Atmospheric water vapour is a feedback (not forcing) - on Watts and Eschenbach #AGU16 poster

Willis Eschenbach has a poster at AGU16, to which Anthony Watts added his name. Anthony's now written a blog article about it (archived here). Actually, Anthony put his name first although I strongly suspect he doesn't have a clue what the poster is all about.

They haven't made the poster available on the AGU16 website, or not at the time of this article. It is downloadable on Anthony's blog at WUWT, here.  He's also made available what he calls "data and code". The file is 500 MB or so, therefore I won't be downloading it till I get home in 20 hours or so.

There are a few points I'll make:

• The poster is based on a couple of blog articles by Willis Eschenbach at WUWT, including the one I wrote about here.
• Willis Eschenbach still doesn't know the difference between a forcing and a feedback (more below). Nor does Anthony Watts.
• Their poster supports what real scientists tell us, that there's more water vapour in the air because of global warming.
• Most of the data they use is ocean only, not land.
• They seem happy to rely on RSS data, while disparaging it elsewhere.
• They seem happy with lots of data carefully collected and analysed by climate scientists, despite calling it fraudulent elsewhere, and despite WUWT-ers wanting to stop all research.

After the Rally for Science, Anthony Watts' illiterati crowd call for science to end

I wrote to flag the rally that was held to coincide with AGU16. Anthony Watts, who yesterday missed the fact that it was on, finally found a flyer but I don't know if he went or not. He posted some photos, but he didn't take them. Instead he filched them from Twitter and gave no credit. This tweet has one of the photos Anthony posted, but didn't take himself.

More great pics from #standupforscience demo at @theAGU "Ice has no agenda, it just melts" is a good slogan, btw pic.twitter.com/YsqAZMyQR2

— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) December 13, 2016

Rally to Stand Up for Science: and Anthony Watts, a fish out of water at #AGU16

First things first. As you may or may not know, there's a rally for science in San Francisco Tuesday and it's not AGU16. This is a rally organised to coincide with the gathering of scientists. It doesn't seem to have been all that highly publicised, at least not outside of the science community.

I didn't learn about it until a day or so ago. It's been promoted on Facebook and by @ClimateTruth and others on Twitter, but so far I haven't found any blog or normal website or much of anything else.

The rally is at Jessie Square, 740 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA on Tuesday 13 December at 12 PM - 1:30 PM PST. (see map)

Despite the minimal publicity, lots of people will be there from what I can gather. The 25k plus crowd at AGU provides a decent base from which to draw people to rally. So if you're in the San Francisco area - go and show your support for science. If you can't make it, I understand the event will be streamed live from the Facebook page of ClimateTruth.

Cycling disinformers: A mini update of denier waffle at WUWT

I admit to being bored with the petty deniers and conspiracy theorists at WUWT. What's happening at the political level in the USA and Australia is much more fascinating in a grim way. Still, until I have a bit more time to focus on the blog, you'll have to make do with this mini-update about the goings on in deniersville - from Eric Worrall, Andy May, Willis Eschenbach and Ira Glickstein, PhD.

It's pretty much the blind leading the blind in the sense that there's none so blind...(nothing to do with vision-impairment).

Get ready for the AGU Fall Meeting #AGU16

A reminder to everyone who isn't in San Francisco at AGU16, that it's best to be prepared in advance. (Fine words coming from me, when I can barely find time at the moment to write a simple blog article.)

I think that last year's registration details probably work this year too. If so, you've probably already received an email from AGU with all the links. If not, you can register and logon to AGU On-Demand here. (Let me know if that link doesn't work for you.)

Just remember this moment, Anthony Watts! Dunning Kruger in the Arctic.

Today, finally, Anthony Watts has written about the record low Arctic ice extent that is being observed in the Arctic (and Antarctic) (archived here). He copied and pasted a press release from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (with no link to the original, as usual). What I'm writing about is the weirdly ignorant comment he added at the top. Anthony wrote:

It’s weather folks, but do remember this moment the next time we get a record high Arctic sea ice extent, the same people that are caterwauling on Twitter right now about this will tell you that it doesn’t matter. 

Yep - just remember this moment

Oh my! Anthony won't see a record high in his lifetime. It's highly likely that no-one will -  for thousands of years at least. Even just going back over the satellite record, since October 1978, there hasn't been a high record in the average annual sea ice extent since 1982. (Data is here - and the spreadsheet is here) If you analyse the monthly records, most months have the record high recorded in the first year of observations - 1978 or 1979 - almost forty years ago. The exceptions are the months of: May (1985), July (1983), August (1983), and September (1980).

In other words, the most recent record high sea ice extent in the Arctic was in May 1985, more than 30 years ago! And that's just the satellite record. If you go back to 1953, except for January when the record high was in 1979, the latest monthly record highs were in 1971 or earlier - 45 years ago.

Scott Adams puff piece on disputing climate science torn apart by Victor Venema

Scott Adams is very perceptive of the human condition in his Dilbert cartoons. He is not as perceptive when it comes to things that matter a lot. (From my reading of his tweets recently, he fell for conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton and for the lies of Donald Trump, for example.) Today he's come out as a wilful science denier - or as good as.

I would love to do an analysis of Scott Adams' new article for fake sceptics, but I have more pressing matters to attend to right at this moment. In the comments to his article I did ask him to elucidate one point he made. I wrote:

Scott, I appreciate you want to hedge your bets, that you aren't able to learn about climate science despite all the information available to the general public, and that your preferred position is that climate science is a hoax but you aren't game enough to say it out loud.

You say: "In my experience, and based on my training, it is normal and routine for the “majority of experts” to be completely wrong about important stuff."

Can you list three examples? I am keen to see examples that are comparable. That is, where 98% of the thousands of scientific experts on the subject have for decades been finding one result (made up of multiple results pointing to the same conclusion) based on theory and observation, and it turned out to be completely wrong. Not merely opinion on some minor matter, I'm talking about situations where the same theories have been shown to be consistent with observations every time in one context, but for some reason not in a different context.

If as you say this is "normal and routine", just three examples that are comparable to showing 200 years of an entire large scientific field are completely off track, should be a breeze for you. That is, unless this was just a throwaway comment of the type that fake sceptics make to support their authoritarian inclinations.

What is interesting is that he refers to his "experience and training" as support for his claim, but provides not a jot of evidence for that claim. At the same time, he dismisses as largely irrelevant the "experience and training" based on years of observations and analysis of climate scientists over the past 200 years.

While I don't have time right now to write a detailed analysis, Victor Venema did manage to make the time. So go read what he's written - and dwell on it. Especially if, like Scott, you have an unhealthy rather than a healthy, scepticism of specialist advice.

No, there's no La Niña. BoM has announced ENSO inactive

Some of you might have noticed the changed picture in the ENSO report in the side bar. Today the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has announced that ENSO is inactive. There is no La Niña expected in the near term.

Figure 1 | ENSO dial - derived from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology graphic.

From the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM):

The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the tropical Pacific Ocean remains neutral (neither El Niño nor La Niña). Although some very weak La Niña-like patterns continue (such as cooler than normal ocean temperatures and reduced cloudiness in the central and eastern Pacific), La Niña thresholds have not been met. Climate models and current observations suggest these patterns will not persist. The likelihood of La Niña developing in the coming months is now low, and hence the Bureau’s ENSO Outlook has shifted from La Niña WATCH to INACTIVE.

Lying Willis Eschenbach defames a prominent scientist and spreads fake news @wattsupwiththat

Willis Eschenbach is one of the sleazier climate disinformers who tells lies quite freely at WUWT (and is a shameless misogynist). Most of the time he pretends to be a "scientist" who is "just wondering" about something or other. He seems to think he was the first to discover the mechanisms of thunderstorms, for example, which is pretty weird. I mean this has probably been part of Meteorology 101 going way back before Willis was a twinkle in his father's eye.

Sleazy pseudo-scientist - Willis Eschenbach
Credit: unknown

Other times (and often at the same time) he loses his cool and lashes out and all and sundry. That's when he brazenly outs himself as a committed liar. Willis has a very short fuse.

Today he ventured beyond the pale, even for a creep like him. He was complaining about an article in Scientific American: The 9 Best Reactions to the House Science Committee’s Breitbart Tweet. He effectively said he no longer reads SciAm much because it isn't anti-science.

But that's not what I want to write about. That's the norm at the fake science blog, WUWT.

Disgusting untrue defamation

What I was much more disgusted with were the lies he told about the renowned scientist Peter Gleick. Willis told several big whoppers. He falsely claimed that Peter Gleick "was forced to quit his job in disgrace". Which is an outright lie. This is what he was referring to - a transition, four years after the incident with the Heartland Institute and completely unrelated. Willis might as well claim that Obama is resigning from the Presidency because he failed the American people.

Then Willis claimed that Dr Gleick "never did say one word of contrition for his actions". Another huge lie. Here is part of what Peter Gleick wrote after he helped expose the extent Heartland Institute's funding of science disinformation. It includes his apology:

I will not comment on the substance or implications of the materials; others have and are doing so. I only note that the scientific understanding of the reality and risks of climate change is strong, compelling, and increasingly disturbing, and a rational public debate is desperately needed. My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts — often anonymous, well-funded, and coordinated — to attack climate science and scientists and prevent this debate, and by the lack of transparency of the organizations involved. Nevertheless I deeply regret my own actions in this case. I offer my personal apologies to all those affected.

Peter Gleick

Why is it that despicable people like Willis Eschenbach tell such outrageous lies about scientists? Is it because they think it makes them look big and important?

Head slap: Deniers feign "shock" at James Hansen. It's just @wattsupwiththat using denier tricks

There are several points to note in this rather silly WUWT article (archived here), written by someone called Robert Bradley Jr. (who I'm guessing is this one-man show - of fossil fuel advocates). The article provides a good illustration of common denier tricks - as well as the usual misrepresentation of climate science:

• The headline is completely wrong. It is a "fake news" article typical of WUWT.
• Robert has applied the Serengeti strategy - attacking a single scientist, Dr James Hansen, hoping to isolate him and bring him down (as if!).
• It resorts to quote mining and quote splicing to fake that Dr Hansen said something different to what he actually said.
• It illustrates that the author doesn't understand much of anything about greenhouse gases - or pretends he doesn't and assumes WUWT readers don't.
• It is trying to persuade readers that Dr Hansen is saying there's no rush to cut CO2 emissions - when he isn't.

Robert's WUWT article is a quote mine of things Dr James Hansen has written over the years. Problem is that Robert is either incapable of understanding what he copies and pastes, or believes that WUWT readers are incapable.

Robert Bradley Jr. seems to think that all it takes to reduce atmospheric GHG amounts is to reduce GHG emissions.  In fact, from what I can tell, Robert doesn't know the difference between atmospheric greenhouse gases and human emissions of greenhouse gases.