Climate Crock of the Week: What's Up With Anthony Watts [take 2]

Okay, let's try this again.

Peter Sinclair, producer of the well-known "Climate Crock of the Week" video series, posted a video debunking weatherman Anthony Watts, who runs a Climate Denier Den also known as his Watt's Up With That blog.

The video was auto-scrubbed by YouTube after Watts claimed the video broke YouTube's copyright rules. The video has since been reviewed by a number of US copyright experts and (big surprise) there appears to be nothing that could be construed as anything but fair use. 

This whole situation has raised the ire of even some of the more ardent commenters on DeSmogBlog (the site I manage) who normally disagree with pretty much everything we say on the site. One such commenter, Rick James wrote:

"I have to admit it doesn't look good for the skeptic side when something gets scrubbed like this. Watts loses some stature here unless he can post something convincing about why he did it on his blog. Silence won't get it done."

One could speculate that Watts had a problem with the clips Sinclair used of Watts being interviewed by Glenn Beck on Fox News (Watts formerly worked as a weatherman for a Fox News affiliate), but that would be pretty weak given that Watts has no problem excerpting large swaths of print articles like this one posted tonight from the BBC on his own website.

As I have asked on two posts here on Huffington Post and on DeSmog: tell me Mr. Watts, what part of this video is it that gives you the right to have it removed from the public discourse on climate change? You can email me at desmogblog [at] gmail [dot] com.

Here's the video again, reposted on YouTube:

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Comments

[MGhamma]

Watts problem is that he shoved his foot in his mouth big time, he's further discredited the denier arguement,( if that's possible) and now wants to pretend that it never happened. This gets weirder by the minute.

[joebaggadonuts]

Birthers, Climate deniers, "Conservatives," and their fellow travelers don't want the truth. They want their side to win at all costs. To heck with the planet, their grandchildren and the rest of us. Thanks for your efforts anyway.

Eventually they will cave in, but perhaps only after we pry their resentful but cold dead hands from their guns and bibles.

[MerlinJames]

...and what "truths" don't the conservatives want?

Please be specific.

[joebaggadonuts]

Truths "Conservatives" don't want:

That the earth is pretty much a closed system and that humanity has affected that system greatly with its economic activity and weight of its population for one.

That prices don't reflect anything other than current prejudices about value for another.

That people are required to run the system and people don't act exactly according to models used by economists for a third.

That Big Government is not the problem, Bad Government is the problem for a fourth. Bad Government tightly coupled to Bad Business through out of control lobbying and business controlled pretend regulation is an even worse problem.

There are others, if I get time to think of them.