Quote of the week, the hilarious EPIC FAIL of Dana Nuccitelli

This has been a weird week with my appearance on PBS Newshour. As Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters documents, the alarmosphere has gone beserk over my appearance on PBS.

Watching it, it becomes clear they are in a panic. Even Ralph Nader says Washington is running away from the issue. So, like anyone who’s panicked, Nuccitelli makes an epic fail in his haste to discredit me. He’s upset that I was allowed to speak at PBS and I was just one of a balanced panel of people on that program. It must have been the horrible things I said like:

SPENCER MICHELS: His conclusion though is that basically global warming exists and that the scientists, no matter what the problems were, were pretty much right on.

ANTHONY WATTS: I agree with him that global warming exists. However, the ability to attribute the percentage of global warming to CO2 versus other man-made influences is still an open question.

or this:

ANTHONY WATTS: I’m saying that the data might be biased by these influences to a percentage. Yes, we have some global warming, it’s clear the temperature has gone up in the last 100 years. But what percentage of that is from carbon dioxide? And what percentage of that is from changes in the local and measurement environment?

So to counter those terrible opinions on percentages, Nuccitelli goes on the emotional offensive in a rant at Romm’s romper room, and in the process, makes an epic failure of the most basic rule of percentages:

A Deeper Look At False Balance On PBS News Hour | ThinkProgress

…the amount of warming caused by human greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is known to a high degree of certainty, and these same studies have all found that GHGs are responsible for over 100% of the observed warming over this timeframe.

Gosh. GHG’s are responsible for over 100% of the observed warming? That’s an epic fail if I’ve ever seen one. Even Nuccitelli’s buddy, Stephan Lewadowsky’s statistical blundering on his “skeptics deny the moon landing” paper isn’t that bad. Tamino will not be impressed.

No wonder Noel Sheppard said “If you had any doubts about the level of zealotry involved in today’s global warming movement, they likely will be erased by the goings on at PBS the past few days.”

But when you see the sort of things the people at Skeptical Science write, you start to understand that this isn’t about science, but about pure unmitigated hate against people that have differing views about climate science. For example, this came from the SkS secret web forum where all of the moderators and authors (including Nuccitelli) get together to talk about what they are going to do about the climate skeptics.

Here is Glenn Tamblyn (Skeptical Science author/moderator) secretly conversing with his SkS pals on their off limits forum and saying “we need a conspiracy to save humanity”. The Viet Cong comparison is a nice touch too. There’s talk of convening a “war council” too.

And this isn’t about science or personal careers and reputations any more. This is a fight for survival. Our civilisations survival. .. We need our own anonymous (or not so anonymous) donors, our own think tanks…. Our Monckton’s … Our assassins.

Anyone got Bill Gates’ private number, Warren Buffett, Richard Branson? Our ‘side’ has got to get professional, ASAP. We don’t need to blog. We need to network. Every single blog, organisation, movement is like a platoon in an army. ..This has a lot of similarities to the Vietnam War….And the skeptics are the Viet Cong… Not fighting like ‘Gentlemen’ at all. And the mainstream guys like Gleick don’t know how to deal with this. Queensberry Rules rather than biting and gouging.

..So, either Mother Nature deigns to give the world a terrifying wake up call. Or people like us have to build the greatest guerilla force in human history. Now. Because time is up…Someone needs to convene a council of war of the major environmental movements, blogs, institutes etc. In a smoke filled room (OK, an incense filled room) we need a conspiracy to save humanity.

[As quoted by Geoff Chambers in this Bishop Hill thread. http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/3/26/opengate-josh-158.html?currentPage=2#comments ]

Yet climate skeptics are being painted as conspiracy theory nutters by the very same people who say “a conspiracy to save humanity” is needed.

More here.  Dana Nuccitelli’s email response to me on 9/14/2012 when I asked him if he had any remorse about this?

“No.”

I have to wonder, does Dana put tinfoil under that helmet to protect him from skeptical climate thoughts of the general populace when he rides his scooter around in Sacramento?

One final note, Nuccitelli says this in his rant at Romm’s romper room:

Not only has the accuracy of the surface temperature record been confirmed by BEST and Watts’ own Fall et al. (2011), but also by a number of other peer-reviewed papers such as Peterson et al. (2003) and Menne et al. (2010).  If Watts believes these studies are flawed, he should attempt to demonstrate it in a peer-reviewed paper.  Until he has accomplished this, by his own standards his argument is invalid.

Apparently it was just too much for him to link to the Watts et al 2012 paper, even though he’s written about it before (or to mention that the BEST paper failed peer review).

Oh and for the record Dana, I have two peer reviewed papers in which I am an author, not one. See here, you might want to fix your article. And, there’s more to come, not that it matters to people like Dana whether it is peer reviewed or not, they’ll diss it just the same because we need a conspiracy to save humanity.

*He’s on a mission from clods.

*with apologies to Jake and Elwood