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skepticstudent at 08:44 AM on 8 May 2010Climate Change and the Integrity of Science: a letter to Science
Let me be the first to respond to this august panel (my compliments to anyone who sits through 4-12 years of science to earn a degree of any kind) 1. **** NO, but a decade of snowy winters in Alaska, Washington, Russia and most of western Europe make a statement towards declining temperatures. -
Rob Honeycutt at 08:34 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
@poptech... The individual degrees these people hold is irrelevant. This is THE top scientific organization in our fine nation. This is a rather large group of HIGHLY accomplished scientists, arguably many of the finest living scientists humanity has to offer. Their issue is not about climate science per se. It is about the outside political and special interest forces being exerted on their colleagues. They are also making a clears statement that the climate science is sound, to the point of declaring it a "theory" same as evolution and the big bang, and stating that it can be viewed as fact. These are extremely definitive terms they are choosing to lay out. And they are also stating that climate science is, at the same time, a process of discovery that involves, as I have pointed out, disagreements. But you can't take the disagreements and hold them up to suggest that AGW is not real, anymore than you can hold up a disagreement in evolution and hold that up to suggest that evolution is not real. -
MarkR at 07:40 AM on 8 May 2010University of Queensland talk wrap-up
cdion: the argument seems quite complex in the papers I've read (Hansen did one in '95 iirc), involving interactions with clouds too... But one simple explanation might be that days are cooler than nights. Heat flow is related to temperature by something like Planck's Law (accounting for emissivity), dQ/dt = A ε σ T4 (that's heat flow proportional to temperature to the power 4, the other symbols are constants). If you change heat flow by a given amount, a hotter thing will warm up less than a cooler thing will. To increase from a T of '1' to a T of '2' requires an increase in heat flow of 15/(Aσε) (from '1' to '16'). To increase from a temp of '5' to a temp of '6' requires an increase in heat flow of 671/(Aσε) units. So if you add a heat flow of 15/(Aσε) from, say, greenhouse gases, you could warm something from 1K to 2K, or from 5K to something like 5.02K. i.e. nights should warm faster than days. Once again though, the real argument seems pretty complex; with the full observations requiring greenhouse gases and cloud changes and scientists seem to take a full paper to explain it! Maybe a quick look at Hansen's '95 paper is worth a go, you've reminded me to check it again when I next have time! -
Tom Dayton at 07:36 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
Poptech, instead of pasting large blocks of content from other sites (your comment with that was deleted), you should link to the original site. In response to your request, no I will not do that research for you. The signers of the letter are listed at the bottom of the letter, and their affiliations are listed in the supporting material. But if you want to argue about how many scientists take which position, the appropriate thread is not this one. Instead, post on There is no consensus or on the threads listed in the "Related Arguments" green box at the bottom of that one. -
carrot eater at 07:30 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
This is turning into a mere exercise of digging up things other people have said somewhere. Which is useful inasmuch as they're relevant, but simply linking something is not the same as reading it, understanding it, critically assessing it, and then discussing it. Simply showing that something exists does not demonstrate that it is valid. Granted, for somebody who isn't a specialist in paleoclimate (and I surely am not; I'm not even that interested in it), there's only so much time you might want to devote to getting into it. No one person can be an expert in all things. I applaud robhon for being upfront, that he isn't a specialist, but that he appreciates that the process works out - science proceeds over time. -
Riccardo at 07:20 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
Again, as in the main post, this is just a useless fight. This kind of argiung is not in the interest of adding something to the science. There's something really a-scientific behind it. Sentences like "Defending Mann's work is the equivalent of defending the Titanic as unsinkable" means absolutely nothing but make clear the intention. Which is unacceptable. -
Tom Dayton at 06:57 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
Poptech, the letter from a great many members of the National Academy of Sciences was published in the May 7 issue of the journal Science. -
Rob Honeycutt at 06:47 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
The NAS letter is about YOU. -
Rob Honeycutt at 06:39 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
@poptech... It takes only one but also takes more than one person to believe it. The broader scientific community has NOT accepted it. But again, that is part of the scientific process. What you are doing is literally taking film of one punch in a 12 round fight and deciding the whole match on it. The rest of the scientific community obviously did NOT see this as a knock out blow, as witnessed by the open letter from 255 NAS scientist that came out today. -
Rob Honeycutt at 06:31 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
@poptech... I think you should read my previous post again. It wasn't about Mann at all. It was about the public perception of science and the battles that go on that are part of the scientific process. -
Doug Bostrom at 06:19 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
Poptech, for the slow-witted among us, could you explain how Mann's reply to Mc&Mc 2009 is incorrect, in your own words? How is it funny? Tell us in your own words, please. -
Rob Honeycutt at 05:50 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
@poptech... I think what doug's comments point out is the same thing that I'm actually trying to say in my main post above. This IS what scientists do! They challenge each other. They battle. They quarrel. They snipe and sometimes even get unpleasant in their exchanges. That is part and parcel to most science and is particularly true of a contentious issue like global warming. The mistake to make is thinking that Mc&Mc somehow completely invalidate Mann's work. This is the process by which solid scientific theories are built. But what is happening is the broader public out there is being fed details of this robust scientific process and are being told that everything is broken, when in fact it's not. The good fight is extremely important. Science would get nowhere without it. The problem with the public perception of this process has to do with a lot of unfair amateur refereeing going on along at the side lines. -
cdion at 04:50 AM on 8 May 2010University of Queensland talk wrap-up
Nice slides! I have a question. In the notes, you say: "The greenhouse effect operates day and night so this means nights should be warming faster than days." The logic for this escapes me. Why faster warming during the night? -
NewYorkJ at 03:12 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
Ned: "Maybe you're right and the previous commenter was just referring to "why he cannot get any climate change papers published." If that was unclear to me, it was probably unclear to others as well (or, maybe not :-) " I took it to mean "why he cannot get [the stuff he's complaining about] published". Thanks for the link to the E&E discussion. -
Kung-fu Climate
Poptech, Let's assume we toss out the CRU data. Now what? Where does your argument go from there? The remaining datasets all show either the same results or more warming, and most of them do have the raw data and source code available. Your entire line of argument is a red herring. -
Doug Bostrom at 02:45 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
Waiting for acknowledgment by Poptech of Dikran Marsupial's concise and complete explanation of which historical temperature data is available, which is not, the reasons for that. By the way, complaining about supposedly "missing" raw temperature data is akin to complaining that you can't read War and Peace because you can't read the same physical copy of the book I read. Get a copy of the book, read it yourself, draw your own conclusions. My margin notes don't change the book. -
JMurphy at 02:25 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
Humanity Rules quotes CoalGeologist asking : "the presumption that there has to be some other explanation than AGW, because AGW couldn't be true" Humanity Rules then asks : Who is making this presumption? Oh wait I remember, it's the straw man. Do you mean this 'straw man' : Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science. Dr Tim Ball -
michael sweet at 02:04 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
Manns' work in 1998 (with subsequent additions to the present) was detailed and built on the work of others. Loelhe makes many basic errors that were worked out before Mannn even became involved. Since Loehle retains errors that others corrected over 14 years ago, why should he be given a voice at the table with those who are informed about how to do this work? Loelhe may be a good scientist in other areas. He should know that if he comits basic errors and adds nothing to the discussion he will not be able to publish in reputable journals. Scientific journals are not op-ed pages, you need new data or analysis to participate. This paper has neither. -
HumanityRules at 01:52 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
151.chris I don't understand your first point sorry The CPC data is from here (near the bottom of the page) http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/data/indices/ There isn't really much context. Just data. -
HumanityRules at 01:48 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
145.chris Again you confuse a scientist recognising possible limitation in his work with bad work. 147.chris 1207 sounds like a big number. Only six (3 if you're using the screened database) of them cover the SH for the MWP. 6 is a much smaller number. The SH data is sparse. Mann's work covering the MWP is essentially a NH reconstruction. The problem is he and you can't recognise the limitations of his work. Loelhe appears to have that important skill. A question. If Energy and Environment is just a rag for peddling denier propaganda why does Loelhe bother putting all these caveats in his work? -
chris at 01:42 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
HumanityRules at 01:26 AM on 8 May, 2010 HR, you're misrepresenting CoalGeologist by false precis. He said:"That said, the presumption that there has to be some other explanation than AGW, because AGW couldn't be true, is what distinguishes denialism from skepticism."
so it's not a strawman at all. Your plots are nice. Can you give us the link so we can look at them in context? Obviously the OLR is likely to depend on the surface (especially ocean) temperature, and so it isn't surprising if this fluctuates as surface temperature fluctuates. However AGW is about the net imbalance between incoming and outcoming radiation in response to enhanced atmospheric forcing, and its temporal evolution towards a new equilibrium. -
chris at 01:28 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
My last word on the non-science aspects of Dr. Loehle, but something which is odd and perhaps a little sad. This is the extent to which his recent efforts are so diametrically opposed to the sentiments he apparently held 20-odd years ago. He felt so strongly against attempts at political interference in science, and particularly the efforts at "fraud-hunting" and "auditing" that he wrote a letter to Nature on the subject. some excerpts [see Nature (1989) 338, p. 370]:"There is a danger in the controversy over fraud in science of merging the concepts of fraud and error. The call for an audit of scientific papers for error is a symptom of this trend. Fraud such as fabricating data or publishing the work of other's as one's own is of course serious, particularly when it involves assessment of drugs and other medical treatments whwre lives are at stake. But error is an inevitable part of science. The fundamental point is being missed in the current debate...."
and towards the end:"Who will review the error hunters? Who is qualified to punish whom?"
And yet Loehle spends time on a blog where the sort of "auditing" that he decried all those years ago is used to bully and harass scientists. Googling "Craig Loehle fraud", uncovers many examples of his work being used to bolster the efforts of those bellowing "fraud" against science. Dr. Loehle seems to think this is now acceptable. ....how one's views and philosophies can change over the years.... -
HumanityRules at 01:26 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
60.CoalGeologist "the presumption that there has to be some other explanation than AGW, because AGW couldn't be true" Who is making this presumption? Oh wait I remember, it's the straw man. I don't know if this is full filling my duty but I was trawling through the CPC website, as you do, and found this. Again energy rather than atmospheric temperature. If this isn't something other than CO2 affecting energy loss from the earth then I don't know what is. The similarity of SOI and equatorial OLR is amazing.
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Nichol at 01:15 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
Wondering about the error-bars, without intimate knowledge of the various kung-fu techniques.. + There is a basic problem with the above curves: without error bars, how can we know they're not all consistent with e.g. the hocky-stick like curves in the middle? Is there a 'fight' going on between these curves at all, or do they simply agree with the one or two using the largest data sample, the ones most likely to be the most precise? Obviously, one would expect the blue curve with much less data also to have much larger error bars. + The question #2 about local vs global temperature proxies is a serious one. It raises the possibility of systematic errors if you limit yourself to localized datasets. Maybe a better approach towards a global curve would be to take the average of one curve for the northern hemisphere and another for the southern? + could somebody explain what was the reason for avoiding the tree ring data? I only remember reading that there are problems with recent tree-ring data. Is there any understanding of the reason for that? Are recent tree rings affected by recent burning of fossil fuels, or other changes in the air? Or is there any reason to believe that there can be problems with older tree ring data? Does 'tree ring data' consist of anything else than just the width of the rings, e.g. some chemical/isotopic analysis of the wood? If not, does #75 have a good reason to be (properly) skeptic about the meaningfulness of tree ring data? Or are there reasonable ways to estimate the systematic errorbars on tree ring derived data? -
chris at 01:11 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
HumanityRules at 00:52 AM on 8 May, 2010 Mann's recent paleoreconstruction (PNAS 2008, 105, 13252-13257), comprised 1209 records [1,158 annually and 51 decadally-resolved proxy series including tree-ring, marine sediment, speleothem, lacustrine, ice core, coral, and historical documentary series]. I'd say that's not sparse. Each of Mann's series meets criteria of verification with respect to temperature relationship validation, dating, temporal resolution and overall homogenisation criteria. He is clear in the criteria by which his (and his colleagues, of course) paleoreconstructions are appropriately N. hemispheric or global. Contrast that with Lohle's use of poorly validated proxies. The use of proxies with inadequate dating and that have temporal resolution of as poor as one point every 100 years. His pretence that by including a couple of poorly validated S. African and one equatorial Pacific set his 18-proxy reconstruction can be considered a global reconstruction. Loehle could have used many more avaliable proxies [he chose one proxy series out of a whole set of ocean sediment proxies compiled by Kim et al (2004) Quaternary Science Reviews 23, 2141-2154, at least 2 others of which had the temporal resolution and dating validation appropriate for inclusion]. And Mann et al. acknowledge the limitations of their work. All science has limitations. As far as Mann's paleoreconstructions go and Loehle's, I consider one to be science and one to be something else... -
Alexandre at 01:10 AM on 8 May 2010University of Queensland talk wrap-up
Very good slideshow. I downloaded the high-res version to make sure I have my copy. It's hard subject to get through in just a few minutes, and you did it well. One minor comment: when I first heard of the stratospheric cooling, I also understood it via the mental picture of that "blanketing" effect at the troposphere. But I was surprised to find out it's far more complicated than that. The blanket analogy works for the imbalance period, but the cooler stratosphere is the equilibrium state predicted in the models. Even Gavin Schmidt had a hard time expaining it at RealClimate - which is saying a lot. Ramanathan used another mental picture that I found a bit more enlightening: since the temperature increases with altitude in the stratosphere, more CO2 there would mean less heat coming down (thanks to ScienceOfDoom here). -
Byron Smith at 01:08 AM on 8 May 2010University of Queensland talk wrap-up
Thanks John - another great resource! I second the comment above about including ocean acidification in any future and slightly longer presentations. Also, if you think you might start getting more invites to information sessions like this, a short course on public speaking might be useful. I have no idea of your skills in this area, and so don't take this as any kind of attack, but everyone can improve and if you've only done a few talks, then getting a handle on some of the basics could help your verbal communication. This message is too important to have people distracted by irrelevant factors. -
D Kelly O at 01:07 AM on 8 May 2010University of Queensland talk wrap-up
John: Great slideshow, I'll add a link to it on my blog. Ned: I agree with your comment about ..."positive examples of "citizen science". Keep on "obsessing", you have at least 1 supporter! -
Ned at 01:05 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
chris, I don't disagree with anything you say there. I was just reacting to the comment "I can see why he cannot get anything published" and perhaps reading too much into it. CL has published quite a lot in his own field, and in perfectly fine journals. Maybe you're right and the previous commenter was just referring to "why he cannot get any climate change papers published." If that was unclear to me, it was probably unclear to others as well (or, maybe not :-) -
chris at 00:53 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
Ned, I don't normally do this (deviate from the science), but I think it's appropriate to comment more generally on on Loehle's recent publications, since this issue came up in the top article on this thread; i.e.:" What I got from him was that he believes himself to be one of the scientists whose work is blocked from publication for political reasons. And I got that his motivation for this 2007/2008 paper was to point out the "politically motivated" science trying to obscure the MWP by Michael Mann and others. I do not doubt Loehle is genuine in this statement and that he is genuine in his desire to do good science."
(i) "good science". Loehle's reconstruction isn't very good science (see the posts that actually address the science, on this thread). His note in the magazine Energy&Environ. on upper ocean heat content wasn't good science (final sentence "...and it remains possible that the result of the present analysis remains an artifact" - quite so!). His recent misplaced assertions in Atmospheric Environment isn't "good science". We could discuss these poor and unnecessary efforts in case anyone considers that my comments are overly subjective. (ii) "work blocked from publication". Loehle has published around 80 papers largely on various aspects of forest and landscape ecology, environmental impacts on habitats etc. He knows what's required to get decent science into decent journals. Pretty much anything that complies with the basic standards of the scientific method can be published somewhere. If Loehle is being sincere, he needs (it seems to me) to confront the reality that his diversion into climate physics has produced sub-standard analyses that don't make the grade (I personally believe he knows this, and that these recent publicationds aren't actually about science at all). We don't have to beat around the bush on this - Loehle has got his papers published in a magazine (E&E) and elsewhere, and we can see for ourselves what it is that Loehle seemingly considers he should have been allowed to publish in proper journals. -
HumanityRules at 00:52 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
97.chris Ron pointed out in post 87 that Loelhe acknowledges that the data is sparse. Much of the problems you level at Loelhe's work are suffered by Mann. The question might be whether Mann and the IPCC (and you) are prepared to acknowledge the limitations of their work? -
Paul D at 00:47 AM on 8 May 2010University of Queensland talk wrap-up
John I think a comment you make in your PDF notes is key to the skeptical attacks and strategy. You said: "...independent lines of evidence all point to the same result..." For those that understand the issues 'independent lines of evidence' are key to proving something. They are the fingerprints of the big picture. However those same 'independent lines of evidence' are a political gift for those that want to spread doubt and confusion. -
Dikran Marsupial at 00:17 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
Poptech @ 25 asks: "What are the reasons CRU raw data is not publicly available?" Most of it is, from the GCHN repository. The bits that are not are owned by various national met offices and CRU have no legal right to distribute them. They are however available from the national met offices. This has been explained e.g. in Phil Jones' testimony to the house of parliament inquiry, and ought by now to be common knowledge to anyone interested in the debate. The reason CRU can't distribute all of the data is because governments (including that of the UK) insist that national met offices make money from commercial licensing of their data, so that the met offices maximize their value to the tax payer. The reason that the data is not all in the open lies with government policy, not the CRU. However, CRU and the UK met office have been working to get permission from the national met offices to distribute the data, although not all are likely to agree. -
carrot eater at 00:11 AM on 8 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
michael sweet: Loehle's paper attempts to answer the question, what happens if you don't use any tree ring proxies. So it will necessarily have fewer proxies than a paper that does use tree rings. Don't knock it for not having 1000 proxies. Loehle does limit himself though by only using proxies where the original authors also published a calibration. Loehle only accepts temperatures as inputs. Loehle 2007/2008 is a couple steps backward from Moberg 2005, which also attempted to reduce the influence of tree rings. Moberg itself could be improved, but Loehle is worse, yet came out afterwards. So even after the basic errors in the 2007 version were corrected, Loehle 2008 isn't progress upon the existing literature. But I'm still glad that some sceptic bothered to try to make a reconstruction. -
Ned at 23:46 PM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
Michael Sweet writes: When I examine Loehle's paper I can see why he cannot get anything published. That's a very unfair statement. Loehle has published many papers, primarily on forestry, forest ecology, and related topics, in a variety of well respected journals (i.e., not just E&E). Insofar as there are concerns about anything in this paper, let's discuss those concerns. But let's not make sweeping (and incorrect) statements denigrating his publication record in general. -
James Wight at 23:38 PM on 7 May 2010University of Queensland talk wrap-up
A good summary of the basic science – though it is a shame you had to cut some slides. Have you thought have using the graph on slide 31 in a response to “Deserts are retreating”? Also, just out of interest, where did that temperature graph on slide 4 come from? It doesn’t look much like the usual “hockey team” of reconstructions.Response: It's by Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist from Texas. It's constructed from ice core and sediment records, she kindly sent me the raw data so I was able to plot it in a format matching the other graphs. I used it because of its longevity, most of the other hockey stick graphs only go back 1000 to 2000 years. -
Ned at 23:26 PM on 7 May 2010What causes Arctic amplification?
skepticstudent writes: One thing I fail to see in all 30 previous posts on this subject is the fact that in 2008 the temperatures were the third coldest since thermometers were invented in 1775. Are you kidding? 2008 wasn't even close to being that cold. In fact, it was above the average of the past 30 years*, and that 30 year period itself is way warmer than any other period in your 1775-present timeframe! In fact, although 2008 was cooler than some other recent years, in the GISSTEMP record it was the 10th warmest year since the start of the record in 1880! Every year since 2001 is in the top 10. Where on earth did you get the idea that "2008 was the third-coldest year since 1775"? You need to check your sources, and preferably provide references for your claims. * 2008 was warmer than the 1979-2009 average in the RSS, GISS, CRU, and NCDC records. It was slightly cooler than the average in the UAH record. -
michael sweet at 23:02 PM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
When I examine Loehle's paper I can see why he cannot get anything published. He has a "me too" paper. He is re-examining an issue previously addressed by someone else. He has basic math and other basic errors. He uses only 18 proxies versus Manns over 1,000. He claims global coverage that he does not have. What is added to scientific knowledge by this paper? Nothing. It is a waste of paper. Mann has already carefully covered this topic and Loehle adds nothing useful to Manns' analysis. Scientific journals are not open blogs where anyone gets in. A new paper needs to add to knowledge to get published. Either by adding new data (Loehle does not begin to address the many proxies Mann uses) or by developing a new, better analysis. Loehle has just written a poor opinion piece. Good journals have good papers to publish that advance science. Loehles whinging about his inability to get published shows his lack of understanding about what a paper should contain. -
Ned at 22:41 PM on 7 May 2010University of Queensland talk wrap-up
Okay, I've looked through your slides, and you've really done a good job of covering the main points. I like the fact that you include some graphics that are actually very fundamental but that aren't always shown in these kinds of talks. What would I add if you had more time? Maybe a slide or two about ocean acidification ... it's important to remind people about that, particularly since a lot of proposed geo-engineering "solutions" only address warming, not ocean pH. Also, depending on the audience, it might be nice to include positive examples of "citizen science" (e.g., people verifying the surface temperature trend by independently analyzing the same data used in the four "official" data sets [GISS, CRU, NCDC, JMA] ... yes, I know I've been obsessing about this lately; sorry, I just think what Clear Climate Code, etc. have done is really neat!) A slide about this would probably be appreciated by an audience of engineers or non-academics. What would I trim if you needed to save time? I don't know exactly how much time you spend on each section, but I note a string of 9 slides in the middle that focus on the cryosphere (starting with "glaciers are retreating" and ending with "Arctic sea ice is melting"). If you needed to shorten it up a bit, you might be able to consolidate this topic, though it'd be a shame to not include any of the figures you've got there. All in all, well done!Response: I intentionally left out ocean acidification because the next talker, Ove, was a coral reef researcher with many peer-reviewed papers on the subject. I didn't want to steal his thunder. If I present that talk in the future, if I have more time, I would add more impacts at the end. -
Ned at 21:38 PM on 7 May 2010University of Queensland talk wrap-up
Congratulations, John. I'm going to download your slides and look them over. I wish I were able to go to one of your talks, but unfortunately I'm in the wrong hemisphere :-( John writes: [...] my notes (which I forgot to refer to on the day anyway) [...] Apart from a few hiccups [...] I had trouble fitting all the content into 20 minutes [...] I had to jettison [...] which was a great shame (I have much fondness for those graphics). Mental note: make sure I'm allocated enough time to include my superfluous but pretty graphics next time around. [...] Unfortunately, there was only time for a couple of questions which was a disappointment. [...] Well, I've given many dozens of scientific talks over the past couple of decades and the laments you list above could have described pretty much ... all of them! If those are the worst you can say in retrospect, consider it a great success. (No surprise to anyone here, we've seen ample evidence of what an effective communicator you are.) I hope you'll keep doing these presentations because they're desperately needed.Response: Looking at all those quotes, I really am a glass-half-empty type! :-( -
Ned at 21:25 PM on 7 May 2010Why are there fewer weather stations and what's the effect?
skepticstudent, thanks for your comment. However, I would gently suggest that it's often best to keep one's comments a bit shorter and more focused on one or a few points, rather than trying to include everything at once. (Of course, I say this as someone who has produced more than my share of too-long comments!) In science it's very important to be clear about what the question is that you're addressing. Taking photographs of weather stations could be part of testing the following question: (1) Does weather station X meet the following criteria [...] that we use to define a "good" station? In addition, if you used an appropriate sampling scheme (completely randomized, systematic, stratified random, ...) one could also test the following question: (2) What is the best estimate of the percentage of the weather stations in the US that meet the criteria, and what are the 95% confidence intervals around that estimate? Merely taking photographs, however, does not address the following question: (3) Does the suboptimal siting of individual weather stations have a statistically significant impact on estimates of the regional (or global) temperature trend? Now, Watts has made a lot of assertions that his photos "prove" that there is a problem with the temperature record. But neither he nor any of his colleagues has ever published (on his blog, or in the literature) anything that actually shows that quantitatively. In fact, the only quantitative analyses of Watts's surface station results (by John Van Vliet on various blogs, and by Menne et al. 2010) clearly suggest that the kinds of problems Watts and others have identified don't actually propagate through to the final estimates of temperature trends. Likewise, Watts and D'Aleo pointed to a decline in the numbers of stations, and claimed that this decline (particularly among stations that are high-latitude, high-altitude, and/or rural) is artificially biasing estimates of the global mean temperature trend. But neither Watts nor D'Aleo did any quantitative studies to justify their claims. Once again, when people actually started calculating and quantifying the impact of this, it became quite clear that there's been no significant effect at all -- and in fact, insofar as there is any effect, it's been a slight bias in the opposite direction. In fact, you can actually get a good estimate of the global temperature trend using a very small number of stations. This is because temperature anomalies are spatially autocorrelated over long distances. In a recent analysis, Nick Stokes used only the 61 stations in GHCN that have more than 90 years of data and that are categorized as rural. The results match what you'd get using the full set of stations very closely, though there's clearly much more year-to-year variation in the 61-station version:
FWIW, the entire US including Alaska is less than 2% of the surface area of the Earth. So one could actually calculate an accurate global mean temperature data set using a group of stations that included only a single station within the US.
Of course, more stations is better! But anyone claiming that the decline in the number of stations has a significant effect needs to prove that quantitatively, and all the studies I've seen so far have found exactly the opposite.
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JMurphy at 21:24 PM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
Someone asked about a list of different types of proxies. Lots can be found at NOAA, inluding climate reconstructions. And did I dream it or did someone actually include a link to the Science [sic] and Public Policy Institute ? -
Riccardo at 21:04 PM on 7 May 2010Why are there fewer weather stations and what's the effect?
skepticstudent, only climate change skeptics claims that scientists say there's no UHI. On the contrary, scientists say it's there and it is accounted for. Sea surface temperature is not at its minimum in 35 years. It looks like your long "dissertation" is not based on recognizable facts. -
HumanityRules at 20:03 PM on 7 May 2010University of Queensland talk wrap-up
That reminds me, Mark E. Smith of 'The Fall' famously used to sing through two mics at gigs, it never did him any good either. The Fall - "What about us?" "question time which was dominated by discussion of policy, human psychology and over-population" I enjoy the focus this website has on the science but it's worth remembering that it's the politics that really drives policies on climate change. Misanthropic ideas about human nature and population are the most worrying aspect of the whole affair to me. -
Ned at 19:50 PM on 7 May 2010Kung-fu Climate
This thread has gone off-topic in several directions, and should probably be brought back into focus. One tangent (which I contributed to -- mea culpa!) involves questions about analyses of global mean surface temperature trends. For anyone who is sincerely interested, I think this has now been addressed satisfactorily (see the second page of this thread). If there are more specific questions about CRUTEMP, GISSTEMP, etc. those should probably be addressed to the people who maintain those data sets. Any further discussion on this site should probably be moved here or here. Likewise, discussion of the journal E&E, its quality or lack thereof, and whether or not its papers are peer-reviewed, should probably be taken here (where many of these exact points have recently been debated). Carrot eater's comment upthread is important, IMHO. While discussing concerns and issues with Loehle's reconstruction, it's important to recognize that he's made a sincere effort to contribute to this part of the field and it deserves to be considered critically and seriously. -
skepticstudent at 19:06 PM on 7 May 2010Why are there fewer weather stations and what's the effect?
sorry, I had a typo, I meant it they said it wasn't their fault... -
skepticstudent at 19:05 PM on 7 May 2010Why are there fewer weather stations and what's the effect?
Ok I will respond to two different comments here, the rest are just similar in line with these two comments. .41 Ned and # 16 Nautilus_Mr You are both pretty much saying the same things as everyone else and I challenge these statements. First Nautilus_Mr is saying that Watt’s famous photos are red herrings and dumbing down the information. No! Those pictures are the crux of what is wrong with much of the information being pushed by the side of ACGW alarmists. On one hand you say that obviously the first will be a casual effect of weather increase but in the same breath you say that these pictures are red herrings. These new weather stations were placed between 1995 and the year 2000. There were guidelines which were obviously ignored in the placement of numerous sensors. I have pictures of about 30 sensors that are placed either over asphalt or lava rock, or in front of air conditioner outlets or even in the case of two pictures, within 50 feet of the exhaust of airplanes where they sit on the hot tarmac with the exhaust aimed right at the sensor. These sensors were placed at about the same time that the temperature anomalies started showing up. Also the sensors that are missing aren’t just one or two, there are 30,000 sensors that have been removed and are no longer giving temperature. This occurred roughly during the same time period between the years 1995 to 200. People talk about UHIE and how it doesn’t have any appreciable effect. I have lived in Southern Arizona and I know for a fact that there are more people now. A tremendous amount versus 1984 when I lived in the Tucson area and the Grand Canyon area. How can any scientist in good conscious not consider that data from an area whose paved roads, homes, automobiles, trucks bringing in supplies and goods to a vastly increased population would further increase temperatures in an already extremely hot place? I just can’t understand it. Not to mention if you look at the main USHCN sensors, I am currently looking at a 10.5 X 11 picture of it as I write this… Just look at the picture and ask yourself what is wrong with this picture. There are at least 10 cars that have parked within 15 feet of it, obviously by looking at its placing you can see with your own two eyes that they had to go passed it and then stop and cool down. Have you ever felt the heat given off by a catalytic converter in a cold town let alone one like Tucson? There is also a very large building nearby which anyone that has lived in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah or Mexico will tell you that this type of building will give off a tremendous amount of heat and is less than 50 feet away. The reason why I talk about this town and this sensor so much is it is frequently mentioned as one of the hottest growing towns in the last 25 years. Can I just be a man and lose the scientific pontification for a minute and just say an emphatic DUHHH! Then you throw in the 30,000 sensors that disappeared from Russian and numerous other high latitudes or high altitudes. You put all those things together and try to tell me seriously with a straight face while you look me in the eye that those are all nominal enough that you can just wipe them out with an adjustment in a proxy in a computerized model and it don’t mean anything? Seriously? As if all the other evidence wasn’t enough for the Jury at hand… There was a study done for UHIE effects in Barrow Alaska, one of the smallest villages in the world, in one of the coldest places in the world. There were several dozen temp sensors placed around the village with roughly 200 or less people depending on the birth, death, and escaping of teens to warmer more exciting climes…. And then several dozen more placed outside the “urban area”. Now when I say urban area, there are only a few buildings, you can only drive a full size vehicle less than three months out of the year and around 200 people. This is not a metropolis folks. It’s an Alaskan village. But still even in the middle of winter, (a very cold winter I might add) the study showed an increase in temperature in the town versus the outlying “rural” area. If that doesn’t make a believer out of you on UHIE I don’t know what will. But yet once again this is one of the many things that the ACGW believers either aren’t willing to talk about, don’t know about, or try to hide. Ned… here’s a good match for scientific reality for you. View the report about the joint study between NASA with their Satellites, and an organization called Remote sensing Systems. They took the information provided by NASA and their own oceanic buoy sensors and both Satellite and buoy information shows that even with Vulcanic offflow (which is very important because I think both sides of the equation would agree that heat rises, unless there is a new study for that now as well) the oceanic temperatures are cooler now by a considerable amount than they have been for the last 35 years since Satellites have flown around our orbit. Keep in mind, any kind of satellite data is relatively new since they have only been flying since 1975. If you go to their website you can view a real time chart that shows the globe with a daily updated view of all the buoys on the globe, there are a lot of them. http://www.remss.com/ This is a grid of buoys as of their daily update from about 2 weeks ago. As you can see there is quite a large amount of these sensors splattered across the globe. This mixed with science I feel can be a very good depiction of true information. I would challenge anyone to tell me that surface and shallow subsurface temperature sensors placed around the oceans of the globe would not be a far better even keeled relative measurement than land surface sensors that have all sorts of built in biases. Looking at Ocean bound sensors that tell us that temperatures for the last 20 years have been cooling globally (even though they have to deal with Volcanic effluence) are not a better picture of the global warming or cooling trends I would love to have you help me wrap my brain around that. Ignoring all the papers that have been written on the side of the ACGW can you still tell me that UHIE amounts to nothing? So yes it does matter that new sensors aren’t being placed very intelligently (or at the most polite that I can be, failed to follow the rules of best practice given to them by the people telling them what to do and where to go) Yes it does matter and no it is most certainly not a red herring when you look at a picture of a sensor less than two feet and right over the top of a very large industrial grade air conditioning outvent. Or sensors very near where the exhaust of a plane would blow for long periods of time as it warmed up before takeoff. Yes it does matter that towns have more people in them and more asphalt roads. It matters very much. http://www.remss.com/ also shows a grid of sea surface temperatures that are pretty much flat since the beginning of the 21st century and shows the drastic decrease of sea surface temperatures in 2008, which mimic the cold temperatures on land surface. If you look at the map on the link below it shows a gridded map of surface temperaatures across the US over a period of time. It points out Tuscon, AZ specifically.(Map by Steve McIntyre in 2007 of USHCN data adjusted for Time of Observation. http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1687) Let’s also look at the facts of Amateurs who truly had nothing to gain, and people that work for an arm of the government that is spending trillions of tax payers dollars to research in the name of global warming. Who is more trustworthy here folks? Is there a scientific formula or computer model to proxy or filter out greed and corruption? What does this have to do with anything you might ask? It’s not politics and it’s not ad hominem, it goes to the evidence of what placing of sensors has to do with anything and why the UHIE is real and it effects the numbers beyond what you can wish away with a computer model. The timeline of all this, the disappearance of 30,000 colder clime sensors, the takeover of weather sensor monitoring and placement by United states government workers, all correlating to roughly the same time period, 1995-2000. How can you look me in the eye, scientist or otherwise and deny these facts and tell me that sensor placement, or UHIE has nothing to do with the presentation of those on the side of ACGW? Next I will bring up the incident where the Goddard institute had to eat crow and admit the fact that it didn’t do any quality control of information given to them. There was a report put out about the anomaly of the warmest snowy day in history. It talked about the anomaly of 2008 when there was more snow in Russia than there had been in a very long time. There was also a lot more snow in the Pacific Northwest and in Alaska in a very long time, yet the information given stated that it was the warmest October on record. Continued signs of global warming. Not just in the United States but also in Russia. What the paper didn’t state was that the person giving the Goddard institute it’s temperature data apparently for some reason decided to give the same data two months in a row, in reality instead of giving data for September and for October, they gave the same data for September two months in a row. (You have to ask yourself why the rocket scientists at NASA didn’t catch this) I have to say here that my 83 year old mother who is about as far as you can get from being a scientist has told me since I can remember, that September is typically one of the warmest months of the year and is even warmer than August usually, it’s called Indian Summer. The question begging to be asked, If my 83 year old mother who can’t even figure out how to program her VCR and watch another show at the same time understands this why didn’t Goddard? The best excuse they could come up with is that it is third party information that has been given to them for a long period of time and it wasn’t there fault. Isn’t part of the scientific method and the idea behind the ETHOS of writing a presentation supposed to be that you follow up on your information so no bad information ever gets past you? This isn’t to insult the scientists at Goddard in an ad hominem attack, this is to point out some very shoddy scientific writing that is supposed to support the agenda of ACGW and deny UHIE and other information pretty much drives home the importance of those two previously discussed items more than ever. -
quokka at 18:52 PM on 7 May 2010University of Queensland talk wrap-up
Very nice set of slides with excellent logical progression. Lots of material to get through in 20 mins. The ABC science show Catalyst this week had an interesting piece on "CO2 is plant food". The point was essentially that even if higher CO2 is good for plants (disregarding issues of water, nutrients etc) it may not be good for either humans or the ecosystem as a whole. At high CO2 levels protein content of important crops drops significantly and levels of toxins in some plants increase significantly. One suggested consequence was that under such conditions Koalas may no longer be able to subsist on a diet of Eucalyptus leaves. (Maybe deniers can fixate on Koala bears instead of Polar bears now!) It would be interesting to know more about this research if anybody has any references.A guest post would be nice :) -
dpovey at 18:15 PM on 7 May 2010University of Queensland talk wrap-up
Really enjoyed your talk John, and yes it's a shame that the moderator let the panel waffle a bit and we missed the opportunity to see some skeptic smackdowns :-). -
Riccardo at 17:44 PM on 7 May 2010What causes Arctic amplification?
skepticstudent, if you're looking for a discussion on a particular year or month you should try to find a weather related blog. Climate is different. P.S. The place where I live has been called "the Heaven on Earth". I don't think we should take this ancient testimony litterally.
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