Anthony Watts blows his dog whistle to round up the cosmic ray lynch mob

Ha ha ha. This is hilarious. There's an article by Anthony Watts on his climate science denier blog WUWT where he writes (archived here):

A peer reviewed Nuccitelli smackdown
Posted on June 19, 2014 by Anthony Watts
Reply to “Comment on ‘Cosmic-ray-driven reaction and greenhouse effect of halogenated molecules: Culprits for atmospheric ozone depletion and global climate change’ by Dana Nuccitelli et al.”

Anthony copies the abstract of the reply to the comment but nothing else apart from the above and a link to the reply. He leaves it up to readers to try to find the original paper, figure out who wrote it and see if they can lay their hand on the comment. (The reply was published a month ago, so Anthony is losing his touch.)

Click "read more" to read the rest :)

Another cosmic ray nutter

The original paper is by a little-known science denier called Qing-Bin Lu, from the Physics and Astronomy Department of the University of Waterloo, Ontario. He's not a climate scientist. Apparently he disputes mainstream science and reckons that the extra CO2 isn't warming the world. He thinks that it's cosmic rays and halogen-containing molecules. He talks about the "the cosmic-ray-driven electron-induced-reaction (CRE) theory for O3 depletion and the warming theory of halogenated molecules for climate change". Dr Lu first published his paper at arXiv.org, then in the International Journal of Modern Physics B. Neither journals are known for high quality climate science papers.

For some reason, a team of people from SkepticalScience.com and various universities decided to send a comment to the Journal pointing out the many flaws in the paper.  Here's a link to the the abstract from their smackdown.

In a nutshell, Dr Lu wrongly assumed that CO2 has saturated the atmosphere to such an extent that it won't warm it any more. He doesn't know the difference between transient climate response and equilibrium climate sensitivity. On top of all that, he messed up the statistical analysis. There was an article at SkepticalScience about all this. The main message I get from that article is that Dr Lu confused correlation with causation. As explained by skepticalscience:

Lu's hypothesis was disproven very simply by Nuccitelli et al. (2014).  Lu argues that the radiative forcing (global energy imbalance) from CFCs matches global surface temperatures better than that from CO2 over the past decade.  This is because as a result of the Montreal Protocol, CFC emissions (and emissions of hydrofluorocarbons, which replaced CFCs) have been flat over the past decade, and global surface air temperatures have also been essentially flat during that short timeframe, while CO2 emissions have continued to rise.

However, a global energy imbalance doesn't just impact surface temperatures.  In fact, only about 2% of global warming is used in heating the atmosphere, while about 90% heats the oceans.  Over the past decade, ocean and overall global heating have continued to rise rapidly, accumulating the equivalent of about 4 Hiroshima atomic bomb detonations per second (Figure 1).

So while CFCs might match surface temperature changes better than CO2 emissions over the past decade, CO2 emissions better match the relevant metric – overall global heat accumulation.  Since a global energy imbalance influences global heat content and not just surface temperatures, this by itself is sufficient to falsify Lu's hypothesis (though the paper contains several other fundamental problems – see the Advanced level rebuttal for details).

Now if Dr Lu's response was "peer-reviewed" then one assumes that so was his original paper and so was the Nuccitelli et al comment. I've no idea who the peers were who reviewed all these papers. I'd say that the peers who reviewed the original paper knew nothing of the subject matter and didn't do their job properly.

Anthony Watts wouldn't have a clue about the original paper or the comment or the reply that he called a "smackdown". All he's doing is using it as an excuse to have a shot at the lead author of the comment, Dana Nuccitelli. Anthony objects to Dana because he is such an effective climate hawk.

Thing is the ozone hole is affecting the climate in my part of the world (as is carbon dioxide). I'll leave that discussion for another day. Suffice to say that Dr Lu is wrong, and Anthony Watts is, as usual, behaving like an utter nutter. You'll have noticed his application of the Serengeti Strategy, singling Dana Nuccitelli out from the other seven authors of the comment: Kevin Cowtan, Peter Jacobs, Mark Richardson, Robert G. Way, Anne-Marie Blackburn, Martin B. Stolpe and John Cook.

From the WUWT comments

There were 14 comments to Anthony's article at the time of archiving.

Four were about the author and/or the article, yet in none of these did anyone make any observation about the contents of the paper, the comment or the reply.

Ten (71%) were taking pot shots at Dana Nuccitelli.

It just goes to prove what we all know. WUWT isn't about science. It exists purely so that the scientific illiterati have somewhere central to rail against the acquisition of knowledge, particularly knowledge about our climate.

charles nelson doesn't appreciate the mystery surrounding the blog article and says:

June 19, 2014 at 4:11 am
Whoever is writing this (that’s unclear because they’re not named) is clearly very angry and that has played havoc with their clarity of expression.
If they could take a few minutes to go back over the piece and give us some detail and context and just correct a few grammatical points, it would be much more effective and informative.
Mods…feel free to remove this comment.

It doesn't take long before the WUWT lynch mob comes out in force. The mob doesn't have a clue about the reply, the comment or the original paper but it does recognise a dog whistle from Anthony Watts.

Pointman doesn't like climate hawks either, is another cosmic ray advocate, and didn't pay any attention to Anthony urging people to stop name-calling. He says:

June 19, 2014 at 4:28 am
Yet another Dana disaster. The boy has the knack of unerringly being wrong but he did win the climate prat of 2013 award.

Paul Homewood says:

June 19, 2014 at 4:42 am
At least Nuttercelli spelt his name right!

Jonathan Abbott says:

June 19, 2014 at 4:44 am
We should start a Dana fan-club. He never ceases to entertain.

philjourdan says:

June 19, 2014 at 4:52 am
It’s nutty. Which tells you the competence and comedy all in one person.

jaffa says:

June 19, 2014 at 5:01 am
Nuccitelli is a fool, no-one has any respect for his views – not even the most rabid alarmist would hold Nuccitelli up as an example of anything other than a complete slobbering imbecile – he may actually be brain-dead. there’s a reason he looks like a zombie (sorry zombies).
Those supporting Nuccitelli here are actually sceptics pretending to support him in an effort to make warmists look even dumber than they are (the same as they do for Mann). Nice work guys.

Hoser says:

June 19, 2014 at 5:28 am
I love how the warmistas unerringly correlate GMST increase with technological advancement, and then use hyperbole and hysteria to give the central planners the excuses they need to control us. Thank you, and by the way, your 5 year grant has been approved..

knr says:

June 19, 2014 at 5:29 am
Dana never tires from showing how little he knows about so much , an man truly amazed by his own delusion of his own brilliance.

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Lu, Q-B. "Cosmic-Ray-Driven Reaction and Greenhouse Effect of Halogenated Molecules: Culprits for Atmospheric Ozone Depletion and Global Climate Change." International Journal of Modern Physics B 27, no. 17 (2013). DOI: 10.1142/S0217979213500732http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0217979213500732

Dana Nuccitelli, Kevin Cowtan, Peter Jacobs, Mark Richardson, Robert G. Way, Anne-Marie Blackburn, Martin B. Stolpe, John Cook. (2014) Comment on "Cosmic-ray-driven reaction and greenhouse effect of halogenated molecules: Culprits for atmospheric ozone depletion and global climate change". International Journal of Modern Physics B 28:13. . Online publication date: 20-May-2014. DOI: 10.1142/S0217979214820037

Q.-B. Lu. (2014) Reply to "Comment on 'Cosmic-ray-driven reaction and greenhouse effect of halogenated molecules: Culprits for atmospheric ozone depletion and global climate change' by Dana Nuccitelli et al.". International Journal of Modern Physics B 28:13. DOI: 10.1142/S0217979214820049