The global inconsistency of climate science denier, Larry Hamlin, at WUWT

This is rich.

Yesterday I wrote how climate disinformer Larry Hamlin picked out years of hot Junes in the USA and California, as if to argue that global warming isn't worth worrying about because there have been occasional hot Junes in California and the USA in the past. Today he wants to ignore local and go global (cached here).

In the last article I showed how, when you put Larry's USA/Californian June temperatures in the global context, it highlights the ridiculousness of deniers. Early last century the world as a whole was much colder than it is today. This century we're really getting a taste of what's to come. This past few weeks we've been getting a horrific taste of what's to come much more often, with deadly fires, drought, killer heat waves and floods widespread over the northern hemisphere, not to mention the drought back here in Australia. It isn't just hot in California and the USA, it's hot in lots of places as this map of June temperatures shows (from GISTemp).

US-centred climate change denial from the desperate deniers at WUWT

While the distinctly unpresidential Donald Trump is desperate to deny he's in Putin's pocket, his zombie acolytes at WUWT are desperate to deny the world is warming. So much so that they are trying to deny that the weather lately has been quite extraordinary.

There are fires raging in Greece, where at least 74 people are feared dead. There has been a killer heatwave in Japan that broke high temperature records, has claimed at least 77 lives and sent more than 30,000 people to hospital. This follows the tragically disastrous floods that killed upwards of 200 people. Then there was the horrific tragedy in Laos, where monsoon rains led to 5 billion cubic metres of water flowing from a busted new hydro dam, killing who knows how many people and with hundreds missing and leaving 6,600 people homeless. (If the evacuation notice had not been sent out in advance the tragedy may have been even worse.)

In Sweden, which is suffering the worst drought since records began, there are terrible wildfires. In fact, much of Western Europe is facing yet another summer heatwave. In the far north of Finland, of all places, the temperature reached 34.3 C (94 F) the other day!

Climate conspiracy theorist Anthony Watts is hot and bothered by heat in California

It's taking me a while to get back to blogging and there's a lot happening in the world to distract. I couldn't help but notice there is a lot of extreme weather around the world, the terrible floods in Japan, for example. If you're wondering how these examples of climate change are affecting climate science deniers, it's making them even loopier than normal.

Airport UHI disease breakout in Africa

Over at WUWT, Anthony Watts found another airport that had a sudden attack of airport UHI disease. You'll remember how there was an outbreak in Greenland back in 2013. This horrible disease only strikes on very hot days, apparently. Not even that. It only strikes on the very hottest of days according to Anthony's research. He said he his amazing finding was "based on hours of combing Google Earth and other sources". Yes, he really did spend "hours" trying to figure out a reason to discount a temperature reading for a weather station in Africa. He decided that on the particular day of the very high weather reading, possibly a record high reading, the weather station decided to act up.

Pseudoscience in black and white, from Eric Worrall at WUWT

Here's a small example of why one should avoid getting their science from pseudo-scientists. Eric Worrall is criticising an experiment that was designed to determine the impact of higher daytime temperatures on bees.

The scientists put some bees into boxes painted white and some into boxes painted black and monitored them for a couple of years.

Eric thought he found a fatal flaw. His criticism was this:

The team seem to have logged daily maximum temperature inside the boxes, but I didn’t see any attention to daily minimum temperature. Painting the boxes black would have caused higher maximum temperatures from absorption of sunlight in the daytime, but the black painted boxes would also have radiated heat faster at night.

Just in case you thought, maybe Eric was talking about the faster rate of cooling as the sun went down, he's not. He added a sentence so you'll not make any mistake:

So it seems possible that much of the damage to the bees in the black boxes was caused by colder night time temperatures, rather than warmer daytime temperatures.

Wrong! Both boxes would have around the same minimum temperature during the night.

2018 has the fourth hottest May on record

Summary: May 2018 was the fourth hottest May on record. The 12 month period to May 2018 was the third hottest June to May period on record.

According to GISS NASA, the average global surface temperature anomaly for May was 0.82 °C, which is 0.09 °C less than the hottest - May 2016.

Below is a chart of the average of 12 months to May each year. The 12 months to May 2018 averaged 0.82 °C above the 1951-1980 mean, which was 0.19 °C cooler than the 12 months to May 2016.

This makes it the third hottest June to May 12 month period on record after 2016 and 2015.

David Archibald tells lies about Australia's climate, at WUWT

David Archibald is someone who often predicts the world is about to get very, very cold. He's not a denier, he's a disinformer. He tells lies. One of the many who Anthony Watts promotes on his climate conspiracy blog WUWT.

I couldn't let this one pass, because this time he was claiming it hasn't warmed in Australia in 40 years. He's wrong. It has.

Below is a chart showing the surface warming from data recorded and analysed by Australia's Bureau of Meteorology, one of the foremost climate and weather offices in the world. It includes a LOESS smooth (red line) and a linear trend line from 1979 to 2017.

Climate science deniers take a dim view of reading science and heeding experts

The other day (was it only yesterday) Anthony Watts predicted that newly-appointed Jim Bridenstine would soon lose his job as head of NASA (pictured right).

Anthony was relying on an article by James Delingpole on a competitor site of WUWT, Breitbart. James wrote scoffingly, quoting Mr Bridenstine:

“I read a lot”?
What was Bridenstine thinking?

What indeed - reading for heaven's sake. Who in their right mind would read? Not James Delingpole, that's for sure.

Manipulating Tim Ball at WUWT

Tim Ball is Anthony Watts' pet conspiracy theorist. He's an utter nutter of the first order. He was the first-named author of a book denying the greenhouse effect (pictured right).  Anthony Watts never mentions that, although he has a policy that "WUWT is a slayer free zone". Anthony only implements this policy on very rare occasions, and always exempts Tim Ball.

Today I'll just write about one thing, and it's not about Tim's main preoccupation (anti-semitic conspiracy theories). This time it's about manipulation.

Manipulation is a curious word. It sends shivers down the spine of every science denier yet they flock to blogs like WUWT where manipulation of the gullible is the only stock in trade.

Anthony Watts posted an article with the usual nonsense from Tim Ball (climate science is a hoax, a communist plot, a conspiracy for world domination by persons sometimes named, sometimes not). In it, Tim opened with this sentence:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the people who formulated the structure that directed their research, constantly manipulated the data and the methods to predetermine the results.

Two uncomplicated tips for Judith Curry's dilemma

Judith Curry, who used to be a scientist and is now science denier, has asked a question: "How can the fundamental disagreement about the causes of climate change be most effectively communicated?"

She claims there is a fundamental disagreement on what is causing the climate to change. She doesn't cite any people who disagree with the fact that increasing atmospheric CO2 is causing global warming. She just asserts that there is "fundamental disagreement".

Nor does she explain what she thinks the fundamental disagreement is over, although she hints in a mockup of a slide that she thinks something other than the massive increase in CO2 is causing global warming. What that is only she knows, or doesn't. If she does she isn't saying, which is typical of deniers.

Lightning fire confusion at WUWT

Bushfire Mount Beauty 11 December 2006

It would be nice to think that wrong headlines like the one below are the reason for the decline in WUWT readership. Thing is, headlines that don't reflect a copy and pasted article are par for the course at WUWT. The headline is: "Claim: Global warming to make more lightning caused fires, but only in the Northern Hemisphere."

Anthony Watts got his north and south mixed up. The paper is about an increase in lightning caused fires in the southern hemisphere. So far, no-one at WUWT has noticed (archive here).

Notice, too, that Anthony continues his "claim" prefix. He does that with most of the press releases he copies, showing that he doesn't "believe" science and wants his readers to think that science is nothing but a hoax.