Anthony Watts is finally back to his field of expertise, with help

See update below

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This article isn't about science, it's about behaviour.  It's about blog and twitter spats.  So unless you're interested in blog bickering, don't read on.  It's boring and mundane.

After a hiatus, Anthony Watts has decided to blog in the one area in which he can be called an expert.  Name-calling. (Archived here.)

From what I can gather, a UK dendrochronologist called Robert Wilson in a lecture referred to a recent paper (?) by Michael Mann as a "crock of shit".  This was picked up on a the website of a UK denier Andrew Montford (archived here).  It might have been left there except that someone drew it to Michael Mann's attention and he responded in a tweet, using the word "denier", which he later deleted and retracted saying he'd wait for confirmation.  The confirmation came from Robert Wilson in a comment on Montford's blog, but Michael Mann didn't retweet his deleted comment.

The only reason I'm writing about this is to comment on the behaviour of scientist Tamsin Edwards.  It's not unexpected, given her previous behaviour.  (I smell curry.)

Tamsin put on her concern troll hat, or was it her "scientist police" hat.  However, she didn't direct her concern trolling comments at Robert Wilson, who made the "crock of shit" statement and confirmed it in a comment on the UK denier blog.  No. She got stuck into Michael Mann.  And she didn't just do it on twitter, she did it on Montford's denier blog (saying she was "so shocked") and then again at Anthony Watts science denying blog.

So much for her holier than thou sermons to climate scientists!

(IMO, Michael Mann is kinder to Tamsin Edwards than she deserves.  Maybe he tweeted this before she entered the fray at WUWT.  Or maybe he sees some of himself in her outspokenness, though not in what she says or whose favours she courts.)

Climate scientists are under a perpetual spotlight.  I don't think there is any other scientific group whose every public utterance is dissected and misinterpreted and blown up out of all proportion by the denial machine and regurgitated year after year.  It's not fair but life isn't fair.  Robert Wilson's comment in a lecture is one thing.  He used an unprofessional turn of phrase but I'm sure worse comments have been made in public in all fields of science.  However, he didn't need to repeat it on a denier blog.  And Tamsin Edwards definitely didn't need to buy into it and certainly shouldn't have picked sides the way she did.  And while Michael Mann's reacting was understandable and justifiable, it pays to pick your battles.

Back to science soon.

Update

I've just seen that Tamsin Edwards tweeted that she thinks I unfairly represented her views but didn't elaborate.  That may be so, I cannot tell.  I only commented on the facts of the matter and what happened in sequence.  People can judge for themselves.  In any case, I wasn't writing about her views so much as her actions and how they are taken in all the different quarters but especially in the deniosphere.  I find it hard to accept that she could still be so naive after all this time (especially given all the feedback to her from more experienced climate scientists).

(And FWIW, Richard Tol has adopted the language of the scientific illiterati, with its very limited vocabulary.  I doubt that will come as a surprise to anyone who follows the personalities in the climate blogosphere.)

Sou 22 Oct 13 6:59 pm AEDST

The negative bias of Anthony Watts, Hockey Sticks and the Dunning Kruger Effect

Another funny from Anthony Watts.  I won't dwell on the subject matter. Despite the fact that its undoubtedly a fascinating field, dendrochronology is a very specialised area in which I haven't the slightest bit of expertise.  But neither does Anthony Watts. (That's me fawning :))

He's come across a paper in his daily trawls of denialist websites (or via email or smoke signals or whatever).  It's a new paper by Cecile et al in the journal Climate of the Past: A likelihood perspective on tree-ring standardization: eliminating modern sample bias. The paper is discussing a new method to determine what is apparently widely known in dendrochronology circles as "modern sample bias".  I've seen the term in this 2008 chapter/paper by Keith R. Briffa and Thomas M. Melvin, for example.

Anyway Anthony is jumping up and down clapping his hands with excitement.  Why?  I think it's because the authors used the word "negative" and "bias" together.  He reckons it means the Hockey Stick is finally broken!  The five millionth nail he's tried to drive in the coffin - still the Hockey Stick lives on.

Here is his jubilant headline and the first line of his article:

And here are the tags - so he's not trying to be funny :)

Anthony highlights the bits of his copy and paste that he thinks are important - I've italicised Anthony's bolded bits:

Dendrochronologists observed that the older a tree was, the slower it tended to grow, even after controlling for age- and time-driven effects. The result is an artificial downward signal in the regional curve (as the older ages are only represented by the slower growing trees) and a similar artificial positive signal in the final chronology (as earlier years are only represented by the slow growing trees), an effect termed modern sample bias. When this biased chronology is used in climate reconstruction it then implies a relatively unsuitable historic climate. Obviously, the detection of long term 15 trends in tree growth, as might be caused by a changing climate or carbon fertilization, is also seriously compromised (Brienen et al., 2012b). More generally, modern sample bias can be viewed as a form of “differing-contemporaneous-growth-rate bias”, where changes in the magnitude of growth of the tree ring series included in the chronology over time (or age, in the case of the regional curve) skew the final curve, especially 20 near the ends of the chronology where series are rapidly added and removed (Briffa and Melvin, 2011)....

...Furthermore, modern sample bias produced a significant negative bias in estimated tree growth by time in 70.5% of chronologies and a significant positive bias in 29.5% of chronologies. This effect is largely concentrated in the last 300 yr of growth data, posing serious questions about the homogeneity of modern and ancient chronologies using traditional standardization techniques.

Looks as if Anthony's put two and two together and come up with two and two fifths.   Now I won't pretend to understand the details of the issue of "modern sample bias", but it seems clear enough that it's to do with deriving signals from aged trees and the application of statistical analysis.

In keeping with the tree theme and hockey themes, I'll stick my neck out and say that Anthony's got the wrong end of the stick.  If, as is stated in the excerpt Anthony quotes, the majority of chronologies (70.5%) have a "significant negative bias", that would mean they underestimate whatever the parameter is that is being measured (eg temperature) in the last "300 yr of growth data".  So if one was to apply that to the Hockey Stick chart as a stand-alone - it would surely mean that the hockey stick is even steeper in modern times!  In fact, had Anthony read the paper, he might have noticed this:

D’Arrigo et al. (2008) suggest that modern sample bias may be responsible for the “divergence problem” in dendroclimatology, the widespread reduction in temperature 10 sensitivity of tree-ring chronologies in recent decades

Not that I'm suggesting that the various published Hockey Stick charts are negatively biased in the recent end of the data.  These dendro scientists know their trees too well for that.  I also know that there are numerous temperature reconstructions that all show the Hockey Stick shape and use many more proxies than tree rings - as well as the obvious fact of having modern thermometers these days that show the sudden rise in temperature in recent decades. And all these different studies match each other fairly closely and, in the periods of overlap, are a close match with the instrumental data sets.

I'll stop here before I go all DuKE myself!  Professor Mann and all the other Hockey Stick producers who followed, would know a zillion times more about "modern sample bias" and dendrochronology than I (or Anthony Watts) will ever know.


It seems a nice little example of Dunning Kruger Effect in action at WUWT - don't you think?

Sophisticated Satellites and Other Denier Weirdness at WUWT

How's this for a lead in from someone who studied meteorology (albeit didn't graduate).  There is so much wrong in so few words.

I have always found a stark contrast in the way the forecasts of meteorologists on television and radio are limited in accuracy to about a week and beyond that become more speculative while the claims about global warming are always stated in decades. For example, the polar ice caps were supposed to have all melted by now. The daily forecasts are formulated based on sophisticated meteorological satellites. The global warming claims are all based on computer models, not empirical observation and data.

Anthony Watts of WUWT is quoting Alan Caruba, who didn't have to tell us he wasn't a scientist.  Anyone reading the above would know that for certain.

Forecasting a few days of weather is very different to making climate projections.  I can forecast with reasonable confidence several months ahead as, I'm sure, can you.  (It will be considerably warmer in January than it is now, even though we're having a very warm winter!) But I leave it to the experts to forecast tomorrow's weather.  I'll even predict decades ahead with some confidence.  By 2050 the Arctic will be pretty well ice free and January where I (will have used to) live will be a lot hotter than it was this year.  (If I'm still around and wrong, I'll buy you a beer.  That is, if hops can still be grown in these parts, and you come here to collect.)

Deniers love their satellites and hate models.  Well I've got news for Alan Caruba!

Alan says the daily forecasts are "formulated based on sophisticated meteorological satellites".  Satellites don't predict the future.  All they can do is give information about what has happened from the past to the now.  These days weather forecasters use models. They just plug in the latest data, unlike climate modellers. That's why forecasts can go out not just a day ahead, not just three days ahead, but anything up to around ten days ahead now.  And it's why the forecast can change.   Day 7 of the seven day forecast might be different by the time it gets to Day 3, 2 or 1.  And the data doesn't just come from satellite instruments either.  Weather bureaux also get data from land based instruments such as automatic weather stations, from instruments on weather balloons, from instruments on buoys in the sea, from ships and from aircraft.

This website describes how the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) makes rainfall forecasts.  BoM says "Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) or computer models included in the calculation of the rainfall totals and the chance of rain are from" - and lists the places and the computer model names as follows:

• Australian Bureau of Meteorology ACCESS-R, ACCESS-G
• US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration USAGFS
• UK Meteorological Office UKGC
• Japanese Meteorological Agency JMAGSM
• European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting ECSP
• Meteorological Service of Canada CMCGEM
• German national weather service, Deutscher Wetterdienst DWD

Don't tell Alan Caruba - he'd be terribly disappointed and would never leave his house without a brolly - because he just knows computer models can't be trusted.  And as for feeding in data from land-based weather stations - well he'll probably tell you that can't be trusted either!

Alan Caruba doesn't read science.  Here's proof!

Okay - not proof (science isn't about proof).  Here's the evidence.  I have no idea where Alan gets his crankery from but it's not science.  He wrote that "the polar ice caps were supposed to have all melted by now".  Maybe he just made it up all by himself.  Let's guess why Anthony Watts posted that silliness.  Not because he believes it, but because it's good disinformation for his readers.

Just in case there's a reader who doesn't know the facts - then he's wrong.  There is no reputable scientific source that predicted that the "polar ice caps" would have melted by now.  In fact, the Arctic sea ice is melting much more quickly than was predicted a few years back.  There are no solid predictions for Antarctica that I'm aware of.  But the general consensus (there's that word again) is that the Antarctic Peninsula and West Antarctica are going to continue to warm and the ice there will contribute to sea level rise.

You don't have to look far to find his motive.  On his own blog Alan Caruba writes:

I am, however, a science writer who has followed the global warming hoax since it began in the late 1980s and picked up momentum as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing its computer-based doomsday claims.

Alan Caruba just makes it up as he goes along.  He's effectively denying that scientists have known that CO2 is a greenhouse gas since at least the 1860s.  He denies the work of Fourier, Tyndall,  Arrhenius, Callendar, Plass, Revelle, Broecker, Keeling and many others who were studying CO2 well before the 1980s.  And he can't claim it was a secret known only to scientists - CO2 was discussed in newspapers even in Australia, well before the 1980s.

Caruba comes across as a crank paranoid conspiracy theorist like our old mate from HotCopper, BenBradley.

I couldn't be bothered reading any further.  The first couple of paragraphs was enough to know Caruba is a fiction writer posing as a science writer and I find it difficult to imagine he fools even the most foolish of the 8% Dismissives.

From the WUWT Comments - The Daily Ad HomineMann Competition

Nothing much to report in the comments at WUWT.  A couple of people pulled Anthony up about Alan Caruba's  "sophisticated meteorological satellites" and pointed out that models are used to forecast weather.  The rest of them were too busy competing to win the prize for the most libellous ad homineMann.  That seems to have become a daily event at WUWT.  Anthony hasn't announced the Grand Prize yet.  (Maybe the prize is to share the stage with Tim Ball at an upcoming event.)

Climate Wars Linger: Anthony Rallies the Lynch Mob Again to Attack Michael Mann and Global Warming

Update: Anthony advises that it wasn't him who took a swipe at creationists, it was an emailer called Robert Scheaffer.  Anthony just provided links to his Marcott protests etc (which I've improved upon by linking to better articles).  Anthony says he is off at a "conference" organised by the fake oregon petition crowd.  The meeting has a very mixed up line-up of speakers and topics, ranging from climate science denial to silicosis denial and lots in between - mostly the crank end of right wing ideology from the look of it.



Anthony Watts went away for a couple of days and all he left his audience was an open thread that fizzled out slowly along with one of their new/past heroes, ending up with a few posts about "energy can be made out of nothing" (aka the E-Cat hoax).  Perennially Puzzled Bob Tisdale wrote an article about current sea surface temperatures, in which he said nothing except the ocean warms by magic and there's a colder than normal patch somewhere.  WUWT was so slow that even Bob's article has earned him 43 45 comments.  Wondering Willis tried to do his bit with a third or is it his fourth post in as many days complaining about the carbon tax in British Columbia and showing that the 6.67 cents/litre carbon tax on petrol (around 5%) hasn't prevented British Columbians from driving their motor cars altogether.  Though it does seem to be helping reduce carbon emissions.

Bash the Mann

Time to get the mob stirred up, thought Anthony.  There has only been one this week and few this month, so maybe I'll give the lynch mob a bit of a lift by having another Mann-bashing session.

He knew he didn't have to do any more than write the name "Mann", but probably because it had been such a fizzer of a week, he added this (I amended some of his hyperlinks to point to better information sources):

The Amazing Mann just told TAM (The Amazing Meeting of the Skeptics Society) that there has been no pause in Global Warming, and says claims that there has been are just ‘Cherry Picking’.

Also he used Marcott et al. as proof that his Hockey Stick is valid.

Surely he must know that the authors themselves disavow that conclusion!! Like a creationist, he uses arguments he knows to be false, but the audience doesn’t.

Anthony is wrong, of course, as usual, as ever.  The hockey stick is valid and was further validated by numerous other reconstructions including Marcott et al, and the modern record - and every new reconstruction continues to confirm it.

Anthony manages to take a swipe at the intellectual capability of attendees at this year's The Amaz!ng Meeting as well as get in a thirty-something'th protest at Marcott et al, (along the way implying he also doesn't accept any of the modern datasets that use the instrumental record of global surface temperatures).

Marcott et al (2013) Globally stacked temperature anomalies for the 5° × 5° area-weighted mean calculation (purple line) with its 1σ uncertainty (blue band) and Mann et al.'s global CRU-EIV composite mean temperature (dark gray line) with their uncertainty (light gray band).

About that so-called "pause" in global warming, the evidence shows the world is still warming.  Here are some indicators in an animated gif:

Data sources: NASA GISTemp, NODC/NOAA Ocean Heat, U Colorado sea level, PIOMAS Arctic Ice 

And to put the recent warming in perspective, here is my adaptation of Jos Hagelaars' composite showing where we've been and where we are heading:

Source: Jos Hagelaars

However, back on WUWT the world's 8% Dismissives gather to deny all the signs of global warming. Anthony gets the reaction he's looking for, with words like "delusional", "lying", "fiction", "fantasy" and some rather ugly terms that are allowed on WUWT but only if you are a science denier.  His thread brings out the diversity of his followers - ranging from right-wing extremists, Christian fundamentalists, run-of-the-mill illiterati, "Ice Age Cometh"-ers through to "I don't understand it but I know what I (don't) like" ordinary old science deniers - who at least know how to toss out ad homs when Anthony tells them to.

Anthony in his own small way is proving what Professor Mann describes in his book:

The lynch mob rallies to the call

Eric Worrall says:

July 13, 2013 at 4:14 pm  Is he deliberately lying? Or is he delusional?... (blah blah blah)...

Eric Worrall was really worked up because he immediately follows up his first comment with this:

July 13, 2013 at 4:15 pm  What is going through his head when he says things like that? Does he think the pause is a temporary blip, that all he has to do is bluff it out until it ends?

Chuck L says:

July 13, 2013 at 4:35 pm  It is remarkable that he sticks to his fiction/fantasy in the face of facts and data. I guess he’ll be the last one left on AGW ship.

GlynnMhor uses a denier analogy, and impolitely writes:

July 13, 2013 at 4:36 pm If we don’t feed the monkey, won’t it just throw feces at us?

Mike Jowsey says:

July 13, 2013 at 4:49 pm  With fingers in ears, shouting “Nya nya nya, I can’t hear you”, he denies the reality. Would this classify him as an evildoer denier?

GeoLurking says:

July 13, 2013 at 4:30 pm  He’s a buffoon… nothing more, nothing less. He leaps and squeals for a banana. Don’t feed him, you’ll just encourage him.

DR objects to any entity that investigates facts:

July 13, 2013 at 8:23 pm The Randi Forum is anything but skeptics…..it is basically Media Matters for global warming fanatics.

Eliza has something wrong twixt the keyboard and brain and writes:

July 13, 2013 at 9:12 pm This can only ,eran that Mann universityinvented the Hockey Stick nThe guy is a looney how dare he be allowed withinnthe confines of a

Eliza says: July 13, 2013 at 9:12 pm a university my bad

Per Strandberg (@LittleIceAge) says:

July 14, 2013 at 6:20 am  Two famous makeup artists of fakery, Mann & Randi together on the same picture, Coo!

beng says:

July 14, 2013 at 7:48 am Funny how Randi loses his skepticism right when he needs it. Like Phil_dot, Carl Sagan & others.

beng says:

July 14, 2013 at 8:41 am  Is it just me? Every time I see that Mann-mug, I want to punch the crap out of it.

Reed Coray says:

July 14, 2013 at 9:46 am  beng: It’s not just you.

It's all a nefarious plot involving long-dead Hitler?  Who runs a hate group called the EPA? If anyone can make head or tail of what Chad Wozniak says:

July 13, 2013 at 5:58 pm  @Larry Hamlin - And don’t forget the land temps are all UHI-affected and therefore falsely ovewrstated. As for Mann being the last one on the sinking ship, let’s don’t forget that hatemonger der Fuehrer and his satraps at the hate-group EPA can do a lot of damage yet before they are brought down. And no matter who else deserts the ship, der Fuehrer can’t leave it because it is the entire basis for his campaign to destroy the economy and along with it civil liberties.

Mike Buzz-Senior Busby is oblivious to irony:

July 13, 2013 at 4:24 pm  Tap dancing waiting for proof which never comes. The sign of some one desperate to have his dogma accepted as proof which flies in the face of empirical evidence. Pretty sad that he continues to discount real world evidence and instead demands that his belief in a failed set of models is all that is needed to change the entire worlds opinion. – Sir Boab Tree.

as is sonicfrog1:

July 13, 2013 at 5:32 pm  Yep. I really enjoy some of the podcasts from many of the TAM’ers, including Brian Dunning and the Skeptics Guide To The Universe crew. But, yeah, when they turn to the subject of global warming…. Mann oh Mann…. That IS a huge blind spot. They were glowing over the Cook / Lewdowski (whatever his name is – if correct statistical methodologies are not important to him…. his name is not important to me) studies without really digging in to examine what the problems with the studies are. They bought the “Skeptical Science spiel hook, line, and stinker. It’s sad, because there used to be one guy on the Skeptics Guide panel, Perry, who was very skeptical of the alarmist side of AGW. But, unfortunately, he passed away several years ago. he is sorely missed.

A lone fact checker emerges, but it's a dismal attempt

Andres Valencia is the first commenter to attempt to back up what he says and links to an NOAA chart.  He manages to squeeze out a tiny downward sloping black line on the very top of a global surface temperature chart.  Needless to say he ignores all the other signs of ongoing global warming as illustrated in the gif animation above.  (Nor does he point out that 2010 was the hottest year on record or equal to 2005 as such.)

July 13, 2013 at 4:49 pm  Even the NCDC shows a -0.02°C/Decade trend since 2001 to 2012.  11 years of very slight cooling.

Put on your denier specs, squint really hard and you'll see the little black line
Source: NOAA

The creationists rally to defend their doctrine

Don objects to being compared to a climate scientist:

July 13, 2013 at 5:00 pm  “Like a creationist, he uses arguments he knows to be false, but the audience doesn’t.” Anthony, I must protest. Any creationist in particular? Any argument in particular? This seems an overgeneralization and, well, a cheap shot.

Alvin says:

July 13, 2013 at 5:13 pm  Like a creationist, he uses arguments he knows to be false, but the audience doesn’t.
Umm, people of faith can also believe in properly researched science. Many support your endeavors. Maybe a poor analogy.

GlennD objects:

July 13, 2013 at 5:20 pm  Um, Anthony, I find references to creationism in posts and comments inappropriate. Taking the ‘science’ side of Darwinism shows ignorance of that debate and opens a topic this website should not be concerned with. Those more familiar with the debate find the same groupthink, gatekeeping, arrogance, career railroading and denying of contrary evidence among Darwinism as is found in climate science (don’t forget whose side the NCSE is on in both cases). Those trying to debate Darwinists on scientific terms are dismissed as ‘creationists’ (whether they are or not).....

juan slayton says:

July 13, 2013 at 5:23 pm  Like a creationist, he uses arguments he knows to be false, but the audience doesn’t.Painting with a broad brush, there, friend. : > )

D Caldwell says:

July 13, 2013 at 7:55 pm  Agree with Don and Alvin. Was your creationist jab really necessary?

Jeff C warns Anthony that he needs to hang onto whatever "friends" he can still get.  It's okay to set the lynch mob onto real scientists, but quite another thing to slag off creationists:

July 13, 2013 at 8:04 pm  I’m not a creationist but was taken aback by Anthony’s stereotype as it seemed so out of character. My first reaction was to recheck the byline to ensure the post was from Anthony and sure enough it was. What gives? Bad habit to fall into, my friend.

Sun Spot says:

July 13, 2013 at 7:56 pm  We all know “Climate Change” happens (the climate is always changing) and we all know “Creation” happened (we’re here aren’t we), we also know both were/are highly chaotic un-modelable events.  @Don says: July 13, 2013 at 5:00 pm, I’m a creationist like Don.

JimF says:

July 13, 2013 at 7:17 pm  I’m a geologist. I think Mann is a cheat and a fraud and a disgrace to the profession (he wears one or two geology degrees). And since no one else can explain it, I believe the Bible account of the formation of everything at the outset. No one will ever disprove it. The rocks don’t go back that far.

Don't worry - it's only the land that's warming?

Larry Hamlin explains the trick:

July 13, 2013 at 5:42 pm  Climate alarmists like Mann use only the land surface temperature record and ignore sea surface temperatures which when both are combined represent the global surface temperature record. The global surface temperature record shows the pause. The land surface record continues increase and that’s all the alarmists need. Alarmists also frequently site the Berkeley Earth project land temperature record as further proof there is no global temperature pause. This is how the ignore the pause game is played.

While another commenter is under the misapprehension that it hasn't warmed for 17 years.  Bruce Cobb says:

July 14, 2013 at 11:04 am  Mann’s “cherrypicking” claim regarding the warming pause (now 17+ years) is of course just another one of his multitude of lies he tells. But hey, he’s got to make a living somehow.

Neither Larry nor Bruce offer any evidence, so I will.  Here is a chart showing land only surface temperatures and land and ocean surface temperatures, with arrows indicating how much it's warmed since 17 years ago:

Data Source: NASA

As Willis once Wondered, the land surface warms faster than the sea surface.  Both are warming because of increasing atmospheric CO2.  Most of us live on the land and rely on it for our food, shelter and clothing among other things.  And there are many more signs that global warming progresses.

The "An Ice Age Cometh" brigade

Andres Valencia says:

July 13, 2013 at 6:27 pm  I think our planet is always warming or cooling, always seeking but never attaining equilibrium. This present stasis seems to indicate a lack of net input for the self-regulated planet to react against. I watch for next El Niño or La NIña to emerge with some push, one way or the other. Afterwards, around a new level, some overshoot followed by dampening oscillations. This until the next plunge into an ice age.

Bill H reckons it's going to get cold:

July 13, 2013 at 5:12 pm  This “pause” in upward trend can be one of two things…A real pause that just lasted to long or; It shows the fact we have peaked in the larger cycle (thus the longer period) and we are now headed in the reveres trend… the top of a large sign wave is always longer in time period.  The fact we have long since left the normal short cycle trend lines would lead me to believe we are going to get much cooler as we have begun the downward trend to the low part of the larger natural cycle.

One challenger to the WUWT groupthink remains

Ryan wonders if Anthony's relationship Roy Spencer will suffer (I don't know about Denning):

July 13, 2013 at 5:04 pm  “Surely he must know that the authors themselves disavow that conclusion!! Like a creationist, he uses arguments he knows to be false, but the audience doesn’t.”
The authors of M. et al actually said that their reconstruction was indistinguishable from some of Mann’s, and there are many other modern-reaching reconstructions that have confirmed the hockey stick. If you want to throw out the relative uniqueness of the modern temperature spike, you have to do stupid things like assuming CET is representative of global temps.

I do appreciate your acknowledgment of creationists as the bottom-feeders of even the pseudoscientist community, but how do you think Denning and Spencer are going to take that?

Even the Central England Temperature wouldn't help very much, Ryan:

Data Source: UK Met Office Hadley Centre

The 8% Dismissives at WUWT

As we've seen from the above, Anthony Watts and his motley lynch mob linger on as a disparate rabble of creationists, "Ice Age Cometh"-ers, right wing extremists and scientific illiterati, continuing to deny and rail against global warming.

Is there such a person as a reasonable "fake skeptic"?

One lone "skeptic" goes against the mob but shows he is quite unfamiliar with the norm at WUWT.  Mike McMillan says:

July 14, 2013 at 10:21 am  A good bit more ad hominem than I’m used to seeing on this site. Unfortunate.

He was immediately admonished by members of the WUWT anti-science lynch mob, including Justthinkin:

July 14, 2013 at 10:57 am  Mike….calling a pathological liar and con man just that is not ad hominem.

More denier weirdness: Ed Hoskins Magic Numbers

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

Ed Hoskins' magic numbers

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

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

Source: NRC Report: Climate Stabilization Targets

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

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

It could happen, but think of this...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: NASA

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

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

Ed Hoskins' fake "experts"

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

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

Anthony Watts' pet slayers

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

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

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

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

Janice Moore also asks for "proof" and says:

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

Prove it.

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

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

Make up your mind, Anthony Watts

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

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

Shameful Behaviour at WUWT - Not Asking the Right Question

Update below.

My heart goes out to everyone in Oklahoma and to people everywhere who have lost loved ones and homes in weather disasters.

I wasn't going to write about weather disasters today, out of respect for the people who died and those who have lost everything in Oklahoma.  However I changed my mind when I saw the way Anthony Watts was using the disaster to push his barrow of science denial and rant against doing anything to ameliorate climate change.  Like many readers, I know people who've lost their lives and homes in recent weather-related disasters.  People very close to me and family members lost their father, grandfather and friends.  There is a point to standing up against those who deny what is happening to the world.

So please forgive me if you find this disrespectul, but in my view, something needs to be said.

Anthony Asks the Wrong Question

Anthony Watts is busy stirring up the mob over at WUWT with no less than three shameful posts on the subject.  He really hates it when extreme events happen.  He know that every time a weather-related disaster occurs, people think again of climate change.

What Anthony does know is that if we don't rein in carbon emissions, there will be more droughts, floods, wildfires, heat waves and other weather extremes and disasters.  That's why he insists on asking the wrong questions, like:

Tell us, what could any tax, law, edict, or protest have done to stop yesterday’s tornado outbreak?

If they had a shred of human decency, what Anthony and his mob of Dismissives would be asking is:

Tell us, what can we do to limit future weather disasters and prevent the worst excesses of climate change?

Update:

It gets more abominable.  I won't waste my time on a separate post (IdiotTracker says it all) - these appallingly pathetic excuses for human beings don't deserve it.  Many lives were undoubtedly saved in Oklahoma because the tornado warning was able to be issued a few minutes earlier - because of weather monitoring systems.  Yet Roger Pielke Sr wants to take money away from such important science to spend it on shelters.  (I don't believe for a minute that Roger is offering up his own government-funded job as a climate scientist to build a shelter.)  Yes, shelters are a must, but not at the expense of disaster warnings.  And in a revolting display of acrimony against science, Anthony Watts agrees making the following tweet his 'Quote of the Week'.

Spending millions of dollar on no skill climate projections is poor policy compared with grants to communities for school tornado shelters.
— Roger A. Pielke Sr (@RogerAPielkeSr) May 22, 2013

 Someone tell them that all the shelters in the world won't save a soul if they don't know a tornado is coming.

Rajendra Pauchari: Pinning the Oklahoma tornado on climate change is wrong-headed, un-scientific

Dr Pauchari points out what is often emphasised by other scientists, that from a scientific standpoint it's just not possible to relate a single event like the Oklahoma tornado, Superstorm Sandy, Katrina or Cyclone Yasi to human-induced climate change. From The Times of India:

Pinning the deadly tornado in the US state of Oklahoma on climate change is wrongheaded, even though the world is set to see a rise in high-profile weather disasters due to global warming, the leader of a UN body said on Tuesday.

Almost every scientists will tell you the same.  What they can and continue to investigate is the extent to which the world will see more and worse events of various types, such as tropical cyclones, hurricanes, extreme droughts, catastrophic bushfires, paralyzing blizzards and massive floods.

Michael E Mann: The wild-card is the shear

On tornadoes in particular, this is how Professor Mann responded when asked, from Take Part:

“As far as climate change is concerned, there will likely be a greater clashing of cold air masses from the north with even warmer, even more humid air masses coming off the Gulf of Mexico—conditions that are favorable for breeding destructive storms,” says Michael Mann, climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University and author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars.

“The wildcard is the sheer—we don’t know with certainty whether that will increase or not in the key regions for tornado formation as a result of climate change,” Mann continues. “But if one factor is likely to be favorable, and the other is a wildcard, it’s still more likely that the product of the two factors will be favorable. Thus, if you’re a betting person—or the insurance or reinsurance industry for that matter—you’d probably go with a prediction of greater frequency and intensity of tornadoes as a result of human-caused climate change.

Kevin Trenberth: Chance Effect of Weather - The climate change effect is up to 32% in terms of damage

Professor Trenberth is reported by The Brad Blog as responding to a question from Peter Sinclair, saying:

Of course tornadoes are very much a weather phenomenon. They come from certain thunderstorms, usually super-cell thunderstorms that are in a wind shear environment that promotes rotation. The main climate change connection is via the basic instability of the low level air that creates the convection and thunderstorms in the first place.

Warmer and moister conditions are the key for unstable air.

The climate change effect is probably only a 5 to 10% effect in terms of the instability and subsequent rainfall, but it translates into up to a 32% effect in terms of damage. (It is highly nonlinear).

So there is a chain of events and climate change mainly affects the first link: the basic buoyancy of the air is increased. Whether that translates into a super-cell storm and one with a tornado is largely chance weather.

What can we do?

We don't have to go and live in a cave.  That would do no good at all.  What we can do is change our own behaviour and lead by example.  Where possible we can use energy from renewable sources not fossil fuels. We can favour energy efficient appliances.  We can vote for representation by people who will put policies in place to hasten the shift to clean energy.  And we can urge others to do the same.

Testing WUWT Moderation

Update: Test 2 Fail! See below.


Apparently Anthony Watts has a new system of moderation for his blog, WUWT.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this:

@petergleick @michaelemann Funny, if its blacklisting how come we let you comment there? Entire system is far more open now, less moderation
— Watts Up With That (@wattsupwiththat) May 5, 2013

I think Anthony is saying that if he was going to blacklist people, Professors Mann and Gleick would be at the top of his list.

Why, you may ask?  If Anthony wanted to run a science blog with a focus on climate science, wouldn't he want to attract the top scientists in the field?  No?

Update:  It's obviously Wattsonian doublespeak.  Anthony means that Dr Gleick at least is still banned (click here to read then scroll down) and I seriously doubt that Dr Mann would be welcomed there.

WUWT Moderation Test

Since Anthony has blocked me from his twitter feed and told me I'm not welcome to post on WUWT, I thought I'd test out the new WUWT moderation system and see if he really has opened it to all and sundry.  I'm posing a question that's occurred to me every time Dr Spencer posts his UAH charts.  I don't know why WUWT-ers aren't calling for the data, or even the 'raw data', if any of them knew what to do with raw data from satellites.  (WUWT commenters seem to call for 'links to data' a lot but give Dr Spencer a free pass for some reason.)

Test Result 1: Pass

Indeed Anthony has opened up moderation.  My post didn't disappear without trace as in the past.  It didn't even go to a moderation queue.  It looks as if Anthony's now allowing any ratbag scum to make a comment!

Test result 2: Fail!

This next comment lasted a whole hour before Tony got things back in order...

...and decided his new "open policy" is not quite all it was cracked up to be after all.

Click here to see what my comment was all about.

Attention-seeker banned from WUWT

There's more, way down the bottom after Anthony's ad hom dogwhistle got all his lynch mob piling on.  Any excuse to trash a real scientist (Peter Gleick):

Skiphil says:
May 7, 2013 at 4:08 pm  Sou, you must be a special kind of ignorant if you imagine that the “Union of Concerned Scientists” is a “scientific organisation.” No qualifications for membership, specializes in bleating and whining for political activism…. obviously, a renowned “scientific organisation” to be sure. Sou, are you mendacious or merely ignorant?

[note: don't engage this person - she's a persona non grata attention seeker - mod]

It's not that attention seekers aren't welcome at WUWT.  The blog wouldn't have survived this long but for attention seekers.  After all, look at Anthony himself and who he promotes.  There's 'Wondering' Willis E who throws a hissy fit if he senses the least bit of criticism.  And Backward Bob who cannot tolerate anyone disagreeing.  Anyway freedom of speech is considered sacred on WUWT, provided you say what Anthony and his mob want to hear.

It's just that attention seekers must be of the right ideological persuasion and fully paid up members of the scientific illiterati.  Anthony and his mods don't want any competition for him or his plebs <:o

Who is Sou?

Wait, there's still more (and we haven't got to the free steak knives yet).  How's this for conspiracy ideation.  Apologies to Dr Gleick. (But I have to say I'm deeply flattered)...

Jimbo says:
May 7, 2013 at 5:51 pm  Is Sou Peter Gleick?

[Reply: Not sure. But he/she also posts as "A. Crowe". — mod.]

You'll notice that the mod's response puts the lie to this!