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Comments 95901 to 95950:
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Rob Honeycutt at 15:40 PM on 13 February 2011Meet The Denominator
PopTech... Thanks for stopping in. re: #32... I actually deselected the patent button when I did the search. I also went through the list fairly thoroughly and noted that most all the articles listed were from actual published papers, as I noted. -
Marcus at 15:33 PM on 13 February 2011Meet The Denominator
"I just would like to point out you scored your own goal regarding the Oregon Petition as you would have to apply the same numerical standards to lists of proponents of AGW. Thus you have done nothing but help support that there is no consensus." Hmmm, this just displays your ongoing, blind ignorance to what scientific consensus actually is. Its not a popularity contest, no matter how much you try & make it so-its about the *scientific evidence* that either backs or debunks an existing theory. To date, though you've been quick to cite those papers that allegedly support skepticism of AGW (even though some are contradictory or don't, in truth, support skepticism as you claim) you've not been honest enough to do your own search of the literature to see how this stacks up against papers that *don't* support AGW skepticism. If you were an honest skeptic, & not merely a propagandist, then you'd have the common decency to do this. -
Meet The Denominator
Poptech - Funny: I get 2020 Google Scholar finds with quotes, 67,700 without. -
Marcus at 15:21 PM on 13 February 2011Meet The Denominator
You know, Poptech, if I were trying to build a *scientific* case against Global Warming, I'd be very leery about using a journal that isn't ISI listed, & whose editor has publicly admitted that the journal has a "political agenda"-namely backing so-called skepticism. You criticise others-with no evidence-of using non-scientific sources to bolster their argument, yet you've clearly felt a need to pad out your own rather dubious list with the pseudo-scientific nonsense published in E&E-talk about an own goal right there! -
villabolo at 15:05 PM on 13 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Tell me, Poptech, how many peer reviewed papers in favor of Climate Change would you estimate there are? More than or less than 850? If greater than 850, by how much? An order of magnitude or two perhaps? By the way, what do your links at #17 have to do with the number of Climate Change articles? -
scaddenp at 14:39 PM on 13 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Also note that in Poptech's world, a paper in E&E is perfectly equivalent to a paper in Science, Nature, or even Geophys Letters. Wonder what the numerators for cross-journal citations are like? -
MichaelM at 14:33 PM on 13 February 2011Meet The Denominator
After #22 I wouldn't be surprised if "850 Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of 'Man-Made' Global Warming (AGW) Alarm" suddenly becomes "851 Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of 'Man-Made' Global Warming (AGW) Alarm". -
Marcus at 14:12 PM on 13 February 2011Meet The Denominator
It goes even further than that though. I have a Bachelor of Science-with Honors-& work in a scientific field (Molecular Biology/Soil Microbiology). I understand the Scientific Method well enough-& know how to read a scientific paper-to be able to understand when a theory is supported by good evidence. Yet if someone were to make an "appeal to authority", & get me to sign a petition saying I support the theory of AGW, I don't know if I could do so in all good conscience. Not because I *don't* support the theory of AGW (because I do), but because ultimately I don't have the background to sign such a petition honestly. So it *really* bugs me that there are supposed scientists out there who are prepared to dishonestly lend their names to a petition about a subject which the majority of them clearly know even less about than I do. Hope that makes sense! -
r.pauli at 13:47 PM on 13 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Hmm... I see that Wikipedia says tt is estimated that approximately one percent of the general population are psychopaths. -
Henry justice at 13:18 PM on 13 February 2011It cooled mid-century
The temperature variations according to NOAA/NCDC dataset from 1880-2010 vs rising CO2 levels indicate no significant impact from CO2. However, the day/night variations explained above appear to be legitimate science and I applaud them for their work. The real worry may not be so much CO2 but a possible sudden release of Methane Hydrate from the sea bottoms and tundra bogs of Siberia. -
villabolo at 13:14 PM on 13 February 2011Meet The Denominator
I limited the search to the term "climate change" and only searched articles in the subject areas of 1) Biology, Life Science and Environmental Science, and 2) Physics, Astronomy and Planetary Science. That returned 954,000 articles. I got 622,000 by folowing the same exact criteria but when I dropped the quote marks on "climate change" I got 956,000. -
Marcus at 13:07 PM on 13 February 2011Monckton Myth #10: Warming in the Pipeline
Thanks for clarifying that Dana & Muon. I knew I only had part of the story. Any look at CO2 vs solar forcing for the last 120 years shows that CO2 easily swamps solar. Its worth noting that solar forcing grew from almost zero during the Maunder/Dalton Minimum periods up to the highs of the mid-20th century, yet that produced-at best-a +0.6 degree warming over a period of about 200 years. By contrast, we've seen a +0.6 degree warming in just the last 60 years-with +0.5 degrees of that being in the last 30 years-which represents an almost 10 times more rapid warming trend than from Solar "alone" (I say alone, though for the period of 1900-1950 CO2 was almost certainly playing a minor role). IMO, that really does highlight how powerful greenhouse gases are at boosting temperatures-compared to solar forcing alone-something further reinforced by a consideration of how much hotter our planet was 500 million years ago-in *spite* of the sun being significantly cooler than today. -
MattJ at 12:44 PM on 13 February 2011PMEL Carbon Program: a new resource
Here in this article, you say the oceans absorb a quarter, but in the NOAA sites itself, http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Ocean%2BAcidification, it says "one third", which is even more scary. The oceans might not turn completely lifeless, but they will be pretty barren pretty soon. Worse yet, people will still have videos of people eating sushi and other seafood, so they will know what we have deprived them of. So instead of the ancestor worship still common in the Far East, there will be a widespread cult of ancestor cursing. -
Ron Crouch at 12:30 PM on 13 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Even if you had been more liberal in your treatment of the OP or Poptech, it would still have demonstrated that it's little more than "grandstanding". It's like these outfits try to prey upon gullibility by speaking as if they have some ordained authority. The sad part is that there is an element of realism to it. I don't know about the rest here but I come into contact with plain old Joe of the streets on a daily basis. And I find most are simply misinformed, citing garbage like this, and could care less to find out the real truth. Oh, lest I forget those who would deny the truth based upon some "higher" belief, or those who deny just because it's in their nature to do so. Most of them are too busy trying to be the nice hand fed puppies that they are, mindlessly sipping their Latte' from Starbucks. Most don't hold opinions of their own design. Don't worry about not being counted as a real scientist just cause you live outside the U.S. The Ville, cause "Your not a Real American unless Your a Marine" either, or so the story goes. And to think that all these years I was raised to believe that a Real American was -- an Indian. -
MattJ at 12:23 PM on 13 February 2011Meet The Denominator
@Alexandre- Right you are. But isn't it sad? Doesn't it say something is terribly wrong about our so-called "scientific peer review"? After all, the paper really did somehow manage to squeak past. Even if they are a minority of papers that passed peer review, this is really, really bad. -
MattJ at 12:22 PM on 13 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Now what you have to do is get the article to show the Austrian-accent pronunciation of "I'll be back";) Oh, BTW: I see the comments have already made a good start on it, but I'll mention it anyway: once you have shown that even giving them the benefit of the doubt, the numbers are not behind them, it really does make sense to go ahead and show that they never deserved that benefit of the doubt in the first place. Like Polar Bear said, there are a lot of people with degrees who really don't know much science, even with nursing degrees, where they really should have learned something about it. Sad to say, there are even a lot of people with medical and engineering degrees who think they know science, but most of what they 'know' about it isn't even true. Why, I'll go even further and say that there are too many "practicing scientists" who don't even really know science. I have in mind this one individual with a PhD in science who publicly humiliated and ridiculed a fellow scientist for pointing out the unsolved problems in the presenter's thesis in a seminar on biology that took place at a major biotech company. But such criticism IS a vital part of the scientific method: if your conclusion/proposal cannot survive sound criticism, then it is unscientfic. After all: in Newton's 'Opticks', where he gave his still valid description of the scientific method, he says: "And if no exception occur from Phaenomena, the Conclusion may be pronounced generally (p380)". But how will we KNOW whether or not exceptions occur, if we silence objections like this? We MUST allow them, as long as "they are taken from Experiments or other certain Truths (ibid)". In the case I am criticizing, they were. Objections can be silenced only when they are truly unscientific, such as the objections of Lindzen and Monckton, which are neither from experiments nor from any other kind of "certain truths". NB: Newton's 'Opticks' is in Google Books. It is worth reading the citations above in context, since his description of the scientific method is SO good! -
JMurphy at 12:14 PM on 13 February 2011Monckton Myth #9: Monckton vs Monckton on heat waves
With reference to the high/low ratio : This is now the 10th month out of the last 13 since last January that heat records have exceeded cold ones. The ratio of high temperature records to low temperature records over that period is 2.18 to 1, and the cumulative excess of heat records is almost 7000. January Heat Outpaces Cold -
rhjames at 12:09 PM on 13 February 2011Ten temperature records in a single graphic
Thanks - I'll go through this in detail. Where possible, I try to get as close to the data source as possible (eg the Hadcrut data I listed earlier). I get concerned when someone modifies data, and gets a different gradient or trend. Normalisation with a baseline shift is fine, but the basic trends normally shouldn't change. I expect I'll find the answers when I study the text. Keep in mind that my earlier comments were based on data I've looked at from the actual data sets before these adjustments are applied, so I'm seeing a different picture. -
Rob Honeycutt at 11:49 AM on 13 February 2011Meet The Denominator
I would be very curious to know how many papers PopTech has read in order to get 850 that he believes challenge "AGW alarm." -
JMurphy at 11:43 AM on 13 February 2011Meet The Denominator
The main thing about Poptech's little list is that no matter what the authors of the papers actually think, they are, in his own mind, supporting his own version of what he considers 'AGW alarm' to be, i.e. he has his own world-view and beliefs and he can twist any paper into agreeing with what he thinks 'alarm' means. It's a very good example of Conservative reality-creating, necessitated by the real world being too inconvenient. -
JMurphy at 11:25 AM on 13 February 2011It hasn't warmed since 1998
protestant, I notice you still haven't retracted or backed-up your accusation of "unjustified interpolation", so, to help you out, please look at the following comment. You can reply there to retract or back-up your accusation. -
Chemware at 11:24 AM on 13 February 2011Coral Reef Baselines
I visited the Cairns area in 1967, and clearly remember inshore reefs right on the coast on the drive up to Port Douglas. When I next visited that area in the early 1990s they were gone. Clearly, any survey that started in 1986 will not include these reefs, so any claims that the GBR was in a pristine state at this time are ridiculous. -
JMurphy at 11:17 AM on 13 February 2011Guardian article: Australia's recent extreme weather isn't so extreme anymore
I thought I would add the actual image from the first link I gave previously, just in case :
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JMurphy at 11:13 AM on 13 February 2011Guardian article: Australia's recent extreme weather isn't so extreme anymore
johnd, instead of seeing Australia as one entity that can only get wetter, drier (whatever it is that you want to argue against), why not have a look at a trend map where you will see that the majority of the country seems to be trending wetter, while a significant minority seems to be trending drier. You see, the two states can exist at the same time in different parts of the country, because Climate is complicated. That is why people easily get confused when they expect Global Warming to mean that warming will occur linearly everywhere, year by year. It's a shame that it needs to be constantly re-iterated. As for 30-year trends, laugh at this : The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) requires the calculation of averages for consecutive periods of 30 years, with the latest covering the 1961–1990 period. However, many WMO members, including the UK, update their averages at the completion of each decade. Thirty years was chosen as a period long enough to eliminate year-to-year variations. MET OFFICE I believe you will find that they decided that before Al Gore and all his alarmists thought it would be a good idea to use 30 years, to be mean to all the so-called skeptics...well, according to the so-called skeptics, anyway. -
Rob Painting at 11:06 AM on 13 February 2011Guardian article: Australia's recent extreme weather isn't so extreme anymore
John D - "Your comment about the relevance of the most recent drought indicates that perhaps you are more influenced by such short term aberrations rather than the bigger "broad-scale" longer term picture." Define what you mean about aberration. We have over 40 years of a general drying trend in Australia:
When does your aberration end and non-aberration start?.
How does this relate to your own assertions?
From Gallant & Karoly 2010
John D -"These trends mostly stem from changes in tropical regions during summer and spring."
I do hope you understand that rainfall totals can fall in a region yet extreme rainfall events can increase. You get that right?. The long term drying trend is what causes drought.
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Polar Bear at 11:04 AM on 13 February 2011Meet The Denominator
There are a lot of people with bs degrees in Nursing who do not know much science..After an associate degree,work experience gets credit toward the degree..that could explain why my state nursing organization did not want to discuss global warming when they had a big meeting about the environment and health -
Rob Honeycutt at 10:56 AM on 13 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Toolmaker... Regarding an analysis of the points made on the OP, that's a little outside the point I'm trying to make with this article. -
Rob Honeycutt at 10:47 AM on 13 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Toolmaker... Good catch. Updated the post. -
johnd at 10:40 AM on 13 February 2011Guardian article: Australia's recent extreme weather isn't so extreme anymore
Rob Painting at 07:18 AM on 13 February, 2011, the conclusions of the Gallant & Karoly 2010 paper were "Around the mid-late 1970s, the broad-scale Australian environment changed from a period where colder and drier extremes dominated to one where hotter and wetter extremes were more prevalent. Such changes manifested in annual, seasonal, and daily extremes." How does this relate to your own assertions? Whilst they noted regional differences, the conclusions were defined as referring to "the broad-scale Australian environment". Your comment about the relevance of the most recent drought indicates that perhaps you are more influenced by such short term aberrations rather than the bigger "broad-scale" longer term picture. It is only when the status-quo has been re-established after a drought and the ground water reservoirs have been replenished that any indications will become obvious. Indeed even in the paper it was the only the focusing on very short time scales, 5 years and less that allowed their conclusions to be reached, and that leads me to wonder what is the relevance of it all as I feel measuring anything less than the time frames that are found in the various ocean based cycles yields little. Just as there are shorter and longer periods of dry weather, so too are there shorter and longer periods of wet weather. The systems that bring rain to one region, generally deprive another region of theirs. In Australia's case that means not just regions within Australia, but includes Indonesia, India and Africa all being within the Indian Ocean region. One other aspect that I am not sure of in such studies that are analysing extremes is whether or not double counting or worse occurs or not. Generally if the systems are such that it brings above average rainfall to one region, another region is deprived of theirs. This should not be counted as two extreme events, but given how it was indicated in the paper that contrasting extreme events were evident in some regions, then I suspect they were accommodated as two separate pieces of data. How do you think they have been accommodated, or should be accommodated? Recent events worldwide also indicate that perhaps the same may apply to heat, if the various systems coincide in such a way that the heat carried by them is directed into a single region, then it will be at the expense of other regions. Any thoughts on that? -
Rob Painting at 10:35 AM on 13 February 2011Guardian article: Australia's recent extreme weather isn't so extreme anymore
Marvin @ 34 - If this six weeks of extreme weather events in 2011 is an indicator of AGW, then could we assume that six weeks or more of relative inactivity indicates the opposite? If you ignore the preceding 3 centuries of increasingly more extreme weather in Australia, and focus only on the last 6 weeks, then maybe. Sounds a tad unscientific though. -
ToolmakerSteve at 10:34 AM on 13 February 2011Meet The Denominator
make a correction please: 0.001 is 0.1% (not 0.01%). [I rounded the 0.00099 to 0.001, because the values given don't have enough accuracy to justify two decimal points. besides, it is easier to grasp the correct values with that rounding.] Related topic - the scientific summary in the pdf on that petition site: can you provide an analysis of the points that they raise? -
Paul D at 10:13 AM on 13 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Ah, so because I live outside the US, I'm not a scientist (I'm not in the real world, but I could apparently qualify as being one in the US!). -
WSteven at 10:06 AM on 13 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Excellent article. I'm glad to see someone making the effort to put things into perspective. -
rockytom at 10:04 AM on 13 February 2011Articgate: perpetuating the myth that Arctic sea ice has recovered
As a geologist I must defend the science. However, as a geologist I find Harrison Schmitt an embarrassment. Obviously, he is a geologist that has been blinded by his conservatism and possibly hasn't read a scientific paper outside his specialty in some time. I don't intend to write an ad hominem piece, but there are so many more like him, not just geologists but "scientists" like S. Fred Singer, Roy Spencer, Roger Pielke, Jr., etc. The Earth is warming and mankind is the major contributor and those who deny this have not looked at the evidence no matter what their background. One would think a geologist (an Earth scientist) would be able to read and understand climate science, which is after all an Earth science. Thanks for all you do on this blog! And I do mean all the contributors. Tom -
Brendon at 09:52 AM on 13 February 2011Meet The Denominator
As a discussion on Nova's forum pointed out, to make the 800 list a paper can qualify as follows: 1. It must disagree, even if only slightly, in part with some aspect of CAGW as defined by anyone, even a newspaper, rather than disagreeing with the IPCC or mainstream scientific opinion (eg Knorr). 2. The paper may confirm fundamental properties of AGW (Scafetta & natural GHG feedbacks). 3. The papers can hold completely opposing views with each other and that’s ok (Gerlich, says no greenhouse effect, Scafetta says there is). 4. The paper can be seriously flawed (Idso). 5. The paper doesn’t have to be from a climate scientist, pollitical views are ok. 6. "Poptech", the guy who maintains the list, doesn’t have to agree with the findings of the paper, in this way they can avoid the conflict of point 3 and dispute point 2). -
Alexandre at 09:42 AM on 13 February 2011Meet The Denominator
I tried to find something worthwhile in that list, when it first appeared with the "450 peer-reviewed studies". It was just an amateur attempt, of course. I picked one or two, then challanged some skeptics friend to pick some too. I think we went over some 6 or 7. They were all either non-peer-reviewed (E&E or opinion piece, for example), or did not challenge the consensus (like some paleoclimate study saying that sometime in the past we had higher temperatures somewhere, or saying that the PETM cannot be explained by CO2 alone). I'm sure there MUST be some real challenge hidden in there, but the "denominator" certainly chops it down to just a handful (if any). If this list had more attention of the denialosphere3, it could deserve a rebuttal post here by someone better qualified than myself... -
muoncounter at 09:34 AM on 13 February 2011Ten temperature records in a single graphic
#133: "I pointed out that at least 30 years is needed for a trend to be meaningful." Sorry, I thought your conclusion was "Basically, we really don't know what it's doing ... only time will tell" which seemed to be based on 15 years of something or other. Thirty years (or 50 years) of temperature data doesn't support that conclusion. "something seems very wrong" Read the Tamino post; he's made a series of adjustments to put the datasets on a common baseline and take out the oscillatory noise. What he's showing is a trend that is common to all measures -- and that trend is quite meaningful. -
heystoopid at 09:27 AM on 13 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Ah, those evil numbers from the real world strike again, such infamy! -
rhjames at 09:20 AM on 13 February 2011Ten temperature records in a single graphic
muoncounter - if you read my post again, you'll see that I pointed out that at least 30 years is needed for a trend to be meaningful. I've selected this period because it was mentioned in an earlier post. Interesting - when I compare the above plot to my plot taken from Hadcrut data, it's very different. The Hadcrut site http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3vgl.txt gives the following : 1997 : 0.349 1998 : 0.529 1999 : 0.304 2000 : 0.278 2001 : 0.407 2002 : 0.455 2003 : 0.467 2004 : 0.444 2005 : 0.474 2006 : 0.425 2007 : 0.397 2008 : 0.333 2009 : 0.437 2010 : 0.468 This concerns be because something seems very wrong - possibly in my data source. I would appreciate it if someone can clarify why my Hadcrut data seems wrong. Sorry I can't insert the plot. I'll check the Tamino link to see if it explains the data source. -
Bjarne Mikael Torkveen at 08:47 AM on 13 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Kudos for the math. But the numbers are even more cruel to the climate deniers when you take into account that not everyone on the Oregon Petition is an actual scientist or even an actual person. The same goes for the PopTech list where not every paper is published in a peer reviewed journal. The all too familiar name "Energy & Environment" pops up quite often on that list. -
RickG at 08:40 AM on 13 February 2011There is no consensus
muoncounter, Yes, I'm well aware of the lack of credibility of the "petition project" list. That's why I asked the question in light of the statements in #281. I wanted to see if he supported the "petition project" but not the Doran study. Or perhaps I misunderstood what he was suggesting. -
Marvin Gardens at 08:15 AM on 13 February 2011Guardian article: Australia's recent extreme weather isn't so extreme anymore
If this six weeks of extreme weather events in 2011 is an indicator of AGW, then could we assume that six weeks or more of relative inactivity indicates the opposite? It's a fair question. -
muoncounter at 08:11 AM on 13 February 2011Monckton Myth #10: Warming in the Pipeline
#18: "Conversely it has to increase the CO2 response for the last 30 years." Of course it has to increase. Atmospheric CO2 concentration is a strongly concave up function of time. CO2 concentration drives radiative forcing by the log of the ratio of current year CO2 to a reference level (usually the 'pre-industrial' 280 ppm). Some have argued (see Monckton #3) that warming must slow because the log function is concave down, but CO2's upward concavity trumps. So even after taking the natural log of this ratio, we still see a concave up temperature vs. time. Hence the slope of the temperature graph increases. See sample graphs here. -
muoncounter at 07:35 AM on 13 February 2011There is no consensus
#282: "concerning the "petition project"... " See the thread on the very same petition project. When the petition first came out, I checked some of the names: Quite a few dentists, pediatricians, astrologers, people who had taken a science degree and then gone on to business school or law school ... even some who were deceased at the time. -
Rob Painting at 07:18 AM on 13 February 2011Guardian article: Australia's recent extreme weather isn't so extreme anymore
Johnd @ 30 - and a notion that it all can be analysed through a number of formulas or graphs What do you have in mind to replace it?, chicken bones and tea leafs?. Actual analysis shows extreme events are increasing in Australia. It would be nice to have information further back in time, however until someone invents a time machine, we have to use what is available. I constantly had to point out that Australia in fact, was not getting drier, but instead getting wetter And of course you were constantly wrong. Northern Australia is indeed getting wetter: Weather Extremes Are Growing Trend in Northern Australia, Corals Show and A Combined Climate Extremes Index for the Australian Region - Gallant & Karoly 2010 but that isn't the case for other regions of Australia, as the last decade of drought should have made obvious. And when this La Nina is over?. Back to drought again for many regions. -
Kevin C at 07:08 AM on 13 February 2011Climate Data for Citizen Scientists
Nice work Caerbannog! I had one interesting idea on a variant of the baselining technique: Calculate a baseline on the whole period rather than 1950-1980 (which will therefore be poor), then calculate the geographically averaged monthly anomaly. Then go back and recalculate the baseline for each station subtracting the monthly average to get a better set of baselines. Calculate the monthly anomaly again. Calculate baselines again. Iterate until stable. The result should be a poor-man's approximation to Nick Stokes' TempLS algorithm. -
Rob Painting at 06:53 AM on 13 February 2011Climate Data for Citizen Scientists
Caerbannog - I liken "skeptics" to dogs that chase after cars. They get all excited and noisy, but when the car stops they have no idea what to do. Same with skeptics and the raw data. -
Eric (skeptic) at 06:37 AM on 13 February 2011Guardian article: Australia's recent extreme weather isn't so extreme anymore
Here's a 2003 paper that supports a broad perspective on Australian climate change impacts: http://www.edo.org.au/edonsw/site/pdf/subs/climate%20change%20review.pdf A 2000 paper shows that a simple index like "total rainfall" may not be as illuminating as indexes that show rainfall events decreasing while the intensity of the events increases: http://www.vsamp.com/vsamp/resume/publications/Haylock_Nicholls.pdf My inclination is to cherry pick some advice from the first paper to emphasize impact mitigation (instead of emission mitigation). -
caerbannog at 06:00 AM on 13 February 2011Climate Data for Citizen Scientists
Thought that the citizen-science thread would be a good place to post this. Not enough material to justify a full guest post, so I'm just leaving a little note here. I've added some new features to my "Quick and Dirty" global temperature anomaly app. It now performs a simple gridded average (geospatial weighting) that produces results that are remarkably similar to NASA's "Meteorological Stations" temperature index (NASA results here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/ -- scroll down to the Global Temperature (meteorological stations) plot). The app now allows you to generate urban vs. rural results side-by-side (it reads the GHCN v2 metadata file to extract rural and urban stations separately). You can now debunk the "Urban Heat Island" talking-point in real-time. The all also allows you to generate ensembles of results, each computed from a different set of randomly-chosen temperature stations. You can throw out 90 percent of the temperature stations and still get results that are quite consistent with the results you get when you process all of the data. Here's a plot of the program's output vs. NASA's equivalent results (note: I used GHCN "raw" monthly-mean data):
For those who are interested, the latest source-code can be found here: http://forum.signonsandiego.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=8142&d=1297529025
(Run the app without any arguments to get a semi-helpful "usage" message).
Now, back onto the soapbox for a bit:
It was surprisingly easy to implement the gridding/geospatial-weighting routine (much easier that I originally thought that it would be). The result posted above is what popped out on my first "full-up" run -- i.e. not tweaking or data-fiddling required. Only a few modest changes to my app would be required to perform all the temperature-data analysis/processing that Anthony Watts has been promising (but has failed to deliver) for years!
Getting a crude version of this app up and running took something like a weekend in my spare time -- the bulk of the time spent was cleaning it up and getting it into a form where others might find it useful.
The one major thing that I learned from this project is how breathtakingly inane and brain-dead the denialists' campaign against the surface temperature record has been. A major part of the "climategate" campaign against the CRU was based on the claim that nobody could verify the CRU's global temperature results because the CRU supposedly was "hiding" a small fraction of the data used in their global temperature calculations.
That, of course, is completely absurd -- what my exercise demonstrated is that someone with basic programming skills and the ability to read documentation should have no trouble validating the CRU's results with just a weekend's worth of effort. There is enough public temperature data and plenty of free software tools to enable any technically competent person to debunk the entire basis of the so-called "climategate" scandal with just a couple of days worth of effort.
The "climategate" campaign truly has taken "stupid" to unprecedented heights.
I'm keeping my app handy so that the next time some loudmouth starts spouting off to me about NASA's/CRU's "cooked" data, I'll be able to whip out my laptop and shut him up. I've found that having someone see me generate results "on the fly" from my own app makes a bigger impression than handing him/her a link to a NASA web-page.
Hopefully, others can find this app useful in the same way. I've given it a fair bit of testing, so I don't think that there are any "showstopper" bugs (but no guarantees!).
Moderator Response: [DB] Converted URL's to links. -
dana1981 at 05:54 AM on 13 February 2011Monckton Myth #10: Warming in the Pipeline
mozart - I recommend you look over the 'Climate sensitivity is not specific to CO2' section here. I discussed the 'efficacies' of various climate forcings - how effective they are in changing global temperatures. If anything, solar irradiance has a lower efficacy than CO2, so comparing the response to solar irraidance to the response to CO2 is a reasonable thing to do.
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