Category Archives: Self-promotion

WUWT Status report – 40 million

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“WUWT Status report – 40 million” Anthony Watts blows his own horn over his web stats, claiming the status of “the most visited climate science blog in the world” and in the process admits that he’s “resorted to posting a lot of press releases rather than analysis and commentary” owing to “a period of exhaustion and illness”.

Yet somehow in spite of this elevated status traffic has slowed to about half since December, his revenues are down, and he’s going to have to start posting more ads.

Joe Romm over at Climate Progress handily dissects Anthony’s statistical “trick”. “Memo to Watts: “Hits” are what people use when they want to hype or inflate their webstats.” The only stat Anthony provides in support of his claim is a dubious Alexa statistic for “Daily Reach”. 40 million total hits also doesn’t seem to hold up so well to Climate Progress’ own stat of 20 million in the first three months of 2010, but as Joe says “hits” are a deceptive benchmark.

This stat doesn't look as good as the one Anthony touts...

Skeptic-Warmer networking update with no update?

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“Skeptic-Warmer networking update with no update?” Anthony Watts returns to the “Skeptical Network / Supporter’s Network” topic, but ironically doesn’t add anything other than a few idle boasts either.

WUWT makes a difference – London Science Museum changes their climate change exhibit

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“WUWT makes a difference – London Science Museum changes their climate change exhibit“. Anthony is delighted that he was able to hijack an unscientific online poll at the London Science Museum. That’s the denialist raison d’être; make enough noise to attract notice, throw out enough misrepresentations to drown the honest science.

The Times is happy to throw its weight behind the hijack with this article: Public scepticism prompts Science Museum to rename climate exhibition. Just as it did with Jonathan Leake’s false accusation of the IPCC about the Amazon rainforest’s response to drought.

Funny, the vote chart doesn't show the early voting trend, before the denialist hijack. Cherry-picking?

Climategate.com shuts down

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“Climategate.com shuts down“. Anthony Watts reports that a denialist has given up trying to keep juggling the lies, but boasts of his own web stats. “Heh. He doesn’t know the meaning of hard work.”

Hard work. Good work. Discuss.

Spencer: Global Urban Heat Island Effect Study – An Update

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“Spencer: Global Urban Heat Island Effect Study – An Update“. More tortured charts and explanations from Dr. Roy Spencer, merely producing a deeper hole. When he said “I don’t know the reason for this, but I suspect that a little thought from Anthony Watts, Joe D’Aleo & others will help figure it out.“, well… I realized that even by Anthony’s standards I’d wasted five minutes of my life.

Yes, Dr. Spencer’s charts have lines on them. What is lacking is an objective basis for the station pairings he has settled on. Or a cogent theory explaining them.

Dr. Spencer, you have jumped the shark.

Baltic sea ice traps ships

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“Baltic sea ice traps ships“. Ice exists, thus disproving man-made global warming. That’s Anthony Watts’ frequent refrain. Whatever.

Anthony also mentions Richard North’s post on the event, which cosily refers back to Anthony’s posts. It’s a pretty tight orbit in the denialosphere…

NSIDC Confirms WUWT Ice Forecast

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“NSIDC Confirms WUWT Ice Forecast” Anthony Watts teams up with the numerically challenged Steven Goddard to claim vindication for their “everything will be fine” prediction for Arctic sea ice extend in 2010. Why do these two keep pushing idiotically short, statistically meaningless trends? Maybe it’s because they’re unqualified partisans hunting for something to justify their biases.

2010 doesn't look like a "recovery" to me, Anthony!

Spencer: Using hourly surface data to gauge UHI by population density

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“Spencer: Using hourly surface data to gauge UHI by population density“. Dr. Roy Spencer has realised that “forsaking blindingly technical statistics” isn’t a practical position and has come up with an analysis, using one(!) year of data, that correlates “warming bias” of  station temperature records with population density (Urban Heat Island!). Population density is “presumed to be related to how much the environment around the thermometer site has been modified over time” (emphasis mine). That’s a rather big presumption. There are plenty of other simplistic adjustments in Dr. Spencer’s data, such as a blanket 5.4°C per 1000m increase in station elevation adjustment. Dr. Spencer has shown before that he has problems using statistics correctly, so it will be interesting to see if this stands up, but given Dr. Spencer’s track record I’m going to bet on “confirmation bias“.

Dr. Spencer makes a dangerous statement though: “Note that the philosophy here is not to provide the best adjustments for each station individually, but to do adjustments for spurious effects which, when averaged over all stations, will remove the effect…” (emphasis mine). He’s setting himself up as a target for exactly the same weather station correction nitpicking that Anthony has played with the USHNC’s weather station data. Will Anthony hold him to the fire?

Anthony inadvertently answers this question with “I believe this is a truly important piece of work” in spite of all dodgy assumptions Dr. Spencer admits to. Also, his blogging about Spencer’s draft should be considered as an “early peer review.” I will support Anthony’s hope that “Dr. Spencer will submit it to a journal” though. I think I’ll enjoy watching what is effectively another “sciency” attempt at Anthony’s failed surfacestations.org project be subjected to legitimate scientific scrutiny.

Willis makes the NYT, Gavin to stop “persuading the public”

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Willis makes the NYT, Gavin to stop “persuading the public”. Reading a New York Times article entitled Scientists Taking Steps to Defend Work on Climate, Anthony Watts concludes that Gavin Schmidt’s realclimate.org, the climatology website that explains climate science, should stop doing it. Climatologists should stick to their thermometers and leave the ‘splainin’ to Anthony, because he’s so good at it. Actually Anthony, I think you’re just wishing you could prevent reality from interfering with your fantasy world.

This quote about denialists from Energy Secretary Steven Chu puts Anthony in context: “What standard are they being held to? It’s very asymmetric. They get to say anything they want.”

Anthony’s also delighted that one of his blogging buddies, “citizen-scientist” Willis Eschenbach, is quoted in a NYT article: “I’ll let you in on a very dark, ugly secret – I don’t want trust in climate science to be restored”. He apparently wants scientists to “stop trying to pass off garbage as science.” Psychologists call this projection.

Sea change in climate journalism: The Guardian and the D-word

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“Sea change in climate journalism: The Guardian and the D-word“. It’s always interesting when Anthony tries to take the “high road.” Lately he’s been trying to get The Guardian to stop describing climate change denialists as “sceptics.”

They’re thinking about it. The money quote from The Guardian’s correspondence with him is this (emphasis mine):

The ’sceptics’ label is almost too generous a badge as very few are genuinely sceptical about the science but I think we have to accept the name is now common parlance.

Anthony ‘reciprocates’ by making a hollow call to “dial back and treat others with the same respect in conversation as you might treat dinner guests having a discussion at home.”

As he does on occasion, Anthony takes a moment to try to distance himself from his own posts:

My position has been that there is no debate that the earth has warmed over the past 100+ years, but that the magnitude of the measured warming and the cause(s) remain in debate. The question of whether such warming is beneficial or detrimental depends on who you ask. I’ll also point out that it took our modern society about 150 years of science and technology advances to get where we are now. Doing it cleaner and better won’t be an overnight solution either.