Comments on: A USHCN Station on the plains

By: O Insurgente » Blog Archive » Os fundamentos pesudo-cientàficos do eco-alarmismo

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 14:18:39 +0000

[...] A USHCN Station on the plains. Por Anthony Watts. This one is from Fort Morgan, Colorado’s USHCN climate station of record. Fort Morgan is in the eastern plains of Colorado, about 100 miles northeast of Denver. [...]

By: MrPete

MrPete — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 11:45:32 +0000

#15, #50 — the fact that the sensor is in front of a south-facing brick wall should not be lost in the noise.

I had to laugh yesterday… an ad in the local paper was touting the thermal mass of a brick wall for keeping greenhouses nice and toasty — winter nights at 35F instead of -17F (yes, this in an enclosed space… yet the Ft Morgan sensor is also kept “safe from the elements” in its nicely protected spot.

Perhaps that’s part of the thinking — after all, those nasty old Stevenson boxes were always in need of painting or repair. Now we can use these low-maintenance plastic-coated sensors, and put them up close to a building where they won’t be affected by the nasty weather outside. Then they’ll last a long time and not need so much maintenance and repair!

An improvement we all can agree on. Right?

Not.

By: fFreddy

fFreddy — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 11:32:40 +0000

Re #54, MarkW I think that is James Lovelock. No doubt it helped his book sales.

By: MarkW

MarkW — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 00:47:05 +0000

I don’t remember who it was, but some guy in the British Climate office keeps saying that in a century the only humans left alive will be living on Antarctic.

By: beng

beng — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 16:50:36 +0000

Something I think should be pointed out, even if obvious. The Western Sugar Company and/or the station-tenders aren’t really at “fault” here, just that such situations aren’t useful from a climatic-studies viewpoint & shouldn’t be used (unless somehow accounted for) in such. The same for all such situations. But USHCN is knowingly, and incorrectly IMO, including many such situations in its database that subsequently get used for such climatic studies. That’s the problem.

By: Anthony Watts

Anthony Watts — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 15:16:05 +0000

The original poster of this comment (originally #51) below used a somewhat inflammatory psuedo-name that I didn’t think was appropriate for this forum, so I deleted the post. But seeing that Mr. Dardinger responded before I could delete it, I’m restoring the content of it.

IMHO lets just ignore these sorts of things as being errant, and continue with constructive dialog.

[from: anonymous poster]
For his trouble Mr. Watts gets to read a letter to the editor in his local paper from a nutjob telling him to kill himself.

http://www.chicoer.com/ci_6278695

On the bright side, other Chicoans support Mr. Watts.

http://www.chicoer.com/ci_6318730

By: Dave Dardinger

Dave Dardinger — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 14:27:26 +0000

re: #51

That paper should be a bit careful about what they publish. Of course this Sherri person just shows here total ignorance of anything scientific She’s either confused between CO and CO2 or thinks she can fool others. And I’m not sure even the nuttiest enviros claim GW will/can kill all life on earth.

I might add that this sort of thing shows the necessity of rebutting the best rather than the worst arguments of one’s adversaries. I wouldn’t go to the trouble of trying to claim this person’s rambling nonsense proves AGW is false. But I’m afraid that many AGW supporters seem to think that “discrediting” a wrong or misleading skeptic position somehow reflects on the entire skeptic edifice. Use your opponents best arguments, give them a chance to reply and quote directly and in context whenever possible. It’s not that much harder than being cleverly misleading. I know, when skeptics see bad arguments from their opponents, it’s tempting to respond in kind. But it’s not useful in the long run.

By: David Stockwell

David Stockwell — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 03:26:22 +0000

Showing that picture to people. It is a real classic. That could serve as an icon – 4 A/Cs, red brick 2 story, parking lot, silos. Thanks

By: Reference

Reference — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 15:17:31 +0000

Those A/C units may be extremely useful. When searching for systematic errors, one nice trick is to enhance their value to make the signal visible. As the purpose of the exercise to detect the tiny AGW warming signal inside the temperature history of the site, let’s see if the A/C signal can be detected in the data. If not then it sets an upper lower on the sensitivity of the apparatus.

By: TAC

TAC — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 11:38:41 +0000

The latest Scientific American has a nicely written article, "The Physical Science behind Climate Change," by William Collins, Robert Colman, James Haywood, Martin R. Manning and Philip Mote, which mostly summarizes the IPCC AGW perspective. However, in light of what Anthony Watts and the rest of you have uncovered about the USHCN stations, the opening paragraph is hilarious [emphasis mine]:

For a scientist studying climate change, "eureka" moments are unusually rare. Instead progress is generally made by a painstaking piecing together of evidence from every new temperature measurement, satellite sounding or climate-model experiment. Data get checked and rechecked, ideas tested over and over again. Do the observations fit the predicted changes? Could there be some alternative explanation? Good climate scientists, like all good scientists, want to ensure that the highest standards of proof apply to everything they discover.

Given the importance they apparently attach to data and data quality assurance, it is surprising no one noticed the disgraceful neglect that the USHCN seems to have received. Go figure! Scientific American could do us all a service by publishing an editorial deploring the condition of the USHCN, noting the importance of the USHCN for climate science, and calling for higher standards in the future.