Category Archives: Pull the Other One

Antarctic warming courtesy of Mr. Fix-it

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“Antarctic warming courtesy of Mr. Fix-it“ (2012-12-27). Anthony Watts posts some profound scientific analysis – “Just a little something [David Middleton] threw together”.

On the basis of Middleton’s “Mk I eyeball”, careful scientific work on Western Antarctic temperature records is dismissed with a sneer as “manufactured” and denialist cooling (via squinting) replaces objective evidence of significant warming.

So David, did you just “throw it together” or just throw it up?

Here’s Anthony Watts’ own attempt to disparage the study three days earlier, in it’s entirety, supported by a cartoon of Santa’s sleigh:

They can’t find any recent warming, so they took a broken sensor with “intermittent gaps and other problems”, “recalibrated” it, “used computerized analyses of the atmosphere to fill the gaps” and “discovered” warming that “happened in the 1980s”. If you believe that this is science, then I strongly suggest you prep your telescope, lest you miss out on a spectacular sleigh sighting…

If you believe Anthony’s interested in science, you probably believe in the tooth fairy.

Dana Nuccitelli’s holiday trick for sobering up quick: put a little less rum in your egg nog

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“Dana Nuccitelli’s holiday trick for sobering up quick: put a little less rum in your egg nog” (2012-12-28). Funny how a post on Anthony Watts’ “uncensored” website attacking Dana Nuccitelli doesn’t have any responses from Dana Nuccitelli. Just sayin’.

So Anthony’s denialist buddy Alec Rawls, a self-appointed whistle-blowing IPCC expert, posted this bunk to lash out at Dana Nuccitelli. Dana had the temerity to ridicule Alec’s idea that there is a lag of secret duration and unknown cause in our climate’s response to “solar variation” (which… doesn’t). Thus proving that it really is all because of the sun and we can go back to our coal-powered land yachts free from communist oppression.

After-all, your level of inebriation can rise even after you stop drinking! And a wacky biological analogy is even better than a physical science proof. To be blunt, you’d know more about solar physics and climate from staring straight into the sun for a minute than Alec could figure out in a lifetime.

If you have the patience the 400+ comments are a comedy goldmine, especially when actual solar scientist Leif Svalgaard pops in for a serious round of whack-a-mole. Paul Vaughan’s wounded howl “Do not ever address me again” seems to capture the flavor of the reactions. Poor Alec must have anticipated an unopposed playing field, because he swaggers and sneers hilariously:

I have to feel bad for Dana on this point. It isn’t his fault. He has been systematically duped by this parade of so-called scientists all telling him that a persistent high level of forcing can’t cause continued warming. Makes me want to put him on a milk carton. The poor guy isn’t just lost, he was kidnapped. Want a piece of candy little boy? Credulous Science indeed.

Leif Svalgaard finally calls a spade a spade:

lsvalgaard says:December 29, 2012 at 3:28 pm
Alec Rawls says:
December 29, 2012 at 2:39 pm
UV-shift effects is one obvious candidate, so the NewScientist actually belittles TWO of the main candidates for this unidentified solar amplification mechanism
The Steinhilber et al. paper you cite, ends with “The UV irradiance may not be the viable solution because its observational data do not show a similar distinct decreasing trend as TSI [Frohlich ¨ , 2009], implying that its level during the MM was similar as in present solar cycle minima.
So you will quote selectively and omit what you don’t like.

Thank you for watching WUWT-TV

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“Thank you for watching WUWT-TV” (2012-11-16). Anthony Watts pats himself on the back for his anti-Gore Skype-athon.

He “won on science”! As opposed to logic or coherence. Which is why Senator Inhofe and Lord Monckton were booked on Anthony’s gong show.

Everyone who watched the Climate Reality broadcast was a computer “bot” set to reload every ten seconds! Denial science proves it.

His amateur 24 hours were “illustrative of the disparity between the well funded “haves” [communist environmentalists] and “have nots” [noble denialists]”! Which of course brings up the question that Anthony’s leaving pretty vague: what did his little show cost and who paid for it?

That Reality Drop video that says Not a Single Legitimate Scientific Body Disputes [AGW] is hilarious!

Hilarious! Because it’s true, right Anthony?

Whatever. Go to Reality Drop and see how quickly Anthony’s defiant house of cards collapses.

WUWT-TV’s answer to Al Gore’s ‘Dirty Weather Report’ is ON THE AIR

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“WUWT-TV’s answer to Al Gore’s ‘Dirty Weather Report’ is ON THE AIR” (2012-11-14). One word: painfully amateur. OK, that’s two words. It’s going to be a useful resource though, a concise compendium of dumb-ass blow-hards that won’t be able to squirm away from their claims.

The constant technical stumbles actually make Anthony Watts’ F*CKUP-TV look better than it is though. Surely they meant to say something else? Something intelligent? They just lost their notes, right?

Production values, denialist-style.

Gore’s Climate Reality show pales in comparison!

So who paid the $10,000+ for Anthony’s web setup? Not to mention the bandwidth costs.  He’s being coy about that…

Neil Armstrong, First Man on the Moon: 1930-2012

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“Neil Armstrong, First Man on the Moon: 1930-2012“ (2012-08-25). Do you really think that Anthony Watts would pass up the chance to sidle up beside a great man so he can poke his nose into the spotlight? Bet your ass not.

“America has just lost its most heroic son” declares Anthony, tissue dabbing the corner of his eye as he ‘reflects’ on the death of Neil Armstrong, first man to step on the surface of the Moon.

I wonder if Anthony will recognize the contrast: Neil Armstrong did something courageous and audacious. He was part of a concerted effort to face a challenge that had no guarantee of success, that required the best efforts of the entire nation and had to be reinvented every step along the way to finally achieve it. That was America in the 1960’s.

Denialists today say the environmental risks we clearly face aren’t so bad (maybe they’re even good!), are lies, or can’t be conveniently solved and fight for inaction. This is Tea Party America in the 2000’s.

America has gone from “can do ” to “can’t do”.

So Anthony when you declare, through crocodile tears, that “America’s manned space program is also dead” remember that thinking people know that it’s wounds come from the determined efforts of ‘small government’ political zealots like yourself. Reflect on that while you pretend to exalt NASA’s most famous representative.

Farewell to Neil Armstrong, a courageous and dedicated explorer from a time when America faced challenges rather than set them aside and bickered over them.

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too. – President Kennedy, 1962.

New study shows half of the global warming in the USA is artificial

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“New study shows half of the global warming in the USA is artificial” (2012-07-29. Originally titled “PRESS RELEASE”). Here it is! The game-changing scientific announcement from Anthony Watts that the entire world will want to know about!

“U.S. Temperature trends show a spurious doubling due to NOAA station siting problems and post measurement adjustments.”

So… Anthony Watts’ science revelation is that his inkjet has finished printing a typo-ridden do-over of his attack on US surface station weather data, “to be submitted for publication”, with his usual denialist pals (McIntyre, Christie, Jones).

Strange that Anthony’s promoting his sciencey-ness before publication (let alone acceptance). Didn’t he rail against the practice when he didn’t like former pal Dr. Muller’s temperature analysis? I guess that was then and this is… now.

Let’s see who he tries to submit this too (Journal of Geophysics, anyone? Oops, all the planted editors have decamped) and how the peer-review turns out. Should be funny to watch him squirm and sputter.

Wait, I just got it!

Anthony knows the evil conspiracy of competent climate scientists will never allow  a threat to the secret communist world government. Like every denialist proclamation yet, Anthony’s moment of shining triumph will last no longer than the delay between clicking “post” and being read by tamino or RealClimate.org (that will be some good readin’).

Make hay while the sun shines, Anthony.

P.S. Looks like Anthony’s barrage was timed to deflect attention from his former denialist buddy Dr. Muller. Muller’s Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature publication confirmed the conventional scientific conclusions. His op-ed today in the New York Times is “The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic”:

Call me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.

Anthony’s been hiding behind a fence, nursing his snowball-with-a-stone-in-it waiting for Muller to walk past. Hell hath no fury like a betrayed denialist.

2012-07-31 Update: Victor Venema (commenting here too) has some good first-pass comments on Anthony’s mediocrity. Eli Rabett has also gathered some entertaining insights into Anthony’s latest self-congratulatory own goal.

But this lack [of perspective] makes amateurs prone to get caught in the traps that entangled the professionals’ grandfathers, and it can be difficult to disabuse them of their discoveries. Especially problematical are those who want science to validate preconceived political notions, and those willing to believe they are Einstein and the professionals are fools. Put these two types together and you get a witches brew of ignorance and attitude.

Unfortunately climate science is as sugar to flies for those types.

Climate skeptic instructor fired from Oregon State University

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“Climate skeptic instructor fired from Oregon State University“ (2012-06-10). Much like The White Queen, Anthony Watts can swallow any contradiction without a hiccup. Here he does his bit to fan the flames outrage over the persecution “firing” of climate skeptic Nickolas Drapela, an exalted Senior Instructor in chemistry at Oregon State University. It’s dang witch hunt!

First of all, setting aside any question of Nick’s scientific “persecution” (it’s farcical, but we’ll get there), those of us with functioning brains will recall Anthony’s resentful fantasies about how James Hansen and Gavin Schmidt at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies should be fired for their views on climate change (i.e. they describe how it’s happening). He’s even run dumbass polls on the topic, and ‘fire ’em/throw them in jail’ is a steady somnambulistic undercurrent in the comments.

But that’s… different.

OK, let’s turn to the persecution. If we are to believe Nick’s champion Gordon Fulks, OSU is a place where:

“Transgressors who dare to be different are eventually weeded out so that the campus maintains its ideological purity.”

Stalin, Lysenko, politically correct, “Anthropogenic Global Warming, the official religion of the State of Oregon”, hot button, hot button. The on-going reductions in OSU’s funding has nothing to do with it. Nor does the fact that Nick’s basically wandered from university to university for the last fifteen years. It’s definitely malicious persecution.

Next checkmark: Is Nick a fiercely insightful scientist whose careful analysis has disproven AGW and who must be silenced at any cost? Just look at his publication record! Case closed. Well honestly the case never opened because his entire published scientific output is third author on this metabolic chemistry paper from 2000. Gee, I wonder if that contributed to his termination?

Still, there are plenty of laughs in “Global Warming Cracked Open”, a paranoid cut-and-paste “sociopolitical” slide show rant about AGW. Slide 78 of 80 introduces the only science, a pathetic cherry-picked and debunked chart of solar activity from that bastion of scientific integrity, the deceptive “documentary” The Great Global Warming Swindle. He also assures us that “they regularly read all my email communications.”

Now I get it! Anthony Watts and other denialists look at this delusional no-hope nutter and see… themselves. Is this really the donkey you want to hitch your persecution wagon to, Anthony?

Thanks to Tamino’s post The Light of Day for doing the heavy lifting on this one,

Heartland Institute Responds to Pacific Institute’s Reinstatement of Gleick – cites Federal criminal prosecution

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“Heartland Institute Responds to Pacific Institute’s Reinstatement of Gleick – cites Federal criminal prosecution“ (2012-06-07). Anthony Watts loves the thrill of leaping to a conclusion. Here, he regurgitates a Heartland Institute press release muttering sourly about the Pacific Institute’s announcement that they had reinstated Dr. Peter Gleick after investigating his “stealing” Heartland Fakegate documents. Documents that were so sensitive that staff e-mailed them to pretty much anyone that asked.

The Heartland Institute also mutters that they wish the Feds would charge Dr. Gleick with… something. In other words, “just you wait until your father gets home!”

But what really gets under the Anthony and Heartland’s skin is that “the Pacific Institute has refused to identify who conducted its investigation” This is total conspiracy stuff! There. Was. No. Investigation. You can put money on that, pal.

Anthony adds an admission a few hours later:

Note: shortly before I received this statement from Heartland, I got an email identifying the investigating organization.

So Anthony knew the Heartland statement was inaccurate and still he chose to post it uncorrected.

Way more satisfying to slap your mouth to the megaphone and start bellowing, isn’t it Anthony?

The Anatomy of a Global Warming Smear

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“The Anatomy of a Global Warming Smear” (2012-02-18). ¡Ay, caramba! Anthony Watts desperately posts fellow Heartland Institute funding recipient Alan Caruba’s full-on rant about climate science, apparently triggered by the Heartland Institute document leak. Also, he hates the New York Times.

Here’s some nuance for ya:

Suffice to say, the “climate science” served up by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been a pack of lies from the day it first convened.

Sing it brother! What next?

Next to oxygen, CO2 is vital to all life on Earth as it sustains all vegetation which in turn sustains every creature that depends on it as a source of food.

I guess as a good environmentalist I should rush outside and pant on some shrubs.

Thousands of scientists have signed petitions denouncing global warming as a hoax.

If you’re gonna stay stupid things like that someone should tell you about the internet. Your wannabe petitions were all fake petitions packed with unqualified names.

There’s a reason the theme of Heartland’s sixth conference in 2011 was “Restoring the Scientific Method.”

Cute misspelling of “undermining”.

2012-05-22 update: After much caterwauling by the Heartland Institute about forgeries and the shameful behavior of nasty warmists, the true conclusion can be drawn: “Peter Gleick cleared of forging documents in Heartland expose“

Regulatory Czar wants to use copyright protection mechanisms to shut down rumors and conspiracy theories

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“Regulatory Czar wants to use copyright protection mechanisms to shut down rumors and conspiracy theories“ (2012-01-20). Anthony Watts loves to give a platform to libertarian crackpots. Wild incendiary ideas get promoted, people Anthony doesn’t like get slandered, but he can stand back with his hands clean.

Here we have Alex Rawls, a climate change denier who’s also obsessed with, for example, the Flight 93 memorial (it is, of course, a “terrorist memorial mosque”), how the Beijing Olympics Closing Ceremony depicted an orgasm, and of course “Republicanism’. He tells us that Obama wants to suppress rumors and conspiracy theories such as claims that global warming is a deliberate fraud or that Barack Obama “pals around with terrorists.”

Strangely, these are precisely the wild claims that Alex, a “simple public-spirited blogger”, likes to shout from the rooftop.

Sorry Anthony, who you pass the megaphone to says a lot about you.