Quote of the Week

Posted on by
1

“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.

Expert Embarrassment in Climate Change

Posted on by
2

“Expert Embarrassment in Climate Change“. Thomas Fuller, first to publish rash “Climategate” accusations, lets us know that the recent PNAS paper, ‘Expert Credibility in Climate Change’, is somehow a nasty and unethical blacklist.

Sorry Tom, the determination of denier/agree-er was based on freely given public statements and the assessment of expertise was the same for all subjects. Claiming sneakiness, privacy infringement, or violation of confidentiality is bull. Read the author’s defense, several days before Fuller’s repetition, over at Real Climate.

Your denialist victims have been “outing” themselves without any help, and your post is merely an exercise in victim bullying. However your howls do remind me of the frequent calls by denialists for the dismissal of “warmist” scientists or public officials, cuts to their funding, calls for boycotts, etc, etc. What’s that smell? Oh yes, hypocrisy.

Analysis of NSIDC August 4 News

Posted on by
1

“Analysis of NSIDC August 4 News“. Steven Goddard still thinks that he can use Photoshop to disprove Global Warming! Friendly advice for Anthony Watts: I know Steven helps fill your blog with denialist arguments of varying quality, but his premises are invariably based on either stubborn ignorance or deliberate analytical flaws. Although perhaps you don’t care?

So what’s Steven’s “analysis” this time? He claims that the NSIDC’s (National Snow and Ice Data Center) Sea Ice News has a deceptive chart of Arctic Sea Ice Extent because his pixel counting from an NSIDC map shows 10% more ice now that in 2007. That’s not what the chart shows! Although it goes right over Steven’s head, Dr. Walt Meier of the NSIDC charitably explains;

Our sea ice maps are not an equal area projection. Thus one cannot compare extents by counting grid cells – this is probably the reason for the 7.5% vs. 3% discrepancy. Steve has been alerted to this issue in the past, but seems to have forgotten it.

Photoshop also proves that Arctic multi-year ice is doing just fine, sort of, even though the NSIDC says that it is melting in the southern Beaufort Sea. So there.

Finally, Steven lets us know that Sea Ice Extent is increasing in the Antarctic, naturally disproving Global Warming. Too bad Antarctic Sea Ice Extent is driven by ocean current patterns and glacial outflow and not temperature.

Goddard notes grandly that he has “alerted Dr. Meier to most of these issues by E-mail.” Another trophy for the lunch-room bulletin board I suppose.

DMI polar data shows cooler Arctic temperature since 1958

Posted on by
2

“DMI polar data shows cooler Arctic temperature since 1958“. Frank Lansner joins Steven Goddard’s love-in with the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI). Their Arctic climate modeling in the 80° – 90° latitudes seems to show cooler average melting season (“summer”) temperatures than the GISS model. Thus proving that Global Warming doesn’t exist. Evil “garbage in-garbage out” “adjusted” computer models are just fine if they tell Frank and Steven what they want to hear apparently.

Why the difference between DMI’s estimates and those from GISS? It doesn’t seem to matter to Frank as long as he can wave one of them around accusingly.

Why the CO2 increase is man made (part 1)

Posted on by
1

“Why the CO2 increase is man made (part 1)“. A rare bit of reality pops up unexpectedly on Anthony Watts’ blog. Yes, the increase in atmospheric CO2 is effectively all man-made, says Ferdinand Engelbeen.

Oh, here’s the catch; Engelbeen has left himself an escape hatch for the ensuing denialist assault. The increase in atmospheric CO2 apparently has limited impact on temperature. This is to be discussed later.

So that’s why Anthony offered a bit of “mainstream” perspective. He’s trying to gently steer his readers away from embarrassing attacks on scientific evidence and on to new and more flexible topics.

CO2 heats the atmosphere…a counter view

Posted on by
4

“CO2 heats the atmosphere…a counter view“. Tom Vonk, “Physicist”, engages in some wishful thinking to prove that CO2 is not responsible for heating the atmosphere. If you look at a small enough quantity of atmospheric gases in just the right way, and ignore the rest of the field of radiative physics that is. It’s always a bad sign when an arm-waving pet theory that start with “intuitively”.

So what is responsible for heating the atmosphere? Oh, that’s a question for another day.

Vonk’s conclusion?

The main point is that every time you hear or read that “CO2 heats the atmosphere”, that “energy is trapped by CO2”, that “energy is stored by green house gases” and similar statements, you may be sure that this source is not to be trusted for information about radiation questions.

Oh, I se. This is just an exercise in training denialists to stop reading “warmist” statements as soon as the science begins.

When the educated commenters, including Dr. Roy Spencer and even Steven Goddard, take a big step back from Vonk’s claims in the comments you know this post ain’t earning any Nobel prizes.

Most of the comments are, of course, of the hilariously oblivious wild praise variety. And that’s what counts, right?

Discrepancies In Sea Ice Measurements

Posted on by
Reply

“Discrepancies In Sea Ice Measurements“. Steven Goddard returns for the second time today to prove, via Photoshop, that climatologists are tricking us. The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) Arctic Sea Ice Extent plots aren’t identical!!!!!

Because they use different modeling techniques that have different break points for ice/not ice. So what?

Of course Steven is really trying to avoid talking about Arctic Sea Ice Volume, which is much less useful for sowing denialist confusion. We’ll stick with extent though and post this image for Steven to chew on:

Average monthly Arctic Sea Ice Extent trend since 1979. Source: NSIDC.

We enter the age of “…or else”

Posted on by
1

We enter the age of “…or else”. Nothing makes a libertarian madder than governments acting on something. Anthony Watts  copies-and-pastes excerpts from a Washington Post report that the death of a Senate Climate bill means that the White House will use its power to act on Global Warming via the EPA’s clean-air regulations.

Obama is such a bully! And a Nigerian communist.

A color scheme change for the SST map

Posted on by
Reply

“A color scheme change for the SST map“. Steven Goddard still thinks that diddling around in Photoshop is scientifically meaningful. Today he tries to jigger the color scheme to reduce the global temperature anomalies by using a “cooler” color for small positive anomalies.

Of course he had to hunt around the NOAA site to find the Coral Reef Watch group’s variation on the master Sea Surface Temp anomaly map to find a chart that he could make look bad. Note to Steven: Charts are representations of data, they are not data. What you are doing is discarding the data that you don’t like.

Here's a real NOAA SST Anomaly Map, for August 4, 2010.

Using the same logic Steven “proves” in the comments that, by geographical area, President Obama only got 28% of the 2008 Presidential election vote.