BW2013 says: “Had one building where the air-handler economizer dampers were not positioned where they should be based on the temperatures being mixed. Traced the control cabling to a nearby J-box, found them coiled inside and never landed in the local control panel. They were installed 4 years prior.”
I’ll bet if you looked in that area, you could probably find several dozen installations done the exact same way.
jorgekafkazar
December 12, 2013 5:44 pm
philjourdan says: “Damn Steve! You are getting old! ;-)”
Heck, Phil, he doesn’t look anywhere near as old as I thought he was. : ]
kuhnkat
December 12, 2013 5:55 pm
Steven Mosher,
“We dont adjust data. We identify breakpoints and slice.
Then we estimate a field.”
and every break point and slice adds a tiny amount of positive bias. Is that why you and GISS go out of your way to find breakpoints and use ALL the data??
Oh yeah, NCDC homogenizes it for you!!
Estimate a “field?”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
kuhnkat
December 12, 2013 5:57 pm
Get a haircut you Hippy!!
DirkH
December 12, 2013 6:38 pm
Mario Lento says:
December 12, 2013 at 12:25 pm
“Steven Mosher, you do not agree with Rohdes in this video, do you? All and all I’m unclear on your thoughts on CO2 and whether it’s the culprit for the warming.”
So Rhode says BEST shows it’s all CO2 plus some natural variation, fine, so obviously from 1995 on the natural variation completely compensates CO2 and when it’ll be in the other phase we must therefore get all the Global Warming we missed out on during the past 17 years PLUS more Global Warming from still rising CO2 levels, so we now know that the BEST team are on the extreme side of catastrophism; Schellnhuber-style catastrophism.
Mosher, do you agree that a Great Transformation of the world’s economy is necessary to evade this terrible fate?
Janice Moore
December 12, 2013 6:48 pm
@ur momisugly Mario Lento —
Then, you have the toughest boss in the world!
I think your excellently posed question at 4:43pm today was responded to by one poster (Mark Bofill at 5:13pm), kinda sorta (he, too wants some answers along those same lines!). Hard to figure why your Q was ignored. I see TONS of excellent questions posed that get silence for an answer. Then, others are responded to wonderfully. Guess it’s just hit and miss on WUWT as I realize you know.
Mainly, I mentioned your GREAT QUESTION in case this post will give it a little promotional boost.
And, thank you so much for your kind words.
Janice
Kuhnkat.
Hippy?
How many libertarian hippies do you know
Janice Moore
December 12, 2013 6:52 pm
@ur momisugly Dirk — way to get to the bottom line (last sentence at 6:38pm today).
(btw: in case my sloppy English is unclear, by “way to” I mean “well done.”)
It would be nice it Steve would do a “simple” essay for us on what they have done. I believe WUWT had some information on what they proposed to do some time ago. Or perhaps they have a nice summary on the BEST website somewhere that could be pointed out (again?). Getting old and I don’t remember as well as I used to. But the civil engineer in me wonders how this slicing and dicing would do with test to failure for beams for a new bridge or building design. It may be mathematically or statistically correct, but will it stand the test of time? Will it stand at all? (Just kidding, but a simple essay for the mathematically challenged would be good.)
Oh darn, I was going to stop there but then I went back and did some reading:
“Berkeley Earth is a Berkeley, California based independent non-profit focused on climate science and strategic analysis. Berkeley Earth was founded in early 2010 (originally called the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project) with the goal of addressing the major concerns of skeptics regarding global warming and the land surface temperature record. The project’s stated aim was a “transparent approach, based on data analysis.”[1] In February 2013, Berkeley Earth became an independent non-profit. In August 2013, Berkeley Earth was granted 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status by the US government. Berkeley Earth is now expanding scientific investigations, educating and communicating about climate change, and evaluating mitigation efforts in developing and developed economies.[2]”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“Good Lord y’all”, doesn’t that sound a bit similar to the raison d’être of the IPCC? The mandate appears to be to convince those of us of a skeptical mind that we are the problem. We may be. Certainly most of us here would agree that the earth has warmed up since the Little Ice Age, and most of us would agree that our heating and cooling systems, automobiles, power plants etc. etc. produce heat and must have an effect – we know deforestation has an effect and poor countries short on energy are going to have problems with agricultural practices and deforestation. But CO2 as a MAJOR driver.
I doubt anyone can provide conclusive evidence of CO2 or even the scale of man’s influence on the total. When the next MOC takes things in a different direction, what power will we have to change anything? About as much as ISON had on the sun I reckon.
So let’s have a nice summary from BEST.
Thanks.
Truthseeker
December 12, 2013 7:13 pm
For anyone who thinks that a “global” temperature is anything but a meaningless concept, I suggest you go here and following the text and links it contains … http://www.l4patterns.com/Air_Temperatures.php
Janice Moore says:
December 12, 2013 at 6:48 pm @ur momisugly Mario Lento —
… Mainly, I mentioned your GREAT QUESTION in case this post will give it a little promotional boost…
++++++
Thank you Janice. I sort of lay out how I think BEST says the UHI is real, but that it’s compensated for and has pretty much no measurable effect on temperature records. I don’t buy it. I don’t expect people read all of the literature, but I think people want to know how BEST came to these conclusions.
I used quotes and references so people who know (like Steven Mosher) can correct my understanding. It could be that I misunderstand, misread, or did not read enough to really get it.
In project management, sometimes I can give a cursory look at a complex problem and see there will be no solution with the path we’re on – and change course. That’s how I read the BEST explanation of how they try to have it both ways (YES WE DON’T DENY THE UHI – BUT IT HAS NO EFFECT). They go through many pages of gyrations that do not pass the smell test. Some of the gyrations rely on flat trust. Some are just assumptions such that since two methods agreed with each other, they must be correct. Other gyrations require a willful suspension of disbelief to swallow. They say all three sources (NOAA, NASA GIS and HadCRU) compensate for UHI in different ways and all three come out to the pretty much the same result –so there – we think they are right. They go as far as suggesting that 1/3 of the data are really bad.
I’m ready to be schooled here. Being wrong teaches me something I did not previously know. Being right is frustrating when everyone around me (I live in CA) votes to take my money to save “the childrens’s” future – while saddling those same children with a debt laiden weak country to run.
RE: Mosher 12:18 pm We dont adjust data. We identify breakpoints and slice.
Then we estimate a field.
Slicing the data IS adjusting the data… BEST uses a Cuisinart — so that it is difficult to know with what you began.
My April 2, 2011 objection to BEST is fundamental on a mathematical and information theory basis. All time series have a 1 to 1 equivalent Fourier series (frequency, amplitude, phase). The best scalpel finds “breakpoints” in the time series. Breaking a time series discards the lowest frequencies of the Fourier series, as well as changing much of the rest. Climate signals are found in the lowest frequencies. The scalpel “adjusts” the Fourier spectrum, not exclusively by loss of low frequency data and therefore it adjusts the timeseries. Whatever we can use BEST work for, low frequency climate information is the least trustworthy.
One year ago, Dec. 13, 2012, I posted a longer critique of the scalpel method that resonated with some readers here.
Kudo’s and in agreement with:
holts at 12:46 pm & 12:53 pm
Mario Lento at 12:46 pm
Reg Nelson at 12:47 pm
Richard of NZ at 1:36 pm
NikFromNYC at 1:41 pm & 1:58 pm +5 for all the specifics!
TimTheToolMan at 2:37 pm +2 (Yes! The scalpel preserves the instrument drift as signal and discards the recalibration as noise)
Dp at 3:04 pm
Gunga Din at 4:02 pm
Wayne Delbeke says:
December 12, 2013 at 7:08 pm
It would be nice it Steve would do a “simple” essay for us on what they have done.
+++++++
Let BEST answer a different question – but first tell you that their charter is to GET PAID to solve energy problems caused by AGW. They are a political organization making money by continuing meme.
BEST wrote the following about THEMSELVES:
What is next for Berkeley Earth?
… One key element of this latter program will be to try to forge a new coalition between industry and environmental groups for the use of cleanly-produced natural gas as a bridging fuel to slow global warming over the next few decades – with a particular focus on China.
Bob
December 12, 2013 7:43 pm
Mario Lento, Rohde claim that CO2 is the cause of warming is pure speculation on his part. While he doesn’t say directly that CO2 is the “control knob”, he does by inference. No one denies that CO2 is a GHG, albeit a minor one.
The doom you worry about all comes from models, not data. Where is the evidence showing that the Berkely CO2-warming is expanded to 4 degrees as depicted by the climate modelers? There is none. So Mario, all the talk you hear about CAGW, including the precautionary babble, is premised on the notion that CO2 can amplify warming to 3-4 degrees C based on model outputs, not data. I take it you are aware that the models have little fidelity to observations. http://climateaudit.org/2013/12/09/does-the-observational-evidence-in-ar5-support-itsthe-cmip5-models-tcr-ranges/
I would like to know how Mosher justifies his libertarianism with calamitous CO2 prescriptive policy that primarily emanate from unreliable, and apparently incomplete models.
Tom J
December 12, 2013 7:45 pm
Those three wise men really need to acquire some wardrobe assistance. First, and most certainly worst is L-R Zeke Hausfather. May I kindly state, Mr. Hausfather, that shirt of your’s is, like, way too tight. I can handle seeing the distended belly, and the love handles, but I really don’t need to see your nipples. You’re not Vladimir Putin: and I get tired of seeing his too. And, Zeke, if you don’t have any other shirts to wear the least you could do is not assume a cocky stance – hands in the pockets; head cocked with an in-your-face grin – while you’re wearing a nipple shirt. It obliterates any justification for cockiness.
Now, as far as Robert Rhode; do you really wish to be wearing a blue shirt while you’re standing right next to somebody wearing a nipple revealing shirt in the same blue color? If you need to have that explained further, well I just can’t help you. And aside from that wardrobe fail may I suggest that you don’t wear your coat as if it’s the cape of Zorro. You’re not Zorro.
And Steven Mosher, ok, I’ll give you some credit for not looking like a dweeb. But you’re standing next to
people who look like dweebs. I don’t want my life run by dweebs. I don’t want my life run by anybody.
The problem I have with all the slice and splice “fixes” is this:
An old Stevenson screen gathers dirt (after a whitewash to latex warming paint change…) and shows a bogus rise. A new mmts is installed. Now there is a down spike of 1/2 degree. So the past is adjusted down to make a smooth curve out of the discontinuity. We have now made a smooth temp series and made a bogus rise Recieved Wisdom. That is the method used to fix the past by automation that removes discontinuities.
We need to accept the data as is and understand the discontinuities, not remove them backwards…
Bob says:
December 12, 2013 at 7:43 pm
++++++++
Yes – we’re on the same page. I am trying to find out if Mosher really believes specific BEST results.
Rob Ricket
December 12, 2013 7:49 pm
Steve has my respect and admiration for his role in breaking the Climategate emails. Do make an attempt to understand what he is trying to accomplish before busting on the man
Bill H
December 12, 2013 7:51 pm
Slicing and dicing of a data set removes the low end and then elevates the high end… now why would we want to remove th low and exagerate the high?
I cant think of a single agenda that would require that … /Sarc…
running low on money send more soon… BEST
RE: TimTheToolMan at 2:37 pm and
E.M.Smith at 7:45 pm
Both address what I too see as a practical problem with the BEST scalpel. It treats instrument drift as real climate signal and treats maintenance recalibrations as “discontinuities” to be discarded.
From: Jan 23, 2013 at 11:30 am
Let me nominate the occasional “painting of a Stephenson screen” as a member of a class of events called recalibration of the temperature sensor. Other members of the class might be: weeding around the enclosure, replacement of degrading sensors, trimming of nearby trees, removal of a bird’s nest, other actions that might fall under the name “maintenance”.
A property of this “recalibration class” is that there is slow buildup of instrument drift, then quick, discontinuous offset to restore calibration. At time t=A0 the sensor is set up for use at a quality satisfactory for someone who signs the log. The station operates with some degree of human oversight. At time t=A9, a human schedules some maintenance (painting, weeding, trimming, sensor replacement, whatever). The maintenance is performed and at the time tools are packed up the station is ready to take measurements again at time t=B0. A recalibration event happened between A9 and B0. The station operates until time t=B9 when the human sees the need for more work. Tools up, work performed, tools down. t=C0 and we take measurements again. The intervals between A0-A9, B0-B9 are wide, likely many years. A9-B0 and B9-C0 recalibration events are very short, probably within a sample period. My key point is that A0-A9 and B0-B9 contain instrument drift as well as temperature record. A9-B0, B9-C0 are related to the drift estimation and correction.
At what points in the record are the temperatures most trustworthy? How can they be any other but the “tools down” points of A0, B0, C0?
We go back to look at the temperature record and let BEST slice and dice with the scalpel. What if the scalpel detects a discontinuity at B0 and/or C0? Should it make a cut there? That all depends upon what happens next.
1. From everything I have read about the BEST process, it would slice the record into a A0-A9 segment and a B0-B9 segment and treat the A9-B0, B9-C0 displacements as discontinuities and discard them. BEST will honor the A0-A9, B0-B9 trends and codify two episodes of instrument drift into real temperature trends. Not only will Instrument drift and climate signal be inseparable, we have multiplied the drift in the overall record by discarding the correcting recalibration at the discontinuities. ….
With a saw-tooth signal, the climate is the SAW. BEST slices up the saw and lines up all the teeth into a smoth edge.
To eliminate these sawtooth type errors, what I did was to subtract yesterday’s temp from today’s, these deltas should then have the least of these “drift” type errors possible, and then I do nothing else but average the measurement from the stations that meet the inclusion requirements (ie so many samples per year for so many years). I know it’s not perfect, but it is the data we have. I also realize it not an average for said area, but an average of the measurements from the area.
Steve always tells me it’s wrong but to be fair I tell him what they do is wrong.
For those who haven’t seen the results of these processes, follow the link in my name, there are a number of blogs on this there.
An addendum to 8:16 pm.
Let suggest a potentially invalid assumption in the BEST scalpel approach. The potential error in the temperature segments is NOT UNIFORM across the segment.
At what points in the record are the temperatures most trustworthy? How can they be any other but the “tools down” points of A0, B0, C0? (from 8:16 pm above)
Temperature segments, if they have any reality at all, ought to be most trustworthy at the begining of the segment when a record segment begins. Its error range should be smallest at the point of maintenance, recalibration, or station move. The potential error should be is largest at the end of each segment. A non-uniform standard deviation that is a function of time, requires unusual mathematics of the statistics and estimations of the trends. What did BEST assume about the standard deviation of the data as a funciton of time?
Tilo
December 12, 2013 8:34 pm
So, Steve, I’m looking at the global Cryosphere data and a rough eyeball tells me that the global anomaly for the entire year is zero, and maybe positive. Wish they had their raw data posted. I’d like to run a trend through it for 2013. In any case, spiking around zero is typical, but having a year average at or above zero is unusual. It’s going to be difficult justifying an upward temp trend if the ice stops cooperating. I’m still going with the satellite data as being the real deal on global temp.
Eliza
December 12, 2013 8:45 pm
To what year does that graph go? I bet it is 2007 or less? The BEST effort is AGW and always has been follow the money…..
BW2013 says: “Had one building where the air-handler economizer dampers were not positioned where they should be based on the temperatures being mixed. Traced the control cabling to a nearby J-box, found them coiled inside and never landed in the local control panel. They were installed 4 years prior.”
I’ll bet if you looked in that area, you could probably find several dozen installations done the exact same way.
philjourdan says: “Damn Steve! You are getting old! ;-)”
Heck, Phil, he doesn’t look anywhere near as old as I thought he was. : ]
Steven Mosher,
“We dont adjust data. We identify breakpoints and slice.
Then we estimate a field.”
and every break point and slice adds a tiny amount of positive bias. Is that why you and GISS go out of your way to find breakpoints and use ALL the data??
Oh yeah, NCDC homogenizes it for you!!
Estimate a “field?”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Get a haircut you Hippy!!
Mario Lento says:
December 12, 2013 at 12:25 pm
“Steven Mosher, you do not agree with Rohdes in this video, do you? All and all I’m unclear on your thoughts on CO2 and whether it’s the culprit for the warming.”
So Rhode says BEST shows it’s all CO2 plus some natural variation, fine, so obviously from 1995 on the natural variation completely compensates CO2 and when it’ll be in the other phase we must therefore get all the Global Warming we missed out on during the past 17 years PLUS more Global Warming from still rising CO2 levels, so we now know that the BEST team are on the extreme side of catastrophism; Schellnhuber-style catastrophism.
Mosher, do you agree that a Great Transformation of the world’s economy is necessary to evade this terrible fate?
@ur momisugly Mario Lento —
Then, you have the toughest boss in the world!
I think your excellently posed question at 4:43pm today was responded to by one poster (Mark Bofill at 5:13pm), kinda sorta (he, too wants some answers along those same lines!). Hard to figure why your Q was ignored. I see TONS of excellent questions posed that get silence for an answer. Then, others are responded to wonderfully. Guess it’s just hit and miss on WUWT as I realize you know.
Mainly, I mentioned your GREAT QUESTION in case this post will give it a little promotional boost.
And, thank you so much for your kind words.
Janice
Kuhnkat.
Hippy?
How many libertarian hippies do you know
@ur momisugly Dirk — way to get to the bottom line (last sentence at 6:38pm today).
(btw: in case my sloppy English is unclear, by “way to” I mean “well done.”)
So my views on Co2. On my phone. Will post tonight later
It would be nice it Steve would do a “simple” essay for us on what they have done. I believe WUWT had some information on what they proposed to do some time ago. Or perhaps they have a nice summary on the BEST website somewhere that could be pointed out (again?). Getting old and I don’t remember as well as I used to. But the civil engineer in me wonders how this slicing and dicing would do with test to failure for beams for a new bridge or building design. It may be mathematically or statistically correct, but will it stand the test of time? Will it stand at all? (Just kidding, but a simple essay for the mathematically challenged would be good.)
Oh darn, I was going to stop there but then I went back and did some reading:
“Berkeley Earth is a Berkeley, California based independent non-profit focused on climate science and strategic analysis. Berkeley Earth was founded in early 2010 (originally called the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project) with the goal of addressing the major concerns of skeptics regarding global warming and the land surface temperature record. The project’s stated aim was a “transparent approach, based on data analysis.”[1] In February 2013, Berkeley Earth became an independent non-profit. In August 2013, Berkeley Earth was granted 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status by the US government. Berkeley Earth is now expanding scientific investigations, educating and communicating about climate change, and evaluating mitigation efforts in developing and developed economies.[2]”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“Good Lord y’all”, doesn’t that sound a bit similar to the raison d’être of the IPCC? The mandate appears to be to convince those of us of a skeptical mind that we are the problem. We may be. Certainly most of us here would agree that the earth has warmed up since the Little Ice Age, and most of us would agree that our heating and cooling systems, automobiles, power plants etc. etc. produce heat and must have an effect – we know deforestation has an effect and poor countries short on energy are going to have problems with agricultural practices and deforestation. But CO2 as a MAJOR driver.
I doubt anyone can provide conclusive evidence of CO2 or even the scale of man’s influence on the total. When the next MOC takes things in a different direction, what power will we have to change anything? About as much as ISON had on the sun I reckon.
So let’s have a nice summary from BEST.
Thanks.
For anyone who thinks that a “global” temperature is anything but a meaningless concept, I suggest you go here and following the text and links it contains …
http://www.l4patterns.com/Air_Temperatures.php
Janice Moore says:
December 12, 2013 at 6:48 pm
@ur momisugly Mario Lento —
… Mainly, I mentioned your GREAT QUESTION in case this post will give it a little promotional boost…
++++++
Thank you Janice. I sort of lay out how I think BEST says the UHI is real, but that it’s compensated for and has pretty much no measurable effect on temperature records. I don’t buy it. I don’t expect people read all of the literature, but I think people want to know how BEST came to these conclusions.
I used quotes and references so people who know (like Steven Mosher) can correct my understanding. It could be that I misunderstand, misread, or did not read enough to really get it.
In project management, sometimes I can give a cursory look at a complex problem and see there will be no solution with the path we’re on – and change course. That’s how I read the BEST explanation of how they try to have it both ways (YES WE DON’T DENY THE UHI – BUT IT HAS NO EFFECT). They go through many pages of gyrations that do not pass the smell test. Some of the gyrations rely on flat trust. Some are just assumptions such that since two methods agreed with each other, they must be correct. Other gyrations require a willful suspension of disbelief to swallow. They say all three sources (NOAA, NASA GIS and HadCRU) compensate for UHI in different ways and all three come out to the pretty much the same result –so there – we think they are right. They go as far as suggesting that 1/3 of the data are really bad.
I’m ready to be schooled here. Being wrong teaches me something I did not previously know. Being right is frustrating when everyone around me (I live in CA) votes to take my money to save “the childrens’s” future – while saddling those same children with a debt laiden weak country to run.
RE: Mosher 12:18 pm
We dont adjust data. We identify breakpoints and slice.
Then we estimate a field.
Slicing the data IS adjusting the data… BEST uses a Cuisinart — so that it is difficult to know with what you began.
My April 2, 2011 objection to BEST is fundamental on a mathematical and information theory basis. All time series have a 1 to 1 equivalent Fourier series (frequency, amplitude, phase). The best scalpel finds “breakpoints” in the time series. Breaking a time series discards the lowest frequencies of the Fourier series, as well as changing much of the rest. Climate signals are found in the lowest frequencies. The scalpel “adjusts” the Fourier spectrum, not exclusively by loss of low frequency data and therefore it adjusts the timeseries. Whatever we can use BEST work for, low frequency climate information is the least trustworthy.
One year ago, Dec. 13, 2012, I posted a longer critique of the scalpel method that resonated with some readers here.
Kudo’s and in agreement with:
holts at 12:46 pm & 12:53 pm
Mario Lento at 12:46 pm
Reg Nelson at 12:47 pm
Richard of NZ at 1:36 pm
NikFromNYC at 1:41 pm & 1:58 pm +5 for all the specifics!
TimTheToolMan at 2:37 pm +2 (Yes! The scalpel preserves the instrument drift as signal and discards the recalibration as noise)
Dp at 3:04 pm
Gunga Din at 4:02 pm
Wayne Delbeke says:
December 12, 2013 at 7:08 pm
It would be nice it Steve would do a “simple” essay for us on what they have done.
+++++++
Let BEST answer a different question – but first tell you that their charter is to GET PAID to solve energy problems caused by AGW. They are a political organization making money by continuing meme.
BEST wrote the following about THEMSELVES:
What is next for Berkeley Earth?
… One key element of this latter program will be to try to forge a new coalition between industry and environmental groups for the use of cleanly-produced natural gas as a bridging fuel to slow global warming over the next few decades – with a particular focus on China.
Mario Lento, Rohde claim that CO2 is the cause of warming is pure speculation on his part. While he doesn’t say directly that CO2 is the “control knob”, he does by inference. No one denies that CO2 is a GHG, albeit a minor one.
The doom you worry about all comes from models, not data. Where is the evidence showing that the Berkely CO2-warming is expanded to 4 degrees as depicted by the climate modelers? There is none. So Mario, all the talk you hear about CAGW, including the precautionary babble, is premised on the notion that CO2 can amplify warming to 3-4 degrees C based on model outputs, not data. I take it you are aware that the models have little fidelity to observations. http://climateaudit.org/2013/12/09/does-the-observational-evidence-in-ar5-support-itsthe-cmip5-models-tcr-ranges/
I would like to know how Mosher justifies his libertarianism with calamitous CO2 prescriptive policy that primarily emanate from unreliable, and apparently incomplete models.
Those three wise men really need to acquire some wardrobe assistance. First, and most certainly worst is L-R Zeke Hausfather. May I kindly state, Mr. Hausfather, that shirt of your’s is, like, way too tight. I can handle seeing the distended belly, and the love handles, but I really don’t need to see your nipples. You’re not Vladimir Putin: and I get tired of seeing his too. And, Zeke, if you don’t have any other shirts to wear the least you could do is not assume a cocky stance – hands in the pockets; head cocked with an in-your-face grin – while you’re wearing a nipple shirt. It obliterates any justification for cockiness.
Now, as far as Robert Rhode; do you really wish to be wearing a blue shirt while you’re standing right next to somebody wearing a nipple revealing shirt in the same blue color? If you need to have that explained further, well I just can’t help you. And aside from that wardrobe fail may I suggest that you don’t wear your coat as if it’s the cape of Zorro. You’re not Zorro.
And Steven Mosher, ok, I’ll give you some credit for not looking like a dweeb. But you’re standing next to
people who look like dweebs. I don’t want my life run by dweebs. I don’t want my life run by anybody.
The problem I have with all the slice and splice “fixes” is this:
An old Stevenson screen gathers dirt (after a whitewash to latex warming paint change…) and shows a bogus rise. A new mmts is installed. Now there is a down spike of 1/2 degree. So the past is adjusted down to make a smooth curve out of the discontinuity. We have now made a smooth temp series and made a bogus rise Recieved Wisdom. That is the method used to fix the past by automation that removes discontinuities.
We need to accept the data as is and understand the discontinuities, not remove them backwards…
Bob says:
December 12, 2013 at 7:43 pm
++++++++
Yes – we’re on the same page. I am trying to find out if Mosher really believes specific BEST results.
Steve has my respect and admiration for his role in breaking the Climategate emails. Do make an attempt to understand what he is trying to accomplish before busting on the man
Slicing and dicing of a data set removes the low end and then elevates the high end… now why would we want to remove th low and exagerate the high?
I cant think of a single agenda that would require that … /Sarc…
running low on money send more soon… BEST
RE: TimTheToolMan at 2:37 pm and
E.M.Smith at 7:45 pm
Both address what I too see as a practical problem with the BEST scalpel. It treats instrument drift as real climate signal and treats maintenance recalibrations as “discontinuities” to be discarded.
From: Jan 23, 2013 at 11:30 am
With a saw-tooth signal, the climate is the SAW. BEST slices up the saw and lines up all the teeth into a smoth edge.
To eliminate these sawtooth type errors, what I did was to subtract yesterday’s temp from today’s, these deltas should then have the least of these “drift” type errors possible, and then I do nothing else but average the measurement from the stations that meet the inclusion requirements (ie so many samples per year for so many years). I know it’s not perfect, but it is the data we have. I also realize it not an average for said area, but an average of the measurements from the area.
Steve always tells me it’s wrong but to be fair I tell him what they do is wrong.
For those who haven’t seen the results of these processes, follow the link in my name, there are a number of blogs on this there.
@Stephen Fisher Rasey:
BINGO!
An addendum to 8:16 pm.
Let suggest a potentially invalid assumption in the BEST scalpel approach. The potential error in the temperature segments is NOT UNIFORM across the segment.
Temperature segments, if they have any reality at all, ought to be most trustworthy at the begining of the segment when a record segment begins. Its error range should be smallest at the point of maintenance, recalibration, or station move. The potential error should be is largest at the end of each segment. A non-uniform standard deviation that is a function of time, requires unusual mathematics of the statistics and estimations of the trends. What did BEST assume about the standard deviation of the data as a funciton of time?
So, Steve, I’m looking at the global Cryosphere data and a rough eyeball tells me that the global anomaly for the entire year is zero, and maybe positive. Wish they had their raw data posted. I’d like to run a trend through it for 2013. In any case, spiking around zero is typical, but having a year average at or above zero is unusual. It’s going to be difficult justifying an upward temp trend if the ice stops cooperating. I’m still going with the satellite data as being the real deal on global temp.
To what year does that graph go? I bet it is 2007 or less? The BEST effort is AGW and always has been follow the money…..