Where does cartoonist John Spooner get his science from?

Tim:

> Spooner does like to footnote his cartoons.

I guess certain styles of cartoon are like certain styles of abstract art: there's the artwork, and then there's the long-winded paragraph of supplementary material that's needed to explain what the art is all about, in case the artwork itself isn't (ahem) expressive enough to do the job. Fail.

And the fact that Spooner's cartoons (at least those shown here) are essentially just verbiage with human figures thrown in for good measure -- well, that only adds to the fail.

And of course, Spooner's 'fact'-checking is bogus.

So that's a fail at 3 levels.

-- frank

Perhaps Spooner gets his science from James 'interpreter of interpretations' Delingpole. His write up of Kaufmann et al is "Man Made Global Cooling is cancelling out Man Made Global Warming" .

This is the same James Delingpole who admitted to Sir Paul Nurse that he doesn't have the expertise to read scientific papers. Quite.

UK Daily Mail has also done something similar in words. It started since they published an appalling article by Christopher Booker in which he misrepresented the Kaufman paper as predicting global cooling:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2011667/Global-warming-new-ic…

My guess is some journalist or editor took Christopher Booker's article to heart because since then any article on "green taxes" has included a little snippet such as in this article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2012064/The-green-tax-ruse-pu… where suddenly it says "Meanwhile, somewhat inconveniently for the green lobby, scientists have just concluded that we are headed for a global temperature drop."

On the plus side, unlike Nicholson in The Australian, he at least doesn't feel the need to remind us all of the PM's anatomy every time he depicts her.

Spooner has been away with the fairies for years on this issue.

All I can say is, typical...

Recently wrote a letter to the editor about Paul Zanetti for a similar reason (around about the time of the volcano in Chile).

It's one thing to make fun of the politics - it's another to completely misrepresent the facts.

Since it seems that a lot of people look no further than the cartoons and the opinion page for their "facts", I guess we all have to play the grumpy stick-in-the-mud game. Ah, well...

#4: "On the plus side, unlike Nicholson in The Australian, he at least doesn't feel the need to remind us all of the PM's anatomy every time he depicts her."
Hmmm....what about the nose, Joel?

Spooner's problem is that he is just not very bright.

>*Spooner's problem is that he is just not very bright.*

Perhaps, but judging from this work, nor is he funny, nor insightful, nor is he expressing any talent worth of publishing. Why are the Age paying for this rubbish?

I work in an office with about 150 'ordinary' 'middle-class' suburbanites. Don't underestimate the extent to which these people are also 'off with the fairies' on this matter - they've been herded around by talkback neural-outsourcing and the Murdochracy; result - they implicitly assume anyone who knows what they're talking about in this issue is in on the plot. Down here The Advertiser is openly lobbying for a new election to throw out Labor and the Greens on its front page today.

I always suspected that if this country ever took an IQ test the results would not be pretty. Sadly, I may yet be proven right.

Dim-bulb cartoonists and commentators who can't distinguish real science from blog science and who aren't sufficiently skeptical of real power are actively facilitating this process. There are a lot of people who pose as being coolly defiant of the status quo who will simply rush to defend their place in it if they perceive it as really being under threat...

Which is ironic given how mind-numbingly moderate the tax really is, but the general attitude is more consistent with the hysteria fomented by the Bolts and Delingpoles of this world. Seriously.

The Greens need to announce that once in power they will introduce retrospective legislation under which anybody who propagated falsehoods relating to climate change, and anybody who funded them, would be sent off to The Hague to face trial for crimes against humanity.

Something needs to be done to concentrate their minds about the consequences of their malicious lies.

Actually, it's not The Greens that need to make this threat, because a climate-related tanked economy will not really benefit them - what we'll get is a huge rise in popularity of right-wing nationalist parties.

No doubt Spooner knows which side his bread is buttered on, wouldn't do to poke fun a Abbots non-climate action plan,just shows Cartoonists are not some special breed immune to kissing the bosses arse.

This may not be the best place to put it but I wrote a letter to ther UK Daily Telegraph yesterday as follows :-

.....

Sir,
In view of seemingly having fingers in many email & telephone âhackingsâ, has anybody considered that Rupert Murdcochâs News International may have been involved in the so-called âClimategateâ emails hacking several years ago?
After all, he owns Fox News in the USA which regularly allows fossil-fuel funded Global Warming âdeniersâ a regular platform to âdoubtâ the overwhelming science.
Yours Sincerely

.......

I doubt they'll publish it but any comments?

@11, you're talking of Adelaide I presume.

Sheesh, I know. Many of my relatives are from there, and they're just as suckered in by the Murdoch media spin. Disappointing too, as I thought some of them were smarter than that.

Fortunately, there are (non-Murdoch) jouurnalists in the country who are writing intelligently about the subject, Check out Bill Hoffman's column in the Sunshine Coast Daily.

**Update** Roger Jones [weighs in](http://2risk.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/spooners-war-on-climate-science/):

>John Spooner of the Melbourne Age used to be a great cartoonist. He's done whatever cartoonists do whenever they go emeritus or jump the shark - let his emotional beliefs rule the analytical edge that makes satirical comment. As a result he is drawing rubbish cartoons lampooning facts that he finds offensive. When it comes to climate change, Spooner has lost his mojo.

Sorry. The Bill Hoffman article is here

The Age had a journo who waged a war against windfarms over many years but I haven't seen anything from him for at least a couple of years. The Age also, of course, gave Bolt his cadetship but he wouldn't have hung around there any longer than he needed to. Papers like The Age do allow a lot of lattitude.

Back to clown school for Spooner, with a summer catch-up class in reading comprehension.

The first rule of cartooning is "be funny". Spooner himself should be able to see that he's failing that test. The second rule is to understand your subject material really, really well ... as does for instance Fairfax's far better cartoonist Alan Moir.

@17,

John Spooner of the Melbourne Age used to be a great cartoonist. He's done whatever cartoonists do whenever they go emeritus or jump the shark - let his emotional beliefs rule the analytical edge that makes satirical comment.

Ah, the dreaded Johnny Hart syndrome.

Q: Where does cartoonist John Spooner get his science from?

A: A comic book.

Oh, wait ...

[This](http://www.rjmatson.com/frames_S.htm) cartoon seems more accurate (from a US perspective).

Sorry, 06/26/2011 cartoon.

Vince @12: I was thinking more along the lines of them voluntarily sequestering their carbon content.

At last, some real [humour](http://heathenscripture.wordpress.com/2011/07/14/you-shut-your-goddamn-…).

Thanks for that, MikeH - that's my new favourite rant of all time!

"...retrospective legislation under which anybody who propagated falsehoods relating to climate change... would be sent off to The Hague to face trial for crimes against humanity...Something needs to be done to concentrate their minds about the consequences of their malicious lies."

You have to wonder if in the not too distant future we will see some civil cases brought against the more egregious purveyor's of denialist BS. You can imagine someone living in a place like Lauderdale in Tasmania who now has an unsellable house a lot closer to the water than it used to be taking action along the lines of "xxx said global warming was a fraud. I believed him. I want compensation".

I suppose there is an element of wishful thinking there, but afterall, something similar did happen to the tobacco industry. Who knows. We may live to see some of the most vile of them spending their retirement living in a cardboard box. At least the nights will be warm.

I live in hope.

I second bill's motion. I like lemon's stomping of the thronging comment twats, too.

PB - I agree. I also suspect there are going to be law suits aimed at prominent Denialist individuals/organizations in the future.

Not the putative Stalinist show-trials the contrarians like to whip themselves into an onanistic lather over ("I'll think of you when the Fasco-Communists pierce my nipples with hot wires, Lord Monckey!"); the good old Capitalist 'your prolonged and deliberate disinformation campaigns screwed my future / income / assets / livelihood' variety. I wish them well

[PB](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/07/where_does_cartoonist_john_spo…).

I too have been saying the same thing.

Launderdale is a stone's throw from the proposed canal estate that Walker Corporation tried so hard to have rammed through for approval by the Tasmania Resources and Planning Development Commission. Unfortunately for Walker, but fortunately for sanity, the RPDC gave a vehement thumbs down to the proposal, surprising many Tasmanians who believed that the tendrils of development would prevail.

In hindsight, Walker's idea really was madness, but even more crazy is the fact that both the State government and opposition are still sypathetic to the possibility of future canal estates elsewhere - the govnernment demonstrating this more by its silence, but the Liberal opposition by outright declaration.

It seems that at the state level many politicians still think with their re-election chances and with their mates' wallets, rather than with anything resembling rationality. At the local level however councils are feverishly looking at covering their arses, because they can see the writing on the wall, and Lauderdale's little dunking a few days ago only serves to underscore the issue.

On a vaguely related issue, the backwards thinking that has erupted over Jan Cameron's purchase of the Triabuna woodchip mill emphasises the myopia of conservative thinking in Tasmania, but that's a tale for another forum...

Why did you put [sic] after sulphide? Would you put it after colour or centre?

Because the emissions are sulphur dioxide, not sulphides.

I, like most, do not have the science to argue either for or against the proposition that an increased amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is leading to global warming. I don’t think that recent climate events can prove anything long term. I frankly don’t worry much about it either way. Humans are very adaptable and someone will make money out of whatever happens. For instance, here we are paying taxes to avoid being boiled to death and at the same time we sending off endless boatloads of fossil fuel. What might happen is that we will use up all the fossil fuel before the next ice age and freeze to death instead.