Fake sceptics have nothing to latch onto given the greater certainty from IPCC

The IPCC AR5 SPM has been reported fairly well in the mainstream media with headlines like the following:

• Australia has 'much to lose' from climate change Sydney Morning Herald
• IPCC climate change report: Human role in global warming now even clearer ABC Online
• Govt pressured to make deeper CO2 cuts Sydney Morning Herald
• Government accepts climate report but declares carbon tax was ‘wrong policy’ Herald Sun, Australia
• U.N. Affirms Human Role in Global Warming The Wall Street Journal
• Science solid on global warming, IPCC declares The Australian
• Global warming 'extremely likely' man-made: IPCC The Australian
• Coalition urged to raise emissions reduction target in wake of IPCC report The Guardian
• IPCC climate report: humans 'dominant cause' of warming BBC
• Human influence on climate change a ‘clarion call’ to global community Irish Times
• Scientists more convinced mankind is main cause of warming Reuters
• IPCC: Global warming is getting deeper The Telegraph
• Climate Change Report “Gives No Reason for Optimism” News International
• Climate panel forecast: Higher seas, temperatures The Seattle Times
• UN panel says humans causing global warming Bangkok Post
• IPCC report: The financial markets are the only hope in the race to stop global warming The Independent
• UN panel's climate report sparks concern AFP
• Around the world, strong reactions to climate-change report Globe and Mail
• An 'alarm clock moment' for the world: IPCC SBS
• Climate change scientists 'unequivocal' in blaming man Herald Scotland
• UN panel 95% sure humans causing global warming Economic Times

There are very few articles still attempting to deny climate science.  And those that do misrepresent it.  There are very few denier articles outside of denier blogs and opinion pieces in right wing rags.

We're heading for hot!

One denier, Michael Barrone penned The Great Global-Warming Disappointment for the National Review Online (archived here), in which he wrote at length about a cult called the Millerites, Jesus and religion.  It was difficult to work out what he was trying to say.  He quoted from other science deniers like Matt Ridley to bolster whatever argument he thought he was making, writing:

“The big news,” Ridley writes, “is that, for the first time since these reports started coming out in 1990, the new one dials back the alarm. It states that the temperature rise we can expect as a result of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide is lower than the IPCC thought in 2007.”

How Ridley came to that conclusion is perplexing.  The IPCC does not say that.  What it does do is provide a wider estimated range for climate sensitivity.  The higher estimate remains at 4.5 degrees (my bold italics):

The equilibrium climate sensitivity quantifies the response of the climate system to constant radiative forcing on multi-century 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. Equilibrium climate sensitivity is likely in the range 1.5°C to 4.5°C (high confidence), extremely unlikely less than 1°C (high confidence), and very unlikely greater than 6°C (medium confidence)16. The lower temperature limit of the assessed likely range is thus less than the 2°C in the AR4, but the upper limit is the same. This assessment reflects improved understanding, the extended temperature record in the atmosphere and ocean, and new estimates of radiative forcing.

Compare this with AR4 Summary for Policy Makers:

Progress since the TAR enables an assessment that climate sensitivity is likely to be in the range of 2 to 4.5°C with a best estimate of about 3°C, and is very unlikely to be less than 1.5°C. Values substantially higher than 4.5°C cannot be excluded, but agreement of models with observations is not as good for those values. {WGI 8.6, 9.6, Box 10.2, SPM}

Scientists are conservative.  However, the fact that the IPCC has high confidence that it's "extremely unlikely" to be less than 1°C and has only medium confidence that it's "very unlikely" to be higher than 6°C  in the top end of the range is not cause for celebration.  Regardless, if we listened to the Matt Ridley's of the world we'd overshoot the doubling way before the end of this century, so we could be looking at very rapid climate change in only a few decades leading to severe climate change over coming centuries.

That's on the millenial time frame, what about the near term.  Here is what the report states:

The transient climate response quantifies the response of the climate system to an increasing radiative forcing on a decadal to century timescale. It is defined as the change in global mean surface temperature at the time when the atmospheric CO2 concentration has doubled in a scenario of concentration increasing at 1% per year. The transient climate response is likely in the range of 1.0°C to 2.5°C (high confidence) and extremely unlikely greater than 3°C.

So this century if we continue on our current emissions path, we would be looking at a rise greater than 2.5°C, and 2°C is considered the upper safe limit!

The Daily Mail is wrong, again!

The Daily Mail lives up to its reputation as a denier tabloid with a mix of fact and fiction.  Fiona Macrae writes (archived here):

Climate change scientists warned yesterday that the Earth is set for more heatwaves, floods, droughts and rising sea levels that could swamp coasts and low-lying islands as greenhouse gases build up in the atmosphere.

But despite these dire predictions, they admitted global warming is likely to be more gradual than they previously thought and that world temperatures have barely changed in the past 15 years.

I looked through the report but could find no "admission" that global warming is likely to be more gradual than previously thought.  On the contrary, what I found was examples that things could be worse, for example estimates of sea level by the end of 2100 could be almost half a metre higher than "previously thought".


There is more to write about denier's thrashing about with nothing to focus their denial upon.  But I've got to go out for a bit.  Back later.  Feel free to add more silliness from deniers in the comments.

Wind and ice in Antarctica as seen through the eyes of science deniers at WUWT

Anthony Watts and the readers at WUWT are nothing if not inconsistent.

Anthony has put up another of his "Claim:" headlines as he's been doing lately to denote that a new scientific paper has been released for him and his readers to disbelieve.  (Anthony Watts rejects science that he thinks might result in his having to pay more taxation. Yeah, that's what he said.)  The WUWT article is archived here.

Anthony's latest is a new paper by Jinlun Zhang linking the increase in winter sea ice in southern oceans with more intense polar winds.  From ScienceDaily:

"The overwhelming evidence is that the Southern Ocean is warming," said author Jinlun Zhang, an oceanographer at the UW Applied Physics Laboratory. "Why would sea ice be increasing? Although the rate of increase is small, it is a puzzle to scientists."

His new study shows that stronger westerly winds swirling around the South Pole can explain 80 percent of the increase in Antarctic sea ice volume in the past three decades.

The polar vortex that swirls around the South Pole is not just stronger than it was when satellite records began in the 1970s, it has more convergence, meaning it shoves the sea ice together to cause ridging. Stronger winds also drive ice faster, which leads to still more deformation and ridging. This creates thicker, longer-lasting ice, while exposing surrounding water and thin ice to the blistering cold winds that cause more ice growth.

Antarctic sea ice concentration changes from 1981 to 2011.
(Credit: U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center)
Source: ScienceDaily.com

Windy inconsistency

I call "inconsistent" because Anthony denigrates the study with his "Claim:" headline and many of his readers do the same.  They want to dispute the finding that intensified winds can explain most of the increase in winter sea ice down south, but jump on the idea that wind can cause a decrease in summer ice in the Arctic. For example from a WUWT article on the record sea ice melt of 2007 (archived here):

In simpler terms, polar wind patterns changed and blew sea ice further south to warmer waters than it normally would. Sea ice can easily be wind driven.

I wonder if that’s the same mechanism that caused loss of Arctic sea ice in the 1920-30′s?

Another example from WUWT on the record sea ice melt of 2012 (archived here):

Many climate activists have sought to downplay the significance that the Arctic cyclone played on this year’s summer sea ice in the Arctic. But this new inconvenient video report from NASA now makes the warmists’ attempt to deny the cyclones role in 2012′s Arctic sea ice conditions — impossible.

Of course the above is just another one of Anthony Watts' strawman arguments.  His "many climate activists" most probably wouldn't have denied that a storm played a part in breaking up sea ice in the Arctic last year. As noted by Neven on his sea ice blog last year in relation to that cyclone:

The effects of this storm on the sea ice concentration maps are in plain sight. Slowly sea ice area and extent data are trickling in and for now the changes are quite large. 

What is a fact is that it didn't cause the record low in Arctic sea ice extent.  The record low ice extent wouldn't have been the record it was if not for global warming.

From the WUWT comments

The comments are archived here with the main WUWT article.  Here is a sample:

StuartMcL complains about the colour scheme of the diagram and proposes a (conspiracy) theory:

September 18, 2013 at 6:09 pm
Every other climate related chart that I’ve seen shows reds for warmer and blues for colder. I wonder why this one uses the opposite. It wouldn’t be to make it look more “scary” would it?

Bob Tisdale hasn't read about the study, which uses observations, and doesn't like models (though he uses them when it suits him) and says:

September 18, 2013 at 6:17 pm
Modeling study? Are the current batch of climate scientists incapable of studying data?
Oh, for the good old days before fatally flawed climate models.

James Allison acknowledges the role of wind in both polar regions though he doesn't get it quite right when he says:

September 18, 2013 at 6:20 pm
So there we have it – wind pushes ice away from the Arctic however pushes it toward the Antarctic.

Jeff D is very disturbed that scientists keep on looking for explanations and insist on adding to the world's knowledge.  To scientific illiteratis like JeffD, scientific research is anathema:

September 18, 2013 at 6:29 pm
They cannot let the increase in ice stand. They have to come up with some cock and bull study to make us believe that it is still worse than we thought. Will the insanity ever end..

Mike Jowsey is a plain vanilla science denier and says:

September 18, 2013 at 6:35 pm
I guess he didn’t get the memo – the climate is not warming.

4 eyes is a proudly semi-illiterate member of the illiterati and says:

September 18, 2013 at 6:49 pm
Truly settled science – no doubt. These guys should be de-funded. Immediately. Since the science was settled years ago there is no need for anymore work. Especially if it’s this quality. This must be embarassing for the scientists who follow the scientific method and make models that history match the facts.

Surfer Dave thinks that all models are bad and says:

September 18, 2013 at 5:52 pm
“model experiment” is an oxymoron. Why do they think their model comes anywhere near to reality? How does one calibrate such a model before doing an “experiment” with it. Totally bogus “science”.

Peter Foster theorises from his armchair that he knows more about Antarctic oceans than does Jinlun Zhang, Senior Principal Oceanographer from the Polar Science Center of the University of  Washington and says:

September 18, 2013 at 7:12 pm
I wonder if Zhang has ever been to Antarctica. i wonder if he has ever spent time working on the sea ice or on a ship sailing through it. No matter how strong or cold the wind, if the sea surface water is not cold enough it will not freeze and once it does freeze the wind has no effect on the thickening of the ice. That occurs by radiation of heat through the ice from the water underneath. Sea ice thickens by water freezing from underneath. But then you would think a scientist studying sea ice would know that wouldn’t you. Perhaps that is the difference between the armchair theorists and practical scientists.

By the way, is there any actual data on the circumpolar wind strength from sub Antarctic islands or is this just guess work on Zhang’s part.

Tez doesn't quite understand a letter he got from a "Professor" working on the Ross Ice Shelf and says:

September 18, 2013 at 7:26 pm
They dont know why the sea ice is growing. Wind patterns is just as much a guess as the theory that it is due to the melting ice shelves cooling the adjacent waters.

A Professor currently working on the Ross Ice shelf wrote to me stating that the increased sea ice was due the the ozone hole allowing cold air from high above to descend on the Arctic ocean. (which Tez later corrected to Antarctic)

This increase is difficult to explain away in a warming world and I dont think they have found the answer yet.

(The ozone hole in the south affects the polar winds.  Here is an article at Climate Central that discusses a recent paper by Waugh et al (2013) in Science: The Impact of Stratospheric Ozone Recovery on the Southern Hemisphere Westerly Jet, DOI: 10.1126/science.1155939)

Jim Steele offers his own brand of pseudo-science, talking of katabaitc (sic) winds "blowing equator-ward" and disputing Zhang's findings (excerpt):

September 18, 2013 at 7:33 pm
Besides the false claim that ice is growing where it is warming, the model actually offers a good explanation for the change in Arctic sea ice. Most of the Antarctic sea ice is driven by the katabaitc winds blowing equator-ward from the continental interior. Unconstrained by other continents, most of the Antarctcc sea ice expands unimpeded with much less ridging than witnessed in the Arctic. For that reason most of Antarctic’s sea ice is thin first year ice with very little ridging that is claimed by the model. Each winter the Antarctic sea ice extent is much greater than observed in the Arctic, but Antarctic sea ice also melts more rapidly each summer precisely because there is so little ridging .

From the Australian Antarctic Division (my bold italics):

Radiative cooling over the Antarctic ice sheet produces very cold, dense air that flows away from elevated areas and is replaced by subsiding air from above. The resulting katabatic winds accelerate downhill, enhanced by the confluence of glacial valleys. Katabatic winds blow with great consistency over large areas. At the coast they lose their driving force and soon dissipate offshore.

Low-pressure systems near the Antarctic coast can interact with katabatic winds to increase their strength. Resulting wind speeds can exceed 100 km/h for days at a time. Wind gusts well over 200 km/h have been measured.

And a diagram illustrating the wind flows down from the mountain ranges in Antarctica, from Stephanie in Antarctica:

Bill Illis says "it's not happening" (extract):

September 18, 2013 at 5:37 pm
First, the oceans around Antarctica are not warming. All the datasets show no warming going back more than 100 years and there is clearly recent cooling given the sea ice conditions.

Oakden Wolf responds to Bill Illis's denial, writing (with insight into the collective mind of WUWT) in part (my paras):

September 18, 2013 at 8:26 pm
Wow. History. I read Bob Illis’ comment that the Southern Oceans had not warmed for 100 years, and that seemed wrong. I did a little digging, and discovered a remarkable WUWT thread from about three years ago, “Dr. Curry warms the Southern Ocean”, in which this issue was discussed at length. And I was reminded that I participated in that thread, and offered SEVERAL references indicating the Southern Ocean was warming.

My references were only mildly considered, and they were dismissed with quite inadequate effort, because the principal in that thread was hunting bigger game than I, a small fish to fry.

Nonetheless, the references remain, and they are quite compelling that the Southern Ocean is warming. I note that one key paper, which I provide the citation and link to below, was not addressed at all in that somewhat forgotten thread. So I’ll also provide the abstract for that one.

Gille, Sarah T., 2008: Decadal-Scale Temperature Trends in the Southern Hemisphere Ocean. J. Climate, 21, 4749–4765. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/2008JCLI2131.1

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008JCLI2131.1...

... So I think it’s fairly clear that the Southern Ocean has been and is warming, and efforts to understand the slight increase in Antarctic sea ice extent need to incorporate that.

Zhang, Jinlun. "Modeling the impact of wind intensification on Antarctic sea ice volume." Journal of Climate 2013 (2013). doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00139.1

Human influence on climate is confirmed (again); plus WUWT is forced to back down

Clear evidence for a discernible human influence on the thermal structure of the atmosphere

Today Australia's ABC announced another scientific paper in PNAS (open access).  The paper is by Ben Santer et al and focuses on human influence on the structure of the atmosphere.  It complements research in other areas and, as stated in the abstract, provide(s) clear evidence for a discernible human influence on the thermal structure of the atmosphere.

Contrast with Anthony Watts' anti-science blog, WUWT

In the last few days Anthony Watts has been making preposterous claims like the climate only warmed half as much as thought over the past 50 years (it hasn't).  He even had a post as a "sticky" with an update claiming that "the IPCC edifice is crumbling".

Because this first lot of IPCC reports (from Working Group 1) won't be out till the end of September this year, I can't comment on what it contains.  But I am watching how the science deniers are cavorting around in advance of its release, trying to frame their own message.  They aren't doing a very good job because they keep shifting their framing.

Anthony Watts makes a tactical retreat

A few hours ago Anthony Watts said he got a copy of the leaked draft dated 7 June 2013.  This is the same draft that lots of mainstream media outlets got about a month ago so Anthony's probably feeling a bit left out.

Now he's got the leaked draft in his hot sticky hands, he's decided he'd better "unsticky" his previous article and change his tune.  I guess he feels he can no longer get away with the sort of silliness he's been bombarding his readers with over the past couple of weeks.

More magical thinking from Perennially Puzzled Bob Tisdale

Instead, Anthony has roped in perennially puzzled Bob Tisdale (archived here).  Bob tells readers what they are supposed to see in a figure from the leaked draft.  The figure in question shows up very well the rapid warming of the past few decades.  Bob is basically telling his readers not to look at what is in the chart - he wants them to imagine what is not yet in the chart.  He wants them to imagine a future.

Bob is telling his readers to imagine that for the next 30 or 60 years there will be no further rise in the global surface temperature.

Why he wants his readers to "see" this is fairly obvious to anyone who has come across Tisdale or WUWT in their travels.  They don't want anyone to take any action to mitigate global warming.

I know, I know, that's not a reason.  One has to ask why they want us to keep heating up the world.  It seems each person has their own particular reason.  In Anthony Watts' case he's said it's because he doesn't like paying tax.  In Bob Tisdale's case he's got a lot invested in his "theory" of magical leaping ENSOs and I guess he wants to give his fairies and leprauchauns a rest for a few decades.  He realises he can only call on magic to explain the rise in surface temperature for so long before more of his readers will wake up to his claims of "warming by magic".

Not the IPCC report 

Anthony has also been touting the "Not the IPCC" report (the NIPCC report).  This report is written by "skeptics" not by climate scientists, so the duffers at WUWT who reject science get a consolation prize.  I think the idea is that deniers get their own reward so they don't feel too jealous when the rest of the world is awarded the main prize - the real IPCC report.  You can read his latest promotion archived here.

It's not much of a consolation prize.  Even Anthony admits that, referring to it as a "second" opinion.   It's claimed to be written by only 40 fake skeptics, although most is probably written by only one or two people. Anthony announces it (again) with the weak headline: Major New Report on Tuesday: Climate Science Says Global Warming Is Not a Crisis.

Not a very good headline, you'll admit.  It's a bit like saying - "we operated and can announce that the patient isn't dead (yet)".

Another thing the Not the IPCC report has against it is that it's a creature of the Heartland Institute.  That's the crowd that argued mass murderers accept the science therefore the science is wrong.  Yeah - I know.  They are really, really nutty.

And yet another thing the Not the IPCC report has against it is that it's associated with names like Fred Singer, Craig Idso, Willie Soon and Bob Carter.  I don't know if Ian "iron sun" Plimer is involved.

Here is what Bob Carter says, to give you some idea of how irrelevant and silly the Not the IPCC report is bound to be (it hasn't been released yet):

“NIPCC’s Climate Change Reconsidered II report is full of factual evidence that today’s climate continues to jog along well within the bounds of previous natural variation. 

Compare that falsehood with what I commented on at the opening of the article  What real practicing climate scientists have found, as reported on the ABC website (my bold italics):

A report by a team of international scientists concludes there now is no doubt climatic changes are due to humans rather than any other natural factors.

 Here again is the PNAS paper by Santer et al: Human and natural influences on the changing thermal structure of the atmosphere

Here is more from Bob Carter, he is quoted as saying: The empirical pigeons have therefore finally come home to roost on the IPCC’s speculative computer models — and they carry the message that:

• ice is not melting at an enhanced rate, 
• sea-level rise is not accelerating, 
• the intensity and magnitude of extreme events is not increasing, and 
• dangerous global warming is not occurring.”

As any informed climate watcher knows, these are all straightforward lies.  Notice too how he couches a couple of his lies in terms he thinks he can get away with (eg ice is melting but not at an "enhanced rate".  I don't know what Bob means by that it's not true in a global sense.) The fact that Bob Carter feels compelled to tell lies is a stark reminder of how far some people will go in order to hasten the destruction of civilisation.  Again, it's a mystery why any human being would want to see the sixth mass extinction happen more quickly than it is already.  Or why they don't want to limit dangerous global warming.  I guess they have their own reasons.  Their reasons might even be unrelated to global warming.  It could be that some of them like being seen as a "big fish" even if it means flailing about and gasping for breath in a tiny and shrinking pond.

I'll finish the main article with a few more charts - just to show how wrong Bob is:

Ice is melting

This chart shows the minimum volume of Arctic sea ice as modeled by PIOMAS.  It only goes to 2012 because the minima for this year isn't in yet.  The current minima for sea ice extent is likely to be around that of 2010 but I don't know what will be this year's minima for sea ice volume.

Data source: PIOMAS

This one shows the annual minima for the Arctic and the Antarctic sea ice plotted on the same chart.  The time is different because they reach their minima at different times of the year.  It doesn't show this year's data which is not in yet.  This year, Antarctic sea ice was higher than ever recorded, while in the Arctic, the sea ice remained very low but not as low as last year's record or that of 2007.  It will probably fall between that of 2009 and 2010.

Data source: NSIDC

I don't have charts of land ice to hand, but it's known that many more glaciers are receding than advancing and that the ice sheets in Greenland and western Antarctica and the Antarctic peninsula are melting.

Seas are rising

Sea level rise for much of last century was at around 1.9 mm a year.  Now it's at around 3.2 mm a year. (For more detail see here.)  Therefore Bob Carter is wrong.  Not only is sea level rising, it's rising more quickly than it did.  (As always, click chart for larger version.)

Source: U Colorado

More extreme events are happening more often

This chart from Munich Re shows the increase in extreme weather events around the world.  (Click to enlarge.)  About the best that fake skeptics come up with against this evidence is "I don't believe it" - the logical fallacy of personal incredulity.

Source: Munich Re report - Topics Geo – Natural catastrophes 2012

The world is getting hotter and it is posing a real danger

Data source: NASA

Bob Carter no longer denies that the world is getting hotter.  He's shifted to arguing that is won't be dangerous.  The evidence is otherwise.  

Heat waves are dangerous and have killed tens of thousands in Europe and Russia already this past decade.  As they get hotter, they more dangerous.  Droughts pose a danger to people's livelihood, their ability to access potable water (or any water in some cases) and limits the amount of global food production.  Flash floods kill, wash away topsoil and destroy homes and buildings.  Wildfire kills and will get more dangerous in parts of the world that dry out and heat up.  Rising seas will mean that entire towns and cities will need to be relocated.  They also kill when storms hit and the sea water surges through communities.  When there is extreme heat and extreme humidity people will die.  They can't survive it.  Mammals have a physiological limit in regard to wet bulb temperature.  That's not happened yet in any part of the world that I know of but it is a real danger.  As oceans get more acidic there will be real impacts on the livelihood of fishers with a flow on effect to food supplies.  As more species become extinct because they cannot adapt to the rapid change in climate, the entire ecosystem will be threatened.

From the WUWT comments

Most of the comments to the Not the IPCC article are about children suffering a fever.   I think they welcomed the distraction of Anthony's quoting Prince Charles of England so they didn't have to face the reality that even the Not the IPCC report can deny - the world is getting warmer.  By the way, Anthony disagrees with Prince Charles and seems to be arguing that if a child has a fever, the doctor should wait for endless tests before taking any action, even if it means the death of the child.  Among this and other silliness, dbstealey, not satisfied with denying the greenhouse effect,  is now denying the risks posed by passive smoking.  You can read that article and the comments archived here.

You can read an archived copy of Bob Tisdale's article and the comments here.  They are mostly pretty dumb too.  Many of them are of the "I don't believe it" type.

gymnosperm seems to have come to the realisation that Bob is a charlatan, though IMO he gives him too much credit:

September 16, 2013 at 9:10 pm
Face it. We are in a marketing war. Scientists generally do not make good salesmen. It is an entirely different mindset. Charlatans make good salesmen, because they can infuse belief into their own self interest.

Streetcred is particularly odd.  He got very confused by Bob telling his readers that the world will stop warming for the next 60 years, thinking it was the IPCC saying something about 60 years (it didn't).  He says:

September 16, 2013 at 8:37 pm
They want what ? 60 More years to build their hypothesis ? Your time is up, SS CAGW, please return to port.

He's not the only one who can't understand what Bob was saying.  dbstealey is just as dumb and says:

September 16, 2013 at 8:00 pm
So they have pushed doomsday out 30 – 60 more years. What a bunch of unscientific nonsense. Cherry-picking the future, based on their past batting average of 0.000.
It is more likely that global temperatures will decline over the next six decades. If so, where do taxpayers go for a refund?

Cynical Scientst can't believe how warm it's getting and says:

September 16, 2013 at 8:22 pm
Amazing how much colder the 1930′s and 40′s have gotten over the last couple of decades.

The "standard" of WUWT continues to decline at a rapid pace.  I reckon the trend in quality of WUWT and its readership is the inverse of global warming, which would make sense.

PS I got the idea for the blog article title from Graham Lloyd's "forced to".  It's kinda neat, don't you think? :D

Santer, Benjamin D., et al. "Identifying human influences on atmospheric temperature." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110.1 (2013): 26-33. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1305332110 

Attacks on science are getting weaker but there is no room for complacency

Every time there is an important event relating to climate science, the disinformers try to wage a coordinated attack.  This time around, the attacks on climate science have been coordinated but weak (so far).  The disinformation machine has given up on outright denial that humans are causing global warming and restricting themselves to making up lies about what is written in past IPCC reports and the yet-to-be-released IPCC report.  Plus throwing in a lie about a fictional IPCC event.  Their argument these days has shifted from "it isn't happening" to "it's real but it won't be bad".

Australia's Prime Minister ignores science (and women)

The incoming Australian government under Tony "climate change is crap" Abbott has decided that climate change doesn't matter.  He has got around his "problem" of denying science by ignoring it.  He has decided to not appoint a Science Minister at all!  (That's better than appointing rabid science denier Dennis Jensen I suppose.)  No science Minister, no science portfolio.  What are you thinking, Tony?

He's also got around his problem in regard to women - by appointing only one - out of nineteen Ministerial appointments.  One!  He says he's disappointed there aren't two.  TWO out of NINETEEN!  What about aiming for ten out of nineteen, Tony?

Leading the charge against science

The disinformation charge began with Matt Ridley with an article in the Wall St Journal.  There were also two articles by David Rose in the Daily Mail (discussed here and here), which in turn were regurgitated by anti-science editor Graham Lloyd in The Australian.

There were some preliminaries.  For example anti-science campaigner and blogger, Donna Laframboise, put together articles from her silly little blog and published it as a book.  But that seems to have fallen flat.  I've not seen much on it apart from an equally silly article on WUWT.  Steve "mad, mad, mad" Goreham wrote on WUWT about a new Heartland Institute report by science deniers (an updated NIPCC report), but that didn't get much cyber-play either.  Which isn't surprising given the "arguments" these "not a climate" scientists put up in the past.

Anthony Watts is trying to get mileage by blowing the lies up into a ridiculous sounding sound-byte with an empty: "the IPCC edifice is crumbling".  His tweets are equally moronic. For example:

• Tweeting to Brad Johnson of Forecast the Facts: your religion just died.
• Tweeting to no-one in particular that: Amazed watching response 2 David Rose article. Warmists really DO want a catastrophe & are angry with anyone who suggests there might not be

Anthony Watts thinks climate science is a religion.  He joins economist Richard Tol (here and here) and others who protest climate science is a "religion" (see HotWhopper's Law of Science Denial).  And does he really think that people are pointing out his lies because they don't want the world to take action to mitigate global warming?  Talk about spin!

Deniers are shifting towards science

What is interesting is that the science deniers are accepting the IPCC report.  Instead of pretending it's wrong, they are misrepresenting what it contains.  That could be called progress of a sort and shows that the science maybe ahead in this war being waged on it by the anti-science crowd.

The list of most prominent deniers this time around is a bit different from George Monbiot's compilation back in 2009.  Some of his list have fallen by the way.  The one thing this current crop seems to have in common is an ideological opposition to doing anything to mitigate global warming.  They prefer a pay-after-disaster scheme, like the flood levy imposed on Australian taxpayers last year.  Here are some of the events that will require a "pay-after-disaster" rather than a cheaper preventative approach:

• Colorado floods 2013
• Sandy 2012
• Heat wave in China 2013
• Alberta floods 2013
• Catastrophic fires in Victoria 2009
• Russian and Eastern European heat wave 2010
• European heat wave 2003
• Bangladesh floods
• and many more like the above all around the world.

No room for complacency

Despite the fact that disinformers are showing signs of weakening there is no room for complacency.  For everyone's sake, it's important to take a strategic and multi-pronged approach to combating the people and organisations that want to destroy the world as we know it.  We need to keep "demolishing disinformation" when and where we find it.  Otherwise this new era of civilisation that showed such promise will be "stillborn".

Matt Ridley loses the plot, falls back on "CO2 is plant food"

I've been watching WUWT waiting for an article on the amazing and appalling one in a hundred year flood in Colorado.  But despite claiming to be an ex-tele weather announcer, and despite living close by in California, Anthony isn't interested in such things.

Instead, joining the list of crank articles on WUWT, Anthony favours a Matt Ridley "CO2 is plant food" bit of idiocy (archived here).  Here is a video from Peter Sinclair that hits that old denier meme on the head:

A spate of silly articles on WUWT - but what's new?

As usual there is a spate of silly articles coming out in advance of the new IPCC report later this month.  Anthony Watts is putting up all sorts of nonsense and it's hard to tell which is worse.

First - Tim "slayer" Ball can't read a simple chart

Yesterday he had Tim Ball, who denies the greenhouse effect, claiming it's been cooling for the past seventeen years (archived here). If Tim was interested in facts, he'd be saying that the average global surface temperature hasn't gone up in two years - not since the record high in 2010.  Instead he tries to bluff and bluster about 17 years.  Here's a chart showing 1995 (2012 minus 17) and 1996 (2013 minus 17) that demonstrates how woefully wrong is serial disinformer and greenhouse effect denier, Tim Ball.

Data source: NASA

Next it's Matt "CO2 is plant food" Ridley

Now the latest spin on WUWT is from Matt Ridley, who has gone completely nuts claiming that global warming will be "good".  All this would be laughable, if it weren't so sad.  What is it that addles people's brains to the extent that they can't accept reality?

Anthony thinks he has "BREAKING: IPCC AR5 report to dial back climate sensitivity" (archived here).  Whether that is true or not (see Justin Gillis NYT article), the article itself shows that Ridley has lost the plot completely. Matt tries to claim: (there is a) very real possibility that, over the next several generations, the overall effect of climate change will be positive for humankind and the planet.

Good grief.  Remember, that's coming from a self-labelled "rational optimist".  Irrational is more like it.  Ridley makes a ludicrous appeal to an "authority" that he pulled out of thin air - unnamed "experts":

Most experts believe that warming of less than 2 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels will result in no net economic and ecological damage. 

Matt has a habit of making up stuff.  His "most experts" probably include deniers like Anthony Watts.  No rational person thinks that "less than two degrees" will result in "no net economic or ecological damage".  Governments picked 2 degrees to aim for as a cap because they figured that we might just survive that - albeit at great cost to the economy and the environment.

Matt's "most experts" are not climate scientists, that's for sure.  Not only is his claim about "most experts" not true, but at present we are on track to well exceed a doubling of carbon emissions this century which, even with the most conservative estimates of sensitivity, means that we are heading for very serious climate change with dire consequences.  If Matt Ridley and Anthony Watts and other science deniers have their way, we won't be worried about what damage a doubling of CO2 will bring, we'll be facing damage that a trebling or quadrupling of CO2 will bring - or worse.

I had to go to the Wall Street Journal (archived here) to read the rest of his silliness.  For example:

Warming of up to 1.2 degrees Celsius over the next 70 years (0.8 degrees have already occurred), most of which is predicted to happen in cold areas in winter and at night, would extend the range of farming further north, improve crop yields, slightly increase rainfall (especially in arid areas), enhance forest growth and cut winter deaths (which far exceed summer deaths in most places). Increased carbon dioxide levels also have caused and will continue to cause an increase in the growth rates of crops and the greening of the Earth—because plants grow faster and need less water when carbon dioxide concentrations are higher.

"Extend the range of farming further north" - does he seriously imagine that farming is going to suddenly sprout up on the Greenland ice sheet?  I wonder if he thinks that the sun will stay up for longer as the world warms?  And what about all the farming south that will go under?

"Improve crop yields?" - what about the reduction in crop yields as marginal areas extend further, as places like south western USA and south western Australia become even drier and hotter?

"Slightly increase rainfall in arid areas"? Not so.  Dry areas are generally expected to become drier and wet areas wetter.  Rainfall intensity will continue to increase.  Downpours aren't good for topsoil.

As for his silly "CO2 is plant food" argument - if everything else is equal, C3 plants (wheat etc) do respond to an increase in CO2.  But if there's no water or too much water it won't help the crop.  And it doesn't matter how much extra CO2 there is when it's too hot and dry.

Then Matt goes into full-on - "people in low lying coastal areas can go hang":

Up to two degrees of warming, these benefits will generally outweigh the harmful effects, such as more extreme weather or rising sea levels, which even the IPCC concedes will be only about 1 to 3 feet during this period.

Matt Ridley dismisses the sea level rise as "only 1 to 3 feet over this period".  "Only"? I'm almost lost for words with that one.  That means he cares little about places like Miami, much of which would be seriously damaged with a one foot rise in sea level.  Just look at the damage that Sandy wrought with a much smaller rise in sea level.  From Jeff Goodell at Rolling Stone:

With just three feet of sea-level rise, more than a third of southern Florida will vanish; at six feet, more than half will be gone; if the seas rise 12 feet, South Florida will be little more than an isolated archipelago surrounded by abandoned buildings and crumbling overpasses. And the waters won't just come in from the east – because the region is so flat, rising seas will come in nearly as fast from the west too, through the Everglades.

Not that Matt Ridley cares, he lives in England.  So what will happen to his little island after he's departed it? Here is one estimate - with a rise of one metre, the risk that the Thames Barrier is breached goes to one in ten years.  Bye bye London:

"With 50cm of sea level rise we would expect that level of protection to go down from 1 in 1,000 years to about 1 in 100 years, so under that scenario in every year there would be a 1 per cent chance of flooding. If you have a metre rise you go down from 1 in 1,000 years to 1 in 10 years," Professor Vaughan said.

We can expect more ludicrous articles like this one over the next few weeks as the people who don't want to mitigate harmful global warming deny the latest IPCC report of the science.

And to think that Anthony Watts complains about being lumped in with all the other deniers.  If he doesn't want people to think he rejects climate science, he will need at the very least to stop posting any and all contributions from "guest denialist authors" like Matt Ridley, perennially puzzled Bob Tisdale, Tim Ball, Christopher Monckton, Steve "mad, mad, mad" Goreham, David "funny sunny" Archibald and others.  And he'd have to stop making silly claims like he did yesterday, with his "it's natural" and other denier memes.

From the WUWT comments

As usual the fake "skeptics" at WUWT regulars aren't the least bit sceptical.  Here is a sample of the reaction:

Lanny says:

September 14, 2013 at 12:23 am
So basically the whole “Global warming thing” has been a tempest in a teapot.

Steve Jones is an uber conspiracy nutter who says:

September 14, 2013 at 12:39 am
They are putting an awful lot of effort into calculating these temp rises v. probability and none of it is via the scientific method. Their concern is to keep their gravy train rolling whilst distancing themselves from the more ridiculous projections that real world data is falsifying right now.
Let’s hope the IPCC falls off this tight-rope and soon.

JustMEinT Musings thinks global warming is one big joke and says:

September 14, 2013 at 12:41 am
so does this mean that Dr. Train Driver/engineer will be out of a job now :-)

Birdieshooter is completely ignorant of climate science and says:

September 14, 2013 at 12:42 am
Since earlier projections of increases in extreme weather,ie, hurricanes and tornadoes etc, have not come to pass, I wonder how they will address that aspect.

ConTrari is another deluded conspiracy nutter who says:

September 14, 2013 at 12:54 am
The basic question for IPCC in a world that is cooling not only in temperature but also in attitudes towards them, is how to preserve their status and funding. So they must backpaddle a bit, to avoid the danger of being called activist alarmists. It is, however, a razorthin edge to walk along, with the abyss of oblivion and insignificance on the other side of the knife’s edge.
They may adopt the practical view that in order to keep themselves clothed, warm and well-fed, the vision of a boiling globe and a starving humanity must be pushed a bit into the background.

Anthony Watts doesn't want to be thought of as a "denier" - ha! He and his blog are a joke!

WUWT is the biggest blog in the anti-science echo chamber and proud of it

Anthony Watts has found something to boast about (archived here, latest is here).  It's a working paper by Amelia Sharman for the Grantham Institute called:  Mapping the climate sceptical blogosphere

Sharman has described Anthony's anti-science blog, wattsupwiththat (WUWT) as occupying "the most central positions in the climate sceptical blogosphere" with an estimated 140,000 visitors and more than 2 million page views a month.  That is indeed impressive and why it needs countering.

Setting the scene - the 97% scientific consensus

Anthony doesn't much like the opening sentence of the Introduction, saying "There is only one little fatal mistake IMHO on sentence one of the paper". The opening sentence refers to the 97% scientific consensus:

Evidence supporting the reality of climate change and its anthropogenic cause is overwhelming in the peer-reviewed literature (J. Cook et al. 2013; Doran and Zimmerman 2009).

Critiquing mainstream science or mocking mainstream science?

Sharman writes in one part:

The expertise that appears to be the most valued in this alternative knowledge network—command of scientific knowledge and willingness to use it to critique mainstream climate science—is thus also different to that valued in other networks of alternative knowledge.

Indeed. Either Sharman either isn't aware of the dearth of scientific knowledge on fake sceptic blogs or is pointing out that those who flock to those blogs are unaware of it.  In the abstract she refers to "alternative networks of scientific knowledge production" - which suggests she actually thinks that fake sceptics are adding knowledge, when in fact they ridicule it illiterati-style.  They are in the disinformation business not the knowledge business.  However elsewhere in her paper there are indications that she may have an inkling of their purpose.  It could be that her term "alternative knowledge" is a euphemism for "unadulterated bunk". Here are some examples of the "command of scientific knowledge" or "alternative knowledge" or "unadulterated bunk" typical of WUWT.

As Sharman notices, without mainstream science WUWT would have nothing to mock at all, and we'd not have David "funny sunny" Archibald or Ronald D "OMG it's insects" Voisin or the potty peer Monckton:

Interestingly however, and in opposition to the Cumbrian sheep farmers in Wynne’s classic investigation of expertise, these bloggers do not appear to recognise their ‘dependency upon the scientific experts as the certified public authorities on the issue’ (1992: 299). 

Interpreters for the interpreters of interpretations

Why do anti-science blogs exist?  The authors put forward a couple of ideas, for example as "reinterpreters" of science (feeding other science deniers à la James Delingpole with his self-description as an "interpreter of interpretations"):

It is possible that these central blogs in particular are not only acting as translators between scientific research and lay audiences, but, in their reinterpretation of existing climate science knowledge claims, are filling a void by opening up climate science to those who may have been previously unengaged by the mainstream knowledge process and, importantly, acting themselves as alternative public sites of expertise for a climate sceptical audience. 

Attempting to destabilise science and/or echo chambers of worldviews (and/or fodder for the illiterati)

And why do anti-science blogs like WUWT reinterpret science? Is it to destabilise mainstream science?

Several reasons may explain why scientifically-based challenges to, or reinterpretations of, climate science by mainstream climate science outsiders are valued within the climate sceptical blogosphere. Those whose scepticism is entirely scientifically-motivated may regard these blogs as sites of more accurate or trustworthy knowledge than exists in mainstream climate science, or indeed is available either as readily or in as detailed a format as in other sources such as the mainstream media (Boykoff 2013). This rationale would suggest that the ‘relevant resource’ that Brass (1984: 520) identifies as critical as to why certain nodes become more powerful than others in a network is, in this instance, command of scientific knowledge, in particular, knowledge that attempts to destabilise mainstream science.

Again the strange language.  Fake sceptics like those on WUWT and other denier blogs have little if any "command of scientific knowledge".  However the fact that she talks about their purpose being to destabilise mainstream science suggests Sharman may be aware of this.  It's curious the way she presents her ideas.

Another reason put forward by Sharman is that they exist to provide an echo chamber reflecting the worldview and ideology of their readers.  There is more than ample evidence supporting this hypothesis.

Another possible reason is that these blogs are providing a basis upon which scepticism motivated by underlying worldviews or ideological values (such as disagreement for the need for government intervention) can be scientifically justified (G. Cook et al. 2004). It is possible that this contributes to a situation whereby these blogs serve as an “echo chamber”, within which users are ‘consuming news that mesh with their worldview and ideology’ (Boykoff 2013: 15), thus contributing to Hoffman’s (2011a) concept of a logic schism within the climate debate.

I'll add my own hypothesis - anti-science blogs exist to sustain the illiterati and echo their creed that all knowledge is valueless and the only thing of value is ignorance.  Perhaps this is a sub-group of the "worldview" club reason.

Judith Curry "officially" joins the ranks of "sceptics"

I see that Judith Curry's blog rates a mention.  Hers is considered a "category 2" "skeptical" blog - in the same bag as Stephen McIntyre's blog.  I don't think Judith will complain about being tagged as a "skeptical blog" despite the definition for inclusion being one or more of "trend, attribution or impact climate scepticism", described as:

• trend sceptics are ‘those who say global temperatures are not warming’
• attribution sceptics are ‘those who say they are warming, but argue that the anthropogenic contribution to global warming or climate change is over-stated, negligible, or non-existent compared to other factors like natural variations or sun spots’ 
• impact sceptics are ‘those who accept it is happening but for different reasons question its impacts or the need to do something about it’.

Roy Spencer's blog is included as a category 1 blog (which might or might not please him).  IMO Spencer's blog along with those of Judith Curry and Anthony Watts fits all three categories - sometimes all at the same time!

Here is how the paper further categorised the blogs:

... a categorisation system became a necessary addition in order to distinguish between types of blogs, as there was a marked difference in language employed. Two categories were developed: openly sceptical (category 1) and self-proclaimed “open-minded” (category 2). For example, compare the following excerpts in Table 1 from Climate etc., a category 2 blog authored by Judith Curry (Georgia Institute of Technology) and GORE LIED, a category 1 blog authored under the pseudonym “The Editor”, based in Oregon, USA. In the GORE LIED excerpts, the phrase ‘the foundation for anthropogenic global warming is fraudulent’ and the suggestion of climate scientists and policy-makers personally profiting from the existence of climate change clearly identifies it as a category 1 blog. Conversely, in the Climate etc. excerpt, the discussion of the need for greater causal investigation into the scientific factors behind the physical manifestation of climate change is markedly different in tone, hence its classification as a category 2 blog.

The difference is simply one of "tone".  Anthony Watts' blog is in category 1 along with GORE LIED - the blog that says mainstream science is a fraud.  That pretty well sums up WUWT.

Curry's blog, with it's constant bleating about "uncertainty" and "don't act yet until every tiny bit of science is 100% certain", is a category 2.  I'd argue it's been shifting towards category 1 for some time now.

From the WUWT comments

I think I've found out whether or not Roy Spencer is happy with being included as a category 1 "sceptic", he says (comments and the blog article are archived here - latest update here):

September 9, 2013 at 12:29 pm
Apparently, you can get a PhD these days just for using a bunch of multi-syllable words.

Theo Goodwin is ignorance personified and oblivious to WUWT's "dependency upon the scientific experts". He seems to think that WUWT invented climate science and erroneously says, unaware of the irony in his "ironic" comment:

September 9, 2013 at 1:16 pm
WUWT does the heavy lifting in criticism of climate science. Alarmists are now talking about natural regularities and natural variability. That is new talk for them and it came directly from WUWT. Alarmists are talking about ENSO and the AMO. That came from Bob Tisdale and others at WUWT. In the near future, the Alarmists that remain will be talking about Willis’ cloud hypotheses. At this time, talk about actual physical hypotheses begging for empirical investigation is a bridge too far.

It is ironic that WUWT is the leader in criticism of climate science. In the natural order of things, the most severe critics of a science are supposed to be those who created the science. In the natural order, Gavin Schmidt’s blog should offer the most severe criticism of climate science.

John Mason is not sure about all this attention and says (excerpt):

September 9, 2013 at 1:29 pm
On the one hand it’s interesting to see the number of studies trying to understand the skeptical mind. On the other hand it’s disturbing to see the base assumptions being made that make these authors believe skeptics need to be studied rather than any possible consideration that the supposed consensus is flawed.

kwinterkorn thinks the paper is complimentary towards WUWT and says:

September 9, 2013 at 1:33 pm
I think Sharman’s work is complimentary to WUWT, perhaps inadvertently or perhaps because her exposure to WUWT made her a closet “skeptic”. After all, her statement is that WUWT is focused on the science of climate and is this not true? I admire WUWT because of its principled focus on scientific method, climate theory, the limitations of our current knowledge of climate-related facts (eg How accurately do we measure temperature in the real world of climate science?), and the difference between real science and “post-normal science” (which is not really science, but politics). Everyone who is not a “post normal” scientist knows that good science is skeptical.

Given the comment on post-normal science, I wonder how kwinterkorn views this understated observation in Sharman's paper:

Ravetz (2012) even goes so far as to argue that the blogosphere has actualised post-normal science, with debates about quality—particularly quality related to scientific work—a central tenet of the climate sceptical blogosphere. The freely accessible nature of blogs is also notable, as while there is a movement in academia towards open-access journal publication (Chan 2004), it is not yet the norm. This is significant as blogs are an increasingly common source of scientific source material for mainstream media (Brumfiel 2009) and the climate sceptical arguments emphasised in these central blogs may receive a disproportionately larger audience than is perhaps warranted when compared with the knowledge claims made by the majority of mainstream climate science (Boykoff 2013). 

Reg Nelson says the author isn't aware of the multitude of scientists' blogs and I can't say I disagree. I don't agree that NASA's website is a blog, and John Cook researches science communication AFAIK. Neither does she mention the pro-science blogs by people who aren't themselves climate scientists.  But then they weren't the subject of her research.

September 9, 2013 at 1:43 pm
“because even though few climate scientists themselves blog”
She obviously didn’t research this paper very well. Gavin has a blog. Cook (who she cited) has blog. GISS & NOAA use websites to push there agenda, and Mann uses Twitter to disseminate his propaganda. And that’s just off the top of my head.

Annie provides evidence of HotWhopper's 'WUWT exists for the illiterati' hypothesis and says:

September 9, 2013 at 1:47 pm
I couldn’t believe the amount of gobbledegook but managed to get some idea of what she was trying to say eventually….I think. Are people awarded degrees and doctorates for this sort of thing?

Steve C provides evidence supporting Sharman's 'worldview echo chamber' hypothesis and says:

September 9, 2013 at 1:54 pm
Why do climate sceptical blogs exist? Because there are still too many scientifically literate people out here who can quickly recognise the sort of pseudoscientific tosh pumped out by the blatherskites promoted as “climate scientists”, and who want to see real science restored to its pedestal. And, btw, who will fight every attempt by the political class to turn real science into some sort of fluffy feelgood rubbish like the social “sciences”, for ever and ever, amen.

David Ball is not just ignorant of science, he is ignorant of the very strict censorship on WUWT, ultimately banning everyone who dares to put forward ideas from mainstream science on the pretext that they violated some unwritten "policy" or other and says:

September 9, 2013 at 4:04 pm
WUWT? engages in something unfamiliar to many other blogs, particularly pro-AGW blogs. Freedom of speech. What patrons have to bear in mind, is that although you are allowed to speak freely, you must also be accurate and be prepared to defend that which you post. Perhaps this idea is lost on Amelia Sharman.

Anthony Watts thinks it's April the first at WUWT!

This is hilarious if you're into black humour.  Anthony Watts has posted yet another article (archived here) protesting the 97% consensus.  What is it now, is anyone counting?

They didn't ask if it was dangerous!

Here is an excerpt:

The new paper by the leading climatologist Dr David Legates and his colleagues, published in the respected Science and Education journal, now in its 21st year of publication, reveals that Cook had not considered whether scientists and their published papers had said climate change was “dangerous”.

Bloody hell!  What does he think?  That 97% of scientists who've attributed global warming to human activity, that warn of what will happen if we keep doing it, that already are observing Russian heatwaves and Angry Summers and acidifying oceans and signs of the sixth major extinction event and have been warning people for decades about what we can expect - and they are warning the world just for kicks?

What a bunch of utter nutters!

More seriously though, Cook et al didn't make any mention of whether or not climate change was dangerous.  What they did was assess abstracts of scientific papers and categorise them according to the extent to which the abstract attributed global warming to human activity.  Deniers got their knickers in a knot because of a tweet from President Obama to his 38 million followers saying climate change was dangerous, which of course it is.  So this bunch of deniers are complaining about something that Cook et al didn't discuss at all!  They are complaining about a tweet from the President of the USA.  And it looks as if they've published a "paper" about this. Heck.  Maybe there's something to this twitter business!

If the authors of this new paper want to know how dangerous global warming is, I suggest they read the scientific literature on the topic. They could start with the IPCC reports.  There's a new one coming out at the end of the month and I reckon it will have a few hints about how dangerous is global warming.

Peer reviewed? Seriously?

I looked into this a bit more and I have to say it's a tangled mess.  Anthony quotes a "press release" about a new "peer-reviewed paper" in a respected Science and Education journal.  The "paper" is printed as a rejoinder to an article by Daniel Bedford and John Cook in the same journal.  The Bedford and Cook paper is titled: Agnotology, Scientific Consensus, and the Teaching and Learning of Climate Change: A response to Legates, Soon and Briggs and is a response to an earlier paper by those authors that in turn was in response to an original paper by Daniel Bedford.  Apparently and unsurprisingly, Legates, Soon and Briggs misrepresented something else.

My head is spinning! So far there are four papers in this series if I've counted them all.  Bedford followed by Legates, Soon and Briggs, followed by Bedford and Cook followed by Legates, Soon, Briggs and Monckton.  They are bringing out the big guns adding the potty peer, eh what?  If the journal was respected before, it will be respected less now.
 .
In this latest "rejoinder" (which going by the press release, seems not to be a rejoinder at all but a completely new paper), Dr David Legates - a climate science denier from way back has coauthored the paper with a bunch of other deniers including the potty peer, Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, professional disinformer Willie Soon and science denying statistician William Briggs (who took part in the Battle of the DuKEs recently).

Ye gods!  They are getting desperate, aren't they!  Adding Monckton to the mix?  I suppose the peer can finally say he has published a peer reviewed paper that wasn't peer reviewed by himself.  I wonder who on earth peer reviewed it?

To get to the point - in this new paper denier David and three of his mates have signed on to joining the innumerate Christopher Monckton of Brenchley.  Monckton thinks that 3,896 is not 97.1% of 4014.  Now we've got four science deniers insisting that 3896 divided by 4014 equals only 0.003.  Interestingly I mentioned Monckton's disability in this regard earlier today.

From the WUWT comments

Surely even the fake sceptics who flock to Anthony Watts' science denying blog are getting sore heads from tilting at windmills.

Bill Marsh decides to quibble over whether "most" really means "most" or whether instead it means "most" and says:

September 3, 2013 at 9:04 am
I think using the term ‘most’ or ‘more than’ was ambiguous and confusing, i.e. unscientific. The term ‘most’ as used in the paper could mean ‘at least half’ (the interpretation shown above), but, it could also mean ‘more than any other factor’, which is not necessarily ‘at least half’. ‘Most’ could mean ‘plurality’ rather than ‘majority’. That and ‘man made’ contribution to warming comprises several factors besides CO2 – land use changes, Urban Heat, etc are all ‘man made contributions’ to warming.

Steve Keohane says that if all the scientific evidence points to one inescapable conclusion, the conclusion must be wrong:

September 3, 2013 at 8:32 am
‘If it’s consensus, it isn’t science’ says it all.

I have to inform you, Steve.  As a wise man once said:

@wattsupwiththat doesn't get it.  The science isn't strong because of consensus, the consensus is strong because of science.

My advice to Topher Field - take the money and run!

Topher Field managed to fleece tens of thousands of dollars out of gullible and hopeful science deniers.  Now he seems to be making the mistake of trying to defend his dumb video and the lies it contains.

If he had any sense he'd take the money and run, not stick around to be shown up for so grossly misrepresenting climate science and climate economics.



Topher Field made a comment on HotWhopper about my initial response to his utterly nutty Australian election video about quadrillions of dollar coins looping around Neptune and the sun.  He implies he thinks he got it right.  Topher wrote in part:

It's incredibly kind of you to dedicate so much time to trying to 'take me down',

I replied, among other things:

I wrote the above article in a very short time. I don't care about you one way or another although I've formed an opinion about your political ideology, from this and other videos you've made, and your scientific and economic illiteracy. Your ideology explains your motivation for spreading disinformation, which speaks to your lack of ethics. But I'll grant you that you may merely be supremely ignorant. A veritable example of Dunning and Kruger. Or you could just be trying to make a crust and, like some people, are willing to sacrifice integrity in the process. Any or all of those could be the driving force or none of them. It doesn't matter. Therefore I'll skip the speculation as to what drove you to spend other people's money producing utter nuttery. 

What I'll address in a future article is the content of your video and that of Monckton's ridiculous pdf file that I gather you've used as the basis for your nonsense claims.

Topher doesn't want to know what's wrong with his video or Monckton's mathurbations, saying"

Anyway, that's all from me, I've learned long ago not to argue with those who prefer to believe their own reality rather than the one in front of them.

What a plonker!  Does he really think his silly cartoon bears any resemblance to reality?  While Topher takes my advice and runs, but back into the arms of the marks he conned, there may be other stray readers who'll venture here from a google search for "topher" or for "monckton".  This might get them started on thinking critically about science and/or the economics of climate change.  Or at least make them pause before deciding wannabee cartoon producers and potty peers know more about climate science and economics than specialists who've spent their lives researching those subjects.

So let's get going.

Because this post is very long, I've put in a break.  Click here to open to the full article if you're on the home page.

Feeling sensitive at WUWT

After the fiasco with his 'iostatic' paper, Anthony Watts, science illiterate extraordinaire, must be feeling a tad sensitive.  That may be why he thought to post an article supposedly about climate sensitivity. Click here for an archived copy.

I say 'supposedly' because the author seems to be putting all the different types of sensitivity into one basket. I'm no expert so perhaps others will chip in.

There are many ways to represent climate sensitivity.  There is Charney sensitivity, equilibrium climate sensitivity (long term), transient climate response (very short term), earth system sensitivity - exceedingly long term.  So it can all get confusing and makes it difficult to compare different estimates if you aren't careful to check just what is being discussed. Climate sensitivity types are discussed in realclimate.org here. For example:

We need to start with some definitions. Sensitivity is defined as the global mean surface temperature anomaly response to a doubling of CO2 with other boundary conditions staying the same. However, depending on what the boundary conditions include, you can get very different numbers. The standard definition (sometimes called the Charney sensitivity), assumes the land surface, ice sheets and atmospheric composition (chemistry and aerosols) stay the same. Hansen’s long term sensitivity (which might be better described as the Earth System sensitivity) allows all of these to vary and feed back on the temperature response. Indeed, one can imagine a whole range of different sensitivities that could be clearly defined by successively including additional feedbacks. The reason why the Earth System sensitivity might be more appropriate is because that determines the eventual consequences of any particular CO2 stabilization scenario.

There are more recent articles on the topic at realclimate, for example here and here.  Dana Nuccitelli wrote a good article on climate sensitivity in the UK Guardian recently, too.

What the WUWT article is claiming, surprise surprise, is that sensitivity is overstated.  The author, Barry Brill, has cherry picked a number of papers from among the many that discuss the subject, and makes ridiculous claims, such as:

These new papers devastate the IPCC orthodoxy that current and future global temperatures are mostly driven by greenhouse gas emissions, and will reach dangerous levels later this century. On the other hand, all older papers are blindsided by their apparent failure to take account of the recent data (standstill).

Devastate IPCC orthodoxy? Nothing but wishful thinking on the part of a science denier.  What about these equally ridiculous claims:

• It is quite conceivable that natural variability (including natural forcing) has historically dwarfed anthropogenic effects and will persistently do so in future.
• ...warming may not resume until mid-century. (I hope someone will tell Barry that warming hasn't stopped!)
• 2013 is ushering in a long-delayed revolution in climate science. A new paradigm is demanded which recognizes that AGW is but one non-determinative component in a ‘non-linear chaotic system’.
• The draft SPM apparently fails to mention that 30-year warming trends have declined each year since peaking in 2003. Or that the latest 10-year period (2003-12) is the coolest decade since satellite records began in 1979.

What is he on about - a thirty year trend declining since 2003? Might as well say that "it's been cooling since 2010! And "2003-2012" is the coolest decade since records began in 1979? In fact it's been the hottest!

From the WUWT comments

There are some classic denierisms in the WUWT comments, too.  (Archived here.) Here is a sample.

Brad says:

August 31, 2013 at 7:20 pm
Lets not be naive, it is likely reviewers and editors actually held papers until after the March 15 deadline just so they would NOT be included. This is not paranoia, see Judith Curry’s blog for actual suppression of anti-AGW papers that have excellent science

Philip Bradley refers to the more than 830 IPCC authors reporting the work of thousands of scientists as a "small clique" - conspiracy ideation plus - and says:

August 31, 2013 at 8:00 pm
I’d question whether the ‘normal science’ of anthropogenic GHG warming was ever real. IMO it was merely the view of a small clique that captured the IPCC and all the rest of the AGW apparatus, and the large revenue streams that ensued, enabled them to control the narrative and subvert opposing views.

RockyRoad decides name-calling is the answer to science he doesn't like and says:

August 31, 2013 at 9:20 pm
DAGW?

These folks are “Deceitful Anthropogenic Genocidal Warmistas”. More personal and accurate than my previous “Catastrophic Anthropogenic Genocidal Warmista” expansion of the old acronym CAGW.