What's his Agenda? Anthony Watts lets Tim Ball run riot with his crackpot conspiracy theories at WUWT

Anthony Watts is a bit of a nutter and he's posted some crackpot conspiracy theories in the past.  He's even added some of his own, musing he's about to be incarcerated in a psychiatric facility.  But today he goes for the conventional crackpot conspiracy theory. (Archived here, latest update here.)

Agenda 21, the master plan for the 21st Century

Tim Ball we know holds completely nutty conspiracy theories. He didn't make them up himself, you'll read them on any run-of-the-mill wacky conspiracy website.  You know - new world order; Maurice Strong is going to take over the world (at whatever age he must be now); Agenda 21; HAARP mind control (Anthony draws the line there - I wonder if he edited it out of Tim's article?)  Even Charles Darwin is part of Tim Ball's conspiracy theory.

Tim Ball's given an acronym to the Club of Rome - TCOR.  They are the brains behind this dastardly plot which involves Al Gore, James Hansen, Charles Darwin, Thomas Robert Malthus, Paul Erlich - it looks as if it could include not just anyone who has warned the world of the problems it faces, but also people who have been involved in addressing these problems.  Even people who died well before the Club of Rome was born!  Tim Ball doesn't credit anyone with finding solutions to the problems documented by the Club of Rome and Paul Erlich and others, like the Green Revolution or family planning or education.  Not at all.

Tim starts off with a misquote - conspiracy nutters and disinformers rely on misquotes and cherry picks because otherwise other conspiracy nutters might have their dim brain alerted to the fact that they something was askew.  Then again, dumb conspiracy nutters don't really care about details and rely on disinformation and misrepresentation (as well as confirmation bias and ideology among their readers).

Mistaking symptoms for causes

Here's Tim's misquote with his lead in, followed by the actual quote:

Global Warming was just one issue The Club of Rome (TCOR) targeted in its campaign to reduce world population. In 1993 the Club’s co-founder, Alexander King with Bertrand Schneider wrote The First Global Revolution stating,

“The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”

Here is the actual quote, from the book, The First Global Revolution ( H/t ClimateandStuff).  I've highlighted the differences.

The ploy of inventing a scapegoat

There are some earlier passages in the same chapter that are relevant to the sort of conspiracy theorising by science deniers that's often seen at WUWT.  For example:

So are conspiracy theorists merely filling a void?  Are they so in need of finding an enemy that they'll make them up out of thin air?  Here is the rest of the passage:

No. It's because science deniers cannot accept that there are real problems that we must address. Tim Ball, for example, is arguing that there are no problems brought about by the population explosion. He is painting as the "common enemy" the UN, the IPCC, Al Gore, James Hansen etc.  In fact Tim's enemies include anyone who is working to help humanity find solutions to common problems. 

Deniers have warped imagination

It's not that deniers have no imagination.  They have it in spades.  But their imagination is warped.  Tim Ball, for example, cannot imagine that an exponential rapid growth in population could cause any difficulties for humankind.  But he can imagine that James Hansen is the devil incarnate and Agenda 21 is "the master plan for the 21st Century".

Tim Ball cannot imagine that global warming is a "common threat which must be confronted by everyone together".  In his imagination, it "was structured to predetermine scientific proof that human CO2 was one contribution of the “common enemy”."  To do so, Tim Ball had to misquote the Club of Rome, which pointed out that to cast things like global warming as "the common enemy" is to mistake the symptoms for the cause.  He also has to reject physics and the science of the greenhouse effect.  Not bad for someone who claims to be a "climate scientist".

In my mother's lifetime (and she's still alive) the world has grown from less than two billion people to more than seven billion people.  When I was born there were only about 2.5 billion people in the world.  Since that time the world has managed to feed a lot of people, but a lot have died from starvation and fouled water and associated disease. 

Since the beginning of the Club of Rome, and in part because of the Club of Rome and others who spoke out, agricultural scientists have found ways to lift the productivity of food crops (eg the green revolution). There have been massive family planning programs and education programs and health programs such as immunisation.  Recycling programs are still pretty pathetic and waste production has yet to be brought under control - largely because all that's been addressed has been the waste disposal end.  The waste production end has barely been tackled (except for making some packaging biodegradable.)

If it had been left to conspiracy theorists like the Tim Ball's and Anthony Watts of the world, we would all be in a fine pickle - those of us who'd survived.

But what gets me is the 'monsterising' of people who are doing good in the world.  What good have conspiracy theorists ever done?  What good are the mad ravings of Anthony Watts and Tim Ball and the potty peer Christopher Monckton and other nutters?  What good has Judith Curry ever done by her demonising of science and putting nutters on a pedestal.

HotWhopper exists to demolish disinformation.  Denier weirdness is an understatement. It's nuts that some of the disinformation it comes across is as primitive as you find at WUWT.

Addendum

Prompted by the comments, I looked to see where else the Club of Rome book passage is misquoted.  I searched for "In searching for a new enemy to unite us" in place of the actual text "In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite" and checked it had the comma added by the conspiracy nuts in the last line of the quote.  I came across books that included the mangled quotation, which had titles like:

• The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power
• Prince of Darkness: Antichrist and the New World Order
• RISE OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER: The Culling of Man

That last book has the following blurb on Amazon (my para breaks and bold italics):

The same occult group of people who have been ruling over humanity for thousands of years continue to do so to this day. The one world government prophesized in the Bible is unfolding behind the scenes right under your nose as you read this, and was given the catchy name of the 'New World Order'.

Currently, the technology exists to fulfill all aspects of the Biblical prophecies regarding the End Times, including the resurrection of the Antichrist, who came up with the idea for the New World Order roughly 4,200 years ago. He will be brought back to life using modern DNA technology, fulfilling the prophecy of Revelation 17:8" " The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and will come up out of the Abyss and go to his destruction. The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast, because he once was, now is not, and yet will come."

I discuss all of this in my book, including who exactly the Antichrist is, how the New World Order started, who ran it through history, who runs it today, and what is to happen in the near future. I also go over how and why the Federal Reserve is a privately-owned, for-profit corporation. The same people who founded and own the Federal Reserve are the same people who founded the United Nations, the first incarnation of the Luciferian one world government. These same people were also responsible for starting the Civil War, World Wars I and II including the rise of Hitler, the Vietnam War, and on and on and on.

I am trying to wake up everybody I can with my book. It is not so much a reference book as it is an outline with commentary on what I personally believe is going on in the world. Judging from the emails I've received and the book reviews I've garnered here, I pretty much put the gist of the New World Order conspiracy into a 445 page book that you can read in a couple of days and be brought up to speed quickly.

They say we are known by the company we keep.  Anthony Watts and his followers bed down with the lunatic fringe. Anthony doesn't just keep company with them, he actively promotes their paranoid conspiracy theories.

Sou 5:30 pm Monday 6 January 2014 AEDST 

From the WUWT utter nuttery

There aren't a huge number of comments - maybe Tim Ball's extreme crackpottery is giving some of the usual suspects pause. (Archived here, latest update here with quite a few more comments from the nutty fringe at WUWT.)

MarkW says:

January 5, 2014 at 3:27 pm
GregS, I have never met anyone who promotes population growth for growth’s sake, so stop with the silly strawmen.

The only conceivable reason for stopping population growth would be if you could demonstrate that it is a problem. To date, no one has been able to do that, indeed, the opposite is probably true. As Julian Simon stated, more people means more minds working on the world’s problems.

TobiasN says (excerpt):

January 5, 2014 at 3:37 pm
CO2 is irrelevant. CAGW is the warmists way of praying. They simply do not know how to actually achieve what they really want.

Lil Fella from OZ says:

January 5, 2014 at 3:53 pm
I hope more people read this article than this blog. It demonstrates the wider battle the average person is up against, against the Left (I am Left because I can use your money to destroy your way of life!).

Leon Brozyna says:

January 5, 2014 at 4:12 pm
Taking their elitist thinking to its logical conclusion, they would view genocide as a viable option to reining in the growth of human population.

dbstealey says (excerpt):

January 5, 2014 at 4:21 pm
Cheyne Gordon says: “Family planning remains the most cost-effective technology we have for reducing poverty.”

Well, that is a completely wrong statement. Captialism is the most cost-effective effective technology we have for reducing poverty, bar none.

jim karlock says:

January 5, 2014 at 4:23 pm
I argue that resources also increase exponentially:
1-we explore more of the earth’s surface
2- We explore deeper in the earth
3 – we can recover less concentrated materials
4- we material more efficiently
Example: oil – deeper wells; fracking
thanks
jk

Faustino aka Genghis Cunn says:

January 5, 2014 at 6:07 pm
Dr Ball, the most worrying thing is that what you say has been demonstrated time after time, yet few are aware of it. They are therefore prone to accept the recurrent scare stories such as the population bomb and CAGW. How to counter this? One tactic I use is to get frequent letters on related topics published in Australia’s national newspaper, The Australian, whose readership is more likely to be interested in such issues than the population at large. I have one or two letters in most weeks, so have developed some credibility with the readers. Michael Cunningham.

More of the Ludicrous: Judith Curry's Eye-Catching Merchants of Doubt

Talk about ludicrous. While Anthony Watts and his WUWT followers are obsessed with a ship stuck in ice, with 16 of the past 47 articles devoted to that subject, I see that Judith Curry has gone into full-on science denying mode with her weekend "things that caught her eye".

Just look at what has caught her eye.  It's a short "who's who" of Merchants of Doubt. (Archived here.)

Richard Lindzen - fake sceptics are disorganised

The first thing that caught Judith's eye was a puff piece on Richard Lindzen, who has "gone emeritus" at MIT.  In the article it has such gaffes as this:

Judging by where we are now, he appears to have a point; so far, 150 years of burning fossil fuels in large quantities has had a relatively minimal effect on the climate. By some measurements, there is now more CO2 in the atmosphere than there has been at any time in the past 15 million years. Yet since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, the average global temperature has risen by, at most, 1 degree Celsius, or 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Relatively minimal effect?  If you call global surface temperatures rising faster than ever and on pace to rise ten times faster than in 65 million years as "relatively minimal" - right!  How's this for a "relatively minimal effect" - blue and green is where we've been and red is where we are heading:

Adapted from Jos Hagelaars

John McLean - of "2011 temperatures will be lower than 1956" infamy

Next Judith says that John McLean's article in the Age "caught her eye".  This is the same John McLean who co-authored the thoroughly discredited paper about ENSO and who predicted, in 2011, that surface temperatures in 2011 would drop to or below those of 1956!  Judith quoted this paragraph (just in case you doubted how far she's slithered):

The reality is that the IPCC is in effect little more than a UN-sponsored lobby group, created specifically to investigate and push the ”man-made warming” line. With no similar organisations to examine other potential causes of climate change, it’s only the IPCC voice that is heard. But the IPCC’s voice isn’t heard in context and with all the necessary caveats; it’s distorted via the UNFCCC and others who imply that the IPCC is the sole scientific authority on climate matters.

Goodness only knows why The Age gave John McLean a voice.  It doesn't make a habit of giving column space to cranks.  The article is archived here.  No point encouraging The Age.  It is just a muted conspiracy theory about the UN and the IPCC playing a giant hoax on the human race.  (Are all fake sceptics sexist? I hate to admit it, but I reckon women have something to do with "keeping the coal-fires burning".  It's not all man-made.)

Pat Michaels - science is "flashy" therefore wrong

Next Judith hails professional disinformer Pat Michaels, who writes an article with no substance and lots of innuendo - re-published on the Cato Institute website. He's arguing that because the flashy journals publish flashy research, then denier research doesn't get a guernsey or some such nonsense. His logic goes like this:

• Science and Nature are biased to the flashy
• Pat Michaels sorted the climate articles in these journals into piles and decided that most climate articles were "worse".
• Therefore, he argues, all climate papers are biased into "worse"
• Therefore, he argues, this "creates horrific effects, especially when the issues are policy-related."

Empty nonsense. No-one but the Judith Curry's of the world would promote Pat Michaels gumpf.

David Gelernter likens science to the Catholic Church of the 16th century 

Can it get more ludicrous?  Yes, indeed.  Judith's eye got caught on an article in CommentaryMagazine by David Gelernter. (Judith left her reading glasses behind and called him David Gelemter, twice).  David is a computer scientist working at Yale.  He was attempting to wax philosophical about the human brain or the mind and how it's different from a computer.  Fair enough - it is.  But the wax melts and runs randomly in weird directions when David writes a lot of stuff and nonsense like this:

That science should face crises in the early 21st century is inevitable. Power corrupts, and science today is the Catholic Church around the start of the 16th century: used to having its own way and dealing with heretics by excommunication, not argument.

Science deals with heretics by excommunication?  I guess Judith is feeling the pain of heresy.

Science needs reasoned argument and constant skepticism and open-mindedness. But our leading universities have dedicated themselves to stamping them out—at least in all political areas. We routinely provide superb technical educations in science, mathematics, and technology to brilliant undergraduates and doctoral students. But if those same students have been taught since kindergarten that you are not permitted to question the doctrine of man-made global warming, or the line that men and women are interchangeable, or the multiculturalist idea that all cultures and nations are equally good (except for Western nations and cultures, which are worse), how will they ever become reasonable, skeptical scientists? They’ve been reared on the idea that questioning official doctrine is wrong, gauche, just unacceptable in polite society. (And if you are president of Harvard, it can get you fired.)

I bet that para got Judith all tingly, especially the bit about "the doctrine of man-made global warming" - which is kinda funny since it shows how gauche is David Gelernter.  Now I don't know anything about the main contention of David Gelernter, but I did come across a blog article that had a different take on the events he is so up in arms about:

Finally, have a look at this piece, in Commentary by Yale computer scientist David Gelernter. It’s a long and angry rant about materialist approaches to consciousness and philosophy of mind. The part that really jumped at me is this, which I’ll quote at length:

(I'll skip over most of the quote - and just post these bits. You can read the full article here:)

the chaos was on display in the ugliness occasioned by the publication of Thomas Nagel’s Mind & Cosmos in 2012....Nagel was immediately set on and (symbolically) beaten to death by all the leading punks, bullies, and hangers-on of the philosophical underworld. Attacking Darwin is the sin against the Holy Ghost that pious scientists are taught never to forgive. 

And here is how Jason Rosenhouse sees it:

From reading that description, you could be forgiven for not realizing that the actual sequence of events surrounding Nagel’s book was this:

Nagel published his book.

Various knowledgeable people wrote critical reviews of the book, in which they pointed out the many flaws in Nagel’s arguments.

Whiny right-wingers likened this to a lynch mob that beat Nagel to death (if only symbolically).

Actual lynch mobs were in the habit of torturing and murdering people. Nagel’s critics merely wrote essays suggesting that he wrote a bad book. Those behaviors do not seem comparable to me.

Why do so few academics want anything to do with modern conservatism? Because being a conservative nowadays requires denying reality, and having a sense of victimization so profound that seeing your book criticized is the same as being lynched. That’s why.

Remind you of anyone?  Fake sceptics often complain long and loudly that they are wronged for rejecting science. Judith Curry herself, you may recall, complained that "Hotwhopper's interpretation of pretty much anything I say is IMO ludicrous."  This despite the fact that I unwittingly said pretty much the same as Bart Verheggen about which Judith apparently had no complaint.

Just look at the Lindzen puff piece above for another example.

A need to generate fear, in Lindzen’s telling, is what’s driving the apocalyptic rhetoric heard from many climate scientists and their media allies. “The idea was, to engage the public you needed an event .  .  . not just a Sputnik—a drought, a storm, a sand demon. You know, something you could latch onto. [Climate scientists] carefully arranged a congressional hearing. And they arranged for [James] Hansen [author of Storms of My Grandchildren, and one of the leading global warming “alarmists”] to come and say something vague that would somehow relate a heat wave or a drought to global warming.” (This theme, by the way, is developed to characteristic extremes in the late Michael Crichton’s entertaining 2004 novel State of Fear, in which environmental activists engineer a series of fake “natural” disasters to sow fear over global warming.) 

Lindzen also says that the “consensus”—the oft-heard contention that “virtually all” climate scientists believe in catastrophic, anthropogenic global warming—is overblown, primarily for structural reasons. “When you have an issue that is somewhat bogus, the opposition is always scattered and without resources,” he explains. “But the environmental movement is highly organized. There are hundreds of NGOs. To coordinate these hundreds, they quickly organized the Climate Action Network, the central body on climate. There would be, I think, actual meetings to tell them what the party line is for the year, and so on.” Skeptics, on the other hand, are more scattered across disciplines and continents. As such, they have a much harder time getting their message across.

Lindzen is arguing, I think, it's not logical at all - that "bogus" science is better organised than fake sceptics' "science".  (Like ecologists and biologists are better organised than creationists.  And round-earthers are better organised than flat-earthers. And immunologists are better organised than anti-vaxxers.)  What he probably means is that most fake sceptics don't do science therefore they don't feature much in the scientific literature. He uses words like "bogus" and "apocalyptic" and argues that fake sceptics can't get access to funding.  And he implies that the Climate Action Network leads the science, instead of responding to the science.

To Bob Tisdale - thanks for the magical oceans hypothesis

Next to last, Judith thanks Bob Tisdale for his careful analysis underpinning his magical ocean hypothesis and his rejection of the greenhouse effect.  She doesn't use those words, but since that's what Bob is all about, that's what she is thanking him for.

Climate Science and Eugenics

To cap it off, in the comments Judith links to this article by Ben Pile, in which he compares climate scientists to "eugenicists of mid 20th Century Europe and America", writing: "Ben Pile has a very interesting addition to the scientist-advocacy debate."

Yeah - about as interesting as an article by dilettante "interpreter of interpretations" James Delingpole. (I've written about Ben Pile's fantastic hypotheses before.)

On Merchants of Doubt

Finally and fittingly, the last thing that caught Judith's eye is Merchants of Doubt (as are all the previous people who caught Judith's eye).  Judith is flummoxed by the fact (saying "I kid you not") that Jeff Skoll is making a film about Merchants of Doubt.  Why is she "not kidding you"? She doesn't say, as usual, leaving it up to the imagination of her coterie of fans.  Judith is a latecomer to that news.

The Balance

If you were waiting for Judith Curry to inject some balance to counter the false balance - she disappointed.

Th-th-th-that's all folks!

2013 the fourth hottest year in the UAH record

This won't be pleasing news to anyone, let alone the deniers at WUWT.  From WUWT (archived here):

2013 was the fourth warmest year in the satellite era, trailing only 1998, 2010 and 2005, according to Dr. John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. The warmest areas during the year were over the North Pacific and the Antarctic, where temperatures for the year averaged more than 1.4 C (more than 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than normal. There were small areas of cooler than normal temperatures scattered about the globe, including one area over central Canada where temperatures were 0.6 C (about 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit) cooler than the 30-year norm.

The Antarctic was much warmer than 'normal'

All sorts of things should shake the faith of the denialati, not least of which is the fact that according to UAH analysis, the Antarctic was one of the warmest areas -  where temperatures for the year averaged more than 1.4 C (more than 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than normal.

After all their recent ravings over sea ice around Antarctica, that should have given the deniers at WUWT pause.

I've done a quick chart of annual UAH annual global lower troposphere temperature anomalies, up to and including 2013:

Data Source: UAH

Addendum - RSS and UAH

I've included HadCRUT below, here is RSS and UAH together, for the sake of completeness.  GISTemp isn't out yet. They are fairly closely aligned, at least up until a couple of years ago. [Sou 10:19 am 5 Jan 14 AEDST]

Data Sources: UAH and RSS

Update

I've made minor corrections to the charts, using the latest data from UAH. [Sou 11:33 am 5 January 2014 AEDST]

Despite this, the denial continues - from the WUWT comments

Lots of comments of the type "I don't believe it" and "it's about to cool down" and even "warmer = cooling". You've got to admit that WUWT houses a lot of utter nutters.

RichardLH says:

January 3, 2014 at 12:30 pm
Given that we appear to be at the top of a well observed 60 year cycle then this is not unexpected. The real question is ‘How much down from here do we go and for how long?”.

Gareth Phillips queries Richard and says:

January 3, 2014 at 12:37 pm
The point is Richard, the trend remains upwards.It may be a small amount, but it is still rising, not falling or staying still. Is there any objective evidence that we are at a peak and the trend will reverse?

To which RichardLH replies (excerpt, quotes removed):

January 3, 2014 at 12:41 pm
Well the HadCrut4 says there is a 60 year and we are at the top of it.
The UAH says the same (though with only data since 1979 you can only see half a cycle).
What evidence do you have that this is an upward trend? It looks very, very cyclic to me.

Let's look at HadCRUT4 to see just how we are now at temperatures of sixty years ago. I've animated with UAH superimposed as well - with a 1981-2010 baseline:

Data Sources: UAH and UK Met Office Hadley Centre

Nope - we should surely be at the temperatures of 1953 if all that affected climate was a sixty year cycle. But no, we're not. And no-one's likely to see surface temperatures of the 1950s for at least tens of thousands of years, barring supervolcanic eruptions or some other cataclysmic event.

Incidentally, in HadCRUT4, 2013 is the eighth hottest year on record, after (in order)  2010, 2005, 1998, 2003, 2006, 2009 and 2002.

JimS demands a recount from science deniers Roy Spencer and John Christy and says:

January 3, 2014 at 1:03 pm
I find that very hard to believe, quite frankly – 2013 being the 4th warmest year in the last 30 years. I demand a recount, or, perhaps the coolists should be given opportunity to “adjust” the figures, this time, eh?

WeatherOrNot doesn't understand anomalies and says:

January 3, 2014 at 1:12 pm
Is mean global average temperature data available, rather than just the anomaly? I’d be interested to know the trend for the actual average global temperature over the years.

LT says:

January 3, 2014 at 1:13 pm
It looks like UAH continues to deviate from the other global temperature datasets. Something seems off.

dp says that warming means it's cooling - huh?:

January 3, 2014 at 1:14 pm
Having that heat in the atmosphere above the north Pacific is a net cooling effect to the planet as the ocean heat passes through the air before making its way back the the dark regions of the universe. People are viewing this as a bad thing – I don’t understand that. Rejoice, people – that is what global cooling looks like.

Steve from Rockwood rides a cycle and says:

January 3, 2014 at 1:28 pm
If there is such a thing as a 60 year cycle then using a 30 year average for the negative half of the 60 year cycle and then claiming that 2001-2013 are the warmest years is … well … entirely expected. With the positive peak of a 60 year cycle centered around 2005 anything other than 12 of 13 years being 2001 or later would be very unusual – like 1998 which shouldn’t be there (we all know why it is an exception). It seems as though the world is unfolding as it should.

Steven Mosher posts a challenge to deniers and says:

January 3, 2014 at 1:35 pm
Time for all you sun nuts and PDO fans to place your bets.
we are at solar max.. If the sun is the cause then its time to make predictions

justsomeguy31167 goes for "it's a conspiracy" of the "gremlins in the satellite" type and and says:

January 3, 2014 at 2:03 pm
Since you get your data from NASA, any chance it is “pre-cooked” Hansen and Gavin?

bazza  misunderstood the ABC, thinking that "since 1889" means it was hot in 1889, not realising it means "since records began in 1889" (in that part of Queensland) and says:

January 3, 2014 at 2:36 pm
The abc here in australia are obsessed with the hot weather we are getting in qld at the moment.They spent most of the news talking about it no mention of the extream cold in the us.At one point in the show they had a [so called] weather expert on and with great joy he said it has not been this hot since 1889 scary scary we are all going to fry.My question is what made it so hot in 1889?it was not SUVs and air con, trust me the weather is no different now than it was in the 1950s.When will this global warming madness end?so we can stop spending billions of dollars on stupid research projects like that fiasco in antarctica with there ship stuck in the ice that they claim is not there.

This is for bazza courtesy HotWhopper and the Bureau of Meteorology:

Adapted from: Australian Bureau of Meteorology

Bob Grise applies the logical fallacy of argument from incredulity when he says:

January 4, 2014 at 12:25 am
You look at all this massive ice at the poles and all that mass of water in the oceans and then do some math. The population of man per square mile of Earth is only 35, or one person per 18 acres. How the heck did that influence climate, or the amount of ice at the poles in any given year? It can’t be possible. This is nature at work. Natural variation. We have very little to no control.

Arno Arrak writes a very long post, of which the following excerpt is probably the gist of it. Step warming happened but it isn't really warming. (My para breaks and bold italics.)

January 3, 2014 at 5:07 pmThis way of calculating temperature is all wrong. What happened is that the 1998 super El Nino brought so much warm water across the ocean that it created a step warming immediately following it. That step warming raised global temperature by 0.3 degrees Celsius and then stopped. This 0.3 degrees rise looked like another El Nino at first but the temperature rise it created became a permanent addition to global temperature, starting with the year 2002. As a result, all 21st century temperatures sit on a high platform created by this step warming. It is a pretty level platform too, judging by the fact that global mean temperature has stayed the same throughout this century.

Just comparing twenty-first to twentieth century temperatures will give the impression that some kind of warming is taking place which is wrong. Warming did happen but it was a step warming and is over.

But it did leave a permanent imprint on global temperature whose consequences we must account for. It is not clear why the temperature rise it created stayed at that high level instead of going back to the pre-1998 period. Superimposed upon this platform are the 2008 La Nina and the 2010 El Nino that are part of the ENSO oscillation. That super El Nino of 1998 was itself preceded by eighteen years of temperature standstill, just like the one we have now.

Hansen noticed the temperature increase and pointed out that the ten warmest years all happened in the twenty-first century. He was right of course but he did not understand the role of the step warming and jumped to the conclusion that CO2 was responsible.

The super El Nino and its aftermath are a climate mystery that should have been intensely investigated. Nothing like this has happened for more than a century. Instead we see billions of dollars wasted on trying to prove greenhouse warming which does not exist. These “experts” controlling the money don’t have a clue about 1998 and its aftermath. Real climate science just does not interest them

You can read more dross at the archived WUWT article.

Bob Tisdale asks the wrong people the wrong question @wattsupwiththat

Preamble

I started writing this after Bob Tisdale's article at WUWT about climate models (archived here).  Since then Bob has announced he is quitting full time hypothesising about leprechauns warming the oceans and has opted for more gainful employment.  He tells us that he's not able to earn a living from rejecting climate science. He warns that we haven't seen the last of his magical musings, it's just going to be on a part-time basis from here on in.

You'll note that Anthony Watts has implied at WUWT that none of "big oil" and "big coal" and Donor's Trust think much of Bob's "oceans warm by magic" and other equally silly hypotheses. (Archived here.)  They are more strategic with their political investments and don't waste money on mickey mouse denier bloggers preaching only to the denier chorus.  Their focus would be on trying to con normal people and influencing people of influence, not two-bit denier bloggers. (Click here for Robert Brulle's paper in Climatic Change, with 120 page supplement here. And here for the related article in Nature News.)

Greenhouse effect denier Bob Tisdale has come up with seven questions that he wants policy makers to put to climate scientists (archived here).  I don't know if he wants them to ask any or all climate scientists or only those who work with complex earth system models.  He doesn't say.  His article has the title:

Questions Policymakers Should Be Asking Climate Scientists Who Receive Government Funding

I'll argue that Bob is asking the wrong questions of the wrong people.  (I'd also argue that Perennially Puzzled Bob Tisdale is not in a position to be asking questions of anyone until he makes the effort to learn some basic science himself.)

What Bob does is complain that climate models aren't any good.  By that I think he means that climate models are not perfectly aligned with observations. I say to Bob, show me a model, any model, of anything, that is.

This article is long so I've put in a page break.  If' you're on the home page, click here to read on.

Reflections - with Carl Sagan

The WUWT kangaroo court is busy poring over blog posts from Antarctica, trying to find snippets that Anthony can use to justify the pre-emptive "Guilty" verdict WUWT pronounced a few days ago.  Shades of stolen emails, except the blogs are public.  It seems to be keeping them distracted for a while. (Not sure if they'll be moving on to pronounce "Guilty" verdicts for yachts that need rescuing or anyone else that dares a risky activity.)

Anyway this seems a good time to have a break of sorts.  To be inspired instead of despired :)

Credit: NASA

A couple of days ago someone tweeted a video (below) of Carl Sagan.  I've prefaced it with some of the words he spoke almost two decades earlier - which I expect readers are familiar with, to remind me that it pays to take a wider perspective from time to time.




Carl Edward Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996)

Those worlds in space are as countless as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the Earth. Each of those worlds is as real as ours. In every one of them, there's a succession of incidents, events, occurrences which influence its future. Countless worlds, numberless moments, an immensity of space and time.

And our small planet, at this moment, here we face a critical branch-point in the history. What we do with our world, right now, will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully affect the destiny of our descendants. It is well within our power to destroy our civilization, and perhaps our species as well.

If we capitulate to superstition, or greed, or stupidity we can plunge our world into a darkness deeper than time between the collapse of classical civilization and the Italian Renaissance.

But, we are also capable of using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology and our wealth, to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet. To enhance enormously our understanding of the Universe, and to carry us to the stars."

From Carl Sagan's Cosmos episode 8, "Journeys in Space and Time". (1980)

Carl Sagan - one of his last interviews

"This combustible mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later will blow up in our faces."

"A Science Icon Died 17 Years Ago. In His Last Interview, He Made A Warning That Gives Me Goosebumps."  Rajiv Narayan

WUWT Weather Games: Coldest day since 1974 vs hottest several days since 1906.

Anthony Watts has just posted an article (archived here) with the headline:

New record low set in the coldest city in the continental USA – much of the country headed for a deep freeze

Oh boy! We're heading for an ice age.

Thing is, his NEW RECORD LOW is for International Falls, Minnesota, USA.  Guess how long they've been keeping records - a whole forty years.  Yes, that's right.  According to this weather website:

This report describes the typical weather at the International Fa (International Falls, Minnesota, United States) weather station over the course of an average year. It is based on the historical records from 1974 to 2012. Earlier records are either unavailable or unreliable.

Over the course of a year, the temperature typically varies from -21°C to 25°C and is rarely below -33°C or above 30°C.

So what was the "record low" that was recorded?  It was cold.  Very cold.  It was -42ºF, breaking the previous cold record of -37ºF.  I'll translate for most of my readers - that's -41ºC with the previous record a well-below freezing cold of -38ºC.

Now while Anthony has in his hand a single town in the USA that had the coldest morning in forty years, in winter time, I'll raise him two countries including an entire continent with extremely hot temperatures, not just for a day - but for days on end.

Argentina

Argentina is only now experiencing relief after some areas have had the worst heat wave since records began.  When did the records begin, you ask?  They began not forty years ago, not fifty years ago, not one hundred years ago but one hundred and eight years ago - back in 1906.

And this isn't a single town we're talking about with a few hours of record heat.  This heat wave affected the large part of a nation and lasted more than a fortnight.  Okay, it might not seem that hot to some people with temperatures in the high thirties but in some parts it got into the mid-forties.  Argentina isn't used to these sort of temperatures and its power grid can't cope with the demand.

What happens in record heat waves?  Well it happened here too so I relate to the people of Argentina who can't use their air conditioners because of power cuts.  It's causing all sorts of problems for the nation, exacerbating political problems as well as daily living.  The power cuts have made people angry, stopped shops that should have benefited from the hot weather, like ice cream parlours, from being able to earn a crust.  Yep, expect more civil unrest in various parts of the world over coming decades. 

Australia 

Australia is reporting massive areas only now getting relief from a wave of heat that emerged in the west on Boxing day and shifted across the continent.  It brought temperatures in the low to high forties (102ºF to 114ºF) to large parts of Australia sparing only Victoria and Tasmania.  This is what it's been like - not from latte-sipping city slickers in air-conditioned luxury, but from tough people who live in the bush and have lived through all sorts of weather extremes.  (Australians tend toward understatement not exaggeration or over-exuberance.)

Queensland isn't out of the woods yet - it's still in the grip of the heat wave.  They aren't used to temperatures that high in the tropics.

This after Australia's Angry Summer last year, various "hottest days" on record and the hottest year on record - with no El Nino.

USA

I wonder why Anthony didn't report this hot spell last month, a bit closer to his home.

From the WUWT comments

Okay, let me have my fun.  Sometimes I get the impression that WUWT readers think that the USA is the entire world - except for Alaska which is sometimes hot when the rest of the country gets chilly and maybe Florida which has been warm and toasty.

John Eggert doesn't remember even a month ago, when the whole world had the hottest November on record. Or 2012 when the USA had its hottest year on record - and says:

January 2, 2014 at 7:50 am
This brings to mind a question to add to Bob Tisdale’s list. For 25 . . . years we’ve been promised . . . global warming. Where . . . is it? I want a refund. Profanity free, but can be added for effect. -35C this morning. “Normal” minimum is -17C. Wind chill is cheating and isn’t included in that.

IIRC it was only yesterday that it was pointed out that the "CAGW crowd" = deniers.  They are the only people who use the acronym.  I've never tried to measure the thickness of their skulls with a ruler. physics geek says:

January 2, 2014 at 8:52 am
2014 is setting out to be another inconvenient year for the CAGW crowd.
That presupposes that a) the weather and temperature will be honestly reported and b) that reality will somehow penetrate the overly thick skulls of the CAGW crowd. I would opine that no evidence exists for the latter supposition.

Monckton emits a silent scream - and gets the IPCC report wrong (as usual)

Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, otherwise known as the potty peer (among other things) is suffering memory loss.  Well, he probably always was batty so this will not come as a surprise to anyone.

Today Anthony Watts, who doesn't care what nonsense he publishes as long as it is anti-science, put up an article by Christopher Monckton that doesn't make a lot of sense. (Archived here.)

The headline reads:

IPCC silently slashes its global warming predictions in the AR5 final draft

Aside from being very late to the party, that's very odd for a couple of reasons.  First it implies that Christopher Monckton was hoping for a "talking" book from the IPCC.  Maybe so he could listen when he's on the train or maybe because his eyesight is failing.  Could someone tell Christopher that there are software programs around that will read text aloud.  All he needs is a computer with speakers or headphones and he can hear the sounds.

Secondly, Christopher can't have read the report properly if he thinks that global warming predictions have been "slashed".  Here is how Ed Hawkins responded:

@latimeralder @wattsupwiththat (1) This is the first 'prediction' the IPCC has made. (2) Observations within range of previous projections.
— Ed Hawkins (@ed_hawkins) January 2, 2014

As Ed Hawkins explained rather clearly and well - oh, more than three months ago now (Christopher is also behind the times):

The AR5 includes, for the first time, a specific chapter and assessment on ‘near-term’ climate change, which covers the period up to 2050, but with a specific focus on the 2016-2035 period.

The near-term period is interesting because the projections can be verified rather soon and because understanding the changes over this period may be relevant for adaptation decision making. This period is also relatively insensitive to the particular emissions scenario, although aerosol emissions decline quite rapidly in all RCPs which may be slightly unrealistic. However, the near-term is made complicated because of the role of climate variability.

The IPCC has made a probabilistic assessment of how global temperatures are projected to evolve over the next 20 or so years, which is valid for all RCPs, but with a few caveats such as no future large volcanic eruptions.

To find out more about the short term estimates for global temperatures, I recommend Ed Hawkin's blog article.

Now Christopher rabbits on about "climbdowns" and "overestimates" which is nothing but wishful thinking on his part.  He persists in using monthly charts of global temperature so he can hide the signal in among the noise of weather.

It's going to get hotter

Regular readers will have seen the following charts more than once, but for those of you who are new to the subject, or those of you who've barely subsisted on a diet of denial up to now, here they are again:

It's going to get hotter if we don't do something about it.  For some unknown reason, Christopher Monckton believes that future temperatures have either stopped or will proceed at exactly the same rate as they have over some period in the past or something else.  It's never easy to work out just what the potty peer is trying to say.  At one stage he was pushing for David "funny sunny" Archibald's "ice age by 2020" prediction.

Australia has just broken multiple heat records, including 2013 being the hottest year on record.  Large parts of the country have been suffering another near record-breaking heat wave, with known hot regions recording near highs (almost 50 degrees at Moomba).  And it's not even been an El Nino year.  It's a long, long time since there has been a "coldest year on record" - probably for almost any region on Earth that has several decades of temperature records, and certainly for the world as a whole.

Many scientists have found through their research that if we don't cut emissions enough, Earth will rise by four degrees above the temperatures of the early twentieth century.  That will spell disaster for a lot of people.  Roger Bodman and David Karoly, for example, in a paper published in Nature Climate Change back in May last year found

...an increased probability of exceeding a 2 °C global–mean temperature increase by 2100 while reducing the probability of surpassing a 6 °C threshold for non-mitigation scenarios.

More recently, Steven Sherwood et al have just had a paper published in Nature about the behaviour of clouds in a warming world, and Steven discusses the implications:

"When the processes are correct in the climate models the level of climate sensitivity is far higher. Previously, estimates of the sensitivity of global temperature to a doubling of carbon dioxide ranged from 1.5°C to 5°C. This new research takes away the lower end of climate sensitivity estimates, meaning that global average temperatures will increase by 3°C to 5°C with a doubling of carbon dioxide."

The bottom line is that if we don't cut emissions of CO2 enough, the world will continue to heat up and that will pose a lot of big challenges to many people and in many fields of endeavour.  Not least of which will be fishing, agriculture, food production, infrastructure maintenance, liveability in many regions and general quality of life and its affordability.

People like poor old Christopher Monckton, who complains that the IPCC didn't provide a read-aloud version of its reports, and has forgotten that he first read the IPCC report months ago.  He was even an "expert reviewer" at one stage but I guess he's forgotten that little fact - or forgotten that he's already written ad nauseum about it.

Christopher can't read a chart

Christopher Monckton has quite a reputation for telling bald-faced lies.  For example, in only the second paragraph of his article at WUWT, Christopher writes:

Official projections of global warming have plummeted since Dr. James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies told the U.S. Congress in June 1988 the world would warm by 1 Cº every 20 years till 2050 (Fig. 1), implying 6 Cº to 2100.

I found nowhere in Dr Hansen's testimony any prediction or projection to 2050.  Nor could I find any example of his saying or even suggesting that the world will warm by one degree every twenty years.  Christopher put up this chart saying it was from Dr Hansen's testimony:

Source: WUWT

Which is similar to the actual chart from Dr Hansen's testimony, except Monckton's chart has the temperature in degree Kelvin for some strange reason and he's shifted around the labels.

Source: Hansen's 1988 testimony

If you look at the charts above, neither of them go to 2050. Nor do either of them, under any scenario, show a rise of one degree in twenty years.  Since 1960, Scenario A, which is the most extreme, shows a rise of almost 1.6 degrees to 2019. From 2000 to 2019, scenario A and B show a rise of around 0.7-0.8 degrees and nearly 0.6 degrees respectively.

Of course that's not to say that over the coming century the global temperatures won't rise more quickly in some decades, or more slowly in other decades.  The latest estimates suggest a rise of four degrees above temperatures in the early 1900s is quite on the cards by 2100 if we don't cut emissions enough.  And it will continue to rise after that as long as we're adding CO2 to the air in greater quantities than it's removed.

Here are the longer term projections for different choices we make about how much CO2 we will throw into the air.

Source: IPCC AR5 WG1 Summary for Policy Makers

Christopher's getting on in years like me, so he may not suffer too much.  So he can go gallivanting about complaining that he isn't allowed in the House of Lords and doesn't believe that Obama is President of the USA and that he's found a cure for AIDS and other crank ideas, like global warming isn't happening.  And Anthony Watts can promote as many crazies as he wants to on his anti-science blog.  It won't change a thing.

From the WUWT comments

GlynnMhor is a dinky di fake sceptic, not bothering to check any of Christopher's "claims".  He is one of the gullible dismissives, assuming he's witnessing the biggest hoax in human history - that all the thousands of scientists in the world who study various parts of Earth systems are "lying" and says:

January 1, 2014 at 6:01 pm
I generally tend to trust those recognized to be experts in their field, when they’re talking about their field, at least.

But once these ‘experts’ have been caught out in lie after lie after lie, their credibility in my mind declines markedly.

Janice Moore says (excerpt - okay, I'm having fun with the shouty god-botherer Janice):

January 1, 2014 at 6:55 pmHear, hear, Christopher Monckton. Well done! Thank you for the truth-in-science tour de force.

Damned out of their own mouths:...

...They must think we’re a bunch of morons.

Yep, Janice. For once you hit the nail on the head!

mib8 says innocently (excerpt):

January 1, 2014 at 10:42 pm
OK, folks, here’s something I don’t get in these graphs or some of the earlier ones. If there is a non-negative “anomaly” I’ve always understood it to mean that global warming is happening. Whether it is 0.001 degree or 0.1 degree or 0.9 degree or 2 degrees, it’s still “warming”....

...So, why do all of the graphs seem to show some global warming over the last 17-18 years, when several postings have said that the data show no global warming over that period? I’m not trying to be annoying; I just don’t understand.

M Courtney is another deluded denier that has no sense of time or just how fast is this change we are causing, and impatiently asks "are we there yet?":

January 2, 2014 at 12:49 am
It is worth noting that the rise in temperatures has never been considered catastrophic or even problematic.

It is the rate of rise in temperatures that was potentially disastrous.

So when does the expected change become so slow that we can adapt easily?
Probably when the effects of warming are slower than the natural wear-and-tear on infrastructure; we will adapt at no extra cost then.

Have we hit that point?

Richard Betts decides enough is enough and says:

January 2, 2014 at 3:28 am
How can something be “quietly cut” when it was only a draft in the first place?
Monckton makes it sound like the IPCC noisily made some predictions, and then secretly changed them afterwards, but this is the exact opposite of what really happened. The Second Order Draft was, as the name suggests, a draft. The IPCC specifically says that the earlier drafts are just preliminary, not the final conclusions, and indeed it asked authors and reviewers not to circulate the drafts specifically because it didn’t want people thinking that the draft conclusions were the final ones.

The drafts will be officially published later as a matter of public record, along with the review comments and author responses, so the evolution of the report will be clear.

This is a totally manufactured criticism.

Boris Gimbarzevsky does a grand imitation of a deluded denier (will someone call Poe?) and says:

January 2, 2014 at 5:21 am
I wouldn’t put it past the IPCC to suddenly announce that it had been wrong all along and that increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations causes global cooling. All it would take would be just changing the signs of a few variables in their models and quickly readjusting historical global temperature data to show it was warmer in the past.

Given the propensity for the majority of individuals to not remember what happened decades ago and believe what authority figures tell them, likely such a preposterous scheme would be noticed only by those who are suspicious by nature and question authority. With a mere flip of the presumed effects of CO2 on world temperature, suddenly the models would fit far better and would predict a new ice age in a century. The only question is whether people would accept the huge reductions in fossil fuel consumption which would be imperative to prevent the next ice age according to “experts”? While such a reversal of the IPCC’s position might seem far fetched, it is more plausible than Trenbeth’s “missing heat” and it appears that no theory is too implausible for this group of kleptocrats if it furthers the watermelon agenda of a deindustrialized world.

On a clear sunny day in East Antarctica...

...passengers from MV Akademik Shokalskiy were airlifted off by helicopters from the Chinese icebreaker Xue Long and will eventually board the Aurora Australis.  From there they will travel to Tasmania, arriving in mid-January.

.
You can read more here on the live blog at the Guardian, and on Twitter.

H/t John Russell.

Jim Steele, science denier, gets lost in Florida's mangroves

Jim Steele got lost in the Arctic a few months ago, confusing the Chukchi Sea and the Bering Sea.  He also couldn't tell the difference between seasons and demonstrated that he can't read a simple chart.

So it won't be a surprise to anyone that he got lost in Florida and finds statistical analysis "bewildering".

Today at WUWT (archived here), in another attempt to sell his book about how all the scientists in the world have got it wrong, Jim has taken to a study of mangroves along the Florida coast.

The PNAS paper (open access for now) is by Kyle C. Cavanaugh and co and what they found was that mangroves are moving up the Florida coastline.  The scientists looked at Landsat images over a thirty year period, writing:

We measured mangrove area along the east coast of Florida (25°N to 30°N) each summer from 1984 to 2011 by using 30-m resolution multispectral Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper satellite imagery. All three species of mangroves found in Florida (A. germinans, L. racemosa, and R. mangle) were grouped together in our analysis.

Mangroves are marching north

What the scientists found was the mangroves are expanding northwards as the number of days below minus 4 degrees Celsius lessens. In the abstract they write:

This expansion is associated with a reduction in the frequency of “extreme” cold events (days colder than −4 °C), but uncorrelated with changes in mean annual temperature, mean annual precipitation, and land use. Our analyses provide evidence for a threshold response, with declining frequency of severe cold winter events allowing for poleward expansion of mangroves. Future warming may result in increases in mangrove cover beyond current latitudinal limits of mangrove forests, thereby altering the structure and function of these important coastal ecosystems.

Maybe Jim thinks he has to call all the scientists wrong in order to get anyone to buy his science denial book.Whatever the reason, he makes a habit of picking out papers to try to prove them wrong.

Jim Steele is bewildered by simple statistics

To show his credentials to the scientific illiterati at WUWT, he said the authors "use a bewildering array of statistics".  My reading of the paper is that the statistics are straightforward and not at all bewildering, even to me - and my statistics days are in the dim distant past.  They used linear regression and correlation analysis, and it doesn't look bewildering at all. It tells us a lot about Jim's scientific expertise that he thinks otherwise.

Where are the Indian River Lagoon mangrove re-establishement sites?

Jim's main argument, however, was that he knew "people" who took part in shoreline restoration projects in the region of Indian River Lagoon.  Jim provided a link.  The Indian River Lagoon covers a large-ish spread along the Florida coast from around 27N to 29N, covering around 245 km from beginning to end by my reckoning.  What Jim is arguing is that it's not the number of minus four degree days that is causing the mangroves to expand north, it's a mangrove planting project.

Well I decided to see if there was anything to Jim's claim.  I found a 2008 paper that reports on the project. It reported numbers of plantings, the sites and various other matters.  I was struck by a couple of things, given Jim's claim that the increase in mangroves was because of revegetation projects.

First of all, the paper reports around 760 survived trees from all 57 sites at the time of the report (the survival rate is reported at 10% +/-2%).  There were 57 sites scattered along the lagoon spanning about 165 km along the coast. The top-most planting site was at around 28 15'N.  That should indicate the scale of the planting compared to the entire Florida coastline.  I've also posted a map below.

Now let's go back to what the researchers found.  They wrote:

The historical northern limit of mangroves in eastern North America, believed to be set by cold temperatures, is located near 30°N, just north of St. Augustine, FL (22).

And they found that:

The area of mangrove forests increased dramatically between 1984 and 2011 near the northern range limit of mangroves in Florida (Fig. 1). Over this time period, the spatial extent of mangroves between 29° and 29.75°N doubled.

Here is a map showing the above, plus the stretch of coastline along which the Indian River Lagoon revegetation sites were scattered.  The top yellow arrow marks the stretch of coastline where the scientists found a doubling in mangrove area.  The bottom yellow arrow marks the stretch  of coast along which the people Jim knew planted mangroves.

As the map shows, the area that the study referred to in regard to expansion to the north is not the same as the areas being revegetated.  The mangrove planting sites are quite a way south of there.  Once again, Jim Steele has shown his incompetence at best and the lengths to which he will go to try to discredit science and scientists.

Addendum

Here's a chart that also shows clearly how Jim Steele got it wrong. I've roughly marked the boundaries of the mangrove planting sites along the Indian River Lagoon:

Fig. 2. A 28-y time series of mangrove area separated into 0.25° latitudinal bands. Mangrove area is displayed relative to the first year in the time series (1984). (Right) A value of 1 indicates no change (100% of 1984 area), 0 indicates total loss of mangroves, and 2 indicates a doubling of mangrove area. Data were calculated from Landsat imagery collected each year between April and July. White areas indicate that no cloud-free Landsat data were available.

Source: Cavanaugh13

Added by Sou 11:55 pm 2 January 2014  (AEDST)


Jim has a habit of denying climate science, and of attacking scientists.  That's why I believe it's important to show up his incompetence and his shallow efforts at denial.

If he stuck to his area of expertise, which as I understand it is habitat restoration, he could do a lot of good.  Instead he goes for doing bad and all because he doesn't "believe in" climate science.


Kyle C. Cavanaugh, James R. Kellner, Alexander J. Forde, Daniel S. Gruner, John D. Parker, Wilfrid Rodriguez, and Ilka C. Feller (2013), Poleward expansion of mangroves is a threshold response to decreased frequency of extreme cold events, PNAS, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1315800111

Lisa K. Johnson and Laura W. Herren (October 2008), Re-establishment of Fringing Mangrove Habitat in the Indian River Lagoon, Shoreline Restoration Project 2007-2008 Final Report, Florida Department of Environmental Protection (click here for report)

From the WUWT comments

Perennially Puzzled Bob Tisdale takes the opportunity to name-link back to his own blog in the hope of selling his own claptrap and says:

January 1, 2014 at 8:18 am
Thanks, Jim, for another enlightening article.
Regards

Bill H is a typical fake sceptic who doesn't check facts and says:

January 1, 2014 at 8:28 am
The state plants a whole bunch of man groves and along comes a scientist, who ignores mans influence and then touts the increase as evidence of CAGW…. ?? And those doing the study couldn’t figure this one out?

John does a good imitation of a parrot who's lived at WUWT long enough to learn some words and says:

January 1, 2014 at 8:45 am
I am not a geologist but fancy this sort of stuff… The geologic record proves this planet warms and cools in natural cycles – something these climate change nuts ignore. So ridiculous.

pat is a good little parrot, too, and has even learnt the big bewildering word "Smithsonian":

January 1, 2014 at 9:24 am
A fraud. A fraud by the Smithsonian.

Another WUWT-trained parrot,  Steve Keohane says:

January 1, 2014 at 9:43 am
I feel a need for a special stupidity descriptor for this type of non-sense. Perhaps ‘G-WS’ for ‘Grant-Whore Stupid’. This is really getting to be too much.

R. de Haan says he's pigged out on WUWT:

January 1, 2014 at 9:00 am
One warmist crap strory after another. I’m really getting boared.

Proud Skeptic is a member of the Illiterati Society and says he can't understand why scientists want to find out stuff:

January 1, 2014 at 6:20 pm
I find myself wondering why Warmists are so insistent that all present ecosystems remain exactly as they are in the places they now exist. Whatever the reason the mangroves are moving, aren’t they a valid ecosystem?

Anthony Watts, most blessed and ethical professional hero @wattsupwiththat, rides gallantly to the Antarctic rescue

Update  - I've added the result of an enquiry by a HotWhopper reader - Thanks, Rattus Norvegicus.  You will need to read the rest of the article to see the context. (3 January 2014)

Rattus Norvegicus January 2, 2014 at 1:05 PM

At the suggestion of a poster above I emailed Dr. McGillivary. Here are the bullet points.

1. They were discussing contingency plans should they be called up.
2. Needed long term forecast.
3. Usual sources all on vacation, so called Scott.
4. Forecast was provided (and misreported on KUSI piece).
5. Polar Star's mission is resupply of McMurdo.
6. They have not been asked to participate in rescue.
7. The Akademik Shokalskiy is in no immediate danger.
8. Polar Star just arrived in Sydney....

It would appear that more than a few things are messed up in the reporting by WUWT and KUSI. It appears as though he was looking for confirmation of his forecast that winds would turn around. This was confirmed by information from KUSI and a sea ice expert who got back to him (apparently). The forecast as reported by KUSI seemed to be far more dire.

BTW, from Sydney to the Mertz Glacier/Cape Dennison area is about two weeks sailing, so the situation would have had to go on for quite some time before they could be of any use.

To summarize, Scott provided a forecast (long term?) which was used for discussion of contingencies in case they were called to assist in the rescue efforts.

It can be tough reading stuff at WUWT.  One needs a very strong stomach at times.

I've just been alerted to a complete about face at WUWT.  Anthony Watts has girded his loins, put on his shining armour, saddled his white steed and ridden to the rescue of the stranded ship in the Antarctic.  In one fell swoop and swish of his cape, Anthony has decided to shift sides and can prove it, on television no less.  Now he's an "ethical" and "professional" hero, gallantly putting aside his science denial to rescue the idiot warmunistas brave men and women on the MV Akademik Shokalskiy. (Archived here)

What KUSI-TV reported

Actually, what happened was that Anthony got a call from a John Coleman of KUSI-TV who said he got a call from Dave Scott of KUSI-TV who got a call from someone on the Polar Star (a US coastguard ice breaker) asking for weather information. Then Anthony did a television interview via webcam for a TV station in San Diego without a hint of the mockery, derision or conspiracy theorising he wrote on his blog. (I've got to say the TV presenters at KUSI-TV are masters of overstatement, something that hasn't yet percolated here to quite the same degree, thank goodness.  For example, they claimed the Polar Star is "standing by".  But it's not.  The Polar Star said in a statement that it will consider any request by the Australian Government for assistance, but it hasn't promised anything and is not "standing by" in any normal sense of the phrase, according to its statement aired on KUSI-TV.)

Anthony Watts' Spin

Anthony's spin is different though.  He claims that he got a call from John Coleman (so far so good) but then diverges from what Dave Scott reported:

Then to my surprise, he relayed a conversation he had just had; a person on the Akademik Shokalskiy had reached out, because they didn’t have adequate weather data on-board. At first, I thought John was pulling my leg, but then as he gave more details, I realized he was serious.

Not according to Dave Scott of KUSI-TV, who said he received the original phone request from his friend on the Polar Star for the Polar Star.  There was no mention that anyone on the MV Akademik Shokalskiy asked for weather information.  They'd have access to Antarctic weather information from BoM and other sources closer at hand.

Publicity-seeking Anthony Watts

Anthony must have figured that getting deliberately stuck in ice was such a terrific "publicity stunt" that he wanted to be part of it. I doubt you'll see a better example of hypocrisy.

The new hero image doesn't mix well with the old anti-hero image, best change it

There is shift in the WUWT comments now.  Some of his followers are very well-trained monkeys. Let's see how the comments evolved over three articles.

First a few of the really nasty ones that Anthony allowed on his blog:

Stephen Richards says, after quoting another commenter who suggested "toning it down":

December 30, 2013 at 1:37 am
Can we all start jumping for joy after they die ?? then (archived here)

Gail Combs says (excerpt):

December 29, 2013 at 5:35 pm
I really do not care if people who wish me and others to live short, nasty brutal lives end up earning Darwin Awards. However I do care if those who went to the rescue of these idiots are hurt. (archived here)

Michael Ronayne says:

December 30, 2013 at 10:47 am
Question: What do you call a ship load of trapped Global Cooling Deniers who are in danger of freezing to death?
Answer: A good start! (Archived here)

Then some plain ordinary mockery WUWT-style.

albertalad says:

December 29, 2013 at 11:12 am
You can’t make this stuff up – the AGW dude stuck in ice along with the Australian Green Party senator and their ilk. Priceless! (Archived here.)

Mac the Knife says (excerpt):

December 29, 2013 at 11:53 am
At last – true Environmental Justice in action! In the most direct and immediately tangible terms, the expanding ice pack surrounds them with blunt and massive evidence that their beliefs are wrong. Yet, they continue to preach the AGW dogma, even as the antarctic climate tries to kill them. If that isn’t a hallmark of religious environmentalism, I don’t know what would be! (Archived here)

Now that Anthony is heroically rescuing the stricken vessel, he and some of his trained monkeys have done an about face, as per Anthony Watts' instructions (archived here):

Despite the irony and folly of the situation, I’m sure readers will join me in the hope that everyone makes it off the ship safely, whether it is by helicopter or by the ship being freed from the ice.

Janice Moore says:

December 31, 2013 at 11:42 pm
Good for you, An-thon-y! They went to the best.
That you have been given the opportunity to come to the aid of your “enemies” (v. a v. truth in science), can only be God’s providence. And, yes, I have been and will pray that God gets them out of there (they are certainly not going to get out without God’s help).
Your admiring fan,
Janice
P.S. Yet another resounding blow for free markets over socialism: During Hurricane (a real one) Katrina, it was privately owned Home Depot who got the supplies and equipment through; when 33 Chilean miners needed rescuing from the bowels of the earth, it was private companies in the U.S., Germany, and other capitalist countries (sorry, forgot all of them) who had the drill bit and cable and who flew in the supplies (U.P.S.); and now, it is you and Joe, two American free market entrepreneurs and genuine scientists’ turn. WAY TO GO!

Mark and two Cats says "warmunists! this is called ethics" - It's not my ethics, Mark

December 31, 2013 at 11:46 pm
“My first thought was that no matter how much we’ve been criticizing the expedition for its silliness, that if such a request had reached all the way from Antarctica to me, I’d do everything I could to help.”
————————————–
See all ye warmunists! This is called “ethics”.
Try to get some.

albertalad decides to join in the alleluia chorus and says:

January 1, 2014 at 12:17 am
The speed and professionalism of Anthony and friends was magnificent, indeed the best of humanity itself. Thank you to all involved! God speed to those in peril on the sea this night!

NikFromNYC says:

January 1, 2014 at 12:03 am
Civilized professionalism at its finest, and a PR coup too.

Mac the Knife changes his tune somewhat and says:

January 1, 2014 at 12:42 am
Anthony,
Serendipity makes for strange bed fellows, doesn’t it? May God bless you for doing the right thing. While we can laugh at the self-induced predicament of the ship of fools, we all should pray for their survival… and help, if it is in our power to do so.
MtK

dp says:

December 31, 2013 at 11:54 pm
Anthony – you are a person of extreme character and great industry. What an exemplary way to start off the new year, bridging the bitter divide between climate alarmism and skepticism in a time of uncommon and dire need. Hopefully this will lead to some bridge mending.

MrX doesn't read WUWT comments and says there should be no doubt (about the good intentions of Anthony and all at WUWT) - Huh?

January 1, 2014 at 12:23 am
Of course everyone wishes a safe return for all those out at sea. I don’t think there should ever be any doubt of that. Yet I’ve just had a discussion about this with my liberal friends and they don’t see the irony at all. In fact, they resent my suggesting it. This won’t change a thing. Those who believe the globe is warming due to human influence won’t let being surrounded by ice deter them.