Tag Archives: Cherry-picking

Is It Time To Stop The Insanity Of Wasting Time and Money On More Climate Models?

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“Is It Time To Stop The Insanity Of Wasting Time and Money On More Climate Models?” (2015-09-14). Wait a second. Hasn’t the only faintly credible denialist argument been that all the climate modelling and climate projections are too preliminary? We should keep waiting, twiddling our thumbs, until perfect data and projections are in hand? Then, presumably, the denialists will swing into righteous eco-warrior action. No, for Dr. Tim Ball it’s now about wasteful funding. Apparently ignorance is again bliss.

I still flick a bored eye over to Anthony Watts’ clown convention every now and then, and this post made me laugh enough to spend a moment scrolling through the “science.”

Today Anthony has loaned his dunce’s pulpit to Sky Dragon kook Dr. Tim Ball so he can mutter that climate projections aren’t as precise as he requires, that there aren’t enough “stations”, and that if you copy and paste carefully enough even the IPCC can be made to admit that the data is awful. Shut the whole thing down!

Hard to put much credence in Dr. Ball’s “career as a climatologist” (actually he’s a retired geographer and semi-pro Letter to the Editor writer) when he’s still trying to sell the out-of-context “hide the decline” source code quote from 2009. That dog won’t hunt. Also, does he really think that climatologists are trying to forecast climate? Ball seems to have a very rudimentary notion of how his alleged profession gathers climate data, or how it is used. Most of his gotcha quotes stop just before the actual meaning is explained, but this can possibly be put down to a short attention span.

Hell, Dr. Ball seems to have even forgotten that “stations” aren’t the only way we gather climate data. Maybe he should dust off those National Geographic magazines and look for articles about “satellites.” They’re brill. They go everywhere!

Actually, Dr. Ball seems to hold Australian garden-variety denialist and conspiracy enthusiast (ask her about the Rothschilds) Joanne Nova in high esteem, so perhaps he’s hidden an admission of poor judgement amongst his contemptuous bluster.

My Blog Spawn

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“My Blog Spawn”. Thanks, I guess, to What’s Up With Watts for pointing out how Anthony Watts privately obsesses over his critics, in all the completely irrelevant ways possible. What a painful example of projection, resentment, back-of-the-classroom goonery, and (hard for him to fight the compulsion) cherry-picking. If he doesn’t stop Googling he may go blind!

WottsUpWithThat.com

blog_child_wottsupwiththat

Proprietor: Ben Lawson of Toronto, Canada

Some of Ben’s skills: Male model, ladies man, marathon runner, cook, peach harvester,Bad Santa, snowfall collector, a Mac technology specialist and Noble Swan

Reason for creating the blog: he got kicked off WUWT for multiple policy violations, got mad, still trying to get even.

Anthony wants you to know that I frivolously run marathons, but not that I’m a geologist. His way of deflecting my exposure of his bankrupt arguments is troll flickr for photos of me that he thinks are embarrassing, not to point out any actual errors on my part (hey Tony, here’s a tip; I have funnier ones on Facebook). Naturally my motivation, according to him, is revenge over unspecified “multiple policy violations” in my comments on his blog. Not his endless lying and remorseless Nixonian suppression of opponents.

Hats off to fellow “skewered” garbage collectors, currently vvattsupwiththat.com, wottsupwiththatblog.wordpress.com, whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com and hotwhopper.com. These days you have a stronger stomach that I!

Apparently Governor Brown, you’ve never visited the weather station at Lake Tahoe

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“Apparently Governor Brown, you’ve never visited the weather station at Lake Tahoe” (2012-08-13). Anthony Watts gets his shorts in a knot because the Governor of California, whom he derisively refers to as “moonbeam” says that “Global warming’s impact on Lake Tahoe is well documented.”

Now if there’s one thing Anthony likes it’s a tasty cherry-pick. His (unqualified) buddy Russ Steele has done the ‘sciencey analysis’ for him too! It’s all laid out on Russ’ website, concerned with “AGW Defeat” as well as security, liberty and property.

First Russ/Anthony decides that the Governor is referring to a particular Lake Tahoe weather station, one that they can spin to their own benefit.

Then he declares that the rise is all “Urban Heat Island” effect – a tennis court was built nearby in 1980! Actually, as Anthony knew, the courts were built in 1973 and can’t be honestly linked to the alleged artificial 1980 change in temperature trend. Which kinda happened globally, so that’s one heck of a tennis court.

Next, it’s also all bad weather station siting. There’s a fire barrel nearby, it must burn constantly! Anthony, of course, has no evidence about how long the fire barrel has been there, how often it was used, or at what time of day it was lit in comparison to the times of measurement. Still, fire barrel!

Next, he selects some other stations that show a different temperature trend (still up though, unless you squint… which Anthony does). This is the one thing that could be a legitimate argument, but of course he restricts himself to selected weather stations that suit his argument, not a scientifically legitimate regional comparison. Doing that might not make his case…

Finally, he declares that the scientists involved are “political hacks”. Surely if this was likely to stick he’d start and finish with this. And maybe demonstrate it clearly.

Well! Done and dusted for Anthony. A disused fire barrel and tennis courts in place long before a disputed temperature trend started have proven, once and for all, that there is no Global Warming. Never mind that his argument never rises above vague, un-verified supposition.

Note: This post was written so that comments made in a recent but unrelated post could be associated with the correct topic. It’s just run-of-the-mill denialist noise on Anthony’s part.

P.S. Love Anthony’s ominous reference to a critical commenter’s personal details, gleaned from IP address snooping. Classic passive-aggression and misdirection!

The “well funded” climate business – follow the money

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“The “well funded” climate business – follow the money” (2012-05-19). Anthony Watts tries to re-stir a cold pot: See how climate scientists are eagerly shoveling mistresses into the Ferrari’s they bought with their free gubmint money?

Joanne Nova (Australian holder of a Graduate Certificate in Science Communications and Rothschild obsessive) pulled out her sharpest crayons three years ago and laid it all out for the boffins at the Science and Public Policy Institute. Anthony remembered just now.

According to Jo-No the US government is giving seven billion dollars a year to those smug climate scientists! No wonder they’re all so happy to lie about global warming.

Wait, you mean they don’t get to stuff the cash into their pockets? It all goes to actual research costs? Surely all that gear just pops up from the ground. The scientists keep none of it? Oh.

What’s that you say? Most of the money on that chart is really for biofuel subsidies, solar power costs and the like? Actual energy? Oh.

Still, I bet plenty goes to campaigning against the rich. (Eat them, they’re delicious.) If the Heartland Institute and the Heritage Foundation spend all their money on partisan warfare then surely scientists do too. Oh.

Also, leading Senate intellectual Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe is fightin’ back against President Obama’s “war on affordable energy”. What’s putting our troops at risk? Not having big enough gas tanks.

The banner ads suggest that Google’s figured out what Anthony and his readers need. It’s hard to argue with ’em.
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Analysing the complete hadCRUT yields some surprising results

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“Analysing the complete hadCRUT yields some surprising results” (2011-08-04). Anthony Watts learns from a post by right-wing “Global Warming Policy Foundation” lobbyists about a post by Luboš Motl that proves that 30% of the Earth has cooled. Run from the Ice Age! Or something like that.

After five years of denialist pretense that the data was being hidden from them (because they had to go to the trouble of requesting it from the various national meteorological organizations that owned it) the unified release of the global data set used by the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia has forced them to switch to a new fake numbers game. Expect a lot more of this kind of transparent misdirection, designed to keep the uninformed public distracted. Expect Anthony to make a big fuss about it each time.

Luboš Motl's plot of HADCRU3 data showing historical warming or cooling trend.

Look at how much of that cRaZy blue there is!

So if we are to believe Motl, the Earth is actually 30% cooler than it was 77 years ago. Run from the Ice Age! No wait; some places have cooled even though most other places have warmed, so it’s not global warming. No wait, it’s that the HadCRUT3 temperature data comes from weather stations that only represent particular small areas, so it can’t tell us anything about global temperature. (Dang! They should have just used that one temperature station that records the whole planet.)

Err, maybe this is why scientists use statistics? To collect and objectively interpret large data sets with complex trends and arrive at an objective understanding.

Hold on. Is Motl really trying to make the point that unless every station shows a warming trend then we can’t claim that there is global warming? Is his point really so dogmatically stupid? Maybe, because in spite of his self-declared brilliance Motl has to admit that he got “standard deviation” mixed up with “root mean square“. Unfortunately he says “I don’t have the energy to redo all these calculations – it’s very time-consuming and CPU-time-consuming” but I’m sure it’s a wash, huh?

Anthony Watts and the “Global Warming Policy Foundation” are certainly happy to overlook this, because to them the fact that 30% of the recording stations show a cooling history apparently makes their heads reel. Not climate scientists however. Only an idiot would expect a trend to be uniformly expressed throughout a complex natural system.

Oh, that’s right. We’re talking about Anthony Watts, aren’t we?

Western snow pack is well above normal, Squaw Valley sets new all time snow record

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“Western snow pack is well above normal, Squaw Valley sets new all time snow record” (May 18, 2011). Anthony Watts returns to his habit of noting “Snow! Somewhere!“, in this case in the Western US where it turns out there is a lot of snow this spring:

All of the western states have snowpacks that are currently 110 to over 180 percent above normal with the exception of southern Colorado!!!!!!! [OK, the exclamation marks are my addition]

Thus disproving global warming forever and showing that those climate scientists were damn liars when they said that snowpack would decline because of global warming and cause terrible water shortages. (Which raises the question: can we really trust anything the government says? Maybe this snowpack data is a trick too!)

These posts are Anthony’s way of deceiving dim-wits who fail to realise that:

  • Climate change is not a uniform and linear global transition.
  • This is a very small cherry-picked region of the Earth that happens to match Anthony’s agenda.
  • Anthony’s trying to refute long-term predictions by drawing attention to short-term variation. (Hence his preëmptive admission that his post is from the “weather is not climate” department.)
  • Increased evaporation over oceans due to the warmer temperatures results in increased precipitation over land.
  • In a warmer world it’s less frequently too cold to snow (look up relative humidity).
  • Anthony is quoting newspaper articles of “alarmist” warnings about declining snowpack, not the published science.
  • Bet you can add a few more yourself.

Funny how taking a step back is always so fatal to Anthony's arguments.

Stanford claims farmers “dodged impacts of global warming” in the USA, but you have to find it first.

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“Stanford claims farmers “dodged impacts of global warming” in the USA, but you have to find it first.“ (May 6, 2011). When Anthony Watts does his own posting you can be sure that it will be short and dishonest. Here Anthony disputes a Stanford University report on the impact of global warming on US crop production, which states:

Global warming is likely already taking a toll on world wheat and corn production, according to a new study led by Stanford University researchers. But the United States, Canada and northern Mexico have largely escaped the trend.

Anthony rebuttal is to slap together charts of US corn yield and US temperature to “prove” that noisy regional weather data shows no global warming. He also alludes to the comical “CO2 is essential for life” argument.

Yep, US corn yields are going up. It’s gotta mean something! Anthony grudgingly allows that “some of the gains seen below are likely the result of improved seed lines”, but the honest first approximation is that all of corn yield gains are “likely the result of improved seed lines”. After-all he’s pretty sure that there hasn’t been any change in the climate, isn’t he? Sez Anthony:

What global warming? The last two years of annual mean temperature for the USA (2009, 2010) is about the same as it was in 1980 and 1981, and lower than many years since.

So Anthony’s entire argument is to compare two years of the US annual mean temperature, 1980 and 1981, against the two most recent years and declare that since they are “about the same” this proves that there’s no global warming? Dude, you’re a frickin’ cherry-pickin’ idiot.

Anthony’s lame “we’ve seen exactly this before” deception is only faintly plausible if he deliberately removes the default trend line from his chart. We can fix that though (replicate it here, but ignore Anthony’s advice to exclude the trend line):

Anthony Watts took care to remove the trend from his version of this chart.

As usual Anthony’s also using several levels of cherry-picking to gin-up his “What global warming?” climate claim aside from the two-year comparison windows. The US Corn Belt is not the same geographic area as the continental US, so he’s not demonstrating anything at all about the Corn Belt climate. Likewise, the continental US represents only a fraction of the global record.

The Stanford article also mentions an US trend towards anomalously cooler summers, which coupled with the unequivocal rise in annual average temperature implies warmer winters. US agriculture has been partly insulated from global warming by keeping the growing season temperatures within the crop’s tolerance zone. Why didn’t Anthony address that? Hmmm.

The GISS divergence problem: Ocean Heat Content

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“The GISS divergence problem: Ocean Heat Content“. Butter wouldn’t melt in citizen-scientist Bob Tisdale’s mouth, would it? He’s back with new proof that there’s no global warming and that them gubmint scientists is stupid. Anthony Watts approvingly notes the alleged “[denialist] reality versus [Goddard Institute for Space Studies] projection disparity” and declares “a GISS miss by a country mile.” Game over, yuck, yuck, yuck!

Tisdale’s claim is that Ocean Heat Content (OHC) hasn’t risen as fast as an old GISS model projected (note that this was not a prediction). Why? Well, because he can slap a projected straight line (Bob still loves ’em) on a chart that rises faster than the observations. Therefore, warmists are liars and their computers are too. This handily side-steps the real issue: Ocean Heat Content is unquestionably rising. We call this global warming.

Except… Even Anthony has to give Bob a nudge in the comments for failing to admit that his citizen-science fair project is showing “anomalies” i.e. deviations from the trend and not the trend itself. Sure, the target man on the street won’t spot it, but it’s like plastering “kick me” all over your own back for the benefit of informed scientific observers like Tamino, to whom Bob’s posts are like candy to a baby. Tamino indulges his sweet tooth in Favorite Denier Tricks, or How to Hide the Incline.

So how does Tisdale think he’s proven that the alarmist GISS projection of increasing OHC doesn’t match the measured increase? By using the classic denialist trick of showing the projection over a very particularly chosen time period from on a very particularly chosen point. This allows him to imply that OHC is flat but the GISS projection is increasingly divergent from “reality”. Anthony is silent on the this half of Bob’s deception because in the denialist playbook cherry-picking is enthusiastically endorsed.

The following graphic collates Tamino’s deconstruction of Bob Tisdale’s game-playing. Perhaps Bob should submit his work to the National Science Fair’s Beeville branch?

New cherry-picking and tunnel vision from Bob "Magoo" Tisdale. Deconstruction by Tamino.

Are Gulf Of Mexico Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies Near To Record Levels?

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“Are Gulf Of Mexico Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies Near To Record Levels?” As Anthony Watts foolishly suggests in his one sentence contribution to Bob Tisdale’s guest post, “the devil is in the details.” He is indeed…

Bob is trying to dispute the claim by meteorologist Jeff Masters that the recent Midwest deluge [was] enhanced by near-record Gulf of Mexico sea surface temperatures. Although Jeff is talking about weather, Bob Tisdale recognizes the threat. This might mean that global warming really is happening! Of course it’s not, so he accuses Jeff of  a “contrived” claim and counters that “…over the past 80 years, there is no global warming signal in the Gulf of Mexico SST data.”

My blue trend is just eyeballing but it's a lot less contrived than Bob Tisdale's flat red line in this example from his "analysis".

Unfortunately for Bob any open-eyed reader will see that every chart he tries to use as evidence reveals that he has deliberately picked dishonest comparison points that minimize the increase and he has ignored everything in-between. Details, details.

Statistics, Bob. Look into ’em. There’s a reason scientists use ’em.

Union of Concerned Scientists – Unwarranted Concern about the Northeast US

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“Union of Concerned Scientists – Unwarranted Concern about the Northeast US“. A guest post by Alan Cheetham of Appinsys (an unskeptical version of Skeptical Science, with an interest in portraits of Mohammed). Did you know that the Union of Concerned Scientists, who are just washed-out librul anti-nuke gravy-train types, has been exaggerating climate change in the Northeastern USA? (Nothing to say about the rest of the world?)

[Across the globe, and] “here in the Northeast, the climate is changing. Records show that spring is arriving earlier, summers are growing hotter, and winters are becoming warmer and less snowy. These changes are consistent with global warming, an urgent phenomenon driven by heat-trapping emissions from human activities.” – 2006, from climatechoices.org

“In fact”, there has been no trend in temperature change there in a hundred years, and sometimes the “record” was, like, years ago!

Cheat-sheet:

  • When denialists like Anthony Watts and Alan Cheetham want to present the illusion of a recent cooling period, they will reduce the number of years of temperature data until they can.
  • When denialists like Anthony and Alan want to hide recent (post 1975) AGW warming, they increase the number of years they present.
  • Denialists like Anthony and Alan will always cherry-pick a convenient location and claim that it disproves a global trend.
  • Denialists like Anthony and Alan will always fixate on an outlier if it suits their argument, the wilder the better.

Unfortunately for Anthony, in this case the “trick” is in plain sight. In all “flat” temperature graphs the trend from 1975 onwards is a rising one. Here’s an example, the “summer” temperature trend:

Alan Cheetham's "flat" temperature trend — of just the northeast USA because nothing else exists — with post-1975 trend indicated.

I guess we should listen to the Union of Unconcerned Scientists.