Some big changes coming to WUWT in the near future

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“Some big changes coming to WUWT in the near future“ (2013-04-10). “You may have already noticed that commenting is faster. That’s because whitelisting is now enabled.” So says Anthony Watts. Of course, if he doesn’t like you then chances are you haven’t noticed any improvement in service at Watts Up With That.

As many of my visitors can attest, blacklisting has been in place at Anthony’s blog for a looooooooong time.

If Anthony doesn’t like you you’ll discover that your comments are even further out of sync, if they ever appear, dropping into the backwaters of the “debate” unread. But Anthony’s passive-aggressive interference is NOT CENSORSHIP.

The early syrupy praise in the comments by richardscourtney is quite illuminating, in spite of the fact that he’s trying to support Anthony’s practices. He zeros in on exactly how Anthony rigs the game:

WUWT has the success it so rightly deserves because of your blog policy, your moderation policy, your selection of the excellent moderators, and your oversight of the moderators’ actions.

Congrats to all the 2013 Bloggie Finalists and Winners!

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“Congrats to all the 2013 Bloggie Finalists and Winners!” (2013-04-03). Today’s post isn’t taken from Anthony Watts’ blog, but from WordPress.com a week ago. The thirteenth annual “Bloggies”, a click-to-win people’s choice-style contest that Anthony likes to mobilize for have just concluded. You know there’s something deeply wrong with a selection process when Anthony’s nasty, malicious, misleading, personality-obsessed blog is regularly chosen as “Best Science or Technology Weblog”.

“michele w.“, on WordPress’ behalf, posted breathless congratulations to the eleven WordPress-based winners and finalists, four of which are denialist blogs. (Watts Up With That, Australian Climate Madness, Tallbloke’s Talkshop and Climate Audit) This is just the kind of PR fluff that Anthony and company hunt for and naturally they all show up in the comments, except the faux-modest Steve McIntyre, to humbly accept the acclamation.

Curiously my comment, reproduced below, remains “in moderation”. In this case I think Michele simply doesn’t want to have her lack of critical thinking highlighted any further, but it does offer an entertaining echo of Anthony’s own style of handling criticism.

I have to echo Callum’s sentiments. The “science” and “environment” winners listed here are infamous, even malicious, promoters of false information. Their ‘achievement” in the Bloggies says nothing whatsoever about their quality or integrity, just their ability to mobilize uncritical supporters.

Blindly publicizing this rigged competition merely transfers the stench onto WordPress.

I’m all for recognizing achievement, but not when it is this easily gamed. Watts Up With That, Australian Climate Madness, Tallbloke’s Talkshop and Climate Audit are examples of partisan anti-science sites that use these “awards” to simulate the recognition they crave but re unable to earn.

Don’t feed the trolls!

But yeah, WordPress is a great web content system.

Bloggies 2013 Comment

Followup: As the updated graphic above demonstrates, my comment remains “in moderation” while someone else’s newer one has been approved. I visited the “Bloggies” website and saw that the winner and three finalists were all rabid denialist sites:

BEST SCIENCE OR TECHNOLOGY WEBLOG

WINNER

Watts Up With That?

FINALISTS

What are the chances that in the wide world of science and technology these four buddy denialist fringe websites would come out on top? Color me skeptical.

Another partisan denialist, James Delingpole(!), won for “best weblog about politics”, edging past The Global Warming Policy Foundation, the denialist website so widely quoted (not) in daily political conversation…

Pielke Jr. appears to get booted from a journal for giving an unfavorable peer review to some shoddy science

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“Pielke Jr. appears to get booted from a journal for giving an unfavorable peer review to some shoddy science“ (2013-02-21). So much truculent stupidity at Watts Up With That recently!  All just background noise here in the world of reality. This one’s entertaining though, especially as once again it illuminates Anthony Watts’ habit of blindly piling on any  complaint of persecution of fellow denialists.

What happened? Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. wrote another of his “everyone’s mean to me” blog posts because he was dropped from the editorial board of Global Environmental Change. Why? Because they hate him and only ever pretended to like him. The reality however is hilariously different.

First though, Anthony’s contribution. He insta-pasted a snide accusation from Mark Steyn, a notoriously inflammatory right-wing flunky, who after the obligatory self-referential muttering about the evil Dr. Michael Mann declared that “…Professor Pielke, expelled by the palace guard of climate conformism, appears to have been felled by the very pathology he identified.”

Our un-inquisitive and hasty Anthony was forced to walk it back a bit though as you will notice when carefully examining his post’s slug; “pielke-jr-gets-booted-from-journal-for-giving-an-unfavorable-peer-review-to-some-shoddy-science”. It’s missing the ass-covering “appears to get” which was added to the post title later. The post now starts with a non-correction by Roger. It seems he still considers himself rudely dumped, but not for the reason he howled about. I can still hear the wahhhh-mbulance though.

So what really happened? The thin-skinned drama queen thought he was kicked to the curb as payback for his blog criticism (Science is the Shortcut) of a paper, Climate change prediction: Erring on the side of least drama?, published in Global Environmental Change. Sadly, it turns out that none of the journal’s other board members were even aware of Roger’s devastating blast, making it hard to sustain the accusation.

In fact, Roger had reached the end of his term and had clearly been coasting. Expected to review up to five papers a year, as many as 30 in his six years, he had been requested to review 18 papers. He’d only actually reviewed six and hadn’t submitted a review since August 2010. His replacement coincided with that of five others, who presumably all simultaneously pissed of the secret editorial board leaders…

2013-02-23 Update: “Rabett” calls it: victim bullying.

A Cool White Christmas – almost two thirds of the continental USA has snow cover

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“A Cool White Christmas – almost two thirds of the continental USA has snow cover” (2012-12-26). Snow! In Winter! Global Warming is over, Anthony Watts assures us. Wait, didn’t it never start? Or was it that Global Warming ended 16 years ago?

Still, snow this Christmas in North America puts the lie to British climate scientist Dr David Viner’s speculation that snowfall in Britain will be rare at some unspecified time in the future, doesn’t it?

It does if you’re Anthony Watts battling a straw man. Once again anything that supports Anthony’s assertions is climate while anything that contradicts him is weather.

Wait, it’s January 6th and the snow is already receding. Winter must be over, Global Warming’s back! (You can play too at National Snow Analyses.)

An open letter challenging the EPA on CO2 regulation

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“An open letter challenging the EPA on CO2 regulation“ (2012-12-28). A line has been drawn in the sand! The environmental gauntlet has been thrown! A fist has been clenched! A steely gaze has been directed! The GIANTS of climatology have been aroused! (Maybe we could have phrased that last one better.) Anthony Watts has added his name to a newspaper opinion piece!!!

So, preeminent 21st century climatologist (Not really. In fact, not even a bit), Joe D’Aleo has written a damning critique (not) of the EPA’s conclusion three years ago that rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations will have harmful environmental consequences. And an important newspaper, the Washington Post has printed it! (Err.. the “Examiner”.) The usual denialist travelers like Fred Singer, Tim Ball, Don Easterbrook and Anthony Watts have signed on along with others we will leave unmentioned out of pity.

Here’s the laser-sharp money quote fired, like a diamond bullet, at the very core of the EPA, that Anthony urges his readers to “consider widely republishing”:

“In summary, it is not incorrect to argue that further study of the role GHGs play in climate is in order.”

My mind is spinning! From trying to decipher the meaning. I guess they want the EPA to stop trying to “P” our “E”?

What are Joe & Co. steamed about? Well mainly they hate government regulation on principle. Also they think that the EPA should have spent ten years replicating all the findings of modern climatology instead of just pulling out the relevant peer-reviewed journals. By the way, did you know that some of those journals aren’t American?

In what alternate reality is this proud “Open Letter” anything other than a kick me sign? Have D’Aleo, Watts and pals forgotten that their grade-school assertions were all shot down three years ago? Maybe they’re hoping that we’ve forgotten.

Rabett Run has an amusing sampling of the EPA’s responses to various inept denialist complaints. I wish there was an index to them, but here’s a useful Google search string. Plenty of chuckles in there.

Antarctic warming courtesy of Mr. Fix-it

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“Antarctic warming courtesy of Mr. Fix-it“ (2012-12-27). Anthony Watts posts some profound scientific analysis – “Just a little something [David Middleton] threw together”.

On the basis of Middleton’s “Mk I eyeball”, careful scientific work on Western Antarctic temperature records is dismissed with a sneer as “manufactured” and denialist cooling (via squinting) replaces objective evidence of significant warming.

So David, did you just “throw it together” or just throw it up?

Here’s Anthony Watts’ own attempt to disparage the study three days earlier, in it’s entirety, supported by a cartoon of Santa’s sleigh:

They can’t find any recent warming, so they took a broken sensor with “intermittent gaps and other problems”, “recalibrated” it, “used computerized analyses of the atmosphere to fill the gaps” and “discovered” warming that “happened in the 1980s”. If you believe that this is science, then I strongly suggest you prep your telescope, lest you miss out on a spectacular sleigh sighting…

If you believe Anthony’s interested in science, you probably believe in the tooth fairy.

Dana Nuccitelli’s holiday trick for sobering up quick: put a little less rum in your egg nog

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“Dana Nuccitelli’s holiday trick for sobering up quick: put a little less rum in your egg nog” (2012-12-28). Funny how a post on Anthony Watts’ “uncensored” website attacking Dana Nuccitelli doesn’t have any responses from Dana Nuccitelli. Just sayin’.

So Anthony’s denialist buddy Alec Rawls, a self-appointed whistle-blowing IPCC expert, posted this bunk to lash out at Dana Nuccitelli. Dana had the temerity to ridicule Alec’s idea that there is a lag of secret duration and unknown cause in our climate’s response to “solar variation” (which… doesn’t). Thus proving that it really is all because of the sun and we can go back to our coal-powered land yachts free from communist oppression.

After-all, your level of inebriation can rise even after you stop drinking! And a wacky biological analogy is even better than a physical science proof. To be blunt, you’d know more about solar physics and climate from staring straight into the sun for a minute than Alec could figure out in a lifetime.

If you have the patience the 400+ comments are a comedy goldmine, especially when actual solar scientist Leif Svalgaard pops in for a serious round of whack-a-mole. Paul Vaughan’s wounded howl ”Do not ever address me again” seems to capture the flavor of the reactions. Poor Alec must have anticipated an unopposed playing field, because he swaggers and sneers hilariously:

I have to feel bad for Dana on this point. It isn’t his fault. He has been systematically duped by this parade of so-called scientists all telling him that a persistent high level of forcing can’t cause continued warming. Makes me want to put him on a milk carton. The poor guy isn’t just lost, he was kidnapped. Want a piece of candy little boy? Credulous Science indeed.

Leif Svalgaard finally calls a spade a spade:

lsvalgaard says:December 29, 2012 at 3:28 pm
Alec Rawls says:
December 29, 2012 at 2:39 pm
UV-shift effects is one obvious candidate, so the NewScientist actually belittles TWO of the main candidates for this unidentified solar amplification mechanism
The Steinhilber et al. paper you cite, ends with “The UV irradiance may not be the viable solution because its observational data do not show a similar distinct decreasing trend as TSI [Frohlich ¨ , 2009], implying that its level during the MM was similar as in present solar cycle minima.
So you will quote selectively and omit what you don’t like.