WUWT's Latest Alarmism: The Climate Hoax Collapsing Civilisation Global Governance Hypothesis

Just after an article about reproducibility of psychological research, Anthony Watts has put up an article from Paul Driessen from CFACT (archived here), which is full of irreproducible nonsense. Paul is one of those people who wants to get rid of any and all environmental regulation. He won't rest until the USA brings back smog.

As you'd expect from a person whose job is to spread disinformation (Paul is employed as the "senior policy analyst" for CFACT, which I gather is code for "propaganda officer"), his article is full of falsehoods.

On reproducibility: Replicated errors and double standards from Anthony Watts at WUWT

The most recent article from Anthony Watts, who runs a climate conspiracy blog called wattsupwiththat, or WUWT, demonstrates once again that he doesn't understand the first thing about scientific research. It also provides another lesson in the telltale techniques of climate science denial, and the double standards of Anthony Watts. 

What the WUWT article (archived here) is about is an article in the New York Times (without a link), which in turn is an article about a paper in Science about the lack of reproducibility of many psychology papers. That is, Anthony published a "guest essay" about a New York Times article about a paper, topped and tailed with some irrelevant silly comments from Anthony himself. (Anthony doesn't write much himself these days. He's probably conscious that most of what he writes is too silly for public consumption so he copies and pastes press releases and denier blog articles from elsewhere, and relies on "guest essays" of dubious quality from his readers.)

Nothing New: On natural variability and global mean surface temperature

Denier blogs are going through a hiatus so I wandered a bit and got to reading a conversation, of sorts, at Judith Curry's blog (archived here). A couple of pro-science types decided to join in to help inform lurkers, while deniers were busy flogging their dead horses.

The subject was the slowdown on global mean surface temperature over the past few years, when various influences came together in a particular way. (Eg the PDO in a cool phase, volcanic aerosols in the stratosphere etc).

At one point someone wrote how he didn't think scientists anticipated natural variability in climate. He was questioning Tamsin Edwards who he reported as writing: "That pause in warming of the atmosphere surprised the media and public, even though scientists always expected this kind of thing could happen in the short term".

It was cold in the 1930s, really it was (compared to now)

There's little if any quality control at WUWT. Blog-owner Anthony Watts doesn't have what it takes to do the job, according to his friend Willis Eschenbach. And I'm inclined to agree with Willis, which makes a change, since I don't often agree with him.

Today there's an unsophisticated article that Anthony's posted (archived here). It's by someone I've not come across before to my knowledge, Sheldon Walker. Sheldon is wanting to tell WUWT readers about the change in trends in global mean surface temperature since records began.

Satellites rule in deniersville, except when sea levels are rising

Science deniers at WUWT are a funny lot. Their sole purpose in visiting denier blogs seems to be to sing the refrain "it's not happening", with the occasional faint chorus of "if it is it's not bad". WUWT deniers in the main haven't got quite as far as "if it is bad, there's nothing we can do about it".

Some of Anthony Watts' guest articles are good illustrations of that. There was a "guest essay" by David Middleton  yesterday (archived here) about a press release on the NASA website about how quickly sea levels may rise.  The press release was consistent with other recent estimates that seas will probably have risen by a metre or more by the end of this century or early the next, particularly if we stay on our current emissions trajectory (and maybe even if we don't).

David Middleton, who you might recall thinks all lizards are the same, wanted to reject the NASA article outright, claiming that "The only way sea level rise could approach the high end of the IPCC range is if it exponentially accelerates…". And he drew a chart with an exponential curve. Having made that wrong statement and putting up his exponential chart, he then drew a wrong conclusion, writing: "The rate from 2081-2100 would have to average 20 mm per year, twice that of the Holocene Transgression. This is only possible in bad science fiction movies."

One major flaw in David's argument was that he assumed that seas would rise according to some smooth chart, either linearly or exponentially. What he failed to factor in was that the main contribution to sea level over coming decades will be from melting ice. Another major flaw was that he himself used data and referenced a paper that showed that seas have risen at more than double his "impossible" rate in the relatively recent past.

Arctic sea ice extent is fourth lowest so far this year

It's that time of the year again when the sea ice in the Arctic is disappearing. It doesn't look as if there will be a record low extent this year, but there's not a lot of ice around. At the moment it's the fourth lowest on record for this time of the year, according to the interactive chart provided by NSIDC (with my annotations).

Source: National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC)

There are links to most of the main sea ice pages on the HotWhopper Climate Metrics page. Here are a couple of charts from the University of Bremen, as at 28 August 2015:

To stay up to date with what's happening, go to Neven's Arctic Sea Ice Blog.  His latest article is about a storm in the Beaufort Sea, which is undoubtedly breaking up ice in that region.

There's not much more to say, except to express concern that the region is at high risk. Not just from melting sea ice and all the changes that brings, but from shipping traffic and resource exploration. Those risks affect the Arctic and because of the wider impact of changes in the Arctic, affect the whole world.

I'll keep an eye on things and probably post an article shortly after the minimum, which should be within the next three weeks.

Denier weirdness: Magical warming and hurricanes

It does seem like going over old ground again and again and again. Science deniers keep repeating the same tired denialisms again and again and again. It's happened on two anti-science blogs today, at Judith Curry's blog and at Anthony Watts' blog. Anthony Watts is, I think, trying to argue that because New Orleans is still on the map, then climate science is a hoax. Judith appears to be trying to argue that most (75%) of the warming since 1950 was caused by magic. Okay - I exaggerate a tad, but not much. See if you agree.

Judith Curry's conscience

There is not a lot that is more irritating in life than some holier than thou person telling everyone how much holier they are than thou -  most especially when that person is anything but holy. When I think about it, the people who I know who really are holier than most of us mere mortals, don't boast about it. It probably never enters their head to make a "goodliness" or "godliness" comparison. Their essential humility is one reason people choose good people as role models.

What you'll find particularly yucky (the best word I can think of at the moment), is Judith Curry setting herself up as the "conscience of the profession". You think I'm joking? Nope - I'm not.

Urban heat confuses deniers at WUWT

Today Anthony Watts has copied and pasted a press release about urban heat (archived here.) A team led by Lahouari Bounoua of NASA's Biospheric Sciences Laboratory has completed an analysis of the impact of urbanisation on surface temperatures across the USA. Anthony said it was "obvious", implying there was no value to the research. He's wrong. The research quantified what to Anthony might have seemed "obvious", and came up with some less obvious findings as well.

The bottom line is, if you live in a city that gets hot, do what you can to get plenty of trees and shrubs planted. The more the better.

This work isn't to be confused with factoring in the impact of urban heat on the mean global surface temperature anomaly. What it is about is how urban centres are mostly hotter than the surrounding rural centres. It says nothing about differences in the rate of warming, or trends over time.

The paper is published in Environmental Research Letters and is open access.  (It's taken a while for the research to be completed from the look of things. Some of the authors presented early findings at the AGU Fall Meeting in 2009.)

To S Fred Singer, thanks for the name-calling, but with regret...

Science deniers sometimes complain that there are gatekeepers to peer reviewed publications. Yes indeed. They are called editors and scientific peers. Their job is to try to make sure that published papers meet certain minimum standards - like being accurate, being supported by evidence, and meeting accepted standards of professional decorum. In the case of S Fred Singer one would have to say he is without peers. Earlier this month, in an article at that strange website called most inappropriately "American Thinker" (archived here), Fred posted three reviews he said an article of his received from a quality journal, Eos. What is surprising is that the editor sent Fred's article out to review. What is even more surprising is that Fred seems unashamed by the scathing reviews. So much so that he shared them with the world at large (or the narrow segment that reads articles at American Thinker).

Dear Dr. Singer:

Thank you again for submitting to Eos your Opinion manuscript entitled "Geo-engineering - stopping ice ages."
Based on the recommendation of the 3 reviewers, I am not able to accept it for publication at this time. I have attached the reviewer reports for your reference.

Thank you for the opportunity to examine this work.
Sincerely,
[redacted by Sou]