The National Climate Data Center (NCDC) has responded to the excellent report
Watts, A. 2009: Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable? 28 pages, March 2009 The Heartland Institute [hard copies available from The Heartland Institute 19 South LaSalle Street #903 Chicago Illinois 60603]
which I weblogged on at “Is The U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable?” By Anthony Watts.
The NCDC “Talking Points” released on June 9, 2009 are available at
Talking Points related to: Is the U.S. Temperature Record Reliable?
Unfortunately, the author of the NCDC Talking Points cavalierly and poorly responded to Anthony Watts report. They did not even have the courtesy to cite the report! {UPDATE 7/3/09: They have now cited Anthony’s report, but retained the original date of the Talking Points of June 9 2009).
Below, I comment on their response.
NCDC Talking Point #1
Q. Do many U.S. stations have poor siting by being placed inappropriately close to trees, buildings, parking lots, etc.?
A. Yes. The National Weather Service has station siting criteria, but they were not always followed. That is one reason why NOAA created the Climate Reference Network, with excellent siting and redundant sensors. It is a network designed specifically for assessing climate change. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/uscrn/. Additionally, an effort is underway to modernize the Historical Climatology Network, though funds are currently available only to modernize and maintain stations in the Southwest. Managers of both of these networks work diligently to put their stations in locations not only with excellent current siting, but also where the site characteristics are unlikely to change very much over the coming decades.
Climate Science Response
Their answer confirms what Anthony Watts and colleagues have carefully documented. An obvious question is why did not NCDC elevate this as a priority sooner? Moreover, if the current sites can be “adjusted” to be regionally representative, why does NOAA even need the new Climate Reference Network? The answer to that is that they have recognized for years that there is a problem with the siting of the surface stations, but deliberately attempted to bury this issue until Anthony Watts and colleagues confronted NCDC with the issue.
NCDC Talking Point #2
Q. How has the poor siting biased local temperatures trends?
A. At the present time (June 2009), to the best of our knowledge, there has only been one published peer-reviewed study that specifically quantified the potential bias in trends caused by poor station siting: Peterson, Thomas C., 2006: Examination of Potential Biases in Air Temperature Caused by Poor Station Locations. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 87, 1073-1080. Written by a NOAA National Climatic Data Center scientist, it examined only a small subset of stations – all that had their siting checked at that time – and found no bias in long-term trends. The linear trend in adjusted temperature series over the period examined was nearly identical between the stations with good siting and the stations with poor siting, with the stations having poor siting showing slightly less warming. The following questions address implications from that paper.
Climate Science Response
This is blatantly untrue and the author of these talking points know that. Tom Peterson, for example, was even a reviewer of the Pielke 2007a and 2007b papers, and was aware of the Pielke et al 2002 paper.
Pielke Sr., R.A., T. Stohlgren, L. Schell, W. Parton, N. Doesken, K. Redmond, J. Moeny, T. McKee, and T.G.F. Kittel, 2002: Problems in evaluating regional and local trends in temperature: An example from eastern Colorado, USA. Int. J. Climatol., 22, 421-434.
Pielke Sr., R.A. J. Nielsen-Gammon, C. Davey, J. Angel, O. Bliss, N. Doesken, M. Cai., S. Fall, D. Niyogi, K. Gallo, R. Hale, K.G. Hubbard, X. Lin, H. Li, and S. Raman, 2007a: Documentation of uncertainties and biases associated with surface temperature measurement sites for climate change assessment. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 88:6, 913-928.
Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, S. Foster, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007b: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S08, doi:10.1029/2006JD008229.
In the second paper, we wrote
“Peterson’s approach and conclusions, therefore, provide a false sense of confidence with these data for temperature change studies by seeming to indicate that the errors can be corrected.”
The decision of the NCDC Talking Points to ignore these papers illustrates the state that NCDC is in with respect to Climate Science. NCDC, as led by Tom Karl, is not interested in an inclusive assessment of climate science issues (in this case the multi-decadal surface temperature trends), but are only interested in promoting their particular agenda and in protecting their particular data set.
NCDC Talking Point #3
Q. Does a station with poor siting read warmer than a station with good siting?
Not necessarily. A station too close to a parking lot would be expected to read warmer than a station situated over grass far from any human influence other natural obstructions. But a station too close to a large tree to the west, so that the station was shaded in the afternoon, would be expected to make the afternoon maximum temperature read a bit cooler than a station in full sunlight. Many local factors influence the observed temperature: whether a station is in a valley with cold air drainage, whether the station is a liquid-in-glass thermometer in a standard wooden shelter or an electronic thermometer in the new smaller and more open plastic shelters, whether the station reads and resets its maximum and minimum thermometers in the coolest time of the day in early morning or in the warmest time of the day in the afternoon, etc. But for detecting climate change, the concern is not the absolute temperature – whether a station is reading warmer or cooler than a nearby station over grass – but how that temperature changes over time.
Climate Science Response
The answer correctly reports on the variety of issues that affect surface temperatures. However, where we disagree is that the multi-decadal surface temperature trends and anomalies also depend on the details of the observing sites and how these details change over time.
This can be illustrated from our 2007 BAMS paper, where the set of relatively closely spaced stations shown in Figure 10 (reproduced belw) have significantly different long term trends, as summarized in Table 5 (reproduced below) from that paper. Despite being relatively close together, the variations in both the local enviroment and the station exposure result in distinctly different trends [Using the categories in the Watts, 2009 report, the stations had the following Trinidad (3); Cheyenne Wells (1); Las Animas (5); Eads (4) and Lamar (4)]. 
Even sites that are locally in a category 1 class, such as Cheyenne Wells, however, also have issues with the landscape in their local surroundings, as we documented for locations in northeastern Colorado in Figures 5, 7, 9, 10 and 12 of
Hanamean, J.R. Jr., R.A. Pielke Sr., C.L. Castro, D.S. Ojima, B.C. Reed, and Z. Gao, 2003: Vegetation impacts on maximum and minimum temperatures in northeast Colorado. Meteorological Applications, 10, 203-215.
Depending on wind direction, the air that reaches the observing site can have a different temperature. Changes in the wind directions over time can result in temperature trends that are due to this effect alone.
This local landscape variation as a function of azimith can be seen in the photographs for the Cheyenne Wells site in
Davey, C.A., and R.A. Pielke Sr., 2005: Microclimate exposures of surface-based weather stations – implications for the assessment of long-term temperature trends. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., Vol. 86, No. 4, 497–504,
where depending on the wind direction and time of year, the air that the temperature sensor monitors may transit a dirt road, crops, or other land surface varations, each with a different surface heat budget., before reaching the temperature observing site.
The NCDC Talking Points ignore informing us why all of these local landscape effects on multi-decadal surface temperature trends would be random and average out.
NCDC Talking Point #4
Q. So a station moving from a location with good siting to a location with poor siting could cause a bias in the temperature record. Can that bias be adjusted out of the record?
A. A great dealof work has gone into efforts to account for a wide variety of biases in the climate record, both in NOAA and at sister agencies around the world. Since the 1980s, scientists at NOAA’s NationalClimatic Data Center are at the forefront of this effort developing techniques to detect and quantify biases in station time series. When a bias associated with any change is detected, it is removed so that the time series is homogeneous with respect to its current instrumentation and siting. The latest peer-reviewed paper which provides an overview the sources of bias and their removal (Menne et al., 2009 in press), including urbanization and nonstandard siting. At the time that paper was written, station site evaluations were too incomplete to conduct a thorough investigation (that analysis is forthcoming). However, they could evaluate urban bias and found that once the data were fully adjusted the 30% most urban stations had about the same trend as the remaining more rural stations.
Climate Science Response
The failure of NCDC to correct for all of the recognized biases has been documented in
Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, S. Foster, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S08, doi:10.1029/2006JD008229;
a paper NCDC has chosen to ignore [another surface temperature analysis group has been open to scientific debate, however; see].
NCDC has also ignored
Lin, X., R.A. Pielke Sr., K.G. Hubbard, K.C. Crawford, M. A. Shafer, and T. Matsui, 2007: An examination of 1997-2007 surface layer temperature trends at two heights in Oklahoma. Geophys. Res. Letts., 34, L24705, doi:10.1029/2007GL031652,
where we document a bias in the use of a single level surface temperature (the minimum temperature, in particular) to monitor multi-decadal surface temperature trends.
The NCDC talking points also mention the Menne et al (2009) paper, which, unfortunately, perpetuates the NCDC failure to adequately consider all of the biases and uncertainties in the surface temperature record. The Menne et al paper was weblogged in
Finally, we have several other papers in the review process, and look forward to communicating them to you when accepted for publication.
NCDC Talking Point #5
Q. What can we say about poor siting’s impact on national temperature trends?
A. We are limited in what we can say due to limited information about station siting. Surfacestations.org has examined about 70% of the 1221 stations in NOAA’s Historical Climatology Network (USHCN). According to their web site of early June 2009, they classified 70 USHCN version 2 stations as good or best (class 1 or 2). The criteria used to make that classification is based on NOAA’s Climate Reference Network Site Handbook so the criteria are clear. But, as many different individuals participated in the site evaluations, with varying levels of expertise, the degree of standardization and reproducibility of this process is unknown.
However, at the present time this is the only large scale site evaluation information available so we conducted a preliminary analysis.
Two national time series were made using the same gridding and area averaging technique. One analysis was for the full data set. The other used only the 70 stations that surfacestations.org classified as good or best. We would expect some differences simply due to the different area covered: the 70 stations only covered 43% of the country with no stations in, for example, New Mexico, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee or North Carolina. Yetthe two time series, shown below as both annual data and smooth data, are remarkably similar. Clearly there is no indication for this analysis that poor current siting is imparting a bias in the U.S. temperature trends.
Climate Science Response
This is a cavalier response. In order to show that there is little effect on surface temperature anomalies due to station siting, they need to assess the anomalies over time in the same region for each category of station siting. A national average which includes includes large regional variations (e.g. see Figure 20a in Pielke et al 2007a ) tells us little about the quality of the data.
Q. Is there any question that surface temperatures in the United States have been rising rapidly during the last 50 years?
A. None at all. Even if NOAA did not have weather observing stations across the length and breadth of the United States the impacts of the warming are unmistakable. For example, lake and river ice is melting earlier in the spring and forming later in the fall. Plants are blooming earlier
in the spring. Mountain glaciers are melting. And a multitude of species of birds, fish, mammals and plants are extending their ranges northward and, in mountainous areas, upward as well.
Menne, Matthew J., Claude N. Williams, Jr. and Russell S. Vose, 2009: The United States Historical Climatology Network Monthly Temperature Data – Version 2. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, in press.
Peterson, Thomas C., 2006: Examination of Potential Biases in Air Temperature Caused by Poor Station Locations. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 87, 1073-1080. It is available from http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0477/87/8/pdf/i1520-0477-87-8-1073.pdf.
Climate Science Response
Their claim that temperatures have been “rising rapidly” over the past 50 years is based on the surface temperature record in which there are reported warm biases; e.g. see
Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, S. Foster, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S08, doi:10.1029/2006JD008229.
NCDC also is misinformed with respect to the other climate metrics. For example, they write
“Plants are blooming earlier in the spring.”
However, a new paper in press (see)
White, M.A., K.M. de Beurs, K. Didan, D.W. Inouye, A.D. Richardson, O.P. Jensen, J. O’Keefe, G. Zhang, R.R. Nemani, W.J.D. van Leeuwen, J.F. Brown, A. de Wit, M. Schaepman, X. Lin, M. Dettinger, A. Bailey, J. Kimball, M.D. Schwartz, D.D. Baldocchi, J.T. Lee, W.K. Lauenroth. Intercomparison, interpretation, and assessment of spring phenology in North America estimated from remote sensing for 1982 to 2006. Global Change Biology (in press),
writes
“Trend estimates from the SOS [Start of Spring] methods as well as measured and modeled plant phenologystrongly suggest either no or very geographically limited trends towards earlier spring arrival, although we caution that, for an event such as SOS with high interannual variability, a 25-year SOS record is short for detecting robust trends.”
IN CONCLUSION
NCDC would be a much more valuable resource in the climate community if they worked to be inclusive in presenting all peer reviewed perspectives in climate science. Currently, they are only reporting on information that supports their agenda and not communicating real world observational data that conflicts with that agenda. The fault for this failure in leadership is with Tom Karl who is Director of NCDC.
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Mike D. (19:20:10) :
… a multitude of species of birds, fish, mammals and plants are extending their ranges northward and, in mountainous areas, upward as well.
That statement is counter-factual and unsupported by any verified scientific research. The NCDC has no idea in creation what the current, former, or future “ranges” of “birds, fish, mammals and plants” are, were, or will be.
Mike:
You can check the scientific literature on this topic by going to Google Scholar and typing in “seasonal phenology and climate change” I got a little over 22,000 hits on this topic. Quite a number of good review articles. Seasonal phenology refers to the timing of breeding, migration, leafing out, flowering etc. If you are specifically interested in studies on range expansion, trying typing “range expansion and climate change” I get over 600,000 hits on this topic. I think that it is fair to argue that we don’t know what future ranges will be. However, there are clearly thousands of good studies in the scientific literature on range expansion in response to climate warming. You should read a few of these studies before concluding that they do not exist.
@Bill (20:11:34) : You make a good point. Experiments should be done to quantify the effect of various situations concerning the sensor. I have to wonder why Hansen and Mann and others on The Team aren’t pushing for such a study and spending some of my tax dollars on it.
>>>Most places will not slowly drift upwards/downwards
>>> it should be an abrupt change over a couple of years.
Urban sprawl and use of increased heat producing devices close to met stations is a slow, on-going process, and I doubt if it would be easily seen as a spike in the records of that station.
The UK midlands monitoring station (don’t have the reference with me at present) has a slow increase in temperature that closely mimics:
a. The AGW theory
b. The growth of urban sprawl around the station
Take your pick, but urbanisation must be included in that temperature record somewhere.
I found Dr. Pielke’s comment about the NCDC not citing the Watts paper as interesting.
There are many people who like to sound smart, but who’d rather have others do their thinking for them. In this group, the words “peer reviewed” are almost magical. If the NCDC cites Watts’ paper, then it is, ipso facto, peer reviewed.
I submit they are not citing it because to do so would further elevate its status.
Tim
World glaciers are melting? How do they know? I have been clicking on the World Glacier Monitoring website for over a year and they are still reporting that the “preliminary” data is available for 2006-2007. WUWT? They must have the data right up to 2009 or its gone! I believe they are holding out until after the “Copenhagen Warm in” in November. Note that even the 2007 number of glacier expansion has risen relative to 2006 data. I think it would be worth a short post by someone with glacier expertise – especially explaining what is involved in assessing glaciers so we don’t get a snow-job with “adjustments” when the number of expanding glaciers comes in after November.
http://www.wgms.ch/
Bill: On what other data would you suggest making a decision that HAS to be made if AGW is a fact (remember you cannot use this temp record to support YOUR theories)?
Your assumption is obvious: that a decision — a far reaching, draconian, and probably devastating one at that (cap and trade) — HAS to be made. Talk about having a desperate assumption or agenda. “If AGW is a fact” – my god, man, that is what its all about! And your use all caps (HAS) to make an hysterical point belies your irrational attachment to the idea.
I personally do not need to present an alternate theory at this time. (Many qualified scientists have done so.) The AGW proponents state a theory; it is up to them to prove it. Period. I would declare the null set to be that the perceived changes can be easily accounted for as natural climate variation (coming out of an ice age) and that there is no “perfect” climate state. You AGW people have to support and prove your theory and one of your major data sets seems to be unreliable and suggests that others like it (other countries) may also be unreliable, at best.
If you add to this the evidence Roger A. Pielke, Sr. offers in his rebuttal of RC propaganda, I think one can safely and sanely declare that the AGW proponents are working with a house of cards: it looks like a great integrated, well designed structure, a consensus — especially to the so-called environmentalists and to their media and political allies — but so many of its foundational data sets (ocean temps, net ice melt, etc) don’t support their model; at the very least, they don’t support the hysterical, “save the planet” nuttiness that is rampant today. Let me correct this last statement and proclaim the hysteria, NUTTINESS.
Wouldn’t it be nice if NCDC was a responsible scientific institution? Since when is a scientific body supposed ot have “talking points”. Advocacy pseudo science at its worst.
@Bill (20:11:34) : If you have access to such a nice IR device, can you get funds to study the UHI effect? Specifically, set up two identical sensors rated CRN1 100 yards apart in the same large field. Record for a year, then pour a concrete pad around one, record temps for a year. Then build a red brick building next to the experimental sensor, record for a year. Then put an air conditioner next to the sensor with the exhaust 5 ft away and record for a year … etc. If Helen Keller had a wide range of outdoor experiences, I think even she would figure out what the effect of this would be … but it would be good to put numbers to it.
I expect full retaliation on RC. The Warmers do NOT like it when you call their bluff with actual facts…..
bill (02:29:54) Referencing my comment at 21:30:02, “You and others are suggesting that the changes are being falsified to prove a position.” I made no such suggestion, merely pointed out what Hansen does with the records. Your assumption shows biased perspective if you uphold such shenanigans. Further, Hansen’s fiddling is done after these adjustments are made: http://i42.tinypic.com/2luqma8.jpg . So, even without the obvious influence of UHI, somewhere in the neighborhood of .6-.7°F is added to the modern temps. Yes, indeed, we do have AGW, without any CO2 influence taken into consideration.
bill (02:29:54) :
I do not dispute the classification.
I do not suggest that siting is “good enough”
Ummm… from the tenor of your posts this does not seem so, just letting you know.
But I would like to know just how much difference that concrete path @ur momisugly “50cm” makes to the temperature readings and especially how much difference it makes to the anomaly (for climate purposes this is the important factor is it not?).
Just a simple experiment I did a while ago trying to show that urbanization ( which can have even in my own yard ) distinct effects on temperature. I basically wired my yard so that every foot I had a sensor 6 feet up ( on a white PBC tube ) on a west facing exposure of my house ( not in the shade ) and did a grid experiment just for kicks and giggles. Basically as I moved away from man made structures ( the house, sidewalks, etc ) I would have a drop in temperature ( on days where there was no or little wind ) with the center of the area ( area without any nearby man made structures ) being the coolest. The amount of cooling was minimal ( .2 to .3 degrees Fahrenheit ) but the space was not that large (measured 30′ X 40′) ( No I did not have 1200 stations I had close to 100, did cross sectioning)
One interesting part about this is the brick from the house heated up the closest station to it a little more then the one closest to the sidewalk. This may well be because the sun had been pounding it far longer then the side walk at that point?!? Once night came the difference was REALLY noticeable changing to a much greater extream of almost a degree .
Now admittedly this was done on grass, which is not what the world is made up of for ground cover however I did this to illustrate a point to myself. When anyone says that urban heat island has no meaning I laugh you can not have that much absorption of radiation not effect ambient temperatures. Combine this with what Anthony has done and you can quickly see how biased a sample such as temperature can become without extreme critical thinking.
I also admit to not being a scientist, just someone who was curious. Take my anecdotal evidence as far as you will ( which should most likely be nigh unto no where ) However I know what it meant to me. If you really want to answer your own question try something similar to what I did ( I think I went a bit overboard I think I could have managed the same thing with only a fifth of the number of stations I used but I didn’t know that at the time ) I have since moved and no longer have the equipment and am now without a yard ( no grass )… I may need to try the same experiment again and see if it yields different results now that there is no grass…
Anyway Bill the point is not that the data is the best we have so live with it, the point is do we want to institute trillions in taxes when this is the best data we have. Do we really want to make policy changes in the way that we regulate a gas as essential as Carbon Dioxide simply because there appears to be a correlation? Based on your own questions as to how much difference 50 cm makes I think the answer would be a resounding NO!!! But then who knows…
The drought is deepening in Cali and our fresh water supply is being stretched to the limit. Interestingly our water system was designed for about 18 million people and now we have legally about 38 million people (plus a couple million extra), the 8th mightiest economy and the most intensive agriculture system on the globe AND million s of tourists each year. You do not have to be a climatologist nor a physicist to see what’s coming down the road.
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/california-drought-water-2104134-earth-year
Dr Reese
Wait and see; I predict that if we are in an extended cooling period, The AGWers will be citing A. Watts report to show that the measuring of temperature is faulty and that we must go with the models. Talking points will change to: Yes, we realize that these stations were sited in the old days and have masked the rise in temperatures. Our corrections were to conservative.
Instead of destroying our economy now, when we don’t know, why not continue economic growth until we do know? Then we will have significantly more resources to throw at the problem? If it was as bad as the scaremongers posit, we would know for sure already.
Bill D (04:39:29)
Mike: You can check the scientific literature on this topic by going to Google Scholar and typing in “seasonal phenology and climate change” I got a little over 22,000 hits on this topic. Quite a number of good review articles. Seasonal phenology refers to the timing of breeding, migration, leafing out, flowering etc. If you are specifically interested in studies on range expansion, trying typing “range expansion and climate change” I get over 600,000 hits on this topic. I think that it is fair to argue that we don’t know what future ranges will be. However, there are clearly thousands of good studies in the scientific literature on range expansion in response to climate warming. You should read a few of these studies before concluding that they do not exist.
Whatsamatter Bill? Do you have a reading comprehension problem? I said NO VERIFIED STUDIES. Sure, there are plenty of wild speculations out there, and junk science by the garbage barge load. But “ranges” of species are not deterministic, mappable, constant polygons. To claim such exhibits a complete misunderstanding of geographical population dynamics.
The USFWS dumped wolves in Yellowstone. They multiplied and moved SOUTH (as well as every other cardinal direction). Do you conclude that global COOLING is responsible?
It is crackpot to presume that every time you sight an animal, it is due to “climate change”. That kind of tunnel vision is a-historical, a-scientific, claptrap jabberwack. Especially considering there has been NO GLOBAL WARMING over the last 30 years. There are a multitude of factors that impact wildlife populations, but global warming is not one of them because IT DOES NOT EXIST. Any study that correlates animal presence/absence with global warming is thus INVALID. Sadly, ignoring real factors and substituting imaginary ones is a common “mistake” made by pseudo-scientists.
Which is the problem here. NCDC is ate up with pseudos. They are junk science purveyors. They can’t do the job they are paid to do because they are too busy doing radically rude and oafish political talking points.
Dr Reese (08:19:07) :
The past 2 years have nothing on 1976-77. Shasta was down to 600,000 ac.ft. in Nov 77, yet by April 78 it was 4,000,000 ac. ft.
In 1870’s drought, the Stanislaus and Mokolumne Rivers went undergroud. (ref. Treatise on Hydraulic Mining – A. J. Bowie).
In the mid 1840’s, the Trinity River went underground according to the Old Settlers who interviewed the Indians here in 1864 (ref – Trinty Journal, 1864)
Please tell me what rivers in Calif. have now gone underground.
Please tell me which reservoirs are now down to the bottom.
Please quote me which watersheds received 10% of normal this year.
The only reason this sub-normal water year is being ballyhooed as a catastrophic drought is that Mr. Chu has declared Calif. that way, not because it is.
AGW and it’s proponents have made the claim.
Let them prove it.
Show us the images of this historic drought.
I am not a scientist nor a meteorologist but I love to delve into the workings of the universe, and I can’t stand junk science. I don’t buy into the “human induced global warming” BS in anyway and find it scary that humans actually think they have that much power and influence in the universe!
I’ve bookmarked your site and will come back when I have more time to soak it up. Thanks for your efforts.
Best, Laura
http://whereabouts.blogster.com
http://greasy.com/whereabouts
I mean, talk about your circular reasoning!
NCDC cannot detect global warming because the stations are messed up. So they presume it’s happening because of wildlife studies. BUT… the wildlife studies are based on the presumption that there IS global warming!!!!
Round and round we go, and where it stops, nobody knows. Cue the circus music, because here comes the parade of clowns.
Mike D. (10:01:27) :
Bill D (04:39:29)
Mike: You can check the scientific literature on this topic by going to Google Scholar and typing in “seasonal phenology and climate change” I got a little over 22,000 hits on this topic. Quite a number of good review articles. Seasonal phenology refers to the timing of breeding, migration, leafing out, flowering etc. If you are specifically interested in studies on range expansion, trying typing “range expansion and climate change” I get over 600,000 hits on this topic. I think that it is fair to argue that we don’t know what future ranges will be. However, there are clearly thousands of good studies in the scientific literature on range expansion in response to climate warming. You should read a few of these studies before concluding that they do not exist.
Whatsamatter Bill? Do you have a reading comprehension problem? I said NO VERIFIED STUDIES. Sure, there are plenty of wild speculations out there, and junk science by the garbage barge load. But “ranges” of species are not deterministic, mappable, constant polygons. To claim such exhibits a complete misunderstanding of geographical population dynamics.
Mike:
I’ve been at scientific meetings in the US and Europe where highly detailed studies of range expansion and phenology shifts are documented with data, often with data sets of 20-40 or more years. Many of these studies are published in scientific journals. These include studies with plants, insects, birds and other groups. I suggest that you actually read a few dozen of these studies before dismissing them as speculation or junk science. It’s not good science to dismiss published studies unless you have studied them in detail and can, in fact show, that the data or analysis is not up to the standards that are purported. I don’t know anything about expansion of wolf ranges–I agree that range expansion of “introduced” species are not likely to be linked to changes in climate.
I have a paper in press on very strong effects of climate warming on the food chain of a large Italian lake. Mean and maximal temperatures of the upper 20 m of the lake increased by >2 oC over 21 years with the 6 coolest years in the early 1980s and the 6 warmest years in the late 90s and early 2000s. The dates for this study could be considered “cherry picking” since funding ended at the end of 2003, the warmest year with instrumental data for Europe. However, the warming trend is very strong, based on all of the data. I would be happy to discuss and debate this study when it appears in print later this year. However, in order to critique a scientific study, you need to read it and to point to specific data and conclusions that are not well supported.
Q. Is there any question that surface temperatures in the United States have been rising rapidly during the last 50 years?
A. None at all.
I think that says it all for me. Their feeble minds cannot see that a lack of suspicion in THAT one aspect renders all of their other endeavors unscientific and unimportant.
Just because your guages (themometers) are increasing, doesn’t mean the ambient temperatute is. Why not? Do we think our surface temperature sample is infalible with regard to the larger, unsampled population? Why not? Could there be something else happening to our sampe? Could our proxy average be incorrect? Could our ‘adjustments’ be causing the increase? Why not?
But they simly reply; “None at all”
Are there any real scientists working in your organization? “None at all”
Does anyone here believe there is a real ‘truth’ waiting to be discovered? “None at all”
Would any of you be willing to give up your funding, if it meant that there really is no catastrophy threatening all mankind? “None at all”
Is there anyone here who can produce a shread of human dignity, rather than groveling at the Pope’s feet, begging for more funding for research into the heliocentric theory of celestial movement? “None at all”
My five year old is more naturally inquisitive than these “scientists”. Maybe we should defund GISS and NOAA, and just pay him instead. At least he would be inclined to ask ‘why?’ every fifteen seconds until there was some reasonable answer given.
bill (02:29:54) :The data as it stands is all the evidence you have. On what other data would you suggest making a decision that HAS to be made if AGW is a fact (remember you cannot use this temp record to support YOUR theories)?
This is a loaded statement, and seriously incomplete (I won’t say false, but it is forgetful of essentials). Or am I an idiot?
(1) The data as it stands is NOT all the evidence we have (and that’s assuming that we can actually get complete raw data records). Thanks to Anthony, we also now will have evidence regarding the individual siting of every station, both visually and hierarchically regarding their level of compliance with NCDC’s own standards. I don’t know if Anthony has collected records of urbanization history in the general vicinity of stations. But on the basis of Anthony’s data alone, it seems that two important things should be possible for the first time with open records and undeniable statistical significance.
First, a series of longterm temperature graphs can be created, using (a) only rural stations of top class (this would avoid BOTH close-proximity bad siting problems AND district UHI problems); (b) only urban stations of bottom class (c) different combinations. In addition, I’d like to see a fair number of urban transects, to get reliable figures for UHI (or does such already exist??) All this should give a picture of how much total bias has crept in.
Second, it should then be possible to start to QUANTIFY all heat-skewing effects thus revealed, and assign transparently verified corrective factors to biassed stations. This would take time and money but it would be of infinitely more use to have 5 trustworthy stations than 500 untrustworthy stations whose collective growing heat bias had set in motion the most expensive and unwinnable war ever known. THIS COULD BE A PROJECT IN COOPERATION WITH NCDC – if – they choose to say “sorry” “let’s cooperate” “let’s get the best and the most objective science” (a very big “if”).
(2) You need to balance your statement eg thus: On what other data would you suggest making a decision that HAS to be made if AGW is NOT a fact? (And remember, you
cannotcould use a properly purged temp record to show how much warming there has actually been, and during which periods of time)Anthony, I hope you have something like the above in mind. Or am I misreading the purpose of it all?
Mike D. IMHO it would be useful if you could quote some typical animal studies that are (a) BS (bad science) or (b) relevant to a time which was warming, but not happening right now that we’ve got cooling again. Bill says he’s got a paper in press about warming effects on lake life, so I suspect he does know a number of “peer-rev’d” similar studies – they may be warmists, but what matters is nailing any details of their evidence that shows bias etc. However, nofreewind says he HAS monitored changes and finds none of significance, which counterbalances Bill D, and at 19:37:02 he has an interesting ref that provides evidence you might like to check.
Mark Fawcett (03:23:10) :
You play a fine straight bat, good show
Of course we are in an interglacial warm period and prior to getting cold we are on route to tipping it by forcing warmth. Anyone who thinks that almost 7 billion people and our excessive spending of carbon energy hasn’t left a footprint on our planet certainly musta dropped in from say — Pluto. Have a walk in any forest on our planet and many of the specialists are in big trouble ie their habitat is disappearing either because we’ve destroyed it or the climate is forcing them over the edge. And perhaps even more disturbingly our main pollinator the honey bees are dying. Without the bees there’s no chance that our civilization will prosper.
Dr Reese
Dr Reese (14:17:05) :
By what measure of heat output by humans in relation to the total energy received by the Sun is going to tip the planets climate, and how on Earth did you come up with that?
If you are worried about bees, stop spraying the latest noxious chemicals snuck around the FDA by changing a few molecules here & there. I don’t use the stuff and I have tons of bees.
The only thing that has destroyed our forests here is the Eco-radicals that bring suit over every attempt to thin, clear out half-burned vegetation or even manage overgrown stands. They shut it down, got away with it for decades, and oh how it burned over and over.
The amount of fossil fuels burned has nothing to do with it. It was the mismanagement from top to bottom that did the deed. Now that we have a chance to correct it, those same forces want to grind Energy in the US to an economic standstill.
Show me your proof and I’ll show you some historical records in Calif. that says it’s always changing, and has been drier, wetter, hotter and colder in periods in the past, will be in the future, and all AGW agenda is going to accomplish is to destroy whatever monetary reserves this nation has left to cope with changing climate.
Some folks at the top have this delusion that man is responsible for everything on Earth, and only they can save Earth. I say they are as tired of living as they are tired of leading.
They certainly are not looking out for Joe Public nor his bees. The most definately made a horrible mess of our forests trying to save them. They will do the same to the rest of the economy if given the chance…i.e. – run it into the ground. Over what? Computer games and data monkeying. Someone do us all a great big favor and program them a new game:
Planet Hero, complete with cheats for those with the dough.