“Poudre River Sets A Record“. Steven Goddard wants us to know that a flooding river in Colorado is proof that last winter was cold. Therefore there has been no Global Warming. Thanks for settling that once and for all Steven!
Oh, wait. We don’t rely on local short-term weather patterns to understand climate trends, do we?
“New Dogs; Old Tricks“. Like the croaking raven, Steve McIntyre spends his days rasping out “the trick!” Steven Mosher assures us that this somnambulistic accusation is “largely misunderstood by nearly everyone discussing it, except Steve and a few of his readers.” Such brilliant minds that can, like the Emperor of fable, discern something so invisible to everyone else! I presume Mosher includes himself in that select few.
Mosher wants us to know that Steve McIntyre has begun a series of curmudgeonly posts about his critics, focussing strangely on desmogblog.com‘s summary of Brian Angliss’ exposure of McIntyre’s false accusations about dendrochronology climate evidence.
Here’s a short version of the years-old puffed up controversy: “northern” tree rings correlate with interpreted climate trends up until about 1960 when they suddenly began showing an opposite trend. This means that “northern” tree rings are a useful climate indicator in older times because they match other measured trends. But after 1960 they don’t respond the same way as other indicators, so they shouldn’t be used in the most modern era. Why the change? I don’t think it’s understood yet. Why use the older data? Because it’s a good indicator and the data can be accurately collected. Seems kind of straight-forward to me. But Steven McIntyre claims that if tree rings stopped correlating to climate then they shouldn’t be used even for the time periods where they work. This is kind of like drinking from a bottle of milk every day and when later the milk starts to turn sour declaring that it must always have been sour.
Here’s a trick, Steven (and Steve): spend all your time implying malicious motivations by your critics and make vague insinuations about their arguments while talking as little as possible about the actual subject. You guys are good at that one.
As Steven Mosher grandly declares, we can indeed “watch the things [a slippery denialist] chooses to discuss and which things get ignored.” [my revision] Like the fact that so little of the scientific evidence of Global Warming is legitimately challenged by the denialists and how much time they spend talking about personalities and punctuation…
“What is PIPS?” Steven Goddard defends his continued use of the US Navy’s deprecated Polar Ice Prediction System (PIPS) Arctic Sea Ice model. The US Navy uses it! Case closed. This is the same obstinate mindset that lies at the root of Anthony Watts’ obsession with surface weather station records. PIPS is not intended for climate usage. It is a repurposed navigational tool.
Steven likes PIPS because, as the Navy states, “PIPS 2.0 often over-predicts the amount of ice in the Barents Sea and therefore often places the ice edge too far south.” This is very useful for a desperate denialist.
Steven concludes by stating that any critics “ignore the facts, and post instead what suits their agenda.” Unsurprisingly, this is actually Steven’s motivation for using PIPS. It’s the easiest to manipulate toward a desired conclusion. Just restrict your analysis to the areas where PIPS over-predicts ice and pass it off as impartial.
“GISTEMP is High“. Steven Goddard discovers that temperatures measured at ground-level are not the same as temperatures measured in the troposphere. Well, learning is a good thing I suppose.
He also discovers that different data-sets have a different geographic basis! The GISS data-set attempts to include high Arctic value, while the HadCRUT3 data-set (which Steven calls “Had-Crut”) excludes those values. Shocking.
The dastardly GISS data-set estimates 2010 to be the “warmest ever“, while HadCRUT3 expects 2010 to be the “fifth warmest ever“. It seems that Steven has been reduced to trying to cherry-pick the data-set that shows the least warming. Whatever happened to the claims of cooling? An inconvenient memory apparently.
“October Through March Was the Snowiest On Record In The Northern Hemisphere“. Steven Goddard pretends once again that regional weather is the same as global climate while making snide remarks about Nobel laureates. This is B.S. to fool the gullible and Steven probably knows it.
But I have to ask; is his “no Global Warming” argument getting so weak that cherry-picking locations is no longer enough? Does he also have to pretend that higher snowfall is an indicator of cold temperatures? Since when does “more snow” = “colder”? Snow volumes depend on air moisture, which drops with temperature. So more winter snow actually means warmer winter conditions.
Maybe no-one will notice the logic disconnect, Steven.
By the way, I love how the numbers from the meteorological offices that suit Steven are gobbled up eagerly, but the ones that don’t suit him are (very) darkly questioned. Are the Met offices liars or aren’t they?
An aside, since I’m covering this WUWT post late and there are lots of comments over there. Steven is getting more and more juvenile in his response to critical comments and Anthony has contributed this revealing editorial remark:
REPLY: Phil, I’ll explain it for you. As a publicly funded professor at a major university who is too timid to put his name to his words, who uses a university email address and IP infrasturcture, and often posts inflammatory comments, all your posts automatically go to the penalty box along with SPAM for examination. When they are examined they get released.
Want more respect? Want to get out of the penalty box reserved for weasels on the public dole that are always critical but too cowardly to criticize on the same open level? Then have the courage to put you name to your words like I do every day and I’ll elevate you. Otherwise stop your whining. – Anthony Watts
That’s a pretty shocking display of prejudice against presumed public employees, proof of willingness to impede critical comments, and an unethical willingness to try to intimidate opponents by revealing personal information. So much for Anthony’s vaunted “open forum”. It goes further downhill from there. Disgusting.
Anthony you are an unethical, unscientific, hypocritical, partisan dissembler. Steven, you’re just an enthusiastically blinkered denialist.
“Seven Months of Winter at NCAR“. Steven Goddard once again shouts about local weather to conceal the truth about climate. Here’s his evidence. Real climatologist Kevin Trenberth idly mentions a Colorado October cold snap in one of the stolen “Climategate” e-mails! A Met Office press release from ten years ago wasn’t accurate enough! Scottish ski resorts had profitable seasons! Steve’s canceled his kid’s soccer practices due to poor weather!
Funny, the real data is pretty solidly against Steven’s deceptive posturing – NASA: Easily the hottest April — and hottest Jan-April — in temperature record – Plus a new record 12-month global temperature, as predicted.
From Murphy et al. 2009.
Steven also repeats the misrepresentation of Kevin Trenberth’s “travesty” comment. Hint: it wasn’t about deceiving the public or faulty climate models. It was about insufficient instrumentation.
Same old denialist lies from Steven Goddard.
“Taiwan sinking: Subsidence or Global Warming Induced Sea Level Rise?“. Anthony Watts wants you to think that rising sea-levels anywhere on Earth are due to subsidence and subsidence alone. Especially in Taiwan. And if anyone, such as in this AFP news report Rising sea levels threaten Taiwan, suggests that it could be sea-level rise due to Global Warming, they should be flooded with hostile correspondence.
It’s certainly true that uncontrolled groundwater (or oil) extraction can produce significant local subsidence. The problem with Anthony’s attempt at misdirection is that this kind of subsidence is highly variable, even within the affected locality. So it’s kind of hard to use as an excuse to wave away regional sea-level changes.
Come to think of it, this is exactly like Anthony’s discredited obsession with surface station temperature records. Cherry-picked instances invoked in the hope of discrediting the wider trend. We’ll be hearing more mutterings on this topic, I think.
“The decrease in upper ocean heat content from March to April was 1C – largest since 1979“. Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. tries on his deceptive “where’s the beef?” complaint about measurement of ocean heat content again. Phil Klotzbach from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center has just reported that there has been a drop in the upper ocean heat anomaly.
Actually, the Climate Prediction Center is only talking about the upper 300m of the ocean, and only in the eastern half of the Pacific Ocean. So Dr. Pielke is enthusiastically extrapolating well beyond his data while also carefully ignoring as much inconvenient data as possible. He even chooses to display only 12 months of data to prove the climate trend! That’s weather, not climate, and when denialists do this they’re usually trying to hide something.
So we’ve got an non-significant time period and a global conclusion being drawn from a regional information. Even still the trend only applies to a cherry-picked subset (upper 300m) of that data! Everything else is waved away. We’re not watching Perry Mason at work here, are we?
Here’s Dr. Pielke’s dubious plot:
And here’s an example I pulled together from the CPC’s original data with a bit longer timeline:
Doesn’t look like the death of Global Warming after all. Just ordinary Pacific Ocean patterns on top of the well-established warming trend.
Speaking of warming, where does Dr. Pielke in his thoughtful scientific way declare that the “missing” heat has gone? He speculates that it was magically transported into space. In other words, he has no idea. But it’s certainly more entertaining than considering good old-fashioned ocean currents.
“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.
“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.
Wott's Up With That? 