The ultimate cherry pick - or how not to interpret a temperature chart, courtesy WUWT

They say a picture tells a thousand words. Is this the ultimate cherry pick?

19 years of pause and 17 years of rapid warming.
Data source: Wood for Trees Charts: WUWT and HotWhopper

Some context

Anthony Watts wrote about a paper by Ross McKitrick (whose name Anthony mis-spelled). It was published in some obscure statistics journal (with zero impact factor), in which Ross set out to "prove" that global warming "paused" 19 years ago. To illustrate, Anthony put up the above chart.

No, not both of them.  Guess which one was Anthony's :)  And I can cherry-pick too, can't I?

He said that Ross McKitrick didn't help him. Anthony Watts was able to come up with that chart all by himself. It's ironic that the abstract that Anthony posted included this sentence about cherry-picking endpoints:

Here, I propose a method for estimating the duration of the hiatus that is robust to unknown forms of heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation (HAC) in the temperature series and to cherry-picking of endpoints.

If you need it, here's a link explaining heteroskedasticity and Tamino discussing autocorrelation, plus more here.

Here's another chart, this time of GISTemp looking at global surface temperatures over the past few decades.

Data source: NASA GISTemp

I wonder if Tamino will bother to take on Ross McKitrick's latest effort?

From the WUWT comments

This first one is priceless. I'm guessing that it's a dig at Anthony's effort, but you can never tell. Lucius von Steinkaninchen  wrote:

September 1, 2014 at 10:26 am
Perhaps eventually we will reach the conclusion that “the pause” extends to the 70s and “global warming” never existed to begin with.

The stats is beyond me, however it mightn't be beyond Greg who says:

September 1, 2014 at 11:23 am
So he uses a method that requires that the data be trend stationary to show that the trend is not statationary but is lower during the 19y ‘pause’.
Seems to have lost something in translation. :?

Tony Brown prefers the word "plateau". climatereason wrote:

September 1, 2014 at 11:56 am
Its an ‘averaged’ pause as clearly the temperatures have moved both ways during the period so ‘pause’ is perhaps not a worthwhile matrix. . Eyeballing it I would say the first 10 years of the 19 year graph is rather variable whilst the second 9 year period is much more constant and would surely merit the term ‘plateau’
tonyb

Denierism of the week: What is increasing the overall cooling rate? Global warming, of course!

Seen at WUWT today, in comments under an article by Bob Tisdale. He was writing about August sea surface temperatures reaching an all time monthly high, for any month in the record (archived here).

A C Osborn  September 1, 2014 at 6:46 am (excerpt)

...this warmth in the sea surface will not take long to disappear in to space, thus increasing the overall cooling rate....

Credit: Plognark

.Bonus quote just seen from pochas  September 1, 2014 at 8:41 am

Is this how a glaciation gets started?

Deluded deniers: Will WUWT correct all its errors about National Geographic?

This is an example of denier weirdness and denier obstinacy and deniers not keeping up. Anthony Watts wrote:

Geoff Sherrington writes: National Geographic Magazine had a Global Warming issue in September 2004. New instruments have given new data. By planning now, NatGeo can make a revised issue 10 years later, in September 2014.

Does Anthony ever write anything himself you might ask? Rarely. And when he does he gets is hilariously wrong, like:

• claiming Russian Steampipes are causing global warming
• claiming an airport suddenly had a one-day bout of UHI disease
• claiming a single pump could have stopped all of the massive floods in England
• claiming a sparsely populated area of China is suffering UHI disease.

The pot calling snow black 

WUWT continues to amaze. Being a site that specialises in disinformation and the stupid, how can anyone there have the cheek to ask someone else to correct something? It's not just pot and kettle. More often it's just pot, with the pot being WUWT. As often as not there is no kettle. When WUWT alleged someone else made a mistake, they are often (usually) wrong.

What Geoff Sherrington wants changed from 2004

Geoff Sherrington wants National Geographic to "correct" articles it published in its September 2004 issue on global warming. Yes, that's right. September 2004.

Let's go through all the hundreds and thousands of errors that Geoff Sherrington wants to "correct". Geoff has gone back to 2004. Why not 1934 or 1974 or 1994? You may well ask. I expect there are things written way back when that could be "corrected".

I'll leave you to wonder about that. In the meantime, let's get on with it. There aren't hundreds and thousands after all, there are only 22 phrases or sentences he wants to change. Geoff said:

The 2014 edition should aim to correct what is now known to be wrong or questionable in the 2004 edition. We can help. Here are some quotes that need attention. The first three have some commentary, as is suggested for the remainder.

Ummm - okay. Magazines should of course check every edition every ten years and publish errata editions. They would probably sell like hot cakes. But just how many "corrections" are needed? Hardly any, and most of those are about things that have got worse in the meantime. As usual Anthony Watts and his deluded deniers have the wrong end of the stick.

Silly season at the Daily Mail and WUWT: wishfully reversing the Arctic decline

Update: David Rose of the Daily Mail attempts to deny his own article. See below.

Oh my. This is about as good as when deniers claimed that the Arctic sea ice was recovering at the fastest rate in years. When they were referring to the winter growth of ice after the record low ice extent in 2012. Remember DenialDepot? - here and here and particularly here.

Anthony Watts made a headline (archived here) from a quote from Judith Curry in an article by David Rose in the Daily Mail (archived here). His headline:

‘The Arctic sea ice spiral of death seems to have reversed’

Did Judith really make such a wild claim? Seriously? It is there in black and white. Not that you can believe anything in the Daily Mail. Then again, you can't take anything that Judith Curry says as credible without checking, either.

James McCown and WUWT reject CO2 science and the greenhouse effect

Anthony Watts works too hard to make sure people know that WUWT peddles pseudo-science crap. He doesn't have to go overboard like he does. Anyone who has heard of denier blogs knows that his is the most favoured utter nutter blog on the internet. He boasts about it. Every now and then he claims to accept the science of the greenhouse effect, but you'd not know it. He often puts up articles disputing the greenhouse effect, and many of his "guests" and probably most of his most ardent fans are stuck in greenhouse effect denial.

Today at WUWT there was another "guest essay" by someone called James McCown. James has a bee in his bonnet about atmospheric carbon dioxide. I've written before about an article he wrote.

James is a one-man band who has a website about his consulting business in oil and gas, and real estate, among other things. When he's not rejecting science, he spends his spare time (of which I'll bet he has a lot) writing Android apps, which he offers for free. He also tries to sell his services as an "expert witness". Whatever, it's clear that his many self-declared talents do not include climate science or any of the physical sciences.

How James McCown disputes basic chemistry

What I don't understand is why Anthony Watts gives idiots like this chap a platform. I mean he comes up with the silliest things. Last time he was arguing that burning fossil fuels doesn't produce carbon dioxide. For example, with one of the simplest hydrocarbons, methane:

CH₄ + 2O₂ → 2H₂O + CO₂ + energy

James wrote:

This leads me to believe that if the CO2 concentration is accurately measured by Etheridge et al (1996), then it is more likely the result of a natural process than from industrial sources.

Natural processes? Is he saying that burning hydrocarbons doesn't produce CO2?

How James McCown disputes basic physics

Today he's just as nutty, trying to argue that atmospheric CO2 isn't long-lasting in the atmosphere and isn't well-mixed. That's contrary to every bit of science on the subject for the past goodness knows how many decades. It's not as if this is something that's being debated in science. This is basic, well-founded knowledge that dates back years and years.

Here is a chart of CO2 as analysed at Law Dome in Antarctica, from Etheridge and co, just for the period from 1840 to 1969. (There are more charts below).

Data source: NOAA

You can see that it's risen since 1840, without any sharp fluctuations.

James doesn't like it. He even dug up a ridiculous chart from somewhere or other (a chap called Beck in the so-called "journal" Energy & Environment), which claims that atmospheric CO2 in the 1830s was as high as it was in the 1990s. It has all sorts of wild swings and is not just way off base, there is no plausible mechanism by which such swings could be explained.

Source: WUWT

Eli Rabett has the story. Georg Hoffmann at RealClimate wrote about it too. And there are other rebuttals, from CO2 guru, Ralph Keeling and Harro A.J. Meijer if that doesn't satisfy you.

James doesn't know much about the data sampling of CO2. He got some of it partly right, (though it's not just flask measurements), saying:

The usual sources of atmospheric CO2 concentration data, beginning with 1958, are flask measurements from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, from observatories at Mauna Loa, Antarctica, and elsewhere. 

Then he veered off into ignoramus land, writing:

These have been sampled on a monthly basis, and sometimes more frequently, and thus provide a good level of temporal accuracy for use in comparing annual average CO2 concentrations with annual global average temperatures.

Monitoring atmospheric CO2

Samples aren't just taken once a month. For example, the monitoring at Mauna Loa is continuous, with readings only interrupted by calibrations.

You can read about the history Charles (Dave) David Keeling and his CO2 monitoring here. You can read about the current process for monitoring atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa here.  This CSIRO page describes what happens at Cape Grim in Tasmania.

Here is a map showing all the places around the world that contribute to the World Data Centre for Greenhouse Gases (WDCGG). Click to view it larger, or go to the source here.

Distribution of the fixed stations that contribute data to the WDCGG.   The symbol " • " denotes that the data from the station has been updated in the last 365 days

CO2 from Law Dome, Antarctica

James is all hot and bothered about the Law Dome data, compiled by Etheridge and co back in the 1990s. Here is a chart from the CSIRO website, showing Law Dome data together with data from Cape Grim:

James is upset because he says:

Due to the issues of diffusive mixing and gradual bubble closure, each of these figures give us only an estimate of the average CO2 concentration over a period that may be 15 years or more. If the distribution of the air age is symmetric about these mean air ages, the estimate of 310.5 ppm from the DE08 core for 1938 could include air from as early as 1930 and as late as 1946.

Umm, even if it did, looking at the Table 4 in Etheridge et al (1996), the range would be from 305.2 ppm (1929) and 311.4 ppm (1948). And comparing the three cores, the CO2 around that period was found to be 310.5 in 1938 (DE08), 310.5 in 1940 (DE08-2) and 309.2 in 1939 (DSS). Not much between them is there.

The dating accuracy of the ice core samples was said to be +/- two years at 1805 and +/- ten years at 1350 AD. The precision of the analysis of the air samples was to 0.2 ppm. This is what is written about the Law Dome analyses for the period 1006 A.D.-1978 A.D:

The CO2 records presented here are derived from three ice cores obtained at Law Dome, East Antarctica from 1987 to 1993. The Law Dome site satisfies many of the desirable characteristics of an ideal ice core site for atmospheric CO2 reconstructions including negligible melting of the ice sheet surface, low concentrations of impurities, regular stratigraphic layering undisturbed at the surface by wind or at depth by ice flow, and high snow accumulation rate. ...

...The precision of analysis of the Law Dome ice core air samples was 0.2 ppm. For greater details on the experimental techniques used on the DE08, DE08-2, and DSS ice cores, please refer to Etheridge et al. (1996).

The ice cores were dated by counting the annual layers in oxygen isotope ratio (δ18O in H2O), ice electroconductivity measurements (ECM), and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) concentrations. For these three parameters, each core displayed clear, well-preserved seasonal cycles allowing a dating accuracy of ±2 years at 1805 A.D. for the three cores and ±10 years at 1350 A.D. for DSS.

And from the paper, variations within a time scale less than ten years would have been difficult to pick up:

It is possible that other CO2 changes of similar magnitude occurred in the past but with such short duration that even the Law Dome ice did not record them. However, it is unlikely that such changes would be recorded in ice cores with still higher accumulation rate than DE08 and DE08-2 (even if sites could be found without significant surface melting), because the diffusion of air through the firn will significantly smooth any variations shorter than about 10 years. The DE08 cores may be at the upper limit of air age resolution for ice cores. 

But so what? Exactly. I really don't know what James is going on about. He spends most of his article talking about cointegration tests. But I think that's just waffle to try to make his main point, which is to question the relationship between atmospheric CO2 and temperature.

In other words, he goes to great lengths to reject the greenhouse effect.

Just another denier nutter.

CO2 is rising too quickly

The bottom line is that CO2 is a well-mixed greenhouse gas and once it gets into the air stays there for a very long time. Look at the CSIRO chart above and tell me how much it matters whether the estimate for 1938 should be 308 ppm or 312 ppm. What is a concern is that atmospheric CO2 broke through 400 ppm this year.

Source: Scripps Institution of Oceanography, USCD

From the WUWT comments

James' silly article had the deniers salivating, particularly the greenhouse effect deniers.

Latitude thinks that James got his historic data from someone other than scientists, who he reckons have ignored it, contrary to the information that James himself provided (lots of references to studies that looked at historic CO2 levels from the dim distant past). What a nutter.

August 29, 2014 at 10:21 am
James, thank you
CO2 levels are the root of the entire global warming hoodoo…and people have been completely fooled into believing it
CO2 history has been almost completely ignored…and it’s the biggest h o a x of them all

Solomon Green doesn't know that CO2 is a well-mixed greenhouse gas or that the data is not sparse.

August 29, 2014 at 11:00 am
I have seen several postings and/or papers discrediting Ernst-Georg Beck but I had not realised that the pre 1958 data was so sparse. If that is the best data available it is very difficult to see that any supposed correlation between CO2 and temperature prior to 1958 can be anything but an act of faith.

I would only disagree with one word in James McCowan’s essay. In the sentence “The results from the tests of the pre-1958 data are almost certainly spurious” I think that he has shown that the words “almost” is not necessary.

TheLastDemocrat wrote a very long comment that shows he doesn't accept the physics of the greenhouse effect. Which only goes to show he's one of the 8% Dismissives and a member of the scientific illiterati.

August 29, 2014 at 11:17 am (excerpts)
Great post.

...ANY coincident variable that dramatically goes from zero at baseline to its highest values at the end of the time span will have relatively powerful mathematical relation with temp.
We could plug in the human population, or the number of computers, etc., and would get a similar result...

...There are many other human-activity-related measures that wold show up as significantly predictive. They only have to have their lower value at the beginning of the timeline, and highest value at the end...

 john robertson is a conspiracy theorist who doesn't know that the world is getting hotter.

August 29, 2014 at 11:48 am
Theory?
Not by empirical standards.
The Magic Gas Meme is either not falsifiable or it is long dead.
As temperature records from 1970 alone destroy it.
But then facts never did matter in the Great Cause, ™ Team IPCC.
So far all we have is weak speculation, that an increase in atmospheric concentrations of CO2 will cause a warmer planet.
Right now, in the incredibly short time we have data for, looks like CO2 = Cooler .
But we do not have sufficient data to say any more than; “Could be, couldn’t say for sure”.
I believe I can make a better case, that hysterical humans produce garage in the place of science.

Here are some temperature records for john robertson, not just from 1970.

Data source: NASA GISS

---

Etheridge, D. M., L. P. Steele, R. L. Langenfelds, R. J. Francey, J‐M. Barnola, and V. I. Morgan. "Natural and anthropogenic changes in atmospheric CO2 over the last 1000 years from air in Antarctic ice and firn." Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres (1984–2012) 101, no. D2 (1996): 4115-4128.

Denier weirdness: 97% irony - deniers deny the science about the science

On undermining public support

...Previous research has shown that four key beliefs about climate change—that it is real, human caused, serious and solvable—are important predictors of support for climate policies. Other research has shown that organized opponents of climate legislation have sought to undermine public support by instilling the belief that there is widespread disagreement among climate scientists about these points—a view shown to be widely held by the public. Ding et al (2011) Nature Climate Change

Key fact: global warming is primarily due to increased CO2

...When asked how to address the problem of climate change, while respondents in 1992 were unable to differentiate between general “good environmental practices” and actions specific to addressing climate change, respondents in 2009 have begun to appreciate the differences. Despite this, many individuals in 2009 still had incorrect beliefs about climate change, and still did not appear to fully appreciate key facts such as that global warming is primarily due to increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and the single most important source of this carbon dioxide is the combustion of fossil fuels. Reynolds et al (2010) Risk Analysis 

Plausibility that climate sensitivity is above 4.5°C remains high 

...Across groups, the non-interactive disjunction is used, assuming that when several scientific theories compete, they cannot be all true at the same time, but at least one will remain. This procedure balances points of view better than averaging: the number of experts holding a view is not essential.

This approach is illustrated with a 16 expert real-world dataset on climate sensitivity obtained in 1995. Climate sensitivity is a key parameter to assess the severity of the global warming issue. Comparing our findings with recent results suggests that the plausibility that sensitivity is small (below 1.5 °C) has decreased since 1995, while the plausibility that it is above 4.5 °C remains high. Ha-Duong (2008) International Journal of Approximate Reasoning

Energy conservation is becoming increasingly important (1991) 

To avoid the risk of global warming energy conservation is becoming increasingly important. Gruber and Brand (1991) Energy Policy

Crazed deniers rant and rave and reject science

Anthony Watts and his fringe followers deny the fact that there is an overwhelming consensus among climate scientists that humans are causing global warming. In fact, since the middle of last century, our actions have probably caused all the global warming observed.

Deniers don't just want to deny the fact that we are causing global warming, some of them even want to deny that the world is warming and that an increase in greenhouse gases warm the world and even, in some cases, deny basic chemistry - that burning fossil fuels produces carbon dioxide.

Science rejected on political grounds

Most HotWhopper readers know that deniers who frequent fringe conspiracy blogs like Anthony Watts' WUWT are utter nutters. They'll do and say anything to reject science. It doesn't have to make sense or be consistent.

The quotes above are from abstracts that were collated by John Cook and his colleagues in their search of the Web of Science database to see what was in the research papers about climate change and global warming.

Anthony has found some wacky PhD candidate from somewhere in Europe the USA, who's supposedly studying psychology, and who is an ideological denier of climate science (archived here).  José Duarte is an extremist right wing ideologue. Not just a libertarian but a nutty libertarian. He quotes a bunch of papers, including the above, and cries "fraud", "retraction" (archived here).

José's excitable and irrational. He was most irate that "The editor of ERL, Daniel Kammen, personally promoted the paper [Cook13] on his blog". He hilariously claimed that "The people doing the reading were militant political activists on the issue of AGW".  Militant...political...activists. What a nutter. Here are the affiliations of the authors of Cook13:

• Global Change Institute, University of Queensland, Australia 
• Skeptical Science, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia 
• School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Australia 
• Tetra Tech, Incorporated, McClellan, CA, USA 
• Department of Chemistry, Michigan Technological University, USA 
• Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, UK 
• Department of Geography, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada 
• Department of Environmental Science and Policy, George Mason University, USA 
• Salt Spring Consulting Ltd, Salt Spring Island, BC, Canada 

Not an army, navy, or airforce affiliation among them :) I'll venture to guess that to the young denier activist Jose, it's not just every climate scientist on the face of the earth who is a "militant political activist", it's everyone who accepts science - that is the majority of people who know anything about the subject are all "militant political activists". (If only there were more people taking action to mitigate global warming.)

I've listed below the papers José complains about, together with the category they were put in and the level of endorsement. The link goes to the paper in each case. The details are from the page on SkepticalScience.com that has the abstracts and other details about the papers.

Remember, the researchers were only categorising the abstracts of the paper and did not see the title, the authors, the journal name or the full paper. [Fixed: I'm told by a very reliable source that the researchers did see the title. Sou 31 Aug 14] Therefore, before you decide whether you'd agree with the category or the endorsement level, read the abstract in isolation of everything else. I've added a link to the paper after the title in each case.

Category: Mitigation

Biomass Fuel Use, Burning Technique And Reasons For The Denial Of Improved Cooking Stoves By Forest User Groups Of Rema-kalenga Wildlife Sanctuary, Bangladesh (link to paper)
Authors: Chowdhury, Msh; Koike, M; Akther, S; Miah, Md (2011)
Journal: International Journal Of Sustainable Development And World Ecology
Category: Mitigation
Endorsement Level: 3. Implicitly endorses AGW without minimising it

Initial Public Perceptions Of Deep Geological And Oceanic Disposal Of Carbon Dioxide (link to paper)
Authors: Palmgren, Cr; Morgan, Mg; De Bruin, Wb; Keith, Dw (2004)
Journal: Environmental Science & Technology
Category: Mitigation
Endorsement Level: 3. Implicitly endorses AGW without minimising it

Climate Change And Climate Variability: Personal Motivation For Adaptation And Mitigation (link to paper)
Authors: Semenza, Jc; Ploubidis, Gb; George, La (2011)
Journal: Environmental Health
Category: Mitigation
Endorsement Level: 3. Implicitly endorses AGW without minimising it

Promoting Energy-conservation In Small And Medium-sized Companies (link to paper)
Authors: Gruber, E; Brand, M (1991)
Journal: Energy Policy
Category: Mitigation
Endorsement Level: 3. Implicitly endorses AGW without minimising it

Category: Impacts

A Strategy And Protocol To Increase Diffusion Of Energy Related Innovations Into The Mainstream Of Housing Associations (link to paper)
Authors: Egmond, C; Jonkers, R; Kok, G (2006)
Journal: Energy Policy
Category: Impacts
Endorsement Level: 3. Implicitly endorses AGW without minimising it

Category: Methods

Hierarchical Fusion Of Expert Opinions In The Transferable Belief Model, Application To Climate Sensitivity (link to paper)
Authors: Ha-duong, M (2008)
Journal: International Journal Of Approximate Reasoning
Category: Methods
Endorsement Level: 3. Implicitly endorses AGW without minimising it

Category: Not climate related

Now What Do People Know About Global Climate Change? Survey Studies Of Educated Laypeople (link to paper)
Authors: Reynolds, Tw; Bostrom, A; Read, D; Morgan, Mg (2010)
Journal: Risk Analysis
Category: Not climate related
Endorsement Level: 1. Explicitly endorses and quantifies AGW as 50+%

Support For Climate Policy And Societal Action Are Linked To Perceptions About Scientific Agreement (link to paper)
Authors: Ding, D; Maibach, Ew; Zhao, Xq; Roser-renouf, C; Leiserowitz, A (2011)
Journal: Nature Climate Change
Category: Not climate related
Endorsement Level: 3. Implicitly endorses AGW without minimising it

José's depth of research - 10 minutes!

"I only spent ten minutes with their database" says Jose. "...I'm not willing to spend a lot of time with their data, for reasons I detail further down...." I don't believe he only "spent ten minutes". He went looking for stuff. And if he really only spent ten minutes with their data base up till the 28 August 2014, then on what grounds did he write his diatribe on the 22 July this year? And on what did he base his opposition to the fact there is an overwhelming consensus in his rants at Judith Curry's blog? (Okay, those were all based on pure, unadulterated ad hom attacks mixed with a lot of disinformation, not on any examination of the paper itself.)

I can believe he's "not willing to spend a lot of time with their data". He'd find he couldn't dispute their findings and that wouldn't do. Not at all.

If he worked at the rate of 8 abstracts in ten minutes, Jose could rate all 11,944 abstracts in about six weeks, working eight hours a day, five days a week. He'd rather not.

He's not very good at research, that is clear. He flies off the handle before doing it. And the little he does is very poor. For example, Jose wrote:

I discovered that the following papers were included as endorsement, as "climate papers", again in just ten minutes of looking. They are classified as either implicit or explicit endorsement, and were evidently included in the 97% figure:

No, José, not all of them were included in the 97% figure. Two of the papers he listed were very clearly marked for the category "not climate related". And it's not as if Jose could have easily missed that point, because he wrote:

In Table 1, page 2, the authors claimed that social science papers were classified as "Not climate related" and not included as endorsement cases. This is a false claim, and the authors should be investigated for fraud. (There were some papers that were classified as "Not climate related" in my quick search, but the above papers were not -- they were classified is implicit or explicit endorsement.) 

That's a strong and wrong allegation. All you need to do is go to the SkepticalScience search facility and you'll find that two of the papers that Jose included in his list were clearly categorised as "not climate related" - here and here. Therefore they weren't included in the 97%.

Now what would be the result if Jose were to remove the other six studies from the 3896 endorsing the human cause of global warming (out of 4014 abstracts that were classified as taking a position on the subject)? You'd get 3890 out of 4008, which is still, you guessed it:

97%

Deniers cannot disprove the findings, and won't even try!

And do deniers really and truly doubt that almost all the science points to the fact that humans are causing global warming? Why don't they provide evidence that a quarter, a third, half the scientific papers dispute this? Why can't they prove that even 10% of scientific papers dispute this.

Because it's not so!

Why don't they do their own research? Because they know they'll find that at least 97% of scientific papers that attribute a cause of modern warming, show it to be human activity.

From the WUWT comments

Max Roberts reckons all psychologists are stupid and untrustworthy, except for those rare beasts who reject the findings of experts and deny the undeniable:

August 29, 2014 at 3:21 pm
Finally, a psychologist with intelligence, analytical skills, and integrity.
Most of us do pointless crap (I have a PhD in psychology, university lecturer in a small useless provincial university for over 20 years, the sort of place that turns out a constant stream of political ‘scientists’ and sociologists who then go off to trash the world).
I always say: social psychology is trivial answers to interesting questions, cognitive psychology is interesting answers to trivial questions.
Its people like this who can buck that trend. 

pokerguy is easily persuaded to believe what he believes, no matter how nutty his beliefs are:

August 29, 2014 at 4:20 pmThis is splendidly written, brilliant, passionate, dripping with common sense and integrity….and extremely persuasive. Any remaining supporters of the nutters who authored this “paper,” should bow their heads in shame.

Eamon Butler is incapable of doing his own research, but he can ask a question:

August 29, 2014 at 3:05 pm
Just so I’m clear, but apart from Cook’s and the Doran/Zimmerman surveys, are there any other studies that conclude the 97% result? I’m sick to death of this nonsense being pushed down my throat as though it was supposed to be proof of CAGW. I’m sure you have all seen the ”97% of engineers and the dodgy bridge” analogy. I ask those promoting this rubbish, from which survey are they referring to? Most haven’t got a clue of it’s source let alone the controversial background.

This is a very damning rebuttal of the Cook fraud. Thanks to Jose for this. Hopefully criminal charges will soon follow. I won’t hold my Co2 laden breath.

Here are some other studies for you, Eamon, since you aren't familiar with climate science yourself (or you wouldn't need such studies, you'd know):

• Oreskes, Naomi. "The scientific consensus on climate change." Science 306, no. 5702 (2004): 1686-1686. (link)
• Verheggen, Bart, Bart Strengers, John Cook, Robert van Dorland, Kees Vringer, Jeroen Peters, Hans Visser, and Leo Meyer. "Scientists’ views about attribution of global warming." Environmental science & technology (2014). (link)
• Anderegg, W. R., Prall, J. W., Harold, J., & Schneider, S. H. (2010). "Expert credibility in climate change." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(27), 12107-12109. [Added 31 Aug 14 - H/t John Cook] (link)
• Not to forget the extensive but unpublished research of James Lawrence Powell.
• or the IPCC reports.

Fred W. Manzo  - his high school science teacher was correct. It's Fred who belongs to the utter nutter fringe group of science deniers. (Fred doesn't know what a personal attack is. And I wouldn't mind betting Fred added the last bit of his quote all by himself.)

August 29, 2014 at 1:50 pm
I did bring up the bias in “97 percent of all scientist say AGW is the most important problem facing humanity” to a High School science teacher. His defense was “that’s impossible. Everyone knows its true and it’s been repeated everywhere.” His implicit position was that only fringe groups dispute such basic scientific thinking. That is, he had nothing but personal attacks to use in its defense.

The delusional seem to dominate at WUWT. Kozlowski  assumes too much:

August 29, 2014 at 1:21 pm
When they retract the paper will Obama retract his citation of the paper?

fobdangerclose has no sense of proportion. He thinks that someone who says he has spent only ten minutes looking at the data and who is "not willing to spend a lot of time with their data", "makes too much sense". And that an extensive study over several months, examining almost 12,000 published abstracts can therefore be dismissed.  Even though it's supported by other studies - and by anyone who's read any climate science. Confirmation bias in action.

August 29, 2014 at 11:33 am
José,
Well you make too much sense and use too many facts to back up your point.
That is just unacceptable to the CO2 cult. 

And deniers wonder why they are ridiculed.

---

Cook, John, Dana Nuccitelli, Sarah A. Green, Mark Richardson, Bärbel Winkler, Rob Painting, Robert Way, Peter Jacobs, and Andrew Skuce. "Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature." Environmental Research Letters 8, no. 2 (2013): 024024. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024

Behind the times (in Greenland) at WUWT. The year is not 1855, it's 2014!

Anthony Watts has put up another shonky chart of GISP2 temperatures (archived here). No-one's complained so far, but he's got the current temperature in central Greenland as being about as cold as the Little Ice Age or colder.

Here is GISP2 from the Richard Alley data (Cuffey and Clow). These data go from 95 years BP to almost 50,000 years ago. I've only included the past 20,000 years or so. 95 years before present is 95 years before 1950, which is 1855. I've put in the average temperature at the summit for the decade 2001-2010, which was 29.9°C, as indicated in Kobashi et al (2011), which I discuss a bit further down.

Data source: Alley, R.B..  2004. GISP2 Ice Core Temperature and Accumulation Data. IGBP PAGES/World Data Center for Paleoclimatology Data Contribution Series #2004-013. NOAA/NGDC Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder CO, USA.

Here is the WUWT chart:

See how Anthony Watts reckons that it's as cold as the coldest period in the Little Ice Age? He's put the "present temperature" and "present global warming" the same as the temperature back in 1855.

Look more closely. You'd have thought Anthony and his merry band would have known when the denier's favourite periods, the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period took place. But he gets those wrong, too. [h/t a few people]

He's been told about this over and over and over again. But he won't take any notice. At WUWT it's whatever you can get away with to reject science.

Here are charts from the 2011 paper by Takuro Kobashi and colleagues, showing surface temperatures in Greenland over the past 4,000 years.

Figure 1. (top) Reconstructed Greenland snow surface temperatures for the past 4000 years and air temperature over the past 170 years (1840–2010) from three records. The thick blue line and blue band represents the reconstructed Greenland temperature and 1s error, respectively (this study). The reconstruction was made by two different methods before and after 1950. The “gas method” is as described in section 2, and the “forward model” is described by Kobashi et al. [2010]. Thick and thin black lines are the inversion!adjusted reconstructed Summit annual air temperatures and 10!year moving average temperatures, respectively [Box et al., 2009]. Thin and thick red lines are the inversion adjusted annual and 10!year moving average AWS temperature records, respectively [Stearns and Weidner, 1991; Shuman et al., 2001; Steffen and Box, 2001; Vaarby!Laursen, 2010]. (middle) Past 1000 years of Greenland temperature. Thick blue line and band are the same as above. Black and red lines are the Summit [Box et al., 2009] and AWS [Stearns and Weidner, 1991; Shuman et al., 2001; Steffen and Box, 2001; Vaarby!Laursen, 2010] decadal average temperatures as above. (bottom) Past 4000 years of Greenland temperature. Thick blue line and band are the same as above. Thick green line represents 100!year moving averages. Black and red lines are the Summit [Box et al., 2009] and AWS [Stearns and Weidner, 1991; Shuman et al., 2001; Steffen and Box, 2001; Vaarby!Laursen, 2010] decadal average temperature, respectively. Blue and pink rectangles are the periods of 1000–2010 C.E. (Figure 1, middle) and 1840–2010 C.E. (Figure 1, top), respectively. Present temperature is calculated from the inversion adjusted AWS decadal average temperature (2001–2010) as −29.9°C (Figure 1, top). Present temperature and ±2s are illustrated by lines in the plots. Green circles are the current decadal average temperature as above (−29.9°C, 2001–2010). Source: 

A cosmic event, but no certainty

Anthony's shonky chart was to illustrate a press release about a new paper in the Journal of Geology, which is about the distribution of nanodiamonds, which the authors say support the hypothesis that the Younger Dryas cooling was caused by a cosmic collision, perhaps a comet, crashing here on Earth.

You can read the press release here. If you've a subscription, you can read the paper here.

Neither the press release nor the paper makes the strong claim of Anthony's headline, which was: "Younger Dryas climate event solved via nanodiamonds – it was a planetary impact event". The press release and the paper talk about the evidence being consistent with the cooling 12,800 years ago being caused by a cosmic impact, and inconsistent with it being caused by "natural terrestrial processes".

I'm not making any comment on the paper. Feel free to talk about it if you want to. I was mainly writing this article to talk about the mislabelled chart that keeps resurfacing at WUWT in one guise or other.

From the WUWT comments

By the time I'd finished writing, I see that finally at least one person commented on Anthony's chart. Greg asked:

August 29, 2014 at 9:20 am
What’s the source of the Greenland temp graph in this article?
Showing current temperatures almost as low as LIA :?

gary gulrud would like to see other evidence of a cosmic impact. That's not an unreasonable request.

August 29, 2014 at 10:19 am
Not an expert but 13,000 years is like geologic yesterday. Point me to the crater, please?

There were various other comments and speculation. The deniers are playing sceptic (for a change).

---

Kobashi, Takuro, Kenji Kawamura, Jeffrey P. Severinghaus, Jean‐Marc Barnola, Toshiyuki Nakaegawa, Bo M. Vinther, Sigfús J. Johnsen, and Jason E. Box. "High variability of Greenland surface temperature over the past 4000 years estimated from trapped air in an ice core." Geophysical Research Letters 38, no. 21 (2011). DOI: 10.1029/2011GL049444

Charles R. Kinzie et al "Nanodiamond-Rich Layer across Three Continents Consistent with Major Cosmic Impact at 12,800 Cal BP" The Journal of Geology. Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/677046

Simple Simon at WUWT: Climate models and paper aeroplanes

Today Anthony Watts, the anti-science blogger at WUWT, is living up to the reputation that Wondering Willis Eschenbach expressed so clearly. That of Simple Simon.

I noticed yesterday how he was enamored by a vacuous comment from one of his readers. It was another light bulb moment, showing just how shallow is Anthony Watts.  Here's the original exchange, which appeared below a dumb article of the "I don't believe it" type.

Tom Trevor  August 28, 2014 at 7:41 am

You know when I was a boy I would build models, I wasn’t very good at building models, but I built them anyway so I could play with them afterwards. I would pretend that the models were real ships or planes, but I alway knew they weren’t even close to real ships or planes.
For some reason these people can’t seem to tell the difference between a climate model and the real climate.

Anthony Watts  August 28, 2014 at 7:54 am

Congratulations Tom on a great comment.

rogerknights  August 28, 2014 at 8:46 am

Seconded!

Anthony has now elevated Tom Trevor's comment to a Quote of the Week (archived here). Seriously!

Anthony also put up that shonky chart of Roy Spencer and John Christy, which I've written about here and here.

If you want to read about climate models, one of the best articles is the article by Scott K. Johnson at Ars Technica.

From the WUWT comments

Mike Bromley the Kurd writes gobbledegook:

August 28, 2014 at 3:04 pmWe have become so innured to the weasel words of climate science that we almost don’t read them any more. And when the MSM gets a hold of these speculations, add another layer of biased obfuscation.

fobdangerclose is as good at spelling as Mike was:

August 28, 2014 at 3:07 pm
It reminds me of what goes on with 5th grade young girls. You make your graph look like all the others or your not in the click.

Latitude drifts to thoughts of sex:

August 28, 2014 at 3:13 pm
You people just don’t understand…..one day the temp is going to shoot straight up and meet that line
just wait and see
It’s called volatile induced anthropogenic global rectified alarmism…………….VIAGRA

Which gets Rick K all excited:

August 28, 2014 at 3:54 pm
Lat,
I think you’re right on. That is HARD science right there. Unfortunately the warmunists and their believers will soon find they’ve been STIFFED. The only thing going UP are their expectations, which will soon go limp as their house of cards is ERECTED on sand. Their expected CLIMAX is definitely PREMATURE.
Their VIAGRA problem will soon become:
FLACCID: Failed Long-term Anthropogenic Climate Change Identification Disorder.
I am so EXCITED to be here! You have no idea!
:-)

Dave is easily impressed at the cleverness of Latitude and Rick K

August 28, 2014 at 5:16 pm
You guys are friggin geniuses!!

Rud Istvan sets out his conspiracy theory:

August 28, 2014 at 4:26 pm
Hate to spoil a bit of the fun here, since agree with the general sentiment. But Dr. Spencer’s comparison is to RCP 8.5, which has elsewhere on this blog ( and elsewhere) been established to be literallyimpossible. The better comparison is to RCP 6.0 (the old SRES A2 is closer to 6.0 than to 4.5). Of course, the change from AR4 was made to obscure the many provably false assumptions in the explicit SRES, covered up by yet more IPCC blathering.
There is no need to resort to hyperbole to stop CAGW. The wheels are coming off all by themselves. Best that the high road is taken.

Keith Minto sees value in models, but he is a greenhouse effect denier:

August 28, 2014 at 5:20 pm
Engineers build and test models and (mostly) get it right. That is their job, the models can fail but, lessons are learned, the models modified until the desired outcome is achieved. Think of aircraft,vehicles, buildings, bridges. The big difference in climate models is that Co2 is assumed to be major driver, producing the present divergence from reality, and I cannot see that changing in the future.

There is no connection between quiet,behind the scenes,engineering model generation where accuracy is literally life and death,and these noisy,politically motived grant seekers masquerading as scientists. 

Benson slipped in a comment querying the data sources for Roy Spencer's silly chart

August 28, 2014 at 5:28 pm
Tropical mid-troposphere, compared to a small number of balloon data sets – really? How many data sets were screened to come up with that one 

Gavin Schmidt skewers Judith Curry's latest bit of silliness

Judith Curry asks:

So, am I ‘making things up’?  Seems to me that I am applying straightforward logic.  

To find the answer (in case you can't guess), go visit realclimate.org.

In case you missed it, Judith Curry wrote a very silly article the other day about the rise in global temperatures and the meaning of various attribution statements in the IPCC reports. No dumber than normal, but this time her article was skewered very neatly by Gavin Schmidt, Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

In case you missed it, here is a link to Gavin's article at realclimate.org. And here is a link to an archive of Judith's bit of silliness.

I wonder if she is embarrassed yet. Probably not. Judith Curry seems to have given up on science and faded into the deniosphere.

Denier for Hire: Sick, crazy and weird - CO2 is plant food book touted at WUWT

I'm not sure whether to describe this as sick or crazy or weird. Anthony Watts is touting a book written by three science deniers (archived here). They make an unlikely trio, united mainly by their desire to destroy the environment.

About the authors

Arthur Middleton Hughes is described as an economist, but I'm not sure if that's still the case. If it's the same chap then these days he's more of a marketer, and vice-president of some email marketing business.

Madhav Khandekar is apparently some retired Canadian meteorologist who is, or was, on the Heartland Institute payroll.

Cliff Ollier is listed as an honorary research fellow at the University of WA, meaning he used to be employed there but now he's probably no longer on the payroll. Cliff is a second-rate climate science denier from way back. He's not a climate scientist. He featured in one of the early articles here at HotWhopper. 

The sick - CO2 is plant food, they want more

The sick is that this trio apparently want to world to burn up. The book has the title: "About Face! Why the World Needs More Carbon Dioxide". It's promoted on Amazon as being published by a crowd that calls itself Two Harbours Press, which from the website looks to be a vanity publisher. It says it's owned by Hillcrest Media Group, which has a printing division and on that website it states that: "The year 2014 brings Hillcrest to Europe, setting us apart as one of the first US self-publishing companies to launch a UK division.", so I'd say I was right about that.

The blurb has lots of commendations from people that few would ever have heard of. You can Google some of them and you get a miscellany of odd bods, who mostly seem to be retired academics who have taken up science denial as a hobby in their old age.

Now we've got that out of the way, why on earth would anyone buy a book that no-one saw fit to back except the authors?  Here is how the book is described, according to WUWT:

About Face! is the product of two scientists and an economist. The scientists are Madhav Khandekar in Canada and Cliff Ollier in Australia, plus economist Arthur Middleton Hughes in the USA. Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is essential to all life on earth. It is plant food. We believe that the more CO2 there is in the atmosphere the bigger and better plants will grow all over the world. Three million people die each year because the prices of food are too high for them. We want to increase CO2 in the atmosphere and reduce world malnutrition.

The crazy and the weird - sequestering CO2, Arthur wants less ... or more?

The crazy and weird is that the top-listed author, Arthur Middleton Hughes has a blog article at Harvard Business Review on which he has this idea for sequestering CO2. That's got to be good, eh? But wait a minute, hasn't he just published a book where the title says "why the world needs more carbon dioxide". Remember how the book's blurb is about how they want to "increase CO2 in the atmosphere"? Why then is he coming up with ideas to reduce carbon dioxide?

That's not the only thing that's weird. Arthur's article starts off with the following:

The world is increasingly concerned with the need to solve our carbon dioxide problem. There are three basic solution paths. We can reduce the use of fossil fuels, mainly by passing laws to restrict or discourage it. We can spend billions in public funds after the fact to capture and store the CO2 that is generated. Or we can plant trees in Australia.

I wonder if that's where Tony Abbott got his tree planting fantasy? There's more. In order to store CO2 in trees planted in Australia, Arthur Middleton Hughes is proposing to:

1. Destroy the entire dryland regions of Australia, those regions which could be classed as desert - including all the native flora and fauna on that land, and presumably all the land owned by indigenous and other Australians who live on and/or lease that land. In other words, he wants to destroy most of the Australian mainland.
2. Build enough desalination plants in Western Australia to pipe the water thousands of miles across Australia so that exotic trees can be planted.
3. Have the Australian government compulsorily acquire all this land (much of it would be Crown Land anyway, but it doesn't look as if Arthur knows that.)

I bet the right wing extremists would love that last point in particular, not. Nor would they be enamoured by the first two points.

Arthur Middleton Hughes doesn't know if he's Arthur or Martha. One minute he's coming up with a crazy plan to sequester CO2 by destroying most of Australia's natural heritage. Next minute he's arguing that the world needs to increase atmospheric CO2 because CO2 is plant food.

Could there be two Arthur Middleton Hughes? Does one have an evil twin and the other a stark raving mad twin? I looked further and found the answer is on his Linked-In profile. Right on top of each other on the same page, he has his proposal to get CO2 out of the atmosphere sitting right on top of his urging that we put as much CO2 into the atmosphere as possible.

There was this:

VP Director of Research and Strategy
CO2 Capture Corporation
September 2012 – Present (2 years)Fort Lauderdale, FL

Doing research on solving CO2 buildup by planting millions of trees in the deserts of Australia. Workiing with Australian firms and individiuals we have put together a plan to solve the world CO2 crisis by converting Australian deserts to profitable forests. The project involves conversion of sea water to fresh water used to grow fast growing profitable Paulownia trees for sale in the Far East. FOr information go to : 

Followed immediately after by this (excerpts):

Author
www.adamsmithtoday.com
January 2012 – Present (2 years 8 months)Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Author with Cliff Ollier and Madhav Khandekar of About Face! Why the world needs more carbon dioxide. This 315 page book explains that contrary to what many people believe, increased carbon dioxide (CO2) from burning fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) does not and will not heat up the climate. CO2 is only 0.04% of the atmosphere ...Instead, CO2 is plant food. ...

What a doozy.  Talk about denier for hire.

From the WUWT comments

There aren't many comments yet. And even in those few there isn't universal acclamation.

M Courtney complains about the content, writing:

August 27, 2014 at 3:06 am
“The book also explains how, as an inhabitant of the Solar System, Earth’s climate is influenced mainly by our Sun, and that should come as no surprise.

But are changes to earth’s climate influenced mainly by our Sun?
Are we so desperate to get rid of dodgy science that we’ll clasp to our breasts any other dodgy science that comes along?
Is it still OK to say, “We don’t know?”

johnmarshall is one of WUWT's regular greenhouse effect deniers, who reckons the sun is causing global warming even though there's a bit less energy coming from the sun these days. In other words, it's magic.

 August 27, 2014 at 3:35 am
If you can think of another source of energy like the sun, but unseen, then carry o n your belief but if the sun is the only major input then it is the major influence.

Has SasjaL read the book already or is he or she judging by its cover?

August 27, 2014 at 3:36 am
This is basically a book that cover most of the stuff that should be tought/learned in late primary school (7th- grade), some even earlier. At least it used to, when I was at that age during late 1970’s …

.