Jim Steele, another WUWT science denier, gets it wrong about Kivalina

See update below


Jim Steele is a so-called environmentalist who rejects climate science and fails geography.  Some environmentalist!  He's another born again denier whose articles have started to appear more often on Anthony Watts' anti-science blog.

Today on WUWT he has a go at the people of Kivalina.  Many readers may be familiar with this settlement because they took on Exxon a few years ago.  They didn't succeed in the courts.  The people of Kivalina will need to relocate in the near future as their settlement will soon be uninhabitable.

Kivalina is a tiny settlement situated on a barrier reef on the Chukchi Sea.  It's at the mouth of the Kivalina River.  Because the ice is melting sooner in spring and forming later in autumn, the settlement is more vulnerable to sea surges and storms than in the past, when ice lasted longer and protected it.  It is reported that the barrier reef is rapidly eroding from these storm surges plus, presumably, rising sea levels.

Jim Steele fails geography plus...

Jim Steele cites greater winter sea ice in the Bering Sea as evidence that the lack of ice is causing erosion at Kivalina. He writes (my bold italics):

Finally it is hard to understand Sackur’s claim, “No longer does thick ice protect their shoreline.” In 2012 the National Snow and Ice Data Center reported “ice extent in the Bering Sea was much greater than average, reaching the second-highest levels for January in the satellite record.” NASA’s Earth Observatory wrote, “For most of the winter of 2011–2012, the Bering Sea has been choking with sea ice… NSIDC data indicate that ice extent in the Bering Sea for most of this winter has been between 20 to 30 percent above the 1979 to 2000 average. February 2012 had the highest ice extent for the area since satellite records started.” And in 2013 Bering Sea ice was again above normal as seen in National Snow and Ice Data Center picture.

Two points. Firstly, it's not the winter ice that's the problem, it's the fact the ice is melting sooner and forming later than it used to.  Secondly, Kivalina is on the Chukchi Sea, not the Bering.  This chart from Cryosphere Today shows how the sea ice has been declining over the years.  Note particularly the anomalies in recent years - from the late nineties in particular.

Source: Cryosphere Today

Here are two extracts from a report by the US Army Corps of Engineers . The file properties indicate it is from March 2009.  The pdf file includes outlines of the past coastline and short term projections.  (My bold italics in the following):

Kivalina has not historically seen significant erosion. The Kivalina spit has seen cyclic accretion, with modest accretion on the Chukchi Sea side more prevalent during the 30-year period of 1970 to 2000. The higher energy storms that could result in significant erosion occur during the winter months when the Chukchi Sea is frozen. This has resulted in natural erosion protection in the past. However, with global climate change the period of open water is increasing and the Chukchi Sea is less likely to be frozen when damaging winter storms occur. Winter storms occurring in October and November of 2004 and 2005 have resulted in significant erosion that is now threatening both the school and the Alaska Village Electric Cooperative (AVEC) tank farm. This erosion has resulted in the loss of some teacher housing and the school and community washateria drain fields....

What is the expected time line for a complete failure of the usable land? 
The winter storms of 2004 and 2005 eroded 70 to 80 feet of uplands behind the school. The bank line is now within 25 feet of the main school structure. Erosion in the vicinity of the AVEC tank farm is similar, with only 5 feet of uplands remaining between the nearest tanks and the bank line. Without the construction of emergency erosion control structures, the school and tank farm will begin to fail within the next year if erosion continues at the same rate as it has during recent months,. Even if erosion slows, these critical structures are in imminent danger and are unlikely to survive for any extended period of time. Due to the physical lack of open land in the Kivalina community, these structures can not be relocated, and their failure would render the community uninhabitable. 

You sometimes read fake outrage on WUWT, from deniers who try to argue that the world's poor need to burn fossil fuels or they'll get poorer.  But when it comes to vulnerable people who's lives are being turned upside down by climate change, the deniers show their true colours.

Most of the WUWT comments are lashing out at the BBC, because there was an article on the BBC about Kivalina.  There was one comment by a person outraged that anyone would consider looking out for the interests of indigenous peoples. Heck, what decent plundering victor would give a toss for displaced persons.

PS So far, not a single fake sceptic at WUWT has commented on the fact that Jim Steele was wrong and that Kivalina isn't on the Bering Sea!  Nor that it's the fact the ice season is shorter that's causing problems, not mid-winter ice.

UPDATE: 4 August 2013 

Jim Steele has visited us and claimed that (my bold italics):

However the Bering Sea extent is a good climate indicator and correlates well with sea ice in the Chukchi.

Let's check that out, shall we?  Here is an animated gif showing the anomalies for the Bering Sea and the Chukchi Sea over the last few decades.  Note particularly the recent years I've circled:

Source: The Cryosphere Today - Chukchi and Bering

Looks like Jim's not just wrong but he's spectacularly wrong.  (Does anyone think it's necessary to do a correlation analysis to see just how wrong Jim is?)

Remember, Jim Steele is a man who thinks heat waves disprove global warming!  So is it any surprise that he maintains such wildly different patterns are a good correlation?

Anthony Watts and WUWT North Pole antics - skating on thin ice

Anthony Watts blog has been really boring lately.  Nothing really ridiculous.  But today he's come up with a doozy.

Not the North Pole I

Anthony writes that people were wrong about a webcam being at the north pole.

As he shows, the webcam is in the Arctic but has drifted quite a way from it's original location.  He shows it as having drifted:

Thing is, of course, that even if the buoy isn't right on the North Pole, disappearing ice north of Greenland is something new.  We'll be getting used to it more and more in coming decades.  But that's not the doozy.

Not the North Pole II

The real killer is that he goes and writes:

And, of course, photos actually taken at the North Pole by the US Navy show that such open water is a regular occurrence in the past:

and posts this picture and has written as the caption: "Skate (SSN-578), surfaced at the North Pole, 1959. (US Navy photo)".

Thing is, of course, that this isn't a photo of Skate surfacing at the North Pole.  On this website it's labelled as: Skate (SSN-578), taken in summer, perhaps in August 1958.  And at Wikipedia that photo is described as "Date and Location uncertain".  According to Wikipedia, Skate didn't first surface at the North Pole until March 1959.  (Note that that navsource.org website is not reliable.  It has the same photos (not the above) with different captions elsewhere on the page.)

He's done this before and had to correct himself!

You know what's even more hilarious?  Anthony did this trick before, back in March last year.  And he had to correct the caption back then.  (Early onset?)  I wonder if anyone will get him to correct it this time around.  The length of time before anyone points out his deception could signal by how much the readership of WUWT has deteriorated.

Here's a picture that is captioned as Skate at the North Pole, this time in 1962:

Currying favour with deniers - Judith predicts no more warming "for the next few decades"

I noticed a few visitors here from Judith Curry's blog and discovered HotWhopper got an honorable mention in the comments.  So I'll return the favour.  It also gives me a chance to show David Appell up in a good light to make up for my being hard on him a few weeks ago.

I'll provide part of an exchange for all those who are like me and, in order to stay sane, don't usually waste time at Curry's place.

It all started with Judith Curry posting a diatribe against the Cook et al study, which is the latest in several studies that have demonstrated the scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming.  Judith doesn't like the fact that there is a scientific consensus and seeks to undermine it every chance she gets.

JC comment: Too many defenders of the consensus have become either ‘pause’ deniers or ‘pause’ dismissers. A while back, I recommended that they ‘own’ the pause, and work on explaining it. Belatedly, we see a little bit of this happening, but of course it does not lead them to challenge the main IPCC conclusion on 20th century attribution.

Judy "recommended"! (Snort!) As if any self-respecting scientist would take any notice of what Dr Curry orders them to do.

JC summary: It is really good to see this discussion about the role of consensus in the public debate on climate change and the problems this has caused for the science, the policy, and increasingly for the proponents of consensus. It is however dismaying to see that continued influence that the existence of a ‘consensus’ has on the politics (especially President Obama’s citing of the Cook et al. study).

Green-Eyed
Uncertainty Monster

"Especially President Obama's citing..." Judy's jealous of John Cook and his team, just like Anthony Watts was.  (Did the then President cite her "epiphany moment" hurricane paper?)

Now let's wait and see how she argues that the scientific consensus on the dangers of tobacco led to everyone taking up smoking.  Or that no President (or Surgeon General) in the USA should have indicated that there is such a scientific consensus.

David Appell challenges Judith:

July 27, 2013 at 8:10 pm JC wrote: A while back, I recommended that they ‘own’ the pause, and work on explaining it.

It has been explained ad nauseum. It in now way undermines AGW, which many many scientists have now said. The Earth still has a clear energy imbalance, and the AGW problem is still here.

The “pause” is absolutely no reason to take AGW any less seriously. Surface warming will resume — physics says it has to.

What will be the excuse then?

Judith replied that anyone who spoke of a pause was called a denier.  But it's her next comment that really shows her up as a disinformation propagandist.  And she's one for building strawmen, too:

curryja | July 27, 2013 at 8:44 pm  I understand that 15 years is too short, but the climate model apostles told us not to expect a pause longer than 10 years, then 15 years, then 17 years. Looks like this one might go another two decades.

The 1945 – 1975 pause was not caused by aerosols. People who have argued that the 1945-1975 pause was caused by multidecadal ocean oscillations are called deniers, this is one of the main ‘denier’ arguments.

"Climate model apostles"?  Who is she talking about?  It can't be Dr Ben Santer and colleagues.  Their paper has in the conclusion (my bold):

... In summary, because of the effects of natural internal climate variability,we do not expect each year to be inexorably warmer than the preceding year, or each decade to be warmer than the last decade, even in the presence of strong anthropogenic forcing of the climate system. The clear message from our signal-to-noise analysis is that multi-decadal records are required for identifying human effects on tropospheric temperature. Minimal warming over a single decade does not disprove the existence of a slowly-evolving anthropogenic warming signal.

Judith is an apologist for science deniers.  It's what she does and who she is and what she wants.  She's pretty well given up on getting any professional respect so she curries favour with the denialati. 

Curry predicts no more warming for "the next few decades"

Enough of her prevarication.  Here is Judith Curry's prediction. A flat temperature trend for the next few decades. Now that will be one to watch if there is anyone left in the world who gives tuppence for what Judith Curry thinks.

curryja | July 27, 2013 at 11:22 pm | ...A year earlier, Jan 2011, I made it pretty clear that I supported Tsonis’ argument regarding climate shifts and a flat temperature trend for the next few decades...

How many is a "few"?  I would take it that she predicts no warming till at least 2050.  I wonder if she'll take a bet on that.

Of course, that's not what Swanson and Tsonis are saying.  (Not that Curry would care.)  In their 2007 paper and their 2009 paper, Swanson and Tsonis were putting up a hypothesis that the climate goes through "shifts".  In the 2009 paper, Swanson and Tsonis suggest that surface temperature may not rise much before 2020, which is a lot sooner than a "few decades" away.  And they are well aware that what they put forward is somewhat contentious and speculative.  The last para in their 2009 paper might upset Curry's denier fans if any of them took the time to read a scientific paper:

Finally, it is vital to note that there is no comfort to be gained by having a climate with a significant degree of internal variability, even if it results in a near-term cessation of global warming. It is straightforward to argue that a climate with significant internal variability is a climate that is very sensitive to applied anthropogenic radiative anomalies (c.f. Roe [2009]). If the role of internal variability in the climate system is as large as this analysis would seem to suggest, warming over the 21st century may well be larger than that predicted by the current generation of models, given the propensity of those models to underestimate climate internal variability [Kravtsov and Spannagle 2008].

Here is an article about their 2009 paper at Desmogblog, and another at realclimate.org by Swanson, who is the lead author.

Compare this with how Judith dismisses their conclusion that anthropogenic warming may be more sensitive rather than less - when she wrote in her 2011 blog piece about a "mandatory genuflexion to orthodox AGW":

Of course as the fact of being chaotic doesn’t imply that the GHG play no role (just that they play some role), he proceeds with the mandatory genuflexion to orthodox AGW by saying that “… the climate shifted after the 1970 event in another warmer state which may be superimposed on an anthropogenic warming trend.” This certainly allows him to avoid inflammatory articles by the usual suspects in the newspapers.

Could Judy possibly be trying to argue that the world shifts to a warmer state by magic?  Just like Bob Tisdale and other deniers at WUWT?

Judith Curry is happy to misrepresent the work of other scientists.  She isn't much interested in science itself, she's too caught up in denying it.

Science deniers at WUWT excel at getting it wrong...

Today Anthony Watts posted an article on his anti-science blog WUWT about a couple of NASA videos.

First the videos.  These are in relation to a draft paper, National Climate Assessment, which is an assessment of how climate change will affect the USA. The text below the video on YouTube that shows temperature projections describes the videos as (in part):

These visualizations -- which highlight computer model projections from the draft National Climate Assessment -- show how average temperatures could change across the U.S. in the coming decades under two different carbon dioxide emissions scenarios.

Both scenarios project significant warming. A scenario with lower emissions, in which carbon dioxide reaches 550 parts per million by 2100, still projects average warming across the continental U.S. of 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

The next video shows projected precipitation in the USA under the same two scenarios.  The description on YouTube includes the following:

The climate of the southwestern U.S. could be a lot drier by 2100. The climate of the northeastern U.S. could be a lot wetter.

New visualizations of computer model projections show how precipitation patterns could change across the U.S. in the coming decades under two different carbon dioxide emissions scenarios. The two climate scenarios, based on "low" and "high" levels of carbon dioxide emissions, highlight results from the draft National Climate Assessment. 

Both scenarios project that dry regions get drier and regions that see more rain and snow would see that trend increase. The scenario with lower emissions, in which carbon dioxide reaches 550 parts per million by 2100, projects more subtle changes. The scenario with higher carbon dioxide emissions projects changes in average annual precipitation of 10 percent or more in some regions.

No-one ever claimed that WUWT isn't a stomping ground for crackpots of "all the experts are wrong" variety

Even though the WUWT article shows the description accompanying the first video, some deniers on WUWT still get confused between global changes and changes in the USA.  Here are some examples of denialism at work on WUWT:

Kevin Lohse thinks the world is about to get colder:

July 29, 2013 at 12:09 am  That’s one hell of a hardware rounding error. As the balance of probability points to a cooling period through most of the 21st C , someone is expecting warming Armageddon in the last 20 years

Lance Wallace thinks the USA is the entire world:

July 29, 2013 at 12:16 am  Anthony, you might mention in the headline that the 8 degrees is Fahrenheit.  Interesting that the low estimate for 2100 (550 ppm) is in fact exactly a doubling of pre-industrial CO2, so the predicted warming of 4.5 F reveals their estimate of climate sensitivity: 2.5 C. That’s if the predicted warming includes the warming of about 0.7-0.8 C already observed–if they are saying the warming starts from now, they are using a higher sensitivity of about 3.2 C.

Alvin is a plain vanilla "climate science is a hoax" conspiracy theorist:

July 29, 2013 at 6:44 am  Corruption

Kev-in-Uk doesn't believe any of the climate science experts:

July 29, 2013 at 5:51 am  I think NASA’s credibility is at the same level of the UK’s Met Office – i.e. non-existent !  Seriously, how can an organisation famed for taking calculated risks re the space program and engineered design, modern science, etc, be so crass as to fall in line with climate science ‘trends’?
Is there no-one who works inside NASA with a backbone, and to be prepared to stand up for real science? (I gave up hoping for someone scientific within the Metoffice years ago!)

wws says:

July 29, 2013 at 5:33 am  And the descent, is complete. NASA, once a shining beacon of the most brilliant combination of science and engineering in the history of mankind, is now nothing more than a hotbed for pseudo-scientific quackery and political maneuvering. How sad to have seen this change occur, just in our own lifetimes.

I can't make head or tail of this comment from herkimer.  I think he's agreeing that summers are going to get a lot hotter in the USA but arguing that maybe winters and autumns are not.  Plus he throws in some conspiracy theorising and saying he knows more than the best scientists at NASA.  Pity he cannot write coherently:

July 29, 2013 at 5:25 am  “They chose 1970-1999 to calibrate their models” If one knows nothing about fall and winter( or purposely chooses to ignore them) and uses the rising summer temperature months to predict the future, you will erronously and most probably perdict only more warming summers. This kind of silly science coming from Nasa? This looks to me as a political move to support the President’s global warming agenda rather than a piece of new or sound science. The timing of this study release gives away its intented purpose.

michael hart notes humorously that it's all in the colour scheme:

July 29, 2013 at 4:53 am  lol  No wonder they can only predict temperatures going up all the time for the whole century-their color scale doesn’t allow them to plot anything less than zero! :)

rOLAND lEbEL wants the 49 decrepit climate science deniers who used to work at NASA to stand up and join the deniers at WUWT in protest:

July 29, 2013 at 4:26 am  I can’t believe that all scientists at NASA share the views of the upcoming report. What about those 50 or so people that wrote a letter of protest regarding Hansen and his catastrophic views of global temperatures? It’s time for them to stand up with more vigor regarding this garbage. After all, the reputation of all NASA is at stake!

Anthony Watts makes no pretense at "reasonable".  What with making a "sticky" out of 500 plus testimonies from about 300 born again freaks who found inner peace through science denial at WUWT.  Giving voice to the potty peer Monckton.  Letting Brandon Shollenberger show he can't read a simple science paper (or do arithmetic).

Most of Anthony's readers think that specialists at NASA, the UK Met Office, CSIRO and other leading research organisations "don't know nuffin'" or are part of the biggest scam in the history of the world (together with mother nature).

Lately his site has been no better than that of conspiracy theorist and gold bug "Jo Nova".  And it's been so boring the past few days.  Maybe if we ask nicely he'll bring back Ronald "it's insects" Voisin or daft Darko Butina - they were more fun!

More confessions and pledges of faith from born again deniers at WUWT

That "bare the soul" thread keeps yielding denialist gems.  A few more "true confessions" - mostly extracts from longer (in some cases much longer) comments:

Just Steve thinks science = socialism and says:

July 28, 2013 at 2:31 pm  Not a scientist, and it was my general skepticism of modern “science”, along with an inherent understanding that modern whacko-environmentalism was the new home of socialism and CAGW was just further manifestation of their desire to control people’s lives, that kept me from ever falling for the CAGW scare to begin with.

Mary Cousins thinks one day she might fall off earth into space, pigs might fly and she will one day find out that the earth doesn't rotate and DNA doesn't exist, she says:

July 28, 2013 at 1:42 pm When Climategate ‘broke’ I wondered what it was all about and started searching the internet. Within about fifteen minutes I found the phrase ‘the science is settled’. “How can science ever be settled?” I thought. “There is something funny going on here.” After researching various sites on the internet to try to ascertain the truth, I am totally unable to accept the CAGW theory.

Ken Rodgers thinks the world warms and cools by magic and refuses to read any science.  He is "waiting" for someone to tell him personally:

July 28, 2013 at 11:01 am For me it was simple. I learned about the little ice age in 6th grade world history (Leif Erikson discovered N. America, et. al). When I first heard about CO2 global warming in the early 90′s, i kept waiting to hear how they determined CO2 was the cause and not a rebound from the LIA. I am still waiting.

Bruce Cobb thinks conspiracy ideation mixed with right wing extremist ideology = "knowlege" and writes:

July 28, 2013 at 5:45 am  Clearly as shown by the comments, the pathway towards becoming a CAGW skeptic, or preferably, climate realist is knowledge, while the True Believers like jai seem to prefer ignorance. Takes all kinds I guess.

vigilantfish says the thread "should be a gold-mine for psychologists":

July 28, 2013 at 3:59 pm  Late to the party – I wanted to read all the comments first. Thanks Jonathan for starting this wonderful thread; it should be a gold-mine for psychologists if they have any real dedication to academic integrity.

Why Climate Deniers Have No Scientific Credibility - In One Pie Chart

Contrast the above comments with the scientific literature on the subject.  Sceptic Richard Dawkins has posted an article by James Lawrence Powell, who analysed nearly 14,000 scientific papers about global warming.  He only found 24 that rejected global warming outright or posited a cause other than increased greenhouse gases.

Deniers will only accept the 24 papers and reject the other 14,000 or so.  They are the epitomy of the deluded.

Who's lying now? It's Brandon Shollenberger on WUWT

Deniers are really upset that climate scientists are aware that humans are causing global warming.  It's not something magical or difficult to figure out.  By our actions of burning fossil fuel, deforestation etc, we have added an additional 40% or more of CO2 to the atmosphere.  About half of what we've emitted has gone into the oceans.  If it hadn't we'd have almost doubled the CO2 in the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution.  The fact it has is causing the oceans to get more acidic.  So we're not only causing global warming we're causing acidification of the oceans.

Yet deniers like Anthony Watts tell lies about a recent study that demonstrated that scientists are aware of this fact.  Now a chap called Brandon Shollenberger is also trying to make out that a recent survey is misleading.  But it's Brandon who is the one who's misleading.

It's quite simple.  Researchers examined the abstracts of around 12,000 scientific papers on the topic of climate change and global warming.  Of those abstracts, around 4,000 attributed a cause to global warming.  97% of these that attributed a cause, indicated that humans have caused most (50% or more) of the warming.  Less than 3% indicated otherwise.  The other 8,000 papers don't overtly attribute a cause.  It's such a well known fact and self-evident.  Just as most of you don't explain every day that it's the earth's rotation that causes the sun to come up every morning, as if it's a surprise, most scientists don't repeat obvious facts in every paper they prepare.

In reality, we're probably causing more than 100% of the warming, which is offset to some extent by aerosols.

Are deniers part of the 97%?

Brandon Shollenberger is trying to imply that Cook et al 97% included abstracts that suggest it's just a little bit of warming that we're causing.  That's a lie.  He's building on recent statements by some of the denialiati that they are part of the 97% who think humans cause at least some global warming.  But unless those deniers accept that humans cause most (at least 50%) of global warming, then they are part of the 3% deniers not the 97%.

All similar studies point to the same thing.  It's not as if the Cook et al study came up with a different result.  Every single study looking at the subject have found that around 97% of papers and/or scientists who research this topic agree that humans are now causing most of the global warming. It's only deniers (not scientists) like those who frequent WUWT who disagree.

There's an unpublished study from last year, that only found 24 out of almost 14,000 papers on climate change rejected global warming.

Deniers like Anthony Watts and Brandon Shollenberger specialise in disinformation and lies.  In this article, Brandon doesn't concede that Cook et al is one of many that found the same thing.

Why do they lie?  I don't know, but they certainly get very emotional about it.  Here's two examples from Brandon:

1. They’ve always managed to say “humans cause global warming” with the implicit qualifier of “some” (that they knew nobody would pay attention to).

2. They say things like, “Humans cause global warming” knowing most people won’t realize they’re meaning “some amount of global warming.”

No, Brandon - Cook et al did not restrict its qualification to "some amount".  Their cut-off was at least 50% of global warming.  Humans are causing not just some but most of the global warming and likely all of the global warming. And going by the studies and policy statements from professional scientific organisations, most scientists would agree with that.

Here is a chart showing estimates of how much humans have contributed to global warming.  Estimates range from more than 160% to just under 100%.  The caption includes links to the relevant papers.

Figure 1: Net human and natural percent contributions to the observed global surface warming over the past 50-65 years according to Tett et al. 2000 (T00, dark blue), Meehl et al. 2004 (M04, red), Stone et al. 2007 (S07, green), Lean and Rind 2008 (LR08, purple),Huber and Knutti 2011 (HK11, light blue), and Gillett et al. 2012 (G12, orange). .
Source: SkepticalScience.com

Humans are probably causing more than 100% of global warming these days.

You'd have to be a complete idiot or a liar to try to argue otherwise.  This blog has provided numerous examples of lying, disinforming and ridiculous claims made on WUWT.  Anthony Watts' blog specialises in anti-science and disinformation - sometimes it's from Anthony himself and other times it's from people like Brandon Shollenberger.

Don't trust WUWT or deniers.  They lie.

BTW Brandon is the one who got most upset with Professor Lewandowsky et al about the Recursive Fury paper, moaning that they got one of the conspiracy theories wrong - it was apparently another conspiracy theory.  He's a bit weird all up.

More denier self-portraits, including around 60 35+ engineers

Update: In the article and comments, I've counted 35 deniers professing to be engineers.  Did an actual count (but didn't double check).  Could be more but definitely fewer than the 60+ I initially thought.  The word "engineer" comes up 75 times so far. - Sou Sunday 28 July 13, 2:54 pm AEST.

The confessions from science deniers at WUWT keep coming.  I commented just a short while ago about Jonathan Abbott's heart-wrenching story about his short path to fake scepticism.  Did he read science papers? No.  Did he read the IPCC reports? No.  Did he do any research at all? No.  What he did was hear about global warming on the BBC, decided it wasn't for him, so he went looking for other people who rejected science.  He found a denier film and a denier blog (WUWT) and has since stopped "looking". Actually, like most fake sceptics, Jonathan didn't ever start looking at science.

Here are a few other stories, most of a similar vein.  The starting point varies but for most deniers, the journey stopped at the first denialistic journalist, author or youtube video they found.

Bloke down the pub didn't want to "believe" so, ignoring the fact that CO2 has been higher in the past and earth has been warmer as a consequence, when he discovered there were others like him, the rest, as he says, was history:

July 25, 2013 at 11:55 am  My academic standard only reaches Geology A’level. From what I had learnt though, I was pretty sure that the global temperature had previously been much higher than present. That seemed to torpedo the warmist’s claim that feedbacks were catastrophically positive. My first contact with sceptics came from Chris Bookers column in the Sunday Telegraph who guided me to WUWT and the rest as they say is history.

Shano got his "science" views from a Crichton novel and youtube:

July 25, 2013 at 12:02 pm  Well put. My journey toward climate skepticism began with reading Michael Crichton’s State of Fear. I was so intrigued that I checked the data, listened to skeptical speakers on you tube, and visited the sites you mentioned on line.

Bob Johnston says he stopped "believing" scientists when television spruikers were wrong about house prices:

July 25, 2013 at 12:05 pm  My conversion from believer to skeptic came only after I came to rude awakenings in other disciplines. It started during the housing crisis (which is still ongoing, btw) – my occupation was residential construction and despite all the “experts” on TV and in newspapers saying it would keep going up I knew they were wrong and I was subsequently proven correct. That episode bitchslapped me into awareness – if everyone was wrong about something as fundamental as housing prices, what else are we wrong about?

kretchetov found a denier film and lots of denier websites.  His motive for looking for other science deniers was because he is a conspiracy nutter and is paranoid about global control.  He found a kindred spirit in Jo Nova :)

July 25, 2013 at 12:22 pm  I had a similar path to the author. I had lots of questions, but seeing breathless propaganda about “settled science” made me suspicious.  “The Great Global Warming Swindle” prompted me to seek answers on the internet, and I stumbled upon Jo Nova’s website, and from there, others.  Having had classic scientific education, I can judge facts for myself, and what I saw made me really angry. And I saw a fraudulent attempt to use the name of science to install global control, raise unjustified taxes and impose bogus regulations.  I still believe that CAGW ideology is more dangerous than any other totalitarian ideology or religion, as it has such popular support, yet outright wrong and will inevitably result in utter misery and death to many.

Too many engineers

Probably 60+ engineers among the 412 comments to date.  Update (28/7/13) - I've done a quick count and have come up with 35 definites, so a bit short of the 60 plus I initially thought:

• Michael J. Dunn says: July 25, 2013 at 1:01 pm I’m also a professional engineer,...
• Dave the Engineer says: July 25, 2013 at 11:31 am  Skeptic from the beginning.
• Ken Hall says: July 25, 2013 at 11:37 am  ...I was also educated in the 1980s and came to climate scepticism in an almost identical way...Being from a computing and engineering background, I instinctively distrusted climate models...
• John de Melle says: July 25, 2013 at 11:47 am  I’m another proffessional engineer. Your road of discovery matches mine, exactly....
• Richard Lawson says:  July 25, 2013 at 12:14 pm  As an Engineer who was also messing about with Bunsen burners in the early ’80′s your story is a carbon copy of mine....
• Theo Barker says:  July 25, 2013 at 12:34 pm  Another engineer with a very similar path to similar stance. 
• and many more.

In all, a search of the so far 412 comments finds the word "engineer" listed 67 75 times in that thread, only two of which were in the original article.  Most At least 35 were from people saying they are engineers.

There were eleven mentions of the word "geologist" but only four deniers saying they are geologists.

By contrast, the word "biologist" only appeared twice, both times in disparaging comments about biologists.  The word "chemist" or a variant appeared seven times, but not a single person claimed it as their field. The only time the word "physicist" appeared was a denier saying they are a retired particle physicist.

Bombshell**! Smokey admits WUWT "regularly hears from scientific illiterates"

The following excerpt is just to show that WUWT moderator dbstealey/smokey skirts perilously close to the truth on rare occasions. The italics are my comments, with the second link showing how at least two of jai mitchell's comments were censored in the past week.  Ironically, Smokey was trying to argue with jai, the subject of much censorship.

dbstealey says:
July 25, 2013 at 12:53 pm  We regularly hear from scientific illiterates here. (Sou: more than regularly.  You pretty well only have scientific illiterates, Smokey.) This site doesn’t censor their opinions, no matter how much pseudo-science they contain.  (Sou: you allow pseudo-science.  That's true. What you ban and censor is real science.)

**Bombshell is a word much used in climate discussions.  It's a dog-whistle word.

Recycling Pat 'n Chip disinformation on WUWT brings out denier weirdness

There are a couple of deniers who hang out at Anthony Watts' anti-science blog, WUWT, from time to time.  This pair go by the names of  Paul C. “Chip” Knappenberger and Patrick J. Michaels.  I don't know if they are denialists themselves or not, but they are known for spreading disinformation wherever they can.  They are from the Cato Institute, which is a libertarian think tank/lobbying organisation, initially set up by "coal" Koch, that promotes denial of climate science.

This time they have recycled an article from the Economist and are putting a lot of weight on climate sensitivity studies (Bayesian approaches) that tend to the lower end of the suite of projections.  Pat 'n Chip are writing as if all studies are showing lower climate sensitivity, which is not so.

First up, I'll point out as have others, that the Economist article was based on something it says is in the working group on mitigation, not on the physical sciences.  So it means zilch.

Secondly, climate sensitivity is important to know, but it doesn't have to be known precisely.  What is more important to my mind is behaviour.  If we double or treble the amount of atmospheric CO2 or worse, we'll definitely turn up the heat to more than we can handle.

I did a quick search of Google Scholar for climate sensitivity studies in the past couple of years.  There are swags of them.  The only ones that Pat 'n Chip want their readers to know about are the ones that come in at the lower end of the spectrum.  But there are many recent studies that come up with the same sort of numbers that the IPCC came up with in the past.  It's just that the media hasn't picked up on them.  Probably because they are the norm rather than the exception.

Here's a sample from the first few studies that come up in a Google Scholar search:

• Equilibrium = 3.2˚C; transient 1.72˚C

Bitz et al (2012) Climate Sensitivity of the Community Climate System Model, Version 4, J Climate DOI: 10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00290.1

• Equilibrium = 2.2 - 4.8˚K

Rohling et al (2012) Making sense of palaeoclimate sensitivity, Nature DOI: 10.1038/nature11574  (Thanks to BBD for the link to the full paper).

• Equilibrium = 2.1 - 4.7˚K

Andrews et al (2012) Forcing, feedbacks and climate sensitivity in CMIP5 coupled atmosphere-ocean climate models, GRL

• Equilibrium = 1.9˚C (1.2 to 2.9˚C); transient = Using observational data up to and including year 2010 gives a 90% C.I. of 1.0 to 2.1˚C, while the 90% C.I. is significantly broader ranging from 1.1 to 3.4 ˚C if only data up to and including year 2000 is used.

Skeie et al A lower and more constrained estimate of climate sensitivity using updated observations and detailed radiative forcing time series, Geophysical Research Abstracts


Pat 'n Chip would have the scientists exclude all the higher estimates and only publish the lower estimates.  Many if not most of the lower estimates seem to come from Bayesian analysis, while the higher ones more commonly come from analysis of past climates (paleoclimatology) or climate models - which are based on physics.

The reason seems to be that they want permission to continue to pollute the atmosphere for a while longer yet.  Obviously they don't give tuppence for what happens to humanity, society or any other life on earth in the future.  Otherwise they'd be arguing that regardless of whether equilibrium sensitivity was 2˚C (which Pat 'n Chip favour) or 3˚C or 4˚C or higher, if we don't stop burning fossil fuels soon climate change will get much worse.

Thing is, equilibrium sensitivity won't mean zilch if we don't stop at doubling CO2.  No-one will be any the wiser about what it would have been.  Humans will have to wait until equilibrium does occur for however many multiples of CO2 we pour into the air, which will take thousands of years as illustrated here. (Click to enlarge.)

Source: RealClimate.Org

From the WUWT comments

I was curious to see how the deniers at WUWT would react.  After all, Pat 'n Chip are arguing that climate sensitivity is 2˚C.  Many deniers at WUWT think CO2 doesn't have any effect on surface temperature.  Some even think that we are about to enter an ice age - any day now - and have thought that for quite some time.  (They are very patient.)

Pseudo-science gobbledegook from Konrad

The response was a mixed lot with people mostly talking past each other.  Here is some classic pseudo-science from Konrad, who says pre-industrial CO2 is fictitious, that "LWIR" (does he think there is such a thing as SWIR I wonder?) doesn't affect the cooling rate of water that is free to evaporatively cool - presumably evaporating because of cooling?  And radiative gases cool the earth, not heat it!

July 26, 2013 at 5:32 pm  “Climate sensitivity” to a doubling from fictitious “pre-industrial” levels would be around -0.00000001 C. To arrive at this figure you of course have to ignore all the evidence that temperature drives atmospheric CO2 concentration at all time scales. Next reduce those ludicrous figures for DWLWIR slowing the cooling of the earths surface by 71percent. LWIR doesn’t effect the cooling rate of water that is free to evaporativly cool.
Now as the troposperic lapse rate created by convective circulation is near the adiabatic limit, there is little need for ajustment here. However speed of convective circulation and mechanical energy transport from the surface should be increased for higher radiative gas concentrations.
The ERL argument can be safely ignored as it is junk science. In a moving atmosphere, warm air masses are transporting energy high above the level of maximum IR opacity, where they always radiate more than the air at the altitude they are rising through.  You should find that radiative gases act to cool the atmosphere at all concentrations above 0.0ppm.  The IPCC however should continue to do static atmosphere calculations and assume surface IR absorption based on emissivity. Otherwise they won’t get paid.

Asian aerosols caused global warming and incomprehensible quackery from AlecM

This one is a new one for me.  AGW was caused by aerosols!  (Most aerosols reflect sunlight and have a cooling influence.)  This from AlecM:

July 26, 2013 at 11:39 pm My view is that the atmospheric control system that damps out natural fluctuations is near 0 K CO2 climate sensitivity. There has been AGW, from Asian aerosols reducing the albedo of low level clouds. This led to the 1980s and 1990s heating but has now saturated. It lead to the ocean temperature rise What we are seeing now in the reduction of TPW and the turn down of OHC and air temperature is the effect of operation of other parts of the control system. CO2 is automatically eliminated from the temperature effects.

The Other-Andy hasn't looked at a temperature chart since 1979

From where on earth does the Other_Andy get his information?

July 27, 2013 at 3:05 am  So, according to the warmists CO2 (And positive feedbacks) controls the Earth’s temperature. As CO2 goes up so does the temperature.
Between 1979 and 1996, CO2 increases by 25 ppm (More than 7% increase), there are several El Ninos and the temperature stays the same. What is their explanation?

The Other_Andy's close enough with the CO2 increase, but he says temperature stayed the same between 1979 and 1996?  Not so:

Data Sources: NASA and UK Met Office Hadley Centre

Self portrait of a typical science denier on WUWT

A science denier called Jonathan Abbott has written an article on WUWT about his discovery of and entrance to of the blessed community of the scientific illiterati.  He's fair game, given that he posted this not as a comment but as a full blown article.  So here is my take.  Not a pretty picture but typical of the educated conservative science denier who feels the need to rationalise his denial.  In this case in public.  Kind of like public baptisms into a quasi-religious cult.  It probably gives him a feeling of belonging to boast on WUWT about his conspiracy ideation and science denial.

Some items stand out and will interest people who are fascinated by the psychology of denialism:

• Jonathan says what stuck in his mind as a little boy was someone (he doesn't say who), long after all speculation had ceased, talking about an impending ice age.  He says this took place in "the early 80s", which was long after all but the most unrealistic scientists entertained any notion that pollution would lead to global cooling.  Particularly since clean air legislation had already been introduced in most developed nations in the late sixties and seventies.  So even as a small child his mind was primed to latch onto quack science.
• He studied engineering (sorry engineers, but your profession seems to attract people of certain mental inagility).  He says he read texts by Bertrand Russell and some science writers and he thinks that helped him in critical thinking.  It didn't.  As he demonstrates later, he didn't ever get past the notion of only accepting what suited him to "believe" and discarding any facts that he didn't like. That's not critical thinking, that's confirmation bias and lack of ability to think critically.
• He reacted against and was unable to distinguish between what is well-accepted science and what areas are at the frontiers of new knowledge (a similar disability to that referred to above).  He demonstrates this with emotive language.  He also exhibits a tendency towards conspiracy ideation as shown by his distrust of authority.  For example, he writes: "I first noticed predictions of global warming and the associated dire warnings of calamities to come. Some of these emanated from the Met Office and so I knew should be treated with a pinch of salt but other sources included NASA, which I then personally still very much respected; despite the space shuttle evidently being the wrong concept poorly executed, their basic scientific expertise seemed unquestionable." 
• He demonstrated zilch understanding of science, comparing the earth system, which is described by scientists in terms of known physics, chemistry and biology with the stock market, which is influenced as much by human emotions as economics.
• For no reason at all except he presumably didn't like it, he discounted the greenhouse effect and the impact of increasing greenhouse gases as being "implausible" "on the grounds of common sense".  Oh, and his conspiracy ideation comes to the fore again in his references to "charities", "pressure groups" and "the UN". 
• He expressed a concern for the environment, writing: "So I was quite passionate about the environment, but my focus was on keeping it clean and safe for all life to live in."  However that concern didn't extend to him educating himself about it.  It probably gave him a warm and fuzzy feeling but he refused to learn what keeping the world clean and safe for all entailed.  He scorned science.  Instead of reading it he mocked it and doubted it, especially as he seems to have got his science from the BBC.  Jonathan is a conspiracy nutter of the right wing authoritarian type, and is suspicious of organisations like the BBC. He made no mention of ever reading any scientific journals.  One can speculate that such an exercise would be too challenging.  Not intellectually challenging (he said he was an engineering graduate) but emotionally challenging.  Challenging of his world view.
• Jonathan got excited by the The Great Swindle and the release of decades of private emails of a handful of climate scientists.  Being of a conspiracising bent and combined with his world view he was a sitting duck for the disinformation brigade.  He was pining for someone to  tell him that climate science is all wrong and the scientists are all crooks (fitting his conspiracy mentality), so he fell for the big con hook, line and sinker - expressing no scepticism whatsoever.
• One thing, he is aware that he's a conspiracy nutter, writing: "Now at this point, I am sure some (perhaps many?) readers are thinking, ‘Great, an inside view of how someone becomes a believer in a conspiracy theory, perhaps I’ll base a research paper on this idiot’. My response is that like most people I have at times stumbled upon the real conspiracy theory nuts lurking on the internet." So he doesn't believe in the lizard men, isn't a birther or a truther, nor that NASA faked the moon landing - or maybe he does.  But he does believe in arguably the biggest paranoid conspiracy ever conceived.  One of incredible longevity and scope, involving all the major national scientific institutions, virtually all the scientific journals and their staff, virtually every scientific researcher in the fields relating to the study of earth systems, ranging from atmospheric physicists through to marine biologists, glaciologists, geologists and ocean chemists and everyone in between, governments of every nation in the world and most people who represent them, the media and probably 70% of the general public.  And all these people have kept up the hoax for decades!  If only a fake sceptic could prove them wrong or find a way into the secret cult.  (Kenji hasn't done much good spying for Anthony!)
• Jonathan then writes this: "But on WUWT and other CAGW-sceptic sites criticism of the position of the website founder isn’t just tolerated but often encouraged. "  What a joke!  Jonathan gives no hint that he's aware of Anthony's general rule of banning any and every one who accepts science from posting or deleting comments about actual science, even innocuous comments   This is particularly odd given that Anthony deleted comments to Jonathan's previous article just a few days ago, including comments about science and a comment that could be interpreted as being critical of him.  It just goes to show how people ignore facts.  You only have to see the demographics of WUWT readers to know the extent to which Anthony bans or otherwise discourages normal people to comment.  WUWT is 98% science deniers - almost the complete opposite of the real world.

Anyway, Jonathan indicates he is finally at peace, finding an chamber that echos what he wants to "believe".  He is relaxed, waiting for the coming ice age or, as he puts it: "I tend to expect some cooling I am pretty agnostic about it. Nature will assuredly do its own thing."  His cognitive dissonance quieted by lies and disinformation that suit  his world view, allowing him peace by denying reality.  Maybe something like this:

From the WUWT comments

Nope, nothing here this time.  Maybe later if I feel inclined.  So far there are 153 comments mostly of the 'rah 'rah type or "me too".  As everyone knows, WUWT is 98% science deniers - so it's much what you'd expect from the scientific illiterati.  Most seem to reject climate science because of their world view, distrust of authority, tendency to attribute any reputable source as having nefarious intent.  In other words, they view themselves as suckers and therefore have become suckers.  Classic expectations theory stuff.

PS I might later do a categorisation of responses.  For example, there appear to be a disproportionate number from engineers, some physicists.  A lot who reject science on ideological grounds (lots of words like "socialism").  I haven't yet read any that refer to any valid scientific basis for their rejection, which isn't a surprise.  A few emotional responses from people who expressed much comfort in knowing there are other science deniers out there in cyberspace.

I've written more about this here and here.

Denier weirdness: a collection of alarmist predictions from WUWT and elsewhere

With the deniers at WUWT complaining about the UK Met Office (which doesn't do too badly), and Benny Peiser from the GWPF getting everyone worked up over a supposed ice age, I figured I'd see how the denier predictions stack up.

A few times a month Anthony Watts gives voice to the ice age alarmists.  They are a weird bunch.  Most deniers are of the type that fear fear but not the ice age alarmists.  They are contrarians. You may have met some of them.  First, here's Benny with some global cooling alarms.

• July 2013: Newsbytes: Sunspot Enigma – Will Inactive Sun Cause Global Cooling?
• July 2013: Newsbytes: Sun’s Bizarre Activity May Trigger Another Little Ice Age (Or Not)
• October 2011: New Climate Scare: Europe May be Facing Return Of ‘Little Ice Age’

As climate scientists will tell you, even a Grand Minimum would hardly make a dent in the global surface temperature these days.  CO2 has the world covered.  Here's a chart from realclimate.org:

Deluded Ed

There is Ed Hoskins, who thinks an ice age is coming because he reckons central England started getting cold thirteen years ago.  Why he thinks there should be an ice age based on the temperature record of central England escapes me.  In any case, he maintains central England "lost all the gains since 1850".  He is very wrong.  Only seven years ago, in 2006, central England had the hottest year in its 353 year record and in 2011 it had its second hottest year in its long record.  Nine of the ten hottest years in central England occurred in the last 23 years and seven occurred from 1995 onwards.  Just look at the chart and compare it to the temperatures of the mid-1800s.  Deluded Ed is deluded.

Data Source: UK Met Office Hadley Centre

David "funny sunny" Archibald

David Archibald is an Australian who makes the wildest claims.  He says that by 2020, Earth will become colder than it has in the entire Holocene.  Colder than the Little Ice Age.  Colder than any time in the past ten thousand years.  He is an extreme alarmist.  Here is his prediction, which he says is based on "on solar maxima of approximately 50 for solar cycles 24 and 25".

Data source: NASA and David Archibald

David is counting sunspots.  Solar cycle 24 was very weak as far as sunspots go, yet the temperature didn't drop.  Instead it kept rising.  2010 is the hottest year on record so far.  For a discussion of solar forcing, sunspots and TSI, there is a good article on skepticalscience.com.

Silly Sal

There is another regular on WUWT who goes by the name Salvatore Del Prete.  I don't think he's posted any articles yet.  He pops up frequently in the comment sections.  He predicts that before seven years is out, Earth will get colder than it has in more than half a century. Not quite as severe a drop as David "funny sunny" Archibald, but it still defies all physics, logic and reason.  Here is his alarmist prediction.

Data source: NASA

Denier Don

Don Easterbrook has been predicting cooling long before WUWT started.  He's way out in his predictions. There may well be earlier ones.  This is from 2001 in comic sans:

And from 2008 at WUWT (click for larger version):

And from 2008 again from here:

Don can't seem to get his story straight from one month to the next.

Blasts from the icy past

I found an old WUWT thread of predictions.  There are a few from some of the current regulars plus some unfamiliar names.

Pierre Gosselin says (extract - click the date to go to the full post):

October 23, 2008 at 2:03 am  -2.5°C by 2020!...My prediction is we’ve started a nasty cold period that will make the 1960s look balmy. We’re about to get caught with our pants down.  And a few molecules of CO2 is not going to change it.

This is what Pierre's prediction looks like:

This one's probably a fake denier, real deniers aren't usually this extreme, though it's hard to tell at WUWT.  SteveSadlov says:

October 24, 2008 at 10:55 am  Cooling continues into the next decade. By 2011, on average, we are back where we were in the early 1800s. The global food crises continues to worsen. The amount of viable ag land in Eurasia, particularly the interior, shrinks dramatically. As happened during the period 350 – 800 AD, this places migration and conquest pressure on the great powers who live there, especially Russia and China. They mount a general offensive, resulting in additional cooling due to the effects of WMDs used to smash Western and pro Western strategic military assets. The new Dark Age begins.

Diatribical Idiot says:

October 22, 2008 at 3:00 pm A thread after my own heart. Folly or not, prediction is what actuaries do. Why should letting a little thing like unpredictability in temperatures stand in the way of making a projection?
My methodology is based on actuarial papers, in looking at temperature as a series of values driven by constantly shifting parameters. Correlation is assumed to be driven by 132 months of historical measures.
There are 6 weighting schemes derived as follows:

See his comment for the rest, if you must.  Here is one of his predictions he linked to.  It does seem far-fetched even for an "ice age cometh"-er but a peep at his blog suggests he's the real thing:

WUWT argumentum ad ignorantiam or what a bunch of ignoramice

Anthony Watts and Bob Tisdale think that there is no movement of water in the world's oceans.  Anthony seems to think the ocean warms as if it is a single solid mass.  He thinks it warms from the top down gradually and no other way.  He cannot fathom that cold water might come up to the surface from the depths or that warm water might be drawn down to lower levels in the ocean. How do I deduce this?  Because Anthony asks:

How does that heat get to the deep ocean hidey hole, down to 2000 meters, without first warming the upper 700 meters in transit? That’s some neat trick.

I'd say he's built a strawman.  Here is a chart of ocean temperatures to different depths over time:

Data source: NODC/NOAA

So for starters, the oceans' top layer is warmer than deeper layers overall.  No surprises there.  Next thing to note is that the ocean is heating up at depth as well, right down to the two kilometres deep layer as has been discussed in recent published papers, like Nuccitelli et al (2012) and Balmaseda et al (2013)

Another funny thing, not so much for Anthony Watts, we know he knows nothing.  But Bob Tisdale keeps boasting about how he knows the ocean inside out and upside down.  Yet he writes this, and Anthony quotes him:

Can well-mixed human-created greenhouse gases pick and choose between the hemispheres, warming one but not the other? One might think that’s very unlikely.

Why is that unlikely?  What rule is there that says that all over the world has to warm at the same rate all at once?  Why wouldn't oceans in particular heat or cool at different rates at different times?  The land does, why not the oceans?

The weird thing is that it's only a few hours since Anthony posted an article about how the Indian Ocean didn't warm up as quickly as others until recently, most probably because of aerosols.  Makes you wonder if he ever reads anything he posts or if he just copies and pastes without reading the stuff.

Here is a chart showing the changes over time in the vertical mean temperature of the different oceans to 2000 metres:

Data source: NODC/NOAA

And here's a chart of the ocean temperature changes over time between the northern and southern hemispheres, again to 2000 metres:

Data source: NODC/NOAA

If you go to WUWT (no need really), you'll see that Anthony has focused on only the past few years, from around 2005 and is looking at changes in ocean heat content, not temperature.  So let's consider that, except we'll look at all the available data, not just the past few years.

Data source: NODC/NOAA

There is only data to depth for the last few years, but there is a lot more data for 0-700 metres.

How does the heat move around in the ocean?  I come across terms like meridonial overturning circulation - where meridonial denotes north-south and overturning denotes surface-depth.  Water in the ocean moves around all the time.  The ocean isn't all the same temperature.  Parts are warmer than others, which is obvious to all but people like Anthony Watts and Bob Tisdale apparently.  (Have they ever wondered how sea ice forms do you think?  Have they ever been swimming in the sea or a river or a lake and noticed how the temperature can change, even at depth?)

Finally, here is one more chart, from Nuccitelli et al (2012) showing where the heat is going:

Data Source: Nuccitelli et al (2012)

A sample from WUWT denialati comments

Eustace Cranch takes 27 words to ask:

July 24, 2013 at 8:17 am  Sorry for the scream, but: again and again, WHAT IS THE MECHANISM? What told the heat to hide? In 50 words or less of plain English, please.

David Becker, another fake skeptic, doesn't query what the deniers write but says:

July 24, 2013 at 8:34 am  Just out of curiosity, why did this process (energy going into the deep ocean) not occur from 1970 to 1996? Does it just occur when the solar radiance decreases (rhetorical question.) I too, wondered to many AWG supporters how the deep ocean might warm, but the surface not. This is more pathological science from very poor scientists who have a poor grasp of basic thermodynamics.

Mark isn't aware that ocean water moves up and down as well as forward and backward and says:

July 24, 2013 at 8:48 am About the only obvious mechanism for deep water to heat up is through vulcanism.

I know Jimbo doesn't keep up with the latest data and is a denier, but he's close when he says:
July 24, 2013 at 9:30 am  Bearing in mind hiding heat > thermal expansion shouldn’t we be seeing an acceleration in the rate of sea level rise?

We would see an acceleration if the oceans were heating faster (at an increasing rate, that is, accelerating) and/or ice sheets and glaciers were melting faster. Here's a chart of sea level - yep, it's rising faster:

Data Source: U Colorado

Chad Wozniak is the ultimate in denial, he says, every chance he gets:

July 24, 2013 at 9:58 am Actually, the overall cooling began in 1938 . . . it’s been going on, net, for 75+ years now . . .

This is for Chad:

Data Sources: NASA and UK Met Office Hadley Centre