Category Archives: Look Over There!

GISS & METAR – dial “M” for missing minus signs: it’s worse than we thought

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“GISS & METAR – dial “M” for missing minus signs: it’s worse than we thought“. Anthony Watts thinks this ‘alarmist’ post “might also be one of the most important” ever because it explains how people “can wreck a whole month’s worth of climate data.” His commenters, of course, agree and praise his insight.

Surprise, it’s nothing but cherry-picked examples of human error in recording negative temperatures and how such entries are handled by automated aviation weather reports. As noted at The Whiteboard, none of the 12 aviation weather report errors Anthony found made it into data-sets used by climatologists. Much more satisfying to rage about alleged errors that to actually make the effort to prove they’re significant. Standard Operating Procedure at WUWT.

Anthony prefers satellite measurements, presumably because of the automated nature of their collection. But I think his real reason is that the satellite record is still too short to conclusively represent long-term climate patterns. Can’t act on Global Warming until then, can we?

But wait, what is the satellite global temperature trend? The same as the surface stations trend. Both are… up.

Amusingly, it seems that Anthony though better of this incidental defamatory accusation (italics mine):

Around 1990, NOAA began weeding out more than three-quarters of the climate measuring stations around the world. They may have been working under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). It can be shown that they systematically and purposefully, country by country, removed higher-latitude, higher-altitude and rural locations, all of which had a tendency to be cooler.

The replacement text reads:

Around 1990, NOAA/NCDC’s GHCN dataset lost more than three-quarters of the climate measuring stations around the world. It can be shown that country by country, they lost stations with a bias towards higher-latitude, higher-altitude and rural locations, all of which had a tendency to be cooler.

This is a long debunked meme of Anthony’s. Perhaps this new fabricated controversy serves to obscure the fact that he still hasn’t proven his charge against NOAA?

A House bill aiming to make research and data open to the public

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“A House bill aiming to make research and data open to the public“. Anthony Watts says “Climategate demonstrated what can go wrong when a few misguided scientists take control of data and keep it from the public.” I say it demonstrated what can happen when a few denialist cranks run wild. In any case, he’s pasted a press release from the Alliance for Taxpayer Access about the Federal Research Public Access Act.

As it happens, in the climatology field publicly funded research in the US has been “open to the public” for years. Try the RealClimate web site’s Data Sources page for a decent listing. This is something that denialists have always whined about, even with their noses shoved in it.

The Federal Research Public Access Act’s real purpose is apparently to “stimulate scientific and technological innovation and competitiveness.”

‘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?

One more thing to worry about – undersea supervolcanoes

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“One more thing to worry about – undersea supervolcanoes“. Anthony Watts copies and pastes a National Science Foundation press release entitled “Scientists explore origins of ’supervolcanoes’ on the sea floor, Ancient goliaths blamed for multiple mass extinctions“.

Why? So he can float the faulty logic of we have so many things to worry about, why restrict our “freedoms” because of trivial old AGW.

Sediments Show Pattern in Earth’s Long-Term Climate Record

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“Sediments Show Pattern in Earth’s Long-Term Climate Record“. Anthony Watts wants us to know about a press release detailing UC Santa Barbara geologist Lorraine Lisiecki’s analysis sediment records as they correlate with the Earth’s long-term climate record. Thus all Global Warming is natural!!!!!!

Note the scale in hundreds of thousands of years. Source: wikimedia

This may be an interesting refinement of the long-known influence of fluctuations in the Earth’s orbit, but these extremely gradual changes play no part in the rapid changes we are experiencing now.

Try again, Anthony.

Tracking Earth Hour in the Greenest State

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“Tracking Earth Hour in the Greenest State“. Anthony Watts disparages the 2010 Earth Hour, a world-wide power consumption awareness campaign by the World Wildlife Federation. Here in Ontario, Canada there was a 4% reduction between 8:30 PM and 9:30 PM on March 27th.

Not good enough for Anthony, hence there’s nothing we can do about Climate Change.

Energy Star-t Your Engines

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“Energy Star-t Your Engines“. Anthony Watts reports that the US Energy Star certification process can be manipulated! There is “massive fraud in the EPA/DOE Energy Star Program“! The New York Times says so!

Actually no, just Anthony says so. In fact, Congressional investigators found that they could apply for Energy Star certifications for 15 fictitious devices (5 others were rejected), but have no evidence that widespread misrepresentation has occurred. See the difference?

This of course means that there is no global warming. And if there is, its hopeless trying to do anything about it so lets oppose oppressive governmental regulation.

Earth follows the warming: soils add 100 million tons of CO2 per year

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“Earth follows the warming: soils add 100 million tons of CO2 per year“. Another press release copy-and-paste from Anthony Watts. This time from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory headlined “Soils release more carbon dioxide as globe warms“.

I guess Anthony’s implication is ‘something else that isn’t included in those stupid climate models’! I see reports like this and infer that the “stupid climate models” are too conservative in their conclusions.

Icelandic fissure eruption triggers worries

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“Icelandic fissure eruption triggers worries“. Volcanoes are unpredictable and violent. So why worry about something as slow and dull as global warming?

Volcano erupts near Eyjafjallajoekull in Iceland.

New GOES-15 weather sat reaches orbit

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“New GOES-15 weather sat reaches orbit“. Anthony Watts copies-and-pastes another innocuous news release to thin out the relentless denialist bunk. NASA and the NOAA have launched GOES-P, a spare geostationary weather satellite, using a Delta IV launch vehicle. Hooray!

From Anthony’s blog we know that Federal institutions, especially NASA and NOAA, are corrupt. How could they carry out this task without fudging the numbers? Perhaps they’ve been caught trying to “hide an ascent.”

GOES-P launches aboard a Delta IV rocket

Click on the image to see the night launch on NASA's website.