych ops or something.

Over at WUWT, Anthony’s latest claims Romm is pulling the “old pea and thimble trick” and hyperventilating

like some cheap MSM news labeling graphic where they’ve caught some sex poodle on tape.

Who’s smoking who here?

People have been teeing off on this doozy by Don Easterbrook, from Gareth Renowden to Steven Mosher, who calls it

pretty bad. One doesn’t even know where to start.

Because I have important news to share. It’s huge. Are you sitting down? Calm yourself. I’m just spreading the word. Ok, here goes:

This is an important moment in science history.

Drum roll please. Just how important, Anthony?

I would describe it as a letter on the scale of Martin Luther, nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door.

Wow. That is big. And very religious sounding, too.

Seriously, can any of the faithful explain to me why this is a big deal? As in right up there with Martin Luther?

There, what did you make of that headline? What’s entering your mind?

Now head over to this post by Watts, and tell me what you think he’s up to. Well, one reader caught on pretty quick:

Good on you Anthony, we need to get a link going in peoples minds between Bin Laden and the likes of Romm and McKibben.

In an inline reply, Watts professes no such insinuation:

It is not my intent to compare them, I only want to point out that like with the 10:10 fiasco, AGW proponents that don’t want this sort of bad publicity, should distance themselves. I’m going to add that to the body of the story so it is clear.

I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again: Watts and Romm are two sides of the same coin. They both like to play the guilt by association card.

UPDATE: True to form, Romm plays his card here with an update:

Memo to Watts:  You know your smear-fest has hit a new low when one of your own ‘tribal’ members, Keith Kloor, calls you out.

That’s so precious. That Romm considers me a member of the WUWT tribe should be a revelation to my friends and colleagues.

UPDATE 2: I see that Romm changed the text containing his reference to me, and that he’s at least letting the reader know. That didn’t happen the first time around when we tangled last year, so it’s nice to see he’s showing improvement in some areas.

James Lee, the demented guy who was killed after taking hostages at the Discovery channel headquarters, is turning into quite an illuminating inkblot in the blogosphere. Exhibit A is this headline from Anthony Watts:

When warmistas attack

Exhibit B would be the majority sentiment that flows from that post’s comment thread, of which this one was among the first few out of the box:

Are you surprised? All of the unbalanced minds are on the Alarmist side. Now watch for the reaction of Romm and Hansen and all of the other spittle-flecked lunatics. Will they have the guts to embrace his actions?

Joe Romm, for his part, rightly criticizes the warped nature of Watts’ headline (as well as the equally cringe-inducing first line from that post) and the offensive tenor of many of the commenters in that thread.

On the central figure in the tragic event,  Romm also correctly observes:

I don’t think you can tell much about this guy from his actions and writing other than the fact that he was crazy every which way.

Then Romm, being Romm, couldn’t leave well enough alone. In the next breath, he forfeits the high ground when he writes:

But you can tell a lot about the anti-science, pro-pollution blogosphere by how they react to this and whether or not they denounce Anthony Watts.

Really? Does that also apply to the (presumably pro-science, anti-pollution) liberal blogosphere, a representation of which Anthony Watts (oblivious to the odious comments from his own readers in the thread of his post), gleefully points out in the thread of this Think Progress post?

This is the thing that puzzles me about Romm. He could have simply let the Watts post speak for itself. It was a gift staring him in the face. Instead, he had to overreach and demagogue it.

So I guess we can tell a lot about Romm and Watts, too, based on how they treat this sorry episode.