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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WUWT and GWPF - disinformers lie through their teeth!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Data Source: UK Met Office Hadley Centre

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

Two Million Views

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

Talking of fruitcake and scumbags, Topher's lying video came out with an apt warning

UPDATE (8:00 pm 3 Sept 13) I've written another piece, which is more than the silly cartoon deserves.  You can read it here.

UPDATE (4:00pm 2 Sept 13) Anthony has an article up now. Archived here.

I'll do a detailed take down later. In the meantime it seems like the thousands of scientists doing difficult and rigorous research over the past several decades haven't much to show for it - according to science-denying Anthony Watts. Anthony sez:

There’s also the main video which sums up the state of climate science and politics in just under 10 minutes.

Wow - science and politics combined in just 10 minutes. Maybe Anthony will shut up shop now that Topher has solved all the world's problems!

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A lot of the people who feature on HotWhopper can be described as nutty as a fruitcake.  Or behave that way.  Some are worse.  I call them scumbags.

I've just come across another person who fits the bill.  He goes by the name of Topher Field.  He makes videos aiming to stop the world becoming a better place.

His latest attempt is to stop any action to reduce carbon emissions.  He doesn't do this out of the badness of his heart totally.  He does it for money.  He got a whole bunch of people to pay him to do this, including some easy marks at Anthony Watts' anti-science blog, wattsupwiththat (WUWT).  Then he went around and got a bunch of talking heads, put it together with some cartoons, some magical mathturbations, which AFAIK came from the potty peer Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, and tweeted the result.

This is what he tweeted:

This is what happened to anyone who clicked the link:

That pretty much sums it up.

I did eventually locate his video.  I haven't watched it all the way through yet but I've seen enough to know how dumb it is.  He does an Alan Jones (Australian readers will know what I mean).

For example Topher makes wild claims and exaggerations about Australia's carbon tax, but doesn't mention the fact that it costs most Australians nothing at all.  They get it back in reduced taxation and supplements to pensions.  Some are even ahead of the game because of the revenue neutral system and the returns to Australians.

For this and the fact that the video contains humungous lies,  I doubt it will get much airplay here despite this being election week.  Neither the Australian Electoral Commission nor ACMA look kindly upon deceptive advertising and gross misrepresentations like is in this video.

I wonder how all the people who don't live in Australia feel about their donations going to support an Australian election campaign?  Because that's what the video is mostly aimed at.

In one part, he makes this idiotic claim: 

Thankfully we have the answer in the 2006 Stern report on climate economics. It concludes that if the planet warms by three degrees this century, it would cause damage of zero to to 3% of GDP. So climate change will cost us roughly 1.5% of global GDP if we simply adapt to it as required or 80% of GDP if we try and stop it.

80% of GDP is rubbish.  The numbers make more sense if they are reversed.  Contrast the above with this extract from the Stern Review report: (my bold italics) - if we don't take action and continue on with Business as Usual, it will reduce welfare by 20%.  Topher told a big fat lie:

In summary, analyses that take into account the full ranges of both impacts and possible outcomes - that is, that employ the basic economics of risk - suggest that BAU climate change will reduce welfare by an amount equivalent to a reduction in consumption per head of between 5 and 20%.  Taking account of the increasing scientific evidence of greater risks, of aversion to the possibilities of catastrophe, and of a broader approach to the consequences than implied by narrow output measures, the appropriate estimate is likely to be in the upper part of this range. 

And this estimate of costs - around 1% of annual global GDP according to Stern.  Topher is telling a humungous lie:

On the basis of these two methods, central estimate is that stabilisation of greenhouse gases at levels of 500-550ppm CO2e will cost, on average, around 1% of annual global GDP by 2050. This is significant, but is fully consistent with continued growth and development, in contrast with unabated climate change, which will eventually pose significant threats to growth.

And more here:

From all of these perspectives, the evidence gathered by the Review leads to a simple conclusion: the benefits of strong, early action considerably outweigh the costs.

The evidence shows that ignoring climate change will eventually damage economic growth. Our actions over the coming few decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, later in this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century. And it will be difficult or impossible to reverse these changes. Tackling climate change is the pro-growth strategy for the longer term, and it can be done in a way that does not cap the aspirations for growth of rich or poor countries. The earlier effective action is taken, the less costly it will be.

At the same time, given that climate change is happening, measures to help people adapt to it are essential. And the less mitigation we do now, the greater the difficulty of continuing to adapt in future.

So how did Topher do his sums?  Why does he misrepresent the Stern Review?  Why does he make up numbers and falsely attribute them to the Stern Review?

His target audience is the uneducated and illiterate.  I don't know if they will be taken in by him, but best take no chances.  He is lying and trying to con people by making these false claims.  He has a lot of other people on his show who are equally disreputable.  They include the conspiracy theorising gold bug "Jo Nova", Anthony Watts who is as silly as they come and doesn't want to pay tax and other dubious characters.

If I get the time in the next day or so I'll go through his nonsense and maybe even rebut it item by item.  I'm away at the moment and don't have time right now.

Suffice to say, Topher whatshisname joins the ranks of those who are "nutty as a fruitcake" as well as the ranks of those dishonourable people who will tell lies for cash.

Watch out for the scumbags of the world.  They will do anything for money or warped, selfish ideology, including telling lies so silly you'd wonder who but the 8% dismissives would believe them.

PS Anthony Watts hasn't put up an article about this one yet.  When he does, I'll let you know how he presents it and the reaction from the comments.  Will they fall for this crap hook, line and sinker?  Will Anthony say he agrees with the lies?   He's featured on it but I haven't watched that segment so I don't know what he says.  I doubt it will be pretty.

PPS (Update) I skipped to Anthony Watts' few seconds. Here is what he had to say (yes, you guessed right - anything but taxation!):

I just think we should stop being so worried and just take a pragmatic approach to increasing efficiency to improving our energy production and going down different pathways to energy production and we'll get to where people say we should be without having to tax people and without having to change our lifestyles in a negative way.

Trust Tony to be more concerned about his tax and lifestyle than about the future of the world as we know it.

Donna Laframboise is of similar mind.  She reckons to pass the problems onto our children and grandchildren and presumable every generation to come for the next few centuries.  They'd have less capacity to adapt, of course, because of global warming.  But Donna and Anthony don't care.  All they are concerned about is the here and now.

The one thing they are all correct about is that global warming is happening, it's real.  What they won't tell you is how much worse it will get if we don't act now.

Going by this video, the age of complete denial has ended.  Welcome to the age of immediate gratification and contempt for future generations.


Click here to go to a more detailed article.

The world has warmed a lot in the 33 years since 1980

There's a smarmy article up now on WUWT with Anthony Watts and David Whitehouse (of the GWPF, a denialist lobby group and propaganda machine in the UK) now saying "it hasn't warmed since 1980"!  Sheesh it's hard to believe even creeps with such a dubious history as that pair would try to pass that one off.

Here is what Anthony wrote:

Using 1997 as preferred by Rose, we are fast approaching Dr. Ben Santer’s 17 year test, and if we use Jones and Lindzen’s 1995 start point, we’ve passed it. What will Gillis say then? – Anthony

What will Gillis say then?  Gosh Anthony is so transparent in trying to shift the goal posts.  What a desperate and silly ploy.  Since the last decade was the hottest on record and since the world has warmed in the last fifteen years, seventeen years and 33 years, Gillis will say just that.  The UK Met Office has already slapped down the Mail's disinformation outlet, David Rose.  But Watts continues to promote his lies. And here is what Whitehouse wrote in the same article:

Removing this volcanic signal also reduces the statistical significance of the rise in temperature seen since 1980. (In fact, statistically speaking, one is hard-pressed to find any statistically significant warming between 1980 – 1995.)

The world is significantly hotter than it was 33 years ago

Though people  like Watts and Whitehouse would have you believe otherwise - it's now more than two years since Dr Phil Jones pointed out that the warming since 1995 is statistically significant.

Let's look at their idiotic claim that there has been no warming in 33 years.  That is, none since since 1995 and no warming between 1980 and 1995, therefore no warming since 1980:

Source: NASA

These crooks try to wave off the warming by distracting readers with volcanoes and ENSO and the like.  It's complete nonsense what they are writing.  Look at the chart.  The volcanoes we've had this past century hardly make a dent on the decadal time scale.  Unless you know where to look, you can barely see them in the chart above among the random noise of weather.  And there's no ENSO now but it's still as hot as ever.

It's not just the air around us that's heating up.  Click here to see how much the oceans have heated up, how fast sea levels are rising and how much the Arctic sea ice has disintegrated.

Rogues like Anthony Watts and his cronies would have us all dead from heat exhaustion or starvation before they'd admit just how wrong they are.  But it's getting harder and harder for them to retain credibility even among what used to be their supporters, with stuff they are spouting these days.

PS Tamino has recently written an article about similar nonsense from the GWPF, with analysis.