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
Do none of you get the hypocrisy of criticizing the RAW data for siting errors while simultaneously saying that adjusting for those errors constitutes fraud
Do none of you get any red flags from warming adjustments being applied to stations whose bad siting calls for cooling adjustments?
Fredrik,
Your logic escapes me completely, if blogs like this did not exist there would be far less awareness of the fraud and fakery within the climate science cabal.
Its as if you are trying to say that the victims of the fraud are to blame for exposing the fraudsters?
Perhaps you are saying that the minority of fraudsters who have brought shame and dishonour to the whole scientific community should be protected in order to save the reputations of the majority of scientists who did not partake of fraud/rent seeking/manipulation/fakery and greasy pole climbing but stayed silent to protect their own positions? All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
I
looks like “climategate” autosuggest completely taken off google news now. You have to type the whole word. Its obvious google is involved in suppresiing its further dissemination
WAG, adjusting for the errors does not constitute fraud. That’s good science. Adjusting for the errors in an obviously fraudulent manner; now, that’s fraud.
You need only one to wreck everything!
from the Times
“One scientist told The Times he felt under pressure to sign. “The Met Office is a major employer of scientists and has long had a policy of only appointing and working with those who subscribe to their views on man-made global warming,” he said. “
Like reports of Mark Twain’s death, predictions of the imminent demise of AGW are premature. The debate is only beginning.
Those of you making this claim are no different than those predicting a 3 foot rise in sea levels by the end of the century. The truth needs to be discovered. You can’t just throw mud at a theory and expect it to be disproved. This is something for the scientists to hash out. The good news is that the reins of the debate are now being freed from the internal control of the IPCC, CRU, the Met Office, GISSS, etc.
Now, on the subject of coercive implementation of policy, that is worth fighting tooth and nail against. No one here is more outraged than I by the recent EPA finding. Until the science is truly settled, nothing should be done to harm economies by imposing draconian solutions.
Cassandra King:
“Your logic escapes me completely, if blogs like this did not exist there would be far less awareness of the fraud and fakery within the climate science cabal.”
There is a post right now about Peter and his dad; they’ve found a huge UHI signal. This signal is due to a bug in peter and his dad’s spreadsheet. When this bug is fixed the result from the spreadsheet will be probably be in line with the scientific consensus: UHI has a minor impact. I mean, think about it, such a huge signal would have been picked up a long time ago by the math savvy people at climate audit if nothing else.
The problem is that an endless stream of accusations of fraud will be produced here about the official temp record. My guess is that the sum of the legit points will have about 0 impact on the actual records, and the majority of the accusations will have as much merit as the you tube film by Peter and his dad. So, we will have 100 accusations of fraud, and 0 impact on the official record. What would be a sensible conclusion? Well, maybe that there was no fraud to begin with, but It seems that no one here will ever reach that conclusion, instead they will look at the 100 accusation and conclude that the official record is falsified 100 times, while the truth of the matter is that the official record has been vindicated 100 times. That is a huge problem.
Warwick Hughes Disagrees with Some of Willis’ Assessment…
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=357
Fredrick wrote: There is a post right now about Peter and his dad; they’ve found a huge UHI signal. This signal is due to a bug in peter and his dad’s spreadsheet. When this bug is fixed the result from the spreadsheet will be probably be in line with the scientific consensus: UHI has a minor impact. I mean, think about it, such a huge signal would have been picked up a long time ago by the math savvy people at climate audit if nothing else.
——————————————
If you chose a specific location, say, a street corner in London, and had a temperature reading from say, Dec. 10th, 1880 and another one from this morning, how would you correlate them? How can you possibly say that conditions today would require a 1 or 2 or 3 degree adjustment with any level of certainty? And the same goes for the countryside where forests may have been cleared for development.
How can you possibly do this with any sense of certitude? Given that uncertainty, how can you possibly predict what temperature will be in fifty or a hundred years with any confidence whatsoever?
And, on the subject of “bugs,” what about the “bugs” noted by hapless Harry
in CRU’s code?
As for your “guess,” until all these issues are adequately explained, it’s as worthless as any 100 year prediction of imminent catastrophe.
Has temperature risen? Probably, although not even that is adequately proven given all the secrecy surrounding the data and code. Has it risen because of CO2 emissions? Correlation is not causation.
Given some of the monstrous solutions to solve a problem that has not adequately been identified, skepticism is the only wholly defensible position at this point in the debate.
Fredrick, a peer reviewed paper by McKitrick has already shown at least 1/2 of the warming in the US id due to UHI
Fredrik (10:07:39) :
Cassandra King:
“Your logic escapes me completely, if blogs like this did not exist there would be far less awareness of the fraud and fakery within the climate science cabal.”
There is a post right now about Peter and his dad; they’ve found a huge UHI signal. This signal is due to a bug in peter and his dad’s spreadsheet. When this bug is fixed the result from the spreadsheet will be probably be in line with the scientific consensus: UHI has a minor impact. I mean, think about it, such a huge signal would have been picked up a long time ago by the math savvy people at climate audit if nothing else.
________________________________________________________________________
And it was noticed a LONG time ago. Go look at the surface stations pages. The issues addressed by siting weather stations are a serious part of UHI (pavement, a/c systems, cars, buildings, land use).
I can see why there are reasons to adjust the temperature readings downwards (urban developments and proximity to other heat inducing constructions). I can also see that the use of lower level stations would indicate a heat reduction. What changes to station circumstances would make an upward adjustment in temperature plausible?
Fredrik,
Thanks for taking the time to reply to my post, you seem to think that the leaked emails and documents contain no proof of fraud and fakery yet the ‘Harry read me’ file is explicit and damning alone, the refusal to publish raw data for years and the collusion between US GISS and CRU is a fact.
The historical temperature record has yet to be verified, the raw data has been subjected to manipulation, it has become a synthesised product from the raw data that isnt available and the method of manipulation which is not available. In effect the CRU temperature series is a finished product using unknown ingredients and unknown manufacturing methods, this is a known fact BTW. Are we to blindly trust what feels like a scam, looks like a scam and uses the methods of a scam simply because those with most to gain and most to hide simply state that their data is correct and are we to trust the unverified word of those who have done so much to bring doubt and suspicion on their own heads?
If the CRU had nothing to hide then why on earth did they move heaven and earth to hide so much? If the CRU had nothing to fear then why did they try so hard to mislead and lie?
The huge and lasting damage to the scientific community is being caused by a minority of bad apples within a corrupted system NOT by those who seek the truth, most here only want the truth to emerge, we all want to trust scientists and we all want to know that the facts will be laid out for all to see, sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Frankly I would be happy if there were no fraud and fakery involved but until the day comes when we can know for sure then I continue to have my doubts.
You confidently state that there will be zero impact on the official record, I wish I had your confidence my friend, we neither of us know what the outcome will be do we? I suspect that if the MWP can be erased then there is more to this particular pudding than meets the eye, time will tell all.
You article on the Darwin station makes great reading. How possible would it be to simplify this so that a number of volunteers could so similar work to look at other station data? At least to the point where we could generate a graph showing raw data and the adjusted data and the adjustment amount?
Do you guys see the eco-nazis invading Moncktons speech with banners and chants? How come if the skeptics were to do this at the alarmist speeches they would get pulled out by security?
Philip Madams (11:53:42) :
I can see why there are reasons to adjust the temperature readings downwards (urban developments and proximity to other heat inducing constructions). I can also see that the use of lower level stations would indicate a heat reduction. What changes to station circumstances would make an upward adjustment in temperature plausible?
———————————————————–
A related question would be: why would they adjust early temperature readings downward, which I’ve heard is also and adjustment device that they use? Like you, if I might presume to know the thinking behind your question, to me it seems counter-intuitive to adjust the present data upwards and the historic data downwards.
My Christmas present this year is Climategate. I don’t need or want anything else. I want to give as a present a DVD titled “ClimateGate: Everything They Didn’t Want You to Know” to everyone I know. When the ask, who are they? I’ll say, watch the movie.
I need you to help me with this. Can we put together a Climategate video we can burn to DVD from a torrent file of the information we have so far? The movie can always be revised in the future. Lots of snow blizzard scenes and stuff about the Solar Minimum in it. I need your feedback on this. Please address this comment directly with your feedback. Can we do this?
Thank You
MJN
Philip,
It is easy to check station and determine what changes they made, but not why they did it.
First, go to the GISS web site: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/
First get the raw data by selecting: “after combining data at same location” option.
Then select an area on the map. I chose the area I have lived in for a very long time.
Pick the station you want to analyze.. click on it.
Near the bottom left is an option to “Download monthly data as text”
Click on this, it will display on the screen the data in monthly and annaul summary format.
Select all the data by CTRL-A on your keyboard. Copy it with CTRL-C.
Open Excel. Copy the data to Excel by CTRL-V.
Select in Excel on the DATA menu, TEXT TO COLUMNS. just follow the defaults…you now have the data in excel.
Now go back to the first GISS page with the map and selection “after homogenity adjustment ” option. Click on the map, find your station, and do repeat “Download Monthly data as text” and copy to Excel.
Then if you subratct the Raw temps from the Homogenized temps and plot you can get exactly the adjustments either by annual or monthly.
You can use the Excel charting tool to plot the raw vs adjusted and put in trend lines to see how they changed it or not. Linear trend for general direction. Polynomial for curve fitting.
The other thing you can do is look at NCDC for each station (use the id to make sure it is exactly the same one.) You can then see if the station history has any reason for the adjustments. I found zero correlations so far.
In my case for California, they took what was a mixed bag of up and down trends (no surprise the growing cities were up and rural was flat to slightly down). The end result was all stations suddenly conformed to a curve that look suspicuously like the main global trend curve.
They are certainly “homogenizing” in my area….. all the curves are being driven to the same story. That story is the main theme on the overall GISS pages. Then they go back and say all the data agrees with the summary. Nice circular confirmation.
I’m hoping others will be encouraged to the same so we can compare. I was expecting “hide the decline” I found instead “we are the borg and your output will conform” …:-).
When someone puts in unexplained data adjustments as large or larger than the change they are claiming to detect, and those changes cause the data to conform better to their predictions when before it did not full conform…..It is not a very convincing argument.
Good luck.
“Ripper (20:16:06) :
I will do the mean minimums later on when I get time”
Is there any possibility you could look for a discordance with respect to June and December in the two data sets. A truely sick individual like myself would ‘homogenize’ june differently from december to generate the largest max/min, but leaving the smallest foot prints. Indeed, just who is going to look for slight differences in months.
So pretty please; compare June and December; as well as the yearly averages.
There seems to be a discrepancy in the BOM records re raw data and their anomaly graphs in their Australian high-quality climate site data. A blogger on Andrew Bolt’s site noticed that when the mean temp for Cape Otway Lighthouse station was calculated from the raw data it was not reflected in the anomaly map.
I checked Yamba Pilot Station (NSW Australia) and found a similar discrepancy straight away.
1915 had a max av temp of 23.6C and a min av temp 0f 15.9C.
2008 had a max av temp of 23.6C and a min av temp 0f 15.5C.
Clearly, 1915 has a slightly higher mean av temp than 2008.
Yet the anomaly graph shows 2008 higher than 1915 by 0.2C. Eh! It should be the other way around.
These discrepancies (which also show up in Cape Otway) give a false impression that the recent warming is greater than it really is.
Anomaly data at:-
http://reg.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/hqsites/site_data.cgi?variable=maxT&area=aus&station=058012&period=annual&dtype=anom&ave_yr=10
Raw data (max temps) at:-
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=36&p_display_type=dataFile&p_startYear=&p_stn_num=058012
and min temps at:-
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=38&p_display_type=dataFile&p_startYear=&p_stn_num=058012
There must be many examples of this (NZ, Darwin, Arctic stations, etc).
And to Al Forno
Darwin has had a Stevenson Shield from at least 1890. See photo evidence at:-
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=302
Can the record amount of ice now in the Arctic and Antarctic be explained by the current solar minimum?
Al Forno (07:53:55) wrote”
“I believe this is a reasonable explanation
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/willis_eschenbach_caught_lying.php
Anybody care to comment?”
You are being sarcastic? Right? Before I comment, why don’t you read the main post here and then read deltoid’s rebuttal.
Ian,
Graph the change values they made to the raw over time for the station you are interested in. My interest now is are they forcing all raws to a rough model curve. What has shown up for curve modification is a stepwise adjustment to stations that does not fit any UHI or station change reasoning that I can find.
That has generally meant at least in my region:
Make the 1900 to mid 60s area flatter. Sometimes they must push up sometimes they must push down. Make sure the 1930s are not well above the 90s. Ensure the late 20th century has a steep ramp. I want to know how widespread this theme is.
My point is…Hide the decline for overall temps is not the point. That was the divergence in the backward looking reconstructions. The question on the table is what are the “homogenizations” and the logic behind them. One theory evolving is they modify to fit the narrative. Other theories are these are necessary and innocent to meet changing conditions at that station, but so far not one has been able to reproduce the docs for this. Good science demands the ability to reconstruct the decisions. The facts will set us free….
Green RD Manager wrote:
“It is easy to check station and determine what changes they made, but not why they did it.
First, go to the GISS web site: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/
First get the raw data by selecting: “after combining data at same location” option.”
That does not seem to be raw data in many cases. For Darwin Airport it seems to be similar to raw but for Grand Canyon it’s not:
Grand Canyon raw:
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/climgraph.aspx?pltparms=GHCNT100AJanDecI190020081200111AR42572376008x
Grand Canyon adjusted:
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/climgraph.aspx?pltparms=GHCNT100AJanDecI190220081200101AR42572376008x
GISS site “after combining data at same location”:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425723760080&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
Here “after combining data at same location” is in fact adjusted data.
–bill (02:16:14) :
steven mosher (23:49:41) :
I think if you look back at the FOI requests CRU very early on said that the free data was already available at GISS / GHCN. It’s just that no one believed them–
That’s not accurate. A bunch of free data has always been “available”. What has never been available, among other things, is what data out of that pile CRU actually used.