Category Archives: Pull the Other One

Sea level rise: “jumpy” after last ice age

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Sea level rise: “jumpy” after last ice age. Anthony Watts thinks that a paper in Global and Planetary Change about sea-level changes 10,000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age when sea-level was rising rapidly, means that any rise in sea-level now, when natural sea-level fluctuations are minor, is also entirely expected. Therefore Anthony has a press release that proves that there is no man-made Global Warming.

If sea-level was jittery during periods of rapid rise then of course it can be jittery during periods of stability! After Global Warming Art.

New book: Slaying the Sky Dragon

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“New book: Slaying the Sky Dragon“. You know a climate denial book is on shaky ground when even Anthony Watts has trouble with the list of authors! Yes, “Iron Sun” kook Oliver K. Manuel is among this confederacy of dunces.

Windmills on the Moon and dragon-riding astronauts!

Still, Anthony’s happy to report that Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory, available as an e-book only, has debunked the greenhouse gas theory. Funny how these devastating “refutations” of accepted science never seem to find their way into an actual scientific journal. Damn those cliquish scientists and their social networks!

Read the author’s modest description of their own work. Bemused emphasis mine.

Even before publication, Slaying the Sky Dragon was destined to be the benchmark for future generations of climate researchers. This is the world’s first and only full volume refutation of the greenhouse gas theory of man-made global warming.

Nine leading international experts methodically expose how willful fakery and outright incompetence were hidden within the politicized realm of government climatology. Applying a thoughtful and sympathetic writing style, the authors help even the untrained mind to navigate the maze of atmospheric thermodynamics. Step-by-step the reader is shown why the so-called greenhouse effect cannot possibly exist in nature.

By deft statistical analysis the cornerstones of climate equations – incorrectly calculated by an incredible factor of three – are exposed then shattered.

This volume is a scientific tour de force and the game-changer for international environmental policymakers as well as being a joy to read for hard-pressed taxpayers everywhere.

Journeyman denialist and former professor of geography Tim Ball seems the only author with even faintly relevant scientific credentials…

Examination of CRU data suggests no statistically significant warming

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“Examination of CRU data suggests no statistically significant warming“. Anthony Watts’ ferociously qualified associate A.J. Strata says:

“Bottom Line – Using two back-of-the-envelope tests for significance against the CRU global temperature data I have discovered:”

and

“let me explain how I derived (by eye – ugh!) the two primary pieces of data I used”

Back-of-the-envelope tests? Eye-balling? Does anyone need to read any further? A.J., who seems more like a Tea-Bagger than a climate expert, is apparently working backwards from various printed graphs! This is classic denialist bunk, even down to accusations of “deception off on a global scale”. It’s kind of pitiable watching these obsessions play out in public.

So how did A.J. pull the Global Warming edifice down? He’s taken sets of what he claims are raw country temperature data (well actually pretty much of his own invention as he’s pulling the numbers from printed graphs) and slapped a line on them so he can declare that there is no Global Warming. I think I’ll wait for the cover story in Nature before I join the parade. Although he has been “working on [this] for about a week now”.

For a laugh, here's a cherry-picked sample of the printed temp charts A.J. Strata used to prove that there's been no Global Warming. These are from Mozambique and South Africa.

In the comments we get more examples of Anthony threatening critical commenters when he asks “Onion” about the weather in England. Anthony likes to use information from his website logs to reveal private details of his critics so he can make them feel exposed.

Length of day correlated to cosmic rays and sunspots

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“Length of day correlated to cosmic rays and sunspots“. See? Anthony Watts was right all along! It’s the Sun!

Thus, the [rotation of the] Earth (specifically the mantle), is accelerated or slowed according to the fluctuations of cosmic rays under the influence of solar activity through the zonal winds… (original article – in french)

Oh, the variations are on the order of a 10th of a percent. Well, it’s still all natural. The solar kooks come out in full force in the comments.

Shackling national security – and renewable energy

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“Shackling national security – and renewable energy“. Because conservationists didn’t enthusiastically embrace consuming mineral resources as fast as possible, talking about their strategic value now is in Anthony Watts’ view hypocritical.

Just read Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise lobbyist Paul Driessen’s guest post. All you need to do is vote Republican and the problem is solved. No more energy technologies using up rare earth minerals that we need for military purposes, just drill, baby, drill!  America will once again be strong and free!

Oh, and by the way, oil is magically created deep in the Earth now, so don’t worry ’bout dat any more neither. (Boy, do the commenters love that idea!)

The other embarrassing AGW story this week

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“The other embarrassing AGW story this week“. Osama bin Laden is against climate change, because he apparently mentions the recent Pakistan floods in his latest audio release. This, according to Anthony Watts, makes him an ally of those commie ‘warmists’ because like them he’s “a man who kills people for having a differing view than him”.

I think I’ll just let this sit there and let you can draw your own conclusions about the workings of Anthony’s mind.

The Royal Society’s Toned Down Climate Stance

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“The Royal Society’s Toned Down Climate Stance“. The Global Warming Policy Foundation (urging no policy because there is no warming) has jumped on the pretend bandwagon and “welcomed the Royal Society’s decision to revise and tone down its position on climate change.” They tell us the the Royal Society now agrees with them, and they’re now BFFs.

Whatever. The actual Royal Society pamphlet is in full agreement with the “consensus view” and the despised IPCC’s 4th Assessment Report.

Threshers - in - spaaaace!

Funny that the commenters are mistaking the labeled sketch of the Cryosat satellite on the Royal Society’s publication for an old-fashioned thresher while also talking about how they’re going to “teach the scientists.” Groan.

Extreme Weather, Extreme Claims

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“Extreme Weather, Extreme Claims“. The ever-impartial think-tank Science and Public Policy Institute, home to any and all denialists itching to see their name in print, is offering Dennis Ambler’s latest pamphlet, Extreme Weather Extreme Claims. Apparently this summer’s heat wave and forest fires in Russia, the floods in Pakistan, etc. could have been taken care of if we had redirected all that foolish climate research money  into fire-hoses and rafts.

Sorry, that’s as much brain-power as I can bear to spend on Dennis’s stupidity.

Can someone explain why Dennis has used two photos twice each on the cover?

Royal Society blinks – embraces sceptics and uncertainty

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“Royal Society blinks – embraces sceptics and uncertainty“. The Royal Society has released a 19-page layman’s guide to climate change science. Because it’s fairly cautious and restricts itself to the physical science of climate change the denialist industry, including dear Anthony Watts, is trying to crow that the Royal Society has “blinked” and changed their position on climate change (i.e. that it’s real).

So did the Royal Society suddenly realise that their 43 “rebellious” members were right and their 1700 other members were not? No. The document states right off the bat that there is “strong evidence that the warming of the Earth over the last half-century has been caused largely by human activity”. If this is what passes for turning tail and running these days it’s a pretty thin gruel.

Here’s the desperate little nub the denialists are pinning their hopes on – pretending that any awareness of uncertainties is new:

“The size of future temperature increases and other aspects of climate change, especially at the regional scale, are still subject to uncertainty.” (italics mine)

“There is little confidence in specific projections of future regional climate change, except at continental scales.” (italics mine)

Well, duh. Useful regional predictions may not be possible in this decade, but global ones have been made and are coming to pass. Royal Society vice president John Pethica says “If the report sounds cautious, that’s because the IPCC is cautious” and “There is no change in the science.” Their statement from December 2009, Preventing dangerous climate change, (pdf here) stands unchanged, as does their 2007 Climate change controversies: a simple guide.

That 2007 pamphlet remains an effective rebuttal to Anthony’s most recent posts, which shows just how stagnant and intellectually bankrupt the denialist arguments are. Funny or sad? I guess it depends on your perspective.

Loehle: Vindication

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“Loehle: Vindication“. Craig Loehle uses Anthony Watts’ blog to declare “victory!” over criticisms of his 2008 temperature reconstruction, which claimed to overthrow Mann’s “hockey-stick” reconstruction, in the discredited journal Energy & Environment (A 2000 Year Global Temperature Reconstruction based on Non-Treering Proxy Data).

At the same time, I have been repeatedly insulted about it on the web. It is claimed that it has been debunked, is junk, that E&E is not a “real” journal, that I’m a hack, that I “only” used 18 series (though 2 were composites covering China & North America), etc. In the ClimateGate emails, Mann called it “awful” (which I’ll take as a compliment!). Lot’s of fun. In this post I demonstrate perhaps a little vindication.

Feel good to get that off your chest Craig?

Craig Loehle's misleading comparison of his discredited temperature reconstruction to a new one by Ljungqvist.

So was this victory achieved? Apparently through a new paper by Fredrik Ljungqvist called “A new reconstruction of temperature variability in the extra-tropical northern hemisphere during the last two millenia“, in Geografiska Annaler. And all Loehle has to do is cheat the charts a bit! Don’t align over the calibration period, center “on their respective long-term mean values”, ‘warm’ the new reconstruction a bit to get it closer to yours, use non-comparable baselines, and… victory!

An honest comparison of Loehle's proxy reconstruction. Loehle's is the red high one, Ljungqvist's is the green one in middle with the rest. By Zeke Hausfather

Funny that the Ljungqvist abstract ends with this, uh, inconvenient quote (underline mine):

Our temperature reconstruction agrees well with the reconstructions by Moberg et al. (2005) and Mann et al. (2008) with regard to the amplitude of the variability as well as the timing of warm and cold periods, except for the period c. ad 300–800, despite significant differences in both data coverage and methodology.

I guess Loehle and Anthony were too lazy to read the whole thing, even though they pasted it into their article. Is this what passes for “vindication” in denialist circles these days?