Some bloke called Marcel Crok plays a cruel climate joke on Anthony Watts at WUWT

This is sad. A ratbag from Europe, Marcel Crok, who is considered by Anthony Watts to be a "good friend" (enough said), has written to Anthony asking him to consult his network of "experts" (cached version).

What a horrid and cruel trick Marcel is playing on his supposed "good" friend.

Of course, it might be Marcel is unfamiliar with WUWT and is not a very close friend of Anthony's. He may not know that Anthony has no "network of experts". On the other hand, Marcel could have been wondering what the dregs of climate conspiracy land will say about the wave of extreme events happening around the world. (As far as I can make out, Marcel is a freelance writer who could be considered the equivalent of David Rose, who in turn has a well-earned reputation as a climate disinformer from the UK.)


Marcel wanted Anthony's network to help him out with his "bullshit detector". He wrote:

It was hot in lots of places this summer, not just Western Europe

The thing Marcel wanted to consult climate conspiracy "experts" about was the map of June temperature anomalies from NASA's GISTemp. In particular, the maps from June 1976 and June 2018. My guess is that he couldn't credit that the heat waves this summer in Europe were different from those in 1976, when the world's climate was vastly different to what it is now. (I can't say if that's because he's dumb or if he's knowledgeable and is seeking world annihilation.)

Have a look for yourself. Slide the arrow in the image below to the right to compare the two months. Look at western Europe, Ireland and the UK and you'll see that in June 1976 they experienced some rather hot weather. It wasn't so hot in most of the rest of the world.

Figure 1 | Maps showing mean surface temperature, anomalies for May and April, from the 1951-1980 mean. Data source: GISS NASA

Last month Western Europe, Ireland and the UK experienced some very hot weather as well. Unlike 1976, that wasn't an isolated event. It's been hotter than the 1951-1980 average all over the place.

Has UHI disease struck Antarctica again?

Anthony took the opportunity from Marcel's comment about crazy Antarctica to hint he thinks there was an outbreak of UHI disease at the south pole. He wrote:

What he was referring to was the scarcity of measurements in Antarctica for the June 2018 map. He found that because he looked at the GISTemp map using a 250 km smoothing radius rather than the 1200 km (default) smoothing radius.

Anthony might have observed that there are other places in the world with grey patches at 250 km smoothing, but if so he didn't mention it.

Here is a comparison of smoothing radii for June 2018 and June 2017.

Figure 2 | Maps showing mean surface temperature, anomalies from the 1951-1980 mean for June 2017 and June 2018, using 250 km smoothing. Data source: GISS NASA

I've shown this comparison to illustrate a point. You'll see that there is a bit more grey shading around the world in the June 2018 map. As more records come in, GISTemp is updated. For June 2017 there is more data for parts of Australia, Africa and some other areas. The additional data makes some, but very little difference to the end result. (I notice that occasionally, as more data comes in, the order of "hottest ever month" might change between months when the anomalies are very close.)

I doubt Anthony Watts knows that. He doesn't even understand what is meant by temperature anomaly, which is the difference in temperature between one period (eg average for 2017) and a baseline period (usually an average of a 30-year period).

One of the things Anthony complains about is that there are not more weather stations throughout Antarctica. (Perhaps he could use his blog to raise some money and send a few expeditions down there to set up and maintain more of them instead of cyber-begging for himself. Can you imagine Anthony getting out from behind his computer and facing the perils of Antarctica, like a real scientist? The mind rebels.)

Anthony has probably never figured out that Antarctica is very large. At 14 million sq km it is almost twice as big as the area of the contiguous United States (8.08 million sq km). He might not realise that not only is Antarctica largely uninhabited, it is also largely unexplored, at least on foot. (There is now a lot of information about Antarctica from satellite data and other means.)

Some of you will no doubt remember the time Anthony Watts accused two lone visitors to a temporary camp in the North Prince Charles Mountains somewhere vaguely near the coast of East Antarctica of contaminating a weather station sited more than 3000 km from where they were camped out (as Antarctic crows fly). He based his claim on a postage stamp and his imagining "waste heat from little pockets of humanity" spreading thousands of kilometers over the mountains and canyons in the vast Antarctic wilderness from one side of East Antarctica to the peninsula above West Antarctica.

Figure 3 | Anthony Watts' and his "little pockets of humanity" in Antarctica. Source: HotWhopper.

Anthony seems to be ashamed of his blog these days

You might notice that Anthony seems to have become ashamed of his blog. He no longer wants it preserved for posterity in the usual internet archives. I can't say I blame him. Who in their right mind would want to be associated with WUWT long term, or have historians discover the idiocy of his articles and particularly the wackiness of his target audience?

From the WUWT comments

I know you're all waiting with bated breath to find out what Anthony's network of "experts" think about Marcel Crok's question. You'll be disappointed. Most of them didn't consider Marcel's question, which was to help him out with his broken bullshit detector.

Bruce Cobb was no help at all. His own bullshit detector was busted years ago.

July 27, 2018 1:07 pm
If it looks like bullshit, smells like bullshit, and tastes like bullshit,
It’s most likely bullshit.

Stephen Richards is proud to be a conspiracy theorist, who probably thinks that NASA faked the moon landing going by this comment:

July 27, 2018 1:12 pm
Or if it’s NASA GISS it’s definitely BS 

A special mention has to go to this comment from msun1313. She or he is aware that the world has been warming, but thinks it's "deceptive" to show it. If only these scientists had removed the trend (Chris de Frietas, Bob Carter and John McLean tried that and just looked stupid), then dim deniers could happy claim that the world is not really heating up.

July 27, 2018 1:14 pm
An additional issue is the scale, is it not? They are using a 1951-1980 baseline. Like many other skeptics, I acknowledge that the earth has been slowly warming since the 1850s. By using a baseline that puts almost all of 2018 natural variability above the zero, you get an entire globe that is “warmer” and orange/red. It’s actually surprising that any of the map on the right is blue. This is the deception of comparing historical data (especially data that compares data 40 years apart) without taking into consideration any natural trend. The result is a graphic that implies man made CO2 is overheating the planet. 

Thing is, of course, that it's not just June 2018 that's "above the zero". Every single year from 1977 onwards has been "above the zero" compared to the average temperature from 1951 to 1980. Now that's saying something!

Figure 4 | Annual global mean surface temperature anomaly. The base period is 1951-1980. Data source: GISS NASA

Latitude refers to some "ice age scare" that was apparently circulating in some countries up north of here. (I'd never heard of it before coming across deniers and their wacky claims, probably because there was no "scare" in Australia, nor in scientific circles to any extent.) If you want to see how chilly it was in the 1970s globally, look at the chart above and compare 1970s temperature anomalies with those of the first part of last century.

July 27, 2018 1:41 pm
They are using a 1951-1980 baseline……guess that was the perfect temp
….and conveniently includes the 70’s ice age scare

I hope Marcel's bullshit detector gets fixed eventually. I don't hold out much hope. It was never any good as far as I know.