Category Archives: Self-promotion

Scientific American’s interview with Dr. Richard Muller

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“Scientific American’s interview with Dr. Richard Muller“ (May 23, 2011). Anthony Watts has long resented Scientific American’s general scientific rationality. Just a few months ago they labelled his blog as a “well-known climate denier site” after-all. However, as we have seen across the popular press, the pretense of “balance” sometimes enables sloppy reporting of controversial topics to allow anti-scientific positions to gather support. Popular support fpr the disproven claim that the MMR vaccine triggers autism offers an excellent example.

Here we find Anthony practically wriggling like a puppy over his mention in Michael Lemonick’s lazy Sci Am interview of physicist Dr. Richard Muller about climate change science.

Both Steve McIntyre and I are mentioned prominently in the article, and once again Dr. Muller thanks us for our contributions to the debate.

Joe Romm at Climate Progress covers the Scientific American article at length, exposing Muller’s statements for their lack of both knowledge and integrity.

The otherwise inactive Dr. Muller injected himself into the Global Warming debate when he started the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project. Denialists licked their chops at the thought of a temperature reconstruction that appeared impartial but came from a politically aligned source, but howled of betrayal when Dr. Muller’s first analysis reluctantly confirmed the existing science.

Still, Dr. Muller enthusiastically embraces the irrelevant nitpicking of citizen-scientists such as Steve McIntyre (contradicted in Scientific American itself back in 2009 “Novel Analysis Confirms Climate ‘Hockey Stick’ Graph“) and freely libels both long-standing climate experts such as Dr. Michael Mann and commentators such as Al Gore. Muller acknowledges the existence of “denialists” but fails to name any so it’s hard to know just how crazy you have to be for Muller to step back. You’re safe, Anthony!

The surfacestations.org paper – accepted

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“The surfacestations.org paper – accepted“. (May 8, 2011)  Holy moly, Anthony Watts are a scientist! Well, “Corresponding Author” Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. is a scientist. Anthony announces that Roger and he will have a paper in an upcoming American Geophysical Union publication. I guess the AGU forgot Al Gore’s instructions about maintaining “the consensus.”

Anthony’s even managed to avoid the taint of public funding by getting fellow citizen-scientists (aka blog readers) to cover the page charges. Anthony and Roger have used the color crayons for this one and that’s expensive.

I have to shake my head at the hate-on Anthony has for government grants and the real scientific community. Of course he’s still on the watch for double-crossin’ warmist sneaks:

If you are wondering why I blurred the [DOI] number, it is simply that given what has transpired, with preemptive strikes by NCDC, and the recent BEST ambush before Congress, I’m simply being cautious.

Gosh, I thought it was hard to get papers confirming previous analyses published these days. Another myth demolished.

Will this paper be laced with accusations and faulty logic like his Science and Public Policy Institute pamphlets? Maybe it will just be, well, boring when he has to stay factual and reality-based.

Expect the denialosphere to kick into high gear over this regardless. I’m looking forward to it.

George Mason University “Climate Change Communicator of the Year” – where only one viewpoint is allowed

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“George Mason University “Climate Change Communicator of the Year” – where only one viewpoint is allowed“. George Mason University, reluctant home of the notoriously failed denialist statistician Edward J. Wegman, has a Center for Climate Change Communication. Anthony Watts is irked that their Center is running an internet poll for Climate Change Communicator of the Year and there isn’t a single denialist on the slate. They would be found over there on the Climate Change Deceiver of the Year poll (you’d have a solid shot at it, Anthony, although Lord Monckton is certainly more entertaining).

Anthony deflects his critics with this self-appraisal: “Lest some think this is some sort of sour grapes, it isn’t.” After all, who won the anything-goes 2011 Bloggies mob-athon, where responsible science communication was honored? Anthony did, that’s who.

The discredited 2006 Wegman Report is still clutched by denialists as some sort of proof of “warmist” fraud and collusion, but it is Wegman who is now under investigation for misconduct.

WUWT Year End Report

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“WUWT Year End Report“. Anthony Watts says:

Thanks to everyone that continues to help make WUWT “…the world’s most viewed climate website”
– Fred Pearce The Climate Files: The Battle for the Truth about Global Warming

Strangely, Anthony shows no interest in being the most informative climate website. I wonder if any of his readers will click-through to the Amazon link he included, where the Climategate “scandal” is summarized thus:

Although the scandal caused a media frenzy, the fact is that just about everything the public heard and read about the University of East Anglia emails is wrong. They are not, as some have claimed, the smoking gun for a great global warming hoax, nor do they reveal a sinister conspiracy by scientists to fabricate global warming data.

Watts Up With That visitor stats. Don't worry, the "decline" is just bad charting. Surprise!

 

 

Heading for half a million comments

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“Heading for half a million comments“. Yes Anthony, you have a small devoted flock of believers who spend every spare minute defending “skepticism”, promoting conspiracy theories, denigrating trained scientists, and resenting Al Gore. Enjoy!

Climategate–the Made Up Story, or Mr. Assange, WUWT?

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“Climategate–the Made Up Story, or Mr. Assange, WUWT?“ Anthony Watts’ associates express their annoyance that Julian Assange of Wikileaks is claiming to have been the first publisher of the stolen Climategate e-mail excerpts. It was them, damn it! They are the hipster heroes!

“Charles the Moderator” says the e-mails were on Wikileaks because he uploaded them. Economist Ross McKitrick makes the nuanced statement that Assange et. al. are “nothing but fakes and cretins.”

Perhaps “Charles” was afraid of legal complications, but I thought it was all public property…

Ah the good old days, when the denialists momentarily had a new way to convince themselves that they’d uncovered the vast decades-long conspiracy to use climate data to install a communist world government!

A bill for climate data integrity: The Public Access to Historical Records Act

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“A bill for climate data integrity: The Public Access to Historical Records Act“. Anthony Watts tries his hand at oppressive legislation, having “a small hand” in Republican Senator David Vitter’s Public Access to Historical Records Act. Ooh, the irony!

Senator Vitter is a creationist Tea Party supporter who “received forgiveness from God” for patronizing the “D.C. Madam” (and probably the “Canal Street Madam“). With Anthony’s help he is trying to introduce a bill hoping to show that NASA is manipulating temperature records.

American taxpayers are apparently being forced to spend billions, each year, on climate change research! Gosh that sounds awful, in an unspecific way.

NASA’s temperature records must be open to public scrutiny! Um, NASA has never collected historical temperature records, the NCDC however does collect it. NASA uses the NCDC’s data, their processed data is here.

These historical temperature records must be protected from political agendas! Amen to that, although I don’t trust Vitter to define it honestly.

So Anthony helped write a bill designed to give political appointees authority over the official US temperature record and to force scientists to use only that dataset? Anthony suddenly loves Gubmint and legislated truth! Has Obama the Nigerian crypto-communist got to him? What happened to the independent skeptic we all loved?

Why am I surprised that Anthony would be proudly involved in something so ill-conceived?

Various WUWT Articles About the “10:10” Video

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O…M…G – Video explodes skeptical kids in bloodbath. Anthony Watts joins in the “astonishment” and “outrage” over this poorly conceived video. I have to point out that the blowin’ up kids bit is only the first of the four scenes. No compassion for white-collar workers, footballers or hard-working narrators?

10:10 exploding skeptical children video “disappears”. Anthony wants to know where the video has gone. Did Dr. Phil Jones e-mail everyone to delete it? Wait he’s found it again! Those wishing to refresh their outrage should click-through.

A message to 10:10 -”sorry”, just doesn’t cut it. Why, oh why would Anthony accept the video author’s apologies when he can continue to use it to malign all environmentalists?

WUWT’s story on 10:10 – 3rd most popular on WordPress globally – even in New Zealand. Anthony boasts about his web statistics. That was a given, wasn’t it?

Blow Me Up, Blow Me Down. Thomas Fuller continues to represent this video as proof that environmentalists think that “it’s okay to ostracize, bully and dismiss those who don’t agree that climate change”. Apparently their intent “is to legitimize the cruelty of children towards each other”. Go get ’em, Junior! Thomas knows he’s gone off the deep end though, because he spends a lot of time trying to preëmpt charges of Nazi allusions (while accusing environmentalists of doing it first).

Steve McIntyre – one of the top 50 people who matter

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“Steve McIntyre – one of the top 50 people who matter“. Surprise, surprise. The Daily Telegraph’s resident denialist James Delingpole notes that although the New Statesman says that Steven McIntyre’s “influence might not be positive” he’s still had an ‘impact’.

Delingpole, and of course Anthony Watts, thinks that McIntyre’s one hell of a dude. Delingpole is sure the entire world agrees because the online comments at the New Statesman article almost universally declare McIntyre to be saintly. Apparently Delingpole has never seen a forum swarmed by denialists…

McIntyre’s real contribution seems to be showing how harassing scientists whose evidence you wish you could discard, trying mightily to magnify inconsequential errors, fixating on perceived slights and generally complaining can be turned into a decade of attention.

I spotted an amusing comment on Anthony’s blog: “What’s great about Steve is that he has absolutely no stake in the matter, save the desire to see something done correctly.” If Steven has “no stake in the matter” why has he never, ever, criticized any of the swarm of poorly argued and statistically flawed papers that the denialists keep hoping will suddenly defeat the AGW evidence?

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.