Comments on: NCAR: Number of record highs beat record lows – if you believe the quality of data from the weather stations

By: jbrodhead

jbrodhead — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 09:05:40 +0000

If a passive parking lot, or tarmac can radiate heat AND cold, without bias, then surely radiant coolers will be the new rage (much quieter than compressor driven AC units).
Oh and now the laws of physics have been rewritten in committee (COP), Cold air rises, so we can officially use Cold-air ballons for traveling about the globe, eliminating the need to travel with politicians as in the old Hot-air ballon days.
When can I get some of those heat/cool baseboard radiators for my home and office. Do they require special chemistry (a.k.a. Goreanium), or just pain H2O?
Does anyone know if Goreanium is toxic? Is it correct to assume Goreanium is overweight AND full of BS? (a bit like moi…)

By: RR Kampen

RR Kampen — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:02:23 +0000

David, what harm am I causing? Do you feel harmed by my disagreeing with you? It’s a free world, does that harm you? Would you rather have a world in which I ‘disappear’ if I’m so stupid to disagree with you? Please answer this. You’ve posted enough rubbish about me to make some amends.

Here’s the graph for Holland: http://benlanka.tweakdsl.nl/climate/datumrecords.png .

And you what? This de facto climate change is reflected in observables re nature and agriculture in Holland. These observables are unprecedented in the agricultural written history of this country.
No reason for alarm. It’s just reality. I’m not dying from it, I’m just interested in climate and climate change.
Next time you write I’m ‘alarmist’ with posts like this, I will point you out as liar. Be warned.

By: MrAce

MrAce — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:30:06 +0000

David Ball (15:22:54)
If you compile the records based on the 10% best stations (Class 1 and Class 2) Count the high/low records and see if the result is different. If you have the data that can not be that hard. If you have not done this calculation, there is no way you can tell whether ‘quality’ has a significant impact on this statistic.

By: David Ball

David Ball — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:45:52 +0000

RRKampen , record highs are exactly what I am talking about. These are not “unprecedented” and thereby make your point moot. You are pushing an agenda that is harmful to all , and yet do not seem to understand the harm you are causing. All the posts I have read from you are alarmist in nature, with little or no evidence to substantiate this position. To form policy on something that is supposed to happen is illogical and wasteful. To say that “record highs are outnumbering record lows” is disingenuous and misleading. You are anthropomorphising climate. Stop ignoring the paleo record and try to understand our place in this record. Nice try at evading the substance of my post.

By: RR Kampen

RR Kampen — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:24:55 +0000

David, if no-one denies that warming has occurred, then why deny the fact that therefore record highs are at present outnumbering record lows, as evidenced by thermometer readings that you apparently do deem correct?

None of my postings here have ever referred to the question whether present warming is or is not ‘unique’ in history. You made that up. You do not know ‘my kind of people’, this is proven hereby. So let’s quit the ad hominems, shall we?

By: David Ball

David Ball — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:09:20 +0000

Glaciers have receded and advanced throughout history. Kampen also ignores the fact that we are well within natural variability of the planet. This is well known and documentation can be found with very little effort. No one denies that warming has occurred, but it certainly is not “unprecedented”. These type of people act like nothing like this has ever happened before, and that is simply incorrect.

By: Icarus

Icarus — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:49:07 +0000

Now I’ll put the question to you again: if you believe thermometer readings are artefacting warming, then do you also believe the freezing point of water in glaciers has been reduced?

Or is it just too hard to put one and one together?

REPLY: This is probably the stupidest comment ever published here, which is the only reason I’m allowing it. – Anthony

Then why not answer his question? It’s a very simple “Yes” or “No” answer. Naturally, if you answer “No” then you have to look for another explanation (other than warming) for all the shrinking glaciers. What could that be?

REPLY: Kampen and people like him, ignorantly assume that glacier loss has only to do with temperature. In fact, glaciers are precipitation driven, and when precipitation falls below the rate of sublimation and/or calving, loss occurs. There’s weather patterns involved in precip accumulation, it’s not just simple thermometry that Kampen ignorantly implies. – Anthony

By: RR Kampen

RR Kampen — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:16:55 +0000

Re: TERRY46 (08:52:34) :

RR Kampen you must be new to this site. Anyone with half a brain if they have followed this site will see for themselves that most of the temps monitors, and not just in the U S, are put in warm biased areas, besides that the fact they closed the rural sites or they just close the monitor down altogether. Look at the pictures this site has shown. These pictures arn’t doctored either. On roof tops, next to air condition units, and as the report shows, over asphalt parking lots.

That may be so, which is why I’m talking about places where no urbanization exists. Mountain ranges: glaciers.
Now I’ll put the question to you again: if you believe thermometer readings are artefacting warming, then do you also believe the freezing point of water in glaciers has been reduced?

Or is it just too hard to put one and one together?

REPLY: This is probably the stupidest comment ever published here, which is the only reason I’m allowing it. – Anthony

By: Fran Manns

Fran Manns — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 14:37:46 +0000

It should be no surprise that the corrupt meteorological database is still fatally flawed and continuing to produce artifacts of urbanization, not measurements of a useful nature. But I must say, warmer urban areas probably save lives in winter among the homeless comunity and save on everyone elses heating bills. The Science News editors apparently have no understanding of the width and depth of the propaganda being generated from the “publish or perish” monolith.

By: David Ball

David Ball — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:22:54 +0000

Mr. Ace (10:58:06) Have you looked at the surfacestations site? I’m afraid that “casting doubt” has been left in the dust. If the claim of warming is ~0.7 C, there no more doubt to be cast. There are so few “perfect” weather stations that one could not make any global conclusions either way. I believe it was E.M.Smith who posted a video on WUWT? showing the number of weather stations that once existed but have since been “decommisioned”(any chance the moderators could help find that one?). It is frightening that some scientist still claim that surface records are a “good” indicator we can base policy on. Take a look at the siting issues on surfacestations.org. It is truly revealing. Cheers.

By: David Ball

David Ball — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:12:39 +0000

Derek D has a good point. This is a tactic used by AGW proponents to distract from the main issues of a debate. The beauty of this blog is that we are allowed to voice our own opinion on climate subjects, either pro or con. This freedom allows the trolls or “debate de-railers” to throw a wrench into the workings of the discussion. A good analogy might be the freedom we enjoy in democratic societies also makes us vulnerable to terrorist activities. We cannot censor our freedom but have to be ever mindful of those who wish ill upon others.

By: MrAce

MrAce — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:58:06 +0000

Casting doubt on the quality of the weather stations with a few examples is easy, but nobody has done the same high/low records calculations for the wheater stations that are known to be of perfect quality. If that has different results, it is a good argument, otherwise it is just tendentious.

By: Espen

Espen — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 12:22:22 +0000

About the 1988 step in european temperature records: Check Bob Tisdale’s postings on El Niño-induced step changes. A step change in 1988 in Europe may have been caused by the 1986-88 El Niño, check Bob’s figure 8, which shows the step change in mid-to-high TLT temperatures, and also note the El Chichon cooling preceding the 1988 temperature rise:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/10/countdown-to-an-unprecedented-warm-decade-2-months-to-go/

By: Christopher Hanley

Christopher Hanley — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 05:47:02 +0000

Oddly, all the highest temperature extremes by continents (except Antarctica)…
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalextremes.html

… were recorded before the atmospheric CO2 concentration had reached 310 ppm.

By: Oakden Wolf

Oakden Wolf — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 05:27:43 +0000

If most of the increasing number of record high temperatures compared to the decreasing number of record low temperatures are attributable to the documented problems with surface station siting, how is it that most other trends related to temperature but not related to the surface stations are also in the direction that would be expected with warming? As an example, Stewart, Cayan, and Dettinger, Journal of Climate, 18, 1136-1155 (2005) described an earlier spring snowmelt pulse based on data from U.S. Geological Survey stream gauging stations in western North America from 1948 to 2002. It seems to me that if the temperature trends are due to inaccurate surface station data, then other climate trends should be a mixed bag (some negative, some positive), but I haven’t seen much discussion of cooling-related trends. That would be an interesting subject.