327 thoughts on “Open Thread… for Ken :)”

  1. Any plans to analyze Romm vs Fuller halfway thru the bet?
    Fuller is leading, but still within range of a typical alarmist vs lukewarmer bet. About .21C of warming is needed for the last half decade compared to 2005-2009.

  2. Kenneth,

    This apparent lack of balance is even more surprising to me given the literature that notes that TOA balance, with consideration for OHC I would assume, is of prime importance when tuning these climate models.

    Just because TOA energy balance is of prime importance doesn’t necessarily mean it can be achieved. Perhaps it’s the best they can do without the code cratering during a run.

  3. MikeN –
    GISS average anomaly 2000-2009 is currently 0.556 K
    Given the bet (0.15 K increase over the decade), the break-point is an average for 2010-2019 of 0.706 K.
    GISS average anomaly 2010-2014 is currently 0.612 K.

    Average anomaly for 2015-2019 would have to exceed 0.8 K for Romm to win. Compare to last year’s record high of 0.68 K.

  4. I hadn’t realized until MikeN mentioned it that we’re at the halfway point in the decade. Lots more than the status of my wager to look at…

  5. Interesting things happen while I’m busy catching up on high school physics. Steven Mosher at Judith Curry and at ATTP. The irony of people distrusting Mosher when he says questioning the adjustments is barking up the wrong tree will never cease to amuse me; if you can’t trust the crutapes letters guy who busted Gleick for no particularly compelling reason, who the heck can you trust in this sad world. At least that’s how I see it.
    Ah well. For my part, I get to go from 9’th to 10’th grade now I think. I didn’t really understand that it’s low pressure that causes the rising air to cool and give up moisture in order to pay the energy price before now. Not that it’s not cool up there, it is, but that’s not what drives the cart. The air expands because it’s low pressure and that costs energy. Giving up moisture helps pay the energy price.
    I post here about physical science so people can disabuse me and tell me where I’m smoking crack, so don’t be shy if I’ve still got a little crack cocaine on my sleeve. In my hair. Whatever. Tell me where I’m wrong when I am! Unless it offends you that I’m not paying tuition. But who has time..
    (EDIT: uhm. I don’t actually use drugs. .. I say this because this fact might not be obvious from the way that I post, now that I think about it.. mm)

  6. Open thread, and sometimes another train of thought helps with perspective. Who here thinks what about ISIS? (aww crud edit in advance. It’s not rhetorical I don’t think, I’m introducing a topic of conversation and inviting opinions and comments on an open thread. There.)

    Let me open by saying I find this encouraging. I don’t know why anybody thought that this, was worth commenting on. Seriously, don’t get it, what was the point? Is this the subtle answer that my conservative war mongering 10’th grade brain just doesn’t get?!? We’ll burn our enemies alive humanely, but it will still inspire terror in our opponents cause they won’t realize on a viseral level that the guy we’re burning alive was drugged? Somehow I seem to recall some news outlet claiming that a woman stoned in the middle east was sedated too.

    So I made a joke, but .. not a joke? Is that what’s happening? Or is the sedation piece fluff? I know my grandfather died screaming and delirious of the pain involved in small cell lung cancer, so color me skeptical. But maybe burning is … an easier way to go. sarc.
    Don’t let my sarcarm intimidate you if you know better. I worked in Cairo for a bit and [edit KNOW] no nothing of Muslims as a result, except that they seem to take better care of folks than we do in the West. Almost certainly there’s much here I don’t understand.

    So my top link didn’t work:
    http://www.christiantoday.com/article/muslim.and.christian.leaders.condemn.jordanian.pilot.murder/47485.htm

    but the was link did.

  7. Should have said,

    I know my grandfather died screaming and delirious of the pain involved in small cell lung cancer drugs notwithstanding, so color me skeptical.

    I’ suspect most physicians would do their best to make sure people die with as little pain as possible.

  9. Mark Bofill:

    Interesting things happen while I’m busy catching up on high school physics. Steven Mosher at Judith Curry and at ATTP. The irony of people distrusting Mosher when he says questioning the adjustments is barking up the wrong tree will never cease to amuse me; if you can’t trust the crutapes letters guy who busted Gleick for no particularly compelling reason, who the heck can you trust in this sad world. At least that’s how I see it.

    I don’t know why you consider this ironic. The entire point of skepticism is that you don’t just trust anything. You trust things as much as the verification you’ve done indicates you should trust them.

    In this regard, it is pretty easy to see why people wouldn’t blindly trust what Mosher says. First, even if you trust someone’s criticisms of other people’s work, that does not mean you need to trust their work. Second, the examples you provide involve largely non-technical work. Trusting a person’s non-technical work does not automatically translate into a need to trust their technical work or skill. Third, Mosher behaves in untrustworthy ways. Consider, for instance, the responses I got when I said:

    As Figure 1 illustrates the effect of adjustments on the global time series are tiny in the period after 1900 and small in the period before 1900. Our approach has a legacy that goes back to the work of John Christy when he worked as state climatologist: Here he describes his technique.

    But if you look at just the blue and red lines, you can see a .2 to .3 degree difference in the earlier portions. That means there’s a 15-20% change introduced by these adjustments. And that’s for if we only go back to 1850. The BEST temperature record extends another hundred or so years back. We can’t see how much of a difference its adjustments make in that period.

    It’s also not clear to me the timing of the adjustments is as meaningful as this post makes it out to be. BEST estimates its climate field over a particular period (just which period is used has been a source of some confusion). It is possible the adjustments have a greater effect in the past, at least partially, because they are further from the baseline period.

    This is an incredibly simple point. As far as I know, a week ago nobody knew ~20% of the warming BEST finds is due to their “empirical breakpoint” calculations. As far as I know, BEST never disclosed this. I think that’s kind of bad. I think people should have been informed of this, even if BEST thinks changes of ~20% are “small.” That is perfectly reasonable. This is how Zeke Hausfather responded:

    Brandon,

    The impact since 1900 is on the order of 0.05 C, not particularly large. The magnitude of this adjustment is effectively the same if you use metadata + empirical breakpoints or metadata alone (see Figure 4).

    Given I had specifically suggested the timing of the adjustments may be an artifact, this doesn’t really tell us much of anything. Still, it clearly refers to what I was talking about, as opposed to Mosher’s derogatory response:

    This is precisous

    “But if you look at just the blue and red lines, you can see a .2 to .3 degree difference in the earlier portions. ”

    Red is Africa
    Blue is the US

    when we talk about the adjustments being inconsequential GLOBALLY
    we mean the BLACK line

    The red line is Africa– 20% of the land
    the blue line is the US 5% of the land.

    So yes if you look at 5% of the data ( blue) you see a .2 to .3 degree difference

    the POINT of showing people continents and how they differ is so that people will AVOID the kind of mistake Brandon just made.

    GLOBALLY ( we are estimating the GLOBAL average) the adjustments are mousenuts..

    BUT because people can cherry pick ( the US) they can show BIG differences.. BUT they also IGNORE big differences in the other direction.

    Which is based entirely upon him pretending I was discussing Figure 4, not Figure 1, even though I clearly quoted text referring to Figure 1 and accurately described what Figure 1 showed. Zeke had no problem understanding what I said. Only Mosher did.

    Mosher routinely talks about how great he is at interpreting text. That means there are two possibilities: 1) He’s full of it when he brags; 2) He intentionally misread what I said in order to dismiss a legitimate point out-of-hand and insult me. Either way, it shows Mosher’s statements shouldn’t just be accepted on faith. But be warned, if you don’t just accept what he says on faith, he might start saying things like this about you:

    But you realize that the brandons of the world would remain skeptical. You know there is uncertainty over exactly how many died in the holocaust.

    The reality is I could find more than a hundred examples of Steven Mosher responding to legitimate concerns people have raised in ways that are rude, unhelpful, misleading and even wrong. What possible reason would I have to take his statements on faith? That’s not rhetorical.

  10. That reminds me, I need to stop being a cheapskate. I’ve still never read that book because I didn’t like spending money on climate stuff given how much time I already waste on it.

  12. Brandon –

    The entire point of skepticism is that you don’t just trust anything. You trust things as much as the verification you’ve done indicates you should trust them.

    That’s so. Mosher could be Holy Mother Steven Teresa and that wouldn’t matter with respect to his science. It’s not really my point. It’s easy to think that that might be all I get from the discussion, since I proudly (proudly? not quite right) advertise my ignorance where applicable. But I think there’s more here than that.

    (Steven Mosher I’m going to call you Holy Mother from on. May I? No?)

    Still. Only some of us have time to check everything. Who is checkworthy and who is trustworthy becomes a thing, because time is limited. All things equal, there are better ways to burn my time I think? ’cause I wonder about rain shadows and why air cools as it goes over mountains; I don’t have time.

    This is an incredibly simple point. As far as I know, a week ago nobody knew ~20% of the warming BEST finds is due to their “empirical breakpoint” calculations. As far as I know, BEST never disclosed this. I think that’s kind of bad. I think people should have been informed of this, even if BEST thinks changes of ~20% are “small.” That is perfectly reasonable. This is how Zeke Hausfather responded:

    Yah people suck we’ve got limited time and processing power. In a perfect world, I’d ‘get’ everybody and grokk the last detail before I remarked on comments.
    ..
    I don’t think we fail because the people we misunderstand are wrong or misguided. I think we don’t have time (interest, .. we don’t have a good simple term for this thing) to make ourselves clear.

    Mosher routinely talks about how great he is at interpreting text. That means there are two possibilities: 1) He’s full of it when he brags;

    yeah be apes, all of us. look at the length of my .. uhh Forearms. the quickness of my butt cheek clench reflex.. We’re animals, we care about our relative importance in our tribe pack yadda yadda got it. I know it’s hard to get past that, so I try to forgive it. 95% of the B.S. we say relates to this. (Part of the reason I read here is because ob In my view we pardon this as we pardon the occasional blech at the table. Bad manners. To demonstrate, but look how cool I am. I can refute so and such, I can bow when I’m beat over nere by dal, I can admit my ignorance about that thing. I can post music that people like. Why do I do any of this? Partially because of human sociologicaligistaliigy (so I got a work call and that sidetracked me…)
    Self snip, my cut and paste and attention to what I was posting went south.
    Sorry. Brandon, what the heck are a couple of software guys doing here anyways? Sometimes I wonder.

  13. I don’t expect you to answer that.
    Gimme a minute and I’ll give you a modicum of order.

  14. So. From the beginning, it seems like there’s not all that much I messed up, mostly the end. I apologize, I was wondering about … something else. On a phone call.

    From the beginning. Do we check everything? I myself do not. I use heuristics. I try to learn the basics. My heuristics tell me when something smells stinky and when it’s probably legit. I make mistakes, but I’d make mistakes anyway and heuristics save time.

    Can we agree that Conan the Mosherian has an impressive kill record d/dx objectivity?, or do I fool myself there? I think that if he was Ken Rice, (forgive me Eli, you know I love you) Ken Halpern, or even dare I say … (no I don’t dare offend any of my tribe sorry, that makes me .. yeah.)

    So wait, what? oh. Can we agree that the heuristics say he’s objective?

    …

    Praps it’s best to just post this and move on from here.

    Open fire all, usually I’m wrong in at least several ways, and particularly when I’m adlibbing like now. Let’s get to the truth.

  16. Gods so I’m sorry. I make no sense. Let’s proceed from there and try to pick some meaning out of the madness. If you want to take the trouble. Or we can change the subject and I’ll go be quiet for a few days! (I’d go with option #2 jus saying).
    Self time out, 6 hours.

  17. Mark Bofill:

    Still. Only some of us have time to check everything. Who is checkworthy and who is trustworthy becomes a thing, because time is limited. All things equal, there are better ways to burn my time I think? ’cause I wonder about rain shadows and why air cools as it goes over mountains; I don’t have time.

    Which is why I pointed to Mosher’s behavior in the face of criticism. If I don’t have the time to try to judge an argument fully, I’ll often just look at the form. A person who routinely posts non-responsive, abusive and misleading comments is someone I will put on the list of, “Don’t believe what he says without verifying it.”

    Yah people suck we’ve got limited time and processing power. In a perfect world, I’d ‘get’ everybody and grokk the last detail before I remarked on comments.
    ..
    I don’t think we fail because the people we misunderstand are wrong or misguided. I think we don’t have time (interest, .. we don’t have a good simple term for this thing) to make ourselves clear.

    Huh? Why do you say “people suck”? I don’t blame anyone for not knowing this. How could I? I’m one of the people who didn’t know BEST’s adjustments increase the amount of warming they find by ~20%. There was practically no way to know that. That was my entire point: BEST should have told people so they could know.

    Can we agree that Conan the Mosherian has an impressive kill record d/dx objectivity?, or do I fool myself there?

    I’m not sure what you have in mind. Mosher definitely deserves credit for the Peter Gleick thing. I suppose he also deserves credit for the book he co-authored, but unlike the Gleick thing, I have no idea how much effect it had. I certainly don’t know of anything that would make me impressed by it.

    (Aside: I’ve gotten ~10% of the way through the book so far. It is horribly written. I get people will offer the excuse of how quickly it was written, but my in-class high school essays were edited better than it. It makes me miss reading Michael Mann’s book because, as many problems it had, its writing quality was far better. If this book had a significant effect on anything, I’d be surprised.)

    (Second aside: The first aside had nothing to do with any feelings I may have toward Steven Mosher. The writing in this book is terrible in an objective sense.)

    Does Mosher’s record demonstate objectivity.

    No. Nothing you’ve cited even suggests objectivity. What you’ve cited doesn’t contradict the idea he is objective, but it doesn’t demonstrate he is objective either.

    Gods so I’m sorry. I make no sense. Let’s proceed from there and try to pick some meaning out of the madness. If you want to take the trouble. Or we can change the subject and I’ll go be quiet for a few days! (I’d go with option #2 jus saying).

    I tried to pick some stuff out. I’m not sure how meaningful it was.

    (If you have me change the subject to something of my choice, I may start ranting about things like how horrible an idea it is to use an appositive set off by commas before an independent clause if that appositive begins with a noun which shares a form with a verb. You can tell I’m working toward a ranting state by the fact I’m losing my ability to write in plain English. Suffice to say while my comment may mean nothing to you, if you understood what I was describing, you’d understand why I want to strangle the authors for doing it.)

  19. No prob.

    For the record, after my comment I went and took a shower than ate. I came back and started reading again. Two paragraphs later, I found myself about to throw the book across the room when I realized that doesn’t work so well with eBooks (I disappointing lack I hope the industry will someday correct).

    I literally cannot tell what form this sentence is supposed to have. The most logical interpretation of one part of it is, “An appositive made up of a list which doesn’t use an Oxford comma, missing one of the two commas that is supposed to set it aside.” This interpretation is somewhat supported by it following shortly after another appositive which is definitely missing one of the commas that would set it aside. The problem is who [self-censored] uses a list inside an appositive set aside by commas?

    This sentence would be no less coherent if you used a random number generator to determine where to put the commas in it. In fact, that might be exactly what they did.

  20. I should point out while the writing of this book is what may drive me to madness, the content of the book has plenty of issues as well. Here is just one example of why I hope the book didn’t have too much influence:

    Those reconstructions play a role in supporting some of the founding claims of the IPCC, namely that the change we see today in the climate has not been seen before in human history, the implication of course being that most of the change can be attributed to human activity. One critical part of these reconstructions is the present day temperature record. This record, the data set created by Jones…

    Apparently Steven Mosher and Thomas Fuller want people to believe that at the time they wrote their book, “the present day temperature record” was created entirely by Phil Jones. Because there was only one present day temperature record. And Phil Jones is the only person who was involved in making it.

    That quote also draws me back a few paragraphs to where the book says:

    One claim underlying the founding of the IPCC, it should be recalled, is that the climate change we are seeing is unprecedented in human history.

    I don’t know how that “should be recalled” since it’s not true. That’s completely made up.

    I don’t think the book even made this claim before telling people to remember it. I’m not positive though. I keep coming across sentences I want to skip because I’m not convinced they were written in English.

  21. Alright, I figure people probably don’t care to read me commenting on this book over and over, so I’ll try to make this my last comment on the subject. I have to make this one though. You see, I’ve never done a spit-take in my life. I’ve seen it used as a comic technique, but I never understood how anyone could do it for real. Then I read something Steven Mosher and Thomas Fuller said in their book. Before I get to that though, last month a commenter said:

    There were two things going on. One was the misleading portrayal of earth’s temperature. The other thing was that a group of people at East Anglia started sending out emails attacking their critics.

    Mosher responded:

    I will never tire of abusing skeptics who continue to mis-portray climategate as a story about temperature series. The central issue was and remains Chapter 6 of Ar4. The clearest crime was and remains the thwarting of Holland’s FOIA request.

    You know as much as I would have liked to find more mails about temperature series in the stack, the fact remains. There was one good story in the mails. That story centered on Briffa, Wahl,Jones, Mann, Mcintrye and Holland, chapter 6 Ar4.

    I’ve seen him make this point many times in the past. Steve McIntyre made the same point, responding to a commenter inline:

    Mr. Mosher, I see that you never tire of being abused by skeptics, in fact it seems you thrive on it. This entire affair, climategate included, is about temperature series and the mathematical abuse thereof.

    Steve: this is way OT to the post, but I’ve repeatedly pointed out that the Climategate emails have nothing to do with temperature data and criticized people who tried to coatrack their disputes about temperature data onto the emails. Please take this issue to a relevant thread or discuss elsewhere.

    It is abundantly clear Climategate had nothing to do with temperature data. Mosher enjoys abusing people who think they do, happily laughing at their foolishness.

    That is the context of what comes next. You see, Mosher and Fuller wrote this about CRU:

    its staff of around thirty research scientists and students has developed and published a number of the data sets widely used in climate research, most importantly the global temperature index, or CRUTEMP. The data and methods surrounding this critical piece of evidence of climate change is the principle focus of Climategate.

    According to Mosher and Fuller’s book, the global temperature index (and there’s only one) is a “critical piece of evidence of climate change” which was “the principle focus of Climategate.”

    I had to do a spit-take at these skeptics who continue to mis-portray climategate as a story about temperature series.

  22. I do not want to butt into your discussion here other than to repeat my wish for the tenth or so time that the discussion of the instrumental temperature record and the adjustment algorithms focus on where I think a work still in progress needs attention, i.e. providing benchmarking tests that truly test the capability of the algorithms currently available to find and properly correct for non climate effects and including at what point potential gradual changes in non climate effects would exceed near completely the algorithms capability. The other important issue to me is providing some assurances that we can quantify the confidence intervals for the entire historical temperature records global, regional and local scales.

    I think what pulls Mosher’s chain is that he wants to be seen as the watch dog on all sides of the AGW issue and as a luke warmer interested in maintaining his neutral bona fides he gets particularly upset with so-called skeptics who make generalized statements about issues that if analyzed in detail would come to different conclusions (and rightfully so but I wonder if his reaction really changes anything). This temperature adjustment thing with some of these so-called skeptics is fertile ground for them to make unsupported claims about the biases of the adjustments and even impute motivation and use too much anecdotal evidence. These approaches are most often readily refuted but in the meantime can be wrongly associated with more legitimate skepticism and criticisms and waste a lot of bandwidth on the wrong topics.

  23. Kenneth Fritsch, interestingly, back when Steven Mosher and I were supposed to work together to examine the UHI issue, I shared the same view. One of my suggestions was to take the current data set, modify it and see what happens. Imagine if we created a potential profile for a UHI signal and added it to 10% of the data set. What would happen? I don’t know. I wish I did. I wish people could say, “If X is in the data, Y will happen.” They can’t. Instead, all we get are things like, “There is no significant change in the overall trend” like that somehow answers all the questions.

    As for Mosher, I can’t begin to explain him. I’ve long thought his attitude to be harmful, and I’ve never been impressed by his contributions to discussions, but now that I’m reading his book, I… just don’t know. His book makes a bunch of arguments he now insults people for making. He’s never gone back and corrected his book. He’s never published a warning that his book will mislead readers. On most of the issues, he hasn’t even shown some simple humility and said, “Yeah, I used to believe that, but I was wrong.”

    Mosher literally wrote a book to promote arguments he now shamelessly insults people for making.

    Mosher made money telling people things he now insults them for believing.

    I cannot form sentences to express how horrible this is.

  24. By the way, I’m starting to think I must just be completely delusional. Or maybe somebody sabotaged Amazon’s servers to distribute a fake book in place of the real one. Something like that seems like the only way this situation wouldn’t be completely and utterly insane.

    Has anyone read this book? Can anyone confirm I am in fact seeing what it says? I only got an eBook version. Could someone maybe have switched out the text?

    Those aren’t rhetorical questions. I’m trying to find a reason to not say this book is worse than Michael Mann’s. I’m trying to find a reason to not say Mosher is more dishonest than Mann. I am trying so hard I will accept I might have suffered a rage-induced psychotic break after Mosher compared me to a Holocaust denier.

    I literally cannot believe what I am seeing in this book. I am seeing it with my own two eyes, and I still don’t believe it.

  25. Brandon, I read the book shortly after it came out, and the only error I noticed was with regards to Hide the Decline, discussed at ClimateAudit on Arthur Smith accuses Steve Mosher of lying.
    The book was rushed a bit, and even the errors you state above look innocent to me. ClimateGate involved Phil Jones’s temperature record, so when they are talking about tacking on a temperature record they say ‘the … made by Phil Jones’ as explanation.

    I mentioned the same thing about ClimateGate and temperature records at ClimateAudit. I commented about Yamal in that thread.
    Keep in mind that Mosher at the time he wrote the book could have reached a different conclusion. I think with the name FOIA, temperature records is clearly in the mix.

  26. MikeN, we can’t just forgive the contradictions between what Steven Mosher says now and what he says in the book by saying at a different time he “could have reached a different conclusion.” It’s fine for views to change. However, we ought to expect certain things to come along with those changes.

    If you sell people a message, you shouldn’t turn around and insult them for having the audacity to… believe that message. That’s especially true if you’re going to keep selling the false message to people without making any effort to warn them it is a false message.

    Heck, look at what Mosher said to me over a post I wasn’t the author of:

    you messed up, in particular not noting the change in spatial uncertainty.
    I would like to see you add a correction to that post, and an acknowledgement.

    No. you need to post a correction in your post.

    probably my Last response to you until you do that

    Mosher won’t talk to me until I add a correction to a post I didn’t write. I contacted the author of the post, and I publicly requested a correction be added to the post, but that’s not enough for Mosher. Mosher won’t even talk to me until I add a correction to a post I have no editorial control over.

    Mosher has never attempted to correct his book. Mosher has never attempted to warn anyone his book is wrong. Mosher has never even acknowledged his book was wrong. Mosher has never even acknowledged he once held the views he now insults people for holding. The hypocrisy is staggering.

    By the way, this is just one troubling problem with his book. I pointed it out because of how absurd it is for Mosher to behave like he does toward people who believe what he published in a book. There are tons of other problems. I’ll be noting a lot of them at my blog where I have a post specifically for it.

  27. MikeN:

    What do you think FOIA stands for.

    All this time I was assuming it referred to “Freedom of Information Act”.

  28. Ken, your goal is admirable but not wanted by extreme alarmists or skeptics.
    The confidence levels in historical data is currently unacheivable.
    There are different thermometers historically, different TOB, a mixture of two different layers earth/air, sea/air to measure over and join together plus the problem of measurement when sea and land ice is present.
    Paucity of measuring stations, changes in stations both temporally and spatially.
    Finally there is the problem of adjustments and homogenisation and the use of the adjusted records. USHCN as described in detail by Zeke has an algorithm which corrects all past data on the basis of the current recorded data. The known UHI is actually left in that is the current temperatures do not have the UHI bias taken out but it is removed as the records go backwards.
    So what would you have them do?
    Not all models rely on UsHcn/GCHN input alone. Standardisation is needed but who gets to choose.
    These claims are not unsubstantiated, they come from Zeke directly in a comment 2 years ago and on a reading of his methods of designing a global temperature system.
    I agree that anecdotal evidence can be overused (I generally steer clear of it) but saying that something is anecdotal does not mean that it is always falseness does not mean it should not be used, only examined more closely.

  29. I suppose Mosher, understandably, just takes pride in his work. In some ways, a sentiment similar to Gavin’s . If McIntyre understands human behavior, he shouldn’t be surprised also if he doesn’t get the data he now wants.

  31. The eBook is the same as the printed version. I wrote the sentences that have Brandon upset. Sorry, Brandon.

    On December 7 when we decided to write the book, to me the focus was on what a small team of scientists wrote to each other about protecting what was shown in the SPR. By January 13th when we finished it it was clear that the only ‘mortal sin’ we had found was the deliberate thwarting of the FOIA requests. All else was peccadillo. To be clear, there were many peccadillos. The Team should be forever ashamed of their behavior and its consequences are polluting the climate discussion still today.

    But Brandon, Mosh is a really good guy. A lot of what he’s doing at BEST is trying to find answers to the questions skeptics like you have been raising for more than a decade. He’s working his butt off and he’s not getting rich doing it.

    You may think the points you are raising are important and should get a quick response. Maybe you’re right. But there are dozens, if not hundreds, of people very similar to you asking similar questions and there’s only one Mosh to answer them. I understand his frustration.

  32. Tom Fuller:

    The eBook is the same as the printed version. I wrote the sentences that have Brandon upset. Sorry, Brandon.

    For what it’s worth, I don’t feel much of anything toward you. Maybe it’s just selection bias, but I can’t think of anything you’ve said that bothers me in light of what I’m reading in your book. I can think of dozens, if not hundreds, of comments by Steven Mosher which stand in stark contrast with what he says in your guys’ book, but I can’t think of any of yours which do. Maybe that’s because there’s a real difference between how you and Mosher have behaved. Maybe it’s because I just happen to read more comment by Mosher than you. I don’t know.

    On December 7 when we decided to write the book, to me the focus was on what a small team of scientists wrote to each other about protecting what was shown in the SPR. By January 13th when we finished it it was clear that the only ‘mortal sin’ we had found was the deliberate thwarting of the FOIA requests. All else was peccadillo. To be clear, there were many peccadillos. The Team should be forever ashamed of their behavior and its consequences are polluting the climate discussion still today.

    I don’t disagree. I think Mosher is right about the hockey stick issue being the most powerful issue in the Climategate affair. I think people would have done better to focus on the strongest points they had. I just can’t justify Mosher’s attitude toward people who focus on those less powerful points.

    When there’s a complicated situation, I can’t fault people for failing to focus on the most powerful arguments available. I can’t fault people for discussing issues which are real no matter how well they may or may not be supported by the Climategate e-mails. Where our views seem to diverge is:

    But Brandon, Mosh is a really good guy. A lot of what he’s doing at BEST is trying to find answers to the questions skeptics like you have been raising for more than a decade. He’s working his butt off and he’s not getting rich doing it.

    You see, I don’t care if what you say is true or not. I don’t care if Mosher is a good person or not. I don’t care if Michael Mann is good or not. I honestly don’t give a **** about any of you.

    All I care about is what you say. Mann says things which are unquestionably dishonest. I’ve known this for years. I’ve pointed it out time and time again, and nobody has ever offered anything resembling a critical response to it. So long as this continues, it is a dead issue to me. Michael Mann is dishonest, and that’s where matters stand.

    Mosher is a different story. I am told Mosher does good work. I am told Mosher does good analyses. I am told Mosher is a good guy trying to find answers to questions I ponder. That might all be true. I don’t know. I can’t read his mind. All I can do is read what he writes, and what he writes is guaranteed to prevent legitimate discussion.

    I’ve tried this one on one. I’ve tried this in public forums. It doesn’t matter. Every time I’ve tried discussing something with Mosher, his responses have been largely useless and always disingenuous. No matter what he may or may not be as a person, his behavior, insofar as it affects me, is horrible.

    You may think the points you are raising are important and should get a quick response. Maybe you’re right. But there are dozens, if not hundreds, of people very similar to you asking similar questions and there’s only one Mosh to answer them. I understand his frustration.

    I don’t understand his frustration. I’ve never asked anything of him. I’ve never asked him to do any analysis. I’ve never asked him to do any work. All I have ever done is ask him to accurately describe whatever work he or the people he associates with have done. All I have asked is for him to provide the same documentation for his work he has routinely demanded others provide for theirs.

    You can defend Mosher all you want, but the reality is I’ve never seen a shred of evidence to support what you’re saying. Until I do, I’m going to just continue doing what I’ve always done: judging his contributions by what I see him contribute. That includes the judgments where I perceive him as a rampant hypocrite for insulting people for believing the very things you two published in your book.

    Aside from that, I don’t know him, and I don’t know you. All I do know is you both bother me because I could drop your book in a bucket of red paint and that would still not indicate the amount corrections an editor for it should make. As an editor, I would set your book on fire and say that accurately demonstrates the quality of your writing. I don’t like to be harsh, but dear god, reading your book makes me feel like my eyes are going to bleed.

  33. Tom, thanks for joining in and trying to help out in the climate debate and contributing those insights into the past. I hope that you will continue to contribute here. I don’t know what else to say other than sorry if it helps.

  34. Upon rereading it, my last comment seems fairly harsh, so I want to clarify something: I am trying to be as conciliatory as I can be.

    If not for that, my remarks would be far harsher. I could write a great deal about how Steven Mosher helped create the problem he now laments (and he he apparently profited from doing so). I could write hundreds of words about how Mosher took money to help set up a straw man he now attacks whenever he can. I could go on and on about how the very argument we see Mosher condemn today is one he sought to create just a few years ago.

    If people want to talk about Mosher as a person, they can. I am trying to tolerate that as much as I can. I am trying to accept people may know things about Mosher I cannot see any evidence for. I am genuinely trying on this.

    But the more people talk about Mosher as a person, the more I’m going to have to provide examples of how he behaves. My impression is those examples will contradict what people want us to believe about him.

  35. Brandon, I’ve lost my temper in a number of comment threads, so I understand some of what you wrote as being in that vein.

    Our book in my opinion was accurate–with a couple of minor mistakes that Arthur Smith pointed out, mostly due to our writing about one version of a hockey stick and showing pictures of another.

    I know Steve corresponds regularly with a number of people on these issues and has a lot more time to spend with those he trusts not to be asking him to do things that either they could do themselves or things that he considers red herrings.

    Your mileage may vary, of course. And you certainly should not accept my opinion of Steve at face value. But similarly I am not going to accept some of what you write about him in the same way.

  36. Thanks Tom for your very level-headed comments. I have been a long time lurker here and elsewhere on the usual circuit of climate sites. I think Mosh has a very abrasive style, and he certainly doesn’t get it right all of the time…but I do read what he says, and whether anyone else finds his comments useful/honest/accurate or not, I have found his input really helpful and informative. I accept that others don’t agree…and that’s fine by me.
    He does put the work in, and he also engages with those who don’t agree with him. That engagement isn’t what everyone wants…and he may well blank certain queries, but he can’t be accused of living in a cotton wool covered ivory tower.
    Duncan

  37. Tom Fuller, I used to respect your word and Mosher’s. No longer. Mosher has created as many “skeptics” as Realclimate has at this point…

  38. Brandon,

    So you said many interesting things that I’d enjoy discussing. To get back to one arbitrary point:

    No. Nothing you’ve cited even suggests objectivity. What you’ve cited doesn’t contradict the idea he is objective, but it doesn’t demonstrate he is objective either.

    I don’t see this. Help me understand where I’m wrong if you’d be so good, my idea rests on a few basic points:
    1) Mosher appears to say some things that some skeptics might find contrary to their view, disagreeable, or counterproductive. For example he often talks about the temperature record ~NOT~ being the way for skeptics to go. Basically he says he’s investigated it in detail and it’s clean.
    2) It’s common (sadly) in my view for people to come to the table with an agenda. What the heck does that mean. Take me for example. I mean no harm and try pretty hard to be forthright about my ignorance in many areas. Still, I have a bias. Maybe it’s my worldview like some say, maybe it’s just tribalism. Maybe it’s something totally different, it doesn’t matter it’s not my point. My point is, often folks appear to allow things to skew their perception of the evidence, or maybe skew the conclusions they reach from looking at the evidence.
    3) A sign (from my perspective) that an individual is doing a good job resisting this .. can we call it corruption? A sign that an indivdual is doing well resisting this corruption is when all of his statements and conclusions don’t form any sort of convenient orderly line. It’s what I’d expect of somebody with integrity; everything doesn’t work out. Sometimes we have to eat crow, sometimes we have to call out our friends. It’s got the pattern / the abstract shape of truth.

    Gosh I’m late. I best get moving, I hope to write more later. Thanks for the discussion, I’m enjoying it!

  39. Hi Sue

    Mosher’s acerbic. If that really is enough to change your perception of anthropogenic contributions to changes in our climate, perhaps you’re involved in the wrong discussion.

  40. Really quickly, because I feel I didn’t finish making my point well:
    3.5) so sometimes we bust Peter Gleick. IT’s not the sort of thing a left of center type blogger with a political agenda would do. We admit it when Monckton makes an error (Mercy Christopher; I needed some example. We all make mistakes, me more often than most). It’s not the sort of thing a righty like me finds comfortable, calling a member of my tribe out. Why does one do it? It doesn’t line up and help with any agenda except one: we do it because it’s the truth. This is what it means to have integrity, in my view.

  41. Hiya Mark,

    Hey, I’m way left of center… and I’ve busted Gleick’s chops as much as anyone! He’s a thief and a forger.

    On the other hand, I have no time at all for Monckton’s games. He’s a hack journalist trying to ride a wave to glory.

    On the gripping hand, which of those two descriptions is worse?

  42. The issues
    CO2 causes an increase in the intrinsic heat of an atmosphere to which it is added. Accepted by almost everyone, not by all.
    Theory suggests heat in equals heat out hence the amount of sun energy in “should” equal the amount of heat out given that the earth stays in it’s usual orbit round the sun.
    Hence the other elements such as heat content in the ocean should not change??

    Measurements of the heat at the surface are continually varying due to station changes and the stations are not spread out equally needing a homogenisation process and extra station creation artificially.
    The process of homogenisation creates issues of replacing stations which no longer function, as well as adding in new stations when they come online and leads to a much bigger problem of comparing with historical data.
    The problems here are of comparing like with like (TOBS) bias, instrument differences and trying to unite the new and old measurements.
    The method chosen, while scientifically valid, results in either keeping the past raw data “true” but dropping current temperatures or as is done, keeping the present true and the past being lowered.
    What is needed is a Fixed truncation, that is nominate a rigid amount that can be adjusted and fix it permanently as the accepted record for instruments , like nominating a fixed distance for the metre and forbid the use of algorithms that adjust the past downward.
    That would fix Ken’s problem and lessen the contortions that Zeke et al have to go through defending an indefensible algorithm.
    Though this method would still have holes in it.

  43. Hollo Tom.

    Hiya Mark,

    Hey, I’m way left of center… and I’ve busted Gleick’s chops as much as anyone! He’s a thief and a forger.

    On the other hand, I have no time at all for Monckton’s games. He’s a hack journalist trying to ride a wave to glory.

    On the gripping hand, which of those two descriptions is worse?

    You provide me with a convenient segue! Thank you (you dirty no good gosh darn lefty). Wait, what?
    See, we want to figure out who is worse. It’s great to have a bad guy. I find it fascinating, I can imagine all sorts of reasons for it which are probably all wrong.
    But I digress. The segue, right. I find it intensely embarrassing to single out individuals in the discussion. Every time I praise Steven Mosher I cringe. Every time I criticise Dana Nuticelli (Nucitelli? Sorry Dana) I also cringe a little. It’s not about people and the true hell is we all know this. Still, fools like me talk about the people.
    Kudo’s to people like Lucia (see what I mean? There I go again, talking about the people. People matter to us, even when they shouldn’t), who generally stick with the scientific truth and manage to demonstrate grace when it comes to the people game; part of why I love the Blackboard, even though she’s not posting much these days.

  44. Tom,
    I feel sorry for Peter GLieck in that he was trying to do something for a cause that he believed/believes in and crossed a line ethically that he would have felt more than most others assuming he has allowed himself the luxury of looking at his actions.
    Christopher Monkton has crossed the lines as well for the same reasons. I believe he is a bit more than a hack journalist having very good mathematical skills.
    If he was only a game playing hack journalist he would not have needed mentioning, would he?
    Having no time for a person opposing your views limits things a bit.

  45. Hi Angech

    I have a lot of time for other people who share Monckton’s views. I disagree with them, but I enjoy talking to them–I consider Anthony Watts a friend, for example.

    But Monckton is just riding a wave. If it weren’t global warming skepticism it would be something–anything–else.

    As for Gleick, I might share your more sympathetic take on his plight if he had ever expressed a word of remorse.

  46. Tom,

    So what’s wrong with riding waves? Lots of bitchin’ dudes in California live for that. Or so I’m told.

    Let him amongst us without stones cast the first sin.. .. uhm, without sin, cast stones, … yeah.

  47. Tom Fuller,

    “On the gripping hand…”

    Moties, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Fun books. Nice to see that somebody else still remembers them.

  48. Aww crud. Mebbe my last remark didn’t come across right. I meant no insult. I consider myself a fool, a jester here. I make people smile and make them rethink, hopefully. We can all laugh at me; no foul I’m good with it.

    So, seriously now. You’re born with a title, in this day and age. You’re not a moron, and you realize it’s an anachronism. What do you do with it? Seriously. Walk a mile in Lord M’s shoes. What do you do with it?

    The best you can, I guess. I’d like to think that anyways.

  49. Yes, Mark and Tom, we talk and think about people’s words and actions. Mosher has become Mike Mann in my opinion. When questioned about specifics he comes across as arrogant and down right nasty. Not sure what is going on with him. Tom, I’m still in the same discussion as you are, just not as concerned about it….

  50. I don’t know you, but I love you.

    But you’ve got to support that statement. Or not. Is it just that Steven irritates you? Or is he in some way Mannian?

  51. Right I pass. Mosher is Mann?

    Do I ridicule you? I guess. Lets everybody spit on me on the count of three.

    One!

    Two!

    THREE–(EWW!)

    Look, I just don’t get it. In what way is Mosher like Mann? Please, everyone kick my butt over this one, it’d make me feel better.

  52. “When questioned about specifics he comes across as arrogant and down right nasty. ” That’s was Mosher does and that is the same thing Mann does.

  54. But you’re saying he’s not nice? I don’t get what you’re saying.

    So.

    I don’t actually know Steven Mosher, and I don’t work in his field. I get the impression that lots of people ask him stupid questions.

    Wow, what question do I ask that’s not stupid?

    The sort that I ought to be able to go answer for myself, if I cared enough.

    So – I do that all the darn time particularly here. A bunch of mechanical engineering phds, other doctorates, — nothing I ask here is deserving of anybody’s time. Grad student questions and answers, at best.

    The folk here show grace. I presume apon it. Mebbe Steven Mosher does not have the patience. Mebbe Mann has no patience left either. Wouldn’t surprise me; from personal experience I emailed Trenberth once and while I forget exactly what the issue and response was, I got the sense that the poor man was overloaded with email from dumbbutts like myself who hadn’t done due dilligence.

    I don’t think that’s crazy, evil, or wrong.

    just sayin. Walk a mile in their shoes, or if not, don’t throw stones. I guess.

  55. “That’s what Mosher does…”

    He also gets cryptic and goes through re-framing your question gymnastics, so he can answer it with spin or an avalanche of non-information… which leads one to believe he doesn’t want to have to put down what a straightforward answer conveys.

    Andrew

  57. Tom Fuller:

    Brandon, I’ve lost my temper in a number of comment threads, so I understand some of what you wrote as being in that vein.

    It actually isn’t. I’m too dumbfounded to be angry. Give me a few days to process things, and then maybe I’ll lose my temper.

    Our book in my opinion was accurate–with a couple of minor mistakes that Arthur Smith pointed out, mostly due to our writing about one version of a hockey stick and showing pictures of another.

    Then you should tell Steven Mosher the HadCRU temperature index is a “critical piece of evidence of climate change [and] is the principle focus of Climategate.” It’ll be interesting to see him abuse you for it as he “will never tire of abusing skeptics who continue to mis-portray climategate as a story about temperature series.”

    Your mileage may vary, of course. And you certainly should not accept my opinion of Steve at face value. But similarly I am not going to accept some of what you write about him in the same way.

    The difference is I don’t ask people to take my opinions at face value. I provide the evidence and logic I use to form my opinions. If people can rebut either, they shouldn’t believe what I believe. If they cannot, they should at least consider the possibility I’m right.

    And the same will be true of how I judge their opinions. I’ll start considering the possibility people’s opinions are right when they provide me reasons to believe they are. I base my views on reasoning and evidence, not just what people tell me.

  58. Mark Bofill:

    3) A sign (from my perspective) that an individual is doing a good job resisting this .. can we call it corruption? A sign that an indivdual is doing well resisting this corruption is when all of his statements and conclusions don’t form any sort of convenient orderly line.

    You’ll remember the University of Queensland threatened me with legal action, going so far as to threaten me if I showed anyone the threat they sent me. David Appell offered to host the letter because he felt that was unacceptable. Does that indicate Appell is unbiased? Of course not.

    There are skeptics who say Monckton is a hack (because he is one). Does that indicate they are unbiased? Of course not. You can’t judge a person’s bias (or lack thereof) on one or two issues. You have to look at their overall pattern of behavior.

    Consider how some Democrats will vote Republican on some issues (and vice versa). Does that mean they aren’t biased toward the Democratic party line? Of course not. The most it could mean is they are not completely and totally biased toward the party line (and even that’s not a given). You could say that about Steven Mosher (for whatever party line), but that’s nowhere near the same as saying he is objective. This is especially true since one doesn’t have to be biased toward one of two major party lines to be biased.

    I don’t much care to try to measure people’s objectivity, but if you ask me to do it, I’m going to try to do it properly.

    I don’t actually know Steven Mosher, and I don’t work in his field. I get the impression that lots of people ask him stupid questions.

    They do, but not in as great numbers as you might think. Mosher has a tendency to portray things as stupid even when they are not, often as part of a misrepresentation which allows him not to have to deal with an issue. Personally, whatever sympathy I’d have toward Mosher for being asked stupid questions evaporated when I realized how many stupid answers he gave.

  59. As Brandon wrote, those of us who do not know someone are limited to what they write when making judgments as to the credibility or trustworthiness of their work. The biggest red flag for me re: Mosher is the strange logic fail that he has repeated a number of times. He argues that society must accept the alarmist political regulatory regime based on bad climate models and databases because skeptics have not created others that are demonstrably better. This is nuts. Society has no need to do anything until someone comes up with theory, models etc. that are demonstrated to be accurate and complete.

    Note — I realize that this is not a ‘techical’ question, but it is one of basic logic. The notion that we must use failed computer models because people who don’t accept the theory haven’t developed their own is ludicrous. First, because skeptics actually do have a very simple model that does a better job. But even more importantly, there is a basic fundamental precept that all people understand at a young age — the proponent of change bears the burden of demonstrating its necessity. Try telling any group of people that they have to make fundamental changes in the way they do their tasks on the basis of your failed theory as to why they should. See how it goes.

  61. Stan:

    He argues that society must accept the alarmist political regulatory regime based on bad climate models and databases because skeptics have not created others that are demonstrably better. This is nuts. Society has no need to do anything until someone comes up with theory, models etc. that are demonstrated to be accurate and complete.

    Stan, you may draw the conclusion that he thinks this is the only path we could take assuming his understanding of the science. I do not draw that conclusion nor do I think he does.

    Possibly a straw man?

    Like you, though, my preference is to do nothing economically damaging pending further and better insight into this issue.

  62. Stan,

    The biggest red flag for me re: Mosher is the strange logic fail that he has repeated a number of times. He argues that society must accept the alarmist political regulatory regime based on bad climate models and databases because skeptics have not created others that are demonstrably better. This is nuts. Society has no need to do anything until someone comes up with theory, models etc. that are demonstrated to be accurate and complete.

    I agree wholeheartedly. This is one of the many points I disagree with Steven on.

  63. Stan,
    “The biggest red flag for me re: Mosher is the strange logic fail that he has repeated a number of times. He argues that society must accept the alarmist political regulatory regime based on bad climate models and databases because skeptics have not created others that are demonstrably better. This is nuts. Society has no need to do anything until someone comes up with theory, models etc. that are demonstrated to be accurate and complete.”

    exactly. Well put. I’ve seen a grown woman freak out and stop a social event because she thought there was a giant spider in the middle of the room–it was an olive. Should we act on every case of someone freaking out? This leads to anti-vaxxers, warning labels on everything, closing all playgrounds (oops we are getting there, aren’t we, welcome to California), children not being allowed to play outside, etc. The “alternate model” is–“shut up, you are nuts”.

  64. Craig Loehle,

    The “alternate model” is – “shut up, you are nuts”.

    LOL.
    Independent of the accuracy of that ‘model’, it will not be well received by many, and certainly not by those most concerned about extreme GHG driven warming (and nuclear power, ‘global economic justice’, total resource depletion, GM crops, etc, etc). Maybe the model is suitable for someone who thinks an olive on the floor is a giant spider.

  65. Stan,

    [Mosher] argues that society must accept the alarmist political regulatory regime based on bad climate models and databases because skeptics have not created others that are demonstrably better.

    Cite please. I must not be reading the right blogs.

    Society has no need to do anything until someone comes up with theory, models etc. that are demonstrated to be accurate and complete.

    That’s not how risk management works in the real world. By the time you have accurate and complete data and theory, it’s generally too late to do anything. Risk management is all about dealing with uncertainty.

    Yet again I point out that the vulnerabilities in the climate change paradigm are the IPCC WG-2 report on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability and the WG-3 report on Mitigation. The WG-2 report exaggerates damage and underestimates adaptability while the WG-3 report underestimates the cost of mitigation, for one by using a ridiculously low discount rate to calculate net present value. See, for example, the Stern Report. Grey literature, i.e. not peer reviewed, is cited heavily to support the conclusions in the WG-2 report and dominates the citations in the WG-3 report.

    If the consequences of a 3 degree increase in global temperature were minimal and the costs of mitigation were extreme, then it hardly matters whether the true value is 2 or 4 degrees, draconian measures would not only not be necessary but would be worse than doing nothing as resources would be diverted away from their best use. Because we are largely failing to challenge the IPCC conclusions that the cost of a 2 degree increase would be horrendous and increase rapidly at higher temperature and the cost of mitigation would be acceptable, then even a true value of 1.5 degrees by 2100 isn’t low enough to argue against taking drastic action now.

    The Stern Report, by the way, was based on the IPCC A2 scenario family, which is nearly worst case. Carbon emissions in 2100 range from 17 to 33 GtC in 2100 compared to about 9 GtC now. Global population increases throughout the 21st century, reaching about 15 billion in 2100 with the most rapid increase in the low latitudes where the affect of increased temperature is thought to be highest. Meanwhile GDP per capita increase is lower than other scenario families.

  66. Brandon,

    Not ignoring you. I’m still chewing. Mouth is full. Promise, I’ll get back once I understand fully.

  67. ““The biggest red flag for me re: Mosher is the strange logic fail that he has repeated a number of times. He argues that society must accept the alarmist political regulatory regime based on bad climate models and databases because skeptics have not created others that are demonstrably better. This is nuts. Society has no need to do anything until someone comes up with theory, models etc. that are demonstrated to be accurate and complete.”

    Ah no. I make no arguments whatsoever about what society “should” accept or “must” accept.

    I will note that Obama ( power) has a pen and phone.
    Figure out what that means.

    A policy maker can ignore science. He can use science. he can abuse science. Telling a policy maker that they cant make a decision because “popper” or because “uncertainty” or because you havent been convinced is pretty silly.

  68. For those interested in local climate, I’ve posted links to the Decades Average Temperature Anomalies for each of the 7 sites mentioned in an earlier post across East Tennessee as column charts. Included are the standard deviations. The mean baseline and sigma period are from 1951 – 2010.

    The quick and dirty is that, where data was available, the 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s were the warmest decades. By far. And the extreme drop in temperature from the 50′ to 60’s is something else. Some kind of big time forcing. PDO, whatever. I do know that there was a lot of air pollution in the region before the 70’s.

    Also, whoever was responsible for supposedly introducing the cold bias into the GHCN data before 1950 didn’t do a very good job.

    Elizabethton
    http://feb.imghost.us/Kqct.jpg

    Greeneville
    http://feb.imghost.us/Kqeu.jpg

    Kingsport
    http://feb.imghost.us/KqgF.jpg

    Knoxville
    http://feb.imghost.us/KqhK.jpg

    Newport
    http://feb.imghost.us/Kqj3.jpg

    Rogersville
    http://feb.imghost.us/KqkL.jpg

    Tri-Cities
    http://feb.imghost.us/KqlI.jpg

    Tom R

  70. Telling a policy maker that they cant make a decision because “popper” or because “uncertainty” or because you havent been convinced is pretty silly.

    Yah, but we can (and do) vote them out. I still don’t get what you’re saying here. What we think matters to the policy makers at the end of the day, is the problem I’ve got with your argument I guess. Doesn”t it?
    Gods be good, esplain so mortals like me can understand.

  71. Mark,

    What we think matters to the policy makers at the end of the day, is the problem I’ve got with your argument I guess. Doesn”t it?

    Well, no, it doesn’t, or at least not always. Consider, for example, the Affordable Care Act.

  72. Steve is making the same point Jennifer Marohasy has made: That without a new paradigm for climate, the alarmist paradigm is going to continue to dominate the public square. Think of Eugenics for an example of policies, laws and progressive social perspective that thrived in the public square but was not supported by science.

  73. On my hobby horse so moving Mark and Brandon aside
    Zeke and Mosher have a temperature paper discussion going at Judith’s. I made a comment about the fact that the USHCN component has half it’s stations no longer working and the data is therefore compiled from other sources and put into these stations to make up an “unchanged USHCN network”
    Icalled this infilling.
    Steven Mosher replied | February 11, 2015 at 11:57 pm | Reply
    we don’t infill stations.”
    My question is
    great so the 600 plus USHC stations out of 1200 that do not physically exist any more other than as made up composites are not infilled. What word do you prefer for establishing the data for the non existent stations so that we can communicate in English?
    as the thread is a little old over there I thought he might care to give an answer here.
    The other perplexing thing is his past comment along the lines of
    “when a station changes for whatever reason, location thermometers etc we treat it as a new station”
    How does this square with the USHCN treatment of pretending the old stations are still on the go?
    Apart from the comment pre ringing in my ears of “I do not have anything to do with USHCN apart from using their data.”

  74. In my web browser google if I hit F3 it brings up a dialog box so I can enter Mosher or Lucia and it shows all the hits on that thread. I know everyone here is more computer literate than I but it was one of the most helpful ways of sorting through blogs I have ever found.
    On I Pad click on the title bar and change it to your search word and when you see “on this page” click that and it will do a similar search function through the blog.

  75. angech (Comment #135239) February 14th, 2015 at 5:25 am

    “What word do you prefer for establishing the data for the non existent stations so that we can communicate in English?”

    Channeling? As in “The live stations are channeling the dead stations.”

  76. Mark Bofill

    I still don’t get what you’re saying here. with respect to Mosher’s

    Telling a policy maker that they cant make a decision because “popper” or because “uncertainty” or because you havent been convinced is pretty silly.

    I took it as a policy maker is constrained by many factors such as time-frames, uncertainty, etc. but still has to make decisions regarding a particular policy. But that is just my read driven by my experience and biases.

  77. Mark Bofill (Comment #135236)

    I think I am with you here in that this discussion would benefit from some definition of terms and a lot less attempts at being cute.

    In my book policy makers in Washington are entities that merely use data to spin the case in favor of whatever political entity has them in their hire. The politician is the one who could be susceptible to public opinion, but that varies in a very practical manner whereas those politicians in “safe” voting constituencies can then proclaim a political philosophy in the these matters and ignore nationwide political sentiment while those in swing situations might well attempt to placate the majority at least among their constituency if not the nation as a whole.

    Policy and politics is no different for AGW related issues than it is for any others of this magnitude of interest. Wherever there is any uncertainty involved in the issue a policy maker with his version of the facts can go work his magic. Government mitigation attempts of potential AGW detrimental effects will be handled in the manner that the prevailing intellectual environment dictates for any similar issue. As a practical matter the voting public in general likes the politician who is willing to foist today’s issues unto future generations, e.g. long term debt, SS, Medicare and state and local government pensions and that tendency, given today’s intellectual crowd’s penchant for government involvement in these matters, is probably all that is holding back some very concerted and massive government involvement with AGW at the moment. The battle here is more in influencing the intelligentsia and/or discrediting them and their ideas with regards to political philosophy.

    The other front in these matters that will only matter in the long run and is of more importance to the thinkers in the populace is the truth of the matter and the science evidence when it comes to AGW and its effects. I suspect that the influence of the layperson with some background and a willingness to take the effort to analyze the output of climate science is stronger here than with the intelligentsia in the above noted arena.

  78. Kenneth,

    As a practical matter the voting public in general likes the politician who is willing to foist today’s issues unto future generations

    The thing is that spending money today on CO2 emission mitigation is foisting (over)estimated future generations’ issues on the current voting public. And the present value of those probably exaggerated future costs is being even more overestimated by using a very low discount rate.

    It’s very much like the sea wall issue discussed here a few months ago. It’s a lot cheaper to build a sea wall over time as needed than to build the whole thing now to protect from a future maximum sea level rise that might be much less than the current pessimistic estimate. But by jiggering with the discount rate, one can make it look more like it needs to be done today.

  79. angech

    “we don’t infill stations.”
    My question is
    great so the 600 plus USHC stations out of 1200 that do not physically exist any more other than as made up composites are not infilled.
    #################################

    This is NOT hard. we have nothing to do with USHCN

    What word do you prefer for establishing the data for the non existent stations so that we can communicate in English?

    We dont infil USHCN or any other data series. PERIOD. so, I can’t really help you with your supposed problem.

    Lets make it simple.

    http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/land-based-station-data/land-based-datasets/us-historical-climatology-network-ushcn

    start on that page. read the documentation for EVERY dataset.
    draw a chart showing the sources and flow of data.

    ###############
    The other perplexing thing is his past comment along the lines of
    “when a station changes for whatever reason, location thermometers etc we treat it as a new station”

    1. Yes I call this the JOHN CHRISTY METHOD.
    2. If station 678754, is moved 50 miles and they still
    call it station 678754, we say.. thats a new station.
    3. If they switch sensors.. we say.. its a new station.

    How does this square with the USHCN treatment of pretending the old stations are still on the go?

    what the hell are you talking about I have nothing to do with USHCN. ITS A DERIVATIVE DATASET. go see what the source is.

    Apart from the comment pre ringing in my ears of “I do not have anything to do with USHCN apart from using their data.

    There are 14 data sources. USHCN is one of those sources.
    But since USHCN 2.5 derives from GHCN-D we dont, in the end, use USHCN data.

    so you have two records..one from GHCN-D and one from USHCN.
    The USHCN station is BUILT FROM the data in GHCN-D.

    When we have two records from different sources that are the same station.. we DEFAULT to using GHCN-D. WHY? because USHCN is downstream of it. For all 14 sources there is order in which data is used.

    The files will say “this station is found in these 10 sources” but in the end there is a order in which we will use sources. Highlest priority goes to daily “Ur” records GHCN_D, GCOS.. records that are compile from these sources are present .. in some case with early records ( before 1820 ) you will only have monthly sources..
    So we use GHCN-M.. derived datasets like ushcn, cru, etc are last resorts.

  80. DeWitt Payne (Comment #135244)

    I agree that we do not have sufficient evidence about the consequences of AGW to start spending lavishly on a problem that might not exist beyond that to which we can adapt. On the other hand we have very serious known problems with large existing government programs that big government politicians and the voting public keep putting off for future generations.

    The existence of an AGW crisis, like the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, were and are promoted by those favoring big government and once those large government programs become problematic those big government proponents ignore the problems and rather prefer to hand them to future generations.

  81. Hey guys. I thought you might be interested to hear about a paper I just came across because of it being mentioned at Judith Curry’s site. Basically, it appears two people read Michael Mann’s book, assumed everything he said was true, misunderstood some of it and used the result to create a narrative to show the effects of the evil “climate change deniers.”

    I e-mailed the authors because it their paper is so incredibly wrong, even on basic factual points (including at least one Michael Mann himself acknowledges). I don’t know how it happened, and I don’t know if anything will come of it, but you can see what I sent to them here:

    http://www.hi-izuru.org/wp_blog/2015/02/factual-errors/

    By the way, the authors specifically labeled Steve McIntyre a “climate change denier.”

  82. “How does this square with the USHCN treatment of pretending the old stations are still on the go?”

    USHCN has not lost half its stations. Why exaggerate?

    USHCN has a unique reason for infilling. They do not work with anomalies. So they have to do something about the changing month to month population, else the results will just reflect the warm/cool selection. Infilling is an adequate way of doing that. BEST and other indices don’t need to.

  83. Nick Stokes (Comment #135248)
    “How does this square with the USHCN treatment of pretending the old stations are still on the go?”

    “USHCN has not lost half its stations. Why exaggerate?”

    You have me there, I could argue that 650 real stations out of 1218 stations is nearly half but I cannot get an accurate answer out of you or Zeke and the actual figures vary from month to month. If you must call 53 percent instead of 50% an exaggeration then I am exaggerating.

    Zeke had a post at SG where he alluded to only 650 real stations out of 1218 . ( May 12th 2014 3.00 pm) and said #130058 at the Blackboard, about 300 of the 1218 stations have closed down.
    ” about 300 of the 1218 stations originally assigned to the USHCN in the late 1980s have closed, mostly due to volunteer observers dying or otherwise stopping reporting.* No stations have been added to the network to make up for this loss, so there are closer to 900 stations reporting on the monthly basis today.”

    The fact of the matter is, as you well know, that well under 900 stations out of the 1218 currently report each month.
    The number last year was down to 645 at the end of the month of April 2014 but data can come in late and is incorporated after initial reporting which means the number swells to up to <900 when reviewed 2 months later .

    The "exaggeration" is not exaggeration now. With further stations dying out It only needs 608 stations or less to report on the end of January for my comment to be pristine and correct for the end of January.

    Would you care to enlighten us on the number of stations reporting at the end of this December for the USHCN report which should have been printed and incorporated in BEST by now.

    Last year you noted in 2014 numbers reporting were Jan 891, Feb 883, Mar 883, and 645 for April. Many are staffed by volunteers and some reports are late. So 918 sounds right.

    * I think Zeke corrected this statement saying some had been added later than he thought.

  84. Steven Mosher (Comment #135245) February 14th, 2015
    re “we don’t infill stations.”
    So the 600 plus USHC stations out of 1200 that do not physically exist any more other than as made up composites are not infilled.
    #################################
    “This is NOT hard. we have nothing to do with USHCN
    What word do you prefer for establishing the data for the non existent stations so that we can communicate in English?
    We dont infil USHCN or any other data series. PERIOD. so, I can’t really help you with your supposed problem.”

    I understand at last,
    You are saying that you do not do the infilling, USHCN does.
    Got it.
    Also you do not use USHCN data just GHCN data.
    Got it.
    Which incorporates USHCN data.
    And is used to make up the infilling for the USHCN missing stations.
    But you do not do this. You only use the GHCN infilled data.
    Got it.
    So BEST is homogenized, correct and taint free. With no infilling done by BEST.
    got it.
    or as Zeke said June 7th, 2014 at 11:45 am
    “If you don’t like infilling, don’t use infilled values”
    Please, you are doing good work, just sell the message not the spin.
    I see the need for organizing the data, just not the way it is being spun for fear of being accused of data manipulation.

  85. angech:

    Also you do not use USHCN data just GHCN data.
    Got it.
    Which incorporates USHCN data.

    Wrong modality. USHCN incorporates GHCN data, and missing from of the GHCN stations is sometimes infilled in the USHCN product. Sometimes they don’t even have the flag that is supposed to present to let you know it’s an estimated value. That’s an error,but it doesn’t affect GHCN.

    Given the number of times people have explained to this guy that USHCN isn’t a primary data source, but a derived product….

    Either he’s ______ <— [insert word or phrase of choice, there are no wrong answers] or he's a troll.

  87. Bob, I’d imagine there were pretty big error bars on absolute temperature for the 1997 product in particular. So not very surprising.

  88. Carrick –
    I had a similar thought. In terms of anomalies, there hasn’t been a huge restatement – the 1997 anomaly wrt 1961-1990 baseline was reported in 1997 as 0.42°C, and in current database it comes to .39 °C.

    However, a change in the global average temperature exceeding 2 °C is quite surprising! While I understand that the spread among models is that large, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an error estimate for the observed baseline which is that large. The implied 1961-90 baseline used in the 1997 report is 16.5 °C, which is quite a bit higher than other estimates which I can recall. [NCDC’s last report claims 20th century average was 13.9°C, and the 1961-90 anomaly is 0.12 °C, so they now reckon that period as having an average temperature near 14.0 °C.]

  89. HaroldW, if I had to guess, that large of a delta T is would have to be related to a systematic measurement error (such as that associated with the distribution of surface measurements) and I would guess is also much larger than the admitted measurement uncertainty.

    Since the question of adjustments never seems to go away, I thought I’d not that Nick has a very nice active graph that gives a
    breakdown of effects of GHCN adjustments

  90. HaroldW,

    The KT97 energy balance paper had an average surface emission of 390W/m². That’s a black body temperature of 14.8°C. In that light, 16.5°C seems a bit high.

    Also Jones, D., M. New, D. E. Parker, S. Martin, and I. G. Rigor, 1999: Surface air temperature and its changes over the past 150 years. Rev. Geophys., 37, 173–199 estimated the 1961-1990 average was 287K or 14°C.

    The estimate of 16.5°C didn’t last long.

  91. “I will note that Obama ( power) has a pen and phone.
    Figure out what that means.”

    This is Mosher’s cryptic way of saying this (AGW) is a political not a scientific issue. For any of you still believing (AGW) is objectively scientific, you are a little late in adjusting your views to reality, but butter late than never, I say.

    Andrew

  92. Brandon, promised I get back to you. I got sidetracked. For the best probably, I think the rest of the denizens had had about enough.
    It’s neat, once I shut up for a day or two people react. Sometimes they move on to other things, sometimes they have time to give me considered responses, which I value much more than you might believe.
    Thanks all.
    [EDIT: had had about enough of me actually is what I was saying. I wasn’t slammin you bro. 😉 ]

  93. DeWitt Payne:

    The KT97 energy balance paper had an average surface emission of 390W/m². That’s a black body temperature of 14.8°C. In that light, 16.5°C seems a bit high.

    Hm… Do you think measurements of the average surface emission could be a more accurate way of estimate the mean surface temperature than the (not terribly) direct method using surface temperature measurements?

  94. Carrick,

    The problem, of course, is that if one averages global upward flux and then uses the Stefan-Boltzmann equation to calculate a temperature, that’s actually the upper limit of a true global average. Hölder’s Inequality requires that the maximum average temperature occurs when the surface is isothermal, and it isn’t. Any other distribution which produces the same total flux will have a lower average. It may not necessarily be more accurate, but it’s certainly useful as a constraint on other methods of determination.

    Note that surface emissivity isn’t all that important because the total upward radiation will be enhanced by downward radiation that is reflected rather than absorbed if the emissivity is less than 1, so using an emissivity of 1 is a reasonable approximation.

  95. angech,

    As of 2011 the new ISTI database(a work in progress) shows 12445 months of raw data from 1120 stations for the USHCN portion of their database. GHCN-M shows 11619 months raw from 1032 stations for the USHCN portion of their database. That’s a discrepancy which has been growing for several years.

    GHCN-M appears to match GHCN-D for coverage(compared a couple stations). If ISTI could get the data, those extra stations are still active. Don’t know why GHCN stopped make use of them. Maybe GHCN isn’t willing to go out of their way to acquire the data if not sent to them, or perhaps GHCN is selectively downsizing the network. Just don’t know.

  96. Carrick (Comment #135251) February 15th, 2015 at 9:42 am
    “Wrong modality. USHCN incorporates GHCN data, and missing from of the GHCN stations is sometimes infilled in the USHCN product. Sometimes they don’t even have the flag that is supposed to present to let you know it’s an estimated value. That’s an error,but it doesn’t affect GHCN.”

    Given the number of times people have explained to this guy that USHCN isn’t a primary data source, but a derived product….

    Either he’s ______ <— [dense, unhappy, ignorant , frustrated] or he's a troll.

    "There are nowadays lots of sources of information. All USHCN stations are now GHCN too, so you can look at the GHCN details.
    An alternative account which is well worth checking is BEST"
    2013 USHCN discarded the raw data from Luling, a Coop station in Texas, and replaced it with infill from neighbouring stations. That is the standard response to missing data.
    Saturday, June 28, 2014 Nick Stokes at Moyhu

    I'm sorry I bug you Carrick,

  97. Carrick (Comment #135251) February 15th, 2015 at 9:42 am
    “Wrong modality. USHCN incorporates GHCN data, and missing from of the GHCN stations is sometimes infilled in the USHCN product. Sometimes they don’t even have the flag that is supposed to present to let you know it’s an estimated value. That’s an error,but it doesn’t affect GHCN.”

    Given the number of times people have explained to this guy that USHCN isn’t a primary data source, but a derived product….

    Either he’s ______ <— [dense, unhappy, ignorant , frustrated person] or he's a troll.

    "There are nowadays lots of sources of information. All USHCN stations are now GHCN too, so you can look at the GHCN details.
    An alternative account which is well worth checking is BEST"
    2013 USHCN discarded the raw data from Luling, a Coop station in Texas, and replaced it with infill from neighbouring stations. That is the standard response to missing data.
    Saturday, June 28, 2014 Nick Stokes at Moyhu

    I'm sorry I bug you Carrick, I have tried to do the reading and check out the facts before I open my mouth but as you would appreciate not all bloggers have recourse to the data bases or the computer skills like yourself to handle them.

    Given that USHCN uses just over half raw data, given that its reason for being is that it supposed to represent Historical sites over a long time frame and that it purports to be a true record how does this make it not a de facto primary data source?

    It now incorporates and uses some derived products so why continue to label it as a historical record rather than as a derived and estimated historical record.

    Nick Stokes (Comment #36011) March 2nd, 2010 at 5:00 pm
    " GHCN is an entity with two distinct phases. In the early ’90’s it was indeed a “historical” project. With funding from DoE, CDIAC and Univ Arizona, a whole lot of historical records were collected in batches, surveyed for quality, and put in the database. It didn’t matter if the records were then up-to-date, and they seemed to have no special requirement for spatial representativeness.
    Then NOAA decided to put some resources into a continuing, updated-by-the-month database, with a rationalised selection of bases clearly very different."

    The problem is that we are told USNCH is a true historical data base.
    It is not.
    We are told BEST is made up of the underlying data bases which represent true global temperature measurements.
    They do not.
    So we use BEST to navel gaze, to say there is so much warming, when really some of the warming is purely mechanical from the adjustments made and known to be made but resolutely ignored when it would be best to say as Zeke does , yes there is some manufactured warming and some real warming.
    Calling people trolls because they point out inconsistencies that do not agree with your viewpoint is fine.
    Go ahead.
    I am much happier though when you use the opportunity as above initially to point out my flaws in argument.

  98. Calling people trolls because they point out inconsistencies that do not agree with your viewpoint is fine.

    That’s not what he said. To paraphrase: What he said was that either your claimed inconsistencies are irrational or that you know that they’re irrational, in which case you’re a tr0ll. In either case, further discussion is pointless.

  99. Or similar to what DeWitt said…it’s been pointed out to you before that USHCN isn’t a primary data source, it isn’t even a literal network. Really the only thing historical about it is its name.

    You can glean all of this and more by reading the various documentation provided by the data product authors. You’ll even learn that the creators and maintainers of the two products share common authorship. You’ll also learn that USHCN is the older of the two products, conceived of in the early 1980s, and GHCN is a newer product, whose design is informed partly no doubt on experience with the first product

    In any case, you should stop (and I’ve said this before) over-parsing the title of the USHCN product.

    If you can’t listen after repeated applications of knowledge to your previous and current plight, then … what DeWitt said.

  100. JC has put up a new denizen’s post at her site.
    A lot of people with reasons for believing that skepticism is valid.
    Some lukewarmers and the occasional warmist from here.
    Well worth a read to find out why so many educated people are turned off by inconsistency and hype in AGW.
    My arguments stand but are pointless as said when people dismiss them out of hand so will not initiate them anymore here.

  101. “The problem, of course, is that if one averages global upward flux and then uses the Stefan-Boltzmann equation to calculate a temperature, that’s actually the upper limit of a true global average.”
    —————————————————————-

    Here’s a fun one. Imagine half the world warms by x degrees and the other half cools by x degrees. The global average temperature change would be zero. But the emission from such warming would increase, because
    :
    1/2 sigma (T-x)^4 + 1/2 sigma (T+x)^4 > sigma T^4
    .
    That’s not a likely response, and of course emissions take place from a turbulent atmosphere in addition to from the surface.
    .
    But increase in variability of temperature can increase emission.

  102. Bishop Hill points to an Australian Academy of Science pamphlet on climate change. Here’s a bit of it:

    Box 1.1: If weather can only be forecast about a week in advance, how can we determine future climate?
    The challenges of predicting weather and climate are very different. Predicting the weather is like predicting how a particular eddy will move and evolve in a turbulent river: it is possible over short time scales by extrapolating the previous path of the eddy, but eventually the eddy is influenced by neighbouring eddies and currents to the extent that predicting its exact path and behaviour becomes impossible. Similarly, the limit for predicting individual weather systems in the atmosphere is around 10 days. On the other hand, predicting climate is like predicting the flow of the whole river. It requires a consideration of the major forces controlling the river such as changes in rainfall, the operation of dams, and extraction of water. Projections of human-induced climate change over decades to centuries are possible because human activities have predictable effects on the future atmospheric composition, and in turn a predictable on climate.

    This seems like blather to me, at least as it refers to GCMs. There is a *claim* that running these a long time will result in the cancellation of random events and the emergence of the correct long-term trend. While a long-term trend does emerge, I’ve seen no evidence that it’s correct to better than a factor of 2 or so, and much evidence that it’s high within that range.

  103. “This seems like blather to me, at least as it refers to GCMs. There is a *claim* that running these a long time will result in the cancellation of random events and the emergence of the correct long-term trend. ”
    –
    Yes
    .
    I’ve come to appreciate this more and more. Atmospheric motion in part determines net radiative balance in addition to being determined by net radiative balance.
    .

  104. HaroldW,

    You’re right, it is blather. River flow exhibits long term persistence, if I remember correctly. That makes long term variance larger than short term variance. Hence prediction based on short term observation, which is all we have, won’t be very good. And river courses can change over time in an unpredictable fashion. See, for example, the Mississippi River.

    It might be possible in principle to determine a climate probability distribution function for the Earth, but I don’t think we’re anywhere close to actually doing that.

  105. “This seems like blather to me, at least as it refers to GCMs. There is a *claim* that running these a long time will result in the cancellation of random events and the emergence of the correct long-term trend. “

    It’s not blather. You see it in this GFDL SST video. It shows the transient eddies that the GCM calculates at base level. This is random weather – it won’t happen as shown. None of those eddies are predictions.

    But as they say, the climate – the familiar current patterns – emerge. Agulhas current, Gulf Stream etc. And the quasi-climate ENSO. Again no particular ENSO is predicted, but it is certainly telling you about the pattern. All from CFD based on heat flows and topography.

  106. Nick –
    I don’t think anyone’s saying — certainly I’m not — that the GCMs don’t produce patterns that resemble actual climatic patterns, ocean currents, etc. [If they didn’t produce something reasonable, they wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) even be on the table. Although there is some unreasonable behavior present as well.] Yes, that’s very cool. We have a general understanding of how insolation distribution and the Earth’s rotation create the large-scale features of terrestrial climates.

    The question is whether the long-term sensitivity is accurate. How does GHG forcing affect the currents? ENSO frequency/intensity? Precipitation? Temperature? At this point, the best I can say is that I think the global average temperature trend is within a factor of 2. Precipitation patterns don’t seem to match well even for baseline. Yet the Australians write that GHG produces a predictable effect on climate.

  107. Mark Bofill.

    what is even funnier is that the paper itself tells people what the real potential issue is.

    I’ll repeat a comment I made on Judiths and ad a bit here.
    ###################################################
    ‘The pictures everyone is drawing from the first sawtooth figure to this one
    misprepresent what the algorithm does even though

    1. That algorithm is described in the papers
    2. The code exists.

    Back on sept 7 2007 ( or so ) when Hansen released his code, there was a whole team of skeptics who looked at the code, got it running ( some partially, later completely)
    and some even implemented there own versions in different languages:
    Jean S in matlab, SteveMc in R. In other words we DID WORK to understand what the code was doing ( see steveMC on hansen step 1 and step 2 )

    This is why releasing code is important.

    A) so that people can SEE what you did. Not draw pictures of what they
    Think you did
    B) so that people can build on, criticize, test, retest, what was actually done.

    C) to free researchers from the task of holding class to explain what they did. Early on people argued that Hansen and Jones should NOT release code, because if they did, then skeptics would
    pester them with demands to EXPLAIN THE CODE.
    The code is the explanation. As I argued in 2007 and continue
    to argue today, the code is the best explanation. Give me the code hansen I will leave you alone and not demand
    a) that you change the language
    b) that you help me to get it running
    c) that you serve as help desk
    d) that you run sensitivity tests for me.

    I suggest that everyone go and look at the climate audit series from Sept 7th 2007 and on. watch what people DID. yes yes there were a couple idiots who wanted to see the history of all changes.
    yes there were guys ( like me) who made fun of their code.
    But a group of people started to dig in so they could make BETTER
    arguments. Historically what came out of that what Tamino and RomanM actually Improving GISS reference station method.
    Yup. They had the code. they understood what was done, and they improved it.

    All that said, here is brief restatement ( over simple) of what the approach does and the major assumption

    Step one.

    A temperature field is created
    T = C+W temperature=T, Climate = C, W =weather.

    Where climate is a function of Lat, Alt and Time, and weather is the residual which is kriged.

    people need to understand this. you need to understand what is actually in the residual. Bonus points if you can name what
    is actually in the Weather field.

    Next. A station is assigned a quality based on its agreement with theEXPECTED FIELD ( not compared pairwise with neighbors)

    “In addition to point outliers, climate records often vary for other reasons that can affect an individual record’s
    reliability at the level of long-term trends. For example, we also need to consider the possibility of gradual biases
    that lead to spurious trends. In this case we assess the overall “reliability” of the record by measuring each record’s
    average level of agreement with the expected field at the same location.”

    Each station is given a rating based on its agreement with the expected field.
    They are NOT compared to neighbors. So every chart you see that compares two stations or 5 stations is wrong from the start. and everyone who shows this kind proves to me that they havent read the paper or the code. The code is provided to PREVENT
    critics from wasting their time with strawmen. It is provided to ENCOURAGE STRONGER arguments against the method.

    Now, After the weights for each station are determined they must be fed into
    The estimate for W!

    Recall T = C + W.

    90%+ of the temperature for a location is determined by the latitude and altitude of the station. The remainder, the residual is W or the weather.

    However, we know that W contains more than Weather. It contains Weather and station bias and in certain cases some climate. So we seek to MINIMIZE the bias in the weather by applying the quality weights.

    At this stage we recalculate the weights for kriging the weather.

    Stations ARE NEVER ADJUSTED. PERIOD. The weather field is re estimated.

    stations are not compared to their neighbors. They are compared to the field created by C+W. They are then given weights by the level of their agreement. Next, The WEATHER FIELD is recalculated.

    And in the end you have T=C+W1 where W1 is the adjusted WEATHER.

    This approach AS WE NOTE has several assumptions. Those assumptions actually tell people where the best counter arguments are.

    “Implicit in the discussion of station reliability considerations are several assumptions. Firstly, the local
    weather field constructed from many station records,is assumed be a better estimate of the underlying
    temperature field than any individual record was. This assumption is generally characteristic of all averaging
    techniques; however, this approach cannot rule out the possibility of large scale systematic biases. Our reliability
    adjustment techniques can work well when one or a few records are noticeably inconsistent with their neighbors, but
    large scale biases affecting many stations could cause the local comparison methods to fail. ”

    What’s that mean. If you had a local weather field that had a lot of UHI bias in it, and a few rural records.. the approach would downweight the rural. If you had a lot of microsite bias in the weather field and only a few reliable
    stations in an area, the good stations would be downweighted. In short, We explain for people where their best argument is and that happens to Be the best argument that someone like Anthony Watts gets or the guy who works with him evan Jones.
    I think its a good argument. My advice. spend your time on good arguments.

    Next assumption is that station quality is constant over time. Its not. and this is where the scalpel comes it. We Slice records but slicing doesnt change a record. Slicing does ONE THING. When a record is sliced we
    Simply ask the question? Over this segment, did the record quality change? well? did it? if we slice at the wrong time and the record is still in agreement with the field.. its a NOP.

    “Secondly, it is assumed
    that the reliability of a station is largely invariant over time. This will in general be false; however, the scalpel
    procedure discussed in the main text will help here. By breaking records into multiple pieces on the basis of
    metadata changes and/or empirical discontinuities, it creates the opportunity to assess the reliability of each
    fragment individually. A detailed comparison and contrast of our results with those obtained using other approaches
    that deal with inhomogeneous data will be presented elsewhere.”

    Points.

    1. Stations are NOT ADJUSTED.
    2. Stations are given quality Weights depending on the agreement
    with the field
    3. Quality ratings are calculated by segment. if a station moves
    we ask “does this change agreement with the field”
    4. The weather field, which is the Residual after climate is removed
    is ADJUSTED.
    5. The final T= C+W is calculated.

    After that is done, you can ask the question.

    Suppose this station had the highest quality.. what would it have looked like?
    That is a prediction of what perfect station would have looked like.

    The field is not constructed from adjusted stations.
    stations are not adjusted.

    In some ways things have changed dramatically in the skeptical community since 2007. Mostly from wannabe Mcintyre’s. and Wanna Watts. You dont see anyone doing what McIntyre and others did replicating Hansens step 1 or step 2. You dont see anyone following Anthony’s approach of comprehensive study.
    Of picking a topic and mastering it so that our understanding is improved.

    Nope. You see various forms of goddard proliferating and you see more claims of fraud.

    When I read a sensational headline about climate change
    When I see a sensational headline about climate hoax.
    I see the same thing.

    Last night listening to a repeat of Rush, I heard him repeat the telegraph crap.
    I was a longtime listener..
    not any more.
    we are better than that.

  108. Not to mention the tropical upper tropospheric hot spot.
    .
    The importance of the failure of the hot spot prediction is significant because it is a dynamic event not directly from radiative forcing.
    .
    If the hot spot existed, surface temperatures could be lower ( because the hot spot would be radiating more energy to space ).
    .
    The missing 800 pound hot spot in the room is the tacit admission of failure of the dynamics of the gcms.
    .
    But we knew this – linear approximations of non-linear differential equations don’t end well.

  109. “When I see a sensational headline about climate hoax.”
    .
    Observed global temperature trends greater than zero and less than the low end model projections since 1979.
    .
    This is consistent with climate change being real in principle.
    It is also consistent with climate change being a hoax of exaggeration.

  110. Mark Bofill:

    [EDIT: had had about enough of me actually is what I was saying. I wasn’t slammin you bro. 😉 ]

    That’s alright. I always assume people have had enough of me. By the way, be careful with Steven Mosher’s response to you. He says:

    All that said, here is brief restatement ( over simple) of what the approach does and the major assumption

    But the reality is his description is not just “over simple.” His explanation completely ignores a significant portion of the BEST methodology: the homogenization step. Concerns with that step make up one of the central issues in recent discussions, yet Mosher completely ignores it. He then says:

    Stations ARE NEVER ADJUSTED. PERIOD. The weather field is re estimated.

    But the reality is before anything Mosher describes happens, stations are adjusted. Mosher has often denied any adjustments are made, saying stations are simply broken up into separate pieces, but the difference is practically immaterial. If you break a station into pieces then shift the baselines of those two pieces, you have effectively adjusted that station’s record. That’s why Moser portrayed these as adjustments when he quoted Robert Rohde as saying:

    Hence the effect of uncertainties in the magnitude, but not the timing, of homogeneity adjustments is included in the overall statistical uncertainties.

    So Mosher completely ignores a major topic of discussion, insists it is improper to say stations are adjusted even though that’s what he quotes BEST team members as saying they are, and then has the audacity to say:

    what is even funnier is that the paper itself tells people what the real potential issue is.

    As though somehow the homogenization issue is simply unimportant. It’s now been demonstrated the “empirical breakpoints” used in BEST’s homogenization process increase the amount of warming they find by ~20% and greatly decrease the spatial resolution of BEST’s results, to the point where regional information is completely destroyed. Mosher simply hand-waves that away as though it’s not a “real potential issue.”

    For additional peculiarity, when people asked Mosher to provide the code and results of the tests he claims proves that issue is unimportant, he refused, insulting them instead. He did this despite the fact he will repeatedly tell people like you the code and data is all available.

    And now for some absurdity. When Carrick tried to discuss concerns with BEST’s homogenization, Mosher called him a troll for it. When I did, Mosher compared me to a Holocaust denier. Mosher refuses to provide the code or data for tests he claims proves our concerns baseless, and when people respond by not blindly accepting what they’re told, that’s how he treats them.

    BEST. It’s truly the best.

  111. I don’t know why Steven Mosher keeps insisting they aren’t adjustments.

    Anytime you are adding an offset to the temperature scale (which they do at empirical breakpoint boundaries), that’s an adjustment to the temperature scale… so “an adjustment”.

    Perhaps he’d prefer “data manipulation”, which is also a correct (but less exact) descriptor of what they are doing. 😛

    Brandon you said:

    BEST’s homogenization process increase the amount of warming they find by ~20%

    That sounded a bit high, so I checked the numbers.

    To avoid issues with different amounts of missing data in the Arctic, I constrained the data to to 60°S to 60°N. Also these are for the period 1900-2013 (inclusive):

    0.10 °C/decade BEST
    0.085 °C/decade GISTEMP
    0.082 °C/decade CRUTEM4

    But you are right. The mean of the second two numbers is 0.0835 °C/decade.

    So:

    Percent Different = 100 x (0.1/0.0835-1) ≈ 20%.

    I honestly didn’t think it was that much.

  112. Carrick & Brandon,

    It’s only 20% if you go back to 1850 correct? That kind of explains Zeke’s answer/non-answer that it’s much less since 1900? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean this to imply it’s not important, just trying to clarify.

  113. Bill_C, it’s difficult to tell just how much influence adjustments have on the BEST results since BEST hasn’t actually published the data to let people know. Even if we ignore that they didn’t publish the data used in the figures they posted for this issue (even when asked to), their record goes back to ~1750 yet they only showed results back to 1850. That means nobody can tell what effect their adjustments have over ~100 years of the record.

    All that said, I was looking at the total magnitude of warming from ~1850 to modern times. Carrick shows another way of looking at it. I hadn’t done anything like he did, but he looked at things only since 1900. Of course, he didn’t look at temperatures for the entire globe, so that adds complications when interpreting his results.

    In any event, when these results were first shown to the public, I suggested the timing of the difference in the homogenized and unhomogenized series may be due to the period BEST uses when calculating its climatology baselines. I said this when under the impression those baselines were calcaulted over the 1950-1980 period (as listed in their results’ Readme file), but I was then informed BEST used the 1900-2000 period to calculate those baselines. Steven Mosher insisted that showed I was wrong, but I can’t see how it would. The results seem to diverge the most before 1900, exactly what my idea would predict.

    My confusion about Zeke’s response stems from the fact he knew about this issue when he made his response. Not only had I raised it in the comment he was responding to, we had discussed the issue before he made his comment. He indicated he didn’t know if my idea was right. He said he didn’t think it would have a significant effect, and that was it. (Strangely, he didn’t get back to me like he said he would to clarify just what baseline period was used.)

    I think you’re right about what Zeke was saying in his non-answer. I just don’t understand why he would respond to me in a way he knew doesn’t address my concerns.

  114. Carrick:

    I honestly didn’t think it was that much.

    I think people might raise issues with how you came up with those results. For instance, Steven Mosher likes to harp on getting the global result right so you not using data for the entire globe could be a source of issues. It could go back to his defense of BEST over-smearing the data where he tells you they got the global result right so looking at regions (even one as large as the one you used) to study their results is wrong.

    I think that’s a pretty weak argument, but it might serve as a smokescreen Mosher can throw out if he ever decides you’re not just a troll to be ignored 😛

    Though I do have a nit about your calculations. This part: 100 x (0.1/0.0835-1) wouldn’t work out. You need to move the -1 outside the parenthesis.

    Perhaps he’d prefer “data manipulation”, which is also a correct (but less exact) descriptor of what they are doing.
    😛

    I’m curious what descriptor he’d prefer to “plagiriasm” for what he and Thomas Fuller did in their book. “Inadvertent copying” might work to make it sound less bad.

    (Yes, I know this plagiarism is unimportant to their book and was almost certainly inadvertent. It’s still hilarious to me.)

  115. Brandon:

    Steven Mosher likes to harp on getting the global result right so you not using data for the entire globe could be a source of issues.

    Well I’m sure somebody will always conjure up a reason. But here’s various intervals (1900-2013 inclusive). These are all land only. The percentages are how much larger BEST trend is than mean of CRUTEMP4 and GISTEMP_1200.

    Zonal Interval: -90-90N
    BEST 0.104 °C/decade (19%)
    GISTEMP_1200 0.091 °C/decade
    GISTEMP_250 0.088 °C/decade
    CRUTEM4 0.084 °C/decade

    Zonal Interval: -60-0N
    BEST 0.085 °C/decade (+16%)
    GISTEMP_250 0.081 °C/decade
    GISTEMP_1200 0.078 °C/decade
    CRUTEM4 0.066 °C/decade

    Zonal Interval: 0-60N
    BEST 0.108 °C/decade (+21%)
    GISTEMP_1200 0.092 °C/decade
    CRUTEM4 0.090 °C/decade
    GISTEMP_250 0.087 °C/decade

    Zonal Interval: -30-30N
    BEST 0.088 °C/decade (+13%)
    GISTEMP_1200 0.084 °C/decade
    GISTEMP_250 0.083 °C/decade
    CRUTEM4 0.072 °C/decade

    Zonal Interval: -60-60N (+21%)
    BEST 0.101 °C/decade
    GISTEMP_1200 0.085 °C/decade
    GISTEMP_250 0.082 °C/decade
    CRUTEM4 0.082 °C/decade

    This part: 100 x (0.1/0.0835-1) wouldn’t work out. You need to move the -1 outside the parenthesis.

    Check your police work. 😉

    % cat > /tmp/blort.c
    #include
    int main() { printf("%g\n", 100 * (0.1/0.0835-1)); }
    % cc -o /tmp/blort /tmp/blort.c
    % /tmp/blort
    19.7605

  116. Yes Harold, Nick is right that GCM’s are just CFD with a lot of very complex sub grid models. However as you say, being qualitatively
    “reasonable” is a very weak endorsement. In general, the uncertainty in CFD is a lot bigger than generally acknowledged. It can be a few percent in the L2 norm for easy cases to 100% depending on the problem being solved. There is beginning to be some rigorous information on this in the literature. If one looks at drag force for example the uncertainty is 20% to 500% because drag is a much smaller force generally and thus more severely impacted by numerical error or nonlinear error. Temperature anomaly is more like drag and vortex “patterns” are more like the L2 norm. Draw your own conclusions. Perhaps someday, I can do a guest post on these issues. It does take however time that I don’t have right now.

  117. Lest people who grocks C thinks I’m crazy, <code> ate the < > symbols. I also managed to get blocked somewhere in there.

    Anyway here’s the code with missing elements:


    % cat > /tmp/blort.c
    #include <stdio.h>
    int main() { printf("%g\n", 100 * (0.1/0.0835-1)); }
    % cc -o /tmp/blort /tmp/blort.c
    % /tmp/blort
    19.7605

  118. Bill_C:

    It’s only 20% if you go back to 1850 correct? That kind of explains Zeke’s answer/non-answer that it’s much less since 1900? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean this to imply it’s not important, just trying to clarify.

    Of the other series, only CRUTEM3 goes back that far. I happen to think the data from 1850-1900 is so poor, there’s not much you can conclude about it.

    Anywhere, here goes:

    Zonal Interval: -90-90N
    BEST -90-90N 0.084 (4%)
    CRUTEM4 -90-90N 0.081

    Zonal Interval: -60-0N
    BEST -60-0N 0.071 (8%)
    CRUTEM4 -60-0N 0.066

    Zonal Interval: 0-60N
    BEST 0-60N 0.083 (2%)
    CRUTEM4 0-60N 0.081

    Zonal Interval: -60-60N
    BEST -60-60N 0.079 (1%)
    CRUTEM4 -60-60N 0.078

    Zonal Interval: -30-30N
    BEST -30-30N 0.071 (-1%)
    CRUTEM4 -30-30N 0.072

  119. Carrick (Comment #135278)
    February 16th, 2015 at 4:42 pm

    Brandon you said:

    BEST’s homogenization process increase the amount of warming they find by ~20%

    That sounded a bit high, so I checked the numbers.

    To avoid issues with different amounts of missing data in the Arctic, I constrained the data to to 60°S to 60°N. Also these are for the period 1900-2013 (inclusive):

    0.10 °C/decade BEST
    0.085 °C/decade GISTEMP
    0.082 °C/decade CRUTEM4

    But you are right. The mean of the second two numbers is 0.0835 °C/decade.

    So:

    Percent Different = 100 x (0.1/0.0835-1) ≈ 20%.

    I honestly didn’t think it was that much.

    I should have been clearer. Brandon’s original comment on Curry’s blog (and not contradicted by his subsequent comments here) was to point out that BEST homogenization increased the temperature trend for its own series by 15-20% since 1850.
    What you’ve done seems different, though perhaps CRUTEM4 should be a good match for unadjusted BEST data. Though it seems not, because you calculate a 20% difference between CRUTEM and BEST for the period since 1900, and there is only a 5% (?) difference between BEST unadjusted and BEST adjusted for that time period.

  120. Carrick,

    I think what Mosher is saying is that the underlying data aren’t adjusted. Adjustments are made to the derived product, which is no longer data but is a derived product of the data, to maximize the agreement between data products of all stations in the vicinity. As he points out, this assumes that the majority of the nearby stations were accurate, if not precise, while the station whose data product has been altered to match was less accurate instead of the converse.

    See also Cowtan’s video: http://youtu.be/qRFz8merXEA

    UAH and RSS LT, MT and LS anomalies aren’t, strictly speaking, data either.

  121. DeWitt Payne (Comment #135287)

    UAH and RSS LT, MT and LS anomalies aren’t, strictly speaking, data either.

    The computations are all part of measurement, no?
    You having moving platforms , orbital variation and instrument shift which all needs to be accounted for to give the bit of data you are looking for but if you do not do it you do not have that little bit of “raw” data.
    To me they are raw thermometers.

    Gets back to someone’s argument that no measurement is real or raw.
    You are therefore, strictly speaking, right.

    The RSS data is the longest running regularly reporting source of data on the global temperature yet it does not agree with the volatile, less reliable, multi sourced and homogenized land data eg warmest year.
    Why is that?

  122. I’ve never seen a satisfactory (to me) answer to the problems introduced by the scalpel method w.r.t. station maintenance.

    There was a long Willis post on WUWT, with some replies by Zeke that really seemed to miss the point.

    Zeke contends that a sawtooth pattern in temps, caused by progresively less reliable readings up to the station maintenance point, can somehow be detected and not cause an adjustment (sorry, I mean break, as of course there are no “adjustments”) by comparison with the adjacent/regional station records.

    But if ALL the regional records display the same sawtooth pattern, but out of sync with each other as maintenance isn’t scheduled for all stations on the same day, then the scalpel will ensure that the station drift is baked into the “adjusted” record and guarantee a false warming trend (or more accurately, a false cooling trend into the past).

    I don’t understand why this apparently simple point has never really been answered by the BEST team.

  123. DeWitt Payne:

    Adjustments are made to the derived product, which is no longer data but is a derived product of the data,

    I don’t agree with this terminology, and I don’t think most people who work in metrology (where we have to sit down and define terms precisely) would agree either:

    I’d say they no longer necessarily relate to direct measurables, but they don’t have to be direct measurables to be data.

    Data are defined as “facts that can be analyzed or used in an effort to gain knowledge or make decisions; information”. Quantitative data are “data that can be quantified and verified, and is amenable to statistical manipulation”. So basically anything you can use as input to a computer program. That includes “synthetic data” a term that Steven Mosher uses too.

    It’s easy to google these terms to verify they are all standard usage

    So just because you’d modified values doesn’t mean they are no longer data. They just no longer relate to what you’d measure with a perfect measurement.

    When you adjust your weight measurement for buoyancy effects, which is supposed to give you the same weight measurement had you taken the value in a vacuum. This is an idealization, not a practically achievable condition (exposing samples to vacuum can damage or destroy them in the car of liquids or solids with trapped air… e.g. styrofoam).

    But I think we’d both agree the buoyancy corrected weight measurements are still valid measurement data.

    If you UHI correct data, what you are trying to do is produce the same measurement you would have made, up to noise with a mean of zero, had you taken a large number of regional measurements then averaged them so that a sampling bias from too many urban vs rural locations doesn’t bias the result. We would prefer a less biased (more accurate) measurement than a more precise but less accurate one. But both are measurements and the results are measurement data.

    So to me, any systematic modification of data based on a verifiable and reproducible method (buoyancy correction, UHI correction etc) is an “adjustment” to that data.

    Since Steven Mosher admits to the existence of data that are not the result of direct measurements, I don’t understand why he would claim they don’t make adjustments.

    When they metadata correct the time series, that’s an adjustment. When they apply an empirical breakpoint correction, that’s an adjustment. BEST adjusts data.

  124. Steve Ta,

    I haven’t read Willis’ post and don’t plan to. Has the effect you described been demonstrated to occur with the BEST code and either real or synthetic data? If not, then that’s probably why Zeke isn’t paying any attention.

  125. I would agree here with Mosher that critics and skeptics or just interested parties of the algorithms used to adjust temperature station data series should determine where the potential weaknesses are and concentrate on those areas.

    That exercise is no easy task and particularly where the algorithm tends toward a blackbox and where an interested party might find reading the code and understanding it a daunting task.

    I think a better approach is using a well thought out benchmarking test of all the available algorithms currently used and published and a test that uses a reasonable simulated climate and with non climate conditions (at individual stations) that will truly test the capability limits of the algorithms in finding non climate effects on temperature and making the proper adjustments. The results of a proper test should lead immediately to where the weaknesses of the various algorithms lie.

    Below are links to an ongoing effort at the benchmarking that I referenced above and a current status. Some time ago I had discussed with Venema and Hausfather some of the features that I thought should be included in these tests. Those inclusions mainly dealt with testing the ultimate capability of the algorithms and doing it with non climate station conditions that could occur but not necessarily proven to occur – like slowly changing conditions that affect temperatures in small increments or continuously but gradually.

    http://www.surfacetemperatures.org/benchmarking-and-assessment-working-group/what-is-benchmarking

    http://www.surfacetemperatures.org/progress_reports
    https://docs.google.com/viewer?

    a=v&pid=sites&srcid=c3VyZmFjZXRlbXBlcmF0dXJlcy5vcmd8aG9tZXxneDo2MDNmNzM1MDZhYzEyZGM5

    I have noticed that the citizen science portal has yet to be funded and made available. Does anyone posting here want to discuss what they think would be a proper inclusion in the benchmarking tests?

    It appears that progress has made it to the point of establishing an analog error free world which I assume is the simulated climate with the known errors that will be placed in stations yet to be determined or at least finalized.

  126. Carrick,

    All corrections are adjustments but all adjustments are not necessarily corrections. Perhaps Mosher doesn’t like the semantic connotations of ‘adjustment’. I don’t know as I can’t read his mind.

    Buoyancy correction is based on simple physics, the density of air, the density of the calibration weights and the density of the object being weighed. Correcting for UHI is not so simple. You can’t calculate it ab initio and the data to measure it probably doesn’t exist in most cases.

  127. Carrick –
    By “adjustments”, I think Mosher is thinking about deterministic changes. E.g. a station’s location changes, and the temperature of the new site is adjusted (say, by d(alt)*(6 K/km) ) to put the two sets of readings on a more compatible basis. Or Tobs changes from afternoon to morning, and a set value (say 0.5 K) is added to the new readings, or subtracted from prior readings. Mosher says that such things aren’t done in BEST.

    By considering each time segment as an independent record, BEST imputes the effect of any change from comparison to neighboring stations. Now it’s true that if you stitch together the various segments into which a station’s record has been cut, applying the offset which the algorithm imputes to each segment, then you would have something that looks a whole lot like an adjusted station record. The primary difference is that the adjustments have been determined dynamically, based on observed behavior at that station, rather than an extrapolation based on the average behavior at some sites where e.g. comparative Tobs measurements were made.

    Is that guaranteed to avoid bias? I don’t think that even Mosher would make that claim. Only that any residual bias is not a significant factor in the use of the figures.

  128. Carrick:

    Well I’m sure somebody will always conjure up a reason. But here’s various intervals (1900-2013 inclusive). These are all land only. The percentages are how much larger BEST trend is than mean of CRUTEMP4 and GISTEMP_1200.

    Aye. It’s interesting to see the results are pretty consistent no matter what regions you use. It seems BEST just shows more warming over 1900-2013 (which means someone should ask about other time periods!). It’s not certain that’s due to their homogenization rather than the difference in the data they use, but it’s certainly interesting.

    Check your police work.

    Oops. I did the calculation as though you placed the parentheses only on the bottom. That’s a pretty boneheaded mistake. My bad.

    Though you know, you don’t need to post C code in order to demonstrate basic arithmetic 😛

    Bill_C:

    I should have been clearer. Brandon’s original comment on Curry’s blog (and not contradicted by his subsequent comments here) was to point out that BEST homogenization increased the temperature trend for its own series by 15-20% since 1850.

    Actually, what I discussed is the total amount of warming. Trends have a time element to them. If you think the timing of an effect might be biased due to an methodological artifact, as I’ve suggested, trends are a much more difficult thing to examine. Direct comparisons of numbers can wind up being meaningless.

    That said, it is interesting it seems BEST has a significantly higher warming trend over the 1900-2013 period but not over the 1850-2013 period (I believe that’s what Carrick used in his recent post).

  129. Kenneth Fritsch:

    I would agree here with Mosher that critics and skeptics or just interested parties of the algorithms used to adjust temperature station data series should determine where the potential weaknesses are and concentrate on those areas.

    That’s not what Mosher has said. Mosher has dismissed issues despite them having real effects because those effects aren’t large enough for him. He doesn’t want people to focus on “potential weaknesses.” He wants them to focus on “potential weaknesses” that “matter” enough to him.

  130. Brandon,

    You’ve never heard of prioritization? You appear to be assuming that Zeke and Mosher don’t have enough work to do already so you expect them to jump on anything you propose or give detailed answers as to why they don’t and then engage in further conversation when you don’t agree with them. Don’t hold your breath.

  131. DeWitt Payne, as is disturbingly common in your responses to me, your comment seems to have no bearing on reality. You say I:

    appear to be assuming that Zeke and Mosher don’t have enough work to do already so you expect them to jump on anything you propose

    But there is absolutely nothing to justify this impression. I have never asked anyone at BEST to do anything other than archive their data, code and results. The fact I choose to discuss issues in no way means I “expect them to jump on anything” at all. If people don’t want to discuss what I’m discussing, they are free not to participate in the discussion.

    The only times you’ll find me criticizing them for how they participate is when they jump into a discussion to say I am wrong but refuse to justify their claims. That’s pretty normal. If somebody says I am wrong, I expect them to explain how I am wrong in a way I can potentially verify. If they don’t, I’ll criticize them because they’re being obnoxious.

    Don’t hold your breath.

    I’ll hold my breath for them when I hold my breath waiting for you to respond to me in a sensible or reasonable manner. I suspect it’ll be when I’m dead and buried.

  132. I think my next post will be on “when skeptics read code”

    Question. How many stations are used to determine breakpoints?

  133. The reason for being precise about the fact that we don’t discretely add or subtract values from a series that is
    We don’t adjust the data is simple.
    People ask the question.. Explain why you decided to
    Adjust that data up or down.

    And the precise answer is this.
    The weather is adjusted.
    The adjusted series is a prediction.

    We provide adjusted series if folks want that.
    And raw if they want that.

    If you are working on a small region.
    Then in many cases you can get a better prediction
    By doing a custom regression for the climate.

    For our climate regression we only consider latitude and
    Altitude. This has the effect in certain regions
    Of leaving some climate in the weather residuals.

    Variables you would add.
    Distance to coast.
    Topographical wetness index
    And depending on your time frame
    Other important surface data.

  134. Brandon,

    When Mosher is involved, your posts are overly long and terminally boring. Perhaps you make some valid points, but it’s too much time and effort to try and find them, especially when I’m not sure they exist.

  135. I assume Mosher is making a back-handed reference to me when he says:

    I think my next post will be on “when skeptics read code”

    Question. How many stations are used to determine breakpoints?

    Because, as far as I know, I’m the only person who has made any statements about how many stations are used based upon the BEST code. Several times in the last week, I’ve pointed out BEST will use the nearest 300 stations, up to 2500km away. This is based upon these lines in the BerkeleyAverageOPtions.m file:

    % Max distance between stations pairs to be considered for the empirical
    % scalpel process.
    options.ScalpelEmpiricalMaxDistance = 2500; %km

    % Max pairs to consider
    options.ScalpelEmpiricalMaxPairs = 300;

    Which is pretty simple and straightforward. I don’t imagine Mosher would make this comment except the file then has:

    % Max pairs to use in constructing expected temperature series, after
    % identifying the most highly correlated records from all considered pairs.
    options.ScalpelEmpiricalBestPairs = 25;

    Which he’s probably thinking to use as a, “Gotcha!” where he says BEST only uses 25 station when determining breakpoints. This would rely upon arguing performing calculations upon 300 stations then filtering the 300 stations down to 25 based upon those calculations is only “using 25.” That would be like how people doing paleoclimate reconstructions refused to publish series they filter out by saying they didn’t “use” the series which get filtered out.

    I could be wrong though. One benefit of Mosher’s crypticism is it makes it almost impossible to prove him wrong about anything. I suspect that is part of why he likes using it so much. When he actually writes out arguments, they are often quite easy to tear apart.

    (That last comment is mostly a reference to my ongoing review of the book by Steven Mosher and Thomas Fuller. It is incredible how wrong the book is on some very simple points.)

  136. DeWitt Payne, that is probably the dumbest argument one could offer in response for making things up about what people say. You’re basically saying, “I don’t want to read what you say, so I’ll just insult you for things I imagine you say!”

    I think we’ve reached the point where your behavior is effectively no different than trolling. Maybe not. I’ll let other people judge. What I won’t do is engage in it any longer.

    If you think something I say is wrong and point it out specifically, I’ll do my best to address it. If you just make more repetitive comments about how you don’t like how I comment, I’ll ignore you.

  137. Steven Mosher (Comment #135303)

    “I think my next post will be on “when skeptics read code”
    Question. How many stations are used to determine breakpoints?”

    Mosher, it is answers like this that are tiresome and non productive. I recall that GHCN used 40 nearest neighbors when I was analyzing their methods, but the exact number is not critical to the discussion. I know your point is that too many skeptics make comments without the details and I suppose that is a problem on all sides of the AGW issue but we would all do better to use these discussions to teach,learn and exchange ideas.

    Do you have any comments or inputs on the benchmarking of the various historical temperature data sets?

  138. Funnier yet would be skeptics explain code. How many do
    You use to find 300 within 2500km? More than 300.
    Then you use the 300 to find the top 25.
    Then you use the 25.
    So you “use “25 and 300 and more than 300.
    And since you used hundreds of thousands of stations to build the raw data.. You also” used” those.
    Why 2500km?
    What percentage of sites have zero empirical breaks?
    At those breaks what is the min and max distance of
    The best correlated stations?
    Where is the password for Svn?

  139. Kenneth Fritsch:

    Mosher, it is answers like this that are tiresome and non productive.

    +10^10^10

    Steven Mosher:

    Funnier yet would be skeptics explain code

    Not nearly as funny as watching you trying not to explain it.

    😛

    Stephen Mosher:

    Why 2500km?

    I was wondering about that. It seems ridiculously large.

  140. It looks like I was right about what Steven Mosher had in mind. Look at his derisive portrayal:

    You use to find 300 within 2500km? More than 300.
    Then you use the 300 to find the top 25.
    Then you use the 25.
    So you “use “25 and 300 and more than 300.
    And since you used hundreds of thousands of stations to build the raw data.. You also” used” those.

    This is nothing like what I actually said. What I said is BEST calculates breakpoints by examining the 300 nearest neighbors within 2500km. What I didn’t point out is it then performs correlation tests on those 300 stations then screens out all but the top 25 results. That’s certainly relevant to the results, but it doesn’t change what I said.

    Mosher whines about this, but nobody would accept the idea BEST only “uses” the screened results. When Gergis et al published their temperature reconstruction, they only published the data which passed their correlation screening. People criticized them for that. People rightly said if they performed calculations on data to see if the data should be included, they used that data.

    The relevant issue for my comments was how many stations are looked at and how far away they can be. I described that accurately. There is no reason for Mosher’s petulance.

  141. By the way, since Mosher has decided to make an issue of how I’ve explained the code, I want to point out two aspects of the empirical breakpoint calculations I’ve never seen disclosed or explained.

    1) After running their calculation tests on the 300 nearest neighbors (within 2500km), BEST screens the results down to 25. Part of this screening is it automatically discards any results with a negative correlation. I’m not sure what the logic is for that. I get it shouldn’t matter most of the time (because there will usually be at least 25 positive scores), but it seems an odd quirk to me. It also seems one which could potentially bias results.

    2) BEST doesn’t actually use the correlation between stations. Instead, it uses the correlation of the first derivative of the station records. As far as I know, BEST doesn’t actually say that anywhere. I’m still not sure what effect this will have.

    I’m sure there may be other issues I haven’t discussed. There might even be some I’m unaware of.

  142. Here are BEST results for correlation length:

    figure.

    Doesn’t look like anything beyond 1000-km radius is justified to me.

    This is what a 2500-km radius looks like, centered or Paraguay:

    Figure.

    Here’s Zeke’s comparison of no adjustments, metadata only and metadata + empirical homogenization:

    Figure.

    I just don’t see the difference between metadata only and metadata + empirical homogenization to be big enough to risk the use of a less well tested algorithm.

    If we look at global mean trends, we do see what looks like a substantial loss of spatial resolution with the empirical homogenization:

    Figure.

    I just don’t understand the insistence on the use of an algorithm that isn’t fully tested and plausible is causing problems.

    When I asked them if they could provide guidance on why they prefer the empirical homogenization method… Steven Mosher called me a troll.

    WTH.

    If you want people to accept novel concepts, like the entire continent of South America warms and cools as a single body, at the least you need to provide an explanation why.

    It’s not arrogant on my part to say I need it before I am going to accept anything so completely novel.

    It’s not a demand for their time and they can choose to not respond.

    But then I have the right to criticize them for failing to adequately justify their own methodology.

    Because that’s how science works.

  143. “I would agree here with Mosher that critics and skeptics or just interested parties of the algorithms used to adjust temperature station data series should determine where the potential weaknesses are and concentrate on those areas.
    That exercise is no easy task and particularly where the algorithm tends toward a blackbox and where an interested party might find reading the code and understanding it a daunting task.
    I think a better approach is using a well thought out benchmarking test of all the available algorithms currently used and published and a test that uses a reasonable simulated climate and with non climate conditions (at individual stations) that will truly test the capability limits of the algorithms in finding non climate effects on temperature and making the proper adjustments. The results of a proper test should lead immediately to where the weaknesses of the various algorithms lie.”

    There a a bunch of approaches. Also, semi automated approaches in R (HOMER).

    In a recent experiment one country had several experts use a semi automated approach ( requires human decision) and then they compared these different answer to global versions.

    Lets see If I can do a taxonomy of approaches.

    Bottom up approaches.

    here the reseacher is interested in a specific area. Lets take New Zeeland or Australia. They get a team of experts in country.
    They look at data and stations they are well versed in. They look at documents other folks dont have access to, perhaps. They pick a method or maybe more. they produce an official record for New Zeeland, or canada, australia, france, hungary, etc.

    Then if you are lucky all the decisions are documented. Maybe some are tested for robustness.

    Each of these countries may use a different method.

    You collect up these homogenized series and create a global series.. That’s kinda what CRU do.

    The problem then if you do a global product.. how do you explain series that you just accepted from an NWS.

    GISS is in the same pickle. They accept NCDC adjusted data.. and then people accuse them of adjusting.

    The other approach is doing your adjusting at a global level. one size fits all. And of course you probably wont do as well as a local expert.

    Currently there is some work going on to comapre global methods with local approaches. before we started I could tell you which types of situations would give our approach trouble.
    basically stuff relating to how we regress the climate.

    Also, there are cases ( like islands) that really should be handled as special cases.. looking for correlated stations across a body of water.. not so sure.. But across a small bay? across a lake?
    you see the complications..

    because of all these special cases.. if you work in this area you really have to ask someone what they want to use the data for?

    If your use is disproving AGW, then neither the adjusted nor raw will help you.

  144. I prefer the empirical homogenization?

    weirdly, the scientists I’ve worked with on this would disagree.

    It depends on the use case.

    In general, if you are interested in local scales, then I start with raw data.

    Then, I’d compare that with the fully adjusted.

    That typically gives me a starting point to decide the real work that needs to be done.

    next post will be. when skeptics read readmes

  145. On the other hand, for a current project on sales forecasting , i’m using “adjusted” data. Because of the time period involved and the inconsequential differences between adjusted and raw.

    There is way more crap in the sales data side that needs attention than fiddling with the temperatures..

    Of course since its real work.. Ill probably have to test against re analysis,.. so much easier to just blog about it..

    when skeptics read minds..

  148. The sawtooth issue.
    If you follow Willis post back to the source you will find the formulation of the problem.
    First off breaking series is not unique. Christy also committed the same fraudulent abuse. Sarc off.

    The problem as defined was this. Regular periodic maintenance actions would result in drops of 1c.

    The guy posted a site as an example where once every ten
    Years trees were cut back. And quoted a different study
    Showing that in one Orchard this could cause a 1c drop.

    Now the description of how our algorithm would handle this was… Special.

    The first thing I did was check the site to see what happened on the dates he provided.. Hmm

    Then I asked the question how often do you get a station
    With three empirical breaks in a row where
    The time between the breaks is regular. Using ten years
    As a starting point. And then onto the other questions
    Do you always see a drop? How big? Are they all
    The same size? I didn’t find anything that jumped out as a game changer. The adjustments are globally nothing.

    Since it’s coming up again I’m leaning towards a database
    Of sorts that classifys these things
    So you can query.
    Show me all urban stations over 20 years long that
    Are adjusted up or down etc

    This lets people hunt for systematic issues.
    Big issues that could be addressed by changes
    To the code.

    I suspect as we push forward with intercomparisons between local and global products that adjustment code
    Will change. But that’s a result of systematic study
    Which is the way I prefer to work on large database.

    On the other hand it is good to have folks finding
    Odd balls. I can’t promise to look at them all.

    Antarctica is a perfect example. Pretty odd.

  149. And just so folks know.
    First I work my 9-5 job.
    Then my BE work on our projects.
    Then real end users.
    Then guys on the Web who may or may not
    Be asking questions because they want
    To know.

  150. SteveF, for context, here is a remark from Carrick:

    I just don’t see any reason why the BEST guys can’t provide some straightforward guidance for what they think is the better product, and why.

    Steven Mosher’s response included:

    When real users ask, they get my guidance. when trolls ask, I mainly ignore them, but I’ll make an exception

    So yeah, Mosher called him a troll. And as Carrick responded:

    I’m a troll now? LOL.

    At least I’m not a holocaust denier for pointing out your various products contradict each other.

    Good grief.

    >.<

    Which of course is a reference to Mosher comparing me to a Holocaust denier.

    The sealion thing is a reference to some stupid cartoon which apparently got brought into discussions over at Anders’s blog. I think it was first brought up here. Of course, Mosher might have saw it somewhere else. Wherever he took it from, it’s basically a way of dismissing a person’s questions as designed to waste your time. It’s a way of portraying them as a specific type of troll.

    So yeah, Mosher didn’t just call Carrick a troll. He called Carrick a troll, and when that was brought up, he doubled down on it. According to Mosher, Carrick is disingenuous and just trying to waste his time.

  151. Brandon, apparently I’m a skeptic too even though my starting point is the IPCC reports. And even though I’ve collected far more atmospheric data than Mosher will ever do in his life, I’m not actually interested in any of the answers to the questions that I ask.

    Because apparently I don’t have better things to do than ask questions that I don’t care about the answer to, and that somehow aren’t research related..

    [big snip]

  152. Carrick, well, maybe. You say:

    Here are BEST results for correlation length:

    figure.

    But if I remember right, that figure is taken from the Appendix of one of their papers, and it shows the figure as part of their discussion of the correlation structure they use in the Kriging process. That ought to mean it is the post-homogenization correlation.

    Doesn’t look like anything beyond 1000-km radius is justified to me.

    Assuming my memory is correct, things are likely worse than you suggest. Homogenizing your data should increase the correlation within that data. That means the actual correlations used when estimating empirical breakpoints should be worse than what you show.

    That said, there is a bit of confounding factor in that BEST uses the correlation of the first derivative of series for its homogenization process. I don’t believe that’s true for its Kriging process or for that figure (though I haven’t verified this in their code). I’m not sure how that would affect things. I’m still not sure I understand why they’d only look at first derivatives when searching for breakpoints.

    And oh, Mosher labels me a skeptic too. I’m not sure what to make of it. I don’t call myself one. I don’t even know what the word means anymore.

  153. Steven Mosher:

    I prefer the empirical homogenization?

    I didn’t whether you preferred it. I asked why it is being pushed as a product by BEST, the group. Since it is the one you guys publish, it’s hard to argue it’s not your groups preferred product.

    I even asked for guidance in a fairly neutral tone:

    I just don’t see any reason why the BEST guys can’t provide some straightforward guidance for what they think is the better product, and why.

    And that apparently makes me a troll. Or a sealion???

    Apparently you are hanging out on a blog where the proprietor bans people who disagree with him, for disagreeing with him.

    I think Mosher need to stay there, and stay out of science, if that is really his attitude about how science should be done.

  154. Here are two pairs of stations which have a correlation of one during the time frames noted. All month pairs have identical values. I found these rather quickly since the same stations are duplicated in GHCN-M.
    Berkeley ID#: 151423, Berkeley ID#: 151425 1951-1960
    Berkeley ID#: 153938, Berkeley ID#: 158939 1961-1971

    I mentioned these to Mosher in a comment at Climate etc. saying it would be a good idea to do within country cross station comparisons for such things. His response was GHCN-D did a good job of removing such things. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. But, for these station pairs their source appears to be GHCN-M. Not necessarily the same thing. GHCN-M has more than 180 years duplicated for 12 months. Even down as far as 7 months duplicated should be so rare as to be suspected of being copied.

    Just as an example. The ISTI database is about the same size as BEST and at the present time they haven’t done anything about weeding out duplicate data. They have 37000+ years containing 12 months of duplicated data across stations within the same country. I’ve seen as many as 11 individual stations having identical data for the same years. Not good when relying on correlations. The overall probability of one station in a country having zero matching months with another station in the same country during the same year is about 93% and it doesn’t change much with distance.

    Using only the best correlated stations within 2500 km means you could end up using stations on the opposite side of the equator, while having most of the close stations being negatively correlated or having duplications skew the resulting sample. Seems they should be able to do better than that if their intention is to do their BEST.

  155. Brandon:

    But if I remember right, that figure is taken from the Appendix of one of their papers, and it shows the figure as part of their discussion of the correlation structure they use in the Kriging process. That ought to mean it is the post-homogenization correlation.

    Yeah, I’m worried about how Robert Rhode computed the correlation. I don’t know that it’s this bad, but it’s a concern. He published summary figures, but not data broken down by latitude, on the azimuthal variation. It isis my guess the 20% anisotropy number is from the global average. My guess is the anisotropy is much worse at some latitudes than others (so the global number is misleading).

    I’ve got a list of concerns. I had promised a study on correlation length. My boss would kill me if I dropped what I’m doing right now to work on it, so it will have to wait.

    Also, if you look at their figure, near the equator, they get very low correlation lengths. Much worse than 1000-km.

    For all that Mosher has written, I guess in response, has he ever addressed the 2500-km number? He’s doing a bit of a run-on, and if he’s addressed it, I couldn’t spot in through all of the chaff.

  156. Here are the same trends I calculated before but now for 1900-1949 inclusive. Here I’m calculating the percentage for each series based on the mean trend for each series.

    For each zonal interval, I’m sorting in reverse numerical order, followed by the zonal mean over all of the series.

    Zonal Interval: -90-90N
    BEST 0.118 20%
    GISTEMP_250 0.103 5%
    GISTEMP_1200 0.092 -6%
    CRUTEM4 0.080 -19%
    MEAN 0.098

    Zonal Interval: -60-0N
    BEST 0.072 14%
    GISTEMP_250 0.067 6%
    GISTEMP_1200 0.066 5%
    CRUTEM4 0.047 -25%
    MEAN 0.063

    Zonal Interval: 0-60N
    BEST 0.109 33%
    GISTEMP_1200 0.076 -7%
    GISTEMP_250 0.074 -10%
    CRUTEM4 0.069 -16%
    MEAN 0.082

    Zonal Interval: -60-60N
    BEST 0.098 27%
    GISTEMP_250 0.074 -4%
    GISTEMP_1200 0.072 -6%
    CRUTEM4 0.064 -17%
    MEAN 0.077

    Zonal Interval: -30-30N
    BEST 0.089 31%
    CRUTEM4 0.074 9%
    GISTEMP_1200 0.065 -4%
    GISTEMP_250 0.043 -37%
    MEAN 0.068

  157. Carrick:

    For all that Mosher has written, I guess in response, has he ever addressed the 2500-km number? He’s doing a bit of a run-on, and if he’s addressed it, I couldn’t spot in through all of the chaff.

    Not that I’ve seen. He’s spent a lot of time commenting, but really, I haven’t seen him contribute much while doing it.

    I’ve got a list of concerns. I had promised a study on correlation length. My boss would kill me if I dropped what I’m doing right now to work on it, so it will have to wait.

    I kind of wish I had a boss to keep me on track in these discussions. I keep letting myself get diverted and not finishing things when I intend. It’s a problem.

    But seriously, Steven Mosher and Thomas Fuller’s book, Climategate: The CRUtape Letters, is so terrible I can’t stop slogging through it. And because doing so gives me such a headache, I have little energy for other things. I’d like to just put it down, but I know if I don’t finish it now, I never will.

    For a somewhat relevant example, Mosher and Fuller’s book claims HadCRUT is the only modern temperature record. The book goes so far as to completely ignore GISS’s temperature record even when it discusses GISS immediately after talking about “the present day temperature record.”

    The best part though? Mosher and Fuller say:

    It’s no understatement to say that almost every major paper written about the issue of the Urban Heat Island and every reconstruction of the climate of the past has relied on the foundational work of Phillip Jones. It’s a cornerstone of climate science.

    Phil Jones, cornerstone of climate science.

  158. And here’s 1950-1999 inclusive range:

    Interestingly the difference between the series on global mean is negligible, but the effect in the southern hemisphere is still large.

    I interpret this to suggest that when they have have lots of stations, the effect on trend of over-smoothing is negligible.

    If they care about their answers, they’d check on this.

    If anybody wants a different range let me know. It takes 2-seconds to produce them now.

    Acknowledgement: My pet sealion did the coding for this.

    Zonal Interval: -90-90N
    BEST 0.137 1%
    GISTEMP_250 0.136 1%
    GISTEMP_1200 0.136 1%
    CRUTEM4 0.132 -2%
    MEAN 0.135

    Zonal Interval: -60-0N
    BEST 0.140 11%
    GISTEMP_1200 0.136 8%
    GISTEMP_250 0.120 -5%
    CRUTEM4 0.109 -14%
    MEAN 0.126

    Zonal Interval: 0-60N
    GISTEMP_250 0.144 2%
    CRUTEM4 0.143 1%
    GISTEMP_1200 0.140 -1%
    BEST 0.140 -1%
    MEAN 0.142

    Zonal Interval: -60-60N
    BEST 0.140 2%
    GISTEMP_1200 0.138 1%
    GISTEMP_250 0.137 0%
    CRUTEM4 0.132 -3%
    MEAN 0.137

    Zonal Interval: -30-30N
    GISTEMP_1200 0.134 12%
    BEST 0.119 -0%
    GISTEMP_250 0.115 -4%
    CRUTEM4 0.109 -9%
    MEAN 0.119

  159. “I’m leaning towards a database
    Of sorts that classifys these things
    So you can query.
    Show me all urban stations over 20 years long that
    Are adjusted up or down etc”

    Here it is (for GHCN).

  160. Carrick, would you mind running those for the 1850-1899 period? I’d be interested to see it since the 1850-2013 period you used before showed little difference between the sets but the 1900-2013 period showed a significant difference.

  161. Why worry about 2500 km? [above] If an individual has confidence in one’s understanding of kriging practices and if that person accepts the CF’s [indicating shorter correlation lengths and anisotropy] in the figure, then for that person the conclusions regarding the use of the 2500 km limit for search seem unavoidable. I would not worry about if my name was not on the paper.

    Also a basic underlying problem is that the BEST work is in reality inadequately documented. “Read the [inline documented] code”, read the publications, works in collegial research circles but curiously falls short even relative to the practices for policy-making with respect to much smaller impact problems, e.g., modeling a superfund hazardous waste site, choosing between cleanup alternatives, licensing a new hazardous waste disposal facility, etc. I’ve have found that to be curious but not surprising–such documentation is a very significant burden.

  163. HaroldW, sorry it took me a bit to get back to you:

    By “adjustments”, I think Mosher is thinking about deterministic changes.

    Actually, the empirical breakpoint based adjustments would still have to be classified as “deterministic”. Given the same set of inputs you’d get the same output. So really would the meta-data based adjustments. You just are looking at different factors than for e.g.. TOBS correction.

    The primary difference is that the adjustments have been determined dynamically, based on observed behavior at that station, rather than an extrapolation based on the average behavior at some sites where e.g. comparative Tobs measurements were made.

    As we both know, there is increased risk when you use the data self-referentially to try and correct for problems.

    Most of us scientists & engineers would yawn if told they were applying a time of day correction, or a meta-data based one, though we’d possibly look at how they computed the correction in either case. The point is, using exogenous factors to adjust data is a well defined operation, and as long as the model relating the exogenous factors to the adjustment makes sense, it’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

    Using the data itself is fragile: If the assumptions made aren’t rigorously true, your algorithm can end up driving you off into la-la land.

    Like what happened with South America, with its jungles and high mountains, all of a sudden looking like a single body, uniformly heating and cooling. And all because of a dirth of stations, and not because the data themselves were really driving you to that conclusion.

  164. mwgrant:

    Interesting. Are you embedded with a sea lion team?

    Sea Lion Team 6. How did you know? 😛

    {josh josh josh… cartoon opportunity alert. heh.}

  166. Brandon here you go. I can only use BEST & CRUTEM4 for that period.

    But be warned CRUTEM4 isn’t going to be very accurate because they have relatively few stations for this period. Probably the differences have more to do with that, than any issues with BEST over smoothing for that period.

    Also because the trends have opposite signs, the percents computed are wonky. This emphasizes the weakness in using percents in data that aren’t positive definite. You can do it, but the results are sometimes not useful.

    Zonal Interval: -90-90N
    BEST 0.026 478%
    CRUTEM4 -0.017 -478%
    MEAN 0.004

    Zonal Interval: -60-0N
    BEST 0.040 -376%
    CRUTEM4 -0.069 376%
    MEAN -0.015

    Zonal Interval: 0-60N
    BEST 0.025 233%
    CRUTEM4 -0.010 -233%
    MEAN 0.008

    Zonal Interval: -60-60N
    BEST 0.027 350%
    CRUTEM4 -0.015 -350%
    MEAN 0.006

    Zonal Interval: -30-30N
    BEST 0.033 -220%
    CRUTEM4 -0.088 220%
    MEAN -0.027

  168. Carrick, thanks. And yeah, I’m not thinking these results will be that informative, especially the percent parts of them. What I was mostly interested in is the raw BEST trends. I’m curious how the BEST trends change depending on what period you use.

    By the way, I’ve been trying not to say much about this book, but I just came across something incredible. In Chapter Two, Steven Mosher and Thomas Fuller quote a statement saying:

    The conference concluded, that “as a result of the increasing greenhouse gases it is now believed that in the first half of the next century (21st century) a rise of global mean temperature could occur which is greater than in any man’s history.”

    And conclude this indicates a:

    belief that the warming scientists were predicting would be unprecedented in the course of human history

    But just a few paragraphs before this, Mosher and Fuller said:

    The IPCC was founded to advise politicians on how bad global warming was going to be and based on the assumption that recent warming was the most extreme in history.

    And Chapter One had a number of statements like:

    One claim underlying the founding of the IPCC, it should be recalled, is that the climate change we are seeing is unprecedented in human history.

    The WMO statement is largely unremarkable. Back in 1985, scientists said we might see warming by 2050 that is unprecedented in human history. Mosher and Fuller somehow distorted this into, “We will see warming by 2050 that is unprecedented in human history” then further distorted it into, “We have seen warming that is unprecedented in human history.”

    After reading things like that, Mosher’s non-responsive comments about BEST are a lot less surprising.

    On a completely different topic, I love that song! I remember looking it up after the movie ended because it stuck with me. Though now that I think about it, the score of the movie is the only part of it I really remember.

  169. Brandon, that is an incredible song. Neat history behind how it got recorded too (look up “Herbert Halpert” if you hadn’t heard of him before).

    Anyway, I went back and looked at the 50-year trend differences between BEST & CRUTEM3. Glad I did, though I don’t understand fully what I’m looking at (bed is calling probably is affecting my judgment here). Anyway here’s a figure:

    BEST-CRUTEM4 50-year trend differences.

    We see here, as we did above, that in the recent period the two series tend to agree, except for the Southern hemisphere. What is interesting is that post 1980 (which corresponds to 1955-2004 inclusive) all of the series except -60-0 have smaller trends for BEST than for CRUTEM3.

    Anyway, curious.

  170. Carrick, oddly enough, I think I first heard of him because of looking up the song after watching that movie.

    That is an interesting figure. I need sleep too so I’m not sure just what to make of it right now. It’s definitely interesting to see the differences in the two series depend on what latitudinal band you examine. I’d be curious to know if that’s because of BEST using more data or something else.

    But the thing I find most interesting is the temporal pattern. I’m not sure what to make of it right now, but my first impression is to remember something Mosher and Zeke have commented on several times:

    1. Berkeley COOLS the global trends since 1960, the period most relavant for attribution studies
    2. berkeley COOLS the global trends from 1979 to present.

    That matches what your figure shows. However, your figure seems to suggest this pattern may exist only if we use data after 2000.

  172. Carrick (Comment #135313) February 17th, 2015 at 6:21 pm

    Here are BEST results for correlation length: Doesn’t look like anything beyond 1000-km radius is justified to me.
    This is what a 2500-km radius looks like, centered or Paraguay:

    There is a video out there of Mr Cowtan explaining why the raw data at a site in Paraguay at 300 meters is actually tending down but when you compare it to adjoining sites [two] it is still trending down
    but when you compare it to a site outside the country at an elevation of 2000 meters that site shows a rise in temperatures so the 3 Paraguay sites are wrong.
    He has a very calm voice.
    When he then said the BEST data showed he other site had to be right and there “must have been instrumental problems in Paraguay” he was quite convincing.

    “DeWitt Payne (Comment #135296) February 17th, 2015 at 10:36

    Carrick, All corrections are adjustments but all adjustments are not necessarily corrections. Perhaps Mosher doesn’t like the semantic connotations of ‘adjustment’. I don’t know as I can’t read his mind.”

    He feels and fears that the use of the word adjustment means fraud but as you point out not all adjustments are fraud.
    It is bad enough to feel fear when you are innocent like Steven but mix in dubious company.

    “Buoyancy correction is based on simple physics, the density of air, the density of the calibration weights and the density of the object being weighed.”

    “Correcting for UHI is not so simple. You can’t calculate it ab initio and the data to measure it probably doesn’t exist in most cases.”

    Zeke is able to measure it.
    “Quantifying the effect of urbanization on U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperature records
    Article first published online: 30 JAN 2013”
    According to these classifications, urbanization accounts for 14–21% of the rise in unadjusted minimum temperatures since 1895 and 6–9% since 1960.
    and claim to correct it.
    But, as they leave the Urban site temperatures intact hoping the Rural sites compensate, The UHI is still the devil in the detail.

  173. Nick, as one does, I followed your link and located the closest station to where I am now. It’s this:

    ROTHAMSTEAD UK
    65103670001
    Start 1872
    End 1969
    Altitude 128
    Trend Adj 0.44
    Urban Urban
    Airpt N

    Interesting – Rothamsted (note the correct spelling) is an agricultural research instutute – and very definately NOT urban.

    Even the google map view shows fairly clearly that this is not an urban site, and that’s after the massive growth that’s occured since 1969 when apparently it stopped reporting.

    Odd since the Met Office has records from Rothamsted from 1853 to today, with temperature records from 1878.

    And that’s just one entry checked ;(

  174. angech:

    but when you compare it to a site outside the country at an elevation of 2000 meters that site shows a rise in temperatures so the 3 Paraguay sites are wrong.

    I’m not going to watch the video, but of course this argument is nonsense. You can have regional-scale changes in agriculture (e.g., increase in irrigation) that can produce negative temperature trends.

    He feels and fears that the use of the word adjustment means fraud but as you point out not all adjustments are fraud.

    Glad you could understand this. Correction is a term that sometimes gets used, so is manipulation.

    The reason I don’t use correction here correction is used when you can adjust the data in such a way that you don’t introduce significant noise. Use adjustment instead when you expect bias in the mean over the ensemble to be reduced, but the adjustment of particular individual stations could have the wrong sign.

    I’d use adjustment here precisely because it emphasizes the statistical nature of the correction to the mean of the ensemble rather than always representing a valid correction for individual members of the ensemble of stations.

    Not only is it not a derogatory term, by not lying about what you are doing to lay readers, hopefully you’ve reduced confusion over why you can find individual stations where the adjustment process actually made the record for that individual station worse.

    Averaging the data over a region is an example of a manipulation, so is computing the mean daily average from a series of hourly measurements. Even though it can be used in a derogatory manner, it’s really an ethically neutral terms.

    I’ll cover the third point in a separate post.

  175. According to these classifications, urbanization accounts for 14–21% of the rise in unadjusted minimum temperatures since 1895 and 6–9% since 1960.
    and claim to correct it.
    But, as they leave the Urban site temperatures intact hoping the Rural sites compensate, The UHI is still the devil in the detail.

    First you need to understand that you can have a small effect on global land+ocean mean, but still be able to measure it in urban areas. It’s the “dilution” effect that happens when you average over rural areas, over “ideally sited stations” and over the 70% ocean of the planet.

    Definitionally the problem is 3 times worse for “land only” global series than it is for land + ocean, so UHI is a correction than may not even be warranted for global land+ocean mean, but which you might want to consider making for land only series (it will be small, and I’ll explain a way that we can figure this out in the next post).

    As I’ve pointed out before (perhaps you’ve not seen it), a thermometer that is seeing an increase in temperature due to urbanization (or a drop in temperature due to increase in summertime irrigation, anti-UHI effect) is working properly. It is registering the correct temperature. There is nothing to adjust or correct here in order to improve the accuracy of the measurements for urban stations. They are all working properly and making a UHI correction actually reduces their accuracy 100% of the time.

    Anyway, the main point is to understand when and why you make a UHI adjustment. If you want to know what an individual station is doing, you would never adjust it or UHI. Generally UHI correction is done before combining multiple stations, and it’s done to reduce the bias in the regional or global scale mean.

    But if you had enough stations and there was no bias in spatial sampling of stations, you wouldn’t need correct for UHI before you took a regional scale or global average. The correct answer for regional mean would come out

    The reason we might want to correct for UHI is because we have an oversampling of urban stations compared to rural stations. So the UHI problem isn’t really a UHI problem, it’s a bias sampling problem.

    When you adjust an individual station series for UHI, you are definitionally moving it away from what an ideal thermometer would measure. It is the average over an ensemble where this UHI adjustment represents (hopefully) an actual correction.

    This is what I think DeWitt was trying to say when he was saying the UHI-corrected series wasn’t data. Technically it is data, just no longer measurement data. It’s a manipulation of the temperature series that has created a non-physical time series (that is a series that is right in no possible way for individual series), and it’s only when you combine these unphysical series into a single ensemble mean do you hopefully improve the accuracy of the ensemble mean.

  176. This is an edited version of a comment I made on Judith’s blog (it was written in response to a comment, so I’ve modified it here to make it more appropriate to this thread):

    You can estimate how much contribution UHI has on global trend by looking at the latitudinal dependence of trend.

    The idea is, if UHI is making a “massive difference”, it should appear as a massive spike in latitude bands where there is significant anthropogenic activity. This can be approximated by looking at the latitudinal distribution (zonal average) of human population, which should serve as a good proxy for anthropogenic activity associated with UHI:

    figure

    and then comparing it to what is actually found from the temperature series, e.g., this:

    figure.

    Were UHI (and other artifactual warming associated with human activity) to be playing a signifiant role, we’d expect a big Gaussian-like blip on the land-only temperature series. In fact you can estimate the magnitude of the effect by looking at the difference between land only and and ocean only zonal averages in regions where the UHI effect is expected to be large.

    But in fact, what we see is that the zonal average in regions where we’d expect large trends were UHI a dominant effect, actually correspond to regions with relatively modest temperature trends.

    We can conclude from this that the bias effect associated with over sampling of urban sites (inappropriately called the UHI effect) is probably below the threshold of measurement for even zonal land only averages. Even if we can still easily measure the effect on individual urban stations when compared to neighboring rural ones:

    figura.

    Anyway, it’s hardly even worth trying to model the net effect on global mean trend, but it must be less than a few percent. I’ll suggest a generous upper limit of “less than 3%” of the global mean of land+ocean. Of course that translates into a (probably generous) upper bound of “less than 10% of the global mean of land only”. Probably it’s worth the effort to get an improved bounds on UHI for global land-only even if the net effect is still very small.

  177. Carrick (#135334) —
    I agree that my word choice of “deterministic” is unapt; your “exogenous” is better. However, one can draw a distinction between accounting for the effect of, e.g. a station move, equipment change, or Tobs change, via a formula, vs. estimating the effect of the change from the data series itself.
    As a general rule, I prefer the latter approach — “letting the data speak” — but in this case, the data quality is such that it’s not clear to me whether it provides an advantage.

    In your example of buoyancy, the repeatability of the effect, and the principles behind it, is such that the formula approach is clearly appropriate.

    Anyway, I also don’t know why Mosher is so opposed to the word “adjustment”. I speculate that it has to do with the distinction above. Perhaps he’s seen adverse effects from applying an incorrect formula, or applying a formula to sites where the formula is not accurate. So he emphasizes that BEST’s approach uses only the raw data (and correlations extracted from that data).

  178. Tom Fuller, that’s a very compelling argument. Maybe next you can tell everybody, “Don’t listen to Brandon. He’s a poopyhead.”

    In case the sarcasm doesn’t make my point, dismissing an argument a person makes with nothing but a derisive remark is lame. If someone is actually wrong, you should indicate in what way they are wrong. Ideally, you should also indicate why people ought to believe they are wrong in that way.

    It is easy to check my claim your book repeatedly says the IPCC was founded on the assumption global warming thus far had been unprecedented in human history. If one does, they’ll find your book even claims the infamous hockey stick shores up this assumption (That would be the hockey stick which goes back to 1000 AD, apparently the advent of human history. Actually, it might only be the one which goes back to 1400 AD since you guys attributed it to the 1998, not the 1999 paper.)

    If my argument is actually “garbage,” someone should take five minutes to check what I said and explain how it is wrong.

    But you won’t, because you’re wrong you poopyhead!

  179. Carrick, I can imagine scenarios where we’d want to correct for UHI even if we had perfect sampling. If what we’re interested in is how the planet’s temperatures are changing, we might want to know how the temperature of areas would change absent urbanization. In such a case, UHI is an undesirable effect.

    That’s not much of an issue in a place like the United States with lots of rural areas, but imagine a more densely populated area. It can be a real one like some Asian areas, or it could be a hypothetical one set sometime in the future. Either way, it’s not difficult to see how a sufficient amount of urbanization in a given region could cause a meaningful UHI signal to exist even with perfect sampling.

    In such a situation, I could see trying to adjust for UHI if you’re interested in global warming. The UHI trends in your data would be confounding factors that wouldn’t help you better estimate global warming trends (save in that waste heat does have a minimal effect).

  180. Steve Ta (135344),
    First, apologies for a bug that got the link to the GHCN info site wrong (fixed). It’s here, deviant spelling and all. And it does show that their record terminates in 1969. I don’t know why, because as you say it is an active continuing station, and should have had a record up to at least 1992, when the collection stage of GHCN finished. But there it is.

    The rural status of Rothamsted has been debated, but I’m surprised that GHCN has put it as urban. But they have. It’s C on line 7209 in the inventory.

  181. Brandon, I definitely agree there are scenarios where you might want to use the UHI adjustment algorithms developed for global modeling to study the effects of urbanization on microclimate.

    Steve Ta, it’s unfortunate that there’s not a world metadata database where observations from you and others could be entered and validated and used to correct the individual station records.

    While I’m skeptical that if you fixed all of the errors that you’d end up with a significantly different global temperature series, I think it would still be a worthwhile exercise, similar to what they were trying to do with the surfacestations.org project.

  182. Nick Stokes (#135351) —
    Thanks for that link. The adjustment for that station seems to be about -0.2K before 1913 (or so), and +0.15K afterwards. [By the way, what’s up with GHCN’s histogram of adjustments on that page? It omits the positive ones.]

    What I found interesting is the effect on the OLS slope. Naively, I’d expected about 0.35K/century, which is the change in the adjustment divided by the record length. However, the unadjusted slope is around 0.3 K/century, while the adjusted slope is around 0.8 K/century. Sure enough, the OLS slope of the adjustment pattern is ~0.5 K/century. More generally, a unit step change in the middle of an N-year time series produces an OLS slope ~1.5/N. Another thing to bear in mind when applying OLS to non-linear functions.

  183. Carrick,

    This is what I think DeWitt was trying to say when he was saying the UHI-corrected series wasn’t data. Technically it is data, just no longer measurement data.

    Yes, that’s it. Thanks.

  184. HaroldW,
    My OLS calc of the difference was o.44°C/cen, as Steveta noted.

    The histogram point is a subtle one. On the right you see plots of QCU and QCA anomalies, and their difference (of the anomalies). “Anomaly” seems to be deviations from the respective whole period means. But in “absolute” terms, QCA and QCU should be by convention equal at the end of the record. So adjustments back to 1913 are zero.

  185. Steven Mosher (Comment #135314)

    “There a a bunch of approaches. Also, semi automated approaches in R (HOMER).
    In a recent experiment one country had several experts use a semi automated approach ( requires human decision) and then they compared these different answer to global versions.
    Lets see If I can do a taxonomy of approaches.
    Bottom up approaches.”

    Steven, I not sure this addresses what I am describing and what the group in my link above is attempting to analyze with benchmarking tests and of which Zeke Hausfather is a member. These tests are where a reasonable simulation of a pure climate is established without non climate effects at the temperature stations and then known non climate effects on temperature are added. In other words the truth is known and it is testing the adjustment algorithms capability to find the non climate effects and adjust back to pure climate.

    “because of all these special cases.. if you work in this area you really have to ask someone what they want to use the data for?
    If your use is disproving AGW, then neither the adjusted nor raw will help you.”

    Steven I think you are right up there with me when it comes to attempting to make a point repetitiously. I have got your build for use mantra. I think what most of us on these blogs are most interested is what the benchmarking test are attempting to capture and that being adjusting station temperatures to the pure climate on global, regional and local bases or the best compromise amongst these three. Climate science requires an accurate instrumental record with regards to capabilities to test climate model output and calibrate temperature proxies used in reconstructions. I believe AGW falls out of the physics of GHG in the atmosphere and not out of a thermometer.

  186. One of the things missing from most discussions of the UHI effect is that density in central cities has fallen over almost the entire instrumental record period, and, of course, weather stations have moved to outlying areas like airports. In effect the heat islands have flattened which implies that warming trends have not accelerated.

    Further small towns in many countries have been depopulated. The place where UHI may have increased most is outlying suburbs.

  188. Carrick discussed the latitudinal dependence of ocean and land warming and population. (Comment #135347) Let’s set aside the polar regions above 60N and below 60S for the moment. In the latitudes with few people, the warming rates of ocean and land are similar. The latitudes with the most people show enhance warming on land compared to the ocean. The 60S-60N portion of the latitudinal data actually fits the UHI hypothesis.

    Now let’s ask if there is a sensible reason why the polar regions should be included in this analysis. There are obviously some strange things going on at the poles, possibly because they depend on heat imported from the rest of the planet. Why has more heat been going to the North Pole and less to the South Pole? One can find plenty of periods in ice core data when the trends at each pole are different. Greenland is an icon for abrupt climate change.

    Without a good explanation for the unusual behavior near the poles, why not focus on what 60S-60N suggests about the importance of UHI?

  189. Eli Rabett (Comment #135358)
    One of the things missing from most discussions of the UHI effect is that density in central cities has fallen over almost the entire instrumental record period,

    Are you sure of this?
    Do you mean density of people per sq meter, density of traffic?
    density of structures?
    and what time frame is the entire instrumental record from that you refer to?
    1850? 1900? 1980?
    I am sure Zeke referred to an obvious increase in UHI in his 2010 studies which does not square with your statement on the surface but it may be your definitions.
    I find it hard to imagine the big cities I know like Melbourne being less dense in UHI than 100 years ago though there may be less people in them centrally at night or registered as living in the buildings.
    Look at that North Korea v USA at night to see how much light and heat we are putting out from urban areas.
    Your argument seems an entertaining diversion til you put some meat on the bones.

    Some “weather stations have moved to outlying areas like airports.” and? Airports can produce heat spots worse that UHI.

    In effect the heat islands have flattened which implies that warming trends have not accelerated.

    This is a statement, not a fact, which is ridiculous if you accept the concept of UHI in the first place. one person isolation, two conversation. three or more a fire and UHI.

    Further small towns in many countries have been depopulated. The place where UHI may have increased most is outlying suburbs.
    a suburb is part of a town The UHI effect increases with increasing population size . The center of town is where all those suburb people go to work and shop driving their hot cars ,Eli.

    I understand Carrick’s point, I think, that the amount of UHI effect and the number of stations is small in comparison to the total number of stations and the effect of all those stations.

  190. In 1985 the population of Shanghai was 6 million. It is now 24 million (legal and registered) inhabitants. In 1985 only party bigwigs had cars. Now they auction off licenses to try and limit the number. Most megacities are increasing, not lowering in density, no matter how it is measured.

  191. Cities are becoming more, not less dense by any measure I am aware of. Huge subsidies are being given to US cities to encourage resettlement of the old urban cores. Money for mass transit has increased in urban cores even though it is needed in the suburbs.
    In the second and third worlds cities are megacities are growing in size and number. The historic model of agrarian peoples flocking to the cities for opportunity and social values is being played out globally.

  192. Frank:

    Let’s set aside the polar regions above 60N and below 60S for the moment. In the latitudes with few people, the warming rates of ocean and land are similar. The latitudes with the most people show enhance warming on land compared to the ocean. The 60S-60N portion of the latitudinal data actually fits the UHI hypothesis.

    Setting aside data without a solid basis smacks of cherry picking.

    Let’s use an exogenous objective criteria instead.

    Here’s the faction of land (blue line):

    figure.

    So I’m going to pick the latitude based on the criterion “at least 10% land”, which works out to roughly -35 to 80°N.

    I’l also subtract the sea surface temperature trend from the land-only trend, since that represnts the “excess warming” associated with land amplification and UHI artficact.

    So this is what population versus the subtracted CRUTEM3 series look like:

    Figure.

    So I’d say it’s hardly the case that this portion of “the latitudinal data actually fits the UHI hypothesis.

  193. Carrick: Thanks for the reply. I agree that focusing on 60S-60N is a form of cherry-picking. That is why I posed my above comment as a question, rather than a statement.

    Unfortunately, your Figure clearly shows that my hypothesis has difficulties between 45N and 60N. To be more honest, the problems start with the rapid rise in population density with latitude around 15N and the drop-off decline in population density moving north of 30N. The problems are worst north of 45N.

    When the warming trend difference between land and ocean is 0.3 degC/decade in the Arctic and negligible elsewhere, perhaps we shouldn’t draw any conclusions about UHI from your latitude plot. A very sizable UHI bias (say 0.05 degC/decade) – if one existed – could be hidden by the dramatic difference between the Arctic and the rest of the planet. Forces more powerful than UHI clearly are at work, but they are currently causing far more “Arctic land warming” than “global warming”.

  194. Going back to Steveta and Nick Stokes comments on the Rothamstead weather station, this is a location I know well, having lived within 5 miles and cycled past it frequently.

    Rothamstead is an agricultural research station on the south-western side of the town of Harpenden. It is about 25 miles north of central London. Harpenden is a significant commuter town for London, and most of the development of the town has happened to the north and east (and probably over the last 30 years or so). This being the UK, the prevailing wind is westerly or south-westerly for something like 90% of the time.

    Approximately 2 km to the west (and running fundamentally north-south) is the M1 motorway, which is the major road north out of London, and the large village of Redbourn. The intervening land is a combination of agricultural and golf courses – while some irrigation will occur in summer, in the main we get enough rain for 9 or 10 months of the year that this will not be a major impact on the local climate (and even when it is warm and dry, we have moderate to high humidity, so irrigation does not have the same impact as in dry climates such as the south-west USA).

    The weather station is obviously still reporting, and indeed is one of the stations used in maintaining the Central England Temperature record.

    The question of whether this station should be classed as urban or rural is interesting – being on the edge of a town it probably has to fall into the urban classification, but given the prevailing wind and land use to the west and south-west the conditions affecting it are essentially rural.

    As a hypothesis, it would be interesting to use the site to study the impacts of wind direction and wind speed on UHI effects. In still conditions or in a winter like this where we have had an unusual frequency of easterly / north-easterly winds the heat from the adjacent town could impact the thermometer, while with very strong southerly / south-south-westerly winds the heat from London could have an effect.

  195. We interrupt this thread for a local weather report.

    Tri-Cities (TRI), Tennessee set a record low for today, 20 February, of -13 F breaking the previous low by 26 degrees, 13 above to 13 below. This occurred under light winds, clear skies and a 5 inch snow pack. Knoxville (TYS), 100 miles SW and 600 feet lower, dropped to 3 above, with no measurable snow on the ground.

    The average low for the date is about 30 with a standard deviation of about 10 degrees F.

    We now return you to regular scheduled posting.

    Tom R

  196. Tom Fuller asked me to provide examples of him and Steven Mosher misrepresenting what people/groups said while criticizing them in their book. I’m doing so in this thread because it is off-topic for the other, and this post is for off-topic stuff.

    I’m only going to offer two examples, both for simplicity and for time. First, we should begin with the example I provided above. Fuller is already aware of this example so I won’t bother giving any details. I know he dismissed what I said by claiming it “is pretty much garbage” so he may not feel it is a valid example, but since, “That’s garbage” isn’t anything resembling an actual argument, I’m going to use the example again.

    For a quick summary, Mosher and Fuller repeatedly claimed the IPCC was founded on the belief the warming we’ve seen is unprecedented in human history. That is wrong in every way.

    For other example, we have Mosher and Fuller claiming e-mails from Phil Jones show:

    as late as 2002, Jones was willing to share his data, even though he believed it might be covered by agreements

    Which is untrue. Jones never indicated he believed the data he sent was covered by any confidentiality agreements. His e-mails merely showed data he was considering releasing in the future was covered by confidentiality. That Jones was worried about confidentiality agreements in regard to one data set does not mean he was automatically worried about them in regard to a different data set.

    Not only did Mosher and Fuller jump to a conclusion not supported by their evidence, there is evidence confidentiality agreements did not exist for the data set Jones sent but did exist for other data. That means Mosher and Fuller didn’t just jump to unsupported conclusions to criticize Phil Jones, they likely jumped to wrong conclusions.

    There are more examples I could provide, but I don’t see a reason to go beyond these two until there’s some indication doing so may result in a response more substantial than, “Nuh-uh. You’re a poopyhead!”

  197. Hiya Brandon,

    I’m confused. You said we ‘repeatedly’ misrepresented what people said and offer two examples, one of which I’ve already looked into and found was not accurate.

    The WMO did announce that the current warming period was unprecedented: “The 1990s were the warmest decade of the
    past century. Evidence is presented in this statement
    that, at least in the Northern Hemisphere,
    the 20th century was most likely the warmest in the
    last millennium.” http://nichol.as/papers/wmo913.pdf. In fact it was a consistent position of the WMO and was adopted by UNFCC and later the IPCC. We did not misrepresent their statements.

    As for our statement about Phil Jones, he was willing to share data as late as 2002. He later claimed that confidentiality agreements existed and used it as an excuse not to share data with his opponents. If there were confidentiality agreements (and my opinion is that between 3 and 8 such agreements did exist) they would have covered prior periods. We did not misrepresent Phil Jones’ statements.

    I’m mystified that you would use such thin gruel as evidence of our ‘repeated’ misrepresentations of others’ statements. In fact, I’m also a bit annoyed.

  198. From Wikipedia (which I assume means with William Connolley’s blessing_: The Climatic Research Unit developed its gridded CRUTEM data set of land air temperature anomalies from instrumental temperature records held by National Meteorological Organisations around the world, often under formal or informal confidentiality agreements that restricted use of this raw data to academic purposes, and prevented it from being passed onto third parties. Over 95% of the CRU climate data set had been available to the public for several years before July 2009,[73] when the university received numerous FOI requests for raw data or details of the confidentiality agreements from Stephen McIntyre and readers of his Climate Audit blog. Phil Jones of CRU announced that requests were being made to all the National Meteorological Organisations for their agreement to waive confidentiality,[126] with the aim of publishing all the data jointly with the Met Office.[127] McIntyre complained that data denied to him had been sent to Jones’s colleague Peter Webster at the Georgia Institute of Technology for work on a joint publication, and FOI requests for this data were made by Jonathan A. Jones of the University of Oxford and Don Keiller of Anglia Ruskin University.[128] Both requests were refused by the UEA by 11 September 2009.[129] Though some National Meteorological Organisations gave full or conditional agreement to waive confidentiality, others failed to respond, and the request was explicitly refused by Trinidad and Tobago and Poland. In discussions with the ICO, the university argued that the data was publicly available from the Met organisations, and the lack of agreement exempted the remaining data.

  199. Tom Fuller:

    Hiya Brandon,

    I’m confused. You said we ‘repeatedly’ misrepresented what people said and offer two examples, one of which I’ve already looked into and found was not accurate.

    Which you promptly refused to explain or comment on in any way, choosing instead to only make a personal remark about me. And now we apparently see why, as your response here is as ridiculous as what you say in your book. You say:

    The WMO did announce that the current warming period was unprecedented: “The 1990s were the warmest decade of the
    past century. Evidence is presented in this statement
    that, at least in the Northern Hemisphere,
    the 20th century was most likely the warmest in the
    last millennium.” http://nichol.as/papers/wmo913.pdf. In fact it was a consistent position of the WMO and was adopted by UNFCC and later the IPCC. We did not misrepresent their statements.

    You just quoted a report titled, “WMO STATEMENT ON THE STATUS OF THE GLOBAL CLIMATE IN 1999.” You offer this in response to my explicit criticisms of your claims regarding the founding assumptions of the IPCC. The IPCC was founded some ten years before the reference you cite. The quote I accuse you of misrepresenting was from 1985, 14 years before the reference you cite.

    You’ve just quoted a statement which relies upon work used in the IPCC Third Assessment Report as proof the IPCC was founded upon the idea expressed in that statement. That is insane.

    (And that’s leaving aside the issue of your book claiming the IPCC was founded on the idea current warming is unprecedented in the history of mankind while your reference only makes the claim in regards to the last 1000 years.)

    As for our statement about Phil Jones, he was willing to share data as late as 2002. He later claimed that confidentiality agreements existed and used it as an excuse not to share data with his opponents. If there were confidentiality agreements (and my opinion is that between 3 and 8 such agreements did exist) they would have covered prior periods. We did not misrepresent Phil Jones’ statements.

    You have absolutely no basis for this argument. I explained how the data Phil Jones shared might not have been covered by confidentiality agreements while the data he didn’t share might have been. I pointed to evidence suggesting that possibility was, in fact, true. You’ve simply ignored all that.

    Instead of addressing anything I’ve said, you’ve simply ignored the argument I’ve made, claimed it was wrong, and refused to even discuss the quote I say you misrepresented. You then say:

    I’m mystified that you would use such thin gruel as evidence of our ‘repeated’ misrepresentations of others’ statements. In fact, I’m also a bit annoyed.

    I only gave two examples because I figured it was pointless to give more. It turns out I was right. You responded to one example I gave of you misrepresenting what a group said by offering a quote from 1999 as though it was their position in the 1980s. You responded to my accusation by doing exactly what I accused you of, in what is practically the most obvious way possible.

    You may be mystified. You may be annoyed. I don’t know. All I know is if you believe your response to me is in reasonable or correct, you are insane.

  201. Brandon, you may find that you get a more reasoned response from people if you stop repeatedly calling them or their work ‘insane’.

  202. Can’t we just agree that the Mosher & Fuller book was put together in a hurry after climategate, so it’s not at all surprising that someone going through it carefully would find quite a lot of errors and unsupported claims? As pointed out in several of the Amazon reviews.

  203. Steve Ta, I wish that were true, but in my experience, it isn’t. People citing reasons like that almost inevitably are just using them as excuses for behaving in a way they’d behave regardless. Look at what happened when I described the problem that started this without any pejorative remarks. The “more reasoned response” I got was:

    Brandon, now I begin to see why others are reluctant to engage with you. Your post #135339 is pretty much garbage.

    I could point to dozens of examples of Steven Mosher responding to neutrally worded comments of mine with equally empty and hostile remarks. It is true some people will react poorly to criticisms that include provocative remarks, but it also true some people will react poorly to criticisms no matter how they are phrased.

    And really, did you read what Tom Fuller said? He pointed to a WMO 1999 position statement as proof the IPCC was founded on the assumption that statement was true. That argument is in the form of:

    In the 1980s, the IPCC must have assumed X because in 1999 the WMO examined publications and concluded X.

    When somebody tells me what I say is “garbage” based upon an argument like that, what would you have me call their argument other than insane? Personally, I think “insane” is generous.

    I would agree I should tone down my language if I were using words like “insane” for effect (e.g. hyperbole). I’m not. I am literally saying this argument expresses a pattern of thought incompatible with reality.

    And rather than say anything more, I’m just going to point to this song:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1KJ9fl4YO4

  204. Ugh. I lost a comment because my IP got banned for some reason. I don’t feel like retyping it, so here’s a short version:

    Paul Matthews, no. We don’t get to just ignore mistakes for years by saying, “The authors were in a hurry.” If that excuse is allowed to shut down discussions on mistakes, any number of excuses can be used just the same.

    There are three things I examine to determine how much criticism to give an error: 1) How significantly it impacts results; 2) How easily the error could have been avoided; 3) What actions were taken after the error was made to mitigate it. Errors I’ve been pointing out with this book fall pretty far on the “bad” end of each of those scales.

    I don’t know how much worse the book could get before people would be willing to agree it shouldn’t have been published (at least, not in its current form).

  205. Brandon,
    I tend to think it’s better for things to get published than not. People understand it was self-published. Obviously, it wasn’t “peer reviewed” or “reviewed by a board” or anything else.

    Heck, I don’t even mind that “skydragons” stuff gets published. I don’t pay any attention to it– but it gets published. Eventually, stuff that people find unworthy isn’t read or purchased anymore. That’s enough for me.

  206. lucia, that’s a good point. I didn’t mean what I said the way it may sound. I didn’t mean to suggest someone should have prevented the book from being published. I meant the authors should have refrained from publishing it. Which is basically the same as me saying the authors should be criticized for publishing bad work.

    I don’t pay any attention to it– but it gets published. Eventually, stuff that people find unworthy isn’t read or purchased anymore. That’s enough for me.

    My problem with this approach is what “people find unworthy” often has little bearing on the quality of the book. Michael Mann sold tons of copies of his book, and people still promote it as a valuable resource. I don’t know how many copies Mosher and Fuller sold, but I’ve seen their book receive a fair amount of praise, and I still see people recommend it to this day.

    I’m not good at staying quiet while seeing bad work get treated as not-bad. When people told me Twilight was a great movie, I had to disagree. When people talk about this book…

  207. I have no objection to people criticizing a book. And then, usually, one can move on– but objecting when someone comes along to promote how great the book is.

    I didn’t see Twilight. Jim hated “Hunger games”. Citizen Kane is way overrated. It’s even more overated than Meryl Streeps acting. (Meryl Streep’s acting is at least pretty good. Just not as great as people sometimes go on about. I mean… is she really any better than Sally Fields? Or Blythe Danner? Or any number of other actresses or actors people don’t go on and on and on about? I think not.)

    Other than reacting to your criticism of Fuller and Mosher’s book, I don’t think anyone has been telling you it’s the best most flawless thing ever written. It has some value– and people appreciate certain reporting of events it did. They also recognize it has some issues. I don’t have a problem with that. It’s been a while since I read it and I’m not going to dig it up and go over it again. Just. Not.

  208. lucia, nobody is telling me the book is great now (though I’ve had over a dozen people tell me I should read this book in the past), but the book is so bad I can’t not discuss it. I recognize a lot of people won’t care about it. That’s why I’ve tried to keep most of my comments about it to my site.

    But really, I find it incredible the book could be this bad yet I had no idea. Not a single review I’ve found even hints at how bad the book is. I think the most informative negative remark I’ve seen is, “[It was] thrown together in a very short time and shows it.” Another reviewer said:

    The only reason I give the book 4 stars, is because since it was hastily written, it reads like a draft, and has occasional typos and errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

    And that there are a “few errors and typos.” I have read far harsher criticisms of books with far better writing. Combined with the authors misrepresenting simple sentences they quote and telling the reader things that are obviously untrue, it’s just too much for me.

    But yeah, I think from now on I’m only going to talk about the book here if someone discusses a specific point I’ve made about it. For instance, I hope Fuller (or Mosher) will explain why they said the IPCC was founded on the assumption the warming seen up to that point was unprecedented in the history of mankind. The only two responses I’ve gotten on that topic so far have been beyond bad.

  209. Brandon, first, two examples is still not ‘repeatedly.’

    Second, we did express ourselves too loosely with regards to the IPCC.

    The IPCC was formed by the WMO and UNEP. They stated in their founding documents that the formation of the IPCC was in response to ‘growing public concern’ about global warming. Our error was to say the founding assumption was based on ‘claimed’ unprecedented global warming when the assumption was based on ‘wide public concern’ over global warming that ‘would reach unprecedented levels’ at (different) time frames (such as 2030).

    That global concern was expressed in documents such as a joint publication of UNEP and the World Resources Institute, which said that CO2 would lead to a ‘projected’ unprecedented global warming in the near term. See http://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/pdf/worldresources1988-89_bw.pdf

    There are many other instances of that type of phrasing. I regret the error.

    I’m sorry you didn’t like our book and am only partially heartened by the positive response to it given by many other readers. I’m sure your own writing efforts will benefit from the deficiencies you observe in our book.

    As for the confidentiality agreements, I believe you’re wrong.

  210. Tom,
    Brandon is not critiquing, he is deconstructing, and doing so poorly. He is pretending his opinion is fact, a typical line of bs fora fanatic. He seems to specialize in finding motes in the eyes of those he dislikes and conflating them into logs. Ignore the putz.

  211. hunter,

    We don’t always often agree, but we are absolutely on the same page on this one. +10

  212. I think it’s actually much simpler. Mosh pissed him off and he’s trying to ‘deconstruct’ us. I think I’m almost collateral damage in this, but I’ve seen Brandon doing this to others, both here and elsewhere. Given his lack of success at toppling anyone, I am not losing sleep. Facts are stubborn things.

  213. Tom Fuller, that is a remarkable change in position. When I first pointed out this error, you responded:

    Brandon, now I begin to see why others are reluctant to engage with you. Your post #135339 is pretty much garbage.

    Then promptly ignored my response. When I brought up the topic again during a subsequent discussion, you responded:

    I’m confused. You said we ‘repeatedly’ misrepresented what people said and offer two examples, one of which I’ve already looked into and found was not accurate.

    First you dismissed my criticism as “garbage.” Then you said it “was not accurate.” Now, without any explanation, you’ve suddenly acknowledged I am correct. You claimed to have “looked into” my argument before deciding it was wrong, so what changed? And why don’t you explain the change? Part of acknowledging mistakes is not just admitting the mistakes, but withdrawing the errant defense of those mistakes. For instance, I think everyone deserves an explanation as to why you claimed a position statement published in ~1999 shows the assumptions underlying the creation of the IPCC.

    Not only do you fail to retract your false responses to me, you greatly downplay the mistake you made:

    Second, we did express ourselves too loosely with regards to the IPCC.

    The IPCC was formed by the WMO and UNEP. They stated in their founding documents that the formation of the IPCC was in response to ‘growing public concern’ about global warming. Our error was to say the founding assumption was based on ‘claimed’ unprecedented global warming when the assumption was based on ‘wide public concern’ over global warming that ‘would reach unprecedented levels’ at (different) time frames (such as 2030).

    That global concern was expressed in documents such as a joint publication of UNEP and the World Resources Institute, which said that CO2 would lead to a ‘projected’ unprecedented global warming in the near term. See http://www.wri.org/sites/defau…..-89_bw.pdf

    I find it interesting you think you merely “expressed [your]selves too loosely” when you changed “could” to “will” and changed the timeframe from 50+ years in the future to now. Also interesting, you apparently feel it is okay to simply point to a 300+ page document and say it says something without any quotation or page number. I had just demonstrated you have misrepresented sources even while quoting them. Are people supposed to dig through the 300+ pages to find out if your representation is correct?

    Guess what? I did. It isn’t. Page 173 of that document clearly says global temperatures may rise anywhere from 1-7 degrees, with 1.5-4.5 being the most likely range. It then says an unprecedented would require an increase of 5 degrees. Not only does the report not claim 5 degrees will happen, 5 degrees is outside the range the of values it considers “most likely.”

    You initially dismissed me when I said you misrepresented a source, but now you acknowledge I was correct while misrepresenting yet another source. I get you say:

    Brandon, first, two examples is still not ‘repeatedly.’

    But given you’ve misrepresented the two sources you’ve offered while talking to me, I don’t think anyone should have trouble believing my claims. If they do, I’m happy to present evidence the problem goes beyond what I’ve shown thus far. I just don’t see a point in doing so if your responses are going to take the form of empty dismissals accompanied by personal remarks, absurd responses which misrepresent additional sources and then sudden and inexplicable changes in position which don’t acknowledge your earlier responses were wrong. Why waste my time presenting many examples if we can’t even properly handle one?

    As for the confidentiality agreements, I believe you’re wrong.

    This is a far weaker condemnation than that you gave for my first example. Since that example turned out to be right, I have to assume this example must be superly awesomely right 😛

  214. Wow. The armchair psychologists are out in force. First we have hunter saying:

    Tom,
    Brandon is not critiquing, he is deconstructing, and doing so poorly. He is pretending his opinion is fact, a typical line of bs fora fanatic. He seems to specialize in finding motes in the eyes of those he dislikes and conflating them into logs. Ignore the putz.

    Even though I’ve presented logic and evidence for every claim I’ve made. This is especially interesting since the people I’ve criticized the most are John Cook, Stephan Lewandowsky and Michael Mann. If my speciality is “finding motes in the eyes of those he dislikes and conflating them into logs,” then apparently my criticisms of those three have been as equally baseless as my criticisms of this book. I guess Cook, Mann and Lewandowsky are actually doing great work…?

    This position is seemingly endorsed by DeWitt Payne who says:

    hunter,

    We don’t always often agree, but we are absolutely on the same page on this one. +10

    But that may not mean much as his comments about me are kind of creepy in that they basically always say the same thing, and it never seems has real connection to do with anything I’ve said on the same page.

    Tom Fuller then gets in on the action by saying:

    I think it’s actually much simpler. Mosh pissed him off and he’s trying to ‘deconstruct’ us. I think I’m almost collateral damage in this, but I’ve seen Brandon doing this to others, both here and elsewhere. Given his lack of success at toppling anyone, I am not losing sleep. Facts are stubborn things.

    But he has admitted I was right to say he and Steven Mosher misrepresented a quote in a way which led to them repeatedly making incorrect claims about the IPCC’s creation. He says facts are stubborn things, but he is the one who was wrong!

    I get dismissing what people say because of supposed psychological traits can be effective. We see exactly that from people like Lewandowsky and Cook who label skeptics conspiracy theorists or Mann who claims skeptics are just shills/pawns for the oil companies. However, “effective” does not mean right. We should not be sinking to the level of people like Mann who promote delusions as reality, Cook who flat-out lies or Lewandowsky who fabricate incorrect results by simply not understand basic statistics and making things up.

    Then again, maybe that’s the level people want to be on. Fuller takes comfort knowing I haven’t toppled anyone, but the only people I’ve spent any significant amount of time on are Mann, Cook and Lewandowsky. I guess Fuller takes comfort in being safe in their company 😛

  215. Repeatedly.

    Why does my finding out that we were too loose in wording our comment about the IPCC’s cause d’etre impact your baloney about confidentiality agreements? Is there a teleconnection somewhere?

    Sorry Schollenberger–I tried to engage with you politely. But I’m done with you. You’re starting to remind me of sod. In fact, you’re making me miss sod.

  216. Damn. It’s Schollenberger, the evil twin, again. Is there no relief?

    Is there a pathology which imputes a precision of expression beyond the message of the words themselves? Might it not be similar to reading 1.25753 on a vernier caliper and then criticizing the accuracy of the caliper for error in the last two points?

  217. Tom Fuller,

    It seems to me Brandon just likes to critique and argue. You know, not just how many angels fit on the head of a pin, but how many have blue eyes, and how many brown. Beyond the joy of arguing over nothing, there seems little objective in his antics. I don’t often bother engaging him beyond a brief comment.

  218. I dropped thread earlier, partially because I didn’t want to food fight and mostly because I talk too much.
    I do want to at least say I appreciated the earlier discussion (This particular discussion of books and motives is of less interest to me anyways. 🙂 ). It was (and remains) interesting. Thanks, to Tom Fuller and Steve Mosher in particular, and all the regulars as well.

  219. Tom Fuller:

    Why does my finding out that we were too loose in wording our comment about the IPCC’s cause d’etre impact your baloney about confidentiality agreements? Is there a teleconnection somewhere?

    I pointed out you’ve made multiple mistakes on this thread, showed you misrepresented another source and made a joke which referenced the confidentiality agreements. Why would you focus solely on the joke? I can’t see any legitimate reasons to do that.

    But more importantly, why would you label what I’ve said about the supposed confidentiality agreements “baloney” when you’ve never done anything to try to show it is wrong? I made a very simple argument. If it is wrong, it should be easy to point to what I said which was wrong and explain how it is wrong. You haven’t even tried.

    You started this exchange with the exact same behavior in regard to what you said about the IPCC, but you’ve now been forced to admit you were wrong there. There is no reason anyone should assume things would go differently if you’d actually bother to try discuss this issue. Which makes it convenient you say:

    Sorry Schollenberger–I tried to engage with you politely. But I’m done with you. You’re starting to remind me of sod. In fact, you’re making me miss sod.

    Sure, you can call me a terrible person. You can go with the attitude of, how dare I point out errors in your book (one of which you now acknowledge)? You can go with the attitude of, how dare I point out mistakes you’ve made on this page (which you refuse to acknowledge even though your comments prove you are aware of them)?

    But that’s not how discussions work. That’s how the people you criticize in your book would behave. If you want to be like them, you can stick with your current attitude. If you want to be like the kind of person you say people should be, you can try growing up.

  220. j ferguson:

    Damn. It’s Schollenberger, the evil twin, again. Is there no relief?

    Ah, I see. I’m not the terrible guy who dares to point out when people make mistakes. It’s that Schollenberger guy!

    SteveF:

    It seems to me Brandon just likes to critique and argue. You know, not just how many angels fit on the head of a pin, but how many have blue eyes, and how many brown. Beyond the joy of arguing over nothing, there seems little objective in his antics.

    It’s interesting how when people disagree with me they often portray what I do as nothing but unimportant quibbling. It’s interesting because when I say things the same people agree with, they pretty much never portray it that way. That confuses me. Sort of like how I find it confusing people seem to enjoy jumping into discussions just to make personal remarks about users contributing to them.

    Mark Bofill:

    I dropped thread earlier, partially because I didn’t want to food fight and mostly because I talk too much.
    I do want to at least say I appreciated the earlier discussion (This particular discussion of books and motives is of less interest to me anyways.

    I think Tom Fuller has made it clear no actual discussion of his book is going to be possible here. At least we can all agree about one error (made multiple times) in the book. That’s something. If no discussion of the specific points I made happens, I’ll be content to have accomplished making progress on at least one point.

    As for motives, I almost always think discussing them is pointless. I’ve never understood the appeal of writing comments solely to discuss motives and make personal remarks. I’d definitely be happy if there was no discussion of that sort of thing.

    By the way, if the Schollenberger guy hadn’t shown up to take the blame, I would so blame you for all this.

  221. By the way, if the Schollenberger guy hadn’t shown up to take the blame, I would so blame you for all this.

    Yah, I’m a stinker aren’t I. 😉

  222. Brandon said,

    “It’s interesting how when people disagree with me they often portray what I do as nothing but unimportant quibbling. It’s interesting because when I say things the same people agree with, they pretty much never portray it that way. That confuses me. Sort of like how I find it confusing people seem to enjoy jumping into discussions just to make personal remarks about users contributing to them.”

    I have noticed this as well.

    Frankly, I see nothing wrong with being precise and holding others to it. After all, we hold the alarmists to a very high standard so what’s good for the goose…

    Tom Fuller said,

    “Sorry Schollenberger–I tried to engage with you politely. But I’m done with you.”

    But before that he said,

    “Brandon, now I begin to see why others are reluctant to engage with you. Your post #135339 is pretty much garbage.”

  224. hunter,

    I would rephrase that. If Brandon were holding himself to the same accuracy he demanded of others, that….

    And no, I’m not going to cite examples, nor respond to whinging.

  226. “I think it’s actually much simpler. Mosh pissed him off and he’s trying to ‘deconstruct’ us. I think I’m almost collateral damage in this, but I’ve seen Brandon doing this to others, both here and elsewhere. Given his lack of success at toppling anyone, I am not losing sleep. Facts are stubborn things.”

    Gavin and Arthur Smith found errors that were actually important.

    Damn given the time we started writing ( nov 29) and the time we finished Xmas I amazed there arent a 1000 errors.

  227. MichaelS, I think Tom Fuller meant he “tried to engage with [me] politely” somewhere in the exchange. As in, we should ignore his rudeness because he wasn’t rude all the time. >.<

    But really, this stuff is funny. Look at how many comments criticizing me are from people behaving in the most petulant, non-contributory ways possible. Earlier I said:

    Tom Fuller, that’s a very compelling argument. Maybe next you can tell everybody, “Don’t listen to Brandon. He’s a poopyhead.”

    And that’s basically what people are doing!

    By the way, Steven Mosher is almost always good for a laugh:

    Gavin and Arthur Smith found errors that were actually important.

    I remember a lot of mocking of people defending their work who would respond to any criticism they disliked by saying it “doesn’t matter,” often while refusing to actually quantify the effect of the claimed error. It was largely directed at the people Mosher and Fuller criticize in their book. And Mosher participated in it.

    I’d heard when you fight an enemy, you become that enemy.

    Damn given the time we started writing ( nov 29) and the time we finished Xmas I amazed there arent a 1000 errors.

    Um, yeah, I’m pretty sure there are.

  228. Steven M. Mosher is a global warming skeptic who coauthored the book Climategate with Thomas W. Fuller.
    Thomas W. Fuller is a climate action skeptic who wrote a column on climate change
    Climategate: The Crutape Letters
    Brandon Shollenberger (Comment #135174)February 12th, 2015 I need to stop being a cheapskate. I’ve still never read that book because I didn’t like spending money on climate stuff given how much time I already waste on it.
    Must go and watch “an inconvenient truth”, wife bought it but I have only ever seen snippets.
    I am much more a cheapskate, Brandon but it seems you have had your money’s worth.
    Still in shock at that description of Steven,
    Any others of you out there to give me a thumbs up or down on buying it?

  229. In 2002 Jones sent Mcintyre data files.
    The way I read the post below was as follows.
    Mcintyre was given two files.
    He requested that the same data for Jones new
    Paper be put online.
    Having sent Mcintyre the old data Jones says
    That he may put the update online. But he
    Doesn’t want to run into problems.

    So Jones sends station data. He indicated he might
    Put the update online but does not want to run
    Into the problem that ghcn ran into with European countries.

    I believe the ghcn problem is detailed in another mail.
    And it’s agreements.

    Further we know Jones also shared these data with Rutherford. And Webster.

    There is little doubt he shared data that he thought might be covered by agreements

    http://climateaudit.org/2009/08/06/a-2002-request-to-cru/

  230. To give brandon some guide posts.

    Jones seems to have played by the following rules with regard to sharing data (station monthly temps )that was supposedly covered by agreements not to release. He would share it with individual researchers, but not post it on the web. he wouldnt post it on the web because of the trouble that GHCN got into with european countries. But he would send copies to individuals.

    The other thing you have to be aware of is The WMO agreement that required all countries to share their data.

    In 2002 he sent the station data to Mcintyre who was an unknown at the time. When McIntrye asks him to post the updated data ( once the paper is published) on the web, jones responds

    “I say possibly releasing above, as I don’t want to run into the issues that GHCN have come across with some European countries objecting to data being freely available.”

    In other words, He sends him a mail containing station data, but has some reservations about posting it because of problems NCDC had european countries that didnt want their data posted in GHCN. At NCDC there are two main guys, peterson and Karl.
    Karl, we know from Peterson’s mail, pushed to make data available and peterson was more circumspect and liked to follow all agreements.

    As mcintyre notes something changed between 2002 and 2005 when warwick hughes is denied data and tries to go over Jones head to the WMO. Jones replies that even if the WMO tell him to release the data he wont.

    basically I tried to answer mcintyre’s question. what changed

    in 2002: he shares station data with the unknown McIntrye
    but it hestitant to put the update on ftp because of
    problems NCDC had when they did it and some european countries objecting to release of their data. Jones at this time
    references the WMO agreement for GCOS
    “I would like to see more countries make their data freely available (and although these monthly averages should be according to GCOS rules for GAA-operational Met. Service.”

    In 2005. he refuses to send data to Warwick Hughes and says he doesnt care what the WMO tells him to do.

    Later Jones would share the data with rutherford.
    Later he would share it with Webster
    Later he refused mcintyre saying he could only share it with
    academics according to the agreements.

    So as far back as 2002 he was sharing data–sending folks zip files.
    But he wasnt sharing it on ftp because he didnt want to get in trouble with country agreements. And he noted that by WMO guidelines they should share it.

    In 2005 he stopped sharing data by email to a certain class of folks. Skeptics. First warwick hughes who threated to go to the WMO to trump the country agreements and then mcintyre.

    yet, he did continue to share it with non skeptics.. rutherford and Webster.

    Now that look pretty clear to me. mcintyre says he got data in 2002 when he was a nobody. But that jones was iffy about putting the next version on ftp because of the trouble NCDC
    got into sharing some country data. He notes that he thinks this is wrong per the GCOS arrangements.
    In 2005 he refuses to share with warwick if if the WMO tell him to.

    So ya. in 2002 he shared data with mcintyre. data he thought might be covered by agreements. But he wont commit to putting the updated data on ftp because he wants to avoid problems with countries who object to sharing. Even though he thinks those agreements dont hold water in light of WMO rules.

    by 2005 he has changed the rules for skeptics now hiding behind agreements which warwick tries to circumvent. And in contemporeneous mails he tell people that his plan for FOIA requests for data is to hide behind agreements.

    later he will send that data to rutherford and webster.

    Now you can throw all this narrative away. The point of the narrative was simply this. It looked to me like Jones was following Mann’s example by not sharing data. That is the entire point of that narrative. That in 2002 he shares data with mc and by 2005 that all changed. Why?

    On the day Jones writes to Warwick deny him data.. On that day
    Briffa sent him a bunch of news clippings about how Mann was being trashed for not sharing data. And briffa noted that skeptics were gaining traction. My supposition is that watching mann changed Jones. Thats it. He watched Mann successfully denying data. So he joined in and used the agreements he knew about as as an excuse.

  231. Wow, Brandon, did you just modify a quote?! You couldn’t!
    “tried to engage with [me] politely”

  232. Sven, of course I modified the quote. I have never said modifying quotes is bad. I’ve specifically said modifying quotes can be done appropriately.

    angech, I’m usually more of a cheapskate, but this was supposed to be research for a (little) eBook I’m writing so it seemed justified.

  233. It is remarkable how much text Steven Mosher just wrote to try to rebut my argument given he didn’t address my argument in the slightest. The point I made is simple. Confidentiality agreements applying to one data set does not mean they must apply to another. It is possible for data used in an earlier version of a data set to have been given freely while data used in a later version was given under confidentiality agreements.

    With that in mind, read these excerpts:

    In 2002 he sent the station data to Mcintyre who was an unknown at the time. When McIntrye asks him to post the updated data

    in 2002: he shares station data with the unknown McIntrye
    but it hestitant to put the update

    So ya. in 2002 he shared data with mcintyre. data he thought might be covered by agreements. But he wont commit to putting the updated data on ftp

    Despite drawing attention to the distinction between the two data sets, Mosher fails to account for the possibility they were created with data given under different conditions. Instead, he goes so far as to say things like:

    In 2002 he sent the station data to Mcintyre who was an unknown at the time. When McIntrye asks him to post the updated data ( once the paper is published) on the web, jones responds

    “I say possibly releasing above, as I don’t want to run into the issues that GHCN have come across with some European countries objecting to data being freely available.”

    In other words, He sends him a mail containing station data, but has some reservations about posting it because of problems NCDC had european countries that didnt want their data posted in GHCN. At NCDC there are two main guys, peterson and Karl.

    Where he actually conflates the two data sets. Jones’s refusal to upload data to an FTP server was in regard to the updated data set, but Mosher says Jones “has some reservations about posting” the data he sent Steve McIntyre, data for the earlier data set.

    Was data used to create the earlier data set covered by confidentiality agreements? Maybe. I don’t know. What I do know is one cannot answer that question simply by looking at whether data used to create an updated data set was covered by confidentiality agreements.

    As an aside, it’s interesting Mosher avoided his normal short and cryptic style of response here. I think it made his response far worse.

  234. Brandon acuses others of being creepy for pointing out his interesting behavior. Poor Steve and Tom. No matter what they say or do there is Brandon to conclude they are evil and wicked. It is fascinating to me that so many of the climate fanatics cannot simply find skeptics wrong. Skeptics, for a disturbing number of them, are bad people who are deliberately doing their badness.

  235. @Hunter

    If you think Mosher and Fuller are skeptics, I’ll wager you’re more of warmist than Brandon. You’ve got your labels backwards there fella.

  236. I don’t know if they’re skeptics, lukewarmists, warmists or what. It doesn’t matter to me. The important thing remains, that we’re all good Muslims here.

  238. Brandon still doesnt get it.

    http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/availability/

    Jones shared the station data.
    Jones refused to post it on ftp and told rutherford not to
    post it on ftp.
    Jones refused to share it with Warwick and given warwicks responses to go to WMO, i suspect Jones refused him in the july 2004 period using agreements as a basis.
    in 2005 jones said he would use agreements as a basis.
    later he would use agreements as a basis.

    so in 2002 when he shared this same data ( station data ) with mcintyre its a good assumption that he knew some of it may be covered by agreements.

    1. he shared the data
    2. He believed they were covered by agreements.

    brandon writes

    “His e-mails merely showed data he was considering releasing in the future was covered by confidentiality. That Jones was worried about confidentiality agreements in regard to one data set does not mean he was automatically worried about them in regard to a different data set.”

    The data he shared was station data, station normals for his previous paper. The 2002 paper would be adding more time more months of data to those stations.
    The agreements go back to 1994.

    It is reasonable to assume as I do that

    1. he shared station data with Mcintrye
    2. he was hesitant about posting the update because
    the data was covered by agreements.

    The file shared, I fairly sure, is the same format, same countries, same data (normals ) from 2002 all the way to the time
    that it was accidentally posted in 2009 ( the mole incident)

    The only difference is the addition of more months.

    In an un related matter > I will try very briefly why the book talks so much about temperature series WHILE CLIMATEGATE was NOT
    About temperature series.

    Historically, one of the most important things that we talked about was the cru series. And it was Willis FOIA that got the ball rolling in the document request efforts. All the efforts, all the FOIA from climate audit are around temperature series..
    So you cant tel the story without telling THAT.

    And its important to tell that story so you understand why Jones and Palmer reacted to Hollands FOIA the way they did

    So you have al this history and dialogue and wrangling back and forth about temperature series.. Tons of it. it dominates the narrative.

    BUT

    in the end , the only story that MATTERS is the Holland FOIA,
    and that is related to Briffa and Ar4 chapter 6.

    Why does that story matter while the tmperature one doesnt

    Simple. because all the wrong doing centers on the HOLLAND FOIA

    1. The violation of IPCC rules
    2. The violation of FOIA
    3. Jones request to delete mails

    In short. the IMPORTANT story is the Holland FOIA.
    But you cant tell that story, yu cant getto the climax
    without telling the temperature story.

    So climate gate is not about temperature series.
    Its ABOUT ar4 chapter 6.
    That means the most important story is there.
    Its most important because THAT is were you have the ICO
    finding CRU in violation of FOIA. the temperature FOIA were asnwered. Hollands was not.
    That is the most important story because THAT is were you get Jones asking people to delete mails.
    That is the most important story because it ties to Hide the decline in ar4.

    BUT to get to that story, to explain the history, to introduce the players, you Must tell the temperature story.

    And in the temperature story you dont find anything that comes close to the misdeed that you find in the Ar4 story.

    Now, I dont expect Brandon to get the allusion in the title.

    Its called crutape because the story is about Briffa Jones and Mann.

    That is the Main Point.
    The temperature stuff has to be told for back ground, for introduction, to establish character, but the POINT is Ar4 chapter 6.

  239. hunter:

    “Poor Steve and Tom. No matter what they say or do there is Brandon to conclude they are evil and wicked.”

    Huh? They’re not? I am disappointed. There is no Mini-Mosh?

  240. Steven Mosher is still writing tons of words without addressing the point I’ve made. He acknowledges new data was obtained for the new data set, yet he fails to address the possibility that new data was covered by confidentiality agreements while previous data was not. Hundreds and hundreds of words, yet in the end, his argument still consists of nothing more than:

    Brandon still doesnt get it.

    And non-topical rambling. I think there’s a reason he usually resorts to short, cryptic comments. You see, when he starts writing full, coherent sentences, he winds up saying things like:

    In an un related matter > I will try very briefly why the book talks so much about temperature series WHILE CLIMATEGATE was NOT
    About temperature series.

    Look at that emphasis. So WHILE CLIMATEGATE was NOT about temperature series:

    the global temperature index, or CRUTEMP… is the principle focus of Climategate.

    According to Mosher, the principle focus of Climategate was the global temperature index, or CRUTEMP, but Climategate was not about temperature series. As Mosher explains now:

    BUT to get to that story, to explain the history, to introduce the players, you Must tell the temperature story.

    And in the temperature story you dont find anything that comes close to the misdeed that you find in the Ar4 story.

    Now, I dont expect Brandon to get the allusion in the title.

    Its called crutape because the story is about Briffa Jones and Mann.

    That is the Main Point.

    According to Mosher, the “Main Point” of Clmiategate had nothing to do with the “principle focus of Climategate,” save that the “principle focus of Climategate” gives context to the “Main Point.”

  241. MichaelS, additional homework might include reading my blog where I’ve posted something like 75 posts on the “skeptic” side. Or my recently published eBook written to give a short summary of the hockey stick debate to allow even people who had never heard of the subject to understand how bad the mainstream postion on the topic has been.

    The idea I’m a “climate fanatic[]” is beyond silly. Could one be any more tribal?

  242. Aw, Geez. This is all to plug your blog and book? Go away.

    I plugged our book on my page. (Didn’t work much. Most of our sales came from a banner on Anthony Watts’ site.) I didn’t go whoring through the blogosphere picking fights at random just to hype it.

    Just…go away.

  243. Tom Fuller, your latest comment is absurd and stupid at the same time. I didn’t provide a link to my book or even tell people how to find it. I didn’t even bring it up until I was portrayed as a “climate fanatic[]” attacking your guy’s work only because I think skeptics are “evil and wicked,” at which point it seemed relevant to point out I’ve spent a great deal of effort pushing “skeptic” messages.

    You are making yourself look far worse than I ever could. Not a single rational person will believe I’ve written over 50 comments pointing out errors in your book just so I could promote by book in a single passing remark.

    And telling me to “go away”? Seriously? I don’t know if you think random commenters on blogs get to dictate who does and does not get to comment there or what, but that is as pathetic a response to criticisms as there is. Absolutely nothing good could come from it. The most it could do is show you behaving in a way which is not approved of.

    This sort of behavior is pathetic. If the Team wrote things like you have in e-mails, you’d criticize them for it.

  244. Oh, I just realized while I sort of answered the rhetorical questions in my comment, I didn’t really do so in a direct manner. Sorry about that. I sometimes forget this site treats rhetorical questions differently than most.

  245. I don’t get why Brandon, who has reasonable points to make ,yet comes across as verbally aggressive.
    I have got to the point that I sometimes skim past Brandon’s comments…this of course may be because of my limitations. It seems sad to me because I think probably Brandon has some good points to make. Maybe it is because Brandon’s style of posting is so completely self-assured that there is no possible way of debating with him.
    I don’t know Brandon’s background, but get the feeling that if his education could be channelled into productive climate work that would be great. I would love to see Brandon on the side of science producing papers rather than just criticising those who are publishing stuff he disagrees with without coming up with new published research/data analysis himself. Brandon…use the data and come up with published work…I guess you have the ability to do this, and it would be great if you did.

    As a complete aside, Mark Bofill, I really enjoy your comments!…sometimes very leftfield, but often funny.

    I’ll go back to lurking now…

    Duncan

  247. @ MichaelS (Comment #135482)
    I disagree with some Tom and Steve’s positions, but they are civilized and coherent, unlike some others. If you think I am a warmist, then you have either not read me or failed to comprehend what I write.

  248. Not a single rational person will believe I’ve written over 50 comments pointing out errors in your book just so I could promote by book in a single passing remark.

    Well, it’s the only suggestion I’ve seen yet that makes sense of you going on and on and on and on (etc…)

  250. Duncan,

    I would have said arrogant rather than self-assured, but then I’m seriously tact deprived, although I’ve mellowed somewhat with age.

  251. @Hunter said,

    “I disagree with some Tom and Steve’s positions, but they are civilized and coherent, unlike some others”.

    Civilized like when Mosher said,

    “But you realize that the brandons of the world would remain skeptical. You know there is uncertainty over exactly how many died in the holocaust”

  252. @Hunter said,

    “If you think I am a warmist, then you have either not read me or failed to comprehend what I write”.

    How could I have read you, I don’t even know who you are.
    I would be happy to read what you have published if you would point me to link.

    I think you are a warmist because you referred to Mosher and
    Fuller as skeptics and Shollenberger, a climate fanatic. If I’m not comprehending, it’s possibly because you are failing to communicate properly.

  253. doctord3:

    I don’t get why Brandon, who has reasonable points to make ,yet comes across as verbally aggressive.

    It’s interesting you feel I am “verbally aggressive” yet express no opinion about the people openly attacking me, often commenting to do nothing else. Their behavior is far more aggressive than mine. If nothing else, I pretty don’t even talk about people, usually limiting my comments to only their behavior.

    I have got to the point that I sometimes skim past Brandon’s comments…this of course may be because of my limitations. It seems sad to me because I think probably Brandon has some good points to make. Maybe it is because Brandon’s style of posting is so completely self-assured that there is no possible way of debating with him.

    I’ve never been told being self-assured is a bad thing before. If I weren’t so self-assured, the constant abuse I get for daring to say things people dislike would have driven me off climate blogs ages ago.

    Self-assurance is not arrogance. I know my limitations, and I openly admit my uncertainties. I probably place more caveats in my comments than just about anyone else. I also promptly admit my mistakes and try to correct them. Not only is that what a person ought to do, it is far better than what people here are promoting.

    I don’t know Brandon’s background, but get the feeling that if his education could be channelled into productive climate work that would be great. I would love to see Brandon on the side of science producing papers rather than just criticising those who are publishing stuff he disagrees with without coming up with new published research/data analysis himself. Brandon…use the data and come up with published work…I guess you have the ability to do this, and it would be great if you did.

    I have no idea why you think I ought to produce papers. I’m not an academic. And despite what you seem to believe, I’ve had no real education on anything relevant to global warming. I haven’t even had any real education in math. I’ve taught myself quite a bit, but there’s nothing to motivate me to produce papers.

    I’d much rather continue to do the things I currently do. For instance, the eBook I am being criticized for mentioning was an effort of mine to create a resource anyone can use to come to understand the hockey stick debate in one hour. Tools like that can be informative and helpful to everybody. I’d much rather have their impact than that of any papers I might get through peer-review.

    In any event, I don’t think the portrayals of me are remotely fair. What surprises me is they don’t include the one obvious criticism which even I’d agree to: My comments can be boring. Because I care about detail and precision, and because I’m bad at letting things go, I often write more than (most/all) people would care for. That’s something I could definitely see turning people off.

  254. Brandon

    I’m bad at letting things go, I often write more than (most/all) people would care for. That’s something I could definitely see turning people off.

    Like you, I often don’t let go of arguments. But there are certain things that suggest the argument is a “dead parrot”.

    When the argument changes to “Why does Brandon argue?”, it’s probably a good time for you to let it go. The reason is that the discussion will not return to any other topic. The few people jumping in will just discuss their theories about you.

  255. MichaelS:

    @Hunter said,

    “I disagree with some Tom and Steve’s positions, but they are civilized and coherent, unlike some others”.

    Civilized like when Mosher said,

    “But you realize that the brandons of the world would remain skeptical. You know there is uncertainty over exactly how many died in the holocaust”

    Yup. Just like how Fuller tried to politely engage with me!

  256. lucia:

    When the argument changes to “Why does Brandon argue?”, it’s probably a good time for you to let it go. The reason is that the discussion will not return to any other topic. The few people jumping in will just discuss their theories about you.

    I definitely agree on the general point you’re making. I just can’t agree that means I need to let this go. I’m finding this hilarious. I like seeing people make ridiculous comments about me. I like that I’ve been called a “climate fanatic[]” while people who openly attack me as a person get portrayed as civilized. It’s a source of great amusement for me.

    Mind you, I wouldn’t continue this if this were on a topical post. I probably wouldn’t even continue it if you didn’t have a more recent open thread where people could discuss whatever they wanted without dealing with this. I get a lot of people don’t like reading foodfights. That’s why I try to limit my participation in them to places which can be easily ignored.

    Of course, if you’d like it to stop as a host/admin thing I will. I have no problem with a blogger asking people to stop stupid arguments.

  258. Challenge to Brandon: examine your posts above and do a word count on “I” or “me”.

  259. @Climate Weenie,

    I suspect it would be in similar proportion to the number of negative comments directed towards him.

    In other words, when you’re responding to personal attacks, it’s only natural to respond with I and me.

  260. In other words, when you’re responding to personal attacks, it’s only natural to respond with I and me.

    Here’s a suggestion: don’t respond to personal attacks. When people find that they can push your buttons, they will. Besides, it gets incredibly boring. If your original point is valid, it will be recognized. Waste bandwidth on defending yourself from personal attacks and your original point will be lost and forgotten.

  261. Re: Brandon Shollenberger (Comment #135506)

    Lurkers of course are usually the biggest audience for any blog. I’m mainly a lurker and applying an assumption of mediocrity wrt to myself, I assume there are a bunch of others like me: somewhat interested in the subject; not having any particularly strong predisposition towards one side of a debate or another; predisposed to believe that Truth is complex, nuanced and hard-won; beyond jaded by flame-wars.

    To the extent that anybody wants to get the attention of lurkers-like-me, a description of how I read blog comments might be useful:

    (Rhetoric) ..skip..
    (Blog warrior) ..skip..
    (Ideologue) ..skip..
    (Personal war) ..skip..
    (Fruit-cake) ..skip..

    And so on. Point being that we tend to filter a lot, because there is so much crap, and so few nuggets. Doesn’t matter if you miss a nugget now & then – it’s sure to be repeated sometime later.

    Whole blogs can get filtered out by this: I don’t see why anybody who isn’t a True Believer one way or the other would continue to read the comments at WUWT or BH, for example, unless really bored. If you want a soap-opera you can find it anywhere: politics, religion, door-knob-collecting: many, many places where the rhetoric is more entertaining than it is anywhere in the climate wars, IMO.

    A risk is that getting filtered often in one place or one commenting mode may mean that you get filtered everywhere and in every conversation.

    I wouldn’t filter you because I really like the precision and focus you bring to bear on things. But it might have been different if I’d first encountered yr posting in a food-fight context.

    Just FWIW. Obviously there are plenty of reasons for commenting besides getting the attention of lurkers-like-me.

  262. Well Dewitt, that might be wise advice for me but then I don’t speak for Brandon and as far as I can tell he seems to find all of this quite amusing so I guess you’ve sniped in the wrong direction.

  263. lucia, can anything really be off-topic in an open thread? 😀

    MichaelS, I gave up on my original points quite a while ago. It quickly became evident the errors in the book Mosher and Fuller wrote were reflective of an attitude the authors are exhibiting in response to criticisms as well. It’s an attitude which makes legitimate discussion impossible. Frankly, I’m surprised I got them to admit any error. (Then again, admitting a single error and playing it off as minor is a common tactic used to distract people from looking deeper.)

    I think it’s beyond obvious to anyone who reads this exchange with an open mind the responses to my criticisms are, at best, anemic. Having established that, why not have fun with it? I get it may not be “mature” or “proper,” but it is fun. Plus, it helps to show the attitudes of the people involved. People are the most themselves when discussing the inane.

  264. Brandon,
    Well…. I can say this, but others can’t. The answer to your question is yes. The example to prove it: Doug Cotton’s theories are off topic on all threads.

  265. Mosh,
    in your narrative about data, both here and in CRUtape, you do not mention the important confrontation at Climatic Change where the issue of data availability was put to the editorial board. Jones was on the editorial board – as was Peter Gleick. Both opposed broadening data availability as a policy.

    That incident hardened lines.

    Another incident that you don’t mention and which isn’t in the emails, but was discussed in Schneider’s book as authority for data obstruction was David Verardo (NSF) endorsement of Mann’s refusal. Telling Mann that he didn’t have to provide data. Mann cited Verardo’s letter in his reply to the Barton committee, Schneider in his book.

    In endorsing data obstruction, Verardo demonstrated to me that he had been coopted by the industry that he was supposed to be regulating. (Data archiving being required under NSF grant policies.) It was an outrageous intervention by NSF.

    There’s some evidence that Verardo’s decision had been poisoned by false statements about requests for babysitting and for unreasonable information – legends that later became part of Team mythology,

  266. Brandon, in one of your posts above, you observe that CRUTape (incorrectly) stated:

    The data and methods surrounding this critical piece of evidence of climate change is the principle focus of Climategate.

    I’ve spent lots of time on Skype with Mosher and I can vouch that this is not his considered position – which is that virtually nothing in the emails is about CRUTEM. This latter obviously being a position that I’ve taken over and over at CA.

    The above statement in CRUTape (in my opinion) is both an error and inconsistent with Mosher’s actual understanding of the emails. CHalk it up to a very hurried book.

    I took a quick browse of CRUTape and the incorrect understanding is not applied in the text – so it’s a stranded incorrect statement. In my re-browse, much of the narrative remains valid and interesting even with further developments.

  267. lucia, good point. That reminds me, I heard he made a website to promote his theories. I haven’t looked at it, but supposedly a number of other people have contributed to it to support what he says.

    I don’t know that I’d ever look at it, but hopefully that means he’ll be less spammy now. And if not, maybe it’ll at least be easier to tell which comments are by him because of what they link to.

  269. I wrote some parts of that book in early December while we were still doing some preliminary scoping of what was in our laps. Those parts are different from what I (and Steve) were writing in early January, when the direction of what we were looking at was clearer.

    Not an excuse, but hopefully it clarifies this discussion.

  270. Steve McIntyre:

    I’ve spent lots of time on Skype with Mosher and I can vouch that this is not his considered position – which is that virtually nothing in the emails is about CRUTEM. This latter obviously being a position that I’ve taken over and over at CA.

    I have no problem believing that. I don’t know that it was true at the time he wrote the book, but I’m sure it is true now. His co-author’s comment may suggest it was true before as well. I don’t know.

    What I do know is Steven Mosher published and sold a book making a claim then turned around and shamelessly abused people who made the same claim. That’s not okay. Neither is it okay for him to, when faced with this, pretend the issue doesn’t exist rather than just admit the mistake made in the book.

    It would have been easy for Mosher to say, “Yeah, that was a mistake. Maybe that shows I should have a little more humility when criticizing people who make the same one.” He didn’t. And while Fuller takes the responsibility here, Mosher isn’t showing up to hurl abuse at him. That sort of hypocritical response is, well, hypocritical.

    I took a quick browse of CRUTape and the incorrect understanding is not applied in the text – so it’s a stranded incorrect statement. In my re-browse, much of the narrative remains valid and interesting even with further developments.

    Given the sheer number of errors in the book, including ones where the authors misrepresent quotes they provide (something one author has already admitted they did), I can’t describe the narrative as “valid and interesting.” Even if the points they were trying to make are valid and interesting, the way they went about making them undermines their narrative.

    In other words, doing the job wrong but getting the right answer does not your make work okay. Criticizing non-friends when they make a mistake but not criticizing your friends when they make the same mistake is not okay. These are the exact same points I’ve been making for years in regard to work by the Team and others.

  271. Oh, and there’s a bit of silliness in your phrasing I can’t resist. One quote from the book I remarked on was:

    This is not a narrative—it is a case. If you stick with us, you’ll understand at the very least why we thought it was important enough to approach in this way.

    You and I may disagree on whether or not their “narrative remains valid and interesting,” but apparently you and they can’t even agree that it is a narrative!

    😀

  274. Wow. Look at the time stamps on the last two comments. First, at 7:07 pm we have:

    Sheer number? citations please.

    Then barely four hours later at 11:16 pm we have:

    C’mon Schollenberger. ‘Given the sheer number of errors…’ Where are they?

    Four hours. For four hours, I didn’t respond to Tom Fuller, who earlier said:

    Sorry Schollenberger–I tried to engage with you politely. But I’m done with you.

    And later said:

    Just…go away.

    Fuller, who had told me he wasn’t going to respond to me and told me to go away apparently finds it unacceptable I failed to respond to him within four hours. This is the same Fuller who has walked away from discussions with me on this thread something like three different times.

    Apparently when Fuller said he was “done with [me],” what he meant was, “I now have a claim on your time so you better respond to me within hours, no matter what time of day it may be or what you may be doing. And oh, don’t count on me responding to you. I’m still going to ignore you whenever I feel like it.”

    In case anyone actually cares, I left my house over 12 hours ago to go out on a Friday evening and have fun socializing and whatnot. I just got home. I had planned to go straight to bed because it is after 4 AM. I probably wouldn’t have gotten online to comment again until at least 10 AM. That means Fuller might have had to wait as much as 18 hours for a response.

    Fuller was already impatient after four hours. If he had to wait 18, he’d probably decide I had stormed off in some petulant rage. That’s why I’m commenting now. I saw Fuller’s comments on my phone’s RSS reader, and I wanted to assure him the fact it sometimes takes me more than four hours to respond does not indicate I am ignoring him. It just indicates sometimes I am doing other things than commenting on blogs.

    Like sleeping. Or grocery shopping. Or making food. Or going out and spending time with people. I’ve already done three of those while Fuller waited for me, and I’m about to go do the fourth. If that’s not acceptable to him… well, tough.

    (By the way, acting like short delays are unbearably long is a time-honored tactic of the Team and its defenders. For one of my favorite examples, look at the behavior of Gavin Schmidt’s “guru.” That’s all I could think of when reading Fuller’s comments.)

  276. Tom, he’s got his review with examples up at his weblog. Most of the review is in the comments. He opens with a really silly critique of your copyright notice and some nitpicky stuff about your use of commas. And the fact that your dedication — like so many book dedications — contains no verb!

    But you can see for yourself whether the other errors he claims are substantive and numerous. Be prepared for many detours back into punctuation though.

  277. He’s even wrong about the grammar, at least the first comma part, which is perfectly appropriate. Ah well, Strunk and E.B.White may despair but I won’t. What little I read of that reminds me of the old story about the literature professor who spent his career trying to prove the Iliad wasn’t written by Homer, but by another Greek with the same name.

    Schollenberger, not liking the book is fine. That isn’t the same as saying it’s full of errors.

  278. Yes Tom Fuller, the fact I chose to not try to write up documentation at 4:30 AM definitely means there is none. It couldn’t possibly mean it was 4:30 in the morning and I was too tired to want to do any work. Sort of like the fact I’m now not providing any details must certainly mean I couldn’t, not that I was awake for all of 15 minutes today before having to leave the house.

    *eyerolls*

    By the way Joseph W., I think explicitly waiving your copyright protection for (tens of?) thousands of people is a weird thing to do. I’m not sure why you say it is silly for me to say so.

  279. Since Tom Fuller made an issue of it, I challenge anyone to explain why you would want to inclide the first comma in this sentence:

    We’re also grateful to Steve McIntyre and Anthony Watts, for speaking with us, giving us permission to use material from their weblog and much more besides. And we’re grateful to Lucia Liljegren just for existing.

    There is no reason to use “for speaking with us” as an appositive, but even if there were, it’s the first item in a list. Using it as an appositive woulf require the entire list be an appositive. That’d be silly.

    And if we don’t interpret it as an appositive, it is just wrong.

  282. Well Don Wagner,

    If no one gave a shit then they wouldn’t keep posting would they.

    Congratulations, your comment has helped keep this thread alive. Aren’t you the clever one.

  283. OMG Brandon stop posting! “Just go away” but first, here’s another escalating comment you have to respond to because I really want you to go away. What a bunch of BS. You want him to post because it gives you something to argue about.

    When I want to cease a discussion, I stop posting. When you want to cease a discussion, you keep posting and escalating and inviting argument. Does that make sense?

  284. Tom,

    Well, I’d still like to thank Lucia Liljegren just for existing.

    Seconded! (Not a joke)

  285. I agree with what the acknowledgement says about our host. I thought it was nice (and even said so when I commented on it during my review). I just don’t see how anyone can say that first comma should be in the sentence.

    Tom Fuller claimed I was wrong to say it shouldn’t be in it, but he’s refused to explain what function the comma is supposed to serve. Clearly, he can’t. After all, if you don’t answer a point within four hours, there must be no answer!

    MichaelS, Fuller told me to go away, told me he was done with me, theb demanded I respond to him. Four hours later, he expressed exasperation at the fact I hadn’t responded. I can’t help but think people just want me to leave so they get the last word.

    (Which I’d be fine with. I’m just going to milk this inanity for all its worth.)

  286. I too am thankful I exist. I’m thankful others are thankful I exist.

    On the comma issue: I would omit the leading comma before the first item in a list of items. However, I don’t think it’s interesting to spend much time on worrying about that sort of thing. Would a newspaper or copy-editor have people whose job it is to take that out do so? Yes. That’s a good thing– but also, in most writing– and in particular the kind in that book–the world does not come to an end because of an extra comma. There are other places it matters a lot– for example writing statutes, interpretation of statutes and so on. With respect to Mosh and Fuller’s book, my thought is “Yeah. Coulda used a better copy-editor. Probably wasn’t going to sell enough to be worth spending money to pay someone with fresh eyes to do it.”

  287. Hiya Lucia,

    We would have loved to get another pair of eyes on on the book. It was more a matter of time. Steve was doing his work on a Mac and I was using a PC. Every time we exchanged versions the formatting went decidedly south. And we had given ourselves a 30-day deadline to get it into print. Further formatting issues cropped up when we loaded the copy into Create Space.

    We ran out of minutes and it showed. Sigh. The Japanese translation was better than the English version…

    But next time we write a book we’ll let you have a look in advance–if you want.

  288. Tom,
    I totally understand. I’ve dealt with the sorts of formatting issues that happen when people send versions back and forth etc. Also, deadlines are both dangerous and necessary. If you don’t have one, you end up never publishing. If you do have one…. well, at some point you have to decide done is done. Otherwise, you never publish.

  289. In comments over at his site Brandon says: “There were never just two FOI requests.” [My bold]

    There are only a few ways I see to interpret that sentence.
    [1] FOI requests have exceeded two since the beginning of time.
    [2] Brandon has a phobia concerning number two(stink maybe?) which doesn’t allow him to acknowledge it exists.
    [3] He realized the sentence is structured incoherently, but figured people would understand and cut him some slack, similar to the way he generously does when coming across trivial writing transgressions others might make. /s

    I lean towards interpretation number two due to the claim of 55 comments shown at the comment head. There are only 54 comments shown and he could easily have mis-counted to 55 if phobic about number two.

    Stones. Glass houses.

    Hopefully more interesting subjects will eventually overwhelm this inane discussion. Maybe a discussion concerning FCC regulation of the internet?

  290. lucia, I don’t think it’s interesting either. I ignored far more grammatial/formatting issues than I commented on. Still, the quality of the writing is important to reviews. People considering buying the book will likely be interested in how well-written it is. That usually is a matter of things like prose, but it does also cover, “Follows basic grammatical rules.”

    That said, I don’t see why anyone would want to discuss examples here at this ppint. I wouldn’t have brought any up. I only commented on one since Tom Fuller said I was wrong about it. He may be too lazy/uninterested/whatever to explain his disagreements, but I’m not. If somebody thinks I made a mistake, I’ll take a look at it and see.

    In this case, I found the same thing I initially found: there is no grammatical function for the comma in question. If anyone thinks that conclusion is wrong, it should be simple to explain why they do.

  293. Brandon

    Still, the quality of the writing is important to reviews. People considering buying the book will likely be interested in how well-written it is.

    Each person is permitted to decide on what they consider important in a review. Evidently, you think reviewers should include comments on grammar; presumably other reviewers think otherwise. Consumers of reviews can up vote and down vote reviews at Amazon. You can go to Amazon and downvote all the reviewers who did not comment on grammar!

  294. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/7601.php
    Below are some of the most common signs and symptoms:

    Obsessive interests. …
    Speech is formal or distinct – there may be a lack of rhythm or intonation in how a person with AS speaks. …
    Routines. …
    Social isolation. …
    Delay in motor skills. …
    Social skills and communication. …
    Imagination. …
    Sensory difficulties.

  295. @ Tom Fuller (Comment #135546)
    I too would like to thank Lucia for existing.
    ;^)

  296. lucia,
    Each viewer of this and other threads can draw their own conclusions about who is consistently argumentative, disagreeable, and nitpicking irrelevant issues…. and then not waste time on those comments. Which is what I long ago decided to do.

  298. Brandon — what was silly was your interpretation of the “waiver.”

    Quotations by a reviewer are a type of fair use (critique and commentary). But the factual issue is…just how much text can a reviewer quote before he has violated copyright?

    What the Mosher/Fuller copyright notice says is…”if you’re with the public press, let ‘er rip. Quote paragraphs if you want, long sections if you want, and don’t angst over whether we’re going to sue you for quoting too much. We won’t.” It evinces the spirit in which they wrote the book: that they wanted to get their facts and arguments “out there” as fast as possible, before distorted versions drowned them out completely.

    But you read the waiver to say, “reviewers for the public press can print whole copies of the book and sell them or give them away.” To which I would only say…I would never appear in front of a real live judge with an argument like that. I would be laughed out of court, or at best I would get a tolerant smile…followed by big damages against my client. It makes it seem as if you read the notice in a spirit of extreme hostility, and in so doing were too eager to put a ridiculous interpretation on it. And when you seem unbalanced, and to lack a sense of perspective, you turn away readers who might otherwise be interested in your substantive critique.

    I’m always glad to see people pay attention to grammar and punctuation, but I will tell you something that is more important in persuasive writing: prioritizing. If you have strong arguments or examples against something, lead with them! Or at least with some of them. Then the reader sees you’re not going to waste his time, and is less tempted to skim or skip the rest.

    (Justice Scalia’s The Art of Persuading Judges contains this and much other good advice. It is itself short and well written, and applies far beyond legal writing. I commend it to your attention.)

  299. Brandon – what’s silly is your interpretation of the “waiver.”

    Quotations in reviews are a type of fair use (critique and commentary), but that leaves a factual question: “how much can we quote?” The Mosher/Fuller notice answers that question: “If you’re a reviewer for the public press, let ‘er rip. Quote as much as you like in your review; don’t worry about getting sued.” It’s in keeping with the sprit in which they wrote the book: to get their facts and arguments out there as fast as possible.

    You think the waiver means that reviewers could reprint the whole book and give away or sell copies, but I would never recommend appearing in front of a real live judge with an interpretation like that. At best you’d get a tolerant smile…followed by an award of damages to the other side.

    Writing what you did makes it look as if you were reading the book with extremely hostile eyes, overeager to find things wrong, and lacking a sense of perspective. When you make yourself appear unbalanced in this way, you turn away readers who might otherwise be interested in your more substantive arguments.

    Grammar and punctuation are an important part of persuasive writing, but I’ll tell you a more important part: prioritizing. If you have strong arguments against something, lead with a strong one! That way the reader sees that you’re not wasting his time or overselling your case, and is more likely to follow you through to the end.

    This advice occurs in a short, well-written, and excellent book: The Art of Persuading Judges by Antonin Scalia (and a coauthor whose name I forget). It applies far beyond the legal realm; I commend it to your attention.

  300. hunter, j ferguson —
    I disagree. While this discussion has long since disintegrated into a food fight, I don’t think one should cross the line into psychologizing. That way lies Lewandowsky- and Lakoff-land.
    .
    And yes, add me to the list of Lucia lauders.

  301. SteveF:

    Each viewer of this and other threads can draw their own conclusions about who is consistently argumentative, disagreeable, and nitpicking irrelevant issues…. and then not waste time on those comments. Which is what I long ago decided to do.

    Well depending on what you’re looking for, the alternative of “yeah me too” sort of affirmative statements aren’t particularly helpful either.

    Having people around who are willing to challenge your statements without regard to group or political affiliation are really a necessity to have in any group. When I have people criticize me, as long as the criticism is rational, I try and use it as “value added” and not take it overly personal.

    I’d suggest if Steven Mosher and Tom Fuller ever want to release a revised version of their book, reading through the criticisms and shrugging off the personal insults of critical reviews of this version of their book would be a good place to start.

    Literally use the criticism as part of your art.

  302. HaroldW:

    I disagree. While this discussion has long since disintegrated into a food fight, I don’t think one should cross the line into psychologizing. That way lies Lewandowsky- and Lakoff-land.

    100% agreed.

    I don’t think suggesting mental disorders for other participants in a blog thread is either productive or funny and I think should be a banned topic of conversation.

    Joseph W, great comments, especially the part about “leading with your strongest argument”. I teach my students to avoid making a “laundry list” of problems, as the collective sum of criticisms is rarely stronger than the chief among those criticisms, and usually dilutes the impact, because you haven’t focused on your best point.

    The other comment I will make is avoid making open criticisms (that is don’t publish) when you find yourself emotionally conflicted. Write the criticism (let off steam), but don’t publish until you’ve had a chance to calm done and write a more dispassionate version of the criticism.

    (I remember Mark Twain writing letters and sometimes sending the wrong version.)

  303. hunter (Comment #135559)
    March 1st, 2015 at 7:33 am

    http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/7601.php
    Below are some of the most common signs and symptoms:

    Obsessive interests. …
    Speech is formal or distinct – there may be a lack of rhythm or intonation in how a person with AS speaks. …
    Routines. …
    Social isolation. …
    Delay in motor skills. …
    Social skills and communication. …
    Imagination. …
    Sensory difficulties.

    Well, we’ve finally hit rock bottom. Using an unfortunate medical condition to mock your opponent is about as sleazy as one can get. The pro CAGW camp could learn a thing or two from Hunter on how to use insinuation and innuendo to marginalize their opponents. You stay classy Hunter!

  304. Carrick,

    collective sum of criticisms is rarely stronger than the chief among those criticisms, and usually dilutes the impact, because you haven’t focused on your best point

    A close corollary of the 80/20 rule: 80% of sales from 20% of customers, 80% of problems from 20% of employees, 80% of technical progress from 20% of publications, etc. It may even be more disproportionate than 80/20 in some cases. (Like 95% of useless comment volume from 5% of blog commenters. 😉 )
    .
    Anyway, there’s constructive criticism, and then there is endless, non-constructive, obstinate hectoring. I think it’s important to be able to tell the difference.

  305. I like how pretty much everything I’m accused of is found in the responses to me. Sometimes in droves. For instance, Bob Koss says:

    In comments over at his site Brandon says: “There were never just two FOI requests.” [My bold]

    There are only a few ways I see to interpret that sentence.
    [1] FOI requests have exceeded two since the beginning of time.
    [2] Brandon has a phobia concerning number two(stink maybe?) which doesn’t allow him to acknowledge it exists.
    [3] He realized the sentence is structured incoherently, but figured people would understand and cut him some slack, similar to the way he generously does when coming across trivial writing transgressions others might make. /s

    But this all requires assuming the word “never” refers to “since the beginning of time. That’s not the case. As everyone knows, context can allow one to use “never” without it referring to a true never. For instance, after a hand of gin rummy I might say, “I never saw an ace.” Nobody would interpret that as me saying I’ve never seen an ace in my entire life.

    As for this remark of his:

    I lean towards interpretation number two due to the claim of 55 comments shown at the comment head. There are only 54 comments shown and he could easily have mis-counted to 55 if phobic about number two.

    I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. I can’t say I’ve counted the comments on the page he refers to, so he might be right about how many there are, but what would that have to do with anything? I haven’t referred to that counter, and I don’t set the counter on the page. Software does that automatically. The counter might be off because of some bug or quirk, but I can’t see how that’d relate to anything I’ve ever said.

    But supposedly this is supposed to reflect on something I’ve said, I guess.

  306. Hoi Polloi tries to suggest I am wrong on the comma issue by posting this image:

    https://i.imgur.com/jxjhq5K.jpg

    And Tom Fuller smiles upon this:

    Hoi Polloi

    🙂

    But anyone interested in the issue of whether or not I am correct on this grammar issue would know “The Parenthetical Comma” is used to enclose an appositive – the very thing I discussed does not exist here. I showed this argument was wrong before it was even made. The response was to ignore me then make the exact same argument I had just rebutted.

    That is hilarious. Just like it’s hilarious Joseph W. says:

    Quotations by a reviewer are a type of fair use (critique and commentary). But the factual issue is…just how much text can a reviewer quote before he has violated copyright?

    What the Mosher/Fuller copyright notice says is…”if you’re with the public press, let ‘er rip. Quote paragraphs if you want, long sections if you want, and don’t angst over whether we’re going to sue you for quoting too much. We won’t.” It evinces the spirit in which they wrote the book: that they wanted to get their facts and arguments “out there” as fast as possible, before distorted versions drowned them out completely.

    To claim I am wrong about what I said about this book’s copyright notice but does nothing to show his interpretation is actually correct. I quoted the copyright notice and explained how my interpretation arises from it. Joseph W. just said, “Nuh-uh.”

    And then he went on to make the silly remark:

    I’m always glad to see people pay attention to grammar and punctuation, but I will tell you something that is more important in persuasive writing: prioritizing. If you have strong arguments or examples against something, lead with them! Or at least with some of them. Then the reader sees you’re not going to waste his time, and is less tempted to skim or skip the rest.

    Which rests on the assumption my “live” commentary on the book was meant as some sort of rebuttal. It wasn’t. It was meant to document my thoughts as I went through the book. I did the exact same thing with Michael Mann’s book. Nobody criticized me for that.

    More importantly, when I decided to write a response to Mann’s book, I went back and built upon the live commentary I had written. In other words, my live commentary served as a form of note-taking. Nobody would insist one needs to prioritize only the strongest arguments when taking notes. That’s true even if one shares their notes as they take them.

    Ultimately, Joseph W. responds to my note-taking by telling me I did a bad job of making a case, but at the same time, his case against me is based entirely upon not rebutting anything I actually said or did.

  308. Michael S
    You are right. Thank you for the wake up call.
    I apologize to Brandon for posting the insinuation about what might drive him.
    It was uncalled for and clearly unnecessary.
    Sincerely,
    hunter

  310. Carrick,

    (I remember Mark Twain writing letters and sometimes
    sending the wrong version.)

    Surely you’re not THAT old!

  311. hunter, j ferguson –
    Thanks for the gracious comments.

    Now perhaps we can get off the subject of personalities, and back to discussing commas.

    Or even science-y stuff, such as Roberts et al., or Steinman et al.

    P.S. Earle: 🙂

  312. Carrick, thanks for the advice. We debated a second edition but neither of us had the time needed to make the needed improvements. There was additional material we wanted to include, but frankly doing what Schollenberger would have demanded just was going to take too much time. We knew the book was full of typos and a couple of people had pointed out errors of fact which we really wanted to correct, Arthur Smith and someone else.

    (And we were not happy with Create Space’s copyright declaration, which appeared in the book by surprise.)

    But, I would have added more commas.

  313. Tom Fuller,

    “We debated a second edition but neither of us had the time needed to make the needed improvements.”

    I would imagine you had a little less enthusiasm–revisiting is never as much fun as the chase. I think you got a lot of bang for your buck.

  314. Earle:

    Surely you’re not THAT old!

    Nah. Mark Twain just never died. He’s still around. Rumors of his death were greatly exaggerated, after all 😀

    HaroldW:

    Now perhaps we can get off the subject of personalities, and back to discussing commas.

    Or we could discuss the multiple misquotations I just found when I decided to start looking at Mosher and Fuller’s sources. I don’t know though. If I think much about that, I might finally have to give up on the book. There is only so much I can take.

    (Then again, maybe people would consider that a good thing!)

    Or even science-y stuff

    Didn’t you hear? Science-y stuff isn’t allowed here. We have a new open thread for people who want to have discussions about whatever without fear of being disrupted by people calling them mentally handicapped.

    And yes, I know hunter and j ferguson just apologized for that, but that they ever felt it was acceptable shows how low people here have been delving

  316. New thread while book people stay here?
    Something on the BOM revisionism in the Australian
    A full page spread of sensible writing.
    Should stir the possums ups.
    Or Rudd and his comments on the Soon paper.
    Noticed Zeke and co out in tandem very early to knock it.
    Not sure why
    “There was a saying among WWII Army Air Force bomber pilots: “If you are taking heavy flak, you are over the target”. What is it about this target?”

    Steven Mosher agreed with JC saying
    ” I don’t see that they can provide any insights into why GCM climate models disagree with observations.”
    “Yup. its the weirdest approach to diagnosing problems.
    It’s questionable that the mean of models has anything but a pragmatic meaning. If you want to diagnose what is wrong with ‘models’ it’s more sensible to examine them individually.”
    hmm.
    From the man who says any model is better than none at all?
    On an article entitled “Why models run hot, results from an irreducibly simple climate model”
    He says its the weirdest approach? Seems an eminently sensible approach when discussing model means to examine them together Steven, especially when they are all running hot.

    ” I havent read widely in the GCM work”
    Now he tells us???

    Full quote was ” Simple energy balance or feedback models are useful for back of the envelope arguments. I don’t see that they can provide any insights into why GCM climate models disagree with observations.”

    Why put the boots in so hard and instead discuss his argument, is that so hard.

  317. Michael S
    You are right. Thank you for the wake up call.
    I apologize to Brandon for posting the insinuation about what might drive him.
    It was uncalled for and clearly unnecessary.
    Sincerely,
    hunter

    Sh*t happens in the heat of debate. It’s cool with me.

  320. I mentioned the fact I found multiple misquotation in Steven Mosher and Tom Fuller’s book. Fuller has responded by saying:

    Multiple? Citation needed. (Not a general fling to a blog.)

    This is a strange response, even if we ignore that he said he wasn’t going to talk to me anymore. The link I provided in my comment was this one. Anyone who follows it will find themselves directed to a single comment on my site. This comment describes one of the misquotations I found. The next three comments continue to discuss such misquotations.

    In other words, all Fuller had to do was follow the link I provided, and he would have immediately found a discussion of misquotations. Despite this, he somehow insisted the link is insufficient, being only “a general fling to a blog.”

    Apparently being linked to a specific comment which provides an example and is immediately followed by more comments providing more examples is not enough for Fuller. I’m not sure what would be. Do I need to provide a link to each comment individually? Do I have to quote the comments or maybe retype them? I have no idea.

    What I do know is if anyone told me I had misquoted someone, I’d be willing to read a couple comments to try to figure out why.

  321. Brandon Shollenberger,

    You inspired an excellent critique of the Mosher/Fuller book. Thank you. It was great that Fuller and Mosher participated in it. Thanks to lucia for having a pleasant venue where it could happen.

    Your severely critical review was civil. I appreciate that.

    I bought the Mosher and Fuller book right after it came out but never read it because at the time of its publishing there was so much to try to keep up with on the climate blogs to take time away to sit down with a book. I will sit down now to read through it.

    John

  322. John Whitman, I’m glad you liked it. I should have finished the book this week, but I’ve been falling behind on a bunch of things due to real life stuff. I don’t like procrastinating, but when people offer to pay you money to do things, it can be hard to say no.

    Best of luck to you when you read the book. I hope you find it easier to get through than I do.

  324. Does anyone know what worked? Trying to figure out Eli Rabett and willard is bad enough. I don’t think I can add a Steven Mosher to the my blog deciphering.

  326. Hi Brandon,

    “Does anyone know what worked?”

    My BEST guess is that you just updated Mosher’s prior. ;O)

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