Anthony Watts and his critical thinking cherry blossom fail

Anthony Watts runs a climate conspiracy blog called WUWT. He dismisses most climate science as "claims" and thinks that global warming is caused by Russian steampipes. Anthony often suffers confirmation bias, meaning he doesn't understand what he reads because his mind, shaped by his personal view of the world, twists it into something else altogether.

Credit: Uberlemur 

Yesterday he decided to take on the National Parks Service and plant researchers, and disputed the main causes of trends in blossoming time of cherry trees in Washington DC. Incidentally, Anthony is still fighting World War II, though it took place before he was born. He wrote:

We can assume that because the Washington cherry trees are curated and budding times tracked by the National Park Service that they get plenty of water and nutrients, after all we can’t have dead and dying cherry trees on the mall. That would insult Japan, who made them a gift in 1912 before they decided to surprise bomb the crap out of us at Pearl Harbor.

Sequel to: Anthony Watts visits Greenland and finds Airport UHI disease!

Update - see below for Anthony Watts' acknowledgement.

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Who could forget Anthony Watts finding UHI disease at Maniitsok airport in Greenland?

Greenland sets new record high temperature this year: Confirmed

Here's the sequel. From Jason Semonow, Capital Weather Gang at Washington Post:

Today, John Cappelen, senior climatologist at the Danish Meteorological Society, emailed me to let me know the record high of 25.9 C (78.6 F) set on July 30 at Maniitsoq stands.

“I have now accepted the record at Maniitsoq based on further analysis,” Cappelen said.

At issue was whether the temperature measurement, taken at an airport location, was legitimate. Artificial heat sources at airports can sometimes corrupt temperature readings.

“We were faced with two options,” Coppelen explained. “We could reject the observation, or we could approve it. If we chose to overrule it, it could be based on two things. One was a faulty sensor/station…and that was not the question – the sensor measured exactly as it should. The second was if we had suspected that extreme local conditions played their part. Here the situation is more debatable, because the station is an airport station that is not necessarily completely optimal in relation to international guidelines for climatological data measurements.”

But Coppelen said the mere fact the temperature was recorded at an airport is not a reason for it be thrown out as few existing weather observing stations in Greenland are ideally sited.

“Within the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) prescribed practices, among other things, measurements – as an example – should be taken over a short lawn,” Coppelen said. “This can be done in Denmark almost anywhere, but in Greenland almost no places.”

Coppelen concluded: “The station in Maniitsoq is within the quality frame practicable/possible for this type of meteorological measurements in Greenland, so it is approved. Alternative would be to question many observations and weather records for Greenland…it doesn’t make sense

DMI press release here.

As a reminder, I posted some suggestions for the weather station siting since Anthony Watts complained it was no good, pointing out the other suggestions were even darker, with not a lawn in sight.

Should we anticipate an article by Anthony Watts acknowledging the record temperature set at Maniitsok in Greenland this year?

Update 

Friday 13 Sept 3:39 pm: 

Anthony Watts has posted the fact that a record has been recorded in his latest WUWT Hot Sheet (archived here).  He hasn't updated his original article (archived here). H/t Thomas Murphy.

The original HotWhopper article and the follow up.

Anthony Watts of WUWT gets noticed by Capital Weather Gang at The Washington Post

Update: There is a sequel :)


Anthony Watts of WUWT has hit the big time, being noticed by The Washington Post.  But he's not the only one :)

I didn't mention what prompted Anthony's humourous efforts to find something wrong with a weather station in Greenland the other day.  It was a short article by Jason Samenow of Capital Weather Gang at the Washington Post observing that a record temperature had been reported by the Danish Meteorological Institute.

Jason was subsequently plagued by tweets from Anthony Watts, demanding he issue a "retraction".  Not once, not twice but three times.  Anthony also sent an email.  Anthony really got his knickers in a twist over that one.  Here are his tweets:

@capitalweather you'll need to issue a retraction, sorry. http://t.co/Bh5rz2kVTe
— Watts Up With That (@wattsupwiththat) August 10, 2013

@capitalweather @JSamenow Are you guys going to issue retraction? Been 24 hours now. http://t.co/Bh5rz2kVTe
— Watts Up With That (@wattsupwiththat) August 11, 2013

@capitalweather @JSamenow Are you guys going to issue retraction? Its been 48 hours now. http://t.co/Bh5rz2kVTe What will it take?
— Watts Up With That (@wattsupwiththat) August 12, 2013

The Maniitsok temperature reading is valid but may or may not reach the record books

Jason Samenow has now posted a response.  He did what Anthony doesn't seem to have done.  He wrote to John Cappelen, data management specialist and senior climatologist at DMI.   Cappelen replied that the reading was valid but because the weather station doesn't comply with all WMO standards, it might not get into the record books.  He wrote: "It is generally very hard to follow the WMO standards in all details in arctic areas, but this sensor is placed so influence from the surroundings can have affected the reading in a way, so the reading maybe will have to be rejected." He will let him know once they've considered the matter and made a decision.  You can read the reply at Capital Weather Gang in Washington Post.

The only reason I know all this is because I happened to look at the live stats for my blog and noticed a sudden influx of visitors.  Went to see what the fuss was all about and discovered that @capitalweathergang had retweeted this:

MT @greenoctopus: If you're really going to use @wattsupwiththat as a source, consider a rebuttal: http://t.co/PGG90ibpwk
— Capital Weather Gang (@capitalweather) August 12, 2013

John Samenow also referred to yours truly in a comment underneath his article.  @capitalweathergang has a few more followers and Washington Post has a few more readers than both HotWhopper and WUWT.  Some of them came here for a look see.  Nice - and thank you to @greenoctopus :)

(As usual, Anthony can't wait to let his readers know that he has some clout in cyberspace.)


PS Now we wait with bated breath for Anthony tell the Japan Meteorological Agency why all the weather stations in Japan are wrong! (H/t @shawnmilrad).

PPS Without a smidgen of self-awareness, Anthony's headline for his article is "Shoot first ask questions later".  Yet it was he who shot first without asking questions, and it took Capital Weather Gang to ask the question of the people who would know the answer.