List of scientists "respected in their field" - only @wattsupwiththat - take on the EPA

This made me laugh.  Anthony Watts is all excited because a bunch of clowns have filed a brief supporting a whole mob of litigants to the US Supreme Court, who want to stop the EPA from regulating CO2 emissions.  This isn't the first time and probably won't be the last.

What caught my eye was this mob that Anthony Watts is promoting (archived here) are trying to pass themselves off as:

...highly regarded scientists and economists [who] have expertise in a wide array of fields implicated by this rulemaking, including climate research, weather modeling, physics, geology, statistical analysis, engineering, and economics. One or more of these scientists and economists has the relevant expertise to support every statement made in this brief. These scientists and economists all have publications in peer reviewed journals and are respected in their fields of expertise by their peers.

Look at the list, six of them have already graced the pages of HotWhopper, some several times.  I guess you could call that regarded, though not at all highly.  The list is below.  It reads like an excerpt from who's who of the extreme right wing of the denial machine.

• Joseph S. D’Aleo - who fails Meteorology 101 at WUWT and is one of Cato Institute's 100 deniers
• Dr. Harold H. Doiron is one of the 49 retired NASA science deniers (they couldn't even get to 50 out of all the thousands of retired NASA employees!)
• Dr. Don J. Easterbrook - AKA Denier Don who pretends that the ice sheet on the top of a summit in Greenland is a good proxy for global surface temperatures, but can't even get the chart of Greenland temperatures right!
• Dr. Theodore R. Eck - unknown, described as Fulbright Professor of International Economics, Former Chief Economist of Amoco Corp. and Exxon Venezuela Advisory Board of the Gas Technology Institute and Energy Intelligence Group
• Dr. Gordon J. Fulks is an ordinary run of the mill denier who writes crank opinion pieces for any newspaper dumb enough to print them and is also one of the infamous Cato Institute 100 science deniers
• Dr. William M. Gray - who thinks the water vapour feedback loop is "weakly negative" and that although global surface temperatures have already gone up by 0.8 degrees, a doubling of CO2 should be expected to cause a global warming of no more than about 0.2-0.4oC.  (I can't wait for global temperatures to drop by 0.4 to 0.6 degrees!).  William is also one of the Cato Institute 100 science deniers
• Dr. Craig D. Idso - co-author of the really dumb "CO2 is plant food" and "it's the sun" Not the IPCC report. Craig is also one of the Cato Institute 100 science deniers
• Dr. Anthony R. Lupo - according to DesmogBlog, Anthony is on the payroll of the Heartland Institute.  Despite his rejection of science, he seems to have managed to retain his job and even managed a Chair at the University of Missouri. Anthony is also one of the Cato Institute 100 science deniers
• Dr. Harrison H. Schmitt - who has a habit of anthropomorphising carbon dioxide
• Dr. Thomas P. Sheahen - whose name is spelt in myriad ways all over the internet and who is one of Cato Institute's 100 science deniers
• Dr. James P. Wallace III - unknown.  Described in the writ as an engineer.
• Dr. George T. Wolff - unknown.  He managed a reference in SourceWatch. He was Chair of the EPA Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee for a period back in the 1990s.
   

EPA Endangerment Finding

What this motley lot are trying to argue in their writ is that greenhouse gases don't cause the greenhouse effect.  And they claim to be "respected"!  They take issue with the Endangerment Finding of the EPA and try to refute the lines of evidence described on page 66518 of the Rules and Regulations:

The attribution of observed climate change to anthropogenic activities is based on multiple lines of evidence. The first line of evidence arises from our basic physical understanding of the effects of changing concentrations of greenhouse gases, natural factors, and other human impacts on the climate system. The second line of evidence arises from indirect, historical estimates of past climate changes that suggest that the changes in global surface temperature over the last several decades are unusual. The third line of evidence arises from the use of computer-based climate models to simulate the likely patterns of response of the climate system to different forcing mechanisms (both natural and anthropogenic).

The tropospheric hotspot is a feature of warming from any forcing

First these fake sceptics go on and on about the tropospheric hot spot, which they wrongly characterise as evidence of greenhouse gas warming.  (It's not.  It's a feature of warming from any forcing, not just greenhouse gases, as explained at SkepticalScience and by Bart Verheggen).  Who knows why they pick on that and ignore the expanding oceans, the melting ice and all the other signs of global warming.  It's a strange point with which to lead off their argument.

Earth is heating up

Then they do make a switch to discussing surface temperature, arguing that because not everywhere on earth has heated up at the same rate it's not global warming.  Did I say they are nutters?  They get quite cheeky when they claim:

These data thus demonstrate that EPA’s second line of evidence—the claim that there has been unusual warming on a global, that is, worldwide, basis over the past several decades—is invalid.

Let's see about that:

Data sources: NASA GISTemp, NODC/NOAA Ocean Heat, U Colorado sea level, PIOMAS Arctic Ice

Observations are not inconsistent with climate model projections

They also try to argue that the models are "wrong".  In their writ they include a very weird chart describing it as:

Figure 5 contrasts the forecasts through 2025 with the actual trend line of global average surface temperature (GAST) data from the Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia (CRU) for 2000-2012 (identified as “HadCRUT4 Trend/Forecast” on the chart).:

Data source: the writ from the not respected

HadCRUT4 is observations not a forecast.  Maybe they meant with HadGEM or HadCM, in which case they couldn't argue that observations are out of kilter.  Either that or they are arguing that they've made observations of the future three years and this future they've already observed doesn't match their version of climate models.

Thing is, observations are within the range of modeled climate projections:

Source: IPCC AR5 WG1

Here is a chart of a CMIP3 model run, showing that periods of hiatus do show up in some runs - from realclimate.org.

Source: realclimate.org

CO2 is a waste by-product of burning fossil fuels

This mob surely can't be serious when they claim that CO2 isn't an "unwanted by-product" by arguing that it is indeed a waste by-product.  They make it sound as if they want to add CO2 to the atmosphere:

CO2 is not in any sense an unwanted by-product of the production of useful energy. Rather, the combustion of carbon based fuels to produce CO2, and the capture of the energy released by that process, is the whole idea....

And they can't do their case any good by arguing that 82% of energy production still emits CO2!

While a modest portion of energy production in the United States (and other countries in general) comes from non-carbon sources (nuclear, wind, solar, hydro), the proportion that comes from fossil fuels in the U.S. is approximately 82 percent (sic).

From the WUWT comments

Not too many fake sceptics at WUWT are as excited as Anthony Watts about this silly writ.  (Archived here.)

Bloke down the pub says:

December 17, 2013 at 9:49 am
They won’t be allowed to win that.

GoneWithTheWind says:

December 17, 2013 at 9:49 am
I wish them luck but I have no faith in the Supreme court as it is now staffed.

LT confusingly or confusedly calls for more regulation, not less:

December 17, 2013 at 9:55 am
That is good news, the EPA is a burden to society they need tighter regulations placed on them than even a BP refinery.

AleaJactaEst says:

December 17, 2013 at 10:02 am
pi**ing in the wind, snowball in Hell’s, US winning the World Cup, not a prayer, the Arctic will be ice free in our lifetime. You get the message about how much chance this has of succeeding.

NeedleFactory says:

December 17, 2013 at 10:03 am
SCOTUS accepts for hearing only about 5% of the requests for Writ of Certiorari.
Don’t get your hopes up.

pokerguy says:

December 17, 2013 at 10:35 am
“snowballs chance etc.”
Negative defeatists many of you. There are people out there fighting your battles. What are you guys doing, except whining?

Roger Sowell puts the writ in perspective and says:

December 17, 2013 at 1:05 pm
This is one of at least eight briefs filed in this case. This amicus brief is only advisory to the Court. The Court will consider the question or questions raised in the petitioners’ briefs.
More later, hopefully tonight 12-17-13.

More AGU non-reporting from Anthony Watts: Judith Lean and err...William M Gray (not really!)

I understand why Anthony Watts had to plead for handouts to drive up the road and go to the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco.  His "reporting" isn't worth a cracker so no reputable media organisation would employ him as a reporter.  I reckon the deniers at WUWT should be asking for their money back. Is Anthony just getting a nice little holiday in San Francisco courtesy of his fans at WUWT?

Anthony could have easily attended 10 or more presentations on Day Two if he'd wanted to and looked at umpteen posters.  But he only posts about a single lecture and he doesn't even do any reporting on that.  He just posts a bunch of out of focus snapshots of slides.

By the way, click here for instructions on how to view the live streaming and on-demand videos from AGU.

Day One Recap: Anthony's Day One "reporting" (archived here) consisted mainly of an unkept promise (to write about it) and a few out of focus snapshots - not of poster sessions, not of people he interviewed in depth, but of signs, and his press pass and his packed up video camera.  Below is a typical example:

Source: WUWT

As an indication of his lack of professionalism as a member of the "press", some of the very few words Anthony wrote included an excuse as to why he hasn't reported any interviews.  He hasn't arranged any.  He wrote: "I ran into Kevin Trenberth in the hall, but he was too busy to talk, he ran off to the authors prep room to prep for his presentation. No chance for an interview."

Day Two Slide Snapshots plus a "guest essay" by a denier (attached to a comment about AGU)

31 snapshots of the Bjerknes Lecture by Judith Lean on Global Change in Earth's Atmosphere

Anthony thinks pictures speak louder than words, so his Day Two report consisted of two articles:

1. 31 snapshots to prove he sat through an entire lecture
2. One of those snapshots and a tweet as an intro to a silly and wrong "guest essay" from denier William M Gray

Anthony's first article was probably to provide some "proof" that he managed to sit all the way through a lecture.  It was the Bjerknes Lecture (though Anthony doesn't tell his readers that) given by Judith Lean, A22A‐01. Global Change in Earth’s Atmosphere: Natural and Anthropogenic Factors.  His article consisted almost solely of smudgy snapshots of slides:

Live blogging . Will add slides and commentary as it proceeds.
Well attended maybe 400 ppl here.

And that was the extent of his "commentary", apart from a senseless comment about a slide showing the difference between weather forecasts and climate projections, above which he wrote cryptically: "This is the crux of the problem with climatology forecasts." And a comment where he tried to bignote himself, above a slide of WUWT where he wrote: "Nice to see a familiar face used. Heard David Appell and Richard Somerville who were sitting near me both grunt when WUWT was displayed."

Update: It turns out that Anthony couldn't even tell the truth in that one irrelevant "commentary" about David Appell. David writes:

...an outright lie, concerning my reaction. Frankly, I couldn't care less -- and, let's note, the presenter, presented his site as an explicit example of bad science, as no Maunder Minimum-like changes in the Sun are going to cancel this century's global warming.

And if Watts can't tell the truth about the little things.... I'm more skeeved out that Watts is secretly monitoring my reactions to the talk, instead of paying attention to the speaker.

By the way, Lean's talk was really fantastic, showing the data for all the relevant climate factors, and stressing that surface temperature is a function of more than CO2.

The rest was a long series of 31 snapshots of various slides.  Anthony doesn't appear to have tried to clean up his snapshots for readability.  Nor does he provide his promised "commentary".  I know Anthony has a hearing problem so maybe he couldn't hear what the lecture was about.  Or maybe he didn't want to report how Judith Lean lambasted and disproved some of the denier myths like the ones that appear with such boring and predictable regularity on WUWT. Or just as likely he didn't understand the fairly straightforward and basic presentation, so he just posted the snaps he took.  This is what 30 of his 31 photos were like:

His final snapshot was a view of the room full of people attending the lecture.

William Gray Denier - at WUWT

Judith Lean in her lecture that Anthony attended, talked about the silliness that goes on in the anti-science blogosphere.  Anthony Watts illustrates that silliness rather well.  He puts up a slide that he knows will be misinterpreted by his illiterati mob.  The slide has the words:

There are no operational forecasts of Global Climate Change

• forecasts of surface weather pertain to time scales < 2 weeks

• after 2 weeks forecast error saturates ...to climatology (Hoskins, 2012)

I tried to find the Hoskins paper.  It might be this one: Hoskins, Brian. "The potential for skill across the range of the seamless weather‐climate prediction problem: a stimulus for our science." Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society (2012).  Although it doesn't contain the words written exactly as above, it is about weather-climate predictions on different time scales.

Anthony picks out the words "There are no operational forecasts of global climate change", knowing his readers will misinterpret them.  I wonder why he doesn't highlight the fact that "operational forecasts of surface weather are not good beyond two weeks" but climate projections on a multi-decadal time frame are excellent!

Anthony also posts a tweet from Gavin Schmidt, who is posting a comment from Smith

Smith: usefulness of climate models for mitigation 'as good as it gets', usefulness for adaptation? Not so much #AGU13
— Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) December 10, 2013

Which as I interpret it is a comment showing that at the global level, climate models are very good and won't be improved a whole lot more.  However there is still a way to go in efforts to get worthwhile projections at the regional and certainly at local scales.  Anthony Watts knows that his readers will interpret it to mean "climate models aren't any good"!

Underneath that, Anthony posts his guest essay.  Essentially William Gray is writing that what he calls "numerical" climate models aren't any good.  I think William may be referring to physical models because he rabbits on about the IPCC.  But he could be referring to statistical models.  It's not clear.

William Gray writes a lot of nonsense about governments in the fashion of someone who denies science on the grounds that it doesn't suit his political ideology, but doesn't go quite as far into fantasy land as conspiracy theorists like Tim Ball.

He does write silly stuff like "The water-vapor feedback loop, in reality, is weakly negative,.." showing he's lost the plot as far as any climatology he might have once known goes.  William does some magical twisting of physics and close to the end he writes:

Thus, with zero water-vapor feedback we should expect a doubling of CO2 to cause no more than about 0.5oC (not 1oC) of global warming and the rest of the compensation to come from enhanced surface evaporation, atmospheric condensation warming, and enhanced OLR to space. If there is a small negative water-vapor feedback of only -0.1 to -0.3oC (as I believe to be the case), then a doubling of CO2 should be expected to cause a global warming of no more than about 0.2-0.4oC. Such a small temperature change should be of little societal concern during the remainder of this century.

I wonder how William Gray explains the 0.8 degree rise in temperature over the past century, or the 0.5 degree rise in temperature since the middle of last century?  Elves? Pixies? Leprechauns?

Update

I just saw a tweet by Anthony writing that he was told that, contrary to what was in Anthony's "guest essay" by William Gray, most of the rise in temperature of the past few decades is water vapour feedback.  Well, we know that's what happens when CO2 increases. The earth heats up, more water evaporates and water vapour is a potent greenhouse gas. Seems that's news to Anthony Watts.

Some very way out and some very interesting posters @agu just interviewed FSU grad who says WV feedback is cause of almost all warming.
— Watts Up With That (@wattsupwiththat) December 10, 2013

(I wonder if the FSU grad knew she or he was being "interviewed" or if they thought they were helping out by giving some basic information about climate science to someone who knows zilch about climate).