I was rather surprised to see this interview in Physics World with Dr. Richard Muller (h/t to Bishop Hill) with this praise.
“If Watts hadn’t done his work, we would not have reliable data today. The fact that he did that means he’s a hero; he deserves some sort of international prize.”
Thanks for the kind words Dr. Muller, but I don’t think that will happen.
Here’s the full quote plus some other interesting things:
Muller also had four specific concerns with the scientific consensus on global warming, which the BEST project was designed to address. The first – and most serious, he says – is the “stations issue”, referring to a problem highlighted by controversial US blogger and former TV meteorologist Anthony Watts. In 2007 Watts initiated the Surfacestations.org project, which reported that 70% of temperature recording stations in the US were inaccurate to a level of 2–5°C. MulIer says that the BEST team has now cleared up this issue by showing that when it comes to specifically measuring change in temperature, the 30% of good stations are not significantly more accurate than the 70% of bad stations. “If Watts hadn’t done his work, we would not have reliable data today. The fact that he did that means he’s a hero; he deserves some sort of international prize.”
The other concerns are as follows:
The second concern Muller refers to i. the “data selection” employed by the three major groups collecting global temperature data: NASA; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US; and the Met Office’s Hadley Centre in the UK. Muller says that the number of stations being used between 1980 and the present day has dropped from 6000 to less than 2000, with no explanation to be found anywhere in the literature. The third issue is that rapid urbanization in the regions surrounding temperature stations might have led to localized temperature increases, or what is known as the “urban heat island” effect. The fourth concern, which Muller calls “data correction”, refers to the small adjustments that the climate groups make to temperature readings as a result of changes in instruments and locations. Muller says the records describing why individual corrections have been made are very poor.
I emailed Professor Muller tonight, thanking him for the kind words. It was our first email exchange in months. He maintains that he has an open mind on the issues of surface data, and if new data is presented to him, he’ll re-evaluate.
Funny…those are the exact concerns skeptics have been pointing out in the data for years.
In the global terms serious disconnect took place around 1970
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/69-71.htm
I say, blame the Russians 🙂
Still in the same position of using ever more powerful computers to average crap until it turns into gold. Not buying it. Never will.
Someone should establish an international prize bearing your name. Perhaps the ‘Anthony Watts Prize for Trying to Keep Science Honest’?
Lord knows, we need one!
Cui Bono
+1
Does this mean that 100% of the stations are inaccurate to a level of 2-5 deg. C or somewhat better? Nice input for models that calculate average global temperatures to one thousandth of a degree C! Or am I missing something?
Careful Anthony…I’m sure Romm will gladly nominate you for any prize that includes a mandatory one-way trip to Pluto!
[snip . . the /sarc is really required for comments like that . . . kbmod]
Andrew Watts –
On the Bishop Hill site you had this to say (Apr 2, 2012 at 5:33 PM ): “Well, he “thinks” he cleared it up. My latest data says otherwise.”
Could you perhaps elaborate on that comment please? Thanks.
Sorry – Anthony Watts (!) not Andrew Watts. I do apologize.
My OED has prize = “Anything striven for or worth striving for; a thing of value won by or inspiring effort.”
By my appraisal Anthony definitely deserves a prize and praise for a truly inspiring effort 🙂
As ever scientists trying and failing to make a silk purse out of pigs’ ears.
Muller has his own problems in mixing up good data with bad.
Big thumbs up for you!! As they say in the Navy “Bravo Zulu, Shipmate”!! And you have received your award…sorta. Isn’t the Bloggies Lifetime achievement the equivalent to the Nobel Prize?
Richard Muller said: “The third issue is that rapid urbanization in the regions surrounding temperature stations might have led to localized temperature increases, or what is known as the “urban heat island” effect.”
Hmmmm. That’s a change of tune. There is a paper by Wickham, Curry, …, Muller et al saying they investigated the urban heat effect and it wasn’t there.
http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/BEST%20UHI.pdf
“We compare … linear temperature trends for [all] sites to the distribution for a rural subset … the difference of these shows a slight negative slope over the period 1950 to 2010 …, opposite in sign to that expected if the urban heat island effect was adding anomalous warming to the record.“. [my emphasis]
The method the paper used was, to put it politlel, useless, and I said so at the time.
http://climateaudit.org/2011/12/20/berkeley-very-rural-data/#comment-318366.
“IMHO the station classification method is useless. It is described in Wickham et al 2011 http://berkeleyearth.org/pdf/berkeley-earth-uhi.pdf
Of the 1313 Australian stations in Berkeley’s site_detail.txt, 878 are (as per the file posted on CA) “very rural” and the other 435 are “other”.
The 878 “very rural” stations include 100+ airports and 111 post offices. I suspect that heaps of the stations are in minor or moderate conurbations which are just as susceptible to UHE as major towns and cities. As Anthony has pointed out, growth and change matter more than size.“.
This was a comment on a Steve McIntyre post in which he raised serious questions about their station selection methodology.
http://climateaudit.org/2011/12/20/berkeley-very-rural-data/.
Some people think that Muller is not fit to lick Anthonys thermometer clean.
But I think he is
The first comment gives a credibility to WUWT which will sit in the craw of so much of the extremist element that it has to be welcomed and ultimately honest and credible data is required to educate the masses. The second is a concise summation of the suspicions we all have, but have not heard from the established scientific sector before this, it has to mark progress, and judje him and it on its merits. We all have to start somewere.
But Mr Watts, you already have the highest international award, a Noble Award: the accolade of millions of independent people, who collectively visit your blog in vast numbers because they trust you and acknowledge your credibility and science.
None of this is based on narrow ideological grounds by a closed group of smug, self-satisfying, incestuous individuals for political reasons.
Mike Jonas,
Many times I see examples of what I can only describe as the phenomena where people making public statements haven’t adapted or understood the fact that things live forever in the interwebs, which becomes evident every time someone notices that what they say today is NOT what they said in the past.
AND…there are people who have enough interest to keep track 🙂
JimB
There is a prize named after the best known British climatologist
The Hubert H. Lamb Memorial Prize
worth all of £100 sterling, awarded by the University of East Anglia, the home of the infamous CRU.
That would be the ultimate irony; only joking. (mod- if comment is inappropriate please delete)
“the 30% of good stations are not significantly more accurate than the 70% of bad stations”
doesn’t that just make people want to keel over with laughter ! :-)))))
Perhaps Muller has finally seen the writing on the wall for the Alarmist’s side and is getting himself relocated in the debate ahead of the IPCC report killing off extremist alarmism once and for all? The report yesterday detailing how the IPCC have accepted that there is no scientific basis for concluding that we are seeing human induced increases in extreme weather activity may also point in that direction.
Keep to the scientific method, follow the empirical evidence, don’t assume anything and the truth will become more and more apparent.
The Nobel committee lost all credibility when awarded a prize to a politician for the act of simply winning an election (Barack Obama).
The argument for not taking UHI especially seriously is that one is dealing with delta temp, and this is unaffected by UHI, in that 100.000 people are still 100.000 people and their effect on the local temperature, while admittedly being enormous (3-4 degrees celcius in f.ex. London) does not change over time.
That is of course nonsense.
Are there studies of UHI which specifically look at changes in (delta) population and (delta) energy consumption over time.
Energy consumption should be researched, as there must be a direct link between emissions of CO2 and energy consumption and UHI.
And does anyone know how much energy we are putting directly into the earths energy balance when we are producing that much CO2 ?
No disrespect to Anthony, but I would also like to see Steve McIntyre and John Daly accorded hero status when the history of this miserable episode comes to be written. Steve, in particular, fought long and hard when it was him alone against the assembled might of the warmist fraternity, and fought a completely clean battle defending pure science against unquestionable fraud.
We were very lucky to have people such as Anthony, John and Steve on our side….
REPLY: I couldn’t agree more. McIntyre and Daly were the pioneers. – Anthony
The problem is;
First they ( The warmistas ) do a press release with all sorts of silly claims. That hits the MSM big time. The “news” spreads all over the western worls as wildfire.
“Its true !The world is warming! We are all gonna die! ”
Next an explanation; ” Well, its only 0.15 degrees…..No we wont put all deniers in an asylumn…..okay maybe the polar bears have multiplied 5 times over…..yes we know, the himalayas arent melitng….okay okay the antarctic is fine…..all right then there is no death spiral…..okay there is an Urban heat effect….yes yes station numbers in non urban areas are removed…..okay okay the sea level isnt rising….I know I know the turds arent getting any bigger…..yes yes birds arent flying into mountains…..I know I know the PMS period isnt getting longer ….no no people arent getting taller…yes yes we know, the worths on teenagers arent increasing……”
But noone mentions the retractions in the MSM. The politicians buys the first story, and The Warmistas has secured next years budget.
I think that we should welcome those, formerly, from the alarmist side of the debate when they recognise our arguments and accept them. This is a welcome sign that the scientific realist side of the debate is winning. The political/alarmist side cannot compete with scientific truth.
George says:
April 3, 2012 at 2:23 am
The Nobel committee lost all credibility when awarded a prize to a politician for the act of simply winning an election (Barack Obama).
=====
Yes, especially when you consider that the year before, they awarded the prize to someone famous for losing an election, and for making a PowerPoint presentation full of “inaccurate” claims about the climate (Al Gore).
Hey, Al Gore (Inconvenient Fairy Tales) and the Pachauri (railway engineer and former Glorioil research advisor) have a Nobel (Peace) Prize so why not you for doing some actual scientific work and observations? 😉
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2007/
I love Anthony’s graphics, pictures, whatever you call them — I don’t know where he gets them.
“Of the 1313 Australian stations in Berkeley’s site_detail.txt, 878 are (as per the file posted on CA) “very rural” and the other 435 are “other”.
The 878 “very rural” stations include 100+ airports and 111 post offices.”
Thanks Mike.
As always, the devilry is in the details.
That was the PEACE Nobel committee and it had already lost all credibility (IMHO) for awarding the prize to the IPCC,
And BTW, although I think Anthony deserves a prize (or two ,:P) KEEP ON GUARD, We do not have reliable data today. No if they keep contaminatating global temps with urban heat.
Well done Anthony. I’m sure some sort of official recognition is warranted, not least for keeping the debate very much alive when they wanted to kill it off.
But to those above, remember that the BEST dataset shows much *more* warming that HadCrut land. Even if Muller’s “open mind” about UHI (especially in the light of Roy Spencer’s recent analysis) caused him to lower this warming trend it may still be higher than HadCrut….. In other words adjustments to BEST are likely to validate HadCrut. Just sayin’.
People, people, be kind! After all, he did say he’d be willing to consider new data . . . (enigmatic smile)
On the Bishop Hill site you had this to say (Apr 2, 2012 at 5:33 PM ): “Well, he “thinks” he cleared it up. My latest data says otherwise.”
Could you perhaps elaborate on that comment please? Thanks.
All in good time . . . all in good time . . .
I sincerely second Cui Bono at 12:36.
John B says:
April 3, 2012 at 1:54 am
“But Mr Watts, you already have the highest international award, a Noble Award: the accolade of millions of independent people, who collectively visit your blog in vast numbers because they trust you and acknowledge your credibility and science.
None of this is based on narrow ideological grounds by a closed group of smug, self-satisfying, incestuous individuals for political reasons.”…………….
I agree. Well said. So let’s hoist up the John B sail.
Oh that they would take away Gore’s Nobel Prize and award it to Mr Anthony Watts.
All good stuff.
I assume Judith is still in the bad books then?
Although I’d be careful Anthony. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice…..
Mark says:
April 3, 2012 at 1:32 am
“.. And you have received your award…sorta. Isn’t the Bloggies Lifetime achievement the equivalent to the Nobel Prize?”
You degrading the Bloggies Lifetime Achievement award with such a comparison.
Watts deserves better than an establishment tainted award, its the establishment and their claque that are backing the ecotard ponzi scheme.
AndyG55 says:
April 3, 2012 at 2:21 am
“the 30% of good stations are not significantly more accurate than the 70% of bad stations”
doesn’t that just make people want to keel over with laughter ! :-)))))
I thought the same thing. So, in other words, all stations are 2-5 degrees C off.
And then Muller does his own study over his summer vacation. Instead of doing something useful like going back to square one and assembling the true uncorrected temperature record (the data that was originally collected) and making it available to the world for analysis, he takes the same old “corrected” data, puts it through yet another analysis that (surprise surprise) agrees with his earlier assumptions and then pats Mr Watts on the head for “ensuring the science was done right.” Big whoop.
Every year since 1901 the NOBEL PRIZE has been awarded for achievements in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and for peace. The Nobel Prize is an international award administered by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden. In 1968, Sveriges Riksbank established The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, founder of the Nobel Prize. Each prize consists of a medal, personal diploma, and a cash award.
The Nobel PEACE Prize is awarded by a committee of five persons who are chosen by the Norwegian Storting (Parliament of Norway), Oslo, Norway.
(My emphasis)
Well, I can only award Anthony the Ottawa Prize – worth $10.
Any other prize givers?
‘the small adjustments that the climate groups make to temperature readings as a result of changes in instruments and locations’
Let me correct that:
”the undocumented and unrecorded adjustments that the climate groups make to temperature readings as a result of changes in instruments and locations, the phases of the moon, the result of the latest model run/simulation, their horoscope, the tips in the Racing Post and anything else they feel may have the correct influence’.
And before anyone challenges my assertions, let them reflect on ‘undocumented’. This is one of the many areas of shoddy and suspicious practice that generates little but contempt when I hear ‘Trust Me, I’m A Climate Scientist’ .
Undocumented and unrecorded changes = Charlatan IMO.
I hereby award Athony Watts the “Texas Attaboy Award” which comes with a heartfelt THANKS! and a tasty beverage of your choice should you find yourself in Houston for some unexplained reason.
Keep up the good work and keep makin ’em squirm.
EternalOptimist says:
April 3, 2012 at 1:51 am
Some people think that Muller is not fit to lick Anthonys thermometer clean.
But I think he is
Would that not create an Oral Heat Island effect?
Yeah, Anthony, the Nobel problem is this: Let’s suppose for just a moment that global temperatures start moving down, as they pretty much have to unless some very basic physics is wrong if the recently observed albedo increase is sustained (whatever its cause). Let’s suppose that the change in sign in the PDO (and eventually the NAO, which is a lot less predictable or periodic) cause this global decrease to be associated with a drop in NH temperatures and strong growth of the Arctic and Greenland ice pack. Let us make the rash assumption that your work, Roy Spencer’s work, and the work of the handful of maverick scientists who have dared to resist the gatekeeping and social and professional ostracism associated with “the cause” is all, completely justified, that it turns out that (say) the Sun or some aspect of the motion of the Earth through the Oort cloud modulating the rates of micrometeorite incidence on the upper atmosphere (and hence the rain of nucleating dust) is indeed a co-factor in global mean temperature that is larger than CO_2 modulation by a factor of three or six, so that the 20th century peak temperature was 3/4 due to non-anthropogenic factors. Let’s suppose that it eventually becomes so glaringly obvious that all of this is true — as we return to near-LIA temperatures in spite of increased CO_2 — that nobody can possibly argue any more that the science and politics mixture that is current “Climate Science” as governed by the IPCC is anything but pure unadulterated bullshit.
Even with all of this true, the Nobel committee would basically have to repudiate themselves to give you or anybody else a Nobel prize for the discoveries on the science side, or (heavens forfend) a peace prize. It would be an “uh, sorry, we were completely and absurdly wrong when we gave the prize to Gore, Mann, Hansen et. al.” moment. The King and Committee would be embarrassed.
At that moment we will see their mettle. In proper science, honest error is never an embarrassment — or shouldn’t be. I still maintain that most climate researchers, warmist or not, are basically honest, and are being misdirected by the combination of selective grant pressure and gatekeeping (hardly the first time for either of these to corrupt science in more mundane venues, actually, although rarely on this grand a scale). The Nobel committee should indeed acknowledge their error and reward the discovery of that error even more enthusiastically than they did the original work. They should step up and say “We were wrong, and thank you for having the courage to show us.”
But will they? Or will they take the cowards way out and simply try to pretend that the past never happened?
My current concern is that for a long time I had a pretty good idea that global temperatures were going to go down along with the solar cycle because the long term data show a strong correlation that made it highly probable, but the mechanism for the decrease was obscure. That is no longer the case. Whether or not climatologists thought that albedo could fluctuate by order of 10% naturally, it is fluctuating by that order now, and that is sufficient to modulate 3K variations of global mean temperature all by itself, a factor utterly neglected in “all things remaining equal” models. Global temperatures follow secular changes by at least a decade if not longer (one or more solar cycles), and Tisdale has fairly convincingly shown that they tend to be quantum drops driven by/slaved to changes in SSTs. We should be preparing for a return to much cooler temperatures not unrestrained heating, especially in the NH.
Speaking of which, do we have UAH for March yet?
rgb
Wolf “praise” in sheep’s clothing.
Robert Brown says (April 3, 2012 at 6:22 am)
——
Good comment!
But we must fear that in it’s current “cause du jour” the Nobel twerps are more likely eyeing up Hansen for a prize (Peace? Pray it’s not physics!) to add to his collection, just to make sure the proper pseudo-intellectual Guardianista circles are kept happy.
Fat Gore & pals won the 2007 Peace Prize beating Irena Sendlerowa (1910-2008). From Wiki: “She smuggled 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto and then provided them with false identity documents and with housing outside the Ghetto, thereby saving those children from being killed in the Holocaust. The Nazis eventually discovered her activities, tortured her, and sentenced her to death; but she managed to evade execution and survive the war.”
So, no contest, really. Sigh.
I smell a rat… and it could be that Muller is up to something.
Please watch your back Anthony.
It is way too early to begin patting each other on the back. Climate skeptics are still despised by the MSM and almost all scientific boards. Some think the battle is nearly over, and each vindication is trumpeted as the “last nail” in the AGW coffin. There must be an infinite number of last nails.
Gatekeeper blocking has not decreased, and the public still perceive CO2 as a problem pollutant, which ultimately requires drastic, remedial action. Any decrease in CO2 emissions are still regarded as desirable at ANY cost.
It only requires a dramatic warm anomaly, to send the human herd, cascading back to AGW alarm and draconian measures. Everyone seems to confuse battle victory with war victory. A dangerous tactical error. This is an ideological war and we are only winning the unreported scientific battles. The future is not set nor assured. GK
Corey S. says:
Funny…those are the exact concerns skeptics have been pointing out in the data for years.
Why do you say that?
Of course those are the exact concerns skeptics have been pointing out. The purpose of the BEST program is to deal with the skeptic movement. It should not surprise you that they addresss the things that you have been pointing out. Nor should it be any surprise when they announce that all skeptic concerns have been addressed, and it is worse than we thought.
It remains to be seen if they can accomplish their secondary objective: co-opt Anthony Watts. They about had him a few months into this effort. They even got him to buy off on the results, sight unseen. That made them cocky. They started taking him for granted a little bit too soon, and scared him off. Perhaps the “kind words” and other flatteries will yet get the deed done.
Rather than giving interviews, wouldn’t Dr. Muller do better trying to get his papers on BEST through peer review?
Hmmm…is this really a compliment, Anthony? Aren’t you perhaps being credited with what BEST wound up doing with this data – finding that the existing adusted records are really okay? You do indeed deserve a prize but for much more than the surface stations project.
“Muller says that the number of stations being used between 1980 and the present day has dropped from 6000 to less than 2000, with no explanation to be found anywhere in the literature ” No problem if the drop-out were random.
The Bloggies are more significant than the Nobel prizes. And, you don’t have to associate with undesirables like Arafat, Gore, Carter, et. al.. Or Muller, come to that.
Randomly distributed spatially? Or temporally? North more than south? Rural vs urban?
Can we know the reasons (cost, neglect, bureaucratic error, misplacement) as well as the distribution of reasons?
.
Aside re: Nobel prizes and the recent track record, the various Nobel prizes are awarded in separate committees and processes. So far as I am aware it is the “Peace” prize and also the Literature prize, not the real science prizes, which have been corrupted by highly “politically correct” committees. The IPCC/Gore prize was from the “Peace” prize committee. It will come to be seen as a permanent embarrassment to the name “Nobel” and there can be a parlor game to debate “which was the worst Nobel Prize selection ever?”
Anthony,
I agree that you deserve some form of “major award”, and I do not mean a lady’s leg lamp ala “A Christmas Story”. The problem is, as noted by some, most of these referenced awards have been discredited by virtue of to whom they have been previuosly awarded. So, a hearty “thank you” and keep in mind the millions of hits on your site! That is the real bottom line. Perhaps a bowling alley (deed) could be arranged to be sent to you? Hope you have seen ” A Christmas Story”. I also agree with those who have indicated some possibility of the potential for some of the “rats jumping from a sinking ship” phenomina potentially being at work in some of these turnarounds being seen lately. Another obvious “award” for all of your hard work.
Regards,
Jim G
Muller better be careful, questioning the data is like questioning the science, and everyone knows the science of GW is perfect.
I wonder where we would be if Anthony and all the other ‘climate deniers’ had just got on with something else. My guess is that we would have official graphs showing a relentless temperature rise over the last 15 years based on about 500 measuring sites (but they would not mention that), and lots of secret temperature adjustment algorithms. Successive hockey stick graphs would have shown ever more clearly how the climate had been constant to 0.05C for 5000 years, with a huge upturn in the last few decades, and Michael Mann would have a Nobel Prize!
Politicians around the world would be being whipped into a frenzy of activity to lower CO2 whatever the cost in money and living standards (including deaths).
Thanks Anthony!
Paging Dorothy Parker. There’s a telephone call waiting.
==============
Timeo danaos et dona ferentes…….
Timeo danaos et dona ferentes comes to mind
Timeo danaos et dona ferentes comes to mind reading the praise
Jim,
Here is the distribution of stations for GHCN-M and Berkeley (which includes GHCN-M, GHCN-D, GSOD, WWR, etc.): http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j237/hausfath/ScreenShot2012-02-18at114537AM.png
Why is it that everybody and their brother seems to be able to find UHI, but the gatekeepers can’t? What about Spencer? http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/03/mckitrick-michaels-were-right-more-evidence-of-spurious-warming-in-the-ipcc-surface-temperature-dataset/
Spencer said 50%, I said possibly over 100% using his same study:
http://naturalclimate.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/northern-hemisphere-uhi-crutem3-18/
That’s why i’ve often responded to those “coffin” claims by recommending a better metaphor: It’s another arrow in the elephant.
Rogerkni,
While I sympathise with what you have written, I think the point is that Anthony and other ‘deniers’ have helped to keep climate science a bit more honest than it otherwise would have been. They have denied tham the option to fiddle the temperatures and other data – forcing them to confront a temprature curve that isn’t rising. Indeed, perhaps that is why they are called ‘deniers’!
“Petrossa says:
April 3, 2012 at 10:18 am
Timeo danaos et dona ferentes comes to mind reading the praise”
Beware the Gleick and those bearing gifts? 😉
Anthony
You and your blog helped inform me from many different sources that UHI corrections lacking were of the order of 0.5 degrees last century. We had the young lad on video doing paired US stations comparisons. Your own incredible Surface Stations project. Your Reno transect. Warren Meyer similar. Warwick Hughes & Aussie comparisons. Comparisons ffrom South Africa. Roy Spencer. John Daly, John Daly and John Daly. Hans Erren. Andrei Ilarionov spectacular presentation at the conference. McKitrick and Michaels. Last but not least, was it Don Keiller on the tail of Wei-Chyung Wang?
All these got big UHI that tend to wipe out any significant temperature rise above natural fluctuations.
BEST hasn’t begun to touch these results. Nice words which I’m glad you thanked Muller for, but no science content AFAICT. And this matters, surely.
Right.
I speed read the last half of the comments appearing by 2100 GMT [?? 2 pm threadtime?? – (ish) ].
So, can we get Anthony Watts, Steve McIntyre and John Daly onto a short-list,ven, of Nobel prizewinners?
Can we? And do we want to?
If we do, not an entirely simple process. Let’s look at the Nobel Prize for Peace [Obama, B is an example of a recent winner]: – “Nomination and Selection of Peace Prize Laureates
Every year, the Norwegian Nobel Committee sends out thousands of letters inviting qualified people to submit their nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize. The names of the nominees and other information about the nominations cannot be revealed until 50 years later.”
Source – http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/nomination/ at 2101 Z 03 April 2012.
So. Not immdiately conducive to a media/internet campaign, I fear.
Physics, Chemistry, Physiology and medicine [not really relvant, I appreciate] and Economics are “by invitation only” – see http://search.nobelprize.org/search/nobel/?q=nominate&i=en
Literature [maybe not, but even they are of vague asociation] requires: – “The Nobel Committee sends invitation letters to persons who are qualified to nominate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Other persons who are qualified to nominate but who have not received invitations may also submit nominations. The names of the nominees and other information about the nominations cannot be revealed until 50 years later.” – from
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/nomination/
A Nobel Prize – for readership, and well-merited Webbies aide – can we deliver?
No reflection on nthomy, Steve or John, but – ehaps – the system is not aligned to this sort of Real Science.
Have a great Easter wek-end.
Auto
so now with the 30% “good” sites they can just expand the grid cell sizes and extrapolate their “good” readings over hundreds of miles … thats just great !!!
It is just as possible that station drop out favored the warm 30 to 60 year pacific oscillation (more frequent El Ninos than La Ninas). When these oscillations flip, some areas cool while other areas warm. With station drop out not being random, the trend could be an artifact of the oscillation’s affect on the remaining station locations, not AGW.
Muller finally said something I agree with. Anthony IS a hero.
The Nobel committee should indeed acknowledge their error and reward the discovery of that error even more enthusiastically than they did the original work. They should step up and say “We were wrong, and thank you for having the courage to show us.”
But will they? Or will they take the cowards way out and simply try to pretend that the past never happened
They’ll stick with experience — cooling down the past.
Muller’s comment reads to me like a backhand slap at the skeptic movement. He’s saying we didn’t have accurate data. Now, thanks to Anthony we do. And, there’s nothing to see. Move along. When excactly did the bad data get fixed?
cui bono says:
April 3, 2012 at 12:36 am
Someone should establish an international prize bearing your name. Perhaps the ‘Anthony Watts Prize for Trying to Keep Science Honest’?
Lord knows, we need one!
___________________________________
Amen to that. If we manage to squeek through this critical point in history with our freedom intact, I would not be surprise if there was an Anthony Watts international prize established, perhaps for scientific whistle-blowwers.
“If Watts hadn’t done his work, we would not have reliable data today.”
Excuse me, but, WHAT RELIABLE DATA?!?!?!?!?!
NOTHING Watts has done has provided us with reliable data or nudged the powers that be into arranging for reliable data in the future. There are NO plans for wilderness temperature stations for one quibble and far too few good quality stations to be meaningful at the global level.
Nothing like sucking up to the guy who can call foul on your crappy temperature series.