Happy holidays and all that

Wishing everyone greetings of the season, whatever the season is for you - winter, summer, Christmas, new year or  just an excuse for a holiday if you are fortunate enough.

If you've noticed I've been a bit distant this past few months, I'll be back in the new year and may even sneak in a couple of blog articles before then.

Thanks for all your support this past year, and best wishes for 2018.

Confirmation bias affects visual perception at WUWT - on carbon trading in China and the LA Times

Anthony Watts has posted an article by a bloke called Larry Hamlin, which is a stark example of how confirmation bias affects visual perception. Larry is a climate science denying conspiracy theorist who has the occasional "essay" at WUWT.

He wrote about something he read in the LA Times. It was a recent announcement from the Chinese government that it is preparing to set up what will eventually be a nationwide carbon trading program. The article was by Jonathan Kaiman reporting, from Beijing, a news conference of the National Development and Reform Commission in China.

The article set out the timetable, which stated that it would be three years before transactions begin (my emphasis):

China’s carbon market will initially apply only to the power-generation industry but will later expand to cover seven other sectors, including petrochemicals, chemicals, building materials, and iron and steel.

The Chinese government will spend a year building a nationwide registration system covering all companies participating in the market, the state-run China Daily reported. It will spend another year testing the system, and actual transactions will begin in about three years.

Has Anthony Watts just claimed he's on Scott Pruitt's #climate science denying "Red Team"?

Scott Pruitt
Gage Skidmore/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

You may have heard that the EPA Secretary, Scott Pruitt, keeps promising to put together a "Red Team" to support him in his rejection of climate science. He's getting names from various unsavoury organisations, I gather. I doubt any of those organisations have suggested WUWT owner and promoter of "climate hoax" conspiracy theories, Anthony Watts. However, it looks as if Anthony is hinting he's on the team.

I stumbled across something at WUWT this morning that suggests this. It was in among a lot of self promotion as an AGU member "in good standing", some misogyny, and various other rantings from Anthony. (What are the criteria for good vs bad standing among AGU membership? If it ever decided to draw a line Anthony would never appear on the "good" side.)

Here's what Anthony wrote, implying that he is already on Scott Pruitt's "Red Team". He was writing how he dislikes New Orleans and doesn't think he'd get enough money from his fans to go this year, so he won't try (or something like that :D). (AGU17 is at New Orleans.) Then he wrote how it's not a bad thing he won't be going, saying:

Polar bears, sexism and climate science denial

Adult polar bear on the look-out.
Source: Ian Sterling

When a science paper about polar bears generates multiple articles on denier blogs you can see it has hit a nerve. This happened recently when a paper was published, with a classic illustration of how deniers reference each other to make out there is dispute about climate change impacts.

The paper was by Jeffrey A Harvey and a bunch of other leading scientists. When I say a bunch, there were fourteen scientists listed as authors, comprising rising stars and heavyweights in the climate science world.

It's fortunate I wasn't able to write about this paper when it was first released because it allowed time to see the numerous articles about it on denier blogs. However, before looking at deniers' various reactions, how about a quick summary of the paper. It's open access and is easy to read. It may help if you understand the analytical techniques used, though that's not essential.

Funny peculiar: #Climate "guru" Anthony Watts' doesn't know the oceans accumulate energy

Two days ago Anthony Watts, who runs a climate conspiracy blog WUWT, posted what he called "Friday Funny – Climate Central’s scare graph excuse: ‘The oceans ate the warming’".

It is funny, as in odd, peculiar, that Anthony Watts doesn't know that more than 90% of the extra energy we've been adding is stored in the ocean. I mean, Anthony makes himself out to be an expert on climate change, more expert than the experts who research the subject. He's been blogging about climate for about ten years now. To think that he doesn't know one of the most basic facts about global warming is very strange indeed.