Deniers against nature at WUWT with Andy May

Anthony Watts has posted a puff piece at WUWT (archived here). In it Andy May says how he wants a world without nature, or at least that's the subtext. What puzzles me is what on earth is it that deniers find so enticing about ridding the world of the abundance of amazing, wondrous flora and fauna? What is it that makes people so irate about having to share the planet with other species?

Andy May likes science fiction. He wrote about how fiction writer Michael Crichton was 'a wonderful writer'. Yes, he could write a compelling yarn, but why Andy prefers Crichton pseudo-science to real science remains a mystery. I guess that the only thing deniers have on their "side" is fiction.

Spoof or genuinely nuts? Another conspiracy theory at WUWT about shrinking glaciers

The latest conspiracy theory at WUWT is of "preposterous" claims that glaciers are disappearing. More specifically, someone called Roger Roots doesn't "believe" that glaciers in Glacier National Park are shrinking as quickly as scientists say they are. The evidence? He can't find the old web pages from USGS.

If you've visited the USGS website since the 26 April this year, you'll have seen that it's rolling out a new website, with the modern format suited to tablets. From the new site:

See updates below (now two).

Double Dunce Award: WUWT gets it wrong when it claims the LA Times was wrong about Missouri streamflows

Today one of the WUWT regulars got a spot in an article at WUWT. It was about a very detailed study of streamflows in the Missouri River Watershed, which can be downloaded here.

Findings support a climatological forcing for the upward trends

The study noted significant changes over time. There was an upward trend in streamflow in some regions and a downward trend in others. The nature of the upward trend lends support for climatological forcing.  Other work identified that the downward trend is at least in part because of groundwater pumping. In the trend analysis at the end of the report, the authors wrote:

Either upward or downward significant trends in annual, monthly, and seasonal streamflow were pervasive within three watershed regions: downward trends in WR1 (upper Missouri River), upward trends in WR3 (Great Plains and Central Lowland physiographic provinces and Niobrara River), and downward trends in WR5 (Kansas River watershed). A comprehensive analysis of cause of trends is outside the scope of this report. An increase in diversions or consumptive use of water during the study period, however, could not result in upward trends in annual streamflows over broad regions, such as WR3. All seven HCDN streamgages in WR3 have upward trends, which supports a climatological forcing for the upward trends. Although not examined in this study, an increase in consumptive use because of groundwater pumping has been identified as a contributing factor to the downward trends in WR5 (Wen and Xunhong, 2006).

Downward trends in WR1, the upper Missouri River, were significant throughout this region and even on main-stem streamgages below reservoirs, such as streamgages 06177000 and 06185500 (map numbers 20 and 21, respectively) in WR1 and streamgage 06342500 (map number 53) in WR2. Two out of eight HCDN streamgages had downward trends, streamgage 06278300 (map number 32) and streamgage 06298000 (map number 40), whereas the remaining HCDN streamgages had no significant streamflow trends. Future studies could examine the forcing factors of these observed trends in streamflow, the watershed effects and potential long term consequences.

Now compare that with what was written at WUWT (archived here). To start with, Anthony wrote the article based on a comment by one of his fans, Joel O’Bryan, who has had quite a few of his comments quoted here at HotWhopper. He tends to make really dumb comments and gets very worked up about climate science.

Word search vs reading the words

Joel did something a bit unusual for a science denier, he went and checked the paper after reading a report in the Los Angeles Times. Well, he obviously didn't actually read the paper. What he did was do a search for the word "climate". I guess that's why he missed the Synthesis of Trends, which was just above the Summary at the end of the report, because it used the word "climatological", not "climate".