The Climatic Blog War

[sunsettommy]

Watts Up With That?

The Climatic Blog War

There is a war of words going on between two scientific blogs over my project at www.surfacestations.org. The RealClimate blog, operated by pro AGW global warming scientists NASA's James Hansen and Gavin Schmidt, James Annan and others has posted a six point rebuttal to the effort saying that it is only marginally useful. It's called "No Man is an (Urban Heat) Island".

Dr. Roger Pielke, of the University of Colorado, runs a blog called Climate Science which looks at a wide variety of topics on climate change outside of the AGW mainstream, has posted his response to RealClimate's rebuttal in defense of the project saying its good science. The debate is intense, and some normally reserved scientists are letting the fur fly over the issue. There's sensible debate, science at high levels, diatribe, rhetoric, and even a "Tasker" like character who is a scientist for a major university that uses a doppelganger persona to attack ideas rather than risk his own credentials.

All because I want to take some pictures of weather stations and put them online in a public database. Go figure.

I guess I should be flattered that people are fighting over my idea, but I'd really rather just get on with the project and see what comes out of it. I'm not getting involved in the bickering, I'm just keeping to the work I and the volunteers have started. We are almost up to 100 stations surveyed now.

http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/

______________________________________________________________________________

James Hansen and Gavin Schmidt, James Annan and others are worried that Anthony Watts AUDITING of the SURFACE weather reporting stations will expose the warming bias.They are in damage control trying to discredit the AUDITING efforts.

It is telling that they are against the Audit and trying to make it seem that the expected conclusions will not be relevant.

I think these men know that their research are about to be made worthless when the Auditing is completed and published.That I think is the reason for the opposition.

Meanwhile go look around at http://www.surfacestations.org/ and look at the photo albums of the various weather reporting station that has been audited.It is revealing how shoddy the quality of the stations are.

[B. Max]

Watts Up With That?

The Climatic Blog War

There is a war of words going on between two scientific blogs over my project at www.surfacestations.org. The RealClimate blog, operated by pro AGW global warming scientists NASA's James Hansen and Gavin Schmidt, James Annan and others has posted a six point rebuttal to the effort saying that it is only marginally useful. It's called "No Man is an (Urban Heat) Island".

Dr. Roger Pielke, of the University of Colorado, runs a blog called Climate Science which looks at a wide variety of topics on climate change outside of the AGW mainstream, has posted his response to RealClimate's rebuttal in defense of the project saying its good science. The debate is intense, and some normally reserved scientists are letting the fur fly over the issue. There's sensible debate, science at high levels, diatribe, rhetoric, and even a "Tasker" like character who is a scientist for a major university that uses a doppelganger persona to attack ideas rather than risk his own credentials.

All because I want to take some pictures of weather stations and put them online in a public database. Go figure.

I guess I should be flattered that people are fighting over my idea, but I'd really rather just get on with the project and see what comes out of it. I'm not getting involved in the bickering, I'm just keeping to the work I and the volunteers have started. We are almost up to 100 stations surveyed now.

http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/

______________________________________________________________________________

James Hansen and Gavin Schmidt, James Annan and others are worried that Anthony Watts AUDITING of the SURFACE weather reporting stations will expose the warming bias.They are in damage control trying to discredit the AUDITING efforts.

It is telling that they are against the Audit and trying to make it seem that the expected conclusions will not be relevant.

I think these men know that their research are about to be made worthless when the Auditing is completed and published.That I think is the reason for the opposition.

Meanwhile go look around at http://www.surfacestations.org/ and look at the photo albums of the various weather reporting station that has been audited.It is revealing how shoddy the quality of the stations are.

I didn't know that was you, or that it is still going on. Has anyone ever confronted Hansen and his changing of the data sets for the US historical temperature records which substantually altered this graph, that you are aware of.

http://www.john-daly.com/usa-1999.gif

[Riverwind]

The RealClimate blog, operated by pro AGW global warming scientists NASA's James Hansen and Gavin Schmidt, James Annan and others has posted a six point rebuttal to the effort saying that it is only marginally useful. It's called "No Man is an (Urban Heat) Island".

I am a definite sceptic when it comes to global warming but in this case I have to side with the global warming chicken littles. It is unlikely that errors introduced by poor measurement stations would have significantly altered the over all conclusions. Photographing random stations is an amusing stunt but it won't provide any concrete information that would invalidate the IPCC models.

The problem with the IPCC conclusions is they make huge assumptions about the causes of global warming.

[ScottSA]

It is unlikely that errors introduced by poor measurement stations would have significantly altered the over all conclusions.

Do you read what you write before you post it?

[Riverwind]

Do you read what you write before you post it?

Yes. Did you read the rebuttle offered by the global warming chicken littles?

[jester]

The climate is changing, it happens all the time. I have thought of a name for this event and believe the word weather may catch on best. Yes the world is changing, always has done always will so what is the point of this arguement dragging on and on? We as a species cannot stop it or slow it, the challenge is to survive it. Does it really matter how it started or who may or may not be speeding it up? All this waste of time and energy is moving the deck chairs on the Titanic, start launching lifeboats instead.........

[speaker]

jester,

I think if you check out the IPCC site here , http://www.ipcc.ch/ ,, you will find that they also are trying to figure out how to mitigate the impacts of climate change, the knowledge of the extent of impacts from global warming will help us to figure out what adaptations will work best and most economically.

[Bonam]

We as a species cannot stop it or slow it

What do you base that on? Were it sufficiently important, humanity could effect substantial change on the global climate. Methods of rapidly changing a planet's climate have been discussed and developed at great length, usually within the context of terraforming.

For example, if it was determined that the Earth was heading into an ice age (due to natural causes), it would be in our interest to prevent that from happening, even though it wasn't our fault. This could be easily achieved through methods including covering highly reflective surfaces of the Earth (i.e. the ice caps) with dark, highly light absorbing materials (i.e. vegetation), and vastly increased production of greenhouse gases (ones that are much more effective than CO2), and, if needed, more extreme methods. These are well within our technological capability, and could be implemented if there was fear of an impending ice age.

Similarly, if the consequences of global warming were deemed severe enough, technological solutions to prevent or reverse the warming could be developed. Besides just reducing our greenhouse gas emissions to prevent the extra heating effect that our civilization may have, if the global climate was becoming dangerously warm (whether due to natural or artificial causes), we could and would act to reverse that change. Highly absorbant areas of the Earth could be covered in more reflective materials, greenhouse gases could be removed from the atmosphere at a rapid rate artificially, and, if it were necessary, the level of solar radiation hitting the Earth could be reduced by the deployment of solar shades (in geosynchronous solar orbit, at an Earth-Sun Lagrange point) that would block some of the sun's light before it hit the Earth.

The above methods might be expensive, and some might need some further technological development before they are really realistic, but they do exist and are options if the need is sufficient.

So from my point of view, humanity as a civilization has the capability, or is close to having the capability, of controlling the Earth's overall climate. What that means is that rather than panicking about changes one way or the other from where the Earth is now, we need to objectively determine what would be the optimum temperature, based on a wide range of criteria such as:

- what global average temperature would make the most land available within a habitable temperature range (most likely a higher temperature than now)

- what global average temperature would cause the extinction of the least species (most likely as small a change from the current temperature as possible)

- what global average temperature would cause the least natural disasters and the least problems for populated areas that are susceptible to the effects of climate change (might be significantly lower than now)

- how difficult (expensive) a target temperature is to achieve and what methods would be required to achieve that temperature

- most likely a bunch of other criteria that I can't think of right now

and then work to implement that temperature. After everything is considered, that optimum global average temperature may be higher than what we have now, or it may be lower, but whatever it is, we have (or will have) the ability to implement that temperature. Basically, humanity has (or will have within the next few decades) the capability to "play God" with the Earth, and along with the capability comes the responsibility.

[sunsettommy]

The RealClimate blog, operated by pro AGW global warming scientists NASA's James Hansen and Gavin Schmidt, James Annan and others has posted a six point rebuttal to the effort saying that it is only marginally useful. It's called "No Man is an (Urban Heat) Island".

I am a definite sceptic when it comes to global warming but in this case I have to side with the global warming chicken littles. It is unlikely that errors introduced by poor measurement stations would have significantly altered the over all conclusions. Photographing random stations is an amusing stunt but it won't provide any concrete information that would invalidate the IPCC models.

The problem with the IPCC conclusions is they make huge assumptions about the causes of global warming.

Did you look at the charts for those AUDITED stations.The Photos tells part of the story.

Do you realize that most of the completed Audited weather reporting stations failed to meet the standards?

Go look again at the link and read the posted standards of what a valid and properly maintained weather reporting station should be.

[sunsettommy]

I didn't know that was you, or that it is still going on. Has anyone ever confronted Hansen and his changing of the data sets for the US historical temperature records which substantually altered this graph, that you are aware of.

I am not Anthony Watts!

Hansen knows since he runs one of the centers that manipulate collect the data from many weather reporting stations.The very ones being audited.

It is amusing that they are so worried about an effort that has only gotten started and may never be published in science or nature publications.Somehow they know the answer without having much of the Auditing done and therefore no clear picture on how much warming bias there is.

Climate Audit I think exposed James Hansens altering data sets.

[Riverwind]

Do you realize that most of the completed Audited weather reporting stations failed to meet the standards?

Yes. The issue is how they use the data from these stations. My reading of the rebuttle is they don't use this data directly and they have introduced fudge factors to account for the urban heat island effect. These fudge factors were calculated by assuming an urban station should report the same data as a rural station and assuming that any difference is caused by the urban heat island effect. This means their results would not change if this difference was actually caused by urban stations that did not meet standards.

If these guys really want to make a point they have to focus on the stations that are classed as 'rural' in the data set. If they can show that a large number of the rural stations have similar problems then they would have evidence that undermines the IPCC models. They don't have any case if all they can show is that the urban stations have problems.

[sunsettommy]

To make it easier since none of you will bother looking it up.

Standards for weather stations

http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/2007/06/s...stations_1.html

Spend some time looking through it.

[sunsettommy]

Do you realize that most of the completed Audited weather reporting stations failed to meet the standards?

Yes. The issue is how they use the data from these stations. My reading of the rebuttle is they don't use this data directly and they have introduced fudge factors to account for the urban heat island effect. These fudge factors were calculated by assuming an urban station should report the same data as a rural station and assuming that any difference is caused by the urban heat island effect. This means their results would not change if this difference was actually caused by urban stations that did not meet standards.

If these guys really want to make a point they have to focus on the stations that are classed as 'rural' in the data set. If they can show that a large number of the rural stations have similar problems then they would have evidence that undermines the IPCC models. They don't have any case if all they can show is that the urban stations have problems.

They use a gridcell set up.Still based on Weather reporting station data.

Their arguments makes no sense since they themselves clearly have no idea how biased INDIVIDUAL stations are.Just how much warming they recieve from a nearby air conditioner exhaust.How much heating from a building it is attached to and so on.

Here is the exchange between Gavin Schmidt and Anthony Watts.

A note from a NASA Climate Researcher

http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/2007/06/a...limate_res.html

Notice how Gavin is not making sense?

Gavin,James.Phil and others never did an Audit of the weather stations themselves.

So how do they know how accurate they are?

[sunsettommy]

Climate Audit responds to Gavin Schmidt:

Gavin Schmidt: station data “not used” in climate models

By Steve McIntyre

EXCERPT:

Gavin Schmidt has told Anthony Watts that the problematic station data are not used in climate models and any suggestion to the contrary is, in realclimate terminology, “just plain wrong”. If station data is not used to validate climate models, then what is?

His point seems to be that the climate models use gridded data.

But isn’t the gridded data calculated from station data? Well, yes. (And it wasn’t very hard to watch the pea under the thimble here.) So Gavin then argues that the adjustments made in calculating the gridded products have “removed the artefacts” from these poor stations:

If you are of the opinion that this station is contaminated, then you have to admit that the process designed to remove artefacts in the GISS or CRU products has in fact done so -

At this point, all we know is that the process has smoothed out the artefacts. Whether the artefacts have biased the record is a different question entirely and one that is not answered by Gavin’s rhetoric here. At this point, while we have a list of GISS stations there still is no list of CRU stations or CRU station data. How could one tell right now whether CRU has “removed the artefacts or not”? So on the present record Anthony doesn’t have to admit anything of the sort. OF course, if the data and code is made available and it becomes possible to confirm the truth of Gavin’s claim, this situation may change. But right now, no one can say for sure.

Gavin then asserts than any removal of contaminated stations would improve model fit. I’m amazed that he can make this claim without even knowing the impact of such removal.

my emphasis

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1781

I am amazed too since he has no idea how many of these stations are contaminated and how biased towards warming they are.

The whole reason for the Audit in the first place.

<snicker>

[Riverwind]

How could one tell right now whether CRU has “removed the artefacts or not”?

There are two ways to do this:

1) Use data from surrounding stations to identify problematic stations. This assumes that the surrounding stations do not have a similar bias.

2) Treat all stations in a certain category (i.e. urban or rural) as less trusted and use the data from the trusted stations to adjust the data from the less trusted stations. This assumes the rural stations have not been compromised.

Data from bad stations would not affect the results if the assumptions used to 'remove the artifacts' are basically correct. That is why the people doing the survey need to focus their effort more and demonstrate that the assumptions used to correct the data are not valid. It is not enough to show that many stations are reporting bad data.

[sunsettommy]

How could one tell right now whether CRU has “removed the artefacts or not”?

There are two ways to do this:

1) Use data from surrounding stations to identify problematic stations. This assumes that the surrounding stations do not have a similar bias.

2) Treat all stations in a certain category (i.e. urban or rural) as less trusted and use the data from the trusted stations to adjust the data from the less trusted stations. This assumes the rural stations have not been compromised.

Data from bad stations would not affect the results if the assumptions used to 'remove the artifacts' are basically correct. That is why the people doing the survey need to focus their effort more and demonstrate that the assumptions used to correct the data are not valid. It is not enough to show that many stations are reporting bad data.

You have no idea what you are talking about.IF THE INITIAL DATA IS COMPROMISED.THEN ANYTHING DOWN THE ROAD WITH THAT DATA WILL NEVER BE FULLY RECONCILED.Try getting good data from stations that meet the standards instead.

CRU has not released the information that would support their claim.THEREFORE YOUR POST GOES FLAT.

YOU STILL FAIL TO FACE THE FACT THAT UNTIL ALL THE STATIONS ARE AUDITED.YOU AND GAVIN AND OTHERS WILL NEVER KNOW HOW GOOD THE DATA REALLY ARE.

That is what went right over your head.

Did you even read this part?

1. Real Climate: “Mistaken Assumption No. 1: Mainstream science doesn’t believe there are urban heat islands….”

Climate Science Response: The issue of poor siting is not an urban heat island issue, but is a question of the very local environment around each site regardless of whether the site is urban or rural. Real Climate’s bias is clearly shown in that they cite the Parker (2005,2006) papers, yet ignore the peer reviewed papers which rebut the Parker conclusions; (my emphasis)

Pielke Sr., R.A., and T. Matsui, 2005: Should light wind and windy nights have the same temperature trends at individual levels even if the boundary layer averaged heat content change is the same? Geophys. Res. Letts., 32, No. 21, L21813, 10.1029/2005GL024407.

and

Walters, J. T., R. T. McNider, X. Shi, W. B Norris, and J. R. Christy (2007): Positive surface temperature feedback in the stable nocturnal boundary layer, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L12709, doi:10.1029/2007GL029505

2. Real Climate: “Mistaken Assumption No. 2: … and thinks that all station data are perfect.”

Climate Science Response:

It is correct that anamolies are less heterogeneous than absolute temperatures. However, for the anamolies to be used to assess long term temperature trends in tenths of a degree, all significant non-climatic and locally specific microclimate influences must be removed. That this has clearly not been done can be seen in the site photos themselves. There are also several papers that present the issues with the station siting in the peer reviewed literature; (my emphasis)

Hale,R. C., K. P. Gallo, T. W. Owen, and T. R. Loveland, 2006 Land use/land cover change effects on temperature trends at U.S. Climate Geophysical Research Letters

Mahmood, Rezaul , Stuart A. Foster and David Logan, 2006: The Geoprofile metadata, exposure of instruments, and measurement bias in climatic record revisited International Journal of Climatology

Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res. in press.

Pielke Sr., R.A. J. Nielsen-Gammon, C. Davey, J. Angel, O. Bliss, M. Cai, N. Doesken, S. Fall, D. Niyogi, K. Gallo, R. Hale, K.G. Hubbard, X. Lin, H. Li, and S. Raman, 2007: Documentation of uncertainties and biases associated with surface temperature measurement sites for climate change assessment. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., in press.

The absence of Real Climate commenting on these papers is by itself evidence that this website is not interesting in debating the science issues that we raise in our papers.

Further, the statement that “comparisons work because of large distance over which the monthly temperature anomalies correlate” is given to avoid the actual science issue that is being addressed. Warm or cool surface temperatures do correlate regionally. However, this does not mean the long term trends over these regions can be quantified to tenths of a degree per decade. This is a misleading statement by Real Climate as the issue being raised about the surface HCN sites is their capability to monitor multi-decadal near-surface temperature trends given the issue of the poor siting of many of them.

[ScottSA]

How could one tell right now whether CRU has “removed the artefacts or not”?

There are two ways to do this:

1) Use data from surrounding stations to identify problematic stations. This assumes that the surrounding stations do not have a similar bias.

2) Treat all stations in a certain category (i.e. urban or rural) as less trusted and use the data from the trusted stations to adjust the data from the less trusted stations. This assumes the rural stations have not been compromised.

Data from bad stations would not affect the results if the assumptions used to 'remove the artifacts' are basically correct. That is why the people doing the survey need to focus their effort more and demonstrate that the assumptions used to correct the data are not valid. It is not enough to show that many stations are reporting bad data.

You have no idea what you are talking about.IF THE INITIAL DATA IS COMPROMISED.THEN ANYTHING DOWN THE ROAD WITH THAT DATA WILL NEVER BE FULLY RECONCILED.

That is exactly right. the GW hypothesis is a multistage, multivariant hypothesis, and each subsequent stage must magnify every error made in the previous stage, yet riverwind and his buddies are talking about arbitrarly massaging the data at the very first stage! I have never seen a worse case of reaching an a priori conclusion and then just making up input to ensure an output. Even with rock solid data it's unlikely that an acceptable margin of error could be reached by the time they start plugging data into climate models themselves designed to reach an a priori conclusion.

[Riverwind]

You have no idea what you are talking about.

I am simply restating the arguments of the global warming crowd. I assume these people know what they are talking about even if they have tunnel vision.

IF THE INITIAL DATA IS COMPROMISED.THEN ANYTHING DOWN THE ROAD WITH THAT DATA WILL NEVER BE FULLY RECONCILED.

It is possible to correct for compromised input data if you can make some reasonable guesses about which data is compromised. The global warming advocates claim that they were able to GUESS which data was compromised without actually auditing each station. What they have not done is demonstrate that their guesses were based on valid assumptions. If the site surveyors will have a strong case if they can show that these guesses were based on invalid assumptions.

IOW - your argument is an over simplification of the process because bad input data does not always invalidate the results.

That said, the evidence uncovered to date certainly does inject a degree of uncertainty into the numbers and the global warming advocates should be doing a better job of addressing it.

The issue of poor siting is not an urban heat island issue, but is a question of the very local environment around each site regardless of whether the site is urban or rural.

I agree with that. That is why I said these guys need to compile a list of compromised rural sites and demonstrate that the 'corrections' for the urban heat island effect were biased by these compromised rural sites.

[bush_cheney2004]

Gotta love Mother Nature....Erik the Red endorses Global Warming!

"Using the world's oldest recovered DNA, a new study suggests Greenland was much warmer than previously thought during the last Ice Age and natural global warming trends may be as significant as human-induced warming."

"...It provides further evidence that natural processes can and do produce climate change, and that this can be large enough to produce effects similar to those predicted to result from anthropogenic warming."

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/stor...705?hub=SciTech

[ScottSA]

Gotta love Mother Nature....Erik the Red endorses Global Warming!

"Using the world's oldest recovered DNA, a new study suggests Greenland was much warmer than previously thought during the last Ice Age and natural global warming trends may be as significant as human-induced warming."

"...It provides further evidence that natural processes can and do produce climate change, and that this can be large enough to produce effects similar to those predicted to result from anthropogenic warming."

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/stor...705?hub=SciTech

Boreal forests in Greenland? Too cool. I'm going to open Vernon's first banana plantation! Bring on global warming!

[B. Max]

[quote name=

It is amusing that they are so worried about an effort that has only gotten started and may never be published in science or nature publications.Somehow they know the answer without having much of the Auditing done and therefore no clear picture on how much warming bias there is.

Hansen was worried about the US historical temperature records so he altered the data sets in order to change the graph that a lot of people have seen.

Climate Audit I think exposed James Hansens altering data sets.

Yes climate audit did expose him. But I was wondering if anyone had actually confront Hansen about it.

[jbg]

...and then work to implement that temperature. After everything is considered, that optimum global average temperature may be higher than what we have now, or it may be lower, but whatever it is, we have (or will have) the ability to implement that temperature. Basically, humanity has (or will have within the next few decades) the capability to "play God" with the Earth, and along with the capability comes the responsibility.

Sounds somewhere between ineffectual and dangerous. During the mid-1970's some "scientists" were talking about throwing carbon black on Arctic sea ice to mitigate the "global cooling" then thought to be in progress. Would we now be blaming the current "warming" on such foolhardy activity, or would that activity have produced a real catastrophe, as opposed to the harm predicted in Al Gore's treacly (sp) and phony movie?

[WestViking]

We are much more likely to blow up a major portion of the planet than learn how to control weather.

[jbg]

We are much more likely to blow up a major portion of the planet than learn how to control weather.

Not if a skilled professional such as David Anderson is controlling the weather.

[WestViking]

We are much more likely to blow up a major portion of the planet than learn how to control weather.

Not if a skilled professional such as David Anderson is controlling the weather.

Perhaps you have a point - controlling the weather may be easier than controlling Iran's President. However the risk of nuclear stupidity remains.