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Sunday, January 3, 2016

Anthony Watts does an "algoreisfat", making it too easy...

Sou | 12:39 PM Go to the first of 72 comments. Add a comment
Anthony Watts makes it far too easy to mock his blog and his band of science deniers. He's just posted an article (archived here) that he wrote all by his little self (for a change). It's an "algoreisfat" type of article. Seriously?

He's saying that there've been no catastrophes. Of course Anthony has ignored all the incredible extreme weather of the past few months and weeks - not a mention in any article on his blog. In this particular article he didn't mention that 2015 was a record hot year by a wide margin (he played it down and blamed it on El Nino), after the record hot year in 2014, and the likelihood of 2016 breaking the record again, or getting close to doing so. He completely forgot about Sandy, Haiyan, Yasi, Pam, Katrina etc and the Big Wet, and the disastrous Californian drought. I don't know if he even knew about the recent tornados in Texas, or the heat wave in India last year, and doesn't seem to have heard about the deadly European heat waves, or massive floods over the past few years.


Local catastrophes don't count


Do millions of people at risk of major floods in his own home country not count? From Reuters:
As of Thursday morning, some 9.3 million people nationwide were in areas with flood warnings. That was down from 12.1 million on Wednesday and 17.7 million on Tuesday.

At least 28 people [now 31 people] have died in the U.S. Midwest since the weekend in the rare winter floods, mostly from driving into flooded areas after storms dropped up to 12 inches (30 cm) of rain, officials said. Flooding in the Midwest usually comes in the spring as snowmelt swells rivers.

While the mid-west USA is suffering the umpteenth 1000 year flood in the last twenty years, and the UK and Ireland are staggering under multiple floods in succession just this year (and years prior), and the eastern USA and western Europe had a record-breaking warm lead-up to winter - Anthony Watts is berating Al Gore for saying, quite truthfully, back in 2006 that the world needed to work out a plan to address global warming within ten years.


The world has agreed on action to reduce greenhouse gases


And the world does have a plan - or at least some promises. Anthony Watts and his fellow deniers did nothing but moan at the agreement reached at COP21 in Paris just a short while ago, and now he's trying to argue that nothing of the sort happened.

Now despite the fact that last year the global emissions may have stalled or even fallen, Anthony continues his pretence that no action has been taken. He can't admit that his reactionary activism to increase carbon emissions is failing. He can't admit that in his own country, the USA, all the lobbying by his pro-smog mates has not stopped the USA from limiting growth in emissions, and they may have even fallen by 1% this year.

Without the dedication of people like Al Gore, it's doubtful that this turnaround would have started.


From an article at SBS in December:
Michael Grubb, professor of international energy and climate change policy at University College London, said: "The trend of rapid global emissions growth has been broken: this keeps 2 degrees C in play....There could hardly be better news to help the Paris conference in its final days."

The UEA and Global Carbon Project said their projection for 2015 is based on available energy consumption data in China and the United States, as well as forecast economic growth for the rest of the world.

"The projected decline (in emissions) is largely down to China's decreased coal use, driven by its economic adjustment," Le Quéré added.

China's emissions have been called into question lately due to difficulties in interpreting its data.

China was still the world's biggest emitter last year, releasing 9.7 billion tonnes of CO2 but its emissions growth is expected to decline in 2015 by 3.9 percent after rising by 1.2 percent last year and 6.7 percent a year for the previous decade, the report said.

Globally, it is unlikely that emissions have peaked for good because many growing economies still rely on coal for energy generation and emissions reductions in some industrialised countries are still very modest, the study said.

In case anyone still thinks "it's natural", this is the abstract from a paper by Gerrit Hansen and Dáithí Stone in Nature Climate Change last month:
Impacts of recent regional changes in climate on natural and human systems are documented across the globe, yet studies explicitly linking these observations to anthropogenic forcing of the climate are scarce. Here we provide a systematic assessment of the role of anthropogenic climate change for the range of impacts of regional climate trends reported in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report. We find that almost two-thirds of the impacts related to atmospheric and ocean temperature can be confidently attributed to anthropogenic forcing. In contrast, evidence connecting changes in precipitation and their respective impacts to human influence is still weak. Moreover, anthropogenic climate change has been a major influence for approximately three-quarters of the impacts observed on continental scales. Hence the effects of anthropogenic emissions can now be discerned not only globally, but also at more regional and local scales for a variety of natural and human systems.

Dimwitted Anthony Watts vs Al Gore - and the winner is Al Gore


This is what Anthony was ridiculing, an article at CBSNews (read the whole article, including page 2):
Americans have been hearing it for decades, wavering between belief and skepticism that it all may just be a natural part of Earth’s cyclical warming and cooling phases.

And politicians and corporations have been ignoring the issue for decades, to the point that unless drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gases are taken within the next 10 years, the world will reach a point of no return, Gore said.

He sees the situation as “a true planetary emergency.”

“If you accept the truth of that, then nothing else really matters that much,” Gore said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We have to organize quickly to come up with a coherent and really strong response, and that’s what I’m devoting myself to.”

Anthony, oblivious to all that has happened, in callous disregard of the disastrous floods pouring down the USA right now, oblivious to the actions that have already been taken to mitigate global warming, and the recent international agreement to take much stronger action - wrote:
Well, the 10 years are about up, by now, warming should have reached “planetary emergency levels” 

Is Anthony Watts really as stupid as he seems or is it for show?


Is Anthony Watts really that stupid or is it just that he knows his readers are that stupid when it comes to climate change. Did he really expect that the world would have collapsed in a heap within ten years? That's not what Mr Gore was suggesting. What he was saying was that drastic measures need to be taken within the next ten years, not that the world would fall apart immediately. The action to reduce emissions has to have started well before the really big effects are felt. For example, the melting of West Antarctica may already be unstoppable, but it will take some time before the melt raises seas by a metre or more. That might not happen for a few decades yet. Okay - so we're probably too late to stop that "planetary emergency", but we may be able to slow it down. Other planetary emergencies will no doubt happen in the next few decades - but if we had kept on increasing emissions at the same rate, they would have happened sooner and the effects would have been worse than they will now be.

Yes, Anthony probably is that stupid. He did a Tisdale and wrote:
Of course, proponents of climatic catastrophe will look at that and say “Gore was right!” …except there is this small niggling problem, a fairly large El Niño in 2015, which has nothing to do with CO2 induced warming as Gore claimed ten years ago. Note the spike in 2007, in the nine years since, that hasn’t been matched.

The real point here is to note that, no matter whether you are looking at the satellite record or the surface temperature record, is that the temperature hasn’t risen dramatically in the last 10 years, and the dramatic spikes we see in the surface and satellite temperature records correspond to a natural event that’s been going on for millennia; El Niño.

Let's see shall we? Tell us Anthony, why is the global mean temperature this year so much hotter than in the year of the super-El Nino of 1998? And pray tell, if global warming has been caused by El Nino for millennia, why haven't the oceans boiled dry and why isn't all the land nothing but bare scorched earth?


And what was that about temperatures rising dramatically? Let's not just look at the last ten years - what about the last 30 years? Is 0.175 °C not fast enough for you? Sheesh!





From the WUWT comments


The question about Anthony's readers being stupid about climate change is answered in the comments - of which there are many. (It's a resounding "yes", in case you were in doubt.) Many of the comments were one-liners of the "algoreisfat" type. There were very few comments from anyone who could pass for sane (I only read one or two, out of the 244 archived, though admittedly I gave up after reading about 80 comments.)

Apropos the last article, Jude is more scared of things that won't happen than things that are certain to happen (see also here).
January 2, 2016 at 12:05 pm
Am far more concerned about a small asteroid hitting the earth than the world temp going up 1 degree over the next 80 years per Gore and the media’s global warming scam.

And a zany conspiracy theory, which could be a common if false denier meme, who knows. Joinamerica
January 2, 2016 at 1:05 pm
Mr. Gore has made about a BILLION dollars from his cap & trade scam. (And many millions from selling his television network to Al Jazeera.)

David L. Hagen is nuts, there's no two ways around it:
January 2, 2016 at 8:30 am
Could “anthropogenic global warming” have compensated for/prevented “most” of the global cooling for the last 18 years 9 months?
Can we then have hope that we might be able to reverse the projected increasing rate of cooling towards the next glaciation? I am more concerned over the damage of a 1000 ft thick glacier grinding back through Canada into the USA than 1 ft higher sea level. 

ferdberple is just as nuts, posting a chart of ice ages and proclaiming:
January 2, 2016 at 10:57 am
Look at NOAA own data below. High CO2 causes temperatures to FALL, not rise. 

BruddahNui might be just mocking everyone, or she/he could be for real:
January 2, 2016 at 12:35 pm
No. AGW is a failed God. CO2 doe’s nothing to slow an ice age mini are full. CO2 doe’s not warm the planet as witnessed by ice core samples and more going back millions of years.

The inspiring, literary "thoughts" keep coming one after another, This from Gloateus Maximus:
January 2, 2016 at 8:33 am
Mother Nature has bitch slapped the blubbery fool masher mercilessly. 

Brad Michael Tankersley says something irrelevant and inane about weather forecasting for reasons known only to himself:
January 2, 2016 at 9:07 am
Bullshi*. It’s an out and out FRAUD and shear arrogance of anyone living to try and predict weather. Perfect example is Al Bore. Sad thing is the younger generations are purposely dumbed down so much, they believe all this crap. Someday, the truth will unfold and all the fraudsters and hacksters hopefully will get the same punishment the Saudis have recently dished out to the terrorists………………

Drifter used to be a daily barn cleaner. He couldn't even hold that job down, and no wonder:
January 2, 2016 at 9:51 am
Warmer Huh? All they have to dois continue to use the FAKE warming reports they already have. This whole thing is take down the USA, make al gore richer and impoverish (enslave) the rest of us.I haven’t seen this much balderdash since I cleaned out the daily barns. 

Sandy Underpants did make some effort to inject a bit of reason into the madness, though he still misunderstood what Al Gore was saying:
January 2, 2016 at 9:11 am
Gore is saying that the 10 year window to act and make changes closes at the end of 2015. There have been many environmentally conscious changes in the past 10 years made by governments across the world in an effort to lower CO2 output and make cleaner burning emissions. The lack of absolute catastrophe may be the result of the fact that changes have been made.

David would have none of it though, and smartly redirected the discussion back to lunacy:
January 2, 2016 at 10:22 am
Keep believing that if it makes you feel better. Global warming is nothing more than a hoax to get money from the masses.

The rabid mob was quite delighted to have someone to flame as well as Al Gore. I've skipped over a few - here's a thought from Don Perry:
January 2, 2016 at 12:55 pm
Sandy ( or is it Alice?)– What rabbit hole have you got your head pushed down?

And Avogadro joined in with
January 2, 2016 at 1:45 pm
If you did not have sand in your underpamts, you could think rationally. There is much wrong with your post, but I will not do you the favor of explaining; the world needs good examples of bad examples 

I don't know if hunter thinks it's getting colder, or if he's talking about the oceans warming the air
January 2, 2016 at 9:14 am
El Nino seems to be an event that is actually removing heat from the Earth system.

Bruce Cobb put up a mislabeled chart of temperature on the top of an ice sheet in central Greenland, which ended in 1854, mistakenly thinking that the global mean surface temperature is in the minus 30s - Celsius! and said:
January 2, 2016 at 10:12 am
Cooling is something to be concerned about, not the slight beneficial warming we’ve experienced. And cooling is very possible in the coming decades. The long-term trend the past 10,000 years is downward. 

You've got to wonder why Anthony boasts about his weird conspiracy theorising fans. Well, given his article he's no better than they are. He deserves them.

BTW there are lots more where these thoughts came from - I didn't even get 1/3 of the way through before I stopped reading. It was as though Anthony's "algoreisfat" article unleashed a pent up tornado of complete insanity - madness. My brain is tough from denier watching, and it would survive the experience of reading more of the comments, however there are much more interesting things I could be using it for...

Credit: XKCD

References and further reading


Hansen, Gerrit, and Dáithí Stone. "Assessing the observed impact of anthropogenic climate change." Nature Climate Change (2015). doi:10.1038/nclimate2896

CO2 emissions 'to stall, even decline' in 2015 - article from Reuters at SBS

2006: Al Gore Does Sundance - article by David Germain at CBSNews

72 comments:

  1. The denialists were so willing to start the 'pause' during a massive El Nino, but whine about the current El Nino impacting temps.

    -CC

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "...except there is this small niggling problem, a fairly large El Niño in 2015, which has nothing to do with CO2 induced warming..."

      Well, using an objective interpretation of Watts' own words it wouldn't be appropriate to use the "it hasn't warmed since 2015" canard because... El Niño!

      Delete
    2. But the current El Nino is not impacting global temps that much according to satellite data which documented 1997/8's El Nino temp rise so well. So yes the hiatus is still on except in the "trumped" up in the regimes "surface" data.

      Delete
    3. Anon, are you claiming that there is no effect of this El Nino? Or is it just that you are not familiar with the typical pattern of the influence of El Nino on surface and atmospheric temperatures?

      RSS shows earlier warming from this El Nino than from that in 1997 and 2009, with a record hottest December. Each one is different.

      The surface temperature record is more reliable than that of various layers in the atmosphere. The atmosphere also doesn't always have the same temperature pattern as the surface below it (aka weather). The world is warming. I know you would like to not look at data that doesn't support your hypothesis (whatever that may be), but it's not what any reputable scientist would do.

      BTW false allegations of fraud are not permitted at HotWhopper. Treat this as a final warning. I understand you may think global warming is a hoax, but keep those fantasies in check, at least until you are on a climate conspiracy blog. You will only draw scoffing, contempt, or if you are lucky, pity and concern, when you are among normal people.

      Delete
    4. I'm claiming the so called monster El Nino has not effected temps as much as 97/98 which is borne out in the satellite data. 2015 will be the 3rd warmest in the satellite era behind 2010 and 1998. As an informed climate observer how do you explain the surface warming faster than the lower tropo? This goes against physics and climate models. Please do tell me how the surface is warming 20% faster than than the LT.

      Delete
    5. Did you look at the chart I linked to which showed how the lower troposphere has responded in the past? This year it's responding earlier than it has on past occasions.

      For comparison, here is GISTemp comparing the El Nino years. It's also responding a bit more quickly and showing higher temperatures compared to the past.

      Note that the RSS chart includes December 2015, but the GISTemp chart only goes up to November this year. Both are global (or as much global as they offer). The huge jump in October (GISTemp) and December (RSS) could suggest that it's not just the tropics that are adding to the warmth.

      See below for comments re lower troposphere and surface observations.

      Delete
    6. Since 1979, GISTemp has been warming at 0.16 °C/decade and RSS at 0.12 °C/decade, which suggests that the surface is warming 31% more quickly than the lower troposphere. That's just a linear trend and not to be taken as the final word.

      Why the difference, when the lower troposphere should probably be warming faster? I don't know. Part of the reason would be that RSS only goes from 70°S to 82.5°N. The mountains in Antarctica mess with the satellite instrument readings (the troposphere is much shallower at the poles and the ice on the high mountains interferes with the readings). The Arctic is one of the fastest warming places on earth and is under-represented in the satellite measures.

      Other possibilities include that there are as yet unidentified problems with analysing the data from satellite instruments. It's not at all a straightforward task. It's not as if there are thermometers up in the air like there are on the ground. (Radiosondes have thermometers and I expect they can help in calibrating the satellite instruments, but they are not nearly as prolific as ground-based weather stations.) There are multiple satellites and the instruments on each need to be calibrated - and be consistent with each other. Then there are the satellites themselves, requiring adjustments for orbital decay etc. And then there is the need to interpret the microwave radiance readings and work out how that translates to temperature. (See this RSS explanation of how atmospheric temperature is deduced.)

      I gather that the scientists use automated algorithms for all the above (which is why they can return the data so quickly), but these are tweaked as needed. (UAH has been coming out with a different version every couple of months lately - it's now at beta4.)

      Then there's the fact that the results don't relate to a single level in the atmosphere, it's to a thick layer of air. The satellites only have "coarse vertical resolution". The lower troposphere is at different heights, getting closer to the surface as you head to the poles, and therefore also has different thicknesses, getting thinner as you move north and south of the equator.

      It's expected that in the early months of next year, the temperature reported for the lower troposphere will jump a lot, going by past El Ninos, which will probably reduce the 30% difference in trends, but by how much I can't say.

      Carl Mears of RSS has said "I consider [surface temperature datasets] to be more reliable than satellite datasets". Unlike the different surface temperature records, until recently, the satellite records of UAH and RSS were diverging, but UAH has since shifted to version 6 beta, which brought it more in line with RSS. They haven't released their code or workings yet so it hasn't been tested outside of UAH yet.

      So the short answer is the one I provided up top - I don't know. It could be a real difference, which would be something worth investigating. Or it could be a spurious difference. If the latter it is more likely to be problems with the satellite data than the surface data, which has a lot more observations to support it.

      Delete
    7. Here's a chart comparing GISTemp, HadCRUT4, UAH and RSS. It looks as if the divergence started around 2006. You expect the ENSO years to be exaggerated in the satellite data, but this looks to be an unusual drop in satellite temperatures. UAH used to be more in line with the surface trends until the new beta version 6. Now both of them are looking odd.

      The two surface datasets remain quite close, despite the differences in how they are calculated.

      Delete
    8. "... according to satellite data ... hiatus is still on ... trumped up ... surface data."

      Classic. All the symptoms of denial in just one short paragraph. Prefer the satellite data even if the people who produce the data set say its not as reliable as surface temperatures. Accuse the surface temperature people of fraud even though all the data is publicly available so no fraud is possible without its detection. And - if the sanity of the poster was not already in question - claim the continuing existence of a illusory hiatus.

      Delete
    9. Thanks for those last posts, Sou. I can see them being very useful when walloping idiots around the ears with a four by two. :D

      Delete
    10. :) Thanks, CC. Sorry for the delay with some of your comments. For some unknown reason Google drops them into the spam folder sometimes, though not always.

      Delete
    11. "But the current El Nino is not impacting global temps that much ..."

      So are you saying that it is nearly all global warming affecting temperatures? Isn't that a rather worse situation?


      Delete
    12. Anomymous.

      "This goes against physics and climate models. Please do tell me how the surface is warming 20% faster than than the LT."

      You really do seem to be singing from the Denier songsheet or perhaps you have been influenced from that article in WUWT about an honest comment Gavin Schmidt made on Twitter - which was immediately twisted around to "mean" something he didn't actual say.

      If you want to provide evidence how it goes against physics and climate models, then please do.

      Otherwise to me it looks like you have not thought about your assumption that surface temps and lower troposphere temps are compariable.

      Delete
  2. Someday, the truth will unfold and all the fraudsters and hacksters hopefully will get the same punishment the Saudis have recently dished out to the terrorists………………

    WUWT is getting enormously right wing. A call for mass executions/beheadings of people who dare to disagree with WUWT. I am still too naive, had not expected that to be tolerated at WUWT.

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    Replies
    1. I had a peep at the latest comments, Victor, they are still coming thick (very thick) and fast.

      It's not just the comment I copied up top. Chemtrails are banned at WUWT, but it's fine to incite violence and wish people dead (Al Gore and the populace in general)

      Delete
    2. u.k(us)
      January 2, 2016 at 1:24 pm

      Ok fine yourself, have you got a cure for that 50% of the worlds population that has no internet access and/or are living under dictatorships ?

      Brandon Gates
      January 2, 2016 at 1:28 pm

      Airstrikes are a popular option these days.

      ---------------

      I didn't exactly forget that subtlety doesn't work well with that crew, but it just couldn't be helped.

      Delete
    3. I looked through as many of the 372 comments as I could stomach. I would say that a significant number of them (maybe 1/4) showed indications of mental illness as well as the usual strong majority espousing political extremism.

      Delete
    4. That's IT? Well, thanks for not counting me ... :)

      Delete
    5. What's happened is that this is the first "lynch mob" dog whistle for quite some time. Anthony has been leaving Michael Mann alone, pretty much, probably because of the court cases. Anthony has also been distinctly absent from WUWT, so he hasn't set the lynch mob on anyone - and the only other people who have been known to do so (Bob Tisdale and Jim Steele) haven't sicced the hounds onto anyone either.

      All that pent up lynch mob hysteria has come bursting out at the mention of Al Gore's name. He meets even more criteria than Michael Mann, and a lot more than the other favourites: Bill McKibben, Dana Nuccitelli, John Cook (and yours truly) - being a Democrat and an ex-vice-President as well as a climate hawk. The climate hawk bit is almost as good as being a climate scientist, but his role as a Democratic Party VP is worth even more.

      It's like I imagine fox-hunting hounds, or pit bull terriers, that have been kept cooped up for too long.

      There's bound to be a PhD thesis in there somewhere. There are enough examples of the phenomenon at WUWT.

      Delete
    6. It's probably worth a blog post, if not an academic paper. Not today - I'll think on it. It will be an interesting exercise to track previous examples of mass hysteria at WUWT (from the perspective of getting insight into the denier psyche). It might be the same pent up emotion that drove Roy Spencer off the rails a couple of times recently. A lynch mob of one doesn't have quite the same impact though.

      Delete
    7. It doesn't help that it's an election year, that Trump is the heir apparent for the Republican nomination for President, and that they think he has a snowball's chance in 2100 of winning the general election.

      Which odds are too close for me to call, so if Trump wins, I may make good on my threat to move to New Zealand.

      Delete
    8. If it was a Muslim website, the intelligence community would be placing a number of WUWT posters on their watch list.

      Delete
    9. I think what we all forget from time to time is that it's only a 'pause' if you start looking at temps from around 1997 or later. Start any year before that, and there's no pause - as tamino has demonstrated time and again.

      The 'pause' is simply a statistical artefact of not considering a long enough period in a time series with inherent natural variability. Lest we forget:

      Skeptical Science - The Escalator

      Delete
    10. Sorry, replied to the wrong sub-thread. That last comment of mine above was supposed to nestle underneath Millicent's below, to buttress what Millicent says there:

      It was both amusing and sad to see that the surface temperature record now has to be truncated long after 1998 in order to hide the trend.

      Delete
    11. Metz...

      "We"--those trained in statistical inference-- have never "forgotten" this. Unfortunately, besides deniers, many trained in the physical sciences are equally unused to thinking correctly statistically.

      The very act of choosing a subset of the data and pretending that normal probabilities apply is wrong from the get go. Choosing a subset violates the assumptions upon which normal statistical tests are based. There are ways of correcting for this, e.g. post hoc tests, but neither deniers nor, often, physically trained persons get this at any conscious level.

      Tamino has discussed this point on occasion as well as the point you mention. The escalator is a good example showing how selected subsets commonly "fail" normal probabilities. Though of course it is no failure at all. Just the probabilities of the actual versus assumed situation asserting themselves. The point, though, is that more than just misinterpreting short intervals, it is also a consequence of violating the basic assumptions of hypothesis testing themselves in the first place such that different probabilitis than the "obvious" ones actually apply.

      In coin flip terms, any series of flips which does NOT periodically exhibit a "significant pause" in going back and forth from heads to tails (e.g., a string of many heads in a row) is suspect. Any temp series which does not periodically exhibit "significant pauses" in subsets of the data would be equally suspect.

      Delete
    12. There never was any "pause" to begin with, the term was invented by a journalist. It is not used in the IPCC reports.

      Delete
    13. Actually a synonym 'hiatus' was used in scare quotes in Chapter 9 box 9.2. But scare quotes, of course, are ignored by deniers.

      Delete
    14. Victor and Sou,
      This may not be familiar to someone who does not follow day-to-day politics in America or have the proximity to hear the rantings of the USA right-wing hoi polloi. The nastiness in the comments is a symptom of Trump. Roiling below the surface has always been some fascistic tendencies in the Republican id that Anthony expresses so well. Now though, things that once were not said in public have been given permission to be aired by Trump's candidacy. You used to only hear this stuff from 3 AM callers on AM talk radio. Trump has mobilized the 'crazy uncle' vote.
      --M2k Anon because WordPress sign-in doesn't work.

      Delete
    15. I dug into the IPCC "hiatus" a while back. Another meaning for the word hiatus is a break in a series especially rock strata. Maybe that part of the report was written by a geologist?

      So I interpret that is what the IPCC meant. The rate of rising temps ie the trend line showed a discontinuity or "break" in the series.

      Delete
  3. Somebody said the heat would come back to haunt. The morons think he meant it was going bubble off the bottom the deep oceans. No. It's back and it's haunting. Looks like the GISS mean for 2015 could be .87C. They'll never get it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. ferdberple is just as nuts, posting a chart of ice ages and proclaiming:

    January 2, 2016 at 10:57 am
    Look at NOAA own data below. High CO2 causes temperatures to FALL, not rise.

    ------------

    Oh jeez, I missed that one and probably good that I did. Last time I attempted to work through the same terminal idiocy ...

    It's a sawtooth shape, see? Temperature rises more quickly than it falls, see? As CO2 outgasses in response to orbital forcing, warming accelerates, see? As orbital forcing decreases, CO2 remaining in the atmosphere retards the rate of heat loss, see? That's consistent with a system which wants to heat up more than it wants to cool off, see? If rising CO2 causes cooling, the upslope would be shallow and the downslope would be steep, see?

    ... no, they didn't see. Did their level best not to so far as I could tell.

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  5. It should surprise no one that Fox New's website has aggregated and linked to Anthony's piece on Gore.

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    1. Drudge too, I think, PG.

      It feeds Anthony's warped hero complex and his delusion that he "must be right".

      He's probably busy counting blog hits, comments and ad revenue as we speak. It's still a far cry from his heady days of stolen emails when he'd get 900 plus comments. Some of his previous fans must have found other interests (like Lizard Men, and chemtrails, and HAARP, and Freedom Water).

      Delete
    2. I think Anthony has just shown why its better for his blog when he leaves it in the hands of dismal talents such as Eric.

      It was both amusing and sad to see that the surface temperature record now has to be truncated long after 1998 in order to hide the trend. And not one of his fanboys seems to notice that 'the pause' they wittered on about for years, 'the pause' that once was their key argument for denial, has now been erased.

      Delete
  6. Brad Michael Tankersley: "... and shear arrogance of anyone living to try and predict weather."

    Well that put Watts in his place! Doesn't Currie provide a tornado prediction service too?

    Of course, the rest of us are predicting CLIMATE, not weather ...

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    1. Weather models are fantastically accurate where I live (BoM).

      Delete
    2. Agreed. BoM is very good
      at seasonal forcasts estimating
      various perameters.

      Delete
    3. And their 7 day forecasts are remarkably good for temperature; rainfall, not so much...

      Delete
  7. The FB groups have been full of these so called prediction failures lately.
    as posted
    Cognitive dissonance and the mythical failed predictions syndrome

    Eric Andrew
    2009 100 months to save the planet,
    Denier " the planet is still here, we are still here, the prediction failed"

    Simplistic understanding of what is being stated, "TO ACT"

    Acting in this case would probably have been reducing emissions by about 2% by 2011 and continuing for the rest of the century each and every year,
    Another I read was reducing emissions by 3% each and every year by 2014 and continuing each and every year thereafter,
    so the longer we left it the harder it has become, the higher the required reductions %
    it is now, we not only have to reduce emissions each and every year by about 4%/5% but we are also going to have to rely on technologies not even invented yet to reduce atmospheric levels of 400ppm will put the planet well over 2C over the long term.
    So no deniers, they are not failed predictions, they are simply a failure to act in what would have been achievable reductions at the time.
    We still not have ensured saving civilization

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    Replies
    1. That's what I see too, John.

      Seems to me that science deniers are typically not only numerically challenged, and vocabulary challenged, and logic challenged, and critical thinking challenged, they are also temporally challenged :) That is "If the Earth hasn't disintegrated by now, climate projections won't happen and are a FAIL", no matter what the projection is. And even though whatever it is, is not be projected to happen till 2080.

      Delete
    2. Following on from John's observations about the magnitude of action required, this site is worth people's perusal, for one minute every day...

      http://trillionthtonne.org/

      Delete
  8. My favourite comment:

    AndyG55 January 2, 2016 at 2:22 pm
    What is interesting to note about the Australia graph is that since 2007 it has a general downward trend but with small jumps in 2009 and 2012.

    A fascinating example of how climate change deniers see trends, or is it a Poe?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Deniers are definitely weird when they look at charts. This is something I wrote about a couple of years ago:

      http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2013/05/wmo-report-gives-insight-into-brain-of.html

      Delete
    2. I have seen AndyG55's willful ignorance before. But his usual tactic is to just get nasty and insult people.

      Delete
  9. I've just read "A Tale of Two Cities", and picture the Wattards as French aristocrats. And somewhere there is a Madam Defarge, knitting their fate.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Sou,

    "I gave up after reading about 80 comments..."

    I admire your stamina. A lot of the WUWT comments do not even relate to the original post. A lot are just rants.

    This is no joke: in around four years of trying I have only found comments from two or three deniers that actually made any sense, ie they presented a reasonable argument about an aspect of AGW theory that went against the theory.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I wonder if you could make an automated comment generator for WTFUWT?

      Delete
    2. I thought it has been in use for quite some time already.. ;)

      Delete
    3. It would be interesting though to run a "sentiment analysis" against WUWT comments to measure the degree of anger or negative emotion.

      Delete
    4. Yes.. Would be interesting to see how that compares with stats from twitter.. Could be yet another topic for a thesis.. ;)

      Delete
  11. When the inevitable has reached the point of catastrophe for us all the deniers will blame the scientists for not screaming loud enough. The most depressing thing about the internet is that it gives a voice to everyone.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. deniers and CT'ers always have both bases covered - it is heads they win tails you lose

      so when it is unusually cold it is "climate" however on the flip side when it is unusually warm it is "weather"

      Delete
  12. "It was as though Anthony's "algoreisfat" article unleashed a pent up tornado of complete insanity - madness."

    I absolutely love your site Sou. You've done far more for the awareness of climate change then most by targeting the heart of the denials meme. Refuting the idiotic denialist crowd is a thankless weary unpaying job that eats up tons of valuable time - but I'll give you a big thank you, as I am sure most here will.

    Denialists refuse reality. They look for shadows and connedspiracies to support their insanity. There is something wrong with them. They lack critical thinking skills.

    "The most depressing thing about the internet is that it gives a voice to everyone."

    I agree. The idiots are given opportunity to voice their stupidity.

    On the other hand, I'm glad we all have an opportunity to contribute and weigh in - let's us all know what we really are as a group and as individuals. Sou's labeled this group and its owner correctly:

    "Is Anthony Watts really as stupid as he seems or is it for show?".

    The denialist meme and screed reveals something else - none of these people care whatsoever about what's happening. Yes, they deny reality. Yes, they deny facts, evidence, eyewitness reports. But at the core of all their denialism - they do not care.

    This means their selfish, heartless and ignorant. It's a deadly combination combined with willful stupidity and arrogance. It goes hand-in-hand with the entitlement culture so pervasive today. "Give me more" and fosters the "damn the consequences" attitude "because I deserve it". This is as selfish as it gets.

    I can't think of anything more dangerous to humanity then this. It's a plague on the species. And it is at the heart of why we've destroyed so much of this planet. They join a long line of conquerors, capitalists and profiteers who have chosen to exploit everything for temporary gains and profits. The cost to the future isn’t even considered. And now we can all see what this same attitude and arrogance has led to.

    Our children are inheriting a god-awful disastrous mess brought about by these very same morons and their like-minded forefathers. We've got a right to be angry at them, all of them, for their indifference, arrogance and attitudes that has brought these disasters to pass.

    They can't see it - because they refuse to see it. They're steadfast refusal to wake the hell up and count the cost of their own choices and preferences will continue to lead the world to more crisis, more suffering, more death, more extinction.

    And they don't care.

    They're selfish pricks, every last one of them. And they deserve nothing from the rest of humanity.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "They can't see it - because they refuse to see it."

      I suspect that for at least a portion of the denialist population it's the other way around: they refuse to see it because they can't see it... Root cause? A presence on the spectrum of psychopathy (particularly facet 2, and some of facet 3) would probably go some way to explaining it...

      Delete
    2. Are you familiar with the rapid rise of Corbert the talk show host? He was so skillful with his double talk, the far right took him for one of them. Everything he said had two meanings, the obvious was hilarious. The wingnut version so reinforced their beliefs they were blind to the obvious meaning.
      Despite being exposed on the internet he was invited to host the Whitehouse Correspondents Dinner. This is a roast and bush the lessor was over the fire for 7 minutes. Bush took a long time to realize what Colbert was doing and he had to force a smile. Colbert walked away unscathed. bush not so much

      It has to be mix of factors that includes religion racism, eduction and dozens of others.

      Delete
  13. Wake me up when sea level rise reaches 1 cm a year.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Waking you up Russ would be an onerous and fruitless task.

      Delete
    2. Russell, SLR may well hit 1 cm/year in the coming decades.

      Unfortunately the problem is that we may have to resurrect you, rather than just wake you...

      :-(

      Delete
    3. Reply to Russell Sietz.
      Pretend you are holding a stubby in your
      hand. Stretch out arm. Think of movie called Empire Strkes Back.
      Remember when it came out.
      It was the sequal to Star Wars. Not very
      long ago.
      Observe distance between thumb and
      fore finger.
      Thats how much the sea has risen on average since Empire came out.

      This fact scares the crap out of me
      when i think about it.

      Delete
    4. I suspect, Li D, that Russell is going to struggle with both stubbies and Yoda. Try a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and the year The Name of the Rose was published...

      Delete
    5. Plan on a short snooze...

      http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2899.html

      Delete
    6. izen Watts has an anecdotal rebuttal to this paper up now. On the face of there might be a reasonable point to his post. Even a broken clock is etc etc

      Delete
    7. I can't run with Russell Seitz, but I wonder if he's referring to the recent spike at the end of the Colorado SLR graphs, which is in the vicinity of a cm per year... and nobody is saying a thing. What is down with dat?

      Delete
    8. PG - the Watts criticism doesn't speak to the paper at all as far as I can see. It's another case of arguing against a strawman.

      Watts is arguing that the 2012 runoff wasn't caused by climate change - which is irrelevant to the paper; the paper claims the firn structure is not what we thought it was. On that Watts is silent.

      He hasn't rebutted the paper that was written, he's rebutted the paper he's imagined. Of course we've *never* seen him do that before :)

      Delete
    9. Thanks Kevin. Anthony can't even rise to the level of a broken clock.

      Delete
    10. JCH then it is incumbent on Russel to ditch obfuscation and say stuff like
      the recent spike at the end of the Colorado SLR graphs, which is in the vicinity of a cm per year... and nobody is saying a thing.

      Delete
    11. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    12. I'd always wondered whether Harper et al were a bit optimistic in their assumptions for the meltwater/ice dynamics. Machguth et al seem to have answered some of those questions.

      Delete
    13. Yes, the noisy data is shouting, "Why am I going up so fast?" Just as in 2011 when it was shouting, "Why am I going down so fast?" So somebody figured it out.

      PG - that would not be Russell Seitz.

      Delete
  14. That's the whole point Russel, by the time you wake up, it will be too late!

    ReplyDelete
  15. He's very keen to quote the 'only' 1.2 degs per 100 years average. But if you combine that with the areas on the world map that show 0.2 to 0.5 increase (2 to 5 degrees over 100 years)
    At current warming rates we can expect the north pole to be 5 degrees warmer (than pre industrial) by 2080. That should be worrying.

    The fastest warming place on Earth over the past 37 years has been in the Arctic Ocean north of the Svalbard archipelago, where temperatures have been rising 0.5 C (about 0.9 degrees F) per decade

    Bonus points for showing a 10 year graph with an upward trend. -1,000 points for Warmth the polar bears now love

    ReplyDelete

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