WUWT - an apology [not really]

Mouse finding holes in Bob's post

No sooner do I comment on WUWT's egregious comment about on-line peer review than a post by the ever entertaining (I didn't say correct, did I?) Bob Tisdale is shown to be fuller of holes than a Swiss cheese:














Three updates.  Blimey.  They might even say it's plain wrong in a minute. 

57 varieties, it says so on the label

What anti-science folks of all their amazing Heinz 57 varieties misunderstand about peer review is this: it is not about keeping weird and unusual science out of the journals.  It is about keeping poor and wrong science out, and making sure what is published is at least scientific, fits in with the well established bits of science and doesn't make such outrageous claims that it teeters on the edge of pseudoscience.

Peer review would, of course, have saved the embarrassment of three corrections within a handful of hours of posting.  Those would have been smoothed out at the review stage.

So add this to the list of posts that are showing increasing desperation, are churned out like cornflakes in a never mind the quality, feel the width style climate denier factory.  If they are so sure that AGW is wrong, then they have to take the time, the effort and the intellectual capacity and use it to really find out what is wrong.  But what does go down at WUWT is grandstanding - trying to see who can hit the top of the tiles in the gents.  It's not adult and it's not funny.

An intellectual disagreement from WUWT

Actually, Watts is not interested in really changing the post or actually reviewing what gets put on his site by the looks of things.  He's interested in a fight.  He makes fun and then lets his honchos do the actual beating.  Sounds like bullying to me.  And there's some people at WUWT for whom this is their sole form of entertainment, it seems.  So Watts types this:

Anthony Watts says:

June 28, 2013 at 4:44 am

Thanks Bob. My point in publishing the “angry” Australian claim by Karoly was that given the broad reach of WUWT, somebody would see what a load of codswallop it was and write a rebuttal, and I was right.
UPDATE: I see Nick is here working on an angle to defend the Karoly and Lewis govsci effort, so I’m even more sure it’s codswallop.

A considered piece of writing, I don't think.

Luckily there are some people who actually do know what they are talking about and that, after a bit of a barney, forces update 3:

Nick Stokes says:

June 28, 2013 at 8:03 am

Bob,
“I present data, Nick.”
You’ve presented reanalysis data, which the authors say is not suitable for validating models because of biases.
“While that would impact the summer model-data comparison, it doesn’t impact the overall comparisons shown in Figures 5 and 6.”
But it does affect your claim that
“the data I had downloaded indicated Australia summertime temperatures in 2013 weren’t remarkable “ and “not so angry after all”.
Fig 6 does not use GHCN/CAMS, so yes, it is unaffected. I think it is likely that the CMIP 5 average will show a higher trend for annual temperature than measured for Australia in this period. How significant this is, I don’t know.

Not the Nick Stokes but another one who also stands for truth and honesty

Followed by:

Steven Mosher says:

June 28, 2013 at 8:30 am

Once again we see folks here using re analysis data without fully disclosing that the data they use is modelled.
Now, If I used re analysis data without disclosing it people would scream bloody murder.
Further, Bob has used RCP 8.5. You all realize that RCP 8.5 is the projection at the highest end of the scenarios, ie Bob has compared re analysis data to the highest projections.
And to make matters worse he has used re analysis data against the authors advice.
When the NAS said that bristlecones should be avoided, we screamed when mann used bristlecones. Here the authors tell us that the data should not be used for model validation.
Yet bob ignores that.
If you want an estmate for australia that uses the exact dimensions of the country
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/regions/australia

which leads to this:

Not the actual Bob blushing

Bob Tisdale says:

June 28, 2013 at 8:53 am

Nick Stokes and Steve Mosher: See Update 3.
Thanks, Nick.

Should be embarrassing.  Not a bit of it. There follows this straight after:

Not the actual Bob throwing teddy out of pram

Bob Tisdale says:

June 28, 2013 at 9:48 am

Steven Mosher says: “Now, If I used re analysis data without disclosing it people would scream bloody murder.”
And you, Steven, are screaming bloody murder and being quite obnoxious about it. See update 3.

So we have a pretty reasonable post from Steven Mosher followed by an angry one from Bob Tisdale.  Just been called out for being wrong - don't like it, na, na, ne, na, nah.  Ya, boo, sucks.

Not the actual Bob being juvenile

 More from Tisdale's reply to Steven Mosher - the raspberry send off:

In closing this comment, Steven, I await your presentation of my Figures 7 & 8 using the RCP6.0-based model mean. If I have to do it, I won’t be as pleasant in my reply to you as I was with this one.
When I make mistakes, Steven, I correct them. Do you?

  I sense some issues.  Know what I mean?

But this isn't what peer reviewing actually is.  This is an argument on your front lawn about what colour the grass is, with someone denying it is green and others, who have training in grass colourology, showing what the reality is.  Real scientists interested in the real world and understanding it would have not got it wrong in the first place because they would have spent ages (20 hours - pah) going through the work with care, passing it by colleagues who would have checked the results and made suggestions on how to improve it, before it ever got near a journal editor.

Somebody not called Bob heading for one of Bob's holes

Fake scientists are sitting at their laptops and churning this stuff out by the yard.  Real scientists are cautious little animals who know that if they put out material with holes this big, they would soon not have a career.  Simples.