Climate change and Watts watch

Results from the Berkeley Earth project data fits existing NASA and NOAA temperature records like a glove

Anthony Watts announced he’s taking the weekend off. But TPM has the back story up on their front page with the header “Climate Change Deniers Abandon ‘Befuddled Warmist’ Physicist Who Came Around On Global Warming”. Specifically that’s Richard Muller, a UC Berkeley physicist who now seems to accept the consensus that the earth is indeed warming:

Muller didn’t reject climate science per se, but he was a skeptic, and a convenient one for big polluters and conservative anti-environmentalists — until Muller put their money where his mouth was, and launched the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, in part with a grant from the Charles G. Koch foundation. After extensive study, he’s concluded that the existing science was right all along — that the earth’s surface is warming, at an accelerating rate.

It struck me reading some of the comments on Watts’ site that he may feel he’s in a real bind. That he has to stick by his guns, even when they run dry, because accepting the facts will deprive him of traffic and threaten his livelihood. As a veteran professional blogger I sympathize, but I also challenge that premise. I can think of at least two big successful blogs, Balloon Juice and Little Green Footballs, where the blogger switched gears dramatically based on evidence, and not only did they both survive, they both prospered. Maybe Watts should give his readers some credit, maybe they actually value honesty? More on this later.

Anthony Watts struggles with climate change facts

Results from the Berkeley Earth project data fits existing NASA and NOAA temperature records like a glove

The Anthony Watts saga continues, sadly, as the popular skeptic blogger seems to be struggling, and so far failing, to face the facts he ostensibly helped produce. Take the first bullet point in a list of things he does and does not agree with, recently posted on his site:

The Earth is warmer than it was 100-150 years ago. But that was never in contention – it is a straw man argument. The magnitude and causes are what skeptics question.

Anthony is terribly confused and that’s a charitable take. [Read more…]

Hey Anthony: Watts up with this?

Results from the Berkeley Earth project data fits existing NASA and NOAA temperature records like a glove

If Anthony Watts is an objective skeptic he has a very interesting weekend ahead. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Watts is a former weather-caster turned blogger and global warming skeptic who writes at What’s Up With That. Sources tell me he may have tipped his hand over a hot-off-the-press independent climate study which confirmed the same rising temperature trend found by NASA and other climate scientists over the last century. The story begins with Watts fluffing the scientific cred of that study’s authors and editors back in March:

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. I haven’t seen the global result, nobody has, not even the home team, but the method isn’t the madness that we’ve seen from NOAA, NCDC, GISS, and CRU …

NASA madness! But the Anthony Watts who chimed in on the same project yesterday, after those results were partly released, sounds very different: [Read more…]