matt, you have just applied the Central Limit Theorem. In doing so, you assumed that each day’s high temperature independent of every other day’s high temperature.

When the observations may be correlated across time and/space, this naive application of the CLT is not valid.

Disagree. While I agree that there is day-to-day correlation between temps, we need just strong guarantee that there will be 0.25 degree (half the rounding error) of change between the days. Browsing temps at weather underground shows that we have that in spades. Once you can be very certain that you’ll have at least a 0.25 degree of variability between the highs of two days, then I’d assert you can treat each day as random.

Of course, you could crank something out in excel in 5 minutes to prove me wrong.

I haven’t read it, but I doubt they were named; it doesn’t seem anyone leaves much of an audit trail. It seems to me to be akin to other non-replicatable and vague (in some or all ways) studies and surveys:

…by analyzing 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords “climate change” (9).

9. The first year for which the database consistently published abstracts was 1993. Some abstracts were deleted from our analysis because, although the authors had put “climate change” in their key words, the paper was not about climate change.

We know what happened to the person that tried to replicate it, given the errors and omissions in that paragraph and vagueness of the note.

I have been unable to find the list.

What we do know is that with 231 stations surveyed, I have yet to see an Urban site located
in a cool park. maybe the next 990 will be situated as Parker described.

That was my next argument.

I think Anthony’s project addresses THREE issues.

1. Prior claims of proper siting. Previous studies have relied on or claimed that the sites meet standards.
Anthony’s study puts these claims INTO QUESTION. they may survive the question, but the Onus is on
them to prove it. I view this as an extension of the Peilke Davey paper and a challenge to the
criticisms of it. Like you said, P &D were criticized on the basis of limited sampling. Watts el at
is a rational response to that criticsm of P&D.

2. Potential Bias in the land record. This is obviously the issue that causes all the heat and publicity.
One issue that must annoy the AGW folks is the drip drip drip of site corruption. The longer
the project takes the more drip drip drip. A smart opponent would get the photo job done as quickly
as possible, and not engage in Nixonian stonewalling. A smart opponent would take charge of the
re analysis and get on the offensive and not send rabbetts to engage in a proxy war.

3. Provide quality sites that the CRN can be coordinated with. Currently the CRN plan is to link the
CRN sites to the nearest neighbor in the historical network. They should consider the nearest
quality site.

It is then up to the person being audited to prove that the failed site had been fixed and that all other sites had been examined and that they do not suffer from the same problems.

“their results do not show that a large number of USHCN stations have a comparable exposure problem”

and at the same time Karl had photographs of all the stations in his possession. Pielke is now trying to obtain copies of these photos.

First they stated:

the USHCN database could definitely benefit from improved site exposure documentation. Under ideal conditions, this new documentation would meet the high standards set forth by Davey and Pielke (2005).

So when you comments by people criticizing the efforts to document stations, keep in mind that the new documentation at surfacestations.org is trying to meet or exceed the “high standards” of Davey and Peilke 2005 – standards endorsed by USHCN itself in an “ideal” world.

They also threw a type of gauntlet at Davey and Pielke saying that they had not demonstrated poor sites anywhere other than eastern Colorado:

Furthermore, their analysis was a static assessment of site exposures over a relatively small part of the country, an area within which station exposures varied considerably. In other words, their results do not show that a large number of USHCN stations have a comparable exposure problem,

Ordinary businesses, confronted with the defects in eastern Colorado identified in 2005, would have done their own survey to ensure that other sites didn’t have such exposure problems. NOAA negligently failed to do so. Anthony and others are showing what Vose et al 2005 challenged: a large number of stations do have comparable exposture problems – actually many are worse.