climate tripe

Well, with a headline like that you know I'm talking about denialist nonsense, and yes its WUWT again. What they are foaming at the mouth about is Jarvis Cocker: the iceman cometh but not the article, rather a factoid at the end: Of the Arctic sea ice, 75% has been lost over the past 30 years. Last year saw sea-ice levels plummet to the second-lowest since records began. It is estimated that the North Pole could be ice-free in the summer within the next 10-20 years Understanding this fairly simple piece of text proves to be beyond the Minds over there. 75% is a lot, and ice area or extent…
With great excitement, WUWT has discovered some old news: The CIA documents the global cooling research of the 1970’s. But, being WUWT, it gets it wrong. Because the CIA didn't document the research of the time. The document they are citing isn't competent. Nor is any of this new; see A study of climatological research as it pertains to intelligence problems for the details. I'll repeat my conclusion from there: Conclusion: this report says more about the CIA, and the dangers of a report being hijacked by a small group of people when not put out for proper review, than it does about the state…
From BigCityLib comes this gem from Bast: Joe Bast's Response to Scholars Feeling Pressure After Attacks on Heartland. Since this is denial-world, everything is appropriately topsy-turvey. The "attacks" he is talking about are not plural but singular, and is the disastrous billboard campaign, which even Heartland has admitted was a mistake - though not very sincerely, and Bast clearly doesn't agree; he is still defending them here. Bast is writing to his pet scholars, and begins For 28 years, The Heartland Institute has tried to stay "above the fray," producing high-quality research and…
From a comment at Forbes, found by R. I found it hard to believe that anyone would say such, but indeed its true: Mr. Zwick you believe your lies and we will believe ours. The sun controls the climate not man. Our earth was more polluted back when there were very few humans roaming the earth that it is today. And that is fact. When the day comes that everyone of your believers gives up their cars, their mansions, shuts off all electricity and ceases all the dirty destructive habits you claim humans impart on the earth is the day many of us might take you seriously. Really. How can we believe…
You can read about his sadness at great length in Scientist's rebuttal of Michael Mann's "denier"and other unsavory labels in his book (note how CL, like "Dr" Roy Spencer, wears his PhD on his sleeve). CL is sad because Mann has been cwuel to him, or about him, in his book. Though this seems to have been more exciting for CL than Mann, since he doesn't make it in until p 187, and its just about CL's rubbish temperature reconstruction (see-also Tamino on the "vindication" version). But the centerpiece of CL's recent post, which conclusively demonstrates how Mann is wrong and... well, you get…
Retraction Watch have an article up about the Wegman plagiarism stuff (also covered by Eli). GMU aren't making the full report public, though, doubtless to protect the guilty (which I think largely means the shoddiness of the report). There is an oddity in what they have released: As sanction, Professor Wegman has been asked to apologize to the journal involved, while retracting the article; and I am placing an official letter of reprimand in his file How can Wegman retract the article? It was retracted by the editors some time ago, on the grounds of plagiarism. Don't forget, though, that…
Habibullo I. Abdussamatov of the Pulkovo Observatory of the RAS thinks solar irradiance is in for a "bicentennial decrease". And has been kind enough to predict it. Unfortunately it won't be obvious until about, what, 2016, that he is hopelessly wrong. But it beats most of the nutters who just wurble and nitpick and never predict anything. Refs * Bicentennial Decrease of the Total Solar Irradiance Leads to Unbalanced Thermal Budget of the Earth and the Little Ice Age, Habibullo I. Abdussamatov, Applied Physics Research, Vol. 4, No. 1; February 2012 .
Dunno yet. I'll expand on this if I do. For the moment, CRU themselves are not excited. Update: it looks very much like this is nothing new, just those mails deemed to dull to release last time. So, as Deltoid points out, and claims to being doing this for "information transparency" is a clear lie. Pic ripped off from Bart who presumably ripped it off someone else... More update: I forgot that the most exciting thing is to look for my name - doh. And I find: On Thu, 4 Jan 2007, Caspar Ammann wrote: > check figure A9, there the 17th century is cold, and this is probably > the curve…
And apsmith's Mathematical analysis of Roy Spencer's climate model has the story. Poor Roy. He has backed himself so far into a corner that he no longer has anyone competent to discuss his ideas with, with the result that he publishes (in a book, because no-one would publish it in a journal) utter twaddle. It is really very difficult to do science all by yourself, and Spencer is certainly failing. [2015 update: I often think of this post, and this concept, when reading the stuff from the Dork Side. Its not just Spencer; Curry is in the same boat and then so is JoNova with her Force X stuff;…
The story so far: "Energy and Environment" threatens to sue RealClimate, and RC tells them they are a bunch of bozos. But now the Grauniad picks up the story. Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen attempts to fight back by asserting that Every paper that is submitted to the journal is vetted by a number of experts but noticeably does *not* use the magic phrase "peer review". So it looks like E+E are going to concede by default, which leaves their reputation in tatters: as Gavin says: You would need a new editor, new board of advisors, and a scrupulous adherence to real peer review, perhaps ... using…
Via Baron von Monckhofen an interesting video, though I think it has been doing the rounds for a while now. [Update: While I'm on the silly people, there is a nice takedown of the Jonny Ball nonsense by Deltoid. Which features the familiar elements: ridiculous claims which fall apart under the flimsiest examination, but which are nonetheless repeated by the std.septics. And for something more sensible: Bart goes where I tend not to and discusses biodiversity. Oh dear. But my blog-reading has now got as far as Tamino, who provides a wonderful example of US political stupidity (see-also the…
The Indian government seems to be making a minor speciality in boosting voodoo science, presumably caring less for their reputations and more for fighting off any restrictions on coal burning. Or it may be all a matter of tedious internal politics and corruption, who knows. This springs again from an article in the Hindu which is kind enough to destroy its credibility right up front by beginning A key belief of climate science theology.... Before I return to the obvious lies - "Cosmic ray impact ignored" - I'll do the throw-away stuff at the end, viz: In November 2009, Mr. Ramesh had released…
In stark contrast to the hard liberalism of TW is one of the worst pieces of woolly-thinking soft liberalism (well, actually the Green Party, of which I'm a member and supporter, if you care. It is from their mag). And yet somehow it seems all too typical. Life in the Peruvian Andes is hard... blah blah... Recently, these communities have experienced the worst winter to hit Peru in nearly 50 years with temperatures plummeting to a deadly minus 24ºC Oh dear. Well, clearly they could do with a bit of warming, then, no? Or are we really obliged to pretend that all climate change is necessarily…
On of the key parts of science is prediction. Or so we're told. So it is fun to watch various people rip Steve Goddard's predictions of sea ice to shreds. WUWT is the one boosting Goddard's worthless noise. * RMG seems to be the most complete, prompted I think by: * Tamino and * Neven. There's a video, too, if you're in the habit of watching moving pictures. Update An update, but worth its own header. While we're on forecasting, I am reminded of something altogether more real: the Keenlyside fiasco. RC has a recent post pointing out how wrong K et al. were (but in a caring, consensual sort of…
Well yes, as is slowly becoming obvious. Deltoid reports USA today (or you can also look at the full Mashey). In the curious world of academe (which I presume Wegman aspires to) plagiarism is a no-no far more serious that just getting the wrong answer; and has the virtue of being fairly easy to spot. But whilst plagiarism is bad (possibly even fatal) for your academic reputation, it doesn't directly say anything about science, or the validity of conclusions. It is evidence that the author has been sloppy and - in this case - bolsters the argument that the author didn't really understand what…
Wise words from David Appell. But this is the blogosphere, so that isn't going to happen. And Hal Lewis would be disappointed if we did; after all, he is trying to make a splash with his nonsense. As DA puts it So someone named Hal Lewis has resigned from the American Physical Society in a snit over their position on climate change, and this is supposedly "fracturing" the scientific community. Who is Hal Lewis? I've been studying physics for 30 years, and I've never heard of him. In the unlikely event that you want to read what HL has to say, the usual idiots have it all laid out. And so…
From RP Jr and Nurture. Well, not quite direct lies, more in the nature of deliberately-misleading by omission. But I have a work colleague who habitually accuses me of spreading climate lies (hello Hugo!) so it only seems fair to use the phrase myself. [From the Nature article,] It isn't quite possible to tell who is at fault: the quote from the review in Nurture is: In The Climate Fix, Pielke argues... Fright sells, he points out, citing the late Stephen Schneider, the environmental scientist and political adviser who once wrote that, to rouse public support, "we have to offer up scary…
So: "Scientific Perspectives on the Greenhouse Problem" by Jastrow, Nierenberg and Seitz, published by the Marshall Institute, has turned up. Now I have to read it. I got mine from abebooks, if you're interested. One thing to note is that it was published in 1990, and so has access to IPCC '90: they explicity acknowledge this in the preface, and ref it in chapter 1. I'm expecting that to be relevant, excuse-wise. Preface: largely neutral; small "skeptic" slant due to over-emphasis of uncertainties. Chapter 1 - reliability of the predictions All is going fairly sanely until Bang! Suddenly,…
Right, the previous thread has spilled off a discussion of Jastrow, Nierenberg and Seitz and their representation of a Hansen et al. figure. I have the feeling that the JNS paper may have appeared in multiple places, but the one I have access to is: There is a lot wrong with that abstract (culminating in the once-traditional but now discarded over-reliance on the S+C satllite record) but the bit that is of immeadiate interest (because it figures in the previous discussion) is their take on figure 5 from Hansen et al. Which is: And which they "reproduce" as: The "2" after "Hansen et al." is…
[Originally posted 27/7; updated a few times and now again (see end) so re-publishing with current date to push it to the top] It looks like it is finally time to announce Judith Curry's departure for the dark side, prompted by her comments at RC. I still think she has good intentions, at heart, but has been "captured by the septic narrative" or somesuch. In some respects this intervention is fairly typical of her previous stuff - which is to say, she mouths off without having done her homework, then tries to back off. But the direction she mouths off in is very revealing. So, where to start…