Category Archives: Just Keep Saying It

Dial “M” for mangled – Wikipedia and Environment Canada caught with temperature data errors.

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“Dial “M” for mangled – Wikipedia and Environment Canada caught with temperature data errors.” Anthony Watts finds another report of cherry-picked errors in raw airport temperature data again, this time by “Ecotretas” about the Canadian High Arctic community of Eureka, Nunavut. Darn those human beings and their inconsistent data entry! Or those malfunctioning gadgets! Or maybe those trucks running right beside the thermometer! Or something.

These kinds of data quality errors are corrected before being used in climate modeling. Hence irrelevant to the Global Warming debate. Anthony almost figures it out here (italics mine):

[Here is where it really gets strange, I’ve added two screencaps from Environment Canada, on for the monthly data, another for the daily data from July 14th, 2009. They don’t match! The 20.9C value never appears in the July 14th hourly data. Click images below to enlarge, EC’s July 2009 Monthly report on the left, July 14th, 2009 daily/hourly data on the right. Perhaps EC corrected the error in the daily/hourly data, but missed the monthly?  – Anthony]

Also, as a geologist and a Canadian, I always laugh when people like Anthony get confused by map projections. According to him the Eureka airport data is “responsible for the very big stripe on the very top of Canada.” Um, no. It looks that way because the Earth is being represented using the cylindrical Mercator projection method, which distorts (magnifies) polar regions.

Mann 2008 a Victim of Sudden Oak Death?

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“Mann 2008 a Victim of Sudden Oak Death?” Anthony Watts is eager to join the new round of uninformed nit-picking over tree ring chronologies. He posts some comments from Canadian sourpuss Steve McIntyre on the subject, quote-mining various news reports. Otherwise, his contribution is a Star Trek and Peanuts graphic and a link to a whack-a-mole copy of the Dr. Mann “spoof” video.

Dr. Mike Baillie of Queen’s University in Belfast has stated that the oak tree ring data he is being forced to release is not useful for temperature proxies, but the infamous Dr. Mann uses some oak ring data in his hated “hockey stick” temperature reconstruction. This clearly proves that the “hockey stick” is a lie! Or something. If you ignore all the other data.

Wait, do Anthony or McIntyre have any idea why Dr. Mann included this data in his reconstruction? Um, no. Doesn’t seem to stop them from complaining though, does it?

Guardian Continues To Spread Misinformation About Eyjafjallajokull

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“Guardian Continues To Spread Misinformation About Eyjafjallajokull“. Self-important non-volcanologist Steven Goddard tries to use an error in the reporting about the CO2 released from the erupting Eyjafjallajokull volcano to repeat the disproved denialist meme that human CO2 output is insignificant (“we know that plants, soil and the oceans generate 30 times as much CO2 as all fossil fuel burning combined“).

Let’s just stop here for a moment and remember that the “plants, soil and the oceans” are part of the active carbon cycle. Barring human intervention, they are effectively in balance. Fossil fuel CO2 output is not counteracted. That, in a nutshell, is the bloody problem! Steven’s deliberately repeating a denialist deceit.

Some of the original reporting incorrectly listed the volcano’s CO2 output as 15,000 tonnes/day, and compared it to the daily 206,465 tonnes of CO2 that would normally be generated by the canceled transatlantic flights. It turns out that the correct estimate of the volcano’s CO2 output should have been 150,000 tonnes, possibly ranging up to 300,000.

So the media got this a bit wrong at first. Damn them! Of course this is just irrelevant whining as far as the climate change debate goes.

It’s interesting to note that the daily CO2 emissions of transatlantic flights alone are equivalent to a continuous full-on volcanic eruption, isn’t it?

Airlines Blame Flawed Computer Modelling For Up To $1.7 Billion Loss

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“Airlines Blame Flawed Computer Modelling For Up To $1.7 Billion Loss“. Anthony Watts rounds up some like-minded comments about the impact of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruption. Apparently gubmints are ruining everything and computer models are all flawed.

The IATA, a lobby group for the airline industry, would have preferred to roll the dice and keep flying through the ash clouds from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland. The astroturf Global Warming Policy Foundation says ‘right on, them gubmits can’t tell us what to do!’

The GWFP is actually just co-opting this topic to declare that they want “to bring reason, integrity and balance to a climate debate that has become seriously unbalanced, irrationally alarmist, and all too often depressingly intolerant”. We have to “balance between risk and reward“, in this instance, the airline’s profits versus their passenger’s lives. Just like coal and oil company profits have to be ‘balanced’.

The dangers of flying through an ash cloud. Source: BBC News.

What’s happening in the air? The criticized Numerical Atmospheric-dispersion Modelling Environment (NAME) has been updated with new safety thresholds based on better detection and risk assessments. Commercial flight has resumed with much smaller “no-fly” zones.

Denialists are trying to paint this as another example of a computer modeling failure, but the system, which accurately modeled the ash dispersion, has simply been updated with better risk analysis.

‘Hockey stick’ graph was exaggerated – McIntyre gets props

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“‘Hockey stick’ graph was exaggerated – McIntyre gets props“. Anthony Watts pastes an article from the noted denialist newspaper The Telegraph entitled ‘Hockey stick’ graph was exaggerated. “Exaggerated” being their way of edging around the fact that the ‘hockey stick’ has still not been disproved. Dr. Mann’s out-dated (but influential) 1998 paper has of course been reproduced with improved data and methods since then.

Professor Hand is head of the Royal Statistical Society and apparently praised climate curmudgeon Steve McIntyre for “uncovering the fact that inappropriate methods were used which could produce misleading results” (emphasis mine). Pretty thin gruel, because the results have actually proven correct.

No mention of the Oxburgh Report’s description of Steve McIntyre as “selective and uncharitable“.

More denialist Fail from Anthony: the top graph is global, the bottom one just "europe". Can you can spot the other two obvious boners?

Lockwood demonstrates link between low sun and low temps

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“Lockwood demonstrates link between low sun and low temps“. Steven Goddard takes solar scientists to task for changing their opinions to reflect apparent changes in the Sun’s behavior. That’s called science, Steven. Unlike ignorantly misconstruing or misquoting Dr. Lockwood’s statements about Solar activity.

Plenty of confusion in the comments too. Is it a conspiracy? Are the solar physicists trying to quietly switch to the denialist side? Are the climate changes driven by low sunspot activity or high sunspot activity? Steven’s own sour contributions to the comments are particularly amusing.

The truth is that the Sun’s output is very constant with only trivial changes in activity such as sunspots and convection. These correlate poorly with the Earth’s climatic variations. Yes, the Sun’s energy input is the single largest input into our climate. But it doesn’t actually vary.

Keep looking for that “final nail”.

IPCC AR4 also gets a failing grade on 21 chapters

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“IPCC AR4 also gets a failing grade on 21 chapters“. Anthony Watts wants you to know that Donna Laframboise (blogger) and a team of denialist “citizen auditors” have performed a grade school (literally) evaluation of the IPCC’s 2007 Assessment Report’s (“AR4”) references. The report, which Donna refers to as “the United Nations’ Nobel-winning climate bible“, gets an “F” for 21 of the 44 chapters, based on their personal assessment of the references.

“We’ve been told it’s 100 percent peer-reviewed science.” Um, no you haven’t. And the bulk of the claimed low-quality references are in the “Impacts” and “Mitigation” sections, not in the far more important “Climate Science” section.

Nothing is said about the physical science or historical evidence, of course. Funny how often “citizen” gets used as a descriptive badge among denialists.

Anthony finishes optimistically: people are beginning to laugh at the “robustness” oft touted in climate science. You’d better unplug your iPod, Anthony…

Oh Donna, you get an “F” too.

Oxburgh’s 5 page Climategate book report gets a failing grade

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“Oxburgh’s 5 page Climategate book report gets a failing grade“. Oh, here’s a shocker. Anthony Watts tells us that the latest report on Climategate, by the Oxburgh Panel, is worthless. A whitewash!!!!

The Global Warming Policy Foundation, the denialist operation that is home to such notables as Ian Pilmer and Nigel Lawson, call it “Another Unsatisfactory Rushed Job“.

Steven McIntyre is still fixated on a certain word, he declares “Oxburgh’s Trick to Hide the Trick”.

Could it be because the report exonerates the Climate Research Unit and Dr. Phil Jones (emphasis mine)?

We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it.  Rather we found a small group of dedicated if slightly disorganised researchers who were ill-prepared for being the focus of public attention. As with many small research groups their internal procedures were rather informal.

Or because of how they describe the assaults of denialists like Steven McIntyre (emphasis mine)?

We have not exhaustively reviewed the external criticism of the dendroclimatological work, but it seems that some of these criticisms show a rather selective and uncharitable approach to information made available by CRU.  They seem also to reflect a lack of awareness of the ongoing and dynamic nature of chronologies, and of the difficult circumstances under which university research is sometimes conducted.

2012-07-19 Update: Norfolk police have called off their investigation for procedural reasons, but state:

“However, as a result of our inquiries, we can say that the data breach was the result of a sophisticated and carefully orchestrated attack on the CRU’s data files, carried out remotely via the internet. The offenders used methods common in unlawful internet activity to obstruct inquiries. There is no evidence to suggest that anyone working at or associated with the University of East Anglia was involved in the crime.”

More Wisdom via Solomon: Global Warming Has Passed The Point Of No Return

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“More Wisdom via Solomon: Global Warming Has Passed The Point Of No Return“. Steven Goddard lists some bad things that weren’t caused by Global Warming, and gives us a juvenile photoshopped image of Susan Solomon from the NOAA.

Why? Because he wants to counter the NOAA’s statement that the rising CO2 levels will not quickly return to pre-industrial levels even if we act decisively now, and that there may be centuries of adjustment ahead.

Next time, try some science.

Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics … and Graphs

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“Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics … and Graphs“. Willis Eschenbach provides what he promises in the title of his post. I would have added “amateur”.