“And, I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong. I’m taking this bold step because the method has promise. So let’s not pay attention to the little yippers who want to tear it down before they even see the results.”
Anthony Watts, October 20, 2011:
“This is sad, because I had very high hopes for this project as the methodology is looked very promising to get a better handle on station discontinuity issues with their “scalpel” method. Now it looks just like another rush to judgement, peer review be damned.”
From Things Break:
Lastly, let’s talk for a moment about the furious backpedaling that’s happening in response to BEST. “Skeptics” over at Curry’s, WUWT, on social media sites like Reddit, etc. are falling all over themselves trying to claim that No True Skepticactually denies that the Earth is warming. They’re claiming the BEST results are meaningless because they don’t actually address attribution.
To which I reply, “Bullshit.” A staggeringly large number of climate “skeptics” do in fact deny that the Earth is warming. A survey less than a month ago found that less than half (49%) of self-identified Republicans and even fewer (41%) self-identified Tea Partiers agreed that the Earth is actually warming.
I attempted to try and get Watts to admit that the post-1960 segment of this graph should alarm anybody here. However, in response, all he did was re-post the above graph and point to the fact that there was already an upward trend prior to the Industrial Revolution. Unfortunately, in my follow-up comment, I forgot to point out that industrial smelting of iron actually started in the late 1700’s [the comments of others in between are also worth reading]…
Forget arm-waving and spinning; it’s more akin to thrashing about like asphyxiating fish out of water…
Even on WUWT, a few brave people have quoted Watts himself (in what appears to be an identical quote to something I have seen referenced to the SPPI website) as having said, “Instrumental temperature data for the pre-satellite era (1850-1980) have been so widely, systematically, and uni-directionally tampered with that IT CANNOT BE CREDIBLY ASSERTED THERE HAS BEEN ANY SIGNIFICANT ‘GLOBAL WARMING’ IN THE 20TH CENTURY“… Daleo, J and Watts, A (2010). Are these two things indeed one and the same thing?
Even if they are not one-and-the-same-thing, it would seem that he is contradicting himself, not just the likes of Lord Monckton.
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
A bit of trivia: Anthony Watts attended college from 1975 to 1982 but never graduated.
So if you should ever decide to put together a video about Watts, you will definitely want to exercise your “fair use” rights and use the “family friendly” portion of this video clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjIH1jdx2_A
Thanks for this. Very apt. What was he attempting to major in? Presumably TV Weatherman studies?
Without doubt, I believe Muller should be commended for the intellectual honesty and personal integrity he has shown in pursuing this Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project to a conclusion even if that conclusion was not the one he expected. However, what I would really like to know is whether he will now publicly also admit that he was wrong to repeatedly and vociferously accuse Michael Mann and his colleagues of scientific malpractice (by appearing to deliberately misinterpret the now infamous “hide the decline” email)? The reason that I ask this question is that, if you overlay the BEST data onto the right-hand end of the MBH98 Hockey Stick you will see that it replicates (if not extends) the flat blade of stick – thus proving that ‘Climategate’ revealed no intention to deceive (as per the findings of 3 official inquiries).
I have already asked him this question via an email to his daughter Elizabeth, the WSJ, and now here, and posted the visual evidence on my WordPress blog. Therefore, although I appreciate that he is very busy fending-off attacks from die-hard skeptics at the moment, I remain hopeful of a response or, at very least, a wider appreciation of the facts of history…