Insects and microbes and OCO-2 conspiracy theories at WUWT

Anthony Watts has done it again. Put up a really weird article that none but the scientifically illiterate could allow on their blog as a straight article. But as his friend Willis Eschebach pointed out so clearly, Anthony Watts is scientifically illiterate.

I can't say it's enjoyable making fun of the articles by Ronald D "OMG it's insects" Voisin, because I do believe he is one of the few genuine deniers at WUWT, and probably a very nice, if very eccentric, chap. It's just that he is a conspiracy theorist of the "climate science is a hoax" type, so much so that I'd not even rate his articles as pseudo-science. (Type Voisin into the search bar to learn more about how Ronald's mind works, or fails to work.)

Just the same, there are people commenting on his latest atrocity (archived here), which has prompted me to point out where he's gone wrong - which is just about everywhere. First, I'll put up the map of atmospheric CO₂ that Ronald was writing about. It's the one shown by the OCO-2 team at AGU14. Click to enlarge it.

Source: NASA/JPL

Look at the legend at the bottom - the scale goes from 387 ppmv to 402.5 ppmv, which shows that the satellite is detecting CO₂ at a very fine scale. Then look at the title up top. The map is of averaged carbon dioxide concentration over the few weeks from 1 October this year through to 11 November.

You can read more about the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 on its website here, and you can browse the data released so far here. I also wrote about it a few days ago.

In a nutshell

To summarise, Ronald thinks that the OCO-2 project is a scam. A scientific plot against him and his fellow deniers, with results that are fudged or worse. He misinterprets the above chart. He wrongly thinks that it's insects and microbes that are causing CO₂ to rise, not human activity.  His logic is a massive fail - he neglects to explain how insects and microbes have suddenly been able to add about 900 billion tonnes of carbon or two trillion tonnes of CO₂ to the air in a space of 150 years. Where is this explosive increase in microbes and insects, such that no-one noticed? Ronald doesn't say.

This article wanders a bit into soils and bugs and microbes and other things so it's a bit long. But read on if you are interested in such things.

Hitting rock bottom at WUWT: OMG it's insects - Ronald D Voisin is ba-a-a-a-ck!

WUWT this week has surely hit rock bottom. It's slithered from the dopey to the absurd.

What is wrong with Anthony Watts? Have his half-coherent fake sceptics deserted him? Has he taken Wondering Willis Eschenbach's words to heart? Has the reality of global warming become so apparent that he's decided to give up on the ideological deniers and target his blog at the wingnuts?

It probably started with the Rocket Scientist from Luna Park, David Evans, and his Force X and the notch. If you thought that was weird enough, since then WUWT's been on a slippery slope to utter nuttery, including Tim Ball and his paranoid fantasies, Wondering Willis Eschenbach and his dismal skirmishes with Economics 101, Willis again and his scathing attack on Anthony Watts and WUWT, Roy Spencer PhD admitting he knows virtually nothing at all about climate science, then Anthony Watts failing junior high school chemistry.

Now Anthony's resurrected Ronald D. Voisin, of OMG it's insects fame (archived here, latest update here). You may recall he suggested we kill off mammals to help reduce CO2. You might also recall his central core nuclear reactor "theory" of climate.

This time Ronald decides, quite arbitrarily, that the oceans are a net emitter of CO2. By implication he's rejecting the notion that burning fossil fuels produces CO2 (although he does list it in a table), that the pH of oceans is dropping. He reckons he's done his sums, but he's neglected to factor in the pluses and minuses. If not for human activities like burning fossil fuels and deforestation, the amount of CO2 absorbed by natural sources (CO2 sinks) would be balanced by the amount of CO2 emitted from CO2 sources.

About PDO, lags, kettles, cycles and hysteria...

...sorry, meant to write "About PDO, Lags, Cycles and Hysteresis"

In another article here, a certain WUWT commenter, Professor JP, took me to task for quoting him.  Quite right too.  But that one line of mine resulted in something of real value.  The Professor obviously forgave me because he was kind enough to give me a lengthy lesson on climate sciency stuff.  For free.  I didn't have to pay a cent.  I was a bit nervous at first because I've heard awful stories about gravy trains and the billions of dollars climate sciency people charge everyone.  For a minute I wondered if I'd end up roast meat under a pile of brown sauce.  But no.  Not a penny did he charge.

Now I wouldn't have written this up as an article, but the Professor was so insistent that I learn and he was so gracious in imparting his years of climate sciency knowledge that I just have to share.  (Don't you just love it when people say "share".  Makes you feel all gooey and warm and fuzzy in your mouth.)

Now I'm always willing to learn new things and I read his comments over and over to make sure I didn't miss a thing.  It's not often I get offered personal tuition.  RealClimate is one place but there are always such a lot of other people in the classes there.  (I've been honoured by other renowned scientists here as well, but none who have written so much detail as Professor JP.)

From kettles and ice blocks to the PDO

After some wonderful lessons on the basics of kettles and ice blocks (I learnt some really good stuff - like ice blocks melt if you take them out of the fridge and water in a kettle won't boil unless you heat it, while seawater doesn't need heat, it expands by magic - did you know that?), the topic shifted to the PDO.  This lesson was so informative I just have to share.  (There's that word again.)  

Here is how it started.  Professor JP was explaining why it took so long for the warmer sun in the 1950s to heat up the earth in the 1970s.  It's called "waiting for homeostasis" and has something to do with boiling kettles.  But then it turns out it wasn't the sun after all that heated up the earth.  It was the PDO.  (I looked that up.  PDO stands for Pacific Decadel Oscillation.  See I'm not as dumb as I look!)  Anyway, Professor JP wrote:

As for why the Earth started heating up in 1978, that is pretty obviously due to the PDO going into its positive phase (the previous 30 year cooling period was coincidentally during the PDO's negative phase).

And this is where lags come in again:

The PDO is clearly one of the long-term lags in climate that I was speaking of.

I got curious about these 'lags' and asked:

Just how long is that "lag" supposed to be? 

To which the Professor replied:

A reasonable guess would be the length of a half-cycle or two - 30-60 years.  

That's wonderful news.  The scientists have narrowed the uncertainty right down to half a cycle or two or 30 years or sixty years. Still, not being at all knowledgeable like the Professor, I had another couple of questions:

And when is the earth going to get back to temperatures of the 1960s? Maybe the PDO only heats the earth but doesn't cool it? Is that what you are arguing?

Unfortunately Professor JP only had time to answer the second question, so there's still a big gap in my knowledge.  Not that I'm complaining, you understand.  Heavens above, it was so generous of him to tutor me at all.  Anyway he scolded me and told me to pay attention (justifiably - I was starting to race ahead a bit) and wrote: 

Not at all, it cooled during the 30 years of the last negative cycle, which I believe I already said. Are you even bothering to read my posts?

The instantaneous laggy PDO

So there you have it.  The PDO warms and cools the earth with either a 30 year lag or a 60 year lag, which I'm told is a half-cycle or two, and instantaneously too like in the previous negative phase.  If you do the sums you'll see the Professor means that the PDO has a 60 year cycle.  In other words the PDO is a 30 or 60 year laggy sciency thing that acts instantaneously. He then generously added more words of wisdom:

I wonder since you haven't mentioned hysteresis, but I assumed someone quietly told you that you were ridiculously wrong on it or you finally realized it yourself.

Oh and please, if you can't see what is wrong with the skeptical science page on it then there is no hope for you. Their graph is so blatantly stupid the way it applies linear trend lines to a cyclical phenomena that a grade school kid could see the error.

Well, I did try to read his posts and I did make a reference to hysteresis, but I can't really blame him for missing that bit.  Professors are very busy at doing PDO climate sciency stuff, and boiling kettles and so forth, I'm sure.

Given Professor JP's insistence that it's now the PDO that is causing global warming, I sat up and took notice.  The way he writes with such certainty, he's obviously a highly qualified expert in the field of hysteresis, PDOs, lags and kettles.  It was with some trepidation that I ventured forth, however.  If a renowned climate expert like JP can't figure out if this PDO lag is 30 years or 60 years, I thought to myself, then what hope does a humble blogger have.  And I couldn't figure out if the lag only applied to the warming phase, because I thought he said the cooling phase brought instant cooling but the warming phase takes 30 or sixty years.  In any case, I put aside my fears and decided to give it a go.

Here's the result.  You can click the animation to enlarge it:

Sources: JISAO and NASA

What do you think?  I reckon Professor JP is incredible.  It sure looks like the negative phase cooled the earth instantly.  Well okay, it didn't cool it exactly but at least it looks like it stopped it getting hotter for a while. Fine, whatever you say.  It didn't completely stop it from getting hotter but you've got to admit it didn't warm quite as much. And 'not warming as much' is pretty close to being the same thing as 'cooling', sort of, if you squint a bit.  Okay, if you squint a lot and shut your eyes and imagine.  Anyway the warming phase really gave such a jolt to the earth that it's still getting hot, even though the PDO has turned negative.  That's pretty powerful stuff.

I figure I'm still much dumber than the Professor though because I can't see the lags working very well. Nor can I see the PDO's 30 year half cycle or the 60 year full cycle.  It goes up and down for sure, but I must have forgotten how to do sums because I just can make them all add up to either 30 or 60, no matter what I do. It's just me I'm sure.  He probably knows as much about climate science as his fellow Professor David Archibald, or even more.  I don't know that he knows as much as Ronald A. "it's the insects" Voisin.  But that's doubtless a matter of opinion.  Whatever, I know I'll never get to the level of any of them.

On "blatant stupidity"

BTW here is the SkepticalScience chart.  As the good professor said, how "blatantly stupid" of them to compare linear trends instead of cycles.

Source: SkepticalScience

I'll send an email to Mr John Cook Esq (proprietor of SkepticalScience) and tell him to change the chart.  Of course he wouldn't listen to a humble blogger.  I'd better tell him Professor JP, the expert in half cycle or two PDO's, hysterical lags and kettles, is personally tutoring me.  That should impress him no end.

As the Professor suggested, all you have to do is show cycles.  I couldn't draw the spokes but I did manage to draw the shape of the wheels.  You can see how bigger and bigger wheels can be made to fit between the lines and are pushing up the temperature.  It's a tri-cycle.  It all makes sense now.  You just wait and see.  I'll bet in no time at all, SkepticalScience will replace their "blatantly stupid" chart with this one below.  It's prettier for one thing.  Don't you like pink?

You had the Marcott wheelchair, now here's the HotWhopper tricycle

I hope every reader has learnt as much as I did from this wonderful lesson.

Gotta go now, the kettle's boiling at last.  (I've only been waiting forty years.  It was only after the tip from the Professor that I figured out you have to apply a source of heat before the water boils.  After I did that, it took no time at all. Nary a lag to be seen.)

Anyone for a nice hot cuppa?

PS While you're sipping your tea (milk and sugar?), you might enjoy reading another version of the PDO, this time with clouds and magic fairy dust.