Monthly Archives: April 2010

WUWT Sea Ice News #2

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““. Steven Goddard Photoshops some sea ice extent maps and enthusiastically declares “Arctic ice extent is normal.” Well, nearly. Naturally he only wants to talk about the one data series that briefly popped above “normal” and not about the others, which… don’t.

Steven’s also excited that Arctic weather patterns may produce an anomalous high sea ice extent next winter. I can see that he’s going to wear himself out thrashing wildly back and forth about weather. It’s irrelevant. Why was the record 2007 sea ice extent minimum a cause for concern? Because it was part of a climate trend.

Some other rhetorical master-strokes: mocking a 40 year-old old newspaper report, and embedding a juvenile YouTube clip from the film Airplane!

New ground truth: soil microbe negative feedback

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“New ground truth: soil microbe negative feedback“. Another month, another “game-changer” claim from Anthony Watts. Yes the denialist “game” does indeed keep changing.

In this case, Anthony has found a press release from the University of California, Irvine titled Soil microbes produce less atmospheric CO2 than expected with climate warming. Here’s a quote that sums up the findings:

The new simulations suggest that if microbial efficiency declines in a warmer world, carbon dioxide emissions will fall back to pre-warming levels, a pattern seen in field experiments. But if microbes manage to adapt to the warmth – for instance, through increased enzyme activity – emissions could intensify.

Fungi to the rescue! We’re saved, Anthony! Saved! Saved… Saved?

Anthony’s grasping at straws again. Yes, microbial contributions to the carbon cycle are significant. No, their potentially steady-state contribution isn’t going to magically offset human CO2 production.

Next “game-changer” coming in… one month.

Al Gore says “Denialists in Denial”

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Al Gore says “Denialists in Denial”. Anthony Watts shows what a big man he is by comparing himself to Al Gore (or “Al, Baby” as he respectfully calls him). Apparently WUWT has a higher “rank” than algore.com does according to alexa.com. These kinds of web statistics are widely understood as meaningless, especially when comparing websites with different purposes such as Anthony’s frenzied argument and Gore’s policy-orientation.

Of course most of Al Gore’s activity is through altogether separate websites such as The Alliance for Climate Protection, The Climate Project, Live Earth and An Inconvenient Truth. He’s also read nation-wide and a popular public speaker. But Anthony’s paranoid-obsessive readers give him way more “hits”.

Anthony’s adolescent outburst is a lame attempt to move the focus away from both Al Gore’s criticism of denialist Richard Lindzen’s dishonest op-ed in the Wall Street Journal and Gore’s link to The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder dismantling of the same.

Australia dumps Carbon Trading Scheme

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“Australia dumps Carbon Trading Scheme“. Politicians focussing on short-term political goals in the face of partisan opposition is somehow proof to Anthony Watts that Global Warming isn’t happening. Whatever.

By the way they delayed the carbon trading scheme, they didn’t “dump” it.

Quote of the week #34: NASA doubts climate model certainty

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“Quote of the week #34: NASA doubts climate model certainty“. Anthony Watts wants you to believe that because a NASA pamphlet from 1998 is not “completely certain” about Global Warming, they must now be taking orders from the secret Al Gore gubmint. It’s called science, Anthony. Better data, better understanding, better conclusions. Is that a difficult concept?

It’s the denialist mind that is frozen in time and unable to process new information. That’s why they’re called denialists.

Anthony’s also jumping onto this month’s denialist theme that “historic temperatures can be modeled with a constant linear trend + a 60 year cycle.” Too bad they can’t actually explain the correlation, too bad the correlation doesn’t persist, too bad the “constant linear trend” is up (what’s behind that I wonder).

HuffPo: “Deniers” clogging up the blogosphere

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HuffPo: “Deniers” clogging up the blogosphere. Now the Huffington Post isn’t exactly science central, but watching Anthony Watts try to mock them is like watching a cretin laugh at an idiot.

The article is here; Climate Deniers are Polluting the Blogosphere, but Anthony’s summary is “Gosh, excercising [sp] free speech and questioning assumptions, why, why, they’re TERRIBLE!” He also repeats the unsupported hope that “the bulk of opinion has shifted.”

Actually among other things the article identifies these familiar denialist tactics:

Deniers often pile up comments on climate change-related articles, most of which may be grouped into the following categories:

  1. Humor (i.e. “What’s next, cow farts?” or “Since carbonated beverages release CO2 into the atmosphere, will CalEPA be outlawing beer and sodas in California?”)
  2. Political (making fun of Al Gore, partisan name calling)
  3. Bullying, name calling, threats
  4. Despair (i.e. “we’re all doomed, humans will go extinct anyway”)
  5. Junk science — quoting disreputed sources that reinforce denier preconceptions, or using simple but wrong aphorisms (confusing weather and climate, or saying the climate is always changing)
  6. Obfuscation – burying your opposition under a mountain of obscure but usually irrelevant statistics
  7. Economic fear — (i.e. “if we take action on climate, all businesses will leave CA, and we’ll lose jobs”)

Looks to me like someone’s noticed Anthony’s army of ditto-heads.

Who says asphalt isn’t natural?

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“Who says asphalt isn’t natural?” Why is it that when scientists report something surprising Anthony Watts has to sneer? Here Anthony posts a University of California, Santa Barbara press release titled “Scientists discover underwater asphalt volcanoes“.

I guess Anthony sees it as a chance to build on the theme that scientists don’t know nuthin’. It’s especially hard for him to resist when it gives him an incidental chance to pump his discredited “analysis” of US weather stations. Today he includes a cherry-picked Utah “climate monitoring station” that has its temperature sensors in a paved parking lot. Is this station used for climate data? Who knows.

Asphalt volcano schematic. Source: University of California, Santa Barbara.

Quite interesting actually. Natural oil seeps are well-known, but this an unusual kind of deposit. By chance I have a natural “asphalt” specimen of my own, collected from a small High Arctic tar sand deposit.

Climate Change and the dinosaurs

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“Climate Change and the dinosaurs“. Anthony Watts has found a press release from Plymouth University. Geological evidence from Norway suggests that during the Cretaceous period, characterized by substantially higher CO2 levels than today, there were several abrupt temperature drops:

over a period of a few hundred or a few thousand years, ocean temperatures fell from an average of 13 degrees centigrade to between eight and four degrees.

Anthony’s implication is that this kind of ancient temperature change shows that there are potential natural drivers as strong as the theorized current man-made changes. So it mustn’t be our fault this time either.

Of course the study found evidence of sudden temperature drops, not rises.

Gore associate said to be named in brewing ethics scandal

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“Gore associate said to be named in brewing ethics scandal“. Anthony Watts is excited that a Republican operative is promising a scandalous revelation about a Gore Obama associate on talk radio today.

Update:

Surprising documents made available to this author reveal that Assistant Secretary of Energy Cathy Zoi has a huge financial stake in companies likely to profit from the Obama administration’s “green” policies.

Those “surprising documents”? Disclosure forms submitted by Zoi when she was hired by the Department of Energy. Ooooh, good sleuthing.