““Catastrophic” retreat of glaciers in Spitsbergen“. Someone’s sent Anthony Watts a scan of an anecdotal Soviet (can we trust those Commies?) report about Arctic Ice from 1943. Gosh, there’s natural climate variability? No. Way!
So how could anything happening now be anything other than natural? Stands to reason.
“WUWT Radio“. Anthony Watts ponders adding an internet radio program to his empire of deception. I guess he wants to take advantage of the chance to make statements that flow by too quickly to be scrutinized and can’t be rebutted. Perfect!
I have to say that Anthony sounds just like he reads. The transcripts would make for entertaining reading though…
“History suggests: don’t bet on La Nina this year“. Bob Tisdale prepares the troops for the unfortunate reality that the end of the Pacific Ocean’s 2009/10 El Niño current will likely not be the start of a cooling La Niña. It’s probably going to stay warm and perhaps even warm up more in spite of the cooling La Niña influence.
But don’t worry, if you fiddle with the numbers enough you can pretend it’s “natural” and continue to ignore the human contribution to climate change. Especially if you use a ten-year smoothing function.
“Climate idiocy at the Monterey Bay Aquarium – cow with a gas mask“. The Monterey Bay Aquarium had a goofy image in a display about threats facing ocean wildlife (including climate change) and now Anthony Watts can’t “marvel at the sea otters, jellyfish, and the Mola” because “it’s just another political hack.”
Get over yourself, Anthony.
“If Sea Level Was Rising, Wouldn’t Someone Have Noticed?” Anthony Watts gives us a post by Steven Goddard, who asks a stupid question and provides a stupid answer.
Short smart answer: the scientists noticed. They’re the ones who measure things.
Somehow alleged-geologist Steven thinks that cherry-picked historical photos from the California coast, a region with notable geological faulting and oil extraction, are conclusive proof that the sea-level has not risen. Also, apparently tides don’t exist. Nor do any other causes of subsidence or uplift.
This is typical of Steven’s posts; a tiny actual fact turned 180°, taken out of context and then used to draw support unwarranted conclusions.
“The Gulf oil rig explosion – on the scene photos“. Dramatic photos, and a smidgeon of insight, about the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion have been provided to Anthony Watts and he posts it.
Commenters are, of course, noting that “more oil seeps naturally than from human spills“, and that “the Feds have only made the problem worse by their slow and bumbling action/inaction” (maybe this can be spun as Obama’s “Katrina”!!!). There have also been deeply delusional speculations about “deliberate sabotage for political reasons“.
As noted by Climate Progress from the Wall Street Journal;
BP’s “it can’t happen here” mentality is no doubt why it decided to save $500,000 and didn’t bother with “a remote-control shutoff switch that two other major oil producers, Norway and Brazil, require,” the WSJ reported (subs. req’d).
BP knows it can’t blame the feds since it fought efforts to change the voluntary self-regulation laws, the industry opposed mandates for the remote-control shutoff switch, BP sold the Minerals Management Service on a laughable planning scenario — it was “unlikely that an accidental surface or subsurface oil spill would occur from the proposed activities” — and the industry, not the feds, have the relevant equipment to stop the gusher.
“NASA Satellite Tracking the Gulf Oil Spill“. This is one of those off-topic posts that Anthony Watts spits out now and then to “prove” that he’s not merely obsessed with denying Global Warming. It’s just a copy and paste job of a NASA press release (which Anthony doesn’t link to) with satellite imaging of the massive oil spill coming from the destroyed BP Deepwater Horizon wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico.
It looks like this spill may rival the Alaskan Exxon Valdez spill of 1989. Can I say “Drill, baby, drill”?
NASA image of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Anthony; do you really trust those nasty NASA satellites?
“Climate Craziness of the Week – MSM jumps on alarming headline“. Anthony Watts dismisses a University of Leeds report that the melting of floating ice, mainly because of salinity and temperature differences, can make a small contribution to sea-level rise. And the “MSM” are talking about it! Shocking. The paper is Recent loss of floating ice and the consequent sea level contribution by Shepherd, et al. 2010 in Geophysical Research Letters.
Nothing like mocking new knowledge because it isn’t significant enough. That’s anti-science I guess. The general opinion was that the melting of floating ice would have no impact on sea-level because of Archimedes’ principle, but it turns out that the estimated volume difference is 742 km²per year! A large number to be sure, but spread over the entire ocean very modest.
Anthony mocks this because the calculated annual contribution is an almost unmeasurable 49 micrometers (0.000049 m). But what would his position be if this hadn’t been calculated and included? Undoubtably outrage.
“Is Melting Ice Warming The Arctic?” Steven Goddard has an insight to offer about today’s earlier WUWT post about Screen and Simmonds’ 2010 Letter to Nature about the contribution of Sea Ice melting to Arctic warming. Did you know that “ice loss has occurred mainly during the summer“? This is one of those curious posts where, to attack a conclusion, the denialist argument implicitly accepts that climate change is happening. Here Steven has chosen to argue about which months the warming is happening, not whether it is happening at all…
UAH Arctic Temp vs NSIDC Ice. After "climateinsiders.wordpress.com".
Enthusiastic arm-waving follows. Steven’s confused by the fact that Arctic climate warming appears stronger in the winter months. Guess what? Ice won’t melt at either -20°C or -2°C, only at 0°C. What happens when ice melts? It absorbs energy. Perhaps the melting of sea ice is buffering rising Arctic temperatures in the summer months.
What will happen when Steven discovers that apples fall down? Stay away from high school physics textbooks Steven, you might have your world rocked.
“Study: Melting sea ice major cause of warming in Arctic“. Anthony Watts tries to distract from a Nature climate paper [update: PDF here.] by muttering about transient temperature recording errors that never actually enter the climate data.
Dr. James Screen of the University of Melbourne reports that Arctic climate change is driven more by declining sea ice than by warmer air circulating up from lower latitudes.
Sea ice 2007 minimum. NASA
Wott's Up With That? 