29 Geoff Sherrington says:
June 10th, 2008 at 1:38 am
[....]The persistence of bodies like ICOAD deserves admiration. I equate them to those who have saved ancient and antique treasures through periods of conflict. It will be valuable to see how much SST can be reconstructed with confidence.

ICOAD certainly has a lot to offer in the way of historical weather records, which is why I have often urged its use in this forum for many years past. However, I am more than a little concerned by any inappropriate usage of these records to sustain arguments while blithely disregarding some very serious limitations in their accuracy and reliability. The observational weather records contain many entirely bogus observations in addition to the observations which have systematic errors. Present users are failing to heed warnings about such problems with these bogus records and their potential effects on the analyses and adjustments of the data series. Simply put, people are formulating conclusions while using data that was faked at the date of collection in addition to any additional faults added at the present time. This is why I must continue to treat these efforts to wring fractional differences out of such faulty data with a certain degree of disgust at such foolishness. My reaction is not unlike the comments made by some coal miners I know who have voiced their contempt of some young mining engineers who fail to understand how a mining tunnel doesn’t end-up in quite the place the mining engineer wrongly believed it should. Real world operations often do not conform to the rules and expectations of people who like to believe they are experts, while the people doing the day to day work know better from experience.

Yes, I agree with you that this is OT – to an extent. You raised the “boom and bust” point of government management.

As one who worked mainly in private enterprise, I have opinions and examples about how Government regulation of private enterprise is/is not a good thing and how much we should trust highly placed official bodies, be they IPCC or whomever. A priori, I see no reason to discriminate on quality grounds between SST temps from navies and private operators, if there developed an inclination to do so.

The persistence of bodies like ICOAD deserves admiration. I equate them to those who have saved ancient and antique treasures through periods of conflict. It will be valuable to see how much SST can be reconstructed with confidence.

Climate Audit is becoming increasingly important among those I know. The frequecy of prima facie errors in matters raised by CA is greater than I am accustomed to.

26 Geoff Sherrington says:

June 8th, 2008 at 3:09 am
Re # 21 D Patterson

As I read, the Chief of Staff, Mosely, and the Secretary for Defense, Wynne, were asked to resign the other day. Some of the reasons?

The service inadvertently shipped “four high-tech electrical nosecone fuses for Minuteman nuclear warheads were [t]o Taiwan in place of helicopter batteries. The mistake was discovered in March — a year and a half after the erroneous shipment,” The New York Times reports. “The mishandling of the nosecone fuses was viewed as another indication of lack of discipline within America’s nuclear infrastructure, and was another embarrassment for the people in charge of those weapons.”

Last fall, the Air Force’s 5th Bomb Wing lost track of six nuclear warheads. (They were in a B-52 flying across USA). Then, in mid-May, the service flunked a nuclear surety inspection, when security personnel couldn’t even be bothered to stop playing videogames on their cellphones. Now, it looks like Moseley and Wynne has some serious time to play with themselves.”

The substantive reason for the resignations was Gates’ desire to end Air Force opposition to an eroding investment in the F-22 Raptor program and other programs devoted to strategic deterrence versus short-term tactical operations with UAV aircraft in the GWOT. The performance related incidents supplied good reasons to request the resignationss without getting into the real and greater substantive issues. Although this is all related to the problems typically found in budget battles and performance issues related to limitations of resources, it appears to be veering sharply off-topic from the issue of competence of an international political organization to plan and conduct planetary engineering projects and determining sea surface temperatures as a measure of the planetary heat condition and capacity.

henry says:

June 7th, 2008 at 10:49 am
D. Patterson (23)
[....]
A change in flag would not have changed the reasons for the measurements of SST. They may have changed the method used (ship crews would have performed the measurements they were most familiar with), but not the reason for taking them.

A change in flag and/or a change in ownership often did change the reasons for measuring sea surface temperatures (SST), due to the differences in attitudes towards participation in the Voluntary Observing Ships (VOS) projects Likewise, changes in command had its effect upon crew performance. Since only a fraction of the world’s fleet of merchant ships ever participated in the VOS projects contributing to the ICOADS database, merchant ships participating in the projects constantly changed, and command and crews constantly changed, the methods used and accuracies used to collect the SST data correspondingly changed in accuracy and reliability in unobserved and unreported ranges of error.

Ships’ crews are in a state of constant change and retraining, and their performance standards with respect to the accuracy of SST measurements have only been hypothesized and estimated. There is no present means of obtaining an actual measure of performance accuracy applicable to the majority of the ICOAD observations of SST.

As I read, the Chief of Staff, Mosely, and the Secretary for Defense, Wynne, were asked to resign the other day. Some of the reasons?

The service inadvertently shipped “four high-tech electrical nosecone fuses for Minuteman nuclear warheads were [t]o Taiwan in place of helicopter batteries. The mistake was discovered in March — a year and a half after the erroneous shipment,” The New York Times reports. “The mishandling of the nosecone fuses was viewed as another indication of lack of discipline within America’s nuclear infrastructure, and was another embarrassment for the people in charge of those weapons.”

Last fall, the Air Force’s 5th Bomb Wing lost track of six nuclear warheads. (They were in a B-52 flying across USA). Then, in mid-May, the service flunked a nuclear surety inspection, when security personnel couldn’t even be bothered to stop playing videogames on their cellphones. Now, it looks like Moseley and Wynne has some serious time to play with themselves.

I agree, re-flagging was probably done for convenience of the owners, either for taxes or avoidance of certain laws.

But remember, just as the surface stations were set to monitor local contitions and not perform climate research, then so were the SST temps (taken to determine settings for ship performance, or to monitor weather, and not perform climate research).

A change in flag would not have changed the reasons for the measurements of SST. They may have changed the method used (ship crews would have performed the measurements they were most familiar with), but not the reason for taking them.

22 Martin J says:
June 7th, 2008 at 7:36 am
[....]
When a ship was “de-flagged” the officers still tended to be of the original nationality: I suspect there was little change in data quality post de-flagging.

It would be interesting to see what your impression is like after you’ve spoken to some of the folks who had routine cause to board, inspect, or survey these vessels and their crews. Among the many reasons why ships were reflagged is also the one in which ship owners regarded the U.S. maritime regulations and crew safety requirements to be too onerous.

Thanks for the comments and perhaps I was being a bit naive in expecting higher standard than what we appear to be getting. On reflection, the inconsistencies of the ocean records are simply a reflection of what has happened with the land records – bristlecone proxies et al- except it’s writ large.

With regards to the change over to flags of conveniece ( Re# 10 Edwards ) and Government attempts to manage their merchant marine, I believe only a few Governments (i.e Japanese )succeeded in this endevour. The Greeks were very successful in attracting this business post WW11. When a ship was “de-flagged” the officers still tended to be of the original nationality: I suspect there was little change in data quality post de-flagging.