When you don’t like the poll numbers, make up your own poll

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“When you don’t like the poll numbers, make up your own poll“. Anthony Watts is disgusted that the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University is spending public money on opinion surveys and releasing their conclusions: Majority of Americans Continue to Believe that Global Warming is Real. The PDF is here.

When pollsters ask Americans to name the most important problem facing the country, fewer than 3 percent mention the environment. But when asked to name the most serious problem facing the planet if left unchecked, the environment and global warming rise to the top, according to a May 2010 study by Woods Institute Senior Fellow Jon Krosnick.

Conventional pollsters have asked the “most important problem” (MIP) question since the 1930’s and short-term issues always predominate in tough economic times. Climate change is less immediately pressing than paying the rent, so climate change has dropped in “the most important problem” ranks.

This is what the denialists have been shouting as proof that they’re “winning”. Once again the denialists have staked their position on a misrepresentation.

Climate change: have we reached the irreversible stage?

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“Climate change: have we reached the irreversible stage?” Steven Mosher re-posts an Abs-Cbn news release about an Al Gore speech in the Philippines. His intellectual contribution is this juvenile graphic of Al Gore. Exceptional effort, Steven.

2007 Sea Ice Post Mortem

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“2007 Sea Ice Post Mortem“. Lately it’s been embarrassing for denialists to talk about the 2010 Arctic Sea Ice Extent, so the indefatigable Steven Goddard tries to recast various denialist comments about the record low 2007 season and misrepresent the remarks of professional climatologists from the time.

First, he tries to pretend that ice volume was what really counted in 2007, not ice extent. Actually, they fought pretty hard against that metric back then. Too bad the ice volume has been steadily declining.

Next, he tries to tie the expert’s ice predictions to newspaper speculations. That’s just plain dishonest.

It seems that no progressive loss of Arctic sea ice will make Steven admit he’s spitting in the wind unless the Arctic Ocean is completely ice-free. Whenever his ‘nothing to worry about’ BS starts getting shaky, he simply moves the goalposts. The only thing thinner than the Arctic sea ice is Steven’s own skin.

A study: The temperature rise has caused the CO2 Increase, not the other way around

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“A study: The temperature rise has caused the CO2 Increase, not the other way around“. Anthony Watts posts a retired physicist’s enthusiastic number crunching that proves… if there’s any global warming it’s not because of CO2. It’s the other way ’round!  However, Lon Hocker has to admit that “we offer no explanation for why global temperatures are changing“. It’s amazing what you can conclude when you remove the atmospheric CO2 trend before starting your number games.

Hocker tells us in the comments that “Excel isn’t all that hard to use, though I admit I had a bunch of learning to go though to write this. Remember I’m just using well accepted data, and high school math.” This is pretty much a confession that he’s a victim of Dunning–Kruger syndrome.

What Hocker has shown is that annual CO2 variations are, indeed, the result of seasonal temperature change and the resulting variation in vegetative CO2 production. In other breaking news, water is wet.

More on the Beeville, TX weather station

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“More on the Beeville, TX weather station“.  Anthony Watts’ friends continue to nitpick the Beeville temperature records and not talk about the false report of a Beeville grade school science project that “disproves global warming” being given a national award.

Apparently if you remove the temperature data corrections (i.e. re-introduce error) you can tell yourself that there’s been no global warming. Nice!

All this whining about “adjustments” (which a commenter goes to the unwelcome trivial effort of looking up and finds simple explanations for) suggests that Anthony wants to obscure difference between using temperature records for weather purposes vs climate purposes. When we’re interested in the weather, we want to know the actual temperature. When we’re interested in the climate, we want to remove local variability so we can use those records to see longer regional trends. Temperature records can’t be used for climate analysis without adjustments!

Legal beagle says: Manmade global warming science doesn’t withstand scrutiny

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“Legal beagle says: Manmade global warming science doesn’t withstand scrutiny“. Anthony Watts points out an article by enthusiastic denialist and Financial Post journalist Lawrence Solomon about a publication called Global Warming Advocacy Science: A Cross Examination. Apparently a partisan “Research Paper” by a law professor with a history of climate change denial is a “Legal verdict” that “eviscerates the case for man-made global warming.” University of Pennsylvania Law School Professor Jason Scott Johnston even “expressed surprise that the case for global warming was so weak”.

Wasn’t this was all wrapped up by that Grade Four student in Beeville, Texas?

Sorry Professor Johnston although you’ve apparently been trying to concoct this attack since September 2008 your Justice is clearly not blind. This is a kangaroo court with the judge, jury and executioner all rolled into one ignorant pedant, even with the “helpful comments from David Henderson, Julia Mahoney, Ross McKitrick, Richard Lindzen, and Roger Pielke, Sr.”.

Perhaps Anthony’s “beagle” description is more accurate than he thinks.

The Beeville Science Fair Hoax – but look at the story the data tells

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“The Beeville Science Fair Hoax – but look at the story the data tells“. Republican activist Marc Morano publicised a report that a fourth grade Beeville Texas student’s science project which “disproved” global warming had been awarded a significant national prize. It turns out to be an elaborate, if stupid, hoax.

Anthony Watts starts discussing this but immediately changes the topic to the reliability of the Beeville weather station. Naturally, there is clear evidence of malicious adjustments to the temperature record…

EPA’s action Jackson on the “resolution of disapproval”

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EPA’s action Jackson on the “resolution of disapproval”. Anthony Watts posts a press release and the prepared remarks of U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson aka “clean Lisa” about, among other things, a resolution of disapproval proposed by Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, aka “dirty Lisa”.

Dirty Lisa doesn’t like anything to interfere with her oil industry supporters making money (and give her a little taste). She’s trying to undermine the EPA’s ability to, you know, perform environmental protection.

Anthony leaves the hard work of invoking gubmint conspiracies to his faithful commenters.

The day TV weather grew up

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“The day TV weather grew up“. Anthony Watts talks about the one thing a TV weatherman is actually qualified to talk about. Weather! In this case, the tornado “swarm” that stuck on April 3-4, 1974. He re-posts a blog article by Mike Smith about being the first TV weatherman to give timely tornado warnings shortly after that event.

Of course Mike seems to share Anthony’s perspective on climate change…

Minority report: 50 year warming due to natural causes

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“Minority report: 50 year warming due to natural causes“. Anthony Watts reposts a blog article by Dr. Roy Spencer. Roy has fiddled around (from his own comments: “this was the result of a couple of hours of work on the weekend, and I didn’t mean to start a whole new research effort”) and managed to amaze himself by extracting a correlation that he uses to claim an unspecified natural cause (“changes in cloud cover”?) for the last 50 years of warming.

How does he do this? Why by mashing together the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO) and Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) and only considering temperature change rate.

I've added the causation to Roy's correlation... After Roy Spencer, 2010/06/06.

Roy often shoots himself in the foot when he tries to use numbers and sure enough a disclaimer about a calculation error was posted within hours. Through the magic of denialist revision its gone now though. I should have grabbed the page for your entertainment.

Let’s say it together: “correlation is not causation.” Roy needs to present a clear mechanism for what he is describing. Turns out that what Roy has actually been plotting is temperature vs temperature, which obviously tracks itself very well…

Note that this computer model is getting a free pass from Anthony’s commenters as is the use of the “corrupt” CRUTem3 temperature data set from the vilified Dr. Phil Jones’ Climate Research Unit…