Tuesday
Dec152009
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Constructing a temperature record
Dec 15, 2009 Climate: Surface Some background reading on creating temperature records. These are probably aimed at the geekier reader:
- Matt Briggs looks at the specific question of dealing with station moves in a four-part posting that starts here. He notes the failure of climatologists to account for their errors properly.
- Error budgets are also bothering AJStrata, who views the so-called homogenisation adjustments as science fiction.
Reader Comments (10)
A quick post that I can't respond to - please, please, study the geostatistical literature we in the mining and exploration industry have verified beyond necessity. Blais and Carlier, Matheron, and others have extensive peer reviewed papers on the theory of aggregating measurements in 3-D. Especially the fallacy of computing statistics of "intensive: variables - you can, notionally, but it's physically meaningless.
Physically meaningless!!!!!!
Bishop
Those are "must reads". Most of us instinctively know that the alleged accuracy of the data presented by the warmists simply cannot be correct. That does not in itself mean that the trend they postulate is wrong - merely that it has not been proven and could probably not be proven for many more years (with necessary ongoing warming to boot). The comments about trees make the Briggs post worth reading for that alone.
The articles are really not that geeky. Just read them slowly, preferably printed out rather than on the screen (I find this helps anyway) then go back and read them again. It's good to see we are moving away from the scurrilous emails and on towards the "science". If Climategate really does lead to a wholesale review of the work of the Team, it will ultimately be through data re-analysis, not leaked emails.
Since when does the thermometer actually measure the REAL temperature? All instruments have errors - and then there is the enclosure ... which also introduces errors. Then, as you change instumentation over time, the errors (and their magnitudes and distribution) change. See mercury in glass versus ASOS thermocouple and Stevenson screen versus Gill screen. Then there are timing/observation errors .... hourly manual versus continuous monitoring using a datalogger, introducing a measurement frequency bias. Before you even start taking into account site conditions, you actually have to look at the equipment itself, the changes over time and the biases and errors inherent in the kit, and the changes in the kit over time. Furthermore, these cumulative errors can be substantial ... plus or minus 5 deg C ... and they are not constant - there can be seasonal variabilty in the error recorded, or the error can vary with windspeed ... the lower the wind, the greater the error. See:
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2009/12/chaotic-system.html
There is good analysis of the CRU emails, and what the "trick" refered to at: http://www.icecap.us/
Why doesn't this guy just shut up and let some other, lesser known charlatans do his bidding while he plays PS3 in his 20 room mansion?
http://agwfraud.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/fuel-to-the-climategate-fire/
Today in Strasbourg - The price we're paying for Copenhagen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiVXHcF2RNM
While all this examination of the "Science" of "Global Warming" is nice, it is sadly irrelevant. The much more germane issue is the "conflicts" of interest. Not only the trillions of dollars that various companies will make such as pointed out in the youtube clip above but also by individual countries imposing a "Carbon Tax" upon their citizens. I follow the happenings in Ireland, being both an EU and Irish citizen.
Recently, the Irish government imposed a Carbon Tax as part of its December 2009 budget increasing the cost of petrol and diesel but 5 cents (EU) per liter.
Now do you think the Irish government gives a diddly damn about the "Science" of "Global Warming" (I am capitalizing to indicate political movements and not facts) when they can soak their citizens a couple euros every time they fill up their vehicles? Not while they can wrap themselves in the flag of "Saving the World" and keep the money.
What is needed is political action by the poor punters getting screwed by our own governments in the name of "Saving the World". Perhaps discrediting the pseudoscience used to perpetrate this fraud is the first step, but we must also make it clear to the politicians hungry for ever more money that we will turn them out of office for such shenanigans.
The "science" of climate change is hardly a science at all. Think of some of the great scientific inquiries of the last century:
The double helix of DNA
Special and general relativity
Quantum physics/nuclear fission and fusion
Immunology, etc.
And what are "climate scientists" doing? Determine what the temperature was at a particular time and then plot it on an X/Y graph. It's a high school project! That's why so many lay man can read and understand the climate change "literature". And there are entire academic departments now on climate change! What a joke!
Dana White
I agree completely. I have been meaning to write something along those lines myself. You saved me the trouble.
Dana White.
Don't forget, they also make some very nice models.