Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
This replaced the previous sticky, and I have this comment about the Economist. Bad form and unprofessional to use the word “denialists”. For WUWT readers who wish to complain: letters@economist.com or use their online form here. – Anthony
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE ECONOMIST
On Dec 11th, the Economist published an unsigned article attacking both me and my work. This open letter is my reply.
TO: The Person Unwilling to Sign Their Economist Article
Dear Sir or Madam;
Recently, you wrote a scathing article about me in the Economist discussing my post called The Smoking Gun At Darwin Zero. Some of it was deserved, but most was undeserved and false. The URL for your unprinicpled attack is http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/12/trust_scientists … trust_scientists? Trust_scientists?? Have you read the CRU emails?
But I digress … you begin by quoting from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, viz:
A change in the type of thermometer shelter used at many Australian observation sites in the early 20th century resulted in a sudden drop in recorded temperatures which is entirely spurious. It is for this reason that these early data are currently not used for monitoring climate change. Other common changes at Australian sites over time include location moves, construction of buildings or growth of vegetation around the observation site and, more recently, the introduction of Automatic Weather Stations.
The impacts of these changes on the data are often comparable in size to real climate variations, so they need to be removed before long-term trends are investigated.
While this is true, it doesn’t apply. None of the GHCN adjustments are from any of those sources. This is because the GHCN does not adjust for location moves. Nor does it adjust for construction of buildings, nor for any of the other items listed. The GHCN uses none of those to make its adjustments. So all of that is totally meaningless.
Next, you say the “explanation for the dramatic change in 1941 is simple”:
As previously advised, the main temperature station moved to the radar station at the newly built Darwin airport in January 1941. The temperature station had previously been at the Darwin Post Office in the middle of the CBD, on the cliff above the port. Thus, there is a likely factor of removal of a slight urban heat island effect from 1941 onwards. However, the main factor appears to be a change in screening. The new station located at Darwin airport from January 1941 used a standard Stevenson screen. However, the previous station at Darwin PO did not have a Stevenson screen. Instead, the instrument was mounted on a horizontal enclosure without a back or sides. The postmaster had to move it during the day so that the direct tropical sun didn’t strike it! Obviously, if he forgot or was too busy, the temperature readings were a hell of a lot hotter than it really was.
This might make sense if there were any “dramatic change in 1941”. But as I clearly stated in my article, <b>there is no such dramatic change</b>. The drop in temperature was gradual and lasted from 1936 to 1940. The change from 1940 to 1941 was quite average. So that claim of yours is nonsense as well. In any case, the change in screening did not coincide with the 1941 move. In my article I cited a reference to a picture of a Stevenson Screen in use in Darwin at the turn of the century. Perhaps you didn’t bother to read that.
So, to sum up your first arguments, changes in the Stevenson Screens and other local conditions cannot be the explanation for any of the GHCN adjustments because 1) the GHCN doesn’t use local conditions to make adjustments and 2) the timing of the screen change is wrong. In addition, there was no “dramatic change in 1941”.Next, you point out two actual mistakes I did make.
First, in my proofreading I did not catch that I that I had written “the 1941 adjustment” when I meant the 1930 adjustment. That should have been obvious to me, because there is no 1941 GHCN adjustment. My bad.
Second, I had said that the Darwin temperature data couldn’t have been adjusted by using the GHCN method. This method requires five neighboring stations to which Darwin can be compared. Why couldn’t the GHCN method be used? I said it was because in the earlier time periods like the 1930s, there were no such stations covering that time period within 500 km of Darwin. I was wrong, it fact there is one such station.
Neither of these errors of mine affect my point, which is that there are not enough neighboring stations to adjust Darwin using the main GHCN method. The GHCN folks mention this possibility, saying:
Also, not all stations could be adjusted. Remote stations for which we could not produce an adequate reference series (the correlation between first-difference station time series and its reference time series must be 0.80 or greater) were not adjusted. The homogeneity-adjusted version of GHCN includes only those stations that were deemed homogeneous and those stations we could reliably adjust to make them homogeneous.
Unfortunately, they adjusted Darwin anyway. Consider the GHCN adjustment in 1920. To find five stations around Darwin covering 1920, you have to go out 1,250 km. Nor is there any guarantee that those stations will be suitable. You need to have five stations with an 80% correlation with the Darwin record … I wish you the best of luck finding those five stations.
So while my statement about stations nearer than Daly Waters was wrong as you point out (there is one nearer station that covers the 1930 adjustment), my point was correct – there are not enough neighboring stations to adjust Darwin using the GHCN method. The first GHCN adjustment to Darwin was a single year adjustment in 1901. To get five “neighboring” stations for that adjustment, you have to go out 1728 km. You fail to deal with that issue at all. Instead, you say:
“So is it reasonable, if the GHCN is using complex statistical tools to adjust the temperature readings at Darwin based on surrounding stations, that they might come up with the figures they came up with? Sure. No. Yes. I have no idea. And neither does Mr Eschenbach. Because in order to judge that, you would have to have a graduate-level understanding of statistical modeling. … I don’t understand that formula. I don’t have the math for it.”
“Surrounding stations”? We’re talking about stations a thousand km away and more, not surrounding stations.
And while I am sorry to hear of the lacunae in your math education, please don’t make the foolish assumption that others are similarly limited. I have no problem with the GHCN math. If you truly have no idea on the question as you say … then why are you excoriating my ideas on the question?
Nor is it inherently a complex question. The question is, should temperatures more than a thousand km away from Darwin be used to arbitrarily adjust Darwin’s temperature by a huge amount? You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out.
Next, as an aside you make the scurrilously false statement that I said that claims of damage due to sea level rise in Tuvalu “stemmed from attempts by locals to blame subsidence problems on the developed world, and cash in on it”. I said no such thing nor do I believe it. The claims stemmed from misguided environmentalists.
Next, you say “He makes it sound as if he’s just happened to stumble across this one site whilst perusing a debate over climate change in northern Australia. But as his link to that conversation from 2000 makes clear, Mr Eschenbach is already aware that climate change denialists have been trumpeting the apparent anomalies at Darwin for nine years.” BZZZZT, poor understanding of the implications of chronology. I looked up the conversation after I stumbled across Darwin. How dare you accuse me of lying? As I said, I went to AIS to see if what Professor Karlen had said was true. I called up a list of all of the stations in Australia that covered 1900-2000. Darwin was the first on the list, so that’s the one I looked at. Try it and see. You accusation is both wrong and totally unfounded.
“[Climate change denialists] do so because of that errant data at Darwin from before 1941, which makes it look as though there was a cooling trend there. The fact that climate-change researchers have to do a particularly strong correction on the data at Darwin, because they moved their dang instruments from the downtown post office to the airport, makes Darwin a perfect place to look for support if you want to claim that climate-change scientists are cooking the data.”
While a correction in Darwin is perhaps necessary, it is cannot be because they “moved their dang instruments” in January of 1941. LOOK AT THE DATA. There is no big change in January of 1941. It occurred gradually over the previous five years. So your theory falls apart upon the simplest examination of the facts.
Next you say: “Average guys with websites can do a lot of amazing things. One thing they cannot do is reveal statistical manipulation in climate-change studies that require a PhD in a related field to understand.”
Your understanding of statistics is as poor as your understanding of chronology. The statistics used by GHCN are average college level tools. You are dazzled by the fact that you don’t understand them, so you make the incredibly foolish assumption that no one without “a PhD in a related field” can understand them either. Some of us actually paid attention in class, you know.
Finally, you use your closing arguments to cheerlead for peer review. Curiously, I agree with you in theory … but the peer review system in climate science is badly broken. First, as the CRU emails clearly show, it has been subjected to enormous “old-boy” pressures to pass through bad studies without a second glance, and to deny opposing papers a fair hearing. How do you think we got the Hockeystick and its cousins? Here’s Phil Jones from the emails, talking about keeping peer-reviewed papers out of the IPCC report:
I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!
And you give your article the URL “trust_scientists”???
Second, the peer-review system is ripe for abuse. This is because the reviewers often know who the author is, while the reviewers (like you) hide in anonymity. This invites malfeasance. The system needs to be changed so that after the review, the [authors] sign their names to the paper as well as reviewers. At present, we have no way of knowing whether the paper was seriously reviewed by inquiring scientists, or simply passed through by the authors friends.
So I, like you, support peer review. I just want a peer review system that works. It must be double blind during the review period, with neither the reviewers nor the author knowing the others’ names. And the reviewers should reveal their names at the end, so that we know it wasn’t just the author’s best mates doing the author a favor.
Since we have an easily manipulated system instead of a real peer review system, I opt for public peer review by putting my work on the web. This lets anyone, even anonymous innumerates like yourself, register your objections.
Finally, the Economist did not contact me before publishing an article full of false accusations, incorrect assumptions and wrong statements … looks like peer review is not the only system in trouble here. I thought journalists were under an obligation to check their facts before making accusations …
Willis Eschenbach
Does this help? Quote from article.
‘The new station located at Darwin airport from January 1941 used a standard Stevenson screen. However, the previous station at Darwin PO did not have a Stevenson screen. Instead, the instrument was mounted on a horizontal enclosure without a back or sides.’
Incorrect. Go to:-
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=302
Scroll down to see a picture of a Stevenson Shield at Darwin PO in 1890. I don’t know about the back but it does have one side.
I just arrived in thread, and haven’t scanned it fully, but surely someone made the point to [i]The Economist[/i] that any corporation whose accountants revised long past revenue records downwards to create the false impression of impressive growth to boost its current stock price would find itself in deep, deep trouble.
All this makes me wonder whether weather station volunteers will be in increasingly short supply since their diligent efforts at accurately recording data each and every day produce a record that’s given less respect than toilet paper. If the data is going to be thrown away or distorted beyond recognition, why not just flip to the Weather Channel, pop open a beer, make a guess about local conditions, and write it down instead of getting up off the couch and heading out to the calibrated thermometer?
I’d say the science is settled:
Associated Press article:
AP IMPACT: Science not faked, but not pretty
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gRa5F7Lv_zO0ZKaHmbQENlyV3KdgD9CHUS980
janama (15:16:22) :
I think it is most unlikely that GHCN uses BoM adjusted data. There’s no evidence that they do, and it wouldn’t be consistent with their methodology. And you can check the case of Darwin – BoM adjusted, like GHCN adjusted, has an uptrend – GHCN raw has a downtrend.
Will,
I normally just lurk and don’t post much because I have nothing of value to add in the science area, but I do have something of value to say about your rebuttal. First, well done on the merits of the argument. But second, your response is probably more likely to receive a favorable hearing and thus publication if you take out the emotionally loaded terms like scurrilous and the disparaging remarks about the writer’s math skills. Just rebut the arguments on the merits and leave the drama out. They won’t be able to hear what you are saying through the anger. Just a thought. Get a good night’s sleep and do a rewrite.
In your 4th last paragraph don’t you mean should be signed by reviewers as well as authors
temperature does not equal heat.To me you would need a graph of temperature plotted versus time for a 24 hour day and the area under the curve would give a accurate value of what is really happening.
I actually think that the “emotionally loaded” language is somewhat appropriate, as the tone of the Economist article is condescending and the anonymous author, despite his lack of maths skills, bemoans the idea that he’ll have to personally debunk, at the cost of many hours’ work, future articles that reveal the bias of station temperature adjustments. Of course, he has no intention of doing this. I think it is fair to draw readers’ attention to his hypocrisy in slagging Eschenbach’s honest work, all the while appealing to the authority of established climate scientists and their peer reviewed work, due to his own lack of credentials in either stats or climatology. I am way out of practice, but do have the memory of the general content of a first-year science stats course, and agree that there’s no need for a Ph.D to do this stuff.
Mr. Cowardly Anonymous says:
““Average guys with websites can do a lot of amazing things. One thing they cannot do is reveal statistical manipulation in climate-change studies that require a PhD in a related field to understand.”
I would suppose that depends on the average guy. Regardless, there has been a lot of people with degrees in “related fields,” if not the field itself, uncovering a lot of “statistical manipulation in climate change studies.”
This we know for a fact.
Aw snap!
Way to go Willis! LOL
The methodology GHCN uses I mastered in my third year of high school. The author at the economist is borne of ignorance as the author himself writes.
Willis,
On your argument about five nearby stations – as I read the overview doc, they describe three techniques for diminishing homogeneities in the reference series. The second and third use five neighbors (the third selected three), but it doesn’t seem that you have to be able to use all three techniques.
In the 1941 change, there are more details in my post (05:11:33) 12/11 on the other thread. Apparently there were problems at the PO prior to the 1941 move with trees shadowing the measurement site, which caused cooling and accentuated the discontinuity of the move. The description there by the Australian scientist (Blair) is helpful.
As you say, GHCN does not correct on the basis of known events. But it tries to detect and estimate these events, and so one hopes they will show up in the corrections. The year may be wrong, but the general effect should correspond. As Ripper (21:00:43) pointed out on the other thread, BoM does correct using metadata events, which he listed. I commented further at (03:38:08) 12/12. The general pattern of their corrections is somewhat like GHCN inferred, although the years are fairly different.
But of course, the big issue is the analysis of Giorgio Gilestro.
Sorry Willis, I don’t quite follow this phrase:
“…so that after the review, the reviewers sign their names to the paper as well as reviewers.”
Nick – my point was that the data on the ftp site I linked is 1999 data – before the second BoM adjustment made in 2004.
Plus – the site lists all the changes from the raw data that were made and why.
The Economist has a running debate series. Anyone can participate. This week’s debate question:
“This house believes that governments should play a stronger role in guiding food and nutrition choices”
Other debate questions are equally lame or ridiculous. Compared with the commenters on WUWT, the folks voting on the question and the posted comments seem to have been educated on television and not much else. It’s a shame, because the Economist used to be a very free market, libertarian-type of publication. A good antidote to rags like Newsweek. But then they became infected with the AGW virus, and it’s been downhill ever since.
Here is the comment that currently has the highest number of votes in this Economist debate:
Willis, you are running circles around your critics.
“Because in order to judge that, you would have to have a graduate-level understanding of statistical modeling. … I don’t understand that formula. I don’t have the math for it.”
Sounds like Gavin’s work then.
This might make sense if there were any “dramatic change in 1941?. But as I clearly stated in my article, there is no such dramatic change. The drop in temperature was gradual and lasted from 1936 to 1940. The change from 1940 to 1941 was quite average. So that claim of yours is nonsense as well. In any case, the change in screening did not coincide with the 1941 move. In my article I cited a reference to a picture of a Stevenson Screen in use in Darwin at the turn of the century. Perhaps you didn’t bother to read that
Are you sure you are not looking at yearly data and filtered when you state there is no change in 1941 and that there was a slow change over a number of years?
My plots clearly show a 1941 January drop. There is also a June-July 1994 drop of similar size
http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/9677/darwingissghcn.png
http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/2505/darwincorrectionpoints.png
You claim that the stevenson screen was in place in 1880s
however John daly’s page
http://www.john-daly.com/darwin.htm
Says that the screen was installed in 1941.
Compare this photo on warwick hughes’ page
http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri/darwin1890.jpg
to
http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/218/darwinpostofficebombed.png
War Correspondent Robert Sherrod, od Time magazine, in front
of the remains of the Darwin Post Office in June 1942
http://www.sandgate.net/~dunn/darwin02.htm
These do not look the same construction of building
the 1880 building looks more modern than the 1942
the 1880 is single storey the 1942 has at least one first floor room.
The 1942 building has solid stone walls. The 1880s building has more glass!
Do you still think these are the same?
pby (A Catalina?)
temperature does not equal heat.To me you would need a graph of temperature plotted versus time for a 24 hour day and the area under the curve would give a accurate value of what is really happening
I come from an engineering background and just want to roll my eyes at what they’ve been trying to get away with, from simplifying the shallow water equations which don’t even include a vertical dimension and violate even Newtonian mechanics (and which were written by a guy who wore a powdered wig and tube socks) to using the Navier-Stokes equation to model climate, even though Navier-Stokes is completely invalid when condensation or evaporation are occuring.
Then there’s the calculation of the Earth’s radiative balance in which they crunch through Stefan-Boltzman with the Earth’s average temperature of 287.15 Kelvin to get 385.5 W/m^2, whereas I can posit a planet with twice the sunlit temperature and absolute zero on the dark side, keeping the average temperature exactly the same, and get exactly 8000% more radiation output, assuming of course that both planets are blackbodies, which is itself invalid.
Then there’s the almost complete ignorance of what goes on in the thermosphere, which shoots up from four to six Earth radii throughout the day, falling back down at night, which indicates a massive amount of radiative output above the altitude of low-Earth satellites. Upper atmospheric lightning questions (sprites), the question of what the South Atlantic Anomaly (where the Van Allen belt touches the atmosphere) does to the charge distribution of the atmosphere and how that might feed back into cloud formation (and which should vary over the same timescale as the solar wind superimposed over the wandering of the magnetic poles).
There are so many fundamental questions in climate science that have been tossed aside to give the appearance of certainty about CO2 that the field is suffering.
Smokey, if that article you quoted is anything other than sarcasm, then I think it’s time to openly panic in the streets!!!!
OK, who’s going to debunk this?
http://www.startribune.com/science/79122057.html
The Economist article has been posted at Slashdot. http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/12/12/2246208/The-Limits-To-Skepticism
“the reviewers sign their names to the paper as well as reviewers. ”
Not sure if that is what you meant. Cheers.
REPLY: Typo – he meant authors – fixed thanks -A
Willis,
Don’t get all worked up about the “anonymous” author in the Economist. They are all anonymous and always have been. The economist never publishes the author’s name for normal articles. I suspect many are not written by an individual anyway.
Concentrate on the science involved. And the lack of willingness of the economist to use someone with even halfway decent maths to cover a science story. But not the name, as that is a non-issue.
Nick Stokes
Maybe it’s just me, but gg’s analysis looks more interesting if you blow it up a bit.
http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/448/histogram.jpg
This has been batted around a little elsewhere (I think Ryan O first brought it up at the Air Vent, but RomanM also mentions it). A 0.017 deg/decade adjustment bias is not insignificant.
As I pointed out at gg’s site, HadCRUT3 has a 1900-2000 trend of ~0.65 deg/century.