Category Archives: There's a Study!

Cold kills: Summer no sweat for Aussies but winter freeze fatal

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“Cold kills: Summer no sweat for Aussies but winter freeze fatal“ (2015-01-13). In which Anthony Watts tries to move the pea from under the “it’s not getting hotter” shell to the “who cares how hot it gets anyway” shell.

After the crazy temperature records all across Australia earlier this month, Anthony somehow had to change the subject to something a little less awkward I guess.

Not quite sure why Anthony thinks, or pretends to think, it’s a revelation that there are more deaths during cold weather than hot weather. Or what that really has to do with climate. Cold weather deaths are generally a risk to those with inadequate shelter, not some magic indicator of ‘the best’ climate for Homo sapiens.

It makes a useful denialist bellowing talking point I guess, but I love how eagerly Anthony jumps on any mention of the word “cold”. It’s almost Pavlovian!

97% of pictures are worth 1000 climate words

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“97% of pictures are worth 1000 climate words“ (2014-02-27). Anthony Watts posts a profound intellectual insight from his favourite denialist blow-hard, Lord Monckton. Shockingly, it seems that not every single climate paper is about the cause of the current rapid global temperature rise! Many of them don’t even mention the issue! Therefore no Global Warming.

In other equally profound news, the cause of Global Warming is never mentioned in surgical journals, more excellent proof that there is no Global Warming.

But wait, Monckton’s claim is that “Only 64 of 11,944 published since 1991 said most warming since 1950 was manmade: i.e. 0.5%” This means that 11,880 papers asserted that the warming has been natural! I’m looking forward to reading some of them.

Sadly for the loony Lord, no. The other climate papers about other subjects entirely.

Fixed it for ya, Monckton.

Fixed it for ya, Monckton. But don’t be so modest, you’re fourth author on that Science & Education paper!

New paper blames about half of global warming on weather station data homogenization

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“New paper blames about half of global warming on weather station data homogenization” (2012-07-17). Anthony Watts eagerly embraces a “peer-reviewed paper” conference abstract that uses some garden-variety data diddling. Sez Anthony:

Authors Steirou and Koutsoyiannis, after taking homogenization errors into account find global warming over the past century was only about one-half [0.42°C] of that claimed by the IPCC [0.7-0.8°C].

Them climate scientists are manipulat’n data for their Commie bosses! Not Steirou and Koutsoyiannis…

Strange how Anthony forgets that even denialist Roy Spencer’s satellite temperature records show a 0.46°C rise in 33 years. One might think a bit of caution is in order when someone claims that only there’s been 0.42°C of warming over the last century.

Anthony Watts just types “told ya so” as fast as he can work his trembling fingers. Where’s the skepticism? Up his ass of course. He, like the paper’s authors, doesn’t seem to understand data homogenization. Here’s Dutch scientist Victor Venema on Anthony’s intentional ignorance:

A student can make an error and conferences are there to talk about preliminary results, much more worrying is that Anthony Watts keeps on getting his facts wrong. An EGU abstract is simply not a peer reviewed paper. Of the three sentences Watts cited from the “peer reviewed paper”, two can only be found in the slides of the talk, which are not reviewed. Every post on Watts up with that?that is on a topic I am knowledgeable about, contains serious factual errors and clear misrepresentations. I am not talking about having another opinion, but facts. If clear facts are already wrong, I start doubting the rest. One wonders why the readers of Watts up with that? keep on reading that stuff. There seems to be little interest in the truth among these self-proclaimed skeptics.

We’ll leave the final insight to one of Anthony’s squad of censors “moderators” who is proud of how enthusiastically and regularly wrong WUWT is:

[REPLY – What it means is that WUWT, unlike nearly all alarmist blogs, does not censor contrary points of view. Science is a very back-and-forth kind of thing. Anyone can be wrong. Anything can be wrong. Consider that. ~ Evan]

BREAKING NEWS – CERN Experiment Confirms Cosmic Rays Influence Cloud Seeds

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“BREAKING NEWS – CERN Experiment Confirms Cosmic Rays Influence Cloud Seeds” (2011-08-24). Anthony Watts tells the world that a cosmic ray experiment at CERN (“CLOUD“) proves that global warming is all because of cosmic rays! Thus ending global warming once and for all. The AGW theory is “dented”!

Anthony’s analysis consists pasting in a biased interpretation by the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s elderly denialist, and Henrik Svensmark pal, Nigel Calder. Henrik Svensmark is the widely discounted proponent of galactic cosmic rays as the source of all climate change.

Hmmm… Could it be true that “CERN Experiment Confirms Cosmic Rays Influence Climate Change”?

Well, maybe cosmic rays contribute to ionization, but the experiment being hailed by denialists only detected events at scales too small to trigger droplet formation. Sadly, historical climate change patterns also show no correlation at all with cosmic rays. So… maybe not.

Want to read something intelligent on the matter? Try Real Climate’s post “The CERN/CLOUD results are surprisingly interesting…” There’s certainly more to learn from this experiment.

Pielke Sr. on new Spencer and Braswell paper

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“Pielke Sr. on new Spencer and Braswell paper” (2011/07/26). Who’d ‘a thunk that Roger Pielke (the dad who’s a grumpy scientist, not the son who’s just a grumpy economist) would, again, sing the praises of Dr. Roy Spencer’s latest paper proving, again, sort of, that there is no global warming? Anthony Watts is excited enough by this startling development to copy and paste Pielke Sr.’s insights.

Dr. Pielke Sr. intones that Dr. Spencer’s paper, On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance in Remote Sensing, “raises further questions on the robustness of multi-decadal global climate predictions”. Yes, it’s the final nail in the coffin of global warming alarmism! Again! This time, for real! Oh, they have to be smart questions? Oops. Remote Sensing, for their part, is a new journal that seems more interested in publication fees than ensuring the scientific credibility of their papers.

Not yet referenced by Anthony, there’s also an enthusiastic “so there!” article in Forbes magazine. Right-wing climate change denying Heartland Institute lobbyist James Taylor sings the praises of right-wing climate change denying scientist Dr. Spencer, also tightly associated with Heartland Institute, in a right-wing climate change denying magazine! It stirs the soul to see all the pistons firing together so smoothly but using “alarmist” in 15 times, in practically every sentence, shines the spotlight in a presumably unintended direction.

So, what about Dr. Spencer’s science? Do clouds really cause climate like Spencer keeps saying? Is the Earth really failing to warm up quite as much as alarmist scientists say it is?  This is just a laugh-at-Anthony-Watts’-lies blog, so today I’ll simply point out some of the criticisms from around the web.

Synchronized shouting seems the only tactic left to the denialists.

2011-08-01 Update: Climate Progress weighs in on Spencer’s science that Pielke Sr. likes so much. Climate Scientists Debunk Latest Bunk by Denier Roy Spencer.

2011-08-10 Update: John Timmer covers Spencer’s paper in the larger context at Ars Technica – Climate change: cloudy, with a chance of competing realities.

2011-09-02 Update: More embarrassing fallout for Spencer covered at Ars Technica – Editor who published controversial climate paper resigns, blasts media.

2011-09-07 Update: Well this hasn’t taken long. Spencer’s ‘final nail in the coffin of AGW’  has completely unravelled. Turns out his crayon version of atmospheric physics has in fact proven the validity of current “alarmist” climate theories and models! Thanks Roy. That’s what happens when you work backwards from a baseless conclusion and ignore logic. Thanks for wading through the stupid, Dr. Dessler (preprint here, watch a video summary here).

 

 

 

A helpful note to Dr. Eric Steig

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“A helpful note to Dr. Eric Steig“. Anthony Watts casts about for something critical to say about “perfesser” Eric Steig, whose 2009 paper on Antarctic warming trends was supposedly refuted by Anthony’s team-mates, O’Donnell, Lewis, and McIntyre. In this case “refuted” means that they packaged the data slightly differently and got slightly different warming trends. Thus revealing once and for all (the denialists shouted) that Global Warming isn’t happening.

Here’s the response to a comment by “MapleLeaf” at Real Climate that has Anthony foolishly yelling “gotcha!”

And why did WUWT show an image that appears to have less warming than the one shown here by Eric? Sorry but I have to fault you both there..the figures should show for what season they are valid, or if they are for annual temperatures.

[The figure here shows O’Donnell’s et al.s reconstruction for the same time period as our Nature cover image. These are annual mean estimates. I cannot speak to WTF WUWT has done.–eric]

So what is Anthony’s “gotcha” advice to Dr. Steig? It wasn’t Anthony who used temperature color bands that visually minimized warming in the Antarctic temperature anomaly map shown on Watts Up With That, it was someone else! Ooh, snap! Anthony just blindly copied and pasted it, like the alert “skeptic” he is, so you can’t blame him for any graphics shenanigans. Take that “perfesser”, you were impugning the wrong website!

There was much denialist lip-licking when this paper was in preparation. Finally the virtuous scientist-citizens were going to show the corrupt climatologists how to do science… Too bad that in the end the authors had to conform to reality and found themselves the proud owners of a dud. From O’Donnell’s closing comments:

In my opinion, the Steig reconstruction was quite clever, and the general concept was sound.

Poor  Anthony’s looking for a way to pretend the denialist firecracker didn’t fizzle.

The Dessler Cloud Feedback Paper in Science: A Step Backward for Climate Research

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“The Dessler Cloud Feedback Paper in Science: A Step Backward for Climate Research“. Anthony Watts is tickled with his teammate Dr. Roy Spencer (Ph. D.)’s attack on a new climate paper by Dr. Andrew Dessler:

How’s this for “rapid response“? This rebuttal comes out at exactly the same time the press embargo lifts in Science. We were able to obtain advance copies of the Dessler paper

“Rapid response” in the sense of knee-jerk… Spencer’s critique of Dessler’s paper on cloud feedback, which uses the same data as an earlier paper of Spencer’s, is basically a determined effort to tear down a superior paper published in a superior journal and crow about his own obstinate analysis (phase space!). Accusations by the highly fallible Dr. Spencer of “flawed logic” should be greeted with skepticism, the real kind, and in this case someone has a serious chip on their shoulder…

Dessler concludes that cloud climate feedbacks are positive, and generally agree with what Spencer incorrectly calls “the IPCC computerized climate models.” (The IPCC only consolidates climate research, it has never performed it. Spencer knows this.) Spencer says that clouds stabilize the climate and prevent climate change from occurring (i.e. a negative feedback) and claims that in particular cloud formation triggers the Pacific Ocean’s El Niño circulation pattern.

Unfortunately Spencer’s theory is pure wish-fulfillment, he has neither a theoretical mechanism for the proposed process nor evidence of its occurrence. Dessler’s theory, which predicts that the El Niño circulation pattern instead drives cloud formation, has both.

This blog isn’t the place for detailed scientific discussion, so I suggest readers follow the conversation at Real Climate, and perhaps follow Dr. Dessler’s comments in the Watts Up With That post.

Tip for Dr. Spencer, Ph. D.: Avoid muttering about conspiracies and censorship if you hope to be taken seriously, and stay away from meaningless analogies about x-rays vs. MRI’s to “prove” that your superior methodology unless your purpose is simply to distract your readers.

A regional approach to the medieval warm period and the little ice age

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“A regional approach to the medieval warm period and the little ice age“. Anthony Watts jabbers about the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age again, using a paper by Dr. Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist by a history grad student at Stockholm University titled “A regional approach to the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age“. Has it been submitted? Reviewed? Published? Who knows.

Funny how denialists are always pointing out regional evidence to try to challenge global climate trends. Well, it’s not really funny, it’s kind of boring and a predictable intellectual bankruptcy. Strange that there’s no whining about Urban Heat Islands and sneaky “corrections” to proxies or mutterings about the failings of computer models, etc. when the denialists think the result suits them.

The paper, using only use northern hemisphere locations, claims that the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were global although they seem to have somehow happened a different times in different regions. Hmmm. But this is the first sentence of Dr. Ljungqvist’s concluding remarks:

The presently available palaeotemperature proxy data records do not support the assumption that late 20th century temperatures exceeded those of the MWP in most regions, although it is clear that the temperatures of the last few decades exceed those of any multi-decadal period in the last 700–800 years. (Emphasis mine)

Anthony seems to find the Greenland reconstruction fascinating, as it plays in to his meme that “it’s been warmer in the past, so why worry about this warmth (which isn’t happening).”

Greenland and China temperature reconstructions from Ljungqvist, 2010. Anthony apparently sees a global MWP and LIA in both, I see two regions responding differently.

Study: Wind farms affect local surface temperatures

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“Study: Wind farms affect local surface temperatures“. So Global Warming is all because of wind farms, Anthony? Good one. Actually the University of Illinois press release Anthony Watts found quantifies a slight local daytime cooling and nighttime warming due to wind turbines vertically mixing air layers.

Anthony finds the paper especially “interesting” because the late Dr. Steven Schneider, a dedicated opponent of climate change denialism, edited it. Why so interesting Anthony? Should Dr. Schneider have “re-framed” the paper to match his manipulative “post-normal” purpose? Maybe Anthony’s surprised that a scientist could simply follow the facts. It doesn’t happen much on his side of the fence.

Antarctic sea ice increase not linked to ozone hole

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“Antarctic sea ice increase not linked to ozone hole“. Anthony Watts has discovered a two paragraph news report about a paper in Geophysical Research Letters titled “Has the ozone hole contributed to increased Antarctic sea ice extent?” Here’s the paper’s heart:

Contrary to expectations, our model simulates a year-round decrease in Antarctic sea ice due to stratospheric ozone depletion. The largest percentage sea ice decrease in our model occurs in the austral summer near the coast of Antarctica, due to a mechanism involving offshore Ekman sea ice transport.

Ooh, they’re talking about computer models! Anthony hates computer models, he’s totally going to tear them a new one! Wait, why is he as quiet as a church-mouse? This particular computer modeling happens to be useful to denialists, so it gets accepted unquestioningly.

The Antarctic ozone hole. From NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

So which is right, this new climate model or the older ones that linked ozone depletion to increased Antarctic sea ice? Anthony doesn’t seem to care really, he just wants to shout that there is ‘no global warming.’