WUWT is severely undernourished when it comes to the science of crop production with rising CO2

Anthony Watts has another of his "claim" articles - which is his dogwhistle to the members of the WUWT Scientific Illiterati to display their allegiance to ignorance (archived here).

The science is about something that's been appearing in the literature over the years about the impact of rising CO2 on plant nutrients of importance to human health.  This time it's the result of a large international collaboration involving twenty scientists from the USA, Israel, Australia and Japan.

These twenty scientists are affiliated with numerous prominent organisations, including: Harvard (various), Ben-Gurion University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, UC Davis, University of Pennsylvania, DEPI Victoria Australia, National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences Japan, USDA (various), University of Arizona, The Nature Conservancy New Mexico and The University of Melbourne (various).

About FACE

No, WUWT-ers haven't done an about-face.  This is about FACE, which was the system used in the research.

ScienceDaily.com has a press release about the research paper. (As usual, Anthony didn't provide a link to the paper or to the press release.) What the various studies looked at was the impact of higher CO2 levels on multiple varieties of multiple important staple crops, including wheat, rice, field peas, soybeans, maize and sorghum. The way they did this was in open-air fields using a system that pumps out CO2 to simulate the levels expected over coming decades.  The CO2 pumping system, called FACE (Free Air Concentration Enrichment), pumps out CO2 and automatically adjusts it.  The research compared the crops grown under high CO2 with crops grown at current CO2 levels.  All the other growing conditions were the same - including sunlight, soil, water and temperature.

What they found is not a surprise to people who've been keeping up with the scientific literature but it's notable for the breadth and depth of the study, the variety of crops studied and the fact that it was conducted in open air conditions, with controls of current day conditions. As reported by ScienceDaily.com:

The study contributed "more than tenfold more data regarding both the zinc and iron content of the edible portions of crops grown under FACE conditions" than available from previous studies, the team wrote.

C3 crops have lower levels of important nutrients at higher CO2

The most important findings were that at higher CO2, a lot of the important crops (wheat, rice, field peas and soybeans) had a big reduction in zinc and iron, which is very important for human health. Zinc and iron deficiencies already affect a large number of people in the world and as CO2 rises, this could become an even bigger problem. Except for the legumes, the C3 crops also had lower concentrations of protein. Protein content is particularly important for processing qualities of wheat - making bread, pizzas and pasta for example. Of course it's also important nutritionally for wheat and rice.

Sorghum and maize are C4 plants and their nutrients weren't affected by higher CO2. C4 plants photosynthesize differently to C3 plants. From ScienceDaily.com again:

Nutrients in sorghum and maize remained relatively stable at higher CO2 levels because these crops use a type of photosynthesis, called C4, which already concentrates carbon dioxide in their leaves, Leakey said.

"C4 is sort of a fuel-injected photosynthesis that maize and sorghum and millet have," he said. "Our previous work here at Illinois has shown that their photosynthesis rates are not stimulated by being at elevated CO2. They already have high CO2 inside their leaves."

Role for plant breeders

The results of this research will be important for plant breeders.  There will need to be a focus on breeding to retain nutrients in crops grown under higher CO2 levels. It's just another feature to add to the growing list of attributes that plant breeders will need to focus on.  The list already includes breeding for drought tolerance, disease resistance under high humidity etc etc.  The abstract of the paper suggests:

Differences between cultivars of a single crop suggest that breeding for decreased sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 concentration could partly address these new challenges to global health.

From the WUWT comments

H/tip to Magma for pointing out the silliness at WUWT.

Lou says there's a simple solution - stop eating food:

May 7, 2014 at 2:10 pm
Hmm… It’s not like wheat is good for you anyway (See Heart Scan Blog or Wheat Belly Diet by Dr Mike Davis) for more information. Some are quite susceptible to wheat based food (diabetes and heart disease).

Anyway, I’ll have to see more studies to make sure that study holds up or not because as everybody already knows, leftists are desperate to label CO2 as dangerous so they’re looking for ways to demonize it.

Matt Maschinot says he's got another solution, the opposite to Lou - Matt says just eat more, not less:

May 7, 2014 at 2:24 pm
I’m curious as to what the growth efficiency was, for those plants that lost nutritional value. Is it possible that the additional CO2 increased the efficiency of the growth of the plant, and that by growing quicker, the plants did not accumulate the same level of nutrients?

If that’s the case, wouldn’t higher crop yields, result in lower cost, and higher consumption? And wouldn’t that offset the lower nutritional value of the individual plant?

schitzree doesn't know the difference between greenhouse tomatoes and open field grain and legume crops (or between greenhouse tomatoes and field tomatoes) and says:

May 7, 2014 at 2:15 pm
So I guess we need to tell commercial greenhouse owners that they’ve been wrong all this time? I’m sure they will be happy to hear they won’t have to buy all that extra CO2 anymore.

tteclod didn't bother reading the press release and has a lot of questions for most of which the answer is already provided (as if anyone at WUWT would answer them anyway). tteclod is a clod and talks about "he" instead of the "they" - being 20 scientists, and says:

May 7, 2014 at 2:22 pm
Also, he seems to differentiate between photosynthesis mechanisms. This looks like a study for a plant biologist and ag engineer to critique.

Also, what carbon-dioxide concentration did he achieve? How was the concentration measured? How was the CO2 introduced? Was the elevated CO2 level maintained throughout the daily photosynthesis cycle, or did it change according to time of day? How did they handle weather and winds in an open field. Did they measure the natural CO2 level in the region before, during, and after the experiment and compare to controls? What species of crops did they use? Did they make any comparison of nutritional values to nearby crops harvested by others?

ladylifegrows knows much more than all of those silly scientists from around the world put together, and says that the little goblins who work inside the cells of the plant factory will have lots of free time under higher CO2, because of "Rubisco". So they can turn their efforts to making other nutrients of "increased concentration and variety", presumably because they won't be as busy manufacturing carbohydrates:

May 7, 2014 at 2:24 pm
Rubisco is the name of the main plant protein that turns CO2 + H2O into sugar and oxygen. With higher CO2, the plant will need less of this protein and minerals associated with it. That will give the plant freedom to produce other nutrients in increased concentration and variety. Logically, this should mean a much more health-promoting food, but it would take sophisticated research for find out for sure or to quantify it. That pretty much cannot be done in a highly biased atmosphere. And good luck finding anything else.

Mike Maguire doesn't believe in wolves (or science), and says:

May 7, 2014 at 2:28 pm
In Aesops Fable “The boy who cried wolf” how many different times did the village people get fooled?

In the IPCC Fable, “The planet that was being destroyed by CO2″ we have been subjected to hundreds(make that many thousands) of CO2 wolf stories but the CO2 wolf still has not come after 20 years.

At this point, even if this study was valid, it is almost impossible for me to believe that finally after screaming wolf for 20 years, a real wolf(and this one, not necessarily a big bad wolf) could actually be there.

Les Johnson says he doesn't believe it, but can't be bothered going to look at the article or tables himself:

May 7, 2014 at 2:33 pm
I see some control issues here. Protein in wheat is determined by how much rain and sun, and when during the wheat development, the rain and sun are applied. How long was the study? If only a few years, or god forbid one year, then the results would be weather more than CO2.
Anyone find the paper? I would like to read about the methods.

R2D2 says that undernourished people living in underdeveloped countries should pop into their local supermarket and buy some multi-vitamins - simple!

May 7, 2014 at 2:45 pm
Or take some multi vitamin

Kon Dealer is probably correct when she or he says:

May 7, 2014 at 2:52 pm
I guess these “scientists” have never heard of the word “fertliser”? 

I haven't come across that word before, either.


tegirinenashi, who wouldn't know science if it bit him in the butt, says:

May 7, 2014 at 3:16 pm
I think there is a way to combat this endless flow of superficial half-baked “research”. Conservative think tank institutions can establish annual “Bad Science” award with nominal prizes. I don’t think researchers would think twice before publishing anything that may be caught by negative publicity of getting BS award.

Charles Nelson didn't bother reading the article. He thinks the paper is about tomatoes. (It wasn't. It was a study of grain and legume field crops.) He says:

May 7, 2014 at 3:23 pm
Pure garbage.
Are they claiming that tomatoes grown in greenhouses with elevated CO2 are less ‘nutritious’?
I’ll bet they can afford ‘organic’ fruit and veg.

Jungle says the research is meaningless because plant breeders "should be able to adapt". Jungle doesn't say how the plant breeders are supposed to know what to adapt to, without studies such as these:

May 7, 2014 at 3:27 pm
Even if this was the case. Plant breeders should be able to adapt to that scenario. Another meaningless study.

Okay, I've read enough.  There are almost 100 WUWT comments along the lines of the above. A good example of the WUWT scientific illiterati who worship ignorance and despise knowledge and learning.

---

Samuel S. Myers, Antonella Zanobetti, Itai Kloog, Peter Huybers, Andrew D. B. Leakey, Arnold J. Bloom, Eli Carlisle, Lee H. Dietterich, Glenn Fitzgerald, Toshihiro Hasegawa, N. Michele Holbrook, Randall L. Nelson, Michael J. Ottman, Victor Raboy, Hidemitsu Sakai, Karla A. Sartor, Joel Schwartz, Saman Seneweera, Michael Tausz, Yasuhiro Usui. Increasing CO2 threatens human nutrition. Nature, 2014; DOI: 10.1038/nature13179 (pdf here)

Deniers at WUWT are up in arms about the US National Climate Assessment

Going by the number of protest articles at WUWT, it's unclear whether climate science deniers want to promote or suppress the newly released National Climate Assessment. This assessment was produced by the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). Jeff Masters has a very good summary. Here is an excerpt from the overview, which gives you an idea of what the report covers and the general slant:

This National Climate Assessment collects, integrates, and assesses observations and research from around the country, helping us to see what is actually happening and understand what it means for our lives, our livelihoods, and our future. The report includes analyses of impacts on seven sectors – human health, water, energy, transportation, agriculture, forests, and ecosystems – and the interactions among sectors at the national level. The report also assesses key impacts on all U.S. regions: Northeast, Southeast and Caribbean, Midwest, Great Plains, Southwest, Northwest, Alaska, Hawai'i and Pacific Islands, as well as the country’s coastal areas, oceans, and marine resources.

Over recent decades, climate science has advanced significantly. Increased scrutiny has led to increased certainty that we are now seeing impacts associated with human-induced climate change. With each passing year, the accumulating evidence further expands our understanding and extends the record of observed trends in temperature, precipitation, sea level, ice mass, and many other variables recorded by a variety of measuring systems and analyzed by independent research groups from around the world. It is notable that as these data records have grown longer and climate models have become more comprehensive, earlier predictions have largely been confirmed. The only real surprises have been that some changes, such as sea level rise and Arctic sea ice decline, have outpaced earlier projections.

What is new over the last decade is that we know with increasing certainty that climate change is happening now. While scientists continue to refine projections of the future, observations unequivocally show that climate is changing and that the warming of the past 50 years is primarily due to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases. These emissions come mainly from burning coal, oil, and gas, with additional contributions from forest clearing and some agricultural practices.

Global climate is projected to continue to change over this century and beyond, but there is still time to act to limit the amount of change and the extent of damaging impacts.

This U.S. Global Change Research Program isn't new. It was established under President George Herbert Walker Bush by Presidential Initiative in 1989. It was mandated by Congress in the Global Change Research Act (GCRA) of 1990 to “assist the Nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change.”

The USGCRP website lists all the agencies participating in the USGCRP. They are:

• Agency for International Development
• Department of Agriculture
• Department of Commerce
• Department of Defense
• Department of Energy
• Department of Health & Human Services
• Department of State
• Department of the Interior
• Department of Transportation
• Environmental Protection Agency
• National Aeronautics & Space Administration
• National Science Foundation
• Smithsonian Institution

The USGCRP has a legal mandate to conduct a National Climate Assessment (NCA) every four years. This latest assessment is only the third National Climate Assessment, so I don't know when it was given the mandate, but the organisation itself has been in existence longer than 16 years.  Some of its reports are a bit slow in coming!

Anthony Watts has so far posted five articles protesting the report (in almost as many hours), with the following headlines:

1. National Climate Assessment report: Alarmists offer untrue, unrelenting doom and gloom (archived here), which is an article by "dirty energy industries' best friend" Marlo Lewis, who is some chap from the US-based right wing lobby group the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
2. I’ve been waiting for this statement, and the National Climate Assessment has helpfully provided it (archived here), in which Anthony quotes "Steve Goddard" of all people, then goes on to push Evan Jones' as yet unpublished work with as yet no substance to underpin it (discussed here and here)
3. Quotes of the Week: Some early comments on the National Climate Assesment report (archived here); in which Anthony has some more quotes from science contrarians and disinformers like Pat'nChip
4. Some advance copy on the National Climate Assessment Report (archived here); in which Anthony appeals to the scaredy cat deniers "they are trying to make people afraid of the more mundane weather" and goes on to give a bit of the content of the report.
5. What the National Climate Assessment Doesn’t Tell You (archived here); a protest article by Pat'nChip from the right wing science disinforming lobby group, the CATO Institute.

There are only a few themes to the protests.

The "they're trying to scare you" theme. First of all, you can tell that deniers often deny because they don't want to be scared. For example, Marlo Lewis writes: As with previous editions, the new report is an alarmist document designed to scare people and build political support for unpopular policies such as carbon taxes, cap-and-trade, and EPA regulatory mandates.

The "we'll adapt" theme (or die). Pat'nChip argue that people will adapt to ever-hotter heat waves, so there's no need to worry. I expect they are relying on manufacturers being able to design air conditioners that don't stop working when the temperature gets too hot.  If you shop around you can find air conditioners that will work up to 46° Celsius (115°F), but read the specs because some will only work up to what is even now in some parts becoming a "mild" 43° Celsius (109°F).  And take precautions, because when you want your air conditioner to work, so does everyone else, which can result in rationing of electricity. Fires don't help either. In some parts of the world, it's not just the heat that affects electricity supply, water rationing is introduced as well. (The Arizona Department of Health Services is not nearly as complacent as Pat'nChip.)

The "it's all a hoax" theme. Anthony claims that some unknown persons are making wrong adjustments to the record and that it hasn't really been as hot as everyone knows and has felt it to be. People (and animals and plants) are just imagining the earlier snow melt and the extreme heat and the evaporating water. He's put up a silly chart and some pretty pictures to "prove" it. Thing is, he had to call on not just his unpublished and unsubstantiated paper but "steve goddard".

The "it's political" theme. Where he quotes science denier John Coleman trying to argue that Republicans don't accept science because of their politics, or some such nonsense. John doesn't like it when people point out he's a science denier, even while he denies the science he wrote, while not pointing to a single scientific study to support his wild claim:

There are thousands and thousands of scientists who know without a doubt that the entire matter is based on bad science. We fight with everything we have to inform the public of the truth, but the dominate liberal media shuns us and the global warming team calls us names and insults us.

Is it an insult to say that people like the crowd at WUWT deny science? The fact is they do.

Pleading insanity? Denier weirdness at WUWT - your host: Tim Ball.

Tim Ball the conspiracy theorist was let loose at WUWT today (archived here). No, I don't mean he let loose. I mean what I wrote, he was let loose. He's been let out, unsupervised.  (Perhaps he's angling for the insanity defense in his current court cases.)

As John asked in the WUWT comments:

May 4, 2014 at 8:18 pm
Is this a joke?

Let's see if I can decipher Tim's article.

Tim starts off talking about "agents of the IPCC".  You know, the infamous secret spy ring "the IPCC". It's members infiltrated the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, which spread its tentacles far and wide and inserted sleeper agents into NASA and Penn State University and the University of Chicago and the Norwegian Meteorological Institute and the British Antarctic Expedition and various other nefarious organisations (even Wikipedia).  These evil spies communicate by secret coded emails that they hide from innocent parties like Steve McIntyre and the American Tradition Institute, who have offices of analysts standing by to decode the secret messages in the email headers to find the missing core tops in the bristlecones to determine whether the ice age will start this year or next.

Tim knows that hidden in the blade of Michael Mann's hockey stick that he keeps in a locked basement in the secret hideaway known as "RealClimate" is the secret code. But first he has to get the key from the current Ruler of the World, Tom Wigley, and to do that he needs to get past the duo of bouncers known as "Bradley and Hughes".

Tim tells us that Mr Cuccinelli valiantly fought The Mann, on behalf of the good guys known as The Taxpayers.  However that upright gentleman was thwarted by the evil cabal otherwise known as the Supreme Court, which is an arm of the evil IPCC - though the details are a bit murky and are buried in the Nobel Prize and protected by Proprietary Rights, which is another agency of the evil UN that has surreptitiously taken over the world and is about to seize all Intellectual and Other Property including everyone's private property (before sending everyone on the Long March to the FEMA concentration camps aka Agenda21).

As fobdangerclose says:

May 4, 2014 at 8:16 pm
It is not supported by law, the cult has misplaced the real law of reason, all they have is power.
They use it for their own evil ends. Just say no.

And Oracle has hit the nail on the head, writing:

May 4, 2014 at 8:57 pm
The IPCC’s true goal is to use *any* means possible to bring about a U.N. one world government somewhat communist/marxist/lenninist or extreme socialist in nature, and they clearly don’t care how many lies they propagate to achieve their true goal.
Lord Monckton leaked some documents to Fox News some years ago which showed the UN/IPCC agenda.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/09/08/years-setbacks-looks-world-leader/
http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/austria_retreat_papers.pdf

These U.N. anti-freedom control freak petty tyrants must never be allowed to succeed.
Conspiracy Theory – I think not! 

Of course, the thlot plickens further to the Ineptitude of Obamma (another name for the Barack Fiefdom) and the oilfields of the Middle East as the illustrious Streetcred, you can tell by his name that he has a nose for such things, says:

May 4, 2014 at 10:57 pm
Ah, Bushbunny, but think of how successful the socialists have been to limit fossil fuel supply … via Obamma’s ineptitude the oil output from the Middle East has been strangled by civil war and terrorism, and the supply of cheap gas to Europe from Russia is also threatened. Price of crude through the roof and cost of natural gas similarly disposed. 

While the bushbunny points out that "they" are not just "they" they are also "them" and says:

May 5, 2014 at 1:23 am
Streetcred, Gosh I don’t think it is ‘just’ socialists, what about Fascists. Anyway guys must go and have my dinner, so keep writing.

Twobob nods sagely and says:

May 5, 2014 at 2:38 am
Hi KNR.
Your B. Was it a serendipitous Mistake.
Keep your proof secret,refuse to share it and employ has may some and
mirrors has you can.
Like cracked mirrors of their souls. 

Beware, the secret IPCC which is a front for the evil empire of the UN. The IPCC is coming to get you. Yes, you. You have been warned!

(I kid you not!)

Difficulties in denial at WUWT: Oceans are getting warmer, no they aren't, yes they are...

WUWT-ers must get mightily confused at times. Then again, one thing about deniers, especially those prone to conspiracy ideation, is that they can happily hold two contradictory notions simultaneously. (This article isn't as thorough as usual because I've got a few other things on my plate. Feel free to fill in the gaps in the comments.)

The oceans aren't warming - much, sez Christopher

Yesterday Christopher Monckton wrote (archived here) that he was sent a paper by Willie Soon, that rejects the rising seas. (Isn't there a biblical lesson there somewhere?) Christopher didn't link to the paper but I think this is the one. It's by another science denier called Beenstock.  Christopher didn't link to the paper itself, and none of the commenters asked him for the paper or a link to it either! This is probably the paper - it's by Michael Beenstock et al and it hasn't been published anywhere that I can find. Michael is apparently a Professor of Economics and a climate science denier so I guess he knows all about tide gauges - umm.

Anyway, that's settled. The tides aren't rising so the seas aren't warming, if you listen to people like Michael and Christopher and WUWT.  Christopher even drags up the name of Nils Axel-Morner.  Who can forget Nils Axel-Morner's chart that he presented to a UK Parliamentary Committee to "prove" that seas are not rising:

Source: UK Parliament written submission from Nils Axel-Morner

Citizen's Challenge has an article about Nils and his claims.

Yes they are, sez Anthony

Wait a sec. Now the oceans are warming so much they are causing climate change. It's undersea volcanoes!!

In another article just today (archived here), Anthony goes and muddies the (ocean) waters by arguing that climate science is wrong because it doesn't count undersea volcanoes.  Is he arguing that global warming is caused by a sudden explosion of new volcanoes under the sea that weren't there before and no-one knows about because they are hidden and no-one knows about them?

No. Anthony doesn't go quite that far.  The expert he calls upon is a man by the name of John Reid, who wrote an article for that renowned non-peer reviewed literary unscientific right wing magazine Quadrant. A favourite publication of all the science deniers who can't get their silliness published in a science journal and don't even try.  This time Anthony does put a link to the article - I've archived it here.  John Reid isn't an oceanographer or a climatologist - he's a retired physicist who, from the look of it, gave up physics for climate science denial.

This "undersea volcanoes" meme pops up from time to time at WUWT. Yes, there are volcanoes under the oceans, like on the land, but there aren't suddenly a whole rash of new volcanoes that are heating up the earth and making the oceans boil. Nothing's changed.

Yes, the seas are rising and the oceans are warming

The oceans are warming but they aren't warming from below. They are warming from above. It's because of all the CO2 in the air that's warming the earth as a whole.

From the WUWT comments

Like I said, I'm short of time.  This will have to do :)

drumphil says:

May 3, 2014 at 10:02 pm
Gawd, Christopher has actually found a place where people with call him “Lord” with a straight face?

Climate models are skilful - Gavin Schmidt and TED give us 10 lessons in denialism at WUWT

To show how even-handed he is, Anthony Watts posted a TED video of Gavin Schmidt talking about climate models (archived here).  Anthony wrote:

Love him or hate him, it is worthwhile to understand where he is coming from, so I present this video: The emergent patterns of climate change.

The "love him or hate him" is the language of deniers. They aren't interested so much in what Dr Schmidt has to say, they prefer to get personal.  It's a "must have" for the Serengeti Strategy.

Anthony adds quite unnecessarily: "comments welcome".

It's worth watching the video full screen (click in the bottom right) and reading the transcript:

It's short. In just over 12 minutes Gavin Schmidt shows how scientists write code to emulate what happens with clouds, solar radiation, ice, natural and human-made aerosols, soil and vegetation, and other things that together shape our climate.

For a more detailed discussion of climate models, you can't do much better than this article by Scott K. Johnson at Ars Technica.

I went through the WUWT comments till I got up to ten lessons. There is more to learn, but ten is enough to get you going as an accredited science denier.  Here they are, with examples in the WUWT comments below.

• Lesson 1: accept one part of science and follow it up with a silly statement. Deniers are good at "silly". The silly statement proves to the crowd that you really are a science denier.
• Lesson 2: Make a grossly inaccurate statement and don't even pretend to back it up with any data, not even false data.
• Lesson 3: Make out that physics, chemistry and biology can only explain the past and aren't any use as a predictive tool. (Such people would, I expect, never step into an aeroplane and would quite happily and optimistically step out of a window on the 50th storey.)
• Lesson 4: If you haven't anything intelligent to add to the discussion, go for vulgarity.
• Lesson 5: If you don't like the data, claim a conspiracy.
• Lesson 6: If you can't refute the science, make out that the scientists stole their ideas from deniers.
• Lesson 7: If you can't refute the science and can't stomach facts, don't look. Avoid it altogether where possible. When that fails, try to ignore it.
• Lesson 8: Pretend that science is based on "faith" rather than evidence and reasoning. 
• Lesson 9: Trade on your reputation as a fake sceptic and dazzle with meaningless gobbledegook.
• Lesson 10: Harass any organisation that promotes sound science by sending spam. 

From the WUWT comments

The first out of the gate is a denier and the rest follow.  The WUWT deniers give a very good lesson in "how to be a science denier".

Latitude says:

May 3, 2014 at 12:08 pm
” We know what happened over the 20th century. Right? We know that it’s gotten warmer. We know where it’s gotten warmer. And if you ask the models why did that happen, and you say, okay, well, yes, basically it’s because of the carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere. We have a very good match up until the present day. ”

and if you tell the models ahead of time that’s what happened….
Those computer games can not tell you something you don’t know.

That's an odd thing for Latitude to write. Latitude is a regular science denying commenter at WUWT. What he or she is saying now is that it's well-accepted that adding CO2 to the atmosphere will cause global warming.

The last sentence is very wrong. If you watch the video you'll get a glimpse of all the extra knowledge that comes from the models. It's not just that CO2 warms earth, it's how dust gets spread around the globe and how that affects weather; and how quickly the CO2 warming happens; and what changes does a hole in the ozone layer cause; and lots more as well. Such changes would be almost impossible to work out without a complex climate model.

Lesson 1: accept one part of science and follow it up with a silly statement. Deniers are good at "silly". The silly statement proves to the crowd that you really are a science denier.


Gerry Parker says:

May 3, 2014 at 12:12 pm
And despite these claims of model skill, they consistently over predict warming.

The lesson that Gerry and quite a few others at WUWT provide is to make a completely wrong statement. Best not to provide any evidence or examples or it becomes too obvious that what you're saying is wrong. For example, if Gerry had put up a chart of CMIP5 and CMIP3 against observations he would see that firstly, observations have been within the model envelop right the way through since 1860, and secondly that the mean of the models has only been above the observations very few occasions. Similarly it's only been below the observations on very few occasions:

Figure TS.9 (a) Source: IPCC AR5 WG1

Lesson 2: Make a grossly inaccurate statement and don't even pretend to back it up with any data, not even false data.

Louis says:

May 3, 2014 at 12:23 pm
“The models are skillful.”
That phrase was repeated several times, so it must be the take-away message. But it is one thing to tune the models to forecast the past and quite another to accurately forecast the future.

Louis gives us another lesson in denial. This one is commonly used by "ice age cometh-ers". The trick is to argue that just because science explains past events doesn't mean that science can explain future events.  This is the equivalent of arguing that if you jump off a 30 storey building with no aids, you might fly. Roy Spencer is good at this sort of thing, when he talks about rear-view mirrors.

Lesson 3: Make out that physics, chemistry and biology can only explain the past and aren't any use as a predictive tool. (Such people would, I expect, never step into an aeroplanenever step into an aeroplane and would quite happily and optimistically step out of a window on the 50th storey.)


JEM says, apparently in response to Gavin saying that "a model result is skillful if it gives better predictions than a simpler alternative":

May 3, 2014 at 12:27 pm
Dear Gavin, unless you are carrying the error range of every number you feed into your model all the way through every calculation and out into the result, what’s coming out is not skillful, it’s fecal.

Lesson 4: If you haven't anything intelligent to add to the discussion, go for vulgarity.


Layne says:

May 3, 2014 at 12:31 pm
Let’s not forget that inconvenient warming of the 30s-40s has been disappeared so that the models can align with temps.

Layne learnt from Lesson 2 (making a grossly inaccurate statement), but she or he adds a twist and tosses in a conspiracy theory. That hundreds of people all around the world have conspired over decades to alter the temperature data recorded by volunteers and official weather offices.  Layne is arguing there has been a massive world-wide "fiddling" of data maintained independently by multiple organisations, which would have required not just a massive cover up but incredibly sophisticated coordination worldwide.  Shame that no-one has so far been able to uncover this conspiracy.

Lesson 5: If you don't like the data, claim a conspiracy.


Gary Pearse says (excerpt):

May 3, 2014 at 1:01 pm
“Emergent” hmm where have I heard this before. Oh yeah, Willis’s ‘emergent phenomena’ that serve as a governor on climate overheating. I and others have stated before that something as good as Willis’s emergent phenomena and other climate findings won’t be out there long before they begin to be stolen. They are just too good. Okay, Gav has only used the word emergent, half of the idea but that’s a start.

Gary is referring to Willis' convoluted thunderstorm hypothesis. It's a cocktail of the Gaia hypothesis and Richard Lindzen's failed Iris hypothesis, mixed up in a folksy manner with some some big dollops of fake data (eg Willis maintains that surface temperature varied by +/- 0.3 degrees over the last 100 years) and the tiniest smidgen of real science for good measure. Willis argues variously that we might be heading for an ice age and all the science is wrong and Wondering Willis is right.

Lesson 6: If you can't refute the science, make out that the scientists stole their ideas from deniers.

stephen richards says:

May 3, 2014 at 1:20 pm
Watching that piece of merde makes me sick. I cannot bring myself to do it.

Lesson 7: If you can't refute the science and can't stomach facts, don't look. Try to ignore it.


JFA in Montreal says:

May 3, 2014 at 1:55 pm
Priest of all persuasion of religion held the same discourse: you can’t comprehend anything up until you get the big picture. The underlying message is “you’re just to imbecile to see the light”. Of course, they know the only light is the one shining on them, for power, fame and profit.

This person doesn't understand science so belittles it. In addition to Lesson 5 (claiming a conspiracy with nefarious intent - "power, fame and profit"), pretend that just because you don't understand it, no-one else could possibly understand it. It's used by people who claim that climate science is religion not science.

Lesson 8: Pretend that science is based on "faith" rather than evidence and reasoning.


Steve McIntyre says:

May 3, 2014 at 2:33 pm
Mosh, I do not share the kneejerk antagonism to “models” of many commenters, but the CA post to which you refer doesn’t exactly support your assertion: it indicates that GCMs with positive feedbacks have no “skill” in forecasting global temperature relative to a “naive” no-feedback log relationship of Callendar 1938. I think that it’s entirely reasonable to criticize models on that point. As you and I have discussed, it’s unfortunate that the modeling community have failed to fully map the parameter space and left low-to-no feedback largely as a terra incognita, a mapping failure that seems to originate from a kind of academic stubbornness in the modeling community – it’s hard to contemplate similar behavior from commercial organizations.

As well as being his usual waffle, if you manage to decipher it, Steve is indulging in wishful thinking. From what I gather, he's hoping that someone some day will discover an unknown "parameter" that will offset all the global warming that we see. It will mop up all the warming and climate change will go away all by itself.

Most WUWT readers won't try to figure out what he's saying. They'll just be quite delighted that a notable fake sceptic has lowered himself, as he does from time to time, and joined in the hoi polloi denialati at the low brow denier blog, WUWT.

Lesson 9: Trade on your reputation as a fake sceptic and dazzle with meaningless gobbledegook.

Now I haven't even got a third of the way down the comments. There are doubtless many more lessons in how to be a good little denier.


John Coleman says:

May 3, 2014 at 5:30 pm
I sent the following email:
tedx@ted.com
Hello,
I note you have presented talks by several proponents of Global Warming/Climate Change. However, you have not given an opportunity to present the other side of the issue to climate skeptics. There are several notable, peer reviewed climate experts who present the skeptical view. Among them are Richard Lindzen at MIT, Willie Soon at the Harvard Smithsonian Observatory, Judith Curry at Georgia Tech, Roy Spencer and John Christy at the University of Alabama and a long list of other Ph.D. experts. Please invite one or more of these experts to take the stage at a future conference. Balance of scientific opinion is important.
Regards,
John Coleman

I think if would be excellent if they heard from many of the rest of you.

If you are a fake sceptic, particularly one who is known as a journalist turned television weather announcer, send a dumb email and urge everyone else to do the same. Thankfully junk email isn't quite as damaging to the environment as snail mail.

Lesson 10: Harass any organisation that promotes sound science by sending spam.

Going against the tide of denialism

There were very few people who tried to buck the trend, some of them just a little bit. I mean when you're battling a tide of denialism of more than 120 comments, you're asking for trouble.  Some people buck the trend because they want to appear as "reasonable" fake sceptics. Others might be more genuine.


Jeff Alberts quoted HenryP and indicated that times, denialism goes a bit too far for his liking, and says:

May 3, 2014 at 7:07 pm
The climate is changing only because of natural reasons.
It is God who made it so.

Actually THERE’S the #1 stupid skeptic argument.

Stephen Philbrick says:

May 3, 2014 at 5:57 pm
I thought it was fairly good.

Some false notes, but overall, an effective presentation.

I liked the orders of magnitude paradigm, a very useful way to illustrate the difficulty of the problem

Surprisingly, he used only 14, with the size of the earth as the upper bounds – somewhat surprising as he clearly (despite some comments upthread) acknowledged the influence of the sun. The 4 down 14 to go was simply the artifact of a live presentation.

I see some chuckles about Fortran, and can only assume people are doing serious modeling.
In a recent role with my company, I worked with a moderately sophisticated financial model. It was written in Fortran, because we had to model interest rates, inflation, and the interactions as they affect bond prices and yields, not to mention stochastic insurance loss projections. Fortran was used because it is a suitable language to do very heavy duty number-crunching. It makes a nice sound-bite to treat it as antiquated, but only to those who don’t really do heavy duty modeling. (Which is not to say it is always the best option – I’ve modeled some processes in APL, some others in Excel,, the choice depends on how much number crunching is needed. One can have a highly sophisticated model that doesn’t require a lot of number crunching, but models of the financial world and models of the climate need to do a lot of brute force calculations)

JohnB says:

May 3, 2014 at 7:12 pm
I thought it extremely interesting and would happily sit through a longer lecture by Dr Schmidt.
I may not agree with his conclusions but the talk certainly allows you to see where he is coming from. Note that he admits the models are “wrong” and should, can and hopefully will be improved. However he thinks that they are good enough for a “reasonable” projection of the future and that future improvements in the models will refine the projection but not fundamentally change it.

If you had a model that you thought gave a reasonable projection and the results of that projection gave you cause for concern, wouldn’t you speak loudly too? Dr Schmidt models climate and the results have convinced him that there are grounds for concern.

He spoke fairly from his point of view and that is the best that anyone can do.

What pushed Judith Curry over the edge?

Serious question. Look, we've all known that Judith has been getting more and more ratty as time goes on. Just when we think she can't sink any lower she surprises us again.  But this time she's really gone over the edge. I mean really and truly.

I've been a bit busy the last few days and have only just got around to checking out the various denier websites. I was surprised to see Judith Curry (archived here) putting up some old, wacky and long bit of idiocy from John Christy. Back in 2011, John was whining to the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, protesting the IPCC, the northern hemisphere temperature reconstructions pre-2001, and all else besides.

Earth is as cold as a summit in Central Greenland?

At face value John, and therefore Judith, were doing a Denier Don Easterbrook, arguing that the temperature of earth is the same as it is on the top of the summit in Greenland.  John was complaining that a paper by Dahl-Jensen et al (1998) wasn't referred to in Section 2.3.2 in Chapter 2 of TAR, Temperature of the Past 1,000 Years. Yes, they are talking about the IPCC WG1 report from 2001, thirteen years ago.  Not the current report, not the 2007 report. The third assessment report from 2001.

Anyway, John complained that instead of discussing the temperature of Greenland's ice sheets over the past 1,000 years as if it represented global temperatures, the authors decided to discuss the temperatures of the whole world over the past 1000 years as far as it was known at the time (weird, huh?).  Turns out that back then (as is still the case to a great extent) there was an emphasis on the northern hemisphere reconstructions because there wasn't a lot of data for the southern hemisphere in 2001.

John Christy even admitted the other authors didn't think much of his idiocy:

To me Dahl-Jensen et al.’s reconstruction was a more robust estimate of past temperatures than one produced from a certain set of western U.S. tree-ring proxies. But as the process stood, the L.A. was not required to acknowledge my suggestions, and I was not able to convince him otherwise. It is perhaps a failure of mine that I did not press the issue even harder or sought agreement from others who might have been likewise aware of the evidence against the Hockey Stick realization.

Note too that there were several paleoclimatologists as lead authors of Chapter 2, so I don't know why John talks about "him" rather than "them". It's a case of the Serengeti Strategy again I guess.

John didn't point out that the paper was referred to in Section 2.4.2, How Stable was the Holocene Climate? Here is the relevant passage (my bold italics):

The early Holocene was generally warmer than the 20th century but the period of maximum warmth depends on the region considered. It is seen at the beginning of the Holocene (about 11 to 10 ky BP) in most ice cores from high latitude regions e.g., north-west Canada (Ritchie et al., 1989), central Antarctica (Ciais et al., 1992; Masson et al., 2000) and in some tropical ice cores such as Huascaran in Peru (Thompson et al., 1995). It is also seen during the early Holocene in the Guliya ice core in China (Thompson et al., 1998) but not in two other Chinese cores (Dunde, Thompson et al., 1989; and Dasuopu, to be published). North Africa experienced a greatly expanded monsoon in the early and mid-Holocene, starting at 11 ky BP (Petit-Maire and Guo, 1996), and declining thereafter. In New Zealand the warmest conditions occurred between about 10 to 8 ky BP, when there was a more complete forest cover than at any other time. Glacial activity was at a minimal level in the Southern Alps and speleothem analyses indicate temperatures were about 2°C warmer than present (Salinger and McGlone, 1989; Williams et al., 1999).

By contrast, central Greenland (Dahl-Jensen et al., 1998), and regions downstream of the Laurentide ice sheet, did not warm up until after 8 ky BP (including Europe: COHMAP Members, 1988; eastern North America: Webb et al., 1993). 

Nor did John Christy point out that the temperature reconstructions described in Chapter 2 of TAR were based on many more proxies than just tree rings.  Nor that there were several reconstructions discussed, not just those of Michael Mann and colleagues. Nor that there were lots of caveats in TAR (as always).

Now the fact that John and Judith think that the summit of Greenland on its own is a proxy for global temperatures is wacky enough and way beyond Judith's usual fare. But she not only put forward John's silliness as if it ought to be taken seriously, she threw in snippets of stolen emails as evidence of something or other.

Not only that, but she resurrected her jealousy of Michael Mann, that he was one of eight lead authors of a chapter in the IPCC's third assessment report, whereas she was but a lowly contributing author of Chapter 7. John Christy was a lead author in the same chapter as Michael Mann, so goodness knows why he and Judith were whinging. (Maybe she was miffed that Michael Mann wasn't just a lead author of Chapter 2, he was also a contributing author of Chapter 7 and Chapter 8.)

I mean we're talking TAR, the third assessment report. Judith is going back thirteen years.

Here is another reason I think Judith has finally lost it for good. She wrote:

Christy’s assessment, when combined with the UEA emails, provides substantial insight into how this hockey stick travesty occurred.  

John Christy's assessment! Climategate! Sheesh, Judith is scraping the bottom of the barrel isn't she.  What will Judith write about next? The fake Oregon Petition?

Here is a sample of John Christy's conspiracy ideation - and this is only a snippet.  There's more of the same where that came from.  Here he is referring to authors of the IPCC reports, writing:

As time went on, nations would tend to nominate only those authors whose climate change opinions were in line with a national political agenda which sought perceived advantages (i.e. political capital, economic gain, etc.) by promoting the notion of catastrophic human-induced climate change. Scientists with well-known alternative views would not be nominated or selected. Indeed, it became more and more difficult for dissention and skepticism to penetrate the process now run by this establishment. As noted in my IAC testimony, I saw a process in which L.A.s were transformed from serving as Brokers of science (and policy-relevant information) to Gatekeepers of a preferred point of view. 

John Christy is so deluded as to think that politicians throughout the world will gain economically and politically as a result of global warming. Tell that to Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard! Tell that to Tony Abbott! Tell that to the James Inhofe and the GOP!

And what "hockey stick travesty"? The hockey stick keeps showing up in all the subseqent IPCC reports.  This is from the latest AR5:

Box TS5 Fig 1 Source: IPCC AR5 WG1 

Doesn't Judith know what the current instrumental record shows compared to the Holocene as a whole?  I don't believe it. She has subsequently written an article about the recent Neukom paper under a weird title: "The inconvenient southern hemisphere".  In that article she "rebuts" the paper by referring her readers to, of all places, WUWT! Yep. She's well and truly gone over the edge. Here is Figure 2 from that paper - guess what it shows. You guessed it, a hockey stick:

Figure 2 Temperature variability over the past millennium. a, 30-year loess filtered ensemble mean temperature reconstruction for the Southern Hemisphere (SH; blue) and Northern Hemisphere (NH; red) relative to the millennium mean for the period 1000–2000. Blue shading based on Southern Hemisphere reconstruction uncertainties (Supplementary Section 2.4). Thin orange lines represent the ensemble means of the nine individual temperature reconstructions making up the Northern Hemisphere dataset5. b, as a but for the 24-member climate model ensemble. Note for consistency with reconstruction data, simulated temperatures are shown as individual simulations for the Northern Hemisphere and a probabilistic range based on ensemble percentiles for the Southern Hemisphere.

Source: Neukom14

Back to basic Curry - the IPCC and Michael Mann

For once Judith isn't being her usual ambiguous self.  She is up front about her motivation. She has it in for Michael Mann and the IPCC. She has ever since I first heard of her - when she "came out" as a denier on Keith Kloor's blog way back when.  This is what she wrote the other day:

Back in April 2011, I had a post on The U.S. House of Representatives Hearing on Climate Change: Examining the Processes Used to Create Science and Policy.  John Christy’s testimony is worth revisiting, in two contexts:

• problems with the IPCC process, most recently highlighted in context of WG3 [link]
• the Steyn versus Mann and Mann versus Steyn lawsuits [link]

So she's back to basics - Judith Curry waging a war on the IPCC and Michael Mann. That's bare bones Judith Curry - in a nutshell. Forget science. Forget politics. For Judith, this is personal.

---

Neukom, Raphael, Joëlle Gergis, David J. Karoly, Heinz Wanner, Mark Curran, Julie Elbert, Fidel González-Rouco et al. "Inter-hemispheric temperature variability over the past millennium." Nature Climate Change 4, no. 5 (2014): 362-367. doi:10.1038/nclimate2174

Roy Spencer isn't always wrong ...

Roy Spencer is often wrong, at times deceitful and sometimes right. This time he is more right than wrong. He occasionally comes out with some home truths about climate science, which annoys some deniers no end.  They prefer to think he's always on their "side".

In the past Roy's written about the greenhouse effect, which was a magnet for "slayers". This time he's expanded his list and written:

Top Ten Skeptical Arguments that Don’t Hold Water

Anthony Watts has reposted Roy's article at WUWT (archived here). This is Anthony pretending to be "serious" about climate science. (Pity his credibility has been shot a thousand times and more, with all the rubbish he promotes.)

Here's the list - I'll just post the headers and you can fill in the blanks yourself - or check here for the details, because some of the headers are a bit ambiguous or misleading.

1. There is no greenhouse effect. 
2. The greenhouse effect violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. 
3. CO2 can’t cause warming because CO2 emits IR as fast as it absorbs. 
4. CO2 cools, not warms, the atmosphere. 
5. Adding CO2 to the atmosphere has no effect because the CO2 absorption bands are already 100% opaque. 
6. Lower atmospheric warmth is due to the lapse rate/adiabatic compression. 
7. Warming causes CO2 to rise, not the other way around 
8. The IPCC models are for a flat earth
9. There is no such thing as a global average temperature 
10. The earth isn’t a black body. 

From the WUWT comments

Fake sceptics were busy jockeying to position themselves as "real" sceptics, but most of them are just faking it. Others are happy to be seen as plain ordinary science deniers of varying kinds.  Here is a sample:

Gerard Harbison says:

May 1, 2014 at 6:05 am
Actually, I think it’s a very useful post, and I have no substantial disagreement with any of it.

PaulH is one of many who says:

May 1, 2014 at 6:11 am
Re. #9, I have no problem with the idea of calculating a global average temperature. My question is, what is the “correct” average (target) temperature, and who decides?

If he waits a bit he'll find quite a few people who'll decide when it's too hot for comfort, or too hot to grow the food they used to grow, or so hot the ice has melted and their home town is a new Atlantis.

Thomas Hogg and a few other commenters ask the impossible:

May 1, 2014 at 6:17 am
Could Dr Spencer complement this valuable article with its analogue
ie Ten Skeptical Arguments that do hold water?

Update: Roy Spencer hasn't delivered the impossible. He's tried but his effort is pathetic and fails the "hold water" test.


ferdberple comes out with his notion he's written before - that all that extra CO2 is pressing on the walls and ceiling and floor of the sky and stopping water from evaporating!

May 1, 2014 at 6:28 am
What effect does adding CO2 to the atmosphere have on water vapor? All things being equal, doesn’t increasing the partial pressure of CO2 by necessity make it harder for water to evaporate, reducing atmospheric moisture and thus reducing the GHG effect of water in the atmosphere?

Isn’t the reduction in atmospheric moisture consistent with long term observations? As CO2 is increasing, isn’t atmospheric H2O is decreasing? Otherwise, wouldn’t atmospheric pressure need to increase as per partial pressure law? Wouldn’t the increase in atmospheric pressure itself lead to warming?

Juergen MIchele says Roy Spencer is wrong - CO2 cools the planet:

May 1, 2014 at 6:28 am
Looking at your point 4. :
CO2 in the upper atmosphere blocks outgoing radiation from the earth surface.
But the incoming radiation from the sun in the relevant frequency range is hundredfold compared to the back radiation from earth.

As a consequence more CO2 cools!

Tom Stone says he's learnt something today:

May 1, 2014 at 6:32 am
Thank you Dr. Spencer. Until today, I was a proponent of fallacy #7. Science is at its best when it challenges itself with observational evidence.

And in the blink of an eye Tom Stone is relieved that thanks to the fake sceptics at WUWT he's unlearnt it again. Tom Stone says:

May 1, 2014 at 6:34 am
Some of the more recent posts indicate that I was not so wrong. Even better.

Mike M has come up with a doozy of an argument that proves categorically that all the scientists don't know nuffin', including Roy Spencer, and says he can't get a "palpable" answer. (Reminds me of the palatable leftists):

May 1, 2014 at 6:40 am 
Bob B says: May 1, 2014 at 6:31 am “Roy, I think your #7 is a strawman argument. I have seen it stated by skeptics that the temperature leads the rise in CO2 in the Vostok ice core records and not the other way around. I believe the data does indeed show that.”

Yes and I use that all the time while emphasizing the alarmist claim that “CO2 took over to push temperature even higher”. So if CO2 pushed it higher then how in the world did it manage to come back while CO2 remained higher? No one seems to give a palpable answer to that question outside of “natural variability”. So then I’ve got them – if “natural variability” was solely responsible for bringing temperature down when CO2 was at or near its highest concentration – WHY should I believe that “natural variability” could not have been solely responsible for the rise of temperature when CO2 was at a lower concentration ?

JimS comes up with a number 11 and says:

May 1, 2014 at 6:55 am
Another bad skeptic argument is stating that just one volcanoe eruption can spew out more CO2 than all the CO2 that mankind has ever produced throughout industrial history. This is simply NOT true and I see it being used much too much.

AlecM says (excerpt):

May 1, 2014 at 6:58 am
My Dear Roy, you are still so wrong despite my efforts to educate you!

And proceeds to do nothing of the sort - in a very long comment. His Dear Roy has heard all the "slayers'" nonsense before.


Julien talks about "cinetic" energy and wind and says he thinks that atmospheric physicists might have neglected convection:

May 1, 2014 at 7:13 am
Thanks for this good article, although there isn’t any surprise there. Sometimes I’ve doubted point #8, but now I think it’s ok. There are still some obscure areas:

- About point #2, when a photon hits a CO2 molecule, it can be as well transformed into cinetic energy (same as heat at the atomic level), and therefore it can generate convection (and therefore winds). Globaly it concludes that energy is either transformed into heat or wind, but that doesn’t really change anything.

The real argument behind the fact that climate models might break the second law of thermodynamics is because the climate models may neglect convection.

David A doesn't like it when people use the word "stupid" and says Roy Spencer shouldn't have explained why the fake sceptics' arguments were wrong, instead he should have explained why the fake sceptics' arguments were wrong - or something:

May 1, 2014 at 7:15 am
There is more then one straw man in Dr. Spencer’s overall OK post. Basically the CAGW enthusiast all agree, so it is natural that skeptics fall into every other possible camp. This means it will be natural for skeptic’s to have disparate views. It would have been best to call those considering a different view wrong because… The use of the word stupid is antagonizing and counter productive.

mpainter points out that a lot of WUWT-ers are having trouble with No. 7 (Warming causes CO2 to rise, not the other way around), and says:

May 1, 2014 at 7:22 am
Roy,
It looks like you are getting clobbered on #7. Better prop that one up a bit, if you can. My personal understanding is that warmer SST emits higher CO2. Am I wrong?
mpainter

He's got a point. Thing is, if we weren't adding so much CO2 to the air and something else was causing global warming, then warmer oceans would release more CO2 than they absorb. Thing is, the oceans are absorbing more CO2 than they release at the moment, even though they are warming, because the partial pressure of CO2 is rising so quickly.


Resourceguy doesn't read much at WUWT, despite what he says. The comments above his in the very same thread show just how wrong he is:

May 1, 2014 at 7:23 am
I see this as confirmation of my addiction to WUWT as a source for climate science information because I don’t recognize any of these items on the list and I certainly am not aware of “proliferation” of them anywhere. Does the author have some agenda here. More information on where the “proliferation” is coming from would be more insightful than the list itself. I suppose if all blogs were counted equally you could come up with a list like this and call it proliferation.

John Boles says:

May 1, 2014 at 7:40 am
I agree with the article, but still, there are plenty of skeptical arguments that DO hold water.

Unfortunately he didn't list even one of the "plenty".


Dung says that Dr Spencer is wrong to rely on science (excerpt):

May 1, 2014 at 7:47 am
Daft response number 1 ^.^
Mr Spencer makes a mistake common to many on both sides of this argument, he assumes that current scientific theories (i.e. theories emanating from qualified scientists) are correct.

John Whitman pulls Roy up on his manners and says he could be more like Richard Lindzen who is polite to the ludicrously stupid:

May 1, 2014 at 7:50 am
Roy Spencer, I think your positions do debunk those skeptical positions, but was your use of the unprofessional ‘stupid’ and ‘ludicrous’ words necessary? Oh, yes, I see they were because your goal was to get 1,000+ nasty comments. You could have just used professional scientific words like; contrary to observation,, incorrect, unsupported, etc.

My esteem for you is lowered somewhat today. Personally, Lindzen’s approach of never taunting and always low key polite behavior serves science incomparably better than your approach with this article’s unbecoming unprofessionalism.
John

Roy Spencer makes no excuses but offers a reason and says:

May 1, 2014 at 7:55 am
…actually, the way Dick handles this is to avoid engaging people. My downfall is engaging them, repeatedly, hoping they can at least understand what they are talking about before trying to debunk it. This leads to frustration, and then to bad manners.

Anthony Watts doesn't have reds under his bed (or in his cellar)

There's another "claim" article at WUWT (archived here). This time Anthony Watts is mocking a study of the impact of a changing climate on Spain's coveted red wine grape variety, the Tempranillo.  Tempranillo is described here as:

Red. Superb quality and very aromatic, the star of Spanish grapes. It is called Ull de Llebre in Catalonia, Cencibel in Castile-La Mancha and Madrid, and Tinto Fino and Tinto del Pais in Castile and Leon. It flourishes in Burgos, La Rioja, Alava, Cuenca and Ciudad Real. It is considered a main variety in the following DOs: Calatayud, Cigales, Conca de Barbera, Costers del Segre, La Mancha, Penedes, Ribera del Duero, Rioja, Somontano, Utiel-Requena, Valdepenas, and Vinos de Madrid.

Credit: Mick Stephenson

There's a nice article about Tempranillo on JancisRobinson.com.


Not unusually, Anthony Watts didn't say where he copied his article from. Not a hint of a link.  Still, it wasn't hard to find the source as Basque Research (though I doubt Anthony copied it from there).  According to the press release, scientists grew the grape under different conditions. They tested for changes to three factors: climate change, water stress of the plant and soil texture.

To test for the impact of climate change, they studied what would happen with higher CO2, higher temperature and lower relative humidity, compared to vines situated in current climate conditions. They subjected vines to different moisture regimes:  properly hydrated plants (20-35% of water content in the soil) compared to vines subjected to water stress, irrigated with 40% less water. As regards the soil, three different textures were studied with clay contents of 9%, 18% and 36%.

So that's a lot of variables to compare.  What did they find?  Well, as expected, change affects the grape which affects the wine.  From the press release:

• Climate change was found to bring forward the grape harvest by nine days. This reduced the anthocyanin concentration, which resulted in red wines with less colour. It also caused an increase in the pH of the must. The pH level is a factor of interest for wineries, since it has to be low if the wines are going to be preserved optimally.
• The water shortfall, for its part, delayed ripening –the grape harvest was carried out ten days later– and the growth of the vine was reduced. This fact also meant an increase in the pH of the must and a reduction in polyphenol content. Polyphenols are found in grape skin and pips and give wines aroma, colour and taste. 
• The sandiest soils –with the lowest clay content– produced musts with a higher anthocyanin level, which yields wines with more colour.

The press release concluded with this statement, which probably annoyed Anthony no end:

The final aim of the study by Neiker-Tecnalia, the University of Navarre and the EEAD-CSIC is to make available information that will assist the wine growing sector in mitigating possible damage by the anticipated climate conditions or, where appropriate, to take advantage of the opportunities that may present themselves.

The climate is the factor that exerts the greatest influence on the suitability of a region for vine growing and wine production, since it directly affects the development of the vineyard and grape quality. Climate change is therefore an aspect that the sector needs to take very much into consideration.

The vineyard surface area across Spain amounts to 954,000 hectares, which is 5.6% of the total cultivated surface. The wine growing sector is an hugely important activity in terms of the economic value it generates, the population it employs and the role it plays in environmental conservation. 

Heaven forbid any practical research that will help wine grape growers in Spain, or anywhere else for that matter. The research is being carried out by scientists at the Basque Institute for Agricultural Research and Development Neiker-Tecnalia, in collaboration with the University of Navarre and the Aula Dei (EEAD) Experimental Station of the National Council for Scientific Research (CSIC).

You can read more about the research in English, or if you prefer it, in Spanish or Basque.

Anthony Watts is no wine buff

It will come as no surprise that Anthony Watts is no wine connoisseur. What's the bet he doesn't own a corkscrew? I can hear all wine-loving readers groan as they read how Anthony dismisses the study by writing:

Note: Despite the claim, the grape has been planted throughout the globe in places with diverse climates such as Mexico, New Zealand, California, Oregon, Washington State, South Africa, Australia, Argentina, Portugal, Uruguay, Turkey and Canada.

It grows best at relatively high altitudes, but it also can tolerate a much warmer climate according to: researcher Sid Perkins “Global Vineyard. Can technology take on a warming climate?”. Science News http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-118376057.html  (29 May 2004).

- Anthony

Someone tell Anthony that there are wines and there are wines.  Wine grapes will grow in regions as far north as Quebec and as far south as Tasmania and places in between, even Queensland.  The same variety grown in different places will differ hugely. Wine grapes grown on different slopes in the same region will produce quite different wines. The same vines will produce different tasting wine from year to year, with slight changes in weather.

Follow the sheep

As for the Tempranillo grape, it's been the fastest growing grape variety in Australia. That's in terms of area planted, not in terms of how long it takes to grow.  You can read more about it here, from a wine perspective.  Hugh Hamilton of McLaren Vale bottles it as "Scoundrel" with his black sheep label and writes:

Tempranillo (pronounce it temp-ra-nee-oh) is the most widely planted red grape variety in Spain. It is to the Spaniards what Shiraz is to Australians. The Spanish make it into every style of wine from a light red to heavy, “slap-ya-chops” tannic reds.

It's not just Australia that used to ride on the sheep's back, I've read that in the Rioja region of Spain, the same country that grows Tempranillo is also home to sheep.

From the WUWT comments

There is no pleasing deniers. Model change and they cry that models are wrong. Do field trials and they are still not happy wanting either more or none. If you want to see ignorant and crass, read on. Otherwise, pull out the cork on a nice bottle of the red stuff.



Tom Moran says they should have run the field trials (eg of higher CO2) in his grandma's garden!

May 1, 2014 at 5:44 am
Otter (ClimateOtter on Twitter) says: May 1, 2014 at 3:31 am ‘The research has been conducted in a greenhouse environment’ “Annnnd THAT’S where it FAILed for me.”

Me to! Does anyone actually prefer grocery store bought greenhouse/hothouse tomatoes over vine ripened, picked from grandmas garden, bursting with flavor and juice tomatoes? No, I didn’t think so….

Bruce Cobb is a dumb as conspiracy theorist. I mean he doesn't even know what Lysenko did. He says:

May 1, 2014 at 6:02 am
My bogosity meter on this “study” pegged. Creating a fictitious environment with the pathetic excuse that it’s what “could” happen, and then examining the results of that fictitious environment isn’t science.
Furthermore, negative results from the “experiment” were not only expected, but were a requirement. We are watching nothing but a repeat of Lysenkoism on a massive, worldwide scale.

Bryan A pretends to be a wine buff, but sounds more like a wino. He wants more research on different varieties in different conditions and says:

May 1, 2014 at 6:07 am
They need to run the same test on different varieties of grapes. During the drought of 1977 (a very DRY year in California’s history) the wine industry produced some highly valued wines. Rieslings that were normally $15 per bottle were being sold for upwards of $200 each. Because of throw DRIER CONDITIONS combined with the LATER HARVEST the Brix (natural sugar level) was much higher and produced a white wine that was still good over 20 years later. We opened our last bottle for our 15th wedding anniversary in 1999 and discovered that at 22 the wine was still superior

hunter doesn't find it "credible" and says:

May 1, 2014 at 6:38 am
This grape study could be no less credible if Lewandowsky had authored it.
It has everything: deception, distraction, a pre-determined outcome, contrived evidence, cherry picking- in other words, a typical product of the climate hype industry.

RoHa is more concerned about Anthony's geographism than the fate of his favourite wine grape and says:

May 1, 2014 at 3:24 am
“with diverse climates such as Mexico, New Zealand, California, Oregon, Washington State, South Africa, Australia, Argentina, Portugal, Uruguay, Turkey and Canada.”

Strange that you spell out three US states, but not the relevant states/provinces of Australia, Argentina, Mexico, and Canada. There are enormous variations in climate in all those countries. Even Canada. And the climate of the south coast of Turkey is different from the mountains in the North East.

MattN is about the only person at WUWT who seems to have a clue about wine and says:

May 1, 2014 at 4:06 am
Of course they will change with a changing climate. All grapes do. +/- an inch of rain or +/- half a degree over the growing season changes the flavor. Hell, PICKING THE GRAPES AT NIGHT makes the wine have a different flavor!

It’s kinda what makes wine so awesome. It’s always different every year. Some years its spectacular. 

Bob Tisdale, the one-trick pony, rides again at WUWT

One-trick pony

Perennially puzzled Bob Tisdale has another ENSO article at WUWT (archived here). I won't go into all the details, it's a variation of his normal theme that El Niño is the cause of global warming. If you read what Bob writes about ENSO, I recommend supplementing it with reading from scientific sources, such as the Bureau of Meteorology and NOAA. I've pulled together some of the key points previously, with references.



What I'll comment on (again) is that Bob refuses to accept the greenhouse effect.  He's no better than the dragon slayers and one wonders why Anthony allows him to write at WUWT, since Anthony's said many times that he doesn't allow slayers to have a voice.

Noise vs signal

Bob doesn't always seem to understand what he's quoting. For example, he quotes this passage from an NPR article (mainly about ENSO guru Kevin Trenberth):

You can think of it like a staircase. Temperature is flat when a natural cool spell cancels out the gradual temperature increase caused by human activity. But when there’s a natural warm spell on top of the long-term warming trend, the story is dramatically different.

Notice the part about the "long-term warming trend".  The long term trend is the signal. ENSO is noise.  ENSO comes and goes while the world continues to warm up. ENSO events do have a big impact on weather in parts of the world, but they are not the cause of climate change. The floods and droughts that can come from La Niña and El Niño (respectively, in Australia) are weather variations, not climate change. (And drought can happen without an ENSO event, too.)

Bob doesn't believe there is an anthropogenic cause to the long term warming trend. He attributes it to El Niño heating up the world by magic.  Bob doesn't see ENSO as internal variability. He thinks it causes global warming.  It doesn't.  El Niño and La Niña shift energy within the system - between the atmosphere and the ocean and within the ocean. They don't generate energy from nothing, which is what Bob would have you believe.  According to Bob, conservation of energy doesn't hold on earth. He seems to think that energy is created out of nothing.  He wrote at one point about an article about ENSO at SkepticalScience.com:

We can see evidence of this in the way that alarmists portray the instrument temperature record. Refer to the SkepticalScience animation on their recent ENSO Temperature Trends webpage. There they write in explanation of the first frame of their animation:

First Frame: The Cowtan & Way (2013) global surface temperature data show a clear increasing trend, but it is “noisy” because multiple influences are present in the data (AGW, ENSO, volcanoes, solar cycle).

Of course, any portrayal of El Niño and La Niña events as noise is intended to mislead or misdirect. It’s nothing more than nonsense based on their misunderstandings or misrepresentations of El Niño and La Niña processes. There are a number of other examples being used by the global warming enthusiasts.

ENSO is sacred to Bob.  He cannot bear to think it might be described as "noise" that can mask or amplify the long term warming signal in temperature data.  To Bob, ENSO is the be all and end all of climate. This is what Bob finished up with (my bold italics):

A strong El Niño event can also cause an upward shift in the temperatures of two-thirds of the surface of the global oceans, while having no apparent long-term effect on the other one-third. Those upward shifts in surface temperatures give the appearance of a relatively steady rise in global surface temperatures when the data are looked at globally. As a result, the rise in global surface temperatures have been incorrectly attributed to human-induced global warming. That means the climate science community is no closer to finding evidence of the human fingerprint in global warming than they were in the early 1990s, the early years of the IPCC. The IPCC has no one to blame for that than themselves, with their focus on carbon dioxide.

Why haven't the oceans boiled dry by now?

Thing is, ENSO type events have been happening forever - or as close to forever as is relevant to now. If Bob were correct that El Niño warms up but La Niña doesn't balance this out, then by now the oceans should have all boiled dry.

From the WUWT comments

Gary Pearse says:

April 30, 2014 at 6:52 pm
Bob, a casual review of the “steps” leaves an impression as expressed by Trenberth that the climate shifts up with an El Nino but it doesn’t shift back down. Looking at your fig. 15, one could imagine the steps going up forever. Isn’t there more to say about this process?

Chuck L says:

April 30, 2014 at 7:36 pm
Bob, the step-increases in temperatures shown in your diagrams and charts make sense. Although I know you are not in the prediction business, I am curious whether you think a period of step-decreases can occur and if so, what the mechanism would be. Thanks.

Bob doesn't answer either of these two questions directly. He mumbles something about the AMO (Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation). Incidentally, there's been a new paper on the AMO recently, in Nature that looks interesting (open access).

X Anonymous says:

April 30, 2014 at 8:25 pm
“THERE ARE NO OTHER WEATHER-RELATED EVENTS ON EARTH THAT COMPARE IN MAGNITUDE TO AN EL NIÑO
El Niño events are by far the largest of any weather-related phenomenon taking place on the planet, and they impact weather around the globe.”

Except for the Seasons. Summer>Winter, etc, are much larger than El Nino

u.k.(us) says:

April 30, 2014 at 9:49 pm
Do plankton (etc) act like clouds in the ocean, keeping the sun’s energy near the surface where it is easily re-radiated to space ?

I don't know about it all being re-radiated to space. However organisms in the ocean do have a role to play in the carbon cycle and climate (though probably not through anything to do with sulphate emissions and clouds in the sky).


Otter (ClimateOtter on Twitter) says:

May 1, 2014 at 1:50 am
Question: Is there any definitive paleorecord of El Ninos and La Ninas? You have noted that La Ninas, in some (most?) cases, do not quite cancel out the warming from El Ninos. It occurred to me that it would be interesting to see how / if the cycles corresponded and changed, with the LIA.

Yes, as a matter of fact, deniers ask and scientists oblige, for example, here and here.


holts7 says:

May 1, 2014 at 2:09 am
Bob your theory means that the temp always goes up in steps and never down, that sounds like an agreement with CO2 adding heat all the time….sorry, it does not gell with me…nothing keeps on going up in the oceans…they warm and they cool, the sun is the likely culprit imo

Except the world has been getting hotter even though the sun hasn't been sending more heat our way:

Source: SkepticalScience.com

---

Knudsen, Mads Faurschou, Bo Holm Jacobsen, Marit-Solveig Seidenkrantz, and Jesper Olsen. "Evidence for external forcing of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation since termination of the Little Ice Age." Nature communications 5 (2014). doi:10.1038/ncomms4323