Category Archives: Anti-Science

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.

Does Hadley Centre Sea Surface Temperature Data (HADSST2) Underestimate Recent Warming?

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“Does Hadley Centre Sea Surface Temperature Data (HADSST2) Underestimate Recent Warming?“. Anthony Watts knows that the politicians meeting in Cancun next week to discuss climate issues need the best scientific advice, so he’s gonna make sure its available to them, protected by a mountain of bullshit.

Here’s a chart from Bob Tisdale that Anthony wants you to look at and see a villainous adjustment in 1998 to make temperatures look hotter. But its a difference plot between two temperature sets, and all it shows is that when the newer sea surface temperature measurement methods replaced the older ones they slightly underestimated sea surface temperature correction.

Bob Tisdale's plot of the difference between the HADSST2 sea surface temperature measurements and the HADISST satellite measurements. The step "up" represents an overcorrection and hence an underestimate of true SST.

NYT’s sort-of-clarity on Norfolk sinking aka “sea level rise” and an inconvenient map

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NYT’s sort-of-clarity on Norfolk sinking aka “sea level rise” and an inconvenient map. Anthony Watts and friends complain about a newspaper article. Thus disproving Global Warming.

The New York Times article lays the rising sea-level part of the equation a bit too thickly, but Anthony wants his readers to think that climate scientists have only one biased explanation for sea-level changes. In fact, subsidence is just one of the well-known factors in local sea-level change.

Examination of CRU data suggests no statistically significant warming

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“Examination of CRU data suggests no statistically significant warming“. Anthony Watts’ ferociously qualified associate A.J. Strata says:

“Bottom Line – Using two back-of-the-envelope tests for significance against the CRU global temperature data I have discovered:”

and

“let me explain how I derived (by eye – ugh!) the two primary pieces of data I used”

Back-of-the-envelope tests? Eye-balling? Does anyone need to read any further? A.J., who seems more like a Tea-Bagger than a climate expert, is apparently working backwards from various printed graphs! This is classic denialist bunk, even down to accusations of “deception off on a global scale”. It’s kind of pitiable watching these obsessions play out in public.

So how did A.J. pull the Global Warming edifice down? He’s taken sets of what he claims are raw country temperature data (well actually pretty much of his own invention as he’s pulling the numbers from printed graphs) and slapped a line on them so he can declare that there is no Global Warming. I think I’ll wait for the cover story in Nature before I join the parade. Although he has been “working on [this] for about a week now”.

For a laugh, here's a cherry-picked sample of the printed temp charts A.J. Strata used to prove that there's been no Global Warming. These are from Mozambique and South Africa.

In the comments we get more examples of Anthony threatening critical commenters when he asks “Onion” about the weather in England. Anthony likes to use information from his website logs to reveal private details of his critics so he can make them feel exposed.

Can cacti ‘escape’ underground in high temperatures?

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“Can cacti ‘escape’ underground in high temperatures?“. Anthony Watts discovers that a species of cactus that can handle higher temperatures. So Global Warming, which of course isn’t happening, will be no problem at all!

This post is just a placeholder to give his readers a fresh place to vent. Cue the ditto-head chorus of “scientists are so stupid” with a verse from “its cold where I am!”

GHCN V3 temperature data errors spotted within a day of release

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“GHCN V3 temperature data errors spotted within a day of release“. Anthony Watts leaps on a claim that newly released data from Global Historical Climatological Network has quality control problems. Someone has plotted the difference between the old analysis software version and the new version, and they aren’t identical!

Perhaps it’s because there’s a problem with the beta release of their website’s charting software? Geez, it’s a beta. Let them finish it before you start howling.

Anthony, why can’t you just savor one conspiracy theory at a time? Well, at least we get to enjoy the bizarre spectacle in the comments of Steven Mosher defending climate data.

Wegman responds to USA Today

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“Wegman responds to USA Today“. Another hollow denialist trophy – the politically driven, unqualified, lazy, plagiarized, misrepresentative, incompetent, padded, 2006 Wegman Report crumbles but Anthony Watts clings to it tighter than ever.

Recent, and damning, attention to it on the Deep Climate website and by John Mashey has dragged a defense from Dr. Wegman, four years after he promised to show how he “confirmed” the errors in Dr. Mann’s famous 1999 paper Northern hemisphere temperatures during the past millennium: Inferences, uncertainties, and limitations (PDF here). That defense? Apparently it’s all just “conspiracy theory”. And he had to “work faster than [he] might like”. And he “never intended… …to take intellectual credit.” Yeah, that’ll stick. Thanks for bringing it to our attention, Anthony.

So how did Dr. Edward Wegman get himself into so much trouble? In 2006 he produced a report for Congress at the request of Republican Congressman Joe Barton that supported Ross McKitrick and Steve McIntyre’s criticism of Dr. Mann’s global temperature reconstruction “Hockey Stick”. If Dr. Wegman used the same carefully selected starting points as McKitrick and McIntyre and the same un-released but evidently biased code he could, surprise, produce precisely the same “damning” trends they did. He also announced that there was evidence of cozy scientific relationships among “mainstream” climate scientists. This “social network analysis” was off-the-cuff conjecture ginned up to support resentful denialist claims of conspiracies. Attention-getting claims though, if he could make it stick.

Dr. Wegman’s report was widely criticized by knowledgeable people at the time and largely contradicted by a concurrent impartial analysis produced by the National Research Council. It nevertheless became a favorite denialist talking point as they could pretend that the report was peer-reviewed, that it ‘must be true because it was congressional testimony’, and the author was a real scientist (albeit a statistician without climatology expertise).

Unfortunately the Wegman Report has been shown to be a massive exercise in plagiarism, performed with such ham-fisted incompetence that it also revealed the author’s ignorance of the subject. It also contained crude attempts to twist the record to support his desired conclusion and frankly demonstrated a deep ethical lapse. Oh, and the “social network analysis”? Well if applied to Wegman, it shows that in direct contradiction to his statements, he was taking orders pretty much directly from Congressman Joe Barton’s staff.

What did Dr. Wegman’s Report say about man-made Climate Change? Nothing. How could it? He knows nothing about the subject and has proven it.

Here’s a comparison of the IPCC’s temperature reconstructions from their 2001 and 2007 Reports. Did the complaints of McKitrick and McIntyre or Wegman make any difference to the scientific reality? Nope. If anything the new reconstructions amplify the trend.

IPCC temperature reconstructions from AR3 and AR4 on the same time scale. AR3's chart is Mann, et. al. 1999, AR4 adds newer reconstructions, based on new data and techniques. Click to see (slightly) larger version.

You’ve hitched your wagon to a bolting nag, Anthony and you’re going to be dragged all over town.

NASA’s Hathaway issues new solar cycle prediction

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“NASA’s Hathaway issues new solar cycle prediction“. Anthony Watts draws attention to the difficulty experts are having predicting the course of the current sunspot cycle. He also says “let us not be too critical of Dr. Hathaway, unlike some scientists we know, he has the integrity and courage to admit when his forecasts and models don’t work, and to revise them in the face of reality.” Ah yes, the mythical corrupt scientist. Who is the cowardly scientist that refuses to admit any error in their theories?

Of course if we can’t accurately predict something as ‘simple’ as the number of sunspots how can we possibly trust any climate predictions, right?

P.S. That was a lousy “blink comparator” graphic, Anthony. Try using the same scale and date range for both version next time. Or were you just pasting together two jpgs?

OH NO! Too much fresh water! (but we can’t tell)

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“OH NO! Too much fresh water! (but we can’t tell)“. Holy cow, Anthony Watts says that a news release from University of California, Irvine sort-of contradicts itself! You know what this means, don’t you – there is no Global Warming! He ponders – “Do these guys even read their own press releases? I want my California State taxes back.”

Apparently Anthony doesn’t read press releases either. He juxtaposes “study finds alarming increase” and “there is no global discharge measurement network” but seems incapable of understanding that the lack of a “measurement network” doesn’t mean that they aren’t able to measure something. This sentence slipped past Anthony’s incurious nose:

This paper uses satellite records of sea level rise, precipitation and evaporation to put together a unique 13-year record – the longest and first of its kind. (Emphasis mine)

So the news release title is “First-of-its-kind study finds alarming increase in flow of water into oceans.” They estimate that freshwater outflow has increased by 18% since 1994 and 2006. The authors clearly are ‘climate alarmists’ because they say:

“In general, more water is good,” Famiglietti said. “But here’s the problem: Not everybody is getting more rainfall, and those who are may not need it. What we’re seeing is exactly what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted – that precipitation is increasing in the tropics and the Arctic Circle with heavier, more punishing storms. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of people live in semiarid regions, and those are drying up.”

Mann’s old University gets another subpoena

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“Mann’s old University gets another subpoena“. Anthony Watts is a bit muted on the topic of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s attempt to restart his deeply ill-advised “investigation” of Professor Michael Mann over some of the grants he received while at the University of Virginia. On the one hand, he loves to see climate scientists being harassed. On the other, Cuccinelli’s clearly way out of his depth and jurisdiction.

But Anthony does have the energy to repost what the denialist lobbyists at the Science and Public Policy Institute are saying about it, and his commenters have no problem waxing ignorant, rattling on about “taxpayer’s money”, “hiding evidence”, etc.

The ethics, politics and legality of Cuccinelli’s maneuverings have all been covered before, both on this website and at other important places such as Real Climate, Andrew Revkin at the New York Times, the Washington Post (1, 2), even USA Today.

Short version? This is morally and intellectually bankrupt Tea Party harassment.