Anthony Watts is green with envy. Uh oh. Not green by a long shot, but he is so envious. Why? Well, President Obama has tweeted about SkepticalScience 97 hours!
Anthony Watts, denier blogger at WUWT, is so jealous that he wrote an article (archived here) mentioning the tweet, but didn't highlight the fact that it was about John Cook and Skeptical Science's 97 hours campaign. Instead he linked it to a zombie photo and an article about civil disobedience. Not the article that the President linked to.
Just how desperate must Anthony be to sink to such low propaganda tactics of deception.
Here's the tweet:
"'There’s no debate': 97 experts explain the scientific consensus on climate change" More from @Salon: http://t.co/dER5LipEKy #ActOnClimate
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) September 9, 2014
That's the second time that there's been a President Obama tweet about a SkepticalScience initiative. The last one only went to 31 million plus followers. This one went to 46.3 million followers.
It is tearing Anthony apart. No US President has ever tweeted about the world's biggest anti-science blog WUWT.
Anthony is so torn apart and twisted that he didn't embed the tweet. Instead he copied it into a photoshopped image from some zombie film, which had been altered to insert placards for Obama and climate. Anthony or one of his denier mates photoshopped the image below except for the arrow and the bit that says "photoshopped by Anthony Watts".
 |
| Adapted from WUWT |
Not only that, but in the same article, Anthony disappeared the warming after 1995. That means he's even got rid of the 97-98 El Nino so beloved of deniers. He wrote:
Meanwhile, Earth hasn’t gotten any warmer at the surface since 1995, or in the lower troposphere for a similar amount of time.
Let's see - at the surface it's got quite a bit warmer since 1995, which at the time was itself a record hot year:
In the lower troposphere - yep, there've been hardly any years colder than 1995 since then - and again, 1995was a record hot year for RSS:
Anthony Watts has become barking mad of late. He's losing his marbles. He's in such a state that he resorts to photoshopping, cherry picking and generally making up stuff that's too ridiculous for anyone but hard core deniers to swallow.
From the WUWT comments
I'm running late - got to rush. Maybe later I'll show how much his bottom of the barrel followers just love this new Anthony Watts. Finally, he's one of "them".
Anthony's "no warming since 1995" was probably found using no other dataset than RSS, which shows 0.030+/-0.169 from 1995-2014 (SkS trend calculator) and which can be eyeballed to produce "no increase" in temperature at all...
ReplyDeleteAny guesses as to the 1995-2014 trends for *any other dataset* in the trend calculator? Hint: half of them are even statistically significant!
My guess is he's referring to a McKitrick paper recently published in a suspect "journal". Except that it was looking back to 1994 I believe. Anthony would recognise that 1994 looks even sillier on a chart than does 1995, so he upped it by a year. I could be wrong - on both counts.
ReplyDeleteWhatever. Faking a link between President Obama and civil disobedience will alienate him from any centrist voters who happen to reject science. He's definitely only targetting the extremist right wing nutters these days. It wasn't always so.
The link -
Deletehttp://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/09/the-ultimate-cherry-pick-or-how-not-to.html
About "the pause", I hadn't been aware until just now of this wonderful post by Tamino, from back in 2014 January:
ReplyDeletehttp://tamino.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/global-temperature-the-post-1998-surprise/
In it he shows that if you take the 1979-1997 temperature trend line -- which is obviously increasing -- and extend it to the present, a solid majority of the average annual temperature lie ABOVE the trend line. The "hiatus" is really an artifact of the very warm 1998. Claims that the warming has stopped, or it's cooling, or whatever, are even more bogus than one might have thought.
Indeed - We're still undergoing regression to the mean warming trend after that 3-sigma 1998 El Nino and the following warm years.
DeleteFunny how the deniers neglect earlier non-significant high trends (see Tamino here) while ranting about recent non-significant low trends.
Hmm. I see 34 year trends below the IPCC 1.5 degC/decade in your plot. Is that what the consensus was? I'm also wondering who bestowed Obama with "scientist" status? What exactly makes Obama an expert on the climate? Did he meet Al Gore in a washroom?
ReplyDeleteIs Obama claiming to be a scientist or to do science? Are those famously qualified WUWTers Monckton, Eschenbach, Ball and so on climate scientists? I think we know the answers.
DeleteHe's the President of the United States of America and he is duty bound to protect the US and its allies against existential threats.
DeleteCatnado you left out Jr.
DeleteSheesh deniers are a wacky lot, aren't they. Some of them wouldn't know a science paper if it bit them in the proverbial. And witness the irony of Spooner's comment in an article about dumb attempts at deception.
DeleteSpooner started with a blatant lie:
Hmm. I see 34 year trends below the IPCC 1.5 degC/decade in your plot
Show me where the IPCC projected a 15 degree rise in surface temperature over a century. You can't. It didn't.
Is that what the consensus was?
Nope. I can't recall coming across that bit of silliness before, not even in deniersville. Certainly not in any IPCC report.
I'm also wondering who bestowed Obama with "scientist" status? What exactly makes Obama an expert on the climate?
So far Spooner is the only person who has suggested that anyone has bestowed President Obama with Scientist status. The President tweeted about scientists talking about climate. Unlike idiot deniers, President Obama takes advice from experts in the field. As GSR pointed out, he has an obligation to do so.
Spooner doesn't know the difference between referring readers to an article about what scientists say and science itself. Wacky doesn't describe it.
Did he meet Al Gore in a washroom?
Oh my. An "algore is fat" type reference. That's so passé. Spooner is really behind the times.
Speaking of wondering about scientist status. There are three people mentioned in the article and comments above. Anthony Watts, President Obama and Ross McKitrick. None of them are climate scientists. Only two make claims about climate science that they reckon they've figured out by themselves - Anthony Watts and Ross McKitrick. President Obama is the only one of the three who does not claim personal expertise in climate science. He relies on experts. Yet Spooner doesn't mention the real fakes - Anthony Watts and Ross McKitrick!
What does that tell you about Spooner?
As a non-expert in cognitive science, I'll venture an answer to my rhetorical question. Could it be that Spooner consciously, subconsciously (or unconsciously) knows that Ross McKitrick and Anthony Watts have *no* credibility when it comes to climate science. That they are not scientists and deniers accept these two talk rubbish most of the time?
DeleteCould it be that Spooner is happy to look like a fool but there are limits beyond which he or she won't even cross?
Watts thinks he's denigrating John by calling him a cartoonist and yet Watts prides
ReplyDeletehimself on being a deft photo shopper. Watt shopper's that?
The number of times Anthony has moaned and groaned about publications using a photoshopped image to illustrate a point. Yet none of them have gone for the sort of deception in photoshopping that Anthony tried on in that article.
DeleteDouble standards? Hypocrisy? It's worse than that.
In my Universe there are only two real sins. Hypocrisy and Ignorance.
DeleteAll other sins can be explained by this simple categorisation.
Bert
Sou, ICYMI Evan Jones has been taking quite the turn over at Stoatie's. He and Our Tony have big plans, it seems.
ReplyDeleteHe's long on verbiage, very long on adoration of Anthony blind to all his sins, even the worst.
DeleteIt also looks as if he's drifting further away from anything publishable as time goes by, not closer.
Still flogging a horse that died a long time ago?
Looking at the number of posts there by Evan Jones I find it hard to believe he's doing much real work at all.
DeleteIndeed. Evan's new bridge-building oh-so-reasonable lets all be friends persona is at odds with the ongoing fact of his collaboration with Watts, a man who has shown himself repeatedly to be without honour, good faith or much in the way of brains.
Delete"“I believe we will be able to demonstrate that some of the global warming increase is not from CO2 but from localized changes in the temperature-measurement environment.”
Anthony Watts
June 17 2007 ( after about 2% of data collected)
Interview with Pittsburgh Tribune.
“It gets worse. We observed that changes in the technology of temperature stations over time also has caused them to report a false warming trend. We found major gaps in the data record that were filled in with data from nearby sites, a practice that propagates and compounds errors. We found that adjustments to the data by both NOAA and another government agency, NASA, cause recent temperatures to look even higher.
The conclusion is inescapable: The U.S. temperature record is unreliable.”
Is the U.S. Temperature Record Reliable?
Anthony Watts
Publisher: Heartland Institute.
Peer-reviewed? No.
“Instrumental temperature data for the pre-satellite era (1850-1980) have been so widely, systematically, and uni-directionally tampered with that it cannot be credibly asserted there has been any significant “global warming” in the 20th century.”
SURFACE TEMPERATURE RECORDS: POLICY-DRIVEN DECEPTION?
Anthony Watts/Joe D’Aleo
Aug 27, 2010.
Published ‘Science and Public policy institute” (aka Monckton)
Peer-reviewed? Ha Ha.
“The Earth is warmer than it was 100-150 years ago. But that was never in contention – it is a straw man argument. The magnitude and causes are what skeptics question.”
WUWT.
Anthony Watts
Oct 21, 2011 (Post-BEST)
One hopes Evan is less willing to distort data than he is languauge if he honestly believes that an accusing a body of uni-directional tampering, manipulation and exaggeration is not a serious allegation of malpractice (How does one tamper ‘unintentionally’?). Anyone acting in good faith, with a scrap of honour, anyone who wanted to be taken seriously as an objective researcher would retract the Heartland and SPPI ‘reports’ and apologise once the allegations were shown to be baseless.
To the reality-based community, anyone with a history such as Watts’, littered with baseless allegations, not a little vitriol, and a clear-as-crystal agenda and bias, and 180-degree turnarounds has a mountain to climb to rebuild his credibility and before anything he writes will be taken without a shovelful of scepticism."
I wonder how long the Pittsburgh Tribune (the one paper that interviewed Watts) will continue. It was something of a joke when I was in the 'burgh: its real customer was very obviously its patron and owner, Richard Mellon Scaife, who used it to advance policies that would benefit his financial interests. Scaife died this summer.
DeleteEvan himself is only too willing to slag off scientists and their work. He's featured in the HotWhoppery for doing just that. He doesn't have a clue about science but is only too willing to believe "it must be wrong" because some dumb denier or other said so.
DeleteI've no time for him or his mates who dabble in pseudo-science and think they've made some grand discovery that everyone else has overlooked.
Notice how he is picking the brains of experts, selecting what he likes and discarding what doesn't suit his agenda, and how he doesn't want to acknowledge the work of other scientists in his "paper". He's in the same category as Wondering Willis.
Words like "smarmy" and "sycophant" come to mind, among other words that are not as flattering.
I'm glad to see that he hasn't conned everyone at Stoat's place.
The photoshopping makes him descend to "Steven Goddard" levels. Maybe he'll pick a fake name next?
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Ross McKitrick, I happened upon his Rational Wiki page today - definitely worth a read, although hot beverages should be avoided for the duration.
ReplyDeleteWatts and his fellow deniers are freaking out right now. A massive climate change march and rally takes place in New York on the 21st (coinciding with the UN meeting). It's going to be one of those events where the number of participants will be measured in the hundreds of thousands. About a thousand organizations are helping to organize it. But it will be a good opportunity for Watts to cherry-pick: I bet his reporting on this will mention that one of those groups participating is the Communist Party USA (both members?), but he won't mention the dozens of religious groups involved. -- Dennis
ReplyDeleteAnthony Watts is a obnoxious to ad isn't he - check out his replies to SkS on the Obama tweet, nasty.
ReplyDeleteI predict that Anthony Watts' moderate supporters will gradually depart leaving only the extremists. Then they will devour each other.
"will gradually depart" - it feels like this has already happened.
DeleteThe next project for Skeptical Science should be an "R U Nuts?" Campaign. Let me explain. Every time a science-challenged contrarian makes an error-riddled statement on AGW, e.g. no warming for 18 years, a supportive and thoughtful community needs to show how much it cares for their ideas by asking, "R U Nuts?"
ReplyDeleteGM
If you would read the account those tweets came from you would know Obama DID NOT tweet them. If you can't get that right why should I believe anything I read here?
ReplyDeleteI tried using my Wordpress ID, but I couldn't login.
Oh, really! Who'd have thunk it.
DeleteBased on your question, I doubt you would "believe" anything you read here. It's probably against your religion or your politics or your conspiracy theory or whatever.
The tweet was a tweet from certified (ticked) Barack Obama twitter account. That means he has delegated his authority to the actual people tweeting via that account. I don't imagine he has much time in the day to spend tweeting himself. It's just one of the many things he delegates.
Anthony acts as if he's jealous. As if there would ever be a tweet from the Barack Obama twitter account about an "ice age cometh" article at WUWT.
Sorry that blogger won't accept your Wordpress ID. (Perhaps it's got a built in detector to determine which people will make a worthwhile contribution ...)
So you knew Obama didn't send the tweets? Then why are you saying he did?
DeleteFYI some political group took over the account years ago.
Ooooh, spooky. "Some political group" took over the account years ago. I wonder who it is? Communists from the UN I expect.
DeleteHow conspiratorial is that?
FYI some political group took over the account years ago.
DeleteChortle, chortle. Too funny! (Luckily I didn't just take a sip of coffee.)
I'm with Jammy. It's spooky. About as spooky as Caspar the Friendly Ghost.
I wonder if Anonymous thinks it's the same "political group" that took over Google blogger and rejected his Wordpress account.?
(And he wonders why anyone would believe anything I write! If only all climate science deniers were as credible as Anonymous. Oh, wait...)
By the way, Anonymous. Have you corrected Anthony Watts himself for writing that the tweet was from President Obama. He wrote:
DeleteA tweet from Barack Obama today along with a call for civil disobedience from Alternet shows us what to expect
Or have you called Anthony out for photoshopping the tweet onto a zombie photo as if they were in any way linked? Or have you asked Anthony Watts why he tried to link the article on Alternet with the tweet about 97 hours from the President, when they weren't related in the slightest?
Thought not.
https://archive.today/yNVGV#selection-799.2-799.112
To end the suspense, below is a link to the website for "Organising for Action" which runs the @BarackObama Twitter account and possibly also does the tweeting, except for those tweets signed -bo, which are personally tweeted by the big man himself.
Deletehttp://www.barackobama.com/about/
I figured by now everyone knew that. But I guess not. Some people probably thought that the President himself has spent all his time personally writing 12,400 tweets (since March 2007).
You figured everybody knew "Organizing for Action" runs the account, but accused me of thinking Casper the friendly ghost did. Once again you admit you knew Obama didn't send the tweets.
DeleteThe first time Watts posted Obama tweeted about the 97% by Cook et al I told them Obama DID NOT send the tweet.
I see instead of fixing your mistake you would rather attack me. That says a lot about you. :)
Just out of curiosity why do you dislike Watts so much?
Just out of curiosity why do you dislike Watts so much?
DeleteWhat an odd question. I neither like nor dislike Anthony. I've not met the chap. He might be quite a nice fellow (underneath his sociopathic tendencies).
I ridicule what is *written* at WUWT. I demolish the disinformation that passes for pseudo-science. The idiocy that fake sceptics lap up as if that was all there was to learn about climate.
Most articles at WUWT aren't even written by Anthony. He's not crash hot when it comes to writing articles and usually makes a worse mess of things than his "guest essayists".
Anonymous
DeleteHow does
"About as spooky as Caspar the Friendly Ghost."
get translated to
"...accused me of thinking Casper the friendly ghost did. "
Why do deniers distort words and make things up? Something to do with avoiding any real discussion I believe.
Jammy, I think it's the same cognitive process that causes confirmation bias. Everyone has a tendency to read what they expect to read to some extent, but deniers and conspiracy theorists suffer this affliction much more severely than the average person - in my experience. If you read the rest of Anon's comments you'll see related inconsistencies woven throughout.
DeleteHe/she might have started to wake up to this when I asked if they had said the same thing to Anthony. Their answer was in effect, not this time but Anthony's article was "humour" - implying a few interesting things.
My article wasn't humour - or that's how Anon reacted (confirmation bias)
Anthony Watts isn't expected to do the right thing. He's considered a scoundrel at heart, whereas I am to be trusted (a backhanded compliment) - at least until I didn't jump high enough or fast enough when Anon said "jump"
Anon doesn't want to push his luck with Anthony Watts, HotWhopper is another avenue for him to vent his frustration at global warming. Anthony is a bully and doesn't take criticism kindly. Climate hawks are meant to be polite and accommodating - Anon got that bit wrong in my case :)
Or have you called Anthony out for photoshopping the tweet onto a zombie photo as if they were in any way linked?
ReplyDeleteI thought it was obvious Watts was doing it in humor or to get a reaction out of folks like you. It seems it worked. :)
I see, so when Anthony does something it's okay because it's for "humour" and to get a rise out of "folks" like me.
DeleteWhen HotWhopper pokes fun at Anthony, it's not okay because you don't find it funny, and it gets a rise out of "folks" like you.
Did I get that right?