Category Archives: Just Keep Saying It

Reports from the Guardian Climategate Debate

Posted on by
Reply

Reports from the Guardian Climategate Debate: Surprise, surprise. In Anthony Watts’ report of the debate on the Climategate false controversy hosted by the Guardian newspaper, climate scientists are “devious” and “appallingly bad” but denialist Steven McIntyre, who spoke from behind a lectern to give him more ‘authority’, gets “the largest applause”.

Here’s a different view of the panel’s performance:

  • Prof. Davies said the CRU has learned about the need for public engagement in the scientific discussion.
  • Steve McIntyre sidestepped the challenge that “any competent individual could reproduce a temperature series from publicly accessible data”. Slippery as always, but an embarrassing exposure of his grandiose claims.
  • Bob Watson said the reviews had high integrity and robust conclusions, accused the media of getting carried away with “skeptic” allegations.
  • Doug Keenan claimed that “bogus fraudulent research is rife throughout science.” and “AGW is a fraud.” Clinging to his paranoid denialist views I guess.
  • Fred Pearce, looking for a way to climb back down from his gullible reporting, called the  saga is more a tragedy than a conspiracy and said that the CRU inquiries were well conducted.

Nothing like getting the spin in as fast as possible… Three inquiries (four if you count the tangential Penn State inquiry) completely clear the CRU climate scientists of any deception and yet the volume and fervor of the denialist accusations of “whitewash” and conspiracy simply rises.

The louder you say it the righter you are Anthony?

WUWT Arctic Sea Ice News #9

Posted on by
2

“WUWT Arctic Sea Ice News #9“. Steven Goddard declares that the topic for this Arctic Sea Ice News is “verification of data sources.” Why? Well a big change of focus is needed because this is what the NSIDC reports:

At the end of [May], extent fell near the level recorded in 2006, the lowest in the satellite record

So Steven talks about “concentration” instead of extend or volume, because that value is a little more ‘interpretable.’ He talks about Barrow, Alaska because the ice happens to be a bit thicker there. He talks about recent Arctic air temperatures. He keeps trying to promote the PIPS data because that also looks thicker.

Keep dancing, Steven, but we remember how you were crowing that Arctic Sea Ice Extent back in March was proof that the Arctic was recovering.

NSIDC 2010 Arctic Sea Ice Extent: an inconvenient truth.

Steven’s response to the clinical dismantling of his claims in the comments is to start talking about football (aka soccer) scores.

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

Posted on by
4

“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.

Does money grow in wind farms?

Posted on by
2

“Does money grow in wind farms?” Charles Rotter tells us that a right-wing UK journalist thinks that “wind turbines are a poor way to harness energy – but a very good way to generate public subsidies“. Damn business interests sucking up government money! Wait, aren’t denialists almost universally in favor of letting business solve all environmental problems by being profit-oriented?

New Dogs; Old Tricks

Posted on by
Reply

“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…

What is PIPS?

Posted on by
Reply

“What is PIPS?” Steven Goddard defends his continued use of the US Navy’s deprecated Polar Ice Prediction System (PIPS) Arctic Sea Ice model. The US Navy uses it! Case closed. This is the same obstinate mindset that lies at the root of Anthony Watts’ obsession with surface weather station records. PIPS is not intended for climate usage. It is a repurposed navigational tool.

Steven likes PIPS because, as the Navy states, “PIPS 2.0 often over-predicts the amount of ice in the Barents Sea and therefore often places the ice edge too far south.” This is very useful for a desperate denialist.

Steven concludes by stating that any critics “ignore the facts, and post instead what suits their agenda.”  Unsurprisingly, this is actually Steven’s motivation for using PIPS. It’s the easiest to manipulate toward a desired conclusion. Just restrict your analysis to the areas where PIPS over-predicts ice and pass it off as impartial.

That solar sinking feeling

Posted on by
2

“That solar sinking feeling“. Anthony Watts tries to imply that the beginning of the end of the current, and somewhat unusual, solar minimum is going to lead to global cooling.

The denialists like to ignore the fact that these cycles are of sunspot activity, not energy output. They have no significance for Earth’s climate except in the wild theories of goof-ball amateurs.

But all those charts sure look “sciencey”.

Legal beagle says: Manmade global warming science doesn’t withstand scrutiny

Posted on by
3

“Legal beagle says: Manmade global warming science doesn’t withstand scrutiny“. Anthony Watts points out an article by enthusiastic denialist and Financial Post journalist Lawrence Solomon about a publication called Global Warming Advocacy Science: A Cross Examination. Apparently a partisan “Research Paper” by a law professor with a history of climate change denial is a “Legal verdict” that “eviscerates the case for man-made global warming.” University of Pennsylvania Law School Professor Jason Scott Johnston even “expressed surprise that the case for global warming was so weak”.

Wasn’t this was all wrapped up by that Grade Four student in Beeville, Texas?

Sorry Professor Johnston although you’ve apparently been trying to concoct this attack since September 2008 your Justice is clearly not blind. This is a kangaroo court with the judge, jury and executioner all rolled into one ignorant pedant, even with the “helpful comments from David Henderson, Julia Mahoney, Ross McKitrick, Richard Lindzen, and Roger Pielke, Sr.”.

Perhaps Anthony’s “beagle” description is more accurate than he thinks.

GISTEMP is High

Posted on by
3

“GISTEMP is High“. Steven Goddard discovers that temperatures measured at ground-level are not the same as temperatures measured in the troposphere. Well, learning is a good thing I suppose.

He also discovers that different data-sets have a different geographic basis! The GISS data-set attempts to include high Arctic value, while the HadCRUT3 data-set (which Steven calls “Had-Crut”) excludes those values. Shocking.

The dastardly GISS data-set estimates 2010 to be the “warmest ever“, while HadCRUT3 expects 2010 to be the “fifth warmest ever“. It seems that Steven has been reduced to trying to cherry-pick the data-set that shows the least warming. Whatever happened to the claims of cooling? An inconvenient memory apparently.

Volcano Update

Posted on by
Reply

“Volcano Update“. Steven Goddard tells us that Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano is still erupting. He seems to have quietly  stopped trying to argue that volcanic CO2 output is more important that human CO2 output.