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Search for anthony watts

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More than 100 comments found. Only the most recent 100 have been displayed.

At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?

MA Rodger at 19:42 PM on 25 April, 2024

Eclectic @14,

You say the work of these jokers Kubicki, Kopczyński & Młyńczak failed the WUWT test, being too bonkers even for Anthony Willard Watts to cope-with. I would say Watts has happily promoted work just as bonkers in the past.

And as you say, there is no WUWT coverage of this Kubicki et al 2024 paper although Google shows it is mentioned once in one of the comment threads, as is an earlier paper from the same jokers. Indeed, there are two such earlier papers from 2020 and 2022. Thankfully, these are relatively brief and thus they easily expose the main error these jokers are promoting.

In Kubicki et al (2020) they kick-off by misusing the Schwarzschild equation. The error they employ even gets a mention within this Wiki-ref which says:-

At equilibrium, dIλ = 0 even when the density of the GHG (n) increases. This has led some to falsely believe that Schwarzschild's equation predicts no radiative forcing at wavelengths where absorption is "saturated".

They then measure the radiation from the Moon through a chamber either filled with air or with CO2 and show there is no difference and thus, as their misuse of Schwarzschild suggests, that the Earth's CO2 is "saturated." In preparing for this grand experiment, they research the thermal properties of the Moon as an IR source and thus tell us:-

The moon. The temperature of its surface varies a lot, but for the part illuminated by the Sun, according to encyclopaedic information, it may slightly exceed 1100ºC.

This well demonstrates that these jokers are on a different planet to us as it is well know our Moon only manages 120ºC under the equatorial noon-day sun.

A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty

Eclectic at 11:06 AM on 12 August, 2023

Nigelj @17 :

Cranks or crackpots do inhabit the Denier spectrum, But IMO they are outliers of the main body. Dr Frank's wondrous "Uncertainty" simply produces absurd results ~ see his chart showing the envelope of uncertainty which "explodes" from the observation starting point, rendering all data nearly meaningless. Yet he cannot see the absurdity. He falls back on the bizarre argument of uncertainty being separate from error. (But in practical terms, there is a large Venn Diagram overlap of the two concepts.)

WUWT blog is an enjoyable stamping ground where I observe the denialists' shenanigans. Most of the commenters at WUWT are angry selfish characters, who do not wish to see any socio-economic changes in this world ~ and hence their motivated reasoning against AGW.

Certainly, WUWT has its share of cranks & crackpots. Also a large slice of "CO2-deniers" who continually assert "the trace gas CO2 simply cannot do any global warming". (WUWT blog's founder & patron, Anthony Watts initially tried to oust the CO2-deniers . . . but in the past decade he seems to have abandoned that attempt.)

Dr Frank's comments in a WUWT thread are worth reading, but sadly they rarely rise above the common ruck there. Much more interesting to read, is a Mr Rud Istvan ~ though he does blow his own trumpet a lot (and publicizes his own book "Blowing Smoke" which I gather does in all ways Smite The Heathen warmists & alarmists. Istvan, like Frank, is very intelligent, yet does come out with some nonsenses. For instance, Istvan often states mainstream AGW must be wrong because of reasons A , B , C & D . And unfortunately, 3 of his 4 facts/reasons are quite erroneous. He is so widely informed, that he must know his facts/reasons are erroneous . . . yet he keeps repeating them blindly (in a way that resembles the blindness in Dr Frank).

To very broadly paraphrase Voltaire : It is horrifying to see how even intelligent minds can believe absurdities.

Arctic sea ice has recovered

Rob Honeycutt at 00:46 AM on 21 April, 2023

Albert @150... I'm curious why you can't see what you're doing is selecting (cherry picking) short time frames out of a clear overall trend in order to fit a predetermined conclusion.

This is truly what I find so fascinating to witness. The sheer volume of well-established research and scientific evidence that has to be dismissed or ignored in order to come to such conclusions is staggering.

Anthony Watts I can understand simply because his income is predicated on keeping climate deniers coming to his website. People who don't have a specific monetary necessity, these I don't understand.

Climate Science Denial Explained

Eclectic at 11:30 AM on 20 March, 2023

Foster @17 ,

I hope you found some amusement reading the Anthony Watts article. And reading maybe a few of its attached comments [best to look for ones with a high number of red-color "down votes"]. WUWT currently shows that article as having over 650 comments . . . a Platinum Medal score for a WUWT article, and demonstrating that it is doing well as a Hot Button issue for climate-denialists. Whew !

If you read the comments, you will see a lot of sniping & griping, but very little science at all.

As MA Rodger has touched on, you find prominent denialists such as Dr Lindzen and Dr Spencer who are driven by "motivated reasoning" derived from their emotional religious beliefs that the Divine Entity simply would not permit Earth's climate to depart from the comfortable Garden-of-Eden range.

However, most WUWT regular denialists fall into 3 groups :- the conspiritard/wingnut group ; the science crackpot group ; and the intelligent well-informed ones who neverthelesshave been captured by their own motivated reasoning (a sort of palace coup where emotions displace intellect). But obviously there is some overlap between groups ~ mostly the 1st and 3rd groups.

Foster , I would if I had my druthers, simply leave WUWT & similar sites to fester as they are. Yes, there is an argument that such disinformation sites ought to be "stopped". Undoubtably they deserve that fate. However, they may do more good than harm, by localizing denialists into their own echo chamber where they can blow off some steam . . . and it keeps them off the streets, so to speak.

Climate Science Denial Explained

Foster at 10:03 AM on 20 March, 2023

Thank you all for summing up and explaining why that recent blog on WUWT post by Anthony Watts is just again, more misinfomration. I'm no climate scientists but I often come here to learn more, research and hear from you all as I'm well aware climate change is a major problem and love to hear thoughts as to how we can all help combat it. A higher

I feel like something needs to be done to stop denier sites and the spreading of misinformation as it relates to climate change. Thank you all again! I enjoy reading the comments and articles here and continue to be an active member here.

Climate Science Denial Explained

MA Rodger at 18:20 PM on 14 March, 2023

Foster @11,

The crux of this latest nonsense from our chum Anthony Willard Watts is to plot out global average temperature using a very long Y-axis so it appears as a flat line.

Wattsupian poster

This is rather reminiscent of the 'thin red line' of aging climate-change-denying climatologist Dickie Lindzen who would plot the size of AGW-to-date onto a graph of annual max-min temperatures in Boston (where he worked) using the width of a red line.

Lindzen's thin red line

Lindzen would then make some nonsense statement about the planet's average temperature always wobbling by several tenths of a degree at virtually all timescales (which isn't correct). At a presentation in the UK Houses of Parliament back in 2012, he candidly put it thus:-

Changes in the order of several tenths of a degree are always present at virtually all time scales. And obsessing on the details of this record is more akin to a spectator sport for tea-leaf reading than a serious contributor to scientific efforts.
Say, at least so far: if some day I should see some changes of twenty-times what I've seen so far, that would be certainly remarkable but nothing so far looks that way.

So this so-called climatologist suggests a global temperature change of twenty-times 'what he's seen so far' is when climate change becomes "remarkable". Call that 20 x 1.5ºF=+30ºF=+16ºC. I think the word "uninhabitable" would have been a more appropriate adjective.

Climate Science Denial Explained

Eclectic at 09:13 AM on 14 March, 2023

Foster @11 ,

Count me in ~ I, too, would love to know what virtues you see in that WattsUpWithThat blog article.

I confess to being a regular reader of WUWT blog ~ it has its amusing side, and despite WUWT 's prolific posts, it takes me little time to skim the daily avalanche (the trick is to skip through the rubbish). Most of the lead articles have a strong tinge of angry sourness & childishness. Rarely do I find an article containing some technical information of value.

And without scooping more than a ladle's worth of justified ad-hominems ~ I can say that the WUWT comments columns are even worse than the lead articles. The commenters do (in general) show a remarkable range of pathology . . . from scientific ignorance and delusional beliefs, through to extremist political axe-grinding. All wonderfully entertaining, if you have the stomach for it.

Foster, the WUWT article you mentioned has a humorous comment [about 4th from the top] by Nick Stokes , showing a graph depicting the change in the U.S. National Debt. Droll humor by Nick Stokes, exemplifying the absurdity of Anthony Watts's ideas. (Nick Stokes is always worth reading, for he is very rational & scientifically well-informed ~ he is the complete opposite of the Usual Denizens at WUWT. And they hate him for it ! )

[ The writer "Hot Sou" (mentioned @13 above) is pretty much banned at WUWT. She gets under Anthony Watts's skin ~ and IIRC he has threatened to take legal action against her. ]

Climate Science Denial Explained

Foster at 00:36 AM on 14 March, 2023

Hi All! First post here but I came across a blog (anti climate change blog) called What's Up With That by Anthony Watts who made a recent post trying to disprove NASA GISS chart.

Here is a blog post: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/03/12/new-wuwt-global-temperature-feature-anomaly-vs-real-world-temperature/

What do you all make of it? Curious to hear your thoughts. Thanks! :)

2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7

Philippe Chantreau at 10:14 AM on 27 February, 2022

"the content at WUWT seems to be better researched."

That is the funniest thing I have read in a while. People like me who have been following this non-debate for a long time know better.

WUWT is the site where the superbly absurd idea that excess CO2 fell back on Antarctica as carbonic snow was presented, and bitterly defended by the peanut gallery, even after multiple posts showing the phase diagram of CO2 and emphasizing the importance of partial pressure. Finally, someone could beat some sense into Anthony Watts' head, and made him realize that he had better take this off the site if he wanted any appearance of credibility. It is still accessible through the wayback machine, I believe.

The very premise of WUWT existence was the following: there is no warming, it is all an artefact of poorly designed temperature reporting stations, and the whole thing might even be intentional (insert ominous music).

This theory was successfully challenged on multiple occasions: first by a John V, who did a quick analysis of the high quality stations showing no significant difference with the major other datasets. Then, there was the BEST project, led by Richard Muller, who somehow lent credence to the concerns of some so-called "skeptics." At the time this effort was launched, Watts solemnly swore that he woud accept the conclusions. That enthusiasm evaporated (another feedback perhaps?) when the conclusions were released, confirming what the other datasets were already showing. Then, some NOAA researchers published a paper reaching, again, the same conclusions. Then, after much, much time, Watts himself participated in a research paper that essentially redid what the NOAA researchers had done, and reached the same conclusions again, but he pulled a "Spencer" by still making some vacuous argument that, in some way, he could still be right.

Over time, of course, the continued warming forced it to go silent about the very hypothesis that caused its existence in the first place, but there was never any shortage of new spots where other goal posts could be moved. It has now evolved and received help from people who managed to give it a better appearance. Nonetheless, it is still the same motivated reasoning machine that it always was.

YouTube's Climate Denial Problem

Eclectic at 12:32 PM on 10 April, 2020

Since the SkS scene is a bit quiet at the moment (a covid-19 effect?) , I take the liberty of doing some more waffling about the notorious WUWT website. So my apologies for this long post.

WUWT claims to be the world's "most viewed site" for global warming and climate change ~ and I have seen no evidence disproving WUWT 's possession of the crown for most popular Climate Denial echo-chamber website status.

As mentioned above, WUWT has a rapid churn of headlines to keep its fans interested & clicking-on frequently. Proprietor Anthony Watts claims WUWT receives no subsidy from the fossil fuel industries ~ I don't know if this was so in its early days, but it could well be so nowadays. (There are of course many ways in which secret sponsors can covertly channel funds indirectly to WUWT or associated entities . . . but that's not immediately relevant to the site's anti-science activities.) Judging by the large range of of on-line advertising at the WUWT site, it seems there is no shortage of dollar income ~ and it also suggests that the on-line advertising agencies have examined & confirmed a high rate of traffic going to the website.

Nigelj and OPOF ~ my earlier wording that many of the regular WUWT commenters "are thick as two short planks" . . . was a colloquialism, and was not meaning that Denialists are of lower IQ than the general population. AFAIK, there is no evidence that Denialists have an average IQ lower than logical thinkers have. Yes, most of the WUWT commenters are "pretty average" [another colloquialism!]. But as always ~ it is not whether you are intelligent but whether you actually use the intelligence you have.

And there are indeed [a few] highly intelligent commenters at WUWT. My favorite is Willis Eschenbach. Very intelligent, and he has a sense of humor I like . . . but despite his analytical skills, he nevertheless has a "Dark Side" twist in his psyche ~ such that he always fails in the end to reach the destination of logical synthesis of the full context of the climate issue. I reckon he has a combination of Motivated Reasoning and Doublethink. Like so many (all?) Denialists, he somehow manages ultimately to suppress seeing the Bleeding Obvious.

# There are certain neurological conditions [often, from stroke] where the brain fails to identify the human face, or other objects. Climate Denialists achieve that status, sometimes wilfully perhaps . . . but eventually it becomes an automatic mental habit to "not see" what their emotions don't want to see.

Nigelj , as I mentioned earlier, it surely must be that the WUWT Moderators allow Nick Stokes as a token example of their "non-discrimination" policy. But there is yet another example ~ Steven Mosher. Mosher does not come from the strong scientific background of Stokes . . . but over the years he has gained his stripes as a scientist (in a de-facto manner). IIRC, Mosher was at first rather climate-skeptical, and joined the original BEST project in a sort of literary capacity. And when the BEST project eventually confirmed the mainstream climate science data, he accordingly "converted" to become a mainstreamer.

As a convert from "skepticism" , Mosher is loathed and hated by the bulk of WUWT commenters. Mosher's style is usually not to go into details on how the OP or fellow commenters have messed up or been stupid . . . but he more often issues a one-liner to point out an error, or he merely says [in effect] : "Sigh. You've gotten it wrong again." Unsurprisingly, this enrages many of the Denialists.

Stokes is hated too, and is hated also because he is unfailingly correct , and the Denialists can find no chinks in his scientific armor ~ not that the Denialists at WUWT would ever change their viewpoint merely because someone publicly proves them wrong !

In the past, WUWT had a system where registered commenters could vote a Like or a Dislike to any post in the Comments column. Run-of-the -mill Deniaist comments sometimes garnered one or two or a handful of Likes. But I always found it amusing to see how every comment by Stokes or Mosher was immediately garnering 20 - 50 Dislikes ! (In a way, it's pity this Like/Dislike barometer got scrubbed.)

# Over my years of observation, there have not really been any other "anti-Denialists" to stay the course in the hostile environment at the WUWT comments columns. Some appear for a little while, then disappear ~ mostly by being censored I think (but doubtless, a few have become tired & disgusted). Yet I also detect a few who (after banning) resurrect themselves under a new pseudonym. However, in recent months WUWT has introduced a new stricter regime of registration to make resurrection far more difficult. ( It also raises your risk of being doxxed.)

And no, I myself don't post at WUWT. The denizens there are largely rabid political ultra-extremists, quite uncharitable to humanity as a whole. There are also some (apolitical or non-partisan) scientific crackpots. But all are hard-core deniers of climate science, and they show zero inclination to become sane.

# If you examine the bulk of WUWT posted articles, you see a strong undercurrent of petulant and childish propaganda slant. Clearly WUWT is essentially aiming at the Lowest Common Denominator of everyday Denialists. (Some Denialist websites exist, which are slightly more high-brow e.g. Judith Curry's and Roy Spencer's .) But for rampant psychopathology, my "vote" goes to WUWT.

My apologies once again for the long post. I hope readers have found elements informative and/or entertaining.

YouTube's Climate Denial Problem

Eclectic at 23:08 PM on 8 April, 2020

MA Rodger , the marvellous WUWT that you call rogue planetoid, is not a planet nor a planetoid. It is more of a moon or lunar body, orbiting the real universe yet not truly part of it. Yet it draws sustenance from the real universe, just as a tick draws sustenance from its unwilling host. (You can see that I am laboring to get lunar & tick into the same sentence, to describe WUWT . . . but sadly the intended pun is an uphill labor, and I had better retract it, and move on.)

For my sins (and for the pleasure of Schadenfreude ) and for my education in the field of psychopathology I am often reading parts of the comments columns at WUWT. (Of the lead articles there, I would say that 80% of them are not worth reading or maybe just worth a very high-speed skim.) But the comments columns are a goldmine of mental pathology.

Not every commenter there is intellectually and/or morally insane. There are a few notable exceptions ~ pre-eminent is Nick Stokes, who is always worth reading. Nick is a very well-informed scientific thinker who is regularly (and blandly) correcting the the usual errors & inanities of the run-of-the-mill commenters at WUWT. He is balanced and scientifically accurate . . . in short, he is the complete opposite of the typical on-line Denialist. And they hate him for it, and bay for his blood. Most non-denialists are quickly booted out by the website proprietor (Mr Anthony Watts) and his Moderators. Yet Nick Stokes endures, year after year (and AFAICT he is unfailing correct in his observations). I am sure Anthony Watts keeps tolerating Nick Stokes ~ partly as a demonstration of the [cough] civilized & open-minded nature of the WUWT website . . . as a token "contrarian" [i.e. mainstream scientist] . . . and possibly also as a piece of raw meat to keep inflaming the rabid dogs who frequent the WUWT columns (and who keep the website hit-rate high, for the benefit of the routine on-line advertisers).

And yes, just recently WUWT has been serving up quite a bit of Covid-19 headlines ~ that's out of the ordinary for the site, but surely no worse than all other media outlets at present. The usual WUWT articles are sourly scoffing or sneering [e.g. anti-Thunberg] or generally anti-renewables . . . spiced up with the occasional mathematical clangers from Christopher Monckton as he comes up with his bi-annual mathturbational "proofs" that the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity is only 1.1 degrees or 0.5 degrees or whatever (or that the scientific Consensus was not 97% but actually 33% or 4% or whatever). And sometimes other scientific Mc Experts demonstrate (in completely different & incompatible ways) how the mainstream scientists are all wrong about climate.

WUWT puts up several new headlines each day. It's important to keep the flock supplied with fresh clickbait. And I must admit they occasionally have a brief but interesting article of general interest, including astronomy news. After all, this is a serious science-based website !

There is no consensus

Eclectic at 22:53 PM on 16 March, 2020

Thanks, MA Rodger @882 ,

the Heartland "Climate at a glance" summaries have also recently been touted on WUWT website: I gather Mr Anthony Watts has had some co-writing input for the Summaries. Unsurprisingly, they are a waste of time for anyone who wishes to learn anything truthful about climate matters.

I have read a number of the Summaries (they are quite short). Their pattern soon becomes evident :- cherry-picking & strawman arguments, and the general tenor is that of advocate-lawyers rather than scientists.

As you say, the "Consensus" summary did nothing but pick out and misrepresent one single study of members of the American Meteorological Organisation, and did not mention the World Meteorological Organisation . . . or any other organisations of greater relevance. No nuance; no general context; no honesty of presentation.

The "Summaries" are a complete waste of time for any inquiring mind ~ their only virtue is that they are brief. Yet brief as they are, they have a surprising number of typos and spelling errors ~ this is surprising for such brief presentations from a supposedly-slick propaganda "Institute" like Heartland, where one would at least expect some proof-reading of stuff going onto permanent display. Perhaps there is some truth in the rumors that Heartland has been forced to retrench staff.

On climate misinformation and accountability

BillWalker at 14:33 PM on 11 February, 2020

I hadn't seen the "Misinformation by Source" page before. Nice! I'm surprised to find Anthony Watts and Marc Morano missing from the list, though.

Top 10 most viewed rebuttals in September and October 2019

Eclectic at 10:29 AM on 14 November, 2019

Thanks, Nigelj.

I will make a few points about website WUWT, and then shut up ~ since it's getting somewhat off-topic. The comparison of the two websites has some interest here in "numbers" comparison only. There's no real other comparison . . . I think of SkS as an eagle flying in the sunshine, while WUWT is more like an octopus slithering in the murky depths.

For those readers wise enough to be unfamiliar with WUWT:- Anthony Watts & team run the WattsUpWithThat website. Allegedly they don't receive Big Oil funding these days. Be that as it may, they want to receive a lot of hits/views, partly in order to have enough high rank to pull in advertising of the incidental sort ( e.g. I myself am plagued with telescope advertisements when I click on the WUWT site).

Accordingly, WUWT has a high turnover of lead articles. Most articles are brief, and many are slanted propaganda against the reality of AGW and often are rather childish whinges about the teething problems of the gradual transfer to renewables (versus fossil fuel power stations) . . . or whinges about Greta Thunberg, James Hansen, and so on. There's the occasional leavening with articles about technical developments, or astronomical news, or things of general interest [but not many!]. Then we get the re-posts of Heartland propaganda articles, of GWPF, and of assorted Media op-ed propaganda pieces. And a succession of crackpot ideas from Lord Monckton, Dr Pat Frank, and similar fringe dwellers of Dunning-Krugerism and Delusion Land.

WUWT maintains a high hit rate, by having an open-door policy on its comments columns ~ provided that the comments do not support mainstream climate science nor support "climate action". (A tiny dribble of such comments is permitted by moderators . . . but mainly I suspect to act as red meat and keep the regular clientele in a savage mood. A prominent exception, is comments by scientist Nick Stokes, who often has something pertinent to say, which punctures the usual rubbishy comments. He is loathed by the standard clientele, and I suspect he is not moderated out . . . because his is a token presence to illustrate the respectabiity & toleration of the WUWT website!)

In short, WUWT is an echo-chamber for the Angries, the extremists, and the deluded. Comments tend to be repetitious ventings. But the sheer number of these, is part of what keeps the site ranking high enough to attract advertising dollars. Does the WUWT ranking intimidate politicians into thinking there's a lot of Denialists around? I don't know.

My own interest in the WUWT website, is to observe the ways that some intelligent minds engage in rampant Motivated Reasoning. And to a smaller extent, to keep in touch with the Dreck found in the murky depths. Know thine enemy!

Sorry, Nigelj, for my own lengthy vent of a post ~ but I hope it provided some "edutainment".

97% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven

Philippe Chantreau at 01:10 AM on 13 March, 2019

Good question Postkey. I don't recall anyone ever really be that specific. No quote is provided. And it is, in fact, off topic. This thread is about Anthony Watts' and others assertion that the consensus is based on only one paper, and that said paper was flawed enough to invalidate the results. As usual, Watts is full of it.

Next self-paced run of Denial101x starts on March 5

Philippe Chantreau at 04:36 AM on 7 March, 2019

Your post is full of ideology and every bit as biased as you suggest others are. I personally trust the government for protecting the public's interest far more than I trust corporations, or any other organization, except those specifically created to protect the public's interest. Not only because it is the logical thing to do considering where their interest truly is, but because of their respective records. I hear all this distrust about the government, and very little to back it up. In fact, most of the stuff that would back it up is what happens when the government is corrupted by private interests for the furtherance of their profits. It's funny how the government gets so much scrutiny and so much bad press every time one little thing goes wrong, but the private sector gets a passs by default even when they commit the most massive screw ups.

Private banks came close to tanking the World economy in 2008, because the entire financial system had become fraudulent. Hardly anyone went to jail. A few years later they're already complaining against regulations put in place to prevent them from doing it again. Last December, Century Link had a giant screw-up that rendered 911 inoperative in hundreds of counties throughout the nation, and it was barely even mentioned; I don't want to even imagine the uproar if it was a government service. In 2017, Equifax essentially opened the doors and let their commercial base free for the taking, namely the private information of 143 million Americans, and everyone just shrugged their shoulders. No consequence whatsoever. I never hear anything from the "government is bad" types about these problems, which reveals a double standard large enough to invalidate anything they say that includes the word bias.

Even you Prometheus trust the government far more than you think: I bet that you have no problem taking an airplane to cross the country without doubting that Air Traffic Control will do its job. Think about this: if ATC had a 99.99% success rate in their handling of flights all over the nation, you would see about 50 ATC-caused crashes per day. Instead, you see exactly zero, because the FAA achieves 100% success rate every day and has done so for years. As for the airlines, they achieve their success largely by complying with all these pesky regulations fort maintenance and operation that are there so our butts get from A to B safely every time. That's government work right there, so much a part of the landscape that people don't even realize it's serving them. This lack of perception and of recognition applies to pretty much everything that the government does right, which is vastly more than anyone in the US realizes.

You're talking about NASA and NOAA as if they were shady organizations bent on deceiving the public. That is total nonsense. Not only they are open to scrutiny and far more transparent than many private organizations, but their existence and their funding depends on them doing their job right. These administrations are full of highly educated, dedicated scientific experts, who often could make far more money in the private sector but they want to serve the public. Over the years, NOAA has refined their understanding of hurricanes and can now give 72 hours of notice within a very well defined geographical area so that evacuations can take place before a storm strikes. They save lives that way, and businesses too. Of course, some work at NASA has very strong implications with national defense and military applications, so the apropriate secrecy applies; usually the military is the darling of the "bad governement" types of ideologues so perhaps you don't mind that part.

So-called skeptics, led by the Fossil Fuel funded McIntyre, started whining about NASA Goddard not releasing the code for their climate models some years back (a number of years, I've followed this for a while). The argument from Gavin Schmidt at the time for not giving the code was perfectly reasonable because the algorithm had been released, but McIntyre went on a full blown mind manipulation campaign that was quite successful with his gullible followers. So NASA released the code, and of course, nothing happened. Zip. Why? Because none of these self professed skeptics had the expertise or were willing to put in the effort to examine the code. The demands to release information were nothing but a campaign to spread doubt in the integrity of NASA. Once the code was released, the pseudo-skeptics moved on to other things.

Another governement disliker and skeptic was Richard Muller. He did not believe NASA and NOAA either, so decided to examine global temperatures on his own by forming an independent team at Berkeley. He was hailed as a hero at the time by Anthony Watts. After quite a bit of painstaking dedicated work, they came to pretty much the same conclusion as NASA and NOAA. Anthony Watts didn't like him any more. You can find the BEST stuff along with the other sources regularly updated on the Real Climate site: NOAA, HADCRUT etc...

I've had conversations on this site before with skeptics strongly animated by anti-governement ideology, sometimes on the subject of MODTRAN, the line by line atmospheric radiative transfer model. They argue that it's just a model and it's a government thing, whatever. Yes, it's a model, developed by the Air Force for infrared weapon guidance, you really think it's inaccurate?

After years of following this pseudo-debate, it turns out to be really simple. Science aims at understanding the world. The quality, sincere science in the case of climate change overhwelmingly points in a certain direction. Fossil fuel interests have billions of dollars of profit per quarter at stake. Who do I trust? Seriously? What a joke.

Climate Carbon Bookkeeping

Dan Joppich at 05:31 AM on 17 January, 2019

Thanks. This is very cool stuff. I haven't had a chance to read it thoughtfully due to my day job demands but I was curious about how this graph plotting temp data since the last glacial period (sorry, I couldn't figure out how to insert it here) . Scientists have concluded that over the last 10,000 years, the temp is relatively flat. Here's the link:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png

The graph was created based on Greenland ice core data by the late paleoclimatologist, Professor Bob Carter.

It seems that over the past 10,000 years, we've seen warming and cooling oscillate within a range of +/- 2.5 degrees Celsius (D.C.). The rate today using satellite data (if you're familiar with Anthony Watts's other website, you know that nothing else will do) is 1.5 D.C./century, which is right within the Holocene averages.

And, although looking at the past 2,000 years, we see several warming periods (Roman, Medieval), overall, cooling occurred at an even faster rate. Significantly, the last 700 years, which includes the historically colder Little Ice Age (LIA), brought even faster cooling and then warming coming out of the LIA into the Modern Late 20th-Century Warm Period.

Of course, this data needs to be superimposed onto the CO2 data to be truly comparable to the conversation here, but it does narrow down our range to a possibly more relevant period in human history.

Climate's changed before

Philippe Chantreau at 04:38 AM on 30 October, 2017

jop3v2 says "The planet is warming. On this we all agree."

Actually, no. I have been around the mind manipulation wars on climate for a good number of years. There are countless fake skeptics who in fact disagree with that and have made a living of attempting to spread doubt about that very point. Most famously, Anthony Watts, who was proven wrong in his assumptions very early on by an amateur going by the handle of John V. He was proven wrong again later by NOAA and finally by his own publication. It was a fairly inconsequential paper, that still took him years to produce; it did not lead him to disavow his years of accusations of fraud against others, encouraging his readers to harass scientists by putting their personal addresses on his site, or putting up posts so grotesque that only the scientificaly illiterate could take him seriously (Antarctica carbonic snow comes to mind). And he is only one of many; some are in the highest positions of power. Your concluding statement is verifiably wrong. Perhaps you should have said: "we, people amenable to reason, all agree with that." I would concur if phrased that way.

Another part of your argument to which I object is the "humans too small to affect anything." It is common and sometimes comes from people who are religious minded. However, it is not valid either. Imagine all the carbon dioxide released from volcanic activity happening naturally on Earth over a year. Now, multiply that by approximately 100 (give or take); that's how much we have been and are still releasing, year after year. Any argument that this does not constitute a geological scale event is wrong, purely from simple quantitative considerations. Geological scale events have geological scale ramifications.

The per volume fraction of CO2 is seemingly small, but that does not change the physics. If CO2 was not transparent to visible light and we could actually see its increase just by looking at photos of now vs 35 years ago, we certainly would be more enclined to take the threat seriously, because that's the kind of animal we humans are. We also are very bad at anything truly long term, although this has become far worse in the recent past, under the pressure of an extreme ideology of maximizing short term gains at any cost, present or future.

There is more to discuss about the fact that we weren't around as a global civilization in the time periods you mentioned and that we developped as such in a certain range of conditions; we then built some pretty heavy infrastructure that is already compromised by rapid seal level increase. We established industrial agricultural practices that, for all their machinery and chemical underpinnings, are nonetheless most dependent on rainfall, seasonal cycles, and low probability of extreme events. The rapidity of the change we are witnessing now is far more relevant to us than the actual position of equilibrium in a past when we were just tagging along with all the other critters.

Temp record is unreliable

scaddenp at 17:56 PM on 2 August, 2017

"however as all of them subscribe to the consensus view"

Um, this isnt politics. You arrive at a consensus you dont start with one. Also BEST was started by Muller as was skeptical of the record with Koch funding. Anthony Watts said “prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong.” That was until it confirmed the existing temperature records. So definitely not "all of them".

2017 is so far the second-hottest year on record thanks to global warming

John S at 04:37 AM on 2 August, 2017

I just finished viewing a doc on You-Tube entitled “Climategate II Explained – NOAA Whistleblower – Data Manipulation – Global Warming Hoax” by Larouche PA published recently. Wikipedia’s account of Larouche PAC seems entirely economic, no climate change involvement indicated. The gist of the 72 minute lecture by an unidentified (?spokeperson for Larouche PAC?) was that ““NOAA breached its own rules on scientific integrity when it published the sensational but flawed report, aimed at making the maximum possible impact on world leaders including Barack Obama and David Cameron at the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015.” This was by Karl et all (2015) that claimed warming rate was twice what prior versions showed ( source Anthony Watts October (2015) and argued that truth was shown by satellite data from both UAH and RSS showing a flat line over this period. I know that Anthony Watts is a notorious climate change denial blogger, but rather than just dismissing the whole argument based on its source, I’d rather understand more of the background on this – basically is it true that, as alleged in this doc, NOAA fiddled the data, suppressed any internal dissention and then mysteriously “lost” the data all as revealed by whistleblower John Bates, a 40 year NOAA veteran and eminent climate scientist. I’m well aware that cherry-picking end-points over such a short period is no good way to consider the warming trend and that RSS put out a correction to its earlier data. What I want to know is any specific background on this specific accusation of wrong-doing by Karl et al exposed by Bates..
Later the talk characterizes such antics as typical for climate change advocates, citing the “broken hockey stick” supposedly exposed by McIntyre & MacKitrick in Energy and Environment. I heard Michael Mann’s response that their method was flawed but, again, I’d like to understand this on a deeper level than just “he said, she said”.
It also goes on about NASA supposedly lowering data before 1950 and raising it after 1950 thereby supposedly creating a warming trend. I heard about the correction of “bucket variances” for ocean data but I also thought I’d heard that these NASA adjustments created a lower warming trend not higher – so is the Larouche Pac presentation just a bald-faced lie or is there some more subtle fallacy involved in it?. The same accusation of NASA adjusting data upwards after 1950 was made in another doc on You-Tube, so, on the basis that where there’s smoke, there may be fire, I’m wondering where this story is coming from. I appreciate that adjustments to the temperature record have to be made to produce the best estimate of trend and so this can change retroactively and this fact alone allows the deniers to come in with clod-hopping boots, but as I said above, my understanding was that the net result of these adjustments was a lower warming trend not higher as alleged, so is that just a lie or what?
They also had a more fundamental question which I admit has confused me quite a bit also and that is how it is at all possible to calculate a global average from such a variety of circumstances affecting each temperature measuring device? I saw an explanation on NASA’s web-site of why changes were more reliable to average than absolute values but even so (and even after watching Cowtons’ excellent presentation on Denial 101x) it’s still a baffling subject. Maybe there is a good reference you can give me to read up on this.

Just who are these 300 'scientists' telling Trump to burn the climate?

Philippe Chantreau at 08:19 AM on 2 March, 2017

GB @ 13 says "It is rather obvious that if one is making a living as Global Warming Scientist receiving funding, such a person would be a proponent of the issue."

This particular argument is often seen and is complete bunk. It does not even pass the lowest level of scrutiny. Despite armies of lobbyists at the boot of fossil fuel industries making billions in profit every quarter having an interest in demonstrating flaws, no such behavior has been identified as causing any significant bias in research results. Every time that someone looks into the real science from the assumption that it is flawed and the motivations are questionable, they find exactly the same things that others have before them. Even Richard Mueller and Anthony Watts went through this. Watts could barely accept the obvious result of his own paper. People who can barely draw a square trying to reinvent the wheel, and beiung all proud of themselves when they have something round, while all the serious scientists have already moved on.

Then there is the other fact that competing theories are nowhere near the ability to actually compete (cosmic rays come to mind). Furthermore, if one makes a living of studying climate change, the best thing that can happen to perpetuate their source of income is doubt, and the continued need for more studies to keep building up a case. The moment that it all becomes commonly accepted as an undeniable fact, they loose their source of income and have to start working at something else.

I'm not sure if there is a specific thread addressing the dishonesty/financial motivation argument on SkS but it deserves to have one, considering that it is one of the most vacuous out there. It's funny when one considers what happened to the Exxon scientists, who happened to reach similar conclusions as others, even though their financial interest should have steered them toward the denial side. Ironic.

Climate Change – What We Knew and When We Knew It

shoyemore at 01:04 AM on 23 February, 2017

Richard Muller has a record of conflict with climate scientists and for many, many years he was a soulmate of deniers like Anthony Watts. In the end, he stood up to be counted when he was confronted with the evidence.

Whatever about the past, he is very, very good in this video, quite the star in fact.

Correcting Warren Meyer on Forbes

Tom Curtis at 12:13 PM on 21 February, 2017

"One more error is, he claims Al Gore states that, "...we will see a tipping point where temperatures will run away, [Gore] is positing that feedbacks will be nearly infinite (a phenomenon we can hear with loud feedback screeches from a microphone)." Nope. Sorry. That is Mr. Meyer's misunderstanding and is nothing that Al Gore has ever stated."

I did a bit of research and managed to find the source for Al Gore's claims about "tipping-points". It turns out to be a conflation of a comment Gore made to CBS news in 2006, and a review of An Inconvenient Truth, by James Hansen.

CBS reported on January 26th, 2006 that:

"And politicians and corporations have been ignoring the issue for decades, to the point that unless drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gases are taken within the next 10 years, the world will reach a point of no return, Gore said.
He sees the situation as "a true planetary emergency.""

You will notice that while the sentiment is Gore's, the initial sentence contains no quotations, and hence no indication that the term "point of no return" was Gore's.

Meanwhile, in his review of "An Inconvenient Truth", Hansen expressed similar views when he wrote:

"Any responsible assessment of environmental impact must conclude that further global warming exceeding two degrees Fahrenheit will be dangerous. Yet because of the global warming already bound to take place as a result of the continuing long-term effects of greenhouse gases and the energy systems now in use, the two-degree Fahrenheit limit will be exceeded unless a change in direction can begin during the current decade. Unless this fact is widely communicated, and decision-makers are responsive, it will soon be impossible to avoid climate change with far-ranging undesirable consequences. We have reached a critical tipping point."

In January, 2016, Anthony Watts published an article by Jaclyn Schiff, which quoted the NBC article, before saying:

"Well, the 10 years are about up, by now, warming should have reached “planetary emergency levels” Let’s look at the data:
...
As you can see, little has changed since 2006. Note the spike in 1998, in the 18 years since the great El Niño of 97/98, that hasn’t been matched, and the current one we are in isn’t stronger, and looks to be on the way to decaying. So much for the “monster” El Niño."

In the space covered by the ellipsis, Schiff published a graph of the UAH TLT temperature through to Nov 2015. Why November, given that the Dec 2016 data was published by Roy Spencer on January 5th, 2016. Perhaps it had something to do with the December values being higher than those of October, hence giving the lie to the claim that the temperatures "looks to be on the way to decaying". Regardless, hindsight shows her claims to be utterly baseless:

Indeed, so also did foresight for anybody aware of the relative delays of surface and mid troposphere temperature responses to ENSO fluctuations.

More important than any shenanigans with out of date temperature data is the complete misunderstanding of what Gore is reputed to have said.

Going back to the original NBC metaphore, a point of no return is that point in a flight, or expedition, were turning around will not leave you with sufficient fuel (or supplies) to return to base. It could also be used of a scenario where you are driving rapidly towards the lip of the Grand Canyon, in which case the point of no return is that point at which no amount of braking, or rapidity of turning will prevent you from going over the lip. In neither case is there any sudden change in your conditions. The point of no return on a flight is not a point of sudden turbulence; and the point of no return as you follow Thelma and Louis to a premature death is as smooth as any other point you had traversed on the trip thus far.

Applying this to Gore's thought, clearly he was saying (whether using that phrase or not) that if radical action was not taken by (approximately) 2016, then we would have reached a point where no economically achievable measures could prevent CO2 concentrations rising sufficiently to cause temperatures to pass the threshold beyond which their impacts are considered dangerous. No sudden jump in temperature is predicted, and nor is it predicted that the temperature increase by 2016 will itself have passed a dangerous threshold.

In any event, Schiff's misunderstanding was then picked up by the deniasphere, with Hansen's term frequently substituted. From there, it was apparently further misinterpreted by Warren Myer.

Ignoring the gross misrepresentations without which deniers have no argument, the question is whether or not we have in fact passed Gore's 'point of no return', or Hansen's "tipping point". The answer is that we do not know. We may have, and if we have not we certainly will do so soon. My feeling is that we have for a 1.5^oC increase above the preindustrial, but not quite yet for a 2^oC threshold. Unfortunately, whether we have or have not passed it, the actions of Trump in the US, and Turnbull in Australia seem geared to ensure we pass it very soon, if we have not already.

2016 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #39

andreas_s at 21:14 PM on 26 September, 2016

here we have an erroneous link:
[...]Something went wrong at WUWT. Is Anthony Watts ceding his title? by Sou (HotWhopper)[...]

here is the correct url:
http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2016/09/something-went-wrong-at-wuwt-is-anthony.html

How climate science deniers can accept so many 'impossible things' all at once

Tom Curtis at 08:24 AM on 26 September, 2016

Art Vandelay @10, the issues you raise are discussed in the paper explicitly under section 1.4. In that section the authors point out that they have documented instances of incoherence in the positions of several individuals in Table 2, including Plimer (3 examples), Christy (1 example), Watts (2 examples) and Monckton (3 examples). Their table 2 is certainly not exhaustive in the cases of Plimer, Watts and Monckton, and is from my experience not exhaustive as to individuals demonstrating this sort of incoherence.

Further, they argue that even if the incoherence were within the group, but not within particular individuals, "...there are several reasons why this would not be reflective of “healthy debate” or “scientific diversity”". They go on:

"First, as we noted at the outset, science strives for coherence (e.g., Douglas 2013; Laudan 1984; Roche 2014; Thagard 2012) and there is little room for incoherent theories in science (and any incoherence contains within it an impetus for reconciliation). ... It follows that if climate denial were to constitute scientific reasoning—as is its purported purpose (e.g., Solomon 2008)—then it would exhibit coherence notwithstanding the presence of multiple agents and actors. The fact that it fails to achieve this and that incoherence is manifest at the aggregate (Table 1) as well as at the individual level (Table 2) leaves little doubt about the non-scientific nature of denial.
Second, the theoretical coherence of consensual climate science does not prevent robust debate. ... No such corrective processes can be observed in denialist discourse which focuses entirely on its opposition to mainstream science and does not entail any debate among the incoherent positions we have revealed in this article.
The absence of any corrective resolution process among climate contrarians raises the question to what extent incoherence is perceived or recognized as a problem by people who hold contrarian views. This question is difficult to answer with any degree of certainty, although one can attempt to make an inference by examining the “revealed preferences” (cf. Beshears et al. 2008) of contrarians. In the context of climate change, one way in which preferences might be revealed is by the willingness to incur financial risks to back one’s position in a bet. Bets have a long history as a tool to reveal people’s preferences.
...
It is notable that although contrarians readily claim that the Earth will be cooling in the future, most are unwilling to bet on their stated position (Annan 2005). ... The unwillingness to bet is thus indicative of the over-arching rationality of denial, notwithstanding its argumentative incoherence and non-scientific nature."

Obviously you should read the full text in the original rather than my quote alone, as I have ellided much of the text for brevity.

For myself, I have often noted within the "skeptical" community a tendency by individuals to comment appreciatively on any claim purported to refute AGW, even when such claims contradict the favoured theory of the individual. That indicates fairly clearly to me that the purpose of the theories advanced is not to vindicate those theories, but to "refute" AGW. If in fact the proponents of the diverse theories of AGW denial were primarilly motivated by the science, those who thought warming was caused by the rise in GHG, but that climate sensitivity was low would have as much of a problem with those who thought the warming was primarilly due to the Sun as do proponents of AGW, and similarly with those who thought the recent temperature increase was due to the PDO or AMO. Instead, there behaviour clearly indicates that they reject AGW, and will give a favourable reception to almost any theory that similarly rejects AGW, even when that theory is as incoherent with, or more inchorent with their own theory than it is with AGW. (This might be considered an aspect of the authors second point quoted above, but I think it is different.)

All that said, there are two fuzzy divides within the AGW denial community. First, there is that between those who reject the possibility of an enhanced greenhouse effect altogether, and those who do not. This is illustrated by another of Anthony Watts incoherences, for while he rejects the label "denier" as applied to himself as being a deliberate, and odious moral comparison with holocaust deniers (rather than an indication that his doubt is based on pseudoscience), he is happy to call the "dragon slayers", ie, those deniers who reject an enhanced greenhouse effect entirely deniers). The weaker barrier is between deniers who reject any possibility of AGW being either significant or harmful, and those who merely insist it will be moderate (ie, that the mean Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity lies between 1 and 3 C, and that increased damage with increased GMST is low). These categories are fuzzy because not all deniers accept that one or either category represents a significant division in the community, and because a number of those in the second category deliberately misrepresent their position by labelling it as belonging to the third category. It should be noted in passing that not all members of the third category, the "luke warmers" are in fact deniers, ie, those whose rejection of AGW shows the hallmarks of pseudoscience.

1934 - hottest year on record

Tom Curtis at 12:14 PM on 29 August, 2016

DarkMath @48, if you don't like NOAA, you can always use the AGW denier funded Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project results:

Technically, the BEST data series make no adjustments. Instead, when there is a known, or reasonably inferred change of equipment, location, or time of observations they treat the data as coming from two distinct stations - a proceedure which Anthony Watts endorsed as having his full confidence (until he saw the results). It is certainly a proceedure that has the full confidence of Judith Curry (denier enabler), Richard Muller (temperature series skeptic), Zeke Hausfather (luke warmer) and Steven Mosher (Luke Warmer), not to mention three independent scientists selected by at the time, climate skeptic Richard Muller.

For the record, the highest ranked running 12 month mean temperature in the 1930s according to BEST ranks 23rd. In contrast, eight of the 12 highest ranked 12 month running mean temperatures are in 2012, with another three in the last three months of 2011.

But you want to cherry pick just July temperatures. However, the highest ranked July temperature in the 1930s is 1936 (ranked 3rd) followed by 1934 (ranked 6th). In contrast, in the 21st century the highest ranked are 2012 (1st), 2006 (2nd), 2011 (4th), and 2002 (5th). The average July temperature across the 1930s was 0.66 C. Across the 21st century (to 2012) it was 0.85 C.

And if you are wondering, BEST uses approximately 8 times as many stations as does the USHCN, with an increasing number in time over the 20th and 21st century.

In short, your cherry pick of the cherry pick still does not give you the conclusion you desire.

Your only refuge is to insist that when a station changes its instrument entirely, or its time of day for observations, or is moved to a new location, it should be treated as the same station with no adjustments for differences in recorded temperature between the new and the old; and to take meaningless arithmetic means that do not care that the station density in New York is far higher than that in Nevada, thereby giving more importance to North Eastern state temperatures than to those in the mid-west or west:

Your bias in favour of rich, Democratic eastern states is noted.

Conspiracy theories about Skeptical Science

Tom Curtis at 09:37 AM on 28 July, 2015

I have just been emailed by Scott Gates (who I do not remember, and certainly have had no correspondence with under that name) making scurrilous accusations relating to Lubos Motl's accusations. I consider his accusations libelous, and will not repost them, but I will post my response:

"I don't know you from a bar of soap, and do not appreciate being mail bombed with your scurrilous and false accusations.
The facts are:
1) John Cook used the pseudonym "Lubos Motl" only on a private forum, where all other members were aware that it was a pseudonym. Ergo it was no more identity theft than using somebodies name to perform a parody, or manufacturing fake quotes in somebodies name in a cartoon (as is regularly done by Josh in cartoons published on WUWT). If any pseudoskeptic has a problem with the practice, they should first take it up with Anthony Watts and Josh.
2) The use of the pseudonym was not in anyway related to the 97% consensus paper, nor in Recursive Fury or Recurrent Fury (the follow on papers to the Moonlanding paper by Lewandowsky). Nor has it been used as data for any published scientific paper by John Cook. This point is made in an update to the link you provide on the story.
3) The non-accidental uses of the pseudonym was intended for research that was not published. For that research, the posts were used under a different pseudonym not associated with any person known (and certainly not with any well known scientists, a category that does not include Motl). It is less than ideal to use manufactured samples in research of that category because of the possibility of unconscious biases being introduced to the writing style. It does not, however, constitute scientific fraud unless the fact that the examples of "pseudoskeptic arguments" were written by non-pseudoskeptics is concealed in the published work. It is an arguable point as to whether failure to explicitly acknowledge the manufactured samples in the published work constitutes fraud, but there is no doubt that explicitly mentioning it is best practice. These same points apply also to manufactured examples of "consensus" arguments by people who accept the consensus, even if writing in their own name; because again, the contrived situation may lead to subtle biases in the samples (perhaps making the arguments more cogent than is typical of pro-consensus comments). (I should note that the use of non-manufactured samples also raises ethical issues relating to consent, so despite the issues discussed in this paragraph, the use of manufactured samples, properly acknowledged as such, may in fact be the best scientific practice for this type of research once all considerations are taken into account.)
4) Regardless of the considerations in (4), to my certain knowledge, John Cook has not intentionally practiced scientific fraud in any of his research, published or unpublished. Suggesting otherwise constitutes libel, and is considerably more unethical than anything John Cook has done."

The link provided, and mentioned in point (2) above, was to WUWT.

Global warming deniers are an endangered species

mancan18 at 10:19 AM on 25 July, 2015

In Australia, Climate Change denial does pay. Australia is one of the world's largest coal exporters, a significant proportion of it's power generation comes from coal, and coal products are an important component the national income that underpins Australia's wealth. As a result, attitudes towards climate change follows party lines, with one party, Labor, promoting it as a serious issue and the other, Liberal/National Party, while giving it token support, take a "lukewarmer" position. This is the reason that the Government has implemented it's clayton's climate change policy, "Direct Action" and has attacked the climate advisory bodies, climate change funding arrangements for developing needed technologies, and promoted many climate change deniers to important positions upon it's economic advisory bodies.

The reason for this is actually quite simple. One of the main Liberal/National party policy think tanks is the Institute of Public Affairs (the IPA). It is Australia's equivalent of the George C Marshall Institute. The IPA, along with other Liberal Party policy think tanks like the Menzies Research Centre and the H. R. Nicholls Society, all actively promote Climate Change denial. Scientists like climate change deniers, Ian Plimer and Bob Carter are attached to the IPA, providing advice related to climate change policy. Plimer is also an important member of the Mining Council of Australia, having been it's chairman, and he influences it's political stance. Gina Reinhart, Australia's wealthiest person, who made her money from huge mining projects, is also related to the IPA. She funded a Christopher Monkton speaking tour of Australia, at the height of the ETS/Carbon Tax debate when Labor tried to introduce an ETS. The IPA is also an important source of climate change denial material and underpins the political stance of Murdoch media outlets who reach around 83% of the Australian population, where right wing commentators like Andrew Bolt, Miranda Devine, and Piers Ackereman, and right wing shock jocks like Alan Jones and Ray Hadley, disseminate IPA inspired climate change denial material to their readers and listeners.

Also, the IPA, through it's journal, provides climate change material to its readers, and it's latest effort comes in the form of a book called "Climate Change - the Facts 2014" with contributions from Ian Plimer, Richard Lindzen, Bob Carter, Nigel Lawson, Bill Kininmonth, Willie Soon, Christopher Monckton, Garth Paltridge, Richard Tol, Brian Fisher, Bob Carter, Donna Laframboise, Anthony Watts, Alan Moran amongst others and other climate change deniers. Also, this book seems to form the basis of Matt Ridley's latest essay in June's Quadrant magazine "How the Climate Wars Undermine Science", where John Cook's Consensus Project is discredited, (in their eyes), by referring to it as being biased and unrepresentative.

Now I don't know about you, but, I don't think that climate change deniers are being marginalised in Australia. If anything, they are still pre-eminent due to the IPA's political and media reach. Trying to take effective action to tackle climate change in Australia has already seen the toppling of two prime minsters and a leader of the Liberal Party who did think that the issue was important. It will be a significant issue in the next election but whether the electorate will embrace it, after a fear campaign related to the hip pocket nerve and xenophobic fears related to asylum seekers, is questionable.

While it is easier to have a debate with like minded people; what is happening in Australia, while the Sydney Morning Herald and the Guardian do present material properly conveying the 97% consensus; demonstrates why climate change advocates need to be more engaged with the climate change deniers from the IPA, the Murdoch press, and the right wing shock jock community, because, at the moment the denier/lukewarmer argument is still pre-eminent and not getting it's proper voice with Australia's public.

Carbon cycle feedbacks and the worst-case greenhouse gas pathway

Tom Curtis at 23:54 PM on 8 July, 2015

howardlee @6, the consensus view on ocean uptake is represented schematically by David Archer thus:

From memory, this is for a 1000 Petagramme pulse of CO2. As you can see, the oceans keep on absorbing CO2 strongly for several hundred years after the pulse, eventually absorbing around 80% of CO2, before chemical weathering of different sorts eventually, and very slowly removes the rest (over hundreds of thousands of years).

The models showing this pattern have successfully retrodicted the decline in CO2 concentrations following the PETM, so it is highly unlikely that they will fail for the CO2 increase expected over the next few hundred years with BaU.

Yes, some scientists think differently, but they are a distinct minority. It makes no more sense to work on the assumption that they are right than it does to work on the assumption that that other distinct minority much loved by Anthony Watts are right.

Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique

Evan Jones at 06:57 AM on 4 July, 2015

Yes indeed. Anthony Watts has made a career of finding the mud an wallowing in it.

He found this mud. Makes very good wallowing. I've been doing that for the last five years, so I should know.

Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique

John Hartz at 03:40 AM on 4 July, 2015

Evan:

Can you tell us what "game", Anthony Watts is going to change with this paper?

Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique

John Hartz at 23:58 PM on 3 July, 2015

Evan Jones @87 states:

For much the same reason that a general gets the credit for winning (or losing) a battle. Although I have refined the hypothesis somewhat and slogged through much mud, he (Anthony Watts) is the one that found the mud in the first place. I am just the infantry. And he has also done much heavy lifting of his own in this, as well.

Yes indeed. Anthony Watts has made a career of finding the mud an wallowing in it.

Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique

MA Rodger at 03:40 AM on 27 June, 2015

Rob Honeycutt @68.

The appearance of an ebullient Evan Jones to claim (in the present tense) credit for (actually) an almost three-year-old comment may be down to a new outlet appearing for the publication of atmospheric science. It is called The Open Atmospheric Society and according to this web-page the founder is a chap called Anthony Willard Watts which should make papers written by Anthony Willard Watts a lot easier to get published.

http://theoas.org/

http://dailycaller.com/2015/06/19/skeptics-found-scientific-society-to-escape-journals-that-keep-out-dissenters/

CO2 effect is saturated

Tom Dayton at 14:15 PM on 19 June, 2015

SeanO, HotWhopper dealt with that paper last year: http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/10/anthony-watts-has-found-another.html?m=1

The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator

Philip Shehan at 00:38 AM on 10 June, 2015

Have been getting all sorts of grief over at Bolt for pointing out a number of problems with "skeptics" use of temperature data, and using the trend calculator for this purpose.

I am told that I should contact directly the people whose interpretation I criticise and offer tham right of reply. Just like the "skeptics" do with scintistrs they bucket on blogs. (Yes, sarcasm.)

Actually I have on occasion have failed to do so in the case of Fred Singer, David Whitehouse and Patrick J. Michaels, Richard S. Lindzen, and Paul C. Knappenberge

I have told one critic, on numerous occasions that i have checked the trends with those produced by , among others, Monckton, McKitrick, and those who leapt on Jones' "admission" that a 15 year warming trend was not statistically significant, but nearly so, and the trend calculator results match theirs. I have also explained repeatedly the necessity for autocorrelation to be used with temperature data and referred him to this link.

Yet he wrote today.

The calculation that he [that is me] uses is a method written by a shill that just doesn’t make sense and comes out two to three times larger than you would get if you treated the noise as just random.

I will encourage him to represent his argument here.

But thank you for this valuable tool

Of interest this week are the following posts of mine;

On Anthony Watts blog, Patrick J. Michaels, Richard S. Lindzen, and Paul C. Knappenberger dispute a recent paper by Karl et al which questions whether there has been a “hiatus” in global warming.

This new paper, right or wrong, does not affect my primary argument on claims of a “hiatus”.

Which is that such claims do not meet (in fact do not come within a bulls roar of) the criterion of statistical significance.

What is of interest is that the criticisms of Michaels, Lindzen,and Knappenberger again demonstrate the way that skeptics apply totally different standards of statistical significance depending on how they want to spin the data.

The critique of the paper says:

“The significance level they report on their findings (0.10) is hardly normative, and the use of it should prompt members of the scientific community to question the reasoning behind the use of such a lax standard.”

True, the usual standard of statistical significance is the 0.05, 95% or 2 sigma level. The 0.10 level means that there is a 90% probability that the trend is significant

Yet further on Michaels, Lindzen,and Knappenberger claim:

“Additionally, there exist multiple measures of bulk lower atmosphere temperature independent from surface measurements which indicate the existence of a “hiatus"…Both the UAH and RSS satellite records are now in their 21st year without a significant trend, for example.”

Here are the trends for UAH, RSS and Berkeley data (the most comprehensive surface data set ) from 1995 at the 0.05 level

0.124 ±0.149 °C/decade

0.030 ±0.149 °C/decade

0.129 ±0.088 °C/decade

The Berkeley data shows statistically significant warming trend, as do 5 other surface data sets, with mean trend and error of

0.122 ± 0.093 °C/decade

So, Michaels, Lindzen, and Knappenberger object to statistical significance at the 90% level used by Karl et al.

Yet they base their claim of “multiple measures of bulk lower atmosphere temperature independent from surface measurements which indicate the existence of a “hiatus” on two data sets which have a probability of a “hiatus” or a cooling trend of 4.8% (UAH) and 34.5% (RSS).

I mean, these people have the chutzpah to write “the use of [a confidence level of 90%] should prompt members of the scientific community to question the reasoning behind the use of such a lax standard” yet pin their case for a “hiatus” on such a low statistical probability for two cherry picked data sets.

Lukewarmers – the third stage of climate denial, gambling on snake eyes

michael sweet at 05:25 AM on 15 May, 2015

It strikes me that people who used to call themselves "skeptics" now often call themselves "lukewarmers". Anthony Watts and many others come to mind. Lundzen in 1989 said that warming would not exceed the noise in the data. Hansen was correct in predicting warming. The "skeptic" brand has been shown to be incorrect. They are trying to continue their stalling by putting on a new hat. How long will it take the mainstream media to see through the new outfit?

Examining Hansen's prediction about the West Side Highway

Roger Knights at 21:31 PM on 20 December, 2014

In March 2011, perhaps in reaction to this March 10 SkS thread, Watts updated his original 2009 story to correct the record and concede that 40 years was the correct number. He wrote, “So I’m happy to make the correction for Dr. Hansen in my original article, since Mr. Reiss reports on his original error in conflating 40 years with 20 years.”

See the updated first pages at: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/22/a-little-known-but-failed-20-year-old-climate-change-prediction-by-dr-james-hansen/

SkS should update its head post by mentioning Watts’s update. As-is, it can be read as implying that Watts is continuing to make a debunked claim. (It says, “One climate myth found on the internet, propagated by Anthony Watts, is that James Hansen erroneously predicted . . . .”) In addition, “previously” should be inserted before “propagated.”

CO2 effect is saturated

Tom Curtis at 09:35 AM on 17 November, 2014

Satoh @347, 348, 349, 350, and 354 criticized my understanding of path length as used as a measure of pressure-length (pL) in Hottel diagrams. This is despite the fact that he responded to my post @340 in which I describe my understanding by saying "excellent work" with no expressed quibble about my understanding of pL or emissivity, both of which he now disputes. In particular, he wrote @349:

"You randomly picked the top line and said "it's 4 foot atmospheres which is .0004 X 10,000 feet" so it would point to the 0.2 mark. That's pretty arbitrary. The mean free path length of 15 micron photons at sea level is definitely not 10,000 feet so you can't use that line.
This paper has been floating around the web which says the mean path length for photons in CO2 at sea level is 32 meters. I don't buy it. They first measured it many years ago and it was in millimeters. I'd like to know what the latest calculations are for that.
Mean path length applies to absorption, and it also applies to emission. They are inverse of the same process."

The first and most crucial point is that L is not defined as "mean free path length", and that "mean free path length" is not the same thing as "mean path length". Indeed, Mehrota et al (1995) (download PDF), define L in pL as "mean Beam width". Further, in a worked example, they calculate estimates of emissivity for a Claus plant (described in Nasato et al, 1994), saying, "A mean beam length of L = 0.9 x diameter = 0.04 m can be used." (The inside diameter of the tube in question was 43.99 mm.)

Further, that is consistent with the lecture slides by Dr Prabal Talukdar on Gas Radiation in which he defines "Mean Beam Length":

"• The simple expression for the hemisphere of gas is not
applicable for other geometries
• A concept of mean beam length is introduced for
engineering calculations
This is an equivalent path length L which represents the
average contributions of different beam lengths from the
gas body to the striking surface
In the absence of information available, mean beam
length is approximately calculated as
L =~= 3.5*V/A
Where A=total surface area of the enclosure
and V = total volume of the gas"

He then shows a slide of a table of formula for different shapes including a "Circular cylinder of semi-infinite height" radiating to "an element at the center of the base" for which the formula is 0.9 *D. As these formula are not restricted as to the actual volumes enclosed, and as the worked example by Mehrota et al has a Beam Length significantly greater than your estimated Mean Free Path Length, I take this to show how experts in the field interpret L for the pL contours in Hottel diagrams (as opposed to the interpretation of biologists working outside of their field that even Anthony Watts considers to be a pseudo-scientist).

Worse, however, the mean free path length is given by the general formula l=1/(nσ), where l is the mean free path length, n is the number of particles involved, and σ is the effective cross sectional area of collision. (In Nahle's varian he uses "l=m/(nσ)" where m is the mass of the gas, and n is the number of molecules per unit mass which is equivalent.) However, by the ideal gas law,

P=nRT/V, where n is the number of molecules in moles, P is pressure, T is temperature, V volume and R a constant. Ergo, for constant temperature and volume, P is proportional to n. But n is inversely proportional to l (free path length), so that if L in pL is mean free path length, pL is constant for a constant temperature and volume. Ergo, if L were mean free path length, contours of constant pL in Hottel diagrams (which assume constant volume) would by necessity be vertical, ie, have a constant value in the x-axis (Temperature). Therefore it is mathematically impossible that L from pL = mean free path length. (Put another way that may be less obscure, because p is the inverse of l, of L=l then Hottel diagrams should revert to a mapping of Temperature directly onto emissivity, and shoud require no pL contours for that mapping.)

Turning to emissivity, we have the statement of Byun and Chen (2013) that Hottel diagrams model total emissivity, not spectral emissivity. The latter is the emission at a given wavelength or frequency relative to that predicted by the appropriate form of Planck's law for a black body at that wavelength or frequency. The former is the integral of the spectral emissivions as a ratio to the emission predicted by the Steffan-Boltzmann law for the total emission of a black body. Both, or course, are relative to a particular temperature.

Because the emissivity plotted in Hottel diagrams is total emissivity, it is irrelevant that the emission at 15 microns is absorbed within a very short distance. Emissions just above or just below 15 microns may not be absorbed for meter, or even kilometers and hence make a substantial contribution to mean Beam Length (L). Therefore, in determining the total emissivity of the atmosphere, you cannot assume very short mean beam lengths. (Nor should you assume mean beam lengths equivalent to the total height of the atmosphere because of decreasing pressure with altitude.) But looking horizontally, mean beam lengths of multiple kilometers are possible with near constant pressure. Hence my example of 10 horizontal kilometers, which with CO2 and amtospheric concentrations gives a total emissivity of approximately 0.2 (which I know independently to be the approximate total emissivity of CO2 looking vertically in clear sky conditions).

The Wall Street Journal downplays global warming risks once again

Bob Loblaw at 07:40 AM on 28 September, 2014

Tom:

I agree that doing it right has been around a lot longer than 1979, and misunderstandings also go back further. The reason I picked Newell and Dopplick as an example was two-fold:

I knew of the study (and the comment/reply), having been exposed to it (and why it was wrong) as part of my graduate studies in the mid-1980s (i.e.. 30 years ago);
it was an example of the sort of mis-understanding that Koonin is making - but an example that appears in the proper scientific literature, underwent peer review, was properly critiqued in the same journal ("hey, you made some mistakes"), and where it received a proper reaction from the original authors ("oops"). Journal-published comments on bad papers are so rare these days that it is useful to have examples where they exist.

The second point is germain to the fact that Koonin:

is making his points in non-peer-reviewed slop-eds and opinion papers;
is making mistakes that were somewhat permissible in the scientific literature 35 years ago (J Applied Meteo is a generally excellent journal);
is making mistakes that he has no excuse (other than willful ignorance) for making in 2014.

If Newell and Dopplick tried to publish a similar paper today, in a respectable journal (not something like E&E or one of the off-topic or vanity press labels the denial indistry is fond of), it would likely not get published at all. Knowledgable reviewers would notice the mistakes immediately.

Joe:

As I knew it was Robert Watts (respected scientist), having read the comment decades before Anthony's blog was a gleam in a denialist's eye, it didn't even occur to me that someone might wonder if it involved Anthony. Thanks for a good laugh!

The Wall Street Journal downplays global warming risks once again

JoeT at 01:35 AM on 28 September, 2014

Thanks Bob for the additional comments. I have to admit that I went to the Watts reference first, but was reassured that it was a Robert from Tulane, not an Anthony from nowhere. The articles were actually very informative, so thanks for pointing them out. As a member of the American Physical Society myself, it concerns me greatly that Koonin is (or was?) the chair of the APS committee tasked with rewriting the orgranization's position on climate change. It's the reason I was particularly interested in understanding his article.

New study finds fringe global warming contrarians get disproportionate media attention

Bob Loblaw at 11:05 AM on 14 August, 2014

Johncl:

An interesting alternative hypothesis. I don't watch much of the US right-wing news networks - usually just the clips I see on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show. There, the number of times I see the same faces pop up on the contrarian side (e.g. Anthony Watts - an "expert" by nobody's definition), my impression was that certain people are way over-represented.

I think this falls in the "for future research" category!

It's albedo

John Michael Carter at 19:47 PM on 14 July, 2014

I think in general this site does a fantastic job, and fully support it. Though I struggled with this article a little bit, I also thought it was informative, and for the issue of cloud cover albedo, linked to it here.

But, though I know this is an old post (though I don't think that makes it or comments in it have any less value) I have a question on this article as well. It reads "Overall, the Earth's albedo has a cooling effect."

Has a cooling affect relative to what? Doesn't the earth have to have some level of albedo? So the albedo can't cool or heat, but only cool or heat relative to a higher or lower albedo??

I also wonder, since the myth is supplied by Anthony Watts, who seems to have gotten a lot of fairly central stuff incorrect, if the end of that statement supplied at the outset "the albedo forcings.. seem to be ...larger than that of all manmade greenhouse gases combined."

Again, doesn't this have to be relative to some baseline, such as a marked and precise change in albedo over a specific time period? It's also unclear from the myth quote whether he is talking about the allleged "decrease in albedo" over some set of years prior to '97 (followed by a "lull," which presumable means no change from the prior year?) or the alleged increase in albedo after '97. And is the statement of total affect even accurate? And again, relative to what (not Watt) specifically?

Ned, comment 7 above: Helpful comment. It also says "So, a change in the earth's albedo can increase or decrease the amount of energy that is absorbed, without necessarily increasing or decreasing the amount of energy that is emitted."

I want to make sure I understand this correctly, as I'm also unclear on this as well. A higher albedo will reflect more radiation away from the surface, which has not affected the amount of energy the surface is emitting, but is affecting the energy absorbed by increasing (in the case of a higher albedo) the amount simply reflected away (like a white shirt) and thus decreasing the amount not reflected, but simply absorbed. Making high (versus low) albedo huge, because much of it then goes back into space, instead of heating the surface it hit, and then adding to overall thermal emittance from that warmed surface. I botch anything major there?

(Maybe this is going too far afield, and also showing whatI need to learn about the changing wavelengths, but if it is simply reflected and the wavelengths stay the same, then it won't be much impeded by atsmopheric gg gas absorption and re radiation - but, if it is not reflected, but aborbed (say into warmer water) not only does it heat the surface (or water) but when some of that energy is released as heat, in longer thermal radiation form, more of it is then trapped, and re radiated in all directions, by the gg gases in the atmosphere, then otherwise would have been had it been bounced back originally in its original shorter wavelength (and thus not, or less? gg gas absorbable) and less goes back out into space, yet again. ?? )

The Wall Street Journal denies the 97% scientific consensus on human-caused global warming

LazyTeenager at 22:46 PM on 31 May, 2014

Weeeelll , I think we should defer to the expertise of Anthony Watts. Just compare the number of peer reviewed papers he asks his minions to disparage, to the number of peer reviewed papers he asks them to applaud. I am taking bets the ratio is close to 97%.

Brandis confuses right to be heard with right to be taken seriously

Composer99 at 00:43 AM on 7 May, 2014

To elaborate a bit on the characteristics of denialism, and how creationists, climate science deniers, and anti-vaccine activists share them in common, let me provide some examples:

1. Fake or Misleading Experts

Creationism - Ken Ham, Dr Michael Egnor (a neurosurgeon), William Dembski

Anti-Vaccine Activism - Andrew Wakefield, Dr Jay Gordon (*), Dr Vera Scheibner (a micropaleontologist)

Climate Science Denial - Christopher Monckton, Dr Roy Spencer (*), Dr S. Fred Singer (*), Dr Richard Lindzen (*), Ian McIntyre

(*) denotes misleading experts - people with pertinent expertise in the subject (e.g. Dr Jay Gordon is a pediatrician) but who are using their credentials to support or propagate false or misleading information, in the public sphere at least, if not in the literature (e.g. Dr Spencer and the Cornwall Alliance). (Some creationists I have named above might be misleading experts; but I'm not familiar enough with them to say so.)

2. Cherry-Picking & Misrepresentation

Creationism - claims about radiocarbon dating, this article showing distortion of so-called "No Free Lunch" algorithms, claims about the eye, or flagellum, making Charles Darwin out to be a proto-eugenicist, etc.

Anti-Vaccine - Wakefield's (retracted) 1998 Lancet paper (I don't recall seeing that one get trotted out as much since its retraction), some rubbish papers by Laura Hewitson et al (also retracted), claims about various ingredients in vaccines (formaldehyde, aluminium, etc.), the "Fourteen Studies". I could go on - maybe search the vaccine topic thread on Science-Based Medicine for some more examples.

Climate Science Denial - the "pause" in global warming (cherry picking a small portion of the surface temperature record while ignoring the behaviour of 95+% of the climate system), the obsession over outdated papers (Hansen et al 1988 and Mann et al 1999), Anthony Watts' "surface stations project".

3. Logical Fallacies

Creationism - false dichotomy (either their misrepresentation of evolutionary processes must be true, or God/an "Intelligent Designer" did it), ad hominem or similar argument (e.g. accepting evolution leads to the Holocaust, courtesy of Ben Stein).

Anti-Vaccine - ad hominem (what Dr David Gorski calls the "pharma shill gambit"), red herrings (appeals to the issues surrounding thalidomide, Vioxx, or, say, the Tuskegee experiments).

Global Warming Denial - ad hominem (pretty much whenever Al Gore or David Suzuki's names come up), strawman argument ("CAGW"), appeal to popularity (here's a good example, or you could bring up the Orgeon Petition), guilt by association (Donna Laframboise's book about the IPCC).

4. Conspiratorial Ideation

Creationism - In Expelled, Ben Stein alleges that the scientific community conspires to ruin the careers of those who express any doubt in the "scientific orthodoxy of Darwinism" (quotes used to denote sarcasm, not direct quote). Especially religious creationists are liable to discern the influence of Satan or other supernatural forces of wickedness in the widespread acceptance of evolution among biologists.

Anti-Vaccine - One activist, Jake Crosby, is famed for trying to playing "six degrees of separation" to try and tie pro-vaccine advocates to pharmaceutical companies. Conspiracy theories are also called upon to explain why public health departments & researchers would continue to support vaccination programs despite the alleged harms of vaccines.

Global Warming Denial - The allegations that the UEA-CRU hack exposed fraud, or that the subsequent inquiry findings were whitewashing. Any time the claim is made that climate scientists are engaged in a hoax or fraud for the purpose of securing grant money. Any time the claim is made that climate science is part of a wider "eco-fascist", "Marxist", or what-have-you plot to establish despotism.

5. Impossible Expectations/Shifting Goalposts

Creationism - I'm not as well-read on creationist tactics on this front, but I understand that creationists have made a big fuss about lack of certain transitional forms, or even set up impossible expectations for what sort of transitional forms might be found (e.g. the "crocoduck"). The shift to "Intelligent Design" as the primary public vehicle of creationism is a goalpost shift.

Anti-Vaccine - Despite its unethical nature, many anti-vaccine activists call for a double-blind trial of vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. Anti-vaccine activists occasionally demand 100% certainty of the safety or efficacy of vaccines. I have personally had an anti-vaccine commenter demand that science either develop the capacity to predict who would be harmed by vaccines (an impossible expectation at present).

Climate Science Denial - The "quantum" behaviour of denial as recently discussed on Skeptical Science is a perfect example of shifting goalposts. A good example of impossible expectations would be Judith Curry's "Uncertainty Monster", or similar claims that we just need to do more research for a few more years/decades before we can make policy decisions (because it's all so uncertain).

Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap

Andrew Mclaren at 03:30 AM on 24 February, 2014

For those who might find such a reference useful, according to Johnson's English Dictionary (5th ed, 1773) the word DENIER is defined as follows:

DENI´ER ∫. [from deny]
1. A contradictor ; an opponent.   Watts.
2. One that does not own or acknowledge.   South.
3. A refuſer ; one that refuſes.   King Charles.

==========
Always a good excuſe to uſe thoſe long letter ſ's...

(ſmile)

Johnson's annotations refer to his contemporary literary sources, so that first citation is from the logician Isaac Watts, definitely not Anthony Watts!

This edition of Johnson's dictionary was the last revision by himself during his lifetime, and set the standard for the more widely disseminated editions printed in the Georgian period. The word "denier" clearly has hundreds of years of precedence as a generic term for a person adopting a contentious and contrarian position in argument, making an appeal of ignorance, or actively refusing to consider, or grant something. Such have been common understandings of the term for at least a dozen generations of common use.

Roy Spencer and others who claim that 'denier' impugns holocaust deniers specifically and exclusively, are truly oblivious to the broader basis of the language and concepts they engage with. Let alone in invoking Godwin's Law as it is called, in such a mawkish and pious claim of victimhood.

MP Graham Stringer and CNN Crossfire are wrong about the 97% consensus on human-caused global warming

Tom Curtis at 19:42 PM on 23 February, 2014

tlitb1 @35, it is fairly obvious even to this non-author that:

1) The papers were "captured" by the search, not "captured" into a category. That is, the literature search can be viewed metaphorically as a net which 'caught' 12,280 papers, which were then sorted into their appropriate categories. Your misinterpretation is both typical of you, and from past experience, probably deliberate. Whether deliberate or not, it has no justification in the text of the article.

2) Even casual readers of the paper will have noted that the abstract raters rated the papers only on the abstract and title, all other information (including date and journal of publication, and authors names) being withheld. In constrast author self ratings were based not only on the full paper, but also on whatever memories they had of their intentions for the paper. As such, the two sorts of ratings do not, and cannot compounded into a conglomerate rating as you suggest. If the authors disagree with the abstract ratings, that may be simply because they are rating a different thing. It is presume that abstracts are related to the contents of papers, so that on average the pattern of ratings by authors represents a check on the accuracy of both the method of rating papers by abstract alone and on the accuracy of abstract raters. Differences in the rating of individual papers, whoever, can be the consequence of to many different factors to safely attribute them to any one factor (at least without a lot of additional information).

3) In constrast, a large difference between the author rating of the same paper by various authors can only be attributed to either misunderstanding the rating categories, or (hopefully less likely) misunderstanding their own paper by one or more of the authors. A difference of just one point in self rating, however, may simply be attributable to slighly different subjective judgements, which cannot be completely excluded. In the scenario you describe, at least two of the authors have misunderstood the rating categories.

4) In this case, Spencer makes an explicit claim about how he would be rated, a claim which is shown to be false by the actual facts. That is fairly clear evidence that he is misdescribing how the ratings should apply.

In fact it is very interesting to compare Spencer's reaction to that of Dr Nicola Scaffeta, who when asked a question about the rating of one of his papers had this to say:

Question: "Dr. Scafetta, your paper ‘Phenomenological solar contribution to the 1900–2000 global surface warming‘ is categorized by Cook et al. (2013) as; “Explicitly endorses and quantifies AGW as 50+%“
Is this an accurate representation of your paper?"
Scafetta: “Cook et al. (2013) is based on a strawman argument because it does not correctly define the IPCC AGW theory, which is NOT that human emissions have contributed 50%+ of the global warming since 1900 but that almost 90-100% of the observed global warming was induced by human emission.
What my papers say is that the IPCC view is erroneous because about 40-70% of the global warming observed from 1900 to 2000 was induced by the sun. This implies that the true climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling is likely around 1.5 C or less, and that the 21st century projections must be reduced by at least a factor of 2 or more. Of that the sun contributed (more or less) as much as the anthropogenic forcings.
The “less” claim is based on alternative solar models (e.g. ACRIM instead of PMOD) and also on the observation that part of the observed global warming might be due to urban heat island effect, and not to CO2.
By using the 50% borderline a lot of so-called “skeptical works” including some of mine are included in their 97%.”

First, Scaffeta grotesquely misrepresents the IPCC position, which is that greater than 50% of warming since 1950 has been anthropogenic.

Second, the abstract of his paper reads as follows:

"We study the role of solar forcing on global surface temperature during four periods of the industrial era (1900–2000, 1900–1950, 1950–2000 and 1980–2000) by using a sun-climate coupling model based on four scale-dependent empirical climate sensitive parameters to solar variations. We use two alternative total solar irradiance satellite composites, ACRIM and PMOD, and a total solar irradiance proxy reconstruction. We estimate that the sun contributed as much as 45–50% of the 1900–2000 global warming, and 25–35% of the 1980–2000 global warming. These results, while confirming that anthropogenic-added climate forcing might have progressively played a dominant role in climate change during the last century, also suggest that the solar impact on climate change during the same period is significantly stronger than what some theoretical models have predicted."
(My emphasis)

The phrasing, "as much as" indicates that the upper limit is being specified. With solar activity specified as only contributing "as much as" 25-30% of warming since 1980, the rating of the abstract was eminently justified.

What is interesting, however, is the stark contrast between Scaffeta's misinterpretation of the rating, and that by Spencer. Interestingly, all early commentary on the paper by AGW "skeptics" followed Scaffeta's line (if not quite so extremely). Then a new, and contradictory talking point developed, ie, that used by Spencer. Some at least Anthony Watts have happily presented both views.

I suspect it is fortunate for a number of AGW "skeptics" who self rated that their self ratings are confidential (unless they choose to release them), for I suspect quite a few of them will have rated them as rejecting the concensus, and are now publicly declaring that they ratings must be interpreted such that they are part of the 97%. As I have not seen the data, that is, of course, just a guess.

Discussing global warming: why does this have to be so hard?

Rob Nicholls at 02:38 AM on 14 February, 2014

'Even the radicals don't want to pollute the planet. Can you imagine James Inhofe sitting around the dinner table asking his family to find more ways he can pollute the air and water of this planet? I can't; it just doesn't happen.' I think this is really important, and it ties in with something I've been trying (and failing) to say in various comments on various websites for some time now.

I think the positions taken by climate "skeptics" are contradicted by overwhelming evidence, but I don't get the sense that these people are setting out deliberately to do harm or to deceive. In fact I think generally they are really trying to do the right thing, and in many cases they are trying very hard to get at the truth, it's just that the very normal human trait of confirmation bias gets in the way. I suspect that Anthony Watts truly believes he's exposing "damaging AGW fraud" and trying to protect humanity from unnecessarily cutting fossil fuel use. I don't know why anyone would put so much effort into a website unless they really believed in what they are doing. I often hear accusations of "bad faith" made against climate "skeptics" e.g. because they twist arguments, cherry pick, fail to back down when proven wrong, fail to back up their claims when challenged, and behave in other frustrating ways. But I really think this is generally all driven by confirmation bias and not by malice or "bad faith". (also, obviously I'm not claiming that behaviour is necessarily perfect on the side of those who broadly agree with the IPCC's overall conclusions, or that any of us is immune to confirmation bias).

I think it's important to remember that climate "skeptics" may not have much control over how they see the world and the tactics they use to defend their worldviews. Why does this matter? Remembering it may at least help me to be civil in engaging with climate "skeptics". Personally I think civility is constructive and I would prefer to be civil, although I find it very difficult to achieve consistently. By the way, I don't have an issue with those who choose to employ a more "robust" style in their blog posts.

Why rainbows and oil slicks help to show the greenhouse effect

joeygoze at 05:33 AM on 5 February, 2014

This article mischaracterizes this out of the many skeptic arguments as..."One of the most ‘out there’ is that the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist..." That is a fringe argument which goes against basic physics. It is not "one of the most out there" as characterized. As you note, not even Anthony Watts accepts this argument. Goes in the same bucket as fringe arguments such as forecasts of the arctic being ice free in 2013.

Climate scientist Dessler to US Senate: 'Climate change is a clear and present danger'

DSL at 05:08 AM on 22 January, 2014

Perhaps, DD, but then let's also recognize without hem-hawing just what sort of project Judith Curry is engaged in. Curry is interested in the promotion of uncertainty. In the minds of the general public, uncertainty typically reads as doubt, and Curry knows that. What Curry publishes and what Curry says often result in dissonance.

How do meteorologists fit into the 97% global warming consensus?

michael sweet at 02:46 AM on 5 December, 2013

Poster,

Perhaps I misread your comment.

The scientists who do the work studying AGW are not politically biased. The general public has become biased in the last 10 years. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) is commonly quoted as saying that he was in favor of doing something about AGW until he heard what the possible cost was. Scientists are not biased by potential costs, they study nature. If the AMS found that their members are biased due to politics, that does not mean anything relative to the accuracy of scientific studies of AGW. It means that the AMS members are not very well informed. That is consistent with the fact that many of the AMS members are television performers who have little knowledge of AGW (Anthony Watts being a prime example).

How do meteorologists fit into the 97% global warming consensus?

dhogaza at 15:14 PM on 4 December, 2013

Tom Curtis:

"dhogaza @18, the survey was limited to full members, ie, it excluded associate and student members. Therefore all respondents to the survey either have a bachelors degree in meteorology, or equivalent academic knowledge; or have demonstrated "professional or scholarly expertise" in meteorology. That later category likely includes Anthony Watts based on his being an author of a relevent scientific publication."

The AMS requirements were not as stringent in the past, as I indicated in my first comment. Watts is there because he's old enough to have escaped the need for a degree. He was a member long, long before he was an author of a relevent scientific publication.

How do meteorologists fit into the 97% global warming consensus?

Tom Curtis at 12:15 PM on 4 December, 2013

dhogaza @18, the survey was limited to full members, ie, it excluded associate and student members. Therefore all respondents to the survey either have a bachelors degree in meteorology, or equivalent academic knowledge; or have demonstrated "professional or scholarly expertise" in meteorology. That later category likely includes Anthony Watts based on his being an author of a relevent scientific publication. However, it is not true that most, or even a significant number of those surveyed lack scientific credentials on meteorology.

What is true is that a large minority of those sampled (43.9%) conduct no research in any area, and that only a small minority (12.7%) conduct research on climate; or which an even smaller minority (6.8%) have climate as a career focus. Acceptance of an anthropogenic cause for global warming is strongest in that smallest, most expert group, and declines with the fall of expertise. That shows that it is something other than expert knowledge that is driving the low levels of acceptance of an anthropogenic cause to global warming among meteorologists.

How do meteorologists fit into the 97% global warming consensus?

dhogaza at 09:12 AM on 4 December, 2013

Licorj:

"KR - Theoretically, the wheater forecasters should be the easiest kind of scientists, should expected to be convinced about AGW, by climate scientists.

Why, it is not happening ?"

Most weather forecasters aren't scientists. While in modern times most have a undergraduate years university degree, very few have a graduate degree, and very few are practicing scientists.

The most famous (ex-)weather forecaster in the denialist camp, Anthony Watts, only has a high school degree - he's old enough to have been certified as a broadcast meteorologist before the requirement (in the US, at least) for an undergraduate degree was adopted. There are plenty of older weather forecasters out there working in media who don't have an undergraduate.

What made you think they're scientists? When you watch the weather forecast on TV, do you think "oh, there's a scientist on TV!" ????

Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

scaddenp at 11:56 AM on 26 November, 2013

PS. My evidence of ideological bias. In an interview with Watts on PBS.

"SPENCER MICHELS: What’s the thing that bothers you the most about people who say there’s lots of global warming?

ANTHONY WATTS: They want to change policy. They want to apply taxes and these kinds of things may not be the actual solution for making a change to our society."

To me that sounds pretty much like the wonderful "skeptic" logic of "The only solution I can see to AGW involves things contrary to my political ideology, therefore AGW must be wrong". A better approach would be think up a solution that it is compatiable with your ideology.

How we discovered the 97% scientific consensus on man-made global warming

barry at 16:25 PM on 23 November, 2013

Question:

Of the scientists that were surveyed to rate their own papers, did you include Alan Carlin, Craig D. Idso, Nicola Scafetta, Nils-Axel Morner, Nir J. Shaviv, Richard S.J. Tol, and Wei-Hock "Willie" Soon?

I ask because Anthony Watts, referring to a PopTech article regarding those scientists' comments on the paper, says that they were not contacted. But the scientists themselves say nothing about that.

Do you have a list of the scientists you attempted to contact, perhaps in supplementary material?

Any leads appreciated.

Barry.

Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

VictorVenema at 05:06 AM on 19 November, 2013

Poster, in case you are interested, I just wrote my thoughts on the comments of Judith Curry (and Watts and Lucia).

Concluding, I see no problems with this paper. Like any work of science there is no certainty and we will have to see what future scientists will find. The comments by Judith Curry and Lucia point to interesting points for future research, but do not invalidate the study in any way.

Double Standard on Internal Variability

panzerboy at 15:00 PM on 26 October, 2013

Willard Tony is Anthony Watts?

Aunt Judy Judith Curry from Climate etc?

Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation

Tom Curtis at 20:43 PM on 25 October, 2013

So there we have it. EITR's defence of AGW skepticism against the demand for scientific justification of their position is that the demand is unfair, for the skeptics have no such justification. Well, at least he has chutzpah for trying that one on. And WUWT is superior to SkS because Anthony Watts "challenges the science" without having any poblishable scientific basis for doing so; while SkS is inferior because it merely reports the published science. And thus, haveing declared virtues to be vices, and vices virtues, he concludes that his own position is virtuous indeed, by his definition.

Clearly at this point any pretense that a rational discussion can be held with EITR is just that, pretense. As I am no good at pretending, I will therefore leave the "discussion".

No doubt EITR will now expostulate that it is unfair of me to expect from him rational discussion as he has no rational basis for his views ...

Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation

Elephant In The Room at 09:13 AM on 25 October, 2013

Ok - this is what is happening. There are 2 sides to this debate. Those that support the view that man made climate change is occurring and those that either question or do not believe that man made climate change is occurring. When the IPCC was set up, their aim was, and I quote "The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy, although they may need to deal objectively with scientific, technical and socio-economic factors relevant to the application of particular policies."The IPCC were not set up to challenge whether or not man made climate change existed, but to assess the risk, possible impacts and how to reduce them. At no point were they asked to consider whether or not man made climate change was even a threat at all.Every site that supports man-made climate change has the IPCC at its disposal. To ask someone to offer scientific evidence that man made climate change is not occurring given the initial remit of the IPCC and the wealth of information that followed is quite frankly impossible. There are sites that support man-made climate change and there are sites that do not. This site heavily supports the view that man made climate change is occurring. So do you really wish to ask the so named contrarians to offer evidence that refutes the argument. It really is a rather pointless exercise and I find the offer to provide evidence disingenuous at the very least.What I do find speaks volumes is how sites on both sides of the discussion can never find any common ground with each other. This results in the same group of people flapping their wings on the same few websites, but never agreeing or accepting alternative opinion. I blame Skeptical Science and WUWT equally for that, or any other site for that matter that shares different views on this. What I will say however in defense of Anthony Watts is that he challenges the science. Anyone can quote peer reviewed papers and the work of a body set up to determine the effect of something. It takes a different kind of person to challenge that.Not so long ago, people that believe climate change is occurring were scratching their heads because there hasn't been a warming for a few years - putting forward suggestions that it could be due to north atlantic oscillation. yet, when the skeptics simply say there hasn't been a warming, the alarmists say we need to look at bigger time scales. It's funny how the same suggestion by 2 different groups produces 2 totally different answers by the group that is trying to prove climate change. And here lies the problem for me.On a final note and given that in the last 15 years or so there has been no warming, what has made the IPPC now 95 percent sure that man made climate is occurring over and above the previous 90 percent. have I missed something?

Arctic sea-ice 'growth', a manufactured IPCC 'crisis' and more: David Rose is at it again

Bernard J. at 13:22 PM on 11 September, 2013

The truly sad thing about all this is that people such as David Rose are fully and consciously aware that they are lying to the public, but that this deliberate misrepresentation of the science works spectacularly well to achieve their goals.

In Australia the most conspicuous contemporary example of this is the Coalition's intention to repeal the price on carbon pollution. Every scientist and objective economist understands that a market-based approach is the most effective mechanism for acheiving emissions reduction in a democracy (and even the Coalition's leader Tony Abbott and climate spokesman Greg Hunt understood this up to the time that the carbon "tax" was introduced), but between them the conservative body politic and the conservative media understand that all one has to do to see fruittion of rationally-untenable but desired outcomes is to repeat memes that appeal to the ideological ignorance of a large section of the self-indulgent Western middle class. It doesn't need to be true - just true in the minds of sufficient people.

We've long passed the point where simply being right and pointing out that the denialist industry is wrong is sufficient to make the case. If it was otherwise we'd live in a world where singnificant and tangible changes to emissions were already in train. David Rose and the rest of the denialist movement well know that they can spout any scientifically-preposterous clap-trap that they like, and all they have to do it to persist in repeating it for the truth to be eroded in the minds of sufficient members of the public that the end result is the same - and that they make a tidy living in the process.

It took decades to overturn the ideological inertia of the asbestos and the tobacco industries, and even today their acknowledgement of the harm of their products is only effectively manifested in the First World, and even then only incompletely. The fossil fuel industry is vastly more profitable than either of the former two, however, and the impacts of the fossil fuel industry materialise over centuries and millenia rather than decades, which makes the tangibility of the consequences that much more difficulkt to communicate, so any hope of an eleventh-hour salvaging of even some prospect of effective mitigation will require a much more concerted and substantively different approach to the one that has largely been followed to date.

As a consequence of a compliant media manifesting the thinking of people such as Rose, and of an ideologically-motivated conservative government as has just been elected, Australia is putting the cause of carbon emissions reduction behind by decades and the effects will ripple beyond Australia and around the world.

Our best last chance is the wording of the upcoming AR5. If the conclusions from this report cannot galvanise governments around the world to act, then any further reporting by the IPCC or by national scientific bodies will be little more than plotting points on a graph and hand-wringing whimperings of "we told you so".

I wish that it was otherwise, but I've watched for almost a decade as the David Roses, Anthony Watts, and Christopher Moncktons of the world have been debunked at every turn, time after time, but the effectiveness of their fallacious nonsense continues to maintain the status quo.

People will believe an easy lie over the hard truth. And for the last 15 to 20 years lies and deceipt have won at every turn. As long as this remains the case David Rose and his ilk will continue to publish this type of bilge, and it will continue to have a significant effect to delay action to far beyond the point where the best outcomes can be realised.

There is no consensus

DSL at 14:29 PM on 8 September, 2013

Chuckle, "AGW folk" is more ambiguous than "consensus." How do you define "AGW folk"?

I'll tell you what a consensus is. It's achieved when science moves on, when science stops targeting the proposition for testing. Very rarely, and the probability weakens with each passing year, do major theories that have reached the consensus state end up dying or going through major revision.

Science has moved well beyond the fundamental theory of the greenhouse effect. Its existence is no longer being targeted for research. It is instead now fodder for STEM undergrads. The fine details are still being worked out, yes (radiative transfer is not a simple thing). Sure, there are the Gerlich & Tscheuschners of the world, who attempt to mathturbate the effect away, ignoring the multitude of direct surface observations (not surface temp -- downwelling longwave radiation from the atmosphere) that confirm modeled expectations. You can try to defend them if you wish, but their existence falsifies the consensus of evidence in favor of the greenhouse effect no more than the latest nutjob moon landing hoax claim falsifies the theory that humans have been to the moon. Again, without solid evidence and a coherent physical model, it's all lip-flapping and dancing with the general public, singing sweet nothings down the ear canals of those who have not the time, energy, training, means, and/or motivation to engage the actual science.

Is Cook et al. 2013 lip-flapping? Perhaps, but you won't find too many scientists disagreeing with the conslusions drawn. You can wheedle and whittle all day with Anthony Watts, but the 600k pound gorilla in the room is 1) that the basic theory is supported by all evidence and physics, and 2) that there is no alternative theory that is supported by all evidence and physics--not even close. And if the theory is the actuality, then global energy storage can only continue to rise in the absence of any major off-setting forcing.

The Pacific Ocean fills in another piece of the global warming puzzle, and puzzles Curry

Bernard J. at 15:40 PM on 3 September, 2013

As I noted last week at Hot Whopper the authors did no favours for themselves or the interpretation of their paper by using the term "hiatus" without any prefacing modifiers.

It's important to emphasise that there is no hiatus in overall global heat accumulation - only a redistibution such that the surface of the planet manifests less of the overall heat accumulation. This is of course what Kosaka and Xie are describing, but the Denialati have run with the ambiguous phrasing and released their own twisted meme to the world whilst Precision stands waiting for Truth to finish lacing its boots so that the former personage can pull on its own footwear.

An accurately informed public is necessary for climate policy

NewYorkJ at 07:59 AM on 31 July, 2013

Is Warren related to Fred?

www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/02/the-guardian-disappoints/

shoyemore, I think a clue to how Warren's arguments are formed is in his research profile:

"Warren Pearce is a Research Fellow on the Making Science Public Programme, focusing on the relationship between scepticism and science, with a particular focus on the online debates around climate change."

If you skip an education in the hard sciences, the various science conferences involving climate science, published studies, and synthesis reports, and your primary view of climate science is from an examination of the blogosphere, it's easy to understand where Warren's arguments are coming from. He views bloggers as the most credible "scientists".

Such a background doesn't really excuse logical fallacies. Impressed by many of the comments so far. An example...

bverheggen:

Warren Pearce seems to argue that the existence of even more extreme voices makes Anthony Watts suddenly a "mainstream" sceptic who is thereby freed of the predicate pseudoscience. That is not a logical argument to make.

Regardless of what one may think of Watts, contrasting an extremist with someone who is even more extreme doesnt make him mainstream. Regardless of what one thinks of Watts, contrasting someone who frequently flirts with pseudoscience with an all out pseudo-science lover doesn't free the former from any link with pseudo-science.

That is what I would call the fallacy of the middle ground.

An accurately informed public is necessary for climate policy

shoyemore at 05:56 AM on 31 July, 2013

Warren Pearce's contribution is embarrassing and cringeworthy. He sets a standard composed of Karl Popper, Andrew Montfort and Anthony Watts. No scientist, let alone climate scientist, gets a mention.

Leaving aside Popper (whose philosophy of science is contested), apparently scientists who have spent years observing, writing, publishing and honing their skills may yet aspire to the excellence of our two stalwarts.

No reference or link is provided (for example, to this site) where the reader may go to gain a balanced overview of climate science. The "technical" references are to the Economist article on climate sensitivity of a few months back, the Bishop Hill blog, Wikipedia, and a blog called "Climate Resistance".

Beisdes looking good on his CV in an application to become a Fox News talking head, Pearce's farrago only serves as a minor irritant.

An accurately informed public is necessary for climate policy

shoyemore at 00:09 AM on 31 July, 2013

Barry Woods,

Given Myles Allen's agreement with "7 out of 10" points with Professor LIndzen, Bishop Hill et al, here is an article by Professor Allen in which he indeed says that the "climate of climate change" has changed.

However, Allen takes the science for granted, and wants the discussion to push on the penalizing fossil fuel companies for polluting the atmosphere. That is the change he sees, but I do not think that is the one noted by Mike Hulme.

The only institution in the world that could deal with the cost of climate change without missing a beat is the fossil fuel industry: BP took a $30bn charge for Deepwater Horizon, very possibly more than the total cost of climate change damages last year, and was back in profit within months. Of the $5 trillion per year we currently spend on fossil energy, a small fraction would take care of all the loss and damage attributable to climate change for the foreseeable future several times over.

The fact is that you may well be right about 70%, even 90%, of the science is agreed, leaving out the Killing the Sky Dragon crowd. Unfortunately, you will find that the likes of Roy Spencer and Anthony Watts will only agree sufficient of the science that justifies their preferred policy, which is to do nothing.

www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jul/11/climate-change-debate-weather

An accurately informed public is necessary for climate policy

Rob Honeycutt at 13:09 PM on 30 July, 2013

“So maybe it is time to accept Roy Spencer, Prof Lindzen, Anthony Watts and Andrew Montford, etc into the consensus?”

Hm, are Spencer, Lindzen and Watts ready to accept that >50% of warming is due to human activities? I think likely not.

An accurately informed public is necessary for climate policy

Daniel Livingston at 11:18 AM on 30 July, 2013

Barry Woods asserts a widespread reframing of climate change discourse, which apparently he believes has relevance to readers here. That may well be true, but his framing of the reframing comes across to me as nitpicky and adversarial – the very thing that ironically it seems he wishes wasn’t part of climate discourse. Political science suggests there may indeed be power in reframing discourse. In fact, I appreciate how this site (SkS) helps to reframe cognitive discourse (at least on this site) away from myth and propaganda toward science.

“Prof Mike Hulme’s... view that the climate communications environment with the politicians, media and the public has changed post Copenhagen Conference (or climategate - 2009)”
“Evidence (if only ancedotal) that the comms climate has changed i the UK at least”

In addition to claiming that this reframing is widespread, Barry implies that this reframing is beneficial, and that communicators who are framing the discourse differently are counterproductive. It is not entirely clear what Barry’s reframing is other than that current ‘contrarians’ (WUWT etc) be categorised as part of a new ‘consensus’ where the consensus envelope is redrawn to be far more inclusive, and then that we resume discussions about things over which there is disagreement (sensitivity and a perceived hiatus). In my opinion this would probably leave us not far from where we are now except that we would have to find other words to describe the current ‘consensus’ that current ‘contrarians’ fall outside of.

“So maybe it is time to accept Roy Spencer, Prof Lindzen, Anthony Watts and Andrew Montford, etc into the consensus?”

I wonder whether Barry would consider a contribution at WUWT in which he encouraged its readers to view themselves as part of a meaningful consensus (not just mockery of the idea of consensus) that includes, presumably, SkS authors/readers? While on the one hand that would be a wonderful development, I unfortunately doubt the discourse has moved to this point from the point of view of WUWT authors/readers.

Barry, in one or two sentences, could you succinctly characterise the change in climate discourse that you are talking about?

Further, in another one or two sentences, what is your objective for facilitating a reframing of climate change discourse, and what should be the objective generally for climate communication?

Finally, if one believes the premise of Dana’s conclusion in the OP, would it make to participate in the reframing you are talking about? If so, why? Or if one must logically dispute Dana’s conclusion in order to participate in such a reframing, perhaps it would be useful to start with evidence-based reasoning to come to a different conclusion than that of the OP.

An accurately informed public is necessary for climate policy

JasonB at 10:15 AM on 30 July, 2013

Barry Woods,

So is it time to work out what we all can agree on and move forward.

You mean, figure out what the consensus is and then announce the results to everyone in some sort of publication?

So maybe it is time to accept Roy Spencer, Prof Lindzen, Anthony Watts and Andrew Montford, etc into the consensus?

This is a bizarre suggestion. "The consensus" is not a club. It's what the overwhelming majority of scientists with the relevant expertise agree on. Anyone will automatically be a part of that consensus if they agree on the same thing.

You seem to be suggesting that "the consensus" should be watered down to the extent that the remaining 3% can also be "included", a sort of lowest-common-denominator approach that excludes nobody so everyone gets to be in "the club".

Well, I've got some bad news for you there. Some of those 3% are real cranks, and they don't all agree on the same thing. Some of them don't even agree with themselves from one blog post to the next!

Besides which, telling everyone what 97% of scientists say on a subject is good enough for me and, I suspect, most people. We don't need to water it down to pick up the stragglers who can't bring themselves to accept the evidence or let go of their pet theories no matter how many times they've been shown wrong.

An accurately informed public is necessary for climate policy

Barry Woods at 08:18 AM on 30 July, 2013

As I'm in the UK and John Cook is in Australia (Dana the USA) - I'll have to wait (hopefully) to a reply to my question (comment 1) from the authors of the paper.

I'm a little surprised that Dana did not focuss on the first part Prof Mike Hulme's (founding director of Tyndall Centre for Climate Change) comment, as this has recieved the most attention around the blogs (in particular Prof Judith Curry and Prof Dan Kahan), it talks mainly about his view that the climate communications environment with the politicians, media and the public has changed post Copenhagen Conference (or climategate - 2009):

"Ben Pile is spot on. The “97% consensus” article is poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed. It obscures the complexities of the climate issue and it is a sign of the desperately poor level of public and policy debate in this country that the energy minister should cite it. It offers a similar depiction of the world into categories of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ to that adopted in Anderegg et al.’s 2010 equally poor study in PNAS: dividing publishing climate scientists into ‘believers’ and ‘non-believers’." - Prof Mike Hulme
http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/makingsciencepublic/2013/07/23/whats-behind-the-battle-of-received-wisdoms/#comment-182401

Prof Dan Kahan (Yale) made a similar observation of how succesful this consensus aproach communications would be likely to work, in a post when the paper was published:

"Annual "new study" finds 97% of climate scientists believe in man-made climate change; public consensus sure to follow once news gets out " - Prof Dan Kahan
http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2013/5/17/annual-new-study-finds-97-of-climate-scientists-believe-in-m.html

Prof Dan Kahan revisited this paper when Prof Mike Hulme's comment came to his attention, and seems to be agreeing with Hulme that the climate of communications has moved on:

"On the contrary, there’s good reason to believe that the self-righteous and contemptuous tone with which the “scientific consensus” point is typically advanced (“assault on reason,” “the debate is over” etc.) deepens polarization. That's because "scientific consensus," when used as a rhetorical bludgeon, predictably excites reciprocally contemptuous and recriminatory responses by those who are being beaten about the head and neck with it.
Such a mode of discourse doesn't help the public to figure out what scientists believe. But it makes it as clear as day to them that climate change is an "us-vs.-them" cultural conflict, in which those who stray from the position that dominates in their group will be stigmatized as traitors within their communities."
This is not a condition conducive to enlightened self-government." - Prof Dan Kahan

Is it not possible to change focus, and to attempt to discuss what we all agree on, going forward?

Evidence (if only ancedotal) that the comms climate has changed i the UK at least:

At the recent Oxford Union Interview with Prof Lindzen, with Mark Lynas (author Six Degreees, God Species and environmental writer/activist), Prof Lyles Allen - Oxford Uni - opposing, and David Rose - Mail on Sunday supporting, surprising the interviewer I think, they all agreed that current EU climate policies were pointless futile symbolic gestures, Myles Allen stated that he and Lindzen were in agreement about most of the science and Mark Lynas stated aterwards that they all agreed on 7 out of 10 things.

So is it time to work out what we all can agree on and move forward.

Mike Hulme suggests in this comment that the world has changed and despairs at the polarised and quality of the public debate.

Consider that Prof Mike Hulme (Tyndall Centre, UEA) was quoted in a climategate email of trying to keep sceptics like Prof Stott off the BBC airwaves, and Mark Lynas was writing 6 years ago that climates sceptics were the moral equivalent of Holocaust deniers, that surely is an indication of how things have changed?

I had lunch with Mark Lynas last year and he expressed surpise at the contents of the full Doran survey, an earlier 97% consensus paper (especially the appendices,) he is the unatributed environmental writer here in the WUWT article below, he had often quoted it, but had never read - The Consensus on the Consensus - M Zimmerman (the survey cited by Doran)

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/18/what-else-did-the-97-of-scientists-say/

Both Hulme and Kahan are saying that yet another 97% consensus paper is unlikely to change anything and perhaps a new approach is required, even psychologist Dr Adam Corner is trying to broaden the tent, to include conservatives (UK sort) who whilst many care about the environemnet, Dr Adam Corner (Cardiff Uni, Guardian, COIN, PIRC, formerly Green Party MP candidate, and Friends of the Earth) recognises that the issue has become symbolic and identified with the left, and needs a broader viewpoint to actually ever achieve anything with respect to policy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jun/13/sceptical-tory-voters-climate-change

If Mark Lynas (who put Lindzen into a who is who of Climate Change Deniers - (with Exxon fossil fuel links innuendo) in the New Statesmen a decade ago and equated sceptics with moral equivalent of Holocause deniers ( 6 years ago) can sit down with me ( a Watts Up With that very occasional Guest Author) civily and have lunch, discuss, agree to disagree or even agree to agree on many things (I even 'know where he lives' - ref Greenpeace, he had a bad back, so I gave him a lift), have things moved on?

Or after the Lindzen debate, when Mark Lynas was asked, do you think Prof Lindzen's scence is in anyway influenced by any fossil fuel infuence, he said highly highly unlikely, Prof Myles Allen was really offended that Lindzen had been asked this sort of question (repeatably, a lot was cut from the video edit) , Myles (frustrated with the interviewer) even saying Exxon paid for my ticket once, can we move on, and that consensus was not getting us anywhere , is that a not a sign that the climate of communications has moved on (in the UK at least)

So maybe it is time to accept Roy Spencer, Prof Lindzen, Anthony Watts and Andrew Montford, etc into the consensus? As they all agree that the Earth has warmed in the last 200 hundred years, that CO2 is a green house gas, and that man contributes to climate change.

We can then discuss what we all disagree about, which I think is mainly policy and the hot topics of climate science, senitsivity and the reason for the hiatus in temps in the last decade or so.?

And also perhaps it is time to drop Deniers Disinformation Databases (Desmogblog) or Deniers Halls of Shame (Rising Tide, Campaign Agansit Climate Change) as a tool in the communications debate (it is ever so counterproductve)

Thoughts?

(sorry the comment was a bit long)

links:

Prof Myles Alen comments about Prof Lindzen treatement by the interviewer (comment 23):

http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/3/9/lindzen-at-the-oxford-union.html

the Oxford Union Lindzen interview (Allen, Rose, Lynas)

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/headtohead/2013/06/201361311721241956.html

They didn't change the name from 'global warming' to 'climate change'

John Fisher at 03:16 AM on 17 July, 2013

Here is one such example provided by Anthony Watts:

"Global warming" suggests a steady linear increase in temperature, but since that isn't happening, proponents have shifted to the more universal term "climate change," which can be liberally applied to just about anything observable in the atmosphere.

Climate Change without Catastrophe: Interview with Anthony Watts, oilprice.com, 11 March, 2013

Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy

DSL at 10:24 AM on 2 July, 2013

Daniel, how many people are included in the category "knowledgeable about climate science"? If you're here at SkS, then you're probably knowledgeable enough about the war of rhetoric surrounding the subject. If so, it's puzzling you'd make such claims. The non-knowledgeable public relies on interpreters and experts to understand the science. They have no other route to the approximation of truth that science provides. Consensus is a powerful rhetorical tool. It's evidence that experts believe a proposition or set of propositions. That's good enough for many members of the non-knowledgeable general public. If it's not good enough for you, why complain about Cook? Why not complain about the social structure that forces most people away from engaging the science?

I find it extraordinary that people like Anthony Watts complain about a study like Cook's when Watts himself relies on a variety of evidence-free rhetorical tools to shape public opinion. The difference between Cook and Watts, of course, is that Cook's position is supported by both the consensus of scientists and the consensus of evidence. Watts is supported by the likes of Willis Eschenbach.

CO2 effect is saturated

Tom Curtis at 13:09 PM on 26 June, 2013

stealth @220, the version of Modtran available at the University of Chicago website is an early version (1987), which has been superceeded by 4 other versions since then. More importantly, no single atmospheric condition will effectively model the mean effect over the entire Earth. You need to take representative samples from a large number of conditions (tropical over forest, tropical over sand, tropical over ocean, various cloud conditions etc) and determine an average effect to get accurate values. Unfortunately the University of Chicago interface does not allow that level of flexibility in conditions. Nevertheless, Gunnar Myhre and associates did exactly that in 1998. There result was that over a broad range of values, the radiative forcing of CO2 was 5.35 * ln(CO2c/CO2i) where CO2c is the new value and CO2i is the initial value. The error given is +/-1%. This yields a forcing for the doubling of CO2 of 3.7 W/m^2, and a forcing of 1.36 W/m^2 for the CO2 increase from 310-400 ppmv.

NOAA maintains a usefull webpage showing the relevant formulas for the most significant GHG that do not condense at normal atmospheric pressures and temperatures, along with their estimated radiative forcing. For what it is worth, this is the aspect of climate science that even Spenser and Lindzen agree with, and which Anthony Watts feels insulted if you suggest he does not, even though he frequently publishes and publicly endorses articles which disagree with it.

Regarding your questions, it is hard to suggest an appropriate thread without knowing what they are. You could either use the search function on this site to find an appropriate topic, or ask the questions and we can switch topic for the answers if appropriate.

Imbers et al. Test Human-Caused Global Warming Detection

Manwichstick at 06:55 AM on 5 June, 2013

@SASM #23

modeling is always wrong (meaning it is never fully correct under all cases) and that the real world is different than the lab world, which is different than the modeled world, at least for aircraft and radars. I strongly suspect the climate is even more complex than what I have dealt with, which makes me very skeptical that climate scientists have a full grasp on the complexities of the climate.

I would like to chip in with a thought about climate modelling -big picture- which your comment reminded me of. A model by definition is "wrong", but lately I have been trying to use the word "incomplete" instead so that I don't create the impression that a model has no utility. I would agree that our planet's climate system is more complex than smaller scale models pertaining to stealth aircraft design - however that doesn't mean that climate models have less predictive power than the models you have dealt with.

I like to use the example of radioactive elements. The moment when an individual nucleus will blow is fundamentally unknowable. However, from this utter lack of causation knowledge comes a term "half-life" that is startilingly accurate in it predictions. Sometimes an infinite mess of choas when looked at in small chunks is freakishly predictable in the large scale. Like-wise, I think the earth's climate system is surprisingly reducable to a planet-wide, yearly average temperature, despite the appearence of innumerable interactions and parameters depending on how deep you go in the oceans, how high in the atmosphere, and with what 3-D pixel size resolution you care about. And I don't think we've seen a great increase in accuracy in our climate models since in the early eighties. Those simpler models spat out numbers with great "big picture" accuracy.

From a distance, the earth is a tiny speck of wet rock , with a thin coating of gas, circling a heat source. Dead simple to calculate its average temperature over long time scales... well, maybe having to guess a bit about aerosols...

Now models zoom in more, calculate more, they add more coupling between the various "spheres" (litho, cryo, atmos, oceans) but even after decades when you get the same big picture answer for the earth's average temperature, you realize these "complex" models are merely arguing over who/what/where gets the energy that is sloshing around our planet. Does chopping the energy units into smaller and smaller peices and putting GPS-like tracking on them as they move around really make that much difference? When you put a bubble around the earth and measure every thing that is going in and out - this is something much simplier to model than wing dynamics at different altitudes, or whatever cool classified things you were working on.

Stealth, earlier you said, "I’m sure CO2 does absorbs some IR wavelengths; ".

That is so important to focus on -CO2 MUST warm the planet. If you still have any doubts, visit a lab with an infrared microscope and exhale on it. You will get the same absorption pattern you see from satellites looking down at the earth. So, with no way to argue against increasing CO2 causing warming, the interesting questions become: warming where, how fast, will it be dangerous, is there anything that will cool us down, etc.

The questions we want climate models to answer now are much more specific: will the water level in this river go up or down in the next 30 years? What is the climate like on that exo-planet? Would you recommend I build my hut on this hectare of permafrost here?

You mentioned some of the websites you go to for information. I've recently become sad about the futility of the Anthony Watts site. I think of the wasted hours people put in there under the partial guise of growing our scientific knowledge. If the purpose is public opinion and political medling, then it is less wasteful - but I have found it to be a very irrelevant space for scientific knowledge as it pertains to climate change. It feels like I'm watching a movie starring teenagers who get deeper and deeper into trouble because they refuse to take the advice of the police.

Imbers et al. Test Human-Caused Global Warming Detection

StealthAircraftSoftwareModeler at 23:25 PM on 4 June, 2013

Okay, there's a lot of information here that I would like to take a closer look, and it will take a little bit to go through it. This post and thread is exactly what I have been wondering about, which is specifically trying to address and measure how much warming is due to AGW. I’ve done a lot of general internet research over the last year or two and have been on this site, Real Climate, Anthony Watts’ site, Roy Spencer, Steve McIntyre among other sites trying to gather information and fuse it together into what I think it a coherent picture. I expect that mentioning some of these names on this site might be offensive, so I apologize in advance.

My general philosophy is that I believe none of what I hear and only half of what I see. My background is dual BS in Physics and Computer Science with 30+ years in software development and modeling, most all of it related to stealth aircraft -- real time software systems operating in real world environments to support pilot decision making process. It requires modeling aircraft, weather, terrain, weapons, sensors, threats and so on. Lots of optimization algorithms to maximize opportunity and minimize risk. It has been a fun and cool job, and very interesting. If I have learned one thing, it is that modeling is always wrong (meaning it is never fully correct under all cases) and that the real world is different than the lab world, which is different than the modeled world, at least for aircraft and radars. I strongly suspect the climate is even more complex than what I have dealt with, which makes me very skeptical that climate scientists have a full grasp on the complexities of the climate. This is not a criticism of climate scientists, it is just hat things are hard and complex. After all, if it was easy, then everyone would agree and there wouldn’t be much debate.

Give me a day or two to wallow in these links and I’ll post some more questions shortly. Thanks for the feedback.

The 5 characteristics of global warming consensus denial

RomanM at 02:26 AM on 2 June, 2013

@Tom Curtis #53

[moderation complaint snipped] However, I will first address the points in your comment.

1) The blog post referenced in the article above was not yours, but that by Anthony Watts...

Is this argument based on some sort of technicality? The WUWT post paraphrased the title of my CA post, showed a graph created by me from that post and provided a link to my post, and it has nothing to do with my work? Possibly the fact that my name was misspelled caused some confusion.

"The number of papers endorsing AGW is falling, while the number of papers with no position is increasing. Looks like an increase in uncertainty to me."
That sentiment was not attributed to you, and is unwarrented by your results. Ergo the article above does not criticize (or even take notice of) your blogpost.
Do you wish to endorse Watts' understanding of the implications of your blogpost?

It may have mischaracterized my position slightly. Replace the word "number" by the word "percentage". The glm procedure applied to these two groups gives the results:

Endorse: Mean annual change in percentage points over the period of the study = -0.44, p-value = 0.0402
No Position: Mean annual change in percentage points over the period of the study = 0.60, p-value = 0.0041

Both of these were characterized in the paper as showing no demonstrable trend.

2) Your blogpost seems very incomplete to me. Although it carefully analyzes the trends in papers for reject, endorse, and noposition, it does not analyze the relative trend of endorse to reject. By my calculation, a simple linear regression shows that endorsements are increasing at a rate of 0.34% a year as a percentage of papers that take a position (ie, papers excluding noposition papers) from an already high base (91.7% average over the first five years). I would be very interested to see your GLM trend and statistical significance for that statistic. I am also curious as to why you did not caclulate it in your original post, given that it is the most germaine statistic given your thesis and the headline result of Cook et al.

I didn't bother calculating them because the "germane" 97% statistic is ill-conceived. If you have 97 people in the Endorse group, 3 people in the Reject group and 0 in the No Position group, you get a 97% "Consensus". If you have 97 people in the Endorse group, 3 people in the Reject group and 1000000 in the No Position group, you still get a 97% "Consensus".This statistic would not be particularly robust by either statistical or common sense standards and could produce radically different results for just slightly different data sets.

However as a favour to you (and the authors), I have calculated what you have requested and one more for "completeness"

Endorse (from Endorse + Reject): Mean annual change in percentage points over the period of the study = 0.26, p-value = 0.0159
Endorse (from Endorse + No Position): Mean annual change in percentage points over the period of the study = -0.56, p-value = 0.009

3) As an aside, it is clear that the increasing percentage of endorsement papers as a percentage of papers with a position completely refutes Watts' hypothesis as to why the percentage of neutral papers is increasing. Indeed, that fact shows that John Cook and Dana were entirely justified to claim above that:
"However, if uncertainty over the cause of global warming were increasing, we would expect to see the percentage of papers rejecting or minimizing human-caused global warming increasing. On the contrary, rejection studies are becoming less common as well. That scientists feel the issue is settled science actually suggests there is more certainty about the causes of global warming."
Do you disagree?

I have given what I consider to be a very plausible reason for why the percentage of "rejection" studies would well go down under increasing research funding , but it is apparently "off-topic ideology."

4) Your cited source on funding shows a near constant level of funding over the years 1998 -2009, a period over which self rated papers increased nine-fold. If your theory that it is desire for funding that drives climate science had any merit, a slowly increasing level of funding would be expected to be matched by a slowly increasing level of research. As a result, it appears to me that in addition to being libellous, your theory has no merit. The best that can be said for it is that it is a terribly convenient theory for people who find themselves rejecting the scientific consensus for ideological reasons.

Your argument is clearly wrong. Ask yourself how many of these approximately 12000 papers did NOT have any research funding. If as you say, the number of papers increased nine-fold during this period where did the nine times as much funding come from? Your argument that slowly increasing the funding will slowly increase the numbers is also wrong. Grants are often multiyear and various delays in writing and publication push some the papers into later time periods. Furthermore, I only referenced a single source of funding. Add in new sources at various intervals and the rate goes up dramatically.

From ny own personal experiences in academia, funding is extremely important to researchers. If the money becomes available, people willl apply for that money and papers will be written - some good, some not so good. How you get the idea that indicating the importance of acquiring research funding is "libellous" I can only wonder...

The 5 characteristics of global warming consensus denial

Tom Curtis at 10:43 AM on 1 June, 2013

RomanM:

1) The blog post referenced in the article above was not yours, but that by Anthony Watts, how explicitly states:

"The number of papers endorsing AGW is falling, while the number of papers with no position is increasing. Looks like an increase in uncertainty to me."

That sentiment was not attributed to you, and is unwarrented by your results. Ergo the article above does not criticize (or even take notice of) your blogpost.

Do you wish to endorse Watts' understanding of the implications of your blogpost?

2) Your blogpost seems very incomplete to me. Although it carefully analyzes the trends in papers for reject, endorse, and noposition, it does not analyze the relative trend of endorse to reject. By my calculation, a simple linear regression shows that endorsements are increasing at a rate of 0.34% a year as a percentage of papers that take a position (ie, papers excluding noposition papers) from an already high base (91.7% average over the first five years). I would be very interested to see your GLM trend and statistical significance for that statistic. I am also curious as to why you did not caclulate it in your original post, given that it is the most germaine statistic given your thesis and the headline result of Cook et al.

3) As an aside, it is clear that the increasing percentage of endorsement papers as a percentage of papers with a position completely refutes Watts' hypothesis as to why the percentage of neutral papers is increasing. Indeed, that fact shows that John Cook and Dana were entirely justified to claim above that:

"However, if uncertainty over the cause of global warming were increasing, we would expect to see the percentage of papers rejecting or minimizing human-caused global warming increasing. On the contrary, rejection studies are becoming less common as well. That scientists feel the issue is settled science actually suggests there is more certainty about the causes of global warming."

Do you disagree?

4) Your cited source on funding shows a near constant level of funding over the years 1998 -2009, a period over which self rated papers increased nine-fold. If your theory that it is desire for funding that drives climate science had any merit, a slowly increasing level of funding would be expected to be matched by a slowly increasing level of research. As a result, it appears to me that in addition to being libellous, your theory has no merit. The best that can be said for it is that it is a terribly convenient theory for people who find themselves rejecting the scientific consensus for ideological reasons.

The 5 characteristics of global warming consensus denial

caerbannog at 13:28 PM on 29 May, 2013

<i>"That is especially true given that I am but one person, and you were 24."</i>

When you see skeptics making excuses like "We don't have the time, or we don't have enough people", remember that Anthony Watts likes to brag about how much more traffic, how many more visitors, how many more comments, etc. that his site gets than do sites like skepticalscience.com, realclimate.org etc.

If we are to take Watts at his word, then that would mean that he has access to far more warm bodies to throw at a problem than skepticalscience does. So the above excuses simply don't fly. If Watts and Co were serious, they could easily "crowd-source" an even bigger project than the Cook13 effort.

Furthermore, a quick bit of Googling will confirm that Mr Shollenberger has an *immense* amount of free-time on his hands. The "I don't have enough time or access to enough manpower to organize my own study" simply doesn't cut it, as far as I'm concerned.

A good way to distinguish genuine skeptics from "pseudoskeptics" is that genuine skeptics produce *results* while "pseudoskeptics" produce excuses.

And all we've seen in response to Cook13 is excuses.

Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature

barry at 23:48 PM on 22 May, 2013

Jason,

I'm making no claim as to what the consensus statement is meant to be.

barry, the authors were asked to state whether or not their papers endorsed the proposition that human activity is causing global warming.

I agree. But if Authors rating at 2 and 3 (which comprise a huge bulk of the endorsement ratings) take that to mean anything between, say, 'some' influence and >50%, and Cook et al take it to mean >50%, then the rating criterion is different and this may signficantly affect the comparitive results.

Would I be correct in assuming you would say that options 2 and 3 rate the human influence on global warming as dominant (b)?

I'm hoping to garner clear responses to see if there are different interpretations by commenters here. Tom Curtis began as an author on Cook et al, but declined participation after a while. Judging by comments he has made at Lucia's he is saying that ratings 2 and 3 refer to >50% influence. Eg,

Lucia, excluding papers dealing with impacts and mitigation, 92.9% of papers surveyed (and that indicate a position in the abstract) implicitly or explicitly affirm that >50% of recent warming is due to anthropogenic causes.

http://rankexploits.com/musings/2013/on-the-consensus/#comment-113388

You write;

If they felt that their paper either implied or stated that human activity was a contributing factor but not the primary cause then they could have categorised their paper as level 5, 6, or 7, depending on how it was presented. (Remember, level 5 includes any proposition that something other than humans was the main cause, and level 7 includes any quantification less than 50%.)

Apart from 1 and 7, none of the ratings are quantified. The descriptors are "endorses" and "minimises" AGW. These are qualitative statements, and that was how I read them. That is also how Zeke Hausfather read them.

Categories 2 and 3 as well as 5 and 6 do not make any explicit assertion of attribution percent (e.g. they don’t assert < 50 percent, they simply don't provide enough information to imply a percent).

http://rankexploits.com/musings/2013/on-the-consensus/#comment-113263

That 2, 3, 5 and 6 relate to >/< 50% human contribution may be inferred in context, but other inference is also possible.

My point is, if reasonable people disagree on the ratings criterion (and the 2 I've cited are 'friendlies', there is yet more disagreement between other parties), then original Authors may have had different interpretations, and this may well undermine the comparitive results that are a strong corroborative feature of the paper. The similarity of results could be a fluke.

The only way to test that, that I can think of, is by asking the original Authors who rated their own papers what they assumed the criterion was for 2 and 3 (and 5 and 6).

If the point of the paper is to demonstrate there is a consensus that more GHGs in the atmosphere should cause some warming, then that is not as impactful as endorsing the IPCC statement. It's a much lower bar with a much smaller target audience. None of the contrarian climate scientsts dispute that, and neither do most prominent skeptics (including Anthony Watts, for example) and most of their followers.

The basic message is fine - and the effort has been successful on that regard. I'm discussing the academic merit of the Cook et al study.

Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature

Tom Curtis at 07:47 AM on 17 May, 2013

Barry @38, the blog by Brandon Shollenberger at Lucia's essentially points out that:

1) "While criteria for determining ratings were defined prior to the rating period, some clarifications and amendments were required as specific situations presented themselves."

and that

2) "Initially, 27% of category ratings and 33% of endorsement ratings disagreed. Raters were then allowed to compare and justify or update their rating through the web system, while maintaining anonymity. Following this, 11% of category ratings and 16% of endorsement ratings disagreed; these were then resolved by a third party."

Instead of merely quoting to the paper to that effect (as I have done), however, he has taken some examples out of context from the hacked forum contents and deliberately not quoted the discussion of these points in the paper even though he knew that they existed so as to create the impression that SKS had acted in an underhanded way.

Victor Venema makes a fair comment on Shollenberger's approach:

"From Anthony Watts I expect any kind of deception. If something is written on WUWT, by now I initially assume that the opposite is true. From The Blackboard I had a better impression. Had there not been a discussion about the broken link to the article, I might not become suspicious and have checked the article. From now on I will put you in the Watts category until you have shown you deserve better."

Klotzbach Revisited and John Christy's response, part 2

bouke at 19:46 PM on 5 April, 2013

I started reading the Klotzbach paper and notice they reference surfacestations.org several times, which is maintained by Anthony Watts. It reminded me of this sad exchange: Watts uses a picture to 'prove' that antarctic surface stations are influenced by urban heat island. The picture turns out to be from the wrong end of the continent, and the weather station on the picture isn't even used for climate data. And Watts never acknowledges his errors.

Why anyone even wants to associate with that guy is beyond me, but if they do that's an instant mark against their credibility.

The Fool's Gold of Current Climate

John Fisher at 07:10 AM on 5 April, 2013

Anthony Watts made the same mistake 3 years ago, commenting

"Actually a warmer planet with more C02 will in fact improve growing conditions, which is why that exact growing environment is created in production greenhouses."

Conditions in production greenhouses are monitored and modulated (drip lines, drainage, ventilation, etc). We can't simply open a 'space window' to let more heat escape!

Matt Ridley's talk reminds me of the Swedish politician who remarked--from his perspective--that a little global warming would be a good thing. He was later berated by an Israeli minister who called him self-interested twit.

The two epochs of Marcott and the Wheelchair

Philip Shehan at 15:45 PM on 3 April, 2013

An insight into how Anthony Watts regards discussion of this question in his latest installlment:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/31/quote-of-the-week-bad-eggs-in-the-marcott-et-al-omelete-recipe/#comment-1262484

Here is his response to a comment of mine:

Anthony Watts says:

April 1, 2013 at 11:22 pm

Ah jeez Shehan, give it up, the Marcott study is toast and your focus minutiae is a waste of everyone’s time . Stop defending the indefensible and get your head out of your posterior so you can see the mess they created. Start by reading Ross McKitrick’s essay on the main page.

And here are my responses (the second is yet to be posted):

Philip Shehan says:

April 2, 2013 at 2:33 pm

Mr Watts. Well pardon me for focussing on “minutae”. So much easier to make a general smear without examining the “minutae” The accusations against Marcott were based on the “minutae”, and I have examined them. That’s what scientists do. That’s what science is about. If you can’t hack having the claims in your articles examined, don’t put them up.

REPLY: Oh I can hack it, I just find your hacks tiresome and pointless- Anthony

Mr Watts, This section contains complaints by Pielke and commentators of some specific points Marcott’s thesis and the Science article he coauthored. These complaints and alleged inconsistencies are used to claim that Marcott and others are guilty of fraud, misconduct deceit lying etc etc.

I recognize that there are many commentators who think that comments should be confined to unexamined cheering agreement, mutual backslapping and rounds of “Boo Hiss Marcott Sucks and Shehan too LOL.”

I take the attitude that on what is billed as The World’s Best Science Blog”, there are actually some here who have the interest, scientific understanding and or intellectual ability to actually examine these claims in a scientific manner.

I know from experience that if I don’t go into “minutae” I have to keep coming back to correct misinterpretation or plain pigheaded stupidity and explain things in further detail.

For example. I pointed out that contrary to the rumour started by one of McIntyre’s readers and accepted without examination and repeated everywhere as established fact, Marcott’s thesis contains seven graphs with an uptick. I also pointed out that McIntyre’s puzzlement at the differences in the two graphs is in plain sight for anyone who wished to spend more than a few seconds looking at it.

I then get asked for a link. I provide it, but knowing people will still not read it before hitting the keyboard, nor after (ferd berple take note), I briefly quote from the thesis to explain what the graphs are showing. This is not pointless, but for those who are to stupid , lazy or ignorant to engage in a truly scientific debate and who do not want their prejudices challenged it may well be tiresome.

If people wish to critically examine my assessment of the evidence, they are welcome to do so with a clear reasoned argument with enough “minutae” to establish their case. Politely. That is how real scientific discussion is supposed to work

Watts Interview – Denial and Reality Mix like Oil and Water

Ray at 10:47 AM on 19 March, 2013

Thanks for the reply Dana but I still don't get it. (-snip-)

Watts Interview – Denial and Reality Mix like Oil and Water

Ray at 10:23 AM on 19 March, 2013

Dana@99 Thanks for the reply Dana but what interest is an interview of Anthony Watts to those that read Skeptical Science. I accept yhat your answer could, very reasonably. point to the number of comments generated but these by and large, are merely supporting and confirming one another's opinions so I'm not sure what it was that was hoped to be gained. Personally I didn't read much of it for the little I did read added nothing to my understanding of climate change and as Anthony Watts is hardly a climate scientist, agreed he doesn't claim he is, his views carry little weight in the mainstream community of climate scientists. Sure his shortcomings, at least those perceived to be shortcomings by those that wrote the piece, were well aired but to what avail? Those who believe what Watts says are unlikely to read this post and so will continue on in their ignorance while those who don't believe what Watts says will have their beliefs confirmed. Sorry , still don't get the point of it

Watts Interview – Denial and Reality Mix like Oil and Water

Ray at 06:22 AM on 19 March, 2013

Thinking about this particular topic, what on earth was the point of discussing WUWT on this blog? Everyone, well nearly everyone, here dismisses WUWT as risible rubbish and regards Anthony Watts as a complete charlatan. Conversely, most of those that don't are highly unlikley to consider accessing Skeptical Science and should they do so are likely to get short shrift Why then give him traction?

Watts Interview – Denial and Reality Mix like Oil and Water

WheelsOC at 17:15 PM on 18 March, 2013

Well, how about an update about to my attempt to correct the misrepresentation of GISP2 data at WUWT?

My first comment and nearly all subsequent ones got through moderation (one didn't, but it was fairly inconsequential and is no real loss). Moderator D.B. Stealey (aka dbs aka Smokey) felt like making an issue of it, and Easterbrook himself commented a couple of times in an attempt to refute the correct information and support the error. He demanded an apology for my pointing out the mistake and calling it what it was.

Easterbrook continued to insist that the graph was labelled correctly, i.e. that "years before present" meant "years before 2000 AD." It's actually "years before 1950," which puts the most recent data in Easterbrook's graphs (which Watts subsequently reused and misrepresented as being Alley's) at 1855. This means that it captures none of the data from the late 19th century onwards. Easterbrook actually claimed that Alley labelled the X axis himself.

Since he was citing Alley (2000) and Cuffey and Clow (1997), I pulled up a copy of Alley's original paper and looked through the two data sets online. There was A) no graph similar to the one Easterbrook uses which labels anything in relation to the year 2000 AD, and B) all definitions of "before present" in Alley's paper, the Cuffey and Clow paper, and in all the GISP2 data sets and relevant pages at the NCDC, define "before present" as "before 1950." It is their standard convention for the whole GISP project (and many other fields involved in reconstructing the past). GISP2 pages at the NCDC explicitly spell this out in no uncertain terms. So not only was Easterbrook's claim unsupported, it was directly contradicted by the sources he cites. It's not even an easy mistake to make in the first place, let alone after the issue has been brought to his (and Watts's) attention for several years now.

None of the evidence I produced was addressed by Easterbrook or Stealey at all. I suggested that, because this was such a common issue at WUWT (Easterbrook's graphs get a lot of mileage there and this issue comes up a lot in the comments when that happens), someone at the blog could easily just ask Alley and clear the whole thing up once and for all. It would certainly give them iron-clad proof of their own correctness whenever the issue was brought up, IF they were correct. Apparently neither Easterbrook, Watts, or Stealey felt like this was a good idea! Fed up, I turned to Richard Alley myself and sent off a polite email asking about the dating convention he used, or if he ever labelled GISP2 data based around 2000 AD as "present." He confirmed what everybody else had already said; "before present" means "before 1950." He doesn't remember publishing any plot of the GISP2 data where "before present" is relative to 2000. I'm not the first person to ask him that question or get that answer. Gareth Renowden did likewise several years ago and received the same confirmation. I'd already given a link to his account at the start.

When I posted Dr. Alley's response in the thread, Stealey equated it to someone pretending to email the Pope and making up a fake reply. So not only did they have no inclination to ask for themselves to save their own credibility, they refused to believe someone who did (again). The last post so far is mine, pointing out that even if they don't believe me about contacting Alley, there is still all the other damning evidence in Easterbrook's own sources. Consistent with the rest of the exchange, nobody so far has offered any evidence to the contrary nor any argument to counter it. Despite being demonstrably wrong, nobody at the blog would budge or even acknowledge the error.

This just reinforces my previous suggestion for the eleventh denialist strategy: never give up on a bad argument no matter how thoroughly or repeatedly debunked it may be.

As an aside: this doesn't really seem to support A. Scott's argument about the level of scientific discourse at WUWT. None of the behavior I described above resembles a scientific approach. Scientists, for one thing, go out of their way to see if they're wrong. It's not just part of the job, it's part of the process of science. Neither Dr. Easterbrook, Anthony Watts, or D.B. Stealey treated the issue with a scientific mindset. Why should they? They already "know" what the answer is. They deny the validity of anything which contradicts their preconceived answer; regarding global warming, that means they wind up rejecting virtually all the science. That's what makes them denialists, and the ten strategies outlined in this post (+ my humble contribution) are how denialists operate. Hence the lack of scientific thinking at the blog; science and denialism are mutually exclusive because the scientific method doesn't work in the presence of a denialist mindset which can't accept uncomfortable data.

It's not just about climate change. Denialists of evolution, HIV/AIDS denialists, etc. operate from the same playbook. They all stick very closely to the stragies outlined here. That's how you can recognize denialism for what it is.

Watts Interview – Denial and Reality Mix like Oil and Water

Ray at 22:31 PM on 17 March, 2013

Sphaerica @57 As the whole article about which these posts are being written is all about Anthony Watts it seems strange to read you think "I'm promulgating "Watts' idiocy" as my comments on Anthony Watts were only a couple of sentences. I merely mentioned he had posted figures from Narcott's PhD Figures as well as those from the Science paper. I really can't see what is idiotic about Watts doing that. And why is Tom Curtis insisting "on giving fodder...."? He appears to be making valid points about the two figures in question. That you may not like those comments is hardly reason to attack him for doing so. With regard to Steve McIntytre, he does not peddle idiocy. Incidentally it's Sistine Chapel

Watts Interview – Denial and Reality Mix like Oil and Water

barry at 11:53 AM on 17 March, 2013

"And yet, as might be expected, Dr. Marcott chose to build upon his previous work and to take it in a new direction, one relevant to a major issue of the day, anthropogenic climate change."

Anthony Watts did the same for the US temperature record, building upon the work of Fall et al (he was a co-author) when drawing up his unpublished effort on station exposure. Both papers give a pie chart on percentage of stations with different classification. They are different from each other.

Should we now imply that A Watts has done something questionnable by 'altering' the latter graph?

No - the papers have a different focus (and methods). Same with Marcott. Honest participants would take the trouble to find out why there are differences, and not just make implication with 'questions' they are not interested in answering for themselves.

Watts Interview – Denial and Reality Mix like Oil and Water

barry at 11:20 AM on 17 March, 2013

DSL,

Alas, Poole could've used a more robust representation of "climate change" instead of just equating it with temperature as Luntz does. Climate change somewhat obviously can be changes in temp, general circulation, precipitation, weather patterns, wind, cloud cover, frequency of "extreme" events, etc.

While illuminating the definition of climate change in this way may be laudable, Poole's thesis was on the politicisation of language, and he articulated the intent of the political actors at the time. It would be great if the faux skeptics just dropped the talking point, but seeing as they bring it up as a political argument (cf Anthony Watts) it's worthwhile knowing how discussion of the terminologies actually played out. Watts claims that AGW 'proponents' fiddled with the language. But it wasn't the scientists or the media or Greenpeace that focussed on the political ramifications of the two phrases, it was those with vested interests in downplaying AGW. It still is.

Watts is not only wrong, his criticism is completely misdirected.

Watts Interview – Denial and Reality Mix like Oil and Water

Ray at 11:21 AM on 16 March, 2013

As this topic is centred on Anthony Watts I visited his website to "have a look for myself". Interestingly the figure you show from Marcott's Science paper, also shown on Watts' blog but not here, is virtually identical to a figure from Marcott's PhD thesis in all respects for the early periods but not for later periods. Notably reconstructions given as negative in the PhD figure are given as positive in the Science paper and even more notably the uptick at the end seen in the Scince paper is absent in the figure from Marcott's Ph.D. Are there any explanations for these discrepancies of which you are aware? I must say I am rather surprised these differences are not mentioned here given your heading "True skeptics consider all the data" .

Watts Interview – Denial and Reality Mix like Oil and Water

shoyemore at 02:25 AM on 15 March, 2013

I am not sure if the first one is a real contradiction on Watts' part - you could call the one on the right a lie or a strawman, and the one on the left exaggerated ("hundreds" of variables?), but the two statements are not mutually exclusive. At least, they do not seem so to me.

But far be it from me to defend Anthony Watts. I think he gets far too much attention, anyway.

Greedy Lying Bastards - Now In Theaters

Bernard J. at 13:27 PM on 11 March, 2013

Interesting to note that Anthony Watts' response was essentially "it's a fake because they photoshopped the oil slick on the cover". He could as well have gone with "it's a fake because they photoshopped a guy floating on the ocean in an arm chair".

This is the (ground-) level of thinking of which Watts is only capable.

Apparently it would be more believable in Watts' opinion if the producers has prepared a real oil slick for the publicity photo (would a photoshopped guy floating in a chair then escape notice?). Of course, had it been a real oil slick Watts was all oiled up to rant about the environmental damage thus caused...

On a more interesting note (for me), is there any indication when the documentary will be released in Australia?

Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They're Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories

Brandon Shollenberger at 18:06 PM on 9 March, 2013

Tristan @60, I'd say no.

Albatross @61, are you acknowledging Watts wasn't "trying to insinuate that there is something nefarious and secret going on behind the scenes between Gore, Al Jazeera and SkS"? It seems like it, but I'm not sure. Whatever he may have been saying about Gore and SKS, I hope we can all agree he wasn't saying Al Jazeera was involved.

As for your suggestion, I've submitted a post to WUWT due to Tom Curtis's comments about me. If it gets published, I will ask Anthony that question as my first comment. I suspect his answer will be something like, "No, I don't think there is any conspiring between the two. I think they worked together to some extent." I hope that will satisfy you.

By the way, Watts is certainly welcome to make a fool of himself. I think he's managed to do that a number of times without ever discussing conspiracies!

Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They're Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories

Rob Honeycutt at 09:43 AM on 9 March, 2013

Brandon... You're just not getting it.

You obviously can not comprehend what is being discussed in terms of conspiracy ideation.

McIntyre went off on a completely irrational tanget on his site. He did exactly what I've repeatedly described as "conspiracy ideation." He looked for what he believed we inconsistencies, connected his own dots, and claimed something was going on. All based only on his imagination, having asked no one involved if they could explain.

Anthony Watts did exactly the same thing. He made a post on his site and also made comments on Lucia's site claiming that SkS must be getting paid by Al Gore, even giving dollar figures, for the work. All before ever asking John Cook. And even when John answered honestly, made only the thinnest reference on his site. No mea culpa.

These are acts of conspiracy ideation. I'm sorry if you don't get it.

Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They're Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories

Brandon Shollenberger at 09:26 AM on 9 March, 2013

In my comment @47, I showed Rob Honeycutt was completely wrong about what Anthony Watts did. @48 Honeycutt responded by saying if things were the exact opposite of what he said... he was still exactly right. I can't help but see some similarity to what this paper described where "contrary evidence is often interpreted as evidence for a conspiracy." I know it isn't actually the same, but there's something to be said for finding out you got everything exactly backwards and responding by saying it doesn't change your conclusion.

As for what Tom Curtis says @51, the simple truth is I don't remember seeing a topic on any site I visit regularly that had a discussion of the contents of this paper. That's why I haven't discussed it publicly. The only times such a discussion seemed relevant (prior to seeing Michael Mann's Facebook post) to me has been in personal communication. I don't think that fact merits an entire comment devoted solely to personal attacks and accusations of dishonesty.

As for what he says @52, he claims my discussion of his wording was a non-substantive response, but he ignores the fact I followed that discussion by saying, "I'll assume that was a mistake" and explaining why the interpretation he intended is wrong. In other words, I disagreed with his wording then clarified what I thought he meant. I then responded based upon that clarification.

Tom Curtis ignored that response. He portrays my clarification as the entirety of my response. Based upon that misrepresentation, he says my "response was entirely non-responsive." He completely ignored the primary point of my response then claimed the response was non-responsive.

I don't agree with the defense of the wording Tom Curtis offered @52, but we both seem to agree it is irrelevant. As such, I won't discuss it. I'll merely point out it what I said was not offered as a rebuttal, but a clarification. It is ridiculous to say my post was non-responsive by focusing on a clarification and ignoring the actual rebuttal.

Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They're Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories

Brandon Shollenberger at 05:59 AM on 9 March, 2013

Rob Honeycutt @41 and @42 says:

Third, Anthony was told this and has still chosen to reject the facts and create a post to the contrary.
...
This is exactly what Tony's doing. He's been told, upfront and honestly, what the facts are but is choosing to assume those facts are not the truth, but are a cover up for the "real truth."

When I looked at Anthony's site for posts about the issue, I found this site. On it, Watts shows the exact opposite of what Honeycutt portrays. He says he sent an e-mail to John Cook asking how much Cook was paid. There is then an update that says Cook responded, saying he wasn't paid anything. That is the opposite of what Honeycutt says.

Watts didn't know "the facts" before he made his post, and he accepted them once he found them out. As far as I can see, Rob Honeycutt's description is completely false.

As for him saying (@43) my "true colors come out" on a different site, I haven't said anything different on any other site. The only thing I've done differently here is use a more moderate tone in respect for this site and its rules. My views are well-documented. There would be no point in me trying to hide them. I couldn't if I wanted to.

Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They're Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories

Rob Honeycutt at 04:37 AM on 9 March, 2013

And how fascinating how on Lucia's site your true colors come out...

Brandon Shollenberger (Comment #111119)
March 7th, 2013 at 11:42 pm
John Cook continues the insanity by saying this quote from Anthony Watts is the:
Latest conspiracy theory from @wattsupwiththat – @skepticscience getting paid by Al Gore with Al Jazeera oil money http://bit.ly/XWp5vj
What about hiring people to do a legal job in an open manner is a conspiracy?
I think this link should take you to the “tweet.”

Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They're Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories

Rob Honeycutt at 04:23 AM on 9 March, 2013

Brandon @ 37.... OMG. You have got to be joking. That has to be one of the worst conspiratorial twitter posts to ever come out of Watts and you're asking what's the conspiracy?

First of all, no one hired SkS to do any work. Second, no one paid SkS any money. Third, Anthony was told this and has still chosen to reject the facts and create a post to the contrary.

Again, this is exactly what "conspiracy ideation" is. It's following what one perceives to be inconsistencies and then connecting those dots to create a story line, regardless of any actual facts.

Cherrypicking to Deny Continued Ocean and Global Warming

Glenn Tamblyn at 17:51 PM on 8 March, 2013

Here are some of Anthony's comments and a comment from one use:

"REPLY: It is a highlighter marker, used to call attention to the area, like I routinely do with text. If I wanted to make a plot trend line, I would have used a plot trend line. – Anthony"

"REPLY: and again, it isn’t statistically significant in the scheme of things, much like that 0.7C in the atmosphere isn’t statistically significant against daily diurnal variation or seasons. – Anthony" He sure doesn't seem to have his head around what Statistical Significance actually means does he?

"REPLY: and again as answered previously and made clear in the story, it isn’t a trend line (though you want it to be) it is simply a yellow highlight to draw attention to the section of interest, just like I use the same highlight tool on sections of text or tables I post. – Anthony"

But...

"Mark Buehner says:

February 26, 2013 at 2:21 pm

“Anthony, what’s your evidence the warming has paused? The data you present show the warming continuing.”

It does? Whats the slope look like over the past 10 years (tip- look at the yellow line)."

Sure looks like he misled at least on person!

So, Anthony's use of the 'highlighter' was, in a communications sense, very, very ... sloppy. If your readers can misinterpret what you have written, you didn't do a very good job communicating with them.

An open question that each reader can decide for themselves. Is such sloppiness unintentional, in which case we simply say that that person shouldn't be writing anything because they aren't good enough at it?

Or is it intentional, carefully crafted sloppiness that has a desired effect and can then be immediately denied if you are called out on it?

Whats the term used in politics - plausible deniability?

Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They're Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories

Brandon Shollenberger at 15:41 PM on 8 March, 2013

In a related note, John Cook just posted this on Twitter:

Latest conspiracy theory from @wattsupwiththat - @skepticscience getting paid by Al Gore with Al Jazeera oil money http://bit.ly/XWp5vj

What is the supposed conspiracy here? Anthony Watts said "the SkS kidz are behind" a website, pondering how much Skeptical Science got paid for making the site. Right or wrong, nothing about that idea is a conspiracy. There is nothing untoward about hiring people to make a website for you. Besides, the point of a conspiracy is to be secretive. The entire basis for what Watts said was that the site was developed "through a collaboration with the website Skeptical Science."

Watts said Skeptical Science was hired to do a job, and their involvement was openly acknowledged. What about that idea involves a conspiracy?

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