“New study shows half of the global warming in the USA is artificial” (2012-07-29. Originally titled “PRESS RELEASE”). Here it is! The game-changing scientific announcement from Anthony Watts that the entire world will want to know about!
“U.S. Temperature trends show a spurious doubling due to NOAA station siting problems and post measurement adjustments.”
So… Anthony Watts’ science revelation is that his inkjet has finished printing a typo-ridden do-over of his attack on US surface station weather data, “to be submitted for publication”, with his usual denialist pals (McIntyre, Christie, Jones).
Strange that Anthony’s promoting his sciencey-ness before publication (let alone acceptance). Didn’t he rail against the practice when he didn’t like former pal Dr. Muller’s temperature analysis? I guess that was then and this is… now.
Let’s see who he tries to submit this too (Journal of Geophysics, anyone? Oops, all the planted editors have decamped) and how the peer-review turns out. Should be funny to watch him squirm and sputter.
Wait, I just got it!
Anthony knows the evil conspiracy of competent climate scientists will never allow a threat to the secret communist world government. Like every denialist proclamation yet, Anthony’s moment of shining triumph will last no longer than the delay between clicking “post” and being read by tamino or RealClimate.org (that will be some good readin’).
Make hay while the sun shines, Anthony.
P.S. Looks like Anthony’s barrage was timed to deflect attention from his former denialist buddy Dr. Muller. Muller’s Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature publication confirmed the conventional scientific conclusions. His op-ed today in the New York Times is “The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic”:
Call me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.
Anthony’s been hiding behind a fence, nursing his snowball-with-a-stone-in-it waiting for Muller to walk past. Hell hath no fury like a betrayed denialist.
2012-07-31 Update: Victor Venema (commenting here too) has some good first-pass comments on Anthony’s mediocrity. Eli Rabett has also gathered some entertaining insights into Anthony’s latest self-congratulatory own goal.
But this lack [of perspective] makes amateurs prone to get caught in the traps that entangled the professionals’ grandfathers, and it can be difficult to disabuse them of their discoveries. Especially problematical are those who want science to validate preconceived political notions, and those willing to believe they are Einstein and the professionals are fools. Put these two types together and you get a witches brew of ignorance and attitude.
Unfortunately climate science is as sugar to flies for those types.
Wott's Up With That? 
Ah, the announcement that never was!
Mean while, back in the real world “Are climate sceptics more likely to be conspiracy theorists?”!
link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/jul/27/climate-sceptics-conspiracy-theorists?intcmp=239
It truly explains much, why Anthony is still flogging this dead horse, which was long debunked by both NOAA’s Matthew Menne and Anthony’s previous paper with a very dubious conclusion.
Matthew’s paper(pdf) Link : http://www.homogenisation.org/admin/docs/menne.pdf
Cheers :)
Ben, why are you so obsessed with Anthony Watts? When are you going to put out your research?
You can’t even come up with an original name having to ride on Watt’s Up With That’s coat tails to get any hits at all.
[It must be hard going through life with broken puzzler! When Anthony stops lying I’ll stop drawing attention to it. – Ben]
As far as I can see the main novelty is that the weather station classification scheme of Leroy (2010) is better than Leroy (1999). It would have been more elegant if Watts had stated in his press release that the differences between stations of various qualities he found in the temperature trends are only visible in the raw data and not in the homogenized (adjusted) data.
For a bit more detailed “review”, please visit my blog: variable-variability.blogspot.com
I hope I have been fair to the manuscript. I felt it was good to comment before the press started parroting the press release.
[Nice early analysis! – Ben]
Also, going by your post and blog article, I think you have completely misunderstood the issue.
[Although you explain it so well, lemme see if I’ve got this right: Anthony thinks he’s found a new way to massage the US temperature data to suit his agenda and has timed announcing the “completion” of his paper (not “submitted”, not “in review”, not “accepted”, just his fingers-crossed draft) to try to undermine the REAL publication (after real submission, review and acceptance) of Dr. Muller’s inconvenient results. – Ben]
Good article, Ben. The stone in a snowball line is apt.
In his teaser article, Watts wrote: “there will be a major announcement that I’m sure will attract a broad global interest due to its controversial and unprecedented nature”
Trying to get a paper published is hardly controversial let alone unprecedented. It’s not even a first for these guys. (Trying to get a 47-page paper published could probably be termed ‘challenging’ rather than ‘controversial’ or ‘unprecedented’. Maybe he’s going for SPPI – lol! That may not be too far off the mark going by the reference list he’s provided.)
(Only a couple of days prior he slammed someone for using the word ‘unprecedented’ in a headline to mean ‘never before in the satellite record’.)
The announcement is taking the piss out of Muller’s BEST PR stunt. Sly dog that Watts.
[You’re easily impressed – Ben]
He is a sly dog indeed! A very clever man by all accounts. The more that people are discussing his new results in the blogosphere, which is enabled by the lack of a pay-wall / FOI requirement to actually see the work, the more that people are realizing what a gifted researcher he is. Perhaps a Noble is in the offering? He has certainly created a buzz of unusually intelligent debate on this website!
[Anthony’s work struggles to achieve even the bottom of the barrel. “Sly”? maybe in the unflattering way. “Clever”? Never. Anthony had better hope he can borrow Lord Monckton’s “Noble”. – Ben]
Maybe Watts should submit it to “New Concepts in Global Tectonics” – they’ll probably have sympathy for ‘skeptics’ of the mainstream science ‘dogma’…
[Looking forward to reading “Geoscience and plate tectonic myth” in the June 2012 issue! – Ben]
Some amusing disclosure about Watts’ buddy David Archibald being made elsewhere.
What a bunch of liars. Do they reckon no one will ever question them?
David Archibald addressed the senate?
[He’s a puffed up nutter alright. I bet he’ll decide that picking his socks will count as “advising Cabinet”, à la Lord Monckton. – Ben]
Anthony cancelled his holiday for this ?
I’m sure the people who pay his bills made him stay and submit in the same weekend as Muller…
Nicely said, by the way – switch on the social media stuff so I can tweet this :)
[I think all those things are hiding under the “More” button beside “Share This”. Maybe I’ll ‘promote’ the Twitter button. – Ben]
Pingback: Richard Muller, covert agent for the climate conspiracy: the “sceptic” response to Muller’s BEST paper « Watching the Deniers
Pingback: What I’m Reading, Monday, July 30, 2012 | Rationally Thinking Out Loud
Pielke Sr gushes over both Watt’s and his paper: Comments On The Game Changer New Paper “An Area And Distance Weighted Analysis Of The Impacts Of Station Exposure On The U.S. Historical Climatology Network Temperatures And Temperature Trends” By Watts Et Al 2012.
[In the literary world this is called “logrolling”. I do have to admire Pielke Sr’s embrace of underlining. – Ben]
I don’t know much but I think we need to do better than that unless the general, albeit unspoken, consensus among legitimate climatologists and scientists is that Pielke Sr., himself, has deteriorated to be no better than Watts.
[Ding! – Ben]
[Adolescent clowning deleted – Ben]
I’m not sure that I really meant to ding you and I trust that soon enough those who are wont will provide the critical review that Watts’ paper deserves. For the most part I like your site and would probably like it more if I hadn’t long ago decided that Watts and audience was just ignorable. From SkS and elsewhere I do get the sense that some credible people really do believe that Pielke is deteriorating significantly, whatever the cause. I’ve not heard anybody say Alzheimer’s and don’t believe that’s what it is.
[“Ding!” was my clever way of saying “correct” to your inference about Pielke Sr. (Pielke Jr. will need to find his own excuse). If you can ignore Watts and his audience, more power to you! – Ben]
Thanks. Yes, I misunderstood the “ding.” If that’s true about Pielke Sr. I find it a little sad. On the other hand, maybe I’ll save myself some time and mental effort by relegating him to my Watts’ garbage can. I’ve been checking in with Pielke weekly, still been thinking that his tendency towards moderation or devil’s advocacy (or whatever) was of some value. But the last few months I’d begun to wonder a bit. What I’ve never found explainable, let alone defensible, was his validation of Watts. As Hitchens said of Falwell, if you gave him an enema you could bury him in a matchbox. If Pielke had limited his praise to Watts’ matchbox equivalent of worth, that would have been one thing.
Even though I can totally ignore Watts and his audience (I never go to his site anymore – you are my only contact with it) I think there’s a need for what you’re doing. Keep up the good work and thanks.
Maybe you need to read this from one of the reviewers of Muller’s BEST paper:
http://www.rossmckitrick.com/
Including his update; [Update July 30: JGR told me “This paper was rejected and the editor recommended that the author resubmit it as a new paper.”]
ROFLMAO
[Ross McKitrick? The evangelical denialist economist with a history of “climategate” and “hockey-stick” obsession? A Heartland Institute flunky would never be a hostile reviewer, would they? Don’t choke on that donut! I’ll take “resubmit” over never submitted any day. – Ben]
Mmmmm…..donut.
REJECTED…..just like the Gergis et all 2012 papers recently.
[I do not think that word means what you think it means. – Ben]
What? Donut.
Has that dreaded conspiracy infiltrated the USA Navy?
“U.S. Navy Task Force Climate Change is on Facebook.”
How much of a conspiracy can it be?
The USA Navy publishes their Climate Change Roadmap on the web.
Looks like he is claiming to have used an updated method of classifying station quality and found that the trend is not so high after all. Are you saying that the new classification is dishonest or that the analysis using the new classification is dishonest? I say dishonest, because you called him a liar on a comment already. What lie is he telling this time?
[Anthony’s “paper” is over-sold and timed to deflect attention from someone Anthony considers an enemy. Of course he’s now hypocritically trumpeting data manipulation of the kind he once scorned, because he’s found a technique that suits his agenda. The time to boast is when real scientists confirm the basis for his claims. Until then this is just “Elvis Sighted in New York City, Living with the Bat-boy!!!” – Ben]
Chris, see Sou’s comment. As usual, Watts has been incompetent again. Victor Venema has just pointed out a paper from 2003 by Voss et al that discusses the effect of T(obs) on the CONUS temperature trend.
But the story is even weirder. An anonymous commenter pointed out that Watts mentions the TOB as “dominant adjustment factor” for further research and even cites Vose et al. Thus Watts knew about this major problem, but still put the manuscript on the web. Did he really expect that the reviewers would have no problem with simply ignoring such an important confounding factor? I am stunned beyond anything.
Victor, considering the fact that he wanted the Wattsians to review the paper, the answer to your question is “yes”. ;-)
McIntyre has apparently distanced himself from the paper, acknowledging it doesn’t allow for time of observation. As someone commented on the bunny’s blog:
Strikes me that none of the discussion here has much substance. Just attack, no grappling with the ideas. In contrast wuwt does qualify as dialogue.
[You think it takes substance to observe that Anthony is simultaneously dishonest and ignorant? If you feel better reading the stream of “Tony, you’re a genius!” comments over at Watts Up With That, then wallow away. – Ben]
[Adolescent clowning deleted – Ben]
Did you know the times and the dates of the maximum solar radiation have varied greatly during the Julian Era?
Please cite a peer reviewed article to support this statement and the results of a survey to support that this is the consensus view of all “time and date experts”.
[We live to please you! Not. – Ben]
Good New Week: someone has carpet bombed Anthony Watts latest “UHI MythGate 2.0”.
Skeptical Science “Watts’ New Paper – Analysis and Critique”.
Tamino launched the second follow-up run “Much Ado About Nothing”.
All one can see are holes so big in Anthony’s posteriorlate that one can sail the old SS Manhattan and the US Sixth and Seventh fleets through it without touching the sides.
Six carpet bomb runs down and still more incoming, on the horizon.
Such is life.
Cheers ;)
[Both are great demolitions. Sad that we have to waste time on Anthony’s intellectual pollution. – Ben]
Pingback: Baanbrekend “Minder Opwarming In De VS”-klimaatonderzoek voorlopig toch maar even uitgesteld | Krapuul.nl
@Ben: Yes, you have a couple of incomprehenisble Dutch pingbacks again. Yes, same guy (me) as last year. (Just in case you were wondering.) ;)
[Thanks for clearing that up! – Ben]