No honesty or diligence about #climate change or coral reef science from Bob Fernley-Jones at WUWT

As you know very well by now, science disinformers abound at Anthony Watts' blog wattsupwiththat.com. It's one of the reasons his blog exists.  It's not so that Anthony can write stuff. He doesn't do that much any more. It's so that disinformers and science deniers can comfort science deniers that their false opinions are promoted by other people. (Other reasons include making money, panhandling for jaunts, and trying to convince his readers that he's cleverer than the really clever people.)

Dead coral, Lizard Is. GBR. Credit: Greg Torda

Another case in point today, when a dud ex-engineer (so he says) called Bob Fernley-Jones (Mechanical engineer retired, Melbourne Australia) made up a whole bunch of stuff about coral reefs (archived here). I'd say it was so that he could try to portray himself as being cleverer than climate scientists and coral reef experts. Instead he's a Dunning Kruger case, and a whiner.

As well as that, Bob's article shows:

• disinformers will make up stuff that they think their readers want to read
• disinformers don't think much of the intellectual capability of their readers, with good cause
• disinformers are fairly confident that their readers won't bother to do any fact-checking, again with good cause.
• Bob is sloppy and careless, with missing links and missing diagrams. Actually, it's Anthony Watts who was sloppy in this case (he also got Bob's name wrong). Bob complained in the comments about some of the missing links and diagrams.
• Bob is a messy thinker, with a summary at the end that is meaningless, incomprehensible nonsense.

Lying Willis Eschenbach defames a prominent scientist and spreads fake news @wattsupwiththat

Willis Eschenbach is one of the sleazier climate disinformers who tells lies quite freely at WUWT (and is a shameless misogynist). Most of the time he pretends to be a "scientist" who is "just wondering" about something or other. He seems to think he was the first to discover the mechanisms of thunderstorms, for example, which is pretty weird. I mean this has probably been part of Meteorology 101 going way back before Willis was a twinkle in his father's eye.

Sleazy pseudo-scientist - Willis Eschenbach
Credit: unknown

Other times (and often at the same time) he loses his cool and lashes out and all and sundry. That's when he brazenly outs himself as a committed liar. Willis has a very short fuse.

Today he ventured beyond the pale, even for a creep like him. He was complaining about an article in Scientific American: The 9 Best Reactions to the House Science Committee’s Breitbart Tweet. He effectively said he no longer reads SciAm much because it isn't anti-science.

But that's not what I want to write about. That's the norm at the fake science blog, WUWT.

Disgusting untrue defamation

What I was much more disgusted with were the lies he told about the renowned scientist Peter Gleick. Willis told several big whoppers. He falsely claimed that Peter Gleick "was forced to quit his job in disgrace". Which is an outright lie. This is what he was referring to - a transition, four years after the incident with the Heartland Institute and completely unrelated. Willis might as well claim that Obama is resigning from the Presidency because he failed the American people.

Then Willis claimed that Dr Gleick "never did say one word of contrition for his actions". Another huge lie. Here is part of what Peter Gleick wrote after he helped expose the extent Heartland Institute's funding of science disinformation. It includes his apology:

I will not comment on the substance or implications of the materials; others have and are doing so. I only note that the scientific understanding of the reality and risks of climate change is strong, compelling, and increasingly disturbing, and a rational public debate is desperately needed. My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts — often anonymous, well-funded, and coordinated — to attack climate science and scientists and prevent this debate, and by the lack of transparency of the organizations involved. Nevertheless I deeply regret my own actions in this case. I offer my personal apologies to all those affected.

Peter Gleick

Why is it that despicable people like Willis Eschenbach tell such outrageous lies about scientists? Is it because they think it makes them look big and important?

Do WUWT-ers live on another planet? Dim Denier David Middleton takes on science journalist Seth Borenstein

At WUWT, Anthony Watts has posted another article by David Middleton (archived here) who asks: "Is Seth Borenstein a journalist or a political activist?". He adds "This should matter to the associated press, but clearly doesn't." David described a recent article by award-winning journalist Seth Borenstein as "a particularly ignorant rant" and then proceeded to write a particularly ignorant rant on the conspiracy blog WUWT.

Seth Borenstein's article is part of the series called "Why It Matters", which is examining three dozen issues at stake in the presidential election in the USA. In this particular article, Seth Borenstein begins by comparing what Hillary Clinton says about climate change with what Donald Trump has been saying. He said "it's as if Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump live on two entirely different planets: one warming, one not." You can guess which planet Donald Trump thinks he lives upon.

Tropical cyclones and aerosols, with Breitbart's Steven Capozzola at WUWT

Anthony Watts has posted an article by Steven Capozzola, who seems to be presenting himself as some sort of authority on hurricanes or climate (archived here, latest here). I checked him out. Is he any kind of expert on tropical cyclones? No. Has he even the most basic understanding of climate? No. Yet he pits himself against experts as if he knows something they don't.

Steven Capozzola claims to be "Media consultant. CEO of CAP Media LLC. Advocate for U.S. manufacturing & affordable power" - not affordable, but expensive and dirty power. He's a denier for hire.

At WUWT today, Steve is writing how he doesn't think that the USA will ever get a hurricane landing on its shores again. Well, not quite that. He wrote:

The New York Times ran an op-ed today by Adam Sobel, an “atmospheric scientist at Columbia.”  The gist of Sobel’s article: Since 2005, the United States has been experiencing a hurricane “drought” (I.e. no major hurricane has made landfall in the time. We are currently at 3918 days, over a decade.)  But don’t worry, Sobel says, there will be more hurricanes soon, and the fact that they will be coming is proof of man-made climate change.
Yes, that’s what he’s saying.

The question is whether Sobel is writing the op-ed to buck himself up, and the rest of the alarmist crowd. 

No, that wasn't exactly what Adam Sobel was saying, as you've probably guessed.

Un-American witch hunts: Karl Rove Tactic #3 from WUWT

If there is one thing that defines climate science deniers it is that they are conspiracy theorists. Some wilful deniers believe the disinformers who claim that climate science is a hoax and that scientists are committing fraud. WUWT is full of it. Today it's Eric Worrall's turn (archived here). This time he's doing a Karl Rove, and accusing Senator Whitehouse of being a conspiracy theorist because he is exposing the deliberate disinformation campaigns allegedly paid for in part by fossil fuel companies.

Some background. Over time, more and more evidence has been compiled showing that fossil fuel companies have paid money to climate denying organisations in the USA. This includes ExxonMobil, Peabody coal and others. Today Eric Worrall copied from the Guardian:

The Senate heard how fossil fuel companies such as ExxonMobil, Peabody Energy and the billionaire oil brothers Charles and David Koch had funnelled millions into groups that had spread doubt about the causes of climate change.

The Guardian article has a lot of detail, including the role of paid disinformers like Bob Carter. It also has links to other documentation of the deliberate campaigns to spread climate science denial, including in Australia.

Judith Curry objects to scientists warning US Congress about the dangers of climate change

Deniers are getting antsy. Judith Curry is complaining about a letter from leaders of prominent scientific organisations in the USA to US Congress (archived here). She is framing it as a political stunt. She just wants to rail against science and climate science in particular, again. Boringly predictable is Judith.

Judith doesn't think much of the knowledge of scientists. She claims that scientists who study fish and amphibians don't know or care that climate change is changing the world's fisheries and frog habitats. She's wrong.

Climate disinformers Willie Soon and István Markó caught out again

Talking of paid disinformers, Willie Soon has penned an article for Breitbart, some of which Anthony Watts copied and pasted at WUWT (archived here). He's written it with another disinformer called István Markó. The article is full to the brim with disinformation and logical fallacies and denier memes, typical of WUWT. The person they chose to target is Bill Nye, a US television personality who has a science show. The pair of disinformers went through "science is settled", "CO2 is plant food", and they gave Anthony Watts' climate conspiracy blog a plug, too.

The dark side of humanity at WUWT: Tim Ball's hopes have been realised, his lies have not

Anthony Watts has posted another article from his resident conspiracy theorist Tim Ball (archived here, latest here). I won't bore you with all the details. You know that Tim's articles are usually ugly paranoid conspiracy theories written to feed the salacious appetites of Anthony's deluded fans. There are just a couple of points I'll make.

The hope

The first one is that Tim's hopes are realised. He says: "I Hope The IPCC Is Correct About Warming Because Cooling Is a Bigger Problem". Here you go, Tim:

Data source: GISS NASA

Why does science denier Bob Tisdale tell such big fat lies at WUWT?

Most people will know very well why Bob Tisdale uses a 61 month running filter when he compares HadCRUT4 temperature anomalies with CMIP5 model mean (as archived here). It's so he can string out his false claim that there is a "growing difference" between model projections and observations. He's lying. There is now practically no difference.

Let me illustrate. In all these charts except the one down the bottom, the CMIP5 projections are as for the IPCC report, using RCP8.5. That is, they don't have the actual forcings from 2006 onwards, only estimates. The actual forcings would have made the projections lower from 2006.

Below is a chart showing GISTemp vs CMIP5 model mean.

See also Addendum below.

WUWT blogger Eric Worrall flits from Montreal to Pakistan to tout his science denial

Climate science deniers are a funny lot. From my reading of climate conspiracy blogs like WUWT, most of them don't know what they are rejecting. Nor do they care. What drives some of them seems to be a desire to show they are cleverer than the experts. But like many people who aim to look smart, they don't fool anyone who really is smart. Sarcasm only works if it's grounded in fact. When you use sarcasm but base it on a logical fallacy it tends to reflect badly on you, not on the person you are mocking.

Take Eric Worrall for example. He's the person who Anthony Watts has put in charge of WUWT while Anthony's off doing I don't know what. At least that's what it looks like.

Eric has posted two articles in succession at WUWT. He seems to think they show that "climate alarmists don't know nuffin'".

More of David Siegel's climate lies and conspiracy theories

Okay - now it's out there. I don't know why David Siegel tells lies. Whether it's because he's stupid and isn't capable of doing his own research, or whether he does it for reward (either tangible or for ideological purposes). But he does tell lies and, unless he falls into the stupid category, he must know it.

Backtrack: A few days ago I wrote about a science denier called David Siegel, who used WUWT to promote a screed he put up somewhere on the internet. That "somewhere" is, as Greg Laden described it: "big giant blog that anybody can go and blog their big giant thoughts on: like tumblr, but more bloggy".

I pretty much dismissed David Siegel's article as the sort of denier tripe that's a dime a dozen in the dark outer reaches of cyberspace. It was nothing more than a mosaic of WUWT or any other climate conspiracy blog. Still, having it all in one place was a good enough reason to write an article. So a few of us got together and that's just what we did. We posted it on the same website that the original article appeared on.

We were gentle with David Siegel in our Medium.com article. We were more interested in presenting the science than in portraying David Siegel as the utter nutter that he is. Here at HotWhopper there are no kid gloves. David Siegel's article was nothing more than a 9,000 word Gish gallop of denier memes. To address every single one in a blog post would have resulted in an article more like 80,000 words rather than the 8,000 or so that we wrote.

Climate disinformer Patrick Moore talks to deniers at the GWPF

Semi-professional climate disinformer Patrick Moore gave a talk to UK climate science deniers the other day. Anthony Watts posted it under a headline: "Greenpeace founder delivers powerful annual lecture, praises carbon dioxide – full text" (archived here). Powerful? No. Pseudo-scientific rubbish? Yes. I don't know what the audience in general thought of his nonsense. It probably didn't register with many of them. All they wanted was to hear someone they felt was on "their side". The people who invited him most likely knew he would spout a load of nonsense, and couldn't get anyone more credible to talk. Well, who is left these days?

Patrick spent the first part of his talk on himself. He's a hero in his own mind. A born-again denier. I cannot imagine that he believes the words that come out of his mouth, but they help him earn a crust in his chosen field. Science denial.

The basis of his claim was that without CO2 the planet would be dead, therefore the more we have the better. That's like saying to a drowning woman - without water we'd all be dead so suck it up.

Warning: this is a long article, but it covers a lot of ground

Obviously - what? Bob Tisdale on global mean surface temperature trends

"Obviously, Cowtan and Honeycutt are overlooking something very important. Their graph shows that it took well over a century for global surface temperatures to reach the 1.0 deg C halfway point. Many newcomers will look at the graph and wonder what all of the hubbub is about."

Bob Tisdale, WUWT

Oh my! Those words were actually written with serious intent. Can you believe it? That's from the keyboard of Bob Tisdale (archived here). He's one of the resident pseudo-scientists at Anthony Watts' climate science denial blog, WUWT. His forte is conspiracy theories, not scientific research.

Let's see what will happen if surface temperatures keep going up at different rates.

HadCRUT4 - equalling (slightly besting?) the hottest year with a lie from Anthony Watts at WUWT

HadCRUT4 is out. It's another hottest year ever on record result at 0.563C above the 1961-1990 mean. That just tops the next hottest, 2010, which was 0.555C above the mean if you go by straight numbers. It makes it equal hottest once you allow for confidence ranges.

Some people were wondering if HadCRUT4 would come out on top. It could be argued that it did. Just. The Met Office is being cautious, saying it is too close to call, which is fair enough. From their press release - my emphasis:

26 January 2015 - Provisional full-year global mean temperature figures show 2014 was one of the warmest years in a record dating back to 1850.

The  HadCRUT4 dataset (compiled by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit) shows last year was 0.56C (±0.1C*) above the long-term (1961-1990) average.

Nominally this ranks 2014 as the joint warmest year in the record, tied with 2010, but the uncertainty ranges mean it's not possible to definitively say which of several recent years was the warmest.

Colin Morice, a climate monitoring scientist at the Met Office, said: "Uncertainties in the estimates of global temperature are larger than the differences between the warmest years. This limits what we can say about rankings of individual years.

"We can say with confidence that 2014 is one of ten warmest years in the series and that it adds to the set of near-record temperatures we have seen over the last two decades."

WUWT and GWPF - disinformers lie through their teeth!

There is no such hesitation or caution among the climate disinformers though.  Professional liar denier Anthony Watts claims, wrongly, that:

"UK Met Office says 2014 was NOT the hottest year ever due to ‘uncertainty ranges’ of the data". 

That's wrong. The UK Met Office did NOT say 2014 was not the hottest year ever. It's one thing to say it's too close to call even though the numbers show it the hottest. It's quite another to say that it was NOT the hottest year ever. Just how desperate must he be feeling. Honestly, you've got to wonder if Anthony Watts can lie straight in bed!

His headline was above a "press release" by the GWPF, which is an anti-mitigation lobby group from the UK.  In the body of the release, David Whitehouse, who I guess is paid to tell fibs, wrote:

Quoting the temperature to one hundredth of a degree and the error on that measurement to a tenth of a degree is not normal scientific practice. It is against normal scientific practice to have an error of the measurement larger than the precision of that measurement. This means that most scientists would have rounded the data so that it was 0.6 +/- 0.1 °C. If this is done to the HadCRUT4 dataset it is even more obvious that there has been a warming “pause” for the past 18 years.

That's not right or correct or accurate. The Met Office provides data to three decimal places and reported it to two decimal places. 0.563C was the reported median and 0.529  and  0.600 were the lower and upper bounds at the 95% confidence interval.

I guess when the disinformers can't claim that an ice age is imminent, muddying the hottest year with a pause is the next best thing.

I'm very pressed for time this week but will just add two more things. First a chart of HADCRUT4 - click to enlarge it:

Data Source: UK Met Office Hadley Centre

No time for comments - you can read the WUWT archive here.

Two Million Views

Secondly, yesterday HotWhopper had it's two millionth page view. Thank you to everyone!

More dumb disinformer tactics at WUWT: From China to the world

Climate disinformers like Anthony Watts (who runs a pseudo-science blog, wattsupwiththat (WUWT)), use various tactics to keep climate science deniers happy. Today a single sentence combines several propaganda tactics used by climate disinformers.

Anthony Watts (archived here) has a lead-in to a press release about two papers about temperature reconstructions in the South China Sea. He wrote:

While government science and media begin the ramp-up to claim 2014 as the “hottest year ever” China’s Sea’s biggest bivalve shows that the Middle Ages were warmer than today, when Carbon Dioxide was lower.

Ironically (because of deniers' distaste of communism and 'guvmint'), but not unusually, he went to the People's Republic of China for the press release he copied and pasted.

Anthony Watts gets (slam) dunked in the oceans by CSIRO and Nature

I know you don't need any more proof that Anthony Watts doesn't read what he posts about, but you're getting it anyway. Today he's gloatingly posted:

You might remember this claim from Australia’s CSIRO back in 2012 published in the Sydney Morning Herald. It’s been busted by a new paper:

Has the CSIRO paper been busted? Nope. Not at all. Just the opposite. It's findings have been confirmed.

The new paper Anthony is talking about is a study published in Nature Geoscience. Anthony doesn't provide a direct link to the press release, but here it is - at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich. It says in part:

With a new analysis of land regions, ETH climate researcher are challenging the general climate change precept that dry regions are getting drier and wet regions are getting wetter. In some regions they are encountering divergent trends.

Based on models and observations, climate scientists have devised a simplified formula to describe one of the consequences of climate change: regions already marked by droughts will continue to dry out in the future climate. Regions that already have a moist climate will experience additional rainfall. In short: dry gets drier; wet gets wetter (DDWW).

However, this formula is less universally valid than previously assumed. 

...the researchers compared data from between 1948 and 1968 and 1984 to 2004.

The evaluation shows no obvious trend towards a drier or wetter climate across three-quarters of the land are[a]. There are solid trends for the remaining quarter. However, only half of this surface area follows the DDWW principle, i.e. one-eighth of the total landmass, while the trends seem to contradict this rule over the other half.

Land doesn't conform to expectations

That is, when comparing the two periods, 1948-1968 and 1984-2004 and just looking at land:

• three quarters of the land area showed no obvious trend
• one quarter of the land area shows solid trends
• half the land areas in this quarter, or 1/8 of the land areas followed the dry getting drier, wet getting wetter pattern, and 
• half showed the opposite. That is, 1/8 of the land areas showed dry getting wetter and wet getting drier.

The supplementary information seems to be different to the press release. It states in part:

In our study, we detect changes in the mean hydroclimatological conditions between the time periods 1948 to 1968 and 1985 to 2005.

This is different to what's stated in the press release.  Further, the supplementary info itself has more comparisons than the paper does.

However, in the interest of completeness we performed the same analysis comparing the first (1948-1968) and the last period (1985-2005) with the respective middle period (1968-1985, see Fig. S3). 

The oceans conform to expectations

The scientists also looked at the ocean areas. They reported that the principle of wet gets wetter and dry gets drier holds for the oceans.

Let's go back to the report in the Sydney Morning Herald that Anthony Watts scoffed at. What does it say. Well, this is what it said:

WET areas have become wetter and dry areas drier over the past 50 years due to global warming, a study of the saltiness of the world's oceans by a team including CSIRO researchers has shown.

Do you need to read it again? The CSIRO article was about a study of the world's oceans. Not a study of the land. It was confirmed, not rebutted by the new paper. 

Anthony got it wrong. No surprises there. 

Both bits of research show exactly the same thing: that as far as the oceans are concerned, the principle of the wet gets wetter and the dry gets drier holds.

Points of interest

Now the new research is interesting for more reasons than just the result for patterns of rainfall on land. It's interesting because it was able to get a result. The SMH report of the Paul Durack and co paper states:

Initial attempts to study this ''rich get richer'' effect, however, were hindered by a shortage of good rainfall records on land and a lack of long-term satellite measurements.

So Dr Durack studied the oceans.

Paul Durack and colleagues list some of the difficulties in collecting data about rainfall patterns in the 2012 Science paper itself as (my paras):

Given the above broad-scale model responses and the CC relationship, an intensification of ~4% in the global water cycle (E-P) is expected to already have occurred in response to the observed 0.5°C warming of Earth’s surface over the past 50 years (11).

However, obtaining a global view of historical long-term rainfall pattern changes is made difficult because of the spatially sparse and short observational record. Long, high-quality land-based records are few and Northern Hemisphere–biased (12). Direct high-quality long-term rainfall estimates over oceans [which comprise 71% of the global surface area and receive over 80% of global rainfall (13) (fig. S1)] are very scarce, with most global observational products dependent on data contributions from satellites, themselves sensitive to error (14, 15).

Additionally, because of the short temporal coverage (~15 to 30 years) by satellite missions, trends are likely affected by natural decadal modes of variability and may dominate much of the measured changes (3).

This challenge is exacerbated by the spatially and temporally sporadic nature of rainfall, making the derivation of broad-scale averages of small multidecadal changes from a sparse network of observing stations error-prone (16).

These difficulties are evident in the differing signs of long-term trends between reconstructed rainfall data sets (17, 18). Discrepancies among air-sea evaporative flux products (19) undermine their use in resolving long-term water cycle changes.

As a result, we do not yet have a definitive view on whether Earth’s water cycle has intensified over the past several decades from atmospheric observing networks (12, 20).

That was for a paper published in 2012. They bypassed the above problems by studying trends in sea surface salinity. However that meant they could only study trends for the oceans, not land.

Now I don't know how reliable is the data used for the new paper by Peter Greve and colleagues. Obviously the researchers think it's reliable enough. Whether they were able to come up with new techniques to determine precipitation on land, or whether it's that better data has become available in the past two years. Or maybe they overcame the data deficiencies in some other way. In the abstract they state:

Here we present an analysis of more than 300 combinations of various hydrological data sets of historical land dryness changes covering the period from 1948 to 2005. Each combination of data sets is benchmarked against an empirical relationship between evaporation, precipitation and aridity. 

The Nature Geoscience paper itself is paywalled, but there is a supplementary info file for people who may be familiar with the Budyko framework and are in a position to assess the reliability of the data. This new study did reference the Durack paper in Science, as well as other related studies.

From the WUWT comments

I can't be bothered. I just had another look through the latest (archived here) and so far not a single person at WUWT has noticed that, contrary to what Anthony Watts claimed, the new study confirmed the earlier study, which was about trends over the oceans.

---

Peter Greve, Boris Orlowsky, Brigitte Mueller, Justin Sheffield, Markus Reichstein & Sonia I. Seneviratne. "Global assessment of trends in wetting and drying over land." Nature Geoscience (2014) doi:10.1038/ngeo2247

Durack, Paul J., Susan E. Wijffels, and Richard J. Matear. "Ocean salinities reveal strong global water cycle intensification during 1950 to 2000." Science 336, no. 6080 (2012): 455-458. DOI: 10.1126/science.1212222

Climate disinformer Judith Curry, "pragmatic ethicist" despicably perpetuates a lie....

Update: After this article which I tweeted to @curryja at the time, comments from Kevin O'Neill and Izen and two days after writing it, Judith has finally commented that she has changed her article (compare original to revised). She now refers to the headline but does not clarify what Professor Torcello actually wrote or the context or that she grossly misrepresented him and his views. She left the word "outrageous" to refer to Lawrence Torcello's "thinking about climate ethics", suggesting she views the organised funding of misinformation campaigns as more than perfectly okay. Does it fit with her "pragmatic ethics"?

Curry as amended... Torcello famously wrote an essay entitled Is misinformation about the climate criminally negligent? More traditional (less outrageous) thinking about climate ethics ...

Curry's original and very wrong portrayal... Torcello famously wrote that climate scientists who fail to communicate the correct message about “global warming” should face trial for “criminal negligence”.  More traditional (less outrageous) thinking about climate ethics

What Lawrence Torcello wrote (my bold italics):

When it comes to global warming, much of the public remains in denial about a set of facts that the majority of scientists clearly agree on. With such high stakes, an organised campaign funding misinformation ought to be considered criminally negligent

Of interest may be the comments like this and this and these, especially in light of the fact that Lawrence Torcello's article attracted so much venom on denier blogs and upwards of 700 hate emails and telephone calls.

Following the disinformation on denier blogs earlier this year, Professor Torcello wrote a strongly worded very clear statement  (h/t MikeH in the comments below).

(Note also that in this article I have not discussed the suspect ethics and absurdly impractical suggestions that Judith was promoting to try to justify her push to not reduce CO2 emissions and not mitigate climate change, which could be worth an article in its own right.)

Sou 12:27 pm AEST 27 July 2014 - amended 12:58 pm to compare changed wording and add more for clarification.

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I don't go there too often - it's too awful. However today I visited Judith Curry's blog and I found her perpetuating an old lie (archived here). Since, as a bully herself she gets so upset about people "bullying" (ie calling her out on her disinformation and worse), you'd have thought she'd be more cautious.

No, I won't yawn, Judith, I'm outraged

What was her lie? She was repeating the nonsense about the Laurence Torcello article in The Conversation back in March this year. You know, the one that prompted all the hate mail from deniers, some of whom could well have been part of an "organised campaign funding misinformation".

Judith has to know it's made up baloney. She even linked to the article itself.  So this is just one more piece of evidence to add to her long list of sins.  I can totally believe that Judith would "yawn" at ethics. This is what Judith wrote [now inserted full paragraph for comparison with the update above Sou 12:27 pm AEST 27 July 2014 ]:

My recent post Why scientists should talk to philosophers elicited a comment on twitter (that I can’t find) that recommended Lawrence Torcello as a philosopher that I should be paying attention to.  In case the name doesn’t ring a bell, Torcello famously wrote that climate scientists who fail to communicate the correct message about “global warming” should face trial for “criminal negligence”.  More traditional (less outrageous) thinking about climate ethics is typified by this Nature essay by Stephen Gardiner.My response to most writings on climate ethics that I’ve encountered has ranged from outrage to a yawn..

No, that's not what Lawrence Torcello "famously wrote". He said nothing of the kind. He didn't say that climate scientists should face trial.  Perhaps the philosophers Judith talks to encourage her to be immoral and unethical (Judith's "pragmatic ethics"), although she needs no encouragement.

Compare what Judith wrote with what Lawrence Torcello actually wrote:

The importance of clearly communicating science to the public should not be underestimated. Accurately understanding our natural environment and sharing that information can be a matter of life or death. When it comes to global warming, much of the public remains in denial about a set of facts that the majority of scientists clearly agree on. With such high stakes, an organised campaign funding misinformation ought to be considered criminally negligent.

No mention of climate scientists except to say that the majority agree on global warming. Professor Torcello was talking about "an organised campaign funding misinformation", not climate scientists.

What Lawrence Torcello did say was that he didn't believe poor scientific communication should be criminalised:

I don’t believe poor scientific communication should be criminalised because doing so will likely discourage scientists from engaging with the public at all.

Well, Judith Curry is one of those rare scientists who should most definitely not be engaging with the public. She's not to be trusted.

(I've just had a thought. Maybe Judith, climate scientist, is admitting to being part of "an organised campaign funding misinformation". That could let her off the hook, couldn't it? Maybe - at a Curry-style stretch. Especially with her "pragmatic" ethics. Only to hang her on another hook, of course.)

Justice for deliberate disinformers who are in positions of influence

Let's hope that one day there will be justice for people like Judith Curry. People like Judith Curry, who used to be a Departmental Chair at Georgia Tech professorial chair at a minor university, should be held to higher standards than plebs like the normal denier crowd at WUWT.

[Georgia Tech is a very worthy institution and is not a minor university by any means. I apologise without reservation for the unintended slight to all the current top notch staff, students and alumni. The intended slight was aimed at the single individual who has diminished its reputation somewhat. There are duds in the best universities. Sou 1:16 pm  AEST 26 July 2014]

You know what was the razor blade in the soap? Judith wrote her lie under a headline:

Towards a pragmatic ethics of climate change 

Is it her pragmatic ethics that allows Judith to promote disinformation? Does it allow her to disregard any twinge of conscience or does she have no conscience?

I'd say if the former, she hides it very well, as evidenced by her testimonies to the US Government.

Roy Spencer grows even wearier...

Some of you may remember how Roy Spencer fudges charts so he can write emotive and alarmist stuff like this (archived here):

I am growing weary of the variety of emotional, misleading, and policy-useless statements like “most warming since the 1950s is human caused” or “97% of climate scientists agree humans are contributing to warming”, neither of which leads to the conclusion we need to substantially increase energy prices and freeze and starve more poor people to death for the greater good.

Roy has just made a belated appearance, commenting on my article where I exposed his shenanigans, writing:

we aligned all of the observations so that the *5 year average* at the beginning of the record (1979-1983) was the starting point. There is NO deception here, nothing nefarious, as you suggest. You can make your own graphs to suggest we did the same as you, but we didn't.

Roy can't have read my article, because what he claims to have done is exactly what I accused him of doing except that I pointed out that what he did was deceitful. In reply I asked him to explain:

Perhaps you will explain why you chose a "five year average" at the beginning of the record and not a thirty year average. Perhaps you will explain why, since you did pick a five year average instead of a thirty year average, you picked that particular five year period when UAH was abnormally high such that it distorted the difference (as I showed above) . Why did you pick 1979-1983 2004 rather than, say 2001 to 2005. Why did you move away from your normal baseline of 1981 to 2010?

Roy hasn't explained yet. Anyway, because there were a couple of people who still apparently didn't understand Roy's deception, let's do what I suggested in my comment, and compare using a different five year baseline (2001-2005) and a thirty year 1981-2010 baseline. Here is the result - as always, click to enlarge:

Data Sources: NASA , UAH ,  Met Office Hadley Centre and KNMI Climate Explorer

It should be obvious by now why Roy chose the baseline he did. It was because in that five year period, the UAH readings were abnormally high while CMIP5 mean was on the low side compared with observations. (Compare the 1979-1983 baselined chart with the 1981-2010 baselined chart. As climate watchers know, Roy Spencer reports UAH monthly and annual observations using the 1981-2010 baseline, so his use of the unusual five-year baseline 1979-83 for this exercise is a once-off for his own purposes.)

By picking a very short window where UAH was way above (and other observations were also above) CMIP5, Roy was able to create his illusion. Effectively what Roy's little trick did, was to artificially shift the CMIP5 model runs up compared to observations, making it look as if there is more of a difference than in actuality.

Roy wanted to make the CMIP data look more divergent from observations than they actually are. He used a simple arithmetic trick. Pick an abnormally short window when UAH and CMIP5 are both more divergent from other observations, and in opposite directions, and it will make it appear that there is even more of a divergence. When in fact over the medium term (thirty four years or so) there isn't anything like the difference Roy's trick makes it appear.

What isn't obvious is, when it's pointed out to him, why Roy doesn't just 'fess up to the reason he used his trick.

Living Dangerously: Jim Steele denies Texas warming

Jim Steele seems to be addicted to making up stuff.  Today he wrote a long article for Anthony Watts' blog WUWT, picking on Katharine Hayhoe and Don Cheadle, who featured in the Years of Living Dangerously (which I haven't seen). Jim wrote a long article short on facts and long on his normal rejection of science (archived here).  At one stage he wrote:

The truth is there has been no climate warming in Texas. 

To support his claim he put up a chart that he described as "Plainview TX temperature trends found online from the US Historical Climate Network".  I don't know why he stopped at 2012.  Anyway, I've got a better chart if you want to know about Texas temperatures.  It's a statewide chart, not just one small town in the north of the state.  The data is from NOAA. I converted it from Fahrenheit to Celsius and plotted it as an anomaly from the twentieth century mean.

Data Source: NOAA

You can see how much hotter it's been getting, consistently - in Texas. It's been hotter for longer for any time in the record going back to the late 1800s. Much hotter, with 2012 being nearly two degrees Celsius above the twentieth century average.

I can't be bothered going through the rest of Jim's diatribe.  He does end up blaming Joe Romm for whatever Katherine Hayhoe said.  Jim's a climate science denier.  He's written a book about his denial. It pays to check every word he writes.  What I suggest for anyone who's come looking to find out more about Jim Steele, you can type his name into the search box above.  This is by no means the first time he's lashed out at scientists or misrepresented data.

You can read about how Jim doubled down when I pointed out he'd got his seas wrong and his seasons wrong.  [Update: You can see Jim continues to "double down" in the comments below. Not once has he conceded that the NOAA data shows warming or that the paper he himself cited states that Texas has warmed (which  it does).  Not only does the paper state that Texas has warmed, it attributes some of this warming to human factors! Sou 2:10 pm AEST Thurs 17 April 2014]

Better yet, have a look at the Years of Living Dangerously and tell us what you think of it.

Ignoble cause: Anthony Watts tells a lie to stoke conspiracy theories - or justify his lies?

Anthony Watts is over the moon.  He's been told there's a paper that says it's okay for him and other science deniers to keep lying about climate.  Of course that's not the tack that Anthony is taking.  (Archived here.)

Irony: manipulating information to stoke a conspiracy theory

In an irony heaped on an irony, Anthony Watts is lying and exaggerating about a research paper on exaggeration and information manipulation - to stoke the conspiracy theory that climate science is a hoax.  The other irony is that the research is based on a model.  Deniers usually reject outright any finding that's based on a model.

What Anthony and organised disinformers are feigning is shock and horror.  Anthony gives credit to the disinformation lobby group CFACT, for drawing his attention to a paper that says it's okay to exaggerate global warming.  Even though that's not what the paper is saying, going by the abstract.

Still, Anthony Watts and his fellow disinformers must be feeling all warm and fuzzy, saying to themselves that all their lies (including the current one about this very paper) are quite alright, because a paper that (doesn't) say it's okay to lie is (not) saying to the academic world that it's okay to lie.

Are you following all that? No?  it's just another example of how climate disinformers twist the facts to support their agenda of - bring on global warming.  Here is the abstract of the paper and its title:

Information Manipulation and Climate Agreements
It appears that news media and some pro-environmental organizations have the tendency to accentuate or even exaggerate the damage caused by climate change. This article provides a rationale for this tendency by using a modified International Environmental Agreement (IEA) model with asymmetric information. We find that the information manipulation has an instrumental value, as it ex post induces more countries to participate in an IEA, which will eventually enhance global welfare. From the ex ante perspective, however, the impact that manipulating information has on the level of participation in an IEA and on welfare is ambiguous.

Compare what Anthony writes...

Climate Craziness of the Week: Peer reviewed paper says it’s OK to manipulate data, exaggerate climate claims

Noble cause corruption gone wild. People tend to think of scientists as being unbiased, in climate science, apparently if you aren’t biased, you aren’t doing useful work.

...with what the abstract states:

news media and some pro-environmental organizations have the tendency to accentuate or even exaggerate

See how Anthony Watts goes beyond accentuation and exaggeration to fabrication through innuendo!  He's spinning that this is about bias of climate scientists.  It's not.  He talks about noble cause corruption.  Anthony is a despicable "champion" of ignoble causes, who spreads his disinformation arguably for money (his tip jar, his plea for his readers to pay his (free) "entry" to AGU etc etc)


Oh, in his next paragraph lying Anthony Watts writes:

A new peer-reviewed paper published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, titled “Information Manipulation and Climate Agreements”, is openly advocating that global warming proponents engage in mendacious claims in order to further their cause.

The paper itself is reporting research on whether exaggerations in news reporting and environmental activism makes a difference to participation by countries in international environmental agreements and if so to what extent.  It found that ex post suggests yes, while ex ante is ambiguous.  The research is based on a model, which seems to have passed by WUWT-ers.  (Normally deniers poo poo any research based on a model, but not in this case.)


PS. Here's another paper by one of the authors, for people interested in the general subject of the economics and politics of international environmental agreements (downloadable).

From the WUWT comments

Climate disinformer Anthony Watts has told a big fat lie.  As usual he implies that climate scientists are the culprits.  The abstract says nothing about climate scientists.  It is talking about news media and "some pro-environmental organizations".  And it doesn't give the "permission" or "advocate" anything.  It certainly doesn't advocate that Anthony Watts and other deniers and disinformers lie.  But that's what Anthony does to supplement his income and push his cause.  And a prime example is this very article (archived here).

The conspiracy wingnuts come out in force

leon0112 has jumped right through Anthony Watts hoop to the wrong conclusion that climate scientists are lying and says:

April 4, 2014 at 8:18 am
Wow. Next time someone throws the phrase “peer reviewed literature” at me, I will point to this one.

Dire Wolf says "it's all a conspiracy":

April 4, 2014 at 8:30 am
Let’s parse this. A paper from China (which will never, ever restrict its CO2 output) says that it is good to manipulate the media (that is the media outside of China) to “[induce] more countries to participate in an IEA” which will cripple the industries of those countries leaving China untouched and unrivaled. So, how much is the chinese equivalent of the KGB paying them?

jauntycyclist is an easy mark for Anthony's spin and says:

April 4, 2014 at 8:34 am
manipulation is so common , entrenched, accepted and expected in climate science it has its own study? maybe it should become a subject with its own faculty that rates climate papers on a beerosphere-o-meter?

Peter Hanely is another willing conspiracy theorist says:

April 4, 2014 at 8:36 am
“Its ok to lie to people for their own good.” Typical left wingnut rationalization.

cnxtim goes even further and says:

April 4, 2014 at 8:37 am
These CAGW devotees have made criminal behavior a science

mpainter seems to think the finding should have been kept under wraps and says:

April 4, 2014 at 8:48 am
It is well that such a paper publicly says what many privately believe.Such extremism will be the undoing of the movement. Staggering that it was published in such a journal. What rot.

Barry Cullen says:

April 4, 2014 at 8:51 am
This from the little despots in training in leadership positions descended from despot Mao and friends. Not surprising. Anything to gain and maintain control over a populace is acceptable.
The “peer” reviewers must, by definition, share similar political views.

Col Mosby says:

April 4, 2014 at 8:53 am
Thru this published paper, we have acheved total corruption of a scientific discipline. I wonder if these two brainless authors realize the contradiction implicit in their argument : Claim that something not dangerous is dangerous, to induce folks to take actions to prevent this (non-dangerous) something. 

markstoval decides this paper confirms his conspiracy theory that climate science is a hoax and says:

April 4, 2014 at 8:53 am
“Peer reviewed paper says it’s OK to manipulate data, exaggerate climate claims”
It is good to see the climate “scientists” admit they have been doing this since they have been doing it for at least 30 years. It is good for them to tell us that their “science” is all fiction. We knew it all along, but it is damn nice to get peer-reviewed conformation on that issue.
Modern “climate science” is pure baloney.

chinook reminds me of the utter nutters at HotCopper when s/he says:

April 4, 2014 at 8:54 am
They’re just following the now fashionable Post Modern Scientific Method that’s become pervasive, esp in America. In order for the ersatz religion of ‘environmentalism’ and climatchondria to spread far and wide like the plagues of mentally impaired rationalizing that they are, anything goes. Possibly, real scientists who believe in the scientific method, the honest ones who leave advocacy, politics and dogma out of their work will slowly turn the tide back.

tgasloli says:

April 4, 2014 at 9:18 am
What would you expect from Chinese Communists? This is why the “greens” should be considered “watermelons”. 

Some WUWT-ers are more astute and aren't buying Anthony's spin

Anthony had better watch it. Not all of his readers are buying his spin.

Bloke down the pub says:

April 4, 2014 at 8:26 am
Are they advocating it or just saying ‘hey man, sh*t happens’

AnonyMoose says:

April 4, 2014 at 8:48 am
They’re saying that exaggeration happens, and they’re not judging whether it is wrong, but the distorted information can increase participation in environmental agreements, and that end result is always good. They seem to be assuming that environmental agreements always have good results for the general welfare, and anything which enhances the general welfare is good. (Are “general welfare” and “enhance” defined?)

Mark 543 says:

April 4, 2014 at 8:57 am
You have misread the paper, or have not read it. By “rationale” they mean a rational explanation for the observed phenomena, not a moral justification for the behavior. The paper goes on to say “However, because people update their beliefs using the Bayesian rule, such information manipulation has a negative externality on the other state when climate damage is really huge, in which case the aforementioned information provider will not be sufficiently trusted even if it indicates the true state.” In other words, crying wolf leads to greater skepticism.

The paper also makes serious claims about errors in Al Gore’s film and an earlier IPCC report.

Aphan says:

April 4, 2014 at 9:16 am
Hang on a moment, I hate it when the AGW crowd says something about a paper that the paper itself doesnt actually say. We also wouldn’t to be guilty of “exaggerating” the claims in this paper would we?

The “article” (as opposed to a study) as represented above does NOT say anything about scientists manipulating data or using corrupt methods in scientific studies. It speaks to how the MEDIA and environmental groups manipulate and exaggerate “the damage done by climate change” to further their agendas.

Those are two very different things and I think we on the sceptical side of things need to be just as careful with how accurately we reflect the conclusions of papers we dont agree with as we are the ones we do.

Conspiracy theorists vs sceptical readers

There are many more comments archived here, which can largely be split into two types as above:

• the conspiracy theorising deniers - of whom Anthony Watts is one in this instance, and
• the sceptical deniers - and there are a small number who aren't taken in by Anthony's spin.

---

Fuhai Hong and Xiaojian Zhao, "Information Manipulation and Climate Agreements", Am. J. Agr. Econ. (2014); doi: 10.1093/ajae/aau001


There's another paper here that you might be interested in:

Hong, Fuhai, and Larry Karp. "International environmental agreements with mixed strategies and investment." Journal of Public Economics 96, no. 9 (2012): 685-697.