Anthony Watts publicly accuses NOAA scientists of fraud (again) - plus his "people go to jail"!

If you mistakenly thought that deniers like Anthony Watts might have some ethics or even a tiny shred of decency hidden very deep, you're wrong. In a topsy turvy and ugly article at WUWT today, Anthony Watts has someone trying to defend his appalling email to Tom Peterson of NOAA, in which he accuses Dr Peterson of fraud. Kip Hansen (archived here) tries to twist this into it being Andy Revkin who committed "a public journalistic offense". (I did say "that's gotta hurt".)

Andy Revkin wrote this after learning about Anthony's defamatory email:

Any notion that Watts is interested in fostering an atmosphere of civility and constructive discourse evaporates pretty quickly in considering how he handled his questions about that paper. Alternating between happy talk about rooftop solar and slanderous accusations is not constructive or civil.

Anthony Watts has discovered pristine US temperature (and MS Excel)

Today, after having no opinion on whether or not greenhouse gases work, Anthony Watts has decided to get an opinion. In his opinion the US temperature record maintained by NOAA is pristine. That is, the NOAA Climate Reference Network is pristine. Just how long he'll think it will remain pristine is the question. He wrote an article (archived here) with the headline: "Despite attempts to erase it globally, “the pause” still exists in pristine US surface temperature data"

This time Anthony had nothing but praise for the scientists who work at NOAA. (He did sneak in some snide comments verging on the defamatory by implication. He's got to keep his disreputable reputation intact.) His praise was only because he liked what he saw or he would have hidden it from his readers. He saw a temperature chart from 2005 to 2014 and figured that was good enough for his purposes. Anthony wrote:

But, what if there were a dataset of temperature that was so well done, so scientifically accurate, and so completely free of bias that by its design, there would never be any need nor justification for any adjustments to the data?
Such a temperature record exists, it is called the U.S. Climate Reference Network, (USCRN) and it is also operated by NOAA/NCDC’s (NCEI) head administrator,Tom Karl:

Given that Anthony has been busy for years trying to prove that the record isn't pristine, this is a bit of an about face. Is he admitting defeat? You might think so, mightn't you. Let's come back in five years time, and see if Anthony still says the data is pristine.

Data source: NOAA

Here is a comparison of the pristine with the non-pristine, on an annual basis. I'll let you spot the difference:

Data source: NOAA

OMG. Anthony Watts is right. The USA temperature has paused! Ooh, it's worse than that - it's cooling!

Let's just see how much the USA has cooled over the past 120 years. If you read WUWT you'll probably think the USA is practically in an ice age.

Anthony Watts sez he has "no opinion"

It seems to me that over recent months, the owner of the anti-science blog WUWT has been shifting further away from science and shifting further conspiracy theories of "climate science is a scam" type. He has in the past claimed that he accepts that there is such a thing as a greenhouse effect. Today he takes a step back from that, and is now claiming to have no opinion on the subject. He wrote this at the top of an article (archived here) that basically claims that the world is warming by magic, not because of the greenhouse effect:

Note: I present this for discussion, I have no opinion on its validity -Anthony Watts

Anthony seems to be admitting now what his long time guest, Willis Eschenbach wrote about him. That he doesn't know the difference between science and crackpottery. Willis Eschenbach has been devastatingly scathing of Anthony Watts inabilities, writing (my emphasis):

When Anthony publishes scientific claims from the edges of the field, generally they are quickly either confirmed or falsified. This is hugely educational for scientists of all kinds, to know how to counter some of the incorrect arguments, as well as giving room for those unusual ideas which tomorrow may be mainstream ideas.

So it is not Anthony’s job to determine whether or not the work of the guest authors will stand the harsh light of public exposure. That’s the job of the peer reviewers, who are you and I and everyone making defensible supported scientific comments. Even if Anthony had a year to analyze and dissect each piece, he couldn’t do that job. There’s no way that one man’s wisdom can substitute for that of the crowd in the free marketplace of scientific ideas. Bear in mind that even with peer review, something like two-thirds of peer-reviewed science is falsified within a year, and Anthony is making judgements, publish or don’t publish, on dozens of papers every week.

Free speech advocates make a fresh start by banning free speech

There's some sort of denier shindig going on in Washington, I've heard. WUWT is quiet, probably because Anthony Watts is away receiving his "dumbest fake sceptic of the year" award. (He's already been exercising what he thinks is his right to defame.) No-one can say much about this fresh start for fake sceptics, because the organisers have decided to ban some of the media.

What's clear is that The Heartland Institute has made a "fresh start" for "free speech". What that means is that these champions of free speech are going to preserve their right to make up whatever they like and say it to anyone dumb enough to listen, while making sure there is no-one around to disagree with them.

Seriously. You couldn't make it up.

(Kyla Mandel at DeSmog UK has the details. Check the headline, and the link at the bottom of the page.)

Maybe the Heartland Institute is going to adopt Free Speech HotCopper-style:

We fully endorse unfettered free speech (which is the right of every full-blooded proudly conservative white male, especially those over 50), and will do our best to suppress all stray bleeding heart liberals and feminazis who invade our space, so that you can exercise your right to free speech without fear of contradiction.

That's gotta hurt!

Right up the top of a WUWT search on Twitter:

For what's gotta hurt - see this.

I might need to explain - if the link no longer shows it. I caught a coincidental juxtaposition, a tweet from Andy Revkin sitting right above a tweet from Anthony Watts - in the WUWT twitter timeline.

Andy Revkin's update has got to hurt Anthony. Andy's tweet was sitting right on top of a tweet from Anthony Watts. Anthony was gloating that the book "Climate Change the Facts" is rated higher at Amazon than the new (2nd) edition of the book Dire Predictions by Michael Mann and Lee R. Kump.

I happened to grab a screenshot of them both one sitting on top of the other. It struck me a funny at the time. You probably had to be there :)

The second edition of Dire Predictions (print version) is moving up the ranks quite quickly, incidentally. It's already at #34 in Books > Environmental Studies and #56 in Books > Climatology. I'm told the Kindle version will be out in July.

WUWT Quote of the Day - Conspiracy Eyes

This was seen at WUWT just now:

we're not conspiracy theorists but it's a conspiracy, right in front of our eyes :)

Paul Westhaver

June 9, 2015 at 12:16 pm

Skeptics we may well be. But contrary to Lewandowski’s opinion, we are NOT also conspiracy theorists.

NOW with the government, in front of our eyes, changing the historical temperature plot,

I wonder if a statement of conspiracy REALITY is appropriate.

Come on guys… right in front of our eyes!?

"Scientifically illiterate" David Rose has his "ill-posed question" floated in Nature Climate Change

There's a new paper out in Nature Climate Change that caught the eye of Anthony Watts (archived here). I bet he's relieved to have something else to talk about, instead of the demise of global warming (which is as alive as ever, unfortunately).

Update: There's now a published comment to the Hollin and Pearce paper, which is discussed here: The IPCC climate message is clear based on the evidence: The fundamental flaws of Hollin & Pearce

Sou 24 October 2015

The paper is both timely and out of date. Timely because it relates to "seepage" - which was the subject of a recent paper discussed here a short while ago. Timely also because it's all about the so-called "hiatus", with the authors even claiming (in their press release blog article) that there was a "short-term decrease in temperature" (which there wasn't). Out of date for the same reason.

The paper is by one of the UK "deniophiles" called Warren Pearce, together with a post-doc at his university called G. J. S. (Gregory) Hollin, who looks to be studying autism (updated dead link Oct 15). This unlikely pair somehow got their unlikely paper accepted and published in Nature Climate Change. I don't know what the editors were thinking.

More perversity from Anthony Watts @wattsupwiththat

The day before yesterday, with approval of the author, I promoted a comment to an article, which needed very little introduction. Anthony Watts had already publicly accused the NOAA of fraud, and of lying. In an email to Dr Peterson he went one further and accused Dr Peterson and his colleagues of fraud and prostitution. [See also addendum below.]

I just noticed a very long Twitter exchange in which Anthony Watts is trying to perversely twist around his own accusation of fraud, and claim that it is Dr Peterson who is "sliming" Anthony Watts. And apparently I also "slimed" Anthony by hosting his comment, despite saying very little about it. Anthony's email said it all. Here's his email again - this time I'll emphasise his allegations in bold italics:

Pausing for a dozen protests at WUWT

So far there have been 12 articles at WUWT protesting the NOAA paper that came out last Thursday - by my count. Not including the first two, which broke embargo, that's more than two protests a day. We're still waiting for Anthony's promised fatal weakness.

The perversity of deniers - and the "pause" that never was with Tom Peterson

Below is a TedX talk from Dr Tom Peterson on "What is Science: How it Differs from Art, Law and Quackery":

Tom quoted Stephen Jay Gould, Harvard geologist, from the video (which provided the title for this article):

Science does not deal in certainty, so "fact" can only mean a proposition affirmed to such a high degree it would be perverse to withhold one's provisional assent.

What follows is copied from a comment posted here at HotWhopper, from Tom Peterson of NOAA, co-author of the new paper in Science, and President of the WMO Commission for Climatology. The email exchange is about a subject of much recent discussion - the new Science paper, which I described here (with lots of links at the bottom for further reading).

Tom has subsequently confirmed the email exchange and kindly gave me permission to repost his comment as a blog article. Apart from remarking on Anthony's conspiracy ideation, there's not really anything more I need add. The exchange speaks for itself - and speaks volumes.

Email exchange between Anthony Watts and Tom Peterson

Dear Sou et al.,

I thought you might find an email exchange I had yesterday with Anthony Watts interesting. 16 hours ago I received this email from Anthony Watts: