Ira Glickstein's "Natural Cycles" that refuse to cycle naturally

Ira Glickstein is a funny one.  He writes for Anthony Watts on occasion.  I don't know if he writes for anyone else.

Today he starts off by claiming to accept the greenhouse effect and human-caused global warming (archived here).  Then he tries to minimise it by making up whatever he feels like making up for the heck of it.  In other words, he rejects science after all.  (Sound familiar?)

Ira's figure plucking

Ira writes about how scientists have shown that earth has warmed by 0.8 degrees and most of this warming is attributed to human causes.  Ira plucks a figure out of the air and says only 70% of it is from human causes. He writes:

I have interpreted “majority” to mean about 70% and have therefore allocated 1°F (0.6°C) to Human-Causation and the remaining 0.4°F (0.2°C) to Natural Cycles.

Ira's personal opinion

He has put up a chart with lots of "bars" and writes (my bold italics):

The seventh bar represents my personal opinion as to the actual Global Warming since 1880, discounting the “adjustments” made by the official Climate “Team” that I believe have inflated the temperature record. 

And later he he writes:

So, unless we believe that the world temperature record is more reliable than the US record, it is likely the world record has also been similarly “adjusted”. Therefore, I have discounted the GISS estimate of Global Warming by about 30%, so actual warming is about 1.0°F (0.6°C). As for allocation of this actual warming to Human- vs Natural-Causes, I believe the IPCC has over-estimated Climate Sensitivity by a factor of two or three, so I have allocated the majority of the warming 0.8°F (0.5°C) to Natural Cycles, and the remaining 0.2°F (0.1°C) to Human-Causation.

Ira talks about reliability, but adjusting data has nothing to do with reliability.  It's to do with accounting for different times of observation or if a weather station is moved or something else happens that needs adjusting.  In regard to global data sets, the global anomaly may be adjusted when more data is added.  (In any one month all the data from all over the world doesn't come in straight away all at the same time.)

Victor Venema is an expert on homogenisation of temperature data and has written a very good blog article about time of observation bias.  These days with automatic weather stations, time of observation is no longer as big a problem.  However weather stations still get moved and other things happen.  If the record isn't adjusted to reflect changes, then the record won't be as accurate.

Basically what Ira is saying is that he doesn't like what the data shows so he's going to make adjustments himself based on nothing at all except for his own bias and "opinion".  He has plucked some numbers he likes better out of thin (if warmer) air.

Now you'll have read how fake sceptics complain that climate sensitivity isn't definitely known to several decimal points.  Yet here's Ira writing stuff like:

I believe the IPCC has over-estimated Climate Sensitivity by a factor of two or three

A factor of two or three! Not two.  Not three.  Not 1.5.  Sheesh, why not go for five or ten while you're at it Ira? Or twenty or thirty?  (No-one complains at WUWT about this.)

The IPCC has estimated climate sensitivity as "likely" being between 1.5°C and 4.5°C.  So if it's overestimated it "by a factor of two or three", then Ira should be putting it at between 0.5°C and 1.5°C or 0.75°C and 2.25°C.  In the end he doesn't say what he estimates it to be.  He just writes:

... I have allocated the majority of the warming 0.8°F (0.5°C) to Natural Cycles, and the remaining 0.2°F (0.1°C) to Human-Causation.

Nor does Ira say what Natural Cycles (note the capitalisation, suggesting Ira's getting on in years) could possibly have caused a rise of his 0.5°C, except for his "natural cycles".  What natural cycles? Why have those cycles never cycled before?

To sum up Ira's article:

• Global warming = 0.8°C - X = 0.6°C where X = Ira's opinion.
• The amount of warming from humans = 0.1°C which is derived from science less Ira's opinion.  

Here's the science with Ira's opinion:

IPCC Figure TS.9 showing observations with modeled "natural" forcing only, and Ira's "opinion".

Ira's opinion is not what he stated.  When you look at the above chart, in Ira's opinion, natural cycles have somehow managed to shift the temperature up by 0.6°C not 0.5°C.  But I won't quibble over 0.1°C.  What I will quibble about is Ira's notion of "natural cycle".

Why don't the cycles cycle?

Given that Ira reckon's that it's "natural cycles" that have caused almost all the warming of the past several decades, he must think we're about to get jolly cold. A cycle is a cycle so it's got to come down, right?

And if it was a "natural cycle" why hasn't it shown up already as such?  If it were a natural cycle, then it should have been as hot as it is now in the recent past.  Say the natural cycle had a period of 60 years. That would mean that sixty years ago it should have been as warm as it is today.  Or if you like, as warm as it is today minus Ira's 0.1°C.

It didn't happen. Ergo, Ira is wrong.  Well, you knew that already, didn't you.  He's not just wrong in his "opinion" about the temperature record.  He's not just wrong in his "opinion" about climate sensitivity.  He's also wrong in his "opinion" about natural cycles.

From the WUWT comments

Some people complained about Ira's drawings.  RoHa says:

April 7, 2014 at 12:26 am
I like the point you are making, but that’s a pretty confusing graph. A straightforward bar graph, without the pictures, would be easier to follow.

robr says:

April 7, 2014 at 12:39 am
The graphic is too cluttered. The valid points being made in the text are not being reinforced as well as they should be.

RoHa and robr have a point:

Ira's messy drawing

jaffa says:

April 7, 2014 at 1:03 am
It would be nice to see a bargraph of typical daily/yearly variation (range) before warming next to the same thing after warming, it would illustrate that the warming was insignificant compared to daily/yearly fluctuations and that for most of each day/year the temperature after warming was within the normal range that occured before warming.

This is, of course, why the climate deceit community prefer to use a temperature anomaly instead of actual temperatures, because the numbers just aren’t scary at all.

Maybe where jaffa lives he's not had the sort of heat that some of us have endured lately.  Compare the following two charts (click to enlarge them) and it's only just beginning.

Australia's Angry Summer

This is the average January daily maximum for 1961-1990:

Source: BoM

Bruce Cobb is not a farmer (or a fish) and says:

April 7, 2014 at 4:43 am
What “human-caused warming”? There very well could be a tiny amount, but if there, it gets lost in the noise of a complex, multi-layered, somewhat chaotic, and not well understood system. For all intents and purposes, even if theory says it should be there, it is non-existant. It is too small to ferret out, and too small to matter in the slightest.

CodeTech joined in a discussion of what is meant by doubling temperature and says:

April 7, 2014 at 5:06 am
steveta, looks like you fell for the trick question.

The language used by climate change believers and alarmists is often filled with deliberately confusing statements and concepts. In order to double a temperature you need to be aware of where your zero is (and I don’t mean the Oval Office). The only zero that makes universal sense is K.

It was 10C today. Tomorrow will be 20C. The temperature will not even remotely double.

Alex muses over radiation transfer vs kinetic energy says:

April 7, 2014 at 7:14 am
It’s always ‘radiation transfer’ with both sceptics and warmists. I’ve heard very little discussion about kinetic energy. A gas does not have ‘temperature’, it has kinetic energy that manifests itself as ‘temperature’ when it is involved in a physical contact with a surface or another molecule of gas ie exchange of energy. Why this process is never mentioned, I don’t understand.

Mike confuses global with local and doesn't know that he's not being rational when he says:

April 7, 2014 at 7:31 am
Here in Ottawa we have a 60-70 degree C yearly temperature range..a good reason why rational Canadians should ignore the alarmism.

On a related note: in the recently released IPCC impact statement the positive benefits to Canada of warming are trivialized. I cannot think of any negative impacts of 1-2C warming. I am sure the same case could be made for Russia, Scandinavia, Mongolia, etc.

"Much more moral authority comes from the imprimatur of government" - David "funny sunny" Archibald at WUWT

He's back!

I was wondering what had happened to David "funny sunny" Archibald.  He hasn't been seen for a good while at WUWT.  David is one of the wackier deniers who thinks we are heading for an ice age "any day now".

Setting the scene by twisting the facts

His article is about Nebraska, or partly (archived here).  David says he is writing his third book, which I think is about the impending ice age that cometh.  He is a strange one for a WUWT conspiracy theorist.  He writes:

At the urging of State Senator Beau McCoy in late 2013, the Nebraska Department of Agriculture was tasked with commissioning a report on cyclical climate change. The budget for the exercise was $44,000. That right, for a mere $44,000 Nebraskans would be told what was going to happen to their climate. If the Sun was going to sleep with the consequence that cold air from the Canadians would come south faster and longer, Nebraskans would be forewarned and fore-armed. Alas, the effort was abandoned when promoters of global warming in the state offered to do it for free. 

People who keep up with the climate blog wars will recall that the situation wasn't quite like that.  What happened was this. A lawmaker in Nebraska who is a climate science denier was happy enough to support a bill for someone to prepare a report on climate in Nebraska.  However he didn't want them to take account of any human factors influencing the climate, so he proposed an amendment to the bill.

Given that human factors now dominate global warming (ie climate change not day to day weather), that seemed not just pointless but a waste of money.  And you'd have to offer a lot more than $44,000 to climate scientists to persuade any of them to forsake their science for money.  They might have gotten Marc Morano or Anthony Watts or one of the other denier bloggers to prepare the report.  They come cheap I hear.  I don't know why they didn't do that.  Alternatively they could have approached some of the Not the IPCC Report writers.

Perhaps  they were hoping for a credible name to attach to their shonky report.  Or maybe they just wanted to test the waters and see if there were any corruptible climate scientists around.  (Judith Curry put up her hand, but I don't think her blog offer was accepted.)

I wrote about this at the time, because Judith Curry was arguing that politicians should be able to put constraints on climate studies to suit their political agenda.  Her stance was reminiscent of the various attempts to prevent high school teachers from teaching students about biology, wanting to bring their weird religious beliefs into the classroom and ban science.

If only deniers could drum up a fake report that was credible

Back to David "funny sunny" Archibald. His next paragraph was this:

The danger to the promoters of global warming was that the stillborn Nebraskan climate report would have been the first government-sanctioned report on the planet to say that carbon dioxide and the burning of coal are nothing to worry about. A report on cyclical climate change would say that there is something far more serious coming that is going to smack our civilisation like a freight train. That serious thing is one of the cycles that the Nebraskans were going to be told about. One day the science of climate cycles might get out to Nebraska but in the meantime they will be wondering why their winters are getting colder and Spring seems to be delayed and how can they begin planting while their fields are still covered in snow. 

There you see it.  Climate science is a hoax and information is being kept from the poor little Nebraskans.  What's odd about this is that David is arguing that the government could be trusted.  This is despite the fact that in this case the politician who put up the amendment to the bill wanted scientists to exclude some of the main factors that will affect Nebraska's climate in coming years.

More moral authority from the imprimatur of government!

David even writes (my bold italics):

It is one thing for books to be published which warn of the severe, solar-driven cooling coming (I’m on my third) and for retired academics to voice concerns over the low standards of US Government-funded climate science, but much more moral authority comes from the imprimatur of government. 

I know you'll be scratching your head wondering how this article of David "funny sunny" Archibald got past the censor-in-chief at WUWT.  Anthony Watts spends a lot of time complaining about "political interference".  I saw a couple of tweets that he put out only a day ago where, in his conspiracy-addled brain, he is clearly of the view that IPCC reports can't be trusted because the IPCC is a "political body".  I guess he's never read an IPCC report or any of the scientific papers underpinning it.

Only some governments have moral authority

There's a catch to this moral authority and imprimatur business.  You knew there would be, didn't you.  Apparently "moral authority" only comes from governments that reject climate science.  For example, the government agency the EPA doesn't have any moral authority.  Neither does the President of the United States.  David writes:

As the climate reports come in, the vague, almost-impossible-to-believe notion that the Obama Administration’s war on coal through the EPA is a peculiar form of malicious self-loathing will be seen with crystal clarity. That there is no scientific basis for what the EPA is attempting to do whatsoever. That the degradation and disruption that the EPA is intent upon is a loathing for America as it is, pure and simple. Instead of the loftiest ideals of “thinking of the children” and so on, President Obama and the EPA are driven by the basest of motives – that their fellow Americans be poorer with reduced opportunities.

Now why didn't more than half the people in the USA realise that President Obama is driven by the basest of motives, to reduce all his "fellow Americans" to poverty.  And he's got a funny way of going about it, too. Look at how he impoverished American investors - not!

As for people's jobs and other economic measures, well the charts here at CNN show he's not doing a very good job at reducing everyone to a poverty below what George Bush managed.  Arguably his biggest coup was helping Americans get health care when they need it.  Oh, wait. That can hardly have been prompted by the "basest of motives" can it?

Another twist: David sez that one government's climate report is as good as another's

There's yet another twist.  According to David Archibald:

One government’s report on something like climate is as good as another’s. 

Oh, I do wish he'd make up his mind.  He's just been telling us that the US government is not to be trusted, now it is.  I have a sneaking suspicion that David doesn't really believe what he says.  I've yet to see him tout the IPCC report, which is accepted by 193 nation's governments, as being  "as good as another's".

Nebraska braces for an ice age

While we're waiting to see if David can figure out what he wants to say, let's shoot back to Nebraska and see how his Nebraskan ice age is faring:

Data source: NOAA

Hmmm.  I guess David "funny sunny" Archibald is prepared to wait for all that hot weather of the past forty years to go away so that the temperatures can drop back to those more common in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  Nope. He won't be satisfied with that. Here is what David has predicted for the world:

Incidentally, it looks as if the Nebraskan government has successfully suppressed any information on climate change from its Department of Agriculture.  Despite it's claim of "Nebraska Agriculture at Work for You" there is not a peep about climate change.  Thankfully here in my home state the government is not so draconian.

Have David's coal shares plummeted?

By the way, David's article was mainly moaning about the fact that coal has no future.  Here's what the rest of the world thinks about coal:

Peabody, "the world’s largest private-sector coal company" share price drops sharply

Here's a short bio of David "funny sunny" Archibald.

From the WUWT comments

hunter says:

April 5, 2014 at 12:38 am
Interesting concept. Please explain further how the AGW promoters derailed the state effort. The story seems incomplete. We need to know more so that the push back against the hype can be more effective.

Jeff is one of those conspiracy nutters that the deniers say don't exist.  He talks about control of "every facet of life in America" and says (excerpt):

April 5, 2014 at 1:51 am
I think the poster above gives Obama way too much credit. I don’t believe Obama cares one bit for the environment, I think his motives are entirely an effort to support the efforts of an extreme faction of liberals. Not all supporters of AGW science are the same. He gives voice only to those scare mongers whose goal isn’t to clean the environment, but to control every facet of life in America.

Patrick "knows" that the CO2 is 3% of the atmosphere! He says:

April 5, 2014 at 3:51 am
I just spoke to a friend of mine who called me to talk about cars they want to buy, and then talked about electrically powered cars because the UK had “servos” littered about the country to re-powered electrically powered cars. Apparently it was cheaper than petrol. Well, maybe so in the UK, but CO2 is still emitted. I asked how the electricity that “re-powered” the batteries was generated. We eventually got to gas and coal fired power stations. Which in the bigger picture of the situation, is correct. Then I asked how much CO2 “pollution” was in the air, right now, in their opinion. The answer was 40% (I kid you not – And most people I know “believe” this is the sort of concentration in the air right now). We’d all be dead I said, if that were true. The actual figure, as we know here, is ~3%.

James Strom comes up with a bit of trivia and says:

April 5, 2014 at 6:32 am
In light of your political leanings, which I am sympathetic with, it is amusing that your choice of title, “What is to be done?”, is the same that Lenin used for a pamphlet he published in 1902. The phrase is somewhat famous, at least to someone with an interest in early communist arcana.

G. Karst says:

April 5, 2014 at 7:45 am
I would like to see coal miners and the mine owners perform a pre-emptive strike. A shut down of coal production for thirty days will have an alarming effect on those trying to shut down the industry. A shutdown until prices improve would be justifiable and a real sharp eye opener. GK

I suppose it would be noticed in some states, anyway.  Coal still makes up 37% of electricity production in the USA. It was 57% in 1985 but only 46% in 1950.

Speaking of ethics and conspiracies ...

Anthony Watts has a new "sticky" article about - guess what - yep, it's another protest against Professor Lewandowsky (archived here).  He's writing about the arguably unethical action by the journal that retracted the Recursive Fury paper.

Frontiers did not identify any issues with the ethical aspects of the study

I've written about that already.  The journal has this statement  on the page of the article, showing they found NO issue from an ethical perspective:

In the light of a small number of complaints received following publication of the original research article cited above, Frontiers carried out a detailed investigation of the academic, ethical, and legal aspects of the work. This investigation did not identify any issues with the academic and ethical aspects of the study. It did, however, determine that the legal context is insufficiently clear and therefore Frontiers wishes to retract the published article. The authors understand this decision, while they stand by their article and regret the limitations on academic freedom which can be caused by legal factors. 

Journal is squirming and making matters worse for themselves

Now the journal is trying to argue otherwise, writing:

As a result of its investigation, which was carried out in respect of academic, ethical and legal factors, Frontiers came to the conclusion that it could not continue to carry the paper, which does not sufficiently protect the rights of the studied subjects. 

The journal has made a real mess of this.  First they got the paper reviewed and it got the tick for publication. Then they published the paper. Then they got complaints from a "small number" of science deniers so they pulled the paper. Then they sat on it for a year or so and there was probably stuff going on behind the scenes.  Then they retracted it, while saying there was no reason other than an "insufficiently clear" legal context!

Now they are backtracking from the statement they made and is still on their website.  Now they are implying there are ethical issues! This latest statement comes across as an attempt to obfuscate after they got such bad press for caving into the conspiracy nutters who complained that their public statements showing their conspiracy ideation were studied to see how conspiracies evolve over time. That latest action by Frontiers seems to me to be a violation of ethics on their part!

I doubt this latest statement from them will help recover their now-sullied reputation.  As Peter Hannam wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald (my bold italics):

Kim Heitman, a lawyer for the UWA, said the university had done its own risk analysis before publishing the paper online. “There’s no reason to take it down,” Mr Heitman said. 

The university had also received complaints from some groups. “It’s quite relentless,” he said.

“There’s always a close interest in everything that Steve (Lewandowsky) does,” Mr Heitman said. “We are conscious that we are going to be targeted by people opposed to his works.”

The university, though, had also received plaudits from around the world for its decision to publish the paper.

"I couldn't list them," Mr Heitman said. "And I wouldn't list them, having regard to the fact that anyone who issues a 'thanks UWA' will probably get their own enquiry."

Thing is, most people had probably never heard of the journal Frontiers in Psychology before.  Now a lot more people have heard about it - and what they read is not exactly the sort of publicity a journal would be expected to seek.  The mess is their own making.  This is from Ars Technica:

When asked for comment, Lewandowsky forwarded Ars a letter he received from the staff of the Australian Psychological Society. In it, they note they are "concerned about the possible reasons behind Frontiers’ decision to retract the article, particularly given that their investigation has not identified any significant issues with the academic and ethical aspects of this study. It is concerning that some scientific journals feel sufficiently threatened by potential liability fears to not publish articles with ‘inconvenient information’ about climate change."

Update: As pointed out by Jammy Dodger, it's a bit unusual for such a statement to appear on a blog page (rather than on a press release page, for example. Especially as they have not revised the retraction statement.) However the blog article is from Costanza Zucca, Editorial Director and Fred Fenter, Executive Editor so looks as if it's meant to be a formal statement.

Ignoble cause: Anthony Watts tells a lie to stoke conspiracy theories - or justify his lies?

Anthony Watts is over the moon.  He's been told there's a paper that says it's okay for him and other science deniers to keep lying about climate.  Of course that's not the tack that Anthony is taking.  (Archived here.)

Irony: manipulating information to stoke a conspiracy theory

In an irony heaped on an irony, Anthony Watts is lying and exaggerating about a research paper on exaggeration and information manipulation - to stoke the conspiracy theory that climate science is a hoax.  The other irony is that the research is based on a model.  Deniers usually reject outright any finding that's based on a model.

What Anthony and organised disinformers are feigning is shock and horror.  Anthony gives credit to the disinformation lobby group CFACT, for drawing his attention to a paper that says it's okay to exaggerate global warming.  Even though that's not what the paper is saying, going by the abstract.

Still, Anthony Watts and his fellow disinformers must be feeling all warm and fuzzy, saying to themselves that all their lies (including the current one about this very paper) are quite alright, because a paper that (doesn't) say it's okay to lie is (not) saying to the academic world that it's okay to lie.

Are you following all that? No?  it's just another example of how climate disinformers twist the facts to support their agenda of - bring on global warming.  Here is the abstract of the paper and its title:

Information Manipulation and Climate Agreements
It appears that news media and some pro-environmental organizations have the tendency to accentuate or even exaggerate the damage caused by climate change. This article provides a rationale for this tendency by using a modified International Environmental Agreement (IEA) model with asymmetric information. We find that the information manipulation has an instrumental value, as it ex post induces more countries to participate in an IEA, which will eventually enhance global welfare. From the ex ante perspective, however, the impact that manipulating information has on the level of participation in an IEA and on welfare is ambiguous.

Compare what Anthony writes...

Climate Craziness of the Week: Peer reviewed paper says it’s OK to manipulate data, exaggerate climate claims

Noble cause corruption gone wild. People tend to think of scientists as being unbiased, in climate science, apparently if you aren’t biased, you aren’t doing useful work.

...with what the abstract states:

news media and some pro-environmental organizations have the tendency to accentuate or even exaggerate

See how Anthony Watts goes beyond accentuation and exaggeration to fabrication through innuendo!  He's spinning that this is about bias of climate scientists.  It's not.  He talks about noble cause corruption.  Anthony is a despicable "champion" of ignoble causes, who spreads his disinformation arguably for money (his tip jar, his plea for his readers to pay his (free) "entry" to AGU etc etc)


Oh, in his next paragraph lying Anthony Watts writes:

A new peer-reviewed paper published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, titled “Information Manipulation and Climate Agreements”, is openly advocating that global warming proponents engage in mendacious claims in order to further their cause.

The paper itself is reporting research on whether exaggerations in news reporting and environmental activism makes a difference to participation by countries in international environmental agreements and if so to what extent.  It found that ex post suggests yes, while ex ante is ambiguous.  The research is based on a model, which seems to have passed by WUWT-ers.  (Normally deniers poo poo any research based on a model, but not in this case.)


PS. Here's another paper by one of the authors, for people interested in the general subject of the economics and politics of international environmental agreements (downloadable).

From the WUWT comments

Climate disinformer Anthony Watts has told a big fat lie.  As usual he implies that climate scientists are the culprits.  The abstract says nothing about climate scientists.  It is talking about news media and "some pro-environmental organizations".  And it doesn't give the "permission" or "advocate" anything.  It certainly doesn't advocate that Anthony Watts and other deniers and disinformers lie.  But that's what Anthony does to supplement his income and push his cause.  And a prime example is this very article (archived here).

The conspiracy wingnuts come out in force

leon0112 has jumped right through Anthony Watts hoop to the wrong conclusion that climate scientists are lying and says:

April 4, 2014 at 8:18 am
Wow. Next time someone throws the phrase “peer reviewed literature” at me, I will point to this one.

Dire Wolf says "it's all a conspiracy":

April 4, 2014 at 8:30 am
Let’s parse this. A paper from China (which will never, ever restrict its CO2 output) says that it is good to manipulate the media (that is the media outside of China) to “[induce] more countries to participate in an IEA” which will cripple the industries of those countries leaving China untouched and unrivaled. So, how much is the chinese equivalent of the KGB paying them?

jauntycyclist is an easy mark for Anthony's spin and says:

April 4, 2014 at 8:34 am
manipulation is so common , entrenched, accepted and expected in climate science it has its own study? maybe it should become a subject with its own faculty that rates climate papers on a beerosphere-o-meter?

Peter Hanely is another willing conspiracy theorist says:

April 4, 2014 at 8:36 am
“Its ok to lie to people for their own good.” Typical left wingnut rationalization.

cnxtim goes even further and says:

April 4, 2014 at 8:37 am
These CAGW devotees have made criminal behavior a science

mpainter seems to think the finding should have been kept under wraps and says:

April 4, 2014 at 8:48 am
It is well that such a paper publicly says what many privately believe.Such extremism will be the undoing of the movement. Staggering that it was published in such a journal. What rot.

Barry Cullen says:

April 4, 2014 at 8:51 am
This from the little despots in training in leadership positions descended from despot Mao and friends. Not surprising. Anything to gain and maintain control over a populace is acceptable.
The “peer” reviewers must, by definition, share similar political views.

Col Mosby says:

April 4, 2014 at 8:53 am
Thru this published paper, we have acheved total corruption of a scientific discipline. I wonder if these two brainless authors realize the contradiction implicit in their argument : Claim that something not dangerous is dangerous, to induce folks to take actions to prevent this (non-dangerous) something. 

markstoval decides this paper confirms his conspiracy theory that climate science is a hoax and says:

April 4, 2014 at 8:53 am
“Peer reviewed paper says it’s OK to manipulate data, exaggerate climate claims”
It is good to see the climate “scientists” admit they have been doing this since they have been doing it for at least 30 years. It is good for them to tell us that their “science” is all fiction. We knew it all along, but it is damn nice to get peer-reviewed conformation on that issue.
Modern “climate science” is pure baloney.

chinook reminds me of the utter nutters at HotCopper when s/he says:

April 4, 2014 at 8:54 am
They’re just following the now fashionable Post Modern Scientific Method that’s become pervasive, esp in America. In order for the ersatz religion of ‘environmentalism’ and climatchondria to spread far and wide like the plagues of mentally impaired rationalizing that they are, anything goes. Possibly, real scientists who believe in the scientific method, the honest ones who leave advocacy, politics and dogma out of their work will slowly turn the tide back.

tgasloli says:

April 4, 2014 at 9:18 am
What would you expect from Chinese Communists? This is why the “greens” should be considered “watermelons”. 

Some WUWT-ers are more astute and aren't buying Anthony's spin

Anthony had better watch it. Not all of his readers are buying his spin.

Bloke down the pub says:

April 4, 2014 at 8:26 am
Are they advocating it or just saying ‘hey man, sh*t happens’

AnonyMoose says:

April 4, 2014 at 8:48 am
They’re saying that exaggeration happens, and they’re not judging whether it is wrong, but the distorted information can increase participation in environmental agreements, and that end result is always good. They seem to be assuming that environmental agreements always have good results for the general welfare, and anything which enhances the general welfare is good. (Are “general welfare” and “enhance” defined?)

Mark 543 says:

April 4, 2014 at 8:57 am
You have misread the paper, or have not read it. By “rationale” they mean a rational explanation for the observed phenomena, not a moral justification for the behavior. The paper goes on to say “However, because people update their beliefs using the Bayesian rule, such information manipulation has a negative externality on the other state when climate damage is really huge, in which case the aforementioned information provider will not be sufficiently trusted even if it indicates the true state.” In other words, crying wolf leads to greater skepticism.

The paper also makes serious claims about errors in Al Gore’s film and an earlier IPCC report.

Aphan says:

April 4, 2014 at 9:16 am
Hang on a moment, I hate it when the AGW crowd says something about a paper that the paper itself doesnt actually say. We also wouldn’t to be guilty of “exaggerating” the claims in this paper would we?

The “article” (as opposed to a study) as represented above does NOT say anything about scientists manipulating data or using corrupt methods in scientific studies. It speaks to how the MEDIA and environmental groups manipulate and exaggerate “the damage done by climate change” to further their agendas.

Those are two very different things and I think we on the sceptical side of things need to be just as careful with how accurately we reflect the conclusions of papers we dont agree with as we are the ones we do.

Conspiracy theorists vs sceptical readers

There are many more comments archived here, which can largely be split into two types as above:

• the conspiracy theorising deniers - of whom Anthony Watts is one in this instance, and
• the sceptical deniers - and there are a small number who aren't taken in by Anthony's spin.

---

Fuhai Hong and Xiaojian Zhao, "Information Manipulation and Climate Agreements", Am. J. Agr. Econ. (2014); doi: 10.1093/ajae/aau001


There's another paper here that you might be interested in:

Hong, Fuhai, and Larry Karp. "International environmental agreements with mixed strategies and investment." Journal of Public Economics 96, no. 9 (2012): 685-697.

Totally Bat-Shit Crazy: Anthony Watts and his "failed" climate predictions

You'll see these silly lists pop up from time to time on denier websites all over.  A list of supposedly "failed" climate predictions.  Many of them you won't find anywhere else at all.  It's as if the deniers just made them up.

"Surely they wouldn't stoop so low", I hear you say.  Oh, you didn't say that at all?

Anthony Watts has just put up such a list (archived here).  He said it was a list to answer the question of "what was predicted by scientists and activists 25 years ago that would be a result of global warming." and "The original post was asking for a list of failed climate predictions".

Thing is, I only counted fifteen of his 107 predictions that were made 25 years or more ago.  All the rest were more recent.  And of those fifteen, only eight were about global warming.  In fact quite a few of them were about global cooling and some weren't about either warming or cooling but something completely different.  So not only does Anthony fail arithmetic but he can't even stick to the subject he himself chose.

Here are some others that he reckons are failed predictions.  Let me know what you think of their failure:

1. “Due to global warming, the coming winters in the local regions will become milder.”
Stefan Rahmstorf, Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research, University of Potsdam, February 8, 2006

I couldn't find any trace of Professor Rahmstorf saying this, though it was plastered all over a lot of denier websites.  I can say, without a shadow of doubt, that winters in my local region have become milder.  I don't know about yours.

Data Source: Bureau of Meteorology Australia

If he did say it, then I'd rate this as scientist pass; deniers fail.


Here's another prediction that Anthony Watts (and a zillion other denier websites) say has failed:

3. “More heat waves, no snow in the winter… Climate models… over 20 times more precise than the UN IPCC global models. In no other country do we have more precise calculations of climate consequences. They should form the basis for political planning… Temperatures in the wintertime will rise the most… there will be less cold air coming to Central Europe from the east…In the Alps winters will be 2°C warmer already between 2021 and 2050.”
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, September 2, 2008.

Between 2021 and 2050?  How do they know it has failed? Perhaps these deniers have a time machine.  Incidentally I did a search of www.mpimet.mpg.de for that quote. I couldn't find it.  That doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  The deniers have obviously chopped so much out of it to try to squeeze it into a "failed" prediction.  Strange they left in the part about 2021 and 2050 though.

The European Alps are certainly getting hotter.  In the Executive Summary of this OECD report, is written:

The Alps are particularly sensitive to climate change, and recent warming has been roughly three times the global average. The years 1994, 2000, 2002, and particularly 2003 have been the warmest on record in the Alps in the past 500 years.

Scientists pass; deniers fail.

There are lots more like the above.  There are also lots of quotes from magazines and newspapers.

I have to say that most of the quotes Anthony Watts seems to regard as being a failed prediction are either or both:

• predictions about the near or far future ranging from 2030 to 2100
• already happening.

I saw a tweet today that made me wonder if I should take the first step towards forgiving WUWT:

Freedom means this > pic.twitter.com/zS1ULl56SL
— Girl Futurist (@GirlFuturist) April 3, 2014

From the WUWT comments

Lots of them aren't buying the list.  Some are falling for it, but they are as bad as Anthony Watts or even worse, if possible.

Richard says:

April 2, 2014 at 11:20 am
Wow.. this post is of a quality that I’d expect from spam email. It is extremely poorly sourced. Most entries are completely devoid of context about the range of time these predictions are supposed to occur by, and there are even predictions that specify ranges of years that are still decades away, yet are somehow already considered “failed.”

Bruce Cobb says:

April 2, 2014 at 11:21 am
You can’t know that those are failed predictions. They might have come true in an alternate universe.

LB says:

April 2, 2014 at 11:23 am
“In the UK wetter winters are expected which will lead to more extreme rainfall, whereas summers are expected to get drier. However, it is possible under climate change that there could be an increase of extreme rainfall even under general drying.”
Telegraph, Dr. Peter Stott, Met Office, 24 July 2007
==============
About the only one correct, for this year at least

Patagon says:

April 2, 2014 at 11:33 am
They seem to dislike skiing very much. I would like to know the actual impact of those failed prophecies on the skiing industry. Calling to stop investment on the basis of unsupported regional models is a bit nasty (number 26).

The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley says:

April 2, 2014 at 11:38 am
Number 98: has anyone checked this (partial pun)? There is the Czech physicist Lubos Motl, but he wasn’t born until 1973. I can find no reference for a ‘Lubos Moti’ – note the ‘i’. 

He's talking about this one, which is pretty funny:

 98. 1969, Lubos Moti, Czech physicist: “It is now pretty clearly agreed that CO2 content [in the atmosphere] will rise 25% by 2000. This could increase the average temperature near the earth’s surface by 7 degrees Fahrenheit. This in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. Goodbye New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter.”

JimS says:

April 2, 2014 at 12:10 pm
Rarely do I side with the AGW point of view, but to call these “failed predictions” is really stretching it. Some are notable, but very few.

G. Karst makes an astute observation.  The list of "climate fails" from deniers is getting bigger all the time while that from scientists is, sadly, almost non-existent.  G Karst says:

April 2, 2014 at 12:10 pm
Should’t these be filed under the “Climate Fail” tab on the site banner. After all, it is sparsely populated at the moment (2). GK

Surprisingly, there were a few deniers who thought the list was silly.  But most people who comment at WUWT are, as expected, fake sceptics or weirdos who can't see that the listed predictions had either already come to pass or were about the future.


Resourceguy apparently reckons WUWT is a den of illiterati. At least I assume he's talking about WUWT when he mentions anti-learning and says:

April 2, 2014 at 12:10 pm
Definitely a keep, but the failed predictions after this point will still grow exponentially anyway because we live in the era of anti-learning and anti-empirical evidence, right NYT, BBC, and others?

groovyman67 wants every high school, college, university, news station, et al to know how dumb they are at WUWT and says:

April 2, 2014 at 12:58 pm
This list should be more thoroughly completed, continually updated, and have the names and employer of each listed. Then nailed on the door of every high school, college, university, news station, et al as the ’107 theses’. If there is no accountability for these predictions there is no stopping them.

Since there is no desire for accountability, rather a desire to cover up, among the warmists (formerly coolists) perhaps the route to go is loud, obnoxious and ongoing predictions of 0 degree temperature change by 2034, ice caps will be almost exactly the same in 2064. This will only work if the manner in which it is presented draws attention, since it’s not fearmongering it will be considered non-newsworthy. 

PaulH says it's important to remember the names and faces of people like Anthony Watts, Marc Morano, Christopher Monckton, Judith Curry, Roy Spencer, Matt Ridley, Nigel Lawson, Benny Peiser, John Christy, Ian Plimer, Bob Carter, James Delingpole, David Rose, Andrew Bolt, Jo Nova and all the others who are working hard to make sure the world gets hotter and hotter, faster and faster. Perhaps he's right:

April 2, 2014 at 1:03 pm
It is important to remember the names and faces of the people who caused all of this CAGW mayhem.

JohnWho says:

April 2, 2014 at 1:56 pm
Great information from the OP and other posters.

Question:
Is there a similar list of skeptical failed predictions or are the climate skeptics too “proper science minded” to make unfounded predictions?

John, if you're over this way, check this out!  This one by Pierre Gosselin who predicts minus 2.5 degrees Celsius by 2020 is up there with the best of them. It's not 2020 yet, but I think it's fair to say that unless there's an asteroid strike or a supervolcanic eruption, it will fail.  Back in 2008 he wrote:

My prediction is we’ve started a nasty cold period that will make the 1960s look balmy. We’re about to get caught with our pants down. And a few molecules of CO2 is not going to change it.

Yet only two years later, we had the equal hottest year on record. Here's what his prediction would look like in the context of the prior 140 years.

We can ignore everything Anthony Watts says because of his denier affiliations

Anthony Watts has another "Claim" headline (archived here).  This time it's a claim that Arctic sea ice is forming later and melting sooner - as a general trend.  (Anthony copied and pasted a long article with no attribution for the article and no link to any source. He didn't mention the research paper itself.)  Here are the opening paragraphs from the NASA press release:

The length of the melt season for Arctic sea ice is growing by several days each decade, and an earlier start to the melt season is allowing the Arctic Ocean to absorb enough additional solar radiation in some places to melt as much as four feet of the Arctic ice cap’s thickness, according to a new study by National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and NASA researchers.

Arctic sea ice has been in sharp decline during the last four decades. The sea ice cover is shrinking and thinning, making scientists think an ice-free Arctic Ocean during the summer might be reached this century. The seven lowest September sea ice extents in the satellite record have all occurred in the past seven years.

"The Arctic is warming and this is causing the melt season to last longer," said Julienne Stroeve, a senior scientist at NSIDC, Boulder and lead author of the new study, which has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters. "The lengthening of the melt season is allowing for more of the sun’s energy to get stored in the ocean and increase ice melt during the summer, overall weakening the sea ice cover."

The fact that the melt season is getting longer won't be a surprise to anyone.  However Anthony Watts dismissed the analysis because:

I tend to take research done by Ms. Stroeve with a grain of skepticism, since she allows her work to be aided by political activists at Greenpeace.

Julienne Stroeve
(Image: NSIDC)

Ms Stroeve is Julienne Stroeve PhD.  That is, Dr Stroeve, who is a research scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) and has an impressive publication history. In 2012 she travelled to the Arctic to do research, which she blogged about.  It's really the research findings that Anthony objects to. His excuse for rejecting it is typically pathetic.

You can read the full paper here (open access at the moment).


Here is Anthony Watts hoping that the greenhouse effect will be disproven one of these days:

While there likely is some truth in the report, what isn’t explored is whether the cause of this change is part of a natural cycle, a natural cycle enhanced by some AGW effects, or purely an artifact of AGW.

Their claim…

The increases in surface ocean temperatures, combined with a warming Arctic atmosphere due to climate change, explain the delayed freeze up in the fall.

…reads like something Greenpeace would write, providing no other possibility. One thing I tend to notice about Earthly geological and atmospheric processes is that they tend to act on timespans than exceed human lifetimes, sometimes being orders of magnitudes longer. In the case of Arctic sea ice, a record going back to 1979 is shorter than that and only represent a fraction of what may be a natural cycle. Making claims that they know exactly what the cause is might very well bite them in a few years or few decades.

What other possibility would Anthony entertain?  Leprechauns? Magic? He thinks that Arctic warming in the context of global warming might be "natural"? That the greenhouse effect has suddenly stopped working?

Notice his "tend to notice" that "Earthly geological and atmospheric processes" act on timespans that exceed human lifetimes.  Sometimes being orders of magnitudes longer!

Wow - really, Anthony?  What a revelation that will be to all the world's geologists.

Yeah. It's a huge ask to expect a science denier to think in timeframes longer than their personal life span.

Since Anthony can take Dr Stroeve's research, and by association anything that comes out of the NSIDC, with his "grain of skepticism", I expect that means he's letting the world know that we can take anything he writes with a huge dollop of disdain.  He has a long association with the ignominious Heartland Institute and gets a lot of his material courtesy of people like the award winning climate disinformer Marc Morano.

From the WUWT comments

Sorry, I'm still strapped for time.  You can read them archived here.  I notice that Anthony is trying to retrieve his shattered reputation. Fat chance, Anthony! And he's playing the persecuted martyr into the bargain.  Cheeky, given his propensity to round up a lynch mob to attack climate scientists and others.

---

J. C. Stroeve, T. Markus, L. Boisvert, J. Miller, A. Barrett. Changes in Arctic melt season and implications for sea ice loss. Geophysical Research Letters, 2014; 41 (4): 1216 DOI: 10.1002/2013GL058951

"Heeeelp! They are going to throw me in jail!" Or weird denier weirdness from Roger E. Sowell, Esq. at WUWT

Waaaa...
Let me out!!!

If you're taking a break from reading the new IPCC report - from Working Group II, here's a distraction for you.

Someone named Roger E. Sowell, Esq. has written an article at WUWT (archived here) to fit with Anthony's theme of the week.  If you thought deniers couldn't get any nuttier, think again. (The "Esq." just means he owns a bit of land. It could be anything from a handkerchief sized plot in a community garden to an island in the Pacific.  It also probably means he's about 110 years of age.  I haven't seen anyone add Esq. to their name in decades.)

Update: I've been informed by riverat that some people who practice law in the USA append Esq. to their name, though one source says it's bad form to append it to your own name. It's a courtesy title. Sou.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.reckons he's a skeptic.  He makes a disclosure in keeping with his pomposity.

Disclosure: my own view after long and careful study and based on engineering, science, and mathematics, is that of a confirmed skeptic with a full understanding that carbon dioxide, CO2, does indeed absorb and emit thermal radiant energy.

What he means by that is that he accepts the science but doesn't.  He doesn't "believe" that CO2 absorption and emission means that more CO2 warms the planet.  In other words, he's a nutter.

There is more evidence underpinning my "nutter" hypothesis.

The basis for the jailing of skeptics is that many, perhaps millions, of human deaths will occur inevitably if drastic action is not taken immediately to prevent additional fossil fuel use.

First off, not many people are calling for the "jailing of skeptics", not even fake skeptics like Roger E. Sowell, Esq. Certainly not the  people he refers to (Lawrence Torcello, for example.)

Secondly, while strong action needs to be taken, I know of no rational person who expects "immediate action to prevent additional fossil fuel use" - or at least not any additional use - not immediately.  Or that if there isn't "immediate action" that many, perhaps millions, of human deaths will occur inevitably.  Although I must admit that some time over the next 120 years at least 7,000 million people are going to die.  What we do need is urgent and considered action to shift to clean energy. Roger E. Sowell Esq. missed out that part.  This is the Critical Decade. If we don't cut CO2 and shift to clean energy then it's a sure bet that a lot of people will die before their time. So he's partly right, just missing out on the bit where we are replacing a dirty, damaging energy source with clean, more renewable energy sources.

I noticed that Roger E. Sowell Esq. doesn't think the people who read WUWT have an IQ above 70, because he feels the need to explain:

By fossil fuel use, what is meant is the burning of coal and natural gas in power plants and process plants, plus burning petroleum products as transportation and heating fuel.   

I got as far as this when it became crystal clear that this wasn't any ordinary nutter. Roger E. Sowell Esq. was an "utter nutter".

In this particular case, the assertion is that those who promote research into climate change to show that no alarm is justified will cause the death of millions of people due to events such as ice caps melting, subsequent sealevel rise and coastal inundation, droughts, and heat waves.   

How many things can you find wrong with that sentence? (Apart from it being too long for people with an IQ below 70 to follow.)  How's this for starters:

Roger E. Sowell Esq. thinks that a scientist would do "research into climate change to show no alarm is justified".  Well, maybe that's not so silly.  That's what motivated Richard Muller and I guess what motivated Koch to fund his research.  At least he was scientist enough to recognise and admit that his base premise was wrong.  Not like Richard Lindzen, who just threw in the towel when he failed to find evidence for his Iris hypothesis, and took to the science denier speaking circuit.

Whereas many scientists probably wouldn't admit they were searching for evidence to support a pet hypothesis and would argue one needs an "open mind", you do need an idea to start with.  That idea might be a firm or woolly hypothesis - or it might not.  The open mind is more important when it comes to designing the research and collecting evidence.  Roger E. Sowell Esq., were he capable of designing a research project, would probably discard any evidence that he didn't like. No reputable scientist would do that.

Your other reaction might have been - WTF! Why does Roger E. Sowell Esq. think that anyone who promotes research should "cause the death of millions of people". Okay, some research has that potential.  Research into a killer virus and letting it escape the lab might conceivably do that. But climate science?  Not if it's done by a decent scientist.

I didn't bother with the rest of his article. I could see that Roger E. Sowell Esq. wandered into voluntary and involuntary manslaughter and spent most of his article talking about the ins and outs of that. Since his base premises were so flawed as to be laughable what was the point of reading further?

Evolution of a denier meme

It's an interesting development of a denier meme, just the same.  It reminds me of Recursive Fury, probably because that's been in the blog news lately.

In the first iteration a few days ago, Anthony led in with a misrepresentation of an article by a climate philosopher, wrongly claiming that he said deniers should be thrown in jail.  But the article didn't mention jail and wasn't talking about deniers. Professor Torcello was talking about people who fund disinformation campaigns. Roger E. Sowell Esq. might fit that description. I know nothing about him.

Anthony repeated his false claim in at least two other articles.  For good measure he tossed in a misrepresentation of a climate blogger and a former Archbishop.  That helped set the scene.

Now he trots out Roger E. Sowell Esq. who twists an already flawed denier meme into something even more twisted. It began with an actual suggestion that funding disinformation campaigns should be a criminal offence. That was morphed by deniers into fake sceptics should be thrown in jail. Now it's people who do climate science research to try to prove that climate science is a hoax should be thrown into jail.  It didn't take long to evolve.  It was only about 16 days in all, from start to where it is now.

By the time Anthony is finished with them, at the rate he's going, all the deniers at WUWT will be quaking in their boots, thinking they are heading for the gallows. Or at the very least, that FEMA concentration camp guards, supported by a platoon from Agenda 21 military force of the one world government, are going to knock down their door in the middle of the night and frogmarch them to Guantanamo Bay.

From the potential jailbirds at WUWT

No-one ever accused WUWT readers of being sceptical.


Owen in GA is an alarmist who says:

March 31, 2014 at 7:33 am
Stonyground says: March 31, 2014 at 7:21 am

So, in practical terms, what is this drastic action that we should be taking but are being prevented from taking due to the very existence of sceptics?

Ahh there’s the rub in it all. If you read the literature of some of the players, the answer is to MURDER 9/10 ths of the world population, destroy all industrial conveniences and live as our stone-age ancestors did. (Except for a small cadre of “elites” who would have all the modern convenience to better “guide” over the stone age remainder.)

I wish the above was sarcasm, but it is the unfortunate reality of what we are up against.

Neo may not be aware of the L'Aquila jailings or the witch hunt after our own floods in Brisbane and says:

March 31, 2014 at 7:47 am
There is a slippery slope to linking scientific research and predictions to legal culpability.
Just imagine the possible litigation from a weather report that understands or overstates the level of precipitation.
Of course, the horror of horrors would be to extend this level of culpability to political promises.

Ronald says "there wright!":

March 31, 2014 at 8:07 am
Can’t do I think there is a bit of a problem. To go to court and claim skeptics are a danger for humans by dismissing climate change they must proof there wright. On the other hand skeptics get the change to proof there wright to.

Don’t think models stand a change a gains real life data so there must be a real stupid judge out there for the alarmist to win that one.

Chuck says:

March 31, 2014 at 8:12 am
I see the call by climate alarmists that skeptics should be imprisoned as simply another indication that CAGW is a religion for them. Skeptics are the heretics of the CAGW religion and the call for imprisonment is a modern Inquisition.

Oh, this is a long one - and I didn't read it before writing the above, believe it or not (it's true!) Think how much the deniers have been squawking lately at the suggestion some of them are paranoid conspiracy theorists.  R. de Haan talks about a mortal struggle and more - and says:

March 31, 2014 at 7:22 am
Roger, thank you very much for your excellent article.

At te same time I would like to ask you if there is a case to take on the UN and all in support for abuse of science and scare mongering promoting punishing caps, taxes and restrictions of fossil fuel use and social behavior manipulations to execute their UN Agenda 21 which in principle is a centralist take over (coup) of the entire world, it’s economies, it’s financial system, it’s resources, you name it.

Now this would be a productive move that would bring us forward instead of defending our views with our back against the wall.

I have come to the conclusion that we have arrived in a mortal struggle for the survival of our western civilization and thought it was better to check for legal options before we blow up the world because that’s where we’re heading if these idiots continue to push their insane plans.

In fact we already have numerous human deaths as a direct result from the US and EU bio fuel mandate which triggered the Arab Spring Revolution started as food protests and energy poverty is already killing numerous people, even in the Western nations.

The practices of the totally corrupted UN is going to turn very ugly soon if we don’t undertake something more structural than trying to establish a dialogue with the warmists, an initiative I gave up years ago.

I know this question is in the same category as ” Could a lawyer have stopped the Nazi’s from starting WWII and root out the Jews” but still.

Here we have a bunch of crazies destroying Western civilization by raping science and bribing politicians, NGO’s and scientists while they completely wreck our economies leaving written and physical evidence all over the place.

I am looking forward to your response.

Roger E. Sowell Esq. hasn't responded yet.  However at the bottom of his WUWT article he wrote that he's touting for business. It takes no imagination to guess why he has to resort to free advertising on WUWT.

Specific legal advice is available from Mr. Sowell and anyone who seeks such advice is encouraged to contact Mr. Sowell.

PS This article is for real.  It's not an April Fools Day joke.

Some reactions to WGII

Human interference with the climate system is occurring, and climate change poses risks for human and natural systems.

So opens the Summary for Policy Makers of WGII, Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability.

Here is a sample of the blogger reactions and (pre-release) news items about the IPCC AR5 WGII report.

Judith Curry said yesterday that she had "yet to read the entire WG2 Report" (surprise surprise, seeing it hadn't been released at the time), but expressed the view that threats on the timescale of the 21st century are not existential.  I don't know what Judith meant by existential threats. She might have meant to the all life on Earth, to the human race, to a single nation anywhere or just to the USA. Although some island nations may be facing an existential threat this century, I'm not aware of anyone suggesting that a major nation or humanity or Earth as a whole could disappear.  However it is likely that if we don't mitigate, then society will face serious challenges.

Judith pointed her readers to Andrew Lillicoe who writes for The Telegraph, who wrote that we don't need to make any serious effort to cut carbon emissions. He's wrong.

Our first step in adapting to climate change should be to accept that we aren't going to mitigate it. We're going to have to adapt. That doesn't mean there might not be the odd mitigation-type policy, around the edges, that is cheap and feasible and worthwhile. But it does mean that the grandiloquent schemes for preventing climate change should go. Their day is done. Even the IPCC – albeit implicitly – sees that now.

You can read some about Andrew Lillicoe here.

The Independent on 18 March wrote an article that took a fairly broad-based approach, including mention of climate migration and cost.

Climate change will displace hundreds of millions of people by the end of this century, increasing the risk of violent conflict and wiping trillions of dollars off the global economy, a forthcoming UN report will warn. 

Suzanne Goldenberg for the Guardian on 28 March also wrote a general article, mainly about weather, flooding and water security.  As with some other writers, she noted that:

Climate change has already left its mark "on all continents and across the oceans", damaging food crops, spreading disease, and melting glaciers, according to the leaked text of a blockbuster UN climate science report due out on Monday.

Aaron Akinyemi in the International Business Times on March 30, 2014 (before WGII release) focused on world stability and security, opening with:

Climate change is likely to undermine global security and exacerbate civil wars, a major new UN report warns.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), extreme weather patterns will complicate existing conflicts over resources such as water and energy, leading to further instability.

Megan Rowling for Thomas Reuters Foundation took a softer approach but nevertheless pointed out that the report emphasised that our response needs to include both mitigation and adaptation. She also wrote that there are limits to adaptation.


Justin Gilles from the NY Times made an interesting point:

The poorest people in the world, who have had virtually nothing to do with causing global warming, will be high on the list of victims as climatic disruptions intensify, the report said. It cited a World Bank estimate that poor countries need as much as $100 billion a year to try to offset the effects of climate change; they are now getting, at best, a few billion dollars a year in such aid from rich countries.

The $100 billion figure, though included in the 2,500-page main report, was removed from a 48-page executive summary to be read by the world’s top political leaders. It was among the most significant changes made as the summary underwent final review during a days long editing session in Yokohama. 

The edit came after several rich countries, including the United States, raised questions about the language, according to several people who were in the room at the time but did not wish to be identified because the negotiations are private.

The language is contentious because poor countries are expected to renew their demand for aid this September in New York at a summit meeting of world leaders, who will attempt to make headway on a new treaty to limit greenhouse gases.

Anti-science blogger Anthony Watts' reaction was forgettable (archived here).  He tried to downplay WGII after his moan of a headline and opening:

The IPCC WGII report is out – now the screaming begins anew
Not so much fanfare now, since leaks pretty much revealed earlier that it’s alarmism on steroids. The always dependably worrisome Seth Borenstein, AP’s science reporter, sums up the alarmism quite well with this tweet:

The tweet being this one. Anthony then went on to copy the headlines from the Summary for Policy Makers but didn't add much more.  Only he copied them from Working Group 1- oh my! (h/t Anonymous). He buried his article under a couple of much more important announcements from his point of view (archived here):

• The Death of the Bloggies, signified by the fact that The Bloggie awards have been commandeered by climate deniers in all sorts of categories unrelated to climate (Tallbloke won the best European blog, GWPF won the best politics blog, ClimateAudit won the best topical blog, JoNova the lifetime achievement and WUWT a couple of equally ridiculous categories! ), and
• His followers awarded Professor Michael Mann the WUWT award of Climate Duplicist of the Year.  Which is as zany as you'd expect from WUWT.  If anyone epitomised "what you see is what you get", then it's Michael Mann.  He's about the last person you'd accuse of being "duplicitous".  Outspoken, apparently fearless, yes. Occasionally over-reacts - some would say, though who can blame him after the treatment he's had for the past fifteen years or more.  Definitely not duplicitous.

You can download the WGII report here, which is what I'm doing now. I've been having some trouble accessing the site but it seems to be okay again.

IPCC WG II is out...watch this space for reactions (later)

I've an article in the works on the "pre" and "post" reaction to the IPCC AR5 WGII report, but won't get back to it for a few hours yet.  In the meantime, you can download the Summary for Policy Makers and the final full draft here.

Feel free to comment about the report or reactions to same.

Denier weirdness: WGII has unbalanced Anthony Watts @wattsupwiththat

Talking about the unbalanced. Anthony Watts is is on a roll.

Whenever he sees something he doesn't like his vocabulary takes a dive.  Today he has an article (archived here) full of lies, half-truths and disinformation.  It's peppered with the word - "hate", which he reverts to when he gets upset. In addition to the headline, he's used the word eight more times.  It's as if he loses any command of vocabulary when something displeases him.  He started his article like this:

HATE WEEK on the Climate Certainty Channel™
What a week this has been. In preparation for the release of the IPCC Working Group II report, hate speech against climate skeptics seems to have ramped up and turned into a week-long unreality show. 

Perhaps it's the realisation that WGII is not going to be what Matt Ridley said it would be.  Who knows.  Whatever it is, Anthony Watts lashes out at all and sundry.

First up he once again misconstrues what Professor Torcello wrote. By now we can only conclude it's quite deliberate.  Anthony notes that others have pointed out that he misrepresented Lawrence Torcello, yet he still claims that he wrote that deniers should be jailed.  What Lawrence Torcello actually wrote was that "an organised campaign funding misinformation ought to be considered criminally negligent".  Not "deniers" and not "jail". It's the people funding misinformation that he had a go at.

I reckon Anthony wants to rally his lynch mob to keep up the pressure.

Next Anthony has the effrontery to claim that And Then There's Physics blog "allows hate speech".  He even does this while linking to his own WUWT article where he shows that the comment in question was deleted shortly after it appeared! Showing the complete opposite.  And Then There's Physics bends over backwards in "trying to keep the discussion civil" - and does a great job too.

Anthony goes on to list all the other people who offended him, including a blogger, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, everyone who criticised Roger Pielke Jr, including Nate Silver for "caving in", and the Anti-Defamation League for not sticking up for climate science deniers.

He ends up by posting a old fudged chart of Roy Spencer's that was even worse than this one, writing:

As reality (measurements) diverge from models, becoming more uncertain,  the certainty of the IPCC gets stronger, and the hateful rhetoric ramps up to match the mean.

Anthony is feeling very put upon.  He's probably let down by the likelihood that WGII won't, after all, spell "game over for climate alarm".

From the WUWT comments (Warning)

This epitomises the comments and is probably the reaction that Anthony was hoping for. (Warning - it's ugly.) twg2a PitBull says:

March 30, 2014 at 11:00 am
I want those evil beasts to continue hating me, calling me filthy names and spitting in my face. Do you know why? Because every time they do, it makes me even more determined to fight them until we win, or until I die. When evil people hate me because I am trying to do what’s right, it gives me great strength. Sooooo, keep it up lefties. I thrive on your hatred. Thank You..