What got me snipped from wattsupwiththat.com - 7

More than a week has already passed. Thus, it is safe to assume my following comment to the smear post by Anthony Watts against William Connolley got vanished back then after submission to Watts's blog. Here is my comment:

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Anthony Watts wrote:

"Wikipedia climate fiddler William Connolley is in the news again"

"in the news again" means here, Kopp-online, one of worst garbage publishers, which is known for spreading esoteric and pseudo-scientific views, conspiracy fantasies and outright lies, in the German language online world, published some dreck about Connolley, an opinion article filled with lies, filled with assertions not backed up with anything, filled with innuendo and conspiracy fantasy. Then the author quotes and references his own Kopp-article in his own blog, which then is quoted and referenced by Anthony Watts here. And soon, it likely is going to be further spread all around the "skeptic"-blogosphere. This is how some "news" are being created.

Unbelievable but true: The Wikipedia umpire on Climate Change was a member of the UK Green Party and openly sympathized with the views of the controversial IPCC. So it was not a referee, but the 12th Man of the IPCC team.

I’m not sure how accurate the translation is, but it suggests he was somehow part of the IPCC “short list” team.

What is "the IPCC 'short list' team"? The central committee of the evil "AGW hoax" conspiracy?

No, it means something else here. It's a sports metaphor, through which it is asserted that Connolley lacked objectivity as an author or administrator of Wikipedia because of his former Green Party membership and because "he openly sympathized with the views of the controversial IPCC".

"he openly sympathized with the views of the controversial IPCC". This statement is obviously derogatorily meant, but it comes as pure innuendo. What is this even supposed to mean? What are the alleged "views of the controversial IPCC", with which he "openly sympathizes"? The scientific views on climate change of mainstream climate science, as compiled and synthesized in the IPCC report? Or what else is meant?

So, people who agree with the mainstream views in a scientific field should not write or edit articles about topics in the field in an encyclopedia? And if they do anyhow, it's just "unbelievable"! How dare they!

It's really an irony that the crowd here is ranting about Wikipedia, and at the same time is taking something at face value, which comes from a garbage source like Kopp-online, as soon as it seems to confirm the preconceived views. Anyone who values science and truth should stay far away from such a source, though.

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What got me snipped from wattsupwiththat.com - 6

This time a comment of mine, which I had submitted on January, 24, 2013, in reply to the posting "Burt Rutan: 'This says it all and clear'" got vanished or never appeared at Anthony Watts's blog "Watts Up With That?". My reply listed some major flaws of the posting. It is one of the many examples how fake skeptics lie using cherry picked data and flawed statistics. I addressed this pseudo-scientific approach also in the post "How to create a false 'global warming standstill'".

Here is the comment:

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Three major flaws in the post:

1. Cherry picking of data intervals and the data set to support the desired message.

2. Drawing scientifically invalid conclusions from changes in limited data, which are not statistically significant.

3. Straw man argumentation, where something is being "refuted" that is not being stated (as if any climate scientist has claimed that CO2 was the only factor influencing the global atmospheric or surface temperature record, and that there was a linear relationship between CO2 emission or CO2 mixing ratio in the atmosphere and observed temperature record).

But the crowd here is generally applauding. So much for the skepticism of "skeptics".

I don't know for what purpose Mr. Watts posted this. But if the purpose has been to expose what I am seeing here, it is a full success.

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What got me snipped from wattsupwiththat.com - 4

I suppose I have waited long enough now since the other day to see whether publishing my comment to an article on the fake skeptic opinion blog wattsupwiththat.com has only been delayed, or whether it has been vanished again. To clarify, I do not claim censoring away my comments was a violation of my rights to freely express my opinion or similar. There aren't any such rights on private blogs. It is fully up to the discretion of a blog owner, in this case Anthony Watts, or the moderators who do this on his/her behalf, to decide what is allowed to be posted and what isn't for what reason ever. I document here the censored comments for two reasons:

1. It exposes the claims made by Anthony Watts or his moderators as falsehoods, according to which comments expressing views contrary to the ones of the blog host or his followers were not censored by them on his blog as they please, and it exposes Anthony Watt's hypocrisy, since he complains that his comments or other fake skeptic's comments were censored on blogs of climate realists (e.g., here), allegedly unlike what he practices with comments by climate realists on his blog. He exactly practices the same of what he accuses others. Different sites have different biases. This would be all fine, if Watts and Co. weren't lying about what they do.

2. I do not want to have written the comments for nothing. If they are not published where I submitted them I publish them here.

Following comment written by me to the article "NASA on Arctic sea ice record low - storm 'wreaked havoc on the Arctic sea ice cover" was not published:

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Anthony Watts wrote:

NASA finally admits it Arctic cyclone in August ‘broke up’ and ‘wreaked havoc’ on sea ice — Reuters reports Arctic storm played ‘key role’ in this season’s sea ice reduction.

"NASA finally admits" == Loaded language. I suspect this choice of words is supposed to suggest that something had been hidden from the public before, the knowledge of which would change any of the conclusions. As if the fact that some individual weather event like this cyclone additionally contributed to the sea ice minimum in the Arctic this year, would negate that 1.) Arctic sea ice was already lower than 2007 at the same time of the year before this storm occurred and the record probably would have been broken anyway, or 2) that there has been a multi-decadal trend of Arctic sea ice decline, for which there is evidence that it has been unprecedented for at least 1,450 years (Kinnard et al., 2011, doi: 10.1038/nature10581). The Arctic sea ice decline is empirical evidence that global warming is really happening. Therefore the need to downplay it in this opinion blog. I observe how hard you and your friends try to do this.

I predict this won't have been the last time that the Arctic sea ice extend has broken its record minimum. The Arctic sea ice extend (and volume) will break record minimums over and over again in the years and decades ahead, since greenhouse gas mixing ratios in the atmosphere continue to increase and therefore global warming continues.  "Global cooling" that is announced here as allegedly happening or being right around the corner quite frequently is a figment of the imagination of the ones who assert it.

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What got me snipped from wattsupwiththat.com - 3

"The reason is that WUWT does not censor comments like alarmist blogs do. It allows true freedom of speech, thus the grain of truth is winnowed from the chaff of propaganda; readers can make up their own minds, and arrive at reasonable conclusions based on the facts presented."
(Smokey aka David B. Stealey, moderator of the blog wattsupwiththat.com, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/28/comment-of-the-week-2/#comment-754850)

I continue my series that documents comments that are apparently not liked, and therefore vanished at the opinion blog wattsupwiththat.com, which is presented by blog host Anthony Watts as "The world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change" and which promotes denial of anthropogenically caused global warming. The comment was in reply to the claim by regular guest author Bob Tisdale, made in his posting "Tisdale asks: Hey, Where'd The El Niño Go?". Mr. Tisdale asserts global warming was caused by the natural phenomenon El Niño.  The El Niño/La Niña pattern (or ENSO - El Niño/Southern Oscillation) is a major mode of ocean variability in the tropical Pacific. It influences the weather in many parts of the world through so called teleconnections. Here is my comment to this claim. The comment also included a couple of questions for Mr. Tisdale:

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How is El Nino supposed to cause global warming? El Nino/La Nina is a major mode of natural variability with warm and cold phases, but global warming is a long-term trend. And the temperature of the upper ocean layers is not an independent climate driver. It's a dependent variable, so it can be the first cause that explains global warming. Claiming a warming of the upper ocean layers was the cause of global warming is just circular reasoning, since warming of the upper ocean layers is part of global warming.

Here are the annually and globally averaged anomalies of the surface temperature according to the GISS analysis relative to the average of the reference period 1951-1980:

For the decade of 1991 to 2000:
0.36, 0.14, 0.15, 0.25, 0.4, 0.3, 0.42, 0.59, 0.34, 0.36; mean+/-std = 0.331+/-0.133
For the decade of 2001 to 2010:
0.49, 0.58, 0.57, 0.49, 0.62, 0.56, 0.59, 0.44, 0.57, 0.63; mean+/-std = 0.554+/-0.061
(http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.txt)

What El Nino events are supposed to have caused and how are they supposed to have caused it that the 10 year average of the global temperature anomaly of the period 2001 to 2010 was 0.22 K higher than the 10-year average of the period 1991 to 2000? How does El Nino cause the long-term increase in the ocean heat content?

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Update 09/25/2012, at 9:27 AM:  The statement above, "It's a dependent variable, so it can be the first cause that explains global warming", was supposed to say "It's a dependent variable, so it can't be the first cause that explains global warming" (h/t Al. Thank you for spotting this and notifying me). Comments still don't work.

Update 09/25/2012, at 9:32 AM: Posting new comments actually works. Old comments have not been imported yet.

Fake Skeptics Versus True Skeptics

Since I have previously used the term Fake Skeptics, perhaps some explanation is required what is meant with this term. I am distinguishing between fake skeptics and true skeptics regarding scientific debates, based on the form of the arguments and the motivation behind the arguments. The phenomenon of a, if not necessarily large, but the more noisy group of people who act as fake skeptics is for instance particularly present regarding the findings in the field of climate science, since those findings have become highly politicized due to their implications for the human civilization and economics and politics all over the planet.

Fake Skeptics do not argue on the grounds of science, they mostly use non-scientific arguments to attack the findings of science. They misrepresent the science, use logical fallacies, acknowledge and interpret empirical data only very selectively, e.g., by cherry picking those, insofar those appear to be in support of their views. The thinking is governed by cognitive biases too a large degree. The driving force is not primarily scientific curiosity, and the motivation for arguing against findings of science is mostly not just some scientific disagreement. Findings from scientific research are rejected, because those findings are in contradiction to preconceived economical, political, ideological, or religious views. Consequently, since the scientific arguments are lacking, fake skeptics often resort to attacks not just against the results from research, but also against the scientists who have presented those results. Scientists who are presenting results from research which are not liked are being defamed and smeared. Accusations, insinuation, or the use of innuendo against those scientists, asserting or suggesting fraud and malicious manipulation of data and results from scientific studies are common. Resort to conspiracy theories fantasies is common too, which is explainable. How else can the worldview be made whole, if most scientists who work and publish in the field say something else? The ones who act as fake skeptics are mostly people who are not directly involved in the area of research the findings of which are being rejected. Since scientific arguments and rigorousness are lacking, fake skeptic arguments are usually not presented in scientific publications in specialist journals of the field due to the filter mechanism of the peer review process. Instead, they are mostly found in other venues, nowadays especially in Internet opinion blogs, since it is not mandatory in those to uphold strong scientific standards.

True Skeptics are, in contrast, driven by scientific curiosity and they wish to acquire knowledge about the cause-effect relationships that govern the workings of the object or system that is being studied and debated. They argue based on science. If they do not agree with findings presented by scientists, they do this using scientific arguments. They embrace the scientific method and test alternative explanations, if they hypothesize those, against empirical data. True skeptics present their alternative hypotheses and theories, once they have been worked out sufficiently, in the peer reviewed specialist journals of the field, i.e., they uphold for themselves high scientific standards. Personal attacks against scientists who are presenting alternative, competing hypotheses and theories are not being considered as legit arguments against those hypotheses and theories. Professional scientists need to be true skeptics in their daily work. It is part of their professional profile.