David Archibald tells lies about Australia's climate, at WUWT

David Archibald is someone who often predicts the world is about to get very, very cold. He's not a denier, he's a disinformer. He tells lies. One of the many who Anthony Watts promotes on his climate conspiracy blog WUWT.

I couldn't let this one pass, because this time he was claiming it hasn't warmed in Australia in 40 years. He's wrong. It has.

Below is a chart showing the surface warming from data recorded and analysed by Australia's Bureau of Meteorology, one of the foremost climate and weather offices in the world. It includes a LOESS smooth (red line) and a linear trend line from 1979 to 2017.

A frosty look at David Archibald's latest speculation about global cooling

It was so cold this morning that I had to hop into the fridge to warm up. It's winter, of course, but it got quite cold even for winter in this part of the world - measuring about minus 6.4 Celsius this morning at our place.

Okay, I know for some of you that would be a mild winter's morning. Here it's worth lots of tweets. We're no longer used to having the sort of frosty mornings that were common when I was a child. What used to be the norm has now become a novelty with the world warming up so much.

Figure 1 | Frosty nights in Australia via BoM

Deniers can get all of a twitter when there's a frost. They are scared that it means an ice age is coming. Take David Archibald. He's been predicting an ice age for something like twelve years, ever since (he says) he "started out in climate science". He says his first paper was written just a few months later, but the only place he could publish it was in the denier journal Energy and Environment.

David Archibald (again) predicts an ice age to cometh @wattsupwiththat

No sooner had I predicted that an ice age cometh article would appear at WUWT than Anthony Watts posted one. My wish is his command :)

David "funny sunny" Archibald wrote another of his solar articles (archived here) and, despite all the failures of his previous predictions, snuck in this comment (my emphasis):

On that assumption, Solar Cycle 25’s amplitude is likely to be two thirds of that of Solar Cycle 24, and thus 60. Further climatic cooling is therefore in store.

What climatic cooling has there been? How can there be "further" climatic cooling in store, when there's not been any so far?

The Institute of World Politics on unethical conduct, foreign propaganda, deception and covert political influence

Anthony Watts has posted an article on his blog announcing the existence of yet another secret UN organisation (archived here) called the "UN Climate Change Commission". David "funny sunny" Archibald claims this previously unheard of UN entity is "on a path to rule the world ".  (David is a science denier who, like many deniers, is prone to paranoid conspiracy theories of this type.) I'm guessing this UN entity is known only to a select few at the Institute of World Politics. Maybe only to one person - David "funny sunny" Archibald.  The "UN Climate Change Commission" is not listed on the United Nations list of UN Climate Change Organizations and Programs.

The Institute of World Politics

David Archibald promotes himself at WUWT as a Visiting Fellow, Strategic Energy Policy at the Institute of World Politics. He is described on the Institute's website as:

a Perth, Australia-based scientist working in the fields of oil exploration, climate science, energy and geostrategy

Now I don't know much about the Institute of World Politics or its agenda. Here is what I do know. The Institute states on its website that it encourages "a free and open atmosphere to support the search for truth, the heart of the academic enterprise".

WUWT is utter nutter heaven: David "funny sunny" Archibald sez his ice age is comething

Anti-science activist Anthony Watts can't make up his mind if he's coming or going. Into or out of an ice age, that is. And he wonders why people regard his blog as utter nutter heaven.

Today he's promoting David "funny sunny" Archibald again, with his ice age comething predictions (archived here). He found a spot somewhere in the world where it's been a bit cold lately, and wrote an article with the headline: "A Prediction Coming True?"

David's prediction, you may recall is that an ice age is comething. Here's what he has said will happen by 2020 - a drop of 1.5 degrees from 2005:

Data sources: GISTemp and Archibald (2006)

The chart above also shows what has happened since David's 2006 "prediction" - published in that august journal E&E - ha!. David's prediction is in yellow, the actual is in white. The year before his prediction was the hottest year on record at the time. In the eight years since his "prediction", 2010 then 2014 were the hottest years on record. Is he nuts to claim his prediction is "coming true"? What word would you use to describe his fantasy?

Applauding gratuitous violence as entertainment for the "justly righteous" at WUWT

I've just read at WUWT how David "funny sunny" Archibald is singing the praises of an ultra-violent film (archived here). And I thought that deniers at WUWT thought the 10:10 spoof (that went nowhere) was gross (it really was).

Apparently gratuitous and extreme violence, sick morals, sexism, unfunny jokes and a generally poor cinematic experience is viewed as wonderful entertainment, as long as it's disparaging anyone who cares for the environment.

If you want to know what I'm talking about, read the review from the Guardian or SBS - and then some of the user reviews here on IMDB.

The World Domination Conspiracy Theory at WUWT

As if Viv Forbes paranoid conspiracy theory wasn't enough, Anthony Watts trots out David "funny sunny" Archibald, starting off an article (archived here) with (my emphasis):

“Everybody Wants To Rule The World” was a 1985 song by Tears For Fears. Now in 2015, a number of parties are doing their best to that end – ISIS in the Middle East, Russia chewing up the Ukraine, China in the East and South China Seas and the UN Climate Change Commission. A draft document out of Geneva gives details of the UN plan to rule the world.

David Archibald in a momentus denial of gravity at WUWT

Anthony Watts' blog is where science deniers congregate so they don't feel so alone in the world. Usually they are simply rejecting climate science, the greenhouse effect, rising global surface temperatures and anything else that takes their fancy that's to do with climate. They don't normally get into rejecting biology or not openly at least. They will from time to time reject chemistry, usually in relation to ocean acidification.

Today I see that a guest essayist has decided to reject gravity and probably momentum. He was writing about a paper in Science from last week, which got denier blogs all a twitter. The paper is probably raising some eyebrows among scientists too. It's an interesting take on where the heat is going.

Before I get to that, though, let me show you what David "funny sunny" Archibald wrote about thermohaline circulation (archived here). He posted this image from an article in last week's Science, which Eli Kintisch wrote about the subject:

The Atlantic Ocean may be storing vast amounts of heat (red), keeping global surface temperatures from rising.
Credit: Xianyao Chen, Ka-Kit Tung, Source: Science Vol. 345 no. 6199 pp. 860-861 

David Archibald said it can't be so. He wrote:

The illustration shows heat plunging into the depths as far as 1,500 metres. The oceans don’t work like that. Most of the heat energy of sunlight is absorbed in the first few centimetres of the ocean’s surface. Waves mix the water near the surface layer such that the temperature may be relatively uniform in the top 100 metres. Below that there is almost no mixing and no vertical movement of water.

Some of what he wrote was okay, sort of. Some of it was very wrong. In particular, he he is rejecting thermohaline circulation, arguing there is no vertical movement of water in the ocean. He's wrong of course.  Thermohaline circulation is the convection in the ocean driven by pressure gradients and gravity. Saltier water is denser than fresh water. Cold water is denser than warm water. Colder saltier water sinks in the ocean. This process doesn't stop and start, or not easily and not often. There's a lot of momentum behind the conveyor belt. There's a huge amount of water going through this cycle. Just because some of it is a bit warmer at times doesn't mean the water stops moving.

Denier Weirdness: Magical mysterious Force X and the Notch

Note: You can read a step by step account of the Big News here. In more recent news, it has been announced that The Notch has passed away, peacefully, in the presence of family and close friends. RIP. [Sou 1 August 2014]

---

If you ever wondered just how much a fake sceptic is willing to be duped, here's an example.

Until today there was only been one minor mention of the scam at WUWT that I noticed. Anthony Watts chastised Wondering Willis for not giving Jo Nova a plug, in another of his "it's not the sun" articles. Today it's being promoted by Anthony Watts in an article by David "funny sunny" Archibald (archived here, latest here, and very latest here, with 532 comments. Some of the stouches (battles) are hilarious).

I mean, you've got to wonder at how deniers can be so darned gullible.

If you're wondering what this is all about, apparently Jo Nova and her partner David Evans have found a Notch. What this Notch does is delay solar energy reaching the earth by eleven years, or something like that. That's a long time for light to wait in the queue. Einstein would be amused.

There's more. There is also a mysterious Force X that is affecting the climate. This Force X comes from the sun. It's just that no-one's noticed except David Evans and Jo Nova.

This is a long account. If you're on the home page click read more for the rest.

"Much more moral authority comes from the imprimatur of government" - David "funny sunny" Archibald at WUWT

He's back!

I was wondering what had happened to David "funny sunny" Archibald.  He hasn't been seen for a good while at WUWT.  David is one of the wackier deniers who thinks we are heading for an ice age "any day now".

Setting the scene by twisting the facts

His article is about Nebraska, or partly (archived here).  David says he is writing his third book, which I think is about the impending ice age that cometh.  He is a strange one for a WUWT conspiracy theorist.  He writes:

At the urging of State Senator Beau McCoy in late 2013, the Nebraska Department of Agriculture was tasked with commissioning a report on cyclical climate change. The budget for the exercise was $44,000. That right, for a mere $44,000 Nebraskans would be told what was going to happen to their climate. If the Sun was going to sleep with the consequence that cold air from the Canadians would come south faster and longer, Nebraskans would be forewarned and fore-armed. Alas, the effort was abandoned when promoters of global warming in the state offered to do it for free. 

People who keep up with the climate blog wars will recall that the situation wasn't quite like that.  What happened was this. A lawmaker in Nebraska who is a climate science denier was happy enough to support a bill for someone to prepare a report on climate in Nebraska.  However he didn't want them to take account of any human factors influencing the climate, so he proposed an amendment to the bill.

Given that human factors now dominate global warming (ie climate change not day to day weather), that seemed not just pointless but a waste of money.  And you'd have to offer a lot more than $44,000 to climate scientists to persuade any of them to forsake their science for money.  They might have gotten Marc Morano or Anthony Watts or one of the other denier bloggers to prepare the report.  They come cheap I hear.  I don't know why they didn't do that.  Alternatively they could have approached some of the Not the IPCC Report writers.

Perhaps  they were hoping for a credible name to attach to their shonky report.  Or maybe they just wanted to test the waters and see if there were any corruptible climate scientists around.  (Judith Curry put up her hand, but I don't think her blog offer was accepted.)

I wrote about this at the time, because Judith Curry was arguing that politicians should be able to put constraints on climate studies to suit their political agenda.  Her stance was reminiscent of the various attempts to prevent high school teachers from teaching students about biology, wanting to bring their weird religious beliefs into the classroom and ban science.

If only deniers could drum up a fake report that was credible

Back to David "funny sunny" Archibald. His next paragraph was this:

The danger to the promoters of global warming was that the stillborn Nebraskan climate report would have been the first government-sanctioned report on the planet to say that carbon dioxide and the burning of coal are nothing to worry about. A report on cyclical climate change would say that there is something far more serious coming that is going to smack our civilisation like a freight train. That serious thing is one of the cycles that the Nebraskans were going to be told about. One day the science of climate cycles might get out to Nebraska but in the meantime they will be wondering why their winters are getting colder and Spring seems to be delayed and how can they begin planting while their fields are still covered in snow. 

There you see it.  Climate science is a hoax and information is being kept from the poor little Nebraskans.  What's odd about this is that David is arguing that the government could be trusted.  This is despite the fact that in this case the politician who put up the amendment to the bill wanted scientists to exclude some of the main factors that will affect Nebraska's climate in coming years.

More moral authority from the imprimatur of government!

David even writes (my bold italics):

It is one thing for books to be published which warn of the severe, solar-driven cooling coming (I’m on my third) and for retired academics to voice concerns over the low standards of US Government-funded climate science, but much more moral authority comes from the imprimatur of government. 

I know you'll be scratching your head wondering how this article of David "funny sunny" Archibald got past the censor-in-chief at WUWT.  Anthony Watts spends a lot of time complaining about "political interference".  I saw a couple of tweets that he put out only a day ago where, in his conspiracy-addled brain, he is clearly of the view that IPCC reports can't be trusted because the IPCC is a "political body".  I guess he's never read an IPCC report or any of the scientific papers underpinning it.

Only some governments have moral authority

There's a catch to this moral authority and imprimatur business.  You knew there would be, didn't you.  Apparently "moral authority" only comes from governments that reject climate science.  For example, the government agency the EPA doesn't have any moral authority.  Neither does the President of the United States.  David writes:

As the climate reports come in, the vague, almost-impossible-to-believe notion that the Obama Administration’s war on coal through the EPA is a peculiar form of malicious self-loathing will be seen with crystal clarity. That there is no scientific basis for what the EPA is attempting to do whatsoever. That the degradation and disruption that the EPA is intent upon is a loathing for America as it is, pure and simple. Instead of the loftiest ideals of “thinking of the children” and so on, President Obama and the EPA are driven by the basest of motives – that their fellow Americans be poorer with reduced opportunities.

Now why didn't more than half the people in the USA realise that President Obama is driven by the basest of motives, to reduce all his "fellow Americans" to poverty.  And he's got a funny way of going about it, too. Look at how he impoverished American investors - not!

As for people's jobs and other economic measures, well the charts here at CNN show he's not doing a very good job at reducing everyone to a poverty below what George Bush managed.  Arguably his biggest coup was helping Americans get health care when they need it.  Oh, wait. That can hardly have been prompted by the "basest of motives" can it?

Another twist: David sez that one government's climate report is as good as another's

There's yet another twist.  According to David Archibald:

One government’s report on something like climate is as good as another’s. 

Oh, I do wish he'd make up his mind.  He's just been telling us that the US government is not to be trusted, now it is.  I have a sneaking suspicion that David doesn't really believe what he says.  I've yet to see him tout the IPCC report, which is accepted by 193 nation's governments, as being  "as good as another's".

Nebraska braces for an ice age

While we're waiting to see if David can figure out what he wants to say, let's shoot back to Nebraska and see how his Nebraskan ice age is faring:

Data source: NOAA

Hmmm.  I guess David "funny sunny" Archibald is prepared to wait for all that hot weather of the past forty years to go away so that the temperatures can drop back to those more common in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  Nope. He won't be satisfied with that. Here is what David has predicted for the world:

Incidentally, it looks as if the Nebraskan government has successfully suppressed any information on climate change from its Department of Agriculture.  Despite it's claim of "Nebraska Agriculture at Work for You" there is not a peep about climate change.  Thankfully here in my home state the government is not so draconian.

Have David's coal shares plummeted?

By the way, David's article was mainly moaning about the fact that coal has no future.  Here's what the rest of the world thinks about coal:

Peabody, "the world’s largest private-sector coal company" share price drops sharply

Here's a short bio of David "funny sunny" Archibald.

From the WUWT comments

hunter says:

April 5, 2014 at 12:38 am
Interesting concept. Please explain further how the AGW promoters derailed the state effort. The story seems incomplete. We need to know more so that the push back against the hype can be more effective.

Jeff is one of those conspiracy nutters that the deniers say don't exist.  He talks about control of "every facet of life in America" and says (excerpt):

April 5, 2014 at 1:51 am
I think the poster above gives Obama way too much credit. I don’t believe Obama cares one bit for the environment, I think his motives are entirely an effort to support the efforts of an extreme faction of liberals. Not all supporters of AGW science are the same. He gives voice only to those scare mongers whose goal isn’t to clean the environment, but to control every facet of life in America.

Patrick "knows" that the CO2 is 3% of the atmosphere! He says:

April 5, 2014 at 3:51 am
I just spoke to a friend of mine who called me to talk about cars they want to buy, and then talked about electrically powered cars because the UK had “servos” littered about the country to re-powered electrically powered cars. Apparently it was cheaper than petrol. Well, maybe so in the UK, but CO2 is still emitted. I asked how the electricity that “re-powered” the batteries was generated. We eventually got to gas and coal fired power stations. Which in the bigger picture of the situation, is correct. Then I asked how much CO2 “pollution” was in the air, right now, in their opinion. The answer was 40% (I kid you not – And most people I know “believe” this is the sort of concentration in the air right now). We’d all be dead I said, if that were true. The actual figure, as we know here, is ~3%.

James Strom comes up with a bit of trivia and says:

April 5, 2014 at 6:32 am
In light of your political leanings, which I am sympathetic with, it is amusing that your choice of title, “What is to be done?”, is the same that Lenin used for a pamphlet he published in 1902. The phrase is somewhat famous, at least to someone with an interest in early communist arcana.

G. Karst says:

April 5, 2014 at 7:45 am
I would like to see coal miners and the mine owners perform a pre-emptive strike. A shut down of coal production for thirty days will have an alarming effect on those trying to shut down the industry. A shutdown until prices improve would be justifiable and a real sharp eye opener. GK

I suppose it would be noticed in some states, anyway.  Coal still makes up 37% of electricity production in the USA. It was 57% in 1985 but only 46% in 1950.

A contrarian teddy bears' picnic at WUWT - do science deniers believe in lizard men, too? (Yes, close enough anyway!)

Who to believe?  A teddy bear ...

       

                ...or climate scientists?

The rhetoric is ramping up everywhere.  Here we recently discussed language used to illustrate the impact of global warming.  To even things up let's consider the language used to illustrate denial of global warming. Today on WUWT, Anthony Watts has put up an article by David "funny sunny" Archibald.  This is how it went.

Google earned "a place in the deepest circle of Hell" with a capital H for siding with the "forces of darkness": that is, for siding with modern science

According to David Archibald on WUWT, Google sided with the "forces of evil" and belongs in hell, because it made some effort to help communicate climate science.  David wrote:

Google’s motto is “Don’t be evil”. Well, a couple of years ago Google had sided with the forces of darkness in the global warming battle – a position that when their lives are weighed in the balance would earn them a place in the deepest circle of Hell.

Scientists are Google's "foot soldiers in propaganda"

Google pulled together a team of scientists and science communicators, mainly from the earth systems and life sciences, in Google's words, to:

help foster a more open, transparent and accessible scientific dialogue.   This effort seeks to empower scientists to use information technology, new media, and systems and computational thinking to engage the public in science.

David Archibald refers to these scientists from places like Stanford University and elsewhere, as "foot soldiers' in propaganda.

Women who accept climate science are "ignorant sluts"

There's more besides.  David Archibald apparently gets his understanding of climate science from a teddy bear cartoon on youtube.  One important bit, he tells his readers at WUWT, is that he learnt from the cartoon teddy bear that women who accept that adding CO2 to the air causes global warming are "ignorant sluts".  I guess you can learn or unlearn something every day.

Looking for the jaw of the orangutan

David passes on a hope expressed by the cartoon teddy bear.  David writes:

At the end he notes that it took 40 years for the Piltdown Hoax to be shown to be based on the jaw of an orangutan and he hopes that it doesn’t take 40 years for the global warming hoax to be shown to be based on the jawbones of asses.

He's giving it forty more years, eh?  Nearly two hundred years have elapsed since Joseph Fourier first wrote about the atmosphere and climate. Almost 150 years have passed since Tyndall, 117 years since Arrhenius, more than 70 years since Callendar, nearly 60 years since Plass, half a century since Revelle advised President Johnson, and more than thirty years since the creation of the IPCC.

For decades there have been a small number of contrarian scientists trying to prove that CO2 has little or no impact on climate without success.  Instead mainstream scientists are discovering more and more about the changes we are causing.  Nevertheless, David is still optimistic that someone somewhere will one day overturn a substantial portion of physics, chemistry and biology.

What other weird ideas do science deniers hold dear?

Fake sceptics still haven't come anywhere close to exposing what they think of as a gigantic "hoax" that can be traced back at least as far as the early 1800s.   But David is still convinced it's all a hoax and the work of the devil.  And to think that science deniers think Professor Lewandowsky's findings were wide of the mark.  As far as conspiracy ideation goes, you'd think it's hard to better David Archibald's idea.   It beats NASA faked the moon landing by a long way.  It's probably on par with the idea that lizard men rule the world or that earth sprang out of nothingness 6,000 years ago.  (Maybe someone will ask him what he thinks about those ones.)  However, David's not the only one who has crazy notions - see the WUWT comments below.

David Archibald's "funny sunny" prediction

As a reminder - this is David Archibald's prediction for the near future, seven years from now.

Conspiracies galore from the WUWT comments

A few people pointed out to David that the teddy bear cartoon wasn't made by Google.  That youtube alerted him to it based on his browsing history.  However there were some choice comments in the mix:


General P. Malaise is fairly sure about who is a member of the circle of hell and says:

August 17, 2013 at 3:20 am  when pigs fly Smithers.  google is and will remain on the side of evil. don’t be an ignorante they are in obamas circle of hell. THAT is the centre one.

DirkH might not be familiar with the circle of hell, but he does know who is employed by the National Security Agency.  And be careful of those white "earplugs" - the NSA is spying on you :D. DirkH says:

August 17, 2013 at 3:45 am  Google is the NSA. Eric Schmidt had a number of mistresses over the years while being married all the time. He doesn’t want anyone to know. But he wants to know everything about all of us. From the moment I heard their motto “Don’t be evil” I was certain they are absolutely unscrupulous in their zeal to destroy privacy. I’m funny in that regard; marketing slogans have the opposite effect on me. Remember Steve Jobs, another NSA guy, with his slogan “Think different”? And then everyone runs around with the exact same white earplugs. (Not me. I use Sennheisers.)

kadaka (KD Knoebel) invokes scientology, Tom Cruise and his belt buckle :), Area 51, Nevada, New Mexico, satellites and the Daily Mail and says:

August 17, 2013 at 4:54 am And within a day of the published (and accidental?) admission of the existence of Area 51, sans admission of non-human aliens, we have the first-ever exclusive publishing of new detailed aerial photos of “Scientology’s ‘alien space cathedral and spaceship landing pad’ built in the New Mexico desert”.  Quick, save your own copies of the photos before the Scientology elites force the Daily Mail to take them down. If they don’t, Tom Cruise will infiltrate, wipe clean the servers and destroy the back-ups, and escape into the night using the rocket pack that’s disguised as his belt buckle.  When mere civilians have increasing access to high-resolution satellite imagery, do their own high-altitude surveillance with a weather balloon and an iPhone, when ANYTHING on the surface is about to be in full continuous view of ANYONE ANYTIME thus continued photographic obscurity would have become impossible, “revelations” about Area 51 in Nevada and Scientology’s spaceport in New Mexico, in essentially the same spot global-wise, are made public just a day apart.
Coincidence? You decide.

Alberta Slim doesn't trust anyone anymore.  They are all in on the hoax.  Alberta says:

August 17, 2013 at 4:56 am  The heads of Google, Microsoft, and Apple are, supposed to be brillant when it comes to logic. So why do the believe in CAGW? It seems unlikely to be ignorance, so it must be dishonesty. IMO.  BTW: I quit useing “Google News” as my home page because of their persistent posting of “Warmist” articles. …. Dying polar bears etc……

Martin Lewitt shows proof that Google is on the side of the dark forces and says:

August 17, 2013 at 3:47 am  wattsupwiththat.com does not appear until page 5 of a “global warming” google. Nuf said.

Yeah, 'nuff said :D

How the American Midwest has been relocated to Central England

Today on WUWT, David "funny sunny" Archibald seems to have relocated the Midwest (USA) to central England.

He's put up a chart of monthly temperatures - comparing monthly temperatures for the year 1740 with the monthly averages for the period 1736 to 1739.  I've done the same but have added the monthly averages for the past ten years - 2003 to 2012 inclusive.  Here it is:

Data source: HadCET

The reason I say that David relocated the Midwest is because this is what he writes in reference to his version of the above (as above but minus the last ten years):

This graph shows the average of the monthly temperatures for the years 1736 to 1739 plotted with the monthly temperatures of the year 1740:...

... With respect to growing conditions, the 1740 season was a month later than the average of the previous five years and the peak months of the season were 2.5°C cooler. To get a perspective on how a repeat of 1740 might affect growing conditions in the Corn Belt, Bill Fordham, advising the grain industry in the Midwest, has kindly provided an update on the current season:

Do you think David Archibald is:

1. claiming that Central England was the entire world from 1736 to 1740, or
2. claiming that the Midwest has been relocated to central England.

There are no tangible prizes for the answer.  Just the honour and glory of peeking into the strange mind of David "funny sunny" Archibald.  The rest of us will wonder why Anthony Watts post articles like this on his blog.

As for comparing temperatures in central England of the mid-eighteenth century to that of the last ten years, it appears that summer is lasting longer than it did back then.  However the range of temperature is not all that different.  If you look at the long term annual average temperatures it tells a more complete story. (Click chart to enlarge it.)

Data source: HadCET

Just like most of the rest of the world, central England is getting hotter.  You'll notice that 2010, the hottest year on record globally, was a very cold year in central England.  That would have dragged down the average of the last ten years in the top chart.

Will WUWT's David Archibald be right and severe cold hit Central England?

Anthony Watts of WUWT infamy favours David Archibald, who makes funny sunny predictions.  This time Archibald is asking if Central England will have a sudden drop in temperature for a bit.  He bases his surmise on "wiggle matching" with the temperature drop in 1740.  The Archibald post oddly enough comes straight after a post by a physicist denier, rbgatduke, who slammed Christy and Monckton for what he saw as their abuse of statistics and charting.

Anyway, I thought I'd do some pattern matching of my own to see how well that would have worked for David Archibald in the past.  I've superimposed the bit around 1740 onto what look like the closest matches later on.  Same as David Archibald did only he just did it for the current period.

Here's the result - you'll probably have to click on the animated gif chart to see the larger version.

Source: Adapted from UK Met - Hadley Centre

So there was a dip in the late 1879, but not as great as the 1740 drop, other than that nothing.  Like David Archibald says, we'll have to wait and see.  With the jet stream the way it is, climate change and the weather in the UK being a bit weird lately, I suppose anything could happen.


There is a paper on the 1740 event written by Dr Phil Jones but I can't find a full copy.  Here is another paper by Dr Jones (2008) that touches on the subject and is a good read in its own right; and a myth-buster.

Update:

Here's an animated chart for anonymous in the comments, to put the weather in the UK during March 2013 and December 2010 into context of the whole world.  Winter still happens, it's just that when taken over the whole world, the earth's land and sea surfaces are considerably warmer than they used to be early last century.  There are still "cold" records being set, but not nearly as many as "hot" records.

Data source: NASA

More denier weirdness: Ed Hoskins Magic Numbers

Anthony Watts is scraping the bottom of the barrel again on WUWT.  He only has a couple of posts up so far today.  In one he is expressing shock horror at a couple of tweets between scientists.  Anthony feigns surprise that Michael Mann doesn't tolerate disinformation-spewing trolls like BishopHill*.  What does he expect?  That anyone other than snark bloggers and the denialiti would pay them any mind?

Ed Hoskins' magic numbers

In another he publishes an incomprehensible article by Ed Hoskins, who previously wrote that we are on the verge of an ice age.

The gist of Ed's argument is that plants love CO2 so we should give them more.  He seems to be advocating a rise in CO2 up to 1000 ppm or more.  I can't follow his arithmetic at all.  I have no idea what he is doing with the numbers.  So let's just look at the effect a rise to 1000 ppm of CO2 may have. (Click image to enlarge)

Source: NRC Report: Climate Stabilization Targets

If we were to continue to increase emissions at an exponential rate and achieve 1000 ppm by 2100 the average global surface temperature could get up past four degrees even this century.

Just think how that might affect extremes.  Temperate Melbourne has already had temperatures of 47 degrees.  Even cold Hobart has hit more than 42 degrees.  Imagine if it got to 55 degrees, or 60 degrees!

It could happen, but think of this...

Well I'm not even sure it could happen.  The reason I have some doubts is because if we head towards that, then some time on or shortly after the middle of the century, the weather would be such that societies would become dysfunctional and economic activity would wind down enormously, therefore burning fossil fuels would be reduced significantly.  Agricultural production would all but cease in many countries.  Water supplies would be made unreliable by unpredictable excessive downpours and droughts.  Millions, maybe billions would have died from intolerable heat, storms, floods, famine and disease.  Transport and communications infrastructure would be broken beyond repair. There would be civil wars and wars between nations that still had the wherewithall to muster an armed force.  There would be epidemics and pandemics of disease.  Pests would proliferate and spread.

Plants wouldn't be suffering from lack of CO2.  They'd be suffering from lack of water or too much of it.  They'd be suffering from heat stress - the ones that were still able to germinate and send up shoots.

Ed's in cloud cuckoo land - in fact winter is warming faster than summer

People like Ed Hoskins live in cloud cuckoo land.  At the same time as he is talking about a rise in temperature he is writing that:

With a quietening sun, changing ocean circulation patterns and the present evidence of much colder winters in the Northern Hemisphere over the past 5 years, that cooling could already be upon us. The cooling climate could well last for many decades or even centuries.

The winters of the last year or two might have seemed colder and some cold records might have been broken even.  But the coldest of them was still hotter than the 1951-80 average by 0.5 degrees Celsius.  In 2007 the northern hemisphere had the hottest winter on record so far at a whopping 1.1 degrees hotter than the 1951-1980 average.

I notice that Ed doesn't mention northern hemisphere summers.  Let's see why that might be.  Here is an animation of northern hemisphere winter and summer temperatures and the global surface temperatures. (Click to enlarge.)

Source: NASA

Whoops!  The northern hemisphere summer temperatures are shooting way up!  Whoops again - northern hemisphere winters are getting warmer faster than summers! And globally the earth just keeps on getting hotter and hotter.

Ed does some weird arithmetic to "prove" that cutting carbon emissions won't cut carbon emissions.  The fact is that if we replace fossil fuel-based energy with renewable energy we still have a chance of limiting the rise to two degrees, which will be bad enough.  But we have to get a move on.

Ed Hoskins' fake "experts"

I also see that in his "paper" Ed Hoskins has referred to David Archibald as if he is a reputable sceptic.  David's prediction is that before seven years is out, earth will get colder than it was in the Little Ice Age!

And Anthony wonders why climate scientists don't bother 'debating' fake sceptics and disinformation propagandists!

Anthony Watts' pet slayers

In the comments, Anthony's pet dragon slayer has backed off a bit from saying the greenhouse effect isn't real, but still manages to do so.  dbstealey cuts and pastes from his other identical comments:

June 8, 2013 at 11:40 am  Not the ‘root cause’? There is no scientific evidence that CO2 is any cause of global warming.

Of course it is possible that CO2 causes some minuscule warming. However, there is no verifiable and testable supporting evidence that this is so. There are empirical observations showing that CO2 levels are a direct response to changing temperatures. But there are NO such measurements showing that rising CO2 is the cause of rising global temperatures. None.
Within the Scientific Method, the only conclusion to be reached is that CO2 does not matter regarding global temperatures. If that is wrong, anyone is free to post their empirical observations right here, showing that ∆CO2 in fact causes ∆T.

This challenge has been on offer for months. But so far — no takers.

Janice Moore also asks for "proof" and says:

June 8, 2013 at 4:30 pm  “CO2 makes it harder for the sun’s heat energy to leave the planet … .” [Jai @ 11:42 AM today]

Prove it.

Not only is there ample evidence in the scientific literature, David and Janice, but since 1988 scientists have volunteered their time to pull this information together and provide comprehensive reports.

For a shorter readable account of how the greenhouse effect works, look no further than this booklet from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

Make up your mind, Anthony Watts

As Ryan notes, just last week WUWT was telling everyone that it wasn't people causing the rise in CO2, it was insects.  Anthony Watts can't get his story straight.  And he wonders why real scientists won't bother to pass the time of day with him.

* I see in that Twitter conversation poor old dithering doddering Anthony Watts is still vainly protesting Marcott et al. ROTFL

It's the Sun, An Ice Age Cometh - Wait! OMG - It's the Insects! ... and more farce from WUWT

I'm thinking the spate of new climate research has addled Anthony Watts' brain.  His website may have always have been this dumb, I've only been following it for a few months.  But I find it hard to imagine it could hold any more blindingly stupid articles than it has this past 24 hours.  Perhaps it's the Marcott study so hot on the heels of the Shakun study and the Lewandowsky studies one and two, followed by the Cook 97% study.  Whatever, WUWT is a barrel of stupidity this week.  A DuKE of deniers doesn't come close.

In only 24 hours Anthony's tried on:

• Example One: Scientists don't no nuffin' about marine ecology
• Example Two: "It's the Sun" and by 2020 we'll be in an ice age
• Example Three: Greenland ice cores are less than 650 years old
• Example Four: "It's the Insects" - yeah, that's a new one for me, too.
• More: Wondering Willis (to come, maybe) and Denier Don's Deception

BTW - these are all actual articles posted by Anthony Watts or with his endorsement.  They aren't just the "stupid" in the comments.

Example One: How Anthony is an Ass

Every now and then, Anthony Watts posts an actual science article, mainly for the purpose of ridicule.  In doing so it's usually he who looks the fool.  Here's a typical example of his childish petulance at scientific research.

Anthony scoffs at a study designed to test whether the presence of consumers (invertebrate mesograzers) influenced the interactive effects of ocean acidification and warming on benthic microalgae in a seagrass community mesocosm experiment.   (Yes, it did.)  The researchers set up different tanks to emulate different temperatures and atmospheric CO2 concentrations, with the latter determing the pH of the water.  In order to mimic an atmosphere with higher CO2 concentrations than those of today, the scientists added CO2 to the tanks.  (This is a common practice by home aquarists who keep plants in their aquariums.  You can use equipment purchased especially or make up your own using yeast and plastic soft drink bottles. You  maintain a steady higher concentration of CO2 by letting it bubble into the tank and monitoring the pH.  The aquatic plants take off like nobody's business but you've got to watch it or undesirable algae will take off as well.)

Anthony decided that adding CO2 was a silly idea, writing:

From the University of Gothenburg , the stuff that keeps some people awake at night. A question; why should we care? And, why should we take any of this seriously when you do things like “We raised the water temperature in miniature ecosystems containing eelgrass meadows, while simultaneously bubbling with carbon-dioxide.” when that “bubbling” would not happen naturally.

Well, that's rather the point, Anthony.  At present it won't happen naturally because the atmosphere doesn't yet contain the amount of CO2 it will in the future.  That's why in order to mimic the future higher concentrations, CO2 is added to the tank.  Same reason that some of the tanks were heated more than others, to emulate a future warmer world.

Anthony gets cranky when someone points this out to him, snapping at Ryan who says:

June 3, 2013 at 9:03 am  Perhaps before criticizing the bubbling it would be good to actually read how it was done? It’s not like they had bubbles seeping throughout the area(as one commenter already suggested). It is one thing to criticize actual experimental design. It is quite another to just say “bubbles don’t happen naturally” and skip over what they actually did.

REPLY: no matter how you look at the experimental design, it isn’t how the ocean actually works. We’ve had a number of studies like this where they try to simulate ocean conditions, but the simulation doesn’t reflect the real world. I don’t think this one does either. – Anthony 

Anthony, Mr Know-it-All! I especially like his use of "we" - as if he's somehow involved in any scientific research of marine ecosystems.

Anthony gets more and more cross with Ryan who writes:

June 3, 2013 at 9:10 am  ...And why should we take your claim seriously when you plainly didn’t read the paper?

REPLY: because it isn’t reality. – Anthony

Duh! That's the whole point, Anthony.  If it were 'reality' the scientists wouldn't need to emulate future conditions.  They could study it in situ. Thing is, if they then wanted to compare it to what might have been they'd have to increase the pH and cool the water in some tanks for comparison.

Example Two: Blindingly Dumb Article on "It's the Sun" and an Ice Age Cometh

Yesterday Anthony posted an article by David Archibald who thinks the global surface temperature is going to drop below the lowest temperature in the Little Ice Age - before the end of seven years from now.  I've already written about that, with graphics.  It wasn't even tagged humour or satire.

This is what Archibald predicts for 2020, seven years from now.  Colder than the Little Ice Age:

Source: Adapted from Jos Hagelaars

Example Three: Unbelievably Stupid Article on Ice and Ice Cores

And just when you think WUWT couldn't get any more farcical, along comes William Hunt.  William has decided that the ice cores in Greenland aren't any older than 650 years.  Why?  Good question.  This is what he has to say:

Greenland’s ice cap is more problematic than the Antarctic. Unfortunately, many scientists are not conversant with Greenland’s history. Most of Greenland’s ice is of recent origin. Prior to the Little Ice Age, most of the areas where today’s core samples are taken, were not covered with ice. The ice that scientists have stated is hundreds of thousands of years old can be no more than a maximum of 650 years in age. Were it not so, farming would have been impossible in Greenland prior to the Little Ice Age.

Talk about the Dunning Kruger effect.  Here is a map showing the ice cores and the three main Viking settlements and topography (click to enlarge):

Sources: North Greenland Ice Core Project (2004) and Archaeology In Europe

William goes to some lengths to explain why he believes that: "When scientists make claims about the atmospheric carbon dioxide on the basis of ice cores, ignore their claims as the “junk science” that they are."

Hmm.  No need to comment any more on William Hunt and his certainty that all the science is wrong.

I found some good, easy to follow articles on how scientists 'read' past climatic conditions from ice cores.  

• This article on a NASA website is part of a series, and combines human interest with science.  It talks about how people like Richard Alley spent years doing invaluable research analysing ice cores in Greenland.
• This one from the British Antarctic Survey is probably more technical/dry but very basic, describing how the water isotopes yield past temperatures of the ice itself, how air bubbles yield up information about past atmospheric concentrations and discusses how combining the data from ice cores in Greenland with those from Antarctic ice cores provides a huge amount of information about global climate changes.
• And here's an article from Scientific American about a technique (using nitrogen 15) to determine the age of air bubbles at different depths in the ice, providing more accurate timelines for different concentrations of greenhouse gases.  The paper on which it's based is published here in Science (March 2013).  Turns out that CO2 often didn't "lag" temperature so much after all.

Example Four: Here's a new twist: "It's the Insects"

I though William Hunt with his 650-year-young ice cores was the ultimate.  But it gets worse if that's possible.

It really looks as if Anthony's given up pretending WUWT has anything to do with science.  I was about to publish this article when I hit refresh on WUWT and, in among the "CO2 lags temperature" (not so fast, Ronald - see here as referred to in Example Three above) and other denialist paraphernalia I found these words from Ronald D. Voisin staring me in the face:

This (AGW) theory relies entirely on a powerful positive-feedback and overriding (pivotal) role for CO2. It further assumes that rising atmospheric CO2 is largely or even entirely anthropogenic. Both of these points are individually and fundamentally required at the basis of alarm. Yet neither of them is in evidence whatsoever. And neither of them is even remotely true....And the current spike in atmospheric CO2 is clearly not primarily human caused....And yes, we humans, as co-inhabitants of this Earth, are emitting CO2. But so are microbes and insects emitting. And each of them is emitting with ~10 times our current anthropogenic emission.  In both cases (microbes and insects) there is every reason to believe that their populations are geometrically exploding in this current highly favorable environment to their existence.

What can I say?  There's way more on this.  You've gotta see it to believe it.

There's more...

But I'll probably save Wondering Willis the Wanker's latest effort for another post. If I can be bothered.

PS Nearly forgot about Denier Don's Deception - that's in the last 24 hours as well.

David Archibald's Funny Sunny Prediction

Global Surface Temperature Prediction - David Archibald

David "it's the sun" Archibald has another post and another prediction on WUWT.   Back in 2006 he published a paper in E&E (yes, that's the one) which made a prediction in the abstract (my bold):

Projections of weak solar maxima for solar cycles 24 and 25 are correlated with the terrestrial climate response to solar cycles over the last three hundred years, derived from a review of the literature. Based on solar maxima of approximately 50 for solar cycles 24 and 25, a global temperature decline of 1.5°C is predicted to 2020, equating to the experience of the Dalton Minimum. To provide a baseline for projecting temperature to the projected maximum of solar cycle 25, data from five rural, continental US stations with data from 1905 to 2003 was averaged and smoothed. The profile indicates that temperatures remain below the average over the first half of the twentieth century.

I've no idea why he thought "five rural, continental US stations" be they averaged and smoothed or not would be an adequate "baseline" for global surface temperatures.  But there you go.  I didn't bother with all that because it made no sense. Instead I've charted this prediction using GISTemp (click to enlarge):

That's colder than the coldest time in the Little Ice Age - in less than seven years from now!

Source: Adapted from Jos Hagelaars

Central England Temperature Prediction - Archibald-style

Today he seems to have changed to using the Central England temperature.  He has an optimistic headline: CET cooling in line with solar model prediction, although to my knowledge, he has never previously made a prediction about CET temperature.  The only other paper he references is about the temperature in Svalbard.  I expect he isn't fussy what his prediction is about, anywhere will do.  Might be Melbourne Australia next, or Bundangawoolarangeera :).

In any case, I'm no clearer on what he's predicting than any commenter on the thread, but I'll have a shot.  This is what he writes:

Over Solar Cycle 23 the average temperature of the CET was 10.4°C so the model predicts that the average over Solar Cycle 24 will be 9.0°C. For the first four years of Solar Cycle 24, it has averaged 9.8°C. For the prediction to hold from here, the average temperature over the remainder of the cycle will have to be 8.7°C. The average temperature of 2010 was 8.8°C – only 0.1°C more than what is needed from here. With solar maximum of Solar Cycle 24 now past us, the prediction is in the bag.

Thanks to Richard Altrock’s green corona emissions diagram we can also predict average temperature over Solar Cycle 25. Interpreting that diagram, Solar Cycle 24 will be at least 16 years long. In turn, that means that the CET over Solar Cycle 25 will be a further 1.4°C cooler than the average over Solar Cycle 24.

You'll remark that his optimism about his "prediction" is probably misplaced, if he ever did make a prediction about Central England temperatures.  In any case, what I've done is plotted the temperatures from 2013 onwards to get an average of 9.0°C for Solar Cycle 24 and an average of 7.6°C for Solar Cycle 25.  Here is the result, based on HadCET.

I don't think too many people will be betting his way.  What do you think?

PS Anthony Watts does keep strange company, doesn't he.  It might be a matter of Anthony being "impressed" by the photos on David Archibald's website.  Just like he's impressed by a titled potty peer.  I can't think of any other reason why he'd post their crank ideas - or maybe I can.