Bob Tisdale trots over to Berkeley Earth to fetch a red herring from China

Bob Tisdale has trotted over to Berkeley Earth to have a look at what is happening to surface temperature in China (archived here). It's odd that he's allowed to do that, because Anthony Watts disowned Berkeley Earth because it failed to show that we are heading for an ice age, or something like that. (Anthony has to pander to the bulk of his readers who deny that global warming is happening.)

Anyway, Anthony gave Bob Tisdale a free pass. He probably thinks that no-one ever reads Bob's articles anyway, and they fill the gaps in his daily quota of blog nonsense.

Bob Tisdale gets enthused about surface temperature in China

Bob set out to prove that China isn't warming any faster (or slower) than the land surface of earth as a whole.  He reckons the media should have fact-checked something that the head of China's Meteorological Administration, Dr Zheng Guoguang, reportedly said to the Study Times, as reported by Reuters. That "the country's rate of warming was higher than the global average".

The moral bankruptcy of deniers: sending the poor into a pit of smoke, pollution and disease

There's a very weird cartoon at WUWT from Josh at WUWT today (archived here). It looks as if he's urging the world to push poor nations into a pit of smoke, pollution and disease. Under a headline: "Turning our backs on the poor? Cartoon by Josh", Yep. Turning their backs on the poor is one thing deniers do well. Josh explains that he wants poor nations to build more and more dirty coal-fired power plants instead of clean renewable energy.

Josh has drawn some chap climbing down into a dark pit, labelled "smoke, pollution and disease", being urged on by deniers, presumably - and saying "thank you" for the privilege of being doomed to an early grave.

I won't post it - but if you want you can see the archived version.

Did I ever say deniers are morally bankrupt?

Anthony Watts puts Roy Spencer and John Christy on notice

Anthony Watts has put Roy Spencer and John Christy on notice (archived here). He has found an article about how some computer programmers have written a fancy paper. The paper is "fancy" in that if you click on links and charts, you're apparently taken to program code and data.

Now providing data and code might be new in the world of computer science but it's been the norm for climate science for years. There's more data than deniers know what to do with. Articles on anti-science blogs like WUWT show that deniers don't have a clue what to do with the data that is available. In fact most of them don't even know that there is a heap of data and code they can play with.

WUWT is utter nutter heaven: David "funny sunny" Archibald sez his ice age is comething

Anti-science activist Anthony Watts can't make up his mind if he's coming or going. Into or out of an ice age, that is. And he wonders why people regard his blog as utter nutter heaven.

Today he's promoting David "funny sunny" Archibald again, with his ice age comething predictions (archived here). He found a spot somewhere in the world where it's been a bit cold lately, and wrote an article with the headline: "A Prediction Coming True?"

David's prediction, you may recall is that an ice age is comething. Here's what he has said will happen by 2020 - a drop of 1.5 degrees from 2005:

Data sources: GISTemp and Archibald (2006)

The chart above also shows what has happened since David's 2006 "prediction" - published in that august journal E&E - ha!. David's prediction is in yellow, the actual is in white. The year before his prediction was the hottest year on record at the time. In the eight years since his "prediction", 2010 then 2014 were the hottest years on record. Is he nuts to claim his prediction is "coming true"? What word would you use to describe his fantasy?

Christopher Monckton's Latest Conspiracy Theory: World Guvmint caused by ENSO

This was sighted at Anthony Watts' conspiracy blog, WUWT, today, from Monckton of Brenchley (my emphasis):

May 4, 2015 at 10:23 am
In response to Aneipris, the problem is timing. The el Nino, if it endures to the end of this year, will shorten the Pause. Then the Paris conference will introduce a world government. Then the la Nina will continue the Pause, but it will be too late. In the current draft treaty, there is no secession clause.

Deniers complain when we point out their conspiracy nuttery. It doesn't stop them getting nuttier by the day.

Rud Istvan goes on a Gish gallop at WUWT

Rud Istvan is a climate science denier who hangs out at various denialist haunts. Today he's got a silly article at the anti-science blog of Anthony Watts at WUWT (archived here). He's trying to sell a dumb book he wrote to the deniers at WUWT. (Just how much did he pay to get his "book" vanity-published and marketed as an ebook!) His article has the word "truth" in the title: "Talking Truth to the Climate Consensus". This is a big red flag, alerting the wary that what follows is likely to be a lie. Particularly as the article is on a blog that is known as a climate disinformation blog.

Rud says that Bjorn Lomborg is a denier because he doesn't promote mitigation of climate change (by reducing CO2 emissions). Bjorn is more in favour of letting the lucky survive - those who can afford to adapt and recover, and letting the rest go to pot. In other words, Bjorn ignores the fact that we all rely on each other. If the USA can afford to recover from floods and fire and drought, it won't be much help when the goods it has got used to can't be produced any because more vulnerable nations sink under rising seas or are caught up in conflict after famine and drought.

Five people died in Queensland floods

The weather in much of eastern Australia has been extreme over the past few weeks. That's only one of the words I can find to describe it. In just the last 24 hours, five people have died as a result. That's in a country where people are not unused to floods.

This is May already. The wet season should be done. In any case, this is south of the tropics. Yet not long after incredible downpours and floods in the Hunter region in NSW, there've been such heavy rains over part of south eastern Queensland that it's taken the lives of five people - in three separate events of cars being washed away by floodwaters.

Please, people - take care out there. Weather can be extremely dangerous.

Central England Temperature has fallen out of favour at WUWT

Some of you might remember how various WUWT-ers were hailing the temperature in Central England (HadCET) as heralding in an ice age. Two years ago a denier at WUWT was claiming that an ice age cometh, and pointed to HadCET - which, as you'll see below, indicated no such thing.  In June that year, David "funny sunny" Archibald made one of his famous failed predictions, that Central England was in for a cold spell. A few months later, a chap called Tony Brown claimed that HadCET showed temperatures were back to those of the 1730s, which was utter nonsense. (That is, they weren't!)

Now that particular temperature record has fallen out of favour. Not even the most ardent denier can deny it's got a lot hotter there in the past few years. I say they can't deny it, but they do, still.

Taking a 68,000 year break from conspiracies, at the poles

WUWT is taking a short intermission from it's normal fare of utter nutter conspiracy theories. Anthony Watts copied and pasted a press release about oceans, the Arctic and Antarctica. He didn't understand what he copied and pasted, confusing the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). His headline read (archived here): "AMO fingered in newly discovered 200 year bipolar disorder lag".

As you can probably guess, it wasn't the AMO that got "fingered", it was ocean circulation. The AMO is more or less just a pattern of sea surface temperature in the north Atlantic - a long way from Antarctica. The AMOC, on the other hand, is where currents overturn in the north Atlantic, off Greenland, effectively pumping water around the world. At least Anthony didn't put the word "claim" in front of his headline this time.

Denier weirdness: Conspiracy theories get odder by the day at WUWT

Anthony Watts has come up with yet another conspiracy theory. It's full of holes, but what do science deniers care, those who can see the holes, that is. In fact it's got so many holes that it vanishes as soon as you touch it - it disintegrates into nothingness. Conspiracy theorists are willing to accept any nonsense. I haven't seen a sillier article or a sillier thread at WUWT in at least a few hours.

If you have a few minutes to waste, read on. Otherwise, wait for me to write about something vaguely sane.