Around the traps

I've two excuses for the lack of new articles the last couple of days. There's really been nothing exciting happening on denier blogs, and I've been otherwise occupied (on matters unrelated to climate).

Regular blogging will resume shortly. In the interim, here's a rundown on some of what's been happening at WUWT and elsewhere:

A coordinated approach to climate action: A scandal (not really) has been uncovered by Chris Horner. He's a chap who's employed by a right wing lobby group to submit FOI requests of all kinds for emails and text messages - as long as they are not about what right wing lobby groups get up to. What he's discovered is that in the USA governments and NGOs and others have been talking to each other on ways to make the world and the USA safer - by getting some coordination and agreement on climate action. It's being shaped as the scandal of the year in denier-land. Chris Horner didn't compare it to the right wing shenanigans of ALEC, by which large corporations get together to draft legislation and instruct governments to pass it - and there's no comparison. This wasn't closed door meetings drafting legislation like ALEC. It was people talking to each other by email about climate action. (I think Chris Horner thought right wing lobbyists had governments all to themselves.) It's not clear what shocks deniers more - that there are people who don't want to destroy the environment, or that there are people who communicate by email.

Willis Eschenbach has been posting his various thoughts at WUWT - here and here and here. One day it's fry pans or non-solar cycles and the next day he's writing about comments to what he wrote the day before. Either corrections to his article or some other random thought that pops into his head. Not too many at WUWT are following or understanding what the heck he's on about. It's filling what would otherwise be empty spaces I suppose. I couldn't see any good reason to spend any more time on his latest wonderings than this short para.

Tony Brown, a UK denier who likes to boast how he can talk with UK scientists, has been busy biting the hand that feeds him. That's in the context of the BBC not renewing the contract with the UK Met Office for weather services. (Most people (and the UK Met Office) wouldn't agree with Tony's take on the subject.)

For the conspiracy nutters: Then there's the usual same-old same-old climate conspiracy hoax from Tim Ball, who can't think of anything new to write about. Anthony Watts has to keep all his readers happy and as long as there's a demand for wacky paranoid conspiracy theories of the anti-semitic kind, he'll oblige.

On denier scientists: Some scientists are only now waking up to how far ex-scientist Judith Curry has moved across into denier-land, with her calling the theft of scientists' personal emails "responsible" - or it's roll out; and spreading fibs about the content of the emails themselves.

It's been a slow few days in the blogosphere.

Is it too late to prevent dangerous climate change?

A lot of people think it is too late to prevent dangerous warming. That we have already passed the point of no return in regard to limiting the increase in global mean surface temperature to 2°C above that of pre-industrial times. Some people think that we'll be lucky to stay within 4°C of warming this century. Anthony Watts doesn't think we've passed the point of no return. He wrote about how Dr Pauchari said, back in 2007, that "If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment." Anthony called it a failed prediction (archived here).

Anthony Watts claims a scientist ignored his own work on US droughts

Anthony Watts latest claim (archived here, latest here) is that a scientist ignored his own research. At Anthony's climate conspiracy blog today, he copied and pasted a press release about a new paper on the Californian drought. Anthony wrote his article under the headline "Ridiculous claim from Columbia University: ‘Warming climate is deepening California drought". He thinks that it's ridiculous to think that evaporation will be higher under hotter conditions. He doesn't understand the basics of science at all. He also wrote:

From the THE EARTH INSTITUTE AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY and the department of “intense droughts only occur in the age of the SUV” department, where they apparently failed to take the climatic history of the region into account:

And he put up a chart that he claimed came from from one of the authors of the new paper (though Anthony clearly didn't know that), in an attempt to dismiss this new work. In any case, it didn't. His graphic wasn't in the 2007 paper and the graphic didn't refute the new paper:

Mid-August ENSO report - El Niño still strengthening

The latest ENSO wrap up from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology indicates that the El Niño is likely to continue to strengthen, with trade winds weakened.

The 2015 El Niño has continued to strengthen over the past fortnight. The ocean and atmosphere are reinforcing each other, with tropical Pacific Ocean temperatures well above El Niño thresholds, consistently weakened trade winds, and a strongly negative Southern Oscillation Index. Strong coupling of the tropical Pacific Ocean and atmosphere is typical of a mature El Niño, and suggests only a small chance of the event finishing before the end of the year.

All international climate models surveyed by the Bureau of Meteorology indicate the tropical Pacific is likely to warm further, peaking later in the year. Typically, El Niño peaks during the late austral spring or early summer, and weakens during late summer to autumn.

Warning to the bandwidth challenged - one of the files below the fold is rather large (just under 1 MB).

What astounds Anthony Watts: that anyone other than he would send "hate mail"

Anthony Watts, owner of the climate conspiracy blog WUWT, doesn't get much mail from people who like science. I doubt he gets too many from researchers at universities, for example. Over the past few weeks he's posted a couple of emails and comments that he calls "hate mail". (Never mind that Anthony himself sends hate mail.) He was going to do it more often, but he probably doesn't get enough to make an article worthwhile. This latest one he's posted (archived here) is very mild. It's asking Anthony how he sleeps at night. If that's the worst he gets, then he gets off very lightly, compared to climate scientists.

Today he wrote:

You know what astounds me in this world? That there are people with so little moral character that they have to hurl insults about scientific integrity from behind faux names.

Not Anthony. He hurls insults about scientific integrity in public and in private. Though he only does it when he's safely ensconced behind his computer screen.

Willis Eschenbach makes false claims about surface temperature (again)

Wondering Willis Eschenbach is wondering about rainfall and the role of the water cycle in regulating weather (archived here). In his article he made the false claim that he makes often, probably because no-one at WUWT has the wit to challenge him on it. He wrote:

My hypothesis is that the earth has a thermoregulatory system keeping the global temperature within narrow bounds (e.g. ±0.3°C over the 20th century). 

What I'd like to know is what planet Willis lives on. Where does he get his "±0.3°C over the 20th century" from?

Here is a chart of surface temperature, including over the twentieth century (highlighted box) and using the entire twentieth century as the baseline. I've also shaded the area bound by ±0.3°C:

Data source: GISS NASA

How could any person claim that in the twentieth century, global mean surface temperature stayed "within narrow bounds (e.g. ±0.3°C over the 20th century)". Look at how it jumped out of all bounds in the 1970s. How the span from the beginning of the century to the end was in the order of 1°C. The only time it fluctuated around ±0.3°C was for a few years mid-century. Over the whole century it just kept going up and up and up.

Mind-boggling toxic hypocrisy at WUWT over Gold King Mine and EPA

You have to read it to believe it. Anthony Watts and Paul Driessen have an article at WUWT (archived here) in which they castigate the EPA for an accidental spill of toxic water from Gold King Mine into waterways in Colorado. Now who or what is to blame for that particular incident is a good question. But that's not what I am writing about.

The point of this article is that both Paul and Anthony are often posting articles where they don't want any environmental regulations. In which they want to send America back to the smog age. They don't give a damn that toxic waste from mining operations accumulated to such an extent that this accident occurred. All they care about is trashing the people who have come in to try to contain or clean up the mess that the grossly negligent miners left behind.

Nowhere in the WUWT article or the comments is there any finger pointing at the companies and people that caused the water to get so toxic in the first place. Nowhere is there a call for companies and people to be held responsible for toxic dumps.

No, it's all about how it's all the fault of the Environmental Protection Agency - the very agency that is trying to do something to clean up the mess left behind by the mates of the anti-environment brigade.

Such gross hypocrisy and double standards is mind-boggling, but is all too common at denier blogs and on anti-regulation websites.

You can read another version of what happened in an article by Alan Prendergast on westword.com.

WUWT goes from denying the ozone hole to blaming it for global warming!

You'd hardly credit it. There are umpteen articles in which Anthony Watts and his crew denied the ozone hole (it's existence and that human activity caused it - yep! Probably both at the same time.). Now he's now posted an article where it's real and blamed for global warming (archived here, latest here). Some new bloke called Steven Capozzola has written an article in which he says: "The evidence is compelling, and the subject deserves further scrutiny."

The evidence for what exactly? Well, that's not so easy to figure out. I'll see if I can step past the waffly bits to the nuts and bolts of his hypothesis. It goes something like this:

Denier weirdness: WUWT makes a foray into celestial cycles

Well, well, well. It had to happen sooner or later I suppose. Anthony Watts has added astrology (or as good as) to the weird and weirder articles he promotes (archived here, latest here). He tried to wriggle out a little bit by writing at the top of his article:

[Note, I don’t necessarily agree with the conclusion this publication, as it smacks of barycentrism, which I don’t give any credence to, but it does discuss some other concepts, and  I thought it might make for an interesting and entertaining discussion – Anthony]

All that does is emphasise what his good friend Willis Eschenbach wrote about Anthony:

Even if Anthony had a year to analyze and dissect each piece...(he couldn't tell if it would)... stand the harsh light of public exposure. 

Here's an excerpt from his astrology article, which was from his guest Brian T. Johnston:

It is demonstrated that the fundamental economic cycles of the world are based upon the cycles of the planets as is the timing and magnitude of the sunspot cycle and the also the changes in the earth’s climate which are at the foundation of the world’s economic cycles. It also shows that even though all of these cycles are linked the cycles of the sun are not the causes of the world’s economic cycles, but rather the cycles are driven by the changes in the electromagnetic climate of the solar system that appear to be associated with the interactions of the planets.

Watching the global thermometer - year to date GISTemp with July 2015

Every month since March, I've posted a chart of the progressive year-to-date global average surface temperature, from GISS. This is the update with July included. I'll repeat the explanation with each update and add what seem to be things to watch.