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I have serious questions about the quality of the data. I spent 5 years designing scientific SONAR systems and running surveys. Capturing data with proper spatial resolution (including time series/syncing) as well as quality of measurements and maintaining tolerance was crucial. With less than 8% of surface stations having less than 1 deg C accuracy now, how can data precision to three significant digits be claimed? Data should be tossed, OR should only be quoted with appropriate tolerances. If your measurement gear is only good to 2 deg C, then your measurements can be stated to any precision you want - but have to be qualified with the tolerance (12.443 deg C +/- 2 deg).

1. A primary method of convincing others is to ridicule and insult them. Notice the responses and downvotes this post will get.

Repeated ignorance in the face of facts deserves ridicule.

2. We have seen vastly higher CO2 levels in planetary history and right now we are seeing what is actually all time lows. We should expect CO2 increases and, in fact, hope for them as going much below 300 ppm would see the beginning of a massive plant die off - there's a reason commercial greenhouses pump CO2 into their facilities.

Not in human history.
And the level sat at ~280pp for several million years without a die off in sight.

3. The temperature change we are seeing now is far from unusual, we've seen similar changes in both rate and magnitude before. In fact, what we are seeing now does not stand out from background noise.

Completely wrong.
The current rate is over 333,000x faster than anything that has come before.

4. Measuring temperatures from millions of years ago to tenths of a degree with any certainty is not realistic. Yet, that's what we're doing.

Wrong.

5. The measuring devices we use, known as Stevenson Screens, have approximately 70% of them improperly cited in such a way as to produce more than 2 degrees of error making it appear hotter (see http://www.surfacestations.org...).

Still wrong.

6. We know some, perhaps a lot, of data has been fabricated (e.g. Yamal tree ring data) or manipulated in such a way as to produce the desired results (e.g. the so called hockey stick graph) and how it conveniently always gets colder in the past as data is adjusted.

Yep, wrong again.

7. We know from the ClimateGate email leaks that coordinated efforts to suppress any conflicting information/studies occurred and were successful.

Manufactured scandal.
IE, lies.

8. Many times the data and methodology of studies supporting AGW is not shared and that even occurs illegally in the refusal of FOIA requests.

Total fabrication

9. So many of the predicted side effects of AGW have not come to pass. For example, we were supposed to be seeing Katrina like hurricanes as the norm but instead the exact opposite happened and we have the longest stretch of reduced cyclonic activity since we began keeping records or the millions of climate refugees that were supposed to be created by now - the UN 62nd General assembly in July 2008 said: it had been estimated that there would be between 50 million and 200 million environmental migrants by 2010. They now say it'll be by 2020 - only a little over 3 years from now. It's not happening. [More here](https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/02/the-big-list-of-failed-climate-predictions/).

Actually 2012 was a record year for tropical storm damage, especially in areas that don't typically see much of them.
Cherry picking for only hurricanes, a geographically restricted term, leaves out rather a lot of the globe.

10. Experiments allegedly proving AGW are sometimes blatantly faked ([see here](https://wattsupwiththat.com/climate-fail-files/gore-and-bill-nye-fail-at-doing-a-simple-co2-experiment/)).

Link to nonscientists who lie about science, and get paid to do so.

11. The breakdown of the scientific method as it becomes science by consensus with massive reliance on appeals to authority and popularity as well as theories that are not falsifiable.

Myth.

12. Computer models are based on assumptions that may or may not be accurate, computer models are not necessarily "proof" of the future. For example, the "pause" of the last 15 years that is causing all the confusion now.

There was no confusion.

There are only about 8% of the USHCN Sites, sited so that the expected error is less than 1C, which is pretty damning considering the warming for the century is estimated at 0.7 degrees Celsius.

Scientists aren't afraid to share the data - ALL the data. And explain why they discounted it. Why is this data hidden? What was the criteria for dropping stations? Especially when an independent audit found that less than 8% of all stations had an accuracy of less than 1 deg C.

http://www.surfacestations.org...

I'll trade that against bad surface stations

http://www.surfacestations.org...

Wow, you would think that since "The Science is Settled", the 10 different temperature records would be essentially the same instead of the vastly different. That just amplifies the fact that 64.5% of the USHCN network stations are rated CRN4 , error >= 2C due to artificial heating sources = 5C due to temperature sensor located next to/above an artificial heating source, such a building, roof top, parking lot, or concrete surface; the majority of surface stations have errors an order of magnitude greater than the signal they are trying to measure. You might want to take a look at www.surfacestations.org before you put to much credibility into surfface station records.

Perhaps you should start where he did, by looking at his observations on the observations: SurfaceStations.org/Odd Sites (he started that site first)

You mean accurate temperature records up to 1987, before they shut off the majority of the weather stations (83% and growing) and started to rely on atmospheric satellite data that has lower accuracy rates spread over much larger areas?

And the remaining weather stations turned out to not be very reliable either, with most being more than 2 degrees Celsius error.

http://www.surfacestations.org...

You mean like this brilliant location for a climate temperature monitor?

http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_itemId=849

Even Anthony Watts thinks that Global Warming is caused by ACs.

You mean like this brilliant location for a climate temperature monitor?

http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_itemId=849

All of the raw data and analysis needs to be released. This can easily be an open source project. I started trying to track down the data and it was a bit difficult. Apparently in the old days the temperature was just recorded by hand at weather stations around the country. The thermometers had to be located away from structures to reduce heat island effect. There were quite a few data points missing in bad (ie cold) weather when the people operating the stations were too lazy to get the data. So data from near by stations was used to fill in that missing data. That is a big no no. You can try to interpolate data but you don't do it and include your interpolation as raw data.

Also the different data sets, tree rings, surface stations, and satellite data didn't agree well so they were massaged together. That is where I get really worried.

Some good information here.

http://www.surfacestations.org/

See http://www.surfacestations.org/

Basing your temperature data on temperature stations that have had AC condensers installed near by or put in the middle of waste water treatment areas isn't going to give you good data. The number of stations that are not in compliance is amazing.

One small problem, though - the NOAA numbers for that time period came from a truncated data set.

For some unstated reason, NOAA decided that the previous number of stations was too large, and decided to stop using the full set. So they dropped a lot of stations. Not the ones in cities, or that had problems with siting (like next to air conditioning units), but a whole bunch of rural ones. Which had the effect of making the overall temperature seem to increase. For exactly the time period when other measurements showed a flat to decreasing graph.

People who looked at individual rural stations can't seem to find the "hotter" trend - and those are exactly the places you'd expect to find it.

The NOAA record seems to be more of a study of "how much has the Urban Heat Index measurement changed over the last couple of decades" than any serious accurate global heat measurement. Look at the http://www.surfacestations.org/ website for examples of just how bad current ground instrument siting is. When you see an "official" thermometer station sitting in the middle of a recently-installed asphalt parking lot, you know it's going to be a bit warm when compared to the same one that's been in a grass field for 100 years...

Not quite accurate

Climate Reference Network Rating Guide - adopted from NCDC Climate Reference Network Handbook, 2002, specifications for siting (section 2.2.1) of NOAA's new Climate Reference Network:

Class 1 (CRN1)- Flat and horizontal ground surrounded by a clear surface with a slope below 1/3 (<19deg). Grass/low vegetation ground cover <10 centimeters high. Sensors located at least 100 meters from artificial heating or reflecting surfaces, such as buildings, concrete surfaces, and parking lots. Far from large bodies of water, except if it is representative of the area, and then located at least 100 meters away. No shading when the sun elevation >3 degrees.

Class 2 (CRN2) - Same as Class 1 with the following differences. Surrounding Vegetation <25 centimeters. No artificial heating sources within 30m. No shading for a sun elevation >5deg.

Class 3 (CRN3) (error >=1C) - Same as Class 2, except no artificial heating sources within 10 meters.

Class 4 (CRN4) (error >= 2C) - Artificial heating sources <10 meters.

Class 5 (CRN5) (error >= 5C) - Temperature sensor located next to/above an artificial heating source, such a building, roof top, parking lot, or concrete surface."
surfacestations.org

  they rated the sites as per NOAA own specifications. The "results" that were published were published against Watts recommendations, because he knew that because the project was done by volunteers, and that the easy to find stations would be statistically over-represented compared to hard stations. now with 82% of the network surveyed only 10% of the stations hit into CRN1 and CRN2 categories and would have an expected error of less than 1 degree C and 8% are in CRN5 with errors expected of 5 or more degrees. It strains credibility to be making predictions of hundredths of a degrees with such certainty when your instruments have systemic errors of 2 whole degrees on average. The new digital stations are even worst, they are shipped without enough cable to reach a siting that would qualify better than CRN3! I don't even think that the global thermometer records would even be talked about if the climate modelers didn't need them for backcasting.
  OBTW in regards to satellites, the UAH Global temperature anomaly for January is -0.01 degrees.

> Here is a graph [wikipedia.org] where CO2, solar activity and temperature are all on a same graph.

So you have a graph showing .8 degree C variation. And the temps are being recorded from surface stations, which over the course of industrialization are now located in cities and yards from air conditioning fans?

I would recommend you look at
http://www.ianschumacher.com/global_warming.html
and
http://www.ianschumacher.com/greenhouse_effect_maximum.html

He touches on most of my objections to global warming screams:
1. Non-convincing evidence for global warming if you discount all earth based measurement as well as historical reconstructions and use satellite data only. Or put differently, there are observation series (ftp://ftp.ssmi.com/msu/monthly_time_series/rss_monthly_msu_amsu_channel_tlt_anomalies_land_and_ocean_v03_1.txt) which show no warming.

2. Certainly if one takes a long term view of climate then anything below 5 degree swing is not out of line with the climate over the past million years and so is not a cause for alarm.

3. Global warming observed from land stations may be due to urban heat island effect where the stations are positioned too close to sources of heat. Moreover, if one looks at http://www.surfacestations.org/, the number of CRN-1 stations is minuscule and even those do not necessarily produce believable data because they are not calibrated often and are not monitored 24/7 for random events which could affect data (e.g. bird flock landing on a redundant array of temperature sensors). Why should I believe the data produced by earth-based stations?

4. The correlation between CO2 levels and temperature is not surprising but CO2 level changes lag temperature changes. What is the cause and what is the effect again? The plot you link to shows this clearly as well btw.

5. Predictive power of climate models is non-existent. Indeed, a simple calculation shows that greenhouse effect, if real, should saturate at some point so that Earth temperature would not increase indefinitely even in this scenario.

My additional objection is that even if climate change is real, and even if it is driven by CO2 levels (rather than vice versa) then it may be preferable to address the issue via carbon sequestration and other technological measures rather than reducing our carbon footprint. Imposing things like Kyoto protocol rather than giving financial incentives for technology development is very dubious to me.

Year-to-year?

http://www.surfacestations.org/

No, I'm saying that the effect of urban heat islands and imprecise data is very well known to climate researchers and is compensated against.

So this link: http://www.surfacestations.org/ is a strawman.

PS: I was a climate scientist as a grad student.

90% of the thermometers in the United States have Climate Reference Network Rating of class 3 or higher resulting in expected errors => than 1C, 61% of the USHCN stations are class 5 with expected errors => 5C! The real tragedy is the US is considered the gold standard for climatological data!

No, they haven't moved them. Fully 90% of surface sensors are badly sited. That's the point of http://www.surfacestations.org/, to document the quality of the sensors.

Satellites take temperature measurements as well, but they have other issues. Well-sited surface sensors would be the best data we can get, and yet we don't even make the effort to site them properly.

Which makes me suspect a lot of the AGW scare. Another being what happens when they have no data and just make stuff up.

http://www.surfacestations.org/

A quick google search turned up these odd stations I think you are referring to: http://www.surfacestations.org/odd_sites.htm and the faq page seems to cover what you described in your summary http://www.surfacestations.org/faqs.htm

A quick google search turned up these odd stations I think you are referring to: http://www.surfacestations.org/odd_sites.htm and the faq page seems to cover what you described in your summary http://www.surfacestations.org/faqs.htm

surfacestations.org

The link you are looking for is:
http://www.surfacestations.org/about.htm
and pretty much the worst sites they found are listed here:
http://www.surfacestations.org/odd_sites.htm

Garbage-In, Garbage-Out, anyone?

The link you are looking for is:
http://www.surfacestations.org/about.htm
and pretty much the worst sites they found are listed here:
http://www.surfacestations.org/odd_sites.htm

Garbage-In, Garbage-Out, anyone?

In 2009, the CO2 global average concentration in Earth's atmosphere was about 0.0387% by volume.

Ahem, listen: zero point zero four percent. Isn't that within background noise range? Don't you think there might be another cause for "warming" if there actually is any beyond cherry-picking? http://www.surfacestations.org/odd_sites.htm

You mean the data from these? http://www.surfacestations.org/ My favorite part is where they changed the coating on the shelters from a lime white wash to a white latex paint. But the latex paint causes the temperatures to read higher than with a white wash.

I cannot tell you how much I hate this line of argument. "People who believe X must therefore believe Y. We all know Y is a crock; therefore people who believe X believe crocks; therefore X is a crock." It's completely illogical, and at least two argumentative fallacies into the bargain.

As far as CAGW goes, there is a fundamental chain of proofs that have to occur before it can be taken as reasonably proven. These start with the claim that the Earth is warming and end with the claim that therefore catastrophe will result. (Well, and more frequently these then pass on from that to claims that if we undertake to destroy the economy in a particular way, the catastrophe will be prevented or attenuated.) The very first claim, that the Earth is warming, is actually suspect because of instrumentation problems, but is likely true as we have been coming out of the Little Ice Age that ended in about 1850. That this warming, if indeed it exists, is unprecedented, is almost certainly false. The CAGW claims just get shakier from there.

Now, I have no problem with the thought that CAGW might be true, and that if so we should act. However, it is an extraordinary claim, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. So far, the CAGW proponents have not provided us with even ordinary evidence, particularly given that all of their predictions to date (that is, those whose end dates have already passed) have been dramatically wrong, that much of their evidence has been irreproducible (and thus, in a scientific sense, not evidence at all) and that their obvious bad will and career politics (as exhibited in the climategate emails) is of the kind that tends to suppress contrary evidence even if it is stronger than the "consensus" view pushed by the CAGW proponents.

In other words, CAGW may be true, but it is not obviously true, has not been shown to be reasonably likely to be true, and is as likely to be utterly false. And on this basis, the CAGW proponents wish to destroy the world's economy, immiserating hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people.

Go visit http://www.surfacestations.org/ and see how many US stations are classified as poor or bad ... 69%, or two thirds of the stations have an error >= 2 degrees celcius, and 8% have an error >= 5 degrees celcius.

I'm the dunce ? If that means I'm not willing to accept everything assholes like Al Gore would have us believe, then yes, I'm a dunce.

The nuclear arsonal of just a few superpowers could kill all life on earth. Instantly. No supervolcano can do that

Bull pucky. A supervolcano would easily out do every single warhead ever built by man, and even if every nuke went off at once, life would certainly go on.

Also, the seasons are caused by the tilt of the earth, not the sun. It may be summer up north, but in Aussiland it is fall, the beginning of winter.

So get rid of summer in one hemisphere. Whether because of axial tilt or solar output, natural variation in global climate far exceeds even the most outrageous projects of unfalsifiable climate models.

Oil is a combination of hundreds of different hydrocarbons of varying length and shape. Its most likely origin is from deposits of life that were burried by sedimentation and eventually compacted into coal or oil.

Its most likely origin is from methane created in the lower layers of the earth, percolating up through various levels of temperature and pressure, creating complex hydrocarbons. The idea that deposits of life somehow magically turn into petroleum is farcical.

What is not nice, is when we increase CO2 or Methane, because then the earth heats, and warmer oceans mean more H2O in the air, keeping it even warmer. However, clouds do help reflect some light.

Actually, the latest papers on the subject show that the cloud reflection effect acts as a negative feedback that far outweighs any increase of CO2 or methane. You've got your story right, but your conclusion wrong.

I am currently only struggling because Americans have decided that if I want to do something with my life I need to be absolutely perfect, and put myself in such heaploads of debt that it will take a good part of my life to pay off, or I could just pull the money out of my ass, or save up 10 dollars that don't go towards cost of living each month to put towards going to college, so that I could get a degree by the time I am 50.

You're struggling because you've chosen to put yourself in debt. There are plenty of community colleges and state universities that offer college educations for much less than some fancy dancy private four year college. And you're always welcome to join the military and get GI bill benefits for education, if you're not a total lard ass.

Please, if you are going to continue, consider the arguments out there, as I have looked at every single anti-global warming website and haven't found even the slightest reasonable argument against it

Well, you may have looked, but it's obvious you haven't understood anything. Check out http://surfacestations.org/ http://wattsupwiththat.com/ and http://climateaudit.org/ - and please, further than just the front page, actually read the critiques and think about it. It's fairly obvious that politics of catastrophic AGW have been corrupting the science of global climate, and the religious fervor with which you defend the "consensus" view is an example of that.

First, thanks for the thoughtful response.

I'm not a climate scientist.

I also am not a believer in Anthropogenic Global Warming. I'm not convinced one way or the other. I suspect that sufficient evidence to reach a reasonable conclusion exists. I doubt we could "prove beyond a reasonable doubt" one way or the other -- we seem to understand too little still -- but we could probably make a fairly convincing statement. Unfortunately, bad political motivations on both sides (environmental extremism on one side, and drill, baby, drill [for lack of a better name] on the other side) for the evidence to be clearly and accurately portrayed. Most [vocal] players in this space are partisans and not scientists (even if they are "scientists" if they are partisans then they are not doing "science")

Actually, that's a fairly good summation of my position as well, as it happens.

But, I have a rough explanation of the answer to one of your questions.

> How, specifically, do we know this?

Those graphs of global mean temperature that you've seen bandied about? Well, the temperature data come from a variety of sources.

We have temperature data in some areas that go back to 1850-1880. The number of weather stations and the accuracy of the measurements have improved in the last 160 years, but we have direct measurements for this period. This is called the "instrumental period." It is probably pretty safe to assume that, for measurements taken from the same weather station, the data are sufficiently accurate measurements of temperature at that station.

Excellent. I have a few questions, then. What is the accuracy of the various thermometers? My understanding is that they are accurate to within anywhere from one degree to around five degrees celsius. Given that the changes hypothesized by the AGW crew are on the order of a degree or two celsius per century, are these thermometers even accurate enough to measure the temperature to the precision needed, within a reasonable margin of error? Moreover, my understanding is that attempts to survey the surface temperature stations have found that the records are often not well kept. For example, I have seen a report on a station in, IIRC, Australia, where the station was moved from a remote location to an airport, but the station ID wasn't changed. Given that the airport would be necessarily hotter than the remoter area (because of albedo from the concrete and such), it seems that this would make that station unreliable. Further, it's my understanding that the number of surface stations has been dropping, and moving towards the coast and inhabited areas, for the last fifty years. Finally, it's my understanding that many of the corrections introduced to remove the biases for such things have had the impact of making the temperature records consistently climb, even when the station has changed neither its location nor its equipment over time. These things make me rather suspicious that the temperature measured is reliable enough and accurate enough, and the corrections applied reasonably enough, to make any firm conclusion. (And note that this is just about the particular stations; I'm not addressing at the point the idea of how we go from that to a concept of global average temperature.)

Any records that you see from before 1850-1880 are proxies. We have found several data sources that we have data for (or can measure today) that appear to be reasonable proxies for temperature in an area. Not being a climate scientist or expert in this area, I can't tell you whether they are highly accurate proxies or not. Maybe somebody else can weigh in on that. I'm not saying that they are not accurate. I have no information, and I haven't seen any significant evidence one way or the other.

According to Wikipedia, sources such as ice cores, tree-ring widths, borehole temperatures and others are providing proxy temperatu

First off, this isn't a prediction, but rather a question of historical fact.

Well, strictly speaking, you can make predictions on what you would find in the historical record (like the rabbit fossil in the Cambrian era that would falsify evolution). I would assert that any theory of AGW should have something interesting to predict about the history of climate.

It seems to me that CO2 concentration is unprecedented however.

Actually, it isn't. We're at around 350ppm, and we've got historical evidence showing it as high as 6000ppm (granted, hundreds of millions of years ago, but we've seen as high as 1000ppm during the last geological era.

Third, what does the lead/lag of CO2 vs temperature have to do with the magnitude of the warming trend?

Causality. You cannot have a lag of CO2 levels if it is a cause, just like you cannot assert that children create their mothers.

Finally, I would just mention that the rate of change is probably the important metric here, not the absolute temperature.

Agreed, and the rate of change is not unprecedented either.

Also I'm wondering why you're not mentioning some of the clearly obvious falsifiable predictions: Like the fact that earth-climate-models are generated using assumptions about how CO2 affects radiation in the atmosphere, and the implications of models can be compared with current climate data?

The fact that computer models are built with assumptions could possibly lead to falsifiability, if it was asserted that a failure of the model to predict let's say, next year's temperatures, falsified the theory. Unfortunately, the typical response is an ad hoc adjustment (a hard coded fudge factor), which severely reduces the utility of the model in the first place. I would submit that sufficient ad hoc adjustments have been made to the climate models to make their utility minimal at best, and completely misleading at worst.

So what's that "single bit of data" that just kills all hope of AGW? I'm intensely curious.

The killer for me? Well, I'd vote for the lag of CO2 levels, but a close second, which isn't exactly a "single" bit of data, but you could consider it a fatal flaw, is the surface temperature record - http://surfacestations.org/ for more details on that. I'd also lump in with the surface temp record the CO2 ppm metric being used -> Mauna Loa is our standard, which I think is probably a poor way to do the science, since CO2 concentrations, like other gases, are not even throughout the globe. I would expect any model which didn't take into account CO2 concentration variations wouldn't be able to make accurate predictions at all.

GIGO, so if you've got a temperature record that has a maximum resolution of 1 degree C, you certainly can't discern trends of .3 degrees C (just like you can't take any arbitrary digital camera footage and zoom into see that fuzzy guy in the background in full detail).

Now, I'll admit the second one is essentially a spamming of scattered nitpicks, but death by a thousand paper cuts is death nonetheless.

Look throught the literature on any field, and you can find data that is inconsistent with theory--whatever theory you happen to choose.

Show me a fossil rabbit in the Cambrian.

Who doesn't have a falsifiable theory? The AGW critics.

AGW critics don't need to have a falsifiable theory -> they're not making the assertion. The burden of proof here clearly belongs to the proponents of AGW.

There are measurment errors, statistical anomalies, unrecognized procedural errors.

I think what you're missing here, though, is that this applies to the work done by AGW supporters. For measurement errors in particular, see http://surfacestations.org/ The problem that AGW folks have is that the nitpicks and flaws pointed out to them represent some very important impacts on their conclusions. If you have error bars of measurement that are greater than 5 degrees C, how can you predict a change of .05 degrees C? If you cannot sustain your theory without erasing the MWP, how can we trust you haven't just found another statistical anomaly and interpreted too much into it?

Look, on the one hand you want me to be skeptical of data that refutes AGW, but you won't apply the same scrutiny to data that supports AGW. The simple fact of the matter is that the scientific view should always be skeptical, and its a shame the AGW supporters have turned that into an insult.

.
As far as the NOAA paper, this should be enlightening.

Well that would be easy, except everytime someone finds evidence of that, the IPCC scientists apply correction after correction, fudge factor after fudge factor to distort the records.

Not to mention a lot of the data they use in the US comes from temperature stations located next to industrial aircon exhausts, in the middle of large expanses of heat retaining tarmac, next to barbeque pits etc etc.

For a very interesting view of the (bad) condition of US temperature monitoring, visit here http://www.surfacestations.org/. Of course the AGW crowd will just accuse the author of being affiliated with Mobil anyway, but for people with a grain of common sense or an inquiring mind, it's an eye-opener.

Citations? One can argue if you want to believe them or not, but: US data., Austrailian data., and African data.. And there's plenty more of non-data related repudiations (wrongly quoted, science does not support the conclusion....) if you bother looking.

Dude, would you get over it. Man made global warming is REAL, and this site proves it:
http://surfacestations.org/
At least in the sense that there are little spots all over the globe made warmer by asphalt and air conditioner exhausts.

This site also shows that only about a tenth of the stations in question are well sited.
In an urban area you have quite a big of warming due to the Heating part of HVAC, internal combustion engines, etc. Which can affect even a well sited monitoring station.
Worldwide a large proportion of monitoring sites are located at airports, which have the same issues as those located in cities, even where the airport is misleadingly classified as "rural".

If you study your own links, you see that they use adjusted data, called homogenized, and is a fitting description. If you first modify rural data to fit urban data it's not surprising that you won't find big differences afterwards.>/I>

You're confusing two different aspects. You homogenize rural and urban stations, and then adjust by the scale of urbanization, for determining the average planetary temperature. You do not do that for determining how urban stations are changing relative to rural stations. For that, you divide them up into separate urban and rural datasets.

... can be found at http://surfacestations.org/ [surfacestations.org]

And your evidence for your claim is....? The link you provided is just to a dataset, not an analysis of parkland vs. non-parkland. So we're back to square one: who to trust, peer-reviewed paper or bold assertion on Slashdot? Hmmm...

And on the contrary to what you suggest, many who do statistics on these datasets, and do not agree with how the adjustments are based, are scientist.

1) Scientist != climatologist
2) Few are.

:(

If you study your own links, you see that they use adjusted data, called homogenized, and is a fitting description. If you first modify rural data to fit urban data it's not surprising that you won't find big differences afterwards.

Example quotes:

Quality-controlled mean monthly temperature data for U.S. in situ stations were obtained from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/National En- vironmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service/ National Climatic Data Center (NOAA/NESDIS/ NCDC) archives.

... and a direct falsification to:

urban meteorological observations are more likely to be made within park cool islands than industrial regions

... can be found at http://surfacestations.org/

And on the contrary to what you suggest, many who do statistics on these datasets, and do not agree with how the adjustments are based, are scientist. Why would you even claim otherwise?

But what do you do when the data is called into question?

I'm prepared to lose my excellent Karma on this issue. To be honest I'm not prepared to lose it over whether Microsoft is better than Linux, or Linux is better than Microsoft:

Research has shown Mount Kilimanjaro has been losing glaciers/snow cap over the last 150 years or so. The reasons for this are micro-climate issues, particularly deforestation around the base on the mountain. Now, will you just shut-up about Mount Kilimanjaro being somehow proof of CO2 based warming hypothesis. It isn't, it never was and it never will be.

Secondly, this whole topic is posted by a Real Climate shill and is nothing more than a propaganda piece to try to limit the damage from the unfolding scandal. The datasets aren't entirely independent as they both take data from the same poorly sited, poor maintained and poorly analysed surface station networks. Moreover, there are big data quality problems with NASA's GISS data. If CRU data agrees with GISS and CRU data has been fixed, I conclude that either GISS data has been fixed too, or that they're both crap.

Here's a brief analysis of data quality issues with GIStemp. Here's information about the poor quality of the surface station network.

You do realize that the location of these things is near building and stuff, so pretty much not representative of even local temperatures?

Yeah.. about that sigh of yours

And if using the one at your house, would you put the thermometer in the middle of the driveway, or right where the heat pump blasts out the exchange air? Wouldn't make sense to do that, would it?

Nonetheless, that is exactly the kind of environment where a lot of the Surface Stations are located. Makes me question the data...

Your points are just plain WRONG. The US isn't the world, no, but it's one of the few countries that has been able to maintain almost continuous sensor coverage. Places like Russia/Western Europe (a vast expanse) just haven't, particularly throughout the first half of the 20th century and (in Russia) the latter quarter of the 20th century. The majority of temperature stations are in the US. A lot of those stations are cited in idiotic locations, vulnerable to the Urban Heat Island affect.

Secondly, the satellite temperature anomaly differs from the surface temperature anomaly and they only come into agreement via. "adjustment". This is the process where so called Scientists massage the data to make it fit their pre-conceived ideas. For further information about "adjustment", I refer you to Climate Audit. For information about just how dodgy a lot of these temperature stations actually are, take a look at Surface Stations.

Yes, it is well within the bounds of natural variation. Weather didn't start in year 1,000. As I understand it, temperature records from Roman times are hard to come by. Dendro records have their own problems (climate audit has a very comprehensive review of the issues, if you care to look).

Your idiotic graph stops in the year 1990. We've had 20 years of data since then. Moreover, a large part of the increasing trend shown starts around 1900, so is obviously not man-made CO2 based. Furthermore, almost half of the observed change occurred before widespread industrialisation and the increase has NOT accelerated through the second half of the 20th century (apart from in the fake graph of Dr Hansen, proven to be statistical nonsense). Moreover, look at the Y scale. What does it show? Try looking at a graph of temperature with a more natural scale, rather than zooming in to make the end look worse than it actually is.

Thanks.

I do apply the highest standards that I can to all claims from any source on any topic. As a person committed to minimal belief and maximum tested knowledge in as many areas of life as possible I take it quite seriously.

Unfortunately what is clear is that "climate science", ahem, isn't as hard a science as we are lead to believe nor is it as "settled" as we are lead to believe. Physics has one up on climate science in many regards.

There are many problems with climate science: bad data, limited data, inferred data, statistically - ahem magically - corrected data, bad data collection sites, bad science by scientists, refusals to provide data and programs, political agendas, .... the list goes on and on and on and on.... like the energizer bunny.... (no I don't work for Duracell ;-).

I won't repeat what others are more capable of reporting in depth: http://climateaudit.org/ http://wattsupwiththat.com/ - two excellent sites that work to provide an audit and rational analysis of what is going on in the science and in the actual world. Oh and http://surfacestations.org/ - when you can't trust the sources of the raw data (if you can even get that) how can you trust any conclusions drawn from said data?

I'm not an expert by any means. In fact I'm quite ignorant of much of the climate science science but I'm learning step by step. It's a complicated field with many flaws and whacked out conclusions drawn seemingly from extreme disaster scenarios and good and bad hollywood movies.

I am a computer scientist and as such I do know about simulations. I've written some. I also know about cellular automata and how they can generate their own randomness within their systems. As Wolfram has demonstrated with a number of proofs Nature is a universal computing system that not only includes continuous systems but also discrete cellular automata like systems. It's highly likely that weather and climate systems are systems that generate their own randomness from within their own systems. This means that they can never be simulated with any accuracy. This means that the only way to know how those "natural computations" are going to end up is to watch them run to their conclusions. This means that all computer models for climate are bogus in regard to their ability to predict the future. That is an inherent flaw not due to a lack of human ingenuity but due to a fundamental aspect of Nature. The fundamental notion that "the map is not the territory" has been violated by the climate scientists running simulations WHEN they BELIEVE in their simulations and WHEN they distort the raw input data with statistical games that alter the data so much that fundamentally alter the trends visibly. (See this blink comparator: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/28/how-not-to-measure-temperature-part-87-grilling-in-the-cornhusker-state/). Is statistically massaged data that misrepresents scientific fraud? That is a good question that is being investigated and is part of the reason that the likes of Dr. Mann (of hockey stick fame) are so defensive. They don't like their work being scrutinized in depth. Dr. Mann has already been admonished by the NAS.

However, it turns out that there are many such questions with climate science which looks like it's in a big need of a serious revamping of it's peer review process. Also if the claims are as dire as the likes of Gore predict or even 1/50th as bad then it's extremely important that we OPEN the Climate Science to maximal scrutiny by people of all fields to vet it and find the flaws and frauds and correct these mistakes and transgressions and to improve our knowledge of climate science and really find out what is occurring on planet Earth in the dynamic Sol-Earth-Moon-solar-system syste

We cannot trust their data

And, for some reason, you think you can trust the government's? How quaint.

I'm sorry, but your post is simply factually incorrect.

http://digitaldiatribes.wordpress.com/2009/04/17/april-2009-update-on-global-temperature-uah/

(The reason for using satellite data vs surface data is because of the strong UHI influence - as seen on http://surfacestations.org/ )

Hey TapeCutter, Here is the site http://www.surfacestations.org/ It supports my observations that weather stations report increasing temperatures when heat islands have been installed around the station.

I'm 47, and have seen lots of hysterics whipped up. After 30 years in electronics, I'm back in college anticipating a career change. I see the writing on the way, and I want to own the exit plan. In 06 I had a college class where one project was to correlate global climate and glacial retreat of the Nisqually glacier. So I plotted the retreat of the glacier and global weather data provided in the text. R-squared was 0.47, pretty crappy correlation. I read some about the Nisqually glacier, it's on an active volcano, and also sees around 250 earthquakes a year. So that's one picture of climate science, have students plot temperature and glacial retreat of a glacier on an active volcano.