Anthony Watts' Russian steampipes move around the world - amazing!

Every three or four years Anthony Watts (who owns a conspiracy blog called Watts Up with That, or WUWT) claims steam pipes in vast empty spaces in remote and largely unpopulated areas of Russia are what's causing global warming. This year he's at it again (archived here).

I don't need to write much about this, you can see it in pictures. In fact, Anthony himself put up a photo of steam pipes in a small town called Omyakon (population ~500), one of the coldest permanently inhabited places on earth.

The map below shows where the tiny settlement of Omyakon is located on the GISTEMP January temperature map . It's not in the middle of where the highest temperature anomalies were recorded.

Figure 1 | Temperature anomalies for January 2020 from the 1951-1980 mean, showing the location of Omyakon and its steampipes that conspiracy nutters blame for global warming. Data source: NASA GISTEMP

Paul Driessen at WUWT suggests Australia remove its forests

Wildflowers & snowgum

The weird get weirder. A bloke called Paul Driessen, whose job includes telling lies about climate change and bringing back smog to the USA, has come up with a wild idea and it's been posted at WUWT. This time he's really gone bananas. What he's saying is that Australia should get rid of all its trees, or those of the eucalypt species which is pretty much the same thing, and that would stop fires. In other words, he's suggesting we get rid of almost all our forests. That's one solution to stopping fires, though not original.

Don't believe me? Here's what he wrote:

In both California and Australia, people bemoan the loss of eucalyptus trees in fires. But many don’t want them removed or even thinned out.

Denier twittery weirdness, with CO2 is a very cold gas

CO2 sublimation

Over the last few days I've been spending some time on a long-running denier thread on Twitter. It was an opportunity to interact with the types you see at the climate conspiracy blog WUWT, but in an environment where it's much less likely anyone will be banned for posting science.

This article is to let you know about some of what I've learned about denier twitterers, with a new "theory" as a bonus.

Deniers yearn for attention from sciency types

One thing struck me above everything else. Fake sceptics are starved for attention.

As soon as a science type enters a room full of deniers, they get pounced on. Anyone who's followed comments at WUWT would have noticed the same thing. (Anthony Watts, the owner of WUWT, himself has demonstrated a yearning for recognition from scientists. That he can't get the type of recognition he wants has been a source of frustration to him.)

If global surface temperature keeps rising at the current rate

I'm not going to go full-on with some wide-ranging projections, this article is mainly about temperature. It was prompted by something silly written in an article at WUWT, by a random blogger who goes by the name of Larry Kummer.

Larry was musing about how fast it's warming. He nicely put up some facts, based on the NOAA temperature report but then showed the extent of his ignorance about climate change.

A portrait of a denier: Sheldon Walker trolls RealClimate

While we're trying to cope with this dastardly Australian heat wave, I'm avoiding hard work. Instead, here's some entertainment in the form of a self-portrait of a denier.

I don't know why deniers take offense at being called deniers. After all, all they boast about is how the science is wrong, the scientists are frauds, and they don't "believe in" science. They delight in their denial.

There's an entire post at the climate conspiracy blog WUWT today about how offensive it is for scientists to call science deniers "deniers". The WUWT article is from Sheldon Walker, who's been here in the past to get some tips. On another occasion I wrote about a pickle he got into. He's an odd chap :)

Trump was only joking - sez WUWT. (Global warming is happening)

Are climate science deniers' opinions changing? (Short answer, No, but they are very confused little mites.)

Eric Worrall, a nondescript but prolific "guest" on the conspiracy blog WUWT said that when Donald Trump tweeted about snow and global warming he was only joking. Eric wrote (archived here):

Climate change activists simply cannot seem to handle even a joke which contradicts their obsession, without getting riled about it and providing long boring monologues about why they disagree with whatever was said.

Some bloke called Marcel Crok plays a cruel climate joke on Anthony Watts at WUWT

This is sad. A ratbag from Europe, Marcel Crok, who is considered by Anthony Watts to be a "good friend" (enough said), has written to Anthony asking him to consult his network of "experts" (cached version).

What a horrid and cruel trick Marcel is playing on his supposed "good" friend.

Of course, it might be Marcel is unfamiliar with WUWT and is not a very close friend of Anthony's. He may not know that Anthony has no "network of experts". On the other hand, Marcel could have been wondering what the dregs of climate conspiracy land will say about the wave of extreme events happening around the world. (As far as I can make out, Marcel is a freelance writer who could be considered the equivalent of David Rose, who in turn has a well-earned reputation as a climate disinformer from the UK.)

Climate conspiracy theorist Anthony Watts is hot and bothered by heat in California

It's taking me a while to get back to blogging and there's a lot happening in the world to distract. I couldn't help but notice there is a lot of extreme weather around the world, the terrible floods in Japan, for example. If you're wondering how these examples of climate change are affecting climate science deniers, it's making them even loopier than normal.

Airport UHI disease breakout in Africa

Over at WUWT, Anthony Watts found another airport that had a sudden attack of airport UHI disease. You'll remember how there was an outbreak in Greenland back in 2013. This horrible disease only strikes on very hot days, apparently. Not even that. It only strikes on the very hottest of days according to Anthony's research. He said he his amazing finding was "based on hours of combing Google Earth and other sources". Yes, he really did spend "hours" trying to figure out a reason to discount a temperature reading for a weather station in Africa. He decided that on the particular day of the very high weather reading, possibly a record high reading, the weather station decided to act up.

Anthony Watts is irate that Gavin Schmidt didn't call out a climate science denier!

This is rich. A climate science denier on Twitter wrote a sarcastic tweet, and Anthony Watts is irate.

No he's not irate that the denier was sarcastic. What he's irate about is that Gavin Schmidt, the Director of GISS at NASA didn't call it out.

Anthony Watts wrote a whole article on his blog at WUWT complaining that Dr Gavin Schmidt didn't repudiate this person. Here's the tweet in question (click the link to see it in context):

No reasonable person reading that tweet would take it at face value. It dings all sorts of alarm bells. Then again, whoever accused a "climate hoax" conspiracy theorist like Anthony Watts of being "reasonable"?

The strange madhouse of climate science denial - defaming Einstein at WUWT

Anthony Watts, a long-time denier blogger, is pushing the notion that Albert Einstein would likely have been a climate skeptic.

Really? Resorting to impugning the integrity of a long dead scientist to justify his anti-science propaganda?

Anthony is claiming that Einstein would have been a fake sceptic or worse, a science disinformer, a liar denier, like Anthony himself is. That's a big idea and one for which he offers no support. Oh he posted an article underneath his headline, which was written by some bloke called David Shapter, or was it Will Happer?

When 97% becomes 99.6% - climate change in 2017

Anthony Watts has kindly pointed out that the scientific consensus on climate change is changing. He wrote the very strange headline: "‘The 97% climate consensus’starts to crumble with 485 new papers in 2017 that question it". Apparently some drongo (who does this every year IIRC) has only managed to dig up 485 "papers" that he claims " in some way questioned the supposed consensus regarding the perils of human CO2 emissions or the efficacy of climate models to predict the future."

I expect that, as in past collections, many of findings of those 485 don't dispute climate change, and many probably support the fact that human activity is causing global warming, but I haven't bothered checking (because that's not the point of this little article).  What struck me was that 485 was a pretty small number given the vast number of peer-reviewed publications on climate change these days.

If you go to Google Scholar and search for the term "climate change" and select "2017-2017", you'll find there were "About 115,000 results". Now 485 is 0.4% of 115,000, so even if all those 485 papers disputed the greenhouse effect (which they don't), it would still mean that one could argue that 97% has become 99.6% :D

Now that even beats the 98.4% of WUWT-ers who deny straightforward science. Who'd have thought!

Thanks, Anthony Watts, Breitbart, Pierre Gosselin and Kenneth Richard.

Confirmation bias affects visual perception at WUWT - on carbon trading in China and the LA Times

Anthony Watts has posted an article by a bloke called Larry Hamlin, which is a stark example of how confirmation bias affects visual perception. Larry is a climate science denying conspiracy theorist who has the occasional "essay" at WUWT.

He wrote about something he read in the LA Times. It was a recent announcement from the Chinese government that it is preparing to set up what will eventually be a nationwide carbon trading program. The article was by Jonathan Kaiman reporting, from Beijing, a news conference of the National Development and Reform Commission in China.

The article set out the timetable, which stated that it would be three years before transactions begin (my emphasis):

China’s carbon market will initially apply only to the power-generation industry but will later expand to cover seven other sectors, including petrochemicals, chemicals, building materials, and iron and steel.

The Chinese government will spend a year building a nationwide registration system covering all companies participating in the market, the state-run China Daily reported. It will spend another year testing the system, and actual transactions will begin in about three years.

Funny peculiar: #Climate "guru" Anthony Watts' doesn't know the oceans accumulate energy

Two days ago Anthony Watts, who runs a climate conspiracy blog WUWT, posted what he called "Friday Funny – Climate Central’s scare graph excuse: ‘The oceans ate the warming’".

It is funny, as in odd, peculiar, that Anthony Watts doesn't know that more than 90% of the extra energy we've been adding is stored in the ocean. I mean, Anthony makes himself out to be an expert on climate change, more expert than the experts who research the subject. He's been blogging about climate for about ten years now. To think that he doesn't know one of the most basic facts about global warming is very strange indeed.

Anthony Watts is already crowing it hasn't warmed since 2016 (last year), with a La Niña watch

If you've been missing HotWhopper's take downs of deniers, you haven't been missing a lot. Wattsupwiththat is just repeating common denier memes over and over again.

In the last day Anthony Watts has even managed - it hasn't warmed since 2016 (therefore global warming is a hoax)! If you can believe that. (It's mostly true, though he only blew on the dog whistle and didn't spell out that last bit.)

He's a bit late to the party. The latest ENSO wrap-up from Australia's Bureau of Meteorology was an announcement of a La Niña watch, and that was last Tuesday. Here's an excerpt (my emphasis), which may disappoint the global cooling believers:

Seven of the eight international climate models surveyed by the Bureau suggest that sea surface temperatures will reach or exceed La Niña thresholds by November 2017. However, indicators need to remain at La Niña levels for at least three months to be considered an event. This is forecast by six of the eight models. If a La Niña does occur this year it is likely to be short and weak, as sea surface temperatures are forecast to warm again in early 2018, as the austral autumn is the time when La Niña events normally decay.

Stefan Rahmstorf wins the AGU Climate Communication Prize, so WUWT compares him to Hitler

Is it the horrors of Hurricane Harvey that have unhinged deniers at WUWT? I don't know, but something has.

There have been two articles bashing Stefan Rahmstorf, one of the world's leading ocean scientists. He is Professor of Physics of the Oceans at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). The AGU is awarding him the Climate Communication Prize, which he richly deserves. As some sort of payback, deniers are using the Serengeti Strategy to defame Dr Rahmstorf in two (so far) ugly and ridiculous articles at WUWT.

In the first WUWT article, Charles the Moderator has copied and pasted an unhinged article by someone called Duane Thresher, who has a huge chip on his shoulder against climate scientists. Charles the Moderator included a photo of Hitler because that's what deniers do when they want to smear and defame. It's a Law of Deniers. That article is a nasty denier take on how Dr Rahmstorf took a newspaper to task way back in April 2010, after it published false information about an IPCC report. You can read about this on Dr. Rahmstorf's blog (if you don't read German you'll need to translate).

See the update below for more context.

Roy Spencer's latest silly conspiracy theory at WUWT. Delusions, including of grandeur

Roy Spencer feels he is being attacked. It's all because he wrote an ebook in two weeks and put it up for sale on Amazon. Anthony Watts promoted his conspiracy theory at WUWT (archived here). His headline and opening sentence were:

After publishing new book critical of Al Gore, climate scientist has website shut down by attacks 

This is the equivalent of a modem day book burning.

Is poor little Roy Spencer being singled out by Al Gore for attack or has Roy found a novel way to get people to buy his little ebook?

I'm sceptical. However, let's look at his claim that was echoed and amplified by climate conspiracy theorist Anthony Watts. I've mixed up the facts with Roy and Anthony's hypothesis, which demonstrates (again) the foolishness of deniers. It also demonstrates their delusions of grandeur and their paranoia.

A frosty look at David Archibald's latest speculation about global cooling

It was so cold this morning that I had to hop into the fridge to warm up. It's winter, of course, but it got quite cold even for winter in this part of the world - measuring about minus 6.4 Celsius this morning at our place.

Okay, I know for some of you that would be a mild winter's morning. Here it's worth lots of tweets. We're no longer used to having the sort of frosty mornings that were common when I was a child. What used to be the norm has now become a novelty with the world warming up so much.

Figure 1 | Frosty nights in Australia via BoM

Deniers can get all of a twitter when there's a frost. They are scared that it means an ice age is coming. Take David Archibald. He's been predicting an ice age for something like twelve years, ever since (he says) he "started out in climate science". He says his first paper was written just a few months later, but the only place he could publish it was in the denier journal Energy and Environment.

Leo Goldstein has an oddly paranoid poke at the IPCC

Some of articles at WUWT are indistinguishable from gibberish. In the past few months, Anthony Watts has taken to publishing articles by a very strange man. He now calls himself Leo Goldstein. When he first wrote articles for WUWT, he wrote as Ari Halperin. He's the chap who came up with the Google conspiracy, and developed a tool to combat it, made by Google :D.

Here's one bit of gobbledegook from Leo today (archived here, latest here). He wrote about equilibrium climate sensitivity and quoted the IPCC's AR5 Working Group 1 report:

The equilibrium climate sensitivity quantifies the response of the climate system to constant radiative forcing on multicentury time scales. It is defined as the change in global mean surface temperature at equilibrium that is caused by a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration.” (p. 16)

That's fine. Thing is, I don't understand what Leo's difficulty is.

David Archibald (again) predicts an ice age to cometh @wattsupwiththat

No sooner had I predicted that an ice age cometh article would appear at WUWT than Anthony Watts posted one. My wish is his command :)

David "funny sunny" Archibald wrote another of his solar articles (archived here) and, despite all the failures of his previous predictions, snuck in this comment (my emphasis):

On that assumption, Solar Cycle 25’s amplitude is likely to be two thirds of that of Solar Cycle 24, and thus 60. Further climatic cooling is therefore in store.

What climatic cooling has there been? How can there be "further" climatic cooling in store, when there's not been any so far?

Most people want to mitigate climate change. Anthony Watts thinks this is "crazy"

Anthony Watts runs a climate conspiracy blog. He specialises in pseudo-science and dark conspiracy theories for the wackos on the internet. Today he's put up some photos from the various climate marches, which attracted huge numbers of people from all over America, and called them "crazy".

Wow: enormous crowd for the Climate March today, just a week after the March for Science. People are fired up.pic.twitter.com/oz9PtdgpK3

— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) April 29, 2017

[I'm relieved that the weird slogans didn't put people off going to the march. (Who the heck thought them up? An activist from the 1960s? No, activists weren't that bad back then. A subversive wanting to mock the march, perhaps?)]

Many of Anthony's photos (archived here) are underexposed so it's hard to read the writing on the posters. It's not really hard to read the signals that Anthony Watts is sending, though. He's a fossil fuel advocate who wants his fans to end civilisation as soon as possible. Here is some of what Anthony Watts thinks is "crazy", with my comment in italics.