Climate change this and that

Michael Tobis (and Gareth Renowden) have really been ripping into some recent bogus claims by climate “skeptics”lately. First, it was the non story of the New Zealand temperature record adjustments, somehow claimed by the skeptic group that forced a reassessment as some sort of triumph over the e-vil lying NIWA scientists. Yet, gullible skeptics lap this sort of stuff up.

Secondly, it was a takedown of a Watts Up With That post by Don Easterbrook, in which a puzzling graph was claimed to show something it patently did not. Again, about 95% of the comments following the story at Anthony Watts place brought this hook, line and sinker.

There really is a new definition for gullible, and it’s Climate Change Skeptic.

As someone commented at Tobis’ blog, it seemed clear that Watts Up With That has in the last couple of weeks been running with a pre-emptive campaign to argue why the possible hottest year on record title for 2010 (it will be a close call with 1998) is not really so important anyway. I reckon this sort of pre-emptive action was obvious in 2010 too, with respect to Arctic ice loss when it wasn’t clear just how wrong Steven Goddard’s prediction would be.

At other blogs:

* Barry Brook has an important post on the meaning of the “no statistically significant warming since 1995” line. In fact, he puts up a persuasive argument as to why it was (in effect) the wrong question that was being asked in the first place.

* Tamino looks at the GISS temperature record to once again emphasise via graph that there is no last decade decline in the warming trend, which is the key thing (not the annual ups and downs.)

* Stoat had a pretty good take before Christmas on the issue of explanations for the current (and previous year’s) cold European winter, which can be summed up as:

So before explaining such-and-such an event, the first thing you need to do is to show that there is something in need of an explanation. A cold December in Europe doesn't fall into that category.

He doesn't deny that the ideas being run as to why these winters have been so cold might be correct (see the Real Climate post on this), but he considers it safer to not try to over-explain weather and its relationship to climate change. Given the way skeptics smack their lips over decade old statements that snow was well and truly on the way out in Britain, he has a pretty good point.

* It’s easy to forget, in light of the well publicised extreme heat of Russia in 2010, that Japan also suffered a record hot, long summer last year. As I noted in my first post of 2011 earlier today, it seems that the record number of deaths for the elderly has been blamed on this. The Japan Meteorological Agency seems right on board with AGW, and it is fascinating how so many agencies from so many countries have been “fooled” according to the skeptics. It’s funny how the gullible think they can recognize the gullible, but it doesn’t work that way.

Update: I see that the China Meteorological Agency also put out a 2010 year end summary noting the extreme weather, and putting it down to global warming. For example:

Extreme rainstorms followed the hot weather. Ninety-seven weather stations around China reported record-breaking daily rainfall, and 133 stations broke their annual records. Only seven record-breaking daily rainfall figures were reported from 2000 to 2009.