climate snarking

The AR5 comments are available!

stoat — Thu, 30 Jan 2014 12:54:24 +0000

The AR5 comments are available!

Can I really be the first to snark about this?

Expert and Government Review Comments on the IPCC WGI AR5 Second Order Draft – General is now available for download.

As you'd expect, the pompous "Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, United Kingdom" notches up a string of "reject", please read the guidelines. Someone called "Jyrki Kauppinen, Finland" gets all his comments rejected with "please read what we said the first time". That was just the general stuff. There may be some treasures buried in the individual chapters.

John McLean gets lots of retractions; he seems to be some NN from the ASSC.

I should say, though, that merely having your comment rejected doesn't make you a wacko. Plenty of sane people have had comments rejected.

Watts et al. 2012 rides again, or not

Good for a laff, anyway: on Chapter 10, attribution one David Hagen reckons the IPCC ought to cite Watts et al. 2012 and has the gall to try to use the pre-print at WUWT as a reference. The reviewers are baffled: Rejected. This comment does not seem relevant. Seems to refer to Pg 16 ln 21-27. Still, this is an issue for the observations chapter. This is discussed in chapter 2.

Crok doesn't fare well in chapter 2 either.

Gray

Update: Hot Topic finds a lovely one for Vincent Gray:

Rejected – The comment does not reflect the scientific understanding. The errors in individual observations are not additive; we are also doing relative analysis that eliminates many of the concerns about individual errors. The reviewer obviously has a limited understanding of the associated error evaluation for analysis of large datasets. See Chapter 2 for more on the evaluation of these datasets. Or maybe even read a basic textbook.

(my bold).

stoat Thu, 01/30/2014 - 07:54

Tags

climate snarking

A fun project for somebody would be to catalog the commenters and the results of their comments. I've long thought that there should be some level of silly comments that got you a permanent ban, such that questions might be recorded, but no one had to bother answering.
Was Vincent Gray still in there pitching? THere wa a tl east one round I think

Jyrki Kauppinen is probably the professor emeritus, former head of Physics Department at University of Turku. His stance is that greenhouse gases account for 5...10 per cent of the observed warming.

> strong of reject

string?
storm?

[String. Thanks, fixed -W]

Who is Thomas Dunning Newbury? He almost got more comments rejected than all the septics combined!

As an endurance test see if you make it all the way through Alec Rawls' epic comment on Chapter 7 FOD, page 116...and 117... and 118... and 119.........

http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/Ch07_WG1AR5FOD_RevCommRe…

It perhaps doesn't need saying that the response was somewhat more concise.

[Woo! Its big, but its definitely *not* clever -W]

Vincent Gray's intermittent comments (Damn and blast your confounded radiative models! its the clouds I tells ya! THE CLOUDS!!) provide welcome comedy relief, as do the dry-as-dust responses.

A small thing, but it made me smile: the responses to comments 7-1317 to 7-1334.

Aside from plugging Rawls I was looking in Chapter 7 for some clues to explain how the aerosol forcing estimates turned out how they did. Not really any the wiser but I did find this comment interesting:

'There is a potential inconsistency between the estimated total forcing, climate sensitivity and the observed ocean and surface warming. A large part of this is related to the aerosol total forcing estimated to be much smaller than in AR4. If all the forcing numbers are taken at face value, the observed warming implies a climate sensitivity of 2K or less, which is inconsistent with CMIP5, and which would imply much smaller warming in the future. This potential inconsistency needs to be checked, and if real its implications need to be discussed in one of the chapters. [Reto Knutti, Switzerland]'

This appears to be the genesis of Otto et al. 2013. Not necessarily this comment exactly, but the sentiment - Knutti is a co-author on the Otto paper. That paper was published following the SOD in order to feature in the final draft and appears to be the reason for the lowering of the ECS range to 1.5-4.5ºC - in the SOD it was still 2-4.5ºC.

These machinations were based on a best estimate total aerosol forcing of -0.9W/m2, which in the SOD was explicitly derived from various quantitative estimates using a number of basic method types - GCMs, satellite obs-informed, inverse - combined without weighting towards any set of individual estimates. The result of -0.9 depended on their averaging of satellite estimates to be ~ -0.7W/m2. The problem is that this averaging was badly in error, as is acknowledged by changes in the final draft. The real figure for satellite estimates should have been about -1.1W/m2, which is reflected in the final draft numbers (though note the estimate they actually give is -0.85 W/m2 because they incorporate a non-observational adjustment which wasn't mentioned in any previous drafts, or prefigured anywhere else in the chapter).

Interesting to think the series of events which led to the change in the ECS range appears to have been triggered by a simple calculation error. On the other hand the authors seem to have been wedded to an aerosol-cloud forcing of about -0.45W/m2 (total aerosol forcing including direct -0.9W.m2) from the first to final draft, so it's possible the error didn't make a difference.

Paul S, #5. Thanks, I enjoyed Alec Rawls's comment 7-1337, particularly the bit about a "misbegotten jihad against CO2."

Jyrki Kauppinen... fond memories

Fond memories, Martin?

He actually got a paper published with his nonsense:
http://butler.cc.tut.fi/~trantala/opetus/files/FS-1550.Fysiikan.seminaa…

Do note the Publisher.

Retirement of a Dr* Salesman

stoat — Fri, 03 Jan 2014 20:29:38 +0000

Retirement of a Dr* Salesman

Image credit: The Phytophactor

After a hard day down the lint mines realigning brackets, its nice to turn to the comic section and such greats as:

rpielke says: January 3, 2014 at 1:21 pm: ...Your work really should be funded by the NSF or other such grant awarding organizations.

I hasten to add that RP Sr is not speaking of me, no, he is talking of renowned blogger Bob Tisdale. BT has, he says, been spending 8 to 16 hours-per-day blogging, writing books and producing videos over the past few years, but alas it doesn't pay the rent so he needs to get a job. I don't think I need to say any more about that.

The "*" is another great one:

*You are a Ph. D. de facto; Einstein’s doctorate from Oxford was “honorary.”

As you'd expect from the Dork Side, this is wrong/misleading: Einstein had an earned doctorate from Zurich.

[Update: 2014/01/17: BT has yet another whinge up at WUWT (don't bother follow the details) in which he says I am an independent climate researcher and regular contributor at the award-winning science blog WattsUpWithThat. But this isn't really true. He's retired, as he says himself, and no longer a regular at anything.]

Refs

* Death of a salesman, part 2
* My main talent is having a big gob
*BT is having some trouble retiring - but he's doing fine at now producing anything new ;-)

stoat Fri, 01/03/2014 - 15:29

Tags

climate snarking

And here is the comment that "Dr*" Bob couldn't cope with, so I'll record it here in its full glory:

> *You are a Ph. D. de facto; Einstein’s doctorate from Oxford was “honorary.”

Einstein had an earned doctorate from Zurich: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Academic_career

> B(nT):

Oh come now. You can’t possibly imagine that NSF would fund this stuff, can you?

And as for cowardly: here I am. Under my real name, not hiding as anon.

If he needs a title, he can talk to Scottish Skeptic (sic).

Amazin' Dr. Roy signed on.

[He wasn't dumb enough to endorse RP's NSF stuff though -W]

Although he apparently used his real name, Mr. Tisdale was remarkably invisible on the internet, with no background info, no resume, and no evidence of his education, occupation or location.

In general, in public conversations it is better to be more forthcoming about your identity.

Are you sure Bob Tisdale is his real name? He is very coy, saying at one stage that he values his privacy. He's never attacked anyone for using a pseudonym despite there being times where he was almost put on the spot by Anthony to denounce an anonymous coward (specifically me).

I'm not saying it's not his real name, but I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that it's not. (Not that it matters one way or another, except it would be a slap in the face for Anthony Watts.)

[Its interesting that his books are by "Bob Tisdale", according to Amazon. He can't possibly be called Bob, really: that's just short for Robert. So the books ought to be by "Robert Tisdale" which suggests fakery (and they aren't really books either, they're Kindle-only) -W]

"I deny nothing" -- Bob Tisdale

There's the problem.

"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it." -- Terry Pratchett

Pielke Sr to Tisdale: "I hope you do keep active to the extent you can as you have made very major contributions to climate research."

Yes, the theory that ENSO has caused global warming is truly a very major contribution to climate research. /sarcasm

Lifting my image without giving me credit? What kind of blogging manners is that?

[Not quite. If you click on the pic, it goes to your blog. But I'll make it clearer just to be on the safe side -W]

Tisdale sez:

"The new job isn’t anything special. I could leave it without a second thought if something unusual happened—like my ebook sales skyrocketed or I found funding for my research."

Either he's not very bright or Tisdale isn't his real name or he's working at McDonalds, because the above isn't something I'd want my employer to read.

I take back what I said at #5. Not about Bob's name, but about the "not attacking" anyone. Poor old Bob was upset that way back I didn't address something he wrote point by point. Instead of addressing my article point by point he wrote about how upset he is that William and I made a point :)

(I won't let Bob's flattery go to my head. Despite what Bob says, I'm not in the same league as William or realclimate - not by a long way.)

[He and his ilk are not very discriminating -W]

Refute his contributions directly decries.Typical leftie snarks.

[Pardon? That's a touch difficult to decode. Are you complaining that I'm uninterested in his "science"? -W]

William M. Connolley wrote: "Einstein had an earned doctorate from Zurich: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Academic_career"

Well you could have expected they would be allergic to WMC linking to WikiPedia, couldn't we? :) You probably faked that article and Einstein removed the part about Einstein being highly skeptical of the IPCC.

[I find it funny the way they object violently to wiki, errm, unless they happen to like the article in which case they're entirely happy. Its almost as though they do some ideological vetting before reading. Which must be tricky; perhaps they're psychic -W]

Maybe you should have linked to conservapedia. They state he got a PhD in 1905, and surely they won't object to conservapedia?

his paper on the photoelectric effect, which eventually got him his Nobel, was published barely a week after he was granted his PhD. but don't tell Donna LaFramboise that -- she'd do her nut.

Its almost as though they do some ideological vetting before reading. Which must be tricky; perhaps they're psychic -W

I believe the correct term is "crimestop".

I just wrote a comment at WUWT on the suggestions that WMC should debate Mockton. If Mockton wins WMC should stop editing WikiPedia. If WMC wins Mockton will not longer write for WUWT. I am under moderation, thus I thought I would also publish it here.

"A debate would be interesting. Connolley, knowing the climate "debate" well, would be a very good candidate to debate Mockton. A much better candidate as most scientists that know the scientific literature well, but not the kind of things that are discussed here.

The win/lose part does not make any sense whatsoever, however. Who would "win" the debate would depend on who is invited to sit in the audience. I am sure you do not really expect "alarmists" in the audience being convinced by Mockton, just as I have never seen and no longer expect a climate ostrich being convinced by scientific evidence."

[Ha, it won't happen. Not just because M would refuse - but I really don't think a real-time debate format is sensible. Gavin Schmidt has said the same elsewhere, I think. Real time in front of an audience favours repartee and sharp wit, which is useless at arriving at the truth. In fact a debate in blog comments is about the perfect way of doing it (it would need to be strictly moderated to either no third party comments, or only very strictly relevant and helpful 3rd party) -W]

These people are in the business of constructing an alternate reality. That includes imagining they matter to science -- otherwise the whole charade collapses.

Saul Bellow: "A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for delusion is deep."

The AGU climate policy statement as redrafted by Monckton!

stoat — Wed, 07 Aug 2013 12:03:24 +0000

The AGU climate policy statement as redrafted by Monckton!

The AGU has a revised policy statement on Human-induced climate change requires urgent action (h/t: everyone).

As with any serious item like this, people release comedy versions. RP Sr had a go and JC threw in her bit, and now Screaming Lord Monckton has had a go, at the home of Blog Science Comedy, WUWT. To paraphrase M'lud:

* Global warming isn't happening
* But if it was, it would be great

But whilst risible, he wins no points for originality: that kind of stuff is old hat.

So, I proudly announce (don't let me down now) the Stoat Competition of the Month (ta da!): in your own words (but not to exceed a paragraph or two) just what should Monckton's statement be? Points will be awarded for every septic talking point included, and deduc[t]ed for every truth you inadvertently include.

[The result: dorlomin (verdict: "easily") -W]

Refs

* Anthony Watts calls inhomogeneity in his web traffic a success - VV

stoat Wed, 08/07/2013 - 08:03

Tags

climate snarking

You dropped this:

[Ha. I was going to say that "steptic" makes no sense in this context but then spotted it. Fixed. Though deduced is possible... -W]

Dear Serfs-of-Sadly-Limited-Intellect:

Having cured MS and AIDS, and having proved that Obama was born in Kenya, I have of late been moved to take some great pains to illuminate the sorry state of geophysical unity in the Colonies. Drawing on my immense analytical skill-set, frequently and victoriously deployed on the Hitler Youth of climate alarm, I have discovered two facts: 1) I am the smartest man in the world, and 2) the smartest man in the world is me. As such, it behooves me to re-articulate the erroneous policy statement flowing from the halls of the tax-hungry, world-government-seeking, Yankee cartographers.
Since the sun and the cosmic rays from the moon are actually in control of everything - and since the Sith have recently contacted me to inquire as to the possibility of performing another scientifically daring sky-dive, I can confidently assert that the people of earth are not in need of any policy statements but mine.

Therefore, without further ado:
Climate. Change. Oedipus rex. Plant food. Gin and tonic.

Also - I have sent my navies in search of Al Gore. If they should ever find him, I will rebuke, in the strongest possible terms, that pretender and mansion-dwelling scofflaw again for the 2006 motion picture that initiated this whole climate charade.

- Lord Chris Monckton, Defender of the Realm, WTFUWT Essayist-par-excellence, Advocate for Science, Omniscient, etc..

did anyone bet this year?
Neven sez - "But how long can that be kept up? There's still 5-6 weeks to go until the end of the melting season, but 2013 is trailing 2012 by over 1.2 million km2. A new record has become impossible for all practical purposes." http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2013/08/asi-2013-update-6-major-slowdown…

[Sea ice is dull this year. The denialists will be all over the "recovery", which is also dull -W]

I am the very model of a citizen scientist climatalogical,
I've information gaseous, nebulous and palaeontological,
I know the blog authors, and I quote their science fictional
From Climate Depot to Watt-er-loo, in order scatalogical
I'm very well acquainted, too, with hoaxes mathematical,
I invent equations, both the sensitivity and atmospheric,
About UN climate plots I'm teeming with a lot o' news, (bothered for a rhyme)
With many cheerful facts about this dreadful Marxist ruse.

It's official: today's winner of the internets is Dorlomin.

I was going to try and say something witty, but it would pale in comparison to dorlomin.

Well done sir - you win one internet!

Eli OTOH, wishes to know when the services are at Rev. J's Church of the Right Triangle

fwiw, my vote goes to the Rev Jeb as well.

Re: The neglected individuals.
Roger Pielke Sr. and Judith Curry are resigning from the AGU and the AIP on the grounds of their unjustified promotion of the

earthquake proof house

When asked for their reasons JC and RP quoted the large uncertainty monsters exemplified by...

"Our ability to predict earthquake hazards is, frankly, lousy," said Seth Stein, a professor of Earth sciences at Northwestern University in Illinois

[April 1st 2014 is not that far away].

The Rev's version is too coherent, sensible and modest to be Monckton.

Having denounced my Harrow science master to the inquisition for denying the atheism of the anti-papist Isaac Newton , I can now place myself in nomination as Holy Roman Emperor , an office for which I a qualified by a patent of nobilty that can be traced almost as far back as the Suez Crisis, which I resolved at the age of six by tutoring Harold MacMillan in the strategic hydrodyamics of sudoku and the vital link between his immune system and the sunspot cycle. Had he not too selflessly breathed out the last of his CO2 in an efforf to save the English Ash form carbon starvation, he might be here to second Ser Tom Bethell's proposal to append the Life Presidency of the Royal Society to my duties as Chancellor of the Heartland Institute in exile.

It speaks clearly to truth

stoat — Sat, 22 Jun 2013 18:59:06 +0000

It speaks clearly to truth

What a weird phrase. It sort of sounds like it ought to mean something, but it means nothing at all. "It speaks clearly of truth" would be better - but the grammar doesn't quite work. The alternate title to this post, incidentally, was "Like a trouser, yet not a trouser". I'll reserve that for future use.

I picture a large mountain, immaculate and shining with pure snow, glowing with inner fire: Mt Truth, the abode of all that is truthy. And down below, gazing up at the summit glimpsed dimly through the clouds, a small (but clear-voiced) figure speaking. Errm, to the mountain. Is the figure asking a question of Mt Truth? "Dear Mt Truth, I am small and confused, please help me to see further"? Alas no, the figure is hectoring Mt Truth with gobbledegook. Which is probably the fate of all who try to talk to Mt Truth, rather than asking questions of it.

(Here's my poppy, also glowing with inner fire, or rather with transmitted fire. I like the picture, even though its not really a picture of the poppy - the colours are wrong, the red too orange and not deep scarlet. anyway, on with the show...)

Well, that was a jolly exciting story, no? But what am I on about? Alas, nothing worthwhile. Its yet another of those occasions when WUWT posts nonsense (the "speaks clearly to truth" is part of AW's intro; perhaps (were we to credit him with sufficient insight) a subtle hint at the garbage to come), this time The “ensemble” of models is completely meaningless, statistically its by Robert G. Brown, some wacko physicist who, in the usual way of these things, may or may not be a competent physicist but is utterly (and like so many physicists, forcefully) clueless outside of his field. Large parts of the post are, I think, literally nonsense; most of the rest and the title point is just wrong, as pointed out by William Briggs, himself a bit of a wacko. But he's entertaining:

Brown is wrong. What he said was false. As in not right. As is not even close to being right. As is severely, embarrassingly wrong. As in wrong in such a way that not one of his statistical statements could be repaired. As in just plain wrong. In other words, and to be precise, Brown is wrong. He has no idea of which he speaks. The passage you quote from him is wronger than Joe Biden’s hair plugs. It is wronger than Napoleon marching on Moscow. It is wronger than televised wrestling.

That's Briggs trying to get things through into WE's thick skull. Naturally enough, it bounces off. Because we're in New Aristotelians - WE is unable to abstract: he can't see past his hatred of climate models to the underlying statistics, which is the point that Briggs is trying to make.

I probably shouldn't snark too much, though. I've never been entirely happy with the IPCC habit of drawing spaghetti graphs with little attention to which of the models are any good; and I've even got a paper suggesting we might try to weight the models by how much they resemble reality. But really you're better off reading James Annan.

Oh, but I wanted to add something else: all that stuff is going nowhere; the arguements are not only wrong, but not really interesting or relevant (I'm not talking about JA, of course). They're just wandering lost in the darkness. But that's part of the point: for the denialists, the entire point is to go nowhere and understand nothing. I find it hard to believe, though, that very many other than the hardcore really want to go down that path; or that path has any coherence. So while there't lots of noise, there's no substance and no weight. The denialists have no "bottom", to use a seafaring term. The terms of debate are set by the IPCC reports, which are coherent; and the upcoming AR5 will move things onwards, somewhat.

[Update: Briggs says "Update I weep at the difficulty of explaining things" which is fair enough. Its practically a quote from Leviathan in The Deep; or indeed from anyone trying to talk to the more unthinking denialists. On a more serious note, I'm pleased to say that I'm now the #2 google hit for "like a trouser, yet not a trouser" -W]

* Government to reduce cull opposition by demonising literary badgers

stoat Sat, 06/22/2013 - 14:59

Tags

climate snarking

Wow, what a mess that post at WUWT is.

Nick Stokes tries valiantly to inject some sense into the comment thread, but it's a lost cause. Of course no good deed goes unpunished, so Nick's reward is to be called some rather unpleasant names. If the insults were directed at him or his buddies, Anthony Watts would have banned the commenters and deleted their comments in a heartbeat, but since they're on his side he lets them bash away at Nick gleefully.

That place is a cesspool. Ugh.

Physics is the purest science, and you calling Brown a "wacko physicist" is laughable. If there were a "Mt Truth", its acolytes would be physicists. Remember, "Science consists of physics, and stamp collecting". Physicists, when roused, are well competent to evaluate the lesser disciplines. And that is likely the immediate threat to your climate alarmism, that the physicists of the world will finally come down from the mountain and declare you all as the idolaters that you are -- as Freeman Dyson, William Happer, and Robert Brown have already done. That, and the planet Earth which refuses to follow your inane script.

NZ Willy, I think XKCD has a comment of that:

https://xkcd.com/793/

> the entire point is to go nowhere and understand nothing.

As explained by a GOP strategist, quoted at
http://billmoyers.com/wp-content/themes/billmoyers/transcript-print.php…
------excerpt follows---------

PAUL WEYRICH: They want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by…

BILL MOYERS: Weyrich recognized that too much democracy could endanger his movement.

PAUL WEYRICH: As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections, quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.
-----------end excerpt-----------

One more thing before I slip off into the good night: About this 97% consensus thing, I hope you all realize that science always goes in this way. First you get a new paradigm, then it grows and develops until it becomes the new norm with "97% consensus". Then along comes a paradigm-breaker and the cycle starts again. All the greatest names in science, Bohr, Einstein etc were consensus-breakers. So your 97% consensus means nothing.

And now, a closing word from the biologists, who have a saying: "Ubiquity is the last step before extinction". Yes, ubiquity = your 97% consensus. Ubiquity will not keep you from iniquity, nor from extinction. Bye now.

> a Badger who sells Ratty and Mole into slavery to the Weasels,

Yep, weasels are next

So NZ Willy agrees there is a consensus and no "paradigm-breaker" has yet arrived. But NZ Willy has faith that it will.

Yeah, you gotta have faith.

BTW

"All the greatest names in science, Bohr, Einstein etc were consensus-breakers"

is just not true. They all built on what came before them. Solid consensuses get rarely broken --- I cannot off the cuff think of a single example.

[Perhaps you have to look back to the overthrow of "Greek physics" - Copernicus, Brahe, Momentum, and so on.

After extolling the universality of physicists, NZ WIlly leaves the bad odor of Brown's rotten understanding of statistics still hanging in the air.

Empty boasting isn't an argument.

Rattus, Roy, Martin, Doug:

Have you *ever* seen a serious afflictee of Dunning-Kruger recover?

I find it easier to understand the value (or lack thereof) by looking at the various ensemble models for Atlantic hurricanes. There are quite a few and they usually vary significantly in the early stages of hurricanes.

But the interesting part isn't the mathematics, or the variance or finding the best model or figuring out how to weight the "better" models. It's the discussion by the forecaster that is the expert. Sometimes they discount one model, the next hurricane it will be a different model, etc. No single model is "better" than another, otherwise they would stop wasting cycles on the poor ones. Rather, the effort of assessing a particular model for a particular hurricane is based up the models previous ability to predict with similar conditions. Plotting all the models on one graph is entertaining but in reality, it is the models strengths and weaknesses for the conditions that are more important than it's mean and variance. In that sense, there is no mathematical way to weight them (except an all encompassing model that if existed would negate the need for any other models). The weighting would be more complex than the model itself as it would have to dynamically weight each model based on present and forecasted conditions. The model weights, it seems, would have as much variance as the models.

Which alternate Earth is 'nzwilly' from?
https://www.google.com/search?q=%E2%80%9CUbiquity+is+the+last+step+befo…
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%E2%80%9CUbiquity+is+the+last+step+…

Worth re-emphasizing is JA's excellent point that there already exists a large body of methodology and literature on ensemble forecasting in the context of NWP. But as far as I know this has mostly been ignored in the climate community. I'd gladly stand to be corrected if anyone can point to references.

Ironically, it's far from clear and probably not true. However, I might start to use it at those time when people around me are saying things way outside my field or I just haven't been listening. In a pause I can nod sagely and say, "Well it speaks clearly to truth, doesn't it?" Then get up to go to the bathroom before anyone can ask me what the hell I mean.

[Perhaps you have to look back to the overthrow of “Greek physics” – Copernicus, Brahe, Momentum, and so on.

Sure. But then you're looking at the birth of modern science, which tells you little about the fate of consensus within modern science. Yes, I'm cheating a bit by substituting "modern science" for "science".

the arguements are not only wrong, but not really interesting or relevant

Or as Pauli, yet another nutty physicist, put it: not even wrong.

And physicists really should know better, because it only takes a few sentences to explain at the spherical cow level why adding CO2 to the atmosphere might be a problem.

On top of the promised future use of "Like a trouser, yet not a trouser", I feel that an entire series of headlines based on the Hutton ouevre would be a great success. "Is this a library or a bordello?" is the obvious candidate, but from there the sky's the limit.

the trouble is : the models are still wrong.the planet isn't warming.get over it!!

[You too are unable to understand the importance of separation. Listen to Briggs, at least on this point -W]

check out all the main global temp. graphs from nasa giss,hadcrut3/4 uah,rss here:
http://climate4you.com/
what will happen if the sun goes into grand solar minimum soon ? will the temp. anomaly start going up? it isn't very likely is it !!!

I remain fond of John N-G's discussion on "lack of warming" especially the 3rd graph with the regression lines.
Of course, a large number of people seem clueless about Ocean Heart Content and ENSO jiggles.

Finally, if something "speaks clearly to Truth", what does Truth say back? Somehow, that reminds me of Shakespeare (or maybe the deep ocean is doing that:

'Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them?
Glendower:
Why, I can teach you, cousin, to command
The devil
Hotspur:
And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil—
By telling the truth. Tell truth and shame the devil.'

check out all the main global temp. graphs from nasa giss,hadcrut3/4 uah,rss here:
http://climate4you.com/

Fascinating. Why would anybody pick 1998-2006 as their baseline for comparison? (I mean a good reason, obviously, rather than the obvious bad one...)

Hank @#12

Thanks, I haven't seen a googlewhack in ages.

for dunc:
what baseline date do you suggest? shall we have(end of Little Ice Age) 1850? or shall we have the cold 1970s? either of these baselines will then show warming thereafter.1998 was an outlier caused by a super e lnino.even if we chose 1990,the temperature graphs still end up sideways at best.

and again dunc:
who mentioned a baseline of 1998-2006?
i didn't! and most of the temp.anomaly graphs go back far beyond 1998 !thanks!

Phil, most of the charts on that link you gave are baselined against 1998 - 2006 - they say so quite clearly. Did you even bother looking at your own link?

As for what baseline I would suggest... How about one that's actually long enough to escape the noise, at least? That's usually held to be 20 to 30 years. The standard baseline is 1951 - 1980. Why change it?

Super snarky fun!

stoat — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 19:24:02 +0000

Super snarky fun!

Yes, its the wonderful Heartland / WUWT own-goal over the Chinese translations of HI's Climate Change Reconsidered. I have nothing to add except laughter, so you may as well read

* BCL(SB),
* Eli,
* HW.

Not edifying, true, but certainly amusing.

Since I'm here I may as well put up something: can I interest you in this fine photo of a goldfinch, lying symbolically on a bed of peony petals? The peony represents transient beauty, and so it would seem does this particular goldfinch. The culprit may just be circumstance, or may be closer to home.

After a day, she decided to eat it anyway:

Interestingly, in the end, only the colourful bits survived:

stoat Sat, 06/15/2013 - 15:24

Tags

climate snarking

Besides a more-or-less common language, the US and UK also have thinktanks that manage to be tax-exempt "public charities" whose donors can reduce taxes by giving money to them.
For now, we (US) have Heartland, and a whole lot more, many who happen to be located near lobbyist central, K-street in Washington.

You Brits are wimps when it comes to generating these thinktanks wholesale, but you at least have GWPF and IEA, and they certainly knew each other and ours, as well as few folks from CA and AU.

That looks like it hit your bay window. I would think cat would have made bigger mess.

[Certainly possible, there was no signs of blood or gnawing -W]

Windmills, cats and shotguns in reverse order. Why does Heartland hate the second amendment?

The cat ambiguity problem would have been solved if the current VIscount Viscount Monckton's fasther had retained his seat in the House of Lords and gotten his campaign planks eventually into law.
One plank required all cats to be muzzled to prevent curlety to birds.
The other was to outlaw line fishing.

I expect Tony will post the picture and claim a wind turbine attack.

I think it unsporting of windmills to knock out not only birds worth shooting, but poor inedible creature like the goldfinch.

A strict bag limit shoud be imposed on the things, and they should be shut down completely from August to February

[We'll leave our front door open, then -W]

Meanwhile, back in Beijing, Fred Singer is still trying to deny that the Chinese Academy of Science has declined Heartland's NIPCC gambit

Good find!

Given that SEPP = Fred Singer, Ken Haapala, and others like Donna Bethell, what would you expect?

I'd guess this is just Haapala putting out canned material while Fred wanders around.

The GWPF might be struggling:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/lord-lawsons-cl…

[Fine quality lying from Peiser in response -W]

#!0

Amazing picture of Lawson he looks as though the Beefsteak Club confiscated his teeth.

Send it along to the Eye and collect your tenner!

I think William's alluding to this from Peiser:

“The GWPF has never participated in any campaigning and does not promote any particular line of opinion. In fact, the GWPF does not have an official or shared view about the science or politics of global warming – although we are of course aware that these issues are not settled,” said Dr Peiser, a former senior lecturer in sports science at Liverpool John Moores University.

It's the first part of that statement that's getting Heartland and others in trouble in the US, courtesy of John Mashey and others. Hopefully it'll do the same in the UK.

[Yup, that's the bit I meant. I don't think any of it is believeable, and admitting that they're pushing the "nothing is settled" line (which is another lie, they're more denialist than that) amounts to admitting campaigning anyway. Whether the courts can cope, though, I'm dubious about -W]

Shocker: solar physicists interested in solar physics

stoat — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 20:41:17 +0000

Shocker: solar physicists interested in solar physics

Um. sorry folks, don't blame me, blame Eli. 'twas the now-aged lagomorph who attempted to interest me in the good old days of sci.env when we were all young and bushy-tailed. And indeed that thread does make for interesting reading: the present-day switch to blogs doesn't encourage that style of discussion any more.

Anyway, what prompted this post (is this incestuous enough for you yet?) was TB's witty rejoinder that "Clearly Eli hasn’t kept up with recent developments in the literature at JASTP, Elsevier and elsewhere. Well, what fun, I could but follow, and discover that

My thanks to Nicola Scafetta for pointing out this page of the most downloaded articles at science publishing house Elsevier’s title ‘Journal of Atmospheric and Solar Terrestrial Physics. Our Solar-Planetary Theory is gaining traction. It asserts that the Sun is a more significant climate driver than human emitted trace gases and aerosols and...

...so on. You get the idea. But JASTP is for the solar folk. Mostly, I think, for the respectable ones; but even they are hard-pressed not to try to make their stuff "relevant" to GW, no matter how hard that is. You can read the JASTP statement-of-purpose and it is

The Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics is an international journal concerned with the inter-disciplinary science of the Sun-Earth connection, defined very broadly.

So given that the whole purpose of the journal is sun-earth connections its not terribly surprising that's what the papers are about.

And to all you who say, correctly, stop wasting time on shooting fish-in-a-barrel I say Yes, you're right, and I'm about to read More about Fears of Climate Change.

stoat Sat, 01/19/2013 - 15:41

Tags

climate snarking

generic stupidity

Many thanks for the plug William. Have you read NASA's latest article on the Sun-Earth connection yet?

http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/01/09/nasa-finally-gets-it/

Lots of new science to enjoy in the space age.

Given the hiatus in the warming trend (looking more like a sine wave with an underlying trend since at least 1850 all the time), it only seems sensible to explore the possibilities for where we spend our research money. Spread the love a little.

[You need to read the update to the sky fairies post -W]

"Given the hiatus in the warming trend..."

As opposed to the even longer hiatus in increased solar energy output? One of these sine waves is not like the other.

JB: The Sun's activity was well above the long term average all the way from 1935 to 2003. Although the peak ampliudes fell a little after 1960, the minima were brief, and the oceans integrated the overall extra input and increased in temperature.

Given the thermal inertia of the ocean, you need to integrate the sunspot number to see its effect on ocean heat content. When you multiply the integrated sunspot - TSI quantity by the factor determined in Nir Shaviv's JGR paper on using the oceans as a calorimeter, you get a curve. If you combine that curve with the detrended AMO and the ENSO proxy (SOI) and a reasonable value for LnCo2 , you get the curve below, which matches HADsst3 to an R^2 value of 0.873 for *monthly* data. You can ignore the projection for now. It would take too long to explain.

http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/sst-model1.png

Oh wait, now we're onto the mathturbation of the sunspot cycle related to temperature change? Gimme a break.

Well, it gives a break from the mathturbation of the co2 curve non-correlation with temperature change at least. My model tuning finds equal contributions from Sun, Co2, and ocean oscillations. It seems like a reasonable starting point for a respectful conversation - though not with Guthrie, obviously.

From

Global temperature evolution 1979–2010
FEATURED ARTICLE
Grant Foster and Stefan Rahmstorf
Environ. Res. Lett. 6 044022 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/6/4/044022

in
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4

we see that the trend established in the late 20th century continues in the 21st:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/12/13/global-temperature-update/
in agreement with "Ranking of years, hottest to coldest"
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/MetOffice.gif
and "Decadal average global temperatures (NOAA/NCDC)"
http://kgcdevelopment.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/30-year-heat-wave-gra…

I'm suspicious of any attempt to pitch science that links to wattsupwiththat: it's a site that sees any apparent paradox in science as a reason to ridicule science and scientists, rather than a motivation to look for an explanation, as though the real world must be simple to be true. It's an anti-science attitude that surely anybody with any experience of science would recognise as false and back away from. When scientists pitch to Watts, it seems to me a pretty sure sign they know they have nothing but are just looking for an audience. I seem to remember Scafetta's earlier work was taken seriously, but he seems to have gone off into cranky astrological explanation for global warming.

Donald: JASTP isn't in the business of publishing astrology. Its true that the question of the underlying mechanism accounting for the correlative relationship between planetary motion and solar variation is not yet settled. There are several untested but potentially viable mechanisms in play at the moment.

Scafetta published one of them in a paper at JASTP last year:
'Does the Sun work as a nuclear fusion amplifier of planetary tidal forcing? A proposal for a physical mechanism based on the mass-luminosity relation'
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/pdf/ATP3610.pdf

Some elucidation here:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/05/20/back-to-basics-the-mass-lumin…

Sorry, Rog- my crank-ometre is swinging to the right. The fact that he's pitching it to Watts means I have to switch to the logarithmic scale.

Just to reiterate, as it appears to have been missed:

David B. Benson
2013/01/20

From

Global temperature evolution 1979–2010
FEATURED ARTICLE
Grant Foster and Stefan Rahmstorf
Environ. Res. Lett. 6 044022 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/6/4/044022

in
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4

we see that the trend established in the late 20th century continues in the 21st:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/12/13/global-temperature-update/
in agreement with “Ranking of years, hottest to coldest”
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/MetOffice.gif
and “Decadal average global temperatures (NOAA/NCDC)”
http://kgcdevelopment.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/30-year-heat-wave-gra…

DB & JB: From the second link: If theNASA GISS temperature product shows a continuous trend through to the present from the late C20th, why is James hansen it's producer, now saying:

"The five-year mean global temperature has been flat for the last decade, which we interpret as a combination of natural variability and a slow down in the growth rate of net climate forcing." ?
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2013/20130115_Temperature2012.pdf

Donald: Nicola Scafetta doesn't decide what Anthony Watts prints. In any case, neither of them are 'cranks' as you so picturesquely describe. If your prejudice prevents you from reading new and interesting science, that's your loss, not theirs, or mine.

"If theNASA GISS temperature product shows a continuous trend through to the present from the late C20th, why is James hansen it’s producer, now saying..."

Well the answer to that was in the update.

Keep an open mind, Rog, but don't let your brain fall out. ;-)

DB &JB: Regarding the first link: I'm broadly in agreement with Frank Lansner's analysis here
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/the-real-temperature-trend-given-b…
The main thrust of which is to point out that the paper takes no account of the thermal inertia of the ocean, and the persistence of accumulated energy. This is unphysical.

[Once upon a time I would have had the patience to read that in detail. But as my quick scan and your one-sentence summary agree (the chief objection is persistence of accumulated energy) then I think I've seen enough to know its missed the point. F+R are trying to separate out the temperature time series into components. They are trying to remove some "noise" from the long-term trend. Which is why they remove El Nino. There's nothing magic about that, though: its a subjective choice, and it affects the stats (your resultant series has fewer d.o.f.). But if you pick useful things to remove, the loss of noise compensates, and you get a better estimate. That's what they've done. To complain that its unphysical misses the point. To complain that they haven't taken out other series they could have also misses the point -W]

Hi William. I think Lansners key point is that in 'removing El Nino' F&R don't actually remove all the increase in energy near the surface which persists for some years after the spike has subsided. So it's not so much that it's unphysical in the sense of 'no longer corresponding to the historic record'. It's unphysical in the sense that it doesn't achieve what they say it achieves and so invalidates their derived conclusions.

[No - you've missed the point again. All they've done is time series analysis. There isn't really any physics in it (other than as a vague guide to things to remove. So complaining it is unphysical is irrelevant -W]

W: All they've done is time series analysis.

They've chopped lumps off the time series

[No, they haven't. That's not a permissible way to accurately describe what they've done -W]

and in effect said said:
"look, we took out a major natural variability factor and we still get a strongly rising trend, so it must be all due to the co2 effect"

[They haven't done that, either. Have you read their paper? I haven't, but even having not read it I know they haven't done that -W]

Lansners fig9 shows the lumps they missed by just removing the short term spike.

W: There isn't really any physics in it.

On that we can agree.

[I don't think you're being serious. If you already know there is no physics, intrinsically, in the method, why complain about its non-physicality, and raise physics-based objections? You're not making any sense -W]

re: Scafetta
Those unfamiliar with his work might gain calibration by looking at this 76-page 2009 presentation, an extensive set of information for a 1-hour <a href="http://yosemite.epa.gov/ee/epa/eed.nsf/vwpsw/360796B06E48EA048525760100….
in whichhe describes importantt new findings.

Among other things, he relies strongly on a graph often considered here, as in Adoration of the Lamb, but in addition, on p.62, he brings to the attention of the EPA, the ideas of Rhodes Fairbridge and Theodor Landscheidt.

[What an awful lot of graphs. It all has a bit of a thrown-together look. He's either a John Mitchell, or an amateur. Use of TL suggests the latter -W]

He ends (p.68) with a clear view:
'A cooling is expected until 2030 – 2040 because of a 60 year cycle.'

William: Agreed that in the time series analysis phase of the paper it's not a physics problem as such, more an accounting error.

However, when we get to the conclusion, the faulty ENSO analysis lead to the faulty conclusion that:

"Because the effects of ENSO are very short-term and that of solar variability very small (figure 7), none of these factors can be expected to exert a significant influence on the continuation of global warming over the coming decades."

They conflate the terrestrial effect of solar variability with the irradiance effect of TSI variability only in raw wattage heating terms, which is a grave error, as the science papers highlighted in the new NASA article linked above and those at the link you highlighted in your introduction indicate.

John Mashey: Lots has been happening since the EPA presentation, you are behind the curve on this area of science. The recent paper by Abreu et al has also moved things forwards.

What's interesting is that denialists prefer matching curves in orbits and whatnot to the known real physical evidence of the greenhouse effect, CO2, feedback, cooling stratosphere etc.

guthrie: Taking these in reverse order:

The stratosphere stopped cooling around 1995 according to MET office and NOAA data.
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/stratosphere_temps-500.jpg

Water vapour feedback hasn't happened to any measurable extent and is within the uncertainty of measuements.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/Paltridge-NCEP-vapor-2009.pdf

I'd be very grateful if you could link to known real physical evidence of the CO2 greenhouse effect.

Rog Tallbloke "known real physical evidence of the CO2 greenhouse effect" --- Will Venus do?

The extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere temperature in the last two millennia: reconstructions of low-frequency variability
B. Christiansen and F. C. Ljungqvist
Clim. Past, 8, 765–786, 2012
www.clim-past.net/8/765/2012/
doi:10.5194/cp-8-765-2012

but to compare with
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/graphics/lawdome.gif
one would need (1) tropical temperatures and (2) extra-tropical southern hemisphere temperatures. (Note there is often a 'see-saw' in effect between the temperatures of the two polar regions.)

Insights from the past: the drivers of Australian climate variability over the last millennium
http://web.science.unsw.edu.au/~sjphipps/presentations/coe2012.pdf
is probably the best we currently have for the southern hemisphere. Skipping to the end, one sees that it is quite boring until about 1900 CE.

David B: Will Venus do?

No, because I can 'prove' that the surface temperature of Venus is due to the mass of its atmosphere just as Easily as you can 'prove' it is due to its opacity.

[Bingo! I knew you were going to say that. People won't (don't) take you seriously while you're talking nonsense like that -W]

Given that Law Dome co2 only rose by ~8ppm while Lundquist and Christiansen show "a well defined Medieval Warm Period, with a peak warming ca. 950–1050 AD reaching 0.6 °C relative to the reference period 1880–1960 AD." I'm unsure how you think this provides Guthrie's "known real physical evidence of the (CO2) greenhouse effect".

Australia's surface temperature record is ... problematic.
One example:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/roger-andrews-chunder-down-un…

R Tallbloke "... I can ‘prove’ that the surface temperature of Venus is due to the mass of its atmosphere ....."

Well, go on then, we're waiting.

[No we are not. All that trash is not fit to be seen in public. If you really want to see the disaster area, then places like http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/nikolov-zeller-reply-eschenba… are for you. But don't bring it back here -W]

Well given you reject all science about things, there isn't much we can prove to you.

[Burrowed. I thought I'd made myself clear -W]

Lets see if William censors wikipedia too... oh, wait a minute... ;-)

[You need to learn the difference between censorship, which is WUWT practices, and merely moving stuff. And no: our relations are not such that you're welcome to make jokes -W]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus
The atmosphere of Venus is much denser and hotter than that of Earth.
Despite the harsh conditions on the surface, the atmospheric pressure and temperature at about 50 km to 65 km above the surface of the planet is nearly the same as that of the Earth,

The temperature and pressure 65 km below the surface of the Earth is harsh, but that at the surface of the Earth is about the same

Ye know, if it was the thickness of the atmosphere of venus that was responsible for the warmth, you could calculate how much energy there should be and what should happen to it all...

Meanwhile here on earth, a similar line of thought surely leads us to expect that the Earth is picking up atmosphere from somewhere!

Rog Tallbloke --- Assuming you are ready to accept what is in Ray Pierrehumbert's "Principles of Planetary Climate", the northern hemisphere Medieval Warm Period (MWP) becomes interesting. First off, it is not clear that any proxies give that reliable a reading of temperature before about 1600 CE. Second, Lundquist and Christiansen give a more pronounced MWP than earleir studies. Third, the MWP does not show up in Australian proxies (but does in some Pategonian limnology work). This third point suggests the MWP might not have been that pronounced, globally.

What we do not have is a corresponding record of the growth of methane. At least Ruddiman points out that increased rice production in Southeast Asia and South China would cause methane expression to increase.

So setting aside the MWP for lack of sufficient data, consider the temperature records and CO2 concentrations from 1900 CE onwards. Now note that this correlation is functional via the work re-released in "The Warming Papers" and explained in Pierrehumbert's text.

However, I can only suggest you set aside your prejudices long enough to study those words...

Eli Rabett
"The temperature and pressure 65 km below the surface of the Earth is harsh, but that at the surface of the Earth is about the same"

Perceptive Eli. In fact, the average lapse rate through the Earth's troposphere doesn't change profile dramatically as it heads on down below the surface. There's a reason for that.
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/image191.jpeg

guthrie: Meanwhile here on earth, a similar line of thought surely leads us to expect that the Earth is picking up atmosphere from somewhere!

It's volume increased while the Sun was more than averagely active in the second half of the C20th. It's been shrinking again since 2003. I would suggest that people with sufficient smarts to apply the gas laws to the atmosphere should be able to draw some conclusions from that fact.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nasa-shows-quiet-sun-means-cool…

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-046

Oh dear.
Anyway, what is the difference in thermal conductivity between crustal and mantle rock, and the atmosphere?

Besides, if the earths atmosphere shrank and warmed the planet when the sun is quiet, why don't we see it getting warmer in the little ice age?

Roger, where in your links does it discuss the *volume* of the earth's atmosphere? I don't see any references to that, but perhaps my eyes are deceiving me.

Also, I am curious how the gas law (and which one?) shows that a change in parameter one (volume) alters parameter two (temperature) without knowing or assuming something about parameter three (pressure) and possibly even parameter four (n).

Finally, I'd be interested to know how you determined the volume of the earth's atmosphere. Where do you put the limit, and why?

guthrie: "Anyway, what is the difference in thermal conductivity between crustal and mantle rock, and the atmosphere? "

A lot, unless you find water permeating them both. Which we do.

" if the earths atmosphere shrank and warmed the planet when the sun is quiet, why don’t we see it getting warmer in the little ice age?"

Because the change in energy is coming from outside the Earth's climate system. Maunder minimum - no sunspots seen for fifty years - atmosphere shrinks - increase in near surface density mitigates cooling though not completely.
However, the Little Ice Age was much longer than the Maunder Minimum and the ~974 year cycle is a type of solar variability which has a different cyclical driver to the grand mimima such as Oort, Sporer, Maunder, Dalton, and the solar grand minimum starting around now.

Marco, I'd like to discuss it with you, but William has made it clear he doesn't want the matter discussed further here.

[Absolutely. Any further discussion, I've provided a link to TB's blog, feel free to discuss it there. Its not fair to poke him here. Any further comments on thi *will* be erased with no notice -W]

Oh dear, I hadn't realised the atmospheric cooling meme was so well developed, with all the hallmarks of von Daniken and such works.

Marco, can you tell the audience what the single most specific piece of evidence for anthropogenic global warming is?

Freddy, what is the single most specific piece of evidence for evolution? Can't come up with anything? Gee, then I guess you'll be telling the world evolution is a crock, eh?

Or how about continental drift? Another hoax played on you by them nasty libruls?

Even the Master students in my lab know that most theories are not the result of any specific piece of evidence, but a collection of elements that in concert explain what is observed. With your supposed background, you should know that even better. So, why don't you?

Marco, why are unwilling to answer my simple question? I did not ask you on evolution.

[Stop trolling. You know what to do if interested - read the IPCC report, starting with the SPM -W]

W, you call somebody a troll who politely asks "what the single most specific piece of evidence for anthropogenic global warming is"?

Can't you give any more specfic answer than just saying: "read x".

The question is simple. So please answer it without evading. Thank you. And please stop offending me as a troll.

[You're trolling. As has already been demonstrated with the nice "evolution" reply.

If you're interested, then you know what you need to do if you want the facts - start with the IPCC report, SPM. Once you've got through that, you can try the executive summary. Then you can go on to read the chapter on attribution: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9.html

But if you *are* interested, I have to wonder why you haven't already found chapter 9 for yourself -W]

[Burrowed - feel free to keep asking exactly the same question again and again whilst ignoring the answers people give you over there, if you like -W]

William, I actually have to apologize, because I knew freddy would not be able to understand my example, despite the fact he has elsewhere claimed to have been a working scientist at a university, even supervising PhD students (who I feel, really, really sorry for!).

Marco, and I knew that you would not even understand the simplicity of my question.

Well, Freddy, is you consider the question is so simple, why not answer it yourself? Many of the pieces of evidence you can find in WG1, AR4, chapter 9.

[I think its time to recognise that no-one has any more content to add to this particular issue -W]

Marco, so you are unable to answer on your own, you relate only to somebody else. If I would have asked IPCC then I would NOT have asked YOU, but the IPCC directly.

So I summarize that you are unable to answer a simple question personally and directly. Is this due to the fact that you don't have an opinion on the matter questioned or that you don't have the necessary knowledge to answer it or that you are simply unwilling to answer or anything else?

[I see you failed to take my hint. Any content-free answer to this will be burrowed, as will any repeating of the same trolling by freddy -W]

Attacked!

stoat — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 20:26:46 +0000

Attacked!

h/t to JM for More on the Iconography of IPCC 1990 Figure 7 - scroll down for the breathless prose.

First the background: why does anyone care about figure 7.1.c of the IPCC '90 report? Well, if you're a denialist you care, because it represents the true uncorrupted state of climate science before the evil taint of the hockey stick crept in. I suppose if anyone doesn't believe that and challenges me I'll have to go crawling in the slime for references, so please don't make me do it. So, the septic storyline is "true uncorrupted state" -> "corrupt hockey stick". That works OK with a naive audience; it doesn't work very well if you put the correct dates in because if you write "true uncorrupted state (1990)" -> "corrupt hockey stick (2001)" even naive people will start to say "hold on there's a bit of a gap in the middle there, no?" And indeed there is; the gap is filled, in IPCC world, by the 1992 supplementary report and the 1995 second report. Neither of which feature fig 7.1.c or anything like it. So (just to spell this out to make it really obvious) figure 7.1.c had already disappeared from the IPCC narrative well before the hockey stick ever came into being; the hockey stick did not displace it because it was already gone; the hockey stick was not created to displace it because it was already gone. So the entire denialist narrative falls apart, again. Read more about it at the snappily titled Description of the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age in IPCC reports.

Anyway, errm, where was I? Oh yes, The Significance of the Hockey Stick at CA. This post has now been corrected, ungraciously, after I pointed out it was wrong. But now it has been corrected, it makes no sense, because of the unseen presence of the '92 and '95 reports, which CA is obliged to ignore. And then we go back to the weird stuff in the last CA post, which seems to be McI scrabbling for credit. He has a very thin publication record but I didn't think he was that desperate.

stoat Mon, 10/01/2012 - 16:26

Tags

climate snarking

Outside of a few fellow brits of a certain age and inclination, the Geoffrey Howe picture is going to seem a little out of place. Apropos though. ;-)

[Not as subtle as I thought I was, but I bet some rotter gives it away :-) -W]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/8127533/The-…

actually this is a better link to the original phrase

http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/historic_moments/newsid_8185000/…

What's he got? Nothing. He is reduced to going over the same old topics now, which have been done to death already. It's either that, or harassing people with FOI requests that have nothing to do with the science.

Here is another piece of ancient history he got wrong as well.

http://climateaudit.org/2005/04/23/moberg-satellite/ They were the good old days, when the UAH told everyone there was no warming.

"but I bet some rotter gives it away"

:-)

[There's always one -W]

Ah but, but, following a 2008 blog by McI which said the cartoon came from Lamb 1965, in a leaked email Gavin Schmidt wrote "McIntyre has worked out where IPCC 1990 fig 7.2 has came from (almost). We are being scooped!" An amazing breakthrough for McI, only a year after you'd pointed out at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Description_of_the_Medieval_W… "it resembles figure A9(d) from the 1975 NAS report, which is sourced to Lamb, 1966". The NAS report seems to be “Understanding Climatic Change: A Program for Action” which you reviewed in 2001. It doesn't seem to be available online, does their graph have three panels matching fig 7.2?

[I have NAS at home - previously it was there because of the "global cooling" nonsense. I have a feeling that I've previously checked for fig 7.1.c stuff, but I'll look again later -W]

[I looked; the answer is http://www.flickr.com/photos/belette/8048538078/in/photostream. No, there aren't 3 panels there are 4 and the layout is very different -W]

McI discusses Tickell as a possible source, and corrects himself in the first instance that it was '86 and not '77, but forgets to correct himself later when it would make his ramblings look sillier. He's excited about the "ur-graphic" which Tickell attributes to the British Antarctic Survey – do you have access to the presumed BAS graph?

[I'm not sure what he's going on about there. I don't have access to such a graph, and I don't believe one could have originated in BAS -W]

Well, if you’re a denialist you care, because it represents the true uncorrupted state of climate science before the evil taint of the hockey stick crept in.

Agreed, but where is the contemporary evidence that Singer, Seitz and their friends were being so kind to the hockey-stick-free-1990 report?

[Oh, I don't think they liked it *then*. It was only after the HS came in that '90 became perfection -W]

Thanks, look forward to info about the 1975 NAS report, and whether it has graphs similar to fig 7.1 a + b as well as c.

On Tickell '86, the precise wording is "Figure 2: Temperature variations over the last million years. Courtesy of the British Antarctic Survey." http://www.crispintickell.com/page80.html

Regarding pre-hockey stick MWP sentiment, the earliest I've noticed is the George C. Marshall Institute in June 1998 having a go at MBH98 for not going as far back as the MWP!! They claim that "the climate was considerably warmer than now" and rousingly conclude that "The Medieval Warm Period must have had a natural origin. The 1990 report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change notes, 'there is no evidence that [the Medieval warm period] was accompanied by an increase in greenhouse gases.'" So even then deniers liked that part of the FAR.

Note that it is well worth reading the few pages of text that surround the graph in IPCC(1990). A few caveats appear, but it runs out many people who've promoted the graph either didn't read that or else cherry-picked what they liked.

That's here Chapter 7 (~p.202).

That last link is busted...

[Thanks. Fixed. I just do it to check that someone reads this stuff, of course -W]

Your Geoffrey Howe iconography is all wrong. You've actually been savaged by a dead Lamb.

[I could have used a pic of Howe as a baby to be really subtle -W]

I just assumed it was Lamb at first, and even with Gavin's hint had to look it up since I recalled the quote but not its context (although I think "savaged" would have cued it for me).

Elsewhere, I notice that the last few days have been big for hockey stick papers. Poor McI, everything he ever does will be seen in light of that meme.

As per < the thing that stirred this up, see Falsification, flat-earth maps, dog astrology journal.

There are more shoes (or hooves) to drop in the IPCC 7.1c story, as well as the dog astrology journal part. The latter induced A.Scott into a determined defense of the relevant canine-related journal. Meanwhile, Willard finds some useful info.

I'll leave readers to judge for themselves who is the intellectual heavyweight in this interwebby sprat. ;-)

More background here.

see P Lewis link (above) for "Abraham vs. Monckton in 15secs"

or is it Hadfield on the left? could be any number of people really

I was thinking more in line with the subjects in this thread... but you are of course correct :-)

What's McI on about? Going way back to the 1990 IPCC report and trying to justify / rehash something he wrote 2005? McI is demonstrating worse symptoms of the guano type every day.

A right nutter!

Thanks for making the 1975 NAS graphs available, as you say they look too different to be a likely source of fig. 7.1.

That brings us back to McI's claim that his 2008 CA post showing his smoothing of Lamb '65 had brought to light Tickell's 1986 Figure 2 "Courtesy of the British Antarctic Survey". He pores through the CRU emails to claim that they'd been alarmed by him getting this result first, and is dismissive of the Jones et al. 2009 paper's view that Lamb 1982 is the source. McI then whines, as usual, about not getting credit for his "discovery".

Fortunately, Lamb 1982: Climate: history and the modern world. Methuen shows up in the google books, and the ur-graph appears nicely on page 76 if you search in the book for "probable fifty-year averages".

As to why McI does this, the narrative about universal agreement with Fig 7.1 (c) until the nasty MBH98 is central to arguments such as "The Hockey Stick Illusion" by Montford (Bishop Hill, a Pap of Lomond).
Rather undermined by caveats in the 1990 FAR itself and the increased doubt about the MWP in the 1996 SAR. The MWP was still being used by contrarians when Kyoto came under discussion, for example November 3, 1997, in the Parliament of Canada where Dr. Gordon McBean puts the mainstream view, and Dr. Roger Pocklington (associated with the Fraser Institute) argues that wheat was grown in southern Greenland during the MWP.

http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?DocId=1038119&…

And another reason... Mr. McIntyre, a self-declared expert in statistics, has been taken to the cleaners by Stephan Lewandowsky, Winthrop Professor, School of Psychology, University of Western Australia.

After a flurry of denial and paranoid conspiracy theorising, Mr. McIntyre suddenly became a self-declared expert in the use of statistics in psychology, and has been blogging away about "Lewandowsky’s fake data and false results". Stung by John Massey's aside in Lewandowsky’s blog comments, a sudden diversion – oh look, a squirrel!

Well, indeed he may not have liked False citation, flat-earth maps and sourcing from dog astrology journal, but some of his fans liked it even less. Until his departure, "A.Scott" mounted a spirited defense of the dog astrology journal, a source on which Richard Lindzen, Andrew Montford, and many others have relied to provide Truth.

The interesting question is whether or not McIntyre had read the relevant part of IPCC(1990) and had a copy when writing 03/16/05 post.
The 1995 confusion raises doubts and there may be other issues.

Certainly, by )6/25/05, he msut have had IPCC(1990).

WATTS EXPLAINS WHY LEWANDOWSKY PAPER ON CONSPIRACY THEORIES IS WRONG: ITS A CONSPIRACY BETWEEN JOHN COOK AND THE PROF

stoat — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 09:25:55 +0000

WATTS EXPLAINS WHY LEWANDOWSKY PAPER ON CONSPIRACY THEORIES IS WRONG: ITS A CONSPIRACY BETWEEN JOHN COOK AND THE PROF

Ah, superb.

WATTS EXPLAINS WHY LEWANDOWSKY PAPER ON CONSPIRACY THEORIES IS WRONG: ITS A CONSPIRACY BETWEEN JOHN COOK AND THE PROF

Sorry for the all-caps, I couldn't be bothered to re-type it without.

stoat Thu, 09/13/2012 - 05:25

Tags

climate snarking

septic tripe

Copy to Word (or similar), Ctrl+A, Shift+F3 (or similar).

Of course, you'd have the bother then of recapitalising the initial caps of the proper nouns by inserting your cursor in those words and hitting Shift+F3 again. ;-)

I do like the tags for "filed under": ANTHONY WATTS, BLOGGING, BULLSHIT, FUNNY

Sorry about the all caps, but I couldn't be bot..., but you know the rest :-)

Actually, that's a lie, as I had to purposely make them all caps. If you select the blog post (or even just its title) and paste it into Word or (better) Notepad you lose the all caps anyway. Which begs the question... Why the all caps? I guess the ScienceBlogs' editor works differently.

So you think this is a good paper rather than the typical self-reinforcing of stereotypes by faux social science types like Oreskes who want to be seen as left-wing heroes?

[Some of Oreskes stuff was good - the "Ivory tower" one that wiki uses was good, and the denialist attacks on it were funny and incompetent. Other stuff she has done has been less good; see for example http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2010/08/25/nierenberg-vs-oreskes-round-2/ or just search Oreskes on this blog -W]

This should be in all-CAPS given the huge implications of this conspiracy.

[Plus lots of bright primary colours and <blink> -W]

@WMC "[Some of Oreskes stuff was good - the "Ivory tower" one that wiki uses was good, and the denialist attacks on it were funny and incompetent. Other stuff she has done has been less good; see for example http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2010/08/25/nierenberg-vs-oreskes-round-2/ or just search Oreskes on this blog -W]"

Ah, well I read both pieces, I don't want to get things too off-topic, but it seems like the Ivory Tower piece is a based around a rather subtle strawman.

My main point was that there should be a little skepticism regarding some of these social science types who are clearly pushing an agenda, which your previous article(s) on Oreskes tends to enforce.

TGL:

So you think this is a good paper rather than the typical self-reinforcing of stereotypes by faux social science types like Oreskes who want to be seen as left-wing heroes?

Good or bad, it's not bad because Cook manages the domain name for SL's server.

Deflect much?

Note that Stoat didn't say a word about the merit of the paper in his OP ...

So Willard Tony finally figured it out. Prof. L. and John have the whole bunch hooked. The gaff is coming soon enough:)

@dhogaza "Good or bad, it’s not bad because Cook manages the domain name for SL’s server.

Deflect much?"

It does indicate a strong belief which can inadvertently lead to all sorts of problems including, but not limited to, selection and confirmation biases.

It's wider than you thought, this conspiracy. From the Watts thread:

I also want to know why Jo Nova’s site shows a notice saying it has been ‘Suspended’. What is behind this?

REPLY: DDoS attacks. She’s had a couple of threads outlining them. I wonder what sort of group might want to take down her website? Oh, wait. – Anthony

Conspiracy theorist? Moi?

If I wanted to discredit Watts, this is exactly what I'd post under his name* Just hilarious.

More popcorn please.

* I didn't btw, I'm not part of the conspiracy. Or maybe this is a double bluff. Help! I can't remember who I'm conspiring against any more. Neverending recursive conspiracy anyone?

"It does indicate a strong belief which can inadvertently lead to all sorts of problems including, but not limited to, selection and confirmation biases."

Conspiracy confirmed!

@dhogaza

"Conspiracy confirmed!"

I believe in human nature - not conspiracies.

I don't believe conspiracies are possible for humans on large scales or time periods.

"I don’t believe conspiracies are possible for humans on large scales..."

Watts has only uncovered a conspiracy of two people, so it's not really necessary to extrapolate. Yet ... you seem to share his "concern".

@dhogaza

"Watts has only uncovered a conspiracy of two people, so it’s not really necessary to extrapolate. Yet … you seem to share his “concern”."

Which conspiracy would that be? That Lewandowsky and Cook are strongly socially connected?

That just seems to be factually accurate.

In any case, my "concern" is simply to look at things from alternate points of view. These sorts of studies have a poor track record in that they often confirm the biases of the scientists.

Exposing that bias solidifies those concerns.

"Which conspiracy would that be? That Lewandowsky and Cook are strongly socially connected?"

That it matters.

Can people tell me why the two co-authors on the Lewandowsky paper are ignored?

Oh, they can't be linked to prior statements about AGW? Never mind...

Mann Bradley Hughes

Why should Oreskes bother with primary sources when she can quote Vanity Fair without attribution ?

When we can't access a website most of us don't immediately take it as a personal slight - not Steven McIntyre. If he can't access Lewandowski's website Lewandowski must be personally thwarting him - http://climateaudit.org/2012/09/14/the-sks-link-to-the-lewandowsky-surv…

While its hard to be certain what McIntyre's problem was - I managed to reproduce a problem accessing Lewandowski's website from a couple of places around the world - but the same problem affected other sites with the same network provider (Optus) - so, I know its hard to believe, but maybe just maybe there was a network problem - say corrupted data on a router in say Melbourne or LA, rather than a vindictive Psych prof in WA out to get Steven McIntyre.

The paranoia in that CA thread is a real eye opener. It's clearly still not occurred that they're making Lewandowsky's point far more eloquently than his paper ever could.

When we can’t access a website most of us don’t immediately take it as a personal slight – not Steven McIntyre.

Actually, yes, he does, two other instances that I'm aware of. It's not healthy ...

What's hilarious about their conspiracy theorizing and all that, at this point it appears none of them has figured out a most direct link between Cook and SL and SKS and SL'd site:

They both run the same (SkS) software, just with different CSS skins.

TGL: get on it! More evidence of conspiracy!

Steven McIntyre seems to have now realized that its possible his problems accessing Lewandowsky's website were not Lewandowsky blocking him, and disappeared the comments where he accused Lewandowsky of being unethical, petty and spiteful - which I guess is as close to an apology as Lewandowsky will get.

sounds like the amusing incident a few years back when McI was hammering a GISS webserver with a script he wrote. a sysadmin noticed the heavy load it was inflicting on the machine, temporarily blocked requests from that IP.

turns out he was violating their robots.txt no-scraping policy. but that's ok: as Steve explained, he wasn't using a web robot to scrape the site, he was just using a script to automatically make tens of thousands of web requests. clear difference.

obviously this was Hansen's thugs unfairly victimising poor Stevie, and definitely not a sysadmin's bog-standard reaction to some antisocial arsebucket abusing one of their services.

http://climateaudit.org/2007/05/17/giss-blocks-data-access/ has the full comedy-show. see how disgusted he is that, even after telling them that he is Stephen McIntyre (you know, The Climate Auditor), and ordering them to unblock him post haste, they didn't immediately comply while apologising and tugging their forelocks.

ligne ...

sounds like the amusing incident a few years back...

Yep, that's one of the two incidents I alluded to above.

The other had to do with an airport in the UK blocking him or something like that, does this ring a bell?

oh yeah, and this comedy goldmine too: http://climateaudit.org/2009/06/07/banned-at-sudbury-airport/

some random free wifi point at an airport doesn't let you access one website, but another works? not only that, but a local academic then comes over and praises RealClimate? obviously Laurentian University have been putting pressure on local businesses. or something.

any resemblance between Stephen McIntyre and an over-tired, paranoid, entitled 6 year old is obviously also due to the climate conspiracy.

andrewt

...disappeared the comments where he accused Lewandowsky of being unethical, petty and spiteful...

Now I wish I'd saved a couple.

Because the accusation was that SL et al were blocking McI and friends with the intent of causing the latter to think they were being blocked and leading to conspiracy-laden commentary ... which would lead to SL et al unblocking them while falsely claiming that no blocking had been done ... then using the commentary to support the denialists-are-conspiracy-prone hypothesis.

A trap, in other words. The paranoia was a beautiful thing ...

dhogaza: ha, that'll learn me not to refresh the thread before commenting :-)

ligne - thank you! yes, the sudbury incident was the second one I alluded to (while being too lazy to go find the thread myself, thanks for your diligence).

Anything else we should be remembering?

haha, there's more: http://climateaudit.org/2009/01/16/nasa-giss-blocks-access/

"What annoys me is the act itself: that they had blocked me once again. And yes, there’s history: I’ve been blocked at U of Virginia (Mann), Roger Williams U (Rutherford) and U of Arizona (Hughes)."

what's that, Steve, you keep getting blocked by a whole swathe of independent organisations? obviously it's because they're all out to get you, and not at all that you never seem to show any consideration for others, or learn from your transgressions.

blocking by user-agent is pretty crude, but as any sysadmin is well aware, you don't always have the time to implement a scalpel fix, and you don't always have the perpetrator within flame-thrower or flensing knife range.

"it appears none of them has figured out a most direct link between Cook and SL and SKS and SL’d site: They both run the same (SkS) software, just with different CSS skins."

wow, it's almost like Lewandowsky wanted to set up a blog, knew John Cook, and that he ran a blog, so asked him to set up a blog for him too. it's like an antipodean Watergate.

At sites where comments get disappeared, or in any thing using DISQUS (which allows editing of comments for a long time, and uses an annoying relative date setup that ends up eliminating timestamps):

A) Use WebCite, if it isn't blocked.
B) do screen grabs if needed

The silliest element of the paranoverdrive:
SL's blog is moderated.
Now, would SL block the very people who might provide additional data? If were SL, I'd want comments recorded there in a convenient place :-)

T. Fuller?

Yeah, but the thing that you're missing is that the Lewandowsky paper is fundamentally complete and utter shit. As A E Houseman said, three minutes thought would suffice to find this out, but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time. Even Watts can be right occasionally.

Yeah, but the thing that you’re missing is that the Lewandowsky paper is fundamentally complete and utter shit.

Which doesn't explain the guilty-as-charged overly-emotional response by the denialsphere, in which they manage to demonstrate that they really *do* believe in a conspiracy of climate scientists (no suprirse, of course).

So we're all in agreement that the Lewandowsky paper is fundamentally complete and utter shit?

No, Squanto, we are not all in agreement. Just as we are unlikely to agree that the reaction by the blogosphere to the paper reinforces the main gist of the paper: most pseudoskeptics are pseudoskeptics because they are libertarian, and there's a higher relative amount of conspiracy nutters amongst the pseudoskeptics.

Here's one from the Australian ABC's "The Drum" _ :

"TONY : 16 Sep 2012 12:46:15pm I'm sick and tired of hearing the same BS mantra repeated adnauseum, "The science is settled", "We know AGW is real and we are to blame" NO!IT IS NOT SETTLED AT ALL. To prove it read the full report from the worlds leading Atmospheric Physicists, Scientists and experts who have published an equally voluminous report to the IPCC's fourth assessment debunking it completely with valid pier reviewed and proven empirical scientific data covering every aspect of climate relevant to the claims made by the Political Neo Marxist IPCC and its UN masters who are pushing us into a single centralized global government in compliance with Agenda 21 now ICLEI and the whole "Sustainability" mantra. For those who doubt this is fact just look at who is dictating school curriculum under UNESO's 5 pillars of indoctrination coauthored by 3, one being Mikhail Gorbachev and encapsulates the dictum of "Sustainability", "Environmentalism" and "Social Engineering" which is just Communism dressed up and has been adopted by every level of government from local to federal, including public schools from K-12, then ask yourselves if this is what we want for our children's futures? A government run from New York, we can neither vote in or out and one that dictates what we eat wear and believe, now they are removing God from the public school system. We should keep in mind our entire system including political, constitutional and judicial is all based on the Christian bible and its commandments, and for good reason, you only need look at Nth Korea, Stalin's Russia and Mao's China to see how well Atheism has performed there.
Carl Marx and Fred Engels were the first to use the bogus claim of catastrophic climate change in 1883 in opposition to Free Market Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution, they claimed Russia would suffer a catastrophic ice age because of the Industrial Revolution and the burning of fossil fuels, sound familiar?
The ABC is complicit in repeating the UN's and this Leftist Governments doctrine while marginalizing and silencing any opposition, when we the tax payers responsible for paying the ABC's wages, are supposed to get unbiased news and information. It's high time the ABC grew a spine and started reporting the full story instead of regurgitating and sneaking into every report the AGW mantra adnauseum. I believe when election time comes, and the weather is its cyclic self as has been since the big bang and the sun still rises in the east, Australians will look to a completely different source for leadership, maybe someone from the TEA Party or Family First, someone who will consider the constitution as a valid sound base for policy and prosperity of Australians instead of this global Leftist Utopian dream that has never existed nor been accomplished, it's time we shifted back to our Judeo-Christian based utopia that has been a proven and reliable model, where since the Enlightenment al."

I suppose the deniers rubbishing SL's paper will conveniently disown this bloke and tens of thousands like him who hold the same views. Didn't John Grisham, or some other well known fiction author, write similar conspiratorial crap in the intro to one of his books?

One denialist/conspiracy blog _ Before It's News _ has 177,000,000 visits. If only half are deniers, that leaves nearly 90,000,000 potential conspiracy nuts who'll believe everything presented on the blog. In it, we find this sort of stuff: A thread titled "Agenda 21′s Globalist Death Plan For Humanity", where he promotes Monkton and also claims that at the... "U.N. Summit at Rio in 1992, the Conference Secretary-General, Maurice Strong, said 'Isn't the only hope for this planet that the industrialized civilization collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?' "

Another thread is titled _ "Global Warming Author Says “Bar-Code Everyone at Birth”.
Conspiracies? Where?

Why Watts's new paper is doomed to fail review

stoat — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 18:28:10 +0000

Why Watts's new paper is doomed to fail review

I've started reading it (I was going to read BEST, but the little b*gg*rs have it behind a permission-wall at the moment. So much for openness. Update: because their site is screwed; its really here), and got to:

As documented in surveys presented in Watts, (2009)

OK, well, obviously, its "Watts (2009)" not "Watts, (2009)" but he'll fix that eventually. Perhaps Christy can help, assuming he is on the author list for doing something and not just to add respectability. But Watts (2009)? I didn't realise he had any pubs. And indeed he doesn't, because this turns out to be:

Watts, A., 2009: Is the U.S. surface temperature record reliable? The Heartland Institute, Chicago, IL. 28 pp.

Srsly? He's trying to cite Heartland trash in a real journal?

Anyway, I haven't got to the science yet.

[Update: Eli arises from the monitor to cry: the Sun! (you get points if you can identify that). McI isn't keen, either -W]

[Update: Still haven't read it. But I was very struck by a comment from McK's review of BEST: With regard to their own empirical work, a basic problem is that they are relating a change term (temperature trend) to a level variable (in this case MODIS classification) rather than to a corresponding change variable (such as the change in surface conditions). I will give a simple example of why this is a flawed method, then I will demonstrate it empirically. At least to first sight, that appears to apply to Watts's stuff, as I was thinking to myself before reading McK.]

stoat Mon, 07/30/2012 - 14:28

Tags

climate snarking

Anyway, I haven’t got to the science yet.

My snarky side can't resist saying ... "despite having reached the end?"

It's "it's 'Watts (2009)'...."

Sorry. Couldn't resist!

BEST has published? All I see from looking around Google News is a bit of controversy about how they started publicizing their results before the paper went through the full review process (e.g. http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/07/amid-criticism-berkeley-earth-exte…)

[Not published, no. But they claim "The Berkeley Earth team has submitted a fifth paper for publication; it has received journal peer review, and we are now posting it for a wider peer review from the scientific community" is available at http://berkeleyearth.org/beta/results-paper-july-8.pdf . But the link, for me, requires sign-in.

And note, still, that weird woo hand-wavy "has received journal peer review". WTF is that supposed to mean? If its been reviewed, and is now accepted, they would say so. If its been reviewed, and requires revision, they should say so -W]

Per the commenting on the WUWT Press Release thread, I have the impression that Evan Jones is the principle editor of the paper. The paper is nowhere near ready for submission, IMHO.

You can cite pretty much anything you like, peer-reviewed or not, as long as it's publicly accessible.

"Technical reports", in particular, are non-reviewed documents produced with the imprimatur of an institution and offered for the world to see. Some of them are pretty widely cited. And yes, people do cite their own technical reports (especially MIT people).

I guess citing his Heartland stuff would fall in that category, so I don't think it would necessarily "doom" it to fail review.

[I'm dubious. Journals can be fairly sniffy about what they allow you to cite - just being available isn't enough. An MIT technical report, maybe - but that's rather different to Heartland -W]

Do you have a link to the paper? Sometimes these things are useful in teaching -- give an anonymized version to the students and see if they can spot the silliness.

Perhaps I should steel myself with a shot of good scotch before reading it. Or maybe just have the scotch, and not bother...

[http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/watts-et-al_2012_dis… - I'll add that to the post, too -W]

William, try http://berkeleyearth.org/pdf/results-paper-july-8.pdf

[Thanks, that works. Those bozos should sort out their web site -W]

It is my impression that they use a lot of "raw averages" for their comparisons. I assume they are simply averaging over all existing stations without gridding or area weighting. I have explicitly asked for clarification at WUWT but did not get a response. This kind of averaging does not give you any meaningful results as changes in the station distribution will change the average.

Furthermore they compare the class 1,2 trend and class 3,4,5 class trend of the unhomogenized data to the NOAA trend calculated from the homogenized data including corrections for time of obeservation bias etc. It's barely discernible in the paper and omitted in the press release. Watts does seem to think that the completely unadjusted data is the correct temperature to use; when he compares his trend to the satellite data he argues that tropospheric amplification is up to 1.4 in some models and he needs 1.5. So without mentioning it Watts questions the vailidity of each and any adjustement done to NOAA final data, be it TOBS, SHAP or whatever. No discussion for this, just sneaking this in.

Given the nonsense above it's almost a minor point that all trends are listed to three significant digits, without the slightest indication of error ranges or significance levels.

Eschenbach 2011: So, despite a promise of transparency, to great fanfare BEST has released four pre-prints, based on admittedly “buggy” data, without the accompanying code or data to back them up.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/01/pre-prints-and-pre-data/

I think that pretty much sums up last Sunday.

h/t PDA @ lucia's

Oh, so someone threw Eschenbach's denial of Mosher's claim back in his face,eh?

(You'll have to read the thread over there to understand.)

FWIW, Eli has been softly hinting about that a 2008 photograph tells you nothing about the state of anything in 1980. Spread the koan:)

Eli Rabett,

To be fair, if you know the date of the last station move, its not useless. Unfortunately I don't think Watts et al have gotten that far in their analysis yet.

So Watts basic argument is ...

We have a set of rather recent digital photographs wherein you will see many ponies.

And the cart before the pony ploy ...

"Until I came along with Watts 2009, they really weren’t looking closely at the issue. The SurfaceStations photography forced them into reaction mode, to do two things."

But right below that Tony the Tiger states ...

"Additionally, if they think they can get good data out of these stations with the myriad of adjustments they perform, why did they need to spend millions of dollars on the new Climate Reference Network commissioned in 2008 that we never hear about?"

Methinks 2008 comes before 2009. But wait, from the "we have this department"...

"The U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN) ... Experimental stations have been located in Alaska since 2002 and Hawaii since 2005, providing network experience in polar and tropical regions. ..."

So long before there ever was a WTFUWT? blog there was NOAA doing the right things to begin with in the first plase.

Somehow this episode of Tony the Tiger reminds me of that South Park episode ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dum_dum_dum_dum_dum

NOAA ... "Smart, smart, smart, smart, smart,.."

Tony the Tiger... "Dum, dum, dum, dum, dum..."

Somehow a set of recent digital photographs does not make one a subject matter expert in field measurements.

Eli writes "FWIW, Eli has been softly hinting about that a 2008 photograph tells you nothing about the state of anything in 1980"

As I understand it Watts et al took the unprecedented step of actually talking to people about the history of the stations :-P

Besides I would imagine it to be rare that sites become better over time, rather I would expect the norm to be more bitumen and concrete added in the immediate area over time so if its bad in the photo now and you dont have a good history of the station its safest to simply downgrade it.

This is selection criteria independent of the temperatures recorded at the station itself and that gives their method some validity (cf tree ring selection criteria)

Let's see, the title of this post is "Why Watts’s new paper is doomed to fail review" and then the (summarized) content of this post is: "Anyway, I haven’t got to the science yet."
So the conclusion is settled, now you only have to find the arguments?
Oh well, that just means I don't have to visit this site anymore.

[I'm not sure if you've heard of a concept we English have, its called "humour". You might want to investigate this concept some time, we find it makes life more enjoyable.

As to the substance: I was trying to gently hint that the paper seems to contain some newbie flaws that would require revision at the very least; and which suggest that Christy, although nominally an author, hasn't actually read it -W]

Check out orlowskis latest two articles on the register. One promoting the watts paper and the other attacking mullers. Apparently miller is bad for doing science by press release and not releasing data immediately. There's a very amusing paragraph critisizing journalists for promoting non-peer reviewed papers!

I left a comment questioning the different approach orlowski took to each paper, but so far it hasn't been published. I notice the article has just one comment and its marked as removed by the moderator....I wonder

"suggest that Christy, although nominally an author, hasn't actually read it -W"

Do you think that Watts has read it?

The WUWT headline is interesting: New study shows half the global warming in the USA is artificial.

First parsing 'global warming in the USA' is tricky. Parsing 'half being artificial' is easier - half wouldn't have happened but for humans.

Muller reckons almost all the recent land surface warming is artificial while Watts reckons only half of the "global / USA" warming is artificial.

(In three days working full time on this you'd think he could have come up with a different headline.)

Well, Tony missed something important

Though it uses a lot of words to get there, my (brief) reading of the paper suggests the synopsis is that they have two collections of stations, one with a significantly lower trend than the other....And that's pretty much it.

So, the question becomes: at this stage, is that enough? I suspect it could be given that the station collections have been divided on the basis of objective quality ratings (even if that rating system has been applied by Watts & McIntyre). However, it would need some major revisions. For one, it rambles on for pages about things which could be summed up in a few lines. It's far too long for what it actually says.
The paper also arrives at strong conclusions based on effectively zero evidence, such as 'These factors, combined with station siting issues, have led to a spurious doubling of U.S. mean temperature trends in the 30 year data period covered by the study from 1979 - 2008.' Since they haven't actually investigated the adjustment factors (TOBS, SHAPS) which lead to the greater trend they have no basis for this statement.

Here's an interesting paragraph from the paper: 'By way of comparison, the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH) Lower Troposphere CONUS trend over this period is 0.25°C/decade and Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) has 0.23°C/decade, the average being 0.24°C/decade. This provides an upper bound for the surface temperature since the upper air is supposed to have larger trends than the surface (e.g. see Klotzbach et al (2011). Therefore, the surface temperatures should display some fraction of that 0.24°C/decade trend. Depending on the amplification factor used, which for some models ranges from 1.1 to 1.4, the surface trend would calculate to be in the range of 0.17 to 0.22, which is close to the 0.155°C/decade trend seen in the compliant Class 1&2 stations. '

This is wrong of course - the 1.1 - 1.4 figure would relate to global land+ocean TLT amplification. The global land relationship in CMIP3 models centres on a 1:1 relationship (0.8 to 1.2 between 1979 and 2005, 0.9 to 1.1 between 2010 and 2100), and land temperatures are what is at issue. However, the interesting thing is that McIntyre knows it's wrong, because Gavin pointed out his minunderstanding in a climateaudit thread last November.

Also, the CONUS surface-TLT amplification factor in models may well be different from the global average.

Link fail: climateaudit.org/2011/11/07/un-muddying-the-waters/

Though it uses a lot of words to get there, my (brief) reading of the paper suggests the synopsis is that they have two collections of stations, one with a significantly lower trend than the other….And that’s pretty much it.

That's my reading too. The paper can basically be summarised as 'Biases exist. We didn't bother to check if they matter.'

We know of at least one "journal" that will publish this "paper" as is.

E&E

The peer review will be done by Moe, Larry and Curly.

Turnaround from initial submittal to final publication will be immediate if not sooner.

FWIW McIntyre seems to have been surprised at his inclusion as an author. He is also being very non-committal about the paper, pointing out some of the more common observations (e.g. the TOBS confound problem discussed by Eli).
http://climateaudit.org/2012/07/31/surface-stations/

[That's interesting. McI is distinctly non-commital there. I notice he is keen to avoid having to look at the satellites; but as he says (as everyone says) once you've done that, there isn't much scope for the surface temperature record being very wrong -W]

McI:

When I had done my own initial assessment of this a few years ago, I had used TOBS versions and am annoyed with myself for not properly considering this factor. I should have noticed it immediately. That will teach me to keep to my practices of not rushing.

More than non-commital, he's saying he screwed up by not noticing that the paper he was helping on ignored TOBS issues.

Coming from McIntyre, even a tiny acknowledgement of having screwed up is absolutely huge. It's obvious that he just helped clean up a few details of the analysis without bothering to read the entire paper for comprehension ...

More than non-commital, he’s saying he screwed up by not noticing that the paper he was helping on ignored TOBS issues.

He's also putting only a very thin veneer over the underlying fact that the paper itself is really only fit for use in the smallest room in the house - and I don't mean for reading.

It's popcorn time, by all appearances.

I quite like this comment on CA http://climateaudit.org/2012/07/31/surface-stations/#comment-345330

"The fact that a statistician was brought in over the weekend to finish a paper does not reflect well on the entire effort. A scientific paper is not a homework assignment"

"Here’s an interesting paragraph from the paper: ‘By way of comparison, the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH) Lower Troposphere CONUS trend over this period is 0.25°C/decade and Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) has 0.23°C/decade, the average being 0.24°C/decade. This provides an upper bound for the surface temperature since the upper air is supposed to have larger trends than the surface (e.g. see Klotzbach et al (2011). Therefore, the surface temperatures should display some fraction of that 0.24°C/decade trend. Depending on the amplification factor used, which for some models ranges from 1.1 to 1.4, the surface trend would calculate to be in the range of 0.17 to 0.22, which is close to the 0.155°C/decade trend seen in the compliant Class 1&2 stations. ‘"

Yes notice that this adjustment was made but not TOBS

Emerges, not arises, after all these things are audited.

McI is distinctly non-commital there.

To McIntyre's credit, he is now saying that he totally screwed up in not catching the fact that Watts ignores TOBS issues, is extremely annoyed at himself for having done so (and presumably allowing himself to be rushed into a quick round of help over a short weekend), and has every intention of making sure that TOBS issues are properly addressed, even if it means "redoing the statistics from the ground up".

Now, we'll see where this leads, but so far it's promising.

And the possibility of an interesting clash between Watts and McIntyre is promising, too, because I just can't imagine Watts letting go of his "50% of the warming is spurious" conclusion.

Has Christy said anything about the paper yet? Or is he also "surprised" to see himself listed as an author too?

Eli arising / emerging from the monitor reminds me of Wolfe's Long Sun tetralogy. Probably not what you had in mind at all, but I shall risk ridicule :-)

[You are exactly correct. http://mustelid.blogspot.co.uk/2005/04/i-dwindle-go-unnoticed-now.html -W]

When will we (if ever) see a list of station ID's (with numbered classifications) used in this, err, missive, cast down to Earth by the Holey Church of the Eternal Denier?

Just asking for the the list of station ID's and nothing else.

I don't need to see literally thousands of very recent 2D digital pictures of ponies, thank you very much. I don't need to see their overly verbose excuses for siting selection. And I don't need to see KML files for Google Earth. By the time they put that all together, the text alone, will be bigger than The Bible.

A simple two colume ASCII file, Column 1 = station ID, Column 2 = Classification (an integer between 1 and 5).

Simple enough data request. Watts Up With That?

So now RP, SR. is telling all the world that the "game changer" paper by you know is "[to be submitted to JGR]"

But, as usual, RP, Sr. just can't help but reference one of his own "game changer" literary works.

No denial yet (as to where it will be submitted) from AW and Co. as they have a post up pointing directly to RP, Sr. "game changing" essay.

JGR? Seriously? Are they trying to get soundly rejected on purpose? Meaning the "as is" paper. IMHO I do think so!

Zeke Hausfather has written what is probably the best possible review of Watt's draft given available information (or lack thereof) over at Lucia's.

You may be surprised to learn that his assessment is not exactly over-enthusiastic. :p

[You broke your HTML. I think you mean http://rankexploits.com/musings/2012/initial-thoughts-on-the-watts-et-a… -W]

Not only is Pielke Sr describing this as a game changer, he says:

Anthony has led what is a critically important assessment of the issue of station quality. Indeed, this type of analysis should have been performed by Tom Karl and Tom Peterson at NCDC, Jim Hansen at GISS and Phil Jones at the University of East Anglia (and Richard Muller). However, they apparently liked their answers and did not want to test the robustness of their findings.

Which is kind of ironic in view of the fact that even one of the authors (McIntyre) doesn't think the stats have been done proerly (yet at least). In other words, Roger is happy to blindly accept something that supports his viewpoint.

I remember when Pielke Sr was an interesting voice (and obviously has had a great career). Not one I necessarily agreed with, but generally thought provoking. In the last couple of years or so, however, he's become an utter embarrassment.

[RP Sr has drifted off. He's been like that for a while. Its a Linden thing, really. He can't bear to be part of the mainstream, and he feels personally slighted because, despite his relentless and shameless self-promotion, his work isn't widely recognised. Probably, he is now being outrageous in order to get a quote into the limelight of NYT -W]

Well now Roger thr Dodger does a walk back of sorts, all about TOBS now, "game changer" now on hold.

[Ah, you mean http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2012/07/31/summary-of-two-game-ch… Yeeeessss... its a bit much (well, for anyone who wants to think they have any credibility) to call the paper a "game changer" complete with big logo, and then suddenly have to say "oh, hold on, actually I haven't read it..." -W]

And as usual he just has to reference himself yet again

So as I see it, this paper by Watts won't even make the IPCC AR5 WG1 submittal deadline (it's already 8/1/2012 over there).

https://www.ipcc-wg1.unibe.ch/AR5/AR5.html

“redoing the statistics from the ground up” rules out looking at anything like borehole data, but I suppose ... well, no, I don't.

"Well now Roger thr Dodger does a walk back of sorts, all about TOBS now, “game changer” now on hold."

Oh, God, that was quick. And he's been a co-project leader of the surface stations project from day one, so for all practical purposes, he's lying.

Wow, crap on a crutch.

So as I see it, this paper by Watts won’t even make the IPCC AR5 WG1 submittal deadline (it’s already 8/1/2012 over there).

Christy's #5 author on the paper, and he's scheduled to testify to the US Senate tomorrow, so I think you might be missing the intended target? Watts stated that he wanted to prime Christy for his testimony ...

It will be interesting if Christy (who I doubt actually read the paper, McI admits he hadn't) plays the Watts card ...

dhogaza,

Very true. I'm sure Inhofe will charge right into it, with the "It's all a cons piracy." Political theatre at it's best.

Just hope for someone else on that panel who points out how deeply flawed it really is, not fit for peer reviewed (or public) consumption. And I do mean forcefully.

It will be interesting to see though, how well he supports his, err Watts, own work.

I don't think Christy will use Watts' report. If he does, he will be openly ridiculed by everyone, touting a paper that within a few days of blog review is already shown to be based on flawed analysis.

What would be really funny if one of the senators (it can only be a Democrat) asks Christy about Watts' report. I'll gladly make popcorn for everyone if that happens!

@Paul S
July 31, 2:12 pm

You should apologize to all people who read that topic at CA. There is nothing more laughable than McIntyre berating Gavin for not writing all his code in R, because that is the high level language everyone uses. The man's inability to see the world in any other terms than what is suits him personally is amazing. Not one of his minions pulls him up on it.

Is Watts seriously trying to get this thing into IPCC? It's likely that if it were submitted for publication in current form it would have a very hard time, not least because the length needs to be cut in half.

I suppose it's a win-win for him. If it gets published, he builds his credibility. If it's rejected, he can wail against the godless left-wing fascist anarchist "gatekeepers."

1) Christy has indeed references the Watts study in his congressional testimony: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_…

2) On bluegrue's point: reading the paper methodology, it seems to me that Anthony has averaged all stations within a given region, and then does an area-weighted averaging of the regions to get a US average. He uses the word "gridded" in his phrase, "gridded, area-weighted mean of the regional averages", but I don't think that word means what he thinks it means, because that phrase makes no logical sense as is. (if it was gridded, there would be no need to have done the regional averaging step first)

The fact that Watts cannot do a real gridded anomaly average after all these years of working in this field is an embarrassment. The TOBS ignorance is just the cherry on the embarrassment cake. (Apparently Watts is now claiming that he doesn't believe in TOBS because he doesn't think that observers actually changed their observation times when NOAA told them to).

Very glad to see someone is taking Watts to task over this nonsense. Goodness knows, I have tried...
http://lackofenvironment.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/muller-knows-best-wat…

MMM: 'Apparently Watts is now claiming that he doesn’t believe in TOBS because he doesn’t think that observers actually changed their observation times when NOAA told them to'

Is that really what he's saying? The BEST methodology for dealing with discontinuities such as TOBS does not use metadata, so doesn't care when anyone was told anything, but produces a final adjusted record remarkably similar to USHCN's. Does he provide any justification?

Ah, I was mistaken. Watts did use, for some of his analysis, a crude gridding routine, dividing the US into 26 six degree grid boxes, and it also appears he used a reasonable anomaly method, so that should address the major non-TOBS issues.

(better gridding methods do exist, but this is a big step up from just regional averaging) (note that Watts ALSO does raw averaging, and it isn't always clear which of his results are raw-average based and which aren't)

Just hope for someone else on that panel who points out how deeply flawed it really is, not fit for peer reviewed (or public) consumption. And I do mean forcefully.

I posted a heads-up over at Climate Progress on the thread regarding the upcoming hearing, but it was already 8:30 PM eastern time when I thought to do so.

I was clearly too slow ... it would've been nice if Romm had been able to prime a dem on the committee ...

Paul S: Here's the exchange I was referring to:

Nick Stokes:
The 2009 BAMS paper of Menne et al has a Fig 3 which shows the trend of observation times that observers actually reported. And Fig 4 shows the resulting effect of a TOBS adjustment on trends, based on the Fig 3 data and the known diurnal and day-to-day variability.

REPLY: Noooo…Fig. 3. Changes in the documented time of observation in the U.S. HCN. is about the times they assigned the observers. There’s no proof the observers adhere to it. – Anthony

Regarding BEST: Yes, I agree that BEST provides confirmation that the TOBS adjustment is reasonable. But for Watts, BEST is project-non-grata.

Harry,

Heh, much of McIntyre's input (probably the whole purpose of the post) on that page amounts to little more than preening for his audience.

McIntyre has pleaded ignorance on the contents of the paper, so my point is irrelevant now anyway. I have no reason to suspect Watts knows anything about TLT/surface temperature trend amplification.

MMM,

Just more Wattsian anecdotal evidence. Not much meat on them there bones

Wattsian logic will take qualification over quantification each and every time.

That most famous of Wattsian informal logical fallacies, the cherry pick.

Look see a pony, an exception to the rule is 100% proof that all other information is equally invalid.

I completely forgot that the testimony of Christy was likely prepared some time ago. It may thus explain Watts' rushjob: it needed to be ready before today.

More eggs on Christy's face.

REPLY: Noooo…Fig. 3. Changes in the documented time of observation in the U.S. HCN. is about the times they assigned the observers. There’s no proof the observers adhere to it. – Anthony

Watts is essentially claiming that most observers LIED ON THEIR DATASHEETS, entering bogus reset times, therefore that bit of metadata can't be trusted.

I don't think that a claim based on the assertion of lying observers will make it far through the review process ...

This is what Christy has to say about Watts paper in his congressional testimony:

"Watts et al. demonstrate that when humans alter the
immediate landscape around the thermometer stations, there is a clear warming signal
due simply to those alterations, especially at night. An even more worrisome result is
that the adjustment procedure for one of the popular surface temperature datasets actually
increases the temperature of the rural (i.e. best) stations to match and even exceed the
more urbanized (i.e. poor) stations. This is a case where it appears the adjustment
process took the spurious warming of the poorer stations and spread it throughout the
entire set of stations and even magnified it. This is ongoing research and bears watching
as other factors as still under investigation, such as changes in the time-of-day readings
were taken, but at this point it helps explain why the surface measurements appear to be
warming more than the deep atmosphere (where the greenhouse effect should appear.)"

So in spite of theTOBS problem, Christy still thinks it is good enough.

Link

Team Tony The Tiger (or T4) dribbles the ball down the court ... T4 takes the shot ... Team Reality Ultimately Endures (or TRUE) massively BLOCKS the shot ... the ball EXPLODES right in T4's face .. TRUE picks up the many shards of the ball off the floor ... dribbles said shards down the court ... massively SLAM DUNKS said shards ... the backboard EXPLODES ... the clock expires ... TRUE remains undefeared.

T4 regroups, after all they do have a pony.

Wow, I can't believe that Christy relied on the Watt's POS in his testimony. Credibility, buh-bye.

Now you see why Watts pushed it out this weekend ...

I watched the Senate hearing this morning. Christy didn't mention the Watts paper in his spoken testimony, but Senator Boxer (D from CA, and chair) absolutely slammed him for referring to it in writing, asking him whether it was peer-reviewed and how could he be relying on one unreviewed paper, she trusted in the many reviewed papers that supported warming. Christy looked like he wanted to crawl somewhere and hide.

Score one for our side!

Got a link to the replay?

Sorry, all I saw was a live stream, I assume they post a video later somewhere? I'd actually like to see it as I missed most of the second part of the hearing on impacts.

Never mind, I found the video at the epw site:

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Choose&Heari…

Christy free for all begins around 120:00 or there abouts. Questions from Boxer around 130:00.

RN, did Christy have any credibility remaining prior to this? Don't think so.

By the way, if you are left unimpressed by citing of Heartland literature I wonder how you'll feel about the citation - '(as noted in online discussions at the time)' later in the paper?

Paul S: i'll have you know that the International Journal of Shit I Heard Down The Pub is a highly respected publication.

Arthur,

do you know how many days in advance the written testimony has to be submitted to the senate? Might be an interesting point in regard to the timeline of the fabrication of Watts et al.

And the possibility of an interesting clash between Watts and McIntyre is promising, too, because I just can’t imagine Watts letting go of his “50% of the warming is spurious” conclusion.

Watts runs McIntyre's server.

Andreas - I'm not sure there's a requirement - Boxer actually left open another 2 days for witnesses to submit written materials to be included in the record, so it sounds like it can be submitted even after the hearing itself. But I think the habit is to send it in at least a day early so at least some senate staff can prep questions. Like that one :)

I hadn't remembered that Boxer made that query about Anthony Watts the very first question for the witnesses, it looked very deflating to the contrarians there...

Christy's graphs looked rather dubious too - I wish somebody had asked whether they had been submitted for peer review. It sounds like from the written testimony he artificially reduced the UAH/RSS temperatures in the comparison - very shady thing to do.

"Christy’s graphs looked rather dubious too – I wish somebody had asked whether they had been submitted for peer review. It sounds like from the written testimony he artificially reduced the UAH/RSS temperatures in the comparison – very shady thing to do."

The other shady thing about that graph is the 1979-1983 baseline. 4 year baseline? And not even the first 4 years being examined? Is it coincidence that this 4 year period is warmer than the years immediately before and after?

Judging by the latest crop of comments at WUWT:

"Lucy Skywalker says:
August 2, 2012 at 3:27 pm
I shall be with you in spirit on 18 August ....But ah, I had to take time off to celebrate and support the “protestant reformation” in Science emerging with the historic nailing to the blog door of Watts et al 2012."

It may be time to toss another Lollard on the barbie.

Since Watts et al is not yet submittable in either form or content, it's up in the air if it will ever get to peer review. While the world anxiously awaits Watts' TOBS reanalysis, I wonder if he is at least correct that Leroy 2010 should supersede Leroy 1999 as a criterion for station adjustments.

" I wonder if he is at least correct that Leroy 2010 should supersede Leroy 1999 as a criterion for station adjustments."

Well, digging around a bit, I get this quote:

"[leroy 2010's methodology] endorsed by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Commission for Instruments and Methods of Observation (CIMO-XV, 2010) Fifteenth session, in September 2010 as a WMO-ISO standard, making it suitable for reevaluating previous studies on the issue of station siting."

While "endorsed" does not mean "ISO standard" yet (this requires a usually lengthy process among national-level standards organizations and eventually a vote by them, and I doubt the process is complete, though don't know for sure), it's a good sign.

"...the historic nailing to the blog door of Watts et al 2012."

Watts' triumphant revamping of the peer-review and publication processes of science is also being compared to the invention of the printing press by Gütenberg.

The comparison having first been made by Watts himself ...

Oh, ugh, that quote regarding "endorsed by the WMO" actually came from a re-post of Watts PR on his paper.

But I think it's probably accurate.

dhogaza,

The irony of Wattsian logic is truly amazing.

So Watts has never ever heard of ArXiv?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArXiv

"It started in August 1991 as a repository for preprints in physics and later expanded to include astronomy, mathematics, computer science, nonlinear science, quantitative biology and, most recently, statistics."

I've never been quite sure that all ArXiv articles have been submitted to at least one peer reviewed journal though. But some real duds do appear to make it through.

But on the other hand, Watts most surely is not the first person to post a "paper" for review purposes prior to submission either.

And even if this paper is never submitted in any form to any journal, what Watts is suggesting is no formalities are necessary for publishing works of art on the internets. Which kind of goes without saying, as this form of internet "publishing" has been happening ever since there was the internet to begin with in the first place.

The difference here with Watts, is in his completely closed minded approach taken to the many people who have pointed out the rather serious flaws in this paper. He definitely isn't playing with a full deck of cards (on purpose), if you know what I mean.

Gütenberg or Galileo or Einstein, gosh there's a lot of famous people out there, which one will Watts choose to be tomorrow?

In the spirit of Carl Sagan, I would suggest Bozo the Clown.

Dhogaza, it's way past "serious flaws" and into "erroneous premise" territory. IOW there's no salvaging *this* paper. The paper that there's material for, one discussing the differences between Leroy 1998 and Leroy 2010, would be a different paper entirely. Or maybe, if he wanted to do more (and more subtle) work than he's capable of, he could examine whether the Leroy 2010 standards are valid by analyzing whether particular influences that affect the Leroy class are reflected in the USHCN record. The latter might even be kind of interesting, but it would also involve being very careful in the application of the Leroy standards. (Actually I suspect field work to take direct measurements of the influences of heat sources and sinks would be needed to do such a thing correctly, another reason why it won't happen.)

And I didn't want to let the thread end without it being pointed out as baldly as possible what an utter fool Watts was to imagine that this would not blow up in his face instantly.

Re the Leroy 2010 standards, the key point is that applying them is more art than science. A too-strict interpretation of e.g. the shadowing standard could demote an otherwise Class 1 station to Class 4. In the hands of a scientist, that's not a problem, since it would be understood how easily an incorrect class can be assigned. In the hands of Watts, it's guaranteed to be one.

BTW, I see in his withdrawal statement that Watts says he won't post the revision, but will just go ahead and submit it for publication. That will make it a lot easier just to slip the whole thing down the memory hole.

Re your famous person question, I vote for Helen Keller. :)

[The Leroy '10 stuff is interesting. I'm not familiar with this at all. Watts is very keen on it, but of course only because it produces a result he likes. If he liked Leroy '9, then of course *that* would be the one faithful standard and the '10 would be a modern corruption - see all the endless junk about "IPCC used to endorse the MWP".

But I haven't really seen anyone else commenting much on Lereoy versions -W]

"I wonder if he is at least correct that Leroy 2010 should supersede Leroy 1999 as a criterion for station adjustments."

To be clear on this, the 1998 standards were for siting only. For years right up until this recent draft, Watts had claimed otherwise, but note that the draft admits that they were never appropriate for adjustments (actually not adjustments, BTW, but addition of error bars). The 2010 standards claim to be suitable for adding error bars.

Now that I think about it, the fact that it's error bars and not adjustments is rather important. In effect, the former makes no claim that there really is an error. One would then want to examine the station record to see if there really is an issue.

A fellow named ChristianP has left some comments on Leroy 1999/2010 at the Blackboard.

[Thanks, that's interesting. It reinforces my view (well, the obvious view) that Leroy '10 isn't a magic bullet. The other point (which I think McK made in his review, but again its an obvious one) is that the classification that Watts did was right at the end, whereas what they need is classification through time. A constant cold bias isn't a problem for trends. Also the talk of "heat sinks" makes no sense to me -W]

Christy says in his committee testimony that temperature is an incorrect measurement for global warming, the correct measurement is in joules. I've seen this asserted elsewhere and wonder if it is true.

The correct measurement is Hiroshima Bombs for extra energy added because of GHGs: two every second.

What McK said has been Eli;s point for years. A 2008 photo tells you nothing about 1980.

Since the radioactive decay flux is about a hiroshima/ second, ten to the fourteenth J or so, this must really be the Anthropocene.

Note that shooting off all the world's nuclear arsenals could only sustain the rate of radiative bracket creep for a hay and a half.

They just don'tmake Ages like they used to .

If a hiroshima is 6x 10 exp 13 J, just how big is a Shima anyway ?

Neven at 9:01 pm, 3 August

The correct measurement is Hiroshima Bombs for extra energy added because of GHGs: two every second

James Hansen has stated that the the energy excess is equivalent to 400,000 Hiroshima bombs per day. If one does the arithmetic is actually works out to be 4.63 HB/second.

Since 1 Tsarbomba= 4.25 x 10 exp3 Hiroshima , to a first appoximation the Shima is about a bomba / hour, which is still enough to ruin your entire day.

re: "Srsly? He’s trying to cite Heartland trash in a real journal?"

The idea of citing something is to acknowledge a source to either given them credit or for people to turn to it for more info. People have even cited personal conversations just to give someone credit. It is simple concept, it is odd you have difficulty with it. I suppose those who care more about style than substance may run journals that limit cites to other journals even if that makes the content less useful and steals credit from those they are prevented from citing.

I suspect you care neither for substance nor even style but merely expressing your hatred for allowing anyone to cite those that dare disagree with your simplistic worldview.

[You cite personal conversations as pers. comm.. You don't pretend they are real papers -W]

"It is my impression that they use a lot of “raw averages” for their comparisons. I assume they are simply averaging over all existing stations without gridding or area weighting."

No, we use not one but two weighting measures. One uses 9 areas of the US. The other cuts up the US into 26 grid boxes.

Our revised data fully addresses the TOBS issue and also factors in MMTS conversion. Stations with documented moves post 2002 are dropped unless the prior location is known and rated.

We will include statistics for all dropped stations, as well, in order to establish that there is no cherrypicking at issue.

I will be happy to address any and all objections.

(P.S., I am NOT the primary editor of the paper. But I did do the vast bulk of the actual footwork, so I am in a position to comment.)

[Welcome! I'd be interested to know if you have any comments re the current state of the paper. As you'll see from the comments here, it looks from the outside as though promised updates haven't occurred -W]

Thank you. Here is some feedback. The paper is controversial in its conclusions and we expect it to be carefully scrutinized.

comments re the current state of the paper.

Well, I'm working on it very hard. Rome wasn't built in a day. Or even burnt in a day, for that matter. But I can tell you that the paper is very much alive and in active process.

To be fair, if you know the date of the last station move, its not useless. Unfortunately I don’t think Watts et al have gotten that far in their analysis yet.

Well, I dropped all the stations that have moves after 2002 (except for a small handful of cases, where we know the precise pre-move location and can therefore rate it). That data is available from MMS. Prior to that it is difficult to be consistent because the given coordinates become very imprecise very quickly and the remarks themselves are not uniform.

That does not solve the issue in its entirety, but it goes as far as we can.

(In our update, we will be including the data for all dropped stations partly for purposes of demonstrating that we are not indulging in cherrypicking.)

Do you think that Watts has read it?

I'm not sure he read it. (But he did write it.)

Since they haven’t actually investigated the adjustment factors (TOBS, SHAPS) which lead to the greater trend they have no basis for this statement.

We will have addressed TOBS, and I think very well.

To me, the very idea that SHAP is an overall positive trend adjustment is mindboggling. But TOBS is a legitimate concern.

So is MMTS, though one of considerably lesser magnitude. We will be addressing that as well.

We know of at least one “journal” that will publish this “paper” as is.

E&E

The peer review will be done by Moe, Larry and Curly.

Our previous paper on the subject (Fall et al., 2011) was published by the Journal of Geophysical Research. One of the reviewers was from NOAA. (We figure that was probably Moe.)

Our conclusions were different. But we published anyway. We certainly did not withhold the paper because it concluded that siting has little effect on trend. The answer, either way, is an important question for both its scientific and policy implications.

To be clear, our current paper refutes our earlier paper, and devotes much space as to the reasons therefor.

Also the talk of "heat sinks" makes no sense to me -W

The basic premise is that heat is absorbed by the sink during the day and then released at night, having a serious effect om Tmin.

The question we address is whether this effect on trend increases during a period of sustained warming, or whether it is constant, as per Menne, et al. (2010), and does not increase trend.

We conclude that the trend does indeed increase. Or, to put it another way, a heat sink does not only make a station warmer, it makes it warmier.

[Does the draft paper address that? I didn't see it, but then I only skimmed it If you could point me to the section, I would read it -W]

One might well hypothesize that if a poorly sited station warms faster during a sustained warming phase, it will therefore cool faster than a well sited station during a period of sustained cooling, as the effect 'undoes" itself. a sort of "what goes up must come down" type of argument.

A note on our use of Leroy in both our papers: We are using the proximity factors only. We are not considering shading or vegetation. This is important. For one thing, shading is a cooling effect that makes a rating worse -- and it is far more likely to affect a poorly sited station (thanks to proximity to structures).

So we are not rating a station as a class 4 because of a small nearby bush. (A small nearby power plant, maybe . . . )

I hope this answers some of your questions.

Another interesting observation is that stations with poor mesosite (i.e, urban and airports) have markedly superior microsite.

This gainsays the prejudice that urban sites have worse specific locations than those in rural or semi-rural environment.

Under 20% of stations in rural areas are Class 1\2, while 30% of stations in urban areas are Class 1\2.

I believe that because of this phenomenon, the fact that TOBS bias is more prevalent in rural areas does not "wash out" the differences between well and poorly (micro)sited stations.

OK, well, obviously, its “Watts (2009)” not “Watts, (2009)” but he’ll fix that eventually.

I concede Anthony does have a problem with punctuation prior to parentheses. (And parenthetical commas.)

I did fix all that, but unfortunately those fixes did not make it through to the release.

But, yes, it will ultimately be fixed.

[Does the draft paper address that? I didn't see it, but then I only skimmed it If you could point me to the section, I would read it -W]

Well, it does so indirectly. Bear in mind that the paper is not primarily about the underlying science, it is about observation.

After all, before one gets into the "why", one has to nail down the "what is".

We claim observe in the overall sampling poor siting affects Tmin more than Tmax.

I note that in our revised statistics, that the Tmin difference is greater in areas with poor mesosite than in areas with good mesosite, and that Tmax differences are more dominant in rural areas.

Overall, the differences in Tmean trend between good and poor microsite stations, while omnipresent, diminishes somewhat in areas with poor mesosite as omnipresent heat sink begins to overwhelm the trends (esp. Tmax).

Even in rural areas, Class 5 stations have lower Tmean trends than Class 4. And in urban areas, Class 4 stations trends dip to or even below those of Class 3 (although remaining higher than Class 1\2). Urban Class 5 stations are so overwhemed that their trend is dampened slightly below (though not significantly below) that of Class 1\2.

Overall, the combination of Class 3\4\5 stations Tmean trend remains higher than Class 1\2 even with urban and airport stations. but the rural "class differences" are greater.

For reference, 10% of sites in our study are urban, a bit over 5% are airport, with a fair bit of overlap between thew two..

We believe this is consistent with the heat sink/Tmin trend hypothesis.

Remember, it's not about whether urbanized areas are warmer. it's about whether they warm faster during a n overall warming trend.

[Yes, exactly. That is a key question. So I'm surprised to see you only address it indirectly, since it is so vital to your thesis. I was hoping you could direct me to the part of the paper that covered this issue -W]

Also remember, the gold speck here is the observation rather than the theories adduced to accommodate the observations. We are, of course, far more certain of the former than of the latter.

We conclude that the trend does indeed increase. Or, to put it another way, a heat sink does not only make a station warmer, it makes it warmier.

[Does the draft paper address that? I didn't see it, but then I only skimmed it If you could point me to the section, I would read it -W]

Well, yes. That is the main point of the paper.

Leory (both v. 1999 and 2010), inter multa alia agree that poor microsites are warmer (sic) than goodr microsites. That is not controversial; both sides agree.

The question, also addressed by Menne et al. (2010) and by us in Fall et al. (2011), is whether poorly sited stations warmed faster than the well sited stations, from 1979 - 2008 (or in Menne's case, from 1980 - 2010).

We find that they do indeed warm faster. And, as I say, that is the main point of the paper.

[And yet this appears to be highly methodology dependent, and to differ from previous results. Undoubtedly, you've looked into exactly why your results differ from previous, and explained why your new results are to be considered superior? Again, which section of the paper covers this? -W]

We also agree that there has been warming. We are, after all, lukewarmers. In order for a warming trend to be exaggerated by poor siting, there has to be a warming trend in the first place to exaggerate.

But, when it comes to global warming, size matters. (Not to mention the motion of the ocean.)

Yes, it is methodolggical and, yes, it differs from previous results. Including our own.

The paper itself attributes it to binning. This is correct, as far as it goes, but I will explain further (and will suggest that it be explained in the paper):

Leroy (1999) bases it rating on distance from heat source or sink, but does not take into account the size of the sink. Therefore a small garden path will have the same effect on rating as a parking lot. But Leroy (2010) accounts for area covered within radius.

For example, Leroy (1999) rates a station as Class 4 if within 10 m. of a heat source. But Leroy (2010) says that for a Class 4 rating, 10% of the area within a 10 m. radius must be heat sink. If you do the circle-segment dance, you will find that if a station that is 6.9 m. from the side of a house is NOT considered to be a Class 4 (unless there is other stuff near the station) because under 10% of the radius would be covered by the house.

This is a more lenient system (except for defining Class 5)than Lerroy (1999). So a larger number of stations are rated Class 1\2.

And the reason that this lowers the Class 1\2 average rather than raises it is that nearly all of the stations re-rated from Class 3 (or even 4) to Class 2 are Non-Airport stations.

This greatly decreases the proportion of Class 1\2 Airports compared with the total of all Class 1\2 stations. And airports have a much higher trend than non-airports. Therefore, the Class 1\2 average goes down instead of up even though the standards are loosened.

But it doesn't really matter why. Assuming Leroy is correct in that a < 10% area does not affect the readings, then what the result is is, well, what the result is. It is certainly logical that the area of heat sink is of primary importance.

When I get a chance, i will go over the paper again and provide page numbers and the like. Your questions are quite reasonable and certainly deserve answers. (And I feel certain that peer review will be a most bruising process -- far more so than it was last time.)

[I think others will be interested in your comments here; I'll write a post pointing them out, since many won't notice new comments on an old thread. Can I ask you to clarify the "lack of visible activity" question: the natural place for you reporting progress would be WUWT, I'd imagine, rather than here, so its a bit odd to see no sign of this activity, there -W]

Well, okay, so I must, perforce, consider this to be, to some degree, "enemy territory". But that's okay, I'm figuring peer review will be worse . . .

And there is no lack of activity, really, just a lack of visible activity. When I get the new data properly assembled and Anthony gets the new version written up, there will be plenty to see.

Meanwhile, I have no problem defending the paper and explaining what we have and will be addressing. If there is something that I consider to be seriously wrong, I will need to address it, after all.

We kinow what the overall MMTS adjustment is (via Menne 2010 and 2009). And we have cleverly addressed the TOBS issue in a manner that even the most unsympathetic will find satisfactory (you'll find out more about that later . . .).

SHAP is very minor after 1980. As for homogonization, I think that the professionals are going to have to rework that. What's happening -- I think -- is that the cooler-trend stations (which are mostly Class 1\2) are being considered as outliers and are being "brought in to conformity" with the majority -- which are poorly sited.

I think that for homogenization to get it right, there will have to be a siting adjustment prior to homogenization. unfortunately at this point NOAA does not concede that siting maters in respect to ttrend.

Not only will that screw up the homogonization procedure, but it also imperils any pairwise comparisons (because the comparisons may well be made between stations of different siting quality). This will inevitably affect MMTS and TOBS adjustments, both of which, as I understand it, involve pairwise comparisons.

Note that I am not saying all adjustments are wrong in concept, merely that by ignoring siting, they are currently being done wrong and will have to be readdressed.

The big objection to Watts et al. (2012) is TOBS. With that issue dealt with, I predict it will make it through peer review.

Evan Jones, the most visible issue with Watts et al. (in preparation) is TOBS. It was certainly not the only issue.

My concern, however, is a what I regard as an inadequacy with the new (and the old) classification system. Specifically, it takes no account of the difference in thermal properties between heat sinks and natural terrain.

To illustrate the issue, consider Watts classification of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology weather station at Ceduna SA as urban. It is located in arid country where natural ground cover covers only 20-50% of the terrain, and consists of water retentive vegetation with a very high silica content. Watts classifies the site as urban because there is a graded runway within 100 meters of the stevenson screen, which probably sees traffic of 4 or 5 light aircraft a day.

From my perspective, the graded airport runway would make no appreciable difference to the temperature record at that location. At Mount Isa, even a large brick building would make little difference in a terrain similar to Ceduna except for the presence of many large exposed rock surfaces, thermally little different from such a building.

Another example comes from the Australian Antarctic Territory where Watts has twice attributed warming trends to the nearby location (2-4 meters) of an insulated two man hut. (That the Stevenson screen in question has never been used for climate records is beside the point.)

Obviously these are not US examples, but it illustrates that classifications that do not take into account the change in thermal properties introduced by supposedly artificial structures are inadequate.

To my mind they also illustrate the fact that Watts is a biased observer whose own biases are likely to distort his application of any classification system, but that is another matter.

I do not understand most of the discussion above, I am afraid, but maybe I can make some helpful remarks on the time of observation bias.

Evan Jones: "This will inevitably affect MMTS and TOBS adjustments, both of which, as I understand it, involve pairwise comparisons."

The TOBS adjustments have been computed from hourly measurements. The pairwise homogenisation algorithm is a recent development to detect and correct additional non-documented inhomogeneities and was not involved in any way in the computation of the TOBS.

Evan Jones: "And we have cleverly addressed the TOBS issue in a manner that even the most unsympathetic will find satisfactory "

May I ask, is there need for a clever solution? You can download TOBS adjusted data from the NOAA homepage. If you do not believe these adjustments have been computed correctly, as Anthony Watts seems to do, you can restrict your analysis to stations for which the time of observation did not change.

If you do not believe these adjustments have been computed correctly, as Anthony Watts seems to do

Actually, it's worse, Watts has claimed that significant humbers of station monitors ignored instructions to change the TOBS and , in essence, rather than doing so lied on their data sheets (i.e. wrote in the new time but continued to take observations at the old time).

If the revised paper rests at all on that premise I predict a difficult future for it ...

Evan Jones:

This will inevitably affect MMTS and TOBS adjustments, both of which, as I understand it, involve pairwise comparisons.

VV already pointed out that you understand wrong, in regard to TOBS. Regarding MMTS adjustments, these are done immediately after TOBS adjustments are made:

"Temperature data at stations that have the Maximum/Minimum Temperature System (MMTS) are adjusted for the bias introduced when the liquid-in-glass thermometers were replaced with the MMTS (Quayle, et al. 1991). The TOB debiased data are input into the MMTS program and is the second adjustment. The MMTS program debiases the data obtained from stations with MMTS sensors. The NWS has replaced a majority of the liquid-in-glass thermometers in wooden Cotton-Region shelters with thermistor based maximum-minimum temperature systems (MMTS) housed in smaller plastic shelters. This adjustment removes the MMTS bias for stations so equipped with this type of sensor."

I see nothing in the description that discusses pairwise comparisons. Homogenization comes after TOBS and MMTS adjustments, not during/before.

Note that I am not saying all adjustments are wrong in concept, merely that by ignoring siting, they are currently being done wrong and will have to be readdressed.

If the measurement characteristics of liquid-in-glass vs. MMTS sensors is understood, why oh why would you have to take siting into effect? Siting issues are not going to wipe out or modify the differences in the physical characteristics of the two sensor types!

It is reasoning like this that makes me question whether you and Watts will successfully overturn decades of work done by professional scientists. You apparently don't understand the adjustment procedures which are used, even though they are clearly documented by NOAA complete with links to the relevant papers.

(oops ... the link to the Quayle paper is apparently messed up, so maybe "complete with links" is an overstatement, but at least the full title of each paper is available.)

Indeed you can! *evil grin* (Love that MMS "Phenomena" Tab.)

Specifically, it takes no account of the difference in thermal properties between heat sinks and natural terrain.

Leroy (2010) is empirical. he is not attempting to do that. he merely notes that he measures a definite temperature bias when sensors are located near heat sinks.

He is, of course, examining offset, not trend. NOAA agrees insofar as offset goes, and adopted the 1999 version as a basis for siting its CRN network.

He is observing the WHAT, not the WHY. And the "what" is that the offset is biased.

We are also making an empirical observation, not of offset, but of trend, only. I cannot tell you the details of thermodynamic exchange variance of nasty gray stuff vs. funky green stuff.

The Leroy papers tell you, via observation, is that, on average, stations in proximity to the former ARE warmer. And what Watts et al. tells you, also via observation, is that during a period of sustained warming (1979 - 2008) they WARM FASTER.

I would expect that during a period of sustained cooling, they would cool faster. But i have no measurements for that.

dhogaza needs to explain why well sited station trends are adjusted upwards to match poorly sited station trends and not vice-versa.

NOAA makes its adjustments on the premise that siting may affect offset, but does not affect trend.

And, yes, I know when MMTS adjustment is made.

Siting issues are not going to wipe out or modify the differences in the physical characteristics of the two sensor types!

If one is well sited and the other poorly sited and one does not account for that, one is going to get an incorrect result. After all, Leroy documents the difference in offset between good and poor stations. And, as we demonstrate, the decadal trend difference between a well and poorly sited station is five times the difference of that between MMTS and CRS (Menne et al., 2009, 2010).

What I think is going on is that during the homogenization process, well sited stations are being identified as outliers and wind up being pasteurized. Can anyone explain this otherwise?

It is reasoning like this that makes me question whether you and Watts will successfully overturn decades of work done by professional scientists.

Maybe they should have taken six months out and looked at what we have been looking at?

[This is getting close to the "Galileo gambit". Its sort-of OK in a comment thread, but you're going to have to provide more detail in a paper to be credible. Ie, why your new results are better than the existing ones, which they contradict -W]

If the measurement characteristics of liquid-in-glass vs. MMTS sensors is understood, why oh why would you have to take siting into effect?

It is also understood that MMTS is a superior instrument. Is it also understood that MMTS units show far less warming than CRS even after MMTS offset adjustment? (Or am I the only one who could be bothered to make that measurement?)

[Unlikely -W]

If the revised paper rests at all on that premise I predict a difficult future for it …

It doesn't. VV is on the right track, here.

clearly documented by NOAA

THAT old thing? I've been all over that page any number of times. It identifies adjustments are and in what order, but it really doesn't have much to say about how they are made. We never get to find out why FILNET is such a whopping positive adjustment. Folks prefer taking measurements in the cold, maybe?

USHCN2 has a considerably longer-winded adjustment explanation. But, I note, with far fewer actual useful numbers appended. At least with the USHCN1 page you can tell (roughly) by how much and when the adjustments are occurring.

Well, yes. I agree.

In a nutshell:

1.) NOAA's conclusions are based on Menne et al.

2.) Menne's paper uses Leroy (1999).

3.) Leroy himself realized the severe shortcomings of his 1999 paper and revised it in a very logical manner.

4.) We find that Tmean trend for compliant (i.e., Class 1\2 stations using Leroy 2010 proximity ratings) stations is fully 0.11C lower than that of poorly sited stations (Class 3\4\5). This includes consideration for both TOBS and MMTS.

5.) Unless LeRoy 2010 is wrong in a manner which reflects on our use of it or unless our ratings are incorrect (or both), our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that stations with poor sitings not only have higher readings, per se, but significantly higher trends as well.

6.) Stations with both good microsite and mesosite warm at a rate of approximately half their NOAA-adjusted trends, which, in turn, coincide with the adjusted trends for poorly sited stations.

7.) Therefore US ground surface temperature is exaggerated by that amount of difference.

It's really as simple as that.

I guess I will have to wait for the next manuscript, press release.

Sorry, Mr. Evans, but in the most generous case, your comments are unclear. Maybe try to write a more coherent text on the manuscript work page.

And, yes, I know when MMTS adjustment is made.

Then why did you mistate it as being a pairwise adjustment ala the homogenization step?

Siting issues are not going to wipe out or modify the differences in the physical characteristics of the two sensor types!

If one is well sited and the other poorly sited and one does not account for that, one is going to get an incorrect result. After all, Leroy documents the difference in offset between good and poor stations

Even if true, this is *separate* from and *independent* of the offset due to the switch in sensors. Leroy's work isn't going to tell you anything about that, nor justify your reducing the amount of the adjustment made to account for sensor change.

Good luck, Evan, you're going to need it ...

clearly documented by NOAA

THAT old thing? I’ve been all over that page any number of times. It identifies adjustments are and in what order, but it really doesn’t have much to say about how they are made.

The underlying papers are, as I pointed out, referenced. For the details you go to the underlying literature, that's why they reference the papers directly.

Regardless, you've clearly mistated how both TOBS and MMTS adjustments are made. The page isn't opaque. You've gone over it many times and haven't noticed that the only time they mention pairwise adjustments are when discussing homogenization?

You're going to have to show why:

1. your results differ not only from GISTemp etc which use TOBS, MMTS and homogenization but also reconstructions which *don't*, including BEST.

2. why your results are inconsistent with the satellite data.

Good luck.

Generosity accepted. Allow me to try again.

A.) In the presence of an unambiguous period of warming poorly sited stations appear have significantly higher Tmean trends than well sited stations, no matter what subset of the sample is considered.

B.) Urban (as defined by NASA) and airport sites also appear to have a higher Tmean trend than rural sites, especially for Class 1\2 stations.

C.) After full NOAA adjustment, the well sited station trends are increased to the same level as as the poorly sited stations.

D.) When referring to the "rural, no airports" subset, NOAA-adjusted trend is nearly twice that of well sited stations. Tmean trend is more than double if only majority-time MMTS stations are used, even after MMTS adjustment is applied.)

Those are the major findings. They are strictly empirical, although, naturally, we do have our prejudices and speculations as to the reasons they occur.

In the revised draft, TOBS will be dealt with and MMTS adjustment applied. Those were the primary objections to the preliminary release.

A.) In the presence of an unambiguous period of warming poorly sited stations appear have significantly higher Tmean trends than well sited stations, no matter what subset of the sample is considered.

B.) Urban (as defined by NASA) and airport sites also appear to have a higher Tmean trend than rural sites, especially for Class 1\2 stations.

So poorer sited sties have a higher trend than well-sited sites except for those that don't?

D.) When referring to the “rural, no airports” subset

There's really no point in using a classification scheme at all if you're just going to toss out the class 1\2 stations that give results you don't care for ...

In the revised draft, TOBS will be dealt with and MMTS adjustment applied. Those were the primary objections to the preliminary release.

These were two obvious blunders. There were other objections made as well, but my impression is folks didn't bother to dig deeply into the paper because the existence of these two obvious blunders were severe enough to roundfile it without further review.

If you folks have corrected these two obvious blunders (though your novel and non-standard treatment of TOBS changes raises the possibility of a repeated blunder), you can be sure that people will dig deeper to see where else you've gone wrong.

Those are the major findings. They are strictly empirical

On the surface, the impression the first paper gave of slicing and dicing the dataset until you got the result you wanted persists ...

Regardless, you’ve clearly mistated how both TOBS and MMTS adjustments are made.

Regardless, the paper does not deal with how those adjustments are made.

The TOBS issue is easily dealt with, as VV has pointed out, and we can easily extract and apply the (much smaller) overall MMTS adjustment impact from Menne 2010 and 2009.

[I'm surprised that you think you can so easily re-work your paper to include this major change, without (apparently) affecting the conclusions at all -W]

1. your results differ not only from GISTemp etc which use TOBS, MMTS and homogenization but also reconstructions which *don’t*, including BEST.

Yes, they do. The reason for that is that Menne and Muller (and Fall, for that matter) use Leroy (1999) as a basis for rating rather than Leroy (2010).

2. why your results are inconsistent with the satellite data.

Actually, all we have to do is demonstrate our observations. The new set of data is not inconsistent when one considers that satellites convert MW readings to determine LT rather than ST. There are many reasons to believe that ST trends will not be equal to LT trends.

To be clear, our revised dataset (dealing with TOBS and MMTS) shows a decreased (though still very large) difference between Class 1\2 station Tmean trends and NOAA-adjusted Tmean trends, but a slightly greater difference between Class 1\2 and Class 3\4\5 Tmean trends than our previous dataset.

Good luck.

#B^j

On the surface, the impression the first paper gave of slicing and dicing the dataset until you got the result you wanted persists …

Then you need to go below the surface.

The first release (and the revisions) show that no matter how you slice and dice the dataset, the results are the same.

We were not content to settle for just one slice. We had to make sure that not only did the whole yield the results, but that the parts did as well.

Regardless, the paper does not deal with how those adjustments are made.

But presumably you understand why your inability to understand something as simple as that NOAA page despite having read it several times might lead one to question whether or not you really are the next Galileo?

These were two obvious blunders.

We stated clearly that TOBS was an issue and we would be addressing it. After initial review, we decided we needed to deal with the issue immediately. I have done so.

Funny how those were not "obvious blunders" in Fall et al. (2011). But, then, the results from Fall et al.produced far less consternation than Watts et al. (2012), did they not?

There were other objections made as well, but my impression is folks didn’t bother to dig deeply into the paper because the existence of these two obvious blunders were severe enough to roundfile it without further review.

Dig away. Funny how those exact same considerations were not enough to "roundfile" Fall et al. But those results were far more pleasing, were they not?

Indeed, we can be quite sure of that! (But I must stress that my method of dealing with TOBS is neither nonstandard nor controversial.)

But presumably you understand why your inability to understand something as simple as that NOAA page despite having read it several times

What I cannot understand is your inability to understand why failure to consider microsite would not affect adjusted data.

Especially as we provide direct comparisons of Class 1\2 station and Class 3\4\5 station raw and adjusted data.

might lead one to question whether or not you really are the next Galileo?

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

B.) Urban (as defined by NASA) and airport sites also appear to have a higher Tmean trend than rural sites, especially for Class 1\2 stations.

So poorer sited sties have a higher trend than well-sited sites except for those that don’t?

Well, yes . . .

Or to put it another way:

A.) Rural Class 1\2 trends are lower than Rural class 3\4\5 trends.

B.) Urban Class 1\2 trends are lower than Urban Class 3\4\5 trends.

C.) Rural Class 1\2 trends are lower than Urban Class 1\2 trends.

D.) Rural Class 3\4\5 trends are lower than Urban Class 3\4\5 trends.

E.) Urban Class 1\2 trends are slightly lower than Rural Class 3\4\5 trends.

(The above is true even after MMTS adjustment, which has a much greater effect on rural stations than on urban.)

D.) When referring to the “rural, no airports” subset

There’s really no point in using a classification scheme at all if you’re just going to toss out the class 1\2 stations that give results you don’t care for …

That's funny!

I took the entire set stations. We dropped all stations with moves after 2002 (where we could not establish the pre-move location), all stations with major TOBS issues, and all stations with no NOAA data, and all unrated stations.

I have data for the following sets:

1.) All stations
2.) Airports Excluded
3.) Airports Only
4.) Rural Only
5.) Urban Only
6.) Rural, No Airports
7.) CRS (majority of period) Only
8.) MMTS (majority of period) Only
9.) "Pure" CRS (never converted to MMTS)
10.) Rural MMTS
11.) Dropped stations (for amusement value and to demonstrate there is no cherrypicking)

All is included. Nothing is tossed out.

Funny how when one bends over backward to include everything, one gets accused of "tossing out".

Seeing as how only a minuscule percentage of surface area is urban (yet 15% of Class 1\2 stations, and 10% overall are urban, with c. 5% airports, with some overlap), the set most representative of the actual climate would be #6, or if one wanted to avoid equipment inhomogeneity, #10.

FWIW, for our revised set of data #1 (All Stations) shows Class 1-5 NOAA-adjusted temperatures as over 60% higher than raw Class 1\2 even after MMTS adjustment.

In all slices, Class 1/2 stations have a lower Tmean trend than their Class 3\4\5 counterparts. I'd have to say that rates the "robust" word.

Even if true, this is *separate* from and *independent* of the offset due to the switch in sensors. Leroy’s work isn’t going to tell you anything about that, nor justify your reducing the amount of the adjustment made to account for sensor change.

No, Leroy, 1999 and 2010, is not about equipment inhomogeneity. It is about microsite.

We account for sensor change citing Menne (2010), p. 5, fig. 1. The MMTS aggregate adjustment works out to +0.11C/d Tmax and -0.07 C/d Tmin (therefore +0.02 Tmean) during the 1980 - 2010 period. 75% of stations are converted to MMTS during that period, which coincides with Menne (2009), which states that overall USHCN trends are up 0.0139C/d since MMTS introduction to 2009.

Is it also understood that MMTS units show far less warming than CRS even after MMTS offset adjustment? (Or am I the only one who could be bothered to make that measurement?)

[Unlikely -W]

Unlikely, yes.

Yet it would also seem unlikely that no one rated the USHCN using Leroy (2010) heat sink proximity parameters. It just sat there for over a year before I tackled the job.

For that matter, no one had even done that for the whole USHCN using Leroy 1999 until I did it (Anthony had previously done a first rough draft of 40% of USHCN). Even Muller didn't -- he used the ratings for BEST that I compiled for Fall et al.

And how unlikely is that?

Therefore, presumptions of likelihood are not necessarily given.

Mr. Evans, I assume you and Mr. Watts can demonstrate the station classifications have remained constant throughout the 30+ years in question. In other words, a station classified as 1 or 2 for instance based on pictures taken in the last 5 years can be demonstrated to have been that way for the entire period under study. I am sure you can understand why this would be necessary.

Also, since you dismissed above the need to consider the satellite data (which shows a warming trend that is in good accord with the homogenized instrumental data), has Mr. McIntyre (who didn't even know he was being listed as an author in the first draft btw) declined to be listed as a co-author on this revised paper? I say that because he too also says the satellite data for CONUS is in agreement with the homogenized instrumental data.

How about in the revised version of this piece of "paper" we actually get a list of station ID's and classification ID'S?

If you can't be bothered with this rather simple request, all discussion of this piece of "paper" is indeed a moot point, until such time as the list of station/classification ID's are made available.

Oh and error bars on classification itself, you know like in a double blind experiment, where two different observers using independent site information each do their own classification.

You do do statistical significance testing on potential systematic selection biases in siting classification?

Sans all your one time slice pictures of ponies and the other myriad anecdotal hearsay data.

And as to the Leroy classification system itself, do we all have actuals (meaning statistics from which Leroy supports the temperature errors in a quantitive way) on tenperature offfsets biases and potential temperature trendline bias errors?

To me I do find it rather odd to even begin to discuss this piece of "paper" without the list of station/classification ID''s.

Somehow all this rather verbose use of the english language that EJ uses over here (itself an odd use of postnormal blog science) leaves me wanting, justifying your biases on this website, sans the underlying datasets, in and of itself, means absolutely nothing.

As to substative peer review (say in GRL/ERL), I'd expect at least one reviewer to come from the NOAA camp (but perhaps two or even three can't be ruled out). So you should expect at least one reviewer, to get down into the "weeds" of your paper, meaning that they just won't read the darn thing and simply accept it at face value (something that you seem to be assuming in all your too many poses over here, ad infinitum, ad nauseam)..

If you wand a real discussion of your paper, then please submit a revised draft of said paper including the station/classification ID's.

I mean of the two choices, working on improvements to your paper versus discussions of an as yet unseen reviesed draft of said paper over here, which of those two options is the most productive to actually getting your paper published?

Seriously?

You've made 22 comments (so far) on over here in the past 4 days, its like you've come over here to "test the waters" of your current/revised paper, to rationalize and reinforce, certain "subjective" choices made in said paper.

At least one of us is on to your game, the "tell" as they say in poker, on your part, is way too obvious.

That should have been "Mr. Jones", not "Mr. Evans", above. <<<typing without his coffee.

I assume you and Mr. Watts can demonstrate the station classifications have remained constant throughout the 30+ years in question.

That is a fair question.

No, we can't (as I said earlier). And neither did Menne, Muller, or Fall, all of whose papers were peer reviewed and approved.

But I went as far as I reasonably could, a lot further than Menne or Muller -- or what we did in Fall.

As MMS records were brought up to speed, I found that I could discern station moves with reasonable reliability going back to around 2003. Some of the moves were recorded in the remarks section. Some station moves were not recorded as such, but by coordinating the "Change, Ingest user" notes and coordinate changes, I was able to pick up the rest. Unfortunately it was not until well after Y2K that reasonably precise coordinates were provided in MMS. (They also went back and forth between 4 and 5 decimal paces, finally settling on 4. In many cases they updated the coordinates (eg., from 41.500 to 41.5231, or whatever, when there were no station moves.

So I removed all stations with pre-survey recorded moves after 2002. It is not as much as I would have liked, but it was as good as could be done with any consistency, and certainly more than was done in the three previous studies.

Also, since you dismissed above the need to consider the satellite data (which shows a warming trend that is in good accord with the homogenized instrumental data), has Mr. McIntyre (who didn’t even know he was being listed as an author in the first draft btw) declined to be listed as a co-author on this revised paper? I say that because he too also says the satellite data for CONUS is in agreement with the homogenized instrumental data.

Well, Dr. Christy (a co-author in this paper and Fall et al.) has addressed this. He claims that LT temperature trends will inevitably be considerably higher than ST. We do address this issue in the first draft of Watt, et al (2012).

[I'm concerned that too many of your answers here are too glib. It looks to me as though you're too confident, and not checking things properly. That certainly showed up in the first draught of the paper. I'm not checking up on everything, or close to everything, but here I can tell you've not done your job properly. You don't "address" this issue in any meaningful fashion. You know this, because people have already pointed it out -W]

I didn't dismiss the satellite data, I just pointed out that LT should be a higher trend. If the LT trends and ST tends "match", that means that either LT is too low or ST is too high.

As for whether St. Mac. will remain as co-author is entirely up to him. (I don't handle that part, I just do research and analysis on the ST side.)

How about in the revised version of this piece of “paper” we actually get a list of station ID’s and classification ID’S?

That data and all related spreadsheets will definitely be archived and made available. Plus whatever notes we have on each station, and reasons for dropping any station that we drop. And the trends for each station derived for Fall, et al. (by Dr. Fall), will be included as well..

[But, you have (today) and you had (when the draft paper was put up) a spreadsheet with the station IDs in the draft paper. Extracting just the station IDs from that spreadsheet would be the work of minutes. That you won't do that raises suspicions in people's minds -W]

In addition, I put up hundreds of "Measurement Views" for the stations on surfacetations.org in order to facilitate the ratings via Leroy 2010, and all that will be available too, for independent review.

Oh and error bars on classification itself, you know like in a double blind experiment, where two different observers using independent site information each do their own classification.

Absolutely. I can't manage to tease Excel into making error bars that account for the toals that make up an averagfe for a single data point. All I can get is bars that cross the single graph, treating each average as a single data point.

We had the same problem with Fall, et al., but our co-authors on the stats side ran Monte Carlos on the averages and got the bars up and running.

In any case, be assured that there will be "full and complete" error bars in the paper before we submit.

Leroy does not address trends at all. He only addresses offset. Those organizations which have adopted Leroy 2010 are noted in the draft paper.

All we are doing is observing whether Leroy's heat sink proximity ratings show any difference in Tmean trend between good and poor sites. They do not for Leroy (1999). They very much do for Leroy (2010).

We used to have a joke about Leroy (1999) back when we were doing Fall, et al -- that all Class 4 stations were equal, but some Class 4 stations were more equal than others. At the time, John N-G suggested we might make our own distinctions in a followup paper.

But then Leroy (2010) made those distinctions himself, having recognized the pitfalls in his previous paper, and we (that is to say, I) classified the stations using his new rating system. I will say that I was very surprised at the difference in results!

Sans all your one time slice pictures of ponies and the other myriad anecdotal hearsay data.

In the history biz they call that one "false dichotomy".

So you don't think I have been working on improvements?

Rly?

(I don't think he knows me very well!)

As to substative peer review (say in GRL/ERL), I’d expect at least one reviewer to come from the NOAA camp (but perhaps two or even three can’t be ruled out). So you should expect at least one reviewer, to get down into the “weeds” of your paper, meaning that they just won’t read the darn thing and simply accept it at face value (something that you seem to be assuming in all your too many poses over here, ad infinitum, ad nauseam)..

Been there, done that. The Journal of Geophysical Research threw us an NOAA peer reviewer last time (for Fall, et al.). I certainly wouldn't expect less this on this pass.

Only they won't be liking the results so much this time around the wheel, so you can bet the farm the sparks will be a-flyin'.

You think we don't know this?

. . .

At least one of us is on to your game, the “tell” as they say in poker, on your part, is way too obvious.

WhatEver.

Funny how all that was good enough when the results were different! But I don't suppose we'll be getting personal thanks for improving the science from Dr. Muller this time around -- like we did last time . . . *grin*

But if them's the best cards you got showing, this poker player sees and raises.

Funny how all that was good enough when the results were different!

It's not funny or strange at all. Extraordinary results require extraordinary evidence. Results that merely support previous results - not so much. People have calculated the US surface temp trends in a variety of ways - GISTemp and BEST are just two - using data that's been subjected to a variety of pre-processing, and come up with roughly the same trend.

Consistent with the satelite data which everyone, including Christy until very recently, expects. Christy's in a bit of a bind if he's proclaiming that the satellite (LT) trend should be considerably higher than the ST because if you guys fail to overturn all of these previous results, he's going to have to explain what's wrong with his satellite trend computations *again*. Or why his claim that LT should be considerably higher (consistent with a ST that's cut in 1/2) is bogus after all.

Now you guys come along and say *all* But I don’t suppose we’ll be getting personal thanks for improving the science from Dr. Muller this time around — like we did last time . . . *grin*

If you actually improve the science, you'll get congratulated.

Don't count your chickens until the hatch, Gali ...

"How about in the revised version of this piece of “paper” we actually get a list of station ID’s and classification ID’S?"

In addition, I put up hundreds of “Measurement Views” for the stations on surfacetations.org in order to facilitate the ratings via Leroy 2010, and all that will be available too, for independent review.
_________________________________________________

Does that mean explicitly in the NEXT revised draft version to be "published" at WUWT (or however the next revision might be publicised)?

A direct yes or no answer, if you don't mind. Dodgy answers need not apply.
_________________________________________________

"And as to the Leroy classification system itself, do we all have actuals (meaning statistics from which Leroy supports the temperature errors in a quantitive way) on tenperature offfsets biases and potential temperature trendline bias errors?"

Leroy does not address trends at all. He only addresses offset. Those organizations which have adopted Leroy 2010 are noted in the draft paper.

All we are doing is observing whether Leroy’s heat sink proximity ratings show any difference in Tmean trend between good and poor sites. They do not for Leroy (1999). They very much do for Leroy (2010).

We used to have a joke about Leroy (1999) back when we were doing Fall, et al — that all Class 4 stations were equal, but some Class 4 stations were more equal than others. At the time, John N-G suggested we might make our own distinctions in a followup paper.

So no quantitative assessments of Leroy (2010) have ever been done (e. g. temperature offset and trend biases)?

Thank you! For NOT answering that question.

So there you have it folks, a classification system with no quantifiable results as to temperature biases.

What good is any classification system with no underlying quantitative data on the accuracy of the data itself?.

It does indeen look like confirmation bias and circular logic does apply here.

And yes, I do like my hand alot more than your hand at this point in time. Very much so.

Does that mean explicitly in the NEXT revised draft version to be “published” at WUWT (or however the next revision might be publicised)?

A direct yes or no answer, if you don’t mind. Dodgy answers need not apply.

Oy.

At the latest, my spreadsheets will be archived at the time of publication. I don't even know if there is going to be another pre-publication release. That's not up to me.

You can go to surfacestations.org for the stations pics and images right now.

You may have to wait for the rest, but it will be available and easily accessible.

So no quantitative assessments of Leroy (2010) have ever been done (e. g. temperature offset and trend biases)?

For offset, obviously. As far as I am aware, there is no controversy whatever regarding the effect on offset. It's WMO endorsed. The 1999 version is the standard for NOAA/CRN and MeteoFrance. All the 2010 version does is quantify areas rather than mere distance.

It has not been quantified for trend (until we came along). Leroy isn't doing trend, he's doing offset. We're the ones doing trend. In fact, we don't do offset at all.

And yes, I do like my hand alot more than your hand at this point in time. Very much so.

That's the best you can do? Infer we are going to conceal up data and impute that Leroy has no underlying quantifying data for offset?

Good luck with that.

(Robert Murphy's concerns, OTOH, are actually meaningful.)\

It’s not funny or strange at all. Extraordinary results require extraordinary evidence. Results that merely support previous results – not so much.

Menne and Fall didn't support any previous results. There weren't any previous results to support

But regardless, we do provide extraordinary evidence.

he’s going to have to explain what’s wrong with his satellite trend computations *again*. Or why his claim that LT should be considerably higher (consistent with a ST that’s cut in 1/2) is bogus after all.

But UAH CONUS shows 0.23 C/d for the study period. NOAA-Adjusted USHCN2 clocks in at over 0.3. Our Rural No AP trend is around 30% lower than UAH. Our All Station trend is well within 20%. LT is supposed to be between 10% and 40% higher than ST trend.

So if you ask me, it's NOAA that's needs to be doing the 'splainin', not Christy.

Evan Jones, I was hoping you might respond to a comment our host snuck into one of your posts that you may have missed:
[I'm surprised that you think you can so easily re-work your paper to include this major change, without (apparently) affecting the conclusions at all -W]
Or perhaps to that comment, rephrased as a question: why do you think that you can easily rework your paper to include the major TOBS change without affecting the conclusions?

It’s not funny or strange at all. Extraordinary results require extraordinary evidence. Results that merely support previous results – not so much.

Menne and Fall didn’t support any previous results. There weren’t any previous results to support

What bull. I'm not going to bother to go into detail, everyone but you reading this thread understands.

Your credibility continues to drop with such statements. Tch, tch.

Or perhaps to that comment, rephrased as a question: why do you think that you can easily rework your paper to include the major TOBS change without affecting the conclusions?

He's already said they're dealing with TOBS changes with a new technique which refutes the previous TOBS changes which he doesn't understand.

My guess is that this will be "interesting".

[I'm surprised that you think you can so easily re-work your paper to include this major change, without (apparently) affecting the conclusions at all -W]

Thanks, JBL. Yeah, I missed that. It's a fun story, too. (Fun for me, anyway; YMMV.)

To begin our tale, it is necessary to discuss prejudice. Not all prejudice, and not unduly condemning of prejudice, either. After all, many prejudices turn out to be true.

But not all of them do. That is, after all, the nature of prejudice, in accordance with its very etymology.

And we are here to discuss one prejudice in particular.

It is a prejudice concerning TOBS. Even Anthony was somewhat affected by it, as it turns out. And Steve McIntyre, as well, perhaps (or not). It is a prejudice that I shared, early on in this process, but one of which I was disabused two years ago, under the harsh light of empiricism.

It isn't a prejudice about whether TOBS is a valid concern. (It is.) And it isn't about how it's calculated, either. it's about how it's distributed.

It's not even a prejudice about TOBS. Rather, it is a prejudice that concerns TOBS. It's a natural prejudice and seems logical.

And that prejudice is that stations in urban areas are more poorly sited than stations in non-urban areas.

The reason this affects TOBS is that it is well known (correctly, as far as I can tell) that TOBS corrections apply mostly to non-urban areas.

Therefore, the better microsites (which our prejudice tells us are rural) will be disproportionately hammered by TOBS, and the trend differences between good and poor microsites will be washed away.

But it's not so. Not so! Urban areas, which are indeed miserable mesosites, have, on average, far better microsites than do non-urban areas. Under 20% of stations in non-urban areas are Class 1\2. But fully 30% of urban areas are class 1\2.

So it is not primarily the well sited stations that are falling victims to TOBS bias. In fact, poorly (micro)sited stations are proportiobnately more affected by TOBS. than good sites.

So instead of washing out the trend differences between well and poorly sited stations, the removal of TOBS-bias affected stations actually slightly increases them.

Yes, removing them from the sample. That way one is not required to spitball over the calculation of TOBS bias; one can simply bypass the problem as easily as Vaslievsky at Brobruisk in that fateful July of 1944.

Sometimes the best way to stay out of trouble is to stay away from it.

Well, okay, reworking the study was not so easy. It did take a number of hours of hard work. I also had to find the needle in the haystack. That needle was hiding under the Phenomena tab in NCDC/MMS. Having located said needle, I then had to review TOBS for nearly 800 stations, coding them "in" or "out".

Having done that, it was a simple matter of "Filter" and "Delete Row".

Now, removing TOBS does indeed narrow the gap somewhat between the Class 1\2 raw and Class 1-5 NOAA-Adjusted data. But only by under .04 per decade in the "All Stations" set, even with MMTS adjustment thrown in. And, as I have already said, the differences between well and poorly sites stations are slightly wider that they were before.

So the basic premise of the paper (good v. bad siting) remains rock-solid, and the secondary premise (the "adjustment gap") is narrowed somewhat, but still gapingly wide.

And it turns out that the reason one thought it mightn't turns out to be a mere prejudice . . . a prejudice concerning a bias . . .

[You should have read Peterson -W]

He’s already said they’re dealing with TOBS changes with a new technique which refutes the previous TOBS changes which he doesn’t understand.

My guess is that this will be “interesting”.

Interesting? Perhaps.

But I never said was refuting TOBS and I never said I was employing a new technique, either.

What I said was that VV had it right -- and he did.

What bull. I’m not going to bother to go into detail, everyone but you reading this thread understands.

Your credibility continues to drop with such statements. Tch, tch.

Funny how you elided my very next sentence. Which everyone (including you) will have understood. You were speaking of credibility?

There are many reasons to believe that ST trends will not be equal to LT trends.

Have you looked at http://climateaudit.org/2011/11/07/un-muddying-the-waters/

and in particular http://climateaudit.org/2011/11/07/un-muddying-the-waters/#comment-3092…

This seems to imply there won't be an amplification factor of trends in LT vs ST over land

[The draft paper is naive in the extreme in its treatment of the satellite record. That won't survive competent peer review -W]

Yes, removing them from the sample.

Ahhh ... there lies a cherrypick ... toss out the stations you don't like.

That's not exactly a novel way of handling the TOBS problem that will satisify everyone, as you've claimed you've done up above ...

Sure. What of it?

But when push comes to shove we are not primarily theorizing. We are observing.

The best reason to believe that CONUS LT trends won't equal to ST trends is that, well, CONUS LT trends don't match the trends of well sited surface stations. With TOBS and MMTS accounted for.

For that matter, they don't match the adjusted trend either -- NOAA-adjusted ST trend is over a third higher than LT trend.

It is demonstrated.

Ahhh … there lies a cherrypick … toss out the stations you don’t like.

That’s not exactly a novel way of handling the TOBS problem that will satisify everyone, as you’ve claimed you’ve done up above …

That's a cherrypick? GOOD Lord!

Besides, our hypotheses hold just fine with or without TOBS-biased stations removed.

(No wait. I get it. You are joking.)

[You should have read Peterson -W]

Which one? Peterson, Parker picked a peck of packed parking lots (2006)?

I read the abstract on that one but it was at least two years ago.

In any case, it was quite easy to observe for myself that urban areas have a higher proportion of well microsited stations than non-urban areas.

But most folks on either side of the debate do not appear to be aware of this. And it is counterintuitive.

I am obviously html-challenged. I need to be better about closing my italics.

[Fixed. But you must be aware of the Peterson one where he points out that many nominally "urban" sites have good exposure -W]

Fixed. But you must be aware of the Peterson one where he points out that many nominally "urban" sites have good exposure -W]

Thanks. I've read a bunch of abstracts over the last few years, but for the last two I've been pretty well immersed in directly working on the data myself. (That plus a 10-hour workday doesn't leave a lot of time left over.)

By the way, thanks for providing this forum. It gives me the opportunity to answer questions and criticism from the other side of the aisle (some quite legit., yours included), and to communicate what is actually going on with the research for this paper.

Our findings demonstrate that microsite is fully as important as TOBS on an individual station basis (~0.1C/d over the study period). Yet microsite is not accounted for when adjusting the data.

We clearly demonstrate that poorly sited stations trends receive little overall adjustment while well sited station trends are heavily adjusted upward and match (even exceed) the adjusted trends of the poorly sited stations.

I therefore think it is important to readdress the NOAA adjustment procedure.

That is secondary, however. The primary finding is that microsite matters. A lot. Not merely for offset (which is not an issue of controversy), but for trend. We do not believe this finding is counterintuitive. But it is clear that opinion varies widely as to that.

"2) The siting classification which was proposed in ET-AWS-5 and further expanded in ET-AWS-6 was endorsed by CIMO-XV in Helsinki, 2010. The Commission has requested that it be included in the CIMO Guide with the following clarifications in order to ensure its appropriate use: 1) the use of the siting classification of observing stations depends on the purposes of the observations, 2) the proposed classification is the first official version of the siting classification, and will be reviewed and updated as needed at the next CIMO. The classification was published in Annex IV of CIMO-XV (WMO No. 1064)."

http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/www/OSY/Meetings/ET-AWS7-2012/ET-AWS-7.ht…

(Item 9)

So one wonders what (1) might mean for the purposes of climatology versus daily temperature values from AWS? AFAIK, Leroy has never been involved in the climatological aspects of surface temperature measurements.

Also (2) suggests future updates and no doubt further clarifications.

Finally Leroy (2010) states;

Class 1/2: No uncertainties in temperature defined.
Class 3: "(additional estimated uncertainty added by siting up to 1°C)"
Class 4 "(additional estimated uncertainty added by siting up to 2°C)"
Class 5: "(additional estimated uncertainty added by siting up to 5°C)"

Note that to date, there are no statistical datasets that actually quantify the stated uncertainties. Thus we can take these uncertainties as "ad hoc" conjectures.

Note also that these uncertainties as stated do NOT define temperature offset biases or temperture trend biases. In fact, until such datasets can quantify these "ad hoc" bounds, we don't even know in which direction (to the offsets and trendlines) those uncertainty biases apply.

Considering that the WMO has to date, had 7 conferences devoted strictly to homogenization of temperature data for the purposes of developing long term climatology, the last being;

"Seventh seminar for homogenization and quality control in climatological databases"

(24-28 October 2011, Budapest, Hungary

You know, kind of makes me think that the WMO will continue on in the homogenization and quality control in climatological databases reguardless of how many pictures of ponies that Tony can show.

The term, "additional estimated uncertainty added ", applies to offset.

Considering that the WMO has to date, had 7 conferences devoted strictly to homogenization of temperature data for the purposes of developing long term climatology, the last being;

All based on the premise that microsite does not affect trend.

I think they are going to need to hold an 8th conference.

And not only regarding microsite -- a very large percentage of GHCN station are located in airports. One of our findings is that airport stations show far higher Tmean trends than non-AP stations.

Until and unless they account for all that, they are just misidentifying outliers and smearing the error around.

Note that to date, there are no statistical datasets that actually quantify the stated uncertainties.

Yilmaz et al. (2008) measures the offset effects of asphalt, dirt, and grass surfaces. it's a limited study, however.

But that is not very relevant. Unlike Leroy, we are not addressing offset. We are addressing trend. And we definitely have a very nice statistical dataset to demonstrate comprehensively and unequivocally the large effect on Tmean trend.

How about you submit your paper to E&E already.

I mean it's highly unikely to stand up in any regard in the long run (given only the original draft and your rather weak defense of the revised draft over here to date).

Get on with it already, let the thorough shredding of a final published Watts, et. al. begin already.

Put up or shut up already. That's what people want now, what people don't want is your continuous spin on things.

[That is a touch harsh, but I do agree that there are too many words here to wade through. What is needed is a revised draft, or the version-to-be-submitted if you're that close -W]

The term, “additional estimated uncertainty added “, applies to offset.

No, that's not what that means. Sheesh. Increasing uncertainty will leave an offset of 0, i.e. the measured value, with the probable range.

No, that’s not what that means. Sheesh. Increasing uncertainty will leave an offset of 0, i.e. the measured value, with the probable range.

It means the offset will be off by up to that much. This is not obvious? Shade on the cool side, heat source on the warm side.

But, as we know, offset has little to do with trend. For example, airports often tend to be cooler than surrounding areas (hence the SHAP adjustments of the 1950s, acc, to NOAA), but tend to have higher trends than the average non-AP stations.

That is a touch harsh

I consider it to be praise by faint damnation.

What is needed is a revised draft, or the version-to-be-submitted if you're that close

Well, the data is there. I've finished up the regional grid, though I still need to run the new set though my grid box sheets. (With the reduced number of stations, I may have to increase the size of the boxes.)

As for the paper, I'm not letting Anthony submit until I have both proofread and edited it. He may or may not want to present before submitting; that will be up to him.

Sure. What of it?

But when push comes to shove we are not primarily theorizing. We are observing.

The best reason to believe that CONUS LT trends won’t equal to ST trends is that, well, CONUS LT trends don’t match the trends of well sited surface stations. With TOBS and MMTS accounted for.

AIUI in the original version of the paper I think you were claiming, once you consider the amplification factor predicted, there was reasonable agreement between the satellite LT record and the trend in ST that you found.

Your position now seems , given the non-amplification factor predicted over land, indicates either that prediction over land is wrong or the satellite record LT trend is too high.

It just means for you to be right, one or other of a independent line of evidence must be wrong,

there was reasonable agreement between the satellite LT record and the trend in ST that you found.

That is presuming Christy is correct in that LT is at a somewhat higher trend than ST.

The revised trends after removing TOBS-biased stations makes it a very strong agreement (~17% lower for "All Stations" and ~30% for the "Rural, No Airports" slice).

The above is for Class 1\2 stations, of course.

I'll be gone for the next few days.

If there is any further feedback, I will comment when I get back.

I'll be taking my precious spreadsheets with me, but I almost hope I will be in a non-Excel, non-email zone. I need the rest.

The revised trends after removing TOBS-biased stations makes it a very strong agreement (~17% lower for “All Stations” and ~30% for the “Rural, No Airports” slice).

OK - it's difficult without seeing the actual calculation but UAH for US48 is 0.22 Deg C /decade so 17% lower gives 0.183 and 30% lower gives 0.154 which gives amplification factors over land of 20% and 43% - that doesn't seem consistent with the non amplification expected over land

One other thing that has been mentioned earlier is the degree of subjectivity in rating stations (particularly if you have seen the temperature history and from the temperature history you expect a siting issue you might see what you expect !)
So I wonder if would be sensible to get someone like john n-g to rate the stations independently based on the Leroy 2010 criteria and see if he rated them similarly - also there was a good suggestion on the other thread from MMM I don't know if you saw it :

run the Watts et al. methodology using Leroy 2010, and then run it again using Leroy 1999. Compare the two graphs. This tells you how much the Leroy change actually matters. If that change is small, well, then, we know to scrutinize the rest of the methodology. If the change is big, then we know that the classification method used is actually important, and we can think about that...

OK – it’s difficult without seeing the actual calculation but UAH for US48 is 0.22 Deg C /decade so 17% lower gives 0.183 and 30% lower gives 0.154 which gives amplification factors over land of 20% and 43% – that doesn’t seem consistent with the non amplification expected over land

Yet it's dead on if the amplification is expected. Assuming Christy is correct that there is amplification.

I would consider these results as support of amplification.

And I also would point out that the 0.22 UAH figure is well below the 0.31 C/d adjusted trend of NOAA (or the 0.28 C/d raw trend, for that matter).

Therefore, I contend that it is NOAA that needs to do the 'splainin'.

Well, yes. That's why I made darn sure that when I did the re-ratings i did not have the station data in front of me. Doing it "blind" is essential for objective results.

I was and am acutely aware that there will be close scrutiny of the ratings themselves. As there should be.

To repeat from earlier, we are using ONLY the heat sink/source parameters from Leroy 2010, as we did for our previous paper (Fall et al., 2011, which had very different results).

And do bear in mind that I rated the stations for Fall et al., using Leroy (1999).

I found results that showed no difference between well and poorly sited stations for Tmean trend. And we went to publication even though the results were very different from the results of Watts, et al.

So I wonder if would be sensible to get someone like john n-g to rate the stations independently based on the Leroy 2010 criteria and see if he rated them similarly – also there was a good suggestion on the other thread from MMM I don’t know if you saw it :

Funny you should mention that. We had John N-G do a spot-check on my ratings couple of months (before the pre-pub release). Anthony needed to be sure that I was not 'way into Confirmation Bias Land! And so did I, for that matter.

As it turned out, we differed only on one station where he pointed out that rock formations I thought we natural we probably landscaping. So I made the change. (And I don't even know if this one wound up getting dropped for TOBS bias or not.)

The trouble is that even with the reduced station set (600 down from 1000), it still takes a lot of time. After the dust cleared on the QC, I had spent hundreds of hours at it. It won't be easy to get anyone who will spend that much (unpaid) time on it.

So while we can get spot checks, getting the whole thing done over will be difficult. I am sure there are one or two borderline cases, esp. where the imagery was less than stellar. I have had to re-look at some of the ratings as better Google Earth, Bing, and Street Level imagery has become available. Some of it has "helped" our results, some not. But I really, really have tried to do it straight and get it right.

I daresay many more man-hours (raw or adjusted) have gone into this paper than into most peer-reviewed papers of this sort.

I ran a quickie on that using the updated set. Change was huge. The Leroy version change has a very large effect.

also there was a good suggestion on the other thread from MMM I don’t know if you saw it :

Can't find the ref. Could you spot for me?

Evan, allow me to point out that if you ever want to cite the supposed discrepancy between satellite trends and land-based trends, a "if Christy is right" reference will get reviewers to roll off their chairs laughing for multiple reasons. You'll have to do the work. Fortunately, it has already been done once, and I'll leave it to your co-author Steve McIntyre to find that work.

Just so you know, the 20% is the absolute largest amplification factor over land that you will find in the climate models. Some, however, have a 20% 'dampening'. Mean of the climate models around 0.98.

Hint: see the Klotzbach et al disaster.

I'll leave all that up to Dr. Christy. He does the microwaves. I do the surface stations. Whatever discrepancy there is (or is not), is his territory. As it stands, the NOAA-adjusted trend is ~25% higher than the UAH trend.

It is also unequivocally demonstrated that the well sited station trends are adjusted upwards to match the poorly sited stations (quite apart from TOBS and MMTS, which our revised paper addresses).

For that to be considered valid it needs to be demonstrated that well sited stations produce bad data in need of severe adjustment, while poorly sited stations produce good data in need of very small adjustment. I predict that that will be a tougher nut to crack than discrepancy between Watts (2012) and UAH.

Evan, there's already stuff in the literature that shows Christy is wrong. And that's the co-author you are depending on! At the very least you, and with you I mean the author group, cannot claim not to have known.

Perhaps.

Or perhaps our findings are empirical evidence that it is the stuff in the literature may be wrong. Direct observations -- if determined to be correct -- trump models.

As it stands today, UAH and NOAA-adjusted Tmean trend data for CONUS are not currently in agreement, in any case. So the applecart was upset long before Watts et al. (2012) came on the scene.

But in the end it is of tertiary importance to our paper. Our thesis does not hang on UAH or RSS.

What matters far more is our primary finding on Tmean trend (siting matters) and our secondary finding (the adjustments need adjusting). None of that directly involves satellite data.

At any rate, if Dr. Christy is wrong, then he will have to address the issue during peer review.

Evan, the claim that you (read: Christy) expect the land to warm faster than the lower troposphere comes from "models". That notion is wrong, but there it is. If we take the *correct* notion: land as fast, and maybe even faster than lower troposphere, your original analysis that lowered the trend by a factor two was very problematic, and you would have had to address that in the paper. Just handwaving "maybe the satellites have a warm bias, too!" won't cut it.

And last time I checked, Spencer and Christy kept on speeding up their applecart.

That notion is wrong

Is it? Or is the "correct notion" based on the comparison between official adjusted surface data and satellite data? That would indeed support the contention that you are right.

But we observe that the official adjusted ST trends are too high. Our reanalysis shows it is not as exaggerated we thought as in our original paper, but is still severely exaggerated.

Just handwaving “maybe the satellites have a warm bias, too!” won’t cut it.

The satellites are not measuring ST.

[That's not really a credible answer. I think you're going to need one, for the reviewers, although they might decide that they don't care, if you get lucky -W]

Evan,

Sadly I see you did not even look up the prior literature which I pointed out to you (again: see the Klotzbach et al disaster).

The "correct notion" is based on the climate models. You cannot claim you expect the surface to warm slower than the troposphere (as Christy did - it's the claim present in the first version of your paper) without a climate model. And you'll have to cherry pick climate runs or a specific model to make that claim work. Any reviewer worth his money will have something to say about that, and it won't be pretty.

Sadly I see you did not even look up the prior literature which I pointed out to you (again: see the Klotzbach et al disaster).

That is true. Instead, I worked for ten hours-plus and then I traveled home and then I spent three hours searching for more stations -- and found one. (Then I collapsed in exhaustion.)

You cannot claim you expect the surface to warm slower than the troposphere (as Christy did – it’s the claim present in the first version of your paper) without a climate model.

I don't expect it. I observe it.

I do not accept that observations require models to support them. Rather, I suggest that models require observations to support them.

Besides, our paper is not about creating models. We merely observe.

What we observe regarding ST vs. LT is:

A.) poorly sited stations and
NOAA-adjusted trends exceed LT trends.

B.) Well sited stations are exceeded by LT trends.

Perhaps someone would care to confirm or disprove our observations and then create a model that conforms therewith. That would be scientific method.

I contend that the models do not disprove my observations; it is my observations which call the models into very serious question.

For my observations to fail peer review, they must be found to be methodologically or tactically flawed. Failure to match models is not a valid criterion.

And, finally, I repeat that agreement or disagreement with the satellite record is entirely tertiary to our paper.

[That's not really a credible answer. I think you're going to need one, for the reviewers, although they might decide that they don't care, if you get lucky -W]

If the ST/LT trend comparisons start turning into trench warfare, we can merely drop them and the paper will lose next to nothing.

[I'm dubious about that - and I certainly would be, if I was a referee. The MSU provides a useful benchmark comparison, it would be odd not to use it -W]

I doubt we will have to, but we can, if necessary.

(Also, see the above comment.)

Evan, it's nice that you think you can drop the satellite versus surface trend difference, but remember that it was used in the first version as evidence that you were right. Now that it suddenly turns out to be contradictory, you just call it tertiary?

It really starts to sound like Klotzbach et al all over again...

BTW: does removing the satellite issue not equal throwing John Christy off the paper? :-)

"So the applecart was upset long before Watts et al. (2012) came on the scene."

I'm betting (2013) at the earliest, if ever.

[Um yes. Its all gone a bit quiet, hasn't it? Wasn't there supposed to be a work-in-progress page at WUWT? -W]

[I'm dubious about that - and I certainly would be, if I was a referee. The MSU provides a useful benchmark comparison, it would be odd not to use it -W]

But while LTT and ST are in the same park, they are not the same bench.

Evan, it’s nice that you think you can drop the satellite versus surface trend difference, but remember that it was used in the first version as evidence that you were right. Now that it suddenly turns out to be contradictory, you just call it tertiary?

It was never anything but tertiary. We find what we find. And can demonstrate it.

And what the evidence clearly demonstrates is that ST trend on land is lower than LT trend -- as supported by the data.

Citing models won't change that finding. Looks as if there'll have to be some new models. I doubt very much we'll drop it. No need. (Though we could.) Busted models without valid statistical backup doth not a refutation make.

[Um yes. Its all gone a bit quiet, hasn't it? Wasn't there supposed to be a work-in-progress page at WUWT? -W]

2013? No doubt. These things take time.

As for "work in progress", well, that would be me. Much work. And much progress! (And I don't do "quiet". Q.E.D.)

P.S., Thanks again for entertaining this discussion.

Evan Jones is defending Watts PBS Newhour statements over on the PBS blog:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2012/09/climate-change-from-differe…

The money quote:
"NOAA is going to have to readdress its entire USHCN dataset."

[EJ is, to my mind, over confident of his correctness. But then, to an absurd degree, so is AW. Also I think (somewhat in the Roy Spencer mold, http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2011/03/05/dr-roy-spencer-is-sad-and-lone/) he needs to talk to more people, and not just in blog comments -W]

@Evan Jones
"2013? No doubt. These things take time."

But Anthony Watts claims that
"After going through our second round of review, I’m confident that our results will hold up"

Does it mean your paper is already submitted?

Ah, so they finally posted that!

Yes, I am very confident, especially since TOBS and MMTS has been dealt with and the results are still robust.

They hold no matter how you subdivide the data by type (All stations, Rural only, Urban only, MMTS only, CRs 0n;y, No Airports, Airports only, etc., etc.).

So I have every reason to be confident. Yes, NOAA adjusts step changes for station moves, but does not concede trend is affected by poor microsite over time (Menne, 2010).

So, yes, NOAA is going to have to readdress adjustment. And I'll go even further. It is not merely USHCN that has to be readdressed, it is GHCN. But rating the GHCN stations would be a much wormier bag of beans (for a number of reasons I could go into if anyone cared..)

Does it mean your paper is already submitted?

Not before I get a chance to correct the grammar and punctuation!

But, no, we are waiting for our stats guys to add the error bars and Dr. Chtristy to address the satellite issues.

@Evan Jones

"But, no, we are waiting for our stats guys to add the error bars and Dr. Chtristy to address the satellite issues."

If it's not submitted, then what kind of review Watts is talking about?

"Yes, I am very confident"

Are you confident the same way Anthony Watts was confident about Fall et al. results BEFORE the paper was published?

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/05/13/anthony-watts-contradicted-b…

I am not sure whay you mean by that. Watts, et al., has not yet been submitted. It has only been subject to independent review, not peer review.

I personally did the ratings for Fall, et al (of which I was a co-author). We went to press despite findings that we did not expect.

I also personally made the ratings for Watts, et al.

I did not expect the results to be any different from Fall, et al. We can explain why those findings were different and why the previous findings were not correct. (Well, they were correct -- for the flawed Leroy, 1999, rating methodology.)

I am confident in the results because we have addressed the concerns expressed during independent review and they still hold up. At this stage, that would be a pretty good reason for confidence.

Sorry, the entire approach is sunk by the Dr. Who Effect

Already asked and answered previously. You need to go back and read a bit.

Actually, we go much further than Menne (or what we did in Fall, et al., for that matter) to exclude recently moved stations. We would have gone even further, but MMS does not provide reliable, uniform data earlier than around 2003.

Did you raise similar objections to Menne et al.? Or to Fall? (Just curious.)

"I am not sure whay you mean by that."

Maybe you should ask Anthony Watts, he's the one who's talking about the "second round of review".

"We went to press despite findings that we did not expect."

You didn't really have a choice since N-G joined your team. You could only decide how to spin these results and pretend it was all about the diurnal temperature range.

"I am confident in the results because we have addressed the concerns expressed during independent review and they still hold up."

Well, that's what Anthony Watts said:

"Dr. Pielke Sr. and I, plus others on the surfacestations data analysis teams (two independent analyses have been done) see an entirely different picture [than Menne et al], now that we have nearly 90% of USHCN surveyed. NCDC used data at 43%, and even though I told them they’d see little or nothing in the way of a signal then, they forged ahead anyway."
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/19/tom-karls-senate-dog-and-pony-sho…

Surprisingly, this "entirely different picture" turned out to be essentially a confirmation of Menne et al. results.

And even earlier,

"Around 1990, NOAA began weeding out more than three-quarters of the climate measuring stations around the world. They may have been working under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). It can be shown that they systematically and purposefully, country by country, removed higher-latitude, higher-altitude and rural locations, all of which had a tendency to be cooler."

"Of course there will be those who say “but it is not peer reviewed” as some scientific papers are. But the sections in it have been reviewed by thousands before being combined into this new document. We welcome constructive feedback on this compendium."

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/26/new-paper-on-surface-temperature-…

My point is, the surfacestations project people have a long history of making overconfident statements that, despite 'independent analyses' and 'review by thousands', turned out to be flatly wrong. That's why I take anything you say about being confident with a grain of salt.

You didn’t really have a choice since N-G joined your team.

We knew the results well before he joined the team. He came on towards the end of the process to do the Monte Carlo on the findings.

In fact he even suggested that Leroy (1999) was off the mark and that we should have a "plus" and "minus" category for Class 3 and 4 stations. If I had taken him up on that, our findings might have changed.

He also urged rerating the stations a la Leroy 2010, but we decided to wait until the followup.

Well, Watts (2012) is the followup.

As for Fall, we did show results different from Menne, esp. re. Tmin. But I told them at the time, though, that no one would give half a damn for anything by Tmean, and, boy, was I right or what.

Dr. Pielke emphasized all along that, whatever the findings were, they would be important and needed to be published. We were, and are, in it for the science.

At any rate, the analysis is done and the factors missing are now included. So it's not a matter of "expecting" a result. We now have the result. So I'll stand on my confidence.

"It has only been subject to independent review, not peer review."

Two questons on this:
1) Are you implying here that peer-review is not independent?
2) In what way is the review of this work independent?

Evan Jones: I don't understand why the surfacestations team, supposedly concerned about siting issues, wouldn't take the most obvious and straightforward path to show siting problems.

We have a "gold standard" now, so why not compare the well -sited and poorly-sited stations in grids with the USCRN station anomalies, and show the well-sited stations match the USCRN anomalies, and the poorly-sited station do not match.

Menne did this with the surfacestations previous classifications of stations, and showed no difference for matching USCRN between the two classes.

You also have a problem with your "we are only reporting observations" statement. Actually you are drawing conclusions from the observations, that may not be valid, and this extrapolating these conclusions to comparisons with satellite records etc. Come back down to the ground, and finish the analysis of the surface stations. If your team has calculated the anomalies correctly for the two sets of stations, you still don't know which is correct. You are jumping to a conclusion when you claim the Class 1/2 stations are correct. Matching the USCRN data from the last five years to each of the two sets of data, should tell you which set is correct.

Possible problem: What if over the last five years both sets of stations match the USCRN stations? If so, then you have a big problem. For the "siting issue makes significant difference in anomaly", to be believable, then there should be a significant difference between the poorly sited and the best sited stations compared to the gold standard USCRN stations over the the history of the USCRN. If not, it raises questions about lack of historical siting data for the stations.

My goodness, why all this pussyfooting around? If siting is an issue, just compare the poorly sited/good sited anomalies with the "gold standard" USCRN data, and show it. Its that simple.

Menne already did this with the previous siting classifications, although with less USCRN data. He found no significant difference in the two sets of stations with USCRN station data. That is a very powerful finding that you will need to overturn, before publishing.

Let me try saying it this way; surfacestations parsed the stations into two sets previously, lets call them set A1 and A2. We also have a set of stations from USCRN, which we can use over timeframe that USCRN has existed ( the set of stations are 5-10 years old), which we can call the USCRN set.

Menne showed that set A1 matched set A2 results, and both matched the published NOAA temperature reports. Menne also showed that A1 and A2 matched the USCRN set, over the timeframe covered by the USCRN.

Now surfacestations has re-parsed the stations into sets B1 and B2, and claims B1 doesn't match B2 (and that B2 matches the published temperature trend from NOAA). But if B2 matches the published NOAA trend, then B2 should match sets A1 and A2, and likely matches the USCRN set.

This leaves set B1 out in the cold (pun intended). The class 1/2 set that surfacestations now proposes, very likely doesn't match the USCRN set. Whoa… stop the presses. If set B1 conflicts with the USCRN data, then the surfacestations conclusion (that the new classified 1/2 stations correctly measures temperature anomalies) has a big problem.

The surfacestations Team needs to compare the new classifications with USCRN data, similar to the Menne paper.

Which, of course, was exactly what Atmoz did for one of Willard Tony's 10 worst stations. Guess what he found.

"We knew the results well before he joined the team."

Are you implying that Anthony Watts knew the results and was purposely lying when he said that

"the early arguments against this project said that all of these different biases are going to cancel themselves out and there would be cool biases as well as warm biases, but we discovered that that wasn’t the case. The vast majority of them are warm biases"
?

"But I told them at the time, though, that no one would give half a damn for anything by Tmean, and, boy, was I right or what."

I know, I know, actually it was pretty sad. You didn't even deserve to get a sticky post at WUWT, and the only person who seemed to care about the paper was Dr. Nielsen-Gammon.

Fortunetely, this time it's different.

Just a dumb (I mean a *really* dumb) -- when the USDA redrew its plant hardiness zones based on where various species of plants can make it through the winter, what USCHN temperature stations did those plants use to figure out where they can now grow? And did the plants use raw or adjusted temperature data?

Inquiring minds want to know!

That should be,

Just a dumb (I mean a *really* dumb) **question**...

Following up: If the longer-term warming trends computed from USHCN stations are fictional (due to hot bbq's nearby, etc.), then there should certainly be a disconnect between the new USDA hardiness zone map and where various species of garden plants can actually grow.

But it definitely appears that various species of garden plants are cooperating with the curators of the USHCN temperature record by deciding where they are now able to grow.

Exciting news (ahem): Don Tony yesterday replied to Victor Venema at/in my location "REPLY: Watts et al 2012 on the sidebar, soon to be updated to handle the TOBs (non)issue, ..."

["soon" eh? That would be interesting, at least a bit, but we'll have to wait and see. VV seems to be doing a good job over there -W]

Any news about Watts et al 2012 (soon to be 2013)? It takes awfully long time to handle the TOBs "non-issue"...

[Not a sausage, as far as I'm aware -W]

Muller is still rubbish

stoat — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 20:03:06 +0000

Muller is still rubbish

When BEST first came out I said it was boring, because it just said what everyone knew already "Summary: the global temperature record is just what we thought it was". There was some soap opera thrown in for fun, but that didn't affect the science.

But now (New Global Temperature Data Reanalysis Confirms Warming, Blames CO2, Ronald Bailey at reason.com, h/t JB at RR) it seems that Muller is announcing his "new" findings via op-ed in the NYT [Important note: reason.com isn't exactly a brilliant source, but I can't see a good reason why they'd make this up. Update: the real thing is now available, and the early version was correct]. Although I'm not really sure what the new findings are. They appear to be:

* the temperature record is, still, just as we thought it was, and
* it appears likely that essentially all of this increase is due to the human emission of greenhouse gases.

The first bit is, still, boring. The second bit is true, but isn't a consequence of the study. Their work is (as far as I can tell) purely a matter of pulling together a temperature record. They've done none of the attribution work you'd expect, in order to talk about attribution. And what they say (How definite is the attribution to humans? The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we’ve tried. Its magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect – extra warming from trapped heat radiation) appears absurdly naive. [Update: it appears there is an as-yet-unrevealed paper that covers this. Based on the thin info currently available, I'm dubious. DA puts it nicely. More: At dotearth Elizabeth Muller gives a non-answer to the "attribution" question; naive still looks to be the order of the day.]

So I think my original contention - that Muller is rubbish - holds up remarkably well.

Muller also says These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming. To which the answer is: no, your actual findings are simply the same as IPCC 2007: all the UHI stuff, and the data selection issues: its been done before. You've added a bit of extra data, which makes no difference post 1850, and you may have done better with the early record, though I imagine people will suspend belief until they actually see the proper results. [Update: on reflection, I'm being a bit unfair here. They have made some incremental improvements. But its nothing earth-shattering, and indeed arguably nothing terribly important; it certainly doesn't justify the attention the op-ed says that Muller thinks he deserves. Also, via La Curry I find this figure and the accompanying "For the period from 1700-1800 Berkeley uses 27 percent more station months". So I think its hard to see them having much more data for the early period.]

But the bit that really annoys is:

CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified scientific issues that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Now, after organizing an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I’ve concluded that global warming is real, that the prior estimates of the rate were correct...

All of that is bollocks. What Muller is saying is that he read a few septic blogs, didn't bother read any of the scientific literature, and so decided to run his own project. So is that his model for converting septics? Everyone who has doubts gets to run their own re-analysis of the temperature reccord? Its going to be a pretty slow process at that rate. Wouldn't it be quicker if people just read the existing literature? Of course, Muller is a prima donna and must invent his own wheel: as far as he is concerned, now that he believes, everyone else should, too. Idiot.

[Update: Romm quotes Caldeira as saying I am glad that Muller et al have taken a look at the data and have come to essentially the same conclusion that nearly everyone else had come to more than a decade ago. The basic scientific results have been established for a long time now, so I do not see the results of Muller et al as being scientifically important. However, their result may be politically important. Which is what I'm saying, only he is more polite, as you'd expect.

Another item: WUWT has been off-air for a day or two, promising something weally exciting. Could that be a leak of BEST results? I hope so, because if that's it, he's going to look like the twat he is. Though that doesn't obviously fit "something to do with one of my many projects", so maybe not. Oh well, reading chicken entrails was never my favourite sport. Actually my favourite sport is rowing; I don't know if you've noticed (and if you follow that link, please ignore 4's blade height, he's a good lad really but does tend to dive at the catch).]

[Update: Update: the real thing is now available (webcite), and the early version was correct. Jolly good. So, yes its still rubbish, and in fact goes on to even more rubbish lower down. It also says "The careful analysis by our team is laid out in five scientific papers now online at BerkeleyEarth.org... Four of our papers have undergone extensive scrutiny by the scientific community, and the newest, a paper with the analysis of the human component, is now posted, along with the data and computer programs used..." I don't see any changes, though, from when I looked earlier. There are still only 4 papers listed, there isn't one on attribution, and the 4 that are there are marked "submitted" (see-also Eli for some parsing of the review status).]

Refs

* QS on the rumour; and TP seems to believe it, too
* webcite of the reason.com article (I have learnt something over the years...)
* according to the BEST site their publication output is 4 papers, all still under review by JGR. If those, too, talk the same nonsense about attribution its no wonder they are coming out slowly.
* The Incidence of Solipsism Among Physicists by Eli.
* Michael Mann is unimpressed: Muller's announcement last year that the Earth is indeed warming brought him up to date w/ where the scientific community was in the the 1980s. His announcement this week that the warming can only be explained by human influences, brings him up to date with where the science was in the mid 1990s. At this rate, Muller should be caught up to the current state of climate science within a matter of a few years!
* The Grauniad, shamefully falls for the hype.
* Gold award for most garbled take goes to topdailybreakingnews for "Muller, who has total P.T. Barnum climax and scholarship via his three-year project" and more.
* Andy Revkin "quotes" me but the paraphrase is badly wrong; see my comment.
* Muller talks bollocks to the Graun
* Berkeley Earth, part 1: Divergences and discrepancies - Deep Climate. It looks like BEST isn't doing a great job admitting errors.
* Want more shite from Muller? its here.

stoat Sat, 07/28/2012 - 16:03

Tags

climate snarking

Agree, Muller probably is rubbish, but he can't be that rubbish surely. Think someone is having us on.

[Its possible. I'm going to look a bit stupid if the reason.com stuff is made up, and I'm uneasy using them as a source. I'm only doing so because I really can't see why they'd make it up.

OTOH another uneasy thought occurs: if Muller reads any of this stuff, he's still got time to re-write his op-ed so its isn't quite so crap -W]

Its such a bizarre prank to play though - psych grads with a bit of background having a bit of fun after final exams? unlikely.

Does fit Muller's MO though, do the press release, grab a few headlines, worry about whether the stuff is viable/publishable after - I don't think the last lot was, not emerged from JGR peer review yet as far as I can tell.

[Having just checked the BEST site, the 4 JGR papers are still described as in review -W]

Muller isn't just rubbish, he's dishonest and disreputable. Shame on him for attempting to deceive the public back when he was supposedly a skeptic, and for slandering decent and honest climate scientists. Let him sink back into obscurity as nothing he does can ever be trusted again.

[I notice his "Three years ago I identified scientific issues that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming" is tolerably vague about what the "issues" were, and indeed what has happened as a result of his work to resolve these issues. And I do recall him rather carelessly flinging accusations about, though I can't now call them to mind -W]

My assumption, on hearing "the rumours", was that Muller would be writing an op-ed to coincide with the publication the BEST papers.

If that's not the case I'm struggling to think what could be the point? What's different beyond what was publicised nine months ago, aside from apparently extending the record back another 40-50 years (with presumably massive uncertainties)?

Could it be the NYT are doing some kind of special issue on climate change and they thought Muller would be an ideal candidate to include given his 'conversion'? In other words, this isn't Muller demanding the spotlight of an NYT op-ed for self-publicity but accepting an offer not often afforded to scientists to talk about his results and views on an important issue.

[That's a more generous view; and you could be right. We'll see -W]

Regarding the flinging of accusations, allow me to jog your memory, via wikipedia (I think you've heard of it? :) :) ):

"McIntyre and McKitrick obtained part of the program that Mann used, and they found serious problems. Not only does the program not do conventional PCA, but it handles data normalization in a way that can only be described as mistaken.

Now comes the real shocker. This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called "Monte Carlo" analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!

That discovery hit me like a bombshell, and I suspect it is having the same effect on many others. Suddenly the hockey stick, the poster-child of the global warming community, turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics. How could it happen?"

[Ah yes, that sounds like it. In which case he's even more rubbish: that isn't the instrumental temperature record, which is what we're talking about. And of course he is wrong, as Deep Climate demonstrated -W]

I don't think Muller's dishonest, but I do think he was unforgiveably lazy in his willingness to accept denialist claims in the past. He fell for pretty much every piece of denialist bullshit out there in the past, and took Watts seriously enough to invite him to give advice to the BEST project.

Along with the quote above, Muller's reaction to the "trick to hide the decline" crap was to state that he wasn't worried about the word "trick", but was worried about the decline. Another words, that temps have been declining in recent decades and that Mann and others were *really* hiding it. A veiled accusation of scientific fraud ...

See Muller (2004), "Global Warming Bombshell" and discussion on p.183 of SSWR, i.e., that (non-peer-reviewed) article got cited in Wegman Report.,
I wrote:
'Muller is a UC Berkeley physicist who apparently accepted MM views and passed them along. He repeated some of this in his 2008 book Physics for Future Presidents, despite results of the intervening years. Most of his AGW discussion otherwise matched mainstream climate science. Muller is certainly an accomplished, eclectic physicist, but these publications offer no evidence that he has followed the hockey stick issues in any real detail, despite being a member of North‘s NRC panel, A.1.1.
McK05 mentioned him as a contact.'

Note that the WR didn't actually cite this, it was just included as a reference. For more fun, read about reference #52 on p.180.

muller's email address is all over climate depot now...

I wonder if the wuwt announcement will have something to do with that heartland funded temperature website...

Has anyone posted the NYT link? http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-c…

[OTOH another uneasy thought occurs: if Muller reads any of this stuff, he's still got time to re-write his op-ed so its isn't quite so crap -W]

It's a bit late for that.

Like most US dailies, the NYTimes prints an early Sunday edition on Saturday afternoons (to give shoppers more time to take advantage of/recycle the massive number of ads included in the Sunday paper). The "leak" by reason.com didn't say which day "next week" the editorial would appear, but Sunday's the prime day for exposure and it's out in today's online Sunday edition.

I'd like to change my earlier assessment having read the full piece,

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-c…

Muller probably is Rubbish->Muller definitely is Rubbish.
;)

("today" is still saturday, i.e. it's in the early edition, though it's already early Sunday AM in the UK, of course. He explains a bit more detail about what other correlations they tried, that don't fit nearly as well as the rise in CO2, which sounds more like grasping at straws than serious science.)

GSW - beat you by 4 minutes, but my link's broken. Oops.

So, folks, click on GSW's link, not mine.

Agreed about the scientific irrelevancy of Muller's work:

The reaction to Anthony announcement is somewhat reminiscent of the people who sell all their belongings as they place their complete trust in the one or two people who proudly declare that the world will end on some certain date (I'm quite convinced that if Anthony had asked people to do that, half of his readership would happily do so). The end-of-the-world people, like Anthony, always get the answer wrong, and yet people continue to go back to him as an authoritative or even "interesting" source. An entire psychology community could have a field day with the phenomenon. The difference is that Anthony gets stuff wrong everyday, while the end-of-the-world people make much less frequent announcements. The only difference between this and the every day comic fest at WUWT is that this time he asked people to get excited and wait for it. Unsurprisingly, many people are.

While everyone is speculating and chiming in, here's a prediction:

Like virtually everything that Anthony throws on his blog, it will be some sort of alleged "nail in the coffin" for some aspect of the science, whether it be the surface station network quality, attribution of AGW, sensitivity, or whatever. Given what "his work" entails, I suspect it related to the first one.

Then, like everything on his blog, we will see a "rah rah!" fest from the conspiracy theorists, and the implications of whatever it is will be exaggerated beyond belief. There will be lots of "we knew it all along!!" or "how can [insert name] be called a real scientist!!" where [insert name] will be someone like Muller, Mann, etc.

Within a few days, no one will care, except for the typical crowd on a handful of blogs, and the understanding of how our atmosphere behaves will not be in the least bit impacted. It will contribute zero to discussions at scientific conferences, etc, and maybe will produce one paper that gets maybe a sentence of attention in the upcoming AR5.

But even I must admit to holding an ounce of curiosity...

John , the "bombshell" meme was flloated as well by Mchaels and Singer in a report publicized by the Cato Instittute:

<a href="http://takimag.com/article/climate_of_here/print#axzz21hWccc7p".I noted in 2008 :

"What little scientific street cred the “global warming skeptics” brought to the debate evaporated in the heat of a long string of (un-peer reviewed) articles like Singer & Michaels's:

“Meltdown for Global Warming Science”:

“Bombshell papers have just hit the refereed literature that knock the stuffing out of the United Nations, and its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In two research papers in…Geophysical Research Letters…we have a quarter-century of concurrent balloon and satellite data, both screaming that the U.N.‘s climate models have failed, as well as indicating its surface record is simply too hot.”

Authors Singer & Michaels were dead wrong—the satellite data they cited was seriously in error—the climatologist responsible agreed to its retraction in Science in 2005 and told Newsweek in 2006 that “our satellite trend has been positive.”

So, how long before the next person who insists on re-inventing the wheel for himself, before allowing the world to move on?

http://xkcd.com/793/

Russell, yes.
See PDF @ Fake Science,... pp.100-101 on the satellites.
Singer kept doing it for a long time.

So sad for you to have your very own guru, darling of the AGW/CC deniers brigade, be honest enough to admit he was wrong and man enough to publish his findings. Even sadder to witness your stubborn intransigence and ignorance and your attack on Muller's credibility when his research debunks your personal theorioes. You are entitled to your own opinion but not your own scientific facts. Get over it - the science is in- the Earth is warming due to man's actions and
we need to take steps to halt the warming. Nuclear power is the answer. Put your energies into promoting that not denying the undeniable.
www.bravenewclimate.com

[Errm, who are you talking to? Muller isn't my guru, and his work debunks none of my theories. Are you suffering from reading comprehension troubles? -W]

"Analysis: Muller's 'Results Nothing New': Warmist William "Connolley finds new BEST results 'rubbish' (by which he Stoat calls Muller a 'prima donna,' and quotes Ken Caldiera: '...I do not see the results of Muller et al as being scientifically important. However, their result may be politically important'"

What would Locke think?

[That was DenialDepot, in case others wondered. Note that I don't in fact call the results rubbish -W]

If Muller continues like this the skeptics will be demanding his emails next.....

[That was DenialDepot, in case others wondered. Note that I don't in fact call the results rubbish -W]

Or perhaps Climate Depot ...

But it would be nice to see Denial Depot get off the pot and cover this news :)

> So I think my original contention – that Muller is rubbish –
> holds up remarkably well.

Yep... the secret to success in science, consistently making accurate predictions.

You might have a future in climatology yet :-)

As former denizens of sci.environment {two of whom have denned up here} may remember, the original MBH98 included a few temperature records that went back into the 18th century, but they were not sufficient by themselves. This, and the BEAST (gotta work on those acronyms) studies raise some interesting questions about who you gonna trust.

I think it's often of value to look at these situations from the perspective of incentives. While this is always dicey when dealing with someone one doesn't know personally (which is the case between myself and Muller), it certainly seems plausible that what we have here is Muller finding a way to [1] gain lots of positive attention and [2] manufacture an exit strategy for some of the less virulent climate deniers.

I suspect that this announcement will succeed brilliantly on that first goal, and will likely serve well enough for the second. I don't expect all deniers to have a sudden attack of reality acceptance and abandon their cause; there's simply too many with deep ideological or financial incentives for that to happen. But I do expect to see a few recognize the opportunity to stealthily take advantage of an unscheduled stop of the crazy train and get off.

You'll be shocked, shocked, to see from the Graun that Curry agrees with you. Sort of. "I don't think this question can be answered by the simple curve fitting used in this paper, and I don't see that their paper adds anything to our understanding of the causes of the recent warming."

No sign that she agrees with the basic point, that Muller reconfirms the accuracy of temp records. Also; rises in Celsius, not sure if there might have been a mix-up with Fahrenheit.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jul/29/climate-change-sceptics-c…

[I'm sorry to see the Grauniad falling for the hype. And they don't get the best quote from Mann, even though they know of it, the cowards. Curry: meh, who cares? -W]

Whenever I hear the word " bombshell" I reach for my ear protectors, for it generally precedes shouting by the hearing impaired.

Now Rom is doing it .

Well, here I must quibble slightly with Martin about secret of success in science.

I'd say that making accurate predictions is good, but success requires making nonobvious-at-the-time accurate predictions, while avoiding making too many wrong ones.
The more nonobvious, the better , ie if everyone else says "No way!" at first and some years later almost all agree that's a win.
(For instance, if the evidence keeps piling up for Bill Ruddinan's ideas, that would be a big win, much bigger than my accurate prediction for many years that the Sun would rise the next day.:-))

Of course Muller has often been wrong on simple things.

William ... Revkin over at dotearth has posted on this, and paraphrases you:

But others, notably the climate modeler William Connolley through his Stoat blog, have dismissed Muller’s work — old and new — as “rubbish.”

His work, i.e. the BEST temp reconstruction, as opposed to Muller himself.

You might want to e-mail him and ask for a correction, or post there explaining exactly what you're calling "rubbish".

[Thanks for that. I've posted a comment there, hopefully it will appear. I've also written on my google+, which he joined just recently -W]

Watts strikes back.

Bad station siting has caused a "spurious" doubling of temperature trends over the last 30 years for the US.

Lead author is Watts. Trailing author of the paper is Christy.

So, obviously, we can ignore BEST and Muller. Right? (chuckle chuckle).

[That's it? That's Watts's bombshell. How dull -W]

Is the end of the project or has he got funds for more?

Its not unknown in other areas of research that someone promotes or exaggerates his own role in a scientific result after starting by being indifferent or hostile.

One benefit is that he has used up some of Koch's funds. The problem is the size of the reservoir.

So Watts is obviously aiming for the geographically deficient who don't realise that the USA is a tiny fraction of the Earth's surface.

Surely it just being the US doesn't matter. If bad quality sites in the US elevate the trend then I don't see why that wouldn't apply to the world too.

Whereas if trends between good quality and bad quality stations match in the US that's evidence that microsite and all that doesn't alter the trends much in other countries.

@Turboblocke

From memory, and I hope I have this right, Muller used Watts US SurfaceStation data to determine that UHI could be discounted as a contributor to observed warming, A US study, and if it's true there, well its true everywhere else right?

"Instrumental" Surface temp anomaly dominated by oceans ~70% anyway and there's a whole load of other historical issues there also. Muller doesn't use Ocean data, only land for his studies so bad UHI accounting is a killer for him.

Watts has applied a rating criteria on the stations and produced trends for 'good' stations of +0.155degC/decade.
Less 'good' stations had a raw trend of +0.248degC/decade.
However the figure printed in red in his press release is that the NOAA final adjusted data shows +0.308degC/decade.

Until the details of the method used to derive the trends from those groups are clear I reserve judgment about their credibility.
But it would appear that the lowest trend matches the global rate of warming.

However the obvious implication of this result, carried in the manner of its presentation, is the deliberate malfeasance, or at least gross incompetence of the USHCN and NOAA data sources.
If doubt is your product, then confirming the known rate of warming is an acceptable loss for the greater gain of undermining the official sources, throwing uncertainty and suspicion on all the data they produce.

But it would appear that the lowest trend matches the global rate of warming.

Which is unlikely to be true given that 70% of the world is ocean.

Until the details of the method used to derive the trends from those groups are clear I reserve judgment about their credibility.

They're using raw data and comparing it to the trend found with NOAA's homogenized data. Of course, there are sound reasons for homogenizing data. And then one wonders why others doing similar work haven't gotten the same results.

Folks over at lucia are already looking into it (particularly Zeke), but they're a bit hampered by the fact that the classification data's not been made available, nor their (tee hee) code.

Free the code!

But really in reading the paper it had the reek of both obfuscation and waterboarding of the data. Add to that the fact that several members of the authorship team have a history of being both mendacious and wrong....

RPSr falls to his knees, worshipping anthony and his new paper, which is a "game changer"

In direct contradiction to Richard Muller’s BEST study, the new Watts et al 2012 paper has very effectively shown that a substantive warm bias exists even in the mean temperature trends. This type of bias certainly exists throughout the Global Historical Climate Network, as well as what Anthony has documented for the US Historical Climate Reference Network.

Well, yeah, uh-huh. I'm sure Watts has done just that.

[Weird. I thought Pielke was better than that. Well, I suppose I'll have to read the new BEST and Watts things sometime -W]

One recalls Sagan , Pollack, Ackerman, Toon & Turco announcing their review article confirming the work of Turco Toon Ackerman Pollack & Sagan t

When full-on denier GSW says that Muller is rubbish, he means something different than what the rest of us mean.

Hey, [incivility redacted. Be nice, or be unpublished], Watts' paper is out, and its not what you thought. In fact, it trashes the pathetic lack of rigorous reexamination of GHCN metadata and applies the new WMO gold standard for temperature site adjustments to show that half the warming you've been claiming is merely localized heat island effects and exaggerated adjustments that overcompensate. Lets see what sort of excuses and ad homs you come up with on this one.

[Well, Watts excitement is out, and you're right, its not at all what anyone thought - its far less interesting. You haven't read it, obviously, given your comments, but VV has - see http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2012/07/29/watts-disappoints/ -W]

Oh, and btw, Watts' measured warming is about 1/4 what you disasturbationists have been claiming your models have predicted, and half of what your doctored data claimed was happening.

[You really ought to try reading the paper at some point -W]

"Muller's announcement last year that the Earth is indeed warming brought him up to date w/ where the scientific community was in the the 1980s. His announcement this week that the warming can only be explained by human influences, brings him up to date with where the science was in the mid 1990s. At this rate, Muller should be caught up to the current state of climate science within a matter of a few years!"
http://www.facebook.com/MichaelMannScientist

You can't tell a cycle from a trend with data that's short compared to the cycle you want to exclude, period. (The eigenvalues of the discriminating matrix explode, making every possible measurement inadequate.)

Looking for signatures is completely bogus. It doesn't get around that completely mathematical fact.

If you can't tell, you can't tell, period.

I may be cynical but I see this as Muller's attempt to get an invite to the cool kidz' IPCC party. Don't submissions close soon?

This stuff is out just in time to sneak through before cut-off.

This part of Muller's op-ed really bugged me:

It’s a scientist’s duty to be properly skeptical. I still find that much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong. I’ve analyzed some of the most alarmist claims, and my skepticism about them hasn’t changed. Hurricane Katrina cannot be attributed to global warming. The number of hurricanes hitting the United States has been going down, not up; likewise for intense tornadoes. Polar bears aren’t dying from receding ice, and the Himalayan glaciers aren’t going to melt by 2035.

Is he just being obtuse? The 2035 claim is acknowledged to be erroneous--at the very least it's a typo of the actual date of 2350--and no "alarmist" is claiming the 2035 date is correct.

The whole thing reeks of a man who can't accept that he believed things that are demonstrably untrue and is now ret-conning his denialism into some half-palatable "healthy skepticism."

[Yes. The 2035 stuff is obviously wrong. How he can still be believing it, whilst still claiming to be other than clueless, is unclear to me -W]

adelady, not exactly. The manuscripts should be submitted to a journal (no, the NYT is not a journal) -- and that happened quite some while ago. And then then should be ultimately accepted for publication, which remains to be seen.

@Martin,

I'm not sure about whether it can ever ultimately be published in the literature. It will get a lot of attention, people requiring copies of the data to check Watts findings, objections raised, even people publishing rebuttals (which is probably more appealing to journals) in the form their own "Analysis" of the data. By the time that's done, will it have merit enough to be published in journal? have my doubts.

I think the work will value in its own right though, irrespective of whether it gets published in a journal, purely because it can't be ignored, it will have to be addressed by somebody at some point otherwise there will always be a question mark over of existing datasets.

Sure scientificaly Muller is just a metastudy of stuff we already knew. Buit in terms of the wider debate among audiences which are not scientifically (or -especially climate science) literate, this sort of conversion is a big deal. As a simply matter of tactics, we need to make it easier -not tougher for such conversions. I say we should swallow our justified pique, and welcome him in as a person, who because he was willing to follow where the data leads rather than his priors, has shown that he can muster some intellectual integrity. We don't have to like the fellow, but in the interest of helping the public debate, we should welcome him.

As far as the Berkeley results go, I find Robert's work on this pretty cool: http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/country-list/

There are also records for all the continents, CONUS, and individual states in there if you dig.

Muller,Nemesis and Wikipedia

It is clear that Richard Muller (RM) is a far more serious researcher than Edward Wegman (EM) who was Congressman Barton's choice for re-analysing the hockey stick. EW never got down to work.

On the other hand, is it fair to have given him all the credit for the Nemesis hypothesis when it was initiated by five authors in 1984? Perhaps the authors of Wikipedia's biography of RM have checked this point? Just imagine that the idea had not run into trouble and had been confirmed? Would Wik. have awarded all the prize money to RM?

On the other hand elsewhere in Wikipedia, the article devoted to the N hypothesis does provide references to the two simultaneous papers involved.

I've long applauded Robert Rohde's globalwarmingart website, created while he was a grad student of Muller's, though updating didn't happen much while he finished his PhD recently.

He's now listed as Chief Scientist at BEST; the statistical work for BEST is attributed to him in its PR.

This seems a bit much -- it reminds me of how Mike Mann, either a grad student or freshly minted PhD as I recall, was pushed to the fore as responsible for the math behind the original 'hockey stick' paper.

Should we be citing the BEST work as "et al. and Rohde" in as that earlier paper was referred to as "et al. and Mann"?

Who decides who gets pushed out in front on these things -- the elder authors?

[The fifth BEST paper is Rohde et al. - he's the lead author. But, he doesn't seem to speak much. It looks like Muller speaks more than enough for all of them -W]

"Everyone who has doubts gets to run their own re-analysis of the temperature reccord? Its going to be a pretty slow process at that rate. Wouldn’t it be quicker if people just read the existing literature? Of course, Muller is a prima donna and must invent his own wheel: as far as he is concerned, now that he believes, everyone else should, too. Idiot."

Oh, and research would also be quicker without this peer-review thing, too.

[Yeeees, Muller clearly likes the ways physics do their stuff, which isn't unreasonable, but he does appear to think that everyone else should do things his way, which is not reasonable. I don't know how arXiv weeds out trash; it must have some gatekeeping, or reputation, or it would fill up with rubbish -W]

I thought the whole point of peer review was scientists testing the claims of others through their own investigations. What's wrong with that?

[That is a complete misunderstanding of peer review.

PR is for someone (several persons, usually) to check that the work presented is up to scratch: no obvious errors, is either totally original or is at least partly original and has taken account of prior art, and so on.

If you want to do something unoriginal - like, recreating someone else's temperature series, as McI does - then that isn't publishable; and it isn't peer review. Its replication. It can be valuable (see for example http://clearclimatecode.org/) but its not original work in the sense of original scientific work; the CCC is original coding, obviously. But journals that publish code are rather separate.

In all cases, you're expected to have actually read and be familiar with clear prior work in your own area; that is Muller's fatal flaw -W]

I'll post this comment here just because the previous para references this site. The quote is by Muller of Judith Curry. I find it hard to believe she thinks this. On the other hand, she must have spoken to Muller about her discomfort with his work.

Anyway, here is what is in the Guardian:
Muller says Curry distanced herself from the paper because she disagrees with the findings, and that she has an alternative theory - that the climate is random, so any correlation between increases in carbon dioxide and warming is an accident.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/aug/03/scepticism-clima…

I don't frequent Curry's blog. Someone here might know if she really denies the greenhouse effect or not. I recall she once tried to describe it so I doubt Muller is correct.

Even if he's wrong (or misquoted), this probably signals further rifts between the various denier/lukewarmer/do-nothings.

It's been quite a week for that, hasn't it.

[Some scientists have wryly noted that in confirming the conclusions of other groups that examine global temperatures, BEST has essentially spent two years getting to where climate science was in the 1990s. seems fair enough.

However, Muller is still talking bollocks. In fact, he's got worse, and is now reduced to outright lying:

"Then, there's the urban heat island effect [the criticism that weather stations sited in urban areas give artificially high temperature readings]. That was something I think we studied in a clever and original way," Muller says. This involved examining only the data from rural stations to see if the temperature rise was still there - and it was. "We got the same answer," he says.

This has been done before. Muller knows full well that its been done before. He is lying through his teeth.

He is still clueless about attribution.

As for Muller says Curry distanced herself from the paper because she disagrees with the findings, and that she has an alternative theory - that the climate is random, so any correlation between increases in carbon dioxide and warming is an accident. - no, I don't think Muller is quoting Curry accurately. Curry believes many wacky things, but I doubt she believes that.

It isn't odd that Muller would misquote people, because he is far too arrogant to actually both understand what anyone else says -W]

Basically arXiv is full of trash, but they just let it sink.

A screen shot of this page made it on the PBS Newshour Sept. 17 as a part of their very disappointing and controversial spot on Muller's "conversion" counterbalanced by a long interview with Watts.

[Fame, I suppose. I hope they challenged Muller with some of the obvious -W]

Well, they quoted Curry too.

PBS reporters are not into very probing questions.