A fool by any other name...

Well, I am too ill due to a cold to continue the electronics work I have been doing, and ire has driven me to tackle an easy subject, the hubristic musings of Ron Clutz. So for a second time in a few days I am breaking my pause from sea ice blogging.

Ron Clutz has recently used MASIE data over a short period to claim that there is a rebound in Arctic sea ice. This has been repeated by that ang of dolts; the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Tamino has already ably dismissed the original claims of Clutz, in Clutz's response it is claimed that 'Nothing alarming is happening to Arctic ice'. The response utterly fails to deal with Tamino's points, just restates the same half arsed nonsense originally asserted.

Clutz is wrong and I will show so in one graph based on NSIDC Concentration data, no modelled data involved just satellite data.

Mid Monthly Miscellanea: September

Rather than doing specific Monthly Status posts over the coming winter I'll be resuming the Mid Month Miscellanea posts. So here's September...

On the problems attendant in denying a real and ongoing physical process.

Am I the only one who's not seen this version of Downfall?

 



 

CO2 Causes Arctic Sea Ice Loss.

The reason I've not been blogging much recently is because I've been spending time in discussion threads, mainly at RealClimate and Neven's Sea Ice Blog. However news posted at Neven's a recent paper offers the opportunity to make a blog post, and an apology. The paper concerned is "Observations reveal external driver for Arctic sea-ice retreat" by Notz & Marotzke, as usual there's a copy to the actual paper at the end of this post.

Frozen Planet: Fact Checking Nigel Lawson.

In the 3 - 9 December issue of the Radio Times (RT) there is a substantial piece by Sir David Attenborough about the final episode of Frozen Planet - On Thin Ice. I've fact checked that too, but here I'll fact check Lord Nigel Lawson's response, printed on page 15 of that issue of RT. The blockquotes below are Lawson's factual statements from the RT article.

That latest batch of hacked emails...

Yawn...

Actually Vyvyan puts it better than I ever could.

Shifting Sun-Earth-Moon Harmonies.... WTF!

There's an, ahem, interesting page and paper at What The F**K's Up With That? Never was a humorous acronym so apt.

...to ask the community to start thinking carefully about what can be learned from rotating multivariate lunisolar spatiotemporal phase relations shared by Earth Orientation Parameters (EOP) and terrestrial climate records, while seizing the same opportunity to highlight critical omissions in “classic” works on alleged solar-barycentric terrestrial influences (section II).

The material reads like it was put together using SciGen. A site that allows you to compose gibberish of an equal order, like this.

I've skipped through the document and it seems to be a extreme case of Gerlich and Tscheuschner's leaving the disproof of the Greenhouse effect as an exercise for the reader. Von Neuman once said "With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk." From the graphs this appears at face value to be an extreme example of that. But frankly I can't be sure as it's hard to discern a structured argument.

Have WTFUWT been had by a practical joke?

Matters arising from D'Aleo 3: The 1940s and the present.

The warming of the 1940s was not like the current warming. There are differences in observations and the model evidence supports the idea that while the 1940s was an outcome of natural variability, whereas the recent warming is externally forced.

Matters Arising from D'Aleo 2: The AMO & PDO.

Regarding the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO). D'Aleo claims it "Looks like an awfully good fit. There is very little, if any, global warming." I've already pointed the following out to him. The Center for Atmospheric Research suggests that the major part of recent ocean warming in the AMO is due to global warming, once the global warming signature is removed the AMO is rather a small effect. So that source suggests that if warmer ocean waters due to the AMO are substantially responsible for loss of Arctic sea-ice, then it is global warming that is causing most of the warming.

Matters arising from D'Aleo 1: Opening comments.

Recently Joseph D'Aleo has posted a reply to Tamino's posts Cold Cherries from Joe D'Aleo and More Cherry Ice from Joe D'Aleo. D'Aleo's response is here.

What's up with D'Aleo?

Well known denialist Joseph D'Aleo has recently written a load of specious claptrap at the internet's great repository of specious claptrap; Watt's up With That. Tamino exposes D'Aleo's cherry picking (denialists so love their cherries). That noted, my disagreement is with the overall gist of D'Aleo's post. Which is essentially a boring re-run of a tired denialist meme that Arctic sea-ice loss is due to natural processes in the atmosphere and ocean.

An Honourable Decision.

Wolfgang Wagner was editor of  the Journal 'Remote Sensing' when the journal published a paper by Roy Spencer and William Braswell entitled "On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance." link.

Spencer and Braswell was glowingly received at Watts Up With That (aka WTF), which is to be expected as WTF is heavy on the applause of anything that bolsters their increasingly bizarre stance, but light on the analysis. It was similarly received on Faux News and other wingnut media. Meanwhile more reputable commentators actually read the paper and pointed out the obvious flaws.