Monthly Archives: February 2010

Contribution of USHNC and GISS bias in long-term temperature records for a well-sited rural weather station

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“Contribution of USHNC and GISS bias in long-term temperature records for a well-sited rural weather station“. Anthony Watts’ associate “Charles the Moderator” finds a cherry-picked weather station that someone important (Ph.D. and Esquire!) has slapped up some charts for.

David W. Schnare (Esq. Ph.D.) is an environmental lawyer from a renowned scientific institution the “Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy”. He’s also a Heartland Institute associate. He nods approvingly over both Anthony Watt’s discredited Science and Public Policy pamphlet and yesterday’s new “sciency” version by Dr. Anthony Long. “Dr.” Schnare shares their fixation with the denialist meme of adjustments = cheating and notes that “NCDC adjusts the original data in every year!”

The temperature trends at one station clearly prove that all the other stations are wrong.

Now it could be true that Schnare’s nit-picking about the station adjustments made in this particular place are justified. There are certainly plenty of qualitatively poor temperature stations and we can count on the denialists to trot them out one by one at carefully staged intervals. However his amusing references to “hard partying, college kids” and sweeping generalizations about the terrain away from the station’s actual micro-climate suggest that he’s trying to distract from the poverty of his evidence.

Breaking News: IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri to face independent inquiry

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“Breaking News: IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri to face independent inquiry“. Anthony Watts reports a rumor from The Daily Telegraph, a chronically dishonest source on climate change. There’s no question that the denialist onslaught on Dr. Pachauri has created political pressure. Just not scientific pressure… Dr. Pachauri is approaching Al Gore in Anthony’s symbol-fixated mind.

It’s always entertaining to consider that Dr. Pachauri was installed as IPCC Chairman as a result of lobbying by the Republican administration of George W. Bush because they felt he was a tacit supporter of the denialist movement. Unfortunately he developed an “inconvenient” perspective when he started reading the incoming reports.

A new paper comparing NCDC rural and urban US surface temperature data

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“A new paper comparing NCDC rural and urban US surface temperature data“. Anthony Watts reports that the denialist “think tank” Science and Public Policy has “published a paper” by retired NASA “advanced materials” physicist and self-described extremely conservative blogger Dr. Edward Long. “Published” in the sense of printed, just like Anthony’s own discredited Science and Public Policy pamphlet “Surface Temperature Records: Policy Driven Deception?” (tellingly admired by Dr. Long). Actually, this feels like a do-over of Anthony’s idea with a Ph.D. stuck on top and the really dumb bits left out.

“Contiguous U.S. Temperature Trends Using NCDC Raw and Adjusted Data for One-Per-State Rural and Urban Station Sets“ concludes that the NCDC (National Climatic Data Center) has “taken liberty to alter the actual rural measured values.” Why? Because two 48 station subsets (“rural” and “urban”) have the same trend after the NCDC’s adjustments have been made. Which means that some nefarious trick has forced them to match. Dr. Long selected his stations “on the assumption that within a certain latitude band stations along an East-West line experience the same climate and that within a grid unit the set of stations are somehow related“. That’s a rather off-hand justification for what I suspect is a pretty careful cherry-picking operation. There have been objective re-examinations of the US surface temperature data (Menne et al, 2010), but no significant errors have been uncovered.

Dr. Long also tries to wave away the temperature trend by suggesting that it reflects population growth around the weather stations. Somehow population growth intensifies the UHI effect. I’m not a climate scientist but I would expect the same UHI effect to occur more widely with population growth, not show up as ever “hotter” readings. After all, UHI is effectively a landscape factor, something Anthony himself has been fixated on for sometime on his surfacestations.org project. Should someone whisper “maybe it’s global warming?“

CTM is Contacted by the Norfolk Constabulary and Responds

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“CTM is Contacted by the Norfolk Constabulary and Responds“. Charles Rotter, aka “Charles the Moderator”, was the anonymous behind-the-scenes guy on Anthony Watts’ blog until his involvement in disseminating the stolen Climate Research Unit e-mails. His most important responsibility was to harass Anthony’s critics by blocking or maliciously altering their comments, but he probably spent most of his time thinning out the worst comments of the denialist loony fringe so the cause didn’t look too bad.

Charles reports that he was contacted by the Norfolk Constabulary as part of their criminal investigation into the theft of CRU e-mails. Charles answers are to claim he’s just a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, but he unwisely casts aspersions on the victims of the crime and offers up a self-serving theory of the crime as a noble act by unnamed persons. Good luck with that.

UEA – the new crimestoppers

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“UEA – the new crimestoppers“. This is another case of Dunning–Kruger Effect from the denialosphere. Anthony reports the “gobsmacking” news that the UK Information Commissioners Office (ICO) has referred to the complaints about University of East Anglia’s response to freedom of information requests as “cogent prima facie evidence“. This, in Anthony’s mind, is just as good as a conviction. Probably actually better for his purposes.

Prima facie means “at first sight”. It doesn’t mean that something has been proven, just that a claim has been made that if true would support the legal charge. The ICO is merely says that the claim should be investigated and not dismissed out-of-hand.

Also the endlessly repeated denialist allegation of the Climate Research Unit’s deletion of information is baseless despite the off-hand remarks quote-mined from the stolen CRU e-mails. Nothing was deleted. Except, of course, by the thieves. They only released a subset of the stolen e-mails, presumably to prevent them from being understood in proper context.

CRUTEM3 error getting attention by Met Office

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“CRUTEM3 error getting attention by Met Office“. Anthony Watts reports an error in temperature corrections has been found by a denialist nit-picker (John Graham-Cumming)!!! Thus ending global warming forever and also proving that scientists are stupid and evil. Naturally he expects his readers to scan the headline but ignore the details, because the details aren’t so helpful…

Anthony has to admit that “the error he found may lead to slightly less uncertainty” (emphasis naturally mine) but he immediately tries to counter this by claiming that “the magnitude of the uncertainty (especially in homogenization) is quite large”. This has a few unfortunate consequences for his argument.

  • The presumed deceitful “consensus” temperature trend is strengthened and not undermined by this nit.
  • Anthony allusion to the “magnitude of the uncertainty” again proves that he knows nothing about objective statistical analysis.

Here’s the trend in question:

    Judith, I love ya, but you’re way wrong …

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    “Judith, I love ya, but you’re way wrong …” Anthony Watt’s friend Willis Eschenbach, the self-appointed “citizen scientist”, rants about Dr. Judith Curry’s ill-conceived denialist-sympathetic comments about “credibility” in climate science.

    His point? We can never trust scientists again. No matter what. They are stupid liars. Willis actually says with a straight face that scientists should emulate Steve McIntyre’s “transparency and openness and freewheeling scientific discussion and honest reporting“. My god, McIntyre is the most dishonest, manipulative, resentful, nit-picking denialist out there. He is the model for scientific behavior?

    Epic fail.

    WMO: “. . . we cannot at this time conclusively identify anthropogenic signals in past tropical cyclone data.

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    WMO: “. . . we cannot at this time conclusively identify anthropogenic signals in past tropical cyclone data.” Anthony Watts considers this recent report by The World Meteorological Organization a “stunning statement” about the frequency of cyclones. They haven’t increased statistically, so there’s no global warming! Anthony found this on right-wing political scientist (and self-proclaimed “honest broker”) Roger Pielke Jr.’s blog.

    Actually, among other things the authors say “it remains uncertain whether past changes in tropical cyclone frequency have exceeded the variability expected through natural causes.” Emphasis mine. Not quite so stunning. More like scientifically honest, in fact.

    This is the kind of “weather not climate” data that denialists love to talk up. It’s a low volume but variable record that is easily misrepresented. They can also count on honest scientists making the usual statistical cautionary statements, which can then be used against them (see Pielke’s blog in general).

    However, I think that global warming is actually predicted to increase the intensity of cyclones, not the frequency. I also like how Anthony unselfconsciously posts a chart showing that ocean temperature has been unequivocally going up! Hey, Anthony! Shhhhhh…

    On the Credibility of Climate Research, Part II: Towards Rebuilding Trust

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    “On the Credibility of Climate Research, Part II: Towards Rebuilding Trust“. A guest essat by Dr. Judith Curry, a mainstream geophysicist, on the subject of scientific trust and credibility. Tellingly, she describes credibility as “a combination of expertise and trust”, neither are in evidence on Anthony’s blog. Dr. Curry has been engaged in conversation with denialists long enough that their murky thought processes and falsehoods have taken on a kind of face-value status in her mind. This is like the false journalistic balance that gives complete falsehoods the same standing as sound science simply because they come from opposing sides of a controversy.

    Overall her piece is quite vague about many of the factual matters, leaves key issues and definitions poorly defined, and seems more interested in personalities than science. Regardless, Anthony doesn’t like some of her characterizations so he prefaces her remarks with a few accusations and charges of disrespect before ‘taking the high road’ to “broadly report the issues.”

    Anthony, if you did that I’d have to find a new hobby.

    There’s a more detailed criticism of Dr. Curry’s essay over on Climate Progress.

    The Goracle Forecast: AGW=More snow

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    “The Goracle Forecast: AGW=More snow“. Anthony Watts calls “the Goracle” (also known as Al Gore to non-rabid partisans) a liar for his discussion yesterday of the prediction that AGW will produce more snow during the winter.

    The controversial claims?

    • Fact: Climate change causes more frequent and severe snowstorms
    • Fact: We can expect more extreme weather
    • Fact: The world is warming at a quickening pace

    Anthony says that he “could spend lots of time pointing out why each one of these claims is false, and that Mr. Gore is atcually [sic] the one who is the liar“. But… he doesn’t.

    Anthony does mention that it’s cold at the moment and invokes El Niño. Isn’t saying that El Niño is the cause of this year’s abnormal snow kind of admitting that the storms aren’t a disproof of global warming?