Tamino calls out Anthony Watts

OMG re Tim's 2004 post, Louis Hissink seems to argue it is not possible to measure air temperature because unlike water, a volume of air is not a physical object.

Aah, good times. Makes you feel all nostalgic.

OMG who would have thought Louis got worse and worse as his posts continued.

But McKitrick's argument that you can't measure the average temperature of earth' surface is very Post-Normal-Science. And an ingenious method for ending global warming.

And the chances of Watts admitting being wrong are.........?

I mean, seriously, the sky will fall on my head before that happens, no matter how widely it is reported.

As for the link to Louis Hissink: far out.
"But where is the data?"

"Here"

"No, I want you to show me the data"

"Yes, here it is again, in the same spot as before"

"But you haven't provided the data"

"I just did. Here it is again"

"No, I mean the way you processed it"

"Yes, that was with the data I gave you"

"You're just trying to conceal it aren't you?"

It was about that stage I was surprised Tim didn't just swallow a tiny suicide capsule. These people are well versed in how to drive the sanity out of literally anyone.

It's good to see Watts being called what he is, namely a scoundrel. "A liar and a scoundrel" would be better, but still.

3 Mike,

Which causes the sensation shown [here](http://plognark.com/?q=node/1129). :)

I hope that [Paul UK](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/andrew_bolt_takes_back_nice_wo…) sees this example of Louis Hissink's bizarre approach to statistics and basic science. He'll be even more amazed than he was previously!

Thanks for the reminder Tim: I laughed until I cried.

And kudos to Tamino, for both his merciless deconstruction of Watts' nonsense, and for his straight-shooting calling for Watts to retract.

Tamino's cherry-on-top is his coining of the term "Wattergate". It is of course obvious, but nevertheless how delicious is it, and what a dog for Watts' heels?!

It is right and proper that Tamino brought it into the station drop-out arena. Marketers and spin doctors the world over will be on their knees giving reverence even as I type...

I wonder how soon it will be before Watts starts selling used cars?

Watts will ignore her until she goes away (he hopes), and it will all be forgotten by his adoring fans.

Deniers like Watts have (to use an old Dublin saying)" a neck as hard as a jockey's bollocks."

In the 2004 post you cite a paper by Hansen et al: "If you look at Hansen et al's paper that describes how the GISS graph was constructed,..." The word "paper" is a hot link that has gone bad. I believe this is the paper in question:

Hansen, J., R. Ruedy, J. Glascoe, and Mki. Sato, 1999: GISS analysis of surface temperature change. J. Geophys. Res., 104, 30997-31022.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi?id=ha03200f

My post from way back in 2004 on station dropout may be of interest.

Just more evidence for my theory of a six year bullshit cycle.

@3 Mike....I thought you were just spoofing till I followed Tim's 2004 link and read the comments(!). I'm gob-smacked, as my grandad used to say.

Look, over there! A spelling mistake in the IPCC report!

> If you have any honor at all, you'll set the record straight.

[tumble weed, crickets chirping]

~~~

toby:

> Deniers like Watts have (to use an old Dublin saying)" a neck as hard as a jockey's bollocks."

Ha! Very good. I'm stealing that. See if I don't.

>I hope that Paul UK sees this example of Louis Hissink's bizarre approach to statistics and basic science. He'll be even more amazed than he was previously!

Thanks for the heads up.
I was particularly amused by Tim continually pointing to a link of downloadable data and Hissink refusing to acknowledge it.

I have had the same issue in one of two discussions myself.
I think it is a tactic used to debate rather than discuss the science. You can end up going round and round in circles.

Your point about average temperature is incorrect. If you mix exactly 1 kg of water at 20C with 1 kg of water at 30 C, you won't get 2 kg at exactly 25 C, because the heat capacity of water is temperature dependent. Around ambient temperatures the variation in water's heat capacity happens to be small, and so you'll be pretty close to 25 C; but that's an accident, not a result of any principle.

Of course you can have an average temperature. You can have an infinite number of different average temperatures. You can take an average any way you wish; you could base it on not the mass of the water, but the surface area of the water, or the number of containers of water, irrespective of mass.

The question is, does the 'average temperature' of the earth's surface have any thermodynamic significance, or significance as a metric. My answers would be 'not much', and 'yes', respectively. The average surface temperature of the earth, weighted by area, does tell us something about the earth as a whole.

Here endeth the homily.

Watts will never own up to his flaws - he never has. He'll keep with his cowardly, immature and immoral campaign to smear, slur and defame scientists and manufacturing doubt about the science.

Watts is about the most loathsome denialist out there - and that's saying something.

The stupid troll:

"Your point about average temperature is incorrect. If you mix exactly 1 kg of water at 20C with 1 kg of water at 30 C, you won't get 2 kg at exactly 25 C, because the heat capacity of water is temperature dependent. Around ambient temperatures the variation in water's heat capacity happens to be small, and so you'll be pretty close to 25 C; but that's an accident, not a result of any principle."

Yes, so any model that doesn't EXACTLY MATCH reality is to be discarded entirely.

Having thus disposed of all of science, the lying troll then cleverly shields his head from the mind control laser by inserting it in his ass.

Maybe Monbiot or someone else at the Guardian or another major newspaper in the USA or UK or Oz will print Tamino's letter or make a similar request of Watts as Tamino has.

Time to start calling the deniers on their perpetual lies and deception in a mainstream public forum (no offense meant to Tim) which reaches millions of people.

Anyhow, kudos to Tamino and Tim Lambert for doggedly exposing the endless lies put forth by those in denial about AGW.

And here we have an example of none other than Lindzen coaching Watts on how to cherry pick data to hide the warming trend.

The other day DeepClimate posted a story about Lindzen's role in the " skeptics' " questions put forward to Phil Jones by the BBC. DC, quotes an email that Lindzen sent to Anthony Watts in March 2008 (DC provides a link) in which he says:

"Look at the attached. There has been no warming since 1997 and no
statistically significant warming since 1995. Why bother with the
arguments about an El Nino anomaly in 1998? (Incidentally, the red
fuzz represents the error âbarsâ.)

Best wishes,

Dick

==================================================
Richard S. Lindzen
Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences
MIT Cambridge, MA 02139 USA"

The DC story is at: http://deepclimate.org/2010/03/02/round-and-round-we-go-with-lindzen-mo…

Wow....

This is what I, MapleLeaf posted at DC:

"What I neglected to mention the other day, and this is perhaps what really needs to be emphasized, is that Lindzen is not operating in good faith. He has divorced himself with the science and that email to A. Watts is scary, b/c that is not how a reputable scientists in the search for truth thinks. This is LindzenGate. He is trying to hide the incline while at the same time his ilk are [falsely] accusing the CRU of fudging the data. Here Lindzen is explaining to Watts how to fudge the data [edit, OK, fudge is probably too strong a word] to avoid getting statistically significant warming. As andrew pointed out above, they can apply this tactic ad infinitum and continue to deceive the masses."

Can you imagine the uproar from the denier camp had Hansen, for example, sent such an email?

elspi:

I'm sorry for upsetting you by posting a lot of scientific stuff you didn't understand.

Maybe you could sing a song to calm yourself down?

elspi, Gerard Harbison was not trolling, but educating. It is nothing more than what GISS has on their website. The elusive absolute surface air temperature: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/abs_temp.html

Another item Mr Watts should be called out on is his running of a statement made by "sceptics" the Stockholm Institute who claim that Phil Jones lied to Parliament about restrictions on Swedish data, posted at articles at both WUWT and CA.

However,...

http://data.smhi.se/met/climate/time_series/html/essential20.html

Dataserier 1961-2008

3.2 The Licensee owns no right to use the data or products provided under this agreement for commercial purposes and not for development or production of meteorological, hydrological and oceanographic value added-value services. The licensee does not own nor authorized to redistribute, sell, assign or otherwise transfer data products or documentation without further processing to third parties unless the parties have received written permission from SMHI.

HT to Rattus Norvegicus, over at Policy Lass.

My post from way back in 2004 on station dropout maybe of interest

Maybe of interest? No Tim, it's a bloody classic!

Obviously 'Louie the fly' still hasn't learned anything.

@5. Funny link, TrueSceptic. I think I might even buy the t-shirt!

I mean, even I can click on a link someone provides me and read what is actually there. Denialists appear to have a unique selective deafness/blindness. Speaking of psychology, have you ever noticed how they attempt to project back onto others all the stuff they've been caught doing?

One accused me of "cherry picking data" the other week because I said he should look at a 20 year temp trend instead of the 5 year trend he showed me. I mean, how do you respond to that while resisting the temptation to call him a complete moron?

Fascinating and amusing stuff. I want to do brain scans on denialists to see what region of their brain is active when they do this, and how it is different from other people.

17 MapleLeaf,

What you said!

23 Mike,

Fascinating and amusing stuff. I want to do brain scans on denialists to see what region of their brain is active when they do this, and how it is different from other people.

The temptation to say the obvious is almost overwhelming. ;)

BTW I've adopted 'The Stupid" as my avatar where I can.

14 Gerard,

Please give us your figure, so we can see if the difference from "exactly" 25°C is relevant to the discussion.

Not that this is the point of the thread, but we'll come to that later.

26
The error is around a thousandth of a percent. Should go without saying that this error is negligible compared to others when averaging surface temperatures.

Mike, you call him a complete moron

@ J Bowers | March 6, 2010 6:11 PM
A correction - the press release posted by Watts was from the [Stockholm Initiative](http://www.stockholminitiative.com/eng/petition/), not the Stockhold Institute.

The Stockholm Initiative is a private lobby group that is urging people to NOT take action to mitigate climate change. Based on the press release disseminated on the websites of both Watts and McIntyre, one of their strategies is to spread lies about climate scientists.

Obviously Watts and McIntyre have also decided to be more blatant that their own strategies include promoting falsehoods, given both have posted the flagrant lie. Even though they also post the evidence that it is a lie, it's still obviously misleading lots of people, going by the comments. I'm sure that's their intention - otherwise why post in the first place and why put the false header?

@Sou

Thanks for the correction. It was late here. :/ I also posted it at CA, but there's a certain lack of willingness to accept its... umm... relevance?

@J Bowers
It looks to me that Watts and McIntyre are solidifying their stance as more strongly anti-humanity and anti-science every day. They are digging themselves into a such a deep hole they'll not be able to get out of it.

McIntyre's two submissions to the UK Hearings were very amateurish. His linking up with Watts in this latest lie, puts him even more firmly on the side of the amateurs who'll go to any lengths to try to discredit scientists. It won't be too long before no self-respecting person visits their sites and all they are left with are the loonies.

I suspect that the recent and coming investigations are making them desperate, because they know the investigations will illustrate the strength of the science and highlight the urgency of addressing climate change.

To repeat myself again: this domain name is registered under Watts's name.

I'm merely asking questions. :-)

I have it on good authority that Anthony is not well, but will come back fighting fit very soon.

32 bi -- IJI,

The post and comments at this link may be of interest: http://lightbucket.wordpress.com/2009/08/09/more-on-anthony-watts/

J Bowers: Tee-hee. :)

it is completely unbelievable, that climate audit reposted that horrible watts article.

complete loss of even pretending to do any sort of analysis.

27 Wyman,

Thanks. I thought it might be of that order. So what was Gerard's point, other than a ridiculous and irrelevant nit-pick?

33 el gordo
Does he have a note signed by his mother?

Yes, I've noticed that McIntyre has gone a bit strange over the past couple of months. Before this, he was at least trying to analyse stuff but he's now become much more concerned with trivia. His cover has always been that he is only trying to audit science and on several occasions he has gone on record as arguing that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere might well have significant consequences (these views are usually ignored by the posters at CA). However, his failure to audit clearly bonkers stuff (Chilingar, Monckton, even Soon and Balliunas back in 2003) is telling.

39 san quintin,

McFraudit has never "audited" bonkers denidiot stuff. For some reason he sees that as someone else's job. Some sceptic, some auditor, huh?

40 TrueSceptic
Yes, that's my point. If he were really concerned with auditing then he could spend his whole life rubbishing the nonsense put out by the sceptics. That he doesn't do so is significant.

One thing that I find interesting about the station drop-out issue is that it's really a station drop-in issue. The number of stations was initially even smaller than now until someone did the legwork to find and add in a bunch more in the early 90s.

Who was it? It pretty obviously couldn't have been any members of the Team or their associates. That data is from colder areas and doesn't fit their agenda. So it's impossible for them to have even wanted to get more data and they probably fought to keep it out. Do we have whistle-blown emails from that long ago? There must be some record of them trying to use their ego-driven bullying to keep out the data that shows the world what frauds they are.

Remember: it's not station drop-out; it's station drop-in. But who's behind it? And will we see it happen again? And will the MSM ever report on the stunning victory for the sceptics that the station drop-in event of the early 90s was? I doubt it.

"Just more evidence for my theory of a six year bullshit cycle."

Not to sound like a denialist, but does this fit the evidence, is this global, and is this trend borne out through history? :P

pough (42) said,

"It pretty obviously couldn't have been any members of the Team or their associates. That data is from colder areas and doesn't fit their agenda."

You do know that dropping stations from colder areas would most likely decrease *not* increase temperature anomalies, right? The last thing someone who wanted to make it look like it was warming more than it has been would want to do is drop high latitude, cold stations. The ones to drop are the ones from the tropics. Remember, it's temp anomalies that are the issue.

Psst. Satire. I'm trying to point out that the major addition of extra data sets from colder regions not only proves their understanding of the situation wrong, it also flies in the face of denialist assumptions of the motives and methods of the scientists they constantly attempt to demean.

Gotcha, my bad. :)

James H

Does Anthony have a note signed by his mother? Nah, Charles the moderator.

And will we see it happen again?

I thought I saw a quote to the effect that it would, but just like last time it would be a batched manual data entry operation of many years of data in one hit - or something along those lines.

@34: I note with interest that as well as Watts' background, that article also highlights Spencer's creationist convictions, something I wasn't aware of before.

It seems that crank magnetism runs deep in the denialist camp, even amongst its supposedly more qualified proponents. Someone colour me completely unsurprised.

>*Does Anthony have a note signed by his mother? Nah, Charles the moderator.*

I remember as a child feeling like wagging school if I hadn't done my homework when some called a test.

Keep the brave face Charles, I'm sure Anthony will come through with his homework.

49 JamesA,

John Christy is also strongly religious but to his credit it appears not to influence his scientific work, in contrast to that of Roy Spencer.

Of course, when you look at ASS (anti-science syndrome) politicians, they are often wingnut creationists, Inhofe being the obvious example.

RomanM, Steve Mosher, and to some extent Lucia, are being very vocal on the [spherical cow thread](http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/the-pure-anomaly-method-aka-a-sphe…) at the blackboard, about how 'Tamino is wrong' with respected to a methodological refinement, but none of them are prepared to say that Watts should retract. Lucia at least has the grace to admit that NOAA did not "commit fraud", but the first two simply pick at the speck in Tamino's eye and ignore the log in Watts'.

Oh, and they seem to be relishing the opportunity to put their own twistings on the matter with Phil Jones. Lucia especially has a quaint little shrink session at comment #36782. I think that Lucia missed her calling. I think that she actually wanted to be a psychiatrist. I think that she is very good at attributing motivations to other people...

All in all it's a curious example of subtle (and not-so-subtle) cognitive dissonance, and I feel carrot eater's and Neven's frustration...

Who is throwing whom under the bus?

Anthony Watts,
> Most of the station dropout issue covered in that report is based on the hard work of E. M. Smith, aka âchiefioâ, who has been aggressively working through the data bias issues that develop when thermometers have been dropped from the Global Historical Climate Network. ___My contribution to the study of the dropout issue was essentially zero___, as I focused on contributing what Iâve been studying for the past three years, the USHCN. USHCN has had a few station dropout issues, mostly due to closure, but nothing compared to the magnitude of what has happened in the GHCN.

E. M. Smith,
> In this case, the first thing assumed wrong is that I have asserted that the anomaly trends for the cold stations are different from the warm stations. I have never asserted such a thing.

Anthony Watts said:
"My contribution to the study of the dropout issue was essentially zero"

That sums up his contribution to climate science in general as well. His contributions to amateur photography on the other hand...

:)

In this case, the first thing assumed wrong is that I have asserted that the anomaly trends for the cold stations are different from the warm stations. I have never asserted such a thing.

The funny thing is, I think he might be correct. Didn't he present the issue as though he had no clue what temperature anomalies were, and that the colder stations affected the trend because of their absolute temperatures? Essentially, what he said initially wasn't so much wrong as stupid (and wrong).

From [Spencer's](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/tamino_calls_out_anthony_watts…) evolution rant:

>All naturalistic cosmological theories of origins must invent physics that have never been observed by science -- because the "Big Bang" can't be explained based upon current physics. A naturalistic origin of the universe violates either the First or Second Laws of thermodynamics -- or both. So, is this science? Or faith?

All I can say is "Wow!"

All in all it's a curious example of subtle (and not-so-subtle) cognitive dissonance, and I feel carrot eater's and Neven's frustration...

I'm not so frustrated in this particular case. People like Lucia and Mosher (and perhaps RomanM, I'm not sure) like to position themselves as lukewarmers, as neutral observers in a way, but somehow they can't bring themselves to say something along the lines of 'Watts, or Anthony as they call him, should retract'. They just can't. So here you have these neutral observers basically covering what looks to be their denialist buddy. Because Watts is a denialist, there is no doubt in my mind that he is.

It's very, very strange. They reframe the question, they keep reverting to E.M. Smith (whereas it was Watts making the allegations together with d'Aleo), they keep insisting that apologies or retractions aren't as interesting as the technical discussion, as if Watts' actions have no consequences (must be because Watts is on the good side, right?). Anyway, to quote Mosher: their wiggling makes me grin.

I don't know what I find harder to swallow: denialists plain and simple or denialists who pose as lukewarmers. To be fair, I don't think they are even aware of it.

Watts is funny. Now he's saying "oh well, it wan't me who did that work anyway". Yet he screamed allegations of a warming bias from his soapbox as loud as his little lungs could manage.

Same as the temperature anomaly understanding - which turned out to be wrong.

Same as the allegations from the NZCSC - which turned out to be wrong.

Gotta hand it to Anthony though. He is never discouraged by being consistently wrong or providing wrong information. He just keeps going like the Energizer bunny.

Neven:

It seems to me that Wattergate could be a defining point for the skeptic/denier debate. If it doesn't get swept under the rug, it will be very obvious who is interested in the truth and who just wants to poison and confuse the debate.

Gotta hand it to Anthony though. He is never discouraged by being consistently wrong or providing wrong information. He just keeps going like the Energizer bunny.

You are neglecting to account for the fact that, like a tobacco company, Anthony Watts' business model works best when he is wrong all the time. His # of acolytes, readers, corporate sponsors, speaking engagements and revenue stream increases the more he is proven wrong.

You are neglecting to account for the fact that, like a tobacco company, Anthony Watts' business model works best when he is wrong all the time. His # of acolytes, readers, corporate sponsors, speaking engagements and revenue stream increases the more he is proven wrong.

Ah, I was wondering about his followers sticking around after being repeatedly punked, mentally thinking of Lucy snatching the football away from Charlie Brown every time...but now I see it. He's a conservative (new) media pundit! They get promoted for being wrong, and the more wrong they are the more they get promoted and the more people adhere to their ... brave certainty in the face of all evidence.

Lotharsson,

Yup.

It's kool, when you have Exxon and the Cato Institute financially backing you, to be the lone David fighting the Collective, Nameless Goliath of Oppressive Scientitude. Anthony Watts is glad to play this role on stage so long as people are willing to pay admission to come into the tent and watch the show. And the more the Oppressive Dark Lords of Scientitude prove him wrong, the more he looks to his acolytes like a noble, defiant warrior and martyr. It's a great scam. Ask Richard C. Hoagland.

It seems to me that Wattergate could be a defining point for the skeptic/denier debate. If it doesn't get swept under the rug, it will be very obvious who is interested in the truth and who just wants to poison and confuse the debate.

Yes, that's what is making this so interesting. The result will probably be that the Chiefio is wrong and poor, naive Anthony was misled by that. Either way, Watts has to retract/apologize. If he doesn't, the smarter denialists/lukewarmers will have to rethink their allegiances. 'Climategate' is making everybody accountable, and Watts could prove to be a liability to their cause (ie = delay, delay, delay).

Elsewhere I suggested WTFgate ;-) but I don't think it's going to catch on.

Alot of the comments here seem to reflect a macho one upsmanship that's unhealty.Why not put the arguments out there and let the Scientific Method take over?

monroe - I would be interested to read how you think the scientific method works, especially with regards to blogs and their comments.

Elsewhere I suggested WTFgate ;-) but I don't think it's going to catch on.

You may apply that to his entire blog, if you like :)

Why not put the arguments out there and let the Scientific Method take over?

Tamino's writing his work up for publication as we speak, little boy.

Where was Watts and D'Aleo reviewed and published again? I can't seem to remember, Monroe.

Why not put the arguments out there and let the Scientific Method take over?

Exactly. What they should really do is have people write up what they think and why they think it in some kind of essay format. These could then be checked over by others who work in the same or similar field, and the ones which pass inspection can be collected into a larger document that is published periodically. After that, there can be response documents to either support or refute the work.

How come nobody has thought of this before? Scientists are all idiots. Everyone needs to start listening to monroe right now. That's where the smart ideas are coming from.

Stunning! Why didn't we think of this before? Wait, wait - ideas are rushing in: Institutions like NASA, to pull a name out of a hat, should then publish their data online, along with their methods (even their code!) and let people look it over. How's that, eh?

"Institutions like NASA, to pull a name out of a hat, should then publish their data online, along with their methods (even their code!) and let people look it over." 'Cuz we know that then the critics will all sit up and say, "Oh, you were right and we were wrong. Good job; keep up the good work, fellas." Yep.

10 JasonW,

And until NASA do that, the moon landings and all the other spacey stuff are a hoax, right?

In fact, *everything* we "know" is just propaganda unless we see the raw data and all the code used to process that data. ;)

72 me,

70, not 10, duh.

I do believe that #70 was meant as satire, since NASA has published methods and code (the main repository of data, though, is at GHCN :)

74 dhogaza,

Quite (how could it not be?). :-)

#71, all NASA's data is publicly available. I expect if you actually looked at it your response would be "Oh, you were right and we were wrong. Good job; keep up the good work, fellas."

Quite (how could it not be?). :-)

I sorta thought you were in on the big secret, but wasn't sure :)

Actually, a couple of decades ago it wasn't, but back then no one cared, and no one thought anyone would care. Now people do, it's made public, and we still get the big "wah wah wah" from the denialsphere!