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..until Sunday July 29th, around Noon PST, WUWT ..

350 Comments

Let the speculation begin! Anthony writes:

Something’s happened. From now until Sunday July 29th, around Noon PST, WUWT will be suspending publishing. At that time, there will be a major announcement that I’m sure will attract a broad global interest due to its controversial and unprecedented nature.

To give you an idea as to the magnitude of this event, I’m suspending my vacation plans. I weighed the issue, and decided (much to my dismay) this was more important. I can go on vacation trips another time, but this announcement is not something I can miss now and do later.

Media outlets be sure to check in to WUWT on Sunday around 12PM PST and check your emails.

If you wish to be automatically notified of the updates, click on the “Follow Blog via Email” button about midway down the right sidebar.

Comments are closed, and I will not be responding to emails until Sunday.

Thank you for your consideration and patience – Anthony Watts

3

I’ve decided that in this case copying the whole thing is fair use! I admit to being curious. V_e_r_y. Maybe the beetle larvae got him? Beats me. Anyone have a clue?

(Note: I suspect new commenters might what to chat here. If new visitors comment, remember first comments are moderated. )

350 thoughts on “..until Sunday July 29th, around Noon PST, WUWT ..”

  1. Considering how often Steven Mosher gets inside information (and how much he knows about the backdrop behind things), I’d love to hear his speculation if he has any or cares to (or cares to leak little tidbits if he is in the direct know 😉 )

    As to Lucia’s speculation… if Anthony was really a giant beetle controlling a human suit, that would fit the description!

  5. Oh groan. I hate things like this. The tension (like who shot JR, only far worse, because I couldn’t care less who shot JR). I care about WUWT though.

  6. Lucia–

    If he knows something specific, I have a feeling we won’t see him till Sunday 🙁

    Brandon–

    Nah, I don’t think Anthony is crazy enough to run for that job (as Colin Powell would say). Though, it would fit the description too!

  7. 5 quatloos on it being an insect infestation in Watt’s home town (wherever that is).

  8. wow.

    There is only one reason why a newsman stops publishing.

    at least one I can think of.

    Let’s see what I ruled out.

    1. Anthony has a new paper that he is announcing…
    hmm he would not stop publishing for that.
    2. Personal life issues. hmm he would talk to his friends

    3. WUWT hacked? well, there was suspicious activity in the last week related to the site.. I dont think its that.

    4. He’s being purchased by HuffPo. HAHAHAHAH. but seriously
    I dont think he is being acquired.

    5. Climategate 3.0.. hmm. wait for november for that.

    That leaves my one speculation.

    even there I dont think my guess is right.

    My guess would be some kind of legal action. maybe he was served.
    But that is not unprecedented and not global.

    weird.

    Anyway, com channels are silent. nobody is going to find out.
    Friday is a bad news day, but Anthony has turned it into a newsday with a bit of mystery.

  10. It doesn’t make sense that legal action would be announced at noon (I’m assuming PDT) on a Sunday. In fact, noon Sunday is a real head-scratcher. Why noon Sunday?

  11. @ Mosher – not unprecedented and not global for him to be served. Maybe FOIA has revealed himself to him. Maybe it will happen at the Olympics 🙂

  13. Thanks for showing up, Mosher!

    My only down to Earth guess for what could be worthy of such a mysterious post, and a suspension of news, is coming into possession of some incontrovertible evidence of collusion between political forces to specifically corrupt science data and interpretations, to specifically enact a global agenda (whatever that may be, as I don’t give in to such conspiracy theories), and which all of could specifically harm our civilization.

    Other than that.. no clue. And I know whatever I speculate will undoubtedly be proven false come Sunday. But its fun! I love a good mystery.

    Brandon–

    Senate seat would be more reasonable, for sure 🙂

  14. Actually, if I had to guess, I’d say some group/organization is going to be doing some sort of project that involves examining/investigating some fairly large aspect of the global warming controversy, and he’ll be playing a part in it. That’s about the only thing I can think of which would fit his description. I can’t imagine it’d be a Congressional committee forming, but there are all sorts of other possibilities.

    Of course, I’m probably way off.

  15. Maybe Peter Gleick hacked emails of Mann/Schmidt/Hansen and sent them to Anthony.

  19. BillC.

    I don’t rule out the possibility that FOIA has revealed himself to Anthony; however, if that’s what it is, there are other people who I would expect would find out first.

  20. Mosher

    My guess would be some kind of legal action. maybe he was served.

    I don’t think he would stop blogging and tell us he will be announcing a big thing on Sunday if he was served because the person who served him would be aware of the issue and could just reveal that information. This would rob Anthony of his “scoop”

    Friday is a bad news day, but Anthony has turned it into a newsday with a bit of mystery.

    Yes. And it’s possible that he’s announcing Sunday because
    1) He needs to carefully word something and
    2) Monday is a good newsday for Newspapers. But by announcing Sunday, everyone will be talking Monday morning. Also, noon PST is not noon everywhere. Noon Sunday is probably just in time for the UK news media bloggers to read and comment.

  22. BillC,
    Yup, disclosure of FOIA’s identity would be sufficient to ‘stop the presses’, especially if FOIA turned out to be an insider. Or maybe an interview with FOIA, without revealing his/her identity, which Anthony is working on as we write. Positively identifying some well known global warming advocate who has hacked into WUWT might do it. Being served with papers from a lawsuit? Doesn’t seem big enough. Maybe Gleick settling a civil suit worth millions of dollars would be enough, but even that seems too small. UVA capitulating on Mann’s emails? Maybe, but seems unlikely.

  23. Assuming that there are moderators who could step in and keep things moving on WUWT, the suspension suggests that there is a volume of material that needs to be screened or checked. Of course, a MacArthur would be well deserved.

  24. Thomaswfuller’s idea is a good one, if it was a seriously enormous breakthrough that would be released Monday, so Anthony is going to scoop it. But… that wouldn’t be controversial would it?

    I really don’t think it’s something as mundane as e-mails; as the impact of those has always decreased, and they wouldn’t be unprecedented. FOIA’s reveal would only be so important if he was someone really, really high up, or Gavin Schmidt.

    Even so, why stop the presses? Not even guest posts.

  27. Based on the clues Anthony has left us, we can rule out that he was served with a lawsuit, a new paper, personal issues, or an acquisition of WUWT.

    I dont believe we can rule out CG3, in fact this is the most likely scenario even though Im hoping for something more explosive, unless of course CG3 is super-explosive, as Pointman has expertly speculated.

    We can also rule out that WUWT has been hacked. If it had been, Anthony would be using other means to tell everyone he’d been hacked.

    We can use the following clues:
    -Anthony was probably not aware of this until very recently
    -This is something that requires alot of work or alot of care before making an annoucement
    -This story would come out some time after Sunday even if Anthony went on vacation

    CG3 fits that bill, but obviously many other things do.

    My current best guess other than CG3 is some prominent previously-alarmist climate scientist spilling the beans on the whole sham.

  28. maybe emails AND identity/interview of ‘leaker’ (an insider?!)

    Just guessing like everybody else though, but volume of material to work through makes the actions of stopping publishing/moderating look feasible.

    WUWT doesn’t appear to be hacked, ie I can log on fine still (but beyond that I know absolutely nothing)

  29. Mosher–

    I think you’re right, that’s the most logical conclusion for the sudden silence.

  30. Read reading it. It looks positive.
    since he is using the word unprecedented, my bet is he has something and is checking it twice.

    But he had to trust it enough to suspend publishing.

    He has created great interest and has to deliver.

  31. Absolutely. He’s no naive attention getter, and we already know the very wide realm of things that constitute just normal news items to him, and many of those have been pretty big on their own right, let alone the items that get a sticky. The bar is already set very high, and a call out to the media now sets it in the stratosphere.

  32. My guess is that someone has cracked or guessed the FOIA password and they are unpacking. They are probably busy seeking legal advice on publishing. Anything else would seem overly melodramatic. Some criminal activity exposed would be reason for caution. Such drama! GK

  33. Ruling out.

    1. Personal life issues. hmm he would talk to his friends
    2. WUWT hacked? well, there was suspicious activity in the last week related to the site.. I dont think its that.
    3. He’s being purchased by HuffPo. HAHAHAHAH. but seriously
    I dont think he is being acquired.
    4. lawsuit

    #########
    open

    1. some evidence against the temp record
    ( it better be solid )
    2. FOIA reveal

    3. new technology.

    Hmm he’s got a scoop of some sorts. Its important ( to him) and he wants attention.
    ..

    Hmm

  34. Gavin is RC-FOIA? That would stop the presses a lot of places! 😉
    Non a chance.
    Maybe James Hansen has told Anthony that he was kidnapped and replaced by an alien robot 35 years ago, and finally managed to escape from the aliens the day before yesterday.

  35. I’ll speculate that someone at NASA got disgusted over the ‘Greenland Ice Melt’ story and has decided to defect and spill the beans on the cooked books and over egged pudding.

  37. Mosher

    Maybe he is stopping publishing just to get attention

    But that’s only useful if his Sunday announcement is pretty big. This preannouncement does amplify, but it would be stupid if on Sunday, the post was “A monster goes put, put, put.”*

    (Those are the immortal words on my brother, who at the age of 2 1/2 or so got really upset he couldn’t get a word in edgewise at the family dinner table where his older sisters and parents were chattering away, screamed something about wanting to get to speak… and then Dad said, “Ok. Let Peter speak”. Of course, at 2, he didn’t really have anything much specific to say. And he winged it. His conversational skills did improve over time.)

  38. maybe BEST is releasing their attribution study – Mosher would know more than I on this though

  39. “A monster goes put, put, put.”

    That’s really choice. In fact, that’s the best such story I’ve heard in years.

    thanks.

  41. RealClimate commenter “Russell” may be on to Watts’ shenagigans:

    > One fears he has finalized the post-Heartland subsidy alluded to by Brad Johnson.

    At ThinkProgress.org, Johnson had written about the Gleick trove in February:

    The secret Heartland document explains that Watts isn’t just trying to present “new NOAA surface data in a public friendly graphical form.” Watts, the document explains, has been “exposing flaws in the current network of temperature stations (work that the Heartland Institute supported and promoted),” based on his hypothesis that “many of the temperature stations relied on by weathermen are compromised by heat radiating from nearby buildings, machines, or paved surfaces.” These stations generate “spurious records” which are “used by environmental extremists as evidence that human emissions are causing either global warming or the more ambiguous ‘climate change.’”

  42. “A monster [file} goes put, put, put [the sound of unpacking files – HD access].” GK

  45. Maybe stopping publishing allows all his readers to assess how much they value the site for two days. Then on Sunday he comes up with a new charging scheme for access. To make it “unprecedented”, however, it would have to be some type of charging mechanism no one else has figured out thus far. If he does have some new foolproof method of charging for content on the internet, it would certainly “change the world”. It might also be “controversial”. Media outlets would also be very interested in such a development and would want to check it out.

  46. On further reflection, I am leaning more towards Option 3. Like all our speculations, it’s a long shot though. The “Mosher List” of possibilities is by far the best one so far.

    Eric–
    You may be closer than you think, if all the rumblings going on are not coincidences; which they are most likely to be though. Again, option 3 is a long shot, and there’s more likely possibilities, but it’s still on the table, and would fit the bill of this mystery to a T.

  47. There are four open Congressional seats in California (41, 47, 26, 21). Does Anthony live in one of those districts?

  48. “there will be a major announcement that I’m sure will attract a broad global interest due to its controversial and unprecedented nature.”
    That is a hard combination of adjectives for anything published on WUWT to live up to. I hope Anthony is not hyping too much.

  49. Maybe Kenji got a huge promotion at UCS. Top dog?

    Bill Nye. Go fetch me my chewy bone.

  50. “But that’s only useful if his Sunday announcement is pretty big. This preannouncement does amplify, but it would be stupid if on Sunday, the post was ”

    yes he has set the bar pretty high. that rulz certain things out.. assuming he has good news judgement..

  52. Charles–

    That you are in the dark makes this all the more mysterious. Also means the suspension of posting isn’t to pull back all you moderators to help with something. Unless of course you are secretly obfuscating us to keep us guessing ;).

  53. SteveF (Comment #100139)
    July 27th, 2012 at 1:41 pm
    There are four open Congressional seats in California (41, 47, 26, 21). Does Anthony live in one of those districts?

    ############

    Chico.. not sure what district.

  58. My two guesses: 1) an interview with FOIA, and that 2) FOIAs identity is still unknown, even to Anthony, but that FOIA supplied the password to Climategate 3.0 files as proof that he is indeed FOIA.

  60. An interview would be a sticky, not a stop the presses call in the media sort of thing, I would think from previous patterns. Not unless something like proof of impeachable offenses of high up political people was offered.

    Robert has nailed it, I think!

  61. I wouldn’t be too surprised if this is overblown or some commercial enterprise – I’m less convinced about the man’s judgement than many here.

    Maybe another piece of the puzzle, but not of earthquake proportions, at least in the short term.

  62. Ged,

    My involvement has been rather limited for the past year or so, so it is not surprising that I wasn’t around to be briefed.

  63. Sean–
    Then why not a sticky?

    Climategate was a sticky, not a stop the presses, same with climategate part 2. Same with the Gleick reveal. And the Higgs Boson was just a normal news item. So that gives some context. Unless he’s suddenly lost his marbles.

    Charles–
    Gotchya!

  64. [NOTE: this is cross posted from BH’s blog]

    Jul 27, 2012 at 8:37 PM | Anoneumouse said,

    “””From Norwich to Pennsylvania I can hear the sound of twitching sphincters”””

    – – – – – – – – –

    Anoneumouse,

    Exactly . . . .

    I have had some thoughts along the lines that Anthony knows that some individual(s) is/are aware of and very concerned about what Anthony will reveal. Is Anthony trying to give room to he/she/them to self-reveal the stuff that Anthony has before he reveals it? That would be a humane move on Anthony’s part. Kudos to Anthony if that is the case.

    John

  65. Charlie A (Comment #100153)
    July 27th, 2012 at 2:12 pm
    My two guesses: 1) an interview with FOIA, and that 2) FOIAs identity is still unknown, even to Anthony, but that FOIA supplied the password to Climategate 3.0 files as proof that he is indeed FOIA.

    ###############

    holy shit. Well that would allow Anthony to be certain that his
    story was solid.

    There is also an outstanding promise from FOIA. a promise tied to the end of the police investigation.

  66. I am making the rounds to see if any of the sites have an in.

    So far, no one has a clue. I think we need to put Anthony in charge of White House secrets!

  67. John.

    The way I read it is this.

    1. Anthony has an exclusive of some sorts and he knows he has it.
    he is not afraid of being scooped. hence the early reveal.
    2. He must know that it is real. so he has proof.

    3. He suspended publishing to create interest.

    I’m changing my bets to an FOIA mail release..

  70. Following the CG-III meme (I wish we had something besides xxxx-gate. Of course, CG is kind of catchy in and of itself and may now become the standard for this domain).
    1. Internal EPA/NASA/NOAA documents or emails that challenge the endangerment finding.
    2. Internal UN documents or emails that document and express concern about the impact of environmental groups on the IPCC process.
    3. A disclosure of the UVA Mannian emails.
    4. A disclosure of what the “team” or AR5 authors have been saying in their non publicly funded (and thus not FOIA-able) emails.

    And I have to add that I also am very pleased that Steve M was #100,000.

  71. FOIA/Climategate related would be my best guess, though thats somewhat mitigated by the fact that Mosher and McIntyre (to the best of my knowledge) haven’t been briefed about it.

    It has to be something that is:

    1) More important than something that warrants a normal sticky. Either more important in its overall impact (less likely) or more important in its interest to Anthony’s specific community (more likely).
    2) A scoop by Anthony. The reference to emails to the media indicates that he will be the one breaking the news.

    One possibility might be the formation of a new thinktank or other group with Anthony and others. Similarly, some new report that has been under wraps is about to be released.

  72. There’s an update on Anthony’s site to sooth the savage blogosphere.

  73. how long would it take to convert all the attachments in CGIII into excel format, so that Steve McI can use them 🙂

    please let it be the password

  74. AW says it has something to do with one of his projects and everyone will want to know about it. Seems like it’s going to be a letdown.

  75. “Anthony’s site to sooth the savage blogosphere.”
    While my dark side wanted something CG-IIIish, this sounds way cool.

  76. Hmm, the follow-up to Fall et al passed peer review and the announcement is coming out?

  78. UPDATE: I’ve been advised by concerned friends that speculation on the nature of this announcement has gotten out of hand in the blogosphere, and that was not my intent. My intent was to give me time to work on something very important without the distraction of this blog, emails/twitter/facebook, etc.

    As many of you know, running WUWT is a monumental task which I could not do without the help of many people. Even so, it still requires my constant attention.

    First, I am well. This isn’t a health issue for me or my family.

    Second, my announcement has nothing to do with FOIA issues or other sorts of political or social theories being bandied about on other blogs.

    It does however have something to do with one of my many projects, and it has important implications that I’m sure everyone will want to know about.

    I greatly appreciate all the concern and interest, and I look forward to being able to share all my work on Sunday. – Anthony

    .
    Now I’m disapointed.

  79. Similarly, some new report that has been under wraps is about to be released.

    If this is the reason the blog pause and cancelling a family vacation are mistakes.

  80. Jerome

    AW says it has something to do with one of his projects and everyone will want to know about it.

    Where and when did he say this?

    ==
    update
    Oh.. I see. G. Karst (Comment #100173)

  81. Don’t be let down guys (until we see what it is at least :P), unless FOIA was the only thing you were interested in. I never believed for a second this had anything to do with FOIA/climategate/the emails. This sounds like it’s something way more exciting, and exciting to the globe, not just the climate blog sphere (hence the call to normal media).

  84. well the IPCC deadline is coming up..

    paper accepted or rejected in the nick of time?

  85. Technically its the IPCC submission deadline thats around this week, not accept/reject deadline.

  88. I’m changing my bet. He has a weather station site situation paper with monumental implications that The Team/IPCC/Someone ‘Important’ agrees with.

  89. Fine. It’s not CG-3. In some quarters it really will represent an “Oh Shit!” moment. You’re not going to be disappointed.

  91. Ok, lets have some fun with this:

    1) Anthony Watts has been selected to head up the production of the next IPCC Assessment Report.

    2) Anthony Watts has been selected to be a senior staff member of Senator Ihofe’s staff and is moving to Oklahoma.

    3) The now-discredited Dr. Michael Mann has decided to repent and part ways with the warmanistas and join the ranks of the climate skeptics. He is also moving to California so Mr. Watts is going to fly out and help Dr. Mann load up a U-Haul and allow him to stay in a spare room at his house until Dr. Mann gets on his feet in his new location.

    4) None of the above.

    I am sure one of these is correct.

  92. He has put the final nail in the coffin of AGW.

    Or perhaps he has run out of nails.

  93. I may be proven wrong, but in light of Anthony’s clarification, I rather suspect this will turn out to be a lot less than the fevered speculation above suggests.

  95. SteveF–
    I agree. I think Anthony was focusing on letting people know why he is taking a break to provide himself time and he believes the issue is newsworthy. But of course, everyone’s imagination ran wild! (Mine did!)

    I’m interested in reading the Sunday post, but I doubt it’s going to be of the “stop the presses” variety. Of course… may turn out to be wrong! (Cold fusion!!! 🙂 )

  96. heard three things:
    (1) BEST is being released Monday
    (2) BEST has extended the analysis into the 18th century
    (3) BEST has concluded that most of the last 50 years is human caused

    1 and 2 are confirmed in that I know that BEST has extended the analysis and that the results are being released early next week. #3 is from two sources. Apparently there are some who have been shown the BEST results – I presume Anthony is one of them.

  97. Steven Mosher (Comment #100177)
    July 27th, 2012 at 3:18 pm

    There is another project….but its technology.

    He got some funding from heartland a while back for some sort of climate data visualization tool. The software is probably fairly simple…building an ‘affordable box’ to run it all on may have been the hard part.

    Whether climate data visualized with significantly smaller grid cells then what GISS uses to make their pretty pictures ends up looking different could be ‘controversial’.

  98. The use of the term “unprecedented” is interesting, but given its rather overuse in recent month related to many things, my guess is that whatever Anthony announces:

    1) Won’t be unprecedented
    2) Won’t change anything related to climate science
    3) Will be much like a clanging gong or banging cymbal– full of sound and fury but in the end actually signifying nothing
    4) Will create a fair amount of buzz in certain segments of the blogsphere– but perhaps not as much as Anthony thought
    5) Anthony probably should have gone ahead and taken his vacation

  99. Mosher,
    Here on Cape Cod seals have returned in the last ~15 years (the result of protection from hunting), and there are 25 to 50 thousand of them, fouling the beaches (think about 50 thousand 300 pound guys using the beach like a toilet). So, we now also have lots of great whites (which seem to like eating seals), and kayakers and surfers actually have a chance to jump the shark, if they are so inclined. Talk about unintend consequences! Check Cape Cod shark kayak on googe for a video.

  100. If it’s a gizmo he’s been working on, why would he cancel his vacation? That suggests more of an external event.

  101. My guess is that this is related to Surface Station Project/BEST in someway. There was only one thing that I observed that ever got Anthony really upset on WUWT and that was the conduct of the BEST team. Now, rumors abound of another BEST announcement next week. I suspect that Anthony wants to (1) beat them to the punch with his own work and (2) overwhelm their release with coverage of his stuff. This might be something that he had been working on and that was nearing completion, but the BEST announcement has forced him to move his release plans forward. He needs to work frantically over the weekend to get it done before BEST goes out.

  103. Mosher wrote: “1. some evidence against the temp record
    ( it better be solid )”

    Didn’t he take a couple of days off a few weeks back saying he was working on a very important project?

    At first I thought it might be something to do with HI and Gleick, and then I thought it might be FOIA coming in from the cold, but now I think it is something related to what you’ve speculated above.

  104. He’s discovered the satellite records of the ancient astronauts. Complete global coverage of temperature starting from the time of the pyramids. Next step is for Mosher to push von Daniken to archive his data properly.

  106. Regarding the BEST Analysis rumor:

    Hot Rumor: BEST Analysis Next Week to Report – Globe’s Temperature Up 1.5 Degrees Celsius

    [[ http://reason.com/blog/2012/07/27/hot-rumor-best-analysis-next-week-to-rep ]]

    The gist is BEST will release a new finding “next week” and:

    “The rumors say that new BEST reanalysis will show that global average temperature has increased by 1.5 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times and will suggest that most of the warming since the 1950s is the result of increased greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.”

    I emailed Bailey to confirm his rumor was 1.5 C and not 1.5 F and confirms:

    “To be clear – as I understand it the increase is 1.5 degrees Celsius from about 1750. I again stress that it is a rumor – so my information may be garbled in its transmission to me.”

    So, I stress — THIS IS A RUMOR.

  108. Watts demos incredible UHI 3-D heatmap. NASA arithmetic of 1×0=2×0 implies 1=2 shown to be false. Global scientists synchronously slap foreheads.

  109. RB

    Watts demos incredible UHI 3-D heatmap. NASA arithmetic of assuming that 1×0=2×0 implies 1=2 shown to be false. Global scientists synchronously slap foreheads.

    Are the 1 and 2 in lbf or Newtons?

  110. “as I understand it the increase is 1.5 degrees Celsius from about 1750.”

    Which would document the recovery of the LIA. CO2 would not have had any impact until after the 1960s or so.

  113. BREAKING NEWS: Burning Man responsible for all post 1986 warming; organisers apologise and promise Carbon Capture & Storage technology to be installed for next year.

  114. Burning Man isn’t until the end of August (ends labor day weekend) unless he is working on the advance DPW crew. I don’t think they have even set the center mark yet.

  115. The BEST rumor is an interesting one. Anthony got burned badly on the first release. If he got wind of a new release it would probably motivate him to take some kind of preemptive action. Equally intriguing is some kind of inclusion of Anthony’s efforts in to the next IPCC report or some new weather station paper that attempts to take the wind out of the sails of a new BEST report.

  116. I predict WUWT website will crash at noon PDT on Sunday, unprecedented? I don’t know. 🙂

  117. He said “something’s happened”
    That “something led him to the decision not to take a family vacation,as he talks about the time he spends away from his everyday family life quite often,it would have to be something important to him.
    Why does he need to give up his family vacation?You can be on the internet wherever you are,so what necessitates him being home?
    Maybe he is planning on spending days on his computer after the announcement,what would necessitate him being there all the time?
    That’s all I got.

  118. Watts is suffering from attention deficit syndrome. He doesn’t feel like he is getting enough attention.

  119. 1. Anthony’s use of the word “unprecedented” would seem to have some specific meaning considering the very recent flap over the silly use of the word regarding the Greenland ice melt silliness.

    2. This was something unexpected. Generally a project related announcement would be well planned in advance. Certainly would not require cancellation of vacation plans.

    3. Anthony had remarked in a thread comment recently that the Heartland funding for his project had been lost as a result of GleickGate An initial thought was perhaps he had received replacement funding, and from a potentially unexpected or unusual source – and that he needed to finish the demonstration software for an announcement. However, this too would note require urgency – and could have been pre-planned.

    4. Anthony says the announcement will be controversial and unprecedented and have broad global interest. I don’t really see the BEST paper in that category – it could be just as effective to wait to see what it says and then reply.

    5. What would be unprecedented, controversial and of broad global interest would be for the main stream “science” establishment – some highly warmist biased entity – to embrace, acknowledge, fund and/or endorse Anthony – a skeptic. Taking a skeptic seriously – someone the warmist cabal believes little more than a heretic – would be highly controversial – and such breaking down of the “climate bias” would most certainly be unprecedented. An announcement would not have HAD to be made right away, but considering the gravity perhaps Anthony wanted to share as soon as possible with the world.

    6. My wild arse guess 😉 …. Perhaps a benefactor or prestigious institution, agency or entity – one with warmist ties –
    (a.) … has agreed to fund a project where Anthony can provide a proper, accurate, non-biased Universal Climate Monitoring Station to schools, universities and the like across the world,
    (b.) … which would be tied to a global Blade-Server Network provided by Anthony’s firm, which would; (1) provide real time display of world wide weather, (2) through an easy to use, user friendly online site, (3) with 3D graphic’s by Anthony’s other company
    (c.) … this network would also collect raw data from existing sources such as UAH, RSS, and other trustworthy autonomous sources
    (d.) … this network would also archive and provide public access to all of the raw climate data collected, and
    (e.) … an educational curriculum appropriate for each age group will be developed and provided to the schools hosting stations – not to teach one climate position or another – but to teach students about science by making them real participants in the scientific process

    If I’m not right – and this isn’t what Anthony is announcing – it sure seems like someone should be doing this 😉

  120. “I’ve been advised by concerned friends that speculation on the nature of this announcement has gotten out of hand in the blogosphere, and that was not my intent.”
    Given the wording of his original announcement, *what* did he think would happen?

  121. Anthony thought he had proof the earth was cooling, then realised he had the wrong sign on his calculation.

    Anthony had definite proof there was a conspiracy to use global warming as a ruse to overthrow the western democracies and install a new age of Stalinism.

    Anthony thought he had an interview with FOIA lined up then realised it was someone from Nigeria yanking his chain.

    I could go on for hours. This is going to go down as one of his more memorable bloopers.

    What is interesting is what will be the fallback position. Maybe he has finally finished that paint on the cabinets project he seemed to lose interest in.

  122. Ray

    Given the wording of his original announcement, *what* did he think would happen?

    I don’t know… but it’s the wild speculation is sort of fun. 🙂

  123. Discovery Channel has asked him to produce a weekly TV show presenting the skeptical view of CAGW. That would be controversial and unprecedented in nature.

  124. There seems to be a Blackboard “Bugs” infestation. Imagine the rage if “trolls” were demeaned here as they have been elsewhere.

    http://climateaudit.org/2012/07/24/infestation-of-beetle-larvae/

    … hey trolls who have been given marching orders to flood the comment threads here like an infestation of beetle larvae: Don’t bother! We’ve seen the mindless talking points before …

  126. “Discovery Channel has asked him to produce a weekly TV show presenting the skeptical view of CAGW”

    I was picking up my mother from babysitting my niece t’other day, PBS was on the tele and they were watching afternoon kids cartoons, when Lo and Behold, Brian Willams appears and imparts the correct lifestyle adjustments to negate Climate Change.

    Frightening, the level of stupidity.

    Andrew

  127. Maybe he found out that Bugs is really that wrascally Eli Rabbet and he’s hired Elmer Fudd.

    Well, what projects do we know of? The ones that aren’t commercial that I’m aware of:
    surface station survey
    Stevenson screen
    Papers with Dr. Pielke
    weather data server

    The only one out of those that would be of a controversial nature is the last. All the rest have been on going. So unless he’s got another project he hasn’t really talked about, I’m going with the last one.

  128. These scientists go on lots of conferences in exotic third world countries. Some of these guys may even feel they are untouchable, and I wouldn’t put anything beyond a few of them.
    Words like “unprecendented”, “something happened”, “global implications” and so on suggest what Anthony has is something f—– huge and unsurvivable.
    We live in the electronic age of cell phone cameras. It can only be something like videos and audios that must be extremely embarrassing and/or outrageous…and a whole load of them that requires time to go through and to choose, edit and time the juicy, steamy, sleazy parts.
    It’s may be the kind of stuff that is so good that you just don’t want to do anything else but get to work on it. You all know the feeling? Like when you get a big lead to a story that you know is going to hit like an atom bomb.
    You can spin words like “nature trick” into “math trick”, but it’s virtually impossible to spin or white wash video footage. It just is what it is.
    I can’t think of anything else that would lead to Anthony’s reaction. I can only surmise he has something that is white hot.

  129. Disagree, Barry – Eli occasionally provides actual content, and can’t avoid writing in third-person.

  131. Ah, but that’s the genius of it. Nobody would connect the two except by the name. 😉

  138. Ah, so Anthony is trying to get ahead of Muller’s article? Looks like Muller’s article doesn’t contain anything he hasn’t already said. It doesn’t look like anything of vacation-cancelling magnitude.

  139. OK, here it is. Anthony has been contacted by our Alien Creators. He is to become the messenger for our Masters. This fully explains the weirdness happening on the internet. He has been advised, that they will make their appearance on Dec. 24, 2012.

  140. The rise in temps may correlate with the increase in CO2 from 1750, but how does Muller explain the rise before then?

  141. I know this is only climate science, and details don’t matter, but that should be “PDT” in the title, not “PST”.

  142. sorry. i wrote willis last week about getting together and
    he mentioned burning man.
    maybe he was doing work on set up.
    dunno.

  143. So it appears it either is something to attempt to upstage Muller’s upcoming op-ed piece, counter it, or some other equally futile action. I would hope that I am wrong and something positive is forthcoming.

  144. So there was a Little Ice Age after all in Western Europe and the US East Coast.

    Of course, there is the issue of the splicing technique used by Rohdes and Menne which produces hockey stick temperatures when used with UHI-contaminated and unrealistic TOBS-adjusted data.

    In 1750, the thermometres were not on pavement and they measured the daily maximum temperatures at 4:30 am (no alarm clocks – just Roosters – hence they have to be adjusted down – even 1995 temperatures are being adjusted down for TOBS – added leap seconds I presume).

  145. Paul Vaughn – who is largely incomprehensible most of the time – on Curry’s blog writes he thinks it has something to do with cracking the code of ENSO. I give this half a chance, as it could be a “project” and ENSO update due out Monday according to Tisdale. Interesting no one here mentioned ENSO.

    On second thought I just checked Tisdale’s blog. Based on that it’s probably not ENSO related. But I like his conspiracy theory. It’s not unlike what M&M have come up with but it’s a bit well – more plainly stated. And more speculative.

  146. Bill Illis,

    Berkeley Earth does not do any explicit TOBs adjustments, nor use data sources that have been TOBs adjusted (barring really old undocumented records that may have been, but its the “rawest” data that exists).

  147. Perhaps Zeke could put together an Excel spreadsheet that contains historical information about what data sets Climate Science uses that would include the dates they were compiled and then used, and versions of the sets, the adjustments applied to them, why they were applied, what effect the adjsutments had, what particular conslusions were drawn, and which organizations use what particular data to base their positions on and what their positions actually are.

    Andrew

  148. The logical next step for Ron Broberg and bugs would be to announce that they’re going to stop blogging and posting until Sunday. I’m positive that these two announcements would completely overshadow whatever stunt Anthony is trying to pull. Because everyone really wants to know what they’re going to say next.

    Heh.

  150. So there was a Little Ice Age after all in Western Europe and the US East Coast.

    ############
    only skeptics who deny the current warming put the LIA into question. yes it was colder in the LIA, which implies that it is warmer now.

    “Of course, there is the issue of the splicing technique used by Rohdes and Menne which produces hockey stick temperatures when used with UHI-contaminated and unrealistic TOBS-adjusted data.”

    1. Berkley earth does not splice. we start with 36K stations. when they are split ( as willis and others have suggested as a method) we end up with 170K+ stations.
    2. No Tobs adjustment. sorry thank you for playing. If the time of observation is different a new station is created. It is after all a new station.
    3. Hockey sticks.yes the blade matches Roy Spencer and the shaft is lower than the blade. there was an LIA. except its a bumpy shaft. Are the bumps in that shaft correlated with other data.. data that is not temperature data.. make your predictions..
    How will the bumps in the shaft correspond to major climate events.. Put something out there bill. I double dog dare you.

    “In 1750, the thermometres were not on pavement and they measured the daily maximum temperatures at 4:30 am (no alarm clocks – just Roosters – hence they have to be adjusted down – even 1995 temperatures are being adjusted down for TOBS – added leap seconds I presume).”

    No TOBS adjustment required. Suggest you study KED, UK, or regression kriging. KED = kriging with external drift.

    Finally, UHI.

    There are 15000 stations in the dataset that meet a pretty stringent requirement for being very rural. Guess what?
    they warmed just as much. why? cause its warmer now than in the LIA.

  151. Andrew KY.

    Download the package BerkeleyEarth.

    read in the site data and report your results.

    Or alternatively propose a testable hypothesis about the station data. I will test your hypothesis and you will accept the results, regardless of the outcome.

  152. “Download the package BerkeleyEarth”

    Steven Mosher,

    Gotta link?

    There are more data sets than just BerkeleyEarth. What about the rest?

    Andrew

  153. Since the current model seems to have run out of ideas, I think Anthony will announce the R Gates CAGW blogbot v.2

  154. Andrew_KY (Comment #100268)
    July 28th, 2012 at 4:28 pm
    “Download the package BerkeleyEarth”
    Steven Mosher,
    Gotta link?
    There are more data sets than just BerkeleyEarth. What about the rest?
    Andrew

    ###############

    First Hypothesis: there are more datasets than Berkeley Earth.

    Hmm: Well, we use all the 16 datasets that are currently available online. And we had additional datasets put online. There is one dataset we don’t use and that is Environment canada because the data is only available for download one file at a time ( 7K + stations). However, if you want that data download the package CHCN. it takes about two days to download the whole dataset and then assemble it into a usable format. After you do that you can compare Berkeley Earth with Env Canada. I did that for labrador. the estimate for that region showed no difference between the two. Part of the reason for that is that the best stations from env canada ( longest) get funneled into GHCN Daily and GHCN Monthly or GCOS.

    You are welcomed to compare the rest of canada as estimated by Env canada with Berkeley earth. Labrador took me about 3 months. and that was comparing about 100 stations from each dataset.

    packages are all on CRAN.

    Next.

  155. Steven Mosher,

    I asked for a link. Not an extreme request. Do you have one?

    Andrew

  156. “Well, we use all the 16 datasets that are currently available online”

    Any links to those?

    Andrew

  158. AMac,

    Just asking for links, so I can examine stuff. Guess that’s too silly for Climate Science these days.

    Andrew

  159. Andrew KY.

    It is obvious you do not know R. if you did, then you would have understood my reference to CRAN which is known by all R programmers because that is where we get R from.

    So that was a test of your intelligence and your sincerity.
    you failed.

    For folks who want to learn R

    http://cran.r-project.org/

    http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/available_packages_by_name.html

    or see the link on the data page below.
    If you dont have 4GB of memory, your life will be painful and miserable; however, I’ve written things so that even those with small RAM can work.

    For folks interested in the data the links have been around for a long time. anyone smart enough to question the data, is resourceful enough to look. Andrew, what is your excuse?

    http://berkeleyearth.org/dataset/

    http://berkeleyearth.org/data/

    http://berkeleyearth.org/source-files/

  160. and andrew as always GIYF

    Berkeleyearth package

    google it

    CHCN package

    google is your friend.

    easy peasy.

  161. well, since everyone else is weighing in w/their 2 cents…here’s mine

    I do not have the background everyone else has, so my first reading of his post was that he just wanted to concentrate on something. I thought the phrasing of ‘global’ and ‘unprecedented’ was, well, hyperbole…maybe droll hyperbole. As in, well, humor.

    And, sadly I think, people have spun this way up…so much that Watts had to update to say…hey guys

    “it is still a “major announcement” and it has important implications that I’m sure everyone will want to know about.”

    So, yeah, it is probably some software thing that can be used…maybe with the forthcoming BEST announcement.

    I think that he just didn’t realize the impact of this suspension…and now, those that have issues, will use this against him.

  163. You know it could be the other way around to most peoples thinking here.

    Maybe he’s reviewed all the science, re-read the IPCC reports and come to the conclusion the evidence points to a strong case for serious anthropogenic warming in the coming decades/century.

    Well maybe!

    That would be unprecedented!

  165. So, since 1750 warming is due to human-generated CO2, but before that it was all “natural?” Where did the “natural” warming go?

  166. Muller is absolutely dishonest. He was never a skeptic,

    http://www.populartechnology.net/2012/06/truth-about-richard-muller.html

    “I was never a skeptic” – Richard Muller, 2011

    “If Al Gore reaches more people and convinces the world that global warming is real, even if he does it through exaggeration and distortion – which he does, but he’s very effective at it – then let him fly any plane he wants.”
    – Richard Muller, 2008

    “There is a consensus that global warming is real. …it’s going to get much, much worse.” – Richard Muller, 2006

    “Let me be clear. My own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate.” – Richard Muller, 2003

  167. @jim2,

    FYI, people are ignoring your observation about warming before 1750 because the various millennial scale temperature reconstructions generally agree that prior to 1750, temperatures exhibited a very slow decreasing trend, not an increasing one, i.e. the natural warming you imagine happened before 1750 is precisely that, something you imagined.

  168. Muller broke into his cellar and left a big green pod. He’s now part of the consensus.

  169. RE: Jon (Comment #100283) said:
    “the natural warming you imagine happened before 1750 is precisely that, something you imagined.”

    Except of course for these well documented historic warming periods before 1750:

    “The period from 750 BC – 800 AD saw warming up to 150 BC. Temperatures, however, did not get as warm as the Climatic Optimum. During the time of Roman Empire (150 BC – 300 AD) a cooling began that lasted until about 900 AD. At its height, the cooling caused the Nile River (829 AD) and the Black Sea (800-801 AD) to freeze.

    The period 900 – 1200 AD has been called the Little Climatic Optimum. It represents the warmest climate since the Climatic Optimum. During this period, the Vikings established settlements on Greenland and Iceland. The snow line in the Rocky Mountains was about 370 meters above current levels. A period of cool and more extreme weather followed the Little Climatic Optimum. A great drought in the American southwest occurred between 1276 and 1299. There are records of floods, great droughts and extreme seasonal climate fluctuations up to the 1400s.

    From 1550 to 1850 AD global temperatures were at their coldest since the beginning of the Holocene. Scientists call this period the Little Ice Age. During the Little Ice Age, the average annual temperature of the Northern Hemisphere was about 1.0 degree Celsius lower than today. During the period 1580 to 1600, the western United States experienced one of its longest and most severe droughts in the last 500 years. Cold weather in Iceland from 1753 and 1759 caused 25% of the population to die from crop failure and famine. Newspapers in New England were calling 1816 the year without a summer.”

  170. This bit from Muller’s piece:

    “It’s a scientist’s duty to be properly skeptical. I still find that much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong. I’ve analyzed some of the most alarmist claims, and my skepticism about them hasn’t changed.”

    Is an excellent summary of the honest skeptics perspective. Muller’s journey of conversion to skeptic warmist is the way it’s suppose to work.

  172. Richard Muller 2012:
    “CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming.”

    Richard Muller 2003:
    Let me be clear. My own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate.

  173. I suspect Muller was playing the deniers when he claimed he was a sceptic but so what! I think Muller realised that no matter how many confirming studies scientist publish the deniers can still just continue cast doubt on the temperature record, why?? Because while normal scientific work is published, the data, methodology and programs typically are not disclosed, at least not all aspects of it, this makes scientists the effective gate keepers in a way. This allows deniers to attack scientists and to cast doubt on their motivation and trustworthiness. i.e. “they are just doing it for the grant money”.

    The brilliance of Muller is that he realised that without full disclosure the debate and doubt casting on the temperature record can continue indefinitely, but if the proof is laid out for all to see and question – AND no one can disprove the conclusions, then this short circuits the debate and removes all doubt, full stop.

    I think Muller realised that you can’t argue against the existence of something that is shown to exist openly for all to see and played the deniers like a violin from the start. That’s why he made such a big deal about disclosing every aspect of the work. With this work Muller is has driven a stake through the heart of deniers, sure there will still be hard core diners, but it’ll be so much harder for deniers to convince people, the comeback will now forever be “sure but it’s all there on paper for all to see, you go and disprove it”.

  174. There is no need for Anthony to shut down his site completely, even when he goes on vacation or has to prepare a major announcement, or even if he is to run for president or found a cure to cancer or so. It’s kind of annoying actually. What’s up with Anthony ? ADD ?

  176. “And it’s possible that he’s announcing Sunday because…”

    I think the simplest explanation is that the information has been embargoed.

  178. I hope Anthony’s announcement has nothing to do with a reaction to Muller’s editorial or the Berkley Earth project; otherwise he will be (justly, I think) accused of overhyping something that is very far from unprecedented.

  179. @SteveF (Comment #100294)
    July 29th, 2012 at 7:10 am

    I hope Anthony’s announcement has nothing to do with a reaction to Muller’s editorial or the Berkley Earth project; otherwise he will be (justly, I think) accused of overhyping something that is very far from unprecedented.

    Unprecedented for most of us, not so much for Anthony. Perhaps that is the earth shattering news, Anthony now views AGW as accepted science.

  180. @Jon (Comment #100283)
    So, Jon. What about the warming periods before 1750? Any clue at all?

  181. Not Muller; not health; not FOIA.

    Well, I’m stumped. Certainly it would not be something mundane, just related to a new project. Apperently related to one of his many projects. But, it has to be something NEW about them, strikingly important.

  182. Bugs,
    I do not know Anthony’s views on AGW, but I’m pretty sure he accepts there has been warming and accepts radiative forcing from infrared absorbing gases in the atmosphere. But I thing you miss my point: there is nothing unprecedented about Anthony reacting to an editorial column… It sure doesn’t require shutting down WUWT to prepare comments on what someone else writes.

  183. Nick Stokes, if he is waiting for an information embargo, then who is releasing what info? I guess he is spending the weekend studying it.

  184. My suspicion was that he would be commenting on a new publication – likely Best. That his comments aren’t responsive to Muller’s piece in the NYT, doesn’t preclude a response to Best. Am I confused in thinking that Best never actually published to date? If so, this could be it.

  185. Running thru what we know –

    1) AW said it wasn’t FOIA.
    2) AW said to BH it wasn’t about Herr Muller’s articles.
    3) It caused the cancellation of a family holiday.
    4) Not even Charles the Mod is in the loop. Cards close to chest.
    5) Unlikely to be BEST. It’d just get the usual WUWT kicking.
    6) It was unschedule and unexpected.
    7) It’s taking 2 days of prep before we get an article.

    In spy parlance, it sounds like a walk-in to me. A defector or stellar piece of intelligence dropping into your lap. First thing you do is verify them as much as you can and then do the assessment.

    My money is on another leak of documents and/or emails from a different climate research establishment.

    Pointman

  186. Some keep forgetting that it’s related to one of his projects. I recall two or three years back Anthony soliciting volunteers to go through and transcribe all of the surface station observer sheets (forget the name of the form). I don’t know if he ever went forward with this project as I never saw another peep about it afterward. But that would certainly fit the criteria if he were to make some kind of discovery based on all of that. I think that would turn a whole lot of peoples’ worlds upside down if it turned out there was a big discrepancy between the official published data and what the observers actually recorded.

  189. Well according to Rep, one of Anthony’s mods, it is not glitzy, but more tectonic.

    “Robert of Ottawa says:

    July 28, 2012 at 5:14 pm

    We all await. Even a donation to AW didn’t get a response 🙁

    [REPLY: Donations don’t come to Anthony’s attention immediately… it’s kinda automated… and Anthony is REALLY, REALLY, REALLY busy and distracted at the moment. Your support is truly appreciated and I think you will find the wait quite worthwhile. What Anthony is going to publish tomorrow is not of the flashy fire-works variety, rather it is a tectonic sort of event. Lots of people are going to be, shall we say, non-plussed? Could even get bloody. Stay tuned, and thank you for your support. -REP]”

  191. Pointman 100302
    I think you’re on the right track. AW is selling it as Earth-shattering, and I expect it to be so. If it isn’t, he’s going look bad. And note how he hasn’t responded to all the speculation, hence he feels no need to drop expectations.
    My gut tells me huge disclosure of some type…
    …T-minus 2hr 27 min 28.134 sec

  192. The website is saying that there will be a press release. That says it must be something more than just an issue that would interest climate geeks.

  195. Pointman re #6: on July 22nd, he asked for blog submissions because he was going to be busy on a big project. So assuming it’s the same project, it’s been hanging over him for a while and is likely not unscheduled and unexpected.

  196. Bishop Hill has qualified his post:

    Interestingly, I learn from Anthony that this [Muller’s NYT editorial] is not what has caused him to postpone his vacation. There’s more news coming later today.
    Update on Jul 29, 2012 by Registered CommenterBishop Hill

    Just a note to clarify – I am saying that the excitement is not over the Muller editorial. It’s not unrelated though.

    Based on this, I’m going to predict the project is some sort of counter argument to the new findings of BEST, which Anthony has been aware of for sometime. He may have some expert co-authors in the dissenting view.

  197. Then again he could do a 180 and say that CAGW is real and he’s been wrong all along.

  199. I think by far the most likely announcement will be that Anthony has found a way to monetise WUWT. Could be selling it or going into partnership with a large media organisation as their science portal. Perhaps just a major sponsor a gift of some sort or perhaps even additional staff to create content.

    Would be nice to see him (+ many other climate bloggers) get better rewarded for all the hard work they put in.

  201. Putting all this together, BEST, the possibility of a team defection, I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that maybe there are some people who were with the BEST project who bolted due to some internal skulduggery. Expect a minority report.

    At best, BEST is a yawner, but there’s some more juice to it.

  204. @TheDuke.

    He knew he was going on holiday, a very natural time to ask for some decent guest posts to fill in the gap. It’s cancelling the family holiday that makes me think it was a walk-in of some sort.

    Pointman

  206. Why does Muller announce he is a converted skeptic every 6 months? Maybe in the same vein Watts is going to announce he is still a skeptic.

    My actual bet for WUWT is a website change of some sort, probably a minor thing. Maybe he is getting rid of the annoying ads and run it more like the Blackboard, I hope.

  207. Calling it now: update to Fall et all (sans Fall, Niyogi, and perhaps John N-G as authors)

  208. Steve McIntyre (Comment #100320)
    July 29th, 2012 at 11:40 am
    everyone needs to dial expectations way back.

    So we are back to:

    ChE (Comment #100142)
    July 27th, 2012 at 1:46 pm
    Maybe Kenji got a huge promotion at UCS. Top dog?

  210. But Steve, Rep has said that it will be tetonic. Maybe Anthony gave you some “calibrated” info to help keep the real issue off of the radar. If it is a defection of some sort, or my guess, our Alien Masters are returning, then he would not want to be scooped, or the defector/Alien Masters has laid out clear instructions that if he tells anyone, ANYONE!, before the news release, then the defector/Alien Masters will totally deny all that Anthony releases.

  211. Zeke,
    An update to Fall et al is unprecedented and controversial, and will generate global interest? Seems unlikely. I sure hope it is nothing so mundane, or people are going to say Anthoy whent over the top on a minor thing.

  212. With an hour to go, let’s toss this wild piece of speculation into the ring. The defection from BEST is Judith Curry. She had it with Muller and is announcing enough is enough. Her site has been kind of quiet lately.

  213. “REP” seems to have replied at JoNova’s site to somebody’s quote of his/her Tips & Notes “tectonic” comment.

    http://joannenova.com.au/2012/07/watts-up-speculation-thread/#comment-1096567

    REP
    July 30, 2012 at 1:36 am · Reply

    Damn. Didn’t think anyone paid much attention to Tips & Notes. When you read what Anthony posts, take the time to actually read it, think about it, and the implications will become obvious. We will be moderating strictly. Snark, outrage, disappointment, and instant-analysis of how that stupid Watts got it all wrong will, of course, be snipped.

    Enjoy.

  214. I sure hope it is nothing so mundane, or people are going to say Anthony went over the top on a minor thing.

    I’m waiting for 2 or 3 pm my time….. I suspect lots of people are going to think it’s over the top.

    In fact, I think Anthony’s update pretty much communicates that the original “unprecedented” wasn’t going to be considered all that earth shattering by some. (Others may find it very exciting. We’ll see soon. IN the meantime, my lawn needs mowing…)

  215. The clues are all there if you know how to read them:

    What was Anthony’s last “project” he took time off for? PV Solar panels on his house. Anthony has an electric car. Isn’t it obvious? The announcement will be Anthony is becoming CTO for a green company turnaround, seeded with an initial $500 million grant from the Obama administration.

    This company will promote residential conversion to 100% renewable energy systems — mostly solar but some wind and geothermal where appropriate.

    The initial goal is to convert 5,000 houses in California currently foreclosed&vacant to make them more attractive to buyers. The cost ($100,000 per house) is a bargain in terms of recent federal programs, and every house sold will reduce the inventory currently on the books of various federal mortgage guarantee agencies.

    In addition to helping sell vacant homes, this new venture will train over 1,000 currently unemployed people in California to be residential solar system designers & installers, creating new green jobs. Again, $500K per new job marks a new low price-point for federal job initiatives (compare this with the earlier massive stimulus package). And transitioning people into employment means they will be paying taxes instead of collecting unemployment benefits — simultaineously increasing federal revenue and reducing federal expenditures.

    For you doubters, please explain the “coincidence” of this recent announcement regarding Solyndra — the headquarters building has already been secured for Anthony’s new venture.

    We’ve all criticized the large-scale PV projects, but many of us (especially Anthony) admit that for smaller applications in the right environment, solar can make sense. This new venture will: create jobs, reduce the inventory of foreclosed & vacant properties, reduce the federal deficit, reduce fossil fuel use, reduce CO2 emissions and generally promote a more sustainable lifestyle.

    And finally, (wait for it) ….

    /sarc

  216. Anthony has lobbed many bombs that have sent shockwaves since WUWT was founded. But this one is getting the real Manhattan-project kind of build-up. Looking a how AW has handled this one, I see no reason to dial anything back.
    Anything short of a nuke is for me going to feel disappointing.

  218. Steve McIntyre (Comment #100320)
    July 29th, 2012 at 11:40 am
    everyone needs to dial expectations way back.

    Can’t, never dialed it up in the first place 🙂

  221. PRESS RELEASE – July 29th, 2012 12PM PDT – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
    [A] pre-publication draft paper, titled An area and distance weighted analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends… is to be submitted for publication. [The authors are] Anthony Watts of California, Evan Jones of New York, Stephen McIntyre of Toronto, Canada, and Dr. John R. Christy from the Department of Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama, Huntsville.

    [Abstract:] A reanalysis of U.S. surface station temperatures has been performed using the recently WMO-approved Siting Classification System devised by METEO-France’s Michel Leroy. The new siting classification more accurately characterizes the quality of the location in terms of monitoring long-term spatially representative surface temperature trends. The new analysis demonstrates that reported 1979-2008 U.S. temperature trends are spuriously doubled, with 92% of that over-estimation resulting from erroneous NOAA adjustments of well-sited stations upward. The paper is the first to use the updated siting system which addresses USHCN siting issues and data adjustments.

    The new improved assessment, for the years 1979 to 2008, yields a trend of +0.155C per decade from the high quality sites, a +0.248 C per decade trend for poorly sited locations, and a trend of +0.309 C per decade after NOAA adjusts the data. This issue of station siting quality is expected to be an issue with respect to the monitoring of land surface temperature throughout the Global Historical Climate Network and in the BEST network.

  224. With Willis away Anthony has finally come to his senses and realised there is gravity and ‘backradiation’ is nonsense.

  225. I guess the pre-publication press release was just following BEST practices …

  226. “is to be submitted for publication.” How exciting. I suppose we won’t actually get access to the new ratings till after publication…

  227. Michel Leroy, the person who invented this new siting system, is not an author of the new paper.

    I don’t know what that means. But much will be made of the observation!

  230. Lucia,

    Did you always have this post in the ‘data comparisons’ category?
    If not then good guess.

  231. I think the announcement is interesting. I think Anthony is correct that people will discuss it. Also, I suspect there is some positioning to get this into the grey literature in time for “the deadline”. (Whether it will end up cited, I don’t know. But I think it’s worth a shot. For that reason, Anthony skipping vacation might have been worthwhile.)

    I can understand why Anthony wanted a break from reading comments under the circumstances. Those who don’t have blog with lots of comments don’t necessarily understand that you can get pretty antzy letting comments roll without moderation for a while. (Some of the regulars do email me to bring my attention to ‘troll’ behavior if I get away for too long. And I do appreciate that.)

    I wouldn’t call the announcement “tectonic” — but it is important to Anthony and likely his readers. I think we are going to have reactions saying it was overblown and other saying it wasn’t. Just a matter of opinion there.

  232. Looks like I pretty much called it.

    Here’s another tip: Anthony’s new paper- not tectonic. He tried to upstage Muller, but has come up far short of his goal. Muller got Anthony good the first round, and this counter-punch doesn’t live up to the knock-out “unprecedented” billing.

    Anthony should not have cancelled his vacation for this…lot’s of smoke but in the end, very little fire.

  234. He has shown that UHI exagerates warming 3X in the USA extrapolate to world there is no global warming sorry. Give up. Lucia dont publish my IP like last time (what was the relevance of that?) or I will never trust you for anything. If you want to reveal email addresses like you did before chao

  235. This won’t change anything in Europe or at the IPCC. But maybe it’ll shake up a few things in USA. Global implications? Little to very litttle.

  236. Lucia,

    Did you always have this post in the ‘data comparisons’ category?
    If not then good guess.

    That’s the default. I just didn’t change it to something else.

  237. Zeke (Comment #100324)
    July 29th, 2012 at 11:51 am
    Calling it now: update to Fall et all (sans Fall, Niyogi, and perhaps John N-G as authors)
    —————————————————
    Am I good or what?

    Lots of fun stuff to pick apart in this new paper. I’ll probably make a series of blog posts here looking into them, assuming I can get the actual data used to run the analysis myself.

  238. Andrew (Comment #100351)

    Let me quote my previous comment to you

    lucia (Comment #81714)
    September 18th, 2011 at 6:50 am

    Andrew (aka andrea,Annabelle Torres,Marie deschamps,Albert,Laura Gonzales,Rebecca, Fulton, and Albert)

    1) Your comment showing the minimum has also been reached based on DMI belongs on the post discussing the minimum likely having been reached on JAXA.

    2) Please pick one sockpuppet name. It may not be “Andrew”. If you use “Andrew”, you need to add letters to distinguish yourself from the other Andrews who used that name before you decided it was a good new sockpuppet name.

    see: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/captchas-from-hell/#comment-81714

    NOTE: Do not pick “Andrew” with no initials as your sock-puppet name. Given your history, I am going to put you on moderation.

  239. Zeke,
    Why should AW give you the data if all you want to do is find something wrong with it? 🙂

  241. no problem it will be my last post here until I can trust this site not to reveal personal details.

  242. Ron,

    The interesting thing is that Anthony’s new paper comes to the same conclusion as Fall et al, namely that there is no difference in trends between good and poor stations post-homogenization. He just focuses much more on the raw data this time around. Which is fine, provided that you take adequate steps to ensure that your poorly and well sited sets do not have systemic differences in the various biases (TOBs changes, station moves, instrument changes, etc.) corrected in the homogenization process. I have a feeling that when we have a chance to dive into this in more detail we will find some interesting things 🙂
    .
    I’m pretty sure we can get Anthony to release the classifications if we ask nicely enough. After all, aren’t blogs supposed to be for extended peer review?

  243. Zeke –
    Looking forward to your & Mosher’s analyses. In particular, I’d like to see if the 56 “gold standard” stations — class 1/2, rural, non-airport, MMPS — had any siting/equipment changes which would call into question using raw data for that group.

    On a slightly different front, despite the presence of Christy as a co-author, Watts et al 2012 has no comparison with satellite records. Is there any way of obtaining a CONUS-masked temperature sequence from UAH or RSS records?

  244. UH Gates, you read the full paper? I thought not. If the best record of historic temps on the planet is maybe off by 1 – 2 times higher then reality, then what about the rest of the world? What this paper is saying in a very small nutshell, is that the great water vapour feedback is NOT positive as used by the climate modellers. Therefore the sensitivity to warming by CO2 is not a clear and PRESENT danger. It gives us time to actually figure out how to convert most of our energy needs to RELIABLE renewable energy.

    In other words, we can now stop rushing to jump over the cliff and destroy western civilization, we have time to burn a few more gigatons of carbon based energy, and PROPERLY convert our energy systems with the least amount of mistakes and disruptions.

    This paper is not saying that CO2 is not causing an increase in temps. It is saying, “hey world, take a deep breathe, relax, we have time to do this conversion properly and to allow the poorer nations to bring their standard of living up.”

    So yes Gates, it is tetonic! If this paper is right, Anthony et al, have given the Human Race the time it needs to transition properly and the least expensivelly.

    “A Miracle Has Happened!!!”

  245. @R Gates #100349

    I think Watts did the best he could to knock the winds out of Mullers sails. A knock-out punch? Nope. A contrarian talking point “temp trends overstated by 100%”? Yup.

    Will have to look at the data when its available, but I suspect a key move was the treatment of airports. There is a *lot* of discussion regarding reasons to exclude airports even when their siting is deemed Class 1 or 2. I suspect that their results are not nearly “headline” worthy if you include them. I’ve tried to create a table of trends based on their discussions of trends re airport/none, urban/suburban/rural(meso), class12/345(micro), but either I’m doing a poor job of reading or there isn’t enough description in the paper to provide the necessary details to fill in all the cells.

  246. Lucia sorry for being a bit heavy with you. I think the revelation of my details was not you fault. Someone else got them from me because I emailed them. I’ve put Initials but they are not mine and never will be until I can trust to be not persecuted for my climate beliefs. I hope you understand its a very touchy issue at the moment. Your site is very moderate and reasonable, And I constantly have a looked at it because of your lukewarmer attitude which i hope is now devastated by WUWT findings just joking!

  247. I found the press release and draft of the paper interesting but surprisingly anticlimactic in view of the preceding hype. Whether the new Leroy method does indeed yield more accurate results remains to be seen, and will certainly be argued, although I accept it as a possibility.

    For perspective, though, it’s important to remember that for multidecadal global warming data, the very dominant factor is SST, and that the 1979-2008 SST data, while not perfect, are far more reliable than earlier 20th century data. The oceans dominate for two reasons – first, they comprise 70 percent of the surface, and second, they strongly affect land temperature, particularly nearer the coasts than inland. In addition, it has been known since antiquity that the land warms or cools faster than the oceans; the main reasons are the thermal inertia of the oceans due to their enormous heat capacity, and the greater evaporative cooling that occurs over water compared with land. For this reason, one must always multiply ocean warming data by a factor slightly exceeding one to estimate land warming. This will not always be true for short intervals, but is a reasonable presumption for a 29 year interval.

    All the above puts constraints – upper and lower – on the true value of land warming since 2008. If the new estimates are extended globally, and are consistent with these principles, they are probably close to accurate. If not, the source of the inaccuracies must be determined. While it may involve SST to some extent, it will more likely reside primarily in the estimates of land warming.

  248. Muller says rural stations alone are the same as others, Watts shows that to be false. Pretty significant, if the result holds.

  249. Andrew aka (Fitzcarraldo, andrea,Annabelle Torres,Marie deschamps,Albert,Laura Gonzales,Rebecca, Fulton, and Albert).
    Ciao.

  250. Long ago Willis criticized Muller for his first release of data with a pre print because it was not finalized.

    One will have to see if he holds folks to the same standard.

    Long ago People were critical of NASA’s classification of rural.
    we will see if they stand up today.

    I have my doubts.

    On trends. They find a bias of between .11 and .14 per decade
    for the subset of US stations they look at. That’s a bit higher than Zeke and I found ( .04) for the entire world and it lacks spatial completeness. We know for example that these effects are more pronounced in higher latitudes.

  252. HaroldW (Comment #100360)-“despite the presence of Christy as a co-author, Watts et al 2012 has no comparison with satellite records”

    Why would there be? It is hardly necessary that the lower atmosphere show the same behavior as the surface. Such a comparison would be apples to oranges. It might tell you something interesting, but not, by itself, about any bias in one record or the other.

  253. Ok we will see you dumped with all the other modelers including Mann etc hahahah

  254. So, is there a consensus that UHI is an important contributing factor to land temperature increases or it doesn’t make any difference?

    Is there a consensus that the TOBS adjustments are too high or about right?

    Is there a consensus that we should measure/assess global warming trends by using the best sited non-UHI-impacted stations or that it doesn’t matter.

    Zeke and Mosher have already made their conclusions clear but what about others.

  255. Adieu Andrew, bonjour who knows? You’ve got a lot more patience than I’ve got Lucia. I’m a less patient creature. Kill ’em all. Let God sort it out …

    Pointman

  257. haha you must be incredibly stupid WUWT CA all other really professional sites accept anonymous names. You spend your time with stupid bots, security and attemps at fitting fraudalent data to your climate dreams etc you dont have a chance chao

  259. btw, give me his IP on the sly and I’ll arrange for it to be given to the internet Cosa Nostra. Everyone’s hands will be clean …

    Pointman

  260. W.A.Andrew:

    I *know* any revelation of your details to whoever learned them was not my fault.

    Also, I can’t be having you posting remarks that read as hostile generally and specifically hostile to me and constantly changing email and sock-puppet names. Possibly, you think your comments are light-hearted — but they don’t come off that way and the constant sock-puppetry tends to make things worse, not better.

    If you wish to comment:
    1) Pick one and only one sock puppet name. I assume you are going with “W.A. Andrew”.
    2) Pick one email address for commenting.
    3) If you need to protect your identity, take steps to do so. If your real last name is “Andrew” and you really want to be anonymous, you are being an idiot by using your real name. I’ll assume it’s a pseudonym. If it’s not, that’s on you, not me.
    4) I don’t care how touchy the issue is for you: You don’t get to go accuse people of revealing your email or IP when you know you revealed them yourself through your own sloppiness.

    You will be moderated until you have demonstrate consistent respectful behavior to me and others at my blog. At the very minimum, achieving “respectful” means sticking to one name and not changing email addresses and not throwing around accusations you know to be false.

  261. HaroldW,
    Re: satellite comparison for CONUS, see the discussion starting on line 739 of the draft paper.
    The satellite CONUS average (RSS an UAH) is 0.23 C per decade, which is suggested by Watts et al as a upper bound for surface warming, since there is expected to be some tropospheric amplification (hotly disputed by Gavin, IIRC), and because the satellite data does not capture night time boundry layer cooling, which extends to only 100 meters or so; this is probably a pretty good argument in light of the recently published work on boundry layer effects as an explanation for the large discrepancy between trends in Tmax and Tmin. The satellite trend of 0.23C per decade sure makes the CONUS ground station trend of >0.3C look questionable.
    .
    Based on my reading of the paper, it does appear to make some real contributions, especially if a closer look at the data supports the claim that bad station trends are used to adjust good stations upward.

  263. remove all my comments from this site please i will have nothing to do with this site anymore. thank you I hope you will at least have the courtesy to do so. I apologise for any discomfort i may have caused

  264. SteveF –
    Thanks. I overlooked that reference, having only skimmed the paper and then searched for the word satellite. [I should have used “troposphere”!]

    Bill Illis –
    What is your source for the satellite CONUS temperature sequence you depict in #100375?

  265. Forgot to add, I think Anthony overhyped what is really an academic discussion/dispute about methodology. Maybe important if it holds up to closer inspection, but by no means unprecedented.

  266. Leo G (Comment #100361): When you wrote…

    “This paper is not saying that CO2 is not causing an increase in temps. It is saying, “hey world, take a deep breathe, relax, we have time to do this conversion properly and to allow the poorer nations to bring their standard of living up.”

    …I think you probably pointed out the two most important conclusions that can be drawn from AW’s paper.

  267. Considering the adversarial nature of climate science publishing, Watts et al may have a very hard time getting past peer review unless their analysis is air tight and bullet-proof. My guess: don’t expect to see it in print any time soon.

  268. Fred 100364,
    The problem with the post 1970 temperature record is the there has been a big divergence between SST and land temps. The rate of increase on land is just about twice that of SST. Of course, some will immediately point to lag from the difference in thermal inirtia. But if you look at the two trends there is no discernable lag between land and ocean; they move together (both up and down!), but with the land moving twice as fast in both directions. From about 1900 to 1970 ocean and land moved in lock-step, with no significant difference in warming or cooling rates. It is a real puzzle if both temperature trends are accurate.

  269. Steven Mosher:

    Long ago Willis criticized Muller for his first release of data with a pre print because it was not finalized.

    One will have to see if he holds folks to the same standard.

    You say Willis’s criticism was “because [the data] was not finalized.” How could he possibly hold Anthony to the same standard now when Anthony hasn’t published any of the data? You can say Anthony should be releasing data, but that has no bearing on the criticism of Muller having released data with a note saying the data shouldn’t be used.

    Long ago People were critical of NASA’s classification of rural.
    we will see if they stand up today.

    I have my doubts.

    Seeing as that issue has much less relevance to Anthony’s paper, I’m not overly concerned with it. Even if we doubt his micro/meso-site comparisons, the conclusions of his paper still hold. I do still question NASA’s classifications, but I’m not going to harp on a relatively minor issue in a paper before discussing the major aspects of it.

    Finally, over on WUWT, you say:

    Data Problems

    1. Uses GHCN Version 2.

    No, they don’t. They use USHCNv2 which was created when GHCNv3 was released. The version numbers don’t line up between the sets.

  271. There’s only so many nails you can put in a coffin. Occasionally, even a troll, can make sense. It’s a Monkies and typewriters thing.

    Pointman

  272. @Leo G

    In other words, we can now stop rushing to jump over the cliff and destroy western civilization, we have time to burn a few more gigatons of carbon based energy, and PROPERLY convert our energy systems with the least amount of mistakes and disruptions.

    you are sounding very alarmist.

  273. Fred Moolten says:

    For this reason, one must always multiply ocean warming data by a factor slightly exceeding one to estimate land warming. This will not always be true for short intervals, but is a reasonable presumption for a 29 year interval.

    All the above puts constraints – upper and lower – on the true value of land warming since 2008. If the new estimates are extended globally, and are consistent with these principles, they are probably close to accurate.

    He says the paragraph this is in is “for perspective” so I’ll add to the perspective. Table 3.2 in the IPCC AR4 gives global estimates for land temperature decadal trends over the 1979-2005 period as 0.268, 0.315, 0.188 and 0.203. For the oceans, it gives 0.133 and 0.135. There are all sorts of factors to consider with this (especially hemispheric ones), but it does indicate something.

    If one uses the IPCC numbers, the “factor slightly exceeding one” could be as much as 2.0. This means the land temperature trends could be reduced by almost one-half and we’d still need the factor Fred has described. This suggests ocean temperatures are not going to offer a meaningful limit on interpreting Anthony’s results.

    He’s definitely right about the issue needing to be examined, but I don’t see any reason to expect it to create problems.

  274. Steve 100385 – That’s an interesting point, and the difference between the post-1970 and earlier behavior doesn’t have an obvious explanation, except that the earlier data are probably less reliable. On the other hand, my main point was that global temperature anomaly estimates (including post-1970 global temperature) parallel ocean temperature data quite well, despite the land/ocean disparities, and so revisions to the land data will probably have relatively effect on the global estimates. An example can be found by comparing AR4 WG1 figures 3.6 with 3.4 and 3.1.

  275. In my above message (100391), I intended to say that revised land data will probably have relatively little effect on global estimates.

  276. Given that Muller blindsided him on the release of the BEST results, Anthony did the right thing by getting his paper out there.

    As far as the BEST data goes. I went to their site and their 1960 to present trend is .23 deg C/dec for the US is about what Anthony gets for the worstsites by themselves so I don’t see where the homogenization enters into it. Weird though that BEST North America gets .45+ /dec from 1990, but the US has .17.

  278. Fred Moolten says:

    On the other hand, my main point was that global temperature anomaly estimates (including post-1970 global temperature) parallel ocean temperature data quite well, despite the land/ocean disparities, and so revisions to the land data will probably have relatively [little] effect on the global estimates. An example can be found by comparing AR4 WG1 figures 3.6 with 3.4 and 3.1.

    Can someone tell me if I’m missing something? I look at Figure 3.1, and I see a warming of ~.6 degrees since 1980. I look at Figure 3.4, and I see a warming of ~.3 degrees since 1980. Figure 3.1 shows global temperatures while Figure 3.4 shows ocean temperatures.

    From that, it seems to me if the land temperature trends were reduced, we could expect to see as much as a .1 degree per decade decrease in global temperature trends over the period data is most reliable.

    Am I missing something, or is that correct? If it is correct, am I right to conclude that is more than a (relatively) small effect?

  279. “Given that Muller blindsided him on the release of the BEST results, Anthony did the right thing by getting his paper out there.”

    I doubt very much Muller “blindsided” him. Anthony got a heads up — how else did he have his shiny object ready for the very day Muller said “global warming is real and humans are the cause”?

    No, even an unsubmitted “paper” takes time to put together. Anthony knew his distraction had to be ready today — that suggests advance warning.

  280. By the way, lucia can correct me if I’m wrong since she follows the topic more closely, but I think almost any change to the global temperature record that lowered recent trends would make GCM “predictions” significantly different than actual temperatures.

  281. W.A. Andrew–
    I am accept your apology.

    However, in response to this

    I hope you will at least have the courtesy to do so

    I do not think that your apology requires me to do you the favor of spending my time and hunting down all your previous comments in order to conceal from others your consistently rude behavior. I am not going to go to the trouble to remove all your comments. In fairness to myself, I would rather display those comments that support my previous response to you.

    These include among others, the following all of which appear on the current thread:

    * To demonstrate that you hurled a baseless accusation, I feel I need to retain this on display:

    Lucia dont publish my IP like last time (what was the relevance of that?) or I will never trust you for anything. If you want to reveal email addresses like you did before chao

    (See Andrew (Comment #100351) .

    * To demonstrate that even you know it was you, yourself who revealed your personal details, I will continue to display:

    “I think the revelation of my details was not you fault. Someone else got them from me because I emailed them.”

    ( SEe W. A. Andrew (Comment #100363) )

    * To demonstrate that you do post hostile comments I feel the need to retain this on display:

    “haha you must be incredibly stupid WUWT CA all other really professional sites accept anonymous names. ”

    (See W. A. Andrew (Comment #100374) )

    I do not consider myself discourteous to retain these comments. In fact I consider it discourteous of you to insinuate that my retaining your comments and continuuing to display them is extremely discourteous on your part. Of course, it is up to others to judge. I’m not going to pretend to do so for anyone other than myself.

  282. Bugs, I am a realist. CO2 added to the atmosphere will produce warming. But now it looks more likely that Spencer/Lindzen were correct after all.

  283. Robert (Comment #100396)
    I was referring to the release of the original BEST results.

  284. What Mr Watts has found is very crucial to the whole AGW story. Most of the recorded ground temps have come from Stevenson Boxes which are in cities, airports and have been contaminated by human activities and cement ect. The findings for USA data can most likely be extrapolated worlwide and mean that there is no significant warming anywhere as proven by the AMSU data recently

  285. Brandon – Fig. 3.1 shows land temperatures only, whereas the combined land/ocean global temperature anomalies (Fig. 3.6) are much closer to the global ocean temperatures (Fig. 3.4). In other words, the much steeper land temperature rise made the combined land/ocean trend only slightly steeper than the ocean trend alone. If that land trend were adjusted downward, I don’t think it would have much effect on the combined trend.

  286. Fred Moolten (Comment #100391)
    July 29th, 2012 at 4:36 pm

    That’s an interesting point, and the difference between the post-1970 and earlier behavior doesn’t have an obvious explanation, except that the earlier data are probably less reliable.

    The Boeing 747 didn’t exist prior to 1970. Airports were smaller, many were still grass fields. Air conditioning also wasn’t commonplace. I grew up in a house without air-conditioning(if it was really hot we would just sleep outside under the stars), the idea of having a ‘paved driveway’ didn’t occur to my father until the late 1960’s, none of the houses in our neighborhood came with ‘paved’ driveways.

    If I go back to the same neighborhood today all the houses are air conditioned and they all have two,three,four car paved driveways. The gravel parking lot at my childhood schoolhouse has been paved, the playground is paved, we used to have a dirt track we ran on, it’s been paved. Population density hasn’t changed at all…but the kinds of thing that people associate with ‘UHI’ increased dramatically.

  287. Fred 100392,
    Yes, because of area weighting, the overall impact of an adjustment in land temps (as in Watts et al, if it holds up) would be modest… Probably well under 15%. The more interesting and potentially important issues are understanding/verifying things like tropspheric amplification over land versus water, boundry layer influences over land, and any systematic problems with treatment of the land temperature data.

  288. Steve F,

    …since there is expected to be some tropospheric amplification (hotly disputed by Gavin, IIRC)…

    I don’t think Gavin disputes a global TLT amplification. What he’s said is that amplification in AOGCMs occurs almost entirely over the oceans whereas over land they tend towards an average 1:1 ratio. This makes sense given that tropospheric amplification is about water vapour, which isn’t abundant on land. Note that 1:1 is a global average – “amplification” could be less than 1 on average over large continental masses like the USA.

  289. Ok Im AW Andrews Who the hell is Bugs for example? Anyway Lucia I dont have any interest in fighting with you you have a wonderful site please leave it alone for ssss sake dont you have a sense of humore? I love your cats BTW. If you you are really affected by my posts just write me off Im perfectly fine with that why is all this climate stuff so serious ? hahaha, My quip was with a another person here who posted my email, my blog site ect a long time ago. it was not with you. im still a denier though hahaha sorry I profoundly apologize for anything that may have caused you any stress etc,

  290. Fred Moolten:

    Brandon – Fig. 3.1 shows land temperatures only,

    Ah, that explains it. I always get thrown off by the phrase, “global land.” I get that it’s to distinguish between global/hemispheric land masses, but my mind never wants to interpret it that way.

    In other words, the much steeper land temperature rise made the combined land/ocean trend only slightly steeper than the ocean trend alone. If that land trend were adjusted downward, I don’t think it would have much effect on the combined trend.

    I think a change of ~10% or so would still be enough to make the GCMs be running too hot, but it’s definitely a smaller effect than my quick glance suggested.

  291. PaulS,
    That was exactly what I was referring to; Gavin said there was no expected amplification over land, only over ocean. I should have been more explicit. No need to go into the (contested) measured extend of tropospheric amplification over the ocean. 😉

  292. I’m betting 5 quatloos that Myrrh is a sock puppet of Doug Cotton. For those unfamiliar, Doug, whoever he actually is, has managed to get himself banned at sites that normally don’t ban anyone. He’s popped up under several different names at Science of Doom, for example. He’s changed his style a little by misspelling physics, but otherwise, the style is identical.

  293. I wonder what the effect of the interstate highway system has had on the temperature data? Explosive growth of the car culture, increase of suburban density, more pavement.

  294. DeWitt,
    Oh no! Not another attack of the cottonmouth! If that is who he/she is, then Lucia ought just block him/her, and not waste time.

  295. I wonder what results Mosh and Zeke would get applying their algorithms to the data sets Anthony used.

  296. To Leo G (Comment #100361) et al,

    Here’s the thing: even if somehow the tropospheric temperature data globally has been off by a factor of 2, in the worst case scenario (which is has not, and even before the ink on Anthony’s paper even has a chance to dry, it will be refuted by more than one source), but even if the temps were off by a factor of 2, the focus on tropospheric temps misses the heat sink that is bigger by a factor thousands of times more and has been gaining energy for decades far more robustly than the troposphere. I’m talking of course about the oceans, and as their influence on the climate and weather is greater than the troposphere (as the oceans feed energy into the troposphere), Anthony’s paper cannot possibly be “tectonic” as the troposphere has insufficient energy to create anything tectonic enough to counter the massive influence the oceans have on our climate. When anyone says the Earth has cooled or warmed, if they are not including the oceans in their definition of “the Earth” they simply are wrong no matter what. Last I checked, urban heat island and other location site effects were not affecting the ARGO floats.

    Anthony’s paper is interesting but inconsequential in terms of Earth’s energy imbalance. Earth continues to accumulate energy, and the vast majority is going into the oceans.

  297. I wonder what results Mosh and Zeke would get applying their algorithms to the data sets Anthony used.

    I’m sure we’ll learn within 6 months. Possibly sooner.

  298. R. Gates (Comment #100413)
    July 29th, 2012 at 7:04 pm
    To Leo G (Comment #100361) et al,
    Anthony’s paper is interesting but inconsequential in terms of Earth’s energy imbalance. Earth continues to accumulate energy, and the vast majority is going into the oceans.
    —————————

    How much energy is the Ocean accumulating? Is that “consequential”?
    Put an “In-” in front of that it seems.

    90% of the expected energy accumulation is escaping Earth as increased OLR, been reduced by volcanoes or is a “residual/missing” as in not being able to tell where it is going or it was never there in the first place.

    http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/church_2011.jpg

  299. R. Gates amuses me:

    even before the ink on Anthony’s paper even has a chance to dry, it will be refuted by more than one source

    Apparently, he’s so certain Anthony is wrong he doesn’t even have to think about what Anthony did. He just knows Anthony will be proven wrong, and soon. More importantly, he says:

    When anyone says the Earth has cooled or warmed, if they are not including the oceans in their definition of “the Earth” they simply are wrong no matter what.

    I’ve noticed a recent fad where people insist you must include ocean temperatures when discussing whether “the Earth has cooled or warmed.” If this is true, and anyone who doesn’t do so is wrong about what they said, a great deal of what we’ve heard for a couple decades has been wrong.

    I could find thousands of statements from supporters of AGW who have done exactly what R. Gates says shouldn’t be done. Not only does it appear in informal settings (think about how often Phil Jones has done it), but it even appears in scientific papers all the time. Does that mean we can wave our hands and say all those papers are wrong?

  300. R. Gates (Comment #100413)_I find your comment bizarre. In the first place, this paper only deals with the temperatures near the bottom of the boundary layer, not the “troposphere”. Second, nothing in the paper contradicts or attempts to overturn the idea that there has been (over a sufficiently long period for this statement to be correct 😉 ) heat accumulation in the Oceans. When you get right down to it, you’re arguing essentially that no one should care how large or small the warming is-there’s warming and that’s all that matters, so be afraid! This is a peculiar way of thinking, IMAO. The size of near surface air temperature change is in fact very important. It (not the heat in the ocean) determines the extent of the “problem” that hypothetically exists.

    Tell me, quantitatively, how much temperature change is implied by a certain amount of heat accumulated in the ocean, and please explain how you get your answer.

    Brandon Shollenberger (Comment #100416)-Yes, and given that, IIRC, BEST is an analysis of land based temperature stations, all the excitement over Mr. Converted Skeptic is over an analysis that is:

    “wrong no matter what.”

  301. R Gates 100413,
    It is true that the oceans are accumulating heat, somewhere near 0.4 – 0.45 watt per M^2 based on a combination of ARGO and some deep ocean measurements (the very deep ocean appears to be accumulating ~0.06 watt/M^2). How important that is depends on the net GHG forcing; that is, GHG forcing (about 3.05 watts/M^2) less direct and indirect aerosol effects, which are extremely uncertain, less ocean heat accumulation. If aerosol offsets are modest (say 0.6 watt/M^2), then the current net forcing is about 3.05 – 0.45 – 0.6 = 2 watts/M^2, and climate sensitivity is quite modest. If aerosol offsets are much higher (say 1.6 watts/M^2) then net forcing is about 1 watt/M^2, and climate sensitivity is quite high. Since aerosol offsets are the least certain factor in Earths heat balance, there remains considerable uncertainty about the net sensitivity. Anthony’s paper doesn’t much impact the greater question of climate sensitivity, even if it is completely correct. It may be a useful contribution if the data and analysis stands up to close inspection.

  302. When ever I look at the various homigenization efforts for temperature I cannot be help think of Mark Steyn and this statement:-

    “It’s a good basic axiom that if you take a quart of ice-cream and a quart of dog feces and mix ’em together the result will taste more like the latter than the former”

    Now it appears that Watt’s et al., had an a prior classification of site types which they postulated would give a more realistic measure of atmospheric temperature temperature. They selected these sites, and find a statistical difference between these sites and others. Moreover, the selection criteria for site classification, does appear to have some robustness.

    If we are smart we should be able to postulate the effects the various ‘man-made heat sinks’ and ‘water/probe interaction’ would have compared with a virgin site.
    We could suggest what daily/monthly/seasonal/yearly waveforms we would expect a ‘perfect’ grass, unshaded, freshly white-washed screened sensor should have and the impacts of placing a a large runway or a large pool would be. Based on our a prior predictions, we should then be able to so if the Leroy classification system is robust.

    I must admit I am a little perplexed by Moshers reaction.

  303. R. Gates, a little wordy but not bad. But pointing out ocean inertia doesn’t eliminate the need to revisit models based on possibly spurious trends since those models include the oceans.

  304. R. Gates, if one treats the oceans as a large body having a fixed, but slowly rising, influx of radiation, then one could model a slow rise in average temperature as part of a box model with thermal inertia.
    However, this is not the case. The oceans surface heats and cools daily and seasonally.
    You just may have noticed that your doctor does not take an average your systolic and diastolic pressures. Do you know why this is?

  305. I think the dog feces has the same taste-trend as the ice-cream so it doesn’t matter.

  308. R Gates,

    First you’re congratulating Muller on his conversion to skeptical warmist through his scientific endeavor. (comment 100286)

    Then you’re telling us the science is an inconsequential sideshow. (comment 100413)

    It can’t be both revealing and inconsequential, can it?

  309. Mosh sez:
    “Steven Mosher (Comment #100367)
    July 29th, 2012 at 2:39 pm

    Long ago Willis criticized Muller for his first release of data with a pre print because it was not finalized.

    One will have to see if he holds folks to the same standard.”

    To be the first is highly irregular, a violation of established protocols, and certain to lead to further offenses. Those offenses are only tacky. In Anthony’s case it was also a bit of IYF drama. He was making a point. He made it. Hopefully this will be the last.

  310. HR,

    I was congratulating Muller for displaying the way real skepticism works. Muller, like myself, is now a warmist but remains a skeptic as well, meaning that we accept AGW as provisionally true, but constantly are on the look out for data that might prove AGW as false. In this regard, Watts” work is interesting and worth noting in term of potential errors in measuring ground based temperatures, but can’t tell us much about actual retention of energy in Earth’s system as the troposphere is not where primary activity of AGW is
    happening in terms of the retention of energy in Earth’s system.

    Somewhere around 10 x 10^22 joules of energy have been added to the upper 2000 meters of the ocean over the past decade. Thus, when someone says the Earth has cooled over the past decade, they must not be referring to the Earth’s largest non-tectonic energy reservoir. A real “unprecedented” finding would have been that the oceans had lost 10 x 10^22 joules of energy over the past decade, but that isn’t the case. No small fraction of this energy has been finding its way to the Arctic, melting the ice from the bottom from the warmer water entering primarily from the Atlantic side.

  311. BarryW (Comment #100412),

    I do too. I’ll also remain somewhat skeptical until I have the classifications to test myself. More on that later.

  312. Zeke (Comment #100429)

    Glad to hear that. The microsite issue is the one area that I don’t think has been properly addressed in validating any of the temperature algorithms.

  313. Nice to do a fast read of this thread and catch up on the past day’s goings-on. Shoutout to Fred Moolten, SteveF, Zeke, Brandon Shollenberger, R. Gates, harrywr, Bill Illis, PaulS, and other recent serial commenters (sorry if I missed mentioning you!) for an informative back and forth on Watts’ preprint. Appreciated.

  314. Andrew_FL – in defense of Gates, land temps don’t matter much for sea level rise or extreme weather other than heat waves. So *sometimes* irrelevant.

    -BillC, the warmickal skepticist.

  315. Soooo Anthony et al have a paper that demonstrates the land temp divergence post 1970 is a result of concrete, asphalt, and widespread use of air conditioning units? I think intuitively we already knew this but good to define it more clearly. Personally I think land temps and atmospheric temps are interesting but SSTs have always been the meat of the AGW story.

    Lucia, Wild guess: W.A. Andrew sock puppet = Shoosh sock puppet…. eeew!

  316. BillC (Comment #100448)-Yes, ocean temperature/heat determines certain things. One cannot ignore it in certain areas. This is a much more modest claim than saying that the magnitude of temperature change (presumably, based on insisting on the use of heat content, including sea surface temperatures) is irrelevant.

    I just found Gates’ statement really bizarre.

    R. Gates (Comment #100427)-“I was congratulating Muller for displaying the way real skepticism works. Muller, like myself, is now a warmist”

    He never was not a “warmist” so what he is displaying is intellectual dishonesty, not “true skepticism” at all.

  318. This was not a let down to me. Fit the bill completely. And honestly a huge coup if proven out in review. This would also make the (good) land temperature data finally meet up with the satellites in scope.

  319. Steven Mosher (Comment #100367)
    July 29th, 2012 at 2:39 pm

    Long ago Willis criticized Muller for his first release of data with a pre print because it was not finalized.
    One will have to see if he holds folks to the same standard.

    Cite? I’d like to know what it was that I actually said that you are referring to. I’m willing to defend my own words, but not your interpretation of my words … and no, near as I can tell, I’m not at burning man.

    w.

  320. Steven Mosher (Comment #100275)
    July 28th, 2012 at 5:47 pm

    Andrew KY.
    It is obvious you do not know R. if you did, then you would have understood my reference to CRAN which is known by all R programmers because that is where we get R from.
    So that was a test of your intelligence and your sincerity.
    you failed.

    So knowing the computer language “R” is a test of one’s intelligence and sincerity? Heck, I guess that makes me both intelligent and sincere … and man, do I feel sorry for all the stupid, insincere folks that don’t know R, how do they get through life? …

    w.

  321. Re: Neven (Jul 30 09:55),

    Anthony makes two points in his paper and both are important. Both will take months for others to re-examine. The first is that the site-quality ratings system employed by some major players that “adjust” climate data is seriously flawed and that the new METEO-France method of rating site quality, which has been accepted by the WMO and thus an apparently legitimate alternative site scoring system, yields dramatically different results. The second is that some 90% of the excess increase in temperature trends in North American temperature data is due to flawed “adjustment” methods that degrade data from the highest quality sites. The latter is not a new assertion, but the former is, especially as it takes into account effects of nearby heat sinks and emitters that will have micro to mesoscale effects.

  322. Duster,

    Unfortunately barring a release of the new station siting ratings (unlikely prior to publication), we won’t be able to analyze and re-examine Anthony’s points in too much depth.

  324. Zeke–

    Why so? Can’t one use the station data in his paper and go from there? Sure, for any area of the world were station status is unknown that would be impossible, but where we do have verified meta data on station quality, would we be able to apply the paper’s methods to see what happens?

  325. Ged,

    His paper does not include the quality classification of any specific stations. Thus its not possible right now to test if there are any confounding effects (like TOBs, station moves, instrument changes) between the well and poor sited stations that might explain why there is such a large difference in the raw data but no effective difference in the homogenized data.

  327. “do I feel sorry for all the stupid, insincere folks that don’t know R, how do they get through life? …”

    Thanks for your sympathy, Willis. I never realized how stupid I am. What’s R? Did I spell it right? I don’t know how I was able to survive wars and then get rich. Must be blind luck, along with my abundant and superior insincerity. I am extremely sneaky and down right treacherous. I guess that makes up for being so dimwitted.

    Seems like Mosher has got a bad case of the BIG HEAD, since Muller took him under his wing 🙂

  329. I remember when Watts first published his data on site quality rankings’ Mosher and his poodle John V were straight in trying to discredit it. See Watts first post on this at Climate Audit in 2007: http://climateaudit.org/2007/09/12/ushcn-survey-results-based-on-33-of-the-network/
    Mosher has always been determined to be wrong on the idea that site quality hasn’t impacted the quality of the temperature record. Likewise his insistance that CO2 has any correlation to temperature. Clever, but wrong.

    LEAVE A REPLY

  330. R Gates,

    I accept that skepticism as a default position for all scientific analysis. Hopefully we agree the warmist position has to come with some real content. In the case of Muller the epiphany must come from his science and as you say his science is a bit of a sideshow. The energy content of the surface air over land is going to tell us little about the build up of energy in the system.

    That was my point. Where does the change of mind come from? It has to have real content and I agree with you the surface air trend over the last century should have little persuasive value alone. Maybe he’s done a full review of all the evidence though, who knows?

  331. MarkR,

    John V as Mosh’s poodle? Hehe.

    We really should archive the history of climate blogs somewhere for posterity. Lots of interesting stuff and people that have been involved over the years…

  332. Earlier I discussed my view on R. Gates, saying:

    Apparently, he’s so certain Anthony is wrong he doesn’t even have to think about what Anthony did. He just knows Anthony will be proven wrong, and soon.

    It seems R. Gates was right. Over on Judith Curry’s site, poster Robert (who I’ve been told is a climate scientist) said:

    Your attachment to Watt’s shiny object is already past its sell-by date. Debunkings are already popping up like mushrooms all around the web, despite Watts strangely providing neither data nor code nor the name of the journal he’s submitting to:

    One of the two “debunkings” he posted was this one which explicitly says:

    Anyway, I haven’t got to the science yet.

    I guess R. Gates was right.

  333. After a 300 plus post thread I think it would be time for someone to attempt to summarize the importance and weaknesses of the Watts prepublication. I have not read all 300 plus posts and I have only skimmed through the Watts paper. I am familiar with this subject so skimming can impart a fairly accurate picture.

    What I see is with the newer criteria for classifying stations the raw USHCN temperature data shows larger differences between 1979-2008 trends when station are grouped by the newer criteria. That finding if it can be verified would be worth a publication. For the bigger picture, however, the question has to be whether that difference exists in the adjusted data. It does not, but Watt attempts to make the point that the data from the higher quality stations with the lower trends is adjusted upwards towards the poorer quality stations with the higher trends. That is an occurrence I have seen with my own calculations using the older classification criteria with TOB and adjusted data. Here I do not see Watts making the connection between that observation and an error in the adjustment methodology, but perhaps my skimming of the article was not sufficient to find it.

    Firstly as I recall the USHCN data adjustments start with the TOB data and not the raw data and secondly I recall the TOB is a major part of the adjustment from raw to adjusted temperatures. The adjustments between TOB and Adjusted data are made for USHCN with the change point algorithm which is invoked from both meta data and measured change point calculations between nearest neighbors stations. Once the non homogeneity is established in this manner the data is adjusted using the nearest neighbor stations. It is at this point that Watts would have to show the over homogenization of the algorithm that would lead to the error he claims for the USHCN adjustment process. What I have found by calculating and finding change points between nearest neighbors after the USHCN data has been adjusted with the Menne algorithm is that it is under adjusted – although these observation could arise from separate problems.

    The problem with using a current station rating to predict temperature trend effects is that it says nothing about the past history of the quality of that station and when you only look at the past 30 years of data a station change that predates that period and remained more of less constant should not affect a temperature trend. Obviously in principle a change point can look into the past and would be better equipped to find these changes. Unfortunately those change point algorithms are limited and particularly so by noisy data. Attempts have been made to use simulated and realistic data to test or benchmark the performances of these algorithms. It might be instructive to determine how one might realistically simulate a changing station criterion for testing the adjustment algorithm. For example would a slow decay in station quality (rating) be detected with a change point and without meta data?

  335. Kenneth writes “What I see is with the newer criteria for classifying stations the raw USHCN temperature data shows larger differences between 1979-2008 trends when station are grouped by the newer criteria.”

    Is TOB an issue when we were using maximum and minimum recording instruments? Or am I missing something?

  337. DeWitt, Changing the method of finding Tmax is the issue. The old Max/Min LIG didn’t wear watches. They just recorded max and min. The changing time of that Max and Min is information, which we don’t have in the past. So the new digital true Max and Min should be compared to the old max and min. Adjusting TOBS definitely has an impact, but is it what we really should be looking for?

  338. You have to use these 2 links below to get a better picture of what the Watts paper is referencing when it talks about temperature data. In the last listed link the figures show Raw data which I assume is the raw USHCN data before the TOBS adjustment and the Adjusted data which would have to be unambiguously the final adjusted form that USHCN derives using the Menne change point algorithm. I find the lack of specificity in the Watts text about which temperature data set he is referencing very frustrating.

    Many have looked at the TOBS adjustments, and while the adjustment is not exact, the direction has been found correct and the magnitude is reasonable. If I have the Watts definition of temperature data sets used in his paper correctly interpreted then an unlikely interaction between the TOB adjustment and station site quality would be indicated.

    I see that SteveM at CA has started a thread on the subject of the Watts paper. Maybe some of these critical details can be revealed there. I would hope that a reasonable discussion could avoid the personality issues. I have questions about the use of change point algorithms that have not been answered to my satisfaction to date and I have a great deal of interest in the benchmarking of these various algorithms by testing against realistic simulated data where the truth is known. I would think that change point analysis could hypothetically be the best method of adjusting non homogeneous temperature data. Unfortunately I am aware of the limitations of these methods when working with noisy data. The key to validating any system is testing it with realistic data.

    http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/watts-et-al_2012_discussion_paper_webrelease.pdf

    http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/watts-et-al-2012-figures-and-tables-fina

  339. PDA (short for PDA’s Dada Acronym) (Comment #100487)
    July 30th, 2012 at 2:30 pm

    Willis Eschenbach (Comment #100465)

    July 30th, 2012 at 11:54 am
    Cite?

    Cite.

    PDA, I didn’t ask you what you might fantasize that Steven Mosher was talking about.

    I asked Steven what he was talking about. I don’t care in the slightest what you might believe about what Steven was referring to. That’s not even hearsay, that’s just idle speculation on your part, and is useless to me.

    w.

  340. Kenneth Fritsch,

    I’ll try and do a summary post today, though my day job is getting rather hectic at the moment so it might be late tonight.

  341. We have a diagnostic test for measuring the levels of HIV and Hepatitis virus in whole human blood.
    Now there are two ways we can test;
    Firstly, we could take blood from hundreds of people, type it, then mix it together and finally screen it for deadly viruses
    Secondly, we could take blood from hundreds of people, type it, screen it for deadly viruses, then mix together all the blood that passes the screening.

    The first method is much cheaper and much easier to do than the second, but kills more people.
    Than again, what the hell do biologists know about quality control and homogenization.

  342. DocMartyn (Comment #100548)-“The first method is much cheaper and much easier to do than the second, but kills more people.”

    It would not be cheap, nor would it kill anyone. You are forgetting that it was:

    “Firstly, we could take blood from hundreds of people, type it, then mix it together and finally screen it for deadly viruses”

    If you screen it, and find deadly viruses, presumably you dispose of it. That is why it is also not cheaper, since that method would entail collecting large amounts of blood and never using them because you virtually guarantee that every pooled sample is infected.

  343. Zeke (Comment #100547)

    “I’ll try and do a summary post today, though my day job is getting rather hectic at the moment so it might be late tonight.”

    Zeke, I thought I just did. If you have inputs I missed, that would be most welcome or that would clarify my first impressions.

    I will ask you some questions on the current BEST thread here at the Black Board that have not been answered to my satisfaction and to date about the BEST process.

  344. Kenneth Fritsch,

    I generally agree with your points. I just meant taking them and my own thoughts to create a new thread, as this one is getting a tad long.

    Feel free to ask the Berkeley questions. I’ll try and answer them as best I can.

  346. Andrew_FL, alas, this was done by the French in the 80’s and is the reason that so many European hemophiliacs are dead.
    You see the thing is that the detection threshold of viruses is higher than the size of the infectious innoculm. You can dilute viral load to lower than detection level with ease, and it will still kill you. Titrating away signal is a common fault.

  347. Lucia,

    Sounds like a plan. Might not to be later tonight due to the demands of the job that actually pays me :-p

  348. DocMartyn (Comment #100554)-Sorry, I assumed there would be no relationship between success of the screening procedure and the amount of blood. More accurately, I assumed screening would be done at whatever level necessary to detect any contaminant present no matter how dilute, but a small rephrasing would make my assumptions about what your analogy was clearer.

  349. Re: DocMartyn (Jul 31 13:03),

    Titrating away signal is a common fault.

    Indeed. If a batch of your product doesn’t meet specifications, blend it with some better batches until the blend passes. Blended whiskey comes to mind. They say it’s done for consistency of taste….

  350. Andrew_FL (Comment #100557)

    It’s not the amount of blood, but the amount of virus the test could detect in a certain amount of blood. When the HIV viral load test first came out, I believe the the minimum for a positive test was 500 copies/mL of HIV-1 RNA. Currently the standard minimum is 20 copies/mL.

Comments are closed.