Accuracy of climate station electronic sensors – not the best

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“Accuracy of climate station electronic sensors – not the best“. Anthony Watts loves to talk about the accuracy of weather stations and temperature sensors. It’s an excellent way to distract from the fact that statistical analysis does a great job of detecting and removing the effect of such systemic issues.

This paper, Sensor and Electronic Biases/Errors in Air Temperature Measurements in Common Weather Station Networks by X. Lin and K. G. Hubbard gives him the perfect, and pointless, opportunity.

Look below at the chart Anthony posts as evidence and draw the obvious conclusion – over the range of common real-world conditions, the instrument error is flat! Even outside that range the worst-case inaccuracy is only on the order of 0.5%.

Notice the errors all happen away from common real-world temps.

It goes without saying (especially by Anthony) that instrumentation issues are closely watched and corrected for in the climate record, through the magic of statistical analysis.

P.S. Anthony, what is the difference between “accurate” and “consistent”? Which would be a better quality, for example, in a train station clock?

NSIDC Reports That Antarctica is Cooling and Sea Ice is Increasing

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“NSIDC Reports That Antarctica is Cooling and Sea Ice is Increasing“. The always entertaining Steven Goddard pastes up a few maps and tries to use them to claim that they “seem to point” to modest cooling in the Antarctic. Thus proving that there is no global warming. Even though there has been some sea ice loss. And ignoring the impact of the “ozone hole“.

We dealt with this stuff just a few hours ago. Regional, not global. Known to be sensitive to non-temperature driven factors. Ignores other relevant contributing factors.

Remember when the global warming denialists were all fighting against the evidence that ozone emissions were damaging the atmosphere?

On the “march of the thermometers”

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On the “march of the thermometers”. Missed this one. Anthony Watts pointing to “the hard work of E. M. Smith” on ‘dropped’ weather station records. The accusation is always that stations that are warming faster are being kept, those that are cooling are being maliciously discarded.

Funny, they never seem to mention two things about this:

  1. The ‘dropped’ stations are stations that aren’t automatically uploaded to the weather databases. They are in fact added intermittently by infrequent manual processes. This means that a station will be in the database, seem to be dropped, and then at a later date reappear with all the intervening years of data.
  2. The trends for the “dropped” stations and the “kept” stations are the same. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that “colder” stations are more likely to need intermittent manual incorporation into the data set because they are more likely to be remote.

For more on this foolishness, go over to the “Dropouts” post on Open Mind and give your head a shake.

IPCC AR4 Commenter: “I do not understand why this trend is insignificant – it is more than three times the quoted error estimates”

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IPCC AR4 Commenter: “I do not understand why this trend is insignificant – it is more than three times the quoted error estimates”. Chip Knappenberger found an error in the IPCC AR4 Chapter 4 First Order Draft! The draft said:

“The Antarctic results show a slight but insignificant positive trend of 0.7 ± 0.2% per decade.”

Dr. John Church said ‘hey, isn’t that significant?’ Therefore the IPCC are liars! They’re now up to 3 alleged errors out of thousands of evidentiary statements! Or is it 4 alleged errors? They’re coming in so fast (not) that I can’t keep up. As an aside I have to say members of the climate conspiracy who actually scrutinize our overlord’s statements won’t get their bonus cheques. Follow your scripts people!

Here’s the final version (emphasis mine). Damning, or… not?

The negative trend in the NH is significant at the 90% confidence level whereas the small positive trend in the SH is not significant (updated from Comiso, 2003).

A fuller statement (both are from page 351 – page 15 of the PDF – of Chapter 4 of Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is this:

There is a significant decreasing trend in arctic sea ice extent of -33 ± 7.4 × 10³ km²/yr (equivalent to -2.7 ± 0.6% per decade), whereas the antarctic results show a small positive trend of 5.6 ± 9.2 × 10³ km²/yr (0.47 ± 0.8% per decade), which is not statistically significant.

Sea Ice Extent, Northern & Southern Hemispheres. Pg 351, Chapter 4: The Physical Science Basis of IPCC AR4. Which trend is significant?

The second part of this accusation is that any increase in Antarctic sea ice is proof of “no warming” and a disproof on the criminal climate model predictions. Sorry, this is not a predicted response. The Antarctic sea ice is known to be more sensitive to ocean circulation than it is to temperature. This has been discussed as far back as 1992 (Manabe et al., 1992).

The Logarithmic Effect of Carbon Dioxide

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“The Logarithmic Effect of Carbon Dioxide“. Geologist (and amateur climate and cancer researcher) David Archibald tries to show that CO2‘s greenhouse effect impact is negligible at current levels and that rising levels will have even less impact. The only supporting references he mentions are an old blog post on the paragon of atmospheric physics, Climate Audit.

In fact, David’s ill-conceived idea was shot down all the way back in 2007. His conclusion is a product of deliberately selecting a very low climate sensitivity value for CO2. Low sensitivity means low amplification. Kind of obvious if you think about it for a minute, but David clearly prefers to pick his question based on the answer he wants.

I have to mention his strange claim that ‘conventional climatology’ denies a logarithmic relationship to CO2 forcing. This is contradicted by Arrhenius’ work in 1896 and the climate physics actually described in every IPCC Report to date. Even some of the denialist regulars are distancing themselves in the post comments, saying that while they resist the IPCC’s estimate of CO2 forcing as too aggressive they accept that there is some degree of forcing.

Emails from “attack ad” science group posted

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“Emails from “attack ad” science group posted“. Anthony Watts is happy to report that a new batch of scientist’s private e-mails have been “obtained” by The Washington Times and are being quote-minded for juicy bits. Somehow the Competitive Enterprise Institute has “independently obtained” the e-mails too. Anthony says that the “e-mails reveal a group of scientists plotting a political strategy to minimize the effects of Climategate.” I say that the Climategate thing has coasted to a halt and the disappointed denialists are giving the tactic another try to get the hit of attention they crave.

So who are these Machiavellian “prominent climate scientists affiliated with the U.S. National Academies of Science”? Well, actually they seem to be biologists not climatologists, and they are simply members of NAS, not representatives of it. What is their “scheme”? Raise money to pay for a newspaper ad that would highlight the unaccountable falsehoods and character assassination that the denialists deal in. Now that’s nefarious!

Because everyone knows that scientists shouldn’t be allowed to have political opinions, or even worst, express them. That’s reserved for “think tanks” and cranks.

The ‘damning’ quotes Anthony presents are almost comically tepid. Here’s a typical one: “Op eds in the NY Times and other national newspapers would also be great.”

Methane, The Panic Du Jour

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“Methane, The Panic Du Jour“. Steven Goddard prefaces his misrepresentation of reactions to a report about Arctic Ocean methane emissions with a dumb denialist cartoon. Nice to have the quality of thought displayed right off the bat. He finishes with a repeat of his foolish obsession with Arctic sea ice extent by showing a chart of this year’s sea ice extent against the long-term pattern. (It still shows that recent years are visibly lower in comparison to the long-term trend. Shouldn’t you keep quiet about that Steven?)

What is Steven’s main point? Recent research in Science about the amount of methane being released by permafrost underlying the East Siberian Arctic Shelf indicates that the quantities are significantly higher than previously known. Actual scientists at RealClimate think it’s not likely to be a particularly serious matter, but there has been some tempered concern in the first newspaper reports (see this NYT article).

Steven takes this as a cue to pretend that this is invoking a new climate disaster. Somehow in his mind the battle over CO² has been won, and the “warmists” are regrouping to claim that methane is the real terror.

He accuses the newspapers of exaggerating for effect but the NYT article places the estimated Arctic methane emissions of  7 million tonnes in the context of annual emissions of 500 tonnes and describes the resulting local methane concentrations as being elevated by only 2 ppm. It’s funny when Steven ponders the evil cherry-picking motivation of the scientists reporting on the years 2003-2008. In fact, that’s the years that the scientists were actually working in the study area. His understanding of chemistry is no better, as his naïve analogy for “parts per million” shows. Molecules aren’t people Steven, although Soylent Green apparently is.

Climatologists aren’t particularly concerned, newspapers are speculating but staying in context. So much for that accusation.

Global Warming not to blame for toad extinction

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“Global Warming not to blame for toad extinction“. Anthony Watts tries to present a Columbia University press release as disproof of the claim that global warming drove the extinction of Costa Rica’s Monteverde golden toad. The paper’s disputed conclusion is actually that drying due to El Niño weather patterns allowed a harmful chytrid fungus to spread into the toad’s habitat.

The press release says that “proving a link between climate change and biodiversity loss is difficult because so many overlapping factors may be at play, including habitat destruction, introduction of disease, pollution and normal weather variability.” Not too difficult for Anthony to disprove though.

AWOL: Anthony Watts Out of Lies?

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Anthony Watts has gone to ground this weekend, giving me a blessed vacation from his scattergun approach to denialism.

He claims to have a bad cold, but I think it has more to do with licking his wounds over “The Stockholm Initiative”. Anthony made a particularly aggressive claim that a false parliamentary submission by some Swedish denialists was actually the impartial opinion of a legitimate scientific organization. This was immediately shot down in flames.

So I’ll highlight a few positive developments in Climate Change instead.

Skeptical Science has been a great place to find straight-forward unravelling of regular denialist claims. Not long ago they got together with Australian software developers Shine Technologies to produce an iPhone app that gives quick access to their list of predictable “skeptic” arguments. Nice!

Joe Romm at Climate Progress talks about Merchants of Doubt, a book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway that will be released in May, 2010. It exposes the decades-long maneuvering of “a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry.” The same players, but an ever-changing game:

For half a century, the tobacco industry, defenders of the Strategic Defense Initiative, and those skeptical of acid rain, the ozone hole, and global warming strove to ‘maintain the controversy’ and ‘keep the debate alive’ by fostering claims that were contrary to the mainstream of scientific evidence and expert judgment.

Climate Cover-Up, by James Hoggan with Richard Littlemore has been available for a while now. It’s another good look at the political backstory of Global Warming denial. It “spotlights premeditated prevarications about the threat of greenhouse gas emissions by the oil and coal industry, in league with junk scientists, compliant conservative politicians and unsavory public relations practitioners.”

Grasping at Straws

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“Grasping at Straws“. Charles Rotter (the “Moderator”) posts a newspaper article from USA Today called Scientists misread data on global warming controversy. The “data” in question is not temperature records or CO² levels, its opinion polls that show dropping public concern over climate change.

The article suggests that public confidence in ‘scientists’ is actually quite high, presumably excluding the denialosphere, and that people are simply focussed on the harsh short-term economic situation. The concern of climate scientists is that political resistance and misinformation are obscuring the highly probable negative consequences of AGW and encouraging dangerous inaction.

Charles’ entire insight is “If you try really really hard to ask questions a certain way, then you’ll get the answers you want.” He’s trying to spin this two ways. Firstly, he’s implying that the mainstream is trying to position the bad news of a drop in public concern over AGW as an understandable and temporary matter. Secondly he’s implying that climate scientists are panicking over losing funding. Them Ferrari’s ain’t gonna buy themselves!

However his odd remark seems more like advice to fellow denialists. Their anti-AGW positions are often the result of looking at a particular fact or set of data from every possible angle and finding one perspective that if they squint just right looks like it supports their desired conclusion, regardless of how crazy or dishonest it is. Then they discard all the other rational perspectives.

That’s why, for instance, denialists have lately latched onto the “no warming since 1995” claim. We posted on this back on February 16th. The 1995-2009 temperature rise happens to be short enough and modest enough that it falls just short of 95% statistical probability. This can be used to maneuver honest scientists into “admitting” that considering only that arbitrary period, there has been no statistically conclusive warming. Proof!