Quote of the Day at WUWT: Beginner's Mind or Fools Rush In

From Wondering Willis Eschenbach today at WUWT (archived here):

Now most folks would likely do a search of the literature first, to find out what is currently known about the subject.

I don’t like doing that. Oh, the literature search is important, don’t get me wrong … but I postpone it as long as I possibly can. You see, I don’t want to be mesmerized by what is claimed to be already known. I want to look whatever it is with a fresh eye, what the Buddhists call “Beginner’s Mind”, unencumbered by decades of claims and counter-claims. 

That short passage sums up why Willis Eschenbach gets into strife so often. He claims to "postpone it" but is there evidence that Willis ever reads the literature? (I'm not talking about a random paper here or there that he might try to pull to bits, I'm talking about a proper literature review on a subject of interest.)

The above passage by Willis was from a lead in to an article about beryllium isotopes and solar cycles in which Willis confesses he did do a search, apparently for a data set not the literature on the subject.  He found one, for which he provided a title and abstract but not the authors or source or any other information.  A quick search shows Willis found the data at NASA.  He ignored the requested citation, which is:

Pedro, Joel and Smith, Andrew M (2012, updated 2012) Annually-resolved polar ice core 10Be records spanning the Neutron Monitor era Australian Antarctic Data Centre - CAASM Metadata (https://data.aad.gov.au/aadc/metadata/metadata_redirect.cfm?md=/AMD/AU/Neutron-Monitor-era-annual-10Be)

And Willis seems to have ignored the associated paper (available here):

Pedro, J. B., Simon, K. J., Smith, A. M., van Ommen T. D. and Curran, M. A. J. (2011), High-resolution records of beryllium-10 in ice from Law Dome, East Antarctica: measurement, reproducibility and principal trends, Climate of the Past, 7, 707-721, doi:doi:10.5194/cp-7-707-2011 

There is much more research that he could have found had he really been interested in the subject.

Fools rush in...

Once again Willis has rushed in to a field, found some data, performed a couple of simple plots and decided that all the scientists are wrong.  He expects either pats on the back from the WUWT-ers, or for someone else to do the hard work.  Mostly the former from what I gather.

Willis' did go as far as look at the notes to the data set and found that the scientists commented on the difference in solar cycle correlation between concentration and flux:

Concentrations at both DSS and Das2 are significantly correlated to the 11-yr solar cycle modulation of cosmic ray intensity, r = 0.54 with 95% CI [0.31; 0.70], and r = 0.45 with 95% CI [0.22; 0.62], respectively. For both sites, if fluxes are used instead of concentrations then correlations with solar activity decrease.

He wasn't at all happy.  He put a question to WUWT-ers (not the researchers themselves) (my bold italics):

If you use flux rates the “Correlations with solar activity decrease”??? Yeah, they do … they decrease to insignificance. And this is a big problem. It’s a good thing I didn’t read the notes first …

Now, my understanding is that using 10Be concentrations in ice cores doesn’t give valid results. This is because the 10Be is coming down from the sky … but so is the snow. As a result, the concentration is a factor of both the 10Be flux and the snow accumulation rate. So if we want to understand the production and subsequent deposition rate of 10Be, it is necessary to correct the 10Be concentrations by using the corresponding snow accumulation rate to give us the actual flux rate. So 10Be flux rates should show a better correlation with sunspots than concentrations, because they’re free of the confounding variable of snow accumulation rate.

As a result, I’ve used the flux rates and not the concentrations … and found nothing of interest. No correlation between the datasets, no 11-year periodicity, no relationship to the solar cycle.

What am I missing here? What am I doing wrong? How can they use the concentration of 10Be rather than the flux? Are we getting accurate results from the ice cores? If not, why not?

It's not that the questions themselves are unreasonable for a "beginner".  The problem I have is that Willis goes barging in without doing any reading on the subject. And his questions are like a red rag to a bull at WUWT.  It means all the science is wrong! (In fact, Willis has some fans and some who really don't like him at WUWT, so he often gets a mixed reception.)

I'm not the person to answer Willis' question.  All I can do is suggest he read the literature. As the authors of the above paper say (my bold italics):

...obtaining reliable information from the 10Be record requires proven sample processing and measurement techniques, along with a good understanding of the sequence of environmental processes controlling production in the atmosphere and ultimate storage in the ice sheet.

There's more, in a discussion of how best to "test the response of 10Be concentrations in ice to variations in the atmospheric production rate", for example:

By contrast, the sunspot record is less useful since the relation between sunspots and 10Be production is neither linear nor direct.

My question to Willis is: Why don't you read the literature?

From the WUWT comments

Quite a few people try to help Willis out.  None of them come right out and ask - "why don't you read the literature?" However a number of them did just that and quoted various papers on the topic (not all of them reliable sources, needless to say).  Plus one for WUWT commenters, FAIL for Wondering Willis Eschenbach.

Tom in Florida isn't one for reading literature - he says:

April 13, 2014 at 4:28 pm
“What am I missing here? What am I doing wrong? How can they use the concentration of 10Be rather than the flux?”
I believe you know the answer,…………. it gives them the results they were seeking.

Brad who is not an expert on beryllium in ice but a building auditor, says:

April 13, 2014 at 4:32 pm
Willis,
It is obvious what you are missing, GRANT MONEY!!!! You could have strung this out for at lest a few years and made a million or more, plus publishing rights. You also need to run it through the DIY a few times to get it thoroughly “scientificey”, so most eyes will glaze over and bow to the master. sarc/off

Your “beginners eyes” are greatly appreciated… that is a term I will remember in the future when auditing commercial buildings. I always tell operators they have blinders on when it comes to some problems. They just can’t see it, and will argue until the cows come home.
A new set of eyes can see that which others can’t.

scarletmacaw takes a wild guess but comes down on the side of the scientists, not Willis and says:

April 13, 2014 at 5:38 pm
I would think the difference between flux and concentration depends on how the Be10 is deposited. If it is captured in ice crystals and deposited in snow fall, then using concentration makes sense. I guess my question is where does the Beryllium come from?

Cynical Scientst goes a bit further and says:

April 13, 2014 at 6:07 pm
It depends strongly on how the beryllium is being deposited.

Flux is the appropriate measure only if we assume that beryllium is deposited evenly and steadily across the entire surface of the planet. But it seems much more likely to me that beryllium is transported out of the atmosphere by precipitation and hence is deposited quite unevenly and unsteadily across the planet. Areas with high precipitation would then be expected to receive a high beryllium flux while those with low precipitation will get only a small amount. In this scenario concentration is much better measure than flux of the rate of beryllium production as in a well mixed atmosphere the rate of beryllium production should determine the concentration of beryllium in precipitation.

Look to see which of flux or concentration is least strongly correlated with local rates of precipitation. That would be the best measure to use.

markx might not understand what's been written, but he likes the style. He says:

April 13, 2014 at 6:12 pm
Very interesting, and very nicely laid out.
Willis, you write very clearly.
We would all do well if scientific papers were written in a similar clear prose, instead of being immersed and obfuscated in the accepted contemporary ‘scientific’ phrasing and jargon.

bushbunny takes exception to something Willis wrote and says:

April 13, 2014 at 7:53 pm
Willis I appreciate your hard work producing these graphs. They must give you some exciting work and I commend you for that, but remember that most of us here haven’t a deep scientific understanding to comment on your graphs To stipulate whom should respond to them is a bit elitist and selective in my opinion. I say no more.We know cosmic rays are deflected from earth due to solar activities, hence less contact with water vapour in our atmosphere.

WGIII is out - Mitigation options and societal impacts

The IPCC AR5 WGIII Summary for Policy Makers is now available for download. Without making a recommendation for any particular option, it assesses "the scientific, technological, environmental, economic and social aspects of mitigation of climate change".  It also assesses societal implications of different mitigation policies.

For this assessment, about 900 mitigation scenarios have been collected in a database based on published integrated models.

That's a lot of mitigation scenarios to work through! I'm still reading the report as I write this. It looks as if the main report will be chock full of facts and figures as well as emphasising what will probably seem obvious to most readers.

One item that fits in the "facts and figures" category is this one, about how if we don't do something, we're stuffed:

Without additional efforts to reduce GHG emissions beyond those in place today, emissions growth is expected to persist driven by growth in global population and economic activities. Baseline scenarios, those without additional mitigation, result in global mean surface temperature increases in 2100 from 3.7 to 4.8°C compared to pre‐industrial levels 10 (median values; the range is 2.5°C to 7.8°C when including climate uncertainty, see Table SPM.1)

Yep, the report comes right out and says we could be heading for a temperature rise of 7.8°C.

We've not done enough to stay safe.  We've not promised to do enough to stay below 2°C of warming. But we can get there if we put our collective mind to it.

Estimated global GHG emissions levels in 2020 based on the Cancún Pledges are not consistent with cost‐effective long‐term mitigation trajectories that are at least as likely as not to limit temperature change to 2°C relative to pre‐industrial levels (2100 concentrations of about 450 and about 500 ppm CO2eq), but they do not preclude the option to meet that goal (high confidence). Meeting this goal would require further substantial reductions beyond 2020. The Cancún Pledges are broadly consistent with cost‐effective scenarios that are likely to keep temperature change below 3°C relative to preindustrial levels. [6.4, 13.13, Figures TS.11, TS.13]

The more we delay the more dangerous and costly it becomes and the fewer choices we'll have.

Delaying mitigation efforts beyond those in place today through 2030 is estimated to substantially increase the difficulty of the transition to low longer‐term emissions levels and narrow the range of options consistent with maintaining temperature change below 2°C relative to pre‐industrial levels

The report includes some pie-in-the-sky scenarios for comparison, such as everywhere on earth starting to mitigate immediately and there is a global price on carbon. It's not all bad news. If we act properly, there will be lots of associated benefits such as clean air (which some parts of the world haven't seen in a while).

The SPM touches on different sectors: transport, buildings, and industry as well as agriculture, forestry and other land use (which has its own acronym AFOLU). It also discusses what actions have been taken around the world to mitigate, in a broader policy context. The final (short) section covers international cooperation.

The main report should also be out shortly.  Meanwhile, you can read the Summary for Policy Makers.


By the way, the only mention of this at WUWT so far is a dig at ClimateProgress (archived here), although for some reason Anthony Watts neglected to mention that the ClimateProgress article was about WGIII.

Anthony probably didn't realise what Joe Romm's article was about, even though it's mentioned in the snapshot he took.  He was too busy trying to make a "funny" out of Joe Romm writing:

You read that right, the annual growth loss to preserve a livable climate is 0.06% — and that’s “relative to annualized consumption growth in the baseline that is between 1.6% and 3% per year.” So we’re talking annual growth of, say 2.24% rather than 2.30% to save billions and billions of people from needless suffering for decades if not centuries. As always, every word of the report was signed off on by every major government in the world.

Anthony Watts is confused about ENSO.

Update - see below for how it's sometimes me who makes a fool of myself!


Anthony Watts is very confused about ENSO. He's got a little competition going at the moment (archived here, latest update here).  This is what he's written:

When/if a large or super El Niño forms, you know the usual suspects will try to link it to global warming/climate change. It is as certain as the sun rising in the morning.

Anthony doesn't say who the usual suspects are. Nor does he say how they will try to link an El Niño to global warming/climate change.  He does give a hint about the latter though, writing:

So, readers are invited to create statements/headlines that they think are likely to appear in the media, and when we get a hit on one of those, we’ll refer back to this WUWT article and point out that it was expected, but there’s just no linkage.

My contribution is:

Trenberth told us that heat hiding in the ocean would jump out and burn us in the future, and he was right!

Happy headlining!

This article is long - to parse Anthony's confused comments, see Bob Tisdale's fudged chart and find out what WUWT-ers think about ENSO, click here to read on.

More on Tropical Cyclone Ita

Australia's attention is focused on Far North Queensland and Tropical Cyclone Ita. (More here.)

Source: BoM

The Cooktown shelter has gone into lockdown and power has gone out in the town.  I've just heard that people may be locked in the shelter for 48 hours. The storm will probably bring down powerlines so there'll be all sorts of dangers even after the storm passes. There's a warning that it could be a month before power is restored. (Supply in Far North Queensland was described as one long extension cord stretching north of Cairns.)

Been hearing that the cyclone shelter in Hope Vale is meant for a Cat 3 cyclone, so the people there are concerned, given Ita is a Cat 5.

The other thing is that the system is slow.  I've heard it could mean 300 mm of rain every six hours for days.  That means floods and more damage to areas already devastated by massive winds.

The locals seem to be very organised and have prepared very well. Cairns is a fair way south of landfall but is in the expected path as the system moves down the coast. (see here)

I've been collecting a few tweets about Tropical Cyclone Ita.

Warning in cairns that ATMs will stop working. #TCIta pic.twitter.com/GQHVrjI6g6
— Matt Wordsworth (@MattWordsworth) April 11, 2014

The main cyclone shelter in #Cooktown is now locked down as Ita approaches. Follow our blog for live updates #TCIta http://t.co/I3ESryk2Ig
— ABC News (@abcnews) April 11, 2014

Just got a text from Cooktown: "no power in Cooktown whole town out". It's going to be a long night in #FNQ. #TCIta
— Sam Drummond (@samdrummond) April 11, 2014

Cooktown power has just gone out, according to the town's Sovereign Hotel owner, Brendan Cullern. #TCIta
— Tropical Cyclone ITA (@Cyclone_Ita) April 11, 2014

We have set up a hotline for relatives of residents at #Bupa Mt Sheridan. For urgent inquiries regarding #TCIta please call 1300 352 638
— Bupa aged care Aust (@BupaAgedCareAus) April 11, 2014

Thinking of my family and friends in #fnq Especially all the hard working banana farmers. Stay safe. #TCIta
— Lucy Stocker (@miningmummy) April 11, 2014

@hairbyjulia1 If you haven't been through a big one before the noise of the wind and rain will shock you. #TCIta
— Pete (@PeteDotAscian) April 11, 2014

You can see some more info about Ita here.
.

Battening down in Far North Queensland for Tropical Cyclone Ita

Tropical Cyclone Ita is a dangerous Category 5 heading for Far North Queensland.  It's likely to hit the coast just north of Cooktown, which is north of Cairns.

The cyclone is regarded as the worst since Yasi in 2011. At least 23 people were killed when the storm hit the Solomon Islands, and up to 10,000 people were affected in what is reported as being "a natural disaster on a scale never before witnessed in the Solomon Islands".  And that was when Ita was just a tropical low.

Here is the latest chart from the Bureau of Meteorology. (As always, click any image to enlarge it.)

Note: I've updated the chart below as an animation. Note how the track after landfall has moved closer to the more populated coastal settlements of Cape Tribulation, Port Douglas, Cairns, Innisfail and Townsville. Sou. (1:08 pm Friday 11 April 2014 AEST)

Source: BoM

If you are interested in how communities prepare, this page from Cairns Post has a good overview.  It includes emptying hospitals of everyone who can reasonably be sent home, shutting up shops, opening emergency shelters, sandbagging and more.

I've taken a snapshot of some satellite images too. This first one is via BoM:

Source: BoM

Update: Below is an animation showing how the cyclone is slowly moving toward the coast (Sat 11 April 2:00 pm).

Source: BoM

The rest are from the Space Science & Engineering Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison. In the longwave photo below you can clearly see the eye of the cyclone and how far the tail spreads.

Source: SSEC, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Here is the water vapour image.

Source: SSEC, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Below is the latest visible - which is a few hours old because it's night time here:

Source: SSEC, University of Wisconsin-Madison

From the Bureau of Meteorology

SEVERE TROPICAL CYCLONE ITA, CATEGORY 5, poses a significant threat to communities along the far north Queensland coast. At this stage it is expected to move to the southwest and make landfall between Cape Melville and Cape Tribulation later on Friday as a SEVERE CATEGORY 5 TROPICAL CYCLONE with VERY DESTRUCTIVE WINDS near the core and GALES extending some distance from the landfall location.

DESTRUCTIVE WINDS may develop between Cape Melville and Cooktown from as early as sunrise Friday morning before extending inland to Laura and further south to Cape Tribulation and possibly Port Douglas later in the day.  GALES may develop between Lockhart River and Cape Tribulation during Friday morning before extending further south to Innisfail and inland to Kalinga, Palmerville, and Laura, and Chillagoe later in the day as the system moves closer to the coast and over land.

Coastal residents between Cape Melville and Cape Tribulation including Cooktown are specifically warned of the dangerous storm tide as the cyclone crosses the coast later on Friday. The sea is likely to rise steadily up to a level which will be significantly above the normal tide, with damaging waves, strong currents and flooding of low-lying areas extending some way inland.


In an ABC report, something was written that made me think of Roger Pielke Jr.  It was that "Cooktown residents are being warned that properties built before 1985 may not be able to withstand Ita's impact."


It will be a difficult few hours and days ahead for far north Queenslanders. Stay safe.

El Niño on its way

While we're on the subject of weather, most of you will probably have heard by now that the likelihood of El Niño was upgraded the other day.  Now there is a greater than 70% chance of an El Niño this winter (southern hemisphere winter, that is 1 June to 31 August).

Source: BoM

What next from CEI and Chris Horner - thought recorders?

The world of conspiracy theorists gets weirder day by day.

According to an article on WUWT (archived here), the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which appears to exist for the sole purpose of suing the government and anyone and everyone, is now filing a lawsuit to get text messages from EPA people.  Not emails this time, text messages.

Really and truly.  I reckon they ought to just petition the court for the right to have one of their people sit alongside every government employee in the USA (and elsewhere if their conspiracy theories go that far) for 24 hours a day, and record every word they utter. Then they can apply to have thought readers strapped to the head of every government employee in the nation to be transcribed by Chris Horner, preferably.  That should keep him busy for a while.

What a bunch of crazies!

WUWT boasts how it tries to delegitimise expert knowledge. Rinse, repeat... (again)

Update - see below.


Anthony Watts has posted a new article at WUWT (archived here) about an article that he's written about already, last September (archived here). His memory is playing up again.

So am I! ...writing a new article about an article I (and he) have written about already.

The newly published article (by Amelia Sharman) has changed a bit from the working paper. At least the abstract has changed. This is what was there in the abstract first time around, with changes crossed out.

A network of 171 individual blogs is identified, with three blogs in particular found to be the most central: Climate Audit, JoNova and Watts Up With That. These blogs predominantly focus on the scientific element of the climate debate, providing either a direct scientifically-based challenge to mainstream climate science, or a critique of the conduct of the climate science system, and appear to be less preoccupied with other types of scepticism that are prevalent in the wider public debate such as ideologically or values-motivated scepticism. It is possible that these central blogs in particular are not only acting as translators between scientific research and lay audiences, but, in their reinterpretation of existing climate science knowledge claims, are filling a void by opening up climate science to those who may have been previously unengaged by the mainstream knowledge process and, importantly, acting themselves as public sites of alternative expertise for a climate sceptical audience. 

This is the new abstract with changes in bold italics.

A network of 171 individual blogs is identified, with three blogs in particular found to be the most central: Climate Audit, JoNova and Watts Up With That. These blogs predominantly focus on the scientific element of the climate debate, providing either a direct scientifically-based challenge to mainstream climate science, or a critique of the conduct of the climate science system. This overt scientific framing, as opposed to explicitly highlighting differences in values, politics, or ideological worldview, appears to be an important contributory factor in the positioning of the most central blogs. It is suggested that these central blogs are key protagonists in a process of attempted expert knowledge de-legitimisation and contestation, acting not only as translators between scientific research and lay audiences, but, in their reinterpretation of existing climate science knowledge claims, are acting themselves as alternative public sites of expertise for a climate sceptical audience.

WUWT attempts to delegitimise and contest expert knowledge

Anthony is very proud of the fact that he is king pin of blogs that are key protagonists in a process of attempted knowledge de-legitimisation and contestation. It makes him feel all warm and fuzzy inside to know that he is recognised for trying to delegitimise expert knowledge.  Tomorrow he'll probably announce the opening of another Chapter of the Scientific Illiterati.

What a Dumb Denier

Not only has Anthony forgotten he's written about this before, he doesn't twig to the fact that the paper has been changed.  He's put up a link to the earlier working paper and said "An open access version of the paper is available here".  I wonder what else has changed in the paper itself.  Going by the changes to the abstract, the amended paper is likely to be less ambiguous about the nature of fake sceptic blogs than was the original working paper.

Update

There's an interesting discussion at And Then There's Physics about this paper.  It has some worthwhile comments from a social science researcher that help explain what to climate hawks is puzzling (about the working draft).

From the WUWT comments

Rob Ricket says:

April 9, 2014 at 6:48 am
Congrats to the WUWT team! Peer reviewed no less…Mann and Lew will have to be restrained and placed in the rubber room.

View from the Solent doesn't understand what is meant by "network" in this context, nor acknowledge just how much is copied from one denier blog to the other and says:

April 9, 2014 at 6:55 am
Describing 171 unrelated blogs as a ‘network’ says much about the authors of the paper. It implies that they cannot concieve of those blogs arising independently and spontaneously.

Gary Pearse comes up with something that will be news to climate buffs. He's got to be kidding when he says (or is he really that dense?):

April 9, 2014 at 6:58 am
Yeah, good, but let’s add the visits by all the main proponents of CAGW. WUWT is indeed a central source. Many of these proponents have been invited to put articles on WUWT to argue their positions. It hasn’t happened much but I foresee this becoming a new development of this blog. There can be little doubt that the new “discoveries” of CAGW proponents of natural variability, the ocean oscillations, solar, etc. where purloined from such as WUWT. Willis E’s stuff I’m sure is going to generate new “discoveries” to replace the patched up failures that abound.

TG thinks that realclimate.org is a denier blog and says:

April 9, 2014 at 6:59 am
Ooo… How come there’s no RealClimate in the top group?

Duke C. is alert to the changes in the paper and says:

April 9, 2014 at 7:23 am
“Given that it is from the Grantham Institute, I wonder how Bob Ward is taking the news?”
Given the differences between the two abstracts, I wouldn’t be surprised if Bob Ward was one of the reviewers. 

hunter isn't sharing Anthony's enthusiasm for the paper and says:

April 9, 2014 at 8:06 am
Oh yeah, this is that paper that attempts to claim that skeptical blogs are anti-science, etc. What a nasty little game these academics play: no respect for debate, no tolerance,and no questioning of their apocalyptic claptrap.

What nasty little minded bigots they are. 

Venter says:

April 9, 2014 at 8:31 am
Well done Anthony and all mods. Your hard work is being recognised. Great job.

Lance Wallace sheds some light on the changes in the paywalled paper and says:

April 9, 2014 at 8:20 am
There is also a useful discussion of this paper over at CA (about halfway down the comments).
http://climateaudit.org/2014/04/07/the-ethics-application-for-lewandowskys-fury/

Mike S at that site points out the change (toward the CAGW POV) between the working draft and the final paper, particularly clear in the abstract. However, Ms. Sharma did resist the pressure to some extent. I commented at CA as follows:

Yes, clearly pressure was brought to bear on the author, no doubt through the Grantham Institute, which partially funded the work. However, even the paywalled version retains some reasonable observations. For example, the first conclusion is the following:

“The most noteworthy finding of this research however is that
the blogs identified as the most central predominantly focus on the scientific element of the climate debate. Regardless of the motivation behind the existence of the climate sceptical opinion, what appears to be the most valued and legitimate way of expressing that opinion within the blogosphere is through the use of scientific themes and language.”

And a bit later:

“Finally, it also suggests that by not focusing on, or explicitly identifying, debates regarding the ideological foundation for climate change disagreement, which more explicitly highlights ‘attitudes and worldviews. . .[and] political ideology and personal values’ (Poortinga et al., 2011, p. 1022), the blogosphere may be playing a central role in perpetuating doubt regarding the scientific basis for subsequent climate change policy-making.”

Right on, Ms. Sharman!

Bluff the public with pseudo-science is one way to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt.  And deniers and disinformers are proud of doing so.  Pretty disgusting isn't it.

I wonder if Amelia's revised analysis comments on all the slime and innuendo that her list of blogs are known for? Or the wacky conspiracy theories that abound? Or has she still been partly taken in by the pseudo-science on denier blogs?

Awww! Poor little Anthony Watts Ego Trips to Nonentity-Land. It's a conspiracy!

Update: Current count of editors resigning from Frontiers in protest at it caving in to intimidation from science deniers = 3 (three).  See Graham Readfearn's article at DeSmogBlog for details.

---

Poor, sensitive little Anthony Watts is upset.  He wrote a letter and sent it to all and sundry and no-one took the slightest bit of notice.

Today he's complaining (archived here) that Professor Ugo Bardi, (former) Specialty Chief Editor of the journal Frontiers in Energy Research, has resigned from Frontiers.  He resigned because, as he wrote:

...my opinion is that, with their latest statement and their decision to retract the paper, Frontiers has shown no respect for authors nor for their own appointed referees and editors. But the main problem is that we have here another example of the climate of intimidation that is developing around the climate issue. ..

...The climate of intimidation which is developing nowadays risks to do great damage to climate science and to science in general. I believe that the situation risks to deteriorate further if we all don't take a strong stance on this issue. Hence, I am taking the strongest action I can take, that is I am resigning from "Chief Specialty Editor" of Frontiers in protest against the behavior of the journal in the "Recursive Fury" case. I sent to the editors a letter today, stating my intention to resign. 

You can read Professor Bardi's full explanation and commentary on his blog.

This is even longer than my usual fare, so to save bandwith for people not interested, I've split it.  Click here to read more. It might amuse you - if you're a closet watcher of the weird and wacky world of conspiracy-theorising climate science denial and the unfathomable thought processes of The One who regards himself as The Fearless Famous Leader :)

Denier Weirdness: Wildely Wrong (behaviour) at WUWT

There's an update below.

---

This is an article that goes to the character of Anthony Watts, or his lack of.  He has posted an article by one of his faithful fans, Stephen Wilde.  I'll be kind and suggest that Anthony didn't read it before he put it up.  That happens quite a lot.

Here is a link to the archived original version, courtesy of one who joined in the general guffawing that went on in Twitter.  I've taken a snapshot of the original then the attempt at face-saving.  Spot the difference.

Anthony belatedly tried to save face by adding some time later:

Note: I’m glad to see a number of people pointing out how flawed the argument is. Every once in awhile we need to take a look at the ‘Slayer’ mentality of thinking about radiative balance, just to keep sharp on the topic. At first I thought this should go straight into the hopper, and then I thought it might make some good target practice, so I published it without any caveat.
Readers did not disappoint.

You may have spotted something else.  Not only is Anthony happy to expose his faithful fan to public ridicule, he didn't even have the courtesy to spell Stephen's name correctly as you'll see below.  And there's more in the comments, where Anthony tries to wriggle out of his lack of judgement:

REPLY: the journey to a right or wrong answer is just as important. This was good practice in seeing how well people can sort out the answer. -A 

 And in response to dp, Anthony talks about using Stephen Wilde for target practice:

April 8, 2014 at 9:05 am
This post comes 7 days too late. It is a joke, right?

REPLY: yep, just some fun target practice – Anthony

Stephen Wilde has good reason to object. Not only did Anthony spell his name wrongly, Stephen has learnt a hard lesson in how Anthony treats his "friends". He says (excerpt):

April 8, 2014 at 9:09 am
...Anthony,
All posts here are good target practice for someone.

If you thought it was only good for the hopper then I would have preferred you had said so and not bothered to use it....

REPLY: My opinion on the backradiation and lapse rate silliness is well known, you should have known better than to submit it. If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen. Hopefully you’ll learn something from the comments. – Anthony

Just like he did with Nicola Scafetta recently, Anthony tossed his faithful fan, Stephen Wilde, to the dogs. Anthony acts as if he's caught between a rock and a hard place. He can't accept the science or he'll lose all his fans. Yet he wants to appear to be knowledgeable. His character is such that he'll sacrifice the odd loyal follower when it suits him.

Which is the worse indictment on Anthony? That he might not have realised that the article was dumb when he posted it? Or he did know it was dumb but was happy to ridicule a fan rather than shelve the article.  I think the latter is worse, but Anthony doesn't agree or he would have acted differently.  It goes to character.


I guess this article is more about bad blog behaviour than about the article.  But since you're probably curious - Stephen decided that Kevin Trenberth's energy balance diagram is wrong. What's wrong with Stephen Wilde's article?  Practically everything.  Even the diagram he used is 17 years old.  It's from Kiehl and Trenberth (1997). There have been lots of updates since then.

I don't have the time or the inclination to go through the article itself.  Much of what was wrong was picked up in the WUWT comments.  Stephen Wilde makes a lot of comments trying to justify his stance.  Another comment that you might like is this one, from Anthony Watts' guard dog, sock puppeteer and favoured mod, dbstealey aka Smokey aka dbs aka D Boehm aka who knows what else.  dbstealey admits that he's a greenhouse effect denier and says:

April 8, 2014 at 10:30 am
Duster says: … the inward or down-welling LIR is never 50% of the reradiated IR…

That has been my understanding for a long time now. Greenhouse gases radiate in all directions, therefore a CO2 molecule at, for example, a 20 km altitude would re-radiate an IR photon that it absorbed from the surface in all directions, therefore far less than 50% of the re-radiated photons would return to heat the earth. Most would proceed into outer space. It is only at the surface that a photon has a 50% chance of warming the planet. The rest of the photons radiate into space, cooling the planet.

That is just one of several arguments falsifying the greenhouse gas conjecture.

That's enough from me. I've a busy day ahead.  I'll just let you enjoy the reaction on Twitter.

Its the return of the Killer Slayers of Death! Get it now, before it gets taken down in shame: http://t.co/u1lOlbz8dM
— William Connolley (@wmconnolley) April 8, 2014

@capital_climate No. It's definitely wrong. ;-) @VariabilityBlog @wmconnolley @MobyT9
— Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) April 8, 2014

.@wmconnolley @ClimateOfGavin @capital_climate @MobyT9 If Watts realised it,that would be worse. Exposing a fellow sceptic to mass ridicule.
— Victor Venema (@VariabilityBlog) April 8, 2014 

 .

Update

After writing this article there were quite a few more comments plus Anthony added more to his note at the bottom of his article (latest archive) In his note he wrote:

Update: Let me add that the author assuredly should have included a link to the underlying document, Earth’s Global Energy Budget by Kiehl and Trenberth 

Go on, try out his link.  It's dead. Not only that but going by the doi (and date) in the link, Anthony meant the link to go to this 2009 paper.

Trenberth, Kevin E., John T. Fasullo, and Jeffrey Kiehl. "Earth's global energy budget." Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 90, no. 3 (2009): 311-323.

But the diagram Stephen used was from this 1997 paper:

Kiehl, J. T., and Kevin E. Trenberth. "Earth's annual global mean energy budget." Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 78, no. 2 (1997): 197-208.

First stone-caster Anthony Watts:- put up a dead link to the wrong paper. He mixed up the right authors with the wrong title (and paper and year of publication). 

In the more recent comments you'll come across a few people who are feeling uncomfortable about WUWT turning on one of their own and chastising Anthony Watts, as if they accept his line that he knew the article was wrong when he put it up. They also know it could have been any one of them to be humiliated.  There are also more comments from people who are busy claiming that the energy diagram is all wrong because their particular brand of pseudophysics "proves" it.

Anthony Watts denies agricultural science at WUWT

As many of us would have predicted (had we bothered with such a prediction), with the release of the IPCC AR5 WGII report, deniers have been busy protesting climate science.

I started to put together a summary of protest articles from WUWT:

• Larry Hamlin says the risks are overstated (archived here).
• The GWPF advisers can't make up their mind if the report is alarmist or if it's a comfort.  Richard Tol says the report is too alarmist for his taste and when Bob Ward points out where he's made mistakes Richard goes all sooky (as he does) and claims he's being "smeared".  Matt Ridley, on the other hand, says the latest report has "toned down the alarmism". I've written about that already - well not the smeary Richard bit.  The IPCC itself has addressed that one!  And here's the Daily Mail articles that the IPCC was responding to. (For fun, read the caption under the photo of Ed Davey, half way down the page.)
• Anthony Watts says a journalist for the LA Times is wrong and that crop yields are not depressed because Roy Spencer told him so (archived here).

Hang on, that last one is something I'm quite interested in.  I didn't know that Roy Spencer was an expert in agriculture.  Maybe it's Roy Spencer who's wrong.  Here is what Anthony wrongly "claims":

LA Times Tony Barboza gets caught fear mongering the IPCC report, becomes first victim of facts that don’t agree with claims

....Problem is, the agricultural data doesn’t match the LATimes/IPCC claim, see for yourself:

I decided to look first at what the journalist actually wrote.  Here it is, in an article by Tony Barboza in the Los Angeles Times:

One of the panel's most striking new conclusions is that rising temperatures are already depressing crop yields, including those of corn and wheat. In the coming decades, farmers may not be able to grow enough food to meet the demands of the world's growing population, it warns.

So next I turned to the WGII report to see what it stated about crop yields.  Chapter 7 is the one about food security and food production system - for people (like me) who find this latest report even harder to navigate than WGI.

As an aside, why couldn't the IPCC just release a single file and one with chapter labels as well as numbers! It takes forever to search each chapter separately when looking for a particular quote.  I'd have consolidated the separate chapters into a single document myself except that the files are protected in a way that makes it virtually impossible. And since the IPCC in its wisdom didn't provide a single file, why not have the chapter numbers beside the chapter titles on the web page? Tip: put your mouse over the link beside each chapter title to find out the chapter number. Update - here's a better page which has chapter numbers and titles.)

Be grateful for what we've got I suppose.  At least the report is out on time.  Here is some of what is in the report regarding crop yields:

Studies have documented a large negative sensitivity of crop yields to extreme daytime temperatures around 30°C. [Chapter 5 AR4, 7.3.2.1.1] These sensitivities have been identified for several crops and regions and exist throughout the growing season (high confidence). 

This is probably the part that caught Tony Barboza's attention (my bold italics):

Many studies of cropping systems have estimated impacts of observed climate changes on crop yields over the past half century, although they typically do not attempt to compare observed yields to a counterfactual baseline, and thus are not formal detection and attribution studies. These studies employ both mechanistic and statistical approaches (7.3.1), and estimate impacts by running the models with observed historical climate and then computing trends in modelled outcomes. Based on these studies, there is medium confidence that climate trends have negatively affected wheat and maize production for many regions (Figure 7-2) (medium evidence, high agreement). Since many of these regional studies are for major producers, and a global study (Lobell et al. 2011) estimated negative impacts on these crops, there is also medium confidence for negative impacts on global aggregate production of wheat and maize. Effects on rice and soybean yields have been small in major production regions and globally (Figure 7-2) (medium evidence, high agreement). There is also high confidence that warming has benefitted crop production in some high-latitude regions, such as Northeast China or the United Kingdom Jaggard et al., 2007, Supit et al., 2010; Chen et al., 2010; Gregory and Marshall, 2012).

Yield is affected by growing conditions as well as by planting improved varieties.  Plant breeders continue to develop new varieties with improved yield in some crops.  But plant breeding can only go so far.  Determining what yield would have been like without global warming is not straightforward.

Not only that, but yield is only part of the equation.   To feed the world requires a growth in total production (total quantity harvested), not just yield (quantity harvested per hectare).  If areas of land become unsuitable for growing particular crops because yield drops too much, then either new areas will have to take up the slack or there'll be less of that crop to go around.

Anthony Watts and Roy Spencer pointed me to the USDA website that has quite a bit of information about crops, total production and yield.  I  drew up some charts - which I must admit don't inspire confidence in our ongoing ability to feed a growing world population.  I've picked out a few of the most common field crops - corn (maize), wheat, barley, oats, sorghum and rice.

Yield of selected field crops

First let's look at yield. That's what Anthony wrote about and that's what was mentioned in the LA Times article. I suggest clicking on the chart to enlarge it.

Data Source: USDA

What the chart suggests is that corn yield continues to improve linearly. Wheat has had its heyday. Yield continues to improve but not like it did up to around the mid 1990s. Sorghum isn't making any great strides at all. Rice has picked up a bit after a lull in the late 1990s.

The question that the IPCC would like addressed is whether or not the yield is being adversely affected by global warming.  You can't tell that from the charts.  You'd need to separate out the yield improvements as a result of plant breeding and crop management from any effect of climate.  In other words, if global warming wasn't happening, would the yield be greater or less than it is.

Total production of selected field crops

Next have a look at the total production of the same field crops.  Here is the result:

Data Source: USDA

Once again, corn is the clear leader, with a huge hike in total production in the past few years. Wheat is tapering off. Rice has moved back toward the trend line. Oats and barley are in decline and sorghum is fairly steady.

Area harvested

Lastly, consider the area harvested for the same crops.

Data Source: USDA

Looking at the chart, the area planted to corn has gone up in the last few years in particular. Putting this chart together with the other two, corn has a double advantage - more area planted plus considerable improvement in yield. Wheat on the other hand has to rely on yield improvements because the area planted has shrunk compared to the late 1970s. Rice growing continues to expand.  Oats and barley are quite out of favour, while sorghum is only slowly declining.

What does this mean? Keeping pace with a growing population.

These field crops are only interchangeable to a limited extent from a cropping perspective. Corn and rice needs lots of water. Wheat, oats and barley can be grown as dryland crops but they need moisture to germinate. They don't want too much rain when the grain is ripening or they'll get all sorts of fungal infestations and other problems. Sorghum can grow where other crops can't, but there are a lot of different types suiting different conditions.  In other words, when climate changes - autumn or spring rains are no longer reliable, or the summer is wet instead of dry, or there are extended periods of drought and the irrigation water is no longer available - then production drops in that region, or even ceases entirely.

The reason I'm not encouraged is that looking at wheat for example, it suggests that any growth in total production will come down to continued improvements in plant yield, not in area planted.  There is only so much improvement before yield improvements start to taper off.  But the human population is still increasing.

Different areas are suited to different types of agriculture.  There isn't a lot of land about that can be converted to cropping.  Some horticultural land will probably shift to field crops as climate changes. I'm thinking particularly of my home state, where horticultural production needs irrigation.  Our region is going to keep getting hotter and drier. Water will become more scarce and more costly. That will mean a shift in production. So we may get wheat instead of cherries. (Well, more likely wheat instead of citrus or wine.)

On the other hand, in the marginal cropping land in some regions, farmers are giving up. Wheat has been grown on marginal land in south western australia - and that's getting drier.

I'm not going any further with this for now.  There is more on the topic in WGII (Chapter 7). Just thought it worth an article because we need to eat.  And if production doesn't keep pace with the growing world population then food prices will rise and food will become scarce.  This will have lots of flow on effects such as famine, civil unrest and mass migration. Plus large areas of land may be left unmanaged, with consequent damage to the environment.

From the WUWT comments

There were lots of people who moaned that newspapers and journalists don't check facts.  Ironic, eh? The journalist wrote what was in the IPCC report. It was the WUWT crowd who didn't check the facts - they just lapped up what Anthony Watts and Roy Spencer fed them, without question.  Without checking it for meaning or accuracy.


Billy Ruff'n says:

April 1, 2014 at 11:35 am
You’re letting facts get in the way of feelings….

Peter Miller probably knows "where to look" but was too lazy.  He says:

April 1, 2014 at 11:36 am
The facts are boring and don’t sell newspapers, but scary unfounded stories sell newspapers.
It is probably no more than this. Also, the hack was too lazy to check the facts, or so uninformed and pig ignorant that he did not know where to look.

Brian R probably means every word he writes and speaks on behalf of all WUWT-ers when he says:

April 1, 2014 at 11:40 am
Facts? We don’t need no stinking FACTS! 

JimS wouldn't make a good reporter because he says:

April 1, 2014 at 11:45 am
The difference between a good reporter and a poor one is this: a good reporter checks the facts; a poor one doesn’t. It seems as though the AGW movement, if we can call it that, survives and thrives because the quality of good media reporting has dropped considerably. 

James Ard might have made a fool of himself after he says:

April 1, 2014 at 11:48 am
Will the refutation of their just plain wrong claims be allowed in their letters to the editor?

Col Mosby, who seems to use only half his brain (if that), decides to have a crack at the journalist's name and says:

April 1, 2014 at 11:39 am
Tony Barboza is a name I expect to see on the back of a boxer’s robe. Sounds like his aspirations significantlly exceed his mental abilities. “Hey, with haf a brain, I coulda’ been somebody.”

RM3 Frisker FTN opts for "CO2 is plant food", ignoring the fact that excessive heat kills plants and crops need water, and says:

April 1, 2014 at 11:47 am
Maybe we could convince Lord Mockton to write a post that again uses the graph showing both CO2 vs Time and Temperature Anomaly vs Time with the thirteen plus year pause while CO2 continues to climb. Further in the post would be a second graph showing Agriculture Yields vs Time and CO2 vs Time, illustrating the correlation between CO2 concentration growth and Agriculture Yields. In other words CO2 equals Plant Food. QED via the Correlation yields Causation logic of the Alarmists.

Mac the Knife goes for a conspiracy ideation and says:

April 1, 2014 at 12:01 pm
“Maybe he’s just too lazy to check facts like this? Or, is it belief mixed with incompetence?”
The third possibility is a willingness to ‘shade the truth’ sufficiently to create a perception of alarm…. and sell more subscriptions to secure his paycheck.

TheMightyQuinn plays the poor victim and says:

April 1, 2014 at 12:09 pm
Tony did his job. He spread fear so the Progressive boot can be pressed against our necks.

rw is an "ice age comether" and says:

April 1, 2014 at 12:27 pm
If it keeps getting colder, we will see crop reductions. So Tony may have his predictions right even if he’s a bit off regarding causation. 

I read through every single comment and only one person, mark 543, had checked the facts or looked at the IPCC WGII report itself.  One or two others picked it up later in the discussion but in the main, the WUWT commenters are a bunch of mindless m....