Lightning fire confusion at WUWT

Bushfire Mount Beauty 11 December 2006

It would be nice to think that wrong headlines like the one below are the reason for the decline in WUWT readership. Thing is, headlines that don't reflect a copy and pasted article are par for the course at WUWT. The headline is: "Claim: Global warming to make more lightning caused fires, but only in the Northern Hemisphere."

Anthony Watts got his north and south mixed up. The paper is about an increase in lightning caused fires in the southern hemisphere. So far, no-one at WUWT has noticed (archive here).

Notice, too, that Anthony continues his "claim" prefix. He does that with most of the press releases he copies, showing that he doesn't "believe" science and wants his readers to think that science is nothing but a hoax.

Are nefarious forces causing the public to cool on the idea of climate conspiracies?

According to conspiracy blogger Anthony Watts, nefarious forces have been responsible for the slowdown in his blog traffic. He put up an article about how he reckons his blog has been "under attack by a variety of forces".  The short version is that he's got WordPress to transfer his anti-environment blog onto their cloud platform.

There's more conspiratorial paranoia, too. He wrote in part:

"In the short term this migration may mean some interruptions of service, in the long-term this should ensure that WUWT continues to reach audiences worldwide without interruption or interception by some of the nefarious forces that operate from the shadows trying to reduce the impact this website has. It will also toughen the site against attacks."

Just thought I'd let you know that this nefarious force will soon be on its way back from the shadows to play its small part in reducing the ruinous impact of climate science deniers on our precious world. (Other obligations have kept me away for longer than I expected.)

Anthony Watts is irate that Gavin Schmidt didn't call out a climate science denier!

This is rich. A climate science denier on Twitter wrote a sarcastic tweet, and Anthony Watts is irate.

No he's not irate that the denier was sarcastic. What he's irate about is that Gavin Schmidt, the Director of GISS at NASA didn't call it out.

Anthony Watts wrote a whole article on his blog at WUWT complaining that Dr Gavin Schmidt didn't repudiate this person. Here's the tweet in question (click the link to see it in context):

No reasonable person reading that tweet would take it at face value. It dings all sorts of alarm bells. Then again, whoever accused a "climate hoax" conspiracy theorist like Anthony Watts of being "reasonable"?

Right wing anti-intellectuals can't get into university - so implies the dimwits at WUWT

Looking through comments to the latest article at WUWT, it's clear that the general view of Anthony Watts' fans think that science deniers are incapable of getting into academia. Every comment implies that a university job in whatever field, which entails going to conferences, is restricted to people who accept climate science. Deniers are incapable of getting a job at a university, according to WUWT-ers. At best, they are in such a tiny minority that they don't count.

This is a rather strange position for science deniers to take though it does make sense, in a weird way. WUWT fans are assuming people who deny science don't do PhDs or post-docs, let alone make a career for themselves as a lecturer and/or researcher. They assume that science deniers do not have the inclination (or the wherewithal) to do academic research.

If you want evidence, see for yourself. Eric Worrall has copied and pasted some of an article at Huffington Post, written by two academics: Nives Dolšak and Aseem Prakash. The article was suggesting ways that universities and academics could offset their air travel, though Eric didn't write about that. His focus was on the fact that academics fly across the country and around the world to conferences, to exchange ideas with their colleagues.

The strange madhouse of climate science denial - defaming Einstein at WUWT

Anthony Watts, a long-time denier blogger, is pushing the notion that Albert Einstein would likely have been a climate skeptic.

Really? Resorting to impugning the integrity of a long dead scientist to justify his anti-science propaganda?

Anthony is claiming that Einstein would have been a fake sceptic or worse, a science disinformer, a liar denier, like Anthony himself is. That's a big idea and one for which he offers no support. Oh he posted an article underneath his headline, which was written by some bloke called David Shapter, or was it Will Happer?

Climate science denial dismissed - Judge finds Tim Ball too wacky to be believed

Over at WUWT, Anthony Watts has gleefully announced to his climate conspiracy mob that a Canadian judge has dismissed a lawsuit against Tim Ball. What Anthony didn't (and probably won't) tell his readers, is that the judge dismissed the complaint because:

Simply put, a reasonably thoughtful and informed person who reads the Article is unlikely to place any stock in Dr. Ball’s views, including his views of Dr. Weaver as a supporter of conventional climate science.

Now we know that no-one who is a fan of WUWT is a "reasonably thoughtful" or "informed person". And we also know that about 99% of them won't bother reading any judgement, and most don't read DeSmogBlog (or HotWhopper) either. Still, I thought it might be useful to spread the word, thanks to Richard Littlemore - who wrote about this first.

If the argument put by the judge is extended, it means that he regards most fans of Anthony Watts' wattsupwiththat blog as unreasonable, lacking in thinking power, and distinctly uninformed. He also holds a large minority of the US population in contempt, the ones who still believe anything their authoritarian idols tell them to believe.

Another key quote was how the Judge found Tim Ball intended to harm then climate scientist Andrew Weaver:

The judge agreed, saying, first of all that Ball’s intent to injure was adequately established in the evidence:
“These allegations are directed at Dr. Weaver’s professional competence and are clearly derogatory of him. Indeed, it is quite apparent that this was Dr. Ball’s intent.”

That's why I think Andrew Weaver stands a chance if he chooses to appeal. Even though I agree with the judgement in its essence, it's also not unreasonable to argue that something like 30% of the US population might be "reasonably thoughtful" despite being wrong about climate science, and are instead merely "uninformed". (That's not the case for probably most WUWT commenters. The long term fans can only be considered as unscrupulous disinformers who deliberately spread lies, or are wilfully ignorant, because they've had ample time and means to find out the facts for themselves.)

Now will Anthony keep his promise and perhaps post the judgement (pdf) or not. Any bets?

By the way - I did predict that Tim Ball was trying for the insanity defense, back in April last year. He must be very pleased his efforts have come to this!

As an aside, sorry for being tardy in getting back to blogging. Other commitments mean articles will be a bit slow coming for a little while yet. Sorry about that. I shall return in full swing shortly.

Further reading

Is Tim Ball wanting to try the "insane" defense in his court cases, with the help of Anthony Watts? - HotWhopper article from April 2017

More about Tim Ball from HotWhopper

The spectacular failure of the 2007 climate "bet" by denier J. Scott Armstrong

Today at WUWT there's a rambling, indecipherable article about some bet that a science denier called J. Scott Armstrong unsuccessfully tried to make with Al Gore way back in 2007. It's a tale of a failed denier prediction, and worse. Having failed so spectacularly, J. Scott Armstrong is doubling down and betting on a drop of up to 4.5 °C in global temperature over the next decade.

Armstrong was wanting to bet that there'd be no change in global average surface temperatures between 2008 and 2017. He figured, wrongly, that Al Gore would bet there would be warming. Al Gore didn't take the bet. Why would he deal with a nincompoop denier like J Scott Armstrong.

Armstrong's first draft of the bet was a bit weird. The essence of it was this:

Anthony Watts gets over-excited by a meaningless weather (not climate) "award"

For HotWhopper, not WUWT

This reminds me of Donald Trump, always wanting to magnify his magnificence and making a fool of himself in the process.

Anthony Watts is over the moon with excitement that he came top of the class in the weather blog category of some award. The "award" looks to be a way of getting clicks to a content reader/gatherer called Feedspot, which was set up a few years ago - back in 2013 from the look of things.

It's weather, not climate, Anthony!

Well, I've got news for Anthony Watts. He probably didn't know that Feedspot also has a top 40 global warming and climate change category. That's because WUWT isn't in the top 40. It didn't make the list, as of this writing. The top website in that category is SkepticalScience.com.

When 97% becomes 99.6% - climate change in 2017

Anthony Watts has kindly pointed out that the scientific consensus on climate change is changing. He wrote the very strange headline: "‘The 97% climate consensus’starts to crumble with 485 new papers in 2017 that question it". Apparently some drongo (who does this every year IIRC) has only managed to dig up 485 "papers" that he claims " in some way questioned the supposed consensus regarding the perils of human CO2 emissions or the efficacy of climate models to predict the future."

I expect that, as in past collections, many of findings of those 485 don't dispute climate change, and many probably support the fact that human activity is causing global warming, but I haven't bothered checking (because that's not the point of this little article).  What struck me was that 485 was a pretty small number given the vast number of peer-reviewed publications on climate change these days.

If you go to Google Scholar and search for the term "climate change" and select "2017-2017", you'll find there were "About 115,000 results". Now 485 is 0.4% of 115,000, so even if all those 485 papers disputed the greenhouse effect (which they don't), it would still mean that one could argue that 97% has become 99.6% :D

Now that even beats the 98.4% of WUWT-ers who deny straightforward science. Who'd have thought!

Thanks, Anthony Watts, Breitbart, Pierre Gosselin and Kenneth Richard.

The latest conspiracy theory from WUWT science deniers - losing their grip on ice

The latest conspiracy theory from science deniers at WUWT is that the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) is up to something nefarious. (Seeing nefarious intent in the most innocuous actions is one of the hallmarks of conspiratorial thinking.)

All the fuss was about a new version of NSIDC's Sea Ice Index. It's gone from version 2 to version 3. In the latest version, monthly averages are calculated in a different way. The new version only affects monthly averages, not anything else. From the analysis report:

The Sea Ice Index has been updated to Version 3 (V3). The key update in V3 is a change in the method for calculating the numerical monthly averages of sea ice extent and sea ice area data values; that is, the data distributed in .csv and .xlsx format. This change impacts only the monthly data values in the Sea Ice Index time series and not monthly sea ice extent and concentration maps that accompany the data product, that is, the .png, .tif, and shapefile archives. Daily data are also not impacted, nor are any current conclusions drawn from the Sea Ice Index data set about the state of sea ice in either the Arctic or the Antarctic. This change is being made in response to questions raised by users of the product concerning how the monthly average ice extent and areas are calculated.