Anthony Watts thinks it's April the first at WUWT!

This is hilarious if you're into black humour.  Anthony Watts has posted yet another article (archived here) protesting the 97% consensus.  What is it now, is anyone counting?

They didn't ask if it was dangerous!

Here is an excerpt:

The new paper by the leading climatologist Dr David Legates and his colleagues, published in the respected Science and Education journal, now in its 21st year of publication, reveals that Cook had not considered whether scientists and their published papers had said climate change was “dangerous”.

Bloody hell!  What does he think?  That 97% of scientists who've attributed global warming to human activity, that warn of what will happen if we keep doing it, that already are observing Russian heatwaves and Angry Summers and acidifying oceans and signs of the sixth major extinction event and have been warning people for decades about what we can expect - and they are warning the world just for kicks?

What a bunch of utter nutters!

More seriously though, Cook et al didn't make any mention of whether or not climate change was dangerous.  What they did was assess abstracts of scientific papers and categorise them according to the extent to which the abstract attributed global warming to human activity.  Deniers got their knickers in a knot because of a tweet from President Obama to his 38 million followers saying climate change was dangerous, which of course it is.  So this bunch of deniers are complaining about something that Cook et al didn't discuss at all!  They are complaining about a tweet from the President of the USA.  And it looks as if they've published a "paper" about this. Heck.  Maybe there's something to this twitter business!

If the authors of this new paper want to know how dangerous global warming is, I suggest they read the scientific literature on the topic. They could start with the IPCC reports.  There's a new one coming out at the end of the month and I reckon it will have a few hints about how dangerous is global warming.

Peer reviewed? Seriously?

I looked into this a bit more and I have to say it's a tangled mess.  Anthony quotes a "press release" about a new "peer-reviewed paper" in a respected Science and Education journal.  The "paper" is printed as a rejoinder to an article by Daniel Bedford and John Cook in the same journal.  The Bedford and Cook paper is titled: Agnotology, Scientific Consensus, and the Teaching and Learning of Climate Change: A response to Legates, Soon and Briggs and is a response to an earlier paper by those authors that in turn was in response to an original paper by Daniel Bedford.  Apparently and unsurprisingly, Legates, Soon and Briggs misrepresented something else.

My head is spinning! So far there are four papers in this series if I've counted them all.  Bedford followed by Legates, Soon and Briggs, followed by Bedford and Cook followed by Legates, Soon, Briggs and Monckton.  They are bringing out the big guns adding the potty peer, eh what?  If the journal was respected before, it will be respected less now.
 .
In this latest "rejoinder" (which going by the press release, seems not to be a rejoinder at all but a completely new paper), Dr David Legates - a climate science denier from way back has coauthored the paper with a bunch of other deniers including the potty peer, Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, professional disinformer Willie Soon and science denying statistician William Briggs (who took part in the Battle of the DuKEs recently).

Ye gods!  They are getting desperate, aren't they!  Adding Monckton to the mix?  I suppose the peer can finally say he has published a peer reviewed paper that wasn't peer reviewed by himself.  I wonder who on earth peer reviewed it?

To get to the point - in this new paper denier David and three of his mates have signed on to joining the innumerate Christopher Monckton of Brenchley.  Monckton thinks that 3,896 is not 97.1% of 4014.  Now we've got four science deniers insisting that 3896 divided by 4014 equals only 0.003.  Interestingly I mentioned Monckton's disability in this regard earlier today.

From the WUWT comments

Surely even the fake sceptics who flock to Anthony Watts' science denying blog are getting sore heads from tilting at windmills.

Bill Marsh decides to quibble over whether "most" really means "most" or whether instead it means "most" and says:

September 3, 2013 at 9:04 am
I think using the term ‘most’ or ‘more than’ was ambiguous and confusing, i.e. unscientific. The term ‘most’ as used in the paper could mean ‘at least half’ (the interpretation shown above), but, it could also mean ‘more than any other factor’, which is not necessarily ‘at least half’. ‘Most’ could mean ‘plurality’ rather than ‘majority’. That and ‘man made’ contribution to warming comprises several factors besides CO2 – land use changes, Urban Heat, etc are all ‘man made contributions’ to warming.

Steve Keohane says that if all the scientific evidence points to one inescapable conclusion, the conclusion must be wrong:

September 3, 2013 at 8:32 am
‘If it’s consensus, it isn’t science’ says it all.

I have to inform you, Steve.  As a wise man once said:

@wattsupwiththat doesn't get it.  The science isn't strong because of consensus, the consensus is strong because of science.

My advice to Topher Field - take the money and run!

Topher Field managed to fleece tens of thousands of dollars out of gullible and hopeful science deniers.  Now he seems to be making the mistake of trying to defend his dumb video and the lies it contains.

If he had any sense he'd take the money and run, not stick around to be shown up for so grossly misrepresenting climate science and climate economics.



Topher Field made a comment on HotWhopper about my initial response to his utterly nutty Australian election video about quadrillions of dollar coins looping around Neptune and the sun.  He implies he thinks he got it right.  Topher wrote in part:

It's incredibly kind of you to dedicate so much time to trying to 'take me down',

I replied, among other things:

I wrote the above article in a very short time. I don't care about you one way or another although I've formed an opinion about your political ideology, from this and other videos you've made, and your scientific and economic illiteracy. Your ideology explains your motivation for spreading disinformation, which speaks to your lack of ethics. But I'll grant you that you may merely be supremely ignorant. A veritable example of Dunning and Kruger. Or you could just be trying to make a crust and, like some people, are willing to sacrifice integrity in the process. Any or all of those could be the driving force or none of them. It doesn't matter. Therefore I'll skip the speculation as to what drove you to spend other people's money producing utter nuttery. 

What I'll address in a future article is the content of your video and that of Monckton's ridiculous pdf file that I gather you've used as the basis for your nonsense claims.

Topher doesn't want to know what's wrong with his video or Monckton's mathurbations, saying"

Anyway, that's all from me, I've learned long ago not to argue with those who prefer to believe their own reality rather than the one in front of them.

What a plonker!  Does he really think his silly cartoon bears any resemblance to reality?  While Topher takes my advice and runs, but back into the arms of the marks he conned, there may be other stray readers who'll venture here from a google search for "topher" or for "monckton".  This might get them started on thinking critically about science and/or the economics of climate change.  Or at least make them pause before deciding wannabee cartoon producers and potty peers know more about climate science and economics than specialists who've spent their lives researching those subjects.

So let's get going.

Because this post is very long, I've put in a break.  Click here to open to the full article if you're on the home page.

Fifty to One Moncktonian Codswallop!

I was going to refute the Monckton "facts" parroted by Topher, an actor who conned tens of thousands of dollars out of readers of denier blogs, but there are no facts to refute.  I can't believe anyone put their name to this 50 to 1 video. I can't even credit Jo Nova would - and she's as batty as they come.  It's even worse than the typical Monckton diatribe.

For starters Monckton uses unusual units.  The science is kaput and so divorced from reality you'd think he was talking about a planet in a far off universe.  On the "economics" he assumes Australia is the only country to price carbon, which is a pile of nonsense.  We were late to the party.  For another thing he assumes no benefits.  And then he makes up a pile of numbers out of thin air.  None of it makes any sense at all.  It's utter garbage.  Full of wrong numbers.  Full of fake references.  I picked out a couple of quotes from the video in my previous article if you're interested.

Did I say it's a pile of codswallop?  Topher will be laughing all the way to the bank.

Deniers are bloody barmy.

If anyone wants to read the Monckton diatribe it I've put the document up on google docs here, so neither Topher nor Watts will get any hits.

So far the response on WUWT has been underwhelming.  Anthony posted his article about seven and a half hours ago and so far only 30 responses.  There might be a few more as people in the USA wake up and start bashing away at their keyboards.  There aren't too many tweets either.  (An article bashing Professor Mann or John Cook gets a much more vigourous response and at no cost to deniers.)  The youtube video has around 1700 hits FWIW.

The deniers who have written comments reckon they got their moneys worth.  Goodness knows why.  I guess they like coloured cartoons.

Sorry to disappoint you all.  But truly.  There is nothing to refute.  It's a dogs breakfast.

Oh, there is a heap of very long one hour videos with the various interviewees, too.  It would take someone of much sterner stuff than I'm made of to wade through those.  I'll just list the deniers interviewed and if any are familiar to you then you can guess what they say.

• "Jo Nova" and her partner her partner David Evans.
• Anthony Watts - oops, sorry wrong one - it's this Anthony Watts
• Donna Laframboise
• Marc Morano
• Fred Singer
• Henry Ergas

Give me insects any day :)



PS A humorous note, the mods at WUWT weren't briefed on WUWT fund-raising for the Topher video atrocity.  This from the tips on WUWT.

Tom in Texas says:

September 1, 2013 at 7:02 pmThe 50 : 1 website & video is now up at:
http://topher.com.au/50-to-1-video-project/

[You have not explained what the 50:1 project is, and why Anthony should spend his time researching your link. Mod]

The Wager Part II

This follows from The Wager.


I do not want HotWhopper readers to miss out, so I've archived this WUWT thread (again).  I've written about this particular article already here, but this is a different topic.  You can consider it a sub-topic, or several sub-topics.  Here is a taste, but there's more in the thread if you're into utter nuttery:


Eli Rabett says to Christopher Monckton of Brenchley:

August 28, 2013 at 2:03 pm

Eli understands that there is some betting action to be had on your earlier claim that “A math geek with a track-record of getting stuff right tells me we are in for 0.5 Cº of global cooling. It could happen in two years, but is very likely by 2020.”. It is for two bets of $1000 each from John Abraham to Lord Monckton. Given your claims here, you must believe that this would be easy money. John has added a codicil that if you wish the bet can be for benefit of a charity chose by either side, but who knows, maybe you need the money?

Eli is looking perhaps for some smaller side bets on the proposition and what the good Lord’s reaction will be.

richardscourtney, the WUWT playground monitor says, in a comment that is unique from him because there is not a single word SHOUTED let alone SHOUTED EXTRA LOUDLY:

August 28, 2013 at 2:11 pm
Troll posing as Eli Rabett:
re your post at August 28, 2013 at 2:03 pm

Please be assured that nobody cares about the “betting action” of an idiot so deluded that he is unaware of his own name or his own person. Similarly, nobody cares about the “betting action” of even lesser men than the troll (yes, it is hard to believe, but they do exist).

So you need not waste space on WUWT with such nonsense again.

Richard

Monckton of Brenchley says - again, that he wants to sue somebody, and pikes on the bet (excerpt):

August 28, 2013 at 5:04 pm
...One Rabett says someone wants to take a bet with me about whether the world will cool by 0.5 K before 2020 is out. However, it was not I but another who forecast that. In an earlier posting I merely reported the forecast, which is one of a growing number that find cooling more likely than warming in the short to medium term. To make any such bet symmetrical, there would be no payout if the temperature fluctuated by less than 0.5 K in either direction by 2020 compared with today. The bedwetters would win if the temperature rose by 0.5 K; the army of light and truth would win if it fell by 0.5 K.

However, the creature seeking cheap publicity by offering the bet has, I discover, been part of an organized (and probably paid) campaign to prevent skeptics such as me from being allowed to speak at various universities around the world to which we are from time to time invited. Evidence is being gathered, since in Scotland tampering with the right of academic freedom in this characteristically furtive way, particularly with the wildly malicious claims the perpetrator and his little chums have apparently been making, would be held to constitute a grave libel.

I had hoped to sue the defalcating nitwit in the U.S for an earlier malicious attempt by him to assert that I take a skeptical line because I am paid to do so (if only …). However, the lawyers whom I consulted, after having a good look at the case, concluded that, though what this inconsequential little creep had said was unquestionably libelous, as well as displaying an exceptionally poor grasp of elementary science and even of arithmetic, I did not have title to sue because, in the US, I am counted at law as a “public figure” and the jerklet is not. If he were a public figure, I could sue him. If I were not a public figure, I could sue him. But, since I am a public figure and he is not, I cannot sue him. Not in the U.S., at any rate. I visited the Court of Session in Edinburgh yesterday …

Eli Rabett says:

August 28, 2013 at 11:32 pm
Now some, not Eli to be sure, thought that it would be most pleasing if the good Monckton of Brenchley made John Abraham put up, but Sadly No.

Instead, as the Bunny proposed but a few days ago, we are treated to an entertaining essay in avoidance. To watch Lord Monckton as his mind works at an astonishingly furious pace, whinging about the ills done to him, the difficulty of confronting his tormentors, and the cruel law which forbid him to pounce upon them, but, of course he could if he really wanted to and they should be more cautious, when shunning a chance to do same, is indeed a show Eli feels privileged to have played a minor part in. 

Such humor is found only in our pale memories except for YouTube. We have Chris.

John Whitman says:

August 29, 2013 at 7:18 am
Christopher Monckton,
Have you considered attending the AGU’s annual fall meeting in San Francisco this December?
John

Eli Rabett says:

August 29, 2013 at 7:48 am
JPeden says: @Monckton But, since I am a public figure and he is not, I cannot sue him. Not in the U.S., at any rate. I visited the Court of Session in Edinburgh yesterday …
“Run Rabett Run” — 1970′s James Cann movie

Yes, more droppings along the bunny trail.

Monckton of Brenchley says he's changed his mind about suing in the space of a few comments and is now going to sue after all.  If I only had a dollar for every time Monckton threatened to sue someone for catching him out in a lie I could buy those nice italian leather shoes:

August 29, 2013 at 8:17 am
To answer a few questions from commenters: yes, the World Federation of Scientists exists (it has existed for half a century); yes, its climate monitoring panel consists of a dozen eminent scientists from all parts of the globe; and yes, the chairman of that panel announced to the closing plenary that global warming is not, in itself, a planetary emergency; and no, the world’s mainstream media will do their utmost not to report that conclusion, because it does not accord with the Party Line.

The troll named “Rabett” is snide about my not taking an asymmetric bet. Well, I’m not going to give the joke figure who offered the bet any publicity: indeed, it would be improper for me to have a bet with him at present, given the likelihood that he will face court action once the trail of evidence is complete. Interesting how the trolls will talk about just about everything except the science, on which events are proving them to have been so spectacularly wrong.

Monckton of Brenchley says:

August 29, 2013 at 12:58 pm
I am not confident of what temperatures will do, because they are stochastic. A fair bet (if I were a betting man, which I am not) would take zero change as the baseline.

What did I say about denier weirdness and cranks and utter nutters?


Here is a link to the archived thread again.

Read more at Rabett Run.

Denier weirdness: About Christopher Monckton's World Federation of Scientists Climate Monitoring Panel

On WUWT, Anthony Watts has Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, reporting from Erice, Sicily (archived here)

ERICE, SICILY – It’s official. The scare is over. The World Federation of Scientists, at its annual seminars on planetary emergencies, has been advised by its own climate monitoring panel that global warming is no longer a planetary emergency.

This is really hilarious.  If you didn't wonder if Anthony had cracked up by rebroadcasting a nutty letter from Richard Tol, or allowing dragon slayer Tim Ball to write that greenhouse gases don't warm the world, you'd have to start wondering now with the latest bit of nuttery from Christopher Monckton of Brenchley.

You can read about it at Stoat.  He writes about the World Federation of Scientists (Permanent Monitoring Panel – Climatology) weirdness :

Fast forward to 2012 and Essex is chair of the panel. And, err, that’s it for people on the panel. Its just Essex, all alone (so in the quote above, where Essex gave the Federation’s closing plenary session his panel’s confirmation he really wasn’t joking – it is his panel all alone-io). Suddenly the panel has no members, and no associate members, and has nothing to say.

So - a panel of one who is not a climate scientist.  And it's "news" that there is still at least one science denier in the world?  Good to see Anthony Watts back to his old self  - again.

The Wager

Update: Click here for the outcome



Everyone's talking about it and I don't want any of HotWhopper-ites to miss out on the fun.

You can read all about it here.  And if the party at Greg's place is too crowded you can join the party at the burrow.

I'll keep my eye out for updates and ask all of you to do the same.

It's all related to this.

Monckton makes a bigger mess at wattsupwiththat

Update: see below - TimC has something to say in the WUWT comments about Monckton's fake claim to be a member of the House of Lords.

---

Not satisfied with the mess Christopher Monckton of Brenchley made in his last article, Anthony let's him get into a bigger mess on WUWT.  (If you click the link you'll notice I've taken everyone's advice. I've updated the link - previous version here)

What Christopher does is draw a whole heap of his yucky pink charts using monthly data and cherry picking the start date of December 1996.  He plonks on top a supposed trend line each with an R² value close to zero.  In the background on a scale of his choosing he adds atmospheric CO2.  He could just as easily have used a different scale for CO2 and the slope would have been quite different.  Anyway, this is what Christopher's mess looks like.  I've combined all his charts into a single animation to save space (and eyes):

Anyone who knows anything about statistics or climate will see immediately what is wrong with this approach.  Notice the very low R² value in each chart.  The trend lines are meaningless.  The surface temperature data is too noisy to determine a trend.  The CO2 background chart is meaningless.

Christopher Monckton drowns the trend in noisy variations

Here is what rasmus says on realclimate.org about this very common trick by fake skeptics like Anthony Watts and Christopher Monckton:

The real trick, however, is to show all the short-term variations. Hourly and daily values would be an over-kill, but showing monthly values works. Climate change involves time scales of many years, and hence if emphasis is given to much shorter time scales, the trends will drown in noisy variations. 

Let's look and see what happens with GISTemp using annual data.  Compare the R² value of the linear trend line with those in Christopher's charts:

Data Source: NASA

Now given that climate doesn't change on an annual basis but over years, here is the same data on a decadal basis.

Data Source: NASA

Compare the R² value with those in Christopher's charts and with that in the annual GISTemp above.  Remember too, the last column on the right only contains three years of data from 2010 to 2012 inclusive.

Next, compare the above with Christopher's cherry pick.  He started in December 1996.  Here is the annual data showing the full data set compared with data for the full year 1997 to 2012 inclusive:

Data Source: NASA

Christopher Monckton ignores uncertainty to fool people

Tamino has a very good article (well a lot of very good articles) on the topic of trends in data when there is a lot of noise, like there is in Christopher's monthly data and even in annual data.  If you think for one minute that Christopher is on to something then I urge you to read the article.  Tamino discusses how you need to allow for uncertainty, particularly with noisy data like monthly global surface temperature anomalies.

Christopher Monckton's ridiculous prediction

Christopher finishes up with this:

A math geek with a track-record of getting stuff right tells me we are in for 0.5 Cº of global cooling. It could happen in two years, but is very likely by 2020. His prediction is based on the behavior of the most obvious culprit in temperature change here on Earth – the Sun.

Data Source: NASA plus Monckton's math geek

I know people who think Christopher Monckton has something to offer are seriously weird, but are they that delusional? Let's see - from the WUWT comments:

MattN is getting impatient for all the cooling predicted by many people at WUWT and says:

August 27, 2013 at 3:59 am
As good as this is, what we really need is some cooling that no one can deny/spin instead of non-warming.

Eric says the greenhouse gas theory has been disproven:

August 27, 2013 at 6:36 am
How can people still cling to the CO2 myth — including WUWT? The idea that rising CO2 causes rising temperatures has failed the observational test.
“Does the Great Gap prove the basic greenhouse-gas theory wrong? No.” ???? Observation of actual events HAS disproved the GHG theory. Get over it.

rgbatduke, as part of a very long lecture to Christopher, says he doesn't know, he thinks it's all too uncertain:

August 27, 2013 at 5:08 am
I’m not certain I agree that we are due for 0.5C of cooling — perhaps we are, perhaps not — because I don’t think uncertain science suddenly becomes certain for you, for me, for your friend who is sometimes right, for the IPCC, for the GCMs, or for your favorite psychic medium. Given the uncertainties in the data and the corrections, I’m not even sure we’ve had the claimed 1 C of global warming post the mid-1800s. I think we have actually had some warming, but it could be a half a degree, it could be a degree and a half. Who knows what Australia, Antarctica, the western half of the United States, most of South America, half of Canada, most of China, the bulk of the pacific, and the bulk of the Atlantic oceans were doing (temperature-wise) in the mid-1800s? Our thermometric data is spotty to sparse and inaccurate, and a lot of this was terra incognita to the point where we don’t even have good ANECDOTAL evidence of climate.

Chris Schoneveld says it's a shame that Christopher picked the cherry:

August 27, 2013 at 3:57 am
So to summarize: Lord Monckton did pick the dataset with the lowest, (even negative) trend (RSS) of -0.2 ºC/century since all the other datasets show positive trends between +0.44ºC/century and +0.93 ºC/century. So, yes, RSS was a cherry, because it was the only one that showed (be it statistically insignificant) cooling for 200 months (I know, the warming trends of the others are equally statistically insignificant). It is a pity that he chose RSS, since it gave his opponents ammunition to attack his credibility.

David L. says all the models are wrong - Christopher Monckton sez so, so there!

August 27, 2013 at 2:45 am
Who can say the models aren’t wrong? The evidence cannot possibly be more clear. So warmists, scrap the models and go back to the drawing boards! You ain’t got nuthin’.

TimC has a few things to say about Christopher's false claim to me a member of the House of Lords:

August 27, 2013 at 1:29 pm
Lord Monckton: as your original posting in this thread itself made reference to your claim to be “a member of the House of Lords” and you also responded to what I thought was a fair posting from steveta_uk by describing him as a “furtively pseudonymous troll” and going on about “some malicious and politicized lackwit’s effusions” I am afraid I have decided to add my own ha’pennys worth – accepting that this was not of course the principal topic of your otherwise interesting article.

I am sure you know that in the UK the Monarch does not by herself (or by Royal Command or Warrant) make laws: it is “the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons in …. Parliament assembled” (to use the enacting words on all general legislation of the Westminster Parliament), that constitutionally makes laws. The monarchy is itself subject to those laws (as under the Succession to the Crown Act 2013), so are peers (life and hereditary) and commoners. Unlike in some other jurisdictions there is no constitutional court or right of judicial review from legislation enacted by Parliament (Monarch, Lords and Commons together) nor any concept that an Act passed by Parliament can ever be flawed or unenforceable – every Act passed by Parliament is valid legislation until the Parliamentary process is used once again to alter or repeal it.

By Section 1 of the House of Lords Act 1999 (enacted by the Queen, Lords and Commons in Parliament) “No-one shall be a member of the House of Lords by virtue of a hereditary peerage”. By Section 2 “Section 1 shall not apply in relation to anyone excepted from it by or in accordance with Standing Orders of the House”; “At any one time 90 people shall be excepted from section 1”; “Once excepted from section 1, a person shall continue to be so throughout his life …” – creating 90 hereditary peers (in addition to appointed life peers) as members of the House for life. This legislation is absolutely clear; it was passed with the direct authority of the (then) House of Lords.

Since I believe you succeeded to your title in 2006 when the 1999 Act was already in force (as it still is today), under Section 1 of that Act you cannot be a member of the House of Lords by virtue of your hereditary peerage unless you show that you have been excepted from Section 1. This is the law however unreasonable, unfair or improper you might consider it to be; it was approved by the Monarch, the (then) House of Lords and the Commons in 1999.

For clarity: may I ask if you have a Section 2 exception in accordance with the Standing Orders of the House? If not, how can you be a member of the House of Lords so long as Section 1 of the 1999 Act remains the law?

TimC has more to say about that:

August 27, 2013 at 3:02 pmAs “The furtively pseudonymous TimC” (Anthony has my email address with my correct full name which I prefer to abbreviate here) I have indeed read the opinion obtained by Lord Monckton: I assume that given by Hugh O’Donoghue of Carmelite Chambers, Inner Temple.

I have (the now rather too familiar) issues over someone first called in 2004, who probably won’t get silk for another 10-15 years, being described as “a leading constitutional lawyer” – until he gets silk he is not entitled to lead anyone. I fear this is another example of embroidering expressions rather to the limit – and we have all on occasions shopped cases around the Temple until we get the opinion we want.

And I’m afraid I simply don’t agree with the opinion. The 1999 Act is absolutely clear and to the point: “no-one shall be a member of the House of Lords by virtue of a hereditary peerage”. The Queen gave royal assent to this in 1999, thereby altering letters patent given before that time (by her or any of her predecessors). The Queen, and any instrument previously issued by her, is subject to later Acts of Parliament exactly in the same way as any of her subjects.

The potty peer Christopher Monckton of Brenchley at WUWT goes for the Mann and loses badly

WUWT continues to scratch and scrape the bottom of the barrel

Poor little Anthony Watts has not got much to choose from any more when it comes to posting articles to his website.  He's not very good at writing himself and rarely attempts it.  When he does he gets into strife like here and here.  So he has to rely on other people.  Now he's down to just a handful of regulars like Perennially Puzzled Bob Tisdale, Wondering Willis Eschenbach, less often from Tony "b..b..but Central England" Brown and David "funny sunny" Archibald - and, save the worst for last, the potty peer, Christopher Monckton of Brenchley.

But before we start, the question must be asked.  Is it really Monckton on WUWT?

For the sake of the discussion, we'll let him adopt the Monckton persona.  Today Christopher has a go at Professor Michael Mann, one of the world's leading paleoclimatologists.  Christopher doesn't refer to what he is "refuting" but gives a quote from Dr Mann:

NASA found the warming continues unabated, with the past decade the warmest on record.

Michael Mann on Monckton

Luckily there are good search engines around and it wasn't long before I discovered what got Christopher so hot under the collar.  Here is Professor Mann's article, in the Richmond Time Dispatch.  Michael Mann gave Christopher a serve, writing:

Most recently the Viscount Monckton of Brenchley of Edinburgh, Scotland, used offensive personal attacks and completely false statements in another attempt to defend Cuccinelli’s use of state funds to engage in a politically motivated attack on both me and Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia. Monckton failed to mention that his qualifications for speaking on climate science include claiming to be a member of the House of Lords despite their continued statements that he is not, and being banned for life from the United Nations climate process for impersonating a delegate from Myanmar during the last round of talks in Doha, Qatar.

Lord Monckton goes after the “hockey stick” work published more than a decade ago showing that recent warming is unusual over at least the past 1,000 years. Despite Monckton’s rambling attack, the hockey stick most certainly has not been disproved. The highest scientific body in the nation, the National Academy of Sciences, affirmed our research findings in an exhaustive independent review published in June 2006. Dozens of independent groups of scientists have independently reproduced and confirmed our findings, and more recent work by other groups summarized in the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report shows that recent warmth is unusual over an even longer timeframe. There are in fact numerous independent lines of evidence that humans are warming the planet and changing our climate by burning coal and other fossil fuels. And despite Monckton’s and Battig’s claims that global warming stopped 16 years ago, in fact NASA found the warming continues unabated with the past decade the warmest on record.

In what is the most personally offensive part of Monckton’s letter, he says that references to climate “ ‘deniers’ and ‘denialists’ would be illegal in Europe as being anti-Jewish, racialist hate-speech.” This is particularly troubling to me both because I am Jewish and because it does not make any sense. No one is attempting to subpoena or prosecute climate change deniers. We are simply trying to make sure the public understands what the overwhelming majority of scientists believe is happening.

To read the complete article, go here.

Monckton cherry picks RSS

Now for Monckton.  He puts up one of his yucky pink charts showing noise-ridden monthly readings from the RSS data set starting just before 1998.  I dealt with that one earlier today but science deniers wouldn't take any notice of facts.  Here is the RSS chart again.

Data Source: RSS

Michael Mann referred to the last decade being the warmest on record.  This one is shaping up to beat it. Here is a decadal chart of RSS temperature anomalies.  The first and last decade are, of course, incomplete.

Data Source: RSS

What do you think?  Climate trends are much easier to see in years than in months, because months clog up the data with seasonal fluctuations and noise. Longer term climate trends are even easier to see in decades, because years have noise from year to year natural fluctuations, like ENSO.

It's important to note that RSS doesn't monitor temperatures right to the top of the poles.  It only goes as high as 82.5 degrees North and South.  So it misses out on some of the Arctic amplification.  Here is GISTemp showing also the temperature 64 degrees and north (the Arctic).

Data source: NASA

Michael Mann is correct, Christopher Monckton is wrong.  No surprises there!

Monckton cites the disgraced plagiarist Wegman of all people in an attempt to "prove" Michael Mann is wrong.  Sheesh.  He really needs to think about who to call upon.  That "study" has been shown to be very wrong.  Just another bit of denialist rubbish.

Monckton is a Denier according to the Oxford Dictionary

And you'd think that Monckton, being a lord and all that, would know the Queen's English.  He doesn't like being called a science denier.  I don't know what euphemism he'd accept.  A "potty peer"?  A crackpot? A fruitcake?  Here is the Oxford English definition of denier:

Monckton fakes membership of the House of Lords

Monckton is still trying to fake membership of the House of Lords but with a twist.  He's toned it down a little and tries some clever wordplay.  He can't bring himself to admit that he's not and never has been a member of the House of Lords.  Monckton writes:

Mann says the House of Lords says I am not a member when I say I am. Sigh! Mann knows no more of British constitutional practice than he does of elementary statistics. Hansard records that the House has recognized my title to succeed my late beloved father, but does not record the House as saying I am not a member. Facts wrong again, Mike, baby. Try doing science, not invective.

For the record, here is the House of Lords stating quite clearly that Lord Monckton is not a member.

Monckton kicked out of Doha after impersonating a delegate from Myanmar

Monckton then tries to weasel out of getting kicked out of the Doha climate conference when he impersonated a delegate from Myanmar.  He writes:

Finally, Mann says I “impersonated a delegate from Myanmar” at a UN conference. Do I look Burmese? Do I sound Burmese? Did the chairman of the conference say he thought I was Burmese? No. He said he knew I was not from Burma. Facts wrong yet again, Mickey.

This is what happened, from the UK Guardian.  I think "impersonate" is a fair description:

At one of the sessions, Monckton assumed the seat for Burma in place of the real delegate, and addressed the hall from his microphone. He spoke for nearly a minute, before being escorted out.

And h/t to Eli in the comments at WUWT.  Monckton himself has written:

The microphone was just in front of me. All I had to do was press the button. I pressed it. The Chair recognized Myanmar (Burmese for Burma). I was on. 

Global warming isn't real, says Monckton

Monckton finishes with this:

Meanwhile, the world continues to fail to warm as predicted. Not only Attorneys General but also taxpayers will soon, and rightly, be demanding their money back from the grasping profiteers of doom who so monstrously over-egged this particular pudding.

Yeah, right!

Monckton is an expert science denier and entertainer

There is one more tidbit for Monckton fans:

Lord Monckton is an expert reviewer for the IPCC’s forthcoming Fifth Assessment Report. He has lectured worldwide in climate science and economics and has published several papers in the learned literature. Oh, and his passport says he is The Right Honourable Christopher Walter, Viscount Monckton of Brenchley.

Lord Monckton may be an expert reviewer, but Mickey Mouse could be an expert reviewer for the IPCC if he wanted.  Anyone can be an expert reviewer - you just self-nominate.

He's gone on numerous tours as an entertainer, to confirm he is a "drivelling idiot" and "hangs himself out of his own mouth" (at 1 minute 49 secs) - oh, and entertain the oldies and the members of the Flat Earth Society.

He's never published a peer-reviewed paper - his only "several papers" have been in denier rags like SPPI plus one article in an APS newsletter, but the article was not peer-reviewed.  APS were so horrified that anyone could think such a thing that they wrote an introduction:

The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review, since that is not normal procedure for American Physical Society newsletters. The American Physical Society reaffirms the following position on climate change, adopted by its governing body, the APS Council, on November 18, 2007: "Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate."

Laws of Monckton

For a more complete run-down on the shenanigans of Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, visit Barry Bickmore.  I particularly like his laws of Monckton and wonder when/if they will apply to Anthony Watts.

Bickmore’s First Law of Monckton
For every person who publicly endorses Lord Monckton’s climate pronouncements for merely irrational reasons, there exists a threshold in Monckton’s behavior which, if crossed, will cause said person to regret their association.

Bickmore’s Second Law of Monckton
Any behavioral threshold posited by Bickmore’s First Law of Monckton will eventually be crossed by Lord Monckton.

From Twitter

I discovered from Foxgoose that Monckton might be standing in upcoming elections.  In Scotland.  Best of luck to the Scottish.  I do hope for your sake he gets no votes.  However those elections have nought to do with me.  Scotland is a long way from my home.

.@SouBundanga @wattsupwiththat @MichaelEMann You're beginning to sound a bit desperate Sou - those looming elections getting to ya?
— Foxgoose (@Foxgoose) August 26, 2013

From WUWT comments

Pamela Gray is ever hopeful in her denial and says:

August 26, 2013 at 10:00 am  How much cooling (versus just stalling) would have to have been shown before the AGW crowd would have to say that the present decade was NOT the hottest in the present record? Let’s use their logic. They are obviously using an average from a decade of temperature averages. So let’s put the decade to hypothetical test using only negative slopes. Easily done with linear trend lines between the two decadal points being used by the AGW crowd. One could then easily show how far that crowd would be willing to show up as clowns. And all accomplished by using their decadal start and end points, their use of decadal averages, and their use of linear trend lines. Logic wins most handedly when the oponent side uses the proponent’s logic. Its like having the rival team accidently fail to remember which basket is theirs and score one for the other side. Makes them look stupid but is fun to watch!

For those curious about shifting the start years of the decade, here is the RSS so favoured these days on WUWT, as an animation, replete with the linear trend line Pamela requested.  Excel couldn't produce any negative slopes.  Sorry to disappoint Pamela.

Data Source: RSS

David L. isn't aware that the hockey stick is formed by proxy reconstructions plus instrumental observations, doesn't know that being a Viscount means being called Lord so-and-so but is not the same as being a member of the House of Lords.  He is also another hopeful science denier and writes:

August 26, 2013 at 9:53 am  Can someone produce the hockeystick graph that Mann is talking about? The one I remember has a blade that shoots up dramatically. I don’t remember the version that Mann is obviously refering to that shoots up a little then levels off for 17 years. Even in Al Gore’s fictional movie “Inconvenient Truth” his little platform kept going up and up. I don’t remember it going up and stopping for the rest of the movie.

BTW, what is Mann going to say when the temperatures start dropping for the next 10 years? I’ll tell you what he’ll say in 2023: “Global warming is still happening, most scientists believe this to be true. The late 20th century was the warmest period of the past millenium with 1998 being the all time record. Lord Monckton is not a Lord. Anyone who disagrees with me is a denier”

While the leader of the bunny tribe pops in and puts Monckton in his place. Eli Rabett says:

August 26, 2013 at 9:34 am  Certainly Lord Monckton does not look Burmese. And no one, not even Eli, believes that Lord Monckton sounds Burmese. Even the chairman of the conference was not foolish enough to say he thought Lord Monckton was Myanmarese. Well at least not when someone pointed this out after Lord Monckton talked having been recognized as a speaker from Myanmar

Why Eli even read about that at Watts Up With That, and the happy bunny even saw that Chris wrote that he took the seat of the representative of Myanmar and Chris asked to be recognized as same 

The microphone was just in front of me. All I had to do was press the button. I pressed it. The Chair recognized Myanmar (Burmese for Burma). I was on.

Last  one, because it amuses me on one level and disgusts me on another.  Anthony and his moderators are getting a bit annoyed because even his loyal denialists are trying to post links to yours truly's little blog.  The mod tries to make sure that all the ad homs go in only one direction.  The "subject of this thread" is not HotWhopper nor is it climate science, sez the mod, it's "bash Professor Michael Mann".  dp says (extract):

August 26, 2013 at 12:58 pm  ...this topic at a climate hysteria site that likely would not exist if there were no WUWT to stalk....

[Snip. You have our sympathy, but that link has been posted here so many times it amounts to threadjacking. The subject of the thread is Mann. Please stick to that topic. — mod.]

Is the end in sight? Monckton, the Sun and Cosmic Rays at WUWT

Christopher Monckton of Brenchley says, in a comment on WUWT: "perhaps the end is in sight":

August 13, 2013 at 1:11 am Suppose that the solar influence on global mean surface temperature, setting aside natural internal variability, varies as the time-integral of solar activity over the previous 11-year cycle.

Suppose also that the very small peak-to-trough difference in incoming solar radiance (it’s about 0.15% of total activity) were amplified sevenfold by cosmic-ray displacement, as Svensmark and many others think.

In that event, there could be half a Celsius degree of global cooling by 2020, and possibly more beyond that date, even after allowing for the small warming influence of CO2. The scare will not survive even seven more years without warming. Perhaps the end is in sight.

First his "half a Celsius degree of global cooling by 2020".  You reckon?!

Data Source: NASA plus Monckton

Next his "supposing" about cosmic rays. Galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) originate from outside our solar system.  (In addition there are charged particles that come from within the solar system and the sun.)  GCRs are affected by the solar magnetic field.  The amount reaching earth is inversely correlated with the approximately eleven year solar cycle.  So when the sun is least active, that's when more cosmic rays will reach earth.  For a good short introduction to cosmic rays, you could start with the Neutron Monitor Database website.

For a detailed discussion of cosmic rays and clouds (ie effect on the climate), there is a detailed article by Jeffrey Pierce on realclimate.org.

One of the main notions put forward is that cosmic rays form clouds which reflect incoming solar radiation back out again.  So if there is more cosmic radiation then there is more global cooling.  Thing is, there hasn't been much variation in cosmic radiation in the past 50 years and more as discussed at realclimate.org by Jeff Pierce (above) as well as in an article by Rasmus E. Benestad - with the data presented graphically as follows.  The grey dots represent cosmic rays but multiplied by -1 to emphasise the correlation with the solar cycle (in other words, they are the inverse of what is shown below).

A comparison between time evolution in the global mean temperature (dark red) and different solar indices (bottom) as well as CO2 forcing (green). All the curves here have been standardised, and the solar curves are shown along the bottom. The GCR are shown in grey, and have been multiplied by -1 to emphasise the correlation with the other solar indices.

So there is nothing to suggest that the earth's current climate will be affected to a measurable extent by cosmic rays even if they were shown to play a part in cloud formation.

How would you spot a drop in temperature from "a low-activity sun"?

This next comment is from Dermot O'Logical who has the absurd notion that a drop of one whole degree Celsius would be lost in "natural variability".

August 13, 2013 at 1:26 am  @Kev-in-UK I think any drop in temps from a low-activity sun is not going to show up as a distinct signal – there are so many other factors in play with regards to surface temps.

Let’s suppose there is an actual effect of -1C over 10 years. How would you spot a 0.1C / yr effect amidst the noise of natural variability and be able to assign certainty to the cause being a quiet sun?

Here is what Dermot thinks would not be spotted "amidst the noise of natural variability"!

Data Source: NASA plus Dermot

That's probably as cold as it's been in the entire Holocene.  It wouldn't take much to notice that.

Breaking News: Christopher Monckton writes some facts about climate

The potty peer Lord Monckton has drafted an alternative to the new position statement on climate change recently announced by the American Geophysical Union, for the benefit of WUWT science deniers. Surprisingly it includes some factual bits, for example:

Human activities are changing Earth’s climate...The atmospheric concentration of CO2 has increased ... caused by burning fossil fuels.  The world has warmed by 0.8 Cº.  Some (but not all) mountain glaciers have receded.  Arctic sea ice has declined since 1979, but Antarctic sea ice has increased.  

Climate models predict that global temperatures will continue to rise, with the amount of warming primarily determined by the level of emissions; that higher emissions of greenhouse gases will lead to larger warming and greater risks to society and ecosystems; and that some additional warming is unavoidable owing to past emissions. 

Climate change is not expected to be uniform over space or time. Deforestation, urbanization, and particulate pollution can have complex geographical, seasonal, and longer-term effects ... on temperature, precipitation, and cloud properties. In the current climate, weather experienced at a given location or region varies from year to year; in a changing climate, both the nature of that variability and the basic patterns of weather experienced can change, sometimes in counter-intuitive ways – some areas may experience cooling, for instance.

Apart from the above, the rest is just another rehash of Monckton's normal nonsense, lies and disinformation so I won't say any more about it other than to selectively quote three WUWT readers.


Justthinkin says (cherry-picked excerpt):

August 7, 2013 at 7:03 am  ...I would only add this quote…
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former. Albert Einstein

Eric Worrall says (cherry-picked excerpt):

August 7, 2013 at 3:44 am  Dear Lord Monckton, if only the world were a little saner. 

 
stan stendera is overwhelmed by being in the presence of "royalty" and writes:

August 7, 2013 at 3:42 am I bow again to you M’Lord.

There is one more comment I'll mention, from the "gone emeritus" professor Don Easterbrook.  Denier Don is as woeful at arithmetic as he is at climate science. Don Easterbrook says:

August 7, 2013 at 7:20 am  The atmospheric CO2 in 1958 was 0.0315% and has risen to 0.0395 in 2013, a rise of 0.008%. Isn’t it amazing that an increase of 0.008% in a gas that accounts for only 3.5% of the greenhouse effect is supposed to cause global warming of 6-10 degrees F by 2100? Even more amazing is that while CO2 rose from 0.0315% to 0.0338 from 1958 to 1980, global temperatures cooled, rather than increased, and the warmest decade of the century, the 1930s (unless you tamper with the data), occurred BEFORE atmospheric CO2 began to soar after 1945! But perhaps most amazing of all is how people who call themselves scientists (AGU) are willing to accept failed model predictions over real-time data.

The arithmetic error:  Denier Don talks of an increase as a percentage.  0.0395% minus 0.0315% divided by 0.0315% equals a 25% increase in the amount of atmospheric CO2 since 1958, not a 0.008% increase.  The increase in atmospheric CO2 since industrialisation is now around 40% or more.


Denier Don's climate science errors:

1. Carbon dioxide accounts for around 20% of the greenhouse effect (not 3.5%) - that is, the greenhouse effect itself, not global warming.  From Schmidt et al (2010):

With a straightforward scheme for allocating overlaps, we find that water vapor is the dominant contributor (∼50% of the effect), followed by clouds (∼25%) and then CO2 with ∼20%. All other absorbers play only minor roles. In a doubled CO2 scenario, this allocation is essentially unchanged, even though the magnitude of the total greenhouse effect is significantly larger than the initial radiative forcing, underscoring the importance of feedbacks from water vapor and clouds to climate sensitivity.

2. Global temperatures did not "cool" between 1958 and 1980.  2010 was the hottest year on record to date, the decade of the 1930s was a lot cooler.

Data Source: NASA

Christopher the expert fiddler...

Update: I missed this, but an astute commenter on Wotts' blog picked it up.  The disrespectful potty peer calls President Obama "Mr" throughout until he gets to the end, when he puts President in quotation marks.  That's his birtherism showing.  Nice that Anthony allows this - not!  (I don't feel any qualms about being disrespectful towards Monckton.)

---

After a couple of weeks away, Lord Christopher is back on WUWT.   (You were all starting to miss him, weren't you.) This time he's tearing into President Obama, who is reported to have said:

But the flipside is we also know that the climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated five or 10 years ago

The Lord might have missed Obama's speech made in May, but he's now caught up, since it was a much-asked question at the US Senate hearings last week.

First up, Monckton shows us all a stunning drawing in full technicolor like this:

I think it's an improvement on his previous drawings.  It brings to mind a locomotive for some reason.  And there's not quite as much of his ghastly pink background.  Of course it bears no resemblance to anything except Monckton's imagination.

Monckton waffles on in his usual fashion about being an "expert reviewer" for the IPCC.  I expect the IPCC lead authors will give his comments the attention they deserve.  (For the benefit of anyone new to climate discussions, anyone at all can nominate themselves as an 'expert reviewer' for the IPCC, even a potty peer.)

Moncton then makes some huge errors of fact.  For example, he says "the models expect an approximately linear warming...".  I cannot imagine that any of the models expect anything.  It's the scientists who interpret the models who may draw conclusions and thus have some expectations.  And I doubt any climate scientist has an expectation of a linear warming, given the system till now has not demonstrated linear warming.  Here is how the surface temperature has progressed over the past century and more:

Data Source: NASA

Even the five year moving average goes up and down over time, reflecting internal variation like ENSO and other forcings like volcanos, aerosols and the like.  Still, there is a definite upward trend.

Monckton continues his deceptions.  The reason is obvious.  He wants to argue that all the models are wrong.  So what he does is show charts for very short periods of time.  All except RSS is either five years or ten years. Not only does he pick very short intervals, but he puts up monthly charts so he can make sure that the noise of month to month variation masks any signal of the trend.  Not that you would expect to see the signal in a short period of time.  (The longest period he shows is for RSS, for which he puts up a monthly chart of sixteen years and seven months.)

Here's an example with UAH, Monckton's five years by month compared to the same period on an annual basis:

Data Source: UAH

Now Monckton's ten years by month compared to the same period on an annual basis:

Data Source: UAH

Now compare the above with all the data for UAH:

Data Source: UAH

It's pretty easy to see the cherry pick and why it pays to use as much data as you can if you want to see what's happening to the lower troposphere surface temperature.

Dishonest is the best adjective I can come up with to describe the man.

In the comments

One thing you can almost always count on in the comments to a Monckton article, is at least one pompous response.  This from Ben Wilson who says (spoilt only by the exclamation marks):

July 21, 2013 at 8:31 am  Lord Monckton, I would like to personally think you for the work you have done and are doing, and pray that your efforts will bear abundant fruit!!

Jon Jewett says:

July 21, 2013 at 9:13 am  

Dear Lord Monckton of Brenchley,

Thank you.

Should you ever be at loose ends in the Heart of Texas, you would be welcome at our table. We could shoot guns and eat BBQ and drink beer and go to a rousing Bible thumping Baptist Church service (all of the things that the coasters believe of us here.)

Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)

Robin sums it up quite well, though unwittingly, when he says (excerpt):

July 21, 2013 at 10:39 am  We are dealing with an ideology here pure and simple. 

Monckton changes his mind again, again and again. Now it's an Orwellian conspiracy!

That eccentric chap Christopher Monckton from Brenchley has found another conspiracy in true "moon-landing" fashion. He's written yet another article on WUWT that Anthony Watts has made "blue" - I think that means Anthony reckons that mixed up pile of codswallop is a "top post".  (How the mighty have fallen and fallen hard!)  Monckton can't make up his mind if the world is warming or cooling or what!

Big Brother is Watching You!

Monckton now reckons he's found an "Orwellian" conspiracy.  No proof of course.  It's how he gets his brain to cope with the fact that the world is warming**.

So what happened in 1984?  Did Eric Arthur Blair really doctor all the world's records of surface temperature?  If so, he must have done it some time before 21 January 1950.  But who knows, he might not really be dead but hiding among us as a lizard man and doctoring Presidential birth certificates.

It's not CO2, it's not the PDO, it's a conspiracy

Monckton writes (my emphasis):

However, the apparently tidy 1.0 to 1.4 to 1.8 Cº/century-equivalent increase in the rates of global warming during the “warming” phases of the PDO may not be attributable to CO2 at all. The true cause may be another and more sinister man-made phenomenon: Orwellian data revisionism.

That is one mixed up sentence.  We'll tackle the PDO reference first.

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation is an index that is based on the sea surface temperature of the North Pacific and as such it is embedded in the global surface temperature, which includes land surface and sea surface temperatures.  It is described here as:

The PDO is defined as the leading EOF of mean November through March SST anomalies for the Pacific Ocean to the north of 20N latitude. ... Positive values indicate months of above normal SSTs along the west coast of the North and Central America and on the equator, and below normal SSTs in the central and western north Pacific at about the latitude of Japan. Fluctuations in this pattern are dominated by variability on the decadal time scale.

The PDO is not regular, it is an observed oscillation in the North Pacific sea surface temperatures and has been linked to ENSO.  (It's also been linked to kettles and ice blocks.)

If you look at the animation below, it's easy to see that there must be other forces acting on the land and surface temperatures.  Sometimes the temperature trend is in the same direction as the PDO, but as often it isn't.  Right now, for example, the temperature hasn't gone down although the PDO has turned negative.  Even in that big flat stretch from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s, the PDO went down and although the global temperature didn't go up, neither did it drop much at all.  So there are other forces pushing the temperature up.  Since the late 1970s, the strongest force has been elevated levels of greenhouse gases. (Click chart to enlarge.)

Sources: JISAO and NASA

Why can't Monckton make up his mind?

Monckton changes his mind more often than the weather changes in Melbourne.  Just a day or so ago Monckton had been so certain that it's cooling he had narrowed down the date his "cooling" began to 17 years and four months ago.  This was after he'd made numerous wild guesses at "cooling" - including it started cooling 16, 17, 18, 19 and 23 years (all in the one letter); then he went for "approaching two decades"; then just last month it was 18 years.  Kenji would be much less confused than Monckton, I'll be willing to bet.

Now Monckton can't make up his mind, saying all of "it's not cooling", "it's warming, but not as fast as before" and "it's cooling".  Or is he saying that Spencer and Christy's UAH record is an Orwellian conspiracy?  He writes:

RSS showed warming at 0.7 Cº/century from 1979-1996 and cooling at almost 0.1 Cº/century from 1997-2012....

...UAH, however, in contrast to both HadCRUt4 and RSS, showed warming in the later period, 1997-2012, that was thrice as fast as the warming of the earlier period, 1979-1996.

So according to Monckton even his precious satellite data sets differ.  Pity he can't work out what's happening.  He writes:

It would be interesting to adjust the global instrumental temperature anomaly record not only for volcanic aerosols, solar cycles and el Niños but also for the cycles of the PDO, but that is above my present pay-grade.

Poor old Monckton.  He admits he doesn't know what he's doing.  He decides to throw in the towel and put the rise in global temperatures down to "an Orwellian conspiracy".  At least he can rest happy now, knowing that, as he says, the satellites are watching and preventing cheating even though he reckons that his "watching satellites" can't even agree with each other.


I hope in his next article Monckton sets out his theory of how this conspiracy works.  How is it that no one else has blown the whistle except an eccentric conspiracy theorist from Brenchley.  It must involve not only 97% of climate researchers all over the world, but also the hundreds of thousands of people who work for weather bureaus as well as the thousands of editors of scientific journals.  Plus more.  There has never been and never will be a conspiracy quite so grand.

Looking forward to the next conspiracy theory promoted by Anthony Watts on WUWT.  You never know, he might move onto fake moon landings next.

(I thought Anthony Watts used to try to present himself as a 'rational' sceptic.  Lately he's been oscillating between irrational and truly weird.  He's effectively handed over WUWT to the crank Monckton, who even Andrew Bolt (temporarily) distanced himself from.  I'm wondering if recent research like Marcott, Lewandowsky, Cook and others on top of the Heartland-China fiasco has done something to his brain.  Or maybe he's always been this strange.)

In the comments

You can easily distinguish the thinkers from the fake "skeptics".  Anyone who was really interested in science, as opposed to purveyors of disinformation and doubt (FUD specialists), wouldn't write this, for example:

Eric Worrall says:
June 15, 2013 at 10:41 pm  The missing piece of the puzzle is how they worked their magic. I’d love to see a recipe for turning Hadcrut3 into Hadcrut4, that would tell us a lot about what was happening. If the details of how to do this are not public domain, they should be.

Instead, they'd Google and then write something like this:

Anyone but Eric Worrall would say:
June 16, 2013 at 8:53 pm I was interested in the changes between HadCRUT3 and HadCRUT4, and found that the researchers had written a paper describing the differences and explaining how HadCRUT4 was developed.  Here is the abstract, which I've broken into paragraphs for easier reading:

Recent developments in observational near-surface air temperature and sea-surface temperature analyses are combined to produce HadCRUT4, a new data set of global and regional temperature evolution from 1850 to the present. This includes the addition of newly digitized measurement data, both over land and sea, new sea-surface temperature bias adjustments and a more comprehensive error model for describing uncertainties in sea-surface temperature measurements.

An ensemble approach has been adopted to better describe complex temporal and spatial interdependencies of measurement and bias uncertainties and to allow these correlated uncertainties to be taken into account in studies that are based upon HadCRUT4.

Climate diagnostics computed from the gridded data set broadly agree with those of other global near-surface temperature analyses. Fitted linear trends in temperature anomalies are approximately 0.07°C/decade from 1901 to 2010 and 0.17°C/decade from 1979 to 2010 globally. Northern/southern hemispheric trends are 0.08/0.07°C/decade over 1901 to 2010 and 0.24/0.10°C/decade over 1979 to 2010. Linear trends in other prominent near-surface temperature analyses agree well with the range of trends computed from the HadCRUT4 ensemble members.

And for those who cannot access the full paper, which is behind a paywall, I found a poster online that summarises the changes.  You can click here to view it. 

---

**From a review of Michael Shermer's book "The Believing Brain":

Mr. Shermer offers a handy guide for those who are confused. Conspiracy theories are usually bunk when they are too complex, require too many people to be involved, ratchet up from small events to grand effects, assign portentous meanings to innocuous events, express strong suspicion of either governments or companies, attribute too much power to individuals or generate no further evidence as time goes by.