Well, the Kerry Lieberman cap and trade fiasco has brought Tom Karl to give a Senate briefing last week. Predictably, they couldn’t wait to spring more adjustments du jour on the hapless Senators, claiming once again, everything analysis-wise the government does is ‘robust’ (used several times). But ‘robustness’ just isn’t convincing enough anymore. The new catch phrase is shown below:
What’s the most interesting thing about this PowerPoint? It reads like a skeptics refutation handbook. NCDC reacted. I’ve highlighted a few slides of interest, including one refuting me and the surfacestations project. Because, well, as readers of DeSmog blog and Romm’s fairy tales know, I’d never want anyone to see that.
The key word above is “adjusted”. Comparing adjusted data to adjusted data will almost guarantee an agreement.
I’m sure Karl (or Peterson) was thinking “Better not make those graphs too big”. Surely he didn’t mention that he and Menne et al ‘borrowed’ my incomplete surfacestations rating data against my protests. Dr. Pielke Sr. and I, plus others on the surfacestations data analysis teams (two independent analyses have been done) see an entirely different picture, now that we have nearly 90% of USHCN surveyed. NCDC used data at 43%, and even though I told them they’d see little or nothing in the way of a signal then, they forged ahead anyway. Assuming we aren’t blocked by journal politics, we’ll have the surfacestations analysis results in public view soon. If we are blocked by journal politics, we’ll have other ways.
What’s humorous about this PowerPoint (besides the claims) is that after Peterson previously authored a rushed and ghost written “Talking Points Memo” critical of the surfacestations project, attributable to nobody, but who got caught in the PDF document properties:
…they now show this for the author, heh.
After NCDC’s unethical borrowing of my data and denying my right of first publication, don’t ask to see the surfacestations analysis results here. I learned my lesson not to trust Karl et al the first time. Full disclosure comes in an SI with journal publication, not before.
Here’s some other slides of interest.
The urbanization signal, easily dispensed with thanks to homogenization. 
This slide above is part of the “nothing matters and we can adjust for everything” meme. Now they are using Hansen’s night lights method. Heh. The rural trend they present is different than what I’ve seen.
Above: New and improved! Gotta show progress for the senators! Thanks to GHCN3, it’s now even hotter, faster.
Look for new pronouncements of “unprecedented” and “it’s worse than we thought” when they publish GHCN3. Robust times two. Gosh.
Of course, airports don’t matter. Naw. Never, even when they don’t bother to remove the base measurement errors at airports, even when pointed out. Like movie directors, I’m sure they are thinking: “we can fix that in post production”.
Yes, I’m being sarcastic here. Yes, I think most of this shown to the Senate is based on self fulfilling adjustments and a need to keep bureaucracy alive.
You can download the entire powerpoint here:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/download/Global%20Warming%20is%20Unequivocal%20TKarl%20May%206.ppt
Do it fast before it gets “disappeared”.
===========================================
UPDATE 5/21: Backup file locations (since the one above seems to have gone dysfunctional) as PowerPoint and PDF are below:
Global Warming is Unequivocal TKarl May 6 (PPT)
Global_Warming_is_Unequivocal_TKarl_050610 (PDF)
===========================================
In related news. I’ve been made privy to a new surface data set, one that doesn’t have the problem of NCDC’s need to show additional warming to keep the cap and trade dream alive. This surface data set uses an entirely different methodology to fix the errors, deal with dropouts, and separate good records from bad. I’ve seen the methodology. I won’t insult everyone’s intelligence by calling it “robust”. Instead, I’ll call it properly engineered.
The best part is, it was never designed with global warming in mind. So there’s no built in confirmation bias.
And to Mr. Karl, Dr. Menne, Dr. Petersen, and Dr. Easterling (who I know will read this): stay tuned.
Oh, and another team sends word today and that’s not the only surprise to come. But, that’s another story for another day.
h/t to Steve Mosher, who is the new inspector Columbo.
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…they now show this for the author, heh.
The real author is revealed here.
http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt74/MartinGAtkins/NOAA.png
GK says:
May 19, 2010 at 1:42 pm
‘So why isnt the GOP calling for and demanding his sacking ??’
Don’t kid yourself. There are a lot of GOP politicians that are for CO2 Cap and Tax.
With climate gate, long term CO2 related stories took a hit. The Politics took over.
Now NOAA has to save face and look busy. They have to crank out stuff, insert some drama hope for job security.
You know… thinking about all that has emanated from both the “core” of GW scientists(?) as well as the likes of the “Union of Concerned Scientists”, since 11/09 but especially in the last month; the screeching, the contradictions, the outright lies, the Power Point propaganda, the relating of EVERYTHING that is wrong to GW……
…where as I was going to end all my thoughts with, “It’s the water, Stupid!”, now I think it should be, “It’s the MONEY, Stupid!”
This may sound a bit off topic, and I know this could never get passed, but wouldn’t it solve everything if henceforth ALL funding for scientific research had to come “through” private, for-profit industry? We cut the total world-wide Gov. funding in half (for the first year), make for-profit companies apply (like Grants) and then when awarded (obviously for things the Gov. wants researched, just like now) the companies hire the people, get the eqp., do the research and – – benefit (or not) from the results in the competitive market-place. Seriously, if that lake in Africa IS REALLY warming and it’s killing the fish or whatever, with the right research money there are any number of companies ….. well, you get my point.
THE WAY IT IS NOW, politicians from various parts of the world (mostly the USA) GIVE money to scientists to produce – – nothing, but words in a report and if it “fits” what the politicians want, they give them more money – – – FOR ANOTHER REPORT! OR COMPUTER MODEL! OR ANOTHER PP PRESENTATION!
No wonder EVERY professor I have ever met (and it numbers in the dozens) is a socialist or outright communist.
“Government isn’t the solution to the problem, government IS the problem.”
It’s the money, stupid!
Zeke
The biggest issue with Menne’s study is that he MIXED rural stations with Urban Stations. Not a very good design for finding a small effect.
Anthony, if you guys want it I can post my google earth tour of menne’s sites. I was making a movie of them, but kinda got distracted with other stuff
Also, I did a much larger file of the most “ruralest” sites I could find. There are 239 in the US that pass all the screens I have for being rural.. more to follow
Let me get this straight.The ‘warmist’ crowd use Mr Watts’ work in an incomplete state,against his wishes,yet, when research by a government sponsored body kept secret in defiance of a FOI act gets out into the wild,they cry “theft”?
The hypocrisy of these people is breathtaking in it’s arrogance.
Mosh,
A good test would be to compare urban airport station to nearby urban non-airport stations and rural airport stations to rural non-airport stations. I’m about done with a project to that end.
Also, looks like I misread their slide on rural stations. Finding a higher trend in rural stations than in all stations is indeed rather odd, as what I’ve seen suggests that rural stations trend 0.05C per decade lower than all station, not 0.05C higher. I wonder if they have some spatial coverage issues sneaking into their analysis (e.g. faster warming high-latitude areas might be predominantly rural).
NOAA/NCDC claims ” no evidence that the US temperature trend is inflated by poor siting stations” and “poor siting alone does not implicitly lead to significant observational errors in the trend”
If siting doesn’t matter, why bother to set siting standards at all?
Socialist Science where the Government decides the outcome and conclusions regardless of the actual observations… that is surely robust and unequivocal …. barf!
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/karl_senate_2010_pg21.png
This image seems wrong. The more recent V3 data seems lower, especially in recent years like 1993, 1994, 2009. The trend difference, 0.83 vs 0.91 should be readily visible on the graph, but the trend lines seem to be nearly on top of each other.
Also, the data covers 1 1/2 full PDO cycles – 2 warm phases, one cool. Ah well, at least they aren’t pulling the recent decade is the warmest. Or is that on another slide? Don’t have time to check right now.
Ideally, with some minor financial support, you set up a Stevenson screen thermometer a kilometer or two away from an airport (or other “contaminated” site) and compare the two over several months. (For a statistically significant number of sites.) That way, you could provide the fudge factor to re-adjust the current values.
Just so we know what is really going on.
Lets not forget the exponential increase in the size of airports since the late 60’s, and particularly since, what, the middle 80’s. As we all know.
Mosh,
Fair enough. You can control for urbanity (e.g. http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/USHCN-CRN.png ) but the sample size gets pretty small.
We will have to wait for Anthony to release the full dataset to play around with it more. I’d love to test CRN status while holding urbanity and sensor type (MMTS vs CRS) constant.
Stephen Skinner says:
May 19, 2010 at 2:01 pm
Oh, come on 🙂 , that’s been known since at least 1863 and the Gettysburg Address!
See http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/
The attempt to trivialise urban heat affect must be a kind of acknowledgment that there is a measurable (and perceptable) temperature difference between urban and rural areas that needs to be accounted for. Added to the fact that Airports are not positioned in urban centres where the greatest heat is.
Perhaps it’s worth revisiting ‘UHI is alive and well’
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/31/uhi-is-alive-and-well/
Well…first off, these boys are on a political mission as well as CYA mission. I wouldn’t trust Tom Karl any farther than I could throw him. Anthony Watts, et al have done an absolutely marvelous job with the surface station project. Many others have done great work exposing the flaws in the HADCrut, NASA and NOAA datasets. Recently the lid has been blown off the NZ temp record. So where are Roy Spencer and John Christy for this Senate testimony?
I work in the healthcare industry and the staggering ignorance on the part of Congress, the Senate and Obama made my skin crawl throughout the healthcare reform debacle. I can only extrapolate that ignorance in the field of climate.
I think global warming is indeed “unequivocal”. Sure enough, the planet is warmer than it was 300 years ago. Almost no one would argue that, theoretically, doubling atmospheric CO2 conc would result in about a 1 degree increase in global mean temperature in about 90 years (all other factors remaining unchanged). In my view that’s about as “robust” as their claims are. I found this NOAA drivel to be quite disturbing. This is 100% political and nearly 0% scientific.
Ric Werme says:
“Oh, come on 🙂 , that’s been known since at least 1863 and the Gettysburg Address!”
OK. Now I really did laugh out loud. Thanks Ric.
Looking back;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/26/climatgate-pielke-senior-on-the-ncdc-ccsp-report-strong-arm-tactics/
Columbo? Why not Kojak?
Another pinch of salt in the soup pot. Should be ready by November.
The biggest issue with Menne’s study is that he MIXED rural stations with Urban Stations. Not a very good design for finding a small effect.
Not necessarily. As it turns out, urban stations actually have superior micrositing to non-urban stations. There are, however, other (very) severe issues with the Menne “study” (and I use that term loosely).
I look forward to seeing your analysis published in a journal. I see no reason why it shouldn’t be if the methodology is sound. Have you decided which journal you will submit it to?
The attempt to trivialise urban heat affect must be a kind of acknowledgment that there is a measurable (and perceptable) temperature difference between urban and rural areas that needs to be accounted for.
Big difference not only in that cities are warmer, but trends (sic) are considerably higher as well. I have run the numbers.
Added to the fact that Airports are not positioned in urban centres where the greatest heat is.
But they have other issues. The absolute heat may be low but the heating trend (sic) is artificially high for a whole host of reasons.
there are 3 pages of utter rubbish in here, including quotes from plenty of “experts” on denial blah blah. quite incredible:
19 May: New Scientist: Debora MacKenzie: Living in denial: Why sensible people reject the truth
Similarly, global warming, evolution and the link between tobacco and cancer must be taken on trust, usually on the word of scientists, doctors and other technical experts who many non-scientists see as arrogant and alien.
Many people see this as a threat to important aspects of their lives…
If science is the best way to understand the world and its dangers, and acting on that understanding requires popular support, then denial movements threaten us all.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627606.100-living-in-denial-why-sensible-people-reject-the-truth.html?page=1
“Global Warming is Unequivocal: The Evidence from NOAA.”
==========================
Does this mean I can stop worrying about Climate Change??
I recall something being “settled”, but which one was it. I’m so confused.
I’m sure the Senators will explain, it is after all the New Age of transparency in Government, and I’m sure my taxes won’t go to waste.
u.k.(us) says:
May 19, 2010 at 2:58 pm
“Lets not forget the exponential increase in the size of airports since the late 60′s, and particularly since, what, the middle 80′s. As we all know.”
If this were the case I would expect to be able to pick out all the airports in those IR images of Earth. Instead the IR images show urban areas quite clearly with the greatest heat where you would expect it, in the urban centres. And no, airports have not grown exponentially in comparison to urban and infrastructure expansion. In fact in the case of somewhere like Las Vegas the international airport is within the urban area when in the middle 80’s it was outside.