politics

Willis! Steve! Fuller! Revkin! And More!

28 Comments

There is so much political stuff happening, I’m just going to post bullets of things that came to my attention when I woke up this morning:

  1. Willis posts The Smoking Gun At Darwin Zero temperature adjustments for Darwin Australia at WUWT. Reactions from Reiner Grundmann (coblogs with Zorita and VonStorch), David Stockwell and Bishop Hills. Presumably, responses from people funded to create the homogenized data sets. (Or not.)
  2. Steve answers Campbell Brown’s questions directly. Oppenheimer: Reframing alert! He does engage the specific example of cherry picking in Brown’s question, makes a blanket statement of no deception and then quickly suggests “let’s step back”. He dives into the story line he wants to discuss.. 🙂 Chris Horner answers Campbell Browns question (In fairness, she asked him a question he probably “like”). In the second set of questions, Campbell cuts off someone (Openheimer?) trying to interupt.) Openheimer engages Horner’s fraud & conspiracy claims, but does not engage Steven McIntyre’s observations.
  3. Thomas Fuller muses on conspiracy theories and why he doesn’t believe the Russian Hacker conspiracy, the claims Global Warming is invented conspiracy nor the “skepticism is a Big Oil conspiracy” theory. Reiner Grundmann makes similar observations.
  4. Will Revkin leave the New York Times? Rumor here.
  5. Joshua Kahn Russell at Grist reports disgruntlement expressed at Copenhagen. Evidently, some entity Joshua refers to as ‘the Danish presidency’ is desperate to see a good outcome and is pressing for a treaty with lax requirements as required to get the US on board. Some see the Danish president as a bully.

I found some of these in my aggregator and some links were sent me. If you know a good resource to add to the aggregator let me know. (The resource needs to have a valid RSS feed that is at least 50% climate oriented. ) T

28 thoughts on “Willis! Steve! Fuller! Revkin! And More!”

  1. I would say that if both:

    1. the politically correct conclusion is “temperatures are going up”

    2. No sound check is applied on the fairness of the “official” temperature assessments

    Then it is “statistically obvious” that

    3. assessed temperatures will go up, unrelated to real ones.

    Point 1 is certain
    Point 2 is seems made clear by (amongst many other cases…) the quoted “Smoking Gun At Darwin Zero”

    So conclusion 3 surely follows

    We can also guess that in such a situation temperature trends are “in some measure” lower than the official assessments, but in fact remain devoid of reliable figures…

  2. Mario–
    It’s true we can’t tell the overall impact from the examination of Darwin 0. It will be interesting to see if there are any stations that have negative trends imposed. In either case, if there are lots of tenuous “corrections” that points to large uncertainty intervals.

  3. It is worth noting that GMST is dominated by the SSTs so major errors in the land record many only have a small effect on the GMST.

    However, that does not mean that the SST record is any better but it is much more difficult to conclusively demostrate a warm bias in the adjustments.

  4. it is “statistically obvious” that

    3. assessed temperatures will go up, unrelated to real ones.

    And for how long would such a disjunction between ‘assessed temperatures’ and ‘real ones’ continue? Little by little, forever and a day? For how long do you think this has been happening? What do you guess might be the extent of the difference between ‘assessed’ and ‘real’ as of now? And how do you account for correlation in trends between surface and satellite records? Do you consider the latter to be subject to an equivalent “politically correct” influence?

  5. Simon,

    The satellite records come from multiple satellites that have to be spliced together. This splicing is validated by comparing satellite records to the surface records so the satellite records are not true independent measures of temperature.

  6. Simon

    And for how long would such a disjunction between ‘assessed temperatures’ and ‘real ones’ continue? Little by little, forever and a day? For how long do you think this has been happening? What do you guess might be the extent of the difference between ‘assessed’ and ‘real’ as of now? And how do you account for correlation in trends between surface and satellite records? Do you consider the latter to be subject to an equivalent “politically correct” influence?

    Are these questions rhetorical?
    As you know, I prefer people avoid the socratic method and trying to make points by asking questions. Socrates was put to death– and I suspect the Socartic method was the true underlying reason why people wanted to kill him.

    If you think you have any insight into the answers to these questions, please answer them yourself. Otherwise, avoid this sort of comment. (I moderated Andrew_KY for a week for this sort of thing, and I plan to do it to everyone who does it.)

  7. Raven,

    I am well aware of the limitations and uncertainties in the satellite records. I was asking whether Mario thought they were subject to the same ‘politically correct’ influence.

  8. Raven,

    John Christy uses Sondes in several of his publications for step correction. I’m not sure how surface data is used.

  9. Lucia,

    I moderated Andrew_KY for a week for this sort of thing, and I plan to do it to everyone who does it.

    Fine, then go ahead and do that for me please, but in my case I’d prefer you to make your decision permanent, if you choose to make it. I cannot make guesses as to what you consider to be rhetorical questions when I have put questions looking for answers.

  10. Simon–
    I don’t like people to argue by asking series of questions. That comment consisted of exactly 6 statements all ending with “?” If you think Mario is claim is erroneous, say so. If you think you know why, say so.

    As it happens, I do not believe it is “statistically obvious” that “assessed temperatures will go up, unrelated to real ones” — or at least I don’t think it will necessarily do so for global temperatures. I don’t think Willis’s findings for Darwin are sufficient to show this. For all we know, people who dig will find weird imposed negative trends for Frost Bite Falls Minnesota.

    Willis’s findings are interesting to read and we’ll see if any explanations are forth coming–and also what happens to the record for Frost Bit Falls.

    But in the mean time, none of this rebutting by arguing by “posing questions”. This actually has been one of my few rules. It’s just that up to now, the only one bumping up to it was Andrew_KY.

  11. jeff id,

    The most frustrating thing about climate science is the unintended bias driven by the need to confirm the consensus.

    In this case, I have no doubt that John Christy was extremely diligent when he made his choices but he also knew that his record would not be accepted by the climate community unless it matched the surface record. He could not avoid be influenced by that which means the satellite record is not truly independent of the surface record.

    This kind of bias has been documented in other fields:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil-drop_experiment

    See the section on “Millikan’s experiment and cargo cult science”

  12. Raven,

    John Christy was extremely diligent when he made his choices but he also knew that his record would not be accepted by the climate community unless it matched the surface record.

    That’s simply not borne out by the history. Until 2005 UAH was very significantly below the surface record trend, that is until the UAH error was pointed out by others. Christy and Spencer were making quite a lot of the discrepancy in their statements before that correction, with no suggestion that they wanted to tend towards ‘acceptance’! The fact is, of course, that their analysis was just wrong.

  13. Simon Evans,

    You are supporting my point that failing to confirm existing results will invite criticism. After the incident with diurnal drift Christy and Spencer would have felt even more pressure to make decisions that would maximize the match with the surface record.

    The net result is the two are not independent data sets.

  15. Lucia: “Some see the Danish president as a bully”
    Denmark is a kingdom and kingdoms don’t have presidents they have eh… queens…
    Lars Løkke Rasmussen is just our prime minister.

  16. Raven,

    You are supporting my point that failing to confirm existing results will invite criticism.

    Er, no, it invited some other folks checking out their work and discovering they’d muddled up a plus with a minus…..

  17. Niels–
    Thanks. I knew Denmark has a royal family. But other than that, I don’t know what members of various offices are called. The Grist article reports “Here’s the inside scoop: the Danish presidency is desperate for a positive spin on any outcome of the climate negotiations here.”

    So, I assumed “the Danish presidency” is “the president”. I’ll admit to now having no idea whether “the presidency” is the prime-minister, something like a cabinet, or a three-headed paper mache parade dragon.
    I reworded. The rewording sound snarky, but … can’t figure out how to make it sound more mild.

  18. Now I understand why Apple always keeps their next generation products secret. I plan to get a mug, but with Steve’s hint of more decline to come. I am hoping for Mug version 2 “now with better decline” !

  19. One thing odd I noticed about Willis’ analysis. If you go to the GISS site, they show raw and homogeneity-adjusted plots. And there’s very little adjustment at all.
    Update: Willis has explained – GISS and GHCN do their adjustment differently.

  20. dear lucia: 1) i think that by ” Danish presidency” they mean “the Presidency of the Conference”
    2) Socrates was put to death because he was the “teacher” of a serie of traitors: alcibiades, jenofonte, trasimaco, critias…
    3) have you read the guardian?? “conpenhagen in disarray”…

  21. Thanks jorge–
    1) That makes sense.
    2) That’s the official story. 🙂
    3) Yes. There are lots of rumors coming out of Copenhagen. I’ve been posting links when I see new ones. But the notion that negotiators are grumpy with each other appears in a number of stories. That said: this is diplomacy and politics. There is going to be a lot of wrangling and arm twisting. Some will be done through rumors, leak to the press etc. So…we’ll see.

  22. dear lucía: 2) please read Karl Popper “The open society and its enemies” great book!!

  23. FWIW The released data from the UK met offce seems so far (I’ve not done an exhaustive examination) to not be as wildly adjusted as some others. At least my plot of DARWIN from this set looks like the unadjusted GHCN data in Willis’ graph 7 in the Darwin post linked above

    http://www.di2.nu/200912/08a.htm

  24. > What do you guess might be the extent of the difference between ‘assessed’
    > and ‘real’ as of now?
    > And how do you account for correlation in trends between surface and satellite records?
    I am not trying to assess what the real temperatures are, but to point to a problem, that seems frequently overlooked, yet seems to me quite relevant in temperature assessment
    Then I’ll try to explain it more clearly…
    –
    > I do not believe it is “statistically obvious” that “assessed temperatures will go up,
    > unrelated to real ones” — or at least I don’t think it will necessarily do so for global
    > temperatures. I don’t think Willis’s findings for Darwin are sufficient to show this.
    –
    I agree that the discovery of one, or a few, doubtful temperature adjustments does not allow a meaningful reassesment of global temperatures,
    but I think that the discovery of a certain number of “doubtful temperature adjustments” can provide relevant clues to fairly assess… global temperature assessment methods (!)
    –
    Let’s put this in a simple way:
    Possibility 1: temperatures go up
    Possibility 2: temperatures do not go up
    –
    If neither 1 nor 2 are “politically correct”,
    the decision made between them can be right or wrong but, when wrong, the mistakes will not be systematic, they will not have a statistically predictable direction.
    –
    On the contrary if the decision-maker is already persuaded that 1 or 2 is the correct result,
    it is quite normal that, as a member of mankind, he will apply or let enter a systematic bias to get it right
    –
    UNLESS
    A. the decision is so simple and mechanical to leave no space (conscious or unconscious) for biases
    OR
    B. he makes a determined and “self-suspecting” effort to stay away from bias-susceptible elements (as one thinks “scientists” should always do…)
    –
    Here A. is clearly not the case, as these problems are not trivial, some adjustments MUST in any case be made, and it’s not clear their precise amount.
    –
    And, on the basis of not few cases like, say, “Smoking Gun At Darwin Zero” neither B. seems to be the way things go.
    –
    To be sure one or two case are not enough for such a decision – it has been said “falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus”, but is too strong here – but if, after examining “some” cases… we find “mostly” errors toward one direction, we will rule out B. too, and rather soon because the number of mistakes needed to conclude that the metodology and its results are flawed
    is much less then the number needed to get a statistically believable reassesment of global world temperatures,
    –
    For this, after quite a few cases “mostly in one direction” I find
    “temperature trends are in some measure lower than the official assessments, but we can’t say how much”
    to be the logical conclusion.

  25. jorge c,

    “2) Socrates was put to death because he was the “teacher” of a serie of traitors: alcibiades, jenofonte, trasimaco, critias…”

    I like Lucia’s story better!!

  27. McIntyre is very careful with his wording. He makes it sound like they altered the temperature record, when what they were doing was dealing with a proxy that was at odds with the accepted temperatur record of warming. “Nuanced” criticism is right.

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