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 misspelled Capitol Visitor Center on the title page.
It is simple. A poor siting study should be done:
1. Select what is deemed a proper number of poorly sited stations; preferably ones that come up as classes 2, 3 and 4 should be equally represented.
2. Put exactly the same kind of calibrated and certified station nearby in a location that meets class 1 standards.
3. Of course, log the locations of the new comparison stations.
4. Log data at the same TOB that is currently used at each statement for some proper duration – say one year.
5. Compare the differences.
Until someone does this, everyone can argue till they are blue in the face. Both sides will continue to laugh at the other side.
Climatology is not rocket science. It is 90% statistics and 10% methodology. Proper siting comes under the methodology 10%.
Global warming is robust. True, except for the ro.
“The Evidence From NOAA”
They spelled it wrong. Should be Noah.
And the price of arks has increased exponentially.
karen: May 19, 2010 at 4:05 pm
I don’t need any weather stations to tell me it’s been getting warmer recently.
That’s the way things work — when winter is over, it gets warmer. Problem is, in a lot of places, it hasn’t been getting as warm as it *should* be by now, and if AGW were correct, we should be seeing warmer temperatures sooner, not later.
Within the range of 10 to 14 um, perhaps a Thermographic camera employing a cooled IR detector:
Theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermographic_camera
Practical devices: http://www.flir.com/thermography/americas/us/
.
.
“karen says:
May 19, 2010 at 4:05 pm
Ski resorts in the Alps are extending lifts and trying innovative techniques to keep more snow on the ground.”
Snow cover in the Alps has been splendid these last few years, and more snow on the ground means better skiing and a longer season (lacking in April are skiers, not snow). The runs are much easier today, no bare spots, moguls mostly gone, and the carving skis turn by themselves. But (or therefore) snowboarding seems in retreat.
Of course “climate change” was a good argument for installing snow cannons to cover the problem spots.
(Please pardon me if your contribution was meant to be ironic.)
#23, the “Airport versus NonAirport” one seen above, the airport one on the left is clearly captioned “NonAirport” on the graph.
#36, “Plants and Animals are Acting as if it is Warming”, “Plants are blooming 1-3 days/decade earlier”. But the higher CO2 levels mean more favorable conditions for plant growth. Also, what plants were they looking at? Horticulture continues to move forward, hardier breeds are created that withstand cooler temperatures better. Were these factors taken into account?
#12, they can’t even spell “environment” right. A presentation by a government body to Congress, and they can’t even run the spell checker first?
Too much stupidity in there. I’m considering deleting it off my computer before it spreads. Given such high concentrations of pure idiocy mixed with political activism, one can’t be too cautious when dealing with such a toxic brew.
Siting issues in this sampling should be at 100, we need moe at manufacturing level.
we need moe, at .001 same as real service provision.
We dont need a year we need a day. Site is the issue error is the issue.
time is not the issue, the issue is site error, sampling is the issue mathematically.
Not time.
Time is not the issue statistically, for this test.
We are testing for divergence, from proper to poor siting.
Manufacturing does not rely on time. It relies on sampling.
National Organization of Asinine Alarmists
“You get what you pay for” does not apply to taxes paid to governments, obviously.
It’s called calibration, it really is not a new concept.
In one day, but for rigor take another benchmark, but one site is measuring the other under obserrvation conditions.
You don’t need a year for instrumentation calibration and that is the issue and that is the discussion.
Calibration to site.
Normally before one takes a task on one does what one calls a scoping run.
ie before effort is exerted 4 brand new Stevenenson measurement sites are set up randomly next to existing bad sites, they would run for a fortnight or a month.
Random a dart board or a computer sim wont matter.
Parameterisation of the decison factor for the test must be at anything above 97.5 because at 4 on 4000 sites, we can’t have anything less.
So four sites rural at airport must be one click away at best standard.
Then 100 stevensons would be set up.
But as a Pirate and not a mathematician, I can’t say.
Forget Everything.
The issue is calibration under parameters.
The parameters are the same, when a bad site measures, it’s doppel ganger good site measures.
With a hundred it would be over the same day, Mathematically and Statistically.
The experiment is site by parameter.
I was about to say.
In the interests of Shrodingers cat and the deceit we deal with dont give the cat stranglers any heads up.
Bummer.
I dont know how much a brand new set inside the screen costs, but put me down for a hundred Australian dollars.
I aint got many.
4 mobile sites will do for the scope run.
You aint heard her sing Emmy lou Harris.
Of course there’s been warming over the last 300 years on average, regardless of any attempts to amplify the signal by Mann, Hansen et al. The reason we see all the various ‘adjustments’ invariably increasing the long-term linear trendlines is that, without them, there will likely be nothing of significance beyond natural variation.
Every single adjustment builds on the quantity of ‘recorded’ temperature increase that cannot be explained by natural variation, and will therefore be attributed to human causes (if there’s no existing explanation, it msut be mankind, right?). This is why every single adjustment matters, why there are repeated adjustments over time and why every single one of them must be challenged.
Good luck that experiment wont die for money.
karen says:
May 19, 2010 at 4:05 pm
Greenland is rising b/c of so much ice melt is taking weight off the continent. …. Another study I just heard of that goes across parts of the globe is that some lizards are disappearing from the “hotter” end of their range….. All you have to do is look to Mother Nature to see that.
__________________________________________________________________________
Karen, many of those studies are part of a political agenda to take your money. WORSE those studies instead of doing the hard work of determining the TRUE CAUSE of the problem skip the hard part and just blame AGW. This means the environment suffers even more because of the dishonesty.
An example of this can be seen in this comment by an expert on the “Unprecedented Warming in Lake Tanganyika”
Pat Moffitt says:
May 19, 2010 at 1:10 pm
“…I have done a fair amount of investigation on the problems with the latid and clupeid fishery (sociological and ecological) in both Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika- outside this scope. There are any number of pressing problems with these fisheries and the impacts are potentially large to the local human population. For the researchers to “imply” that CO2 induced temperature changes represents a significant concern for the lake or the residents is wrong on too many levels….
…..I would have had less of a reaction had these researchers mentioned the fact that nutrient addition would cause an immediate increase in the lake’s food production and the well being of the resident human population– whether or not climate change is real. Failing to tell the media that an easy nutrient fix is available or how CO2 ranks with the other problems faced in this region-in my view is unethical and immoral.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/18/unprecedented-warming-in-lake-tanganyika/#comment-393147
I began on the Rail,, out of the village.
The ganger measure the rail.
It’d be nice to have a new googleearth .kml with just what’s left for surfacestations.org at this point. I think after my Iowa trip last weekend, I’m pretty well out of groups of stations I can hit in one day (which is typically how I prefer to do it).
I’d be interested to see Mosher’s list of 239 “ruralest of the rural” stations –just to see if I’ve been at one or more of them. I still sigh over one in South Dakota that was several miles on dirt roads to get to it, nothing but 160 acre farms as far as the eye could see (and in South Dakota, the eye can see pretty far!), and there’s the MMTS just a few paces from the farmhouse.
Oh, Anthony/Evan –I don’t know if you noticed, but I finally got a pic of the Pembina, ND MMTS (city office took it for me) and uploaded it. Be sure to read the comment I put on it too, as it places that pic in context of the other general pics of the site so far as where the MMTS is compared to the larger pics of the site.
REPLY – Yes, I have seen it. Thanks. Definitely a CRN4. Saw the others as well. Help me out with Rockwell City, tough. Is it CRN3 or 4?
We call this shit safe worken.