Author Archives: Ben

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About Ben

I trained as a sedimentary geologist at a Canadian University, but have worked in the I.T. field as a programmer and manager for many years.

CRUTEM3 “…code did not adhere to standards one might find in professional software engineering”

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CRUTEM3 “…code did not adhere to standards one might find in professional software engineering”. John Graham-Cumming, a British computer programmer, says that the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit global temperature analysis programming code isn’t professional. Anthony Watts concludes that this is damning expert opinion.

Sorry John but CRUTEM3, just one of several tools for analyzing global temperature, is scientific code. Done on a tight academic budget, it was basically a one-off effort. Could it be improved? Sure. Is the programming “quality” relevant? Not fundamentally. Does it give a correct result? Apparently. Good work spotting minor errors, but we’re not debating the elegance or efficiency of internet routing protocols here.

Corrections resulting from John's error-spotting in green.

Just as an aside, the fuss over the quote-mined code fragments that were found in the stolen CRU e-mails was about code that wasn’t actually used.

Doctor Gore: a good idea? – poll disagrees

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“Doctor Gore: a good idea? – poll disagrees“. Anthony Watts thinks an online poll attached to a Knoxville News Sentinel editorial entitled “Al Gore a fine choice for honorary degree” is proof of national contempt for Al Gore. Couldn’t be the ever-ready paranoid-obsessive goreophobe subculture leaping into action, could it? Well they’ve certainly been alerted now (there’s an almost one-to-one intersection with Anthony’s readers).

Maybe Anthony should take the editorial’s advice: “Get over it.“

Spencer: Using hourly surface data to gauge UHI by population density

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“Spencer: Using hourly surface data to gauge UHI by population density“. Dr. Roy Spencer has realised that “forsaking blindingly technical statistics” isn’t a practical position and has come up with an analysis, using one(!) year of data, that correlates “warming bias” of  station temperature records with population density (Urban Heat Island!). Population density is “presumed to be related to how much the environment around the thermometer site has been modified over time” (emphasis mine). That’s a rather big presumption. There are plenty of other simplistic adjustments in Dr. Spencer’s data, such as a blanket 5.4°C per 1000m increase in station elevation adjustment. Dr. Spencer has shown before that he has problems using statistics correctly, so it will be interesting to see if this stands up, but given Dr. Spencer’s track record I’m going to bet on “confirmation bias“.

Dr. Spencer makes a dangerous statement though: “Note that the philosophy here is not to provide the best adjustments for each station individually, but to do adjustments for spurious effects which, when averaged over all stations, will remove the effect…” (emphasis mine). He’s setting himself up as a target for exactly the same weather station correction nitpicking that Anthony has played with the USHNC’s weather station data. Will Anthony hold him to the fire?

Anthony inadvertently answers this question with “I believe this is a truly important piece of work” in spite of all dodgy assumptions Dr. Spencer admits to. Also, his blogging about Spencer’s draft should be considered as an “early peer review.” I will support Anthony’s hope that “Dr. Spencer will submit it to a journal” though. I think I’ll enjoy watching what is effectively another “sciency” attempt at Anthony’s failed surfacestations.org project be subjected to legitimate scientific scrutiny.

A question to the USGS and NPR

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“A question to the USGS and NPR“. Anthony Watts lays a geography smack-down on the U.S. Geological Survey’s Jane Ferrigno because in a National Public Radio interview because she blows an analogy for the volume of lost Antarctic ice. Excellent nit-picking Anthony!

This reinforces his new theme that scientists should leave the fancy talkin’ to impartial intellectuals such as himself.

No comment from Anthony on the statement in the same interview that “every ice front in the southern part of the Antarctic Peninsula is retreating.”

Wilkins Ice Sheet retreat since 1947. USGS news article 2409

Willis makes the NYT, Gavin to stop “persuading the public”

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Willis makes the NYT, Gavin to stop “persuading the public”. Reading a New York Times article entitled Scientists Taking Steps to Defend Work on Climate, Anthony Watts concludes that Gavin Schmidt’s realclimate.org, the climatology website that explains climate science, should stop doing it. Climatologists should stick to their thermometers and leave the ‘splainin’ to Anthony, because he’s so good at it. Actually Anthony, I think you’re just wishing you could prevent reality from interfering with your fantasy world.

This quote about denialists from Energy Secretary Steven Chu puts Anthony in context: “What standard are they being held to? It’s very asymmetric. They get to say anything they want.”

Anthony’s also delighted that one of his blogging buddies, “citizen-scientist” Willis Eschenbach, is quoted in a NYT article: “I’ll let you in on a very dark, ugly secret – I don’t want trust in climate science to be restored”. He apparently wants scientists to “stop trying to pass off garbage as science.” Psychologists call this projection.

2001-2010 was the Snowiest Decade on Record

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“2001-2010 was the Snowiest Decade on Record“. Steven Goddard’s “guest posts” on Anthony Watt’s blog are getting embarrassing. He’s still going on about how much snow there is! He even accuses Al Gore of ineptitude. Now that’s rich… Steven, you’ve got issues. Big issues. Emotional issues as well as intellectual ones.

Steven’s data comes from the Rutgers University Global Snow Lab. The closest he comes to explaining his climate change claims is this: A decade long record across the entire Northern Hemisphere is not appropriately described as a “snowstorm.” Actually, unless Steven can slap some legitimate statistical trends on this claim it’s just as likely a “snowstorm.” He once again has bupkis. Looks like Steven’s going to have the bupkis market locked down pretty tight.

Steven's yellow line has no meaning, it's just a visual "trick" to create the illusion of an anomaly.

Ignoring the regionality of his claim, his invented threshold of 45 million km² snow extend, and the lack of any evidence of statistical significance, how does any of this undermine the factual evidence of AGW? You know the answer.

Sea change in climate journalism: The Guardian and the D-word

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“Sea change in climate journalism: The Guardian and the D-word“. It’s always interesting when Anthony tries to take the “high road.” Lately he’s been trying to get The Guardian to stop describing climate change denialists as “sceptics.”

They’re thinking about it. The money quote from The Guardian’s correspondence with him is this (emphasis mine):

The ’sceptics’ label is almost too generous a badge as very few are genuinely sceptical about the science but I think we have to accept the name is now common parlance.

Anthony ‘reciprocates’ by making a hollow call to “dial back and treat others with the same respect in conversation as you might treat dinner guests having a discussion at home.”

As he does on occasion, Anthony takes a moment to try to distance himself from his own posts:

My position has been that there is no debate that the earth has warmed over the past 100+ years, but that the magnitude of the measured warming and the cause(s) remain in debate. The question of whether such warming is beneficial or detrimental depends on who you ask. I’ll also point out that it took our modern society about 150 years of science and technology advances to get where we are now. Doing it cleaner and better won’t be an overnight solution either.

Video: Dr. Phil Jones Climategate testimony at the British House of Commons

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“Video: Dr. Phil Jones Climategate testimony at the British House of Commons“. Unsurprisingly, Anthony Watts feels the questioning is insufficiently tough. He consoles himself by gathering some critical quotes from various denialist-friendly UK media outlets.

The Final Straw

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Steven Mosher, amateur quote miner

“The Final Straw“. “Charles the moderator” posts his roommate Steven Mosher’s article further quote-mining Dr. Phil Jones’ stolen e-mail and speculating about Dr. Jones’ motives.

Shockingly, after repeatedly telling various unqualified denialist pests where to get the temperature record data he uses, Dr. Jones eventually stops responding when they use it to launch irrelevant criticisms and starts treating them as… unqualified denialist pests. This is, apparently, “the final straw.”

Steven Mosher also self-published an amateur analysis of the stolen CRU e-mails, Climategate: The Crutape letters, shortly after their appearance.

A tornado free February – first time ever!

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“A tornado free February – first time ever!” Anthony Watts talks about weather again. There were no tornadoes in the USA in February. Take that, Al Gore!

To quote the NOAA article, “What does this tell us about the rest of the 2010 tornado season?  Somewhere between a little and nothing at all.” Actually, that sounds like a pretty good summary of Anthony’s blog.