...such a shame he can't understand Twitter
Anthony Watts is crowing that he put one over Peter Gleick, who he really doesn't like. The reason he's so jealous of Dr Gleick is that Anthony, despite pretending(?) to be a Dog and paying the annual subscription, didn't find anything worth exposing at the Union of Concerned Scientists, while Peter Gleick didn't even have to pay the subs to expose the Heartland Institute. (Though one could argue that he had to pretend to be a dog.)Anthony thinks he is victorious because he saw Dr Gleick tweeting this photo of melted traffic lights:
Note the time: 9:25 am
About half an hour later , in his very next tweet, Dr Gleick tweeted that it was "no doubt from some fire..."
Note the time: 10:04 am
Anthony says in his gotcha article (my bold italics):
I took one look at that photo and the 110°F temperature, and my bullshit detector alarm went off. My next thought was “how could Gleick be so dumb as to fall for this?”. I mean GMAFB, if it was air temperature doing it, all parts of the stoplight would show a nearly equal melting effect, and not be lopsided. Surely geniuses like Gleick understand the basic of thermodynamics enough to get this? Apparently not.
I immediately replied to Gleick and explained how this just wasn’t possible:
Now be advised, dear reader. Don't ever count on Anthony for punctuality, will you.
Note the time of Anthony's first tweet: 10:22 am, Anthony's "immediate" was almost one whole hour after Dr Gleick's first tweet and twenty minutes after he qualified it with "No doubt some fire...." (which was at 10:04 am).
Dr Gleick very sensibly didn't reply to Anthony. Which probably put Anthony's nose out of joint. But Anthony had up a head of steam and undeterred he immediately tweeted again:
...and caught up in the heat of the moment, Anthony excitedly shot off more in quick succession:
...and then, the pièce de résistance.
Finally Anthony had it all figured out. It was a dog water bowl what melted them traffic lights! Well waddaya know!
Anthony really has a thing for dogs. He sends his own dog off to become a scientist, now he's blaming poor Fido for burning down a set of traffic lights in Kuwait.
As for the fire in Northern California - not too many Huff Post readers were impressed.
Q 1: Could the authorities be correct and a dog dish start a verandah smouldering? I'll leave that to the physicists and fire experts out there. This report suggests they could be. Living in a fire prone area as I do, stranger things have happened.
Q 2: The more pertinent question is: could a doggie dish have melted traffic lights in Kuwait as Anthony suggested? Well that's about as plausible as direct sunlight being able to melt them :D
You will marvel at Anthony Watts' humility
Funny thing is, Anthony proudly posted all his clever tweets to @PeterGleick on WUWT - except the really, really clever inspiration that it was the doggy dish wot dun it. (Scratches head in wonder at how someone of such genius as Anthony can show such humility.)
Post Script
Sorry Peter, I couldn't resist. The burning traffic lights by doggy dish was just too good to pass up.
