Is this what you want, Matt Ridley?

It's not just deniers who have sunk to a new low. Scientific American has too. The magazine made something of a mockery of a collection of in-depth articles about climate change by including an article from science disinformer Matt Ridley. I'm told Matt's article is only in the online edition, not the print edition, but it shouldn't have been in either. Matt claimed (despite all evidence that already we are seeing extreme weather disasters from global warming) that "Climate Change Will Not Be Dangerous for a Long Time".

The misleading headline is really bad and something I'd never expected to see at the once admired magazine. Matt Ridley's article is full of the sort of nonsense you'd expect to read on climate conspiracy blogs. It starts with:

The climate change debate has been polarized into a simple dichotomy. Either global warming is “real, man-made and dangerous,” as Pres. Barack Obama thinks, or it’s a “hoax,” as Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe thinks. But there is a third possibility: that it is real, man-made and not dangerous, at least not for a long time.

COP21 begins in Paris - links to get you up to speed

COP21 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is getting underway at Le Bourget conference centre just outside Paris. It will be a huge gathering of world leaders and delegates from all around the world. The meeting runs from 30 November to 11 December.

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UPDATE: I've just seen that the final text draft has been agreed prepared. I'll let you know as soon as it's available - or you can keep an eye on the UN website. There's a press conference scheduled for 11:30 am CET today - Saturday (Europe time).

Sou 2:30 pm AEDT 12 December 2015

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The purpose

COP meetings aren't scientific meetings, they are about action to mitigate climate change through intergovernmental agreement. The aim of COP21 has been described as "to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on climate, with the aim of keeping global warming below 2°C".  The "legally binding" is probably not going to be achieved, because the agreement has to be accepted by all parties and there are some who won't be able to accept the legally binding part. The agreement won't be sufficient to guarantee "below 2°C", but will be an important pre-requisite.

The meeting

To keep up to date with drafts etc, here is a link to the main UNFCCC COP21 website and the provisional agenda and overview schedule. There is also an information hub, and live webcasts (I don't know if they will be open to a general audience or not).

Background and commentary

Below are links to some of what is being written about it. It's not exhaustive by any means. I mainly picked articles that provide information about what COP21 is about and what is to be achieved, hopefully.

• The Conversation has a big spread with lots of articles focusing on different aspects.
• From the UK Independent: Paris climate change talks: What the different groups attending expect from these crucial meetings
• Biwa Kwan at SBS (Australia) provides an overview: Paris Climate Meeting: What you need to know about COP21
• Climate scientist Simon Donner writes about the Seven Key Issues To Be Addressed At The Paris Climate Summit
• Matt McGrath of the BBC - COP21: Beginner's guide to the UN Paris climate summit
• The Guardian has a feature spread with lots of articles
• Australia's ABC is notable for it's lack of focus on COP21 apart from a couple of articles in the Drum opinion section and news items about marches and arrests - maybe there is more to come
• Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary General - What I expect from the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris
• Brandon Miller, CNN - 5 things you need to know about COP21

UNFCCC Pledges, websites and reports

There is a special UNFCCC website, which has a the report "Climate Action Now", plus the pledges from each country. It's one of those highly irritating fancy websites designed for touch tablets, where you have to guess a lot, click a lot, scroll a lot, and get mini-bits of information in return - but it mightn't be the information you are looking for. I recommend this link for the Climate Action Now Summary for Policymakers report - although if you're on a notebook or desktop computer, you'll find the website almost as irritating. There's also a web page with a press release, which is easier to read.

It would be great if you can add other interesting links in the comments below.

Eric Worrall's WUWT: Stop educating children

On Anthony Watts' Eric Worrall's blog WUWT**, he is complaining that Australian children are being prepared to face climate change (archived here, cached here).  Eric calls climate education "green indoctrination". If you didn't know, Eric is not in favour of natural resource conservation or science education. I deduce from his article that Eric is not in favour of education at all. I'm guessing, but I'd say that like many people at WUWT he thinks that children should not learn how to learn, instead they should be taught how to read, write and do sums. And that's about all. (Oh, teaching children to be Islamaphobic would go down well with Eric, too.)

Anthony Watts sinks to another vile low: Jim Jones' suicide cult and climate science

With only a couple of days to go until the Paris COP21 talks begin, science deniers are falling apart. Yesterday I wrote how Judith Curry stooped to tabloid writer David Rose as a pulpit for her brand of "no mitigation" advocacy and disinformation. (She is so anxious that her message is falling on deaf ears that she put out a plea to "Be sure to link to the article" and commented "I hope that as a result of this article, i will get a few more twitter followers and followers of Climate Etc.".)

Today Anthony Watts did a Heartland Institute. He posted an article at his blog, WUWT, likening people who accept climate science to Jim Jones and his suicide cult. His latest article proclaims (archived here):

Similarities to Jim Jones and the Cult of Climate Change

"...The apocalypse of an alleged climate change shares many of Jones’ cult-like qualities."

[Update: See the update below relating to plagiarism in the WUWT article.]

Turned not tossed - Judith Curry denier martyr with David Rose

Tabloid writer David Rose has written another puff piece on Judith Curry. Judith used to be a scientist who dabbled in climate stuff, until she gave it away to write a blog for science deniers. David Rose was never what you'd call a journalist. He's a hack writer for a tabloid in the UK. His article this time didn't even make the grade for the Mail. This time he was relegated to a magazine called The Spectator, which if you're like me and have never heard of it, is described in Wikipedia as "a weekly British conservative magazine. It was first published on 6 July 1828,[2] making it the oldest continuously published magazine in the English language." For a few years Nigel Lawson was editor. Nigel now heads up the denier lobby group the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which, as its name suggests, agitates for more global warming. So science denial articles in The Spectator shouldn't surprise anyone.

RealClimate.org is up and running again

This is just to let you know that realclimate.org is back up and running. It might take a few hours to propagate everywhere. If you have trouble reaching the main site, you can access the back-up website here.

I did have the back-up site in the blog roll for a short spell. I've now changed it back again, but it may take a while to detect. Meanwhile, you can still click on the link which seems to be currently right at the bottom of the blogroll. [I'm leaving it off the blogroll until the links are directed back to the main site.]

Congrats to Gavin Schmidt and co. I really thought it would take quite a bit longer to sort out. They fixed the problem in record time - though they still have to update the links. (You may find yourself going back and from from the main website to the backup website when you click on links.)

Denier weirdness: Judith Curry will not be renewing her subscription

There's been no doubt for quite a long time that Judith Curry has discarded any pretense of being a scientist. Today she made it official, declaring:

The APS Statement on Climate Change is now officially posted [link], minor changes from the draft.  I will not be renewing my membership to the APS.

The American Physical Society released it's revised statement on climate change just over a week ago. It's not terribly strong, but it could have been even weaker given the attempts by science denying members to water it down.

Blistering letter from House Committee member to Lamar Smith about his baseless smear campaign against NOAA scientists

You may have read about US Congressman Lamar Smith's ongoing vindictive harassment and smear campaign against scientists at NOAA. You might have also read about his latest allegations of "whistleblowers". If you are wondering if there is anything behind this, other than a deranged attack on science, scientists and the NOAA, then wonder no more.

There is not.

To prove this point, just read the letter to Lamar Smith from Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, a member of the committee of which Lamar Smith is chair - the Committee on Space, Science and Technology.

I'll quote some segments damning the unconscionable actions of this vindictive, out-of-control, grandstanding US congressman, Lamar Smith. The bolding and some paragraph breaks are mine.

Lesson 1,126½ in how to be a science disinformer, featuring Bob Tisdale

In this lesson about how to be a climate disinformer, I refer to a recent article by Bob Tisdale (archived here, cached here). In fact I refer to umpteen articles by Bob Tisdale, because his articles are often copies and pastes of his previous articles, with slight updates.

You can also watch a video with Tom Peterson, who gives The Story of Climate Data. This article is worth it for that alone. Dr Peterson is President of the World Meteorological Organization's Commission for Climatology, and recently retired from NOAA.

The purpose of the lesson, and hiding the closing of the gap

The purpose of the deception is to "prove" that all models are useless by hiding the closing of the gap.

Before you start, it's important to see what the observations actually show. Below is a chart of HadCRUT4, plotted with the multi-model mean of CMIP5. The 95% probability is for all uncertainties for HadCRUT observations - measurement and sampling, bias and coverage uncertainties. The uncertainties relating to the multi-model mean of CMIP5 are not plotted. As always, click on the chart to enlarge it.

Fig 1 | Global mean surface temperature observations and multi-model mean.
Data sources: UK Met Office Hadley Centre and KNMI Climate Explorer (CMIP5)

As you can see, with 2015 year to date (to September 2015), the observations are now approaching the CMIP5 multi-model mean. This closing of the gap must be hidden from WUWT deniers at all costs. And it's not hard to do so if you follow the steps in the lesson.

Tim Ball tells fibs about past climates at Anthony Watts' conspiracy blog WUWT

Tim Ball is an uber conspiracy theorist and the author of the first chapter in the greenhouse gas denying book about slaying sky dragons. One might suspect that he pens articles for Anthony Watts so he (Tim) can build up a defense of insanity in his defamation lawsuits. He's quoted Hitler and Osama bin Laden to support his conspiracy nuttery. He thinks that Tom Wigley is angling to be the Leader of the World. He's nuts.

Nevertheless he has a nutter fan club in Anthony Watts and his conspiracy theorising acolytes.

The Medieval Climate Anomaly and the Little Ice Age

Today he's started an article with the following:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2001 Report claimed that neither the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) nor the Little Ice Age (LIA) occurred. 

I didn't need to check to know that he telling fibs. To save you the trouble let me quote from the 2013 AR5 WG1 report from the IPCC. The medieval warm period is referred to in the IPCC report as the Medieval Climate Anomaly. The report doesn't just mention it 27 times, it states its duration, from 950 to 1250. The Little Ice Age is mentioned 43 times in the document, and its duration is given from 1450 to 1850. Therefore Tim is lying when he claims that the IPCC "claimed that neither the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) nor the Little Ice Age (LIA) occurred". Quelle surprise - not. Lying and deception is pretty well mandatory on denier blogs like WUWT. Below are some of the 70 instances:

Watching the global thermometer - year to date GISTemp with a very hot October 2015

Wow! I knew that the Japan Meteorological Agency showed a big jump in October, and I expect GISS was doing some double and triple checking of the GISS data. October is the hottest October on record by a country mile. A whopping 1.04 °C above the 1951-1980 mean. This is the first time any month has an anomaly greater than 1 °C above the 1951-1980 mean (h/t Joe Stepansky).

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 October included. I'll repeat the explanation with each update and add what seem to be things to watch.

Denier weirdness: Bob Tisdale on weather and climate

In case anyone was in any doubt that Bob Tisdale knows nothing about weather or climate, read the words he published on Anthony Watts' climate conspiracy blog today (archived here, latest here, cached here). Bob wrote about the WMO definition of climate:

On their Frequently Asked Questions webpage, the World Meteorological Organization asks and answers:

What is Climate?
Climate in a narrow sense is usually defined as the “average weather,” or more rigorously, as the statistical description in terms of the mean and variability of relevant quantities over a period of time ranging from months to thousands or millions of years. The classical period is 30 years, as defined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). These quantities are most often surface variables such as temperature, precipitation, and wind. Climate in a wider sense is the state, including a statistical description, of the climate system.

Will the real Richard Tol please stand up?

At the Carbon Brief, there's a full transcript of an interview of Richard Tol by Roger Harrabin of the BBC. Readers of HotWhopper won't recognise him. The Richard Tol who was interviewed by Roger Harrabin is a completely different man to the person who has behaved in an unhinged obsessive manner when he has visited HotWhopper in the past (see below). He is quite a different person to the man who for more than two years has been obsessed with fatigued abstracts, date stamps and 97 per cents, trying to find flaws in the research study by Cook et al, and failing.

Adverse effects of climate change are about to outweigh any benefits

The newly emerged Richard Tol says things like adverse affects of climate change will very soon outweigh any benefits of warming (within months, not years):

• According to my latest calculations, it’s sort of around 1.1 degrees of warming relative to pre-industrial, so that’s … referring to the boundary between net positive benefits from warming, and negatives, which means we are at the boundary.

Laid bare: the sociopathology of climate science denial

Within minutes of the terrorist killings in Paris last night, there was a WUWT blog article, plus numerous tweets and retweets. Anthony Watts milked the horror of the terrorist attacks in Paris for all he could get out of it (archived here and here). Several hours later he added a French flag and the word "solidarité" to his blog header (archived here), perhaps in an attempt to soften his crass opportunism, or perhaps make more mileage.

This episode demonstrates again what Anthony and his followers at wattsupwiththat.com (WUWT) are really like underneath their charade of climate science denial. It's not the first time Anthony Watts has shown he has no class and is incapable of empathy. In the past he has seized on a disastrous tragedy, Haiyan, and used it as an opportunity for another attack on science. And if you decide to read the WUWT comments, you'll see that denial goes hand in hand with the bigotry of some deniers.

Shame on them.

Update: Dr Roy Spencer PhD tops the efforts of Anthony Watts and most of the deniers at WUWT. See the comments below for details, or read what he wrote on his Facebook page.

Sou 11:15 am 15 November 2015

[Note: Out of respect for the victims of the terrorist attacks in Paris, and their families, and all of France, I postponed the publication of this article for a few hours. If you do comment, I know you'll remember that this blog is viewed by people from around the world, and will respect those who've been touched by the horrific events in Paris.]

Denier whines of censorship: Why won't they let me say the Earth is flat?

Anthony Watts has really, really, really got his nose out of joint. What caused his nose to become disjointed was a UK newspaper, The Independent. It has modernised its website and poor little Anthony can no longer find a minor article from March 2000 - more than 15 years ago.

It's a conspiracy, he moans. It's all a plot to hide bad headlines. He wrote (archived here, cached here):

In light of what happened yesterday with The Independent apparently disappearing a famous climate prediction blunder article while leaving an article critical of its use intact, this opinion piece by Joe Wallach seemed pertinent -Anthony

Sheesh. He doesn't mind hiding his own inconvenient articles, does he? Try to find this one at WUWT: "An interesting issue with ice core data". Here's the link:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/03/an-interesting-issue-with-ice-core-data/

What? It's disappeared? Along with all the 83 comments? Okay then, here's the archived version: http://www.webcitation.org/6H83F9g4X

Credit: XKCD

A rare and exciting event at WUWT

A rare and exciting event has occurred at Anthony Watts' blog WUWT. He can't find one of what he calls his failed climate predictions. The rarity isn't that he couldn't find it, it's that he actually looked for the source! As you know, in deniersville, a climate prediction can fail as long as it hasn't happened yet. It doesn't have to be a near time prediction, it could be a prediction for the years well into the future. In fact, it doesn't even have to be a prediction to be a failed prediction. In deniersville, if a newspaper reporter (or occasionally a scientist) says anything about the future, and even if they don't, it can be added to one of those silly denier lists that float around cyberspace.

I don't know why Anthony Watts is so upset. He doesn't usually bother linking to original sources when he posts a list of so-called "failed predictions" that he filches from some denier website or other. In deniers' minds it doesn't matter if there never was a prediction in the first place. or if there was it doesn't matter who made it.

I once tried to source some of the supposed "predictions" he posted back in 2014, but mostly all I found was a copy of his denier list, not an original source for the quote. In other words, most of the so-called predictions are probably just made up out of thin air. At best, some might be quote-mined from newspaper articles. Very few are scientific predictions. Only eight of the 107 so-called "predictions" had a live link to any source, none of which was a "failed prediction"!

Denier weirdness: No pennies have dropped for Bob Tisdale at WUWT

Some deniers at WUWT seem to think that Bob Tisdale has a wonderful intellect. If he does he hides it very well. I've already written about his conspiracy theorising fantasies from his new "book". Well, he's at it again at WUWT.

He wrote a very silly article (archived here), full of meaningless charts. He was, I think, making the point that it can get warm in the day and cool at night in Central England. And in that part of the world, it's warmer in summer than it is in winter, surprise, surprise. Does he think that nobody knew that? Where I live it doesn't usually get quite as cold but it can get a lot hotter, so I'd say we experience seasonal and diurnal differences in temperature that might not be that different, just shifted up a bit on the chart.

The point Bob was trying to make is so puerile that I'm wondering if I've got it wrong. Maybe he was trying to write about some other great breakthrough. If he was he didn't explain it well.

Eric Worrall and WUWT with telltale techniques - No. 3: Impossible expectations No: 2 Logical Fallacy

The third of five telltale techniques of climate science denial is that of setting impossible expectations. The second is logical fallacies. Today Anthony Watts has put up another article by Eric Worrall (archived here). His article has both featured, and more. This article is about a special report of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS): Explaining Extreme Events of 2014 from a Climate Perspective.

The report itself, like the ones about extreme events in 2011, 2012 and 2013, describes a number of extreme weather events from around the world in the context of human-caused climate change. There's a short explanation on the contents web page, my paras, dot points and emphasis:

Some history that led to Judith Curry hunkering down in the NOAA conspiracy theorists' bunker

The last couple of days has seen ex-scientist Judith Curry hunkering down in the conspiracy theorists' bunker. She is suggesting that the scientists at NOAA are "biasing and spinning climate science to support a political agenda".

If that's what they were doing (it isn't, as climate researcher Peter Thorne explains), they were not doing it at all well. For one thing, they've published papers describing their work in considerable detail, and the data is freely available (here and here and here) for anyone to check. Judith has no expertise in putting together surface temperature records (if you can't tell from reading her articles), so she wouldn't know what to do with the NOAA data any more than Lamar Smith does. (Judith dropped off the Berkeley Earth project team at an early stage, without making any substantive contribution.)

She does know how to insinuate and spread nasty smear campaigns, however. Over the years she's honed that art to a reasonable, if patently transparent, level.

Anthony Watts opens mouth, places foot firmly - in the weakening Walker Circulation

As if one foot in mouth wasn't enough for the day, Anthony Watts does it again (archived here, cached here). Maybe he wanted to give both his clodhoppers a turn. Whatever - he posted one of his "claim" articles, which was about a new paper published in Geophysical Research Letters. The paper, by Katinka Bellomo and Amy C. Clement from the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, University of Miami, was describing evidence of the expected slowdown in the Walker Circulation. Beneath his "claim" headline Anthony wrote:

From the UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI ROSENSTIEL SCHOOL OF MARINE & ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE and the “correlation is not causation department” comes this paper that suggests GHG’s decrease the Walker Circulation. Only one problem. They don’t give a clear cut mechanism, only tenuous linkage. I suspect Willis will have a thing or two to say about this paper.

Only one problem, the scientists did give a clear cut mechanism. (Actually, they referred to more than one mechanism, although they emphasised the one proposed by Isaac Held and Brian Soden.) As the authors explained right at the very beginning of their paper:

More snow won't stop the West Antarctic ice sheet from collapsing

Anthony Watts reappears in a frenzy of excitement (archived here and cached here). He's discovered a press release about a new paper by scientists from the British Antarctic Survey Expedition, but didn't take the time to read it or the paper. Because of that, he's made a complete ass of himself as he almost always does whenever he writes something on his blog. (Which is probably why he appears so rarely these days. He can't hack the guffaws from onlookers.)

Anthony's headline is wrong. It reads: "Yet another study shows Antarctica gaining ice mass – snowfall accumulation ‘highest we have seen in the last 300 years’". Then, that blogger who rejects out of hand almost every scientific paper he comes across, bemoans the fact that an article at Media Matters tells how a scientist, Jay Zwally, knew that deniers would twist his recent paper.

OCO-2 baffles deniers at WUWT and prompts more conspiracy theories

The OCO-2 project at NASA has a video showing the changes in atmospheric CO2 over a year or so, as measured by the OCO-2 satellite, which was launched last year. NASA put out a press release a few days ago:

"We can already clearly see patterns of seasonal change and variations in carbon dioxide around the globe," said Annmarie Eldering, OCO-2 deputy project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "Far more subtle features are expected to emerge over time."...

...Through most of OCO-2's first year in space, the mission team was busy calibrating its science instrument, learning how to process its massive amount of data, and delivering data products to NASA's Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES-DISC) in Greenbelt, Maryland, for distribution to the world’s science community.

Scientists are comparing OCO-2 data to ground-based measurements to validate the satellite data and tie it to internationally accepted standards for accuracy and precision. 

CO2 is a well-mixed greenhouse gas. Notice the legend - it spans just 15 parts per million by volume, from 390 to 405 ppmv. And I don't think the colours hit the extremes at any point during the year (you can check for yourself). It gets drawn down into plants on land and in the ocean and then released again as the seasons change.

Is this all there is before COP21? Crowd-sourcing the list of climate science deniers from 2009

There's a denier conference being organised for Paris, calling itself the Paris Climate Challenge. I think it's being organised by the Heartland Institute, but whoever is organising it is rather coy, and doesn't say. Going by the speakers, it could just be the political party, the UKIP. On the other hand, if it's the same as the Heartland Institute effort, then it hasn't decided on the name yet - is it Pandemonium in Paris or is it the Paris Climate Challenge?

Anyway, the one that's being promoted at WUWT (archived here and waybacked here) doesn't have much going for it. About all it's got is a plea for some speakers and a letter written six years ago, back in 2009. The 2009 letter is signed by people who are described as "climate experts", but most can make no such claim. Two of those signatories are listed as deceased: Ernst G Beck and Zbigniew Jaworowski. There may be more.

If you're thinking of signing up to fill one of what will undoubtedly be many empty chairs, you will be entertained by a sad and motley lot of ratbags:

• Stuart Agnew - a right wing politican from the UK (UKIP) - see comment
• Piers Corbyn - who manages to sell weather forecasts 
• Philip Foster -possible organiser - a retired vicar and continuing science denier, and director of the company that is listed as accepting donations for the effort, and who may be associated with the UKIP also (he goes to their conferences)
• Roger Helmer - another nutty politician from the UKIP
• Tom Harris - who says that climate science is a hoax, and gets his paleo-climate from the Old Testament 
• Murry Salby - who was sacked from Macquarie University and resurfaces every now and then to show how he can't do CO2 arithmetic
• Donna Laframboise - who writes books about dustbins 
• Viscount Monckton - aka the potty peer, who goes in for childish bluster
• Patrick Moore - who trades on his past time with Greenpeace while denying science 
• Nils-Axel Mörner - who twists charts to deny rising seas 
• Cliff Ollier - another denier for hire
• Ian Plimer - of iron sun fame, who's published (written? who knows) books denying climate science. He's all but disappeared from the scene after his disgrace at the hands of George Monbiot on the ABC with Australia's Tony Jones.
• Roger Tattersall - another organiser - aka Tallbloke, a denier blogger who once tried to get elected - another one associated with the UKIP. For a while he was thought too silly for WUWT, but has since been taken back into the fold. He registered the website for the Paris Climate Challenge (h/t Anonymous in the comments) - see this comment and this comment.

Crowd-sourcing details of deniers

Below is the list of people from the 2009 letter published on the 2015 "Paris Climate Challenge" website, for want of anything more recent. As I said, the list claims the following as "climate experts" but most have no expertise in climate science. They may be "expert" in science denial - a lot of them are associated with denier lobby groups.

I've linked quite a few of them. If anyone is willing to lend a hand, and pick out some and provide links to show their background, whether they are still in the land of the living, main denial "achievements" etc, that would be great. Even if it's only one or two people you look up - every bit will help. It can then be a ready reference for the future. If you do, can you list the number in the list, and their name and I'll add the links.

There are some websites that list science deniers and their background, including desmogblog, the Denier List, and SourceWatch. Links to in-depth articles are also helpful.

Cherry picking polls: global warming is real and we're causing it

There's a new article by Eric Worrall at WUWT - archived here, cached here. (Anthony seems to opted out of his blog again and left it as a notice board for the riff raff.) He's written about a poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The report of the poll is called: American attitudes toward the Pope following his visit to the United States. What it indicated was that 16% of Americans think that global warming isn't happening, and 67% know that global warming is real.

But that's not what Eric wrote about.

Bob Tisdale's illusion and conspiracy theories: A Book Review

Bob Tisdale's illusion is that global warming is caused by magic, or blobs, or El Niño. Anything but human activity. He's announced at WUWT that he has written a new book (archived here). He's called it "On Global Warming and the Illusion of Control Part 1". It's very long, running to 733 pages. You'll have to wade through 82 pages before you get to the first page of the first chapter. There are three chapters plus the 82 pages of introductory material.

Bob relies on the hard work done by climate scientists for much of his book, he picks bits he likes but ignores or rejects the bits he doesn't like. That is, he rejects all the science that confirms human-caused warming. For the most part, he doesn't understand the data he uses. Certainly he doesn't understand climate models. For the other much of his book, he relies on conspiracy theories dreamt up by him or other science deniers. What his book boils down to is:

• Climate scientists are right, except when their science demonstrates that humans are causing global warming, and except when he can provide an alternative notion, usually involving a gigantic conspiracy of incredible proportions, or no alternative at all
• Bob learnt lots about ENSO from Dr Kevin Trenberth, but doesn't believe him where it matters
• According to Bob, the cause of global warming is hotter oceans (i.e. warming is caused by warming), or a magical bounce from the Little Ice Age with no cause, or the sun heating up the ocean (even though the sun's output has decreased a bit lately), or anything except human activity
• Climate models are wrong - based on Bob not understanding the first thing about them
• The IPCC is [insert conspiracy theory here] - based on Bob's denialist imagination.

Extreme weather: Cyclone Chapala drowns the Yemen desert

The rare cyclone in the Arabian sea, Chapala, is now causing the massive forecast rainfall on land.  Al Jazeera reports that three people were killed on the island of Socotra, and more than 100 homes destroyed. The BBC reports that ten years' rain may fall in parts of that very arid region, and states:

"The sea water level has risen by 9m (29ft) and has destroyed the Mukalla seafront," resident Mohammed Ba Zuhair told the Reuters news agency.

Below are some videos from Sara al aidarous on Twitter, which I can't verify, but I understand from Emirates 24/7 are of Al Mukalla, a city of about 300,000 people on the coast of Yemen:

#المكلا حي أكتوبر #تشابالا_حضرموت_المهرة_شبوه pic.twitter.com/9lyDuIy5CA

— ُSara al aidarous⭐ (@SoS0i0s) November 3, 2015

Antarctic ice - growing or shrinking? NASA vs Princeton and Leeds etc

There's a new paper out about Antarctic ice, from H. Jay Zwally and colleagues at NASA. They report that over the period from 2003 to 2008, there was a net increase in ice over all Antarctica of 82±25 Gt/year. This paper looks to be based on a conference paper at a SCAR workshop back in July 2012 (though that doesn't explain why there wasn't data from the past six years in the final published paper).

These findings are different to the results of work reported earlier this year from two scientists at Princeton, Christopher Harig and Frederik J. Simons. The Princeton team found that over the period January 2003 to 2014, there was a loss of ice overall. the overall mass loss from Antarctica since January 2003 at 92 ±10 Gt/yr.

It's also different from the results reported in a paper by Malcolm McMillan and colleagues last year. They estimated the current mass loss over all Antarctica at 159 ± 48 Gt/year. ".

So one group of scientists find that ice has been on balance increasing, while others find that ice has been on balance decreasing.

Dull Palates: WUWT deniers are not connoisseurs of wine

While flailing about for some science to deny, Anthony Watts has put up another article by Eric Worrall (archived here). Eric copied and pasted an excerpt from an article about wine. If Eric thinks that climate change isn't affecting wine production, he's wrong. Just as science deniers don't have a clue about science, neither do they have a clue about wine.

The article was from Reuters, and it was about winemakers and wine grape growers adapting to climate change. Although it had a positive slant, everyone who knows anything about wine knows that climate change is going to change the type and taste of wine.

The article did put a positive spin on the situation, saying that grapes are adaptable. That may be so, but if a winemaker wants a particular wine, they'll be getting the grapes from different places in the future, if they can. Here's the bit that Eric Worrall copied: