James Delingpole Trusts Known Obstructers

I think I might start using a new term : “Climate Obstructers”, people who make lots of challenges to the IPCC consensus, who have what seems to me to be an agenda to obstruct the course of Climate Change Science.

In his latest Web Log post, James Delingpole attracts attention to a “magisterial report” from Joseph D’Aleo (of web log ICECAP) and Anthony Watts (of web log WattsUpWithThat), which is actually a crock of shambolic fripperies, in my view :-

https://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100024023/global-warming-is-it-even-happening/
“Global Warming: is it even happening?”

Of Joseph D’Aleo, SourceWatch says :-

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Joseph_D’Aleo

“Joseph (Joe) D’Aleo, is a retired meteorologist who is a well known climate change skeptic. He contributes to publications such as Tech Central Station…D’Aleo’s fundamental premise is that although there is a global warming trend there is not a strong causal relationship between that trend and carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere. Instead D’Aleo contends that the global warming trend correlates more closely with other phenomena such as solar activity and ocean current oscillations…On October 20, 2006 D’Aleo registered the domain name for ICECAP, a website challenging human-induced global warming…”

Unluckily for him, his theories on solar activity have been undermined, and Global Warming is still showing a clear upwards trend, despite the very real variations of ocean oscillations over timescales of decades :-

https://www.joabbess.com/2010/01/19/spikes-slopes/

Of Anthony Watts, we read :-

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Anthony_Watts

“Willard Anthony Watts (Anthony Watts) is a weathercaster at KPAY 1290 AM radio in Chico, California and a climate change skeptic…Anthony Watts is listed as a signatory on the “Leipzig Declaration”, which said “there does not exist today a general scientific consensus about the importance of greenhouse warming from rising levels of carbon dioxide. In fact, most climate specialists now agree that actual observations from both weather satellites and balloon-borne radiosondes show no current warming whatsoever.”…In 2007, Watts founded SurfaceStations.org, to collect information on weather stations that are part of the United States Historical Climatological Network (USHCN) and Global Historical Climatological Network (GHCN). Watts believed that, with the information collected via the website, “we will be able to demonstrate that some of the global warming increase is not from CO2 but from localized changes in the temperature-measurement environment.”. But the results did not match Watts’s expectations; a NOAA analysis of the Surface Stations data showed “no indication from this analysis that poor station exposure has imparted a bias in the U.S. temperature trends.”…”

Clearly, neither of these gentlemen are open-minded.

I would not qualify either as “skeptical”, or “un-decided”.

Let me pick just one sentence from the “magisterial report” that James Delingpole cites :-

https://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/surface_temp.pdf

“NOAA proclaimed June 2008 to be the eighth-warmest for the globe in 129 years. Meanwhile NASA showed it was the 9th-coldest June in the 30 years of its record.”

There is a certain deliberate fudge factor in the second of these two claims.

The first reference, the NOAA reference is probably best read here on the NOAA website :-

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/index.php
–> Global Analysis –> 2008 –> June

“Based on preliminary data, the globally averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was the eighth warmest on record for June and the ninth warmest for January-June year-to-date period.”

The second reference to NASA is not actually to NASA GISS surface data stations, but to the UAH satellite measurements :-

https://www.terradaily.com/reports/Global_Temperature_Report_June_2008_999.html

“Global Temperature Report: June 2008 : by Staff Writers : Huntsville AL (SPX) Jul 11, 2008 : A La Nina Pacific Ocean cooling event continues to drive tropical and global temperatures: Globally, June 2008 was the coolest June since 1999, according to Dr. John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville…”

The Blob Chart from NASA GISS clearly shows that June 2008 was nowhere near the coldest for 30 years :-

https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Tvs.year+month.lrg.gif

There is continuing discussion about how Science can reasonably compare the UAH satellite measurements at different heights above sea level with temperatures on the ground and in the oceans.

There have also been some corrections in the UAH satellite measurement records, which have been widely announced.

We are not comparing like with like when we look at the NOAA dataset and the UAH dataset.

This is an established fact.

But what’s up with this ? Looking back to Anthony Watt’s web log for 16 July 2009, I read :-

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/16/ncdc-june-2009-second-warmest-on-record-globally/

“NOAA/NCDC: June 2009 – second warmest on record globally : 16 July 2009 : There’s some really interesting things going on with global temperature. On one hand we have UAH and RSS which show Global Temperature anomalies near zero, while NCDC/NOAA and GISS (which derives from NCDC data with their own adjustments added) show large positive anomalies. Joe D’Aleo at ICECAP writes: “Last month, NOAA had May 2009 to be the 4th warmest on record globally. Meanwhile NASA UAH MSU satellite assessment showed it was the 15th coldest May in the 31 years of its record. This divergence is not new and has been growing. Just a year ago, NOAA proclaimed June 2008 to be the 8th warmest for the globe in 129 years of record keeping. Meanwhile NASA satellites showed it was the 9th coldest June in the 30 years of its record.”…”

So this is not the first time these two have tried to use this argument. It was pointless then, and it’s pointless now.

The only conclusion I can draw is that these gentlemen Meteorologists are seeking to create a stumbling block for others.

If they are genuine Climate Change Sceptics, let’s hear some decent arguments from them instead of this kind of water-muddying tactic !