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 hope that the alarmists scientists who are developing the datasets who claim that there is a clear human signal in the warming, never have to measure anything for real.
This is the heart of the global warming alarmist problem. How do we know if we are causing a problem if we are not even measuring it correctly.
The FoxNews article has as related articles the FoxNews Feb. 26, 2010 which talks about USCRN being developed with an interview with Watts and examples of some of the worst contaminated USHCN stations. U.S. Climate Data Compromised by Sensors’ Proximity to Heat Sources, Critics Say
It also has the classic slide show from surfacestations.org 9 Wacky Weather Stations. Including the BBQ grill under the sensor and another in CA 5 feet from the makeshift incinerator.
At last you have said it “where is the warming? I dont think ther is ANY warming and there hasnt been any probably since 1880. I’ve been saying this for the last 6 years after considering the adjustment and reading posts from fellow bloggers like “I travelleved from my city a just 1 mile out in to rural and my thermometer fell by 3-5 c repeatedly”. It was obvious. The only problem is that the persons involved with AGW will NOT admit as their jobs , blogs, investments and so on, depend on it. It will be more like “old soldiers never die they only fade away”. The process has already started with CG1 and obvious non-warming beginning to be noticed by ordinary folk on the street, but will still take another 3-5 years to be 100% acknowledged (even if Romney wins in the USA).
“where is the warming?” BTW the above statement contradicts to some extent what has been said at FOX news by AW? There is definitely warming ect.
Interested, that comment deserve being said again in total. Those are the same deep questions I keep shaking my head at every single day since I learned what is really going on. How can these persons that call themselves scientists be doing this. The only answer I keep coming up with is pure personal greed or possibly fear. Thanks for putting it in so many words.
Gary says:
July 30, 2012 at 6:57 pm
How many things can you get wrong in one post?
– it’s not an ‘op-ed’, it’s a quote in a blog.
It’s more than just a single quote, the site is clearly labeled “The Opinion Pages” of the electronic edition of the NYT, and it was written in response to a request by the writer, so it qualifies as an op-ed.
– Given that CRN was commissioned in 2008 – after a decade of reports describing the need for such a system, how can you claim that no-one was doing anything until Watts (2009)? Does NCDC have time travel too?
CRN was *commissioned* in 2008. What did they actually do before Watts (2009)? Nothing – they talked, but did nothing.
– Where’s the warming? I suppose the changes in plant hardiness zones are fictional, the melting glaciers in the Rockies are fictional, spring arriving earlier is fictional, adjacent ocean temperature rises are fictional, the satellite temperature rise over the US is fictional etc. etc.
Where’s the rapid, severe, debilitating, catastrophic warming? The official plant hardiness zones have been changing ever since they were first established. When I was a kid back in the ‘50s, Black Birches (which are cold-soil trees) on Long Island were vanishing – now they’re common.
http://pbisotopes.ess.sunysb.edu/esp/Science_Walks/Weld/Weld.htm
What about the glaciers in the Rockies?
http://www.nps.gov/features/romo/feat0001/GlcBasics.html
As for “spring arriving earlier is fictional” – try selling that to someone living in the Northeast Corridor in the US. Or to a Brit. Wear earplugs and be prepared to duck frequently.
– whatever happened to taking the science as it comes instead of this clinging to the wreckage of failed ideas?
Because most of the CAGW canon is built on the wreckage of failed ideas – the boffins just planted shrubs around the ruins, gave them a fresh coat of paint via PowerPoint, and then declared the result the “Settled Science Consensus Community”…
Soooooo —
How many things can you get wrong in one post?
Keep trying – yours is nowhere near the record.
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.
Which laws did you have in mind when you wrote that?
“They still refuse to get out of the office, to examine firsthand the condition of the network”
The devil is always hiding in the details and they are too obsessed with their computer programmes to go out and study reality any more.. It’s GIGO for them all the way.
My understanding is that warming of Earth’s surface is not assessed using the near-surface temperatures of one country, even one as large as the USA. It is also my understanding that the greatest rise in heat content is in the oceans.
On the subject of peer-review, it provides for some control of scientific quality, something a blog posting doesn’t have. Having published many papers in my own discipline, as well as having served as journal editor and reviewer of many manuscripts, I know first-hand that the concept of expert review is actually a good one. Yes, occasional papers “squeak through” that shouldn’t; others get rejected that may deserve to be accepted (although often those manuscripts will be accepted if resubmitted having addressed key scientific criticisms). If a manuscript doesn’t hold up to journal peer review, usually there is a good reason.
The reason they fear the Surface Station Project is because they know once the truth comes out, a lot of them are going to become redundant and lose their funding. Rather than fight the truth, they should retool themselves and learn new skills to make themselves employable. Those who selfishly try and hide the truth to protect their own ricebowl are harming the progress of mankind. Think of the children.
Gary Paul K2
P.G. Sharrow @ur momisugly 9:05 pm got it dead to rights with this gem of scientific-naff:
‘How do you like them apples’, Gary and Paul K2? Or maybe, that’s what you two believe as well.
Bill Illis says: July 30, 2012 at 6:39 pm
Well put
Paul K2 says: July 30, 2012 at 7:59 pm
Your words speak volumes about your own quality. Your point, however, is noted and will hopefully be dealt with / explained.
Theo Goodwin says: July 30, 2012 at 8:52 pm
Worth emphasising. However, the c-y-a mentions here, at BBC, and elsewhere, are still micro-moves in the right direction. Though WaPo counsels readers to keep their eyes averted until peer-reviewed.
This paper isn’t just a nail in the coffin of AGW imho.
I think this is a gift that will in the future be able to keep giving nails indefinitely for everyone to hammer into the AGW coffin for themselves – when properly edited and corrected by the scientific end of the open-peer-review here – as noted by Leif et al.
I hope Steve McIntyre can help with this.
Who are the real deniers?
Those who, having once believed in AGW, now deny, on Anthony’s good (and about-to-be-improved-by-open-review) fundamental evidence, that manmade global warming even exists as a hazard;
or
Those who refuse to look properly at Anthony’s paper, but do things like:
Nitpick
Distract
Cherrypick
Misrepresent
Appeal to Authority
Ignore and Obscure
Distribute anonymous criticism
Counsel others “not to look until peer-reviewed”
Refuse to look beyond their office at the stations themselves
?
Ian W says:
July 30, 2012 at 5:27 pm
What has been exposed is a total lack of governance, quality control and configuration management….
_____________________________
AMEN, You can not “adjust” data higgly piggly like these jokers do. You either toss it out as contaminated, use LARGE error bars or you have a valid justified reason for adjusting each individual data point, calibration off, wind direction from the road…. AND you had better have the studies to back up the amount of adjustment too, for each individual station.
This historical data is good to +/- 1F and that is being very generous. See Australian temperature records shoddy, inaccurate, unreliable. The USA and Australia would be expected to have the best climate records in the world. They obviously do not.
As far as I’m concerned, we have no surface data from this system, just numbers. If you can massage these numbers into something meaningful, then why bother with the weather stations at all? It’s no greater feat of magic.
Kapoooow!!!
I have always been very sceptical about how they are able to make accurate adjustments for the Urban Heat Island effect. Do they make adjustments for unconscious bias? How do we know their adjustments are correct?
US taxpayers are not getting value for money. Why should it take a blogger working pro bono and a band of volunteers to examine thermometer locations????? Where is the oil funding when you really need it???
I’ve never understood the reason for giving the warmmongers more grants. After all, the science is settled.
Bill Tuttle says:
July 31, 2012 at 1:40 am
Thanks Bill for setting the trolls straight.
I’ve been observing Anthony’s work since 2007, way back when Roger Pielke Sr’s blog was open for comments 🙂 I remember some of the first pictures of the US surface stations showing poor siting and poor maintenance. And I also remember that Tom Karl of NCDC (among MANY others in the well-funded climate science cabal) was NOT very interested in “amateur” involvement in NCDC matters, especially when they pointed out glaring problems with the network. The icing on the cake was Tom Peterson’s “ghost written” talking points memo from 2009 cited by Anthony above. Here’s one of the best bits:
Q. What can we say about poor station exposure and its impact on national temperature
trends?
A. Surfacestations.org has examined about 70% of the 1221 stations in NOAA’s Historical
Climatology Network (USHCN) (Watts, 2009). According to their web site of early June 2009,
they classified 70 USHCN version 2 stations as good or best (class 1 or 2). The criteria used to make that classification is based on NOAA’s Climate Reference Network Site Handbook so the criteria are clear. But, as many different individuals participated in the site evaluations, with varying levels of expertise, the degree of standardization and reproducibility of this process is unknown.
Yes – you read that right. NCDC thinks that citizens “with varying levels of expertise” taking pictures of poorly-sited climate monitoring stations requires some form of “standardization and reproducibility”!
Finally, it would be very revealing to compare the budgets of the citizen Surface Stations Project with NCDC annual budget. What ARE they doing with our tax money, anyway? Oh yeah, they’re blowing it on the National Climate Service!
“House Science Panel to Investigate NOAA Climate Service”
by Daniel Strain on 22 September 2011, 4:29 PM
A political feud over a “shadow” climate science service is heating up again. Following months of partisan sparring, Representative Ralph Hall (R-TX), announced yesterday that the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology that he chairs will investigate whether the Obama Administration has ignored Congress and created a centralized climate service within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Last year, NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco announced the agency’s intention to create the climate service, which was envisioned as a parallel entity to the National Weather Service that would issue long range climate forecasts. Republican lawmakers, however, opposed the idea, and inserted language into a 2011 spending bill that barred the agency from using any funds to “implement, establish, or create a NOAA Climate Service.”
Some members of the House science committee became upset after NOAA climatologist Thomas Karl appeared to suggest in a December 2010 interview that NOAA had moved ahead regardless. Soon, Hall was writing to Lubchenco, asking for an explanation. In a series of letters, the committee asked for information regarding, among other requests, the responsibilities of Karl and a few other climate-focused employees and funding for their positions.
Mr. Watts et al, I must thank you from the bottom of my heart. You all are doing what I wished I could do. Make a difference , have an impact on the AGW propaganda machine. Thank you.
I was once alone in the AGW forest. When I found WUWT, I found a home amongst others who were also skeptical. Anthony you’re the best.
I debated making a comment here as to the science of monitoring stations. Anthony I applaud your good scientific work. It is quite impressive. I also applaud many of the comments made both here and in other blog posts. Many of the commenters have gone through the same experiences I have gone through in our working careers.
I was very much involved in EPA’s primary and secondary air monitoring stations. They had set standards for siting these stations, but no one seemed to really know what the surrounding conditions were at each site. EPA figured they had enough data in the early 1980’s and then shut down most of the sites. They only “needed” a few to keep up the data stream. Financial cut-backs were the reason.
I was also involved in the asbestos contrivers starting at about 1976. Much of that information and data that was used for the EPA statements and MSM at the time was GIGO. Very little science used here either in their determinations for regulations imposed on the public. Environmental monitoring of asbestos levels did not take into consideration the surrounding geology, meteorology, land use, etc. People set up stations and left them. Going out and looking and evaluating sites was not necessary by the powers to be in EPA. My impression is that they thought they didn’t need to actually look at the sites.
I take intense interest in the climate change debates. There is a lot of good science (much like the recent study done by Watts et al) and lots of GIGO science that seems to be the popular view point by the public. Thanks everyone for your good comments and articles. My little part to help promote good science is to spread the word as long as I can, to a local college by teaching. Everyone needs to do their part to spread good, reliable information to others that don’t have the time nor attention to learn on their own, good science.
All the facts in the world will not change the central fact that AGW Catastrophism is a systematic political-economic assault on post-Enlightenment industrial-technological civilization (Ehrlich, Linkola, Schellnhuber), not under any circumstances a scientific inquiry. Let doubters of this assertion answer, Why is “Railroad Bill” Pachauri still Chairman of the UN’s IPCC?
Imagine if Anthony had with great fanfare announced, like that fellow Muller, that he had “recanted,” that he had “seen the light,” and “realized the deeper truth” that man-made greenhouse gases were “polluting the Earth” and “would soon raise the atmosphere to unsustainable temperatures.”
You can bet that this “former leader of the anti-science denialists” would be an instant celebrity, showered with praise and inundated with requests for interviews, op-eds, speeches. His name would be on the lips of every mainstream television anchor; indeed, he would probably be invited to the White House, along with the high priests of the Watermelons, Algore, Michael Mann, John Holdren, and other ‘green’ luminaries.
Instead Anthony and his colleagues have performed a seminal service to the cause of rationality and good science, pointing out with careful observation that the “global warming” emperor is wearing only a tissue of fabricated data. What should then be the response of the True Believers to this heresy? To denounce it would be to draw the attention of the public; better to ignore it, leave it in the weeds by the road where the emperor marches, like the story-book child who pointed out the obvious.
Just watch: The days will roll by, and the months, and even the brief flurry in the alternative media will die away. The Establishment will continue to press for taxes, and controls, and the elimination of “fossil fuels,” all in the name of “sustainability” and the “green economy.”
The only hope for a real change, for the replacement of cant with science, is to elect people to government (local, state, national) who will cut off the funding to the agenda-driven “green” bureaucracies and the rent-seekers in the universities who pad every grant proposal with homilies and obeisance to “climate change.”
Send Anthony’s press release and some of the better reports about it around to every candidate you can find. You will find some willing ears.
/Mr Lynn
Closing stations willy nilly will only further destroy data continuity. The US has fairly clear cut regional climates that warm or cool over long periods of time due to oceanic and atmospheric oscillations that can span 30 to 60 years. If station numbers and mix do not take this into consideration, you will bias the data set as you go forward with a climatologically different mix of stations than what you had before, resulting in more spurious trends, not less. I agree with Anthony. The proper thing to do would be to match each station closing with a properly sited new station within the same climate region, take over-lapping data, and then either possibly adjust the old station data accordingly, or if that can’t be done, junk the old data. It would also be well to remember that new stations set weather “records” all the time and has nothing to do with hypothesized catastrophic anthropogenic climate trends. An average day at an old station will set bells off at a new station.