“Breaking: Japan refuses to extend Kyoto treaty at Cancun“. Japan, one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases refuses to cut their emissions. Why should they when their trading partner the USA is entering years of Republican obstruction? Make money now, let future generations look after themselves!
Anthony Watts is right that this important, but not for the partisan reasons he is focused on.
“A Fertilizer Trading Market?” Anthony Watts uses a University of Maryland report on agricultural practices to smear the failed Chicago Climate Exchange and mutter about governments trying to control the lives of Americans.
From the Multiple Ecosystem Markets in Maryland report:
The researchers conclude that setting up a “trading market,” where farmers earn financial incentives for investing in eco-friendly techniques, would result in a double environmental benefit – reducing fertilizer run-off destined for the Chesapeake Bay, while at the same time capturing carbon dioxide headed for the atmosphere.
Of course howling “bullshit” is the closest Anthony comes to critical thought, so it must be hard for him to resist.
“Testing … testing … is this model powered up?” Willis Eschenbach guest posts on Anthony Watts’ website and mentions about Judith Curry’s “excellent blog”, where she has apparently been talking in her usual vague way about a subject that she seems to have only a superficial understanding of. In this case about “verifying and validating” climate models.
After drowning us in a deluge of Excel charts derived from a variety of old (6+ years) climate models and using a conveniently short 20-year span, Willis tells us that generalized climate models don’t mirror the specific fluctuations of real temperature trends well enough. This, somehow, is a surprise to Willis. Apparently all the climate models must be discarded now.
Newsflash: “general” is not “specific”. The impact of one-time events will never be predicted. Regardless, I guess we can’t trust any of them sneaky climate computer models, can we Anthony?
“Skeptic paper on Antarctica accepted – rebuts Steig et al“. “Hah!” says Anthony Watts. A skeptic has a paper into a real journal! Of course there were many review comments that were “difficult”, but they overcame the alleged resistance of the nasty “Team”!
So what new knowledge have these intrepid skeptics uncovered? Well, nothing. They’re just trying to critique a paper in Nature that showed that Antarctica has warmed (Steig et al, Nature, 2009). They report that yeah Antarctica has warmed, but it’s not quite as uniform as Steig determined. With Steven McIntyre as a co-author, as well as fellow ‘citizen-scientist’ Jeff Condon, I suspect that this will prove another exercise in sour-minded nit-picking resulting in a conclusion that ‘they could have used a slightly better statistical method’.
Such rebuttals are usually in the original journal for reasons of clarity, but this particular attack will be in the Journal of Climate.
Statistical fiddling changes... what? After O'Donnell, 2010
What do we see in the abstract? Admissions that Steig 2009 “has merit”. Allusions to “suboptimal determination”. Reluctant references to “negligible differences”.
Oh here’s Anthony’s killer rebuttal of Steig! “I would hope that our paper is not seen as a repudiation of Steig’s results, but rather as an improvement.”
That’s the problem with peer-review. Your accusations have to stand up to scrutiny before they are published. Or get restated honestly. Unlike denialist websites like Anthony Watts’.
“What’s the best way promote reducing CO2 causing combustion?” Anthony Watts indulges in some “filthy eco hippies” slurs because an artist used fire in an environmental project. Don’t let those brain cells accidentally come in contact Anthony!
“Quote of the Week – delineating Nature“. Apparently Anthony Watts thinks nature is our enemy. He likes this deep insight from a WUWT commenter:
You might wonder why these fools are trying to let the outdoors back in, when we’ve spent our entire history trying to keep the outdoors out.
“Pelosi’s Global Warming Panel gets the axe“. Anthony Watts is pleased that the Republicans, now the majority in the US House of Representatives, have axed the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. The Select Committee was created by the Democrats in 2007.
Not discussing climate change will definitely solve the problem, right Anthony? Excellent Tea Party logic there.
Sea level rise: “jumpy” after last ice age. Anthony Watts thinks that a paper in Global and Planetary Change about sea-level changes 10,000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age when sea-level was rising rapidly, means that any rise in sea-level now, when natural sea-level fluctuations are minor, is also entirely expected. Therefore Anthony has a press release that proves that there is no man-made Global Warming.
If sea-level was jittery during periods of rapid rise then of course it can be jittery during periods of stability! After Global Warming Art.
“Telegraph blunders, assumes Wikileaks was responsible for Climategate emails being made available to the public“. Funny, Anthony Watts loved the Telegraph until they were forced to retract denialist climate change statements.
Of course the question that begs asking is why Anthony so concerned about the “damaging impacts” of WikiLeaks but so quick to embrace the Climategate leaks. The answer, surprisingly, is that Anthony is a partisan hypocrite.
“Sea Level Rise and Solar Activity“. Anthony Watts posts Australian denialist David Archibald’s latest insights about how it’s all due to the Sun. Thanks?
See where the Sun affects seal-level rise? Which is flat by the way. Original by David Archibald, 2010.
Let’s file this one away for a laugh:
Our prediction of a 2° C decline in temperature for the mid-latitudes over Solar Cycles 24 and 25 suggests that sea level will stop rising, and should start falling at some point prior to 2032.
Nothing like giving yourself twenty years of wriggle room!
Wott's Up With That? 