“Luxemberg“. An exceptional iceberg breaks away from Antarctica but the deceitful and conspiratorial “warmists” don’t immediately claim it as proof of AGW! Anthony Watts can still make snide remarks though. BBC News report here.
Luxemberg
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Author Archives: Ben
The Times: “University ‘tried to mislead MPs on climate change e-mails’”
The Times: “University ‘tried to mislead MPs on climate change e-mails’”. Anthony Watts draws attention to a useful headline from the chronically denial-biased Times and equates the remarks of a right-wing politician with a factual statement. So let’s see; the University of East Anglia CRU’s opponents don’t like their choice of words, but can’t actually contradict them. Snap?
The “savage” article is by Ben Webster, perhaps The Times has realised that Jonathan Leake’s byline is a little compromised…
Anthony gives us another laugh by continuing to obsess over the word “trick”.
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Institute of Physics on Climategate
“Institute of Physics on Climategate“. Anthony Watts finds it “rather astonishing” that the UK’s Institute of Physics thinks the inquiry into the accusations, based on quote-mined correspondence, against the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit should continue. The probable conclusion after filtering out the mom-and-apple-pie language: remember to use polite language when talking about assholes that are harassing you, even in private correspondence.
Anthony also sagely notes that his BFF, blowhard Australian journo Andrew Bolt, continues to repeat the comic claim that “Climategate reveals the greatest scientific scandal of our lifetime.”
Not much mention of the fundamental fact that even excluding the CRU’s impugned data, which has always been over 95% publicly available, other historical and modern climate records show a clear AGW signal. Why is that, I wonder?
2010-03-05 Update: Looks like the IOP statement was partially based on the views of an energy industry consultant who argues that global warming is a religion.
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Contribution of USHNC and GISS bias in long-term temperature records for a well-sited rural weather station
“Contribution of USHNC and GISS bias in long-term temperature records for a well-sited rural weather station“. Anthony Watts’ associate “Charles the Moderator” finds a cherry-picked weather station that someone important (Ph.D. and Esquire!) has slapped up some charts for.
David W. Schnare (Esq. Ph.D.) is an environmental lawyer from a renowned scientific institution the “Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy”. He’s also a Heartland Institute associate. He nods approvingly over both Anthony Watt’s discredited Science and Public Policy pamphlet and yesterday’s new “sciency” version by Dr. Anthony Long. “Dr.” Schnare shares their fixation with the denialist meme of adjustments = cheating and notes that “NCDC adjusts the original data in every year!”
The temperature trends at one station clearly prove that all the other stations are wrong.
Now it could be true that Schnare’s nit-picking about the station adjustments made in this particular place are justified. There are certainly plenty of qualitatively poor temperature stations and we can count on the denialists to trot them out one by one at carefully staged intervals. However his amusing references to “hard partying, college kids” and sweeping generalizations about the terrain away from the station’s actual micro-climate suggest that he’s trying to distract from the poverty of his evidence.
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Breaking News: IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri to face independent inquiry
“Breaking News: IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri to face independent inquiry“. Anthony Watts reports a rumor from The Daily Telegraph, a chronically dishonest source on climate change. There’s no question that the denialist onslaught on Dr. Pachauri has created political pressure. Just not scientific pressure… Dr. Pachauri is approaching Al Gore in Anthony’s symbol-fixated mind.
It’s always entertaining to consider that Dr. Pachauri was installed as IPCC Chairman as a result of lobbying by the Republican administration of George W. Bush because they felt he was a tacit supporter of the denialist movement. Unfortunately he developed an “inconvenient” perspective when he started reading the incoming reports.
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A new paper comparing NCDC rural and urban US surface temperature data
“A new paper comparing NCDC rural and urban US surface temperature data“. Anthony Watts reports that the denialist “think tank” Science and Public Policy has “published a paper” by retired NASA “advanced materials” physicist and self-described extremely conservative blogger Dr. Edward Long. “Published” in the sense of printed, just like Anthony’s own discredited Science and Public Policy pamphlet “Surface Temperature Records: Policy Driven Deception?” (tellingly admired by Dr. Long). Actually, this feels like a do-over of Anthony’s idea with a Ph.D. stuck on top and the really dumb bits left out.
“Contiguous U.S. Temperature Trends Using NCDC Raw and Adjusted Data for One-Per-State Rural and Urban Station Sets“ concludes that the NCDC (National Climatic Data Center) has “taken liberty to alter the actual rural measured values.” Why? Because two 48 station subsets (“rural” and “urban”) have the same trend after the NCDC’s adjustments have been made. Which means that some nefarious trick has forced them to match. Dr. Long selected his stations “on the assumption that within a certain latitude band stations along an East-West line experience the same climate and that within a grid unit the set of stations are somehow related“. That’s a rather off-hand justification for what I suspect is a pretty careful cherry-picking operation. There have been objective re-examinations of the US surface temperature data (Menne et al, 2010), but no significant errors have been uncovered.
Dr. Long also tries to wave away the temperature trend by suggesting that it reflects population growth around the weather stations. Somehow population growth intensifies the UHI effect. I’m not a climate scientist but I would expect the same UHI effect to occur more widely with population growth, not show up as ever “hotter” readings. After all, UHI is effectively a landscape factor, something Anthony himself has been fixated on for sometime on his surfacestations.org project. Should someone whisper “maybe it’s global warming?“
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CTM is Contacted by the Norfolk Constabulary and Responds
“CTM is Contacted by the Norfolk Constabulary and Responds“. Charles Rotter, aka “Charles the Moderator”, was the anonymous behind-the-scenes guy on Anthony Watts’ blog until his involvement in disseminating the stolen Climate Research Unit e-mails. His most important responsibility was to harass Anthony’s critics by blocking or maliciously altering their comments, but he probably spent most of his time thinning out the worst comments of the denialist loony fringe so the cause didn’t look too bad.
Charles reports that he was contacted by the Norfolk Constabulary as part of their criminal investigation into the theft of CRU e-mails. Charles answers are to claim he’s just a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, but he unwisely casts aspersions on the victims of the crime and offers up a self-serving theory of the crime as a noble act by unnamed persons. Good luck with that.
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UEA – the new crimestoppers
“UEA – the new crimestoppers“. This is another case of Dunning–Kruger Effect from the denialosphere. Anthony reports the “gobsmacking” news that the UK Information Commissioners Office (ICO) has referred to the complaints about University of East Anglia’s response to freedom of information requests as “cogent prima facie evidence“. This, in Anthony’s mind, is just as good as a conviction. Probably actually better for his purposes.
Prima facie means “at first sight”. It doesn’t mean that something has been proven, just that a claim has been made that if true would support the legal charge. The ICO is merely says that the claim should be investigated and not dismissed out-of-hand.
Also the endlessly repeated denialist allegation of the Climate Research Unit’s deletion of information is baseless despite the off-hand remarks quote-mined from the stolen CRU e-mails. Nothing was deleted. Except, of course, by the thieves. They only released a subset of the stolen e-mails, presumably to prevent them from being understood in proper context.
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CRUTEM3 error getting attention by Met Office
“CRUTEM3 error getting attention by Met Office“. Anthony Watts reports an error in temperature corrections has been found by a denialist nit-picker (John Graham-Cumming)!!! Thus ending global warming forever and also proving that scientists are stupid and evil. Naturally he expects his readers to scan the headline but ignore the details, because the details aren’t so helpful…
Anthony has to admit that “the error he found may lead to slightly less uncertainty” (emphasis naturally mine) but he immediately tries to counter this by claiming that “the magnitude of the uncertainty (especially in homogenization) is quite large”. This has a few unfortunate consequences for his argument.
- The presumed deceitful “consensus” temperature trend is strengthened and not undermined by this nit.
- Anthony allusion to the “magnitude of the uncertainty” again proves that he knows nothing about objective statistical analysis.
Here’s the trend in question:
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Judith, I love ya, but you’re way wrong …
“Judith, I love ya, but you’re way wrong …” Anthony Watt’s friend Willis Eschenbach, the self-appointed “citizen scientist”, rants about Dr. Judith Curry’s ill-conceived denialist-sympathetic comments about “credibility” in climate science.
His point? We can never trust scientists again. No matter what. They are stupid liars. Willis actually says with a straight face that scientists should emulate Steve McIntyre’s “transparency and openness and freewheeling scientific discussion and honest reporting“. My god, McIntyre is the most dishonest, manipulative, resentful, nit-picking denialist out there. He is the model for scientific behavior?
Epic fail.
Wott's Up With That? 