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.)

Blistering letter from House Committee member to Lamar Smith about his baseless smear campaign against NOAA scientists

You may have read about US Congressman Lamar Smith's ongoing vindictive harassment and smear campaign against scientists at NOAA. You might have also read about his latest allegations of "whistleblowers". If you are wondering if there is anything behind this, other than a deranged attack on science, scientists and the NOAA, then wonder no more.

There is not.

To prove this point, just read the letter to Lamar Smith from Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, a member of the committee of which Lamar Smith is chair - the Committee on Space, Science and Technology.

I'll quote some segments damning the unconscionable actions of this vindictive, out-of-control, grandstanding US congressman, Lamar Smith. The bolding and some paragraph breaks are mine.

WUWT proposes harassment and lawsuits to stop climate research

Matt Manos is going great guns with his conspiratorial thinking over at WUWT (archived here). He comes across as a real nutter, albeit one who can manage to write an entire sentence with proper use of nouns and verbs. Flush with his success at flushing out all his fellow WUWT conspiracy theorists, today he's urging WUWT-ers to spam governments with FOIA requests. Matt wants to get to the bottom of what he thinks is a giant climate conspiracy. He wrote, using the same "sheeple" concept from his last article:

In my previous post, Why It’s So Hard to Convince Warmists, I introduced the concept of bellwethers and rational ignorance to explain why it’s so hard to convince warmists using empirical evidence. 

Tim Ball is busy re-writing science at WUWT (again) and regurgitating his paranoid conspiracies

Anthony Watts is back to the dregs of deniers again with another "essay" by uber-conspiracy theorist Tim Ball (archived here). Tim just recycles his hogwash from previous "essays" as a typical Gish gallop, so there's no need for me to go through this one bit by bit, if I could be bothered. I'll pick up on this sentence though. He wrote:

The 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report included evidence in the form of a “hockey stick” graph, showing that the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) did not exist. Less prominent, but just as wrong, was erasure of the Little Ice Age (LIA). 

Tim for some reason has a fixation on the medieval warm anomaly and the Little Ice Age. He probably thinks that if climates changed anywhere in the past without being caused by greenhouse gases, then the current warming can't be caused by greenhouse gases. That's a logical fallacy of course. Just because bushfires get started from lightning strikes doesn't mean that they can't be caused by humans.

Here is the relevant section of the 2001 IPCC report. Both the medieval warm anomaly and the Little Ice Age were real. What Tim is objecting to is that science now shows that neither of them were global in effect. Not everywhere got warm and cold during those periods and those that did didn't get warm and cold all at the same time.

More studies have been done since 2001, not surprisingly. The latest IPCC report has this to say (TS.2.2.1 Surface):

Continental-scale surface temperature reconstructions show, with high confidence, multidecadal intervals during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (950 to 1250) that were in some regions as warm as in the mid-20th century and in others as warm as in the late 20th century. With high confidence, these intervals were not as synchronous across seasons and regions as the warming since the mid-20th century. Based on the comparison between reconstructions and simulations, there is high confidence that not only external orbital, solar and volcanic forcing, but also internal variability, contributed substantially to the spatial pattern and timing of surface-temperature changes between the Medieval Climate Anomaly and the Little Ice Age.

Tim would like science to have stopped short in the 1960s, going by the ancient drawings in his article.  He also thinks that temperatures on an ice sheet on the top of a summit in Greenland make a good proxy for global surface temperatures. He's a real nutter. Nuttier even than Denier Don Easterbrook, who we haven't heard a peep from in ages.

Oh, and in case you think Tim wrote a coherent article, he didn't. As well as the medieval warm anomaly and the Little Ice Age, Tim jumped from one topic to another with no rhyme or reason. I've listed below most of the topics he covered and provided links so that you can compare facts with Tim's paranoid ramblings, if you can stomach them:

• Stolen emails from the Climatic Research Unit
• William Connolley
• Realclimate.org
• Andrew Weaver
• Antarctic ice core records
• Holocene climatic optimum
• GISP2 in Greenland
• Rising sea levels
• Hubert Lamb
• The IPCC

If you want to find out more about Tim Ball's "science" and his paranoid conspiracy ideations, you can do so here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here.

Goodness me. Have I really wasted that much cyberspace on that despicable little man? Perhaps in future I'll just link back to here as a ready reckoner.

From the WUWT comments

Tim Ball is an unsavoury character and he tends to bring out the same characterics in others. The more reasonable deniers (if there is such a beast) generally avoid commenting on his articles. It's mainly the weird and wacky who do so. Like knr who says:

June 30, 2014 at 12:58 am
IPCC is a parasitic organisation whose existence relies on AGW , with Mann and his gang are merely parasite facilitators who have done very well out of their ‘work’ , without its ‘host ‘ like any parasite its it would be dead through starvation.

With that in mind, is anyone surprised to find its acts in the way it does?

The saddest part is the very people that should have acted has gate keepers to such behaviour have either played the three wise monkeys or deep their own snouts in bucket of funding slops no matter how much ‘filth’ they had to clog their eyes , ears and mouths with . And for that we may all pay the price as the people start to view all science through the dishonest, hypocritical , poor scientific approaches used by climate ‘science’ .

Bloke down the pub says:

June 30, 2014 at 12:29 am
Maybe one day there’ll be a presidential inquiry into who said what and when, but there again presidents don’t like asking embarrassing questions about previous incumbents, as they don’t want to set a dangerous precedent. 

Anthony Watts @wattsupwiththat sees climate conspiracies everywhere...

Anthony Watts has just come across the tale of the senior EPA official who pulled a giant scam.  Probably because he's now coming up for sentencing so it's in the news again.  The official pretended to work for the CIA and instead just took months off work.  He also made huge claims of travel expenses.

It's another example of the sort of thing that happens sometimes in government agencies and, more commonly, in the private sector (but most of those aren't made public for obvious reasons).  There was a case in Queensland a couple of years ago of a man who defrauded the government of millions while working at the health department.

It's 'the cause' wot done it! sez Anthony

What Anthony sees, though, is another climate conspiracy.  (Archived here.) It's not of course. It's a case of fraud and deception quite unrelated to climate science.  But anything to get his denialati riled up.  Anthony writes:

This is stunning, yet not surprising. We know people get caught up in “the cause”, and that there are massive egos involved in some of the more visible climate advocates that lead them to irrational excesses of word and deed, but this one takes the cake.

Anthony is trying to say that he committed the fraud because climate advocates have big egos!  That's a stretch.  But he goes further and twists the meaning of a quote from Patrick Sullivan, an Assistant Inspector General at EPA:

And of course, here’s the “anything for the cause” blindness that allowed it all to happen:

Sullivan said he doubted Beale’s fraud could occur at any federal agency other than the EPA. “There’s a certain culture here at the EPA where the mission is the most important thing,” he said. “They don’t think like criminal investigators. They tend to be very trusting and accepting.”

Translation: he’s doing good work for “the cause”, so there’s no need to look further.

Trust a conspiracy theorist to come up with a spin like that.  And there's more.  Anthony goes the whole hog into full blown conspiracy ideation, writing:

While this is a massive fraud of salary and benefits, one has to wonder what sort of fraud this man may have perpetrated in his role as a climate official. ...In this EPA document, they don’t seem to be looking into any of those things, only his travel abuse. I think they have “team blinders” on since I haven’t found anything where they look into the quality of his climate work.

Aha! Climate science is a hoax because a government employee defrauded the government of funds.  Anthony has handed his science deniers a new conspiracy theory.

Anthony doesn't let it rest even there.  He decides the entire government is rife with corruption and reckons he's living in a third world country now.

The culture of corruption in Washington will be the death of the republic if it isn’t reigned in soon. Already our government feels like that of a third world country.

America the brave is no more.  I wonder if Anthony Watts is thinking of moving to a developed nation?  And which one?  (Maybe one where the cost of a five day conference will be less than $415 and won't break his piggy bank.)

From the WUWT comments

No-one else seems to be buying Anthony's climate conspiracy.  There aren't too many comments yet, so I guess there's still time.  But this could be a case of WUWT deniers being jaded.  So many conspiracies to choose from and this one of Anthony's doesn't carry as much excitement or flair as the terribly secret (and outrageously public) Agenda 21 and New World Order and Lizard Men.

Protect the children...or trapped in the denialist echo chamber

I see that a WUWT reader has written to Anthony Watts to thank him for his part in protecting his ten year old daughter from the truth about the warming world.  Children mature at different ages and some ten year olds may not be mature enough to handle the facts about global warming.  However it's one thing to not tell them about it, it's quite another to lie to them.

It's a sad indictment on society that her father isn't able to handle the truth and probably never will.  It would appear that he is one of the bottom 21%, either one of the 8% Dismissives or, more likely, one of the 13% Doubtfuls. Maybe his daughter will grow into a mature adult and maybe not.  If she does, I hope she acquires the wisdom, intellect and courage that her father lacks.

Reading the WUWT comments shows just what sort of echo chamber is WUWT.  Many of those commenting are complaining that their colleagues and/or children accept the science.  I didn't see a single comment that the person was open to the idea they could be wrong about their denial.  Only that all the world is wrong except WUWT deniers.

I couldn't see some of the comments because Anthony snipped any from people who accept the science, although some commenters copied and pasted them before they were snipped.  Here's an example of what Anthony censors, from Jai Mitchell as quoted by Michael Moon says:

July 23, 2013 at 5:42 pm  Jai Mitchell,
“I have also witnessed daily assertions that global warming has stopped. This is, of course a complete fallacy as the ocean heat content and sea level (as well as land-based glacial melt) evidence has shown”

The above statement would seem perfectly ordinary and non-controversial to anyone but a denier of science.  Anthony is getting more strict about keeping his blog for science denial purists.  This next one, in which Gunga Din quotes Jai Mitchell, is admonishing Anthony.  We all know Anthony can't take criticism and censors it.  Gunga Din quotes jai mitchell:

July 23, 2013 at 6:01 pm  jai mitchell says: July 23, 2013 at 3:19 pm
Anthony,

You should be ashamed of yourself.

The point of this thread is how one can use the information present here to indoctrinate their child to the fringe scientific view that global warming is a) not happening or b) stopped.

This is a fringe scientific view — not anywhere near the consensus of over 100 years of a scientific body of work performed by tens of thousands of accomplished scientists, over several millions of person-hours of work in the last 45 years.

Many WUWT comments are straight from the conspiracy theorists' handbook: "science is a left-wing plot". A large number advocate home-schooling so that young minds don't get polluted by "left-wing" nonsense. The following demonstrate the sort of weirdos who are the mainstay of WUWT and their paranoia:

Kiwi Sceptic thinks all the world is wrong except him and the WUWT echo chamber:

July 23, 2013 at 6:17 pm The alarmists are impervious to reason; impervious to empirical evidence that proves them wrong; impervious to the stink of Climategate. They simply don’t care how much evidence you throw at them, or how many times you prove them to be liars in blogs, newspapers and journals. They don’t care because the point of the exercise is to get this poisonous dogma drummed into the minds of children who, through innocence and naivety, are not equipped to challenge it, let alone ask important and searching questions.

Owen in GA says the same:

July 23, 2013 at 6:43 pm Wayne, It is always good to examine your arguments to make sure you are not just going through the motions and keeping the same old memes. This is what I enjoy in the rebuttals to folks like Jai Mitchell, those rebutting put forth arguments backed by data and we are all able to look and see that the misdirection and subterfuge used by CAGW believers is just that: misdirection and subterfuge. One day, we may have someone put the charts together to make a rebuttal and we all go “hmm, that doesn’t look right” and something new may come of it. Of course I understand your point about time wasting, life is short.

tango says:

July 23, 2013 at 2:16 pm I have 4 grand kids in Australia oldest 18 she is going to uni youngest 7 our school system is controlled by left wing unions and a lot of teachers are greenies so they are brain washing students in global warming it is sad but I keep telling them the truth, what you are being told is not true . every parent must try and stop this brain washing

Dennis York says education is child abuse:

July 23, 2013 at 2:24 pm  My biggest mistake as a parent was letting my children attend public schools. They can all read, write, add and subtract (of course I taught them that). In fact two are post-graduate engineers and one is a molecular biologist The problem is that they are members of the Church of Ecodruidism. They harbor guilt and are depressed for being normal humans with normal human desires.
Public education is child abuse. Save your kids! Get them out of public schools!

Eric Worrall doesn't say he's going to encourage his daughter to think for herself, he's going to teach his daughter how to lie so she is not discriminated against (paranoia plus):

July 23, 2013 at 2:26 pm  My little girl is 3.
Since they can’t convince enough thinking adults to believe their cr@p, plan B is to brainwash the kids.  Its going to be a battle – I’ve got to not only teach my little girl the truth, I’ve got to teach her to lie to her teachers, so she isn’t discriminated against.