“Fox News uses WUWT“. Anthony Watts delights that Fox News is treating WUWT as a reliable news source, in this instance using posted photos of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster.
This says as much about Fox News’ scientific credibility as it does about Anthony’s political enthusiasms.
“A multi question poll on Real Climate“. Anthony Watts believes that hundreds of denialists obsessively refreshing the comments of his posts so they can shout down people who disagree with them is proof that his website is the best. That’s basically what the Alexa statistics he touts show. He’s way better than those climatologist jerks at Real Climate and better even than that nutty physicist at Climate Progress.
Now he has more supporting evidence. Jeff Id at The Air Vent has created a series of goofball polls asking his loyal denialist readers if they think that Real Climate is mean or stupid. Why can’t they pick mean and stupid?
So now we know who make Anthony and Jeff Id squirm the most. Real Climate and Climate Progress, in their different ways, are both doing something right.
“WUWT Radio“. Anthony Watts ponders adding an internet radio program to his empire of deception. I guess he wants to take advantage of the chance to make statements that flow by too quickly to be scrutinized and can’t be rebutted. Perfect!
I have to say that Anthony sounds just like he reads. The transcripts would make for entertaining reading though…
Al Gore says “Denialists in Denial”. Anthony Watts shows what a big man he is by comparing himself to Al Gore (or “Al, Baby” as he respectfully calls him). Apparently WUWT has a higher “rank” than algore.com does according to alexa.com. These kinds of web statistics are widely understood as meaningless, especially when comparing websites with different purposes such as Anthony’s frenzied argument and Gore’s policy-orientation.
Of course most of Al Gore’s activity is through altogether separate websites such as The Alliance for Climate Protection, The Climate Project, Live Earth and An Inconvenient Truth. He’s also read nation-wide and a popular public speaker. But Anthony’s paranoid-obsessive readers give him way more “hits”.
Anthony’s adolescent outburst is a lame attempt to move the focus away from both Al Gore’s criticism of denialist Richard Lindzen’s dishonest op-ed in the Wall Street Journal and Gore’s link to The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder dismantling of the same.
“WUWT gets a Cartoon by Josh“. Anthony Watts basks in the glow of an admiring cartoon.
Prominent Climategate Figure Threatens Lawsuit over Spoof Video – No Cap-and-Trade Coalition Says “Bring it on” This is a funny one, especially because Anthony Watts’ buddy “Charles the Moderator” has done the posting (read to the end). I’m left wondering – is Dr. Mann thin-skinned or are these guys just stupid?
First act: “Minnesotans for Global Warming” (M4GW) create a video that they posted on YouTube called Hide the Decline that defames Dr. Michael Mann with baseless accusations that he falsified climate data. The video also infringes on copyright and exploits Dr. Mann’s image without permission. Pretty much a legal slam-dunk for Dr. Mann. Usually these slimy things are brushed off, but this time Dr. Mann had his lawyers act on the matter as Rush Limbaugh had begun promoting it. M4GW knew they’d been caught out and immediately caved in, but of course the defamatory video had already spread far and wide and had lodged itself in the thoughts of the feeble-minded.
Hilarity! In a defamatory kind of way.
Second act: “Little guy” M4GW turns out to be a limb of the astroturf operation No Cap and Trade, “an alliance of organizations concerned about the devastating impact that a cap-and-trade scheme could have on American families, businesses and the faltering US economy.” They’ve staged a media event, complete with dancing mascots, to announce that they’ve posted the original defamatory video as well as a revised version that presumably substitutes a malicious caricature for the images of Dr. Mann. Why “presumably”? Go to the third act…
Third Act: YouTube pulls the No Cap and Trade version because of different copyright violation charge by JibJab Media.
Oops.
Denouement: Why didn’t Anthony post this himself? Well he’s been on the wrong end of a copyright violation accusation before, hasn’t he? See this Climate Crock of the Week video and related coverage at Climate Progress.
“‘Hockey stick’ graph was exaggerated – McIntyre gets props“. Anthony Watts pastes an article from the noted denialist newspaper The Telegraph entitled ‘Hockey stick’ graph was exaggerated. “Exaggerated” being their way of edging around the fact that the ‘hockey stick’ has still not been disproved. Dr. Mann’s out-dated (but influential) 1998 paper has of course been reproduced with improved data and methods since then.
Professor Hand is head of the Royal Statistical Society and apparently praised climate curmudgeon Steve McIntyre for “uncovering the fact that inappropriate methods were used which could produce misleading results” (emphasis mine). Pretty thin gruel, because the results have actually proven correct.
No mention of the Oxburgh Report’s description of Steve McIntyre as “selective and uncharitable“.
More denialist Fail from Anthony: the top graph is global, the bottom one just "europe". Can you can spot the other two obvious boners?
“IPCC AR4 also gets a failing grade on 21 chapters“. Anthony Watts wants you to know that Donna Laframboise (blogger) and a team of denialist “citizen auditors” have performed a grade school (literally) evaluation of the IPCC’s 2007 Assessment Report’s (“AR4”) references. The report, which Donna refers to as “the United Nations’ Nobel-winning climate bible“, gets an “F” for 21 of the 44 chapters, based on their personal assessment of the references.
“We’ve been told it’s 100 percent peer-reviewed science.” Um, no you haven’t. And the bulk of the claimed low-quality references are in the “Impacts” and “Mitigation” sections, not in the far more important “Climate Science” section.
Nothing is said about the physical science or historical evidence, of course. Funny how often “citizen” gets used as a descriptive badge among denialists.
Anthony finishes optimistically: people are beginning to laugh at the “robustness” oft touted in climate science. You’d better unplug your iPod, Anthony…
Oh Donna, you get an “F” too.
“NSIDC’s Walt Meier responds to Willis“. Dr. Meier takes up Willis Eschenbach’s challenge and responds to the self-serving “questionnaire” about climate with a rational discussion.
From the sound of minds clanging shut in the comments, I don’t think Anthony’s readers are buying it.
Nice try,Walt…
“NASA Data Worse Than Climate-Gate Data, GISS Admits“. The latest scientific analysis Anthony Watts has copied-and-pasted is… a Fox News article! This is really scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Blake Snow of FOXNews.com reports as an admission of inferiority a NASA scientist’s assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the different global surface temperature analyses. He also presents as definitive the opinion of Christopher Horner, a ‘senior fellow’ from the right-wing Competitive Enterprise Institute, that “three out of the four temperature data sets stink”. When another ‘senior fellow’ this time at the right-wing Heartland Institute, James M. Taylor, is quoted next and the article ends with our own Anthony’s unchallenged arm-waving about the “quality” of surface stations, you know the fix is in. “Fair & Balanced”, eh?
The only hint of reality comes from Dr. Jeff Masters at Weather Underground: “It would be nice if we had more global stations to enable the groups to do independent estimates using completely different raw data, but we don’t have that luxury”.
The real story? Climatologists have a limited number of long-duration surface temperature stations available to them. They use as many of those stations as possible. It’s a fundamental logical fact that they will all start with the same raw data. The differences will be in how they select representative stations from the entire data set and how they extrapolate from those stations.
As a final thought, I have to draw attention to the use of “accuracy” as the sole valid assessment of a temperature data set. Data can be accurate (very close to a true reading) but not as useful (doesn’t reflect the actual conditions over a wider area). The fundamental difference between the interpreted surface temperature data sets is that some are optimized for accuracy, some for global representativeness. There are good reasons for each approach. There are also good reasons why denialists try to define the argument on such narrow and misleading points.
Wott's Up With That? 