Happy New Year to Everyone

New Year's Resolution - I've been told to lift my game

Update - see below.

I've had a strong message to lift my game from none other than Lucia Liljegren, who runs a blog somewhere in deniersville. The science I reported these past few days has not persuaded her of the following:

• That the Greenland ice sheets are quite unlikely to make a speedy "recovery" any time soon
• That CO2 really doesn't lag temperature by 800 years therefore climate science is not a hoax
• That NASA's OCO-2 team isn't really playing a giant hoax on the world
• That it really isn't insects and germs which are causing global warming
• That ocean pH really is dropping
• That temperatures in Finland really are rising
• That the warming in the UK really isn't being caused by sunshine
• That holidays really should be happy times
• That humans really can't be exonerated of the rise in atmospheric CO2
• That there really are such things as grassfires
• That Pat'n Chip really didn't do a good job with their poster at AGU
• That it really does get quite dark in the Arctic in the northern hemisphere winter
• That clouds are quite fascinating (I must add the second installment to that article)

Until now I'd thought of Lucia, when I thought of her at all, which was rarely, I'd imagined her to be a denier of the lukewarmish variety. If science doesn't persuade a lukewarmish denier and they remain convinced that the pseudo-scientific crap at WUWT is undemolished, then I really have to lift my game. (Of course it could just be that she's feeling a bit left out, not rating a mention here very often - though a search up top shows she's been featured here on more than one occasion.)

Any ideas, people? Simpler? Shorter? Less science? More science? 

And no, don't tell me less snark :)

BTW - This is a serious question. Here's a chance for you to have your say.

PS - Go have a look at Paige Brown Jarreau's research project on science blogs. She's got a clever interactive graphic to go with it. Victor Venema alerted me to it. Stoat was suitably impressed as well :) (While Lucia was trying her best to score points for sadly-isolated Anthony Watts of WUWT.)

Update: Lucia has kindly responded on Twitter, but was unable to think of (or put into words) any suggestions for making it easier for her and other deniers to understand science. It may be that the problem isn't me after all. Or it could be that the blog format isn't suitable for some people. If I had the talent, I'd try comic strips. I remember one denier at HotCopper complaining that a science paper had too many words and not enough pictures - really and truly. They did.

Update2: Lucia has added two ideas - to pace myself - good tip. To not make snide remarks about Jim Steele's ongoing nasty baseless personal one-way vendetta with Camille Parmesan. I'll pass. She also said that writing ideas on Twitter is difficult. She hasn't yet twigged that she could write more than 140 characters here at HW. Which is a sort of tip - to try to factor in the intellectual capability and limited imagination of deniers when I write.

Duet on Ice: More denier silliness at WUWT

This will be short-ish - by HotWhopper standards :). It's about a duo of articles at WUWT. About ice at opposite ends of the earth - Greenland and Antarctica.

Jim Steele's Bold Greenland Prediction

Jim Steele wrote an article (without mentioning Camille Parmesan once!) predicting that Greenland will start accumulating ice next year. He pulled something out of thin (Arctic) air and wrote:

And based on historical analyses, Greenland will likely begin gaining mass in the coming years.

Insects and microbes and OCO-2 conspiracy theories at WUWT

Anthony Watts has done it again. Put up a really weird article that none but the scientifically illiterate could allow on their blog as a straight article. But as his friend Willis Eschebach pointed out so clearly, Anthony Watts is scientifically illiterate.

I can't say it's enjoyable making fun of the articles by Ronald D "OMG it's insects" Voisin, because I do believe he is one of the few genuine deniers at WUWT, and probably a very nice, if very eccentric, chap. It's just that he is a conspiracy theorist of the "climate science is a hoax" type, so much so that I'd not even rate his articles as pseudo-science. (Type Voisin into the search bar to learn more about how Ronald's mind works, or fails to work.)

Just the same, there are people commenting on his latest atrocity (archived here), which has prompted me to point out where he's gone wrong - which is just about everywhere. First, I'll put up the map of atmospheric CO₂ that Ronald was writing about. It's the one shown by the OCO-2 team at AGU14. Click to enlarge it.

Source: NASA/JPL

Look at the legend at the bottom - the scale goes from 387 ppmv to 402.5 ppmv, which shows that the satellite is detecting CO₂ at a very fine scale. Then look at the title up top. The map is of averaged carbon dioxide concentration over the few weeks from 1 October this year through to 11 November.

You can read more about the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 on its website here, and you can browse the data released so far here. I also wrote about it a few days ago.

In a nutshell

To summarise, Ronald thinks that the OCO-2 project is a scam. A scientific plot against him and his fellow deniers, with results that are fudged or worse. He misinterprets the above chart. He wrongly thinks that it's insects and microbes that are causing CO₂ to rise, not human activity.  His logic is a massive fail - he neglects to explain how insects and microbes have suddenly been able to add about 900 billion tonnes of carbon or two trillion tonnes of CO₂ to the air in a space of 150 years. Where is this explosive increase in microbes and insects, such that no-one noticed? Ronald doesn't say.

This article wanders a bit into soils and bugs and microbes and other things so it's a bit long. But read on if you are interested in such things.

Where has all the CO2 gone? WUWT fails arithmetic & science, so cries pHraud!

Update: I've added some older papers - meant to do this earlier. (Sou - a bit later)

See also a new HW article on the same topic, with some interesting bits and pieces about pH data. (Sou - 2 January 2015)

---

In two very, very dumb articles at WUWT, one of which is a mainly a copy of a CFACT monstrosity elsewhere - there are foolish accusations of fraud about ocean acidification.

Now anyone who is taken in by this nonsense should go stand in the corner and put on a dunce cap. Then they ought to enrol in a remedial arithmetic class.

Thing is, experts have calculated how much extra CO2 humans have put in the atmosphere. It comes from burning fossil fuel, from land use changes, particularly deforestation, and from the making of cement. Only around half of what humans have emitted has stayed in the atmosphere. The rest is absorbed in the oceans and on land - with plants absorbing something like 30% of the extra and the oceans absorbing around 25%.

If you look at it from another perspective, you'll see that the oceans must be absorbing more CO2. That other perspective is that the increase in atmospheric CO2 means an increase in the partial pressure of CO2. When partial pressure of a gas in contact with a solution rises, the solution dissolves more of the gas. If temperature increases, then all else being equal, the solution will give up the gas. However right now, even though the temperature is rising, the increase in partial pressure outstrips this rise - so the oceans are taking CO2 from the air.

European temperature at WUWT - Finland, the UK, teleconnections and more

I started this article before the hols and although it's a bit stale now, it's a good example of how deniers are nothing if not inconsistent. So here it is.

In another sign that WUWT doesn't know its ups from its downs, whether it's warming or cooling, there were two articles that pretty well contradicted each other.

• In the first article, Anthony Watts reckons that all the thermometers in Finland must be wrong because they show a "step change" in temperature from the late 1980s.
• In the second article, Paul Homewood talks about the "sharp rise" in UK temperatures from the 1980s as something that "everyone knows".

The UK isn't really all that far from Finland, and the way the wind blows I expect they'd both often be influenced by the same weather patterns - though Finland can get quite a bit colder. So why would Anthony figure that Finland can't be getting any warmer while he posts an article on the very next day assuming that "everyone knows" that the UK has got a lot warmer?

Source: Google Maps

Happy Holidays

Well - it's Christmas Eve already.

From sunny Australia let me wish you all happy holidays and a healthy, safe and successful 2015. May the weather be kind and the CO2 drop.

Jingle Bells with country musician Bucko (Colin Buchanan) and Champs (Greg Champion) of the Coodabeens and a bunch of people at a typical Australian Christmas.
::-::-::

Merry Kangaroo :)

Tim Ball FAILS Carbon Cycle 101 at WUWT

I'm flat out getting a few things done before the Christmas break, so this is just a short article. It's necessary because if you read WUWT, you'll leave it scratching your head wondering how it could claim to be a climate site.

Before I begin, if anyone wants to read up on the carbon cycle, one of the best sites that describes it for the non-scientists out there, is NASA's Earth Observatory website.

NASA's OCO-2 Satellite

The topic is NASA's OCO-2 project, which was launched earlier this year. NASA gave a report at AGU. They've been collecting data since early September. I'll let the scientists tell it, if you have the time:

It takes 16 days to get a full set of global data, with a million readings a reading a day which yields tens of thousands of data points. What they have to do is determine differences of maybe only one or two parts per million (there are around 400 ppm of CO2 in the air today).

I've been wanting to write this for a few days now, and have been prompted to get a move on by one of the sillier articles from conspiracy theorising Tim Ball (archived here).

A silly poster by Pat'n Chip at AGU14 provides a learning experience

Anthony Watts has reported a poster (archived here). He doesn't comment on it. I doubt he understands it. Most of the people commenting at WUWT don't understand it either. And I don't blame them.

Now I'm no Tamino, however in my view, what Pat Michaels and Chip Knappenberger have done, ostensibly, is flawed from the outset and demonstrates that they don't understand the CMIP5 climate models.

Rather than show a chart with observations vs models (combined), what they've done is show a chart of trend changes. That's fine, but further down I'll explain why I believe the conclusions they draw are flawed.

Anthony Watts pokes fun at ATI

Anthony Watts takes a shot at the“American Traditions Institute” now known as the “Energy & Environment Legal Institute”. Thing is, he doesn't even know it (or if he does he didn't tell his readers).

Today he posted an out of focus photo he took of the cheque Michael Mann gave to the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund. The cheque was the damages awarded by the court when ATI/EELI tried to get his personal emails. You may remember the case (see Washington Post article). The judge saw it for the harassment it was and awarded damages of $250 dollars to Michael Mann. Dr Mann wasn't looking for a payout. All he wanted was justice and to prove a point that he will not tolerate the sort of vexatious law suits that disinformers bring from time to time, when they harass and try to intimidate research scientists.

Peter Sinclair of ClimateCrocks has the story and a much better photograph :D

Dr. Michael Mann displays his court awarded damages check, won against the climate and science denying, fossil fuel funded “think” tank,  “American Traditions Institute” aka, the “Energy & Environment Legal Institute”, after judges realized that actions against Dr. Mann were pure anti-science harassment and had no basis in fact.
From left to right, CSLDF Executive Director Lauren Kurtz, and Board members Charles Zeller, Scott Mandia, and Josh Wolfe. The picture was taken December 18, 2014, in San Francisco, at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting
Source: Peter Sinclair/ClimateCrocks