Monthly Archives: April 2010

Global warming: The Oxburgh Inquiry was an offer he couldn’t refuse.

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“Global warming: The Oxburgh Inquiry was an offer he couldn’t refuse.” A criminal conspiracy theory from Thomas Fuller, a denialist political commentator at the San Francisco Examiner, who asks a number of ominous leading questions about the Oxburgh Inquiry into the claimed scientific criticisms that arose from the Climategate e-mails.

Do I believe the ‘mob directed the investigation?’ Of course not. Do I believe that Lord Oxburgh had additional reasons to weight the findings of his investigation in favor of the status quo? It’s certainly possible. Do I think that having an underworld connection to renewable energy subsidies prejudices almost every decision made about renewable energy? Definitely.

Eeek! Sounds like a job for Steven Seagal.

Note that Fuller was a very early actor in the effort to leverage the inconsequential stolen Climate Research Unit e-mails into a scientific and political scandal.

Predictions Of Global Mean Temperatures & IPCC Projections

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“Predictions Of Global Mean Temperatures & IPCC Projections“. A guest post by Girma Orssengo “B. Tech, MASc, PhD”. He’s created a mathematical model that predicts global cooling by about 0.42 deg C by 2030. Good work! Take the rest of the day off, everyone.

Uh oh, he doesn’t even know the name of the institution whose temperature data he has used. What is the “Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the Hadley Center”? CRU is part of the University of East Anglia. The Hadley Centre is part of the Meteorological Office.

Left unmentioned is the critical mechanism behind his “mathematical model”. What drives all this? I vote for mermaids. Wait, make that pirates. Or… pirates and mermaids, working together.

Update 2010/05/13: I must have rushed this post, here’s Dr. Orssengo’s evidence in chart form:

Not a great fit or even a prediction of declining temperature. Source: WUWT.

Graham comes to his senses, dumps support for climate bill, “Lurch” in a lurch

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Graham comes to his senses, dumps support for climate bill, “Lurch” in a lurch. A Republican politician, South Carolina’s Senator Graham, withdraws his support for an energy bill because he doesn’t like an immigration bill. Clearly, the problem was with the energy bill and Sen. Graham as “come to his senses”.

Oh, wait. The Washington Post article actually says that Sen. Graham felt that “only a focused effort on a climate and energy bill could ensure its passage.“

Kind of the opposite of Anthony’s headline.

Anthony’s commenters aren’t fooled though, they know that Sen. Graham is a despised “Democrat in Republican clothing.”

Inside The Eureka Weather Station

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“Inside The Eureka Weather Station“. Anthony Watts has an exposé on the suddenly notorious Eureka arctic weather station in Nunavut, Canada. OMG, that crazy temperature spike that Anthony and Co. were ranting about as obviously bad data was real! Oops.

The weather station manager has even provided photos and answered questions! They’re not idiots after all! But Anthony will no doubt have 300 nits to pick based on this new information.

This is looking like a pretty eager-to-please, open-door conspiracy.

Butterfly study: a case study in confirmation bias

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“Butterfly study: a case study in confirmation bias“. Anthony Watts wants us to know that there is a bias against skeptics in the scientific literature. Marc Hendrickx, denialist Australian blogger and “part time consulting geologist”, submitted a Comment on a paper on Biology Letters called Early emergence in a butterfly causally linked to anthropogenic warming. It was rejected for basically lacking any basis.

Poor Hendrickx, a denialist geologist trying to attack a biology study, then asks Anthony’s readers for help improving it! Talk about the blind leading the blind.

Hendrickx presents his full Comment and the text of his rejection. He’s so deep in Dunning–Kruger that he badly misconstrued this bemused complete response by Referee 2 (italics are Hendrickx’s oblivious addition):

In the short intro, the author writes twice “phonological changes”. I guess that would be “phenological changes”? (MH based on this I take it that Ref 2 was generally happy with the manuscript)

Perhaps Anthony thinks this is an example of insightful research unjustly rejected because of the alleged bias against skeptics in the scientific literature? If so it’s Anthony with the ‘confirmation bias.’

Russian scientist suggests colder times ahead, cites UHI as a worry

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“Russian scientist suggests colder times ahead, cites UHI as a worry“. My gosh, Anthony Watts has proof that there’s no Global Warming! It’s all Urban Heat Island effect, which no-one has ever noticed. Just ask Oleg Pokrovsky from the Voeikov Main Geophysical Observatory.

He apparently claims, on the basis of nothing, that there has been a 12 year “Arctic cold snap” that no-one has noticed. They’ve all been tricked by those lyin’ thermometers in the US which are merely showing UHI effects. Eye-roll.

New book from Dr. Roy Spencer

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“New book from Dr. Roy Spencer“. Anthony Watts gives us the press release for Dr. Roy Spencer’s new book entitled (with great hubris) “The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists“. Dr. Spencer is widely known as an enthusiastic denialist whose own blunders are well recorded.

The press release is a comically amateur effort at convincing and not describing. Get a load of this random unsubstantiated bunk (italics mine):

Believe it or not, this potential natural explanation for recent warming has never been seriously researched by climate scientists. The main reason they have ignored this possibility is that they cannot think of what might have caused it.

There are tens of thousands of papers discussing natural forcings in climatology. Here’s another juicy bit (italics Dr. Spencer’s):

But in Blunder I address what other scientists should have the courage to admit: that maybe putting more CO2 in the atmosphere is a good thing.

Man, that’s so 2008.

You have to love headings like “NATURE’S SUNSHADE: CLOUDS” and “CARBON DIOXIDE: FRIEND OR FOE?” too. I’m having flashbacks to my Grade Eight science project.

Dial “M” for mangled – Wikipedia and Environment Canada caught with temperature data errors.

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“Dial “M” for mangled – Wikipedia and Environment Canada caught with temperature data errors.” Anthony Watts finds another report of cherry-picked errors in raw airport temperature data again, this time by “Ecotretas” about the Canadian High Arctic community of Eureka, Nunavut. Darn those human beings and their inconsistent data entry! Or those malfunctioning gadgets! Or maybe those trucks running right beside the thermometer! Or something.

These kinds of data quality errors are corrected before being used in climate modeling. Hence irrelevant to the Global Warming debate. Anthony almost figures it out here (italics mine):

[Here is where it really gets strange, I’ve added two screencaps from Environment Canada, on for the monthly data, another for the daily data from July 14th, 2009. They don’t match! The 20.9C value never appears in the July 14th hourly data. Click images below to enlarge, EC’s July 2009 Monthly report on the left, July 14th, 2009 daily/hourly data on the right. Perhaps EC corrected the error in the daily/hourly data, but missed the monthly?  – Anthony]

Also, as a geologist and a Canadian, I always laugh when people like Anthony get confused by map projections. According to him the Eureka airport data is “responsible for the very big stripe on the very top of Canada.” Um, no. It looks that way because the Earth is being represented using the cylindrical Mercator projection method, which distorts (magnifies) polar regions.