Category Archives: Pull the Other One

New paper in Nature on ocean cycles finally causes recognition in media

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“New paper in Nature on ocean cycles finally causes recognition in media“. Anthony Watts’ “European friend” Pierre Gosselin has discovered some important science in Der Spiegel. Apparently the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) controls our entire climate, which no-one except denialists knew about until just now!

It’s all explained by a Der Spiegel article about a Nature paper  titled An abrupt drop in Northern Hemisphere sea surface temperature around 1970 that is completely demonstrated by a denialist blogger’s bulls**t fake chart. Dr. Phil Jones is one of the authors! He’s starting to admit all the lies!!!! The denialists have won!

Who doesn't like crayons?

Oops, someone didn’t read the article that Der Spiegel tried to summarize. The AMO has been well described for many years, oceanic circulation patterns are a well-known factor in climate change (remember last year when Anthony spent all his time posting bunk about El Niño?), the AMO cycles don’t correlate with the recorded global temperature changes (neither did the El Niño ones). In fact, the paper is a perfectly good investigation of historical circulation patterns in the Atlantic Ocean.

Too bad it’s not useful for the purpose that Anthony tries to squeeze out of it. Why is Anthony promoting a blog post that so clearly misrepresents the paper it is ostensibly about? Oh, and once again we see Anthony likes suddenly computer models when he thinks they are saying what he wants to hear…

Surprise: Peer reviewed study says current Arctic sea ice is more extensive than most of the past 9000 years

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“Surprise: Peer reviewed study says current Arctic sea ice is more extensive than most of the past 9000 years“. A blogger discovers a paleoclimate paper by McKay, et.al. in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences from 2008 and Anthony Watts is on it like white on rice. “Peer reviewed!” “More ice now than ever!” “Natural!!!!”

Oh, it’s only referring to a bit of the western Arctic. Oh, they’re only comparing to Arctic Sea Ice extent of a decade ago, when there was in fact rather more sea ice. Oh, they aren’t suggesting that such low ice extents were common. Oh, dinocyst proxies are a bit dodgy. Oh, the paper is merely titled Holocene fluctuations in Arctic sea-ice cover: dinocyst-based reconstructions for the eastern Chukchi Sea, not “there’s more ice than ever now!”

Expert Embarrassment in Climate Change

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“Expert Embarrassment in Climate Change“. Thomas Fuller, first to publish rash “Climategate” accusations, lets us know that the recent PNAS paper, ‘Expert Credibility in Climate Change’, is somehow a nasty and unethical blacklist.

Sorry Tom, the determination of denier/agree-er was based on freely given public statements and the assessment of expertise was the same for all subjects. Claiming sneakiness, privacy infringement, or violation of confidentiality is bull. Read the author’s defense, several days before Fuller’s repetition, over at Real Climate.

Your denialist victims have been “outing” themselves without any help, and your post is merely an exercise in victim bullying. However your howls do remind me of the frequent calls by denialists for the dismissal of “warmist” scientists or public officials, cuts to their funding, calls for boycotts, etc, etc. What’s that smell? Oh yes, hypocrisy.

CO2 heats the atmosphere…a counter view

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“CO2 heats the atmosphere…a counter view“. Tom Vonk, “Physicist”, engages in some wishful thinking to prove that CO2 is not responsible for heating the atmosphere. If you look at a small enough quantity of atmospheric gases in just the right way, and ignore the rest of the field of radiative physics that is. It’s always a bad sign when an arm-waving pet theory that start with “intuitively”.

So what is responsible for heating the atmosphere? Oh, that’s a question for another day.

Vonk’s conclusion?

The main point is that every time you hear or read that “CO2 heats the atmosphere”, that “energy is trapped by CO2”, that “energy is stored by green house gases” and similar statements, you may be sure that this source is not to be trusted for information about radiation questions.

Oh, I se. This is just an exercise in training denialists to stop reading “warmist” statements as soon as the science begins.

When the educated commenters, including Dr. Roy Spencer and even Steven Goddard, take a big step back from Vonk’s claims in the comments you know this post ain’t earning any Nobel prizes.

Most of the comments are, of course, of the hilariously oblivious wild praise variety. And that’s what counts, right?

A color scheme change for the SST map

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“A color scheme change for the SST map“. Steven Goddard still thinks that diddling around in Photoshop is scientifically meaningful. Today he tries to jigger the color scheme to reduce the global temperature anomalies by using a “cooler” color for small positive anomalies.

Of course he had to hunt around the NOAA site to find the Coral Reef Watch group’s variation on the master Sea Surface Temp anomaly map to find a chart that he could make look bad. Note to Steven: Charts are representations of data, they are not data. What you are doing is discarding the data that you don’t like.

Here's a real NOAA SST Anomaly Map, for August 4, 2010.

Using the same logic Steven “proves” in the comments that, by geographical area, President Obama only got 28% of the 2008 Presidential election vote.

Graphing Lesson Part 2 – “Crest to Crest”

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Graphing Lesson Part 2 – “Crest to Crest”. Steven Goddard tries yet again to explain why his cherry-picked charting tricks are perfectly A-OK. The time span that shows that there is no statistical Global Warming is always the correct one to use!

Desperately seeking swelter

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“Desperately seeking swelter“. Anthony Watts has found a Telegraph column by denialist pontificator Christopher Booker that pulls the old “black is white” trick. Somehow the record hot weather across the northern hemisphere is “risibly desperate” effort by “believers in global warming to hold the line for their religion”. Sure it’s hot now, but apparently any hot weather at any time in the past is unshakeable proof that hot weather now can’t be due to Global Warming. You’ll have to talk me through that one, Chris.

What does Booker offer in support of his shifty argument? Well he does mention “expert analysis on Watts Up With That, the US science blog”.

ROTFLMAO (for libertarian retirees hunched over their 286’s, that’s txt for “rolling on the floor laughing my ass off”).

Oh, by the way Booker in the past has been delighted to claim that cold winter weather is proof that there’s no Global Warming…

Sea Ice News #15

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“Sea Ice News #15“. Steven Goddard returns to his weekly “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” exercise in trying to explain away the Arctic Sea Ice trends. In this “report” he decides to talk about data coverage and not the data itself and about Arctic air temperature and not sea ice. Oh, he has some webcam photos as evidence too.

In passing, he mentions that “ice loss accelerated during the past week over the East Siberian Sea due to above normal temperatures.” But pay no heed to that!

Seven Eminent Physicists Skeptical of AGW

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“Seven Eminent Physicists Skeptical of AGW“. The secret’s out! Anthony Watts has been asked to post the truth about scientific consensus by Popular Technology.net, who promise “Impartial Analysis of Popular Trends and Technology” especially if you want some anti-nationalized health care or anti-marijuana info.

Seven Eminent Physicists; Freeman Dyson, Ivar Giaever (Nobel Prize), Robert Laughlin (Nobel Prize), Edward Teller, Frederick Seitz, Robert Jastrow and William Nierenberg, all skeptical of “man-made” global warming (AGW) alarm.

Wait, four of them are dead and the rest of them are ancient. Wait, none of them have published anything relevant in decades. Oh, I see. They’ve all “gone emeritus” (their egos and stature make them think they are authoritative way outside of their expertise).

Here’s an enlightening quote by Max Planck:

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

Hey, doesn’t Monckton have a home-made “Nobel pin“? There are eight “eminent physicists” skeptical of AGW!

CO2 Optical Illusion

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“CO2 Optical Illusion“. Steven Goddard is nothing if not stubborn. He still thinks that graphics editors can be used to prove that Global Warming is a lie. NASA’s Earth Observatory image of the day has him all riled up.

Here he once again mangles legitimate scientific images and then counts pixels to prove… something. Although he admits that “This is not a perfect equal area projection – so the pixel count method is not 100% accurate” it doesn’t stop him from speaking from the mountaintop. He declares that “5% more pixels were below normal than were above normal” but ignores the unreported areas (most of India and China) that almost all lie within hotter than normal regions.

Pixels, eh Steven? I think you’re actually looking at pixies. I suppose it makes a change from arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.