“Un-bearable news“. Anthony wants us to know that the inestimable Jonathan Leake of The Times says that polar bears are just funny brown bears. So if they get wiped out by global warming it’s no biggie.
Alaska Zoo kissin' cousins!
Today’s installment starts with Anthony Watts worrying that some of his favorite “scientists” might have been killed at University of Alabama in Huntsville. Which would clearly be another desperate attempt of the secret world gubmint to prevent noble denialists from revealing the truth. Not to worry though, they were both busy elsewhere doing important research making a video with denialist weatherman John Coleman. Everything’s OK! By the way Anthony; three biologists died.
Next up is this gem from the some scientific geniuses were opposed by their contemporaries, therefore denialists are also geniuses file by half-assed geologist Steven Goddard: Are Scientists Always Smart? Steven discusses the long resistance to the idea of “continental drift” and manages to conclude that resisting evidence of AGW is just like defending evidence of continental drift! No Steven; you’re the one who is squeezing your eyes shut. Continental drift is actually a good case study of scientific progress, too bad it undermines the point you thought you were making…
Congenital Climate Abnormalities. Yet another statistically ignorant round of hand waving, this time by Willis Eschenbach, showing how climate trends in one place prove that there is no global warming trend. Except his example actually shows a… warming trend.
A yawner about 49 States with snow. One more time Anthony: warmer moist air produces higher snowfall, not colder dry air.
Scripps: Antarctic Ice Shelf Collapse Possibly Triggered by Ocean Waves. Anthony takes the opportunity to prove his ignorance of ice physics. The original paper’s analysis is interesting, but Anthony’s just preparing the ground for a rearguard action on future reports of declining Antarctic ice volume.
Tisdale on the importance of El Nino’s little sister – recharging ocean heat content. Bob Tisdale loves distract the debate by talking about the El Niño and La Niña Pacific Ocean circulation patterns. Well they’re real and they’re actively studied, but they’re short-term… Regardless, look for Anthony to post about this again in another week or two.
Daily Mail: The Jones U-turn. Here’s this episode’s red meat. Anthony tells us that Conspiracist-in-Chief Dr. Phil Jones admits there has been no warming since 1995!!!!!!! Except the Daily Mail article is a lie. What Dr. Jones said was that, because of a variety of factors, the warming that has occurred over the time period of 1995 to 2009 doesn’t quite reach the desired statistical confidence. Dr. Jones was at pains to be honest and factual, but Anthony and his team jump in with both feet to do the opposite.
Phil Jones momentous Q&A with BBC reopens the “science is settled” issues. Right-wing economist Indur M. Goklany tries to dissect Dr. Jones’ scientific responses from a Q&A session sentence by sentence and merely confuses himself.
New paper on mathematical analysis of GHG. Israeli economists adamantly refute AGW with statistics in a submitted, but not yet accepted, paper! Well, that’s settled, another triumph for economics over the reality! [2010-03-06 Update: “Rabett” has turned his attention to this foolishness…]
Christy and McKittrick in the UK Times: doubts on station data. Anthony approves of discredited UK denialist journo Jonathan Leake trying to pump up Christy and McKittrick’s second (third? fourth?) kick at the we can’t trust any of those darn thermometers anyway thing. This is Anthony’s personal obsession after all.
The Snow Line is Moving South. Anthony got this wrong for the twentieth time just a day ago, Steve Goddard shows that he’s a faithful sidekick by going along for the intentionally simplistic ride.
Dalton Minimum Repeat goes mainstream. Anthony just loves the sunspot stuff. It shows… something, apparently. Well, actually it doesn’t.
OK, another quick-fire summary of Anthony Watts’ latest missives. I’ll ignore all the “winter storms mean Global Warming is a hoax” tomfoolery that Anthony posts to keep the simple-minded transfixed. The WUWT post referenced in the title is near the bottom of this post…
Sir David King: Half Right on the IPCC and Global Warming Policies, Despite Bad Logic. A political “guest post” by Indur M. Goklany, a right-wing “oil IS prosperity!“ economist.
What NOAA Isn’t Saying About Snow and Ice. Steven Goddard guest posting, muttering darkly about nothing at all.
Prediction: Arctic Ice Will Continue to Recover This Summer. Goddard again splashing charts around and then ignoring them, this time to fabricate an arctic ice prediction from his imagination.
Hansen colleague rejected IPCC AR4 ES as having “no scientific merit”, but what does IPCC do? Anthony misrepresents comments on a report draft as a damning mainstream criticism of the final report.
Climategate: Plausibility and the blogosphere in the post-normal age. Another guest post, this time by Jerome Ravetz, an 80-year-old retired lecturer on the philosophy of science who has lately turned to “environmental consulting”. He starts off with some scientific whoppers and meanders downhill from there.
Brace for the tipping point. Anthony prefixes a UC Davis press release about climate change risks (“Climate ‘Tipping Points’ May Arrive Without Warning, Says Top Forecaster”) with a photoshopped traffic sign.
Pielke responds to Romm and Time. Anthony reports that Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. has some nits to pick over Time Magazine’s Another Snowstorm: What Happened to Global Warming? article, which explains how Anthony’s beloved winter storms fit well with current climate trends. Nothing to say about actual Global Warming though…
Climate “Twilight of the Gods”. The right-wing political journal The National Review takes aim at their ideological opponents and Anthony considers it scientific.
Nature suggests IPCC get an overhaul. Could it be true? Is this the end of the IPCC? Or is it just arm-chair quarterbacking along the lines of who was the best Batman? Anthony; just because someone answers a hypothetical question doesn’t mean they think there’s something actually wrong with the IPCC…
Penn State students to rally for independent investigation of Prof. Michael Mann. Campusreform.org, a far-right student group, wants to attack someone who isn’t as far-right as they are. Not very science-y, Anthony.
GISS adjustments in Australia. Raw data has again been forced to conform with the desired political result! Or corrected to account for regional and site issues. One or the other…
UEA/CRU and the Royal Society make a really bad PR move. Oh my god, the Royal Society is going to have scientists with relevant credentials review some of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit publications for possible errors! This is such a conspiracy! They’re all scientists! Where are the bloggers?
WUWT named to top 30 science blogs by The Times. The Times has a long history of promoting the denialist side, so this sad factoid just has to be swallowed. This kind of uncritical stupidity is the reason I started this blog.
Editor of Nature forced to resign from climate review panel. A blogger howls about bias, Dr. Phillip Campbell says “bunk” but steps down anyway to end blogger’s the crocodile tears. But Anthony does like to spin things.
New Paper in Science: Sea level 81,000 years ago was 1 meter higher while CO2 was lower. Thus ending Global Warming forever. Um, Anthony, there are many natural factors contributing to sea-level and to atmospheric CO2 levels. They are not all directly linked. They do not produce the kinds and rates of change that our man-made factors are now doing. So the lesson is: it’s great to learn more about natural factors and their timings, but that doesn’t make the new man-made factors disappear…
Scientist quits: ‘I don’t want to remain a member of an organization that …screws up science that badly.’ Henk Tennekes, an engineer with only meteorological expertise whose “contrary views on global warming forced him into early retirement at age 58” (15 years ago), according to the denialist “institute” ICECAP, quits the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences because they support action to reduce AGW. No doubt he will continue to express himself through the right-wing political organisations ICECAP and the Institute for Science and Public Policy.
NOAA langoliers eat another 1/3 of stations from GHCN database. Guest blogger E.M. Smith reports that the nefarious Climate Conspiracy “Team” are not using every single raw weather station in their cleverly cherry-picked data sets! They’re only using the ones that are consistent! And stable! And usefully distributed!
That’s it for today. Time for a new pot of coffee.
Two posts in a row linking to discredited Times journalist Jonathan Leake! Methinks Anthony Watts has a new man-crush brewing. The Times: Top British scientist says IPCC is losing credibility. Sounds bad, huh? Except Leake has a record of playing for the denialist side of the climate debate. We’ll have to wait for a direct response from Dr. Watson before we can figure this one out. The second, IPCC’s “Africagate” blunder as told by Dr. Richard North, presents an IPCC critic as honest investigator when he is in fact a right-wing think tank operative completely lacking scientific expertise.
Another cold weather!!! post, Snow totals for Washington DC storm, for the stupids who need regular reminders that snow in winter proves that there is no global warming.
Tracking the Earth’s orbit: looking for warming signs is another kick at the “it’s all solar” defense by flashing a new paper by Dr. Rohling in Earth and Planetary Science Letters. The paper interprets sea-level from inferred Red Sea salinity values over time and correlates this with an orbital mechanics theory. Interesting, but surely we should look at it skeptically until we understand why it differs from so many other well-known lines of evidence? Uh oh, Dr. Rohling also explicitly states “Our study is therefore relevant to the long-term climate future, and not so much for the next decades or century.” Maybe Anthony’s audience will be too eager to notice that bit.
New study using satellite data: Alaskan glacier melt overestimated. Apparently melting Alaskan glaciers may have only produced 0.12 mm/year of sea-level rise and not 0.17 mm/year! Problem solved.
Swapping my lights: fantastic! Anthony blogs about changing to LED light fixtures. He has a big solar array too, maybe he’s getting ready to declare a libertarian paradise? :-)
Munging Madagascar. A guest post by fellow believer Verity Jones who shows a common denialist enthusiasm for plotting numbers without having a clue about what they actually represent and is shocked that the climate conspiracy staff in Madagascar have, according to him, been lazy about sending in their made-up data.
IPCC Gate Du Jour: Aussie Droughtgate. Aussie lunatic journalist Andrew Bolt gets quoted reporting that South Australia’s drought is all down to too much durn sunshine. Take that, global warming!
UCAR: Roof white out helps UHI. Anthony is amused that scientists have studied and characterised the effect of white roofs on local temperature. I would have thought that a “skeptic” would have been a keen supporter of a careful examination of something everyone takes for granted.
Finally, NOAA’s new ‘climate service’ – not a sure thing yet lets us know that Anthony thinks we don’t need no one-stop gubmint climate information. Might get in the way of play fast and loose with the facts.
Gotta love the way Anthony Watts makes lemonade out of lemons! Today Penn State issued a report on their investigation into denialist charges that Dr. Michael Mann was a no-good dirty rat. Three of the four allegations were dismissed as completely without substance and the fourth equally dodgy allegation has, on a technicality, been passed on to a new panel of knowledgeable faculty members. Anthony naturally presents this as Dr. Mann now being the “subject of [a new] upcoming investigation”. I guess he’s hoping for a Hail Mary play. Kind of like every other denialist end-game.
Love this post too: BBC asks WUWT for help. Apparently the Beeb was looking for “UK scientists in current academic posts who are sceptical about AGW”. None found, they have turned to a TV weatherman (and high school graduate) for advice.
NASA Still Spreading Antarctic Worries. This is a post by Anthony’s associate Steven Goddard, allegedly a geologist. In a classic example of linear thinking (literally), Steven says that it will take over 18,000 years for the Antarctic ice cap to melt at current rates, so why worry?
More solar mutterings in Solar Cycle 24 Update. Anthony likes to post irrelevant discussions about solar cycles in order keep the “maybe it’s all just the Sun” thing occupying the minds of suggestible denialists.
Anthony has posted ClimateGate Timeline: 30 years in the making, a nice big busy info-graphic by Mohib Ebrahim “an amateur astronomer” who has “always been an AGW skeptic because of synchronous warming on neighbouring planets” (not) and has also read Michael Crichton’s State of Fear. You know what they say about idle hands.
This post is fun: Forests in the Eastern United States are growing faster than they have in the past 225 years. It’s a dog-whistle for the idiotic idea that CO2 is good for plants, so the more we have the better! Some right-wing lobbyists actually aired TV commercials extolling this lunacy last year in the USA.
Wott's Up With That? 