Author Archives: Ben

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About Ben

I trained as a sedimentary geologist at a Canadian University, but have worked in the I.T. field as a programmer and manager for many years.

Anthony Watts Defeats Himself

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“Hump day hilarity: Chris Mooney’s abby-normal post modern science” (2011-11-09) and “Mooney pulls a Muller” (2011-11-10). After years of announcing how he was going to prove Global Warming was a lie (but utterly failing to do so), Anthony decides to castigate anyone else who talks about their conclusions before formal publication. Only the targets of his hypocrisy have simply released drafts of submitted papers (the previously beloved Dr. Muller) or described a book they are still writing (Chris Mooney’s The Republican Brain). Anthony, you may recall, loudly and repeatedly announced that he was going to prove that the temperature record was both inaccurate and tampered with, and that climate scientists were corrupt socialists. You may also recall that he was 99 44/100%  wrong.

So what has twisted Anthony’s shorts this time? You’re going to love this: He’s attacking a book that hasn’t been finished yet, claiming that it portrays conservatives as idiots who jump to conclusions! Nice stick-work there, Anthony.

Seems like finishing your book is kind of redundant now, Chris! You can read his take on the response is here: Conservatives Attack and Misunderstand A Book They Haven’t Read… A Book About Flawed Conservative Reasoning.

Why is 20 years statistically significant when 10 years is not?

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“Why is 20 years statistically significant when 10 years is not?” (2011-11-05). Anthony Watts loves a long-winded sneering crank who can slap together reams of irrelevant charts (see Willis Eschenbach). Here he gives us James Padgett, ironically also known as WUWT commenter “Just the Facts”, who asks if PhD climatologists “are smarter than a 5th grader” after implying that climate scientists are only vaguely aware of the sun.

Padgett has a “simple vision” that beats the pants off of all those chrome-domes and their complicated ‘takin’ everything into account’. It’s just the sun, don’t you know! Thus ending Global Warming forever.

The statistical question posed in the post title is, unsurprisingly, never answered. When all is said and done James Padgett has simply gone to great lengths to prove that he’s not “smarter than a 5th grader.” Naturally Anthony’s commenters declare Padgett’s assertions to be “Very, very interesting and important” and rail about the arrogance of them scientists and their studyin’.

You know you’re reading the theories of an utter idiot when Padgett’s opening paragraph is this:

Many of you are aware that the concept of continental drift, proposed by Alfred Wegener, was widely ridiculed by his contemporaries. This reaction was in spite of the very clear visual evidence that the continents could be fit together like a giant puzzle.

Wegener’s theory is a perfect example of that pinnacle of denialist scientific method known as “eyeballing”. Wegener’s theory always had its supporters but wasn’t accepted for 40 years until evidence emerged that explained how the continents had actually moved (although he almost had it right). Just like no-one takes denialist Global Warming “science” seriously because it is utterly unable to explain the observed climate trends with only natural influences.

You do have to admire Padgett’s determined arm-waving though. It’s eye-wateringly hard work pawing through reams of charts, squinting as hard as possible to ignore everything that doesn’t suit his pre-determined conclusion.

Why do denialists make so many contradictory arguments at once? None of them stand up, they’re all merely efforts to distract:

  • The temperature records are wrong / OK, maybe they’re pretty good.
  • It’s not warming / OK, maybe it is warming.
  • The warming has stopped / OK, maybe it hasn’t stopped.
  • It’s not us / OK, maybe it is us.
  • It’s not harmful / OK, maybe it is harmful.
  • It’s not unfixable / OK, maybe “fixing” it would be really difficult.

Sharpen those eyeballs, James, if you want to be more than noise.

Trenberth: null and void

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“Trenberth: null and void“ (2011-11-03). Anthony Watts finds an excuse to make insulting references to a climate scientist. Will wonders never cease? Seems hard to reconcile with his regular calls for niceness.

This time Anthony’s decided that the scientific insights of a British publicist named Ben Norman will be his means of unraveling the global warming fraud. Anthony throws in references to Eurekalert and Wiley-Blackwell to give the appearance of scientific legitimacy, but I think he’s hoping no-one actually reads past his misleading headline.

Norman simply grouped together three recent papers, Ken Trenberth’s provocative “null hypothesis” paper and responses by Dr. Judith Curry (you know, the sciencey wiz who’s decided that eyeballing trends and muttering vaguely about uncertainty is as hard as anyone should have to work) and Dr. Myles Allen (who thinks that Trenberth’s idea is too radical but “Curry’s counter proposal to abandon hypothesis tests is worse”).

I know that Anthony’s mainly trying to smear Dr. Trenberth, but it seems odd that he’s mocking the idea that the default scientific presumption should be that humans are affecting our environment. That’s what underpins his juvenile “surface stations” project! Yeah we’re warming the Earth, but only in a few tiny spots and only in a way that hides the real climate trend (anything other than warming).

His readers comments are the usual assortment of ignorant profundities and jealous paranoia.

Newsbytes: New Research Reveals IPCC In Bed With Green Lobbies

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“Newsbytes: New Research Reveals IPCC In Bed With Green Lobbies“ (2011-11-03). Oh my gosh, a carefully fact-checked newswire story proves that the IPCC are incompetent commie eco-facists! It’s a “scathing new expose“!

Oh, wait. It’s just another wild one-sided press release rehash from the denialist Global Warming Policy Foundation’s Benny Peiser. He’s uncovered a Fox News screed that trumpets how young some of the IPCC report authors are, and has found a few other semi-random news links. Also Donna Laframboise is a feminist, so we should have complete faith in her 43 recruits and their “audit” of the IPCC 2007 report. Go buy her book The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert! It’s sciencey.

The “green lobbies” accusation is somehow implicit, but of course everything is a “green lobby” to paranoid libertarians because it’s all part of the secret communist world government.

Thanks madcap paranoid libertarians, I knew you’d clear everything up!

It does seem a bit odd though that there’s no mention of atmospheric physics.

Michael Mann wades into the UVA thicket as intervenor

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“Michael Mann wades into the UVA thicket as intervenor” (2011-11-02). I’ve sat back a bit lately, enjoying the sight of Anthony and his Team imploding over the results of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) study, but this post cries out for a “WTF?”

Anthony Watts sympathetically re-posts Chris Horner’s whining about how Dr. Michael Mann has been allowed to intervene in the American Tradition Institute’s lawsuit over… Dr. Michael Mann’s correspondence during his time at the University of Virginia.

Why on god’s green earth should Dr. Mann be permitted to intervene in a lawsuit over his own correspondence? What could he possibly know? What insight could he possibly offer? What interest is it of his?

Whereas the ATI’s lawyers, who are also the ATI petitioners, assert that they are pure as driven snow (ideologically at least). They’re highly qualified, as attorneys, to confidentially assess the documents in question without revealing then to the petitioners (that would be themselves). Too bad they were widely broadcasting their intention to widely distribute the material they had tentatively been given permission to inspect under a protective order.

Smooth move, Chris.

Chris does however quite rightly assert that there is no “vast right-wing conspiracy”. It’s actually quite tiny and close-knit.

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.