Category Archives: Half of the Story

Heartland’s NIPCC report to be accepted by Chinese Academy of Sciences in special ceremony

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“Heartland’s NIPCC report to be accepted by Chinese Academy of Sciences in special ceremony“ (2013-06-12). Too funny to resist this one. Anthony Watts informs us that he’s ‘been aware of this effort being underway for sometime” as he copy-and-pastes a Heartland Institute press release. But it’s just another example of Anthony over-selling himself while pimping for his political allies. I think Anthony tried to jump on a passing bandwagon but still doesn’t realise that he’s grasped a honeywagon.

To hear Heartland tell it, they’re in the final stages of a major scientific collaboration with their new Best Friends Forever, the Chinese Communist Party. A collaboration that proves the denialist “scientific” position has momentum. The Chinese Academy of Science is totally on their side and Craig Idso (Ph.D.), Bob Carter (Ph.D.) and Fred Singer (Ph.D.) are going to Beijing to get their medals!

Perhaps Rabett Run has it right though, the CAS’s comedy translation division has finished puzzling out the Heartland Institute’s Climate Change Reconsidered and Climate Change Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report, authored by the NIPCC, a denialist sound-alike to the United Nation’s IPCC (their “report” is a look-alike too). You gotta read the hilarious things these round eyes say!

Too bad this is the reality:

 ”this is only a book cooperation between the Lanzhou Branch of the National Science Library and Heartland Institute, and is limited only to copy right trading, with no academic research work involved.”

I guess this is a close to a win as denialist “science” gets. Anthony’s followers are giddy with delight in comments even as “Plain Richard” tries to peel the wool back.

A few other links on this:

2013-06-14 Update: I couldn’t resist poking the ant nest and commented on Anthony’s post failing to reflect the instant collapse of the Heartland Institute and his claims. The result was exactly what you would expect from inquiring website devoted to informing the public about controversial subjects. Not.

Anthony Watts NEVER avoids criticism.

Anthony Watts NEVER avoids criticism.

University of Graz Responds to Parncutt’s calls for death penalty for “deniers”

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University of Graz Responds to Parncutt’s calls for death penalty for “deniers” ()2012-12-27). Yeah! Denialist outrage has led the University of Graz to censor their music professor’s ill-advised ramblings about climate change! Freedom from speech is victorious! Nothing more satisfying than a bit of successful bullying, is there Anthony? Monckton, of course, also got his stick in there.

Also, Skeptical Science and DeSmogBlog haven’t explicitly disavowed Professor Parncutt’s essay suggesting the execution of denialists, so that clearly means they support it.

UPDATE2: 2:55:PM PST In an email received today from Skeptical Science contributor Dana Nuccitelli, he has flat out refused to distance himself or the SkS website publicly from the Parncutt essay. Readers may recall that Parncutt used SkS as a reference in his essay calling for the death penalty. No word yet on whether John Cook (owner of the website) agrees and no word yet from DeSmog blog. – Anthony

Funny, I happen to have Mr. Nuccitelli’s actual response here, which was also posted as a comment that was blocked by Anthony’s censors, which seems a bit more nuanced than Anthony’s “reporting”:

From: Dana Nuccitelli
To: Anthony <xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2012 2:47 PM
Subject: Re: still waiting…
We of course don’t agree with giving denialists the death penalty, but we’re also not going to waste our time commenting on what some German musicologist said just because he happens to (correctly) cite SkS as a factually accurate source on climate science.

Given than you frequently allow WUWT guest posts from people like Christopher Monckton, who aside from being a total nutjob (to put it as kindly as I can), says some pretty horrible things on a regular basis, I really don’t think you’re in a position to expect more than that.

-Dana

Al Gore’s ‘drowning polar bear’ source reprimanded

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“Al Gore’s ‘drowning polar bear’ source reprimanded“ (2012-09-29). A lying scientist has been caught red-handed! We’ll get those guys, one at a time. That’s a check mark on the good guy’s side! No need to read further.

You can always count on Anthony Watts to baldly misrepresent the facts. To put this plainly, Dr. Charles Monnett was accused of corruption (helping a scientist apply for a grant) and scientific malpractice (reporting his observation of drowned polar bears). This appears driven largely by political irritation over how other information he disclosed “helped reveal that Bush administration Arctic offshore drilling reviews illegally suppressed adverse environmental consequences.” Also, his observations were mentioned in that Communist Al Gore’s filthy propaganda, An Inconvenient Truth.

After an incompetent investigation that focused obsessively on the irrelevant dead polar bears, Dr. Monnett was only “reprimanded” because he had “improperly disclosed internal government documents”. Isn’t that the kind of thing that Anthony has been demanding more of? Transparency, letting in the light, resisting persecution, citizen-science, etc.

As usual Anthony falsely holds his target to a higher standard than he could ever live up to. Dr. Monnett is just collateral damage in Anthony’s Gore-ophobia.

REPLY: The issue is mostly with Gore’s ridiculous claims, AGW had noting to do with the dead polar bear and a dead polar bear does not a trend make. Monnet didn’t speak out when Gore took his observation and turned into into a bogus sympathy pitch -Anthony

Here’s an enlightening quote from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management press office that Anthony didn’t manage in include in his conveniently partial copy-and-paste of the Seattle Times article (this is called burying the lede):

A BOEM spokeswoman, Theresa Eisenman, said the findings in the report do not support a conclusion that the scientists involved engaged in “scientific misconduct.”

I note that Google Ads still sees Anthony’s readership as prime targets for Brain Training Games. Indeed, indeed.

Stupid: Oregon Museum of Science and Industry cancels climate talk due to skeptics being on panel

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“Stupid: Oregon Museum of Science and Industry cancels climate talk due to skeptics being on panel” 2011-11-29). Oh, so close! You can hear Anthony Watts’ disappointment behind his outraged accusation of censorship. Seems that Oregon Museum of Science and Industry canceled a climate presentation to be held on their premises because denialists might have spoken! Never mind that the “skeptics” weren’t “on the panel”, they were the panel. Anthony’s a bit vague about that detail.

So three denialists almost managed to stage an unchallenged “presentation” via the American Meteorological Society’s Oregon Chapter at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry that would have let them make arch self-references for years to come. Wouldn’t Anthony have loved to lead people astray with “A Oregon Museum of Science presentation showed that…”?

Sounds so much better than “my partisan think-tank article says…” or “a paranoid, narcissistic British peer trained as a journalist claims…”.

Didn’t they know that Climate Research is the journal for assuaging an ambitious denialist’s sense of inadequacy? Oh that’s right. Chris de Freitas is no longer there to receive the secret handshake. Sorry, I guess that was your best chance.

The AMS’s Oregon Chapter seems to think that a one-sided presentation on a controversial scientific topic meets their self-proclaimed mission to “advance professional ideals in the science of meteorology and to promote the development, exchange, and application of meteorological knowledge.”

In this outrageous case the OMSI begged to differ and brutally censored them. In the sense of telling them to hold that particular event somewhere else. And then saying that they’d support a balanced presentation because ”[Their] job is to make sure it’s not just one voice that’s heard”.

Anthony casts about seeking a damning analogy but can’t do better that suggest that because the OMSI has an attack submarine on display they are equally hypocritical if they don’t also have some kind of hippy love-in exhibit for “balance”. So why hold denialists to a higher standard? Or any standard I guess. But you know what? You can buy a tie-die kit in the gift-shop. The circle of life is complete.

Leading with “Stupid” in the title seems odd though, it just leads to readers puzzling over the message and that leads in a direction that Anthony would prefer to steer away from. One side of a debate isn’t a debate at all, is it, even if you agree with that side. Anthony and his friends have scuttled their own intellectual submarine again.

One word: “plastics”

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“One word: “plastics”. (May 5, 2011) Another half-the-story from Anthony Watts, linking to a Guardian article about the European Union paying fishers to “catch” plastic.

What does this have to do with climate change, or even just science? Nuthin’. It’s just reflexive regulation bashing and tax whining. Funny how there’s nary a peep on Anthony’s blog about the billions in tax cuts that oil companies receive…

So what’s really going on? Reading the Guardian article might help.

The move is intended as a sweetener to fishermen who have bitterly opposed the European commission’s plans to ban the wasteful practice of discarding edible fish at sea. Fleets fear they will lose money by not being able to throw away lower-value catch.

“Ending this practice of throwing away edible fish is in the interest of fishermen, and consumers,” Damanaki told the Guardian in an interview. “It has to happen – we cannot have consumers afraid to eat fish because they hate this problem of discards.”

Fishermen who clear plastic will be subsidised initially by EU member states, but in future the scheme could turn into a self-sustaining profitable enterprise, as fleets cash in on the increasing value of recycled plastics. Cleaning up the rubbish will also improve the prospects for fish, seabirds and other marine species, which frequently choke or suffer internal damage from ingesting small pieces of non-biodegradable packaging.

Outrageous!

Real Climate on Spencer – Bad timing or just bad judgment?

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“Real Climate on Spencer – Bad timing or just bad judgment?” Anthony Watts decides to read nefarious purpose into the timing of a RealClimate review of denialist scientist Roy Spencer’s book “The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists”. They seem to have posted it on the same day that a series of massive tornadoes (nothing to do whatsoever with global warming!!!!!) took out power in Spencer’s hometown of Huntsville, Alabama.

Did they deliberately release their review when they thought they would be safe from Spencer’s devastating intellectual rebuttal? Those cunning, corrupt, dishonest communist climate scientists! But the always high-minded Anthony Watts sorted it out with an e-mail offering ethics advice. Anthony’s readers start the libeling by themselves.

So what of Spencer’s book? Could he be right? Would it really take “only one research study to cause the global warming house of cards to collapse”?

Well unless you embrace Spencer’s astonishing belief that decades of work by thousands of scientists around the world could actually flip into untold thousands of admissions of “my bad”, no.

Instead Spencer accuses “the IPCC researchers” of “fundamental mistakes” that only he has discovered, but never identifies the dumb scientists or references their alleged mistakes. He waves away detailed paleo data with “we don’t have a clue”. (I suppose as a creationist he is uncomfortable with any date before 4004 BC.) He’s so intellectually flexible that he’s already contradicted his own book in later papers. Is it true that “short-term fluctuations in the energy balance and surface temperature are consistent with a low climate sensitivity” (the whatever-he-can-get-away-with book, April 2010), or  that “the climate system is never in equilibrium” ( the peer-reviewed Journal of Geophysical Research, August 2010)? I guess the ice ages are impossible.

Perhaps next Spencer will be confidently asserting that toothpicks are made when beavers sneeze? He should stick to remote sensing, where he actually has some expertise.

Read some other critiques at Climate Progress and Barry Bickmore. Anthony Watts and right-wing blogs such as “The American [un]Thinker” offer gullible high praise of course.

Are biofuel policies to help Mother Earth killing her most vulnerable children instead?

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“Are biofuel policies to help Mother Earth killing her most vulnerable children instead?” Indur M. Goklany returns to Anthony Watts’ blog to tell us about his paper in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. Could Biofuel Policies Increase Death and Disease in Developing Countries? reveals how “global warming policies may be helping kill more people than it saves.” OMG, stop everything! We’re killing poor people!

I always think it’s a bit dodgy when a scientific paper title is in the form of a question. Maybe because the author is ever so slightly overreaching? “Could” is about as close as Indur gets to any kind of supporting evidence. He calls his research an “exploratory analysis”. With, apparently, exploratory conclusions.

Who reviewed and published it? Oops, The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons is a “politically conservative non-profit organization“. They are anti-vaccination, anti-universal healthcare, pro-gun, don’t think HIV causes AIDS, try to link abortion to breast cancer and claim that illegal immigrants are bringing leprosy to America. Nice.

But is Indur Goklany right? Are biofuel production consequences the result of AGW policies? As I recall American ethanol production began as a response to the “energy crisis” in the Seventies. Nothing whatsoever to do with climate. Some current forms of biofuel production can reduce global food availability and increase global food prices. This says more about the enthusiasm of agribusiness for government subsidies than it does about attempts to reverse AGW. Biofuels are primarily an economic issue.

Indur Goklany illustrates a linear process as a circle, but leaves something out.

This is just another one of Indur’s right-wing think-tank revisionist efforts. Based on a fast-and-loose numbers, with an exaggerated connection to climate policy and used to infer imaginary negative future consequences. This time, instead of understating the consequences of AGW we get an overstatement of AGW’s alleged political power.

Hurricanes and global warming – still no connection

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“Hurricanes and global warming – still no connection“. Yep, the tripling of loss-relevant weather events over the past 30 years is just coincidence to Anthony Watts. After-all, denialist economist Roger Pielke Jr. can explain it all away with just the merest jiggering of his arbitrary cost analysis! It will be decades before these storms get really destructive, if you ignore sea-level rise. Thus disproving Global Warming.

Funny, Roger sang a different tune back in 2006 when he said “Clearly, since 1970, climate change has shaped the disaster loss record.”

Anthony’s typically trivial contribution is to mutter about photoshopping in magazine articles and on book covers, and link to his own “definitive” past coverage of the subject. If you want to step back from the hurricane strawman, Skeptical Science says:

“It is unclear whether global warming is increasing hurricane frequency out there but there is increasing evidence that warming increases hurricane intensity”.

Anthony and Roger’s scientific nemesis Joe Romm (in the sense that Joe is a scientist) at Climate Progress says,

So one thing you can safely say about a hurricane damage analysis study: Its conclusions should not be generalized into broader conclusions about the impact of climate change on extreme weather.

So, what’s the deal? Just more denialist smoke.

The Northeast snowstorm of 2010 by satellite view

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“The Northeast snowstorm of 2010 by satellite view“. Gosh, a December 28th satellite photo of the snowstorm in the Northeastern US, the “Image of the Day” at the NASA Earth Observatory website, must mean that Global Warming is a fraud! Just ask Anthony Watts.

Jeff Masters includes it with his top US weather events of 2010 and makes this insightful comment (italics mine):

The Northeast has seen an inordinate number of top-ten snowstorms in the past ten years, raising the question of whether this is due to random chance or a change in the climate. A study by Houston and Changnon (2009) on the top ten heaviest snows on record for each of 121 major U.S. cities showed no upward or downward trend in these very heaviest snowstorms during the period 1948 – 2001. It would be interesting to see if they repeated their study using data from the past decade if the answer would change. As I stated in my blog post, The United States of Snow in February, bigger snowstorms are not an indication that global warming is not occurring. The old adage, “it’s too cold to snow”, has some truth to it, and there is research supporting the idea that the average climate in the U.S. is colder than optimal to support the heaviest snowstorms. For example, Changnon et al. (2006) found that for the contiguous U.S. between 1900 – 2001, 61% – 80% of all heavy snowstorms of 6+ inches occurred during winters with above normal temperatures. The authors also found that 61% – 85% of all heavy snowstorms of 6+ inches occurred during winters that were wetter than average. The authors conclude, “a future with wetter and warmer winters, which is one outcome expected (National Assessment Synthesis Team 2001), will bring more heavy snowstorms of 6+ inches than in 1901 – 2000.” The authors found that over the U.S. as a whole, there had been a slight but significant increase in heavy snowstorms of 6+ inches than in 1901 – 2000. If the climate continues to warm, we should expect an increase in heavy snow events for a few decades, until the climate grows so warm that we pass the point where winter temperatures are at the optimum for heavy snow events.

Antarctic Ice Cores: The Sample Rate Problem

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“Antarctic Ice Cores: The Sample Rate Problem“. Geologist David Middleton returns to tell us that those Antarctic ice cores that seem to support the climatology conspiracy consensus can’t be trusted. After-all, the ice doesn’t permanently capture the CO2 level at the exact instant it begins to form. Also, maybe CO2 got sucked out of the old ice. And everyone knows that only second-by-second CO2 samples can be trusted.

Actually, David is suggesting that the ice CO2 levels blend a bit. He wants us to think that maybe there have been large fluctuations in atmospheric CO2 that have been blurred together and are no longer seen in the ice samples, maybe the modern CO2 trend just happens to be an ordinary large natural swing in CO2, and that we just happen to be at the peak of one of those “swings”.

Although, if the ice cores chanced to suit denialist wishes I’m sure they’d be just fine. In this case the erratic plant leaf stomata CO2 proxy values (sotto voce: does David know that they are a computer model?) are praised because they show large fluctuations that can be used to “prove” that there has been wide variation in the modern era and hence today’s CO2 levels are perfectly natural.

This puzzling quote comes from one of the apparently supporting papers, CO2 diffusion in polar ice: observations from naturally formed CO2 spikes in the Siple Dome (Antarctica) ice core (italics mine):

“Smoothing of the CO2 record by diffusion is one to two orders of magnitude smaller than the smoothing by diffusion in the firn at the depth of 287m (gas age = 2.74 kyr BP) in the Siple Dome ice, and so does not degrade the record.”

So… scientists know about this crazy diffusion thing and have been able to assess it as being insignificant. So what’s David really trying to do?