Second Mann spoof video removed

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“Second Mann spoof video removed“. Anthony Watts says that “Somebody just can’t handle satire.” I think the real problem is that somebody is determined to slander a scientist.

But fear not, another ambitiously named astroturf outfit called “Minnesota Majority” has popped up, Whack-A-Mole style, to re-post it.

This reminds me of watching drunken streakers at a college football game.

[Funny, the “Minnesota Majority”, springing to the defense of “Minnesotans For Global Warming” has the same principals. Astroturf puffery.]

Guardian Continues To Spread Misinformation About Eyjafjallajokull

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“Guardian Continues To Spread Misinformation About Eyjafjallajokull“. Self-important non-volcanologist Steven Goddard tries to use an error in the reporting about the CO2 released from the erupting Eyjafjallajokull volcano to repeat the disproved denialist meme that human CO2 output is insignificant (“we know that plants, soil and the oceans generate 30 times as much CO2 as all fossil fuel burning combined“).

Let’s just stop here for a moment and remember that the “plants, soil and the oceans” are part of the active carbon cycle. Barring human intervention, they are effectively in balance. Fossil fuel CO2 output is not counteracted. That, in a nutshell, is the bloody problem! Steven’s deliberately repeating a denialist deceit.

Some of the original reporting incorrectly listed the volcano’s CO2 output as 15,000 tonnes/day, and compared it to the daily 206,465 tonnes of CO2 that would normally be generated by the canceled transatlantic flights. It turns out that the correct estimate of the volcano’s CO2 output should have been 150,000 tonnes, possibly ranging up to 300,000.

So the media got this a bit wrong at first. Damn them! Of course this is just irrelevant whining as far as the climate change debate goes.

It’s interesting to note that the daily CO2 emissions of transatlantic flights alone are equivalent to a continuous full-on volcanic eruption, isn’t it?

Solar Dynamics Observatory – STUNNING first images and movies

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“Solar Dynamics Observatory – STUNNING first images and movies“. No argument from me on this one…

SDO First Images - Full Disk Multicolor. Source: NASA.

http://www.nasa.gov/sdo Go there!

Not a joke: Gore’s “Inconvenient Youth”

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Not a joke: Gore’s “Inconvenient Youth” Anthony Watts ‘subtly’ alludes to the Hitler Youth when talking about a training program called “Inconvenient Youth” that Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection has initiated.

Just a copy and paste of the press release with a few poorly thought-out comments appended, like this sneer about a vegetable oil-powered VW seen in a video clip. It “still produces CO2 when the oil is burned.” The difference, of course, is that vegetable oil is carbon neutral because it is derived from a component (plants!)of the active carbon cycle. CO2 released by coal or petroleum has been sequestered from the carbon cycle for millions of years.

Oh and don’t buy Apple products, because Al Gore is on their Board of Directors!

Airlines Blame Flawed Computer Modelling For Up To $1.7 Billion Loss

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“Airlines Blame Flawed Computer Modelling For Up To $1.7 Billion Loss“. Anthony Watts rounds up some like-minded comments about the impact of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruption. Apparently gubmints are ruining everything and computer models are all flawed.

The IATA, a lobby group for the airline industry, would have preferred to roll the dice and keep flying through the ash clouds from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland. The astroturf Global Warming Policy Foundation says ‘right on, them gubmits can’t tell us what to do!’

The GWFP is actually just co-opting this topic to declare that they want “to bring reason, integrity and balance to a climate debate that has become seriously unbalanced, irrationally alarmist, and all too often depressingly intolerant”. We have to “balance between risk and reward“, in this instance, the airline’s profits versus their passenger’s lives. Just like coal and oil company profits have to be ‘balanced’.

The dangers of flying through an ash cloud. Source: BBC News.

What’s happening in the air? The criticized Numerical Atmospheric-dispersion Modelling Environment (NAME) has been updated with new safety thresholds based on better detection and risk assessments. Commercial flight has resumed with much smaller “no-fly” zones.

Denialists are trying to paint this as another example of a computer modeling failure, but the system, which accurately modeled the ash dispersion, has simply been updated with better risk analysis.

Solar Dynamics Observatory first light images to be released today

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“Solar Dynamics Observatory first light images to be released today“. A NASA press release. The denialist line will undoubtably be to only trust observations from this new satellite, so we’ll have to wait for at least 100 years before we can have enough information to act.

Here’s the SDO’s dedicated NASA website.

Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite subsystems. Source: NASA.

Prominent Climategate Figure Threatens Lawsuit over Spoof Video – No Cap-and-Trade Coalition Says “Bring it on”

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Prominent Climategate Figure Threatens Lawsuit over Spoof Video – No Cap-and-Trade Coalition Says “Bring it on” This is a funny one, especially because Anthony Watts’ buddy “Charles the Moderator” has done the posting (read to the end). I’m left wondering – is Dr. Mann thin-skinned or are these guys just stupid?

First act: “Minnesotans for Global Warming” (M4GW) create a video that they posted on YouTube called Hide the Decline that defames Dr. Michael Mann with baseless accusations that he falsified climate data. The video also infringes on copyright and exploits Dr. Mann’s image without permission. Pretty much a legal slam-dunk for Dr. Mann. Usually these slimy things are brushed off, but this time Dr. Mann had his lawyers act on the matter as Rush Limbaugh had begun promoting it. M4GW knew they’d been caught out and immediately caved in, but of course the defamatory video had already spread far and wide and had lodged itself in the thoughts of the feeble-minded.

Hilarity! In a defamatory kind of way.

Second act: “Little guy” M4GW turns out to be a limb of the astroturf operation No Cap and Trade, “an alliance of organizations concerned about the devastating impact that a cap-and-trade scheme could have on American families, businesses and the faltering US economy.” They’ve staged a media event, complete with dancing mascots, to announce that they’ve posted the original defamatory video as well as a revised version that presumably substitutes a malicious caricature for the images of Dr. Mann. Why “presumably”? Go to the third act…

Third Act: YouTube pulls the No Cap and Trade version because of different copyright violation charge by JibJab Media.

Oops.

Denouement: Why didn’t Anthony post this himself? Well he’s been on the wrong end of a copyright violation accusation before, hasn’t he? See this Climate Crock of the Week video and related coverage at Climate Progress.

Of Hawks and Handsaws

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“Of Hawks and Handsaws“. Willis Eschenbach, citizen-scientist, has more pretty pictures with data stuck on top of them. He’s figured out that if you slap a bunch of thick lines representing cyclic annual trends on top of each other and obscure their order, you can hide the incline pretty handily.

His expert eyeballing tells him that there’s an Urban Heat Island effect at work in Scandinavia! You betcha. And there’s nothing like a quote from Shakespeare to give an intellectual air to an empty argument. (The cheesy clip-art kind of undermines that though.)

Who needs to bother with statistical analysis when you can pull a powerful ‘intuitive’ conclusion like this from thin air? Italics mine:

At least part of the warming in the US and the NORDKLIM datasets is the result of UHI distortion of the records. An unknown but likely significant amount of this UHI heating is due to direct energy consumption in the cities.

You know what would give this claim some credibility? Credible statistics.

Another indication of MWP and LIA being global

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“Another indication of MWP and LIA being global“. Suddenly Anthony Watts likes temperature proxies because here they seem to go his way… In this case he’s been pointed toward a juicy Letter in Nature back in August of 2009 that proves that the Medieval Warm Period was global. At least in one place. OK then, what do we really have?

The denialist CO2 Science website (aka “Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change”, founded by a Peabody Energy operative) posted their own summary and “adapted” figure from the Nature Letter “2,000-year-long temperature and hydrology reconstructions from the Indo-Pacific warm pool.” It used Oxygen18 isotopes from planktonic foraminifera to estimate historical temperatures.

Strangely neither Anthony or CO2 Science provide a quick link to the claimed proof, but you can read the abstract here. Perhaps their coyness was triggered by the last sentence of the real abstract (emphasis mine)?

A companion reconstruction of delta18O of sea water—a sea surface salinity and hydrology indicator—indicates a tight coupling with the East Asian monsoon system and remote control of IPWP [Indo-Pacific warm pool] hydrology on centennial–millennial timescales, rather than a dominant influence from local SST variation.

Although the authors also state that “Reconstructed SST was, however, within error of modern values” that doesn’t stop Anthony’s buddies from slapping a ruler on the “adapted” figure and declaring “we calculate that the Medieval Warm Period was about 0.4°C warmer than the Current Warm Period.“

Doug Keenan finally gets the tree data

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“Doug Keenan finally gets the tree data“. Anthony Watts declares “victory!” because Guardian writer Fred Pearce reports that “part-time climate analyst, Doug Keenan” who “admits he has no expertise in tree-ring analysis” has used a Freedom of Information request to force Queen’s University to give him proprietary Irish tree-ring study data that covers a 7000 year time span.

Keenan hopes to somehow prove that the Irish tree-rings are evidence of a widespread medieval warm period. Dr. Baillie has published a study with his colleagues showing that Irish oaks record temperature changes poorly, so good luck with that.

Anthony says “It will be interesting to see what independent analysis shows.” Wouldn’t that presumptive eventual Global Warming disproof be the actual “victory”? I think Anthony knows that this quick celebration will be all that he can extract from it other than the start of a new round of misrepresentation.

“Keenan has become notorious for pursuing a series of vitriolic disputes with British academics over climate data.” How unusual.