Denier weirdness: Anthony Watts finds a fake UN video. It's a conspiracy!

Anthony Watts found a fake forecast video. Not just any fake forecast video, but a fake forecast video that he says was "sponsored by the World Meteorological Organisation (part of the UN)"

Did he prove it by showing the actual event in reality? Nope. He couldn't.

So how does he know it's fake? Did he quiz the people in the video? Nope. At least not that he said.

So how does he know it's fake? Did he just assume it was fake because the United Nations had a hand in it? Well, maybe that was what got him thinking. After all, as every genuine paranoid conspiracy theorist knows, the UN is out to strip good honest US bloggers of their property, send them off to FEMA camps and hand the property over to poor people living on islands that are sinking.

Now Anthony Watts is a very smart cookie. He knows when something is real and something isn't. He watched the video and said to himself "something is wrong here". He thought a bit more and watched it again. Something was niggling him. He watched it one more time and finally twigged.

Anthony slapped his forehead and cried aloud. "I know what it is. I know. I know. And I can't wait to boast how clever I am at spotting a fake video."

Ooh! Isn't Anthony Watts a Clever Little Pup...

...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.

About PDO, lags, kettles, cycles and hysteria...

...sorry, meant to write "About PDO, Lags, Cycles and Hysteresis"

In another article here, a certain WUWT commenter, Professor JP, took me to task for quoting him.  Quite right too.  But that one line of mine resulted in something of real value.  The Professor obviously forgave me because he was kind enough to give me a lengthy lesson on climate sciency stuff.  For free.  I didn't have to pay a cent.  I was a bit nervous at first because I've heard awful stories about gravy trains and the billions of dollars climate sciency people charge everyone.  For a minute I wondered if I'd end up roast meat under a pile of brown sauce.  But no.  Not a penny did he charge.

Now I wouldn't have written this up as an article, but the Professor was so insistent that I learn and he was so gracious in imparting his years of climate sciency knowledge that I just have to share.  (Don't you just love it when people say "share".  Makes you feel all gooey and warm and fuzzy in your mouth.)

Now I'm always willing to learn new things and I read his comments over and over to make sure I didn't miss a thing.  It's not often I get offered personal tuition.  RealClimate is one place but there are always such a lot of other people in the classes there.  (I've been honoured by other renowned scientists here as well, but none who have written so much detail as Professor JP.)

From kettles and ice blocks to the PDO

After some wonderful lessons on the basics of kettles and ice blocks (I learnt some really good stuff - like ice blocks melt if you take them out of the fridge and water in a kettle won't boil unless you heat it, while seawater doesn't need heat, it expands by magic - did you know that?), the topic shifted to the PDO.  This lesson was so informative I just have to share.  (There's that word again.)  

Here is how it started.  Professor JP was explaining why it took so long for the warmer sun in the 1950s to heat up the earth in the 1970s.  It's called "waiting for homeostasis" and has something to do with boiling kettles.  But then it turns out it wasn't the sun after all that heated up the earth.  It was the PDO.  (I looked that up.  PDO stands for Pacific Decadel Oscillation.  See I'm not as dumb as I look!)  Anyway, Professor JP wrote:

As for why the Earth started heating up in 1978, that is pretty obviously due to the PDO going into its positive phase (the previous 30 year cooling period was coincidentally during the PDO's negative phase).

And this is where lags come in again:

The PDO is clearly one of the long-term lags in climate that I was speaking of.

I got curious about these 'lags' and asked:

Just how long is that "lag" supposed to be? 

To which the Professor replied:

A reasonable guess would be the length of a half-cycle or two - 30-60 years.  

That's wonderful news.  The scientists have narrowed the uncertainty right down to half a cycle or two or 30 years or sixty years. Still, not being at all knowledgeable like the Professor, I had another couple of questions:

And when is the earth going to get back to temperatures of the 1960s? Maybe the PDO only heats the earth but doesn't cool it? Is that what you are arguing?

Unfortunately Professor JP only had time to answer the second question, so there's still a big gap in my knowledge.  Not that I'm complaining, you understand.  Heavens above, it was so generous of him to tutor me at all.  Anyway he scolded me and told me to pay attention (justifiably - I was starting to race ahead a bit) and wrote: 

Not at all, it cooled during the 30 years of the last negative cycle, which I believe I already said. Are you even bothering to read my posts?

The instantaneous laggy PDO

So there you have it.  The PDO warms and cools the earth with either a 30 year lag or a 60 year lag, which I'm told is a half-cycle or two, and instantaneously too like in the previous negative phase.  If you do the sums you'll see the Professor means that the PDO has a 60 year cycle.  In other words the PDO is a 30 or 60 year laggy sciency thing that acts instantaneously. He then generously added more words of wisdom:

I wonder since you haven't mentioned hysteresis, but I assumed someone quietly told you that you were ridiculously wrong on it or you finally realized it yourself.

Oh and please, if you can't see what is wrong with the skeptical science page on it then there is no hope for you. Their graph is so blatantly stupid the way it applies linear trend lines to a cyclical phenomena that a grade school kid could see the error.

Well, I did try to read his posts and I did make a reference to hysteresis, but I can't really blame him for missing that bit.  Professors are very busy at doing PDO climate sciency stuff, and boiling kettles and so forth, I'm sure.

Given Professor JP's insistence that it's now the PDO that is causing global warming, I sat up and took notice.  The way he writes with such certainty, he's obviously a highly qualified expert in the field of hysteresis, PDOs, lags and kettles.  It was with some trepidation that I ventured forth, however.  If a renowned climate expert like JP can't figure out if this PDO lag is 30 years or 60 years, I thought to myself, then what hope does a humble blogger have.  And I couldn't figure out if the lag only applied to the warming phase, because I thought he said the cooling phase brought instant cooling but the warming phase takes 30 or sixty years.  In any case, I put aside my fears and decided to give it a go.

Here's the result.  You can click the animation to enlarge it:

Sources: JISAO and NASA

What do you think?  I reckon Professor JP is incredible.  It sure looks like the negative phase cooled the earth instantly.  Well okay, it didn't cool it exactly but at least it looks like it stopped it getting hotter for a while. Fine, whatever you say.  It didn't completely stop it from getting hotter but you've got to admit it didn't warm quite as much. And 'not warming as much' is pretty close to being the same thing as 'cooling', sort of, if you squint a bit.  Okay, if you squint a lot and shut your eyes and imagine.  Anyway the warming phase really gave such a jolt to the earth that it's still getting hot, even though the PDO has turned negative.  That's pretty powerful stuff.

I figure I'm still much dumber than the Professor though because I can't see the lags working very well. Nor can I see the PDO's 30 year half cycle or the 60 year full cycle.  It goes up and down for sure, but I must have forgotten how to do sums because I just can make them all add up to either 30 or 60, no matter what I do. It's just me I'm sure.  He probably knows as much about climate science as his fellow Professor David Archibald, or even more.  I don't know that he knows as much as Ronald A. "it's the insects" Voisin.  But that's doubtless a matter of opinion.  Whatever, I know I'll never get to the level of any of them.

On "blatant stupidity"

BTW here is the SkepticalScience chart.  As the good professor said, how "blatantly stupid" of them to compare linear trends instead of cycles.

Source: SkepticalScience

I'll send an email to Mr John Cook Esq (proprietor of SkepticalScience) and tell him to change the chart.  Of course he wouldn't listen to a humble blogger.  I'd better tell him Professor JP, the expert in half cycle or two PDO's, hysterical lags and kettles, is personally tutoring me.  That should impress him no end.

As the Professor suggested, all you have to do is show cycles.  I couldn't draw the spokes but I did manage to draw the shape of the wheels.  You can see how bigger and bigger wheels can be made to fit between the lines and are pushing up the temperature.  It's a tri-cycle.  It all makes sense now.  You just wait and see.  I'll bet in no time at all, SkepticalScience will replace their "blatantly stupid" chart with this one below.  It's prettier for one thing.  Don't you like pink?

You had the Marcott wheelchair, now here's the HotWhopper tricycle

I hope every reader has learnt as much as I did from this wonderful lesson.

Gotta go now, the kettle's boiling at last.  (I've only been waiting forty years.  It was only after the tip from the Professor that I figured out you have to apply a source of heat before the water boils.  After I did that, it took no time at all. Nary a lag to be seen.)

Anyone for a nice hot cuppa?

PS While you're sipping your tea (milk and sugar?), you might enjoy reading another version of the PDO, this time with clouds and magic fairy dust.

WUWT poll on Arctic Sea Ice September Minima

Anthony Watts is running a poll on what readers think will be the minimum Arctic sea ice extent in September 2013.  If you vote, take note of Anthony's words of wisdom:

Of recent interest has been the recent tendency for the current data to hang between the 1990′s and the 2000 normal line.

Best observe what one of his commenters, Klench Mychiques wisely cautions:

June 6, 2013 at 2:32 am But don’t vote too low either, or it will look like WUWT is acknowledging that the climate in the Arctic is changing due to global warming. Which is nonsense, of course, and if it isn’t, it’s a natural cycle.

A failed WUWT experiment?

I notice the "thumbs" have disappeared from WUWT without fanfare, having survived for barely a day.

Coincidentally Anthony has blocked HotWhopper @mobyt9 from his twitter feed.  I don't know why, I have never bothered to follow him on Twitter - I want an informative feed. (Maybe it's so he doesn't have to read my 'critiques').

I wouldn't be surprised if Tony thinks that means no-one else can see my tweets :)

Denier weirdness: It's not CO2, it's aeroplanes

More denier weirdness from WUWT.  Willis Eschenbach has decided that it's not CO2 that's causing global warming, it's occasional landings at remote airports.

Maybe that's what HotCopper's beretta based this idea of his on.

Just for fun, let's analyse what Willis E is saying.

On day one an aeroplane (A1) lands at a remote airstrip.  On day 61 another aeroplane (A2) lands on that same remote airstrip.  The heat produced by aeroplane A1 defies physics and doesn't dissipate, it has magically hung around and is added to the heat produce by aeroplane A2.  After twenty years and (let's be extravagant) 500 landings, the temperature at that remote airstrip has risen by the amount of heat from A1 + A2...A500.

Sheesh, that airstrip is probably really hot by now isn't it.  No wonder the world is heating up :D

---

---

Addendum:

To show how sceptical "fake sceptics" are, and whether or not they check sources, compare the following comment from a WUWT reader...

sunshinehours1 says:
April 4, 2013 at 9:20 am   UHI exists. If the BEST team can’t find UHI, they should keep trying. And quit pretending UHI doesn’t exist.

...with the first paragraph of the BEST paper that Willis 'discusses'.

The Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect describes the observation that temperatures in a city are often higher than in its rural surroundings. London was the first urban heat island to be documented [1] but since then many cities have been identified as urban heat islands [2-5]. A well-known example is Tokyo where the temperature has risen much more rapidly in the city than in nearby rural areas: Fujibe estimates excess warming of almost 2°C/100yr compared to the rest of Japan [6] The warming of Tokyo is dramatic when compared to a global average as seen in Figure 1. The UHI effect can be attributed to many physical differences between urban and rural areas, including absorption of sunlight, increased heat storage of artificial surfaces, obstruction of re-radiation by buildings, absence of plant transpiration, differences in air circulation, and other phenomena [7].

Note for fake sceptics: The BEST paper is not disputing UHI (which is real, was first discussed more than two centuries ago and has been well-documented by climate scientists for decades).  It is looking to see if UHI has biased the record of global land surface temperature anomalies or if it has already been sufficiently factored in or is otherwise inconsequential.  Like every other similar (published) analyses, it has concluded UHI has not biased the records.

Searching...

There are some interesting searches that lead people to HotWhopper.  I can't (and nor would want to) track individuals (or see IP addresses) of anyone who lands here or makes a comment, but I can see some of the search terms.

Today there was someone looking for "communism socialism and climate change" and I guess they found this post.

There have also been a couple of searches for: "anthony watts" -cowboys.  Must be more than one cowboy out there called Anthony Watts :)

Wondering if I should be offended that someone else landed here when searching for "bleeding whopper".

HotWhoppers: Double Doozy from Denmor

The other day when the HC deniers were kindly promoting this blog as part of their daily science and medicine S&M antics, I got the feeling that poor old denmor was a bit miffed that I hadn't paid him more attention.  So here's a double doozy from denmor.  

Not that long ago denmor graduated from simpleton cartoons and crude name-calling. Now he's learning the art of 'copy and paste', usually of long slabs of senseless rants against science from insignificant little denier blogs.  This time he comes up with two pieces of idiocy in the same short post.  Both from "the world's most viewed" anti-science blog - WUWT.

1. Are engineers and geo-scientists who work in the oil sector less likely to accept climate science?

Um - yeah?  No?  Not quite the point of the research? And if it were true, what did you expect?

A recent study reported that 36% of geoscientists and engineers surveyed, most of whom are reliant on or whose work relates to the Alberta tar sands or petroleum sector in general, are adamant that humans are causing global warming and we need to take decisive action. (They "view the Kyoto Protocol and additional regulation as the solution").

That can be seen as equivalent to: thirty years ago 36% of engineers (not medical researchers) who develop the packaging for cigarettes being adamant that smoking is a health hazard and urging international agreements be put into effect to force people to quit.

Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum


The anti-science illiterati give a decent round of applause.  (HC rids itself of educated people as fast as they stray into their corner of cyberspace.  Often without a mod having to press a keystroke.)

The Lie

Poor denmor (probably all unknowing given that deniers rarely read let alone absorb scientific papers) quotes from a  blog article that quotes from another article that refers to a research paper in the social sciences/management journal "Organization Studies". (No respectable denier - except Brad - would go straight to the source.) Let's be generous and say, because he was too lazy or incompetent to read the paper in question, denmor wasn't aware that he was spreading a lie.  He also seems blissfully unaware that very few oil engineers and geo-scientists would be involved in climate research.  All scientists and engineers probably look the same to him.

Looking at the categories ('Frames') in the paper, there were 'only' 24% (Frame 2) who "believe that changes to the climate are natural, normal cycles of the Earth".  All other groupings (68% of respondents) included people who knew that humans are at least a partial cause of global warming, with a full 36% being adamant that "humans are the main or central cause" of global warming.  (Eight per cent were unable to be categorised.  One group, the 'economic responsibility' frame (10%), included rampant deniers as well as people who thought that climate change is both natural and human caused.)

Beknownst (or unbeknownst) to denmor, the researchers deliberately targeted an industry (petroleum) and locale (Alberta Canada) that  is economically tied to CO2 pollution so they could get a big enough cohort across the full spectrum (including deniers).  They were keen to find out more about how people of different viewpoints frame/rationalise their thinking within the context of organisational management.

HotWhopper Petrol Award

Before leaving the topic, let's award an honourable mention to the resident anti-vaxxer jantimot (who by now is probably also feeling left out).

Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

Jantimot probably thinks he's in the majority of the general population.  Instead he would be aligning himself with the majority of petrol heads who work in the pollution sector of whom only 24% chant the 'it's all natural' refrain.  (I'm not sure how or if aligning himself with ecological vandalism of tar sands fits with his homeopathic purity.)

Goodness knows why jantimot implies climate scientists are extrovert compared to petroleum engineers and geo-scientists.  (You need go no further than Ian Plimer to find a geo-scientist who loudly contradicts himself pontificates on topics way beyond his expertise.)

Not everyone jumps at the chance to work in tar sands, especially not people who understand the ramifications of CO2 pollution.

2. Bombshell!!!! The Arctic froze this winter!!!!

denmor 'blown away' again;

Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

Who'd have thought.  A record low ice in summer followed by a record ice gain in winter!

(Imagine a litre flask half full of water.  How much extra water does it take to fill it?  Now imagine an empty litre flask.  How much extra water does it take to fill it?)

There were too many climate bloggers to count who accurately predicted that deniers would fall for the 'amazing winter recovery' after last summer's record low ice cover.  (So much for deniers who say you can't predict the future!)

As 'proud to be a denier' Dr Inferno pointed out way back in  way back in September last year:

Arctic Sea Ice Increases Past FOUR MILLION Square Kilometers For The First Time Since Records Began!

It took another four and a half months before Anthony Watts of WUWT woke up to the fact of this startling turnaround.  But as denmor reported, Tony has finally picked up the message and heralded it to the world, writing:

...Arctic sea ice has made a stunning rebound since the record low recorded in the late summer of 2012...

...With a few weeks of growth still to occur, the Arctic has blown away the previous record for ice gain this winter. This is only the third winter in history when more than 10 million km² of new ice has formed. 

Duh!

Now some readers may be wondering where in the Arctic all this extra ice can have formed.  Does it mean that the ice is starting to extend down to near the equator?  After all, there's only so many square kilometers available in the Arctic.

If you are one of these readers, check how the ice cover has changed from 13 February thirty, twenty and ten years ago compared to 13 Feb 2013 - from The Cryosphere Today.

Umm - there's less ice this year? How can that be?

Still think denmor's onto something?  Click here and look at this interactive chart and follow the 2012 (dark pink) and 2013 (yellow) lines before making as big an idiot of yourself as denmor and Anthony Watts.

Here's a snapshot - you might just be able to make out the yellow line for 2013, in among the lower quarter of the records to the left of the image.  The dark pink line for 2012 is fairly clear.

For more fun and enlightenment, read Tamino's take on all this - and see what his readers think about Anthony's bombshell!

Basketballs, Franklin water and saving the world from Climate Change

A Sunday arvo video for all the Ben Pobjie fans out there.

Enjoy!

Whew, that feels better ...

© Stik, Jantoo.com

Someone calling me a cow? Huh!