Anthony Watts: Loopy and out of the loop. It's been noticed.

Tom Karl has retired from NOAA after more than 40 years of dedicated service. At HotWhopper, let's wish him well in his retirement and thank him for his valuable contribution, helping everyone understand better how we are changing climates around the world.

I woke up to see an article by Anthony Watts at WUWT (archived here). That's still a rare occurrence. It wasn't so much an article by Anthony as a misleading headline on top of a copied and pasted press release, with Anthony Watts' conspiracy theorising added underneath. At around the same time I got some messages from people who noticed that Anthony is very much out of the science loop.

The press release was to let people know that Tom Karl of NOAA has retired. Anthony's headline was "resigned", probably so that his obedient fans would make up some conspiracy theory about nefarious goings on. Or it could just be another example of Anthony Watts' ignorance. (So far most of his dim deniers have just stuck with Anthony's own conspiracy theory.)

Lesson 1,126½ in how to be a science disinformer, featuring Bob Tisdale

In this lesson about how to be a climate disinformer, I refer to a recent article by Bob Tisdale (archived here, cached here). In fact I refer to umpteen articles by Bob Tisdale, because his articles are often copies and pastes of his previous articles, with slight updates.

You can also watch a video with Tom Peterson, who gives The Story of Climate Data. This article is worth it for that alone. Dr Peterson is President of the World Meteorological Organization's Commission for Climatology, and recently retired from NOAA.

The purpose of the lesson, and hiding the closing of the gap

The purpose of the deception is to "prove" that all models are useless by hiding the closing of the gap.

Before you start, it's important to see what the observations actually show. Below is a chart of HadCRUT4, plotted with the multi-model mean of CMIP5. The 95% probability is for all uncertainties for HadCRUT observations - measurement and sampling, bias and coverage uncertainties. The uncertainties relating to the multi-model mean of CMIP5 are not plotted. As always, click on the chart to enlarge it.

Fig 1 | Global mean surface temperature observations and multi-model mean.
Data sources: UK Met Office Hadley Centre and KNMI Climate Explorer (CMIP5)

As you can see, with 2015 year to date (to September 2015), the observations are now approaching the CMIP5 multi-model mean. This closing of the gap must be hidden from WUWT deniers at all costs. And it's not hard to do so if you follow the steps in the lesson.

Anthony Watts tells more fibs about NOAA

There's a US congressman who's out of control when it comes to things environmental and climate. His name is Lamar Smith. Not satisfied with data, he wants NOAA to provide him with emails and stuff. The general consensus is that Lamar Smith isn't capable of assessing data. He can't tell one number from the rest. And he's a conspiracy nutter of the type that Peter Sinclair found when he and greenmanbucket installed a hidden camera to record the Science Committee:

Lamar Smith has been vindictively harassing scientists for some time now, in a clear abuse of power. Weirdly, the US legislators have made him, an anti-science advocate, chair of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Smith gets lots of money from oil and gas companies, and from that perspective some would argue he's only doing what he's paid to do. But that would be wrong. He gets paid to represent the American people, not the oil and gas sector. His job is to do what is right for Americans, not to line his campaign chest with donations from lobby groups.

Anyway, he's been on a wild rampage trying to stop climate science from progressing. He's another one who can't wait for the world to burn. As Ars Technica reports, he's also falsely and maliciously accused scientists of "altering data".

Reminds me of James Inhofe, who wanted to send climate scientists to gaol because he didn't like what the research was showing.

Anthony Watts publicly accuses NOAA scientists of fraud (again) - plus his "people go to jail"!

If you mistakenly thought that deniers like Anthony Watts might have some ethics or even a tiny shred of decency hidden very deep, you're wrong. In a topsy turvy and ugly article at WUWT today, Anthony Watts has someone trying to defend his appalling email to Tom Peterson of NOAA, in which he accuses Dr Peterson of fraud. Kip Hansen (archived here) tries to twist this into it being Andy Revkin who committed "a public journalistic offense". (I did say "that's gotta hurt".)

Andy Revkin wrote this after learning about Anthony's defamatory email:

Any notion that Watts is interested in fostering an atmosphere of civility and constructive discourse evaporates pretty quickly in considering how he handled his questions about that paper. Alternating between happy talk about rooftop solar and slanderous accusations is not constructive or civil.

More perversity from Anthony Watts @wattsupwiththat

The day before yesterday, with approval of the author, I promoted a comment to an article, which needed very little introduction. Anthony Watts had already publicly accused the NOAA of fraud, and of lying. In an email to Dr Peterson he went one further and accused Dr Peterson and his colleagues of fraud and prostitution. [See also addendum below.]

I just noticed a very long Twitter exchange in which Anthony Watts is trying to perversely twist around his own accusation of fraud, and claim that it is Dr Peterson who is "sliming" Anthony Watts. And apparently I also "slimed" Anthony by hosting his comment, despite saying very little about it. Anthony's email said it all. Here's his email again - this time I'll emphasise his allegations in bold italics:

Pausing for a dozen protests at WUWT

So far there have been 12 articles at WUWT protesting the NOAA paper that came out last Thursday - by my count. Not including the first two, which broke embargo, that's more than two protests a day. We're still waiting for Anthony's promised fatal weakness.

The perversity of deniers - and the "pause" that never was with Tom Peterson

Below is a TedX talk from Dr Tom Peterson on "What is Science: How it Differs from Art, Law and Quackery":

Tom quoted Stephen Jay Gould, Harvard geologist, from the video (which provided the title for this article):

Science does not deal in certainty, so "fact" can only mean a proposition affirmed to such a high degree it would be perverse to withhold one's provisional assent.

What follows is copied from a comment posted here at HotWhopper, from Tom Peterson of NOAA, co-author of the new paper in Science, and President of the WMO Commission for Climatology. The email exchange is about a subject of much recent discussion - the new Science paper, which I described here (with lots of links at the bottom for further reading).

Tom has subsequently confirmed the email exchange and kindly gave me permission to repost his comment as a blog article. Apart from remarking on Anthony's conspiracy ideation, there's not really anything more I need add. The exchange speaks for itself - and speaks volumes.

Email exchange between Anthony Watts and Tom Peterson

Dear Sou et al.,

I thought you might find an email exchange I had yesterday with Anthony Watts interesting. 16 hours ago I received this email from Anthony Watts: