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Comments 71101 to 71150:

  1. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    @ Sphaerica "there are no actual temporary cooling trends" That's a great Obi-Wan channeling act you've got going there. ;)
  2. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    Utahn @8 - thanks. We've got another post in the works comparing the various data sets. Short answer - BEST is comparable with NOAA and GISS land-only. Almost identical long-term warming trends, in fact. HadCRUT is biased lower, but that's not news. The satellite analysis is where it gets interesting, but I don't want to spoil the post.
  3. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    7. @Sphaerica. "here are no actual temporary cooling trends" Yeah, I knew that. Sorry, poor choice of words on my part.
  4. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    Really excellent, figure 1 will save me a lot of time. Is 0.27/decade comparable to other datasets, or I guess warmer as land only? Thanks!
  5. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    6, WSteven, Two notes. First, there are no actual temporary cooling trends. You see them only because of a careful selection of endpoints. It's actually a whole lot easier to get a graph with a series of warming trends (almost any choice of end points will give them to you): Second, the gradual flattening of the downward trends is not an optical illusion, but I'm not sure that it's anything more than coincidence, either.
  6. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    In fig 1, the denialist's view, you can almost see the slope of the temporary cooling trends becoming more positive each decadal cycle. I'm not sure if I'm actually seeing that, or if that's some sort of optical illusion. Regardless, it's obvious that the start and end points are always higher than the previous decade. I don't see how deniers can continue fooling themselves.
  7. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    Figure 1, is an excellent representation of how the deniers look at the temp record. Having recently shown this graph to a few, they are always lost for words....... Excellent article.
  8. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    kmpollard @3, "Those warmists have cooked the data again." The irony is that it is they (the "skeptics" and those who deny AGW) who are cooking the data.
  9. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    I can just hear the deniers discussing Fig. 1.”If the global temperature has gone down over so many periods in the last 40 years, how can it be warming? Those warmists have cooked the data again.”
  10. Climate's changed before
    292, lancelot, Didn't notice Appinsys in your list. The site is a travesty. You will get nothing but confusion and misinformation there.
  11. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    Tom and Logicman, the problem with that line is given by the actual struggle for interpretion of evidence. In history and practice oratory always helps to bring certain interpretations of evidence (like that of rising mercury in certain instruments across the globe) across. Actually this is only not true for logic and mathematics, although even there certain 'retorical rules' for proofs exist. The elegant proof convinces even more: often by giving deeper insight. The line is self-defeating. I think the problem can be avoided by not viewing science as a contest at all, for starters. But I don't know how such a fine oneliner could be destilled from this..
  12. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    Thanks Alexandre, the point of this post was really to highlight that Figure 1. I should note that we had to include the last two BEST incomplete months (April and May 2010) in the "skeptic" version in order to get a cooling trend (without them all recent trends are positive), but we removed the incomplete points in the "realist" version, since realists would not use incomplete data. Otherwise the data in the "skeptic" and "realist" versions are identical. Hat-tip to Sphaerica again for coming up with the idea. All I did was animate it a bit.
  13. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    Figure 1 is a great graph that speaks for itself. It hasn't warmed since... the last recent temp record.
  14. Climate's changed before
    lancelot - I would also recommend The Discovery of Global Warming for an overview of the topic, not requiring a technical background. And in looking at the 'series of tubes', the interweb, I would suggest discounting any sites with obvious political or ad hominem ranting. Such as, for example, "Appinsys". The ability for anyone to publish to the web means that quality checking is ever more important.
  15. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    Logicman: What a great line: "'Debate' is a contest of orators: science is a contest of evidence. I've been searching for a concise, snappy way to say just this. That one's going right into ClimateBites (with credit to Sks & logicman, of course!)
  16. Climate's changed before
    Lancelot: Rather than attempting to access and read a slew of peer-reviewed papers, I recommend that you first read and digest books and reports that essentially synthesize the science of climate change. You really need to understand the forst before you start analyzing each and every tree in it. In terms of textbooks, I highly recommend the Fourth Edition of Global Warming: The Complete Briefing by John Hougton, Cambridge University Press, 2009. It is written in plain English so to speak. Another excellent resource is the recent set of reports prepared by the National Academies of Science under their America's Climate Choices initiative. To access these reports, click here.
  17. Climate's changed before
    lancelot : "Muller, Svensmark, Kirkby.. Appinsys..." Seeing that you go to Appinsys, I can now see how you could have been confused or uncertain previously ! A website whose 'Global Warming' page contains 28 instances of 'alarm' and 3 uses of the word 'lie', should give pause to anyone thinking of using that site. Not only that, the About page ends up by calling Obama a "liar" ! How could you (or anyone) consider that site a useful and unbiased one ?
  18. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    @caerbannog, Watts will not 'come clean'. He will already have his tactics laid out now, and when the peer review etc on BEST is done he will call the peers 'biased' or worse (though he might try to avoid a word like 'traitors': for us to guess). Correlation in trends between stations less than 1000 km apart is considerable. I think one will find global temperature on a monthly basis by using just a hundred stations 'sufficiently spread across the globe' within one or two tenths of a degree C margin of error. JMurphy #30, I have disqualified Watts as a meteorologist permamently as of just over a year ago, when he showed not to know at all what a Polar Low is. An object any meteo textbook will describe, and only within the tropics can one afford not ever to have heard of it. Though the warm core, non-baroclinic, convective character of such a low could provide a little useful understanding for tropical revolving systems (just add seven kilometers for tropopause height, say).
  19. Climate's changed before
    lancelot - One thing I've found helpful on Google Scholar is the links to "All N version". Often this points to alternative sources, pre-prints, author's copies, etc., when just an abstract is available on a journal page. Full text isn't always available, but it's helpful. If nothing else works, I follow the "Cited by N" link, and try to get a feel for that particular topic from those either using that paper as background, expanding upon or refuting the results.
  20. Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study: “The effect of urban heating on the global trends is nearly negligible”
    DB response, MY misleading graphic! Goodness one has to be careful (smile).& Les you are quite correct on method, if graphs are supposed to be proving anything or quantifying anything. My chart was simply to check for any broad correlation. I think it serves that singular purpose. From that point on, I would certainly defer to (and insist on) the power of numbers if taking the investigation further.
  21. Climate's changed before
    285, lancelot, For learning properly I might recommend Raypierre Humbert's book Principles of Planetary Climate. I have not read it myself yet. I simply have a whole lot of respect for Raypierre. Amazon lets you look at a fair number of pages inside the book to give you a feel for it. If you do pick it up, let me know how it reads. I won't have time to do so myself for quite a while (looking at my schedule, I'm planning on getting to it by my fourth reincarnation from now).
  22. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    Perhaps there needs to be more emphasis on the abject failures of the "coating" experiment to reach the appropriate standards for a scientific experiment. Because it was one screen of each type, tested over the course of one day, in one location, the results should be considered mildly interesting but not statistically significant until the test has been repeated many time with randomized placement so that positioning bias (among others) can be controlled for. The essential problem to me appears to be that Watts prefers an approach to science best characterized as "science by anecdote".
  23. Climate's changed before
    285, lancelot, Three things. First, while it seems daunting at first, you will find that as you look at more and more actual papers (just briefly!) it will get easier and easier. Admittedly, KR's ability to do what he did in 2 1/2 minutes did come from a lot of practice. But it does get easier. Second, on finding papers... I've found that while most papers are behind paywalls, you can almost always find a copy for free download from somewhere. Usually including the term "+pdf" in the Google search terms will find you an option or two... but not always. Third, on learning on the Internet... that can be very, very dangerous, especially with the vast number of denial sites out there who want to spin the science from their own perturbed (and wrong) point of view, but do so with the confident tone of someone who is teaching you fact rather than their interpretation, misinterpretation or misrepresentation of the facts. You need to be very leery of what you read and what you trust.
  24. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    1120, Fred, I actually think you've done a pretty good job of creating a simple model that demonstrates exactly the effect and mirrors real life (i.e. the temperature of the surface is clearly not 255K, although it's not quite 303K). As Tom pointed out, your simple model has flaws (it is, after all a simple model), so you can't expect to have used it to compute an accurate surface temperature. To elaborate a bit on what Tom said, the "half up/half down" simplification is good for a thought model but grossly flawed for a quantitative analysis. The atmosphere is more complex than that, with varying density and behavior from the surface upwards, so working with a single-slab with a half-up/half-down rule really is a gross simplification. But still, all in all, I think you have something that you can work with for understanding what is happening at a very high level. [Like Tom, I am baffled by your "why pay more?" comment. Can you explain?]
  25. Climate's changed before
    KR I will use google scholar in future, it looks good. iI have in the past tried to download papers such as Dickens from the AAAS site and for some reason the site repeatedly fails to register me. So only the abstracts are viewable, for me. When I have seen full articles, often as a non expert the language and terminology can get quite dense and very hard to follow. I simply don't have the hours in the day to learn the language. At the same time, i need to make some decisions which are to a large extent dependent on theIPCC advice for policy makers. For that reason I have taken time over the last 6 months to fully understand the subject in as much depth as possible, in order to feel confident about applying the advice. Learning mainly on the web, that inevitably exposes one to a lot of arguments and apparently valid questions, from all sides, some of them very plausible. Muller, Svensmark, Kirkby.. Appinsys... I felt it was quite important to be clear in my mind and to subject the questions in my mind (some of them independently arrived at by the way) to expert grilling. I wish of course I had the time to do a climate science degree and even to understand a tenth of the content of some of the papers! But this forum has been very helpful, and patient. I have actually gone through my finite list of 5 query subjects now so I doubt that I will need to ask any more, unless some surprises come up. Of course as we know, life is full of surprises!
  26. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    I seem to recall noting to damborel some time ago a simpler variant of the below: The atmospheric greenhouse effect: (1) was postulated theoretically; (2) then confirmed experimentally; (3) and has since been observed empirically. Trying to argue it doesn't exist by means of the Second Law of Thermodynamics is a fool's errand.
  27. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    Like Stevo@9, to me what would be important is the delta temp change. Even if there was some effect from the surrounds which I don't believe there would be, it is the delta change from year to year that is important. I see this argument about location as revelant as a denier stating that we cannot have a cold day if AGW is real. Once again thou, another well thought and written article.
  28. Eric (skeptic) at 02:51 AM on 5 November 2011
    GHG emission mitigation solutions - a challenge for the Right?
    I mentioned government-built roads as a contrast to goods and services modulated by a free market. I just saw this article http://english.caixin.cn/2011-10-31/100319471.html that shows how even that relatively simple allocation of resources to demand can be flawed. Not trying to suggest there is only state control or free markets and nothing in between. For contrast to the article about China, here is a CATO article http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=5837 in which they mention the Dulles Greenway, a private toll road not to far from me. Subsidies directly from the road were used to prompt relatively dense development along it, now serviced by Loudon county's privately run bus line.
  29. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    Maybe off-topic with regards to the actual subject of the post, but it does concern one of the main subjects : Watts. I can't see how he can be described as a meteorologist when he has no qualifications in that field and doesn't actually work in the field - he is retired, like so many of the so-called skeptics. He admits his lack of relevant qualifications generally on his own blog, although he does try to deflect away by the usual unrelated diversion : "While I’m not a degreed climate scientist, I’ll point out that neither is Al Gore, and his specialty is presentation also."
  30. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    Fred Staples @1120: 1) The atmosphere will only radiate equal amounts up and down if there is no change of temperature with altitude. That is only a reasonable approximation for very thin slices of atmosphere, although it is a common simplifying assumption for unrealistic models used only to explain basic concepts. If you are trying to prove the "un-physicality" of the greenhouse effect, you are not entitled to use an un-physical model to do so. 2) Your first model state not in equilibrium. The surface is said to receive 1 W radiation from the sun, and 0.5 W radiation from the atmosphere. Therefore it should radiation 1.5 W radiation, of which half (0.75 W) is absorbed by the atmosphere. That means at the TOA the outgoing radiation is 0.5 W from the atmosphere and 0.75 W from the surface, which is 0.25 W greater than the 1 W incoming radiation. Meanwhile the atmosphere is absorbing only 0.75 W, but is radiating 1 W (0.5 W up, and the same down), making a shortfall of 0.25 W. Hence, in your model as specified, the atmosphere is rapidly loosing energy to space. These models do have equilibrium states, and they can be found, but you can't avoid the algebra if you wish to do so. 3) Your description of a perfectly absorbing, optical depth 1 atmosphere with uniform temperature is correct. The model is, of course, unphysical, and only used to explain basic concepts. Having said that, I do not know what point you are trying to make by describing it, nor by your final comment.
  31. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    The outward radiative temperature of the stations do not accurately reflect the internal temperature of the air, especially in the case where the station is well-ventilated. I would presume that such open-screened housing units as those shown don't let air stagnate within. In any case, if it indeed was true that the ground temperature/housing temperature (as yes they do appear the same, more or less) was the one being recorded, then the fact that the housing unit and ground are *cooler* in each photograph than the ambient air would suggest a cooling bias in temperature, not a warming bias. Time lapse images, I would think, wouldn't help at all. What would help is if you compared the thermometer readings with the IR temperatures of the surrounding unit and ground - if the temperature follows those, instead of the ambient air, then there's a problem.
  32. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    Of course, many folks remember the following claim that Watts made in this non-peer-reviewed publication.
    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. 5. There has been a severe bias towards removing higher-altitude, higher-latitude, and rural stations, leading to a further serious overstatement of warming.
    Of course, there is a simple and straightforward way to test this supposed "dropped stations" effect. You simply compare global-average temperature anomalies computed from all the stations with the temperature anomalies computed from just the stations that are still actively reporting data. Do that, and you will find that the "dropped stations" effect is virtually nonexistent. I did exactly that some time ago with my own simple gridding/averaging routine, and here are my results (computed from GHCN *raw* data):
    Anomalies computed from all stations are plotted in blue. Anomalies computed only from stations still reporting data as of 2011 are plotted in orange. This is something that a competent programmer/analyst could do from scratch in a few days (max). The fact that Watts and Co. have been pushing this "dropped stations" claim for *years* even though proving it wrong would take only a few *days* of work (assuming that you are starting from scratch and "hand-rolling" all of your own code) does not reflect well on their competence or honesty. BTW, even though a number of folks (Tamino and others) have published results showing that that Watts' "dropped-stations" claim is completely bogus, Watts has yet to "come clean" and admit that his claim is wrong.
  33. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    Camburn @24, the bulb of a thermometer in a weather station doss not rest against the side of its screen. Therefore, it measures air temperature, not enclosure temperature. The question the becomes, does the enclosure effectively screen the thermometer from sources of radiant energy. The fact that screens near hot spots remain cool strongly suggests that they do, and that the thermometer does in fact measure local air temperature. That local air temperature may have been raised by nearby concrete structures, and observing the cool screen tells us nothing about that sort of bias. Nor do I think these pictures are enough to determine whether a bias exists from the radiant heat sources or not, as I do not presume to be able to judge IR temperature to tenths of a degree by brightness in a photo. But the cool screens do show that these pictures do not prove bias.
  34. Is there a case against human caused global warming in the peer-reviewed literature? Part 1
    Jim, Certainly, it is subjective and up to you, as it is your database. However, I'll note that the Forster and Gregory (2006) was one of 10 studies included in the "constrained by past transient temperature evolutions" climate sensitivity box of AR4: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/box-10-2-figure-1.html. Furthermore, the Murphy et al (JGR, 2009) paper basically just expands on the method, and there is more confident language used in that paper (indeed, they are confident enough in the method that they attempt to diagnose the aerosol forcings based on the sensitivity calculated early in the paper). The SB criticisms equally apply to Murphy et al (2009), which uses the same method as FG06. Basically, if I were going to make a peer-reviewed case for low sensitivity, I would try to show how the various lines of evidence for current estimates are flawed, and that correcting for these flaws would actually point to lower sensitivity. So, for example, I would use MMH2010 and the other model comparison papers to show that the models are running hot (and hence may overestimate sensitivity), the SB papers to show that the FG06 method should yield a lower sensitivity, the Douglas and Knox (2009) OHC paper to show that ocean warming suggests that the ECS is closer to the TCS, etc. I think that looking for a single paper that discredits the entire case for the IPCC likely value of ECS will turn up some crank papers, but that won't be the strongest case you can make in the peer-reviewed literature. So, that's why I would lobby for many of those papers that you don't necessarily see as "big picture". But, as you say, it's a judgment call.
  35. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    Watts and other deniers claim they will wait for peer review of the Best study. This is a copout for two reasons. First, they don't seem to rely on peer review or even good critical review for reports, presentations, and papers that support their positions. Second, peer review is far more important for papers that add significant new findings to the science or claim to overturn existing conclusions. Best only confirmed several previous studies. How restrained would Watts be if Best had contradicted the prior conclusions? Just look at the headlines based on the Salby video. Curry's only comment to Salby was "wow," no analysis of the science.
  36. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    I return to this thread to present a theory of greenhouse warming which appears all over the blogs, and in some text-books, to defend a position I took in the “After McClean” thread. If we accept the Stefan-Bolzmann fourth power law of radiation, and ignore other means of heat transfer it can be done very simply. Start with a bare rock earth radiating back to the sun the incoming radiation of W watts per square meter. In order to radiate this energy back, the earth will acquire a mean temperature of 255 degrees K. Now build up an atmosphere capable of absorbing and re-radiating part of the outgoing radiation. It will radiate equal intensities, up and down. To avoid typing algebra, I will pause the analysis when the atmosphere can absorb half of the outgoing radiation.. The atmosphere will then radiate W/2 to space, and the surface (directly to space) also W/2. This means that the atmosphere must receive W from the surface (half out, half back) and the surface will receive W (from the sun) and W/2 from they atmosphere. The surface must consequently be warmed (by the sun) to radiate W + W/2. Now continue the build-up until all (100%) of the outgoing radiation is being absorbed. At that point everything reaches “goldilocks” equilibrium. The earth radiates 2W, the atmosphere receives 2W, and radiates W to space, W back to the surface. What is the ratio of the new surface temperature to the bare rock temperature? It is the fourth root of the radiant energy ratio, 2W/W. The fourth root of 2 is 1.19, so we would expect a greenhouse temperature of 1.19 x 255, or 303 degrees K. The effective radiative temperature must be 255 degrees K (goldilocks again). Why pay more?
    Response:

    [DB] "Why pay more?"

    If by this you mean:

    Q.  Why have a more complex and robust model that explains fairly well everything we can observationally measure when we can opt for something far simpler that explains very little? 

    A.  Because life and physics seldom contort themselves to simple models.  Why have a faux relationship when the real thing is so much richer?.

  37. Climate's changed before
    lancelot - If I've misinterpreted your posts, overreacted, my apologies. What I was reacting to is in large part the series of different skeptic arguments you have presented, pointing every which way. That can be very hard to distinguish from the behavior of a Concern Troll. I will note, however, that the vast well of knowledge does reward those who put in some effort. In my last post I spent ~20 seconds on Google Scholar using the search term "Dickens G R 1999, Nature" from your post (clicking on the first PDF), roughly two minutes looking through the abstract, initial sections, and conclusions - and found clear information completely dismissing a 'heat from the crust' scenario. That's two and a half minutes. And this is not my professional field. Alternatively, using the "Search" box here on SkS, with the term "crust", links to some relevant threads discussing particular climate issues, such as the recent Heat from the Earth’s interior does not control climate. I'm glad you are actually looking for information on climate change. Far too many take a personally/ideologically attractive position, stick their fingers in their ears and sing 'lalala", as I'm sure you've seen. I would encourage both your curiosity - and perhaps a bit more use of search capabilities.
  38. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    Unfortunately, Camburn makes my point for me (about robust arguments). However, though he's right about ground temperatures and air temperatures often being very different, the fact that the station temperature and the grass temp seem to be the same in the photograph is not meaningful, in that that situation is not unusual. Only a series of time lapse images would provide statistically meaningful data. Looking again, I would say that the very last thermal image above makes our point best. The grass 1 metre from the warm concrete slab is at the same temperature as the grass 5 metres away, and again 30+ metres away -- and all the grass is at the same temperature as the weather station. This suggests that heat from the slab is not influencing temperatures significantly, beyond a very short distance (50cm?). The thin metal shield round the sensor kills any radiant heat from surroundings, so that can be discounted. If anything, air warmed by the slab and convected directly upwards will pull in air at ambient temperature from the surroundings and this will tend to ensure that the weather station produces an accurate reading of local air temperature. If the station was sitting on the concrete slab that could be very different.
  39. 9 Months After McLean
    Very well DB,(36) I will return to the G and T Second Law thread and present a back-radiation case for greenhouse warming, without comment. Perhaps afterwards we can revisit perpetual motion (joke again, Composer99, 33). As far as the CET/Tamino projections the thread has vanished (sadly missed) but I kept a note of the comments: Tamino, with at auto-regressive polynomial fit claimed to see a really substantial and significant trend of 0.5 degrees per centigrade towards the end of the record (2007). Dismissing my humble (but rigorous) linear regression, Tamino wrote: ““Oh My, the trend over the last ten years is 0.5 degrees per decade” I replied :” Since the previous decade finished at about 10.5 degrees, Tamino, you presumably expect this one to finish at an unprecedented 11 degree centigrade. Now that would be surprising.” The following years came in at 2008 – 9.96 and 2009 – 10.11, and the trend for the decade was not significantly different from zero.
    Response:

    [DB] "As far as the CET/Tamino projections the thread has vanished  (sadly missed) but I kept a note of the comments"

    I, too keep track of things.  Such as the location of the supposedly-missing Central England Temperature thread.  Here are your comments on the CET thread you maintain has vanished:

    May 3, 2008
    May 8, 2008
    May 12, 2008
    May 13, 2008
    July 7, 2008
    July 8, 2008
    August 7, 2008
    August 22, 2008
    September 7, 2008
    September 9, 2008
    October 3, 2008
    November 12, 2008

    The astute reader will note both the responses to you and the posting behavior you employ.

  40. Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study: “The effect of urban heating on the global trends is nearly negligible”
    42 - lancelot "In due course I plan to redraw it using a proper CAD programme" Just a small point on methods. Drawing a graph with a CAD program is not really the thing to do - as is manipulating plots to compare them in this way... not to mention "looks correct" - the eyeball-o-meter. If you want to understand the data and compare different data sets, you need to get hold of the numbers and put them in something like Excel (if you must!) or better: R, matlab, octave, SciPy (others will have their preferred tools). Only in that way can you be sure plots are correctly scaled and aligned; and you'll have the tools to do stats etc.
  41. Eric (skeptic) at 23:47 PM on 4 November 2011
    GHG emission mitigation solutions - a challenge for the Right?
    Tristan and scaddenp, you may be right about the "average" libertarian, but the probability distribution of libertarians includes those who care very much about the environment (and probably some on the other end of the spectrum). One common libertarian idea is that free markets are the best way to allocate scarce resources (a little less lofty than your pinnacle description Tristan). The basic idea is that the price signal is the most effective communication between producers and consumers. Other comm links have been tried and work in narrow areas (e.g. government deciding what roads to build), but not in others. I and other libertarian leaners expect that the energy market would be best served with a market signal. The question is how to alter or adjust the market signal to account for global warming externalities. The problem I would have with most cap and trade systems is that someone (probably in government) has to decide on the environmental value of various offsets using model predictions which is quite different from the more traditional role of government to measure pollution after the fact and levy fines. That is why I much prefer Hansen's proposal of taxing fossil fuels at the source and rebating the money to the people. But that has problems too, someone has to decide on the fossil fuel component of imports. For example, were they built in a coal-powered factory or a natural gas powered factory at 1/2 the CO2 cost? These problems are not insurmountable since for the most part they are measurements, not model outputs, but they will require a fairly extensive measurement infrastructure. Alternatively we can just heavily tax products from China, but that will engender a lot of political horse trading. Free markets can add a lot of value even in the face of high tariffs but we have to be careful not to create black markets.
  42. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    Sorry to burst a bubble, but if the stations are the same temperature as the ground, which they appear to be in a couple of photo's, then the reading is really screwed up. Ground temperatures are only the same as air temps as the air temp rises or falls. Prob like a clock twice a day. And if it is quit warm, then not even then. Farmers refer to ground temp as sod temperature. I can only suggest that you use a probe and leave it in the ground. You will see that ground temperatures and air temp seldome match.
  43. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    @Jeffery Davis Exactly! That's the argument to use. No point in getting bogged down in the detail of how the clock works when all we want to know is the time.
  44. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    @CB Dunkerson: I agree with every word of what you write. It's just that I think rebuttals should be robust as they will be nit-picked by those in denial. The essence of my comment is that the article uses thermal images to prove that the station and its surroundings are at the same temperature. I agree, they are. It then suggests that this means that the station is not being affected by the nearby heat source -- implying that if it was being affected by the heat source it should show as being warmer than its surroundings. If I have interpreted what the article says correctly then surely this is not logical in that -- assuming just for the sake of argument that there is a measurable raising of temperature -- the heat source would heat both the station and its surroundings equally. I'm suggesting that these thermal images should not be part of a robust rebuttal as they do not actually prove anything either way. Or have I misunderstood something?
  45. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    No Urban Heat Island effect in space. Satellite studies show the same warming as surface stations.
  46. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    Ok, yes I agree that the impact will be 'equally not measurable' on both... but isn't the 'not measurable' the relevant bit for a temperature anomaly study? I gather that you are saying that the IR photographs showing that the environment and monitoring stations are at the same temperature does not prove that they haven't both been impacted by the heat source. Indeed, technically they both have been... just to such a small degree as to be meaningless for purposes of the study. However, the sharp contrast (i.e. bright yellow vs purple) between the heat sources and the environment / monitoring stations also demonstrates this lack of impact. Once the logic flaw in the claim 'near heat source means biased readings' is pointed out the 'common knowledge' factor kicks in and people realize that their own past experience is at odds with what Watts is claiming.
  47. Sorting out Settled Science from Remaining Uncertainties
    I'm not sure why daisym @21 puts Prof William Happer at the top of the list of must-have scientists who disagree with AGW. There is a quality aspect to such lists (indeed they can be easily subject to discrediting) so why kick-off with Happer. Happer is a man I have a serious misgivings about. He is the man who, while discussing the Truth About Greenhouse Gases in a GWPF Policy Document (so not a place for ill-considered comments) describes the PETM, a time of mass extictions & stresses on species that resulted in, for instance, bats evolving: desctibed all this as "life thrived abundantly. He also asserts that "our ancestors" survived the Younger Dyras Event "just fine". Perhaps the same argument about ancestors would also work for the Black Death or World War 2. I would suggest that when listing scientists as evidence of legitimate scepticism, Happer is a name that would be best not seen at all, certainly never at the very top of the checklist.
  48. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    @CB Dunkerson: I agree. Please re-read what I said. The weather station and it's surroundings will both be influenced equally by any nearby heat source -- even if the influence is zero! We would therefore expect them both to be the same colour in a thermal imaging camera. So this observation does not invalidate the idea that the weather station is influenced by the nearby heat source -- even though, for the reasons you give, we know empirically that the influence will be not measurable. See what I mean?
  49. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    John Russell, think about the amount of energy which would be required to change the temperature of the surrounding environment. Or better... just do a simple experiment at home; 1: Place a thermometer three feet from your stove 2: Record the current temperature 3: Turn one of the burners to its highest setting 4: Wait a bit for the burner to warm up 5: Compare the temperature to that recorded in step 2 I think you know, without even doing the experiment, that the temperature will not change. Yes, the burner is very hot and would show up as such on an IR image... but it is not going to change the temperature of the entire room by any measurable amount. This is even more true outdoors. I'm sure there have been scientific studies of this fact (probably a couple of hundred years ago), but it also falls into the category of 'common knowledge'.
  50. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    Much as I think Watts and co have always been clutching at straws in their attempts to discredit temperature recordings, I do worry about this argument offered in rebuttal:
    "Rather than draw readers' attention to the hot spots, I would invite readers to compare the color (temperature) of the instrument housing with the color (temperature) of the general surroundings. In each case, the temperature station casing is - despite being near a source of heat - at the same temperature as the nearby land."
    My gut reaction to that statement is; well, that's what one would expect, wouldn't one -- given that the weather station and its general surroundings are arguably both equally influenced by the nearby heat source in question? I'm not sure this is such a good argument and in the absence of any scientific study in support of its validity, I would suggest it's removed. As far as I'm concerned the 'BEST' and 'Fall et al' studies have demolished the 'station siting' myth and we should move on.

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