And most regulars will recall William Connolley. Connolley’s likely best known for his hijinks as a former editor at Wikipedia. (See the WattsUpWithThat posts here, here, here, here, here, here here….and here.) But Connolley is also a former climate modeler with the British Antarctic Survey…plus a co-founder of, and former contributor to, the blog RealClimate, where he authored or co-authored a grand total of 14 blog posts from December, 2004 to March, 2008. Connolley now blogs at ScienceBlogs/Stoat.
WattsUpWithThat regulars will remember “Sou”, a.k.a. Miriam O’Brien. As Anthony Watts notes in his post My Blog Spawn:
Proprietor: “Sou from Bundangawoolarangeera” aka Miriam O’Brien of Mt. Beauty, VC, Australia
Some of Miriam’s skills: being a “a sixties-something woman with an interest in climate science“, sniping at WUWT, snark, Twitter snark, photography, business consulting, being on a board of directors.
Anthony continued:
Given her daily rants, she has now qualified for “Internet stalker” levels of infatuation and invective. Assigned to the permanent troll bin.
How do those two bloggers form the basis for an article?
More background: Connolley was the first troll to appear on the thread of my post I’m Retiring from Full-Time Climate Change Blogging. See his January 3, 2014 at 3:11 pm comment. But that’s not the subject of this post. This post is about Connolley’s first link in his blog post, one that serves as his reference for my work on the processes and aftereffects of El Niño and La Niña events—a body of work that includes more than 150 well-illustrated, data-based blog posts about El Niño and La Niña processes and one book solely about ENSO. Connolley writes. [I’ve removed his hyperlink attached to my name so that readers don’t get ahead of me]:
I hasten to add that RP Sr is not speaking of me, no, he is talking of renowned blogger Bob Tisdale.
Where would you have expected the hyperlink to lead? My blog? Maybe WattsUpWithThat? Maybe the exchange I had last year at SkepticalScience about the long-term effects of ENSO?
Give up? The hyperlink was to a post by Miriam O’Brien from HotWhopper. (I’m glad I hadn’t been drinking coffee when I clicked on that link.)
As a reference for his understanding of my work, Connolley linked Miriam O’Brien’s post Bob Tisdale is Perennially Puzzled about ENSO [Miriam hyperlinks to archives, not the original blog posts, so I’ve done the same here]. Miriam’s post is her response to my post titled SkepticalScience Still Misunderstands or Misrepresents the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). (The WattsUpWithThat cross post is here.) In that post, I provided graphs of a number of datasets broken down into logical subsets that contradicted the SkepticalScience representation of ENSO, and I challenged SkepticalScience to provide links to climate model-based, peer-reviewed papers that explained why those variables for specific parts of the globe responded as they did to El Niño and La Niña events.
Of course, Miriam O’Brien did not address the content of my post. She did not discuss the datasets I presented, as I had presented them. And Miriam quoted me out of context—nothing surprising there. Miriam could have saved herself a lot of time by simply noting that she agreed with Nuccitelli’s post and disagreed with mine–but she didn’t. Miriam O’Brien wasted her time creating a couple of illustrations so that she could restate Dana Nuccitelli’s misunderstandings and misinformation.
Miriam O’Brien fancies herself an expert on just about every climate-related subject. Yet she is only capable of using the Monty Python contradiction approach to argument, which is why I find her blog so amusing…and, at the same time, I find her blogging style pitiable because she doesn’t realize she’s become an embodiment of a Python caricature.
CLOSING
It’s quite telling that William Connolley, a co-founder of RealClimate, used Miriam O’Brien’s HotWhopper post as a reference for his knowledge of ENSO. It indicates his understandings of the complex coupled ocean-atmosphere processes and aftereffects of El Niño and La Niña events are as limited as Miriam’s. And if Miriam O’Brien serves as one of his scientific or technical experts, it also suggests Connolley’s arguments about human-induced global warming have grown as laughable as hers.
Bob et al, you are being trolled, having interacted with Mr Connolley on the Wikipedia admin channels a number of times prior to him being de-sysopped, the one thing he doesn’t do is engage or go toe to toe so to speak. You are being had.
===========================================================
Sometimes it’s “fun”. Sometimes it’s a distraction the thrust of more important topics. Here it’s just a bit fun.
What has Con-man said that can be taken seriously?
Cuthbert Shaw says:
January 12, 2014 at 1:17 pm
“You are being had.”
May be, maybe not.
I note this is a recurring theme with Mr. Connolley
He’s used the “hard enough” phrase twice on this thread and several times in the past. It’s like a grade school taunt from him, the equivalent of saying “are you chicken?!”. It’s so juvenile. We have a large audience here for him, he just wants to control the conversation by moving it to his place, typically a bully tactic, much like his Wikipedia editing.
One will probably see some snarky and or derogatory revisions to the WUWT Wikipedia page as a result of his interaction here.
[trimmed – as dupe text]
Since when is noise solar energy distributed around ocean surface currents from the natural ENSO build up and disperse cycle? It is not noise, it is how the planet moves the build up of too much energy in the tropics to the rest of the world. It is natural thermostat that prevents the tropics warming too much. The reason why during major ice ages the tropics hardly changed and only cooled about 1c.
http://morriscourse.com/elements_of_ecology/images/ocean_currents.jpg
http://www.plantsciences.ucdavis.edu/plantsciences_Faculty/Bloom/CAMEL/Art/CurrentsOcean.jpg
The ocean currents above show how energy from the E equatorial Pacific move west with trade winds and spread into 3 different directions from the W equatorial Pacific. One warm current moves N toward the Arctic, the other moves S towards Antarctica and the main one moves energy towards the Indian ocean which joins surface currents that eventually reach the tip of South Africa and move up the Eastern side of North and South America until reach Europe and finally the Arctic. This is how the planet naturally removes energy from a hot tropical regions preventing it from positive feedback.
Only surface ocean water cant last that long before cooling can it? Yes it can and does because the surface ocean current varies between around 200m and 400m deep.
The diagram below shows how the warming in E equatorial Pacific formed back in 1997.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/GODAS/mnth_gif/xz/mnth.anom.xz.temp.0n.1996.04.gif
How can it be noise when it causes a step up roughly half of the original El Nino in global temperature rise. Then stays flat with maybe a very slight cooling trend until the next strong El Nino appears. This shows that global temperatures are only rising when a strong El Nino occurs. When there isn’t one, global temperatures remain generally flat like recent years since the last strong El Nino back in 1997/1998.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1982/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.5/trend/offset:-0.05/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:1996.5/trend/offset:-0.05
The strong El Nino back in the early 1980s would have been larger on global temperatures if it had not been for a major volcanic eruption back then.
William and co don’t seem to grasp natural reality.
Sorry, previous post seems to have duplicate, please remove the first section if possible to prevent confusion.
Anthony:
“One will probably see some snarky and or derogatory revisions to the WUWT Wikipedia page as a result of his interaction here.”
Surely not. After all he has the perfect forum here now to explain his ideas in a calm and reasoned fashion. /sarc
When one bothers to stop and consider William you tend to ascribe to him the modern definition of arrogance: often wrong, but never in doubt.
=====================================================================
“Come over here where I can control/delete/edit the debate.”
A “triple-dog-dare” won’t explain why that poor kid’s tongue froze to pole.
Connelly, tell Anthony that you will present evidence for what you believe/perceive/conclude and I suspect he would be more than willing to provide you a “post”. (Provided you don’t regress into “It’s true because I said so mode.”) You know what you did at Wikipedia. You know Anthony doesn’t do that here.
Cuthbert Shaw says: “Bob et al, you are being trolled…”
Thanks for your concern, but the post was basically an invitation for Connolley. With his ego, there was no way he would avoid this thread. What has he presented? He has shown an unlimited capacity to spin reality–quite the wordsmith. I do find him very entertaining, though.
Regards
“It’s like a grade school taunt from him, the equivalent of saying “are you chicken?!”. It’s so juvenile.”
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=%22chicken+little%22+site:wattsupwiththat.com&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
REPLY: Oh sure, somehow in your mind the story of Chicken Little used as a metaphor is the same as a direct taunt. Too bad that your argument is too week to wash. I’ll forgive you though for the ignorance because English isn’t your primary country of origin language. – Anthony
“Oh sure, somehow in your mind the story of Chicken Little used as a metaphor is the same as a direct taunt.”
And yet, when -somewhere in a discussion- someone mentions Chicken Little I have never thought about this person’s metaphoric skills…
To be clear, I don’t like the “If you think you’re hard enough.” quote. But your protestations seem a bit off. You are not impartial to taunts yourself.
Sisi: Pardon me, I am not trying to taunt you, but that is your screen name after all. Perhaps you should read the full context of what’s happening before you insert yourself. You obviously don’t have a clue about what’s going on.
Anthony:
“I’ll forgive you though for the ignorance because English isn’t your primary country of origin language.”
Mario:
“You obviously don’t have a clue about what’s going on.”
Thanks a lot guys! Cheers!
Sisi says:
January 12, 2014 at 4:57 pm
Anthony:
“I’ll forgive you though for the ignorance because English isn’t your primary country of origin language.”
Mario:
“You obviously don’t have a clue about what’s going on.”
Thanks a lot guys! Cheers!
+++++++++
Sisi: I have even better colloquialisms to save you the time.
I’m rubber your glue
I know you are but what am I
Neener neener…
richardscourtney says:
January 12, 2014 at 6:57 am
++++++++++
It happens some times, we get moderated. Your posts are truly excellent. I enjoy reading your thoughtful responses to people who need to learn a thing or two –especially when those people are as dishonest con artists.
“As demonstrated above, the problem with Mr. Connolley’s ability to communicate is condescension.”
Thanks!
William Connolley says:
“If M shows up, I’ll be happy to debate with him here.”
Ah, but that was not the challenge. Connolley is amusing in his juvenile way, isn’t he?
The specific challenge was:
a) A debate with Lord Monckton, held at
b) Oxford (the site of a previous debate), and
c) There were serious stakes involved
Said stakes were that the loser would give up his Wiki moderating position, or WUWT article writing position, as the case may be, to the debate winner.
The challenge was to be at the Oxford venue, because it would be difficult to game the debate there. And without such worthwhile stakes, Connolley will keep on blathering, with no downside risk.
If someone is not willing to take the risk that their position would be rejected by a neutral jury (but still, a jury inclined to accept Connolley’s catastrophic AGW conjecture), then their motive is politics, not science. Thus, they are being disingenuous.
The disingenuous one comments:
“Anytime you want to talk GW or climate science in general, come on over. If you think you’re hard enough.”.
Aside from Connolley’s juvenile taunt, why should anyone “come on over” to his thinly-trafficked blog, when comments here are being read by thousands? The amusing Mr Connolley is just trolling for traffic to his blog; but I, for one, prefer to have my comments read by more than a small handful of True Believers. I’m sensible like that, and I think others are, too.
Therefore, I can predict that the disingenuous Mr Connolley will never risk his wiki position, simply because he does not believe in what he preaches. That makes him less than honest (readers can decide how much less). But anyone who truly believed in what they are trying to sell to others would man up and roll the dice. That is something the cowardly Connolley will never do… although this is his golden opportunity to prove me wrong.
“The amusing Mr Connolley is just trolling for traffic to his blog; but I, for one, prefer to have my comments read by more than a small handful of True Believers. I’m sensible like that, and I think others are, too.”
I read that! I am still giggling! “I’m sensible like that”! Hilarious! Need a new keyboard now.
William Connolley (January 12, 2014 at 8:50 am): “That’s certainly an exciting new theory. I look forward to you developing it in more rigourous fashion.”
No, it is an old theory, been around since the 70’s. Here’s Trenberth from 1994: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00210625 and a more recent paper http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~dennis/Zelinka%26Hartmann_2012.pdf by Zelinka and Hartman: “Anomalous meridional energy fluxes by the climate system perform the analogous role under global warming, diverging energy from regions in which feed- backs amplify the radiative forcing and converging energy into regions in which feedbacks dampen the radiative forcing”
Most papers agree that polar heat flux will increase under global warming, but the critical issue is how much since that will determine whether it is a minor or major negative feedback overall.
> eric1skeptic says:
Ah, I misread you, at least partly. http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2013/12/19/climate-science-is-interesting-and-fun/ applies, I think.
> a very generous woman
Completely deluded would be more accurate. She got Einstein’s doctorate wrong, as did you – which is disrespectful to his memory and his work – and you lapped up the fake comparison.
Here’s an earlier (1980) paper by Lindzen on the topic: http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/prggclhttr.pdf >>Baroclinic eddies can then be viewed as a climatic “voltage” regulator, where the pole-to-equator temperature difference plays the role of “voltage”<<
Sisi says:
“when… someone mentions Chicken Little I have never thought about this person’s metaphoric skills…”
Dear Sisi. Chicken Little is embedded in Western culture. It is a parable, like ‘the boy who cried “Wolf!”‘ Parables are meant to convey a lesson, and in this case the Chicken Little parable teaches us that often what we fear is, in reality, nothing worth getting scared about.
Thus, ‘Chicken Little’ is an excellent parable for the “carbon” scare. There is nothing to be afraid of: in reality, no scientific evidence exists that supports the demonization of CO2 [“carbon” for easily frightened scientific illiterates].
When someone produces measurable, testable evidence of global damage or harm due to the rise in CO2 (from only 3 parts per 10,000, to only 4 parts per 10,000), I will be the first to sit up straight and pay attention.
But note this, and note it well: there is no such evidence of global harm available. And many scientists have been searching frantically for any such evidence for the past several decades. After all that time, and after hundreds of $billions spent on the search for AGW, reasonable people will conclude that there really isn’t any basis for the catastrophic AGW scare; none at all.
Based on those facts, maybe you should re-think your own world view.
Finally, if you don’t believe being ‘sensible’ is spending time writing comments to a small handful of like-minded true believers, when the same effort could reach thousands of readers, then your idea of being ‘sensible’ is far different from mine. In fact, I would label your idea as being borderline crazy.
But glad to give you some mirth, however wacky you may be…
Mac the Knife says:
January 11, 2014 at 1:00 pm
William Connolley says:
January 11, 2014 at 12:13 pm
You people really aren’t thinking.
Huh…..Did I just hear another pop gun go off?
William,
Your response does not indicate lack of understanding but simply ad hom attack. As such you ‘fail’ even more completely than this hapless fellow:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Connolley reminds me more of this old joke:
Americans: “Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision.”
Canadians: “Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.”
Americans: “This is the captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.”
Canadians: “No, I say again, you divert YOUR course.”
Americans: “THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN, THE SECOND LARGEST SHIP IN THE UNITED STATES’ ATLANTIC FLEET. WE ARE ACCOMPANIED BY THREE DESTROYERS, THREE CRUISERS AND NUMEROUS SUPPORT VESSELS. I DEMAND THAT YOU CHANGE YOUR COURSE 15 DEGREES NORTH. THAT’S ONE-FIVE DEGREES NORTH, OR COUNTER MEASURES WILL BE UNDERTAKEN TO ENSURE THE SAFETY OF THIS SHIP.”
Canadians: “This is a lighthouse. Your call.”
Read more at http://www.snopes.com/military/lighthouse.asp#ZKKH1I0Chpzchwo0.99
Conolley of course is the American captain.
William Connolley: One last comment to you. There was and continues to be no reason for me to dwell on Janice Moore’s exaggerated compliment, “You are a Ph. D. de facto; Einstein’s doctorate from Oxford was ‘honorary.’”
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/im-retiring-from-full-time-climate-change-blogging/#comment-14480
Janice has a legal background so she likes to include those Latin phrases like de facto.
And, if you’re not aware, my reply to Eli Rabett had to do with the fact that Einstein also had numerous honorary Ph.D.’s in addition to his doctorate from “Zurich in 1905”, so Eli’s comment did not refute her statement.
Your latest reply to me included, “I think its rather revealing that you bask in the comparison; anyone with a less inflated ego would have rejected it as clearly inappropriate.”
Since you’re belaboring Janice’s PS, I’ll add: Her exaggerated compliment has become a fixation, an obsession, for you.
I understand what I do. I present data…and I present the outputs of climate models. I discuss what the data present and the failings of the models. I am no Einstein, never have been, never claimed to be, never will be, don’t want to be. I understand my role in this debate.
Yet somehow, you’ve taken a brief moment of kindness from a very generous woman and attempted to pervert it for your own needs and wants. Anyone with common sense understands Janice’s PS was an exaggeration. Your need to dwell on it and mutate it exposes you, not me, to ridicule—because it broadcasts for everyone reading this thread your lack of realism…that good judgment eludes you.
Have a nice day.
“Anthony Watts says:
January 12, 2014 at 1:55 pm
I note this is a recurring theme with Mr. Connolley
“If you think you’re hard enough.”.
He’s used the “hard enough” phrase twice on this thread and several times in the past. It’s like a grade school taunt from him, the equivalent of saying “are you chicken?!”. It’s so juvenile.”
It’s not only juvenile, it’s typically infantile British pub “hardman” bullsh*t talk. More like school yard bullyboy than a hardman. Experienced it many times in the past when I used to live in England. A predominantly cowardly way to try to start a fight, usually about nothing (In this case very apt considering his challenge on GW and “climate science”), when they’ve had a few pints along with a bunch of mates to back them up. When challenged, they back down quickly whimpering away back to their pub seat gripping their pint quietly looking back at you mumbling to each other. Pathetic!