Category Archives: Whining

Some notes on the Heartland Leak

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Some notes on the Heartland Leak (2012-02-15). Anthony Watts urges us, as others have noted, to ‘pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!’ The revelation that he co-ordinates with and has received money from the Heartland Institute does not mean that he’s just an unscrupulous mouthpiece. He’s definitely not panicked by the exposure either.

James Hansen! Algore! The e-mails were stolen! Some of them are fake!

Anthony’s just collateral damage here though. The real story here is that the notoriously partisan Heartland Institute, a “free-market think tank” theoretically ‘providing information to inform policy debate’ but long regarded as the political home of climate denial, tobacco enthusiasm and government hating, has suffered an embarrassing “leak” of documents. Nothing like a little sunshine to make the bugs skitter.

Read about it at:

Of course this is totally different from the “Climategate” e-mails, which revealed that in private conversation some climate scientists didn’t hold high opinions of global warming deniers. The fact that the Heartland Institute spends most of its time and money scheming to confuse the public and to undermine objective scientific advice (i.e. funding Anthony Watts) is an irrelevance in comparison! Thus ending Global Warming forever.

Anthony’s personal defense boils down to noting that the Heartland Institute and an “Anonymous Donor” have (to our knowledge) only given him $44,000 for one particular project. Dr. James Hansen has received way more dough, therefore Anthony is less of a hypocrite. Now that’s what I call claiming the high ground.

However, Anthony’s concealed “scientific” funding came from a biased political organization. That’s a tough one to skate away from, huh?

Note to Anthony: you just look stupid when you try to contrast all money spent in support of any environmental cause to just the political funding for opposition to CO2 regulation. Unless of course the Heartland Institute and their ilk are also busy arguing on behalf of, for example, killing more endangered species or putting more mercury in fish.

2012-02-20 update: Peter Gleick, at the Huffington Post, is the source of the Heartland Institute leak and asserts their authenticity.

2012-05-22 update: After much caterwauling by the Heartland Institute about forgeries and the shameful behavior of nasty warmists, the true conclusion can be drawn: “Peter Gleick cleared of forging documents in Heartland expose“

The new Hollywood blacklist

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“The new Hollywood blacklist“ (2012-01-14). Oh the inhumanity! Kyocera hired Ben Stein to play an uptight dullard in a TV commercial and then changed their mind. Therefore, McCarthyism. Now Mr. Stein is suing for attention breech of contract. (Tip for Anthony: McCarthyism refers to right-wing politicians making false claims about secret political motives of people they consider politically unpalatable and then coercing businesses into shunning them. Some present examples might be Lord Monckton, Andrew Bolt, James Delingpole, Andrew Montford, Ken Cuccinelli, Marc Morano. Minus the influence in the arts.)

I think Kyocera discovered that Stein wasn’t just an accidentally funny cameo as a monotonous economics teacher in that Ferris Bueller movie back in the Eighties, or the host of a dimwitted game show a few years back. He’s also a controversial misinformer on a number of scientific issues, namely creationism (he narrated the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed) and climate change denial (it’s an Obama conspiracy). Not quite the association an advanced technology company wants to encourage.

So they used a real glass-wearing economics teacher instead.

Anthony Watt’s nuanced response, aside from overblown self-pitying political posturing is this:

I’ll never buy another Kyocera product ever again.

I thought it was “the greenies” that wanted to go back to living in caves in the dark, but perhaps resentful denialists renouncing society will get there first!

Monckton responds to “potholer54”

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Monckton responds to “potholer54” (2012-01-11). Anthony Watts really needs to think about who he associates with. Sure, the comical/pompous/paranoid attention-whore Lord Monckton will bring web hits, but it’s the bad kind of attention. It shows that you’re all about politics and shouting and not about thinking.

In this case Monckton’s guest post is about the “silly allegations” on YouTube of

a former “science writer” who uses a speleological pseudonym “potholer54″ [to] sneeringly deliver a series of petty smears about artfully-distorted and often inconsequential aspects of my talks on climate change.

Monckton does a good job of obscuring his argument, but if you strip away the pompous weaselly word play, his 2334 word response to the boils down to yeah, but… and because I said so. So little payoff for so many words. And long ones too!

So what can we determine from Monckton’s post? Well clearly potholer54’s penetrating observations have hit home with the thin-skinned Viscount, particularly because he goes to such effort to minimize them. The funny thing is that Monckton’s posts serve as “kick me” signs, his flowery attempts to dismiss his critics simply point us to where his claims are most effectively destroyed. You just know that getting to the bottom of his arch reference in this same post to a “no-account non-climatologist at a fourth-rank bible college in Nowheresville” is going to be worth the Googling (we covered it here).

Viscount, shouldn’t you keep quiet about where your arguments are so neatly skewered? We know that you love the spotlight and the sound of your own voice, but you’re really not helping yourself.

Anthony Watts helpfully provides the real name of the “potholer54” YouTube account holder in case his readers want to make their life miserable.

Quote of the Week – what Durban is really about

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“Quote of the Week – what Durban is really about” (2011-12-11). Anthony Watts thinks that esteemed climate scientist “Cal65” (aka random anonymous commenter) has managed to get to the core truth about the purpose of the Durban climate conference which has, infuriatingly, achieved positive results:

The UN plan will shift wealth from the first world’s poor to the third world’s rich without making any difference in climate control.

That was a real stretch, huh? The invisible hand of the secret commie world government revealed again!

Those “whiny grifters known as the Maldives” are building airports, which clearly means they know that the sea-level won’t actually change for at least eleventy hundred years. Therefore:

“Anything coming out of the mouths of Maldives officials related to climate, CO2, or sea level is pure bullshit.”

I love the nuance of Anthony’s usual noisy arguments:

  1. “Tuvalu and many other South Pacific Islands are not sinking, claims they are due to global warming driven sea level rise are opportunistic.” Good lead! This is as close as Anthony can get to a verifiable claim. Too bad the authors of the paper he’s trying to misconstrue have been summarized thus: “Webb and Kench warn that while the islands are coping for now, any acceleration in the rate of sea-level rise could overtake the sediment build up. Calculating how fast sea levels will rise over the coming decades is uncertain science, and no one knows how fast the islands can grow.“
  2.  “The Maldives can’t take a joke.” Yeah, that’s it! Anthony’s spittle is a joke! Roll with it, dudes.
  3. Willis Eschenbach are smart and he says islands FLOAT! Really Anthony? You’re trying to show that the reaction of the Maldives government to rising sea-levels is “FAIL” and you cite Willis? You should have saved him for last and hoped that your readers wandered away before reading this bit.
  4. “The sea level is actually dropping.” It’s called statistics, Anthony. You’re not using them right. (But you know that.)
  5. Lorne Gunther (a virulent right-wing columnist) says that kooky Nils-Axel Mörner can prove that sea-level ”hasn’t risen in 50 years.” Yes, ignore the sea-level charts you shoved in our faces in point 4, Anthony.
  6. The Maldives government is building things! So is Iceland, and they gots volcanoes. Not everything is intended to last eleventy hundred years.
  7. Airports too! So is the US military in Afghanistan.
  8. The Maldives tricked the USA into giving them $30 billion! Maybe you should change the battery in your Casio.

Anthony, you’re experiencing a panic attack. Frankly we were all a bit surprised that the Durban conference managed to achieve something. Please breathe into a paper bag for the rest of the day, OK?

Hiding the decline down under – inconvenient papers censored

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“Hiding the decline down under – inconvenient papers censored” (2011-12-01). Yawn. Anthony Watts complains again about outrageous scientific censorship. Scientific papers disproving global warming were blocked! Except they weren’t.

A right-wing Australian newspaper has declared that former senior public servant Doug Lord’s “six scientific papers” about sea-level changes at Fort Denison in Sydney Harbour were blocked by “post-normal” partisan (i.e. socialist) bureaucrats. Thus disproving Global Warming once and for all.

Except… even the supporting 1990 paper by E. A. Bryant later brought to Anthony’s incurious attention shows that rates of sea-level change across Australia are not uniform, with Sydney appearing particularly divergent. Funny that that’s the only one Anthony’s interested in talking about.

So… these six papers were the only ones ever prepared by a government employee that weren’t published? Seems a bit of a stretch. Oh wait, only five weren’t published. One of them was published. Which one, Anthony? Your skeptical intellect didn’t bother to investigate, did it.

Australian crank David Archibald (an Energy & Environment author and “endorsed by one head of state and four professors“) rushes in to ‘confirm’ that “there does not appear to be any evidence of acceleration” with his usual straight line slapped on top of a squiggle. While the commenters rail about progressive Australian politics. Same old same old.

An Open Letter to Dr. Phil Jones of the UEA CRU

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“An Open Letter to Dr. Phil Jones of the UEA CRU” (2011-11-27). Just like Anthony Watts, the first thing darling Willis Eschenbach did with the “new” batch of (years-old) Climategate e-mails was search for his own name. And he found it! Hardly surprising, after-all he was one of people who “mail bombed” the Climate Research Unit with “freedom of information” requests.

Again just like Anthony’s response, this “new” batch of old messages is merely an opportunity to serve up warmed-over self-righteous fury. Did you know that Dr. Phil Jones didn’t instantly respond to Willis’ meandering nit-picking accusatory e-mails? Indentured servants, err… university professors, must jump to attention when a taxpayer speaks! Did you also know that Dr. Jones failed to respond in the way Willis instructed him to? Such petty defiance!

Also, Dr. Jones no longer has his high school term papers available for public dissection. He’s hiding something!

As noted in comments here, Willis’ open letter to “Dear Dr. Jones” about his “polite, scientific request” uses the word ‘lie’ at least twenty times and the word ‘liar’ at least twice.

The intention of the “mail bombs” was to obstruct the scientist’s activities and to sift through their responses for anything that could be twisted to the denialist’s purpose. That game continues.

P.S. All the highlighting of disputes and arguments between the real climate scientists “revealed” in the latest batch of old stolen e-mails kind of undermines the whole conspiracy thing. Bit of a mixed message, Willis.

Anthony Watts Defeats Himself

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“Hump day hilarity: Chris Mooney’s abby-normal post modern science” (2011-11-09) and “Mooney pulls a Muller” (2011-11-10). After years of announcing how he was going to prove Global Warming was a lie (but utterly failing to do so), Anthony decides to castigate anyone else who talks about their conclusions before formal publication. Only the targets of his hypocrisy have simply released drafts of submitted papers (the previously beloved Dr. Muller) or described a book they are still writing (Chris Mooney’s The Republican Brain). Anthony, you may recall, loudly and repeatedly announced that he was going to prove that the temperature record was both inaccurate and tampered with, and that climate scientists were corrupt socialists. You may also recall that he was 99 44/100%  wrong.

So what has twisted Anthony’s shorts this time? You’re going to love this: He’s attacking a book that hasn’t been finished yet, claiming that it portrays conservatives as idiots who jump to conclusions! Nice stick-work there, Anthony.

Seems like finishing your book is kind of redundant now, Chris! You can read his take on the response is here: Conservatives Attack and Misunderstand A Book They Haven’t Read… A Book About Flawed Conservative Reasoning.

Michael Mann wades into the UVA thicket as intervenor

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“Michael Mann wades into the UVA thicket as intervenor” (2011-11-02). I’ve sat back a bit lately, enjoying the sight of Anthony and his Team imploding over the results of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) study, but this post cries out for a “WTF?”

Anthony Watts sympathetically re-posts Chris Horner’s whining about how Dr. Michael Mann has been allowed to intervene in the American Tradition Institute’s lawsuit over… Dr. Michael Mann’s correspondence during his time at the University of Virginia.

Why on god’s green earth should Dr. Mann be permitted to intervene in a lawsuit over his own correspondence? What could he possibly know? What insight could he possibly offer? What interest is it of his?

Whereas the ATI’s lawyers, who are also the ATI petitioners, assert that they are pure as driven snow (ideologically at least). They’re highly qualified, as attorneys, to confidentially assess the documents in question without revealing then to the petitioners (that would be themselves). Too bad they were widely broadcasting their intention to widely distribute the material they had tentatively been given permission to inspect under a protective order.

Smooth move, Chris.

Chris does however quite rightly assert that there is no “vast right-wing conspiracy”. It’s actually quite tiny and close-knit.

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project puts PR before peer review

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“The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project puts PR before peer review” (2011-10-20). Remember the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) study begun by the “reliable” Dr. Richard Muller? Their results are in and it seems Anthony Watts has been run over by reality and taken away by the wahhhhhambulance.

Back in March Anthony seemed sure that the BEST study would be free of the corruption, manipulation and deception, unlike everything the thousands of other climate scientists had produced. He declared that he was “prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong.”

Suddenly, for some reason, Anthony’s tune has changed. Now Anthony is disgusted by Dr. Muller’s “media blitz” of his results. Results that, inconveniently, confirm all the conventional analyses of modern temperature trends and completely gut Anthony’s years of false criticisms.

Did you know that “Not one of the BEST papers have completed peer review“? It’s sort of true! Never mind that Anthony spent literally years falsely pre-announcing that his own amateur surface-stations “study” would prove that the rising temperature trend in the USA was the product of biased weather station choice and changing urban environments. Never mind that releasing pre-publication versions of scientific papers is a widespread practice, and never mind that the paper that Anthony was eventually able to help produce couldn’t support his own claims.

Did you know that “a basic procedural error that has been discovered in the methodology that will likely require a rework of the data and calculations, and thus the conclusions may also change“? Eagle-eyed Anthony has discovered that Dr. Muller used too much data! The first rule of cherry picking is to ignore as much data as possible, don’t you know.

Also, despite of Anthony’s habit of continuously posting articles noting localized cold or snow, Anthony wants you to know that “the issue of ‘the world is warming’ is not one that climate skeptics question, it is the magnitude and causes.” Even he’s given up on that. Technically.

Addition: Here’s the BEST’s global temperature trend compared to the three historical temperature trends created by evil, cheating, communist, climatologists. Break out your magnifying glasses and you’ll see that the differences are enormous!

The BEST Temperature Reconstruction matches previous results

BEST Study temperature reconstruction matches previous results! Shocking.

Whether or not the world is really warming, Anthony’s certainly feeling the burn. From Open Mind:

In my opinion it’s clear what Watts is really upset about — the results from the Berkeley team have confirmed that the other main global temperature estimates (NASA GISS, NOAA/NCDC, and HadCRU) got it right, and that station siting/urban heat island effects are not responsible for any of the observed temperature increase. The real reason all these analyses (including Berkeley’s) show temperature rise is: the globe is warming.

I’ll add links to other websites covering this entertaining development as I find them.

Dr. Martin Hertzberg responds to Dr. Michael Mann

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“Dr. Martin Hertzberg responds to Dr. Michael Mann“ (2011-10-05). Anthony Watts posts another letter from Martin Hertzberg to the Vail Daily, this time responding to Dr. Mann’s slap down. Although Martin seems to delight in the attention (a key denialist motivation), he’s simply compounding his failure.

  • If his “hockey stick” criticism is based on the opinion of “a large number of scientists”, please name five relevant scientists.
  • If the “so-called climategate e-mails revealed an appalling lack of scientific integrity and manipulations by a cabal of advocates of that theory”, please name one inquiry that agrees.
  • If the IPCC “got rid of the embarrassing Medieval Warm Period” after Mann’s alleged fabrication of the paleotemperature record, why did it never appear in the global paleotemperature record?
  • If John Daly was “a distinguished Australian scientist” who questioned Mann’s paleotemperature reconstructions, why doe he have no discernible scientific credentials?

Good work, Martin! (You too Anthony.)