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Whoppers to 2015...

This page is for dud comments that have been HotWhoppered. To see newer HotWhoppered comments, click here for 2015 and for here for 2016 to the present. If you are feeling masochistic and you're 18 or older, you can peruse the uncensored version of the HotWhoppery.

For the HotWhopper blog, click here.


 

Richard Tol has been responding to my articles (here and here) about his smear campaign against John Cook, Dana Nuccitelli and the rest of the team that wrote Cook13, the well-known 97% consensus study. When I say responding, that's not quite the case. What he did was ignore the points I made demolishing his nonsense, and instead used my articles to promote a whole bunch more of his foolish and unsubstantiated and wrong claims. He's been asked to supply evidence on more than one occasion and refused. Now Richard goes for more smear. He is unethical and unprofessional and wrong. Richard S J Tol wrote this comment on March 30, 2015 at 4:53 AM on the article "The fall and fall of Gish galloping Richard Tol's smear campaign"

Bernard
Removing data is always bad, and removing data without telling is worse.

In this case, data from the first round of rating seem to have been replaced by data from the second round of rating. Ratings were materially and significantly different between the two rounds, so the final results are affected.

That is bullshit, pure and simple. Duplicate articles were removed from the database after they were inadvertently added. There was no need to "tell" anyone anything. The final results were not affected. Richard is making up stuff again. Note his "seem to have been replaced" - no evidence as usual. Not that it would make any difference. The abstracts that were removed were duplicate entries. They all were included in the research study and categorised.


Bob is very keen to get some comments on HotWhopper and today has posted the following twice on a two-year-old thread "The Wrong Climate Stuff" - once as Anonymous and once as Bob. He sent his comments some time apart and he must have valued them highly enough to copy them word for word. I don't agree that deniers' opinions are worth two bob, but since he's so keen to be seen here are his thoughts:

This is an old thread, but I just ran across it. Holy cow. Roll me a joint too. You write about "drought or extreme heat waves or floods or shifting seasons or wildfires" as if these things are unprecedented in some way. Despite the hype over Katrina, Sandy, Haiyan, California’s drought, etc., there is nothing historically unusual about today’s weather/climate.

Global cyclonic activity, both in terms of frequency and ACE, are moderating (Maue). Severe tornado activity is moderating (NOAA). There are no significant global wet and dry trends (NOAA). Worldwide grain production is at an all-time high and rising (USDA). The number of wildfires in the United States is declining (NIFC). The drought in California is mild compared to droughts that it has experienced in the past. There is literally nothing that is more extreme today that it has been in the past. Sea levels were much higher during the Holocene Climate Optimum. Droughts experienced by the Khmer, Maya, Anasazi, and the Yuan were far worse than anything we have experienced in the last 150 years.

He's wrong about what I wrote about drought and heat waves. He didn't "get" that any benefits of CO2 as plant food will not be sufficient to counteract the adverse changes to climate as global warming continues.

And there's more. He seems to think that 78 out of 11,944 papers that dispute mainstream science are worth more than the thousands that don't. Of the 4014 papers that took a position on the cause of global warming,, 3896 papers or 97.1% endorsed human-caused global warming, 78 or 1.9% disputed it and 40 or 1.0% indicated the cause was 'uncertain'. Bob goes with the 2%. Would he do the same if it were 2% of doctors that told him he was fine, and 97% who told him he needed to take medicine or he'd get very sick? Probably.

Then you climb on board with the 97% nonsense. With all due respect, the studies are useless. Doran and Zimmerman sent out 10,257 email questionnaires, got back 3,146 responses, and picked 79 that met their criteria. Of those 79 scientists, 77 agreed that humans had a “significant” impact upon the climate; whatever “significant” means. Anderegg didn’t poll a single scientist; he simply identified those who had signed a petition of some kind (as a measure of their certainty) and counted their papers and citations. Cook reviewed the abstracts of 11,944 papers and counted those that either explicitly or, in his opinion, implicitly endorsed man-made global warming. Only 65 abstracts were quantified explicit endorsements, not exactly 97% of 11,944. 

There's still more. Bob doesn't know what ad hominem means:

And of course, no post of this nature is complete with liberal doses of ad hominem; clueless geriatrics, merchants of doubt, deniers… Come on. The logic seems to be that if a researcher is not a climate scientist then their opinions don’t matter. Yet it is your much-ballyhooed climate scientists whose opinions should be questioned. Their models are the basis of the entire AGW argument, but they have failed miserably to accurately project global temperatures. The averaged CMIP5 projection vastly overestimates actual temperature increases, particularly in the lower atmosphere as measure by RSS and UAH, but also on the surface. Failed models, failed hypothesis. 

He's got it wrong. If a researcher is not an expert in climate science and disputes it on no grounds, without evidence, then they are rightly called deniers and their opinions are not worth anything at all. Bob provides no good evidence for disputing the science, nothing more than recycled denier memes. This is what has been happening as the world warms. And here's a reality check of surface and lower troposphere - in the last couple of years, RSS is the only odd one out. Not forgetting the hottest year on record - 2014.


I let Lucifer run free on the blog, but his or her comments fit the HotWhoppery better. Here's a sample. Posted on February 19, 2015 at 3:10 AM on the article Confessions of deniers at Judith Curry's blog:

guthrie,
You know, that raises a good point.
Tribalism is most entrenched when it becomes institutionalized,
like... the IPCC.


Peter claims he was misrepresented in his tone trolling. He's done it again, accompanied by a gish gallop of denial. After promising that would be his "one last comment", in typical denier form he wrote another. This time he really gave himself away, with a vengeance. In the very first line, Peter paints himself as a hard-core denier using the denier term "CAGW". And it only gets worse from there. Denier memes 101, replete with a prediction that an ice age is comething..

Peter whined on February 1, 2015 at 7:37 pm on the article "An uncanny ability: Anthony Watts goes to Iceland and figures 2+2=5 or 7".

Gotta do one more as I have been misrepresented. I was a CAGW adherent and believed everything on sites such as HopWhopper. However I gradually became disillusioned as I saw that instead of rational discussion and a genuine search for the truth, CAGW people always reverted to abuse and “I’m right and you’re wrong” arrogance and only searched for ways to further their (religious?) beliefs.
I found that CAGW people desperately want CAGW to be true and will pervert and distort the truth in order to distort their cause. I believe it’s caused “noble cause corruption”. 
Anthony Watts did nothing more than to respond to a silly and provocative statement by Kruger. “The finding is bad news not just for one comparatively remote part of the world, but for everywhere."
To say it doesn’t mean more than Iceland is just absurd. Read it and read it again, it means what it means. The context is that the findings extend everywhere. If it wasn’t for this single sentence, Watts wouldn’t have had any ammunition for an article. 
I notice that the longer the global temperature “pause/slowdown/hiatus” continues, the more shrill and desperate you people become.
Let’s see…
No (Rss) or reduced(Giss) atmospheric warming this century
Record Antarctic sea ice
Arctic Sea Ice 96% back to normal (Sorry Al Gore but it didn’t disappear)
Record snow dumps in Greenland and many parts of the NH
Cold summer in Australia
record polar bear and walrus numbers
Glaciers have been in massive retreat since the last ice age ramped down in the early 1800’s which was before atmospheric CO2 increase by man could have had any effect. 

Well CAGW people, hate to rain on your parade but if I was a betting man, I would bet that planet Earth has reached the top of it’s post little ice age heating oscillation and is heading back towards cooling again. Can we all agree to meet again on this site in 15 years time to see if my prediction came true? 
In conclusion, CAGW is unfalsifiable and that precludes it from being a scientific theory. Even if we had 50 years of future cooling, you would still be making up excuses and sticking solidly to your faith. 
I won’t visit this site again.

I wonder will he keep this latest promise?


It could be the same anon as the paranoid conspiracy theorist from yesterday (below). I don't normally leave comments like this for display. This time I will because it's funny. Funny peculiar. Because anon is carrying on a conversation with him or herself- while talking about mental illness. Both comments are on the article "No, Willis - WUWT is not a science site - eg CO2 in the atmosphere" Anonymous on January 20, 2015 at 5:26 AM wrote:

You are clearly suffering from clinical depression Sou. For the benefit of your own wellbeing and health you really need to stop stalking WUWT and other people on the web. 

Get a proper hobby and you will find your mental health will improve.

And then a couple of minutes later, the same Anonymous mutters aloud back to him/herself, writing on January 20, 2015 at 5:32 AM that he agrees with himself.

I agree, it can't be good for anyone let alone a person of Sou's age, to suffer from an obsessive personality disorder that leads to the irrational behaviour exhibited in some of these posts.

I get that sort of comment from time to time. Nothing to do with any article at HotWhopper. A freebie psych diagnosis from a paranoid conspiracy nutter who talks to himself on the internet.


It's been a while since someone volunteered for the HotWhoppery. This one's from the ubiquitous Anonymous, a paranoid conspiracy theorist, who left it on an older article "The latest climate science from the IPCC and some early reactions" on January 19, 2015 at 10:22 PM

Minions of Rockefeller's Agenda21. That's all. Period. 
Time has gone for them and for these managed BS's. There are no probe of realistic grow of warming, specially "due to human activities". Statistics of few dozens of years are ridiculous. CO2 has never been proved to be a damage for the Earth, instead... We are on the edge of a new mini glacial Era. What warming are they talking about? John Kerry is the puppet of Rockefellers, every average American knows it. In order to know the truth every single word of him must be upside down.
You are lost, guys. Very very lost and you'll have the evidence of it in few years.


There's another anomymous denier muttering something about UAH lower troposphere temperatures and the surface temperatures as recorded by Australia's Bureau of Meteorology. He seems to think that one can only deduce a trend across the country if there are lots and lots of unbroken records back to the year dot. He doesn't know much about climate, surface temperature or statistics.  He also thinks I should have received an email that John Christy sent him, but it's not in my inbox. And that an article on Australia's Angry Summer should have made more mention of the fact that globally, temperatures have gone up by a fraction of a degree. About 8/10 of a degree in fact. Anonymous wrote at 6:47 pm on 4 December 2014 on "Robert Balic at WUWT tries to downplay Australia's Angry Summer - but who's fooling who?"

You don't seem to mention that the UAH data for Australian summers shows the last one to be on par with 1980 and 4 hotter in between (email Dr Christy)

You probably don't appreciate that large swathes of the country are covered by a single site with data missing. Warburton Airfield is missing data from 1979 to 1999 with many missing months in between. How can you compare recent times with the long term average when data is missing (which only uses data from 1969). I've also noticed another remote station has data not included if the same number is written down twice. Its not always but it is usually when well above the monthly average. Its too easy to break records when data goes missing.

But the worse thing is the lack of appreciation that the global average has only gone up a fraction of a degree. If it is a few degrees above the average then its not global warming, its weather. 

For the record, here is a comparison of UAH summer temperature above Australia (lower troposphere) compared to the mean temperature on the surface as recorded by BoM. Both are aligned to the mean of 1981-2010 baseline. Unsurprisingly, there are differences. The lower troposphere isn't the surface. As well as that, satellite data over a particular area is unlikely to be as good as thermometers on the surface.


As is common when dumb denier comments end up in the HotWhoppery (see below), Richard Treadgold comes back with nothing but a tone-trolling whinge. He also pretends he thinks when I mentioned his history I was referring to his history at HotWhopper. As I expect he knows (because I already alluded to it), I was referring to his dismal history as a harasser of New Zealand scientists when he and his mates tried and failed to demonise NIWA via the courts, and their subsequent avoidance of court costs. Richard Treadgold wrote a comment at 5:16 pm on 2 December 2014 on Why did the water in the kettle boil? Because it got hot!

"You ought to be thankful..."

'Ought' to be? I have twice said 'thank you'. What do you mean? What more do you want?

"There is more than one thing wrong with that silly statement"

Really? I have been polite, in line with the guidelines you specify: "Steer clear of personal attacks," you say. "Attack the argument," you say. But you respond with 'silly', and offer sarcasm, such as 'Tamino's leprechauns? Tedious Tisdale's goblins?' The gallery enjoys this kind of cleverness, does it? I've not been here before, is that the way we're all expected to carry on? Why have any guidelines? Please speak politely, for otherwise you waste my time.

I'll get back to you on the remainder.


Comment from Richard Treadgold, who talks of "minuscule radiation" and thinks that oceans are cooling the world because he says the warming skin layer prevents "a little thermal energy from escaping the oceans". Has he never heard of El Niño? Comment from Richard Treadgold on 2 December 2014 at 1:44 pm on Why did the water in the kettle boil? Because it got hot!

Sou, thank you for your courteous response.

You confirm what I could not have known without asking (never mind the allegation of 'faux curiosity'), as I neither know everything, nor do I read minds, that you rely upon the Skeptical Science post and the Real Climate article by Dr Minnett to support your assertion that greenhouse gases significantly warm the ocean.

Unfortunately, the experiment described by Dr Minnett does not support you, substantially because they didn't measure the warming influence of CO2, they measured the varying amount of infrared radiation from clouds, which intercepted the infrared as it tried to leave the surface.

Contrary to what you say, there is no evidence that the minuscule radiation from CO2 molecules might have a significant effect on the temperature of the ocean. The experiment was designed, as Dr Minnett explains, not to quantify the effect, but only to demonstrate it. It's surprising, in light of its apparent success in doing so, that no further experiments appear to have been conducted in this area, including nothing to establish its magnitude.

Perhaps that lack of interest springs from the fact that the experiment discovered yet another hitherto unsuspected negative feedback to increasing radiative forcing.

Because the skin layer, as it warms, prevents a little thermal energy from escaping the oceans. That heat no longer warms the atmosphere, which rather defines a cooling influence.

Still, without knowing the magnitude of the warming effect on the skin layer and the consequent reduction in heat flux from the water, we can't be sure how important this is, can we? There is of course no reason to believe it will destroy us by 2100. 

Cheers,
Richard Treadgold.

 


Anonymous hijacked a thread. Many of us helped him out with the information he was seeking. He dug his heels in and insisted the scientists were wrong. I warned him that I'd not accept any more moans and groans, but invited him to show his workings. He refused. He refused to show his "data and code" (ironically after wrongly accusing scientists of doing just that) and decided to do an "up yours", which is the only thing that made any of his numerous comments relevant to the article. Anon started off telling fibs and then went into a series of denialist comments. His language betrays him. You'll enjoy his "gullible sheep" reference, which is an accusation conspiracy theorists make often. Not a person one would trust by a long shot. Anonymous commented on December 1, 2014 at 12:59 PM on "Up yours!" sez Anthony Watts with another Tim Ball "Climate Hoax" conspiracy theory.

Sou, in other words, you have no answer. Here's the truth - the authors made an easy claim - a stepwise change in temperature readings due to a "probable" site relocation. But the obvious conclusion from that claim is that they then made a step-wise adjustment to the data. Something you could have easily checked, but did not. 

Well, I did check it, and they did NOT make a stepwise adjustment. They made a linear adjustment, approximately -0.02C per year. 

And that, Sou, is completely inconsistent with their claim. So all your nonsense about links that you have provided is just that - nonsense. 

Quick now, Sou, hit the delete button before your gullible sheep start to question.


Since wuwt.fan.4.6.years went to a lot of effort to write this, I'll repost it here in full. You should be able to tell why it's here rather than being on the blog itself.  There are a string of other comments from wuwt.fan.4.6.years over there that you can also enjoy, if the mood takes you. There were also a few questions put to him or her that they didn't get around to answering. Never mind. This is by way of being an answer to the questions posed by wuwt.fan.4.6.years toward the end of the comment. wuwt.fan.4.6.years commented at 10:44 AM on 27 November 2014 on "Bob Tisdale gets into a spot of hot water":

Joe says at November 27, 2014 at 3:38 AM: “Fan is hilarious. He ran away from ATTP after posting the same contradictory repeat of Tisdale's nonsense. His idol, BT, also ran away from this thread where all the contradictions were pointed out in full:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?p=1&t=190&&a=57

I didn’t run away from ATTP, Joe. I answered questions there until I hit a wall. That wall is called the antiquated erroneous belief that only manmade greenhouse gases can cause the ocean surfaces and ocean depths to warm, when data and common sense contradict those assumptions. I’m encountering that same wall here, right now, Joe. 

Tisdale also didn’t run away from SkepticalScience. Tisdale entered that thread at comment 40 and he ended at comment 171. All comments ended at 190. As far as I can tell, Tisdale answered every question posed to him. You may not like Tisdale’s answers, Joe, and some you may not understand. That’s no problem. It’s a complex subject. I’ve been studying global warming and ENSO for more than a decade, and to my understanding, Tisdale’s answers are correct. You may not agree with them, Joe, but that doesn’t make those answers wrong. Looking at the comments on the thread after Tisdale left, they never countered anything that he presented. They simply went back to their original misunderstandings of ENSO. So, in some respects, Tisdale wasted his time. But in other respects, it looks like he used that experience at SkepticalScience to fine tune his arguments. See the archived posts here and here.

Right now, Joe, to me I appear to be wasting my time. I posed a hypothetical question to you earlier, about a house. Your reply, “It's chart cherry picking, energy conservation-violating, GHG denying, pseudo science…” indicates you would build that house solely on the appearance of the exterior, the façade. And your house would come crashing down. I don’t need to expand on that, do I?

We’ve reached a point in our conversation where, if I continue, it’s likely Sou is not going to like my answers. She might even start deleting them. That would be a total waste of my time. 

The ball is now in Sou’s court. Based on Sou’s comment at November 27, 2014 at 5:14 AM I think I’ve outstayed my welcome here at HW. 

I’ve hors d’oeuvres to throw together this evening and a holiday meal to prepare tomorrow for my family, who are arriving home as I write this. But I can return to answer all of your questions on Friday. But that depends on what Sou wants. 

What’s your answer, Sou? You aren’t going to like my answers. Can I answer Joe’s technical questions without fear of having my answers deleted?


Climate science deniers still find it hard to accept that 97% of papers that attribute a cause to the current global warming, attribute most or all of it to human activity. They will probably carry on like this Anonymous till the cows come home - doing weird contortions with their flawed arithmetic and flawed logic.  Anonymous wrote a comment at 11:43 AM on 25 November 2014, on "Cook et al Paper Confirms 97% Scientific Consensus - Prompting Silly Conspiracy Theories from Anthony Watts and WUWT"

What is left out of the analysis is "66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW," while "32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain" - the quotes were taken directly from the abstract. Now despite the two thirds of the papers publishing research on global climate change or global warming, that statistic is being conveniently left out leaving the average "joe" to think that the 97% consensus is a valid number. Proof of this? Just read all the blogs on major news sites dealing with climate change. Even blogs using this research to support their contention that there is consensus (such as "only 0.7% denied that AGW existed while leaving out the fact 66% did not state a position one way or the other on the subject. 


This is one of the milder comments HotWhopper's been subject to in the past couple of days, which included several suggesting I suffer a severe psychological illness (which would no doubt make the Anonymous below "pretty sad") and others saying what they think of we dregs of society, ie women, in no uncertain terms. The comments I haven't published, like the one below, didn't discuss the topic of the article or provide any evidence supporting their claims. I haven't published most of the other comments. I just thought some readers may like to know what is being thought and said around the traps by some of the denialati, about HotWhopper and more particularly me, Sou.

Comment from Anonymous on November 23, 2014 at 12:48 PM to the article "Deniers are weird at WUWT. ENSO is a BoM conspiracy!":

Sou, you attack those with who you disagree by frequently claiming they have mental disabilities of one type or another. That form of attack is pretty sad, and to be quite frank its also quite nasty. I get the impression you really believe that you are a thorn in the side of climate skeptics, when in fact I believe it would be more apt to describe you as a pus filled abcess on the butthole of humanity.


Lots of visits from WUWT deniers today. Some are getting tedious and repetitive and refuse to link to sources, because they know their sources show the opposite to what they claim. The Backslider is a greenhouse effect denier and a chemistry denier, who wrote another comment on November 22, 2014 at 3:46 AM on Deniers are weird at WUWT. ENSO is a BoM conspiracy!

"The recent focus on ocean cycles is their number one suspect for hiding the heat that hasn't shown up in the surface temperatures."

And unfortunately for them, the "missing heat" has not been detected by 3000 Argo buoys. NASA recently released a paper showing that "the missing heat" is also not in the deep ocean below 2000 meters.

I expect he's misrepresenting one of these papers I discussed recently.

And here's another one from backslider, from November 22, 2014 at 5:18 AM, who doesn't give up his brand of pseudo-science easily. (Remember Sydney shock jock Alan Jones?)

"He's a chemistry denier as well. He doesn't agree that burning gigatonnes of fossil fuel each year has increased atmospheric CO2 by 43%."

Ha ha. You really are funny. You are the chemistry denier if you do not recognise that atmospheric CO2 levels are governed by Henry's Law.

The world has come out of The Little Ice Age. The oceans have warmed, thus according to Henry's Law, atmospheric CO2 levels have increased.

To understand this concept, please take a warm can of Coca Cola, hold it close to your face and open it.

One more from backslider, bearing in mind the top one here, let alone all the others I've left on the blog. This time he's decided to very selectively "believe" Dr James Hansen, though he doesn't "believe" anything else Dr Hansen finds - from November 22, 2014 at 5:29 AM:

"Are you in such utter and complete denial?"

You have been unable to show that I have "denied" anything.

You on the other hand quite clearly deny what James Hansen has to say:

"The five-year mean global temperature has been flat for the last decade, which we interpret as a combination of natural variability and a slow down in the growth rate of net climate forcing."

Please take careful note of "mean global temperatures has been flat for the last decade" and "a SLOW DOWN in the growth rate of net climate forcing"

You missy are the denier.


I don't normally re-post these sort of off-topic comments. However today is another anti-HotWhopper (and sexist rant) day at WUWT so it's in keeping with the mood there. It's also typical of what passes for a science discussion at WUWT, where anyone who accepts science over pseudoscience is considered to be off their rocker. And where comments about anything except science are preferred. Mogumbo Gono left this comment at 7:46 pm on 28 October 2014 on A reality check of temperature for Wondering Willis Eschenbach:

Aside from the technical nonsense, [Sou], I observe that you have severe personality problems. I am certain you know this. My wife deals with the mentally ill, and she often points out that they know that they are crazy. But that's not their fault. But you — you revel in your anti-normalcy. You are simply a hater, no more and no less.

Gotta go take a shower now. Sorry, won't be back any time soon... if ever.


Andrew Gordon has left a new comment on an older article, "Unbalanced at WUWT: Earth's Energy Budget", at 8:36 AM on 22 October 2014. The HotWhopper article Andrew commented on included a fairly detailed discussion of recent research on the global energy budget plus several references to scientific papers. Andrew is a slayer of sky dragons and doesn't "believe in" the greenhouse effect:

I am quite concerned about global warming and the adverse impact of mans activities on that.

However the current climate science view, as expressed in the widely distributed 'earth energy budget' diagrams (Trenberth et al), has some major flaws.

See diagrams here (http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Topics/Fig1_GheatMap.small.png) and here (http://nasawavelength.org/sites/default/files/images/resource_images/292.jpg) for example.

Can I first ask 'the reader' a couple of questions:

1) According to these models how much energy is being emitted through the 'atmospheric window'? What % is this of the input energy?
2) According to observed reality here (http://lasp.colorado.edu/~bagenal/3720/CLASS5/EarthBB.jpg) how much energy from the earths surface (at 12C~285K) do we see coming out? [FYI: the total output at 285K would be 374 w/m2. What % of this can you see coming out.]
3) How big is the atmospheric window in reality? Does it agree with the models.
4) How much radiation passes through an absorbing medium? [If you are stuck on this one, try holding a solid object, like a book up to the light ... how much light comes through?]
5) If you have a candle, how closely can you put your hand to the side of it without burning? How closely can you put your hand to the top of it without burning?
6) If you have a hot engine, how hot does it feel if you put your hand under it? How hot does it feel if you put your hand on top (with the bonnet open)? How hot would it feel if you tried to unscrew the radiator cap (please do not try this)?
7) What are the dominant mechanisms for heat transfer in air in reality?
8) What happens to hot air? What happens when you heat air?
9) How much energy would the column of air above a 1m2 area of the earth's surface store if it were stretched up by 5cm? [This might need a bit of science & googling.]
10) During the day, where do you think the energy from the surface that does not radiate out through the atmospheric window go?
11) During the night, what do you think happens?

Now you have had a chance to think, what are the flaws in those energy budgets?

a) The atmospheric window in reality is twice as big as shown in the models. See here [Denier link redacted. Sou.]

b) In reality, no radiative heat transfer occurs between the clouds/atmosphere and the Earth's surface. It is physically impossible.
c) Evaporation and convection are the dominant heat transfer mechanisms in reality in air. Not radiation.
d) When we heat air it expands and rises. When it contracts and falls it releases the stored energy. This is what keeps the Earth warm at night. Not radiation.

The science appears to be fundamentally misrepresented (at least for these widely published energy budget diagrams).

In any energy budget you need to separately consider the flows occurring for Night and Day - without this we miss large energy flows into and out of the active daily energy reservoir. These major energy flows are completely missing. It is also probably worth separating the 'atmosphere' into the troposhpere (H2O, O3, CO2) layer, the tropopause (O3, CO2) layer and the ozone (03) layer. The interaction at these boundaries is quite fundamental to the overall picture.

Not sure what impact this has on the wider debate about the effect of CO2 on the climate, but if you cannot get the basic energy budget to correspond with reality you have to wonder.

F. 

I don't know who F. is :(


Rog Tallbloke commented at 10:48 pm on 20 October 2014 on Well, what do you know.. Tallbloke and his group of cyclists are back in the fold at WUWT

BBD: where did the radiative forcing from CO2 go in the TB universe?

Most of the radiative activity of co2 in the troposphere is the effect, not the cause of the local temperature. This is not controverial. So the 'forcing' you refer to is small, and doesn't get much bigger if you double the co2. (About 2.3% in the tropics) 


Billy Bob appears to take responses to his comments, like this and this and this and this and this and this and this as not "being all over" something or the other. He was too lazy to read the comments that people took time and effort to send to him, or too ignorant to understand them. Actually, he is just playing the fool. He's done it before - telling fibs and twisting events to fit a fictional narrative of his own. He doesn't like HotWhopper or climate hawks. His comments have morphed into a general gripe at people who accept science not pandering to his denial of it. Then he sank into his usual tone trolling. He wants civility shown to him even though he shows none to anyone else. Anyway, he says he's given up this particular sock puppet and will use another name when he tone trolls in the future. We'll see. Billy Bob commented on October 18, 2014 at 9:16 PM on Sea levels and global ice volumes over the past 35,000 years.

BBD, I'm not arguing for anything in respect to undersea activity. I just posed the question - it occurred to me while reading this blog post and the comments about volcanoes etc. I did a quick look around and found a few sceptic comments about the idea which made sense to me. And I wasn't quickly able to find any info about it with a quick Google. I figured given the rather 'enthusiastic' nature of denier bashing here you'd be all over this but evidently not.

I am NOT saying that I think SLR is a result of underwater vulcanism. However, given that there are some VERY active zones under the ocean, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that on the whole, there are significant localised lava extrusion/seabed uplifts each year. So while I don't think it affects the overall trend in SLR, I DO speculate about the extent to which those events might affect the trend. And I wouldn't be at all surprised to find it a relatively constant background effect.

No-one I hope disagrees that seabed uplifting must affect sea level, however minimal. I am sinmply curious about the extent of that background impact.

I must disagree with your closing comment about the mound not affecting long term trends, insofar as we see them today. If the magnitude of those effects, including the occasional major earthquake, were actually significant, of course it would affect the long term trend. Right now, we have no evidence one way or the other. But perhaps somewhere in the literature someone has done the obs and the sums and discounted it. 

Again, I repeat - I do not argue FOR this possibility, I merely wonder if it has been well measured. I can find little reference to this in what I've seen. I will look harder, just out of curiosity.

Now, Jp. What can I say, you nailed it. Good on you. Clot.

Anonymous. Respect? Are you kidding me? The entire basis of this blog is disrespect. You may disagree with sceptics, you may even postulate nefarious motives. But many many people are sceptical of global warming in a variety of ways. This blog presents all such people as utter cretins, and happily disses them at every opportunity. Look at the recent comments about Anthony Watts, well heck look at all the comments about him. Or Jo Nova. Jennifer Marohasy. Lindzen. Pielke. And so on. Witness Gugel calling me a dickhead. And believe me, I've seen the full range of nasty, vitriolic, disresepctful bollocks from some of the very commenters at this blog during a debate on Deltoid. You might be pretty scathing about sceptics, but frankly, I find most of the 'warmists' rude ignorant tossers. So, don't bleat to me about respect until you guys clean up your own act. And don't bulls**t me with the crap about how sceptics do it, or I was rude. Are you so bereft of common courtesy and self control that you can't be better than that? Apparently not.

But you know, I tire of the Billy Bob persona. On reflection it's just me giving in to my own prejudices against the religious intolerance of people such as you. I guess I should be better than that too. So henceforth, Billy Bob is no more. I'll still post if the urge takes me, but as me. And only if I avoid getting snipped which on past performance is probably unlikely...


Now Rum Runner decides to try to lie his way out of his mess (see also his comment below this one) - as if we can't see his previous comments. Rum Runner wrote a comment at 11:55 am on 16 October 2013 on Reducing uncertainty and Jasper Kirkby of CERN's CLOUD.

@ Sou (From the HotWhoppery)

Apparently my mistake was:
"It's assuming that the current temperature is the equilibrium temperature, which it's not."

[At the risk of excommunication :-D] Sou - No. That's not an error! 

It's not necessary for a heat balance approach to know if the temperatures are in equilibrium as long as one knows the lambda that will bring them into equilibrium! As you will see from the above post the IPCCS central 3C figure for ECS FOLLOWS FROM the lambda of 0.8 K/wm^2. The lambda if you like defines how much of the forcing will translate into temperature at equilibrium

Yes it was an error. Rum Runner calculated λ plugging the current, not equilibrium, temperature anomaly into this equation:

ΔT=λ.RF where

...and then used that value of λ to claim it was the sensitivity for equilibrium climate sensitivity (a doubling of CO2), which it isn't. He was estimating, at best, transient climate response.

The lambda is there as an overall figure for ALL the feedbacks.

A valid argument against my figure of 1.55C for ECS would be that my lambda (0.4) is poorly estimated. But that I didn't "know" if the temperature was in equilibrium is not a valid argument, as you don't need to for this approach. That's the appeal of it. 

No. Not poorly estimated, it was wrongly estimated. Because it was not derived from a temperature at equilibrium. He shouldn't have tried to calculate it. He should have used the best estimate of 0.8C/Wm-2

But as I mentioned Lewis & Curry found an ECS of 1.6C from the instrumental record (only 0.05C different), so my lambda can't have been that outrageous.

That is coincidence. Rum Runners calculations were flawed. If choosing a comparison with Lewis/Curry it would be with their estimate of TCR, which was 0.9-2.5K with their best estimate around 1.3K.

"You do realise that the 0.8 number you used above has nothing to do with the 0.8C you plugged into the equation as ΔT in your earlier comments:"

Yes. I believe I was the one that brought it up!

No. On the contrary. Rum Runner wrongly used the 0.8 figure as ΔT in the equation:  ΔT = S ln(CO2/CO2(t=1750))/ln2

"It's pure coincidence that the number is the same. This time you've got ECS as 3C, not 1.5C. You've finally done something correctly, though I'm not at all sure that you've realised it."

I think that was a bit harsh Sou! The thing I'm trying to get people to understand is that the figure for the ECS (1.5C, or 3C) FOLLOWS from the lambda chosen! Using 0.8, the ECS is 3C. Using 0.4 the ECS is 1.5C. The supposed beauty of the heat balance approach is that lambda is tailored so that it returns the CS , at equilibrium, after all the feedbacks, so you don't need to know if the temperature you've chosen is an "equilibrium" one.

Rum Runner Out. 

Amazing the deceit of Rum Runner with the evidence in plain sight. Why can't he simply admit he was wrong? It would be no big deal. We all make mistakes. Surely he'd rather be regarded as having made an honest error than being labelled dishonest. It's too late now.


After at least ten comments pointing out to Rum Runner that the current global surface temperature is not the equilibrium temperature, it still has not sunk in. He cannot figure out that people are telling him that he cannot use 0.8°C as ΔT in the equation to estimate equilibrium climate sensitivity S:

ΔT = S ln(CO2/CO2(t=1750))/ln2

That he would have to use whatever value ΔT was after equilibrium has been attained.

Rum Runner commented at 8:14 AM on 16 October 2014, on Reducing uncertainty and Jasper Kirkby of CERN's CLOUD.

Evening BBD,

"Where is the acknowledgement of your major error? Come on. Admit your mistake."

When I was 16 or so I had a girlfriend who seemed to be upset with me. I kept on asking what was wrong, and she replied "If you don't know I'm not telling you". To this day I never knew what I was meant to have done, so to find history repeating itself now, bugs me slightly.

What "major error"? 

The major error, as he's been told ten times or more now, is that he is not using the temperature at equilibrium - which he can't, because he doesn't know what it would be.

I've re-read the thread and come up with some places where there might have been misunderstanding, and can only suppose that one of these may be the root of my "major error":

1) Using the instrumental record to determine climate sensitivity.

My response to that is that it's ludicrous not to use it. Recent papers (e.g. Lewis and Curry) do the same, but with more complex methodology. They find an ECS, (not a TCR) of 1.6C. Mine using the equation was 1.55C. Not too far apart. And note - if it's important to you - within the IPCC range.

No, the instrumental record itself is not the major error. It's assuming that the current temperature is the equilibrium temperature, which it's not.
If it is claimed that we don't know that all the feedbacks are in place, then that must logically concede that we don't know what all the feedbacks are. Because the whole claimed beauty of using the heat-balance approach is that "it is known" that the forcings will give a certain change in temperature, that will either be dampened or amplified by the feedbacks. The term lambda is there to account for the feedbacks. In all their totality. Values much above 1 will mean the climate will spiral into a fireball Venus type scenario. Values below 1 mean that the feedbacks get dampened and there is "hope for mankind".


No, that's not the major error.

Do I "know" lambda is 0.4? No.
Do the IPCC "know" lambda is 0.8? No
Do you "know" ECS is 3C? No.

It's an estimate. Like the rest of climate science. But at least mine has the benefit of hard data.

Rum Runner doesn't plug in hard data. He misuses a value for ΔT, not the ΔT at equilibrium. He doesn't know the value of ΔT at equilibrium.

2) Using your equation to show ECS of 1.5C

My response is: If you propose an equation - and you did - that had ECS as one of the terms, then ECS can be solved for. If ECS CANNOT be solved with a simple equation then do not propose an equation for it.

The equation ΔT = S ln(CO2/CO2(t=1750))/ln2 can be solved, but you need to know the terms in order to solve it. CO2 values are known. Sensitivity S can be estimated, which will give a value for ΔT, the equilibrium warming for a known change in CO2.

3) Belittling you, or insulting you.

If you got upset by that I apologise. Sou's blog does seem to be a place for cut and thrust. She insults the "idiot deniers" regularly. I had supposed that she was setting the tone.

No, that's not the major error. It does make Rum Runner look a bit foolish, but that's not a major error.

4) Claiming the equation was for ECS.

My response is: It was. So was your equation. Read the papers and links I referenced above. They termed it ECS - I termed it ECS. You even gave an equation with ECS as a term! 

The IPCC's definition of ECS is "the change in global mean surface temperature at equilibrium that is caused by a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration." That's what we (both) showed.

The equation is for climate sensitivity but Rum Runner didn't use it properly. Rum Runner has nearly got it, but for some reason his brain doesn't register the word "equilibrium" in his quote: "the change in global mean surface temperature at equilibrium ...".  He insists on using the non-equilibrium value for temperature and claiming it is equilibrium. 

Re Hansen you can read the Shine et al paper: http://www.met.rdg.ac.uk/~radiation/papers/grl_shine.pdf


Rum Runner would need to quote Dr Hansen, not Rum Runner's misinterpretation of another person citing work of Dr Hansen.

@ Sou:

"it appears that RR genuinely does not understand the concept of ECS or even what the word "equilibrium" means."

You are free to think what you like. I'm well aware of what it means, and what's more I know why the whole concept of defining an "Equilibrium" climate sensitivity for a rock third out from the Sun that has NEVER in it's whole history EVER been in equilibrium is so ludicrous. (Unless of course, you can give us the dates when it was...) The whole idea of defining a term for such a quasi-chaotic, stochastic, monster as our climate is absurd. And reducing it down to one SINGLE variable - CO2 - is hubris beyond belief.

Now that is odd. After Rum Runner has written about ten comments trying to support his erroneous claim that he's come up with a single number for ECS, now he is building a strawman. I've seen that sort of behaviour before. In  young children as well as, on occasion, adults. Rum Runner doesn't understand the topic so in frustration he throws a tantrum and says the equivalent of "science is silly and I don't want anything to do with it".

I'm fairly sure Rum Runner knows that scientists who have done the sums have always come up with a range for ECS, not a single value.  And I'm fairly sure that he understands that while increasing CO2 is the major forcing on climate these days, there are changes in other forcings too (eg other greenhouse gases, aerosols, albedo etc).

The other thing that last paragraph shows is that not only does Rum Runner not understand the meaning of the word "equilibrium", he doesn't know the difference between climate and weather.


I've given Roger Tallbloke a lot of leeway, given I wrote an article about how Anthony Watts has taken him back into the WUWT fold. Still, there are limits, such as this comment. Roger Tallbloke commented on October 14, 2014 at 10:03 PM under the article Well, what do you know.. Tallbloke and his group of cyclists are back in the fold at WUWT, in reply to a question from BBD:

BBD: "First, you must explain where the RF from CO2 went in your alternative universe"

My alternative hypothesis has a model successfully hindcasting 4000 years of data, I don't have to do anything about 3860 of them until you show me a model hindcasting your co2 hypothesis back past 1860.

Please don't show me Al Gore's ice ages graph, as I get fits of the giggles.

Roger didn't answer the question about where all the energy that's accumulated as a result of extra greenhouse warming went to. I expect he was too busy giggling about ice ages.

Earlier Roger Tallbloke wrote in a comment on October 14, 2014 at 9:54 PM under the article Well, what do you know. Tallbloke and his group of cyclists are back in the fold at WUWT, again in reply to a question from BBD:

BBD: "Where did the physics go?"

Where did the missing heat go? It's not on the surface, which hasn't warmed for 18 years. It's not in the abyss, as NASA now discovers. So now we're told the southern ocean data needs adjusting upwards to account for the only place left where it 'must' be. Even then it won't be enough, so sensitivity will have to go downwards to make the numbers fit.

but Southern ocean sea ice extent has been trending upwards these last 20 years (to a satellite era high this year), and SST is a reasonable proxy for ocean heat content to considerable depth. But ocean heat content was in decline from 2003 to 2010 according to ARGO (until it too was adjusted upwards by dropping the rapidly cooling buoys from the dataset).

The missing heat is actually somewhere past Alpha Centauri by now.

By that last line, I take it that Roger thinks that Earth has radiated all the extra heat away from the Earth system. But it hasn't, has it. That would defy physics. He's wrong about 18 years. The Earth is still warming up, a lot. As it is, Roger doesn't read science, he gets his nonsense from elsewhere. Otherwise he'd know that Antarctic sea ice is increasing for different reasons. Largely from the strengthening winds as a result of the ozone hole. As for his reference to the southern hemisphere oceans, you can read about that on HotWhopper, too.


Today Rum Runner, a fairly new fan of HotWhopper, is at it again, trying to persuade HotWhopperites of his magical warming oceans theory that long wave radiation cools the oceans. Oops. Hang on a sec. This time he's telling us he thinks that the oceans are cooling down, not warming. Or is he saying that they are warming and global warming is cooling them down? I do wish he'd make up his mind or at least make some sense. The following comment is below an article that explains how extra greenhouse gases reflect more long wave radiation downward and thereby warm the oceans. Rum Runner commented at 6:09 pm on 14 October 2014 on Bob Irvine at WUWT rejects ocean warming because - foil and clingwrap!

Hi Bert,
>" Perhaps if you understood Green's Theorem and Gauss's Theorem you may be able to get to a more realistic model of what is really happening. "

Oh, most probably. Why don't you explain them to me, with particular reference to my post? And to the article on the subject at Columbia university? Thanks.

>"The basic premise that an increase in green house gas concentration leads to less long wave IR radiation radiating into space will lead to a temperature increase of the whole Earth system is irrefutable. In order to reach equilibrium the temperature MUST rise." 

Yes. But how is that relevant here. We're only talking about the oceans here. And they are opaque to IR. IR cools the oceans. So more IR will cool them more! We've discounted conduction and evaporation also. 

The only thing that can penetrate, as Sou tells us, is SW. But she is trying not to see the glaring implication: that rises in OHC are due to SW. 

There's more. At 6:41 PM, Rum Runner added under the same article that explained how greenhouse gases make the oceans warmer:

Hi Sou,

>"His efforts are futile. Oceans don't heat up by magic. Clouds don't suddenly behave differently for no reason."

You are correct of course. Oceans don't heat up by magic. And the properties of IR radiation and sea-water don't change by magic either. So if we discount magic the only thing that can heat up the oceans is SW. 

>"Simplified down, energy in the earth's system is rising and Earth is warming up. Energy on Earth is expressed as:"

Einstein famously said, or is attributed to have said, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." What you are doing there is trying to make things too simple. The major heatsink on the planet is opaque to the GHGs we are emitting. You can't just ignore that problem! 

Equally you can't ignore the lack of change in the factors that would increase conduction across the skin. 

Unless, :-D , of course, you want to "refuse to accept well-established theory, law, fact or evidence". 

Rum Runner doesn't agree that any change in energy on earth over a period of time can be expressed as the sum of incoming energy less the energy that's being radiated back to space, over that period of time. He says that's "too simple". He doesn't say how he thinks energy is made out of nothing (or disappears into nothing) within the Earth system. What Rum Runner does make clear from his dismissal of that basic equation, is that he doesn't accept the known physics of thermodynamics.


Rum Runner is a climate disinformer who has been gish galloping at HotWhopper the last few days. He's been misrepresenting science (and my comments), and repeating ad nauseum his own collection of dumb denierisms. Rum Runner commented at 7:10 pm on  12 October 2014, on The Pacific Decadal Oscillation and Australia - plus more

Sou: "Rum Runner - no, it was no joke"

Well it made me laugh in any case. "The oceans can't heat up the air all by themselves all of a sudden out of the blue" !! Hilarious. Ever done pantomime? You'd be superb. 

What RR finds hilarious is self-evident. Thing is, for the second time in a day RR deliberately quote-mined from that comment of mine, where I wrote in part: "The oceans can't heat up the air all by themselves all of a sudden out of the blue, not unless something is heating the oceans." Not that it needs the added proviso. RR seems to be arguing that oceans can heat the air by magic, which is dumb denier nonsense on par with Perennially Puzzled Bob Tisdale's magical ENSOs.

I won't bother with all the guff he wrote. It's just a repeat from his earlier comments. At one point, for example, he wrote:

Sou: "You claim that clouds have suddenly decided to behave differently all by themselves for no reason. Well they don't."
No I didn't claim that - I demonstrated that.

Except of course RR didn't demonstrate that. Change doesn't happen for no reason. In any case, his claims that clouds have suddenly changed are questionable at best.

I'll skip over more of RR's repeated nonsense - you can read his gish gallop of fifteen comments that I chose to allow, below the blog article, if you're so inclined (it's the PDO, it's the AMO, it's clouds, it's anything but CO2). Let's jump to what RR claims next. He seems to think that the large increase in greenhouse gases hasn't caused modern global warming:

It's a done deal. One doesn't need to invoke CO2 to account for all of the recent warming. One of the reasons that CO2 is invoked (aside from the politics) is that it can be modelled in GCMs, while clouds cannot. Then people scratch their heads when the models are out....

He's wrong. All the research shows that there wouldn't have been any recent warming except for the added CO2. On top of that, RR denies that this rapid change is anything to be concerned about, claiming that he knows something that all the world's experts on the subject don't:

Sou: "That is probably going to bring about changes not seen since Homo sapiens first emerged onto Earth a couple of hundred thousand years ago?" 

That's a common alarmism. I'm sure the study you linked to all used the "correct" equations etc. Their mistake is twofold: i) that they attribute all the warming to CO2, and ii) try to run GCMs which don't in any adequate way account for cloud processes (or model the pause, antarctic sea ice, humidity, or even temperature convincingly). 

Yes, well, the warming since the 1950s can pretty well all be attributed to human activity. It's not the sun and there is no other forcing of the magnitude required other than greenhouse warming.

I'll not bother clogging up the HotWhoppery (let alone HotWhopper) with RR's other comments. They are just repeats of the rubbish he's posted already. Nothing new. Like deniers all over he seems to think if he shouts loudly enough for long enough, maybe someone will take him seriously. He'll have to try somewhere else.


Billy Bob couched this comment as a response to another commenter whose comment I didn't moderate in an attempt to repeat the points of his comment below. I will let it stand, but here instead of cluttering up the comments. Billy Bob commented on 11 October at 7:16 am on on Heat, Heat Waves and Angry Australian Summers (and Years):

On the contrary, me old Dodger. It is me that is wounded, having been hot whoppered for what must be the zillionth time just because Sou doesn't like what I wrote. But she was right about something else too, this IS almost my favourite blog now... Go figure.

Now, I don't recall saying that YOUR mind, Jammy ol' mate, couldn't be changed. What I said was that if Sou's only aim is to show that deniers are wrong with nothing but reference to mainstream science and an unwillingness to debate with them, then all she has is an echo chamber. Telling you what you already know is simply a waste of time.

The value for people like me, who, as you so gleefully note, are not scientists, is in seeing that sort of discussion. That's why I like blogs like WUWT. There is actual discussion back and forwards with all sorts of ideas and views expressed.

The whole point of the sceptic position is that it disagrees with the mainstream. You can't argue with that simply by repeating the mainstream, you have to actually engage with the substance. Just saying there is no substance, when quite clearly there is because the world has not gone how it was expected to, is hardly demolishing the sceptical view.

Most sceptics view this site as light-weight, which in essence it is because it does little more than repeat the consensus view and heavily moderate those with a different opinion.

If RR is wrong, don't moderate him. Argue him. And if you win and he flounces off, then you've demonstrated the point in a transparent manner. As it is, it just looks like he is asking awkward questions Sou doesn't want to tackle.

I repeat, just telling you, Jammy, that deniers are wrong and why mainstream climate science is right is hardly a challenge. So this blog is not actually achieving anything. It's just preaching to the converted and alienating the heathens.

Lastly, you have no idea about my views on science. And to suggest I have made no effort to understand why the atmosphere has weight is to simply make stuff up. Have you asked me? No. So how can you make that statement and pretend it's true? If that's how you approach things as a scientist, then I am in doubt of your ability. And hence I doubt your views on the climate.

I have thought long and hard and read a lot about the weight of the atmosphere. The trouble is, I end up at a point where I need deep physics knowledge to go any further. And being an average Joe with a day job, I can't get that knowledge. I really need a tame physicist to explain it to me. I simply do not think, on the evidence I see, that the atmosphere has 'weight'. It has something, but is that weight as we understand weight. The answer I think lies in the deeper physical nature of weight. Which I don't at this point understand. Or, I am overcomplicating something simple with half-arsed notions. It is very likely the latter. But that doesn't mean I haven't thought a lot about it. 

If you think you can explain it to me, Jammy, then feel free to take your best shot.

My problem is that I do think a lot and I hate just accepting something because someone says so. I need to 'see' why it is so. But when you are just a dumbass redneck who spends most of his life watching Fox, well, it's hard to work some things out well enough.

I freely admit to being a 'denier'. But I also admit to being willing to have my mind changed too. It's just that the strategy here is unlikely to achieve that, so far at least.

Oh and Sou, how about you let this post stand? Old jammy gets his say, so I should get a right of reply, surely?

Again BB has missed all the many responses and articles addressing denialist talking points, and explaining in some detail where they go wrong. Either that or he is simply making up stuff trolling for attention. Yes, the comments do refer to existing knowledge rather than drawing pseudo-scientific nonsense. I don't know what else BB expects. Does he expect us to debate about whether or not fairies live at the bottom of the garden or whether they live under the ocean? This is a climate science blog it deals in scientific knowledge, not anything else. RR was off base, and I and others took the time and effort not just to respond in the comments, but to write not one but two articles about the points he made. I suspect it's because BB doesn't understand the science in the responses that his mind blanks out when he reads the responses, and he thinks that the articles and comments are empty spaces on his computer screen. He also likes WUWT, probably because it allows people to comment about anything and everything except science. If Billy Bob has a question about science then he can post a comment. If he just wants to rant about the fact that the comment policy here doesn't allow off topic comments and is sick and tired of tone trolling then his comments will probably disappear, because now they are even cluttering up the HotWhoppery.


After three days of responding to a rush from deniers, reading what they wrote, crafting replies, and other people doing the same, which of course only made them more determined to repeat whatever nonsense they were spouting. After I researched and wrote two blog articles to explore points made by denier visitors, Billy Bob has the cheek to preach that I should engage more with fake sceptics. He's wrong. I already "engage" with them a lot more than they deserve. Deniers demand personal attention. They are like little children. I replied to BB, but realised I was wasting my breath. So he's ended up here again. Billy Bob commented on October 10, 2014 at 9:47 PM on Heat, Heat Waves and Angry Australian Summers (and Years):

hahahaha... Cugel, you are such a hyuckster - a savage wit indeed. Lordy Lordy Lordy but you'd be fun to be around. 

Now Sou, why do we agree? Because I made the point that anyone such as RR cannot present an argument contrary to mainstream science for the very reason that his argument is contrary to mainstream science. As you observe, this blog exists to counter 'disinformation' by deniers. A contrary view can't gain any traction here because the basis for the blog is that a contrary view doesn't have traction. 

That's fine and I have no quibble with that. I am just saying that RR hasn't flounced off as such, he simply can't go anywhere with his case. And in your rather long winded way, you have agreed with me.

All of that said, I think just deleting someone's comment because it is contrary to the accepted science is poor form. Argue the case, demonstrate its fallacy. Otherwise, all you have is an echo chamber. If your readers all agree with you, then stating the bleeding obvious is a waste of time or an exercise in self congratulatory backslapping. If your readers disagree, then a detailed back and forward with the commenter would surely be of more benefit.

The consensus sceptical position is that mainstream science is not entirely correct. My sympathies lie with that claim. And a great many observations currently lend weight to that view. You'd have more success in swaying my opinion if you actually engaged with the sceptics who post here rather than simply putting your fingers in your ears and shouting lalalalala. Of course you can argue you don't need to sway my opinion. Sure... but then, whose opinion ARE you swaying? Your own? BBD? DBostrom? Jammy Dodger? Milly? Not exactly a challenge, that one.

As for Ferd Berple's views on the weight of CO2 or atmospheres or whatever, well, that lot went right over my head. You are right, I am no scientist. I'm probably not even an especially good public servant. However, I am damned if I can see how the atmosphere has a weight. But I guess that is a discussion for another day...

For the life of me I don't know how Billy Bob missed the endless back and forth that's been dragging on the last few days with various denialati visitors. It was tedious and boring, which is probably why he missed it.

If Billy Bob wants to read pseudo-science there are plenty of blogs he can patronise. He doesn't believe me (probably because he doesn't know what it means) that I would eagerly write about contrarian science, provided it was supported by evidence. He is science illiterate, which is no crime, lots of people are. His crime is that, despite being science illiterate, he is preaching that pseudo-science crap is as good as science and I ought to promote it, not point out where it's wrong. Well he wants that done too. Which I do. He's a very mixed up chappy is Billy Bob.

What he didn't acknowledge is that most of the comments that get moved here are simply repeats of comments/notions that the same people have posted already. Often multiple times. Deniers seem to think that if they repeat something often enough it will come true, or make sense, or something.


Rum Runner's been posting a lot of nonsense about the PDO causing Australia's hottest spring, hottest summer, hottest year on record. He doesn't explain how that's supposed to work, given the PDO is an oscillation and if it was just the PDO, Australia would be the same temperature as it was decades ago, instead of getting hotter and hotter as each decade passes. He also views science published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society as "political advocacy", which is why he doesn't bother with it unless it's his misunderstanding of the science behind the PDO. (Here's a link to the September 2014 BAMS Supplement: Explaining Extreme Events of 2013 from a Climate Perspective.)

This is Rum Runner at 7:54 PM on 8 October 2014 on Robert Balic at WUWT tries to downplay Australia's Angry Summer - but who's fooling who?

"O...k...ay. So a change in the index in May 2014 caused Australia to have its hottest summer, year, spring etc on record in 2012-13."
a) It wasn't a "change in the index in May 2014". It was a rise throughout the "hottest summer, year, spring etc on record in 2012-13" that ended in May 2014
b) "No one event can ever be attributed to climate change", "Climate is measured on decadal timescales". Do those phrases sound familiar? 
c) Natural variability seems to have caused "Australia to have its hottest summer, year, spring etc on record in 2012-13."

"Got it"
I don't think you'll ever "Get it". 

This is Rum Runner at 7:44 PM on 8 October 2014 on Robert Balic at WUWT tries to downplay Australia's Angry Summer - but who's fooling who?

"Are you trying to argue that the spike in May 2014 influenced the Angry Summer of 2012-13? How does that work?"
Can I recommend an optician? The PDO spike seems to have finished in May 2014. It was rising throughout the Summer of 2012-13. And there's another clue. It was Summer. It get's hot in Summer. It has still not been shown that it was outside the normal range.

"You didn't read the BAMS supplement did you. Otherwise you'd have had to acknowledge that global warming, caused by us, had a strong influence on the summer of 2012-13 and 2013 as a whole."

Have I read all 108 pages of it? I look at the data. I don't take my information from political advocacy. You should try it sometime. And it's by the AMERICAN MO. We are talking Australia are we not? 

"The PDO is a long term influence, it doesn't work in short spikes. Nor can it cause long term warming. "

So far, from the data presented, there hasn't been any long term (AUS) warming outside normal variation, so that's a moot point. When temperature charts are presented (as they typically are on political advocacy climate blogs) from the trough of one oscillation to the peak of another - it sure looks like a "long-term warming", but it's not. It's deceit.

"The PDO is an index. It isn't degrees Celsius."
The PDO is derived from SST. What units are they in? To save you the bother I'll let the University of Washington answer for you:
http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/

"The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) Index is defined as the leading principal component of North Pacific monthly sea surface TEMPERATURE variability (poleward of 20N for the 1900-93 period)." 

Rum Runner is mistaken about the PDO index being in degrees Celsius. The index is dimensionless. He focused on the word "temperature", whereas he should have focused more on "leading principal component" and "variability".

BTW, I pulled together a chart of Australian mean temperature and the PDO index for anyone interested. The PDO index has the global warming signal removed. It's an index of variability in sea surface temperatures defined as "the leading principal component of monthly SST anomalies in the North Pacific Ocean, poleward of 20N. The monthly mean global average SST anomalies are removed to separate this pattern of variability from any "global warming" signal that may be present in the data." PDO index values from here and temperature data from here. As you can see, the PDO index goes up and down with phases of the oscillation lasting anywhere from four or five years to thirty years or so. In contrast, Australia's temperature has been going up and up and up the last few decades.


Richard doesn't know when to stop, does he. This time he bleats, at 7:34 pm on 8 October 2014 on More conspiracy theories at WUWT, this time it's HadCRUT4:

but JOe, if you take a look at the NASA graph , see link, you will notice that the temps in the Arctic have been decreasing 0.07 degrees a decade since 1935. Do you know what the ice extent was back then. 
Richard

Yeah, right. Ice melts more when it gets colder - not.

 

Courtesy Andy Lee Robinson

There are links to maps and papers about the Arctic on this page.


Richard followed up my deletion gleefully with what he thought was a "debunk". It wasn't. I don't think he's a Poe. I think he really and truly believes what he writes. After that he got all excited and added this on October 8, 2014 at 10:08 AM:

sou isn't it great to debunk, !!!
by the way did you see the temp trend in the Arctic from 1935 to 2010 -0.07 per decade.
looked a lot warmer than today as well!! 
richard

He was repeating something he'd posted before, as deniers tend to do (repeat themselves over and over and over again, as if repeating it will make it come true). If you are curious, click here to see what got Richard so excited. Richard suffers from slanty vision. Is there an optometrist in the house? (Richard subsequently attempted to thread bomb with various irrelevant comments. I have neither the time nor the energy to bother reposting them here.)


Don't blame me. It was Richard himself who begged so hard to be sent here that I finally succumbed. I mean, really. Really and truly. After a straight rejoinder, followed by much merriment and mirth at his expense he still persists with his 10,000 ships being rescued from ice in the Arctic in a single season!

Comment by Anonymous on October 8, 2014 at 9:08 AM on More conspiracy theories at WUWT, this time it's HadCRUT4

As you have continued with the ice breaker story i will add.

I think that if 10,000 ships need rescuing it would mean that the ice is still a serious threat, after all it is entirely due to Nuclear ice breakers that it is navigable at all.

http://www.cnrs-scrn.org/northern_mariner/vol03/tnm_3_2_1-17.pdf

"Over the past eight decades the ice-infested sea route along the Russian Arctic coast has been 
steadily developed. Massive resources, including nuclear-powered icebreakers, have now enabled 
regular navigation. The western portion is kept open all year and there are through voyages 
between the Atlantic and the Pacific for three or four months annually"

Richard


I've had one or two brave souls venture here from WUWT in the last day, overcoming the expressed fear of many that their comments would be deleted. This particular Anonymous commented on October 6, 2014 at 7:05 PM on the old article from June 2013, What's that about 16 years? Since 1996, you say?

Can't believe anyone would believe your selective and dubious charts above.

EG 

Arctic ice has recovered about 47% since 2012....the year your chart stops! 
Every landbased or satellite based global temperature system shows a 
"pause" for between 10-26 years. Your "NASA" chart contradicts all these, even the IPCC admits there has been a pause.
Sea rise of 60mm in 13 years? LOL.

If CAGW is true why do you need to lie and distort the truth? 

Anonymous is either incapable of checking the sources for the data I provided or is one of those utter nutter types who can't face facts. Anonymous also seems to have the expectation that in June 2013 I would not only post the full year for 2013, but I'd be able to see so far into the future I would have included the full year for 2014. And it's only October! BTW the minimum Arctic sea ice extent this year was 5.02 million square kilometers, lower than the minimum last year of 5.10 million square kilometres (2013). And higher than the minimum of 2012 of 3.41 million square kilometers by, as Anomymous rightly says, 47%. It's a dumb denierism to pick the lowest on record and try to claim that Arctic sea ice is recovering. It isn't. It's really dumb to expect that I would go back and change old posts. (I thought that was a no-no in deniersville.) Anyway, there's an updated article here if anyone is interested. It's from August, so doesn't have any September or October data - nor Full Year 2014 data :)


It would be hard to find a more classic example of science denial than this comment by Dave on September 27, 2014 at 1:08 AM on What's happened to global warming in the last 17 years and ten months? Since 1996, you ask (updated).

Great example of bad propaganda! Let's walk through and examine the claims, shall we? 

First off, it uses GISS, which even aside from its many well-documented problems with data manipulation, is nonresponsive to the claim of a pause in satellite temps since the last peak in temperature. 

Click here for a comparison of surface and lower tropospheric temperatures, from this article. It looks as if Dave doesn't distinguish or maybe doesn't even know the difference. Dave continues with pseudo-science gobbledegook. He doesn't have a clue.

Next, they cite deep ocean heat, but that's not a measurement, that's an estimate based on the fact the models cannot explain the pause, i.e. circular reasoning -- and that's before we even talk about the physical impossibility of downwelling longwave IR warming the deep ocean, or the fact the oceans are orders of magnitude more massive and hence could easily absorb many atmospheres worth of warming, which would imply AGW doesn't matter. 

Next, they cite Arctic sea ice, which has recovered dramatically this year despite numerous predictions of an ice-free summer -- and note the graph begins at 1979, which is known to be the maximum sea ice year for several decades before and after. Record Antarctic (and global) sea ice is ignored. 

Finally, sea level rise has been continuing since the end of the LIA, and the trend has not changed.

So we can see none of these really have any merit -- which shouldn't surprise anyone, since the pause is not even very controversial.

Is there one factual statement he's made? Well, it's true that in my article I wrote on 8 August 2014, I didn't mention the record (for the satellite era) winter Antarctic sea ice extent that occurred in September 2014. Any more? Nope. (Dave probably thinks the earth is flat and the moon is made of cheese, too.)


Anonymous ventured to HotWhopper and left a non-comment, at 2:10 PM on 25 September 2014, on Hockey sticks drive deniers nuts...

The graph is topical because it has been raised in the Mann v Steyn court case. As usual Sou rants about things she doesn't comprehend. I won't bother writing more to elucidate since this will be deleted as are all posts showing our host doesn't know what she's raving about. 

Ah yes. Deniers and disinformers are ferreting around at the WMO trying to find irrelevant material, prepared by scientists at CRU fifteen years ago, and approved by the WMO, that they hope will help Mark Steyn wriggle out of his defamation of Professor Mann on what they believe is a technicality. It doesn't and it won't. It's not at all related to the disgusting and false claims Mark Steyn wrote about Michael Mann. These obsessives really do take the cake, don't they. Talk about the devil finding work for idle hands (and dead brains). Oh, look. There's a squirrel. Oops, it's not even a squirrel.


Give an inch 1. This has stopped being a discussion and is arguably another example of trolling, given the number of times he's repeated the points. Billy Bob, labouring his point and, despite all the evidence to the contrary, arguing that the disinformers "believe" what they are finding. Fat chance. And wrong. They haven't "found" anything at all. Billy Bob wrote on Monday 22 September 2014 at 7:02 am on Remember the weather at Rutherglen? BoM was right all along, of course!

Quite a lengthy response Lotharsson. In my earlier comment I stated that this blog is not 'science' and asked who you are. These were not literal statements as such - I was noting that of course blog comments/discussion do not constitute peer reviewed scientific process and that you, like most of the anonymous commenters may or may not be 'anyone' worth listening to.

However, blogs are a legitimate form of public discourse and indeed may carry significantly more influence in the public mind than peer reviewed science. Joe Average - me for example - read lots of blogs and I suspect many who read blogs get a lot more information from those sources than they do from reading the peer reviewed literature.

Jennifer's claims may fail your tests for scientific validity, but I suspect that between her and the other main players they do have a clear idea of what they believe they are finding. Your assertions about her not subjecting her claims to peer review fall on barren ground. I don't care - IF she has found something than I am interested regardless of peer review or not. 

Blog science debate is a real form of interaction/communication with the public. This very blog we comment on is example of that.

My point was, rather than hide behind peer review as a defence in a public debate in which the sceptics seem to be gaining ground in the public interest, much more mileage could be gained through direct collaboration rather than sniping across the trenches.

There seems little downside. If, as you all seem so confident, Jennifer is wrong, then not only does this get demonstrated but it gets demonstrated through a spirit of collabortation and joint exploration. It's your best chance at closing this particular debate down in as most effective manner possible.

Sure, this is blog science, not peer reviewed science. But it has a weight in the forum of public opinion. That is the basis for my challenge. I'd like to have seen that kind of joint effort, partly to tackle the across the divide nature of the debate and partly - mostly - to tackle the claims by Jennifer in an open, transparent manner that hopefully could then stand on its merits for both sides.

But I can see where you are coming from, so I shan't labour the point. 

You just did labour your point, Billy Bob.


Give and inch 2. Ragnaar decides to push his luck and goes to Jim Steele for information and doesn't bother with links or the names of papers or contexts. This is also an example of concern trolling with his "makes one wonder" comment. I might have let this pass with another newcomer, or might not, but I have just given multiples cautions to Ragnaar - here and here and here including to check and cite original sources. Ragnaar wrote on Monday 22 September at 7:41 am on Charting the depths of CO2 ignorance at WUWT:

I don't think the ocean heat sequestration question has been settled.
Information on studies about ocean heat:
Hansen 2005 1993-2003 0.86 +/- 0.12 Watts/m2 
Lyman 2010 1993-2008 0.64 +/- 0.11 Watts/m2 
von Schuckmann 2011 2005-2010 0.54 +/- 0.1 Watts/m2 
Wunsch 2014 1992-2011 0.2 +/- 0.1 Watts/m2 
Compiled by Jim Steele. The scientists are still looking at the question. Carl Wunsch and Patrick Heimbach report a significantly smaller amount in their recent paper with errors bars half as large as their 0.2 Watts/m2 answer. 
Wunsch & Heimbach 2013: http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/papersonline/heatcontentchange_26dec2013_ph.pdf
The range of the above results from these esteemed scientists might cause one to wonder what the answer is?

Even if Ragnaar did know "what the answer is", do you think there's a snowball's chance in hell he'd know what to do with it? That's another reason it's called concern trolling. In this case, also mindlessly copying from a known disinformer. (See also immediately below, for which he apologised, then amended slightly and reposted, for some very odd reason known only to himself. It's not exactly on topic.)


Ragnaar quote mines to misrepresent a great scientist, Wallace S. Broecker, on September 21, 2014 at 1:58 PM on Judith Curry picks a cherry in her motivated recycled denial. His source? A rabid science denying blog.

I am hoping this gentleman was making coherent arguments.
From a skeptical piece on Broecker written in 2001,
“Since 1860, however, the earth has warmed. Yet, as Broecker notes, "roughly half the overall warming since 1860 occurred before carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from human activities had reached significant levels." Continuing, he says that some people, such as us, "take this as evidence that most of the current upswing in temperature is merely a continuation of the natural events that brought the Little Ice Age to a close."”
“"we can state with some confidence that natural Holocene temperature fluctuations have been on the same scale as the human-caused effects estimated to result from greenhouse gases." Hence, as he continues, "we cannot assume that in the absence of human intervention, earth's temperatures would have remained stable."”
[Link to disinformation site redacted and replaced with archived copy, Sou]
Broecker is not a skeptic though the linked article is. His work on abrupt climate change was good.

Notice how Ragnaar leaves out a very important word, "some", so as to totally change the meaning. This is from an old article (not a paper) in Natural History Magazine. The article is about glaciers as evidence of climate change. The full quote in context is:

The Little Ice Age ended abruptly. Starting in 1860, the world’s glaciers began a retreat that has continued right up to the present. Without a doubt, therefore, planet Earth has gotten warmer over the past century and a half. But humanity’s exact contribution to the warming is still under debate. Along with most atmospheric scientists, I take very seriously the results of computer simulations showing that human-produced forces are very likely driving the rise in temperature that we have seen over the past quarter century. Yet roughly half the overall warming since 1860 occurred before carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from human activities had reached significant levels. Some take this as evidence that most of the current upswing in temperature is merely a continuation of the natural events that brought the Little Ice Age to a close.

Thirteen years later and the answer to the question of how much warming can be attributed to human activity has been refined a lot.

And this could be taken as a personal message to Ragnaar from Dr Broecker, from the same article:

To strengthen their case, corporate spokespersons, avid consumers, and plenty of other people and institutions inclined to dismiss the ongoing rise in atmospheric CO2 as inconsequential may be happy to latch on to the paleoclimatic reconstruction presented here. This would be unfortunate. Unless all the work done on climate simulations and fossil-fuel-use projections is seriously flawed, one thing is certain: our planet will indeed experience a major human-induced warming during this century.

We have learned that Holocene temperatures have undergone natural fluctuations, but the causes of these changes are so subtle that we have yet to figure them out. Apparently, our climate system responds to even tiny nudges. This being the case, the potential effects of human activities should not be underestimated. If we continue along a business-as-usual energy course, we’ll be giving the climate a large shove.


Rather strange comment from Anonymous at 1:24 PM on Saturday 20 September 2014, on Who's lying now? It's Brandon Shollenberger on WUWT, wrongly accusing me of lying. I wonder if he/she can provide a list of the piddly few papers that dispute AGW. No? Of course not. He/she can't even acknowledge the thousands that show evidence supporting it.

Why do you lie when 99% of the 14,000 papers express no clear opinion on whether humans actually cause more than 50% of the warming. Why don't you break down the numbers and reject those expressing no opinion at all, and show an apples to apples comparison: Those attributing with quantitative analysis, and those that don't.

You mean break down the numbers like I did in the article itself, or like I did here and here? Or like Cook13 did, in more detail?


Comment from David L. Hagen on September 20, 2014 at 12:46 PM on Judith Curry picks a cherry in her motivated recycled denial

We have had a massive 11% increase in CO2 since 1995. 
“Consequently” we now see two decades of global temperature "pause" [Link to denier disinformation redacted - Sou]
Arctic ice is above average.

Weird claim. Moyhu shows no such thing. Arctic sea ice hasn't been above average for years. It's declining faster than was predicted! Sou.

Furthermore, we now have a record high antarctic ice extent, 20 million square kilometers higher. [Link to denier disinformation redacted. See here and here and here instead - Sou]
Amazing the impact of increasing CO2!

Not amazing. It's what's been predicted for decades.


Anonymous cannot help himself with his OT whines. Since these two he's lost his self control and sent more vitriolic empty comments not worth repeating. If you read this, Anon, you are now banned. Future comments will be deleted. [Sou 11:30 18 Sept 14]

I wasn't aware he'd ever used a Google or WP "nick". Is he ashamed of himself? [Update: It's probably Greig, who was banned months ago. The rapid decline in behaviour, the language used and lack of self awareness and self control is similar.] Is he under the mistaken impression that I "delete" (I usually just move comments here, not delete them altogether) - because of who people are and not because of what they write? I doubt it. He knows the comment policy and is simply trolling again. September 18, 2014 at 10:25 AM on New denialist journal open to all

Mike,
I use the Anon option because, if I used my Google or WP nick, Sou would simply and mindlessly delete the posts. She does it on a regular basis while trying to pretend to be open in her discussions. Deleted, mind you, not because they are wrong but because they carry infrmation she doesn't want to be true.

For the record I don't say scientists are involved in a hoax/conspiracy but I do think they are subject to confirmation bias. On the other hand, there is a small but powerful contingent of climate scientists (Mann, Jones etc) who have decided that the science should be subsumed to personal advancement and political objectives. It is never, never right in science to hinder attempts to replicate results.

And there he goes again. An OT lie about Michael Mann and Phil Jones - two twentieth century climate heros showing true courage in the face of disgusting denialist attacks.

I thought Anonymous knew about the HotWhoppery. He's been featured here for serial trolling and telling lies under one or other of his various sock puppets. Anonymous trolled again on September 18, 2014 at 8:10 AM on New denialist journal open to all

I can always tell when I've written something that is so painfully truthful that Sou can't even begin to find a way to address it...the comment is simply deleted holus-bolus. Sou obviously has a very low opinion of her readership, thinking that they couldn't possible be safely exposed to heretical views.


Billy Bob asks a question. September 18, 2014 at 8:34 AM on Judith Curry picks a cherry in her motivated recycled denial

So.... surprise me Sou. How is it that you can post all the snarkery under the sun, and your commenters are free to snark and attack the deniers, but you don't cop it in return? I said it in the comment you have now snipped - that doesn't help your cause. I'm no convert to your way of thinking, but I have found some of your posts of deep interest and illustrating an alternative viewpoint. But like every other warmist blog I've visited, you just won't tolerate anyone that comes back at you.

Sure I can't argue the science as well, I am after all a redneck dummy, but I AM a typical average Joe Citizen. So that's how you engage? By dodging the issue?

This post is just puffery, and nasty puffery at that. As for WHT, if he/she is Web Hub Telescope, his snark here should be balanced by knowing he got well and truly roughed up at Curry's (although I didn't follow those threads all the way to a conclusion so maybe he later saved face).

Like many deniers, Billy Bob doesn't know what's what when it comes to climate science. He thinks denialism should be given equal weight with science, even on a blog that promotes science over disinformation and disinformers. He cannot distinguish between my criticism of disinformation and what he thinks is his right to attack other commenters. He's wrong about me, too. I don't mind the personal attacks against me, which is why I repost them here. Well, the ones that pass the test for family viewing at any rate. I've acceded to requests from regulars and tend to agree, that clogging up comment threads with personal attacks against me distracts readers and tends to take the discussion way off topic. If he thinks I am avoiding denialism and attacks on science, he's not reading my articles.

Oh, and as for his first question, the answer should be obvious. It's my blog and I can do what I like, as long as it doesn't contravene the law. (I wonder if he's ever asked denier blog owners the same question? Most of them are much less tolerant of anyone who comments about science than HotWhopper is of comments from deniers. I welcome comments from everyone, provided they don't contravene the comment policy and are based in fact.)


Billy Bob on September 18, 2014 at 6:36 AM on Judith Curry picks a cherry in her motivated recycled denial defends Judith Curry's right to be a science denier. I guess he thinks I don't have a right to talk about it in the way that I do. (His reference to the iron sun is misplaced. The actual comment was about Judith's theory of cloud nucleation - "her crackpot IronSun-like theory of cloud nucleation")

[Unprovoked personal attack on another commenter redacted]

As far as I know Curry doesn't go for the Iron Sun theory, that's the baby of that guy who was eventually banned at WUWT for his constant stream of iron sun promotion.

Sou, this is an example of why people like me, with limited education and who are not in the trade, are scpetical. It's not just the contrary evidence, the slavish adherence to a theory whose predictions fall short, or even the utterly dogmatic abuse of anyone who dares disagree. It's also the fact that even scientists who disagree become the subject of a savage campaign of character assassination.

Any idea that promotes that sort of rabid defence is immediately suspect in my view. This entire post is nothing but an attack on Judith Curry because she has a sceptical viewpoint. That's as weak as.

As far as the 1998 thing goes, it is indeed a fact that there has been a pause. Cherry picking is such a dumb claim. Any period can be subject to a trend. If we had an instrumental record back 10,000 years, what trend is the 'right' trend?

This almost desperate desire to downplay the pause does you no credit. The pause was NOT predicted, it IS counter to IPCC projections, and it IS a major embarrassment to the claim of AGW. The longer it lasts, the more so.

And that's a fact. Rubbishing Judith Curry is not. It's fluffy nastiness.

My fluffy nastiness is nothing compared to Judith Curry's actions, a person who cares so little about the world that she denies the extent of the influence of CO2 and advocates no mitigation of global warming. Especially when she claims scientific authority on the subject.


Why do deniers spread so much FUD? Does it make them feel superior to research scientists who spend their lives studying science? How could that possibly be?  Comment from a serial sockpuppet, Anonymous (today), on September 17, 2014 at 5:27 PM on New denialist journal open to all - indented, with my additions.

The quote ( "Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.") was from Jones to Warwick Hughes.

Deceitful despicable Anon quote mines, omitting the context and, more seriously, not including the fact that Professor Jones did offer data to Hughes. Hughes was a serial harasser whose aims were to disrupt research and defame scientists.

If Mann released all his data/code etc then why has he and Penn State spent mega bucks and years trying to stop the FOI release of his data/emails etc? Still its touching that you still leap to the defense of the (not)Nobel Laureate since even climate scientists now know the HS was nonsense .

If pervs are more interested in poring over personal and private emails than in published science, like all the different paleo reconstructions that are shaped like a hockey stick, why don't they just steal them? Oh, wait!

If Cook released all his data then why did UQ threaten to sue Shollenberger when he found and wanted to release some of their unpublished data?

The script kiddie wasn't about to release unpublished data. He was going to release irrelevant personal details. Again, why are fake sceptics more interested in the private information about scientists than in the science itself? All the data needed to repeat the work is in the public domain.

I understand why you are so dismissive of McIntyre given that he has made such fools of your high priests. I wonder if Gergis and Karoly agree with your assessment of him.

In ... your ... dreams, ... faker.


Predictable parting comment from Anonymous on September 15, 2014 at 8:07 PM on Perennially Puzzled Bob Tisdale surfs the surface at Florida Keys. Though if he's anything like other trolls (sadly) it won't be his last word. I don't think 7DaBrooklynKnight7 knows the meaning of in situ. He (she? probably not) certainly doesn't know the difference between HadISST estimates of SST over a wide area of ocean, and on-site temperature measurements taken at specific locations in coral reefs, or why they might differ. This is despite multiple personal responses addressing his same question (that he repeated multiple times), and which ended up being classed by me and others as concern trolling. In a previous comment 7DaBrooklynKnight7 claimed not to be a science denier. The comment below signals that's not the case. He is indeed a science denier / fake sceptic / whatever, though that's not why his comment appears here.

wow. i will happily go elsewhere, sou. there is no reason for a newcomer (like me) to ask questions of someone so rude (like you). 

i tried nicely to show you where your article is wrong and you keep repeating skin temperature. hadisst is not skin temperature data; it is sea surface temperature data. the data from the paper (figures 2 and 3) you've shown above in your article is Sea Surface Temperature data. the y-axis in both figures reads SST. maybe it's you who needs "remedial arithmetic services or personal tuition in climate science and oceanography for dummies". 

something else you've overlooked. are the data from the lighthouses and from the buoys included in the hadisst data? 

i may not be a skeptic but i am now skeptical of what you call science, sou. i will happily go elsewhere. maybe tisdale will answer my questions. his series of posts about el nino this year were easy to understand and accurate. they were educational. i noticed you didn’t try to question those. he is building his credibility by helping people understand. you are not. you seem intent on hiding the truth and that destroys your credibility.

sadly

7DaBrooklynKnight7


Rather than respond to specifics, there is yet more tone trolling from Meteormike. Mike Maguire September 3, 2014 at 9:26 AM on Silly season at the Daily Mail and WUWT: wishfully reversing the Arctic decline

"A victim I am not nor would I feel comfortable playing one. There's a difference between that and trying to get along.

So the bullied are not victims nor do you claim to be bullied? Come on"

Interesting that my comments are now being removed by the moderator and now my words twisted. My original comment was that you were acting like bullies and I have done nothing but been respectful. You cannot define how I feel, which is not one bit like a victim.

And it would be absurd for me to still be here and assert that I am getting bullied. I am here by my own choice and Sou can kick me out anytime for any reason. You can say whatever you want to me........and I really won't take it personal.........I'm not built that way. 

I originally came here to present a view, with evidence on oceanic cycles and it has morphed into something something less than I was hoping for.

You all would be surprised if you actually looked, that we share most of the same views on climate science. Seriously. I agree with 97% of what you believe. The main disagreement is over exactly how much the atmosphere is and will be warmed by CO2.........which leads us to completely different future projections. This has polarized 2 sides that treat each other as if they have nothing in common and dislike each other because of it(both sides).

There actually is enough common ground to at least do a better job trying to get along.
Consider me somebody doing more than just saying that by being here.
I am trying to do the opposite of trolling, though so far seemed to have failed miserably.


Meteormike decides to link to a yet another website by another denier. He does make a habit of this. I guess he can't find any actual science to support his claims. Meteormike on September 3, 2014 at 8:51 AM on Silly season at the Daily Mail and WUWT: wishfully reversing the Arctic decline

"And to do that you have to state your case, provide evidence........ "cited a paper that gives a figure for AMO influence on Arctic sea ice extent. No thanks needed"

Why thank you anyway Jammy,

I guess everybody choose to ignore my evidence. There are other papers too but one step at a time. There was no acknowledgement of my first link to show this:

[Denier link redacted]

"The AMO affects regional temperatures in the Arctic area of the northern Atlantic. The following figure shows the temperature anomalies for the only 2 long-term stations in Iceland (from the NOAA GHCN database)Temperatures are recently approaching those observed in the 1930’s. The next figure compares the Iceland temperatures with the AMO shown previously. There is a strong correlation between the two."

"The following figure shows the temperature anomalies for the available long-term or recent stations in Greenland (from the NOAA GHCN database). Temperatures are recently matching those observed in the 1930’s. The next figure shows the average temperature anomalies from those same stations, while the following figure compares the average anomalies with the AMO shown previously. Again, there is a strong correlation between the two"

After I presented evidence, with graphs of actual data and referred to it again, why accuse me of not providing evidence and insist I provide evidence? 

There are other papers and articles that studied this. Why would I post more links when you've decided to ignore them when you don't agree?


This is one of a many comments from Meteromike, a denier who claims to know a lot. On the contrary, much of what he writes is merely a repetition of well-known denier memes. He evades answering any questions by tone trolling. All whine, no substance. I've had enough.

Below is an excellent example of his tone trolling in order to avoid responding to specific challenges to his assertions. (One example was his assertion that he could eyeball a chart of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and see a repeating 60 year cycle!) Mike's specialty is to self-aggrandize and appeal to himself as an authority, another tactic to avoid answering questions that he thinks he can get away with because he's a weather forecaster. That's as bad as claiming that weather forecasters like Joe Bastardi or Anthony Watts know what they are talking about when it comes to climate.

Meteormike on September 3, 2014 at 6:24 AM on Silly season at the Daily Mail and WUWT: wishfully reversing the Arctic decline

As stated, I come here in peace. I am well aware of the differences between "deniers" and everybody here and that you consider me "one of them".

I present my comments in a manner that is as non confrontational as possible and try to stay focused on specific areas that qualify me as an expert.......trying not to get dragged into what always turns into an argumentative/combative exchange in these sorts of situations.

My original point was that I see natural oceanic cycles, specifically the PDO and AMO based on several lines of evidence, the key being the data presented graphically. 

The first step in having any sort of fruitful conversation between 2 groups, is for both parties to agree on something................if that doesn't happen, then it quickly turns into a battle, where each side resorts to defending what they are sure they know already..........and sometimes attacking the other side using psychological warfare.

If everyone here is unable to see what I consider the most powerful/obvious evidence, graphing/charting the actual data, going back thru previous cycles over the last century(especially of the AMO), then your response is noted. It also means taking the 2nd step is impossible.

Also noted are intentionally inflammatory comments, directed at me because I'm a "denier".

If that makes you feel better to act like bullies, fine but you won't get me to respond in a similar fashion.

Like I said, I came here in peace to share a small but important aspect of climate change based on my observations of 33 years as an operational meteorologist.


Billy Bob doesn't understand the difference between an unprovoked sexist personal attack on another HotWhopper commenter and ridiculing comments made at WUWT and elsewhere. Is it any wonder that he doesn't understand the complexities of climate? (He also seems to think he should have free rein to spread his disinformation and silly denier memes at HotWhopper. He doesn't. )

Billy Bob, September 2, 2014 at 1:44 PM on The ultimate cherry pick - or how not to interpret a temperature chart, courtesy WUWT

What the? I got hot whopperied (is that even a word?). C'mon, you guys can happily slag off the denizens of WUWT, suggest that Nova and Marohasy are scurrilous scoundrels, malign Judith Curry, and call into question any poor old redneck denier that wanders innocently by, but I can't suggest that Millicent is a shade too delicate?

[Sou: That wasn't how Billy Bob referred to Millicent, who strikes me as a strong person and who, by the way, hadn't commented in this particular discussion at the time of the comments. What Billy Bob wrote wasn't even suitable for the HotWhoppery. It most certainly didn't comply with the comment policy. ]

OK...

So, what do you feel about Shaun Lovejoy's comments over at Judith Curry's? He's given us a solid prediction - if the pause continues until 2020, it will "reject the anthropogenic hypothesis at the 95% level".

From where I am sitting, that's an interesting comment when one remembers the vociferous argument against the very notion of a pause not so long ago. Certainly Lovejoy's paper as quoted by Curry indicates that the 'pause' (or plateau as I am now gonna call it, thanks Tony B) fits nicely into his range for natural variability, but there again I think we see a great example of after the fact wishful thinking. All backed up by some solid stats of the kind you guys would happily accept. Unlike that McKitrick bounder.

Still what would I know. Call me in 2020 maybe, eh?

Dang, now I have to drop by in 2016 to see how the sea ice went and 2020 to note the poor old temp's struggle to lift its game.


(It would be too dreary and probably useless, to try to explain to a serious fake sceptic how my cherry-pick was making fun of Anthony Watts.) Billy Bob September 2, 2014 at 6:56 AM on The ultimate cherry pick - or how not to interpret a temperature chart, courtesy WUWT

See, this is just like the sea ice thing. You can play all the games you like with the trend lines and so on, but this is indeed a temperature plateau.And like all plateaus, it will eventually reach its edge and start the downward run.

I'm thinking when I pop back over in say September 2016 that will be more evident. And even when its on its way down, you'll show me a trendline from ohhh I dunno, 1967.5 that shows its still on the way up. You will of course ignore the trend in the trendline itself, but that's OK. 

There are none so blind etc.

[Deleted the rest]


One way to make sure a comment ends up in the HotWhoppery is to try to send people to a website like that of John McLean, who predicted, in 2011, that the global surface temperature in 2011 would be as cold as it was in 1956. Meteormike should know better. He's spent enough time at HW.  Since he sees patterns in the PDO of 30 years or 60 years or is it 90 years (he can't make up his mind) where there are none, and since it is the silly season for deniers, it probably shouldn't have surprised me.

Meteormike on September 2, 2014 at 3:23 AM commented on Silly season at the Daily Mail and WUWT: wishfully reversing the Arctic decline

When natural cycles change/flip, the key to recognizing it comes from properly weighting recent observations relative to an historical record of similar observations.

Since there are different cycles and most importantly now, rapidly increasing CO2 to consider, the ability to see the cycle change muddies the waters.

Every cycle change is noted by 2 important elements.

1. Observed changes in conditions that begin to show divergence from the previous trend in the conditions previously measured.
2. Timing of those changes.
a. Timing is related to the changes taking place when an expected cycle low or cycle high is due and
b. Timing is also related to how long the changes need to persist for them to stand out from random variation in a chaotic system.

With regards to 2.a, we are/have been due for a shift in a 30 year natural cycle, which can be seen looking at the PDO.
With regards to 2.b, there are clear signs with global warming slowing down, more La Nina's, weakening El Nino strength and other measures, one of which "could" be the bottoming of Arctic sea ice.

This has not been confirmed as the old downtrend has not been violated yet. It is however, consistent with the numerous other signs, including changes in the Pacific/Atlantic and flattening of the global temp curse, even as CO2 is having the opposite influence.

The PDO monthly index values going back over 100 years capture this ~30 cycle very well. 
http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/

The start of every new phase of any cycle involving oceans and amount of sea ice can be gradual/slow with inertia left from the previous cycle.

For some historical perspective, the cycle that effects ice in the Arctic went thru a similar period around 90 to 60 years ago, that we most recently experienced with accelerated melting.
Using rounded off numbers to illustrate the point, we then went thru the next phase from 60 to 30 years ago, followed by a flip to melting acceleration again from 30 years ago until present(present possibly ending in recent years)

Evidence of this is seen here: [link redacted by Sou]

Add 60 years to this and you match up well with recent ice losses in the Arctic, which is strong confirmation of the cycle in it's Arctic melting phase described earlier.

This is not suggesting that Arctic ice will get back to where is was ~30 years ago or that increasing CO2 did not accelerate the melting of Arctic ice for the previous 
~30 years. With high confidence, it did.

However, with at least the same amount of high confidence, the cycle exists and signs of it flipping are being confirmed in most measures right now. The Arctic ice bottoming would be just one more.

 


A good illustration of confirmation bias, blindness and denialism from Rocketdan on August 31, 2014 at 4:43 AM (I'm assuming it's not deliberate deception, or a Poe). Somewhat ironically to an article in which Anthony Watts attempts to denigrate the World Meteorological Organisation, quoting what he wrongly claims is a "howler". In an article pointing out the deceit of Anthony Watts, and showing where Anthony makes false allegations and denigrates one of the very few people at WUWT who accepts science (Nick Stokes)- from Denier weirdness: A howler from Anthony Watts at WUWT

If I had to pick between the articles and comments of Anthony Watts, the most viewed source of Global Warming articles on the net, and this semi-anonymous blogger "sou" I would overwhelmingly pick Watts. He provides rational for his positions and doesn't simply rely on denigrating those who disagree with him. This blogger doesn't seem to have anything real to offer on the climate debate.


A fairly ordinary kind of stupid from Chad on August 31, 2014 at 1:17 AM, demonstrating that he hasn't read Cook13, or any climate science - which is consistent with the fact that he can't do simple arithmetic - from Denier weirdness: 97% irony - deniers deny the science about the science.

'Why he is so vehemently anti the Cook et al paper I cannot understand.' Try reading.

http://www.joseduarte.com/blog/cooking-stove-use-housing-associations-white-males-and-the-97

What witty responses from Sou. Denier, denier, denier! It's a special kind of stupid that regards a 0.3% consensus as a 97% consensus.

Of nearly 12,000 abstracts analysed, there were only 64 papers in category 1 (which explicitly endorsed man-made global warming). Of those only 41 (0.3%) actually endorsed the quantitative hypothesis as defined by Cook in the introduction. A third of the 64 papers did not belong.

Thankfully you're not to be taken seriously. Your level of data denying idiocy was quite a laugh though.


A strange comment from Anonymous on August 9, 2014 at 9:27 PM on an old article, Just to be clear about Weatherzone...

Yup! Anybody who wants the government to keep their paws off of private property is a *denier* and needs to be locked up for not handing their hard earned money to big brother to feed dopey Joe's bad habits! 

I like you're rational thinking! Time to go on a witch hunt and show you're true colors!!!! 


The comment below is typical of the end pattern of denier trolls. They start out making a heap of increasingly silly comments, veering further and further from the subject at hand (and reality). Eventually they cross the line into unsubstantiated and unfounded allegations of fraud, scam, deception or hoax by scientists. I don't allow such defamatory idiocy here or on the main blog. (Ironically, in this case, this happened on an article about crazy denier conspiracy theories.) When their comments get deleted the denier spits the dummy and starts making what they regard as threats. It's the same pattern repeated over and over by different deniers. One is tempted to think these tactics are deliberate so that they can get banned. Then they can go crying to their denier mates and fill up denier blogs with rants about all those nasty alarmists, who won't let them defame scientists and fill up threads with ludicrous pseudo-scientific fantasies.

Comment from hazym on August 7, 2014 at 2:32 PM on Irony alert! More conspiracy plots discovered at WUWT and elsewhere...

Well Sou, we finally got there. Now you're sending things down the memory hole without even acknowledging they existed. Winston Smith would feel right at home. Well he'd feel embarrassed by it, but not everyone has his ethics, do they?

Of coarse, henceforth, whenever you or one of your troop rails against wuwt or the suchlike for censorship etc, you'll have this tiny niggle in the back of your conscience knowing that you do the same. Delicious.

Oh, and the next time your name comes up over at wuwt or elsewhere I might just post a note explaining how you actually work, complete with screen-dumps of all the deleted posts and explanations of why you sought to hide your errors. Oh did I neglect to mention that I took screen-dumps of my posts prior to your deletion? oops, my bad...how unethical of me!

Now you have a nice day. cya :)


Comment from hazym on August 5, 2014 at 12:42 PM on Chance of El Niño drops to 50%, Just goes to show you can't believe everything you read on the internet. Especially not anything from someone who calls themselves hazym.

Nup...banned for making the egregious error of pointing out errors on the site:
1. It was claimed that 300 Billion people die each year from industrial pollution. I pointed out that 'only' 60 Billion die world wide from all causes. Accused of eugenics (!!!).
2. Pointed out that two posts, one month apart, made diametrically opposite claims. One said Abbott would disappoint those silly deniers by never repealing the plant food tax while the other urged the overthrown of Gillard to stop Abbott winning the election and repealing the plant food tax. Mike M, who never made an error he didn't try to cover up, deleted all posts pointing out the 'error' and banned me to ensure I couldn't continue to draw attention to it.

More than a day later, even after the foolishness was highlighted, hazym still doesn't know what was wrong with his comment. hazym wrote on August 6, 2014 at 6:10 PM

I've got no idea what you're talking about Bill.

I suspect that makes two of us.

Perhaps if you could put your thoughts into words rather than just launching into inane abuse...

And two hours later still hasn't twigged. Maybe hazym lives in alternate universe with a whole heap more people who've driven him around the twist (Figure that one out :)) hazym on August 6, 2014 at 8:22 PM

But Bill, what's any of that got to do with my words that you quoted at the commencement of your post?

Oh I get it...you screwed up and are now covering up. A lot of that going around, heh Sou?


Comment from hazym, trying to explain the nonsense from sleazy Timothy Ball, from August 6, 2014 at 5:52 PM on WUWT fails first grade everything and in a fit of paranoid delusion rejects the greenhouse effect

1. Here's a thought. When TB says CO2 is "naturally only 4 percent of all greenhouse gases" maybe he means CO2 is "naturally only 4 percent of all greenhouse gases". ie before all those evil lassez-faire anarchist capitalists started 'polluting' the atmosphere with plant food (the natural state) CO2 did/does make up 4% by volume of the ghg (ie water vapor, CO2, methane etc). So his point (and before we get the usual dills leaping in, I'm just explaining, not supporting his point) his point was that a fractional increase in a gas that comprises only 4% of the ghg by volume, couldn't make the difference claimed for it.

2. His reference to "a couple of years" has nothing to do with whatever you (Sou) are on about. You need to read it in reference to the preceding paragraph where he's taking about the miraculous year on 1950. (Again explaining, not agreeing). So he means that within acouple of years around 1950 CO2 went from having almost no effect on temps to having overwhelming effects, according to the cognoscenti. 
3. Can't help there - but in the age of twitter and gen Y grammar is a dying beast anyway. 

Now off to the circular file for this comment. Can't have our host looking so daft.


Comment from M Taylor on August 6, 2014 at 4:14 AM on Denier Don Easterbrook gets it all wrong in his absurd fairytale on WUWT, about the "scientific method", name-calling and politics.

I want to congratulate Silly Sou for the substance of the article, but name calling is beneath any scientific discussion and is downright silly. However, in the spirit of this webpage, I have followed suit and given Sou a moniker. It's also very silly to label someone a "denier" because they disagree with commonly held scientific beliefs. This is counter to the scientific method. Resorting to childish behavior such as name calling is in accordance with politics and has no place in scientific discourse.


After a few days of trolling HW with "competing view" comments and after I deleted a comment that wasn't suitable even for the HotWhoppery, hazym wrote, I think in response, but who knows. On August 6, 2014 at 8:49 AM on Eric Eugenics Worrall makes a glacially silly blunder down under at WUWT

Well thanks for that Sou. Yet another alarmist blog unable to take differing views. But at least most of the others actually announced the banning. But clearly you had neither the grace, ethics or intellectual wherewithal to confront my point. Just reach for the censorship button...much easier than actual thinking. 

Remember that while you're reading "The Authoritarians" and which side of the divide you fall.

Keep up the good work. I always find your blog a real giggle in the morning - today's was a doozie.


Weird follow up comment to the one below, also from Just Asking on July 27, 2014 at 3:11 PM on No fatal blunder: Matching climate models with ENSO matches observations. Demonstrating they don't know the meaning of the words "honest" and "civil", or if they do they are prone to lying.

dhogaza, honest and civil response deleted. 


Comment from Just Asking, after other comments in which they deliberately misrepresented facts. This comment encapsulates Just Asking's disinformation efforts fairly well - made on July 27, 2014 at 3:02 PM on No fatal blunder: Matching climate models with ENSO matches observations.

Too funny Sou, your first Cook explanation, "This means I regularly update old rebuttals when new data is released or when new papers are published." Translation, I alter my posts when I made false statements and get called out on it. Stopped reading your post after that. Done here on HW, nothing to learn here, although might drop by again if Mann links to you on twitter. Have a good day and cheers. 


A lesson in radiative physics, denier-style, from Mack on July 24, 2014 at 6:17 pm on No fatal blunder: Matching climate models with ENSO matches observations.

Catmando sort of answered your question Jammy Dodger
.....but there's also another 'Wow Mack" from metzomagic who says... "That's one of the best examples of outright physics denial I've ever seen" Gotta luv the way you guys say .."It's basic physics" or "denial of physics" (or just "science denialist" for the more ignorant among you.)

Some basic gas physics for you metzomagic. Gases do not add energy to a system but disperse it. All gases dissipate heat. CO2, ever so slightly, cools the atmosphere. 


Comment from conspiracy theorising Marcel, trying to perpetuate the insinuation by Alex below, on July 24, 2014 at 1:39 PM on Watching the weather for 84 years and the petty peeves of Anthony Watts

Je ne sais pas, Bert.

It was not Alex who "claimed the evidence was adjusted", 
Alex comments seem perfectly reasonable to me. 
He was pointing out that Gavin himself admitted to having
adjusted the data to fit in with his models. This must be
the wrong way round surely.

If the model doesn't fit the data, surely the model is wrong.


Whinge comment from conspiracy theorising Alex on July 24, 2014 at 1:21 PM on Watching the weather for 84 years and the petty peeves of Anthony Watts

Oh so don't criticise the great G_d Gavin on this blog or you shall have your comments redacted ? I was critical yes, but not abusive or profane, why the censorship?


Comment from conspiracy theorising Alex on July 24, 2014 at 1:13 PM on Watching the weather for 84 years and the petty peeves of Anthony Watts

sorry for typo ion should be in.

As to Gavin Schmidt, I too have some reservations about his methodology, and on his own c.v. for example, it states that - "He has also worked on ways to reconcile paleo-data with models." - Note the word order, and that is no typo. Gavin Schmidt reconciles the Data to fit in with his models, and not the other way around.

The empirical data is altered by Schmidt to fit in with his man-made invented computer models. This is really what irks people about Gavin, his Canute-like hubris and smugness. It isn't justifiable.


Admonition from Robert in Vancouver on July 21, 2014 at 6:59 AM, admitting that he knows nothing about climate science, and dropping in a defamatory "algore is fat", while commenting on: Tim Ball is busy re-writing science at WUWT (again) and regurgitating his paranoid conspiracies

Considering that much we don't know very much about the forces behind climate change and their causes and effects, it is everyone's interests to consider what the so-called 'deniers' say to ensure whatever decisions we make are the best ones, not just the most popular ones. 

Anyone who says "the science is settled" regarding climate change is not a scientist, they are a politician or have some other ulterior motive that doesn't involve science. Science is never settled so quickly with so little verifiable evidence.

[Redacted defamatory comment]


Comment from John on July 19, 2014 at 6:28 AM on PM Tony Abbott and his party and independents commit Australia to faster global warming

Well, Millicent, can you cite where someone is opposed to "cheaper sources" of energy? If they really are "cheaper," what do we need the tax for?

Yes, the history of DDT is quite clear including the 1948 Nobel Prize and the millions of people that it saved from death by malaria. Few chemicals ever developed have the life saving track record of DDT. I would love to discuss this with you, but will I be allowed? Or, if DDT is off topic here, then why is the discussion continuing?,


Comment from John on July 19, 2014 at 12:01 AM on PM Tony Abbott and his party and independents commit Australia to faster global warming

Sou,

Did I say it was banned because it kills people? I just said that it never has. 

For the record, and you will see this as a theme, I am favor of things that improve and save human lives like DDT and fossil fuel. And, I am not in favor of them for any other reason. So, if you find something that saves more lives and improves lives better than DDT and/or fossil fuel, by all means, let it be known.


These insults might not seem like much on their own. John has been baiting for some time, wanting to get a guernsey in the HotWhoppery, and now he's succeeded. Comment from John on July 17, 2014 at 4:20 AM on Denier weirdness: Christopher Monckton and his 100% consensus

BBD, there is quite a bit of difference between theoretically possible and financially viable. 

Sou, please don't do any research for me. If I ask a question that you don't know, "I don't know" is a fair answer. However, if you don't know how many people die each day as a result of not having electricity, for example, it might be helpful to know given the subject matter of this blog.

How have I treated anyone here poorly? I submit that the questions I am raising are one of the reasons for this lengthy discussion. 

And here is the thing. There are people dying. The developing world wants to build coal powered plants. That is why they are. It is not for me. I assume that you oppose such. If so, you sort of have an obligation to provide some sort of viable alternative. 

Or maybe your blog is not about finding solutions to these problems. Maybe it is just about taking shots at others on the internet and providing entertainment. If so, fair enough. Or maybe it is just to belittle people that care about those dying from lack of access to energy and clean water. That seems to be the theme of a large percentage of your writing.


Three comments from the same Anonymous as below, apropos who knows what. He or she seems to think they have wandered into a courtroom arguing an unknown case for an unknown plaintiff (themselves?)- on Pollution advocate Rachel DeJong and her unsavoury smear campaign at WUWT sometime on Wednesday 16 July 2014.

Sou, there you go again - disparaging anyone who dares to challenge you on the substance. 

You are fearful of the adversarial process and seek refuge in the consensus-based go-along-to-get-along process.

Does it comfort you to label me a "a true right wing authoritarian"?

Do you feel vulnerable about your lack of knowledge about the differences between the American and European constitutional systems, forms of government and social compacts? 

Perhaps you have been down under too long? Or, perhaps, you need a civics lesson?


Dear Sou, it's time to take you to civics school. International Civics Class - Lesson #1:

If I am a “true right wing authoritarian”, it must be because I am an American and not an Aussie subject of the commonwealth.

American and European academics have concluded that the different approaches employed by Europe and the U.S. to address food safety and environmental risks (a hazard assessment ex-ante regulatory approach vs. a risk assessment ex-post market legal approach) are attributable to fundamental underlying constitutional differences between these two regions. These constitutional differences, in turn, reflect different notions concerning the rights of individuals versus those of society, of the role of government in balancing between those rights and of the relative functions served by the different institutions of government: 

"The U.S. system is rooted in the Bill of Rights and the sanctity of the individual. ‘The Constitution of the United States…places great symbolic weight on human rights. It elevates the basic rights of man to supreme constitutional status. Judges then are the protectors of those rights and thus have a role superior to that of the other branches of government.’ England on the other hand, has no such anchor. 
English law observes rights as residual and set in the dynamic process of Parliament rule…‘In theory, in practice and in constitutional structure and procedure, the British courts have always been firmly placed under…Parliament. The Parliament is the ultimate and unchallengeable maker of the law they apply’.

See: Peter Goldsmith, Hamish Gow and Nesve Turan, “Is it Safe? Post-Market Surveillance versus Ex-ante Signalling”, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (2002), at 5-6, at: http://www.ifama.org/conferences/2003Conference/papers/goldsmith.pdf


Dear Sou, International Civics Class - Lesson #2 follows:

The observations made in Lesson #1 above are extremely significant, especially considering that England’s societal perspective towards risk is not dissimilar to that of the European continent (and apparently, of Australia):

"[W]here[as] the US system focuses on the individual…the English system focuses on the polity. In application of the rights of the individual are unchangeable while the needs of the polity change…A society where individual rights are preeminent worries when rights are trampled, thus each individual and firm has standing before the court of law…In the British system, because of the role of the Parliament the unit of analysis is the polity, which balances the rights of individuals against the needs of society. Letting go the guilty is far worse because society as a whole is made worse off. In this way it can be said th[at] liberty trumps democracy (society) in the US, while democracy (society) trumps liberty 
in the UK."

See: Id., at 6-7. 

And, Deary, aren’t you old enough to remember the infamous Economist article from 2007?

"Brussels is becoming the world’s regulatory capital. The European Union’s drive to set standards has many causes—and a protectionist impulse within some governments (e.g., France’s) may be one. But though the EU is a big market, with almost half a billion consumers, neither size, nor zeal, nor sneaky protectionism explains why it is usurping America’s role as a source of global standards. A better 
answer lies in transatlantic philosophical differences. 

The American model turns on cost-benefit analysis, with regulators weighing the effects of new rules on jobs and growth, as well as testing the significance of any risks. Companies enjoy a presumption of innocence for their products: should this prove mistaken, punishment is provided by the market (and a barrage of lawsuits). The European model rests more on the “precautionary principle which underpins most environmental and health directives. This calls for pre-emptive action if scientists spot a credible hazard, even before the level of risk can be measured. Such a principle sparks many transatlantic disputes: over genetically modified organisms or climate change, for example. 

In Europe corporate innocence is not assumed. Indeed, a vast slab of EU laws evaluating the safety of tens of thousands of chemicals, known as REACH, reverses the burden of proof, asking industry to demonstrate that substances are harmless. Some Eurocrats suggest that the philosophical gap reflects the American constitutional tradition that everything is allowed unless it is forbidden, against the Napoleonic tradition codifying what the state allows and banning everything else..."

See: Brussels Rules OK; How the European Union Is Becoming the World’s Chief Regulator, ECONOMIST, Sept. 20, 2007, at 68 (emphasis added), available at http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9832900.

Deary, I rest my case.

Sou - Okay. (I wonder what that was all about?).


Later, very predictable comment by Anonymous on Pollution advocate Rachel DeJong and her unsavoury smear campaign at WUWT, July 14, 2014 at 3:04 PM (earlier comments below this one).

Dear Sou,

You and your supporters are spineless, mindless and pusillanimous - no more than intellectual lilliputians.

Apparently, your blog is intended to disparage rather than to inform.

It is typical of the postmodern progressives of the day...

If you can't take the heat get out of the kitchen.


From Anonymous - from earliest to latest in order 14 July 2014, apparently not caring that pro-pollution advocates aim to deceive, on Pollution advocate Rachel DeJong and her unsavoury smear campaign at WUWT

Dear Sou, Who are You??

Your claim to fame is that you are "a sixties-something woman with an interest in climate science." As you describe yourself, "I have a Bachelor of Agricultural Science (Honours) and an MBA and work as a freelance consultant".

You also claim that you are a victim of misogynists, which inspired you to begin this blog. "HotWhopper was inspired by the treatment I suffered last year (2012)...I started this blog to shine a spotlight on misogyny and the rejection of climate science."

Wow, I guess that qualifies you as a climate expert who is climate science competent and able to defend the claims of the climate science consensus?

Stellar credentials!!! 

Posted by Anonymous to HotWhopper at July 14, 2014 at 8:54 AM


Anonymous has left a new comment on "Pollution advocate Rachel DeJong and her unsavoury...": 

I do declare that these credentials qualify you as an expert in the critique of those critical of the climate consensus!

Posted by Anonymous to HotWhopper at July 14, 2014 at 8:58 AM

Dearest Sou,

Why not review the ITSSD findings and then comment on them? 

Why do you feel the need to engage in ad hominem attacks?

Do the facts frighten you? 

Posted by Anonymous to HotWhopper at July 14, 2014 at 9:01 AM


Anonymous has left a new comment on "Pollution advocate Rachel DeJong and her unsavoury...": 

Indeed, it would be quite difficult for EPA to disprove the findings contained in the ITSSD FOIA request.

Sou wouldn't even be able to disprove them.

Posted by Anonymous to HotWhopper at July 14, 2014 at 9:03 AM


Anonymous becomes prosecutor, judge and jury of his own kangaroo court and has left a new comment on "Pollution advocate Rachel DeJong and her unsavoury...": 

Dear Sou,

There is something called "due process of law", and EPA hasn't provided it to the American public.

EPA has been neither transparent nor accountable to the American people.

In America, government works for the People, the People do not work for the government.

Unless EPA can account to the American people for how its validation of the science underlying EPA's Endangerment Findings satisfied, the most rigorous and least discretionary standards of the US Information Quality Act applicable to highly influential scientific assessments, as the ITSSD FOIA Request suggests, then the Endangerment Findings must be reexamined.

This is consistent with the government's obligation to remain transparent and accountable to the public. 

Posted by Anonymous to HotWhopper at July 14, 2014 at 9:08 AM


Anonymous, like a true right wing authoritarian, is intensely suspicious of any authority and has left a new comment on "Pollution advocate Rachel DeJong and her unsavoury...": 

Dear Raoul,

Sou's prior remarks say nothing substantive.

They are merely further evidence of ad hominem attack.

I, like other third parties, have carefully read the ITSSD findings. 

They indicate that EPA failed to follow the US Information Quality Act at four distinct levels, and that each such failure violates the statute.

True, there is a distinction between internal peer review and external peer review. However, the ITSSD findings show that EPA and the third parties it relied on (e.g., including NOAA) apparently failed to meet the US Information Quality Act requirements for BOTH internal AND external peer review.

Now, what do you have to say about that??

The facts speak for themselves - res ipsa loquitor! 


Posted by Anonymous to HotWhopper at July 14, 2014 at 11:23 AM

Dear George,

Well, if Sou is an astrophysicist, then why doesn't she state so? 

Why would she need to hide behind a description that reveals only that she possesses a "Bachelor of Agricultural Science (Honours) and an MBA and work as a freelance consultant"???

Perhaps Sou suffers from the same infirmity that EPA suffers from - i.e., non-transparency??? Lack of truthfulness??

And, even if Sou were an astrophysicist, what qualifies her as any more of an "eminent" expert than those scientists whom she disparages as "deniers"??

Is it merely because Sou is a go-along-to-get-along post-modern "consensus-based" scientist, rather than an independent scientist with her own mind that is driven by empirical facts rather than ideals or ideology??

Posted by Anonymous to HotWhopper at July 14, 2014 at 11:30 AM


Anonymous has left a new comment on "Pollution advocate Rachel DeJong and her unsavoury...": 

There is no need for any commenter to reveal their identity if Sou, our host, proceeds to remain anonymous herself. 

Posted by Anonymous to HotWhopper at July 14, 2014 at 12:49 PM


Anonymous has left a new comment on "Pollution advocate Rachel DeJong and her unsavoury...": 

Dear Raoul and George,

That proof is in the pudding. 

Sou's prior blog, and the pedestrian comments that followed from she, Millicent and John Mashey above, are vituperative, condescending and an ad hominem attack on Rachelle DeJong. This was quite unnecessary and extremely unprofessional. As far as I can discern, she did not single out any of these individuals for disparagement.

As for the ITSSD's findings, to which I referred in my prior remarks which have been conveniently excised, they clearly show that the US EPA had not fulfilled the four levels of legal obligation to which it had been subject under the US Information Quality Act. 

In other words, the agency has not substantiated that it validated the scientific assessments underlying the GHG Endangerment Findings the EPA Administrator had reached pursuant to the US Clean Air Act, consistent with the most rigorous and least discretionary peer review, objectivity/bias, transparency and conflict-of-interest standards applicable to highly influential scientific assessments.

If the evidence clearly shows that EPA has failed to meet its legal obligations, Sou's wishful thinking and idealism won't be able to do so either.

These are the facts, ma'am, like them or not. The truth speaks for itself - res ipsa loquitor!!

Both US law and public opinion will compel EPA to reexamine the Endangerment Finding. It's only a matter of time. 

And, as I previously stated (but which also has been conveniently excised), since Sou has not been transparent about her identity, there is no reason why any commenter responding to Sou's blog entries or the comments supporting them need reveal his/her identity.

Fair is fair.


Anonymous wanders around post-modern denial and has left a new comment on "Pollution advocate Rachel DeJong and her unsavoury...": 

Dear George,

Given the significant uncertainties plaguing both the observational climate change data and the uncertainties that riddle the complex computer modeling used by IPCC and EPA/NOAA to make future climate change prognostications, climate change science has been definitively premised on the postmodern precautionary principle.

This result obtains because there is no causal proof that global warming is attributable to predominantly anthropogenic as opposed to natural processes. Rather, the evidence proffered by climate change scientists is fundamentally correlative in nature. 

The postmodern precautionary principle is mainly a political (and not a scientific) device/mechanism intended to address the myriad scientific uncertainties surrounding various facets of everyday life. It is reflective of a new paradigm of qualitative rather than quantitative science, focused more on remote potential hazards rather than probabilistic risks.

According to at least one author,

"In environmental law one devise that has developed to deal with situations where it is clear that we do not know enough, or are not certain enough, is the precautionary principle. This principle can be seen as part of a rejection of the modernist science-law paradigm, in favour of a post-modern approach, which embraces the reality that science is not omniscient.5 Where circumstances arise in which the scientific knowledge available is not capable of ruling out adverse effects or fully identifying all possible risks, the precautionary principle allows public authorities to act without conclusive evidence, as waiting for full information it may ultimately be acting too late.6

See, e.g.: Niamh O‟Sullivan, SCIENTIFIC UNCERTAINTY AND THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE, Cork Online (2010), available at:http://corkonlinelawreview.com/editions/2010/SCIENTIFIC%20UNCERTAINTY%20AND%20THE%20PRECAUTIONARY%20PRINCIPLE.pdf

And there are other authors who agree with this assessment.

See, e.g., Jeremy Rifkin, A precautionary tale, The Guardian (2004), available at: http://www.theguardian.com/education/2004/may/12/research.highereducation

See also, Leigh Glover, Postmodern Climate Change (Routledge Research in Environmental Politics 2007), available at:http://books.google.com/books?id=aL_k-8E9HNQC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false.

And there are other authors. You need only perform the research.

The US EPA actually refers to the precautionary principle in its Endangerment Finding which it reads into the Clean Air Act - i.e., it claims that Congress had a precautionary motivation for enacting the relevant provision of the statute.

Given this, it is quite obvious that EPA/NOAA, relying on mostly IPCC climate change science, placed great weight on qualitative evidence reflective more of judgment rather than of hard quantitative science. 

EPA and NOAA then failed to adequately peer review such science, consistent with the high standards of the US Information Quality Act.

This is so fundamentally clear, but yet you and your sympathizers wish to ignore it.


Comment from opit on Friday 11 July 2014 at 6:57 am, on Where is the cooling, Ira Glickstein? It's a travesty...

When the 'conversation' is about projection and motives there is no matter of abstract science or even mutual respect. How can a nonscientist like myself make any other conclusion except that representations are not being made in good faith but by a 'circling the wagons' mentality which is confrontational and partisan ?
I am unconvinced that a mechanism of absorption of energy must somehow act as an amplifier of it unless such could be proven practically - difficult indeed when such proof is complicated by uncertainties in the applicability of the modeling scenario and the reliability of modeling as a practical technique with real world application. 


Comment from Anonymous on Thursday 26 June 2014 at 7:18 am

After several increasingly vexatious comments on WUWT claim? CO2 is NOT plant food. How WUWT rejects chemistry, biology and photosynthesis

No, this is about English literacy. He did not say what you say he did. Your obnoxious, pretentious attitude is not enough to distract from that simole fact. You put the ob in obtuse and your blog is hippy flake drek. See you next Tuesday. Comprehend that.

Ed


Comment from Mack at 6:14 pm on Tuesday 3 June 2014 on The world domination ultra-paranoid conspiracy theory at WUWT

Hot Wopper,
Can I make a comment? on your blog?
I can help you by introducing myself as a dumb, reactionary, fat , ugly, filthy rich, cigar-huffing, denialist, misogynist, capitalist pig. ?


Comment by David Friedman on Saturday 31 May at 7:03 am on Anthony Watts is in Serious Trouble with a Whopper of a Lie of 'Epic Proportions'

"That's right! Anthony added a whopping 7,970 to the mere 78 papers that dispute global warming - to try to fool his readers."

Whereas John Cook added a whopping 3,832 papers that held that humans were a cause of warming (his categories 2 and 3) to the mere 64 that held that humans were the principal cause (category 1), reported only the sum (for the individual categories you have to go to the webbed data and count them yourself), and then in a later paper reported that sum as the number that held that humans were "the main cause."

For details see: [denier link redacted - Sou]

And neither paper gave any figure relevant to the "and dangerous" part of Obama's claim.

So far as Watts' claim, a paper that doesn't accept AGW isn't the same thing as a paper that denies AGW. It can be, in many cases is, a paper that simply doesn't say anything on the subject. This comment by me doesn't accept (or deny) the Four Color Theorem, or the Theory of Comparative Advantage, or quite a lot of other things.

Watts wrote less clearly than he should have. Cook lied in the second paper about the contents of the first, and presented the results of the first in a way obviously designed to make such a lie easier—by not reporting the separate numbers for the categories, only the sum of categories 1-3.

Sou: David is wrong about the Cook13 paper. All three top categories relate to AGW. The A is for anthropogenic - that humans are causing the global warming. The first category puts numbers on it.  It's the very small number of papers in the rejection categories that either minimise human influence or deny it outright. You can read the the paper here with a description of the categories.


Comment from nbl957 on May 29 2014 at 11:26 AM on Denier Weirdness, Begorrah, from WUWT

"Surely he is not saying that the entire history of Armagh observations were recorded in degrees Celsius? (They weren't.) Or that degrees Fahrenheit cannot be converted to degrees Celsius?"

Comments like this show that you are not remotely serious in your discussion. The point being OBVIOUSLY made is that as the opening data is in C then it can not be earlier than the introduction of C as a measurement.

If only you enthusiasts would deal in facts and prepare your own papers rather than spend time and energy trashing others. Could it be that fear beats facts.

As I heard a scientist state recently "I believe in global warming as the place I am standing had a mile of ice in the past so it must have melted due to DA DA - GLOBAL WARMING. Dinosaur farts I suppose. 

Sou: Oh dear! NBL957 must be very young and/or have no understanding of history.


Comment by SH on May 24 2014 at 5:38 am (ironically) on Who's lying now? It's Brandon Shollenberger on WUWT

You are nuts. I am no denier, but this article is riddled bald speculation and fallacies. Your partisan juvenile sniping doesn't help the cause in any way. It is embarrassing. The point isn't to be more right than the people you hate who disagree, it is to get as close to reality as possible and share that reality with others. If you care about saving humanity from climate change, you should just stop talking and shut down this blog immediately. 


Comment by chrisflyz on May 23 2014 at 5:55 am on Roy Spencer's latest deceit and deception

First of all, science does not demand orthodoxy. Therefore, people who speak of deniers are, by definition, religious zealots. Second of all, it would be interesting to address those who have converted from the global warming religion and cited the extreme heterodoxy and lack of science that accompanies it. Personally, I am pro-global warming. Now if only there was a way to accomplish that . . .anyone have a few volcanoes they are hiding somewhere? 


Nik on May 16, 2014 at 12:39 AM

This web site is so creepy weird. All these hissy fits and piling on, devoid of any actual feedback from skeptics who will never see it or the public who show up on WUWT.

The only denial here is your bizarre and psychologically projective denial of the actual objective *trends* of climate (model) skepticism.

(A) WattsUpWithThat.com versus blog.hotwhopper.com:

Ranking 255,482 versus 9,557, a factor of 27, with WUWT *tripling* in readership from 2013 to 2014, and skeptical blogs just made a clean sweep of nearly the whole 2014 weblogs awards even after they omitted the science category altogether, so instead of just one blog winning science, Tallbloke's Talkshop even won the best European blog and Joanne Nova won Lifetime Achievement award after formerly winning the best Austrialian blog award. O.K. now the best rated blog in all of Europe is a skeptical one! WUWT was disqualified since it won too many awards in the past.

http://oi59.tinypic.com/34fb30y.jpg

(B) Highly skeptical Fox News is holding viewers while alarmist networks are all hemorrhaging viewership and Al Gore sold his own channel to the state media concern of the oil kingdom of Qatar.

(C) Concern for climate now ranks near last in worldwide public opinion and still diving:

http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/lji_c-2sqkwhdfcnpbaqmq.png

LOOK AT THAT LAST CHART OF PUBLIC OPINION and tell us again: "Such fun to watch."

Is it really fun to watch how your idiotic climate alarm promoted to a willing left wing media is marginalizing *all* environmentalism?


Comment from Nik May 16, 2014 at 12:01 AM

"The IPCC won a Nobel Peace Prize for heaven's sake!"

So did the terrorist supporting Yasser Arafat and President Drone War.

The reason crimes against humanity is a logical charge by the former Harvard professor Motl, is that willful support of clear scientific fraud in the effort to genocidally ration energy in our era of abundance is morally criminal. Extreme disapproval of genocidal policies is a normal healthy human emotion. People like Lubos from formerly communist countries have even more extreme reactions to those they consider to be fascists, and *here* you *are*, supporting attacks on a very distinguished climate scientist who is calling *you* McCarthyites.

That climate alarm is indeed a fraud is now simply undeniable after skeptics simply plotted the bladeless input data of the latest hockey stick: [redacted]

If you can simply ignore Mann's support of a bladeless hockey stick, then you are deeply buried in a cult outlook.

Here is what's going to happen. The massively growing popularity of skeptical blogs and the continuing loss of viewers of mainstream television news in favor of Fox News is going to lead to a growing backlash against climate alarm that will become quite serious especially when college students and recent graduates who have been so indoctrinated find out they've been *willfully* duped and are now suffering a crappy economy made worse and worse by highly premature green energy boondoggles. For the next few centuries your Stalinist "science" climate alarm movement will live in infamy, with your names forever attached to it in Internet archives. At this point you all know it's a fraud, and that makes you evil for supporting it, not just misguided.

-=NikFromNYC=-, Ph.D. in carbon chemistry (Columbia/Harvard)


Comment by Luboš Motl on May 15, 2014 at 4:40 PM

Decent people all over the world should find all conceivable legal tools to physically liquidate ultra extreme fascists who authored the disgusting article on this blog and who have intimidated the Swedish scientist. Apologizing the reaction by the climate fascists is unforgivable and as far as I can say, William Connolley and the cripple on this blog should get a death penalty.

[Sou: under normal circumstances this comment wouldn't make the grade for the HotWhoppery. It would be deleted like other similar comments are, and that'd be that. Because I was away and didn't pick it up immediately, this comment got some attention in the blogosphere, probably because the author is a scientist himself (not a climate scientist), so I've copied it here for the record.]


Comment by Prevy at 4:25 PM on 13 May 2014 to "A decade of extremes from WMO and WUWT"

I replotted the chart you have above in degrees Celsius and you know what I got? The closest thing to a flat line that I've ever seen. In every textbook, history book, science book and reference I looked at dated prior to this alarm being sounded all the temperature charts were in one degree increments. Now they're suddenly in hundreths of a degree. Is anyone seriously worried about the earth warming at a rate of .05C per decade? The amount the earth has warmed in 160 years is so small that you would not be able to detect it at all if you bought yourself a standard spring mechanism thermometer (margin of error +/-1.5C) In fact, if you took all the climate scientists and put them in a room warmed to 16C, then changed the temperature up or down 0.8C, not one of them would notice it

If you want to do the trend of global temperature thing right, start with the latest RSS data and work backwards while maintaining a 0.00 or less trend. Currently that is August 1996 The data provides the start and end dates. That's 17 years 9 months, enough time to satisfy your rules. Until you realize you don't want to accept the data and up the time needed to 20 years. First it was ten years, then 15, then 17. Soon it will exceed the period of warming. No matter how long the trend of zero warming lasts. ,it will always be just short of the time required to disprove the CAGW theory. If the earth cools one degree a year from now on the IPCC will say in 2024 that the 10 degree drop was consistent with their models. Every model will show the opposite but they'll just turn the chart upside down and the media will applaud. By the way, when anyone suggests a specific starting point, that is cherry picking.


Comment by Evan Jones, April 24, 2014 at 5:14 PM

The study you cannot recall is Marcott et al. (2013), about which much cobblers has been written on contrarian blogs. M13 does not "clash with most of the others".

Yeah, I remember it now. The conveniently redated core tap study.

I prefer what Marcott, himself said about it. Remember that part? The part about how those red-hot 20th century results were, erm, "not robust". 

Yet another scalp for McIntyre's collection. No wonder it vanished without a trace.

In fact the millennial section of the reconstruction is in good agreement with MBH99. 

Why, I couldn't agree with you more. I may have forgotten Marcott -- but I know a hockey stick when I see one!

Speaking of McIntyre's scalp collection . . . #8^D

Evan is a plain vanilla denier with his and proclamations that he is right and all climate science is wrong.

"Denier" I can take. I can be big about that. 

But vanilla? You wound me! You wound me!

repetitive pronouncements of "I think's" and unsubstantiatied "likelies"

Right. I keep forgetting. I am supposed to speak in terms of unwavering certainty -- like a real scientist. #B^D

proclamations that he is right and all climate science is wrong.

citation needed


Comment from Anonymous, April 23 at 1:55 pm about the 97% consensus

"Of those abstracts, around 4,000 attributed a cause to global warming. 97% of these that attributed a cause, indicated that humans have caused most (50% or more) of the warming."
Talk about a lie, that is TOTAL hogwash. You're claiming that 3880 papers claimed humans have caused 50% or more of the warming? Not even close to true.


Comment from Charles S. Opalek, PE April 19, 2014 at 6:18 am

Besides anecdotes, computer projections, Hockey Stick FrankenGraphs, and consensus is there any empirical evidence linking the activities of humans to the climate? 


Comment from Jim Steele April 18, 2014 at 1:36 PM (a continuation of below)

Ill gladly continue a scientific debate if ALL my posts are reinstated. Otherwise this site is simply manipulating the discussion and lack any integrity. 


Comment by Eric Worrall April 18, 2014 at 12:40 PM

The reason the CRU were plagued with vexatious requests is they did everything in their power to refuse the requests [redacted]

Frankly I don't feel the same sympathy that you do for the alleged plight of CRU scientists. If you push an argument in public, that the world faces a grave crisis which only personal sacrifice on a grand scale, and vast expenditure, can avert, you should expect a few people to ask to see your evidence.


Comments from Jim Steele - April 2014

The four comments below were all received after the author had this request from Sou on April 18, 2014 at 12:15 AM:

...I've had enough of your pathetic filibustering, obfuscation, whining and snivelling. And I don't imagine I'm the only one. You have no hesitation in vilifying scientists who are much more successful at their profession than you ever were. Until you come up with data to support your statement or admit you were wrong, any further comment from you will be deleted.

And the temperature data you come up with had better be for the whole state of Texas and go to 2013. It can go back as far as you want. The data I showed goes back to 1895 - I challenge you to find data that shows different. Or, as I say, a simple admission that you were wrong in that statement would suffice....

Comment from Jim Steele April 18, 2014 at 2:23 AM

Sou it is clear now that you have no integrity and are bent on denigration of all those who expose your contradictions. You preference for intellectual tyranny as exemplified by deleting my posts illustrates why media manipulators such as yourself why we are experiencing years of living dangerously 

Comment from Jim Steele April 18, 2014 at 1:25 AM

I provide scientific evidence and Sou removes my post.

Comment from Jim Steele April 18, 2014 at 1:24 AM

Catmando you seem to miss the point and not have read all my posts. I already agreed that Hoerling et al mentioned a warming from the 80s to 200 and statistically it correlated with purported CO2 warming. But they added a caveat because for the century they did not find warming.

If you are truly interested in honest debate do you accept their conclusion in which they wrote ""finally regarding the possible impacts of human-induced climate change and its connection with anticipating the 2011 event several specific science challenges for the region of the southern plains remain. In particular, there is a need for a complete and physically based explanation for why there has been a lack of overall warming during the last century over this region;"

Those physically based explanations are what my last post was trying discuss. Stop making this personal and discuss those issues. 

Comment from Jim Steele April 18, 2014 at 1:11 AM

Ahh Sou, you can keep your ad homs attack going. Ill do my best to keep a scientific debate going.

The exceptional rise in Far West TX is at least in part driven by the growth in EL Paso where thermometers measure temperatures at the El Paso TX airport. I have watched the El Paso area grow tremendously since the 60s and it is now a sprawling metropolis of nearly 1 million people. Obviously temperatures can correlate with either the growing population or CO2. How do we separate the likely causes.

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/cgi-bin/broker?id=412797&_PROGRAM=prog.gplot_meanclim_mon_yr2012.sas&_SERVICE=default&param=TMEAN&minyear=1878&maxyear=2012
The smaller trend in Plainview TX with population of about 22,000 shows a different trend in mean temp driven by the minimum, and suggests the unusual Faar West warming trend is driven by the booming populatio in the El Paso areaa 

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/cgi-bin/broker?id=417079&_PROGRAM=prog.gplot_meanclim_mon_yr2012.sas&_SERVICE=default&param=TMEAN&minyear=1889&maxyear=2012
The warm spike in Plainview is due the drought and is unusual given the cooling trend from the 1930s to 2010 which is why NOAAs scientists argue attribution must be decided with great caution. Many data sets are suspect as the homogenization process often eliminates natural change points as demonstrated here [redacted link to denier blog]

The drought is attributed mostly to La Nina which caused a cooling in the eastern Pacific. Droughts cause higher temperatures not because CO2 adds heat but because the lower heat capacity of the surface warms much faster even with no change in added heat. However the drought does make for clearer skies and greater insolation. 

Also studies of temperatures in Arizona and Mexico have shown that lost vegetation from severe overgrazing and other careless practices had caused the soil surface to dry. This drying process increased temperatures by as much as 7°F compared to adjacent lands that had not been so mistreated. Read 20. Balling, R. C., Jr (1998) Impacts of land degradation on historical temperature records from the Sonoran Desert. Climatic Change, 40, 669–681

The documentary would have served science and the public better by enlightening them about the complexities of climate change and all the factors that are involved in creating graphic trends that people will mindlessly hurl at their opposition. But Years of LIving Dangerously chose to exploit human misery and imply it was all due to rising CO2 and only religion prevent ranchers from seeing the truth.


 Comment by Anonymous April 16, 2014 at 12:11 AM

One other link and that will be the last one I post which is a statistical analysis from all the worlds data graphs that are used in the AGW scene and it is the work from Burt Rutan, a guy who has designed numerous aircraft and who's designs hold many records, a.m.o two records circumnavigating the entire world without any fuel stop.

[redacted link to denier blog]

To the lady who runs this blog and who has a back gound in agriculture I would like to say that she should know the alarmist predictions of food security made by the Club of Rome in the sixties never materialized but at the same time she should know the effect of processing 40% of the corn crops from two continents into bio fuel has had a devastating effect on the poor. 

I personally never us the words I believe. I always use the words I think.
So please think, think, think and try to rationalize, move away from the feel good dish and start working with the figures and the physical realities of this world which is a carbon planet with carbon based life.

Just think about that. There is now a law that has declared the Co2 we exhale as a poisonous gas....

This will turn us all into Jews because the people behind the UN Agenda 21 want a world with 500 million inhabitants

So please wake up before this devastating development turns our world into another slaughterhouse.

Good luck with your blog.

Jason Bradstreet


Comment from Anonymous April 15, 2014 at 11:40 PM

Gave a read at this and stop being useful idiots with a suicide mission:

[redacted] and also read Agenda 21 of the United Nations which will place our populations that are left when the finished the great cull on the other side of the fence of the zoo,

It's time to wake up and use the grey stuff between your ears.


Comment from Anonymous April 15, 2014 at 11:33 PM

Nobel Prize Winner Says That The Arctic Will Be Ice Free In Less Than 20 Weeks
Posted on April 15, 2014 by stevengoddard

Yes, you guy's hate Steven Goddard don't you?

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Al Gore says that the 16 foot thick ice in the Beaufort Sea will all melt in the next few weeks.
http://www.examiner.com/article/gore-arctic-ocean-ice-free-as-early-as-2014

Who to believe?: Maybe your own lying eyes: http://home.comcast.net/~ewerme/wuwt/cryo_compare.jpg

And don't forget the massive amounts of ice at the Great Lakes this winter. 

But relax, it's only weather.
What's important now is how our weather will be in the year 2.100 because when we do that the people we rob from their prospects, their jobs and their future statistically will be dead against that time.

And that allows us to take distance from the previous mistake when we made short term claims that didn't materialize. Did you hear that Mr. Gore?

I tell you in all sincerity that there is nothing wrong with our weather. 

Weather extremes are from all times and I should know because I'm from a country that in most of the part is below sea level and has one of the oldest historical records in the world about all the weather catastrophes, the storms and the floods from which we know that the most extreme periods happen during the swits from cold to warm and warm to cold periods. But hey, we adapted, we build dikes and turned this little country into en economic power house, until the Green Madness hit and we joined the freaking EU and the euro.

Now we are kicking our elderly out on the streets because the Government have invested all our money in wind farms and wood pellets,

Apart from the Minoan Climate Optimum, the Roman Climate Optimum (when Hannibal Crossed the Alps with elephants and the Roman City's were build) and finally te Medieval Climate Optimum, when the Vikings sailed accross the oceans, started settlements in Greenland (which by the way became inhabitable and were deserted around 1.400 AC) and sailed as far as New Foundland and North America in open long boats (don't try this today) and when all the big Cathedrals in Europe were build, a period when it was warmer than today, a period that was followed by the devastating times of disease and hunger but also adaption and finally growth and prosperity of the Little Ice Age from 1400 to 1850, we now live in one of the best times of this interglacial we could ever hope for. 

But you guy's, you believers, you alarmists, you destroyers of our civilizarion, you think it is the worst of times.

Well it isn't. 


I enjoy life every day and see the world from the air and it's wonderful. 
I only get pissed off when I see the incredible destruction that that takes place in the Middle East, Africa, destruction and despair inflicted on purpose by the bio fuel mandate in Europe and the US.

This mandate, pushed for by zealots like you, triggered the Arab Spring Revolution because it hiked food prices with devastating consequences for our poor populations who live from a few USD a day. Yes, the Arab Spring Revolution started as a food protest caused by the alarmists. 

The same goes for the destruction of tropical forests to make place for palm oil and sisal farms, the one for biodiesel burned in German power plants and in planes (thanks to a colleague zealot of yours who goes by the name of Richard Branson and who dreams about operating his entire fleet of Jumbo Jets on palm oil. And now, after we have thrown billions and billions in useless wind and solar power in Europe the EU has mandated the use of bio feeds in coal plants, to be operated with 1/3 coal and 2/3 wood.

This wood for now comes from the Swamp Forests in Georgia, USA. So cutting down entire forests to be burned in Europe's coal plants now has become a "Green Job".

You guys should learn how to use a calculator and stop acting on your "feel good" compass. Use your head to think and your belly to process your food. 

Get a life.

Jason Bradstreet


Comment from Anonymous April 13, 2014 at 9:39 AM

Catmando said ...

Like all the accumulated CO2 - sorry, you don't think that has any effect. Silly me.

Cat person , clouds are vastly more powerful players when it comes to determining global temperature than is CO2 . Your ignorance is on display .


Comment from Anonymous April 13, 2014 at 1:09 AM

Dave said ..

So using a model, they managed to get at most a 6.8% influence. That's right, a less than 10% influence on "global mean nucleation rates". Nothing about this effect on temperature, or in a real world situation.

Are you nuts .

Do you really not understand the cumulative effect of that over years . .


Comment from Cartman ( Previously Anonymous ) April 12, 2014 at 12:13 PM

When I go to the Dr. Tim Ball website I see calm reasoned scientific argument along with his supporting evidence .

Yes he says things that I would not say but then look at the situation from his perspective . He is an experienced scientist/academic witnessing a world gone mad with bizarre hysteria over global warming . A phenomenon that is world wide . Is it any wonder he stretching to explain how that could happen and in the process starts speculating on the role of central players like Tom Wigley , the IPCC , etc

The fact that he thinks CO2 has limited effect is based on scientific argument which he explains. He hardly stands alone in the scientific world in the view global warming via back radiation from a trace gas ( CO2 ) is unconvincing .

In short I see calm reasoned argument along with some political speculation by a brave and intelligent man prepared to stand up to mob insanity .

I do not see the ravings of a lunatic and being scientifically wrong ( if he is ) in an extremely complex field with many unknowns does not define you as batshit crazy in my book .


Comment by Eric Worrall April 5, 2014 at 11:42 PM

I see - so believing that the moon landing was faked is not the same as being a delusional conspiracy theorist? Do you believe the moon landing was faked, Sou?


Comment by Eric Worrall April 5, 2014 at 11:40 PM

I contribute to blogs DS - I'm not a professor of psychology, bound by codes of conduct and ethics, which Lewandosky appears, from my reading of the Frontiers retraction statement, to have violated.


Comment from Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy on March 29 at 1:01 pm

First off all we must understand the fact that global warming is only one part of climate change. The major part of climate change is natural variation.

on the occassion of WMO Day 2014 -- WMO press release: The 2013 drought in the Southern Hemisphere is part of natural variation in precipitation [my publications on cycles in precipitation published during 1980 to 1985]. Also the warmer conditions in 2013 in the Southern Hemisphere is associated with the drought condition. The above average temperature condition in India during 2002 and 2009 are associated with drought condition in 2002 and 2009 only. Also, I used cube root of precipitation as a function of global solar radiation and evaporation [Solar Energy (USA) journal of 1987].

Few days back US National Academy of Sciences and British Royal Society released a report wherein they separated 60-year cycle part [I projected this around 2000] from trend. The trend showed an anomoly of around 0.5 degrees Celsius from 1950 to 2010. According to IPCC this is the contribution by human actions and of which around 50% is the share of global warming component of Anthropogenic greenhouse gases. That means, the only around 0.25 degrees Celsius is the increase in temperature from 1950 to 2010. Also, this anomoly is primarily due to overestimation of heat-island affect part and underestimation of cold-island effect in proportion terms, which is supported by the satellite data released and later withdrawn from the internet. So, practically the global warming component is insignificant to influence nature. What we are experiencing -- extremes -- are part of natural rythm in nature. However, this is some times modified by changes in land use and land cover at local and regional scales.

Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy

[Sou: In case you are wondering who this is, William Connolley at Stoat has written about Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy.]


Comment from Anonymous on March 28 at 4:20 PM

I haven't read the article that you refer to but you have smoothed data up to 2004 with a 10 year moving average calculated right up to 2004. It should have stopped at 1999, at not even a quarter of a degree warmer than 60 or 150 years ago.

Are you the right person to criticise Dr. Butina?

[Sou: maybe so, maybe not. I don't think anyone else would bother with his tripe. I don't, however, think anonymous is the right person to criticise HotWhopper, since they admitted they didn't read the article in question and didn't comment on the critique itself.]


Comment from Anonymous on March 14 at 8:42 AM

We increased the world population and mostly in India and China. This lead to increase CO2 from people growing extra rice to feed these people. Shall we ask them to stop growing rice?

[Sou: I think Anonymous probably meant to write CH4, not CO2. The answer in that case would be "No". Instead suggest that growers adopt improved water management techniques and grow different varieties.]


Comment from Anonymous on March 13 at 9:32 PM

Is geo-engineering going on now? what is solar radiation management? Why are you calling people kooks that care about whats going on? Is name calling the best you have? Keep deleting comments to hide the truth..nice..Myself,family and friends never used to see these trails in the sky like we do now..why? these trails spread out and cover the skies...don't contrails dissipate(i guess not)..they seem to spread out and cover the skies now and stay up there for hours..does this effect our climate? Did you see Melbourne's skies today? lines everywhere that spread out to a hazy mist...your telling me that this is normal now? it never used to be...why now?


Comment from contrail hoax on March 13, 2014 at 7:04 PM

Well, that's enough learning for you today then. Tomorrow, It might do you some good to actually read david keiths report on nano geo - engineering, the chief scientists report on geo engineering, then correlate that with the 1000's of soil and rainwater tests, and tell me then they haven't already started already?. Not to mention the 100's if not 1000's of companies that already use this technology today. You also made no attempt to answer my question about anthropogenic aerosols, but maybe that's because you have no idea. Mark West of Metabunk has no credentials, his not a Dr, or a scientist. I'm not talking about "chemtrails" per se I'm talking about rouge island nations and companies spraying aerosols and that if I was a climate scientist delivering a report to the nation and its public I'd have to include this factor in my studies, no?


Comment from Fraudulent Climate / Hausfrau, March 7, 2014 at 3:40 AM

Oh Dear Mon Sou -

So Comment that you disagree with is deemed to be a so called "HotWhopper" and cited by you as "entertainment". Apparently there is no room for contrary views in your rational. This is a pity, because actually it reinforces opinion that you are irrationally biased. You ought to reflect upon the impression that your oppressive censorship has upon readers.


Comment from Fraudulent ClimateMarch 7, 2014 at 3:11 AM

Yet despite all your explanations, what Monckton stated is accurate, in that there has been no warming for the past 17 odd years. Your objection is that he did not take account of the prior years, and as you animation shows, if he had done, then there would have been evident warming over the piece.

But Monckton isn't denying that there was warming, up until about 17 years ago, just that it hasn't warmed since then. Of course any of the last 17 years will be among the most warmest recent years, since we are now at a high plateau. Unless temperatures should actually drop, then this will continue to be the case.

There is however evidence of a falling trend, and especially during the last 12 months or so, and yet the CO2 level measurement continues to rise at a steady rate. If the general theory is that CO2 causes the warming, and all the official models have this parameter, then why does CO2 continue to rise at the same rate, whereas the temperature has stood still ?

This is the quandary, the dilemma for the modellers, and the protagonists of CO2 induced climate change. There must be another main Actor at work here, apart from CO2. If CO2 has such little effect, and if "Man's" contribution is such a tiny percentage of all CO2, and if CO2 is such a rare gas (around .004%), then what could the main Actor be ?

THE SUN !

The Sun, is responsible for driving the climate and the weather of the Planet Earth, as it does for all other Planets within the Heliosphere and as well as insolation of heat and light, there are magnetic effects to be considered. Sadly none of the modellers has considered the Solar effects to any great degree, and most everybody has concentrated on CO2 as the culprit.

There are historical reasons for this, going back to the World Wilderness Conference, and the subsequent 1992 Rio Summit. We must all think again as to the reasons for choosing CO2 as a regulatory mechanism, and principally this : If the Sun is responsible for climate change, then how can a Government blame or tax the The Sun ? Clearly they can't, but if CO2 is made to appear to be the culprit, and "Man" produced CO2, then "Man" can be taxed. This means Me and You !

This means tax on your transport, tax on your heating, tax on your lighting, tax on education, tax on health services, tax on clothes, tax on food, tax on everything that is manufactured or in any way produced using processes which emit any amount of CO2. It isn't Rocket Science. Many have mistaken propaganda for genuine scientific research, and this is what is at the root of the problem for Humanity.

Ad Hominem attacks upon Christopher Monckton, or Michael Mann on the other hand, do NOTHING to advance the sum total of knowledge on these issues, and simplistic analyses, and fatuous crowing at elementary lapses lingui and so on, are not conducive to rational argument, and logical debate.

I don't how many of you read thus far, but I do appreciate your time if having done so. At the linked website to my name, there are many videos featuring Monckton, and others of alternate points of view, and many other esoteric and abstruse videos. I am interested in the wider exposure of these recondite discoveries.

Please do check out some of the videos the website, I don't understand the half of it myself, and don't agree with all that they say, but these views are rarely seen in the Western Mainstream Media, and so somebody has to collate these views. So don't get too upset with me if you are angry at being lied to. I am not the one who is doing the lying. Like the Network News, we show you the evidence, then You Decide !

I Thank you for your attention.

- FC


Comment from Anonymous March 7, 2014 at 12:12 AM

If you look at the Watts Up With That website run by Anthony Watts, you will soon see that its main raison d'etre is to downplay the significance of man-made global warming. Many people have a view on this one way or the other, and so there are plenty of like-minded people to contribute articles and comments. As far as I can see from a quick look, the rationale behind this web-site is "I hate Anthony Watts (but I am in awe of him and can't get through the day without mentioning his name)". Most people have probably never heard of him, and if they have, they will feel neither awe nor hatred of him, and so will quickly wander away. Your blog rating will remain low.


Comment from Anonymous, March 6, 2014 at 9:48 PM

"This comment has been removed by a blog administrator."

I see you are taking your lead from Skeptical Science now, when it all gets too hard just delete any comments that are inconvenient. Hilarious.


Comment from Anonymous, March 4, 9:53 pm

"any honest and objective evaluation of their performance reveals that they are performing their design function well."

Bullshit. The models have performed so badly over the past decade or so that they need to adjusted because,

"coincidence, conspired to dampen warming trends in the real world after about 1992."

and

“CMIP5 model simulations were based on historical estimates of external influences on the climate only to 2000 or 2005”

Yet the IPCC claims with 95% confidence that they can predict what the climate will do by 2100. And you accuse me of "posting incoherent, mangled, dishonest misrepresentations of the science"

You really would believe anything.


Comment from Anonymous, February 9, 2014 at 2:18 am

There has been a 29 per cent increase in the amount of ocean covered with ice compared to this time last year, the equivalent of 533,000 square miles. In a rebound from 2012's record low, an unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia's northern shores, days before the annual re-freeze is even set to begin. The Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific had remained blocked by pack-ice all year, forcing some ships to change their routes. One ship has now managed to pass through, completing its journey on September 27. A leaked report to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) seen by the Mail on Sunday, has led some scientists to claim that the world is heading for a period of cooling that will not end until the middle of this century. If correct, it would contradict computer forecasts of imminent catastrophic warming. The news comes several years after predictions that the arctic would be ice-free by 2013. Despite the original forecasts, major climate research centres now accept that there has been a “pause” in global warming since 1997. The original predictions led to billions being invested in green measures to combat the effects of climate change. The changing predictions have led to the UN's climate change's body holding a crisis meeting, it was reported, and the IPCC is due to report on the situation in October. A pre-summit meeting will be held later this month. But the leaked documents are said to show that the governments who fund the IPCC are demanding 1,500 changes to the Fifth Assessment Report - a three-volume study issued every six or seven years – as they claim its current draft does not properly explain the pause. The extent to which temperatures will rise with carbon dioxide levels and how much of the warming over the past 150 years, a total of 0.8C, is down to human greenhouse gas emissions are key issues in the debate. The IPCC says it is “95 per cent confident” that global warming has been caused by humans - up from 90 per cent in 2007 – according to the draft report. However, US climate expert Professor Judith Curry has questioned how this can be true as that rather than increasing in confidence, “uncertainty is getting bigger” within the academic community. Long-term cycles in ocean temperature, she said, suggest the world may be approaching a period similar to that from 1965 to 1975, when there was a clear cooling trend. At the time some scientists forecast an imminent ice age. Professor Anastasios Tsonis, of the University of Wisconsin, said: "We are already in a cooling trend, which I think will continue for the next 15 years at least. There is no doubt the warming of the 1980s and 1990s has stopped.” The IPCC is said to maintain that their climate change models suggest a pause of 15 years can be expected. They have denied that there are any crisis meetings over the report. Other experts agree that natural cycles cannot explain all of the recorded warming.


Comment from Greig, February 4, 2014 at 12:05 PM

As expected, you cheer on your heroes, and denigrate the climate scientists who disagree with your worldview.

Out of "100 doctors" 97 are saying "it's a huge problem", 2 are saying "we don't really know" and 1 is saying "look - squirrel!"

Wrong. 97 are saying AGW is real, and 3% question whether their is evidence of an anthropogenic signature in observed warming. When it comes to so-called "dangerous" climate change and policy, you will get 100 different answers.


Comment from Greig, Friday 31 January 2014, 9:43 pm

Greig : Meanwhile in the climate scientific community there is considerable debate about climate sensitivity and rate of warming as this is critical to policy, and plenty of room for "real scepticism" of alarmist claims and calls for panic.

BBD: No there isn't. You just made this up. And to prove that you are confablulating, I challenge you to produce some quotes

We were just discussing Rosenthal and Lindley, where they were pointing out ( in an online interview about their peer reviewed paper) that ocean buffering may have an impact of the rate of warming, and Rosenthal's comment that this impacts policy. Which part of that did you miss?

Also, I have pointed you to climate scientist Garth Paltridge's book "The Climate Caper". Have you not read it?

"Specifically that there is - within the scientific mainstream - a position that TCR may be so low that no policy response is necessary. "

Who said anything about "no policy response". Strawman alert, very weak BBD. Try again.

Also note that (as I am wont to say) it is the developing nations who are failing on a policy response. Why is that, BBD?

In this context I also reject your use of the terms "alarmist" and "calls for panic" as dishonest framing.

From the start I have rejected your term "denier" as dishonest framing, but I am not inclined to whinging about it.


Comment from Greig, Friday 31 January 2014, 3:57 pm

It shouldn't surprise me (but it does) how a person could read so much nonsense into my straightforward post. Talk about extremist.

Well Sou, I have always thought precisely the same about your ability to extract alternative meaning from WUWT articles. The fact that you see your post as “straightforward” is illustrative of how easily people are driven by the seduction of simple alarmist memes.

But then that was coming from someone who doesn't believe we can learn anything from past climates.

Bold argumentum ad hominem based on a deliberate misinterpretation of meaning, with a veiled appeal to authority (ie scientists support learning from past climate). A triple logical fallacy in a single sentence, Bravo! Notice how the sentence adds nothing of value to the discussion?

Given teachers might find this thread useful as a clear thinking exercise, I've published Greig's response. For one thing, it's a great example of confirmation bias (among other things).

This whole website is constructed from confirmation bias.


Comment from Anonymous, Friday 31 January, 11:38 am

The point is that LIndzen did not say that the fact that climate has been changing is proof that it isn't our fault. He points to other reasons to suggest that it isn't our fault. His statement is not an example of what SKS is trying to state is their climate myth number one. Lindzen may very well be wrong, or he might be right. But he is not making the argument that past climate change proves that current climate change is not man's fault.

Sou, you are just wrong in that assertion. Delete my comments if you want to, but that just proves how anti-science you really are. You do it by not quoting Lindzen's complete sentence:

"Supporting the notion that man has not been the cause of this unexceptional change in temperature is the fact that there is a distinct signature to greenhouse warming: surface warming should be accompanied by warming in the tropics around an altitude of about 9km that is about 2.5 times greater than at the surface."

He is not saying that past climate change proves man is not at fault. He is saying that evidence that man is not at fault is the lack of the GHG signature. Again, maybe he is wrong, and maybe he is right. But he is CERTAINLY not making the argument of which you accuse him

.

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