Category Archives: Anti-Science

Is It Time To Stop The Insanity Of Wasting Time and Money On More Climate Models?

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“Is It Time To Stop The Insanity Of Wasting Time and Money On More Climate Models?” (2015-09-14). Wait a second. Hasn’t the only faintly credible denialist argument been that all the climate modelling and climate projections are too preliminary? We should keep waiting, twiddling our thumbs, until perfect data and projections are in hand? Then, presumably, the denialists will swing into righteous eco-warrior action. No, for Dr. Tim Ball it’s now about wasteful funding. Apparently ignorance is again bliss.

I still flick a bored eye over to Anthony Watts’ clown convention every now and then, and this post made me laugh enough to spend a moment scrolling through the “science.”

Today Anthony has loaned his dunce’s pulpit to Sky Dragon kook Dr. Tim Ball so he can mutter that climate projections aren’t as precise as he requires, that there aren’t enough “stations”, and that if you copy and paste carefully enough even the IPCC can be made to admit that the data is awful. Shut the whole thing down!

Hard to put much credence in Dr. Ball’s “career as a climatologist” (actually he’s a retired geographer and semi-pro Letter to the Editor writer) when he’s still trying to sell the out-of-context “hide the decline” source code quote from 2009. That dog won’t hunt. Also, does he really think that climatologists are trying to forecast climate? Ball seems to have a very rudimentary notion of how his alleged profession gathers climate data, or how it is used. Most of his gotcha quotes stop just before the actual meaning is explained, but this can possibly be put down to a short attention span.

Hell, Dr. Ball seems to have even forgotten that “stations” aren’t the only way we gather climate data. Maybe he should dust off those National Geographic magazines and look for articles about “satellites.” They’re brill. They go everywhere!

Actually, Dr. Ball seems to hold Australian garden-variety denialist and conspiracy enthusiast (ask her about the Rothschilds) Joanne Nova in high esteem, so perhaps he’s hidden an admission of poor judgement amongst his contemptuous bluster.

Open Letter to Jon Stewart – The Daily Show

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“Open Letter to Jon Stewart – The Daily Show” (2014-01-17). I LOVE these denialist “open letters”! Anthony Watts seems to love ’em too, but for different reasons. Anthony loves the chance to act as if he’s initiating a great public debate. When The Letter lands like a tiny pebble in a reeeeeally deep well he can pretend it was so beautifully argued that the (oblivious) target was shamed into silence. Me? I love the hubris.

Here we have Bob Tisdale lecturing Jon Stewart about his coverage of right-wing “weather!” whoppers on January 6th. Anthony Watts has had a pickle up his ass on the same topic; the recent deep cold snap should have been the final nail in the Global Warming hoax, right? But at least weatherman Anthony learned what the Polar Vortex is.

Bob lists his credentials up front so that Jon will sit up and take notice. He’s an “independent climate researcher” (code for “not a climate researcher”) and author of three ebooks!

I quite enjoyed Ingenious Pursuits‘ deconstruction: “Dr” Bob in retirement – just keep churning it out, check it out.

Like most denialists, Bob seems to consider himself a blend of Galileo and Martin Luther. Fierce intellect, incredible moral integrity, and probably the strength of ten men. Yeah, right. Bob’s just rattling through the usual tired and debunked denialist claims, misrepresenting evidence, demonstrating his ignorance of real scientific process or squawking “the models are wrong!”

I note that Anthony seems A-OK with the anti-Semitic undercurrent in his carefully moderated comments sandbox. Did you know Jon Stewart’s real surname is Leibowitz? This is apparently important to know.

The ‘planetary tidal influence on climate’ fiasco: strong armed science tactics are overkill, due process would work better

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“The ‘planetary tidal influence on climate’ fiasco: strong armed science tactics are overkill, due process would work better” (2014-01-18). Hey Anthony, this is just like that day the football team locked themselves in the school office and replaced morning announcements with fart sounds and declarations that “art class sucks”. Eventually the adults pulled the plug and it slowly dawned on the jocks that they’d made a laughingstock of themselves.

So, in the here and now, a little cabal of denialists managed (with just a smidgen of misrepresentation) to launch a “peer-reviewed” journal they titled  Pattern Recognition In Physics under the legitimate auspices of Copernicus Publications. They even managed to pull off two issues, stacked with their own papers, before the bullshit detectors pegged and their journal was abruptly terminated.

Says Copernicus Publications about the editorial conniving:

the editors selected the referees on a nepotistic basis, which we regard as malpractice in scientific publishing and not in accordance with our publication ethics we expect to be followed by the editors.

and

Therefore, we at Copernicus Publications wish to distance ourselves from the apparent misuse of the originally agreed aims & scope of the journal as well as the malpractice regarding the review process, and decided on 17 January 2014 to cease the publication of PRP.

Anthony Watts can merely sniff about unsubstantiated external pressure from “team climate science”, “strong-arm gang tactics” and how, if they’d only been given a chance to ‘splain, “due process would have been the right way to approach the issue”. This has to be done carefully though, because even Anthony is backing away from the stupid as fast as he can and admits, as meekly as possible, that their claims of a “planetary tidal influence on climate is likely a bit of overkill”.

Anthony sniffs that Astronomy and Astrophysics didn’t collapse after publishing a similarly poor paper by Abreu et al. entitled Is there a planetary influence on solar activity? so why should this journal?

Anthony, there’s a difference between a bad paper getting through review at a reputable journal and a dishonest journal created for the purpose of giving a stream of bad papers the appearance of credibility. Perspective’s a bitch.

Still, celebrated scientist denialist blogger Joanna Nova trumpets that “the new line in the sand is to write a paper so hot they have to terminate the whole journal!” I guess Pattern Recognition in Physics’s science jujitsu is so strong that Jo’s cute idea of flooding the Copernicus Publications inboxes with hate mail is only a polite suggestion. It just looks like editorial and scientific deception!

Too bad for Roger Tattersall, aka “Tallbloke”, a truculent denialist blogger engineer/historian and regular commenter at Watts Up With That. He’s wearing two conflicting hats here; appointed to the journal’s rigged editorial board on the basis of no qualification whatsoever (denialist blogging?)  and also tagging along as a delighted junior author of one of the papers that broke the camel’s back. Now he wails about the harsh fist of censorship while his readers sagely drop the Hitler bomb.

This new comedy is just another instance of resentful, impotent, denialists clustering together like cockroaches in a little backwater hoping to boil forth and startle a small child into dropping their ice-cream. Remember the Climate Research misfire? Energy & Environment also has a long history of slipping denialist boners into the mix.

Follow the new bouncing ball at Open Mind and Rabett Run.

There’s also a good perspective at And The There’s Physics

A bit more on this juicy incident;

  • Greg Laden’s blog: Science Denialists Make Fake Journal, Get Shut Down.
    Greg coverage brought this statement by Copernicus Publications, from Roger Tattersall’s own bitter post, which kind of puts the whole matter in perspective:

    We were alarmed by the authors’ second implication stating “This sheds serious doubts on the issue of a continued, even accelerated, warming as claimed by the IPCC project”. Before the journal was launched, we had a long discussion regarding its topics. The aim of the journal was to publish articles about patterns recognized in the full spectrum of physical disciplines. PRP was never meant to be a platform for climate sceptics. In addition to our doubts about the scientific content of PRP, we also received information about potential misconduct during the review process.

  • Science magazine: Alleging ‘Malpractice’ With Climate Skeptic Papers, Publisher Kills Journal

Discussion thread: Reddit Bans Climate Change Skeptics

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“Discussion thread: Reddit Bans Climate Change Skeptics“ (2013-12-20). This is rich; Anthony Watts, who uses his website’s commenting policy to impede and frustrate critics of denialism, has suddenly noticed that Reddit banned “climate change skeptics” from its /r/science forum. A year ago.

Anthony excerpts an article from that bastion of honesty and impartiality, Fox News, to ‘splain it. Strange though that Anthony’s copy-and-paste fails to include this bit:

While there is a subreddit dedicated to climate skeptics, it has far less research than the larger science board.

I love the quote from famously dishonest denialist journalist James Delingpole that Anthony seems to want to highlight. it’s a beautiful example of free-floating, illogical, baseless political resentment:

“The greenies — and their many useful idiots in the liberal media — are terrified of open debate on climate-change because the real world evidence long ago parted company with their scientifically threadbare theory,” Delingpole told FoxNews.com, arguing that Allen’s tactic is part of a “classic liberal defense mechanism: If the facts don’t support you, then close down the argument.”

Seems pretty clear that Reddit moderator Nathan Allen understands readers of Watts Up With That? well:

They had no idea that the smart-sounding talking points from their preferred climate blog were, even to a casual climate science observer, plainly wrong.”

Have a look at the comments in Anthony’s post for the delusional nonsense Nathan recognizes as so poisonous to intelligent conversation.

Whither went the warmer weather?

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“Whither went the warmer weather?“ (2013-12-16). “17 years, 3 months with no global warming” says Anthony Watts, our all-knowing guide to the Universe. He knows this because Britain’s celebrated Morris Dancer of the intellect, Lord Christopher Monckton of Brenchley says so in his usual tangential, conspiracist, long-winded, self-delighted way. He even has a tongue-twister post title and a poem to back him up, who can beat that?

Furthermore, the Lord declares that “the models are in fundamental error”, trying to imply that conventional climate science is somehow wrong. As usual he’s too busy pontificating to consider, in this case, the distinction between prediction and projection.

Monckton tops it off by jumbling the cautionary statistical aphorism “correlation doesn’t imply causation” into “absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation.” That’s logical mastery that rises above grimy reality!

Never mind that this November just past was the hottest ever in the GISS record, or that the HadCRUT3 warming trend is pretty glaring if your eyes are open. Look at Monckton’s data!

Wait that’s the GISS data, posted by Tamino, which kinda undermines the Lord. We only trust the RSS data! Look again:

Damn, that’s not flat! Can’t a right-thinking denialist count on Dr. Roy Spencer? Oh, his chart wasn’t playing the long game, it was just designed to boast about his UAH satellite data corrections (it’s only “fudging” when other scientists do it).

Best to stick to Lord Monckton’s own chart, with the messy contradictions and distracting numbers tucked away out of sight. Squish the scale down too and draw a nice thick flat line on it:

Monckton 20131216 RSS chart

Now that’s useful science!

Towards a theory of climate

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“Towards a theory of climate“ (2013-11-10). Why on earth does Anthony Watts cling to that fog horn Lord Christopher Monckton of Brenchley? It’s like watching a drowning man clutch an anchor.

Monckton is an utter loon who clearly takes absolute delight in his own rabid, meandering self-reverential declarations. Would any intelligent person read past this tripe?

I have just had the honor of listening to Professor Murry Salby giving a lecture on climate. He had addressed the Numptorium in Holyrood earlier in the day, to the bafflement of the fourteenth-raters who populate Edinburgh’s daft wee parliament. In the evening, among friends, he gave one of the most outstanding talks I have heard.

Professor Salby has also addressed the Parliament of Eunuchs in Westminster. Unfortunately he did not get the opportunity to talk to our real masters, the unelected Kommissars of the European tyranny-by-clerk.

 Monckton’s head is so far up his own ass that he’s actually seeing daylight again.

The message from on high that Monckton is attempting to deliver is that Dr. Murry Salby, the fired Professor, has reached the “explosive conclusion that temperature change drives CO2 concentration change and not the other way about”.

Therefore Global Warming is a communist lie.

So Monckton and Salby have discovered that real, long-term, natural, climate changes will affect our atmosphere’s chemical composition. Wow. Only one of them can be hailed as the new Galileo, which one will it be? Surely we can split all the Nobel Prizes between them though.

So where’s the huge, near-instantaneous, temperature spike 800 years ago that naturally produced the skyrocketing CO2 concentrations we’ve seen in the last century? Oops.

But we’re still being repressed by the “climate communists”, right?

Super Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda – another overhyped storm that didn’t match early reports

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“Super Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda – another overhyped storm that didn’t match early reports” (2013-11-09). Sometimes Anthony Watts’ denialist haste can only be described as contemptible, verging on sociopathic. Here he rushes to highlight Paul Homewood (scientific qualification – retired accountant) braying that some media reports on Super Typhoon Haiyan botched converting wind speeds from metric to imperial.

Since the Mainstream Media are proven liars, there is clearly no Global Warming! Write scathing letters to your editors complaining about math errors!

Paul Homewood’s whining is done while brushing aside the deaths and destruction that Super Typhoon Haiyan is still causing and are only beginning to be quantified. Of course as even early reports start to roll in Anthony and Paul have had to trip over themselves to qualify and re-qualify themselves. Maybe it wasn’t so overhyped after-all.

Look, Anthony Watts was right - No big deal. Photo: AP

Look, Anthony Watts was right! No big deal.. Gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette, right? Taken from a photo gallery on The Ages’ website. Photo: AP

What a disgusting, shameless, little jig. They know that their readers will have largely passed on to the next fake outrage and are unlikely to see them scuttle away from their claims. Aspersions on disliked news sources and climatologists have been spread, Anthony’s readers have been reminded to trust no-one but him; job done. For denialists like Anthony it’s critical to strike while the iron’s hot and while the human consequences can still, callously, be disregarded. Measured comment has no place in his world.

It’s also sickly amusing to watch Paul Homewood try to portray the evil “MSM”, which for simplicity in this case momentarily includes the execrable denialist-friendly Daily Mail, as simultaneously too dumb to work their calculators properly and so cunning that they are deliberately converting the wind speed wrong to terrify their readers.

I’ll leave readers with science blogger Greg Laden’s thoughts: WUWT Science Denialist Blog Hits New, Historic Low.

Update 1: Sou at HotWhopper also takes Anthony to task While thousands may have died in Typhoon Haiyan, be prepared to “throw up in your mouth” at this article on WUWT.

Update 2: Anthony Watts, trying to squirm away from his callous haste, sanctimoniously reminds us that he’s donated to the Red Cross. Has Greg Laden? Has he? Has he??? Greg’s the jerk, not Anthony! I thought a doctrinaire libertarian like Anthony would conclude that Filipinos should stand proud and free and take it on the chin if they failed to personally prepare. Just goes to show.

An open letter challenging the EPA on CO2 regulation

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“An open letter challenging the EPA on CO2 regulation“ (2012-12-28). A line has been drawn in the sand! The environmental gauntlet has been thrown! A fist has been clenched! A steely gaze has been directed! The GIANTS of climatology have been aroused! (Maybe we could have phrased that last one better.) Anthony Watts has added his name to a newspaper opinion piece!!!

So, preeminent 21st century climatologist (Not really. In fact, not even a bit), Joe D’Aleo has written a damning critique (not) of the EPA’s conclusion three years ago that rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations will have harmful environmental consequences. And an important newspaper, the Washington Post has printed it! (Err.. the “Examiner”.) The usual denialist travelers like Fred Singer, Tim Ball, Don Easterbrook and Anthony Watts have signed on along with others we will leave unmentioned out of pity.

Here’s the laser-sharp money quote fired, like a diamond bullet, at the very core of the EPA, that Anthony urges his readers to “consider widely republishing”:

“In summary, it is not incorrect to argue that further study of the role GHGs play in climate is in order.”

My mind is spinning! From trying to decipher the meaning. I guess they want the EPA to stop trying to “P” our “E”?

What are Joe & Co. steamed about? Well mainly they hate government regulation on principle. Also they think that the EPA should have spent ten years replicating all the findings of modern climatology instead of just pulling out the relevant peer-reviewed journals. By the way, did you know that some of those journals aren’t American?

In what alternate reality is this proud “Open Letter” anything other than a kick me sign? Have D’Aleo, Watts and pals forgotten that their grade-school assertions were all shot down three years ago? Maybe they’re hoping that we’ve forgotten.

Rabett Run has an amusing sampling of the EPA’s responses to various inept denialist complaints. I wish there was an index to them, but here’s a useful Google search string. Plenty of chuckles in there.

Antarctic warming courtesy of Mr. Fix-it

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“Antarctic warming courtesy of Mr. Fix-it“ (2012-12-27). Anthony Watts posts some profound scientific analysis – “Just a little something [David Middleton] threw together”.

On the basis of Middleton’s “Mk I eyeball”, careful scientific work on Western Antarctic temperature records is dismissed with a sneer as “manufactured” and denialist cooling (via squinting) replaces objective evidence of significant warming.

So David, did you just “throw it together” or just throw it up?

Here’s Anthony Watts’ own attempt to disparage the study three days earlier, in it’s entirety, supported by a cartoon of Santa’s sleigh:

They can’t find any recent warming, so they took a broken sensor with “intermittent gaps and other problems”, “recalibrated” it, “used computerized analyses of the atmosphere to fill the gaps” and “discovered” warming that “happened in the 1980s”. If you believe that this is science, then I strongly suggest you prep your telescope, lest you miss out on a spectacular sleigh sighting…

If you believe Anthony’s interested in science, you probably believe in the tooth fairy.

‘Reach for the Stars’ now becomes ‘Retreat to the Past’

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‘Reach for the Stars’ now becomes ‘Retreat to the Past’ (2012-08-27). So many dumb posts on Watts Up, but I couldn’t let this reflection the stupidity of Viv Forbes, from Australia’s denialist dumb-tank The Carbon Sense Coalition, sent in as a guest post pass unremarked.

Apparently the deaths of Steve Jobs and Neil Armstrong are evidence that good science (such as coal power) is under attack and that nasty environmentalists are making up excuses to force us all back into dark caves. I suspect both those men would be spinning in their graves if they knew the idiocy they were being connected to.

Already [the “Green Generation”] have re-discovered wind power, wood energy and electric cars that were tried and largely rejected a century ago; they now encourage the production of once-banned ethanol corn whiskey, but waste it on cars; they spurn the energy potential of nuclear, coal, oil and gas; and they would close our airports and lock up our resources whilst developing computerised spy-ware to record, regulate, ration and tax our usage of everything.

And one branch of NASA, the once-great risk-taking body that put Neil Armstrong on the moon, is now supporting an anti-carbon cult that advocates the closure of the whole coal industry from mine to power station.

Viv the philosopher seems to feel that every technological development up until he was born was good, but everything since then is bad. We tried windmills before, don’t try them again! Coal got us here, we must stick with it! Don’t try anything new!

Sorry Viv and Anthony, progress doesn’t follow a forced path. We aren’t required to reject displaced technologies even when reevaluation shows they have advantages again.

The one thing Viv’s guest post does accomplish is to show how Anthony Watts vets these guest posts:

  1. Anti-environmentalist? Check.
  2. Anti-government? Check.
  3. Think about it. 
  4. Paste!

The comments focus on taxation as theft and “Agenda 21”. Surprise!