Christopher Monckton and fraud - fact check of @wattsupwiththat

Christopher Monckton is at it again, spreading climate disinformation. Today he's taking on Reuters and the World Meteorological Organisation and losing - badly (archived here, latest here). Anthony Watts had a brave headline accusing Reuters of fraud. It's not Reuters or the World Meteorological Organisation that is committing fraud. It's Anthony Watts and Christopher Monckton who are deliberately deceiving the public and publishing false information. They are the anti-science brigade who want the world to burn.

Don't fall for Judith Curry's poor attempt to spin the WMO (and Matt Ridley)

No surprise, Judith Curry is trying to spin the hot weather we've been having these last few months making out it isn't important (archived here). I'm not going to comment on her article except for a couple of things.

She talks up a dreadful article by Matt Ridley (see ATTP and Greg Laden), which got people all a twitter. Judith favours deniers and the GWPF, so that's no surprise.

The other thing is she goes on an on about a press release from the WMO being "spin" ahead of Lima. She emphasised that several times, including her headline, and writing at one point:

Attempts to spin 2014 as a possible ‘warmest year’ is exactly that: spin designed to influence the Lima deliberations.  While the WMO report was not unreasonable, their press release was a clear attempt to influence the Lima deliberations in the direction of being ‘alarmed.’

Why was it "a clear attempt"? Judith doesn't give a reason. Since she thinks the WMO report is "not unreasonable", and the press release was just highlighting the main points, then she's probably referring to the timing. However, if she'd taken a couple of minutes to check, this is when the WMO released it's take on the year's temperatures for the past five years:

• 2014 - press release dated 3 December 2014
• 2013 - press release dated 13 November 2013
• 2012 - press release dated 28 November 2012
• 2011 - press release dated 29 November 2011
• 2010 - press release dated 2 December 2010

In other words, don't fall for Judith Curry's spin. She's not good at it, so I don't expect you do, no more than you fall for Matt Ridley's spin. And you'll notice they spin each other.

Denier weirdness: A howler from Anthony Watts at WUWT

Anthony Watts has written a Quote of the Week. It's what he regards as a "howler". He wrote a headline (archived here):

Quote of the week: a howler from the World Meteorological Organization – what warming?

And this is what he thought was a howler from this WMO press release. He wrote:

Gosh, you’d think they’d check the data before issuing a statement like this (press release follows).

It [CO2] was responsible for 85% of the increase in radiative forcing – the warming effect on our climate – over the decade 2002-2012. Between 1990 and 2013 there was a 34% increase in radiative forcing because of greenhouse gases, according to the latest figures from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

But, the temperature data tells an entirely different story, look at this plot of all global temperature metrics and trends from 2002-2012 – there’s no warming to be seen! 

Anthony goes an posts some monthly temperature charts from 2002 onwards. He doesn't put up anything like this one though:

Data Source: NASA GISS

Anthony's chosen career is to misrepresent climate science. Mostly he does it by posting idiotic pseudo-science by his "guests", interspersed with really dumb articles by Anthony himself. This article by Anthony falls into the latter category. You'd have thought he'd have learnt by now. Does he really expect that normal people will mistakenly think science denier Anthony Watts knows more about climate than the World Meteorological Organisation?

Anthony is probably assuming that all the extra energy should be displayed as a hotter surface or atmosphere. Yet less than three per cent of the energy goes into heating the atmosphere. Most of it (around 90%) goes into heating the oceans, with some into melting ice, evaporating water and heating the land.

Here is a SkepticalScience.com chart you'll have seen before to illustrate just how much heat is accumulating because we're using the air as a rubbish tip:

Source: SkepticalScience.com

From the WUWT comments

Anthony Watts loses his cool with Nick Stokes, who had the same reaction as I did. Dumbo Anthony goes all out as a paranoid conspiracy theorist, accusing Nick of being a paid troll. Nick Stokes says:

May 26, 2014 at 9:02 pm“Gosh, you’d think they’d check the data”
What data? They are simply making a perfectly valid statement about CO2 increase and the forcings. You can measure and talk about CO2 concentration without getting into temperature issues.

REPLY: Oh, bullshit, you left out this part: “the warming effect on our climate – over the decade 2002-2012″. Nick Go obfuscate the truth someplace else. Now I’m SURE you are a paid troll. – Anthony

Does this mean that Anthony has finally banned Nick? He's been a thorn in Anthony's side for years. Rarely getting ruffled. Almost never responding to all the flames that get thrown his way. Has Anthony finally decided to rid WUWT forever of any reason and normality and go for pure 100% nuttery?

Anthony wasn't happy to leave it at that. He added a comment to one from the unholy zealot Janice Moore who says:

May 26, 2014 at 9:05 pm
Hey, Anthony! Great minds, heh, heh.
#(:))

REPLY: Yeah, Nick either can’t help himself, as his many years of working for CSIRO has produced an institutionalized reaction to anything contrary to the monthly newsletter, or he’s simply paid to come here and sow obfuscation. Given he’s often one of the earliest commenters for anything contrary to his world view, I expect he has a trigger mechanism setup to alert him so he can derail threads early on with his particular brand of diversion.
Bottom line: increased CO2 forcing with no resulting increase in temperature, means no warming, and WMO believes there was warming. Bad science, just PR – no cookie. – Anthony

David says:

May 26, 2014 at 9:09 pm
Between 1990 and 2013 there was a 34% increase in radiative forcing because of greenhouse gases…

How is that possible? Water vapor is the primary ‘greenhouse’ gas and I don’t think it’s atmospheric concentration changed much. And CO2 levels only increased about 10%.
So where does the 34% number come from?

Michael 2 says:

May 26, 2014 at 9:15 pm
I comprehend Mr. Stokes comment — but if an increase in a forcing is NOT producing an increase in temperature, then somewhere exists a cooling effect that is balancing the forcing such that the “net” is mostly unchanging. It’s not just that the heat is hiding in oceans, something must be exerting a cooling effect, and it may well be the very same CO2 at high altitude whose increased abundance means more radiation into space.
Or something like that. I’ll let the scientists figure it out BUT the claim was global WARMING, not global FORCING.

nc says wistfully, perhaps not realising that probably more than 100% of the warming is from human factors:

May 26, 2014 at 9:28 pm
Did they differentiate between natural and anthropogenic c02 levels? That always seems to be left out.