New Analysis Shows Lamar Smith's Accusations On Climate Data Are Wrong (arstechnica.com)

Layzej writes from a report via Ars Technica: In 2015, NOAA released version 4 of their marine temperature dataset called ERSST. The new dataset accounted for a known cooling bias introduced when ocean temperature measurements transitioned from being taken in ship engine intake valves to buoy-based measurements. The warming of the last couple decades increased ever so slightly in NOAA's new analysis. This was a red flag for U.S. House Science Committee Chair Lamar Smith (R-TX), who rejects the conclusions of climate science -- like the fact that the Earth's climate is warming. Suddenly he wanted to see the researchers' e-mails and echoed the accusations of contrarian blogs about scientists' supposedly nefarious adjustments to sea surface temperature measurements. Rather than invoking scientific conspiracies, issues like this should be settled by analyzing the data. A new study, led by University of California Berkeley's Zeke Hausfather, does just that -- and Rep. Smith won't like these results, either. To test the NOAA dataset, Zeke's team created instrumentally homogeneous temperature records from sensors available only over the last couple decades. As it happens, the Argo float data, the buoy data, and the satellite data each hew closer to the updated dataset that NOAA used. The older version (3b) gives a global average that is too cool in recent years, growing to an offset of about 0.06 degrees Celsius. The researchers repeat this same analysis for two more major sea surface datasets that are used by the UK Met Office and the Japanese Meteorological Agency for their global temperature records. Both of those datasets also drift cooler than the comparison data, but less so than NOAA's old dataset.

Comments

instrumentally homogeneous temperature records

[mwvdlee]

You're not going to convince an idiot by providing evidence that he doesn't understand.

Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records

[burtosis]

You're not going to convince an idiot by providing evidence that he doesn't understand.

Due to climate science being too complicated to wrap up in one or two security blanket statements consisting of a pithy statement, we are all doomed to suffer the consequences. How many sheep carcasses, wolf tracks and turds do we need to find before people start actually doing something about the wolves, despite not seeing them personally?

Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records

[Ol Olsoc]

You're not going to convince an idiot by providing evidence that he doesn't understand.

Due to climate science being too complicated to wrap up in one or two security blanket statements consisting of a pithy statement, we are all doomed to suffer the consequences. How many sheep carcasses, wolf tracks and turds do we need to find before people start actually doing something about the wolves, despite not seeing them personally?

But is it really that hard to understand?

Once you accept that the greenhouse effect is real - and grade school children have been showing this at science fairs, and greenhouse owners have proven it for years, it doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that taking the Carbon that was removed from the atmosphere and putting it back in the atmosphere is going to have some effect.

Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records

[burtosis]

Or to quote Neil De Grasse Tyson: "It's basic physics. If you keep adding energy to a system, but you slow down the rate at which the energy can leave the system then the system gets hotter".

Sadly you lose most people at basic physics. I know it's hard for most slashdotters to wrap their heads around it but many people were brought up believing science and math will never amount to anything except a lack of dates and "cool" friends. Most people tune out science and all they hear is the teacher from peanuts going "whanana naaa naa whwahna".

Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records

[mattwarden]

You appear to be taking the straw man arguments too literally. Very few people say there is no effect from human greenhouse emissions. I have heard Lamar say this in hearings (something like "No one here would disagree that human greenhouse gas emissions affect climate innsome way."). Here are some questions to which we do not know the answer (though people will reply with claims that we do):

1) How big is the effect of human greenhouse emissions compared to natural temperature variation?
2) On climate time scale, is the net impact of human greenhouse emissions throughout all systems negative, neutral, or positive, and on what dimensions should we measure that?

My beef with the climate change people is the attitude of omniscience about a complex topic that nobody actually understands. We have pieces of the puzzle, and the climate change folks overcompensate for uncertainty with a condescending attitude and bullshit vending. The "98% scientific consensus" talking point is a great example. It's garbage, but because climate change people feel vulnerable with normal levels of uncertainty in scientific subjects, they exaggerate and fearmonger in substitution for fact based discussion about what we do and dont know.

There is another way to deal with this uncertainty: risk. Argue that yes, we might be wrong about our cost-benefit analysis of certain policy prescriptions because like any field of science, especially relatively new ones, there is a lot we don't know. But the risk is hugely asymmetrical. If we are wrong, we probably spent money on stupid projects and increased poverty levels and income inequality relative to what would have otherwise been. If we are right, human life will confront existential threats. So logically we should err on the side of the uncertainty that minimizes downside.

This is the sane argument, but I won't hold my breath (pardon the CO2 emission)

Harness economic self interest

[sjbe]

Suddenly he wanted to see the researchers' e-mails and echoed the accusations of contrarian blogs about scientists' supposedly nefarious adjustments to sea surface temperature measurements. Rather than invoking scientific conspiracies, issues like this should be settled by analyzing the data.

Most people wouldn't understand the data if you clubbed them over the head with it. Doubly so for politicians with no scientific training. The problem in the argument is that one side of this argument isn't arguing with facts and is actually incentivized to demonize any data that contradicts their pre-determined conclusions. They see the argument in one of two ways (sometimes both). A) They see climate change data as a threat to their personal interests - usually financial ones. If you are a politician sponsored by a fossil fuel company, this threatens your self interest. B) They see the climate change argument as something coming from the Other. It's a tribal thing - that Other group supports it ergo it must be bad. Often they frame it as a conspiracy despite the absurdity of that statement.

So in either case you have people who have no incentive whatsoever to acknowledge the data because it threatens what they hold dear. Rationality plays no role in it. The best way to combat this is to frame the argument in such a way as to align their incentives with the data. Point out how much money there is to be made/saved by working on the problem. Put it front and center as an economic issue. Figure out how to align solutions to the problem with economic and political self interest. Until you do that you're going to have this problem of certain politically powerful factions sticking their fingers in their ears and getting in the way.

Re:Or skeptics

[Anonymous Coward]

Outstanding comment!

You've perfectly parodied the "belligerent climate change denier asshole" tone and messaging, right down to calling scientists "ivory tower elitists" and accusing them of calling deniers "backwards rednecks" with zero proof. I've seen a lot of people try to pull off this kind of mockery online without anywhere near your level of success.

Thanks for helping point out just how absurd the deniers are. Well done!

Re:Hug a climate denier today

[radl33t]

And the odds of a global conspiracy with thousands (if not 10s of thousands) of actors? LoL

Prove the data wrong

[sjbe]

No really, stop tickling my sides. Skeptical Science, a shill front organisation for rent-seeking environmentalists.

Even if that is true it doesn't mean the data they are presenting is wrong. Prove the data wrong or shut up and go away.

It does matter though, imho. It matters for reasons of integrity, especially public trust in science.

The only lack of integrity is coming from the climate change deniers. They refuse to engage in a honest debate about or honest analysis of the evidence. Many of them have clear conflicts of interest (fossil fuel industry ties, etc) and don't even pretend to hide them. All the scientists are doing is presenting the evidence which is mountainous in volume at this point and growing all the time. If the climate deniers had an actual evidence based case they could easily cut through the BS by presenting actual evidence contradicting the current science models. They have no such evidence so they are making a political argument instead of a scientific one.

Re:Prove the data wrong

[apoc.famine]

I think you'll find it's the climate shills who aren't showing up to debate "deniers".

Thank you for very clearly pointing out that you have absolutely no fucking clue what you're talking about. This isn't a fucking debate. That's your problem. That you think this is a debate shows a marked detachment from reality and how the world works.
 
The reason nobody is showing up for a debate is that there's nothing to debate, and debating facts is something only stupid shills do.
 
I'm sorry you don't like the fact that the battles fought to understand and quantify climate change are fought on a battleground you don't have access to. That battleground isn't on a debate floor where you can rant and scream that it's not climate change because this winter was cold. It's being fought with data sets and analysis in peer reviewed journals where qualified experts are welcome to tear any such research apart. And they do on a regular basis. The problem that you're having is that what they're tearing apart are techniques and reanalysis that changes the outcome by hundredths or tenths of degrees, and doesn't disprove climate change.

Are there contrarians who're going to survive graduate school and end up with tenure?

No. Because if you're still a contrarian, you're being one based on a belief not supported by the data. And grad school in the sciences is not about what you feel, it's about what you can prove or disprove. The battle to disprove climate change is over, and has been for a long time. That's not the battle being fought now, no matter how much you want it to be fought. You might as well rail against gravity.
 
Again, I'm sorry that the facts aren't lining up with your worldview. But everything you think should be done is either a) not how you prove things or b) has been done and it proved climate change. You need to get over it.

Arguing with facts

[sjbe]

In other words, it's politicized.

The climate deniers are the one's making it political. But because they have that's the reality we have to deal with. We can pretend it isn't political or we can deal with the fact that it is and get on with fixing the problem.

Also, I would argue that neither side is actually arguing with facts.

Nonsense. The scientists are arguing with almost nothing BUT facts. The fact that a bunch of mostly right wing fossil fuel shills are standing in the way of those facts is plain enough to see. One side has facts and scientific data. The other has economic self interest and little else. The notion that both sides aren't arguing with facts is just nonsense.

Re:We don't need data

[apoc.famine]

All of that data is freely available. Why aren't you doing your own analysis on it?
 
And if you ask me where to find it and how to analyze it, you can just fuck off. Because you are obviously not smart enough to do it, no matter how much you want to. The data is easy enough to find, but it turns out that science and statistics are hard, and the vast majority of the population isn't smart enough and doesn't have the skill-set to do anything meaningful with the data.

Let's see those e-mails.

Oh yes, right, those emails that have the tens and hundreds of gigabyte data sets attached to them. That's how scientists transfer their data, right? Just like I transfer my spreadsheets.

Re:Do greenhouses create their own heat?

[Rob Y.]

Why it's almost as if fossil fuel-funded pols wanted us to reach a tipping point so that they could then say - there's no point attempting to stop it now. Party on and build those big seawalls. I wonder if they're investing in seawall technology now...

Nothing in that tipping point argument says that it's useless to stop throwing fuel on the fire. Yes, the tipping point means that we've got our work cut out for us, and we should be preparing in addition to trying our best not to add to the problem, but based on how well we 'prepared' for preventing getting to this point, I don't see much happening there either.

Re:Do greenhouses create their own heat?

[david_thornley]

Ah, yes, the stages of denialism:

1. It's not happening.

2. It's not our fault.

3. Our contribution isn't significant.

4. It's not going to be that bad..

5. It's too late to do anything useful, so there's no point in doing anything.