Andrew Revkin asked me to provide comments on this article of his where the National Climatic Data Center was asked to respond to Watts et al 2012:
A Closer Look at Climate Studies Promoted Before Publication
Here is what I sent to him:
My comments on Thorne’s response are pretty simple.
They still refuse to get out of the office, to examine firsthand the condition of the network and try to come up with hands on approaches for dealing with station inhomogeneity, but instead focus of trying to spot patterns in data and massage it. In my view this is the wrong approach and the reason that we are in this polarization today. We are conducting a grand experiment, and like any scientific experiment, you have to carefully watch how the data is being measured in the experiment environment, or problems will invalidate the measurement. If Climate Science operated under the same rules as Forensic Science, the compromised data would be tossed out on its ear. Instead, we are told to accept it as fully factual in the court of public opinion.
Until I came along with Watts 2009, they really weren’t looking closely at the issue. The SurfaceStations photography forced them into reaction mode, to do two things.
1. Close the worst USHCN stations, such as Marysville, CA (the station that started it all), Tucson, AZ (the University Science Dept/Weather Service Office that had the USHCN weather station in the parking lot), and Ardmore, OK (the USHCN station on the street corner). There are many others that have been closed.
If they are able to correct the data gathering problems back in the office with algorithms, why do they need to close these stations? Additionally, if they think they can get good data out of these stations with the myriad of adjustments they perform, why did they need to spend millions of dollars on the new Climate Reference Network commissioned in 2008 that we never hear about?
According to communications I received from Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon, the National Weather Service is developing plans to eliminate up to half of all COOP network stations (of which USHCN is a subset) as a potential cost-cutting measure.
Some possible reasons: (1) not central to the core mission of the NWS; (2) poor data quality; (3) too much of a public relations headache with people putting embarrassing photographs online.
I would argue not for removal of bad stations, but rather for the replacement of bad stations with well-sited stations, with simultaneous overlapping data collection so that biases can be both measured directly and permanently eliminated. I don’t see anything in what they are doing with Thorne that addresses this. To me, all they are doing is trying to put lipstick on a pig.
2. Attack me without publishing an appropriate paper intended for peer review first, such as the ghost authored “Talking points” memo issued by NCDC’s Dr. Thomas Peterson, who wouldn’t put his name on it, yet circulated it to every NOAA manager and the press. If the data from these stations is so strong, and the adjustments and corrections so valid, why the cloak and dagger approach?
Note, that in the Thorne response, they carefully avoided saying anything about station siting, preferring instead to focus on data manipulations. From my viewpoint, until they start worrying about the measurement environment in which our grand global experiment is being measured, all they are doing is rearranging data without looking at and learning from the environment and history that created it.
Perhaps they should follow the advice of the General Accounting Office report that backed up my work:
GAO-11-800 August 31, 2011, Climate Monitoring: NOAA Can Improve Management of the U.S. Historical Climatology Network Highlights Page (PDF) Full Report (PDF, 47 pages) Accessible Text Recommendations (HTML)
Finally, let’s spend a few moments looking at another network in the USA that doesn’t seem to suffer from the same sorts of magnitude of issues. The U.S. Population-Adjusted Temperature Dataset (PDAT) developed by Dr. Roy Spencer, which better handles UHI.
The following plot shows 12-month trailing average anomalies for the three different datasets (USHCN, CRUTem3, and ISH PDAT)…note the large differences in computed linear warming trends (click on plots for high res versions):
Where’s the warming?
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“I would argue not for removal of bad stations, but rather for the replacement of bad stations with well-sited stations, with simultaneous overlapping data collection so that biases can be both measured directly and permanently eliminated.”
Maybe if they named each new station after a politician, they’d get more funding for the project. 🙂
Or how about corporate sponsorship? Do you think air conditioning manufacturers would want to have their names on climate stations? 🙂
What astounds me is the money, time, and energy spent on trying to get good results out of garbage data, see for example the *BEST* (but not best) effort, yet thes *real climate scientists* say zip on improving the quality of the measurements.
Mr. Watts, your devotion, expertise and tenacity is truly a thing to admire and aspire to. Congratulations and best wishes for continued success.
I am still in a state of disbelief that so many so-called scientists have been willing to abandon the basic tenets of the scientific method in accepting, and even actively peddling, a hypothesis so clearly lacking in supporting data. Worse yet, it’s becoming more and more obvious that many of them are even prepared to manipulate the available data to produce a biased outcome.
What on Earth is happening to us? First of all, how can any scientist bring him/herself actively to undermine the very institution which has dragged humanity out of witchcraft and ignorance? And second, how can other scientists (almost certainly the great majority) witness this appalling deceit and choose to say nothing?
If there is a category of things we might call outright evil, the Global Warming deceit must surely be perilously close to falling within that category. Scientists knowingly spread disinformation because it lines their pockets, trusting school children are deliberately fed blatant lies and exaggerations disguised as scientific facts, countless thousands of the world’s poor starve while food crops are converted to unnecessary and environmentally damaging biofuels, and investigative reporters deliberately neglect to investigate the facts.
Why? What do these rogues and fools hope to accomplish except the destruction of their own lifestyle, their own prosperity, and ultimately their own freedom? What can they themselves possibly gain by it? It appears they want to throw away individual liberties it has taken millenia of struggle to achieve and turn over our future to an unelected and unaccountable ‘Green’ bureaucracy. In the words of the old adage: ‘They are making a rod for their own backs’.
By the grace of God, arrayed against this prostitution of science and misrepresentation of the truth, the rest of us have the likes of Anthony Watts, Stephen McIntyre, Professors Lindzen, Plimer, and Carter, Lord Christopher Monckton, and Joanne Nova, to name just a few of our champions.
Only very rarely in the field of scientific endeavour have so many owed so much to so few. (Apologies to Churchill.)
These individuals have spent years suffering the slings and arrows of outraged climate alarmists by publicly pointing out the flaws in ‘the science’ and decrying the lies. That takes stamina, determination, and above all courage, and I thank them all profusely from the bottom of my heart for their sacrifices.
But it also takes money to carry on the fight.
I have just sent $50.00 to WUWT and I urge you all, those who haven’t done so already, to send whatever money you can afford so that true science can be supported further. I’m not clever enough or brave enough to do what Anthony Watts does on our behalf, and maybe you’re not either, but we can do the next best thing and give him the means to finish the job.
I think he’s more than worth it. Dig deep! Do it now!
Me too. I’ve always cautioned commenters here who claimed “the last nail in the coffin.” I suggested they say, “It’s another arrow in the elephant.” But now I think that this, plus the recent “bad homogenization” paper, are going to make a considerable number of warmists, even marinated-in-the-meme climatologists, stop and ask themselves: “Hmm, could it possibly be (perish the thought) that the skeptics might be right?”
They will then start to review mentally some of the other findings our side has come up with and begin to look at things from a new perspective. As Sherlock Holmes said, once you shift your perspective ever so slightly, circumstantial evidence can point in an entirely different direction. At a minimum, I think this momentary re-think will lead to expressions of a lesser certainty in their case, a lower degree of scorn for contrarians, and a greater willingness to bethink themselves that they might be wrong.
So I’d call these papers the first nails in the coffin, from a psychological point of view.
In doing some digging I also found that NCDC also has its own “surface stations” program and site http://www.surfacetemperatures.org/ … apparently created after the Sept 2010 WMO CIMO meeting which endorsed the Leroy 2010 method.
Much hand-waving about establishing benchmarks for surface temp monitoring. They made some efforts thru 2011 but appears they’ve made no progress since.
Sure appears to have been largely abandoned – no blog posts – no progress reports – since beginning of year.
A “Benchmarking Position paper submitted for peer review” was scheduled due for April 2012 and appears was never completed.
Almost laughably – to me at least – they show they planned to get around to actually beginning to create benchmarks in November 2015! When does it take 5 years to figure out what a simple picture or site visit would show? When its the gubmint spending our tax dollars – and when its a group of scientists performing triage with no apparently real intent to actually do anything – thats when.
Hmmm …. seems to me their first task should have been “Review Leroy 2010 and implement”
HOW HARD IS IT TO LOOK AT THESE TWO EXAMPLES AND FIGURE OUT A SIMPLE SITE ANALYSIS PROGRAM?
http://surfacestations.org/images/OrlandCA_USHCN_Site_small.jpg
http://surfacestations.org/images/MarysvilleCA_USHCN_Site_small.jpg
I would remind folks to visit Anthony’s http://surfacestations.org/ site as well … it is obviously a very good resource on this topic
Great work. But, I strongly suspect that the overlap of new stations with old ones will reveal that for many of them the relationship between the new clean data and the old contaminated data is rather random.
As a worst possible case, take an airport site. The amount of additional heat will depend on so many factors like which way was the wind blowing, which planes went down which runways and when, which way did they turn and point their engines, what type of planes were there. All of these things will influence the amount of extra heat that hit that station. And the amount of heat will be essentially random. Then, given that many records will only contain hourly records how could you possibly remove any contamination reliably?
Where heat sources are less intense and less variable the contamination will be less but the principle will be the same.
I suspect that several PHDs later we will have compelling evidence that the data from many old stations cannot be retrospectively adjusted and simply has to be thrown away.
Manipulate the Data!
The spokesman for NOAA said, adjusted data better fits the projected computer models then raw data…!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why take data at all as it is no longer needed, just take down the computer results and save all that money wasted on data collection and entry.
Oh yeh! closing stations and just using Major airport automatic reports and projecting the temperatures for everything with 1200km is the way things are to be done in the future. pg
This graphic stands out to me.
http://surfacestations.org/images/USHCN_equip.gif
The new study notes that MMTS stations report cooler temps and have been adjusted warmer – according to this graphic that would mean 55% of the stations with MMTS were adjusted warmer to match the older technology.
Completely silly it would seem when both the newer MMTS sites and the well sited high quality rural sites both showed cooler. What possible reason is there to choose to adjust warmer – to adjust the newer and high quality rural sites warmer to match the old tech and poor quality sites?
If I may ask a broader question (from this non-scientist) about the scientific significance of surface Tmin and Tmax records, even if we had “ideal” Tmin and Tmax records, has anyone assessed whether that would really tell us enough about climate?
i.e., do we really know that the surface temp record would be adequate to understanding the “climate system” even if the record-keeping were… adequate? For instance, how do we know what is “really” happening between the Tmin and Tmax during each 24 hr period, through every minute and hour of the cycles, across every mile or Km. of a large land area? Temperatures change in so many ways and at varying rates depending upon local weather. Can min., mean, and max. numbers represent the “real” energy during all of that time and space? And to the extent that this is a difficult kind of problem (this is what I’m really getting at now), do flaws in the siting/instrumental records get magnified as great uncertainties by the fact that they really represent only momentary snapshots in an extremely complex and constantly changing system?
I know this is not phrased well enough, but does anyone know if these kinds of issues are sufficiently addressed in the scientific literature? TIA for any help….
Watts (2009) was preceded by years of threads on his blog documenting the ongoing results from his SurfaceStations project. These were what stirred the pot.
Great job! Thank you, Anthony, and all your help!
If they adopted your wireless monitoring devices, the data could be fed from the local wireless receptor straight to the home office. And the stations could be correctly sited without digging an expensive trench. The expense would go down and the reliability would go up.
RE: FoxNews: Global warming believer-turned-skeptic Anthony Watts, a former TV meteorologist, …
Nicely put. We forget.
Anthony, you ought to adopt that as a standard suggested introduction. It was NOAA, with their neglected station quality, who is most responsible for you becoming a skeptic. As a conversation piece, it leads right into your realization the surfacestations.org was needed.
@Anthony and Evan, You guys are doing great work on this blog and have turned out a valuable paper as well. This AGW monster will be taken down by a thousand cuts and not at one blow. This cut may fester for a long time as it calls into question a large body of work that this thing has been created from. A tactical win, yes. A strategic blow, I think yes. pg
Anthony, your response has hit the nail squarely on the head. The simple fact that the temperature source data is badly corrupted & completely untrustworthy must be repeated over, & over, & over, in a loud voice, until even our politicians hear about it!! Only then can the war against the AGW scare be won.
We see the standard response of academia “It’s not peer reviewed, so I won’t comment”. Circle the peer group. Call in the Rapid Response team for heavy air cover! Meanwhile the paper has 600+ comments (last I looked). Many typo corrections, some editorial suggestions, some stylistic suggestions, and a couple of thoughtful “you might want to think about” sciency (™ S. Palin) suggestions. All in two days.
Journal Pal Review by four pre-qualified commenter’s takes forever and our government scientists prefer not to comment until that hurdle is met. I’m searching for a word that won’t get snipped. Wussies.
Remember the laws of thermodynamics Carbon dioxide traps heat , where do you think it goes.
Cecil, you’re quite correct in your criticism of “peer review.” I co-authored a paper in 2005 and we submitted it to the BMJ. They held on to it for almost three months while getting only ONE peer review (which was actually somewhat positive) and then rejected the paper on the grounds that it “provided nothing new to what is already known” — which was a bit odd since it flatly and 100% contradicted everything they’d ever previously published on the topic (smoking bans and heart attacks.) We then submitted it to “Circulation” where an unknown number of anonymous reviewers reviewed it and we were allowed to see a few selected snippets of their reviews, and got rejected again. Finally we submitted it to “Tobacco Control” and received three anonymous and strongly negative reviews and were rejected a third time. Eventually, between 2009 and 2011 our work was corroborated by three similarly large studies: the one done by the Rand Corporation and Stanford was published in an environmental journal while I believe the other two are still homeless despite their authors having impressive credentials and the work being both well done and verifiable.
Peer-review isn’t worth a pixel on a computer screen nowadays if the journals have a policy that runs counter to the conclusions of a study. Anthony, I’d recommend you submit your work to ONE good weather/environment journal in the mainstream, and if it’s rejected there, immediately look for publication by a journal in a less disagreeable field.
– MJM
In the real environmental world, litigation often relies upon the quality of the data. So much so that prescriptive standard methodologies for sample extraction and analyses commonly turn on USEPA Level IV scrutiny, to the tune of many millions of dollars. Here, we are asked, nay prescribed, to readily accept, as sacrosanct, data collected from highly questionable, protocol-failed, frequently, throughout recent time, instrumental sitings, numerable, undisclosed, undocumented mathematical manipulations, particularly over the recently rapid evolution of such instrumentation. In effect, we, the jury in this case, are beseeched to believe such a proposition, proscribing any and all scientific objection.
I just could not dream of taking such a sorry, unsupportable argument to trial. What Anthony et al have provided is precisely what I would seek out to sequentially neuter the very base of whatever argument “I” might devise in “support” of my “side” in such a judicially tortuous venture.
In opposition, a litany of images from the surfacestations.org works would suffice to instill “reasonable doubt” in almost any judge or jury, followed with seemingly interminable, undocumented “adjustments”. New Zealands’ data is likely all it would take. But that’s not hammering. Watts et al, 2012, is.
A properly prepared attorney would easily shred such an argument, even to the perception of a jury of 12. Which is what makes the defense of such an argument incomprehensible to a ready, willing and available “climate ambulance chaser”………
I would have no qualms advising my attorney-client to inquire “Is that all you got?”, before seeing how much WATTage they could take………experts on the stand, et al, of course.
“The defense calls Dr. Michael Mann………..”
But stranger things have (Australia), and will (AB-32, California), happen, meaning that
“a stern chase after a lie is a long one.” – unknown
Phillip boccuto on July 30, 2012 at 10:43 pm
Remember the laws of thermodynamics Carbon dioxide traps heat , where do you think it goes.
I’m trying to remember where it says it traps heat….
NCSC say “Our approach always moved in the right direction” – which direction might that be, I wonder?
Phillip Boccuto, you really need to understand the audience of WUWT before making inane statements like that.
“Phillip boccuto says:
July 30, 2012 at 10:43 pm
Remember the laws of thermodynamics Carbon dioxide traps heat , where do you think it goes.”
I’ll try more latent heat of evaporation and increased cloud cover to reflect more sunlight and a small rise in temperature. Where do you think it goes?
“Ray Boorman says:
July 30, 2012 at 9:53 pm
Anthony, your response has hit the nail squarely on the head. The simple fact that the temperature source data is badly corrupted & completely untrustworthy must be repeated over, & over, & over, in a loud voice, until even our politicians hear about it!!”
And emphasize that the homogenization process elevates the good sites to match the bad sites, a built in predjudice of the data which must have been understood by those processing the data originally.