What never occurred to Judith Curry (and does 50% equal half?)

Update: Judith continues to talk nonsense - see below.

I find this extremely odd, coming from a climate scientist. Judith Curry wrote about the IPCC's AR5 attribution of global warming:

Until this exchange, it never occurred to me that the IPCC’s attribution statement was attempting to convey AGW attribution that was possibly outside the range of 0 to 100%.

As most people who follow climate science would know, the IPCC attributes virtually all of the warming since 1950 to human causes. Judith quotes the following statement:

It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together. The best estimate of the human induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period.

In other words, the best estimate is that we've caused all the warming.

No, Willis - WUWT is not a science site - eg CO2 in the atmosphere

Wondering Willis Eschenbach and his fellow deniers at WUWT are a bit miffed that no-one but a science denier would ever mistake WUWT for a science site (archived here).

Willis rambles on about the importance of "public peer review", which is a laugh. WUWT isn't for "public peer review". It's for deniers to push their varying contradictory brands of pseudo-scientific claptrap, slap each other on the back and tell each other how "scientists don't know nuffin'".  At least one denier doesn't agree that WUWT is for "public peer review", which disappointed Willis no end.

What "public peer review"?

On a science site, would people who knew anything about science (or "public peer review") let the comment below stand unchallenged and uncorrected? It's been there for about two days now and not a soul commented on it. This is in the very same discussion that is claiming that WUWT is a science site for "public peer review".

Let's just clear this up once and for all. Last year was HOT!

Deniers are busy protesting the hottest year on record. Climate disinformers are trying every trick in their book to persuade the dumb denier that it's not so. The dumb denier doesn't need persuading so it's not clear why professional disinformers bother. Perhaps it's to give them something they believe is half plausible (even though it's not). Or perhaps it's just so they can say "it's true - I read it in black and white at WUWT".

WUWT has had a few protest articles already. The latest is a repeat article from Bob Tisdale (archived here). It's not enough for Bob to bore the pants off readers - he has to do it over and over and over again. He's worried that they might have missed his message the last time because it was just one of many wrong messages in a very, very long, very tedious article, which I've covered already.

This time Bob's kept his words to a minimum (or what Bob Tisdale regards as a minimum) and managed by a miracle to stay on point - although he got the point wrong, as usual. (It must have taken a lot of self-discipline for him to do that.)

Now Bob knows that this year has been recorded as the hottest year on record. He knows that the odds of any other year having been hotter are quite low. Much lower than that this year is the hottest. And yet Bob and other deniers are all in a tizz about whether last year was the hottest or was it 2010 or 2005 and are going for full blown conspiracising - that the guvmint is trying to pull a fast one. Not on this topic they aren't.

Bob Tisdale is confused, miffed and bewildered by record hot seas at WUWT

Update - see below - plus there's also an addendum with a map showing all the places which broke new heat records in 2014.


The record heat is causing much confusion at WUWT. Bob Tisdale in the comments invited me to write an article about his latest protest at the record hot 2014 (archived here). Well, not exactly invited, what he suggested was that rooter come here to make his points about Bob Tisdales article - twice - here and here. (Both times he finished in passive-aggressive fashion in the style of Willis Eschenbach, writing through gritted teeth "have a good day" after calling rooter a "troll".

Heat-addled brains and a competition: Judith Curry vs Phil Plait

It shouldn't surprise anyone. It happens every time there's a hottest year on record. Deniers go barmy. Crazy, Round the twist. Barking mad. The heat addles their brains.

One person that may surprise, though, is Judith Curry. It won't be news to you that she's been behaving more and more like a science disinformer/denier. You know that already. No what is surprising is just how far into denial she's sunk and how far she's moved away from science of late.

Confirmed - 2014 was the hottest year on record

NOAA and NASA have jointly confirmed 2014 as the hottest year on record. Here is the chart of GISTemp, including the latest data for December 2014:

December came in at 0.72°C, the second hottest December on record. 2006 (0.74°C), was the hottest. The previous second warmest was 2003 (which was 0.71C).  (Corrected from earlier version h/t Jim Milks). The previous hottest calendar years were 2005 at 0.65°C and 2010 at 0.66°C above the 1951-2010 mean. This year was 0.68°C above that mean, despite there being no (official) El Nino.

Andrew Freedman reported that "There is less than a 1-in-27 million chance that Earth's record hot streak is natural". Nature News has a report about the hottest year, as does Justin Gillis of the New York Times, and Chris Mooney at the Washington Post. While the Union of Concerned Scientists pinched my line about how 65% of people living today have never ever experienced a year where the global average temperature is less than the twentieth century average.

Here's a video from NASA showing how Earth has warmed since 1880 :

You can read the NOAA global report here. Some highlights:

• During 2014, the average temperature across global land and ocean surfaces was 1.24°F (0.69°C) above the 20th century average. This was the highest among all 135 years in the 1880–2014 record, surpassing the previous records of 2005 and 2010 by 0.07°F (0.04°C).
• Record warmth was spread around the world, including Far East Russia into western Alaska, the western United States, parts of interior South America, most of Europe stretching into northern Africa, parts of eastern and western coastal Australia, much of the northeastern Pacific around the Gulf of Alaska, the central to western equatorial Pacific, large swaths of northwestern and southeastern Atlantic, most of the Norwegian Sea, and parts of the central to southern Indian Ocean.
• During 2014, the globally-averaged land surface temperature was 1.80°F (1.00°C) above the 20th century average. This was the fourth highest among all years in the 1880–2014 record.
• During 2014, the globally-averaged sea surface temperature was 1.03°F (0.57°C) above the 20th century average. This was the highest among all years in the 1880–2014 record, surpassing the previous records of 1998 and 2003 by 0.09°F (0.05°C).

If you're wondering how WUWT will handle the news, well Bob Tisdale promised an article showing how it was nothing but sunlight-fueled oceans that caused the warming, or because the oceans were hotter, or some nonsense like that. He can't or won't explain why or how this can happen when the sun isn't putting out any more energy than before. His main concern is to try to persuade anyone who'll still read his tripe that it's got nothing to do with CO2 or the greenhouse effect. His article hasn't appeared yet, but that will be the gist of it, though I expect he'll say it in many more words.

How Wondering Willis Eschenbach's religious background prevents him from understanding a scientific framework

Wondering Willis Eschenbach has been getting annoyed at science lately. I suppose it's because it's not showing what he wants to believe.

In his latest missive he loses the plot once again (archived here). He has read, but not understood the half of, a new paper just published in the early edition of science.

The Planetary Boundaries Framework

The new paper is discussing a framework, a planetary boundaries framework, by which society can be guided about what are biophysical safe limits, beyond which we should not go. That is, we should take care if we want civilisation and humans to flourish and try to stay within the safe limits.

Yes, it is a human-centric framework, devised to help decision-makers. Yet it is not a social framework. It's not about intergovernmental relations or human indices of well-being. It's a physical sciences framework. The framework is described in terms of the biophysical boundaries that are safe. Boundaries that we humans, through our actions, are pushing up against and in some cases have well and truly crossed.

The boundaries framework builds on the one proposed in a 2009 paper on the same topic. It updates the numbers and adds some discussion of regional boundaries, among other things. The planetary boundaries are illustrated in Figure 3 of the paper:

Figure 3: The current status of the control variables for seven of the nine planetary boundaries. Green zone is the safe operating space (below the boundary), yellow represents the zone of uncertainty (increasing risk), and red is the high-risk zone. The planetary boundary itself lies at the inner heavy circle. The control variables have been normalized for the zone of uncertainty (between the two heavy circles); the center of the figure therefore does not represent values of 0 for the control variables. The control variable shown for climate change is atmospheric CO2 concentration. Processes for which global-level boundaries cannot yet be quantified are represented by gray wedges; these are atmospheric aerosol loading, novel entities and the functional role of biosphere integrity. Modified from (1). Source: Steffen15

Money-mad WUWT conspiracy theorists rate low on the "care" index

You know that the fans of WUWT, a climate science denying blog, are a bit potty. Did you know that they are "not nice" people as well?

There's an article today by Eric Worrall (archived here), who is a rather dull bloke from England who moved to Australia a while back. He's found a map of vulnerability to climate change and wrote that most of the countries most vulnerable are "with few exceptions, countries which are neutral to or even hostile to the USA and Western interests". He asks a question:

if we accept the map at face value, why should we care about climate change?

The countries most vulnerable to climate change are, of course, the poorest countries in the world. Unlike the wealthy, CO2-emitting nations, they are least able to afford to adapt. Eric found his map on a blog, which got it from a group known as ND-Gain at the University of Notre Dame in the USA. This is how the index is described:

A country's ND-GAIN index score is composed of a Vulnerability score and a Readiness score. Vulnerability measures a country's exposure, sensitivity and ability to adapt to the negative impact of climate change. ND-GAIN measures the overall vulnerability by considering vulnerability in six life-supporting sectors – food, water, health, ecosystem service, human habitat and infrastructure.

Here is an animation showing the ND Index, vulnerability and readiness as assessed by the ND-Gain team. Click to enlarge it:

Source: ND-GAIN

Are the poorest countries hostile to "Western interests" and the USA? Some may be, many aren't. Most of the people who live in Africa wouldn't be hostile to "Western interests". They are probably too busy trying to clothe and feed themselves to think much about "Western interests".

Take Chad, the country that rank lowest on the ND-Index scale.  From Wikipedia:

According to the 2012 U.S. Global Leadership Report, 81% of Chadians approve of U.S. leadership, with 18% disapproving and 1% uncertain, the fourth-highest rating for any surveyed country in Africa.[1]

I'm not really surprised that WUWT-ers are against foreign aid. Money dominates the thinking of many people at WUWT, as you can see from the Wattmeter in the sidebar. Most of them strongly disapprove of giving assistance to people in need. It goes against their ideology.

From the WUWT comments

Louis quite rightly points out that most vulnerable countries are at risk anyway. He's wrong if he thinks that climate change won't make things worse:

January 14, 2015 at 11:07 pm
Right. What difference does climate change make? Those countries would be “at risk” whether there is climate change or not.

Gabriel was the first to use the word "money":

January 14, 2015 at 11:32 pm
Those UK “climate experts” seems to me more socio-economist(with some marxist view). The map show in fact(with some exception) the distribution of wealth on the earth. From the global warming real risk it’s a piece of sh__t.
What want to tell us the “scientist”? the green countries must quickly send a lot of money to th red countries.
Because all it’s about money.

gbaikie followed suit:

January 14, 2015 at 11:45 pm
—All of this poses an obvious question – if we accept the map at face value, why should we care about climate change?—
Because politicians want give the enemies [problem countries] money- I mean tax payer money.
As they accustomed to buying and selling favors- and bonus is they poor and useless countries which therefore *apparently* should be dirt cheap to buy. 

andrewmharding doesn't understand the map, and can't make up his mind whether global warming is really happening or not:

January 15, 2015 at 12:18 am
I thought AGW was a global problem, it seems on the Korean peninsula that only harm happens to North Korea!! Why is Malaysia affected and not Northern Australia? UK is at least risk, with USA and China (both with bigger economies and a much bigger land area, with more diverse climate) at greater risk?
It is a crock of sh*t like anything associated with AGW! 

Krudd Gillard of the Commondebt of Australia thinks all poor people are terrorists:

January 15, 2015 at 12:24 am
This is something that really needs to be impressed on the voters in western democracies. Your tax dollars for terrorists. 

TerryS is a multi-conspiracy theorist who is scared of his own shadow:

January 15, 2015 at 2:27 am
Climate change is being used as a weapon.
Some of those using climate change as weapon are using it for a One World agenda.
Some of those using climate change as weapon are using it for more government controls.
Some of those using climate change as weapon are using it for the de-industrialisation of the West.
Some of those using climate change as weapon are using it for a socialist agenda.
Some of those using climate change as weapon are using it for personal gain.
Some of those using climate change as weapon are using it because of a genuine concern for the environment.
Some of those using climate change as weapon are using it because of a genuine concern for humanity.
Like any weapon, the use it is put to depends upon the motives of the person using it which means some motives will be altruistic, some will be selfish and some will be driven by an agenda. 

Jack is another money-mad denier:

January 15, 2015 at 2:08 am
It is a guilt map obscenely used to redistribute money. Would like to know how the nations in central Africa are going to perish from sea rise.
Also notice the Australia map is least risk but our greens convinced the Labor government to have the most onerous carbon tax in the world.
Lastly, there mission to abuse CO2 and fossil fuels as vandalising the world is going to hurt those poor countries even more.
Just airheads that can only handle one idea thrust in there by slogans at a time.

It took a lot of comments before one person decided that enough was enough, and the money-mad deniers were giving the fake sceptics a bad name. Notanist thinks "a lot" of people care, it's just that not a lot of people at WUWT who care:

January 15, 2015 at 4:11 am
I don’t understand the point of saying “why should we care?” while looking at a map of some of the world’s most impoverished countries, or of countries that are clearly and obviously friends (most of Latin America/Caribbean) etc. The last remark in the article plays into the alarmists’ worst stereotypes about skeptics.

Who cares about those countries anyway? I’m betting that quite a lot of us do, some of us even have family and second homes in some of those countries.

Gary Pearse thinks that Eric Worrall is a "very caring person" and wrote the article as a joke, except he gave no indication it was a joke. There was no "sarc" tag and the article wasn't tagged as "humour". So if Eric is a "very caring person" then he hides it well.

January 15, 2015 at 4:55 am
“Why should we care”
Look folks, it was a joke, okay? Eric, put a sarc tag for the sensitive ones. Frequent visitors to WUWT know Eric is a very caring person. 

WUWT rates at 0.46 on a scale of 10 on the care index

The sum total of comments that could be classed (generously) as caring about people who live in impoverished, vulnerable countries, was three. Three out of 68 "thoughts" cared.  If there was a care index, WUWT would rate as 0.46 on a scale of 10.

I'd say that Notanist is right to be concerned about stereotyping WUWT deniers as money-mad conspiracy theorists who don't give a damn about the rest of the world. Wouldn't you?

The stupid: a prediction fulfilled at WUWT (and sea level)

Deniers at WUWT can be really funny sometimes - if you enjoy laughing at the stupid.

The Stupid It Burns Credit: Plognark

It doesn't happen very often, but there is the odd occasion when a prediction made at WUWT will be fulfilled. Such was the case today.

Despite the winter ice, Rolf E Westgard's pants catch fire at WUWT

Why can't deniers just deny science? Some of them have to go further and make up stuff.

Today there's an article by someone called Rolf E. Westgard who's a petrol head as far as I can tell.  He's been featured here before, waffling on about clouds.

This time he's decided to see how many fibs he can tell in a single "guest essay". As with all good fibs, he skirts around the facts - quite a long way around. He mostly manages to avoid bumping into them.