Category Archives: Uncategorized

Seeing red: jobs initiative to limit California’s AB32 greenhouse gas law will be on the November ballot

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“Seeing red: jobs initiative to limit California’s AB32 greenhouse gas law will be on the November ballot“. Anthony Watts excerpts a news report about a proposed ballot initiative from the ‘California Jobs Initiative Coalition’ to suspend some of California’s environmental standards “until the economy rebounds”.

Somehow the recession is all the evil environmentalists’ fault. They’re trying to take our jobs away! Even previously reliable Republicans like former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz are starting to fall for it. Shudder!

Republican Assemblyman Dan Logue says this is “about small business taking a stand for jobs” but that proves not to be the case as this quote, which Anthony helpfully excluded from his post, shows:

The ballot initiative is largely being funded by Texas oil companies that oppose climate regulations in California and similar legislation moving through Congress. Valero Services Inc. has given $500,000, while Tesoro Cos. has given $275,000. [Grass Valley Union. Italics mine.]

Nothing like a little deceitful astroturfing.

History suggests: don’t bet on La Nina this year

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“History suggests: don’t bet on La Nina this year“. Bob Tisdale prepares the troops for the unfortunate reality that the end of the Pacific Ocean’s 2009/10 El Niño current will likely not be the start of a cooling La Niña. It’s probably going to stay warm and perhaps even warm up more in spite of the cooling La Niña influence.

But don’t worry, if you fiddle with the numbers enough you can pretend it’s “natural” and continue to ignore the human contribution to climate change. Especially if you use a ten-year smoothing function.

NASA Satellite Tracking the Gulf Oil Spill

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“NASA Satellite Tracking the Gulf Oil Spill“. This is one of those off-topic posts that Anthony Watts spits out now and then to “prove” that he’s not merely obsessed with denying Global Warming. It’s just a copy and paste job of a NASA press release (which Anthony doesn’t link to) with satellite imaging of the massive oil spill coming from the destroyed BP Deepwater Horizon wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico.

It looks like this spill may rival the Alaskan Exxon Valdez spill of 1989. Can I say “Drill, baby, drill”?

NASA image of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Anthony; do you really trust those nasty NASA satellites?

Is Melting Ice Warming The Arctic?

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“Is Melting Ice Warming The Arctic?” Steven Goddard has an insight to offer about today’s earlier WUWT post about Screen and Simmonds’ 2010 Letter to Nature about  the contribution of Sea Ice melting to Arctic warming. Did you know that “ice loss has occurred mainly during the summer“? This is one of those curious posts where, to attack a conclusion, the denialist argument implicitly accepts that climate change is happening. Here Steven has chosen to argue about which months the warming is happening, not whether it is happening at all…

UAH Arctic Temp vs NSIDC Ice. After "climateinsiders.wordpress.com".

Enthusiastic arm-waving follows. Steven’s confused by the fact that Arctic climate warming appears stronger in the winter months. Guess what? Ice won’t melt at either -20°C or -2°C, only at 0°C. What happens when ice melts? It absorbs energy. Perhaps the melting of sea ice is buffering rising Arctic temperatures in the summer months.

What will happen when Steven discovers that apples fall down? Stay away from high school physics textbooks Steven, you might have your world rocked.

Disconnected Computer Modeling

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“Disconnected Computer Modeling“. Steven Goddard notices a University Of Washington computer simulation of Arctic sea ice extent by Jinlun Zhang and Ron Lindsay which strikes him “as being particularly disconnected from reality.” Probably because their low prediction for the fall of 2010 doesn’t suit him.

Does Steven explain why the prediction is faulty, or what is wrong with their model? Of course not, he has no clue whatsoever about the how the model is generated.

Arctic Sea Ice Extent 2010 prediction by Zhang and Lindsay.

Zhang’s prediction includes the reasonable statement that “There are many uncertainties with the predictions and the results must be viewed with caution” but it will be interesting to see how this prediction, which includes a month of hindcast, bears out.

EPA’s action Jackson moving forward

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“EPA’s action Jackson moving forward“. There’s nothing Anthony Watts hates more than a government actually doing something. The disparagingly nicknamed EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has testified before Congress that the EPA will be setting efficiency and biofuel standards to further reduce pollution and incidentally decrease American dependency on foreign oil sources.

Damn her and her commie meddling!

Gore’s new venture – ‘Crowdsourced TV’

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“Gore’s new venture – ‘Crowdsourced TV’“. Al Gore does something! Anthony Watts and his readers are boringly predictable in their knee-jerk response, starting of course with the “inventor of the internet” urban legend. I suppose I could just stop there really.

Anthony belittles Gore’s planned YouTube-like venture, declares everything Gore has done is a failure, and posts a YouTube video that mocks “crowdsourcing”. But isn’t that the only thing that denialist leaders do; coax as many people as possible to join their ignorant chorus?

WUWT Sea Ice News #2

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““. Steven Goddard Photoshops some sea ice extent maps and enthusiastically declares “Arctic ice extent is normal.” Well, nearly. Naturally he only wants to talk about the one data series that briefly popped above “normal” and not about the others, which… don’t.

Steven’s also excited that Arctic weather patterns may produce an anomalous high sea ice extent next winter. I can see that he’s going to wear himself out thrashing wildly back and forth about weather. It’s irrelevant. Why was the record 2007 sea ice extent minimum a cause for concern? Because it was part of a climate trend.

Some other rhetorical master-strokes: mocking a 40 year-old old newspaper report, and embedding a juvenile YouTube clip from the film Airplane!

New ground truth: soil microbe negative feedback

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“New ground truth: soil microbe negative feedback“. Another month, another “game-changer” claim from Anthony Watts. Yes the denialist “game” does indeed keep changing.

In this case, Anthony has found a press release from the University of California, Irvine titled Soil microbes produce less atmospheric CO2 than expected with climate warming. Here’s a quote that sums up the findings:

The new simulations suggest that if microbial efficiency declines in a warmer world, carbon dioxide emissions will fall back to pre-warming levels, a pattern seen in field experiments. But if microbes manage to adapt to the warmth – for instance, through increased enzyme activity – emissions could intensify.

Fungi to the rescue! We’re saved, Anthony! Saved! Saved… Saved?

Anthony’s grasping at straws again. Yes, microbial contributions to the carbon cycle are significant. No, their potentially steady-state contribution isn’t going to magically offset human CO2 production.

Next “game-changer” coming in… one month.

Al Gore says “Denialists in Denial”

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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.