This picture below comes to me via surfacestations.org volunteer Kristen Byrnes, a 15 year old budding scientist that has created a bit of a stir with her critique of Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth. Her website,”Ponder the Maunder” also has more photos of weather stations.
It is the USHCN Climate Station of Record for Lewiston, Maine, placed at the Union Water Power Company there.
It features an air conditioner unit, a portable barbecue grill, pavement and a nearby building. No close-by parking though as we’ve seen with other stations.
It also features a curious non-standard instrument shelter, of a design I’ve not seen before. The observing height appears to be non-standard, and lower to the ground than usual.
In addition to the close by hard surfaces like concrete pavement, the shelter also is located on an up-slope. That’s a no-no according to NOAA siting specs for a good reason – hot air rises.
Ms. Byrnes found another interesting station in Eastport, Maine. While it is not part of the USHCN climatic network it is worth looking at because it shows how something simple and obvious that was missed can skew any experiment.
This station is a state operated, NOAA funded special monitoring station with high accuracy, very expensive laboratory grade sensors. The temperature sensor is aspirated, meaning it has a powered fan to draw air in from the outside, and is considered the most accurate way to measure air temperature. The same temperature sensor is used in the US Climate Reference Network (USCRN) specs of which can be seen here and photos here.
The setup also has a portable electronics building to go with it, to house all the data logging and analysis electronics. All that electronics needs to be kept cool, so these buildings are fitted with an air conditioner.
But the scientists who placed the temperature sensor were apparently so transfixed on the goal, they didn’t notice the air conditioner for the electronics building:
Fortunately, the US Climate Reference Network sites I’ve seen are much better thought out than this station in Eastport Maine.
Climate Audit 
363 Comments
I would have thought those blackened railings behind the top sensor will re-emit heat rather efficiently.
Anthony,
Just a little something maybe I didn’t mention about the station in Eastport. The temperature sensor is DOWNWIND from the air conditioner so the hot air gets sucked right up into the sensor. But hey, at least the AC unit works and blows off some pretty good heat from the condensors so you know it must be keeping the instruments inside the shack cool.
This is wonderful stuff. When can we start collecting and posting similar data on the UK, Australia and Europe?
Anthony have you had a look wether you have at least one good site from each grid in the US.
RE4 Steve, its too early to do such a study…we have about 150 stations surveyed out of 1221.
RE3 Peter I have been concentrating on the USHCN, but if you want to compile a list of GHCN stations in the UK and elsewhere, with locations, I’ll start putting up album placholders for them so surveys and photos can be uploaded.
Kristen Byrnes’ science leaves a lot to be desired. I have been asking her for the data behind the 1880-1960 section of the green line for CO2 on her graph labeled “Jan-Dec Global Mean Temperature over Land & Ocean,” which appears on http://home.earthlink.net/%7Eponderthemaunderg/index.html, and so far she has been ignoring me. This line is wrong, as Eli Rabbett has recently pointed out on http://rabett.blogspot.com/2007/07/ponder-maunder-tony-at-deltoid-points.html . Global CO2 concentrations have been increasing since about 1800.
#7
That’s funny David, I just finished responding to your like 8th email before I read this post. To repeat, it is data from the Keeling Curve drawn over the NOAA graph by hand. But that is a moot point now since even the NOAA temperature graphs I used in all of my articles are pretty much invalidated by the photos being taken of the temperature stations. Now the only thing we have is satellite data that goes back 40 years.
Kristen, as I told you in email, the Keeling Curve starts in 1958. I’m asking about the flat part of your CO2 curve, from 1880-1960. So far you have alluded to some NOAA graph, but you have refused to specify which one. You’re also refused to specify the data series used to draw the flat part of your graph, from 1880 to 1960. Where is this data?
David Appell, have you found the 159 proxies yet?
RE 5..
I was just wondering which grids DONT you have coverage of yet.. or at least one sample.
Looking at 35N-40N 120W-125W My last look was that you were about 50% covered ( consulting
the list of stations actually used) recent additions put you over that mark.
RE 7
David. his name isn’t Eli Rabbett. Its Josh Halpern.
Second, please ask Jones for his data about station lists for CRU. Then
if he denies you, question his science.
David Appel, CO2 has gone up, as everyone knows. Whats the big deal?
I think David Appell is going to take the CA pledge!
If they don’t supply the data and the methods to replicate, then question the science.
Ok People, here it goes. Will someone please tell David Appell that the NOAA graph that the CO2 curve is HAND drawn over is the very temperature graph that is right in front of his face? This guy calls himself an environmental reporter but he cant read or look? Is this how he observes things before he writes his stories?
Is there anyone here that would not understand what I was talking aobut if I told you that I, drew by hand, the Keeling Curve over an NOAA temperature graph. Especially after you asked me questions about it in numerous emails?
Tams, please. All I want to know is the data source for the green CO2 line in Kristen’s graph. She shows CO2 as flat from 1880-1960 — actually, she shows it with a small dip around 1940. What graph or data series is this based on?
I thought asking about data was what this site was all about.
It’s a hand drawn line over a NOAA temperature graph that is widely available on the internet. The Keeling curve is well known and widely available on the internet.
Or better yet, David. Forget about it and take comfort in knowing that 90% of the reporters in the world suffer the same deficit as you, although maybe not as bad.
to David Appel
The curve for CO2 shown in the post on Rabbett’s blog is cited as coming from a paper from Keeling and Whorf. It shows concentrations dating from 1845. Perhaps this is an answer to your question.
Again to David Appel
Rabbet, in his blog posting, displays a curve for CO2 concentration from 800 on showing essentially a flat line from 800 until the 19th century. He also displays a pair of curves showing C)2 concentration and surface temperature form about 1845 on. This has the obvious implication of causation and not correlation.
However the longer CO2 curve shows no indication of a Little Ice Age or a Medieval Warm period. Do you find this odd.
Would you be cynical enough to believe that this is why climate scientists write Emails saying that they “have to get rid of the Little Ice Age”?
Yes David.
Take the CA pledge. If they dont turn over data and methods, question the science.
I have no issue Questioning Kristen or Mann or Jones or Hansen, until they turn over the data and methods.
Kristen, Looks to me like you made a mistake…handdrawing a curve. Looks like
you moved 1800 to 1980. Now, I suppose if you had access to the source data ( and didnt have to digitize,
hand draw etc) these kind of mistake could be avoided. In any case, as you point out the C02 record is
OBE ( overtaken by events ), namely. The land record is a polluted mess. Any who uses it needs to justify,
and verify its accuracy. It’s not up to us to prove it wrong anymore. The burden has shifted, shifted because
of Anthony’s work.
David, you however, seem to employ the CA pledge selectively. So, denounce Jones and Hansen along with Kristen
and I have no problem with you. They dont share data. they dont share methods. you enever questioned their science,
but you questioned Kristens. Be fair all around. otherwise [ self snip]
re 22
To David Appel
The second curve of the Rabbet blog, attributed to Schwartz ( the one that Rabbet posted to correct his elemntary error), shows the dip in concentration around 1940 that you were asking about in posting 22.
re: #7
Say David, how about asking around for documentation sufficient enough for Independent Verification and Validation of all the computer software used in all aspects of the analysis of Global Climate Change? Documentation of the Qualification of all the users of such software would be helpful, too. You could start by asking to see the approved and audited Software Quality Assurance plans and procedures for any piece of software.
And how about asking to see the actual data and equations used to calculate The Global Average Temperature. The Quality Assurance plans and procedures for both the data and coding for this very important part of the picture are of special interest.
And while we’re at it, how about asking Editors at the several science journals if you can see their policy relative to publishing papers the basis of which are calculations using a single grid and no evidence that the numerical approximations have converged. Several engineering journals will not accept papers for publication under these conditions. Apparently such papers are considered to be un-fit relative to containing representations of actual physical and are most certainly not of archival quality.
Say, here’s a specific suggestion. How about a science article in which the publication policies of several engineering journals are compared/contrasted with those of the major science journals.
I have dozens of other suggestions if you are interested.
It is you warmers who have been faking the data. Kristen’s chart is very close to accurate.
Although there were CO2 measurements taken in the 1800s (which indicated concentrations as high as 350 ppm), you warmers have thrown out that data and the only measurements considered reliable are from the Law Dome ice core.
Law Dome CO2 was 284 ppm in 1832 and the amount increased to 315 ppm by 1958. 10% rise from 1800, Big deal!
Interestingly, the Law Dome CO2 numbers also show a dip around 1940 (before Kelling started measuring in 1958.)
Kristen:
I have no doubt that your work and your attitude have inspired a great many more young people to look at science as a future and hopefully to question the science of AGW rather than just accept it. Sometimes you have to treat people with the contempt they deserve. keep up the good work.
(trying to get back on subject) Anthony (and friends) are there any plans to quantify good vs bad sites? I believe you’ve referenced a system for doing as such before, and while it is not completely accurate to rate as you go along (better to wait until you have all the data), it would still be interesting to see.
OK. no more comments from me about [self snip] or [self snip] or [self snip]
( no wise cracks from the moils amongst you all)
RE 54.
Yes, there is a criteria established for rating sites. Anthony has the rating guide
on his site. basically, you would want to have class 1 or Class 2 sites. Sites positioned over
vegetation, away from building, concrete, ashphalt, slopes, etc
Class 1 and Class 2 are easy to pick out from the photos..
Somedays I think its vitally important to find GOOD sites. just as important as bad sites. That contrast
gives you the sense of how important siting can be.
Lib,
They don’t think you are abusive, they think you are silly going on the internet under an assumed name talking about other people working for Monsontos or what ever. But that is another thread.
Now you and I know there is a problem with the temperature record that is proven by all the photographs (and I have seen many more on satellite). Until the project is done maybe you can help figure out some ways to fix it. But before you do that, can you help me understand why Maine is almost all trees and forest but not one temperature station is in the forest. The forests are cooler in both day and night. The same with the hockey stick. It is a lot of tree ring data but the temperature record it is compared to is all in the sun (or next to ac fans, pavement and etc).
Kristen, did you get a chance to talk with the operators and determine if the siting had to do with the short cables that were required for certain instruments at one time?
Kristen,
Nice work. If you don’t mind a suggestion, it may be worth your time to take a look at this site, paying close attention to the first three fallacies and then apply them to understanding the outline here which is the universal primer for argument by liberal sophists.
When you do err (that’s “when” not “if”), thank whoever corrects the error and move on. Defending an unintentional error is, as you can see from the lengthy defenses of intentional error scattered hither and yon, the very essence of a waste of time.
Good luck and keep digging.
Kristen,
I would like to congratulate you on some well written material. The Gore article was well ref’d. What really shocks me is that you are accused of being a mole for the oil companies when you clearly advocate changing from oil to solar and wind. It shows you that many people need to read before sticking their foot in their mouth.
On a different note, my 16 year old grandson wants to know if he can email you… on a more personal level.
#64, I guess this thing doesn’t always work. No because they were closed.
Kristen Byrnes:
You are to be commended for spending your time in this way, but I believe you may have made a fundamentally erroneous assumption about air conditioning units, as it applies to this particular photo and station. I have some experience in this area as I used to be a commercial / industrial air conditioning technician.
Many readers here apparently are under the mistaken impression that condensing units ‘blow’ hot air.
A few do this, but the more common design is for the condenser fan to pull [or draw, if you like that term better] ambient air through the hot condenser coil. The hot exhaust air typically blows out the TOP of the unit, not the side. This is because people who work with A/C are not fools. Many rooftop or other installations have a large number of A/C units in close proximity. If hot air vented out the side, neighboring units could use this air, which is typically 20-30 F warmer than ambient air temp, to attempt to cool their condenser coils. This would result in poor efficiency and other potential problems.
Readers here may have experience with residiential window units that may, indeed, push the air through the coil so it “blows” out the side. These units will have flat coils, however, like a car radiator. It is simple to fit a fan with a shroud to efficiently push air through a flat coil.
The unit in your photo appears to have a curved coil. I see what appears to be condenser coil on two sides. It’s not so easy to push air through that. I expect that if looked on the top of the unit you’d see what looks like a ceiling fan under a circular barbecue grill. You can see an example of this in the top photo of the three-sided split-system condensing unit, near the building.
The rectangular hole facing the temperature sensor is probably an air INLET, not an outlet. The hot air vents directly up.
Keep up the good work.
RE65, “…when you clearly advocate changing from oil to solar and wind. ”
I share the same philosphy in advocating alternate energy. And, I put my money where my mouth is instead of just talking about it.
As a trustee for our local school district, I advocated for, researched, presented, convinced for majority vote, and sucessfully had installed a large (125KW) photovoltaic solar array on one of our local schools.
You can see the results here, there is a real time monitor online.
http://www.chicousd.org/dna/little_chico_creek/Solar_Energy_Project.html
I also installed a 10KW photovoltaic system on my home and assisted our local Park observatory with a 5 KW system there.
In California, almost every previous form of energy generation has been legislated out of existence. Coal, nuclear, and hydro have all been removed from the table for further development. All that is left is natural gas peaker plants, which are wasteful, solar, wind, and tide systems.
So solar makes a lot of sense for California.
Sorry, there is no way you can reconcile the CO2 concentrations on Ms. Byrnes chart with these from Keeling and others. The shape of the curve Ms. Byrnes drew is very very similar to the CO2 mixing ratio curve from the IPCC TAR which shows the change from 800 to the present.
If you assume that the 1960-2005 deta on her chart is from 315 to 380 ppm (the results from the Keeling Mauna Loa Observatory curve for that period), that means that each small tick on the ordinate is ~7.5 ppm CO2. The minimum CO2 mixing ratio in here drawing would be in 1940, corresponding to ~310 ppm. The flat part of the CO2 curve she drew in is constant at ~315 ppm extending from before 1880 – 1930. The mixing ratios from a variety of ice cores (Siple, Law Dome, etc.) that were shown on Rabett Run indicate that the mixing ratio was relatively flat at 280 ppm between 800 and 1800, when it began to rise, driven first by land use changes and then by fossil fuel burning.
Anyone who thinks that the Law Dome data supports a flat mixing ratio from 1850 – 1950 as Ms. Byrnes claims should look at these graphics and data. For your viewing pleasure, here is the Siple ice core data which reinforces Law
To summarize, atmospheric CO2 concentrations started to rise in 1800 not 1950 as shown by Ms. Byrnes’ hand drawn graph. They had already increased ~35 from a base of 280 ppm by 1950, and after that the rate of increase got faster reaching 380 ppm by 2005.
As to Beck and Jaworowski, Jim Easter tore J’s CO2 measurements were higher apart in Some Are Boojums, and Beck, well it is not even funny anymore to talk about how bad some of the measurements that Beck trumpets were.
re 71
How do you reconcile the flat CO2 curve with the variable temperature?
#70, Anthony Watts:
…or we could fire our current crop of legislators and allow the market to select appropriate energy technologies.
I’m glad you serve your community on a school board in Butte County. I’ll venture that the solar installation was at least a break-even proposition. If it wasn’t, then your board would have been poor trustees of public funds. [That wasn’t “your money” talking, after all, it was the taxpayers’…]
I question whether the installation would have been break-even w/o a government subsidy. If it requires a subsidy to make it competitive, we shouldn’t be using that form of energy, period. I’d apply that same test to petroleum, which the federal government has been heavily subsidizing for decades through our foreign policy [treaties, military policy, and spending].
Let the market work.
Eli,
Take the CA pledge. People who do not reveal their identity, data or methods should not be
trusted. I don’t trust industry shills. I don’t trust government shills. I don’t trust professors
went then hide in ivory towers.
Sorry, did I say Eli? I meant Josh. Just kidding.
RE68 Jim Edwards
I agree, Jim has a valid point. But it does depend on the A/C unit. I’ve seen them have air flow both ways.
In the case of the photo, the amount of A/C hot exhaust air delivered to the aspirated temperature sensor will also be dependent on wind direction, more so if the side vents pull rather than blow air.
Bottom line; A/C units and temperature sensors don’t mix, no matter what the air flow orientation of the A/C unit. So we should endeavor to prevent such juxtapositions where scientific data on temperature is being gathered.
RE74 Jim, Yes it was better than a break even proposition, and this one had a performance clause attached to it, the first one of it’s kind for a school district. The solar array had to meet or exceed generation goals, or the contractor had to pay the difference to the school district to ensure public funds weren’t wasted. It is exceeding the goal I’m proud to say.
But yes, without subsidy, it would not have worked, and I wouldn’t have pushed the idea. I agree, the market needs to drive the solution and pricing.
Kristen, you are doing an amazing job. Some of your interpretations are not correct, but that is almost beside the point. I am very impressed by the thoroughness of your efforts and your ability to handle yourself in a fairly hostile environment. When you are ready to start thinking about where you want to go to university, please consider Georgia Tech, my contact information can be found on my web page http://www.eas.gatech.edu/people/faculty/curry.htm
#76, Anthony Watts:
This sounds like a precautionary principle that nobody should be able to argue with.
Even though the vast majority of the hot exhaust air in the photo will be vented upwards at high speed, there will be some turbulence at the tips of the condenser fan blades that will likely allow ‘leakage’ to the sides. If a mere 1% of the air entering the air sensor has been previously heated 20-30 F above ambient, that’s a net ~0.25 F increase to measured ambient air temp. A typical duty cycle for an A/C unit might be ~30%, so if you had very stable, noiseless data and continuous data acquisition then the thermal cycling could stand out. Equipment rooms tend to get loaded with ever more computers, routers, et Al until the A/C is running 100% of the time – which would then make detection of the A/C effects impossible. The time to look for A/C contribution in this case would be before noon on cool spring days. As you say, why mess around with all the possibilities, it’s clearly not the best place to measure temp.
Good point. I’ll find the tree ring data persuasive when it’s correlated with a temperature record from a comparable forested area.
The global warming dogma is so pervasive that a temperature record from one place is deemed as good as a temperature record from any other place, which frankly ludicrous. We should be looking at temperature records in relation to their environs to tease out the causal factors.
Can we just leave bigcitylib/MJ Murphy/whoever it is off this thread and off the blog? Its got nothing to do with this thread, and its just a personal attack.
What interests me about the aspirated temperature sensor is that its going to pick up air which has been warmed by its proximity to the nice stainless steel or aluminium structure its hanging off as well as the nice white warm box its sitting next to….which would appear to defeat the idea of meaningful measurements to 1/1000th of a degree or whatever.
Did I miss something?
A note to all: I have deleted a number of off topic, inappropriate, or otherwise non science oriented comments from this thread on both sides of the aisle.
If that upsets anyone, my apologies, but this thread got out of hand.
Kristen – nice work, but I’m afraid your CO2 graph is wrong. Admit your mistake and fix the graph – put the alarmists to shame by showing them how good science works.
Eli,
I’ll make you a deal. You take the same graph with my hand drawn line and draw your own line and I’ll take a look at it.
And since you seem to be a little bit more educated than the average person, maybe you can answer the questions I had for lib (I hope he’s busy on that one) about how to fix the problem with the temperature stations and the whole thing about the temperature stations all being out in the sun where there are forests around. Also the hockey stick.
Anthony Watts:
I think Steve M. normally leaves the post, but replaces all the offensive text with snip. This allows all the un-snipped comments to make sense when they reference each other by number. If it’s possible to do so, that would be good.
Feel free to delete this immediately.
RE48 Jim Ah, well as guest moderator, I didn’t know that, so too late. If an outbreak occurs again, I’ll try the “snip” method.
Can I just go off-topic and say thanks to Judith Curry? I know that the vitriol on both sides can be pretty mean here and elsewhere, and the automatic assumption is that the college professors and researchers on the AGW side tend to run “closed shops” with regard to climate science. But to see an open and honest offer to somebody who Dr. Curry knows may believe differently than her about AGW is pretty refreshing to my mind. Having just read about Dr. Dessler’s department issuing a consensus oath of membership in the clan…errr…I mean a consensus statement about the IPCC consensus at my alma mater, I was understanably a bit down about the future of true scientific independence in the academic environment, but Dr. Curry’s extended hand to Kristin gave me a smile and a little hope. Or is it really just a diabolic plot to try to brain wash her while she is still young? (just kidding Dr. Curry…thanks again!)
#46 Jules,
Maybe Eli will do a better job of drawing it than me. But I am still thinking about how to rewrite that section like a lot of sections that I have to rewrite because of the problems with the temperature stations.
Judith # 41
We were in Dallas GA for a couple of days on vacation and went to Stone Mtn and The Aquarium in downtown Atlanta. My Step-Grandmother has her Masters from your school.
I looked at your page and was hoping that since you are pretty educated in this area that you can answer some of the questions I had for Eli and lib.
Re 41, Kristen, you are probably aware of it, but Judith Curry serves the Dark Side. Witness her attacks on the saintly Vincent Gray – “brain fossilisation” etc. Her role at CA is pure agit-prop. Relative to your Dorothy, she is the Wicked Witch of the South. By the time you are out of university, this whole climate change thing will have blown over. In fact once it has blown over, funding for climate research will drop to below pre-AGW levels. Pharmaceuticals is still wide open. I commend that as a happy hunting ground.
RE 41.
Kristen, Georgia Tech is a great school. I didn’t go there, but had some friends who did and they loved it.
re 35 Mr Halpern and others
There’s an interesting graph at
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/environment/co2analysis.html
(the second one on the page) which shows a dip in atmospheric CO2 from about 1939 — I say ‘about’ because it is difficult to tell exact dates with a smoothed graph. I see that anthropogenic CO2 production and temperature increase are uncoupled for those few years, the only section on the whole graph where this happens, one going up and the other going down. Why should this be so? I dislike post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning — ‘anthropogenic CO2 is going up and because of this atmospheric CO2 is rising’ falls into this category. Here is the exception that points up that fallacy.
Over at RC I’ve been given a reference which shows 12C/13C ratios in graphical form which I’ve not yet checked. I expect it to likewise show the Kriegesmarine effect with a marked divergence starting around 1939. Up or down though, there’s the question. I would prefer, I think, down, which is what would happen if the Kriegesmarine warming caused a flush of the C3 metabolism phytoplankton at the expense of the C4 type. These unregarded little plants are, in my opinion, what is confusing the isotope record. If it’s up, I’ll need a new thinking cap.
Anyone wishing to see the Kriegesmarine temperature effect can find the graph on CA — it’s the CRU SST one with the bucket correction removed, where it shows loud and clear. In Hadcrut3 it is corrected and smoothed into confusion.
We are told that we cannot experiment with the climate. This is true. However, during WWII we inadvertently did just that. It’s a shame that we are not trying to account for the results of that experiment.
Julian Flood
Kristen, I appreciate you’ve got a lot to do but, to be fair, it’s not just a matter of doing “a better job of drawing it”. Your CO2 graph doesn’t start rising until the 1950s – not too surprising if your source was the Keeling curve, which is based on direct measurements that only began in the late 50s. However, evidence from ice cores shows that atmospheric CO2 has been rising since the early 1800s – I hate to say it, but Eli’s right on this one (see his post above for graphical evidence).
You’re obviously a smart girl; I’m sure you’ve searched the web, seen the sources and realised your mistake already. It’s a trivial and obvious error that has little impact on the rest of your argument. Admit to it and you take the wind out of the alarmists’ sails. Avoiding the question is exactly the kind of thing the alarmists would do – demonstrate that you’re better than that.
Stan Palmer raises an interesting point. The answer is that solar forcing with the occasional kick from a volcanic eruption was controlling before 1900. Greenhouse gas forcing became more important until we have reached the current position where it dominates. Here is a graphic showing the time history of the various forcings.
By the way, an interview with Anthony was just shown on Fox with Sean Hannity. The information that was given seemed useful.
re 56
The charts at the URL are for forcings from 1750 on. The issue that I was pointing out was that the graphs for CO2 concentrations from 800 to about 1800 are flat and as such show no indications of the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period.
Is it your point of view that the LIA and MWP were of solar cause that the the current measured warming is not?
RE 50.
Agreed. When I read Dr. Curry’s note I found it refreshing as well. Good minds need
a test of fire. Both the student and the professor.
Re: Josh (aka Eli Rabett) and his comment: “Greenhouse gas forcing became more important until we have reached the current position where it dominates.”
Precisely what do you claim is the change in temperature resulting from each 100ppm (parts per million) of change in atmospheric concentration of CO2, and what authorities do you rely upon to determine the relationship between temperature and CO2 in such changes?
#56: All the references are from Hansen. Don’t think Kristen is going to be too open to it. I believe those are all based off climate models which have been under intense controversy.
Kristen,
#55 Jules is basically correct on the CO2 plot and offers good advice. Fix the CO2 plot and modify your argument, move on from this. Focus on the surface temperature stations, which is the main part of your argument and an important point. Re the historical temperature record, problems certainly abound with the siting of the stations. The sea surface temperature record is slightly “cleaner”, but there are issues with that record also. The tropospheric temperature profiles are another big can of worms, i tried to point out the sampling and bias issues in one of my papers http://curry.eas.gatech.edu/currydoc/Agudelo_GRL31.pdf. There is much work to be done in sorting all this out.
Georgia Tech teaches critical thinking skills, it teaches students how to think, not what to think (and yes we are introducing a new statistics/data analysis course for earth and atmospheric undergrads next spring). The broad fields of environmental science, climate, and atmospheric science promise to continue to be very exciting in years to come, but Georgia Tech has much to offer broadly in the sciences and engineering. I’m glad you’ve had a chance to visit atlanta, the aquarium is really cool.
LOL Jules, I’m sure Eli can do it in a second. If it looks good I’ll probably just post it. But it really needs to be on the same NOAA temperature with my green line.
Re 52 David, I’ll be fair and hear what she has to say at least. She has a good resume but I guarrantee you I will ask for other peoples thinking on both sides. A lot of people say that the AGW side will not address issues that they don’t like. But the stuff about the forest and the temperature problem and the rest is a good subject to hear them on. If some one is religeous in their beliefs on something then you can usually tell.
Judith # 62 the link doesn’t work for me. Can you email it?
Kristen, this link works (without the period after pdf)
Click to access Agudelo_GRL31.pdf
Kristen, Georgia Tech is a hotbed of passive-aggressive pro-global warming advocates.
A big scholarship would be great, but then you’d be stuck there (trying to massage the data for Judith Curry’s next great paper on how global warming has increased hurricane intensity to category 6 in the last decade, after re-normalization of the data of course.)
LOL John # 66, is that before or after 2006?
Judith # 62 I used ground temps in my articles because they seemed to match up and decided on NOAA because of the margin of error bars (mainly). But of course that can’t be trusted now. So I have to look at the satellites again and that will take some work. Is there a big difference between the different satellite measurements now? Like a tenth, a hundredth or what? Is there any good plots besides wikipedia that show the different ones matched up?
Please, oh please, someone find us a weather station without an air conditioner condenser blowing on it. LOL, LOL, LOL.
62:
But all the data sufficient to predict hurricanes is OK? LOL.
My 69: Sorry Judith, cheap shot. Too much vino. I am just weary and cynical, when I behold what poor data underlie most of climate science.
Ya jae, cheap shot. I started to read Dr. Curry’s paper and my head hurts. I just wish she could have taken
more than 5 pages. I suppose there was a limit
Hey guys, (and gals) Let’s not nitpick Kirsten’s work. It would be about par for a first year grad student (she is about six years ahead of schedule.). It is outstanding for a Mainer (just kidding, I’m a Colby grad.) Anyway, she has provided us with some excellent summaries and I’m sure where ever she goes to school she will keep them honest. I would be happy to see her work under Judith or any other sincere scientist. Thanks for posting and keep up the good work!
Kristen, have you read any of Zbigniew Jaworowski’s papers on CO2 data?
The Greatest Scientific Scandal of Our TIme. March 16, 2007. EIRScience. http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/zjmar07.pdf
Or his statement written for the Hearing before the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
Climate Change: Incorrect information on pre-industrial CO2, March 19, 2004
http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/
Bob
Kirsten please defend your work on ukweatherworld.
http://www.ukweatherworld.co.uk/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=14944
Apologies for misspelling your name Kristen.
I have been reading this blog with interest and I think a log of people needed to chill; this is an excellent extra credit project report by a 15 year old.
It’s far better than a recent report by the Royal Society; which as an Englishman I’m ashamed of.
So, Good job Kristen.
To be honest I blame the sunspot that just revolved into view; it ruined the film I was watching at the cinema hp5. But create a eerie sky lastnight.
re #35. Looking at the graphs I think that it is a question of scale.
Thus plotting [CO2] on a 0 – 400ppm scales (which is what I think Kristen has done in her hand drawn plot) will look rather different from the same data plotted on a 200-400ppm scale. Of course the arguement about this plot is a red herring. Your real beef is that Kristen has dared challenge the orthodoxy of AGW.
[snip]
Kristen,
As someone who did graduate from Ga Tech, I can honestly say that it is a great school. Tough, but great.
Eli,
Do you have some evidence that CO2 has someone, mystically become a much stronger climate driver than it has been in the past?
Or are you just waving computer models at us again?
Jim # 33 Please see my post in #2
Bob # Not yet, no time but I have seen some debate on it.
Hans # 76, no problem, do you remember I mispelled both Steve M. AND Ross M. TWICE? lol
MarkW # 79 College is still 3 years away but I already have some offers that came in over the last few months provided my grades stay up. Of course something in Greece would be nice, just a thought that makes me smile 🙂
Base on his questioning the usefulness of surfacestations.org, calling them “unscientific” @ Pielke’s site, I would say that either he is not the sharpest knife in the drawer or it has been sharpened for a specific agenda. This nonsense that the metadata describing the current state of the temperature measurement sites is irrelevant is well, nonsense. Even if the current data is but a snap shot, you have some sort of context to ask questions like how long has the a/c been there, when was the asphalt installed, has the station moved, is there any data about the set-up in its last N locations, etc. Questions that should have been asked before the data was used.
Can you imagine a large aerospace company being so nonchalant about the positioning and functioning of their telemetry instrumentation? Yea, lets just grab some out of spec thermistors, pitot tubes, etc. to outfit our next test of the #1 787…maybe the flight law changes as a result will not crash #2. What the heck lets just have a go with shoddy data for which we have little confidence to base the success our huge airliner program.
IMO, those that ridicule efforts like surfacestations prove their agenda driven perspective because they sure aren’t after the truth. Its beyond ludicrous.
Kristen, the climate data record is very vexing, and the farther back you go, the greater the uncertainties. scientists deal with this issue in two ways: 1) make continued efforts to understand and improve if possible the historical data and 2) consider the imperfect data in the context of theory and models to formulate and test hypotheses. Statistical analysis of data without a background of physical understanding does not really move the science forward much, which is an issue that I have found that some of the climateauditors don’t particularly grasp.
Since 1979, the satellite data should be a much better source of data for global temperature trends, but different analyses have rendered different results. These discrepancies are being resolved as errors are identified or improved methods are developed to do the retrievals. The IPCC report and also the CCSP Synthesis and Assessment Report on Tropospheric Temperature trends have recent summaries of these issues and the status of the data and analysis. So progress is being, but the satellite datasets are not yet “perfect” either.
Interpreting the surface data in the context of the satellite data and changes to the landscape are needed to effectively utilize the surface temperature data. Even if the surface station data is somehow rendered perfect, there is still the serious issue of trying to sample global temperature with order 100 point measurements. Further interpretation of the data record using climate models allows for interpretation of the data record.
Climate science “experiments” are different from controlled experiments say in the chemistry laboratory that can be reproduced and conducted numerous times. We have one actual rendition of the earth’s climate, and until recently we haven’t even articulated the requirements for a climate record let alone implement an appropriate satellite and surface based climate observing system, and can only make do with data that was actually collected and paleo proxy data. So the data is far from perfect, which is why climate scientists combine data analysis, theory and numerical modelling in interpreting the climate.
Re: #47 Kristen Byrnes…”how to fix the problem with the temperature stations and the whole thing about the temperature stations all being out in the sun where there are forests around.”
Kristen,
I’ll offer an explanation of why it is inappropriate to conduct weather observations from sites immediately within the confined spaces of a forest.
The purpose of a surface weather observation is to collect information about the conditions of an air mass located immediately above the surface of the Earth. Another way of looking at the objective is to say we are trying to collect information about the conditions of the air mass located a standard measured distance immediately above the lowest boundary of the troposphere. Since a forest typically extends tens of meters above the soil of the Earth, the conditions of the air spaces within a forest are typically quite different from the conditions within the air mass above and around the forest. Consequently, measurements of the conditions of the air spaces within a forest do not supply us with the information we are seeking about the condition of the air mass surrounding the surfaces of the forest. Accordingly, we must therefore treat the forest as if it is another component of the Earth’s surface which exhibits conditions different from the air mass above and around it just as we do with soil temperature and moisture, water temperatures and conditions, cave temperatures and humidity, etc. Because there are often geographical locations where forest canopies are nearly unbroken, it can become a challenge to locate a weather observation site within a clearing in the forest large enough for the lower boundary of the tropospheric air mass to fully reach ground level and fairly represent its condition without being contaminated by the other conditions existing within the airspaces of the forest. This is the reason why the meteorological organizations have adopted some standards specifying the distances certain meteorological observations must be made away from certain terrain features and objects which can influence measurements and introduce inaccuracies concerning the conditions of the air masses at the lower tropospheric boundary with the Earth’s surface.
Unfortunately, it is increasingly evident the the purpose, letter, and spirit of the standards and limitations for the collection of meteorological observations and their usage in climate science is being grossly disregarded and abused by members of the WMO and climate science community. It is then small wonder that the general public finds such inconsistent observation practices to be seemingly contradictory and confusing.
Does this explanation answer your question about why the observation sites must be in the sun and not within a forest?
#83
About the only reliable data out there are hourly observations taken from air fields. Not only must the weather observer be certified, but the equipment must be maintained, and the process of making hourly observations be standardized. From past expirience, auto-observation sites as well as co-ops are of little value. Anthony Watts and Kristen are only documenting what operational forecasters have known for decades.
Even our rawindsonde network has problems as documented by Dr Maddox recently on Roger Pielke’s blog. To clean up this mess will take money and time. The reason that aviation observations are much cleaner and consistent is simple -people’s lives are at stake. That kind of intensity must be brought over to the co-op sites as well.
Airports have heating effects just like cities. For example,
“At the Asheville site, the effect of siting difference between the ASOS and CRN led to a ΔTlocal effect of about 0.25o C, much larger than the ΔTshield effect (about -0.1o C). This local warming effect, caused by the heat from the airport runway and parking lots next to the ASOS site, was found to be strongly modulated by wind direction, solar radiation, and cloud type and height. Siting effect can vary with different locations and regions as well. This term, undoubtedly, needs to be taken into account in the bias analysis if two instruments of interest are separated by a significant distance.”
From http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/uscrn/documentation/research/Sun.pdf
Also I come from Maine. The Farmington, Maine station is about 15 feet away from Rt. 4 and has many large trees around it so it is not a good site for climate monitoring. Caribou, Maine has its site at the airport and probably also has micro-heating effects.
Re: #82
Unfortunately the reiteration of the state of the art that follows this comment does not provide a satisfactory base for understanding the uncertainties involved.
When the corrections to past temperature data are nearly equal to the trends measured and current corrections continue to be made for past measurements, one has to look very carefully at how these corrections were determined.
One must also look at various sources of temperature measurements and compare them amongst themselves and determine whether the error bars provided for each series would allow for these differences, i.e. are the data sets significantly different, and if so, why?
One must understand what the concept of a global average temperature and/or anomaly means in terms of the much larger variations in temperatures and temperature anomalies in localized areas.
One must understand that temperature measurements were not initially intended to have the accuracy and precision and area coverage intended for the purpose that they were eventually used.
Satellite measurements unfortunately have a relatively short history, but should be the most objective measurements available. Even in this case, however, corrections are needed to bring different sources of these measurements into agreement and that is an ongoing project.
It is not enough to do less than complete analyses of measurement data and then move on when that data agrees with a current consensus view.
Re #82, Judith Curry
Please could you point to some examples of this ?
Unfortunately the climatological SME’s are pretending they are also statisticians. The way this usually works is that you have a domain expert working with an analyst who understands data analysis and applied stats, etc. To date, I see nothing of the sort going on in the various climatology disciplines.
#80, Kristen:
Yes, I saw #2, which prompted me to write the [now] #32, above. I’m not inside your mind, obviously, so I don’t know what you were thinking, exactly, or what you meant to say, but the description seemed vague enough to me to be misleading to the readers [who probably lack expertise in this area]. The photo, coupled with the description, seem to imply that hot exhaust air is directed toward the inlet of the temperature sensor. Some heat will certainly make it into the temperature sensor, even if it is upwind . Very little of the exhaust heat would appear to, however. I think this distinction is important to point out to the readers. It makes the difference between negligent and reckless behavior on the part of those who monitor the weather site.
The packaged unit appears to be around a 1 1/2 -ton unit, incidentally, meaning that at 100% duty cycle it’s generating around 18k btu / hr of cooling – something more like 23k btu / hr as a heat source. At normal duty cycle it’s probably putting out a temporal average of ~8k btu / hr of thermal energy.
Sheesh…Statistical analysis of data without a backgound understanding of statistics … yada yada…climate scientists don’t particularly grasp what a problem THAT is.
I’ve said this to you before Dr. Curry! Stop teaching kids what to think! And start teaching kids HOW to think! And hello- Kristen doesn’t need your help in that regard! Keep up the good work Kristen.
(hello everyone! we are still around in lurk mode!)
Kristen #62, you’ve done such a good job of writing your report without anyone’s help – don’t give the alarmists the satisfaction of drawing your CO2 graph for you.
There’s little dispute over historic atmospheric CO2 concentration; I’m sure you can find a reliable source yourself, but if you want to be consistent with the temperature series you can use this graph from the NOAA website (up to 2000 at least – you can use the latest Keeling curve from Scripps after that):
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/infodata/faq_cat-3.html#10
You might also consider graphing the temperature against the logarithm of the CO2 mixing ratio, since any warming should depend logarithmically on CO2 concentration – another thing the alarmists will often forget to mention.
D. Patterson # 83 That really helps me understand the idea behind it but I am worried that they are mistaken. But that would open up a whole new bunch of problems.
How about the “hockey stick reconstructions” that are discussed here so often? Would comparing the temperature estimations in tree rings against temperature observations in the sun (not to mention all of the other things that are being documented) be a problem? It may have been discussed here or other places but I have not seen it. Maybe Judith Curry could talk about this too?
Dr. Hoyt # 85 It is 31 feet from Rte 4 to be exact, that is the main hwy through town there. The NWS rules say it should be at least 100 feet. Would an increase in traffic over time bias the measure very much? Also, you know how when they put down new blacktop it is darker then gets lighter over time, would that make a difference by much if at all?
JP # 84 Are there any data sets that use only, or almost only, the airport observations you discussed?
Jules # 91, I’m probably just going to put on the movie and take a snapshot of what Al Gore used if no one wants to redraw it. It looks like he used CRU which is the same as NOAA without the error bars. I might also update the section with some other comparrisons because there are some disturbing things out there, but that’s after I verify the data sources. But then I’ll have something to say after that 🙂
#85
You are correct. The question isn’t whether air fields expirence UHI effects, but whether non aviation observations are reliable. Each airfield would have to be analysed on an individual basis.
#92
I have yet seen any filtering of our temps based upon site usage (airfield, public utility, state park system, farming co-ops, volunteers such as schools, universities, etc…). I do know that the number of NWS and DOD airfields has been going steadily down in recent decades. For instance, KI Sawyer, Wirtsmith and Selfridge AFBs have closed in Michigan. A number of small airfields in the Midwest and Plains have also ceased reporting as well. It would take a little bit of effort , but I think someone at the AWN (Automated Weather Network) could probably do a little data mining and come up witha list of currently active airfield reporting sites worldwide, and compare them to active sites say in 1960. If not the DOD, then someone at NMMC in Suitland Maryland could do the job.
??. Judith, you just HAD to get one zinger in there, didn’t you. As someone else asked, please provide an example. Surely, you don’t think this is true, relative to the tree ring hockeystick nonsense?? I think it is just as fair to say: “Partial physical understanding without a background in statistical analysis of data does not really move the science forward much, which is an issue that I have found that some of the climate scientists don’t particularly grasp.”
Re: Kristen and Dr. Curry
Kristen. First, keep up the good work!
Second, in researching Dr. Curry’s work I unfortunately came across this shrill paper published last year.
Click to access Curry_BAMS87.pdf
Please download it count the number times the word “denier” is used and how it is used.
Moreover, I find their arguments entirely unconvincing (unless they have reliable hurricane strength data stretching back over several hundred years). But then again, I suppose I’m a “denier”…
Frank K.
How does the retention of bad data improve the science?
Even in calm conditions that aspirator will suck in the hot air from the A/C.
How about this little quote from the BAMS paper?
Why not just say “heretic” or “liar” or “witch”? …and
burn’em at the stake?
Re: 99
Yes – and there are many more “gems” like this in the paper.
Dr. Curry has done a great service here in showing us how some in academia view the “lay public”.
By the way, the connotation of the word “denier” is someone who rejects something which *must* be true (such as someone who is in a “state of denial”). In this case, the implication is that there can be no debate about the science of AGW – you either accept it or you’re a “denier”.
Frank K.
Four times and it seems appropriate in each case. Interesting article.
RE99
Interesting that the Curry paper contains a list of Logical Fallicies which as far as I can see have been the mode of discourse of the AGW crowd, including her smearing of those who are skeptical of her views as deniers.
Dr Curry, would you classify the quote that Jaye posted as “ad hominem” attack or “Appeal to authority” since your a ‘real’ scientist and know so much more than the rest of us?
We don’t seem to hear from the actual data analysts about weather station data work.
I’d imagine they might be, at least in newer stations
— logging the times the A/C operates
— logging the times the temperature’s recorded
— looking for correlations between the two
(Heck, if it’s like my house, the whole electrical system voltage sags whenever a big motor starts up)
— comparing temps recorded at different wind velocities and vs. calm days
Even simpler, have the A/C shut off a few minutes before the temperature’s taken each time. That would avoid any power spikes as well as any excess hot air in the vicinity.
I disagree, and it seems I’m not alone in that assesment.
Pete, if you are so convinced that the slur is appropriate, then please defend the useage in each case.
I would also like you to defend the use of a pejorative, rather than a simple descriptive, such as skeptic.
I’m a professional software architect/developer. As a member of the “lay public”, I frequently have to discard and rewrite code I get from academic institutions.
Folks, we should not be too harsh to Dr. Curry. After all, she is one of the few climate scientists with enough intestinal fortitude to comment here, where so many cynical denialists, laypeople, scientists who do not specialize in “climate science” (whatever that really is), and statistics experts hang out. Somebody has to keep reminding us that we are not part of the AGW elite!
The paper linked in post #96 was written by Curry, Webster and Holland before the revelations of Kossin’s re-analyses and is, as a result, probably considered little more than a lot of to do about nothing at this point, since the arguments for and against the hypothesis of a significant effect of SST on hurricanes and tropical storms have more to do with the facts at hand and much less to do with an analysis of logical fallacies.
Since Kossin sees no global trends in hurricanes, named storms or storm intensities, using all the world’s tropical storm areas from the 1980’s forward, to counter these facts one has to start making the arguments about the NATL being unique in the AGW to hurricane/tropical storm relationship and at the same time begin making the proposition that NATL data are “better” than the other areas of concern. It does not take a climate scientist to see that this approach is well under way in an effort to re-fortify the AGW/hurricane hypothesis.
It has also been the practice to use the 1970’s and forward time period of storm data for trends versus SST (with the given reason being that this is a period of trusted data) when prior data would indicate the presence of cyclical frequency in the hurricanes/tropical storms that would tend to favor an increase when starting in the 1970s and going forward.. The categorical differences in long term trend increases in the reported occurrences in the NATL with the ease of detection when considering (1) no trend for land fall events, (2) a somewhat increased trend for hurricanes and (3) a significantly increasing trend for named storms weighs heavily in favor of the counts being influenced by an increasing ability to detect tropical storms and hurricanes over time. That this also is viewed as a serious weakness in their arguments by the proponents of AGW having significant tropical storm influences can be detected by laypeople in that much effort is being made to independently explain these detection ratios.
re #92 – Kristen
You are correct about the effect of new asphalt vs aged asphalt. The albedo of new asphalt is about 0.04 while aged asphalt is app. 0.16. This is enough to dramatically raise the hear absorption of the pavement.
Regarding the station in Eastport, I would be much more concerned about heat reflection from the metal siding on the enclosure than the A/C unit. I guarantee the heat emitting from the metal is much greater than from the A/C.
judy, your statement is appalling.
“moving the science forward” without proper, accepted statistical analysis of statistical data is the very reason this blog exists.
re 108
I seriously doubt it. If the wind is blowing the hot air from those coils right into the sensor that has a fan to suck it up then that will be most of the heat. ON THE OTHER HAND, think about the cumulative effect of both the AC AND the reflection. What do they do, have the trucker that delivered it hook it up?
Kristen #92, for #83, I am assuming that the correctness of meteorological data is not necessarily your goal.
I don’t know whether I would make a statement of this nature as quoted above, and then say that temperatures measured in forests would not show what you need. The AGW arguments, such as by Hansen, have filtered and adjusted data, and say that they have a good anomaly set. Their claim of anomaly data filtering out such effects as UHI and recently microsite data, should easily apply to a fundamentally unchanging forest canopy. As the canopy grew, and/or transpiration increased, one could expect some very small changes to accumulate. But not to worry, Hansen and others have explained how as much as .6C in a .6C was not detected, or was taken care of by their filtering. A little of a nearly constant change should be a small matter to filter. The long and short of it, in what way is a forest not part of the surface. In fact, with the relatively stable transpiration of the canopy, it might well be the best place to measure for temperature anomalies for the determination of global warming, if that was your goal.
Based on the claims by the AGW crowd, I would rather claim that if global warming is true, a good forest set of data would be just as good as any other set, and would be preferred since one would not have to adjust for known large effects, or be dependent on someone else’s ability to filter or adjust data, or even the station siting/changes.
Re: #92
It has, but it’s not all that easy to find, so I won’t try. IIRC, cores are not taken from trees in the middle of forests, they’re taken at the high altitude edges where the trees are stressed. Again, IIRC, there is a preference for a slope facing North (or maybe it’s South, but there is a preference). It’s in one of the fairly recent dendro- threads.
re #82
Dr. Curry,
You can publish whatever data with whatever theory you feel moves the science forward, but until someone gets a decent climate record, I am afraid you are going to have to cope with skeptics. And justifiably so, I might add.
John (#82) looks like the skeptics will remain in business for awhile. the future of the climate observing system (not to mention hurricane observing system) is satellites. for information on the disastrous coming decimation of the U.S. satellite observing system, i refer you to testimony from a commerce hearing last week (note the web links are on two lines):
http://commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Testimony&Hearing_ID=1881&Witness_ID=6668
http://commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?
FuseAction=Hearings.Testimony&Hearing_ID=1881&Witness_ID=2696
Also, my own comments on this can be found in a congressional briefing i gave last week:
ppt: http://www.eas.gatech.edu/research/CB_ppt.pdf
text: http://www.eas.gatech.edu/research/CB_text.pdf
the bottom line is that within 3-5 years, we will see substantial degradation of our current satellite observing system, which is not even geared towards the issue of climate data records (we need an improved observing system, not a diminished one).
Instead of observing the earth, we see NOAA squandering funds (see testimony from the rest of the hearing) and NASA spending money on the space station and getting us to mars.
Georgia Tech – great school and no one can go wrong going there. But of course, while I am at it, allow me to put into plug for the University of California at Santa Barbara, and a specific plug for UCSB Geology …… 😉
Kristen, do check it out! 🙂
Re: 113
Interesting. Dr. Holland states in his testimony:
“A warming climate also may well create more and more intense hurricanes, although this is not certain.”
Not certain? How does this square with the BAMS article?
Nevertheless, upon reading the remainder of the document, I do fully support his recommendations for upgrading our hurricane forecasting capabilities.
Frank K. (just another PhD member of the lay public)
RE 113.
Our dedication to the ‘simple’ task of observation is disheartening. My sense has always been that
the believers, deniers, and questioners could always meet on a middle ground of better measurement.
Re 113
I guess you should thank Kristen and the rest of Anthony’s other volunteers. Now that the science is not settled anymore you can keep feeding at the trough.
RE 114.
Sadlov, the green lipped mussels served on the SB pier ( can’t recall the name of the place)
are excellent. My best friend taught there ( fiction) I had many fun visits, staggering
down state street.
Professor Curry,
I don’t want to get too far off topic, but on this I agree with you 100%. Government sponsored manned spaceflight and the space station in particular, at our current level of technology, is a colossal expense with a vanishingly small prospect of any return on investment. The proposals I’ve seen for going to Mars wouldn’t even qualify as good ‘hard’ science fiction.
Kristen,
It’s a little early, but you might want to look into small liberal arts colleges with good science programs for your undergraduate degree and go to a big research university for your post-grad work. A couple of years of summer research work as an undergraduate is highly recommended as well. My daughter went to Furman in South Carolina, won an NSF graduate research fellowship and now has a Ph.D in Chemistry from UNC Chapel Hill. I would recommend Caltech, where I went, but I don’t think it’s worth the very large amount of money it costs to go there unless you are going to be an engineer and don’t plan to get an advanced degree.
Rabett Run has an update with the NOAA global surface (ocean+land) temperature anomaly and the CO2 mixing ratio on the same graph. My compliments to Julius Virdee whose advice was sound, although I disagree with his secondary conclusions.
Anyone interested in the greenhouse gas forcings can find them in the last graph at the end of the post which was added a few days ago after Hans Erren raised the issue. Simple inspection of that figure shows that the reason greenhouse gas forcings became more important as the twentieth century progressed is that they became much larger, rising from about .25 W/m2 in 1900 to > 2.25 W/m2 by 2000, a ninefold increase.
My apologies for mispelling Jules Virdee’s name in the last post
Re #86, #107 Spot-on.
Ken, we’re witnessing a discipline in its infancy, one that has yet to see many heavyweights. It’s both frustrating and fascinating.
Is that website by Kristen a joke? Temperature gauges only feet away from an air conditioning exhaust?
I am a believer in the theory of global warming. It is just that “believer” is completely the wrong word. It should be “The verified evidence shows that …”.
However, the verified evidence shows that believers have completely exagerated the impact of global warming, that the evidence shows there will be about 1.0C to 1.5C of warming for every doubling of CO2. That is not a really significant impact versus the disaster preached by every global warming study that comes out just about every day it seems.
It does seem clear that we will reach the 1 doubling of CO2 within a century and temperatures, on average, will rise 1.0C to 1.5C. That is not really a significant impact, especially over a century.
Plants will grow a little better, a small of amount of land-based glacial ice will melt. Sea levels will continue rising at 1 mm to 3 mm per year as they have since the end of the last ice age. Some places will get a little dryer, some will get a little wetter. All of that is not a significant impact.
Except when it comes to hurricanes. A 1.0C to 1.5C increase in sea surface temperatures will cause more destructive hurricanes in the hurricane-prone areas. So far, the evidence shows there has not been much change. But an increase of 1.0C to 1.5C will expand the areas prone to hurricanes and increase their intensity in the hot zones.
So yeah. We need to keep the hurricane monitoring systems as up-to-date and with the best coverage as we can get. So J. Curry and I finally agree on something.
A believer is defined as someone who cannot be convinced otherwise no matter the given facts.
Kristen re#92 Check out this paper “Solar and climate signal records in tree ring width from Chile”
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V10/N28/C1.jsp
#126
Curious, they find an 11 year cycle in the tree ring widths between 1645’€”1715 AD. Precisely the same timing as the Maunder minimum, when the 11 year sunspot cycle was greatly suppressed.
Thanks Eli; I’d like to see a trend line for the temperature and a log scale for the CO2 concentration, but I suppose I can draw those myself.
One more quibble – you suggested that “The shape of the curve Ms. Byrnes drew is very very similar to the CO2 mixing ratio curve from the IPCC TAR which shows the change from 800 to the present.”
Eyeballing the two graphs, I don’t see much similarity (other than the obvious); the IPCC graph is much steeper, and the bump you noticed in Kristen’s graph is probably an artefact from trying to draw a flat line in MS Paint.
#127
There is no such statement in the summary at CO2 Science. Is this in the article itself? Can you post a pdf if you have access to the paper?
#129
You shouldn’t rely on CO2science! Look at figure 1, and the test associated with it in the pdf
“and the bump you noticed in Kristen’s graph is probably an artefact from trying to draw a flat line in MS Paint.”
Well, we can forgive such things, espcially for a CA “resource.”
#119
DeWitt,
What you advised is exactly what my cousin did. Her father was a Chemist and basically told her not to waste her time studying Biology, but to go to a good liberal arts school. Her undergrad degree was in English with a minor in Math. She applied and got a fellowship at the Univ of Texas where she eventually earned a PHD in Oceanography. She did have a little problem with differential equations at the grad level, but her interest in Oceanography was such that she was determined not to allow anything to get in her way.
I just wanted to add something to my post above in #124, where I said we would see 1.0C to 1.5C of warming from doubling of CO2. We have experienced nearly half of that warming already with CO2 going from 280 ppm to 385 ppm. There has not been a significant impact from that 0.3C to 0.6C of warming (I don’t accept the GISS and Hadley Centre temperature increase figures) and, thus, the next 0.5C to 1.0C of warming will not be significant as well.
#91 says: “There’s little dispute over historic atmospheric CO2 concentration;”
Yes, just once I’d like to see the “Rabbit Runs” and the “Curry’s” really discuss a chart like this!
link to view: chart
Earth history is so much more interesting then these little teeny fractions of temps, teeny tiny C02 concentrations, and teeny tiny time scales, micro-blips, bumps and lines we keep arguing about at “0” point represented as “now” on a chart like this. 😉
Boris,
Considering the things you regurally excuse in your sources, your complaint rings hollow.
All this unhappiness about what and how our federal government is spending funds does not bode well for it doing the “right” thing in mitigation against any of the alleged adverse effects of AGW. Currently I would judge that most thinking people would agree that the major problems with hurricanes are primarily related to land falling events (of which the long term trend in the NATL appears flat) and the fact that past government actions have subsidized a migration to these areas in harms way through FEMA funding (as feeble and fumbling as it may have been for Katrina) and federally subsidized insurance. Does anyone see that situation being remedied any time soon?
Well, here’s the data itself, no need to argue about it. Graphing it on a spreadsheet is fairly easy to do. Remember that there is a yearly variation of 6 (+/-3) ppmv.
Mean Air Age, ice, 1832-1978 http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/co2/lawdome.smoothed.yr20
Monthly mean, atmosphere, 1958-2007 http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/co2_mm_mlo.dat
Just graphing it plainly, depending on the scaling and line length (height and width of graph), eyeballing it it’s about flat to 1856, has a gradual rise from 1856 to 1928, goes flat for a bit, rises quickly from 1952 to 1976, and takes off from then to now at almost a 45 degree angle.
I think the other one is mistakenly off by 1000 years. I think Eli also is correct that we need to look at the mixing ratio compared to forcing power. Doing so would tend (and notice I say tend) to show that there is a lead/lag situation. However, since it’s really a feedback loop, I don’t know if that even matters. (That’s if it actually is warming, since the temperatures we’re recording on the surface seem not to be valid or at least not sensitive enough to talk about anything other than entire degrees.)
Hang in there Dr. Curry!
One thing I’ve noticed is that rather than just say “Here’s what CO2 did, here’s the data for you.” we start mixing in discussions of what it means, then how it interacts and we get off the track – which is “What did CO2 do?” There’s the data for what it did. That should end the discussion over that particular question. 🙂
135:
Actually CA should sponsor an award in creative graphing. You have Kristen’s MSpaint masterpiece, The various Swindle graphs. Monckton’s besuties. Pat Michael’s inspired erasures. It’s going to be hard to pick a winner.
#136 Any time soon? Probably not.
Discussion of forcing: http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2006/04/27/what-fraction-of-global-warming-is-due-to-the-radiative-forcing-of-increased-atmospheric-concentrations-of-co2/
It starts out with the
CONCLUSIONS:
1. The primary focus on carbon dioxide inappropriately deemphasizes the first order importance of the other climate system heat system forcings (both cooling and warming forcings), as well as does not address the spatially complex, and incompletely understood, actual pattern of global climate system heat changes.
2. Attempts to significantly influence regional and local-scale climate based on controlling CO2 emissions alone is an inadequate policy for this purpose.
You missed the disappearing Briffa and Osborn graphics in the AR4 renditions of attempts at near term temperature reconstructions and some of the arbitrary smoothing of tropical cyclone frequencies and intensities.
Let’s not forget Eli’s decadal smoothing, Hansen wasn’t even that bad.
Just what is your point, if you have one? From the conclusions:
#130, RichardT
Thanks for the pdf link. You’re right about Fig. 1. Remember that the solar cycle doesn’t stop just because there are no sun spots. In fact, the sun’s magnetic field is at a maximum during solar minimum. What they may be observing is a link between the earth’s climate and the solar magnetic field. Some sort of modulation of clouds a la the cosmic ray hypothesis?
Re #127
RichardT,
It almost sounds as if there’s more to this solar thing than we currently understand. Curious indeed.
Re #96 Frank, the BAMS paper was discussed on climateaudit about a year ago (no idea what thread this was on). the main complaint i recall was lack of statistical significance testing. Even R P Jr (not exactly a fan of mine) liked the paper at Prometheus:
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/000904hurricanes_and_globa.html
The main scientific conclusion in the paper is:
“In summary, the central hypothesis and sub-hypotheses cannot be invalidated by the available evidence. We anticipate that it may take a decade for the observations to clarify the situation as to whether the hypothesis has predictive ability. In short, time will tell.”
This statement is still true today. The hypothesis linking hurricanes and global warming is still on the table, has not yet been invalidated. This whole subject has many uncertainties (not the least of which is the quality of the data). Given the sorry state of the data, it doesn’t seem that the hypothesis can be invalidated by historical data. I argue in the BAMS paper that if the hypothesis has any predictive ability, then 10 years from now we should see a further shift of the hurricane intensity distribution to more storms. The rate we are going with with satellites, the current observations outside the north atlantic don’t seem to be any better than the disputed historical data. The subject of hurricanes and global warming is a work in progress, and Chris Mooney’s book Storm World clearly lays it out how scientific debate in the glare of the media becomes rather perverse.
You misinterpret my statments regarding “deniers”. Consider this example explicitly discussed in the BAMS article: Peter Webster debating hurricanes and global warming on CNN with Myron Ebel, a lawyer with the Competitive Enterprise Institute who is simply a global warming denier, anyway you slice it. This is far different from the bonafide scientific skeptic (in which category I would place SteveM), who is someone who actively investigates the issue and doesn’t “know” the answer before he starts investigating.
By the way this paper has been quite influential and is being used widely in journalism and public policy schools. Nobody has previously found the paper “shrill” or objectionable in its use of “deniers” in the context of describing people such as Myron Ebel. Bonafide skeptics are not deniers (since the paper was submitted, the politically correct version of “denier” has become “denialist”. I would not waste my time on a site that was populated primarily by denialists, i enjoy engaging skeptics (and as a scientist i am naturally a skeptic myself in terms of how i approach evaluating science).
#145 — So, Judith, if GCMs have no predictive reliability, how would you as a naturally skeptical scientist attribute any increase in hurricane intensity or incidence to a warming climate?
Maybe Judith would be so kind as to put Kristen’s graph on MS Paint and redraw it. I’d like to see how far off she really was and if it changes the point about mid 20th century cooling.
re 138.
The winner is clear. The briffa deletion.
Boris it is one thing to hand draw a curve and get it wrong. ( which a bunch of us poined out)
It is quite ANOTHER THING to delete actual data when presenting an official “scientific” document.
So, I agree with you, Kristen made a mistake. Easily remedied. Think of it as a “peer” review of sorts
NOW, consider the IPCC deleting data from a published peer reviewed article.
Question, why do you sport the courage to attack a learning scientist over a mistake
but lack the testosterone to question the briffa deletion.
I’m not suggesting that you hit girls
Interesting take on the issue.
As we all agree, the evidence on AGW is not yet in.
If you look at the available evidence and decide that it proves conclusively that the CO2 is causing the earth to warm dramatically: You are a scientist.
If you look at the available evidence and decide that there is not enough evidence to draw any conclusions: You are a skeptic.
If you look at the available evidence and decide that it proves that CO2 is not a major factor in causing the earth to warm: You are a denier.
Did I get the categories right?
The last time I checked we could not prove that the bogey man doesn’t exist.
Well, then I suggest Pat Michaels wins. Not only did he delete portions of James Hansen’s graphs in a “scientific” presentation, he also did it in front of congress.
As for “hitting girls”, maybe if you didn’t send a 15 year old girl to fight your fights for you…
RE: #119 – It used to be called Brophy Brothers’ Seafood. Ownership might have changed since I last lived in SoCal, some 20 odd years ago.
Kenneth, it’s called falsification for a reason I’d think…
Boris, it would be nice if you were adding something more useful to the discussion rather than complaining about an error a 15 year old made on a graph.
MarkW, it seems as if you did, but I’d adjust the ‘scientist’ one to something more like 85% rather than a simple ‘conclusivly’
stephen moser, right, a peer review of sorts. If a spreadsheet and the data had been used, and somebody had looked it over beforehand, it’s been done now, or at least looked over.
We’re only as competent as our tools (at best), and we all need an editor.
Pat, I think she’s been saying there isn’t a clear link yet, so it doesn’t seem she’s claiming that.
#146 Judith
You really make me laugh. From the quotes by you I’ve found on the internet (and posted on a different thread), you are clearly a politicised scientist, yet you try to come across on threads on this blog as a concerned non-politicised scientist. You know full well that but for Katrina your hypothosis that hurricane frequencies and their intensities will increase due to global warming would not even be given the time of day, let alone the funding which you will no doubt be expecting to receive from your political supporters over the next 10 years. I for one am happy to put up with 10 more miserable summers in the UK if at the end of it we can get to invalidate your politically inspired hypothesis.
I enjoyed reading Judith Curry’s comments in post #146.
My question to Judith is how and why is the term skeptic hardly ever used anymore and only the perjorative term “denialist” used instead?
Is there a way to return the public discussion about global climate to a healthier state?
Thanks,
#156. My answer would be because the vocal ones are primarily denialists or nearly so. But think about it, aren’t we helping to bring the discussion to something healthier? I mean, the fact that Dr. Curry is here and discussing things with us probably means she likes it and is getting something out of it. Why would she be here if she hated it? And if we were hardcore denialists, what could she possibly accomplish?
I don’t see anything uncivil or crazy about saying you have a hypothesis that the Earth getting warmer will produce more hurricanes, that it hasn’t been invalidated, and we won’t know for a while if it’s true or not. Doesn’t sound unreasonable to me. (Although I don’t really agree with the conclusion it is getting warmer or that it getting warmer will be bad, I don’t think either of those conclusions are unreasonable ones.) Regardless if I agree with the hypothesis or not, or its underlying assumptions, doesn’t mean I can’t see that they may be valid ones, right?
Or in other words, you don’t have to agree with something to a) understand the point or b) understand why the person thinks that way.
Okay here’s something useful:
If Watts and Byrnes and et al are really interested in identifying problems in the TREND of the global temperature ANOMALY, then snapping photos is not enough. The entire metatdata set should be considered.
An example: Take one of the sites where an air conditioner could be contaminating the trend. When was the air conditioner installed? Cnn you determine a change in the data at or around the time of installation? If you can’t determine a change in data, what does that say about the hypothesis that this particular station is contaminated?
As a logical exercise (good for budding scientists), perhaps someone could describe how an air conditioner placed next to a thermometer could introduce a spurious cooling trend into the dataset. (Assume that the AC will actually affect the temp readings.)
Re #159
Boris,
When can we expect your submission to a peer-reviewed journal?
It would be a hell of a lot of work, Earle, but interesting. I’m sure Watts is up to it.
Re #161
Boris,
What, Boris turning down an opportunity to discredit the skeptics? This is the perfect chance to put up or shut up. Granted, a peer-reviewed journal article is pretty ambitious. Heck, even a web-posted analysis would be a start. If you need some help I’m sure there’s plenty of capable 15-year olds that could lend a hand.
Re: 146
Thank you Dr. Curry for your response. I agree (as apparently does Dr. Holland) that we don’t have sufficient data to conclude the hurricane issue one way or another (your hypotheses notwithstanding). In my opinion, however, the BAMS article was quite shrill, and you and your coauthors could have conveyed your message in a much more even-handed and reasoned fashion.
I would like know, for the record, if you would place Al Gore in the same category (but on the opposite side) as Myron Ebel? That is, he is someone with no scientific background or expertise who believes in nearly every extereme AGW scenario and doesn’t wish to debate anyone with a contrary view. And would you agree that the image of a hurricane vortex emanating from a smokestack is an inappropriate image for the movie “An Inconvenient Truth” given the high level of uncertainty in the connection between hurricanes and global warming?
Frank K.
Boris,
Are you seriously arguing that unless Watts can come up with a way to solve the problem, he shouldn’t be looking into the problem in the first place?
It’s sufficient to demonstrate that there are serious problems with the ground based temperature network. Since this invalidates all of the claims based on data from this network.
If you think that gathering the metadata will improve Watt’s site, you are free to gather it, and send it to him. I’m quite sure that Anthony would be more than happy to post anything you can find.
Or is complaining the best you are capable of?
#159 Sounds like a reasonable thing to ask. I won’t say that you asked it means you have to do the work, but that doesn’t mean somebody else has to do it. I think the idea is if you are concerned about it to that degree, you might not be concerned enough if you aren’t going to do it.
That said, Snapping photos is not enough. That’s why the station is also surveyed. And yes, the entire metatdata set should be considered. This is a first step, gathering statistics so as to analyze trends once enough data points have been gathered to make such analysis meaningful.
I don’t know what that point is, but I would guess that we’re not there yet.
Again, the key is finding out what part of the measurements are signal, and which are noise. If a station is moved and airconditioned at the same time, what part that’s being adjusted for is from the move, and what from the environment in the new location. That’s what the project seems to be to me.
So I suppose your answer is “We’re working on it.”
Boris #159 said
A better way to consider the problem, more to the point, and similar to Hansen, would be to ask at what point will known heat producers or heat sinks effect temperature. Of course, one item worth noting would be the accuracy of a calibrated instrument, and how often it is calibrated or calibration check. In fact for heat sources or sinks, the size of the unit, (BTU’s, square feet of pavement, distance/square feet/height of walls)approximations could be made. However, the best appraoch at least by Hansen and others would be to get an uncontaminated site and use this as the baseline to show the heat effects using anomaly data.
I guess if Hansen and others use it, Watts or others can’t. It is apparently still proprietary (lol).
Come on, Earle, the skeptics discredit themselves. Have you checked out Watts’ blog post on Neptune?
No, Mark. He can look into it all he wants. The question is, does he want to look into it seriously or as a rhetorical game?
But you haven’t proven that these problems are serious, especially when it comes to the trend of the global temperature anomaly.
So I should finish properly what someone else starts?
Isn’t that what Climate Audit is all about?
So I offer suggestions on how surfacestations could actually contribute to the discussion on the temp record and everyone says “do it yourself” I wish I could say I was surprised.
Heck, nobody’s proved the trend of the global temperature anomaly is a serious problem either, but we’re about to spend trillions in a futile effort to do something.
Re #167
Boris,
Artfully dodged. You sure you aren’t Steve Bloom’s sock puppet? 😉
Here’s a chance for you to do something besides throw darts and you take the immediate pass. What’s the deal? Not competent or just don’t care enough? Do you actually have any interest in credible science? It certainly couldn’t be that all the time, energy, and CO2 you expend trolling ClimateAudit isn’t just to spread FUD? Certainly the self-proclaimed denizens of the AGW moral high ground wouldn’t just be making noise, would they? Would they?
RE: #169 – Back in the days when the AGW fanatics were successfully selling the meme of “right wing ideologue denialists” (read, non scientists, non engineers, K street political wonks, oil company shills, etc) to the masses, they could sort of kick back and let that meme work its magic. But now, people without ideological axes to grind, who have nothing to do with big oil, big automobile or big power, and, many of whom, are scientists and engineers, have started to question almighty all powerful AGW as the driver of climate change. Don’t get me wrong, I do accord AGW a role, but not the role of a lone actor. So, now that more credible people than non scientist talk hosts are questioning the Mannian Movement, they are getting scared …. really and truly scared. I picture the uniformitarians, round about, say, 1966 or so.
#167 does bring up a valid point “But you haven’t proven that these problems are serious, especially when it comes to the trend of the global temperature anomaly.” No, I don’t think anyone has.
#168 does bring up a valid point “nobody’s proved the trend of the global temperature anomaly is a serious problem either” No, I don’t think anyone has. We don’t have enough data yet to know one way or the other. I’m sure we’ll find out. I want to know.
Boris, what in fact Watts is doing is checking the quality control of the micro climate and maintenance of weather stations. Whatever claims he or others or you make about the total effect this might have on the more recognized temperature anomalies is quite another matter and a more complicated one at that. You are reacting as though the confidence in the temperature anomaly is under direct attack and that therefore you are over reacting to what Watts is finding.
My question to you would be whether you feel a third party audit has any value and are you at all surprised by what Watts has found?
Sam U, if you have a hypothesis statement in mind that Dr. Curry can practically falsify in this regard, let us see it.
I like what Pat Micheals has to say, but I consider his concentrating on only one of three scenarios that Hansen presented misleading. I think he would have done better to show that the inputs that Hansen used for his scenarios were far off the mark. Now, Boris, will you admit that the AR4 report is misleading when it does not include the Briffa near term temperature reconstruction results.
The science is not settled and anyone with half a brain would acknowledge that. If someone in the AGW camp had wanted to prove their case they could have set up a hundred experiments 10 years ago which by now would have given us answers to many of the current questions being asked. The FIRST thing you do if you have any doubt about the data is check the quality of that data.
What we are discovering is either that no one checked the quality of the data or that someone did and realised it was crap so ignored it.
Actually, the onus is on those that regularly use these sites, to prove they are not corrupted. That’s how science works. They’ve already made a claim, through the site classification schemes, that the sites produce reliable data. Given that many of these sites do not meet their own standards, the onus is on the site keepers to demonstrate why a violation of the standards is not meaningful. Tsk, tsk, Boris, that’s a simple one… no need to reference a high school chemistry text here.
That the data is hard to get, as well as subsequent adjustments made by Handse, also precludes full audit, though that is another fish to fry.
Mark
BTW, Anthony has already stated that he intends to do an analysis once he has a more complete representation of the site survey (which is heavily West Coast influenced to date), so your assertion falls on its face right there.
And, above, it should be “Hansen,” not “Handse.”
Mark
In post # 159, Boris says:
Photographing a site is part of the metadata. The NOAA purportedly had many sites photographed (by their volunteers) several years ago but never compiled the photos in a useful manner and will not make these photos available to the public. Why not?
Nobody seems to know. Least of all the climate experts using this data. Shouldn’t the climate scientists who use this data have answered questions like that years ago? Before using the data?
Can climate scientists state with confidence that air conditioners/rooftop installations/parking lots etc. do not contaminate the data? Especially when the climate experts appear blissfully unaware of these microsite anomalies?
Why “budding scientists”? The experts should have completed this groundwork many years ago.
One useful obvious idea for testing if air conditioners have an effect is to compare the trend in the winter vs the trend in the summer.
It seems that some people are prepared to use the temperature data to test everything about a site. It seems a bit like using a blood sample to identify everything about a patient. Sometimes you just have to go see the patient, ask a few questions and perform a few more tests.
Re# 179
How? Is there a copy of each of these stations which are identical in every way, excepting ac units?
RE: #179 – In an equipment hut, A/C usage is a matter of duty cycle. In summer, duty cycle may approach 100%, in the winter, some lower figure. In a cramped space with equipment and no windows, temp rise of ambient air from equipment dissipation alone is significant. So, without knowledge of duty cycle, a simple “winter – summer” comparison falls flat.
Earle,
This entire site is devoted to the art of throwing darts. Check Dr. Curry for puncture wounds if you don’t believe me. How many posts has Steve M made here? And how many has he actually followed through on to publication? One in GRL and one in E&E (BTW do you want to discuss some of the recent brilliance in E&E? No, I wouldn’t think that you would.) All these darts and what does Steve M have to show? A lot of commenters who are thoroughly convinced primarily because they were, well, pre-convinced.
You know, if you guys are going to undo this whole global warming thing you better get going. Why is it taking you so long, Earle?
I don’t know, Kenneth, several people in this thread seem to think the surface record now has no value. Watts even puts those little inset graphs into his front page. The implication is that good sites show cooling.
I have absolutely no problem with Watts or anyone taking pictures and gathering metadata, but some here–and not all I know–are overreaching with their conclusions.
The suggestions I made are sincere. If the surface record is contmainated by air conditioners, I want to know. No, I don’t have the time to do it myself.
RE 152.
fight my fights? I don’t have fights. I have questions. Don’t feel so threatened.
My question is simple. produce the data. Produce the methods. Supply the source code.
Otherwise I AM NOT OBLIGATED TO BELIEVE.
Kristen presented a mistaken hand drawn chart on C02. In my mind we have not yet settled the question of
of the land surface record. So, I really could care less about C02 until we settle the issue of
the land surface record. Then, we can move to SST. Then, we can move to the troposhpere.
THEN, we can take up the C02 figures.
In the mean time, go hit more girls. ( psst.. this is FIGURATIVE not literal, I am suggesting that
you accel at attacking straw persons)
If you need to buy a vowel to sort this out, just ask. Today, I’m selling vowels to the clueless at
half off.
Using the USHCN stations for anything other than their original intended purpose is asking for trouble. These stations were situated to find out what the actual temperature was in a particular area. If that area was rural then you got a “rural” temperature, i.e. the actual temperature in that rural area. If that area was a growing city you got the actual temperature that people were exposed to in that city as it grew.
These instruments would have be designed much differently if they were intended to exclude the effects of urbanization or the influence of nearby bodies of water. There is no way to go back and “correct” these temperatures because the temperatures are not wrong. They are completely correct within the original intent of those who placed the instruments.
There is no “true” temperature that these instruments somehow incorrectly measured (not counting defective instruments but in that case there are no actual measurements at all) This may be an odd point but it is an important point: There is no “true” temperature.
If you want to exclude a particular contributor to a measurement you need an independent measurement of that contributor, not a SWAG as to its magnitude. If you want to exclude the effects of asphalt as opposed to grass then you need the actual measurements of stations on asphalt and on grass with all other influences the same. We obviously don’t have that kind of information and neither do the AGW advocates.
This is why I cringe when I see “corrected measurements”. To really correct a measurement you need cases where you actually know what factors are involved and have measurements, not guesses, of the effects of each factor. What I see in the “corrections” is nothing more than the idea that any station that deviates from surrounding stations needs correcting. That isn’t science, that’s just a way to lose resolution. The overall effect is a low pass filter. It may make your “measurements” look more like your models but it won’t make them look more like reality because those measurements are reality and “corrections” only make the measurements deviate from reality.
We’re sitting here arguing about how many errors can dance on the head of a thermometer. If there is anything that Anthony has established with the station audits it is that there are far more influences on each weather station than any of us suspected and far more unmeasured influences than any simple “correction” formula can account for.
185: Trust me, I’m not threatened. If you really don’t believe the Earth has warmed, I don’t know how to answer your questions. Science isn’t going to wait on you. Let us know when you catch up.
Boris, zip it.
We have all seen (those who have been reading this and other sites for some time) the strong “belief” of many global warming researchers overwhelming their scientific integrity resulting in data selection studies and out right distortions in order to “prove” that their “belief” in global warming is warranted.
They need to prove to themselves and prove to others that global warming is as significant as their belief is.
We have the hockey stick.
We have “adjustments” to the global temperature data which conveniently adjusts old temperatures downwardward by 0.4C and newer 1990 temperatures upward by 0.2C.
We have the Urban Heat Island temperature increase estimates of 0.0C or 0.05C even though the real studies show major metropolitan centres have 4.0C of UHI.
We have truncated tree ring series data at 1950 or 1980 since it goes opposite to the actual temperature data.
We have hurricane studies starting in 1970 (the low point of hurricane numbers) even though the data goes back to 1851.
We have sea ice charts that do not match up with first person accounts and visible satellite images.
We have Antarctica is melting stories even though the data and actual ice measurements showing increasing ice and declining temperature.
We have June 2007 global temperature estimates from the NOAA which show it was the warmest June in history (it was very cool in 90% of the planet.)
We have doom and gloom when the actual evidence shows that a slightly warmer Earth is most definitely good for plants and a naked ape.
Those of us who have really looked into the actual evidence on the global warming issue could go on and on and on with this list.
What we see is exageration and distortion, not science.
#187 Isn’t it funny how those climate scientists are free to leap ahead with their speculation, leaving petty matters, like actually validating the integrity of the data sets they rely on, to other people. And that doesn’t bother you in the least?
re 187
I’d like to ask a layman’s question. From what I have picked up reading this controversy here, there are standards for the proper siting of these instruments. The evidence from the site survey is that these standards are not being followed. Presumably the standards were set for explicit reasons. Do these reasons include the required accuracy and homogeneity of results.
In an engineering discipline, there would be no question about this. The results would not be accepted. There would have to be as Boris indicates a large scale effort to determine what is anything can be done to be able to recover useful data. Boris errs though when he indicates that tests on the effects of air conditioners on a single or group of sites would be sufficient. The evidence is that the sites are completely heterogeneous and so the likelihood is the best that can be hoped for are specific corrections determined for and applied at each and every site. This is a NASA-scale project that will cost a large amount of money.
Imagine blaming amateurs and volunteers for discovering that sites that are relied upon for producing reliable data are not set up to standard. This is outrageous. FEMA is blamed for the fiasco of New Orleans. Who is to blame for this fiasco?
Played tennis with a buddy of mine at USCB while on business at a nearby defunct military base. My head was on a swivel trying to keep up with all the coeds. The only school I’ve been to that had better looking girls than your typical SEC school. Not that Kristen would care but its the first thing I think of when somebody mentions UCSB.
John Goetz’ photographs of the Baton Rouge, Louisiana site is exactly what I picture a proper site to look like. Surrounded by grass, far from trees or shrubs, little concrete, no heat generators. And the temperature record for that site looks nice, too ( link ).
Oddly, that region (lower Mississippi River valley) shows little or no 20’th century warming. I hope to survey a number of sites in that area in August. Since the USHCN sites seem to be administered by regional NWS, I wonder if the NWS in that area “got it right” with regards to station layouts. We’ll see!
Boris, when I think about it, your attitude really is appalling. You seem to have the view that it’s up to us guys to “undo this whole global warming thing”. What, so it’s not up to scientists to prove they use consistent, unbiased datasets and valid statistical methods? They can just throw anything they like out there and it’s up to the skeptics to do all that laborious leg work to make sure it isn’t complete rubbish? That we should be making billion or trillion dollar policy decisions on based on data that we assume to be valid until skeptics prove otherwise even as the skeptics are asking questions about the data? Is that really how things work over in the AGW camp?
They’ve done this in paper after paper. If you disagree with their conclusions, then, yes, you have to prove it.
Do you think that climate scientists think the historical network is perfect? The proper action is to identify flaws and correct for them. If the data are flawed, then you should be able to show this quantitatively, not in picture form. So get crackin’.
Sadlov, you’re usually ruder than that. Win the lottery or something?
#195 Oh really? Papers and papers, hey? Perhaps you can cite some then? Let’s take the issue of AC units near temperature sensors. Can you cite a conservative estimate for how far an AC unit with a given heat output should be from a temperature sensor for it to have no effect on the air temperature measured by that sensor so we can establish some standard the sensors should meet? Can you provide any references where sensors have been audited and sensors that do not meet this criterion have been excluded from analysis of global temperature trends? Or can anyone prove there are no trends in AC usage where this criterion is not met? Or that the effects of AC units on temperature measurements can be accurately identified and corrected?
How many still believe the surface temperature record trend has IPCC error bars of plus or minus 0.05 degrees celcius? With noisy seasonal temperature swings of more than 60 degrees celcius in many northern hemisphere locales, how many believe it is even possible to reliably extract a 0.01 degrees per year trend?
Boris says:
Nothing is perfect. But your logic is a very poor excuse for slopply surface site standards.
Agreed. Why have climate professional done neither in regards to physical surface site characteristics?
You sure don’t like pictures boris. I wonder why?
Thanks “Boris”, for the inspiration. Given that you’ve “thrown down the gauntlet” so to speak, I plan to work harder to complete the goal. From some of the inquiries I’m getting via email, it appears that many, many, others are willing to help in the surfacestations.org project.
Photography is well established as a diagnostic tool in many fields. Take astronomy for example. If data and computer models of the universe is all that was needed to move the science forward, we certainly wouldn’t need Hubble Space Telescope.
How well do you think pictures work in illustrating problems that need correction? Well I say ask any doctor who uses xrays, or MRI images, or ultrasound. Do you think doctors can define an illness solely on chart data such as BP and body temperature? No of course not, they need pictures. They DEMAND pictures.
Or how about the NASA’s loss of the space shuttle a couple years ago? The spacecraft is covered in sensors, yet after a photo showed foam striking the shuttle during booster burn, engineers pleaded to get photos under the wing from Department of Defense DOD. NASA Engineering made three separate requests for DOD imaging of the shuttle in orbit to get photos to determine if there was damage. NASA management did not honor the requests for DOD photos and in some cases intervened to stop the DOD from assisting.
On reentry, sensors on the shuttle started showing problems, and flight engineers struggled to understand what was happening. Photos and video taken by amateurs on the ground showed clearly what had happened. I don’t recall CNN showing pictures of sensor data in announcing this failure to the world.
Given NASA’s unwillingness to listen to engineers first with Challenger (frost and o-rings) and Columbia (possible wing damage – just get us a picture so we can be sure) I have even less respect for the NASA armchair UHI analysis called “lights = x” ironically done with DOD nighttime photos, which can’t possibly discern the microsite effects that have seen so far.
The worlds of science, engineering, medicine, forensics, astronomy, biology, and many more use photos to cross check gathered data or to confirm observations or theory. Climatology shall be no exception.
We are getting pictures of stations, lots of them, every one if possible. Then we are going to analyse them against existing published standards, and then we will publish the results of that analysis. And unlike some prominent climatologists, the pictures, the methods, the code, and the results will be publicly available to anybody, be it scientist, layman, or citizen. And, it will be done without wasting once cent of taxpayer money.
Then after that, please feel to say how valuable or worthless the pictures are.
I like it how Boris has such minimal expectations as to how much quality control should be done by AGW’s proponents, but a skeptic can’t just raise an issue, they have to have a complete analysis done on the issue proving it’s a problem and quantifying how much of a problem it is, and they have to have it immediately (yesterday, even) even if they aren’t being paid.
No, people in this thread think that claims of a reliable network are unfounded, and the onus in on those that use these sites to make claims, warming or cooling, to prove the network is reliable. The implication is nothing other than garbage in, garbage out. We’d just like to be convinced that the results are based on sound science, not guesswork.
Mark
From Boris comment (#195)
… What, so it’s not up to scientists to prove they use consistent, unbiased datasets and valid statistical methods?
Boris reply:
They’ve done this in paper after paper. If you disagree with their conclusions, then, yes, you have to prove it.
IPCC has problems in “paper after paper”. It is interesting that, as Steve M has shown, “they” cannot statistically show how likely the temperature trend is depending on CO2. “They” cannot even show that the rising trend statistically differs from natural variation. “They” only say “paper after paper” that it is likely and IPCC gives a value of 90%.
In the most recent report by IPCC, Phil Jones only presents his view that he doesn’t believe in mathematicians when they point out problems in calculations. So, Jones expect us to believe in his conclusions. And Boris believes. And Boris expect us to prove it is something wrong with his beliefs.
Boris,
Are you seriously trying to claim that the issues found to date are not serious? Or are you just trying to blow smoke in order to confuse yourself.
Boris,
Interesting dodge you are attempting there. So anyfact that you don’t want to acknowledge, automatically discredits the person presenting that fact?
Neptune and most of the planets and moons that have been surveyed to date show signs of warming.
Just why is it that pointing this fact out discredits those who do so?
Boris,
Boris, the way science works is that the person making an assertion has to prove that assertion.
Merely showing that in the present day, the temperature sensor network has serious problems is sufficient to invalidate that network.
It is up to the person who wants to use that data to PROVE, that the problems found are not serious or have been adequately compensated for.
We are not the ones demanding that the world’s economy be completely reshaped based on the output of this temperature network.
Boris,
Can you ever get beyond your pathetic strawmen?
Nobody here has stated that the earth hasn’t warmed.
Boris,
Just where have the “scientists” proven that the data sets they use are reliable and consistent. I’ve seen them make such assertions on a regular basis. however the work of Anthony and others, inadequate as you seem to believe, has been sufficient to show that those claims are a bunch of bunk.
#194,
Milesworthy keeps telling us that as long as you trust the person doing the work, there is no need to check the work.
#208
Mark,
There are 2 Articles of Faith at play here:
1)Faith in the Foxtail Bristlecone as a reliable temp proxy
2)Faith in the USHCN climate data. For those who shivered through June -rest assured it was the hottest June in a million years.
Excellent red herring. First, there’s nothing wrong with pictures. But we are diagnosing a trend. All your examples of pictures relate to finding something wrong in the NOW. To that effect, your pictures are helpful. But youc can’t discount the TREND unless you know historical metadata. In fact, pictures can be misleading. (No one has taken me up on explaining how an AC which causes the temp to read higher could introduce a cooling TREND into the data. Too obvious?)
Without historical metadata, the effect on trends will still be unknown.
re 195.
Well, Boris, I suppose we could bin the sites into two groups. Those with AC units nearby
and those sited according to standards . And then we could look at the difference in temp trends.
if we found a difference in trends between those sites that are well sited and those that are sited
next to buildings, what could we conclude?
You are merely asserting this. If you can prove it, write up an article explaining why and submit it to a journal.
If there’s a huge problem with AC contaminating the trend. You have to assume that the errors are large, so that they can actually affect global temp trends (We are talking a small number of sites in the US, which is about 2% of the global network.) Next, you have to assume the errors are small so that they won’t be noticed in the current procedures for finding bad stations.
There is a problem with assuming that the errors are both large and small.
These are the comments at the top of a routine from the GISS Model as seen in the code viewer available on this page (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/modelEsrc/) . The comments indicate that the surface temperature is calculated in the routine. The last line of the comments, all marked by !@, in which ‘auth’ means the author of the coding, is interesting.
SUBROUTINE SURFCE
!@sum SURFCE calculates the surface fluxes which include
!@+ sensible heat, evaporation, thermal radiation, and momentum
!@+ drag. It also calculates instantaneous surface temperature,
!@+ surface specific humidity, and surface wind components.
!@auth Nobody will claim responsibilty
Makes it kind of tough to perform an Independent Verification of the intended purpose of the routine and the accuracy of the coding.
#193 That photo is one of the few photos of an ASOS system in the USHCN dataset that is available on the NOAA website. Albany, Binghamton, and Syracuse NY are the only others I could find (ie: ASOS, photos available on the NOAA website, part of USHCN network). Being the lazy person that I am, I simply copied the public-domain photos to surfacestations.org. There are other USHCN sites located at airports, but I have not yet found images of them on the web.
Generally speaking it looks like the ASOS sites are typically (but not always) at airports (like Baton Rouge) and are therefore well-sited. One site I found that may be questionable can be seen here (the image on the right).
Boris, what you are saying is that data is correct because the CO2 proponents say it is so. The only problem is that it is a circular argument, namely, they know that there is no UHI because of the surface station data and they know the surface station data is correct because there is no UHI. All the pictures show is that there is a possible bias in the data being collected. I say a bias and not noise since noise can be removed from the data set statistically, but the pictures indicate that the stations seem to have siting problems leading to an increased heat reading, whether due to urbanization, various heat sources, or what ever else that is wrong with the sitings.
There is no way to know the extent of the errors inject by the temperature bias but the pictures show evidence that the stations are not in accordance with established guidelines. This is enough to cast doubt on an results using the surface station data until a study is done to determine what the bias is and correct for it.
I really don’t understand why the proponents are against developing a better data set that will only prove them right… unless they are worried that it will not.
Boris, considering how incredibly tiny the affect that the alarmists have claimed to have found is.
And considering that the US has the best kept network in the world.
And considering that the vast majority of sites surveyed to date have huge problems.
Yes, the network can be considered to have been invalidated.
Boris, I am sure that you, like us all, want the science to be done properly. It is only by having data and processes that are verifiable and reproduceable that this can be the case. The NOAA has produced clear instructions for station siting. These instructions are designed to ensure that the kind of arguements that we are having about the reliability of the data should not happen. Te very fact that a significant number of stations do not comply makes their data scientifically useless. Unless stations can be proven to conform, then any data from them should be excluded. If that invalidates alot of the papers published using this data, then so be it.
I don’t need to prove anything. Again, you miss the point of scientific audit. Merely pointing out that their stations do not meet _their own standards_ is sufficient to force YOU (well, the site keepers) to prove the data is valid.
Mark
This is, in general, the underlying problem with climate science. These people really do think they can make a claim, no matter how wild, and then the onus is on everyone else to “prove” their claim is wrong. Any initial assumption in scientific work must first be proved or otherwise validated, and if a problem arises with said proof/validation, back to the drawing board. The same can be said for Mann’s claims of IID distributions, linear responses to temperature in tree-rings (in fact, Mann even points out that the latter must be proved, yet he never does so) ergodicity (a sort of result of IID), and countless other similar examples. Gads, this concept was taught in grade school science class.
Mark
I guarantee that any engineer that stood up in a design review and said “we collected data with these methods and standards and these are the results” and later on it was revealed he did not follow those methods and standards, would be laughed out of the room if he told the discoverer to prove there is a problem with the results. He’d also be told to go back and reexamine the data under the assumption of the actual methods and standards used, and if he refused, he’d be gone.
Mark
#220
Mark,
It’s very similar to:
“Here’s our dataset. We conducted the readings with this brand of flow meter and this ph meter. ”
“Okay, did you remember to calibrate the meters before your test? Did you use the same meter for each test? Did you follow the manufacturer’s instructions for proper usages of the meters?”
“uh, no. But here are our results.”
Followed by “prove my results are incorrect!”
Audacity for sure.
I recently did a patent investigation and we had to mark every single configuration setting (it was a wireless comm application) and note _every_ deviation in the setup from what would otherwise be considered the norm. One good example was the fact that we were using an uncalibrated spectrum analyzer. It took a full page of text to prove that accuracy was not required since we were not attempting to measure actual power levels nor precise location of the signal in frequency (or even time, since the signal was somewhat bursty). Had we proceeded without the validation, the entire effort would have been ignored. Had we supposed that the customer should bear the responsibility of proving accuracy was not required, we’d be out of that type of business altogether.
Mark
Boris says
Boris, this does not help your case, A better way of putting it would be:
“Without historical metadata, the trends will be unknown”
This is a point that I believe Steve Mcintyre has made several times
It’s certainly very interesting that some stations have oddities like nearby A/C units. But has anyone actually quantified the changes in recorded temperatures caused by this sort of contamination from as much as even a single station? The argument is just one of assertion and counter assertion until this is done.
Re #183 and others
Boris,
Ah, your suggestion was SINCERE. Please forgive me for making the mistake of interpreting your words in the context of all your other posting here. Silly me, expecting a leopard’s spots not to change.
I’ll back your sincere offer with one of my own. Like you, I have some ideas and don’t have a lot of time to explore them. I’d welcome a discussion on specific quantitative studies that you feel could improve the metadata and microsite analysis for the USHCN stations. I’m sure that NOAA and the NWS would appreciate objective, quantitative analyses that identify potential measurement biases in the existing networks.
The problem we have is that in my perception you’re simply full of hot air. I know, it’s the burden I must carry have to live with such prejudices. My offer is sincere but tempered with a healthy dose of skepticism that your offer is also sincere. So here’s a suggestion to demonstrate your sincerity. I see you claiming sincerity, but when it’s wrapped in condescension and and served on a bed of sarcasm, it’s pretty hard to take you at face value. Go figure.
First, state what it is you’re actually suggesting. Are you suggesting a way to improve quantitatively measurement biases in the network of stations? Or are your suggesting a means to quantitatively refute the outcomes of the http://surfacestations.org effort? Right now you’ve just proposed some very specific analyses to address perceived shortcomings in presumed assumptions and conclusions in in an effort that has just begun. So if you’re interested in the science focus on the science. That would demonstrate sincerity. If instead you’re only interested in discrediting skeptics, then just keep on doing what you’re doing. Just don’t forget to get a double shot of sincerity in your next latte.
re 212.
Boris, one of the fundamental issues here is REPLICATION. Lets take Jones, for example, he asserts than his
analysis of the surafce data is correct. ( same with Hansen)
Fair enough. How do we replicate and verify this claim? How do we discofirm his claim
How do we do what you ask? how do we do basic science?
Well, we start by asking for the data, methods, and source.
Simple: Mr Jones, we should like to see a list of the stations you used, the data you used,
the algorithms you used, the source code you used. The purpose of our study is to replicate
your results and confirm your observations. If we do not have access to this material then
we are obligated by scientific principles to remain in doubt over your findings. Doubt,
is not epistemologically equivalent to denial. Denial requires knowledge, doubt requires
only the absence of independent confirmation.
Now, when Mr Jones and Mr hansen refuse to supply the data methods and sources, We are left
with DOUBT. not denial. denial would require access to the data sources and methods.
We have Doubt. It is a scientific doubt. It is a doubt that the scietific method can Remove.
You and others ask Kristen a simple question: where did you get the data? Why? So that you could
confirm or disconfirm. We ask Hansen and Jones the same question. They refuse. We remain in doubt.
Not denial. Denial would require access to their data sources and methods.
So, I remain in doubt. I do not need to deny. They claim knowledge .I claim the DUTY and right
to replicate or withhold my consent. So, I withhold my consent.
While some of the posts are great, I think you guys are wasting time and bandwidth on Boris the Boring. He is NOT here to learn anything and should not be taken seriously.
With or without metadata, asphault will increase the temperature in it’s vicinity.
The only thing we don’t know is exactly when the warming bias was added to the signal.
Almost all of the problems found to date will cause warming bias, usually a severe warming bias.
Therefore any claims of finding a warming signal in the data, without finding someway to remove the known warming bias in the signal, especially when the trend that is “found” is so incredibly small, is highly suspect.
Pete,
Are you saying that in your world, A/C units do not expell copious amounts of hot air?
Judith Curry,
I appreciate your comments on this site. You present yourself reasonably and respectfully. I read your article Mixing Politics and Science…Hurricane Intensity..that was linked above and was surprised by the tone. I suppose that given the title, “Mixing Politics and Science…” one might expect a bit of prosletyzing. The distaste for and individual’s opinion, however, seems inconsistent with a scientific paper.
You have explained your use of “denier” only applied to certain individuals. A Denier in the context of climate science was from comparisons to those who deny the Holocaust and attempted extermination of the Jews. And the implication was that global warming was an impending disaster just as was the Holocaust that was ignored by many. This is a very unfortunate comparison and lacks sensitivity to both Jews and people who are merely still searching for answers.
I sense the paper was written for a specific audience as the tone does not cater to differing viewpoints. This will tend to get great applause from like thinkers, but distrust from others. It seems the point of the article was to further science, not to impede it, so this seems contradictory.
I am neither a denier nor a skeptic, I don’t know enough to be either. But I am also not a believer though I do have solar panels, flourescent bulbs through-out, compost, efficient appliances, etc… There are many of us lay-folk who are simply interested and find problems with some of the “science” that we hear. Most of my friends are of the AGW trend but do not know the name of a single climate scientist, have not read a paper or study, yet their opinion seems to be more highly regarded by your paper’s assessment than my opinion because they speak the correct lingo.
I hope you will consider this in your future papers and adopt a tone similar to that you use at this blog.
#224
Best Practices demand a certain amount of standardization in site deployment and equipment. Stations that fail the minimum qualifications should at the very minimum be highlighted to scientists who use thier data; otherwise, the data should be pulled from the database. If you wish to stand in front of an AC exhaust during the summer months feel free to. The same goes for sensors located on roof tops, and concrete or asphalt aprons.
In any event, if you going to to publish site rules and procedures why not enforce them? The entire reason to have standards and rules is to avoid the kind of questions that are now being raised. Why should a scientist have to visit a site and attempt to create an alogrithim in order to filter out poisoned data at all? If I was a chemistry or physics teacher and I found that one of my students didn’t follow the correct lab procedure, I wouldn’t attempt to go over the student’s lab data and “correct” it; I would send the student back to the lab and do the procedure correctly.
KevinUK: One of the reasons I post on blogs is to get MY words out there. I’ve also updated our hurricane web site to post my main publications, presentations, and other statements on the subject http://www.eas.gatech.edu/research/hurricane_Webster.htm
One of the main points of the BAMS article is about garbling by the media, i have been crazily misquoted in the past, and have been called in the blogosphere by various interesting epitaphs, the most entertaining one being “high priestess of global warming”. So if you want to criticize/attack me, point to my own words as posted by me in the blogosphere or on our website.
Frank #146: Gore is not easily categorized. He is not a scientist, but has studied the science considerably and is actually quite knowledgeable and up to date. He has been attached to the AGW issue for decades, long before it became popular or politically profitable to do so, hence there is a great deal of personal commitment and passion to this subject. Gore really believes. Up until several years ago, Gore had a propensity towards alarmism on this subject. Particularly in the last two years, he has had a staff of scientist/fact checkers working with him to make sure his statements are not indefensible in terms of the science. That said, Gore is a politician, and he was trying with his movie to convince people to be concerned about AGW. Using a hurricane as an icon for global warming was not a good choice. So in summary, Gore is not at all the left wing version of Myron Ebel. I would say someone from a left wing enviro advocacy group would be a better analogy to Myron Ebel.
Paul #156: Because of people like Myron Ebel, there has been a backlash against denialists and skeptics have been caught in the crossfire. Vocal skeptics with any links to right wing political groups or the fossil fuel industry seem to automatically be tarred with the “denialist” brush. The classical inappropriate labelling of someone in this way is of course SteveM owing to his ties to the mining industry. Another interesting case is Pat Michaels, who has some interesting points (and even publishes them), but his ideas often get rejected out of hand owing to his oil industry funding and links to right wing think tanks. Scientific skepticism is alive and well, largely enabled by the blogosphere. Climateaudit has certainly contributed here by raising issues related to data quality and statistical analysis of the data
#232 Judith Curry
What do you make, then, of the RealClimate folks who always mention Steve M’s link to mining as if it had any relevance?
Dr Curry
I am astonished that you believe that Al Gore is knowledgeable or up to date. For example some quotes from a Chicago Sun Times article:
Gore claims the snowcap atop Africa’s Mt. Kilimanjaro is shrinking and that global warming is to blame. Yet according to the November 23, 2003, issue of Nature magazine, “Although it’s tempting to blame the ice loss on global warming, researchers think that deforestation of the mountain’s foothills is the more likely culprit. Without the forests’ humidity, previously moisture-laden winds blew dry. No longer replenished with water, the ice is evaporating in the strong equatorial sunshine.”
Gore claims global warming is causing more tornadoes. Yet the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in February that there has been no scientific link established between global warming and tornadoes.
Gore claims global warming is causing an expansion of African deserts. However, the Sept. 16, 2002, issue of New Scientist reports, “Africa’s deserts are in ‘spectacular’ retreat . . . making farming viable again in what were some of the most arid parts of Africa.”
He picks and choses his facts to serve his own ends. Distorting the truth no matter what the ends is wrong.
My favorite is “those two Canadians.” It’s sort of South Parkesque.
Mark
Gore is a complete air head. One either faces this fact or is in …. denial … of it.
I like the way that Dr. Curry finds the worst case “denialist” and then declares that this person damages the reputation of anyone who disagrees with the alarmists.
On the other hand, no matter how far out from mainstream science, there is no alarmist, who in the mind of Dr. Curry, who is capable of doing similar damage to the ranks of the alarmists. For example the British guy who was recently quoted as saying that if we don’t do something soon, by the end of the century, Antarctica will be the only continent left that is inhabitable.
I also not that while Dr. Curry does not approve of having “denialists” tarred because of their associations, neither does she condemn the tactic.
Re: 232
Thanks again for your comments, Dr. Curry. I disagree with you about Al Gore. You state:
“Particularly in the last two years, he has had a staff of scientist/fact checkers working with him to make sure his statements are not indefensible in terms of the science.”
So, are you suggesting that *all* of the scientific “facts” in the movie “An Inconvenient Truth” are “not indefensible in terms of the science”? Does this mean that it’s OK to shade the truth about AGW so that someone, such as my 12 year old son (who was shown this movie at his school), can be convinced that catastrophic global warming is occurring? We’ve already established that the hurricane link is questionable. How about that tornado image? How about the polar bears? Extreme floods? Droughts? Wasn’t it Mr. Gore that said “the science is settled”?
It appears to me that there is a segment of America’s scientific/academic/political community that thinks it’s OK to be dishonest to our kids (and the “lay public”) about global warming so as to “convince people to be concerned about AGW”. And to the extent that I, by speaking out, can inject some sanity and constraint into what has now become a *political* (and not a scientific) enterprise, I shall do so. I’m just glad that there are intelligent kids out there like Kristen Byrnes who can see through the baloney…
Frank K.
RE: #221 – “uh, no. But here are our results.”
And, ooooooooo noooooooo, we measured a pH of 4, the oceans are turning into vats of HCl ….. we’re dooooooomed, doooooooomed! 😉
LOL. For example, Al Gore! If Judith Curry has any respect for the way Al Gore is making an ass of himself (again!) WRT climate change, then I just have to question the good Doctor’s judgement!
RE 232
Hi Dr. Curry. First off I want to thank you for your generous offer to Kristen. It made me smile.
( ok, the cynics can try to beat me senseless for this)
A couple things. I read your article on golabl warming and TS frequency. Can you help me
a bit. You seemed to indiacate that by 2025, the frequency of storms would increase from around 14/year
to around 20/year. Is that about right? I’m not sensitive about being wrong so feel free to kick my shins.
1. this estimate was made in 2005 right?
2. You state that the average in 2025 will be between 17 and 21/ year. Is that a projection
of the number of storms for 2025? A projection of the 20 year average between 2005 and 2025?
3. If the projection of 17-21 is a point projection of 2025, then do you have a projection of the
TREND LINE between 2005 and 2025?
Second issue. Gore has repeatly stated that we are approaching a point of no return. 10 years from now.
There isn’t a bit of science to support this.
Now, you suggested that Kristen fix her chart ( many of us joined you). Now, without equivocation, without evasion,
call on a grown man to correct his mistake. Or stand by him and his alarmism. You were wise enough
to give advice to a budding scientist. Will you be brave enough to correct Gore. Not denouce. Just correct.
Same as you did with Kristen. I know you would not treat their mistakes differently. That would not be good
critical thinking.
I thank you in advance for doing the intellectually and morally responsible thing.
re 239- Steve:
LOL!!!! Such jocularity!
In the fine tradition of showing how data selection and data manipulation can lead people astray, such as Judith Curry’s Famous BAMS Hurricanes are Increasing and their Intensity is Increasing Paper (at least since 1970 that is),
I present the Number and Intensity of US Landfall Hurricanes Since 1851 By Decade chart.
For the above J. Curry fans, please note how the two charts present a completely different interpretation of Hurricane numbers and how a complete analysis would have lead to a completely different conclusion.
re: 233 and on…
From the archive:
“The proportion of warming since 1970 attributable to greenhouse gases can be debated, but no credible scientist suggests that there is NO temperature increase from the increases in greenhouse gases”-Dr. Curry, Dec 2007, Climate Audit, “New Holland and Webster Paper” topic.
re:244
Sorry, should say from 2006, of course.
RE: #242 – Paminator (and all) you might find the following thread of interest, especially after post #72:
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2007/06/20/documentation-of-ipcc-wg1-bias-by-roger-a-pielke-sr-and-dallas-staley-part-i/
I caught Eli red handed.
I have to laugh at the idiocy of people that keep insisting that the skeptics have to prove that the AGW theory is not correct, and sometimes even demand a replacement theory. That’s completely backwards from the way that the Scientific Method works. The assumption is always that the null hypothesis is correct and the onus is on the presenter(s) of the theory that it is not. If flaws are found in the theory, or data used to support the theory, then the onus is on the presenters of the theory to fix the flaws or collect new (better) data, but there are no other obligations on the party or parties that discovered the flaw(s). If the flaws are not correctable then h0 is assumed to be correct.
In the case of the surface temperature record, we now know there are problems with some of the sites. We do not know how extensive the problems are or to what extent they affect the theory (of AGW), however we can’t just assume that they are not a problem. The onus is now on the people that used the data to support their theories to determine the extent of the problems and carry out an analysis to see what kind of effect it has. If they do not do this, then the Scientific Method demands that we discard the data and revert to the null hypothesis for those theories that depend on it.
You can’t replace “don’t know” with “probably OK”. We do know that right now there are some problems with some of these temperature sites. We don’t know the extent of these problems or how long they have existed, but it is not Anthony’s responsibility to determine this just because he uncovered the problems.
Business as usual for the Team and its supporters, actually. They may have PhDs, but seem to never have taken science class.
Mark
Ok, re 159
I ask you to compare the drawing error of a 15 year old with the following from post 159.
Boris wrote ( ok maybe he didn’t. maybe he hired a [self snip] with an IQ of [self snip] or maybe
he is a josh halpern sock puppet.) :
1. the METADATA do not indicate installation of Air conditioners. THIS IS WHY PHOTO ARE NECESSARY. THIS WHY THE CRN
require photos for NEW SITES.
2. One site? One site? One site? Earth to cosmonaut BORIS. YOU would not accept the results of a one site
study. Oh, wait, I did one. When the Burn barrel was added to the Tahoe cty site ( date determined by Jones, personal
communication) the recorded temp increased by 35%. Acceptable? One site. See how silly and unscientific your
approach is.
Parker selected a sub sample of stations ( 290) to study UHI. How about we select a subsample. A/C infected
versus not A/C infected. Not just one site ( you’d whine like a [self snip] about that) we pick 10
A/c infected sites and 10 PRISTINE SITES, sites that rank class 1. sites over grass. Sites in the middle of
rural amercia. 10 sites by Ac 10 sites aways from AC. Fair? And lets look at years after 1950, like Parker did?
YOU SEE, we cannot tell when the AC was ADDED because records are not kept. We cannot tell how the site
was changed because photos were are Not taken or are not shared. Now, today for CRN, for THE REFERENCE NETWORK,
FOR THE NETWORK THAT WILL OPERATE FOR NEXT 100 YEARS, photos are REQUIRED. Why? to document the quality.
To maintain the quality. CLearly KARL and HANSEN thought improving quality was important. you dont.
So, Alice. Assume this study of 20 sites. 10 sites with AC 10 sites without.
Make your bet. Which will show the greater warming trend over the past 60 years.
Think of it as Your chance to draw a curve Alice.
The title of this thread concludes with the statement, “…but they can measure rain.” No they can’t. Not with a raingauge in the location shown with all the thermals created by the different materials and surfaces and the location on the edge of a roof. In fact, accurate measurement of precipitation (rain and snow) is more difficult than getting accurate temperatures and people are now gradually becoming aware of how difficult that is.
#244,
I have met very, very, few people who will claim that there is absolutely no warming.
This is the classic alarmist strawman.
The debate is just how much of the 0.7C warming over the last century or so is due to CO2 and how much is due to other things.
The possiblities range from almost all of it to a few hundredths of a degree.
My personal guess is that about half will be due to changes in the sun, and another 30% will be due to UHI and microsite contamination of the temperature record.
Maybe we could start another challenge on this issue, like the guess the number of hurricanes challenge we already got going?
In Boris’s world, since we can’t prove when the A/C units were added, we must assume that the A/C units have no affect and that the data is therefore pristine.
THANK YOU BORIS!.
ok Boris suggested that we look at one site and see the impact of AC.
Well, the metadata dont indicate when AC units are added. So we have a problem.
I thought about it for a while. How long have AC units been around? Can I find a site where
I know when AC units were added. After a few seconds it occuured to me
SANTA ROSA, california. The press democrat.
According to the metadata the previous site was at the junior college between 1931 and 1992.
After 92 it moved to the Press democrat. From 1997 on ( check the photos and the
elevation record) it looks like the sensor was still at the press democart but
moved to a location within a sea of AC units. It moved UP 7 feet or so.
a single story. Surface station shows the location… Hmm I’d guess that round about
1997 or so, the sensor was moved to the roof
So, boris asked for one site. Have a look at Santa Rosa california. Go to USHCN to get the temp data.
HAVE a look at TMIN versus time. download the daily data. do a yearly average.
I had a look. Interesting. Post your graphs.
OK,
I’m still thanking Boris. Santa Rosa, CA. You all ned to double check me on this.
get the data from USHCN ( no Giss adjustments, yet)
The station history suggests a siting at the JC between 1931 and 1992. ( three different locations
but the same “operator” elevation consistent.
The in 92 it looks like the site moves to the newspaper. The Press democrat.elevation the same.
in 1997 the ELEVATION increases by 7 feet. Photos show the site on the roof od the building
surrounded by AC units.
Looking at Tmin, I found this figure to be relatively constant or declining over the 1931-1997 period.
THEN 1997. I’m seeing a 3F difference ( increase) over the long term Tmin figure.
So, math heads go ahead and check. Boris may have handed us a wonderful prize. Then again, I could be
wrong. so, I shared. See what you find. I won’t cry if you kick me in the shins.
RE: #253 – As population, gadgetization, and lighting excess increase, of course UHI increases as well. Also, as duly noted, as time goes on, based on human tendencies and equipment proliferation, the numbers and densities of A/C, gas grills, parking lots, paving, etc, also go up. Especially when you concatenate the many measurement sites, we’re talking up, up, up.
So, both UHI and microsite effects are both, in the aggregate, most likely increasing over time.
254. It looks like you are right to me!
RE 251.
I have yet to find someone who says there is no warming.
the attack on warming goes like this:
1. is it warming? ( fight about instruments, errors, sampling, observations)
2. Does the warming need explanation? ( outside of “normal bounds”)
3. IS the AGW explanation necesary and sufficient ?( what about x, what about y, what about z)
Seriously, the “attack” on AGW is the same kind of “test” thinking people would apply to
ANY subject. It’s methodical doubt. not scepticism ( there can be no knowledge) Its the
application of sceptical methods to IMPROVE knowledge and power.
That link no work. Maybe this one does.
260: Some evidently do not think there has been any warming in 70 years….
RE 235
[snip, off topic, off color]
Re # 232
Judith Curry says:
“… and have been called in the blogosphere by various interesting epitaphs…”
Er… does this mean that you’re dead? This could be the most interesting claim by a warmer yet 🙂
Please accept the sincere condolences of a “denialist”, o [snip, no ad hominem please]. Your commentary will be sorely missed.
#173 Ken, my comment about falsification was in response to you I beleive. Sorry I didn’t ref it.
#151 “The last time I checked we could not prove that the bogey man doesn’t exist.”
Re: 262
I think if you run the climate models backwards and send the computed temperature history through your soundcard, you’ll hear eerie words from beyond like “I bury AGW”, “turn me on dead theory”, or “the walrus was Hansen” ;^)
Frank K.
Re #262,
Well if an insult is now an epitaph, then Dr. Curry will presumably have an epithet chiseled into her headstone.
# 250 Tim Ball,
If you want to see even worse, go to Kristen’s photos of the Lewiston station on Anthony’s site, the rain gage is under a tree.
RE 259.
Yup. Now I go to USHCN get my data. I always select DAILY . I look at TMAX, TMIN, then
Diurnal Range. The last thng I look at is “Tmean” ( tmax+tmin/2) primarily because it does
not contain any additional information.
Santa rosa Tmin is striking. It trends down until the year it was moved up to the roof amidst a
sea of AC units.
Guys with better math skills and graphics skills than I have can confirm this or point out my
Error.
Oh wait. Judith? You would be a fair judge. Have a look.
Re 249
stephen mosher said:
YOU SEE, we cannot tell when the AC was ADDED because records are not kept. We cannot tell how the site was changed because photos were are Not taken or are not shared.
We don’t need to. We can do things the NOAA way and just pick a date. Let’s say that all air conditioners were installed in 1975. Heck, it worked for sea surface temperatures (all ships changed the method of measurement in 1941, right?), why shouldn’t it work for us?
Now when we look at the air conditioner sites and see warming we will just subtract a small correction factor, say 2 degrees C per century. We will justify this by using data from nearby non air conditioner sites that showed cooling during the period in question. We can ignore the non-air conditioner sites that showed warming because they behave like the air conditioner sites and therefore they must be defective.
With this methodology we can clearly prove global cooling and get NASA to send us millions of research bucks to fix the defective GCMs that predict warming. The only danger is that if we believe what we’re saying then we might try to get rich investing our money constructing ski lodges in the soon-to-be-frozen Caribbean.
re 268.
Funny I was thinking 1975 as well. Still looking at santa rosa I could figure out that the
guage was moved to the roof in 1997 admist a sea of AC units. Tmin went up by 3F
Is mosher calling me ALice because he’s a [snip, no ad hominem, please]
We eagerly await your peer reviewed publication, steven.
Dr. Curry says:
And this is true, but skeptics don’t distance themselves from the denialists. Not only does CA link to Byrnes, but also to Lubos Motl. It’s becoming harder and harder to distinguish a skeptic from someone in denial of the science. For example, Pat Michaels has made some odd choices, such as lauding the ridiculous Khilyuk and Chilingar and his graph erasure. Skeptic or denialist?
Looks like the Team troll de jour is again Boris.
272:
Yeah, it looks like I called mosher somehting really nasty, doesn’t it? The power of the edit button.
Of course the definition of a denialist is anyone who is still skeptical, even after being called nasty names by an alarmist.
re 270 Boris,
Let me a make a distinction.
There are Believers. These folks believe in AGW. they write articles.
There are deniers. These folks deny AGW. they write articles.
Then there are Doubters. We withhold our agreement to either position. We don’t write
articles trying to convince people that they should doubt, believe or deny.
Doubters doubt. It’s what we do. we have no obligation to convince anyone or change there
minds. We do have a responsibility to our selves to make sure our doubt is honest and
systematic.
You go ahead and believe. If you want me to give up my doubt, then have a look at Santa Rosa data.
Peer at Tmin. Or not. your choice. I choose doubt.
#198 I don’t trust the measurements down to .1, much less .01!
If you want the “why”, it’s mainly (but not only) because:
1) “We have a high quality network.”
2) But the stations were originally designed to measure temperature for the sake of it, and now they’re measuring it for the purpose of tracking anomalies. What did you do to ensure the quality of the data now that you need a greater resolution?
3) “We have certain rules as to how the stations should be designed and situated. It is a high quality network.”
4) Can we see the historical photos and surveys showing the records of your temperature measuring experiments then? The calibration statistics? You know, anything like that?
5) [no answer]
6) Well, let’s go look at them then…. Hmmm….. A fair number of these stations don’t seem to meet the rules….
And then of course, the obligatory snap from those that think the stations, and therefore the measurements, are ‘perfect’: “Gee, why are you guys wasting their time looking the stations over, stop, you denialist you!”
#215 What other reason could anyone have for speaking out against developing a better data set and/or verifying/proving the data is correct other than being worried it will prove them wrong? I can’t think of any other reason.
#249 lol, actually he sounds more like Dano sometimes. Regardless, there have been station issues found, it’s up to those that run them to prove they’re not issues affecting the measurements, not us. They’re not our stations. We just found the issues. If the stations don’t meet their own criteria, how is that our problem?
#251 Actually, to be more exact, “GHCN-ERSST shows a +0.6 C trend off the base period from Jan 1880-Dec 2005” or “The 2005 calculated anomaly off the base period is 0.+51 C” etc
Regardless, I’d like to see the data showing what the accuracy and margin of error in that trend is, and how robust the methods for deriving it from the records is. I think getting a large enough sample of the ground stations is a good first step, to verify the accuracy and margin of error of the GHCN data, but it’s not the only part of it naturally.
Once we have a validation of the numbers, then we can discuss “why” (or if it’s abnormal, harmful, continuing, etc)
But of course, you know, by then it will be too late, so of course we need to act now! *sigh*
#270 What is this bizare fixation you have with expecting others to have peer reviewed publications to validate everything they say?
#271 There’s a point there about the mixing of skeptics & denialists. Although since it seems most alarmists consider the two the same anyway, so I don’t think it matters.
I usually stay in the background, but after reading Dr. Curry’s lauding of AlGore, it makes me want to throw up. If this is the guy who she is praising about his knowledge of climate science, puh-lease. At least Boris throws in some comments for a few yucks now and then, even though he never makes any sense or poignant points. AlGore wouldn’t know what a rain gauge was even if he was peeing in it.
I find it remarkably sad (and frustrating) that bad data should just be bad data, no matter where it comes from. If there are problems they need to be corrected or deleted. We (the AGW team) didn’t site the stations properly but we corrected for our inaccuracies and now they are correct (got my fingers crossed behind my back). You see we sent in our methods to be peer reviewed, and low and behold no one said anything. Amazing, so they are right, no matter how wrong they are.
I need to find me one of these jobs, Engineering is such a waste of time. I actually have to do thing correctly or get thrown out on my keister. If I tried some of the stuff that Climate Scientists get away with they’d take away my license to practice engineering.
#275
None of that makes any difference to people like Boris. Now it is true that some people here have made coments about the integrity of some pro-AGW scientists (and more towards the political organizations like IPCC, NOAA, etc), the overwhelming majority of comments only disparage the lack of scientific integrity of papers put forth by such scientists.
But I have yet to read anything except negative attacks on people here from people like Boris. I don’t know whether it’s because they don’t understand the science/statistics involved or because they do and know they stand on slippery ground with bad footing. Either way, the effect is the same.
Comments like #271 are prima facie evidence of their behavior. Not only does it make disparaging comments about specific individuals, but also disparages Steve M and nearly everone else here via the association fallacy.
Boris, here’s a clue for you. You won’t win any converts to your position with the type of posts that you make. If your goal is to poison the well, that’s not going to work either. Since there is no logical reason for you to continue to make them, either argue the science or go away.
273
Boris. I’m sorry I referred to you as “Alice” As an old Rocky and Bullwinkle
fan I should have said “Natascha”. I have a spare sense of humor than I can loan you.
but if you break it, then you will have to buy it.
Seriously. You mentioned that we should find a site where AC units impaired the record.
Did you look at Santa Rosa? if you didnt look, why not?
Now, why did I ask you to Draw the curve for Tmin at Santa Rosa.
1. Experience with data is a good thing.
2. You get to draw the graph. ( I wanted to see if you could do this without
making mistakes… i wanted to compare your performance to Kristens performance…)
So, you minced about and won’t draw the curve. Bravo bruce.
You got a license? Aww, wait… I’m glad I don’t, actually. Too much responsibility since you’d then have legal implications for the claims you make. They should require licenses for those setting and using these sites. At least then there’d be legal responsibility to make sure the standards and methods are properly adhered to.
Mark
It’s called sicence. If you’re not interested in doing it, then don’t complain if no one takes you seriously.
280:
You do realize your premise falls apart when you use the corrected data, don’t you?
279:
Huh? CA has chosen to place Maunder and Motl and World Climate Report in its “resources” sidebar. This implies that they think those “resources” have value. Since those “resources” have no scientific value and are in fact quite wrong on many, many things, it is only reasonable to question the site that legitimizes those “resources.”
In other words, if I ask you for a good resaurant and you say “Taco Bell,” then I get to form an opinion on your views of fine dining.
But, if you want to defend Michaels and talk about the Chilingar paper, I suppose it would be interesting. Go on….
re 282
Read “Proofs and Refutations” by Imre Lakatos or “Againat Method” by Paul Feyerabend. You made a statement in the philosophy and sociology of science tht is incorrect.
re 282 and 283
I was going to add the onservation that such a statement would not survive peer review but I forgot
#282 No, it’s not called science, it’s called changing the subject. You commented asking if a change in data after an air conditioner is installed can be determined, and then when asked to answer your own question yourself by comparing 10 with and 10 without, then you ask back for a peer reviewed paper on the comparison. But if you’re not interested in if there’s a change in data or not and won’t do it, don’t complain if no one takes you seriously.
By the way, you also answered charges of using guilt by association from #279 by doing it again.
I’m not the one claiming the network is invalidated. You guys do the work. Why do you want others to do work for you? It couldn’t be so that you could sit back munching Cheetos and poking holes. Start comparing. If your results are significant, I suggest you publish them and contribute to our understanding of the world.
You don’t seem to grasp the difference between guilt by association and guilt by recommendation.
Don’t feed the troll.
I’m not claiming it’s invalidated either. But it’s not validated, regardless. Immaterial. They don’t have the guidelines for fun. If there is a reason to have them, there’s a reason to follow them. That the people running it don’t know is bad, and I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt that they don’t know.
Do the A/Cs make a difference? Maybe. As many of them as there are, it’s silly and illogical to think at least some of them don’t. How much? Need a bigger sample. Once that happens, we can either validate or invalidate the network. Or at least get rid of the bad data and see what’s at the bottom of the cup of coffee.
And it’s not just the A/C issue, there’s others, as I would guess you very well know. Again, if you care about it now, you do it. I don’t care, why would I do it? You asked the question and were told to answer it yourself, at which point you said the same thing back. Childish.
Yeah right. Tomato, tomato.
Boris,
You missed my question. My question was simple. What could YOU conclude from the 10 versus 10 study?
You responded that we should study 1 site. I did. Case closed for me. Siting on a roof amid a sea
of AC units corrupts the record. This is a conclusion supported by NOAA studies. This is the reason why
Sites are NOT SUPPOSED to be on roofs, not supposed to be by artifical heating sources.
Peer review will not change the NOAA data. When the site moved to the roof, TMIN spikes. Look for
yourself, you won’t go blind..eer blinder.
Last night Owl Gore gave a speech in which he declared that we have 10 years left to save humanity.
Dr. Curry, could you please list the reputable scientists who agree with that position?
287, I like feeding the troll. It’s fun.
289, That is so obvious, I don’t even know why we talk about it sometimes. 🙂
290, he’s been saying that for like 20 or 30 years I think.
Boris,
You don’t need a peer reviewed paper in order to point out problems in other people’s studies. That’s what they call science.
Provide evidence that the corrections are valid.
Care to provide proof that Motl et. al. have no credibility? I know that is what you want to believe, but belief ain’t science.
It’s not up to us to prove that the network is invalid.
It’s up to those who want to use the networks data, to prove that the network is valid.
The evidence that has been presented goes against any proof that the network is valid.
It is up to those who want to use the networks data to show that the problems that have been found do not taint the data.
That’s how science works.
No, MarkW. There are no facts, no truth, unless they appear in a peer-reviewed science journal. I know that this is true, because Boris told me this.
About the Santa Rosa station: the move is exactly what homogeneity adjustment is for. Here are the before and after charts.
#290 Mark, Al Gore’s statement is a political statement and not a scientific one. James Hansen was probably the first scientist to make a statement about “10 years”, although not exactly in the context that you state. What scientists can do is point out the risk associated global warming, it is up to politicians and society to decide what they actually want to do about it. James Hansen and a few others have gone beyond climate science per se and have been assessing relevant research regarding ecosystems, energy policy and energy usage, etc. It is certainly legitimate for a climate scientist to collaborate with other researchers in these errors to attempt to assess the complex issues surrounding global warming. The IPCC effort certainly has done this. The IPCC has clearly couched its conclusions in terms of probabilities and words such as “likely”. James Hansen and a few climate scientists have gone beyond the IPCC and have been “policy prescriptive.” It is up to politicians (of which Gore is one) and the public to decide how they want to use this information.
Judith,
I have been reluctant to ctitisise you as you are a scientist and I am not. As a lay person I rely on blogs like this and a great deal of reading to attempt to inform myself about AGW. For you to support Gore (and you are) I find it surprising to say the least. Gore is an idiot. I really don’t care if he is a politician or not, he is still an idiot. He is prepared to scare the s..t out of schoolchildren to promote AGW and which in turn feeds his own pocket via his companies involvement in Carbon Trading. Judith, wake up and smell the coffee and get back to science.
295, LOL. They moved the WRONG END OF THE CURVE UP, man! That is exactly why I smell a rat in all the “adjustments.”
Darnit, what I meant is that they adjusted the cold end of the curve upward, instead of adjusting the later warming years downward to account for the AC/UHI effects. That doesn’t make any sense to me.
I agree with 297. I am gobsmacked to see a good scientist defend Gore’s unbelievably stupid and exaggerated statements concerning AGW! Especially when the scientist writes in 232:
Either he doesn’t listen to his “staff of scientist/fact checkers,” or they are as far off base as he is (which is probable).
Dr. Curry, what you write makes sense (at least to me) However, the problem here is that none of these projections have anything backing them, at least nothing specific, to say that there is a probability of 25 or 50 or 10 or 90 or any percent. There’s no steak behind the sizzle. Not that everything that gets done is wrong or meaningless, but there is not much transparency to any of it. I don’t know, I just feel like my soup is an empty bowl, and I’m eating spoonfulls of air.
Or carbon dioxide, perhaps?
mosher,
You missed my question. Since GISS makes corrections for station moves, why are you using uncorrected data? (See 295)
Sam,
CA ENDORSES Motl and Byrnes and WCR. That is not guilt by association. If you think it is, please provide a source that descroibes GBA in terms of endorsement. Otherwise you misunderstand the very terms under discussion.
Look again. They did both.
So, if you don’t agree with the adjustment for Santa Rosa, do some research and improve it.
PS–anyone going to audit the early upward adjustment for Santa Rosa?
Re 302
Of course they adjusted both. They just centered it around the “correct” temperature of 14 deg!
How can you do research when there is no means of establishing the changes in micro-climate due to the lack of credible documentation?
303:
Good one.
They idnetify errors and remove them. If you’ve got a better way of doing it there’s a tenrued position for you somewhere I bet.
re: 299, and subsequent posts dealing with apparent “adjustments”:
Mostly a lurker here but this is most curious. Am I reading this correctly to think that Santa Rosa’s data was very recently adjusted as a direct result of the station survey, or this thread, even? More important: If true, is that representative of policy? And, again, if both are true, is this a concession that the microsite data may be flawed / biased? And, finally, perhaps most important, what methodology or algorithm was used for the adjustment, and how has it been validated?
One question that I have for Dr. Curry is how many scientists set out to prove things like AGW simply because it fits their world view. In other words, how many people become scientists in order to help ‘save the whales,’ or whatever.
Also, I generally describe scientists as welfare babies because they often get their funding from government. They live in a socialist world, in a way. One would think that many scientists would be left of center politically, simply because of this fact. They have to think of ways to keep their funding going, but they generally don’t have to answer to anyone but their “peers.” What is your opinion of this view?
Re: #300
Comments like this?
“Gore advised the audience to compare the blue orb of the Earth to Venus, where daytime temperatures reach 867 degrees Fahrenheit and it rains sulphuric acid. The two planets have the same amount of carbon, Gore explained, but Venus’ just happens to be in the atmosphere, while most of the Earth’s is still locked underground. “The habitability of this planet for human beings really is at risk,” he said.”
http://www.aspendailynews.com/article_20762
re 302.
Well, I start with the USHCN source data same as GISS does. GISS makes adjustments. They don’t document
the adjustment they dont explain the adjustment they dont provide code for the adjustment. They just publish
a list of numbers without explanation.
So, why would I merely take their word for it. I will give you an example. Take the site at Orland.
The site has not moved in 100 years. The site has been in a feild for 100 years. What does GISS do
with this site? and what does it say about trusting their undocumented methods? well have a look.
the giss adjustment LOWERS the temp in this rural loaction by 1.1C ( in 1900) and then
linearly adjusts this so that in the current day the temp is lowered by .1C.
Get it. they lower it more in the past and less in the present. With no explaination.
this effectively gives the site a warming trend ( cool the past more than the present)
What this effectively does when you look at trend is WARM the site. For EXAMPLE,
if the TMEAN were 14C in 1900 and 14C in 2000, they lower the 1900 figure to 12.9C
and lower the 2000 figure to 13.9. lower the temp, but warming the site over time.
So the trend for the site goes from nothing to positive. Now, the site didnt move.
There is no UHI. The adjustment is not explained anywhere in any paper, notes, code,
etc etc etc.
Pretty sneaky. Not science. THerefore I doubt.
If you want another example, look at the adjustments for NYC made by Jones.
Now, if Hansen releases the code for doing the adjustments and the site by explainations
then we can check his work. Until such time his adjustment is not science. I might as well
read numbers from the phone book.
Now, HAnsen does make adjustment for elevation changes ( I believe he uses a lapse rate of 1C per km
something like that. it in his paper. ) So, I would expect he made the adjustment for the 7 foot
change in elevation. But his metadata does not have codes for being on a roof amid AC units.
Perhaps he adjusted for it. He should provide the code and the method he used.
Ok, I see. Please disregard my post #305.
re 302.
Oh one more thing Boris. At the GISS site you only get Tmean and you only get monthly data.
So, I like to start with daily data (USHCN) and look at Tmin and Tmax. Especially for a roof top location
I think looking at Tmin is especially important. But I also want to look at TMAx, to see if the
heat exhaust would drive the temp. Daily data is especially important ( AC prolly wont operate on a cold day
ya think) so, if you want to study the effect of AC units, I’m thinking daily Tmax and Tmin
Are the best starting point. And probably best to start with raw data. Then, assuming you found an effect
you would look at the adjustments. See?
So, perhaps you can point me to the daily GISS data for Tmin and TMax. It could be out there.
Also the incremental adjustments and rationale for each. Audit.
Re #296, Judith Curry
I assume that ‘errors’ is a typo for ‘areas’.
On the other hand …
re 302. Boris.
Ok, I broke down and looked at the undocumented GISS adjustments.
The sensor moved to the roof. The adjustment ADDS temperature to the raw record.
So, I guess they think that putting a sensor on a rooftop with AC units around, means the
Site gets cooler, so the raw readings have to be adjusted up.
Makes sense.
next.
With a deep regret I see that this web site, being of incredible asset to the public, degrades to the level of trailer-park domestic argument.
I believe that people defending scientific purity should not be dragged into discussion of proper name-calling (skeptic, denialist, or alarmist), responding to silly arguments having no interest to thousands of readers, or lowering themselves to personal attacks or meaningless rhetorics. AGW proponents will beat you by shear experience in this kind of discussion.
From my experience in blogosphere I find some principals significantly increasing authority of my posts. Just ask yourself before hitting “submit” button:
Does my post contain valuable non-trivial information?
Does anybody care about my unsubstantiated opinion?
Does my critique of somebody contain enough irony?
Did I wait for 2 hours min before posting emotional reply?
Should the frustrating post be honored by my reply?
One more thing: you can claim that argument is stupid, data is corrupt, conclusion is speculative, article is politically motivated, but you should never call your opponent dumb, corrupt, speculative, or politically motivated. Leave it to AGW promoters.
P.S. Never post after glass of vino. Print and save for posting next morning.
#306, David
I can give you my answer to this question from the perspective of a UK academic. Most of us get most of our research funding from the UK research councils. In the case of atmospheric work this will usually be the NERC. However, we don’t just get given the money. We have to submit our research proposals into a competition with other people’s proposals. This is a tough competition. In the last NERC standard grant round the overall success rate for funding was 16%, i.e., 84% of proposals were rejected and not funded. Research funding is therefore fiercely competitive and not an automatic handout. The selection is made on the basis of scientific excellence, the prior track record of the applicants and fit to the research council’s strategic priorities. Those priorities are determined and regularly revised through consultation with the scientific community and government. We are thus answerable to both our peers and government (through the research council) in the sense that if we don’t deliver we will not get funded in future. The “welfare baby” idea doesn’t apply particularly well because of the competition of ideas. Similar systems operate in the US.
Judith,
So when a scientist says something that is blatantly untrue, we just wave it away as a political statement.
So how are us mere mortals supposed to know when a “scientist” is making “political statements” ie, lying through his teeth, and when they are stating things that they know to be true.
In my world, once someone has been caught making lies, their credibility is shot.
I guess in the AGW world, it’s OK to lie, so long as your lies are in service of the movement.
I guess this is why guys like Svensmark have so much trouble getting their research funded. Finding things that cast doubt on the AGW consensus is not on anyone’s “agenda”.
Pete
You are certainly correct about the competetive influence on research funding.
The weakness of course is that the money frequently gets focussed towards ‘trendy’ areas of research, and therefore increases the risk of the conclusions coming first and then the data being written up in a manner to fit the conclusions.
I know from when I did my PhD, much of the research money in geology was being directed to research linked to dinosaur extinction. It amazed me how some perfectly valid research would get linked to extinctions by the most tenuous means.
RE #318
Ian, some climate science papers have impressed me in the same way. I’ve seen well-reasoned papers suddenly take a logical leap in an attempt to connect to AGW.
My conclusion was that they might be doing that for funding purposes – they sold the research idea as something connected to AGW in order to get it approved, then feel compelled to insert a standard paragraph saying, “yes, it’s AGW” into the paper, even though the body of the research doesn’t solidly support that conclusion.
Steve Sadlov, among the 2007 weather oddities is this ongoing weakness in the ITCZ. I was surprised yesterday when I checked the satellite photos and saw the lack of activity almost worldwide, compared to recent years.
Yes it is. It’s adjusted due to changes in time of obsevration.
Boris,
You had been claiming that the adjustments covered the station move and other microsite issues.
Now you are admiting that the only adjustments are for the time of day issue?
re 321.
The TOBS adjustments can be found in USHCN files. well documented
Basicaly Boris you have not looked for yourself.
The issue is not the TOBS adjustments. The issue is the GISS HOMOGENIETY adjustments.
I will give you two examples.
Orland, CA. you can view the site history on line and the photos on line.
1. no moves.
2. Rural
3. No microsite issues.
The homogeneity adjustment imputed a warming trend to the site. in a linear fashion from 1900 on.
The raw data is already TOBS adjusted. Homogeniety comes on top of this. So, to make ORLAND CA
homogeneous, the adjustment gives the ste a warming trend of 1C since 1900.
Now, this is done by cooling the site mre inthe past than in the present.
Now Santa Rosa. The “raw data” ( which includes TOBS adjustments) Shows a linear trend of .0208C
from 1900 to present. The undocumented homogeneity adjustment Increases this trendline to .0212C
The adjustment decreases R2 as well. So from 1900 to the present the homogeniety adjustment adds
temperature to the raw data ( AFTER TOBS adjustment) and it adds a temperature TREND as well.
When you look at these adjustments you will find a consistent practice: a linear addition ( sometimes
broken into two segments) of WARMING TREND. The underlying data ( actual temps) can be cooled (Orland)
or warmed ( santa rosa) but the consistent thing is the TREND of the adjustment is a warming one.
This creates a positive anomaly map. The warming you see in the land record is baked into the data
via these undocumented homogeniety adjustments.
So, our question remains. When will NASA release the code they used to do the homogeniety adjustments.
It’s simple. Release the code. We check the numbers. we confirm or disconfirm. Until then I withhold
my consent
#317 MarkW
Not necessarily. The research councils I have had dealings with are always looking for new work that can challenge orthodoxies – that way lies Nobel prizes and high-impact science. Nobody wants to fund treadmill “more of the same” work. In the UK, PPARC/STFC has formally identified solar variability and climate as one of its ten fundamental “big questions” (see http://www.so.stfc.ac.uk/roadmap/). The question “How does the Sun affect the Earth?” specifically states:
Knowledge of how solar energy is transferred to the Earth, and in particular how variations in solar output produces changes in our climate, is therefore essential to predict our future.
This enthusiasm to look for non-CO2 drivers of climate change is at odds with any suggestion that work challenging CO2/AGW doesn’t get supported, and in my experience on funding panels we never rejected an application because we had an agenda. In fact, the new Lockwood and Frolich paper on solar variability would probably have been supported by PPARC money awarded precisely because it addressed these questions.
re 315
I can tell you how it worked in one government sponsored “research council” that I worked with. There was one academic who was considered to be the founder of the field and is mentioned in all the textbooks written on it. He dominated the group and could and did move to eliminate funding to anyone who disagreed with his views. Privately everyone knew and said that his views were twenty years out of date and unworkable. However no one dared to brook him publicly because this could very well end one’s career. He did try to have my funding eliminated several times simply because my methods approached the problem in a different way. However my funding sources were quite aware of his practices and ignored him. This was unfortunately not the case for other people ‘€” one senior and well-respected professor with a long publishing record, that I knew, fell afoul of him.
I am constantly surprised when people “debate” the science in “An Inconvenient Truth”. There is very little science in the movie. I invite you all to watch it again (my wife couldn’t sit through his posturing) to see what I mean. I have watched it twice and was struck both times with how little Gore actually attributes to AGW. What Gore did was show events and disasters and allowed the viewer to connect it to AGW though it is not expicitly stated. Gore does not say in the movie Katrina was a result of AGW, nor that all of the receding glaciers are a result of AGW. But he craftily let the viewer think there is a “scientific” connection. The vast majority of the movie consists of shots of AL Gore in profile gazing at landscapes and stories of his family and youth; not science.
The most puzzling thing about the movie to me is: we know that glaciers retreat and advance naturally, and have done so forever, therefore would it be environmentally ethical to try to change that if the current receding glaciers were not due to AGW?
#302
Yeah, whatever. If you’re not actually saying something like “denialists like Maunder and Motl and World Climate Report are in the resources section, therefore this site is dubious.” here, I don’t know what else you could be saying. Call it what you want. Potato, potato.
re 298, JAE.
Moving the wrong end of the chart.
Jae to get a sense of this you cant just look at the plot. You have to download the data.
Use Excell if you have nothing else.
Download the raw. Download the Homogenized.
Now be careful because there will be missing months.
Then difference the homogenized versus the Raw. What you wil see is a series of “adjustments”
made over time. Sometimes these adjustments follow a distinct stairstep function like
so -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -.9, -.9 -.9 -.9 -.9 -.8 etc etc
So the site is cooled in absolute terms but WARMED in trend. This hits the anomaly map.
Othertimes ( like with santa rosa) the adjustments reduce the peaks and valleys.
So for santa rosa you have adjustments going back to 1900 that effectively smooth the raw curve.
The critical thing is the TREND of the adjustment. So from 1900 on santa roas is adjusted ( roughly)
UP. the adjustment looks like a random walk from 1900 to present varying between .6C and 1.4C.
The values change year to year ( unlike Tobs adjusts, and site move adjusts ) The critical
thing is BIAS in the adjustment. That is, if you look at the trend of Raw it is .0208
After adjustment the curve of Tmean gets its spikes damped, but the damping IMPOSES an additional
.0004C of warming.
It might be an interesting test to look at all the trend lines of homogeneity adjustments.
That is, Trend of Tmean(adj)-Tmean(raw). If the trend of this difference is POSITIVE, then the adjustments
have baked in a warming trend.
ANECDOTALLY, every site I have looked at has had a warming TREND baked in by the adjustment.
1. Cool the past more than the present.
2. Warm the past less than the present.
Basically the homogeneity adjustment is a linear addition or subtraction from the first recrd
to the current day. I’m wondering what the distribution of slope is for these linear additions.
#310 I doubt he really cares beyond making snide comments.
To what you said, if all we have is Tmean, and it’s only monthly, there’s no real way to see what if anything the A/C does. Besides Tmin and Tmax, I’d think you’d need at least hourly data (I’m not sure what frequency the measurements are taken, or if it’s even a universal number) if not an even greater resolution.
Then you’d have to correlate the temperatures to periods when the A/C may be on or off, cycling or not, etc, compared to the measurements and what they do. It could be that at one reading, the wind would blow the air into the thermometer and another one away from it, and another into it but faster/slower. Different A/C units might blow hoter or colder air, ambient temperature may be greater or less than the A/C air even if it is blowing on it. Take for example, what if it’s winter and the thing is a heat pump, or the building and/or site is such that the A/C runs in the winter versus one where it doesn’t?
The trick is also taking into account any paving or materials nearby (depending on what it is; pea gravel, concrete, stone, asphault, brick, wood, metal, plastic, grass, dirt, water, vegetation, etc) and what effect it has compared to the temperature, time of day, if the sun is out or not (cloudy, overcast, time of day), humidity and if it’s raining or snowing or windy or calm, wind direction and speed if windy, elevation and so on and factor it out or in or whatever. You have to keep all the other variables known before you can really do anything with the unknown, at least accurately.
Sounds rather difficult to do without a lot more measurements of different things to go along with the A/C, and at least hourly readings. (I’d have to say also, a “perfect site” right next to it for comparision” but I can’t because doing a controlled experiment, that would be crazy!)
#326,
This is a standard tactic, publicized in “How To Win Campaigns” (by Chris Rose). It’s called the Self-Validating Proposition. It is recommended without caution as a tactic for “progressive” political campaigners.
The game requires three elements:
observations A and B which are related: all A’s are B
proposition X (the one you care about) which need not be related to A or B but it must be in the ballpark.
“X is true because all A’s are B.”
It’s easy, it’s fun — and it’s very convincing to the vastly gullible public!
RE 329.
Sam. you think like an engineer. Engineers have to design things that work.
Let me draw a distinction.
1. A scientist would look at the data from the climate network and wonder how he could write
a paper explaining how knowledge could be extracted from the noise. I respect that.
2. An engineer will look at the siting of stations and tell you to fix the damn network or he will not stand
behind the data until you do.
One writes papers.the other builds things.
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. They ENDORSE those sites by linking them.
#332 Boris
Endorse? That’s a leap! Did you notice that RealClimate is linked too? There is no need to protect the people on this site, the way that RC seems to protect the fragile minds on theirs.
RE: #306 – I did. I got bitten by the Ecotopia bug back while I was still in high school. Between growing up in SF burbs where leftie polity ran amok, combined with the rising new ageism, combined with that same old Greenpeace indoctrination film about the Harp Seal clubbers, I decided to major in something that would get me into nature and would allow me to chose a school in an area where I could find like minded folks. I got accepted to Cal, UCSB and UCSC. I chose SB in order to say I left the hood and was not a momma’s boy (LOL!). There, I wasted my undergrad years in a perpatual state of conflict due to being part of the 15% of geology majors who had a Greenie POV. (I’m sure the percentage has shot way up, but realize that as of the early 1980s, geology was still dominated by less-than-Green folk). It was not until years later that I started to question the orthodox Green POV. I still embrace selected aspects of it, but as many have seen here and elsewhere, I spend lots of time mano a mano with the likes of Bloom, Halpern, Schmidt, etc. I think in my case, doing my Grad work in Eng instead of Science may have been a factor. Also, just a lot of happenstance resulted in me getting burned out on the whole Green / Left thing for a variety of reasons.
I might add that outside of class at SB, of course I did not really hang out with Geology majors. Mostly, I hung out with Bio, Env Sci, and Liberal Arts majors. No surprise there.
RE: #320 – I picked up on that from the get go. That was factored into my low ball bet. 😉
#331 Thank you Mr. Moser. I don’t know why some people are not interested in really finding out if the data we have is valid data. It’s almost as though for all the talk of science, they’re not interested in science.
#332 And if that’s what you’re say, Boris, you are attempting GBA. And some people have things incorrectly, but that doesn’t necessarily invalidate everything they do, regardless if you think so or not.
#333 Exactly. They’re links to sites on the subject. Viewpoints. Do they all have some sort of value? Probably some sort. I agree; Endorsements?
Kristen, some suggestions. You should:
A) Remove the incorrect CO2 line from your graph; it’s incorrect and doesn’t belong on there still. Along with it, remove the information about the incorrect line from the UPDATE section, you fixed it, neither belongs.
B) Remove the 2nd UPDATE once you remove the first one. It doesn’t need it. Nobody cares there used to be an error, and the details are not important.
C) Get a spreadsheet or graphing program, the data, and graph it yourself. Or if you create the line with a transparant background, you can overlay it. You probably need an image editing progrma also.
D) You are missing the data in the right margin that shows the CO2 line is the radiative forcing for CO2 rather than the 285 to 385 ppmv rise. As it is, it’s incomplete, there’s no scale and no explanation.
E) Remove the wording about the temperature graph can no longer be trusted. That some of the sites are poorly sited, and have issues such as buildings, parking lots, AC units and the like doesn’t prove anything, there are not enough samples of the stations to see if the data has been invalidated or not, regardless if it tends to. It would be better to say that these issues at the least casts doubt on the measurements and further investigation is required. Give the information and let people come to conclusions on their own.
#331,
I beg to differ, scientists build things that work first. Then they publish.
332. Endorsing by linkage?
Is that your criteria?
In that case Realclimate.org Endorses Pielke.
And he endorses Watts,
And Watts endorses CA,
And CA endorses Motl.
So, RC endorses Motl.
QED.
Linking is SOCIAL. If you liked reading this, you might like reading that.
re 339.
Which partical physics guy ran the CNC machine? Just kidding.
Boris re: Poonder the Maunder
I advocated linking Ponder the Maunder, because I believe the site to be useful. The site is clearly useful as a primer to those who wander into this site new to the controversy. This site can be very daunting to someone who hasn’t been following M&M since 2003. I believe PTM is useful if not absolutely perfect. An Absolute Perfection standard would leave an empty sidebar and would lead to the deletion of your posts as we would not want anyone to assume that the failure to delete your posts as an endorsement. My posts would also vanish. And we’d have to hunt down and burn ever copy of AIT. If you wish to argue that PTM is not useful, feel free to do so, but I will be free to ignore your blatherings.
typos are also a marker for an absence of perfection. Sigh.
#339: Not all scientists build things. Not all scientists publish. If a scientist engineers something, aren’t they an engineer also?
It’s like the what is a “climate scientist” question. Somebody involved in climate matters using science?
If I drive a truck to work, am I a truck driver?
hahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahaa
Seriously, it takes a village.
Yeah, I don’t know what I’m trying to say either.
Lighten up, Francis.
So if you enjoy reading CA, you’ll also enjoy these wrongheaded theories. That’s your argument? Okay.
RE 344 .. Sam I guess my distinction was aimed at exposing tendencies or extremes.
Re#346
Very revealing and disgusting feature of AGW movement is conscious policy to eliminate public exposure to alternative opinion. “Do not read this web site it is wrong”, “forbid airing of this movie, it is misleading”, “do not listen to this denialists, they are on Big Oil payroll”, etc.
In fact, it means that they understand very well that exposure to critique will ruin their theories. AGW theory and built-on ideology just can not stand-up to the facts, data, and their proper interpretation. Hence the attempt to shield the public from “wrong and misleading” information.
Such technique is well too familiar to me, who lived most of his life under the blanket of totalitarian ideology of former Soviet Empire.
#346
Boris, what part of “a genuinely open thinking person wants to hear all the sides of an issue from the original sources” do you not understand?
Honest scientists link to all data, even the data they disagree with.
So, telling someone not to read Motl because he has no idea what he is talking about regarding CO2 is equal to the USSR?
Am I Hitler if I tell someone the Flat Earth Society is wrong on the science?
Ok, lets get back on track with the scope of this thread please, or I’ll have to purge again.
I am indeed grateful for your offer to do my reading and thinking for me. However, some of these readings are not always 100% wrong about everything. Even the Flat Earth Society had some wisdom to it. I quote from Wiki (with the word “Climate” added by me):
If you want to discuss the issues themselves in an intelligent fashion, I will listen. If you tell me what I should or shouldn’t read in an arrogant and condescending fashion, then I agree with Andrey.
Sorry, Anthony, I didn’t see your post until after I replied. Purge if you feel it is OT.
Or even address such a conclusion. A reference to the fact of AGW appears out of the blue like a Statement of Faith in many papers.
351: Borissssssss:
You said, “So, telling someone not to read Motl because he has no idea what he is talking about regarding CO2 is equal to the USSR?”
Can you please explain why you think Motl has no idea what he is talking about? What an undefensible position you have now placed yourself in. LOL.
Boris:
Try to understand that trashing Flat Earth Society is one thing, and shutting down their web site is completely another. But probably you would not appreciate the difference, being born and living in a free world and having no idea how totalitarian ideology is used to be forced down the throat.
#320,
I noticed the same thing when looking at various GOES shots. The near equatorial trough (ITCZ) is fairly quiet -esp in the West PAC. It would be interesting to hear from the folks at either the JTWC or Hurricane Center. I’m sure the AGW proponents would argue that the North Atlantic really doesn’t get going until August (which is true), but normally the West PAC has at least 1 to 2 Tropical Storms forming every 48-96 hours.
#332. Boris, CA links to a number of sites that discuss climate issues, including realclimate and other sites that are highly critical of climateaudit. Linking to these sites does not constitute an endorsement. Likewise, I’ve linked to some sites that have supported views expressed here. Again, by linking to those sites, I do not endorse the views expressed at those sites. Similarly posters, including yourself, are free to express their views here and I do not endorse those views. I do not have time to specifically agree or disagree with individual posts.
#359
Boris knows all this. He is simply distracting attention from the main point of the thread. Look at how many posts have been directed his way, rather than continuing to discuss the point of this blog entry.
#347 Yeah I got that, j/k a bit. You know, the whole ‘literal’ thing. 🙂
#359 Steve don’t worry, it’s just Boris logic.
Boris,
If he is wrong, then it should be trivial to prove it.
Your declaring him wrong carries no weight. Especially given how many times you have been proven wrong.
Anthony and Kristen, I don’t know how I missed an obvious comment on this before: MBH98 and, even more remarkably Mann et al 2007, uses precipitation data from Paris, France for this gridcell – which I summarized: The rain in Maine falls mainly in the Seine. A remarkable teleconnection!
Re #363
Actually it falls mainly in the Loire, not that far away though. 😉
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