Polar bears, sexism and climate science denial

Adult polar bear on the look-out.
Source: Ian Sterling

When a science paper about polar bears generates multiple articles on denier blogs you can see it has hit a nerve. This happened recently when a paper was published, with a classic illustration of how deniers reference each other to make out there is dispute about climate change impacts.

The paper was by Jeffrey A Harvey and a bunch of other leading scientists. When I say a bunch, there were fourteen scientists listed as authors, comprising rising stars and heavyweights in the climate science world.

It's fortunate I wasn't able to write about this paper when it was first released because it allowed time to see the numerous articles about it on denier blogs. However, before looking at deniers' various reactions, how about a quick summary of the paper. It's open access and is easy to read. It may help if you understand the analytical techniques used, though that's not essential.

"Climate hoax" conspiracy theorists don't value logic or evidence - who knew :)

In a copy and paste at WUWT, Anthony Watts highlights a paper with research suggesting why WUWT-ers are so willing to adopt their "climate hoax" conspiracy theories. The researchers, Tomas Ståhl and Jan-Willem van Prooijen argue that people holding irrational beliefs (such as Anthony Watts and his ragtag mob of climate hoax conspiracy theorists) lack analytical skills and/or don't value logic or evidence.

Even if one or two WUWT deniers were endowed with reasonably high cognitive skills, evidence suggests they wouldn't value these skills and therefore don't use them. When it comes to climate science, they discard those skills in favour of one of the myriad conspiracies Anthony touts.

In the abstract of the paper itself, the authors write about how both analytical skills and motivation to be rational are required if one is to avoid adopting silly and unfounded beliefs:

We propose that part of the reason why unfounded beliefs are so widespread is because skepticism requires both sufficient analytic skills, and the motivation to form beliefs on rational grounds. 

It's immediately obvious to anyone who reads the articles and comments at WUWT that the bulk of Anthony's commenters lack a lot more than the motivation to be rational. Most of them lack analytical skills. Oh, there are still a few WUWT fans who can string words together to form whole sentences, but they are few and far between.

Climate Science Denial: A rational activity built on incoherence and conspiracy theories

Climate science denial is therefore perhaps best understood as a rational activity that replaces a coherent body of science with an incoherent and conspiracist body of pseudo-science for political reasons and with considerable political coherence and effectiveness.

That is the closing sentence of a new paper called: "The ‘Alice in Wonderland’ mechanics of the rejection of (climate) science: simulating coherence by conspiracism". Great title! The work is by Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, Dr John Cook and Professor Elisabeth Lloyd. It's another wonderful read about the lack of coherence in the arguments put forward by climate science deniers as their reasons for rejecting mainstream science.

"Something must be wrong". Four words. "Something is wrong". Three words.

Do either of the above have any meaning on their own? Not really. However they do invite questions.

It is essentially trivial, says Jonathan Jones. Indeed, says Stephan Lewandowsky

Chelsea Harvey at Washington Post has written about a new paper in Global Environmental Change. Her headline is: "Climate change doubters really aren’t going to like this study", and it seems that at least one science denier doesn't like it. The paper is by Stephan Lewandowsky, Professor at the University of Bristol, Timothy Ballard, Klaus Oberauerd and Rasmus Benestad, a climate scientist. It was a research conducted as a blind test of common claims of climate science deniers, comparing them with science reported by climate scientists.

The blind tests were carried out by disguising the data as something else (like agricultural production figures or population or share market prices or similar) and asking statisticians and economists to check the statements against the data for accuracy. Chelsea Harvey gave this example as a simplified illustration of the test:

Settled science: there is a scientific consensus that humans are causing climate change

You probably think this topic has been done to death, however there are still people who won't or can't accept that there is a strong scientific consensus on climate change. Even people who accept the strong scientific consensus keep coming up with claims that it isn't. The science on the consensus is "settled science". (I say that to annoy science deniers who don't understand the difference between settled science and ongoing research.)

There are two new papers about the extent to which there is a consensus that humans are causing global warming. One is a rather silly comment by Richard Tol (who can't let it go). The other is a reply to Richard's comment by a team of heavy hitters, including many of the people who have already published papers quantifying the consensus, plus more. The reply is much more than a mere reply. It's a synthesis of the consensus papers and something that you'll no doubt find useful the next time you come across a climate science doubter.

Judith Curry attacks open data advocates and encourages people who try to suppress science

No-one will be surprised to learn that Judith Curry supports vicious attacks on scientists who publish on controversial topics (archived here). She gave up science for blogging her science denial a few years ago. Now she's turned her attack onto two people who have been strong advocates for open science, Professor Stephan Lewandowsky and Professor Dorothy Bishop.

Anthony Watts can't get enough conspiracy theories at WUWT

There's another article protesting the moon-landing paper - the initial reaction to which spawned a wealth of material for further research. Some right wing journalist in the Sydney Morning Herald wrote some nonsense about the paper that he either didn't read or didn't understand. It brought out some beaut conspiracy theories from Anthony Watts' conspiratorial "believers" (archived here).

Honestly, you'd think Anthony had learnt his lesson many times over by now. Every time he protests that academic research into conspiracy theories and climate science denial are linked, he brings out a heap more conspiracy theories from his clan. It's not just motivated rejection of climate science, WUWT has motivated rejection of cognitive science. (Perhaps Anthony just wanted his readers to post their conspiracy theories under an "on topic" article.)

Climate things to do - a short round up

This is just to let you know of a few things that you might have missed.

First, Skeptical Science is doing a reader survey. So pop over and let them know what you like best about SkS - here's the link.

Then there's an in-depth article about Exxon at Inside Climate News. It's about how Exxon invested quite heavily in climate research at a time when few people were talking about CO2 and global warming. Before the IPCC was set up. It's a real eye-opener. The authors: Neela Banerjee, Lisa Song and David Hasemyer, are to be congratulated for their excellent research, as well as a highly readable article.

There's another new paper out disputing the so-called "pause" in global warming. It's about how the so-called "pause" fails a blind test. It has just been published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The authors are Stephan Lewandowsky, James S. Risbey and Naomi Oreskes. The paper can be downloaded here.

Peter Sinclair of ClimateCrocks fame has a wonderful video featuring Stefan Rahmstorf - it's only just over six minutes. It features Stefan's beautiful photography, as well as his passion for climate science. Do go and read the article and watch the video. For the lazy ones, here's the video - but go and compliment Peter, too:

References

SkepticalScience reader survey

Exxon: the road not taken - article by Neela Banerjee, Lisa Song and David Hasemyer at Inside Climate News

Stephan Lewandowsky, James S. Risbey and Naomi Oreskes. "The “Pause” in Global Warming: Turning a Routine Fluctuation into a Problem for Science" Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 2015 ; e-View doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-14-00106.1 (open access)

Stefan Rahmstorf – A Scientist’s Mind, and an Artist’s Eye - article and video from Peter Sinclair of ClimateCrocks.com

On the recurrent fury of unethical bloggers and how Anthony Watts issues a correction

Anthony Watts issues a correction? Surprised? Yes, you should be. Anthony Watts makes too many mistakes and publishes too many more. If he corrected all the wrongs on his blog WUWT would be one long correction. He didn't issue a correction for the following that have appeared on his blog in the past few days:

• We are about to enter an ice age (we're not. 2015 will almost certainly be another hottest year on record. Hotter than the current hottest, 2014.)
• UHI caused last year to be the hottest on record (it didn't)
• Sea levels physically can't rise by a metre this century (they can and quite possibly will.)

Nor did he issue a correction to his article that claimed that global warming is caused by steampipes in Russia, or that it's insects that are causing global warming.

And has Anthony published an apology and correction to his false allegations that NOAA researchers committed fraud - here and here and here? No, not at all.

But today, he's published an article (archived here) that complains that authors have issued a correction to a paper. That's right. Not only does Anthony Watts almost never issue a correction for the errors on his blog that are made multiple times every day - he has posted an article complaining that some authors did issue a correction!

On reproducibility: Replicated errors and double standards from Anthony Watts at WUWT

The most recent article from Anthony Watts, who runs a climate conspiracy blog called wattsupwiththat, or WUWT, demonstrates once again that he doesn't understand the first thing about scientific research. It also provides another lesson in the telltale techniques of climate science denial, and the double standards of Anthony Watts. 

What the WUWT article (archived here) is about is an article in the New York Times (without a link), which in turn is an article about a paper in Science about the lack of reproducibility of many psychology papers. That is, Anthony published a "guest essay" about a New York Times article about a paper, topped and tailed with some irrelevant silly comments from Anthony himself. (Anthony doesn't write much himself these days. He's probably conscious that most of what he writes is too silly for public consumption so he copies and pastes press releases and denier blog articles from elsewhere, and relies on "guest essays" of dubious quality from his readers.)

Anthony Watts weakly protests Recurrent Fury

The reaction from WUWT deniers to Recurrent Fury so far is fairly ordinary, though chock full of conspiracy ideation (archived here). It's not clear whether any denier has actually read the paper. Evidence suggests most haven't - they are too busy complaining about it. There is only one article at WUWT and it's dominated by Barry Woods. Barry has spent the past few years scouring the internet for any mention of Professor Lewandowsky and writing endless overly-long, over-hyped complaints mixed with general disinformation. That's because a comment from him was included (buried deep) in the data for the original paper, and Barry maybe regretted making his public comment publicly, and so he took it out on Professor Lewandowsky. (Barry found a paper written by a couple of deniers that he thinks refutes the moon-landing paper. It didn't.)

Many deniers might be nutters, but that's not what Recurrent Fury is about

Anthony Watts himself insists that Recurrent Fury demonstrates that "“people who question the veracity of global warming/climate change are nutters”. It doesn't. That's just what Anthony Watts wants you to think but it's not what the paper shows. Recurrent Fury is about the way that conspiracy theories evolve when facts emerge that force changes to the original conspiracy theory. It isn't a psychological diagnosis of individuals and never was. In any case, as Dr. Katharine Blackwell wrote: "believing in a conspiracy theory is not a psychological disorder, any more than a religious belief is."

Curses! It's a conspiracy! The Fury is Back Thrice Over

I don't know if you saw the wonderful conspiracy theory from the sockpuppeting ex-mod at WUWT, dbstealey (who has also posted as Smokey, D Böehm, D Böehm Stealey, and 'dbs, mod').  Anthony's staunchest ally, fan and WUWT moderator and attack dog, dbstealey, wrote not long ago that the KGB inserted Pope Francis as the head of the Catholic Church:

June 15, 2015 at 7:23 pm
...After Pope John Paul II faced down the Soviet Union, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church was targeted by the KGB/FSB. They have a lot of patience. The current Pope is the result. Now they have their puppet in the Vatican.

His notion that Pope Francis is a KGB sleeper agent is right up there with the best of the multitude of zany conspiracy theories that Anthony Watts promotes on his denier blog.

Communicating climate change risk

You know how some deniers beat up uncertainty every time climate change is mentioned. Well, there's a new booklet that's just been published, which will give you a heap of good tips on how to deal with the subject.

The tips are organised under 12 headings:

1. Manage your audience’s expectations
2. Start with what you know, not what you don’t know
3. Be clear about the scientific consensus
4. Shift from ‘uncertainty’ to ‘risk’
5. Be clear about the type of uncertainty you are talking about
6. Understand what is driving people’s views about climate change
7. The most important question for climate impacts is ‘when’, not ‘if’
8. Communicate through images and stories
9. Highlight the ‘positives’ of uncertainty
10. Communicate effectively about climate impacts
11. Have a conversation, not an argument
12. Tell a human story not a scientific one.

Managing expectations is about pointing out stuff like the fallacy that because something is not known for certain doesn't mean that nothing is known. For example, it is known that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and more of it heats up the planet.

Starting with what you know means starting out with facts like the world is warming and climates are changing. And that heat waves and deluges are getting worse. Rather than starting out with whether or not the planet will heat up by 4C or more or whether we'll act and keep it to 3C or less.

Being clear about the consensus is this:

Shift from ‘uncertainty’ to ‘risk’ because most people don't understand what is meant by uncertainty when used in science. Most people know a bit about risk, though. People typically pay hundreds of dollars a year on insurance against events that have a much lower risk than climate change.

You can read more examples in an article by one of the authors, Adam Corner, at Shaping Tomorrow's World. And the link to the handbook is below.

Reference

Adam Corner, Stephan Lewandowsky, Mary Phillips and Olga Roberts (2015) The Uncertainty Handbook. Bristol: University of Bristol - download here.

Seeps and SCAMS Part III: Richard Betts misunderstands (and misrepresents) a paper

Richard Betts, a UK climate scientist, has written an article about the recent paper by Stephan Lewandowsky and co, which I wrote about in Part I of this series, and referred to in Part II. Well it's not actually about the paper. It's Richard's interpretation of the paper based on his reading of a blog article Stephan wrote about the paper. It could be argued that it is evidence supporting the findings of the paper.

Correction: In the comments, Richard says that he did read the paper before he wrote his article. (I don't know how missed all the things he missed or why he got so much so wrong or why he appeared to write about the blog article and not the paper.) - Sou 6:48 pm Thursday 14 May 2015

I first saw Richard's article at WUWT and was very surprised to see it there. It turns out though, that Richard wrote his article for ATTP's blog. It was only when that rabid anti-Lewandowsky-ite, Barry Woods, asked him that he acquiesced and agreed to it being reposted on Anthony Watts' blog. That's despite the dreadful treatment dished out from WUWT when Richard's last article was published there. Here's the WUWT version - archived. Or better still, you can read it at ATTP's blog.

On Seeps and SCAMS Part II: Pat'n Chip'n David Fake a Debate.

In Part I of On Seeps and SCAMS, I wrote about the new paper on how denialist talking points can influence climate science. A day or so ago, there was an article at WUWT (archived here), by Patrick J. Michaels and Paul C. “Chip” Knappenberger (Pat'n Chip), in which they commented on that paper. Their WUWT article had the title: Lewandowsky’s Competing Theories for Source of Bias in Scientific Research. [This is Part II of a three part series. Click for Part I and Part III.]

The title was misleading. Pat'n Chip's WUWT article was more a promo for another article by David E. Wojick and Patrick J. Michaels. Their's is not a scientific paper, it's a CATO article. It would take a huge stretch of imagination to consider the denier lobby group, CATO, to have any relation to science.

What they wrote about could have been an interesting topic I suppose, though it demonstrates a naive view of the world on the part of the authors. They were ostensibly exploring whether or not government funding can bias research. Their paper had the title:

Is the Government Buying Science or Support?

A Framework Analysis of Federal Funding-induced Biases

They claim:

The research question is clear: does biased funding skew research in a preferred direction, one that supports an agency mission, policy or paradigm?

The reason I say it could have been an interesting topic is that research that is primarily funded by government is subject to the vagaries of government priorities. Not in the results, but in what areas research is undertaken.

On Seeps and SCAMS Part I: Lessons for Climate Scientists

There is a new paper in the literature, or soon to be in the literature, about the impact on climate scientists of denialist propaganda campaigns. The paper is easy to read, being virtually free of specialist jargon. It's written from the perspective of psychology and the lead author is Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, currently at Bristol University in the UK. There is a team of co-authors, some of whom who you'll recognise - Naomi Oreskes, James S. Risbey, Ben R. Newell and Michael Smithson. The paper is to be published in the journal Global Environmental Change, rather than a psychology journal. The reason becomes clear when you read the paper. It's explaining how climate scientists can be adversely affected by denier memes, such as "uncertainty" in climate science. [This is Part I of a three part series. Click for Part II and Part III.]

If you thought that dispassionate scientists, when doing scientific research, are immune from denialist propaganda you'd be wrong. It's not just when scientists talk about climate that they can demonstrate they've been influenced by denialists' campaigns. Even their scientific publications can be so influenced.

Rampant alarmism at WUWT (again) about UN climate talks in Geneva

WUWT is veering once again into rampant alarmism. Eric Worrall (he's just a run-of-the-mill denier from Australia, one of Anthony Watts' useful idiots) has written one of his very short "guest essays" (archived here), most of which is a copy and paste of a segment from the Sydney Morning Herald. It's a contrast to the tedious verbose "guest essays" by some other contributors I suppose.

The SMH article was about how, for the Geneva talks, the draft UN agreement to combat climate change has now swollen to 100 pages, from the 38 page document drafted at Lima.

Eric sets the ball rolling with alarmism, writing:

Given the fact that countries are free to write their own terms, including joke effort’s like China’s agreement to do nothing until the 2030s, in return for America agreeing to commit economic suicide, the greatest contribution to CO2 reduction Paris is likely to produce, will be the sequestration in some dusty filing cabinet, of all the carbon copies, of what promises to be the longest climate agreement ever written.

Eric just made up the part about China - out of thin air. China is reportedly bringing forward its plan for carbon trading. As for America agreeing to "commit economic suicide" - I don't see that happening any time soon.

(Is this really the best that people who want the globe to warm faster have to offer? Seems pathetically weak to me. Thankfully, many world leaders are taking the UN meetings very seriously.)

Framing climate policies for public support

Now all this rampant alarmism gives me a good reason for alerting readers to a new paper by Mark Hurlstone and his colleagues.  Mark and one of his co-authors, Stephan Lewandowsky, have written about the paper at Shaping Tomorrow's World.  The research was exploring how best to frame messages to build support for climate policies.

Confirming Lewandowsky: More self-sealed conspiracy theories at WUWT

Anthony Watts today has highlighted the curious ongoing obsession fake sceptics have with stolen emails written in the dim distant past (archived here). He's pointed to an article in Environmental Research Letters by Stephan Lewandowsky.

Don't confuse conspiracy theorists' obsessions with general public interest

Professor Lewandowsky's article is a perspective piece about a paper published in ERL earlier this year by William R L Anderegg and Gregory R Goldsmith. The abstract:

Anderegg and Goldsmith (2014 Environ. Res. Lett. 9 054005) use Google Trends to examine the impact of specific media events - the so-called "climategate" imbroglio and the glacial-melt error in the IPCC's 2007 report - on public opinion regarding climate change. There has been an overall decline of public interest in climate change after 2007, accompanied by spikes of interest with a half-life of six days for these two media events. The brevity of public interest in "climategate" stands in contrast to the continued and growing fascination of the "skeptic" blogosphere with that event. These results document the assertion that conspiratory obsession by a small number of people should not be mistaken for general public interest.

Indeed. It would be hard to mistake the conspiratory obsession by the small number of people at WUWT with general public interest about anything. For example, is the general public really interested in fake skeptic allegations that climate science is a hoax because climate scientists use email? And is the general public really interested in Tim Ball and his theories about how Tom Wigley has become the ruler of the world?  Is the general public really interested in the WUWT paranoid conspiracy theories about the IPCC?

Who's the wackadoodle?

Although he probably hasn't read the paper, Anthony Watts doesn't seem to like what Professor Lewandowsky wrote, and said:

A new paper by Stephan Lewandowsky once again projects his own conspiracy ideation onto skeptics...

Extract:
One known element of conspiratorial thinking is its ‘self-sealing’ quality (Keeley 1999, Bale 2007, Sunstein and Vermeule 2009), whereby evidence against a conspiratorial belief is re-interpreted as evidence for that belief. In the case of ‘climategate’, this self-sealing nature of conspiratorial belief became evident after the scientists in question were exonerated by nine investigations in two countries (including various parliamentary and government committees in the U.S. and U.K.; see table 1), when those exonerations were re-branded as a ‘whitewash.’ This ‘whitewash’ response can be illustrated by U.S. Representative Sensenbrennerʼs published response to the EPAʼs endangerment finding. 

...Basically, the gist of it is that being interested in Climategate, makes you a conspiracy theorist.

What a wackadoodle.

h/t to Barry Wood. 

Which is funny on a few counts. First of all, there's no hint of any conspiratorial thinking on the part of Professor Lewandowsky in his article.  Anthony is just trying to be "clever" and failing. And yeah, being consumed by a desire to find something, anything in the stolen emails that will "prove" that climate science is a hoax - is a prominent sign of conspiracy ideation. Finally - h/t Barry Wood. Of course!

Empty vessels

The Lewandowsky paper closes by observing that the empty vessel effect is evident. People think there are more deniers than there actually are, because they make so much noise. He writes:

It is known that the perception of the prevalence of ‘skeptic’ opinions is grossly over-estimated compared to the actual extent of ‘skepticism.’ In a representative Australian sample, (Leviston et al 2013b) found that only around 6% of respondents denied that climate change was happening, whereas the publicʼs estimate of the prevalence of that opinion was in excess of 20%—more than three times greater. 

He then discusses the miconceptions about scientific consensus and how that can shape people's attitudes. He wrote:

Given the well-known linkage between the perception of a consensus and actual opinion (e.g., Lewandowsky et al 2013b), peopleʼs mis-calibration of the perceived public-opinion landscape—in particular the inflation of a small minority into 1/5 of the population—raises the possibility that peopleʼs attitudes are disproportionately shaped by a small but very vocal minority. 

And he notes that scientists themselves are not immune to the influence of the empty vessels, writing:

It must be of particular concern that the scientific community does not appear to be immune to such misperceptions. There is some evidence that ‘skeptical’ voices are affecting—and arguably distorting—the course of climate science and the communication of its findings (Freudenburg and Muselli 2010, Brysse et al 2013).

Stephan Lewandowsky rounds off the article cautioning people not to confuse the obsessions of the small number of fake sceptics with the wider public interest. And refers again to the Anderegg & Goldsmith paper, which showed that:

... the wider public astutely lost interest in ‘climategate’ long ago.

Not being as astute as the wider public, Anthony Watts and his fake sceptics at WUWT are still obsessed, turning innocent conversations from innocuous fifteen year old emails into grand conspiracies of climate hoaxes.

Self-sealing conspiracy theories from the WUWT comments

If you go to the WUWT comments, you'll find confirmation of what Professor Lewandowsky wrote in his paper, which Anthony Watts quoted above, about the "self-sealing" quality of conspiracy theory advocates.

...whereby evidence against a conspiratorial belief is reinterpreted as evidence for that belief. ...

WUWT readers decided to prove the points made in the paper. I saw scant evidence of self awareness in the comments. See the self-sealing in action, from Anna Keppa, who wrote:

November 12, 2014 at 6:29 pm
What a crock. It isn’t a case of evidence of a conspiratorial **belief** that matters, it’s evidence of the conspiracy itself. In the case of climategate, there were no independent or disinterested investigations, just parties either invested with stakes in the outcome or on record as having held the same position of the warmistas.

Will Nitschke tries to fudge, but fails to hide his self-sealed conspiracy theory:

November 12, 2014 at 6:42 pm
People don’t trust “internal” police investigations because of the obvious conflict of interest. That’s why police are usually investigated by special and separate branches of the police, or in some cases anti-corruption special judicial appointments.
The issue needs to be correctly framed. Not, that ‘conspiracy’ or more correctly, ‘self interest’ is impossible or highly unlikely, but rather, with any group behaviour, can one expect it to NOT operate? It seems like a rather absurd proposition. It’s rather self evident that conflict of interest is normative in any field of human endeavour.

Malcolm is another self-sealer and says:

November 12, 2014 at 8:21 pm
The primary purpose of these ‘investigations’ was to exonerate the scientists. This point is completely lost on most people. 

Chip Javert decides that Professor Lewandowsky is part of a conspiracy to curtail his freedom to indulge in conspiracy thinking:

November 12, 2014 at 6:54 pm
Oh good. Some witch doctor climbs out from under the psychology rock to defame a community attempting to conduct a legitimate science discussion.
He easily demonstrates a firm grasp on bovine excrement, but how much math & physics does he understand? 

ossqss says he knows from experience that psychologists are nuts. He's married to one, he said, so he knows!

November 12, 2014 at 7:01 pm
Mr. Lew’s continued behavior speaks to psychological issues of his own. I am not a psychologist, but I married one. I have viewed this type of behavior through studies helping my better half get that credential. Just sayin, fixation through facination can lead to strange things. Perhaps one of our credentialed viewers could comment further, but he seems to have a serious internal problem with no known way out of it now. A plateau has been reached in more ways than one for him. 

Konrad. agrees with ossqss and says that because he analyses the fake sceptic psyche he must be nuts, and maybe he's right :)

November 12, 2014 at 7:46 pm
Yes, strange isn’t it? Every time complete foamer Lewandowsky goes to write another of his turgid psychology papers, he keeps coming back to his own crazed conspiracy ideation about sceptics. It’s like a dog returning to its vomit.
I fear there is no hope for a “physician heal thyself” solution. For Lewandowsky it may be time for the quiet clinic in the country where all the nurses speak softly, the furnishings are padded and all the utensils are plastic…

---

Anderegg, William RL, and Gregory R. Goldsmith. "Public interest in climate change over the past decade and the effects of the ‘climategate’media event." Environmental Research Letters 9, no. 5 (2014): 054005. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/9/5/054005

Stephan Lewandowsky. "Conspiratory fascination versus public interest: the case of 'climategate'" Environ. Res. Lett. 9, no. 11 (2014): 111004 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/9/11/111004

Some sciency questions, plus a note on etiquette

Update 2: see below for Anthony's excuses.

Update: see below for Anthony Watts' "report" of Professor Mann's Bristol lecture.

---

Some sciency questions

I added a note about the new stadium wave paper at the end of my last article. I do have some question for readers. On page two of the paper (subs req'd), when talking about their pattern searching, the authors write:

Following Tsonis et al. [2007], Wyatt et al. [2012] considered a network of climate indices associated, geographically and dynamically, with different climatic subsystems, and used an objective filtering method to isolate secular multidecadal variability within this network during the 20th century. On top of a uniform linear trend, they identified an oscillatory-looking wiggle with a common multidecadal time scale, but with different phases across the different indices of the climate network, thus manifesting a signal that propagates in the space of climate indices. The authors termed this propagating signal the “stadium wave,” reflecting a speculation that it dynamically originates in the North Atlantic and spreads over the remainder of the Northern Hemisphere via a hypothesized sequence of delayed dynamical feedbacks. However, search for the stadium wave in a suite of simulations by multiple global climate models only returned stationary, in-phase signals [Wyatt and Peters, 2012], in sharp contrast with the observational analysis of Wyatt et al. [2012].

There were a few questions that popped into my mind when I read that. Perhaps a reader can help out and explain the scientific jargon:

• What is a network of climate indices?  
• What is the difference between an objective filtering method and a non-objective filtering method?
• What does an oscillatory-looking wiggle look like?
• What does a non-oscillatory-looking wiggle look like?
• What makes an oscillatory-looking wiggle distinguishable from an oscillatory-looking waddle?
• How much space is required for climate indices?
• How do you tell the difference between a dynamic origination and a non-dynamic origination?
• What is the difference between a dynamical feedback and a regular feedback?

Thanks in advance, all you science aficionados.

A note on etiquette

On a separate topic, I notice that Anthony Watts is feeling a bit put upon that people have noticed that he doesn't have what it takes when it comes to the crunch. (That's non-science jargon for, well, you can guess.)

Anthony, full of bravado and egged on by his adoring hangers-on, jumped on a plane paid for by those same adoring hangers-on, full of promise to put those supposed miscreant scientists on the spot and ask them some hard-hitting questions.

When Anthony arrived, he found himself confronted, in person, face to face, by the three people in the entire world who, out of all the scientists he rubbishes, he has probably spent more time viciously attacking and telling lies about than any others. (See here and here and here and particularly here for the background.)

Anthony went to water.

Cowed by the reality that there he was, in a university of all places, a place that doesn't just like knowledge it actually creates knowledge. The very antithesis of Anthony Watts' world. Not only that but he was in a foreign country, surrounded by people who not only spoke a different language, they knew a lot more about climate science than he ever could hope to know.  And to top it off he discovered the lectures were being recorded on video. Anthony probably had visions of Paul Nurse and James Delingpole. Cowed, he shrank into his chair and could barely wait until the ordeals ended.

Tail between his legs, he slunk back to his Californian basement, turned on his computer terminal and mumbled: "I only went to watch." Which didn't faze his hard-core supporters, who assured him "You're the man!"

Well, that was too much. Being mocked even by his hard-core supporters. With a monitor shielding him from his nemeses, his cyber-self finally donned the bravado he is known for, he strode over to Facebook and bravely wrote: "May I ask a question?"

He was feeling up again. No longer worried that he might have to look someone in the eye.

Buoyed by his courage at being able to venture into the lion's cyberden, he boldly took a snapshot. Next visited Twitter and boasted to all and sundry that his bravado had returned, now that he didn't have to face anyone in person. Now that he could hide behind his monitor, getting lots of retweets and replies of support from supposed friends and allies. ("That means I must be right" thinks Anthony.)

Now Anthony wasn't invited into the personal log of this scientist. He barged in uninvited. Needless to say he was swiftly and politely shown the door. And just so you know:

If you have a habit of making false, inflammatory, and/or defamatory statements about climate scientists in public then, no, you're not welcome at this facebook page. There are other outlets for you in that case. Thanks!

(Just so you know - it's the same here at HotWhopper.)


Anthony is satisfied. He breathes a sigh of relief. Order has been restored and he didn't even have to think up a dumb question. Saved by etiquette. He is once more king of denialism. He has shown his fans that scientists refuse to debate fake sceptics. He is the Man. (Oops!)


The few climate bloggers who noticed the exchange might have thought of Anthony and his charade: "What a bunch of mindless yobbos".

The rest of the world thinks - umm, nothing. If asked they'd say "Who? Who is Anthony Watts? Oh, you mean the rugby player/bikie/boxer? Not his style."

Update

Anthony Watts has finally written his "report" of Dr Mann's presentation. Showing two things. First: Anthony Watts is incapable of writing a report. Secondly, his fans wouldn't know a report if they tripped over one and are easily pleased. His "report" is nothing more than a collection of photos of Dr Mann's presentation, with very short comment/description underneath.

With no hint that he understands the meaning of intellectual property, under one of his photos he wrote: "I wonder if he got permission from Accu-Weather to use that graphic?" One may ask, "I wonder if Anthony Watts got permission to post all Dr Mann's slides". (In response to a question about this, Anthony claimed it is "fair use". I'd question that. One or two slides maybe, to illustrate a point. But not all of them with barely a word of analysis. I've not linked to the WUWT page or an archived version for obvious reasons.)

And again, with no hint of duplicity he claims, about a photo of Dr Mann's own child: " I don’t think children should be used as props.". This the day after Anthony himself stole a photo of a mother and child to persuade his readers to sign up to a fake religion's repulsive "declaration"! (h/t CM)

Update 2: The gutless wonder - excuses, excuses

Anthony Watts admits he's a gutless wonder (archived here, latest update here). In the process describes his paranoid conspiracy ideation, among other things.

First he tries to foist the blame on Michael Mann claiming he has a "record of hostility". WTF! It's Anthony Watts who hasn't let up on defaming Dr Mann and telling lies about him and his work.  (Didn't he realise when he made the booking that Michael Mann would be there, to answer his "many questions"?)

Next he blames Professor Lewandowsky. [Edit: Just for being there, mind you. Not for anything he did or didn't do there.] Yeah, it's all his fault - not! Remember Anthony's fake bravado when he boasted he was "Headed into ‘Lew-world’" and begged for money? What happened?

Anthony's still behaving exactly as I described above. Words like worthless, slimeball and cowardly come to mind.

He confesses he wasted his readers' money and got it under false pretences, but no-one's asked for a refund, yet.

Anthony was too chicken to admit that his "big brave question" to Michael Mann on Facebook was nothing more than:

"...will you take my question now?"

From Monty Python

.h/t Raoul :)

From the WUWT comments

Anthony's sycophants supported him, boosting his fragile ego, muttering stuff like of course you did the wise thing, oh wise one and I see now you did the right thing. There was one person who had sufficient independence of mind to buck the trend. Velcro wrote:

September 28, 2014 at 10:54 am
The venue was the venue. Nothing Mann could do about the separation between podium and audience. Seems to me that the sceptic community criticise the warmists for not being prepared to debate, yet on this occasion, when there was the opportunity to question, we sceptics passed up the chance. I would have been inclined to ask something like ‘ do you attach any significance to the fact that if one plots annual global temperature against year for the past 18 odd years, one gets a horizontal line? And if you don’t then why not?

This is for Velcro. And this, too. And don't forget this from Gavin Schmidt.


Finally, one slipped by the mods - for everybody, from tz

September 28, 2014 at 1:47 pm
The Mann-o-sphere v.s. Kochtopussy.

Anthony Watts can't help himself. Was he born a liar?

And finally finally, for anyone who has fallen for Anthony's fairytale that he "booted me off WUWT for being overly disruptive". He didn't. He banned me over a fairly mild tweet. This "clueless female eco-nut" who is "isolated, lonely" and petless or is she a "crazy, nasty,spiteful witch" posted only about 30 comments in four years at WUWT, none of which could be described as "overly disruptive" by any stretch of the imagination. Some of my mild comments annoyed Anthony and Smokey/DB Stealey, for some reason. Too sciency I expect. (I'm wondering if Anthony thinks any blogger who ridicules others, be they anti-science or pro-science, must be isolated, lonely and petless.)

[Update to an update: No-one at WUWT commented on what I write but there are lots of theories as to why I write. The latest theory is that I have a all the hallmarks of being a child abuse victim. (Deniers apparently cannot fathom why people would poke fun at their anti-science efforts and pseudo-science and replace it with science. First time I've heard "alarmism" blamed on child abuse though. Is this intended as a milder form of Steyn-abuse?) Sou 29 September 2014]

Nor was I ever kicked off any discussion board for being overly disruptive. (When Anthony wrote in the plural, he was using what passes for blog licence on disinformation blogs. There is no plural. There is only one other instance that he is referring to.) However it wasn't for disruption. I was scarcely ever even modded on that share trading website (a site where deleting comments is the norm, not the exception). They just decided they didn't want a woman in their 'men only' club, after she once commented on the misogyny prevalent there - still, going by the comments here. Much like the way Anthony Watts soon bans almost everyone who prefers climate science to pseudoscience.

Irony alert! More conspiracy plots discovered at WUWT and elsewhere...

Irony meter blows up.

The irony meter is overheating today.

Anthony Watts decided to whistle up all his conspiracy theorists today (archived here). He's found some grad student blogger called José Duarte who's been ranting and raving against Cook13 on any denier blog he can find (to uncritical acclaim by Judith Curry and critical derision by others). On his blog, after deciding that scientists (citizen or otherwise) aren't competent to read scientific abstracts, he wrote (archived here):

There's a much better method for finding out what scientists think — ask them. Not just about their abstracts, which you already rated – you're still adding unnecessary layers of complexity and bias there. Direct surveys of scientists, with more useful questions, is a much more valid method than having ragtag teams of unqualified political activists divine the meanings of thousands of abstracts. 

Ha ha. Guess what, those nefarious plotting "unqualified political activists" did ask them. But that's not what José wants. He doesn't want to confuse the results of a study looking at what the science says by examining what the science says. That would add unnecessary layers of complexity. Say that again? (Best not.)

José's also been writing nonsense about Lewandowsky13, the "moon landing" paper, about how people who think climate science is a hoax don't necessarily think that HIV causes AIDS - or do think that, or something or the other. He's a bit of a nutter. Full of conspiracy ideation himself. And very emotional about it too. He's flinging all the usual accusations using words like fraud and scam. Which is funny, because Anthony Watts has just written two articles bemoaning the fact that climate change tugs at the emotions. After flinging around wild accusations, claiming that the paper was a scam and a lie, José himself tells a lie of his own by implication. He wrote (archived here):

Why would anyone participate in our research if our goal is to marginalize them in public life, to lie about them, to say that they think the moon landing was a hoax, to say they don't think HIV causes AIDS, to say they don't believe smoking causes lung cancer – when none of those things are true. Do we hate our participants?

Thing is that the paper didn't find that every science denier thinks all those things. Not every conspiracy theorist thinks those things. Not every right winger thinks those things. What the paper found was the thinking those things was a predictor of science denial. This is what the paper found, from the abstract:

Paralleling previous work, we find that endorsement of a laissez-faire conception of free-market economics predicts rejection of climate science (r≈.80 between latent constructs). Endorsement of the free market also predicted the rejection of other established scientific findings, such as the facts that HIV causes AIDS and that smoking causes lung cancer. We additionally show that endorsement of a cluster of conspiracy theories (e.g., that the CIA killed Martin-Luther King or that NASA faked the moon landing) predicts rejection of climate science as well as the rejection of other scientific findings, above and beyond endorsement of laissez-faire free markets. This provides empirical confirmation of previous suggestions that conspiracist ideation contributes to the rejection of science.

José fits the bill. He is obviously prone to conspiracist ideation, which he dresses up using words like "scam" and "fraud". (In much the same way as Steve McIntyre did.) He clearly places himself at the extreme end of the right wing ideology spectrum. And I'm guessing from his strong reaction to Cook13 that he also rejects climate science. I wonder what other science he rejects. I wonder what other conspiracy theories he subscribes to?

On the topic of conspiracy theories, sometimes I check out who's been discussing HotWhopper. Guess what I found. John Reece wrote: :

"...The AGW scam is the greatest hoax in the history of the world. What could be more fascinating as a focus for one's attention?..."

Followed shortly afterwards with this. John Reece wrote:

"...Anyone who sees (in what I post) evidence of a conspiracy theory mindset is projecting in the psychological sense ― a phenomenon with which I am quite familiar, having worked for an entire career as a professional colleague of psychiatrists and psychologists in a community mental health center..."

Similarly at WUWT, in response to Anthony's call for all his readers to come up with their best conspiracy theories.

ossqss thinks there is deception in the climate science community and says:

August 6, 2014 at 10:26 am
It is amazing the extent of deception in the climate science community. Data tampering, rigged review, outright lies, refusal to share code or data, policy implementation without representation, agenda driven study results, funding impropriety, and on and on. We need a reset button as everyone is paying the price for this abhorrent behavior.
Incarceration is the only button that can bring this systemic fraud to an end.

Alec Rawls is a long time conspiracy theorist who I've written about before. He claims scientists deploy "scurrilous strategems" and goes further. He's doing what John Reece did above. He's projecting (excerpts):

August 6, 2014 at 9:13 am
As any real scientist should be, Duarte is flabbergasted to witness the scurrilous stratagems deployed by the relentlessly dishonest Lewandowski, Cook et al.. Those of us who have for years been the targets of eco-alarmist slander cannot muster the same surprise, but our years of familiarity can help to answer the questions Mr. Duarte has about the etiology of this perversion.

...These leftists always assume that the correlation between right-left ideology and skeptic-believer views on climate are because people on the right compromise scientific thinking in favor of politically preferred conclusions. The reason they jump to that conclusion is because they are always projecting. Leftists think that everyone engages in “motivated cognition” because that is what THEY do.  ...

...The leftist mind is a truly foul and perverted thing....

Alan Robertson speaks about nefarious plots and says:

August 6, 2014 at 10:05 am
It was only a matter of time until someone within the social sciences community spoke against the farcical works of Lewandowsky. Now that Oreskes has inextricably linked her name to Lewandowsky, the scions of Harvard are surely plotting their next move… 

MattN decides that at least two scientists are charlatans and says:

August 6, 2014 at 9:42 am
Lewandowsky and Cook are just two more in a long line of charlatans bleating out the party line, albeit with unusual attitude and arrogance. 

john robertson reckons that science is dangerous to personal liberty and destructive to civil society and says:

August 6, 2014 at 8:44 am
Possibly too little too late.
Climatology is drowning in Lew Paper and the byproducts associated with it.
Social Science is about to get lumped in with “Climate Science”.
As dangerous pseudo sciencey rubbish that is dangerous to personal liberty and destructive to civil society.
Just another front, a cover for the statist do-gooder power hungry people haters. 

There's a bonus, too. I've often noticed that most deniers at WUWT don't click links. It took more than two hours and 32 comments before someone remarked that the main link to the origins of Anthony Watts' copy and paste was broken! MattS finally says:

August 6, 2014 at 10:38 am
The link in the main post to the José Duarte blog is broken.

And they don't bother reading the papers they complain about, either. If arthur4563 had bothered to read Cook13's scientific consensus paper he'd have known that asking the scientists was exactly what the researchers did. And guess what. 97% of them said their papers endorsed the fact that humans are causing global warming. But arthur4563 is a science denier and science deniers as a general rule don't bother with papers in scientific journals. He says:

August 6, 2014 at 10:42 am
To me the major problem with Cook’s sudy was the fact that it was so stupidly designed and
obsolete. The study was supposedly to determine the opinion of climate scientists about global warming. That implies it should canvas their “current” beliefs, not beliefs they may have held in the past, in some paper they may have been involved with (perhaps before the “pause”).

And the strategy Cook chose almost looks as if it was designed to introduce human bias into the results. If you want to know a scientist’s beliefs about an issue, you do what everyone else (except Cook) would do : YOU ASK THEM. You don’t dig thru a bunch of published papers trying to read tea leaves and infer the answer to a question that the papers probably never even addressed. In court, such a claim as Cook’s study makes would be tossed out as “not best evidence” as well as “including answers likely to be obsolete.” 

The other problem with arthur4563's comment was that the Cook13 study wasn't about personal opinions. It was about the science.


Perhaps the most irony-filled comment comes from Anthony Watts himself, smearer extraordinaire, morally bankrupt blogger, who wrote:

It is heartening to see somebody outside of climate science finally call these spades a spade. Now if we can just instill some sense of moral responsibility to people in climate science who really should be speaking out about using science as a smear tactic, we’ll be gettin somewhere.

---

Cook, John, Dana Nuccitelli, Sarah A. Green, Mark Richardson, Bärbel Winkler, Rob Painting, Robert Way, Peter Jacobs, and Andrew Skuce. "Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature." Environmental Research Letters 8, no. 2 (2013): 024024. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024

Lewandowsky, Stephan, Klaus Oberauer, and Gilles E. Gignac. "NASA faked the moon landing—therefore,(climate) science is a hoax an anatomy of the motivated rejection of science." Psychological science 24, no. 5 (2013): 622-633. doi: 10.1177/0956797612457686