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Comments 40801 to 40850:

  1. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    Holy Vostok Ice Cores, Batman, look at the difference in the trend calculator:

    Old HADCRUT:

    Trend: 0.52 ±1.55 °C/century (2σ)

    HADCRUT Hybrid:

    Trend: 1.33 ±1.83 °C/century (2σ)

    (Naturally I started with 1998...cuz that's where "they" always start)

  2. Help make our coverage bias paper free and open-access

    For those of us in the USA, $1 buys ~£0.62 as of this minute, so if you're thinking of a nice, round number of $100 then submit accordingly to the donation tool, upon which the sun never sets. :-)

  3. Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change

    With 40% of Americans being literal creationists who are convinced the earth is 6000 years or less old and Ausies probably not far behind, it is asking a lot for them to try to understand the mounting evidence for climate change.  The mind set of these folks is for a simple answer that then doesn't require any further thinking and from which all answers flow.  However, these same folks are prone to flipping 180 degrees if the push is great enough.  (read Battle for the mind by WW Sergent for an explanation of this phenomenon).  I suspect the only sufficient push will be some real disasters such as a complete crop failure in the Northern Hemisphere but by then the damage will be horrendous.  Unfortunately we have the boiling frog phenomenon so far.  Each year storms are more serious, floods more devestating, droughts longer and harsher so our fellow travelers on planet earth who demand simple unexamined explanations are getting used to the new paradigm.  Sad to think we need a real disaster to shake them out of their present mind set.

    Moderator Response:

    [JH] Please provide a citation for your assertion that 40% of Americans are literal creationists.

  4. Help make our coverage bias paper free and open-access

    I donated £50 ... £50 * 60 =  £3000 ...
    (or more donating less, or less donating more).

  5. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    It would be interesting to see a temperature curve just for the area within the Arctic circle over the past century or so.  The error bars would be large at first but getting smaller and smaller with accumulating satellite data/

  6. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    Wow raised to the wowth power. WebHubTelescope's CSALT overlay strengthens the urgent need for even stronger data driven science . A linearized CSALT slope over the past 33 years describes a1.8 C per century rate. Do the math.

     

     

  7. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    Unfortunately I think it will be all too easy for the "skeptics" to respond to this by working it into their epic fairytale about how climate scientists "manipulate" data whenever it doesn't "say" what they want it to.  As though reams of tables of raw numbers had a way of opening their mouths and "speaking" for themselves if "statistics" would just keep its grubby hands off of them.  

  8. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    Wow indeed. We always knew that the lack of Arctic coverage meant that the estimates there were questionable, but I never expected the difference to be this significant. That said, it helps explain the observed collapse of Arctic sea ice and the approach seems sound. We had been assuming that the reason measured estimates of deep ocean warming didn't quite cover the 'missing heat' was because we still weren't finding all of it. If this result holds up then the last of the 'missing heat' may finally have been found.

    The fact that they used UAH satellite data to 'bridge the gap'... that 'popping' sound you hear is Roy Spencer's head exploding.

    Esop, for a second there I thought you had suddenly become an impossibly naive optimist... until I got to the airborne pigs.

  9. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    Most excellent work and great to see a formal study on this.

    I have ranted about the negative bias from the poor Arctic coverage and the obvious huge warming up here for years, so that could not be a big surprise for those who work with this full time. On the other hand, the work with areas with low ENSO sensitivity that also had poor coverage is novel and highly interesting.

    The MSM is going to be all over this and they will demand an explanation from the ''skeptics''.

    Shortly after, pigs will be airborne.

  10. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    The trend calculator has a "hadcrut4 hybrid" option. Is that based on this work? Could you confirm? If it is a link on the calculator to this article in the datasource list would be helpful.

  11. Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change

    Tom,

    There's no doubt in my mind that Abbott sees climate policy the same way Howard does, and takes whatever position is most politically expedient. Malcolm Turnbull, one of Abbott's own party said, "There is not a position on the ETS Tony has not held."

    Charging Abbott with hypocrisy gives him too much credit, as if he's ever held a position with any spine in it. He's no more than a flip-flopper on this issue, washed about by the tides of public opinion and opportunities for political gain, like undermining Turnbull's leadership.

  12. Citizens Climate Lobby - Pushing for a US Carbon Fee and Dividend

    Eric and others may be interested in this article on border tariffs.

  13. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    Like almost everyone, I am thrilled at the novelty of this work.

    I am sure it will be closely critiqued (no doubt it has been already), but the implications are quite large.

    • Estimates of climate sensitivity based on recent warming like those of Otto et al will have to be revisited.
    • Climate modellers will be smiling.
    • The publications that ascribed the "pause" to volcanoes, ozone, deep ocean warming or ENSO will have to be also revisited. But we do understand the role of the ocean in global climate a lot better now.

    The scientists involved must be simultaneously thrilled and annoyed!

    Given the uncritical attention the "hiatus" received, there is still no sign of a news media report of this paper AFAIK. We can watch the BBC Science and Technology page, and the Economist with interest!

  14. Cosmic rays fall cosmically behind humans in explaining global warming

    jdixon1980@11,

    Your critique and an explanation of "assessment" term (that I have not been understanding as deeply as you do) is duly noted and up-voted. Thanks.

  15. Free computer game - World at the Crossroads

    That is puzzling to me. You are saying that you would open a downloaded executable but you wouldnt open a zip file? What do you mean by "download the game directly"?

  16. Free computer game - World at the Crossroads

    Many users refuse to open zip files without more security steps..    I wish there was a site to download the game directly.

  17. Models are unreliable

    Also note that the "flux corrections" discussed by Dikran are specific to models that incorporate simulations of both atmospheric and oceanic circulations (note the AOGCM acronym in the wikipedia page Dikran references - AO means Atmosphere/Ocean General Circulatation Model). Such flux corrections do not exist in any other categories of climate models, and they are not in all AOGCMs.

    Simulating both atmospheric and oceanic circulation at the same time is a complex problem: you need small time steps to deal with the rapid atmospheric changes, but you need long simulation times to deal with the slower motions and changes in the ocean. Various tricks (oh, there is that awful word again) are used to deal with the mathematical complexities.

  18. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    Excellent work.  It appears as if the HADCRUT and GISTEMP series may converge if they start to use the Cowtan & Way hybrid or kriging corrections on the HADCRUT data.

    In the figure below I overlaid the GISTEMP series to their supplementary figure S6 to show how closely they match. Also shown is the CSALT model which takes into account CO2, SOI, Aerosol, LOD, and TSI variability.

     

    Cowtan and Way S6

  19. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    Interesting and ingenious approach. I've reserve full praise until I've read through the paper, but the detail and care that went into the accompanying figures and presentations are quite impressive in and of themselves.

  20. Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change

    Ken from Oz @18, I share your concern.

    One of my biggest problems with the nature of political debate in Australia at the moment is Tony Abbot's invocation of his "mandate" as a reason for the Australian Labor Party and other minor parties to support his repeal of the carbon tax.  In 2007, the ALP very conspicously campaigned on a policy of introducing a emissions trading scheme.  Less conspicuously, so also did Tony Abbot's Liberal Party.  Despite this, Abbot seized the leadership of the Liberal Party on a promise to oppose the emissions trading scheme, which he then did.  Now, if a party gaining victory in an election has a mandate to impliment its platform such that other parties ought not to vote against that platform, then Tony Abbot ignored the mandate of the ALP from the 2007 election.  Not only that, if parties have a obligation to support in parliament the policies they take to the electorate, he also had an obligation to support an ETS.

    So, either Tony Abbot believes his mandate theory, and he was an unprincipled political opportunist when he seized control of the Liberal party; or he does not believe it and he is a blatant and deliberate liar when he calls on the opposition to honour his mandate.

    I do not see any other possibilities here.

    This is so obvious a point of hypocrissy that it is incredible that it is not commented on by journalists.  The press of Australia show, however, that they are not bastions of democracy and rational debate by simply ignoring Abbots hypocritical distortions.

    How can we expect any honesty from politicians when they are not called on even these most blatant of lies? 

  21. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    I notice a considerable drop during the 1998 El Nino on the adjusted hybrid record - not at all surprising, as missing polar and mid-African regions are known to be less affected by ENSO than much of the world. It looks to me like this downward shift in the earlier part of the record is just as important WRT the trend as the faster global temperature rise in the later part of the 16 year period. 

  22. Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change

    Tom, you are right to expect what's to be in the quotation marks to be an actual quote; that should be corrected. But I have a big problem with what these 'leaders' say being (IMO deliberately) disingenuous and contradictory - and too often diametrically opposed to what their actions 'say'. Howard is certainly encouraging people to think climate science and climate action is the province of zealots -  it takes hair splitting to claim there was no such implication in what he said. And implying and suggesting things without saying them directly is a distinguishing hallmark of climate politics as practiced by Howard's student, Tony Abbott.

    Not arguing the validity of the science looks like a deliberate tactic for making it easier to push through an agenda  based on  the science being wrong.

  23. Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change

    I couldn't find a quote to match either, just the ones mentioned above. It would be good to amend the comment in the OP with a note on the misattribution.

    When I first read about Howard's speech, the admission of political expediency driving policy struck me as much as the familiarity with contrarian talking points and hollow understanding of the science. For him, global warming is a minor issue except on political grounds.

  24. Models are unreliable

    This gets raised at RC from time to time. You might like to look at the response to this comment. Sounds like an objection based on dated information and overstating the problem.

  25. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    Wow. This is going to tweak a few folks who shall remain unnamed.

  26. Cosmic rays fall cosmically behind humans in explaining global warming

    Listen to what Richard Alley has to say about cosmic rays and global warning 42 minutes into this lecture from 2009. A better version of the graph in the video can be seen here.

    Why waste time and resources at the particle accelerators like the one at CERN when Nature did this experiment for us under far more realistic conditions about 40,000 years ago?


  27. Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change

    Picking up on John's idea of deconstructing the former prime minister's words, I find it interesting that in his comments to reporters Howard said this:

    "I don't completely dismiss the more dire warnings, but I instinctively feel that some of the claims are exaggerated." [Due to my grammatical instinctiveness, I inserted a comma between the two independent clauses.]

    By leaving out any actual examples of what he means by "dire warnings" or exaggerated claims, and by not identifying who has said or made them, Howard probably comes across as being quite rational to those who are sitting on the fence. His words, after all, suggest that he in fact accepts some of the "more dire warnings," or at least some parts of them. And in doing this, while we may roll our eyes at Howard's ability to tell instinctively whether claims are valid or not, he basically touches base with many non-scientist fence sitters who presumable have heard some of these "most dire warnings" and potentially exaggerated claims in the blogosphere. I'd guess that many of them reacted with similar gut-level responses to "dire" claims. After all, "dire" is a word associated with situations we really don't want to experience first hand. And along comes former Prime Minister Howard, an authority figure by definition to some, who is telling people who don't want anything "dire" to happen to them that they really don't need to worry.


    With that in mind, I note that Matt@9 makes an excellent point in noting that Howard draws "no meaningful distinction between climate activism and climate science." I guess I'd add that this is understandable, given that the denier camp really doesn't have much actual science to use as ammunition or to build their arguments on, and thus they tend to wage their campaign by cherrypicking data, or seeking to attack narrow and often out-of-context passages found in scientific papers or in simplified postings about those papers found on sites like Skeptical Science. It is very much a kind of asymmetric warfare where they are reduced to wielding stone knives and spears against the other side. Indeed, with Matt's comment in mind, I suspect it is even possible to conclude that Howard is actually thinking of on-line comment threads on newspaper web sites when he thinks of those dire warning and exaggerated claims. He certainly doesn't provide any evidence to rule that conclusion out.

    Then too, even if we assume Howard is referring only to warnings from scientists working in the field, there is definitely nothing in his words to make me think he is speaking of published scientific arguments. Instead, I suspect Howard could point to the kinds of things even scientists sometimes say or post off the cuff.

    For example, whenever an otherwise measured and rational scientist writes or speaks more or less off the cuff about the likelihood of an ice-free Arctic somewhere in the not too distant future, I "instinctively" understand that the scientist is thinking about the Arctic seas near or at the end of the melt season, and is using "ice-free" in the sense of "effectively ice-free" or "nearly ice-free." Deniers have differenct instinctive responses and thus exhibit a distinct lack of ability to grasp this kind of difference, and that is why Mr. Howard can say what he says and have people agree with him.

  28. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    Michael Tobis at Planet3.0 points out something that I found took some of the "fun" out the finding:

    There’s another aspect to this, though, and it may be a bigger deal than might at first be apparent. It adds up to a pretty scary situation.

    That’s because the “slowdown” or “hiatus” has also had a number of alternative explanations. Decreased solar activity. Increased volcanic activity. A prevalence of cool-phase El Nino oscillations. Increase in aerosol loading from rapid and dirty Chinese industrial expansion. Heat export to deeper ocean layers.

    To be sure, we are somewhat at risk of post hoc reasoning here. If there had been no sign of a “hiatus”, it is likely that less effort would have gone into explaining it! But all of these explanations appear individually to be sound, and with the possible exception of the last, [un]likely to be reversed at any time. What that would mean is that in reality the underlying rate of warming is still accelerating.

    But see Stefan Rahmstorf's comment.

  29. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    Hey, congrats to SKS for making it to the floor of the Senate!

    Since there are no open threads here, I thought was a good a place as any...

  30. Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change

    While on the topic of corrections I would like to see, the final sentence of the OP is too strong.  Many conservatives do have an "unreality bias".  Indeed, currently this is possibly true of most conservatives, and is certainly true of the most politically influential conservatives in Australia when it comes to global warming.  However, there are many political conservatives who do not have that bias (including at least one very great contributor to SkS). Further, there is little doubt that there are mitigation responses to global warming that fit well with conservative philosophy, of which the most obvious is cap and trade (although others exist).  We will not win the fight to achieve effective mitigation by simply alienating half of the political spectrum.  Rather we should encourage conservatives to be true to both their philosophy and the facts.  Even when we disagree with conservative philosophies (there are more than one), we should make that a seperate issue rather than hampering the effort to combat global warming by trying to bury conservatism based on the fact free bias of some conservatives.

  31. Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change

    Easy fix, remove the quotes from around "religious zealots".

    I thought the original phrase was meant to have inverted commas.  It makes sense as 'religious zealots', although I suspect that the grammatic subtlety would be easily lost.

     

    Whatever the distraction over grammar and the natural of the attribution, the point is that John Howard refers to the mainstream professional understanding of the danger of human-caused climate change as being both over zealous and having the appearance of a religion.  He is incorrect on both points.

     

  32. Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change

    Ken in Oz @12, expecting only words actually spoken or written by the person being "quoted" to be included inside quotation marks is not hair splitting.  It is, at the minimum, an expectation of honest reporting.  As such incorrect quotation can be a technique used to make people appear more extreme than they actually are, it can also be a means of libel.

    In this case, the misquotation does not make Howard seem more extreme or ridiculous than he is.  The news reports should, quite frankly, be focussed on his admission that, as Prime Minister of Australia for thirteen years, during which time he steadfastly refused to take any action to mitigate global warming, his only investigation of the science was read a single book, by a well known denier two years after leaving office.  Such fact free policy setting is a national disgrace; and the admission should tarnish Howard's record beyond redemption.

    An even greater disgrace is that this fact free approach to policy setting continues to dominate in Australia, with Australia's newly elected PM, Tony Abbot being no better informed than Howard.

    It is a shame that the misquotation has detracted from these issues.  It the distraction should be ended, however, by John Cook correcting the text of his article, noting the update and the reason and (ideally), apologizing for, and explaining the source of the error, whether that be carelessness (if he is the source of the misquote), or lack of due dilligence (if he assumed from misquotation by others without checking for the original quote).  Even better if he could in fact show the quotation is correct by citing the original, but that currently looks dubious.

    The distraction should not, however, be ended simply by ignoring proper standards of quotation any more than distraction from inconvenient facts should be ended by simply fudging the data.

  33. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    Sorry, I meant to include the link to the image: http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~kdc3/papers/coverage2013/media_compare12.png

    I see perhaps a similar correction around 1980 and then very little change until about 2000.

  34. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    Tom - thanks for that reply.  Let me broaden the question a bit then: If the station coverage bias has been there consistently, why is the descrepancy highlighted in the last 15 or so years?  The agreement prior to the "pause" interval is pretty good, by which I mean the corrections of the hybridized model seem smaller.

  35. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    tmbtx @12, the HadCRUT4 data set excludes large parts of Africa, and significant regions in the Middle East, Central Asia, the Amazon Basin and Australia.  Most of these areas are not significantly effected by ENSO, with the result that HadCRUT4 is more sensitive to ENSO than other surface temperature indices.  In particular, HadCRUT4 undersamples North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia, areas which experienced intense heat in 2010.  These two facts combine to explain the relatively large corrections in 2010 and durring the very intense La Nina of 2011-2012.  Consequently it is a mistake to focus solely on the Arctic.  

    On that point, the video does say that most of the change in trend comes from including the Arctic.  It is not obvious to me that that is the case.  I would be very interested if one of the authors would explain how that was tested, and the portion of the change in trend due to infilling the Arctic compared to the change from infilling the rest of the globe.

    Finally, there have been a number of indications that the pause is over-explained by the data, ie, that absent a number of different effects, there would have been an increased 16 year trend relative to the 30 year trend rather than a decrease.  However, as the well known "alarmist" (irony intended) Stefan Rahmstorf writes:

    "[I]f after all adjustments the global warming trend shows some acceleration, this would probably get the data closer to the model-mean (rather than to a continued linear warming trend).

    But it would probably not be statistically significant, so <b>interpreting an acceleration into 15 years of data would be as ill-founded as finding a slowdown</b>.”

    (See first comment at preceding link, my emphasis.)

     

  36. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    Congratulation Kevin & Rob. Very well done.

  37. Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change

    The splitting of hairs is par for the course;  Howard suggests and implies that people who demand that the emissions and climate connection be taken seriously are motivated by irrational ideology, not by the real existence of  a real problem. The "religious zealotry" motivation behind climate action's proponents is clearly implied.

    It's politically necessary for climate obstructionists to impugn the motives of climate scientists and proponents of climate action, otherwise people might think scientists are basically honest and the public might trust them! An undesired consequence of trust in science would be expecting politicians to incorporate that knowledge into government decision making. Howard makes it clear that politics isn't about trusting experts, it's about trusting gut feelings. But it's dirty and dubious politics to make unsubstantiated suggestions of dubious or dangerous ideological motivations of untrustworthy climate 
    "zealots" to justify politics not responding to valid science.

    As for the new Prime Minister of Australia, it looks to me that, like John Howard, Prime MinisterTony Abbott is assiduous in avoiding telling the Australian public what he really thinks; he continues being persistently contradictory and ambiguous, rather than candid and clear.

    Every statement that the climate problem is real by Abbott or his team seems to be followed by statements that it's not. I can't help but view this a deliberate political tactic; by avoiding any signs of sincerity the climate science obstructors that are his core constituency are reassured that he is not and he does not have to spell out how deep his convictions - his gut feelings - are on this really are. 

  38. Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change

    I second Synapsid @10's comment.

  39. Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change

    JH @ 8:

    tlitb1 has three posts.  In the first he asked for sources for two statements by Howard; the second was a thank-you for a source for one of them; in the third he said that he hadn't received a source as yet for the other statement.  In what way is this excessive repetition?

    Moderator Response:

    [JH] Upon further review, I made a mistake. I have therefore struck through the comment.

  40. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    I was looking at the briefing page in the link Kevin provided.  When you look back at the curve comparisons to 1980 the agreement is good until the most recent 16 years.

    Is it a well established finding that Arctic heating has accelerated more than the globe over the last decade or so?

  41. Matt Fitzpatrick at 06:16 AM on 14 November 2013
    Deconstructing former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's 'gut feeling' on climate change

    Easy fix, remove the quotes from around "religious zealots".

    There's no doubt that Howard calls climate activism a religion, and more than once. And, from the text of this speech, I see Howard drawing no meaningful distinction between climate activism and climate science. In fact, Howard conflates activism and science on page 4 of his speech, by invoking the specter of the "Climategate" East Anglia e-mail theft, and repeating the old "redistributing the world's wealth" quote mine to accuse the IPCC of advancing political agendas.

  42. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    The coverage issue is definitely something to be aware of when reading the literature or looking at blog discussions for models vs. observations - camparisons have to be made with the same masking of effective area to be informative. 

  43. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    Congratulations Kevin and Robert.  Well done.

  44. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    It's a nice reminder that every time you start looking for an explanation, you first need to be sure that there's an effect in need of one. 

    I'm curious to see how this research fits into other studies about the "pause" (AKA, "the paws"). Seems that Kosaka & Xie 2013 might be at odds with this finding since their POGA-H model had an excellent fit with the original temperature record. 

    That brings me to a question. When a model is compared with a temperature record, ¿do they use the same averagin method? It seems to me that if you are using an average observed temperature that doesn't include the Arctic, then you should construct an average model temperature with exactly the same converage. I don't know if that's customary but if that's what K&X did then there would be no problem. 

  45. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    doug_bostrom: "But when I think about it, I had no reason to assume."

    Yeah.... same here.  I started to type a few other things about why I didn't know that and realized it was because I hadn't checked.  You know, like 99.99% of all people whether or not they're informed on the issue overall.

    But now there's a problem, even with well-intentioned media coverage, of having to explain why the temperatures are really going up faster without looking like we're cooking the books.  *I* know the books aren't being cooked but how do I convince people of that?

    The difficulties of scientific communication have never looked so intractable to me.

  46. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    What Doug Bostrom said, at #4....we are inba much more dire sitation that any may have thought.

  47. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    tmbtx: I assumed that's what had already been done, unfortunately.

    Me, too, pretty much. With polar amplification being significant where a substantial part of the 16% of missing coverage lies and especially given the unexpected excursion of sea ice "up there," my assumption was that somehow, some way the gap was accounted for before banging on about a pause. 

    But when I think about it, I had no reason to assume. Which brings us back to the old saw about "ass u me."  :-)

  48. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    Expanding a bit on Doug's point about public discussion - how do you present to a general audience the various decisions that are made in reconstructing temperature data?  Obviously a discussion of kriging isn't really material for the local pub, but temperature curves published by the media get portrayed as "this is the temperature" not "this is the temperature we get from using stations with 85% global coverage and we suspect the other 15% would be warmer."

    Nice work though.  It's pretty clear the hybrid approach is better.  I assumed that's what had already been done, unfortunately.

  49. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    There's an object lesson here in terms of how we may forget that our public discussion can be perilously dependent on speculation without our pausing (!) to carefully consider what we fairly know. For all the sound and fury expended over "the pause" we didn't actually know what was happening, not enough anyway  to get in a lather about it. 

    Now, suddenly, it appears "the pause" has shrunk rather dramatically, thanks to people who look while the rest of us leap. Sheepish looks should be the hangover, not that it's likely any of the more extreme hyperbole we've witnessed is going to be accounted for. 

    I'm truly surprised this previously gaping hole wasn't emphasized more in all the premature chatter.  Particularly it's strange that people who should and do know better have gone on to formalize "the pause" in various embarrassing places.

     

  50. Global warming since 1997 more than twice as fast as previously estimated, new study shows

    Thanks, Kevin and Robert, and congratulations!  

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