This was a surprise to me. A previous presentation I made on the issues with the surface temperature record got turned into a video.
From the YouTube description: Anthony Watts, founder and editor at wattsupwiththat.com, explains why the oft-reported surface temperature record is inaccurate, misleading, and an insult to proper science.
Some graphics in this presentation are from Tony Heller from realclimatescience.com
Bonus video:
A few years ago I was interviewed for PBS News Hour, which caused a lot of liberal heads to explode.
My prime realization is this: Within the small range of values where a “global temperature” is defined, fractions of degrees or even several degrees mean the same as ZERO. All discussion of data in such a context of such a small range, then, seems like so much making of mountains out of mole hills by even being discussed AT ALL.
I still have difficulty taking the whole discussion too seriously.
My bad.
Climate Science is the only branch of scientific enquiry completely devoid of error bars.
Who needs error bars when there is no error. Have you not heard, the science is settled and the debate is over.
What’s wrong with the surface temperature record?
The problem with surface AIR temperature record is that it’s not representative of the true surface temperature of the earth. The true surface temperature of the earth needs to take account of the temperature of the ocean abyss if one wants to model climate in its entirety. Since the weight of earth’s air only amounts to the weight of 33 feet of water, and since the ocean abyss is so cold, surface air temperatures are a minor consideration when modeling the true surface. Warming of air is a secondary step in a much more involved process whereby the oceans depths are cooled to an amazing degree. You effectively have temperatures in the depths and world-wide much much colder than what you have at the bottom of the atmosphere. I suspect that the heat flux diagrams that we see badly underestimate the fluxes needed to maintain a cold ocean.
@Joe Kirklin born
Joe.
Exactly what is your position on man made global warming?
By my analysis: it does not exist.
http://breadonthewater.co.za/2018/05/04/which-way-will-the-wind-be-blowing-genesis-41-vs-27/
I was hoping you have done some measurements of your own to convince yourself one way or another.
I’m agnostic about whether it’s really happening. A lot of smart people say it is. But, despite what I said above, I don’t dismiss Tony Heller’s results for the U.S. out of hand, and perhaps you’ve seen something in South Africa not inconsistent with his findings. In any event, I think on balance a little warming would be beneficial, particularly since most of it would occur at night and in the earth’s colder places.
And I think the evidence is overwhelming that, warming aside, increases in carbon-dioxide concentration are beneficial.
I accept that, everything else being equal, increased carbon-dioxide concentration would increase the surface temperature. But I also think there’s not enough evidence to prove it has actually done so in the real world.
Still, I’m no scientist; I don’t really know more about the ultimate question than the guy on the next bar stool.
On the other hand, I remember enough from the compulsory math courses I took a half century ago to know for sure that the Chrisopher Monckton stuff is hokum.
Joe
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/09/18/woods-hole-greenland-ice-melt-linked-to-the-natural-amo-cycle/#comment-2462646
I was still waiting for an answer from markw to my question about what to think of my results?
Perhaps you have an idea on how to explain the difference in global Tmin between nh and sh?
I would be very interested in hearing your opinion.
Any explanation of your observations I might venture would be mere speculation; I have no expertise in that area.
Joe
Thx for your honest answer. FWIW I agree with you on LordM being rather impolite in general discussions or perhaps even suffering from some form of mental disease. I am not a math man so unfortunately I could not help you there. For me, as a chemist, it is clear that the net effect of more CO2 is that of cooling, rather than warming, i.e. deflecting more energy off from earth than trapping it.
Yet, given the reality of the sh cooling and the nh warming, especially concerning Tmin, I would venture that a a reasonable explanation must be that of a re-alignment of earth’s inner core with that of the sun’s magnetic field.
come with me 2 km down into a gold mine here and find out the real elephant in the room.,,,
“FWIW I agree with you on LordM being rather impolite in general discussions or perhaps even suffering from some form of mental disease. I am not a math man so unfortunately I could not help you there.”
But you’re certainly able to help with contradicting yourself, are you not HenryP?
“I agree with you on LordM being rather impolite in general discussions…”
Ah, but the log in your own eye blinds you does it not?
“…or perhaps even suffering from some form of mental disease.”
Or perhaps tripe little snipey remarks like the above aren’t impolite?
“There’s not enough evidence to prove [CO2] has actually [increased the surface temperature] in the real world.”
How much evidence exactly does it take to “prove” that? What are you doing with the evidence that disproves it? If there is any at all, and there is, you are by definition ignoring it, no?
The 30’s Dust Bowl years, the Medieval Warming Period and the Roman Warming Period were all as warm or warmer than now.
That’s evidence to disprove the CAGW theory. This was all accepted and “settled” science before this scientific field was infected and corrupted by politics.
Are you ignoring this, Chris?
How about ANY unequivocal evidence, Craig. Yes, CO2 temporarily absorbs some LWIR- we know that from the lab. Ditto the much more abundant H2O. But what about other agencies that counteract any warming or cooling such as cloud fornation with increased evaporation and convection.
Did you know that the slightly elliptical orbit of the Earth brings it closer to the sun in January and further away 6 months later. The difference is almost 4%, quite significant, yet it majes not a blip in the temperature record. It is fully compensated for by negative feedbacks.
Now lets do a thought experiment in the lab. We set up an incandescent ball with a controlled temperature. We measure temperature moving outward from the ball and discover the distance squared relation. Now we calculate what will happen to global temperature when the earth recedes and approaches the sun at aphelion and perihelion. We then measure global temperature and … oops there was no change detected! Think about that bit of settked science .
The point I was inartfully attempting to make is that saying thing like “There’s not enough evidence to prove…” is avoiding the obvious: that you can collect all the evidence you want “proving” the AGW theory without proving anything while one piece of contradictory evidence disproves it.
Oh well, the bigger they build this house of cards, the bigger the crash.
OT, sorry (except for the common factor of video), but I’m looking out for Day 2 of this story – have I missed it?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/09/13/livestream-rebuttal-to-global-climate-action-summit-in-san-francisco/
Ian
Anthony – decent video. Clarity, simplicity, compactness -all required ingredients for a convincing message. My question if I may: what about margins of error? I would imagine that deriving ‘global’ temperature to the thousandths of Celsius, say, in the end of XIX century from scattered samples leaves rather huge room for speculation and indeed ‘data infilling’.
Data set #1: The same UHSCN temperature data set used by Muller and his confreres.
Data set #2: The set of UHSCN stations that pass the improved quality standard fully described by Leroy (2010).
Methodology: Repeat the analysis performed by Muller and his confreres, only including the Leroy (2010) compliant stations.
Mosher, etc. are technically adults. They should not need to be led by the hand to replicate (or refute) the conclusions of a paper that specifies, by reference, both the data and the methodology.
Writing Observer,
What you said is what I was thinking at a pre-verbal level, but had not reached the point of verbalizing it yet. You saved me that step. Thanks.
Land Surface Air Temperature Data Are Considerably Different Among BEST‐LAND, CRU‐TEM4v, NASA‐GISS, and NOAA‐NCEI
Yuhan Rao
Shunlin Liang
Yunyue Yu
First published: 28 May 2018
https://doi.org/10.1029/2018JD028355
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2018JD028355
The mean LSAT anomalies are remarkably different because of the data coverage differences, with the magnitude nearly 0.4°C for the global and Northern Hemisphere and 0.6°C for the Southern Hemisphere. This study additionally finds that on the regional scale, northern high latitudes, southern middle‐to‐high latitudes, and the equator show the largest differences nearly 0.8°C. These differences cause notable differences for the trend calculation at regional scales. At the local scale, four data sets show significant variations over South America, Africa, Maritime Continent, central Australia, and Antarctica, which leads to remarkable differences in the local trend analysis. For some areas, different data sets produce conflicting results of whether warming exists. Our analysis shows that the differences across scales are associated with the availability of stations and the use of infilling techniques.
My person view on infilled data from the perspective of someone that was responsible for the data processing of a bank, is there is no such thing as infilled data either you have it or you don’t and when it comes to bank account you have the data a 100% of the time, otherwise you are fired. Why is climate data different, if you make extraordinary claims you need to have extraordinary data, with climate science that not the case, their data is pure BS not suitable to make any claims at all. Yet they expect society to change everything based on their BS.
its not infilled.
its stastically estimated from nearby stations.
you can verify the process.
or just use the 20k stations not in uschn
Hahaha “statistically estimated”…in other words a guess to infill the value.
yup
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/auto/Stations/TAVG/Figures/157290-TAVG-Comparison.png
you claim this:
its not infilled.
but then say that:
its stastically estimated from nearby stations.
which is just another way of saying its infilled. It’s not real data, it’s a (very poor) guess made by inappropriate statistical manipulation of data from stations a long distance away. it’s infilling with made up data where there is no actual data.
Mark Luhman said:
“there is no such thing as infilled data either you have it or you don’t and when it comes to bank account you have the data a 100% of the time, otherwise you are fired. Why is climate data different,”
Meanwhile back here in the real physical world, there is no such thing as complete data. You’d need to sample the temperature at an infinite number of points to get a result without any what you call “infilling”.
That doesn’t mean we can’t have any useful information about temperature over the globe.
0 sample points gives you no information, infinite sample points are impossible, which leaves the question of how many points you need to know something useful.
Nick Stokes did a test, starting with a plot generated from 5451 stations, and then 544 stations, and finally 65 stations.
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2018/08/18/you-only-need-about-60-surface-stations/#comment-128577
Sampling is the only way in the real world. With the accounting paradigm, the only way to know the temperature of a glass of water would be to measure each individual molecule simultaneously. Or you could just stick a thermometer in it. Not perfect, but good enough for most purposes. Industrial chemists manage just fine with limited data points.
Forgot the graph.
Try again…
Meh, beats me. I thought wordpress would display an image automatically from a URL if it ended in png.
Hints anyone?
its not infilled.
its stastically estimated from nearby stations.
… like “it’s not raining; it’s precipitating moisture from the air”
or
“it’s not hot; it’s uncomfortable temperature wise”
or
“it’s not shaken; it’s vigorously manipulated”
or
… well, you get the idea.
Land Surface Air Temperature Data Are Considerably Different Among BEST‐LAND, CRU‐TEM4v, NASA‐GISS, and NOAA‐NCEI
Yuhan Rao
Shunlin Liang
Yunyue Yu
First published: 28 May 2018
https://sci-hub.tw/10.1029/2018JD028355
Both presentation and PBS interview were excellent. Spoken and communicated from the heart and on point.
.
❶①❶①❶①❶①
❶①❶①❶①❶①
❶①❶①❶①❶①
❶①❶①❶①❶①
.
Is Tamino a moron?
Tamino thinks that he has “proved” that my graph (which I call a global warming contour map), is wrong. And many of Tamino’s followers, believe him.
You can imagine, that I am not very happy about this situation. I have spent over 2 years developing my graph, gradually improving it, and thoroughly testing it. I consider it to be a fairly unique, accurate, and reliable graph. You might think that my claims are just bragging, by a conceited loser. But let me tell you about my expertise…
In this article, I use the same “logic” that Tamino used to “prove” that my graph is wrong, to “prove” that Tamino is a moron.
https://agree-to-disagree.com/is-tamino-a-moron
For a person reading for the first time, I have no idea who Tamino is or to what graph you are referring.
Write for a first-time viewer. Don’t assume that readers are as intimate with or as involved with even the basics of what you are talking about. Who? What? Where? Why? When? How? Answer these questions, especially when a specific person or specific issue is involved that does not relate to the main topic details.
Tamino is Statistician Grant Foster
Here’s a link to one of the previous articles here at WUWT about Tamino:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/07/21/tamino-grant-foster-is-back-at-his-old-tricksthat-everyone-but-his-followers-can-see-through/
Thanks for that info.
Some anomalies in HadCRUT4 #1:
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/09/17/hadcrut4-uncertainty/
Some anomalies in HadCRUT4 #2:
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/09/21/ecs-1901-2017/
sycomputing
I will say it again: I think a scientific blog like wuwt is like standing in a lecture room at a university. The difference is: we are all pupils and teachers to each other. If we disagree because our own measurements lead us in another direction we can only try and convince the other party by sharing our results and thoughts.
Unfortunately, there are however a few people writing posts on WUWT who always think they ‘know it all’ and who then find it necessary to ridicule the dissenters. It appears from your comments that you are in support of such public ridicule?
This unintended side step re. Joe and me was indeed OT but I am sure that he, me and most others here only have the best of intentions, i.e. promoting the truth. We are all agreed that Anthony Watts has done a tremendous job, not only about questioning the accuracy of the stations but also maintaining the best and the most read website on climate change!!!
Speaking of the stations, I have always said that you cannot really compare the data from now with those of more than 40 or 50 years ago, for more reasons than mentioned in the video.
Namely, before the 1960’s thermometers were not re-calibrated on a yearly or regular basis. Also the type of recording was different, i.e. dependent on labour rather than recording by computers.
It is like comparing apples with pears.
There is clear evidence that the ice melt in the arctic 100 years ago was as bad as it is now……
“Unfortunately, there are however a few people writing posts on WUWT who always think they ‘know it all’ and who then find it necessary to ridicule the dissenters.”
Indeed there are. I notice Joe Born appears to be one of them:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/09/21/video-whats-wrong-the-the-surface-temperature-record/#comment-2465745
What I didn’t notice, however, was you calling Born out for his ridicule of the rest of us. Why not? Should you not be consistent in your criticism of those who tend to ridicule? Should you not criticize yourself for ridiculing Monckton?
Is ridicule from certain persons acceptable, e.g., yourself re: Monckton’s mental disorder and Born’s suggestion that we here are mere simpleton morons, while ridicule from other persons, e.g., Monckton is not?
So I too will “say it again,” Henry: “Don’t you contradict yourself?” If you don’t, why don’t you?
“It appears from your comments that you are in support of such public ridicule?”
Does it really appear so Henry or are you once again attacking the messenger rather than the message, just as you did with Monckton in this thread? Would it not be the case that for me to “support such ridicule” while at the same time calling you out for it would result in my being guilty of exactly the same logical contradiction of which you are guilty?
Would it not be the case that if I supported ridicule rather than argument, I would be ridiculing you right now?
sycomputing
Let me make it clear that I have the most respect for all the people writing posts on WUWT and I do not wish them bad or want them to go [away from WUWT]. On the contrary, they are the geniuses that keep this blog interesting. Unfortunately, as can be proven in the case of many geniuses, they often do lack skills in keeping relationships or tolerating other people’s differing viewpoints. Having been the subject of much such ridicule I have come to think of those insults and ad hominem attacks as just that: a bit of a mental disorder by the person meting it out to me.
I am of the opinion, though, that if a discussion starts or ends up in a slanging match with insults and ad hominem attacks, the moderator should simply step in and remove those insulting remarks and ad hominem attacks. quoting ‘snip’
I agree with you that in the quoted comment Joe made an unwarranted AH attack on Anthony which was not even on topic and should have been snipped straight away.
God bless Anthony Watts.
I admit that the reference you made was an unsubstantiated ad hominem attack
“I agree with you that in the quoted comment Joe made an unwarranted AH attack on Anthony.”
You could look at it that way. Or you could look on it as an honest attempt to bring to Mr. Watts’s attention the fact that there are good reasons for tightening up his game.
He brought up the station data, something many of his readers, including me, know little about. And, let’s face it, in the scheme of things we pretty much have to take his word for what he’s saying, because we aren’t going to take the time to investigate for ourselves. But quite a few of us do know how bad the Lord Monckton stuff he’s pushing is, and Mr. Watts needs to know that his credibility therefore suffers when he continuing to treat Lord Monckton as a responsible skeptic spokesman.
Saying so isn’t an ad hominem attack. If I were making so egregious an error—and, believe me, I have made some big ones—I’d like to know about it. What I didn’t like was when I was making a mistake people knew about but nobody told me.
Most of us have some area of expertise, yet all of us lack the wherewithal to analyze propositions in some other areas we aren’t familiar with. On most of the subjects that come up on this site, that describes me.
However, as to the particular math in Lord Monckton’s theory, as well as that in his previous, “Irreducibly Simple Climate Model” paper, I do know something. And because I do it was apparent to me that in both cases Christopher Monckton was wrong. And not just a little wrong, but fundamentally wrong, egregiously wrong. So wrong that he had no business pontificating about it as he did.
It was also apparent that, as is true of me on many other subjects, a great many readers do not have the wherewithal to analyze what Lord Monckton was saying. I don’t think that makes them morons any more than it makes me a moron not to know about, say, time-of-observation adjustments. Every one of us is ignorant about something.
Now, the reader has two choices here. He can merely dismiss my analysis as an ad hominem attack—and it isn’t—or he can analyze its substance. And doing so would be easy. As I pointed out, Lord Monckton has now boiled his theory down to a single slide, and testing whether what that slide says makes sense requires only a little arithmetic and knowing how to extrapolate. Extrapolation is something most people learned in high school.
And, no, I don’t think people are morons if they can’t extrapolate. Still, I question whether someone whose grasp of math isn’t even that good should really be expressing an opinion on the subject.
‘Still, I question whether someone whose grasp of math isn’t even that good should really be expressing an opinion on the subject.’
Yes, he should. Most of the smart and well educated guys from ‘mainstream’ climate science would evaluate most (if not all) entries on this blog in the same terms as you did with work of His Lordness (‘fundamentally wrong’, ‘egregiously wrong’, ‘incompetent’, ‘ ‘erudite-sounding nonsense’, ‘impress folks who don’t understand the substance’). They could even provide detailed justification for that, justification very convincing in their own eyes. Does it mean that this blog should be put down because of that? Surely not. So don’t be too quick in deciding who should publish here and who shouldn’t. It’s a matter of perspective. For ‘mainstream’, ‘peer-review’ science no-one should ever publish anything here what goes against official AGW story.
“You could look at it that way. Or you could look on it as an honest attempt to bring to Mr. Watts’s attention the fact that there are good reasons for tightening up his game.”
You mean as in the “honest attempt” you made above at attempting to convince all of the readers here that you weren’t after having your say?
“…the real issue isn’t whether I get my say or not.”
But as with Henry, don’t you contradict yourself (yet again) as well, Mr. Born? How could the brilliant man that you’ve publicly declared yourself to be, claim in the same thread that the “real issue” is not his argument at all, but then spend a good deal of time arguing that very argument, and this in the comment section of an article having nothing at all whatsoever to do with his argument?
E.g., here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/09/21/video-whats-wrong-the-the-surface-temperature-record/#comment-2466417
and then once again here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/09/21/video-whats-wrong-the-the-surface-temperature-record/#comment-2466264
and then once again here:
“Now, the reader has two choices here. He can merely dismiss my analysis as an ad hominem attack—and it isn’t—or he can analyze its substance. And doing so would be easy. As I pointed out, Lord Monckton has now boiled his theory down to a single slide, and testing whether what that slide says makes sense requires only a little arithmetic and knowing how to extrapolate. Extrapolation is something most people learned in high school.”
But you would say it’s all about honesty and truth and helping Mr. Watts to rightly divide the Word of Born?
Now Mr. Born, surely in your brilliance you must see you’re on the horns of a dilemma. You’ve argued on the one hand that those of us who read this blog are just too stupid to understand the subject matter to which you’ve exposed us here. But then you move forward to argue your case to we the readers despite that fact? Perhaps you’re right after all since I must admit, I just don’t follow your logic?
But back to my silly little argument, I’m sure you’re aware of the law of non-contradiction as applied to logical systems are not you? I.e., when a system (or in your case, an individual) contradicts itself (himself), that system (individual) is to be rejected out of hand as inconsistent and no more attention paid to it until that contradiction is fixed.
So two questions:
1) How will you fix your moral contradiction, Mr. Born? And until you do, who should listen to anything you have to say? You’ve already proved yourself willing to lie for your own cause. How could you expect the rest of us to believe anything you have to say in that case? Maybe it helps that you believe us all morons?
2) How will you fix the contradiction that on the one hand you’ve argued the readers here are just too stupid to understand the subject matter, but then unsolicited, unwarranted, and unwanted, you push that same subject matter onto the readers here anyway?
Haven’t you made for yourself quite a philosophical mess? And this from a man of such greater intellect than the rest of us?
“Having been the subject of much such ridicule I have come to think of those insults and ad hominem attacks as just that: a bit of a mental disorder by the person meting it out to me.”
Now Henry…everyone everywhere who ever deploys ad hominem against anyone at any time is suffering from “a bit of a mental disorder?” Except for you I assume? You’re the .000001% of the human population not subject to that particular disorder? The question is rhetorical, of course.
🙂
I’ll take my leave from you in the knowledge that you must surely agree that both Joe Born and Lord Monckton are two peas in a pod. If one suffers from a mental disorder via his use of ad hominem then surely the other does as well.
“I agree with you that in the quoted comment Joe made an unwarranted AH attack on Anthony Watts…”
Thank you for at least being honest enough to call out Mr. Born for both his fallacious reasoning as well as his OT childish, schoolgirl rant against one of his own kind.
All the best and take care!
sycomputing
I am not sure if anyone can claim that he or she is 100% sane, but, yes thanks, 99.99999 is fine for me. Anyway, jokes aside, I hope you actually did see a problem that I have also identified. If it were at all possible, it would be great if it could be arranged that the writer of a post is not the moderator of same post. The moderator must be a neutral person and he must step in if there are any AH attacks and name calling. Like I said before, if all commenters realize that they are standing in a lecture room, being polite and friendly is important. Agree to disagree, if need be, but if you get nasty you must be snipped.
The problem seems to be that the site has no limit to the length or number of the comments that can be posted by an individual on each article.
Perhaps a solution to all this rancor would be, in addition to “snipping” personal attacks, to limit comments to 100 words or so. Longer technical discussions or arguments would then be submitted as articles, or at least as accessible extended comments via a link, thus sparing the rest of us from having to scan through pages of diatribes to get the theme of the responses. Anyone wishing to continue or follow the detailed debate on a particular thread could then do so.
Just a thought.
Once you start implementing a bunch of restrictions and qualifications, kiss this blog goodbye.
Human choice is the best filter — if you don’t want to read a long post, then just don’t do it. If you have an issue with a seeming attack, then watch how it unfolds, and hope that the person being attacked can defend him/herself. At most, the moderator should limit how long it goes on or guide HOW it goes on.
Frankly, I don’t want someone intercepting insults aimed at me and trying to control the natural flow of human emotionally charged exchanges. I prefer to answer for myself and watch out for myself.
Good Point, perhaps I am reacting to how long this one went on.
Perhaps a “more” button on long posts would help. Show the first 100-200 or so words (ie the first couple of paragrpahs) and any post that is longer than that would have a “more” button that would have to be clicked to see the rest. That way those interested can read the whole thing those who aren’t can easily move on to the next post without having to scroll past many paragraphs of off-topic nonsense (you can usually tell in the first couple of paragraphs what kind of post you are looking at).
Also bring back the collapse subthread button. That way you can easily get past subthread slagging matches that go on for dozens of posts that you aren’t interested in to get to the next on topic sub-thread
Good suggestions, I think, John E. I’m sure that there are technical obstacles in implementing them.
But it seems, at some point, those suggestions would be doable.
Guys
Remember when we stand together we are stronger against the lie of man made global warming.
“Remember when we stand together we are stronger against the lie of man made global warming.”
Henry, a wise and gracious man was once accused of driving out demons by the power of demons, to which He responded, “How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, it cannot stand.”
The lesson applies here, or is it wise to try to stand with liars against their own kind, or hypocrisy with hypocrites?
All the best.
Philip says
the point you make is clear. unfortunately the error is repeated 4 times.
You cannot really compare data from more that 50 years ago with data from today; for example, they did not do re-calibrations of thermometers before 1960 and they had to have somebody physically there reading the thermometer at least 4 times a day. Today we have computers for that who can measure every minute and print an average for every day of the year,
\
I looked here in South Africa for the past 40 years, only to find that there has been no warming here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/h7944heslj7gg7q/summary%20of%20climate%20change%20south%20africa.xlsx?dl=0
so, whatever man made warming there maybe, it is not global, at all…
Philip
I would be interested in seeing the trend of same graph over the past 40 years only.