I’m a bit burnt out, so this is a just a few notes to quench some speculations about Steve McIntyre’s role and to help everyone understand what this week has been like.
- Evan and I have been working on this since June 2011, complete redo of all station ratings…huge amount of work. Evan deserves a huge a amount of credit. After Muller could not find strong signal that we knew must be there by physics of heat sinks…and neither could we in Fall et al 2011, we went looking, and discovered the new Leroy 2010 classification system and WMO ISO approval. We knew it would take a lot of work to get old metadatabase into shape. And so it began.
- Started on paper in Spring 2012, but some of the team of people onboard had no vested interest, and with their academic burdens and no budget to pay them anything they could only devote small bits of time for reviews and writings. No fault of theirs, but like herding cats when there’s no funding and all is pro bono.
- Evan and I decided to go ahead anyways and I started writing, steep learning curve as this was my first stint as lead author.
- About a week ago I learned Muller was going to release and do the media blitz, thought he’d be at EPW Senate hearing on August 1st too. (turns out he was passed over, John Christy will be there though.). IPCC deadline coming up too. Added anxiety.
- Tried to get stats guy to the stars Matt Briggs onboard early last week (he was on list of original authors) to help with significance tests, last big hurdle. Most graphs and analysis was done.
- Turns out Briggs was on vacation camping, no fault of his, it is summer…so I figured only way I was going to get this done was to shut down WUWT and stay home from short vacation with wife and kids in Yellowstone. They went on with grandparents and I went on authoring blitz with Evan and with Dr. Pielke Sr. helping edits. Christy provided support too and I helped him craft his EPW section on this.
- So made announcement Friday. Figured on Sunday at noon so WUWT could provide peer review, and dumped my plane tickets in trash. Admittedly I was a bit overwrought when I wrote it. I’m truly sorry if anyone was mislead. Dialed it back. Went on crash self taught stats diet…not my thing, but capable of learning. and being a broadcaster, deadline pressure is a huge motivator. You learn to get it done. On-air waits for nobody. Careers die when you miss deadlines.
- In his post Friday, Steve McIntyre truly didn’t know what this was about. He was out of the loop.
- Steve McIntyre, being the classic gentleman he is, emailed me and said “anything I can do to help, I’m here”. I took him up on the offer and he did all the stats tests from Friday afternoon to Saturday night, then polished last bit of text/graphs early Sunday morning. I owe him a huge debt of gratitude. He is a true gentleman and a scholar.
- Joe D’Aleo and Willis helped with editing/proofing too. Gary Boden solved an Excel map issue for us. Evan came up with powerpoints and helped editing. He was a machine. Pielke Sr. helped with edits and citations. Bob Phelan helped with some PR language. Thanks to all.
- And the result is what you see in the press release today.
- Finally got to take a shower today about 2PM. Prior to that, Kenji was offended.
- Now on to final polish thanks to WUWT peer review and submission.
Thanks everyone for your support and patience! – Anthony
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Cut the abstract as I suggested.
You have done brilliant.I hope you can take a little break for yourself and wait for the barage of commentary you will get. Congratulations on your first paper where you are lead author, what a great effort.
Steph
A grand effort
You did it perfectly, Anthony. All of you. A HUGE effort and HUGELY important. I think you’ve torpedoed CAGW (that’s my opinion, anyway). 🙂
I was at Yellowstone this weekend, weather was great. Hope your kids made it to west Yellowstone to feed the grizzlies.
Kept checking here all the way back to SLC this AM.
REPLY: “Hope your kids made it to west Yellowstone to feed the grizzlies.” Not sure what to make of that – Anthony
Fantastic! You named names and thanked them, now can the other side (paid) do the same?
Well done, everyone. Citizen science surely succeeds.
There is a Grizzly Bear research center just outside the park, they let kids in to hide food for the captive bears to find. Mine loved it.
You’re a star Anthony and so is each member of your team
Can you keep the press release post as a top sticky for a week or so please
“After Muller could not find strong signal that we knew must be there by physics of heat sinks…and neither could we in Fall et al 2011, we went looking, and discovered the new Leroy 2010 classification system and WMO ISO approval.”
Red flag, IMO. Researchers looking for a signal that “we know must be there” makes things ripe for confirmation bias. I truly hope that all involved live up to the standards that us skeptics so commonly cite when reviewing the works of others….namely to look to shoot holes in your own work; try to find areas where your own bias may be affecting results…etc.
Aside from all that, kudos for the seemingly very comprehensive work….and continuation of the unique crowd-sourcing methods.
Any word on where this will be submitted for publishing?
REPLY: Understood, but please think about the physics of heat sinks, specifically when it comes to Tmin and I think you’ll see where we were coming from. Confirmation bias is a huge problem in AGW science, and if this new ratings system had not revealed the solution, I would have had to accede there was no effect. Persistence paid off. – Anthony
Let the reviewing begin!….. What are the other sites saying about the findings of the paper?
Well Done Anthony and all your team of citizens scientist. Thanks for acknowledging our contribution to the data collection phase of the surface stations project.
Russ you are welcome, say hi to Charlie Alpha for me.
IPCC & co will try to avoid a paper like yours under any pretext; the first cop out would be that yours is not accepted for publication “in a respected journal” (pal review).
How are you dealing with that one?
Fantastic effort from all of you, and thank you for the explanation. It makes a lot of sense now. The paper will stand on its merits, let us hope that it will be treated with the respect that it deserves, and gets quality reviews. Any scientist truly worth their salt will look at it and evaluate its implications, outside of politics, because when the story of CAGW is told in the future, they will want their contribution to be a credit to science.
Again, thanks to you and your team for doing something constructive to make the world a better place despite the best efforts of those many misguided and human-hating zealots to enslave us all.
Man years of labor boiled down to a few graphs and charts, Pure gold Anthony Watts…Another solid factual whack to the warmers.
Man, I can’t express in words how impressed that I am with AW and the team … just awesome work !
Anthony, I was also at Yellowstone with my kids this weekend. You missed a fabulous time. I know something about scientific publishing and can imagine the great effort you have gone through (not that the effort is finished). I’m impressed with your dedication and energy. I have been following the station survey project for some years, and I am glad to see it come to fruition. I hope you will be able to catch up on vacation time with your kids soon.
Bravo to all involved!!
I’m reminded of a James Brown performance. Old James would get himself so worked up toward the end of a tune that he’d leave his backup musicians behind and wondering what on earth had gotten into him as they improvised to keep up with his grand finale hyperactivity. At the end, James would fall to the stage floor in an exhausted heap while the other musicians fanned him with towels and feigned concern James might not make it off the set alive.
I do hope the substance in this case lives up to the theatrics.
REPLY: Oh please, read this is you want theatrics – Anthony
Just the BEST!
As one of your regular non-scientific lurkers, Anthony, the best way I can thank you is to fling some Oz dollars in your Tip Jar. What a fabulous job.
J.Hansford says:
July 29, 2012 at 10:13 pm
Let the reviewing begin!….. What are the other sites saying about the findings of the paper?
Steve Hayward on Powerline: “Watts’ conclusion is indeed a bombshell if it proves out: that the U.S. surface temperature rise has been overestimated by a factor of two…”
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/07/breaking-from-best-to-worst-in-less-than-a-day.php?
Climate Depot has a pageful of links to additional reactions: “Anthony Watts delivers devastating scientific blow to Muller’s claims: ‘New analysis demonstrates that reported 1979-2008 U.S. temp trends are spuriously doubled’.”
http://climatedepot.com/
…and I started writing, steep learning curve as this was my first stint as lead author.
I’m guessing that *that’s* why the carpal tunnel popped up when it did.
Anthony,
Figure 23 may be important for follow up work.
Cat1+2 stations have (in mean) identical trends for tmin, tmax, tmean, while 3,4,5 stations have very different trends.
This could be turned around and used as a global station selection criteria.
-> Select only those stations globally, where tmin, tmax and tmean trends are very similar.
Well done. You have put in a huge amount into this and I hope that you receive many good things for your efforts.
But I can see there will be many who would deny your results and say it is all due to big oil/coal etc.
Please take care and try to get some time with your family.God bless you.
James Bull