Sunday, July 27, 2014

Denier weirdness: Anthony Watts at WUWT predicts major imminent global cooling


Not a lot of time today but I just couldn't pass this one up.

Anthony Watts has gone full-on denier in an article about global surface temperatures (archived here). At the very end of his article he puts up this chart:

Source: WUWT
And he writes:
To my eye, I see a natural sine wave, which I’ve traced below on the same graph in solid grey, with extrapolated segments in dashed grey:
It seems to me that our current “pause” might simply be that we are at the top of that sine wave I see, and that we might actually see some cooling ahead, assuming it isn’t all adjusted away by the next “improvement” from NCDC.

First up, I'd say his eye is out a bit if he thinks it's a natural sine wave. Second up, did you notice his conspiratorial thinking? But lets leave all that aside and assume that the Anthony's "wave" will be repeated. Here's the result:



Oh my! It looks as if Anthony Watts has become a greenhouse effect denier. He speculates that global temperatures will drop by more than 1°C before the end of this century.

Addendum: How Anthony Watts "disappears" the Little Ice Age

Since Anthony bothered to put in some dotted lines for "extrapolated segments", you might like to see how well his hindcast matches up with the instrumental record. I've superimposed HadCRUT4 and "extrapolated" Anthony's wave. It's not looking too hot. Or should I say it is looking too hot. Has Anthony decided to "disappear" half the Little Ice Age? :)

Sources: WUWT and HadCRUT4

(Added by Sou 10:48 pm 27 July 2014)

Now compare Anthony's prediction with IPCC temperature anomaly projections for different cumulative total anthropogenic CO2 emissions. If we're not careful, by 2100 the world will be more than 3 or 4°C hotter than this year and maybe 5°C or more hotter than it was in 1870:

Adapted from source: IPCC AR5 WG1 Summary for Policy Makers


Click "read more" to see what WUWT deniers have to say.



From the WUWT comments


Anthony's closing line was: "I’ll leave you all to the squabble which will surely follow." But his readers weren't interested. There were almost no comments about Anthony's predicted global cooling this century. Perhaps it was a test to see if there were any normal people still reading WUWT. If there are, they rarely comment there.

Most of the deniers are bickering about whether this century started in 2000 or 2001. There were a lot of OT comments, like this one which, interestingly, puts the kibosh on Y2K denier claims that it wasn't a serious issue. dp says:
July 26, 2014 at 1:45 pm
As someone who was a principle player for a very large aluminum customer in the Pacific North West the Y2K bug was not trivial, finding and correcting things before the Y2K roll-over was an enormous effort, and we were well rewarded for our work. Because of our success the Y2K “bug” effect was minimized by us, and trivialized by an ignorant press. If one weren’t part of the solution it is unlikely one have any notion of the scale of the problem.

A few other people back up dp's comment. Which raises the question, what will deniers say if the world manages to cut emissions enough soon enough to prevent the worst of global warming? Will they say there wasn't a problem to start with or will they acknowledge that the world managed to act in time? For example, GabrielHBay talks about being "never praised for the effort that went into preventing them from going wrong":
July 27, 2014 at 1:10 am@dp : Agreed, but no matter how many times one tries to explain, those who have no idea what went on behind the scenes persist in thinking that, because of the problem was contained through huge effort, Y2K was trivial to start off with, rather than to acknowledge the success of the containing effort… One only gets slammed if systems go wrong… never praised for the effort that went into preventing them from going wrong. Ah well. That’s the nature of the system support game. 

Other comments include:

Non Nomen finds Anthony's nonsense "absolutely fascinating" and says:
July 26, 2014 at 10:50 am
Absolutely fascinating. It is going to be a real pain in the *ss of certain people being shot with their own weapon. Thanks!

Jim Davidson fails basic arithmetic, not able to calculate (396-369)/369=7.3%, and says:
July 26, 2014 at 11:57 am
You are perpetuating the arguments of the warmists. You say:” CO2 has risen from 369ppm in 2000 to 396.48 in 2013, an increase of about 7.3% You go from parts per million to parts per hundred. If you want to express your answer in parts per hundred (%), you should be in parts per hundred throughout. You should have said: ” CO2 has risen from 0.0369% in 2000 to 0.0396% in 2013, an increase of about 0.0025%.”

Quite a few people try to straighten out Jim's crooked thinking, such as Rex (who doesn't seem too concerned about "The Enemy" mocking Anthony's crooked thinking):
July 26, 2014 at 2:22 pm
>> Jim Davidson says:
What I meant was this :
Assuming proportions of the same base number,
if 20% of the population were completely bonkers
last year, and 25% of them are completely bonkers
this year, then that is an increase of 5 percentage
points, and an increase of 25 percent.
It may seem a trivial point, but this is just the sort of
thing The Enemy will pounce on. 

Bill Guessford is annoying the mod, with multiple posts deleted. This one gives a bit of a clue to what he's trying to inject (not really, but I figure it's even weirder than the normal denier comments):
July 26, 2014 at 12:08 pm
[snip off topic astrology Neptune and Uranus haven't anything to do with the content of this post. Stop posting this offtopic nonsense please .mod]

Tom Trevor might be seeing the light of global warming when he says:
July 26, 2014 at 8:48 pm
What I am wondering is in the last chart where are the “normal” years. I only see about 4 years that look to me that they are really close to the zero abnormality line. It seems to me that abnormalities are normal when it comes to weather.

23 comments:

  1. A sine wave? So it all comes down to a sine wave? But for some reason this ridiculously simple "model" with no thought or science behind it is deemed suitable for a prediction. It is beyond pathetic.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's the sun!
    It's ENSO!
    It's natural variation!
    It's cosmic rays!
    It's cycles!

    I.e., it's anything *but* CO2.

    We accept the science blah blah blah, but disagree on the blah blah blah. Right.

    A million pseudoskeptics before AW have latched onto the same cycles theory - tomorrow we'll have a different 'theory.' All we know is that whatever the theory du jour happens to be - it won't put GHG in a primary role of responsibility. Why is that?

    You'd think that since pseudoskeptics latch on to every theory under the sun (sic) they'd actually hit on the scientific one by accident every now and then. Unless of course they're programmed to avoid that *one* explanation at all costs. Is there something about the scientific theory of global warming that makes it impossible for pseudoskeptics to discover it by accident? Seriously, it's the only theory that comes close to explaining the data we have - from paleoclimate to present day, yet they never latch onto that even by accident.

    There is only one explanation: They are not interested in devising a theory or model that fits all the data, they are only interested in a theory that does not give GHG a primary role.

    ReplyDelete
  3. A 'hand drawn sine'?...a hand...drawn...sine...."to my eye, I see a natural sine wave'...

    I'm sorry, even the cringe-inducing overlong public tantrum that is Watts gift to the intertubes cannot prepare me for this latest effort. He has topped it all.

    Watts is the idiot's idiot. Kudos, Tony...

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  4. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  5. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You posted a dumb dud comment and linked to a wacky denier's website, contrary to the comment policy. Your comments will appear in the HotWhoppery if I can be bothered, and if I get around to it.

      http://denierlist.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/dr-ole-humlum/

      Delete
  6. Fear of truth and facts, the hallmarks of a true believer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer

    Goodbye and good luck!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ah yes 'truth and facts' from the world of the Tea Party - a world where if the truth and facts do not conform to your poiitical philosophy you simply replace them with made up 'truth and facts'. Oh the world is getting hotter but the Kochs don't like that little fact. So lets draw a sine wave somewhere approximately near the data and pretend its gonna get colder soon.

      Could you be more of a numpty?

      Delete
    2. Was anon not talking about the wattsizens? Because that would fit pretty well.

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    3. It would fit exactly. But I've heard stuff like this so often from climate change deniers, and with the string of anonymous numpty comments before it, I am assuming it is more of the same.

      Don't forget that in Tea Party land accepting the consensus opinion of every prestigious scientific body on the planet is equivalent to the accepting literally every single bit of the bible.

      Delete
    4. I know, and was just being snide. I've actually noticed that a shocking number of things that corporatists say, I agree with their every word. But not with their intended meaning. Eg "this violence must stop, and we need to discuss a political solution" says the premier as he sends the riot squad to beat up student protesters, and refuses to meet the protest leaders.

      Delete
    5. I know what you mean, numerobis, I often feel the same. Of course they co-opt words such as "scientific" and "evidence" to mean the way they think and whatever they believe. (Using "think" loosely; it's more a set of instincts and Pavlovian responses.)

      Delete
    6. To be fair, it's an easy thing to do. Sou quite rightly challenged me yesterday to provide references to my claim natural gas was as bad as coal -- and lo and behold, my claim was false according to the sources my belief was based on!

      A rule I've given myself when writing on John Baez' posts on g+ is that every claim I make has links, and I follow the links and read them to verify they support my claim before I hit 'send'. Holy smokes does that ever slow me down.

      Delete
    7. And that was only when you, quite rightly, asked for citations for one of my off-the-cuff pronouncements Numerobis :)

      I had to check myself - and it's not a clear-cut matter.

      Delete
  7. What will deniers say if the world manages to cut emissions enough soon enough to prevent the worst of global warming? Is that even a question? In EVERY case, they deny that there was ever a problem.

    Acid rain.

    CFCs and the ozone hole

    Y2K (and I'm another one who worked on that, by the way)

    In every case they ignore whatever action was taken and then it's either (a) "Hoax!", or (b) "Whatever happened to acid rain/Y2K/ozone hole????? Same chicken little crap!"

    So, is there any question at all about what they would say? Nope.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We are going to find out. The world isn't going to be cutting CO2 emissions anytime soon. Emissions will increase each year for the next 20. Just look at the number of people entering the civilized world.

      Delete
  8. Looks like the crossover noise in my amplifier playing Deep Purple's Wish You were Here on my analogue oscilloscope!. Bert

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  9. Bert - Deep Purple? I'm only familiar with Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here. Smoke On the Water> is what I remember from Deep Purple.

    ReplyDelete
  10. World of the tea party? I am a democrat and helped obama in iowa before he got popular in 2008. Think much?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, you said goodbye. And that was not true.

      Delete
    2. I flew to the moon and back in 2008, but as I am not boastful I didn't bother telling anybody about it. Tell fibs much?

      Delete
    3. To be fair, nobody did more to get Obama elected than the Tea Party: having an unelectable opponent is a real help. I suspect that without the Tea Party it would have taken decades longer to get the first black US President. But that doesn't qualify them as Democrats, and I am quite sure that wasn't the Koch's intention when they set up their very own pet 'grassroots movement'.

      Delete
  11. Looks like someone wrote a theme song for WUWT
    http://music.overthefallsrocks.com/track/enlightenment

    ReplyDelete

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