What is the difference between Anthony Watts and an elephant?

Sometimes Anthony Watts mocks science.
Often Anthony Watts mocks science.
Usually Anthony Watts mocks science.
Almost always Anthony Watts mocks science.

There is at least one attribute that Anthony Watts has in common with an elephant.  Neither can understand science (though I can't positively vouch for the elephant in that regard).  I'd be tempted to say neither are good at arithmetic too, but the elephant is probably better at numbers than is Anthony Watts.

Where they differ is that an elephant never forgets.  Anthony Watts on the other hand...


Today he shows that on very rare occasions, Anthony Watts likes a scientific paper.  He posts an article about a paper that discusses the role of soot in the recession of glaciers in Europe soon after the beginning of the industrial revolution.  Anthony has a headline with a question: (article is archived here):

Black Carbon Soot shrank the 19th century glaciers – but why isn’t it listed as a culprit today?

From the University of Colorado at Boulder comes this press release and accompanying photo. The photo, showing hazy pollution laden air in the Bernese Alps, makes me wonder why they don’t attribute current glacier ice loss issues to soot. Asia in particular, is a leader in soot production, right next to those Himalayan glaciers that the IPCC erroneously told us would be gone by 2035.

But it is and "they" do, it's just that Anthony forgets his own articles...

Anthony forgets his own articles so quickly.  Here is just a sample (all links from archived versions):

• From WUWT in December 2009 - soot in the Himalayas, courtesy NASA
• From WUWT in November 2008 - soot in Asia, again courtesy NASA
• From WUWT in January 2013 - soot on ice generally, courtesy JGR-Atmospheres
• From WUWT in November 2010 - an article that includes a discussion of the impact of soot in the Himalayas

...and many more.

Thing is, almost every time Anthony writes an article about soot he pretends it's he who discovered the impact - and afresh.  He wouldn't know about soot or carbon if not for the scientific research that he usually mocks.  Yet he also hates organisations like the EPA that regulate the amount of pollution.  He is anti-soot but rejects attempts to control it.

Full of contradictions as well as having a very bad memory, as well as taking credit for things he wouldn't be able to do in a pink fit, or understand.

HotWhopper readers also know that although Anthony Watts has been mocking science for a few years now, particularly climate science, he's yet to open and read an IPCC report.  If he had, he'd have read about soot or black carbon and it's impact on snow, ice and albedo, for example - here as well as in the diagram showing radiative forcing in Chapter 2 of the IPCC AR4 WG1 here:

Source: IPCC AR4 WG1

And now for the science...

Here is the abstract of the PNAS paper by Painter et al, which Anthony writes about this time (my para breaks):

Glaciers in the European Alps began to retreat abruptly from their mid-19th century maximum, marking what appeared to be the end of the Little Ice Age. Alpine temperature and precipitation records suggest that glaciers should instead have continued to grow until circa 1910.

Radiative forcing by increasing deposition of industrial black carbon to snow may represent the driver of the abrupt glacier retreats in the Alps that began in the mid-19th century. Ice cores indicate that black carbon concentrations increased abruptly in the mid-19th century and largely continued to increase into the 20th century, consistent with known increases in black carbon emissions from the industrialization of Western Europe.

Inferred annual surface radiative forcings increased stepwise to 13–17 W⋅m−2 between 1850 and 1880, and to 9–22 W⋅m−2 in the early 1900s, with snowmelt season (April/May/June) forcings reaching greater than 35 W⋅m−2 by the early 1900s. These snowmelt season radiative forcings would have resulted in additional annual snow melting of as much as 0.9 m water equivalent across the melt season. Simulations of glacier mass balances with radiative forcing-equivalent changes in atmospheric temperatures result in conservative estimates of accumulating negative mass balances of magnitude −15 m water equivalent by 1900 and −30 m water equivalent by 1930, magnitudes and timing consistent with the observed retreat.  

These results suggest a possible physical explanation for the abrupt retreat of glaciers in the Alps in the mid-19th century that is consistent with existing temperature and precipitation records and reconstructions.

Black carbon in the Arctic as viewed by WUWT - plus more about soot and methane

Anthony Watts posted an article about a new paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research Atmosphere.

Anthony had a headline: In the Arctic, nearby soot may be a larger forcing than CO2. However there was nothing in his article to support his headline so one can only conclude that he made it up out of thin air in keeping with his latest disinformation push.

Sand, M., T. K. Berntsen, Ø. Seland, and J. E. Kristjánsson (2013), Arctic surface temperature change to emissions of black carbon within Arctic or midlatitudes, J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 118, doi:10.1002/jgrd.50613.

It depends on from where the black carbon comes

The researchers set out to quantify the impact of black carbon emissions from different sources - comparing that emanating from within the Arctic with that coming from the midlatitudes. They found that if the black carbon was emitted from within the Arctic, it had "an almost five times larger Arctic surface temperature response (per unit of emitted mass) compared to emissions at midlatitudes".  The AGU report states (my bold italics):

Black carbon emitted within the Arctic is more likely to stay at low altitudes and thus to be deposited on the snow and ice there, whereas black carbon transported into the Arctic from mid-latitudes is more likely to remain at higher altitudes. Because of this, the Arctic surface temperature is almost 5 times more sensitive to black carbon emitted from within the Arctic than to emissions from mid-latitudes, the authors find.

How many WUWT readers understood what was written?

The first thing that struck me in the comments was that I don't think either Anthony or his readers understood the study or what it found.  Going by the headline, Anthony was just aiming for more disinformation and didn't bother to read what he copied and pasted.  His readers were no better. So far, I only counted three responses (out of 26) that demonstrates that any reader has understood the research or the findings.

The second thing that struck me in the comments, was the inability of some people to hold two complementary ideas in their brain at the same time.  It is as if there is only room for one.  This disability is interesting in the context of Bob Altemeyer's The Authoritarians.  (See here for a summary in the context of climate science denial).  Altemayer talks of the RWA's as being recognised for their ability to hold two conflicting ideas in their brain at the same time.  For example, they can swear black and blue that earth is warming because of the sun and in the next breath they'll swear black and blue that the earth isn't warming and then say that it's cooling and then say it's warming but it's caused by ENSO or the PDO.

Maybe the head of the RWA is so full of conflicting notions that it has no room for complementary notions.

Here is an example from Bob who says (extract):

August 13, 2013 at 6:37 pm CO2 doesn’t seem to be working all that well as the cause, so we need to switch to carbon, I suppose....

Here are more comments from the WUWT crowd, but this time to demonstrate how WUWT readers don't bother to read or understand before jumping in feet first:

Owen in GA hasn't bothered to read the WUWT article and hasn't understood what the research was about.  He seems to think it was just to see if black carbon caused melting:

August 13, 2013 at 6:21 pm  I don’t see why they didn’t expect to see this. Ice has an almost perfect reflection surface, put something that is almost a perfect black body on top of it and absorbed energy changes as far as is possible. I would have to run a series of experiments to put actual numbers on it, but the common sense factor of this seems evident. Occasionally the universe throws a curve ball at ya, but usually only on really large or really small scales.

For starters - Owen in GA hasn't bothered to read what the researchers were studying.  Next he's incorrect saying "ice having an almost perfect reflective surface".  Ice does have high albedo compared to, say, the open ocean.  But it's not perfect and is less than snow.  Owen in GA immediately doubles up on his lack of understanding by telling the researchers how they should have done their research.  It would help a bit if he learnt that "alot" is two words not one (yeah, I'm being petty now):

August 13, 2013 at 6:29 pm  The problem here though is they do all their “experiments” in a computer rather than in the universe. Would have to see the methodology to see if they used any actual observations such as solar intensity, shine angle, carbon absorption rate/conversion of effective solar to temperature and length of day. Such a simple model could tell you alot about what effect black carbon “might” have, but until you instrument the heck out of a patch with alot of black carbon and a control patch with little to no black carbon and measure the actual on the ground effect you have not done a real experiment.

Owen in GA throws in the towel and says:

August 13, 2013 at 6:48 pm  I don’t know why this article bugs me so much. I read them all, but only comment occasionally when something either grabs my funny bone or sticks in the craw.

Maybe it's because Owen in GA didn't bother to digest the article and the research findings.

Wyguy declares himself as one of the 8% Dismissives and says:

August 13, 2013 at 7:02 pm “Black carbon ….. is one of the major causes of global warming, after carbon dioxide emissions.” When I read that, I quit reading. The author(s) lost all credibility in my eyes.

Impact of cutting soot and methane - not as much benefit as previously thought

There are a couple of more interesting comments, though.  This time about a PNNL study on the impact of cutting soot and methane emissions, which has recently been published in PNAS and is discussed here in Scientific American.  You can read the press release from PNLL here.  An excerpt:

Cutting the amount of short-lived, climate-warming emissions such as soot and methane in our skies won't limit global warming as much as previous studies have suggested, a new analysis shows. The study also found a comprehensive climate policy (including methane) would produce more climate benefits by 2050 than if soot and methane were reduced alone.

Steven J. Smith1 and Andrew Mizrahi (2013) Near-term climate mitigation by short-lived forcers, PNAS,  doi: 10.1073/pnas.1308470110