Category Archives: Misdirection

RSS data: 2010 not the warmest year in satellite record, but a close second

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“RSS data: 2010 not the warmest year in satellite record, but a close second“. Anthony Watts discovers that 2010 was merely the second warmest year on the satellite record, although his first version of the chart “proving” this was just a tiny bit exaggerated. Thus disproving Global Warming. Of course the declaration that 2010 is now warmest year was based on surface temperature records, not satellite observations.

Funny how a few days ago denialists were poo-pooing the slightness of 2010’s new record but are now hailing the slightness of their claim that 1998 is still the warmest.

So what was “the warmest year” in Anthony’s preferred dataset? Yes, 1998, the outlier year with a massive El Niño boost which has been the denialist “trick” for several years because it throws off short-term statistical significance. Look for this talking point to be quietly dropped over the year as moment

Pick your story from the satellite temperature observations.

It’s such a cold December: 2010 ends on a chilly note where people live

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“It’s such a cold December: 2010 ends on a chilly note where people live“. Another Guest Post for Anthony Watts, by Ryan Maue, once again proving that there is no Global Warming. Did you know that December 2010 was cold in some places? It’s the final nail in the coffin the Global Warming myth!

However Ryan’s not going to talk about the inconvenient fact that the full year was actually rather hot until the “government temperature keepers” release their analyses. Nice side-stepping!

Instead we get a simplistic series of excuses:

  1. Mutterings about weather fluctuations.
  2. Invocation of “regional variation”.
  3. Casual dismissal of the places where there happens to be the most warmth (Ryan actually says, with an apparently straight face, that “You’ll hear a lot about the historically warm Arctic, but who cares at this point, no one lives there and it is still plenty cold.”).
  4. Allusions to governmental conspiracies (“It’s a foregone conclusion that the official government data from whatever nation or agency will show that 2010 was the hottest year ever.  It just has to be that way“).
  5. An attempt to minimize the factual record 2010 temperature by suggesting that it’s only slightly record-breaking.

So for Global Warming to be true the evidence has to be homogenous, continuous, and in large steps? How scientific.

NASA’s Sunspot Prediction Roller Coaster

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“NASA’s Sunspot Prediction Roller Coaster“. Christmas Guest pudding from Ira Glickstein about NASA’s solar cycle predictions, who concludes with a statement that might have been a helpful opening sentence: “I am not any kind of expert on Sunspots”.

The current solar cycle has proven unusually quiet and probably influenced by anomalies in 2003, making NASA’s predictions, based primarily on observed geomagnetic precursors, erratic. Those stupid scientists, thinking that their careful observations and analysis would be any match for a crank with Excel on his PC!

Glickstein thinks that after the publicity for the Algore film An Inconvenient Truth solar scientists “felt pressured to please their colleagues and superiors by predicting a Sunspot doozy that would presage a doozy of a warm spell.” That is the dumbest conspiracy theory I’ve ever heard of.

Ira Glickstein's amateur assessment of NASA's sunspot prediction. What data is the amusing dramatic blue trend showing? None. What a mess.

Arsenic and post-haste: another example of the broken peer review process turned “science by press release”

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Arsenic and post-haste: another example of the broken peer review process turned “science by press release”. A NASA news report made an eye-opening announcement about “an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.” Arsenic-based bacterium were found by astrobiologists in Mono Lake, suggesting that we should widen our search criteria for extraterrestrial life. Turns out that the scientist’s conclusions may be flawed. They’re probably just a regular phosphate-based bacterium that can tolerate high arsenic concentrations. Interesting though.

Anthony Watts’ take on this? Maybe that the scientific publication process catches these kinds of problems? No. Maybe that results that aren’t approved by the existing, and oppressive, “consensus” can be published? No.

Anthony’s conclusion is that scientists are defensive egotists. And that “peer review” failed, somehow. Therefore scientific criticism of denialism must also be flawed.

Guess what, Anthony. That was science in action, not blog-blather. Scientists reported their discovery, other scientists examined it skeptically, knowledge was advanced. One “tribe” didn’t defeat the other. Publication of results isn’t the finish line, it’s the first lap.

Can Anthony really say that “NASA again has egg of [sic] their faces”? No. He’s just trying to opportunistically smear this minor controversy over to the field he’s trying to discredit NASA in.

Monckton’s Mexican Missive #2

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“Monckton’s Mexican Missive #2“. Denialist blowhard Lord Monckton, rattling around the UN climate conference in Cancun waiting for supplicants to seek out his guidance, provides another rambling “report” about how everyone at the Conference is stupid. And evil. And mean. And blindly “religious.” And demoralized. And conspiring. The list seems endless. Anthony Watts gives it all his seal of approval.

And yet this unsupported repetition of a wide list of debunked denialist claims and allegations of conspiracy, along with a random political broadsides and references to his dinner menu, are all we get from the leading “intellectual” of the denialist movement… What a train-wreck.

Monckton reaches his pinnacle of cleverness when he encourages people to call the “wicked” IPCC the “ipecac”. Oh, if we use the name of syrup of ipecac instead of their real name no one will take them seriously! They’ll just think of throwing up! Oh you are by far the cleverest guy in Grade Three and your readers are, tellingly, quivering with delight.

Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup

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“Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup“. Anthony Watts posts an communiqué from the Science and Environmental Policy Project lobbyists. Strangely, the only scientists they mention are Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen, both deeply compromised denialists. The rest of the post is a careful selection of “news” that blindly promotes denialist interests. Oh, and the Cancun climate conference is going to be such a failure.

I guess this is the price of getting your high school projects so neatly bound Anthony.

Wikileaks cables: on climate, IPCC, Copenhagen

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“Wikileaks cables: on climate, IPCC, Copenhagen“. Oooh, a Wikileak document reveals that a European politician is pessimistic about climate negotiations in Copenhagen and now in Cancun. Global Warming is so over.

Herman van Rompuy dismisses Copenhagen climate summit as ‘incredible disaster’ and expects Cancún to be no better

Gosh, that’s almost as scientifically relevant as a public opinion poll.

Telegraph blunders, assumes Wikileaks was responsible for Climategate emails being made available to the public

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“Telegraph blunders, assumes Wikileaks was responsible for Climategate emails being made available to the public“. Funny, Anthony Watts loved the Telegraph until they were forced to retract denialist climate change statements.

Of course the question that begs asking is why Anthony so concerned about the “damaging impacts” of WikiLeaks but so quick to embrace the Climategate leaks. The answer, surprisingly, is that Anthony is a partisan hypocrite.

New Scientist’s Fred Pearce calls for Pachauri to resign

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“New Scientist’s Fred Pearce calls for Pachauri to resign“. More trenchant scientific insight from Anthony Watts. Fred Pearce has written in the enthusiastically right-wing Mail that “amiable, bearded, vegetarian railway engineer and cricket fanatic” Dr. Pachauri should resign from his position as Chairman of the IPCC.

Anthony wants us to infer that Pachauri is a corrupt, dishonest and unqualified politician, but the source article seems more focussed on the toll that fabricated denialist assaults have had on the IPCC’s reputation and that Pachauri’s departure might take some of that baggage with him.

Funny how when Fred Pearce says something that suits Anthony’s agenda he’s happy to take it at face value instead of railing against it like his has done in past coverage. Not the mark of an objective mind…

This all proves, of course, that there is no Global Warming.

Now it’s 2°C climate change target ‘not safe’

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“Now it’s 2°C climate change target ‘not safe’“. Sorry, Anthony, who said that a 2°C rise in mean global temperature was “safe”? Not the climatologists. This is a political target reflecting the industrial inertia that must be overcome. Any artificial increase will have an impact. So a press release from the University of Exeter, based on a paper in the Journal of Quarternary Science saying as much, is hardly a shock.

But I guess it lets Anthony imply that the environmentalists are trying to shift the target so they can be even meaner.

The real message is not that “greenies” want to lower the target and make us live in caves, it’s that the targeted limit will have consequences more severe than has been anticipated:

Professor Turney said: “The results here are quite startling and, importantly, they suggest sea levels will rise significantly higher than anticipated and that stabilizing global average temperatures at 2˚C above pre-industrial levels may not be considered a ‘safe’ target as envisaged by the European Union and others. The inevitable conclusion is emission targets will have to be lowered further still.”