I think that this sort of thing is going to be a lesson for my gentle readers on how the denier mind malfunctions and how to keep them cornered when they shift goalposts, outright lie about what they said and otherwise ignore when they have been checkmated.

It is important to understand that these fools hold their views as articles of faith. They feel the need to sound psuedo scientific however, so they are much more easy to take apart than a simple “well God said so” argument.

So let us look at Mr Reisinger’s latest mewling whine that somehow he is not a fraud and he does understand science beyond a fifth grade level. He goes through all of the denier schticks in one silly post.

Tactic one: Back up from the stupid thing you were saying and assume that the people you are talking to are stupid enough to forget what you said.

I made a number of relatively minor points in order to support the argument that the whole thing was rough around the edges. I’m not going to argue all of them again, but this statement:

Those are statements of fact. They are absolutely correct and not more or less so.

Is simply nonsense.

Actually, he was attempting to completely dismiss as nonsense an energy conservation argument. Those energy conservation statements are absolute fact. He was not gently trying to point out things that were “rough around the edges.” He was openly obfusating one of the most core principles of physics in an attempt to mock science he did not like.

So when they try this stuff, point it out to them. The idiot fails not even freshman physics, but high school physics. There is no harm in pointing out the utter ignorance and stupidity of a blowhard. The averge person has heard that energy is conserved and that anything that denies that or questions that is wrong.

Tactic two: Pretend what you said was something else entirely. This is slightly different than a simple re-spin.

He started out by complaining that the argument about the suns’s composition causing it to give off a lot of IR was stupid and then went into a discussion of the surface temperature of the sun.

He has now shifted it to a description of the Earth being heated by light in the visible and that a great deal of light is emitted at a lower IR wavelength via blackbody radiation.

His second argument is actually true. When a molecule is excited in the visible and heated directly, some of the energy of the incoming photon is converted into kinetic energy and then that hot molecule can radiate out a lower wavelength photon. This is how things heated by visible wavelengths can give off IR.

However, CO2 traps black body radiated IR as well as the IR directly coming in from the sun, but reflected up from the surface. Both of these effects add. This is true. It is also irrelevant to his attempt to deny that CO2 causes warming. In the original post, which was again made to be simple, and to simply state the energy comes in from the sun and then the portion of it that is in the IR gets trapped and causes warming. Since the black body portion has a solar origin, this counts too. I will accept the quibble that in a short and simple post, I did not elaborate on this point, but only hinted at with my discussion of molecular motions.

What is not to be accepted though is his false assertion that this somehow means that the Earth will not warm as a result of GHGs. Again, energy is conserved if you alter the rate of heat in, compared to the rate of heat out, you get warmer. If you doubt this, put on a coat. Alas, poor, deluded Mr. Reisinger repeatedly has difficulties with this concept, even though his second, refined and irrelevant quibble is dependent on it. This is simply because he is a moron and a fraud. Never be afraid to call morons and frauds such to their little faces. Say it clearly. Mr. Reisinger is a moron and a fraud. Don’t pull punches. The fact that he does not understand the most basic physical principles is proof of it. He knows he’s a moron and a fraud. What you need to do is rob him of the chance to convince the gullible that somehow he isn’t.

Tactic three: Call the opposing argument a name so as to ignore the point made without admitting it. This is perhaps the most agitating of the denier tactics. You just nailed them to the wall with some bit of utter nonsense that they spewed and they pretend it never happened.

This is actually easy to defend against. Simply call them on their lies.

I had written:

The important thing to get straight is that space is a vacuum. For convection or conduction to work, one must have a medium to transport heat. Now to be sure, the atmosphere has many modes of conduction and convection, however, the only way it- and hence the Earth as a whole can cool is through radiation. Why? Because space is a vacuum and you can’t conduct or convect heat out into space.

This is actually the basic principle behind a thermos, and a supposed chemical engineer doesn’t get it.

And of course, the re-radiation is well modeled. It is after all, only QM.

in response to his writing:

Again, not quite. The point about offering more resistance to the outflow of energy raising the temperature is valid, but it treats the entire atmosphere like a solid glass bubble. In the lowest layer of the atmosphere, the troposphere, where the vast majority of the atmosphere resides, there are other “channels” for energy to move through than just this radiation channel. Specifically, heat can move by radiation, conduction, dry convection, and convection with phase change. By a huge margin, the most effective of these modes is the last one; when you evaporate a pound of water from the surface, physically transport that pound of water vapor to the tropopause (or thereabouts), and then condense it, huge amounts of heat are transported. And this will happen no matter how much greenhouse gas you put into the atmosphere. This heat leaks right through the “greenhouse”. This is not one of the things that they’ve been able to model accurately, but one thing is certain: ignoring it will always exaggerate the heating effect.

Now he claims that I made a “straw man argument.” Ohhhh booga boooga.

No sorry, Mr. R. the way that the Earth cools as a whole overall, is through radiation because space is a vacuum. We are going to ignore effects where the upper atmosphere can be bled into space. It is too small to be noticed here.

That is it, he is done. His failure to understand thermodynamics is obvious by the fact that he would even bring convection and conduction up. It is red herring at best, but at worst a sign that Mr. Rensinger does not understand basic Thermodynamics. CO2 and other greenhouse gases slow the rate at which the Earth can radiate heat. Energy is conserved. The heat builds up. There is no way around it.

This man claims to be a chemical engineer. How can he not know this? Again, it is because he is a fraud and a moron.

Tactic four: Switch to incoherent political ramblings in the place of a science discussion.

You know you have them beat when they do this. This is the denier equivalent of screaming “Satan I rebuke you!”

He writes:

And with that, his true tranzi nature reveals itself. Americans are the real problem. Not Russians who question climate alarmism, not Indians who criticize the IPCC, no. Only Americans. They must be liquidated.

In response to:

There is a very serious problem here. We have people falsely claiming to be experts, when in reality they would not pass freshman level physics or chemistry. This does not stop them from shooting their mouths off, but that is not the real problem. The real problem is that Americans - or at least some of them are so proudly ignorant, that they believe this shit.

Now I am not clear where I called for the liquidation of those Americans who are stupid enough to fall for frauds and morons like him. However, it is certainly true that it is a real problem that some, in fact many, Americans, are so proudly ignorant that they do embrace fools like Mr Reisinger.

And yes America would be a better place if the average American were well enough educated to simply spot abject idiots, frauds and charlatans like Mr Reisinger from a mile away.

I will confess however as far as any “liquidation” is concerned, I do profoundly hope that Mr. R. is still a virgin. Given his history of misogynistic writings, it is likely that he still is, and therefore we can have hope that the mix of genetics that made him so stupid will die with him.