Despite the winter ice, Rolf E Westgard's pants catch fire at WUWT

Why can't deniers just deny science? Some of them have to go further and make up stuff.

Today there's an article by someone called Rolf E. Westgard who's a petrol head as far as I can tell.  He's been featured here before, waffling on about clouds.

This time he's decided to see how many fibs he can tell in a single "guest essay". As with all good fibs, he skirts around the facts - quite a long way around. He mostly manages to avoid bumping into them.

WUWT boasts: "We don’t know clouds". Indeed they don't!

It's raining, it's pouring psoo-do-science at WUWT.

WUWT is struggling, trying to find something to publish.  Anthony's resurrected a snippet from an umpteen-year-old email stolen from Professor Jones as his Quote of the Week.  He did that to prove what awful people mild-mannered, inoffensive, hard-working, pioneering climate researchers are.  His quote of the week was written by Eric "eugenics hoax" Worral (archived here).  He followed this up with a guest article by Rolf Westgard, which Anthony called an "essay" as if that adds panache or somehow makes up for it being so full of pseudo-science waffle. (Archived here.)

Here are some gems:

It is actually not clear that our fossil fuel burning CO2 emissions are a serious global warming threat. 

Huh? If it's not clear to Rolf by now then it never will be. There have been thousands of scientific papers explaining this and they've been compiled into five mammoth reports over twenty four years.  Rolf should be very embarrassed that he still doesn't understand the basic science of global warming.

But this should embarrass him even more. Rolf wrote:

Clouds are water vapor, a green house gas which warms us. 

Oops.  And to think that Anthony Watts advertises his blog as "The world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change." and winner of umpteen "bloggie" awards, beating all the other science denying blogs for the honour!  You've got to wonder where all his readers come from.  Clouds are not water vapour. Clouds are composed of liquid and solid water and other stuff, not gaseous water.

Never mind, Rolf managed to get this next bit half right:

Clouds reflect the sun’s light, cooling us. 

Rolf forgot to mention that clouds also absorb and emit longwave radiation, warming us.  Then he scores a plus - he does get this bit right:

Clouds produce rain which removes CO2 from the atmosphere, etc.

Thing is, there's rather a lot of CO2 in the air these days.  Rain does dissolve some CO2.  It always has.  Nothing much has changed.  Sure, there's a bit more rain now than their used to be because of global warming.  And there's a whole heap more CO2.  So those two factors probably mean that a bit more CO2 will dissolve in the rain.  However whatever might be dissolving in rain is not making a dent in the build up of atmospheric CO2.  Our emissions totally swamp anything that rain might wash out of the air.

Rolf finishes with a flourish - of sorts. Australians will be used to deniers quoting Dorothea Mackellar at them to "prove" that our climate has extremes.  Rolf goes for something as prosaic, lyrics from Joni Mitchell. The last line he quotes is most appropriate to his "essay".  Sing it with feeling:

 I really don’t know clouds at all.

I agree. Rolf Westgard knows precious little about clouds.

Would you believe that Rolf Westgard claims to be a member of the guest faculty (or is it a guest of the faculty) on energy subjects for the U of MN Lifelong Learning program. He recently taught class #17016 “America’s Climate and Energy Future: the Next 25 Years”

Pity the poor sods at U of MN, whatever that is.

Just to inject a bit of science, here is the energy budget diagram from the IPCC AR5 WG1 report, which shows how energy bounces around the surface and moves through and in and out of the atmosphere:

Fig. 2.1 IPCC AR5 WG1

And here's a nice introduction to clouds from the Bureau of Meteorology, and a Mr McCloud quiz.  Or click here to read about what has recently been occupying the minds of NASA and other scientists who are studying clouds.

From the WUWT comments

There haven't been too many comments so far.  I guess the WUWT-ers are so overwhelmed by all the psoodisciency cloudy stuff they are lost for words. (Archived here.)

Henry Clark says "it's only warmed 0.2%!" (excerpt - minus a link):

February 11, 2014 at 1:30 am
Earth’s average cloud cover has changed by multiple percent over recent decades*, let alone compared to further back, and the impact of the corresponding albedo change is large in context (when, for perspective, all of global warming over the past century was merely <=~ 0.6 K or thus <=~ a 0.2% change in an average absolute temperature near 298 K).

tango must be off his meds and says:

February 11, 2014 at 1:51 am
I have been informed by a doctor that they will not take there medication please take it for they no not what they a doing

Kelvin Vaughan gets it sort of back to front when he says:

February 11, 2014 at 2:09 am
I would have thought the radiation from a cloud depends on its height. The higher a cloud is the colder it is. The colder it is the less the energy it is radiating down. So if CO2 warms the atmosphere the clouds will warm, rise higher, get even colder and radiate back less energy.

(Low clouds tend to be thicker and reflect more solar radiation.  High thin clouds let the solar radiation through but still absorb and emit longwave radiation.  That's in the daytime of course.  At night it's a different story.)


johnmarshall starts off saying what he always says.  Then he decides that scientists don't know nuffin' and mutters some nonsense about latent heat, "convective clouds" and missing heat.

February 11, 2014 at 2:36 am
There is no empirical data showing that CO2 causes temperature increases. In fact empirical data shows the exact opposite.

Clouds, well we do not understand them. 90% are caused by convection which disproves IPCC claims that latent heat is not an important sink for heat. Convective cloud is full of heat that is lost to space. That is where Trenberth,s missing heat is not the oceans.

MikeB chides Rolf Westgard and Anthony Watts and says:

February 11, 2014 at 3:18 am
Clouds are water vapor, a green house gas which warms us.

Clouds are NOT water vapour. Water vapour is an invisible gas. You can see clouds, so they are NOT water vapour.

In a field where there is so much misunderstanding already, I think it is important to avoid adding to the confusion by using loose, inaccurate or incorrect statements [where possible].

Andyj has the climate science hoax all worked out.  No flies on Andyj:

February 11, 2014 at 3:22 am
Fossil fuels already are trapped and stored underground carbon.. So why do they want to re-bury it along with our oxygen this time?

I have the answer.. TO TAKE MONEY OFF THE SCHMUCKS!

Seriously, anyone and everyone who proposes or implements this needs a bullet in the brain.