Not long ago Wormtail Anthony Watts published this post from — who else? — Lord Voldemort Monckton, causing Watts to claim that the premier graph shown as part of Mike Mann’s recent article in Scientific American is wrong. In particular, Watts claimed that the plotted data didn’t correspond to any known surface temeperature data set. Although he didn’t come right out and say it, I got the impression that Watts believed Mike Mann was perpetrating a fraud. Imagine that.

If he’d waited just a few days, he’d have known exactly which known surface temperature dataset had been used.

Here’s the graphic in question (click it for a larger, clearer view):

Watts’ own “go-to guy” for data analysis, Lucius Malfoy Willis Eschenbach, actually digitized the graph of surface temperature in order to show that it doesn’t match known global temperature datasets. Gosh — how could Watts, or Eschenbach, or Monckton, or anybody, possibly have known what dataset was used for the graph in the SciAm article?

Let’s see … they could have read the text on the graph. The part where it says “If the Northern Hemisphere’s surface temperatures rise more than two degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels …” Because the widely accepted surface temperature dataset used is the HadCRUT4 data for the northern hemisphere. Which makes sense, since the zero-dimensional energy balance model which Mann used to make forecasts, is also for the northern hemisphere. Here’s the data from HadCRUT4, compared to the digitized version which Eschenbach estimated:

Failing that, they could have read the “More in this article” sections, particularly noting the link to the data and code used for the graph, and for the zero-dimensional energy balance model used to make the forecasts.

Heck, Watts himself could simply have waited a few days. His own readers told him.

What’s the take-home message here? That Anthony Watts and his crew are so eager to criticize global warming that they can’t be bothered to get the facts straight first. Even when it’s easy to do so. Even when there are multiple ways to do so.

I won’t bother to respond to Watt’s directly, I leave that to Mike Mann himself — if he so chooses. But I will say this: when Wormtail, Malfoy, and Voldemort are trying so hard to kill you, you know you’re on the right side.