Monthly Archives: April 2010

Of Hawks and Handsaws

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“Of Hawks and Handsaws“. Willis Eschenbach, citizen-scientist, has more pretty pictures with data stuck on top of them. He’s figured out that if you slap a bunch of thick lines representing cyclic annual trends on top of each other and obscure their order, you can hide the incline pretty handily.

His expert eyeballing tells him that there’s an Urban Heat Island effect at work in Scandinavia! You betcha. And there’s nothing like a quote from Shakespeare to give an intellectual air to an empty argument. (The cheesy clip-art kind of undermines that though.)

Who needs to bother with statistical analysis when you can pull a powerful ‘intuitive’ conclusion like this from thin air? Italics mine:

At least part of the warming in the US and the NORDKLIM datasets is the result of UHI distortion of the records. An unknown but likely significant amount of this UHI heating is due to direct energy consumption in the cities.

You know what would give this claim some credibility? Credible statistics.

Another indication of MWP and LIA being global

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“Another indication of MWP and LIA being global“. Suddenly Anthony Watts likes temperature proxies because here they seem to go his way… In this case he’s been pointed toward a juicy Letter in Nature back in August of 2009 that proves that the Medieval Warm Period was global. At least in one place. OK then, what do we really have?

The denialist CO2 Science website (aka “Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change”, founded by a Peabody Energy operative) posted their own summary and “adapted” figure from the Nature Letter “2,000-year-long temperature and hydrology reconstructions from the Indo-Pacific warm pool.” It used Oxygen18 isotopes from planktonic foraminifera to estimate historical temperatures.

Strangely neither Anthony or CO2 Science provide a quick link to the claimed proof, but you can read the abstract here. Perhaps their coyness was triggered by the last sentence of the real abstract (emphasis mine)?

A companion reconstruction of delta18O of sea water—a sea surface salinity and hydrology indicator—indicates a tight coupling with the East Asian monsoon system and remote control of IPWP [Indo-Pacific warm pool] hydrology on centennial–millennial timescales, rather than a dominant influence from local SST variation.

Although the authors also state that “Reconstructed SST was, however, within error of modern values” that doesn’t stop Anthony’s buddies from slapping a ruler on the “adapted” figure and declaring “we calculate that the Medieval Warm Period was about 0.4°C warmer than the Current Warm Period.“

Doug Keenan finally gets the tree data

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“Doug Keenan finally gets the tree data“. Anthony Watts declares “victory!” because Guardian writer Fred Pearce reports that “part-time climate analyst, Doug Keenan” who “admits he has no expertise in tree-ring analysis” has used a Freedom of Information request to force Queen’s University to give him proprietary Irish tree-ring study data that covers a 7000 year time span.

Keenan hopes to somehow prove that the Irish tree-rings are evidence of a widespread medieval warm period. Dr. Baillie has published a study with his colleagues showing that Irish oaks record temperature changes poorly, so good luck with that.

Anthony says “It will be interesting to see what independent analysis shows.” Wouldn’t that presumptive eventual Global Warming disproof be the actual “victory”? I think Anthony knows that this quick celebration will be all that he can extract from it other than the start of a new round of misrepresentation.

“Keenan has become notorious for pursuing a series of vitriolic disputes with British academics over climate data.” How unusual.

Is Fossil Fuel CO2 Different From Volcanic CO2?

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“Is Fossil Fuel CO2 Different From Volcanic CO2?“. Steven Goddard is wearing his fingers to the bone this week, and must be getting facial spasms from all the sneering. Here he’s trying to pick on a Guardian article, Iceland volcano causes fall in carbon emissions as eruption grounds aircraft, that basically says the CO2 released by the Eyjafjallajokull volcano is less than the decline in CO2 emissions that has resulted from the temporary cessation of transatlantic flights.

This argument about “fossil fuel” vs “volcanic” CO2 is completely in Steven’s mind.

Royal Ash: Royal society jumps on magma driven worry express

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“Royal Ash: Royal society jumps on magma driven worry express“. Anthony Watts posts more idiocy from Steven Goddard, this time referencing dumb Hollywood disaster flicks to mischaracterize a collection of papers about geological responses (mainly seismic) to climate change. Steven seems to suggest that, over the weekend, the Royal Society whipped up a series of papers from the 2009 conference on Climate forcing of geological and geomorphological hazards (read the preface here) to capitalize on concern over the Icelandic eruptions. However it’s the denialists who specialize in insta-bunk.

Here’s one of the ‘outrageous’ statements in the Daily Telegraph (ugh) article that he links to:

And he warned: ”The rise you may need may be much smaller than we expect. Looking ahead at climate change, we may not need massive changes.

”One of the worries is that tiny environmental changes could have these effects.”

Earth (so to speak) to Steve and Anthony: the planet is in many ways quite delicately balanced. Some small changes can trigger large geologic events. That’s the gist of the Royal Society’s papers. Please don’t substitute your arrogance for rational thought processes.

Ash cloud models – overrated? A word on Post Normal Science by Dr. Jerome Ravetz

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“Ash cloud models – overrated? A word on Post Normal Science by Dr. Jerome Ravetz“. Post Normal Science, a rather odd theoretical description of how scientific research is supposedly manipulated by authorities, has become a short-hand at WUWT for two things:

  1. Scientists cheating to get the results that support their prejudices.
  2. Unaccountable government figures suppressing the rights of the individual for their own purposes.

The flight ban imposed because of the dangers posed by the Iceland ash cloud is proving a fertile topic for denialists obsessed with government activity…

Clean air, a problem?

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“Clean air, a problem?” Anthony complains that those do-good tree hugging environmentalists have made Global Warming worse by removing all that useful air pollution. Except that Global Warming isn’t happening, right?

The LA Times’, Why cleaner air could speed global warming, which Anthony helpfully pastes into his post, is what has set him off.

Anthony, I hope you’re readers don’t realise that our efforts at reducing air pollution are a pretty good example of how we could mitigate Global Warming if we were serious about it…

Volcanoes and Water

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“Volcanoes and Water“. Steven Goddard tells us that volcanic eruptions are mostly steam and ash. Because The Guardian was stupid enough to say in a caption that the cloud rising from the Eyjafjallajokull eruption in Iceland contained smoke!

Correct but irrelevant, Steven. I’m not so sure about your theory that volcanic explosions are due to contact with water though. I think that depressurization of the magma and sudden release of contained gasses might be involved.

But that’s a nice collection of volcano photos.

New weekly feature: WUWT Sea Ice News

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“New weekly feature: WUWT Sea Ice News“. Anthony Watts give obsessive denialists a weekly destination for wild statements about current sea ice extents. There’s nothing Anthony likes better than to talk about the weather when the topic at hand is actually climate.

In the opening installment, Steven Goddard starts with juvenile remarks about Al Gore and then throws up the usual spray of Arctic sea ice maps. It’s almost “average”! No talk about sea ice volume of course because that’s not a helpful statistic.

Come Rain or Come Shine

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“Come Rain or Come Shine“. Willis Eschenbach tells us that Global Warming will be good because “a warmer world is a wetter world”. For the USA anyway. So far, anyway. That seems to be the entire argument.