Second hottest October on record, just above October 2016

Summary: October 2017 was the second hottest October on record. The 12 month period to October 2017 was the second hottest November to October period on record.

According to GISS NASA, the average global surface temperature anomaly for October was 0.90 °C, which is 0.18 °C less than the October 2015. October 2017 was just 0.01 °C hotter than the next hottest October in 2016.

Below is a chart of the average of 12 months to October each year. The 12 months to October 2017 averaged 0.90 °C above the 1951-1980 mean, which was 0.13 °C cooler than the 12 months to October 2016.

This makes it the second hottest September to October 12 month period on record.

"Climate hoax" conspiracy theorists don't value logic or evidence - who knew :)

In a copy and paste at WUWT, Anthony Watts highlights a paper with research suggesting why WUWT-ers are so willing to adopt their "climate hoax" conspiracy theories. The researchers, Tomas Ståhl and Jan-Willem van Prooijen argue that people holding irrational beliefs (such as Anthony Watts and his ragtag mob of climate hoax conspiracy theorists) lack analytical skills and/or don't value logic or evidence.

Even if one or two WUWT deniers were endowed with reasonably high cognitive skills, evidence suggests they wouldn't value these skills and therefore don't use them. When it comes to climate science, they discard those skills in favour of one of the myriad conspiracies Anthony touts.

In the abstract of the paper itself, the authors write about how both analytical skills and motivation to be rational are required if one is to avoid adopting silly and unfounded beliefs:

We propose that part of the reason why unfounded beliefs are so widespread is because skepticism requires both sufficient analytic skills, and the motivation to form beliefs on rational grounds. 

It's immediately obvious to anyone who reads the articles and comments at WUWT that the bulk of Anthony's commenters lack a lot more than the motivation to be rational. Most of them lack analytical skills. Oh, there are still a few WUWT fans who can string words together to form whole sentences, but they are few and far between.