Category Archives: Self-Pity

More dirty pool by NCDC’s Karl, Menne, and Peterson

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“More dirty pool by NCDC’s Karl, Menne, and Peterson“. Anthony’s still mad that “his data” has been used by scientists. Particularly because they studied his claim of fatal problems with the US surface temperature record and found that it was completely baseless. Sorry, Anthony, the actual data was theirs. You merely claimed loudly that particular weather stations were badly adjusted and they showed that from a climate study perspective the problems were irrelevant. A year later we’re still waiting for your thrilling expose.

Now they’ve used an amateur photo of a weather station on the cover of a presentation about how to respond to amateur criticisms of weather stations! My god, they’re also plotting things! Denialists do that too! What copycats, such infamy!

Sorry Anthony, your only contribution has been to trigger the recognition that there are tenacious and ignorant pests on the interwebs that need to be fended off. Nice to see the sudden awareness of copyright though. Did you ever get around to licensing that painting you use in your blog masthead? Like all of Anthony’s pretenses of taking the high road this rings a bit hollow.

Quote of the Week

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“Quote of the Week“. Anthony Watts brings to our attention a quote from Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. about the hated Joe Romm that is “long overdue”, prompted by Joe’s coverage of Clive Crook at the Atlantic repeatedly smearing climatologist Dr. Michael Mann:

“More than any individual — James Inhofe and Marc Morano included — Joe Romm is responsible for creating a poisonous, negative atmosphere in the climate debate. Responsible voices should say so, this nonsense has gone on long enough.”

This is code for “Joe Romm is kicking my ass all over town.” You see, Joe Romm has a Physics Ph.D. but Roger Pielke Jr.’s Ph.D is in… political science. They’ve crossed paths many times, but it’s like bringing a knife to a gun fight, and Romm doesn’t sugar-coat it.

Interesting to see the implication that denialists Senator James Inhofe and political operative Marc Morano are also “poisonous.” I’m not sure how Anthony avoided that short-list, but perhaps it’s because he’s one of Roger’s buddies. Roger Pielke Jr.’s claim of being (the only?) “honest broker” in the climate change debate is currently being laughed out-of-town. Here are two links (Roger at Face Value and The Honestly Broken) about Roger’s self-serving concept.

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.

Heidi Cullen doomcasts in new stemwinding sci-fi thriller

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“Heidi Cullen doomcasts in new stemwinding sci-fi thriller“. How dare a weather girl write a speculative book about Global Warming? How dare ABC News or the New York Times review it? Only Anthony Watts knows the truth about the lies!

Dr. Heidi Cullen, previously at the Weather Channel and now CEO of Climate Central has a book out called The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes from a Climate-Changed Planet.

Oh, wait. Dr. Cullen has a doctorate in climatology and ocean-atmosphere dynamics. Anthony… doesn’t.

I’m honored…I think

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“I’m honored…I think“. Here’s another funny one from Anthony Watts. Virginia Heffernan has naïvely written in the New York Times about a controversy over disguised advertising on ScienceBlogs, which she claims “has become Fox News for the religion-baiting, peak-oil crowd”. Sounds like a someone’s got a nice fact-free agenda… She also makes a rather loose suggestion about some ‘sensible’ science websites:

For science that’s accessible but credible, steer clear of polarizing hatefests like atheist or eco-apocalypse blogs. Instead, check out scientificamerican.com, discovermagazine.com and Anthony Watts’s blog, Watts Up With That?

Anthony loves the credibility bump, even though Scientific America is ‘dead to him’ for it’s awful, corrupt, lying support of the Global Warming orthodoxy (so are most natural history museums). Too bad Heffernan makes a very explicit retraction of her endorsement of Watts Up With That?:

One regret: the Watts blog. Virtually everyone who emailed me pointed out that it’s as axe-grinding as anything out there. I linked to it because has a lively voice; it’s detail-oriented and seemingly not snide; and, above all, it has some beautiful images I’d never seen before. I’m a stranger to the debates on science blogs, so I frankly didn’t recognize the weatherspeak on the blog as “denialist”; I didn’t even know about denialism. I’m don’t endorse the views on the Watts blog, and I’m extremely sorry the recommendation seemed ideological.

Anthony of course considers this proof that Heffernan succumbed to intellectual bullying from those nasty, hateful, lying scientists. Or is he just disappointed that a gullible newcomer with the correct political perspective has slipped through his fingers?

Tim Lambert over at Deltoid has a good overview: Post-modernism rides again at the New York Times.

McIntyre on Stephen Schneider

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“McIntyre on Stephen Schneider“. Anthony Watts copies-and-pastes a post by the thin-skinned curmudgeon Stephen McIntyre, who complains that Climatologist Stephen Schneider, the editor of the journal Climatic Change who recently passed away, didn’t regard his extended pestering as “genial”. Well, that’s an illuminating complaint, isn’t it? Too bad McIntyre didn’t raise the issue a year ago when Schneider was alive and able to respond.

Here’s a quote from Schneider last year that McIntyre objects to:

A serial abuser of legalistic attacks was Stephen McIntyre a statistician who had worked in Canada for a mining company.

McIntyre’s post starts as a half-hearted remembrance before devolving into another in an endless series of complaint about perceived ill-treatment. C for effort but E for execution, Stephen.

Climatic collision on the National/Financial Post website

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“Climatic collision on the National/Financial Post website“. Anthony Watts is busy deleting contacts from his Rolodex and trying to frame the sudden and unwelcome media scrutiny of global warming denialism as part of the Climategate “whitewash” and the alleged “blacklist” of denialists.

Canada’s National Post newspaper, a long-time source and also re-distributor of climate science misinformation, has for the first time printed an intelligent and skeptical assessment of the global warming denial position. Jonathan Kay’s article Bad Science: Global Warming Deniers are a Liability to the Conservative Cause is an entertaining exposé of many of the smug deceptions that the Post’s own doctrinaire columnists, such as Terrence Corcoran, have been regurgitating for years. Quite a startling development. Kay’s telling quote is this:

How has this tiny 2-3% sliver of fringe opinion been reinvented as a perpetually “growing” share of the scientific community?

Columnist Terrence Corcoran naturally has taken exception to having the plug pulled on his cozy bubble-bath. Bad politics The politicization of climate science reaches new low with the development of a deniers blacklist is his response. Strangely, he starts with a reference to the “first principles of good science” before blustering at length about a “scientific mop-and-pail crew”, talking about the astrological signs of the paper’s authors and trying to imply that compiling the alleged “denialist blacklist” was a stealthy librul operation. Actually, the list of denialist scientists was collected from documents published and distributed by denialist lobbyists. But bluster on, Terrence.

Anthony declares that of the two columns “One in my opinion, [is] ugly, the other matter of fact.” No prize for guessing which one Anthony likes.

What is PIPS?

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“What is PIPS?” Steven Goddard defends his continued use of the US Navy’s deprecated Polar Ice Prediction System (PIPS) Arctic Sea Ice model. The US Navy uses it! Case closed. This is the same obstinate mindset that lies at the root of Anthony Watts’ obsession with surface weather station records. PIPS is not intended for climate usage. It is a repurposed navigational tool.

Steven likes PIPS because, as the Navy states, “PIPS 2.0 often over-predicts the amount of ice in the Barents Sea and therefore often places the ice edge too far south.” This is very useful for a desperate denialist.

Steven concludes by stating that any critics “ignore the facts, and post instead what suits their agenda.”  Unsurprisingly, this is actually Steven’s motivation for using PIPS. It’s the easiest to manipulate toward a desired conclusion. Just restrict your analysis to the areas where PIPS over-predicts ice and pass it off as impartial.

Third Climategate report ‘imminent’ – expect a shortage of whitewash in stores this weekend

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“Third Climategate report ‘imminent’ – expect a shortage of whitewash in stores this weekend“. Steve Mosher prepares the ground for more bad news. This is a re-posting of a denialist Telegraph article about Sir Muir Russell’s inquiry into the infamous but insignificant “Climategate” scandal. So far it’s two denialist strike-outs.

Let the disgruntled muttering begin!

A note about boundaries

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“A note about boundaries“. I said I’d start covering Anthony Watts posts on WUWT again tomorrow, but this post by Anthony was too ironic to pass over. Anthony is complaining that a critic intruded into his personal life! Oh, the hypocrisy.

I certainly support the principle that people’s personal lives are private. I am without question a very small fish in a large pond, but already in the short life of this website I’ve experienced intrusive activity by denialists that could be characterized as attempts to intimidate or discredit me (OMG, I have a facebook account! With friends!). Unless the topic is religion, for example, a person’s religious convictions are irrelevant. Does it really matter how big Al Gore’s house is?

If Anthony’s description of this particular person’s behavior is accurate (a big if) then they’ve definitely crossed the line. Challenging a denialist in a public forum, whether online or at a relevant public event, is legitimate (that if fact is the purpose of this website) but accosting them outside of that context is not.

Unfortunately Anthony Watts has made a habit of prying into the lives of his opponents and “researching” people making critical comments on his blog. He’s also been quick to publish e-mail and postal addresses of scientists or journalists he doesn’t like to enable his followers to harass them. It seems to me that Anthony’s own comfort with skipping over the line when it suits him diminishes the legitimacy of his protestations about privacy.