Yawn… Hey, the sun came back! It warm again! (Note to self: the junk calories at Watts Up With That are no foundation whatsoever for a proper hibernation; Anthony gamed that stupid internet popularity poll! He is not the handsomest man in school.)
As I dozed off in January the global (i.e. my neighbourhood) temperature trends (for a few weeks at least) indicated the clear return of a new ice age. How I wept bitter tears as I shuffled into the den I share with Al Gore, knowing I had been fooled by those climate scientists and their greedy self-interest!
Yet I was already too sleepy to beseech forgiveness from the noble citizen-scientists who had so bravely rejected the alleged evidence and the so-called physical science. The warming had stopped, just like Henrik Svensmark had said it would. Snow was falling (somewhere), just as Anthony Watts was always pointing out. The Arctic sea ice was piling up anew just a Steve Goddard had promised. CO2 was plant food! I knew I was in for more than the usual number of hibernation dreams in which I found myself in public without my fur on.
…
So what’s happened during my nap? Let’s gather a list of Anthony’s winter whoppers in the comments. I hear that Anthony has been encouraging his readers to drown out scientist’s voices. And did Watts really try to wriggle into the spotlight and falsely pre-announce the results of Dr. Richard Muller’s Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project’s “skeptic” dream-team reexamination of global temperature trends, only to misrepresent their initial findings and declare that they were dead to him because it, err, matched the published scientific consensus?
Here are some entertaining (or infuriating if you are Anthony Watts) quotes from Dr. Muller’s 2011-03-31 Testimony to the Committee on Science, Space and Technology, who was brought in by the controlling tea-party Republicans as a dependable tame scientist:
“Many US stations have low quality rankings according to a study led by Anthony Watts. However, we find that the warming seen in the “poor” stations is virtually indistinguishable from that seen in the “good” stations.” and later, “Did such poor station quality exaggerate the estimates of global warming? We’ve studied this issue, and our preliminary answer is no.”
“In our preliminary analysis of these stations, we found a warming trend that is shown in the figure. It is very similar to that reported by the prior groups: a rise of about 0.7 degrees C since 1957.”
“The Berkeley Earth agreement with the prior analysis surprised us” [Must suck when your boasts of transparency prevent you from jigging things to match your personal biases, eh Dr. Muller? Don’t worry, your Republican pals will legislate the Earth’s temperature, along with the value of pi and that annoying evolution thing.]
Which brings us to this website… As much as I try to have fun with Anthony Watts’ malicious website, I can’t keep this up by myself. Getting inside Anthony’s head is not only time-consuming but corrosive and claustrophobic, and my Significant Other is much more fun to interact with. In the Fall I had some research help from a few readers, which I greatly appreciated. I need to find a way to facilitate this more directly and where appropriate recognize contributions. Put your thinking caps on and look for a post here discussing some options.
In the meantime, I’ve finally got e-mail working here and you can contact me privately at ben@wottsupwiththat.com.
Wott's Up With That? 
Hey, welcome back! We missed ya!!
Watts and the Muller thing is a real wheeze. Glad to read your take on it.
Welcome back!
Sadly, poor Anthony will be saddled forever with these prophetic words made on March 6th, 2011.
The evil irony is, if you now use the link provided by Salon, Anthony has much modified his comments of the day, and yet the intertubes will not forget his Freudian slip, no matter how hard he tries to evade the facts.
Thanks, for I have even created a small sub reddit to debunk Anthony’s fake science blog output too!
[The more the merrier! On the topic of the Anthony’s reaction to the initial, inconvenient, results of the BEST review Salon’s follow-up on April 4th is also illuminating. Watts publishes the most incendiary statements he can (and allows worse in the comments), but he always tries to slip away from any personal accountability. – Ben]
Ben:
Glad you’re back: i have checked every day.
I don’t know if I can be any help. Rationality in the face of troubled thinking may be beyond me. As well, I checked WUWT today and found that so little was being offered , with such verbosity and venom that I can’t take it seriously. I got bored. Watts is a better arguemet for ignoring Watts than I could ever make.
Having said that , the thread about Mann having Ball in a vice was amusing. Nobody there knows how Ball has shriveled under legal scrutiny.
Hooray! Good to see ya.
I’m obliged to admit that I’ve used you (and others) as a way of avoiding going to that place. A bit like peering through the murky windows of the worst cafe in town, relying on others to actually buy and taste the ghastly offerings.
Can’t promise too much. But when I’m in the mood, I will have the occasional peek and give you a copy of the day’s specials on the menu, suitably wiped off for easier reading.
Missed ya, Ben.
Anthony is annoyed
Publishing emails without the author’s permission? Leaving errors uncorrected? Absolutely outrageous, I am sure we can all agree.
[It’s hard not to snort when Anthony goes into outraged hypocrite mode. – Ben]