Friday, May 20, 2011

Look up this fact, Andrew

Andrew Bolt has a post this morning in which he complains that scientists should just explain the facts, instead of making humorous videos which target him. (As it happens, I don't think that either video is all that good or funny.)

Anyway, I have been posting comments at his blog this week about Anthony Watts' failure to come up with the goods, and about the specific estimate of warming bias that he made to Bolt's face only last June. I don't think yesterday's comment got through on his "tips" page, although maybe I just didn't click "submit" or something.

So here is my attempt today, posted as a comment to his video post:

Andrew, you seem to be showing a distinct lack of interest in the fact that Anthony Watts' own co-authored paper has shown he was completely wrong when you interviewed him in June last year.

Are you having trouble remembering? He estimated that warming bias due to poor weather station siting in the US could account for .5 degree C of increase in the US temperature record.

You said that meant that 2/3 of the increase of .7 degree could be from this. Watts did not disagree.

His actual paper shows what 2 other studies had predicted - cooling biases had balanced warming biases and the US mean temperature record was accurate.

This is the second major, major claim on which Watts has been shown wrong - the other being that international weather station "drop out" was removing cooler stations and biasing the world temperature record.

This was quickly shown to be wrong, and not even "lukewarmenist" Lucia of Lucia's Blackboard believes it. Watts, as far as I know, has never retracted or apologised.

Andrew, why do you show no skepticism towards Watts? He made a wildly inaccurate estimate to your face, disproved by his own paper which he said was days away from being completed.

Do the right thing - get him back on the radio and ask him how specifically how he was so wrong, and to retract his earlier estimate made to you 12 months ago.

7 comments:

Tiny Dancer said...

Is this the worst blog in the history of blogging. No one comments. I only come over to laugh my head off at how hopeless it is.

Steve said...

TD, I've been posting here at a pretty steady rate for 6 years now. This may be taken as a pretty good indication that having few comments has not concerned me.

Tiny Dancer said...

so abusing people and being pointless does not cause you concern

Steve said...

Haven't you got a particularly abusive blog called Catallaxy to go haunt?

As for pointless - this blog is Dostoevsky compared to about 90% of words that flow through the internet now. (Twitter and Facebook share the blame for that.)

Steve said...

Boring now, Tiny. Move on is my suggestion.

Tiny Dancer said...

You're boring. This is a rubbish blog. I only come here to point out how hopeless it is. And all you can do is pretend you did not make a complete goose of yourself you pretentious twat.

Tiny Dancer said...

Dostoevsky - you pretentioustwat