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Comments 70801 to 70850:

  1. Eschenbach and McIntyre's BEST Shot at the Surface Temperature Record
    You can find the GISS land-masked stuff at the following URL: http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/T_moreFigs/Tanom_land_monthly.txt Provided by Gavin Schmidt.
  2. The BEST Kind of Skepticism
    A small SkS shoutout appears in this Weather Underground blog post, dated 11/3. The result was a new land surface temperature series to be added to the well-cited records of NOAA, NASA, and HadCRU, in addition to some truly independent, amateur compilations. Amateur? The author engages in a bit of wishful thinking: The addition of another (eventually) peer-reviewed temperature series is good, and more eyes looking at the data is good, but the result is not surprising. However, it might have changed the minds of some skeptics who have been wanting to see an analysis from scientists that they find trustworthy. -- emphasis added Yeah, it might have changed some minds, but not the folks that live by this motto.
  3. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    I would like to thank everyone who contributed to this interesting discussion. It's good to see so much genuine critical thinking. Regarding comments about the infra red images: the camera 'sees' only significant sources and sinks of radiated heat. The air itself is not imaged, so the IR images can say nothing whatsoever about air temperatures. All they can show is whether or not radiated heat is being absorbed by the weather station screens. If a screen was so close to a radiant source as to be heated by it, then we could assume with some justification that the air inside could or would be heated. But the weather station would need to be very close indeed: almost in contact with the radiating object. Tom Curtis #44 I agree with the previous comments: you have the basis of an excellent article here.
  4. CO2 measurements are suspect
    Actually I can. Try Severinghaus & Battle 2006. You can find other interesting papers (eg look for MA Headly) by looking for papers that cite it in google scholar.
  5. Climate's changed before
    Lance @ 293 Over the past couple months I have been reading both here and at JoNova's blog trying to acquaint myself with the state of the debate. Even if I were absolutely scientifically, numerically and logically illiterate, one thing would stand out. One side is full of desperation, anger, ideology, rhetoric and ignores questions. The other side is a little testy at times, a little left-biased at times but generally patient, responsive and comprehensive. SkS makes it really easy to pick who to trust.
  6. CO2 measurements are suspect
    Cant lay my hands on the papers, but a lot of work went into finding out when bubbles stopped exchanging with the air. Look up one of the early papers on ice bubble composition and work through reference list.
  7. Climate's changed before
    Sphaerica, Thanks , I guess that writing that response was the equivalent of root canal work for you. I get the point!
  8. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    Possible subject of a future post: At what point back in the surface record does multiproxy analysis become more reliable in determining a global or hemispheric mean analysis? The 1800-1850 period in BEST appears to be very imprecise.
  9. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    Sphaerica @21, What a lovely post. I was under the mistaken impression that the global mean temperature warmed between 1917 and 1943. But as you clearly show, it didn't. So let us not here again from those in denial or from "skeptics" that it warmed "rapidly" early in the early 20th century ;) In fact, going by some people's horribly misguided and false logic, it can be shown to be never be warming (or cooling). I'm beginning to doubt the existence of glacial and interglacial periods;) This would be a "Wow" moment for Dr. Judith Curry. What I love most about this Sphaerica is when those in denial try to argue that they are not in denial or when those who cherry pick try to convince others they are not cherry picking by doing just that, cherry picking. So they just keep reinforcing Dana's point-- can they really be oblivious to that fact? This has all reminded me of this fantastic song.
  10. 2010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
    Another billion dollar plus weather disaster, the 29Oct blizzard that struck northeast US caused more than 3billion dollars damage in Connecticut alone. A more complete report is at Dr. Masters' site. http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/show.html
  11. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    @Tom Curtis #44 Thank you for that analysis and I second John Hartz's suggestion that you make an article out of it. The WUWT crowd are sure to play up Muller's supposed manipulation of the results through the use of faulty data and it would be good to have a thorough analysis of what matters and what doesn't in a main article.
  12. keithpickering at 04:59 AM on 6 November 2011
    Chinese translation of The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism
    This may be the most important translation yet. Thanks to Peter Ma.
  13. Chinese translation of The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism
    The link corresponding to the image for "Chinese (Traditional)", center top, is dead. I think the "_Trad" has to be removed from the filename.
    Response: [JC] Fixed, thanks.
  14. Richard Milne separates skepticism from denial
    Thank you for posting this and thanks to Dr. Milne for lecturing on true skepticism vs. denialism/deception. Sometimes, I get the impression I am surrounded by denialism in the U.S. and often are only hearing that side of the debate - which isn't really to say it's a scientific debate whatsoever. The politicians are the loudest and ironically perhaps, from those political figures and our media these views are "trickled down" to ordinary, non-scientific people and so many of them embrace it with (as Dr. Milner points out) a kind of compassion or conviction. Despite this, I feel at home with less emotional and more forward scientific thinking here at skepticalscience.com and Dr. Milner's lecture illustrates the differences perfectly and candidly.
  15. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    Why on earth did people allow Camburn to troll and derail the thread? Please, DNFTT folks!
  16. Extreme Melting on Greenland Ice Sheet, Reports CCNY Team
    It was not my intention to imply any conspiracy on the part of science in my comment above. I wrote specifically of 'steering' by political, not scientific interests. The lack of quantified trends of the six mega-feedbacks' acceleration to date being - a/ assembled and b/ translated into language and graphic form accessible to the public, is something I'd be delighted to find I was wrong on. Can anyone locate such information ? I wrote the comment here of SkS precisely because of its fine and consistent coverage of the feedback reports since its launch. But as far as I know, SkS has yet to publish those quantified trends-thus-far, as an assembly, in a form accessible to the layman. Thus I was hoping that there might be sufficient concern over the issue to consider a fresh suggestion. I still hope that I wasn't wrong on that. For those who choose to respond defensively and see no reason to raise the game, I suggest they try talking to ordinary people about the NOAA/NSIDC report on permafrost carbon emissions: "Permafrost melting will cause around 100 billion tonnes of carbon to be emitted by 2100, getting to about 500 million tonnes by 2020 and to 1,600 million tonnes in 2100, - but that doesn't account for the CO2-equivalent warming due to part of the carbon coming out as methane, which is 72 times as potent as a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide, - and it doesn't include extra melting due to the warming caused by the permafrost greenhouse gas emissions; - or that due to the several other interactive mega-feedbacks that are now accelerating; - or that due to the foreseeable loss of the cooling sulphate pollution that ending our fossil fuel emissions will curtail." An ordinary person hearing such a litany of unquantified hazards is more likely to be turned off than concerned. The need for the clearest quantified overview achievable is thus very real - not for the minority who are still duped by fossil interests, but for the far larger numbers who accept AGW and see the need of action, but are not remotely well-enough informed of the scale and urgency of threat to demand action with implacable determination. Those who want to carry on tussling with deniers to chip away at their minority support are in my view entirely laudable in their efforts, but addressing the majority with information that can generate the demand for action is evidently the necessary precursor to action being achieved at the earliest possible date. I would hope that we can at least agree that achieving commensurate action on climate is our common goal. Regards, Lewis
    Response:

    [DB] Lewis, it is with the greatest of regret that I intervene here.  Not becuase of what you write isn't of interest or not needing further exploration; both are.  But because it is off-topic to this thread.

    With that in mind, I invite you to write this up as a guest post for consideration for publication here at SkS.  If you are interested, just respond to this here and I will email you the details.

    Again, if others want to explore portions of this on some of the other, more pertinent threads, feel free to do so & leave a pointer stub here.  Thanks!

  17. Climate's changed before
    294, lancelot, I don't have any more time for appinsys... have to chauffeur the teen daughter around town. But if you have any particular section of appinsys you'd like me to rip up, just let me know. It can be a fun diversion.
  18. Climate's changed before
    294, lancelot, appinsys MWP This section goes to great length to try to claim that the MWP is global and had temperatures greater than we are seeing currently, when this is patently false. Part of their argument:
    This IPCC statement is at odds with the findings of other scientists. For example, research at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics report on a recent paper using proxies, which verifies the occurrence of the MWP: [http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/press/pr0310.html]
    The linked paper by Willie Soon (an astrophysicist, not a climate scientist) is notorious for it's failings, and the resulting resignation of half of the publishing journal's editorial board in the ensuing controversy. They go on to say:
    Many studies can be found exhibiting the MWP. One example is shown in the following figure.
    This is a common skeptic trick, and a great example of presenting individual proxies that for that one location seemingly show similar warming, yet their graphs stop before more recent temperatures. Another common problem is that the MWP is very loosely defined as occurring from 950 to 1250 AD. The warming in any particular location might be a 50 year span peaking at 1000, 1100, or 1200 AD. They're all treated as contemporaneous. Can you imagine if current temperatures were computed by taking the highest temperature in a 300 year span from each separate location on the globe? In their example shown here the peak is just prior to 1000 AD. They also term this a "Northern Hemisphere" reconstruction even though 9 of the 14 proxy sites used lie above the 60˚ north, and 13 of the 14 above 45˚ north. It's more appropriately a sub-arctic reconstruction. And yet even their graph hows that current global temperatures exceed those around 1000 AD at that latitude. If you were to instead plot temperatures in the same band, you'd see this: [Source: GISTEMP... click on the image to view] Imagine the 1 to 3 degree increase added to the Cook graph, which are representative of the same sites used in his study and on his graph, instead of the temps appinsys added. The Cook paper is available here.
  19. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    fund me - something similar is coming in Part 2
  20. Baked Curry: The BEST Way to Hide the Incline
    Wheels#79: "there's no evidence to say it didn't happen." Curry's new discipline, the study of the lack of evidence of what hasn't happened, is the core principle of climastrology. As opposed to the cold, hard reality of science, this field prefers to embrace such traits as selective myopia ('it was over here the last time I looked') and an allergy to gestalt ('can't see the forest for the trees'). A tendency to believe that 2 + 2 = 5 is also helpful. A plausible conclusion is also that 'there isn't any evidence that we haven't been invaded by aliens.' Be afraid, be very afraid.
  21. Climate's changed before
    294, lancelot, I dont' want to waste too much time dissecting their nonsense, because just looking at it makes my skin crawl, but you should note that they are very, very good at taking actual scientific data that is accurate, but presenting only that data that fits the conclusions they wish to establish. I'll just do a couple. Their page trying to claim that warming is not global. This page goes to great lengths cherry picking plots to try to show that warming is merely a northern hemisphere problem. Their conclusion:
    Conclusion: The empirical data show that warming in recent decades is a northern hemisphere phenomenon – in particular an Arctic phenomenon –with no significant warming in the tropics or southern hemisphere.   It is not a global phenomenon.
    The fact is that because of the unequal distribution of land masses the warming in the two hemispheres is always dramatically different. This does not mean that the southern hemisphere is immune or not involved, merely that it responds differently in the short term. The conclusion that warming will be greater in the Arctic is, in fact, a tenet of the current science -- research "polar amplification." At the same time, much of their evidence relates to the differences between the Arctic and Antarctic ice and temperatures, but these are apples and oranges. One is a large sea virtually hemmed in by land, while the other is a large, mountainous area of land surrounded on all sides by ocean. The southern hemisphere is dominated by ocean, while the northern hemisphere is dominated by land. Of course they are responding differently!
  22. Climate's changed before
    lancelot#254: Replying here, a thread that deals in facts; a strong counterpoint to appinsys.
  23. Test your climate knowledge in free online course
    Continuing from here. lancelot: I put this reply on this thread, as it is educational and fact-based, as opposed to the shrill opinions and nonsense you see on appinsys. Scan their 'updates': IPCC ... lies, Arctic warming ... not CO2, Climate refugee claims debunked, US has no significant warming; and a host of others. Practically everything on that site is incorrect, biased, prejudicial, etc; it is a veritable encyclopedia of denial. Do you see any references to actual scientific literature or is it mostly just hand-waving? To be fair, I have used their climate data visuallizer for quick access to 5x5 lat long grids of temperature trends.
  24. Ferran P. Vilar at 02:36 AM on 6 November 2011
    Fred Singer Denies Global Warming
    The logic of the denialist movement is very different from the scientific logic. It's an economic logic, it's a power logic. Sometimes it's a religious (fundamentalist) logic. Anyway, it's a media dynamics logic. I suspect this move is just another successful attempt to put themselves on the focus once more, with the aim at reinforcing "the other side" facing the public at large, and so reinvigorating the 'debate'. In recognizing that the Earth is warming, they acquire a sense of 'fairness' that they were losing, and this allows them to be more credible with their next claim: it's not CO2 or, at least, it's not the fossil fuels (alternatively, the economic growth). They exhibit high scientific incompetence. But where they really excel is in the management of public opinion. I think it's no coincidence that this 'discovery' appears just one month before the talks in Durban. Be ready with what can happen before Rio next year.
  25. Extreme Melting on Greenland Ice Sheet, Reports CCNY Team
    LewisC #4: You state: "It's my hope that SkS will help to remedy this lack of public information about the rising trends of the interactive feedbacks ..." SkS has been doing just that since its inception. To see the results, insert the word "feedback" into the site's search box and click "GO".
  26. Climate's changed before
    Out of interest, and for future reference in any discussions with colleagues, what would be specific examples of wrong information (as distinct from polemic) in the appinsys site? It was the most convincing skeptic site i came across, the arguments being supported by a lot of impressive graphics. Sorry if off topic here, but I am never quite sure which thread to move to for digressions.
  27. Climate's changed before
    Thank you all for the wealth of suggestions for further reading. To be honest, From now on I will tend to rely on IPCC advice and reports, in which I now have much more confidence.
  28. Extreme Melting on Greenland Ice Sheet, Reports CCNY Team
    LewisC wrote: "...why the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change has failed to include updates on the progress of each of the mega-feedbacks in each of its reports?" WG1 Section 8.6 Enjoy.
  29. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    FundMe#40: Enjoy the inexorable. -- source Any questions, find the appropriate thread.
  30. Extreme Melting on Greenland Ice Sheet, Reports CCNY Team
    Back last spring there was a paper on albedo loss (in geophysical letters I think) which cryosphere buffs will no doubt recall, which reported that albedo loss now imposes a forcing equivalent to around 30% of anthro CO2 emissions - i.e. around 9.0GtCO2e. This is the only feedback for which I've seen a current figure intelligible to the layman, and I'd like to know if this present report supports that finding or not. Given that we face at least seven interactive mega-feedbacks of which six have been accelerating for some decades, I'm getting increasingly skeptical of the lack of proportionate attention being focussed on them, and particularly of the lack of translation of their scientific evaluations into lay English. The report noted above was exceptional in describing the forcing as being 'equivalent to around 30% of anthro CO2 output' - but it could be still more effectively expressed as 'about one-and-a-half new America's worth of warming, and rising by the year'. I would like to think that the lack of public information on the trend-lines of accelerating feedbacks is due simply to the difficulty of their evaluation, and to a grievous lack of co-ordination across the scientific community. But neither point holds true. First, several of the feedbacks have a directly quantifiable track record - i.e.: - rising DOC in peat-bog outflow streams (~6%/yr) since '62 due to elevated CO2 feeding microbial peat-decay rates; - rising percentage of water vapour carried by a warming atmosphere; - declining cryosphere (recorded graphically since the '60s space program) and resulting albedo loss; - declining permafrost - with limited but significant monitoring of resulting emissions allowing a credible estimate of its rising contribution to warming. Second, the failure to assemble, translate and disseminate those feedback trends to the public cannot logically be explained by an accidental lack of co-ordination in the scientific community - there has never been an issue on which global scientific research has collaborated to the extent it has on climate, and the feedbacks have been known for decades to pose the most extreme hazard of the entire climate issue. Skepticism is not a comfortable state of mind - it opens concerns that there is, at some arcane level of society, an interest in steering scientific enquiry away from the issue of the feedbacks - that could radicalize public demand for action - in favour of the deficient focus on anthro-emissions' impacts generating a scant public pressure for action, that has proved easily deflectable by mounting a circus of denial at home and a theatre of nationalistic rivalry abroad. Some may dismiss this perspective as mere conspiracy theory - but then they must either ignore or answer the question as to why the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change has failed to include updates on the progress of each of the mega-feedbacks in each of its reports? As a great many climate scientists would assert, being self-reinforcing hazards they most certainly warrant that degree of attention. It's my hope that SkS will help to remedy this lack of public information about the rising trends of the interactive feedbacks - as a crucial part of its seminal role in informing and educating society on the climate predicament it faces. To my knowledge neither the I(G)PCC, nor the great scientific academies and institutions, nor the NGOs are fulfilling this critical role - so Sks would actually be breaking new and very relevant ground in doing so. Regards, Lewis
    Response:

    [DB] "It's my hope that SkS will help to remedy this lack of public information"

    Science and scientists have been researching climate change and publishing that reaseach for more than a century.  There have been active calls by scientists and scientific bodies for the public and media to pay more attention to their findings for many decades (which is why, for example, President Nixon established the EPA).  So it is not for a lack of transparency, will and effort to reach the public that the message is not being delivered.  So hints at conspiracy on the part of science are vastly misplaced.

    That leaves the issue squarely in the laps of the media and the well-publicized and well-funded efforts of the anti-science community to block any efforts which may result in a declining usage of fossil fuels.  And that is far beyond the realm of this post.  It is my hope that any individuals willing to pursue this line of dialogue take it to a more appropriate thread (many exist), as it is off-topic here.

  31. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    What would be even more telling than plotting the inexorable rise in Global temperature is, if you could plot the inexorable rise in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere on the same graph as the temperature.
  32. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    @Tom Curtis #44: How about transforming your excellent commentary into an article?
  33. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    Sphaerica #38: How about transforming your excellent presentation into an article?
  34. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    Camburn, Camburn, Camburn, I'd grown tired of (-self-snip-) and gone to bed, but here are your graphs of 200 years of "continuous warming" with various trends. Readers should note that observations and coverage get increasingly sparse and unreliable the further back you go. HADCRUT (suffers from lack of coverage at the poles where current warming is known to be greatest, goes back to 1850): BEST (suffers from lack of ocean coverage, goes back to 1800): GISTEMP (suffers from Camburn not personally liking it, only goes back to 1880 because data prior to that date is considered by GISS to be too unreliable and sparse to be meaningful):
  35. Is there a case against human caused global warming in the peer-reviewed literature? Part 1
    Glenn, I don't understand your objection. S&C originally claimed that their satellite research showed that 'actual warming' was significantly less than indicated by the surface temperature records. This was heavily promoted as evidence against the AGW consensus and thus the sort of thing which might end up in this database. However, even S&C now concede that their analysis was wrong. Thus, if their original research were to be included in the database, as one of Lindzen's (similarly disproven and withdrawn) 'cloud iris' papers was, I'd think it both more accurate and indeed 'fair' to indicate that they subsequently corrected their mistakes. It certainly doesn't make sense to treat these things as 'currently active' objections to the AGW consensus given that even the authors no longer support them.
  36. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    D Marshal @39: 1) There are two possible issues with bad surface stations. One is that a bad surface station will show a different trend over time. There is no particular reason to believe this is so, but it is at least a possibility and should be checked. The second is that a good surface station that is modified by later construction to make it bad will generate a false trend because its absolute measured temperatures will have become warmer as a result of the changes. Clearly, if you use 60 years of data instead of 30, a higher proportion of the "bad" stations would have been good stations at the start of the analysis period. You don't need to know which stations they were, or when they where degraded. So based on this, increasing the study period will increase the trend in the "bad" stations if there is an actual problem. On the other hand, in the worst case (for the analysis) scenario, it may be that all "bad" stations where degraded either 30 years ago or less, or more than 60 years ago. In this unusual circumstance, the fact that the spurious trend caused by degradation of the stations is analyzed over a 60 rather than a 30 year period would halve the spurious trend. As the difference between the trend in OK (ranks 1, 2, & 3) and poor (ranks 4 & 5) sites is 0.0684 degrees C per Century, in this worst case example for the analysis, that would make a difference of just 0.07 degrees C per century in the analysis, hardly significant. Further, if that unusual circumstance did apply, it would show in distinct behavior between OK and Poor stations over the last thirty years and the thirty years before that. In fact, no such distinction is apparent in the reconstruction (which does not suffer from this problem): So, for the primary issue, using a 60 year rather than a 30 year analysis is likely to exaggerate the spurious trend, although it de-emphasize it by a trivial amount. Regardless, choice of period makes no difference to the compared reconstructions which show clearly that station quality does not distort the record of trends. However, using a 60 year analysis with only 30 years of metadata does make it difficult to attribute any spurious trend found to the first or second effect. Consequently an additional 30 year analysis would be nice - but essentially Watts is grasping at straws. 2) With regard to the UHI effect, Watts' critique is even worse. It's main point is given by he quote from Willi Eschenbach, who says,
    "That seems crazy to me. Why compare the worst stations to all stations? Why not compare them to the best stations?"
    However, in the UHI paper, the 40% "very rural stations" are compared to all stations. As far as avoiding contamination by the UHI goes, the "very rural" stations are the best. Eshenbach's (and Watts') argument, then consists in simply mis-describing what was done. His secondary argument is no better. Watts says,
    "They didn’t adequately deal with that 1% [of urbanized surface area] in my opinion, by doing a proper area weighting."
    But, of course, in the reconstruction the stations are area weighted, so he is simply claiming as a counter argument that they did not do what they in fact did. He probably suspected that was not a good argument, so he then dragged "33% of the sites show a cooling" across the trail to confuse the scent. (It is, of course, irrelevant to the UHI issue.)
  37. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    Self-correction: @40 Disagreement #2 "provided temperature changes over time at the same rate at both locations". That's not true. They can of course warm or cool at different rates, but the absolute temperature of either station at a point in time is irrelevant for computing the trend. (Slaps own wrist)
  38. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    The article quotes Muller, "But no scientist could do that because he’d be discredited for lying with statistics." Yet, we've seen Curry, Pielke, Spencer, and many others doing this thing no scientist could do... frequently and vehemently. Pielke, at least, is still afforded some measure of respect and none of them have been widely denounced. Muller also infamously said that there were now a 'list of scientists whose research I will not read' over the fake 'Climategate' scandal. So where is the indignation and denunciation over this actual 'scientific malpractice'? I wonder if that even exists as a legal concept. Were the scientists who insisted that smoking was not harmful ever sued for it? Malpractice is a 'failure to follow accepted professional standards which results in harm'. That is an accurate description of what the denier scientists are doing with their "lying with statistics" (and what the tobacco apologists did decades ago)... but so far as I can see there are no real consequences for such behavior in the sciences. Indeed, some of these people are hailed as heroes and/or make a living off of it. Fred Singer has been doing it professionally for decades. Do scientists need to take a page from the medical and legal professions and develop standards and procedures for dealing with scientific malpractice?
  39. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    Riccardo @40, agree - Watts hasn't demonstrated any ability to do the science yet so no-one actually analysing the data should pay him any attention. But DMarshall is correct about the size of the following he has, and unfortunately there seems to be an epidemic of Dunning-Kruger syndrome amongst his followers so they buy into his science fiction (er, mods, what's the plural of hominem?) I don't think the authors should have stuck to his stipulations, but I tend to agree with "should have stated right at the outset as to why they chose to analyse the data the way they did", if only to grab the scientific high ground right from the start. It comes across much more strongly than doing it in rebuttal. It's disgraceful that science has to become a PR exercise to cope with this, but it's also reality.
  40. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    DMarshall @39, I can answer a couple of these. #3 in his points of agreement (the quote from David Whitehouse/GWPF, which has subsequently been hyped into a new denier meme that the "human component of global warming may be somewhat overestimated"). This is a soundbite cherry-picked from a paragraph which a) is a conditional statement, not a conclusion or statement of fact, and b) about questions which the paper didn't attempt to answer. Very good rebuttal on The Way Things Break. Disagreements: #1 I'm sure somebody, somewhere has looked at the actual numbers (I haven't), but the point is that the BEST results and the two papers Watts cites here (Menne et al and Fall et al) agree, so even if using 60 years was catastrophically wrong, it doesn't seem to have biased the results. (Of course Watts will be trying to argue that that the BEST results would be very different from the other two papers if they had used 30 years worth of data instead of 60 - but then he should run the numbers himself and demonstrate this convincingly. Don't hold your breath.) Also in #1, he quotes Willis Eschenbach's comment: "That seems crazy to me. Why compare the worst stations to all stations? Why not compare them to the best stations?" This is nonsense. The objective is to use all the data to compute a mean and trend. So, simplistically, you get "the number" (whatever metric you're computing) from all the data, then you get "the number" from the worst data, and you compare the two results to see whether the worst stations introduce a bias to the overall results. Whether the "best" stations introduce a bias is a completely separate question (and again you would compare them to everything). Disagreement #2: Watts is confusing measurements with trends. Again. The fact that a station is much hotter (or colder) than another station is irrelevant for computing the trend, provided temperature changes over time at the same rate at both locations. What the authors are saying is that the hot spots cover too small an area for their growth to have a big impact on the trend. (Some warming in urban areas will be due to increased urbanisation.) #3 I think several people have observed that this is an outstanding example of pot-kettle-black... ;) Unlike Watt's Heartland Institute paper, these have all been submitted for peer review. Hope that helps - I'm sure others will chip in.
  41. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    DMarshall so a team of professional scientists should stick to what a former TV weatherman "stipulated"? The surface station project provided the raw data, i.e. what "the casual observer thinks ought to cause bias"; the Berkely team analysed those data and reported the conclusions. You may disagree, as Watt does, on BEST's methodology but you can not ask the Berkley team to comply with Watt's wishes or expectations. Not even Watt asked that much.
  42. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    Simple decision analysis: 1. What was the temperature 100 years ago? 2. What is it today? 3. If higher, then we may need to do something, if not then don't. 4. Does it look like it is cooling today? 5. If yes then jump to 6 otherwise continue with low carbon policies. 6. Has it 'cooled' for short periods (a few years) in the past 100 years? 7. In the case of 6 being yes, then the only way of being sure of a long term period of cooling is to wait for a number of decades and see what happens. If test 3 shows warming over hundred years then the probability is high that current cooling is short term and the burden of proof is on skeptics to show it is long term. Which requires a long wait and eliminates that as an input to policy decisions today. So we continue with low carbon policies. 8. If the test at 6 is negative and the past 100 years has seen long periods (30 years or so) of cooling (we haven't seen that) then skeptics may have a point. Basically, based on risk and probabilities and the cherry picking temperature scenarios presented by many skeptics. They basically lose any policy argument based on their own analysis of temperature records. So Nigel Lawson and similar political ideologists are perverting logic and the course of decision making by presenting graphs of recent temperature records (10 years).
  43. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    Watts' criticism can be found at the link below. Can anyone comment if he has valid criticism of the methodology? I think that Muller might have been mistaken to not stick to what Watts stipulated or should have stated right at the outset as to why they chose to analyse the data the way they did. Watts' reasons against BEST results Watts may be an amateur but he has a huge audience and influence. Since he put himself out there by saying he would accept the results, cornering him would really have taken the wind out of the denialist and skeptic sails, if the data supported AGW.
  44. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    Glenn @37: Ant? Watt Ant? (Sorry, that was completely irresistible!) ChrisKoz @12: I think the mug joke is referring to Occupy Wall Street ("we are the 99%") and the study showing that 97% of climate scientists agree with the premise of AGW. I rather like it - I'll buy one of those if they make them (although I'm not a climate scientist either). Camburn @24, John Russell @25, I know zilch about IR photography, but does the "ground" colour represent the ground temperature you would obtain by sticking a probe in the mud, or the temperature of the layer of air immediately above it? Which can be quite different from both the ground temperature and the temp at about shin level.
  45. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    Camburn: What makes you think that the climate changes 200 years ago were natural and not anthropogenic? See this Realclimate post that describes the growing recognition that the Earth was cooling 5000 years ago and AGW started then due to land use changes by ancient farmers. It appears that ancient farmers had dramatic effects on climate. The little ice age deniers crow about may be just due to changes in anthropogenic forcings at that time. Please provide links to data that supports your claim that climate changes in the past 200 years were natural and not human caused.
  46. Is there a case against human caused global warming in the peer-reviewed literature? Part 1
    Glenn, That is not how it happened at all. C&S analyzed the data first and then claimed for over a decade that climate was cooling and their unbiased satelite data showed it [Pielke Sr advocated using satelite data as the primary metric of AGW during this time, perhaps this relates to his current proposal to use ocean heat]. RSS and others then showed that the C&S analysis was in error and corrected them. C&S only changed their calculations after they were proven wrong. C&S did not "bounce off each other", rather C&S were dragged kicking and screaming to where they are now. C&S now ignores the fact that they were wrong and deniers used their data over that time to mislead policymakers in the worst way. Every error they made caused a cooling bias in their record? Normally we find that when scientists have to make several choices in data analysis they have some errors that increase the result and some that lower it. This results in the final analysis being close to the true result. Why did C&S only have cooling errors? C&S continue to run lower than RSS, should I believe that? The entire approach of C&S was wrong and they deserve to be called out on it. This needs to be remembered when we look at their current proposals. Should we listen to Hansen who has always been at the "warmest" extreme and has a long record as being correct, or should we listen to "skeptics" with an equally long record of being wrong? Would you go to a doctor whose last 10 patients died due to neglegience or one whose last 10 patients were corrrectly treated?
  47. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    The current warming, in both hemispheres, is unique in the last 20,000 years, see: Björck(2011). So yeah, I'd call that really dramatic.
  48. Is there a case against human caused global warming in the peer-reviewed literature? Part 1
    CBD @13 "I didn't see any papers from Spencer or Christy on their early satellite temperature record, but if any do eventually get added it would be worthwhile to indicate that they later agreed they had gotten it wrong. Et cetera." I would take a little exception to this comment. Whle there are grounds for doubting C & S's scientific credentials on other issues, I don't see grounds for questioning them on this. They used one analytical technique, RSS have used another. They have bounced off each other and seem to have homed in on a common result. That is how science is meant to work and I have seen nothing in the interplay between these 2 groups over many years to suggest otherwise. Just because we have valid criticisms about other aspects of the science they are putting forward does not meen that we should label every activity they have engaged in as flawed.
  49. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    caerbannog @28 "4. Global terrestrial temperature data are gravely compromised because more than three-quarters of the 6,000 stations that once existed are no longer reporting." And Ants' basis for this claim that this reduction in stations used 'compromises "something" is what'? Sorry, WUWT is a maths free zone so he can't answer that question. "5. There has been a severe bias towards removing higher-altitude, higher-latitude, and rural stations, leading to a further serious overstatement of warming." Again, how does removing a warm station bias the record. As distinct from removing a warming station, which would cause a cooling bias in the record. Like deleting stations from the Canadian Arctic. Ants' seems all to willing to pander to the basic innumeracy of his audience with emotive but badly reasoned views.
  50. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    Camburn @23, yes, you are playing tricks. The first obvious trick you are playing is the appeal to uncertain data to undermine the impact of well known data. The following graph shows the upper and lower bounds of the 95% confidence interval of BEST data, along with trends: Although these show the trends of the confidence interval rather than the confidence interval of the trend, it is clear that data prior to 1880 is insufficiently exact to distinguish with confidence between zero trend over the course of the 19th century, and a moderate trend (0.14 degrees C per decade), although substantially less than that of the last 40 years. When the denier habit of using short trends which lack statistical significance (because they are short) is shown for the smoke and mirrors it is, you appeal to long trends which still lack statistical significane because of the uncertainty of the data. It's the same trick, it just had not yet been exposed. I should note that any long term trend in the 19th century is almost certainly not due to the mythical "recovery from the little ice age", but entirely due to some exceptionally cold years at the start of the 19th century due to the Dalton Minimum and the eruption of Mount Tambora. Indeed, examination of the BEST 20 year average data shows the late 18th century to have been about as warm as the 1850's (with very low confidence). Your second trick is asserting straight out falsehoods such as "[the] GissTemp as the extrapolation does not match DMI observations". Really?

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