Monthly Archives: April 2010

“It really shows what’s been going on in the Arctic – it’s falling apart.”

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“It really shows what’s been going on in the Arctic – it’s falling apart.” Anthony Watts tells the kids to get off his lawn, and no they can’t have their baseball back. I’m not sure why Anthony has such a bug about people going to the Arctic and reporting on what they see, but it does seem to make him grouchy.

Stupid 15 year-olds! Photo provided by GE and Scott Draper

15 year-old Parker Liautaud is skiing to the North Pole and naturally tweeting and blogging about it en-route. Somehow this disgusts Anthony. He has reposted Tom Nelson’s blog posting “Another warmist in the Arctic: GE sponsors 15-year-old to promote climate hoax“.

It’s full of snide remarks such as this:

Of course, anybody can go to the North Pole, and blog about it, by paying a tour guide like this one that is with the 15 year old right now.

Anthony Watts and Tom Nelson need to grow up.

Conservamentalism

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“Conservamentalism“. Anthony Watts thinks that Willis Eschenbach dime-store ethics demonstrates a commendably virile approach to the environment.

It is not often that I turn a comment into a complete post, but this comment from Willis Eschenbach on the Trust and Mistrust article today, merits such a promotion. – Anthony

It seems Willis caught some flak in the comments from the “Tea Party” battalion for daring to express some “environmental” perspectives. How un-American.

Willis is quick to reassure every one of his manly credentials and propose a suitably red-blooded name for is perspective. No namby-pamby crying over sea pups for him. Kill what you eat, and eat your kill! He just wants to use resources efficiently.

Does Conservamentalism combine conservative with fundamentalism? No, conservation and environmentalism.

Faint young sun paradox explained by Stanford – greenhouse effect not involved

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“Faint young sun paradox explained by Stanford – greenhouse effect not involved“. Anthony Watts wants us to know the two billion years ago, the Greenhouse effect was not responsible for keeping the Earth warm in spite of the Sun’s lower energy output. Therefore, Global Warming is a scam.

This is actually a Stanford University press release about a study of ancient banded iron formations (which are fascinating sediments). Apparently a “vast ocean” managed to absorb and retain enough heat to stay liquid.

As always, Anthony the ‘critical thinker’ jumps straight in because it can be spun towards denialist beliefs. I’m not so sure that I accept this yet, but it’s interesting science. Were the early oceans really that much larger than present?

NSIDC: Arctic Sea Ice Melt Season – latest start on record

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“NSIDC: Arctic Sea Ice Melt Season – latest start on record“. Anthony Watts feints amnesia to infer that an NSIDC Sea Ice News report called “Cold snap causes late-season growth spurt” means that a cold Arctic winter has disproved Global Warming.

Remember why this is the latest start on record, Anthony? We both posted about it two days ago.

Sugar, you're goin' down. Source: NSIDC.

A New And Effective Climate Model

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“A New And Effective Climate Model“. A 5,699 word guest post by Stephen Wilde, who has falsely identified himself as a meteorologist, states that existing climate models have “no predictive skill whatever despite huge advances in processing power and the application of millions or even billions of man hours from reputable and experienced scientists over many decades“. That’ll surprise the climatologists who have been predicting things pretty well for some time now.

But he’s here to set it all right. He’s got a “serious hypothesis”! It involves talking about “Solar surface turbulence”, boiling pots and sandwiches. Backed up by newspaper article references. Groan. Looks like textbook example of the Dunning–Kruger effect.

Why is Anthony posting this goof-ball rubbish? Oh I see. This line, buried 3/4 of the way down – “The contribution of the Greenhouse effect is miniscule.”

In spite of the generally credulous welcome given to this nonsense in the WUWT comments, Solar Physicist Leif Svalgaard makes this authoritative and entertaining comment, taking two sentences to address Wilde’s 5,699 words:

I think the first two points:
1: Solar surface turbulence increases causing an expansion of the Earth’s atmosphere.
2: Resistance to outgoing longwave radiation reduces, energy is lost to space faster.
are wrong, and hence the rest.
The part of the atmosphere [the thermosphere] that expands and contracts is 1 centimeter thick [if at same pressure as at the surface] and contains 1/1000,000 the number of molecules, so has no measurable effect on point 2.

Sediments Show Pattern in Earth’s Long-Term Climate Record

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“Sediments Show Pattern in Earth’s Long-Term Climate Record“. Anthony Watts wants us to know about a press release detailing UC Santa Barbara geologist Lorraine Lisiecki’s analysis sediment records as they correlate with the Earth’s long-term climate record. Thus all Global Warming is natural!!!!!!

Note the scale in hundreds of thousands of years. Source: wikimedia

This may be an interesting refinement of the long-known influence of fluctuations in the Earth’s orbit, but these extremely gradual changes play no part in the rapid changes we are experiencing now.

Try again, Anthony.

Damage control: Greenpeace removes threats

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“Damage control: Greenpeace removes threats“. I’m not a particular fan of Greenpeace, but I have to laugh at Anthony Watts’ trembling indignation over a climate post on their website that was replaced with an honest and detailed explanation. The original post had a disclaimer of sorts at the start and didn’t go off the deep end until the last paragraph or two of a fairly conventional commentary, but that didn’t stop Watts and Co. from goin’ to town.

“Bullshit” declares Anthony. He knows that they’re still out to get him.

Play on.

More “hiding the decline”

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More “hiding the decline”. Anthony Watts excerpts a Steve McIntyre post about some oxygen isotope data (a temperature proxy) from the Law Dome in Antarctica that wasn’t used by the evil climatologists because it proves that there was a Medieval Warm Period all over the world.

Except it doesn’t. It’s just one in a collection of historical southern hemisphere temperature proxies. Some are more reliable than others, some show warming trends during different time periods and some don’t. The Law Dome oxygen isotope data exclusion was described in the report, but McIntyre chooses to label that as insufficient. Surprise!

Why wasn’t used? McIntyre has only conspiracy theories. His ignorance must be hard-won because he includes, but completely disregards, this quote from Dr. Jonathan Overpeck in a stolen “Climategate” e-mail:

If we have multiple conflicting temp recons from Law Dome, and one can’t be shown from the literature as being the best, then we should state that, and show neither.

That seems like a clear reason to me. But hey Steve throw it against the wall, mutter a bit, and see if it sticks!

I love “Dr.” Steve’s quote from his own IPCC AR4 Review comments:

6-1231 B 34:12 34:12 What happened to the Law Dome proxy? Why isn’t it shown? [Stephen McIntyre (Reviewer’s comment ID #: 309-115)]

The distilled essence of obsessive nit-picking! Not an ounce (err, gram) of scientific purpose behind the comment. A useful comment would have made a case for including the Law Dome proxy, but all Steve can say is “why?”.

Global Warming and “The Early Spring” Part II

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Global Warming and “The Early Spring” Part II. Steven Goddard has scurried around collecting quotes about whether Spring in England is early or late. Because if Spring in England is late this year, then there’s no way that Global Warming could be true! Anthony Watts endorses this drivel.

Snow! In England! Evidence from: BBC News

Repeat after me: “weather is not climate.“

March Global Sea Surface Temperatures

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“March Global Sea Surface Temperatures“. Bob Tisdale posts a whack of charts and plots derived from NOAA’s National Operational Model Archive & Distribution System (NOMADS) data. Not much interpretation though, maybe because the temperature trends seem to be upward.

Anthony however is confident enough to conclude about the global surface temperatures reported earlier today: “we have the likely primary driver of that number, a persistent El Nino in the Pacific.”

I’m scratching my head over the difference between these two versions of the March Global SST Anomalies. Similar, but somehow Bob’s version minimizes the orangey bits.

Bob Tisdale's version of the March 2010 SST anomalies.

NOAA's version of the March 2010 SST anomalies.