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.

Have you noticed a change in the weather?

Or maybe he was just trying to argue that because it can get hot in summer and cold in winter then global warming won't be difficult. If that was his argument then he knows zilch about climate. Now that's no surprise either. No-one at WUWT knows anything worth knowing about climate. That's not what Anthony Watts' blog is for. He maintains his blog for disinformation not information.

It turns out that yes, that's what Bob was wanting to say, since he wrote:

As I wrote earlier, because the daily and seasonal variations in temperature where we live are so great, it’s very unlikely that we would be able to sense that global surface temperatures have warmed. We have to be told.  

But he didn't need to put up his silly charts, he could have just said that where he lives he hasn't noticed anything unusual with the weather. Maybe he never leaves his air-conditioned basement to see what's happening. Or he could have said that just because one region is getting hotter, it doesn't mean the whole world is getting hotter. That's why there are teams of people monitoring what is happening so that we can get an overall picture at the global level.

Data source: GISS NASA

I can tell you that some people such as me (and my 94 year old mother), have noticed that weather in recent years is unlike any experienced in our lifetime. We've had worse droughts, hotter heat waves, worse fires and more extensive flooding here. Australia is a land of extreme weather - and the extremes are getting more extreme. That doesn't mean that everywhere has been different.  And it doesn't mean that where weather is different there aren't people who haven't noticed. Lots of people spend almost all their time indoors, for example. Some people just don't notice what's going on around them.

Anomalies, trends and averages are too much for Bob Tisdale - he's amazed

Enough of that. At the end his silly article, Bob demonstrated even more clearly that he doesn't understand science or English. He wrote a heading in big bold capital letters:

ACCORDING TO A WELL-KNOWN AND WELL-RESPECTED CLIMATE SCIENTIST, “…NO PARTICULAR ABSOLUTE GLOBAL TEMPERATURE PROVIDES A RISK TO SOCIETY…”

Yes, that's right. Bob is quoting Dr Gavin Schmidt. That's just Bob's headline. He elaborated that he found what Dr Schmidt said was amazing to him (not to anyone else - Bob's a bit slow at the best of times). He wrote:

Every now and then, during the discussion of a global warming-related topic, a climate scientist—a member of the consensus—will make an amazing statement…or two.  Examples can be found in a blog post by Dr. Gavin Schmidt, Director of the Goddard Institute of Space Studies.  Dr. Schmidt wrote the following in his December 2014 blog post Absolute temperatures and relative anomalies, at RealClimate. (Blog post archived here.)  Dr. Schmidt was attempting to downplay the fact that there is a large range (about 3 deg C or about 5.4 deg F) in the absolute global surface temperatures produced by the climate models stored in the CMIP5 archive, which is roughly 3 times the warming we’ve experienced since pre-industrial times.  

You can read for yourself whether Gavin Schmidt was "trying to downplay" or whether he was just explaining in words that most nine-year-olds would understand (but not Bob Tisdale), that it's change in temperature that's important, not absolute. And if you look at the chart there is nothing like a 3 °C degree difference at any time. Bob's telling more fibs. The most is just over 1 °C, and that's unusual.

IPCC figure showing both anomalies as a function of time (left) and the absolute temperature in each model for the baseline (right) - Source: IPCC via realclimate.org

Bob continued:

Dr. Schmidt states, where GMT is global mean temperature (my boldface and my brackets):

Most scientific discussions implicitly assume that these differences [in modeled absolute global surface temperatures] aren’t important i.e. the changes in temperature are robust to errors in the base GMT value, which is true, and perhaps more importantly, are focussed on the change of temperature anyway, since that is what impacts will be tied to. To be clear, no particular absolute global temperature provides a risk to society, it is the change in temperature compared to what we’ve been used to that matters.

Yes, that's right. What is it that so amazes Bob, you might well ask. Let's see. Bob says:

See, I told you. That paragraph includes two memorable statements.
First: “…it is the change in temperature compared to what we’ve been used to that matters”.

Well, we’re “used to” wide variations in surface temperature every day, and “used to” even greater changes each year.

Bob's making a common mistake for deniers. He thinks that because the day and night temperature can vary by 20 °C or more, that he won't notice heat waves that shift from being hottest days around 43 °C to hottest days around 53C. I can tell you he'll sure as hell notice the difference if he goes outside. When we got a cool change after an extended heat wave a couple of years back, the temperature dropped from 47 °C to 38 °C - and we certainly noticed. A temperature we'd normally be complaining about felt like heaven by comparison with what we'd been enduring. (The average maximum temperature in February used to be 29 °C here.)

The next thing that amazed Bob seems to have been that he doesn't understand anomalies or averages, which is odd for someone who's been spouting pseudo-science for a number of years now. He wrote, quoting Gavin Schmidt again:

Second: “To be clear, no particular absolute global temperature provides a risk to society…”

I would hazard a guess that many of you are now wondering why politicians around the globe are concerned about global warming. If the absolute global mean temperature today provides no “risk to society”, and if an absolute global mean temperature that’s 2.0 to 4.0 deg C (3.6 to 7.2 deg F) higher than today provides no “risk to society”, then what’s all the hubbub about?  Based on Dr. Schmidt’s statement, should the priority then be adaptation to weather and rising sea levels, not reductions in greenhouse gas emissions?

Is he really that thick do you think, or is he putting on an act because he thinks his readers are thick as two planks? It's not that he didn't read the article. He even quotes Gavin Schmidt earlier saying how it is the change that is important. More so, it's the rate of change or the trend. Where we live we've had extreme temperatures in the mid to high 40s for days on end already. Imagine what the extremes will be like if the average for the entire surface of the planet rises by another 3 or 4 °C. What will happen? Will we get regular heat waves in the fifties, maybe even the high fifties? Scientists have estimated that as soon as 2050, summers like the Angry Summer of 2013 will be the norm, not the exception. The exceptions will be much, much hotter. I probably won't be around to see that, but my nieces and great-nieces and nephews will. And their children.

From the WUWT comments

Dimwitted deniers at WUWT are impressed by Bob Tisdale's drivel. I wonder does Anthony Watts ever bemoan the fact that his "guest authors" and fan club members have a average IQ of around 60? I suppose he could use an artificial baseline of 30, then claim that his readers have an IQ of 30 above the baseline.

Tom Halla

November 9, 2015 at 2:26 am
Excellent primer on the subject.

Warren Latham

November 9, 2015 at 2:34 am
Excellent post by Bob Tisdale.
“Global Warming” is a CON. The entire basis of the CON is carbon-dioxide.
Carbon-dioxide is not a pollutant, it never was.
The “globe” is not warming.
Thanks again to Bob Tisdale: an excellent post.

Javier piped up and pointed out one of the fallacies in Bob's article:

November 9, 2015 at 3:49 am
Bob Tisdale: “First: “…it is the change in temperature compared to what we’ve been used to that matters”.

Well, we’re “used to” wide variations in surface temperature every day, and “used to” even greater changes each year.

Comparing changes in average temperature to seasonal variation is an apples to oranges comparison. While many mid-latitude locations experiment variations in summer to winter averages of 20-30°C, the average temperature change from glacial to interglacial has been calculated to be of around 5°C by experts. Clearly changes in global average temperature have a lot more drastic effect that changes of regional seasonal temperatures.

I guess everybody understands the difference between being in winter versus being in a glacial period. One cooling lasts a few months and the other lasts many millennia. The effect cannot be the same.

Since Bob Tisdale says he agrees that comparing seasonal variation to ice ages and interglacials is a meaningless comparison, then what was the point of his article? He claims that was the point - but the point Bob made is meaningless, as Javier again pointed out. (So pointily, eh?)

November 9, 2015 at 4:46 am
After quoting me about our being used to wide variations in surface temperatures every day and every year, Javier says: “Comparing changes in average temperature to seasonal variation is an apples to oranges comparison…”
Of course it’s “an apples to oranges comparison”. That’s the point. 

All of which proves the point that Bob Tisdale's unable to understand the simplest arithmetic and climate stuff.

emsnews  thinks that some un-named "their" ideal climate is the Little Ice Age.  Not so. He or she is wrong. Most scientists will tell you that we should be aiming for around 350 ppmv of carbon dioxide, quite a bit warmer than the Little Ice Age when CO2 was around 280 ppm, and there were a lot more volcanic aerosols. This would probably result in an average surface temperature of the late twentieth century, once it settled down.

November 9, 2015 at 5:32 am
Their ‘ideal climate’ is the Little Ice Age.
East coast US cities and many cities in Europe and Asia were founded DURING the Little Ice Age. Since then, the oceans have risen but no where near to Minoan Warm Age levels. This idiotic idea we should be very cold again has gripped many people who think change of any sort is evil.
The problem lies in previous city building. At no time in history have shorelines been ‘stable’ they change not just daily with tides but over geological time.
By the way, due to everyone using wooden ships to get around and do business, building right on top of the water was highly valued which is why low lying easily flooded cities were built in the first place! With the expectations that very cold conditions were normal.

References and further reading

Absolute temperatures and relative anomalies - article by Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate.org

Bob Tisdale's illusion and conspiracy theories: A Book Review - HotWhopper article about Bob Tisdale's new "book", October 2015

(Not) looking forward to hotter and drier... - HotWhopper article about projections for climate change in Australia, March 2014