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
Nick Stokes (02:30:27) :
There are two other analyses of this same data (RomanM and Hpx83) which partially confirm what we have been saying about the adjustments.
The 0.0175C/decade average adjustment actually translates into increasing the trend over time by 0.25C/Century [0.25/2/10 = 0.0175].
Adding and dropping stations that contribute to the trend would also not be taken into account in these figures (which Hpx83 has shown there is an unusual amount of).
http://statpad.wordpress.com/2009/12/12/ghcn-and-adjustment-trends/
http://savecapitalism.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/ghcn-database-adjustments/
It absolutely amazes me how much opinion is offered by the warming worshippers without the benefit of facts.
BradH (04:46:45),
As I understand it, in the US the burden of proof is on the one supposedly being libeled. In the UK it is reversed; the one making the libelous statement must prove that it wasn’t.
So the Economist has the burden of proving that what its blogger wrote was entirely factual; to prove that Willis lied. Willis writes: “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.”
It appears that the Economist’s blogger has deliberately libeled Willis. Forcing them to issue a written apology along with disclosing the writer’s identity could probably be achieved by simply sending a letter to the Economist from a UK based law firm.
But perhaps a public trial would be better, since many of the actors in the AGW issue could be deposed under oath. Not being a lawyer, no doubt I am unaware of many of the legal technicalities. But I do know that UK law is extremely friendly to plaintiffs, making Great Britain the location of choice for “libel tourism.” Neither the plaintiff nor the defendant need reside in the country. All that is necessary is that the publication is circulated in the UK. The Economist certainly qualifies.
As we’ve seen, nothing much can be accomplished in the general AGW debate without the credible threat of the decision being taken out of the hands of the alarmists and their pet media, and being publicly decided by a final authority.
In Willis’ place I would certainly prefer to stick to the science, and forget about legal recourse. The legal profession in general has become a pestilence on society. But the Economist did publicly accuse Willis of lying in their internationally circulated blog, based on nothing more than their blogger’s feelings and false assumptions.
New lead story: This decade is the warmest it has ever been in the past 10 years. Problem is that there are people out there who cannot figure out what that sentence means.
TBH, I’m really surprised and appalled at the conduct of the Economist – to publish this and make no contact with the original author is stunning.
They’ve parked their opinion all over Willis’ reputation without giving him a rebuttal.
I’m not one of their readers but I ALWAYS held their journalism in the highest regard based on years of reputation for integrity. Clearly that was naive of me.
Can anybody point me towards an explanation of which temperature datasets are which, and how they relate to each other?
It seems that the data takes a rather tortuous path before being used.
It seems like there are at least 3 different versions of data at GHCN.
GISS (I think) uses one of these 3 versions, and then adds additional corrections.
CRU uses data from many locations, but a main source is one of the GHCN versions.
The Met Office now has data posted a subset of the CRU data online, but they themselves say it is not clear what adjustments have been made.
The truly raw files — pdfs of the coops station reports for some US reporting stations — are available online somehwere.
===========================
I’m truly confused and would greatly appreciate it if someone that has already figured this out would come forward and put together a tutorial.
Dear Willis,
You said:
“The real problem is the 1920 GHCN adjustment. To cover that a station had to start by 1915. Here’s what I get, comma delimited format. As you can see, the second station on the list is already a thousand km from Darwin.”
As I mentioned above (Kevin (23:08:19)), the Peterson-Easterling paper indicates that the only way in which distance between stations enters into the choice of reference stations is by restricting the search to “the nearest 100 stations to each candidate station.” As mentioned in the comments to the original Smoking Gun post, the 1987 Hansen-Lebedeff paper reaches the conclusion that there can be reasonably strong correlations between stations as far as 1200 km apart; I think you indicated your agreement with that conclusion. It seems that Wyndham Port, Derby, Burketown and Camooweal all fall within 1200 km of Darwin and are available from 1915 onward, with many others just a bit farther. I don’t see that you’ve eliminated the possibility that there are at least two reference stations available to explain the 1920 adjustment.
Thanks,
Kevin
who cares (03:23:39):
“as for the position of “the economist” yes, I’m afraid they’ve taken an AGW stance, but you must remember it’s an economics magazine, they balance risks, costs and credibility.”
If the Economist were so expert at Bayesian decision making, why did that organ spend the 1980s telling us that Mrs Thatcher’s remaking of the UK economy was doomed to fail?
I think we should be told (preferably without misplaced apostrophes).
Phil A,
I had the same question when I looked at the GG post, does the statistical analysis take into effect when adjustments are made(?) As pointed out, station drop out is another issue all together as is UHI… then add to that the uptrend in solar intensity (you can see it on NOAA’s new climate.gov site, where they say it can only explain 10% of observed warming) and I’d be very curious if the unexplained warming was even in the margin of error of the instruments.
CodeTech and Smokey,
Whoever that poster on the Economist was with the Department of Obesity stuff.. it was sarcastic. In the comments section of the article we’re discussing the same guy posted a remarkably eloquent skeptical statement. We should get him to come visit here
“Jack in Oregon (11:03:34) :
I believe what we need to do now is to start a surfacestation type project that is focused on finding the raw daily data for the actual surfacestations around the world. Since we can not trust the data anymore, and we cant trust the custodians of the data, lets build an open source, station by station database of the RAW daily data.
A rebuilding of the US records data base with the original data is necessary. a PDF of the original data for each station with a txt file holding the same raw data, with a google map location for the station….
This would allow us to build a public wiki type project around the raw data. If we can get auditors for Australia and N.Z. locations to show what the known fudges are there. We can make this a global audit of public data base of raw temps….
Its time to FREE the DATA, MAKE it PUBLIC, and than we can argue about WHAT steps are applied to it.”
Brilliant idea.
>>The Economist, which has been around for well over 100 years, has a policy of anonymity, and always has as far as I know. Whether the journalists and bloggers are happy with this or would prefer to write under their own names is irrelevant; the choice has been made for them. I also doubt the ire over the URL is warranted, as I expect someone other than the journalist / blogger made that selection. Your article would have been stronger if you had refrained from these pointless criticisms.
Nonsense. If you are going to publish an article in a widely distributed paper accusing another of being ignorant and deceitful then you should at least have the stones to put your name to the piece. Hiding behind a convenient “policy” is no defense and Mr. Eschenbach’s fact filled rebuttal loses nothing with the addition of some well placed barbs.
As Mr. Eschenbach points out the pro-warming crowd has been hiding their data, their techniques and their review process for years. Were this just an academic argument I and probably most wouldn’t care. But they are using their claims in an attempt to alter the world economy in mindboggling ways, affecting all of us. A little righteous anger, hell, a lot of righteous anger at this entire process is way overdue.
hahaha this guys whole argument is that we should only trust peer review… aparently he only read select emails.
Manfred (21:43:57) :
“The mathematical skills of many of those scientists responsible for historic data records have already been assessed indepedently by a high profile team of statisticians (the Wegman commission) a few years ago:
http://climateaudit.org/2007/11/06/the-wegman-and-north-reports-for-newbies/
Referring to the criticism of McIntyre and McKitrick of hockey-stick reconstructions, those professional scientists “tended to dismiss their results as being developed by biased amateurs”.
The Wegman commission, however, concluded differently:
“While the work of Michael Mann and colleagues presents what appears to be compelling evidence of global temperature change, the criticisms of McIntyre and McKitrick, as well as those of other authors mentioned are indeed valid.”
Their judgement about the quality of the professional scientist’s work was quite revealing:
“The papers of Mann et al. in themselves are written in a confusing manner, making it difficult for the reader to discern the actual methodology and what uncertainty is actually associated with these reconstructions.
It is not clear that Dr. Mann and his associates even realized that their methodology was faulty at the time of writing the [Mann] paper.”
“I am baffled by the claim that the incorrect method doesn’t matter because the answer is correct anyway.
Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science.”
“It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical community.”
“A cardinal rule of statistical inference is that the method of analysis must be decided before looking at the data. The rules and strategy of analysis cannot be changed in order to obtain the desired result. Such a strategy carries no statistical integrity and cannot be used as a basis for drawing sound inferential conclusions.”
If you still think, that was just an “exception”, but at least their algorithms to compute the global temperature data have somehow been elaborated and implemented much more skillful and careful, have a look at their computer code and particularly the inline commments:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/climategate-hide-the-decline-codified/
“OH FUCK THIS. It’s Sunday evening, I’ve worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done I’m
hitting yet another problem that’s based on the hopeless state of our databases. There is no uniform
data integrity, it’s just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they’re found.”
“Here, the expected 1990-2003 period is MISSING – so the correlations aren’t so hot! Yet
the WMO codes and station names /locations are identical (or close). What the hell is
supposed to happen here? Oh yeah – there is no ’supposed’, I can make it up. So I have :-)”
“getting seriously fed up with the state of the Australian data. so many new stations have been
introduced, so many false references.. so many changes that aren’t documented. Every time a
cloud forms I’m presented with a bewildering selection of similar-sounding sites, some with
references, some with WMO codes, and some with both. And if I look up the station metadata with
one of the local references, chances are the WMO code will be wrong (another station will have
it) and the lat/lon will be wrong too.”
“I am very sorry to report that the rest of the databases seem to be in nearly as poor a state as
Australia was. There are hundreds if not thousands of pairs of dummy stations, one with no WMO
and one with, usually overlapping and with the same station name and very similar coordinates. I
know it could be old and new stations, but why such large overlaps if that’s the case? Aarrggghhh!
There truly is no end in sight.”
“Wrote ‘makedtr.for’ to tackle the thorny problem of the tmin and tmax databases not
being kept in step. Sounds familiar, if worrying. am I the first person to attempt
to get the CRU databases in working order?!!”
and many more…”
Thanks Manfred – lest we forget…
Also, I think it reveals the depths of your disingenuousness (is that a word?) when you accuse the Economist of publishing an “unsigned article.” All articles in the Economist are unsigned. You know this of course, but are simply using inflammatory rhetoric to make the magazine seem cowardly.
REPLY: Newsflash there anonymous “WAG”, it IS cowardly to publish public opinion unsigned. Words and actions have consequences. Just saying it is “policy” to write this way is no defense for ducking responsibility.
At least your cowardice is slightly less than that of the Economist, you have a handle, so regular reader at least know what your body of commentary sums up to. Economist readers have no such ability to evaluate the writers. – Anthony Watts
The Economist! What do they know about economics where were they when they were needed, of course they predicted through thorough investigative journalism the demise of the Sub-Prime market and the global banking crisis?
The Economist! What do they know about climate, I suppose soem of their journos get wet in some places and hot in other places.
WAG,
How would you feel if a major international publication had named you personally and accused you of being a liar, for something you wrote not in the Economist, but on a website in another country? Would you just ignore it, thus appearing to confirm their false and widely publicized accusation that you are dishonest? Would you not mind that hit to your reputation?
This isn’t about WUWT, this is about deliberate mendacity. Why are you being the Economist’s apologist? Do you condone their actions?
The graph of adjustments on this article is different to the one on the original article.
Why the change?
“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.”
Sorry the original graph shows a 1941 adjustment.
Why does the graph on this page show a different set of adjustments?
dorlomin (10:50:09)
Look again, you’re wrong.
Willis Eschenbach (01:19:41) :
That’s outstanding, janama, a key piece. Where did you get it?
Willis this is the data that Torok used back in 1999 and it states his methodology.
you can find it all here:
ftp://ftp2.bom.gov.au/anon/home/bmrc/perm/climate/temperature/annual/
“The files in this subdirectory are associated with the Australian
High Quality Temperature Data Set
The directory should contain these files
UNIX FORMAT
readme ‘This file’
method.utx ‘Outline of the method used to prepare the data sets.’
alladj.utx.Z ‘List of adjustments made to the data
and reasons for adjustment.’
finaln.utx.Z ‘Data file of minimum temperatures’
fianlx.utx.Z ‘Data file of maximum temperatures’
Files ending in .Z have been compressed using the unix compress
command. To uncompress them type uncompress FILENAME at the
unix promt once you have transferred the file to your system.
All the data goes back to the late1800s and up to 1993.
here’s the Darwin data taken from the files.
http://users.tpg.com.au/johnsay1/Stuff/Darwin_T.png
“
One of the commenters mentioned a “most important posts” sticky. You could probably post that in the right sidebar somewhere. Maybe a “Are you new to this blog? Check here to get up to speed” section or one for the layman, “If you’re new to all this, start here:”
As for the unsigned article, well, it was probably a staff article and was, therefore, probably more or less official Economist position on the issue. You’ll note that in your local newspaper those aren’t signed either. Only the guest articles/editorials are signed.
WAG (10:00:05) :
In addition to Anthony’s comments on your posting, I have one myself. I am astounded at how many people out there claim to have insight into my mental processes. No, I don’t “know this of course”, that is your perturbed fantasy about my lack of knowledge. I have read the Economist for years, but never noticed that the articles were unsigned … so sue me. When you assume that you have god-like omniscience regarding what others know and don’t know, you just make yourself look foolish.
In any case, my issue is not cowardice. It is the lack of fact checking in the article. A simple email to me would have cleared the air immensely.
dorlomin (10:50:09) :
The graph above is Figure 9 from the original article. Not sure which “original graph” you are talking about.
w.
Regarding Giorgio’s histogram, why is there this implicit assumption that a number near zero somehow validates the GHCN adjustments?
Personally, I would have thought that the UHI (or Airport HI as per Chiefio) should mean we should be getting a negative number per decade.
Anyway, regardless of my own views, the question remains. Why and on what grounds does an average of zero provide evidence that there is no bias or error in the adjustments?
Phil A (05:23:59) :
Have you tried weighting the adjustments by year,
What I did, and what I believe Giorgio did, was linear regression, which really does just that. This histogram is a diagram of the slopes.
The R code has now been posted at Giorgio’s site.