"Fake science" promoter, Anthony Watts, doesn't like a "how to respond" article. Who'd have guessed...

Anthony Watts, who is known (by those who've heard of him) for promoting lies and disinformation, explained why he didn't like a press release (archived here). The article was about a talk at the AAAS annual meeting held in Boston last week.  The talk was by Dominique Brossard from University of Wisconsin, Madison. She was one of three speakers on a panel discussing: "Fake News and Social Media: Impacts on Science Communication and Education". The other speakers were Julie Coiro, University of Rhode Island and Dan Kahan, Yale Law School. The panel was moderated by Seth Borenstein of Associated Press, who is also listed as organiser.

Needless to say I got this information myself. As usual, Anthony Watts, fake news expert, didn't provide any links to his copy and pasted article, or any context information. In fact he didn't have anything much to say about the content of the press release. He probably didn't read it properly. Instead he wrote what he wanted his readers to think:

Leland Park has discovered seasons, day and night at WUWT

After various mundane articles about politics, sea level rise, and tips for deniers on how to reduce the scariness of global warming, there was another rather silly and simplistic article, this time by Leland Park (archived here). It would have been sweet, worthy of an eight-year-old's science essay, except that he mixed up cause and effect and didn't understand most of what he wrote. Worse still, at the bottom of his guest essay he wrote:

The negative feedback between solar levels and temperatures has always existed – but never noticed, officially. I, for one, will be interested to learn how quickly climate science can adapt CO2 theory to explain away its implications.

This is what Leland Park thinks was never noticed officially:

• The hottest time of the year is after, not on, the solstice
• The hottest time of the day is after, not at, noon.

Leland thinking he discovered this would astound even Dunning and Kruger. That Anthony Watts decided to publish his article won't astound anyone much.

Crank magnet WUWT defends pseudo-science and promotes Velikovskyism "in the context of learning"

Credit: Donna Foster Roizen
Source: Wikipedia

This doesn't warrant a long article but it ended up being longish. It's just to comment on the fact that Anthony Watts has published another article from Tim Ball, pushing Velikovsky's crank ideas as science. Tim argues that scientists shouldn't point out dumb and wrong notions posing as science. Tim calls such behaviour "scientific elitism".

Anthony Watts gives an excuse (if you can call it that) for publishing such nonsense, saying that he promotes Velikovsky "in the context of learning" and seems to think the Director of GISS NASA is a coward for not doing the same.

Bob Tisdale rejects the greenhouse effect (again)

Perennially puzzled Bob Tisdale is a bit of a nutter.  He doesn't accept that carbon dioxide, water vapour and other gases like methane absorb long wave radiation and prevent earth from turning into a block of ice.  Anthony Watts has banned from WUWT a number of people who don't accept the greenhouse effect but he gives a platform to greenhouse effect deniers Bob Tisdale and the appalling Tim Ball (who co-authored the silly slayers book) and other people who indulge in pseudo-science and quackery.

Bob Tisdale has a "thing" for Dana Nuccitelli, who is a scientist who writes for SkepticalScience.com and the UK Guardian.  Bob's article is a dismal attempt to refute a recent blog article Dana wrote for the Guardian newspaper.  Dana irritates Bob because Dana writes sensible articles explaining different aspects of climate science.  Bob doesn't understand climate science.  He doesn't understand, for example, that the world's oceans hold a lot of water.  To heat them up by even a few tenths of a degree needs an awful lot of energy.

Bob denies global warming outright in his article (archived here).  The title of his post is:

Dana Nuccitelli Can’t Come to Terms with the Death of the AGW Hypothesis

And in a comment Bob writes this:

For the past few years in numerous blog posts, I’ve illustrated and discussed how the ocean heat content data and satellite-era sea surface temperature data both indicate they’ve warmed, but they’ve warmed due to naturally occurring, naturally fueled ocean-atmosphere processes—not manmade greenhouse gases. (October 18, 2013 at 7:27 am)

"Naturally fueled" is Bob's code word for "magic".  Bob is one of the utter nutters. He thinks that the physics of the greenhouse effect is a hypothesis and he thinks it doesn't hold up.  These days he's in the minority of deniers.  Most fake sceptics these days accept that there are such things as greenhouse gases and that the world is warming.  They'll argue various things like how much the world is warming and what the future climates will be like, but they realise they'd look pretty stupid if they denied any warming at all.  Bob Tisdale looks pretty stupid.

In order to fool his readers at WUWT, Bob has to fudge quite a lot.  For example, he writes about the ocean:

The warming of the top 700 meters has also slowed to a crawl, and is nonexistent in the North Atlantic and North Pacific, but more on that later.

What Bob doesn't mention at all is the Indian Ocean.  Nor does he mention the change in global ocean heat content for the top 2000 m of ocean.  He tries to persuade his readers that as long as they ignore the global data and only look at the parts of the earth system he wants them to look at, they can pretend that the world isn't warming.

It's like saying that if you measure the temperature of the inside of your refrigerator you can pretend that it's not 42° Celsius in the shade outside.

Here is a chart showing the ocean heat content down only as far as 700 metres, including the Indian Ocean that Bob Tisdale doesn't want his readers to know about:

Data Source: NOAA/NODC

The heat accumulating in the different oceans is added together to get the total heat accumulating in all the oceans.  The chart above shows just how much the system is heating up.

The chart below shows the top two kilometres of ocean.  It's accumulating more and more heat.  The heat from the top 700 metres is heating the layers below.  Bob doesn't want his readers to know that.

Bob's final contribution is a chart with surface temperature anomaly plotted on the same chart as temperature changes in the oceans!  I don't know how many of his readers fall for that trick.  Bob is ever hopeful that there are enough dumb readers who don't consider how much energy the ocean has to absorb to raise it by a degree Celsius, compared to the land surface.  (If any readers are grappling with that concept, think of the last time you spent at the beach on a hot day.  The temperature of the sea doesn't rise nearly as much as the sand does, despite getting the same amount of energy from the sun.)

On energy being accumulated on earth, from the AR5 WG1 IPCC report page TS-7 (my bold italics and paras):

It is virtually certain that Earth has gained substantial energy from 1971–2010 — the estimated increase in energy inventory between 1971 and 2010 is 274 [196 to 351] ZJ (1 ZJ = 1021 J), with a rate of 213 TW from a linear fit to the annual values over that time period (Box 3.1, Figure 1).

Ocean warming dominates the total energy change inventory, accounting for roughly 93% on average from 1971–2010. Melting ice (including Arctic sea ice, ice sheets, and glaciers) accounts for 3% of the total, and warming of the continents 3%. Warming of the atmosphere makes up the remaining 1%.

The 1971–2010 estimated rate of oceanic energy gain is 199 TW from a linear fit to data over that time period, implying a mean heat flux of 0.55 W m–2 across the global ocean surface area. Earth's net estimated energy increase from 1993–2010 is 163 [127 to 201] ZJ with a trend estimate of 275 TW. The ocean portion of the trend for 1993–2010 is 257 TW, equivalent to a mean heat flux into the ocean of 0.71 W m–2.

Recycling Pat 'n Chip disinformation on WUWT brings out denier weirdness

There are a couple of deniers who hang out at Anthony Watts' anti-science blog, WUWT, from time to time.  This pair go by the names of  Paul C. “Chip” Knappenberger and Patrick J. Michaels.  I don't know if they are denialists themselves or not, but they are known for spreading disinformation wherever they can.  They are from the Cato Institute, which is a libertarian think tank/lobbying organisation, initially set up by "coal" Koch, that promotes denial of climate science.

This time they have recycled an article from the Economist and are putting a lot of weight on climate sensitivity studies (Bayesian approaches) that tend to the lower end of the suite of projections.  Pat 'n Chip are writing as if all studies are showing lower climate sensitivity, which is not so.

First up, I'll point out as have others, that the Economist article was based on something it says is in the working group on mitigation, not on the physical sciences.  So it means zilch.

Secondly, climate sensitivity is important to know, but it doesn't have to be known precisely.  What is more important to my mind is behaviour.  If we double or treble the amount of atmospheric CO2 or worse, we'll definitely turn up the heat to more than we can handle.

I did a quick search of Google Scholar for climate sensitivity studies in the past couple of years.  There are swags of them.  The only ones that Pat 'n Chip want their readers to know about are the ones that come in at the lower end of the spectrum.  But there are many recent studies that come up with the same sort of numbers that the IPCC came up with in the past.  It's just that the media hasn't picked up on them.  Probably because they are the norm rather than the exception.

Here's a sample from the first few studies that come up in a Google Scholar search:

• Equilibrium = 3.2˚C; transient 1.72˚C

Bitz et al (2012) Climate Sensitivity of the Community Climate System Model, Version 4, J Climate DOI: 10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00290.1

• Equilibrium = 2.2 - 4.8˚K

Rohling et al (2012) Making sense of palaeoclimate sensitivity, Nature DOI: 10.1038/nature11574  (Thanks to BBD for the link to the full paper).

• Equilibrium = 2.1 - 4.7˚K

Andrews et al (2012) Forcing, feedbacks and climate sensitivity in CMIP5 coupled atmosphere-ocean climate models, GRL

• Equilibrium = 1.9˚C (1.2 to 2.9˚C); transient = Using observational data up to and including year 2010 gives a 90% C.I. of 1.0 to 2.1˚C, while the 90% C.I. is significantly broader ranging from 1.1 to 3.4 ˚C if only data up to and including year 2000 is used.

Skeie et al A lower and more constrained estimate of climate sensitivity using updated observations and detailed radiative forcing time series, Geophysical Research Abstracts


Pat 'n Chip would have the scientists exclude all the higher estimates and only publish the lower estimates.  Many if not most of the lower estimates seem to come from Bayesian analysis, while the higher ones more commonly come from analysis of past climates (paleoclimatology) or climate models - which are based on physics.

The reason seems to be that they want permission to continue to pollute the atmosphere for a while longer yet.  Obviously they don't give tuppence for what happens to humanity, society or any other life on earth in the future.  Otherwise they'd be arguing that regardless of whether equilibrium sensitivity was 2˚C (which Pat 'n Chip favour) or 3˚C or 4˚C or higher, if we don't stop burning fossil fuels soon climate change will get much worse.

Thing is, equilibrium sensitivity won't mean zilch if we don't stop at doubling CO2.  No-one will be any the wiser about what it would have been.  Humans will have to wait until equilibrium does occur for however many multiples of CO2 we pour into the air, which will take thousands of years as illustrated here. (Click to enlarge.)

Source: RealClimate.Org

From the WUWT comments

I was curious to see how the deniers at WUWT would react.  After all, Pat 'n Chip are arguing that climate sensitivity is 2˚C.  Many deniers at WUWT think CO2 doesn't have any effect on surface temperature.  Some even think that we are about to enter an ice age - any day now - and have thought that for quite some time.  (They are very patient.)

Pseudo-science gobbledegook from Konrad

The response was a mixed lot with people mostly talking past each other.  Here is some classic pseudo-science from Konrad, who says pre-industrial CO2 is fictitious, that "LWIR" (does he think there is such a thing as SWIR I wonder?) doesn't affect the cooling rate of water that is free to evaporatively cool - presumably evaporating because of cooling?  And radiative gases cool the earth, not heat it!

July 26, 2013 at 5:32 pm  “Climate sensitivity” to a doubling from fictitious “pre-industrial” levels would be around -0.00000001 C. To arrive at this figure you of course have to ignore all the evidence that temperature drives atmospheric CO2 concentration at all time scales. Next reduce those ludicrous figures for DWLWIR slowing the cooling of the earths surface by 71percent. LWIR doesn’t effect the cooling rate of water that is free to evaporativly cool.
Now as the troposperic lapse rate created by convective circulation is near the adiabatic limit, there is little need for ajustment here. However speed of convective circulation and mechanical energy transport from the surface should be increased for higher radiative gas concentrations.
The ERL argument can be safely ignored as it is junk science. In a moving atmosphere, warm air masses are transporting energy high above the level of maximum IR opacity, where they always radiate more than the air at the altitude they are rising through.  You should find that radiative gases act to cool the atmosphere at all concentrations above 0.0ppm.  The IPCC however should continue to do static atmosphere calculations and assume surface IR absorption based on emissivity. Otherwise they won’t get paid.

Asian aerosols caused global warming and incomprehensible quackery from AlecM

This one is a new one for me.  AGW was caused by aerosols!  (Most aerosols reflect sunlight and have a cooling influence.)  This from AlecM:

July 26, 2013 at 11:39 pm My view is that the atmospheric control system that damps out natural fluctuations is near 0 K CO2 climate sensitivity. There has been AGW, from Asian aerosols reducing the albedo of low level clouds. This led to the 1980s and 1990s heating but has now saturated. It lead to the ocean temperature rise What we are seeing now in the reduction of TPW and the turn down of OHC and air temperature is the effect of operation of other parts of the control system. CO2 is automatically eliminated from the temperature effects.

The Other-Andy hasn't looked at a temperature chart since 1979

From where on earth does the Other_Andy get his information?

July 27, 2013 at 3:05 am  So, according to the warmists CO2 (And positive feedbacks) controls the Earth’s temperature. As CO2 goes up so does the temperature.
Between 1979 and 1996, CO2 increases by 25 ppm (More than 7% increase), there are several El Ninos and the temperature stays the same. What is their explanation?

The Other_Andy's close enough with the CO2 increase, but he says temperature stayed the same between 1979 and 1996?  Not so:

Data Sources: NASA and UK Met Office Hadley Centre