Wednesday
Aug252010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill The Economist on surfacetemperatures.org
Aug 25, 2010 Climate: Surface The Economist has an article on Peter Thorne's open temperatures project. Apparently us sceptics should be trying to help more. I'm not sure I accept some of the criticisms here but on the other hand I'm not sure they're worth bickering over either.
Reader Comments (17)
Indeed, the criticisms for what they amount to are rather mealy-mouthed.
From the inimitable text of the HHGTTG:
"But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months."
"Oh yes, well, as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything."
"But the plans were on display..."
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a flashlight."
"Ah, well, the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But look, you found the notice, didn't you?"
"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display on the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard.'"
Peter Throne of "Fraudit" fame! How can anyone believe those people after Climategate!!!
The flaming red Earth map at the top of the Economist article is wonderfully ... neutral?
Another interesting article in the press yesterday:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/aug/24/al-gores-global-warming-crusade-shrinks/
( its a bit OT, strictly speaking, so I used the contact form, but I'm not sure if it is working.)
Simon, superb choice of quote from the late and much missed DA!
He went one better, however, when he really nailed today's pseudo-enviros with the contempt that they fully appear to deserve.
His portraiture of the "sent-ahead", trail-blazing and totally useful idiots whom, shortly after landing on planet momsie, had discovered the leaf-standard, fiscally denuded forests and decreed that, as no one could agree its colour, the wheel was problematic, pure genius.
We now have the leaf replaced with the demonisation of the very substance that makes its existence possible, we've lost the brilliance of Adams and Chrichton but, sadly, retained the telephone-hygienists?
What a travesty!
royfomr
I blame science funding. Telephone hygienists probably earn more than scientists in unpopular disciplines. The popular ones get oversubscribed and churn out Masters in 'Climate Change Management', who in former times may have been more gainfully employed as ditch diggers.
An interesting hypothesis AH.
But let's not forget that, in the absence of telephone-hygienists, the rest of the planet succumbed to a deadly plague caused, precisely, by the absence of the aforementioned!
As to the societal role played by ditch-diggers in the preventation of "things that you're glad not to suffer from", I can only weakly state that I hope that the years of unrelenting study, piling debt and deprivation gave them an advantage over their more- challenged classmates, the climate-champs!
In the new spirit of constructive openness:
Here is the fraudit thread by Peter Thorne - just in case anyone (like the Economist journo/activist) is interested in the documented record:
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=974
Not wishing to get off topic - but it will be interesting to see what the East Anglia police are going to say about their rather long investigation. It will also be interesting to see if the UEA are ever interested in determining whether their researchers deleted emails in response to FOI requests - the Russell inquiry papers indicate that the necessary email folder backups to shed light on this question are available. The UEA are in the embarrassing position of not being able to dispose of the evidence (that ruse is wearing a bit too thin) but also not wanting to submit the evidence for examination. Oh well - let's hope that the East Anglia constabulary are enthusiastically researching...
Roger Pielke Sr. has issue with this as well:
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/comments-on-the-ecomonist-article-green-view-could-temperature-be-less-intemperate/
Notice how Anthony Watts's work with surfacestations.org is badmouthed:
"The NCDC believes, on the basis of preliminary data and in a way that Mr Watts disputes, that the evidence for poor siting does not affect the overall trends in the surface record."
Citing a flawed study, involving preliminary data. Egad! If you would like to read about a study involving near complete data, see (warning, circa 200 pages long):
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/surface_temp.pdf
The problem with the Met Office plan is that there is no way to bring in calibration, siting standardization, and collection methodology into the surface temperature record because it would be too costly and would involve red tape in negotiating details with the many countries involved. The surface temperature record is always going to be garbage. More accurate temperature answers are to be found by satellites and Argo buoys, neither of which are satisfactory to the AGW camp because the latter data does not support catastrophic global warming.
BBQ Summer anyone?
I'm sorry but the Met Office is entirely the wrong organisation to be conducting this project. It simply lacks any public credibility.
People are going to respond with a double positive when the Met Office produces figures, "Yeah, right!"
I posted this comment at http://surfacetemperatures.blogspot.com/2010/07/welcome-and-house-rules.html#comment-form. It will be interesting to see if that gets through moderation.
Roger Pielke Sr. makes the excellent comment that if we are interested in changes to the energy in the Earth 'climate system' then the Argo floats trump everything else. The vast majority of the energy is stored in the layer that Argo has been measuring for the last few years using state of the art technology. Any changes one way or the other have to show up here.
It is very easy to find minor issues all around with the last 150 years surface thermometer data. I'm of the opinion that any notable changes should show in a very small subset of well located and maintained instruments anyway.
Roger Pielke Snr has on a number of occasions found reason to question Peter Thorne's professional ethics. See for instance RP Snrs blog:
June 14, 2010...7:00 am
Erroneous Statement By Peter A. Stott And Peter W. Thorne In Nature Titled “How Best To Log Local Temperatures?”
An article has appeared in Nature on May 13 2010 titled
Peter A. Stott and Peter W. Thorne, 2010: How best to log local temperatures? Nature. doi:10.1038/465158a, page 158 [thanks to Joe Daleo for alterting us to this]
which perpetuates the myth that the surface temperature data sets are independent from each other.
The authors know better but have decided to mislead the Editors and readers of Nature.
They write
“In the late twentieth century scientists were faced with a very basic question: is global climate changing? They stepped up to that challenge by establishing three independent data sets of monthly global average temperatures. Those data sets, despite using different source data and methods of analysis, all agree that the world has warmed by about 0.75 °C since the start of the twentieth century (specifically, the three estimates are 0.80, 0.74 and 0.78 °C from 1901–2009).”
This is deliberately erroneous as one of the authors of this article (Peter Thorne) is an author of a CCSP report with a different conclusion. With just limited exceptions, the surface temperature data sets do not use different sources of data and are, therefore, not independent.
As I wrote in one of my posts
An Erroneous Statement Made By Phil Jones To The Media On The Independence Of The Global Surface Temperature Trend Analyses Of CRU, GISS And NCDC
In the report “Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences Final Report, Synthesis and Assessment Product 1.1” [a report in which Peter Thorne is one of the authors] on page 32 it is written [text from the CCSP report is in italics]
“The global surface air temperature data sets used in this report are to a large extent based on data readily exchanged internationally, e.g., through CLIMAT reports and the WMO publication Monthly Climatic Data for the World. Commercial and other considerations prevent a fuller exchange, though the United States may be better represented than many other areas. In this report, we present three global surface climate records, created from available data by NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies [GISS], NOAA National Climatic Data Center [NCDC], and the cooperative project of the U.K. Hadley Centre and the Climate Research Unit [CRU]of the University of East Anglia (HadCRUT2v).”
These three analyses are led by Tom Karl (NCDC), Jim Hansen (GISS) and Phil Jones (CRU).
The differences between the three global surface temperatures that occur are a result of the analysis methodology as used by each of the three groups. They are not “completely independent”. This is further explained on page 48 of the CCSP report where it is written with respect to the surface temperature data (as well as the other temperature data sets) that
“The data sets are distinguished from one another by differences in the details of their construction.”
On page 50 it is written
“Currently, there are three main groups creating global analyses of surface temperature (see Table 3.1), differing in the choice of available data that are utilized as well as the manner in which these data are synthesized.”
and
“Since the three chosen data sets utilize many of the same raw observations, there is a degree of interdependence.”
The chapter then states on page 51 that
“While there are fundamental differences in the methodology used to create the surface data sets, the differing techniques with the same data produce almost the same results (Vose et al., 2005a). The small differences in deductions about climate change derived from the surface data sets are likely to be due mostly to differences in construction methodology and global averaging procedures.”
and thus, to no surprise, it is concluded that
“Examination of the three global surface temperature anomaly time series (TS) from 1958 to the present shown in Figure 3.1 reveals that the three time series have a very high level of agreement.”
Moreover, as we reported in our paper
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, S. Foster, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S08, doi:10.1029/2006JD008229.
“The raw surface temperature data from which all of the different global surface temperature trend analyses are derived are essentially the same. The best estimate that has been reported is that 90–95% of the raw data in each of the analyses is the same (P. Jones, personal communication, 2003).”
Peter Stott and Peter Thorne have deliberately misled the readership of Nature in order to give the impression that three data analyses collaborate corroborate their analyzed trends, while in reality the three surface temperature data sets are closely related. (End of excerpt from RP Snr's blog).
Anybody who is thinking of taking up Thorne's offer would be well advised to first study his background and assess his trustworthiness.
The argument that is apparently becoming popular among believers- that skeptics should work with believers- is just another step along the way to believers admitting AGW is garbage.
Skeptics should cooperate with nothing except calls for real reviews, audits, investigations and other forensics of the methods, the behavior and the money that AGW promoters have been using in hyping fear and using that fear to shake down governments and foundations and just plain folks for billions of dollars.
I thought Steve M might avail himself of our generous libel laws and take action against Peter Thorne, but it seems he is too nice a chap.
My comment was posted, along with a response, which seemed to transliterate "invitee" to "participant".
I wrote a second comment to clarify: