The good news: there’s new and exciting opportunities opening themselves to us.The bad news; some people are hilariously unquestioning.
It has been an even more entertaining than usual couple of days in the alarmosphere. I’d been traveling the last week, doing TV station work and station surveys. While on the road I discovered through an email that I was the subject of a YouTube Video called “Climate Crock of the Week”.
The video was about my surfacestations.org project and was titled “What’s up with Watts?”. It was sad and funny at the same time, and as is typically the case with our old friends it was directed at me personally, far more than it tried substance. Equally typically, and sadly, what substance it tried turned out to be wrong. I continued on my travels, my friend Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. posted an opinion on it last week to address some of the issues.
Little did I know bizarro land awaited upon my return home.
Sitting down Saturday night, to watch the video again, detecting through its exquisite subtleties and nuance, I couldn’t help but laugh, because once again I noticed that everything reported in it was just wrong.
In fact, it probably was the worst job of fact-finding I had ever seen, which as WUWT readers know, is a bold assessment. I’ve been involved in broadcast TV news for 25 years, and have seen some really bad work from greenhorns fresh out of reporters school. This video reminded me of those. It was as if whoever put it together had never researched it, but just strung together a bunch of graphics, video, photos, and a monotone voice-over track with ad hominems liberally sprinkled for seasoning. I figured it was probably just an overzealous college student out to save the world and this was some college project. It had that air of radical burningman quality about it.
Curiosity piqued, I inquired into just who is this climate Solon? To my surprise, he turned out to be an “independent film producer” working out of his house in Midland, MI under the name “Greenman Studio”, one Peter Sinclair, a proud graduate of Al Gore’s Climate Camp. I still figured him to be a kid and imagined his mom was yelling down into the basement “Peter that’s too loud, turn it down!”.
I also wondered if it was the same “Green Man” that had once prompted surfacestations volunteer Gary Boden to create this nifty patch:
This came about because my now defunct local “Alternate Weekly” had a ghost writer named “green man” who penned an unintentionally (I think) hilarious editorial about me and the www.surfacestations.org project back in 2007 in which he wrote the famous line:
“The Reverend Anthony WTF Watts and his screeching mercury monkeys…”
…in response to our daring to survey the weather stations nationwide. The “mercury” is reference to thermometers.
What was funny is that in my original story, one of my commenters posted a silly comment about well, “green stuff” and the editor of the local “Alternate Weekly” went ballistic and demanded I remove it and gave me a stern lecture on libel. I was happy to comply not out of legal obligation but courtesy and deleted the comment.
Is this Green Man the same guy? Inquiring minds want to know.
OK back to the present. I checked my email for some correspondence from Mr. Sinclair for the past week and found none, and looked back even further to see if he had contacted me about the surfacestations project weeks before in email or in my letters pile. I found nothing and was surprised that he had made a video using my work without at least a basic request or notice. Normally when somebody wants to publish something in another media type (that is not a blog or webpage) from the surfacestations project or my blog, they contact me and ask permission to use the items. The word normal, however, upon scrutiny really doesn’t apply here.
I’ve gotten dozens of such requests from magazines, newsletters, book publishers, and TV stations. So far, I’ve never said no to any request for such materials or copyright waivers. I’ve filled out lots of forms granting my copyright waiver for the legally skittish that need more than an email or “sure, go ahead” over the phone.
But, in the video Mr. Sinclair produced and posted on YouTube, I noticed that he did in fact use photographs and graphics from my published book “Is The U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable?”. I hold the copyright on this book. The notice for copyright is in the inside front cover. © 2009 Surfacestations.org All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this report or portions thereof in any form. ISBN 13: 978-1-934791-29-5 and ISBN 10: 1-934791-26-6.
There was also a Warner Brothers video clip from the movie “Anchorman” with a segment about the incompetent TV weatherman which I assume was added to portray me in my chosen career, and amazingly (and most amusingly) there was another video clip from the movie “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai” which is a campy sendup of “War of the Worlds”. Interestingly in the credits, and I know this because I happened to watch the movie about two weeks before on Showtime, there is a “John Van Vliet” listed in the credits. It made me wonder if it is the same John Van Vliet that created the “opentemp” program launched just a couple of months after I first started the surfacestations project in an attempt to derail it early on. He made the mistake of using incomplete data. More on incomplete data later.
I noted that neither clip was from the trailers you could find on YouTube and were of high quality, so maybe they were cribbed from a DVD or perhaps an Apple video download, since I recognized from the editing effects that Mr. Sinclair owns a Macintosh. WB has some pretty stringent clip licensing requirements, which I know from doing TV news and a reporter wanting once to use part of a film from WB in a special news report. WB wanted our TV station to pay, but the cost was sky high for our small TV station. They finally whittled it down to something we could afford.
Doing a little more research, I found that Mr. Sinclair does a series of animated online greeting cards, which you can see here: http://www.care2.com/ecards/bio/1023
I thought this one was funny: http://www.care2.com/send/card/0840
The description portrayed him as a pretty nice guy with an alternate minded view of the world like a lot of college students have. He is not a college student, though he has a son who is of college age, a nice Ron Paul supporter, I am told from someone who has met him. His rather conservative son, contrasts the rather left-wing eco-activist ad hominem and rhetorically unrestrained father(see here). It is almost humorous greeting card-worthy, this role reversal.
But since he had used that © symbol, Mr. Sinclair demonstrated awareness of copyright protections, having availed himself of them, e.g., here, right below his own artwork.
With knowledge of this and ad hominem attacks made on me personally, I reasonably presumed his copyright violation on my part was likely intentional. I also figured that this might be a teachable moment, as I was still thinking this is a kid just out of college since there seems to be no business website for Greenman studio in operation yet, it is still “under construction”.
http://www.greenmanstudio.com/
And, I mused, by bringing the copyright issue to his attention, I’d probably be doing him a favor, since I surmised he’d be at risk for using the film clips. I figured anybody working a business out of a house without an operating web page probably can’t afford licensing fees. No deep pockets there. I certainly have no personal beef with Mr. Sinclair, it is just the copyright issue.
But my copyright had been ignored, with evidence that Mr. Sinclair as a publisher himself using the © symbol understands copyrights, and WB’s copyright also looked like it also had been ignored. And well, lets face it, he got the facts wrong about the project and never contacted or interviewed me to get any facts from my side (more on that later). So it could hardly be defined as “journalism” and the protections that such enterprise affords for “fair use”. So I filled out the form for copyright issues on YouTube, and pressed enter.
What I expected to happen is that I’d get an angry email or blog comment from the guy, I’d suggest to him (privately) to make a couple of modifications, grant him a copyright for the factual graphics from the surfacestations project, and tell him to put his video back up on the web. End of story, lesson learned.
What I didn’t expect was the alarmosphere going into berserk overdrive.
After all, this was not yet a “weekday” which it increasingly seems to be what we call those periods when our friends lapse into said mode. It turns out that YouTube put my name and the surfacestations.org URL up on the video pane for the former video, made me a target for hatred by the “scream first, ask questions later” types.
The first hint of this started on Sunday when I got a comment on my blog. The commenter, who obviously didn’t know the difference between copyright law and constitutional law wanted to know why I had “denied free speech” to Mr. Sinclair. Of course, “free speech” protections involve state infringement and,as powerful as our friends do apparently believe I have become, neither am I the state nor was the state involved here, so the angst was yet again rather misplaced. Regardless, I also thought this a pretty odd comment. Since Mr. Sinclair still hadn’t contacted me, I paid no attention to it.
Then I began receiving more odd comments, and I’m thinking; “why are these people making a private copyright dispute their personal business?”
Here’s sampling of a few comments I got that never made WUWT:
“Watts you are a coward chickesh** no good dumba** weatherman hiding behind a law that you’ve irrationally applied”
“You can’t handle the TRUTH, if I were Jack Nicholson I’d kick your a**”
“Wattsup, you and your stupid picture book project are toast!”
I even got comments from “Omar” in Finland:
“Looks like your attempt to smother and censor information has fired back badly on you Mr Watts: Do you have – how you say – the cahones to explain yourself? I think not. You appear to be a child coward man.”
Censoring huh? And around the alarmosphere all sorts of curious accusations of censorship — again, with the long arm of the state nowhere to be found, this seemed to be a variant of the Tim Robbins (see also “paranoid” and “uncomprehending”) School of Crying “Censorship”. Even more bizarre, were the demands. On the “DeSmog Blog”, Kevin Grandia lambasted me for not knowing anything about law, and then demanded I email him and explain myself and my reasons for filing a copyright complaint. I’m no lawyer, but clearly giving details of a dispute to an angry third party not involved isn’t right up there with sound legal advice.
Still apparently confused that his dispute lay not with me but with YouTube or the concepts of intellectual property, when that didn’t get the required response, Mr. Grandia posted another angry column over on the Huffington Post, and made the same demand. He’s wondering why I haven’t responded directly to him.
Really.
But being that guardian of smoggy freedom, Mr. Grandia took it a step further, and, in a rather ironic follow-up to his seizing of the mantle of all that conforms to the laws, somehow located the original YouTube video and reposted it to YouTube under the “DeSmog Blog” label:
You can watch it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_0-gX7aUKk
So much for my “censorship”, feel free to view it. You see, I’ve had lots of angry criticism in the last two years, this is nothing new, so I’m not really concerned about the criticisms.
When viewing, note the graph from NCDC in the video which “proves” my surfacestations project is (choose your own derogatory word). More on that momentarily.
The alarmosphere was reaching a tipping point. I knew it was only a matter of time before somebody would blog the coup de grace, and yet; I still haven’t heard from Mr. Sinclair so I could tell him about what I’d like changed.
OK. But if Mr. Sinclair had contacted me (like a journalist would) before he made his video, instead of simply reading the NCDC Talking points memo (revised version seen here, PDF) he could have found out a few things, such as:
- NCDC used an old outdated version of my data set (April 2008) they found on my website and assumed it was “current”. Big mistake on their part. Big admission of not overly concerning himself with first-hand knowledge, or even substance, on his part.
- NCDC did not contact me about use of the data. The data, BTW is not yet public domain, though I plan to make it so after I’ve published my paper. So like Mr. Sinclair, technically they are also in violation of copyright. Surfacestations is a private project, I emphasize, what with the public-private concept being one of the major precipitors of the alarmosphere’s angst.
- That data NCDC found had not been quality controlled, many of the ratings changed after quality control was applied, thus changing the outcome.
- When notified of this, they did nothing to deal with the issue, such as notifying readers.
- NCDC published no methodology, data or formula used, or show work of any kind that would normally be required in a scientific paper.
- The author is missing from the document thus it was published anonymously. Apparently nobody at NCDC would put his or her name on it.
- When notified of the fact that the author’s name Thomas C. Peterson (of NCDC) was embedded in the properties of the PDF document (which happens on registration of the Adobe Acrobat program, causing insertion in all output), NCDC’s only response was to remove the author’s name from the document and place it back online. It is odd behavior for a scientist to publish work but not put your name on it.
- NCDC got the number of USHCN stations wrong in their original document document graph, citing 1228 when it is actually 1218 I notified them of this and they eventually fixed it.
- That NCDC original document did not even cite my published work, or even use my name to credit me. I have the original which you can view here Note also the name in the document properties and the number of USHCN2 stations above the graph.
I’m regularly lambasted for publishing things here that are not “peer reviewed”. But, when NCDC does it, and does it unbelievably badly, not only is the “talking points memo” embraced by the alarmosphere as “truth” and “falsification”, but NOT ONE of those embracing it show the remotest interest in questioning why it fails to meet even the basic standards for a letter to the editor of a local newspaper.
My own local paper wouldn’t publish a letter or memo where the author is not identified. Yet an anonymous NCDC memo the author won’t even own up to is considered “climate truth”.
Students of the alarmists may have noticed some time ago, how the burden of proof and quality of publication shifts when the other side of the aisle is doing the talking. In fact, nobody who has jumped into the fray has asked me any questions, yet take as accurate our gift-card designer cum climate scientist Mr. Sinclair at his word, without asking me a single question.
I guess it doesn’t matter now, The Good Ship Teachable Moment has sailed, now that “Big Smog” has stepped in as the defender of freedom. I think Mr. Grandia is hoping that I’ll file a copyright complaint against him.
But here is the kicker. Once you sort through all the ad homs in the video, you find the nugget. It involves that graph that Mr. Sinclair cites from the NCDC Talking Points Memo. If he had asked, he would have found out that it has some pretty embarrassing flaws.
Figure 1. From the NCDC Talking Points Memo.
As referenced in the text of the NCDC Talking Points Memo, the Figure1 graph compares two homogenized data sets, and demonstrates an uncanny correlation. Here is what they say:
Two national time series were made using the same homogeneity adjusted data set and the same gridding and area averaging technique used by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center for its annual climate monitoring.
Seems reasonable, until you understand what “homgenization” really is.
What’s “homogenization” you say? Some kind of dairy product treatment?
Well no, not quite. It is data that has been put through a series of processes that render it so the end result is like comparing the temperature between several bowls of water that have been mixed together, then poured back into the original bowls and the temperature measured of each. What you get is an end temperature for each bowl that is a mixture of the other nearby bowl temperatures.
Here’s another way that is more visual. Think of it like measuring water pollution. Here’s a simple visual table of CRN station quality ratings (as used in my book) and what they might look like as water pollution turbidity levels, rated as 1 to 5 from best to worst turbidity:
In homgenization the data is weighted against the nearby neighbors within a radius. And so a station the might start out as a “1” data wise, might end up getting polluted with the data of nearby stations and end up as as new value, say weighted at “2.5”. Our contributing author John Goetz explains how even single stations can affect many many other stations in the GISS and NOAA data homogenization methods carried out on US surface temperature data here and here.
In the map above, applying a homogenization smoothing, weighting stations by distance nearby the stations with question marks, what would you imagine the values (of turbidity) of them would be? And, how close would these two values be for the east coast station in question and the west coast station in question? Each would be closer to a smoothed center average value based on the neighboring stations. Of course this isn’t the actual method, just a visual analogy.
So, essentially, NCDC’s graph is comparing homogenized data to homogenized data, and thus there would not likely be any large difference between “good” and “bad” stations. All the differences have been smoothed out by homogenization pollution from neighboring stations!
The best way to compare the effect of siting between groups of stations is to use the “raw” data, before it has passed through the multitude of adjustments that NCDC does. Admittedly, raw data can have its own problems, but there are ways my friends and I at the Pielke research team can make valid station trend comparisons without making numerical adjustments to the actual data raw data.
And finally for those who say “Watts doesn’t want you to see this video” or “he fears the science”, I direct you to this WUWT entry, dated June 26th, 2009:
NCDC writes ghost “talking points” rebuttal to surfacestations project
I was the first one to report on the NCDC Talking Points Memo. Fearing science, video and all that, I chose to publicly blog on a subject critical and even damaging to my own research, knowing full well others would pick it up, including those who would not treat this even-handedness kindly.
The document is an internal memo for NOAA. It didn’t get wide attention after it was first published on June 9th, in fact I don’t think it got any attention at all.
Without my pulling it out of internal memo obscurity and discussing it on WUWT, Dr. Pielke likely wouldn’t have commented on it, McIntyre wouldn’t have written about it, twice, and thus from all the pickups from those articles, Mr. Sinclair probably wouldn’t have ever seen it. Surely there would not be this delightfully entertaining, rather revealing, and grade school caliber commentary had I not sought to publish it to a wide audience.
But that’s OK. The result is not something I fear, even if my final analysis shows the USA trends are unaffected. There are other things we know and will learn that are of significance.
In fact I’ve had some very positive things come out of this, both on the media and scientific side. Some offers and ideas have been floated.
But that’s a story that will have to wait. Maybe Mr. Grandia will place an online demand for it. Stay tuned. They rarely disappoint.
Oh, and I got to “meet” Mr. Sinclair, the father of a college-age kid though not quite the young college kid I expected:
It has been an even more entertaining than usual couple of days in the alarmosphere. I’d been traveling the last week, doing TV station work and station surveys. While on the road I discovered through an email that I was the subject of a YouTube Video called “Climate Crock of the Week”.
The video was about my surfacestations.org project and was titled “What’s up with Watts?”. It was sad and funny at the same time, and as is typically the case with our old friends it was directed at me personally, far more than it tried substance. Equally typically, and sadly, what substance it tried turned out to be wrong. I continued on my travels, My friend Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. posted an opinion on it last week to address some of the issues.
Little did I know bizarro land awaited upon my return home.
Sitting down Saturday night, to watch the video again detecting through its exquisite subtleties and nuance. I couldn’t help but laugh, because once again I noticed that everything reported in it was just wrong.
In fact, it probably was the worst job of fact-finding I had ever seen, which as WUWT readers know, is a bold assessment. I’ve been involved in broadcast TV news for 25 years, and have seen some really bad work from greenhorns fresh out of reporters school. This video reminded me of those. It was if whoever put it together had never researched it, but just strung together a bunch of graphics, video, photos, and the most monotone Pat Paulsen narration I’d ever heard. I figured it was probably just an overzealous college student out to save the world and this was some college project. It had that air of radical burningman quality about it.
Curiosity piqued, I inquired into just who is this climate Solon? To my surprise, he turned out to be an “independent film producer” working out of his house in Midland, MI under the name “Greenman Studio”, one Peter Sinclair, a proud graduate of Al Gore’s Climate Camp. I still figured him to be a kid and imagined his mom was yelling down into the basement “Peter that’s too loud, turn it down!”.
I also wondered if it was the same “Green Man” that had once prompted surfacestations volunteer Gary Boden to create this nifty patch:
This came about because my now defunct local “Alternate Weekly” had a ghost writer named “green man” who penned and unintentionally (I think) editorial about me and the www.surfacestations.org project back in 2007 in which he wrote the famous line:
“The Reverend Anthony WTF Watts and his screeching mercury monkeys…”
…in response to our daring to survey the weather stations nationwide.
What was funny is that in my original story, one of my commenters posted a funny comment about well, “green stuff” and the editor of the local “Alternate Weekly” went ballistic and demanded I remove it and gave me a stern lecture on libel. I was happy to comply not out of legal obligation but courtesy and deleted the comment.
Is this Green Man the same guy? Inquiring minds want to know.
OK back to the present. I checked my email for some correspondence from Mr. Sinclair for the past week and found none, and looked back even further to see if he had contacted me about the surfacestations project weeks before in email or in my letters pile. I found nothing and was surprised that he had made a video using my work without at least a basic request or notice. Normally when somebody wants to publish something in another media type (that is not a blog or webpage) from the surfacestations project or my blog, they contact me and ask permission to use the items. The word normal, however, upon scrutiny really doesn’t apply here.
I’ve gotten dozens of such requests from magazines, newsletters, book publishers, and TV stations. So far, I’ve never said no to any request for such materials or copyright waivers. I’ve filled out lots of forms granting my copyright waiver for the legally skittish that need more than an email or “sure, go ahead” over the phone.
But, in the video Mr. Sinclair produced and posted on YouTube, I noticed that he did in fact use photographs and graphics from my published book “Is The U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable?”. I hold the copyright on this book. The notice for copyright is in the inside front cover. © 2009 Surfacestations.org All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this report or portions thereof in any form. ISBN 13: 978-1-934791-29-5 and ISBN 10: 1-934791-26-6.
There was also a Warner Brothers video clip from the movie “Anchorman” with a segment about the incompetent TV weatherman which I assume was added to portray me in my chosen career, and amazingly (and most amusingly) there was another video clip from the movie “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai” which is a campy sendup of “War of the Worlds”. Interestingly in the credits, and I know this because I happened to watch the movie about two weeks before on Showtime, there is a “John Van Vliet” listed in the credits. It made me wonder if it is the same John Van Vliet that created the “opentemp” program launched just a couple of months after I first started the surfacestations project in an attempt to derail it early on. He made the mistake of using incomplete data. More on incomplete data later.
I noted that neither clip was from the trailers you could find on YouTube and were of high quality, so maybe they were cribbed from a DVD or perhaps an Apple video download, since I recognized from the editing effects that Mr. Sinclair owns a Macintosh. WB has some pretty stringent clip licensing requirements, which I know from doing TV news and a reporter wanting once to use part of a film from WB in a special news report. WB wanted our TV station to pay, but the cost was sky high for our small TV station. They finally whittled it down to something we could afford.
Doing a little more research, I found that Mr. Sinclair does a series of animated online greeting cards, which you can see here:
http://www.care2.com/ecards/bio/1023
I thought this one was pretty funny: http://www.care2.com/send/card/0840
The description portrayed him as a pretty nice guy with an alternate minded view of the world like a lot of college students have. He is not a college student, though he has a son who is of college age, a nice Ron Paul supporter, I am told from someone who has met him. His rather conservative son, contrasts the rather left-wing eco-activist ad hominem and rhetorically unrestrained father(see here). It is almost humorous greeting card-worthy, this role reversal.
But since he had used that © symbol, Mr. Sinclair demonstrated awareness of copyright protections, having availed himself of them, e.g., here, right below his own artwork. With knowledge of this and ad hominem attacks made on me personally, I reasonably presumed his copyright violation on my part was likely intentional. I also figured that this might be a teachable moment, as I was still thinking this is a kid just out of college since there seems to be no business website for Greenman studio in operation yet, it is still “under construction”.
http://www.greenmanstudio.com/
And, I mused, by bringing the copyright issue to his attention, I’d probably be doing him a favor, since I surmised he’d be at risk for using the film clips. I figured anybody working a business out of a house without an operating web page probably can’t afford licensing fees. No deep pockets there. I certainly have no personal beef with Mr. Sinclair, it is just the copyright issue.
But my copyright had been ignored, with evidence that Mr. Sinclair as a publisher himself using the © symbol understands copyrights, and WB’s copyright also looked like it also had been ignored. And well, lets face it, he got the facts wrong about the project and never contacted or interviewed me to get any facts from my side (more on that later). So it could hardly be defined as “journalism” and the protections that such enterprise affords for “fair use”. So I filled out the form for copyright issues on YouTube, and pressed enter.
What I expected to happen is that I’d get an angry email or blog comment from the guy, I’d suggest to him (privately) to make a couple of modifications, grant him a copyright for the factual graphics from the surfacestations project, and tell him to put his video back up on the web. End of story, lesson learned.
What I didn’t expect was the alarmosphere going into berserk overdrive. After all, this was not yet a “weekday” which it increasingly seems to be what we call those periods when our friends lapse into said mode. It turns out that YouTube put my name and the surfacestations.org URL up on the video pane for the former video, made me a target for hatred by the “scream first, ask questions later” types.
The first hint of this started on Sunday when I got a comment on my blog. The commenter, who obviously didn’t know the difference between copyright law and constitutional law wanted to know why I had “denied free speech” to Mr. Sinclair. Of course, “free speech” protections involve state infringement and,as powerful as our friends do apparently believe I have become, neither am I the state nor was the state involved here, so the angst was yet again rather misplaced. Regardless, I also thought it this a pretty odd comment, since Mr. Sinclair still hadn’t contacted me, and I paid no attention to it.
Then I began receiving more odd comments, and I’m thinking; “why are these people making a private copyright dispute their personal business?”
Here’s sampling of a few comments I got that never made WUWT:
“Watts you are a coward chickesh** no good dumba** weatherman hiding behind a law that you’ve irrationally applied”
“You can’t handle the TRUTH, if I were Jack Nicholson I’d kick your a**”
“Wattsup, you and your stupid picture book project are toast!”
I even got comments from “Omar” in Finland:
“Looks like your attempt to smother and censor information has fired back badly on you Mr Watts: Do you have – how you say – the cahones to explain yourself? I think not. You appear to be a child coward man.”
And around the alarmosphere all sorts of curious accusations of censorship — again, with the long arm of the state nowhere to be found, this seemed to be a variant of the Tim Robbins (see also “paranoid” and “uncomprehending”) School of Crying “Censorship”. Even more bizarre, were the demands. On the “DeSmog Blog”, Kevin Grandia lambasted me for not knowing anything about law, and then demanded I email him and explain myself and my reasons for filing a copyright complaint. I’m no lawyer, but clearly giving details of a dispute to an angry third party not involved isn’t right up there with sound legal advice.
Still apparently confused that his dispute lay not with me but with YouTube or the concepts of intellectual property, when that didn’t get the required response, Mr. Grandia posted another angry column over on the Huffington Post, and made the same demand. He’s wondering why I haven’t responded directly to him.
Really.
But being that guardian of smoggy freedom, Mr. Grandia took it a step further, and, in a rather ironic follow-up to his seizing of the mantle of all that conforms to the laws, somehow located the original YouTube video and reposted it to YouTube under the “DeSmog Blog” label:
You can watch it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_0-gX7aUKk
Note the graph from NCDC in the video which “proves” my surfacestations project is (choose your own derogatory word). More on that momentarily.
The alarmosphere was reaching a tipping point. I knew it was only a matter of time before somebody would blog the coup de grace, and yet; I still haven’t heard from Mr. Sinclair so I could tell him about what I’d like changed.
OK Nut if Mr. Sinclair had contacted me (like a journalist would) before he made his video, instead of simply reading the NCDC Talking points memo (seen here, PDF) he could have found out a few things, such as:
- NCDC used an old outdated version of my data set (April 2008) they found on my website and assumed it was “current”. Big mistake on their part. Big admission of not overly concerning himself with first-hand knowledge, or even substance, on his part.
- NCDC did not contact me about use of the data. The data, BTW is not yet public domain, though I plan to make it so after I’ve published my paper. So like Mr. Sinclair, technically they are also in violation of copyright. Surfacestations is a private project, I emphasize, what with the public-private concept being one of the major precipitors of the alarmosphere’s angst.
- That data NCDC found had not been quality controlled, many of the ratings changed after quality control was applied, thus changing the outcome.
- When notified of this, they did nothing to deal with the issue, such as notifying readers.
- NCDC published no methodology, data or formula used, or show work of any kind that would normally be required in a scientific paper.
- The author is missing from the document thus it was published anonymously. Apparently nobody at NCDC would put his or her name on it.
- When notified of the fact that the author’s name Thomas C. Peterson (of NCDC) was embedded in the properties of the PDF document (which happens on registration of the Adobe Acrobat program, causing insertion in all output), NCDC’s only response was to remove the author’s name from the document.
- NCDC got the number of USHCN stations wrong in their original document document graph, citing 1228 when it is actually 1218 I notified them of this and they eventually fixed it.
- That NCDC original document did not even cite my published work, or even use my name to credit me. I have the original which you can view here Note also the name in the document properties and the number of USHCN2 stations above the graph.
I’m regularly lambasted for publishing things here that are not “peer reviewed”, but when NCDC does it, and does it unbelievably badly, not only is the “talking points memo” embraced by the alarmosphere as “truth” and “falsification”. Not ONE of those embracing it show the remotes interest in questioning why it fails to meet even the basic standards for a letter to the editor of a local newspaper. My own local paper wouldn’t publish a letter or memo where the author is not identified. Yet an anonymous memo the author won’t even own up to is considered climate truth.
Students of the alarmists may have noticed some time ago, how the burden of proof and quality of publication shifts when the other side of the aisle is doing the talking. In fact nobody who has jumped into the foray has asked me any questions, yet take our gift-card designer cum climate scientist Mr. Sinclair at his word that what he reported, without asking me a single question, is accurate.
I guess it doesn’t matter now, The Good Ship Teachable Moment has sailed, now that “Big Smog” has stepped in as the defender of freedom. I think Mr. Grandia is hoping that I’ll file a copyright complaint against him.
But here is the kicker. It involves that graph that Mr. Sinclair cites from the NCDC Talking Points Memo. If he had asked, he would have found this out.
Figure 1. From Talking Points Memo.
As referenced in the text of the Talking Points Memo, the NCDC graph compares two homogenized data sets. What’s that you say? Some kind of dairy product?
Well no, not quite. It is data that has been put through a series of processes that render it
such that end result is like comparing the temperature of several bowls of water
[need work here and diagram to explain homgenization of data]
And finally for those who say “Watts doesn’t want you to see this video” or “he fears the science”, I direct you to this WUWT entry, dated June 26th, 2009:
NCDC writes ghost “talking points” rebuttal to surfacestations project
I was the first one to report on the NCDC Talking Points Memo. Fearing science, video and all that, I chose to publicly blog on a subject critical and even damaging to my own research, knowing full well others would pick it up, including those who would not treat this even-handedness kindly.
The document is an internal memo for NOAA. It didn’t get wide attention after it was first published on June 9th, in fact I don’t think it got any attention at all.
Without my pulling it out of internal memo obscurity and discussing it on WUWT, Pielke likely wouldn’t have commented on it, McIntyre wouldn’t have written about it, twice, and thus from all the pickups from those articles, Mr. Sinclair probably wouldn’t have ever seen it. Surely there would not be this delightfully entertaining, rather revealing, and grade school caliber commentary had I not sought to publish it to a wide audience.
But that’s OK. The result is not something I fear, even if it shows the trends are unaffected. There’s other things we know and will learn.
In fact I’ve had some very positive things come out of this both on the media and scientific side. Some offer and ideas have been floated.
But that’s a story that will have to wait. Maybe Mr. Grandia will place an online demand for it. Stay tuned. They rarely disappoint.
Oh, and I got to “meet” Mr. Sinclair, the father of a college-age kid though not quite the young college kid I expected:
Anthony
He has issued a challenge to a debate – take him up on it. Send the invitation to others like Plimer. Bring it on.
Amazing. How can folks get so stampeded over so little. Sigh.
Pop a cold one and enjoy the soap opera!
Great post Anthony. I do like a bit of real journalism cutting through the alarmist BS now and then. He want’s to debate, why not go for it & post the video here.
I don’t believe they will ever debate in person. They want to sit in the weeds and snipe. They want the conversation to go in one direction.
Great story. I was wondering when and how you were going to address Peter Sinclair’s “Crock of the Week” video about you. Your attention to detail is appreciated. It would be great to see you debate him.
I am curious if you saw what George Monbiot of the Guardian UK thought about your endeavors with Mr. Sinclair’s video.
Mr. Monbiot says “ Anthony Watts, sceptic and scourge of climate change science, has used copyright laws to censor an opponent. Climate change deniers claim they’re censored. What hypocrites.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/jul/30/climate-change-deniers-monbiot
I was pointed to another of Sinclair’s ‘climate crock of the week’ vids by a warmist I was debating. It was of the various 7 year cooling trends it was possible to find in the temperature record, and was quoted to point up my ‘cherry picking’ of the data.
I pointed out that the video was careful to show temperatures only since 1975, and that Sinclair neglected to mention that the other two periods where a 7 year cooling trend was identified were both associated with major volcanos, whereas the current cooling is not.
Sinclair is a propagandist of the worst ilk, not a climate researcher.
New Scientist article (current Issue) admits that no one is interested in AGW anymore LOL
Anthony, your good humor and grace while subjected to execrable and actionable slander and libel by nincompoops is truly admirable. You have risen above the childish tantrum level exhibited by untalented fools.
You could have responded (reacted) differently. I know my own reactions when I watched the video and read the comments beneath it last week were more along the lines of shock and outrage.
But instead you have responded with maturity and wry wit, and made it all into a teaching moment. I salute you for that.
These are trying times. Catastrophes loom in science and politics, and I’m not talking about global warming. We face an uncertain future because our traditional institutions, fundamental rights and liberties, and even our culture and civilization are under attack by the most nefarious elements. It is difficult to see how best to defend ourselves from all that.
Your example of calm, good natured, intelligent, and ethical forbearance is a lesson in right behavior. The path with integrity is our best approach to the mountain of problems we face. We all could learn from your example. I know I have. Thank you for that.
I would definitely take him on, he’s asking for it. BTW It seems that there are fewer and fewer maybe he does not realize that the big wigs APS and even Nature maybe be having second thoughts. Even maybe the IPCC (the’ve told Kevin Rudd not to worry about passing the ETS now).
This story has got into the British press at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/jul/30/climate-change-deniers-monbiot?commentpage=4&commentposted=1
I tried to post a link to this article, but my comments to the Guardian are currently being “moderated” (i.e. censored). Would some reader here like to inform Guardian readers about this article?
PS Actually, it would be brilliant if Alan himself could comment on the Monbiot Guardian article. These articles by Monbiot in the Guardian are the principle outlet in the British Press for the warmist / sceptic debate, sometimes attracting 1000+ comments. If Alan posted a comment, Monbiot could hardly fail to reply, and the debate would be open.
Reply: Do you mean Anthony? ~ ctm
Sure, you laugh now, but what happens when “60 Minutes” exposes your underhanded scheme to discredit the work of thousands of bureaucrats and academics on the government
dolepayroll. Hah! You shall wilt under the withering cross-examination from the perky Katie Couric.Don’t let AMPAS know about this. Mr Sinclair has a sure Oscar™ contender in the “Documentary” (chuckle) category. Good to see someone from Michigan has found work.
We’ll have to see if this affects the old blog stats.
Well done Mr. Watts! I encounter (and demolish) these leftover hippies on a regular basis wherever I encounter them. Your dismemberment of these warmongers however is on the level of an art form! Well spoken sir!
I look forward to the coming attractions. I think I have figured some out, but will wait with joy for any new developments.
Cheers!
This is an unbelievable story.
How low can they go!
Anthony, you are handling it perfectly.
You keep concentrating on the science which is their weak spot and never cease to be the true gentleman that you are.
I admire you for your cool and detailed approach and I wish you all the best.
I can only agree with HarryG. Otherwise, are there no lawyers on this blog? The time has come to wipe the floor with someone.
Sinclair must believe copyright means he has the right to copy. Right?
Funny how he really can’t answer the question about solutions to the problem.
Not surprising.
The level of threats and abuse hurled at those who disagree with the orthodoxy is symptomatic of an awfully weak argument, which is encouraging, in a bizarre sort of way. Keep on keeping on, Mr Watts.
Also – has this guy really had his stuff peer reviewed? 😉
Monbiot at the Guardian has also jumped on the bandwagon.
But the guardians moderators are becoming like RCs. Anything
slightly against Monbiots opinions are removed immediately.
Mr Watts, you are NOT in a debate here.
You are in politics. That means, to the other side, you are DEFINED as wrong. There is no way of changing that. It is similar to the attitude which I understand that Americans have with respect to Communism – it MUST be wrong, and everything a communist does MUST be aimed at undermining the United States Constitution.
I am not a political person myself, but the game seems to involve each side shouting insults at the other, and then turning to their own supporters to measure the volume of cheering. The aim seems to be to be that of maintaining morale amongst your own troops by ‘scoring points’, and certainly nothing to do with examining the truth. Similar insults would be traded by the front lines of opposing armies in classical battles, and survive to this day in sporting encounters.
I suggest that, unless you want to move into the specialist world of media soundbites and spin-doctoring, you provide political opponents with as little material as possible to work on. They are likely to be better at lies and smearing than you. If you concentrate on the science you will build a sound foundation. If you ignore the political opposition, they are likely to make more and more extreme assertions in an effort to overtop their last insult, and these exaggerations will emphasis the hollowness of their position. I can see indications that this is already beginning to happen, and that it will be a winning strategy….
Anthony, I bet you were wearing your Playtex 24hr Girdle as I am sure your sides split with laughter with this fellow and his “6 minute” sound bites to get Gore’s “gospel” spread.
He he, I just knew someone wimped on the Kool-Aid. And so modest too! Sinclair’s site must be a hoot.
…and watch out out you don’t get crushed by the bite sized nuggets!
Yes I agree with you, ad hominems are the sign of desperate people with no ability to argue science.
Luckily there are no ad hominem attacks here at WUWT. A clear sign they are the real scientists unlike the world government AGW lackies.
Thank you Anthony.
I only came to learn as many did.
Wow, I never realized you had that kind of power, it must come with the “Arch Denier” throne. I’m sure they wonder why so few people take them seriously even while they make such a trivial and commonplace incident sound like they are being violently repressed by the Gestapo.
It would appear a deep panic is setting in with the AGW crowd.
I guess this is what passes for research for some people.
Thank you so much Anthony for keeping a level head through all this.
How much of what you’ve written about Peter Sinclair would you consider ad hominem?
Mr. Watts,
Please by all means enter into a debate with Peter Sinclair.
Anthony,
Isn’t it an idea to put a link to this site and page on You Tube, so all these screamers can get the whole picture, and as an by-effect, have a chance to visit some more blogs on this site. It might enlighten a few…
Keep up the good work! Greetings from the low countries.
You have given Mr. Sinclair far more webspace than he is worthy of, and far more of your time than he warrants, Anthony. Let his kind bray while you snatch free moments to play with your kids. Green Men will dig their own holes unassisted.
Anthony,
Hats off to you for your professionalism and perseverance through this long, strange trip.
The value you bring to the table with your endeavours is incalculable.
h/t to YOU.
JimB
That’s a lot of words, but I still don’t understand why you had the video taken down. If you would just have ignored it and then written this text you would’ve come out a lot stronger. Taking it down was a big mistake, tactically speaking, especially because this blog is always full of indignation regarding suppressed reports etc. When you fight fire with fire, you become the fire, Anthony.
But I’m looking forward to the results of the surfacestations-project and an explanation in the eventuality it diverges from satellite data.
I had missed that the NCDC data comparisons were BOTH “homogenized”.
Of course, that renders their comparison meaningless and their conclusion untrue. Are they liars or fools?
I have been down the same path with Youtube as well: having my name splashed across the top of a video while a copyright complaint was being dealt with, even though the thief carried on with delicious anonymity. While Youtube is many great things, there are some not so good things as well.
But, as they say in the ad business, there is no such thing as bad press. As a consequence of the video and of Grandia at Huff’n Puff, you will reach even more lay people, not all of whom are card carrying nutbars. And as the nutbars get increasingly juxtaposed against normalcy, their wackiness becomes even more apparent. Win-win, I’d say, even though the methodology may not be “ethical”…
The last refuge of those with no proof and failed arguments is abuse. The more they rant and insult, the more they show that they know that they are losing.
In the final analysis it’s only the truth that’s important. If it actually turns out that the software used does indeed correct for these station abnormalities then it’s a good 3rd party verification. The point of the homogenized plot was to show that a software procedure can remove bad station bias. That the graph is only plotted from 1950 because the 30’s were just as warm is the underhand part.
I’m sure your friend Steve McI said he expected the software would prove ok for the lower 48 and that the real issue is the correction, or lack of it, for the rest of the world. He even has an R script that did the comparison between 1+2 graded stations with the GISS plot (to show JohnV how to do easy gridding). Now that most of the stations are measured has anyone actually re-done it anywhere?
Excellent work Reverend Anthony.
I notiverd a broken link in your text – see below at “I have the original which you can view here”
“That NCDC original document did not even cite my published work, or even use my name to credit me. I have the original which you can view here Note also the name in the document properties and the number of USHCN2 stations above the graph.”
Reply: Fixed. Thanks ~ ctm
Here in Australia, the term “cult” is being used more and more in the last few months by even the man in the street to describe the AGW warmists and activists movement.
Increasingly, the AGW warmists are being classed as a “Mother Earth” worshipping “cult” that has no regard for facts or for human well being.
1 / As in all cults, this warmist “cult” has a hierarchical structure with a few very prominent and extremist leaders at the top that the cult acolytes coalesce around and base their beliefs on the teachings of that leadership.
2 / The “cult” members or acolytes do not accept any rational explanations for happenings, events or established facts that run contrary to their beliefs or the cult dictates.
3 / Strangely, it is often very intelligent and supposedly rational thinking and often quite highly qualified members of society who become the most fanatical of the cult’s membership and leadership.
4 / The cult members launch completely irrational ad hominen attacks, usually without any basis in fact, on anybody that dares to challenge their beliefs either in private or openly.
5 / No consideration is given to any human or animal suffering that may be imposed by following the dictates of the cult or it’s leadership.
6 / Facts are never needed for belief in the cult dictates, just a fanatical belief in the cult leadership and the dictates that leadership promulgates.
7 / Most of the more extreme cult members will remain believers for their entire lifetimes and nothing will shake them in those beliefs so the AGW cult now has a full generation to run before it’s final demise.
8 / The cult leadership will subtly change direction if the stars are moving against them and the acolytes will be told and will believe that is being done for the greater good of all or it has been dictated by the superior being.
All in all, the AGW warmist movement is now steadily deteriorating to the level of a western based Earth worshipping cult and that ultimately spells the end of it’s influence and power and it’s ability to influence the future.
As this realisation sinks in to many fringe dweller believers of the AGW movement, there will be a steady and increasing drift of former believers away from any avowed contact or belief in the teachings and dictates of the cult.
Like all new cults it still has and will have for some time yet, the means and ability to create a great deal of anguish, pain and harm before it’s run is ended.
to be honoust Anthony it wasnt the smartest thing to do. You know how the game is played (especially on youtube), you really didnt see this comming?
You should have responded with a more convincing video yourself .
That “debate” challenge is most likely an empty gesture. Not only are alarmists cowards, but they seem to know instinctively that their arguments are primarily emotional ones, not scientific, and they will be crushed like bugs.
Was the title an Alliterative Attempt to Analyse the Asenine Ambiguity of Amoral Appropriation of Atmospherics Aspects?
Sorry, couldn’t resist it.
My thanks for the work you are doing for showing that results cannot be accurate if the positioning of the instrumentation is not consistant.
You are dealing with RELIGION, Mr. Watts. “Do not question our God, Gaia, and our priests which include Al Gore and James Hansen!” All throughout history and even into present day, religion has made people do some really stupid things. And if you question … the true believes assail you at force. They are an organized religion and they are gaining more and more followers through coercion, fear, lies, and brainwashing. They try to brainwash our impressionable young. This is more than a cult. It is better organized. It is a religion.
Excellent stuff Anthony….. As they say.
….Any Publicity is good publicity.
Your blog traffic graph at the end of the month will be interesting.
I wonder who wrote this:
A couple of months ago I wrote about the upcoming release of Windows Vista, and how I was disappointed that this new release from Microsoft and all of its Digital Rights Management (DRM) nonsense made the operating system turn your PC into a version of George Orwell’s Big Brother
DRM is all about protecting copyright. How can this be “nonsense”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/01/21/ubuntu-an-amazing-alternative-to-windows/#more-62
I also like the screen capture of ubuntu with its prominent BitTorrent icon.
It has some legal uses just not many.
However it’s good to see you have other people’s interests at heart!
Hhhhhmmmmm!
This just goes to show that they are getting desperate, and that the tide is slowly turning.
have a feeling its not going to be quick enough though.
rtgr (04:07:22) :
to be honoust Anthony it wasnt the smartest thing to do. You know how the game is played (especially on youtube), you really didnt see this comming?
You should have responded with a more convincing video yourself .
No, Anthony has done this exactly right. Serving notice that he takes this seriously, as he has, is on target. He has no need to play the “game” on Youtube. Its not a game. There is a curious thing about Youtube: despite how viral certain videos go, most have no credible staying power at all (verbatim clip excerpts of newscasts are a bit of a different story).
A lot of the response is from people looking to see what the fuss is about. Anthony has spent about as many column-inches as he should. Challenging the videos on appropriate legal grounds is the the correct process. Eventually, it all comes to an end, unless Anthony keeps it in the spotlight. For Sinclair or Grandia to do so, leaves them open eventually to legal action, and ultimately makes them look (more) bizarre. Anyone who’s been involved in blogs (and Youtube is a blog, just like all the rest), knows you are wasting your energy chasing anonymous phantom commenters. You use the tools of deletion with effect.
Neven (03:33:51) : said
“…That’s a lot of words, but I still don’t understand why you had the video taken down. If you would just have ignored it and then written this text you would’ve come out a lot stronger. Taking it down was a big mistake, tactically speaking, especially because this blog is always full of indignation regarding suppressed reports etc. When you fight fire with fire, you become the fire, Anthony….”
This is why
Anthony said
“…But my copyright had been ignored, with evidence that Mr. Sinclair as a publisher himself using the © symbol understands copyrights, and WB’s copyright also looked like it also had been ignored. And well, lets face it, he got the facts wrong about the project and never contacted or interviewed me to get any facts from my side (more on that later). So it could hardly be defined as “journalism” and the protections that such enterprise affords for “fair use”. So I filled out the form for copyright issues on YouTube, and pressed enter….”
That was a pretty tame reaction since he could have brought the copyright violation to Warner Brothers notice and let THEM sue the pants off Mr. Sinclair and thereby stayed clear of the fecal hitting the rotating blade. Instead he has explain what he has done and why for all the world to pick apart. He did nothing to Mr Sinclair except point out to YouTube he did not have Anthony’s permission for copyright use and more important probably DID NOT have WB’s. YouTube was the final decider on whether to leave the Video up. If Anthony’s complaint was groundless they would ignore it.
On the whole Anthony came off looking like a gentleman willing to stand-up for himself against a bully without descending to his level. Please realize that failure to defend his copyright could put his “copyright protection” at risk so a response was required. Anthony used the lowest level response unlike Mr. Sinclair.
geoffchambers 01:11:46
Managed to post on the Grauniad Monbigot article directing readers to WUWT. Could be a case of pearls before swine, though.
Peter Sinclair = Supreme Goron Lite?
Thanks, Anthony, for standing up to these creeps. They’re losing when they lose confidence in their own information and instead start running smear pieces.
Obviously people who deal with weather wouldn’t know anything about it….
I never realised that they had Gore Climate Camps. I picture them like schools of certain religous persuasions in which the congregation gets indoctrinated while they sit banging their heads and chanting from The Gore-an.
I debated with this Greenman college boy on one of his videos and found that he had no unique insight or valuable self-research. He was just repeating whatever he read on the Guardian’s website. When I pressed him to answer and quantify the scientific questions I had asked he turned tail and ran, which prompted me to add a video reply to his Climate Crock of the Week (the reply was a debate with John Christy). I invited Greenman to a debate on the videos I uploaded but he didn’t take up the challenge and in his place came some rambling kid whose head was full of conspiracy theories about Exxon Mobil, etc who also was unable to take part in rational debate without throwing insults at others.
Dear Arch Denier Anthony Watts (it has a nice ring to it, “Arch”),
Anthony, it would be nice to see a graph of the raw unedited data that can in comparison show the statistical process that homogenization of the data has in distorting the data.
In fact I’m starting to see that one can’t trust any graphs unless one also sees the raw unaltered data and every step and process and computation along the way that went into making it. One almost needs to have these published as Mathematica or Speadsheets with the data in them as well as the graphs and if it’s not done that way it’s just not accepted as valid open peer – and reader – reviewable science.
I’m curious about the scientific justification for homogenization of the data? On what basis is that and other “smoothing” or “adjustments” done?
On the copyright issue it may be a moot point since he’s likely not making any money which is a factor, and he likely would claim “fair use” in a “critique” of your work which is permitted under copyright laws. In fact a “critique” can reference the entire original work as long as each piece has a corresponding critique of the critiquing author – if I’m not mistaken. I don’t know if that helps or not.
One point in the video, ~6:30min, he’s claiming that “29,000 sets of natural rhythms were collected”, what’s he talking about? That sure sounds impressive but what’s up with that?
He’s clearly a “believer” in “climate change is the most important issue” in his life and by the nature of his belief our lives too. Clearly he’s motivated by belief in the doomsday scenario. I wonder about the components of his particular belief, not to criticize him but, to illuminate the nature of belief taking over a mind rather than using the scientific method to obtain results and to alter ones views after consideration when the data indicate what is going on. Personally I find people motivated by belief rather than provable and re-provable (auditable) knowledge fascinating subjects to study in a clinical setting, not with an eye to emulating them but with an eye to understanding the human condition that has us be so fallible.
Belief in a “cause” is all well and good, but shouldn’t one make sure that the “cause” is actually a real problem? That’s why I support Open Source Science and Open Source Auditing of Science and it’s claims. Keep at it Anthony and Steve. The scientific method is one of our best defenses against the worst of “belief driven causes” as embodied in men such as Greenman Sinclair.
In summary the main point I took from your article above is that “statistical homogenization games” were being played with the data in the graph that our hero the Greenman Mr Sinclair presents in the video. It would be good to see an analysis of the raw data and comparison to the “fake mixed data”.
The graph presented as the “70 good stations” is really just the “70 good stations” since the data for the 70 stations was homogenized already! What if the data for the 70 stations was homogenized with just the 70 stations? What effect would that have?
Keep up the excellent work Anthony (oh and get on CNN and MSNBC and CBC for some balance),
All the best,
Darth PWL
rtgr (04:07:22) :
I’d rather Anthony play to his strength – text is searchable, easy to share, fast to read or skim. Perhaps you can explain why people like Peter Sinclair is so enamored with video. I haven’t seen this one yet, but I’ve seen others. It’s not like his voice add to the experience.
OOPS, wouldn’t you know it, a proof reading mistake caught after hitting submit. The correct version should have had the uppercase corrections in it for correctness and for clarity. Sorry about that. I’m a fallible human after all; at least I can admit a mistake and correct it. – pwl
“The graph presented as the “70 good stations” is NOT really just the “70 good stations” since the data for the 70 stations was homogenized WITH ALL THE OTHER STATIONS already! What if the data for the 70 stations was homogenized with just the 70 stations? What effect would that have?”
Dear Mr. Watts –
By and large, I do not agree with your politics – but I do agree with your methods. I believe that you are doing an invaluable service to the cause of scientific debate by demanding that climate data be as accurate as possible. Otherwise, any deductions drawn from flawed data will be flawed themselves.
With regards to the recent video that contained illegal use of copyrighted materials, George Monbiot at the Guardian published a column critical of you yesterday which contained a pirated version of the video and stated within the column that he was aware of your request that this video be halted. Since the Guardian is a major media outlet in Great Britain, since Great Britain is a signatory to international copyright law, and since Mr. Monbiot is an employee of the Guardian – – I believe that the Guardian is legally liable for intentional infringement.
I do not make this statement lightly. My politics are far more in line with the Guardian than with yours. But I cannot condone the intentional mocking of legitimate copyright protections by an organization that depends upon those same protections for its own works.
Here is a link to the Monbiot column –
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/jul/30/climate-change-deniers-monbiot
As of 6:50a on July 31st, the video is still up. Thus, it has been available for at least 24 hours at guardian.com and more than 48 hours after the request to cease and desist. It is a blatant violation of copyright law and should be treated as such.
Keep up the good work.
Kindest regards – John
Mr Watts – Chin up lad!
IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
…Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!
by Rudyard Kipliing
Great response! A really concise and focused rebuttal. Mentioning ‘ad hominem’ four times really hammers home that point – although I didn’t notice any explanation of what exactly was ‘ad hominem’. Never mind – the sheer volume of words and incidental detail in this great piece was enough to convince me.
Especially liked the way you repeatedly compared Sinclair to a kid or a college student even though he’s not – genius! “Peter that’s too loud, turn it down!”. Hilarious!
Also, very good that you researched and brought Sinclair’s son in to this – that really strengthens your argument and credibility.
Of course! The data used by the NCDC was old and outdated – obvious! So the results will be completely different as a result of whatever has changed in the past 14 months? Look forward to seeing that – it’ll certainly wipe the smile off the face of all those climate scientists around the planet, eh?
But if the data used by the NCDC was old and outdated and therefore flawed, why the need to discuss their technique? Isn’t that ‘showing your hand’. Now they’ll know where they want wrong for next time! Do you think the NOAA are lying to discredit you or are they incompetent on this one? Inquiring minds want to know.
Keep up the good work – your output makes it easy to see where the truth lies in the climate debate.
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
~ John Adams (1735-1826), American politician and second President of the United States
Anthony,
Please note that the attack and the argument has been included in your page on Wikipedia, but (of course?) not your reply:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Watts_(blogger)
Somebody with better english that mine should add Anthony’s reply on the page.
Gail Combs wrote:
“That was a pretty tame reaction since he could have brought the copyright violation to Warner Brothers notice and let THEM sue the pants off Mr. Sinclair and thereby stayed clear of the fecal hitting the rotating blade”
That would’ve been even more childish, running to Warner Brothers to tell on Mr. Sinclair. Asking YouTube to take the film down was a big enough PR mistake as it is.
The point is: Why does Anthony care if someone makes some movie about him portraying the copyrighted (fair use, anyone?) cover of his book? He as a gentleman should be above that, right? Especially considering the fact that there is a blog post here on a weekly basis about something or other being suppressed. Anthony did exactly the same thing.
On a personal note: I was disappointed to see you appear on Fox, Anthony, especially in that Glenn Beck Show. The way the news is reported at that station scares the shit out of me as a European. It is very bad advertising for the American people, considering the fact that Fox is one of the most popular stations in the States. I would never ever want to be associated with that warmongering corporate propaganda outlet. But then again, I would never want to be associated with something like the Heartland Institute either (especially considering the fact that I know people who suffer and have suffered greatly from tobacco). It was also very shocking for me to see how closely you and your surface station project seem to be tied to that organisation. Couldn’t you have done it without them? It would have raised the credibility of your project a lot (in my view), but I’ll wait and see what comes out of the project before jumping to conclusions.
Facts might be stubborn things but the fact is that one persons facts might really be beliefs… that is why we have a wee little tool known as the scientific method… to route out these “fact-beliefs” and replace them with better, more accurate “facts that are facts with a statement of their accuracy”.
For example, in a graph that says “70 good or best sited stations” it should say that these 70 data points are homogenized with the FULL set of data and thus can’t be separated out for the purposes of the comparison that the author, Mr. Greenman Sinclair, is making.
Given Mr. Greenman Sinclair’s strong and clear statement of belief in his video about the doomsday scenario that AGW represents it’s clear that he’s not someone dedicated to the scientific method. Which is fine, not everyone is cut out to be a scientist or has had the benefit of a science oriented educational training. So maybe he doesn’t realize his mistake which makes his piece belief driven ignorant propaganda rather than outright fraud intended propaganda.
However, that doesn’t apply to the anonymous scientist, possibly Dr. Thomas C. Peterson as the digital forensic trail suggests, from NCDC that prepared the graph and seeded it with the public and one way or the other with Mr. Greenman Sinclair. Either it’s gross incompetence or outright scientific fraud on the part of the anonymous NCDC scientist. I don’t know which is worse! Either way NCDC is on the hook for fraudulent or bad science being passed on as propaganda in a political cause. Shame on NCDC and the anonymous scientist.
The scientific method is our tool for finding out those facts that are possible to find out. It is our last refuge from politics and the tyrany of belief driven activism and belief driven causes.
All the best, and keep up the auditing Anthony,
Darth PWL
Mr. Watts, you are a true journalist, a true scientist, and a true gentleman. Your investigative journalist reporting on CCCC, especially copyrights, deserves awards. You might want to take sspecial note of John Egan 5:52:
“With regards to the recent video that contained illegal use of copyrighted materials, George Monbiot at the Guardian published a column critical of you yesterday which contained a pirated version of the video and stated within the column that he was aware of your request that this video be halted. Since the Guardian is a major media outlet in Great Britain, since Great Britain is a signatory to international copyright law, and since Mr. Monbiot is an employee of the Guardian – – I believe that the Guardian is legally liable for intentional infringement.”
You are a hero for your careful, courageous work, generosity, and your tenacity.
Maybe you and this guy can have a beer at the White House and sort it out with Obama
This particular Sinclair is a personally repulsive creature. But the statement about the unimportance of the choice of 70 stations – with this huge accuracy – shows a complete lack of his statistical intuition.
When we look at different years, and I am just using a choice of 80 K*** stations in WeatherData[] of Mathematica, the annual mean temperature in each station oscillates plus minus 1 °C or so, between 1950 and 2008.
Now, about 1/2 of these fluctuations may be attributed to a shared U.S. (or regional) climate, while the remaining 1/2 is random, truly local noise. That’s still +-0.5 °C of local noise per station. By averaging over 70 “representative” stations, the noise decreases by sqrt(70), roughly 8 times, to +-0.06 °C. This 0.1 deg Fahrenheit is the estimate for the “unremovable” noise of the average of 70 stations.
The agreement of the two curves in his graph is already more accurate than that – a statistical impossibility, especially if one realizes that there is surely a correlation between the “class” of the station and characteristics of its graph (i.e. trend and variance).
The blue and red graph are only found matching because both of them are calculated from the same ensemble that is actually overwhelmingly dominated by the bad-class stations. None of these two curves is calculated from the reliable class 1,2 stations only.
I would love to draw the actual correct curve calculated exclusively from the 70 “good” stations but unfortunately most of them are not among the 17168 world station names offered by Mathematica.
I’ve been experimenting with trying to convince a true believer that there are troubling problems with the “science is settled” argument.
I’ll present a chart or story that would lead any thinking person to question what the truth really is or if it has even been discovered. You can see that for a few seconds it is working. There are doubts and concerns. But soon, there is a poll or opinion article that surfaces and all is well again in the climate doom and gloom world. Any concerns and doubts are forgotten and the true believers can return to their mindless devotion. Mr Sinclair’s video is serving its purpose. Getting the facts right is not one of them.
It is interesting. I can’t prove that God exists. I have faith.
They can’t prove AGW exists, they have faith and unfortunately AGW is their religion.
Faith has no part to play in settled science.
Hang in there Anthony!
Mr. Grandia has demonstrated that he’s not particularly attentive to copyright issues by proudly posting a copyright violation of a copyright violation. Mr. Watts was violated by the video creator, but his lawyer might have to figure out what kind of communication with Mr. Grandia would be proper. It’s messy enough dealing with one clear problem, but I don’t know what kind of legal issues might arise with third parties who entangle themselves in a copyright problem. Blog commentary about a publication is one thing, but reposting a copy of a publication is a different kind of behavior.
” considering the fact that Fox is one of the most popular stations in the States.” – Nevin
Do you have numbers to back that up? I call bull sh*t. Fox has half the viewers of any of the broadcast networks, and there are three of them. Figure it out. I see though that your state run (the govt does favors for supporters in the media, for example, the French govt getting a reporter a first rate apartment in a first class arondisment of Paris, which is common) media has done a fine job scaring you about Americans though.
Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals explains how to do Real Climate science.
i.e. leave off the evidence and attack the unbelievers in what ever program you are trying to push. Where they went wrong is that they forgot:
RULE 7: “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.”
I discuss the book and its rules here:
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2008/08/obama-be.html
The current attack on Anthony is a classic case of applying the rules.
And rule #7? Well the marks are wising up.
Thank the Maker science is so much simpler. No need for tactics. Just evidence.
There is only one Green Man.
http://www.thegreenmancostume.com/greenman.gif
Note copious arm waving.
“Managed to post on the Grauniad Monbigo”
Another of those who clearly deplore ad hominems 😉
This is soooooo much fun!
“On a personal note: I was disappointed to see you appear on Fox, Anthony, especially in that Glenn Beck Show. The way the news is reported at that station scares the shit out of me as a European. It is very bad advertising for the American people, considering the fact that Fox is one of the most popular stations in the States. I would never ever want to be associated with that warmongering corporate propaganda outlet. But then again, I would never want to be associated with something like the Heartland Institute either (especially considering the fact that I know people who suffer and have suffered greatly from tobacco). It was also very shocking for me to see how closely you and your surface station project seem to be tied to that organisation. Couldn’t you have done it without them? It would have raised the credibility of your project a lot (in my view), but I’ll wait and see what comes out of the project before jumping to conclusions.”
Are you for real?
It must be weird to run your life on other peoples’ opinions.
This sort “If you want my good opinion, you shouldn’t….” is a form of nagging that is somewhat demeaning.
Anthony: This can only do your reputation a power of good. The behaviour of the warmists shows them as being nothing but brainless hypocrites. Congratulations for your very moderate and sensible behaviour in the face of such provocation. Keep up the good work.
“Bizzaro land” indeed.
Thanks for sharing those little berserker gems. Makes me appreciative of the fact that this is a moderated blog where a certain degree of rationality and civility is maintained. Within that framework we can even see criticisms made of this blog and its posts. We’ve already seen or heard of how alarmist blogs & publications deal with criticism.
So, a special h/t and thanks to Anthony and volunteer mods for that little bit of extra work in maintaining this blog’s standards.
George Monbiot says that carbon [by which he means CO2, whether he knows it or not] sequestration is cheap and easy: click.
As the video shows, people like Monbiot live in their own echo chamber, a self-reinforcing bubble that encloses only like-thinking alarmists. They begin to believe even their wildest statements, because there are no opposing views allowed. As we have heard time after time from comments here, posts by skeptics are routinely censored from realclimate, Tamino, and the other alarmist sites.
This leads to ever more extreme views by the alarmist crowd — and they actually begin to believe crazy, easily debunked statement’s like Monbiot’s claim that it’s cheap and easy to sequester CO2. If it were cheap and easy, lots of companies would already be doing it, for public relations purposes if nothing else.
The great value of WUWT and other skeptic sites is the fact that real debate is encouraged, and opposing views are welcomed. But realclimate and its clones are clearly terrified of different points of view. Why? Because when true debate occurs, the truth begins to emerge. And the truth destroys the warmists’ argument.
If there is one thing that RC, Tamino, etc. are afraid of, it is the truth about their “CO2 causes runaway global warming” conjecture. That claim can not survive honest debate.
So the warmist sites bar skeptics’ comments, and become self-perpetuating echo chambers where people swallow their own propaganda, like Monbiot’s crazy assertion that burying billions of tons of CO2 is both cheap and easy.
ROM (04:06:58) :-the business of cults is to gather followers.The problem is they aren’t in the AGW cult. -The AGW cultists are screaming for windmills and solar in the Portland Or.area as of yesterday.Yet the East side of Oregon was merely warm.Cults die off when they lose followers.The AGW crowd is screaming because fewer people want to drink their Kool-Aid-so, now they are spiking it with MD 20-20 that,is attack
the person.Not the Data….
On a personal level,I endured something less extensive but nonetheless nasty, by writing a paper in support of the continued use of DDT-back in 1974-while in my fourth year of College.To this day there are still people that I knew then that will not talk to me.Not that I want to talk to them, either…
Hang in there,Anthony.It’s always darkest before the dawn…
Ah I see from this:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6370
that NOAA are being sneakier than I’d thought. Rather sneakier than GISS;
I assumed they their adjustment procedure adjusted the bad station data downwards, but apparently they have adjusted the good station data upwards, in the process adding 0.7 degrees F per century above that of the GISS record – and without making the raw data available. Shame. Every time I give someone the shadow of the doubt in this numbers game I’m disappointed.
bill (04:45:22) :
Posting up a screenshot of something copyrighted is an example of “fair use” under the copyright law. Not being a copyright lawyer, and not having nearly the experience Anthony does in the public use of copyrighted material, I will leave it to Anthony to distinguish his actions against Sinclair from Sinclair’s right to fair use of selected portions of Anthony’s copyrighted work. But it does seem clear to me, and ought to seem clear to any fair minded purpose, that Anthony’s objective was not to quash the video, but to see certain errors addressed or acknowledged. And that, in the war of ideas that has become the provenance of climate science and climate change, seems fair game to me.
This is confirmation that your work is making headway in the public.
Your letting the sun shine on the under handed tactics of those that don’t care if science supports AGW – they just want it to be true for their own benefit.
Now that you are making headway in the public, your scaring them and they attack you even more.
I take this as a good sign. Keep up the good work.
What I see is this:
Years ago, Anthony asked a question: Is there a problem with the siting of out land-based temperature stations? No one could give Anthony an answer validated with data. So Anthony set out to find the answer, validated with data. And here this guys is, mocking Anthony for seeking the scientific answer to a very valid question. Is that what we’ve become? Are you kidding me? Openly scorning those that seek the answers to scientific questions? In *this* country?!?!?
It’s childish, disgusting, and unprofessional. Mr. Sinclair should be ashamed of himself, but I’m sure he’s not….
You, sir, are a gentleman.
On a personal note: I was disappointed to see you appear on Fox, Anthony, especially in that Glenn Beck Show. The way the news is reported at that station scares the shit out of me as a European. It is very bad advertising for the American people,
If you don’t get Glenn Beck you don’t get a very large swath of American culture. We are not “used to be Europeans.” We (well many of us any way) are “don’t want to be Europeans.”
Anthony, rest assured that many people are backing away from AGW. Just about everyone in my circle of influence no longer buys into the nonsense. You are up against “the establishment,” so you can expect establishment fanboys to continue to attack you. These are people who do not have the strength to stand on their own.
I think the best thing about your blog is that I continually see crops of freedom oriented comments and statements. Many of the commenters here understand the trouble is governmental interference and intrusion. You yourself mentioned the “angst of the alarmosphere” over your work being private. Indeed, it is the entire reason the establishment hates blogs all together. They are private and outside the realm of government/corporate control. Or at least they started out being so. Regretfully these same antagonists are setting up their own blogs to try and capture the spirit of blogs such as WUWT (and others).
My expertise is not in the realm of weather or climate. I’m trained in the world of technology. But I must state that this is the best blog I know of. I check it regularly throughout the day and read just about every word written. Honestly I don’t know what I like better, the articles or the comments! You have certainly attracted a gaggle of interesting and intelligent thinkers (myself excluded, of course, for humility’s sake). This alone speaks to the content of your blog.
Your work is respected and appreciated. It is also of the utmost importance. Work on, my good man.
A debate with this ‘Greenman’ might be entertaining, and since he probably doesn’t have any hard-science chops, instructive to the ignorant camp-followers. Judging from the video clip above, Anthony would decimate him.
Anthony was right to point out to YouTube that this fellow was playing fast and loose with his copyrighted materials, and YouTube acted with appropriate caution by taking down the video. The usual cries of ‘censorship’ are laughable.
/Mr Lynn
First – they ignore you …
Next – they ridicule you …
Then they violently oppose you …
Then you win.
The first principle of sales says: “NEVER mention the competition´s name, because it will result 1st.in the arousal of curiosity and 2nd. in buying the “product”.
Well, this is it!, so, congratulations Anthony!
Nevin,
Looky how many people watch Fox News compared to the knob slobbering coverage of Obama on the major networks which have many times the viewers. Fox is the most popular *Cable* news network, which is like being the worlds tallest midget.
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/07/20/broadcast-and-cable-news-quarterly-ratings-through-june-2009/23107
Something less that 1% of the people in the US watch Fox News, yet somehow it is a major threat that Obama obsesses on.
This is so OT I don’t know if I should even go here. But I’ll give it a shot since it came up in a comment by some one who seems to understand the state of climate “science”.
Tobacco is an anti-depressant in which the dose can be finely titrated. It does cause cancer in those who smoke enough and who are genetically susceptible. There is another similar drug (an anti-depressant) out there which has anti-tumor properties. However, the US government made it illegal in 1937.
It is not just climate science which is ruled by propaganda and scare tactics. Another similarity of the situation of the drug I refer to with climate “science” is that alternative views are suppressed, shouted down, and research curtailed. That is slowly being rolled back.
The difficulty is that everyone doesn’t have enough time to research every claim of “science”. And at least for a time (sometimes a very long time) researchers can be bought.
The only way to go through the world is with a sceptics view. Or as journalist used to say: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”
Smokey: If it were cheap and easy, lots of companies would already be doing it, for public relations purposes if nothing else.
You are right!…It is very, but very easy, for example, wash CO2 gases with milk of lime….but…in order to make milk of lime, burning milled lime rock (calcium carbonate) is needed, burning fossil fuels or carbon and (surprise!) decomposing calcium carbonate (CaCO3) into CO2 !!! and CaO (calcium oxide).
This is, of course, stupid, as stupid are those who imagine it is possible to warm their feet with a bottle filled of hot air, instead of hot water; as stupid as saying that CO2 is up there in the sky acting as a barrier for re-irradiated heat, being CO2 heavier than the air…
Of course, all these myths are being repeated by the most pure and absolute laymen….so “forgive them as they do not know what they are doing”…to themselves.
JimB (03:30:01) Anthony, Hats off to you for your professionalism and perseverance through this long, strange trip. The value you bring to the table with your endeavours is incalculable.
h/t to YOU
Thanks for the words JimB, couldn’t have stated it better.
Allen63 (03:44:48) Are they liars or fools? I think the answer is the former, as they must consider others as the latter, thus becoming both themselves.
Lists of facts are not copyrightable http://articles.directorym.com/Fact_list_copyrighting-a952224.html
So I doubt the collected and collated data can be prevented from being used by anyone. The way it’s presented can be copyrighted, however.
The Desmogblog crowd is in full swing: in the Vancouver Sun, PR Hoggan chairman of the Suzuki Foundation is attacking the Plimer book in usual fashion -big oil type- and now one of their journacolytes is playing disinformation with Anthony’s work. Obviously as self appointed guardian of the faith, they can’t handle the truth…
>Fox is one of the most popular stations in the States. I would never ever want
> to be associated with that warmongering corporate propaganda outlet.
Probably means – ‘most popular cable stations’.
Still it was the morning show, Fox and Friends, that pulled off this great bit of interviewing…
—————–
On Fox News Channel’s Fox and Friends, co-anchor Steve Doocy talked with Obama Administration Energy Czar Carol Browner:
STEVE DOOCY: “[I] know the bill is over 1,000 pages long. Have you have read it?”
CAROL BROWNER: “Oh, I’m very familiar with this bill.”
DOOCY: “Have you read it?”
BROWNER: “We have obviously been watching this for a very long time. I am very …”
DOOCY: “I’m sure you’ve got an idea of it, but you have read it?”
BROWNER: “I’ve read major portions of it, absolutely.”
DOOCY: “So the answer no you haven’t read it. But you’ve read a big chunk of it.”
BROWNER: “No, no, no that’s not fair. That’s absolutely not fair.”
DOOCY: “No, I’m just asking you if you read the thousand pages.”
BROWNER: “I’ve read vast portions of it.”
DOOCY: “Ok.”
— Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” 6/29/09
Here we see yet more evidence that fascism is more an irrational state of mind based on resentments than a coherent political philosophy. Extreme environmentalism has become a cult that is destroying scientific inquiry and earnest political debate in its pursuit of authoritarian power over the economic engines of the West.
The fact is that Anthony is publicly pursuing a line of research that could undermine the entire foundation of the theory of AGW. Therefore it is imperative he be destroyed before the research is completed.
If the Grandia-posted vid is allowed to stand, then I must assume the copyright issue is a lame duck and Watts reasons for taking down the Sinclair vid is something else.
If the good stations are compared against the raw data, then we will discover that there will be significant differences in the temp series. But that is already known, has long been known, and has been corrected (homogenised) to account for various biases.
The real test of the US temp record is the comparison of that adjusted time series to that of Watts’ good stations. If there is no difference, I think Anthony Watts still will have done a great service – of confirming the formal record. But I’m not sure why there has been all this snarky carry on all this time about siting and other problems when this has been known and accounted for for years and years – since well before surface stations started documenting weather stations (with dedicated helpers). So much of the posting here and there implies disrepute to the NCDC (and others), that one can hardly blame Sinclair for his approach – neither is good, but pots and kettles shouldn’t throw stones at each other (we have a knack for mangling metaphors where I live – it’s almost an art form 🙂 ).
Mr Watts. I’ve read that you promised an update to the good-station time series when 75% of the network has been assessed. We’re now over 80%. Will there be an update soon?
REPLY: Thanks for pointing that out. Actually the analysis started a couple of weeks back, and papers are being prepared. Unfortunately most journals require that the work not be previously published, so WUWT will be second to publication. – Anthony
geoffchambers (01:15:31) :
PS Actually, it would be brilliant if Alan ( Anthony) himself could comment on the Monbiot Guardian article.
I do not think so…let the dogs bark! .BTW: As The Quijote said: “Dogs are barking, it means we are going forward”
Well done Anthony,
I don’t know how you can handle that kind of attacks and not have your blood boil over.
Maintain the high ground, and keep up the great work
All the best,
Darth PWL
lol, I was thinking the same thing. How long before they photoshop Anthony’s picture in a Darth Vader helmet & call him Darth Watts? And the rest of us Storm Troopers?
I thought you handled this quite well, Anthony. Even if they foam at the mouth because they’re too far gone into the green and are beyond all reason, it wasn’t worth stooping to their level on this one.
Give them some more rope, Anthony. Stay on the high road, as I am sure you intend to do. What Sinclair is trained to do is to indoctrinate those who are weak minded enough to not ask the hard questions, as he has been. Mainly youth, who think that complex issues can be addressed with “sound bytes”. I have also noticed a lot more activity from the warmers on this site. Desperate times lead to desperate measures. Time wounds all heels.
M. SImon:
I always suspected that the CAGWers had a play book and Alinsky wrote it.
Alinsky certainly provides an insight into the tactics. As to the mind-set, I was recently reading up on the Alger Hiss story and came across this intriguing but disturbing quotation from American Communist Party Manual on Organization (circa 1930s):
” We do not question the theory of the necessity for the forceful overthrow of capitalism, We do not question the correctness of the revolutionary theory of class struggle laid down by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. We do not question the counter-revolutionary nature of Trotskyism.
We do not question the political correctness of the decisions, resolutions, etc., of the Executive Committee of the Communist International of the convention of the Party, or the Central Committee after they are ratified.” (emphasis added)
We do not question CAGW!!
Note the issue is not the object, but the mindset represented by the verb phrase.
The beauty of all of this is that the more the Warmists resort to defamation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation
the more the general populace is becoming dismissive of them. Ad hominems are the shelter of the weak. When you can’t effectively argue the argument you argue the arguer.
Burch Seymour (08:25:32) : About climate and other zar/commisars:
http://mat-rodina.blogspot.com/2009/07/czar-you-mean-commissar.html
Here’s a farmers take on the carbon, AGW, etc. business: http://www.american.com/archive/2009/july/the-omnivore2019s-delusion-against-the-agri-intellectuals
Partial excerpt:
“Norman Borlaug, founder of the green revolution, estimates that the amount of nitrogen available naturally would only support a worldwide population of 4 billion souls or so. He further remarks that we would need another 5 billion cows to produce enough manure to fertilize our present crops with “natural” fertilizer. That would play havoc with global warming. And cows do not produce nitrogen from the air, but only from the forages they eat, so to produce more manure we will have to plant more forages. Most of the critics of industrial farming maintain the contradictory positions that we should increase the use of manure as a fertilizer, and decrease our consumption of meat. Pollan would solve the problem with cover crops, planted after the corn crop is harvested, and with mandatory composting. Pollan should talk to some actual farmers before he presumes to advise a president.
Pollan tells of flying over the upper Midwest in the winter, and seeing the black, fallow soil. I suppose one sees what one wants to see, but we have not had the kind of tillage implement on our farm that would produce black soil in nearly 20 years. Pollan would provide our nitrogen by planting those black fields to nitrogen-producing cover crops after the cash crops are harvested. This is a fine plan, one that farmers have known about for generations. And sometimes it would even work. But not last year, as we finished harvest in November in a freezing rain. It is hard to think of a legume that would have done its thing between then and corn planting time. Plants do not grow very well in freezing weather, a fact that would evidently surprise Pollan.
And even if we could have gotten a legume established last fall, it would not have fixed any nitrogen before planting time. We used to plant corn in late May, plowing down our green manure and killing the first flush of weeds. But that meant the corn would enter its crucial growing period during the hottest, driest parts of the summer, and that soil erosion would be increased because the land was bare during drenching spring rains. Now we plant in early April, best utilizing our spring rains, and ensuring that pollination occurs before the dog days of August.
A few other problems come to mind. The last time I planted a cover crop, the clover provided a perfect habitat in early spring for bugs, bugs that I had to kill with an insecticide. We do not normally apply insecticides, but we did that year. Of course, you can provide nitrogen with legumes by using a longer crop rotation, growing clover one year and corn the next. But that uses twice as much water to produce a corn crop, and takes twice as much land to produce the same number of bushels. We are producing twice the food we did in 1960 on less land, and commercial nitrogen is one of the main reasons why. It may be that we decide we would rather spend land and water than energy, but Pollan never mentions that we are faced with that choice.
His other grand idea is mandatory household composting, with the compost delivered to farmers free of charge. Why not? Compost is a valuable soil amendment, and if somebody else is paying to deliver it to my farm, then bring it on. But it will not do much to solve the nitrogen problem. Household compost has somewhere between 1 and 5 percent nitrogen, and not all that nitrogen is available to crops the first year. Presently, we are applying about 150 pounds of nitrogen per acre to corn, and crediting about 40 pounds per acre from the preceding years soybean crop. Let’s assume a 5 percent nitrogen rate, or about 100 pounds of nitrogen per ton of compost. That would require 3,000 pounds of compost per acre. Or about 150,000 tons for the corn raised in our county. The average truck carries about 20 tons. Picture 7,500 trucks traveling from New York City to our small county here in the Midwest, delivering compost. Five million truckloads to fertilize the country’s corn crop. Now, that would be a carbon footprint!”
Anthony’s Surface Stations project will be out later this fall. We will then have a chance to see for ourselves what the study reveals.
SInclair and NCDC are simply preparing their people for the storm that will ensue if the data show their product is compromised by the bad stations.
It may not be an honorable mission for a public scientific body, but NCDC is made up of people with egos and personal beliefs they think are being attacked.
Sinclair is just a typical enviro whose worldview is set in stone – facts mean nothing to him.
I look forward to the release of the final Surface Stations report. Until then my mind is open.
It is clear from the video that this character wishes to see himself as a hero. His comment about big changes coming are part of his fantasy. As such, his entire belief system follows that track.
Clearly, if solar technology was ready to solve the world’s energy problems it would be adopted everywhere. So, it’s unlikely his fantasy world will come about in just a few years as he indicated. I see some great disappointments awaiting Mr. Sinclair.
Months and months ago I posted questions to Mr. Sinclairs videos asking fair but tough questions looking for his explanation to certain climate data that did not match up with his views. None of my questions ever showed in the comments so I emailed him direct and asked why that was and he blamed it on my browser. I told him I have never had a problem posting comments to any other videos and he could not give me an answer.
Yea, ok.
On the copyright issue:
I assume the copyright to the published book on the temperature record has been registered. If not, you still own the copyright, but acting on infringements would be expensive as you would be unable to recover legal costs and statutory damages would be unavailable to you. If it is not registered, do so NOW. It’s $40 and well worth it.
The next issue is parody. If the offender’s piece can be construed as parody, you have no copyright case. Parody is one of the most staunchly defended forms of free speech when it comes to copyrights. But it is a tricky area. Your work must be the subject of the parody (not using your work to parody something else) and your work must have been easily recognizable by the public to rise to the parody test.
The next issue is slander. There are times when the motivation of the infringer is to do damage to one’s reputation which rises to defamation and slander.
If you are clear on the copyright matters, a slap down of this clown may be in order.
Douglas DC (07:21:12) :
ROM (04:06:58) :-the business of cults is to gather followers.The problem is they aren’t in the AGW cult. –
Cult? The AGW cult, is this not all about whining about ad hominems, I thought this was supposed to be full of people above that
😉
When I first read the Surface stations document I was wholly skeptical. As should anyone who reads any document which proclaims, well, anything. Even if you agree with the conclusion.
You stance should always be “Ok, that’s your conclusion, demonstrate to me how you came to that conclusion”.
I found Anthonys document to be wholly reasonable, if not necessarily conclusive that the surface temparature measurements are completely useless (which is the straw man that some AGW proponents build), but is an unreliable indicator of surface temperature.
This is a prime example of an ignoramus simply attacking the writer of a document because it goes against their belief. The farcical thing is that a national organization attempted to refute the surfacestations.org result, and simply ended up saying that “The temperatures we measured are correct because we measured the temperatures”. Its not surprising no-one wanted to put their name to it.
Indeed, I believe that there are many people [within NOAA] who know of this issue, but the data and results have been used so extensively to make political and economic decisions, that to volunteer such knowledge is certainly ‘above their pay grade’.
All you need to know about George Monbiot is that he is the co-founder of Britain’s official Marxist-Islamist party (and they called it Respect!). It’s other co-founder was none other than George Galloway, who is so deceitful, authoritarian and treacherous he makes Satan look like God’s favourite girlfriend.
Personally, I’d take any and all action to defend my copy right if I were you. They either respect the law or they don’t.
Once they understand, should they persist, then they’re immoral lawbreakers.
But that’s just.
Sinclair’s offer to rent the room for the debate is an offer to pack the room with his supporters. Beware overconfidence. Being right scientifically is not enough.
Ultimately, history will judge and the bad behavior of the alarmists is being recorded in perfect detail. The more they cheat and insult and lie, the worse it will be for them in the long run.
Anthony writes like he’s taking the long view and knows that history is watching. There’s a word for that — professionalism.
You always stay above the fray.
Sylvia (07:36:05) :
You, sir, are a gentleman.
Ditto.
Burch Seymour (08:25:32) : “…. DOOCY: “Have you read it?”….”
Great find, ROTFL, it is just so typical.
Congressmen are paid by the tax payers to represent their interest but most do not even bother to read what they vote on despite that being their primary duty as representatives of the citizens. However the citizen is expected to read, understand and obey all the laws and regulations (billions of pages???) that are in effect since ignorance of the law is not considered an adequate excuse for breaking the law.
Isn’t it about time Congress and the states started taking laws off the books so citizens have at least a chance of understanding and obeying them. I am sure that most adults by the time they are 30 have broken many laws and regs. For example in MA it is illegal to place in your compose pile anything that did not originate on you land. Placing store bought carrot peelings in your compose pile is illegal! (As of 1993) Or in South Dakota “If there are more than 5 Native Americans on your property you may shoot them.” http://www.dumblaws.com/laws/united-states/south-dakota
Before you vote for a congress-critter in the next election find out if they have bothered to read ALL the laws they voted on. Just a Yes or No answer no spin allowed. That should be the first duty of every voter.
Fantastic post Anthony.
I wonder why the leftists fear surfacestations? What can possibly be so wrong about QC’ing thermometers. How is it possible that a QC check could be so dangerous that it is receiving these responses before it has published it’s findings?
I hope people realize just how astoundingly disengenuous the reply form the NCDC was to Anthony’s project. These guys know the homoginization insures that you’re comparing the same data with itself, ask yourselves why take the time to reply with blatantly false math!!!!! Again.
The other shoe, coming soon to a theater near you.
I’ve done a post on a similar topic which relates to RC’s censorship of comments. It’s been discussed a bit on Lucia’s thread recently and now on RC.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/rc-censors/
I’m surprised the Warmist Cult Priests all don’t walk around with a sign saying “The End is Nigh, Repent Carbon Sinners, Repent”
Few understand the idea of censorship and free speech in the manner Anthony expressed as these “protections involve state infringement.” When it is explained to them, they may listen awhile and then say “Yeah, but . . . ” There should be an award for well-meaning people who try to explain things to fools!
This has been a fascinating morning read. The thing worse than being noticed is not being noticed. I predict there will be a step-up in the hits to WUWT.
Also, comes the news that the “cash for clunkers” project has spiraled out of control. Hang your head if you didn’t see that coming.
The Sinclairs of Argyllshire call themselves Clann-na-Cearda or the Children of the craft or trade.
Unfortunately this one is not a good practitioner of his chosen trade.
News flash
On newsbusters video, the cause of global warming is the Democrats pants on fire
Patrik (02:05:39) :
Also – has this guy really had his stuff peer reviewed? 😉
I think that you have a typo there, a spurious “r” at the end of peer.
Anthony, your cautious and detailed account is a lesson in due diligence but for many people it seems that what we witness here and in so many places it the total abolition of what used to be known as Attention Span. The ability to engage and focus in on the actual detail has been supplanted with a surging need to ricochet off every possible nuance, closely related or otherwise and then proclaim in the negative in the misguided belief that this is where the debate actually is and not back at the science or whatever. Maybe I give them too much credit. 🙂
An OT example, I read the following account yesterday via drudge, a person going about their daily business was public spirited enough to respond to a request to call law enforcement, because the story itself became a cause celebre for many pointless angsters she has been vilified simply because of being there and doing what we would in such circumstance hope she would have done but in doing so becoming a coat hanger for the dross that passes as discourse these days in too many places.
Rant mode off for a few minutes. 🙂
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/25592.html
There are new polls out that show ever greater numbers of Americans now view climate as more caused by natural forces than caused by man. The average Joe can see the obvious. The Sun, Oceans, Currents, Winds, Volcanoes, etc. and all of their complex interactions dwarf mankind. A huge percentage of the earth is essentially uninhabited by man.
The realization that they are losing is setting in, so they are flailing accordingly.
“Is this Green Man the same guy? Inquiring minds want to know.”
Some do, indeed, but this particular inquiring mind doesn’t give a flying owl hoot who he is.
Most posters here who are naysaying Anthony’s action in this matter on legal grounds are misinformed to some degree regarding copyright law. I’ve read up on it while investigating formal copyright of three diverse items, and it’s not as simple as they allege, nor is it entirely clear-cut. Lack of profit motive, for one thing, is not a safe detour around copyright.
And well, lets face it, he got the facts wrong about the project and never contacted or interviewed me to get any facts from my side (more on that later). So it could hardly be defined as “journalism”
No, this is what they want the definition of “journalism” to be. How many time have we heard some warmers, including Gavin and Mann BTW, complain that modern journalism is failing on this issue BECAUSE they sometimes include alternative POV’s that challenges theirs. George Monbiot has practically made a career as a journalist being completely one sided. I have no problem with it if that is where your passions lie, and that is the type of journalist you want to be. But they advocate that all journalism must be of one voice on this particular topic. FAIL.
This little documentary is propaganda pure and simple.
You cannot compare the “adjusted-to-the-average” good sites with the “adjusted-to-the-average” bad sites. Especially when the “average” is a poor overall rating of 4.2. I think Steve M. even showed that GISS lower 48 data is better than the NOAA’s (and GISS lower 48 temps have hardly increased at all – 2008 was even 0.41C lower than 1900).
Anyone who would have spent this amount of time making the documentary and checking into it would have known these facts (and so should have the NOAA). So, the documentary is clearly disingenious/___ .
[just noting there is a legit John V – I checked into it awhile ago.]
theduke (08:28:45) :
Yes. I agree. It will get much worse for Anthony I fear.
A Second Dear Mr. Watts –
You are far greater the gentleman than Mr. Grandia or Mr. Monbiot. Given their actions, you had every legal right to file suit – and it would have been a slam-dunk. But, instead you said this – which I missed on first reading.
“So much for my “censorship”, feel free to view it. You see, I’ve had lots of angry criticism in the last two years, this is nothing new, so I’m not really concerned about the criticisms.”
I am confident that your position and the manner in which you conduct yourself will prevail. I may disagree with you on the issues, but I could not agree with you more on how you have handled this.
Kudos!
J
All I can say is: “Please don’t poop on my copyright!”
pwl (05:52:41) : “OOPS…”
They teach you never to say that in medical school.
“…wouldn’t you know it, a proof reading mistake caught after hitting submit….”
Never look back, that’s my motto.
“…I’m a fallible human after all; at least I can admit a mistake and correct it. – pwl”
Hey, this is the Internerdt. You were close enuf the first time. We knew whatcha meant. Press on, irregardless (sic).
Anthony, I love your site and visit it daily, but I’m a bit skeptical in this matter. I simply can’t believe you thought this fellow was a college student. His video wasn’t at all bad by YouTube standards (presentation, not content), and his voice sounds nothing like a student’s. That and the condescending tone you put behind your purported noble intent comes across as a bit disingenuous and it undermines you. I don’t think for a moment you intended to help this guy out; my not very scientific, and too well-fed gut tells me you had an all-too-human moment of weak character and pulled the trigger prematurely on the DMCA claim before thinking of the political repercussions.
That said, Peter’s movie did lean typically hard on the tobacco association crutch I’ve seen so many times. It’s a fine example of an ad hominem, but I assume to those who rely on it, the point is to demonstrate a lack of credibility. In this case, I found myself wondering what the Heartland Institute’s position was regarding tobacco. Peter’s video made me think they’d asserted smoking wasn’t dangerous, but HI could just as easily have been promoting scientific data minimizing second-hand smoke dangers or supporting tobacco farmers.
Speaking of ad hominems, I find it disturbing how much effort the environmentalist/global warming crowd pours into collecting data on individuals opposed to their agenda. There’s an almost Stazi-esque obsession with assembling dossiers on their opponents — need to find something wrong with one argument that can then be used to smear every successive argument. Maybe the “deniers” do the same thing, but it’s the “warmers” who frequently fall back on the tired, “X said something supporting your view? Well, did you know X also said something wrong once, or is a known associate of the nefarious Y?”
Thanks for this great article, Anthony. Absolutely hilarious. You can’t make this stuff up!
Oh wait, they are… 🙂
I once had a contract cleaning & estimating missing temperature data for a regional network. To say it was a messy job would be a serious understatement.
I have looked into the details of the homogenization methods used in Canada. People may be trying their best to wrestle with a very difficult problem, but there is no escaping the fact that there are substantive issues with homogenized data. Without the raw data, any important log notes, and detailed information on processing there is no guarantee that a careful analyst can draw sensible conclusions in research based on homogenized data. This is tricky business.
It is a slippery slope towards data corruption.
Heh. It seems that the attacks on Anthony have been ratcheted up to the Sarah Palin level. Surely this is evidence that Anthony has struck a nerve, and threatened the implementation of the solutions to their imagined crisis. In other words, they believe that Anthony must be taken out by whatever means deemed necessary.
Here’s a new post on a blog that calls Anthony “scientifically illiterate”, and calls Surface Stations Project a “silly initiative”.
http://one-blue-marble.com/blog/2009/07/30/anthony-watts-wins-the-double-dumb-ass-award/
I think it is terrible that NCDC etc are not applauding your efforts to improve the integrity of their datasets, regardless of whether they feel that the quality of the records affects the outcome of their research. What downside could possibly exist to ensuring high quality data? The only answer I can come up with is that the issue is politicized, and/or they have something to hide.
I wonder, how long will it take for the words “Sinclair” and/or “Grandia” to become synonymous with “cheap hack”.
How do you know when you are opver the target hot zone?
Anthony, there was also a mention of you at Climateprogress.org on a July 29th posting.
Anthony
Any chance of an update on the database.
I started downloading all the data for your grade 1 and 2 stations, then realised that the list of checked station was not complete.
You can email or update your website
Thanks
Anthony, another great post! Love the detail posting of what you encountered and what you did! I too, feel you should debate this Mr. Sinclair! I would also like to see Joanne Nova with you. She is awesome, but there are many others also…I feel if he did something wrong in copyright infringement, go after him…maybe “other” people will take notice! Another thing, I can ONLY imagine the amount of “Negative” email you receive in one day! It’s got to be alot!
This week it became known that the Dutch heir to to throne together with his family went (this week) for a winters Holiday to a skiing resort in Argentina. Up to this there is nothing wrong with that, apart from the fact it is a bit peculiar because it is the summer season in his own personal royalty.
The silly thing is that last January he was on the Southpole together with his wife investigating the serious impact of GW. I can imagine he likes cooler weather, but hey let’s give this guy a break!
A list of measures (considered facts), such as you can get from many website download, is not copyrightable. If it is offered, you don’t need permission to use it. Once you have the list, the table you create, the graph you create, the article you create, the book you create that uses this data, is copyrightable. When Anthony publishes the raw data in list format, others can and should use it to replicate his study. The only way this can be altered is to keep it private and choose who to send it to. However, if the recipient then publishes the raw data list, it is out in the public domain for anyone to use without permission.
Just thought Anthony and the other folks here might want to know…
There is an editing war going on over at Wiki right now concerning Anthony.
In the last…oh, 45 mins I’ve seen the page change 5 times.
BTW, apparently anyone linking anthony’s rebuttal page in an editing is automatically reverted. I know, I tried.
Here’s the message I got:
“July 2009,
Your edit here was reverted by an automated bot that attempts to remove unwanted links and spam from Wikipedia. The external link you added or changed is on my list of links to remove and probably shouldn’t be included in Wikipedia. The external links I reverted were matching the following regex rule(s): \bwordpress\.com (links: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/ncdc_response-v2.pdf).”
Interesting.
Doc
Anyone who’s been involved in blogs (and Youtube is a blog, just like all the rest), knows you are wasting your energy chasing anonymous phantom commenters. You use the tools of deletion with effect.
Let me amplify on that.
I have two blogs (one I’m a co blogger). One gets about 500 eyeballs a day. The other about 4,000. Every now and then I check referrer logs. Roughly 1/2 the traffic for each comes from search engines.
Even if Anthony is doing much better than that (3/4 regular traffic) there will be replacement eye-balls to more than make up for any lost.
M.A.DeLuca said, “Speaking of ad hominems, I find it disturbing how much effort the environmentalist/global warming crowd pours into collecting data on individuals opposed to their agenda. There’s an almost Stazi-esque obsession with assembling dossiers on their opponents….”
Stazi-esque, indeed. If you are ever unsure what side to take, look for these tactics. Then oppose that side as the one that advocates increased State control and reduced individual freedom. I’ve found this approach to be quite reliable.
More comedy from Answers.com
http://fr.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080417084654AADbHc4
So to answer your question I think that Watts is an idiot to go along with the oil industry coverup. Hopefully people like him will eventually be tried in Neuremburg-style courts for their crimes against humanity. It will be too late by then of course, but the people responsible for misinforming everyone else and delaying world understanding and response are essentially committing genocide, and definitely should be held accountable for their actions.
The evidence against them will continue to pile up over the next few decades. It’s only a matter of time before they’re brought to justice.
I must protest. It’s one thing to go into the usual fanatic rant against thoughtcrime and alleged inevitable future genocide, coupled with entreaties to bring the miscreants to harsh but righteous international justice. (Ho-hum.)
But such blatant poor usage of the word “hopefully” is something up with which I shall not put!
evanmjones (13:00:49) :
people like him will eventually be tried in Neuremburg-style courts for their crimes against humanity
That court already exists: It is the INTERNATIONAL CRMINAL COURT
http://www.icc-cpi.int/Menus/ICC?lan=en-GB
See, also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_International_Criminal_Court
Doc_Navy,
That’ll be Connolly at work presumably.
Wikipedia could be one of the greatest potential sources of information on the internet provided it was dealt with honestly and objectively. I wonder if the AGW cultists realise just what damage they are damming up for their cause.
Anthony — Can I add my congratulations to all the others. At this rate we’ll soon have a consensus!
I thoroughly enjoyed your tale of Don Quixote environmental leftism and may God grant you mercy for the idiocy you must bear.
Gore Lied (11:00:59) :
http://one-blue-marble.com/blog/2009/07/30/anthony-watts-wins-the-double-dumb-ass-award/
The juxtaposition between “Richard’s” writing on One Blue Marble and Anthony’s writing above provides a perfect example of why the Warmists are losing in the battle of blogosphere. Unless one has drunk several pitchers of the Warmist’s Kool-Aid, the writing on One Blue Marble is obvious childish blather. Here’s smattering:
Double Dumb Ass, scientifically-illiterate, silly, a buffoon, no more credibility than a conspiracy buff who thinks the moon landing was faked, pleasure in belittling his lack of education, doesn’t even understand the science he’s attempting to refute, doesn’t even understand how ridiculous he sounds, a con man, a snake oil salesman.
I encourage Richard to continue sharing his pearls of wisdom. People like him are the reason that the momentum has swung to the skeptics’ side.
That previous post was by accident. I wish it were possible to delete it.
I enjoyed your article. The statement: “. . . but Not ONE of those embracing it show the remotes interest in questioning . . .” may have some errors. The word “remotes” doesn’t seem to fit, and I’m not sure you intended to capitalize “Not.”
Jim
Reply: Previous post deleted and corrections made. ~ charles the moderator
Lubos Motl your comment at (06:46:55) was very informative… and educational… I too would like to see such an analysis and any others that you or Anthony or others can come up with that are cogent.
Thanks for the full frank informative description of the background to this, I must admit to first hearing about from the Guardian CiF Monbiot article. He has a powerful polemical style which can inspire some people but to me he is a bit of a shrill one note voice, however I see how it has been spun and played out.
The Monbiot Guardian CiF article is pretty risible, making out Mr Watts was “using US law” to silence his critics, with all the obvious implications that construction poses to some of the regular readers there.
Maybe Mr Watts should ask to post a reply on CIF?
Sinclair will never debate — unless the debate is arranged so he has a big advantage [a True Believer audience, interruptions condoned, pro-AGW cheering section, etc.]
Anthony should accept the debate challenge, then set the parameters in order to claim the moral and ethical high ground:
Neutral venue such as a university, from an agreed list of venues, then chosen by lot. Debate moderator to be mutually agree upon; moderator must be experienced in moderating debates, and have an impeccable reputation for being impartial.
Anthony should respond to the challenge by issuing the specific debate question. The moderator should keep all comments on track. Points deducted for ad hominem, appeals to authority, red herring, argumentum ad ignorantiam, etc. Facts are what matter, not personalities.
Debate according to formal debate rules, with each side’s microphone(s) switched off while the other person is speaking. No camera shots of anyone who is not currently speaking [no making faces, etc.] Following the debate, no one may use portions of the debate without the other party’s concurrence. Use the full, unedited debate; don’t cherry pick the parts for partisan propaganda, unless the other side agrees in advance.
Strict time limits. Microphone cut off when speaker’s time is up.
Audience to be selected 50/50 by each side. Preferably in another room, watching by closed circuit TV. Seating to be assigned at random, to avoid one side packing the front rows. The Peanut Gallery should have no influence on the debate.
Propose that each side should have three debaters. This isn’t a personality competition targeting Anthony; the purpose of a debate is to debate a specific question. Each side to choose their own team. One side may not decide who their opponents will be allowed to field.
The debate rules should be as neutral as possible. No shenanigans. When one party was challenged to a duel in old timey days, the challenged party chose the weapons. Anthony has been challenged, therefore he should have the option of setting the venue, the debate rules and the question to be debated.
Accepting the challenge under the above conditions will surely cause Sinclair to chicken out. He knows that in past climate debates the alarmist side has always lost the debate.
By setting rules that everyone will understand are fair to both sides, Sinclair will be seen as chickening out when he objects to the rules specified. Fine. Let him chicken out [or better, let him debate under Anthony’s debate rules].
Sinclair’s video hit piece was the sneak attack of a coward. His attempt to game the process with a self-serving venue and lax rules will be no different. A coward is a coward. Call his bluff — on your terms, Anthony.
Appalling!
“to go along with the oil industry coverup”
Hehe, I believe environmentalists who oppose nuclear power are really coal company shills designed to force the building of more coal plants by preventing the building of nuclear plants.
/sarc
Smokey (13:58:01) :
This time I can not agree with your proposal.
The only one to debate is Al Gore and not one of his apparatchiks.
The scientific consensus is crumbling now and we don’t need to descend to their lowest levels.
“M.A.DeLuca (10:46:55) :
Anthony, I love your site and visit it daily, but I’m a bit skeptical in this matter. I simply can’t believe you thought this fellow was a college student.”
I always believed he was a college student and still refer to him as such because his videos come across with a similar style and narration as 9/11 conspiracy videos on youtube such as Loose Change. It only takes an impressionable young person with no knowledge of engineering, chemistry, etc (science in general) to watch those videos and believe what they see and hear. To learn that a mature adult is behind those videos is staggering.
Smokey, a couple points. First, do you really think a university would be a neutral setting for your proposed debate?
As to the censure of inductive fallacies, let me suggest a Gallagherian approach. The comedian Gallagher once suggested supplying drivers with suction cup guns to shot flags reading “STUPID” at the cars of other drivers who cut them off or otherwise drove dangerously. If a driver accumulated enough STUPID flags he could be given a ticket for being an a**hole.
In the debate scenario I suggest that if a debater uses an inductive fallacy or other disallowed debating technique, the moderator shoots a STUPID flag at the offender’s podium. Ideally it would stick for all to see, especially the offender. After a debater earns a previously-decided number of STUPID flags, the debate would be ended and the opponent declared the victor, on the grounds that only losers resort to such tactics.
Jeff Id (09:35:06) : said
“”Fantastic post Anthony. I wonder why the leftists fear surfacestations?”” Jeff, you know better. 😉 This is not leftists versus rightists or liberals versus conservatives. I understand the humor of Anthony’s post. It is humorous to indulge in a bit of hoisting an opponent on his own petard. But keep in mind several who are reacting negative to IPCC and to some of the stances taken by acknowledged climate scientists are self-proclaimed liberals.
I would claim that bad science, methodology, or argument is not limited to one particular ideology.
evanmjones (13:00:49) :
More comedy from Answers.com
Ugh. That’s not comedy, it’s a horror flick.
******************************
lulo (11:02:46) :
I think it is terrible that NCDC etc are not applauding your efforts to improve the integrity of their datasets, regardless of whether they feel that the quality of the records affects the outcome of their research. What downside could possibly exist to ensuring high quality data? The only answer I can come up with is that the issue is politicized, and/or they have something to hide.
****************************************
“Everybody” knows that they have a magic AlGore-ithm and some fairy dust besides, that adjusts the data even though they don’t have the slightest idea what biases might exist in the adjusted data or the “other” data used to adjust it. It should be called the Three Card Monty AlGore-ithm.
Basil is correct. One does not need to be a lawyer in order to know the law. I haven’t watched the video, and have no intention of wasting my time by doing so, but don’t have the least doubt that the use of Anthony’s copyright is covered by ‘”fair use”. I’m very surprised, and disappointed, that so many here do not understand such simple law.
Substance is what counts no dodgy legalism
dorlomin (07:06:51) :
“Managed to post on the Grauniad Monbigo”
Another of those who clearly deplore ad hominems 😉
This is soooooo much fun!
Except you don’t even know where & why the Grauniad tag came about.
I used to know who as well, but it came about in ‘Private Eye’ & why was when the printed paper was the Manchester Guardian, the well known anagram as all readers at the time were experts at solving anagrams because of the typos.
DaveE.
Smokey (07:21:11) :
George Monbiot says that carbon [by which he means CO2, whether he knows it or not] sequestration is cheap and easy: click.
Actually, he’s right…
It is cheap and easy in HIS terms! In my terms, the loss of human life consequent to, leaving it where it is is an unacceptable price!
DaveE.
M. Simon (07:36:57) :
If you don’t get Glenn Beck you don’t get a very large swath of American culture. We are not “used to be Europeans.” We (well many of us any way) are “don’t want to be Europeans.”
As a British ‘subject’ I don’t blame you!
DaveE.
Neven (06:22:01) : The Surface Stations project was and is an all volunteer effort. Heartland just published Anthony’s report.
There is also a whole lot of other depressingly unintelligent political trash in what you wrote but I thought I point out that this “smear” is totally wrong.
It is PURE DISTORTION at the end of the video when it is suggested that skeptics are suggesting climate change is “not real”.
As for trying to link WUWT to a right-wing organization that promotes free-markets & tobacco: I’ve never even seen these things discussed here (and I sure hope I never do (!) as these topics are NOT EVEN REMOTELY within my sphere of interest).
WUWT is a place where people are interested in discussing the NATURAL factors affecting climate. People here are passionate about looking under every stone. The challenge of investigating the full complexity of nature is embraced.
I am an ecologist with a background in parks, outdoor recreation, and research on the natural environment. I have a reverence for plants & trees and have fought to protect parks & wilderness. I walk in the mountains and kayak the coast, pausing to watch the abundant wildlife which I regularly encounter. I’ve only used 8 tanks of gas in the past 2 years for my small car and I don’t even cause buses to pollute because I walk or paddle 95% of the time when I travel.
Climate change is real – and it occurs naturally. In recent years I have grown VERY concerned about the damage some people are doing to the credibility of both science and the environmental movement.
Sincerely,
Paul Vaughan
Ecologist, Natural-Climate Researcher, Parks & Wilderness Advocate
Hmmm. If links to Anthony’s rebuttal are automatically reverted in wikipedia I wonder if a link to a blog entry somewhere else that prominently featured a link to the rebuttal would suffer the same fate. At least it might force someone to go in and manually update the list of censured sites.
Dear Sandy and Geezer:
I didn’t see any response to your blogs. Probably because that is what they deserve. Sandy, you should know better that in science there is no guilt (or innocence) by association. Your opinion of Heartland has nothing to do with the scientific research on station placement. You convict yourself by your own nonsense. For you Mr Geezer, it seems to me you should take your own advice and get out of the specialist world of blog bites and spin doctoring. Mr Watts is quite capable of deciding what his role should be.
Two statements from the talking points leapt out at me.
“These stations adhere to all of the Global Climate Monitoring Principles and are located are located in areas free local human influences and have excellent site location characteristics. They are closely monitored and are subject to rigorous calibration procedures”
and
“Managers of both of these networks work diligently to locate stations in pristine areas where the site characteristics are unlikely to change
very much over the coming decades.”
I don’t think these statements are true.
John Egan (10:11:52) :
Respect to you too sir. We. may disagree but you’re a gentleman!
DaveE.
Come on folks that link was tossed because the wiki system itself blocked the wordpress reference in the domain name.
The wiki article on Anthony containing direct references to the domain of this blog are there and functional (including to this very article).
Having operated a fairly large web property incuding a spam targeted forum system I used many such automated rules. While wiki has its share of issues the automatic blocking of generic blog hosting domains from appearing isn’t really an issue.
The method used is a bit drastic but not unheard of. I would rel=nofollow them to stop the search engines from passing any ranking relevence until a moderater could review them. All external links on websites need to be continually monitored.
I won’t go into issues caused by the existance of more than one name fot the same web page.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who predicted that as the climate wheel turns, the AGW bretheren and sisteren(?) are going to get meaner and meaner before they finally die, go into hiding, change their names or disguise themselves as natural warmingiters or neo iceage cultists. Strangely, the killing blow would appear to be that the science was settled. With it settled, only one side was doing science and this chipped away at the settled science leaving them nowhere to go but on the attack. It will get worse, rise to a crescendo and 10 years from now their cause will morph into the horrors of an anthropomorphic ice age. We’ve seen several cycles of this kind of hysteria since the 19th century.
Curiousgeorge (08:42:29) :
Here’s a farmers take on the carbon, AGW, etc. business: http://www.american.com/archive/2009/july/the-omnivore2019s-delusion-against-the-agri-intellectuals
This is a bit of realism I can relate to and reaffirm.
1. The parties are each in a location with no “audience” and debate by webcam.
2. Two moderators are selected, they will be represented in the debates as sock puppets. The sock puppets will ask the questions.
Thats where I get stuck …
crosspatch (14:46:33) :
“to go along with the oil industry coverup”
Hehe, I believe environmentalists who oppose nuclear power are really coal company shills designed to force the building of more coal plants by preventing the building of nuclear plants.
/sarc
You may think it is sarcasm but it is not far from the truth. Various economic interests get hordes of useful idiots motivated to attack competing interests.
Thus you get “clean coal vs dirty nuclear”
and
“clean nuclear vs dirty coal”.
And ditto all that squared for solar and wind.
tarpon 11:15:33 “How do you know when you are over the target hot zone?”
Well done!
There is an old saying.. ” Never argue with an idiot, they will bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.”
Beyond the great articles, guest posts, and exceptional jury of commentors, one outstanding thing about his blog is the level of professionalism and civil decorum that is maintained. That is likewise being demonstrated as Anthony gets the Sara Palin treatment for trying to get more accurate data.
Staying above the fray and letting this go viral can only help the blog’s cause as people come, see, and like what goes on here.
I would claim that bad science, methodology, or argument is not limited to one particular ideology.
Absolutely. The left in America has its favored bad science and the right his its own. I’m not going to reprise arguments I made up thread as they are OT. But you can see that I’m an equal opportunity critic of bad science.
What bothers me is that there is so much.
If every person in America picked two or three areas where science intersected public policy and got into deep study of them we might eventually straighten some of this out. At least we would make doubt popular again.
The assiciation with Fox has caused some stir. As a former European I can understand this. I also always was under the impression that Fox was this rightwing biased and incorrect station. As far as I know however it doesn’t air anywhere in the EU. Anyway, yes, Beck is a noisy populist and frankly I hate populists regardless of their political side.
However when I actually moved to the US I kind of liked Fox. Yes, I’m rightwing myself, although not so much conservative, which helps, but I like e.g. O’Reilly. I know he’s rightwing too and it is one side of the story, but what’s wrong with that? If I want the leftwing side, I watch MSNBC. There they are for instance openly leftwing, ridiculling anything right.
Unlike Fox, MSNBC does air in several European countries. I never heard any complaints about objectivity on their broadcasting in Europe though. The reason is twofold. One, Europeans are on average much more leftwing then Americans. You whatch what you like to hear. Second, there are hardly any rightwing stations anywhere in Europe. And those that are named rightwing, are usually just kicking political correctness as a goal (which just happens to be leftwing there) unlike really being right or – as if often the case – are called rightwing simply because they focus on popular amusement-news instead of intellectual news.
Channels like Fox are simply something Europeans don’t have. And that’s sad, as in reality objective news doesn’t exists. News is always a presentation of facts, never the facts and every newsreporter will give his interpretation. That’s just how humans work. Ask 10 people about an event, and you’ll get 10 different stories. True objective news is being able to have right, left and anything else to all view and then make up your own mind.
So Watts association with Fox, is not so disturbing at all. More likely others won’t grant him an audience because they are biased against what he has to tell. Whether Fox is biased therefore doesn’t matter.
Anthony,
I do not, of course always agree with you, however, this is clearly a violation of copyright laws… it is also reprehensible when anyone from either “side,” misquotes, takes out of context, or utilizes older data as opposed to current. Good post here and you have every right to be upset here.
Anthony,
I believe the homogenization applied to the 70 CRN12 stations is to apply appropriate regional weightings rather than to somehow contaminate those records with stations outside those 70. E.g. if you have 10 stations on the West Coast and 60 stations on the East Coast, those 10 on the West Coast would have a stronger weighting, all things being equal, when calculating the temperature for the entire U.S. I recall a rather long discussion on the best way to handle this on CA back in the day when folks were looking at the initial results of Surface Stations. That said, I could be misinterpreting what NCDC means by homogenization in this case, so feel free to correct me if I am mistaken.
You do have a good point that the project is not finished, and that we should not draw conclusions too early (though whether the sample size is large enough to start analysis is open to debate). I look forward to seeing your version of the graphs comparing CRN12 stations to both CRN1-5 stations and GISS for the U.S.
REPLY: Thank you, work is in progress. – Anthony
We get Fox News here in on cable TV Thailand. I’m not a great fan of Glenn Beck’s style. I do like Bill O’Reilly and Laura Ingram for example.
In fact, I’ve seen young Thai guys doing Bill’s thing a few times: “Caution! You are now entering THE no spin zone!”
If only the AGW scam penny would drop with Bill…
There is no point in arguing with a fool, particularly a nasty, fanatical fool, unless your audience is sufficiently informed and capable to be able to distinguish truth from fiction.
Better in my view to set out your counter arguments and refutations clearly and simply on your own site and refer or link any queries to your articles.
Anthony,
Good stuff as usual. I would not bother debating Mr. Sinclair, if I were you, I see no point.
Clearly you are willing to accept criticism, warranted or otherwise, since there are a number of negative comments in this thread. Al Gore et al seem much less willing to allow other opinions to be expressed. Historically, that has been a tactic employed by many different movements. However, in the end, those movements have always failed
Anthony
Looking back at this episode, I think that there are several conclusions that we can draw:
– You are starting to have a measurable impact, i.e. in July there were 15 Google News references including your name and the word climate:
http://news.google.com/news?um=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=%22Anthony+Watts%22+climate
– The Warmists are very scared of the SurfaceStations study, which means that you are probably onto something big.
– The Warmists have no compunctions with using overt character assaults and defamation, but they are also so out of touch with reality that their assaults come across almost as comical, e.g. you’re a silly and ridiculous double crock buffoon who’s a mouthpiece for the tobacco industry. It seems almost cartoonish, like a South Park episode:
http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/103675
“I found myself wondering what the Heartland Institute’s position was regarding tobacco. Peter’s video made me think they’d asserted smoking wasn’t dangerous, but HI could just as easily have been promoting scientific data minimizing second-hand smoke dangers or supporting tobacco farmers.”
A few months ago I checked out Heartland’s website and it’s clear they are defending second-hand smoke. (I don’t know if they defended smoking itself in the past–I hope not.) I gather, from what I’ve read somewhere, that second-hand smoke is dangerous to persons who live with a smoker. It hasn’t been proven that it’s dangerous to persons with only intermittent contact with smokers, like fellow-patrons in bars and theaters.
The big political debate in recent years has been over laws that would outlaw smoking in such semi-public places on the basis of the dangers of second-hand smoke. When the advocates of such laws appeal to “the proven dangers of second-hand smoke” when all such studies show is the dangers to co-habitants of smokers, which I have read is the case, they’re equivocating. If all that Heartland is doing is pointing that out, then there’s nothing wrong with it, and Heartland’s critics are smearing it.
Amazing article
I believe the homogenization applied to the 70 CRN12 stations is to apply appropriate regional weightings rather than to somehow contaminate those records with stations outside those 70.
No. That’s just gridding.
Homogenization is indeed mixing in nearby stations. (Then the lot is pasteurized, but that’s a tale for another day.) Furthermore, the 70 stations have been carefully reviewed using newly available improved online maps. Some had to be reclassified. A large number of them (almost half) are located in airports, and must be excluded from the sample and treated as an entirely separate category.
And there have been many more stations rated since the the sample that NOAA is using.
There’s more, too, but all in good time. Much work in progress. Just be a little patient.
REPLY: When Evan says above that “some had to be reclassified” he means that we found the original rating to be in error as part of the quality control process. – Anthony
farmersteve (19:43:32), that was an excellent article.
The youtube video was so dull I have to admit I could not watch to the end but from the description above the attempted tobacco smear is somewhat ironic given that the Gores were/are(?) tobacco farmers.
Armin (20:22:21) : There seems to be some confusion among non-Americans as to what left/right means here. Beck is as far opposite the American definition of populist it isn’t even funny:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populist_Party_(United_States)
Note they are described as “Far Left”.
Bill O’Reilly is, if anything, the “noisy populist”-the only reason it looks otherwise is because for Beck, everything seems to be going against him these days. O’reilly is NOT “right-wing” at least by my definition, since he whines about “gouging” by oil companies (populist much?)-and last I checked he doesn’t question AGW and even sees it as a tool to screw “the Sheiks”…”Traditionalist” would be more accurate, but he cares not a lick about individual liberty, so hardly “right wing” in the American sense.
Roger Knights (21:46:41) : You miss the point-whether they have a position on Tobacco which people object to is irrelevant (and I personally believe my grandfather’s health suffered greatly from his cigar smoking-although he would have loved organizations like Heartland, because he loved his freedom to smoke and to due anything else and hated those dang “communists” running the government 😉 ) what matters are the facts. The fact is that the quality of the “climate monitoring network” that is supposed to be measuring AGW sucks royally. Does this effect the trends? I tend to think that in the US the effect will prove to be small, but outside the US the situation is extremely doubtful IMAO-if the US situation is any indication, the world’s network is going to be a huge mess. And we can see that the supposed warming is not 83 percent of the trend seen in the lower atmosphere by satellites, but is at least 100% if not more! Either models, theory, and El Ninos are all wrong about the relationship between temperature changes at the surface and at the atmosphere, or the surface data has too much warming due to various biases (If you are going to argue that satellites are wrong, well, why are they wrong? Without a physical reason, that’s arm-waving) It seems to me that Anthony is going to be vindicated, ultimately, in thinking that the surface data are biased. Heartland’s publishing his report has nothing to do with that.
In climatic timescales the whole thing is totally irrelevant. You can debate him until your hair turns purple. It won’t matter, most likely the earth will continue cooling for some time.. and then warm up and so on and on. These guys will just disappear. I would not bother. A valuable waste of your precious time and life
Aha Anthony, I think I’ve figured out your masterful plan.
This guy wants to debate. However let’s face it, currently he’s too small, too insignificant a fish to bother with. I mean, really why waste your time? Even if you did do a Moncton on him, you’d look like a bully.
So what you want to do is beef him up a bit. Put him in the news for a bit. Let him have the 15 minutes of fame he seems to grave. Make him a useful idiot for the Monbiot’s, and others who are too media smart to actually make a debate challenge themselves. Then after he’s got enough attention, and they’ve got the poor sap believing he’s some sort of champion of righteousness, accept his challenge, and finish him off.
Good plan.
Speaking of Monbiot and debates. Do you think a real world Monbiot versus Plimer could ever actually happen.
http://tinyurl.com/nf6hea
I’d love to see it.
Paul K, you may resubmit your comment as long as you do not use prohibited words.
They are striking out because their hockey stick model has been disproven. That should have been to AGW what warming was in the 70’s to the coming ice age. Let them flail about. We want to debate the big wigs like Gore et al, not some trench coat.
So you pulled his video for copyright because he challenged your pseudo science?
Face up to the challenge, your response is pathetic.
The weather stations you identified as good or best (i think that was your terminology) gave pretty much the same climate change graph. People like you, funded by conservative think tanks are not scientists. You are sell outs who have no respect for people, the planet, or objectivity in science.
The Monbiot article does allow Anthony the right to request a right of reply in the Guardian. I suggest that he pursues that.
On Corrupted data and Data Corrption by association
A couple of decades ago I was involved in assessing the “average state of the lower atmosphere” for the purposes of estimating its effects on the propagation of radio waves. I was paid by the US Taxpayer as the work was sponsored by the US Navy. However, as the climate data study was only incidental to a much larger issue — I think that I can be considered to have not been tainted.
My interest specifically concerned the oceans of the world. However, lacking enough pure ocean data I was forced to incorporate some data from islands (some are reasonably ocean-like) and even some coastal continental sites (I tried to restrict these to sharp narrow spits of land surrounded by ocean e.g. Cape Cod)
Moral of the story — the data varied in quality from OK (NOAA tethered buoys designed to collect the typesof data I was looking for — albeit with some systemaatic errotrs concerniong direct solar heating of the temperature and humidity sensor housing) to terrible (Urban Heat Island contaminated coastal data — (by definition if someone has bothered to collect a temperature record for a coastal location there has to be a fair-sized population near-by (e.g. Cape Cod)). The worst set of data was sea surface temperature collected by ships plying a limited number of well-worn sea-lanes. Whle some of this data wenty back to the time of Ben Franklin (he was a big sea-surface temperature-a-phile) most was from the late 1880’s and on. During this period shipping made the transition from sail to steam and temeprature collecting went from hauling a bucket on deck and sticking a thermometer in it — to looking at the guage in the engineroom for intake condeser water. All the while ships kept getting bigger and engine rooms kept moving lower — no-one bothered to note such details in the meta-data accompanying the temperature data sets however
Anyway as an overall observation — it was impossible to ascertain anything useful from the data unless a detailed investigation was made of the methadology associated with a particular data set — to do otherwise is to do BAD SCIENCE (honesty to yourself and to defraud your sponsor)
Mr. Watts — keep up your Good Work!
Some explanations and definitions of “good” weather here: http://www.dtnprogressivefarmer.com/dtnag/common/link.do?symbolicName=/ag/blogs/template1&blogHandle=editorsnotebook&blogEntryId=8a82c0bc22ad9a120122d1281b9601c7&showCommentsOverride=false
Mikey:
On James Delingpole’s blog at the Daily Telegraph – http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/authors/jamesdelingpole – the blog of a few days ago -“will Monbiot accept a debate?” posts a letter from GM and another from Prof. Plimer. They both accept but Monbiot will only debate in writing, while Plimer will only debate before an audience. (The blog is still up if you want to check it.) I somehow doubt that the debate will come off.
The You tube video is typical Gore-like linkage between climate change skeptics and the tobacco industry demons. Partly demolition of straw men and partly crude satire. Disclaimer: I don’t smoke, I am a physician. I don’t much care if Heartland is connected to the Tobacco industry. Let’s try to debate the scientific issues using facts, not innuendo about vast right wing conspiracies.
Mikey:
For some reason the link I gave you only gets you so far into the Telegraph system. Then you have to search “James Delingpole”, then click on his name again under “Search Results” then you’re on his page. The Monbiot blog is the second one down. Sorry about that, but I think you’ll find it’s worth it.
Jacob Mack (21:03:25) :
this is clearly a violation of copyright laws… it is also reprehensible when anyone from either “side,” misquotes, takes out of context, or utilizes older data as opposed to current.
1. Anthony published the book on the web some time ago. All data put on the web is in fact copyright. Most people ignore this. including Anthony.
2. There is no problem in copyright using small sections for critical review.
3. I requested some way back the updated database so I could independantly confirm Anthony’s criticism of the published graphs. He has not updated the database that has been created by members of the public on his behalf.
To mirror some of the comments against CRU. Is he hiding something?
Sadly, this person doesn’t get it either:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/34335_The_Video_Anthony_Watts_Doesnt_Want_You_to_See
Wind is going to be huge for Michigan?!? Now THATS funny! Hugely subsidized maybe. But in my opinion definitely not huge in terms of providing electricity. Not even remotely a far cry from being within shouting distance of somewhere you can see the edge of huge from off in the distance if you squint really, really hard.
Odd how people seem to think Anthony Watts is a federally funded Department.
“Climate change deniers claim they’re censored. What hypocrites”
A mention in the Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/jul/30/climate-change-deniers-monbiot
“Anthony Watts, sceptic and scourge of climate change science, has used copyright laws to censor an opponent”
The key here is, notice in the posters’ comments that the ‘updings’ do not support Charles’ position (literally: ‘that person’ for some reason has an AGW hobby-horse to ride but the posters don’t seem to be supportive of that position)
Full disclosure: I have in the past and still do visit LGF (albeit irregularly).
.
.
.
_Jim (07:14:54)/Matthew W (06:31:07) :
A year ago most of those LGF comments would have been pro-AGW. Now at least half, and probably the majority, are skeptical of AGW.
And a word about censorship. Only the government can censor. A private individual is free to choose how to run a site, and if someone’s comment is deleted for any reason, it’s not censorship. [WUWT doesn’t delete alarmist comments. This post is simply to point out that when the government is involved, deleting good faith, opposing views is censorship.]
Realclimate censors. They use government money and assets to run their site. Deleting skeptics’ comments is therefore government supported censorship.
One of realclimate’s censors is Harald Korneliussen.
Korneliussen explains why RC censors skeptical comments:
Korneliussen is either ignorant or lying when he states that RC is not a political blog. It is heavily political with a Leftist slant, as anyone who regularly visits them understands. Korneliussen is being mendacious when he states that RC is not paid to promote an AGW agenda. In fact, RC is paid to advance the AGW hypothesis by outside interests: realclimate is funded by George Soros – as is James Hansen. He who pays the piper calls the tune, and those with an AGW agenda are calling the realclimate tune.
Korneliussen’s statements are dishonest. I’m not the only one to be censored by RC. Rarely a week goes by that someone doesn’t mention on WUWT that their polite, reasonable – but skeptical – comment was censored by realclimate.
Since the people running realclimate are all on the government payroll, what they are doing is censorship. Private blogs like WUWT, which are run by volunteers, can not be said to censor anything. Censorship is a government activity, and applies to government actions. Realclimate qualifies.
Maybe this will make it clear:
NASA/GISS Director: James Hansen
Hansen’s subordinate: Gavin Schmidt
NASA web site contributors: Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann
GISS Modeler: Gavin Schmidt
RealClimate is run by Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann; contributor: William Connolley
Wikipedia editor: William Connolley
Hansen has pocketed upwards of a million dollars [that we know of] from individuals and organizations with a heavy pro-AGW agenda. By accepting their outside cash, Hansen is deliberately cheating the taxpayers. He should work for one or the other; you cannot serve two masters. And from the crazy statements Hansen makes, it’s clear that he’s not impartially representing taxpayers. Instead, he is representing George Soros and others of that ilk. When you follow the money, you see that James Hansen is corrupt, and realclimate is a Soros-financed propaganda site.
TJA (06:57:11) :
” considering the fact that Fox is one of the most popular stations in the States.” – Nevin
Do you have numbers to back that up?
TJA (07:57:42) :
Nevin,
Looky how many people watch Fox News compared to the knob slobbering coverage of Obama on the major networks which have many times the viewers. Fox is the most popular *Cable* news network, which is like being the worlds tallest midget.
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/07/20/broadcast-and-cable-news-quarterly-ratings-through-june-2009/23107
Something less that 1% of the people in the US watch Fox News, yet somehow it is a major threat that Obama obsesses on.
—————————————————-
I’m not sure what the ratings numbers prove here. You should check out polls that examine where Americans get their news about politics or political issues. Polls show cable news networks overall consistently outperforming network TV news, and Fox doing better than any of the network TV news shows:
http://people-press.org/reports/images/467-3.gif
http://people-press.org/reports/images/384-1.gif
http://people-press.org/reports/images/444-18.gif
In the first link, note that Fox scores almost as high as the three TV networks combined. Obama isn’t obsessed with Fox without a reason. Among viewers with “high political knowledge” cable networks are favored two to one over network TV news:
http://people-press.org/reports/images/444-19.gif
Your attempt to marginalize cable news, and especially Fox news, is falling short.
Dear Mr Watts,
I sent this email to George Monbiot as I was incensed by his article in the Guardian (which I deliberately mis-spell as ‘Grauniad’ – it’s an old thing from ‘Private Eye’). On behalf of all normal, sensible Brits I would like to apologise for this truly nasty person who unfortunately shares my nationality.
Dear Mr Monbiot, I would like to thank you for your article exposing Anthony Watts for what he is, a ‘Denier’ of the true path. His pathetic excuse;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/30/on-climate-comedy-copyrights-and-cinematography/
which I don’t suppose you have the time or inclination to waste your time reading shows his true colours. Just because somebody published a bunch of lies about his so called research and tried to remain anonymous at the same time, and didn’t ask his permission to publish his data, he gets all hissy and upset. Amazing, isn’t it. Your article in The Grauniad made it all clear to me at last. You really are worried, aren’t you? Otherwise why publish ridiculous smears, it makes you look like New Labour at their best. Just because the theory of Global Warming being caused by CO2 emissions is being proved to be false you are busy throwing your toys out of your pram. Thanks to your article I now know, with absolute certainty that you are wrong and Mr Watts is right. Scientific fact will always triumph in the end, a theory is only a theory until it is disproved, no amount of concensus matters then. 500 years ago there was scientific concensus that the sun went round the earth, then it was disproved and that theory went in the bin. AGW and CO2 is now teetering on the edge of the bin and no amount of smears from you will stop it falling over the edge.
Yours sincerely,
Alan Haile.
REPLY: Thank you sir, most sincerely. – Anthony
Dear Mr Watts,
You’ve been pawned. Your first reaction was to try and silence them. I guess the Fox News methods are still ingrained in you. Since that didn’t work (ever heard of free speech?) you can try a different approach now.
Good luck.
Yuri.
Luke (03:11:32) : Anthony is not “funded” by anyone. Sheeh.
_Jim (07:14:54) : LGF hasn’t been worth reading in some time. I suspect that Charles (a saxophone player with, to my knowledge no academic credentials!) is a bitter atheist who likely associates any movement which questions “official” science with creationists, whom he absolutely can’t stand. He says that he feels compelled to take on the “far right” or anyone he deems “fascist” which includes people with a far less totalitarian impulse than he tends to have (like Judge Andrew Napolitano!!). He is a nasty nasty man. Back in the day many on the right figured “If the left calls him an Islamophobe and he calls them all Anti-Semites, he must be okay”-they were dead wrong and looking back again he never did anything but smear anyone anti-war as Anti-Semitic, and didn’t bother to deal with any real arguments they might have made (not that I think that makes them right!). Now he joins the media in sniffing Tea Parties for any cranks to discredit them…
It bothers me that anyone pays him any mind, honestly.
The contrast of the pseudo-macho, ass-kicking, he-man debater in the email response published in Michigan Liberal, and the thoughtful, earnest, well-intentioned activist in the video at the end couldn’t be more pronounced and is typical of the split-personality of most hardcore AGW activists.
I wouldn’t debate with any of them, since, as was pointed out, it can easily turn into an intellectual mugging by an unruly mob. I recommend that Anthony simply continue to do what he is doing, and yes, certainly move to protect his copyright. These people only respect the law when they can use it to their advantage. Combine that with their extreme resentment of opposing points of view and their authoritarian instincts, and it becomes clear who the fascists of our era are.
Anthony’s demeanor in facing this onslaught is admirable and this post was clearly one of his best ever; it was thoughtful, restrained, gently satirical and on point. I hope he is able to maintain his composure because things will certainly get worse as he nears completion of the surface station project.
How does the old saying go–if you’re making your opponents angry, you’re doing something right!
They’re resorting to some pretty foul measures. It’s more sad than funny when adults act like this, but I suppose that’s just how internet debating works when one has nothing to show for his side of the argument.
Anyone care to join me at littlegreenfootballs.com?
bill (05:53:02) : “1. . . . All data put on the web is in fact copyright.”
Not true. Ideas are not copyrightable, only the expression of ideas are. Data is not an expression of an idea. There was a famous copyright case a while back in which a telephone directory claimed that the numbers in their directory were copyright protected. A competing directory was the defendant and prevailed in the case, proving in the end that data, per se, is not copyrightable. Further, there are volumes of stuff out there that are in the public domain and hence not under a copyright.
Of the top of my head, an idea: if Mr. Sinclair wants to debate, let him come here to WUWT and debate Anthony on his website. Give him and Anthony 6 hours to comment and respond while allowing no one else to comment. Just the two of them.
There may be some reason why that would be a bad idea (for instance granting Mr. Sinclair undue legitimacy and credibility by extending such an invitation), and Anthony may not want to take time out for such a thing, but I’m throwing it out there anyway.
For all GWRs.:
It is a pity that CO2 is only a trace gas in the atmosphere. 3.8 per TEN thousand.
It is a pity that CO2 is HEAVIER than air, so it can not go up. (Sorry!)
It is a pity that the volumetric heat capacity of the air (capacity of holding heat) is 3227 times less than water, so there is not any heat piggy bank in the atmosphere at all.!
It is a pity that “they”have cheated YOU!
NOAA accomplished what it wanted with its Talking Points post. The point was to flood cyberspace with the idea that the work of surfacestations.org is at best inconsequential, at worst partisan. People like Sinclair are just foot soldiers. They job is not only to disseminate NOAA’s Talking Points, but to color it with thier vitriol. Once the debate shifts to the personal, the Alarmists win. Now, the Alarmists can always point to the Talking Points nonsense to counter the work Anthony has done.
If people don’t think this is not important, just refer to the iconic Hockey Stick. It is still referenced in pop culture even though it suffers from a host of scientific and mathematical problems and errors.
It’s amazing how the alarmists and their minions misrepresent everything.
There’s not an angle of AGW and the broadening “discussion” they get right.
The rampant distorting and selective responding makes it impossible to have a genuine discussion.
It’s just unhinged BS. Like the rest of the planet, here in Oregon the lefty blogosphere and politicians are simply out of their minds with misunderstandings and blatant misrepresentations.
Walter Cronanty (09:21:15) : Given what a pain he makes it to sign up for the right to comment (hm, someone doesn’t care for dissent…) I’d rather not. But others may differ in their willingness to try…
timetochooseagain (10:12:38)
Yes, unless you are already registered, you must wait until Mr. Johnson opens registration to comment. I’ve found that Mr. Johnson generally allows criticism, as long as it is rational and civil. I am trying to keep on the original topic, as opposed to sinking into idealogical rant – which is my wont.
Comment Is Free if you agree.
Don’t worry about Monbiot he is a hypoctite. In one of his posts he stated that people were paid to post commments in the same post he said he never asked for people to be moderated.
Luke (03:11:32) :
People like you, funded by conservative think tanks are not scientists. You are sell outs who have no respect for people, the planet, or objectivity in science.
“objectivity in science.”
Aw cow farts; you caught us.
timetochooseagain wrote:
“Roger Knights (21:46:41) : You miss the point-whether they have a position on Tobacco which people object to is irrelevant …. what matters are the facts. The fact is that the quality of the “climate monitoring network” that is supposed to be measuring AGW sucks royally. … Heartland’s publishing his report has nothing to do with that.”
I’ve missed nothing. I of course recognized that Heartland’s position on tobacco has nothing to do with the validity of the surfacestation’s project. I only explored a tangent: whether Heartland is being smeared by its critics or not. That’s a matter that deserves exploration.
WUWT doesn’t delete alarmist comments.
Usually not even insulting, uncalled for, erroneous alarmist comments.
Most pro-AGW commenters here, however, are well within the bounds of reason. Skeptics may disagree on points of evidence, of course.
As for the data analysis, it is in progress. When it is done, all data and methods will be made available. Just be a little patient.
Just to add more info about Fox News Channel – TVNewser just covers the news coverage.
At:
http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/ratings/july_ratings_fox_news_beats_msnbc_cnn_combined_in_total_day_and_prime_122858.asp#more
you’ll read among other things:
– Among basic cable networks, FNC ranked third for the month in prime time viewership behind only USA Network and TNT, with CNN and MSNBC lagging behind at 15th and 26th, respectively, while continuing to battle each other for third place in cable news.
– FNC also secured nine out of the top 10 rated programs in cable news for the month based on total viewership. The O’Reilly Factor marked #1 for 104 consecutive months in July and led all programs with 3,075,000 viewers, ending the month up 37% over July 2008. Hannity was second, up 41%. Other notables include: On the Record with Greta Van Susteren (up 60%); Glenn Beck (up 120%); The FOX Report with Shepard Smith (up 36%)
You are sell outs who have no respect for people, the planet, or objectivity in science.
Well, we do release our data and methods. Therefore, regardless of the state of our objectivity, what we are doing actually conforms with the strictures scientific method.
Why, I hear vague rumors that those of opposing views refuse to do so. [insert emoticon indicating mordant irony] Not that alchemy shrouded in secrecy necessarily cannot be correct, but whatever else it is or is not, it certainly is not “science”, objective or otherwise.
We have our lapses regarding respect, but compared with the great majority of the opposing view, we are reasonable, not to say forebearing. (All being relative, of course.)
As for selling out, I would love to. (I am currently actively engaged in attempting to obtain a buyer . . . )
@ DanD (09:16:48) :
How does the old saying go–if you’re making your opponents angry, you’re doing something right!
True, Sir.
Dear Mr. Watts:
I applaud your ongoing effort to evaluate the accuracy of surface temperature measurements. What could possibly be more germane to understanding climate? One might reasonably expect thoughtful people to criticize your methodology, but to denigrate your project is absurd and says a great deal about your critics. Moreover, while it may be possible to “correct” statistically faulty data, isn’t it preferable to ensure thata the raw data is correct to begin with? Some argue that budgets and lack of manpower stand in the way of improving surface station data, but that rings hollow with me. The Congress is considering truly mind boggling expenditures in pursuit of Cap and Trade. $50 million would be a pittance by comparison to ensure good data.
evanmjones (11:52:15) :
As for selling out, I would love to. (I am currently actively engaged in attempting to obtain a buyer . . . )
Me too.
Big oil, big tobacco, big emu, makes no difference to me.
Serious offers only……Please!
I have been playing in the comments section for the repost of this video. There really does seem to be a strange, quasi-religious zeal on display in quite of a few of the posts on that page.
I do think their attempt to manipulate the language (via labeling people “denialists”, rather than skeptics) is revealing of just how much this is not about the facts.
Moreover, while it may be possible to “correct” statistically faulty data, isn’t it preferable to ensure thata the raw data is correct to begin with?
One does tend to wonder how raw data of +0.14C century warming per station eventually clocks in at +0.72C
Not that +0.72C per century represents the vaguest threat to anything.
We are informed that the 21st century will warm at a (midline estimate) rate of +3.5C: nearly five times the adjusted 20th-century figure; 25 times that of the raw data. So far, with the first decade pretty much shot, it has cooled at a rate of ~2C per century.
Why do the Watermelon Marxist Brigade AKA Greens draw parallels between global warming and the tobacco industry. It makes no sense on two levels.
1. A scientific consensus backed by big government and big business said tobacco was good for smokers. Today a scientific consensus backed by big government and big business says carbon dioxide regulation is good for saving the planet, as long as government gets to give vast amounts of taxpayer’s money to “green tech” companies and stock traders get to make money out of thin air, literally.
2. Most Greens I’ve seen are smokers or roll up a little bit of Mary (natural and chemically enhanced) on a daily basis. They claim this broadens their minds, apparently.
$50 million would be a pittance by comparison to ensure good data.
I’ll do it for three . . .
Walter Cronanty,
You’re doing an admirable job in the comments at LGF. You’ve stripped CJ’s position down to a gotcha moment — he’s pointing to Mr. Watt’s pulling of the video as the only important information.
Walter Cronanty (09:21:15) :
Anyone care to join me at littlegreenfootballs.com ?
I used to be a regular at LGF. I was there for the first 100 comment post. Thanks for reminding me why I don’t go there any more.
And no – I will not join in. And AFAIK my registration is still valid. I didn’t check.
Simon
Aron (12:14:24) :
What you say is true. What you didn’t say is that tobacco is an anti-depressant and a favorite of schizophrenics.
Schizophrenia and Tobacco
The tobacco hysteria is hurting the most vulnerable among us.
I hate ignorance. And there seems to be a lot going around.
Some of you will be interested to know that in British Columbia, Canada – which has a carbon tax – it is *lefties* who OPPOSE the carbon tax and _righties that SUPPORT it.
The righties here are coy & clever. They have figured out a way to fight Vancouver traffic congestion *&* avoid provincial deficits — things that appeal to wealthy conservatives. The lefties here scream like mad about it.
A twisted regional political anomaly? …or is this what is coming to a region near you once the wealthy people in your area figure out that this clever, coy approach can be used to make getting around town easier while at the same time deflecting pollution costs to “user pay”?
Regarding LGF, there are a great many things I could say about Mr Johnson but I believe I shall refrain. Except this: the man is a turncoat. A very few can pull off a chance of political affiliation once and fewer still can pull it off twice, as a certain Mr Churchill once did. Johnson is no Churchill.
Dajida (12:59:07)
Thank you. As you can tell, I’m not scientist. Just trying to keep the thread on topic.
M. Simon (13:43:19)
Me too. Mr. Johnson has turned into a bit of a “Johnny One-Note” on the creationist bit. I will say that once he has taken off on a subject, he’s really taken off. I still enjoy some posts, but this one I had to respond to.
REPLY : WALTER here is a link showing NOAA aplied adjustments to the records that “Thanos” and Charles at LGF might appreciate. Thank you for your efforts – Anthony
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/epubs/ndp/ushcn/ndp019.html (note the stepwise differences graphs)
M.A.DeLuca (10:46:55) :
“Speaking of ad hominems, I find it disturbing how much effort the environmentalist/global warming crowd pours into collecting data on individuals opposed to their agenda.”
Look at what the leftists did to Sarah Palin!!
timetochooseagain (08:49:14) :
“He says that he feels compelled to take on the “far right” or anyone he deems “fascist” which includes people with a far less totalitarian impulse than he tends to have (like Judge Andrew Napolitano!!).”
The whole fascism is far right is something that irks me greatly… I was taught it at school, you see it in the media on an almost daily basis… But whats right wing about national socialism? I have my grave doubts Benito Mussolini saw himself as right wing when he broke away from the Italian communist party to form the first fascist party… there were no illusions during WW2 where it stood on the political spectrum. The main difference between communism and fascism is that communists believe in “class war”, whereas fascists believe in class collaboration(utilizing individual ability for advancement of state) But they are socialist… Absolutly nothing to do with the subject at hand however 🙂
I take my hat off to you Anthony, its easy top let emotion rule your actions in the face of such contemptible personal attacks.
[so noted and thank you – gulp]
Anthony – excellent response. Keep stating the facts and eventually the truth will prevail.
The strident righteousness, the anger and vitriol of the proponents will ultimately be their downfall. Desperate people are apparent by their language. When people stop being afraid of being afraid of AGW, the tide will turn. At that point, I hope a more balanced attitude to environmental responsibility and conservation will prevail but the pendulum will shift to the opposite side.
“A twisted regional political anomaly?”
Perhaps not – in Australia we have a Labour Party who in my opinion embraced AGW because it attracted the Green and gullible vote (it’s a long story – google one party preferred voting that gives minority parties abnormal influence) and got them over the line. Now we have the Conservatives pondering voting for ETS Emissions Trading Scheme (aka Extra Taxation by Stealth) for a variety of reasons which include saving their own skin – see this opinion piece from an opposition MP. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25825703-5015664,00.html
O/T but we also have an Environment Minister who personally opposes Uranium Mining (as a rabid greenie musician in Midnight Oil) but now accepts and supports the “Party line” for mining.
Is it any wonder that we have this unstoppable juggernaut called AGW.
I haven’t viewed the DeSmog satire video, but if it is like their other efforts, there would be several good reasons to be offended on the basis of scientific truth, malicious slander, widespread logical fallacies, political innuendo, etc, etc. As others have pointed out, your methodical efforts have struck gold, and the warmist camp cannot afford to let you continue without a token barrage of flaming arrows.
I became a skeptic when I witnessed an Oregon professor attacked by global warming fanatics when he presented information that the world wasn’t, in fact, warming. They tried to get him fired from his teaching job, simply for trying to debate the science. I knew at once that I wanted no part of the global warming movement – nothing that operated on that emotional level could be worthwhile. Since then the science has born out my suspicions.
Wikipedia has become a storehouse of global warming propaganda, and as you read this, William Connolley is editing the truth out of existence. Here is his user page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_M._Connolley
Where he quotes a rather odd diatribe, including this statement:
“For where no covenant hath preceded, there hath no right been transferred, and every man has right to everything and consequently, no action can be unjust.”
Connolley is a former climate modeler, which explains his bias for the model-driven cult of climate alarmisim.
With some preparation, anyone can edit Wikipedia. I think it’s time that a few motivated individuals accept the challenge to re-write the appropriate entries, and give Anthony due credit for the work he’s done.
I have two web sites – one that is skeptical about AGW and the other is about atheism (http://www.cobourgatheist.com). I was looking at the PZ Myers website Pharyngula which has a large following and he really tore into you on this. I wrote a rebuttal on my “atheist” site basically saying he was using poor arguments and I was disappointed in his lack of scientific approach – which is important for atheists – and I am generally really unhappy with his handling of the issue. Maybe you are wrong about accuracy of US temperature measurements but that has very little impact on the total case. It seems he is another example of “I’ve made up my mind, don’t talk to me about it”. To me as an atheist that is like blasphemy to a Christian. He’s strengthened my support for your work by his stupidity.
“in Australia we have a Labour Party who in my opinion embraced AGW because it attracted the Green and gullible vote”
One of the main reasons the AWGers have had such a great impact is that they are a large group that is willing to be foot-soldiers for leftist parties during election campaigns. Ringing doorbells, making phone calls, putting up signs, stuffing envelopes, gathering signatures, etc. is really discouraging work, and parties desperately need committed volunteer workers who will plug away at it. Another reason is that many wealthy liberals have funded enviro organizations, enabling them to pay their foot soldiers well.
John Draper (17:46:27) : Bless you sir, for sticking to your principles. If I maybe be forgiven, GOD bless you! 😉
Meyers cares more about the political shots he can take at creationists so he can mock anyone religious and therefore an entire political party by association than about the actual science. One wonders what “side” of the scientific “consensus” he is on WRT GMOs? I bet dollars to donuts he opposes them…
Aron (12:14:24) :
“Most Greens I’ve seen are smokers or roll up a little bit of Mary (natural and chemically enhanced) on a daily basis. They claim this broadens their minds, apparently.”
I noticed this too and posted a comment on some green blog years ago. I was pounced on by the rabid pack of participants there immediately.
Anthony,
I do have a question then, who is the Heartland Institute affiliated with?
Well, the heartland institute is a ridiculous organization.
I posted 3 times on that video before I got censored and my post deleted ….
facts are not what they claim to live by. Hypocrites and liars that’s what they are.
Heartland?
For those who read the above comments, please be aware the contrary viewpoints have been scrubbed by the moderator. I have had several posts rejected repeatedly.
The funny thing, is that I wrote an email to Mr. Watts complaining about censorship on this site, that referenced the Sinclair video, and likely caused Mr. Watts to attempt to block Sinclair’s reporting of NOAA’s analysis.
No doubt about it, this site is the most heavily censored site I have encountered.
Reply: No one is scrubbing your comments. ~dbstealey, moderator.
Why aren’t my comments accepted here anymore? Have you instituted a more comprehensive censorship protocol?
Paul K,
I understand that even paranoids have enemies, but why would anyone remove your very mild comments, while leaving other, more objectionable posts?
You’re just not making any sense.
I find all blogs delete some comments. No one gets all of their comments posted, especially if they post often in succession or write over the top remarks. I find that on RC I have been deleted often enough, and I tend to agree with most of the statements there…sometimes there is a time delay before posts are published as well. I still would like to know more about this heartland business straight from Anthony’s mouth though; I did check out there site, and although they are protected by the first amendment, I did not find their general statements in each category to be accurate or productive. Tobacco really is that bad and I smoked for more than 10 years myself… I make no secret of that. The science of the dangers of second hand smoke (and first hand for that matter) are well established, but I would never sign a bill that makes smoking cigarettes illegal. AGW is also a serious issue, but the future remains very uncertain, but I would not go so far as to say the science is not there yet either…my issue with other blogs like RC is that they at times misrepresent the peer reviewed paper being discussed. I also think that if Anthony is receiving funding from Heartland he should cut that off so as to be above accusations, but I have not seen direct evidence as of yet that Mr. Watts is in fact, receiving said funds.
Paul K (20:12:13) :
“Why aren’t my comments accepted here anymore? Have you instituted a more comprehensive censorship protocol?”
Lol, they seem to be appearing just fine… If yer load em up with too many links, the auto thing can dump em as spam, irrespective of stance on GW. Or alternatively ad hominems can get things dropped in the bin.
There are a few regular AGW posters in here, and i have to say they generally come across as intelligent people, who understand debate. And can and do argu the science, and i enjoy their postings. Name calling on the other hand, dosn’t normally make it through moderation.
Smokey, how could you know what the comments were mild comments, or for that matter what they were like, if you they weren’t posted, and the readers here can’t read them?
I repeatedly tried to post my email to Mr. Watts discussing censorship on this site, the email that I believe started Mr. Watts’ attempt to block the Sinclair video. The post was rejected over and over.
I attempted to post a comment discussing Mr. Watts acquiescence regarding the The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley’s unauthorized posting of Dr. Arthur Smith’s work last July, and the clear violation of copyright work (Dr. Smith had submitted his work to a publisher, before Monckton put the courtesy copy he received on a politically motivated website). My post was rejected over and over again.
But if WUWT readers would like to read it, they can find it posted on Joe Romm’s Climate Progress site on his post “The Video Anthony Watts Does Not Want You to See…” .
In this case, the Truth may be out there, just not here at this site.
MikeE,
well put.
MikeE… No, I am aware of the link problem. Since you assure me that comments are not being censored, I will try again. Here is a copy of my attempted comment from yesterday, that was published on Climate Progress at the same time, but rejected here.
Paul K says:
July 31, 2009 at 6:01 pm
I read Mr. Watts response and rationale for trying to squelch the Peter Sinclair video. Mr. Watts is incredibly sensitive to claims of censorship, and uses material from other sources routinely at WUWT.
He defends the surreptitious acquisition and dissemination of information. Last year, The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley wrote a treatise on climate sensitivity. Monckton then took a professional courtesy copy of Arthur Smith’s response (that Dr. Smith had submitted for publication), and published it himself on a denier website without the author’s permission. Mr. Watts defended Monckton’s action, and explained why stealing and publishing someone else’s work was fair game.
Later, Dr. Smith graciously gave his after the fact permission to post the response, if Monckton would stop referring to the response as the position of Mr. Smith’s employer, instead of Dr. Smith’s individual work (the response was not part of his job responsibilities, and he wrote the response on his own time and dime).
Judging how Mr. Watts responded in that case, and in many other situations, we can safely reach this conclusion:
Anthony Watts has clearly flip-flopped on this issue.
REPLY: Paul as far as I know I’ve never published Monckton’s paper on climate sensitivity here. And I just searched for it. Not found.
I did publish something on Roy Spencer and his paper that supported Monckton’s claim, and I covered the APS issue with Monckton but I see no place where I endorsed the issue you present. A search of the published files for “Arthur Smith” also yields nothing
You’ve provided no link or quoted text to this claim. Please provide one. – Anthony
Paul K,
What’s your problem? What do you want from all of this?
What’s your price?
Paul K
Why would the moderators remove some of your posts, but then publish your posts when you accuse them of scrubbing/censoring? If they wanted to censor your comments they could just delete them all, like Real Climate does.
Well, it looks like the late Saturday night moderator is letting the truth through tonight, so I am loading up my rejected comments, and sending them in. The moderator must not have gotten the memo from “Gestapo HQ”.
Lets start with Smokey… Do you remember these comments from a year ago, (one from me to you) when I was concerned about copyright infringement, not to mention unethical and unprofessional behavior on the part of Monckton?
Mr. Watts was busy at the time putting up several posts saying how Monckton was being mis-treated by the APS.
Paul K (00:46:25) : August 7, 2008
Meanwhile The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley’s aberrant behavior continues:
I have been checking up on SPPI’s page, and The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (TVMOB) has published Arthur Smith’s paper again, which he received as a private courtesy copy from Smith at the same time it was submitted for publishing. Arthur Smith sent him a letter generously granting him the right to post it, as long as TVMOB deleted all references to the APS, as the paper was written in Smith’s free time, and not sanctioned by the APS or related to Smith’s job at the APS.
TVMOB published the paper again at the SPPI site, and still has references to Arthur Smith’s employment at APS. Here is the Introduction to the paper:
“Soon thereafter, a database manager for the American Physical Society, Arthur Smith, drafted and circulated a critique of Monckton’s paper. Smith’s critique and Monckton’s refutation of it are provided here for educational purposes.”
So again, TVMOB is violating copyright laws.
So now TVMOB has accused the editors who agreed to publish the paper as liars, published a private courtesy copy of a submitted paper without the author’s permission, was warned about copyright infringement, pulled the paper from the SPPI website, then published it again without removing the APS references.
This leaves Arthur Smith in a bind. He has been warned by his employer to remove APS references from his private paper, but TVMOB refuses to do so, and keeps publishing the paper with the APS references intact. This is in spite of the fact that Arthur Smith has spoken to Ferguson at SPPI repeatedly, and written a letter to both TVMOB and SPPI about removing the references.
My comment responding to you:
Paul K (19:16:34) : August 8, 2008
Smokey: Come on you can try harder? You claim this is a vicious attack?
Paul K states in one of his innumerable and vicious ad hominem attacks directed at Viscount Monckton:
“Meanwhile The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley’s aberrant behavior continues… So again, TVMOB [Paul K’s juvenile and derogatory term for Monckton, an internationally respected mathematician, climate authority and journalist] is violating copyright laws.”
I observed that this man (or should I use the term, ‘lord’?), took a private courtesy copy of correspondence, that he knew the author had submitted for publication, then added text to it identifying the man’s employer, and then published it without his permission on his politically motivated website. The author had written it on his own time, and on his own dime, and The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley took work and used it without permission. The author has been warned by his employer to drop all references to his employer, but The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley continues to publish his work, identifying the author’s employer, in spite of being warned. These are all facts.
Is this a vicious attack? Or is it the truth? Maybe that these events occurred make the truth hurt, because of your prior beliefs regarding The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley?
Regarding use of his name, I have tried hard to address him initially by his title and preferred address, The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, on my posts here, since I understand that he prefers to be called by that title, and not be addressed as Christopher Monckton. I usually abbreviate his title as TVMOB, only after identifying his full pedigree first, as in the passage you clipped and posted. (BTW, pedigree has the meaning ‘the recorded ancestry, especially upper class ancestry, of a person or family’ , in my dictionary, and that is the definition, I am using here… please don’t launch another personal attack on me with a different definition.)
How would you like me to address The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley? May I have your permission to refer to him as simply as Monckton, as many do here, without your disapproval or derision? Or do you insist on The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley? What can I call him, so that we can move past the lordship’s inherited title?
I would like get to the facts of ethical reporting by scientific organizations and journals, and discuss no free rides for royalty; scientific or otherwise. I would like to get a response to the technical reviews I summarized in my posts. I would like to talk about blind faith, and the moral hazards of leadership.
And I would like to talk about respect for free enterprise, where a person’s fruits of his own labor are his property, and can’t be stolen and improperly used for political purposes. Should a person surrender his copyright, in order to gain widespread communication available through publication, as The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley did with his paper, then that is that individual’s choice.
Why is it that The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley is denying Arthur Smith that same freedom to publish where and when he saw fit ?
Why is it The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley can call his editors ‘liars’, when they inform the world that none of the papers on the forum that published His Paper, were peer reviewed? Why is this peculiar behavior not allowed to be commented upon, on posts on this site, set up to complain about the treatment his lordship, The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley is getting from the APS?
Anthony Watts defended Monckton all during these disgraceful and unprofessional actions. For Watts to be complaining about the Sinclair video, is ridiculous.
REPLY: Oh that’s interesting. Paul please point out where I specifically defended Monckton on this issue. Publishing the APS issue/story doesn’t count. Show me EXACTLY WHERE I said that I defended the claim you make. This issue with Smith is not mentioned anywhere on my blog (in posts) and this is in fact the very first time I’ve heard of it. – Anthony
Paul “K”
If you mention “Gestapo HQ” again, you will be out on the street. I’m the moderator tonight, and I resent your words.
An apology is required. – Anthony
Personally Paul K… if I was a moderator I would delete your insulting posts. If you can not post without insults it should be deleted.
REPLY: That may happen if he won’t show me exactly where I SPECIFICALLY supported Monckton as he claims. I’ve made no such statement. If he thinks that publishing on the Monckton/APS issue is the same as supporting a claim/dispute between Monckton and Smith then he’s making a giant leap – Anthony
Those comments were from WUWT. You posted several posts in July 2008 defending Monckton regarding his treatment from the APS. In fact, in this post, you called it the “Peergate scandal”.
Meanwhile, numerous comments were made to your posts explaining how Monckton had published Dr. Smith’s courtesy copy without the author’s permission. I posted the information I just copied above, indicating Monckton was running amuck of copyright law, and violating professional code of behavior. You asked for links to the specific comments, but I can’t do that, only to the general posts. I will put up one of the comments from WUWT in the next post.
You were aware of the problem, but chose to ignore Monckton’s aberrant behavior in your defense of him, and your attacks on the APS treatment of his paper.
In fact, Monckton supporters actually contacted Dr. Smith’s employer, and he was called in for a “discussion” by his boss. Read all about the chronology here (Dr. Smith recounts what happened to him, when he dared to respond to Monckton):
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2008/07/biter-bit-arthur-smith-has-had-quite.html
REPLY I’ll ask the question again, show me SPECIFICALLY WHERE I DEFENDED MONCKTON ON THIS ISSUE. Your claim that I published on the APS issue (which was news) is somehow supporting him is absurd.
I was not aware of the issue with Smith until you pointed it out here. I don’t read EVERY comment that makes it into the blog. As you have noted I have several moderators. Your mentioning of this issue with Smith tonight is the very first I’ve heard of it.
Further, I need an apology from you on the “Gestapo HQ” comment – Anthony
Paul K
Reading your “censored” posts I am even more skeptical of your claim that they were censored/scrubbed by WUWT’s moderators. Your posts seem to be unsourced, poorly written and inconsequential. Why would the moderators have bothered to censor them?
I put the following comment in the moderation queue at Tamino’s – it “mysteriously” *vanished* ….
=—–
A note for those of you starting to comment about the weather station monitoring issue:
I follow WUWT. The surface stations stuff certainly is NOT the highlight there. Even though I had some doubts about some of the surface stations stuff I saw presented, I have chosen [so far] not to challenge it for very good reasons – I’ll share a few:
1) I found records for my area that were ridiculously false. For example, METRES of snow do not completely melt and then reappear and then melt and then reappear OVERNIGHT …on MULTIPLE occasions …in MORE THAN ONE year. I also found REPEAT examples of temperatures that got stuck at 0C for strangely-long periods of time when temperatures in my area fluctuated in the sub-zero range. I inquired. It was admitted that there were some serious quality control issues. (Reading between the lines, I sensed funding & staffing issues.)
2) The authorities in my area appear to have failed to carefully assess the capacity of one of their analysts who was reviewing temperature records station-by-station. She made projections that showed daily minimum temperatures OVERTAKING daily maximum temperatures in the near future. I asked around about the analyst and a dedicated local environmentalist who knew of her admitted people were probably being polite to her if they were not challenging her. The appearance to me was that no one was even bothering to check her work before releasing it to the public.
3) In contract work I’ve seen highly-questionable missing-data-estimation procedures applied *extensively* to whole regional temperature networks — worst “messy data” I’ve ever encountered – took *months* of “cleaning”.
From what I’ve seen, I am convinced of the need for watchdogs.
I don’t know any particulars about Watts’ particular surface stations project, but I am (generally speaking) glad there are watchdogs and absolutely convinced of the need for watchdogs.
My primary interest at WUWT is in selectively reading comments made by knowledgeable people (same thing that brings me here). Even when “odd” comments are made, it often stimulates me to download & analyze datasets, dig deeper in the literature, etc.
Not everyone at WUWT is a “denialist nut-job” – and I can see that not everyone here is a “warmist nut-job”.
Each time the dust settles, the serious people (in whatever “camps”) focus on the elephants in the room, not the local jesters.
——-=
[ snip and on purpose – Paul no more discussion from you will be allowed until you apologize for the “gestapo” comment. I’ve made it clear to you twice now that an apology is needed.
Real easy to do, decide now if you want to hang on to that position or not.]
Anthony
Anthony, you just snipped the post with the apology. Did you read it, before you snipped?
REPLY: I saw no apology. Post it separately, it is a separate issue – Anthony
Paul K still waiting for that apology. Real simple comment to make, something like this
Dear Mr. Watts, I sincerely apologize for equating your blog to the Gestapo
“when they inform the world that none of the papers on the forum that published His Paper, were peer reviewed? ”
wrong ! here is one of them.
Peer-Review Papers Supporting Skeptism of “Man-Made” Global Warming:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/k77xr06628851331/
I am a bit lost here… I told you I was astonished that you responded to my email complaining of censorship on WUWT, in which I referenced how links to the Sinclair video “disappeared” without even a snip to indicate editing. When you attempted to block the Sinclair video, and put this post up explaining, I have tried repeatedly over the last two days to comment.
If my comments were really and truly not accepted because of technical problems, or something I did wrong in submitting them, then I apologize for the Gestapo HQ comment.
When I made the comment, I thought I was being blackballed because I knew something about why you seem to be targeting Sinclair.
REPLY: Better, though not very sincere, since it is a conditional apology.
The spam filter here like any computer program is imperfect, so are moderators as they are human. There are hundreds of combination that can set you into the spam filter. We get hundreds of spams per day, viagra, pron, you name it. sometimes it is hard to wade through it all. Sometime comments get lost in the sea of garbage. I’ve accidentally deleted valid comments myself and seen them scroll by as the spam deletion occurs.
Plus the spam filter “learns” based on patterns.
Now the next thing you need to clear up (and please do so concisely, demonstrate a link or quote) is show me EXACTLY where I have defended and supported Monckton on the Smith issue. As I said, until you mentioned it tonight, I have never known about it. With 150,000 comments now on this blog, I don’t read each and every one, especially if approved by another moderator.
You are making a claim against me personally that is erroneous and harmful to me. You need to clearly show where I said what you claim. Simple posting of articles on WUWT that were newsworthy at the time due to the volatile issue with APS does not equate to my support or endorsement for Monckton using Smith’s paper.
And with thousands of deleted spambot comments also if anyone expects perfection or 100% comment throughput here, then sorry, we can’t promise that. – Anthony
Paul K (and others) to give people an idea of the amount of spam we get, here’s just a few minutes worth:
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/files/2009/08/spamcapture.png
Imagine what it looks like if the moderator (or me) is away for an hour or two. This is Saturday night and light traffic. Often, wading through them all when you have dozens of other valid comments pending just isn’t worth the time. These are autobots trying to gain access. We also often have mixes of these and many long advertisements with embedded images. It can get quite messy.
So to anyone who has lost valid comments, I apologize. To anyone who has posted comments with banned words, cuss words, or over the top insults and had them deleted, tough noogies. Get over yourself and be an adult.
Anthony
It is ironic that a person so fueled by his resentments and so driven by a fanatic belief in AGW could accuse Anthony’s site of being “Gestapo HQ.”
Get a grip, Paul K. If you truly want to help your cause, why not argue about the validity of the science of AGW and not the politics that have arisen from the science? Is it because you have no understanding of the science?
Oh dear that bad a night.
And I thought Spam was a tinned meat product.
Still a Spam filter probably explains why I haven’t made any money out of this site.
Did you not realise I alone possess the secret of the True Triacle of the ancients, one spoonful in a silver spoon and you will feel much better and live far longer. Very modest prices.
And should you wish to enquire upon the future why not consult my Tarot cards, the real medieval article printed 500 years ago. I will guide you through their mysteries. Silver or better gold for this.
As for bewildered solar physicists I have a special discount on pyramids at the moment, the full standard rotational and gravitational model complete with extra FREE electrum cap to shed those pesky tachyons.
All credit cards accepted.
Kindest Regards
PS No money refunded.
Anthony, I am surprised you were not aware of Monckton’s peculiar behavior last year, even as you repeatedly attacked his treatment by APS. I commented on this over and over again, as well as other commentators, and WUWT regulars like Smokey and others were aware of the issue, and commented on it.
Starting on July 17 and through August 6 last year, WUWT had five posts discussing Monckton’s analysis in his letter to the APS. All five posts, either complained of Monckton’s treatment by the APS, or attempted to defend Monckton’s analysis. The effort was unsuccessful, as Monckton’s paper was torn apart by numerous scientists.
One of the key critics was Arthur Smith who wrote a rebuttal response, and submitted it for publication. When Monckton published his courtesy copy of Smith’s analysis on a website, the analysis became public. The paper is still at that site today, still in violation of Smith’s request to remove references to his employer.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/monckton/monckton_rebutted.pdf
The analysis in Smith’s paper was discussed and referenced at Real Climate and other science sites on the web, and the information was discussed in comments at WUWT.
The unprofessional behavior of Monckton was also discussed starting with a comment from me on August 2nd, well after the controversy with Smith had broken. By the time comments finished on the August 6 post, there were 41 comments, and I was chastised for posting too many (five) of the comments. My comments discussed the problems with Monckton’s behavior, and summarized the criticisms of Monckton’s work.
It is difficult to see how anyone who followed Monckton’s paper and the aftermath, and who cared about his analysis could have missed being aware of Smith’s rebuttal, especially since Monckton himself drew so much attention to it. I guess someone who would be particularly uninformed, or ignorant of the science, could have missed the discussion.
I really thought you knew more about the discussions of scientists about the posts you make, so I am very surprised you didn’t know about and understand any of this. Given your repeated strident and strong defense of Monckton, I believed you knew about what Monckton was doing, and was cognizant of the important issues. I apparently have been mistaken.
But since you were completely ignorant of the scientific discourse both at WUWT and other sites (Real Climate etc.), then you completely missed the controversy of Monckton’s inappropriate actions. I believed you were defending Monckton in spite of his transgressions, especially after your readers here talked so much about the issue.
You now seem to be making the case that you don’t support Monckton’s cavalier disregard of copyright law, and plagiarism ethics, since you didn’t know about it. In that case, we should give you the benefit of the doubt, and I leave it to the readers here to make that decision.
I won’t raise this issue again here, but I don’t think your blind support for Monckton in this matter, will be forgotten.
REPLY: Have you ever wondered why Monckton’s climate sensitivity paper was never posted here in toto? (it was offered) It is because I don’t agree with one of the graphs in it. See Lucia on that subject as I sought her advice. That does not mean that I disagree with his entire premise, but with one graph that that needs rework. However the APS issue was as I reported it, a news item, that is all, and I never concerned myself with the details beyond what coming up as news at the time. He was invited to submit, they threw up a caveat never before done, it seemed arbitrary and unfair. That was my view.
If he made his written presentation include another paper or portions thereof without permission, or used without citation, then no, for the record, I don’t support that. Had I known about it, I certainly would have taken another tack.
For example, if such fairness in citation and copyright is truly your cause, I didn’t see you complain about the NOAA Talking Points Memo that in its original form, didn’t even cite my published work along with the other citations at the bottom. I had to fight for that. They did revise it, as referenced above in the body of this post. The whole issue that ends up in Sinclair’s lap was started by the same sort of unprofessional behavior that you point out about Monckton, but is my treatment at the hands of NCDC. At least Monckton showed some work and put his name on it. NCDC’s was a hatchet job with no author designed to discredit my work and they simply didn’t care about professional courtesy.
Paul K here is the challenge to you: Since you made no comments here or elsewhere (that I know of) disagreeing with NCDC on that issue on using my work uncredited, and without even asking for permission of data use (or even checking to see if they had the current version), am I then to assume that you support their use of my paper and my data without proper permission and citation? I must assume then that you do support their use without citation since we’ve heard nothing from you. I am surprised you haven’t commented on this to be true to your argument. You surely must be aware of it, since you are posting in the comments where the article makes it a bullet point, and before and after documents are presented.
See how easy it it to fall into the trap you set?
Given the huge amount of traffic here, I’m not an all-seeing eye, especially during workdays. I still have to give priority to my business and whole conversations happen here and at other blogs without my involvement. I don’t take kindly to your language of “I guess someone who would be particularly uninformed, or ignorant of the science, could have missed the discussion.” That’s really a cheap shot.
Sometimes when there’s an issue here or elsewhere that needs my attention, someone will leave a direct note or email. Part of my routine to save time is to check for those. In this case the Smith issue never rose to my attention nor did anyone flag it for me that I am aware of. I wish somebody had.
I was unaware of it until tonight. And, that is the truth. All that can be said is that I published the news items on APS and Monckton and supported the view that the caveat on Monckton was unusual, irregular, and improperly applied. That’s what I reported on.
In light of your own failure to comment on my nearly identical situation where my work was used without my knowledge, permission, or originally even a citation by NCDC, are you prepared to defend me?
Thus I would appreciate it if you’d retract your statements here and elsewhere that say I supported Monckton on the Smith citation issue. I think if you are truly a gentleman and interested in fairness you’ll do that. Your treatment of this either way will long be remembered.
In other news, reports of my evilness are highly exaggerated. 😉
Anthony
FOLLOW UP: This suggestion that I was indifferent to the issue (or even embraced it) was bothering me and I just doubled checked. Paul K your complaint is WAY offbase. Here is the original APS article thread I posted:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/07/19/american-physical-society-and-monckton-at-odds-over-paper/
…and here is a screencap at the end showing when PaulK enters the fray.
Notice the date and timestamp. The thread effectively ended on 7/24/08, and then within the afternoon of 8/02/09, nine days later has the next comment by “paulK” where he lists the issue that he accuses me of being indifferent to. It was posted at 1:24 PM Friday afternoon. A workday for me. Typically I’m at lunch later than my staff becuase I cover the phones while they leave. Very likely then I was not online and another moderator approved this. Unfortunately I don’t have a log file of that day.
So the problem here is that PaulK entered a comment on a dead thread very late, nine days later, another moderator approved it, the renewed conversation lasted only a short time, and it was NEVER brought to my attention. I also don’t read Deltoid, and hardly ever read RC. I just don’t like the way they treat people. So yes I missed it. Does that make me “…someone who would be particularly uninformed, or ignorant of the science, could have missed the discussion.” as you assert?
No, shit happens, Things break, important details sometimes get lost. If you really thought it important, why didn’t you ask a moderator to bring it to my attention? Easy to do.
I really think PaulK, that you should retract your baseless accusations about me. If you are truly interested in fairness, please demonstrate it. I’ve wasted several hours on investigating your whining. Show me it was worth it. – Anthony
I deleted at least one of Paul K’s posts and invited him to resubmit without using prohibited language. I’m tired of editing such posts and will tend more to delete them in the future, especially from those whose only agenda is to heap abuse. I may have deleted more if the tone was over the top.
I go out of my way to approve and even defend serious debaters such as Joel Shore, Phil., and others even when I may disagree with their point of view, but Paul K adds very little to the discussion, and so gets less slack than I may give to other commenters, such as those mentioned above.
Is that 100% objective criteria, no. But people around here both earn and give up their privileges by their own behavior.
~ ctm
Welcome to the big time, Anthony.
This is how it will be from now on. Such is the price to be paid for all disruptive technologies.
Be proud.
Since this is about presenting science with integrity I need to tell you about a contibution to your site which still pops up when I google WUWT. The one where Stephen Goddard (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/09/wuwt-ice-survey-shows-thickening-arctic-ice) shows under the headline “WUWT survey shows thickening arctic ice” that ice is getting thicker in winter (who says it isn’t?) and in his haste to claim large thickness for the ice counts a good metre of air as ice even when it is clearly above the melting point of sea ice or indeed any water ice at all. Letting such unthought through stuff ‘entertain the troops’ on your site does weaken your claims to want to stick to the science and not let the screamers do their thing when they take your side.
REPLY: Yes Goddard didn’t do himself any favors with that one. I’ll have another look. – Anthony
Hey Anthony!
that fellow…Mr. Sinclair..He talks with his eyes closed.
Ref. “South Park, season 10 episod 2, Smug Alert”
“Your attempt to marginalize cable news, and especially Fox news is falling short” – Basil
Well, let’s see now, the politically aware watch it? I guess that your attempt to marginalize Fox News is falling short too. I would say that you moved the goal posts on the original comment, however. Fine, lets go to this new goalpost:
“Obama isn’t obsessed with Fox without a reason. Among viewers with “high political knowledge” cable networks are favored two to one over network TV news:”
If someone has “high political knowledge”, there is a pretty good chance that that viewer gets a lot of news from other sources, such as the internet, and reads newspapers from The Guardian to the Dallas Morning News regularly. Which, once again undercuts Nevin’s point that Fox is a propaganda outlet responsible for the war in Iraq, for example. If Katie Couric had asked me what newspapers I read every day, like she did of Sarah Palin, my answer would have been the similar, “All of them, whatever is interesting that day.”
How about it Paul K? Waiting for a response from you.
In the August 6th thread, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/08/06/aps-fellow-supports-moncktons-position/
You’ll notice it was lightly commented, 41 comments. You made a comment where you called me out by name questioning a headline . I didn’t see it.
Why? Again look at the time stamp: Paul K (00:46:25)
12:46AM PST 08/07/2008 Friday morning, a workday for me. I have to be up at at them at 7AM
Your problem is that you posted your complaints at times when I wasn’t online. That comment was approved by another moderator.
You are then conflating a lack of response with indifference. Try my schedule sometime. Try running a small business, making payroll, traveling around the country doing sales and weather station surveys and keeping on top of every comment made on a blog that gets huge amount of daily traffic and comments.
Then when you’ve walked a mile in my shoes, you’ll get some understanding.
The moderator must not have gotten the memo from “Gestapo HQ”.
I must object to that statement. The moderators operate on a basis of trust.
And both the “HQ” and the cops on the beat around here are about as unfascist as it gets.
Anthony, I read your responses above, and they contradict each other.
Notice the date and timestamp. The thread effectively ended on 7/24/08, and then within the afternoon of 8/02/09, nine days later has the next comment by “paulK” where he lists the issue that he accuses me of being indifferent to. It was posted at 1:24 PM Friday afternoon. A workday for me.
Then a few posts later:
You’ll notice it was lightly commented, 41 comments. You made a comment where you called me out by name questioning a headline . I didn’t see it.
Why? Again look at the time stamp: Paul K (00:46:25)
12:46AM PST 08/07/2008 Friday morning, a workday for me. I have to be up at at them at 7AM
Please notice these two posts are separated by a work week, and the first post was actually on a Saturday, and the second on a Thursday, but not as you indicate.
I came to WUWT on August 2 because I had followed your first three posts defending Monckton and criticizing the APS. I posted a comment on your most recent post asking why Monckton wasn’t being criticized for his unprofessional behavior in attacking his editor and publishing the Smith rebuttal without approval. By then all the sites I had read about the Monckton-APS flap, were aware that Monckton had gone ballistic, posting comments like “Stuff It Smith” and “Stuff It Schmidt”.
Four days later, on August 6th, WUWT put up yet another post defending Monckton’s analysis. On the comments on that post (only 41 comments), I commented several times on Monckton’s peculiar behavior, and there was a round-robin of comments from WUWT regulars over the next few days.
Bottom line, is that Monckton clearly violated copyright laws, not to mention a professional code of ethics. His supporters went to a critic’s employer to get the critic silenced or reprimanded, even though his work was a private individual effort. And although this was widely discussed and known by real climate scientists, you continued to post supporting Monckton.
In my next comment, I will contrast this with your attack on Sinclair’s videos.
REPLY: Yes I made a mistake on the day, It and confused the dates. Weariness after 2AM. Weariness now. The fact is though you posted on that thread 9 days after it ceased to have any meaningful activity.
And I’ve stated clearly that I was never aware of your post on the Smith issue until last night, and shown why. You will of course draw your own conclusions based on your own biases while rejecting my information, since it is contrary to your mission. Since you have no sense of fair play, and your only purpose here is to denigrate me on your terms, my terms are to stop tolerating your abuse here. Since you accept nothing from me, choosing only to follow your bias, your welcome is expired. – Anthony
Hats off to everyone working here at WUWT . I admire your patience and tolerance .
[snip – This is a private email between you and me. I’m not interested in discussing it here, even though you are.]
My question: Does the Heartland report (authored by you) exist? A picture of the cover is shown in the video.
Since you allowed Heartland to publish your report, then commentators should be allowed to comment on the accuracy of the material in the report. Sinclair did nothing wrong from my viewpoint.
Regarding the NOAA report, it was published on a NOAA website, so again Peter Sinclair should be allowed to reference and discuss it in his video.
Your attempt to block and squelch the Sinclair video on copyright grounds doesn’t seem well thought out.
REPLY: I have a published and bound book, with Copyright, clearly stated. Book numbers are: ISBN 13: 978-1-934791-29-5 and ISBN 10: 1-934791-26-6. Commentary is one thing, use of the graphic materials and use of my data set by NCDC is something else. I’ve stated my issues. If you are unhappy with that I’m not concerned. I’m not going to discuss it further since my business with him is none of yours. All further posts from you on this subject will be deleted.
You’ve had your say, here and elsewhere, and you’ve already made your conclusions, and you reject any new information. It is pointless to tolerate your abuse further.
– Anthony
Anthony, re Paul K and others like him:
I think PaulK has taken up enough space over one issue. I can’t recall the other thread a few weeks ago where another wordy and insulting fellow wrote several dozen exceedingly long posts with all mashed potatoes and no meat: indeed he occupied perhaps more than 50% of that particular discussion and engaged smart people who usually have much more pithy stuff to offer in a boring-back-and-forth. I think as the AGW-CO2 balloon degasses, that this tactic is going to become more common. You will remember (sorry no link) that AGWers were being coached by advertising strategists on what words to use and what words to avoid – indeed the Madison Ave advisors may well have come up with the metamorphosis of the issue to “Climate Change” and a suggestion to use only the fahrenheit degree scale because it made the temperature rises look double. In any case, this new tactic of burying discussion is likely to increase as the dying beast kicks up dust clouds.
REPLY: I agree, Paul K’s mission is denigration – he’s no longer welcome since he accepts nothing anyone says here and heaps on abuse like his “Gestapo” comment when things don’t go his way. – Anthony
evanmjones and P Walker… I have two comments in “limbo” right now. I don’t know whether they ever will appear. It is frustrating, especially since Mr. Watts challenged me to respond above. My comments are being reviewed and sometimes censored (or worse, modified) because the information they contain contradicts or refutes WUWT published information.
I think you should question whether this site really has comments that represent a fair and balanced view of the topics being discussed.
REPLY: Your posts are below. I set them to hold so I could review them since they are direct response to me and you have been abusive using terms like “Gestapo”. I do have a life, I don’t sit breathlessly in front of the PC awaiting your next comment. I think you should question yourself. – Anthony
I tried to post a comment on Mr. Monbiot’s blog, it was an inoffensive and polite entreaty, it was removed, yet he wants the ‘debate’, I really think, as like his lackeys, honest and open debate is the very last thing they desire. When I am accused by AGWs of being as bad as a holocaust denier for denial of AGW, Lordy I do declare!
Then again my name is Thomas!!! Bring it on……………
Paul K
Even if WUWT doesn’t censor/scrub your posts, I’ve already begun to. I will waste no more time reading or responding to anything you post because your posts add no value to the discussion and your tone reeks of condescension and closemindedness. Congratulations, you are dismissed.
Can w get back to data sets, models, charts and reasons for believing they are in soime ways inaccurate and accurate? This is reading like a soap opera…lol
Hmmm – for a while there I thought I was time traveling… August 6, 2009 is still in the future as of this writing…
Then I realized that Paul K is calling Anthony out on something that happened a YEAR ago, as though any individual should have crystal clear memory about something that was said about someone else a year ago. Amazing.
“Miring your opponent in minutiae” is definitely another tactic I need to cover in my book, although I suspect it goes along with “diversion” and “strawmen”.
Paul K, since you’ve been around here for over a year, you SHOULD know by now what will get your comment snipped or cut. Since I believe that most likely you do, your attempt to cry “censorship” is 100% bogus and worthy of contempt.
FYI for anyone that wants to read how some people see me.
http://climateprogress.org/2009/08/02/anthony-watts-wattsupwiththat-inanity-defense-censor-peter-sinclair-video/
Meh – maybe if those… let’s say, “people”… had ever actually produced something worth copyrighting, their tune would be a little different…
I know that with my own work, simple claim of copyright is sufficient to launch legal proceedings, and simply proving production dates is enough to get a win.
“Someone” is currently collecting outrageous AGW and “Climate Change” predictions and proclamations. I expect my books will sell well in, say, 20 years.
How you can use the word people to describe these creatures shows me how patient you are.
I am making a list. One day a reckoning will come.
The real irony; Sinclair is censoring posts on his video threads at youtube. It must be catching, as his heroes all do it.
Cut your losses
wattsupwiththat (12:29:20) : Buck up Anthony, nobody takes Romm very seriously-his hysterical histrionics are hilarious, hardly hefty however…
wattsupwiththat (12:29:20) :
It’s really hard to take these guys seriously. For example, in the article you reference, they are lecturing you about not understanding copyright law, but then they reference someone committing trademark infringement:
“Yes, a man who knows less about copyright laws than your average sidewalk vendor of fake Rolexes thinks he can teach Sinclair about copyright law.”
Rolex is a trademark and Sinclair infringed on your copyright, what’s the relevance? To me it seems like Joe Romm and friends don’t understand the difference between trademarks and copyrights.
Eli Rabett (13:11:32) :
What losses?
Anthony,
I hope you have lodged a complaint with YouTube over how their sloppiness resulted in a campaign of abuse against you.
Whether as a deliberate tactic or simply as a true believer coming unhinged, “Miring your opponent in minutiae” and hate and smear campaigns are pretty much all the AGW folks have left.
They don’t want discussion.
Any discussion based on science is a discussion they lose. And they know it.
bill (04:45:22) : “I also like the screen capture of ubuntu with its prominent BitTorrent icon. It has some legal uses just not many.”
Almost all space agencies make data and large high resolution graphics available via torrents. Great use of the technology IMHO.
And as a long time user of Ubuntu, I already know that it – or any GNU Linux distro – can be great operating system alternatives.
I want further discussion Robert, but what about heartland’s false claims?
Robert in Calgary (14:27:56)
“Whether as a deliberate tactic or simply as a true believer coming unhinged, “Miring your opponent in minutiae” and hate and smear campaigns are pretty much all the AGW folks have left.
They don’t want discussion.
Any discussion based on science is a discussion they lose. And they know it.”
–
This has become increasingly evident during the past week. The need to maintain extreme polarization results in the stoning of even genuine diplomats. The belief appears to be that the objective is so high that any tactic is warranted. This approach is not sustainable.
Paul K (10:22:17) :
My question: Does the Heartland report (authored by you) exist? A picture of the cover is shown in the video.
Since you allowed Heartland to publish your report, then commentators should be allowed to comment on the accuracy of the material in the report. Sinclair did nothing wrong from my viewpoint.
Actually, no one has questioned the accuracy of the ‘report’ as you call it. NOAA have questioned (anonymously) whether it asked a legitimate question. They have tried by a very quick & possibly poor response to claim that the question was not legitimate. I suggest this is damage limitation.
The issue of homogenisation has not been addressed as far as I am aware.
DaveE.
******************
Eli Rabett (13:11:32) : Cut your losses
******************
That’s good advice for warmistalarmists. Looks like the “everything is going to hell in a hand basket veiw” is, well, going to hell in a hand basket.
wattsupwiththat (12:29:20) :
Yup, just went over there to take a look. It seems that, over there, usually the articles with the sole purpose of attacking skeptics/skeptical views draw the most comments.
wattsupwiththat (12:29:20) :
I had a look – it’s not pretty. it looks like Romm and his band of adolescents are enjoying a party while the grown ups are away.
Anthony – you are at the vanguard against AGW and fighting the good fight. Far, far many better people, than Romm and his contributors, have a far higher opinion of you than they do – the amount and quality of traffic you get on WUWT is eloquent testimony to that. It is getting ugly and it won’t get any better from here on in. AGW are loosing the war and they know it so they have to resort to these tactics.
Churchill again springs to mind: “…It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
FWIW (not much, I know), I now agree with others above: Anthony should not bother to debate this Sinclair fellow, even if invited. Anthony should hold out for bigger fry.
I would also suggest that when the Senate resumes hearings on Tax and Trade, that Anthony should be invited to testify on his Surface Stations project and its possible implications for the AGW hypothesis.
Re the apparent obsession of Paul K with a putative copyright issue that was not even the subject of any posts here: This is a common tactic of ideological trolls in Web discussions. They will seize upon minor issues and attempt to turn the thread into an endless argument over details, often citing copious sources and references. It is possible that Paul K is merely a compulsive puppy with a bone he can’t give up, but he may also be an agent provocateur. The presence of moderators helps keep these trolls at bay. In this case, Anthony has shown more forbearance and patience than anyone could reasonably expect.
/Mr Lynn
Anthony-
“Well no, not quite. It is data that has been put through a series of processes that render it so the end result is like comparing the temperature between several bowls of water that have been mixed together, then poured back into the original bowls and the temperature measured of each. What you get is an end temperature for each bowl that is a mixture of the other nearby bowl temperatures.”
Isn’t this the whole point in determining global (or in this case “national” )temperature? Sounds like mixing bowls of water together is a perfect analogy, as that is wha tyou want to do to determince average temperature. The point is, that one curve is produced by measurements from all stations, and the other curve is produced by using only the stations you claim to be good or excellent–if your claims that the temperature readings have been contaminated by heat island effects were true, then we would expect the (homogenized) temperatures from the 70 best/excellent statments to be dropping below the (homogenized) temperatures of the full data set (as the heat island effects presumably have been becoming more pronounced). The curve you show clealy does not exhibit this.
On your issue of personal attacks–it seems pretty hard to beat your post.
Sounds like DaveE thinks you can row a rowboat with one oar because it “averages out into two smaller oars”…
DaveE, here’s a small nut for you:
You have 2 temperature sensors, t1 and t2, and one of them’s on fire. You also have two temperature readings.
The homogenized temperature for t1 is 457,5 degrees.
The homogenized temperature for t2 is 457,5 degrees.
Which sensor is on fire, DaveE?
wattsupwiththat (12:29:20) FYI […]
http://climateprogress.org/2009/08/02/anthony-watts-wattsupwiththat-inanity-defense-censor-peter-sinclair-video/
I just took a 10 second scan there. There’s nothing about climate. End of story.
—— Check these out! ——-
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/papers/jgr2001b/jgr2.html
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/papers/jgr2001a/jgr_interann.html
Eye on the ball…
(bait evaded)
–
I look forward to the next articles on tropical precipitation, regional temperature range trends, ENSO, Pacific Warm Pool, etc. The complexity of nature is what puts Watts on top.
I seem to recall Paul K. responded to a post I made on Tips & Notes in late June re the Catlin oil drums being picked up from the ice on June 5. I got the distinct impression he was in someway association with that organisation. I can’t link back as Tips has been cleaned up since then. Moderator: don’t bother posting if you think this is immaterial, just thought I’d draw it to your attention.
The warmistalarmists believe the Bill Maher approach to debate is the way to go. It only works for BM (BM, I like that!) because he is a liberal in front of a liberal audience. He is 85% vitriol and 15% show business. What works for him does not work so much for climate scientists, it makes them look like buffoons to the rest of us. Maybe the climate scientists should try discussing the science for a change. They don’t make particularly effective comedians … well, at least most of them.
Steve (Paris) (03:29:52) :
“I seem to recall Paul K. responded to a post I made on Tips & Notes in late June re the Catlin oil drums being picked up from the ice on June 5. ”
Does anyone know if this mob actually picked up their oil drums yet? I would have thought they might have been worried about them floating about the Arctic Ocean – well all the ice was going to melt, wasn’t it?
The website says they were picked up on 5 June but that news was posted toward end June. I posted on WUWT wondering whether 5 June wasn’t too late for a landing. Paul K. replied that the drums were close to the coast so ice was thick enough – but that level of detail also got me wondering whether he might be associated with Catlin. Posts have been taken down now so sorry no links.
Here’s the Catlin linked re the drums:
All gone quite since then.
http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/
“From the Ice
Logistically, all the loose ends of the expedition have now been tied up.
On the 5th June, Kenn Borek Air scooped up the remaining fuel drums from our fuel cache on the Arctic Ocean, before returning to the base at Resolute.
Today all the freight arrived back at the Ops Room here in London. The laborious task of putting it into some sort of order begins. Some of the kit (sledges, clothing, drills etc) will be used for display purposes, some will be binned and some will be stored for any future projects…more “
Having glanced very briefly at the video and a couple of articles on climateprogress.org, it’s pretty obvious that the video was fully intended as a “hit wh@ring” operation (I hope it’s okay to use that term here–if not I’ll repost). In other words, the guy’s explicitly stated intention was to provoke a response that would generate publicity for himself.
It strikes me as a tad hypocritical to deliberately provoke a reaction and then simultaneously bitch and moan about that reaction while bragging that you deliberately provoked it to draw attention to yourself.
Then again what do I know? I’m old-fashion enough that a blog like climateprogress that bills itself as a ‘science blog’ should have at least a modicum of actual science content once in a while. I’ve gone over there three times and haven’t seen any actual science facts, science theories, or even a remotely scientific way of thinking in the posts or comments.
Oh well. At least this site is popular enough to make hit wh@ring on it worth the effort.
Tangent – Most “lawyers of the internet” do not understand copyright or licensing. In video, if it is not yours, you must get permission and usually license it. I quit doing video because music licensing costs far more in time and money than I can make for video sales. And movie studios charge even more with more paperwork…
Example – If I want to use the song Band of Brothers from series of the same name, there are 2 license holders. Sony and… err… paperwork is at home. I had to pay a fee to Sony and the other holder (the composer’s publisher). I think I ended up at around $100 for both with the licensing letter for a distribution of 250 copies (max). I was filming a marching band… there were 7 other songs I had to license too. Ended up making around $1000 gross and over $500 just in capital licensing cost. The licensing took 8 weeks to clear and cost about 30 hours of my time and effort.
Youtube is just overwhelmed with copyright violations. I have been accused there of having boring music. But hey. I spent $120 on licensed music. I am surprised they actually took action so fast.
On the off-chance that anybody is actually interested:
Homogeneity adjustments of in situ atmospheric climate data: a review (600kB PDF)
TC Peterson et al., International Journal of Climatology, vol. 18, Issue 13, pp.1493-1517
Is there any relation to Mary Sinclair of Midland, the noted anti-nuclear activist?
Somehow, the thought of killing off the Midland Nuclear Plant and complaining about AGW coming from the same family would have a certain Al Gore-ish consistency to it.
Correction to Paul Vaughan (01:59:33)
–
These are the articles:
–
Dai, Aiguo; Qian, Taotao; & Trenberth, Kevin E. (2009) Changes in Continental Freshwater Discharge from 1948 to 2004. Journal of Climate 22(10), 2773-2792.
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F2008JCLI2592.1
–
Adler, Robert F.; Gu, Guojun; Wang, Jian-Jian; Huffman, George J.; Curtis, Scott; Bolvin, David (2008). Relationships between global precipitation and surface temperature on interannual and longer timescales (1979-2006). Journal of Geophysical Research 113, D22104
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008JGRD..11322104A
–
DaveE:
Can someone please explain something to me: How is it that the homogenized data curve from the 70 stations is virtually identical to that of the full data set? Alternatively, why do we then need 1000+ stations when we can get the same results from less than 100? Perhaps even less than 50? 10? 2?
I started reading my latest issue of Scientific American 3.0 (which is not funded or dominated by just the researchers SOME deniers may term “the usual suspects,” though of course they are also interevieed from time to time) and I found very practical and relatively inexpensive methodologies to reduce Green house gas emissions in meaningful ways. Also I saw some methods that would reduce other air pollutants which do increase prevalence and incidence of lung cancers, skin cancers and various other respiratory diseases (think of the “black cloud” from China.)
For one, Sally Benson an expert hydrologist from Stanford University is showing that there is atleast a 100 years of sequestering of C02, and possibly more right now. If a bolier pipe that generates 30 MW of steam is put into the 1,600 MW capacity Schwarze Pump Plant (coal fired power plant) 95% of C02 in a 99.7% pure form. Wind generated turbines are now popping up in Antartica by a Belgian research station named “Princess Elizabeth,” which has endured ice storms in Slovenia and typhoons in Japan. To generate more electricity these turbines are hooked up to diesel generators and photo voltaic cells and can supply electricity to instruments, lights and computers. Also the system has solar panels to melt snow to make water. The technology is out there, the efficiency is getting far better, and the costs though still high, are declining. There are a host of other examples, but you can read that in Scientific American 3.0, the journal Nature, Infinite Energy, Forbes (energy related issues) Google Scholar and Popular Science/Meachanics. PBS has some excellent programs as well on this subject matter. (PBS.org)
AEGeneral (08:31:04) :
… How long before they photoshop Anthony’s picture in a Darth Vader helmet & call him Darth Watts? And the rest of us Storm Troopers?
If Anthony is the “Archdenier,” then clearly the rest of us are minions, mindlessly doing his bidding. 8^)
dorlomin (09:04:12) :
…
Cult? The AGW cult, is this not all about whining about ad hominems, I thought this was supposed to be full of people above that
Your point would be well taken, except for the fact that you lack the capacity to recognize that we are use the term “cult” as a description based on the behavior of AGW adherents, not as an insult. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult
Yuri Manchur (08:37:04) :
Dear Mr Watts,
You’ve been pawned.
…
New to the “interweb?” That’s “pwned,” as in “Yuri, you’ve pwned yourself!”
Luke (03:11:32) :
People like you, funded by conservative think tanks are not scientists.
I’ve told Exxon not to mail you a check this month. While the rest of us are enjoying CO2 laden adult beverages, courtesy of Big Oil, you can reflect on the cost of snark.
Anthony
It appears that you’ve really stirred up the blogosphere. I count almost 25 attack blogs about you in the last week or so, with a similar number of blogs coming to your defense:
http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?as_q=&num=10&hl=en&client=firefox-a&c2coff=1&safe=active&scoring=d&ie=UTF-8&ctz=240&c2coff=1&btnG=Search+Blogs&as_epq=anthony+watts&as_oq=&as_eq=&bl_pt=&bl_bt=&bl_url=&bl_auth=&as_qdr=a&as_drrb=b&as_mind=1&as_minm=7&as_miny=2009&as_maxd=3&as_maxm=8&as_maxy=2009&lr=&safe=active
I think that this is all good news. The more the Warmists attack you, the more people will wonder about you and visit WUWT to find out more. Most people who wonder are just one article/thread away from being skeptics.
REPLY: It has been said that even negative publicity is valuable. I ;eave the decision to people who can get beyond the rhetoric. The ones mired in rhetoric and hate are lost to reason. – Anthony
Can a moderator check that the posting DaveE (20:45:06) : 08.02.09 came from this IP?
I’m pretty sure I wasn’t THAT inebriated
DaveE.
“Before 1976, ENSO events began along the west coast of South America ( TNI positive) and developed westwards. However, after 1977 the warming has developed from the west so that TNI with reversed sign prevailed some 3 to 12 months before the main peak in N34 and was followed by TNI itself some 3 to 12 months after the peak. Therefore, the evolution of ENSO events changed abruptly about 1976/77 [ Wang, 1995; An and Wang, 2000; Trenberth and Stepaniak, 2001].”
“Some nonlinear effects that come into play depend on whether the temperature anomalies occur over the ocean or land. Over the ocean, the magnitude of that surface temperature change is muted by the heat capacity of the underlying ocean […] Consequently, the net surface warming over land is typically much larger than an equivalent response over the ocean (Fig. 9) and this can influence the global mean temperature, although it is not equivalent to a net heat content anomaly.”
“the peak in N34 tends to occur about November to December and is phase locked to the annual cycle”
“The reasons why the change in evolution with the 1976/77 climate shift occurred are quite uncertain”
Trenberth, Kevin E.; Caron, Julie M.; Stepaniak, David P.; Worley, Steve (2002). Evolution of El Nino – Southern Oscillation and global atmospheric surface temperatures. Journal of Geophysical Research (Atmospheres), 107(D8), AAC5-1.
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/papers/jgr2001b/jgr2.html
I’m amazed at how faith-based the response of the global warming crowd has been to the graph in the talking points. I haven’t seen anyone asking about methodology or questioning the frankly rather unbelievably close correspondence between the full station curve and the 70-odd station curve.
Anyone who has worked with data to any major extent would look at those curves and immediately wonder about the methodology. It could conceivably be right, but it’s at least as likely to be produced by a common quirk in the methodology that produced the two curves.
Re: Berry R (20:55:15)
You make a solid point about unquestioning faith-based response, but I would encourage you to run some simulations and then reconsider your latter points (about how many stations it takes to approximate a network).
A watchdog doesn’t always have to bite; knowledge of the watchdog is a deterrent. It isn’t always necessary to blow up a “target”. If the people operating the target want to protect it and are capable of being sensible, a warning shot across the bow might be enough if they appear to be getting out of line.
HOWEVER:
The most important thing isn’t the network average. What is most important is the consistency of measurements at each station. See Currie 1996 to get a sense of how difficult it will be for FUTURE researchers to disentangle complexity if measurements are not taken consistently at each station.
Currie, R. G. (1996). Variance contribution of luni-solar (Mn) and solar cycle (Sc) signals to climate data. International Journal of Climatology 16(12), 1343-1364.
Averages hide a LOT of information about local spatiotemporal heterogeneity. It is not enough to study broad-scale averages. (That is just one baby step towards where we need to go.)
It could conceivably be right, but it’s at least as likely to be produced by a common quirk in the methodology that produced the two curves.
Wait for it. #B^1
Jacob Mack (12:50:46) :
I don’t have a problem with alternatives to coal and nuclear as long as they are cheaper than coal and nuclear.
Anthony,
I didn’t have time to read all of this, but I noticed a couple of statements about me. Let me clear those up.
First, there is a John Van Vliet who makes movies. He’s not me. He was also involved in Weird Science — I was pretty excited as a kid to see my name scroll by in the credits.
Second, what’s with your statement that I used “incomplete data”. If you think just a little bit harder, you’ll remember that I analyzed the best stations (as chosen by you) with proper geographic weighting and without homogeneity adjustments. You’ll remember that the USA48 trend from the best stations matched the trend from all stations.
You may also remember that you continuously ask me to hide the results. Supposedly you’re going to do your own analysis at some point. It’s been a couple of years — how’s that analysis coming?
REPLY: Ah John, the data was in fact incomplete as the data you used was not spatially representative of the USA, there were serious clumping and lack of coverage issues for CRN1/2 stations. The data had also not been quality controlled yet when you used it. We fixed several errors where volunteers had surveyed the wrong station, since many communities contain multiple COOP sites, this is easy to do.
I did not ask you to “hide the results”. That is your statement, not mine. What I did ask you to do is WAIT until I had a complete enough data set and had a chance to publish my own results first. I also asked you to stop citing your results pending publication of mine. This is common practice in science, not to usurp another person’s work by taking their shared data and publishing some conclusion on it prior to the primary investigator being able to do so. Both you and NCDC didin’t pay any attention to that, preferring the rush to judgment approach without so much as asking me initially (you may recall I made suggestions after your surprise analysis. This is what my being open and publishing data early on got me.
The current analysis is going swimmingly, thank you. And two papers are being prepared. I was also invited to participate in a paper from NCDC which I am considering, but they too want to “rush”. When my papers publish, all data and methods will be available online for replication. Until they publish, I ask for the same courtesy extended to any other primary investigator and collector of data. – Anthony
Anthony,
Your arguments sounds very convincing, but you were very happy to promote and go along with Steve McIntyre’s analysis of the same data. His analysis was much simpler than mine and did not even make an attempt at geographic weighting. His analysis also supported your statements and opinion that the “official” temperature histories had major problems.
It was only when I did an improved analysis that showed the official temperature histories were ok that you complained about premature conclusions.
As for using “your” data, all that I have ever used was your station ratings which you regularly publish online (which is a good thing). Nobody has usurped your right to use the data first for your own benefit.
If you would like to do your own analysis with your quality-controlled data, my OpenTemp software is still available. You could finish your analysis this afternoon using any subset of stations that you like. The results would certainly be more complete than empty predictions about the quality of NOAA and NASA results.
REPLY: John, you may recall that McIntyre’s analysis was prompted by you. Other than noting the initial rebuttal here I haven’t been using it. Your analysis OTOH, was being cited as proof of falsification repeatedly on many online discussions, without so much a mention of the weaknesses in that early data. Your analysis of early, incomplete, and non QC’d data prompted a summary rush to judgment by many.
As far as I can tell, you haven’t lifted a finger in any of those cases to point out any of those weaknesses. If you have, please email me a list.
Let me ask you. If I had not been open in my process, and published some early data, would you have even embarked on OpenTemp?
I think not. You saw an angle and went for it. If the OpenTemp project was truly to be used as anything other than a tool to target my work, it would have blossomed (as Open Source projects tend to do) and we’d be seeing regular updates on it. Right? You snark about my taking two years to complete a nationwide project with volunteers. yet your own project has not been significantly updated, and you have only yourself to manage.
You don’t even have it published up on Sourceforge yet.
http://sourceforge.net/search/?type_of_search=soft&words=OpenTemp
– Anthony
Anthony,
I was hanging out on Climate Audit when Mr. McIntyre did his initial analysis using your data. I thought it would be an interesting challenge to take his preliminary work and your station ratings and improve on it. I was not “targeting” your work — I thought your work was useful and was curious about the temperature record. I spent a couplef of evenings writing a little program (OpenTemp) to analyze the stations with proper geographic weighting. I then posted the results on Climate Audit.
That led to many re-analyses. My work was appearing on other web sites that I knew nothing about. I addressed every problem that you and others found in my work. I looked into including stations with CRN ratings of 3 or higher. I excluded urban stations. I excluded airports. I and others worked on regional analysis within USA48. We looked at the differences between the best and worst stations. The basic conclusion was always the same — the station problems had little if any qualitative effect on the USA48 temperature record.
I also made many offers to work with you and Mr McIntyre to write an open-source program and to analyze the data together. You were not interested, and that’s fine.
I published the source code online. I invited collaboration but there were no takers. I do not have the time or inclination to run an open-source project, but the code is still available if anybody wants it.
I do not “snark” about Surface Stations taking two years to complete. I snark about you studiously avoiding any analysis of your data that would quantify the effect of station problems on the temperature record. You spend a lot of time publishing the poor quality of some stations but are unwilling to quantify the problem. As I said, you could be finished this afternoon using OpenTemp.
REPLY: You still haven’t answered the question about why you embarked on the project and published initial results using the data gathered without so much as an initial email to me. Your offers of collaboration came later, BTW. But that’s OK I don’t need an answer.
About my timeline: They key has always been to find the “best” stations, as there are very very few of them. That is the goal. The “best” stations establish the baseline. Publishing analysis on early CRN1/2 data that is clumped and missing wide swaths of the USA while comparing it to a larger more evenly and spatially distributed set is fine, but in my opinion and that of others, was not enough. And that analysis has been completed at one stage for one paper, and we are writing that paper. Your analysis didn’t have a critical mass of CRN1/2 stations so to say that it coame out the same way each time only really speaks to the data.
I will say that your work showed us something of value though, and I’m making use of it. We could go round and round for hours. The right time for doing that is after my papers have been published. All I’ve ever asked of anyone (beyond the volunteer help) is to let me finish, yet I’m being criticized for that even.
Wait for our analysis, then criticize all your wish, write rebuttals. That is the accepted way science does it. – Anthony
“I don’t have a problem with alternatives to coal and nuclear as long as they are cheaper than coal and nuclear.”
Without taxpayer subsidies, alternative energy sources are much, much more expensive than coal, oil or nuclear power.
And they only produce a tiny, single-digit percentage [1%, IIRC] of power produced — for a really massive waste of tax money.
It’s like hooking up generators to bicycles, subsidizing the peddlers, and claiming you have a new alternative source of power.
Take away the subsidies. Then we’ll see what an inefficient waste of resources “green” power really is.
JohnV,
You say that Anthony is “studiously avoiding any analysis of [his] data that would quantify the effect of station problems on the temperature record.” How would you know that?
Do you seriously believe, after the enormous amount of time and effort that has gone into the Surface Stations project, that Anthony is avoiding any analysis of the data? That sounds like a preemptive hit piece, in case the results aren’t what you want to see.
There is nothing stopping you from doing your own site survey, instead of complaining about the way Anthony chooses to do it. But that would take a lot more effort than sitting back and taking pot shots at the guy who’s actually doing the work, wouldn’t it?
Smokey,
I have never complained about the way that Anthony is doing a site survey. It’s a lot of work and I think the results are potentially useful for real science. My statement about studiously avoiding a quantitative analysis is based on his many rejections of offers to quantify the data and write it up as a blog post.
—
Anthony,
I just went back to the original comment thread at CA where I did my first analysis. You are right that my first analysis came before Steve McIntyre’s first analysis (my memory of events was incorrect):
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2048
You ask why I didn’t send you an email first. I guess it was just because I was writing a simple comment in a large online community using data that you had just publicized. Your initial reaction was quite positive:
—
“Hello John V.
Thanks so much for doing this analysis, your detailed effort is appreciated.
I had planned on doing something similar, and I know Steve McIntyre is also working on something along these lines.
Before I comment further, I’m wondering if you’d be able to run the same analysis method on max temps only, then min temps only, discarding calculating any mean or average of max and min.”
(technical details that only make sense in the context of the thread)
—
Looking back, the early comments were very civil and cooperative. We both became more hostile as I came under attack from some CA regulars and you came under attack from outsiders. At some point you decided I was targeting you.
But Anthony, you have to realize that when you spend your days promoting Surface Stations and the idea that the surface temperature record is badly broken, somebody is going to quantify your assumptions. You can’t have it both ways — you can’t promote and publicize your data and assumptions while simultaneously hoarding it and complaining when others do a reality check.
“The evolution of ENSO necessitates more than one mode to explain the ENSO-related variability, a point often not adequately appreciated by a number of analyses which simply use one ENSO index to “remove” the effects of ENSO linearly from time series [e.g., Jones, 1989; Christy and McNider, 1994; Zhang et al., 1996; Wigley and Santer, 2000]. We propose a second time series, TNI, as a simple second index important in the evolution of ENSO [Trenberth and Stepaniak, 2001].”
Trenberth, K.E.; Stepaniak, D.P.; & Caron, J.M. (2002), Interannual variations in the atmospheric heat budget, Journal of Geophysical Research 107(D8), AAC 4-1, 4066. doi:10.1029/2000JD000297.
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/papers/jgr2001a/jgr_interann.html
I’m not going to prejudge what an analysis of the whole range of ‘good’ stations is going to show, but:
(a) Whether or not the ‘good’ stations show the same trends as the overall network I think it is important to keep as much capability to analyze the data from the poor stations as possible. The bureaucratic impulse would be to close down the ‘bad’ stations or fix the problems that Anthony points to. Unfortunately, doing that would make it much more difficult to salvage any value from data from the stations involved. Hopefully the NOAA can figure out some way to salvage data from at least some of the stations. Running properly sited station in parallel (and nearby) to some of the more important ‘bad’ stations for a year or two might allow them to quantify how the poor siting affected the results. We don’t have a time machine, so if this data can be salvaged it should be. In some cases (siting under an air conditioner hot air exhaust) there probably isn’t much point in trying to salvage anything. In other cases there may be a signal extractable from the noise.
b) It’s important not to demonize the poor saps who have been trying to keep these records and make sense of them over the years or to turn them into enemies. If someone at an agency proves themselves to be a political hack rather than a scientist that’s one thing. If some poor smo is just trying to do an impossible job as well as they can that’s another. Don’t make enemies when you don’t have to.
Anthony and the volunteers are doing a job that the agency probably doesn’t have the resources to do themselves. If both sides spin it right this could lead to more resources going to doing the job right, which is in everybody’s interests.
c) The surface stations project was a good idea, but it may start looking at the process too late. Remember, the stations that are being looked at, both good and bad, are a subset of the total stations. I don’t remember the exact figures but I think that around 10-15% of the stations were chosen. How were those specific stations chosen? If any part of the process involved judgment calls, then it’s almost inevitable that biases of some kind got introduced. An obvious one: if you’re expecting warming, you’re more likely to think that stations showing it are good quality stations. Problems like that are why the FDA requires double-blind studies when they decide whether or not to approve drugs.
A closely related problem: sensor replacement. If you’re expecting warming you’re probably going to be more likely to check for faulty sensors when the sensor is running colder than you expected rather than hotter than you expected. When you’re talking tenths of a degree per decade it doesn’t take much subconscious bias to produce a trend whether or not there is one.
d) It would be interesting to see if you could pick out any impact from irrigation on rural temperatures. If water vapor is a greenhouse gas it seems logical that putting a lot of it in a field would increase local humidity and thus local temperatures. Well-watered soil would also probably hold heat better than very dry soil too. How large of an impact would this have? I don’t know. Do temperatures appear to go up more in irrigated areas than in areas with a lot of natural rainfall?
Local humidity might actually be an issue to look for in checking out the siting of sensors. If a sensor in an arid region is in the middle of irrigated field or even a well-watered lawn is it representative of the area in terms of local humidity?
~snip~
I could just scream.
Via realclimate (the link to the German scientists’ letter to the chancellor), I found an article on Dan Satterfield, a TV meteorologist (WHNT Huntsville, AL) being very loudmouthed in denouncing any criticism of AGW as pseudoscience. He’s got (linked from WHNT) a website with a host of Hansen, Schmidt, Mann et al regurgitations, and, what’s worse, a special children’s misinformation site.
So I’m looking around his sites to find a comment function, thinking about a basic find-yourself-on-the- wrong-side-of-history-pretty-soon sort of post, with an added question how he ever came to unquestioningly retell vague propaganda while calling detailed rebuttals pseudo-science – and perhaps to point out that after something is “peer reviewed” (the most common words in his sites), if the review indicates a paper is crap, it is not a mark of excellence. (As a terrible example, he cites Mann’s fantasy data on the Antartic in his slide presentation on why your friend who disbelieves AGW is wrong.)
And what do I find?
Go here:
http://wildwildweather.com/forecastblog/
and scroll down to the currently second item, “August 2009- Science Fights Back” where he writes about a book on lack of science knowledge in the US general public, writes how important that problem is to him, and suddenly, how questioning AGW is unscientific.
*** Then he links to his own post about the Surfacestations pamphlet, where he regurgitates the talking-point memo including crap pre-homogenized graph, enveloping simple untruths (“mis-sited stations cancel each other out”) and irrelevant strawmen (“it’s the delta-T, not the absolute numbers”) in his condescending this-is-not-science, he-doesn’t even-understand style.
Then: “The Scientists at NOAA had had enough, and responded to it.” And:
***Then he goes on to laud the stupid video that is the topic of this thread “Peter Sinclair made a well produced video called The Climate Denial Crock of The Week. It took apart Watt’s silly pamphlet, bit by bit, and showed without a doubt, why NOAA was right.”
and finally, he accuses Anthony of censorship and naturally, “He apparently understands even less about “Fair Use” under copyright law, than he does about climate physics”.
I wished I had the time to respond to him (I’d have a hard time to not stopp to the ad hom. style of the video and call him Mortimer Snurd, as that’s all I’ve seen in this clown until now), but I don’t.
He’s local to me, you see. Anybody else here from Huntsville? Particularly a mouthpiece from this area should have it pointed out to him how local UAH is the source of much of the data that will be his undoing.
othercoast (16:21:12) :
I could just scream.
Via realclimate (the link to the German scientists’ letter to the chancellor), I found an article on Dan Satterfield, a TV meteorologist (WHNT Huntsville, AL) …
I used to live in Huntsville. The standing joke was that Dan is a great meteorologist, he’s predicted 37 of the last 2 blizzards. 8^)
Peter Sinclair’s video has been reinstated by youtube. It seems that cited material was deemed fair use.
Well now you tube has gone green! They’ve just restored Sinclair’s video.
~snip~ The argument is that the Earth isn’t really warming, only we think it is because of bad data from urban temperature sites.
1. The areas were the temperature anomaly are greatest are the Arctic, Siberia, and Antarctica. There aren’t too many sidewalks, air conditioning vents, or tarmacs in those areas.
2. The US only covers 2% of the Earth’s land mass, so even if there were errors in that data, it wouldn’t affect the data in the rest of the 98% of the Earth’s surface.
3. As has been said many times, the errors you site can only cause a constant higher temperature, and those errors would not be useful to a global warming case, since they would have to be increasing. Your only rebuttal point seems to be that you object to the common procedures to normalize the data and adjust for these errors.
4. We don’t even need to look at temperature data, when we can observe the patterns of nature changing before our eyes in response to what would be expected if the Earth was warming as a whole.
~snip~ [~dbstealey, moderator]