“Australia dumps Carbon Trading Scheme“. Politicians focussing on short-term political goals in the face of partisan opposition is somehow proof to Anthony Watts that Global Warming isn’t happening. Whatever.
By the way they delayed the carbon trading scheme, they didn’t “dump” it.
“Quote of the week #34: NASA doubts climate model certainty“. Anthony Watts wants you to believe that because a NASA pamphlet from 1998 is not “completely certain” about Global Warming, they must now be taking orders from the secret Al Gore gubmint. It’s called science, Anthony. Better data, better understanding, better conclusions. Is that a difficult concept?
It’s the denialist mind that is frozen in time and unable to process new information. That’s why they’re called denialists.
Anthony’s also jumping onto this month’s denialist theme that “historic temperatures can be modeled with a constant linear trend + a 60 year cycle.” Too bad they can’t actually explain the correlation, too bad the correlation doesn’t persist, too bad the “constant linear trend” is up (what’s behind that I wonder).
HuffPo: “Deniers” clogging up the blogosphere. Now the Huffington Post isn’t exactly science central, but watching Anthony Watts try to mock them is like watching a cretin laugh at an idiot.
The article is here; Climate Deniers are Polluting the Blogosphere, but Anthony’s summary is “Gosh, excercising [sp] free speech and questioning assumptions, why, why, they’re TERRIBLE!” He also repeats the unsupported hope that “the bulk of opinion has shifted.”
Actually among other things the article identifies these familiar denialist tactics:
Deniers often pile up comments on climate change-related articles, most of which may be grouped into the following categories:
- Humor (i.e. “What’s next, cow farts?” or “Since carbonated beverages release CO2 into the atmosphere, will CalEPA be outlawing beer and sodas in California?”)
- Political (making fun of Al Gore, partisan name calling)
- Bullying, name calling, threats
- Despair (i.e. “we’re all doomed, humans will go extinct anyway”)
- Junk science — quoting disreputed sources that reinforce denier preconceptions, or using simple but wrong aphorisms (confusing weather and climate, or saying the climate is always changing)
- Obfuscation – burying your opposition under a mountain of obscure but usually irrelevant statistics
- Economic fear — (i.e. “if we take action on climate, all businesses will leave CA, and we’ll lose jobs”)
Looks to me like someone’s noticed Anthony’s army of ditto-heads.
“Who says asphalt isn’t natural?” Why is it that when scientists report something surprising Anthony Watts has to sneer? Here Anthony posts a University of California, Santa Barbara press release titled “Scientists discover underwater asphalt volcanoes“.
I guess Anthony sees it as a chance to build on the theme that scientists don’t know nuthin’. It’s especially hard for him to resist when it gives him an incidental chance to pump his discredited “analysis” of US weather stations. Today he includes a cherry-picked Utah “climate monitoring station” that has its temperature sensors in a paved parking lot. Is this station used for climate data? Who knows.
Asphalt volcano schematic. Source: University of California, Santa Barbara.
Quite interesting actually. Natural oil seeps are well-known, but this an unusual kind of deposit. By chance I have a natural “asphalt” specimen of my own, collected from a small High Arctic tar sand deposit.
“Climate Change and the dinosaurs“. Anthony Watts has found a press release from Plymouth University. Geological evidence from Norway suggests that during the Cretaceous period, characterized by substantially higher CO2 levels than today, there were several abrupt temperature drops:
over a period of a few hundred or a few thousand years, ocean temperatures fell from an average of 13 degrees centigrade to between eight and four degrees.
Anthony’s implication is that this kind of ancient temperature change shows that there are potential natural drivers as strong as the theorized current man-made changes. So it mustn’t be our fault this time either.
Of course the study found evidence of sudden temperature drops, not rises.
“ENSO Update“. Weatherman Joseph D’Aleo tells us that the Pacific Ocean El Niño current will be fading soon. I suppose this means that any warming trend must be natural.
“Gore associate said to be named in brewing ethics scandal“. Anthony Watts is excited that a Republican operative is promising a scandalous revelation about a Gore Obama associate on talk radio today.
Update:
Surprising documents made available to this author reveal that Assistant Secretary of Energy Cathy Zoi has a huge financial stake in companies likely to profit from the Obama administration’s “green” policies.
Those “surprising documents”? Disclosure forms submitted by Zoi when she was hired by the Department of Energy. Ooooh, good sleuthing.
“Global warming: The Oxburgh Inquiry was an offer he couldn’t refuse.” A criminal conspiracy theory from Thomas Fuller, a denialist political commentator at the San Francisco Examiner, who asks a number of ominous leading questions about the Oxburgh Inquiry into the claimed scientific criticisms that arose from the Climategate e-mails.
Do I believe the ‘mob directed the investigation?’ Of course not. Do I believe that Lord Oxburgh had additional reasons to weight the findings of his investigation in favor of the status quo? It’s certainly possible. Do I think that having an underworld connection to renewable energy subsidies prejudices almost every decision made about renewable energy? Definitely.
Eeek! Sounds like a job for Steven Seagal.
Note that Fuller was a very early actor in the effort to leverage the inconsequential stolen Climate Research Unit e-mails into a scientific and political scandal.
“Predictions Of Global Mean Temperatures & IPCC Projections“. A guest post by Girma Orssengo “B. Tech, MASc, PhD”. He’s created a mathematical model that predicts global cooling by about 0.42 deg C by 2030. Good work! Take the rest of the day off, everyone.
Uh oh, he doesn’t even know the name of the institution whose temperature data he has used. What is the “Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the Hadley Center”? CRU is part of the University of East Anglia. The Hadley Centre is part of the Meteorological Office.
Left unmentioned is the critical mechanism behind his “mathematical model”. What drives all this? I vote for mermaids. Wait, make that pirates. Or… pirates and mermaids, working together.
Update 2010/05/13: I must have rushed this post, here’s Dr. Orssengo’s evidence in chart form:
Not a great fit or even a prediction of declining temperature. Source: WUWT.
Graham comes to his senses, dumps support for climate bill, “Lurch” in a lurch. A Republican politician, South Carolina’s Senator Graham, withdraws his support for an energy bill because he doesn’t like an immigration bill. Clearly, the problem was with the energy bill and Sen. Graham as “come to his senses”.
Oh, wait. The Washington Post article actually says that Sen. Graham felt that “only a focused effort on a climate and energy bill could ensure its passage.“
Kind of the opposite of Anthony’s headline.
Anthony’s commenters aren’t fooled though, they know that Sen. Graham is a despised “Democrat in Republican clothing.”
Wott's Up With That? 