UPDATE: Mr. Marriott, perhaps fearful of legal action due to his own stupidity on the matter, has dropped the claim of “doctoring” and has also changed the title to remove the “dishonest” claim. Rather than admit he was wrong and published a defamatory article with malicious intent, he’s now using the “Gleick defense” citing his essay as a joke and a “throwaway” comment. All of this defamation was over what could have been a simple request: “Mr. Watts, would you add the NSIDC graph showing standard deviation (in addition to the one sans STD) to the WUWT Sea Ice page ?” I’m happy to do so and have done so. Instead of a simple request, we get ludicrous claims of doctoring images, dishonesty, and now the fallback position of “cherry picking” and the laughable “incomplete context” claim in order to avoid admission of wrongdoing. I suppose his next complaint will be to NSIDC to claim the “incomplete context” of showing only 2012 and 2013 on the NSIDC graph?
Now he’s modified the original essay, sending it down the memory hole, leaving late coming readers to believe his defamation never happened, but you can see the screenshot of the original below. There’s no clear apology, no admission that his hatred caused him to screw up the simplest issue and use it for the basis of defamation. Clearly his behavior is proof there’s no integrity with Mr. Mike Marriot, which of course is self evident by the title of his blog “Watching the Deniers”. – Anthony
False accusation that Watts “doctored” sea ice graph
Eric Worrall writes:
An Australian alarmist blog, Watching The Deniers, has just accused Anthony Watts of photoshopping one of the Sea Ice Graphs.
Click here (screencap here)to see the ridiculous accusation.
Note the original NSIDC graph, updated daily, which the the Watching the Deniers blog claimed Anthony Watts fabricated:
[ http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png ]
Somehow WTD thinks that Anthony makes the above image by “doctoring” this one:
[ http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png ]
I have of course lodged a complaint with the Australian Press Council about this lie. I encourage other Australians to complain through official channels about climate lies propagated by alarmists.
=============================================================
Anthony adds:
This may be the dumbest accusation against me, ever. NSIDC used to put the same graph on their front page, in late 2009, without standard deviation bounds. It is the same one we’ve had since about then on our WUWT Sea Ice page.
By early 2010, NSIDC added one with standard deviation bounds, but keeps updating the original too.
(UPDATE: NSIDC has stopped updating the graph without STD bounds, and replaces any request for it automatically now with one including STD. You can see the NSIDC graph without standard deviation bounds as figure 4 in the Federal register here: http://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2008/05/15/E8-11105/endangered-and-threatened-wildlife-and-plants-determination-of-threatened-status-for-the-polar-bear )
It would be quite some feat for me to “doctor” that image with STD bounds everyday and place it in plain view for thousands to see every month and get away with it for three years. Sheesh.
According to the about page for WTD:
Mike Marriott, a 40+ year old living in Melbourne. I work as an information manager for a large professional services firm.
I’ve left a comment explaining Mr. Marriott’s absurd misconception and asked for an apology. We’ll see if it passes moderation, and if he lives up to his “professional services” label.
Here is a screencap of the comment:
In the meantime, you can leave comments here.
The original accusation by Marriott is in the screenshot below:
![wtdscreenshot[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/wtdscreenshot1.gif)
I’ve updated the post and included the screencap of the original defamation.
What an idiot.
Watching the Deniers – who watches the Watchers?
This thread was just screaming for this.
Eugene WR Gallun says: “Each of us looks at humanity through the prism of our own nature. What we ourselves are, distorts our view of others. This leads dishonest people to believe that others are as dishonest as they are…”
That sums the situation up nicely. It’s projection of the Shadow.
I think WTD post author didn’t read the graph and his misreading led him to jump to the conclusion that the graph as posted at WUWT is designed to help the skeptics. The line that jumped out at me was the following:
“If you remove that pesky piece of information that indicates that sea-ice decline is below average you remove the problem”
Note how he says sea ice DECLINE is below average. The graph is labeled sea ice EXTENT. So if the extent looks farther below average (without SD) that would tend to harm the skeptic argument, while including the SD would (as others have mentioned) put the current ice levels within normal bounds. So a correct reading of the graph, coupled with the effect of including/excluding the SD, would mean the WTD author is suggesting that WUWT deliberately didn’t use a graph that helps the skeptic position and instead used one that makes the sea ice loss look even farther below the average.
Not only is the claim of deliberate misinformation erroneous, even if it were true the end result would be favoring the WTD position and undermining the WUWT position.
Meanwhile they do a very efficient job of ignoring the same type sea ice tracking graph for the Antarctic ice. This is from the same taxpayer-funded source as the Arctic sea ice data chart.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_timeseries.png
If anything, the old Arctic sea ice chart looked pretty bad, quite a bit below average, but thanks to WTD post, Anthony has now included the one with 2 sd and it looks a lot more normal.
Thanks to WTD for pointing this out ..
/sarc
Watching the watchers is a great waste of time and talent unless of course the watchers are key advisers to the government policymakers. In that case the watchers do serve a purpose as indicators that policy is distorted for the benefit of special interest support. And by extension, the dumber and more extreme the watcher, the more distorted the policymaking and the parties involved.
I would be that WtD had record traffic today. I would make a guess that we will see more spite directed at Anthony in particular and WUWT in general from these guys. Let’s not help this guy out with more hits to his website.
@TomR – Yep, that is why I did not go there. Anthony printed enough of the page to know what was going on. Feeding the metrics is merely encouraging the trolls.
Oh hum my post didn’t make past the moderation team(mike) it appears he didn’t like my reminding him of this LOL
“”I have a confession to make: I am not qualified to discuss the intricate, technical details of climate science.
It’s beyond my capability.
I can grasp the essentials, and even make sense of (some) the actual peer reviewed research that I read. However I am very conscious that I have large gaps in my knowledge, and that crucially I am not qualified to critique the work of science.
In order to have a real understanding I’d need to pursue a Bachelor of Science and post-graduate degrees to be able to speak authoritatively on climate science.”
BIG H/T to AndyG55
ain’t truth, transparency,& honesty a bitch LOL
Bad day for me!
1) I followed the link to the WTD site to ‘view’ his new article.
2) I read through a very vague, accusatory uninformative post by the blog’s owner.
3) I was irritated enough that I thought I’d add a comment listing MM’s deficiencies and further defamations.
4) I prefer to read all comments before adding a comment, so I started choking down the bile and nit picking responses by WTD denizen’s avoiding responsibility or education.
5) After surfacing several time’s gasping for clear air, I finally decided that leaving a comment at that trash heap was not worth the effort. (my best decision of the day).
6) I’m wondering how much chocolate and bourbon it’s going to take to cleanse my mouth and mind.
WTD may have removed the egregious libels may have been removed, but instead he has left smaller libels with sneering snark. Maybe an Aussie lawyer visiting WUWT can advise Anthony what if any benefit can be gained by suing. e.g. If Anthony wins, does he get paid back for his trips to Australia to defend his honor?
Exactly my thought DR, especially since in my mind his replies came across as ventriloquism via the dummy on the lap.
WTD owner, writer is an Information Manager? And he suggests paint can be used to photoshop a picture? He’s certainly not an Information Manager connected to technology; perhaps as someone else suggested he’s spinning the title of Information Manager up from some other position, say something in the newspaper delivery line…
Mike Marriott appears on the author list of the “Recursive Fury” paper, mentioned by Geoff Chambers and Barry Woods above, as “Michael Marriott – Climate Realities Research, Australia”.
In his rather petulant non-apology over this issue he says “I do not receive money or funding from any organisation, corporation, government body, institute or think tank. I speak at no think tank sponsored events. I am happily, proudly independent of any political party or organisation.”
This rather begs the question – who or what is “Climate Realities Research”?
If it exists as a genuine research organisation – why is he now denying the affiliiation?
If it doesn’t exist – did he (or someone else) invent it in order to give the false impression that he had some kind of institutional credentials to be an author of an academic paper?
Climate “science” seems to be somewhat unique in allowing authors of its academic works to invite any passing laymen of sufficiently extreme views to join in.
His argument that you are intentionally trying to lead people astray by showing the graph that you did has a pretty major flaw. When you include the standard deviation shading, it shows that currently the arctic sea ice could be considered to be within expected bounds based on historical variability. But then a couple of charts below you show the NORSEX displays, complete with shading for 1 SD, clearly showing the sea ice to be outside of the presumed variability. In other words, by his reasoning, you hid the data that supports your message, yet left the data that runs counter to your message.
And Anthony, I just have to add that one of the things that I really appreciate about this blog is that you do display things on the the reference pages from a variety of sources. You also link directly to the source, without any attempt to craft a special graph that meets your perceived needs.
I now see that the version of the graph with 2SD has been included on the Sea Ice page. Why? What is the possible meaning of 2SD calculated on only 30 years of a 60 year cycle?
So warmers think “error bars” can only be left out if they hide their errors?
Jo Nova has a good post on Mikey Marriott:
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/02/lewandowsky-dismisses-bloggers-but-they-are-his-research-team-who-is-mike-hubble-marriott/
One of the commenters on the post (called mct) notes that Mike is a data info manager for an Aussie law firm:
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/02/lewandowsky-dismisses-bloggers-but-they-are-his-research-team-who-is-mike-hubble-marriott/#comment-1237601
The company is called Middletons. They seem to specialise in patent enforcement for Big Pharma:
http://www.ausbiotech.org/directory/details.asp?companyid=%7B1CBC0100-DDF5-4DD9-BB38-CB9A35B3CF17%7D%20=%2Fdirectory%2Fsearch.asp%3Fpg%3D29
The whole firm has been taken over by a multi-national legal behemoth called K&L Gates:
http://www.klgates.com/melbourne-australia/#overview
Perhaps the marketing and PR department of K&L Gates might like someone to send them a quick email informing them of what an idiot one of their employees is making of themselves 😉
It also seems that Mike’s employers have been taking a hefty slice of the energy industry pie (both conventional fossil fuels and renewable unicorn farts):
http://www.klgates.com/energy–utilities-practices/
son of mulder:
I think you’re missing the point of a data aggregation service. It should be aggregating data from all available sources that is reputable, not just ones that fit some particular groups notion of “acceptable data”.
“This may be the dumbest accusation against me, ever.”
Agreed. If the chart in question is “dishonest” and “flagrantly misrepresents data” then he should take it up with NSIDC. But of course not showing the STD is neither “dishonest” or “misrepresents data”. The STD is simply data that helps put the current value in context.
It would be one thing to think the images *may* have been modified if they were actually hosted on Wattsupwiththat.com but they aren’t. It takes just one click to see the original image at its source and of course there are plenty of other sea ice images other than the one in question.
Ridiculous boarding on the absurd.
@Mycroft –
You don’t have to be a scientist to be able to see that the AGW meme is falsr. There are plenty of very layman-readable books on this – I’d recommend Steve Goreham’s Climatism! to start.
As for the producer of this video, I guess you have to be dishonest to know a dishonest person when you see one (it takes one to know one). /sarc
Anthony, look at WTD’s attack on you from the bright side. If, as WTD falsely claims, you “doctored” some data, then in their eyes you must be a “doctor”. How does it feel to be officially recognized by the Alarmist community as a “Doctor?” Probably about the same as Mikey feels about being recognized as a Nobel Prize Winner.
Clever! (It won’t do the IPCC’s projections any good.)
It’s not much of an apology or correction when the blog post still begins “This is how you do denial and flagrantly cherry pick data.”
So Mr. Marriott believes that displaying a chart from NSIDC is denial and cherry picking?
Really?
The Magic Gassers who drove real science out of the building have now turned on each other. Go figure.
Wait until Marriott see the Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Chart.