Oh I do hate seeing blog posts with titles like “Easterbrook’s Wrong (Again)“. Luckily, it’s not me they’re talking about. It’s some other dude who, as far as I know, is completely unrelated to me. And that’s a damn good thing, as this Don Easterbrook appears to be a serial liar. Apparently he’s an emeritus geology prof from from some university in the US. And because he’s ready to stand up and spout scientific sounding nonsense about “global cooling”, he gets invited to talk to journalists all the time. And then his misinformation then gets duly repeated on blog threads all over the internet, despite the efforts of a small group of bloggers trying to clean up the mess:

In a way, this another instance of the kind of denial of service attack I talked about last year. One retired professor fakes a few graphs, and they spread so widely over the internet that many good honest science bloggers have to stop what they’re doing, research the fraud, and expose it. And still they can’t stop the nonsense from spreading (just google “Don Easterbrook” to see how widely he’s quoted, usually in glowing terms).

The depressing thing is that he’s not the only Easterbrook doing this. I appear to be out-numberered: ClimateProgress, Sept 13, 2008: Gregg Easterbrook still knows nothing about global warming — and less about clean energy.

6 Comments

  1. Sorry Steve! I could make the next headline Easterbrook (not Steve) still wrong if you like, because I don’t think Don’s going to give up his climate crank calling…

  2. Too funny. 8)

    Maybe you could turn the tables on them putting out stuff others will mistake as theirs.

  3. Hi Steve! When I first heard of your climate writings I confused you with Gregg (who is I believe the most famous of the 3 of you). At least, Gregg has appeared on the Colbert Report:

    http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/308090/april-28-2010/gregg-easterbrook

  4. If it’s any consolation, a few weeks ago when one of the sites you mention above was criticizing Easterbrook, I thought to myself, “that doesn’t sound like the Easterbrook whose blog I’ve been reading.” I guess there are too many high profile denialists for me to keep track of; Don E. didn’t make it onto my radar.

    jg

  5. Time to change your name to Westerbrook?

  6. Now, I have been following you ever since your famous essay “Daddy, what did YOU do in the climate wars?” http://www.easterbrook.ca/steve/?p=255 It is still an essential post.

    And now that you call attention to that other fellow… (in Wikipedia he comes across a little bit touched) – clearly you are doing the far more important work. It is important not to get distracted by crazy people. You may ignore him. We know the difference.

    Thanks for all that you do.

  7. Pingback: Tackling nonsense head on | Serendipity

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