WM Briggs thinks the dinosaurs read thermometers

William M Briggs sez he is "statistician to the stars" and claims to "know good physics from bad".  He's wrong. Today he's got an article on some god (US-style) blog, that looks as if it's a libertarian (US-style) god blog. Long on faith and free speech and short on fact. I guess William thought he needed to get it in front of climate conspiracy theorists too, because he had Anthony Watts post a short bit of it at WUWT. (Or maybe it's just that Anthony is stuck for articles to fill up his daily quota.)

William faces a conundrum

William can't reconcile the so-called "pause" with the hottest years on record. He wrote:

Which is it? Either it’s hotter than ever or it isn’t. If it is, then (it is implied) man-caused global warming has not “paused.” If it isn’t, if man-caused global warming has “paused,” then it is not growing hotter.

Now William might want to go and have a chat with his favourite co-author, the potty peer Christopher Monckton. He'd soon set him crooked. Thing is, global warming hasn't paused. Sixteen of the twenty hottest years on record have occurred from 2000 onward, including this year, 2015. According to NASA, the hottest years on record are, so far, and in order:

William M. Briggs falsely alleges broad-scale corruption across US science - sour grapes, mashed and diced

William M. Briggs has an article up at WUWT in which he makes all sorts of wrong claims about research grants (archived here). (Incidentally Anthony Watts called him William H. Briggs, and still hasn't corrected it, despite this tweet only four or so minutes after the article appeared.)

Now maybe William has never received a grant to do any research. From the quality of his recent efforts on "climate" papers, that wouldn't surprise. (See here and here and here and here and DJ in the HW comments here.) And the way William sells himself as numerologist for the stars or whatever (actually it's statistician to the stars with an exclamation point), that wouldn't surprise either.

William M. Briggs hits out at all sciences funded by US government grants

Although this blog is about climate, and WUWT (where the article appeared) is against climate science - the article by William M. Briggs is not restricted to climate-related science. It is about science in general. His article isn't about climate science in particular. He is taking a swipe at all government-funded scientific research in the USA, research scientists and Deans at universities.

This includes everything from space science through to health science through to social science and beyond. It covers physics, chemistry, biology and, presumably, applied science such as nano-technology and nuclear science as well as all the social sciences.