Guest essay by Jim Steele
I was recently notified, by a colleague familiar with my wildlife and restoration work in the Sierra Nevada, that a “whacko” was portraying my graph of temperature trends at Yosemite and Antarctica’s Dumont D’Durville as fraudulent. The skeptic basher had written, “A little research proved the numbers on this WUWT/Steele graph are wrong for “Yosemite.” Similarly, in an attempt to smear a segment of my IEEE presentation demonstrating the Emperor Penguins were not endangered, he sniped, ”Then Steele produces a homemade graph. The “real data“? I think not ! In fact, I have reason to believe it’s another one of Steele’s tricks intended to deceive the unskeptical.” Yet like a little bit of knowledge, a “little research” is a dangerous thing.
The “whacko” blogger turns out to be Peter Miesler. Anyone familiar with Miesler understands he is the most unlikely person to uncover global warming deception. Miesler is one of Anthony Watts’ blog spawn, (aka various versions of “CitizenChallenged,” many versions due to being banned from several sites for slanderous comments) and authors a small website from Durango CO called WhatsUpWithThatWatts et al., dedicated to assassinating the character of any and all skeptics. Slandering Sou is one of Miesler’s mentors and ally, and together they comprise the most rabid and dishonest of all bloggers I call the “Purveyors of Pernicious Prattle”. Miesler lacks any scientific training (and apparently lacks any scientific understanding) but is driven by politics writing, “Steele’s only intention seems to be feeding the Republican/Libertarian meme that scientists should not be trusted and that the under-educated should keep the “debate” alive, even though they don’t know or care for learning about the full spectrum of facts at hand.” (In truth my intention is to expose bad science, so we can be better advised by good science.)
Miesler’s helpful role in the climate debates is more analogous to Gollum in Lord of the Rings, whose demented obsessions accidentally turned the tide of evil. Like so many alarmists, any climate scientist who has suggested CO2 warming has been detrimental to wildlife becomes “Precious” to Miesler. Thus by presenting evidence that contradicts their precious gloom and doom, my analyses are uncritically viewed as lies sponsored by some rightwing conspiracy.
Below is the Yosemite graph under attack. I had published this graph in my book in 2013 and noted the data had been downloaded from the US Historical Network (USHCN) in 2012. I have linked to this graph in a few internet articles such as one I posted to Watts-Up-With-That, in which I debunked Camille Parmesan’s seminal paper in which she argued global warming had exterminated several populations of the Edith’s Checkerspot Butterfly. A cooling trend since the 30s in maximum temperatures for California’s montane regions was one of many pieces of evidence contradicting her global warming scenario. Nonetheless she was fast-tracked to be one of just 4 biologists on the IPCC. Since debunking Parmesan, Miesler has been obsessed with slandering me whenever he can.
I do not want to waste too much time on Miesler’s slander. But people searching for links to my work do see his tirades. He often tries to spam any serious debates at other websites. Hopefully for those similarly attacked, posting a link to this post will provide the proper framework and expose his vacuous tactics. Any risk of increasing traffic to his website will likely be more beneficial as his Gollum-esque traits have been readily apparent. For example, Dr. Paul Opler (the first invertebrate specialist for the Endangered Species Act) was included in an email discussing how to deal with “Steele”, sent by Slandering Sou and Miesler to Cook at SkepticalScience, Climate Progress, and Dr. Singer (who hoist Sou by her own petard). Opler forwarded the email to me simply saying, “You must be coming awfully close to the truth!”
I have referred to Yosemite’s temperature trend (in my IEEE presentation that Miesler has become obsessed with slandering) because it represented similar trends recorded in USHCN data throughout montane California, from the north at Mt Shasta in the Cascades, to Lake Tahoe (where my research was focused) and south to Death Valley. Likewise the peak warming in the 20s and 30s supported past analyses of California’s climatologist illustrating California’s rural counties had not experienced any warming that exceeded the 30s.
The poet William Shenstone wrote, “A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.” Meisler is now on a mission to transform any and all skeptic truths into a falsehoods. My Yosemite graph was created purely from data downloaded from the US Historical Climate Network (USHCN) in January of 2012. Anyone (scientist or layperson), familiar with the climate data issues knows immediately that the USHCN data is a good place to compare temperature data, but Miesler’s “little research” apparently never looked in the most obvious place. So Miesler emailed the folks at the Western Regional Climate Center and their climatologist replied, “I can tell you this is not our graph nor is the data correct” and that was enough for Miesler to suggest the Yosemite graph was fraudulent. But the data is most definitely correct, if USHCN is to be trusted.
As seen in the Yosemite graph below, and downloaded from the USHCN website January 1, 2015, the trend is nearly identical to my “WUWT/Steele” graph. However because my Sierra Nevada research focused on snow pack and watershed effects, I had downloaded the USHCN data for the hydrological year, which extends from October of one year to September of the next. Thus the “year” in my graph refers to the later months (from January to September). The hydrological year slightly shifts temperature peaks and valleys seen in a January to December trend, which maybe why WRCC mistakenly thought my data was incorrect. Still the trend is very much the same, very accurate, and totally supports my assertion: Maximum temperatures have not risen since the 30s! If maximum temperatures have not exceeded that earlier peak, CO2 has not caused any regional “accumulation of heat” due to the hypothesized radiative imbalance; and Parmesan is still very wrong for suggesting global warming was extirpating butterflies.
The WRCC climatologists correctly noted Yosemite’s raw data was not available until 1907, but USHCN’s adjusted data always starts in the 1890s. Since those earliest temperatures are merely modeled from data presumably collected elsewhere, early temperatures are susceptible to the “modeling whim du jour” and in this case the 2015 model had created a steeper 20th century warming trend in just 2 years. I finally realized the USHCN is perpetually altering temperature trends.
I had naively assumed that after the publication of Menne (2009), that USHCN trends published after 2009 would remain fixed because data had been quality controlled for all known changes in location and instrumentation and further homogenized whenever Menne’s algorithm assumed a changing trend might not be natural. Anthony Watts, myself and many others have questioned the distortions created by homogenization and have warned about resulting warming biases. One reason for questioning Menne’s fsulting bias, is evidenced when his homogenization algorithm minimized/eliminated a well-documented 20th century cooling trend in the south eastern portion of the USA. It is ironic that while Menne’s algorithm slowly eliminates a cooling trend in the original data, simultaneously southern USA is increasingly setting more record lows and more record lows are predicted for 2015. (With freezing temperatures in Jacksonville Florida will mangroves “flee” southward contradicting a previous bogus publication that global warming was moving mangroves northward?)
As an ecologist, I never trusted homogenized USHCN data because it alters trends in local mean temperature and removes local variability in an attempt to extract a presumed “real” climate trend. As Menne writes, “although homogenization generally ensures that climate trends can be more confidently inter-compared between sites, the effect of relative biases will still be reflected in the mean temperatures of homogenized series.” But Menne’s algorithm is definitely not ensuring reliable trends! Historical trends are dramatically reversing from warming to cooling in just over 2 years. After re-reading Menne (2004) I realized that USHCN data is updated monthly and fully reprocessed and adjusted for shifts from the recent past. Although tampering with raw data in other scientific disciplines results in retractions and disciplinary actions, Menne’s brand of science boasts, “Daily adjustments are thus a promising area for future HCN development.”
The bizarre consequences of USHCN’s monthly homogenization adjustments are seen by comparing changes in Death Valley’s maximum temperature trends over the past 2 years (solid black line). Adjustments were inflicted despite the fact the data had been quality controlled and adjusted several years before. The graph below (on the right) was published in may book in 2013 and also used in a post discussing how natural weather dynamics created Death Valley’s world-record high temperature long before CO2 concentrations had any significance. The new graph on the left was downloaded on January 2, 2015. Like so many “pesky” warming-peaks of the past that defy CO2 warming theory, USHCN’s algorithm is slowly whittling away at original temperature data that otherwise would reveal a more cyclical nature to climate change.
By what possible logic, would 2 years of additional data suddenly reverse a cooling trend since the 30s and create a warming trend? I suggest we need to ask Congress for a full investigation. (Hat tip to Miesler)
I have also posted that the drop in Emperor Penguin numbers at the “March of the Penguin’s” colony (adjacent to the French research station Dumont D’urville and affectionately called DuDu by the locals) was likely due to researcher disturbance and there has been no evidence of “global warming.” I repeated that claim in my IEEE presentation illustrating the data downloaded from the British Arctic Survey in the graph below. But suggesting no climate doom for Emperor Penguins threatened Mielser’s “precious” beliefs and like so many alarmists, Miesler refuses to accept any documented facts that “global warming” is neither global nor harmful. All organisms act locally and the global warming statistic is a chimera of many local dynamics. Like monatne California and much of the eastern USA, there has simply been no warming since the 1930s. Yet in total denial, Mielser seeks refuge in the delusion that DuDu’s temperature trends are just a skeptic’s trick. Seeking solace Mielser queried Dr. Ainley. But like his mentor, he was hoist by his own petard. Ainley’s graphs had falsely suggested warming was killing the Emperors.
Not only is my graph (above) verified by data from the British Arctic Survey, but at my request, the data illustrated in my graph is the reason Dr. Ainley removed his erroneous illustration (below-left) with the fallacious rising temperature arrow (blue) from his website penguinscience.com. (Ainley has now removed that graph from a web page, but unfortunately it still persists in his educational power point.) In what will surely drive Mielser to greater Gollum-esque depravity, Ainley’s earlier publication in 2005 also reveals Ainley knew all along that winter temperatures had been declining since 1970 as seen in his published graph below on the right. Yet desperately trying to parry documented truths , Miesler then uncritically copied and pasted text and graphs to attack me, but only revealed more misrepresentations by Ainley’s “educational” website and further illustrated Mielser’s biological ignorance. (Hat tip to Miesler)
Mielser could not believe that DuDu’s Emperors had stopped declining once flipper banding ended. He seems to also deny satellite data that shows the number of known Emperors has doubled in recent years. Desperate for precious examples of climate doom, Miesler unwisely switched his focus to the Antarctic Peninsula on the other side of the continent. Apparently he was unaware that the declining Adelies on the peninsula are a different species, or that Adelies act very differently than Emperors. But like DuDu’s Emperors, declines in Adelie Penguins are rare local events, restricted to about 5% of Antarctica’s coastline and best explained by changes in the win direction. Furthermore the most recent survey data published in 2014 shows Adelies have thrived under climate change, increasing their abundance in Antarctica by 53% since 1993.
But Mielser will cut and paste anything that has a hint of his precious climate doom. He posted Ainley’s other graph suggesting a correlation with rising peninsula temperatures and Adelie penguin declines. Ignorant of Adelie penguin biology and Antarctic climate change, Mielser didn’t realize that rising western peninsula temperature happen almost completely during the winter. But Adelie Penguins winter on ice floes north of the Antarctic Circle during the winter, and Ainely agrees warming winter trends on land have no biological significance for Adelies. And as discussed in a WUWT post, Paul Homewood posted the data for 2 western peninsula research stations showing no summer warming, the time when Adelies are on land breeding.
Miesler further revealed his ignorance by mindlessly copying and pasting Ainley’s text that intimated dangerous warming. “In Antarctica’s far north (Anvers Island) air temperatures have become VERY warm and ice no longer forms on the sea.” Really??!!?? Lots of sea ice forms each year around Anvers Island. Researchers report that due to the changing winds, ice in that region forms a few weeks later and retreats a few weeks earlier, but there is still plenty of ice. So I dashed another email to Ainley requesting he correct that misinformation. Otherwise devotees of gloom and doom will continue to be misled. Although my constant corrections have strained our relationship, Ainley replied “I’m making changes to the penguinscience website to correct the sea ice persistence/prevalence issue along WAP”
The fallacious alarmism surrounding the Emperor Penguins “imminent extinction” can be found in one of Miesler’s link to the Center of Biological Diversity. The CBD is the environmental legal outfit that sued the USA to list the polar bear and Emperor as endangered species due CO2 warming. The CBD wrote, “The Emperor colony at Terre Adelie in East Antarctica ”featured in the Academy Award-winning French documentary, March of the Penguins” plummeted by more than 50% in the late 1970s during a warm period with little sea ice cover, when adults died en masse. Because the sea ice continues to disintegrate, and the prolonged blizzards cause ongoing chick mortality, the colony has yet to recover.” And “When sea ice breaks up before their chicks have matured and grown their waterproof feathers, chicks that are swept into the ocean are likely to die.”
Yet there is absolutely no evidence Emperors “died en masse” or were even stressed. Sea ice is expanding to record extent and satellite pictures show lots of ice along the peninsula. Furthermore there is absolutely no evidence of local ice breakouts sweeping chicks to their death. At DuDu, there is only evidence of beneficial breakouts that allowed the penguins easier access to open waters to feed. When I asked Barbraud for evidence to support his published suggestions that devastating breakouts were killing chicks, he admitted, “evidence is hard to find”. (I posted our full email exchange in the comments section here.) Because there is absolutely no evidence for drowning chicks at DuDu, I suggested to Ainley, he also remove references to such events, but he is holding strong. Ainley’s peer reviewed publications, connecting global warming to the lack of recovering Emperors at DuDu, used drowning chicks as a likely reason. So unless Barbraud publishes a retraction, Ainley is holding strong to that illusion.
Although there is no excuse for the lies, distortions and rudeness posted by Mielser or Slandering Sou, I must sympathize to a limited degree. Their delusions have been supported by bad science from the USHCN and elsewhere, and when skeptics reveal the truth, it surely drives them mad.
Mark Twain astutely recognized, “In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other.” And while Peter Miesler and Slandering Sou are iconic examples of this failing, Twain’s remarks should be a warning to us all.
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A minor pedantry – but better correct irrelevant errors than leave them for the trolls to crow over – the organisation you call the British Arctic Survey” is actually called the British Antarctic Survey.
+1 I spotted that too.
Roger Hird,
Funny, I was thinking this entire article is a troll composed of minor errors being crowed over. Different strokes for different folks I guess.
Here’s a puzzle for the homogenizers, or anyone really.
I have a digital thermocouple thermometer with 2 probes. One tells me the temp in my living room and the other is outside the living room window, under a ‘Stephenson screen made of house bricks. Its just for curiosity really but I often compare its outside reading to what my local Wunderground station is reporting. So I know how big a coat to put on when I go the feed my cows!
Despite us being only 5,750 metres apart and as rural as you could get, the differences are sometimes truly astounding.
None more so than just recently, the evening of Jan 3rd to be precise. My thermocouple was reading minus 2C outside and Brampton Wunderground was showing plus 1C It was frosty, the place was white.
So I went and got the data from my 2 dataloggers, one hanging off the washing-line in my garden and the other hanging from a fence, in a field 500 metres away. They tracked each other almost perfectly and agreed with the thermocouple.
Brampton is actually 2 weather stations, the Wunderground one and another reporting ‘officially’ to the Met Office here: http://wow.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/view?siteID=25930296
They tracked each other.
But it got worse. earlier in the day from 13:30 onwards, my 2 dataloggers tracked each other and were reading 3 degrees warmer than Brampton, yet after 16:30, they were reading anything up to 4 degrees colder (degrees centigrade) I have seen them do strange things, but not both at the same time.
So, what went on there?
I have noticed that our local weather site and Wunderground vary from each other by several degrees. And that, usually, our area is actually colder than what both of them say.
Different microclimates. Right now my sensor located 12 inches aboveground reads 9.5 F. My other sensor located 6 ft aboveground reads 11.5 F. Later in the day these readings will reverse. Why? The lower sensor is closer to the ground which radiates directly to space at night. Later, when the ground is receiving direct sunlight, it will warm more than the upper sensor. Local microclimates cause large differences in temperature, which is useful to those homogenizing data with a purpose in mind.
Another effect overlooked is that cold air sinks, so that in hilly areas the dips & valleys will tend to be colder than the tops.
There is a huge difference between town and country. I live on the edge of a large town in southern England. Although we had reports of minus whatever for a few days a week or so ago (lovely frosts), my quite expensive weather station was saying that the temperature probe never went below freezing once. So I worked out that there was a difference of about 3-4 degrees c between the Met Office’s data of the nights before, and my back garden where the probe is in the shade. That’s a lot. During that spell I had to visit a place in the countryside where they said they had had minus 6 degrees c the night before. My data said it was 0.
Lots of radiation in a town coming from brick, heat storing, walls and tarmac roads etc.
typo:
Maybe they will start winning in the other direction.
We have a house in Southern Spain and I have a weather station with an external sensor, this sensor is placed in the kitchen window recess and is in permanent shade. The kitchen window faces West, and is at the back of the house, where we have an enclosed terracotta tiled, enclosed yard. In the summer when the sun is directly overhead at about 14:00 (In the Summer, Spanish time is 2 hours ahead of UT) The temperature rises significantly as the terracotta tiles heat up, by about 15:00 it is impossible to walk on the tiles in bare feet because they are so hot. I would say that the temperature registered by the sensor is only accurate in winter and to a lesser extent in early Spring and late Autumn. This how data is cherry picked and has been mentioned before on WUWT that many temperature monitoring stations are near airport runways, where the black body radiation is higher and the heat from the jet engines of the planes is not taken into account. LIkewise I would guess that any studies carried out where cherry picking or manipulation of data cannot be done are discarded if they do not show GW is taking place. Of course the phrase “peer reviewed” is meaningless when the peers (Christopher Monckton excepted) carry out the review.
This at last brings me to the point of this post, any ground based temperature measurement has to be erroneous, satellite data isn’t and it is satellite data that has demonstrated that there has been no GW for over 19 years. That has to be the crux of the AGW debate, because people like Mielser can procrastinate about penguins, polar bears and heat devouring oceans (how AGW, which is an atmospheric phenomenon, can keep the air at the same temperature but cause the seas to warm is beyond comprehension!) all they wish, but the bottom line is that there has been no global warming!
No one has ever announced the Warmest Hydrological Year Evah!!!1!! proving that warming only occurs in the Gregorian year.
Jim Steele, you are indeed a treasure. I had long believed that the wonderful science of ecology in modern times had become corrupted like the irretrievable social sciences and no longer produced science at all. I tend to be, perhaps, a bit too cynical these days and I’m delighted to have this status ‘adjusted’ on this score. I hope you have lots of honest colleagues like yourself. Any sociologists, anthropologists… out there that would like to correct my impressions?
Thanks Gary for the kind words. My hope is also that the science of ecology can attract more respect once we weed out the bad science corrupted by politics.
Dumont D’Urville station temps from 1956 to 2014. Supplied by Meteo France to the British Antarctic Survey.
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/READER/surface/Dumont_Durville.All.temperature.html
Recorded Monthly Temps (decreasing that is).
http://s8.postimg.org/gexj6htg5/Dumont_Durville_Temps_1956_2014.png
Then in anomalies versus the average temp for the month.
http://s29.postimg.org/atm8acn8n/Dumont_Durville_Temp_Anoms_1956_2014.png
I’ve been maintaining a database of many Antarctic stations. They all show this type of trend, slightly downward (other than the Antarctic Peninsula which warmed somewhat up until about 2000 but has since been cooling).
Well, here’s a link that shows (or purports to show) that the vast majority of global warming in the past few decades has taken place in very high Northern latitudes — well North of anyplace with significant population. http://appinsys.com/globalwarming/GW_NotGlobal.htm
Not sure exactly what to make of it, but your graphs of Antarctic data would seem to fit right in
Indeed most of the warming is recorded in the Arctic but not due to hear accumulation but due to heat ventilating through open waters and thinner ice. The lack of insulating ice was caused by a change in the Arctic Oscillation that removed thick multiyear ice and blew it out into the Atlantic. That oscillation is reversing and thicker ice is forming. NOAA reported multiyear ice cover increased from 22% to 33% this last year. As that continues Arctic temperatures will decline.
That would imply that the “warming” is also taking place where it is interpolated rather than measured.
Thanks Bill for supplying the supporting data and graphs!
On USHCN: I love graphs, as many do, but I need to trust them, which I increasingly don’t.
If results generating graphs cannot be replicated because the raw data is constantly under revision; we have lost the ability for meaningful scientific criticism; one of our institutions.
Is one answer for the USHCN to continuously publish a) the raw data, b) the filter algorythms used at different points in time so critics and supporters alike can replicate data being used in a particular graph, and c) post their latest and greatest ‘managed dataset’ with graphics of their choosing.
Is another answer for WUWT to set a graphics standard policy for guest posts, such as data sources and download time are required for each graphic posted, as well as vertical and horizontal scales.
I would love a six line summary of this post at either the top or bottom, so I can cut and quote it to my not so skeptical friends. e.g. 2015 data reconfirms Yosemite is cooling from the 30s, penguins not threatened by climate change etc.I can’t usually afford the time to slog through adjectives like fallacious and slandering and I think you lose all but the already convinced in the volume of the post. Meant as a constructive comment to increase your band width.
Cheers.
cookiemonster01:
Ditto. Not just for this post, either. The ‘Share’ command in Safari makes it easy to email links to posts on WUWT to friends and relatives, but I know most don’t have the time to spend studying long, often intricate arguments, and references to people they never heard of, not to mention reading lengthy Comments threads. Some are inclined to Realist (or Skeptical) views, but are much more likely to scan a pithy abstract or executive summary than to plough through the nitty gritty.
How about using the teaser space on the Home page for abstracts rather than just the first few sentences? Maybe make composing one a requirement for a guest post?
/Mr Lynn
I agree and I have been constantly torn between a quick pithy post that is easily shared versus a lengthy post that provides the needed detail. I generated first detailed wildlife surveys for consultants but initially left off the executive summary.The consultant admonished me stating the executive summary is the most important section, because very few people read all the details. But as scientist we must provide the supporting evidence so that those who want to critically analyze an interpretation can do so. So indeed an abstract or executive summary is a good compromise. I hoped my title would be an adequate teaser, but teaser space is a good idea
Folks want a simple answer.
You can have all the simple answers you want and they’ll be right less than half the time.
If you want to argue that butterflies aren’t going extinct in the California mountains because of climate change, you have to get down and dirty with the data.
Executive summary, yes. But whatever you do, don’t stop writing your well-reasoned arguments. If those with the attention-span of a mosquito can’t be bothered to read your narrative, remember there are those who can.
As already mentioned below and on other posts, I also miss an Abstract at the beginning or a summary at the end. I and others have also made this point on Mr. Tisdale’s posts. This post could be so much better if being more “objective” and not fashioned as a “contra” to Mr. Miesler. I consider the question of homogenisation of the temperature record so important and I am surprised that it receives so little attention. I keep reading the Heller/Goddard “outbursts” on the increasing difference between raw and “manipulated” data – reducing pre 1960 temperatures and increasing current readings and find it so disturbing and being unable to judge independently the veracity of his work I keep looking for verification or otherwise by wiser persons. Where are the “smart” people who can put a proper perspective on this? Is Heller/Goddard right/wrong? This is important because the CAGW now seems to centre around CO2 causing “extreme weather” and the suggested activity by the different agencies to move the global temperature up to the models rather than the other way round. I could do with som real clarification.
John Peter, I agree that a more useful post would have focussed on homogenization insanity, but I also needed a quick hit to counter Mielser’s lies and character assassinations that spam the internet. I don’t think that needs to be done any more.
There are many others, far more skilled than I, that could tackle the issue of monthly homogenization and its ability to drastically alter trends year to year. There are many people who have graphed the temperature trends over the past 10 years and I would love to see a page developed that compiled and compared the shifting trends created by homogenization over recent years after the quality control of historic data had already been completed. The arguments from people like Zeke Hausfather have centered around why homogenization is needed and indeed there are times that may be the correct solution. But the dramatic change at Death Valley in just 2 years is a clear example of why homogenization is wrong and could easily be abused.
A picture is worth a thousand words, and s page demonstrating the perpetual whimsical alterations in historic trends would be very illustrative of the problem.
Thanks Jim. You’re over a sensitive target and getting alot of flak. Tactically, when that happens, double-down on the attack.
I suggest we need to ask Congress for a full investigation.
==================
Repeated homogenization of already homogenized data makes no sense. It runs the risk of introducing error through over-processing.
In theory homogenization removes noise, leaving only signal. However that is not accurate. In practice, noise reduction removes both noise and signal, and it introduces synthetic noise that was not in the original signal. You try and maximize noise reduction, while minimizing signal loss and synthetic noise. However, no process is perfect.
So one must be careful when applying noise reduction. Applied too heavily it will remove the noise and the signal, and leave synthetic noise. Repeated homogenization of homogenized data runs the risk of corrupting the data, as the small errors inherent in homogenization accumulate with each processing cycle.
ferdberple
As a layman I simply don’t understand the need for “homogenization” – hopefully you can help explain.
As long as discrete data (e.g.: temp for a given time & location) errors are not cumulative (e.g.: 1 degree error on Monday & 1 degree error on Tuesday starts off Wednesday with a 2 degree error), isn’t this what error bands are for?
Chip
The greater the variability of temperature data the more difficult the ability to find a significant climate trend. The homogenizers label variability as “inhomogeneities” and thus justify their efforts to homogenize the data. They make the assumption that changes in a trend are the result of undocumented changes at the weather station. So they make an algorithm to cut and splice the data wherever there is a questionable inflection point. But there are many natural dynamics that alter local trends, and many of the adjustments were made at inflection points caused by El Nino or the PAcific Decadal Oscillation. The problem is algorithm requires some assumption as to what constitutes a suspicious difference in trends. If two stations warm due to increasing populations and the 3rd does not, the 2 “urbanized” stations create a regional expectation for the assumed trend. They may then homogenize the 3rd station to look like the other two thus erroneously incorporating the population effect into the 3rd station which then amplifies the regional trend, and there have been many examples of that mistake.
jim Steele,
Which is the better assumption, ENSO and/or PDO variability caused an inflection point in observations at:
1) One measuring station but none of its closest neighbors or,
2) One measuring station and most or all of its closest neighbors?
Note, this analysis is also sensitive to the magnitude of the changes seen in the data from the station in question relative to its neighbors, so the binary choice I offer is not a true dichotomy.
The problem can not be solved simply and blindly a “majority wins” approach. Each station must be examined. Indeed a change in winds due to the PDO resulted decadal warming trends in one Yosemite locale, a cooling trend in another, and no trend in a third. Those opposing trends are all very accurate representations of how the micro-cllimates being measured had changed due to a larger scale event. Averaging not homogenizing may provide a better picture of the overall trend. The homogenization problem is illustrated by imagining there was a hypothetical 4th station that agreed with one of the other 3, then those two stations in agreement would be assumed to be more “correct”. Instead of averaging the differences, homogenizing the the other stations then amplifies the trend seen at 2 similar stations. During a period of rapid population growth, a lower heat capacity due to drying out of the soil and lost vegetation, and an increase in heat retaining surfaces, then homogenization more often amplifies those warming effects that is not indicative of climate change. That is one reason why tree ring temperature in more natural settings have diverged from instrumental data and almost universally suggest a trend more like the maximum in Yosemite
Chip Javert,
Like you I am a layman, and though you did not ask me here is my understanding. Things such as station moves, instrumentation changes, time of observation, calibration issues, etc., are known to occur without being documented in station metadata. Add to that transcription errors from handwritten reports, inconsistent reporting, stuff getting lost or garbled, poor (or no) organization — in short flat out systemic human and instrumental error. Pile on to that things like increased urbanization, doing stupid stuff like placing the instrument next to the hot outlet of an air cooling system, etc., ad infinitum, ad naseum.
The properly skeptical thing to do when anecdote demonstrates that some of these things have happened at some stations is to assume that all these things have happened at every station. IOW, caveat emptor ALL of the “raw” data by default. Since we want to know what has happened in the past and these data are what we have to tell us, we can’t simply wastebin it, so we need to quality control and adjust. This is standard practice in any and all empirical research, and has been pretty much since we started doing observational data-based science.
Inhomogeneity in this context means that some data from one station looks out of whack compared to its neighbors, or even itself. Sometimes the metatada from the station will tell us it has been moved, recalibrated, undergone an instrument change, etc. When that happens we use that first. Otherwise we have to rely on statistical techniques to identify things which look weird.
Once something goofy is identified, we have to decide what to do with it. One option is to simply declare the data from that station unreliable and junk it. But since we find suspicious things in almost all station data, that really is not an option. So we adjust, most commonly by comparing the suspect data to its neighbors and letting majority rule. It’s all very democratic actually.
NCDC calls their algorithm for doing this Pairwise Homogeneity Adjustment or PHA.
Because it’s a scientific AND ethical faux pas to change data permanently and without telling everyone, the best practice would be to keep the “raw” data around so folk can compare it to the adjusted product, document the process by which the adjustments were made, and freely provide all the source code of the algorithm so it can be compiled and executed by independent investigators.
Which is exactly what NCDC does. GISS does the same for the further processing they do to remove the UHI signal as best they know how, plus other stuff.
@ur momisugly Brandon Gates
Which is why one supposes that the IPCC prefer to rely on CRU where the original data was destroyed and requests for information are routinely obstructed.
Brandon since you argue that homogenization is valid and transparent, please explain how the Death Valley trend changes from negative in 2012 to positive 2014. There is nothing at NCDC that justifies it.
Jim Steele,
The process can be described as a simple majority wins approach, and indeed I just have. That doesn’t mean it is simple and indeed it very much is not. As for blind, like beauty, much does depend on the eye of the beholder.
Technically PHAs do that. But I take your meaning.
So KNMI has four GHCN-D stations with Tmax daily data matching the search string “Yosemite”:
SO_ENTR_YOSEMITE_NP,_CA (United States)coordinates: 37.51N, -119.63E, 1538.0m
GHCN-D station code: USC00048380 (get data)
Found 74 years of data in 1941-2014
YOSEMITE_PARK_HQ,_CA (United States)
coordinates: 37.75N, -119.59E, 1225.0m
GHCN-D station code: USC00049855 (get data)
Found 110 years of data in 1905-2014
YOSEMITE_VILLAGE_12_W,_CA (United States)
coordinates: 37.76N, -119.82E, 2018.0m
GHCN-D station code: USW00053150 (get data)
WMO station: 74503
Found 8 years of data in 2007-2014
FRESNO_YOSEMITE_INTL_AP,_CA (United States)
coordinates: 36.78N, -119.72E, 102.0m
GHCN-D station code: USW00093193 (get data)
WMO station: 72389
Found 67 years of data in 1948-2014
I’ve pulled down Tmin and Tmax for the second one (USC00049855) because that’s the longest record and is the one I spotted in one of the plots in your article. I believe this is homogenized stuff, but can’t confirm … I do know it’s been QC’d. I know where to get daily raw from NCDCs ftp site, I’m wondering where you get yours?
I haven’t gotten to the point where I’m comparing these four stations to each other.
I wouldn’t, and won’t, argue by default that the microclimate changes are not real, but I also don’t understand how you’ve ruled out a slew of other known instrumentation and record-keeping issues in the GHCN network at large.
Easy enough comparison to do. I apologize if I missed it, but have you done one?
Let me restate. I’ve got stations number 1 and 2 which agree, and #3 which doesn’t. A PHA would outvote 3 and adjust it to match 1 and 2. The arithmetic mean would give a different answer. Which do you think is more likely to change the overall trend, the PHA or the simple average?
Now we imagine station #4 which agrees with station 3. We don’t have a tiebreaking vote any longer. Same question as the first scenario.
The way I’ve stated this glosses over how the PHA voting process works and thinks more in terms how polling booths do. My understanding is that it’s not actually one man one vote.
Jim Steele,
I’ve got my hands full with the Yosemite data. I’m not opposed to taking a look at Death Valley, but I can’t do 11 things at once, my limit is 10. As I said to you previously, all things in good time … and in order of the queue.
The Pompous Git,
So far my interactions with Jim have been pretty good at keeping suppositions and snark out of it, dealing with the data at hand, and staying on point. I’d like to keep that trend going, it’s refreshing for me to be having that sort of discussion on WUWT — it’s how things started out for me here and I’ve been missing it of late.
@ur momisugly Brandon “but I also don’t understand how you’ve ruled out a slew of other known instrumentation and record-keeping issues in the GHCN network at large.”
You put words in my mouth. I dont rule out the possibility of those issues but most of those have been addressed. Your question can be turned around and I could ask why do you rule out natural changes? The problem is neither of us knows why 2 stations have “inhomogeneities.” But I do know from examining different microclimates, that it highly likely that most of those differences are due to how weather reacts with different habitats, and just because you describe the problem as a “a slew of other known instrumentation and record-keeping issues”, doesnt mean those issues are predominate. My guess is natural microclimate differences are a magnitude greater than the issues you describe.
Since you are looking at Yosemite, read Lindquist (2007) Surface temperature patterns in complex terrain: Daily variations and long-term change in the central Sierra Nevada, California.
From their abstract “These relationships demonstrate that strong westerly winds are associated with relatively warmer temperatures on the east slope and cooler temperatures on the west slope of the Sierra, and weaker westerly winds are associated with the opposite pattern. Reanalysis data from 1948 to 2005 indicate weakening westerlies over this time period, a trend leading to relatively cooler temperatures on the east slope over decadal timescales. This trend also appears in long-term observations and demonstrates the need to consider topographic effects when examining long-term changes in mountain regions.”
Jim Steele,
My apologies, it was not clear to me that you considered the instrumentation and other non-climate technical issues sufficiently addressed.
I haven’t, and as I said previously neither would I argue that by default.
Speaking for myself I very much do not know why. I’m only just getting started looking at the data.
I agree.
The data I’ve looked at so far are not inconsistent with that guess.
Thanks for the tip. Clearly changes in wind and precipitation patterns are going to do things to surface temperature which would overwhelm any forcing signal from CO2, and must be accounted for before making strong statements that CO2 (all or mostly) diddit.
I found the link you provided for the source data (I missed that in my first reading) so now I can be sure to be working with the same numbers.
@ur momisugly Brandon Gates
My snark was directed at the IPCC and CRU, not yourself. I happen to agree with your words that I quoted. If you find that offensive… well, tough titty.
I agree with the Git: if the procedure that Gates outlined was used, the air would go out of the global warming bubble fast. I have used that exact argument many times. Raw data, with the entire methodology used to “adjust” it is necessary. Anything else is hocus-pocus and juju.
In fact, if the IPCC admitted that there are no measurements quantifying AGW, the ‘man-made global warming’ bubble would be promptly rendered airless.
The alarmist clique is still arguing as if anything they say is anything except their opinion.
It’s not. All they have are baseless assertions, and they get angry when it’s pointed out.
The Pompous Git,
Since you agree with the words you quoted, you should be able to understand the actual bee in my bonnet here, which I’ll restate: thus far this has been an evidence-based discussion about a specific issue, with a minimum of snark. Most days I’m happy to throw mud and not complain when someone lobs a dumptruck of it at me … I could easily wear your nym and be proud of it — it describes me pretty well in a lot of ways actually.
What is grinding on me here with you is what I perceive to be the diversionary nature of your comment. Any old day of the week here at WUWT is a referendum on the IPCC. I’d simply like to have a technical discussion with someone like Jim who knows what he’s about and not have it turn into a free-fire zone about evil communists trying to take over the world via a preposterously ridiculous conspiracy theory.
But now that the cherry has been busted, tell me this: if the data are being juked, why aren’t they done so in such a way so that they better match the GCM output???? Sweet Peter, Paul and Mary, why go through all the motions of a serious and legitimate worldwide scientific endeavor to fabricate a lie which is so utterly unconvincing to so many people?
Once, just once, I’d like to take a hard, properly skeptical, objective as possible look at some data, do some math on it, some ancillary research, all without having the kitchen sink of contrarian talking points lobbed at me for my troubles. Is that so much to ask?
@ur momisugly Brandon Gates
Where on Earth have I ever done that? If you are merely attempting to insult me, you have a very much higher bar to reach.
Antagonist: “You syphilitic offspring of a Mongoloid’s melt!”
The Git: “You’re making me homesick. My Mummy used to speak to me like that.”
That’s an excellent question. Why don’t you address it? I note that many are convinced, but they tend to be people who don’t think critically about the evidence. Example: like many farmers in the Huon Valley of southern Tasmania, I used to grow field tomatoes back in the 1980s. Harvest used to commence late February, early March. By the mid-90s harvest wasn’t commencing until mid-April so we gave up growing them, much to the chagrin of the townies who used to come and pick their own for tomato sauce.
Year on year, we have been continually told that “it’s the hottest year ever”. Which am I to believe? My own lying eyes, or the “quality controlled” thermometer record? Does the growing season really shorten as temperatures increase, or is it the other way around?
@ur momisugly Brandon Gates
Thanks for the chinwag; it was fun. However, in the absence of tertiary level texts supporting CAGW, I will continue to adhere to The Received View (i.e. what I was taught at tertiary level. And I suspect the comments to this thread will be closed in the not very distant. Feel free to contact me off-line should you wish to discuss things further. Jonathan Sturm (my given names) is the world’s most pompous git according to Gurgle.
Live long and prosper…
The Pompous Git,
You haven’t in those exact words, but it’s a common enough refrain here in one form or another. Guilt by association. I know, it’s not fair.
I thought I did. I think the grand conspiracies theories of a Warmunist One World Order are ridiculous on the face of them.
Two way street. Nobody in this debate is immune from confirmation bias, not even me. You yourself have witnessed me at nearly my most prejudiced (and somewhat jaded but weary) since I first responded to you.
Unless your eyes have global daily coverage I’d go with the instrumental record. Were I you, if I had good cause to believe the instrumental record to be wholly unreliable, I’d adopt the agnostic position of not knowing what global trends were doing.
I would naively expect longer growing seasons on average. Oh hey, maybe I’m not so naive:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/images/nature13470-sf2.jpg
Note there are some outliers. I can think of all sorts of things incomplete/dead wrong with this study, but it’s paywalled so I can’t read it: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13470.html
@ur momisugly Brandon Gates
Your problem I think is wanting to universalise/homogenise properties that are local and heterogeneous. Climate is local: “Condition (of a region or country) in relation to prevailing atmospheric phenomena, as temperature, dryness or humidity, wind, clearness or dullness of sky, etc., esp. as these affect human, animal, or vegetable life.” See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6ppen_climate_classification#mediaviewer/File:Koppen_World_Map_(retouched_version).png
You will see that there are lots of different climates on planet Earth, most are the same as they were a century ago. This isn’t to deny climate change; I note that Florida in the USA for example used to be sub-tropical, but now experiences frosts. This is undoubtedly due to anthropogenic effects (land clearance not CO2). See also:
http://www.sturmsoft.com/climate/suckling_mitchell_2000_fig2_3.gif
You introduce some research on perennial plants that appear to show diminished response to temperature. This is hardly surprising given that there was a paper in Nature not so very long ago showing that tropical trees are capable of maintaining a fixed leaf surface temperature regardless of air temperature. However, in horticulture in more temperate climes we have a rule of thumb: we sum the number of degrees above 10C during the growing season and we know that when the required degree days have been reached our crop will be mature. This is also true for the emergence of pests and predators. Average global surface temperature is completely useless for this purpose!
You also make an error in lumping me in with all other posters in this forum. As it happens, I am (according to The Political Compass) somewhat left of centre and very libertarian. About the same as the Dalai Llama.
And while you are posing as something of an expert on CAGW, you might want to point me in the direction of a tertiary level text of the calibre of TR Oke’s Boundary Layer Climates that includes CAGW. Thus far, you and your ilk (guilt by association), have been unable to do so, or indeed explain why after 30+ years no warmunist has managed to write such.
The Pompous Git,
I take a whole system approach from the top down on this issue. Clearly zonal and local responses are going to be heterogeneous this particular system. That’s what makes it a tough nut to crack. And also quite interesting.
I don’t see that it is an either/or proposition. Again, my default naive position would assume some mix of both. I’d then set out to determine the mix by appealing to quantifiable observation backed by explanitory physcial mechanisms.
The plot I posted says “Mean annual temperature” not “Mean annual global temperature” along the x-axis. The scale is -10 to 30 degrees Celsius. Those aren’t typical ranges for global anomalized temperatures.
My view is that guilt by association is always an error, even if it arrives at the correct conclusion. So I try not to. This time my failure was doubly wrong.
Something else I try to do is address the argument, not the alignment, certainly not the person. I often don’t succeed there either.
Now however … trading barbs can be fun, especially when done with humor. I’m still chuckling at “Mongoloid’s melt” being a term of endearment.
I’ve got nuthin’ for you by way of a text or comprehensive expertise.
Aside from that being a somewhat arbitrary condition prone to subjective opinion, it does frustrate me sometimes that the things I’m interested in studying are either presented at the freshman university level or the PhD postgraduate level and beyond.
Cheers for the good fight, Mr. Steele. Don’t let them get you down.
I’m doing a lot of work regarding Big Data – and one of the more interesting outcomes is that I notice just how poorly “research center” types tend to handle disparate data sources.
For example, I recently investigated a model for predicting criminal activity based on historical crime, weather, social media traffic, census and traffic itself. The problem with mashing up these data sources are that the location accuracy for the various components is radically different: crime records are accurate to the nearest address, weather/census is at best zip code, social media is by IP address and hence is literally multiple miles inaccurate, and traffic is generally major thoroughfares/block level. Yet the mashup predictions purport to show accuracy at specific locations!
Unlike the precision on scientific calculations where digits are discarded due to uncertainty in the components, for Big Data – the greatest single component accuracy is used as a basis for all the rest!
I wonder how much of this occurs with climate science – in particular the alarmist bits: those portions of study which expound the most alarmist results, et al.
Great point, C1ue (“the greatest single component accuracy is used as a basis for all the rest!”).
Re: your wonderings about the methodology of the climastrologists…
I think we can be fairly certain that ANYONE claiming there is such a thing as a “global” weather phenomenon (usually called “warming” by such “scientists”) is either:
1. mad or
2. ly1ng.
In either case, their methodology is of absolutely no concern to me.
Indeed! Climate is local. My broad bean harvest was four weeks later than average this season.
O Pompous One!
How did the move off the farm go? I hope that there was more joy in the going-to than sorrow over the leaving-behind. As I told you, I deeply empathize with you about selling a family farm… . I hope that you and your wife are happily settled into your new digs (glad to see that you are still digging — holes for bean seeds, at least smile)).
Best wishes for a bodaciously bountiful broad bean harvest,
Janice
@ur momisugly Janice Moore
There’s quite a lot involved in moving from a place you have inhabited for 33 years. We will put the farm up for sale next spring. That means I will need to commence a new garden at our new home while maintaining the one on the farm.
The bean harvest was about 50% of average, but that only means we give away/trade less than usual. The freezer is almost full. And the pea harvest is in full swing. Life is good!
Good! #(:))
Well done, Jim Steele! Thanks for the great teaching!
Exposing CO2 l1es prevents human misery.
Thus, the most accurate label for you is: “Humanitarian.”
If you ever have a bad moment (and all warriors for truth do, from time to time) and feel that all your valiant efforts are hopelessly futile, remember this:
For an hour, a mieslink may succeed at “making truth itself appear like falsehood,” but,
“truth stands the test of
time.”
Take heart! #(:))
Truth will defend itself. And truth wins — every time.
Truth doesn’t win every skirmish…. truth sometimes “stumbles in the streets,”… but
TRUTH WILL WIN THE WAR! Hoooo-waaah!
#(:))
Time for a song about Heroes
like Jim Steele and Dr. Susan Crockford
and An-thony and our stalwart mod-erators
and commenters like Jimbo!
“I Need a Hero” — Avengers scenes (youtube video)
You rock!
LOL Thanks for the kind praise, I really do appreciate it, but it makes me uncomfortable. The politicization of climate change has embarked on a battle of “our heroes” vs “their heroes.” Our quest is to create respectful debate free of personal attacks and free from the fallacy of authority. We must debate the evidence, the validity of methodologies and interpretations no matter which side if proffering it. Any type “cult of personality” arguments obscure that debate. Miesler persistently uses that tactic to enshrine his chosen researchers of gloom and doom as heroes, and denigrate those who disagree as unworthies. Alarmists enshrine any climate argument that gets published, and denigrate those who expose fallacious arguments and contrived evidence, simply because they have not published. So while I greatly appreciate your counter measure to push back on the alarmists’ non-science, I would prefer to be seen as an average Joe sharing his perspective and that you question every thing I say and scrutinize it thoroughly. And what makes WUWT a great place, is it allows a forum for alternative views that can be scrutinized by all.
Standing up to be counted makes you more than “an average Joe”. I think you are going to have to live with it, especially when you post such interesting arguments.
Dear Jim,
I hear you… and I appreciate your taking the time to write. I write this reply not to argue with you but to defend the INDISPENSABLE value of praise for the “good guys,” especially those on the front lines, bearing the brunt of the battle, a.k.a. “heroes.” Troop morale is not a merely auxiliary matter, it is of vital importance to winning. Honoring our heroes sharpens our focus on the goal and strengthens our determination to fight.
So, I understand your point, however…
this is a WAR for truth.
Would you have had the Allies demurely refrain from lauding their Montgomerys and MacArthurs and Churchills while the enemy glorified its maniacally v1le leadership?
That the enemy makes heroes out of thugs, cr00ks, and l1ars is no reason not to honor those who daily lay down their professional lives, enduring v1le s1ander and worse for right.
Sorry, “Joe” (smile), as Pompous said, you and Dr. Murry Salby and Dr. Soon and An-thony and…. many, many, others… are not “average.” “…. some have greatness thrust upon them… .”
With admiration, gratitude, and all due respect,
Janice
Thank you Janice and Pompous!
As my Dad once told me:
With something like 7 billion people in the world today it’s getting harder not to occasionally step on a few toes.
Dad: {When you’re kicked by a donkey}, just consider the source.
This is an excellent article. Thank you for the excellent background information and the inside story on the detractors. It is very helpful for everyone to see the concise science in defense of our skepticism while being exposed to the rampant disregard for truth and the inevitable bias due to self interest which you exposed is being flagrantly exhibited by the alarmists that are stalking you.
Ferdberple says ” I suggest that we need to ask Congress for an investigation.”
I second this motion.
Dear E. Martin,
If you are Edward Martin (and thank you, if you are, for that generous compliment on 12/31) whose family suffered a great loss recently, how are you and all of your cousin’s family doing? I have been praying steadily as promised.
Your WUWT friend,
Janice
“Slandering Sou is one of Miesler’s mentors and ally”
I think you will find they are one and the same and whoever this person is covers a lot of ground under many names – that i have experienced.
You will notice similar turn of phrase cropping up.
They indeed “channel” the same evil intentions, but they most likely are different people.
There is ALWAYS more than one way to look at an issue. As a non-climate scientist, but having an interest in global warming, I have found it disappointing that there is no forum where someone like me can hear both sides of the story to global warming issues. The mainstream media is aggravating because almost everything is heavily liberal bias. The Skeptical Science page is a disappointment to me because while presenting a warmist’s view on issues with a lot of information it is obviously biased and has a clear purpose of influencing rather than informing. The Watts Up With that Page is the best place I have found to hear highly knowledgeable people discuss climate news, However it chooses stories that make the reader skeptical of global warming. And maybe thats because all climate news when really properly analyzed WILL make you skeptical of global warming. But rather than just a comment section, I would like to see a page like WUWT have a section with its stories where a legitimate warmist (and the more I read about AGW the more I doubt there is a legimate warmist) can give their rebuttal to WUWT that stories. There may be good rebuttals in the comments but there are a lot of comments to sort through. Because right now when I read about the same subjects on Skeptical Science and WUWT they sound like they are talking about different planets. As a prime example, the temperature adjustments made to data bases from the NCDC. Articles on the WUWT page say they are significant, subtracting several tenths of a degree from the past and adding about a half a degree to current measurements. While at Skeptical Science they show a graph that says the adjustments are basically nothing. I’d love to hear WUWT respond to the SKep Scien chart or Skep Scien respond to the WUWT that charts. Right now there is no forum of dialog where someone like me can read or hear a legitimate point / counterpoint on data where both are talking about the same thing. The pages on Anthony’s blog spawn are useless because their agenda is obviously to smear and influence rather than to legitimately inform or debate.
Dear Mr. Thayer,
The comments are, as you suspected, where you will find the point-counterpoint. You will just have to read them. There won’t be much (I’m not dignifying troll inanities with the term “refutation” — they are just amusing or annoying as the case may be) …. because AGW has so little that it can even attempt to legitimately assert on its behalf. AGW is pure speculation. In some of Ferdinand Englebeen’s (he usually appears to counter Dr. Murry Salby or Bart) and in some of (not all by any means) Nick Stokes’ assertions, you will get the glimmerings of refutation. Because they HAVE no genuine refutation of the undeniable truths asserted by “skeptic” scientists, however…
you will find that those glimmerings soon fade into darkness once again.
Sorry, dear truth-seeker — you’ll have to do the homework.
And remember this, as you study: they do not give bank tellers dozens of examples of counterfeit money to study; they give them genuine bills so that when the fake ones appear, they are easily recognizable.
Best wishes for discerning fact from fiction,
Janice (another learner just like you)
Thank you Janice. Its not only a matter of fact and fiction, or real or counterfeit, but getting an unskewed set of facts. The liberals say about the Michael Brown case “The police shot an unarmed teenager”, the conservatives say “A 290 pound robbery suspect was shot when he charged a police officer”. There are lots of facts, and you can always pick facts that help you influence others to believe like you do. I’m looking for a place that gives me a true scientific approach learning about the state of our global climate, presenting research and data that isn’t selected to support one view or another, where that information is freely an openly debated on what its significance is. WUWT is the closest thing I’ve found to that. I guess I’m wishing there was a more prominent token liberal like Fox News will give time to that will expose me the information that did not make it through Anthony’s filter, who is, like me, a skeptic on AGW.
You haven’t been reading WUWT for more than a few hours then…
I found the “blog spawn” phrase a little confusing and had to reread things before deciding I might actually understand it. Pretty sure that the “spawn” are the folks that have to blog on their own sites ABOUT what is said here. Anthony’s policy of keeping personality and similar gibberish to a dullish background rumble and of banning the – ah (I was going to write ‘gits’ but realized your handle could make that a bit misleading) – individuals that can’t keep things civil and informed means that folks like Sou and Miesner have to maintain their own pages to complain about WuWT content in a format they prefer. Anthony’s policy implements an unspoken corollary of the First Amendment. It guarantees free speech, not an audience.
@ur momisugly Duster & Steve Thayer
It would seem I misread the comment. Please excuse my snark…
When you quote it alone like that even I read it as a shot against Anthony. It is not. Duster has it right. The pages set up to dispute WUWT immediately tag themselves as a waste of time just with their names. Names like “Wotts up with …”. Come on, thats just transparent sour grapes. If someone set up a page called “Counterpoints to Watt’s up with that” I would read it at least to see if it had any valid points. I’m a Reagan Republican and my best friend for 30 years happens to be a liberal, and even though I don’t agree with him on many political things he often points out things that help me understand what an issue is about that I would never have thought of myself, or would have heard from my conservative friends. Surrounding yourself with people you agree with too much makes you feel good but doesn’t challenge your mind as much.
Blind acceptance is a bad learning environment, but baseless name calling is 10 times worse. What I really like about this page is the prevailing policy of quoting what you are disputing, rather than general bashing. What makes the Skeptical Science page really just childish to me is the “disputes” are for their own list of general comments like “the temperature record is tainted”. It looks like a list of quotes from an eight year old. Why don’t they post (or at least refer to) an article written by an ADULT, that for instance, claims the temperature record is adjusted, with data on what the adjustments are, and specifically address why the claims in the article of adjustments are false?
Anyway, I’m glad the author of this article, Jim, wrote it, but its sad that he has to address a slander filled article rather than honest questioning of his work.
.
That’s because they are!
“…Since debunking Parmesan, Miesler has been obsessed with slandering me whenever he can….”
This is a small correction, but the sentence above should be written as “..Since my debunking of Parmesan, Miesler has been obsessed with slandering me whenever he can.” This makes apparent that Steele and not Miesler was debunking Parmesan.
Very nice editorial. I especially liked this caveat “But the data is most definitely correct, if USHCN is to be trusted.”
The Gollum Story (youtube video)
So, you see, the Mieslums of the world are to be pitied.
They have been taken captive to do the will of an evil force which they do not even believe exists.
Prayer is the ONLY thing that can save them …. if they are willing to be saved. If they will not… one day they will find that they can not.
The warriors for truth take the trouble to dignify their f1lth with responses as fine as Jim Steele’s ONLY to prevent their leading the innocent astray.
I was wondering why you did not link directly to the offending posts, but having found them, I now understand. Whew.
“evidence is hard to find”.
LOL
Is that not the mantra of the Alarmist/Warmist?
Mielser could not believe that DuDu’s Emperors had stopped declining … He seems to also deny satellite data that shows the number of known Emperors has doubled in recent years.”
I assume you don’t mean to imply that the Emperor population has increased. Because the paper you link to does not say that.
trafamadore, I assume that paper you refer to is Fretwell’s An Emperor Penguin Population Estimate: The First Global, Synoptic Survey of a Species from Space. They wrote “We estimated the breeding population of emperor penguins at each colony during 2009 and provide a population estimate of ~238,000 breeding pairs (compared with the last previously published count of 135,000–175,000 pairs). Based on published values of the relationship between breeders and non-breeders, this translates to a total population of ~595,000 adult birds.” My claim that the numbers have doubled is based on an earlier estimate that the global population to be around 220,000 individuals in Micol and Jouventin (2001) and referenced in the petition to list them as endangered http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/species/birds/penguins/pdfs/PenguinPetition.pdf
Because Adelies breed in the summer the increased population can safely be said to have increased by ~about 53%. Regards Emperors I simply wrote surveys show “the number of known Emperors has doubled in recent years.” Because Emperors breed in the winter when conditions normally prohibit accurate surveys, we can not safely conclude that the doubling of known Emperors translates into an actual growth in population, some of that increase is due to increased detection. But there were enough surveys to suggest there was very likely a substantial increase. Oddly, when population estimates were lower (220,000 individual), the IUCN designated the Emperor as a species of “Lest Concern”, so this near doubling would at the very least suggest the larger population is at a reduced risk. But due to models based on the bogus conclusions about the decline at DuDu, Emperors were uplisted and CBD is petitioning again to make them endangered.
trafamadore, the paper you refer to I assume is Fretwell’s (2012) An Emperor Penguin Population Estimate: The First Global, Synoptic Survey of a Species from Space. They wrote, “We estimated the breeding population of emperor penguins at each colony during 2009 and provide a population estimate of ~238,000 breeding pairs (compared with the last previously published count of 135,000–175,000 pairs). Based on published values of the relationship between breeders and non-breeders, this translates to a total population of ~595,000 adult birds.” From their paper alone it would appear I exaggerated, but the “doubling” was based on numbers quoted in the petition to place the Emperor in the Endangered species list in which the Center for Bioogical Diversity argued a declining population.
“In the 1980s, the total Emperor Penguin population was estimated to be around 270,000 to 350,000 breeding adults (Marchant and Higgins 1990, del Hoyo et al. 1992). More recently, Micol and Jouventin (2001) estimate the global population to be around 220,000 individuals.” http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/species/birds/penguins/pdfs/PenguinPetition.pdf
Accepting the more recent of the earlier estimates, the newest estimate of 595,000 was conservatively a doubling of “known adults” estimated to be 220,000 in 2001.
I purposely wrote a doubling of known adults because that number may have been a partial product of increased detection and not safely assumed to be an indication of a growing population. Nonetheless earlier surveys provide enough information to suggest the overall population has most definitely increased to some degree.
(I posted a version this reply earlier but something went wrong and I dont see it)
Now you say, “Accepting the more recent of the earlier estimates, the newest estimate of 595,000 was conservatively a doubling of “known adults” estimated to be 220,000 in 2001.”
But what you said is that the paper: “shows the number of known Emperors has doubled in recent years”.
From reading the paper, the increase is due to inaccurate counts in the past and the detection of new colonies.
This is what they say, “The last global population estimate of 135,000–175,000 pairs, compiled nearly two decades ago, was based on a compendium of previous reports. However, the accuracy and validity of many of the counts used to compile this figure have been questioned. Further, many colonies have not previously been counted, including the ten new locations reported in a recent Landsat survey and the new colonies found in our study. Also, many of the colonies where counts do exist were last counted several decades ago, while other counts rely on estimates from late in the breeding season … These concerns over the lack of a baseline population figure for the species have led to the suggestion that emperor penguins should be re-classified by the IUCN from ‘of least concern’ to ‘data deficient’ ”
When accusing others of making false claims, perhaps you should not support your claims falsely. Just a suggestion.
trafamadope,
I cannot believe you would argue on Meisler’s side. I can’t believe anyone would.
But then, sometimes I can be naive, thinking everyone is as intelligent as the average skeptic.
Yes I said “shows the number of known Emperors has doubled in recent years” That is not a false claim. I did not take time here to qualify what the meaning of that known doubling was, but I have done so in other posts and in the book.
I was responding to the gloom and doom, and no matter what the ultimate cause of that doubling, the doubling of KNOWN Emperors is a fact. It means the species is at far less risk than was presumed a decade ago. The IUCN’s designation of Least Concern was based on the 220,000.
I did not say the population grew like I did for the Adelies. So You can try to twist what I said as a “false claim”, but you are very wrong and it suggest you have more of an agenda.