I’m traveling today, so an open thread seems useful. Some topics might be:
1. Schollenberger’s coup with SkS ratings data
2. Will Steve Goddard issue a correction, or just ignore it?
3. Why is Dr. Mann playing with fire on Twitter? Is he just being an emotional child or does he want another lawsuit? We’ve been down this path before. See: Monday Mirthiness – Watch the genesis (and retraction) of a smear.
Yet, he persists, as if he can’t help himself:
Michael Mann-child accuses @WattsUpWithThat of being paid to lie by @HeartlandInst. Example? Or just libel? pic.twitter.com/KkMfDS3rqc
— Steve Milloy (@JunkScience) May 10, 2014
Mann’s bogus claim asked and answered here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/about-wuwt/faqs/
If I’m paid (I’m not) to spout “disinformation” as Mann claims, why do I publish posts like this one and this one correcting other skeptics and true disinformation.
Of course, his hateful claim might just be misdirected rage at having been sliced and diced by McIntyre again.
Steven Mosher says: May 10, 2014 at 8:48 pm
“Here is an experiment that EVERY SKEPTIC can do.
why? because it was already done and posted YEARS AGO on John Daly’s site”
Thanks for the reminder, Steven. I put up some histograms from Jerry Brewer’s cogent 2005 TOBS analysis here.
Admad says:
May 10, 2014 at 12:33 pm
Video …
If you look to the right at the list of videos, there are some by Mann that only have 15 and 45 views respectively LOL
There is one video from Apr 14 2014 that makes the ‘Nobel Prize Winner Michael Mann’ claim LOL LOL
Gunga Din on May 10, 2014 at 3:44 pm
Why is it so hard for this guy to realize that some people aren’t motivated by money or fame?”
————–
Psychologists call it “projection”.
Thanks for your comment, Steven Mosher. I would add to that, the fact that the adjustments almost invariably make the past cooler and the present warmer, is perfectly explainable. Back to you for that explanation.
Thought not.
Steven Mosher says:
May 10, 2014 at 8:48 pm
I have just gone back to the data posted in the J Daly thread.
One aspect that has seems to have been totally ignored for Glass/Mercury Thermometers is when statements are made like “and 8 AM would all have indicated a low of -5.6 from the previous morning at 8 AM.”
How can the reading from the previous day be carried over in to the next 24 hour period when the Thermometer is supposed to be Reset with the magnet supplied each time the reading is taken.
ie if the reading was taken at -0.6 by 11 AM the previous day the “Indicator would be rest to -0.6 not left indicating -5.6 which has already been registered as the low for that day.
What do the proposers of TOBS think the Magnet was supplied for?
Can we have someone who has actually run an official weather station explain what the “Official Procedure” was for taking the temperatures?
A C Osborn says: May 11, 2014 at 3:08 am
“what the “Official Procedure” was for taking the temperatures?”
Complete instructions here (Sec 6.7).
But there’s no mystery. Once a day the thermometers were read and set. The observer recorded min aand max (from the pins) and the current temperature.
So, how does the Min Max get carried over to the next day?
In the example given at what time of day would the temp be taken that could allow it to be carried over?
If you have ever used a min/max thermometer, you are aware of the time of observation bias problem. It is not a subtle problem.
Suppose you reset your thermometer at 3 pm, and the temperature is 60F. At 4 pm a cold front comes through and drops the temperature to -10F. The next day you bundle up in your Arctic expedition gear and go to read the maximum temperature. It reads 60F. You realize that the number is ridiculous, because it hasn’t been above 0F all day.
The solution is obvious, you reset the thermometer at night before you go to bed. I figured out the solution to the TOBS problem when I was seven years old, and I am sure just about every other station owner did too. You would have to be a complete idiot to not figure it out.
That being said, the actual TOBS “adjustment” being done by USHCN software doesn’t even vaguely match their documentation. The whole thing is complete BS.
According to that Training the Temperature should be taken every 6 hours and Reset, not reset once per day.
Only the Highest and lowest highs and lows are then recorded for tha day’s high and low.
So I ask again, how can a High or low get carried over to the following day to justify using TOBS?
stevengoddard says:
May 11, 2014 at 3:54 am
Am I correct in thinking that they adjust all temperatures for TOBS regardless of the weather conditions?
The weather you described does not happen that often to justify such adjustments.
A C,
The TOBS adjustment described in the USHCN docs is a statistical adjustment. It is not based on the actual station data.
“Nick Stokes says:
May 11, 2014 at 3:23 am
….current temperature.”
Wrong on so many levels…seriously!
Nick Stokes said
‘Complete instructions here (Sec 6.7).
But there’s no mystery. Once a day the thermometers were read and set. The observer recorded min aand max (from the pins) and the current temperature.’
In theory yes, in practice not always. Hann remarked on the inconsistencies a century ago. Even in high quality observing countries such as the US and UK the procedures were not always followed, in munch of the rest of the world readings were more haphazard.
When thermometers were more of a scientific instrument some 200 years ago the readings were probably taken by more qualified people than those taking them a century later.
tonyb
A C Osborn
I went into the methodology of historic readings some 3 years ago. The article is here.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/23/little-ice-age-thermometers-%E2%80%93-history-and-reliability-2/
tonyb
Simply looking at my back porch thermometer I usually see the coldest temperatures just at dawn, however when it is clear at sunset and cloudy at dawn, especially when a warm front is approaching, the coldest temperature may be right after sunset, which is “yesterday” and not “today.” If I use the overnight low to determine “today’s” mean temperature in such a case, my numbers are not fully accurate.
A further problem is that there are all sorts of other things that can screw up my measure of how cold or warm it has been. This past winter I noticed the warm sector of storms might pass over in a matter of a few hours, spiking temperatures up with the warm front and crashing them down with the cold front, yet on one occasion, because it happened between ten PM and two AM, it straddled midnight, and therefore a warmth that lasted only 4 hours gave me my high temperatures for two days. 4 hours of mild breezes trumped 44 hours of bone-chilling cold, or at least altered the mean upwards.
What it didn’t alter was the frozen slush on my driveway. Because the warm sector only lasted, in one case, 90 minutes, the ice really didn’t have time to thaw before it was freezing again. That frozen slush, with an IQ of zero, knew something that I, with all the data from my back porch thermometer, didn’t.
This was particularly obvious last winter because warm-sectors had a hard time budging the cold air over New Hampshire, and when they finally rushed past a cold front usually was right on their heels. When this happened fifteen times during the course of a winter it meant there were fifteen occasions when my back-porch mean temperatures were uplifted, even as the frozen slush on my driveway told me it had stayed cold.
There are times when the official statistics tell me one thing, but my frozen farm pond, or the refusal of trees to bud in the spring, and many other things I witness outdoors and call “signs”, are telling me something quite different. What should I trust? Numbers on a sheet of paper? Or the reality I am amidst?
What should I be concerned more about? A 0.05 degree adjustment some geek sneaks into a spreadsheet? Or a cold west wind from still-frozen Great Lakes?
A C Osborn says: May 11, 2014 at 3:55 am
“According to that Training the Temperature should be taken every 6 hours and Reset, not reset once per day.”
It says “For designated stations…”. There’s no doubt that Coop stations read the min-max thermometers at a time of day agreed with NWS. If they wanted to change it, they had to ask. They couldn’t just decide to read it again to capture another max. In my post, I linked to the papers of Karl et al 1984 and Vose et al, 2003. These are senior NOAA scientists. Vose et al give this plot of variation of TOBS over time. The second curve, described as the method of DeGaetano, is interesting. Because observers gave the current temp at reading as well as min/max, knowing the diurnal pattern you can work out independently when they are observing. It tracks the agreed time pretty well.
Here’s how Vose describes it:
“The majority of weather stations in the U.S. Cooper- ative Observing Network (and therefore in HCN) are staffed by volunteers. Consequently, the network has no mandatory time at which daily measurements must be taken. Most individuals prefer observing times other than midnight, resulting in an observation day that differs from the standard calendar day. For example, at a station where the volunteer reads the thermometers at 0800 LST, the observation day extends from 0800 LST the previous day to 0800 LST on the current day. “
Insulation doesn’t make a house hotter. It merely slows the rate of heat loss. If there is no source of heat inside the house it will eventually, through heat loss however slow, become as cold as the outside. What makes a house hotter is turning up the heat.
Eric Worrall says:
May 11, 2014 at 12:33 am
I genuinely think there is something wrong with Mann………….
pathological narcissism
And a happy Mother’s Day to all of the applicable WUWT readership. If you raised your children in the proper manner, you should be reaping your reward in chocolate right about…. now :o)
Mosh> Historically in the US ( one of the FEW countries to change its TOB) the change results in cooling the past
=========
..and if it warmed the past….they would have said it was wrong and not used it /snark
“Lying about your addiction, particularly if your addictive behavior is illegal, can become second nature. It can even give a sense of power – “I got away with that.”
chris moffatt says:
May 11, 2014 at 4:56 am
Insulation doesn’t make a house hotter. It merely slows the rate of heat loss. If there is no source of heat inside the house it will eventually, through heat loss however slow, become as cold as the outside. What makes a house hotter is turning up the heat.
If the insulation was balanced with the heating supply so that the heat lost was equal to the heat supply and the heat supply was permanently on, what would happen to the temperature in the room if you then increased the insulation.
Mann has much in common with King Louis-Phillipe of France and going pear-shaped:
“In the late 1820s Louis-Philippe (also known as the Citizen King) came to power. He immediately set about relaxing the defamation and sedition laws that were stifling the press. Ironically this led to a flush of cartoons ridiculing him, especially by the publisher/cartoonist Philipon, and Honore Daumier.
“In 1831 Louis Philippe sued for defamation, the charge being ‘For Going Too Far’. Philipon had been caricaturing him as a pear, ‘la poire’ at that time referring to someone or something foolish. We still have a similar reference today in the phrase “going pear-shaped”.
“The case dragged on for months, causing great hilarity throughout Europe, especially in France’s European rivals, and the cartoons were published and republished all over the continent.
“The king won the case and Philipon was sentenced to six months jail. The court also ruled that there could not be any more drawings of pears published.
“So in the next issue of Philipon’s magazine “Le Charivari”, the results of the court case were published with the type formed in the shape of a pear.
“The king had made an enormous fool of himself, and it became a convention among the ruling classes of France, and later most of Europe, to accept ridicule rather than be seen not to have a sense of humour. This later became a tradition and was important in the development of the ‘free-press’ in the gradually forming democracies.”
http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Public_Information_and_Events/occalect/transcripts/~/link.aspx?_id=9F481BE4EA9B43E8AAE9A9D8065A1EBE&_z=z
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=1602088&partId=1&people=133914&peoA=133914-2-70&page=1
Louis-Phillipe was later mocked by the cartoonist Daumier who drew him with his head sandwiched in a printing press to illustrate the foolishness of the ‘elite’ in trying to silence the press.