This just appeared on the PBS Blog, apparently the mere presence of my interview was enough to push NOAA into responding. It seems they are in full damage control mode.
CLIMATE — September 18, 2012 at 6:08 PM EDT
Climate Change From Different Perspectives
By: Spencer Michels
Anything dealing with climate change is bound to provoke an argument. And our story on Berkeley physicist Richard Muller’s recent conversion to a believer in man-made global warming, which he made in an op-ed in the New York Times, certainly stirred the pot. In addition to preparing a video story on the PBS NewsHour, I had written a blog that included extended remarks from Anthony Watts, a well-known blogger and prominent voice in the skeptic community. Watts — a former California TV weatherman who runs a company that provides weather data to TV stations — says he doesn’t completely discount global warming, but he says that much of the data recording temperatures are flawed because the stations are in areas like urban settings which retain heat and therefore read too high.
The idea of the online post — in part — was to let the audience hear more about the views of a prominent voice from the community of skeptics. In the past, we have on occasion provided a more expansive view from the overwhelming majority of climate scientists who say climate change is real, an ever-growing problem and one that is getting significantly worse because of our own contribution to greenhouse gases. (In fact, my colleague Hari Sreenivasan posted links to some of that prior reporting earlier today.) We thought the online post with Watts would provide a chance for viewers to hear more about the skeptical perspective than we have done recently.
That said — and as many of you wrote us to complain — we should have not ONLY posted additional comments from Watts’ perspective. So we have more interviews and responses from the scientific community about climate change. Let’s start on the question of whether temperature data is flawed. That was raised by Watts, and his views on that are being heavily criticized on the web today.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wrote a response to us and stands by its record on temperature data. Here is what NOAA sent:
The American public can be confident in NOAA’s long-standing surface temperature record, one of the world’s most comprehensive, accurate and trusted data sets. This record has been constructed through many innovative methods to test the robustness of the climate data record developed and made openly available for all to inspect by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. Numerous peer-reviewed studies conclusively show that U.S. temperatures have risen and continue to rise with recent widespread record-setting temperatures in the USA. There is no doubt that NOAA’s temperature record is scientifically sound and reliable. To ensure accuracy of the record, scientists use peer-reviewed methods to account for all potential inaccuracies in the temperature readings such as changes in station location, instrumentation and replacement and urban heat effects.
Specifically, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center published a scientific peer-reviewed paper (Menne, et al., 2010) that compared trends from stations that were considered well-sited and stations that received lower ratings on siting conditions, which found that the U.S. average temperature trend is not inflated by poor station siting. A subsequent research study led by university and private sector scientists reached the same conclusion (Fall et al. 2011). Additionally, the Department of Commerce Inspector General reviewed the US Historical Climatology Network dataset in July 2010 and concluded that “the respondents to our inquiries about the use of and adjustments to the USHCN data generally expressed confidence in the [USHCN] Version 2 dataset.”
Looking ahead to the next century, NOAA has implemented the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN) – with 114 stations across the contiguous United States located in pristine, well-sited areas. Comparing several years of trends from the well-sited USCRN stations with USHCN shows that the temperature trends closely correspond – again validating the accuracy of the USHCN U.S. temperature record.
NOAA also provides this link for those who want more information. [Note from Anthony, see what we found using a new method (not employed by NOAA but endorsed by WMO) in Watts et al 2012, here. Strange that they don’t mention the General Accounting office report on USHCN (what the erroneously refer to as the inspector general’s report) was due to my inquiry, not theirs.]
There are plenty of other links where you can find data and information about this question of temperature measurements. One of note that we are including here is the website, skepticalscience.com, which examines and pushes back on the critique from the skeptics’ community.
One point that we tried to make in the broadcast piece was that Richard Muller, in fact, had his own doubts in the past on temperature readings with some issues that were similar to Watts’ criticisms. But he and his daughter, mathematician Elizabeth Muller, told us they looked closely at climate data and now clearly believe that human-induced climate change is happening. Here’s more of what they told us:
You can read the full story here.
I’m surprised that in the body the story, they’d link to SkepticalScience given what has transpired there recently with the conspiracy mongering, secret forums, hate speech and all that.
I’m still waiting for PBS to make the correction I asked for.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“There is no doubt that NOAA’s temperature record is scientifically sound and reliable.”
Really? NO doubt? A record that has all sorts of adjustments applied to it and is of course subject to human error and NOAA has NO doubt. Boggles the mind. Not even one caveat like on average or within reasonable accuracy expectations or something. Basically, he has faith that they’ll never again discover another bias and change the data with another adjustment. Glad he put that on the record, perhaps it’ll come back to bite him in the near future.
This whole affair is extremely frustrating. PBS, like the rest of the media, consistently frames the debate in terms of whether or not humans are causing climate change. And worse yet, sometimes they even talk about the totally meaningless proposition that “climate change is real.”
Us skeptics need to remember that as soon as the debate is framed in these terms, the alarmists have already won: “CO2 is a greenhouse gas, so human CO2 emissions will cause the Earth to be warmer than it otherwise would have been – Checkmate Deniers!”
In his interview, Anthony did indeed explicitly accept that the Earth has warmed over the past 100 years, and he strongly implied that increased CO2 concentrations has contributed to the warming. But those caveats were too little too late. The debate was already framed in a way that portrays Anthony and his fellow skeptics as folks who think climate change isn’t real.
Skeptics need to (somehow) reframe the debate as one about climate sensitivity, the reliability of model-based predictions, trends in extreme weather events, the expected magnitude of future sea level rise, and the various costs and benefits of different efforts to cope with climate-related problems. I know that’s easier said than done.
P.S. Keep your chin up, Anthony. Those folks who are demonizing you don’t know what they’re talking about.
Pinging Drudge … have you read this yet Matt?
.
Please read the comments at Joe Romm’s site. This is not pressure exerted by PBS viewers per se, this is a mob provoked by people who consistently refuse to debate the science. How many opportunities have Joe Romm, et al. been given to defend their beliefs with reproducible, empirical data, and refused? And when Anthony states very simply why he’s skeptical of the science, rather than defend their beliefs with data, they organize a shouting contest to shout him down. Typical; we shouldn’t have expected any less. I just hope PBS has the balls to stand up to the “Rage Boys”. Better yet, they should challenge Joe Romm to bring his data, and put up or shut up!
I read some of the hate filled comments about Anthony’s appearance on PBS and was surprised at the venom and ignorance, despite my cynicism. I wrote the PBS ombudsman that their cringing take-back was disappointing but not at all surprising. I also asked that they implement the changes you requested. Skeptical Science seems to be behind some of the worst of the comments.
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2012/09/some-eyebrow-raising-claims-from.html
I take back my suggestion there was no real attention to anthropogenic things in the PBS bit. According to Nelson’s transcription above, Collins of LLL suggested all sorts of effects in the climate…just doesn’t mention temperature directly. In my opinion it should be highlighted with its own post here and ridiculed. That is, forget Muller, follow the hiding of the surface heat records.
As they say, “When you start to take flak, you’re close to the target”.
I thought your interview was well balanced, thoughtful and you certainly did not come across as the crazy who has been driving the warmists “crazy”. Good job, WUWT has become one of the daily websites I check along with JWR, NRO, WSJ. You have arrived with the big boys.
“Looking ahead to the next century, NOAA has implemented the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN) – with 114 stations across the contiguous United States located in pristine, well-sited areas. Comparing several years of trends from the well-sited USCRN stations with USHCN shows that the temperature trends closely correspond – again validating the accuracy of the USHCN U.S. temperature record.”
Well if the USHCN is so good – NOAA has obviously wasted huge amounts of taxpayer funds in putting out a new USCRN network for no good reason.
As for the _trend_ argument; as there has been no significant warming since the time USCRN was first implemented then the trends of no significant warming are likely to be similar!
I seem to remember a time when NOAA was a scientific organization.
Do the Global Warming Activists think that we are going away? No apologies here for being down right intractable. Either they come clean about the real wealth redistribution agenda or learn to live with a never-ending fight with we well-heeled scientists who insist on science based on fact and not SCARE tactics.
The more lies that the AGW wack-jobs try to perpetrate on the public, the better it is for we, the skeptics.
Mr Watts needs to send a response to Michels that answers the NOAA responses point for point
and requests that Michels provide it to his viewers in the same way he provided NOAA’s response.
After Michel’s responds, Watts should post his rebuttal for all to see.
Wow. Warmists have gone crazy. This reminds me of good old days of debates over whether consumption of saturated fat and cholesterol really cause heart disease (they don’t at all) and lately at least for me on whether sun really causes skin cancers (a huge catch 22 considering vitamin D is very potent cancer fighter that can prevent all kinds of cancers considering that most people are deficient in vitamin D).
Things never change with these “liberal” people.
Watts for President.
The NOAA temperature dataset is one of the most “trusted” records?
It is probably in the top 100 which would also make them the 94th lowest trusted temperature record using their typical monthly temperature report vernacular.
Did they pull the article, I read it earlier but don’t see it posted now.
You’ve got them worried.
I’ve noticed a few things over the last few months that suggests that we are in Gandhi’s “and then they fight you” stage.
Missed the PBS show. But since PBS is part of the liberal/progressive/leftist main stream media, it doesn’t surprise me that: 1) PBS would cave in to pressure from its predominantly leftist/progressive/liberal viewers; 2) Allow NOAA rebut Anthony unchallenged; and 3) The comments from the leftists/progressives/liberals would be hate filled and venomous. Next January lets pray we have a change in Washington that will cut all funding to PBS.
Let’s analyze the ignorance inherent in this statement by:
WILLIAM COLLINS: So one, one question that I think that occurs to many people is how do we know that global warming is due to mankind? ‘Cos after all, if you go to the Grand Canyon, you see a history of climate for the last 600 million years right there on the canyon walls in front of you. So it’s obvious the Earth’s climate can change, and it can change for perfectly natural reasons.
X Anomaly: What perfectly natural reasons are used by Collins? The Sun and Volcanoes. This statement epitomizes a “cargo cult climate scientist”. Collins implies that an external push is needed in order to cause a change system. This automatically implies that natural variability not associated with volcanoes and the sun is of no importance, however, such internally generated behavior (whether chaotic or deterministic) could be of vital importance (Royal Society Summery of the Science 2010)
WILLIAM COLLINS: So we’ve been looking for fingerprints of man’s influence on climate sort of in some sense, a smoking gun, that would prove that it’s man that’s causing the change. And we’ve actually found those fingerprints in the climate system.
X Anomaly: You have only found what your confirmation bias has allowed for, by excluding in role for internal variability.
WILLIAM COLLINS: Some of them have to do with how the temperature of the surface and the atmosphere are changing together. It turns out that that’s a very strong fingerprint of manmade climate change.
X Anomaly: Such remarks are often made by climate scientists. All have the same in common, they deny internally generated natural variability can cause change on the order of magnitude of what we are experiencing today, even though there are no satisfactory explanations of the largest climate changes known. Why would you rule something out if there is no satisfactory explanation, for say, the last ice age.
WILLIAM COLLINS: You can’t get that, that single (sic) that we’re seeing from volcanoes. You can’t get that signal from the sun. And those are two of the, really, the primary natural causes for climate change.
X Anomaly: *Cough*
WILLIAM COLLINS: The only way that we know of to get the atmosphere’s temperature to change in the way that it’s changed since the early 20th century is to add greenhouse gases. So that’s a fairly strong hint.
X Anomaly: Yep, ignore all other potential variables and bingo, you get the right answer.
WILLIAM COLLINS: We also know from very good evidence that man is responsible for the increase in greenhouse gases. We can show that from basic laboratory chemistry. And that, that fact is really not in much dispute.
X Anomaly: Completely agree.
WILLIAM COLLINS: So there’s several signatures like the temperature that implicate man. You can’t get climate to change in the way that it’s changing, for example, if we have fewer volcanoes today than we had in the middle of the 20th century. Just not possible.
X Anomaly: GHGs do cause warming,however, an estimate of how much warming will occur due to man (and woman) needs to be backed up by another piece of additional evidence, rather than multiple correlations. Correlation does not equal causation (even if it is done multiple times, like grant applications).
Has Watts et al 2012 been submitted for publication yet? If so, what journal?
PBS did not do a report on Judith Curry, Ph.D. of Georgia Tech when she became more skeptical about the impact of carbon dioixide as a greenhouse gas. PBS did not do a report on William Happer Ph.D. of Princeton when he expressed skeptism about “global warming”. PBS has never covered the work of Roy Spencer Ph.D. and John Christy Ph.D. of the Unversity of Alabama and their continuing work to create an unbiased record of atmospheric temperatures from NASA satellite data. PBS has not covered Danish Physicist Henric Svensmark and his cosmic global warming theory. I could go on and on. PBS only did a former sort of skeptic seeking fame and money by doing a non peer reviewed sort of temperature study to please the side with all the Federal Grant money. His future is now financially secure. And, in the process in an effort to provide balance it used an interview with a well manner, well placed but non Univeristy Ph.D. skeptic. It was sure this would cover their tushes as a balancer but make the skeptical side look bad. It didn’t work out well enough to satisfy the deperate global warming alarmists and they are raising the roof with PBS. What did all of this prove? Nothing we didn’t already know. PBS is highly biased and supports a Democrat. liberal agenda. PBS is an embarrasment to Journalism, but no more so than NBC, CBS and ABC, the AP and the New York Times. This episode is simply one more experience. Thank goodness Anthony was strong enough to make them squirm.
It’s worth keeping in mind that the Newshour simply refused to report on Climategate. Many viewers, including myself, wrote letters to the Newshour during Climategate, asking why they wouldn’t cover it. Eventually they posted a message from their ombudsman (or somebody) to the effect that the science was settled and they didn’t view Climategate as newsworthy.
So in a strong sense it is big progress for the Newshour to attend to WUWT, Anthony Watts and skeptical folks at all. I hope this isn’t simply their once-a-decade acknowledgment that skeptics exist and may not all be kooks.
NOAA responded for the simple reason that they feel threatened. ClimateGate 1 revealed a fear of WUWT by “the team” when the readership was a fraction of what it is now. That NOAA felt the need to respond suggests they take the criticism from Anthony seriously, likely far more seriously than their comments indicate.
That said, I have to agree with some of the comments by Follow the Money. The questions the PBS interviewer asked in part framed the debate. Anthony’s answers were drawn from his area of expertise, temperature record, and this framed the discussion further. While I’m delighted to learn that NOAA is running scared, and I know from being interviewed myself on complex topics that it is devilishly difficult to reframe the discussion when the interviewer is in charge both during and afterward, I do try a different tact when someone asks me if a “believe” in global warming or not. My answer runs something like this:
That, in my opinion, is the wrong question. When it comes to global warming, we really need to be asking three questions:
1. How much has the globe warmed?
2. How much of that warming is anthropogenic?
3. What is the cost of mitigating that warming versus the cost of adapting to it?
Oakden Wolf says:
September 18, 2012 at 5:48 pm
Has Watts et al 2012 been submitted for publication yet? If so, what journal?
==============
Supposed to be submitted within the next few weeks. Haven’t heard which journal, either. Any news on when and where, Anthony?
A meager PBS attempt at two sided debate sends the Forecast the Facts syncopaths in a tirade against the “unchecked platform to a virulent climate change denier”. Imagine if the real, three sided debate, discussing the Thermodynamics and Radiation Transmission errors of the GHE hypothesis, were discussed in a manner that laymen could grasp…GASP !
“Forecasting of Facts” sounds strangely presumptive and very non-scientific. Rather than objectively gather and analyze data….the outcome based education, post normal faux science devotees will ‘forecast the agenda driven facts’ that they want. Ignorance is Bliss…..and PBS got the “BS” part of their mission right.
I have obtained exclusive video from NOAA HQ yesterday that I thought I would share 🙂
@ur momisugly NW, September 18, 2012 at 5:53 pm ” … Eventually they posted a message from their ombudsman (or somebody) to the effect that the science was settled and they didn’t view Climategate as newsworthy… :
I think you are speaking of the Ombudsman’s reply to me that I linked to in my article at American Thinker in late 2009: “The Lack of Climate Skeptics on PBS’s ‘NewsHour’ ” http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/12/the_lack_of_climate_skeptics_o.html
To their credit…. sort of… the NewsHour did a piece on ClimateGate about four months after the fact here http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/weather/jan-june10/climate_03-10.html but Dr Patrick Michaels told me in a personal email that his taped appearance was heavily edited.