Wattsup demolished by Climate Crock of the Week

Wattsupwiththat.com is a major meeting place for climate deniers. Click here for Watts' blog. It superficially appears to be a scientific blog but its main raison d’etre is that the author, one Anthony Watts, runs a campaign to show that measured global warming is false because many of the USA’s temperature monitoring stations on land (that are some of those used to measure global temperature trends) are placed in poor locations or have had the temperatures they record affected by subsequent development near them.

The factors that Watts and his team of volunteer sleuths look for are areas of hot tarmac, sites near air conditioning outlets, concrete areas nearby, new commercial development, climate scientists standing nearby aiming hair dryers at the thermometers (Ok, I made that last one up!).

To be fair, there are many poorly sited weather stations that are affected by the factors that Watts trumpets triumphantly but, like so many of the straw man arguments used by climate science deniers (click here for a definition of this well known logical fallacy propaganda technique) to insinuate apparent errors in climate science, they have virtually no effect on the measured global temperature trend, which is still upwards. A difference which makes no difference is no difference.

Firstly, this “station siting problem” effect is known about by climate science and already allowed for in the analysis, so claiming it is still a problem, discovered by Watts’ fearless denier vigilantes, in order to fool the denialist suckers, is a classic straw man. Secondly, climate science does not rely on only one method of measuring global temperatures. They use balloon measurements and satellite measurements too. Also, they take into account many other less direct measurements, such as ocean temperatures etc.

EDIT: ANTHONY WATTS HAS PUT IN A SABOTAGING COPYRIGHT CLAIM TO YOUTUBE AND THEY HAVE REMOVED THE VIDEO (HOPEFULLY TEMPORARILY)

SECOND EDIT: YOUTUBE THREW OUT WATTS' COMPLAINT- THE VIDEO IS BACK

This climate denial crock of the week video devastatingly demolishes Watts’ position by showing that the temperature trend measured by the 70 odd (out of 1200’ish) stations that Watts admits are in “good” locations matches almost identically the trend from the much larger number of stations spotlighted by Wattsupwiththat, and his team of sleuths, as being in “bad” locations. If his straw man theory had any merit there would have been a marked difference in the two graphs from the two records of “good” versus “bad”. Game over Mr Watts!

P.S. The American neocon “think-tank” lobbyist organisation Heartland, as is very often the case, has a paw in this denier garbage. Click here for their website