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Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique
grypo - Christy's written testimony included the following (incorrect!) myths as his five summary points: (1) 'The recent “extremes” were exceeded in previous decades.' (2) Not as much warming as models predict. (3) Urban Heat Islands/bad surface records. Quoted Watts problematic draft, also see Temp record is unreliable. (4) Consensus reports misrepresentative of climate science. (5) CO2 is plant food, and CO2 limits will hurt the poor. No kidding - those really are points 1-5 of 5. Bring your shovel and some aspirin to read. -
Steven Sullivan at 06:44 AM on 2 August 2012Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique
McIntyre (listed as a co-author on Watts' paper) appears to be distancing himself from the paper: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/more-evidence-attention-grabbing-climate-studies-prematurely-rushed-and-potentially-flawed/2012/07/31/gJQAYJkCNX_blog.html "The blogosphere has quickly pointed out two problems with Watts’ estimates: 1) Independent satellite data - which Watts posts on his blog each month and has stood behind - indicate a warming over the U.S. closer to NOAA’s estimate. This point was raised by ClimateAudit blogger Steven McIntyre: “Over the continental US, the UAH satellite record shows a trend of 0.29 deg C/decade (TLT) from 1979-2008,” McIntyre said. Interestingly, McIntyre is listed as a co-author of the Watts paper but begins a blog post expressing “puzzlement at Anthony’s [Watts’press release] announcement”and qualifies his involvement as “very last minute and limited”. And he admits to not having “parsed” parts of the Watts study." . . . McIntyre also addressed [the TOB]problem: “There is a confounding interaction with TOBS [time of observation] that needs to be allowed for, as has been quickly and correctly pointed out.” Hmm, I wonder how long it's gonna take for everyone to get 'on message'. -
vrooomie at 06:43 AM on 2 August 2012Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique
JohnH@4: Though I tend to agree with you, I'd welcome Watt's contributions *IF* they were done in a true and concertedly scientific way. I'd posit that someone here, who may have some conection to Anthony, invite him to *politely* discuss Dana and Kevin's analysis, in the SkS spirit. As a working scientist, and having followed this WUWT kerfuffle (a honest-to-injun real sciency word, BTW!) for quite a few years, I have a high disregard for most of WUWT and its followers. That said, I'm reminded of a stone-cold denier, which whom I've been having email exchanges with for about 3 years now: Trust me when I say they did *not* start off nicely! However, through perserverance and ooodles (another sciency word!) of data submission, he is actually now a real skeptic, no longer a fake one. I was gracious, held my tongue (a ~difficult-for-me-to-do~ act, sometimes), and stayed on point. I'd welcome Watt's "conversion," especially if SkS was the vector it originated in! Today, Muller: Tomorrow.....;) -
dana1981 at 06:34 AM on 2 August 2012Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique
grypo @15 - yes, from what I heard Christy didn't mention the Watts results in his verbal testimony, but he does reference them in his written testimony. Really big no-no referencing unpublished, unreviewed results in congressional testimony. The same criticism could be applied to Muller when he told Congress about preliminary BEST results, but at least those results were pedestrian, just confirming what we already knew. Telling Congress that everything we thought we knew was wrong based on extremely preliminary results - that's simply unprofessional and wrong. -
dana1981 at 06:31 AM on 2 August 2012Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique
Ah it was in the backstory, thanks KR. That mindset - 'we knew it must be there, even though not shown in the data, so we went looking for it in other data' can be problematic, and we're seeing the results here. dhogaza - we're in agreement. Doing the analysis properly with the reclassification scheme would be worth a paper. It's not going to yield an earth-shattering result if they do it right (in fact it will almost certainly be a marginal difference), but useful nonetheless. -
grypo at 06:27 AM on 2 August 2012Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique
Oh joy, co-author John Christy is reporting the results of Watts 12 to Congress, knowing the large issues. Wow. -
Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique
dana1981 - From the Backstory on the new surfacestations paper:After Muller could not find strong signal that we knew must be there by physics of heat sinks…and neither could we in Fall et al 2011, we went looking, and discovered the new Leroy 2010 classification system and WMO ISO approval. ...
(Emphasis added) -
dhogaza at 06:20 AM on 2 August 2012Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique
"Dana... Even if they clearly find that there is no influence from station siting, that is still useful information to know." Other people have shown this, of course. Watts has re-classified stations according to the latest WMO standards which have only been adopted in the last year or so (or claims to have done so, he's not revealed his algorithm for doing so). Publshing on the result of the re-classification is marginally interesting and worth a paper, I should think. Of course, the conclusion, "homegenization gives a false inflated trend" doesn't follow from the work done in the paper, as he simply asserts it. -
dana1981 at 06:19 AM on 2 August 2012Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique
KR and Rob - exactly. There's a new methodology out there to classify temperature stations, and I'd like to know if it makes any difference in UHI adjustments or the temp record in general. As you note, even if it doesn't (and it certainly won't make a big difference, as we've shown), that's still a useful result. But they can only get at the right answer if they do the analysis properly. dhogaza - yes, that's the quote I was talking about. Do you know where it came from? I thought I saw it in the initial press release post, but I don't see it there anymore. I wonder if Watts deleted it. -
dhogaza at 06:16 AM on 2 August 2012Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique
" Somewhere I saw a quote from Watts saying something like 'even though we didn't find a UHI bias in Fall and BEST, we knew it had to be there, so we tried this approach instead'." He's said (paraphrase) that he and Evan *knew* badly sited sights *must* be inflating the true trend because of "the physics of heat sinks". -
Rob Honeycutt at 05:59 AM on 2 August 2012Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique
Dana... Even if they clearly find that there is no influence from station siting, that is still useful information to know. It's just as important to know what things aren't as it is to know what things are. I've even said as much to Anthony in the past but I don't think the comment got through moderation. -
Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique
As a side note on dana1981's comments, a paper investigating potential biases in surface temperature records is still interesting if the conclusion is that the biases are insignificant. At the very least such a paper clears that particular issue off the table. Starting with your conclusions and searching for support, on the other hand, is a fast path to error. In science you have to see where the evidence takes you, not hunt for confirmation of your pre-existing opinion. -
Composer99 at 05:58 AM on 2 August 2012Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
The Galileo Gambit. How original. -
John Hartz at 05:57 AM on 2 August 2012Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique
My take-away from Dana and Kevin's excellent analysis: Watts et al was not ready for prime-time! -
dana1981 at 05:43 AM on 2 August 2012Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique
Rob @6 - I agree, as the post notes, the downfall if this paper (at least this first draft) is that they went looking for UHI bias, convinced it must exist. Somewhere I saw a quote from Watts saying something like 'even though we didn't find a UHI bias in Fall and BEST, we knew it had to be there, so we tried this approach instead'. That's a dangerous approach, basically not resting until you find the result you want, which makes you susceptible to confirmation bias. I think that's what happened here. They wanted to find UHI, they ran an analysis which superficially seemed to fit the bill, so they simply assumed it was indicative of UHI. They're certainly not the first to make mistakes due to confirmation bias, and they won't be the last. That said, they still have the opportunity to fix the problems we've discussed in our post and make a useful contribution to the scientific literature. It will be interesting to see if they're willing to do this, because it will require dropping that conclusion that they wanted to confirm, because it's simply not correct. -
Rob Honeycutt at 04:55 AM on 2 August 2012Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique
Dana... And I actually think that speaks to Anthony's approach to science. Scientists generally start from a position of "here's something we don't yet fully understand, so I want to study this to help expand our understanding." From there the results of the research are what inform the conclusions. Anthony seems to go the opposite direction, starting with the conclusion that he believes is true and tries to work toward that end. Eli Rabett has an interesting perspective that he put forward on this issue. He says:What amateurs lack as a group is perspective, an understanding of how everything fits together and a sense of proportion. Graduate training is designed to pass lore from advisors to students. You learn much about things that didn't work and therefore were never published [hey Prof. I have a great idea!...Well actually son, we did that back in 06 and wasted two years on it], whose papers to trust, and which to be suspicious of [Hey Prof. here's a great new paper!... Son, don't trust that clown.] In short the kind of local knowledge that allows one to cut through the published literature thicket. But this lack makes amateurs prone to get caught in the traps that entangled the professionals' grandfathers, and it can be difficult to disabuse them of their discoveries. Especially problematical are those who want science to validate preconceived political notions, and those willing to believe they are Einstein and the professionals are fools. Put these two types together and you get a witches brew of ignorance and attitude.
Link -
dana1981 at 03:10 AM on 2 August 2012Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique
michael - thanks, link fixed. JohnHarrington - the statement you quote is true. It would be interesting to see what kind of difference this new UHI adjustment process has on the data. It's not going to make much difference as shown in the post above, but it would still be interesting to see, and any improvement to the temperature record is a useful contribution. Whether their attempts were honest or not isn't the issue. The question is whether they can make a valuable contribution to the science. They can, if they try to. -
JohnHarrington at 02:40 AM on 2 August 2012Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique
Good article, but I wish things like this were avoided: "With said caveats carefully addressed and the conclusions amended if and where necessary, the paper has the potential to be a useful contribution to the climate science literature." There's no need to be vituperative, but there's also no need to encourage this enterprise as if it was really an honest attempt to clarify climate science. -
Byron Smith at 02:35 AM on 2 August 2012Is Greenland close to a climate tipping point?
Bernard - Why pick a double Greenland total surface melt (or near total)? We already have had dozens of warnings quite sufficient to put the world on a "war footing" response. Setting up a new one actually serves to justify ongoing delay and offers a pointless hostage to fortune. More generally, when quoting the 153 year average period between melting events in the ice cores from Summit camp, it is important to put this into the context given in the actual 1995 paper that established this calculation. The study is available here and the very first sentence of the abstract ought to be required to be quoted anytime anyone wants to repeat the "150 year" idea. Here is the opening sentence: "The rare melt features in the GISP2, central Greenland deep ice core have decreased in frequency over the most recent 7000 years." These melt events are not some quasi-clockwork natural cycle thing. The most recent one was in 1889 and before that, the next most recent one was not for another 700-800 years earlier. Why NASA chose to include that misleading quote about this being "right on time" in their press release, I'll never know. -
Chris G at 02:25 AM on 2 August 2012Is Greenland close to a climate tipping point?
I am thinking that an albedo change does not have to be associated with new aerosol deposits. As deep snow pack melts, whatever dust was deposited throughout its depth tends to get more concentrated on the surface simply because it melts from the top down. And now I am thinking that melt events like this will tend to positively reinforce themselves. Slowly at first, but I think the effect would tend to be cumulative, and over time, it would take less warm air to melt off the high albedo fresh snow to get to the darker layer below. -
michael sweet at 02:06 AM on 2 August 2012Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique
Good article. It will be interesting to see what response Watts has. When I click the "as has Watts" link at the end of the post I get an error message. -
dana1981 at 01:50 AM on 2 August 2012Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique
Link to Kevin's image @1 -
Hameiri at 01:47 AM on 2 August 2012Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
An Irishman was travelling in Spain around 1620, where he fell in with 2 heliocentric heritics. They travelled together for a bit, but then had the misfortune to be captured by a gang of bloodthirsty banditos. These banditos had little use for foreigners so decided to execute them on the spot. As usual in these jokes, the three were allowed one last request. "Well," the first heretic said "I will take time to tell you about the 3 stars Galileo observed and how they orbit Jupiter and not the Earth." "And, me "said the second heretic, "I will tell you about the Kepler's Supernova and how it so far away disproving the immutability of the heavens! "Oh, J**** Chr***!" said the Irishman, "Shoot me first! I can't stand another lecture about bl***y Supernovas and Heaven immutability." -
Kevin C at 01:40 AM on 2 August 2012Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique
Here's my best attempt at a global land-ocean comparison of the adjusted, raw, and raw/rural data. I've used the HadSST2 data for the ocean part. The algorithm is very similar to GISTEMP, and the results are very close to GISTEMP too (very slightly higher because I don't have a UHI correction).
The difference between the curves is now very small. Part of that is the inclusion of the SSTs, with the ocean covering a far larger portion of the planet than the land stations of course. However a second factor is that using only the rural data reduces coverage in the simple CRU-like algorithm, which also impacts the results.
This is very recent code, and rather more complex than the simple implementation provided above, however the agreement with GISTEMP gives me some confidence. Nick Stokes' TempLS code could do a better job, and is far more mature.
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zinfan94 at 00:53 AM on 2 August 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #30
OH NO!!! Another DRAFT??? Please spare us the Pontificating Press Releases, the Grandstanding in the press (NYTimes etc.), and the enormous waste of effort spent investigating a non-issue. Why doesn't AW get some real peer review? Go to the High School in Chico, find the science teacher, and use some of his haul from Heartland to pay the teacher to review his work before subjecting us all to this again. The process of releasing and publicizing not-even-half-baked propaganda, doesn't work. In the end, the process has even damaged (or destroyed) his own reputation. I hope you are wrong. -
Sceptical Wombat at 22:40 PM on 1 August 2012Is Greenland close to a climate tipping point?
Bernard @1 If melting events in Greenland become common then we can expect the denialsphere to attribute it to black carbon from Chinese Industry. Now lets get back to those EMails. -
Tor B at 22:15 PM on 1 August 2012Mann Fights Back Against Denialist Abuse
In line with Michael Mann's comment that Richard Muller has a ways to go to catch up with mainstream climate science, I was interested in George Marshall's (not of George C. Marshall Inst.) Irresistible Story of Richard Muller post. It identifies the Dr. Muller's change of heart as being a cultural transformation, not a scientific one, dispite what Dr. Muller writes. (I don't see a Muller thread, so I'm putting this comment here.) -
gws at 20:19 PM on 1 August 2012Lindzen's Sandia Talk Contains his Usual Errors
The question is what impact his presentation made. I have seen Lindzen giving presentations, and -- not unlike Monckton -- he is a versed public speaker with reassuring demeanor. That is why it is important to spread the debunkings as they are much more difficult to make on the spot in response to a presentation. The presenter is usually the incumbant, working from a higher vantage point and with time on his/her side, and his/her message will be better remembered than critical questions from the audience. That is why institutions need to be careful when inviting him and others, and follow up with debunkings such as the above if they are really skeptical about Lindzen. Is SkS proactive in this respect? -
gws at 19:35 PM on 1 August 2012Mann Fights Back Against Denialist Abuse
@22,23 The case HS is referring to involved a law suit against Rahmsdorf (SR) by a journalist. SR had pointed out what you may call "bad reporting" (repetition of questionable "skeptic" claims which supposedly let to an earlier retraction by the Sunday Times) by a journalist at a well-respected Frankfurt paper. The "corrections" SR demanded were designed to set the record straight, but the court found he defamed the journalist in his not fact-related choice of words. Not sure the journalist would have had a case in the US; German law gives more leverage to the defamed person, so people usually are much more careful what they say in public. A related question: Based on the above explanation and descriptions, I wonder whether it would be successful to challenge Governor Perry for his remarks last fall. The problem is that he did not name anyone, just said "... a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data ..." -
MA Rodger at 18:53 PM on 1 August 2012Is Greenland close to a climate tipping point?
The two crumbs of comfort in this post come from the Kopp et al 2009 abstract. Firstly they find Sea Level Rise from the (possibly) relevant part of the Eemian to be probably 5mm - 9mm pa. The other is that the polar temperatures were "~3 to 5 dec C warmer than today." But they are pretty meagre crumbs. The SLR I convert from their average over a millennium and with polar amplification of temperature, a ~3 to 5 deg C rise in polar temperatures is less in terms of global ones. -
George Montgomery at 17:54 PM on 1 August 2012Lindzen's Sandia Talk Contains his Usual Errors
The forecast retirement of Lindzen brings to mind that contrarian climatologists are an ageing lot, as are those non-climatologists who are in the vanguard of the faux sceptics movement. Perhaps there is an increasing relevance in Max Planck's 1948 observation that "a (new) scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather that its opponents die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it". [my brackets] -
Bernard J. at 17:42 PM on 1 August 2012Is Greenland close to a climate tipping point?
Given the low probability of seeing such melting across Greenland again in, say, the next decade if such events are only occurring randomly, perhaps the world's nations should be considering a near-future occurence of such an event as a trigger for a 'war footing' response to human carbon emissions. At least, any rational civilisation would do so. If we see another whole-continent melting in Greenland in the next five to ten years, with no concommitent emergency response around the world, then it really will be all over Red Rover for any semblance of a 'pleasant' biosphere and a functioning global human society a century or two from now. -
Doug Hutcheson at 17:02 PM on 1 August 2012Joe Romm's Congressional Testimony
How nice to hear the plain truth spoken in a political environment.No doubt, being largely unacquainted with the truth, the good congress men and women will find it difficult to believe. -
Bernard J. at 14:21 PM on 1 August 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #30
John. I know that you'll be aware that Watts is intending to release a second draft soon - if it hasn't already been done it might be useful to anticipate where any future revisions will end up taking any final paper that might actually make submission. -
eksommer at 13:22 PM on 1 August 2012Peter Hadfield takes on the MWP
Thank you Mr. Hadfield for an excellent presentation. I have completely believed in anthropogenic climate change for decades. However, as I have returned late in life to a graduate program, I am out of necessity for my thesis reading a great deal written by climate change deniers and skeptics. As my background is journalism and not science, occasionally, I am drawn into what seems like a plausible argument, such as MWP. Your video snapped that thought right out of my head. Attention to detail and good investigation--something that competent scientists and journalists share. Most skeptics I;m reading, though, seem to come up short on facts, provide few references, and resort to attacking opponents. Reminds me more of sleight of hand when I read their books and papers. -
PT_Goodman at 12:50 PM on 1 August 2012Newcomers, Start Here
Thanks for the response. I was getting paranoid--I thought it was me. -
dana1981 at 10:19 AM on 1 August 2012Lindzen's Sandia Talk Contains his Usual Errors
Lindzen has credentials though. He's been in the field for a long time and has a lot of publications. People don't care that he's always wrong or always repeating the same misinformation, because they can say "this climate scientist from MIT says it's nothing to worry about". It would be nice if Lindzen would do us all a favor and retire and stay out of the media. -
Chris G at 09:22 AM on 1 August 2012Lindzen's Sandia Talk Contains his Usual Errors
The NY Times has an article which mentions that Lindzen is looking forward to retirement, possibly at his second home. It struck me as a biased piece. Honestly though, he hasn't said anything new for a while, and that hasn't stopped him from being a sceptic magnet. So, I don't know that his retirement would make any difference. Even if he becomes not topical, some other contrarian will feel the void. -
dana1981 at 08:23 AM on 1 August 2012Newcomers, Start Here
koyaanisqatsi - yes, the emails were discontinued when there was a glitch that resulted in several emails being sent out each day. I guess the issue hasn't been resolved yet. -
PT_Goodman at 08:15 AM on 1 August 2012Newcomers, Start Here
To anyone, Have emails for new blog post been discontinued? The last one I have received was back on July 8, 2012. According to SkS, I'm still set up to receive emails from SkS. I have no filter set up for email. Nothing for some time, though. TIA, koyaanisqatsi -
John Hartz at 06:53 AM on 1 August 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #30
To the surprise of no one, Muller’s Op-ed and Watts’s press release have generated a goodly number of blog articles over the past few days. One that merits a careful read is: “More evidence attention-grabbing climate studies prematurely rushed and potentially flawed” by Jason Samenow of the Capital Weather Gang, Washington Post, July 31, 2012 To access this blog post, click here. -
Composer99 at 06:50 AM on 1 August 2012Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt
With reference to muttkat's inquiry: (1) The melt is ice sheet surface melt (i.e. the formation of meltwater on the surface of the ice), which is certainly a concern. The impression I get from the USA Today article is one of greater melting than is the case. (2) (-Snip-)Moderator Response: [DB] Reply to ideology snipped. Thank you for your efforts and for your forbearance. -
zinfan94 at 06:43 AM on 1 August 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #30
Eric (skeptic): Wrong Menne paper. Try this one: JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 115, D11108, doi:10.1029/2009JD013094, 2010 On the reliability of the U.S. surface temperature record Matthew J. Menne,1 Claude N. Williams Jr.,1 and Michael A. Palecki1 Received 27 August 2009; revised 24 December 2009; accepted 7 January 2010; published 8 June 2010. In this paper Menne et. al. compared USHCN stations of different siting quality with the USCRN stations. -
Composer99 at 06:38 AM on 1 August 2012Medieval Warm Period was warmer
muttkat: Your inquiry is off-topic on this thread; fortunately there is a post here on the subject of ice sheet surface melt. -
muttkat at 06:13 AM on 1 August 2012Medieval Warm Period was warmer
I had read a comment that this month that some form of warm air swept over Greenland and the ice melted temporarily from 55% to 97%. http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/story/2012-07-25/greenland-ice-sheet-melt-climate-change/56479518/1 (-Snip-)Moderator Response: [DB] Your initial statement is off-topic for this thread; please follow the sage direction given you by Composer99. Your subsequent statement was snipped due to ideology. -
dana1981 at 04:58 AM on 1 August 2012Lindzen's Sandia Talk Contains his Usual Errors
Thanks Martin. Do you have information that Lindzen is retiring? -
Martin Lack at 04:07 AM on 1 August 2012Lindzen's Sandia Talk Contains his Usual Errors
Excellent summary. Having been apalled by witnessing first-hand his apparently deliberate attempt to peddle misinformation in London in February this year, I tried and failed to get him to explain his "scepticism". I then tried and failed to get either the MIT or the AGU to extract the same from him. I am therefore very disappointed to see that, just months away from retirement to the south of France, he is apparently still peddling exactly the same misinformation. Clearly, my inability to get anyone to call him to account and/or reign-in waht appears to be deeply-prejudiced and unprofessional behaviour has merely served to convince him that he can do just as he pleases without fear of any adverse consequences). -
dana1981 at 03:53 AM on 1 August 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #30
Thanks warm, that's a useful reference. I've used it in our response post to the Watts paper, which we'll probably publish on Friday. -
vrooomie at 03:46 AM on 1 August 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
By searching on "RealOldOne2's" nick, the GoobleBox turns up a devoid-of-any-videos video feed. Hmmmm..... RealOldOne2's UT account Now, this *could* be a different RealOldOne2, but given the other ~10K denier/contrarian refs Google turns up, I highly doubt it. Golly, to know the real reason why all those videos are now gone...;) -
Ari Jokimäki at 03:34 AM on 1 August 2012New research special - paleoclimate papers 2010-2011
The figure is from Martín-Chivelet et al. (2011) and here's the full text for that one.
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