Category Archives: Pull the Other One

Realclimate.org goes dark – is it permanent?

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“Realclimate.org goes dark – is it permanent?“ (2015/11/21). It’s nice to see that Anthony Watts’ jumping-to-conclusions/wish-fulfilment muscles are still in top shape! RealClimate.org had some momentary domain registration problems last week (I love the denier comments there – a momentary website technical problem is proof that PhD climate scientists are incompetent in climate research!).

While few have noticed, since hardly anyone but the handful of extreme faithful visit there anymore [this reminds me of the old restaurant joke: no-one goes there any more, it’s too busy! – Ben], it seems that the website run by the climate alarmist cabal of Dr. Gavin Schmidt, Dr. Michael Mann, Dr. Stephan Rahmstorf, and others has gone dark this week.

In exactly the same way that snow fall, anywhere for any reason, is proof that global warming is a hoax (or is over, or has reversed, or has paused) so too does Anthony trumpet that RealClimate must be shutting down in despair:

‘Tis a puzzle, did Gavin or EMS forget to pay the hosting bill, have they given up, or is something else going on?

I’ll just take a moment to remind Anthony that RealClimate is a website run by highly qualified climate scientists for the purpose of rational communication on their subject of expertise, not an angry firehose blast of ill-informed accusations, paranoia and flat-out lies like Watts Up With That.

Anthony finishes up with a bit of stalker truculence; boasting that he can read Dr. Gavin Schmidt’s Twitter feed even though Dr. Schmidt has blocked him (“Help! Help! I’m being repressed!”). Here’s a hint, Anthony: Twitter blocking means you can’t pester him, can’t piggyback on his tweets to spread your bullshit. It’s about dealing with trolls.

Is It Time To Stop The Insanity Of Wasting Time and Money On More Climate Models?

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“Is It Time To Stop The Insanity Of Wasting Time and Money On More Climate Models?” (2015-09-14). Wait a second. Hasn’t the only faintly credible denialist argument been that all the climate modelling and climate projections are too preliminary? We should keep waiting, twiddling our thumbs, until perfect data and projections are in hand? Then, presumably, the denialists will swing into righteous eco-warrior action. No, for Dr. Tim Ball it’s now about wasteful funding. Apparently ignorance is again bliss.

I still flick a bored eye over to Anthony Watts’ clown convention every now and then, and this post made me laugh enough to spend a moment scrolling through the “science.”

Today Anthony has loaned his dunce’s pulpit to Sky Dragon kook Dr. Tim Ball so he can mutter that climate projections aren’t as precise as he requires, that there aren’t enough “stations”, and that if you copy and paste carefully enough even the IPCC can be made to admit that the data is awful. Shut the whole thing down!

Hard to put much credence in Dr. Ball’s “career as a climatologist” (actually he’s a retired geographer and semi-pro Letter to the Editor writer) when he’s still trying to sell the out-of-context “hide the decline” source code quote from 2009. That dog won’t hunt. Also, does he really think that climatologists are trying to forecast climate? Ball seems to have a very rudimentary notion of how his alleged profession gathers climate data, or how it is used. Most of his gotcha quotes stop just before the actual meaning is explained, but this can possibly be put down to a short attention span.

Hell, Dr. Ball seems to have even forgotten that “stations” aren’t the only way we gather climate data. Maybe he should dust off those National Geographic magazines and look for articles about “satellites.” They’re brill. They go everywhere!

Actually, Dr. Ball seems to hold Australian garden-variety denialist and conspiracy enthusiast (ask her about the Rothschilds) Joanne Nova in high esteem, so perhaps he’s hidden an admission of poor judgement amongst his contemptuous bluster.

Despite posited ‘threats of extinctions caused by global warming’, 221 new species described by the California Academy of Sciences in 2014

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“Despite posited ‘threats of extinctions caused by global warming’, 221 new species described by the California Academy of Sciences in 2014″ (2014-12-29). Hello again! Idling at home over the holidays my curious fingers couldn’t resist Anthony Watts’ latest gum-flapper, a grotesque and deliberate misreading of a California Academy of Sciences press release (which Anthony didn’t bother linking to).

According to biology idiot savant Anthony Watts (you know where the emphasis lies), we shouldn’t care if species are going extinct because we’re finding news ones so fast it doesn’t matter!

Also, some of them ain’t going extinct because of global warming like them lyin’ scientists say because their tiny heads ain’t been found crushed under actual lumps of coal.

The true question here is whether Anthony understands that the rate of species discovery and the rate of species extinction are almost entirely unrelated. Is he too stupid to know this, or is he just playing his readers again? The rate of extinction has skyrocketed since the industrial age, but that got nuthin’ to do with us I guess.

97% of pictures are worth 1000 climate words

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“97% of pictures are worth 1000 climate words“ (2014-02-27). Anthony Watts posts a profound intellectual insight from his favourite denialist blow-hard, Lord Monckton. Shockingly, it seems that not every single climate paper is about the cause of the current rapid global temperature rise! Many of them don’t even mention the issue! Therefore no Global Warming.

In other equally profound news, the cause of Global Warming is never mentioned in surgical journals, more excellent proof that there is no Global Warming.

But wait, Monckton’s claim is that “Only 64 of 11,944 published since 1991 said most warming since 1950 was manmade: i.e. 0.5%” This means that 11,880 papers asserted that the warming has been natural! I’m looking forward to reading some of them.

Sadly for the loony Lord, no. The other climate papers about other subjects entirely.

Fixed it for ya, Monckton.

Fixed it for ya, Monckton. But don’t be so modest, you’re fourth author on that Science & Education paper!

White House science adviser attacks Roger Pielke Jr. for his Senate testimony, Pielke responds with a skillfull counterstrike

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“White House science adviser attacks Roger Pielke Jr. for his Senate testimony, Pielke responds with a skillfull counterstrike“ (2014-03-01). Anthony Watts actually thinks Dr. Roger Pielke Jr., “skeptical” political scientist, can teach Dr. John P. Holdren, the American President’s Science Advisor as well as Past President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, about climate science!

Is this truculent hubris, or just plain old Dunning–Kruger syndrome? You can decide, but I’ll just whisper this to Anthony: “skillfull” is spelt “skillful”. I know, I know, it takes a lot of fingers to keep track of the “l”s. Also, “counterstrike” should have a dash in there somewhere.

I first read about this on HotWhopper, and was reminded by a post on Climate Progress. Thanks guys!

Republican Senator Jeff Sessions had recently tried to use Pielke’s testimony from July 2013 to run the old “nothing’s changed”/”warming is good anyway!” shell game while questioning Dr. Holdren (linked on Rabett Run). Dr. Holdren testified that increased drought in the American West and Southwest has been a consequence of anthropogenic climate change. Sessions tried to dispute this irritating fact using Pielke’s – totally honest-broker, like, fer sure – testimony claiming there hasn’t been a change in drought trends. Dr. Holdren promised to back up his testimony and put Pielke’s in context and did so a few days later. It makes for an amusing read, unless you’re Roger Pielke Jr.

When Dr. Holdren cited research confirming his testimony and exposed Pielke’s classic quote-mining, Pielke revealed his debating ninja skills a blog post titled John Holdren’s Epic Fail. First, the right-wing nutters at The Daily Caller oversold Pielke’s argument in its partisan coverage of the testimony and Dr. Holdren thought they were quoting Pielke directly. Oh, that’s terrible! But more importantly, while Pielke had written that there was no change in drought trends, he put a little footnote-y thing to a journal paper that if you bothered to track down out of idle curiosity and then read through the whole thing shows that there has in fact been an increase in drought in the West and Southwest. That’s how you win the internets. Otherwise it’s all hurt feelings and wailing about politicizing the purity of collegial science. “Tone” is a favourite fall-back position for Pielke.

So no, Anthony: shouting a lie (Pielke’s “Take Home Points”from his 2013 testimony) and then whispering the 180° opposite truth (in a completely opaque footnote) doesn’t count as a “skillfull counterstrike.” It’s just building an escape hatch into the lie.

Open Letter to Jon Stewart – The Daily Show

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“Open Letter to Jon Stewart – The Daily Show” (2014-01-17). I LOVE these denialist “open letters”! Anthony Watts seems to love ’em too, but for different reasons. Anthony loves the chance to act as if he’s initiating a great public debate. When The Letter lands like a tiny pebble in a reeeeeally deep well he can pretend it was so beautifully argued that the (oblivious) target was shamed into silence. Me? I love the hubris.

Here we have Bob Tisdale lecturing Jon Stewart about his coverage of right-wing “weather!” whoppers on January 6th. Anthony Watts has had a pickle up his ass on the same topic; the recent deep cold snap should have been the final nail in the Global Warming hoax, right? But at least weatherman Anthony learned what the Polar Vortex is.

Bob lists his credentials up front so that Jon will sit up and take notice. He’s an “independent climate researcher” (code for “not a climate researcher”) and author of three ebooks!

I quite enjoyed Ingenious Pursuits‘ deconstruction: “Dr” Bob in retirement – just keep churning it out, check it out.

Like most denialists, Bob seems to consider himself a blend of Galileo and Martin Luther. Fierce intellect, incredible moral integrity, and probably the strength of ten men. Yeah, right. Bob’s just rattling through the usual tired and debunked denialist claims, misrepresenting evidence, demonstrating his ignorance of real scientific process or squawking “the models are wrong!”

I note that Anthony seems A-OK with the anti-Semitic undercurrent in his carefully moderated comments sandbox. Did you know Jon Stewart’s real surname is Leibowitz? This is apparently important to know.

Whither went the warmer weather?

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“Whither went the warmer weather?“ (2013-12-16). “17 years, 3 months with no global warming” says Anthony Watts, our all-knowing guide to the Universe. He knows this because Britain’s celebrated Morris Dancer of the intellect, Lord Christopher Monckton of Brenchley says so in his usual tangential, conspiracist, long-winded, self-delighted way. He even has a tongue-twister post title and a poem to back him up, who can beat that?

Furthermore, the Lord declares that “the models are in fundamental error”, trying to imply that conventional climate science is somehow wrong. As usual he’s too busy pontificating to consider, in this case, the distinction between prediction and projection.

Monckton tops it off by jumbling the cautionary statistical aphorism “correlation doesn’t imply causation” into “absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation.” That’s logical mastery that rises above grimy reality!

Never mind that this November just past was the hottest ever in the GISS record, or that the HadCRUT3 warming trend is pretty glaring if your eyes are open. Look at Monckton’s data!

Wait that’s the GISS data, posted by Tamino, which kinda undermines the Lord. We only trust the RSS data! Look again:

Damn, that’s not flat! Can’t a right-thinking denialist count on Dr. Roy Spencer? Oh, his chart wasn’t playing the long game, it was just designed to boast about his UAH satellite data corrections (it’s only “fudging” when other scientists do it).

Best to stick to Lord Monckton’s own chart, with the messy contradictions and distracting numbers tucked away out of sight. Squish the scale down too and draw a nice thick flat line on it:

Monckton 20131216 RSS chart

Now that’s useful science!