Werner Brozek at WUWT claims that "at least" means "at most"!

Update: See below - I've added a video for Werner Brozek, as I promised in the comments, to help him learn the difference between science and policy and maybe pick up some critical thinking tips.

I read this at Anthony Watts' science-denying blog, WUWT, this evening.  Werner Brozek wrote (archived here):

...204 months is equal to 17 years. In the “Separating signal and noise in atmospheric temperature changes: The importance of timescale” Benjamin Santer et al. stated that:

“Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature.”

I am sure that I will be corrected if I am wrong, but in plain English, my interpretation of this statement is as follows:

“There is a lot of noise in the climate system and it is quite possible that the noise can mask the effects of man-made carbon dioxide for a period of time. However if the slope is zero for 17 years, then we cannot blame noise any more but we have to face the facts that we humans do not affect the climate to any great extent.”

Is that reasonably accurate interpretation?

No, it's not a reasonably accurate interpretation

What do you think?   Is that a reasonably accurate interpretation?  It would appear to the disinterested reader that Werner has re-interpreted what was written.  In particular he has:

• ignored the two words "at least"
• committed a logical fallacy.

To my mind the first oversight is sufficient to show that Werner is wrong.  Still, I'll present his logical fallacy, which is related to his ignoring the two important words.  It is as follows:

• Santer stated that "to identify human effects at least 17 years of data is required"
• Werner turned this around and basically said "to identify human effects at most 17 years of data is required", which is wrong.

I've written about this before here when Christoper Monckton tried it on.  If you want to know what Santer et al meant, the best way to find out is to go to the paper itself.  In the text you will read how the longer the time period the more the signal emerges from the noise.  They show that multi-decadal records are needed (at least 17 years).  For example, as follows:

• Our estimated signal-to-noise (S/N) ratios for global-scale TLT changes were less than 1.0 on the 10-year timescale (Figure 6c). On the 32-year timescale, however, S/N exceeded 3.9 in all three observational TLT data sets. The latter result shows that natural internal variability, as simulated by current climate models, is a highly unlikely explanation for the observed lower tropospheric warming over the satellite era (Figure 6d). Comparisons between simulated and observed low-frequency TLT variability suggest that our estimates of S/N ratios on 5–20 year timescales are conservative (Figures 9 and 10). The strong timescale dependence of S/N ratios arises primarily because of the large decrease in noise amplitude as the period used for trend fitting increases (Figure 6b).

• The clear message from our signal-to-noise analysis is that multi-decadal records are required for identifying human effects on tropospheric temperature. Minimal warming over a single decade does not disprove the existence of a slowly-evolving anthropogenic warming signal.

Compare 17 years with 34 years of RSS data

The animation below probably says it all.  I've plotted RSS data of the lower troposphere (70S to 82.5N) because that's what Werner Brozek used. The only difference is that Werner plotted monthly data from 1 November 1996 to 31 October 2013 (monthly data is noisier), whereas I've plotted annual data.  The chart shows:

• the first 17 years of the RSS record, 1979 to 1996
• the second (most recent) 17 years, 1996 to 2013 - minus what hasn't happened yet this year and
• the entire 34 year period, 1979 to 2013 (with the current year to date).

Data Source: RSS

Note the R² values.  For the two shorter periods the trend line has not much meaning.  For the longer period of 34 years, the trend is more solid:

• 1979 to 1996 has a steeper slope than the most recent 17 year period (0.07°C/decade), but R² = 0.0893
• 1996 to 2013 is the least steep slope (0.02°C/decade) and R² = 0.0108
• 1979 to 2013 has the steepest slope of all (0.12°C/decade) and R² = 0.4701

For comparison, here is GISTemp global surface temperature anomaly with the trend line plotted from 1971 to 2012:

Data Source: NASA

I have a feeling that Werner Brozek won't be celebrating for too many more months (click the climate models tab here).

From the WUWT comments

Here's a sample (I nearly forgot! - How could I?) - archived here.


ConfusedPhoton says:

November 4, 2013 at 6:55 am
The goal posts will be moved soon and we will see that we need 25-30 years of non warming.
It is a bit like the timing of the end of the world madmen, everytime we reach it some excuse is used and a new date is given.
Do not make the mistake that Climate ” Science” has anything to do with real science!

JimH says he's prepared to wait a bit longer:

November 4, 2013 at 7:02 am
Personally I’m waiting (hopefully) for the 20 year mark. Because then the 1980-2000 (roughly speaking) rise will be no longer than the 2000-2020 level/cooling period. I don’t think AGW will survive that. We’re nearly three quarters of the way there, as the years tick by the warmists will be getting more and more worried. I think post 2015 the cracks will really begin to show as more rats leave the sinking ship.

oppti says - (you'll enjoy this comment!):

November 4, 2013 at 7:15 am
Ric Werme 7:00
Ok so what is the RSS reading for the period 1944-1978?
Climate has long time periodicity, something CO2 has not changed completely!

Alan the Brit says:

November 4, 2013 at 7:39 am
As people have already noted, the goalpost shifting will soon begin, with warmists ready with a veritable bank of excuses as to why the Earth hasn’t warmed or indeed started to cool!!!! Under no circumstances could they be wrong!

highflight56433 says:

November 4, 2013 at 8:09 am
My contention has been that if we dilute the atmosphere’s water vapor with CO2, it will have a cooling effect. There is more correlation to this per the inter-glacial periods.
Also, temperature readings at airports are for the purposes of aircraft performance, not climate monitoring. My contention (lots of contentions) is not to use any airport weather station data. They are heat islands.
Another contention is the sun drives our climate followed by “other stuff.”

Addendum

Richard Milne on critical thinking - separating climate science and politics / opinion / policy.

i

The certainty of science deniers. And what are the facts about hurricanes, tornadoes and Antarctic sea ice?

Straw men are built to be blown away.  They can be constructed from anything really.  It doesn't have to be straw.  It could be wind and rain, like tornadoes and hurricanes, or sea ice.

justthefactswuwt wrote on WUWT today (archived here):

It is amazing how easy alarmist scare forecasts/predictions can be falsified with readily available data...The data shows no increase in tornado counts or strength. Claims about increasing or more dangerous Tornadoes are unfounded.

Unfounded?  That's a strong claim! But first just what are the "claims" and who is making them?

In today's article (archived here) Justthefacts mentioned three things: tornadoes, hurricanes and Antarctic sea ice.

justthefacts is adamant that the projections of what will happen over the coming 90 years or so are completely wrong.  This complete and utter certainty is based on less than a year's data.  Not only that but justthefactswuwt appears to be very certain about what expectations are held by climate scientists.  So I thought it would be useful to see what are the forecasts/predictions for each item to see whether or not they have been falsified.

It turns out that, in contrast to the absolute certainty of justhefactswuwt, there is a lot of uncertainty and little agreement in the science itself:

• Tornadoes - might decrease relative to severe thunderstorms, although a new paper suggests an increase in frequency of severe tornadic storms over the coming century
• Hurricanes and tropical cyclones - if anything they are expected to decrease or stay the same, but with low confidence, although a new paper argues they may increase.
• Antarctic sea ice - expected to decline over the coming century, but again with low confidence.

The uncertainty and lack of strong agreement within the research is not really surprising, given the sporadic and relatively infrequent nature of tornadoes and hurricanes, and the difficulty of collecting data in the southern oceans and across the whole of the Antarctic continent.

And I must add that a single year's weather is hardly sufficient to falsify projections of climate!

Tornadoes in the USA

AR5 WG1 suggested that in the USA at least, the expectation is for more severe thunderstorms relative to tornadoes over time.  Tornadoes are expected to decrease or at least decrease relative to the number of severe storms.  It's all to do with energy vs shear.  But it won't be till towards the end of this century that trends will be able to be measured.  In any case, a single year's data isn't sufficient for "falsification" .  From AR5:

Severe thunderstorms, associated with large hail, high winds, and tornadoes, are another example of extreme weather associated with the water cycle. The large-scale environments in which they occur are characterized by large Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE) and deep tropospheric wind shear (Brooks et al., 2003; Brooks, 2009). Del Genio et al. (2007), Trapp et al. (2007; 2009), and Van Klooster and Roebber (2009) found a general increase in the energy and decrease in the shear terms from the late 20th century to the late 21st century over the United States using a variety of regional model simulations embedded in global-model SRES scenario simulations. The relative change between these two competing factors would tend to favour more environments that would support severe thunderstorms, providing storms are initiated. Trapp et al. (2009), for example, found an increase in favourable thunderstorm conditions for all regions of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains. Large variability in both the energy and shear terms means that statistical significance is not reached until late in the 21st century under high forcing scenarios. One way of assessing the possibility of a change in frequency of future thunderstorms is to look at historical records of observed tornado, hail, and wind occurrence with respect to the environmental conditions (Brooks, 2013). This indicates that an increase in the fraction of severe thunderstorms containing non-tornadic winds would be consistent with the model projections of increased energy and decreased shear, but there has not been enough research to make a firm conclusion regarding future changes in frequency or magnitude. (Page 12-53)

I searched the AR4 and the Second Assessment report but could not find any projections for tornadoes.  I searched the third assessment report and there was this statement:

Although some evidence is available regarding increases in the intensity and frequency of some extreme weather events, it is not yet clear how tornadoes will be affected. 

By contrast, a more recent study published as open access in PNAS (Diffenbaugh et al 2013), quoted by justthefactswuwt does suggest that tornadoes, or at least severe thunderstorms, will most likely increase this century.  The paper has lots of caveats but the final paragraph in the conclusion states:

Given the substantial damage from severe thunderstorms in the current climate, uncertainty about the response of such storms to global warming has created an important barrier to climate change impacts assessment (1). Our results indicate that continued global warming might cause substantial increases in the occurrence of the atmospheric environments associated with severe thunderstorms, because the implied reduction in vertical wind shear may not be as important as previously thought. These increases include regions where severe thunderstorms currently are most common, and regions where severe thunderstorms currently are less common but where substantial assets are exposed (3, 6, 15). Although important uncertainties about storm-scale processes still exist, the fact that the projected increases in severe environments are robust across a suite of climate models, emerge in response to relatively moderate global warming, and result from robust physical changes suggests that continued increases in greenhouse forcing are likely to increase severe thunderstorm occurrence, thereby increasing the risk of thunderstorm-related damage.

Note that the above relates to "atmospheric environments associated with severe thunderstorms" and not specifically to tornadoes.  However elsewhere in the paper there is reference to tornadoes.  For example in the abstract, Diffenbaugh13 writes:

We also find that days with high convective available potential energy (CAPE) and strong low-level wind shear increase in occurrence, suggesting an increasing likelihood of atmospheric conditions that contribute to the most severe events, including tornadoes.

It is also worth pointing out that Diffenbaugh13 notes the paucity of data, writing:

First, there is no reliable, independent, long-term record of severe thunderstorms—and particularly tornadoes—with which to systematically analyze variability and trends.

The science is much less certain about tornadoes than is justthefactswuwt.

Hurricanes (and tropical cyclones and typhoons)

It doesn't look as if the projections for hurricanes have been falsified, either.  From AR5 WG1 - there has been an increase in the frequency and intensity of the strongest tropical cyclones but not overall.

In summary, this assessment does not revise the SREX conclusion of low confidence that any reported longterm (centennial) increases in tropical cyclone activity are robust, after accounting for past changes in observing capabilities. More recent assessments indicate that it is unlikely that annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have increased over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin. Evidence however is for a virtually certain increase in the frequency and intensity of the strongest tropical cyclones since the 1970s in that region. (Page 2-60)

And tropical cyclones are projected to stay the same or decrease, according to AR5.  But the ones that emerge will be fiercer and wetter:

There is low confidence in the projections for the tropical Atlantic, both for the mean and interannual modes, because of systematic errors in model simulations of current climate. The implications for future changes in Atlantic hurricanes, tropical South American and West African precipitation are therefore uncertain. ...

...Based on process understanding and agreement in 21st century projections, it is likely that the global frequency of occurrence of tropical cyclones will either decrease or remain essentially unchanged, concurrent with a likely increase in both global mean tropical cyclone maximum wind speed and precipitation rates. The future influence of climate change on tropical cyclones is likely to vary by region, but the specific characteristics of the changes are not yet well quantified and there is low confidence in region-specific projections of frequency and intensity.(Page 14-4)

From AR4 - tropical cyclones will become more severe and intense:

Earlier studies assessed in the TAR showed that future tropical cyclones would likely become more severe with greater wind speeds and more intense precipitation. More recent modelling experiments have addressed possible changes in tropical cyclones in a warmer climate and generally confirmed those earlier results. 

From AR4 - tropical cyclones and hurricanes will become more intense but globally, less frequent (low confidence)

Based on a range of models, it is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become more intense, with larger peak wind speeds and more heavy precipitation associated with ongoing increases of tropical sea surface temperatures. There is less confidence in projections of a global decrease in numbers of tropical cyclones. The apparent increase in the proportion of very intense storms since 1970 in some regions is much larger than simulated by current models for that period. {9.5, 10.3, 3.8}

From the Third Assessment Report:

Climate models currently are unable to project accurately how hurricanes will change in the future. 

However not all research points to a decrease in tropical cyclones.  A recent paper by Kerry Emanuel suggests that tropical cyclones may increase, but large uncertainties remain:

An increase in global mean frequency during roughly the first three quarters of the 21st century is indicated, with a total increase in the range of 10-40%. ... most of the increase in frequency is in the North Pacific, but with substantial increases in the North Atlantic and South Indian oceans as well. The only coastal region that experiences a substantial decline in track crossings is the southeast coast of Australia....

...The differences between our results, those arrived at by applying the same technique to CMIP3 models, and the conclusions of other groups using different models and/or using different methods suggest that projections of the response of tropical cyclones to projected climate change will remain uncertain for some time to come.

All I can say once again is that justthefactswuwt is a lot more certain than the science itself.

Antarctic sea ice

On the other hand, Antarctic sea ice is expected to decrease over time - presumably over winter because there's precious little sea ice in summer.  However, but there is only low confidence in the projection.  From AR5 WG1 (page 12-5)

It is very likely that the Arctic sea ice cover will continue shrinking and thinning year-round in the course of the 21st century as global mean surface temperature rises. At the same time, in the Antarctic, a decrease in sea ice extent and volume is expected, but with low confidence....There is however low confidence in those values as projections because of the wide inter-model spread and the inability of almost all of the available models to reproduce the mean annual cycle, interannual variability and overall increase of the Antarctic sea ice areal coverage observed during the satellite era.

Again, justthefactswuwt is much more certain than the science.

From the WUWT comments

There aren't too many people jumping on justthefactswuwt bandwagon.  Maybe they've been bitten too many times in the past, jumping in too soon. Or maybe they are remembering the massive tornado that tore through Oklahoma in May this year. There are a few more Gore-bashing comments than usual, probably because justthefactswuwt let fly in the article.  (Comments archived here.)


sophocles says "it's cooling":

November 3, 2013 at 12:14 pm
The National Academy of Sciences said:
“…are forecast to see a “robust” increase across parts of the U.S. in upcoming decades because of climate change …”
===========================================================
Unfortunately, they may be correct but not for the reasons they are thinking.
If past records are any hint, the onset of cooling can bring bad storms, (from
Brian Fagan’s book “The Little Ice Age”), not warming.
The AMO and PDO have turned over, the Sun is sliding into another minimum
and cooling is already apparent (only slight, so far but…) so the next ten years
are going to be interesting …

Paul Homewood predicts the lull in tornadoes won't last and says:

November 3, 2013 at 12:17 pm
It’s extremely unextreme.
And next year, no doubt, NOAA will be bragging off about “a big jump in tornado numbers from last year”. 

Anthony Watts promotes Denier Don Easterbrook's bad "science" and conspiracy ideation

I see that Anthony Watts has hauled out Denier Don Easterbrook to dust the cobwebs off his flawed Greenland ice core charts and make more allegations of nefarious intent against real scientists.

If you're wondering what Don's latest idiocy is all about, it's the recent Miller et al paper.  Although I was sent a copy of the paper by a reader (many thanks!), Richard Telford tells it better than I could.  There are two three short articles at Richard Telford's excellent blog, Musings on Quantitative Palaeoecology, which cover the Miller paper very well and are easy to read (and have nice pictures!):

• “Unprecedented” – skeptic flypaper
• More on Mosses (Miller et al 2013)
• Man with one graph declares war on mosses (more on Miller et al 2013)

Denier Don dismisses on-site observations from his armchair arguing if what happened in far eastern Canada didn't happen on the summit of the ice sheet in Central Greenland then it can't have happened at all (or some such nonsense).  He also writes:

Even if the conclusions in the paper were correct, they wouldn’t prove anything about CO2 as the cause of climatic warming, so this statement suggests that the real purpose of the paper was to push CO2 at the expense of objective science.

Denier Don assumes nefarious intent - a classic hallmark of the conspiracy theorist.

If you read the archived WUWT article, you'll see that Denier Don Easterbrook is claiming that ice can move over artic moss that's 120,000 years old without harming the moss at all and without even disturbing the roots of the moss.  He's not strong on logical thinking is Denier Don.

I notice Anthony Watts is still letting Don put up his flawed charts of GISP2, claiming that a temperature series that actually starts in 1855 began in 1945.   This is after lots of his readers over the years have told him it's wrong.  Even justthefactswuwt agrees it's wrong.  But what do Anthony Watts or Denier Don care?  Anything goes at WUWT as long as it denies the science.

You'll also note with relief that Anthony Watts finds nothing wrong with the weather station labelled "Clyde NWT", though I don't think it is one of these new ones.  One problem with the record Anthony and Don used, which neither of them will tell you, is that the GISTemp records for that location only go up to November 2010. And there are lots of gaps in what records there are.  Also, it's a bit of a distance from the research site.

The scientists themselves have given an indication in their report of how the local weather has changed.  The ice cap is melting and mosses emerging after 120,000 years under ice, so that says something!

From the WUWT comments

Most of the WUWT readers aren't crash hot on logic and subsribe to Denier Don's conspiracy theory (archived here).

Ron House talks about the "recent few 1,000 years' warming" (is he a closet warmist?):

November 2, 2013 at 10:48 pm
This isn’t the end of the nonsense. They tell us the moss is quickly destroyed when it thaws, which is why they know it hadn’t thawed before. Okay, but what if we had done their survey 50 ya, 100ya, during the LIA, the MWP, the dark ages? Would we have found freshly exposed moss then? By logical deduction from their own claims, we cannot now know what would have been found. Perhaps old moss would have been found at all these times? Or at least the warmer ones? And that would prove that the recent few 1,000 years’ warming had nothing to do with AGW. Since by their own claims the disproving experiment cannot be done, their uniqueness claims are not scientific, just guesswork.

Pippen Kool is on the ball, though and replies to Ron:

November 2, 2013 at 11:06 pm
perhaps. but it wouldn’t be the moss was found in this study …that moss was buried then.

jorgekafkazar doesn't bother with the study itself, he agrees with Denier Don that it must be part of the "CAGW" conspiracy and says:

November 2, 2013 at 10:31 pm
” One wonders how this bad logic got past peer review. ”
This one doesn’t wonder. The process has been corrupted for political reasons and financial gain.
Nice post, Don.

 George McFly.....I'm your density is another conspiracy theorist and says:

November 2, 2013 at 11:07 pm
The last line says it all: “the real purpose of the paper was to push CO2 at the expense of objective science”

phlogiston says - Hey, I'm a conspiracy crank too - don't forget me!:

November 2, 2013 at 11:57 pm
This is a perfect example of politically driven pseudo-science: to jump from a single small, flawed study to a political concluding message, totally ignoring the existing body of scientific data on the subject. The paper is aimed straight at the media and politicians, over the heads of the scientific community.
Mann, Marcott, Miller … who will be the next mendacious machiavellian?

Anthony Watts pushes more crazy paranoid conspiracy theories at WUWT

Updated - see below for new comment and NASA video on depletion of groundwater.

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Anthony Watts hates it that his blog WUWT has a reputation for zany conspiracy theories but doesn't do anything to dispel the notion.

On the contrary.  And today seems the day for more crazy conspiracy theories.

Anthony himself indulges in conspiracy ideation as you'll have read in my last blog article.  Now he's got "sky dragon slayer"** Tim Ball indulging likewise.  In an article today (archived here and updated here), Tim writes:

UNEP, the agency that brought you Agenda 21 and the IPCC established...

What he's saying is that Agenda 21 and the IPCC are conspiracies of the wicked UN.  Implied in those few words are all the weird and wonderful theories that the cranks and crazies can come up with, like all the various conspiracy theories based on the "new world order" theme.

Tim Ball is trying to suggest there is something malevolent in these quotes from the UN Secretary General.

“Water holds the key to sustainable development,” “We must work together to protect and carefully manage this fragile finite resource.” 

And what about this - Tim reckons the IPCC is in on the plot writing:

Environment Canada (EC) produced the map information, but their credibility is close to zero because of involvement in the IPCC from the start. 

If you think I'm reading too much into what Tim wrote, think again.  Here is a direct quote from today's WUWT article:

Environmentalism was a necessary new paradigm hijacked by a few for a political agenda. The goal was political control with subjugation of individuals and their rights to a world government through the UN. Elaine Dewar, author of The Cloak of Green explained,

And there's more:

Strong appeared to achieve his goal with CO2 through the UN, particularly the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) that gave the IPCC effective control of national weather agencies and therefore national policy. Global warming seemed like an easy control agenda until nature took over. Instead of acknowledging their science was wrong the UNEP, IPCC and national environment agencies simply moved the goalposts to climate change and more recently to climate crisis. Now that is failing a move to a new goalpost, water, is underway to pursue the real objective – total control. As always it is cloaked in righteousness (green). Who could oppose a desire for clean air or water?

Notice all the references to the UN, Maurice Strong, the IPCC, Agenda 21.  They are dog whistles to the paranoid conspiracy mob of the "new world order" kind.

Anthony Watts complains about research that shows conspiracy ideation is a predictor of climate science denial, albeit a weak predictor.  But all the while he happily pushes and promotes such paranoid conspiracy theories by cranks like Tim Ball and Christopher Monckton on his very own blog!

PS Remember this water article Anthony put up not that long ago?

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**Tim Ball is a co-author of the book: Slaying the Sky Dragon - Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory which tries and fails to prove all atmospheric physics is wrong!  They "don't believe" in the greenhouse effect.

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From the WUWT comments

Here is a sample of the comments to Anthony Watts' latest conspiracy article by Tim Ball (archived here - updated here).


Txomin says green policies kill lots of people:

November 1, 2013 at 2:43 pm
Experience says that this “green” nonsense will slow down (but not stop) progress. To be sure, many will die because of “green” policies, policies that will enrich a new breed of charlatans. However, humanity will work around them all and will be better off tomorrow than it is today.

Robin says it's a Marxist plot (excerpt):

November 1, 2013 at 3:01 pm
We need to remember that the West, especially the US, is where the Marxian criteria of reaching a stage of technological development that would supposedly allow redistribution was met. Rather than admit the Governed/Governors/Redistribution to Latin America and Africa gambit, the bureaucrats just keep coming up with excuses of why administration via the OECD and the UN is necessary. And the rationales need to extend beyond nation-stat borders and thus require international administration by bureaucrats who can tout their links to local (ICLEI), state (eco devt schemes with China usually), and national.

nigelf says "it's all a scam":

November 1, 2013 at 3:03 pm
Countries far and wide need to start electing Libertarian types as their leaders who won’t be afraid to pull the plug completely on these ongoing scams. They also won’t be afraid to turf the UN and order them all out of their countries so that real prosperity can take place and freedoms restored.
The Republicans have to move considerably to the right or the TEA Party message is really going to start to resonate among regular people in the coming years.

Brian H is under the illusion that Tim Ball has any climate science credentials (Tim Ball used to teach geography many years ago. His publication record is very sparse.):

November 1, 2013 at 3:07 pm
For those inclined to demand credentials, it should be noted that Dr. Ball’s in this subject, as with Climate Science in general, clearly exceed and trump those of the UN sock puppets.

sanaerchi says it's not just water that the one world government wants to control:

November 1, 2013 at 3:34 pm
You could also include food as an item of control because there is a global attempt to improve people’s behavior towards food waste

Bryan Johnson is something of an extremist and says:

November 1, 2013 at 3:49 pm
“Demodernising” is exactly the goal. Not to sound too much of a conspiracy-minded observer (although I’m often enough accused of that), but aren’t the people who want *any* human influence on the earth to be banned — reversed — following a goal of the return of humans to a paleolithic level of hunter-gatherer civilization? It seems so, to me.

A.D. Everard agrees the UN is one giant evil conspiracy says:

November 1, 2013 at 3:53 pm
It is vital, then, for all countries to disconnect from the UN, ignore its directives, cut off its funding and let it die a death. It is the UN and its agencies which are the true enemy of mankind and civilization.

Rhys Jaggar says just wait for the big one:

November 1, 2013 at 4:03 pm
The problem with all these crying wolf scare stories is that, one day, there actually will be an existential threat to mankind and the chances are that no-one will believe the messenger.

Bill Illis seems to think that water was only once created and remains unchanged, ignoring such inconvenient things as metabolic pathways (and not distinguishing potable water from the rest) saying:

November 1, 2013 at 5:42 pm
All the water that was here 4.4 billion years ago, is still here.

Hydrogen loves its oxygen.

Jer0me says, wrongly and irrelevantly:

November 1, 2013 at 6:40 pm
I really wish people would stop stating that tempos have stopped rising for ’15 years’. This makes it look as if it is starting from a cherry-picked 1998. This is easy for warmists to refute.
As I understand it, it has been 17 years, and is not from 1998.

humanati tosses everything into his conspiracy theorising and says (my bold italics):

November 1, 2013 at 10:40 pm
Good to see so many people joining the dots. MMGW wasn’t a mistake or an isolated example of the UN’s war on humanity. It is part of an organised, sustained, orchestrated campaign to extend it’s control & simultaneously destroy truth, science & reason. It’s going on in many, many other areas of science. Fluoride, vaccines, GMO’s, cancer causes & treatments… Someone has declared a war on our minds & bodies. The MMGW myth is just one aspect of this obscenity. I urge others to seek the truth & go wherever it takes you, regardless of how uncomfortable that is…Our lives & our liberty depends on it.

I've got to update the archived article to let you read this comment by Dodgy Geezer who says (excerpts - my bold italics and links):

November 2, 2013 at 4:10 am
I repeat again: There can NEVER be a shortage of water

There are many places in the world where you cannot get fresh, clean water when you want it. But this is NOT because WATER is short. It is because the Infrastructure is short. That means it is NOT a natural resources problem. It is an economic one.

The green trick is to point out places where people are short of water, and then treat this as a resource problem. It is not. If we wanted to, we could run a string of fresh-water swimming pools across the Sahara in case another ‘Phoenix’ crashed, and we wouldn’t waste any water at all. We would have wasted a large amount of money. Unless, of course, this created a new tourist attraction… :)

... What this means is that the appropriate response when told that you are ‘short of water’ is to consider how to address the problem, and the two available ways will always be:

1 – limiting local population
2 – providing more water

In practice, for a typical town, item 2) above will be the answer, and the discussion will centre on how best to pay for that. The one thing that is NOT an answer is to get everyone to cut back on consumption so as to service more people with the same infrastructure. All that does is lower people’s standard of living and ensure that when the problem arises again it will be more dangerous, because everyone will be living that much closer to the critical point where they cannot survive…

Dodgy Geezer might have never heard of this thing called "evaporation".  He (dodgy geezers are always a "he" aren't they?) might learn something about the futility of putting swimming pools across the Sahara if he read about Lake Eyre.

And he might recognise the water resource problem if he knew a bit more about water and its sources, such as:

-

Denier weirdness: Mock outrage and conspiracy ideation by Anthony Watts at WUWT

Today Anthony Watts indulges in some more scientist-bashing and conspiracy ideation.  He writes a protest article on his blog WUWT about a newly published article by Lewandowsky et al.  Anthony blogged under the headline (archived here):

Mann and Lewandowsky go psychotic on climate skeptics

It would be very rare, if not unheard of, for five people, while simultaneously experiencing a psychotic episode, to co-author an article and have it accepted for publication by the Association for Psychological Science.

Sane Australia provides a generalised description of psychosis:

When someone experiences psychosis they are unable to distinguish what is real — there is a loss of contact with reality. 

About psychosis from Wikipedia:

In properly diagnosed psychiatric disorders (where other causes have been excluded by extensive medical and biological laboratory tests), psychosis is a descriptive term for the hallucinations, delusions, sometimes violence, and impaired insight that may occur.[6][7] 

Anthony Watts feeds off people's inability to distinguish what is real. Delusional beliefs and impaired insight are commonly seen at Anthony Watts' blog.

No, I'm not saying that Anthony Watts is psychotic or that climate science deniers are psychotic.  Psychosis is a particular condition that is usually temporary or episodic in certain psychiatric disorders.

Being unable to tell science fact from science fiction doesn't mean a person is psychotic.  It usually means they don't have sufficient knowledge.  Sometimes an individual may not have the mental capacity to obtain such knowledge. Sometimes a person's brain refuses to process information properly because there is a perceived conflict between their view of the world and knowledge - resulting in cognitive dissonance.  There is research that suggests that with some people, when faced with particular facts, the "fear" centre of the brain takes over from the "reasoning" pathways.

The article that Anthony basis his "psychotic" accusation upon has the title:

The Subterranean War on Science

It was written by Stephan Lewandowsky, Michael E. Mann, Linda Bauld, Gerard Hastings, and Elizabeth F. Loftus and published in the Association for Psychological Science's Observer.  The paper is short and strong.  It's well worth reading.

Conspiratorial thinking

The paper refers to the conspiratorial element of denial, for example:

The conspiratorial element of denial explains why contrarians often perceive themselves as heroic dissenters who — in their imagination — are following Galileo’s footsteps by opposing a mainstream scientific “elite” that imposes its views not on the basis of overwhelming evidence but for political reasons. Mainstream climate scientists are therefore frequently accused of “Lysenkoism,” after the Soviet scientist whose Lamarckian views of evolution were state dogma in the Soviet Union. Other contrarians appeal to Albert Einstein’s injunction “. . . to not stop questioning” to support their dissent from the fact that HIV causes AIDS (Duesberg, 1989).

One has often seen on Anthony Watts' blog accusations of Lysenkoism in among the comments.  Anthony Watts himself has indulged, for example:

• Putting up a Forbes article: An Utter Nutter: Anthony Watts has "Gone Lysenko" in a Bout of Recursive Fury
• Promoting the idea by Lindzen: A divide is emerging among the contrarians - utter nutters vs tarnished lukewarmers

Attacks on science and scientists in a variety of disciplines

More from the Lewandowsky et al paper - I've changed the formatting slightly adding dot points:

This conspiratorial element provides a breeding ground for the personal and professional attacks on scientists that seemingly inevitably accompany science denial. The present authors have all been subject to such attacks, whose similarity is notable because the authors’ research spans a broad range of topics and disciplines:

• The first author has investigated the psychological variables underlying the acceptance or rejection of scientific findings;
• the second author is a paleoclimatologist who has shown that current global temperatures are likely unprecedented during the last 1,000 years or more;
• the third and fourth authors are public-health researchers who have investigated the attitudes of teenagers and young adults towards smoking and evaluated a range of tobacco control interventions; and
• the fifth author has established that human memory is not only fallible but subject to very large and systematic distortions.

This article surveys some of the principal techniques by which the authors have been harassed; namely,

• cyber-bullying and public abuse;
• harassment by vexatious freedom-of-information (FOI) requests, complaints, and legal threats or actions;
• and perhaps most troubling, by the intimidation of journal editors who are acting on manuscripts that are considered inconvenient by deniers.

The uniformity with which these attacks are pursued across several disciplines suggests that their motivation is not scientific in nature.

Cyber-bullying and public abuse - this is what Anthony Watts' blog is all about, particularly the "public abuse".  Note for example the title that Anthony Watts gave to his article:- "Mann and Lewandowsky go psychotic on climate skeptics".  This is mild abuse by comparison with his normal fare.

Harassment by vexatious freedom-of-information (FOI) requests, complaints, and legal threats or actions - it was just over a week ago when Anthony's blog was last used to urge harassment by email.  Anthony posted an article by Willis Eschenbach.  Willis wrote some rather impolite (to say the least) letters to Science and Steven Mosher urged WUWT readers to spam Science (archived here).  Steven Mosher says (excerpt - my bold italics):

October 22, 2013 at 8:06 am
...I would suugest that people at WUWT start filling email boxes at Science. with polite requests for the data and the code. Grass roots effort. people rely too much on guys like willis and steve Mc and me to make these requests. The more people who ask or complain in a nice way the better chance we have of changing things. We might not agree about the climate but we can agree about the importance of supplying code and data. On this there should be no sides to the debate. both sides, all sides. Show your data and your code or stop wasting our time.

Anthony Watts often posts articles about the ongoing frivolous lawsuits by ATI used to harass, intimidate and try to get access to scientist's private emails.  Examples are archived here and here and here or just use google.

And who can forget Anthony Watts threatening to sue Greg Laden (archived here) simply for pointing out the silliness of Anthony's speculative article about life in space?  Click here for Greg Laden's take.

Intimidation of journal editors who are acting on manuscripts that are considered inconvenient by deniers - the standout case relating (peripherally) to climate change is the attempt to suppress the Lewandowsky et al paper, Recursive Fury.  Anthony Watts blogs about that too - archived here. (Be warned, Barry - if you post a comment pushing your barrow here it will be deleted.  Same goes for the others who want that paper suppressed. I rarely delete a comment.)

Anthony Watts' mock outrage

Now to Anthony Watts' latest article of mock shock horror that anyone could be so accused.  Anthony writes (archived here):

Dr. Michael Mann and Dr. Stephan Lewandowsky have a new paper out that redefines the term “climate ugliness”. Apparently FOIA requests are “harassment”. And Internet blogs “wrongly sidestep peer-reviewed literature”. Oh Mann, tell that to the IPCC who used magazine articles as sources for AR4. The title suggests all this is happening “subterranean” when in fact blogs are all out in the open, while Dr. Mann continues to fight expensive legal battles to hide his publicly funded emails at the University of Virginia and imagines the Koch brothers behind every virtual rock and tree.

What is harassment?

Apparently FOIA requests are “harassment”  FOIA requests are only harrassment when they are organised campaigns like that solicited by Steven Mosher above or by Anthony Watts himself when he wrote (archived here):

My advice to UK readers, start sending an FOI request every week and complain loudly to your UK representatives and write letters to the editor.  Details are in the body of the post below. – Anthony

Or when Steve McIntyre wrote on his blog (archived here).  Click the image to enlarge:

Side-stepping peer-reviewed literature

Side-stepping peer-reviewed literature: Internet blogs like WUWT do this as a matter of course.  There are plenty of examples at WUWT.

Anthony Watts claims that the IPCC report quoted from a magazine article.  He's wrong.  Ironically, Anthony points to a newspaper article as his source for that claim!

In fact, the reference was to a University of Berne Masters thesis by Dario-Andri Schworer (search the page for "Schworer").  Also it was only one of several references in a table in Working Group 2, not Working Group 1 (see Table 1.2).  Working Group 2 is about Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability not the physical science as such. This volume by its nature draws on many more sources of information than can be found in scientific journals.

And now I'll point to the transcript of a television show that has an interview with Dario-Andri Schworer, in which he discusses the IPCC's use of his reference :D  Or you can watch it here:

Anthony continues (my bold italics):

Mainstream climate skeptics admit there has been warming in the last century, CO2 has an effect, but that the issue has been propped up by biased surface temperature measurements and oversold by activist scientists (such as Mann) and the media, since we have seen that climate sensitivity has been observed to be significantly lower than claims by computer models.

Anthony's claim about climate sensitivity could be described as "side-stepping peer-reviewed literature".  It's a bald statement and in any case it makes no sense.  Climate models don't make claims.  Scientists and science deniers may "make claims" but climate models are just tools.  Very sophisticated tools but tools nonetheless.  (A very different and much less sophisticated tool is Anthony Watts.)

Anthony Watts' Lysenko-style conspiracy ideation

Anthony foolishly writes (my bold italics):

Since they are slowly losing the argument as nature keeps adding years to “the pause” in global warming, what Dr. Mann and Dr. Lewandowsky are doing is engaging in suppression of dissent.

That's just silly.  Has Anthony Watts' dissent been suppressed? No?  Then who or what dissent is being suppressed?  He doesn't say.  What he could be arguing is that Professors Mann and Lewandowsky are so all-powerful that they control not only the world's media but all the little science-attacking blogs on the internet.  The evidence shows otherwise.

But Anthony is busy proving the paper correct, writing:

Their tactic is exactly the same thing that went on in communist Soviet Union with dissenters. It is called Political abuse of psychiatry. Psychiatry was used as a tool to eliminate political opponents (“dissidents”) who openly expressed beliefs that contradicted official dogma. Dissenters were labeled as having a form of mental illness that needed to be cured. We all know how that turned out. The Soviet Union is no more.

Aha!  Anthony's promoting the old Lysenko theory again!  Anthony Watts likens the publication of a paper to Stalinist Russia! The circle is complete!

(Is Anthony forecasting the demise of the USA with his "the Soviet Union is no more"?)

From the WUWT comments

The comments section is bursting with conspiracy ideation and attribution of unimaginable power and influence to just two scientists - Professors Lewandowsky and Mann.  The WUWT commenters largely ignore the other authors of the paper and focus in on the two whose names they recognise, except for one or two mentions of Elizabeth Loftus. (Comments are archived here.)

pablo an ex pat says:

November 1, 2013 at 10:47 am
Looks like projection to me too

David Johnson says:

November 1, 2013 at 10:49 am
It is beyond parody

daviditron says:

November 1, 2013 at 10:50 am
The clearest case of projection I’ve seen in a while.

Pat Michaels is digging for something and says:

November 1, 2013 at 10:50 am
I’m betting that his email shows how much he received from Fenton for RealClimate. Mann does not work for free.

007 says Michael E Mann has wielded enormous power right from when he was only seven years old!:

November 1, 2013 at 11:01 am
Funny he doesn’t mention the millions who’ve died from malaria due to the de facto ban on DDT (instigated by people like Mike Mann and in the absence of sound scientific evidence).

gopal panicker says:

November 1, 2013 at 11:03 am
they are using the tobacco industry as a straw man…if they have the truth they should welcome questions…these guys are now paranoid

Oldseadog says:

November 1, 2013 at 11:17 am
Mann et al are guilty of assisting in the deaths of countless third world people by making sure that £Billions are spent needlessly in useless research regarding CAGW.
Kettle, black, pot, calling, the. Rearrange to suit.

andrewmharding says:

November 1, 2013 at 12:29 pm
I have said this on WUWT several times before, AGW is now a belief, no different to a belief in astrology or witchcraft. The science of AGW ended when the world stubbornly refused to warm for 17 years as it was predicted to do by the computer models.
Mann and Lewandowsky are like rats in a corner with a cat coming towards them, hence the squeals. Their squeals though are not of terror, but of spite and self-righteous indignation to those who would dare have the temerity to question their beliefs. One thing is certain though, the louder and the more shrill the squeals, the more certain we can be that the whole rotten mess they have concocted is falling around their ears and more importantly, their wallets!

Tim Clark says:

November 1, 2013 at 12:44 pm
HEY LEW,
You’re sick.
Because you have to be proven correct to maintain self-esteem and the CAGW bandwagon is crumbling, your fragile ego is shattered.
Self loathing has caused you to become bitter with hatred.
Seek professional help, please.
Tim

Dr Burns rejects Anthony Watts' own statement about what "mainstream climate skeptics admit" and says:

November 1, 2013 at 12:49 pm
“Mainstream climate skeptics admit there has been warming in the last century, CO2 has an effect, but …” No they don’t. Where is the evidence that atmospheric CO2 concentration is not an effect of warming oceans rather than a cause ?

SanityP, in among the 150-odd comments to date about what Professor Lewandowsky and Mann et al wrote, says:

November 1, 2013 at 1:24 pm
Nobody actually cares what Messieurs Mann and Lewandowsky actually think about anything.

bushbunny says:

November 1, 2013 at 8:12 pm
You know if this came to trial, how many scientists will test their hypothesis a lot more than 99.

DirkH has particular criteria for determining when he is being lied to and says (excerpt):

November 1, 2013 at 6:17 pm
Well, I grew up near the Iron Curtain and we were able to receive DDR television.
When I hear that 97% of people agree on something I know I’m being lied to. (The DDR’s ruling party SED hat that kind of election result.)

Jim Clarke does his own amateur psychological analysis, singling out - you guessed it - Michael Mann and says (excerpt):

November 1, 2013 at 8:29 pm
I have recently been learning about Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), due to an unfortunate relationship in my personal life. As I read the above paper, I could not help but see some similarities to the disorder, particularly with Prof. Mann. I am certainly in no position to make a diagnosis. Not only do I lack the necessary qualifications, but I know practically nothing about the authors outside of their published statements. 

---

Note to commenters:  As HotWhopper readers know, I have a very liberal comment policy.  It will be more tightly enforced for this article.  I will not allow this article to be used as a springboard for resurrecting old denier memes about climategate emails or to post conspiratorial rants about Recursive Fury or NASA faked the moon landing or similar.  (This is despite the fact that any such comments would most likely support the findings of these papers and the paper discussed in the above article. )

Denier weirdness: Inane comments from science deniers make "news" at WUWT

This week Anthony Watts posted two articles relating to climate science deniers complaining about climate science.  What intrigues me is what is it about mundane comments denying global warming that warrants raising them to "article" status?  Why does Anthony consider these items newsworthy?

Paul Caruso rejects climate science for no apparent reason

The first one was a few days ago (archived here). Paul Caruso finds it hard to accept the fact that global warming is happening and has gone to the effort of writing up a swag of generic denier memes in a book form.  He's trying to sell his book on Amazon.  I didn't buy the book but if the free reading pages are any indication, it consists of copies of the sort of comments one sees daily on climate science denying sites like WUWT.  Here's a sample of Paul Caruso's inaninities:

• I don't deny the climate is changing - I just think that it is a bit of natural variation.
• The climate has been changing for the past 4.5 billion years so I would be much more worried if it had stopped changing
• Believers in catastrophic global warming have taken to calling us 'climate change deniers' to try and imply some similarity with holocaust deniers or pro-tobacco campaigners.

All of the above are quite silly.  The first two are dumb as and need no further comment.  The last one demonstrates a lack of English language skills.  From the Oxford Dictionary:

Paul Caruso makes up stuff

If that's not enough for readers to see the chap is a very ordinary run-of-the-mill climate science denier, here is another example of shoddiness. Paul Caruso falsely accuses Joe Romm of calling for deniers to be "strangled in their beds".  Joe Romm has never said anything like that.  The "strangled" comment was made by a commenter on Climate Progress back in June 2009.  Dr Romm deleted the comment, writing quite clearly and plainly that he did not agree with it:

[JR: I have not expected all of these comments and not had a chance to go through them in some detail until now (Saturday). As the TOS allow, I am editing this comment. I would note the author elaborates on what he means below. The original was clearly not a threat but a prediction -- albeit one that I certainly do not agree with. Since some people misread it, I am editing it.]

(Compare that with some of the WUWT comments I've copied below!)

Based on what I've read, I'd say Paul Caruso is a sensitive chap who suffers badly from confirmation bias and feels dejected that nobody takes his rejection of climate science seriously.

He's not above making up stuff to support his rejection of science.

He is short on critical thinking and long on denier memes.  He wrote his book to let off steam, that's about it.  There is nothing to indicate the book has anything in it that hasn't already said a zillion times all over the internet. I imagine the only people who'll buy his book will be those who think they way he does.

A plea for evidence - huh?  What world does he inhabit?

How many times have you read a fake sceptic write something like what Paul Caruso writes:

...publish some verifiable empirical evidence that supports your argument...if you can persuade me that a 4/100th of a percent (sic) of the atmosphere is the control knob for the entire planet's temperature...

Of all the sciences I doubt there is any field of research in which more effort has gone into explaining it to all the myriad audiences.  Even the least able like Paul Caruso.

How many times have you fallen for this sort of rhetoric and pointed the Paul Caruso's to an IPCC report, or to SkepticalScience.com or realclimate.org or to a basic description of how greenhouse gases work or to that excellent AGU video by Professor Richard Alley on carbon dioxide as the control knob?  Only to have them reply "I don't believe it" or come back with the same inane request over and over again.

People like Paul Caruso are not interested in learning about science.  They are too busy rejecting what they can't be bothered to learn and understand.

Jim Cripwell rejects basic climate science

The second WUWT article was posted by Anthony Watts earlier today.  He plucked it out and copied it from one of his many blog comments from climate science deniers and raised it to the status of a blog article. Here is some of what Anthony Watts wrote with slight reformatting by me to make it easier to follow (archived here):

WUWT reader Jim Cripwell writes in a comment

I’m so annoyed with this…From today’s GWPF, I find http://www.thegwpf.org/uk-government-no-global-cooling-centuries/ I quote:

“The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Baroness Verma) (Con): The UK government has made substantial investment in research that concerns the likelihood and timing of future changes in global and regional climate.

All of the climate models and policy-relevant pathways of future greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions considered in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) recent Fifth Assessment Report show a long-term global increase in temperature during the 21st century is expected. In all cases, the warming from increasing greenhouse gases significantly exceeds any cooling from atmospheric aerosols. Other effects such as solar changes and volcanic activity are likely to have only a minor impact over this timescale”

So, presumably the UK Met. Office used the IPCC models to prepare this reply. It is given in the House of Lords, by a Peer of the Realm, so by the rules of the British Parliament, it OUGHT to be accurate. Since the climate models are completely incapable of producing accurate predictions, the answer given by Baroness Verma is little more than a pack of lies.

Jim Cripwell accused the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of telling a "pack of lies".  I read Jim's quote a few times and couldn't find a single word that could be described as a lie.  Jim is another person, like Paul Caruso, who just cannot accept the findings of climate science.  Neither can Anthony Watts, which is why he created his science/scientist-attacking blog and maybe why he elevated Jim's comment.

As for why I bothered to write this article?  I really don't know.  Maybe it's just that I find it intriguing that Anthony Watts thinks it newsworthy that there are mundane climate science deniers who make inane and wrong comments about global warming.

From the WUWT comments

These are responses to Anthony Watts' article about Jim Cripwell rejecting climate science (archived here).  Go back and read the quote above (the bit in italics).  It is short, to the point and factual.  There is nothing in it that should have prompted any comment at all, let alone complaint.

Now read the comments below - and these are just a sample!  The comments show quite clearly the audience Anthony Watts blog targets.  Cranks is not a bad description.


Admad says:

October 31, 2013 at 2:49 pm
All Ican think is to force a Judicial Review – if a lawyer could be found to act pro bono.

Cheshirered says:

October 31, 2013 at 3:05 pm
The good Baroness has almost certainly uttered her own epitaph, perhaps along the lines of Dr David ‘children won’t know what snow is’ Viner.
She’ll be hung out to dry on this falsifiable statement. Tough.

geran says:

October 31, 2013 at 3:25 pm
Monckton, get in there and straighten this out, before tea time tomorrow, of course.
(Oh yeah, you can use shackles, chains, and other devices as necessary.)

J Martin says:

October 31, 2013 at 4:08 pm
The good baroness merely consulted the usual soothsayers, and so remains ignorant of the impending reality. And as for, we have another 10,000 years to go before the Holocene ends, I can only think that the British Antarctic Survey can’t been to the Antarctic recently. This has been looked at and debunked. Perhaps she got her nautical vessels mixed up and consulted the crew languishing in Murmanski jails.

If flip flop Lockwood’s current line of research holds up then this period of cooling we about to embark on will be the most rapid since the last glaciation. Something that is hardly suggestive of the Holocene holding out for a further 10,000 years. I appreciate that Milankovitch orbital variation shows a slower decent than the last few glaciations, but not sufficient to support the idea that we may get a further 10,000 years.

We don’t need to drop all the way into a glaciation, which can be a drop of 10 degrees, before we can no longer grow food in the Northern hemisphere.

Tiburon says:

October 31, 2013 at 4:26 pm
And I suppose that Mammoths found flash-frozen in the Arctic with stomachs full of undigested roughage and in need of toothpicks for the flowers between their teeth, count for nothing in this confident projection of “10,000 years till the next glaciation”.
Clowns. Hubris-tic Clowns.
We don’t have the faintest grasp (yet) of what drives Climate, in our Electric Universe.
But we can be pretty certain it ‘ain’t us’.
“They Want To Blame You”. Get ready for it. Diocletian’s Problem, Reaction, Solution applies, full force (Cloward-Piven; Agenda 21; All Aboard to Save the Planet)…and it’s Us against Them.

JimF says:

October 31, 2013 at 4:28 pm
When can we start measuring these dumkoffs and criminals for their pink prison suits, a la Sherriff Joe’s Arizona brigade?

philjourdan says:

October 31, 2013 at 6:00 pm
With all due respect, no one in authority is going to speak out against it. The relationship between alarmists and governments is incestuous. The alarmists provided a great excuse to curtail liberties. But it is failing. Governments had the means in their hands, but now it is slipping away, so they are doubling down (both sides – government and alarmists – as evidenced by the lack of science and the proliferation of spite and vindictiveness). They won a couple of hands at the poker table, but are losing now, and throwing more money hoping for a change of luck.

troe says:

October 31, 2013 at 6:29 pm
They will stop spewing this lunacy when we are able to attach a political price tag to it. Not a minute before.

John Whitman says:

October 31, 2013 at 8:25 pm
Jim Cripwell,
Yes, the news you pointed out is maddening.
At least we have the GWPF being invaluable by giving us this kind of news reporting, though it is maddening news.
Without the likes of organizations like the GWPF we might be complacent. They give us what we need to focus on.
Lindzen is one of the notable associates of the GWPF as is Ridley; among many other notables.
John

Chad Wozniak is still waiting for global cooling and says:

October 31, 2013 at 10:31 pm
It will take someth8ing I really don’t want to wish for, because of the injury it will do to so many – but the only thing that I believe is likely to stop this madness is a series of 15 or 20 years of crushingly cold winters and weak summers.

Gobsmacked! Dumbest article of the day at WUWT

Where does Anthony Watts find his cranks**? I don't know who Neil Catto is but he wrote probably one of the silliest, and shortest, articles that WUWT has seen in - oh, maybe several hours!

This is some of what he wrote (archived here):

As part of this presentation I point out that the temperature from 1659 to 2012 has only increased 0.87 Deg C in 353 years, or equivalent to 0.025 Deg C/decade. Considering this is a recovery period from the Little Ice Age it is hardly surprising and just part of natural variation. At this stage I normally get a few “really?” questions.

“The UK MetOffice’s own figures”, I reply.

The other day however was a bit different, someone in the audience asked “so how long will it take to get to the dangerous 2 Degrees C?”

Pause, why hadn’t I worked that one out before? Quick calculation done, 800 years I replied.
“Say again?”

I recalculate, and say “800 years given the current trend”. Gobsmacked audience!

I'm thinking the audience was gobsmacked at the stupidity of Neil's response.  Or maybe that they attended a lecture by someone so silly. Or maybe at him presuming that Central England is the same as the whole world. Or maybe that if he's pretending that has anything to do with global surface temperature trends, he's misrepresenting global warming when he claims that's "equivalent to 0.025 Deg C/decade".

I've discussed the central  England record before, here and here and here and elsewhere.  It's also been pointed out by a knowledgeable reader that the early HadCET data is not reliable, though interesting for historical reasons.  Here is decadal data from the mid-17th century.  I've shaded the "unreliable" time period.  As usual, you can click to see it larger.

Data source: HadCET

Now here is decadal data from 1771 onwards, the time that the record is deemed more reliable.  What you'll see in the animated gif are linear regressions for different periods:- 1771 to the present, 1771 to 1870 and 1871 to the present.  These trend lines are not the same as simply joining a line between two data points like Neil Catto did.

Data source: HadCET

You'll notice that there's not a discernible trend from 1771 to 1870, the R² is close to zero. After that the temperature starts to go up. And for the past three decades the temperature has been really high with the decadal mean consistently above the twentieth century average.

So let's go back to what Neil Catto wrote.  He said:

the temperature from 1659 to 2012 has only increased 0.87 Deg C in 353 years

The only way he could have jumped to that conclusion was by ignoring all the years in between.  In 1659 the mean temperature is listed as 8.83 degrees and in 2012 the mean temperature is listed as  9.7 degrees.  So that's where he got his "0.87" from.  But if you look at the chart you'll see why that's not an indication of the changes over the period.  (And that's leaving aside the fact that the first 110 years or so of the record is not considered to be reliable.)

What else does Neil Catto claim?  Oh, that's right.  His gobsmacking calculation.  He said it would take 800 years for the temperature to rise 2 degrees "given the current trend".

But which trend is he using?  It's not the current trend.  All he's done is draw a straight line connecting the 1659 data point to the 2012 data point.

In fact, using his methodology I could do another calculation.  The average temperature in 2010 for central England was 8.83 degrees.  In 2012 it was 9.7 degrees.  That's a rise of 0.87 degrees in two years or 0.435 degrees a year.  So at that rate, the temperature would take 4.6 years for the temperature to rise by two degrees.  What does that make it - around July 2016!

Wouldn't you agree that the "trend" from 2010 to 2012 is a lot more "current" than the "trend" from 1659 to 2012 :)

Neil Catto computed a fake trend by arbitrarily picking two years, drawing a line between them and calling it a "current trend".  Here are some more "current trends" for him to think about:

Data source: HadCET

A final word about Central England

Central England is not the entire world.  It's a small area of land in a small island in the North Atlantic Ocean.  That's all.

From WUWT Comments

A few choice comments from the WUWT illiterati (archived here).


Janice Moore grovels in her usual fashion (when she's not mouthing off at people) and says:

October 30, 2013 at 10:47 pm
Hear, hear!
Well done. Thank you for all the time and effort you have dedicated to prevent Envirostalinist tyranny. John Milton would have written a sonnet in your honor, O Valiant Defender of Our Liberties.

Crispin in Waterloo says hopefully:

October 30, 2013 at 11:06 pm
Heh-heh. Well done. And the time will be extended further by 2016. At some point late in my lifetime it may reach the point of ‘never’.

Steve Cords says he's not bothered:

October 30, 2013 at 11:21 pm
One can also ask, “Just what is the right temperature?” or “What is the temperature supposed to be?” Sea levels have risen 5 feet in the last 8,000 years (times and elevations approximate for discussion) and we are suddenly concerned about the last few inches.

Gerry Dorrian says:

October 31, 2013 at 12:38 am
Thank you for this. That this is the met Office’s figures is surely damning!

Peter Miller asks what happened to the conspiracy?:

October 31, 2013 at 1:24 am
I hope someone is hanging on to the original data here, as it sure looks like someone in the Establishment overlooked doing the usual ‘adjustments’.

Tim welham says he thinks there is still a conspiracy:

October 31, 2013 at 1:53 am
Anthony: I believe the CET published figures are ‘adjusted’ before release. Are they any more reliable?

William Astley says it's cooling (excerpt):

October 31, 2013 at 2:06 am
It gets better or worse depending on one’s view of whether lukewarm warming is or is not beneficial. It will take 800 years for the planet to warm 2C assuming 100% of the past warming was due to the increase in atmospheric CO2. Now if Shaviv’s calculation is correct (see attached link for details) and 75% (0.54C ± 0.12C) of the warming in the last 100 years was caused by solar magnetic cycle changes then the planet will cool roughly 0.5C if the very recent grand maximum of solar magnetic cycle activity is followed by a grand minimum. The cooling will last for 80 to 120 years.

Nick luke nitpicks in case an alarmist reads it:

October 31, 2013 at 3:40 am
Just a small quibble…0.87Deg/353years = 0.00246 X 100 = 0.246deg/century. Not 0.025deg/cent. Small typo, I know, but we moan at inaccuracies by the AGW proponents. It makes the difference between your, correct, 800 years and 8000 years…

Kevin Hearle seems to think he is going to live for at least another 637:

October 31, 2013 at 3:42 am
Mmmm so by 2650 we will see all the benefits of increased temperature provided we aren’t falling into a Maunder Minimum or worse which might be worth it to see the shock and horror on the face of Warmists

Chris Wright is oblivious to the fact that Central England had its two hottest years in the entire 353 year record in 2006 and 2011 and says "it's getting consistently colder":

October 31, 2013 at 4:40 am
If you zoom into the CET graph, it shows that the English climate has been rapidly and consistently getting colder since 2000. And it certainly feels colder.

**Cranks is apparently the mot du jour for climate science deniers.