Category Archives: Anti-Science

Hotness is in the eye of the beholder

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“Hotness is in the eye of the beholder“. Anthony posts more nit-picking from Frank Lansner. He’s confused and angry because different representations of surface temperature anomalies use different colors. Specifically he’s comparing NOAA vs. UNISYS Sea Surface Temperature plots. Of course he has very little idea about the decisions behind the representation of either dataset…

He seems to be of the opinion that only ‘cool’ colors should be used so as not to upset anyone, and that there should only be one baseline value to plot from. Different plots are created for different purposes, Frank. No, “tricking” people is a valid scientific purpose.

At least Frank learned that the NESDIS dataset is gathered at night to eliminate variable solar heating of the sea surface and solar glare.

Climate Craziness of the Week – MSM jumps on alarming headline

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“Climate Craziness of the Week – MSM jumps on alarming headline“. Anthony Watts dismisses a University of Leeds report that the melting of floating ice, mainly because of salinity and temperature differences, can make a small contribution to sea-level rise. And the “MSM” are talking about it! Shocking. The paper is Recent loss of floating ice and the consequent sea level contribution by Shepherd, et al. 2010 in Geophysical Research Letters.

Nothing like mocking new knowledge because it isn’t significant enough. That’s anti-science I guess. The general opinion was that the melting of floating ice would have no impact on sea-level because of Archimedes’ principle, but it turns out that the estimated volume difference is 742 km²per year! A large number to be sure, but spread over the entire ocean very modest.

Anthony mocks this because the calculated annual contribution is an almost unmeasurable 49 micrometers (0.000049 m). But what would his position be if this hadn’t been calculated and included? Undoubtably outrage.

Quote of the week #34: NASA doubts climate model certainty

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“Quote of the week #34: NASA doubts climate model certainty“. Anthony Watts wants you to believe that because a NASA pamphlet from 1998 is not “completely certain” about Global Warming, they must now be taking orders from the secret Al Gore gubmint. It’s called science, Anthony. Better data, better understanding, better conclusions. Is that a difficult concept?

It’s the denialist mind that is frozen in time and unable to process new information. That’s why they’re called denialists.

Anthony’s also jumping onto this month’s denialist theme that “historic temperatures can be modeled with a constant linear trend + a 60 year cycle.” Too bad they can’t actually explain the correlation, too bad the correlation doesn’t persist, too bad the “constant linear trend” is up (what’s behind that I wonder).

Russian scientist suggests colder times ahead, cites UHI as a worry

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“Russian scientist suggests colder times ahead, cites UHI as a worry“. My gosh, Anthony Watts has proof that there’s no Global Warming! It’s all Urban Heat Island effect, which no-one has ever noticed. Just ask Oleg Pokrovsky from the Voeikov Main Geophysical Observatory.

He apparently claims, on the basis of nothing, that there has been a 12 year “Arctic cold snap” that no-one has noticed. They’ve all been tricked by those lyin’ thermometers in the US which are merely showing UHI effects. Eye-roll.

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.

Mann 2008 a Victim of Sudden Oak Death?

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“Mann 2008 a Victim of Sudden Oak Death?” Anthony Watts is eager to join the new round of uninformed nit-picking over tree ring chronologies. He posts some comments from Canadian sourpuss Steve McIntyre on the subject, quote-mining various news reports. Otherwise, his contribution is a Star Trek and Peanuts graphic and a link to a whack-a-mole copy of the Dr. Mann “spoof” video.

Dr. Mike Baillie of Queen’s University in Belfast has stated that the oak tree ring data he is being forced to release is not useful for temperature proxies, but the infamous Dr. Mann uses some oak ring data in his hated “hockey stick” temperature reconstruction. This clearly proves that the “hockey stick” is a lie! Or something. If you ignore all the other data.

Wait, do Anthony or McIntyre have any idea why Dr. Mann included this data in his reconstruction? Um, no. Doesn’t seem to stop them from complaining though, does it?

Lockwood demonstrates link between low sun and low temps

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“Lockwood demonstrates link between low sun and low temps“. Steven Goddard takes solar scientists to task for changing their opinions to reflect apparent changes in the Sun’s behavior. That’s called science, Steven. Unlike ignorantly misconstruing or misquoting Dr. Lockwood’s statements about Solar activity.

Plenty of confusion in the comments too. Is it a conspiracy? Are the solar physicists trying to quietly switch to the denialist side? Are the climate changes driven by low sunspot activity or high sunspot activity? Steven’s own sour contributions to the comments are particularly amusing.

The truth is that the Sun’s output is very constant with only trivial changes in activity such as sunspots and convection. These correlate poorly with the Earth’s climatic variations. Yes, the Sun’s energy input is the single largest input into our climate. But it doesn’t actually vary.

Keep looking for that “final nail”.

The new math – IPCC version

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“The new math – IPCC version“. Yet another copy-and-paste job from Anthony Watts. This time its an anonymous analysis from a sites.google.com page.

Wisely detaching themselves from their argument, they chose to confuse real-world temperature trends with synthetic sinusoidal data and declare that the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report is a lie(!!!!!!) because the synthetic trend changes with the number of cycles that are included.

If you measure over different distances, you get different slopes! Wow.

Well, duh. Of course it’s comical to suggest that the real-world temperature trends are better represented by a synthetic waveform.

Where are the sine waves???

Let us know when you get out of high school, anonymous!

My Thanks and Comments for Dr. Walt Meier

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“My Thanks and Comments for Dr. Walt Meier“. Now it’s Willis Eschenbach’s turn to pick at Dr. Walt Meier’s response to Willis’ “questionnaire”. This is just the trap that Willis hoped to spring on Dr. Meier. After some self-congratulatory remarks about civil discussion and the like, he can now nit-pick, throw out cherry-picked counter examples, argue over word choices, casually repeat denialist memes, and generally posture and enjoy the superficial connection to a “real scientist”.

Dr. Meier finds the denialist welcome depicted in this stock photo used at WUWT contains a surprise.

This goes on for about 7300 words. Two points from his “conclusions” bear comment:

1. Reading Dr. Meier’s answers to the questions has been very interesting and very productive for me. It has helped to identify where the discussion goes off the rails. [Implying that it’s Dr. Meier that :”goes off the rails”, not Willis. The departure is in Willis’ head, refusal to accept basic science is why the denialists fail to understand the evidence of Global Warming.]

7. Since the null hypothesis that the climate variations are natural has not been falsified, the AGW hypothesis is still a solution in search of a problem. [This chance to make this unsupported claim is the entire point of Willis’ extended debating exercise. In fact, no scientifically honest climate models can’t match historical climate trends without human factors.]

It feels like Anthony and his associates are chasing their own tails in ever-tightening circles.

More “hiding the decline”

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More “hiding the decline”. Anthony Watts excerpts a Steve McIntyre post about some oxygen isotope data (a temperature proxy) from the Law Dome in Antarctica that wasn’t used by the evil climatologists because it proves that there was a Medieval Warm Period all over the world.

Except it doesn’t. It’s just one in a collection of historical southern hemisphere temperature proxies. Some are more reliable than others, some show warming trends during different time periods and some don’t. The Law Dome oxygen isotope data exclusion was described in the report, but McIntyre chooses to label that as insufficient. Surprise!

Why wasn’t used? McIntyre has only conspiracy theories. His ignorance must be hard-won because he includes, but completely disregards, this quote from Dr. Jonathan Overpeck in a stolen “Climategate” e-mail:

If we have multiple conflicting temp recons from Law Dome, and one can’t be shown from the literature as being the best, then we should state that, and show neither.

That seems like a clear reason to me. But hey Steve throw it against the wall, mutter a bit, and see if it sticks!

I love “Dr.” Steve’s quote from his own IPCC AR4 Review comments:

6-1231 B 34:12 34:12 What happened to the Law Dome proxy? Why isn’t it shown? [Stephen McIntyre (Reviewer’s comment ID #: 309-115)]

The distilled essence of obsessive nit-picking! Not an ounce (err, gram) of scientific purpose behind the comment. A useful comment would have made a case for including the Law Dome proxy, but all Steve can say is “why?”.