Slashdot Mirror
Surfacestations: NOAA Has Overestimated Land Surface Temperature Trends
New submitter BMOC writes "Anthony Watts of Surfacestations project (crowdsourced research) has finally yielded some discussion worthy results (PDF). He uses a siting classification system developed by Michel Leroy for Meteofrance in 1999 that was improved in 2010 to quantify the effect of heat sinks and sources within the thermometer viewshed by calculation of the area- weighted and distance-weighted impact of biasing elements to calculate both raw and gridded 30 year trends for each surveyed station, using temperature data from USHCNv2. His initial claims are that station siting is impacting the surface temperature record significantly, and NOAA adjustments are exacerbating that problem, not helping. Whether you agree with his results or not, recognize that this method of research is modern and worth your participation in the review. Poke holes in publicly sourced and presented research all you can, that's what makes this method useful."
Who the heck would write a whole Slashdot article about un-peer-reviewed results? Geez...
"... Sean Hannity, whose surgery to remove those bolts from his neck was apparently successful,
He uses a siting classification system developed by Michel Leroy for Meteofrance in 1999 that was improved in 2010 to quantify the effect of heat sinks and sources within the thermometer viewshed by calculation of the area- weighted and distance-weighted impact of biasing elements to calculate both raw and gridded 30 year trends for each surveyed station, using temperature data from USHCNv2.
Had to read that a couple of times before my internal parser came back with an approximate translation into lay-English.
I fear that this will be ammunition for the climate change deniers, which if I understand correctly is not the intention here. The gentleman in question is merely pointing out possible bias and error and the open invitation is to critically analyse and see if his theory stands up. You know, like real scientific method! Still, I'll sit back now and watch the fireworks in what promises to be yet another pitched battle between the deeply entrenched sides in a war where actual fact is not nearly as important as name calling and idealogical strength of will.
And the insults start in 3.....2......1......
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
Let the bunfight begin.
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
The research has classified all the surface stations into 5 classes of relevance, from "reliably close to environment" to "poorly sited" in order to evaluate whether and how much the location of the thermometer and its proximity from airports, cities and so on would skew its measures over time. The end result is that there is a warming over time, but that warming is +0.155 C / decade using the best surfacestations, and twice that (+0.309C / decade) if you use them all.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Tell me, is this entire thread merely trolling?
It's not peer-reviewed. Everything else he's submitted for peer review on the matter of climate change has been ripped to shreds; why should this be any different?
"... Sean Hannity, whose surgery to remove those bolts from his neck was apparently successful,
Odd when you consider how much whining about how the data CRU et al had should be released NOW from you deniers.
Watts had said he would publish a preliminary paper when 60% complete. When 60% complete, Watts diodn't publish. NASA took the data WATTS had collected (you know, the "raw data") and did the work.
Showing that there was a slightly higher warming trend if you took Watts' "best sited" stations than if you included them all.
Which was why Watts had clammed up.
(PS Watts has had to massage the figures. He openly admits he made "corrections" which to every denier was "proof" the CRU/NASA et al were "cooking the books" on the data.)
Disclaimer: I did work in atmospheric science for 15 years.
I understand all this talk about adjusting temperature results for urban sprawl around the measuring stations, but bear in mind that those stations are weather forecast stations, never intended as climatology primary source of inputs. So why don't we simply use a better designed system, such as a thermometer a couple of feet inside the ground: depending on the depth you can average out the daily thermal cycle (a few inches) or even the yearly cycles (a few feet). And there you have your reliable long therm^Hterm trends without any supercomputers or fancy models.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Of course the climate is always changing.
The issue is not *that* the climate is changing. It's the *rate* of change that's the issue. And sorry, but choosing between an AC posting a random website, and "the scientific process", I'm going to go with "the scientific process".
"... Sean Hannity, whose surgery to remove those bolts from his neck was apparently successful,
Of course we all know that using more capital letters makes your argument more valid.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
AGW wins again on the data.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
For a long time people have been pointing out that ground based met. stations were showing much more warming than met. balloons and satellites. The urban heat island effect has also been well known.
;-)
The problem is that some people have willfully ignored the instrument problems because it suited their agenda.
Watts noticed the specific problem with station siting and he, along with many others, has been documenting it. That part is uncontroversial. Using the methods of Leroy 2010, Watts is attempting to quantify the problem. He isn't a scientist and isn't used to publishing. That may be a problem for him. On the other hand, he had help with this paper and I expect that his co-authors will improve its quality a lot. The paper is up on his web site and many scientists have made helpful comments. By the time it is finally submitted, it may actually be a good paper.
Looking at her diarrhea of whining posts, she really has her panties in a bunch about this.
I'm not a coward by any name.
WTF is a Surfacestation ? Is it the workstation version of Microsofts new tablet?
They do, they also use thermal satellite imaging, and sea buoys of course, which show the same trends.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_temperature_measurements
why did you call it 'climate change', by the way? The climate is ALWAYS changing
As has been stated before: "climate change" was a spin introduced by Frank Luntz (a Republican "political consultant"), to make global warming sound nicer.
I see a picture of what I assume is the "worst of the worst" monitoring stations at surfacestations.org compared to a good station. What I don't see is the methodology or the formula for determining the temperature error. You could easily test AC impact by simply setting up a second site and turning off the air, for instance.
I could just as easily make up a formula for error based on the geographic proximity to Narnia (which had a really long winter), but that doesn't mean it would be any more accurate.
Naturally, that sounds snarky, but NOAA already has a formula for compensating for local microclimate effects, what makes this new formula better?
It may be important to note that the "incorrect" graph on the surfacestations website looks different than the one at NASA, which you can view here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425745000030&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
It's a close thing, though. If he had said something like "after we could not find a strong signal that, based on our hypothesis, we had reason to assume to be there", it would be a description of a reasonably scientific approach. Maybe, just maybe, being the amateur that he is, he just got the formulation badly wrong, and actually did it reasonably right.
After all, assuming, for the sake of argument, that something is the case, and then testing for it, is a way how it can be legitimately done. You develop a hypothesis, try to figure out what the implications of said hypothesis would be if it were true, and then go looking for signs that match these implications. While making very, very sure that you are not falling victim to some sort of confirmation bias on the way (i.e. seeing stuff you are looking for because you want it to be there, and not because it is actually there).
Personally, I have no reason to defend Mr. Watts, nor am I convinced he is right. But being a professional scientist, I am both fairly shocked by the (almost) blind trust which is placed in the peer review process by the users of this forum (once you have seen it from the inside, you typically no longer trust it that much), and also how most people seem to assume that only the professionals can ever be right.
Is Mr. Watts wrong? Perhaps. Probably. But please don't judge people by paper form alone, lest you be unpleasantly surprised at some point.
yes, he's dangerous. Silence him! And find all those that have visited his site, and have them silenced too!
There is a problem when the definition of 'climatologist' is effectively 'someone who studies the effects of AGW and recommends policy to mitigate it'. A scientist should understand the proper ordering of cause and effect. A scientist would understand the difference between real debate and rigging the game to ensure a predetermined outcome.
There is a point where the case would be settled to the point where it would be more like flat earthers wanting a seat at the table to draw maps. But we ain't even close to that sort of certainty.
I looked at some of those 'climate models' once. Oh. My. God. A few hundred sample points to model the entire Earth? I actually saw one that crappy, the best aren't all that much better. I don't care how much calculating you do on each point, when total resolution is that low I really doubt anything useful can be taken from such a model about next week, next century isn't even a joke.
The problem is we still don't have the ability to model anything as complicated as the Earth's climate. We don't even have good enough data to input into a model if we had one. We only have semi-reliable temp data for less than a century on most of the world, humidity, rainfall, cloudcover/sunlight and pressure data are even worse. And a century is nothing when trying to understand longterm trends. The proxies used to attempt to make up for that lack of primary data is a very rough substitute. So anyone who even tries to make definitive statements at this point should be instanly suspected of being a quack.
Now combine with the hard reality that it is painfilly obvious to anyone who looks at the history of the 20th Century that this is a case of a solution in search of a justification and the politicization of science we are dealing with here makes perfect sense. It makes sense but it still pisses me off how easy it was to make scientists betray science in the name of power and funding. We have real problems, many of them ecological, and we need scientists we can trust to help solve them. But I don't trust em at this point. I'm as pissed as I suspect the average Catholic is at the priests molesting kids. A trusted institution turned out to be rotten to the core and in need of a major cleansing and instead getting a whitewash and a 'nothing to see here, move along.'
Democrat delenda est
Peer Reviewed is not synonymous with truth. You would be wise to learn this. There were peer reviewed articles about the ether before physicists demonstrated that it doesn't exist.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
Problem is, there's so much politics in the peer-review process already that the argument isn't entirely unbelievable, it's just highly unlikely. Anyone with an ear to the ground hears rumblings about science bankrolled by organizations with an agenda and presented as neutral, or about people who have been denied publication because someone on an editorial board was doing the same work and didn't want to get scooped, or about selection of big names for journals because they were big names rather than because their work was great, or about confirmation bias in clinical trials where a doc will almost subconsciously discount symptoms he doesn't like.
Obviously it's not enough to invalidate science, but the political problems make results less trustworthy and gives farfetched conspiracy theories (i.e. no global warming) a ring of truth to them. That's enough to keep them alive among the ignorant, especially because most people don't have time to learn the science themselves.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
"...and also how most people seem to assume that only the professionals can ever be right...." ...and also how most Slashdotters seem to assume that only the AGW supporters can ever be right...
There. Fixed that for you...
Don't be unfair. I never said I believed Mr. Watts. But I do find the way how everyone here has an automated negative response worthy of Pavlov's dogs to non peer reviewed work worrying.
Especially if you factor in the systemic problem that if an amateur attempts to do science, he or she will in all likelihood not be very good at communicating their results in the "proper", dispassionate lingo of the professionals. Or in other words: regardless of whether they are right or not (!), chances are high that even at the best of times, the amateur will not come across in a way that is particularly reassuring to professionals.
The only way to deal with something like the stuff that Mr. Watts is claiming is to dissect it, and, if his theory is found wanting, to calmly say something like "it's crap because of $foo and $bar" (with $foo and $bar being rational arguments that can be readily verified by a reasonably competent person). Discrediting it because it has not appeared in a peer-reviewed journal is actively dangerous, since that sort of dismissal just fans the fire of "alternate science", and the stupid sort of AGW deniers.
The key issue seems to be that a number of stations had hardware upgrades over the past 30 years or so. Many of the new instruments give lower readings than the older ones did. (Didn't dig deep enough to figure out why though.) Any research needs to adjust the data to cope with this problem. Watts just ignores it, and it cancels out half the effect of the warming measured in the US over the last 30 years. He needs to correct for this and rerun his numbers.
Note that the BEST study uses data from all over the world (including satellite data, which is immune from the effect Watts is studying) over a 250-year period. So it's hard to say that Watts' result really amounts to much even if he does correct it.
--Greg
I don't care what NOAA, station siting, or the numbers say. I've not experienced heat like this summer, ever. It's too friggin hot. Last winter was pathetic as far as cold and snow go. It was not the usual. The gist of it is global temp is going up. It's been going up since the late 1800s because people exacerbate the "normal" heating periods of the planet. There's no point in arguing about bunk data. You don't need it. Instead, spend time figuring out what to do after we go over the edge of the tipping point.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Because Bill Nye is a real climatologist.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I appreciate someone that provides a link, even if it is wikipedia.
However the link provided no support that that 'climatology' is not a new branch of research.
The article starts with a history section that chooses to call some people 'climate researchers' because some of what they did included documenting temperatures, tides, etc.
Further the article differentiates such studies from (mere) meteorology saying "those who practice climatology, study both the nature of climates – local, regional or global – and the natural or human-induced factors that cause climates to change."
I haven't seen any documentation suggesting such studies are centuries old.
No brain, no pain.
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2012/07/bunny-bait.html
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2012/07/30/why-wattss-new-paper-is-doomed-to-fail-review/
Too many people fail to realize that small contributions from millions of people add up. This covers multiple topics. Also, a basic real understanding of large numbers or growth is severely lacking; obviously nobody can comprehend large scales like a million without abstractions but I would say that the abstractions commonly used are the problem. Statistics is much much worse and it is used so heavily today even in the "hard" sciences; making it more important for people to learn than topics like calculus or even science courses (where the philosophy of science has been replaced with wrote learning.)
The sky seems huge and infinite; and people know it is not but that does not protect them from grossly over estimating its scope and their ability to impact it. Air density is LOW and people know that if you bring it up, but they don't realize the scales involved. Also, few people I've talked to have made the connection with the thinning air of higher altitude and the amount of matter in the atmosphere - as if it we had a uniform shell around the earth 100s miles thick instead 20 miles. The skeptics will put up a fight over how burning gas produces more lbs of exhaust than the lbs of gas put in and not feel anything while confidently being so ignorant.
Then there is a the CO2 factor, where lab results show its heat retaining power; or one can simply look at history of the space race to see the huge impact it has on Venus and can figure ball park numbers there. One can figure how much humans put out now vs the past and do basic estimates there as well. It puts it all into perspective and the skeptics could continue to expand on the complexity until they end up becoming scientists in the field... and it is likely they won't be skeptics before they get to that point.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
True but it's also true that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was formed in 1988 so the term has been around a long time.
I think peer review is a good thing, and I also think that a peer-reviewed paper has a leg up on a non-peer-reviewed paper.
That being said, peer review does not make something scientific, nor does it make something factual or non-factual.
Peer review is there so that those of us without the time or intellect to understand a paper can make a choice as to whether or not we wish to accept the premises within. It's, in any practical sense, an argument from authority, as we have no idea what procedures, experimentation, number crunching, or hypothesizing these reviewers are doing to validate these documents. The fact is that the bar for acceptance differs from publication to publication.
We simply see that they choose to publish something or they don't and assume we can trust their decision. This is a sociological effect, not a scientific one.
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
As far as I know, Watts et al are the first to attempt exhaustively document and analyze the surface temperature data sources' susceptibility to changes from the environs. Even if they are biased in some presumed ways, they have done part of what should have been done 20 years ago by any group of "scientists" rather than politico gamers and scammers.
Watts et al have driven a stake in the ground about REAL data, no response other than bleating "ur a troll", (supposed) "scientists say/have proven", shows than CAGW "science" politics are no different than Soviet era apparatchiks' argumentation about their inherent superiority in everything, ad nauseum. Nice to see such slimeballs marking down my previous "5" to send me a message - you demonstrate yourselves thugs, too.
Real scientists generate real data and welcome checks of their data and sources. CAGW "major scientists" too often aren't even "green screeners" fudging old data on primitive simulators (relative to the underlying fundamental equations), they are "green screamers" all too reminiscent of the Soviet era apparatchiks, seeking to establish a new Nomenklatura.
See Harold Lewis , former chairman of the JASONs during some of its peak years, on academic corruption driven by the "trillion dollar" global warming scam.
Try reading at least the paper's summary. It's not saying that temperatures haven't risen, only that they haven't risen as far as claimed. Big difference.
Oh yes, that's interesting. Gonna research that a bit. Thank you!
Actually, many published papers only present evidence, and dont try to make any conclusion.
oldhack: "Security is a waste of money until shit hits the fan. 5 minutes later, it becomes waste of money again. "
The best ones do, yes you are correct in that.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
How to explain the difference? Among other things different stages of Milankovitch Cycles, different configurations of the continents due to plate tectonics, much higher levels of CO2 before it got sequestered in the fossil fuels we're digging up now. Of those the Milankovitch Cycles are the most immediately effective and probably explain the warmth of the early Holocene.
You were right the first time. Muller was never a skeptic. It is impossible to call yourself a skeptic and make this statement,
"Let me be clear. My own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate." - Richard Muller, 2003
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/402357/medieval-global-warming/2/
Lots of hot air. Mostly complaining about things that don't exist.
The Watts, et.al. paper is a pre-release version that Mr Watts has made available for review purposes. The plan is that internet readers will find errors that can then be fixed before submission to a journal.
If the paper is garbage, then pop over to http://wattsupwiththat.com/ and explain, in detail, what is wrong with it. Mr Watts will be grateful for the help.
Insults and attacks on the paper or its author should be forwarded to http://127.0.0.1/dev/null.
Please also note that Mr Watts is not "denying" global warming (or anything else). He's trying to measure it. Sounds to me like a positive contribution.
The "science" is not settled. You're thinking of "history".
"We carefully studied issues raised by skeptics: biases from urban heating (we duplicated our results using rural data alone), from data selection (prior groups selected fewer than 20 percent of the available temperature stations; we used virtually 100 percent), from poor station quality (we separately analyzed good stations and poor ones) and from human intervention and data adjustment (our work is completely automated and hands-off). In our papers we demonstrate that none of these potentially troublesome effects unduly biased our conclusions."
The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic
RICHARD A. MULLER
July 28, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-change-skeptic.html?pagewanted=all
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Hal Lewis' brain was working fine in 2010 when he quit APS. CAGW research has contained a lot of slop and fraudulent actions driven by individual ambitions and political agendas. He had had enough with APS sullying itself over the scams, including misrepresentations of distinguished APS members studied positions in committee, and resigned.
It's all about name calling, avoiding discussing the data, and being too much of a POS chickenshit to admit that all you're really doing is kowtowing to authorities, who rely exclusively on federal funding, fear, exaggeration, and your own ignorance and conformity.
You just believe because "climate scientists" tell you to, with no skepticism or comprehension of what they are basing their claims on.
As I've said before, many time, if you are so certain, talk about the data, how it's collected, interpreted, modeled, and represented.
Simply believing it because you are told it's true is fine, too. Just be honest enough to say, hey, I can't make a rational argument because I really don't understand the science and models, which is the case for 99% of you douchebags here.
Please read the comment above again, notice the "an entire field" this time and recognise that the field being referred to is climatology (and everything related), not all of science, then try again.
I suspect it was deliberate strawman building, but you have a chance here to show you are not deliberately pretending to be stupid just to "win" a childish argument.