Willard Anthony Watts is a former radio and TV weatherman and notable global warming denier. He claims to have subscribed to AGW years ago before he saw the light and became a denier. He also claims that he is (otherwise) an environmentalist. This makes him something of an AGW concern troll. He is the proprietor of the Jerry Seinfeldian Watts Up With That (geddit?) blog, usually shortened to WUWT or, as it is sometimes affectionately nicknamed, LOLWUWTor WTFUWT. In the wake of Steve McIntyre of Cimate (Fr)audit fame co-winning the 2007 Best Science Blog prize, the contest yet again made a mockery of itself by giving Watts the same award in 2008. He also runs Surface Stations, a database of pictures and data on weather stations. Although Watts has made appearances on both Glenn Beck[1] and Sean Hannity's[2] shows, he is among the less nutty of the prominent deniers. Mostly he just repeats the same tired old denier talking points, or pulls out some random data and says, "Look, it's cold somewhere!"
hey fraudcurrents your most recent study is 2006... its time to update your science. you might want to go over to wattsupwiththat.com or hockeyschtick.com they have links to many more recent peer reviewed studies showing you that the earth was warmer during the Midieval warm period and other times in the past. Hence we are not warming outside natural variability.
the arctic was warmer too.... http://www.co2science.org/subject/m/summaries/mwparctic.php Medieval Warm Period (Arctic) -- Summary ... Working concurrently on a floating platform in the middle of a small lake (Hjort So) on an 80-km-long by 10.5-km-wide island (Store Koldewey) just off the coast of Northeast Greenland, Wagner et al. (2008) recovered two sediment cores of 70 and 252 cm length, the incremental portions of which they analyzed for grain-size distribution, macrofossils, pollen, diatoms, total carbon, total organic carbon, and several other parameters, the sequences of which were dated by accelerator mass spectrometry, with radiocarbon ages translated into calendar years before present. This work revealed, as they describe it, an "increase of the productivity-indicating proxies around 1,500-1,000 cal year BP, corresponding with the medieval warming," while adding that "after the medieval warming, renewed cooling is reflected in decreasing amounts of total organic carbon, total diatom abundance, and other organisms, and a higher abundance of oligotrophic to meso-oligotrophic diatom taxa." And, as they continue, "this period, the Little Ice Age, was the culmination of cool conditions during the Holocene and is documented in many other records from East and Northeast Greenland, before the onset of the recent warming [that] started ca. 150 years ago." In addition to the obvious importance of their finding evidence for the Medieval Warm Period, the six researchers' statement that the Little Ice Age was the culmination, or most extreme sub-set, of cool conditions during the Holocene, suggests that it would not be at all unusual for such a descent into extreme coolness to be followed by some extreme warming, which further suggests there is nothing unusual about the degree of subsequent warming experienced over the 20th century, especially in light of the fact that the earth has not yet achieved the degree of warmth that held sway over most of the planet throughout large portions of that prior high-temperature period. One year later, based on the use of a novel biomarker (IP25), which they described as a mono-unsaturated highly-branched isoprenoid that is synthesized by sea ice diatoms that have been shown to be stable in sediments below Arctic sea ice, Vare et al. (2009) used this new climatic reconstruction tool - together with "proxy data obtained from analysis of other organic biomarkers, stable isotope composition of bulk organic matter, benthic foraminifera, particle size distributions and ratios of inorganic elements" - to develop a spring sea ice record for that part of the central Canadian Arctic Archipelago. And in doing so, they discovered evidence for a decrease in spring sea ice between approximately 1200 and 800 years before present (BP), which they associated with "the so-called Mediaeval Warm Period." Contemporaneously, Norgaard-Pedersen and Mikkelsen (2009), working with a sediment core retrieved in August 2006 from the deepest basin of Narsaq Sound in southern Greenland, analyzed several properties of the materials thus obtained from which they were able to infer various "glacio-marine environmental and climatic changes" that had occurred over the prior 8,000 years. This work revealed the existence of two periods (2.3-1.5 ka and 1.2-0.8 ka) that appeared to coincide roughly with the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods, while they identified the colder period that followed the Medieval Warm Period as the Little Ice Age and the colder period that preceded it as the Dark Ages Cold Period. And citing the works of Dahl-Jensen et al. (1998), Andresen et al. (2004), Jensen et al. (2004) and Lassen et al. (2004), the two Danish scientists said that the cold and warm periods identified in those researchers' studies "appear to be more or less synchronous to the inferred cold and warm periods observed in the Narsaq Sound record," providing ever more evidence for the reality of the naturally-occurring phenomenon that governs this millennial-scale oscillation of climate. One year later, Vinther et al. (2010) analyzed 20 ice core records from 14 different sites, all of which stretched at least 200 years back in time, as well as near-surface air temperature data from 13 locations along the southern and western coasts of Greenland that covered approximately the same time interval (1784-2005), plus a similar temperature data set from northwest Iceland (said by the authors to be employed "in order to have some data indicative of climate east of the Greenland ice sheet"). This work demonstrated that winter ð18O was "the best proxy for Greenland temperatures." And based on that determination and working with three longer ice core ð18O records (DYE-3, Crete and GRIP), they developed a temperature history that extended more than 1400 years back in time. This history revealed, in the words of the seven scientists, that "temperatures during the warmest intervals of the Medieval Warm Period" - which they defined as occurring some 900 to 1300 years ago - "were as warm as or slightly warmer than present day Greenland temperatures." As for what this result implies, they state that further warming of present day Greenland climate "will result in temperature conditions that are warmer than anything seen in the past 1400 years," which, of course, has not happened yet. Furthermore, Vinther et al. readily acknowledge that the independent "GRIP borehole temperature inversion suggests that central Greenland temperatures are still somewhat below the high temperatures that existed during the Medieval Warm Period." About this same time, Kobashi et al. (2010) had a paper published in which they had written that "in Greenland, oxygen isotopes of ice (Stuiver et al., 1995) have been extensively used as a temperature proxy, but the data are noisy and do not clearly show multi-centennial trends for the last 1,000 years in contrast to borehole temperature records that show a clear 'Little Ice Age' and 'Medieval Warm Period' (Dahl-Jensen et al., 1998)." However, they went on to note that nitrogen (N) and argon (Ar) isotopic ratios - 15N/14N and 40Ar/36Ar, respectively - can be used to construct a temperature record that "is not seasonally biased, and does not require any calibration to instrumental records, and resolves decadal to centennial temperature fluctuations." much more...
By the way how come these papers were not found by the morons who claim there were only 2 papers disputing man made global warming. Could your side lie more?
As is typical of media weathercasters, Watts has no academic training in the physics of climate or related disciplines. Unencumbered by scientific expertise he works by intuition, and intuitively he could not bring himself to accept the documented increase in the U.S. surface temperature record. There had to be a problem with the instrumentation or book keeping — somewhere. Watts explained his story to Glenn Beck. At first he speculated that the composition of new weather shelter paint had interfered with the measuring system:[3] “”Well, Glenn, I kind of stumbled into this. This was a project started on serendipity. I started out looking at paint. You may call seeing some of the early weather shelters that are housing the thermometers. They look like chicken coops on stilts that are white with slots and so forth. Anyway, to make a long story short, the weather bureau designed them back in the 1800s and they lasted until now, some of them still in use. They changed the paint in ’79. A long time ago I had a conversation with the state climatologist of California about them and we wondered if the change in paint—the original spec was the old Tom Sawyer whitewash because they were designed in the 1890s and they changed the paint check in 1979 to latex—so I wanted to do an experiment about finding out whether that paint made a difference ... And then I went to another station in Marysville, California at the fire station and it was a new design and I discovered that the fire chief parked his vehicle, radiator end, right next to the sensor within about two feet of the sensor ... So my project changed from looking at paint to looking at stations all around the country. In his early days Watts tried to position himself as a genuine "skeptic" concerned about the quality of data, but eventually he couldn't keep a straight face.
wow look at fraudcurrents the the leftist troll attempting to distract us from the science once again. I present science and papers showing we are not outside natural variability and he starts going after one of the founders of a website who links to the science and the papers and sometimes creates some reviews of the papers.
More evidence more CO2 is plant food. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/...-co2-trees-continue-to-grow-at-a-faster-rate/ Now there is even more evidence. From From Technische Universität München: Study highlights forest growth trends from 1870 to the present- Global change: Trees continue to grow at a faster rate “…scientists are putting the growth acceleration down to rising temperatures and the extended growing season. Carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrogen are other factors contributing to the faster growth.” ” href=”https://www.tum.de/typo3temp/pics/3a25b695b8.jpg” rel=”group”> Cynthia Schäfer and Eric Thurm, doctoral candidates at the Chair for Forest Growth and Yield, take a growth ring sample from an experimental plot tree. (Photo: L. Steinacker / TUM) 17.09.2014, Research news Trees have been growing significantly faster since the 1960s. The typical development phases of trees and stands have barely changed, but they have accelerated – by as much as 70 percent. This was the outcome of a study carried out by scientists from Technische Universität München (TUM) based on long-term data from experimental forest plots that have been continuously observed since 1870. Their findings were published recently inNature Communications.
Zhao and Running have been measuring terrestrial net primary production (NPP), which is a measure of how much carbon land plants take in and store as part of their structures. While earlier measures looked good (NPP rose in the '90s), over the past decade the picture is grim: as CO2 has been rising, NPP has been falling in lockstep. Plants are not keeping up with human CO2 production. Which means that the ability of land plants to act as a carbon sink in actually weakening as time goes on. NPP is tricky to measure though – it takes a complex model with a lot of inputs. But there is another way to measure the growth (or decline) of land plants, and that is by satellite measurement. NOAA's annual State of the Climate report is a must-read for anyone interested in the guts of climate science today. One of the most depressing facts in this report is an indicator called the Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation, or FAPAR. Photosynthesis uses only very narrow parts of the spectrum, so you can look down at the earth and see how much of those frequencies are being absorbed on the Earth. Essentially, FAPAR is a measure of how much photosynthesis is going on — or how much plants are growing. From space, FAPAR can be measured over land areas quite easily, and has been measured since 1998. And the picture isn't good. We've lost about 1.5% of global land-plant growth over the past 12 years. Interestingly, this loss is concentrated in the southern hemisphere, as seen in this graphic: Although plant growth has declined in the Northern temperate zone and in the tropics, the Southern temperate zone has seen the steepest declines. This is because climate-change driven drought has hit the Southern hemisphere the hardest. If conditions in Russia are any indication, however, the Northern Hemisphere won't be far behind. ******* Three weeks ago in Nature, the world's oldest scientific journal (and one of the most respected), Daniel G. Boyce, Marlon R. Lewis & Boris Worm report on a study they undertook to determine global phytoplankton concentration over the 20th century. Phytoplankton are tiny single-celled marine plants that form the base of the ocean's food chain. Everything that swims in the sea depends on phytoplankton either directly or indirectly as a food source. More important, phytoplankton are responsible for about half of the photosynthesis (read: oxygen) on earth. But phytoplankton are difficult to study, because the level of phyoplankton in the sea varies radically, by several orders of magnitude (that's by thousands of times), and those variations are seasonal, and regional, and there's a bunch of random noise too. So you need a lot of data over a long time period to make sense of what's going on in the long term. And Boyce et. al. have finally got the data. Boyce's shocking result: since 1899, phytoplankton has shown a long-term decline of about 40%, especially during the most recent years. The authors found declines in 8 of 10 ocean basins, and the declines were linked to rising sea surface temperatures. Actually, this isn't too surprising. Cold water has always been good for phytoplankton, because cold water at the surface sinks, and is replaced by water from deeper in the ocean. This vertical mixing brings nutrients (which otherwise would have sunk) back to the surface, which is good for living things of all types. That's why whales, which can swim the whole length of the ocean, prefer cold water: more living things are there to eat. So as sea surface temperatures increase, phytoplankton decrease – which in turn reduces the ability of the oceans to act as a carbon sink, just like the land's ability is reduced. And another positive feedback loop makes the effect of CO2 emissions even worse.
Fraudcurrents -- you are citing a study rebuked by a NASA study... http://cliveg.bu.edu/research/science-tc-2011/bu-draft-press-release.pdf NASA study refutes claims of drought-driven declines in plant productivity, global food security BU researchers find that modeling errors produced exaggerated claims A new, comprehensive study by an international team of scientists, including scientists at Boston University in the US and the Universities of Viçosa and Campinas in Brazil, has been published in the current issue of Science (August 26, 2011) refuting earlier alarmist claims that drought has induced a decline in global plant productivity during the past decade and posed a threat to global food security. Those earlier findings published by Zhao and Running in the August 2010 issue of Science (Vol. 329, p. 940) also warned of potentially serious consequences for biofuel production and the global carbon cycle. The two new technical comments in Science contest these claims on the basis of new evidence from NASA satellite data, which indicates that Zhao and Running's findings resulted from several modeling errors, use of corrupted satellite data and statistically insignificant trends. The main premise of Zhao and Running's model-based study was an expectation of increased global plant productivity during the 2000s based on previously observed increases during the 1980s and 1990s under supposedly similar, favorable climatic conditions. Instead, Zhao and Running were surprised to see a decline, which they attributed it to large-scale droughts in the Southern Hemisphere. "Their model has been tuned to predict lower productivity even for very small increases in temperature. Not surprisingly, their results were preordained," said Arindam Samanta, the study's lead author. (Samanta, now at Atmospheric and Environmental Research Inc., Lexington, MA, worked on the study as a graduate student at Boston University's D ---- http://cliveg.bu.edu/research/science-tc-2011/science-tc-2011.html The right panel shows regions where vegetation greenness increased (in increasing shades of green color) and decreased (in increasing shades of red color) during the 2000-2009 period. Contrary to previously published report (Zhao and Running, Science, Vol. 329, p. 940, 2010) and in their Technical Response to our Comments, this figure clearly shows that over 85% of the vegetated lands South of 70N showed no statistically significant changes during the 2000s. Click on the images to download high resolution images here is the panel. http://cliveg.bu.edu/research/science-tc-2011/science-tc-2011.html
A tax on CO2 that slowly ramps up will result in a market driven solution. The true cost of fossil fuel use is currently not being paid. We are dumping the cost on future generations. But OMG, it might involve the government!