Thursday, October 10, 2013

Sad Lindzen, Surprised Tisdale and another Mann-Bash on a dull day at WUWT


I don't know if it's just the mood I'm in but Anthony Watts' blog WUWT seems rather dull today.  Here's a quick rundown.


How the mighty have fallen


Richard Lindzen has had to resort to publishing his non-science at WUWT (archived here).  How long is it since he published anything himself?  It must be quite a while.  His article is not original. It's just a repeat of denier talking points, with stuff like:
arctic sea ice is suddenly showing surprising growth
Lindzen's wrong!

Sea ice this year isn't growing as fast as it did last year!  It was almost a year ago when deniers were enthralled at the growth of sea ice in the Arctic, observing "2012 is the fastest refreeze ever!".   This year they'll have to admit that 2013 won't be breaking that record.  This day last year ice added 36% to the minimum whereas today it's only added 31% to the minimum, and it had longer to do so (via JAXA)! /sarc


Tisdale on oceans


Perennially Puzzled Bob Tisdale is surprised that he found a chart he likes in the IPCC report (archived here).  I'm surprised at how short Bob's article is, compared to his usual fare.  He still manages to say really dumb stuff like this:
I’ve noted this a number of times before: the NODC should be commended for the amount of work that went into assembling all of the data required for their ocean heat content datasets.
But the NODC cannot be praised for their portrayal of their ocean heat content data as a globally complete dataset with little uncertainty.
"Little uncertainty"?  Bob must only look at the pictures without reading the text, where there is a strong emphasis on uncertainty and its measurement.  Even if he only looked at the pictures, he can't have understood them.  For example, from page 3-93 of Chapter 3 of the full report - note the gray bars:

Fig 3.21 Time series of changes in large-scale ocean climate properties. From top to bottom: global ocean inventory of anthropogenic carbon dioxide, updated from Khatiwala et al. (2009); global mean sea level (GMSL), from Church and White (2011); global upper ocean heat content anomaly, updated from Domingues et al. (2008); the difference between salinity averaged over regions where the sea surface salinity is greater than the global mean sea surface salinity (“High Salinity”) and salinity averaged over regions values below the global mean (“Low Salinity”), from Boyer et al. (2009).


Another Mann-bash


Anthony Watts hasn't done too much scientist-bashing lately, or not on a personal level.  He was probably getting twitchy, because he came up with an excuse that he figured probably wouldn't land him in court.

Anthony decided to fake some outrage at an image used as part of an election campaign (archived here).  He writes:
The imagery is dishonest.
Anthony Watts accusing someone of being dishonest.  Now there's irony in action.

Norfolk Virginia is a flood-prone city and there was an image highlighting the risks of rising sea level, over which Anthony decided to take personal offense.  It probably took him a while to figure out it wasn't "real" and he when he did he felt very foolish.  Enough to get real mad.  I can see him now, googling away looking for a picture of the house under beautifully clear water.  I doubt anyone else thought the picture was anything but illustrating a point.  But then, Anthony isn't all that bright.

Here's the picture, it's got a caption saying seas have risen by 14.5 inches since 1930.  I wonder if Anthony thought at first it was a very very tiny house, before he realised it was an illustration?




From the WUWT comments


Nope, sorry.  The Mann-bashers let forth their pent up fury in the usual fashion.  It's not repeatable. I barely scanned them myself because the ones I did read are so distasteful.  Ignorance at its worst, fuelled by the lack of opportunity Anthony's provided lately to come together as a lynch mob or vent their various spleens.  It's archived here for the ghouls.

14 comments:

  1. Not dull at all, not at all:

    http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/10/citizen-scientist-willis-and-the-cloud-radiative-effect/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Exactly, and Willis hitting back.

      http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/09/dr-roy-spencers-ill-considered-comments-on-citizen-science/

      I start to understand why the climate ostriches can have such enormous differences of opinion, but hardly ever debate each other. Maybe because they know that when the debate starts, its rapidly escalates.

      Delete
    2. And if a real debate did break out, it would be like matter meeting antimatter - the alternative hypotheses would start cancelling one another out until there would be just one left.

      Delete
    3. Given all the invective that Spencer has hurled in the past I was surprised at how level-headed and reasonable his post was. Even some of the first few comments in response were well-spoken. Of course it went downhill from there...

      Delete
    4. Thanks. Looks like fun. I started an article about Willis' stuff a couple of days ago and shelved it. It included something not to different to Spencer's comment:

      C’mon, folks! Do you really think that of the billions of dollars spent on designing, launching, and keeping these satellite instruments going, that no one thought to analyze the data? Really? That’s why hundreds of scientists and engineers collaborated on such projects in the first place!...

      ....... I am asking him (and others): read up on what has been done first, then add to it. Or, show why what was done previously came to the wrong conclusion, or analyzed the data wrong.


      I'm going to have to defer the entertainment for a few hours, unfortunately, and read the rest of their carryings on later. What I've read so far of Spencer, I'm looking forward to reading what Willis says. He can get very angry when someone takes a shot at him. I wondered if he controlled himself this time?

      Okay, I couldn't wait. Willis saw red and didn't digest what was written. He now claims that he

      did the work that your fellow mainstream climate scientists either neglected or refused to do.

      Wondering Willis has delusions of grandeur. Maybe fodder for HotWhopper. I'll read the rest later and decide.

      Delete
    5. Full Willis quote, truöy delusional:

      It is people like Steve McIntyre and Anthony Watts and Donna LaFramboise and myself and Joanne Nova and Warwick Hughes and the late John Daly, citizen climate scientists all, who did the work that your fellow mainstream climate scientists either neglected or refused to do.

      Charge of the DK brigade!

      Delete
    6. Yep, it's about time science was snatched from the high-falutin' over-educated elites and handed back to the little people where it really belongs.

      The most amusing thing is, this ain't even parody!...

      Delete
    7. who did the work that your fellow mainstream climate scientists either neglected or refused to do. .... for good reason: because it's not worth doing and illustrates a significant lack of understanding of basic science. I sometimes worry for people who are doing things like this because you imagine they will one day look back in embarrassment at how they could possibly have thought that they knew better than thousands of professional climate scientists. It is, however, possible that they are so deluded that they may never actually appreciate how embarrassing their attempts at citizen science actually were.

      I have a vague memory of a joke related to the Charge of the Light Brigade part of which went something like "There we were 6 against 6000, and boy did those 6 get stuffed up". Seems somewhat apt (not that I'm suggesting violence though, just to be clear - "stuffed up" in shown to be horribly wrong sense).

      Delete
    8. It is, however, possible that they are so deluded that they may never actually appreciate how embarrassing their attempts at citizen science actually were.

      I'd say 'very likely' in the IPCC sense. It's an ill-deserved mercy that the poor loves need never fear the shame and humiliation the rest of us would suffer. Dunning and Kruger weren't kidding!

      Delete
    9. "... they will one day look back in embarrassment at how they could possibly have thought that they knew better than thousands of professional climate scientists."

      Gotta love your optimism, Wotts.

      Delete
    10. First the homer picture and now 'willisgate'.
      http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/10/willisgate-take-2/

      Willis and co have tried to "resolve" the conflict in the only way they know how. Richard Courtney's hillarious "useful" comment on Roy's blog sums it up.

      Delete
  2. Hm. This is becoming a tragedy and it looks like some kind of dementia or Alzheimer.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Lovely wondering dogfight... http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/09/dr-roy-spencers-ill-considered-comments-on-citizen-science/

    ReplyDelete
  4. Maybe, if they split, one faction can allign with this lot...

    http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/10/10/an_open_letter_to_the_l_a_times_editors.html

    ReplyDelete

Instead of commenting as "Anonymous", please comment using "Name/URL" and your name, initials or pseudonym or whatever. You can leave the "URL" box blank. This isn't mandatory. You can also sign in using your Google ID, Wordpress ID etc as indicated. NOTE: Some Wordpress users are having trouble signing in. If that's you, try signing in using Name/URL. Details here.

Click here to read the HotWhopper comment policy.