Climategate?

Posted on by
6

I’ve hesitated to dip my toes back in the swamp water that Anthony Watts tries to pass off as a science blog, because road-kill skunks are more pleasant than the mental stench he generates. It lingers longer too. But the recent anniversary of “Climategate” and the denialist response to it has brought a smile to my face.

Slightly more than a year ago Anthony and his pals where foaming at the mouth about corrupt, evil, lying climate scientists and proclaiming the death of the Global Warming Scam (which it must be said they pretty much do weekly). Cooler heads, the kind that think objectively, found the “evidence” of stolen, out of context e-mails and the claims made from them far-fetched to say the least. The denialist crowd thought they were having their long-deserved moment in the sun.

Where do we stand today?

  • A series of investigations in the UK and USA showed that the denialist accusations of exclusion, conspiracy and falsification were baseless misrepresentations.
  • It’s widely recognised that Climategate has no implications whatsoever for the evidence and magnitude of man-made Climate Change. It was simply used to orchestrate an unwarranted attack on particular people.
  • Denialist blogs have turned to disgruntled “he said-she said” complaints about the independent investigations of the accusations, while sea ice and Al Gore are once again favorite topics at WUWT.
  • Self-important denialist Steve McIntyre, who was in many ways central to the furor, now says “I planned to write a one-year anniversary piece on Climategate, but have found it difficult to capture the right tone.” That’s code for “I’m tired of pretending that I’m outraged about inconsequential private e-mails, but I can’t think of a way to change the subject without embarrassing myself.”

Anthony’s recent post Climategate – still the issue tries to repeat the original accusations, with as little correction or legitimate context as he can get away with. It’s an entertaining read from an informed perspective. I can easily imagine Anthony’s irritation at having to couch so many of the “fatal” accusations in such half-hearted ways.

Update: I came across this excellent overview of the whole “scandal” over at ClimateSight, a new blog by a student climatologist before writing this post, but it slipped my mind until now (the following day).

Thanks for playing!

2012-07-19 Update: Norfolk police have called off their investigation for procedural reasons, but state:

“However, as a result of our inquiries, we can say that the data breach was the result of a sophisticated and carefully orchestrated attack on the CRU’s data files, carried out remotely via the internet. The offenders used methods common in unlawful internet activity to obstruct inquiries. There is no evidence to suggest that anyone working at or associated with the University of East Anglia was involved in the crime.”

NASA’s Hathaway issues new solar cycle prediction

Posted on by
7

“NASA’s Hathaway issues new solar cycle prediction“. Anthony Watts draws attention to the difficulty experts are having predicting the course of the current sunspot cycle. He also says “let us not be too critical of Dr. Hathaway, unlike some scientists we know, he has the integrity and courage to admit when his forecasts and models don’t work, and to revise them in the face of reality.” Ah yes, the mythical corrupt scientist. Who is the cowardly scientist that refuses to admit any error in their theories?

Of course if we can’t accurately predict something as ‘simple’ as the number of sunspots how can we possibly trust any climate predictions, right?

P.S. That was a lousy “blink comparator” graphic, Anthony. Try using the same scale and date range for both version next time. Or were you just pasting together two jpgs?

Ocean color affects tropical cyclone formation

Posted on by
Reply

“Ocean color affects tropical cyclone formation“. Another filler post from Anthony Watts, this time a press release from all the way back on 13 August about a NOAA paper titled “How ocean color can steer Pacific tropical cyclones“. I suppose this is fodder for the “them climate scientists don’t know a dang thing” file.

The climate modeling premise? “Greener” water absorbs more heat and heats the air above more, with the effect of pushing cyclones towards higher latitudes and increasing their energy. An interesting finding.

I’ll Trade You Cuccinelli For Splattergate With A Player To Be Named Later

Posted on by
Reply

“I’ll Trade You Cuccinelli For Splattergate With A Player To Be Named Later“. Thomas Fuller offers a vague opinion piece filled with half-hearted attempts to sound “neutral”.

Hmmm. Links to recent WUWT posts (are these really the authoritative coverage?), vague references to “the scandals”, a bit of back-pedaling over District Attorney Cuccinelli’s attack on Dr. Mann. Which was the bigger waste of time Tom, us reading it or you typing it?

ABC interview wrongly torches skeptic position

Posted on by
Reply

“ABC interview wrongly torches skeptic position“. Does Anthony Watts really think that denialists fighting in “the cause of climate skepticism” accept that “both CO2 and CH4 are “greenhouse gases”, and yes they do have a warming effect by backscattered long wave infra red“? Guess he doesn’t read his blog’s comments. Wait he does, compulsively and passive-aggressively. Anthony’s only other contribution here is to helpfully provide e-mail addresses that can be bombarded.

The reposted ‘concern troll’ complaint by Canadian denialist Tom Harris maintains that Australia’s ABC Radio Science Show interview with Bob Ward from the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment was too soft by half. (Funny how these guys manage to be on top of such distant matters and have their posts pop up in so many places at once.)

Harris thinks the interviewer should have asked a juicy leading question like “which is more important – the health and welfare of people suffering today, or those not yet born who might suffer someday due to climate change that even you admit is highly uncertain?” I think what he really wants to say is “why should I have to do anything I don’t want to when the effects will only be felt after I’m dead”. I’d be surprised to see a libertarian or Republican tenaciously fighting to improve the lives of anyone other than themselves.

The rest of the post is mere high-school rhetoric and deliberate misrepresentation (try to find the “vilification [of] Professors Carter, Lindzen and Plimer” that Harris claims). There’s something about denialists that compels them to recreate public debates in their minds and explain to themselves how they were really won them.

I love Harris’ embrace of eyeballed temperature trends “showing” negative temperature trends since 2002 though. What happened to “1998 was the hottest year”? Keep the cups moving Tom, keep ’em moving.

Study: Wind farms affect local surface temperatures

Posted on by
2

“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

Posted on by
1

“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.’

September 2010 UAH Global Temperature Update: +0.60 deg. C

Posted on by
Reply

“September 2010 UAH Global Temperature Update: +0.60 deg. C“. Dr. Roy Spencer boosts his publication list with a paper in the noted scientific journal, WattsUpWithThat.com. How would you cite that, I wonder?

The satellite-measured global average lower tropospheric temperature anomaly rose 0.06℃ in September (that’s a record by the way Roy), but the global Sea Surface Temperature is falling! It’s crazy. What can any scientist do in the face of “Mother Nature’s sense of humor”? Nothing, so why bother?

More incurious denialist minds.

OH NO! Too much fresh water! (but we can’t tell)

Posted on by
3

“OH NO! Too much fresh water! (but we can’t tell)“. Holy cow, Anthony Watts says that a news release from University of California, Irvine sort-of contradicts itself! You know what this means, don’t you – there is no Global Warming! He ponders – “Do these guys even read their own press releases? I want my California State taxes back.”

Apparently Anthony doesn’t read press releases either. He juxtaposes “study finds alarming increase” and “there is no global discharge measurement network” but seems incapable of understanding that the lack of a “measurement network” doesn’t mean that they aren’t able to measure something. This sentence slipped past Anthony’s incurious nose:

This paper uses satellite records of sea level rise, precipitation and evaporation to put together a unique 13-year record – the longest and first of its kind. (Emphasis mine)

So the news release title is “First-of-its-kind study finds alarming increase in flow of water into oceans.” They estimate that freshwater outflow has increased by 18% since 1994 and 2006. The authors clearly are ‘climate alarmists’ because they say:

“In general, more water is good,” Famiglietti said. “But here’s the problem: Not everybody is getting more rainfall, and those who are may not need it. What we’re seeing is exactly what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted – that precipitation is increasing in the tropics and the Arctic Circle with heavier, more punishing storms. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of people live in semiarid regions, and those are drying up.”

Mann’s old University gets another subpoena

Posted on by
6

“Mann’s old University gets another subpoena“. Anthony Watts is a bit muted on the topic of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s attempt to restart his deeply ill-advised “investigation” of Professor Michael Mann over some of the grants he received while at the University of Virginia. On the one hand, he loves to see climate scientists being harassed. On the other, Cuccinelli’s clearly way out of his depth and jurisdiction.

But Anthony does have the energy to repost what the denialist lobbyists at the Science and Public Policy Institute are saying about it, and his commenters have no problem waxing ignorant, rattling on about “taxpayer’s money”, “hiding evidence”, etc.

The ethics, politics and legality of Cuccinelli’s maneuverings have all been covered before, both on this website and at other important places such as Real Climate, Andrew Revkin at the New York Times, the Washington Post (1, 2), even USA Today.

Short version? This is morally and intellectually bankrupt Tea Party harassment.