Denier-Speak: There is no differentiating Anthony Watts "claims" @wattsupwiththat

Yesterday Anthony Watts posted a stupid article by a couple of climate cranks, arguing that "it's the sun" and trying to dispute the fact that rising CO2 is causing earth to warm.

Claim at WUWT: An Ice Age Cometh!

The article predicts that "the temperature will decrease until 2100 to a value like the one of the last “little ice age” 1870."

Anthony's headline has the word "claim" at the front, which would usually be a signal to mock.  In this case it was to signify he doesn't know whether to believe it or not.  Here's the headline and a link to the archived article at WUWT:

Claim: Solar, AMO, & PDO cycles combined reproduce the global climate of the past

And Anthony's comment, showing that his readers have his permission to accept that an ice age cometh if they want to, because he dug up papers that he reckons means there is something to the silly nonsense. (AMO and PDO do oscillate as the names indicate, but there is no ice age cometh-ing!).  Anthony wrote:

Note: By publishing this, I offer it for discussion and consideration, I don’t explicitly endorse its methodology or conclusion as I have seen a number of curve fitting and cyclical exercises before that are able to extract cycles and then hindcast fit those cycles.  This may be one of those instances, so I urge caution in consideration of the claim. On the plus side, I did find this Nature SR article that shows a 208 year cycle (Seuss cycle) in Indian Monsoon data., and of course we know that there is a 65 year cycle in the AMO as outlined here. - Anthony

Not good enough, Anthony.  At best this shows he doesn't have a clue about science.  It also shows he is in the disinformation business and thinks he has to post a certain amount of pseudo-science in among his attempts to mock actual science, just to keep his denier fans amused.

Normal WUWT "Claims"

Just so you can see the sort of articles he usually reserves for the "Claim:" category, here are a few of his previous "claim" headlines, together with links to the archived article:

Claim: Climate change is 10x faster than ever before.  Anthony copies a press release about the Stanford study by Noah S. Diffenbaugh and Christopher B. Field that I've mentioned a few times.  Anthony doesn't want to believe the science and tells his readers to deride it, writing:

From Stanford University  comes this breathless missive that sounds just like every one we’ve heard before. No mention of “the pause”, but we do have a “baked into the system” goodness apparently.

Claim: LLNL scientists find precipitation, global warming link. Here Anthony copies a press release about a paper in PNAS which shows what is expected is what is observed. Anthony makes no comment of his own.  His "claim" headline is sufficient signal to his band of scientific illiterati to mock the science.


Claim: atmosphere heats the oceans, melts Antarctic ice shelf.  This article is a press release about a Science paper by TP Stanton et al, describing mechanisms of the rapid melting of Pine Island Glacier.  Again, Anthony doesn't bother to write any comment.  His "claim" in the headline is enough of a signal to his readers to scoff at science again.

And a whole heap more if you want them - and don't mind adding to the WUWT hit count.


Usually Anthony reserves his dogwhistle word, "claim", for actual science, not silly articles rejecting the greenhouse effect. He might be feeling a bit sensitive about his reputation as an ignorant know-nothing at best and as a climate disinformer by those who are more familiar with his antics at WUWT.  Not so sensitive that he'll stop posting pseudo-science to keep his band of scientific illiterati happy and feeling well fed.