More twittery nonsense from climate disinformers: In fact, the world is heating up!

There are one or two long-running denier conversations on Twitter. Here is another example of how they operate as illustrated by a tweeter called "StenchJudi".

Despite all the evidence showing the world is rapidly heating up, someone will tweet something outrageously wrong, such as "it's been cooling for twenty years". The only way they can rationalise such a ridiculous statement is by fudging the data, and claiming real observations are "fake".

The chart below shows how the global temperature has changed over the past twenty years, from 1999 to 2018:

There is no excuse for spreading disinformation about climate

This is a personal note about how I consider hard-core deniers and disinformers to be as bad as the worst of the worst of humanity. They are comparable to Charles Manson, Timothy McVeigh and other horrors in that they want to harm people and take pleasure in the thought of civilisation destroying itself.

There is no excuse for anyone these days to doubt climate change or to not accept that we are causing it. In simple terms which everyone should know by now, we are burning more fossil fuel and adding more greenhouse gases to the air. This results in less energy going to space than is coming in from the sun. Our planet is heating up. Ice is melting, seas are rising, storms are more intense and heat waves are hotter. This is killing people, reducing our capacity to grow food, and causing a great deal of harm already. It will get worse before it gets better.

If a serial climate disinformer doesn't like being compared to mass murderers, then they should ask themselves why they are working so hard to bring about death and destruction. Or, they can change their behaviour and stop acting as if they want to. (Today there was a very unpleasant denier who objected to this comparison. He is a long term disinformer about climate change and has now been banned from this blog, so you won't see his comments or my response.) [Update: That particular disinformer just sent a comment to let me know he and his hard-core denier bloggers follow in the footsteps of "Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot...", or words to that effect.]

Just wanted to put that out there.

(See also: Marginalised, alienated and put upon: climate science deniers are not innocent)

Stefan Rahmstorf wins the AGU Climate Communication Prize, so WUWT compares him to Hitler

Is it the horrors of Hurricane Harvey that have unhinged deniers at WUWT? I don't know, but something has.

There have been two articles bashing Stefan Rahmstorf, one of the world's leading ocean scientists. He is Professor of Physics of the Oceans at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). The AGU is awarding him the Climate Communication Prize, which he richly deserves. As some sort of payback, deniers are using the Serengeti Strategy to defame Dr Rahmstorf in two (so far) ugly and ridiculous articles at WUWT.

In the first WUWT article, Charles the Moderator has copied and pasted an unhinged article by someone called Duane Thresher, who has a huge chip on his shoulder against climate scientists. Charles the Moderator included a photo of Hitler because that's what deniers do when they want to smear and defame. It's a Law of Deniers. That article is a nasty denier take on how Dr Rahmstorf took a newspaper to task way back in April 2010, after it published false information about an IPCC report. You can read about this on Dr. Rahmstorf's blog (if you don't read German you'll need to translate).

See the update below for more context.

Donald Trump and his attempts to destroy our planet and societies

Here are some things that Donald Trump is doing to help wreck the environment, the USA, and the world - up to his first four days in office. (This article is an expansion of something I recently wrote at HotWhopper Chat):

1. Nominating science-deniers and corporations (or their proxies) to Cabinet positions (like in charge of the EPA) 
2. Nominating a clueless anti-education person to head up education (keep the plebs ignorant) 
3. Hastening the destruction of the world in general and that of native Americans, by approving the Keystone and Dakota oil pipelines 
4. Silencing (not merely censoring) science and environmental organisations: National Parks, EPA, Department of Agriculture etc.

After the Rally for Science, Anthony Watts' illiterati crowd call for science to end

I wrote to flag the rally that was held to coincide with AGU16. Anthony Watts, who yesterday missed the fact that it was on, finally found a flyer but I don't know if he went or not. He posted some photos, but he didn't take them. Instead he filched them from Twitter and gave no credit. This tweet has one of the photos Anthony posted, but didn't take himself.

More great pics from #standupforscience demo at @theAGU "Ice has no agenda, it just melts" is a good slogan, btw pic.twitter.com/YsqAZMyQR2

— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) December 13, 2016

A new low from creepy sleazy Anthony Watts, stalking climate scientists and reading their emails

Anthony Watts is a creep. Yes, you knew that. Today there's another example. He wrote about how he's been stalking climate scientists and their families (archived here). It's another low from Anthony Watts, posting aerial shots of what he said was the roof of the homes of some scientists in the USA. He was pawing through the Internet and Google Earth looking to find climate scientists who didn't have solar panels on their roofs. Anthony wrote:

From the “arch denier Watts leads the way” department (see my photos below) I thought it would be interesting to see how many climate scientists actually have solar power on their home, so I did an aerial survey to find out. The results don’t speak well for them. Don’t worry, I did not disclose anyone’s address – Anthony

The first thing that struck me was how sleazy that was. The second was how offensive it is to judge a person's understanding of climate change by whether they had solar panels or not. The third thing that I noticed was that most of the photos showed houses surrounded by trees. Trees have a habit of blocking the sun and don't mix well with solar panels. Another thing I noticed was that he got some houses wrong - one he discovered and at least one he didn't.

Denier Deception #67: Disgusting Jim Steele misrepresents Dr. Kevin Trenberth

Kevin Trenberth is one of the world's leading climate scientists and a top science communicator. He is one of the experts who is more than willing to explain the science of climate to the general public and is often approached by journalists.

Jim Steele is a science denier and disinformer. I doubt he would ever be approached by mainstream scientific journalists. Jim uses climate conspiracy blogger Anthony Watts to promote his denial and his vanity-published denier manifesto.

Kevin Trenberth has 700 papers listed in his Google Scholar listing, and an h-index to weep for (97). Jim Steele has zero peer-reviewed publications and probably doesn't know what an h-index is.

Jim Steele goes to Serengeti to hunt Kevin Trenberth

Kevin Trenberth stands head, shoulders
and neck above the rest.

Today Jim Steele has written a Gish gallop attacking Dr Kevin Trenberth (archived here). As you know, this is a favourite technique of science deniers. It doesn't work so well these days, since the technique was named the Serengeti Strategy (by Michael Mann in his book "The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars"). The aim is to try to discredit an individual scientist, isolate them from all the other climate scientists, and then say "aha - climate science is a hoax".

Yeah - it's pretty dumb, isn't it. Even were someone to find a mistake in a scientific paper, or object to something a scientist once said, it's hardly going to tear down the fabric of science. Most of the time, however, as in this case, it's the deniers who get it wrong, not the scientist they are attacking.

I thought about which Serengeti animal would typify Dr Trenberth and settled on the giraffe. It's got a great personality, it stands head, shoulders and neck above the rest of us mere mortals, it's elegant, and it would respond to attacks from dim deniers with the grace and wit befitting an honest person of strong character, like Dr Kevin Trenberth.

Just plain evil: Anthony Watts and PopTech sink to a new low

I'm not surprised that the despicable denier, PopTech would sink this low, but I must admit that I'm surprised at Anthony Watts, despite all the slime that has come from him over the years. They are both effectively arguing that no descendant of any of the tens of millions of people conscripted to the German armed forces early last century, no matter where they live now, and no matter what their or their forebears' personal beliefs or politics are or were, has any credibility when it comes to climate science. Why? Because they or their ancestors "fought for the Nazis".

It is probably the most abhorrent use of Godwin's Law you can imagine.

Note: See the upshot below in the update.

What a treat for Judith Curry - supping with the morally depraved

Judith Curry is going to be testifying to a Senate Committee next week, along with some other climate science deniers and at least one scientist defamer. The others testifying are from the rogues gallery of science disinformers. The GOP could only find two people who are employed as climate scientists, Judith Curry and John Christy. So they reached into the science denier bag and fished out two disinformers for hire: Will Happer, and Mark Steyn.

Why do the Republicans bother with this crude pantomime? Why not just hang a sign around their necks saying "we want the world to burn"?

Anthony Watts sinks to another vile low: Jim Jones' suicide cult and climate science

With only a couple of days to go until the Paris COP21 talks begin, science deniers are falling apart. Yesterday I wrote how Judith Curry stooped to tabloid writer David Rose as a pulpit for her brand of "no mitigation" advocacy and disinformation. (She is so anxious that her message is falling on deaf ears that she put out a plea to "Be sure to link to the article" and commented "I hope that as a result of this article, i will get a few more twitter followers and followers of Climate Etc.".)

Today Anthony Watts did a Heartland Institute. He posted an article at his blog, WUWT, likening people who accept climate science to Jim Jones and his suicide cult. His latest article proclaims (archived here):

Similarities to Jim Jones and the Cult of Climate Change

"...The apocalypse of an alleged climate change shares many of Jones’ cult-like qualities."

[Update: See the update below relating to plagiarism in the WUWT article.]

Blistering letter from House Committee member to Lamar Smith about his baseless smear campaign against NOAA scientists

You may have read about US Congressman Lamar Smith's ongoing vindictive harassment and smear campaign against scientists at NOAA. You might have also read about his latest allegations of "whistleblowers". If you are wondering if there is anything behind this, other than a deranged attack on science, scientists and the NOAA, then wonder no more.

There is not.

To prove this point, just read the letter to Lamar Smith from Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, a member of the committee of which Lamar Smith is chair - the Committee on Space, Science and Technology.

I'll quote some segments damning the unconscionable actions of this vindictive, out-of-control, grandstanding US congressman, Lamar Smith. The bolding and some paragraph breaks are mine.

Laid bare: the sociopathology of climate science denial

Within minutes of the terrorist killings in Paris last night, there was a WUWT blog article, plus numerous tweets and retweets. Anthony Watts milked the horror of the terrorist attacks in Paris for all he could get out of it (archived here and here). Several hours later he added a French flag and the word "solidarité" to his blog header (archived here), perhaps in an attempt to soften his crass opportunism, or perhaps make more mileage.

This episode demonstrates again what Anthony and his followers at wattsupwiththat.com (WUWT) are really like underneath their charade of climate science denial. It's not the first time Anthony Watts has shown he has no class and is incapable of empathy. In the past he has seized on a disastrous tragedy, Haiyan, and used it as an opportunity for another attack on science. And if you decide to read the WUWT comments, you'll see that denial goes hand in hand with the bigotry of some deniers.

Shame on them.

Update: Dr Roy Spencer PhD tops the efforts of Anthony Watts and most of the deniers at WUWT. See the comments below for details, or read what he wrote on his Facebook page.

Sou 11:15 am 15 November 2015

[Note: Out of respect for the victims of the terrorist attacks in Paris, and their families, and all of France, I postponed the publication of this article for a few hours. If you do comment, I know you'll remember that this blog is viewed by people from around the world, and will respect those who've been touched by the horrific events in Paris.]

Anthony Watts indulges in an abysmal showing of poor (hurricane) taste at WUWT

I was keeping an eye on the articles at WUWT. It's been quite boring there lately. There've have been a bunch of articles about Exxon, and how it was researching climate way back when. These did nothing but confuse deniers.

What I was watching for, was to see how or if Anthony Watts would deal with the latest extreme weather event - Hurricane Patricia. This hurricane is the most intense on record - as a hurricane. And the most fierce tropical cyclone ever recorded in the western hemisphere.

Well, Anthony still can't bring himself to write about it. That's bad enough for someone who passes himself off as a meteorologist (unqualified), and who lives in North America. It's not just Mexico that's suffering under Hurricane Patricia. The effects will be felt right through to Texas and other US states.

Instead he did the unbelievable - even for a science-denying climate conspiracy blog.

Freed of any values, Judith Curry slithers and slides and hurtles into deniersville

Addendum: I see there have been quite a few visitors from Judith Curry's blog today. I found out the reason. Judith has posted a link to this article describing it as "And now into the sewer". I agree that Poptech's article outing another blogger is properly describe as sewer-ish behaviour and I'm surprised that Judith would promote it, if she does indeed find that behaviour unseemly. (Perhaps she doesn't, which wouldn't surprise me.) I also find it strange that she thinks that this HotWhopper article, which points out Judith's lies and false innuendos about scientists, and how she implies that President Obama should not apply values, is sewer-ish. Another example of the Judith behaving as the black pot? Is the irony lost on her?

Sou Sunday 25 January 2015 2:13 pm AEDT

---

Judith Curry cannot help herself any more and she'll find it hard to get anyone respectable to help her. She is now a gung ho denier of the extreme kind.

I first saw it in her years ago. It was as plain as the nose on her face. I wasn't the only one. I'm aware that many scientists denied the signs of Judith Curry's denial for a long time and some probably still do. I think they just cannot accept that one of their own could do such an about face. That a senior academic could turn her back on science and malign her colleagues. Those scientists are in denial.

Remember, we're not talking mere contrarian scientist here. Judith no longer does science. We're not even talking Richard Lindzen-style denialism. He's nothing more than a mildly eccentric emeritus contrarian by comparison. We're talking full blown denial of the wacky and nasty and vitriolic kind. The sort of person who will pick up and repeat any nasty rumour, without regard for facts. Who will malign her colleagues and keep on doing so, on no grounds other than she heard someone else say something.


Here's some of Judith's latest, if you're interested (from here). Her blog is now a parody. It's every bit as bad as WUWT. Judith's nuttery is in italics. (She's totally lost it.)

The problem is that President Obama is listening to scientists that are either playing politics with their expertise, or responding to a political mandate from the administration (probably a combination of both).   Not just administrators in govt labs (e.g. Schmidt, Karl), but think of the scientist networks of John Holdren and John Podesta:  to me the scariest one one is Mann to Romm to Podesta.

That's not any pot calling a kettle black. There's only Judith, the black pot. That's political Judith unable to accept that real scientists do real science and report it. They don't make up stuff, tell lies, make a fool of themselves over simple arithmetic, or tout deniers like Senator Inhofe as being reasonable people. And her personal animosity to Professor Mann? There's got to be a back story somewhere. Did he jilt her? Did he get the job she wanted? Is it just jealousy that his hockey stick beat her hurricane? Who knows. Michael Mann is probably as bewildered by her weird obsession with him as the rest of us.

So what is wrong with President Obama’s statements as cited above?
His statement about humans having exacerbated extreme weather events is not supported by the IPCC

Oh yes it is supported by the IPCC. The latest IPCC report refers to heat waves (killing thousands of people) and intense downpours in particular. Plus droughts that have been exacerbated by the warming.

The Pentagon is confusing climate change with extreme weather (see above)

 I doubt it.

‘Climate change is real’ is almost a tautology; climate has always changed and always will, independently of anything humans do.

Oh my! Is Judith really quoting the well-worn denier meme "climate has always changed"? Sheesh!

His tweet about ‘97%’ is based on an erroneous and discredited paper [link]

Bullshit. The Cook13 paper has never been discredited. It has won awards. Nor have any of the other papers been discredited, the other papers showing that 97% of climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming. Does Judith Curry seriously think that 97% of scientists don't agree that humans are causing global warming? What the heck does she think scientists have found is causing it. Oh, I forgot. She recently decided that it was 220% of something else that was causing global warming. We're all still waiting to learn what the 220% is. Could be Force X or the Notch.

As for ‘Denial from Congress is dangerous’, I doubt that anyone in Congress denies that climate changes.  The issue of ‘dangerous’ is a hypothetical, and relates to values (not science).

There are no deniers in Congress? More bullshit, disguised with a denierism ("climate always changes"). In the same article, Judith gave many column inches to one of the more infamous deniers in the USA - her idol Senator Inhofe.

As for the issue of "denial from Congress is dangerous" being a hypothetical and relating to values not science - yeah. I remember her being very hypothetical last year, when she wanted her city to close all the roads because of the 30% risk of a hypothetical inch of snow. A value judgement if ever there was one.

Did the 173 people who were burnt to death in the Black Saturday fires die happily knowing they were sacrificing themselves to Judith's lack of values? Was the lack of values a comfort to the people they left behind? What about the thousands who died in the heat waves in Russia and western Europe? And did all those who perished or lost their homes and livelihood in Haiyan figure they didn't count because "values"?

The President of the United States of America should not have values?

But the worst part is that Judith is basically saying that the President of the USA should not aspire to values. That he should be valueless. She wasn't quoting a scientist talking about 'denial from Congress' being 'dangerous'.  Judith was quoting one of the most powerful men in the world. One whose day-to-day decisions can determine the fate of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people. Sometimes millions of people. If the President of the United States of America is not meant to have values, if he is not meant to let values guide his decisions, then there is no hope for humanity.

Walking back a conspiracy theory

After enough people accused her of being the wacky conspiracy theorist she's become, Judith thought better of it and deleted one of her conspiracy theories, but left the rest. She wrote:

(JC note:  I am deleting the following text ‘the timing of  the NASA/NOAA press release on warmest year was motivated by the timing of the President’s SOTU address’)

Give the lady a medal. One conspiracy theory down, a zillion more to come.

What I don't understand

I see apparently reasonable people still commenting on Judith's blog. That's the part that I don't understand. How can they lend their support to her? I don't get it. [Not nearly as many reasonable people comment there these days, I should add. The comments are predominately from other deniers. Sou 25 Jan.]

Disgusting deniers: wanting "freedom of speech" to spread climate disinformation

At WUWT there is another distasteful cartoon in the style of the Heartland Institute's murderers and terrorists posters (archived here). The WUWT article and cartoon by Josh, draws a fake analogy between the massacre of the Paris-based cartoonists and the so-called "rights" of deniers to defame scientists and spread disinformation. (Deniers don't complain about WUWT banning people, in fact one of the worst offending would-be censors, a sock-puppeting moderator at WUWT, denies that, too.)

Here is what xkcd has to say about free speech (h/t BW):

Suck it up, deniers!

Disgusting Deniers: Anthony Watts exploits the publicity he got from Tim Ball

Added an addendum. Sou 28 Nov 14

Update again - The article I've written about now has more than 500 comments (archived here) and Anthony has chosen to not dilute it's impact (he's not posted any other article today), unusually but not unexpectedly. Thus adding considerable weight to my contention that Anthony Watts saw the opportunity presented by Tim Ball's article as too good to pass up. He couldn't believe his luck when he got the huge bonus that scientists themselves even offered to lodge a complaint at WUWT. This is being mis-sold as if it means Tim Ball's nasty weird impossible ideas has legs (smoke and fire). Meanwhile Anthony Watts is sitting back with a big smirk on his face, rubbing his hands gleefully.
Sou - 28 November 2014


Tim Ball wrote an absolutely disgusting article from his first words to his last and everything in between, and Anthony Watts went and put it up on his blog - see here. Lots of people were appalled and shocked. So you can guess how bad it must have been. For anyone to be shocked at something that appears at WUWT it has to be really, really bad.

Anthony's reaction was shameful and continues to be so. He tweeted at one point (h/t rubiginosa):

@BarryJWoods I've offered Betts a guest post to refute it and I've put a disclaimer on it. See PM to you
— Watts Up With That (@wattsupwiththat) November 26, 2014

Can you imagine? WUWT claimed that all climate scientists, including Richard Betts, are fooling the world and engaged in some giant deception, and Anthony has the gall to invite a scientist to "refute" it. He sees a chance to get more people to read his blog.

Concern Trolling at the Australian: Graham Lloyd and his despicable war on science

They say that the best defence is attack. When you've not got a leg to stand on, when you've been found out for the despicable muckraker you are, then bare your teeth and snarl, then whine and whimper.

Apparently that's what Graham Lloyd, denier in residence at a newspaper called The Australian, thinks. He has no credibility in scientific circles. I know that sometimes scientists have to respond, just because he publishes his tripe in a national daily.

Graham Lloyd bills himself as an "environmental editor". What he does is quite different. He's a gutter press style of hack. He is so lazy that he's been known to copy disinformation from other gutter press rags - like that of his counterpart in the UK who writes for a sensationalist tabloid.

Attacking climate scientists and misleading the public about climate change seems to be part of Graham Lloyd's job description. I don't know if The Australian had the gall to write that in to his job description or letter of appointment, but maybe Graham figures that if he doesn't pull his weight in that regard, he'll be out on his ear. Facts aren't an issue for Graham. He doesn't let such details get in the way of his disinformation campaigns.

Rhetorical tricks from Graham Lloyd

Take what he's written today. He's fakes a whine and a whinge and makes up allegations out of thin air. All rhetoric no substance. A slimy attack by innuendo.

IT reflects poorly on key members of Australia’s climate science establishment that tribal loyalty is more important than genuine inquiry.

See the rhetorical trick? Graham comes out with a whine as if there really was "tribal loyalty" and as if there was some "genuine enquiry".

No, Graham. There was no genuine enquiry. This isn't a matter of tribal loyalty. The only thing your denialist propaganda brigade is genuine about is spreading FUD. Genuine but not open. You hide behind slimy innuendo and rhetoric. Just like that opening sentence of yours. What you have been engaged in for years now, is spreading disinformation about climate and attacking the integrity of hard-working scientists. It's your modus operandi. It's the essence of how you wage your ongoing war on science.

Graham then indulges in some ad hominem histrionics and writes:

Openness not ad hominem histrionics was always the answer for lingering concerns about what happened to some of the nation’s temperature records under the Bureau of Meteorology’s process of homogenisation.

Pure histrionics from Graham Lloyd. More rhetoric. More slimy innuendo. See what he's done? Was this the end game from the start? Make up some fake allegations. Call them "concerns" - in true concern troll fashion. Then when they are shown to be without foundation insinuate that the Bureau wasn't open from the start.

There were no lingering concerns by anyone. Graham concocted them. He manufactured a controversy when there was none. Was it all so that he could fill his slot for a few days? He could have written this latest piece three weeks ago and barely changed a word. He could have planned it out from the beginning. His sleazy tactics had a predictable outcome.

Graham thinks "oh, this is a good trick. Now I'll insinuate that the Bureau isn't transparent."

BoM’s independent peer review panel called for greater transparency. BoM did not heed the call and when questions were raised the reflexive response of its supporters has been to shoot the messenger.

The Bureau is transparent. It publishes more information than Graham ever bothered to look for. And shoot what messenger? Why should an organisation like the Bureau of Meteorology pay any attention to a messenger from the Denial Propaganda Machine? Does Graham really think that a worm like himself should be paid any attention at all? Someone so mired in the murky world of science denial that he goes to denialist bloggers instead of scientists, just so he can manufacture doubt where there is none?

For BoM’s defenders, the fact that scientist Jennifer Marohasy once worked for the Institute of Public Affairs is somehow more important than her call for clarity on why a cooling trend at several weather stations has been turned into a warming one by BoM.

Melbourne University professor David Karoly has called BoM’s inquisitors amateurs. And in yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald, Monash University astronomer Michael Brown said asking questions was an “attempt to deny a century of science that proves global warming has occurred and will continue to do so”.

If Professor David Karoly said that, he is correct. Dr Michael Brown is spot on. Jennifer Marohasy does not call for "clarity". She is a disinformer. Like Graham himself, I doubt she is the least bit interested in "clarity". Her business is the creation of uncertainty and doubt. Clarity would be the last thing that she or Graham wants. Take this very article from Graham as an example.

Graham continues with his unfounded innuendo. More rhetorical tricks.

It is entirely appropriate to ask public institutions to be open with real facts about actual events.

There you go. That's exactly what I was talking about. Graham has done a great job of creating a straw man. The Bureau of Meteorology is more transparent than almost any other agency. But Graham has gone out of his way to sow the seed of doubt and suggest otherwise.

The belated compliance by BoM to publish its reasoning is proof enough of what was the right thing to do all along.

What "belated compliance" is he talking about? He doesn't say in that article, but I found another article of his where he says there is a new page of information about ACORN-SAT.  He doesn't link to any "publication of its reasoning". Perhaps it is this explanation of ACORN-SAT. Oh no - that one's been up for ages. Perhaps it's this technical document with a detailed explanation of homogenisation and the The Australian Climate Observations Reference Network. Oh, no - that's been up on the website for ages. It was published in March 2012. Maybe it's this 2012 paper from the Bureau's Blair Trewin, if Graham ever bothered to read any science. Oh no - that's behind a paywall. You can't expect the "environment editor" of an Australian national daily to go to the trouble of reading science.

What Graham Lloyd is referring to is this page. A new tab on the ACORN-SAT information website, that describes adjustments in simpler terms so that even a nong like Graham Lloyd might, if he tried hard, be able to understand.

The other thing that Graham is saying is that if some denier blogger makes up stuff on a blog somewhere on the internet, Graham Lloyd expects the Bureau of Meteorology to shut down all its important ongoing work, and pay it any mind at all.

If the Bureau of Meteorology stopped what it was doing to respond to every attack on its integrity from piddly disinformers on denier blogs somewhere on the internet, it would never release any weather forecasts. Then Graham Lloyd might have something to complain about.

Concern Trolling

Graham Lloyd in his article was being a concern troll. He was pretending to be "concerned" about openness and transparency when there is already more openness and transparency than anyone could hope for. What he did was manufacture a controversy when there was none. When it was shown there was no controversy he resorted to slimy innuendo.

Graham Lloyd demonstrates not just a complete lack of integrity, but a determination to impugn the integrity of others. He is without honour. Without principles. A paid hack who long ago sold his soul to the disinformation devil.

Further reading

If you want to read more about The Australian newspaper's attack on the Bureau of Meteorology, Graham Readfearn has been keeping tabs on it. Not to forget Tim Lambert's excellent record of The Australian's "War on Science", going back over time.

The ugly denier: a real, clear and present danger

Denialism is ugly. At its heart is an abdication of responsibility. Denialism goes hand in hand with bigotry and worse. Today there's an example of that at WUWT.

Anthony Watts claims (archived here) that John Kerry is mentally ill because of a speech he gave at a ceremony "in Honor of Special Representative to Muslim Communities Shaarik Zafar". It is part of the role of the Secretary of State to give speeches at ceremonies like this. It is also part of their role to reach out and speak out in times of crisis and difficulty. In particular, to remind everyone that that people of all faiths and no faith can live in harmony, despite what is happening elsewhere in the world. You can read the speech here.

John Kerry doesn't avoid reference to the ugly events by a radical political group that pretends to be Islamic. He faces it head on. He also makes the point that those actions are not the face of Islam.

Anthony Watts on the other hand is a muckraker who not only wants to destroy the planet by preventing any action to mitigate global warming, he now comes out as a warmonger. An ugly bigot inciting hatred. He's shown his sociopathic tendencies before in other ways. Now he's combining his determination to destroy the planet by warming with his desire to destroy the planet by inciting hatred of Muslims.

I don't know if all climate science deniers are bigots, racist and sexist or not. Probably not. But evidence suggests that they are more likely to be so than the general population.

Let me illustrate. Anthony Watts under a headline: "Is John Kerry mentally ill? ‘Scriptures Commands America To Protect Muslims From Global Warming ‘, quoted this part of the speech in support of his claim that John Kerry is mentally ill:

Our faiths are inextricably linked on any number of things that we must confront and deal with in policy concepts today. Our faiths are inextricably linked on the environment. For many of us, respect for God’s creation also translates into a duty to protect and sustain his first creation, Earth, the planet,

Confronting climate change is, in the long run, one of the greatest challenges that we face, and you can see this duty or responsibility laid out in Scriptures clearly, beginning in Genesis. And Muslim-majority countries are among the most vulnerable. Our response to this challenge ought to be rooted in a sense of stewardship of Earth, and for me and for many of us here today, that responsibility comes from God.

Anthony followed it up by writing this, to stir up the bigotry and lynch mob mentality of his rabble:

I do hope Mr. Kerry travels to the heart of an ISIS stronghold to deliver this message personally. Maybe then he’ll gain a sense of priority and perhaps, some sanity when he realizes his epic mistake. 

What Anthony chose not to quote was any of the rest of the speech. For example, this was what immediately followed the above:

We also know that a cadre of extremists – nihilists, people like ISIL – are just waiting to seduce these people into accepting the dead end. And when people don’t have a job, when they can’t get an education, when their voices are silenced by draconian laws or by violence or oppression, we’ve all witnessed the instability that follows from that, from the lack of dignity and respect for the human person. To meet the demands of these populations for dignity and opportunity, frankly, requires new and creative partnerships. That’s why Shaun is here. That’s why we’re here today. We need to reach beyond government to include religious leaders and faith communities, entrepreneurs, civil society groups, all of them working together to invest in a future that embraces tolerance and understanding, and yes, even love.

Anthony Watts is very lucky he lives in a democracy where he probably won't be punished for inciting hatred like he has. He has the freedom to belong to a cadre of WUWT extemists, nihilists, deniers. He is free to seduce his followers into accepting a dead end. He doesn't have the excuse of not being able to get an education. His voice is not silenced by draconian laws or by violence or by oppression. Anthony Watts has no excuse for his lack of dignity, for inciting hatred. Anthony Watts doesn't want to reach out or work together with others to make the world a better place. He is free to do all this, just as I am free to be disgusted by his behaviour.

Usually there is something to ridicule at WUWT.  This WUWT article is beyond ridicule. It is a reminder that deniers at WUWT aren't just depressingly ugly, they are a real, clear and present danger.

When deniers have nothing, they recycle dead arguments....

In the ongoing effort to demonise the work of Professor Michael Mann in particular, Anthony Watts, Steve McIntyre, Judith Curry and John Christy are passing around wrong and worn out "arguments", presumably to try to bolster a defense for the people who allegedly libelled Professor Mann.

It's a pathetic effort on behalf of a pathetic lot from the climate science disinformation brigade.

In a repost at WUWT, Steve McIntyre (and Anthony Watts) are arguably wanting to be added to the list of people being sued.  It's as if they think that if they misrepresent history often enough someone will believe them.

I don't know what point they think they are trying to make. It looks as if they are trying to resurrect "trial by email", which has been tried before and failed dismally. (Update: see especially Marco's comment below, and the links to deepclimate's damning indictments of Steve McIntyre here and here).

I've already written about the misrepresentations from John Christy, which Judith Curry resurrected recently and that is now apparently being touted again at Steve McIntyre's blog and WUWT.  Anthony Watts (archived here) copies Steve McIntyre who copies Judith Curry who quoted from John Christy's misleading testimony to the US government:

Christy gave the following damning summary of Mann’s conduct as IPCC TAR Lead Author:

Regarding the Hockey Stick of IPCC 2001 evidence now indicates, in my view, that an IPCC Lead Author working with a small cohort of scientists, misrepresented the temperature record of the past 1000 years by (a) promoting his own result as the best estimate, (b) neglecting studies that contradicted his, and (c) amputating another’s result so as to eliminate conflicting data and limit any serious attempt to expose the real uncertainties of these data.

Three things.

1. Serengeti Strategy: Singling out one from 850 plus people

Firstly, John Christy was also a lead author of Chapter 2 of TAR, the chapter in question, so he is as culpable as any other lead author of its content.  The other lead authors were: R.A. Clarke, G.V. Gruza, J. Jouzel, M.E. Mann, J. Oerlemans, M.J. Salinger, S.-W. Wang.

In addition there were two coordinating lead authors of Chapter 2, C.K. Folland, T.R. Karl, who presumably vetted the final content.

And two review editors:  R. Hallgren, B. Nyenzi who would also have had a say.

Not only that but there were 140 contributing authors:

J. Bates, M. Crowe, P. Frich, P. Groisman, J. Hurrell, P. Jones, D. Parker, T. Peterson, D. Robinson, J. Walsh, M. Abbott, L. Alexander, H. Alexandersson, R. Allan, R. Alley, P. Ambenje, P. Arkin, L. Bajuk, R. Balling, M.Y. Bardin, R. Bradley, R. Brázdil, K.R. Briffa, H. Brooks, R.D. Brown, S. Brown, M. Brunet-India, M. Cane, D. Changnon, S. Changnon, J. Cole, D. Collins, E. Cook, A. Dai, A. Douglas, B. Douglas, J.C. Duplessy, D. Easterling, P. Englehart, R.E. Eskridge, D. Etheridge, D. Fisher, D. Gaffen, K. Gallo, E. Genikhovich, D. Gong, G. Gutman,W. Haeberli, J. Haigh, J. Hansen, D. Hardy, S. Harrison, R. Heino, K. Hennessy,W. Hogg, S. Huang, K. Hughen, M.K. Hughes, M. Hulme, H. Iskenderian, O.M. Johannessen, D. Kaiser, D. Karoly, D. Kley, R. Knight, K.R. Kumar, K. Kunkel, M. Lal, C. Landsea, J. Lawrimore, J. Lean, C. Leovy, H. Lins, R. Livezey, K.M. Lugina, I. Macadam, J.A. Majorowicz, B. Manighetti, J. Marengo, E. Mekis, M.W. Miles, A. Moberg, I. Mokhov, V. Morgan, L. Mysak, M. New, J. Norris, L. Ogallo, J. Overpeck, T. Owen, D. Paillard, T. Palmer, C. Parkinson, C.R. Pfister, N. Plummer, H. Pollack, C. Prentice, R. Quayle, E.Y. Rankova, N. Rayner, V.N. Razuvaev, G. Ren, J. Renwick, R. Reynolds, D. Rind, A. Robock, R. Rosen, S. Rösner, R. Ross, D. Rothrock, J.M. Russell, M. Serreze,W.R. Skinner, J. Slack, D.M. Smith, D. Stahle, M. Stendel, A. Sterin, T. Stocker, B. Sun, V. Swail, V. Thapliyal, L. Thompson,W.J. Thompson, A. Timmermann, R. Toumi, K. Trenberth, H. Tuomenvirta, T. van Ommen, D. Vaughan, K.Y. Vinnikov, U. von Grafenstein, H. von Storch, M. Vuille, P. Wadhams, J.M. Wallace, S. Warren,W. White, P. Xie, P. Zhai 

And nearly 700 "expert reviewers".

So to my way of thinking, to put imagined "wrongs" of any single IPCC report (which has been twice superseded) on the shoulders of one lone individual and neglect the more than 850 other people who played a part, is a bit much!  What it demonstrates is the Serengeti Strategy so beloved of disinformers and deniers. This time they try to isolate one individual from a very large herd.

2. A false claim from the disinformers

Secondly, the chapter did not misrepresent the temperature record of the past 1,000 years. At the time, arguably the paper by Mann and colleagues was indeed the "best estimate". In any case, Chapter 2 of the IPCC TAR included references to other reconstructions with citations and charts.

3. Deniers are out of touch and out of date

Thirdly, there have been two more IPCC reports since TAR and they present more recent research, which has refined knowledge with new data and multiple new temperature reconstructions, all of which lend support to earlier findings.

Box TS.5 Figure 1 Last-millennium simulations and reconstructions Source: IPCC AR5 WG1

Disinformers are misleading

Anthony's copy and paste misleadingly includes the following claim:

Further, both the Oxburgh and Muir Russell reports concluded that the IPCC 2001 graphic was “misleading”. 

This is misleading! The Muir Russell report referred to the WMO graphic used on the cover of the 1999 report and only indirectly, in parenthesis, to the IPCC TAR, writing about "one of the series" (not the others of the series):

25. The WMO report is a short document produced annually. It does not have the status or importance of the IPCC reports. The figure in question was a frontispiece and there is no major discussion or emphasis on it in the text. The caption of the figure states: "Northern Hemisphere temperatures were reconstructed for the past 1000 years (up to 1999) using palaeoclimatic records (tree rings, corals, ice cores, lake sediments, etc.), along with historical and long instrumental records”.

26. Finding: In relation to "hide the decline" we find that, given its subsequent iconic significance (not least the use of a similar figure in the TAR), the figure supplied for the WMO Report was misleading in not describing that one of the series was truncated post 1960 for the figure, and in not being clear on the fact that proxy and instrumental data were spliced together. We do not find that it is misleading to curtail reconstructions at some point per se, or to splice data, but we believe that both of these procedures should have been made plain – ideally in the figure but certainly clearly described in either the caption or the text.

The Oxburgh report does not use the word "misleading" in relation to the WMO graphic or any TAR temperature reconstruction.  The only relevant passage I could find was this:

Recent public discussion of climate change and summaries and popularizations of the work of CRU and others often contain oversimplifications that omit serious discussion of uncertainties emphasized by the original authors. For example, CRU publications repeatedly emphasize the discrepancy between instrumental and tree-based proxy reconstructions of temperature during the late 20th century, but presentations of this work by the IPCC and others have sometimes neglected to highlight this issue. While we find this regrettable, we could find no such fault with the peer-reviewed papers we examined.

I think it's worth emphasising what the Oxburgh report noted. For example, one of the papers referred to in TAR emphasizes uncertainties and limitations in its title - Mann, M.E., R.S. Bradley, and M.K. Hughes, 1999: "Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations". Geophys. Res. Lett., 26, 759-762.  Since that paper was published there have been numerous other reconstructions. When you take them together with the instrumental records you end up with a hockey stick!

It's also worth highlighting the Addendum to the Oxburgh report, which clearly states about "any research group in the field of climate change":

For the avoidance of misunderstanding in the light of various press stories, it is important to be clear that the neither the panel report nor the press briefing intended to imply that any research group in the field of climate change had been deliberately misleading in any of their analyses or intentionally exaggerated their findings. Rather, the aim was to draw attention to the complexity of statistics in this field, and the need to use the best possible methods.

Meanwhile, the world takes its sweet time to act decisively

The main point, though, is that all this is past history.  There has been a lot more work in the thirteen years since then.  While climate science deniers are obsessed with misrepresenting the past, we keep marching on toward hotter global temperatures and rapidly changing climates. The world hasn't even stopped increasing annual CO2 emissions, let alone reduced them.

A better t-shirt for WUWT-ers

Anthony Watts has a t-shirt for sale, celebrating what deniers think of as success in making Earth more dangerous.

According to Anthony's t-shirt they didn't survive Y2K but those who are still around did survive 400 ppm of CO2.

Since science deniers are surprisingly into extreme risks, here's an even better t-shirt that would fit their jubilant mood and ambitions:

I don't know if they'll have the time (or attention span) to improve the t-shirt as I suggested.  They are now busy arguing amongst each other over whether one denier camp's 'theory' that the earth is heading for an ice age is better or worse than the other denier camp's theory that the greenhouse effect doesn't exist and "all the physics is wrong" or another camp's theory that global warming is real but 'insignificant' and is caused by thunderstorms or another camp's theory that ENSO has suddenly decided to cause global warming.