WUWT tabloid science

Anthony Watts' followers at WUWT reject climate science in favour of tabloid "science".  Perennially puzzled Bob Tisdale writes (archived here):

I figured today would be a good day to post this, with David Rose’s article in the “Sunday Mail” 

Instead of looking to the IPCC for a compilation of climate science, fake skeptics go to the erudite scientific journal the Mail Online to fossick among headlines about someone's ponytail, someone else's camel toe and someone (I think it's a person) called Honey Boo Boo (click image to enlarge):

Source: MailOnline

So today, in honour of tabloid science at WUWT, HotWhopper will report in tabloid style!

Now where is that sciency article by Judith Curry's latest pin-up boy, David Rose, I wonder?  Found it! It's archived here.  Let's see what David Rose has dreamt up this time.

Jilted celebrity Arctic Ice now on the Rebound!

Here's something.  Daily Fail reports that jilted celebrity Arctic Ice, whose ratings in the last few years had gone into a nosedive, is on the rebound. David Rose reports to his devoted illiterati audience:

While 2013 remains the sixth lowest Arctic sea ice year since 1979, forthcoming research suggests the long-term melting trend is partly cyclical, and may have begun a reversal.

"This is beyond me" admits star-struck Judith Curry to her new-found idol

In other breaking news, David Rose quotes his latest tabloid darling, star-struck Judith Curry, writing:

However, not only does the report deny the importance of the pause, it makes a firm, short-term forecast that it is about to end – claiming that the period 2016-2035 will, on average, be 0.3-0.7C hotter than 1986-2005.

That, said Prof Judith Curry, head of climate science at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is a high-risk strategy: ‘The IPCC has thrown down the gauntlet.’

Should the pause continue, she said, ‘they are toast’.  

She was critical about the report’s statement that confidence humans had caused most of the warming of the 20th Century had increased from 90 per cent in the last IPCC report in 2007 to 95 per cent.

‘How they can justify this is beyond me.’

Pop star and illiterati heart-throb Judith Curry admitted to reporter David Rose "...this is beyond me". 

After some digging this reporter has discovered the "toast" Judith talks about are the world's leading climate scientists, who have been hilariously talking as if the world is going to get toasted.  However, anyone who reads the world's most viewed climate website will know that by 2020 the world will be in the depths of an ice age.  What "the toast" don't realise, which readers of Daily Fail have known for some time, is that the warming since the Little Ice Age was caused by a magical bounce, aka off with the pixies.

Daily Fail reports: Scientific experts are implausible and hilariously incoherent

There is more skulduggery as Professor Richard (deep throat) Lindzen solemnly declares "hilarious incoherence".  While business analyst Bjorn Lomborg, who has the best interest of the Daily Fail's illiterati at heart, pronounces the world's top scientific experts as being "implausible".  The Daily Fail's resident climate scientist and heart-throb David Rose agrees, pointing out that "1997 was not a hot year".  

To demonstrate just how cold it was in 1997, HotWhopper has dug up this animated chart of global surface temperatures showing just how freezing cold it was in 1997 compared to now and all the boiling hot years before 1997:

Data Source: NASA

If the freezing cold of 1997 doesn't prove to you that global warming is a giant hoax then I don't know what will convince you.  

Footnote and warning: This reporter has been informed by reliably unreliable sources that anyone who still isn't convinced of the giant hoax is at serious risk of having their membership of the illustrious organisation, the Scientific Illiterati, cancelled.

Click here for more sciency-sounding (sort of) confabulations from Daily Fail's pet Professor, Judith Curry.

It's back - WUWT is heading for an ice age

Not exactly, but the way has been paved by Paul Homewood, who usually brings updates of UK weather to WUWT.  He's shown that using RSS data and Woodfortrees the the lower troposphere as measured by RSS has cooled since 2001 therefore all the science is wrong! (archived here).

Paul didn't post this chart:

Data Source: SkepticalScience Nuccitelli et al (2012)

Or this one:

Adapted from Jos Hagelaars

But Paul did get a slew of "ice age cometh" and similar responses from the WUWT DuKEs :

Richard Hill is looking for a bet on a "new Ice Age" meme, but with what he thinks is a twist:

September 29, 2013 at 4:36 pm

Anthony, how about a bet on how soon a “new Ice Age” meme will arise?.

Just finished reading “Why the West Rules – for Now” by Ian Morris 2010. Gripping analysis of how history can be linked to archaeology to get the broad sweep. Morris shows how climate influences social development in both Asia and Europe. The response to the warm periods and cool downs are strikingly similar on both sides of Eurasia. It might have been luck that the West got past the Little Ice Age better than the East. But the threat of global cooling is real and our ability to respond to it is a worry. Morris has a chapter on future outlook but doesnt include the new ice age possibility. Maybe we are just a couple of Pinatubos away from a real bad scene.

Eric Worrall says he knows what the real threat is.  Maybe he's looking forward to chasing an antelope when it's 50º degrees (122º F) in the shade:

September 29, 2013 at 5:02 pm
Its obvious that the real threat is global cooling – shorter growing seasons, unseasonal frosts, hardship and hunger.

Humans have nothing to fear from a warmer climate, we are one of the most hot climate adapted animals on the planet. In anything except the baking tropical savannahs and jungles of our distant ancestors, we have to wear clothes to protect us from the cold.

Why are we so well adapted to the heat? It goes back to how our ancestors used to hunt. We couldn’t run faster than an antelope, but we could run further than an antelope, in hotter weather, until the antelope ran out of steam and simply lay down and died.

Other_Andy would probably swear on his mother's grave that the "long term trend is down":

September 29, 2013 at 5:39 pm
Jimbo says: What if it cools?

It is……Over the past 10,000 years the current Holocene epoch the world has cooled by about 1.0 °C. The latest ‘blip’ up might last a bit longer but the long term trend is down.

Scute says "It's not fair, I deliberately cherry picked 1997 not 1998!" - he knows little about trends:

September 29, 2013 at 5:04 pm
JJ I had just that problem yesterday in the comments on this BBC article.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24308509
I was accused of using a start date ‘around’ a high El Niño event. I had stated ’1997′ so this guy knew I was avoiding the 1998 peak in order not to cherry-pick. He still went for that knee jerk argument thinking I wouldn’t call him on it. I did.

Luke Warmist admits he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he can tell a lie as big as the next denier when he talks about "joined at the hip marching upward":

September 29, 2013 at 6:32 pm
A quick observation from a passerby. For years IPCC told us co2 and temp were joined at the hip forever marching upward on that 45 degree incline. Somehow, about 1998 the right side twin (temp) separated and went on his merry way ever so slightly rising, while co2 continued rising like a homesick angel. Now they’re trying to feed me some line about ‘total energy budget’ and ‘deep ocean below 2000m sequestration of heat’. I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I recognize what’s in the bowl they’re trying to give me ain’t food.
Regards, T.

John Mason has a message for "warmists" - it's the Little Ice Age bouncing ball meme again (excerpt):

September 29, 2013 at 7:38 pm...And if warmists see this blog post and think we don’t see the warming trend, we do and it started a couple of hundred years ago as we came out of the LIA and we have little to do with it nor little we can do about it whether nature drives the temps up or as we swing back down to the return of the ice age.

dbstealey has slipped his leash (again) calling another WUWT commenter "hater".  He reckons the Little Ice Age leprechauns have debunked the "alarmist fantasy" (aka the findings of scientific experts):

September 29, 2013 at 8:48 pm
Hater, your entire argument is based on unmeasurable assertions. That fails here at the internet’s “Best Science” site. So run along back to Pseudo-skeptical pseudo-science, they like unmeasurable assertions there.

And FYI, the planet has been warming naturally since the LIA. Doesn’t matter if CO2 is low or high, the warming is repeated exactly. Thus, the alarmist fantasy is once again debunked.

And this one is really cute.  JJ tells how fake skeptics "do it" by working backwards till they get an answer they like!  I'd have to be convinced that JJ understands the first thing about climate models.  JJ also has to fib about what the Santer et al study found (it found at least 17 years was necessary, not at most 17 years):

September 29, 2013 at 4:37 pm

“One reason is that 1998, the year invariably chosen by sceptics, was one of the warmest ever.”

Typical strawman. Skeptics don’t make the argument that they declare “invariable”.

First, we don’t start at a point in the past. Our starting point is not 1998, it is 2013. Then we see how far back we can go, and still have a trend so low that it demonstrates the lack of skill of the climate models. If temps were rising as the models had predicted, we would no be able to go back very far.

Second, we don’t end in 1998, either. Most analyses of the model-busting break in trend currently indicate ~17 years of insignificant trend. They end in 1996 or 1997 – the pre-trough or mid-rise rather than the El Nino peak in 1998. This 17 year period is longer than the NASA modelers had previously claimed was the longest period consistent with their predictions. It is as long as the period that Santer et al gave as the starting point for its soon to be continuous goal-post-moving exercise.

Manfred sees a conspiracy and says:

September 29, 2013 at 8:24 pm
According to figure 3, they used the coldest year as their start point. Any other reason for such an odd number of years like 62 ?

The answer to Manfred's question is most probably because the second half of the twentieth century started in 1951, which is 62 years ago.  Manfred is also wrong about 1951 being the coldest year.  The years 1950, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1964 and 1965 were all colder than 1951.

Data source: NASA

WUWT is on the mend - slowly

Good to see WUWT recovering (slowly) after the walloping they suffered when the IPCC SPM report was released.  They've still got a way to go before they recover fully.  The sign of full recovery will be when Anthony puts up another article by David Archibald predicting an "ice age by 2020" or sez  OMG it's insects and we should just kill off all the mammals.

The ugly side of the anti-activist misogynist at WUWT

Update: See further down in the updated WUWT archive for more insight into the mind of the extremists at WUWT. I was going to post some of the WUWT comments here, but they were too over-the-top for HotWhopper.  If you thought the survey came up with unusual results (I don't think so, myself), then you'll think that WUWT brought out off-the-charts unusual.  A veritable DuKE of Right Wing Authoritarians protecting their turf.  (The reactions here and at WUWT would themselves make an interesting study.)

DuKE: Dunning Kruger Effect (used as a collective noun)

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Anthony Watts on his blog, WUWT, has posted a (broken) link to an article on Salon.com about a study that found that people don't like environmental activists or feminists.  Not a surprising result, although of course no-one would learn anything new or adopt 'uncomfortable' behaviours (like recycling, quitting smoking etc) except for activists.  And women would still be legally the property of men if not for feminists.

Anyway, I wonder how Anthony and his followers feel about anti-activists such as Jay who says, with double full stops (archived here - latest update here):

September 29, 2013 at 9:00 am
If you have a keen eye and half a mind its pretty easy to see that environmentalism & Feminism are both hate based movements,, Ugly small minded jerks who think their ability to clear a room somehow makes them right..

Then the media & government highlight these cultist freaks, like they’re some sort of role model..

Which seeds anti media / government feelings, right into class warfare because the believers all have University degrees..

The lines are drawn and no amount of comment or follow the leader propaganda will change the fact that environmentalists / Feminists are either ignored or detested by the general public..
A socially elite group $$$ decide to bring suffering to everybody except themselves.. These swine have to coin a study to dance around their ever present hate..

There is no hope for the hopeless..

Anthony does have a knack for bringing out the ugly from the weirder of his followers.  Does he do it on purpose do you think?  (There is more where that came from.)

Update:  Interesting. More self-confessed misogynists are popping out of the woodwork.

Nigel Lawson and the GWPF is "confused and meaningless"

Credit: Tucker321

Nigel Lawson is an English politician who heads up the Global Warming Policy Foundation.  His foundation, which is funded by who knows who (probably literally), has the aim of preventing any actions to mitigate global warming.  He's getting on in years but being old doesn't explain why he couldn't give two hoots about the future of humanity.  There are plenty of old people who push for the survival of the world, not its destruction.

Yesterday he wrote an opinion piece for the Telegraph which is nonsense from one end to the other (archived here).  Richard Tol, an academic economist (and a coordinating lead author of a chapter of IPCC WGII) who advises Nigel's foundation, tweeted about it and posed the challenge to "specify the bits that are confused and meaningless". Maybe Richard advised Nigel on what to write.  One hopes not.

Here are some of the bits that are confused and meaningless.  Nigel writes:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which published on Friday the first instalment of its latest report, is a deeply discredited organisation. 

Nope.  The IPCC is not a discredited organisation, deeply or otherwise, despite the best efforts of Nigel and his cronies.  The IPCC has the support of 195 nations around the world.  That's almost 100% of the world.

Nigel continues to get it wrong, writing:

Presenting itself as the voice of science on this important issue, it is a politically motivated pressure group that brings the good name of science into disrepute.

Wrong again, Nigel.  The IPCC is apolitical, unlike your GWPF.  It is not a pressure group.  It's a small organisation that coordinates the preparation of reports about climate change.  The 195 member organisations cover the full spectrum of politics but the organisation itself is not political.

Nigel still keeps going from wrong to wronger, writing:

Its previous report, in 2007, was so grotesquely flawed that the leading scientific body in the United States, the InterAcademy Council, decided that an investigation was warranted. The IAC duly reported in 2010, and concluded that there were “significant shortcomings in each major step of [the] IPCC’s assessment process”, and that “significant improvements” were needed. It also chastised the IPCC for claiming to have “high confidence in some statements for which there is little evidence”.

There is no-one, apart from Nigel, who thinks the 2007 report was "flawed" let alone grotesquely flawed.  In fact the IPCC was awarded a Nobel Prize for its contribution to the world.  Nobel Prizes are not handed out for "grotesquely flawed" reports.

Nigel then proceeds to misquote the IAC, which did a review of the IPCC - at the request of the IPCC I should add.  Nigel deliberately leaves out the crucial first part of a sentence in order to change its meaning.  There is a vast difference in meaning between: significant shortcomings in each major step of [the] IPCC’s assessment process and

This chapter identifies and recommends ways to address the most significant shortcomings in each major step of IPCC’s assessment process, based on the Committee’s analysis of current IPCC practices, of the literature on assessments, and community input.

The latter is about identifying which shortcomings are the most significant.  It does not imply that there were significant shortcomings in the manner implied by Nigel.

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Update: As Marco notes in the comments, Nigel Lawson is wrong on another count.  The IAC is not the 'leading scientific body in the United States', it is an international organisation created by "all of the world's science academies...to mobilize the best scientists and engineers worldwide to provide high quality advice to international bodies - such as the United Nations and the World Bank - as well as to other institutions."

Its co-Chairs are from Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. You can see the IAC Board members here.  Nigel Lawson also neglected to observe this recent statement from the IAC congratulating the IPCC:

By again bringing together so many experts from across the globe to synthesize current scientific understanding of climate change, the IPCC has demonstrated its on-going value to society. The InterAcademy Council (IAC) congratulates the IPCC on this accomplishment and expresses its gratitude to the hundreds of experts from developed and developing countries alike who volunteered their time and knowledge to this unique scientific endeavour. Their effort provides a scientific basis for decisions that policymakers around the world are making about how best to mitigate and adapt to climate change -- one of the most critical challenges facing humankind.

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Nigel digs in deeper, invoking the "CO2 is plant food" denier meme.  That is an indicator of the depth of his denial.

He then goes on to write:

... as long ago as 2009, the IPCC chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri – who is a railway engineer and economist by training, not a scientist, let alone a climate scientist – predicted that “when the IPCC’s fifth assessment comes out in 2013 or 2014, there will be a major revival of interest in action that has to be taken. People are going to say: 'My God, we are going to have to take action much faster than we had planned.’” This was well before the scientific investigation on which the latest report is allegedly based had even begun. So much for the scientific method.

Two can play that game of "he's not qualified".  Dr Pachauri has headed up an R&D institute for many decades and is eminently qualified to chair the IPCC.  On the other hand, Nigel is just a politician, economist and treasurer of mixed success, who presumably (based on his "CO2 is plant food" throwaway) doesn't know the first thing about any physical or biological science.  Funnily enough, further in his article, Nigel touts a book he says he's written on global warming.  He's no scientist - what does he know about the subject?  Nothing, nada, zilch!

When he claims that "this was well before the scientific investigation...had even begun" he's woefully wrong.  Not only had scientific investigation already begun in 2009, but much of the research embodied in the current report was well underway and some of it had no doubt been completed.

Nigel's lack of knowledge about the earth system is further exemplified when he writes:

That is that global warming appears to have ceased: there has been no increase in officially recorded global mean temperature for the past 15 years. 

He's flat out wrong.  The "officially recorded" global mean surface temperature hit a maximum in 2010 - that's not even three years ago, let alone fifteen years ago.  Not only that but there has been an "officially recorded" increase in the heat in the oceans - down to two kilometres deep.  So he's doubly wrong.

Data Source: SkepticalScience Nuccitelli et al (2012)

Now for Nigel's mumbo jumbo:

This is not science: it is mumbo-jumbo. Neither the 90 per cent nor the 95 per cent have any objective scientific basis: they are simply numbers plucked from the air for the benefit of credulous politicians and journalists.

Nigel discounts the science because it doesn't suit his agenda.  He doesn't want the world to take any action to mitigate global warming so he comes up with a lot of mumbo jumbo to try to justify his appalling stance.  He wants the world to continue on a trajectory to six degrees of warming or worse.  He can't wait for the seas to rise one, two or six metres.  Well, he'll be dead and gone well before that happens.  But the young people today will be alive to see some of it if people like Nigel get their way.

Inconsistently, Nigel writes:

What we should emphatically not do is what Dr Pachauri, Lord Stern and that gang are calling for and decarbonise the global economy by phasing out fossil fuels.

Before the industrial revolution mankind relied for its energy on beasts of burden and wind power. The industrial revolution, and the enormous increase in prosperity it brought with it, was possible only because the West abandoned wind power and embraced fossil fuels. We are now – unbelievably – being told that we must abandon relatively cheap and highly reliable fossil fuels, and move back to wind power, which is both unreliable and hugely costly.

What he is arguing is change in the past meant prosperity but now we've got to remain stuck in the past.  That's hugely inconsistent.  He argues that in the past innovation brought good things but now the world has to stop innovating.  What a Luddite!  To continue to shift to clean energy is the only way the world has any hope of remaining prosperous.  It's probably the only way that society will survive in the future.  As for his equating modern wind turbines with old-fashioned windmills, who does he take us for?


Then Nigel goes for what is arguably the second last refuge of the scoundrel, pretending to care for developing countries.  As if!  All he cares about is maintaining what he sees as the status quo.  He wants to sell dirty coal to poorer nations so they will make cheap toys for him and his mates, while they suffer all the ills that dirty energy brings.  What he should be advocating is that developing nations bypass the pollution and filth that England and other nations suffered when they began burning coal, and invest in clean energy solutions.  Not only will that limit the damage from global warming, it will limit the huge cost of pollution and adverse health effects that go with dirty energy.

Hopefully the world won't take any notice of villains like Nigel Lawson.  He had his moment of glory many years ago.  Now he's acting like a clown.  If he's remembered in history books of the future, I hope it's for his current activities and not his past activities so that people will not repeat his sins.

Empty vessel Judith Curry wants to stop the public learning about climate change

Judith Curry is jealous of earth system modelers and the IPCC.  Her latest confabulation starts with this (archived here):

Diagnosis: paradigm paralysis, caused by motivated reasoning, oversimplification, and consensus seeking; worsened and made permanent by a vicious positive feedback effect at the climate science-policy interface.

In a previous post, I discussed the IPCC’s diagnosis of a planetary fever and their prescription for planet Earth.  In this post, I provide a diagnosis and prescription for the IPCC.

As William Connolley points out, in her previous post that she links to (archived here) "there is no IPCC diagnosis in there at all; and no IPCC prescription".  She doesn't discuss "the IPCC's diagnosis of a planetary fever and their prescription for planet Earth".  Instead it's a copy and paste from Joe Romm's ClimateProgress and another from The Onion.

In her latest waffle (archived here), Judith is trying to argue that climate models haven't improved.  She's wrong. They have, with each new generation.  She says climate models need to be ditched and replaced with ...errr...climate models.  And she says that the IPCC needs to be ditched, presumably so that policy makers can be free to develop policy without being constrained by unpalatable facts.

On resource allocation

Judith misrepresents earth system research writing that most resources have been allocated to climate projections:

Specifically with regards to climate research, for the past decade most of the resources have been expended on providing projections of future climate change using complex Earth system models, assessing and interpreting the output of climate models, and application of the output of climate models by the climate impacts community.

Most of the resources? That's got to be wrong.  Think of all the resources that go into scientific research in Antarctica and the Arctic (people, equipment, vessels, aircraft, infrastructure).  What about the cost of satellites that monitor the earth?  What about all the Argo buoys? What about oceanography and glaciology? These are all big ticket items.

The IPCC reports themselves suggest that Judith is wrong about the allocation of resources.  If you read the latest IPCC Summary for Policy Makers, then you'll see that the discussion of future expectations doesn't start until page SPM-14 out of 21 pages.  The first seven and a bit pages are devoted to observed changes, the next seven or so pages to drivers of climate change and understanding of observed recent changes, and the final seven pages to future global and regional climate change. And I doubt that reflects the resource allocation, which is more likely to be weighted to the science underpinning the earlier sections.  An understanding of distant past and recent changes is essential to determining what the future will bring.

Naturally, policy makers are more concerned with the future than the past.  It's too late to make policies for the past!  They need an understanding of the past so as to better prepare for the future.

Judith also implies that policy makers at the local level aren't doing anything to address climate change. She's wrong.  Local authorities are addressing the issue of rising sea levels, water scarcity, flood mitigation and more.  Building codes are being amended to allow for more intense rain.  Planning schemes are being changed to allow for rising seas and more frequent floods.  Bridges are being rebuilt to different specifications after being torn down by flash floods.  Port authorities are redesigning jetties for higher sea levels.

In the midst of her mixed up article, she makes a transparent sales pitch for her own commercial models, which don't project ahead longer than weeks or months, writing:

Further, increased scientific focus on subseasonal (weeks) and seasonal (months) weather/climate forecasts could produce the basis for tactical adaptation practices with substantial societal benefits.

"Tactical adaptation strategies" - yeah, right.  Yes, if there's going to be a drought for the next five years I want to know about it.  But weeks or months ahead won't tell me that.  And I'm not so concerned about whether next winter is going to be colder or less cold as I am about whether my great nieces will have to survive a world with a one or a two metre sea level rise.

I find this sentence particularly odd.  Judith writes:

As a result, we’ve lost a generation of climate dynamicists, who have been focused on climate models rather than on climate dynamics and theory that is needed to understand the effects of the sun on climate, the network of natural internal variability on multiple time scales, the mathematics of extreme events, and predictability of a complex system characterized by spatio-temporal chaos. 

What does she think that all the various climate and earth system models do now? That's exactly what they do.  And how does she propose to "understand the effects" without models?  Paper, quill and abacus perhaps?  Maybe not.  She says she wants climate models replaced with climate models:

New structural forms are needed for climate models that are capable of simulating the natural internal variability of the coupled ocean-atmosphere system on timescales from days to millennia and that can accurately account for the fast thermodynamic feedback processes associated with clouds and water vapor.

She can take her pick of timescales - either days or millenia.  She won't get both in the one model from what I know of climate models.  There are currently models for forecasting the atmosphere on a day by day basis (used by weather bureaux) and those that project decades, centuries and millennia used for better understanding the various elements of the earth system and making medium to long term projections.  The latter will simulate on timescales from days to millennia but as far as projections go they are designed for climate timescales, not short term weather forecasts.

"No more climate information" pleads Judith Curry

Finally she gets down to the nitty gritty.  Judith doesn't want anyone to report the science to government or the general public.  She writes:

The IPCC needs to get out of the way so that scientists and policy makers can better do their jobs.

What jobs would that be?  In regard to climate, scientists who aren't wasting time blogging disinformation are getting on with things and doing their job.  Policy makers want information from science and decided long ago that they would set up the IPCC to inform them about the science.  Does she want 195 governments to have to each set up their own mini-IPCC to inform them about the science?  That would be dreadfully inefficient to my way of thinking and leave them open to the risk of misinterpreting the science.  It would have the added risk that when governments came together to agree global strategies, they'd each be working from incomplete and most probably different information bases.

The disinformers

There are a handful of professional scientists whose hobby is to tell lies or spread disinformation about science to anyone who'll listen. They're driven by different forces - chasing fleeting fame, money, peer group pressure, wishful thinking or because their religion dictates. Even if I were to include the full time professional disinformers, it's still only a tiny percentage of the world's climate scientists and probably fewer than would be expected, given human nature.

Judith Curry has come out of the closet and is now a full-on science disinformer. She is, to use her own words, a wicked problem. If one were to analyse her words to the media or on her blog one would find 90% empty rhetoric and 80% to 100% disinformation (high confidence).

She comes across to me as someone who regrets the academic path she chose and is jealous of her more successful colleagues.  She has a really big chip on her shoulder.

When will she start using her blog for science?  When will she use her blog to write about her own research? Is what she has found out about climate so irrelevant that she can't write about it?

What gets me is the number of people who encourage her who should be able to see her for what she is. Some of them even idolise her for "speaking out"!  I'm not talking about all the other denier fans she has.  I'm talking about people who should know better.  People who otherwise seem to have some understanding of climate science.  People who can't see that she's just another empty vessel shouting meaningless platitudes.  For example (archived here):

R. Gates aka Skeptical Warmist | September 28, 2013 at 12:56 pm | Reply

Judith,
One thing is certain– you will either be very well known for someone who played a key role in putting the ship of climate science back on a true course or a rouge wave that will be remembered more as a curious phenomenon. Either way, you certainly show boldness and conviction and have put your ultimate legacy on the line, which I can admire regardless of future historical accounting of your efforts and impact.

Boldness and conviction my foot!  Judith Curry is nothing but an also-ran science disinformer chasing fame.

Anthony Watts is disconnected from climate reality

Anthony Watts, blogger at WUWT, writes with sublime confidence in true denier fashion (archived here):

There’s simply no connection between droughts, hurricanes, thunderstorms, flash floods, tornadoes and “climate change”. Note to Brad Johnson of “Forecast the Facts”, and Bill McKibben of 350.org, both of whom daily try to link weather events to climate change: IPCC says STFU.

Connecting weather and climate change

Anthony Watts is wrong.  There is a most definite connection between global warming and all weather events.  How can there not be.  More energy in the troposphere on the land and in the oceans has to affect the weather. The connections have been identified in Table SPM.1 of the AR5 SPM as follows:

• Drought - Increases in intensity and/or duration of drought are likely (medium confidence) on a regional to global scale. Regional to global-scale projected decreases in soil moisture and increased agricultural drought are likely (medium confidence) in presently dry regions by the end of this century under the RCP8.5 scenario. Soil moisture drying in the Mediterranean, Southwest US and southern African regions is consistent with projected changes in Hadley circulation and increased surface temperatures, so there is high confidence in likely surface drying in these regions by the end of this century under the RCP8.5 scenario.
• Hurricanes - Increases in intense tropical cyclone activity. More likely than not in the Western North Pacific and North Atlantic - based on expert judgment and assessment of projections which use an SRES A1B (or similar) scenario.  
• Flash floods - Heavy precipitation events. Increase in the frequency, intensity, and/or amount of heavy precipitation. Likely over many land areas early this century. Very likely over most of the mid-latitude land masses and over wet tropical regions later this century. 

The following two aren't in Table SPM.1 and I'm not sure why Anthony included them.

• Thunderstorms - why Anthony mentioned thunderstorms is anyone's guess.  Thunder is the noise made when there are massive electrical discharges.  I don't know if there will be more electrical discharges in the atmosphere or not.  Anyone know?
• Tornadoes - AFAIK the jury is still out.

One item Anthony missed is rising seas, which will exacerbate the impact of storms and cyclones that hit coastal areas.  The IPCC report says of sea levels:

Increased incidence and/or magnitude of extreme high sea level is likely early this century and very likely later this century. There is high confidence that this increase in extreme high sea level will primarily be the result of an increase in mean sea level. There is low confidence in region-specific projections of storminess and associated storm surges.

What does Anthony think climate change means?  It means changing climates - duh!

Richard Lindzen - denier weirdness

People have wondered how Richard Lindzen, who is still AFAIK associated with one of the world's most prestigious institutions, MIT, could turn into such a raving ratbag.  He gave a quote to Marc Morano at ClimateDepot, which Anthony Watts reposted at WUWT (archived here in the same article).  I don't think it was picked up by the mainstream media, which is hardly surprising.  Here's an excerpt:

Finally, in attributing warming to man, they fail to point out that the warming has been small, and totally consistent with there being nothing to be alarmed about.  It is quite amazing to see the contortions the IPCC has to go through in order to keep the international climate agenda going

Of course they "fail to point out" that warming has been small.  It hasn't been small.  It's been extremely fast. Most probably faster than any human has ever seen since humans first evolved.  And it's going to get worse.  It's definitely something to be alarmed about.  From Stanford University (excerpt):

The planet is undergoing one of the largest changes in climate since the dinosaurs went extinct. But what might be even more troubling for humans, plants and animals is the speed of the change. Stanford climate scientists warn that the likely rate of change over the next century will be at least 10 times quicker than any climate shift in the past 65 million years.

If the trend continues at its current rapid pace, it will place significant stress on terrestrial ecosystems around the world, and many species will need to make behavioral, evolutionary or geographic adaptations to survive.

From the WUWT comments

Leon0112 doesn't know that surface temperatures have already risen a lot, or that a hotter surface and warmer oceans are not incompatible. On the contrary, they are expected.  He says:

September 28, 2013 at 7:08 am
In previous reports, the IPCC asserted that it was settled science that increasing CO2 levels caused increasing surface temperatures. Now, the IPCC asserts that the heat is hiding in the ocean. This is an implicit admission that previous settled science was wrong.

gopal panicker is a simple, straightforward denier and says:

September 28, 2013 at 6:50 am
the whole ‘report’ is bullshit

Peter Miller uses fancier words to express his denial and says:

September 28, 2013 at 8:14 am
We must never forget the grim truth that the IPCC, like all quasi-government bureaucracies, is primarily interested in its own perpetuation. Everything else is a secondary consideration.
George Orwell would be proud of the IPCC and the way it portrays the ‘facts’ about climate.

Fake sceptics have nothing to latch onto given the greater certainty from IPCC

The IPCC AR5 SPM has been reported fairly well in the mainstream media with headlines like the following:

• Australia has 'much to lose' from climate change Sydney Morning Herald
• IPCC climate change report: Human role in global warming now even clearer ABC Online
• Govt pressured to make deeper CO2 cuts Sydney Morning Herald
• Government accepts climate report but declares carbon tax was ‘wrong policy’ Herald Sun, Australia
• U.N. Affirms Human Role in Global Warming The Wall Street Journal
• Science solid on global warming, IPCC declares The Australian
• Global warming 'extremely likely' man-made: IPCC The Australian
• Coalition urged to raise emissions reduction target in wake of IPCC report The Guardian
• IPCC climate report: humans 'dominant cause' of warming BBC
• Human influence on climate change a ‘clarion call’ to global community Irish Times
• Scientists more convinced mankind is main cause of warming Reuters
• IPCC: Global warming is getting deeper The Telegraph
• Climate Change Report “Gives No Reason for Optimism” News International
• Climate panel forecast: Higher seas, temperatures The Seattle Times
• UN panel says humans causing global warming Bangkok Post
• IPCC report: The financial markets are the only hope in the race to stop global warming The Independent
• UN panel's climate report sparks concern AFP
• Around the world, strong reactions to climate-change report Globe and Mail
• An 'alarm clock moment' for the world: IPCC SBS
• Climate change scientists 'unequivocal' in blaming man Herald Scotland
• UN panel 95% sure humans causing global warming Economic Times

There are very few articles still attempting to deny climate science.  And those that do misrepresent it.  There are very few denier articles outside of denier blogs and opinion pieces in right wing rags.

We're heading for hot!

One denier, Michael Barrone penned The Great Global-Warming Disappointment for the National Review Online (archived here), in which he wrote at length about a cult called the Millerites, Jesus and religion.  It was difficult to work out what he was trying to say.  He quoted from other science deniers like Matt Ridley to bolster whatever argument he thought he was making, writing:

“The big news,” Ridley writes, “is that, for the first time since these reports started coming out in 1990, the new one dials back the alarm. It states that the temperature rise we can expect as a result of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide is lower than the IPCC thought in 2007.”

How Ridley came to that conclusion is perplexing.  The IPCC does not say that.  What it does do is provide a wider estimated range for climate sensitivity.  The higher estimate remains at 4.5 degrees (my bold italics):

The equilibrium climate sensitivity quantifies the response of the climate system to constant radiative forcing on multi-century time scales. It is defined as the change in global mean surface temperature at equilibrium that is caused by a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration. Equilibrium climate sensitivity is likely in the range 1.5°C to 4.5°C (high confidence), extremely unlikely less than 1°C (high confidence), and very unlikely greater than 6°C (medium confidence)16. The lower temperature limit of the assessed likely range is thus less than the 2°C in the AR4, but the upper limit is the same. This assessment reflects improved understanding, the extended temperature record in the atmosphere and ocean, and new estimates of radiative forcing.

Compare this with AR4 Summary for Policy Makers:

Progress since the TAR enables an assessment that climate sensitivity is likely to be in the range of 2 to 4.5°C with a best estimate of about 3°C, and is very unlikely to be less than 1.5°C. Values substantially higher than 4.5°C cannot be excluded, but agreement of models with observations is not as good for those values. {WGI 8.6, 9.6, Box 10.2, SPM}

Scientists are conservative.  However, the fact that the IPCC has high confidence that it's "extremely unlikely" to be less than 1°C and has only medium confidence that it's "very unlikely" to be higher than 6°C  in the top end of the range is not cause for celebration.  Regardless, if we listened to the Matt Ridley's of the world we'd overshoot the doubling way before the end of this century, so we could be looking at very rapid climate change in only a few decades leading to severe climate change over coming centuries.

That's on the millenial time frame, what about the near term.  Here is what the report states:

The transient climate response quantifies the response of the climate system to an increasing radiative forcing on a decadal to century timescale. It is defined as the change in global mean surface temperature at the time when the atmospheric CO2 concentration has doubled in a scenario of concentration increasing at 1% per year. The transient climate response is likely in the range of 1.0°C to 2.5°C (high confidence) and extremely unlikely greater than 3°C.

So this century if we continue on our current emissions path, we would be looking at a rise greater than 2.5°C, and 2°C is considered the upper safe limit!

The Daily Mail is wrong, again!

The Daily Mail lives up to its reputation as a denier tabloid with a mix of fact and fiction.  Fiona Macrae writes (archived here):

Climate change scientists warned yesterday that the Earth is set for more heatwaves, floods, droughts and rising sea levels that could swamp coasts and low-lying islands as greenhouse gases build up in the atmosphere.

But despite these dire predictions, they admitted global warming is likely to be more gradual than they previously thought and that world temperatures have barely changed in the past 15 years.

I looked through the report but could find no "admission" that global warming is likely to be more gradual than previously thought.  On the contrary, what I found was examples that things could be worse, for example estimates of sea level by the end of 2100 could be almost half a metre higher than "previously thought".


There is more to write about denier's thrashing about with nothing to focus their denial upon.  But I've got to go out for a bit.  Back later.  Feel free to add more silliness from deniers in the comments.

IPCC: reaction from fake sceptics. Another "science is wrong because they got tired" protest from WUWT!

Anthony Watts' biggest protest at the new AR5 IPCC Summary for Policy Makers is his repetition of two tweets from the Vice-chair of the IPCC.  At the IPCC meeting this week, scientists were working around the clock to make sure the Summary for Policy Makers was finished on schedule.  Anthony Watts sez that means "all the world's top scientists are wrong" or similar.

Nowhere does he mention the 9,000 plus scientific papers that formed the basis of this latest report.  He is not very interested in what the science finds.  He is much more concerned to try to keep up his end of his bargain to be a Merchant of Doubt.

Anthony's dismally weak protests at this latest and most rigorous compilation of climate science so far consists of his own assertion that they "blew it", without saying why or how he thinks they "blew it" except maybe for this list of non-bulleted bullet points in his sticky post (archived here):

• two tweets from the IPCC Vice-Chair sending then apologising for and correcting a mis-typed link,
• the fact that the IPCC report did not specify a best estimate for climate sensitivity,
• a denialist blogger writing that the AR5 report didn't say what he wanted - a line by line comparison with AR4 (maybe he can do one, using this article to help him)
• various other denialist bloggers like Donna Laframboise and Judith Curry hand-waving vagueness without any substance at all
• still other deniers like Perennially Puzzled Bob Tisdale telling big fat lies about climate models
• meaningless comments from WUWT readers, eg "Let’s all hope this is the last IPCC report. There is nothing useful here."
• Denialist duo Pat 'n Chip boasting they will be denying science in every right wing rag that will publish their rubbish
• An opinion piece on FoxNews.com by another denier who I haven't heard of before, Marlo Lewis and who is probably this Marlo Lewis, The Dirty Energy Industry’s Best Friend, from the pro-tobacco anti-science lobby group, the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
• A weak protest from blogging denialist scientist Roy Spencer
• A strongly worded emotional article, devoid of facts, from another science-denying blogger Pierre "ice age" Gosselin.

What the science says and what it means for society

Anthony did decide to cover other bases by providing links to articles that explain the science or take it further, such as:

• An Associated Press article by Karl Ritter and Seth Borenstein, published on FoxNews and elsewhere
• A Stefan Rahmstorff article on realclimate.org (a good read which hits on some of the main points)
• A blog article by Simon Donner, Professor at the University of British Columbia, discussing recent global surface temperatures
• An article by Brenda Ekwurzel, climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, discussing recent climate change indicators
• An article by Brian Walsh at Time magazine - though Anthony linked to that article via another denialist blogger.

From the WUWT comments

None of the 239 commenters have pointed to any error in the science, but they sure don't like what they read (or probably for the most part haven't read).  They are as "all over the place" as Anthony Watts and other fake sceptics.  There's a new commenter called Grey Oz who's so far been allowed to comment about the science - so that the WUWT lynch mob have someone to attack, no doubt. (Comments are archived here with the main WUWT article.)

Other_Andy says:

September 27, 2013 at 10:16 pm
“Burning fossil fuels creates C02. Increasing C02 in an atmosphere traps in heat. No scientists dispute this. It is the increasing heat, i.e., temperature that will make the environment inhospitable to life on Earth.”

And that’s why planet Earth burned to a crisp during the Late Ordovician Period when CO2 concentrations were nearly 12 times higher than today.

We are now living in Oz’ alternate universe.

Actually it was most probably a glacial event that played a big role in part of the second biggest extinction in the history of earth at the end of the Ordovician period.  From Wikipedia "a significant and rapid draw down of CO2...coincided with a rapid and short ice age".


RACookPE1978 subscribes to the world's most improbable and impossible paranoid conspiracy theory and says:

September 27, 2013 at 5:40 pm

Grey Oz says: September 27, 2013 at 4:55 pm …. And if it’s so debunked, why aren’t the world’s scientists on it?

Because the world’s climate so-called scientists are being paid billions of dollars to make CO2 and CAGW the propaganda campaign that it started as, stayed, and will likely remain until those so-called scientists stop denying the science and the measurements. Governments program their money to support the agencies and the scientists and the research that will provide those governments the answers they want and the taxes they are desperate for.

fobdangerclose might be a Poe or trying for the "Guinnes Book of dumb" (sic) or might be a sign of WUWT to come when he says:

September 27, 2013 at 5:22 pm
We have a 70% chance for rain tomorrow, 90% Sat. nite and Sunday. So had to take off a few and get all the epuipment in out of the dreaded CO2 and acid rain that Al Gore makes when he sweats to much. Now that I am back and have reviewed Grey Oz’s post it seems he came here to get baned and make screen shots of said baning to use aginst this blog. It can not be that any one is this uninformed. So be careful of this one. Now if it is this dumb it may set a record for the Guinnes Book of dumb.

Maybe it is a sign of the future quality of WUWT - here is another of similar "mindless ignorant" quality from tonys who says:

September 27, 2013 at 4:03 pm
greyoz..dead parrot squawking..greenhouse effect,the cornerstone of the IPCC’S CONJECTURE IS FICTION..as it violates 2 nd L.O.T….a cold upper atmosphere cannot transfer heat to a lower warmer one…also c02 is not pollution,,there is no problem to solve or money to spend
billions spent…nothing to show and you squawk about “doing something”
yet ,real people ,crying out for help with food/shelter/homes..
are bypassed and the money handed out for more research…more whatever
mindless ignorant..are you able to think for yourself?

WUWT deniers prediction: John Cook will become the Chair of the IPCC

Eugene WR Gallun holds SkepticalScience's John Cook in very high regard, he says:

September 27, 2013 at 4:58 pm
i read somewhere that Pachauri will soon leave his position as head of the IPCC. Dishonest yes, but Pachauri is no fool. The jig is up and he knows it. He is looking for a soft landing.
To accomplish that, before he goes, he will have to set someone up as his “fall guy” — someone to take over as head of the IPCC who will be so loud mouthed and obtusely committed to ACGW (not to mention “serially dishonest”) that he will become the center of all attention and Pachauri can, like an old soldier, “just fade away”.

The ideal person who meets Pachauri’s needs comes to mind immediately — John Cook-The-Books of Skeptical Science. Can anyone think of a more appropriate person to head the IPCC than John Cook-The-Books? And dimwit that he is John Cook-The-Books will think he is being honored.

Eugene WR Gallun

He's not the only one.  Billy Liar says:

September 27, 2013 at 10:07 am
I predict that AR6 will find the IPCC, led by Professor John Cook, is 97% confident that climate change is caused by humans..

"Popularity" of IPCC report on climate change

One of the arguments put up by science deniers is that "no-one cares".  For example on WUWT today (archived here) M Courtney says:

September 27, 2013 at 5:19 am
Pointman’s comment was interesting. I looked at the BBC News website for their post Most Popular news stories at 13:13 today. The end of the world was only number 6.

1: Kanye West angry at Radio 1 parody
2: Goodbye, US passport
3: Two plead not guilty to Rigby murder
4: The man who may have saved the world
5: Cameron says no to Salmond TV debate
6: Global warming now ‘unequivocal’
7: Spain to consider time zone change
8: Quiz of the week’s news
9: Is Breaking Bad’s Walter White one of TV’s truly evil characters?
10: New Syria chemical attacks probed

No-one cares anymore…

Here is the "popularity" or prominence now on various news sites:


BBC most shared items:

The IPCC report is the second most shared item, but only the fifth most read (so far).

Sky News Australia

I couldn't find a "most read" but the IPCC report is ranked No. 1 of its Top Stories, with the early start to the fire season in NSW ranked No. 6. (Click image for larger view.)

UK Telegraph

The actual news item is Ranked No. 1 in the Most Viewed, while Delingpole's denial is the Most Commented.

The Age, Australia

The IPCC reports are the top four most popular items in the Melbourne Age.

Wall Street Journal

The IPCC report ranks as the fourth most popular item in the WSJ.

The New York Times
Justin Gillis' article is on page 1 today, but doesn't make the grade (yet) in terms of popularity.

The Mail - home of tabloid writer David Rose:

Contrast the above with the most read items at the home of denialist David Rose.  Today's science denier for the Mail is Ellie Zolfagharifard, with an article playing down and misrepresenting the IPCC report.

The latest climate science from the IPCC and some early reactions

The summary report for policy makers from the latest IPCC Working Group 1 report was released a few hours ago, at 10:00 am this morning Stockholm time.  For the last five days the IPCC has been meeting to consider and finalise the draft report.  By all accounts it was a mammoth session, with participants working around the clock.  If nothing else, it shows that all the participants took the summary report very seriously.

I watched the live telecast and have skimmed the Summary for Policy Makers.  It's only 36 pages from beginning to the figures and tables at the end.

David Rose asks an "ill-posed question", from a scientific point of view

During the telecast, tabloid writer David Rose asked a question and was told by Michel Jarraud of the WMO that from a scientific point of view it was "an ill-posed question" based on a misunderstanding of how models work.  Good for Michel Jarraud!

How much more can we burn?

One figure that stood out was a plot of temperature against cumulative CO2 and cumulative carbon.  I was going to include the full caption but it's long.  Scientists don't make things simple to follow, do they.  You can read the caption at the top of page SPM-20 here. Click image for larger version.

Figure SPM.10: Global mean surface temperature increase as a function of cumulative total global CO2 emissions from various lines of evidence. 

The thing I like is that it shows our choices in terms of a carbon budget.  If we are happy to send humanity to a dreadful future we can decide to keep burning carbon.  If we want to opt to give future generations a reasonable hope of continuing civilisation, then we will set a budget limit.  From what I can work out that limit will need to be at around 800 Gt of carbon (GtC is shown on the bottom horizontal scale).  I've overlaid lines showing the 2 degree mark and the 800 Gt mark.  The report states:

Limiting the warming caused by anthropogenic CO2 emissions alone with a probability of >33%, >50%, and >66% to less than 2°C since the period 1861–188022, will require cumulative CO2 emissions from all anthropogenic sources to stay between 0 and about 1560 GtC, 0 and about 1210 GtC, and 0 and about 1000 GtC since that period respectively23. These upper amounts are reduced to about 880 GtC, 840 GtC, and 800 GtC respectively, when accounting for non-CO2 forcings as in RCP2.6. An amount of 531 [446 to 616] GtC, was already emitted by 2011. {12.5}

I think that translates to - don't burn any more than 800 Gt of carbon if you want to leave any sort of future for humankind.

IPCC Headline Statements

There are the nineteen headline statements from the approved Summary for Policy Makers (my bold italics).  It seems to me that they are more forceful than were previous reports.  I won't list the lot - you can read them all here in a separate document or as part of the SPM itself.  I'll just list a few of them:

• Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased. 
• Ocean warming dominates the increase in energy stored in the climate system, accounting for more than 90% of the energy accumulated between 1971 and 2010 (high confidence). It is virtually certain that the upper ocean (0−700 m) warmed from 1971 to 2010, and it likely warmed between the 1870s and 1971. 
• Over the last two decades, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have been losing mass, glaciers have continued to shrink almost worldwide, and Arctic sea ice and Northern Hemisphere spring snow cover have continued to decrease in extent (high confidence). 
• The atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and nitrous oxide have increased to levels unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years. CO2 concentrations have increased by 40% since pre-industrial times, primarily from fossil fuel emissions and secondarily from net land use change emissions. The ocean has absorbed about 30% of the emitted anthropogenic carbon dioxide, causing ocean acidification. 
• Human influence on the climate system is clear. This is evident from the increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, positive radiative forcing, observed warming, and understanding of the climate system. 
• Climate models have improved since the AR4. Models reproduce observed continental-scale surface temperature patterns and trends over many decades, including the more rapid warming since the mid-20th century and the cooling immediately following large volcanic eruptions (very high confidence). 
• Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes in the global water cycle, in reductions in snow and ice, in global mean sea level rise, and in changes in some climate extremes. This evidence for human influence has grown since AR4. It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. 
• Continued emissions of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and changes in all components of the climate system. Limiting climate change will require substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. 
• Changes in the global water cycle in response to the warming over the 21st century will not be uniform. The contrast in precipitation between wet and dry regions and between wet and dry seasons will increase, although there may be regional exceptions. 
• The global ocean will continue to warm during the 21st century. Heat will penetrate from the surface to the deep ocean and affect ocean circulation. 
• Cumulative emissions of CO2 largely determine global mean surface warming by the late 21st century and beyond. Most aspects of climate change will persist for many centuries even if emissions of CO2 are stopped. This represents a substantial multi-century climate change commitment created by past, present and future emissions of CO2.

What the papers are saying

I went to see what the papers were saying.  The Telegraph, where denier blogger James Delingpole has a large if mainly illiterate following, wrote a fairly straight report with a couple of interesting quotes:

One delegate told the Telegraph on Thursday night: "The good news is that the Saudis are not objecting to every word like used to happen [at previous meetings].

"It is pretty tame compared to the early years of the IPCC when you used to have a real scrum between people like the Chinese, who could be quite difficult. There is no-one in there saying climate change isn't real."...

...Ed Davey, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, said solutions to the problem of man-made greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere “must be set in motion today.”
He said: “The risks and costs of doing nothing today are so great, only a deeply irresponsible government would be so negligent.

“Without urgent action to cut greenhouse gas emissions this warming will continue, with potentially dangerous impacts upon our societies and economy.”

Sky News Australia wrote a straight report with the headline: Man-made warming 'extremely likely'

Australia's Sydney Morning Herald featured a strong editorial:

The new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report should be a game-changer in how Australia tackles global warming. But it won't be - not without strong leadership from Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

Future generations will look back, see the clear evidence of human-induced climate change in this and previous IPCC reports and wonder why more wasn't done sooner to tackle the problem? They will look at the safety-first approach of the Howard Coalition government on, say, terrorism, where substantial policy, investment and cultural change was implemented to minimise that risk.

Why, they will ask, does this Abbott Coalition government at best play down the risk of global warming and at worst deny it to protect vested interests and reinforce the ideological groupthink among its cheer squad?

Read the full SMH editorial here.


The Washington Post wrote a fairly straight article, with some quotes from leaders in the USA inexplicably next to a couple from anti-science blogger, Anthony Watts, presumably to show up just what clowns the fake sceptics are.  A short excerpt (my bold italics):

In the United States, officials reacted favorably to the report. Secretary of State John Kerry said “climate change is real,” happening now, and that the United States is determined to be a leader in curbing emissions.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chair of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, called the report a landmark and said it underscores the administration’s recent efforts. “I will do everything in my power to support the administration in their efforts to address the dangerous impacts of climate disruption,” Boxer said.

Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, called the report “a warning bell to the world.” She said the impact are fierce wildfires, drought, floods and storms that will only get worse with delay. “The science is clear: We are altering the climate,” Beinecke said.

But deniers of climate change dismissed the report. Anthony Watts, a former television meteorologist who writes the blog WattsUpWithThat, called it “comical at best.”

Read the full Washington Post article here.

There's a miscellaneous collection of news items, newspaper blogs and editorials here on Google news.  Mainstream media is doing straight reporting.  I'd say if you want to read what science deniers are saying you'll have to go to their blogs, because they don't seem to be getting much airplay in the news.

What the science deniers are saying

Anthony Watts on his blog WUWT (archived here) says his first reaction was:

That IPCC had a golden opportunity, and blew it due to being unable to adapt to reality.

He didn't say what he thought the "golden opportunity" was or how the IPCC "blew it", only why.

Anthony promised a "bullet point collection" of reactions as they come in, but he left out the bullet points.  There is not a dot to be seen at WUWT.

As for reactions, Anthony did report that Judith Curry went looking through the summary report for her favourite "uncertainty".  Going by what I've read she will be certain to have found less uncertainty than was in previous IPCC reports.  Therefore it is extremely likely that Judith Curry won't be happy (high confidence).

The reaction from the rest of what Anthony has collated is predictable and boring.  The usual "I don't believe it" and "all the world's experts are wrong" mixed in with mostly non-specific grumbles and moans.

From the WUWT comments

The comments are archived here with Anthony Watts bullet-less bullet points.

Mike Bromley the Kurd says:

September 27, 2013 at 7:17 am
They just keep running for the shelter of their old pal CO2. It’s tiresome.

What is BBC Radio 4 doing talking to Bob Carter? son of mulder says:

September 27, 2013 at 5:25 am
Just heard Prof Bob Carter on BBC Radio4 World at One. Brilliant interview putting a sound sceptical perspective on the IPCC report. Well worth a listen again when it is available.

Professional science disinformer, Ross McKitrick,  is running out of gigs and is commenting on WUWT.  He also hasn't read much climate science but thinks he's being "clever" instead of wrong as usual - he says:

September 27, 2013 at 5:32 am
SPM in a nutshell: Since we started in 1990 we were right about the Arctic, wrong about the Antarctic, wrong about the tropical troposphere, wrong about the surface, wrong about hurricanes, wrong about the Himalayas, wrong about sensitivity, clueless on clouds and useless on regional trends. And on that basis we’re 95% confident we’re right.

Bill Illis resides on different planet, or so he says:

September 27, 2013 at 5:35 am
We should just be pointing out the errors now. There is no point discussing the virtual world the IPCC is talking about – they are not talking about the real planet Earth, but some virtual world, planet Nibiru in a climate model.
———-
One major graphic is clearly wrong. The observed change in temperature from 1901 to 2012 – figure SPM.1 (b), particularly the Oceans part. There has been no warming in the central Pacific but it is shown as +0.4C or so in the graphic (large parts of it not shown despite there being a large number of measurements in this region covering the whole period). There has been no warming in the far southern ocean (again it is missing despite a large number of ships being there over the whole period – including whaling ships in the early part of the 20th century). Other areas have no warming over this period yet the entire Ocean area is shown as having warmed. Clearly the Figure is meant to show warming everywhere yet that is not correct.
———–
The graphic showing observed change in temperature relative to the climate models shown in earlier drafts is not included in the report anymore.

Here is the chart to which Bill refers:

Bill provides no evidence of why he thinks the chart is wrong.  I'm going to go with the science rather than a WUWT regular.

Peter Ward is complaining that people are listening to scientific experts instead of anti-science bloggers:

September 27, 2013 at 5:35 am
In the MSM (BBC, CNN, etc) the IPCC report is being portrayed as the gospel truth on climate change. For example the CNN summary is “The world’s getting hotter, the sea’s rising and there’s increasing evidence neither are naturally occurring phenomena”. I think it’s fair to say that the MSM are onside with the warmists. The online debate is not reaching the consciousness of the general public.

Steve C says he refuses to look at the evidence, fearing being shaken and stirred:

September 27, 2013 at 5:39 am
The BBC are all over it today, of course. Fawning interviews with the IPCC crowd to spread their political message and – a new development! – the occasional few words from the likes of Bob Carter, now being allowed as the “minority view” to give the impression of balance. Overall, exactly as you’d expect from “The World’s Most Respected Broadcaster” (© BBC): junk reporting of junk politics.

I, meanwhile, remain unshaken and unstirred. Nobody has yet produced any evidence (that I’ve been able to find) to suggest that humanity has had any effect, still less a “catastrophic” one, on the world’s weather systems, therefore the null hypothesis holds. Still waiting, guys. Show me how evil we are, rather than how evil you are.

Robert W Turner is in a world of his own and says:

September 27, 2013 at 8:06 am
The sad part is most of the policy makers that will read this are going to fall for it. How long can this lie last and will anyone be held accountable when the jig is up?