Monthly Archives: October 2011

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project puts PR before peer review

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“The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project puts PR before peer review” (2011-10-20). Remember the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) study begun by the “reliable” Dr. Richard Muller? Their results are in and it seems Anthony Watts has been run over by reality and taken away by the wahhhhhambulance.

Back in March Anthony seemed sure that the BEST study would be free of the corruption, manipulation and deception, unlike everything the thousands of other climate scientists had produced. He declared that he was “prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong.”

Suddenly, for some reason, Anthony’s tune has changed. Now Anthony is disgusted by Dr. Muller’s “media blitz” of his results. Results that, inconveniently, confirm all the conventional analyses of modern temperature trends and completely gut Anthony’s years of false criticisms.

Did you know that “Not one of the BEST papers have completed peer review“? It’s sort of true! Never mind that Anthony spent literally years falsely pre-announcing that his own amateur surface-stations “study” would prove that the rising temperature trend in the USA was the product of biased weather station choice and changing urban environments. Never mind that releasing pre-publication versions of scientific papers is a widespread practice, and never mind that the paper that Anthony was eventually able to help produce couldn’t support his own claims.

Did you know that “a basic procedural error that has been discovered in the methodology that will likely require a rework of the data and calculations, and thus the conclusions may also change“? Eagle-eyed Anthony has discovered that Dr. Muller used too much data! The first rule of cherry picking is to ignore as much data as possible, don’t you know.

Also, despite of Anthony’s habit of continuously posting articles noting localized cold or snow, Anthony wants you to know that “the issue of ‘the world is warming’ is not one that climate skeptics question, it is the magnitude and causes.” Even he’s given up on that. Technically.

Addition: Here’s the BEST’s global temperature trend compared to the three historical temperature trends created by evil, cheating, communist, climatologists. Break out your magnifying glasses and you’ll see that the differences are enormous!

The BEST Temperature Reconstruction matches previous results

BEST Study temperature reconstruction matches previous results! Shocking.

Whether or not the world is really warming, Anthony’s certainly feeling the burn. From Open Mind:

In my opinion it’s clear what Watts is really upset about — the results from the Berkeley team have confirmed that the other main global temperature estimates (NASA GISS, NOAA/NCDC, and HadCRU) got it right, and that station siting/urban heat island effects are not responsible for any of the observed temperature increase. The real reason all these analyses (including Berkeley’s) show temperature rise is: the globe is warming.

I’ll add links to other websites covering this entertaining development as I find them.

High level clouds and surface temperature

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“High level clouds and surface temperature“ (2011-10-06). Anthony Watts thinks that winemaker Erl Happ is S-M-R-T, so he posts his long explanation of why global warming, which isn’t happening, is all because of clouds.

Although tamino has a different opinion of Erl’s science, I’ll just say that I think Erl’s complete quotation of Wordsworth’s poem is the most convincing, and useful, part of his argument.

Next!

Dr. Martin Hertzberg responds to Dr. Michael Mann

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“Dr. Martin Hertzberg responds to Dr. Michael Mann“ (2011-10-05). Anthony Watts posts another letter from Martin Hertzberg to the Vail Daily, this time responding to Dr. Mann’s slap down. Although Martin seems to delight in the attention (a key denialist motivation), he’s simply compounding his failure.

  • If his “hockey stick” criticism is based on the opinion of “a large number of scientists”, please name five relevant scientists.
  • If the “so-called climategate e-mails revealed an appalling lack of scientific integrity and manipulations by a cabal of advocates of that theory”, please name one inquiry that agrees.
  • If the IPCC “got rid of the embarrassing Medieval Warm Period” after Mann’s alleged fabrication of the paleotemperature record, why did it never appear in the global paleotemperature record?
  • If John Daly was “a distinguished Australian scientist” who questioned Mann’s paleotemperature reconstructions, why doe he have no discernible scientific credentials?

Good work, Martin! (You too Anthony.)

Hansen rakes it in

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“Hansen rakes it in” (2011-10-04). A braying Republican lobbyist, Christopher Horner from the “American Tradition Institute”, has discovered that NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen is getting money from people! Why, he’s a “millionaire bureaucrat”! Anthony Watts is naturally all-in with the dumpster-diving. The ATI is busy harassing NASA left, right, and center (although naturally mostly “right”) for their scientific activities with various lawsuits. I guess that’s the their idea of ‘tradition’.

God forbid that a renowned scientist should receive awards and speaking invitations for his research and his expert knowledge, that’s reserved for people like Christopher Horner. Since the money all flows in, somehow, as a result of his “taxpayer-funded employment” he is clearly an indentured servant who needs his chains tightened just a tiny bit.

Funny how just a few days ago Anthony was again trying to claim the high ground with his “heartfelt” post about how nasty the phrase “denialist” is, especially when used by the Skeptical Science website (which he subtly reminds his readers has sometimes been abbreviated to “SS”). To prove his sincerely Anthony spent a whole hour changing his “Al Gore is an idiot” tags to just “Al Gore”. Now here he is giving two thumbs up to personal attacks by a partisan operative.

Getting ready for more global warming: Heathrow airport triples snow clearance fleet

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“Getting ready for more global warming: Heathrow airport triples snow clearance fleet“ (2011-09-29). Anthony Watts drags out the hoary old “Snow! Somewhere!” post, this time trying to suggest that “snowier” weather in Britain means “colder” weather everywhere. Thus disproving Global Warming. Again. After-all the BBC tells us so!

Don’t believe the lyin’ BBC when they also report that “the average [UK] first flowering date has been earlier in the last 25 years than in any other period” or that “UK plants are flowering for a second time this year because of the unseasonably warm weather.”

I’m commenting this time because these kinds of posts are like an idiot’s meaningless drool and Anthony is just… so… dribbly.

Forget that regional weather is not an indicator of global climate. Forget that even the regional trend is actually a warming one. Forget that global warming is leading to higher atmospheric moisture levels and that warmer winter air is what produces snow. Forget that Heathrow airport might be investing in snow-removal equipment for business reasons unrelated to climate. Hell, forget that weather is not climate! (That’s kind of mandatory in Anthony’s bizzaro world.)

Just bob your head along to Anthony’s tuneless melody.

In the comments we see that the presence of winter boots in UK shops is proof that Global Warming isn’t happening, as well as wide agreement that the UK Met Office, like all government agencies, is corrupt and incompetent. I also love the always-pompous Smokey’s confusion over the failure of the UK December trend to match the global December trend. Clearly someone hasn’t faked the data carefully enough.

Thanks to Michael Mann’s response, a newspaper censors a letter to the editor ex post facto

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Boom, sez Martin.

Boom, sez Martin.

“Thanks to Michael Mann’s response, a newspaper censors a letter to the editor ex post facto“ (2011-10-02). Anthony Watts tells us that Michael Mann, lead bully of “the Team”, has forced the proud Vail Daily to withdraw a Sept. 30th, 2011 Letter to the Editor from the skeptical mind of Martin Hertzberg, titled Vail Valley Voices: Researcher disputes evidence for global warming.

Could it be that Dr. Mann found Hertzberg’s analysis so embarrassingly accurate that he had to use his secret power connections to eradicate the hated thing? Hmm. No. Dr. Mann never made any such request.

What did he do? He wrote a response on Oct. 1st, 2011 that effectively started with this:

“It’s hard to imagine anyone packing more lies and distortions into a single commentary.”

Someone at the Vail Daily, whose brain cells happened to brush up against each other, had a look and realized that Dr. Mann was right. Really, really, right. The issue suddenly wasn’t about the noble rights of the upstanding Martin Hertzberg, self-identified “long-time denier of human-caused global warming”, to tell whopping great malicious lies. It was about whether the Vail Voice was legally exposed for carelessly spreading his false and defamatory statements. They chose to put as much distance as possible between themselves and what was clearly a piece of crap.

Anthony can’t even keep his indignation straight. He starts off implying that the Vail Daily is a noble vehicle for free speech, but turns on them with a series of nitpicking remarks intended to impugn their professionalism (does Dr. Mann live in Vail? I think not! Why the obsequious one day turnaround for Mann’s response? Why did the paper call Hertzberg a “denier”? Oh, that’s his self-description. Etc).

After all the howling it seems that the Vail Daily has re-posted the offending Letter to the Editor, apparently with some of the stupider things removed. What do we learn about Martin Hertzberg? He’s a big fan of the deceptive Oregon Petition. He knows that the greenhouse effect is “fear[ ]mongering hysteria… devoid of physical reality.” He considers anthropogenic CO2 emissions “about as significant as a few farts in a hurricane.” He’s heard of the Medieval Warm Period. He knows that diplomats and bureaucrats “have huge egos and a lust for power.” Finally, he’s a co-author of the idiotic Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory, so he’s already had his ass kicked repeatedly on the same topics. I think Martin’s journey to the dustbin of history will be a short one.

In my opinion it’s better to leave these things “up” as originally posted and insert a correction at the start so they are in legitimate context and not left as unchallenged assertions. That way Anthony’s link to the Wikipedia entry for freedom of speech need not be indignantly displayed. I think he should have, uh, censored the sentence “In practice, the right to freedom of speech is not absolute in any country and the right is commonly subject to limitations, such as on libel, slander, obscenity, incitement to commit a crime, etc.” though, because that’s the exact issue here.

P.S. Anthony, I think your Latin’s a bit over-enthusiastic. Also the Sherlock Holmes-by-screen-capture schtick is wearing thin, especially in light of your coy pretense of ignorance about Martin Hertzberg’s denialist contributions. Don’t bury the lede.

2011-10-03 update: Some good coverage at caerbannog (Michael Mann opens a can of whupass on a global warming denier) and at Rabbet Run (It Must Be The Neighborhood).