This is just a quick note, since I have to check out in a few minutes.
Bill Gray delivered a wonderful presentation today at breakfast. Afterwards I was able to meet him and I had a 4 way conversation with him, John Coleman (founder of the weather channel) and Peter Leavitt of Weather Services Corporation.
Peter introduced me to Bill Gray, and I was amazed to find that when Peter described my project, Bill’s eyes lit up and he said “oh, you’re the fellow!”.
It was nice to know that someone of Bill Gray’s stature knew about my work. Bill went on to quip something that I thought was quite funny. John Coleman asked him if he was ever going to to retire from the work he was doing, to which Bill quipped
“…not until they put me in a box!”
Some valid and interesting ideas have been presented here, and despite all the scoffing by the critics, there wasn’t any group prayer, tobacco booths, or free cans of 10W-40 motor oil. It has been all about science, and science policy.
But those who close their minds and choose to only deal in stereotypes of course won’t ever see that, but instead will just pile on the stereotypical criticism as part of their regular closed mind comfort zone.
But those who close their minds and choose to only deal in stereotypes of course won’t ever see that, but instead will just pile on the stereotypical criticism as part of their regular closed mind comfort zone.
And to me, that is just an extremely sad commentary on the scientific community in particular and on society as a whole.
Looking forward to your entire report on the conference. I Googled it this morning and could find no MSM reports at all.
Way to go, Anthony! You’ve struck a blow for science, and against AGW pseudo-science. Yes, the AGW/AGCC Empire will strike back, but they’ve been weakened. Even Darth Gore was afraid to show up on that battleground!
I’d say your weather station auditing has become a part of almost every climate presentation given by skeptics. That in itself tells you something about the importance of Anthony’s work. I attended a speech in Germany given by skeptical jounalist, Dirk Maxeiner, who by the way has written and excellent book on the slobby science of anthroprogenic global warming – in German – called “Hurrah wir retten die Welt!” (Hooray! We’re saving the planet!), and he also mentioned Anthony’s work. So, indeed it appears Anthony is becoming a global climate celebrity.
Thanks for the great site. Saw your short piece on Glenn Beck’s show.
Appreciate the website and all the information
Congratulations, it’s nice to be recognized.
John Tierney in the NY Times had some thoughts on this conference:
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/lessons-from-the-skeptics-conference/
Though the two sides are not so far apart most of the time, often it is not unlike atheists arguing with fundamentalists, isn’t it.
Lubos Motl has a post about media coverage.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/03/heartland-institute-times-square.html
I really appreciate all the hard and time consuming work you and others are doing related to surface stations. That will certainly bring more reliable data in the future.
But I have a basic question which kind of puzzling me. Dr Christy and Spencer at University of Alabama note that the difference between surface stations and satellite data is relatively small (3 deg F vs 2.52 deg F per century). In addition, Dr. Christy says comparing satellite data and surface
measurements, (quoting from http://www.uah.edu/News/climatebackground.php ) that “In areas where you have high resolution, well- maintained scientific collection of temperature data, the satellites and the surface data show a high degree of agreement,” said Christy. “Over North America, Europe, Russia, China and Australia, the agreement is basically one-to-one.” and “The greatest disagreement between the surface and satellite datasets is in the tropics, which includes regions where weather stations are sparse (including central Africa and South America)…”
Since such a one to one match exists for the U.S., is it possible that the corrected surface data, irrespective of how bad the stations are, is accurate enough to have such a good agreement with the satellite data? I am sure I am missing something somewhere. Thanks very much!!
Why don’t you get a life and stop trying to waste all the money and world economies to fix a nonexistent problem. If you have to try to scare everyone why not try to figure out how we will survive when Chicago is under a mile of ice in 15 to 20 years!
I’d say your weather station auditing has become a part of almost every climate presentation given by skeptics. That in itself tells you something about the importance of Anthony’s work.
That’s because it is not theoretical. It is empirical and irrefutable. There may be dispute as to the full extent of the effects, but it is solid as a rock. I could see that from day 1.
PA, what you are missing is the satellite data is also adjusted. The adjustments are doubtless for legitimate reasons, however we have no way of determining their accuracy (some unknown error in adjustments is inherent and unavoidable). And it’s simply human nature to err in the direction of what you think is the right answer. So agreement with what are believed to be good station data is unsurprising.
There is more disagreement in the balloon temperature data. Arguably the least the result of adjustments of the three.
Anthony, I was looking through the list of scheduled speakers, and there appeared to be a number of notable absences : Steve McIntyre, Pielke Jr. or Sr., Scarfetta, Lindzen, Svensmark, Friis-Christensen just to name a few. Were they there and just didn’t speak, and did anyone from the Warmer side of the aisle attend?
REPLY: They were not there, but I believe were invited. Pielke and McIntyre had other commitments AFAIK. Not sure about the others. There was so many people that I could not meet them all. I was particularly impressed that Jennifer Marohasy and Bob Carter made the trip from down under.
Also absent were protesters, although we heard rumblings that there might be some. NYC doesn’t tolerate that stuff well, since it disrupts the city.
PA,
I wonder about another theory which I have not heard expressed. Perhaps the climate models have something right — that AGW induces the troposphere to warm faster than the surface. The satellites (e.g., UAH) do show a warming that is a bit less than surface temperatures; however, if the surface temperature trend is overstated, and if accurate surface trends were less than the trophosperic trend, the models could be confirmed in this fingerprint of global warming. Nevertheless, even if this theory had legitimacy, it would mean that the models are vastly overstating the magnitude of AGW even if fingerprint is there.
An Inq:
That is exactly what I have been thinking. And it fits with my thumbnail prejudice that GW since 1979 is overstated by about a factor of two.
Philip & An Inq., Thank you. I myself do not put a lot of faith in the models yet. But the comparison of empirical data between surface stations and satellite data is what is bothering me. I doubt satellite corrections are made in such a way that it will duplicate the trends from surface stations. If they do that, then those measurements are not going to be independent.
My own feeling is that we have lots of problems with surface stations, but on average they give results with reasonable accuracy, that matches with satellite data. Having said that I fully endorse Anthony\’s mission on making our surface stations even better. I was hoping Anthony could comment about it, but I suspect he is busy with his travel, etc.
Anthony, has anyone uploaded the television interviews that you and other conference goers did?
REPLY: Not that I am aware of
Anthony,
Thought you might be interested in this article from the Daily Tech
“Runaway greenhouse theories contradict energy balance equations,” Miskolczi states. Just as the theory of relativity sets an upper limit on velocity, his theory sets an upper limit on the greenhouse effect, a limit which prevents it from warming the Earth more than a certain amount.
How did modern researchers make such a mistake? They relied upon equations derived over 80 years ago, equations which left off one term from the final solution.
Miskolczi was just at the same conference. Looks like interesting info.
REPLY: yes I was aware of this, but I wanted to read through it before doing any writeup on it.
Dave,
If Miskolczi is correct, that would be one of the most inconvenient truths of all. It would also confirm something that a large number of skeptics have suspected for a long time.
ok , i know my last post wont be seen , thats how this site works , no complains , but please dont use the XXXX” final solution” words any more , it can bring lost memories up
REPLY: This site uses a moderation que, and sometime posts don’t show for a few hours overnight. See the policy page.