Category Archives: It’s Natural

AMO+PDO= temperature variation – one graph says it all

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“AMO+PDO= temperature variation – one graph says it all“. If you’ve got a high-school science project, the “Science and Public Policy” Institute has a laser printer! Anthony Watts is eager to tell us about the latest final nail in the coffin of AGW from retired meteorologist Joe D’Aleo and geologist Don Easterbrook. Our hopeful contestants present Multidecadal Tendencies in ENSO and Global Temperatures Related to Multidecadal Oscillations. They’ve managed to force the US Mean Temperature to look like it’s a near-perfect match for ocean circulation patterns! Global Warming is dead! And it’s natural. Although they do admit that there is “some departure after around 2000.”

More wishful chart fiddling from denialists. After D’Aleo and Easterbrook.

How did they see what no-one else could? Well they chose their time period carefully so they could exclude the last ten years of warming that oppose the natural patterns. Then they smoothed the heck out of the data to artificially inflate the confidence of their results. Of course the AMO (detrended North Atlantic SST anomalies) and PDO (principal component analysis North Pacific SST anomalies, north of 20N) are incompatible values, so we have to wonder why they are combined. One graph does indeed say it all…

Of course, even if their claim withstood examination they still would have only found a correlation. Are the ocean circulation patterns driving air temperature, or vice versa, or is something else driving both? Joe and Don are silent on this interesting subject. Can you say anti-science?

Climatologists have no problem observing natural patterns in historical temperature data and proxies. They just also know that the recent global temperature increases do not follow any of these natural patterns.

Extreme Weather, Extreme Claims

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“Extreme Weather, Extreme Claims“. The ever-impartial think-tank Science and Public Policy Institute, home to any and all denialists itching to see their name in print, is offering Dennis Ambler’s latest pamphlet, Extreme Weather Extreme Claims. Apparently this summer’s heat wave and forest fires in Russia, the floods in Pakistan, etc. could have been taken care of if we had redirected all that foolish climate research money  into fire-hoses and rafts.

Sorry, that’s as much brain-power as I can bear to spend on Dennis’s stupidity.

Can someone explain why Dennis has used two photos twice each on the cover?

Quote of the Week – David Suzuki, a farce of nature

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“Quote of the Week – David Suzuki, a farce of nature“. Anthony Watts is irritated that renowned Canadian biologist David Suzuki has the nerve to say that “we have joined God, powerful enough to influence these [hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, drought, forest fires, earthquakes, volcanic explosions] events.” Maybe he’s just alarmed that someone is stating the obvious: humanity’s actions can and do affect our weather and our climate. Never! It’s all natural!

Come on Anthony, you might well argue about the intensity of our influence, but you’re just being sullen if you try to deny it altogether with nothing but links to your own lame blog as evidence.

Aurora Borealis hits a 100-year low point – sun blamed

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“Aurora Borealis hits a 100-year low point – sun blamed“. A news report from Physorg.com lets Anthony Watts talk vaguely about solar cycles. You know, the thing that’s supposed to be behind all the climate change that hasn’t been happening.

How come the sun’s slight cooling trend hasn’t been reflected in cooling here on Earth?

A MUST READ: European climate, Alpine glaciers and Arctic ice in relation to North Atlantic SST record

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“A MUST READ: European climate, Alpine glaciers and Arctic ice in relation to North Atlantic SST record“. Anthony Watts posts an “excellent essay” by Juraj Vanovcan that tells us that a dog bit a man. Apparently, “oceans drive the temperature of the atmosphere, not the other way around”! Now if only climate scientists knew this… Oh wait, they do.

All the usual claims are present: It’s all natural cycles, earlier warming periods were just like this one, cherry-picked examples are compared to the preferred cyclic pattern and match perfectly, pretending that a claimed correlation means that a causation has been found, etc. Anthony’s contribution is to pretend that “the New Scientist finally came to realize and publish on this week [that] the sun and the oceans play a bigger role than many give credit for.” Thank you Anthony for leading them to truth!

Unfortunately this information doesn’t have any relevance to the fact that AGW is overpowering natural climate variation.

Sea Ice News #24

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“Sea Ice News #24“. I miss Steven Goddard’s agitated ramblings. Anthony Watts tells us that “sea ice has turned the corner, for real this time.” Whew. Best year ever, right?

Sept 26, 2010 Arctic Sea Ice

New paper in Nature on ocean cycles finally causes recognition in media

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“New paper in Nature on ocean cycles finally causes recognition in media“. Anthony Watts’ “European friend” Pierre Gosselin has discovered some important science in Der Spiegel. Apparently the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) controls our entire climate, which no-one except denialists knew about until just now!

It’s all explained by a Der Spiegel article about a Nature paper  titled An abrupt drop in Northern Hemisphere sea surface temperature around 1970 that is completely demonstrated by a denialist blogger’s bulls**t fake chart. Dr. Phil Jones is one of the authors! He’s starting to admit all the lies!!!! The denialists have won!

Who doesn't like crayons?

Oops, someone didn’t read the article that Der Spiegel tried to summarize. The AMO has been well described for many years, oceanic circulation patterns are a well-known factor in climate change (remember last year when Anthony spent all his time posting bunk about El Niño?), the AMO cycles don’t correlate with the recorded global temperature changes (neither did the El Niño ones). In fact, the paper is a perfectly good investigation of historical circulation patterns in the Atlantic Ocean.

Too bad it’s not useful for the purpose that Anthony tries to squeeze out of it. Why is Anthony promoting a blog post that so clearly misrepresents the paper it is ostensibly about? Oh, and once again we see Anthony likes suddenly computer models when he thinks they are saying what he wants to hear…

Climate science solar shock and awe

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“Climate science solar shock and awe“. Anthony Watts thinks that climate scientists have suddenly realized that there’s a sun up there in the sky. Wow, it heats the Earth too! So it’s all natural after all. That’s a relief.

This revelation was, um, revealed, in an editorial in New Scientist! You never know where new ideas will pop into existence, do you? Maybe even from Anthony’s blog where the solar looneys are out in full force in the comments.

You know, there are lots of natural cycles out there that correlate pretty well with natural variations in the earth’s climate. Just not any that correlate with the recent large and abrupt changes that climate scientists ascribe to human activity. Sorry Anthony.

Where the particulates are (and aren’t)

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“Where the particulates are (and aren’t)“. NASA posts a press release (New Map Offers a Global View of Health-Sapping Air Pollution) about an estimate of the global distribution of fine particulate matter, and talks about efforts to assess the health risks these particles pose. Anthony Watts decides it’s all just dust (natural!).

Global Particulate Matter (<2.5μm) Distribution

Satellite-derived map of particulate matter (<2.5μm) distribution averaged over 2001-2006. Source: Dalhousie University.

Donkelaar and Randall Martin published Global Estimates of Ambient Fine Particulate Matter Concentrations from Satellite-Based Aerosol Optical Depth: Development and Application in Environmental Health Perspectives. They combined data from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) on NASA’s Terra satellite and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on both NASA’s Aqua and Terra satellites.

Why the random grousing about random NASA research, Anthony? Just some kind of reflexive urge? The commenters join in with a chorus of “scare tactics!”

Surprise: Peer reviewed study says current Arctic sea ice is more extensive than most of the past 9000 years

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“Surprise: Peer reviewed study says current Arctic sea ice is more extensive than most of the past 9000 years“. A blogger discovers a paleoclimate paper by McKay, et.al. in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences from 2008 and Anthony Watts is on it like white on rice. “Peer reviewed!” “More ice now than ever!” “Natural!!!!”

Oh, it’s only referring to a bit of the western Arctic. Oh, they’re only comparing to Arctic Sea Ice extent of a decade ago, when there was in fact rather more sea ice. Oh, they aren’t suggesting that such low ice extents were common. Oh, dinocyst proxies are a bit dodgy. Oh, the paper is merely titled Holocene fluctuations in Arctic sea-ice cover: dinocyst-based reconstructions for the eastern Chukchi Sea, not “there’s more ice than ever now!”