Igor cool ocean

Posted on by
1

“Igor cool ocean“. Anthony Watts notes that hurricanes “do a splendid job of cooling the ocean surface over which they travel.” He even trusts some nasty NASA computer climate models to explain it. Thus ending Global Warming!

How does he does manage to ignore the more relevant discussion of whether increasing numbers and intensity of cyclones are a symptom of Global Warming? Here are a few random notes on the subject:

Wood fired power plants help reduce climate change

Posted on by
Reply

“Wood fired power plants help reduce climate change“. Anthony Watts has read a press release from the University of Manchester titled How heating our homes could help reduce climate change and thinks we can burn our way to a lower CO2 emissions. No need to change anything else to solve Global Warming. Which isn’t happening.

Um, this is really a report of biomass-fueled district heating concepts. Biomass sequesters and then releases carbon in a repeating cycle, so it’s inherently “neutral” in climate terms if processing, transport and power generation are efficient enough.

“Fossil” fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas were sequestered millions of years ago and completely removed from the natural carbon cycle. When they are extracted and consumed their carbon, in the form of CO2 is released back into the environment with what a “consensus” of scientists would describe as pronounced and measurable impacts on the Earth’s climate.

Google Earth leads to spectacular meteor crater find

Posted on by
2

“Google Earth leads to spectacular meteor crater find“. Random science news from Anthony Watts. See? He runs a science blog, not an anti-science blog! This story makes a pretty good fig-leaf though.

The Kamil crater in the Egyptian desert was first spotted in 2008 by mineralogist Vincenzo De Michele in Google Earth imagery. From a European Space Agency press release:

One day within the last several thousand years, a rare metallic meteorite travelling over 12 000 km/hour smashed into Earth’s surface near what is today the trackless border region between Egypt, Sudan and Libya. The impact of the 1.3 m, 10-tonne chunk of iron generated a fireball and plume that would have been visible over 1000 km away, and drilled a hole 16 m deep and 45 m wide into the rocky terrain.

Engelbeen on why he thinks the CO2 increase is man made (part 4)

Posted on by
Reply

“Engelbeen on why he thinks the CO2 increase is man made (part 4)“. Anthony pats himself on the back for letting someone with a “narrative contrary to the blog owner(s) view” post on his website. Of course although retired engineer Ferdinand Engelbeen happens to accept the scientific principles and evidence for increasing CO2 levels, he has similar ideas about how this has nothing to do with Global Warming. Which of course isn’t happening.

Regardless if that is man made or not, I think we agree that the influence of the increase itself on temperature/climate is limited, if observable at all.

Poor Ferdinand Engelbeen thinks that patiently explaining, in this post, how useful “background” CO2 levels are actually derived, how sampling locations and techniques dramatically diminish the value of many historical records, and how the ratio of stomata openings to the total number of cells on leaves are a poor proxy for CO2 levels, will stem the flow of ignorant commentary.

Good luck Ferdinand! And good luck with the nothing’s happening theory.

Hint to Anthony Watts: the d13C ratios show that the added CO2 has come from fossil fuel sources. Engelbeen explained it to you a week ago. End of story.

NASA discovery: solar storms don’t always travel in straight lines

Posted on by
Reply

“NASA discovery: solar storms don’t always travel in straight lines“. Anthony Watts posts another NASA news report, Solar Storms can Change Directions, Surprising Forecasters. A 2008 coronal mass ejection (CME) was observed by NASA’s STEREO-A and STEREO–B spacecraft. The researchers speculate that CME’s follow the sun’s curving magnetic field until they get swept up by the solar wind. The paper by Byrne et al, Propagation of an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection in three dimensions, is in the Sept. 21, 2010 issue of Nature Communications.

The Dec. 12, 2008 coronal mass ejection observed by STEREO. Source: NASA.

I guess Anthony thinks this report is helpful in suggesting that a) we don’t know anything about that big fiery ball in the sky, and b) them scientists are going to change their minds anyway, so don’t bother listening to them.

Where the particulates are (and aren’t)

Posted on by
Reply

“Where the particulates are (and aren’t)“. NASA posts a press release (New Map Offers a Global View of Health-Sapping Air Pollution) about an estimate of the global distribution of fine particulate matter, and talks about efforts to assess the health risks these particles pose. Anthony Watts decides it’s all just dust (natural!).

Global Particulate Matter (<2.5μm) Distribution

Satellite-derived map of particulate matter (<2.5μm) distribution averaged over 2001-2006. Source: Dalhousie University.

Donkelaar and Randall Martin published Global Estimates of Ambient Fine Particulate Matter Concentrations from Satellite-Based Aerosol Optical Depth: Development and Application in Environmental Health Perspectives. They combined data from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) on NASA’s Terra satellite and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on both NASA’s Aqua and Terra satellites.

Why the random grousing about random NASA research, Anthony? Just some kind of reflexive urge? The commenters join in with a chorus of “scare tactics!”

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

Posted on by
4

“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.

Surprise: Peer reviewed study says current Arctic sea ice is more extensive than most of the past 9000 years

Posted on by
6

“Surprise: Peer reviewed study says current Arctic sea ice is more extensive than most of the past 9000 years“. A blogger discovers a paleoclimate paper by McKay, et.al. in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences from 2008 and Anthony Watts is on it like white on rice. “Peer reviewed!” “More ice now than ever!” “Natural!!!!”

Oh, it’s only referring to a bit of the western Arctic. Oh, they’re only comparing to Arctic Sea Ice extent of a decade ago, when there was in fact rather more sea ice. Oh, they aren’t suggesting that such low ice extents were common. Oh, dinocyst proxies are a bit dodgy. Oh, the paper is merely titled Holocene fluctuations in Arctic sea-ice cover: dinocyst-based reconstructions for the eastern Chukchi Sea, not “there’s more ice than ever now!”

Obituary: Ernst Georg Beck

Posted on by
Reply

“Obituary: Ernst Georg Beck“. Ernst Georg Beck, teacher, blogger and “co-founder of the European Institute for Climate and Energy” and contributor to the disregarded journal Energy & Environment has died. His research interest was to collate historical CO2 chemical measurements, apparently regardless of their source or methodology (they’re all over the place!) and will apparently be “the final nail in the AGW coffin.” If only he’d lived to see the day?

For Anthony Watts an anti-IPCC rant disguised as an obituary is the perfect response. He even lets through comments that ponder whether Beck’s cancer was “given to him in some shape or form by those with a vested interest in such things as global governance.” Alway the high ground with Anthony…

BBC questions if Pachauri’s continued presence “is still serving the best interests of the IPCC”

Posted on by
Reply

BBC questions if Pachauri’s continued presence “is still serving the best interests of the IPCC”. Apparently some British politicians think that Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), should step down because denialists don’t like him. The BBC’s Roger Harrabin writes that Dr. Pachauri is “associated with controversy and error in the IPCC AR4.” What he’s associated with both minor errors? Off with his head! With him gone, Global Warming will naturally stop immediately.

Which image of Dr. Pachuri does Anthony use? Hint: not on the right.

Guess what; Anthony Watts will pour scorn and false accusations on anyone who occupies that office. Is Dr. Pachauri a “railway engineer”? Nope. Does he “write smutty novels”? Nope. Will Anthony repeat these claims as often as possible? Yup.