The Climateers new pause excuse born of desperation: 'the satellites are lying'

Add another one to the huge list of excuses for “the pause” in global temperature. Reader “Al Gorez” emails:

The climate alarmists have come up with a brilliant new excuse to explain why there has been no “global warming” for nearly 19 years: the satellite data is lying.

And to prove it they’ve come up with a glossy new video starring such entirely trustworthy and not at all biased climate experts as Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann , Kevin “Travesty” Trenberth and “I’d be tempted to beat the crap out of Dr. Pat Michaels” Ben Santer. (All of these paragons of scientific rectitude feature heavily in the Climategate emails) See more at Breitbart here.


 

Riiight. Because we all know how reliable their preferred surface temperature measurements are, as illustrated by these examples from NOAA’s USHCN climate monitoring network:

Figure2_Tucson_USHCN_from_above Figure3_Ardmore_USHCN_2009-2 Detroit_lakes_USHCN[1] bainbridge_ga_ushcn[1] fairbury_ne_ushcn

Those and hundreds of other stations have been encroached upon by heat sinks and heat sources. And, the proof is in the fact that when you get rid of all the garbage temperature monitoring stations like those shown above (which comprise about 90% of the US monitoring network) and use only the unperturbed stations that don’t have biases that need corrections applied, what you are left with is a lower trend:

 

Figure4-poster

Comparisons of 30 year trend for compliant Class 1,2 USHCN stations to non-compliant, Class 3,4,5 USHCN stations to NOAA final adjusted V2.5 USHCN data in the Continental United States

Figure 3

Source: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/12/17/press-release-agu15-the-quality-of-temperature-station-siting-matters-for-temperature-trends/

What an act of desperation by these politically oriented climate proponents. NASA GISS, an agency founded to do planetary studies in support of the Apollo program, that should be making use of satellite measurements based on NASA’s strategic plan which has shifted heavily to remote sensing (notice that picture of Earth from space on the cover?), still uses this high polluted, highly adjusted surface temperature data…for one reason only: it supports their narrative, and when their narrative is flowing, so does the funding. I’d wager that NASA GISS would be pretty much out of business due to funding cuts if that hadn’t reinvented themselves after the cancellation of the Apollo program and many other missions in the 70’s and 80’s. They just weren’t needed as much.

Stay tuned, there’s more to this story coming. The full transcript of the video follows (h/t to Monckton):

Here is the video from the “Yale Climate Connections”

Transcript of How reliable are satellite temperatures?

 

Senator Ted Cruz [described in onscreen text as “Climate Denier”, displaying the graph below, shown onscreen in the video]: According to the satellite data, there has been no significant global warming for the past 18 years:

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Dr Michael E. Mann, Pennsylvania State University [The following four terrestrial-temperature graphs, from GISS, HadCRUT4, Japan Met and Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature series respectively, were shown on the video for 1-2 seconds each]: When the full data are available, we will find that 2015 was the warmest year that the globe has seen as far back as we have reliable records.

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Dr Mann [continuing]: And what’s ironic is, it’s really those satellite datasets that critics like John Christy hold up, that Ted Cruz was emphasizing in that Senate hearing a week ago …

Senator Cruz: The satellite data are the best data we have.

Dr Judith Curry, Georgia Tech: We need to look at the satellite data. I mean, this is the best data that we have.

Dr Mann: It is those datasets that are subject to the most adjustments – that have historically been found to have been biased, um, actually in the direction of too little warming.

Sinclair: For a decade during the 1990s and early 2000s, climate skeptics John Christy and Roy Spencer argued that their reading of satellite data showed no atmospheric warming … even a cooling. Finally, a series of studies showed that satellite data was not being correctly interpreted. The problem was friction. Even hundreds of kilometers above the Earth, atmospheric friction slows satellites down and they lose altitude. Every year they were falling about a kilometer closer to the Earth. To derive the temperature, scientists need to know the correct altitude, and without that the results were distorted.

Santer: For many years John Christy and Roy Spencer claimed, based on their analysis, that the lower atmosphere was actually cooling. They were wrong. They had gotten, literally, the sign wrong in adjusting for the effects of satellite orbit drift on the sampling of Earth’s large daily temperature cycle.

Sinclair: In addition, this meant that a satellite that started off measuring the temperature at 2 in the afternoon in a few years was measuring at 6 in the evening, making it look like temperature was cooling, when it had not. Although chastened by their repeated mistakes and failures, Spencer and Christy remain very active in questioning the mainstream science of global warming.

Spencer: I can tell you as a temperature monitoring expert, in 50 years we won’t be able to see the effect.

Limbaugh: I got a note today from our official climatologist, Dr Roy Spencer.

Christy: The regulations being established will do nothing to alter whatever the climate is going to do.

Trenberth: When they made corrections they were still underestimated, and they managed to do that at least three times, I think, which was unfortunate.

Dessler: So what does a satellite actually measure? A satellite doesn’t measure temperature: it measures radiance, which means it measures basically photons of energy that the atmosphere is emitting: in fact, what it really measures is a voltage on some detector, and from that it has to infer radiance, which is these photons, you know, that are coming out of the atmosophere.

Schneider: The problems that these photons are emitted not just from the – from the oxygen atoms as in proportion to their temperature but from the surface, from thick clouds, at different elevations.

Dessler: … and then from that they want to derive temperature. How do they do that? Well, they use a model. Now, they don’t call it a model: they call it a retrieval algorithm. But it’s a model. If you look at the history of the satellite data, the model that has been used has been shown repeatedly to be wrong.

Titley: Dr Christy and Dr Spencer, when they put this out, they have been wrong, I think, at least four consecutive times. Each time the data record has had to be adjusted upward. We used to have a negative trend, and then we had no trend, and now we begrudgingly have an upward trend.

Dessler: I don’t want to bash them, because everybody makes mistakes, and I’m going to presume everybody’s being honest, but I would just point out that – imagine the howls we would get if my model predicted it was warmer at night than during the day: you would hear people on the other side just screaming bloody murder: “How can you believe this? It’s, ah, these people are incompetent. How could you possibly believe this model that has the wrong sign of the diurnal cycle in it? The physics is obviously all screwed up.” But of course you don’t hear anybody talking about that with the satellite data. It goes to show you the amount of confirmation bias that’s actually going on in this debate.

Cruz: The satellite data are the best data we have.

Curry: We need to look at the satellite data. I mean, this is the best data that we have.

Dessler: That these people would accept the satellite data completely uncritically because it tells them what they want to hear …

Cruz [displaying the graph below, shown in the video]: You asked about the source of the data on the right chart: it’s actually not Dr Christy’s data, it’s the Remote Sensing Systems – the RSS – data that is up there.

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Dr Carl Mears [keeper of the RSS dataset]: I guess it depends on which graph exactly you’re talking about. One of the ones that Senator Cruz likes to show actually uses the data that I make, which is a measurement of the temperature of the middle troposphere over time. The entire dataset actually starts in 1979 and goes to the present. But he probably likes to focus on the part really after 1998. He starts at that time for a very specific reason. And that’s because there’s a huge el Niño then, in ‘97/98, which puts a huge spike in the global temperature. And of course if you start at the top of a hill and you start driving you’re going to go downhill at least in the beginning, and that’s kinda the effect we’re seeing here. You start your time series at a place when it’s really high and it’s pretty easy to get no warming, or even cooling, if you do that.

Titley [at the Senate subcommittee hearing, 8 December 2015]: Ah, 1998, big el Niño, so it’s kind of interesting we start at 18 years: we don’t look at a 15-year dataset or a 10-year dataset or a 20-year dataset. We look at an 18-year dataset.

Cruz [replying to Titley]: I fail to see the significance …

Titley [The graph below is shown in the video]: Senator, it’s not. If you take up that top really big spike and you take that out you start getting the upward bias. And this is what people do when you start looking at these relatively arbitrary times, is you start with a really high number at the left-hand side and that kind of influences your – your, basically, your linear trend:

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Titley [continuing: the graph below is shown in the video]: So, when you start looking at things like every decade, you have an upward trend in the data:

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Mears [the graph below is shown in the video]: I think the longer the time period you look at the better, and if you look at the longer time period then you get a better idea of what the overall trend is. Senator Cruz focuses on one dataset (mine) from one type of instrument (satellites) and he ignores all the other evidence: for example, the surface temperature record …

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Mears [continuing: the graph below is displayed in the video]: … you know, things like the Arctic sea ice declining …

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Mears [continuing]: … things like the time of year that plants flower or leaf out or whatever.

Santer [the graph below is shown in the video]: … an increase in the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, changes in sea level …

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Santer [continuing: the graph below is shown in the video] … changes in the heat content of the global ocean …

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Mears: All those things he’s ignored, and he’s just kind of glomming on to this one piece of evidence that supports the story he wants to tell.

Santer: Scientists are looking at moisture, at rainfall, at water vapor, at surface humidity, at the cryosphere, at snow and ice, and all of this is telling an internally and physically consistent story, and that story is, the planet is warming and, despite our best attempts to see whether natural causes can explain that warming, they can’t.

Peter Sinclair [Voice-over out of shot, to Mears onscreen]: Now, you were recently – er – doing some fact-checking for the Daily Show, is that correct?

Mears: That’s correct.

Sinclair: What did they want to know?

Mears: They just wanted to know, you know, they wanted to fine-tune their statement about, you know, whether , you know, the surface temperatures are more accurate or the satellite temperatures are more accurate, and initially they wanted to say something like “But you really shouldn’t trust the satellite temperatures, you should go with these surface temperatures”, and I said, “Well, what I would like to emphasize, you’d really want to look at all the different datasets, so you don’t want to trust only the satellite temperatures, you want to look at the surface temperatures, and – and that sort of thing.

Sinclair: OK, er, has Senator Cruz called you for any fact-checking?

Mears: No, he has not.

Sinclair: OK.

Credits

A production of

Yale Climate Connections

With support from

The Grantham Foundation for The Protection of the Environment

Produced at

Greenman Studio

Midland, MI

Editing, Script, Camera

Peter Sinclair

Interviews

Peter Sinclair

Thanks to

American Geophysical Union

Ben Santer PhD

Livermore National Lab

Andrew Dessler PhD

Texas A&M University

Michael Mann PhD

Pennsylvania State University

Admiral David Titley PhD

Pennsylvania State University

Carl Mears PhD

Remote Sensing Systems

Kevin Trenberth PhD

National Center for Atmospheric Research

Judith Curry PhD

Georgia Tech University

Video

BBC

NASA

CSPAN

Stanford University

 

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January 15, 2016 10:54 am

Just ignore the uncontaminated surface record or the new pristine set of US stations which both compare well with the Satellite record, oh as do the weather balloon records then the video could look compelling to the uninformed masses which was probably the intent.

Reply to  John Mason
January 15, 2016 11:13 am

What the new pristine CRN stations do compare very well with is the old USHCN network:comment image

AndyG55
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 15, 2016 12:16 pm

You can’t pull that one Nick.
Even you are enough of a mathematician to realise that temperatures measured on different systems can NEVER match this well (see below), unless one of those sets is specifically being adjusted to match, so that you could make the statement you have just made.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/national-temperature-index/time-series?datasets%5B%5D=uscrn&datasets%5B%5D=cmbushcn&parameter=anom-tavg&time_scale=p12&begyear=2005&endyear=2015&month=12

Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 15, 2016 12:32 pm

“unless one of those sets is specifically being adjusted to match”
So which dataset do you think is adjusted? By Dr Karl with his pencil?
And how and when? USCRN data are published daily. USHCN stations are in GHCN Daily. Mostly you can get hourly or better updates.

Ktm
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 15, 2016 1:36 pm

I’ve asked this before but have not received an answer, but maybe nick will weigh in. They set up this Climate Reference Network, apparently to be”the reference”since that’s in the name. But then they started out the CRN data at an anomaly of +0.9 instead of zero.
Does that make sense to you Nick? To set your reference to something other than zero?

AndyG55
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 15, 2016 1:41 pm

Poor Nick, It really is tough that USCRN has put such a dampener on fabricated warming in the USA.
But remember, they still have the rest of the world to work with. 😉

Aphan
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 15, 2016 3:18 pm

So, based on your chart, if we plotted a trend line, it would show that there was a DROP in temperatures during the 8 year period between 2005-2013 of 1.25F in the United States. Right?

george e. smith
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 15, 2016 4:29 pm

I gather that the USCRN is some expurgated version of a previously existing but larger network of measuring stations.
But it consists of stations, which are believed to be less contaminated with parked SUVs and concrete/asphalt, and University climate science buildings.
Ergo, by definition, the USCRN network is spatially undersampling the global climate continuous function map to an even greater extent than the old network.
So all that points out is that the surface station network is quite unsuitable for determining a true global mean Temperature.
Also it is my understanding, that many of these surface stations do not really measure Temperatures with a thermometer, but instead they base their readings on a model of a resistor which has a highly non linear proxy relationship to real Temperature.
To get a real correct global mean Temperature you have to directly measure the Temperature at each station with a real thermometer.
So just what is a real Thermometer.
Well it is the Temperature measuring process that is built into the SI units system that defines what the kelvin Temperature scale is; i.e. the thermodynamic Temperature scale.
g

AndyG55
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 15, 2016 5:42 pm

Speaking of Tom Karl.. any idea what his next BOGUS ocean warming stunt will be?
Any advanced knowledge… are you in on the fix, Nick ?
You know he will need to come up with something once the current El Nino subsides.

Evan Jones
Editor
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 16, 2016 4:39 pm

Regarding CRN vs. USHCN
This could be a post in and of itself, but it has an excellent place in this thread.
Okay, I am going to put one hell of a cat among the pigeons. CRN cats, HCN pigeons. I ran a thought experiment. I took us out on a limb a little because I was doing actual prediction based on a hypothesis — classic science — and that sometimes involves the throw of the intellectual dice. But I was confident enough of what I was going to find such that I considered the risk minimal. Besides, I just do things. It is in the nature of servants of chaos.
Anyway, I was getting sick and tired of reading about how other people said the two matched perfectly. So I asked the unaskable question: Does it, really? I figured, hey, I have the data for HCN 05-14. I have anomalized and regionally gridded it. And I have the data for CRN (no gaps, so no anomalization needed.)
So since I have all that, why not just do a Willis and, like, run them numbers myself? But first I had to place bets. Not risky and not enough to break the bank, mind, but, you know, … bets.
I made three HCN/CRN predictions based on what our team has found. Said I’d be back with the results, win, lose, or draw. Here it goes.
PREDICTION 1
Regardless of whether or not there is any trend, the differences between summer and warmer temperatures should be greater for HCN than for CRN (2015-2014). This should not only occur a an overall result, but also in a large majority of years. A positive result would suggest heat sink effect in operation on an annual/seasonal basis as well as for longterm trends. (It should work for both.)
RESULT: Yes, in all years, and increase in trend of difference.
CRN, S-W
Summer – Winter 2005: 17.30
Summer – Winter 2006: 16.03
Summer – Winter 2007: 17.35
Summer – Winter 2008: 17.38
Summer – Winter 2009: 16.75
Summer – Winter 2010; 18.35
Summer – Winter 2011: 18.55
Summer – Winter 2012: 15.40
Summer – Winter 2013: 17.60
Summer – Winter 2014: 17.95
AVERAGE: 17.3C
TREND: 0.07C/d
HCN, S-W
Summer – Winter 2005: 18.95
Summer – Winter 2006: 17.72
Summer – Winter 2007: 19.32
Summer – Winter 2008: 17.38
Summer – Winter 2009: 16.75
Summer – Winter 2010: 20.22
Summer – Winter 2011: 20.47
Summer – Winter 2012: 16.93
Summer – Winter 2013: 19.79
Summer – Winter 2014: 20.20
AVERAGE: 19.2C
TREND: 0.11C/d
PREDICTION 2
If there is any overall trend from 2005-2014, the TOBS-adjusted HCN trend should be larger than the CRN trend.
RESULT: Yes. By ~0.14C/decade.
And, yes, there is a trend. A distinct cooling one. The poorly microsited HCN has exaggerated it substantially as compared with the well sited CRN. And, no, HCN and CRN do not track each other at all well. If you disagree, then run the numbers, yourself.
USHCN Anomalized
TOBS Tmean TREND
(100/th Deg. Celsius)
2005: 20
2006: 56
2007: 22
2008: -58
2009: -52
2010: -10
2011: -7
2012: 113
2013: -51
2014: -40
Trend: -0.39C/d
USCRN (Non-Anomalized)
Obs. Tmean TREND
(Deg. Celsius)
10.53
2006: 10.87
2007: 10.58
2008: 9.91
2009: 9.88
2010: 10.27
2011: 10.39
2012: 11.46
2013: 10.00
2014: 10.1
Trend: -0.25C/d
PREDICTION 3
If there is any overall trend from 2005-2014, HCN homogenized data should magnify that trend over HCN TOBS-adjusted data, same as it does for the unperturbed 1979-2008 set.
RESULT
Yes. This is consistent with the small amount of magnification by homogenization added to the unperturbed poorly sited stations form 1979 to 2008. About 0.01C/decade.
USHCN Anomalized
TOBS Tmean Trend
(100/th Deg. Celsius)
2005 20
2006 56
2007 22
2008 -58
2009 -52
2010 -10
2011 -7
2012 113
2013 -51
2014 -40
Trend -0.39
USHCN Anomalized
Homogenized Tmean Trend
(100/th Deg. Celsius)
2005: 20
2006: 58
2007: 23
2008: -57
2009: -53
2010: -11
2011: -5
2012: 115
2013: -51
2014: -41
Trend: -0.40
All in all, very strong results, entirely consistent with our previous results. They do not prove the hypothesis, but they provide heavy support.
It also tells us that it is possible, with caution, to use the microsite hypothesis as a predictive tool. That is where hypothesis meets theory. So far, so good.
As for those who claim HCN and CRS are the same, what I want to know is what they were doing. And what they were not doing. (Did they not grid. Did they not anomalize? What did they do?)

Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 16, 2016 5:53 pm

Evan,
To follow this, you need to give a lot more detail. Or better, code.
USHCN – are you using adjusted? Raw? How did you anomalise? How gridded?
USCRN – you say not anomalised. Just averaged as is? What if you do anomalise? It would be better, just for apples sake.
Is the difference in Pred 1 significant?
Prediction 2 – the USHCN trend is a lot less than USCRN. Prediction fail.
Prediction 3 – the difference is tiny – certainly not significant.

Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 16, 2016 6:14 pm

Evan,
The other thing I should say is that the plot I showed is NOAA’s and it is of their published ClimDiv average vs CRN. And it is the published average that people see. The published average agrees in anomaly with CRN. You are recalculating it and maybe getting something else. What does that mean? That NOAA should compute the average your way, so you could say it is wrong?

J
Reply to  John Mason
January 15, 2016 11:29 am

” or the new pristine set of US stations which both compare well with the Satellite record”
This I assume is the USCRN, US climate reference network.
NO adjustments, and NO warming in the past >10 years since the inception of the network.

AndyG55
Reply to  J
January 15, 2016 12:10 pm

The trends over the USA of the satellite data match very closely to the trends in USCRN and ClimDiv.
That VALIDATION shows that the extraction algorithms for the satellite temperature are doing a pretty good job..

J
Reply to  John Mason
January 15, 2016 11:42 am

” or the new pristine set of US stations which both compare well with the Satellite record”
This I assume is the USCRN, US climate reference network. (search WUWT for USCRN to see the nice graph)
NO adjustments, and NO warming in the past >10 years since the inception of the network.

Don K
Reply to  John Mason
January 15, 2016 11:50 am

“…as do the weather balloon records”
My understanding is that the satellites are calibrated against the radiosondes. If so, it’d be kind of a surprise if the two didn’t match pretty closely.

AndyG55
Reply to  Don K
January 15, 2016 12:42 pm

As soon as I look at USCRN vs USHCN, I say……… BULLS**T !!!
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/national-temperature-index/time-series?datasets%5B%5D=uscrn&datasets%5B%5D=cmbushcn&parameter=anom-tavg&time_scale=p12&begyear=2005&endyear=2015&month=12
There is NO WAY that the scummy USHCN data can match USCRN that closely without there being one heck of a lot of adjustment and fabrication going on.

John Robertson
Reply to  Don K
January 15, 2016 1:20 pm

Calibrated against correct.
Adjusted continuously to match?
I doubt.

Reply to  Don K
January 15, 2016 1:43 pm

Don K, I am pretty sure your statement is incorrect. UAH calculates absolute atmospheric temperature zones from MSU sensors at various frequencies, adjusting for stuff like orbital drift, aperture, and possible differences between satellites (a true calibration).
It does NOT calibrate the net result to radiosonde temps. It VALIDATES the calculated results using a completely independent measurement system, actual thermometers carried aloft by weather balloons. (Well, OK, battery powered telemetry thermistors, essentially thermometers,)
A distinction between calibration and validation, with a difference as lawyers would say.

Reply to  Don K
January 15, 2016 2:41 pm

“Does that make sense to you Nick? To set your reference to something other than zero?”
The actual CRN data is in degree F absolute. I think you are referring to the interactive diusplay on the NOAA site here. If you check the background page there, they explain. With only 10 years of data, you can’t use a mean of the actual CRN data. So for the display they compute climatologies for the 1981-2010 period from nearby USHCN stations. That is the base period, and the CRN data is at the high end of it and beyond. As they also explain, a common base period allows comparison.

Aphan
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 15, 2016 5:48 pm

Fun little interactive graph that Nick linked to, if you like to play with temperature anomalies instead of actual temperatures. If you click on the graph with your mouse, you can then drag the data around until the zero line is actually on the bottom of the graph, which is cool. So I clicked on the “maximum” anomaly data, and pulled the zero line to the bottom and guess what it showed me? It showed that out of the past ten years of maximum anomaly data, only three years out of the ten show an anomaly above that zero line. 🙂

Ktm
Reply to  Don K
January 15, 2016 4:36 pm

Nick, there is no way to compare between hcn and CRN in absolute temperatures.
But after they went to all the trouble and expense to set up this pristine new “Reference Network” wouldn’t it make more sense to start measuring from zero?
Why pollute your pristine new reference network with data from 25 years before it existed that wasn’t fit for purpose in the first place by using it to set the initial conditions for all future anomaly comparisons?

AndyG55
Reply to  Don K
January 15, 2016 5:44 pm

“Does that make sense to you Nick? To set your reference to something other than zero?””
They take a fudged reference point from a fudged data set.
Its totally meaningless.

Reply to  Don K
January 15, 2016 7:27 pm

Don K,
You’re correct, satellite data is corroborated by radiosonde balloon data:comment image
In that time frame there were about seventeen thousand radiosonde balloon temperature records in 4 datasets. They closely match the 2 satellite datasets. Others like GISS, NOAA, and USHCN don’t match, nor do climate models.
This video was made by serial propagandist Peter Sinclair (“potholer”). He is no different from John Cook. Sinclair has made numerous ad hominem videos trying to smear Lord Monckton, and other alarmist videos. The truth is not in him.

RAH
Reply to  Don K
January 22, 2016 4:50 pm

And what are the surface stations calibrated against?

co2isnotevil
Reply to  RAH
January 22, 2016 5:50 pm

Surface stations are calibrated against the expectation of a warming trend.

KTM
Reply to  John Mason
January 15, 2016 12:09 pm

Yep, that was the most glaring omission. Not one word about Radiosonde data.
They say they can’t find a natural cause, but they don’t hold their own ideas to the same scrutiny.
According to the CO2 model, it must cause the atmosphere to heat first, which then filters down to the surface and the oceans. Since the warming they claim to see at the surface and in the ocean is running far ahead of any warming of the atmosphere shown by satellites or radiosondes, then their explanation is wrong. They have exonerated natural climate variability, but since the evidence contradicts CO2 as the culprit under their own models, they should keep looking.. Kind of like OJ saying he wasn’t responsible, but would spend his time looking for the “real killer”.
They have tried to turn the scientific method on its head by saying skeptics have to disprove their assertion rather than them proving it. But there is nothing at all scientific about what they are trying to do.

MarkW
Reply to  KTM
January 15, 2016 12:40 pm

They can’t find a natural cause for the well known swings in global temperature over the last 10K years either.
But don’t worry, the current temperature swing must be caused by CO2, because the models prove it.
/sarc

Evan Jones
Editor
Reply to  KTM
January 16, 2016 4:52 pm

Video killed the radiosonde.

Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Reply to  John Mason
January 15, 2016 6:36 pm

It is easy to say so and so data is of good quality and so and so data is of poor quality. In climate, globe is covered by climate systems and general circulation patterns. The basic point that must be looked in while qualifying a data set is that the met network must cover areas of climate system and general circulation patterns.
We don’t have such network under surface measurements. Nearly 75-80% globe hasn’t coved by met measurements. On land majority of the met stations are located in urban areas with rapid spatial and vertical expansion affecting with land surface by converting it in to concrete jungle and destruction of greenery and water bodies along with the increased levels of pollution. Met network is sparse in rural areas even though rapidly the environment is changing from rainfed dry-land to irrigated wetland agriculture. Thus rural areas are covering the land with greenery more time in a year. Thus, the major contamination of ground based observations on land is the positive bias in urban data and negative bias in the rural data.
Two-thirds of the globe is covered by the Oceans but unlike on land there are no permanent met stations in the ocean area. Ocean data represents a sparse network — prior to 1990, mostly through ships movement the observations were collected. After 1990 though buoys built the network but this is not going to account the filth effect over sea surface. The spread of filth over land and oceans is non-linearly increasing with the time, which comes under ecological changes [under land and water cover].
Surface measurements were made in oF up to 1956 and there onwards the measurements were made in oC. In averaging the temperature, the second place of decimal is rounded off based on odd or even number in the 1st place of decimal to first place of decimal.
Ground based average temperature is derived from the averaging of maximum and minimum, thinking it follows a sine curve with the duration of day and night are the same. In reality it is not so. If you take the hourly average data from the thermograph, the day average may or may not be equal to the average of maximum plus minimum based on the degree of skewness in the 24-houly thermograph data from the sine curve that vary with the cloud conditions and duration of day and night.
All these are negated in the satellite data as they cover climate system and general circulation patterns on the one side and urban and rural changes, filth cover, etc that are taking place with the progression of time.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy

Sammydj
Reply to  John Mason
January 16, 2016 1:23 am

To create a warming trend, you either have to reduce older temperatures or increase recent temperatures or both. If you have done this and yet we are now seeing record temperatures, doesn’t that imply the adjustments are reasonable?
If the surface global temperature trends have been falsely constructed by data adjustments, doesn’t that mean that recent record high unadjusted global temperatures are even more incredible?

richardscourtney
Reply to  Sammydj
January 16, 2016 5:23 am

Sammydj :
You ask

To create a warming trend, you either have to reduce older temperatures or increase recent temperatures or both. If you have done this and yet we are now seeing record temperatures, doesn’t that imply the adjustments are reasonable?

Only an idiot could honestly think “record temperatures” could “imply the adjustments are reasonable”. “Records temperatures” are probably an artifact of the “adjustments” (i.e. the unjustifiable alterations).
And the alterations to past data are outrageous; see this.
The method for constructing the global and hemispheric averages from surface temperature station data changes almost every month. Take few minutes off from trolling and read

richardscourtney
Reply to  Sammydj
January 16, 2016 5:28 am

Sammydj:
My post ‘went’ before completion. Sorry.
I intended to conclude saying
The method for constructing the global and hemispheric averages from surface temperature station data changes almost every month. Take few minutes off from trolling and read this.
Richard

Sammydj
Reply to  Sammydj
January 17, 2016 2:57 am

‘ “Records temperatures” are probably an artifact of the “adjustments” (i.e. the unjustifiable alterations).’
Are they? So you are saying that recent temperatures are being adjusted upwards to fit in with an artificially created historical trend!
Utter rubbish and conspiracy.

Sammydj
Reply to  Sammydj
January 17, 2016 3:00 am

“Only an idiot could honestly think “record temperatures” could “imply the adjustments are reasonable”.”
Abuse. Childish.

richardscourtney
Reply to  Sammydj
January 18, 2016 2:48 am

Sammydj:
You ask me and assert

‘ “Records temperatures” are probably an artifact of the “adjustments” (i.e. the unjustifiable alterations).’
Are they? So you are saying that recent temperatures are being adjusted upwards to fit in with an artificially created historical trend!
Utter rubbish and conspiracy.

Yes! They are!
I provided you with this link> which demonstrates “that recent temperatures are being adjusted upwards to fit in with an artificially created historical trend”. Making the one mouse click seems to have been too difficult for you (which is not surprising in light of what you have written).
I made no assertions of “conspiracy”.
And I wonder why warmunists always make untrue assertions about conspiracy theories which don’t exist whenever thay are shown to be wrong.
I also provided
this link and I asked you to read it. It is a Parliamentary Sub mission so would be a criminal offence if untrue. Only an idiot could read that link then honestly write your replies to me that I am replying.
Importantly, very importantly, I am deeply offended by your assertion that I said anything that was “abuse” and/or was “childish” in response to your outrageously untrue, illogical and abusive nonsense.
Richard

richardscourtney
Reply to  Sammydj
January 18, 2016 2:54 am

My reply to the egregious troll has severe formatting error so this is a resend that I hope is corrected.
Sammydj:
You ask me and assert

‘ “Records temperatures” are probably an artifact of the “adjustments” (i.e. the unjustifiable alterations).’
Are they? So you are saying that recent temperatures are being adjusted upwards to fit in with an artificially created historical trend!
Utter rubbish and conspiracy.

Yes! They are!
I provided you with this link which demonstrates “that recent temperatures are being adjusted upwards to fit in with an artificially created historical trend”. Making the one mouse click seems to have been too difficult for you (which is not surprising in light of what you have written).
I made no assertions of “conspiracy”.
And I wonder why warmunists always make untrue assertions about conspiracy theories which don’t exist whenever they are shown to be wrong.
I also provided this link and I asked you to read it. It is a Parliamentary Submission so would be a criminal offence if untrue. Only an idiot could read that link then honestly write your replies to me that I am replying.
Importantly, very importantly, I am deeply offended by your assertion that I said anything that was “abuse” and/or was “childish” in response to your outrageously untrue, illogical and abusive nonsense.
Richard

Sammydj
Reply to  Sammydj
January 18, 2016 11:42 am

You don’t see your abuse when it is quoted back at you RSC?
As for your graphics – they are meaningless – without even being able to trace them, I would say that, given that they each depict anomalies from a long term mean, the differences would be attributable to the changing mean not changes to the global temperatures.
But you confirm your willingness to subscribe to unproven and irrational conspiracy.
Show me your proof that recent GISS global temperatures are being artificially adjusted upward or else apologise for deception.

Reply to  Sammydj
January 18, 2016 1:04 pm

“Show me your proof that recent GISS global temperatures are being artificially adjusted upward or else apologise for deception.”
Do you agree they are being adjusted at all?
If you do, where is your proof they needed to be adjusted, and the expert who was there when they were recorded to know exactly how they should be changed?

richardscourtney
Reply to  Sammydj
January 18, 2016 1:13 pm

Sammydj:
I made no abuse of you. I merely stated fact.
And I provided EVIDENCE of my statements which have refuted your falsehoods.
On the other hand, you – an anonymous troll – have spouted abuse.
And you have made untrue assertions that cannot be defended and I have refuted.
Your failure to read the evidence is merely more evidence that either you are an idiot – which I don’t believe – or you are disingenuous: there are no other possible explanations for your behaviour.
Having failed to address the information I have given you, you now demand

Show me your proof that recent GISS global temperatures are being artificially adjusted upward or else apologise for deception.

Type ‘GISS adjustments’ in the WUWT Search facility and you will be inundated with evidence.
Now, egregious troll, apologise for your implication that I would behave as you do then crawl back to wherever you have come from.
Any interested observers can see the evidence I have presented which reveals your misrepresentations. And that revelation is the only reason I refute the misrepresentations of egregious trolls.
Bluster all you want: it does not change reality.
Richard

Sammydj
Reply to  Sammydj
January 18, 2016 10:37 pm

To repeat your abuse: “Only an idiot could honestly think…”
As for your claim – if you have proof GISS adjusted global temps to create a trend and are now adjusting global temps to extend the trend, you’d publish a paper and be famous – and Anthony would be taking you seriously.
You don’t and you’re not – you’re just a person that is willing to make idiotic unsubstantiated claims on a website where that is encourage and tolerated – it’s called Group Think.
Grow up.

richardscourtney
Reply to  Sammydj
January 18, 2016 11:38 pm

Sammydj:
Dear boy, when you grow up you will understand that I have NOT given you abuse but you have abused me.
Providing you with evidence and information is NOT abusing you.
But your childish response is to refuse read (possibly because you cannot) any of the evidence and information I have provided and to pretend to be hurt. Your responses to me amount to you whining, “That nasty scientists is assaulting me with evidence and information which he says I should be able to understand”.
If you had read this link which I have repeatedly provided you then you would not have written such untrue, offensive and abusive nonsense as this.

As for your claim – if you have proof GISS adjusted global temps to create a trend and are now adjusting global temps to extend the trend, you’d publish a paper and be famous – and Anthony would be taking you seriously.

Indeed, you will have a right to comment on my publication record when you have published as I have.
Strewth! I detest oleaginous trolls!
Richard

Sammydj
Reply to  Sammydj
January 19, 2016 10:45 am

Ah yes, the Internet knows who you are and also what you are not Mr Courtney. Explains a lot and why you don’t even understand the graphics of Hansen that you put up as faux evidence.
You have no credibility.

average joe
Reply to  John Mason
January 16, 2016 10:13 am

Please view the video on YouTube

then vote (thumbs up or thumbs down) under the video to the right. Right now it shows more thumbs up, but I can’t believe this is really the case. Show these people what the public thinks. Go out there and vote!

average joe
Reply to  average joe
January 16, 2016 10:15 am

One more thing – click on the YouTube icon at bottom right of video above to go to the YouTube site where you can vote.

Evan Jones
Editor
Reply to  John Mason
January 17, 2016 11:29 pm

Evan, To follow this, you need to give a lot more detail. Or better, code.
I’ve nver been asked for code before. I no longer feel like a complete wallflower.
It’s just Excel, actually. It’ll be archived along with the rest. But you don’t even need our ratings for this, all you need is the usual CRN and HCN data, which you already have (I think).
USHCN – are you using adjusted? Raw? How did you anomalise? How gridded?
Says so up top. Using TOBS data because I haven’t skinned out the perturbed stations for the 2005-1014 set yet. And some of the ratings would have to be updated.
But raw, TOBS, and adjusted data and are pretty close by this time. Most of the MMTS conversion and TOBS flips have already occurred. I’d guess we have at least 800 perturbed for that interval, likely more.
It is gridded by region and area-weighted (same as we do in the paper). Stations are independently anomalized to their own baselines (standard method approved by Doc. N-G, tested many times).
USCRN – you say not anomalised. Just averaged as is? What if you do anomalise? It would be better, just for apples sake.
Well, sure, but it shows exactly the same trend either way. And it was yet more work, so I just didn’t do it. I am using the observational set, but CLIM is quite close.
Is the difference in Pred 1 significant?
I don’t know for sure, but I’d bet it is. The odds of all ten years to come up heads is a thousand to one in and of itself. 2C difference? No Close calls? I’d lay significantly long odds it is. But, like W. the Peacemaker over on jc likes to repeat (over and over and over), “NG got us covered.” He’ll determine for sure.
Prediction 2 – the USHCN trend is a lot less than USCRN. Prediction fail.
Heh. No, it’s a lot more. A lot cooler that is. Strong CONUS cooling trend from 2005-2014, you know. The whole point is that bad siting amplifies trends. It makes warming trends warmer — and cooling trend cooler.
Even the wiggles work.
Prediction triumph.
Prediction 3 – the difference is tiny – certainly not significant.
And that’s the point, isn’t it? We would expect the same thing to happen to the lousy-sited but TOB-adjusted HCN at large as happens to the unperturbed Class 3\4\5s.
Homogenization bumped both roughly equivalent sets ~.01C/d warmer. If the difference were not small and insignificant, the prediction would be a fail.

Evan Jones
Editor
Reply to  John Mason
January 17, 2016 11:45 pm

Evan,
The other thing I should say is that the plot I showed is NOAA’s and it is of their published ClimDiv average vs CRN. And it is the published average that people see. The published average agrees in anomaly with CRN. You are recalculating it and maybe getting something else. What does that mean? That NOAA should compute the average your way, so you could say it is wrong?

I wouldn’t know what NOAA does to its data between the copy-paste and the press release. I just used their data and our standard methods.

Tom Halla
January 15, 2016 10:55 am

Notably, the defensive video fails to note anything about the “corrections” to the surface temperature data, or the balloon/radiosonde data set. Nice try:)

Reply to  Tom Halla
January 15, 2016 11:25 am

” fails to note anything about the “corrections” to the surface temperature data”
Here (from here) is a plot of the corrections to GISS in the last 10 years, compared to the difference made to UAH in just one change last year. Each dataset is set to the same anomaly base 1981-2010, and cover the satellite period. The GISS curves are differences (1981-2010) between current and archived versions from 2011 and 2005.
http://www.moyhu.org.s3.amazonaws.com/2015/12/uahadj1.png

cbone
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 15, 2016 12:56 pm

Nick, what about all of the ‘adjustments’ that GISS made to the dataset from the early 20th century? You know the ones that account for over half of the observed warming in the past century. GISS has been hopelessly trashed with bogus adjustments and corrections. These have been discussed numerous times both here and on Climate Audit. Nice try on the bait and switch though.

Kristian
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 15, 2016 1:05 pm

Yes, and here’s a plot of UAH v6 tlt gl vs. CERES EBAF ToA Ed2.8 global OLR between March 2000 and July 2015, Nick, on whose pretty striking match you commented: “well, I didn’t think the correlations were all that good”:comment image
The plot explained here:
https://okulaer.wordpress.com/2016/01/07/uah-v6-vs-ceres-ebaf-toa/
CERES OLR at the ToA, 60N-60S vs. 90N-90S:comment image
UAH.v6 tlt, 60N-60S vs. 90N-90S:comment image

Kristian
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 15, 2016 1:06 pm

OI.v2 SSTa, 60N-60S vs. 90N-90S:comment image
ERSST.v4, 60N-60S vs. 90N-90S:comment image
HadCRUt3, 60N-60S vs. 90N-90S:comment image
No steepening trend when going from 60-60 to 90-90 in any of these, Nick!
But then there’s GISS, of course …
GISTEMP LOTI, 60N-60S vs. 90N-90S:comment image
What bullshit!

Kristian
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 15, 2016 1:07 pm

Here’s how GISS’s land mask apparently doesn’t work N and S of ~55 degrees of latitude (SSTs largely replaced by land data):comment image
Explained here:
https://okulaer.wordpress.com/2015/12/23/why-gistemp-loti-global-mean-is-wrong-and-hadcrut3-gl-is-right/
Originally from here:
https://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2012/04/13/the-impact-of-giss-replacing-sea-surface-temperature-data-with-land-surface-temperature-data/

Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 15, 2016 1:08 pm

Nick
It would help a lot if you put the graph above on the same scale temperature scale as the other graph you put up. Otherwise people cod accuse you of manipulating the information.

Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 15, 2016 1:30 pm

The uncertainty in UAH was estimated as 0.1°C and the difference between V5 and 6 is close to what it was between V5 and RSS. The problem with GISS is this
http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/2016-01-10-10-51-29.png
Instead of explaining why the rate of warming before 1940 was as much as in the second half of the 20thC, the data is adjusted to increase the trend only for the late 20thC.

Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 15, 2016 1:35 pm

“It would help a lot if you put the graph above on the same scale temperature scale as the other graph you put up.”
The first graph was from NOAA. It is of US anomalies, and is in °F. The second is of differences in global anomalies. Do you think I should convert to °F?
Why do you think the scale should be the same? The lead post has numerous plots, all with different scales.

TG
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 15, 2016 2:05 pm

Poor old St Glow- bull Nick.
You try so hard to promote the BS but there are too many sharper pencils (readers and contributors) who know the science and the tricks you and your fellow warmist are PAID to produce.
PS: WUWT = 259,459,740 views

Aphan
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 15, 2016 3:30 pm

Nick Quoted-” fails to note anything about the “corrections” to the surface temperature data”
Nick Replied- with NOTHING whatsoever about corrections to the surface temperature data.

Aphan
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 15, 2016 3:33 pm

And successfully distracted everyone back to the satellite data. Gotta watch this guy folks.

Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 15, 2016 3:53 pm

“Nick Replied- with NOTHING whatsoever about corrections to the surface temperature data.”
Did you read it? I plotted changes to GISS between 2005, 2011 and now. They are much less than just one correction to UAH.

Aphan
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 15, 2016 6:10 pm

Nick Stokes-
Tom Halla origincally stated- “Notably, the defensive video fails to note anything about the “corrections” to the surface temperature data, or the balloon/radiosonde data set. Nice try:)”
Still laughing. Let me clarify-
You responded, by quoting Tom in a cropped manner- ” fails to note anything about the “corrections” to the surface temperature data” and then posted more changes to the satellite data…NOT by noting ANYTHING about corrections to the SURFACE TEMPERATURE data…(surface temperature data and balloon radiosonde data comes from THE surface…surface monitoring stations and surface launched balloons Nick…not satellites. Satellites do not collect surface temperature data Nick. The video even said that! They collect other data which is then fed through a model which calculates surface temperature changes.) You instead posted more “corrections”/changes made to satellite data. Which I don’t think is what Tom was referring to. Which is why I found it all hilariously off topic. And getting funnier all the time.

Tom T
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 16, 2016 3:23 pm

Michael, why do you think that Nick chose 2005 as his starting date.

Latitude
Reply to  Tom Halla
January 15, 2016 5:32 pm

an automatic computer algorithm searches for breakpoints, and then automatically adjusts the whole prior record up or down by the amount of the breakpoint
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/10/why-automatic-temperature-adjustments-dont-work/

Latitude
January 15, 2016 10:56 am

“In theory, one could argue that the computer models are accurate, and that the real measurements have some problem. However this is not the case. An incredible amount of work has been done to make sure that the satellite data are the best quality possible. Recent claims to the contrary by Hurrell and Trenberth have been shown to be false for a number of reasons, and are laid to rest in the September 25th edition of Nature (page 342). The temperature measurements from space are verified by two direct and independent methods. The first involves actual in-situ measurements of the lower atmosphere made by balloon-borne observations around the world. The second uses intercalibration and comparison among identical experiments on different orbiting platforms. The result is that the satellite temperature measurements are accurate to within three one-hundredths of a degree Centigrade (0.03 C) when compared to ground-launched balloons taking measurements of the same region of the atmosphere at the same time.”
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/1997/essd06oct97_1/

January 15, 2016 10:58 am

You know how close to the target by the amount of flak. A video put out by Yale, funded by Grantham.

commieBob
Reply to  ristvan
January 15, 2016 12:04 pm

You reminded me of something Burt Rutan said. It was something to the effect that the more processed the data, the more likely it was part of an attempted fraud.
I couldn’t find the quote but I did find this 2011 presentation. Holy smokes. Ninety eight pages of excellence. He does the best big picture demolition of CAGW that I have seen. I have seen other, shorter, presentations that he did but this is the first time I had seen this one. Awesome.

JohnB
Reply to  commieBob
January 15, 2016 7:02 pm

He still makes a basic wrong assumption, although it doesn’t invalidate his arguments. We never “recovered” from the last Ice Age, people are seeing it the wrong way around. Right now “Ice Age” is the normal state of affairs on the planet, we are living in the unusual interglacial.
The correct reference frame is that when the bottom drops out, the planet will be “recovering from the interglacial.” 😉

dp
January 15, 2016 11:01 am

I have no doubt there is a lie involved in this (again). And it looks like the alarmist experts on prevarication are on the job.

Janice Moore
January 15, 2016 11:04 am

… despite our best attempts to see whether natural causes can explain that warming, they can’t.

(Santer testimony above)
Natural climate drivers are the null hypothesis, which does not NEED to be “explained.”
The burden of proof is still firmly on the AGWers
who have NEVER made a prima facie case,
much less produced evidence,
that human CO2 emissions drive the climate of the earth.
That is, the burden of proof has NEVER shifted to the science realists (to disprove AGW).
Not one quantitative measurement makes AGW conjectured causation likely, much less, highly likely.
All they have is speculation.
@ Santer, et. al.,
THE BURDEN OF PROOF IS ON —> YOU.

Bartemis
Reply to  Janice Moore
January 15, 2016 11:09 am

+1e12!

Janice Moore
Reply to  Bartemis
January 15, 2016 11:10 am

Thank you, Bart 🙂

David Smith
Reply to  Bartemis
January 16, 2016 4:39 am

Measurement error there Bartemis.
It’s actually +1e13
😉
Top stuff Janice!

Janice Moore
Reply to  Bartemis
January 16, 2016 8:37 am

And, DAVID SMITH! 🙂
Thank you, ten trillion times, thank you!

Notanist
Reply to  Janice Moore
January 15, 2016 11:25 am

Excellent, exactly!!

Marcus
Reply to  Janice Moore
January 15, 2016 11:28 am

But, but…Janice….they got models !!! ROTFLMAO …..

Janice Moore
Reply to  Marcus
January 15, 2016 11:49 am

But, Marcus. The science giants of WUWT have… data. 🙂
And, Hi.
And…. after reading the thread again…. I CAN’T HELP IT….
GO, WUWT MEN AND WOMEN, GO!! — ((blam))!! ((blam))!! …. , one-after-another, knockin’ those wild pseudo-science pitches of the Team Enviroprofiteer (mascot: a weasel) outta the park!! Even with the bad pitching of Santer, et. al., YOU SCIENTISTS FOR REALITY SLAM THEM TO THE WALL!

ferd berple
Reply to  Janice Moore
January 15, 2016 3:31 pm

despite our best attempts to see whether natural causes can explain that warming, they can’t.
==================
the failure isn’t with natural causes, it is with lack of knowledge. You can’t explain why the climate changes naturally. yet there is plenty of evidence it does,
so why would you expect something you can’t explain to explain something you don’t understand?

Aphan
Reply to  ferd berple
January 15, 2016 3:36 pm

Ferd…I adore you!
“the failure isn’t with natural causes, it is with lack of knowledge. You can’t explain why the climate changes naturally. yet there is plenty of evidence it does, so why would you expect something you can’t explain to explain something you don’t understand?”
Gonna call that “Berple’s Law”

JohnWho
January 15, 2016 11:05 am

“Dessler: I don’t want to bash them, because everybody makes mistakes, and I’m going to presume everybody’s being honest,…”
Everybody except you and your fellow cohorts who don’t admit that the satellite data remains better than the heavily distorted ground station data, most likely since that doesn’t match the narrative you wish to peddle.

Reply to  JohnWho
January 15, 2016 12:08 pm

Some knowledge, not expertise. The big problems with land/sea sutface records are lack of coverage (polar regions, Africa, parts of South America and eastern Siberia, the oceans), urban heat island effects, and microsite issues (why USCRN was set up). AW’s post images show examples of the latter two vividly. So, lacking or shonky data from the gitgo. And all the manipulative ‘fixes’ tend to cool the past, for example erasing the historically hot US 1930s, or Reykjavik warmth in the 1940s along with the causative 1940s SST blip that climategate emails showed warmunists wanted to ‘disappear’.
The big issues with satellites are orbital decay and aperture (MSU sensors don’t see a uniform atmospheric depth due to Earth’s curvature). Decay is fixable because known, and aperture is mathematically tractable. UAHv6.0 is an improved aperture algorithm.
The big advantage of land/sea is that is where we live. The big advantages of satellites are two. First, they see the lower, middle, and upper troposphere where the biggest AGW changes are supposed to take place (e.g. modelled but non-existant tropical troposphere hotspot). Second they have been ground truthed by radiosondes (weather balloons), as the linked Breitbart article points out. It is impossible to ground truth vast swaths of non-existant surface data that just gets infilled to produce a land/sea surface guess.

Don K
Reply to  ristvan
January 15, 2016 3:45 pm

ristvan
Two very minor points. First, RSS and UAH cover, I believe, 83N to 83S wheras the surface data sets attempt to include the poles (At least there’s a thermometer at one of the poles so they don’t have to guess at the temp there based on the temp at a site 1000km distant. And said instrument may be pretty accurate. I’d bet on minimal UHI at the South Pole. But the 3km elevation may be a problem).
Second, although all the observations on any given day use the same instruments worldwide, satellites don’t live forever and it’s conceivable that there are handover issues from one satellite to its successor. A lot of effort is put into avoiding problems with that and I haven’t seen any suggestions that there are significant problems with the handovers. But there could be something hidden there.
re your correction to my post far above in the thread. I’m sure you are right. You usually are. But I don’t really understand what you said. No need to explain further. I’ll work it out.

DD More
Reply to  JohnWho
January 15, 2016 3:13 pm

Two things.
1st – GISS uses satellites to measure the sea surface temperatures. If not, where are the gages for 70 percent of the earth surface.
Note the Adjustments – then IR satellite (cannot get thru the clouds) to microwave (get thru the clouds, but not the rain & surface mist). Oh and did I mention one of the satellites was doing reasonable until they had to boost the altitude, then had problems with pitch, yaw and just had no idea the height it was flying. The number of adjustments to correct is staggering. Includes (but not limited to); wind speed, rain, cloud amount/percent and cloud water vapor, daytime diurnal warming, high latitudes, aerosols, SSTs <10C, columnar water vapor, higher latitudes show a slight warm bias, seasonal cycle wind direction for SST retrieval, fast moving storms and fronts, wind direction error and instrument degradation.
http://images.remss.com/papers/rsspubs/gentemann_jgr_2014.pdf
2nd – And this is what people do when you start looking at these relatively arbitrary times, is you start with a really high number at the left-hand side and that kind of influences your – your, basically, your linear trend:
Like the Arctic sea ice levels?
Sea Ice – 1973-1990comment image
Changes and fluctuations in Arctic seaice extent have been analysed by Mysak and Manak (1989); they find no long term trends in sea-ice extent between 1953 and 1984 in a number of Arctic ocean regions but substantial decadal time scale variability was evident in the Atlantic sector. These variations were found to be consistent with the development, movement and decay of the “Great Salinity Anomaly” noted in Section 7.7. Sea-ice conditions are now reported regularly in marine synoptic observations, as well as by special reconnaissance flights, and coastal radar. Especially importantly, satellite observations have been used to map sea-ice extent routinely since the early 1970s. The American Navy Joint Ice Center has produced weekly charts which have been digitised by NOAA. These data are summarized in Figure 7.20 which is based on analyses carried out on a 1° latitude x 2.5° longitude grid. Sea-ice is defined to be present when its concentration exceeds 10% (Ropelewski, 1983). Since about 1976 the areal extent of sea-ice in the Northern Hemisphere has varied about a constant climatological level but in 1972-1975 sea-ice extent was significantly less.
http://ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_chapter_07.pdf

Reply to  DD More
January 16, 2016 8:55 am

Regarding GISS using satellites to measure sea surface temperatures: This is not used in the current version of ERSST (which is v4) or the most recennt version (v3b) that is/was used in the NOAA and GISS global surface temperature datasets. Satellites were used for some of the data gathering for ERSSTv3.

Reply to  DD More
January 17, 2016 6:57 am

DDMoore,
Many items on that list of things that might upset satellite readings are top candidates for a list of what might upset thermometers in Stevenson screens.
So we are not advancing much by the comparison.
Except that the satellite scientists have shown rather better ways with better physics to cope than the thermometer people have.
One of my main concerns is forced reliance on thermometer methods before the satellite era. These did not really have to agree with crosschecks, so it was easier to devise adjustments that, history has shown tended to enhance the CAGW case.
Many times now I have referred to the work of Chris Gilham from Australia who showed in great detail how official government temperature records printed in the middle of the 20th century are rather different to comparable records recalculated with adjustments quite recently. There are not strong grounds to dismiss the accuracy of the earlier complications,except for those inclined to state that these inconvenient early compilations done by top scientists at the time, can show that more than half of the present alleged Australian warming arises from adjustments to the same or similar data sets.
So when BEST advocates yell that their adjustments warmed the early data, they neglect the essential fact that their corrections are too small to give a match to the high quality mid century data that were compiled at a time when there was no pressure to craft either warming or cooling trends.
Therefore, comparisons of lig thermometry and satellites has some problems about whether the lig figures were more idealisrically adjusted to show warming of the globe, with perturbing algorithms that continue to exert questionable lig and thermistor changes post 1978.
Geoff

Aphan
Reply to  JohnWho
January 15, 2016 3:44 pm

“everybody makes mistakes?” Yeah, every body does. But some of those mistakes matter a whole lot, and some of them don’t. I make a mistake in my checkbook. You make a mistake about what size of shirt to buy your kids I get the wrong shampoo or recipe ingredients. No big deal.
But scientists who use OUR MONEY to put large, metal objects into the SKY over our HEADS, and then attempt to use the data from those satellites to CONTROL our daily lives should NOT be making mistakes about that. And HONEST scientists who are shown to be mistaken are expected to ADMIT it and revise their former theories accordingly!

Bartemis
January 15, 2016 11:05 am

Yeah, two points:
1) Their data showed the exact same stagnation in temperatures, until they “adjusted” it by “correcting” the most accurate ocean temperature readings from an extensive state-of-the-art buoy network to match the worst readings from buckets thrown over the sides of ships.
2) They are continually “adjusting” their data, presumably because they were wrong before. Accusing Spencer and Christy of making a few “mistakes” then requires quite a bit of chutzpah.
3) The satellite temps are corroborated independently by radiosonde balloons.
OK, three points.

Janice Moore
Reply to  Bartemis
January 15, 2016 11:13 am

3 strikes. Announcer: “Steeeeerike THREE! Aaaaaan, poor ol’ A. G. W. is….. OUTTA THERE!”
Great pitching, O Hall-of-Famer Bartemis!
+1 for truth!

Richard of NZ
Reply to  Janice Moore
January 15, 2016 12:48 pm

Of course some of us might use an alternative sports analogy, LBW, bowled, caught, stumped and hit wicket. I cannot think of how to include any other ways of getting out that can be included for one delivery.

Reply to  Janice Moore
January 15, 2016 10:48 pm

Richard of NZ:
What about Handled the ball?

January 15, 2016 11:05 am

So down is up, plus is minus, more is less, etc. etc.
The, black, pot, kettle, calling, the (again).
Rearrange to suit.

Marcus
Reply to  Oldseadog
January 15, 2016 11:30 am

Hey , that sounds a liberal paradise !!

Just some guy
January 15, 2016 11:08 am

I would like it if someone with expertise could make a detailed blog post describing the pros and cons of both satellite and ground-based measurements. Videos like the one above are obvious one-sided bs. But since both are subject to adjustments (and therefore both have the potential for human bias), it makes it difficult for laymen such as myself to make informed judgements as to which graphs are better.

Reply to  Just some guy
January 15, 2016 12:48 pm

JsG, tried but got misthreaded. See upthread under JohnWho.

Janice Moore
Reply to  ristvan
January 15, 2016 1:19 pm

Link to RudIstvan (buy his book, Blowing Smoke – available on Amazon! 🙂 )’s 12:08pm answer: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/01/15/the-climateers-new-pause-excuse-born-of-desperation-the-satellites-are-lying/#comment-2120509
JohnWho, Just Some Guy, meh, what’s the difference? Heh.

Reply to  ristvan
January 15, 2016 2:19 pm

TY, Janice. I did not write it to get rich. I wrote it over two years cause am very upset at CAGW perversion of science. And, really care about mankinds energy future. Same motivation I reckon as AW’s excellent maintenance of this awrs winning blog.
If you or AW need additional copies, I can gift them to specific ‘Kindle reader’ coordinates. One of the things Amazon allows authors that iBooks, Kobo, and Nook does not, where is also available from my ebook publisher.

Janice Moore
Reply to  ristvan
January 15, 2016 6:26 pm

Dear Rud,
Yes. And that is why I (every so often) promote your book. It is ammunition in the battle for science truth! Thank you for providing us all with some powerful missiles of knowledge!
And, thank you for the offer! I’ll keep that in mind (I don’t have a kindle yet — sorry about that).
And I think even Knute (who was ribbing you the other day) realizes that all that time and effort you devoted to a book whose profits were never likely to fully compensate you was not done for the money.
I HOPE YOU MENTION YOUR BOOK AT EVERY OPPORTUNITY!
With gratitude for your persevering and powerful efforts for science truth (thus freedom),
Janice

Scott Scarborough
Reply to  Just some guy
January 15, 2016 4:32 pm

The video above interviews the producer of the RSS satellite data set. Does it sound like he is biased to the side of showing no warming?

Richard M
Reply to  Scott Scarborough
January 15, 2016 5:47 pm

Dr. Mears has been trying to find a problem with his data for years. RSS did a very detailed comparison with radiosonde data (no doubt trying to find a problem). What he found is very good agreement outside the tropics with RSS was running too hot in the tropics. Not exactly what he wanted to find.

lee
Reply to  Scott Scarborough
January 15, 2016 7:25 pm

With all the problems Dr Mears has with RSS data, surely he has had time to correct the errors?

Ken L
Reply to  Just some guy
January 17, 2016 3:20 am

As a layman of limited expertise, with, nonetheless, some prior education in higher math and science( who actually earned money part time doing research type jobs in college,years and years ago), I can opine unequivocally, if intuitively, always believe the satellite data, for two reasons – coverage, and it doesn’t get any more pristine than space!
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, of course.

Ken L
Reply to  Ken L
January 17, 2016 3:36 am

I should have said “little or no” expertise.

Marcus
January 15, 2016 11:15 am

Hmmmm, I thought satellites controlled our GPS system, accurate to within 15 meters ???

DCA
Reply to  Marcus
January 15, 2016 11:33 am

The Lieca and Trimble surveying instruments measure MSL elevations to an accuracy of 0.1 +-cm.

DCA
Reply to  DCA
January 15, 2016 11:35 am

Lieca and Trimble make GPS equipment.

Bartemis
Reply to  DCA
January 15, 2016 12:10 pm

The difference between absolute and relative error. Absolute error is generally about 5 meters 1-sigma. But, if you are measuring two positions, they are both affected largely by the same errors, so the difference between them has much smaller error.

PiperPaul
January 15, 2016 11:16 am

Heat from climate scientists’ pants on fire are an example of AGW!

brians356
January 15, 2016 11:19 am

Couldn’t Prof. Dressler at least get a shave for his five minutes of fame, for crying out loud? The Yasser Arafat look I suppose.

FTOP_T
Reply to  brians356
January 15, 2016 3:57 pm

Looking at Curry, Christy, Spencer vs Mann in the video, it is pretty clear which side of the debate gets funding and junkets to Paris. Mann is on the ManBearPig dining plan.

Leon Brozyna
January 15, 2016 11:20 am

Satellite datasets with too little warming … compared to what?
Little Mikey’s wishes, hopes, fears, & funding desires?
Hundreds of different poorly sited stations that have been repeatedly adjusted to show … what … reality or a desired outcome?
All this climate science and these government scientists … talk about the creation of oxymoronic concepts …

Moa
Reply to  Leon Brozyna
January 15, 2016 4:49 pm

“All this climate science and these government scientists … talk about the creation of oxymoronic concepts …”
Looks like “Lysenkoism” to me
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
Next time they try the “denier” slander (deny what? that there is a climate? that it is variable?) hit ’em back with that word, “Lysenkoism”.

Notanist
January 15, 2016 11:21 am

“…the planet is warming and, despite our best attempts to see whether natural causes can explain that warming, they can’t.”
Natural causes melted 2 mile thick ice sheets, raised sea levels 400 feet, and at the end of the Younger Dryas temps rose 7C in a just a few decades. We can’t explain the mechanism behind that either, so the above statement is a non sequitur: nobody is arguing that these far more extreme events weren’t natural, but because Climate Scientists likewise can’t find a natural mechanism for the warming since the 1800s, how is that evidence for human-induced warming? It just doesn’t follow.

Janice Moore
Reply to  Notanist
January 15, 2016 11:52 am

+1 🙂

Bill Illis
January 15, 2016 11:22 am

There are also satellites which have been specifically launched to measure the surface temperature of the ocean. We have thousands of buoys specifically designed to measure sea surface temperatures.
Yet, what do the warmers do with this info? They throw this data out which cost billions of dollars to gather and they use unreliable ship-based engine intakes instead.
And even weirder, the ship-based engine intake data that they are purport to use now does NOT even show the increase in sea surface temperature that they are reporting.
Land-based data has been adjusted up by over 0.5C.
You would have to be a fool to take these guys seriously. But some people like to be foolish.
Thank god_ for Christy and Spencer or temps would be 1.0C higher than right now.

Aphan
Reply to  Bill Illis
January 15, 2016 3:52 pm

Speaking of those satellites Bill-where the crap is all the OCO2 data reporting that should be going on?

AJB
Reply to  Aphan
January 15, 2016 6:48 pm

From Carbon Brief:

Felflames
Reply to  Aphan
January 15, 2016 7:07 pm

Ah ,yes.
It would seem the data wasn’t producing the required support for the AGW crowd, and will need to be “adjusted” before we can get to see it.

Reply to  Aphan
January 16, 2016 9:07 am

The OCO2 video’s smooth global coverage starts with the second half of May, shortly after the peak of CO2 in northern forests. That is when biomass decay has recently been going gangbusters for a while and photosynthesis in tree leaves has just started removing CO2 from the atmosphere. The video ends in and seems to concentrate on August, when northern forests have removed a lot of CO2 from the local atmosphere and are still doing so.

Thomas Homer
January 15, 2016 11:23 am

“Santer: Scientists are looking at moisture, at rainfall, at water vapor, at surface humidity, at the cryosphere, at snow and ice … ”
Yes, scientists are measuring many things with great precision, even barometric pressure. It’s like we measure everything we can, but we don’t measure how much heat is currently being “trapped” by so called “green-house gases”. There are charts and graphs of temperature, pressure, humidity data that we can reference. But there are no charts of the variances in how much heat is being “trapped” by green-house gases throughout the course of a day, a month, a year. We cannot compare how this heat “trapping” varies by elevation, by atmospheric tides.
Physical properties are things that can be measured. If there were an actual physical property resembling the definition of “green house” gases trapping heat, then why aren’t we measuring it? Are we to believe that those 97% of climate scientists just haven’t considered measuring it? If so, they’re not a very savvy lot.

Thomas Homer
Reply to  Thomas Homer
January 15, 2016 11:46 am

(cont) … Of course we’d be measuring it if we could, but we aren’t and that means we can’t. And that means there is no defined physical property resembling the “green-house gas” phenomenon.

Anthony Zeeman
Reply to  Thomas Homer
January 15, 2016 1:07 pm

Considering the billions already wasted on the CAGW scam, it would cost a small fraction of that to set up a large scale physical model to emulate the Earth and its atmosphere and measure the actual amount, if any, that CO2 traps energy. This will never be done because the results are already known and it would quickly put an end to hoax and the gravy train.

FTOP_T
Reply to  Anthony Zeeman
January 15, 2016 3:59 pm

+10. Or a simple experiment showing how a cold gas can boil water by increasing the CO2 content.

johann wundersamer
Reply to  Thomas Homer
January 26, 2016 2:28 am

Yes Thomas Homer,
Physical properties are things
that can be measured. If there were an actual physical property resembling the definition of “green house” gases trapping heat, then why aren’t we measuring it? Are we to believe that those 97 of climate scientists just haven’t considered measuring it? If so, they’re not a very savvy lot.
____
Thanks for clear view, plain truth.
We know the graphs ‘CO2 lags temperatures.’
We can wait for the graphs ‘climate science truth recognition’ follows critical climate science.
Regards – Hans

Gary Pearse
January 15, 2016 11:24 am

I think this video is a good thing to take off from and to answer to these charges on a fuller video that does include balloon radio sonde, etc. Also a set of pristine stations compared to the satellite record. I would also bring in the remote sensing of other planets and moons using the same technology – say compare the satellite with the rover readings on Mars.
For a real killer, I would bring in the Russian astronomer’s evidence of concurrent global warming on Mars and Earth!!! And this was reported in National Geographic – how’s that for a source:
“Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.”The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars,” he said.”
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html
Also in the article from NASA:
“In 2005 data from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide “ice caps” near Mars’s south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row.”
I’ve been disappointed that the best spokespersons we have are even silent on this matter – it would be good for Ted Cruz to have had this ace up his sleeve.

FTOP_T
Reply to  Gary Pearse
January 15, 2016 4:07 pm

Mann will just claim that CO2 from earth is trapping heat and shipping it via UPS to other planets. That’s why we haven’t had the runaway effect — UPS.

Reply to  Gary Pearse
January 16, 2016 9:11 am

3 summers in a row shows a long term trend, while Earth’s temperature has global trends that last a couple decades and then change?

January 15, 2016 11:24 am

I guess they figure everyone will just sit back and believe them.

Man Bearpig
January 15, 2016 11:28 am

First they came for the Mediaval Warm period and I didn’t speak up for no one believed them anyway. Then they became desparate and adjusted the temperatures, and I didn’t speak up as no one believed them anyway then they came for the satellite data and everyone laughed their back sides off.

Reply to  Man Bearpig
January 15, 2016 2:13 pm

+1

FTOP_T
Reply to  Man Bearpig
January 15, 2016 4:01 pm

+2

Reply to  Man Bearpig
January 15, 2016 4:17 pm

Man Bearpig write good.

January 15, 2016 11:32 am

In the ‘Remove the plank from your own eye’ division:

Dessler: So what does a satellite actually measure? A satellite doesn’t measure temperature: it measures radiance, which means it measures basically photons of energy that the atmosphere is emitting: in fact, what it really measures is a voltage on some detector, and from that it has to infer radiance, which is these photons, you know, that are coming out of the atmosophere.

I cannot find a description of the electronics of the MMTS system but I suspect that the NOAA MMTS works by measuring a voltage drop created by the changing resistance of a thermistor, this voltage then being digitised.
As well as siting issues found by our illustrious host and others, I also found this interesting item on how well MMTS is maintained [my bold]. How do they correct for these situations?
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/srh/dad/coop/CPM_Article-1.pdf

What’s in that MMTS Beehive Anyway?
By Michael McAllister, OPL, WFO Jacksonville, FL
If you’re not involved with cleaning an MMTS sensor unit, you probably have not seen inside it. The
white louvered “beehive” contains a thermistor in its center, with 2 white wires connecting it to the plug
on the base of the unit. Really a very basic instrument, but what else is there to be discovered in the
disassembly of the unit ?
I cannot vouch for the rest of the country, but here in northeast Florida and southeast Georgia we
regularly find various critters making their home inside the beehive. At the Jacksonville NWS office, we
like to replace the beehive on our annual visits. After getting the dirty beehive back to the office, and
before carefully taking it apart for cleaning; we leave it in a secure outside area for a day to let any
residents inside vacate, then we dunk it in a bucket of water to flush out any reluctant squatters.
Our most common un-invited guest is the red wasp. These enjoy the shelter, security, and height of the
beehive and usually build their nest toward the top of the unit. We have found nests that are small, with
only 4 or 5 holes/cells, to a large nest covering an entire louver.
From personal experience, I learned to be careful in transporting the dirty beehives. At a rural site about
2 hours away from Jacksonville, I removed a beehive from its post and set it on the ground while I put a
clean beehive in its place. I rolled the dirty beehive on the grass, then shook it. Nothing came out or
buzzed, so I placed it in the back of the co-op van. About 10 minutes after leaving the co-op site, I
noticed a couple of wasps on the back window. A few minutes later there were about 5 to 10 wasps on
the back window. A little while later I noticed more wasps – and they were making their way forward!
Driving with the windows down, I finally found a good place to pull over so I could remove the beehive
and air out the van. I wasn’t stung, but now our standard operating procedure is to place the dirty
beehive in a plastic bag before putting it in the van.
At another site, the wasps were not so docile. As I approached the dirty beehive, I noticed a couple of
wasps flying nearby. I carefully removed the beehive and gently placed it on the ground. After finishing
my co-op duties, I placed the beehive on its side and rolled it on the lawn. About 10 angry wasps came
flying out. I did a little flying of my own away from the beehive. When things calmed down, I rolled the
beehive again – and another 10 to 15 wasps flew out. A little while later I tried again, and more wasps
came flying out. Finally, when nothing else came out in reaction to rolling the beehive, I bagged it. And
I noticed a wasp flying around the clean beehive I had just installed. Sigh…
Another frequent guest found in the beehive is the mud dauber/dirt dauber. These are of the wasp
family, but live a more solitary life. They build a mud nest, fill it with paralyzed spiders, then lay their
eggs on the spiders. When the eggs hatch, the new wasps have a ready meal. Their nests are often
found on eaves on houses – it looks like a mud tube or multiple mud tubes. In the MMTS beehive, they
often cover up the thermistor by building their nest on and around it. Fortunately, the mud dauber is
not aggressive and will fly away when you approach its nest.
Spiders… we find spiders in the beehives at times, but not as often as one would think. Most of the time
it is a jumping spider – a small colorful, active spider that is not poisonous or very aggressive, though
they can be territorial. We have found black widows and brown widows – which are poisonous. But
fortunately, they have been rare.
The most unusual MMTS inhabitant I have found is the Cuban tree frog. At a site near Ocala, Florida I
found a pale brown frog with gold eyes sitting in the shade of one of the louvers. Later, when cleaning
the beehive, I found 3 frog bodies. The Cuban tree frog is a non-native invasive species that grows to
about 5 inches in length (3 to 4 times the size of the native green tree frogs) and is a voracious eater of
other frogs, lizards, etc. What are they doing in a temperature shelter? I’m not sure, but they are not
welcome!
And now the big question – do these trespassers alter the temperature readings? You betcha!
Unfortunately your NWS representative cannot always tell there is a problem when performing remote
quality control. If the trespassers are causing a variation of only a couple of degrees from nearby sites,
the difference may not be significant enough to warrant attention, or it may be rationalized away as a
local effect, such as the sea breeze, nearby rainfall, air drainage area, etc.
What can a cooperative observer do about the situation? Basically, call your NWS co-op manager if you
suspect something nesting or living in the shelter. Do not spray the pests and risk getting stung or
getting a breath full of bug spray (plus a buildup of chemical spray on the shelter/thermistor may not be
good for it). Let your NWS co-op representative come out and deal with the problem. Hopefully, it
won’t be a weekly visit…

Paul Courtney
Reply to  John in Oz
January 15, 2016 6:19 pm

John in Oz, the solution is obvious. Simply bag or tent the thermistor shelter and pump in CO2. The heat (that is, the changed climate) will kill them all in 100 yrs or so.

Aphan
Reply to  Paul Courtney
January 16, 2016 10:53 am

You made me laugh with that one Paul! Maybe we should tent NASA and do that….

johann wundersamer
Reply to  Paul Courtney
January 26, 2016 3:02 am

sorry, you beat me to
Why not wrap that thing and apply nitrogen or carbon monoxide. For preservation of spider parasites?
Spiders are our first line of defense against harmful insects!
/need a sarc ?
Best regards – Hans

mebbe
Reply to  John in Oz
January 15, 2016 8:54 pm

Yes , you’ve just gotta love it when the high priests start dissing the charge coupled device, the sine qua non of precise discrimination, the bed-rock of remote reconnaissance.
They’re not measuring temperature, they’re measuring millivolts! Maybe, they’re just inferring voltage.

Harry Passfield
January 15, 2016 11:39 am

Mosher is happy to tell us – ad-nauseam – that the RSS data is just the product of models. Then again, Mann’s tree rings are the product of – well, we can all fill in some words for that.
So it comes down to this: RSS data v Mann’s; 21st century technology v a Bristlecone or two. Tough choice….

Don K
Reply to  Harry Passfield
January 15, 2016 11:57 am

Perhaps we should keep in mind that the tree-ring data shows that the Earth has been cooling for the past 65 years — something that Dr Mann et al thought we really shouldn’t worry our pretty little heads about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divergence_problem

simple-touriste
Reply to  Harry Passfield
January 15, 2016 4:07 pm

The Apollo mission were based many models. Guess what? These models had been validated before life were put at risk. The best guess of where the Moon would be and how much was needed to be on the good trajectory was good.
Yes, everything is based on models. Some can be tested. Some work really well.
A measurement device uses models. But usually not models about the phenomenon we want to discover.

January 15, 2016 11:42 am

This is the logical next step that I have been waiting for ever since the swift and comprehensive adoption of the Karlization method of the surface data.

Bubba Cow
Reply to  Michael Palmer
January 15, 2016 11:53 am

next week we’ll read that we are no longer carbon based life forms

Michael Oxenham
January 15, 2016 11:43 am

This is the letter I sent to the Veterinary Record last month in response to an Editorial Column.
Part of this column was highlighting how important CO2 and NH4 emissions from agricultural activities were in causing global warming, and that we as a profession should advise our clients of these dangers. We should also advise them to change their farming practices and that we should all eat less meat.
The Editor decided that the readers of the VR should not see my comments.
The Editor
The Veterinary Record
Dear Sir
Are we a Science-based Profession?
I feel bound to ask this question after reading the VR Editorial Comment (28th November). This stated, in effect, that the profession was in a good position to support the IPCC’s dogma on catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW), due to man’s emission of so-called greenhouse gases (mainly CO2 and CH4). There was a similar editorial (VR 5th October 2013) entitled “Curbing Emissions”, which was a response to the IPCC AR5 report. My letter was published (9th November 2013), in which I commented that “there was no published empirical data or verifiable experiments that suggested either of the gasses (CO2 and CH4) had ever caused or driven global warming”. I also suggested that curbing these emissions will have no measurable effect on global temperatures and the ‘economic effects’ are dubious. Recently Dr Patrick Moore, Ecologist (2015) gave a lecture in which he produced robust evidence which suggested that, far from causing CAGW, more CO2 would be highly beneficial to the biosphere and agricultural crops.
In order to clarify the scientific method, I need to refer to Dr Craig Idso and others (2013), quote, “The hypothesis implicit in all IPCC writings is that dangerous global warming is resulting, or will result, from human-related greenhouse gas emissions. In considering any such hypothesis, an alternative and null hypothesis must be entertained, which is the simplest hypothesis consistent with the known facts. The null hypothesis is that the currently observed changes in global climate indices and the physical environment, as well as current changes in animal and plant characteristics, are the result of natural variability. To invalidate this null hypothesis requires, at a minimum, direct evidence of human causation of specific changes that lie outside usual, natural variability. Unless and until such evidence is adduced, the null hypothesis is assumed to be correct”. I respectfully suggest, therefore, that the 28th November Leader does not follow the scientific method which was well defined by Popper (1965). If we are a science-based profession, it would make no sense to support the IPCC’s pseudo-scientific political dogma.
There are other disquieting aspects. Dr Tim Ball (2014) makes a compelling case that climate science has been, quote, “deliberately corrupted by deceptions, misinformation, manipulation of records and misapplying the scientific method and research”. Much of this is also revealed in the emails from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in November 2009, which have been fully recorded and analysed by Andrew Montford (2012). He shows, regrettably, evidence of international malpractice.
One of the main platforms of the IPCC hypothesis is its reliance on un-validated Global Climate Models (aka General Circulation Models) in projecting global temperatures about 100 years ahead. Global climate is far too complex and chaotic for GCMs ever to be programmed correctly. Furthermore many of the known natural factors affecting the global climate have been omitted from the GCMs. It is not surprising, therefore, that the projections made for the last 20 years differ wildly from the actual lower troposphere temperatures as shown by the RSS (Monckton 2015) and UAH (Spencer 2015) datasets. Both of these show there has been no statistical rise in global temperatures for nearly 20 years.
One is bound to wonder whether the Leader Comment exhorting us to “raise awareness of our clients to these issues” of a pseudo-scientific myth, will soon ask us to raise awareness of the importance of homoeopathy.
References
MOORE, P., (2015) GWPF Lecture http://www.thegwpf.org/gwpftv/
IDSO, C.D., CARTER, R.M., SINGER,S.F., (2013) Climate Change Reconsidered ll. Physical Science. http://www.nipccreport.org/reports/ccr2a/pdf/Summary-for-Policymakers.pdf
POPPER, K., (1965) Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge.2nd Edition: Harper and Row.
BALL, T., (2014) The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science. Stairway Press.
MONTFORD, A., (2012) Hiding the Decline. Anglosphere Books
MONCKTON, C., (2015) RSS Dataset http://www.climatedepot.com/2015/08/06/a-new-record-pause-length-no-global-warming-for-18-years-7-months-temperature-standstill-extends-to-233-months/
SPENCER, R., (2015) UAH Dataset http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/V6-vs-v5.6-LT-1979-Mar2015.gif
Michael Oxenham

Bubba Cow
Reply to  Michael Oxenham
January 15, 2016 11:51 am

excellent

Reply to  Bubba Cow
January 15, 2016 5:32 pm

Ditto!

Janice Moore
Reply to  Michael Oxenham
January 15, 2016 12:02 pm

Hear, Hear, Dr. Oxenham! No WONDER your Nov., 2013 letter got published (assuming similar product from same source). Hope this one does, too.
Attention Anyone Needing a Draft Letter to the Editor: Use Michael Oxenham’s above (with necessary modifications AND acknowledgement of author).
Your animal patients are in the hands of a great mind, thus, your practice is very, busy, no doubt!

Walt D.
January 15, 2016 11:46 am

I seem to recall that Roy Spencer and John Christy wrote an article about orbital decay and produced a new data set to correct for it. I also seem to recall that the orbital decay problem did not apply to all the satellites.

Reply to  Walt D.
January 15, 2016 12:20 pm

Correct on both counts.

Steven F
Reply to  Walt D.
January 15, 2016 7:08 pm

Both satellite data sets have been corrected for orbital decay and drift. And unlike surface data the old unadjusted data is still available on the web.

Reply to  Steven F
January 16, 2016 8:40 am

Good point, Steven. The video does not mention how early one these corrections were caught and quantification. I doubt they got the sign wrong. The main point is the transparency and that Mears’ RSS and radiosondes agree. Surface data is the outlier. The models predict the lower troposphere to be warming about the same as land and up to 1.4 times the rate of the ocean surface. The trends as of March 2015 for land and sea for UAH are .19 and .08 per decade respectively, for GMST trend of .11 per decade, 1.1C per century.

Aphan
January 15, 2016 11:47 am

This is stunning! Imagine you want to win a war. You have been telling the masses that you have powerful aerial weapons and powerful ground based weapons to fight this war, and so people have been voluntarily signing up to fight for your side because they trust in the accuracy of your claims.
Some civilians start pointing out that your aerial weapons and your ground weapons aren’t in sync, and that trying to use both at the same time is actually preventing troops on the ground from completing any campaign against the enemy successfully.
Some of those civilians also know that a handful of men and women have already spent years proving that the ground based weapon system is flawed and broken and ineffective in it’s current condition. So all you really have left, is your aerial based assault weapon. And no one can really, effectively prove it’s broken or flawed because its incredibly hard to get to both its hardware and its software, and so the civilians can be easily tricked into believing that it works.
And then you make a video detailing how flawed and untrustworthy that aerial weapon really is….???
The Generals of the AGW Army basically just disarmed the troops completely!

simple-touriste
January 15, 2016 11:50 am

Now RSS is non-PC, because it isn’t a direct measure of temp (what? how can you directly measure energy content?), but I remember the time when the alarmists were parroting the big spike pf the year 98, with RSS.
This guys have no face.

Tom T
Reply to  simple-touriste
January 15, 2016 1:19 pm

Correct there is no such thing as a direct measure of temperature. Liquid thermometers measure the thermal expansion of a liquid. Prop thermometers measure voltage drop due to resistance (this is how MMTS sensors work).

Steven F
Reply to  Tom T
January 15, 2016 7:13 pm

There are two electronic devices used to measure temperature. thermistors and thermocouples. Thermistors us a temperature sensitive meterial, Typically a semiconductor, and measure the resistance of it.
Thermocouple have two different metals joined together. When exposed to heat a small voltage is generated by the thermocouple.
As is typically the case you get what you pay for. The most expensive devices are typically very accurate. If you spend even more you get a very accurate sensor that has had a calibration check done.
It is my understanding that the sattilites HAH and RSS use have platinum based thermocouples which are some of the most accurate temperature sensors available. Platinum based thermcouple are very expensive because of the scarcity of the metals used. In addition to excelent accuracy they are also usable at very high tmerpatures and are highly resistant to corrosion.

jimheath
January 15, 2016 11:50 am

About time they got a proper job. Grow something and feed somebody.

Another Ian
Reply to  jimheath
January 15, 2016 12:09 pm

jimheath
“Grow something and feed somebody.”
They are – unfortunately it’s bs.

Reply to  jimheath
January 15, 2016 2:06 pm

Not on my farm. They do not deserve the priviledge of working there. Based on the climate evidence, they would slack off, probably steal milk, and maybe even wreck my tractors.

Paul Westhaver
January 15, 2016 11:52 am

If the Mods will please indulge me,
I would like to make the point that the satellites are now counted among the list of climate deniers.

FJ Shepherd
Reply to  Paul Westhaver
January 15, 2016 12:13 pm

As well as from balloons because they confirm the satellite temperature data.

Just some guy
Reply to  FJ Shepherd
January 15, 2016 1:53 pm

And Carl Mears. Since his RSS data agree with UAH.

FJ Shepherd
January 15, 2016 12:11 pm

It comes down to this: climate alarmist temperature data from UHI effect locations VERSUS denier temperature data from satellites and air-born balloons. Which one is more reliable? Gee, what a quandary.

Data Soong
January 15, 2016 12:13 pm

The RSS and UAH datasets look nearly identical, and have very similar long- and short-term trends. It’s ridiculous that the video makers try to tear down the UAH and build up the RSS.

Reply to  Data Soong
January 15, 2016 12:27 pm

Christy was at the Cruz hearing. Mears wasn’t. Christy is a scientist who understands the surface temperature data problems, and prefers weather ballons and satellites. Mears is a warmunist who liked his RSS until it showed the pause, then switched to preferring shonky surface records to his own work.
The video shows how politically potent warmunists think the pause is in hands like Cruz.

Phil.
Reply to  Data Soong
January 17, 2016 8:10 pm

However since version 6 they don’t measure the same quantities so there is no reason to expect them to be identical, in fact to the contrary.

jmorpuss
January 15, 2016 12:33 pm

Evidence for Precipitation of Energetic Particles by Ionospheric «Heating» Transmissions
The paper reports observations made in 1970 by the first prototype dynasonde in the form of a time-lapse movie, http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/IONO/Dynasonde/SpEatHeating.htm

MarkW
January 15, 2016 12:38 pm

If they had any credibility left, I would have said they’ve lost the last of it.

January 15, 2016 12:41 pm

Possible ‘video countering’ political sound bites are now needed. Suggestions:
1. Satellite global coverage is good. Land coverage is not (Africa, Polar regions, eastern Siberia, parts of South America). Until ARGO (~2005) ocean coverage was not. Much of the global surface –even since 1979 when sat coverage began, is just some infilled guess.
2. Issues like satellite obital drift and aperture are known and tractable. UHI and microsite issues are not.
3. Weather balloons and regional surface stations without UHI/microsite issues both confirm satellites, and both show the pause also.
4. If the satellite detected near 20 year pause is not real, why have so many warmunist papers been written trying to explain it in various ways? Including by ‘missing heat’ Trenberth of climategate and now video infamy.

Chris
January 15, 2016 12:47 pm

Wouldn’t the detector moving closer to the heat source cause it to record an increase in temperature, as opposed to a decrease? Wouldn’t increased atmospheric friction on the satellite also have the effect of increasing the recorded temperature, as opposed to showing a decrease?

Reply to  Chris
January 15, 2016 12:58 pm

Chris, wrote about this in The Arts of Truth climate chapter. Even put in a chart showing most weather satellites and their degree of orbital drft over time. The big issue is not altitude decay, it is orbital drift that, for example, changes the timing of equator crossings for these near polar satellites. A growing mismatch between real location and signal location. But this is known and can be corrected. The essence of Christy’s ‘fixed 20 years ago’ comment to Breitbart.

Don K
Reply to  Chris
January 15, 2016 4:12 pm

> Wouldn’t the detector moving closer to the heat source cause it to record an increase in temperature, as opposed to a decrease?
It probably would if the satellite were somehow using an incredibly sensitive thermometer to measure near surface temperatures. (I don’t think that could possibly work for a lot of reasons) What the satellite borne Microwave Sounding Units actually measure is the temperature sensitive frequency of vibrating atmospheric Oxygen molecules radiating in the 60GHz range. see https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch3s3-4-1-2.html

Aphan
Reply to  Chris
January 15, 2016 5:11 pm

“Wouldn’t the detector moving closer to the heat source cause it to record an increase in temperature, as opposed to a decrease? Wouldn’t increased atmospheric friction on the satellite also have the effect of increasing the recorded temperature, as opposed to showing a decrease?”
Um…Chris…Earth, the planet, is not a heat source. The sun is. Using your rationale (and the false idea that satellites use thermometers or sensors that detect HEAT…which they don’t) then by launching it into the sky…and getting it closer to the SUN than the surface of Earth is, the detector would definitely record an increase in temperature.
DonK and ristvan have already addressed the friction/drift issue.

Steven F
Reply to  Chris
January 15, 2016 7:22 pm

“Wouldn’t the detector moving closer to the heat source cause it to record an increase in temperature, as opposed to a decrease?”
Yes and the sattilite data was corrected for this yeas ago.
“Wouldn’t increased atmospheric friction on the satellite also have the effect of increasing the recorded temperature”
Yes friction does generate heat. However the ammount of friction they are talking about is extremently small.

Chris
Reply to  Steven F
January 15, 2016 10:09 pm

So, then basically the claims about the satellite drag and drift causing false readings are a total crock.

Aphan
Reply to  Chris
January 16, 2016 10:19 am

Not necessarily. The data being collected by the satellites is affected by both of those things. Changing the position of the satellite height wise brings it closer to Earth and Earth’s gravitational pull. That increase in gravitational force, causes more friction on the actual satellite and slows it down some. This means that the times the data is recorded and the way it’s processed have to be changed over time to compensate for the changes in distance and speed. According to the video (and who knows if what was said is true/accurate) Christy and Spencer weren’t aware of, or ignored etc these effects and were not adjusting the RSS data to compensate for either one, and so that is why the RSS data was often “close to” but not an exact mirror of, the other satellite results.
Either way, the actual data taken by the satellites is not temperature readings. They calculate the temperatures by collecting data about how light is absorbed and reflected by Earth, and the atmosphere and use mathematical formulas to change that data into temperature. Clouds, water vapor, and particulates in the air alter the data because they prevent a “clear sky” shot of the surface of the planet from orbit, so all those have to be taken into consideration too. It’s a difficult process, and modeling the data HAS to be done because there’s no way it can be done manually by humans in any efficient way. But HOW they adjust that data is different between organizations and that makes it even harder for people on the outside to understand how accurately (or not) it’s been processed.

richardscourtney
January 15, 2016 12:51 pm

Mr W.atts:
You essay reports Dr Mann of saying of the temperature time series obtained from microwave sounding units (MSUs) mounted on orbital satellites

It is those datasets that are subject to the most adjustments – that have historically been found to have been biased, um, actually in the direction of too little warming.

The actual measurements show good agreement with data obtained from radiosondes mounted on weather balloons but there is no possible calibration standard for global and hemispheric temperature compilations because there is only one Earth.
In other words the radiosonde data suggests the MSU data is correct but there is no possibility of a scientific determination which could indicate the MSU data have “been found to have been biased” in any direction.
Richard

Resourceguy
January 15, 2016 12:56 pm

A new set of excuses could only mean one thing. More people have been doing some fact checking.

Editor
January 15, 2016 12:57 pm

Why do the crooks keep trying to deflect attention away by claiming that the pause only works by cherry picking 1998 as a start point.
Even the Met Office had to admit that the 1999/2000 La Nina cancelled out the 1998 El Nino, and that the pause was real. (This was in 2013, before the current El Nino started in 2014)
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2016/01/15/climate-alarmists-invent-new-excuse-the-satellites-are-lying/
One would think they had something to hide!

Reply to  Paul Homewood
January 15, 2016 1:20 pm

One would think they had something to hide!

Just as the most transparent administration is US history, they have nothing to hide. Just LOTS they don’t want you to see.

Reply to  Gunga Din
January 15, 2016 1:34 pm

Has Mann released those UVa emails yet?

AndyG55
Reply to  Paul Homewood
January 15, 2016 2:42 pm

And they will use the current El Nino warming to claim the “pause” is broken, only to have a much lengthened “pause” reappear as the temperatures drop as the El Nino dissipates.
As we drop down towards 1979 temperatures, the pause length will grow rapidly and could even reach to the whole of the satellite record. Wouldn’t that be fun to watch 😉
… the divergence between reality and the already farcical model projections will turn those climate modellers into a world wide laughing stock. 🙂 (even more than now)

Joel Snider
January 15, 2016 12:59 pm

Discrediting the satellite data is the current trend among Internet trolls, that post under alarmist stories on line. There’s one guy – tends to post on ‘The Hill’ under the name ‘Kirk’ – who will make upwards of fifty posts per story – which suggest to me that he is a paid shill – I have a day job and usually can’t spend that kind of time commenting on line. Suffice to say he and a few other trolls, flooding the comments with all the alarmist spin, are easy to pick out because they make so many posts. And it’s all out of the warmist playbook.
Basically, this all seems to be fallout from a hearing congress held after one of Obama alarmist speeches from about three years ago – a hearing which was touted at the time as a skeptic victory, as the President’s own hand-picked experts seemed floored to explain the Pause, lack of extreme weather (or connections to C02 forcings), etc. But of course, it got no play in the press and, as I said at the time, the real purpose was to get the skeptic cards on the table so the administration’s propaganda hacks could develop sufficient spin to discredit them. Like the entire AGW scare itself, it doesn’t matter what’s true, just so long as you can get enough people to believe.

Reply to  Joel Snider
January 15, 2016 6:10 pm

Many of those ‘frequent’ posters also vanish after working hours and tend to be absent on weekends and holidays.
As you note, they’re paid shills.

January 15, 2016 1:08 pm

So, when you start looking at things like every decade, you have an upward trend in the data

When looking at the graphics, it looks as if the latest decade is about 0.17 C warmer than the previous one. However that certainly is not the case with RSS. With RSS, 2006 to 2016 averaged 0.236. And 1996 to 2006 averaged 0.231. This gives a difference of 0.005. See:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996/to:2006/plot/rss/from:2006/to:2016

Moa
Reply to  Werner Brozek
January 15, 2016 5:45 pm

Don’t forget the error bars! 0.005 C is not statistically significant. Probably any thing less than 1 C is not statistically significant either – there is 100 C temperature range, 10-20 C diurnal range, some places have 60 C seasonal ranges.
So don’t forget to consider the uncertainties while you quibble over +/- 0.1 C differences.

Reply to  Moa
January 15, 2016 7:14 pm

Don’t forget the error bars!

Good point! So if we assume that the numbers are within 0.10, 95% of the time, the last two decades on RSS are statistically equivalent.

Richard M
Reply to  Werner Brozek
January 15, 2016 6:11 pm

The average from 1997-2007 is around .25. When we get through the next La Nina I’d be surprised if the value wasn’t quite a bit lower (2007-2014 is only .215)

Reply to  Richard M
January 15, 2016 7:25 pm

The next 8 months will be very interesting! The big question in my mind is whether the 18+ year pause will end before the anomaly goes below 0.25.
We may even get a very good indication which way the wind is blowing after the next two months.

richard
January 15, 2016 1:11 pm

hmmm, things must be going badly wrong for them if they are now having to damn the satellite data.

Janice Moore
Reply to  richard
January 15, 2016 1:28 pm

Cool, huh? 🙂
A preeeh-tty big problem, indeed.
Bwah, ha, ha, ha, haaaaaaaaaaa!

Reply to  richard
January 15, 2016 6:16 pm

What is curious; aren’t some of these alleged scientists on government payrolls or operating on government funds?

January 15, 2016 1:19 pm

This is all very well, but has anyone photographed the satellites lately?
How do we know someone hasn’t actually parked a fridge next to them?

January 15, 2016 1:22 pm

The transcript of “How reliable are satellite temperatures?” reads rather like a Monty Python Comedy Script with cartoons from the “Battle of the Graphs”.

January 15, 2016 1:49 pm

Hmmm….so a system designed from the start to measure global temperatures must be wrong because it doesn’t agree with a bunch of surface stations designed for local temperatures? And those surface stations had to adjusted to give numbers that agreed with a few tree rings and upside down lake cores?
And the computer models are the proof?

January 15, 2016 1:58 pm

“Excluding stations with known moves”. How do I get the list of these stations? The station in Canton, NY at the Cornell Cooperative Extension farm was moved probably 18 years ago, and I want to make sure that it’s in the list.
I do notice, however, that http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datasets/GHCNDMS/stations/GHCND:USW00014743/detail shows its current location. If you ask for older data when it was at the old site, …. you get the new location. It used to be here: 44.564349575244364, -75.10140167154246 which you can see is substantially different in character, and 1.6km apart.
In general, if you can identify errors in something based on your personal experience, it’s the case that there are many many more errors. Ever seen a news story where they got significant details wrong because the story lies within your field of expertise? Well, you should then assume that every other story outside of your expertise has similar errors.

Reply to  Russ Nelson
January 15, 2016 2:03 pm

Am I right to be angry at this?

Aphan
Reply to  Russ Nelson
January 15, 2016 3:14 pm

Russ Nelson, depends on what you are angry about.

Reply to  Russ Nelson
January 15, 2016 2:38 pm

Ever seen a news story where they got significant details wrong because the story lies within your field of expertise? Well, you should then assume that every other story outside of your expertise has similar errors.

Yes, I’ve noticed that. Sometimes I was personally involved.
Will Rodgers once said, “All I know is what I read in the papers.”
One of his kids regarding that said, “Yes, but he never said he believed it.”
(The quotes are paraphrased. They are from my sometimes faulty memory.)

January 15, 2016 2:04 pm

If there wasn’t so much money being misappropriated and diverted into underwriting this non-existent problem of CAGW this would all be a marvellous joke, like the emperor’s new clothes, but sadly for us all who are forced to pay for the bs these warmists keep peddling and worse for the poor folks in undeveloped countries who are being denied funding for more essential access to clean water, access to electricity, access to medicine, etc, and a fair chance of employment and economic development. The whole scam is a crime against humanity!

Walt D.
January 15, 2016 2:08 pm

The objection that satellites measure voltages an not temperature has to be one of the stupidest arguments I have every heard.
A mercury in glass thermometer does not measure temperature directly – it measures the expansion of the column of mercury.
A thermocouple also does not measure temperature directly, it also measures voltage.
A platinum resistance thermometer measures temperature much more accurately (to within a few hundredths of a degree C).
The argument about the satellite orbit decay is also fatuous, since the effects were corrected once noticed.
GPS satellites were also gave inaccurate measurements of position until it was discovered that the clocks needed to be adjusted to account for both special and general relativity effects.The fact that they were once wrong does not mean that we should not expect to get accurate measurements of position now.
It takes a lot of processing to produce an MRI/NMR scan or a CAT scan. Does this make them less reliable than a simple X-Ray.

Aphan
Reply to  Walt D.
January 15, 2016 3:09 pm

Satellites DO NOT measure earth or atmospheric temperature changes like ANY of the devices you mentioned Walt D. In order for all of those devices to work, they have to be IN CONTACT WITH the gas, liquid, or surface they are measuring. No matter how accurate your thermometer is Walt D, if you want to measure the temperature changes in your living room, you need to be IN YOUR LIVING room to do that, and you must also correct for any biases like your thermometer being over a heat register or near the air conditioner. You cannot measure temperature changes on the surface of the earth from space period.

Reply to  Aphan
January 15, 2016 11:56 pm

“Dessler goes to pains to announce that satellites measure voltage”
He doesn’t go to pains. He explains the process. Voltage is just a step along the way. The key issue, as he makes perfectly clear, is that it is measuring radiance, and interpreting that as temperature (of where?) is hard.
Thermistors measure voltage too. But you know what it represents. Temperature in that conductor, which reflects temperature in that enclosure. When you have a measure of radiance, you still have the problem of what that means as a temperature, and where, and of what.

co2isnotevil
Reply to  Aphan
January 16, 2016 11:19 am

The ‘voltages’ measured by the satellite sensors are directly proportional to the energy of the photons that hit each specific cell of the CCD device capturing the LWIR image. The processing required to turn this into a radiance is well known and similar software can be found in any digital camera. Since only photons can enter or leave the planet, the satellite sensors are far more accurate at measuring this flux in both directions than any estimates based on sparse land measurements.
The delta voltage between pixels is exactly proportional to the delta radiance. Converting this radiance to a surface temperature is trivial for the clear sky and simply requires running a line by line 3-d simulation of the clear sky atmosphere which is affected primarily by GHG absorption and emission. This is then calibrated to known surface temperatures at the time the image was taken. Since the linearity between voltage and radiance is nearly perfect and the non linearity between radiance and temperature follows T^4 per the Stefan-Boltzmann LAW (independent of the effective emissivity) accurate temperatures for the entire surface of the planet can be far more accurately obtained by weather satellites than by extrapolating sparse surface measurements. The only useful purpose for sparse surface measurements is to center the range of satellite temperatures and they we can use actual data for the rest of the planet, rather than homogenized interpolation.
The temperatures of the cloudy sky surface can be determined on a pixel by pixel basis by interpolating between clear sky samples with an appropriate average diurnal adjustment applied. This can then be cross checked against estimates based on cloud optical depth which is proportional to the amount of surface radiation passing though the clouds and this can also be calibrated to surface measurements. Note that in general, most of the world is continuously covered by geosynchronous satellites while each polar orbiter (there are usually 2 of these), covers the entire planets surface twice per day.

Aphan
Reply to  co2isnotevil
January 16, 2016 11:38 am

Isn’t that what I just said to Walt D, only simpler? The devices he mentioned specifically measure temperature by being in physical contact with the thing being measured-be it gas, or liquid, or solid. My point was specifically directed at HIS comment about the video comment about satellites not measuring temperature. They don’t. They INFER temperature indirectly.
“Satellites do not measure temperature. They measure radiances in various wavelength bands, which must then be mathematically inverted to obtain indirect inferences of temperature.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_temperature_measurements

co2isnotevil
Reply to  Aphan
January 16, 2016 1:09 pm

Aphan.
Yes it is. except that you did not mention that the voltage measured is directly convertible into a temperature based on the linear relationship between radiance and total photon power, the linear relationship between photon power and the measured voltage and the T^4 relationship between radiance and temperature (independent of emissivity). Understanding these relationships is crucial to understanding why temperatures extracted from satellite data are far more robust then temperatures extracted by processing, homogenizing and extrapolating temperatures from sparse surface measurements.

co2isnotevil
Reply to  Aphan
January 16, 2016 1:42 pm

Aphan,
Another crucial point is that a satellite sensor measures radiance across a large fraction of the planet. Polar orbiters measure the entire surface while each geosynchronous sensors measures about 1/4 of the surface and few sensors need to be cross calibrated with each other. Despite this, ISCCP blew the cross calibration by relying on continuous coverage by polar orbiters, which was not always true and added too much noise to the calculated temperatures in order to extract a tiny trend much smaller than the introduced noise.
Surface measurements are made through 1000’s of unique sensors that must be cross calibrated to each other and this is the source of the many bogus adjustments made by GISS and NOAA. Since they could not even get this right dealing with about a half dozen satellite sensors, the chance that they got this right across 1000’s of unique ground sensors is nearly zero.
The opportunity to add degrees of freedom to the analysis (i.e. the many adjustments) isn’t as easy to hide when processing satellite data. As anyone who has dealt with modelling knows, if you add enough degrees of freedom, you can get whatever behavior you are looking for and this is why GISS and NOAA rely on surface sensors to extract trends, rather than using satellite sensors that provide much better data.

simple-touriste
Reply to  Aphan
January 17, 2016 3:42 am

“They don’t. They INFER temperature indirectly.”
I want to see you put a thermometer in the thermosphere and do a DIRECT measure the very high temperature in the “coldness” of space nearly perfect vacuum without “inference”.
LOL

Reply to  Aphan
January 17, 2016 9:04 pm

“Converting this radiance to a surface temperature is trivial for the clear sky and simply requires running a line by line 3-d simulation of the clear sky atmosphere which is affected primarily by GHG absorption and emission. This is then calibrated to known surface temperatures at the time the image was taken. Since the linearity between voltage and radiance is nearly perfect…”
You are completely missing the point here. They aren’t measuring LWIR, but microwaves. These are not emitted from a surface, but from a gas (O2). And they aren’t measuring surface temperature, although surface emission is a confounding factor. When you look along a single direction, you get one voltage, representing the total radiance from that direction. AMSU has several frequency channels, but for TLT, it’s mainly just one (5) with 2 bands. So from that you have to work out what radiance comes from each level in the atmosphere.

Reply to  Walt D.
January 15, 2016 4:07 pm

Walt D,
“The objection that satellites measure voltages an not temperature has to be one of the stupidest arguments I have every heard”
Well, it may be, but who made it? Sounds like you are mis-quoting Dessler, who said:
“A satellite doesn’t measure temperature: it measures radiance, which means it measures basically photons of energy that the atmosphere is emitting:”
And Schneider goes on to explain why that is important. The instruments can probably measure the radiance accurately. But it comes from all kinds of sources (clouds, surface etc). And so you have to work out what the radiance might tell you about not only a chunk of air (somehow excluding those others) but also exactly which chunk of air. There is a lot of modelling involved there. An attribution problem.

Richard M
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 15, 2016 6:16 pm

But then why does it agree with the radiosonde data if it is a problem? Also, you might see a consistent problem which would in no way affect the trend. After all, it is not the exact value we really care about, it is the trend.

Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 15, 2016 7:02 pm

Imagine that Nick? Such sophistry…
Dessler goes to pains to announce that satellites measure voltage, a point you deliberately misquote by only providing a small portion of his response.
The full quote:

“Dessler: So what does a satellite actually measure? A satellite doesn’t measure temperature: it measures radiance, which means it measures basically photons of energy that the atmosphere is emitting: in fact, what it really measures is a voltage on some detector, and from that it has to infer radiance, which is these photons, you know, that are coming out of the atmosophere{sic}.”

I highlighted that small “in fact” portion of the quote you chose to ignore. Walt D, correctly rephrased what Dessler did state.
The old thermometer measurements that NOAA in it’s many regressive forms just loves to adjust, and adjust ad nauseam, until those NOAA practitioners of data inquisition achieve their goals.
Not that NOAA shows any reluctance to torture modern state of the art thermister stations into submission.
From: Real Sciencecomment image?w=500&h=355

co2isnotevil
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 15, 2016 10:54 pm

Schnieder points out one of the misconceptions of consensus climate science, which is the idea that O2 and N2 in the atmosphere contributes to the photons leaving the planet in proportion to their kinetic temperature. In the clear sky, the photons arriving at the satellite sensors come from only 2 sources. One are surface BB emissions passing through the transparent portions of the spectrum and the other are surface emissions delayed by GHG’s. In the cloudy sky, fewer surface emissions pass through and the predominate emitter becomes the water in clouds, which generally emit at a temperature lower than the surface and is why clouds appear colder in IR imagery. And of course, some of the emissions by the water in clouds is subject to the same delay arising from GHG’s. In fact, even emissions by the water in clouds can also be equivalently modelled as delayed surface emissions owing to the tight thermodynamic coupling between the water in clouds and the water in the oceans, which are the predominate source of surface emissions.
This is connected to another false idea which is that GHG absorption directly increases the kinetic temperature of the O2 and N2 in the atmosphere via collisions. From a Quantum Mechanical perspective, collisional broadening spreads across both sides of a lines resonant frequency where there is a probability that a small amount of photon energy will be converted into kinetic energy and and equal probability to convert the same amount of kinetic energy into photon energy. Measuring temperatures just adds confusion because both photons and molecules in motion are detected by conventional temperature sensors, yet only photons contribute to the radiative balance of the planet.

Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 16, 2016 4:28 am

Nick Stokes, If you have a problem with honest science and scientists because of your belief system, and, can not tell truth from propaganda, I would suggest deprogramming.
You add nothing to the debate except that you are a serial pest.

Simon
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 16, 2016 11:12 am

wayne Job
“Nick Stokes, If you have a problem with honest science and scientists because of your belief system, and, can not tell truth from propaganda, I would suggest deprogramming.
You add nothing to the debate except that you are a serial pest.”
Sorry but that is unfair and rather childish. Nick is very patient in stating the facts as they are or as he sees them. If you disagree with what he is saying then tell him why. Don’t just sit there throwing stones. Be a grown up and play the ball not the man.

January 15, 2016 2:10 pm

If the satellites are wrong because they’ve been “adjusted” and they don’t deny that the surface station data has been “adjusted” then why the “war on coal”?
Just because “The Storm Channel” calls some Arctic air moving into the Midwest an “Arctic Invasion” doesn’t mean Man keeping warm caused it.

Follow the Money
January 15, 2016 2:14 pm

This video is itself tainted with graphic fraud. It’s hilarious in its hypocrisy.
Look at the screen grab of the graph above with the red line, in relation to testimony:
If you take up that top really big spike and you take that out you start getting the upward bias. And this is what people do when you start looking at these relatively arbitrary times,
Look at the red line. It stops at 2011. More devious, the purported “Cruz” graph itself is cropped two or three years. Look at the text of the graph, seriously truncated.
Problems:
1. Red line stops at 2011. Precluding at least a year upon the screen grab.
2. Reproduction of graph blatantly crops its years 2012-2014 or 2015.
3. Red line does not include 1998 el Nino, true, but also crops 1997 lower temps.
I suspect there is no or very little incline from 1999 to 2014 or 2015 in this data set. That is why the Yale peeps are committing this graphic chicanery. It seems to be their original video trick, not from the testifier. Or did the testifier present such a line?
I would like much to see someone take this particular point on—graphically. It’s blatant hiding. Thanks.

Follow the Money
Reply to  Follow the Money
January 15, 2016 2:52 pm

More, the video graph is a precise reproduction of the Cruz graph, as posted elsewhere above. That graph shows data to almost the end of 2015. Therefore, the Yale truncated reproduction of the graph about four years of data represented, ie., Five years missing from the end of Yale’s red line.
The underlying graph represents data from 1997 to the end of 2015. The Yale red line only a linear trend of the data from 1999 to the end of 2010. How is Yale’s conduct here anything but “arbitrary?” The truncation of the original graph is in the area of fraud in my opinion.

January 15, 2016 2:27 pm

the agw issue has to do not with temperature but with the relationship between fossil fuel emissions and temperature.
https://youtu.be/vUvLoE5v0yQ

Aphan
Reply to  Jamal Munshi
January 15, 2016 3:00 pm

Jamal Munshi-
“the agw issue has to do not with temperature but with the relationship between fossil fuel emissions and temperature.”
If there has been no significant increase in temperatures at the same time there has been a significant increase in fossil fuel emissions, then there IS NO significant RELATIONSHIP between fossil fuel emissions and temperature. Correlation does not establish causation, so even if there is a perfect correlation between two things, it does not, and cannot, prove a “causal” relationship exists.

Reply to  Aphan
January 15, 2016 10:04 pm

Even worse, there is no objective way to tell which is the cause and which is the effect.

Brian H
Reply to  Jamal Munshi
January 17, 2016 10:19 pm

It can show lack of such causality quite decisively, however. “No causation without correlation.

January 15, 2016 2:28 pm

Oh My! There are 1305 registered satellites in space as of 9-1-15. We depend on them for critical information using similar technologies as the temperature satellites. We use the data from them for communications, earth observations, navigation, earth and space science, etc.
Scientists use satellites for sea level measurements, weather, ice mass, ice extent, ocean temperature, global positioning, many military and commercial purposes, etc. etc.
So, are all these satellites using similar technology lying? I don’t think so.

Curious George
Reply to  Dale Hartz
January 15, 2016 6:06 pm

We should immediately get rid of all satellites. A satellite launch is even worse for the environment than jet travel.

January 15, 2016 2:49 pm

And we would have got away with it if it wasn’t for those pesky satellites.

Reply to  Jimmy Haigh
January 15, 2016 3:59 pm

You bunch of meddling kids!

AndyG55
Reply to  Jimmy Haigh
January 15, 2016 7:29 pm

They put up the satellites, and apart from the 1998 El Nino, the world stopped warming.
They set up USCRN, and the USA stopped warming.
They sent up the CO2 satellite, and the co2 high levels are mostly away from industrial areas.
Every evenly-space, unadjusted, reliable measurement system makes a total mess of the AGW farce.

Reply to  AndyG55
January 16, 2016 9:41 am

What the OCO2 satellite shows is that there are regions that are seasonally either CO2 sources or CO2 sinks, such as the northern extratropical forests. The northern extratropical forests sink huge amounts of CO2 from mid May to the end of summer (CO2 there changes from high to low), and resource that CO2 from fall to early May (CO2 there changes from low to high). This shows up in the annual squiggle of CO2 measurements at Mauna Loa. The seasonal sourcing/sinking of the northern forests is at a higher rate than anthropogenic CO2 emissions – but seasonally oscillating essentially equally in both directions. For global atmospheric CO2 year-in year-out, nature has as a net effect been removing CO2 from the atmosphere since 1959.

Bartemis
Reply to  AndyG55
January 17, 2016 10:58 am

“…but seasonally oscillating essentially equally in both directions…”
There is no evidence for this. It is merely asserted.
“For global atmospheric CO2 year-in year-out, nature has as a net effect been removing CO2 from the atmosphere since 1959.”
Has no impact on the argument for attribution.

son of mulder
January 15, 2016 2:50 pm

The pause is calculated back from the present ie to see how far back can one go from today before you get a statistically significant positive global temperature trend?
The Satelites agree with balloons (radiosonde) data. Confirmation or coincidence?
There are 5 standards of surface measurement from 1/2 (good) and 3/4/5 (poor). They disagree with each other and with the satelite and radiosonde data and trends.
They said none of this in the video.

Aphan
January 15, 2016 2:52 pm

(Science Teacher to a 6th grade class after showing the above Climateers video-)
“Boys and girls, do you remember our recent lessons on how using temperature anomalies to measure temperature changes is the least accurate way, and often used DECEPTIVELY, to represent actual temperature increases on a graph?”
Class: “Yes”.
Teacher-“And what did the ALL of the graphs in the video, including the 4 graphs referred to by Dr. Mann specifically, use to represent temperature changes?”
Class-“Anomalies”
Teacher- “Correct. Now, according to all of the scientists in the video, the anomaly data used by the RSS scientists is even LESS accurate than the anomaly data used by GISS, HadCRUT4, Japan Met etc because the data collected by the RSS scientists wasn’t adjusted to correct for friction and drop rates. Let’s look at how poorly the RSS data performs against all of the other satellite data” (shows graph linked to below)comment image
Teacher-“Class, based on the information from all 4 satellite sources used in that graph, would ANY graph tracking the past 18+ years of satellite data using ANY of the satellite sources produce a warming trend over the past 18+ years? ”
Class- “Nope”.
Teacher-“Correct. So if the RSS data is bad, and it’s trends almost match the others, then the GISS data is bad, the HadCRUT4 data is bad, and the UAH data is bad too.”
“Since Dr. Mann seems to have a lot of faith in the actual land/surface temperature anomalies, tomorrow we’re going to discuss how accurate the surface temperature data really is. We will compare surface temperature anomalies to actual temperature readings taken from surface stations, and then we will examine how Mr. Anthony Watts spent years collecting photos of the land surface stations, and recently wrote a terrific paper that proves that the majority of our land temp stations are cited too poorly to record temperatures accurately. “

David S
January 15, 2016 2:57 pm

I think when it comes to reliability of data that tree rings would be a good substitute for satellite data that sounds like progress.

son of mulder
Reply to  David S
January 15, 2016 3:25 pm

I’ve been using records, old 78’s showed it was colder before 45’s which were colder than 33s. However relatively modern technology like CD’s and Blu-ray DVD’s are useless for temperature measurement.

Aphan
Reply to  son of mulder
January 15, 2016 4:05 pm

LOL! som….you made me laugh outloud.

January 15, 2016 3:17 pm

Satellites are relied upon to measure such things as sea level rise and sea ice thickness. There are satellites currently orbiting and returning huge amounts of useful data from Mars and Saturn. Many other past orbiter missions to many of the solar system bodies, including the New Horizons mission to Pluto, have been regarded as hugely successful. Satellites have made, are making, and will make countless measurements that improve our understanding of our Solar System.
But somehow these guys have decided that satellites just simply cannot be relied upon to measure the temperature of the lower troposphere accurately. I’m sure that comes as a disappointment to the thousands of engineers who build the satellites, and to the thousands of scientists who have used the volumous results from countless satellite missions for their research.

Aphan
Reply to  nhill
January 15, 2016 5:24 pm

“I’m sure that comes as a disappointment to the thousands of engineers who build the satellites, and to the thousands of scientists who have used the volumous results from countless satellite missions for their research.”
Why? Those thousands of engineers and scientists should only be disappointed in ONE THING-the inability of these desk monkeys to know their headwinds from their asteroids! Those thousands of engineers and scientists need to be SHOWN this video so they can collectively rise and ridicule every single “climate scientist” who agrees with them in any way. If they don’t, THAT will come as a disappointment to the hundreds of MILLIONS of people on this planet that paid for all that research and data in the first place.

Reply to  Aphan
January 17, 2016 12:38 am

I for one, who helped develop the instruments flown on the RSS satellites, have seen this video. Carl Mears was in High School while I was busily hanging my @ss out over the void helping NOAA make them work and I’d like to meet Carl someday out behind the hangar for a few choice words…

FTOP_T
January 15, 2016 3:24 pm

Last year when Boston was buried in 100+ inches of snow, Trenberth and Mann were both quoted in WaPo claiming that the record snowfall was the result of warm water in the Atlantic increasing the moisture in the air, i.e., wet snow.
Actual scientists melted the snow measuring the water content and determined it was normal precipitation but the extreme cold caused amplification (see chart http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/what-are-snow-ratios/4786333) to roughly a 30 to 1 ratio.
Climate scientists that don’t understand snow should be laughed out of every venue they show up at.
How their peers allow these two to still sit at the forefront of this “movement” is beyond belief. They discredit themselves every time they step forward. Bizarre.

Aphan
Reply to  FTOP_T
January 15, 2016 5:30 pm

The point there is WHY are their peers allowing these two to discredit the entire field without saying something about it?

Felflames
Reply to  Aphan
January 15, 2016 7:33 pm

Human shields.
The ones standing behind have a better chance of slinking away unnoticed when it all collapses if they haven’t drawn attention to themselves.

FTOP_T
Reply to  Aphan
January 15, 2016 8:38 pm

Felflames, good point. The petty thieves don’t get much scrutiny when the Madoff’s are stealing millions/billions

January 15, 2016 3:33 pm

They did quite a hatchet job on Spencer in that video – focusing the camera below his face, showing him talking without voice, with time lapse motion, then suddenly adding voice etc., trying to make him look threatening and unhinged. Yale should be very ashamed to have their name associated with such blatant, primitive propaganda tricks

Dawtgtomis
Reply to  Michael Palmer
January 15, 2016 4:41 pm

People are not taught to recognise thing like propaganda anymore. That is why “spin” has been so effective since the progressives took hold of education and removed critical thought training from curricula. We have gone through the post cold war years in free societies thinking “c0mmunism can’t happen to us”, but we don’t seem to recognize the agenda behind the “war on climate change”.

Aphan
Reply to  Dawtgtomis
January 15, 2016 5:01 pm

Dawtgtomis-
“People are not taught to recognise thing like propaganda anymore. That is why “spin” has been so effective since the progressives took hold of education and removed critical thought training from curricula. We have gone through the post cold war years in free societies thinking “c0mmunism can’t happen to us”, but we don’t seem to recognize the agenda behind the “war on climate change”.
I disagree. I think that is EXACTLY why the older the group of people involved in a survey is, the more they reject AGW theory. I think they DO recognize propaganda outright because they were kids when the communists tried before. And their parents talked about it all the time, they learned to see it as children. Some of them have taught their own kids (us) how to recognize it too. And some of them dropped the ball and didn’t teach their kids (others). If we don’t keep that ability alive, it will soon be gone. But I think it’s the very reason that Americans aren’t buying into the AGW scare…it’s been sold to them using propaganda.

Doonman
Reply to  Dawtgtomis
January 15, 2016 11:52 pm

When ever anyone tells me I must act now before its too late and the act I must perform involves opening my wallet, I already know that’s a scam.

Dawtgtomis
January 15, 2016 3:51 pm

Does anybody remember how many ‘excuses for the pause’ this makes?

Bruce Cobb
Reply to  Dawtgtomis
January 15, 2016 3:56 pm

I think it’s about 68. The funny thing is, when they aren’t busy making up excuses for it, they are instead busy denying it exists. I guess they can’t make up their minds.

Reply to  Bruce Cobb
January 15, 2016 4:24 pm

BC, good observation. Plus many.

Reply to  Bruce Cobb
January 15, 2016 6:45 pm

From Wikipedia, on “Alternative pleading:”
“Say you sue me because you say my dog bit you. Well, now this is my defense: My dog doesn’t bite. And second, in the alternative, my dog was tied up that night. And third, I don’t believe you really got bit. And fourth, I don’t have a dog.”

Proud Skeptic
January 15, 2016 4:54 pm

I’m no expert but I have begun to wonder if we can measure the temperature of the Earth at all…or at least to the degree of accuracy that is being advertised.
Kind of important to be able to do this, huh?

Latitude
Reply to  Proud Skeptic
January 15, 2016 5:38 pm

nope….

Latitude
Reply to  Proud Skeptic
January 15, 2016 5:40 pm

yes…sorta important…but no where near important enough to care about 1/10 degrees

Derek Colman
January 15, 2016 5:35 pm

These self appointed climate gurus seem to have overlooked that the radiosonde data are in approximate agreement with the satellite data, at least as far as the pause goes. You can’t blame that on orbital shift.

MikeN
January 15, 2016 6:07 pm

Wasn’t Dessler’s last submission to GRL heavily corrected by Roy Spencer?

January 15, 2016 6:13 pm

I looked at the video and found that they are pushing false global temperature data. To start with, Michael Mann shows an AR5 global temperature curve fleetingly in the beginning. I stopped the action and saw that his temperature curve for the eighties and nineties indicates warming when in fact there was no warming for 18 years, from 1979 to 1997. That makes this time period a hiatus, just as long as the present 21st century hiatus is. You don’t see it because the ground-based temperature consortium, in this case GISS, NCDC, and HadCRUT3, took it upon themselves to cover up the hiatus with a fake warming called “late twentieth century warming.” Fortunately they still do not control the satellites and the hiatus is shown accurately in satellite temperature curves. I am not even the only one who has noticed this particular hiatus. Fred Singer noticed it too and lord Monckton calls it a “Singer event” because of that. To deny an observable fact in science is an out and out psudo-scientific trick. But then, he already got his pseudo-science credentials by cherry-picking temperatures that give an imaginary shape to his own temperature curves. And Admiral David Titley, Ph.D., is another one who makes weird suggestions in order to downplay an existing hiatus. In this case he claims that if you do not include the super El Nino of 1998 as part of the twenty-first century hiatus the the rest of the data that belong to the hiatus will have an upward, warming slope, indicating warming. He even shows this warming curve.. Unfortunately for him it is worthless because I checked those data and they do not have an ipward slope but a downward slope of a tenth of a degree for the decade from 2002 to 2012 I suggest that he read the first four chapters in my book before attempting to interpret any mire temperature data. And since we are dealing with hiatuses here let us remember that the greenhouse effect does not work during a hiatus. This means that the length of the hiatus must be subtracted from the total length of temperature curves that aretheoretically eligible for creating greenhouse warming.

Richard M
January 15, 2016 6:30 pm

Well, at least this little exercise helped me confirm my understanding of the issues. As I went through the transcript I was able to easily point out exactly how they were being dishonest. The comments above reaffirm most of what I saw.
This video could be turned into an own goal. Produce a new video that uses this video with regular breaks where the outright deceptions are noted. Put it up on youtube and have skeptic sites reference it constantly. Get it on Fox News as well.
Let their own lies be the source of their downfall.

Richard M
January 15, 2016 6:43 pm

It is becoming very important to get the new Watts et al paper published. It helps refute this kind of propaganda very effectively. However, until it is published it will just be ignored.

January 15, 2016 7:21 pm

Looks like Cruz and Smith has a number of CAGW devotees that can be invited to their hearings.
To answer questions about their ‘expertise’ on satellite and ground temperature measurements. Should be very enlightening.
Maybe Spencer could ask the questions?

TedM
January 15, 2016 7:43 pm

Could hardly understand a word of it because of the offensively loud music in the background.

madmikedavies
January 15, 2016 7:48 pm

Did anybody else notice Carl Mears body language, he didn’t believe what he was saying and appeared under duress

Reply to  madmikedavies
January 17, 2016 12:18 am

Maybe duress in general, but more specifically he just looked like he was lying to me. So did the rest of them. That creates stress and I expect he knows one day this will all come crashing down on him and destroy what’s left of his reputation, or maybe he’ll just turn into a raving old fart like Hansen has. Either way, it’s got to be difficult, there’s no chance it won’t come out and he must know that.

madmikedavies
January 15, 2016 7:51 pm

He should be the weakest link Cruz should call him to congress

January 15, 2016 7:55 pm

“It doesn’t matter how reliable your instruments, it doesn’t matter how good they are, if they disagree with theory, they’re wrong”
– with apologies to Richard Feynman

Reply to  TonyG
January 15, 2016 10:14 pm

Sarcasm is a low form of humor.

Reply to  Dan Pangburn
January 17, 2016 12:28 am

Humor is a measure of taste, wit a measure of intelligence 🙂

Janice Moore
Reply to  TonyG
January 16, 2016 8:46 am

LOL, Tony G 🙂 — wit with a point!
(@ Dan P.: jealousy is an ugly thing)

January 15, 2016 10:01 pm

Figure 7 of:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2015/04/version-6-0-of-the-uah-temperature-dataset-released-new-lt-trend-0-11-cdecade/
indicates that the surface-adjacent part of the lower troposphere warmed since 1979 by .02, maybe .03 degree/decade more than the satellite-measured lower troposphere did.
I think much of this was because decrease of ice and snow cover in areas with lack of convection when iced/snowed caused the surface to warm. The average lapse rate increased in the lowest 1-1.5 or so km of the troposphere.
Or, can someone say what percentage of radiosondes are launched in urban heat islands that are big enough to affect the air a few hundred meters up and that have grown significantly since 1979?

January 15, 2016 10:59 pm

I didn’t watch the video, just read the transcript, and wow is that a lot of half truths all strung together. The problem with half truths is that it takes considerably more work to refute them than outright lies rwquire.
Perhaps the most telling half truth was the manner in which the satellite data was called into question. First they yap on about arbitrary end points as if these were cherry picked. They aren’t. Monckton’s regular column points out that they are calculated from the present working backward to the longest period of time with a zero trend. But in fact even THAT is not a correct rebuttal.
The arbitrary end points were first defined by none other than Phil Jones of the CRU who stated that a pause of 10 years or more would falsify the models and then Santer did another study and said it was actually 15 years and then he did ANOTHER study and said it would be 17 years…So the interval to falsify the models was DEFINED by Santer, it isn’t cherry picking or arbitrary at all, it is just pointing out that the more current 18+ years meets THEIR definition for falsifying THEIR models.
Sadder still is the hand waving by Dessler and cohorts babbling on about they don’t measure temperature, they measure photons that come from who knows where and hit a detector that converts to temperature and they’ve had to adjust them four times! FOUR! First he described the process in such a way as to make it indistinguishable from magic, then he questions the accuracy while ignoring the improved calibration results of those adjustments and ignoring the adjustments to the land based temperatures which by now are too many to count. Four, hah!
This is a video put together by people who are adept at misleading, and to do that, you have to have sound knowledge of what you are trying to discredit. In other words, they know what they do and I do not forgive them.

richardscourtney
Reply to  davidmhoffer
January 16, 2016 12:03 am

davidmhoffer:
Thankyou for that superb summary which – in my opinion is worthy of being elevated to a head post.
Richard

Reply to  davidmhoffer
January 16, 2016 2:09 am

Indeed….my biggest irritation with the video and the recent Cruz lead congressional session is hat the point was not made that in order to avoid cheery picking of start points you star from the right hand side of the graph and work backwards in order to answer the question; “how far back can you go before you get a trend significantly different from 0.”
This avoids the cheery-picking accusation. And the point that there was a large El Niño skewing the results is offset by the subsequent La Niña, something that is often not pointed out.

Reply to  agnostic2015
January 17, 2016 12:53 am

They also neglected to mention the left side of the graph doesn’t start during the ’98 El Nino, but a year before it, which makes the entire bit about starting the measure at a high point a flat out lie.

Richard M
Reply to  davidmhoffer
January 16, 2016 7:27 am

Skeptics need to use this video to prove beyond any doubt that AGW promoting scientists are dishonest. The media is likely to use this video far and wide. Skeptics need a rebuttal video of the form I mention above. In fact, it would be nice for Dr. Spencer et al to have Lawyer send letters to the various scientists asking for a published retraction of some of their statements with an implied libel suit. The entire part where Spencer and Christy are attacked is completely dishonest and easily proven.
I mean, it’s an Emily Litella moment. They go on and on about the scientists track record and then admit the data being used by Cruz comes from RSS. How silly is that? It’s like attacking Einstein for his “God doesn’t play dice” remark and claiming that calls into question all of his other work and the work of anyone who has used his work. Does that make any sense at all.
The claims of cherry picking are also hilarious. The only way to cherry pick temperature data (ignoring volcanoes) is to start a trend or end a trend where you use just half of an El Nino – La Nina pair. If you include both events they usually cancel each other out. This can be easily seen in the pause data by comparing the trend right after the complete ENSO period. The trend is actually more downward if you do this. Including the ENSO data actually makes the trend more upward.
So, what do they do next? They show Titley’s chart that precisely cherry picks only the 1999 La Nina as the starting point and ends with only the 2010 El Nino leaving out the other half of both events. An example of exactly what they stated was wrong.

Richard M
Reply to  davidmhoffer
January 16, 2016 7:42 am

The reason for this video is clear. If you look at Santer et al 2011 you clearly see they define 17 years without any warming as a falsification criteria (95% criteria) for AGW as it is currently defined. The pause of over 17 years has met this criteria and then some. A skeptic video would highlight that the peer reviewed paper authors include both Santer and Mears. The video could include a nice except from the Feynman lectures where he concludes “if it does not agree with experimentation, it is wrong”. After all, the pause is clearly an experiment and the theory as defined by climate models has clearly been shown to be wrong.
This propaganda video is absolutely priceless material for skeptics. We need a video production guru to set this up . We could probably crowd source the material used in the rebuttal video. I would be more than willing to help fund the effort as I’m sure others would.

Reply to  Richard M
January 17, 2016 1:04 am

I have a video production studio and I do documentary film. I’d be happy to donate my equipment and time but there’s a much more talented producer named J. D. King (Vicebear – Cold Hard Truth Never Melts, Blue) that I’d recommend as a better choice. I’m vying for position as an associate producer on his most recent effort, I can’t make a higher recommendation than that. He’d eat these people for lunch.

Reply to  Richard M
January 17, 2016 1:11 am

He’d. Sort of takes the punch out of the line though doesn’t it?

Reply to  Richard M
January 17, 2016 7:37 am

I don’t have a studio but I have experience producing/directing. I also know a little something about crowdfunding. If there are enough people interested I would be happy to help.
Attn Mods: feel free to forward my email info to any serious inquiries on this.

Reply to  davidmhoffer
January 16, 2016 8:38 pm

Their repeated refusal to accept the falsification of their hypothesis is atrocious, an absolute insult to the institution of science — their complete abandonment of the principles of scientific objectivity has turned cautious evidence-based policymaking into baldfaced policy-based evidencemaking.
Science cannot progress under these circumstances, they are taking billions of taxpayer dollars and turning us back into superstitious pre-industrial mystics, unable to offend the priesthoods they serve.
For shame.

Reply to  talldave2
January 17, 2016 1:14 am

TallDave writes: “they are taking billions of taxpayer dollars and turning us back into superstitious pre-industrial mystics”
For me, the “tell”, the real panty dropper, was when they signed up the Pope. After that, it was all bad with no hope of ever getting any better.
It really is game time now. If these folks aren’t stopped, our next exit is the collapse of the Roman Empire. It gets very ugly after this.

RoyFOMR
January 16, 2016 5:54 am

Time, methinks, for NASA to get out of satellites and all that spacey stuff, employ some glassblowers and start making thermometers.
Could be a bit tricky deciding upon what to fill them with; mercury, being toxic, is a no-no while alcohol may upset certain religious sensitivities but, in time, they should be able to crack that problem.
Onwards and UPWARDS ( as per modern temperature records!)

3x2
January 16, 2016 7:31 am

So in addition to conveniently finding that long lost global warming down the back of a filing cabinet just in time for Paris they now set about questioning the reliability of the only sanity checks we have?
It must really sting that they are largely confined to ‘homogenizing’ the pre-satellite era. Can’t have that now can we?.
These people really don’t care what they do to Science in the name of promoting the ’cause’.
At least now I know what well funded climate denial looks like.

Reply to  3x2
January 16, 2016 8:53 am

At least now I know what well funded climate denial looks like.
If corruption of science is justified for a greater cause we are on a dangerous road. I hope it’s not true, but in any case it doesn’t hurt to demand what’s up people’s sleeves. They should have plotted an IPCC model mean hockey stick against the 37-year satellite plot. Then they should have zoomed out to the 1000-year hockey stick and had Mann come back and answer some questions. After all, Mears said the further back one looks the more accurate the picture.

CheshireRed
January 16, 2016 10:05 am

Santer’s 17 years to falsify AGW is also a disastrous own goal for alarmists. What a shambles the whole charade is, yet so far they escape justice. It will catch up with them eventually.

Jabrium TM
January 16, 2016 2:16 pm

There are two types of pseudoscience, distinguishable by the following assumptions:
1) Valid science is indicated by consensus
2) Valid science is obvious
The first tends to be associated with people who are politically liberal.
The second tends to be associate with people who are politically conservative.
Very often these two groups are at odds with each other on a particular issue. But when it comes to undermining the credibility of science they play for the same team.
About ten years ago I confronted the “settled science” of global warming. My examination revealed it as plainly inept. That brought me to wonder if there were not other, deeper, ineptitudes. I found myself examining the foundational assumptions of meteorology and, deeper still, core issues regarding the physical chemistry of H2O. And then I made a discovery:
BREAKTHROUGH: Hydrogen Bonding as The Mechanism That Neutralizes H2O Polarity
https://goo.gl/Hrb6Sb

January 16, 2016 2:57 pm

They should throw out all data, agree on a single method of measurement that does not require adjustments and start over. This is wild guesses substituting for real data. No one knows, or even cares, as far as can be seen, whether the data is adjusted or made-up (they call it “interpolation”) as long as it shows what they want to find. However, the data is so bad I cannot see how any legitimate scientist can use the data. Different instruments, proxies up the eyeballs, conjectures at past climates and then claiming you can tell the average temperature of the globe has increased by .02 degrees. It’s simply insanity. Yes, there will be occasional adjustments, done at the time of the reading or soon thereafter, but when adjustments become the data, science has ceased to exist in any of this.

Reply to  Reality check
January 16, 2016 11:05 pm

However, the data is so bad I cannot see how any legitimate scientist can use the data.

Either because they’re idiots, or it’s intentional.
The proof is in the data that the change in Co2 isn’t causing any measurable increase in temperatures.

Reply to  micro6500
January 17, 2016 1:24 am

And of course real idiots wouldn’t be clever enough to lie this well.

January 16, 2016 5:32 pm

If regulations are passed then our pockets are picked clean the average temperature of Earth will decline…in fifteen years?

January 16, 2016 8:28 pm

Look at the proxies.
We had record Great Lakes ice extent over a few recent years. The raw data says these years were much colder than average. The adjusted data says they were close to average.
CO2 does not affect the melting point of ice.
This is something we need to harp on: it’s irrefutable, easy enough for anyone to understand, and trivial to replicate.

January 16, 2016 8:30 pm

Note — I am talking about Great Lakes temperatures above, not global or US temperatures. The AGW promoters are literally claiming Great Lakes ice coverage is not driven by Great Lakes temperature.
Indefensible and this point should be shoved into their flaccid defenses often and vigorously.

Reply to  talldave2
January 17, 2016 1:27 am

Dave are you suggesting the people get the government they deserve? Good and hard?
— Apologies to H. L. Mencken

Matt
January 16, 2016 8:58 pm

I took a picture from my father’s news paper article collection (he does not do internet), from a letter to the editor by a scientist to German FAZ news paper:
It also talks about adjustments. The good Dr says:
There are 0.038% CO2 in the air.
Out of that, 96% is produced by nature, 4% by humans.
So those 4% CO2 are 0.00152% of the entire atmosphere.
Germany’s contribution to the human made CO2 is 3.1%.
Therefore, Germany’s influence with CO2 on the atmosphere is 0.00004712%
He says: “with that, we (the Germans) want to take a lead role in the world. That costs us 50 billion (Euros) in taxes.”
Now, the adjustments I am talking about are of course those to our tax bill – can you explain that? Because the few percent we want to knock off of our CO2 output of that already minuscule contribution make literally no difference, have no effect – and that costs 50 BILLION every YEAR. See, nobody denies climate change, not even Monckton – so please stop already calling people deniers. It is a straw man. People are questioning the efficacy of what you are doing with all the money… so now, please explain that adjustment to me.

January 16, 2016 9:10 pm

After seeing that cover picture so many times, had to scroll down and comment that it reminds me of effusive production of a certain barnyard greenhouse gas.

January 16, 2016 10:59 pm

Riiight. Because we all know how reliable their preferred surface temperature measurements are

Except, the surface measurements do show there is no warming because of a loss of night time cooling. And they do so since 1940.
If there really is warming (the majority from land use changes (just measure asphalt and nearby grass on a sunny day with an IR thermometer), it’s because things got warmer, but it’s not because of Co2.
Everything else done with surface temps is trash or intentional obfuscation.
Everything needed to provide proof of this is in this document.
https://micro6500blog.wordpress.com/2015/11/18/evidence-against-warming-from-carbon-dioxide/
Don’t take my word, I’ve made the code and all of the resultant processed data available in links in the url.
Many of you quibble over the same nonsense for years, years.
Feel free to prove me wrong, by showing all of the lines of evidence I provide are somehow wrong.
Mosh has blamed it on that I don’t normalize station weights, but don’t look at my results as a global average, it isn’t. Mosh think just saying it’s wrong somehow makes him right, it doesn’t.
It’s an average of the derivative (as well as anomalies) from multiple points over some defined area. I do multiple different sized areas, including global, but I do as small as 1 degree by 1 degree as well.
Lastly some areas in the larger analysis areas are “over represented”, but that is only because with more stations in a single area we know the uncertainty of that area better than other less sampled areas, and isn’t that how it should be?
Or you can keep arguing over the same stuff for a few more years…………

Reply to  micro6500
January 17, 2016 1:40 am

Ya know Micro? I’d just like to say that for my part, the science is settled. The debate is over. I’d like to go home and raise cattle now. There’s no catastrophic anthropogenic global warming and I wish I’d never learned to spell anthropogenic. My spell checker can’t even spell anthropogenic. Whatever happened to real threats? Nazis? Nuclear War? Toenail fungus? I’d just like to rest now. My adrenals are finished, I don’t even think I could survive another soft core beer commercial…

Reply to  Bartleby
January 17, 2016 1:42 am

And for that outrageous rant, I had to await moderation. What in god’s name has the world come to?

Reply to  Bartleby
January 17, 2016 1:53 am

Seems the post in moderation disappeared. So I only got part of it in email, butI too would just as soon let the science work it’s way forward.
Except the morons got in bed with those wanting to revert the world, at least for normal people back to the 19th century. And that just annoys me.
If I wanted to live like a hippy in a commune, I’d have joined one out of High School, I want the world of the Jetson’s, not the flintstones.

Reply to  Bartleby
January 17, 2016 1:53 am

there it is….
[micro & Bartleby, sorry about the delay. WordPress puts some comments into moderation hold. They’re approved now. Keep on keeping on… -mod]

Jake Rock
January 17, 2016 12:10 am

One criticism of the satellites made by Sinclair is that they show cooling because they start off “measuring at 2 in the afternoon in a few years was measuring at 6 in the evening.” I do not understand what he is talking about, but in any case, if there is such a place there should also be one where they start off at 8 AM and end up at 12 noon. THAT would show HEATING. Since it circles the whole Earth, his argument would cancel out giving zero effect to first order.
It’s sad to see the name Yale associated with this thing. It’s ad homenin and the technical arguments are weak. However, I am not sure it will catch up with them. More and more people are believing this drivel and look at Paul Ehrlich: a big Stanford prof even after being spectacularly wrong.

Armst
January 17, 2016 2:44 am

None of the [… ‘BS’] above matters one bit. not the math, not the science, not the statistical analysis, not the data – corrupted or not….
What does matter is the corruption, greed, and lying of these so called climate change scientists, the UN, governments and pols and bureaucrats. Lets face it you all have been caught lying, stealing, cheating over and over again in so many ways and so many places….avoid salt, use salt, avoid eggs, eat eggs….water is safe, water is unsafe, climate change is bad….[snip] you cant predict the weather in three days let alone in 10, 50 or 100 years.
This is about money, power, control. Go fuck yourselves….the day the world falls apart….I suggest you run and hide….you will be held to account.

January 17, 2016 7:30 am

If I understand this correctly, these nonexperts in satellites are saying that for 20 years the experts in satellites were wrong and that these Climate Scientists, Not Satellite Experts, are suddenly smarter and better than the experts in the field and we should listen to them. Wasn’t that why they said doubters were wrong—they weren’t experts? So, if I follow this correctly, a bunch of guys who demand peer-reviewed articles by experts in the field are asking us to believe them, the nonexperts, because they know best? So now we can believe the doubters, too, it seems, because they may know best.

Reply to  Reality check
January 17, 2016 10:28 am

I don’t think Carl Mears qualifies as a non-expert. He produces the RSS of which Lord M is so fond.

Pamela Gray
January 17, 2016 8:36 am

Hmmmm. Words thrown carelessly may come back round and bite the ass of the thrower hard enough to make them shut up. One must carefully approach criticism of research published by colleagues. Yes, one may say “mistake”. Yes, one may say “statistical issues”. Yes, one may say the data does not support the conclusion because of this or that. Yes, you may say that correctly done research in the past is now wrong. But to say that another researcher has lied? That would be libel that will end in court. Two results happen. One, the accusation appears to be valid and research articles are removed, along with even a license to practice. Two, the accusation appears to be not valid and coinage is exchanged.
So, question. Did one or more of these climate scientists accuse another scientist of lying about the satellite data? If so this thread needs to explore that.

January 17, 2016 9:55 am

It looks like Peter Sinclair (AKA Greenman Studio) is the Lili Riefenstahl of the Turd Reich, creating videos that inspire people to viscerally dislike anyone who doesn’t believe malicious disinformation in the service of decarbonization is morally justified.
Is there no copyright restriction against cutting and pasting congressional videos for propaganda purposes?
Some might think it somewhat hypocritical that the video is apparently funded by Jeremy Grantham’s hedge fund, 2015 stock assets of which included over $1B in Philip Morris and $400M in Chevron and Suncor.

Eyes Wide
January 17, 2016 10:35 am

Carl Mears is in a real pickle. His fellow alarmist climate scientist buddies are basically calling all his work total shite but instead of telling these bozos to go F! themselves his ideology forces him to deflect by giving the usual disingenuous answer about the 1998 El Nino driving the pause while completely ignoring the impacts of the La Nina periods just before and after the 1998 upwards spike. The actual total effect over this period works against the pause as can be seen by looking at the trend from 2000 onward where it is actually negative!

Steve Garcia
January 17, 2016 12:02 pm

“Dessler: So what does a satellite actually measure? A satellite doesn’t measure temperature: it measures radiance, which means it measures basically photons of energy that the atmosphere is emitting: in fact, what it really measures is a voltage on some detector, and from that it has to infer radiance, which is these photons, you know, that are coming out of the atmosophere. [sic]”
This argument is invalid. It’s the pot calling the kettle black.
So, what does a tree ring measure? Biologists use tree rings as proxies for precipitation. Climatologists claim tree rings as proxies for temps. Which is really invalid – using a single proxy for TWO completely unrelated qualities. You can’t read both out of one proxy.
AND TO BOOT, the tree rings don’t have signs on them that say, “25.4°C”. THOSE have to be manipulated considerably by algorithms in order to generate temperature values.

Reply to  Steve Garcia
January 17, 2016 12:50 pm

Biologists use tree rings as proxies for precipitation. Climatologists claim tree rings as proxies for temps.

When I moved into my current home, that first summer we planted 10 blooming pear and 10 blooming crab apple trees, all the same size, 2 of them within about 25 feet from each other, one of these is about 25% smaller dia of the biggest one, and most are within 5-10% of the biggest. Most are smaller due to reduced water, but the smallest is reduced because of too much water.
All have the same temp and rain, so unless you actually know why the trees are different sizes, tree rings are a rather worthless proxy.

Walt D.
Reply to  micro6500
January 19, 2016 4:53 am

+100

Kristian
January 17, 2016 1:40 pm

This shouldn’t be so hard. Tropospheric temps follow directly from surface temps, and OLR at the ToA follows directly from tropospheric temps:comment image
It’s always been like this. It’s not something that all of a sudden changed abruptly around 2005.
If you for some reason choose not to ‘trust’ the lower two, then you better trust CERES EBAF ToA Ed2.8 …

Kristian
Reply to  Kristian
January 17, 2016 1:45 pm

HadAT2 (radiosondes) vs. UAHv6:comment image
HadAT2 (radiosondes) vs. CERES OLR:comment image

Chris Schoneveld
January 18, 2016 12:47 am

Carl Mears’s critique about starting the trend at the top of the hill (El Niño 1998) doesn’t hold. Let’s pick the trend starting from 2001 until today: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:2001/to:2016/plot/rss/from:2001/to:2016/trend
That trend also shows cooling!

observa
January 18, 2016 2:44 am

Well they would say that when it’s increasingly obvious they can’t rely on Stevenson Screens, now wouldn’t they?
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/turnbull-governments-plan-to-make-cities-cooler-and-greener-20160118-gm8fdz.html

Jason Calley
January 18, 2016 9:22 am

So-called climate science is an odd thing. Apparently, our knowledge of orbital mechanics is so poor that the satellites measuring global temperature can drop an extra kilometer or so each year before anyone even notices — but at the same time, our satellites measuring sea level are in orbits so well documented that we can measure changes of global average sea levels to within a fraction of a millimeter over the course of a year.
Inconceivable! (And yes, I DO know what that word means.)

January 20, 2016 8:14 am

Though there has been no global warming during the pause there has been global warming during the pause. Contradictory conclusions can be drawn from the associated argument as under the definition of “the global warming” that is used in reaching the conclusion of this argument “the global warming” in a given interval of time is multi-valued.

John Whitman
Reply to  Terry Oldberg
January 20, 2016 8:34 am

Terry Oldberg on January 20, 2016 at 8:14 am
– – – – – – – – –
Terry Oldberg,
I would think that ” ‘the global warming’ in a given period” is undefined so can be anything. The problem is not multi-value, rather it is non-identity.
John

co2islife
January 30, 2016 6:28 am

Dr Spenser discusses this Satellite Data Measurements in this Video Clip:
https://youtu.be/QowL2BiGK7o?t=27m25s

co2islife
January 30, 2016 6:30 am

This video clip highlights the corruption of the locating of the temperature stations, and other issues.
https://youtu.be/QowL2BiGK7o?t=24m27s