Category Archives: AGW is Good!

Cold kills: Summer no sweat for Aussies but winter freeze fatal

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“Cold kills: Summer no sweat for Aussies but winter freeze fatal“ (2015-01-13). In which Anthony Watts tries to move the pea from under the “it’s not getting hotter” shell to the “who cares how hot it gets anyway” shell.

After the crazy temperature records all across Australia earlier this month, Anthony somehow had to change the subject to something a little less awkward I guess.

Not quite sure why Anthony thinks, or pretends to think, it’s a revelation that there are more deaths during cold weather than hot weather. Or what that really has to do with climate. Cold weather deaths are generally a risk to those with inadequate shelter, not some magic indicator of ‘the best’ climate for Homo sapiens.

It makes a useful denialist bellowing talking point I guess, but I love how eagerly Anthony jumps on any mention of the word “cold”. It’s almost Pavlovian!

A pointed question

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“A pointed question“ (2014-03-07). Anthony Watts asks a pointed question and proves that he has a pointy head.

“What is the perfect temperature of Earth?”

This is one of those “answer that!” questions that merely reveal the stupidity of the person asking it. I’m not even going to dip a toe into the cesspool of ignorance that drives it.

The concern of environmentalists is that the current, completely unprecedented, rate of climate change dramatically exceeds our civilization’s ability to cope and how that change is un-balancing our biosphere, which we depend upon to feed our human population.

That completely unprecedented rate of climate change is what the hated “The Hockey Stick” showed, and triggered the libertarian/denialist “you can’t tell me what to do!” reaction we’re now so hampered by.

Cue Anthony’s idiot followers declaring warming is better and muttering darkly about taxes. What a pack of pin-heads.

The AGU climate policy statement as redrafted by Monckton

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“The AGU climate policy statement as redrafted by Monckton“ (2013-08-07). Anthony Watts posts a “guest essay” from the denialism’s leading intellectual, the publicity-seeking self-promoting fringe politician Lord Christopher Monckton.

Monckton gives us the denialist fantasy version of the American Geophysical Union’s periodically restated policy on climate change. No link to the true document provided by Watts or Monckton. In Monckton’s fevered imagination, “Our influence on the climate is minor but beneficial.” So, sorry everyone! False alarm.

His version would be correct if the AGU’s scientific go-to guy was a demented fringe politician with a journalism diploma who publishes Sudoku books instead of fifteen real and highly qualified scientists.

Journalist, AIDS curer, Nobel Prize Winner!

Monckton’s verbal acrobatics can be entertaining as he tries to simultaneously obscure his flimsy arguments and showcase his ‘towering intellect’ through wacky insults, but I won’t bothered wasting my time on the underlying debunked garden-variety nonsense. Try wottsupwiththatblog or HotWhopper if you want to figure out what he’s squawking about.

Did Global Warming Reduce the Impacts of Sandy?

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“Did Global Warming Reduce the Impacts of Sandy?”(2012-11-06). This one’s good for a laugh! Anthony Watts wants us to hear Chip Knappenberger’s (not a climatologist) idea that Global Warming “lessened [Hurricane Sandy’s] intensity and impacts”. Thank god for Global Warming! We need more Global Warming!

Chip’s idea came to Anthony’s attention through the Cato Institute (august science council or libertarian hard-liners? You decide.) which proudly offers it’s brand-new “Center for the Disparagement Study of Science”. The CSS, a scientific initiative along the lines of the Derek Zoolander School for Kids Who Can’t Read Good and Want to Do Other Stuff Good Too.

Here’s a summary of Chip’s arguments, which Anthony found so compelling:

  • Global Warming only contributed 6″ to the 17.34 ft of flooding (but it was the last 6 inches…)
  • No-one can precisely measure the effect of warming tropical storm sources, and besides winds blow in all kinds of directions.
  • Hurricane Sandy could have missed!

Wait a minute… Did Anthony just switch from “Global Warming is a Lie” to “Global Warming is Good”? Don’t worry, he’ll switch back next argument. But I did hear somewhere that CO2 is plant food.

Update: Here’s a discussion by actual climate scientists and meteorologists: Yes, Climate Change Contributed To Superstorm Sandy.

The Anatomy of a Global Warming Smear

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“The Anatomy of a Global Warming Smear” (2012-02-18). ¡Ay, caramba! Anthony Watts desperately posts fellow Heartland Institute funding recipient Alan Caruba’s full-on rant about climate science, apparently triggered by the Heartland Institute document leak. Also, he hates the New York Times.

Here’s some nuance for ya:

Suffice to say, the “climate science” served up by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been a pack of lies from the day it first convened.

Sing it brother! What next?

Next to oxygen, CO2 is vital to all life on Earth as it sustains all vegetation which in turn sustains every creature that depends on it as a source of food.

I guess as a good environmentalist I should rush outside and pant on some shrubs.

Thousands of scientists have signed petitions denouncing global warming as a hoax.

If you’re gonna stay stupid things like that someone should tell you about the internet. Your wannabe petitions were all fake petitions packed with unqualified names.

There’s a reason the theme of Heartland’s sixth conference in 2011 was “Restoring the Scientific Method.”

Cute misspelling of “undermining”.

2012-05-22 update: After much caterwauling by the Heartland Institute about forgeries and the shameful behavior of nasty warmists, the true conclusion can be drawn: “Peter Gleick cleared of forging documents in Heartland expose“

California’s giant redwoods inconveniently respond to increased carbon dioxide

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“California’s giant redwoods inconveniently respond to increased carbon dioxide“. Anthony Watts does his usual backflips to misinterpret research, in this case triggered by an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about giant redwoods in Northern California. He misrepresents recent increased giant redwood growth rates as being evidence that increasing CO2 really is good for everyone. Clearly there is no way there could be any other contributing factors. And there’s no chance that a continued increase in an environmental factor that is currently having a positive impact on growth could become detrimental, is there. We all know, by the way and of course, that Global Warming isn’t happening.

Anthony also throws in a bit of anti-science by trying to give the appearance of contradictory research findings. Are the studies that he says draw opposite conclusions really studying the same processes in the same way? Take a wild guess. But his readers always love a chance to laugh at them stupid scientists.

New peer reviewed study: global warming lowers death rates

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“New peer reviewed study: global warming lowers death rates“. Anthony tries the hoary old “Global Warming is good for us!” line once more. After all, the lobbyists at CO2 Science say so.

Check out this appallingly ignorant quote from CO2 Science:

Warming is highly beneficial to human health, even without any overt adaptation to it. And when adaptations are made, warming is incredibly beneficial in terms of lengthening human life span.

So, when studying population statistics of a highly industrialized society in a temperate climate, and ignoring any possible future climate warming repercussions such as the arrival of new diseases or crop failures, these idiots think this passes for thoughtful science.

I guess the 4 billion humans in tropical climates can just suck it, eh?

For the record, the 2010 paper that CO2 Science and Anthony are misquoting, Causes for the recent changes in cold- and heat-related mortality in England and Wales, actually says the following in their abstract:

…adaptation has prevented a significant increase in heat-related mortality and considerably enhanced a significant decrease in cold-related mortality. Our analysis suggests that in the absence of adaptation, the human influence on climate would have been the main contributor to increases in heat-related mortality and decreases in cold-related mortality. (emphasis mine)

Was Margaret Thatcher the first climate sceptic?

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“Was Margaret Thatcher the first climate sceptic?” When a newspaper article title ends with a question mark, it means that they want you to believe their headline but can’t get away with stating it directly. Steven Mosher links to a right-wing Telegraph article by Christopher Booker that tries to juggle his love of the union-bashing, argy-crushing “Iron Lady” with their need to fight blindly against the government intervention that they associate with Global Warming. She was tricked into voicing alarm over global warming!

Fortunately for denialists, as she has aged and her intellectual powers have diminished she’s subsided back into reflexive right-wing mutterings on environmental issues.”natural factors such as solar activity”, “beneficial effects”, “anti-capitalist, Left-wing political agenda”. Yay?

Of course the alternate explanation is that her global warming concern was merely a political weapon to be used against the then-powerful coal miner’s unions. Similarly the current opposition to global warming is a political weapon to try to inhibit government regulation.

Now it’s more CO2 that will threaten crops

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“Now it’s more CO2 that will threaten crops“. But plants love CO2! Anthony Watts is confused by this UC Davis press release. Apparently “Rising CO2 levels threaten crops and food quality”. What’s confusing about this, Anthony:

…findings from previous research by Bloom and colleagues suggested that elevated levels of carbon dioxide decreased photorespiration and inhibited nitrate assimilation in plant shoots.

Oh, maybe that ‘whole CO2 is good thing’ isn’t going to stick, even though the partisans at CO2Science.org have an “amazing video”.

New book from Dr. Roy Spencer

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“New book from Dr. Roy Spencer“. Anthony Watts gives us the press release for Dr. Roy Spencer’s new book entitled (with great hubris) “The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists“. Dr. Spencer is widely known as an enthusiastic denialist whose own blunders are well recorded.

The press release is a comically amateur effort at convincing and not describing. Get a load of this random unsubstantiated bunk (italics mine):

Believe it or not, this potential natural explanation for recent warming has never been seriously researched by climate scientists. The main reason they have ignored this possibility is that they cannot think of what might have caused it.

There are tens of thousands of papers discussing natural forcings in climatology. Here’s another juicy bit (italics Dr. Spencer’s):

But in Blunder I address what other scientists should have the courage to admit: that maybe putting more CO2 in the atmosphere is a good thing.

Man, that’s so 2008.

You have to love headings like “NATURE’S SUNSHADE: CLOUDS” and “CARBON DIOXIDE: FRIEND OR FOE?” too. I’m having flashbacks to my Grade Eight science project.