Anthony Watts publicly accuses NOAA scientists of fraud (again) - plus his "people go to jail"!

If you mistakenly thought that deniers like Anthony Watts might have some ethics or even a tiny shred of decency hidden very deep, you're wrong. In a topsy turvy and ugly article at WUWT today, Anthony Watts has someone trying to defend his appalling email to Tom Peterson of NOAA, in which he accuses Dr Peterson of fraud. Kip Hansen (archived here) tries to twist this into it being Andy Revkin who committed "a public journalistic offense". (I did say "that's gotta hurt".)

Andy Revkin wrote this after learning about Anthony's defamatory email:

Any notion that Watts is interested in fostering an atmosphere of civility and constructive discourse evaporates pretty quickly in considering how he handled his questions about that paper. Alternating between happy talk about rooftop solar and slanderous accusations is not constructive or civil.

What is really topsy turvy about all this is that Kip falsely claims that Anthony didn't attack Dr Peterson. He did:

He failed to discover the obvious fact that Watts had not attacked Peterson – Watts had sent a personal email to Peterson at his official government email address, stating a change in his [Watts’] personal opinion about Peterson’s scientific ethics. It was a harsh personal opinion, but it was personal, man-to-man, between men who should be colleagues and who have been communicating with one another on a one-to-one basis for years.

Kip is wrong. First off, there is no way that Anthony Watts could possible ever be considered a "colleague" of the scientists at NOAA. Not in the wildest, most insane imagination would that thought enter anyone's head. Not in a million, zillion years. Secondly, and back in the real world - Anthony did indeed attack Dr. Peterson. Do you regard this as an attack?

In my last telephone conversation with you, I stated (paraphrasing) that “I believe you folks aren’t doing anything fraudulent, but you are doing what you feel is correct science in what you believe is a correct way”.

After seeing the desperate tricks pulled in Karl 2015 to erase “the pause” via data manipulation, I no longer hold that opinion. You needed it to go away, so you prostituted yourselves, perhaps at the direction of higher ups.

This will be NCDC’s Waterloo, and will backfire on all of you terribly on the world stage. Take a lesson from Yamamoto’s own observation after he bombed Pearl Harbor. Take a lesson from what is on WUWT today.

If alleging fraud isn't an attack then I don't know what is. What's worse is that Kip falsely claims that Anthony didn't also make the claims publicly - when he did:

What Watts did not do: He did not publish his personal opinion publicly – despite being the editor and owner of the world’s most viewed website on climate (by orders of magnitude). He did not write a joe-romm-ish 1,500 word screed and send it to the tabloid press. That action would have been a public attack. He did not do that. There was no public attack. 

Again he's wrong. Anthony Watts did publish his personal opinion publicly. He did it from the outset. Try these for what Kip claims was not a Anthony's personal opinion published at WUWT. Anthony pretty well alleges fraud:

Grandma Learns About Data Adjustment: A little story about how data adjustment might work in everyday life.
Anthony Watts / 9 hours ago June 1, 2015
Note: On Thursday of this week, NOAA/NCDC will attempt to rewrite the surface temperature record yet again, making even more “adjustments” to the data to achieve a desired effect. This story by Mr. Core is worth noting in the context of data spin that we are about to be subjected to – Anthony Watts (archived here)

Anthony Watts publicly alleges the NOAA scientists are lying

Next he alleges the NOAA is lying (my emphasis):

Tune in here tomorrow at 2PM EDT (11AM PDT) and you’ll see why this is the most mendacious attempt yet to save their climate science from the terrible ravages of an uncooperative planet. (archived here).

Next he implies that the scientists are fudging the data, and falsely claims that their work hasn't been peer-reviewed (the two relevant peer-reviewed papers are in top scientific journals: Science and Journal of Climate) (my emphasis of Anthony's code for "fudging":

NCDC has been in the business of adjusting the surface temperature record for quite some time. The modus operandi so far has been to get a new paper published describing what NCDC considers to be a new and improved dataset, and since NCDC’s articles are often peer reviewed by other government employed scientists at NOAA, they often don’t get a critical peer review. (archived here)

"People go to jail" says Anthony Watts, in public - on WUWT quoting himself on Fox News

And there's more in an article Anthony co-wrote, quoting himself to Fox News, suggesting that the NOAA scientists are fudging the data and should be imprisoned:

Clearly, with each revision of data, NCDC is making the past cooler and the near present warmer through their adjustment process of the original data. To revisit something said in regards to a previous news story about NCDC’s tendency to adjust data as time goes on, so much so that they can’t even tell us with certainty anymore which month in the past century was the warmest on record, this is still applicable:
“
“Is history malleable? Can temperature data of the past be molded to fit a purpose? It certainly seems to be the case here, where the temperature for July 1936 reported … changes with the moment,” Watts told FoxNews.com.
“In the business and trading world, people go to jail for such manipulations of data.” 

Anthony is even suggesting that the NOAA scientists should go to jail!

Interesting emails

And in the same article he talks about emails, writing:

Some might think that NOAA under the direction of Tom Karl designed their ship-buoy bias adjustments with the sole intent of minimizing the impacts of natural slowdown in surface warming.  (Those would be some interesting emails and meeting minutes to read.)

Oh - there's lots more in the more than a dozen protest articles at WUWT.

Anthony Watts and his "slime" - in public

And don't forget the very public twitter exchange, where Anthony tried to claim that Tom Peterson (and I) were the ones doing the "sliming", because we made public Anthony's defamatory email.

Anthony Watts rejects Kip Hansen's article and sets him straight

Not only that, but underneath Kip Hansen's own article in which, contrary to the facts, he tried to claim:

What Watts did not do: He did not publish his personal opinion publicly 

Well, if you think the above isn't Anthony publishing his personal opinion publicly, then he's rectified the situation, writing quite clearly that he does accuse the NOAA scientists of fraud:

Note from Anthony:
Kip Hansen wrote this essay unsolicited. While I admit I used harsh words, probably the harshest I’ve ever used, I too was surprised that Dr. Tom Peterson chose to immediately send the email to the slimiest of outlets Sou aka “hotwhopper”, run by a person dedicated to denigration, who has not the integrity to use her own name: [redacted] While I regret that I didn’t choose my words better, I have no change in my opinion on NCDC after what they did with Karl et al. 2015.  And apparently, according to insiders, there was an internal fight at NCDC over the publication of Karl et al. 2015. I offered this backstory to Revkin, but he was uninterested.

Sadly, it speaks to the integrity of both Dr. Peterson and Andy Revkin that they consider this form of “journalism” acceptable.

It's not sad that Anthony has no integrity and no ethics. It's a fact of life. He's also got double standards, if one can describe a person of no standards having double standards. Don't forget that Anthony Watts himself has a policy at WUWT of publishing emails sent to him. I'm talking about emails sent to Anthony Watts, not just Anthony publishing and promoting thousands of stolen emails.

Anyway - there you have it. Anthony has repeated yet again, and publicly, with no room for mistake, that he accuses the NOAA and it's scientists of fraud. The only regret he has is that he didn't choose different words to say it. (Though as you can see from all the different permutations listed in the article above, he tried a lot of different words.)

The question now is, will any or all of these scientists sue Anthony Watts for defamation?

Thomas R. Karl 

Anthony Arguez

Boyin Huang

Jay H. Lawrimore

James R. McMahon

Matthew J. Menne

Thomas C. Peterson

Russell S. Vose

Huai-Min Zhang

I'd like to see that. Anthony Watts thinks because he has a bully pulpit he can say what he likes and get away with it. It would be good if someone were to show him he's wrong. I don't know if anyone will do so, or not on his own. (Lawyers prefer to sue people who have some money).

Anthony still refuses to publish Tom Peterson's reply to him

Anthony Watts still refuses to publish Tom Peterson's reply to Anthony's accusatory email. You can read it for yourself here. He was extremely polite. (Remember, this all happened around the time that Anthony was pretending to be pals with Bill McKibben.)

Related HotWhopper articles

• That's gotta hurt! - HotWhopper was right. It did hurt him.
• NOAA: No pause in the global surface temperature - main article describing the NOAA paper (Karl15) published in Science
• The perversity of deniers - and the "pause" that never was with Tom Peterson - Anthony Watts' email with the full response from Tom Peterson
• More perversity from Anthony Watts @wattsupwiththat - about a very odd Twitter protest from Anthony Watts
• Pausing for a dozen protests at WUWT - summary of a dozen WUWT protests
• NOAA global temperature paper prompts a torrent of paranoid conspiracies at WUWT
• No pause in the frenzy of denial: at WUWT
• No pause in the frenzy of denial: S. Fred Singer
• Anthony Watts alleges fraud by the NOAA - Anthony's pre-embargo announcement "preparing the ground" and his first allegation of fraud

From the WUWT comments

There are quite a few comments in a thread complaining that an email from Anthony Watts of WUWT was made public, about emails that Anthony Watts himself made public. With no sense of irony.  (My emphasis)

xyzlatin  June 14, 2015 at 3:02 pm
Kip Hansen, have you not read the climategate emails? Sorry, but your own ignorance is showing. Revkin has been partisan cheerleader and a player behind the scenes for years. He is an activist, who happens to have a job in journalism.

geronimo  June 14, 2015 at 3:25 pm
I don’t know Andy Revkin, nor his work, but I do know from the Clmategate emails that he was regarded by the climate scientists, Mann in particular, as a glove puppet for them to feed their views through. He may be a journalist of the highest integrity but Mann, a scientist who will undoubtedly go down in history, assumed he was their “bitch”. (I think the “glove puppet” is much nicer than “bitch” but use both to overcome any US/UK cultural differences).

crosspatch  defends Tom Peterson publishing the email exchange here at HotWhopper and allowing me to post it as an article

June 14, 2015 at 4:50 pm
“I have received two replies from Mr. Revkin, which I do not have explicit permission to publish. Thus, rather than simply inserting them here, I will pull three fair-use quotes ”

If someone send you an email, it belongs to you to publish or not as you wish. They have given that email to you, just as if someone send you a letter, it is yours to publish if you wish. It has been given to you. You do not need their permission to publish an email or a letter sent to you. People turn over to media (and even police) emails or letters they have received (see the latest example in California where a political operative fabricated emails from a Republican candidate and then turned those emails over to police and media).
You do not need Revkin’s permission to reproduce emails. Those emails are yours to do with as you please. 

old construction worker has a warped twist June 14, 2015 at 3:43 pm
What did I tell you a few months ago. The alarmist crowd want a open discussion then stab you in the back.
Be prepared for more back stabbing as argument for Co2 induced global warming falls apart. 

Pat Frank has a twisted twist  June 14, 2015 at 4:47 pm
Rather, Peterson transformed Anthony’s private critical opinion into a manufactured public attack. Rather a different transformation, that; from personal to propaganda.

The difference between revealing Anthony’s private email and revealing the Climategate emails is the difference between publicly gossiping about a domestic quarrel, and publicizing hidden criminal activity, respectively. 

Hockey Schtick  - well I'm running out of adjectives to describe the different twists. But calling on release of stolen property to claim that revealing the contents of a defamatory email is a breach of ethics can only be described as warped, twisted, wacky, suffering too many hockey stick hits?

June 14, 2015 at 3:27 pm
This is another journalistic breach of ethics on activist Revkin’s part, but no surprise given the many Climategate emails displaying the same: 

The Old Crusader  June 14, 2015 at 4:08 pm
Well, I thought Anthony’s note to Peterson, though not understated, was certainly true as written. No hyperbole at all.
I was disappointed to have click on whopper to read it though. Hate to give sites like that traffic. 

There is the odd bit of sanity peeping through at WUWT. Odd because it hints of sanity. ohflow wrote:

June 14, 2015 at 4:22 pm
I don’t really see how Revkin did Watts wrongly. Would someone please clarify this for me?
Kip wrote about there being no public attack by Watts, but I can’t find the explicit statement by Revkin claiming that Watts did?
I’ve enjoyed Revkins writing quite a bit,I don’t like seeing someone being hung out over nothing. 

Update: The evolving conspiracy is is recursing with fury. Now there's the warped and twisted denialist view that it's perfectly fine for deniers like Anthony Watts and his followers to publish false accusations all over the internet, but highlighting the falsity of their accusations is criminal. That publishing stolen emails is fine, but publishing an email you own is not. M Courtney wrote his own personal conspiracy theory - that Andy Revkin "committed a felony". Heck, if journalists were sent to jail for writing about facts that come to their attention, then what's happened to the "free speech" that deniers are so fond of? (Every journo worth their salt would be locked up in prison, if M Courtney had his way. That's leaving aside the fact that Andy Revkin didn't publish the email, and that it was also sent by Anthony Watts to "undisclosed recipients" so it wasn't a private communication. Plus the fact that Anthony Watts prides himself on being "famous" - plus he said all those same things in public on his blog. Also, I cannot see that Anthony's email would be defined as being 'protected from disclosure', not least because he already made it available to third parties, going by the cc note at the bottom. It would also be eminently FOI-able. Maybe Chris Horner could send one of his numerous FOI requests that Anthony often writes about.). M Courtney wrote:

June 15, 2015 at 1:03 am
On the bright side, as it seems that Petersen has broken the law by disclosing private communications, both Revkin and Sou are in line for aiding and abetting.
They’ll still be able to propagandise from in jail but they might have enough free time to learn about the scientific method.

More seriously, has anyone considered that Revkin may have been told to shut up by the NYT’s legal department because he has committed a felony? 

How does a denier brain cope with all the inconsistencies? Colliding neurons. (In the weird world of deniers, disinformers get a free pass to make up whatever lies they please, but scientists commit a crime if they stand up for their rights and the facts.)

Added by Sou at 7:41 pm on 15 June 2015

Thing is, that Kip was wrong as you can see from the above article. Anthony in this very article and lots before publicly attacked the NOAA scientists. He didn't just publicly attack them, he publicly accused them of lying, he publicly accused them of fraud, and he publicly intimated they should be in jail.