Category Archives: Just Keep Saying It

Institute of Physics on Climategate

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“Institute of Physics on Climategate“. Anthony Watts finds it “rather astonishing” that the UK’s Institute of Physics thinks the inquiry into the accusations, based on quote-mined correspondence, against the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit should continue. The probable conclusion after filtering out the mom-and-apple-pie language: remember to use polite language when talking about assholes that are harassing you, even in private correspondence.

Anthony also sagely notes that his BFF, blowhard Australian journo Andrew Bolt, continues to repeat the comic claim that “Climategate reveals the greatest scientific scandal of our lifetime.”

Not much mention of the fundamental fact that even excluding the CRU’s impugned data, which has always been over 95% publicly available, other historical and modern climate records show a clear AGW signal. Why is that, I wonder?

2010-03-05 Update: Looks like the IOP statement was partially based on the views of an energy industry consultant who argues that global warming is a religion.

Contribution of USHNC and GISS bias in long-term temperature records for a well-sited rural weather station

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“Contribution of USHNC and GISS bias in long-term temperature records for a well-sited rural weather station“. Anthony Watts’ associate “Charles the Moderator” finds a cherry-picked weather station that someone important (Ph.D. and Esquire!) has slapped up some charts for.

David W. Schnare (Esq. Ph.D.) is an environmental lawyer from a renowned scientific institution the “Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy”. He’s also a Heartland Institute associate. He nods approvingly over both Anthony Watt’s discredited Science and Public Policy pamphlet and yesterday’s new “sciency” version by Dr. Anthony Long. “Dr.” Schnare shares their fixation with the denialist meme of adjustments = cheating and notes that “NCDC adjusts the original data in every year!”

The temperature trends at one station clearly prove that all the other stations are wrong.

Now it could be true that Schnare’s nit-picking about the station adjustments made in this particular place are justified. There are certainly plenty of qualitatively poor temperature stations and we can count on the denialists to trot them out one by one at carefully staged intervals. However his amusing references to “hard partying, college kids” and sweeping generalizations about the terrain away from the station’s actual micro-climate suggest that he’s trying to distract from the poverty of his evidence.

A new paper comparing NCDC rural and urban US surface temperature data

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“A new paper comparing NCDC rural and urban US surface temperature data“. Anthony Watts reports that the denialist “think tank” Science and Public Policy has “published a paper” by retired NASA “advanced materials” physicist and self-described extremely conservative blogger Dr. Edward Long. “Published” in the sense of printed, just like Anthony’s own discredited Science and Public Policy pamphlet “Surface Temperature Records: Policy Driven Deception?” (tellingly admired by Dr. Long). Actually, this feels like a do-over of Anthony’s idea with a Ph.D. stuck on top and the really dumb bits left out.

“Contiguous U.S. Temperature Trends Using NCDC Raw and Adjusted Data for One-Per-State Rural and Urban Station Sets“ concludes that the NCDC (National Climatic Data Center) has “taken liberty to alter the actual rural measured values.” Why? Because two 48 station subsets (“rural” and “urban”) have the same trend after the NCDC’s adjustments have been made. Which means that some nefarious trick has forced them to match. Dr. Long selected his stations “on the assumption that within a certain latitude band stations along an East-West line experience the same climate and that within a grid unit the set of stations are somehow related“. That’s a rather off-hand justification for what I suspect is a pretty careful cherry-picking operation. There have been objective re-examinations of the US surface temperature data (Menne et al, 2010), but no significant errors have been uncovered.

Dr. Long also tries to wave away the temperature trend by suggesting that it reflects population growth around the weather stations. Somehow population growth intensifies the UHI effect. I’m not a climate scientist but I would expect the same UHI effect to occur more widely with population growth, not show up as ever “hotter” readings. After all, UHI is effectively a landscape factor, something Anthony himself has been fixated on for sometime on his surfacestations.org project. Should someone whisper “maybe it’s global warming?“

UEA – the new crimestoppers

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“UEA – the new crimestoppers“. This is another case of Dunning–Kruger Effect from the denialosphere. Anthony reports the “gobsmacking” news that the UK Information Commissioners Office (ICO) has referred to the complaints about University of East Anglia’s response to freedom of information requests as “cogent prima facie evidence“. This, in Anthony’s mind, is just as good as a conviction. Probably actually better for his purposes.

Prima facie means “at first sight”. It doesn’t mean that something has been proven, just that a claim has been made that if true would support the legal charge. The ICO is merely says that the claim should be investigated and not dismissed out-of-hand.

Also the endlessly repeated denialist allegation of the Climate Research Unit’s deletion of information is baseless despite the off-hand remarks quote-mined from the stolen CRU e-mails. Nothing was deleted. Except, of course, by the thieves. They only released a subset of the stolen e-mails, presumably to prevent them from being understood in proper context.

On the Credibility of Climate Research, Part II: Towards Rebuilding Trust

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“On the Credibility of Climate Research, Part II: Towards Rebuilding Trust“. A guest essat by Dr. Judith Curry, a mainstream geophysicist, on the subject of scientific trust and credibility. Tellingly, she describes credibility as “a combination of expertise and trust”, neither are in evidence on Anthony’s blog. Dr. Curry has been engaged in conversation with denialists long enough that their murky thought processes and falsehoods have taken on a kind of face-value status in her mind. This is like the false journalistic balance that gives complete falsehoods the same standing as sound science simply because they come from opposing sides of a controversy.

Overall her piece is quite vague about many of the factual matters, leaves key issues and definitions poorly defined, and seems more interested in personalities than science. Regardless, Anthony doesn’t like some of her characterizations so he prefaces her remarks with a few accusations and charges of disrespect before ‘taking the high road’ to “broadly report the issues.”

Anthony, if you did that I’d have to find a new hobby.

There’s a more detailed criticism of Dr. Curry’s essay over on Climate Progress.

The Goracle Forecast: AGW=More snow

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“The Goracle Forecast: AGW=More snow“. Anthony Watts calls “the Goracle” (also known as Al Gore to non-rabid partisans) a liar for his discussion yesterday of the prediction that AGW will produce more snow during the winter.

The controversial claims?

  • Fact: Climate change causes more frequent and severe snowstorms
  • Fact: We can expect more extreme weather
  • Fact: The world is warming at a quickening pace

Anthony says that he “could spend lots of time pointing out why each one of these claims is false, and that Mr. Gore is atcually [sic] the one who is the liar“. But… he doesn’t.

Anthony does mention that it’s cold at the moment and invokes El Niño. Isn’t saying that El Niño is the cause of this year’s abnormal snow kind of admitting that the storms aren’t a disproof of global warming?

Bill O’Reilly hosts Bill Nye The Science Guy and AccuWeather’s Joe Bastardi in Fox News Debate

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Yesterday Anthony Watts announced that denialist meteorologist Joe Bastardi ‘runs circles‘ around Bill Nye (“The Science Guy”) on The O’Reilly Factor’s No Spin Zone. Anthony’s link wasn’t viewable outside of the USA so I chose not to comment on it, but I’ve found a link on The Huffington Post that works.

The clip, helpfully subtitled “Bill Nye the Science Guy on debunked global warming study” begins with Bill O’Reilly repeating the dishonest representation of a retracted sea-level prediction paper. Bastardi’s charts were given full screen display, but Nye was left holding small paper versions.

One of Bastardi’s ‘killer arguments’, between winks, cheshire cat grins and bar stool bellowing, was built around calling CO2 a trace gas needed for life. He even tried on both the cherry-picking “since 1998” bunk and the solar cycle claim (which actually undercut the denialist argument). Clearly Anthony thinks louder is better.

Climategate Minority Report

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“Climategate Minority Report“. Apparently Senator Jim Inhofe, the last flat-earther, and his fellow Republican members of a Senate committee have drawn some conclusions that suit their political interests about the out-of-context e-mails stolen from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) in Britain.

It will be interesting to watch their “findings” fall apart under public discussion as everything they state has been already discussed at length and dismissed. “Honest broker” Anthony Watts is naturally all-in. Welcome to a noisy and meaningless re-run of November, 2009.

2012-07-19 Update: Norfolk police have called off their investigation for procedural reasons, but state:

“However, as a result of our inquiries, we can say that the data breach was the result of a sophisticated and carefully orchestrated attack on the CRU’s data files, carried out remotely via the internet. The offenders used methods common in unlawful internet activity to obstruct inquiries. There is no evidence to suggest that anyone working at or associated with the University of East Anglia was involved in the crime.”

Met office pushes a surface temperature data “do over”

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“Met office pushes a surface temperature data “do over”. Anthony lays the ground for rejecting a proposed re-processing of global raw surface temperature data by Britain’s Meteorological Office. I suspect that the only temperature records Anthony likes are the ones that suit his purpose.

While the administrative issues and contractual blockages that surround the global raw surface temperature data have been known for years, the overall usefulness of that data to scientists remains unchanged. But of course right-wing bloggers and media are reporting this proposed clean-up as a capitulation due to the “Climategate” conspiracy accusations.

There’s no business like snow business

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“There’s no business like snow business“. Anthony Watts returns to the old standby of talking about how much snow there is this winter, thus ending global warming.

To make his argument he gathers selected newspaper articles from recent years predicting both less snow and more snow. Some how this tells us that climate scientists don’t know what they’re talking about. His argument would hold more weight if he actually quoted climate scientists, but that might not paint to picture he wants to present.

I see a common theme to Anthony’s cherry-picked newspaper reports; the “less snowfall” predictions refer to five to ten years out, all the “more snowfall” reports are interpreting the current winter. Not actually contradictory.