Hoity Toity Christopher Monckton sez the Earth is losing energy and other silliness at WUWT

The potty peer has done it again.  He's trying to argue that Dana Nuccitelli is wrong in his recent article in the Guardian: The Weekly Standard's Lindzen puff piece exemplifies the conservative media's climate failures.

Christopher Monckton has to play fudgery with numbers and I'm not sure if he's fooling anyone except the hard core deniers.  And they'll be fooled by anything as long as it rejects climate science.  Here is the archived WUWT article.

(I see that Christopher, like Bob Tisdale a couple of days ago, has taken a leaf out of HotWhopper's book and has webcited the Guardian article, but I can't access it.  No-one else has complained so I don't know if it's just me or if no-one at WUWT clicked on the link.  Neither would surprise me. Update: the webcite version is accessible now, but it doesn't look too good in Chrome.)

I won't go over all Christopher's silliness.  He's done it all before, including wanting to running off to his dreaded government  crying crocodile tears when he doesn't like something.  (Deniers typically hold government in contempt unless they are claiming to be members of the House of Lords or wanting the government to intervene in some fabricated slight.)  Here's a short sample.

Yes, Christopher - fewer than two out of every hundred climate science papers in the last twenty years dispute the notion that humans are to blame for global warming. No reputable scientist disputes this fact.

And yes, Christopher, Lindzen's Iris Hypothesis was found wanting.

And yes, Christopher, we are in a period of warming that is unprecedented in a very long time, and are heading for 10 times the pace of warming in 65 million years.

You get the picture.

At one stage Christopher shows he himself doesn't agree with Richard Lindzen.  Christopher writes:

it is possible – indeed, quite likely – that a net loss of energy from the Earth-atmosphere system is now underway. If so, global temperature may even fall,

First of all, if there was a net loss of energy then global temperatures would definitely fall.  No maybes, ifs or buts about it.  But that's physically impossible as long as we keep adding greenhouse gases at the rate we are, and as long as there are no supervolcanic eruptions or asteroid strikes or similar to stop the sunlight penetrating the atmosphere.  Christopher doesn't provide any evidence to support his nutty claim, understandably, because there is none.


Here's another blooper - Christopher writes:

Since natural variability has yielded warming at 4.33 Cº/century within the past 350 years

What natural variability?  What 15ºC of warming over the past 350 years?  Let's look at the longer term record - of the past 2000 years. (Click to enlarge.)

Figure 5.7 IPCC AR5 WG1 Reconstructed (a) Northern Hemisphere and (b) Southern Hemisphere, and (c) global annual temperatures during the last 2000 years. Individual reconstructions (see Appendix 5.A.1 for further information about each one) are shown as indicated in the legends, grouped by colour according to their spatial representation (red: land-only all latitudes; orange: land-only extra-tropical latitudes; light blue: land and sea extra-tropical latitudes; dark blue: land and sea all latitudes) and instrumental temperatures shown in black (HadCRUT4 land and sea, and CRUTEM4 land-only; Morice et al., 2012). All series represent anomalies (°C) from the 1881–1980 mean (horizontal dashed line) and have been smoothed with a filter that reduces variations on timescales less than ~50 years.

No.  There's not been anything like a warming of 4.33 degrees a century (or 15ºC) in the past 350 years.  Even taking it to the present day with the "unnatural" forcing, there's not a 4.33 degree rise from the coldest temperature in the last 1500 years to the temperature today.  Imagine what it will be like if we let global surface temperatures rise by four degrees!

At one point Christopher goes for another bit of disinformation.  He wrote:

A: Before the U.S. Senate on 23 June 1988, Hansen said that his Scenario A, which predicted 0.5 Cº/decade warming to 2060, was the “business-as-usual” case; yet Nuccitelli has only shown Hansen’s less exaggerated Scenario B.

But that's wrong.  In Dr Hansen's testimony, he describes Scenario A as assuming 1.5% a year emissions growth.  But emissions haven't grown at that rate.  The growth averaged over the period since 1988 would be roughly 0.5% a year, going by the rise in atmospheric CO2 over that period.

Christopher cries "libel" a lot.  But it's he, Christopher Monckton, who is one of the biggest frauds in the deniosphere.

The deniers who think they are modern-day Galileos won't be happy with Christopher for writing this bit of nonsense:

The Church, as well as informed scientific opinion, had long agreed that the Earth orbits the Sun and not the other way about. However, Galileo had drawn inappropriate theological conclusions from heliocentricity, perpetrating the notorious non sequitur that since the Earth was not the centre of the Universe the Incarnation and Crucifixion were of less importance than the Church maintained. It was Galileo’s theological conclusion the Church objected to, not the scientific conclusion that the Sun is at the center of the solar system. 

And Christopher proves to be a passive smoking denier, too, writing:

And, as far as I know, Professor Lindzen does not dispute the well-established link between smoking and lung cancer, though he would be within his rights to dispute the imagined link between passive smoking and lung cancer. 

Since Anthony Watts is so anti-smoking I'm surprised he let that one through. For Richard Lindzen's position on passive smoking - check out pages 25 and 26 of this transcript.

From the WUWT comments

Here is how Christopher finishes up:

What is your verdict? From my own knowledge of the Professor and his distinguished work, I find Nuccitelli’s piece misleading, offensive, and cruel. Damages will be huge.

It's now offensive and cruel to point out errors and listing errors is misleading?  Let's see if the WUWT-ers agree.

Lew Skannen says:

January 13, 2014 at 8:48 pm
Sueing is an expensive, difficult and risky process. Better to get a peice in the Graun refuting the garbage so all the Nuttycherry sycophants can have their noses rubbed in it.

Dr C objects to Christopher rewriting history and says (excerpt):

January 13, 2014 at 9:01 pm
Sorry to quibble, Mr Monckton, but this part is incorrect: “The Church, as well as informed scientific opinion, had long agreed that the Earth orbits the Sun and not the other way about.” First, no one used the word ‘orbit’ at the time. Kepler invented that word (as we understand it), and few in Rome were reading Kepler at the time. More important, however, is that Rome at the time remained firmly geocentric in its cosmological outlook: the official line in Rome was that the Sun revolved around the earth. This is an indisputable fact. 

jorgekafkazar says, without a hint that he sees the double standards at WUWT:

January 13, 2014 at 9:01 pm
Ad hominem slurs, the first refuge of scoundrels…

tallbloke has got as far as realising you can only claim "Little Ice Age bouncing" for so long and hope to get away with it, even for hard core deniers.  He's yet to wake up to the reality that there is no such thing as a Little Ice Age bounce.  It takes a forcing to change the climate. He says:

January 13, 2014 at 11:32 pm
“on the evidence there could be as little as 1 Cº global warming between now and 2100″
Or minus 0.5C. The recovery from the LIA won’t go on forever.

Bugs Man is probably one of the 8% who really and truly "believes" people like the potty peer, even though he can't understand a thing about science.  He says (excerpt):

January 13, 2014 at 11:22 pm
Lord Monckton’s article is a tour de force example of a complete* de-bunk of Nuccitelli and Abraham’s piece in The Guardian (6 Jan 2014). That it is libellous is, for me, well proven.
At least one preceding comment questions the economic sense of persuing a libel case which can be cost-prohibitive for individuals. I suggest that a formal complaint to the (UK) Independent Press Complaints Commission (regrettably also abbreviated to IPCC), using Lord Monckton’s article as evidence*, would be a far less expensive exercise and, if upheld, arguably more effective in getting The Guardian to be more circumspect before regurgitating Nuccitelli’s venomous opinions in future. A privately funded libel case on the back of such a judgement by the IPCC should then be considered.

Monckton emits a silent scream - and gets the IPCC report wrong (as usual)

Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, otherwise known as the potty peer (among other things) is suffering memory loss.  Well, he probably always was batty so this will not come as a surprise to anyone.

Today Anthony Watts, who doesn't care what nonsense he publishes as long as it is anti-science, put up an article by Christopher Monckton that doesn't make a lot of sense. (Archived here.)

The headline reads:

IPCC silently slashes its global warming predictions in the AR5 final draft

Aside from being very late to the party, that's very odd for a couple of reasons.  First it implies that Christopher Monckton was hoping for a "talking" book from the IPCC.  Maybe so he could listen when he's on the train or maybe because his eyesight is failing.  Could someone tell Christopher that there are software programs around that will read text aloud.  All he needs is a computer with speakers or headphones and he can hear the sounds.

Secondly, Christopher can't have read the report properly if he thinks that global warming predictions have been "slashed".  Here is how Ed Hawkins responded:

@latimeralder @wattsupwiththat (1) This is the first 'prediction' the IPCC has made. (2) Observations within range of previous projections.
— Ed Hawkins (@ed_hawkins) January 2, 2014

As Ed Hawkins explained rather clearly and well - oh, more than three months ago now (Christopher is also behind the times):

The AR5 includes, for the first time, a specific chapter and assessment on ‘near-term’ climate change, which covers the period up to 2050, but with a specific focus on the 2016-2035 period.

The near-term period is interesting because the projections can be verified rather soon and because understanding the changes over this period may be relevant for adaptation decision making. This period is also relatively insensitive to the particular emissions scenario, although aerosol emissions decline quite rapidly in all RCPs which may be slightly unrealistic. However, the near-term is made complicated because of the role of climate variability.

The IPCC has made a probabilistic assessment of how global temperatures are projected to evolve over the next 20 or so years, which is valid for all RCPs, but with a few caveats such as no future large volcanic eruptions.

To find out more about the short term estimates for global temperatures, I recommend Ed Hawkin's blog article.

Now Christopher rabbits on about "climbdowns" and "overestimates" which is nothing but wishful thinking on his part.  He persists in using monthly charts of global temperature so he can hide the signal in among the noise of weather.

It's going to get hotter

Regular readers will have seen the following charts more than once, but for those of you who are new to the subject, or those of you who've barely subsisted on a diet of denial up to now, here they are again:

It's going to get hotter if we don't do something about it.  For some unknown reason, Christopher Monckton believes that future temperatures have either stopped or will proceed at exactly the same rate as they have over some period in the past or something else.  It's never easy to work out just what the potty peer is trying to say.  At one stage he was pushing for David "funny sunny" Archibald's "ice age by 2020" prediction.

Australia has just broken multiple heat records, including 2013 being the hottest year on record.  Large parts of the country have been suffering another near record-breaking heat wave, with known hot regions recording near highs (almost 50 degrees at Moomba).  And it's not even been an El Nino year.  It's a long, long time since there has been a "coldest year on record" - probably for almost any region on Earth that has several decades of temperature records, and certainly for the world as a whole.

Many scientists have found through their research that if we don't cut emissions enough, Earth will rise by four degrees above the temperatures of the early twentieth century.  That will spell disaster for a lot of people.  Roger Bodman and David Karoly, for example, in a paper published in Nature Climate Change back in May last year found

...an increased probability of exceeding a 2 °C global–mean temperature increase by 2100 while reducing the probability of surpassing a 6 °C threshold for non-mitigation scenarios.

More recently, Steven Sherwood et al have just had a paper published in Nature about the behaviour of clouds in a warming world, and Steven discusses the implications:

"When the processes are correct in the climate models the level of climate sensitivity is far higher. Previously, estimates of the sensitivity of global temperature to a doubling of carbon dioxide ranged from 1.5°C to 5°C. This new research takes away the lower end of climate sensitivity estimates, meaning that global average temperatures will increase by 3°C to 5°C with a doubling of carbon dioxide."

The bottom line is that if we don't cut emissions of CO2 enough, the world will continue to heat up and that will pose a lot of big challenges to many people and in many fields of endeavour.  Not least of which will be fishing, agriculture, food production, infrastructure maintenance, liveability in many regions and general quality of life and its affordability.

People like poor old Christopher Monckton, who complains that the IPCC didn't provide a read-aloud version of its reports, and has forgotten that he first read the IPCC report months ago.  He was even an "expert reviewer" at one stage but I guess he's forgotten that little fact - or forgotten that he's already written ad nauseum about it.

Christopher can't read a chart

Christopher Monckton has quite a reputation for telling bald-faced lies.  For example, in only the second paragraph of his article at WUWT, Christopher writes:

Official projections of global warming have plummeted since Dr. James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies told the U.S. Congress in June 1988 the world would warm by 1 Cº every 20 years till 2050 (Fig. 1), implying 6 Cº to 2100.

I found nowhere in Dr Hansen's testimony any prediction or projection to 2050.  Nor could I find any example of his saying or even suggesting that the world will warm by one degree every twenty years.  Christopher put up this chart saying it was from Dr Hansen's testimony:

Source: WUWT

Which is similar to the actual chart from Dr Hansen's testimony, except Monckton's chart has the temperature in degree Kelvin for some strange reason and he's shifted around the labels.

Source: Hansen's 1988 testimony

If you look at the charts above, neither of them go to 2050. Nor do either of them, under any scenario, show a rise of one degree in twenty years.  Since 1960, Scenario A, which is the most extreme, shows a rise of almost 1.6 degrees to 2019. From 2000 to 2019, scenario A and B show a rise of around 0.7-0.8 degrees and nearly 0.6 degrees respectively.

Of course that's not to say that over the coming century the global temperatures won't rise more quickly in some decades, or more slowly in other decades.  The latest estimates suggest a rise of four degrees above temperatures in the early 1900s is quite on the cards by 2100 if we don't cut emissions enough.  And it will continue to rise after that as long as we're adding CO2 to the air in greater quantities than it's removed.

Here are the longer term projections for different choices we make about how much CO2 we will throw into the air.

Source: IPCC AR5 WG1 Summary for Policy Makers

Christopher's getting on in years like me, so he may not suffer too much.  So he can go gallivanting about complaining that he isn't allowed in the House of Lords and doesn't believe that Obama is President of the USA and that he's found a cure for AIDS and other crank ideas, like global warming isn't happening.  And Anthony Watts can promote as many crazies as he wants to on his anti-science blog.  It won't change a thing.

From the WUWT comments

GlynnMhor is a dinky di fake sceptic, not bothering to check any of Christopher's "claims".  He is one of the gullible dismissives, assuming he's witnessing the biggest hoax in human history - that all the thousands of scientists in the world who study various parts of Earth systems are "lying" and says:

January 1, 2014 at 6:01 pm
I generally tend to trust those recognized to be experts in their field, when they’re talking about their field, at least.

But once these ‘experts’ have been caught out in lie after lie after lie, their credibility in my mind declines markedly.

Janice Moore says (excerpt - okay, I'm having fun with the shouty god-botherer Janice):

January 1, 2014 at 6:55 pmHear, hear, Christopher Monckton. Well done! Thank you for the truth-in-science tour de force.

Damned out of their own mouths:...

...They must think we’re a bunch of morons.

Yep, Janice. For once you hit the nail on the head!

mib8 says innocently (excerpt):

January 1, 2014 at 10:42 pm
OK, folks, here’s something I don’t get in these graphs or some of the earlier ones. If there is a non-negative “anomaly” I’ve always understood it to mean that global warming is happening. Whether it is 0.001 degree or 0.1 degree or 0.9 degree or 2 degrees, it’s still “warming”....

...So, why do all of the graphs seem to show some global warming over the last 17-18 years, when several postings have said that the data show no global warming over that period? I’m not trying to be annoying; I just don’t understand.

M Courtney is another deluded denier that has no sense of time or just how fast is this change we are causing, and impatiently asks "are we there yet?":

January 2, 2014 at 12:49 am
It is worth noting that the rise in temperatures has never been considered catastrophic or even problematic.

It is the rate of rise in temperatures that was potentially disastrous.

So when does the expected change become so slow that we can adapt easily?
Probably when the effects of warming are slower than the natural wear-and-tear on infrastructure; we will adapt at no extra cost then.

Have we hit that point?

Richard Betts decides enough is enough and says:

January 2, 2014 at 3:28 am
How can something be “quietly cut” when it was only a draft in the first place?
Monckton makes it sound like the IPCC noisily made some predictions, and then secretly changed them afterwards, but this is the exact opposite of what really happened. The Second Order Draft was, as the name suggests, a draft. The IPCC specifically says that the earlier drafts are just preliminary, not the final conclusions, and indeed it asked authors and reviewers not to circulate the drafts specifically because it didn’t want people thinking that the draft conclusions were the final ones.

The drafts will be officially published later as a matter of public record, along with the review comments and author responses, so the evolution of the report will be clear.

This is a totally manufactured criticism.

Boris Gimbarzevsky does a grand imitation of a deluded denier (will someone call Poe?) and says:

January 2, 2014 at 5:21 am
I wouldn’t put it past the IPCC to suddenly announce that it had been wrong all along and that increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations causes global cooling. All it would take would be just changing the signs of a few variables in their models and quickly readjusting historical global temperature data to show it was warmer in the past.

Given the propensity for the majority of individuals to not remember what happened decades ago and believe what authority figures tell them, likely such a preposterous scheme would be noticed only by those who are suspicious by nature and question authority. With a mere flip of the presumed effects of CO2 on world temperature, suddenly the models would fit far better and would predict a new ice age in a century. The only question is whether people would accept the huge reductions in fossil fuel consumption which would be imperative to prevent the next ice age according to “experts”? While such a reversal of the IPCC’s position might seem far fetched, it is more plausible than Trenbeth’s “missing heat” and it appears that no theory is too implausible for this group of kleptocrats if it furthers the watermelon agenda of a deindustrialized world.

Medieval Anthony Watts reveals a disinformation "trick" in Five Easy Steps plus assumptions

Updated: see below for Bernard J's chart, which puts medieval climate in perspective with that projected for this century and the global surface temperatures of past eons.

---

Deniers at WUWT have gone back to regurgitating old worn out denier memes.

I've frequently come across deniers saying silly stuff like "warmists deny the MWP".   What they mean is that "warmists" are aware it was real but not global.

Why do some fake sceptics hang onto their MWP meme and why are they so hung up on "MWP denial". Why are they are so convinced, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that the medieval warm period was whatever they variously think it was.  How do they know anything at all about it if not for science?  A lot of them seem to get their "science" from Nordic myths and legends.

Deniers and their sources of disinformation rarely if ever quote the science of that period.  Instead they quote snippets from stolen emails that they've spent hours digging through to find quotes they can twist and misuse.  If that fails they revert to statements made by climate disinformers at US Senate Committee hearings.

Anthony Watts reveals a tactic of climate disinformers

In a rare moment of openness about the disinformation tactics of the "leading darks" in the disinformation business, Anthony explains to the world one tactic used by disinformers.  He did it in a comment he elevated to an article (archived here) that he called:

The truth about ‘We have to get rid of the medieval warm period’

Six basic assumptions made by disinformers about fake sceptics

First, some basic assumptions about the denialati that are made by the disinformers:

1. Most people who reject science never read scientific literature.
2. Most people who reject science never do any fact checking at all.
3. Most people who spread what the disinformers write are fake sceptics or are themselves disinformers. 
4. Fake sceptics refer to themselves as "skeptics" but never do any fact checking, particularly of things they want to believe.
5. Most fake sceptics will "believe" what disinformers say, even when they make contradictory statements.
6. Most people who believe disinformers reject climate science.

The basic assumptions made by disinformers like Anthony Watts and others are quite reasonable, from what I read from fake sceptics.  They don't hold in all cases but in sufficient numbers of cases to make the disinformation tactics work (with fake sceptics). They are a reasonable set of assumptions for people engaged in disinformation campaigns (eg Anthony Watts) to work from.

A Disinformation "Trick" in Five Easy Steps

Today Anthony Watts explains one of the disinformers' magic tricks.  It's quite simple.  Here are the steps.

1. Pick a private email stolen from a scientific research unit
2. Pluck part of a sentence from the email
3. Write something quite different and say it's a "paraphrase" of that plucked clause
4. Repeat the false paraphrase a few times on your blog and claim "so and so scientist said this"
5. Voilà - you now have a denier meme that will be broadcast forever and a day by the denialati all around the world!

Anthony Watts describes the "trick" in detail

Anthony Watts describes the trick in more detail, using a stolen email and his own false paraphrase.  He makes an article out of an inline comment to a comment by Robert.  Here is the comment  (archived here):

Robert says:

December 8, 2013 at 9:50 am
The quote is a fabrication. Jonathan Overpeck’s exact words are:

“I get the sense that I’m not the only one who would like to deal a mortal blow to the misuse of supposed warm period terms and myths in the literature.”

Christopher Monckton, like Andrew Montford before him, alters the text to instead read:

“We have to abolish the medieval warm period.”

Here is Anthony Watts inline reply to Robert (my bold italics):

REPLY: I checked for a citation, and the quote you state is correct:
http://di2.nu/foia/1105670738.txt

From: Jonathan Overpeck
To: Keith Briffa , t.osborn@uea.ac.uk
Subject: the new “warm period myths” box
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 21:45:38 -0700
Cc: Eystein Jansen , Valerie Masson-Delmotte

Hi Keith and Tim – since you’re off the 6.2.2 hook until Eystein hangs you back up on it, you have more time to focus on that new Box. In reading Valerie’s Holocene section, I get the sense that I’m not the only one who would like to deal a mortal blow to the misuse of supposed warm period terms and myths in the literature. The sceptics and uninformed love to cite these periods as natural analogs for current warming too – pure rubbish.

So, pls DO try hard to follow up on my advice provided in previous email. No need to go into details on any but the MWP, but good to mention the others in the same dismissive effort.

“Holocene Thermal Maximum” is another one that should only be used with care, and with the explicit knowledge that it was a time-transgressive event totally
unlike the recent global warming.

Thanks for doing this on – if you have a cool figure idea, include it.
Best, peck
–
Jonathan T. Overpeck
Director, Institute for the Study of Planet Earth
Professor, Department of Geosciences
Professor, Department of Atmospheric Sciences
Mail and Fedex Address:
Institute for the Study of Planet Earth
715 N. Park Ave. 2nd Floor
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721

As to this being a fabrication, no, it’s a summation or a paraphrase of a long quote, something that happens a lot in history. Monckton and Montford aren’t specifically at fault in this, as the summed up quote has been around for a long, long time and it appears to have originated with Dr. David Deming’s statement to the Senate.

The conversion to a paraphrase maintains the meaning. “Mortal blow” certainly equates to “get rid of” (as it is often said) or “abolish” as you state it, and “we” equates to “I’m not the only one”.

The most important point is that Overpeck thinks it should be gotten rid of so that people that don’t agree with his view can’t use it.

And that, is the real travesty. – Anthony

Yes, you read that correctly.  Anthony Watts tries to claim that: “We have to abolish the medieval warm period.” means the same as "would like to deal a mortal blow to the misuse of supposed warm period terms and myths in the literature."

Johnathon Overpeck quite reasonably wants to hit on the head misuse of "supposed warm period terms and myths".   Anthony Watts claims that is the same thing as "abolishing the medieval warm period". Note also the context in the email for the "mortal blow to the misuse" sentence: "The sceptics and uninformed love to cite these periods as natural analogs for current warming too – pure rubbish." That they do!

Anthony isn't the only one.  He also quotes the disinformer Steve McIntyre as morphing " deal a mortal blow to the misuse of supposed warm period terms and myths" into "“deal a mortal blow” to the MWP".  Click here for an archived copy of Steve McIntyre's article here.  Steve writes:

To a third party, it’s hard to understand why someone who wants to “deal a mortal blow” to the “myth” of the MWP would take exception to being labeled as someone who wanted to “get rid of” MWP. The objective in each case seems pretty much the same.

The only way you could argue that the objective of "dealing a mortal blow to the misuse" seems pretty much the same" as "getting rid of the MWP" is if you are a disinformer wanting to spread disinformation.
.
What surprises me is how Anthony Watts is so open about the process behind the dishonest tactics he and other disinformers use.  It's like seeing a magician reveal his tricks.  One can hear the disinformers saying among themselves, trying to justify their lies to each other and themselves:

"Well, it's almost the same thing, isn't it? No?  Okay then it's not quite but it's nearly the same thing. No?  Okay it's nothing like the same thing, but if we say it's the same thing, that's all we need to do. Our readers will process it as meaning exactly the same thing.  And even though it means nothing like the same thing, with the mob that read what we write, they'll believe us when we argue it means the same thing."

David Deming started the meme back in 2006

It turns out that the 2005 email from Jonathon Overpeck wasn't the original source of the meme after all. According to Steve McIntyre, the denier myth began before the CRU emails were stolen.  He attributes it to a climate disinformer called David Deming in a statement to the US Senate Committee back in 2006.  (I read his statement.  Full of misdirection and half truths.  Isn't it illegal to make dishonest statements to the US government?)   You might recall me writing about how David Deming defended the nonsense put out by Denier Don Easterbrook, with his silly claims and misleading charts.

In his statement, climate disinformer David Deming said that he got an email "around the time" his paper was published in Science, which was back in 1995. His statement reads in part:

I had another interesting experience around the time my paper in Science was published. I received an astonishing email from a major researcher in the area of climate change. He said, "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period."

That statement of Deming's has never been verified to my knowledge.  The "major researcher" has not been publicly identified nor has the email been unearthed as far as I know.  And over time science has taken great strides in working out what climates around the world were like going back 2000 years or so - particularly through the work of the PAGES 2k network.  (I'll bet a lot of the scientists working on PAGES 2k have never even heard of David Deming or Steve McIntyre or Anthony Watts or Christopher Monckton!)

How fake sceptics misuse the medieval warm anomaly

I've written about the medieval warm anomaly before. Fake sceptics misuse it in the following fashion, complete with logical fallacies.

1. Disinformers and fake sceptics try to argue it was a globally synchronous event. It wasn't. 
2. They then try to argue that because it was a globally synchronous event (which it wasn't), the current warming isn't "unusual". It is. 
3. They then feel they can argue that because the medieval warm anomaly happened without a concurrent rise in CO2, then the current warming isn't because of CO2. But it is!

What science tells us about the medieval warm anomaly

I reckon most fake sceptics wouldn't know that scientists like Michael Mann have papers and book chapters on the subject. Here's an excerpt from my article for fake sceptics (who don't follow links, but then they don't read HotWhopper either - so this is really to save the time of Hotwhopper readers :)):

-------------

Here are a couple of charts of temperature reconstructions, which span the medieval period. The first on is from Mann et al (2008) which shows the warmer period in the Northern Hemisphere during Medieval times. It wasn't as warm as now, however.

Figure 3. Composite NH temperature reconstructions & published NH reconstructions from Mann ME et al (2008) Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 105, No. 36, pp. 13252-13257, September 9, 2008. doi:10.1073/pnas.0805721105

At the request of Phil Clarke in the comments, here is a chart from Mann et al 2009, showing the likely global surface temperature anomalies from the 1961-1990 mean during the medieval warm anomaly. You can see where it was warm and where it was cold.  However, as urged further down in the section on the Little Ice Age, I recommend you read the paper before trying to interpret the chart.

Source: Mann et al (2009)

------------------

My original article also shows a chart of Marcott et al, with the Holocene Optimum.

Addendum

The article discussed above derived from a statement by Christopher Monckton in a previous and equally silly WUWT article, in which he wrote (archived here):

However, in 1995 Dr. Jonathan Overpeck, an IPCC scientist, wrote an email to Dr. David Deming to say, “We have to abolish the medieval warm period.”

You can see there the disinformation tactic in action with a bit of a dog-leg to the David Deming statement.  No 1995 email from Jonathon Overpeck has ever been produced.  Whether he wrote that phrase or if anyone did, the context is not provided.  Deniers want to twist it into "scientists are re-writing the facts".  Instead what happens is that "scientists are researching the facts".

What is clear from the science is that there never was a period of global warming in medieval times that is anything like the global warming we are seeing now.  In medieval times there was regional warming and regional cooling. The way the deniers and disinformers like Christopher Monckton portray a medieval warm period is nonsense!   As Jonathon Overpeck did write very accurately:

The sceptics and uninformed love to cite these periods as natural analogs for current warming too – pure rubbish.

Update

Bernard J left a comment in another thread to say that he has prepared a chart based on this Wikipedia chart.  He has added in the likely rise in surface temperature if we choose to follow the RCP8.5 pathway.  Here it is - click on the chart to see the larger version:

Credit: Bernard J and Robert Rohde
Source: as listed in Wikipedia and IPCC AR5

Note that the time scale is not an arithmetic progression.  On a geological time scale, the temperature jump we could be choosing for ourselves this coming century would be viewed as a vertical line.

The above chart puts the much-fêted medieval climate anomaly into perspective, as well as the entire Holocene.  It also shows the unknown territory we are facing, especially if we choose not to rein in carbon emissions.

From the WUWT comments

You'll see that the "basic assumptions" don't hold in all cases. Even some of the fake sceptics aren't buying Anthony's line, now that he's revealed the magic disinformation trick.  However, they hold often enough to make this disinformation "trick" work quite well.  Here is a smorgasbord of comments (from the archived article here).

jeff says says he doesn't agree with Anthony's stance, but Anthony Watts digs in his heels and tries to claim that scientists "disappeared it in literature" (sic), implying that scientists have falsifed facts - utter nonsense:

December 8, 2013 at 10:41 am
seriously? i’m on your side and think many of them are crooks, but he SPECIFICALLY SAYS get ride of the “MISUSE” , not the actual MWP. learn to read

REPLY: I view it differently, as do many others, but I’ll edit for clarity. It is about the disappearing it in literature – Anthony

Michael in Sydney weakly sticks up for Anthony and says:

December 8, 2013 at 10:54 am
One mans use is another’s misuse – what exactly is the context of the misuse he complains about? The fact that he uses the term ‘ supposed’ suggests he doesn’t believe there were historical warm periods even on a regional level.

Paul just knows that "they" mean something other than what "they" said and says:

December 8, 2013 at 10:54 am
to jeff:
But any use of the MWP would be a misuse in their opinion.

GaryM finds a way to turn what was written into something completely different to suit the denier meme and  urges people to "learn to read" in the way fake sceptics are supposed to read.  In other words through a thick lens coated with confirmation bias.  He says:

December 8, 2013 at 10:56 am
Seriously? The “misuse” he is referring to is any “use” of the term.
“misuse of supposed warm period terms and myths”

He wants the MWP to disappear because he claims it doesn’t exist, hence “supposed warm periods”. To him the MWP is a “myth”, so ANY use of the term is a misuse.
learn to read – with comprehension.

Rod Chilton read something in a book somewhere and says:

December 8, 2013 at 11:15 am
I cannot believe these guys!!!!!. They will do almost anything to make sure the spin continues as to man as cause for the recent warming. There is some very interesting material presented in a book I read recently, that indicates within the Medieval Warm Period the Chinese actually sailed around Greenland. You cannot to my knowledge to that today…

Steven Mosher says something that upsets Anthony so he censors it:

December 8, 2013 at 11:16 am
[snip - Mosh, you are welcome to resubmit this comment sans the childish name calling - Anthony]

Jquip tells us what Steven Mosher wrote that so upset Anthony and then adds his own lie by implication and says:

December 8, 2013 at 11:30 am
Mosher: “That claim needs to
1. Verified Or
2. retracted.”

Indeed, if climate science held itself to the same standard we’d be rid of this pestilence at once.

Paul Matthews says:

December 8, 2013 at 11:36 am
Careful. There’s no link between the Deming quote and that CG email.

Monckton of Brenchley says it's okay to extend and expand an unverified claim made by another climate disinformer and turn it into a false denier meme that "the medieval warm period was real, was global, and was warmer than the present". Christopher Monckton says:

December 8, 2013 at 11:58 am
I am most grateful to Anthony and others here for verifying the word-for-word quotation from Dr. Deming that I used. I took certain steps to verify the quote some years ago. It is genuine. It dates from 1995. In 1998/9 Nature printed the Mann/Bradley/Hughes hockey stick and the IPCC picked it up in 2001. That nonsensical graph has represented the “official” position ever since, even though hundreds of papers in the reviewed literature, using measurement rather than modeling, provide evidence that the medieval warm period was real, was global, and was warmer than the present.

John Greenfraud is a conspiracy theorist who thinks climate science is a socialist plot and says:

December 8, 2013 at 12:06 pm
A distinction without a difference, the meaning of the ‘quote’ from these so-called climate scientists is clear. Whether it gets hot, cold, or stays the same, their solution is always the identical, socialism masquerading as environmentalism. Kick these dishonest hacks, and their lackeys, out of the national policy decision loop. Go down with the ship climate comrades, we’ll be laughing at you all the way down, just take some temperature readings when you reach bottom, so we can pull you back up and start laughing at you again. You’ve earned it.

Felix says:

December 8, 2013 at 12:11 pm
Watts writes: “As to this being a fabrication (as Robert claims), no, it’s a summation or a paraphrase of a long quote, something that happens a lot in history.”

When someone puts quotation marks around a paraphrase they have created a fabrication. In this case the “summation” alters the meaning as other have noted. The key word “misuse” of ignored in the “summary”. Some here may think the paraphrase is what Overpeck really meant in his heart, and they may or may not be right, but the shortened paraphrase does not have the same literal meaning of the actual quote. Fabrications happen a lot in history, that does not make then true.

John piccirilli either doesn't know when the medieval period was or he is not aware that the Medieval warm anomaly was not global or he's not familiar with Mann temperature reconstructions (see charts above) and says:

December 8, 2013 at 12:52 pm
Tell me felix..where on mann’s hockey stick [graph] does he show
The mwp? The meaning is clear by what peck says and by the actions
Of ipcc.

The bulk of the rest of the comments are from fake sceptics wanting to hang onto their myths about the medieval climate anomaly, for varying reasons of their own, but in the main for the reasons I described above.  If you have some time you're prepared to waste, you  can read more comments archived here.

Bombing out: Christopher Monckton goes in to bat for two professors at WUWT

Update - click here for a follow up article demolishing disinformation from Murry Salby.

This is still "utter nutter" week at WUWT.  Today Anthony Watts has posted an article by the potty peer from the UK, Christopher Monckton.  Christopher writes in his usual "schoolboy" fashion, using words such as "schoolboys at the University of Queensland", probably referring to John Cook, who runs the award-winning climate website, SkepticalScience.com.

Christopher is resurrecting a couple of old and utterly silly denier memes arguing that the CO₂ we emit somehow disappears by magic and goes goodness knows where.  It's a very mixed up article altogether.

One of the main difficulties I had with the WUWT article is that Christopher keeps referring to other articles and comments but doesn't provide any links to what he is talking about.  I guess he has the WUWT target audience summed up well.  He'd have assumed that no fake sceptic would ever follow a link - that would be heresy to the fake sceptic creed.  They might be mistaken for a real sceptic.  However - in this case Christopher would have assumed wrongly.  His article generated much discussion and got lots of people doing lots of sums.  (Archived here)

Two wrongs don't make a right

As far as I can tell, Christopher Monckton is trying to make a whole out of two disparate denier memes.  One is propagated by an older retired professor Gösta Pettersson.  The other is some convoluted hypothesis or two or three of a younger retired ex-professor Murry Salby.  The two hypotheses don't make any sense on their own.  Try to put them together and you end up with a helluva mess.  But that's what Christopher Monckton is proposing.

The short version is as follows:

Gösta Pettersson

AFAIK, Gösta tries to claim that all the extra CO₂ will only stay in the air for a very short time.  He bases this on flawed deductions from analysis of  ¹⁴CO₂. (Note: In the comments, Lars Karlsson says that Gösta Pettersson has acknowledged he made an error in his analysis.)

Following the bomb testing of the 1950s and 60s, analysis has been done to work out how quickly CO₂ circulates between the atmosphere and the surface.  You can think of it as how long it takes for individual molecules of atmospheric carbon dioxide to disperse through the atmosphere and surface.  This time is quite short.  A matter of a few years.  By contrast, if we stopped adding any CO₂ to the air altogether, it would take around 300 years to remove something like 65% to 80% of the extra we've added in the last 150 years or so, and hundreds of thousands of years to completely remove all the carbon we've added to the air.

Murry Salby

I think, based on what Christopher Monckton has written, that Murry has things completely back to front.  I believe he tries to claim that rising temperature has caused CO₂ to outgas from the ocean and that's why atmospheric CO₂ is rising.  He reckons it's not from burning fossil fuels.

I gather that Murry doesn't have any answer to what happens to all the waste CO₂ we've been tossing into the air.  Nor does he seem to understand that the oceans are getting more acidic - because they are absorbing more CO2 than they are outgassing.

If carbon dioxide is not going into the ocean (it is), in fact if as Murry apparently maintains, CO₂ was coming out of the ocean (it's not), and since biomass on earth hasn't increased that much, then where is all that fossil fuel CO₂  ending up?

That's it in a nutshell.  Murry Salby and Gösta Pettersson both have it wrong.  Christopher Monckton is trying to argue that "two wrongs make a right".

There's more - if you're game :)

Researching this article I found myself delving into all sorts of interesting areas and learnt a heap of new stuff.  This article evolved into a longer post reflecting my meandering travels.  It's probably the longest article I've written and I won't blame anyone for not reading it.  If you've landed on the home page and you're not deterred by my sloppiness in not cutting back to bare bones, you can click here to read more.

More WUWT denier weirdness:- Monckton's 8% Dismissives plus another glimpse into "mad, mad, mad" Steve Goreham's world

Today at Anthony Watts' denier blog, wattsupwiththat (WUWT), Anthony provides two more examples of denier weirdness.

Monckton highlights the 8% Dismissives

Christopher Monckton doesn't like the scientific consensus that humans are warming the world.  He's taken a particular dislike to Cook et al (2013), which is the most recent of several papers that demonstrate how great is the consensus. (97% of papers that attribute a cause to global warming attribute it to human activity.)

So he's decided to write a letter to the editor of the journal that published Cook13 - ERL.  Then he had another idea and has now decided to send a copy to every member of the editorial board of the journal. (See Christopher's original version archived here, and his later version archived here.)

Christopher's said he wants to "crowd-source" signatories so has asked for the help of the readers at Anthony Watts denier blog - wattsupwiththat.com (WUWT).  I was interested in seeing who put their names to the letter.  I reckon what he's done is highlight the difference between the denier commenters.  The couple of hundred people who want their names on Christopher's silly letter are the 8% Dismissives.  People like "shouty" Richardscourtney, "holy moly" crawler Janice Moore and sock-puppet dbstealey (AKA Smokey). There are a number of prolific WUWT  commenters who are conspicuous by their absence - so far at any rate (eg Greg Goodman, Pamela Gray and M Courtney). These are people who tend towards being "lukewarmer" deniers - plus of course the one or two real sceptics who Anthony Watts hasn't banned yet.

If anyone ever does any research on categorising the different types of deniers at wattsupwiththat, this thread of Christopher Monckton's is worth noting. (By the way, the article is just another rehash of Christopher's nonsensical arithmetical failures.)

Steve "mad, mad, mad" Goreham fazed by rising seas

Anthony Watts has posted another article by Steve "mad, mad, mad" Goreham at WUWT.  The last one was about the Not the IPCC report.  This one is about sea level (archived here).

Steve's article is a good example of the logical fallacy of personal incredulity.  He doesn't "believe" that there are scientific instruments and analytic techniques that can measure sea level with the accuracy and precision reported by scientists.  Because he doesn't "believe" it, he reckons it can't be true.

Just like deniers often go to SkepticalScience.com's list of most common denier myths to decide what they'll try on today, it looks as if Steve went to U Colorado's FAQ on sea level to try on his "I don't believe it" rubbish.  Some examples of Steve's "personal incredulity" argument:

Steve: they claim to be able to measure ocean level to a high degree of accuracy. But a look at natural ocean variation shows that official sea level measurements are nonsense. 

From the FAQ:

The satellite altimeter estimate of interest is the distance between the sea surface illuminated by the radar altimeter and the center of the Earth (geocentric sea surface height or SSH). This distance is estimated by subtracting the measured distance between the satellite and sea surface (after correcting for many effects on the radar signal) from the very precise orbit of the satellite. At any location, the SSH changes over time due to many well understood factors (ocean tides, atmospheric pressure, glacial isostatic adjustment, etc.). By subtracting from the measured SSH an a priori mean sea surface (MSS), such as the CLS01 mean sea surface, and these known time-varying effects, we compute the sea surface height anomalies (SSHA). Each point in the global mean sea level (GMSL) time series plots is the area-weighted mean of all of the sea surface height anomalies measured by the altimeter in a single, 10-day satellite track repeat cycle (time for the satellite to begin repeating the same ground track). 

Another "I don't believe it" from Steve:

Steve: But three millimeters is about the thickness of two dimes. Can scientists really measure a change in sea level over the course of a year, averaged across the world, which is two dimes thick?

From the FAQ, - yes they can.  The FAQ states that the estimated error is just 0.4 mm/yr.  If you're a fanatical fact checker, you'll notice that Steve isn't very precise himself.  A dime is 1.35 mm thick.  Two dimes are 2.7 mm thick.  The current sea level trend is 3.2 mm +/- 0.4 mm a year.


Steve wonders how the accuracy can be as stated when a single measurement is only accurate to to the nearest centimetre.  What he is missing is that there are lots and lots (and lots!) of measurements taken so the error is hugely reduced.  The higher the number of measurements the lower the measurement error.  Overs and unders cancel out.  From the FAQ:

Each point in the global mean sea level (GMSL) time series plots is the area-weighted mean of all of the sea surface height anomalies measured by the altimeter in a single, 10-day satellite track repeat cycle (time for the satellite to begin repeating the same ground track).  

Steve concludes that the number that the scientists come up with isn't from scientific analysis and mathematics, it's from what he calls "group think".  Which is another way of saying that Steve "mad, mad, mad" Goreham doesn't understand scientific measurement.  (There are different sources of error other than measurement error, which the scientists attempt to address, and they touch on how they do this in the FAQ.)

Spot the fallacy and the error

Steve commits many logical fallacies in his article but this next one is a beauty:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in 2007, “Global average sea level rose at an average rate of 1.8 mm per year over 1961 to 2003. The rate was faster over 1993 to 2003: about 3.1 mm per year.” This translates to a 100-year rise of only 7 inches and 12 inches, far below the dire predictions of the climate alarmists.

He's saying that because the actual sea level rise to date isn't as big as projections to 2100 (as ice sheets melt more), the future projections are wrong!  That's like saying - it was cold in Chicago last December so it couldn't possibly be hot in Chicago in July.

Seas are rising about as fast as projected back in 1990

I will point out that Steve Goreham is not correct in regard to near term being "far below dire predictions", if you look at the chapter on sea level in the first IPCC report (1990) - in which there is a lot of discussion of uncertainty - it summarises the known science at the time making projections for the near term (see p 275 here):

In general, most of the studies in Table 9.9 foresee a sea level rise of somewhere between 10cm and 30cm over the next four decades.  

These projections from the 1990 IPCC report are within the ballpark of the observed trend since 1993 of 3.2 cm a decade which, if sustained, would mean 12.8 cm over four decades. There are still almost two decades to go though.

Source: U Colorado

Note: I've corrected this section from the original - where my own arithmetic was flawed!!

A science denying fan of Monckton as Science Minister?

There is talk that Dennis Jensen is putting up his hand for the Science portfolio in the new Abbott government.  They say that people get the government they deserve but I really don't know what appalling sins the Australian people could have committed that would make them deserve such a thing.

Dennis Jensen denies science

Dennis Jensen in the Australian Federal Parliament 20 September 2011 couldn't be more clear:

I do not accept the premise of anthropogenic climate change, I do not accept that we are causing significant global warming and I reject the findings of the IPCC and its local scientific affiliates.

Dennis Jensen instead espouses the "teachings" of an eccentric entertainer

Dennis Jensen rejects science and follows the ramblings of an eccentric (being kind) entertainer from England, Monckton:

"Most of the stuff [Lord Monckton] says is entirely reasonable," Dr Jensen said.

Wow!  Just wow.  Here is a HotWhopper list of articles on Monckton's idiocy.  And click here for many more examples from Barry Bickmore.  And of course, SkepticalScience has been pointing out his silliness for years now.  Monckton even went too far for right wing blogger Andrew Bolt, in line with the Laws of Monckton.

Dennis Jensen demonstrates his ignorance of climate science

These tweets from Jensen are more examples of his ignorance.  In this first one Jensen demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the field, his notion about "models" is back to front.  The science isn't based on the models, it's the models that are based on the physics.  Science describes global warming without the need for models - including the physics of greenhouse gases and paleoclimatology.  The models are built to explore the complexities and to better explain what the long term future will bring under different scenarios.

@josh1782 @razhorses Only argument for AGW is models, nd they have not predicted stasis in last decade. So models falsified
— Dennis Jensen MP (@DennisJensenMP) June 14, 2013

Would Dennis Jensen MP really appoint James Delingpole, interpreter of interpretations to a climate hatchet job?

Jensen is a run-of-the-mill average ordinary science denier of the "climate has always changed" flavour.

Lots more here and here.

Dennis Jensen is an engineer not a climate scientist

Dennis has a PhD in materials engineering on ceramics, Going by the above tweet, Dennis hasn't heard of paleoclimatology, nor about the greenhouse effect.  Back to school for you, Dennis!  Although evidence suggests that if he's a dyed in the wool engineering denier there's not much hope for him as far as scientific understanding goes.  If he's both an engineering denier and an ideological science denier, then there's even less hope.

Dennis Jensen rejects the physics of the greenhouse effect

@GregRudd1 @OakeyMP Not at all. However, some theories have more rigorous supporting evidence than others. AGW models not supported by data
— Dennis Jensen MP (@DennisJensenMP) June 3, 2013

Oh no?  More evidence that Dennis denies the science.  All the evidence supports the fact that it is the increase in greenhouse gases that is causing global warming.

Dennis Jensen campaigns with conspiracy theorists

Dennis Jensen is an avowed "skeptic" and spoke at a fake sceptic event organised by conspiracy theorist "JoanneNova", which was also attended by Monckton - archived here from the JoanneNova website.

"JoNova" and her partner David Evans are conspiracy theorists of the one world government, fiat currency, Agenda21 type - along with "organisations" like Malcolm Roberts' Galileo Movement (which even Andrew Bolt disavows).  Western Australia has more than its fair share of cranks.  These people are every bit as nutty as Christopher Monckton.

Dennis Jensen proudly denies science on facebook

If you want to see just how ignorant Jensen is about climate science, have a gander at his new "update" on his facebook page.  Hopefully it's enough to put an end to any hopes he might have had for the science portfolio.  On the other hand, the LNP had, of all people, anti-science Sophie Mirabella as its shadow Minister for Science!  So you never know.

Will the Australian "government" become the laughing stock of the world?

Dennis Jensen comes across as just another nutter.  If he is ever appointed to the Science portfolio you can guarantee that if it wasn't already (given the election of Tony "climate change is crap" Abbott), Australia will be the laughing stock of the world.

Do Christopher Monckton and Anthony Watts reject plate tectonics? Really?

Christopher Monckton of Brenchley seems to be becoming nuttier by the day.  And so does Anthony Watts for posting more and more nuttiness from this potty peer.

The stable core of consensus knowledge

Today in an article on WUWT (archived here), Christopher is taking issue with an article written by Naomi Oreskes in Nature.  Her article has the title: Earth science: How plate tectonics clicked.  It is open access and you can read it here.  Here is an excerpt:

In its slow convergence of ideas and evidence, the history of plate tectonics holds lessons for today's debates about human-induced climate change. Although science is always evolving, and our attention is drawn to controversy at the research frontier, it is the stable core of 'consensus' knowledge that provides the best basis for decision-making.

Dr Oreskes describes some of the scientific and technological breakthroughs that underpinned the knowledge we have today of plate tectonics and related ideas about the earth's crust and what lies underneath it, and then writes:

This era marked a change in the character of modern science. Research today is expensive and largely government-funded; almost all major scientific accomplishments are the collective achievement of large teams. This reality — more prosaic than the hagiography of lonely genius — reminds us that although great individuals are worthy of recognition, the strength and power of science lies in the collective effort and judgement of the scientific community.

Naomi Oreskes article is a good read and I discovered things I didn't know before.  She finishes up with parallels to the discoveries of climate science.

Anthony Watts and Christopher Monckton of course are having none of it.  The WUWT article is a bit confusing, but it reads as if Christopher and, presumably Anthony Watts, don't accept plate tectonics.  The article is a mish mash of rubbish Monckton has written before.  I defy anyone to make sense of his ramble.  His basic argument is seems to be that scientific consensus is meaningless.  I expect neither he nor Anthony Watts "believe in" gravity, or that the planets revolve around the sun or that water is wet.  They are waiting, waiting and still waiting for some lone hero (not heroine) to "prove" that CO2 isn't a greenhouse gas and that global warming isn't happening.  Or some such lunacy.

They really are nuts and getting nuttier every day.  As Naomi Oreskes writes:

Anthropogenic climate change has the consensus of researchers. Political leaders who deny the human role in climate change should be compared with the hierarchy of the Catholic church, who dismissed Galileo's arguments for heliocentrism for fear of their social implications.

Science denial as entertainment and theatrics

You might be tempted to substitute Christopher Monckton and Anthony Watts for "political leaders".   They might reject climate science because they fear the social implications.  I don't know if that's correct though.  I doubt Anthony and Christopher give two hoots for society.  With this pair if they fear anything it's the personal implications.  But the more I read WUWT the more obvious it becomes that the main driving force is keeping their audience.  The audience being the 8% Dismissives.  They are playing to a crowd.  They are entertainers.  Their audience is the scientific illiterati.  The dumbos. The fearful.  The ethnocentric.

From the WUWT illiterati

Here are some examples to illustrate the point, from the WUWT comments (archived here).


DirkH says:

September 7, 2013 at 8:16 am
Why doesn’t the Obama USA just use its secret court system to put skeptics in camps and be done with it.  Can’t be that important if they don’t even bother.

Jon says:

September 7, 2013 at 8:22 am
In order to make a new and “better” world they have to get rid of logic and scientific principles?

Bennett In Vermont says:

September 7, 2013 at 8:38 am
I enjoy expanding my vocabulary by reading your articles, Lord Monckton. Thank you!

PaulH says:

September 7, 2013 at 8:48 am
I am almost tempted to cut these warmists some slack. After all, all they know and understand is “consensus”. All their political experience is rooted in “let’s put this to a vote.” So of course when the majority rules, the decision is made, there is no need for further discussion on the topic. Politicians, consensus builders, debating teams, judge and jury situations… it’s all the same. The idea that their majority decision is incorrect is only a vague, distant possibility that is hardly worth considering and besides, that’s just sore loser talk to them. I would recommend the warmists take at least one 101-level course in one of the hard sciences (physics, chemistry, etc,) before they start forcing their belief system upon us, but I’m sure they have no interest in listening to my suggestions. Like I said, I am ALMOST tempted to cut them some slack.

Bryan A comes up with a really, really good idea, but it's not one that deniers usually favour.  He says:

September 7, 2013 at 8:54 am

Perhaps the real experiment to determine if reducing CO2 will reduce temps is not to detect increased temps through an elevated CO2 environmant but rather to take a control of ambient atmosphere and a test of reduced CO2 to see if reducing CO2 will reduce temps

John West misses the whole point in true illiterati style and says (excerpt):

September 7, 2013 at 9:12 am
The article was actually quite good until the article went off into climate change religion apology. Early on the comment is made:

“But the arguments for continental motions did not gel until the 1960s, when a drastic expansion of geophysical research, driven by the cold war, produced evidence that reopened and eventually settled the debate.” — Naomi Oreskes (Nature, 4 September 2013).

So, in Naomi Oreskes’ own words the debate on plate tectonics was settled due to EVIDENCE not CONSESUS. But then she calls for us to believe the debate on climate change should be settled because of consensus instead of evidence.

Two bob each way - or Anthony Watts pats Schrödinger's pussy cat

Anthony Watts places two bob each way** on the 97% consensus.  Within the space of 24 hours he is equally convinced:

• there is virtually no scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming. A potty peer named Monckton sez that 3,896 is not 97.1% of 4014.  Now he's got even a statistician insisting that 3896 divided by 4014 equals only 0.003. Anthony's not too good at arithmetic either, so he places a bet on Monckton;
• there is virtually 100% consensus that humans are causing global warming.  A blogger in the UK called Andrew Montford who lives on a hill with some bishop or other, writes on behalf of the Global Warming Fan Club (a lobby group to agitate on behalf of the much maligned CO2 - it's plant food you know) and sez everyone knows that humans cause AGW, there's no debate. So Anthony places a bet on the Global Warming Fan Club.

Anthony reckons both are equally true.  He's got both points of view on his website on the same page on the same day - click for archive No Consensus and archive 100% Consensus.  They may be opposite viewpoints but the Right Wing Authoritarian in Anthony is not at all uncomfortable holding two opposing thoughts in his head and simultaneously agreeing with both.  

Now the Viscount and the Bishop dweller both agree on one thing, those in positions of authority can't be trusted.  And who is arguably the most powerful human being on earth?  It's the President of the United States of America.  So when he tweets this to his 36,115,998 followers:

Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous. Read more: http://t.co/4lEEBYtVqf
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) May 16, 2013

...the conspiracy theorists rise up in arms, united against a common foe.  They join together, proud of the diversity of thoughts (within their own heads) and cry "But Cook13 didn't ask if it was dangerous!"

Is Cook et al (2013) really Schrödinger's kitty cat?

As those dastardly scientists have discovered:

Distrust and paranoia about government has a long history, and the feeling that there is a conspiracy of elites can lead to suspicion for authorities and the claims they make. For some, the attraction of conspiracy theories is so strong that it leads them to endorse entirely contradictory beliefs...

...The researchers wanted to know if the contradictory beliefs were due to suspicion of authorities, so they asked 102 college students about the death of Osama bin Laden (OBL). People who believed that "when the raid took place, OBL was already dead," were significantly more likely to also believe that "OBL is still alive." Since bin Laden is not Schrödinger's cat, he must either be alive or dead. ...

..."For conspiracy theorists, those in power are seen as deceptive-even malevolent-and so any official explanation is at a disadvantage, and any alternative explanation is more credible from the start," said the authors. It is no surprise that fear, mistrust, and even paranoia can lead to muddled thinking; when distrust is engaged, careful reasoning can coast on by. "Believing Osama is still alive," they write, 'is no obstacle to believing that he has been dead for years."

Deniers are a muddled lot, aren't they.

** A "bob" = 1 shilling, which is roughly equal to ten cents.  "Two bob each way" is a bet eg on a horse race that the horse will either win or come in the top three in a horse race.  (Australian lingo.)