Monday, March 24, 2014

Can David Appell be humble anymore? Was he ever? Who cares?

Following my tweet about AGW alarmist journalist & blogger David Appell's meltdown & quitting rant, Appell deleted his blog post cached below, but thanks to Google will be preserved as useful historical insight into the madness of the CAGW movement. 

Oddly, Appell posted this unhinged rant titled "Is no one humble anymore?" around the same time I asked for a humble apology from him for his comment on this blog that I am a liar for commenting that the adiabatic lapse rate/atmospheric temperature profile is determined by gravity [as well as atmospheric mass & heat capacity of the atmosphere]. The equation for the dry adiabatic lapse rate is in fact:

dT/dh = -g/Cp 

where g=gravity, Cp=heat capacity of the atmosphere, dh=height, dT=change in temperature

Appell never apologized humbly or otherwise for his libel of me as a liar for simply quoting a well-established barometric equation known since the 1800's. This is but one tiny example of Appell's libel, misquotes, and falsehoods against me on his blog, on twitter, and in comments here and elsewhere. 


Google cache for Appell's disappeared tirade:


SUNDAY, MARCH 23, 2014

Is no one humble anymore?

By David Appell, Quark Soup Blog

Ok, well, this time, it's really clear it's time to stop blogging.

No one is reading. No one is commenting. But most of all, I find I get far more done, in a deeper way, when I am not thinking about blogging, when I am not worried about putting up two or three blog posts a day, and when I am not reading Twitter every 30 minutes, trying to keep up, and with what else is going on in the blogosphere day-by-day, hour-by-hour.

It's partly, but not just, about the way I prefer to think about things. Science isn't done in 140 characters or less. Thinking isn't done in 140 characters or less. I like understanding things, not reacting to things.

I can't think like the internet requires. I'm just not interested in all the latest gossip about what Roger Pielke Jr. said or didn't say. I'm tired of the Brad Johnsons of the world attacking him for no reason other than that RPJr dares to speak out against Johnson's prefered storyline -- Brad, if you want a certain point of view to prevail, then make the fucking case for it, instead of telling RPJr or Krauthammer to shut up.

Frankly, it's really not that hard to explain why Krauthammer is wrong. So do it.

And I'm tired of reading Roger Jr's books that say CO2-induced climate change is a big problem, and then reading his blog posts that say that everything anyone says about climate change is wrong. (His dad does the same thing.)

IMO, Roger Jr's accusations about the work of Marcott et al were far worse, and completely inexcusable.

But it never matters.

Life is short. My life seems shorter all the time. Frankly, I am astonished at my age and how much of my life has passed by with no consequence at all. I can continue putting up unread blog posts and dealing with the bald-faced liars of the world like John Hinderaker, but what's the point?

Hinderaker will always be a shit-scrapping Koch-sucking liar. He choose his side and he went for the money. Why bang my head against his wall?

I'd like to write a sci-fi book or two. I've been trying to do that, but frankly I can't when I'm worried about blogging or twittering or whatever the hell else is going on. And so little of that kind of shit has anything to do with science, or what I'm thinking about, or with anything to do with what's real.

It's just Brad Johnson or Roger Pielke Jr bloviating. Always bloviating, always looking for attention.

And I'm trying to earn a living here too. I'm just a little freelancer who only gets paid when I produce something -- and nothing when I blog. Do you have any idea what that pressure is like?

I feel personally lousy, somewhere in the middle of my chest, I think, somewhere like that, when I read about the climate battles and when I try to participate in them. I am ripped by 12:30 pm PT. I don't think about things I think are important. I don/t think the petty day-to-day climate battles are important. The climate will do what it will do. We are little people who worry about this month's UAH LT anomaly -- was it up??? was it down??? How did Anthony Watts lie about it this month? How did John Christy and Roy Spencer skew their data this time? -- when global warming is a problem that will be happening for centuries.

I'm just tired of all the extremists on both sides, and their lies.

I want to pay some real attention to my life and become a better person -- which no, does not mean a better blogger, getting a few more hits than last month, a few more Twitter followers. Most of I'd just like to find a little cabin somewhere up near Mt Hood and ignore the entire fucking world with its shopping mall gun sprees and lost airplanes and the expectations that I'm supposed to be disappointed every time Obama's approval rating drops another point or Paul Ryan says yet another untruth. Fuck the Huffington Post. Fuck the Drudge Report. Fuck the Republicans, evil incarnate. Fuck Joseph Romm and his 6 C warming by 2100. Maybe he's right, probably he's not, but he surely has no justification for acting so superior.

Is no one humble anymore?

Posted by David Appell at 3/23/2014 08:27:00 PM


  1. Appell is a master. He writes an article all about himself, and then asks, "is no one humble any more?".

    And people tell me Americans don't do irony ;-¬>>

  2. I guess David simply couldn't take having the wheels fall off the warming wagon and having that fact thrown in his face.

    It was so much easier to be pure before Climategate and "scientific" before the pause.

    1. Yes, you're right, the scam was rolling along great before the wheels came off and other scientists started critically examining the flimsy evidence behind the facade.

  3. Another highly embarrassing "basic physics" error by Appell at Judith Curry's site

    David Appell (@davidappell) | October 9, 2014 at 9:57 pm | Reply
    For the Nth time, the second law of thermodynamics does not apply to the atmosphere, or any subset of it, because it is not an adiabatic system.

    Jim Owen | October 9, 2014 at 10:48 pm | Reply
    Gee, David, that’s gonna coma as an awful shock to the physicists. IOW, tell me something I’ll believe.

    JudithCurry | October 9, 2014 at 10:52 pm | Reply
    Ouch. David, if you want your 2nd law comment deleted, let me know.

    and other comments in the same thread bash Appell's pathetic understanding of basic physics