First the article at issue:
How best to log local temperatures?
Peter A. Stott1 & Peter W. Thorne2
Abstract
The climate community must work together to create a single, clean, comprehensive and open repository of detailed temperature data, say Peter A. Stott and Peter W. Thorne.
Summary
- Sub-daily, kilometre-scale temperature records are needed to monitor and predict local impacts of climate change.
- Climatologists need access to local weather information currently protected for commercial use.
- Records need to be corrected and cross
Dr. Peilke writes:
An article has appeared in Nature on May 13 2010 titled
Peter A. Stott and Peter W. Thorne, 2010: How best to log local temperatures? Nature. doi:10.1038/465158a, page 158 [thanks to Joe Daleo for alterting us to this]
which perpetuates the myth that the surface temperature data sets are independent from each other.
The authors know better but have decided to mislead the Editors and readers of Nature.
They write
“In the late twentieth century scientists were faced with a very basic question: is global climate changing? They stepped up to that challenge by establishing three independent data sets of monthly global average temperatures. Those data sets, despite using different source data and methods of analysis, all agree that the world has warmed by about 0.75 °C since the start of the twentieth century (specifically, the three estimates are 0.80, 0.74 and 0.78 °C from 1901–2009).”
This is deliberately erroneous as one of the authors of this article (Peter Thorne) is an author of a CCSP report with a different conclusion. With just limited exceptions, the surface temperature data sets do not use different sources of data and are, therefore, not independent.
As I wrote in one of my posts
In the report “Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences Final Report, Synthesis and Assessment Product 1.1” [a report in which Peter Thorne is one of the authors] on page 32 it is written [text from the CCSP report is in italics]
“The global surface air temperature data sets used in this report are to a large extent based on data readily exchanged internationally, e.g., through CLIMAT reports and the WMO publication Monthly Climatic Data for the World. Commercial and other considerations prevent a fuller exchange, though the United States may be better represented than many other areas. In this report, we present three global surface climate records, created from available data by NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies [GISS], NOAA National Climatic Data Center [NCDC], and the cooperative project of the U.K. Hadley Centre and the Climate Research Unit [CRU]of the University of East Anglia (HadCRUT2v).”
These three analyses are led by Tom Karl (NCDC), Jim Hansen (GISS) and Phil Jones (CRU).
The differences between the three global surface temperatures that occur are a result of the analysis methodology as used by each of the three groups. They are not “completely independent”. This is further explained on page 48 of the CCSP report where it is written with respect to the surface temperature data (as well as the other temperature data sets) that
“The data sets are distinguished from one another by differences in the details of their construction.”
On page 50 it is written
“Currently, there are three main groups creating global analyses of surface temperature (see Table 3.1), differing in the choice of available data that are utilized as well as the manner in which these data are synthesized.”
and
“Since the three chosen data sets utilize many of the same raw observations, there is a degree of interdependence.”
The chapter then states on page 51 that
“While there are fundamental differences in the methodology used to create the surface data sets, the differing techniques with the same data produce almost the same results (Vose et al., 2005a). The small differences in deductions about climate change derived from the surface data sets are likely to be due mostly to differences in construction methodology and global averaging procedures.”
and thus, to no surprise, it is concluded that
“Examination of the three global surface temperature anomaly time series (TS) from 1958 to the present shown in Figure 3.1 reveals that the three time series have a very high level of agreement.”
Moreover, as we reported in our paper
Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, S. Foster, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S08, doi:10.1029/2006JD008229.
“The raw surface temperature data from which all of the different global surface temperature trend analyses are derived are essentially the same. The best estimate that has been reported is that 90–95% of the raw data in each of the analyses is the same (P. Jones, personal communication, 2003).”
Peter Stott and Peter Thorne have deliberately misled the readership of Nature in order to give the impression that three data analyses corroborate their analyzed trends, while in reality the three surface temperature data sets are closely related.
Then we have these characters crying into their beer because the public is getting increasingly sceptical.
Not just an unfortunate turn of phrase. A deliberate porky!
Last paragraph. “Corroborate” rather than “collaborate” intended?
Dr Pielke says:
“With just limited exceptions, the surface temperature data sets do not use different sources of data and are, therefore, not independent.”
But it is worse than that!
The surface temperature data sets select from the same sources of data, mostly from met. stations. They differ in that they use different selection criteria and different methods to deterine a “global average” from THE SAME available data.
There are no “limited exceptions”: there are are only different selection criteria.
Richard
Well! GEE! 5% is Possibly independent! 😉 Also we know that 5% certainty is “Most Likely” and “Unprecedented” along with Robust! Two wrongs do not make a roght but in Climatology three or more wrongs are “Robust and Unequivocal” certainty!
I determined many months ago, with the help of WUWT and other sites, that the advocates of agw were lying to me. Lie to me once shame on you, lie to me twice shame on me. I no longer believe a single word they say. If they tell me the sun came up this morning, Ill still look out the window to see for myself!
“Deliberately erroneous.” That’s pretty strong language for the academic community. In common vernacular: they lied (and know it).
Does anyone know if Nature has replied to this claim?
Independent data is not the same as independent analysis.
I think you mean “corroborate” instead of “collaborate” in the last paragraph. Indeed, if they had given the impression that the three data sets were a collaborative work, they would have been speaking truthfully.
The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia – Science and Technology Committee
PROFESSOR EDWARD ACTON AND PROFESSOR PHIL JONES
1 MARCH 2010
Professor Jones: The simple answer is yes, most of the same basic data are available in the United States in something called the Global Historical Climatology Network. They have been downloadable there for a number of years so people have been able to take the data, do whatever method of assessment of the quality of the data and derive their own gridded product and compare that with other workers. There are two groups in America that we compare with and there are also two additional groups, one in Russia and one in Japan, that also produce similar records to ourselves and they all show pretty much the same sort of course of instrumental temperature change since the nineteenth century compared to today.
Q80 Ian Stewart: Can I ask you then just to explain—some of us are not scientists on this Committee—how it could be verified? Was that implicit in what you have just told us?
Professor Jones: That was implicit in what I told you because we are all working independently so we may be using a lot of common data but the way of going from the raw data to a derived product of gridded temperatures and then the average for the hemisphere and the globe is totally independent between the different groups.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/387b/38711.htm
For the love of me, don’t these people know that everything they say and do, EVERYTHING, will be checked and checked and checked again by the many seekers of truth permeating the blogosphere.
Could they be so stupid? Don’t answer that.
“Peter Stott and Peter Thorne have deliberately misled the readership of Nature in order to give the impression that three data analyses collaborate their analyzed trends,”
I think Pielke Pere means ‘corroborate’ rather than ‘collaborate’.
I’ve collected data. Raw is a relative term. First, the machine collecting the data off the head of my subject averaged it over time and subtracted noise (it is no longer raw). Fortunately the signal the subject was listening to made the auditory pathway fire in metronome fashion so the machine could determine its response from the otherwise noisy brain signals.
What I got was a tracing. From there I had to place the curser on the highest point of each synaptic peak and hand record the number onto my chart (further from raw). Then I had to hand enter that data into a computer. The data was printed out and cross checked with my charts for transcription errors (checking less raw data against more raw data but none of it is absolutely raw anymore). The floppies were then sent to the statistician for analysis (ANOVA). What I got back was as far from raw data as you can get. And my study was a very clean straightforward piece of work.
Define raw data and you will begin to see just how “not raw” the raw data is, let alone the 3 interpretations of it.
Our temperature data is likely so collected. Some may still be handcharted, and then transcribed into a data base. Other data may be automatically recorded. How they marry the two data bases is a mystery. But somebody has to come up with a data set that is then used or picked through by various folks. But to say that the data is raw is a relative term.
Basil, yes, it seems that Roger Pielke is becoming more outspoken in his criticism.
“Peter Stott and Peter Thorne have deliberately misled the readership of Nature”
This is quite a serious allegation, but a valid one. Congratulations to Pielke for speaking out.
Another way in which Stott and Thorne deliberately try to mislead readers is by giving the false impression that over 6000 stations are used. In fact, we all know (and so do Stott and Thorne) that the number of stations actually used has dropped dramatically from around 6000 to around 1000 (the GISS graph on this is impossible to read) in the last 20 years, another reason why the graph is so unreliable.
It remains very puzzling the absence of wide spread public outcry demanding to stop public funding of the organizations like NASA GISS, Met Office Hadley Centre, CRU of U. East Anglia as well as individual researchers like M.Mann of PSU. It seems that a layman, typically referred to in the Real Climate blog as an uneducated troll by those who receive handouts from his hans, indeed doesn’t have even an approximate idea of hundreds of millions of dollars spent to maintain this fraudulent activity that brings salaries exceeding 3 times of the average, tenured positions, large pensions, and, finally, publications, fame, and feeling of great importance to those participants. In time of economic hardship, when more than 10% are unemployed, we all seemingly are ok with wasting huge amount of our tax money to pay to the academic fellas who either are incompetent or lie. I believe that academic freedom that of so great concern to Gavin et.al. should be paid by the private sources, like Gates, Bono, Sting etc.
Who cares about it?!
Global Warming is over since 1998 and, politically, died on November 19th 2009, its funeral was held at the city of Copenhagen last december.
It’s over, kaput, finito, tot, acabado…, just forget it!, if you don’t want to be considered a fool.
The big news here, as I stated many times, is that they agree these local temp readings are only “Sub-daily, kilometre-scale” in precision. I have posted many times that the accuracy of these readings deteriorate over time and distance. Therefore any regional or global derived numbers have enormous error bars (on the order of 5°C I estimate).
That means there is no way to use these measurements to detect any global changes below a degree.
Have you seen this on the UK MSN home page!!
http://him.uk.msn.com/in-the-know/photos.aspx?cp-documentid=152130685&page=5
I doubt anyone will be surprised. This is typical in climate science. It’s an offshoot of confirmation bias in that subjects are rarely studied closely. Since that answer is already assumed, it leads to statements and conclusions that do not match reality.
I expect Nature to … do absolutely nothing. 🙁
in darwin australia it’s the same ,the biggest scam of all time and we have kevin rudd who believes in this crap. thank christ not all of us believe in globle warming. what we should be doing is cleaning up the water soil and air no more grants to scientists please
I have to agree with John McGuire above. I am forced into the unpleasant position of doubting anything AGW proponents say.
Worse, I’m seeing hints that in other fields – such as medicine and biology and ecology – the scent of dishonesty and agenda-driven “truth” is wafting through the air.
This puts me in the unenviable position of appearing to be a bit of a conspiracy nut.
Swell.
The source raw data is largely the same for everybody (though not entirely the same), so nobody should claim otherwise. So I’d agree that sentence is poorly worded. But looking over the rest of the article, it is very well worth reading, as it gives you a good sense of where we are, what some of the challenges are, and where we might go.
The methods of analysis are quite different from each other, so they are correct on that count. Recently several bloggers have added their own different methods of analysis as well, and gotten pretty much the same results.
It really shouldn’t be in any way surprising that they all use largely the same source data, though. What do you expect – for them to divide up the global stations, and say NOAA and GISS can only use these stations, and CRU can only use those stations? That doesn’t really make any sense. Of course the source data are going to overlap.
Has this critique been sent to Nature? Dr. Pielke has standing to submit and he should do so.
A lot has changed in the last year, junk science like this can an should be challenged at its source.
I’ve enjoyed this site since I found it following Climategate.
Prior to the internet, rebuttals like this would have been buried in an unread (by the public at large, anyway) journal if it were allowed to be published at all, while the mainstream press would have trumpeted the findings of the original article. Now, Googling the name of the authors will soon bring up not only their article but also the claims (with links to the evidence) that the authors made “deliberately erroneous” claims in their article. Makes it a lot harder to propagate the propaganda successfully, doesn’t it?
And are those deer antlers on top of that weather station in the picture? And possibly the rib cage as well? This is a joke, right? Not a real station? Over a gravestone?
[snip]
[Enough ranting that everyone else is dishonest. ~dbs, mod.]
BTW. What temperature is?.Temperature is the demagogic way of describing energy changes.
“The three institutions overseeing global
monthly temperature monitoring have each
made different decisions about which weather
stations to include, how to perform qualitycontrol
checks, how to correct for data jumps
(due to site moves, missing data and so on) and
how to deal with rising temperatures caused
by urbanization1. That these data sets agree on
the scale of global temperature changes, and
on many aspects of temperature variability
at hemispheric and continental scales, attests
to the reliability of these correction schemes.”
So is Pielke inferring that all three institutions use exactly the same temp stations to create their data set? If that is true then yes I see how the above section from their paper is misleading…..
carrot eater, the single source of the raw data you refer to does not give out the raw data. They provide a data base from which raw data was collected, combed, combined, adjusted for empty spots, etc into that data base. Define what you mean by the word “raw”. To me raw means the handwritten charts from Stevenson screens and downloaded data from the automatic units with absolutely nothing else done to them. If I were to ask for raw data, I would want copies of the handwritten charts and each data dump from the automatic units, complete with missing data, etc. As far as I know, this is not what these three separate research entities are using. Please correct me if I am wrong.
“…Worse, I’m seeing hints that in other fields – such as medicine and biology and ecology – the scent of dishonesty and agenda-driven “truth” is wafting through the air.
This puts me in the unenviable position of appearing to be a bit of a conspiracy nut.
Swell…”
___________
You’ve every right to be cynical, and you’re probably spot on, if the daily “scientific” revelations in the newspapers are anything to go by.
Apart from everything you eat or drink being, in turn, good or bad for you “a scientist said”, there are all the other revelations which appear to be driven by advocacy and weighted funding. You only have to read Chris Booker’s book “Scared to Death” to get an idea of the scale. Then there was Swine Flu, now the concern that we’re all going to contract Legionnaire’s Disease from our windscreen washing systems, or rheumatic fever from drinking tea – the list is endless.
Where does it all come from, and more importantly, why? If it’s not money-driven, there wouldn’t be much point. And they play on public fear and gullibity, which seems to be a recent phenomenon – when I was young, some of these preposterous claims would be laughed out of court by all and sundry. Now we seem to thrive on scares and portents of doom, which are perpetrated by those who should know better, blindly followed by politicians (if it suits them), and fuelled by an ignorant press. The days of culpability and common sense are gone forever.
Its Nature, I wouldn’t be surprised if they gave space to moon landing deniers at this point. In the last year Nature has not changed with the times, so critique process is good to attempt, but just like in the past I bet it doesn’t even get past the first stage.
Proponents of AGW just don’t seem to realize how many skeptics really are out there. I have been saying this for years, but when you start science without attempting to remove bias, you will get garbage results everytime.
Nitpick “(…)give the impression that three data analyses collaborate their analyzed trends, (…)”
Shouldn’t it be “corroborate”?
[Fixed. ~dbs]
Thank you for the comments on my post! I have corrected the word in the last paragraph in my post to “corroborate” as several of you have called my attention to.
I have grave concerns about the refereeing at the World Cup. The US was literally ripped off of a win this morning by a referee who was either incompetent or anti-American.
I must say, this is one of the great station sites yet. Thanks to Surface Station we are able to look at site after site, poorly situated with apparently little or no thought about its function and poorly (or not) maintained. If that little thought went into their construction, what confidence should we have in the manner that the data was collected? Can any of it be salvaged? Yet IPCC has the cajones to present the data as fact! Aren’t these people curious at all about the truth?
And by the way, if there is a conscientious scientist under that grave, he’s rolling over in it as I write.
Enneagram –
Global Warming is far from over as a political and regulatory movement. The EPA has promulgated a suite of comprehensive GHG regulations, all premised on an Endangerment Finding that is itself premised on IPCC reporting, and which adopts and some cases extends fraudulent reporting. This finding and the ensuing regulations will have the force of law unless they are overturned by the appellate courts or by a law passed by Congress and signed by the President. This President will veto any legislative override of these regulations that is not also a cap and trade scheme, so it’s up to 3 judges on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals and perhaps 9 on the US Supreme Court.
The climate skeptic community would do well to turn their skeptical eyes to the EPA’s Endangerment Finding, which enshrines into federal regulatory law many alarmist assertions that have been proven false or fraudulent.
Pamela,
To me, in any reasonable usage of the term, the term ‘raw data’ need not apply to the original handwritten entries in a lab book (to the extent that handwritten entries exist anymore; much can be digitally recorded by the instrument). ‘Raw data’ can also refer to what’s in the computer after somebody keys them in. Yes, there can be and are transcription errors, but that doesn’t mean the resulting data file isn’t normally referred to as the raw data.
Missing months are left missing in the raw source files, by the way.
The way in which monthly climate data aren’t raw is that somebody or some program at the providing country’s met bureau computed monthly averages at each individual station from the daily observations at each station. If you think computing a monthly mean disqualifies climate data from being raw, that’s up to you, I guess. But in my experience, those monthly means are referred to as ‘raw’, with the speaker and audience both aware that there is a computation (taking a monthly mean) embedded in there.
I would like to second Pamela Gray’s replies. In all likelihood, the “raw” NCDC data is not what is in use for temperature analysis. The “raw” GISTEMP data file I downloaded varies quite a lot from the “raw” NCDC pdf images of the hand written weather data collected at my small Missouri town. I carefully transcribed the first half of the twentieth century worth of pdf records. I then used Excel to plot that data against the official “raw” data. I noticed that starting in the 1920’s the GISTEMP data started showing “corrections” in which the temperature would be shifted up or down every couple of years by as much as two degrees. From a quick check with the local historical society, there was nothing happening in our small town that would justify those adjustments. After all, this is a rural town that just managed to reached a population of 10,000 in 2000. The nearest town big enough to have a gas station is 25 miles away. (If you are wondering why I quit after half a century: There are 730 hi/lo temperature readings for each day of each year. I already had an answer I was interested in with the first half of the century.)
Anyway, I can understand why CRU says it will take them three years to re-create their database. It takes time to go back and hand transcribe records that appear to have been recorded with a quill pen. (The early records were sent to the state weather office via mail carried in horse drawn wagons.) I hope this time the “raw, raw” data will be left on line and available. My experience has shown me that “corrected” data should not be trusted unless those corrections can be verified as valid using the original data as reference.
is this important?
http://tertiumquids.blogspot.com/2010/06/cuccinellis-uva-investigation-yields.html
“An article has appeared in Nature on May 13 2010 titled Peter A. Stott and Peter W. Thorne, 2010: How best to log local temperatures?
which perpetuates the myth that the surface temperature data sets are independent from each other.
The authors know better but have decided to mislead the Editors and readers of Nature.”
It appears to be some sort of announcement that they are paralyzed with fear that Anthony Watts<a Surfacestation Project is nearly finished.
“An article has appeared in Nature on May 13 2010 titled Peter A. Stott and Peter W. Thorne, 2010: How best to log local temperatures?
which perpetuates the myth that the surface temperature data sets are independent from each other.
The authors know better but have decided to mislead the Editors and readers of Nature.”
It appears to be some sort of announcement that they are paralyzed with fear that Anthony Watts Surfacestation Project is nearly finished.
I suggest we call reported temperatures just that, “reported temperatures.” This should, I think, get us away from the current “raw” terminology and unambiguously describe what I believe most folks by mean when using the word “raw.” Better yet I would suggest we extend this to the entire set of information in a weather report by calling the entire set a “reported observation.” Surely we don’t need to extend this to something like, “an UNALTERED reported observation,” — or do we?
A USHCN COOP station at Hanksville, UT, sited over a grave?
I’m dying to know its temperature readings! Give ’em hell, Anthony! This is a grave error. I hope someone can resurrect that site.
Expat in France says:
June 18, 2010 at 8:51 am
You unfortunately have seen, accurately, that AGW scamming is the tip of a rotten-ice berg floating across the pages of the major science publications.
Just two examples:
• Embryonic stem cells are all the rage, while the adult stem cells get the runt’s share of funding while showing all of the medical progress. You would not get this from Science or Nature articles.
• Evolution science drives the anthropology and paleoarchaeology articles, while in most cases a liberal sprinkling of artists’ license converts small bone fragments to entire beasts. Arguments that would equally explain results that should be attributed to genetic spread within the specific genome are argued as cases for evolutionary development.
• Ecology and Environmental Advocacy – I need not elaborate on this topic.
This is why I canceled my memberships to Nature, AAAS (Science magazine), and NY Academy of Sciences a couple of years ago. Scientific pursuit has descended into storytelling — witness the UFO craze, ascendancy of new age magic and superstition of proto-societies, searches for Sasquatch, and the success of motion picture photographers like Cameron, whose science fiction movies and his subsequent popular acceptance attest that he is a real scientist who should be consulted for real world problems.
Will science ever rebound? Did Ptolemy’s and Al-Jebra’s science and mathematics methodologies and schools of scientific learning ever rebound after the Middle East, the cradle of geometry, astronomy and experimental science, was plunged into the dark ages of anti-scientific thought?
“Idependent” , like the word “is” can have different meanings in the political world in which we are definitely dealing. As in the “independent” administrator appointed by the Obama administration to hand out the $20 Billion extorted from BP. No doubt, a huge number of votes will be bought with this money. Independent temperature estimations begs the same question, independent from what or whom?
Dr. Peilke writes:
“Pielke” please!
GaryW
GISS does not use raw data for the US. It uses TOB-adjusted and homogenised data for the US, provided by the USHCN v 2.0. If you want to trace it back to before the TOB and homogenisation, you have to go to the USHCN web page for the ‘raw’ monthly means.
One really needs to understand the flow of data between the individual countries, NCDC, and then on to GISS, and it isn’t that hard to keep it straight.
And just where does Dr. Pielke suggest we get another planet?
carrot eater, June 18, 2010 at 8:04 am
It really shouldn’t be in any way surprising that they all use largely the same source data, though. What do you expect – for them to divide up the global stations, and say NOAA and GISS can only use these stations, and CRU can only use those stations? That doesn’t really make any sense. Of course the source data are going to overlap.
It ISN’T suprising that “they” use largely the same source data. I DO EXPECT each of “them” to use the most comprehensive “raw” measurements available at the time. Assuredly, this means data being analyzed by various groups will have large portions in common.
However, the statement: “Those data sets, despite using difference source data and methods of analysis, all agree that the world has warmed by about 0.75 degrees C ….” is disingenuous; and the author either isn’t aware of this fact, in which case he/she should remain silent, or he/she is aware, in which case he/she should be castigated.
For example, assume there exist 100,000 “raw” temperature measurements and group 1 uses the first 99,999 while group 2 uses the last 99,999. The statement: “The two groups used different data sets ….” is simultaneously literally true and a misrepresentation. Anyone defending such a statement on the basis that it is literally true, should be ashamed of himself/herself.
carrot eater:
“One really needs to understand the flow of data between the individual countries, NCDC, and then on to GISS, and it isn’t that hard to keep it straight.”
The problem isn’t the flow of data. It is the endless adjustments to the raw data, without adequate explanation or chain of custody. It is entirely self-serving, and cheats the public that pays for the work product.
Sorry carroteater, but when I was doing research, the raw data in my case referred to only the averaged inkpen copier tracings spit out by the machine, and the hand entered peak measurement worksheets. Once entered into the computer, it was no longer raw data but a computer file of the raw data. We understood that we were required to maintain the raw data in its original condition, safe and sound, but if the computer file became corrupted, no sin. I still have carbon copies of the raw data and it has been decades since I collected that raw data. I can easily recreate a computer file from it, but if a researcher wanted to see the raw data, he/she would not get a computer file, but high quality copies of the tracings and worksheets. Another researcher repeated my study with 9 new subjects. Her raw data is as safe and secure as mine.
That raw temperature data appears to have been eaten by the lab cat or dog, (or so we have read from the emails) speaks of very poor lab research methods and requirements at the most basic ground level. Further, to describe the current data as raw also speaks of poorly understood basic research methodology and the transformation of raw data to other kinds of data. That you speak of such data files as “raw” gives me pause.
Rattus Norvegicus says:
June 18, 2010 at 10:26 am
And just where does Dr. Pielke suggest we get another planet?
Any of the others will do – Mars, Jupiter, Neptune. They have zero population growth, no viable economies, no improvement/evolution of individual lives through technological advancement. They are all perfect environmentalist utopias.
From the reference: How best to log local temperatures?
Quote from summary: Sub-daily, kilometre-scale temperature records are needed to monitor and predict local impacts of climate change.
More than anything else, the italicized remark above points out everything that’s wrong with the whole: It starts out with a preconceived notion that:
[A] There’s so-called ‘climate change’
[B] It’s causes by humans
[C] Something can be done to remedy all of that
It fairly reeks of hubris.
Why don’t they just admit that the whole idea is defunct, set aside ALL of the current results, do a COMPLETE reevaluation of all data sets, review ALL the weather stations (Stephenson screens and other sensors) as to siting, calibration, types of sensors, etc., and disallow the use of ‘selected’ sites and instead use ALL the available sites which fall within the placement criteria?
But then I woke up …
stevengoddard says:
June 18, 2010 at 9:30 am
Agree
Errony is the new irony.
Nature duped with claim of independent surface temp data sets
I suspect Mike!
stevengoddard says:
June 18, 2010 at 9:30 am
Yeah I though after the 4th quarter of the NBA finals game 7 last night officiating could not be worse. I was wrong!
Quinn the Eskimo says:
June 18, 2010 at 9:37 am
Then…call the cavalry!
@carroteater “It really shouldn’t be in any way surprising that they all use largely the same source data, though. What do you expect –”
It could just be me, but it seems the overwhelming response here is that they’d expect a little honesty regarding the data. I commend Dr. Peilke for calling them out. To restore credibility to the “science”, it will take many more people participating in calling out the systemic misinformation campaign from the climatology branch of the sciences.
On Raw Data….. And What Raw Data Is and Is Not.
Consider a raw egg. A freshly opened whole egg dropped into a bowl is analogous to a freshly recorded (hand written or auto logged) data point. If the oblate liquid yellow egg yolk is intact and surrounded by the transparent, gelatinous egg white, we can examine it and easily verify that it is in the original raw condition and unaltered.
If the egg has been individually scrambled, fried, sauteed, poached, beaten, mixed with other ingredients, or otherwise ‘adjusted’ to suit some personal desire, it is no longer a raw egg. If it is mixed with other raw eggs and homogenized for single serving use (averaging), they are no longer raw eggs.
Similarly, if data has been scrambled, averaged, mixed with other ingredients, cooked, or otherwise ‘adjusted’ to suit some personal taste, it is no longer raw data.
Bottom line: Cooked data is not raw data and, for analytical replication and verification purposes, it is completely unpalatable.
Zeke the Sneak:
…They are all perfect environmentalist utopias
This is it!, let’s see how it looks within a few years. You’ll be emigrating like those Antarctica penguins. Anyway, we’ll welcome all of you except for the green ones.
….,believe me, temperatures will be the last thing you will ever, ever, think about. BTW, you already ate today, didn’t you?
If you never get ill you’ll never appreciate health. That is why God send us the Al Gores, the Hansens, all those little devils, all those idiots, to spoil everything. It’s the earth’s renewal by the hard way.
Enneagram says:
June 18, 2010 at 12:16 pm
Zeke the Sneak:
…They are all perfect environmentalist utopias
This is it!, let’s see how it looks within a few years. You’ll be emigrating like those Antarctica penguins. Anyway, we’ll welcome all of you except for the green ones.
It can’t hurt to have one’s passport updated. And thank you very much 🙂
But you will get green ones in Peru. They always move on to a new state after they ruin their own. See “Californians living in Washington State!”
Rod:
Peripheral to the point of the article, but since you asked…. Yes, it’s a real weatherstation. The marker reads “Adelia W ….Wife of Jess…Baldwin…Sept 23, 1888….July 4, 1940. A search of the LDS genealogical record yields an Adelia Winget married to Jesse Clarke Baldwin, b. 9/23/1888 d. 7/4/1940. Adelia appears to have been a lifelong Utah resident.
The curator of this station has accepted the responsibility of running it for many years. I had a conversation at the local BLM office while trying to locate the station that left me with the impression that she is a well known and respected member of the community–not likely someone who would raid the cemetery for a souvenir. So I assume that Adelia was someone special to her, and I’m inclined to think that she is actually interred there.
Ms. XXXX wasn’t home when I visited, so I didn’t get to talk to her. A shame; I’m finding a lot of human interest stories in talking to the COOP volunteers.
This was up at Wikipedia for a while this morning, before it was taken down. An accurate assessment of the abomination which occurred this morning in South Africa.
http://www.blogcdn.com/soccer.fanhouse.com/media/2010/06/screen-shot-2010-06-18-at-12.10.50-pm.png
Enneagram says:
June 18, 2010 at 7:29 am
Global Warming is over since 1998 and, politically, died on November 19th 2009, its funeral was held at the city of Copenhagen last december.
It’s over, kaput, finito, tot, acabado…, just forget it!, if you don’t want to be considered a fool.
Acabado. Now there is a word we Americans would be well advised to take into our lexicon, since the Administration is so madly in love with the green policies that Spainhas implemented.
They may have independent selection criteria, but they all come from the same general data.
Have the Big 3 sufficiently justified thier selection bias?
Would be an interesting compare.
stevengoddard says:
June 18, 2010 at 9:30 am
“Yeah I though after the 4th quarter of the NBA finals game 7 last night officiating could not be worse. I was wrong!”
Yes, but the Ron Artest post-game interview is one for the ages.
http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/blog/ball_dont_lie/post/Ron-Artest-is-the-undisputed-king-of-the-postgam?urn=nba,249382
stevengoddard “I have grave concerns about the refereeing at the World Cup. The US was literally ripped off of a win this morning by a referee who was either incompetent or anti-American.”
Steven,
With only 5% of the global population, the U.S. consumes 25% of the world’s energy. According to the NRDC, Americans are 94.7% more comfortable than their international counterparts. Given this degree of social and climate injustice, you cannot expect the calls to go the U.S.’s way at The World Cup. Sorry, it’s called karma.
peace,
dz
Clearly Messrs Stott & Thorne are not the sharpest knives in the drawer, otherwise they would not have tried to spin yet another climate fairytale to try and fool the public into thinking that the raw data-sets used to produce the three different came from different sources.
Time these guys wised up and realised the public are a tad sharper than that, and any climate publication, peer reviewed or not, will come under the spotlight. Time to pull the plug on the hypothesis of CAGW, it’s well past its sell-by date.
Very interest, but what’s CCSP?
‘Fraid not. Check out the definitive Surface Stations report (thanks to Anthony) at
http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_itemId=2665.
One would hope that NCDC will officially archive the surfacestations record, and then update it every 10 years or so with new photos.
So how did a COOP station end up over a gravesite??
So nobody noticed the antlers? Is this a new requirement for stations?
Brent in Calgary
The headstone looks pretty new — perhaps the long-time volunteer observer asked to be buried under his station?
Anyway, Anthony’s interesting study of latex vs oil-based paint characteristics is not too relevant here, since this isn’t much paint of either kind!
Seems to me a great big fuss over one sentence in a paper about something else entirely. Maybe some of you should get over yourselves.
What Temperature data ? It’s Temperature anomaly data isn’t it ?
I don’t see any gathering of global temperature data; that would cover a range from about -90 deg C to about +60 deg C, insead of about =/- 0.5 deg C
These people don’t seem to be very robust with their terminology. So where are the International Standards of Temperature Anomaly maintained; and who is responsible for them ?
How come that you never ever see any mention of what Temperature it is exactly that correcponds to zero deg C Temperature Anomaly; so that you know what the true mean global surface temperature as measured by Mother Gaia is.
Rick K says:
June 18, 2010 at 10:04 am
stevengoddard says:
June 18, 2010 at 9:30 am
Maybe the lost goal is buried in Hanksville, bUT, what do I now?
Mac the Knife says: “Consider a raw egg….”
Okay, yes, the problem is all the egg-heads in climate science.
What’s the problem? The consensus of data sets agree. Each effectively peer reviews the other. That confirms they are correct. The debate is over.
Rattus Norvegicus says:
June 18, 2010 at 10:26 am
And just where does Dr. Pielke suggest we get another planet?
Dear Sewer Rat (Rattus Norvegicus)
If you spend your life living in the sewers it is no surprise everything looks like it has turned to sh*t 🙂
Cheers
This is like paying for the same job to 3 people for the same study.
Hmmmmm.
stevengoddard says:
June 18, 2010 at 9:30 am
“I have grave concerns about the refereeing at the World Cup. The US was literally ripped off of a win this morning by a referee who was either incompetent or anti-American.”
Sure. The USA was robbed of a great victory (and I say that as a Brit). However, I doubt the ref. was anti-American. He just made a bad call. Pity footy doesn’t allow instant review of video footage, as is done even in rugby these days.
The video footage was an utterly accurate representation of the raw data, and showed that the pushing, shoving and holding was done by the opposition. However, we are stuck forever with the decision and the powers that be would never back down on that. It’s a matter of hubris and the desire to control.
Hmm. Now why does that sound familiar…
Die Zauberflotist,
I hope that comment was parody. If not, you sound about as scientific as a Scientologist.
Karma, Pf-f-ft.
I got your karma right here.
Rod said “And are those deer antlers on top of that weather station in the picture? And possibly the rib cage as well? This is a joke, right? Not a real station? Over a gravestone?”
Sure looks like an old deer carcass, good eyes; the station is no joke, that’s the way it is or was, part of the “science is robust”.
Die Zauberflotist
One of the main things the US uses energy for is to provide jobs and food for much of the rest of the world. China and India used to be starving before they started selling products into western consumer markets.
What on earth does that have to do with football? Your thought process is severely flawed at many levels.
Smokey@June 18, 2010 at 4:58 pm, easy….easy. 😉
Thanks, Mike H, but I’m not quite finished responding to the haters:
stevengoddard says at 1:34 pm:
Truly shameful that a referee would use his hatred of one country to justify cheating in order to allow another country to win.
And it doesn’t say much for anyone who proclaims that it is deserved in the name of ‘climate justice,’ whatever the hell that is. It certainly isn’t science.
Die Zauberflotist:
You would be happy if a third of American citizens were living in shacks with no access to electricity?
Shame on you American people for providing for your citizens! We demand that you cut off power to half your citizens, then you will be rated well along with the nations that allow their people to starve.
If you allow your people to starve, karma (in the guise of a referee) will not get your team at the world cup.
My question to all of this environmental wacko-ism and non-believers:
If all of the data is wrong and our activities have nothing to do with Global Warming, then why don’t we simply follow the rule of return the area to the manner it was prior to use? Care of resources to include earth, wind, water, and fire is a basic human requirement. Why can’t we just do this and forget about the back and forth on the data?
sustaintolive,
Please stop it, you’re scaring me.
since when is it socially unjust that Americans live in a Nation that has a lot of natural benefits that we work our asses off to give to the rest of the world.
Do you know how many trillions of US tax payers money have been given to third world countries? Do you know how many sewers and bathrooms and homes have been built in Third world countries by Americans from American tax payer money?
Please, I feel sorry for poeple in other countries but don’t tell me that there is social insjustice. I have been working hard since I was 13.
You want to talk social insjustice why don’t you talk to George Soros and ask him to give over some of his Billions, Why don’t you talk to Pachauri and tell him to give over some of the money he has illegally gained as the head of the IPCC which has lied cheated and stolen money from several governments of the world. Why don’t you talk to the corrupt governments that keep their people poor rather than sharing their wealth. Like the Somali Government. Or perhaps the idiots in Haiti who agreed to abide by the WTO treaty with the UN and through the Codex Alementarius forces tons of food sent to Haiti by the US to sit on docks and rot while families starve and die.
Rich Americans and social injustice my gluteus maximus.
Now, getting back to the topic at hand.
So many people seem surprised over the behavior in this paper and the dozens if not hundreds of others that are full of lies, deceit, trickery and really bad science.
But why do they continue to push it?
Because of Cap and Trade and greed. These scientists know that if they keep pushing this agenda long enough and if cap and trade goes through, they are on easy cushy street.
They have Gore, Pachauri, Soros and other pushing them to continue their agenda because they want the money from Cap and Trade. Scientists like Mann and Briffa and Jones are way to deeep into this to back out now. This is a conspiracy that would make Hollywood cream their jeans, but everyone turns a blind eye to the truth while idiots like Leonardo DiCaprio take their cues from Gore and try to get the young to be swayed by his hollywood charm.
Gore isn’t worried about the oceans rising, if he was he wouldn’t have just spent 30million for a house on the Beach in Southern California. He doesn’t care about polar bears other than he sees them as a money making tool for his 2 carbon trading firms.
Dere’s smoke commin’ out da machine (agw)!
The Fix Is In: The Showbiz Manipulations of the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL and NASCAR by Brian Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Fix-Showbiz-Manipulations-NFL-NASCAR/dp/1932595813/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276925097&sr=1-1
E.g., “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”?
Steve Goddard; “China and India used to be starving before they started selling products into the western consumer markets”.That’s right,they managed to starve their way to a combined population of two billion. 😉
SM says:
June 18, 2010 at 8:02 am
I have to agree with John McGuire above. I am forced into the unpleasant position of doubting anything AGW proponents say.
Worse, I’m seeing hints that in other fields – such as medicine and biology and ecology – the scent of dishonesty and agenda-driven “truth” is wafting through the air.
This puts me in the unenviable position of appearing to be a bit of a conspiracy nut.
_____________________________________________________________________
Yeah, declaring someone a conspiracy nut or on a “witch hunt” like Joe McCarthy is a very good way to marginalize anyone who stumbles across the truth behind the wide spread propaganda.
For example here is the USDA and FDA truth that has been hidden from the public:
Lies and deception: How the FDA does not protect your best interests
The Festering Fraud Behind Food Safety Reform
History, HACCP and the Food Safety Con Job
Anyone who tries to make this public is labeled as a hysterical conspiracy nut, yet the food companies have donated millions to the campaign chests of congressman
…Quite a coincidence that the woman buried in that grave in Hanksville UT, died exactly
30 years on the day before the WC referee Koman Coulibaly was born [ and he most probably wrongly disallowed a US goal…] and that the date is JULY 4…The Devil is always in the details…just ask Carl-Henrik Svanberg…
What does it say about the mindset of Nature’s reviewers that they let this blooper through?
What other, less blatant, bloopers have they waved through?
PS: Waved through in other papers, by other reviewers with a similar bias, I mean.
A first look at GISTEMP with SYNOP (not CLIMAT) data
http://rhinohide.wordpress.com/2010/05/23/gsod-global-surface-summary-of-the-day/