Category Archives: Just Keep Saying It

North and Booker on Amazongate: A billion dollar cash cow

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“North and Booker on Amazongate: A billion dollar cash cow“. Anthony Watts’ helpfully copy-and-pastes his friends explanation of a “new revelation” about how the IPCC is helping the World Wildlife Federation keep themselves well-supplied with new Ferraris by buying tropical forests and not chopping them down. Cunning, but they’re on to you, WWF! Leave the exploitation to the oil companies.

The denialist conspiracy theory about the purpose of the IPCC’s “Amazongate” lies (also known as substantiated scientific analyses: see here and here), which popped up recently but have already been shown to be groundless denialist misrepresentations, is that the WWF plans to pocket $60 billion from rain forest carbon credits. After all, it’s in Heartland Institute associate Christopher Booker’s Telegraph column (evidence of expertise here and here) and another denialist crank’s blog! I guess they’re hoping to get some traction amongst people who haven’t been paying attention.

The current El Niño: still hanging on

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“The current El Niño: still hanging on“. Ah, yes; El Niño. Invoked as often as possible as the cause of natural, temporary global warming by Anthony Watts and his fellow “thinkers”. Anthony copies-and-pastes a NASA press release or two (El Niño’s Last Hurrah and NASA’s Aura Sees El Niño’s Effects on the Atmosphere) on the subject to keep the natural, temporary idea bouncing around in people’s heads.

A satellite image of the Pacific Ocean's surface temperature. Now that's sciencey Anthony! Image credit: NASA/JPL.

Trouble is this El Niño has been too weak to account for the atmospheric warming we’ve recently experienced. What will Anthony talk about when this El Niño finally fades and the upward climate trend continues or accelerates? He’ll find something.

Weather balloon data backs up missing decline found in old magazine

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“Weather balloon data backs up missing decline found in old magazine“. Anthony Watts really latched onto that 1976 National Geographic illustration! Here are some fresh accusations of “funny business” based on weather balloon data.

Weather balloon data is something that, shockingly, climate scientists evidently never considered. Not. We’ll let this meme run for a bit and try to remember to come back with an update on the conclusion.

Another UHI effect – thunderstorms & lightning

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“Another UHI effect – thunderstorms & lightning“. Anthony Watts copies-and-pastes a Weatherwise magazine article that discusses the Urban Heat Island effect in the context of thunderstorms. It’s real! Thunderstorm formation downwind from cities proves it!

Atlanta 2008 thunderstorm. Image from Weather Underground.

Actually, as we have repeatedly noted here, the Urban Heat Island effect is well-known. It is not disputed. It has simply been rejected on the evidence as a factor in the surface temperature record of global warming. Sorry Anthony.

Rewriting the decline

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“Rewriting the decline“. Anthony Watts’ friends have been down in their basement and found a 1976 issue of National Geographic with a temperature history chart of North America that looks different from current global temperature histories! Could there really be a decline in temperatures since the 1960’s that evil climatologists have tried to hide from us?

After admitting that “the global records are not available to check, it’s impossible to know how accurate or not this graph is” they proceed to make the usual speculations and accusations ( including the suitably Orwellian “history has been rewritten”) based largely on a digital photo of a squished magazine illustration. (The version I post here includes more of the original figure than the denialists revealed.)

Art illustrations as scientific evidence. Note: chart in the lower left, excluded from the discussion, is apparently NOT evidence.

The j’accuse comes pretty quick: “the data had been adjusted (surprise)“, backed by this supporting evidence:

But, as usual, the adjustments were in favor of the Big Scare Campaign, and the reasons and the original data are not easy to find.

So in other words, they have no idea why the modern, global, chart differs.

Anthony compounds this ignorance as usual by failing to understand the term “accuracy”, but he really got my attention with his sudden conversion to dendrochronology.

Many tree rings showed a decline after 1960 that didn’t “concur” with the surface records. Perhaps these tree rings agree with the surface records as recorded at the time, rather than as adjusted post hoc?  Perhaps the decline in the tree rings that Phil Jones worked to hide was not so much a divergence from reality, but instead was slightly more real than the surface-UHI-cherry-picked-and-poorly-sited records??

Anthony, do you really think that the temperature records were maliciously altered around the world to suit an implied political agenda? And that now we should trust the innocent, uncorrupted, tree rings?

Stanford: Urban CO2 domes mean more death

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“Stanford: Urban CO2 domes mean more death“. Anthony Watts reprints a Stanford University press release about the local health effects of CO2 concentrations in cities (actual abstract here). Could this justify his fixation with urban/rural temperature variation? Nope.

Maybe this is just a random poke at “alarmist” conclusions.

Spencer: Direct Evidence that Most U.S. Warming Since 1973 Could Be Spurious

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“Spencer: Direct Evidence that Most U.S. Warming Since 1973 Could Be Spurious“. Dr. Roy Spencer is like the Energizer Bunny on his sudden area of expertise, Urban Heat Islands. He just keeps going and going and going, and Anthony Watts just keeps printing it and printing it and printing it. A perfect symbiosis.

Dr. Spencer does finally admit that his analysis “is meant more for stimulating thought and discussion, and does not equal a peer-reviewed paper.” Let’s just say that the “could” in his report title leaves a lot of wiggle room, especially in light of his final words: “Caveat emptor.”

I particularly enjoyed this bit of ‘hard science’:

There is a clear need for new, independent analyses of the global temperature data…the raw data, that is. As I have mentioned before, we need independent groups doing new and independent global temperature analyses — not international committees of Nobel laureates passing down opinions on tablets of stone.

He manages to call for delaying action, imply that the data has been tampered with, and cast wild accusations against science in just two sentences! Someone’s wound a bit tight.

Hockey Stick Illusion: “Shut-eyed Denial”

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Hockey Stick Illusion: “Shut-eyed Denial”. Anthony Watts enjoys a supportive “review” in Prospect Magazine of Andrew Montford’s “The Hockey Stick Illusion – Climategate and the Corruption of Science”. Surprise, it’s another vanity publication from an obsessed denialist!

This quote that Anthony highlights gave me a snort (italics mine):

an even more worrying thought: how much dodgy science is being published without the benefit of an audit by Mcintyre’s ilk?

Indeed, indeed…

IOP fires back over criticism of their submission to Parliament

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“IOP fires back over criticism of their submission to Parliament“. Anthony Watts copies and pastes an entire article from Physics World entitled Concerns raised over Institute of Physics climate submission that he thinks shows the Institute of Physics defending their widely criticized assessment of the “Climategate” issue. (Their submission was authored by their “Energy Sub-group”, which has clear links to denialist interests.) Read that article title again, Anthony!

Let’s have a look at some of the quotes from the article…

…“there is no doubt that climate change is happening, that it is linked to man-made emissions of greenhouse gases, and that we should be taking action to address it now”.

…”we are already reviewing our consultation process for preparing policy submissions”

…the IOP’s submission appears to prejudge the outcome of the inquiry

…The Institute also says it “strongly rebuts” accusations of “being overly influenced by one ‘climate-change sceptic’ on the energy sub-group

That’s rock-solid, Anthony. No wonder you’re encouraging your followers to flood the article comments section…

Another WWF assisted IPCC claim debunked: Amazon more drought resistant than claimed

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“Another WWF assisted IPCC claim debunked: Amazon more drought resistant than claimed“. Anthony Watts brings a NASA-funded study to our attention. This is a pretty lousy conspiracy if we can’t even count on NASA to play along! I’m getting nervous; it’s four down, 4,996 to go. [2010-03-14 update: see the bottom for how Anthony actually gets this 100% wrong]

The Amazon! Still green.

“Our results certainly do not indicate such extreme sensitivity to reductions in rainfall,” said Sangram Ganguly, an author on the new study, from the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute affiliated with NASA Ames Research Center in California.

“The way that the WWF report calculated this 40% was totally wrong, while [the new] calculations are by far more reliable and correct,” said Dr. Jose Marengo, a Brazilian National Institute for Space Research climate scientist and member of the IPCC.

What? Even a “member of the IPCC” can’t stay on message? This sucks! This is turning into objective science, with new analyses not guaranteed to support the secret government’s agenda! What if my paychecks start bouncing?

2010-03-14 Update: Tim Lambert at Deltoid shows that Anthony’s take is completely wrong. Maybe the actual report title, “Amazon forests did not green‐up during the 2005 drought” is a bit of a give-away! My bad, I didn’t have time to follow through. Another quote from the actual paper:

We find no evidence of large-scale greening of intact Amazon forests during the 2005 drought.

2010-03-16 Update: RealClimate has also discussed this in detail now, Anthony is even more wrong than I first thought!

2010-03-19 Update: Rabett Run reports that nineteen experienced Amazon scientists are also calling out the false representation of the study results.