Tag Archives: Sneers

Quote of the Week

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“Quote of the Week“. Anthony Watts brings to our attention a quote from Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. about the hated Joe Romm that is “long overdue”, prompted by Joe’s coverage of Clive Crook at the Atlantic repeatedly smearing climatologist Dr. Michael Mann:

“More than any individual — James Inhofe and Marc Morano included — Joe Romm is responsible for creating a poisonous, negative atmosphere in the climate debate. Responsible voices should say so, this nonsense has gone on long enough.”

This is code for “Joe Romm is kicking my ass all over town.” You see, Joe Romm has a Physics Ph.D. but Roger Pielke Jr.’s Ph.D is in… political science. They’ve crossed paths many times, but it’s like bringing a knife to a gun fight, and Romm doesn’t sugar-coat it.

Interesting to see the implication that denialists Senator James Inhofe and political operative Marc Morano are also “poisonous.” I’m not sure how Anthony avoided that short-list, but perhaps it’s because he’s one of Roger’s buddies. Roger Pielke Jr.’s claim of being (the only?) “honest broker” in the climate change debate is currently being laughed out-of-town. Here are two links (Roger at Face Value and The Honestly Broken) about Roger’s self-serving concept.

Climatic collision on the National/Financial Post website

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“Climatic collision on the National/Financial Post website“. Anthony Watts is busy deleting contacts from his Rolodex and trying to frame the sudden and unwelcome media scrutiny of global warming denialism as part of the Climategate “whitewash” and the alleged “blacklist” of denialists.

Canada’s National Post newspaper, a long-time source and also re-distributor of climate science misinformation, has for the first time printed an intelligent and skeptical assessment of the global warming denial position. Jonathan Kay’s article Bad Science: Global Warming Deniers are a Liability to the Conservative Cause is an entertaining exposé of many of the smug deceptions that the Post’s own doctrinaire columnists, such as Terrence Corcoran, have been regurgitating for years. Quite a startling development. Kay’s telling quote is this:

How has this tiny 2-3% sliver of fringe opinion been reinvented as a perpetually “growing” share of the scientific community?

Columnist Terrence Corcoran naturally has taken exception to having the plug pulled on his cozy bubble-bath. Bad politics The politicization of climate science reaches new low with the development of a deniers blacklist is his response. Strangely, he starts with a reference to the “first principles of good science” before blustering at length about a “scientific mop-and-pail crew”, talking about the astrological signs of the paper’s authors and trying to imply that compiling the alleged “denialist blacklist” was a stealthy librul operation. Actually, the list of denialist scientists was collected from documents published and distributed by denialist lobbyists. But bluster on, Terrence.

Anthony declares that of the two columns “One in my opinion, [is] ugly, the other matter of fact.” No prize for guessing which one Anthony likes.

From DMSP munching microbes to global climate

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“From DMSP munching microbes to global climate“. Anthony Watts has found a press release about a paper by Justin Seymour of The University of Technology Sydney. Did you know that “Observations show that microorganisms display a behaviour characteristic of larger animals.”? Dimethylsulfide (DMSP) helps marine microorganisms find food (or prey on those microorganisms)!

Seymour’s paper seems trivial from a climate science perspective, but this post seems to be just an opportunity to encourage commenters to rubbish a scientific paper that happens to mention climate change impacts.

Peer reviewed science: Polar bears of the past survived warmth

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“Peer reviewed science: Polar bears of the past survived warmth“: A University of Alaska article about a fossilized polar bear jawbone, called “Polar bears of the past survived warmth“, lets Anthony Watts show his sensitive tree-hugger side:

So next time you have somebody sniffling and tearing up over polar bears and sea ice, show them this research and hand them a Kleenex. Now, they can worry about the polar bears eating hippos in the future.

I guess he didn’t bother reading the article he’s waving around as surly proof:

“Refugia” are places that polar bears may survive without ice. The Svalbard Archipelago may have been one of those places. Biologists today think polar bears would have a difficult time living on land, because other species like the grizzly bear could outcompete them.

The warm period of the Eemian might have come at a time when the polar bear wasn’t such an ice specialist, Talbot says.

Is this what a denialist slam-dunk looks like? Anthony should stick to snickering over inaccurate polar bear illustrations created by graphic artists.

Now it’s caterpillar outbreaks caused by global warming

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“Now it’s caterpillar outbreaks caused by global warming“. Anthony Watts is annoyed by an article in The Independent titled “Caterpillar plague on Isle of Wight was caused by climate change, says expert“. Here’s the offensive passage:

In general, these insects are getting worse in this country because the climate is changing and the summers are getting warmer.

Outrageous! Hopefully Anthony’s readers will flood the article comments with truth.

“The decrease in upper ocean heat content from March to April was 1C – largest since 1

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“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.

Marketing Advice For Mad Scientists

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“Marketing Advice For Mad Scientists“. Anthony Watts says that the 250 scientists (all members of the élite US National Academy of Sciences) who have signed a letter condemning the recent political and personal attacks on scientists, particularly prominent climatologists, are not exhibiting “good judgement”.

Anthony also says that “it has not gone over too well” because Andy Revkin, a journalist who is now courting page views from Denialists, says so. The letter even uses “the d-word”! And they’re not climate scientists. Oops, they are. Barely literate Anthony even calls it “poorly written”.

In fact it’s such a failure that Anthony has to resort to putting words in their mouths to assuage his resentment. His post reminds me of the class clown hunched down in the back row, snickering at his own ‘brilliance’.

Anthony’s also putting in a full court press delaying or editing the few comments that challenge his version of the truth, even though his commenters are working themselves into even more of a lather than usual. I particularly enjoyed the comments comparing the letter to the bogus “30,000 scientists” that “signed” the crack-pot Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine Petition.

Read the Science letter here.

AGW to reach…”The Edge of Wetness”…

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AGW to reach…”The Edge of Wetness”… Super-hip Anthony Watts references the Johnny Carson Show to attempt a put down a press release about a paper (An Adaptability Limit to Climate Change Due to Heat Stress) that suggests the following:

Despite the uncertainty in future climate change impacts, it is often assumed that humans would be able to adapt to any possible warming. Here we argue that heat stress imposes a robust upper limit to such adaptation.

Maximum wet-bulb temperatures from a climate scenario with mean temperature 12°C warmer than 2007. Land areas >~34°C exceed the wet-bulb limit of potentially lethal heat stress. (Purdue University/Matthew Huber)

Here’s Anthony’s snappy comeback in its entirety: “Apparently it’s not just the heat, but the humidity too.” Now that’s what I call critical thinking. How is considering the possible impact of a particular level of warming a bad thing?

HuffPo: “Deniers” clogging up the blogosphere

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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:

  1. 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?”)
  2. Political (making fun of Al Gore, partisan name calling)
  3. Bullying, name calling, threats
  4. Despair (i.e. “we’re all doomed, humans will go extinct anyway”)
  5. 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)
  6. Obfuscation – burying your opposition under a mountain of obscure but usually irrelevant statistics
  7. 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?

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“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.