David Rose uncovers January 2017 HadCRUT temperature, beating the UK Met Office

David Rose took a short vacation after writing his second article full of false allegations about the NOAA paper published a couple of years ago. Now he's published a third monstrosity. He's digging himself into a deeper hole, aiming to totally sever any slim connection he might have had with science.

His first article was rubbish, his second article was an extrapolation of the first with nothing much to add. Today he's posted yet another "no new news" article, despite this tweet he sent to Bob Ward:

@ret_ward I already used this info last week. Let me explain. A news story, in general, is meant to contain something new.

— David Rose (@DavidRoseUK) February 10, 2017

David Rose's latest, like his previous, was full of fakery: fake news, fake horror, fake allegations, fake umbrage. He even seems to have faked the January 2017 temperature from the UK Met Office Hadley Centre, writing:

Since record highs caused last year by an ‘el Nino’ sea-warming event in the Pacific, HadCRUT 4 has fallen by more than half a degree Celsius, and its value for the world average temperature in January 2017 was about the same as January 1998.

David Rose doubles down on #climate disinformation about NOAA. Let's get some perspective

I've had a post in train for a week now, after last week's ridiculously wrong article from David Rose in the Mail on Sunday. He based it on another ridiculous article, that one from John Bates on Judith Curry's climate disinformation blog. David Rose has followed it up with another ridiculously wrong article, which says nothing new and in which he's just trying to justify all the mistakes and lies in his first article.

John Bates is a meteorologist turned computer data person whose nose was out of joint because he didn't always get his way when he used to work at NOAA. It was a sour grapes whine from someone who wanted attention. That's all. However his attention-seeking moan had major repercussions through the deniosphere.

Turned not tossed - Judith Curry denier martyr with David Rose

Tabloid writer David Rose has written another puff piece on Judith Curry. Judith used to be a scientist who dabbled in climate stuff, until she gave it away to write a blog for science deniers. David Rose was never what you'd call a journalist. He's a hack writer for a tabloid in the UK. His article this time didn't even make the grade for the Mail. This time he was relegated to a magazine called The Spectator, which if you're like me and have never heard of it, is described in Wikipedia as "a weekly British conservative magazine. It was first published on 6 July 1828,[2] making it the oldest continuously published magazine in the English language." For a few years Nigel Lawson was editor. Nigel now heads up the denier lobby group the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which, as its name suggests, agitates for more global warming. So science denial articles in The Spectator shouldn't surprise anyone.

"Scientifically illiterate" David Rose has his "ill-posed question" floated in Nature Climate Change

There's a new paper out in Nature Climate Change that caught the eye of Anthony Watts (archived here). I bet he's relieved to have something else to talk about, instead of the demise of global warming (which is as alive as ever, unfortunately).

Update: There's now a published comment to the Hollin and Pearce paper, which is discussed here: The IPCC climate message is clear based on the evidence: The fundamental flaws of Hollin & Pearce

Sou 24 October 2015

The paper is both timely and out of date. Timely because it relates to "seepage" - which was the subject of a recent paper discussed here a short while ago. Timely also because it's all about the so-called "hiatus", with the authors even claiming (in their press release blog article) that there was a "short-term decrease in temperature" (which there wasn't). Out of date for the same reason.

The paper is by one of the UK "deniophiles" called Warren Pearce, together with a post-doc at his university called G. J. S. (Gregory) Hollin, who looks to be studying autism (updated dead link Oct 15). This unlikely pair somehow got their unlikely paper accepted and published in Nature Climate Change. I don't know what the editors were thinking.

Tricks used by David Rose, denier "journalist", to deceive

This is just a short article to show the journalistic tricks that professional disinformers use. It's excerpts from an article by denier David Rose, who is paid to write trash for the Mail, a UK tabloid of the sensationalist kind. He'd probably claim that he's just "doing his job". His job being to creates sensationalist headlines and not bother too much about accuracy, but try to do it in such a way as to stop the paper ending up in court on the wrong end of a lawsuit. Just. (The paper probably doesn't mind so much getting taken to the Press Complaints Commission. )

Here is what David Rose wrote:

The Nasa (sic) climate scientists who claimed 2014 set a new record for global warmth last night admitted they were only 38 per cent sure this was true.

First of all notice the use of the word "admitted" - as if it was something that the scientists were forced into, whereas in fact that they provided all the information in their press briefing. Notice also that David doesn't even know how to spell NASA. Then notice his straight up lie. It's not true. David has taken one number and used it out of context.  The 38% number is the probability that 2014 is the hottest year compared to the probability that 2010 and other hot years are the hottest. 2010, the next hottest year, only got a 23% probability by comparison. Here is the table showing out of 100%, what the different probabilities are:

You can see how David misused the 38% number. In fact the odds of it being the hottest year on record are the highest of the lot.

What is David's next atrocity:

In a press release on Friday, Nasa’s (sic) Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) claimed its analysis of world temperatures showed ‘2014 was the warmest year on record’.

The claim made headlines around the world, but yesterday it emerged that GISS’s analysis – based on readings from more than 3,000 measuring stations worldwide – is subject to a margin of error. Nasa (sic) admits this means it is far from certain that 2014 set a record at all.

See how David Rose distorts things. How he uses rhetoric, abusing words like "emerged" and "claim" and "admits". He is flat out lying about the "far from certain". He just made that one up. It may not be "certain", but it is much more certain than "far from".  And it is more "certain" that 2014 was the hottest year than that any other year was the hottest year.

If David Rose were arguing that you beat your wife, even though you don't, he'd probably write it up as:

The so-called scientist claims that he doesn't beat his wife. He admits that he cannot prove he doesn't beat his wife. However this journalist can show that it has emerged that his claim is subject to a margin of error.  95% of wife-beaters deny beating their wives.

And I doubt he'd add the confidence limits to the 95% number!

David Rose continues his deception writing:

Yet the Nasa (sic) press release failed to mention this, as well as the fact that the alleged ‘record’ amounted to an increase over 2010, the previous ‘warmest year’, of just two-hundredths of a degree – or 0.02C. The margin of error is said by scientists to be approximately 0.1C – several times as much.

That section by David Rose contains the same misprint of NASA (as Nasa), plus the same journalistic tricks of rhetoric, as well as a lie. The margin of error of the annual averaged global surface temperature is described in the GISS FAQ as ±0.05°C:

Assuming that the other inaccuracies might about double that estimate yielded the error bars for global annual means drawn in this graph, i.e., for recent years the error bar for global annual means is about ±0.05°C, for years around 1900 it is about ±0.1°C. The error bars are about twice as big for seasonal means and three times as big for monthly means. Error bars for regional means vary wildly depending on the station density in that region. Error estimates related to homogenization or other factors have been assessed by CRU and the Hadley Centre (among others).

If the press release didn't include any confidence limits, then where did David Rose get his numbers from? you ask. That's a very good question. It turns out that NOAA and NASA held a press conference, during which they showed some slides and explained the confidence limits, among other things. So David Rose was being very deceitful, wasn't he. Which isn't a surprise.

What bit of deception does he swing to next? Well here it is. You be the judge:

As a result, GISS’s director Gavin Schmidt has now admitted Nasa thinks the likelihood that 2014 was the warmest year since 1880 is just 38 per cent. However, when asked by this newspaper whether he regretted that the news release did not mention this, he did not respond. Another analysis, from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project, drawn from ten times as many measuring stations as GISS, concluded that if 2014 was a record year, it was by an even tinier amount. 

More rhetorical tricks using words like "admitted". More deception by David Rose tabloid denier extraordinaire. When and how and where did David Rose ask Gavin Schmidt the question? I don't know. It looks as if it was via an accusatory tweet of the type "have you stopped beating your wife", like this one:

@ClimateOfGavin why didn't you mention the size of the 2014 "record" and the uncertainty in the GISS press release? Do you regret this?
— David Rose (@DavidRoseUK) January 17, 2015

Yet Gavin Schmidt did respond to David Rose, so it was David Rose who told the lie:

@DavidRoseUK Were you on the press call? The uncertainties were directly addressed. pic.twitter.com/1LYbvOf9Rr
— Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) January 16, 2015

That's about it. I'll leave it to you to decide who is the grand deceiver.

I'd not trust David Rose, denier journo, with a single fact.  It is alleged that he is a master of deception. He'd probably try to claim he is just doing his job.

Silly season at the Daily Mail and WUWT: wishfully reversing the Arctic decline

Update: David Rose of the Daily Mail attempts to deny his own article. See below.

Oh my. This is about as good as when deniers claimed that the Arctic sea ice was recovering at the fastest rate in years. When they were referring to the winter growth of ice after the record low ice extent in 2012. Remember DenialDepot? - here and here and particularly here.

Anthony Watts made a headline (archived here) from a quote from Judith Curry in an article by David Rose in the Daily Mail (archived here). His headline:

‘The Arctic sea ice spiral of death seems to have reversed’

Did Judith really make such a wild claim? Seriously? It is there in black and white. Not that you can believe anything in the Daily Mail. Then again, you can't take anything that Judith Curry says as credible without checking, either.

Beefed up or toned down? Judith Curry, David Rose, Anthony Watts spin on the IPCC

Judith Curry has an article about economists Richard Tol and Robert Stavins and the IPCC.

Professor Robert Stavins has a blog post complaining about how much text was deleted from WGIII SPM. He's posted an article with a letter he wrote to the IPCC Chair and the Co-Chairs of Working Group III.  He also posted selections from the Summary for Policy Makers from which text was removed, as Item a (before) and Item b (after). He was concerned that governments chopped out almost all of the explanatory text under the key headings. Most of you will have read about this already, but it's interesting to compare the versions side by side. For further comparison, you can get the final Summary for Policy Makers and the full report here.

Judith is spinning this as the IPCC process is flawed. In fact, it's flawed in the wrong direction for Judith (but she doesn't admit that). Robert is complaining that the report was toned down, not beefed up.

The other interesting thing is that Richard Tol has been taken to task by Brandon Shollenberger for replacing text with his own in WG2. (I noticed how that section of the report had almost no recent studies.) Brandon is very Tol-like in his obsession with trying to find something wrong in minute detail, so it comes across as two-of-a-kind locking horns. (Richard isn't exactly a science denier, though he behaves like one a lot of the time. Brandon on the other hand does fit the definition of a climate science denier.)

Judith Curry is, as usual, advocating we take the highest risk pathway. She wrote on her blog:

I am even more dismayed by public statements from the IPCC leadership that has spun the AR5 message into the usual alarmist meme.

What alarmist meme would that be? That we are causing global warming? That's not alarmist. It's alarming but true. In the past, Judith has made it clear that she would prefer the IPCC not exist at all. Her position seems to be against mitigation or at best "wait" till it's all too late.  It's a "those who survive will adapt" stance and for those who don't, tough luck.

Hyperbole plus from David Rose, tabloid political commenter

David Rose has picked up Robert Stavin's blog post and written about it in his own hyperbolic style (archived here), using words: sensationally, meddling, crucial, electrified, debate, astonishing. Those words were all in the headline and the first two short sentences!

Robert Stavins asks if the IPCC process is broken. Once you get past David's emotive language, what he wrote wasn't all that different to what Robert Stavins wrote.  David does pop in a plug for Richard Tol's dummy spit and Judith Curry's anti-IPCC stance. But he also puts in a plug for the IPCC from Bob Ward.

Too alarmist or toned down too much?

To sum up, it seems the contrarians are now complaining because the reports aren't sufficiently alarmist.  If only they would make up their minds.

Anthony Watts has copied from Judith Curry (archived here). He's gone further in his headline and claimed that "Two scathing reviews by scholars working with the IPCC show why the organization is hopelessly corrupted by politics". However it was only Robert Stavins who directly pointed to specific examples where government input resulted in a change to the report - and that was arguably on diplomatic grounds not political grounds (IMO there is a distinction). 

In regard to complaints about government input, Richard's article didn't say that outright. He merely insinuated. A casual reader might infer that the WG2 Summary for Policy Makers was beefed up because of the views of delegates. Yet Richard didn't point to any example of same. (The IPCC provides drafts and lists changes that were made to the report.)  Richard seems to be complaining that he couldn't get things all his own way. He was complaining that the Summary for Policy Makers focused on areas of high risk and didn't give sufficient space to any pluses, for example, the decrease in death from cold as opposed to the increased mortality from heat. 

This time around Richard's article (archived here) comes across as a mix of excuse-making and whining, but still isn't quite as ratty as some of his previous outbursts have been. He is wrong, too. He wrote:

The SPM, drafted by the scholars of the IPCC, is rewritten by delegates of the governments of the world

It's not rewritten by delegates. Delegates can suggest changes to the report but the authors have to agree to those changes. In other words, the final Summary for Policy Makers cannot be at odds with the full report.

Empty-headed fake sceptics

Richard also seems to think that fake sceptics aren't capable of doing science or economics, implying group think, writing:

Academics who worry about climate change are more likely to publish about it, and more likely to get into the IPCC. Groups of like-minded people reinforce their beliefs. 

Well, if fake sceptics don't have sufficient "like-mind" to do research into climate change, that's more a sign that their "like-mind" is "wrong-headed" and "empty-headed" than anything else.

Climate change in an imperfect world

As for Anthony Watts, he doesn't know the difference between the UN and individual nations.  It looks as if he has a tendency to adopt the wacky UN conspiracy theories and he certainly promotes them on his blog. He wrote:

This statement by Tol pretty well sums up the IPCC:

Many of the more worrying impacts of climate change really are symptoms of mismanagement and underdevelopment.

That’s systemic culture in the U.N. so it is no surprise to me.

After writing that, Richard foolishly drew the wrong conclusion, writing: "This message does not support the political agenda for greenhouse gas emission reduction."

Richard's wrong. Underdevelopment (whatever that means) and mismanagement (presumably of natural resources) makes greenhouse gas emission reduction even more critical. When you combine the impact of, for example, hillside deforestation with higher precipitation you get much worse floods. Both need to be tackled to reduce the harm. Re-forestation will help but it won't be enough to stop the heavier rainfall. It won't be enough to stop the flash flooding.  In any case, reforestation is a mitigation measure in itself.

Richard Tol advocates a carbon tax

The odd thing is that shortly after that Richard wrote:

A polarized debate is not conducive to enlightened policy in an area as complex as climate change – although we only need a carbon tax, and a carbon tax only, that applies to all emissions and gradually and predictably rises over time. 

So is Richard advocating reduction of greenhouse gas emissions or isn't he? It looks as if he is indeed advocating emissions reduction doesn't it.

Richard Tol was writing about Working Group II. You can download the Summary for Policy Makers and full report of Working Group II here. It's well-written but an absolute pain to navigate, not having a full consolidated report.

From the WUWT comments

Just a few today, because this article is long.

Latitude points out that Richard Tol is inconsistent and says:

April 26, 2014 at 6:23 pm
This statement by Tol pretty well sums up Tol…
‘– although we only need a carbon tax, and a carbon tax only, that applies to all emissions and gradually and predictably rises over time’

John F. Hultquist picked up on Anthony Watts confusing individual countries with the UN itself and says:

April 26, 2014 at 6:40 pm
First, I think we can thank these two, and others not yet named, for the work they have done and their public statements such as reported here.
The final line of the post is “That’s systemic culture in the U.N. so it is no surprise to me.” seems to reference the UN and I agree it is a massive waste – for the most part. However, the 2 lines attributable to Richard Tol seem to be a comment on the manner in which many countries operate. Since Prince Henry the Navigator and the Age of Discoveries not much has changed for many “countries” from A to Z as they remain underdeveloped and mismanaged. 

Streetcred isn't buying Anthony's spin either and says:

April 26, 2014 at 6:45 pm
Can’t say much about Dr. Robert Stavins’ benign letter of protest … half of it at the least is butt covering and brown-nosing. The process competence of the managers amounts to nought if the meaning of the body of research is transformed into political claptrap. 

ossqss says - well nothing at all it turns out, just vaguely arm-waves:

April 26, 2014 at 8:15 pm
This is just another example of the corrosion in climate science.
There are many lessons to learn here. 

---

Here are the links to the IPCC AR5 reports:

• IPCC AR5 Working Group I
• IPCC AR5 Working Group II 
• IPCC AR5 Working Group III

Breaking news: BBC gets science from scientists

Stop the presses. In breaking news we can reveal that BBC senior management seek scientific information from scientists.

David Rose first published this scandal at the Mail Online.

Science deniers are enraged.  Andrew Montford labelled it "subversion of the state broadcaster".

Steve E, of Norwich wrote of his outrage: Scap the licence fee now, we are being forced to pay for the BBCs properganda! 

The scandal has made headlines in the USA.

The saga was revealed by a little known - outside of the British arm of Science Deniers Inc (a branch of the Scientific Illiterati)  - pensioner CWM Tony Newbery whose hobby is blogging, mainly protests against clean energy and writing to all and sundry about how he is a fervent and committed climate science denier and that "scientists don't know nuffin'".


In other news, the Scientific Illiterati Society will be holding their annual general meeting next month.  WUWT and Daily Mail readers are encouraged to attend.  The Society said it was bending the rules slightly and would be keen to recruit anyone who is able to read.  Particularly if they are also able to write.  Understanding what is read or written is desirable but not essential. Tea will be served, with an extra biscuit for eligible members. Dress: Brown cardigan.

Anthony Watts @wattsupwiththat throws caution to the wind...

I spoke too soon.

In a fit of recklessness Anthony Watts has posted an article with the title:

EXPOSED: David Rose rips UK climate change committee for being on the take

I've archived the WUWT article here and the David Rose article in Mail Online here.

Caution to the wind

UK Climate Change Committee "on the take"? Anthony Watts is accusing highly respected and prominent UK citizens of criminal activity.  He is probably leaving himself open to being sued by members of the UK Climate Change Committee if not the UK Government itself.  And maybe even by The Daily Mail and David Rose. Would any of them bother?  I don't know.

The Rose article stops short of alleging that the members of the UK Committee on Climate Change are "on the take" but he does skate very close to that, implying that there is potential for them to benefit, writing:

The Mail on Sunday’s investigation has established that four of its nine members have recently had or still have financial interests in firms that benefit from its rulings.

So which of the nine members does Rose allege "had or still have financial interests in firms that benefit from its rulings"?  David Rose draws a very long bow and is walking a thin line, and arguably is on the wrong side of that line.  Anthony Watts crossed right over the line.

About the UK Committee on Climate Change

First of all, the Committee on Climate Change.  The purpose of the Committee is described as follows:

The Committee on Climate Change (the CCC) is an independent, statutory body established under the Climate Change Act 2008. Our purpose is to advise the UK Government and Devolved Administrations on emissions targets and report to Parliament on progress made in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and preparing for climate change.

It recommends emissions targets and reports on progress in meeting the targets.  A fuller description of its statutory duties are provided in its framework document.  It's not the sort of committee from which its members could directly benefit.  The members are listed here with brief bios.

Just what is the benefit from all the work they do on the committee? The members get a sitting fee and it's not much. Only £800 a day for members and £1,000 a day for the chair, which is a pittance for the job particularly for people of such high status as this, but probably standard for government sitting fees.  They meet once a month.  They aren't in it for the money, that's for sure.  (The fake sceptics at WUWT probably paid more than that on a per day basis, to send Anthony Watts to AGU13!)

Fake smear attempt by David Rose

And what is David Rose alleging?  Nothing at all when you boil it down.  His article is smear and innuendo for his ignorant readers, full of language designed to stoke the rage of the denialiti .

As for his "three months investigation" - he's slow.  You could investigate a lot of it in a few minutes on the internet.  For example, his main "allegation" about the members of the Committee on Climate Change is nothing more than a regurgitation of their bios as listed on the Committee on Climate Change website.

Here is a rundown of David Rose's "allegations".  Top secret stuff publicly available to all!

One member of the Committee, Professor Dame Julia King DBE FREng, is also a non-Executive Director of the Green Investment Bank.  "So what?" you might ask.  Exactly.  There is no conflict of interest there.  The Green Investment Bank provides finance to UK companies that are "green and commercial".   David Rose is really stretching to argue that " The more the CCC’s rulings favour renewable subsidies, the better the bank is likely to do."  I doubt that her stipend as a Director would be affected by how well the bank performs.

In case any of David's readers clued into the fact that there's no conflict of interest there, he pointed out a damning piece of evidence - Dame Julia also owns a house! She's owned it since 2002.  She bought it six years before the Committee on Climate Change was created. David even ferreted out what it's worth, which is utterly irrelevant.

He then tackles Professor Lord May of Oxford, OM AC FRS, another one of the most respected figures in the UK, on the grounds that in addition to being on the Climate Change Committee, he is also a member of the Sustainability Board of the global banking giant HSBC and has various other interests.  What does he want him to do with all his days between the monthly meetings? Twiddle his thumbs or use his expertise?  None of the interests David Rose lists could be seen in any way as conflicting with his role on the Committee on Climate Change.

After that he tries to smear by innuendo The Rt. Hon John Gummer, Lord Deben, Chairman of the Committee on Climate Change.  He tackles him on the grounds that until a recent restructure, he was Chair of Veolia Water UK PLC.  Veolia Water is mainly in the business of water, waste water and organic waste.  It also has a an infrastructure division which "provides multi-utility services including large electrical grid connections for renewable energy producers of waste, wind, and anaerobic digestion".  David Rose is stretching about as far as Dame Julia's house when he tries to claim that there is any conflict of interest in that regard.

He then tries to smear Professor Sam Fankhauser, who is Co-Director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics and a Director of an economics consulting firm, Vivid Economics.  The smear this time is because Vivid Economics has as one of its practice areas "Energy and Climate Change".

David Rose rounds off his pseudo-attack by observing that other members of the Climate Change Committee have expertise in climate change.  Well, duh!  You'll like the way he describes it though:

Other CCC members have  spent their careers as  academics in fields that help fuel green campaigns.

Sir Brian Hoskins, a fierce critic of climate sceptics, is a climatologist at Imperial College, London, where he is director of another institute funded by Grantham.

Jim Skea is also at Imperial, where he is Professor of Sustainable Energy, and was launch director of the Low Carbon Vehicle Project.

At the very bottom of the article, after all the smears and garbage, David Rose writes:

A CCC spokeswoman said it  had ‘rigorous checks and balances to ensure that there are no conflicts of interests for committee members’.

And if you doubt it, you can read all the minutes of every committee meeting.  They are all available on the Committee on Climate Change website.

I'm hanging out for David Rose to do an expose of the UK Competition Commission, there are bound to be some members on that who compete.  Or the Financial Conduct Authority, whose Chair used to head up KPMG Europe - an accounting and audit company, and whose members include people with a lot of expertise relevant to financial conduct in the public and private sectors! Who'd have thought.

Better yet, I expect still on David Rose's "to do" list is an investigative report into the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

The future is renewable but UK taxpayers still subsidise dirty coal

By the way, half of David Rose's article has nothing to do with the UK Committee on Climate Change. In the top half of the Rose article he describes how there is money to be made in renewables.  The slant he takes is that the money being made at present hinges on subsidies.  That may be so now but it won't always be the case.

What David Rose doesn't let on is that the fossil fuel sector in the UK is getting greater subsidies than wind power in the UK.

Nor does he let on to his readers that UK taxpayers will be subsidising dirty coal in the UK for years and years.

From the WUWT comments

The article is long enough, so I'll just show a small number of comments from the fake sceptics.  Silly stuff. There's nothing you haven't read umpteen times already. I've updated the WUWT archived version here.


Eric Simpson, a chattering monkey from the WUWT chorus, says:

December 14, 2013 at 5:40 pm
Put the bozos in jail.

A.D. Everard has no insight into what was written but he she "believes" Anthony's arguably libellous headline and says:

December 14, 2013 at 7:15 pm
Well, this will raise the blood pressure of those on the committee and many others in the Green ranks.

Of course this news is no surprise to us, but how wonderful to see it in the news and not just in the opinion column, out where everybody can see it. Facts and figures and photographs. This will get the general public fuming, and I hope it does! The general view some years ago seemed to be “Why would they lie?” Well, now their finding out!

Dare I say, maybe some ministers will wake up to how they are being used?
Hopefully, too, this will trigger other countries to look into their own climate change committees. More of this exposure is essential.

(And here I was thinking Sundays were slow-news days.)

Reed Coray says:

December 14, 2013 at 7:22 pm
Smells a lot like legalized larceny.

noaaprogrammer is still convinced climate science is a hoax and says:

December 14, 2013 at 7:32 pm
Assuming that eventually the AGW scam and its perpetrators are effectively dealt with, is there any legal way that the tax payers around the world can be reimbursed even a small percentage of what the warmists have stolen?

For the U.S. I suggest that presidential wanabees for 2016 include promises of such reimbursements through lower tax rates for the number of years equivalent to a complete restitution of the theft.

John@EF makes a wry (cynical?) comment - my guess is he's a 1 per center:

December 14, 2013 at 5:29 pm
David Rose is reporting this? My, this is serious …

WUWT tabloid science

Anthony Watts' followers at WUWT reject climate science in favour of tabloid "science".  Perennially puzzled Bob Tisdale writes (archived here):

I figured today would be a good day to post this, with David Rose’s article in the “Sunday Mail” 

Instead of looking to the IPCC for a compilation of climate science, fake skeptics go to the erudite scientific journal the Mail Online to fossick among headlines about someone's ponytail, someone else's camel toe and someone (I think it's a person) called Honey Boo Boo (click image to enlarge):

Source: MailOnline

So today, in honour of tabloid science at WUWT, HotWhopper will report in tabloid style!

Now where is that sciency article by Judith Curry's latest pin-up boy, David Rose, I wonder?  Found it! It's archived here.  Let's see what David Rose has dreamt up this time.

Jilted celebrity Arctic Ice now on the Rebound!

Here's something.  Daily Fail reports that jilted celebrity Arctic Ice, whose ratings in the last few years had gone into a nosedive, is on the rebound. David Rose reports to his devoted illiterati audience:

While 2013 remains the sixth lowest Arctic sea ice year since 1979, forthcoming research suggests the long-term melting trend is partly cyclical, and may have begun a reversal.

"This is beyond me" admits star-struck Judith Curry to her new-found idol

In other breaking news, David Rose quotes his latest tabloid darling, star-struck Judith Curry, writing:

However, not only does the report deny the importance of the pause, it makes a firm, short-term forecast that it is about to end – claiming that the period 2016-2035 will, on average, be 0.3-0.7C hotter than 1986-2005.

That, said Prof Judith Curry, head of climate science at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is a high-risk strategy: ‘The IPCC has thrown down the gauntlet.’

Should the pause continue, she said, ‘they are toast’.  

She was critical about the report’s statement that confidence humans had caused most of the warming of the 20th Century had increased from 90 per cent in the last IPCC report in 2007 to 95 per cent.

‘How they can justify this is beyond me.’

Pop star and illiterati heart-throb Judith Curry admitted to reporter David Rose "...this is beyond me". 

After some digging this reporter has discovered the "toast" Judith talks about are the world's leading climate scientists, who have been hilariously talking as if the world is going to get toasted.  However, anyone who reads the world's most viewed climate website will know that by 2020 the world will be in the depths of an ice age.  What "the toast" don't realise, which readers of Daily Fail have known for some time, is that the warming since the Little Ice Age was caused by a magical bounce, aka off with the pixies.

Daily Fail reports: Scientific experts are implausible and hilariously incoherent

There is more skulduggery as Professor Richard (deep throat) Lindzen solemnly declares "hilarious incoherence".  While business analyst Bjorn Lomborg, who has the best interest of the Daily Fail's illiterati at heart, pronounces the world's top scientific experts as being "implausible".  The Daily Fail's resident climate scientist and heart-throb David Rose agrees, pointing out that "1997 was not a hot year".  

To demonstrate just how cold it was in 1997, HotWhopper has dug up this animated chart of global surface temperatures showing just how freezing cold it was in 1997 compared to now and all the boiling hot years before 1997:

Data Source: NASA

If the freezing cold of 1997 doesn't prove to you that global warming is a giant hoax then I don't know what will convince you.  

Footnote and warning: This reporter has been informed by reliably unreliable sources that anyone who still isn't convinced of the giant hoax is at serious risk of having their membership of the illustrious organisation, the Scientific Illiterati, cancelled.

Click here for more sciency-sounding (sort of) confabulations from Daily Fail's pet Professor, Judith Curry.

Curry and Watts - dejected, rejected

The deniers really are running out of stuff to complain about.  Judith Curry is getting nuttier by the day (archived here) and now anti-science blogger Anthony Watts has joined in the fray at WUWT (archived here).

Three out of five GRL papers get rejected

Three years ago a paper got rejected by Geophysical Research Letters.  GRL is quite a prestigious publication and according to a paper in BAMS by David M Schultz, it rejects 59.2% of submissions.  That's not counting author withdrawals or submissions transferred to other journals.  That means that just going by odds, if you submit a paper to GRL it's more likely to be rejected than published.

A motley lot of deniers

The paper purported to be a comparison of climate models with observations.  The authors of the paper are a who's who of deniers - Patrick J. Michaels and Paul C. Knappenberger (Pat 'n Chip), John R. Christy (who tells fibs to US Congress), Chad S. Herman (who I don't know) and Lucia M. Liljegren (a nitpicking blogger who is a science denier of the "lukewarmer" variety).

After the first rejection, this motley lot called in James D. Annan to try to resurrect the paper and package it in way that would be acceptable to the journal.  This didn't succeed either.  I've no idea why James decided to throw in his lot with that lot.  According to Judith Curry he was one of the reviewers for the first draft.  Maybe he thought he could turn it into something useful.  But again according to Judith Curry, the next draft was reviewed by four people, all of whom recommended it not be published.

An excuse for Judith Curry to unfairly wail "not fair"

Judith Curry, who converted to denialism some time ago, has decided to make a big deal out of this, acting as if the journal is 'gatekeeping' against sceptics.  She won't entertain the notion that the paper didn't meet the requirements of GRL, which it obviously didn't.  Although she says she "couldn’t see why it was rejected", she's not a climate modeler nor is she a statistician, so what would she know?  And even if there were "nothing wrong with it" that doesn't automatically mean that GRL would have accepted it.  Journals reject papers for many reasons other than being "wrong".

Anthony Watts has picked up the story too.  (Archived here.)  He's always keen to promote the "gatekeeper" myth that papers get rejected because they are written by fake sceptics rather than because they don't meet the standard or other criteria of the journal.  He's also probably preparing his readers that his own still pending paper won't meet the criteria of any decent journal.

Remember, this all happened three years ago.  James Annan wrote about it on his blog back in May 2010. Why they didn't bother to try another journal is anyone's guess.  Maybe the feedback from reviewers discouraged them from doing so.  Or maybe they just wanted an excuse to cry "gatekeepers".

An excuse for Judith Curry to sing the praises of disinformers

The reason for Judith bringing all this up seems to be so that she can once again sing her praises of disinformation peddlers - David Rose and John Christy.

Judith Curry "came out" as a science denier quite a while ago.  She no longer pretends to be "building bridges".  She's pitched her tent with the disinformers and is now a disinformer in her own right.  Anthony Watts, needless to say, welcomes her with open arms.

If you want to read the paper itself you can do so here to save you having to wade through the nonsense on Curry's blog.  James Annan's blog includes some discussion of the analysis if anyone is interested in the unpublished work.

Just another nutter

I'll leave you with what is probably the denier quote of the day, from Judith Curry this time:

And we see where ‘pause denial’ has led the IPCC, potentially to a crisis point in the AR5.  It will be very interesting to see how this plays out in Stockholm next week.

Crisis point?  Judith Curry really is just another nutter of the David Rose  and Heartland Institute variety.

Approaching crisis point

There is no 'crisis point' yet - although we are rapidly approaching it.  The sooner we act the less it will cost and the greater the likelihood that human civilisation will survive. The latest cost estimate is one per cent of GDP but the cost will rise the longer we leave it.

From the WUWT comments

Just a couple, because they typify WUWT denier weirdness and paranoid conspiracy (archived here):

gopal panicker says:

September 20, 2013 at 10:05 am
cooling started three years ago…have fun

GunnyGene says:

September 20, 2013 at 10:16 am
It was obviously rejected because it doesn’t support the political agenda of global domination by Progressives,etc. You are familiar with Agenda 21, I presume?

Editing the Environment out of Existence: Graham Lloyd and The Australian tell Big Fat Lies

UPDATE 2: Media Watch did pick up on this tonight (23 Sept 13).  Good for them!
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s3854782.htm


UPDATE: The Australian has printed this in its weekend edition today (h/t John Quiggin):

It didn't pick up on all the wrongs in the Lloyd article, it didn't fix the original article and it didn't stop The Australian from publishing more wrong claims about the IPCC and climate science in the same edition today (Saturday 21 September 2013).

---

Graham Lloyd is a science denier.  Graham Lloyd is "Environment Editor" of a national newspaper and a science denier.  Graham Lloyd peddles disinformation, is "Environment Editor" of a national newspaper and is a science denier.


Australian climate hawks knew that already.  Here is the latest evidence for this - archived here.

Editing the Environment out of Existence

My thinking is that Graham takes his job title the wrong way.  In most newspapers the title of "Environment Editor" signifies someone who reports to the public on newsworthy matters relating to the environment.

In Graham Lloyd's case he and his paymasters are trying to edit the environment out of existence.

Tim Lambert of Deltoid for many years chronicled the Australian's War on Science.  Now the Australian is waging a War on our Future.  By editing out the environment they are also editing out the future for humanity.  But they know that already.  The question is - do all their readers know that?

Today's Battle - Big Fat Lies

In today's effort to hasten the sixth major extinction, Graham Lloyd starts off with a big fat lie (archived here):

THE Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's latest assessment reportedly admits its computer drastically overestimated rising temperatures, and over the past 60 years the world has in fact been warming at half the rate claimed in the previous IPCC report in 2007.

I've dealt with that wrong statement already - more than once.  It's not merely disinformation it's a lie.  It's been all over the internet that it's a lie.  If Graham Lloyd wasn't aware of the fact when he lazily and willing repeated the lie that David Rose told, then he is a very poor journalist (well, he is that anyway).

The previous IPCC report stated that between 1956 and 2005 the world had warmed by 0.13 degrees:

The linear warming trend over the 50 years from 1956 to 2005 (0.13 [0.10 to 0.16]°C per decade) is nearly twice that for the 100 years from 1906 to 2005. {WGI 3.2, SPM} 

Graham Lloyd writes (see below) that since 1951 the world has warmed by 0.12 degrees.

Compare 0.13 degrees for one period and 0.12 degrees for a slightly longer period.  Where is the fifty per cent?  Not there. I did my own calculations and got similar results.  Both numbers are accurately reported by the IPCC!  Graham Lloyd is telling a Big Fat Lie.

(Did anyone else notice the reference to the IPCC "computer"?  Oh my!  Does Graham really think the highly complex and sophisticated earth system models are run on a little laptop operated by one of the 12 employees of the IPCC?)

Graham Lloyd Tries to Shift the Blame for his Big Fat Lie

Graham continues:

More importantly, according to reports in British and US media, the draft report appears to suggest global temperatures were less sensitive to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide than was previously thought.

The 2007 assessment report said the planet was warming at a rate of 0.2C every decade, but according to Britain's The Daily Mail the draft update report says the true figure since 1951 has been 0.12C.

Here Graham shows what a seedy character he is.  He uses a slimy gossippers 'trick' of spreading lies while blame-shifting "I'm only telling you what I heard!".  But he refused to tell you that what he read was wrong.  It's a lie.  If he adhered to a code of ethics he'd not have printed the lies.  He's been reporting on climate for years so surely he is familiar with the content of the IPCC reports.  If he didn't know that David Rose has a reputation as a disinformer then as an editor he has a responsibility to take two minutes to check the IPCC report itself.  But Graham does know that David Rose tells lies because he reports as much.  To see how he uses the lies he knows that David Rose told, read on.

How's this for Seedy Spin?

Even knowing something is a lie doesn't stop Graham.  He'll stoop to anything for a chance to destroy the planet.  Denied the opportunity to spread another lie - Rose's ludicrous "crisis talks" lie, Graham uses a gutter press tactic - the "forced to deny" approach.  He writes:

Last week, the IPCC was forced to deny it was locked in crisis talks as reports intensified that scientists were preparing to revise down the speed at which climate change is happening and its likely impact.

Or "have you stopped beating your wife?"

How can such a person be "Environment Editor" of a national newspaper?  Is he devoid of values and ethics or does the Australian itself demand of him that he spread disinformation, innuendo and lies?  Of course he'd never get a job with any reputable newspaper so he's a bit stuck if he wants to get paid for deceiving the general public.  I guess he could freelance for PrisonPlanet or InfoWars or Canada Free Press.

Thing is, given that Graham Lloyd reports that the IPCC showed David Rose up in this lie, why does Graham Lloyd repeat all the other lies told by David Rose at all, or if he must repeat them surely he should let his readers know that David Rose lied!

The facts are buried deep

Way down, after Graham has done his "duty" he decides that he'd better make a weak attempt at pretending to be an environment editor rather than an environment wrecker.  He writes what "is believed".

It is believed the IPCC draft report will still conclude there is now greater confidence that climate change is real, humans are having a major impact and that the world will continue to warm catastrophically unless drastic action is taken to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

The impacts would include big rises in the sea level, floods, droughts and the disappearance of the Arctic icecap.

Believed by whom, Graham doesn't say.  The report hasn't yet been released.  It won't be released until the end of the month.  Which is why people like Graham Lloyd are getting in early.  To try to get people to not believe their eyes or what they read in the papers.

The rest of the article is junk.  He writes about the incomprehensible comments Judith Curry made to David Rose and what fibs Matt Ridley wrote in the Wall Street Journal plus more on a "forced to deny" garbage.

The Lies of Graham Lloyd and The Australian should not be tolerated

The appalling behaviour of Graham Lloyd and the Australian should not be tolerated in Australia.  Our media has a responsibility to portray facts.  I don't know what can be done.  I'll make this contribution but I hope that there is at least one other person who has the integrity and clout to do more.

To read more about the reaction to this War on our Future, here are some other reports and commentary.  As you can see - the disinformers are simply repeating each other's lies and spin.  That's all they have in waging their war against the environment and their war on humanity's future:

Phil Plait on Bad Astronomy at Slate

Dana Nuccitelli at the UK Guardian and more here

HotWhopper - here and here and here and here

Maybe the ABC's Media Watch will help expose the disinformation from Graham Lloyd.  You can help by sending them a tip. - And they did!  (Thanks, people!)

Anthony Watts repeats David Rose's fibs and more denier weirdness from WUWT

Poor old Anthony is late to the party but he still wants a piece of the action.  Anthony Watts has repeated the disinformation and lies from David Rose, the anti-science propagandist for the Mail Online. I'll give Anthony the benefit of the doubt because he's not that bright.  He wouldn't understand an IPCC report if he decided to try and read one - but I've not seen any evidence that he's attempted that.

This is a follow up to my previous articles here and here.

Anthony Watts and David Rose are wrong again - the IPCC reported 0.13°C per decade from 1956 to 2006.

Anthony Watts writes (archived here):

What they say: ‘The rate of warming since 1951 [has been] 0.12C per decade.’

What this means: In their last hugely influential report in 2007, the IPCC claimed the world was warming at 0.2C per decade. Here they admit there has been a massive cut in the speed of global warming – although it’s buried in a section on the recent warming ‘pause’. The true figure, it now turns out, is not only just over half what they thought – it’s below their lowest previous estimate.

What this really means: David Rose and Anthony Watts are telling big fat lies again.  Here is what is written in the IPCC AR4 report - a linear trend from 1956 to 2005 = 0.13°C per decade.  Not a 0.2°C per decade in sight!

Eleven of the last twelve years (1995-2006) rank among the twelve warmest years in the instrumental record of global surface temperature (since 1850). The 100-year linear trend (1906-2005) of 0.74 [0.56 to 0.92]°C is larger than the corresponding trend of 0.6 [0.4 to 0.8]°C (1901-2000) given in the TAR (Figure 1.1). The linear warming trend over the 50 years from 1956 to 2005 (0.13 [0.10 to 0.16]°C per decade) is nearly twice that for the 100 years from 1906 to 2005. {WGI 3.2, SPM}

And because they are not crash hot at comprehension, or they are deliberately setting out to decieve their readers, this is most probably what David Rose and Anthony Watts are misrepresenting - pretending a future likelihood was a statement about the past:

For the next two decades a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emissions scenarios. Even if the concentrations of all GHGs and aerosols had been kept constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming of about 0.1°C per decade would be expected. Afterwards, temperature projections increasingly depend on specific emissions scenarios. {3.2}

Anthony Watts confuses regional and global - again!

Once again, Anthony Watts doesn't understand the difference between regional and global.  I don't know why he loves the medieval climate anomaly so much.  Does he think it "disproves" the greenhouse effect? What a nutter of a denier. He writes (my bold italics):

What they say: ‘Surface temperature reconstructions show multi-decadal intervals during the Medieval Climate Anomaly  (950-1250) that were in some regions as warm as in the late 20th Century.’

What this means: As recently as October 2012, in an earlier draft of this report, the IPCC was adamant that the world is warmer than at any time for at least 1,300 years. Their new inclusion  of the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ – long before the Industrial Revolution and  its associated fossil fuel burning – is a concession that its earlier statement  is highly questionable.

What this really means - Anthony Watts can't tell the difference between regional and global.  What a plonker!  There is no "concession" at all.  The two statements are different.  One is about "some regions" and the other is about global surface temperatures.  It's just that Anthony can't tell the difference between regional and global.  Not that it's relevant to the rapid rise in temperature of the past few decades, which everyone knows is caused by human activity.

Anthony Watts falls back on ad hominem

Anthony is also feeling the pressure of not writing too many ad homs for a while.  He seems to think that playing in a band as a teenager is relevant to one's professional career - maybe even "murky", which will be news to every amateur and professional musician and their parents and siblings.  It's also a bit rich coming from someone like Anthony Watts, whose primary goal is to reject scientific knowledge and to spread lies and disinformation about science and scientists.

He also complains that John Abraham and Dana Nuccitelli didn't delete some comments from their blog on the UK Guardian.  Guess what, Anthony.  They don't have the power to do so.  They aren't moderators. They can't delete comments.  In any case, that is just too, too hypocritical coming from someone like Anthony Watts who encourages worse on his own blog!

I've covered most of the rest in my article on the latest David Rose blurb in Mail Online.

What all this really means: as usual, the denialati are trying to get ahead of the game and control the message.  They are intent on delaying action to mitigate global warming and will go to any lengths to do so.

HotWhopper readers probably know most of what will be in the new IPCC report, because they keep up with the science.  There will be some parts of interest, like how the report treats different aspects like climate sensitivity, modeled projections for surface temperature and sea level rise etc.  Overall though, we know the clock is ticking down.  It's about one minute to midnight.

This is the critical decade.

Disinformer David Rose of the Daily Mail takes another denialist "swinge"

Update: The UK Met Office has commented on David Rose's latest article.

Serial disinformer David Rose from the tabloid rag the Daily Mail doesn't care about facts, only headlines.  He's come out with another "not even wrong" article (archived here) as a follow up to his last one.

David starts with a false headline: Global warming is just HALF what we said: World's top climate scientists admit computers got the effects of greenhouse gases wrong

Unsurprisingly, David doesn't cite any of the world's top scientists so I figure he just made that up.  It's what he does - see here and here and here and here and here and here and here (and more here).

David Rose "swinges" about clean energy and taxation

David could hardly be seen as more "wrong" if he wore a sandwich board saying "I reject and deny science". He goes on to write about the IPCC reports that "they are cited worldwide to justify swingeing (sic) fossil fuel taxes and subsidies for ‘renewable’ energy".

Now we've got his reason for rejecting science out of the way (he prefers dirty energy and doesn't like paying tax), let's see what lies he's spouting this time.

David Rose flunks arithmetic

Remember his headline of just HALF? In addition to wanting dirty energy and not liking taxation, David Rose can't do simple sums, he writes:

Back then, it said that the planet was warming at a rate of 0.2C every decade – a figure it claimed was in line with the forecasts made by computer climate models. 

But the new report says the true figure since 1951 has been only 0.12C per decade – a rate far below even the lowest computer prediction.

David, like some other deniers we know, fails at arithmetic.  0.12 is 60% of 0.2, not 50%.  That amount of difference can make or break a candidate's hope for re-election :D

David also lied.  Here is what is written in the IPCC AR4 report - a linear trend from 1956 to 2005 = 0.13°C per decade. Not a 0.2°C per decade in sight!

If anything, the linear trend has increased!

Do you still wonder about David's implied claim that the IPCC said the world has warmed at 0.2 degrees since 1951 and is only warming at 50% of that - or 60% if you use David's numbers rather than his wrong calculation?  What I think he must have done is try to convince his readers that the modeled projection for future temperature rises under a "business as usual" scenario was the same as the actual rise since 1951.  But who knows.  The mind of the science denier is a tangle of lies and disinformation and it's not for me to try to fathom.

So instead let's look at the record itself.  Here is a chart of global average surface temperature from 1951 to the present, and from 1951 to 2006 - the last full year before the publication of IPCC's AR4 report:

Interesting, eh.  To get a very rough estimate, subtract the value at the bottom of the trend line (the straight line) from the value at the top of the trend line, divide by the number of years and multiply by ten.  (But don't tell Tamino I said this!)  If you do the sums you'll get the following:

• 1951-2006 trend ~ 0.124 degrees per decade
• 1951-2012 trend ~ 0.127 degrees per decade.

If you want to quibble about decimal places, let's round it to two decimal places.  The linear trend has increased from 0.12 degrees a decade for 1951 to 2006 to to 0.13 degrees a decade for 1951 to 2012!

David Rose has a lot of cheek, too.  Pretending that he "first reported" a pause.  He doesn't say, but what he is most likely referring to is another slab of lies and disinformation that the Met Office called him out on - here and here.

The Incomprehensible Judith Curry

I'll mention that David quotes Judith Curry (scientist turned denying fan of David Rose) as saying it's "incomprensible to me" that the IPCC would state, very conservatively, that it is 95% certain that humans have caused more than half the temperature rise from 1951 to 2010.  Some science suggests we've caused more than 100% of the rise in temperature since the 1950s.  Here's an article on realclimate.org about attribution and one on SkepticalScience, with this chart:

Figure 1: Net human and natural percent contributions to the observed global surface warming over the past 50-65 years according to Tett et al. 2000 (T00, dark blue), Meehl et al. 2004 (M04, red), Stone et al. 2007 (S07, green), Lean and Rind 2008 (LR08, purple),Huber and Knutti 2011 (HK11, light blue), and Gillett et al. 2012 (G12, orange). . 
Source: SkepticalScience.com

Going by David Rose's record, I won't take it as read that Judith Curry did say that.  However there is little that she says these days that surprises me.  She could claim tomorrow that the moon was made of cheese and it wouldn't surprise me.  Although she probably wouldn't be categorical and would add "but there is a lot of uncertainty" and "we can't be sure if it's Italian cheese". (Apologies to Italians and their wonderful cheeses.)

And he has a long blurb about how Nic Lewis, who is not a climate scientist, reckons he knows a lot more about climate than do the meteorologists at the UK Met.  I can't follow that bit at all.  Here is a report of decadal forecasting by the UK Met Office and a link to information on its HADCM3 model.

This article is more of a mish mash than other articles by David Rose.  It hops and skips and jumps all over the place.  I'd say he's rattled.  He denies the science but is finding it hard to balance his denial with his possible desire to be viewed as anything but another James Delingpole or Anthony Watts.

I won't bother** going into any more detail of the rest of it because it's a gish gallop of "the models are wrong", Bob Ward said his last article was "error strewn" (it was) and complaints about allusions to Nazis - which I myself abhor but which denialati more commonly resort to than do people who accept science.

Message to David Rose - you are just another denier who has somehow managed to hold down a job with a UK tabloid.  Try writing an article on UFOs and little green men from Mars and your typical fans will probably "believe" you.



** I ended up bothering, because it reappeared on WUWT and elsewhere.  Read more here.

Hat tip to Lars Karlsson in the comments.