More extreme weather shows up the irrelevance of deniers at WUWT

Say a prayer everyone in south Texas. This is an overpass of Interstate 35 in New Braunfels. #TexasFlood https://t.co/QL6AaXpyQF

— Fort Worth Police OA (@FWPOA) October 31, 2015

Over 10 inches of rain S/SW #austinweather #TexasFlood pic.twitter.com/Ae2RHGP5kl

— Rebecca Stevenson (@Rebecca_Weather) October 31, 2015

This past month (and year) has highlighted the irrelevance of science denying blogs like WUWT. Just this past week, the following have and still are being reported in the media:

• Hurricane Patricia - the most intense cyclone ever recorded in the western hemisphere
• Record almost unbelievable rainfall pelting down on Texas causing record flood levels in places, deaths, and sending someone 20 feet up a "nice little tree"
• A rare Category 4 Cyclone Chapala in the Arabian Sea
• The hottest October day ever recorded anywhere at 48.4 °C, , in South Africa
• A record hottest October in Australia
• A rare heavy hailstorm in Chinchilla, Queensland
• Record rain reaching as far as London, Ontario in the wake of Hurricane Patricia. [Note: the rain was heavy, but turns out it wasn't a record for October, let alone for the year, as Cam explained in the comments - Sou 2 November 2015]

This is the same month that saw:

• The most cyclones above Cat 3 ever recorded in the northern hemisphere in a year
• The hottest temperature in Indonesia in 2006 was equaled
• The most southerly major hurricane ever observed in the Eastern Pacific, Olaf
• Typhoon Koppu causing massive flooding  and at least 41 deaths in the Philippines
• Hurricane Joaquin, which emerged in late September, fueled by very hot seas
• Record heat across southern California and up in Newfoundland
• Catastrophic 1,000 year flooding in South Carolina - have these records already been broken in Texas?
• Huge flash floods in the Riviera, claiming 20 lives

And that was just a sample from this October. September has more than its share of extreme weather, too, in this soon-to-be record-breaking hottest year on record.

Denier Desperation: To Russia with WUWT Love

Now that Stephen Harper has gone from the scene, and Australia's Tony "climate change is crap" Abbott has been dethroned, science deniers don't have too many leaders left (oops - I mean right, right?) who they can adore. They briefly flirted with China, but deniers didn't know the name of the leaders there. In any case, China is, if not panicking, at least very aware that climate change is not going to be kind to them. Particularly when something like 50,500,000 people in China could be at risk of flooding from sea level rise if CO2 emissions continue on their current trajectory. And President Xi Jinping of China has made a joint pledge with President Obama of the USA on climate change.

Free marketers find cosying up to China uncomfortable for all sorts of reasons. Not only would China still be described as sort of communist, even though it's started to embrace capitalism, China is blamed for taking all the jobs from hard-working Americans. And there's still a lot of resentment against China for bailing out the USA in the global financial crisis.

Deniers can now breathe a sigh of relief. They've found a new hero - it's Vladimir Putin from Russia (archived here). Now Russia feels probably a tad more comfortable than China. It's no longer as communist as it once was. Now it can probably be best described as a totalitarian rough house.  This is not a bad fit for right wing authoritarians. They've got a leader they can follow, while at the same time, they would relish the anarchic side of Russian society.

The ozone hole grew bigger this year

If you were a first-time visitor to WUWT, you'd never believe that Anthony Watts had been posting articles about climate and ozone for going on eight years. You'd think he was completely ignorant of all things science. And you'd be correct.

This false-color image shows ozone concentrations above Antarctica on Oct. 2, 2015. Credits: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Today he's got an article about the ozone hole (cached here). It's a mite disturbing, especially for those of us who live in southern Australia. The ozone hole over Antarctica grew to be the fourth largest ever. That's because of the colder stratosphere. Stratosphere cooling arises from greenhouse warming, so as I understand it, this is partly because of our CO2 emissions.

Anthony Watts tells more fibs about NOAA

There's a US congressman who's out of control when it comes to things environmental and climate. His name is Lamar Smith. Not satisfied with data, he wants NOAA to provide him with emails and stuff. The general consensus is that Lamar Smith isn't capable of assessing data. He can't tell one number from the rest. And he's a conspiracy nutter of the type that Peter Sinclair found when he and greenmanbucket installed a hidden camera to record the Science Committee:

Lamar Smith has been vindictively harassing scientists for some time now, in a clear abuse of power. Weirdly, the US legislators have made him, an anti-science advocate, chair of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Smith gets lots of money from oil and gas companies, and from that perspective some would argue he's only doing what he's paid to do. But that would be wrong. He gets paid to represent the American people, not the oil and gas sector. His job is to do what is right for Americans, not to line his campaign chest with donations from lobby groups.

Anyway, he's been on a wild rampage trying to stop climate science from progressing. He's another one who can't wait for the world to burn. As Ars Technica reports, he's also falsely and maliciously accused scientists of "altering data".

Reminds me of James Inhofe, who wanted to send climate scientists to gaol because he didn't like what the research was showing.

More of David Siegel's climate lies and conspiracy theories

Okay - now it's out there. I don't know why David Siegel tells lies. Whether it's because he's stupid and isn't capable of doing his own research, or whether he does it for reward (either tangible or for ideological purposes). But he does tell lies and, unless he falls into the stupid category, he must know it.

Backtrack: A few days ago I wrote about a science denier called David Siegel, who used WUWT to promote a screed he put up somewhere on the internet. That "somewhere" is, as Greg Laden described it: "big giant blog that anybody can go and blog their big giant thoughts on: like tumblr, but more bloggy".

I pretty much dismissed David Siegel's article as the sort of denier tripe that's a dime a dozen in the dark outer reaches of cyberspace. It was nothing more than a mosaic of WUWT or any other climate conspiracy blog. Still, having it all in one place was a good enough reason to write an article. So a few of us got together and that's just what we did. We posted it on the same website that the original article appeared on.

We were gentle with David Siegel in our Medium.com article. We were more interested in presenting the science than in portraying David Siegel as the utter nutter that he is. Here at HotWhopper there are no kid gloves. David Siegel's article was nothing more than a 9,000 word Gish gallop of denier memes. To address every single one in a blog post would have resulted in an article more like 80,000 words rather than the 8,000 or so that we wrote.

Denier weirdness from Philip Lloyd: An extreme rainfall event is a year in the making?

Deniers are weird people. Anthony Watts has another article from science denier Philip Lloyd, who's not unknown at HotWhopper. He's not a climate scientist, that's for sure. Philip decided to look at annual rainfall in England and Wales to see if extreme rainfall events have increased or not.

What's that?

No, I don't think it's a joke article. You can see for yourself.

Dan Coffman's climate conspiracy fiction at WUWT

As AGU15 approaches, it looks as if Anthony Watts is trying to distance himself a tiny bit from all the climate conspiracies he promotes on his blog. Anthony's got a poster session at AGU15, and he probably dreads being laughed out of the conference. Today he's promoting a climate conspiracy novel, written by a science denier who thinks climate science is a hoax (archived here). Anthony says he "believes" just a little bit, but leaves plenty of conspiracy ideation to appease his readers. He wrote:

I’m not fully comfortable with the “hoax” title, as there indeed has been some warming in the past century, some of it man made and some of it natural variation, but there’s also been a largess of funding and a shedload of zealotry and hype attached to all of that, and that’s what this book is about.

The author, Dan Coffey Coffman, says he's a retired Earth scientist, but I can't find any papers by him on Google scholar. So what science he's done is a mystery. Dan is appalled by mainstream science. He prefers the contradictory denier memes on blogs like WUWT. He's not an Earth scientist, he's a wannabe Earth burner.

From the twilight zone of WUWT

Have you ever wondered about the delusions of deniers? Are they all crazy, or are some of them feeders of (or off) the deluded? Anthony's got an article from the twilight zone today (archived here). It's written by someone called Walter Starck.

Walter is one of those lazy people who doesn't bother with evidence. Bold declarations are enough for him. He wrote:

In terms of scientific rationale and supporting evidence, climate alarmism  involves far more denial than does skepticism. The only way one could honestly conclude differently would be to be blissfully unaware of the hundreds of robust peer reviewed studies which refute or bring into serious doubt virtually every important claim by the proponents of DAGW.

Why do disinformers assume that climate deniers are such fake sceptics that they won't check fake claims? It's probably based on experience.

Why doesn't he or anyone else at WUWT produce or even name any of these supposed "hundreds of robust peer reviewed studies"?

Wait a minute. Most of the time deniers are claiming they can't get any of their mysterious studies published. They claim that scientists hold the keys to the gate and deniers can't get a look in. Anthony Watts even set up a secretive open society just to publish all these studies that couldn't get published. Even he's not been able to find any pseudo-science studies to publish yet. (It looks as if he can't get any board members, either.)

So deniers should be demanding a list of these newly discovered hundreds of studies. They aren't, of course. Why spoil a good yarn with facts.

Spencer Weart and Physics Today tweak the noses of science deniers from the Heartland Institute

WUWT is shaping up to be the last bastion of climate science deniers. Anthony Watts will post almost any article, no matter how ridiculous, as long as it rejects science. Today he's got a whiny missive from a bunch of people from the Heartland Institute (archived here). They are complaining that the flagship publication of the American Institute of Physics (AIP), Physics Today, won't accept a comment they wrote.

Anthony posted the article under a misleading headline. His headline says that Physics Today wouldn't acknowledge their comment: "NIPCC’s reply to Physics Today (that they won’t even acknowledge)". However in the opening paragraph of the article, he admits that there was an email exchange and that their comment was acknowledged, but rejected.

The reason for the rejection is obvious. It wasn't a "rebuttal", it was a whine that Spencer Weart mentioned their denial efforts and dismissed them out of hand, as he should.

Anthony Watts indulges in an abysmal showing of poor (hurricane) taste at WUWT

I was keeping an eye on the articles at WUWT. It's been quite boring there lately. There've have been a bunch of articles about Exxon, and how it was researching climate way back when. These did nothing but confuse deniers.

What I was watching for, was to see how or if Anthony Watts would deal with the latest extreme weather event - Hurricane Patricia. This hurricane is the most intense on record - as a hurricane. And the most fierce tropical cyclone ever recorded in the western hemisphere.

Well, Anthony still can't bring himself to write about it. That's bad enough for someone who passes himself off as a meteorologist (unqualified), and who lives in North America. It's not just Mexico that's suffering under Hurricane Patricia. The effects will be felt right through to Texas and other US states.

Instead he did the unbelievable - even for a science-denying climate conspiracy blog.

The IPCC climate message is clear based on the evidence: The fundamental flaws of Hollin & Pearce

In June this year I wrote about a paper in Nature Climate change concerning the press conference for the release of 2013 IPCC report WG1. In the paper, G. J. S. (Gregory) Hollin and Warren Pearce from the University of Nottingham claimed that the IPCC speakers at a press conference “threatened their (own) credibility” took an “an incoherently oscillating position”, and caused “confusion within the press conference and subsequent condemnation in the media”.

Hollin and Pearce were fundamentally wrong in all of these claims, and more:

1. Clear message about different time contexts: A comment to the letter by Jacobs et al (Jacobs15) has just been published, which identifies major flaws in the paper. Not least of which is that Gregory and Warren do not understand the difference between the "hottest decade" since records began, and the recent short term slowdown in the ongoing rise in the global mean surface temperature. Jacobs15 and its supplement also identify some other flaws that should never have slipped through the review net, and which undermines their unsupported claims even further.
2. The journalists were not confused: Arguably the biggest flaw in the NCC letter was that Warren and Gregory didn't bother to check for evidence to support their case. Their entire argument rests on their claim that the IPCC confused the press. But it didn't. Not at all. An examination of the articles subsequently written by the journalists who asked a question demonstrates that the IPCC’s message was clearly received. It did not confuse the journalists, nor was the IPCC's credibility eroded in any way. If anything it was enhanced. You can download the report about the media articles or open it directly.
3. Only David Rose "condemned" (as usual): There was no general condemnation of the IPCC. The only condemnation from journalists who asked a question at the press conference, was from one single source: David Rose, who has a history of misrepresenting the IPCC and climate science. And David Rose's silly article was the entire sum total of the "evidence" that Gregory and Warren offered in support of their claim of "condemnation in the media". 
4. It was also David Rose who provided "incoherence: Gregory and Warren spattered their article with the words "incoherent" and "incoherence". This word first appeared in the "condemnation" article by David Rose - it wasn't an original thought from Gregory and Warren. This lends further credence to the notion that Warren and Gregory penned their article with David Rose in mind. (See below).
5. David Rose was not dismissed as scientifically illiterate: The authors were wrong when they said that David Rose was dismissed as being "scientifically illiterate". He wasn't. I covered this point in detail in my previous article on the subject. It's also covered, with references, in the supplement to Jacobs15. It's another case of Warren and Gregory not understanding something that most other people would understand.
6. Questions on the recent slowdown were not ignored. The authors were also wrong when they claimed that the IPCC said the "pause" (as Warren and Gregory called the slowdown) was scientifically irrelevant. They didn't. Nor did they ignore any of the questions about it, contrary to what Warren and Gregory claimed. The supplement to Jacobs15 covers this point well, with references. (You can download the supplement here.)
7. And the above doesn't even cover the many question marks around their main hypothesis, that the general public can only relate to events that are close in time to the present. What they loosely term "public meaning" and "temporal locality". 

When I wrote the first article, it seemed obvious to me that the letter from Warren and Gregory was a sop to David Rose. Since then I've done some more investigating, and so have others. It seems even more obvious to me that this was just two people seeking some payback on behalf of UK tabloid journalist David Rose for an imaginary grievance.

Hurricane Patricia - stronger than Haiyan

It was born and grew so quickly and is being described as the strongest ever tropical cyclone in the western hemisphere. In just 24 hours Patricia grew from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane. It has made landfall in Mexico, with sustained winds (not just gusts) reported at 265 km an hour (165 mph). The ABC reported that before it hit land it had "winds of 325 kilometres per hour, even more powerful than the 315-kilometre-per-hour winds of Super Typhoon Haiyan".

Extra warm seas at some depth

It's intensity is because of the very warm water off the coast of Mexico. It's warm at depth. National Geographic asked scientists:

Scientists don't fully understand why Patricia grew so intense so quickly. But part of the reason is due to an unusually deep pool of warm water off Mexico's Pacific coast, says Kerry Emanuel, an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

As a hurricane intensifies, it churns up the ocean beneath it, drawing deeper, colder water to the surface. Since tropical cyclones feed on warm water, that cooler water acts as a kind of brake, limiting how strong most hurricanes get, Emanuel says.

But in Patricia's case, the warm pool of water beneath the storm goes down nearly 200 feet (61 meters). "That makes it harder for the hurricane to churn up cold water," says Emanuel.

That deep blob of warm water could be due to this year's predicted strong El Niño, a weather pattern characterized by warmer-than-usual water in parts of the Pacific Ocean.

Given the limitations in understanding the mechanics of hurricanes and the effects of climate change on these storms, Herndon fears Patricia won't be the last nasty surprise we see.

Strong winds

The article also provides some comparisons with Patricia's reported sustained winds of 265 kph, and up to 325 kph before landfall:

Tip's wind speeds topped out at 190 miles (306 kilometers) per hour.

Super Typhoon Haiyan, which struck the Philippines in 2013, recorded pressures as low as 895 millibars with wind speeds of 195 miles (315 kilometers) per hour. Hurricane Katrina came in at 902 millibars with maximum wind speeds of 175 miles (282 kilometers) per hour.

According to NOAA's public advisory, the winds will weaken as they hit the mountains. It warns of rainfall of "8 to 12 inches, with isolated maximum amounts of 20 inches, over the Mexican states of Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima, Michoacan, and Guerrero through Saturday.  These rains could produce life-threatening flash floods and mud slides." In addition there is a warning of storm surges. (I've archived the NOAA public advisory for the record.)

Below is an image of winds taken about 8 hours ago from Earth.nullschool.net:

And just now:

Stay safe.

Harper toppled - another climate procrastinator bites the dust

The Canadian election results so far seem to be a huge win to the Liberals, under Justin Trudeau, and a demolition of the Conservatives under Harper.

CBC has already called it a Liberal win, with some polls only just closed.

Australia's Antony Green is keeping everyone updated with tweets. He says that the polls underestimated the swing, that the larger than usual voter turnout is for Liberals, and that the Liberals have swept Winnipeg, along with the Atlantic provinces (which had the first results) and probably most other provinces.

It's not all good news. Justin Trudeau needs a lot of coaching to understand the importance of reducing carbon emissions.

Still, it's a big win just to topple the Harper government, which was not just dragging its heels on mitigation, it was silencing scientists.

The Spanish Inquisition, conflict of interest and free speech

Still nothing from denier blogs. All is quiet. Have deniers given up the battle? Are they gearing up for a concerted attack on science? Looking for that final, final, final, final, final nail in some coffin or other? Anthony Watts is still focusing on extremist right wing lunacy. He's not got anything to offer the centrist WUWT-ers.

Today's contribution (archived here, latest here) is from Paul "bring back smog" Driessen, who is moaning that an economist should be allowed to breach the rules of the Brookings Institution, and blames it on Elizabeth Warren. Nothing to do with climate science, although Paul did manage to mention Senator Whitehouse in the same article. Chastising him for wanting scientists to declare the entities funding their research, and any potential conflict of interest. He opened in his usual highly exaggerated and misplaced fashion:

As Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition for 15 years, Tomas de Torquemada presided over the interrogation, torture, imprisonment and execution of thousands, for the “crimes” of religious heresy and pretended conversion to Christianity. Historian Sebastián de Olmedo titled him “the hammer of heretics.”

Today Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) are pursuing their own inquisition against perceived “heretics.” 

A new record set: Twin typhoons in the Pacific: Koppu (Lando) and Champi

You probably know about Typhoon Koppu that is pummeling the Philippines as I write. Locally it's known as Lando. There's another one not far from it called Champi. Here's a picture from the Earth wind map:

Denier weirdness: Anthony Watts hands his blog to the crazies. Is that the best he's got?

Anthony Watts posted another article from his resident greenhouse effect denier, Tim Ball (archived here). This time he put a caveat on the top, but he posted it anyway. The only other article he's posted in the last day is something from Christopher Monckton, which can best be described as seeming to come from a raving lunatic (archived here). Someone let him out of Bedlam.

Seriously? It's less than six weeks to Paris, and all Anthony Watts has is years' old denier memes of wrong CO2 measurements, and a hysterical (I'm not exaggerating) article from the potty peer?

Another conspiracy theorist "comes out" at WUWT: David Siegel

Anthony Watts has announced a fan, who learnt all he needs to know about climate after reading WUWT for 400 hours (archived here). What have I learnt about climate science deniers after reading their nonsense for several hours a day over several years? Not a helluva lot. Then again, I'm not a cognitive scientist. I have discovered that they'll generally expend an awful lot of energy promoting their rejection of science. A whole lot more than investigating it.

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UPDATE: A group of us have now written a response to David Seigel's article. We posted it at the same website: Medium.com. Feel free to recommend, like, comment, tweet and generally spread it around, especially if you come across people touting the Siegel denialisms.

Sou - 29 October 2015

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I've also figured out that science deniers like to congregate with other science deniers. They don't find much joy in real life, so they get together in cyberspace. I expect they find it reassuring to find there are other people in the world who think the earth is flat, or that it was created by a god 6,000 years ago, or the equivalent for climate denial. Rather in the manner that Gabby so eloquently put it, in the cartoon on sexism:

Climate disinformer Patrick Moore talks to deniers at the GWPF

Semi-professional climate disinformer Patrick Moore gave a talk to UK climate science deniers the other day. Anthony Watts posted it under a headline: "Greenpeace founder delivers powerful annual lecture, praises carbon dioxide – full text" (archived here). Powerful? No. Pseudo-scientific rubbish? Yes. I don't know what the audience in general thought of his nonsense. It probably didn't register with many of them. All they wanted was to hear someone they felt was on "their side". The people who invited him most likely knew he would spout a load of nonsense, and couldn't get anyone more credible to talk. Well, who is left these days?

Patrick spent the first part of his talk on himself. He's a hero in his own mind. A born-again denier. I cannot imagine that he believes the words that come out of his mouth, but they help him earn a crust in his chosen field. Science denial.

The basis of his claim was that without CO2 the planet would be dead, therefore the more we have the better. That's like saying to a drowning woman - without water we'd all be dead so suck it up.

Warning: this is a long article, but it covers a lot of ground

They just don't get it at WUWT. It's the pace of change that's the problem.

Deniers like to claim they aren't stupid and they aren't ignorant. I can't say what happens in the rest of their lives, but those who deny climate science, when it comes to climate science, are either stupid, or ignorant or knowingly telling lies. There is no middle ground.

There's an example again today at WUWT (archived here). Again it's from Eric Worrall. He wonders why, if global warming is threatening the food chain, it didn't threaten it during the Cretaceous period. You don't believe that anyone could be so foolish? It's true. Eric wrote:

The obvious question – why didn’t this hypothesised collapse occur during previous epochs with high CO2 levels, such as the Cretaceous Age? According to Wikipedia, the Cretaceous age enjoyed CO2 levels of around 1700ppm. Yet the Cretaceous was also the age of the Dinosaurs – the period was characterised by large tropical jungles, shallow warm seas, and a vast abundance of life, both marine and terrestrial. I suggest it takes a pretty robust food chain to support a predator like the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

It's as if he's never heard of any of the great extinction events, like the massive Permian Triassic events, which in part were the result of rapid greenhouse warming.

Quote of the Day from Bob Tisdale at WUWT: It is easy...

From an article by Bob "blob" Tisdale a few hours ago on the climate conspiracy blog, WUWT. After years of WUWT articles insisting "it's not warming" or "if it was warming it's stopped" or "if it ever warmed it's now cooling", or "the tide is turning and we're heading for an ice age", or whatever, here's this little gem:

"Alarmists happily ignore the fact that it is easy to have record high global temperatures in the midst of a hiatus or slowdown in global warming"

Errr - what? If it was so "easy" surely there'd not have been a slowdown. Despite all that it's true that there was a record hot year in 2005, and another in 2010, and another in 2014, and this year'll be another no doubt, and probably next year as well. And where's that "slowdown" gone?

Data source: GISS NASA

Watching the global thermometer - year to date GISTemp with September 2015

Every month since March, I've posted a chart of the progressive year-to-date global average surface temperature, from GISS. This is the update with September included. I'll repeat the explanation with each update and add what seem to be things to watch.

The latest conspiracy theory from WUWT: sea level numbers are imaginary

Deniers must be at their wits end. Although if the article (archived here) that Anthony Watts posted at WUWT yesterday is any indication, the wit of deniers is quite small in stature, so they don't have to travel far to get to the end.

A regular denier at WUWT is Kip Hansen. Kip's latest hypothesis is that sea level numbers are imaginary. This is what he thinks is "imaginary":

Source: Sea Level Research Group U Colorado

Kip has woven a conspiracy that goes something like this.

A challenge to climate science deniers

Anthony Watts, who runs the climate conspiracy blog WUWT, tries to make a living from a couple of sources these days. One relies on science and the hard work of scientists to forecast weather. Anthony puts all his faith in models, piggy backing on the efforts of scientists to sell his weather wares.

The other source of his income is rejecting the work of those same scientists. He earns a few bucks from denying climate science.

If you think that's odd, well he's not the only one. There are a few science denying weather people in the USA who make a living regurgitating the weather forecasts of NOAA and science from NASA, while denying the science itself. Joe Bastardi for example.

Today Anthony is claiming that it's not true that 97% of the scientific literature that looks at the causes of global warming attributes it to human activity (archived here). This is despite the fact that there are a number of studies that have provided evidence of this. He hasn't put forward any evidence disputing this number. Nor would he (or could he). Anthony Watts is in the disinformation business, not the information business. He thinks it quite sufficient to repeatedly claim something is "bogus" for his readers to believe it's bogus. He thinks that if he tells a lie often enough, there will be some people foolish enough to believe him. And he's correct. There are people in the world who are so keen to "believe" him, that they'll put their own willingness to believe the lie ahead of the welfare of the human species and every other species on the planet.  They'd rather see the world as we know it end than "believe" climate science.

So I am issuing a challenge.

Update: After four days, not one person has come close to accepting the challenge. Not one. Not even the vaguest of attempts. No-one will be surprised at that.

Sou 11 October 2015

New IPCC Chair: Dr. Hoesung Lee of Korea

If you want to know more about the newly elected chair of the IPCC, Dr. Hoesung Lee of Korea, the Carbon Brief interviewed him not long ago.

http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/09/the-carbon-brief-interview-dr-hoesung-lee/

Extreme weather denial at WUWT

The weather is not being kind to deniers. Just this week there have been record-breaking rains in the USA, where eleven people have reportedly lost their lives.  And in Europe, where seventeen people are reported to have been killed. Not just record-breaking, but record-smashing rains.  And in the past month there was also the incredible record rain in Japan. And the numerous records being set for tropical cyclones and hurricanes.  It's as if the earth is getting sick of us ignoring the signs and has stepped up the pace of climate change.

All this while last year and this year are the two hottest years on record so far. Put all that together with the UN meeting in Paris and you can understand why deniers are losing it.

Anthony Watts has realised that he cannot ignore the rain in the USA, but he's claiming it's just weather (archived here). Which is very inconsistent of him, because he has a record of lying to his readers that extreme events aren't getting more extreme as global warming kicks in. He's also telling lies about the extremely hot waters that the winds blew over, which is part of the reason for the record-smashing rain events. Anthony's telling quite blatant lies now. He seems to not care that he has not a shred of credibility left. (You'll recall that just a few days ago he was also telling his readers that the greenhouse effect isn't real.)

Anthony Watts has lost the plot: WUWT outright rejects the greenhouse effect!

In the most blatant rejection of the greenhouse effect I've yet seen in a WUWT article, Anthony Watts has posted a "guest opinion" from sky dragon slayer, Tim Ball. Tim was the author of Chapter One of "Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory", a book that rejects the greenhouse effect, and which Anthony Watts promoted at the time (without endorsing it).  He mentioned that some people thought that silliest of books might derail the Cancun climate conference.  As if! Perhaps he's hoping to derail the Paris conference with WUWT's startling revelation that the greenhouse effect isn't real and 200 years of climate science is all wrong. What a nutter!

I looked for a debunk of the "slayer" book, but it was obviously too, too silly for anyone to bother doing it. (Judith Curry got mocked by all and sundry for entertaining three articles about it and oodles of comments supporting the book. At one point she wiped the articles, but her denier "free speech" audience got upset over censorship, so she put them back.)

Anthony Watts used to ban commenters who plagued WUWT with weird comments disputing the greenhouse effect, but he's always pandered to Tim Ball. I don't know why. What compensates him for promoting Tim's sleazy conspiracy theories? What does Anthony get out of it, except for the contempt of any normal person who comes across Tim's sordid fantasies. I suppose his reward is page hits from other conspiracy theorists of the One World Guvmint, Agenda 21 kind. Anything to pay the bills.

No evidence at WUWT - a DuKE, global surface temperature, and statistics

Anthony Watts has a new article on his climate conspiracy blog (archived here). It has the title: "Is There Evidence of Frantic Researchers “Adjusting” Unsuitable Data? (Now Includes July Data)". The answer is NO. Or at least none is provided by anyone. Which raises the question of why the title? You'd think he'd at least make up something to appease the mob. All he has is a mish-mash of temperature data from various sources, including lower troposphere data, and land and sea surface data (combined), and sea surface data, interspersed with gobbledegook from one of his long-winded fans. (And July must be a big deal, even though it's already October!)

The authors are listed as follows:

• Professor Robert Brown from Duke University (aka the batty duke or rgbatduke)
• Werner Brozek
• with one of Anthony's pet Anonymous Cowards known as "Just The Facts" as editor.

In regard to whoever is Just The Facts, he or she is a long time regular. Anthony doesn't like people using pseudonyms. Let me correct that. Anthony only likes deniers using pseudonyms. Any normal person who prefers to comment on climate using a pseudonym is castigated by Anthony Watts. (I think Just The Facts is the same person who also posts at WUWT as justthefactswuwt. But I cannot say for sure. It doesn't matter.)

A note on statistical significance: If you want to skip over the meaningless ramble, you can jump straight to the discussion about what statistical significance means. (Hint: a 'not statistically significant' trend doesn't mean that it hasn't warmed.)

WUWT's Bob Tisdale and Hurricane Joaquin

Anthony Watts finally put up an article about Hurricane Joaquin (archived here). It was from Bob Tisdale, one of the regular "guest" pseudo-scientists at WUWT. Bob thinks global warming is caused by a "blob" of warm water in the Pacific, or ENSO events. He has never tried to prove that. He just makes assertions. And he never tries to explain what caused the blob to appear, or why ENSO suddenly decided to heat up the world when it didn't for thousands of years. Bob's a hard-core denier of greenhouse warming and not good at logic (or evidence). Probably the only reason Anthony allowed him to mention Hurricane Joaquin was because it was another "it's not us" articles. In fact it was a very strange article altogether.

The point of Bob's article can probably best be summed up by this bit, where he wrote:

If history repeats itself, and it’s very likely to do so, alarmists will be claiming that Hurricane Joaquin is being made worse by oceans warmed by manmade greenhouse gases.

So far, the cause of the intensity of Joaquin is being attributed to the combined effect of very hot seas (some of the warmest on record in the region), and low-ish wind shear.  A weather underground tutorial on wind shear starts off by saying that "Wind shear is often the most critical factor controlling hurricane formation and destruction. " Below is the latest Earth Wind Map:

Credit: Earth Wind Map

Out of the mouths of deniers: it snows CO2 when it's cold?

Did you know it snows CO2 when it's cold? Noticed in the comments at WUWT today:

...when CO2 cools it falls from the atmosphere, it’s a low lying gas, higher levels of CO2 falling from the atmosphere are being recorded at ground level observatories beside a volcano and all other measurements are calibrated around the planet to assure the correct measurement of “atmospheric CO2” is recorded… 

Sparks is wrong, of course. CO2 is a well-mixed greenhouse gas. And it doesn't easily "fall from the atmosphere".  From Wikipedia (this is basic stuff):

Carbon dioxide has no liquid state at pressures below 5.1 standard atmospheres (520 kPa). At 1 atmosphere (near mean sea level pressure), the gas deposits directly to a solid at temperatures below −78.5 °C (−109.3 °F; 194.7 K) and the solid sublimes directly to a gas above −78.5 °C. In its solid state, carbon dioxide is commonly called dry ice.

Hurricanes and floods - USA

As a follow up to my last article, there's one topic you won't read much of at WUWT, and that's extreme weather. So far, there's not been a single mention of Hurricane Joaquin. That system is currently poised to hit the Bahamas, and is making people on the east coast of the USA a tad nervous. Most particularly because it's very difficult to know whether it will go up the coast or veer out to sea.

Source: EarthWindMap

Coincidentally, the hurricane (as a tropical low) appeared about the same time as a new paper in PNAS, about how rising sea levels and changing tropical cyclones are increasing the risk of flooding in New York City. In the abstract, the authors write how "flood risk has greatly increased for the region; for example, the 500-y return period for a ∼2.25-m flood height during the pre-anthropogenic era has decreased to ∼24.4 y in the anthropogenic era."  500 years to 24.4 years is a huge change. You can read about the paper at The Carbon Brief, where Robert McSweeney writes:

Rising sea levels and changing tropical cyclones are pushing New York City coastal floods to new heights, says a study published today.

Floods hitting the city are now more than a metre higher than before humans had an influence on the climate, the research shows, increasing the risk of coastal defences being overwhelmed.

Read the full article - it's detailed and well written.

Reference

Andra J. Reed, Michael E. Mann, Kerry A. Emanuel, Ning Lin, Benjamin P. Horton, Andrew C. Kemp, and Jeffrey P. Donnelly (2015) "Increased threat of tropical cyclones and coastal flooding to New York City during the anthropogenic era", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,doi/10.1073/pnas.1513127112

• Climate change is raising the risk of coastal floods in New York City, study finds - article by Robert McSweeney at The Carbon Brief.

Paris is approaching, and deniers are on the back foot

In just two months, the 2015 Paris Climate Conference (COP21) will commence, alongside a big shindig for business, the Sustainable Innovation Forum 2015. By this time you might have expected the deniers to be in full swing, stealing emails from scientists, or otherwise getting up to their usual dirty tricks. There's nothing. Worse than nothing. Deniers are merely recycling ancient memes, and if anything, are on the defensive.

Anthony Watts at WUWT briefly stepped out of his hidey hole with a couple of articles over the past week, but all he did was act the fool. First in icy cold Greenland and then in sunny Spain. He wasn't just mocked here at HW, he didn't get much applause from his own crowd, either. So he slunk back into his hole and handed over the reins to his resident uber conspiracy theorist, Tim Ball.