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 Tisdale: Thanks for the simple, concise, but elegant ENSO description, I will use it without hesitation to explain—–
Bob Tisdale: How about not quitting, rather just taking an extended vacation!
Anthony et al: Eventually Truth, which is coming in ever increasing bites will eventually set us free. The subsequent topics such as the BBC scandal will, I hope, gradually grow until the momentum eventually cannot be stomped out. Other sites, which I think are terrific, Climate Etc.
Roy Spencer, Climate Audit (I get a headache from learning and digesting statistical methodology every time I read it) and others, as well as climate depot and real science for some general info will eventually prevail. As was indicated, the IPCC and gang are in a bind and no heat below a half mile in the ocean is going to surface to save them.
Like the foolishness of witchcraft , eugenics and more the idea of a significant human cause was an ideology without limits.
It will eventually serve as how not to do science.
eric1skeptic says:
“No, it is an old theory, been around since the 70′s.”
Thanks for that. Once again, it is shown that Connolley does not know what he’s talking about.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Bob Tisdale,
Thanks for being the adult to Connolley’s prepubescent child. Your maturity comes across well. Janice is simply a very nice person [not “completely deluded” as the execrable Connolley writes]. Connolley cannot stand to see anyone complementing you. He is a thoroughly hateful individual. That is his right, I suppose. But in addition, as eric1skeptic makes clear, Connolley is out of his depth regarding the subject of anything related to AGW. No wonder he is terrified of any real debate.
You, OTOH, are one of the true masters, and I have learned a lot from your articles and comments. Your WUWT articles are very much appreciated, as I’ve mentioned a number of times.
William Connolley says:
January 13, 2014 at 12:48 am
“She got Einstein’s doctorate wrong, as did you”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Academic_career
On 30 April 1905, Einstein completed his thesis, with Alfred Kleiner, Professor of Experimental Physics, serving as pro-forma advisor. Einstein was awarded a PhD by the University of Zurich.
http://www.einstein-website.de/z_information/honours.html
1919 University of Rostock Honorary doctorate
1921 Princeton University Honorary doctorate
1922 Nobel Foundation, Stockholm Nobel Prize in Physics for the year 1921
1923 University of Madrid Honorary doctorate
1923 Order “Pour le mérite” Admission to the order
1925 Royal Society of London Copley Medal
1926 Royal Astronomical Society Gold Medal
1929 German Physical Society Max-Planck-Medal
1930 ETH (Eidgenoessische Technische Hochschule), Zurich Honorary doctorate
1931 Oxford University Honorary doctorate
1935 Franklin Institute, Philadelphia Benjamin Franklin Medal
1935 Harvard University Honorary doctorate
The Oxford one does appear to be Honorary.
I guess some people haven’t heard the phrase “Open mouth, change foot.” classic!
William Connolley (January 13, 2014 at 12:48 am) “Ah, I misread you, at least partly. http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2013/12/19/climate-science-is-interesting-and-fun/ applies, I think.”
It does, but the devil is in the details, specifically the quantity of the poleward heat transport and changes in the flux after CO2 warming. Thus the conclusion in your post which is essentially: “so what” (i.e. the process is already described in a textbook) was unwarranted. Unlike on your blog, Willis followed on with more posts on the topic, including this one: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/21/the-magnificent-climate-heat-engine/ where he states that the 12 petawatts of poleward heat flux is about 10% of the incident solar energy of 120 petawatts although your very reliable wikipedia website claims 170: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy) Considering the breakdown of incident inside and outside the blue lines in his diagram, the heat engine is running at 70% of capacity (although it can never get to 100%).
But that post combines the clouds and convection portion of the heat engine and as Quondam commented, the linear response is 6W/K and nonlinear (which is a better assumption) is 2.57W/K which means between 0.6 and 1.44 temperature rise per doubling of CO2.
> http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/21/the-magnificent-climate-heat-engine/
Ah, you want http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2013/12/22/the-magnificent-disinformation-engine/ for that.
> claims 170: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy)
Wiki says 1.7×1017 J. As you’d hope, wiki sources that statement to “The Earth has a cross section of 1.274×1014 square meters and the solar constant is 1366 watts per square meter.”
Which seems to be correct (earth radius 6,371 km, solar constant now said to be 1361 not 1366, but that’s a far smaller error); WUWT, as you’d expect, doesn’t bother to source its statement and is, predictably, wrong. Score 1 to wiki, 0 to WUWT. I wonder if anyone here will be able to cope with the cognitive dissonance?
Linking to yourself again? You do realize you just affirmed the cliche’s flying around here about you stating “because I told you so” as justification for your ignorance.
Just for the record, Einstein was dyslexic.
William Connolley (January 13, 2014 at 6:00 am)
“Ah, you want….”
I don’t see anything listed specifically in your 12/22 post that Willis (allegedly) copied from your 12/19 post. To be convincing your post should list or summarize what Willis wrote on 12/18, what corrections you made on 12/19, how those were reflected in Willis’s 12/21 post.
AFAICS, there is simply a post on your blog one day after each post by Willis which asserts “The shame is that the septics are so keen to find their fantasies that they can’t see the interesting reality” and “…his new discovery has totally destroyed his previous…” along with accusations of plagiarism without any specifics.
It is a thin gruel as evidenced by 4 +/- 0 comments per post, mostly echoes. In contrast Willis gets 100’s of comments, some attacking his belief in heat absorption by CO2 but also many corrective and informative comments. But importantly, Willis and his commenters quantify and you do not.
It appears to me that science progresses on WUWT and stagnates on Stoat. It guess that should not be a surprise since the Stoat blog is defending the legacy, high-sensitivity climate models now shown to be 95% too warm that can not model the heat engine and heat losses we are discussing since they do not model (but rather parameterize) the weather that controls the amount of heat loss both from latent heat transfer and poleward heat transfer. If that is wrong, please correct, but be specific. Using unsupported assertions is not adequate.
I see you’ve decided to ignore the error in the 170/120 value at WUWT. I can’t say I’m surprised.
As to the plagiarism: that’s so obvious I didn’t think I needed to bother explain. But if you’re finding it difficult: WE writes a post that forgets about transport. I blog about that, pointing out the good old “atmospheric heat engine” type analogy. Which WE then suddenly and mysteriously discovers. What a bizarre coincidence. I’m sure you’re entirely happy to give WE the benefit of the doubt.
RichardLH, thanks.
William Connolley says:
January 13, 2014 at 6:00 am
“Wiki says 1.7×1017”
Well when I go to Wiki it says
1.5×1022J total energy from the Sun that strikes the face of the Earth each day
The Earth has a cross section of 1.274×1014 square meters and the solar constant is 1361 watts per square meter.
So….
That means
Calculated: 1.27e14 m^2 * 1370 W/m^2 * 86400 s/day = 1.5e22 J
William Connolley (January 13, 2014 at 8:43 am) “I see you’ve decided to ignore the error in the 170/120 value at WUWT. I can’t say I’m surprised.”
It seems to be due to vague wording. As you noted, the wikipedia source says “The Earth has a cross section of 1.274×10^14 square meters and the solar constant is 1361 watts per square meter.” but the table entry says “total energy from the Sun that strikes the face of the Earth each second” The source is exact, but the table entry is vague: what is “face of the Earth”?
Willis’s post says “the 120 petawatts of solar energy that is constantly being absorbed by the climate system” The difference is the albedo of 0.7 so Willis is correct. Wikipedia is correct too, but not precisely worded. Maybe you can go fix that.
As for plagiarism, he did not copy your words since there were not many to copy in the first place. I doubt he copied your idea either. Science here is about the discovery of principles or testing of theories from the raw data and that’s what Willis was doing in his series of posts. His was quantitative which is a big step forward since it is impossible to determine global warming and cooling without those numbers.
> The difference is the albedo of 0.7
OK, I’ll give you and WE that.
> As for plagiarism, he did not copy your words since there were not many to copy in the first place. I doubt he copied your idea either
No-one is suggesting he copied my words. That he copied my repeating of a commonplace idea is obvious.
> Well when I go to Wiki it says 1.5×1022J total energy from the Sun that strikes the face of the Earth each day
You’ve failed to distinguish energy-per-second (which is what we’re talking about) from energy-per-day.
Marcel Leroux
> Marcel Leroux
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Marcel_Leroux
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Tim_Ball
Mr. Connolley; I HAVE FIGURED IT OUT!!!
I know why you and the skeptics have such a difficult time agreeing on anything; We live on different planets!!
It’s true!
You live on a circular disc, perpendicular to the solar radiation (Hence 1366W/m^2 for the surface of your planet) vs. 342 W/m^2 (average) over the surface of the sphere the rest of us live on.
Be careful not to fall off.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge
Stalin did it so that’s OK then…
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~hick0088/classes/csci_2101/false.html
You are beyond creepy.
William Connolley says:
January 13, 2014 at 10:45 am
“You’ve failed to distinguish energy-per-second (which is what we’re talking about) from energy-per-day.”
You have failed to read either Wiki or the quotes from it I provided above.
1.5×1022J total energy from the Sun that strikes the face of the Earth each day
The Earth has a cross section of 1.274×1014 square meters and the solar constant is 1361 watts per square meter.
Calculated: 1.27e14 m^2 * 1370 W/m^2 * 86400 s/day = 1.5e22 J
I think the ‘s’ is seconds but I could be wrong.
And you better get your Wiki editing hat on because 1370 differs from 1361 but we all know that Wiki is a moving feast at best.
> 1370 differs from 1361
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010GL045777/pdf
> He disappeared Marcel Leroux
No. Of course I didn’t. I don’t have the power to. You could always find out the facts. Some people find it a useful exercise. As the closer of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Marcel_Leroux
“The result was delete. Ultimately, “fails WP:N” is a very difficult argument to get around, and the humming and hawing about maybe possibly meeting a criterion or two of WP:ACADEMIC is not supported by consensus (even its advocates don’t seem to really believe it)”
Leroux wasn’t notable. You lot should agree with that, because not a one of you had even heard of him before the deletion debate on wiki. Amusingly, it turns out that his page was only created in the first place in order to support his inclusion on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming which itself recently survived deletion.
Henry Galt. says:
January 13, 2014 at 1:04 pm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge
Stalin did it so that’s OK then…
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~hick0088/classes/csci_2101/false.html
You are beyond creepy.
++++++++++
Pardon, but who is beyond creepy?
Who is John Galt? /meant in the nicest possible way 🙂
“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…”
where is the time-saving?
@dbstealey
oh dear! The dbstealey sermon! What a waste of time! Not even relevant!
“In fact, I would label your idea as being borderline crazy.”
And thanks to you too! (you person who understands everyone thoroughly from a few comments on a forum).
sarc tags are not needed I would hope
Mario
The con creature.
He disappeared Marcel Leroux at wikipaedia and is proud of it.
Note: over at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/13/lindzen-libeled-by-nuccitelli/ it is said:
[For the record, William Connolley tucked tail and ran when I suggested a debate over global warming at Oxford between you and him. Not surprising, since he is the one person who I believe has even less integrity and ethics than Nuccitelli.]
That’s dishonest; in fact, I have a comment on that post attempting to discuss what M has said, but it appears to have been suppressed. I also have a comment here that hasn’t appeared.
[Note; All comments have been posted. ~ mod.]
@William Howard Connolley – re: “I have a comment on that post attempting to discuss what M has said, but it appears to have been suppressed.”
I suppose that for someone who regularly suppresses information, Suppress is your first reaction. However as has been constantly shown to you, moderation is the correct term.
But then being an hysterical person, moderation is not in your vocabulary.
Sisi says:
“What a waste of time! Not even relevant!”
I see I have the pleasure of using your time. Fixated on my comments, aren’t you, Sisi?
Also, I must comment several posters here for the spanking they’ve been giving to Connolley. He makes it easy, no?
Connolley says: “That’s dishonest!”
Heh, Connolley calling someone else dishonest! Chutzpah!!
> [Note; All comments have been posted. ~ mod.]
Thank you. However, that’s only the comments *here*. The comments at lindzen-libeled-by-nuccitelli are being censored. Simultaneously, I’m being accused of cowardice for failing to debate M. Which is obviously unfair, since I’m doing my best to talk to M, but my attempts are censored.
Perhaps there’s a different mod on this thread. Anyway, I’ll try posting the comment I made there, here, so that people can judge for themselves:
—-
> Professor Lindzen.
Lindzen isn’t a prof. He’s emeritus.
> Actually, Galileo was wrong.
That one is definitely going in the quote-books, long after the rest
of this article is forgotten.
> Damages will be huge.
No they won’t. Firstly, because L won’t sue, he isn’t stupid.
Secondly, because if he did the case would be thrown out – nothing
here raises to the level of libel, even if proved true, which they
wouldn’t be.
> Sooner or later we are going to have to take someone to court
Mann is doing that. Oddly, no-one here seems to be keen for that day
in court to happen.
William Connolley says:
January 14, 2014 at 2:07 am
“I also have a comment here that hasn’t appeared.”
Really! Please do re-post it. I am interested in hearing your opinions and observations.
> Really! Please do re-post it
My comments here sit in moderation for a while – it makes for fragmented conversation. The one I was referring to there was the one marked January 13, 2014 at 11:55 pm that has now appeared (all my comments in this thread have appeared; the one in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/13/lindzen-libeled-by-nuccitelli/ is being suppressed, which is ironic, given dbstealey’s apparent desire for a debate between me and M. Perhaps someone could draw M’s attention to this marvellous opportunity he is missing?) . It was about Leroux’s notability, if you’re interested in discussing that.