Category Archives: Character Assassination

Breaking: NASA GISS Dr. James Hansen – arrested yet again

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“Breaking: NASA GISS Dr. James Hansen – arrested yet again“. Anthony Watts snickers “Here’s our buddy Jimbo, looking dapper in a fedora, tie, dockers, and cuffs.”

Apparently Anthony can decry repression of free speech from behind his keyboard when it supports his beliefs but he finds it delicious when his opponents put their money where their mouths are, in this case the environmental damage caused by Mountain-top removal mining, and are imprisoned for it. Then authoritarian gubmint is good.

Mountain-top removal coal mining? It’s just a bit of rock dust.

Skeptical Science? John Cook – embarrassing himself

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“Skeptical Science? John Cook – embarrassing himself“. Somehow John Cook calling Anthony Watts a “denier” is an embarrassment. Anthony’s in full thin-skinned rant mode here, and it seems that poor John is now dead to Anthony. It’s Anthony’s tantrum that seems embarrassing.

Anthony’s so incoherent about this that he seems to have manufactured a quote from Cook’s Skeptical Science website claiming that “the usual suspects in natural climate change – solar variations, volcanoes, Milankovitch cycles – are all conspicuous in their absence over the past three decades of warming.” He then thinks he has refuted them with a series “oh yeahs?”. I’m sure that John would actually say that the natural variations simply don’t correlate to the warming we’ve experienced.

John’s also apparently “smug” for restricting himself to peer-reviewed scientific literature and using “the ugly word denier”, and his associate Dr. John Bruno gets taken to task for being nice to Anthony once but only once. This is just a train wreck of a post.

Maybe they’ve found Trenberth’s missing heat

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“Maybe they’ve found Trenberth’s missing heat“. Anthony Watts notes another climate press release with a class-clown giggle so he can side-step the fact that Kevin Trenberth’s honest concern about deep-ocean temperature records is being resolved. His confederacy of dunces sings along in the comments. Once again Anthony’s entire contribution is his choice of blog post title. It’s a reference to a cherry-picked statement by National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientist Kevin Trenberth back in the Spring:

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.

Trenberth used the word “travesty” to describe the lack of well-distributed temperature measurements from places like the deep ocean, he was not talking about a failure of climate theory. However the denialists grabbed that useful sentence fragment with both hands and tried to paint him as agreeing with them that climatology was corrupt, fraudulent, and never visits its mother. This malicious denialist meme is still widely circulating.

NOAA has a press release called Scientists Find 20 Years of Deep Water Warming Leading to Sea Level Rise. It covers a paper on this subject in the Journal of Climate titled Warming of Global Abyssal and Deep Southern Ocean Waters Between the 1990s and 2000s: Contributions to Global Heat and Sea Level Rise Budgets (abstract here, PDF here):

This study shows that the deep ocean – below about 3,300 feet – is taking up about 16 percent of what the upper ocean is absorbing. The authors note that there are several possible causes for this deep warming: a shift in Southern Ocean winds, a change in the density of what is called Antarctic Bottom Water, or how quickly that bottom water is formed near the Antarctic, where it sinks to fill the deepest, coldest portions of the ocean around much of the globe.

Anthony’s last kick at this cat is to now suggest that Trenberth is a sloppy scientist. He lost the heat! So careless.

Abyssal Heat Fluxes in the Southern Ocean. From Purkey and Johnson, 2010.

What’s really happening? Climate scientists are improving our understanding of the Earth’s climate. Uncertainties are being reduced. The honest overall picture remains the same: AGW is real. Anthony’s readers aren’t having any of that though.

BBC questions if Pachauri’s continued presence “is still serving the best interests of the IPCC”

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BBC questions if Pachauri’s continued presence “is still serving the best interests of the IPCC”. Apparently some British politicians think that Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), should step down because denialists don’t like him. The BBC’s Roger Harrabin writes that Dr. Pachauri is “associated with controversy and error in the IPCC AR4.” What he’s associated with both minor errors? Off with his head! With him gone, Global Warming will naturally stop immediately.

Which image of Dr. Pachuri does Anthony use? Hint: not on the right.

Guess what; Anthony Watts will pour scorn and false accusations on anyone who occupies that office. Is Dr. Pachauri a “railway engineer”? Nope. Does he “write smutty novels”? Nope. Will Anthony repeat these claims as often as possible? Yup.

Quote of the Week

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“Quote of the Week“. Anthony Watts brings to our attention a quote from Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. about the hated Joe Romm that is “long overdue”, prompted by Joe’s coverage of Clive Crook at the Atlantic repeatedly smearing climatologist Dr. Michael Mann:

“More than any individual — James Inhofe and Marc Morano included — Joe Romm is responsible for creating a poisonous, negative atmosphere in the climate debate. Responsible voices should say so, this nonsense has gone on long enough.”

This is code for “Joe Romm is kicking my ass all over town.” You see, Joe Romm has a Physics Ph.D. but Roger Pielke Jr.’s Ph.D is in… political science. They’ve crossed paths many times, but it’s like bringing a knife to a gun fight, and Romm doesn’t sugar-coat it.

Interesting to see the implication that denialists Senator James Inhofe and political operative Marc Morano are also “poisonous.” I’m not sure how Anthony avoided that short-list, but perhaps it’s because he’s one of Roger’s buddies. Roger Pielke Jr.’s claim of being (the only?) “honest broker” in the climate change debate is currently being laughed out-of-town. Here are two links (Roger at Face Value and The Honestly Broken) about Roger’s self-serving concept.

Gore cleared in masseuse case

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“Gore cleared in masseuse case“. Is Anthony Watts clearing the air on yet another attempt to besmirch politician and environmentalist Al Gore, or is he taking the opportunity to remind his readers that ‘the alGore’ is evil, evil, EVIL?

This kind of post is just another sign that Anthony Watts’ blog is propelled by partisan right-wing anger and not by objective scientific interest.

Climatic collision on the National/Financial Post website

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“Climatic collision on the National/Financial Post website“. Anthony Watts is busy deleting contacts from his Rolodex and trying to frame the sudden and unwelcome media scrutiny of global warming denialism as part of the Climategate “whitewash” and the alleged “blacklist” of denialists.

Canada’s National Post newspaper, a long-time source and also re-distributor of climate science misinformation, has for the first time printed an intelligent and skeptical assessment of the global warming denial position. Jonathan Kay’s article Bad Science: Global Warming Deniers are a Liability to the Conservative Cause is an entertaining exposé of many of the smug deceptions that the Post’s own doctrinaire columnists, such as Terrence Corcoran, have been regurgitating for years. Quite a startling development. Kay’s telling quote is this:

How has this tiny 2-3% sliver of fringe opinion been reinvented as a perpetually “growing” share of the scientific community?

Columnist Terrence Corcoran naturally has taken exception to having the plug pulled on his cozy bubble-bath. Bad politics The politicization of climate science reaches new low with the development of a deniers blacklist is his response. Strangely, he starts with a reference to the “first principles of good science” before blustering at length about a “scientific mop-and-pail crew”, talking about the astrological signs of the paper’s authors and trying to imply that compiling the alleged “denialist blacklist” was a stealthy librul operation. Actually, the list of denialist scientists was collected from documents published and distributed by denialist lobbyists. But bluster on, Terrence.

Anthony declares that of the two columns “One in my opinion, [is] ugly, the other matter of fact.” No prize for guessing which one Anthony likes.

Condensed Monckton

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Condensed Monckton: Anthony Watts takes a break from managing Steven McIntyre’s Climate Audit blog to help fellow denialists support “Lord” Monckton’s call for e-mail harassment of Prof. John Abraham of St. Thomas University (which Monckton calls a “half-assed Catholic Bible college”). Condensed in the sense of “no need to think, just click on the handy e-mail links and start ranting!”

So what’s triggered this? Prof. Abraham released a devastating analysis of Monckton’s intentionally misleading arguments against Global Warming. Monckton’s wounded ego has led to a two-pronged response:

  1. A call for denialists to pester St. Thomas University to remove Prof. Abraham’s analysis. So ironic! I thought denialists were in a state of constant lividity over perceived suppression of their arguments and ‘ground-breaking research’…
  2. Releasing a ‘response’ that consists of 84 pages and 466 idiotic questions (5 mb PDF) on that scientific clearinghouse the denialist Science and Public Policy Institute. Yes, 466 of them. Monckton’s massive rant is getting plenty of hilarious dissection. Here are a few:

The University of St. Thomas’ final response to Monckton, after a short e-mail exchange?

We received your email response to our June 25, 2010 letter. The University of St Thomas respects your right to disagree with Professor Abraham, just as the University respects Professor Abraham’s right to disagree with you. What we object to are your personal attacks against Father Dease, and Professor Abraham, your inflammatory language, and your decision to disparage Professor Abraham, Father Dease and The University of St Thomas.

Please be advised that neither we nor the University of St Thomas will communicate with you any further about your decision to sully the University of St. Thomas, Professor Abraham, and others rather than to focus on the scholarly differences between you and Professor Abraham.

Signed: Phyllis Karasov, Moore Costellow and Hart, P.L.L.P.

Denialists are actually casting this as proof that Monckton’s “rebuttal” has won the day!

Anthony; you’re out of your scientific depth (think playground splash pad) and you’re tying yourself to a boat anchor…

Then and now, Europe, US to see snowy, cold winters: expert

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“Then and now, Europe, US to see snowy, cold winters: expert“. Charles Rotter thinks that Dr. James Overland re-evaluating predictions in a story on physorg.com means that he’s just making it up as he goes along. So Charles does some making it up of his own with some pretend quotes.

Who said this? Not Dr. Overland.

We used to think that a warming Arctic with melting ice would be part of a warming trend, but instead, we got a lot of snow and cold weather, so the warming Arctic kinda messed with all those, you know, patterns and stuff like that we expected like.

But is the Arctic warming? Yes. Don’t give up the day job, Charles.

New Dogs; Old Tricks

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“New Dogs; Old Tricks“. Like the croaking raven, Steve McIntyre spends his days rasping out “the trick!” Steven Mosher assures us that this somnambulistic accusation is “largely misunderstood by nearly everyone discussing it, except Steve and a few of his readers.” Such brilliant minds that can, like the Emperor of fable, discern something so invisible to everyone else! I presume Mosher includes himself in that select few.

Mosher wants us to know that Steve McIntyre has begun a series of curmudgeonly posts about his critics, focussing strangely on desmogblog.com‘s summary  of Brian Angliss’ exposure of McIntyre’s false accusations about dendrochronology climate evidence.

Here’s a short version of the years-old puffed up controversy: “northern” tree rings correlate with interpreted climate trends up until about 1960 when they suddenly began showing an opposite trend. This means that “northern” tree rings are a useful climate indicator in older times because they match other measured trends. But after 1960 they don’t respond the same way as other indicators, so they shouldn’t be used in the most modern era. Why the change? I don’t think it’s understood yet. Why use the older data? Because it’s a good indicator and the data can be accurately collected. Seems kind of straight-forward to me. But Steven McIntyre claims that if tree rings stopped correlating to climate then they shouldn’t be used even for the time periods where they work. This is kind of like drinking from a bottle of milk every day and when later the milk starts to turn sour declaring that it must always have been sour.

Here’s a trick, Steven (and Steve): spend all your time implying malicious motivations by your critics and make vague insinuations about their arguments while talking as little as possible about the actual subject. You guys are good at that one.

As Steven Mosher grandly declares, we can indeed “watch the things [a slippery denialist] chooses to discuss and which things get ignored.” [my revision] Like the fact that so little of the scientific evidence of Global Warming is legitimately challenged by the denialists and how much time they spend talking about personalities and punctuation…