Author Archives: Ben

Unknown's avatar

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.

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

Posted on by
9
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).

Video analysis and scene replication suggests that Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project fabricated their Climate 101 video “Simple Experiment”

Posted on by
12

Video analysis and scene replication suggests that Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project fabricated their Climate 101 video “Simple Experiment” (2011-09-28). Some awesome CSI-style investigation by Anthony Watts hisself! The recent CO2 “experiment” (well, demonstration) on Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project was all fake! Also the Algore is fat and Bill Nye wears a lab coat.


Come on Anthony, say it! “Zoom in. Now… enhance.”

After Anthony’s Zapruder-style analysis and mail-order recreation of the “fake” CO2 set-up he declares:

The only conclusion one can make from these four points is that the video of the “simple experiment” is a complete fabrication done in post production.

You know, he’s hit in the only possible explanation. Thus proving once and for all, again, that Global Warming is a lie! After-all The Longest Day, Gone with the Wind and Titanic were (probably) done in a single continuous take, why not every other piece of video?

Buried in Anthony’s howling about fake experiments not proving that CO2 is a “greenhouse gas” is the quiet admission that CO2 is actually a greenhouse gas. Because only a complete scientific illiterate would claim otherwise. But pay no attention to that awkward detail, huh?

So after Anthony’s furious nitpick accusations and his reader’s chorus of “brilliant!”, what are we left with? Anthony Watts hates Al Gore with a terrier-like obsession. Treat his occasional pleas for civility and objectivity as the fig-leaves they are.

Footnote: Want to see a 96 minute single take film? Check out Russian Ark.

Update 2011-10-01: There are some entertaining comments on Anthony’s efforts over at Media Matters, I like this one: “If you’re shocked to find out that real volcanoes have NO baking soda inside them, you just might be a Republican.”

Getting GRLed

Posted on by
8

“Getting GRLed” (2011-09-27). Did you know that Geophysical Research Letters editor Noah Diffenbaugh is a thug? According to Anthony Watts it’s true! You see the denialist’s favorite economist Roger Pielke Jr. submitted a paper on tropical cyclones (they’re not worse!) and it was rejected (it the sense of being told to resubmit), simply because the two reviewers wanted revisions! This is clearly more bullying by “the Team”. And also a conspiracy.

Summarizes Anthony, who knows scientific oppression when he sees it (emphasis mine):

It came back with two reviews, both with some corrections, one reviewer suggesting publication without major caveats [originally spelt “caeats”], the other grudgingly [originally spelt “grudingly”]suggesting publication to the editor, Noah Diffenbaugh, and asking for revisions. So far so good (you’d think).

The ever-stringent Anthony opines that the paper “seems straigh[t]forward enough”, but you’d think that Roger Jr.’s claim that “increasing damage around the world over the period(s) of record can be explained entirely by increasing wealth in locations prone to TC landfalls” might need some supporting analysis and not simply rest on what seems a mere assertion.

Perhaps Richard Tol’s comment on Anthony’s post gets to the real heart of the matter:

The decision for major revision was justified as the original paper oversold its results.
Instead of revising the paper, Pielke Jr decided to pick a fight and was told to FO.

Turns out this is all normal boilerplate editorial communication but the thin-skinned Roger Jr. will not revise (ie improve) his paper. He’s chosen to stomp away in a huff shouting about bad faith. The JGR is dead to him! Seems the bad faith lies with Roger Jr. unless you listen to Anthony’s followers. In which case Roger Jr.’s taking a noble stand against a fifth-rate “Team” journal’s bullying. Considering the years of complaining about scientific journals, both Anthony and his reader’s ignorance of how journal submissions work is quite stunning.

Tip to Anthony: look before you leap and pause long enough before posting to run spellcheck. Otherwise your posts look hasty and ill-considered. What? They’re supposed to be?

New peer reviewed paper: clouds have large negative cooling effect on Earth’s radiation budget

Posted on by
39

New peer reviewed paper: clouds have large negative cooling effect on Earth’s radiation budget (2011-09-20). Har, har. The word “feedback” is present in the URL of this post by Anthony, but no longer in the title… This is as close as Anthony gets to admitting he has once again jumped in with both feet, in haste and seeing only the conclusion that suited him.

Anthony’s certain that a new (peer-reviewed!!!!!!) paper by Richard Allan proves, once and for all, that clouds cause climate. So everyone can relax, those scientists were lying all along. Anthony claims that according to the paper:

a combination of satellite observations and models [show] that the cooling effect of clouds far outweighs the long-wave or “greenhouse” warming effect.

When the paper’s author, along with climatologist Bart Verheggen and even Roy Spencer point out that Anthony’s conclusion is not supported by anything in the paper, his fundamental response is a truculent “I saw things differently.” But why should he ‘fess up? Doctrinaire commenters such as ‘Roger Knights’, ‘Tall Bloke’, ‘RockyRoad’, etc will always praise his erroneous interpretation.

Bart asks:

Could you please point out where in this paper it is mentioned that “clouds have large negative-*feedback* cooling effect on Earth’s radiation budget”?

Roy Spencer says, with what must be considerable pain given his ‘my science serves my [denialist] politics’ perspective:

Bart is correct. This paper is not about cloud feedback…it is about the average effect of clouds on the climate system, which the IPCC, Trenberth, Dessler, et al. will all agree is a cooling effect. It is an update of the early estimates from ERBE many years ago.

Richard Allan, the paper author, comments:

I was surprised that this paper was mis-interpreted as suggesting negative cloud feedback. This is a basic error by the author of the post that has been highlighted by many contributors including Roy Spencer.

Even the contrarian Steven Mosher had something interesting to say about the motives of Antony’s “skeptical” supporters (emphasis mine):

it is also fascinating because of what we dont see. usually you will see a whole crew of commeters pounce on the word “model”. This time they didnt.

They didnt because they thought the paper supported spencer. But it was on an entirely different topic. That misunderstanding kinda silenced the usual “models are bad” crew.

Thanks to my commenters for drawing this entertaining post to my attention. It’s a classic example of Anthony’s enthusiastic ignorance. I’ve been overloaded with work and with supporting the recently concluded Toronto International Film Festival and would have missed this…

The science is scuttled: Abraham, Gleick, and Trenberth resort to libeling Spencer and Christy

Posted on by
16

“The science is scuttled: Abraham, Gleick, and Trenberth resort to libeling Spencer and Christy“ (2011-09-07). Did you know that pointing out the repetitively flawed science of denialist scientists like Roy Spencer and John Christy is “libelous”? Anthony thinks so, and so does Dr. Roger Pielke Sr.

Opinion: The damaging impact of Roy Spencer’s science, recently published in The Daily Climate, is apparently a nasty example of this criminal. How dare they point out that “Over the years, Spencer and Christy developed a reputation for making serial mistakes that other scientists have been forced to uncover”? Well, maybe it’s not actually libelous because it’s kind of true. But surely it’s mean! That alone is proof that AGW is a lie.

The reliable Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. has consulted his friends and they all think Roy and John are swell, so there.

It seems that the denialist defenses have fallen all the way back to complaining about “tone”? Maybe Anthony’s cartoon sinking ship is falsely labeled just like the false science he touts.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: My Initial Comments on the New Dessler 2011 Study

Posted on by
3

“The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: My Initial Comments on the New Dessler 2011 Study” (2011-09-07). Anthony Watts says that Dr. Spencer’s continued whining about the treatment of his ill-conceived paper is “important”. So important that it must be accompanied by a pirated YouTube video of the theme music from a Clint Eastwood western.

Science! The Watts and Spencer way.

Does anything else really need to be said about ?

BREAKING: Editor-in-chief of Remote Sensing resigns over Spencer & Braswell paper

Posted on by
8

“BREAKING: Editor-in-chief of Remote Sensing resigns over Spencer & Braswell paper“ (2011-09-02). Anthony Watts reposts Roy Spencer’s sputtering self-defense over the humiliating fall-out from his spectacularly stupid Remote Sensing paper, which we covered back in July. Seems the knock-out punch to the “IPCC climate conspiracy” was actually a denialist own-goal even after a co-ordinated media campaign. Perhaps Anthony is trying to “get out in front” of the embarrassing details to ensure his readers stay locked in the feedback loop.

What provoked Roy’s passionate self-defense? The Remote Sensing editor-in-chief, Wolfgang Wagner, has resigned in disgust (PDF here) over the deception by denialist scientists he believed were impartial reviewers and over the campaign that Spencer organized to promote the overstatement of his paper’s unsupported conclusions and play up its publication as proof of a credibility. Remote Sensing got played.

Spencer’s paper concocted a deliberately over-simplified climate model for the sole purpose of creating the appearance of a scientific refutation of the prevailing climate models and was gamed into Remote Sensing by “sympathetic reviewers”. The well-primed denialist community, including Forbes, Fox News and of course dear Anthony, immediately trumpeted its alleged conclusions.

Roy’s deeply nuanced summary of the response to his paper is “IPCC :1 Scientific Progress: 0″. Or perhaps I’m right and they’re wrong. Of course invoking “the IPCC” is equal parts conspiracy theory and wounded ego. Funny how denialists can spent years muttering about imagined conspiracies but determinedly look the other way when their own actually, if amateurishly, collude to form one. On second though, not so much funny as inevitable.

To restate Roy’s over-simplified assessment of his over-simplified paper, this is “Scientific Progress: 0, Roy Spencer -1”. Roy and company colluded to insert a worthless paper into the scientific record through an off-topic journal and both time and effort have been wasted in dealing with an obvious scientific dead-end. Thanks for nothing.

Read more about at:

2011-09-07 Update

Well this hasn’t taken long. Spencer’s ‘final nail in the coffin of AGW’  has completely unravelled. Turns out his crayon version of atmospheric physics has in fact proven the validity of current “alarmist” climate theories and models! Thanks Roy. That’s what happens when you work backwards from a baseless conclusion and ignore logic. Thanks for wading through the stupid, Dr. Dessler (preprint here, watch a video summary here).

Real Climate has posted intelligently about the dynamics of scientific publishing, but if you want to read mutterings about conspiracies and “repression” of determined stupidity, well, you know where to go…

It was S&B’s desire to avoid dealing with [people disagreeing with and criticising his conclusions ], that likely led them to a non-standard journal, whose editor very likely followed the authors suggestions for (friendly) reviewers, whose resulting reviews didn’t do very much (if anything) to strengthen the paper.

Bill Nye is the anti-science guy when it comes to global warming and hurricanes

Posted on by
6

“Bill Nye is the anti-science guy when it comes to global warming and hurricanes” (2011-08-30). Dr. Ryan Maue seems annoyed with how little traction with his denial science is getting, so he’s going to give political whining a try at his Policlimate blog. Why? Because as he says “Anthony typically avoids political issues” (I still rubbing my eyes over that). Luckily Anthony Watts seems willing, this one time, to dabble in politics by cross-posting Ryan’s rant about Bill Nye’s recent appearance on Fox News.

You know the denialists have had their asses publicly handed to them when they try to re-write an event after the fact by nit-picking someone’s live TV responses intended for a general audience (and when we talk about Fox audiences we’re talking really general) and then declare post facto victory because of imperfect grammar or getting a measurement wrong. They can also be reliably expected to complain about “tone”.

The title of this YouTube copy is “Bill Nye insists the earth is warming though data shows it is not.” and has comments disabled. Denialism writ tiny.

Seems Bill Nye didn’t play along with Fox News “Freedom Watch” guest host Charles Payne’s attempt to describe concern about our changing climate as “apocalyptic”, “irresponsible”, or to assert that there’s a bit of warming “but that’s not from man”. When Payne realized that Bill Nye wasn’t serving as a fig-leaf for Fox News’ preferred scientific assertions he pulled out the patented Fox News escape hatch of but… Al Gore! ending thus:

“We brought you on because we knew you could connect the dots,” Payne interrupted. “Although the route you’ve taken is still confusing some of the viewers.” – Fox Business Host Accuses Bill Nye of ‘Confusing Viewers’ with Science

So six minutes of interrupted reality-based answers to leading questions balances endless hours of Glenn Beck conspiracy theories? That’s “Fair and Balanced” for you.

Government Funding of the National Weather Service: A Response to Our Critics

Posted on by
2

“Government Funding of the National Weather Service: A Response to Our Critics” (2011-08-30). Anthony Watts accidentally admits that he’s part of the Competitive Enterprise Institute team. Or he’s such a sloppy blogger that he can’t even title his posts intelligibly.

Seems the CEI is sticking to their guns about the idealogical necessity of dissolving the National Weather Service if we are to trust Anthony’s copy-and-paste. Here’s the short version of the sputtering defense of their Pavlovian recent attack: All government services are bad because any collective effort makes individuals dependent! Except, not. Collective effort, whether it is weather services or armies, magnifies the contributions of individuals. Also, selling the NWS would give the government a one-time cash bump!

Such doctrinaire thinking, such short-sighted avarice.

I know, I know. Every libertarian is Chuck Norris and Charlton Heston rolled in to one. They fashion roads with their bare hands as they walk through virgin forest and can remove their own appendix without anesthetic. And, by God, no one will tell them what the weather’s going to be!

Hmmm. I wonder why the Competitive Enterprise Institute isn’t all over privatizing the US Military? No there’s an area with real impact on government costs. Maybe it doesn’t suit their prejudices though.

Some reactions to the CLOUD experiment

Posted on by
5

“Some reactions to the CLOUD experiment” (2011-08-25). Strangely Anthony Watts’ selection of “reactions” to the preliminary results of CERN’s CLOUD experiment are all denialist or sympathetic. “Some” means “the ones we like” I guess. Just another day in Anthony’s cramped mind…