Category Archives: Whining

Steve McIntyre – one of the top 50 people who matter

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“Steve McIntyre – one of the top 50 people who matter“. Surprise, surprise. The Daily Telegraph’s resident denialist James Delingpole notes that although the New Statesman says that Steven McIntyre’s “influence might not be positive” he’s still had an ‘impact’.

Delingpole, and of course Anthony Watts, thinks that McIntyre’s one hell of a dude. Delingpole is sure the entire world agrees because the online comments at the New Statesman article almost universally declare McIntyre to be saintly. Apparently Delingpole has never seen a forum swarmed by denialists…

McIntyre’s real contribution seems to be showing how harassing scientists whose evidence you wish you could discard, trying mightily to magnify inconsequential errors, fixating on perceived slights and generally complaining can be turned into a decade of attention.

I spotted an amusing comment on Anthony’s blog: “What’s great about Steve is that he has absolutely no stake in the matter, save the desire to see something done correctly.” If Steven has “no stake in the matter” why has he never, ever, criticized any of the swarm of poorly argued and statistically flawed papers that the denialists keep hoping will suddenly defeat the AGW evidence?

The season of disinvitation continues

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“The season of disinvitation continues“. Oh the high school cruelty that Anthony Watts and his friends endure! The esteemed Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. has had his Letter to Nature rejected! They asked him to write it!!

Why there’s only one possible response to this; Anthony must post an unflattering photo of Nature’s nasty Chief Commissioning Editor, Sara Abdulla. Done and done.

Cancel all your European travel and vacation plans – carbon trading extortion is here

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“Cancel all your European travel and vacation plans – carbon trading extortion is here“. The European Union apparently has proposed requiring airlines to offset their carbon emissions through carbon trading starting in 2012. Well you know, governments will act as they best see fit. Anthony Watts seems to think that sulking in your basement is preferable to yielding to the totalitarian demands of commie Europeans.

Isn’t that what he’s already doing? Anti-Europe sentiments and statements that carbon trading is a scam get a good workout in the comments.

An update on the plight of the Thompsons

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“An update on the plight of the Thompsons“. Oh, the plight! The comedy of Anthony Watts’ sudden burning interest in an Australian farmer’s family continues. Why, oh why is there “no help from the usual [alarmist] suspects and their flocks”? (Oops, there goes “the high ground.” Again.) Are Anthony and his denialist friends the only people who care about ordinary people? Umm, perhaps its time for Anthony to come clean and admit that his topics and motivations are entirely political.

Maybe things aren’t going too well on the denialist front in spite of Anthony’s ever-louder declarations that victory is near. His much-loved Viscount Monckton has been rather brutally revealed as a dishonest buffoon, the deluded Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli’s harassment of climate scientists has been laughed out of court, the cherished Wegman Report has been dissected and shown to be puffed up nonsense full of incompetent plagiarism, misrepresentation and even old-fashioned padding. This little tempest is a good distraction.

Frankly, I have some sympathy for the “honest hardworking” Thompson family (that link’s a kook factory) but no opinion on the core issue of farming regulations. The fact that they have been taken up with such vigor by fanatical strangers is a pretty dodgy sign though. Tough luck, apparently, for the millions living in, say, Bangladesh. Wrong color? Wrong politics? Wrong religion?

Enviro and Media Agenda on Extreme Weather – State Climatologist Invited, then Uninvited to Rally

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“Enviro and Media Agenda on Extreme Weather – State Climatologist Invited, then Uninvited to Rally“. Anthony Watts wants us to know that the State Climatologist for Delaware, “David R. Legates, Ph.D., C.C.M” was invited by Environment America to speak at a press conference about “Extreme Weather in Delaware.” He was cruelly uninvited when they learned that he was loose cannon looking for opportunities to misrepresent climate science in support of the posturing of the politicians who appointed him.

How dare Environment America state that “we do not suggest that these [particular] extreme weather events were caused by global warming” and then say that “the point of examining the recent extreme weather events – and the economic losses and other negative impacts they caused – is to document why we need to take action to protect against them, including by reducing emissions of pollutants that are changing our climate.” That’s a total contradiction, unless you can comprehend the English language!

It’s ironic to see Anthony decrying censorship when his blog comment policy personifies it (and the mob justice he encourages).

More dirty pool by NCDC’s Karl, Menne, and Peterson

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“More dirty pool by NCDC’s Karl, Menne, and Peterson“. Anthony’s still mad that “his data” has been used by scientists. Particularly because they studied his claim of fatal problems with the US surface temperature record and found that it was completely baseless. Sorry, Anthony, the actual data was theirs. You merely claimed loudly that particular weather stations were badly adjusted and they showed that from a climate study perspective the problems were irrelevant. A year later we’re still waiting for your thrilling expose.

Now they’ve used an amateur photo of a weather station on the cover of a presentation about how to respond to amateur criticisms of weather stations! My god, they’re also plotting things! Denialists do that too! What copycats, such infamy!

Sorry Anthony, your only contribution has been to trigger the recognition that there are tenacious and ignorant pests on the interwebs that need to be fended off. Nice to see the sudden awareness of copyright though. Did you ever get around to licensing that painting you use in your blog masthead? Like all of Anthony’s pretenses of taking the high road this rings a bit hollow.

RC’s response to McShane and Wyner: a case of orange cones

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“RC’s response to McShane and Wyner: a case of orange cones“. This is a classic whine from Anthony Watts about “the Team” and their “egos”. Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann, and Scott Rutherford (apparently representing the Team) have written a scathing comment letter to the Annals of Applied Statistics about the recent allegedly “hockey-stick busting” paper by the naïve statisticians McShane and Wyner entitled A Statistical Analysis of Multiple Temperature Proxies: Are Reconstructions of Surface Temperatures Over the Last 1000 Years Reliable? [PDF].

Update: I just noticed that the URL for Anthony’s blog post is “http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/23/rcs-response-to-mcshane-and-wyner-the-teams-steaming-pile-of-snip”! Now that’s critical analysis.

The paper has been debunked as wishful thinking and statistical failures (particularly embarrassing if you’re trying to overturn statistical evidence) that rely heavily and uncritically on biased sources and is coated with an irrelevant layer of political posturing. Read the coverage at Deep Climate, or Deltoid, then have a chuckle over Anthony’s first coverage of this “new and important study“. It has proven to be the latest superficially useful denialist effort, so it is being blindly praised in the usual quarters and stubbornly defended by the ignorant (this is Anthony’s cue).

I’d summarize it as an attempt to claim that the weak results of their poor statistical analysis means that the better techniques used to successfully identify the “hockey-stick” temperature trend are invalid. Sort of like saying “we get crappy results, so you must have done a crappy job just like us.”

Anthony jumps in with both feet sputtering about the nerve of those climatologists pointing out improper “data quality control” in McShane and Wyner’s paper. It’s one thing for denialists to fabricate quality control criticisms and splash them about freely, but apparently poor sportsmanship for scientists to point out real data flaws. Even if M&W tried to preëmptively claim that they’re “not interested at this stage in engaging the issues of data quality.” (Except they are.)

M&W are also called out for adding “poor quality proxies [that have] a material effect on the reconstructions, inflating the level of peak apparent Medieval warmth”. Why can’t they spin the climate record for the benefit of their desired conclusions? It’s standard practice for denialist papers! Sorry Anthony, M&W have to play by the big kid’s rules. What M&W did was to throw back in all garbage data they could to try to cherry-pick their way to an inconclusive trend.

And all this adds up in Anthony’s mind as mere wounded egos on the part of some pesky climatologists…

Ocean cooling contributed to mid-20th century global warming hiatus (and so did the PDO)

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“Ocean cooling contributed to mid-20th century global warming hiatus (and so did the PDO)“. Poor Anthony Watts seems in a foul mood here. Muttering about news story that doesn’t give him access to all the data, references to “public money”, particularly asinine comments about press release photos (where on earth does “grinning like a banshee” come from?), etc. You’d think he’d be clutching at a report about oceanic cooling with both hands…

Maybe he’s irritated that Dr. Phil Jones, who the denialists tried to bring down with the false “Climategate” controversy is publishing science again? Or is it that the paper discusses cooling, which the lying climatologists supposedly never talk about and he has no idea how to react.

So the paper in question is being published as a Letter in Nature titled An abrupt drop in Northern Hemisphere sea surface temperature around 1970 (here’s the abstract). It says that “the hiatus of global warming in the Northern Hemisphere during the mid-20th century may have been due to an abrupt cooling event centered over the North Atlantic around 1970, rather than the cooling effects of tropospheric pollution.” Don’t you just hate it when scientists observe things and try to understand them?

Anthony spots professor David W.J. Thompson "grinning like a banshee".

And the Lord said: “Go forth and model Moses”

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And the Lord said: “Go forth and model Moses”. A creationist gets some grant money for a paper on how a fictional event (Moses parting the Red Sea) could have, maybe, happened. He uses the computers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research to model how topographic configurations could interact with unusual wind patterns to expose the floor of a shallow lagoon (pretty lousy “miracle” if you ask me).

For Anthony Watts, this is a chance to rant about goofy computer models while simultaneously complaining about the wasteful use of said goofy computer models. Whatever.

Careful with the George Monbiot links though Anthony! Are the climate change deniers with no evidence just naturally gullible?

A non-miracle occurs! Figure from NCAR.

Quote of the Week

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“Quote of the Week“. Anthony Watts brings to our attention a quote from Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. about the hated Joe Romm that is “long overdue”, prompted by Joe’s coverage of Clive Crook at the Atlantic repeatedly smearing climatologist Dr. Michael Mann:

“More than any individual — James Inhofe and Marc Morano included — Joe Romm is responsible for creating a poisonous, negative atmosphere in the climate debate. Responsible voices should say so, this nonsense has gone on long enough.”

This is code for “Joe Romm is kicking my ass all over town.” You see, Joe Romm has a Physics Ph.D. but Roger Pielke Jr.’s Ph.D is in… political science. They’ve crossed paths many times, but it’s like bringing a knife to a gun fight, and Romm doesn’t sugar-coat it.

Interesting to see the implication that denialists Senator James Inhofe and political operative Marc Morano are also “poisonous.” I’m not sure how Anthony avoided that short-list, but perhaps it’s because he’s one of Roger’s buddies. Roger Pielke Jr.’s claim of being (the only?) “honest broker” in the climate change debate is currently being laughed out-of-town. Here are two links (Roger at Face Value and The Honestly Broken) about Roger’s self-serving concept.