He’s hopelessly stubborn, worse than Mann at being able to admit mistakes IMHO.
Did NASA/NOAA Dramatically Alter U.S. Temperatures After 2000? – Hit & Run : Reason.com
My response ;
Dear Skeptic,
If rural station data is being progressively lost, then infilling and gridding will create a multiplied progressive warming bias. I would highly recommend that you stop doing that.
Sometimes I’m left scratching my head at the ego of Watts.
The irony is that yesterday all the alarmists were saying “you can’t trust a word Watts rights”.
Today they are saying: “look what Watts wrote”.
Popcorns! Popcorns!
If only we had a consensus ourselves *-D
Jo Nova and David Evans may have a good chance of consensus building:
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/06/big-news-part-vi-building-a-new-solar-climate-model-with-the-notch-filter/#comments
Watts did a great service to the cause of truth with his review of temperature collection stations. A long time ago.
Now he believes that he is some sort of anointed arbiter of good taste, decorum, reason, rationality, science, and strategy for the poorly organized army of skeptical truth-seekers.
Watts’ embrace of the “luke-warm” point of view, apparently so that he is able to continue to be allowed to talk to PC-Progressive media, is the best example of his pandering to the anti-capitalist, anti-progress Progressive Catastrophic Warmers.
Now, he is in all out pander-mode: “The surface temperature record thus becomes a product of bureaucracy and not of hard science…Never ascribe malice to what can be explained by simple incompetence.”
This is a lot like McCain and Romney’s declarations about Obama during their campaigns. They both went out of their way to state publicly that “Obama loves his country and will do a great job if he is elected.”
This is the RINO point of view. They are more worried about being accepted by the PC-Prog media in NYC and DC than they are about the truth.
Thanks for your work, Steve. Don’t let the self-anointed gate-keepers keep you down.
The surface temperature record thus becomes a product of bureaucracy and not of hard science…Never ascribe malice to what can be explained by simple incompetence.
Never ascribe malice to what can be explained by simple incompetence.”…..
This has been going on for way too long to just be incompetence…
Unless someone is saying they are too stupid to catch their mistakes
Yes, and never ascribe incompetence to experts who continue in their errors long after the errors have been pointed out and explained!
“Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts” – Richard Feynman
I read that somewhere …
/sarc (if needed)
i realised yesterday that the fundamental requirement of a real (skeptic) scientist, is that they have to be able to admit they are wrong.
That’s because if you propose a hypothesis – you can only test it properly if don’t dismiss the possibility of it being falsified. You have to be able to accept that it can be falsified – that you can be wrong.
I’ve never ever seen a climate scientist admit they are wrong – perhaps with the one exception of Phil Jones who once admitted the “pause” existed (and then got vilified by his colleagues for admitting it)
Watts is not to blame.
Regretfully, selfishness plagues all mankind, even skeptics who see the problem clearly in AGW believers.
Jo Nova and Dave Evans may have correctly identified the collective engineering approach, rather than the selfish theoretical physics way, to advance human understanding of the source of energy that sustains the lives of us all.
“Never ascribe malice to what can be explained by simple incompetence.”
The problem I have with this rule is that if we were dealing with incompetence it should look like random error. That is sometimes it decreases government power and increases our freedom. Instead it always increases government power and decreases our freedom. Thus I can’t explain it with simple incompetence.
I do however ascribe it to what could be called complex incompetence or self interest incompetence. Or what is my non-conspiracy theory. That is those with influence set up the social conditions for career success and then most everyone else follows along those lines. This biases the incompetence. We will rarely or never have incompetence from within the system that goes against the flow because it is in nobody’s self interest to do so. Even outside critics become aware of the dangers of going against the flow so they produce these throttled criticisms like you describe from Watts.
In other words it is not simple or random incompetence we see, but a guided incompetence.
It would be best to demonstrate how spatial weighting is increasing bias, instead of decreasing it. Perhaps with pictures for us laymen.
On one level, it’s good these differences exist. It lays bare the assumptions on both sides …
I keep coming back to this NOAA graph
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/ushcn/ts.ushcn_anom25_diffs_urb-raw_pg.gif
I assume that the upward trend in that graph continues into the next century and is extended world-wide. One would assume that corrections would be random in sign and decrease in magnitude over time as more sophisticated equipment is employed. The graph says otherwise. It makes no sense unless you consider that something fishy might be going on.
I can’t verify what Goddard is doing except to say it agrees with that graph and with other aspects of the climate debate.
I’d like my side of the coin to scrupulously adhere to the facts.
As near as I can tell, Goddard backs his stuff up with links
I’d like my side of the coin to not let the other side control the debate and language
I see all to often guys on my side offer up ways to control CO2 or refer to it as a problem when it’s not. The last 17 years global temperatures isn’t necessarily a pause. That world temperatures are up over the last 160 years isn’t something to concede or admit to, If it’s a fact say so.
I’d like my side of the coin to organize at a high level
This isn’t happening, the Republicans have never been good politicians. They tend to think they’re playing bean bag according to Marquess of Queensberry rules.
re: Steve Case June 24, 2014 at 2:37 pm
… I can’t …
A self-imposed limitation? One is curious as to why the other can’t …
.
The role of the Republicans over the last thirty years has been to reliably roll over for socialism; by that metric, they are *excellent* politicians.
+100
Intent can be very difficult to prove, but he admits the data is warm baised That plus a very obvious agenda is enough for me to put two plus two together. I seriously doubt that this is innocent bungling. Especially when they continue to spew endless lies, like 331 straight above normal months, more extreme weather, massive exaggeration of named tropical storms, etc., etc.
The idea of mere incompetence is refuted by a non-normal distribution of error.
True incompetence would result in arbitrary errors that, given a large enough sample, would approximate a normal distribution: some error supporting and some error refuting the theory. But that’s not what is happening. Instead, all error serves to support the theory, even to the point of changing the direction of trend lines (since the errors result in warmer temperatures after, and cooler temperatures before, an entirely arbitrary inflection point that just so happens to be a temperature minimum in the 20th century).
Statistically, logically, and in any other way, the chances of the error being the result of mere incompetence are near zero.
+1
“…while it is true that NOAA does a tremendous amount of adjustment to the surface temperature record, the word “fabrication” implies that numbers are being plucked out of thin air in a nefarious way when it isn’t exactly the case.”
I would have thought that “fabrication” would literally mean “manufactured” and I think that describes it pretty well, It doesn’t imply a nefarious intent, at least in my mind.
Watts has done a great job on WUWT, but unfortunately, like many skeptics he’s a stubborn old goat and unfortunately he’s wrong in this instance.
I can’t see any flaw in the statement from the linked (and relinked) article below.
“Absolute temperatures work fine if and only if the composition of the station network remains unchanged over time.”
Does the data exist to perform an analysis using only the data set for the current set of USHCN stations? It should be a pretty straightforward analysis and would go a long way towards settling this argument.
Absolute temperatures are the only way to detect a constant shift in the baseline temperatures, as I have explained many times.
Reading and re-reading past your other posts I see that what I suggested has actually been done (to death) and is the Anomaly Method.
And the Anomaly Method is subject to abuse due the selective removal of USHCN data stations and is therefore not reliable.
I believe I understand now. At least I understand what you’ve been saying about the anomalies over the past weeks.
Thanks for all of the work. We’re all skeptics here by nature so you’re going to keep having to answer questions like these. Repeatedly.
Steven, I agree. There is an inherent danger in making adjustments to raw data.
This made it almost impossible to identify mass fractionation of atoms in nature on the basis of measurements made with mass spectrometers that discriminate against mass in making the measurements.
E.g., types of neon identified in meteorites (Ne-A, Ne-B, Ne-C, Ne-D and Ne-E) and excess light isotopes of various elements in the solar wind are probably made by simple mass-dependent fraction.
Sorry if my comment was incoherent.
Adjusting raw data for mass discrimination in the mass spectrometers kept us from seeing that nature itself was sorting atoms by mass.
Let’s suppose a station in a temperature dataset for Anytown, USA records an average temperature of 60 degrees this month, but a station two miles down the road (not in a dataset) records an average temperature of 61 degrees. The next year, the first station is destroyed by rampaging badgers, so the dataset decides to include the second station in its dataset to keep the record for Anytown, USA going. The second station records a temperature of 61.1 (and 0.1 difference from the last reading).
Year 1
Station 1: Absolute 60
Station 2: Absolute 61
Year 2
Station 1: Destroyed by badgers
Station 2: Absolute 61.1 Anomaly (from year 1) 0.1
What is the best method for recording the temperature of Anytown, USA? If you use absolute temperatures, there would look like a 1.1 rise in temperature the year the station moved. If you use the anomaly, it would look like a 0.1 rise. Are either of these methods even useful because we have no idea if the first station would have recorded 60.1, 60.0, or 59.9?
So your argument is that badgers are systematically targeting cooler stations progressively over time? ROFLMAO
Badgers are fierce creatures and should not be laughed at (badger mocking/harassment is the 37th leading cause of death in my community).
But the question remains, what is the best method for recording the temperature in such a situation? Do you go with the 1.1 jump when the station moved by using absolute temperatures, use the 0.1 anomaly (assuming the old station would have had a similar anomaly), or do you just scrap the record altogether because its not consistent? I think all three possible solutions have their own problems, and I’m curious what your preferred method would be and why you prefer it over the other two.
You are dealing with large numbers. Statistics says the errors will cancel.
Of course when you intentionally drop from over 1500 stations down to less than 100 you might have a bit of a problem….
http://www.climateapplications.com/GHCN/images/Raw_NandCAmerica_Stacked.png
For Canada:
http://diggingintheclay.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/canadadt.png
The essential difference between you and Mikey is that Mikey has deliberately obscured elements of his allegedly scientific proof, and justifies all his output by appeals to authority. You on the other hand give the rational, data sources, and the method for public as well as scientific review.
Mistakes do not have to be admitted unless the rational for the task is proved wrong or illogical, and/or the data or method is(are) shown to be wrong. If none of these things can be shown then there is no mistake. Hence it is instructive to note Mikey’s prefered method of hiding or obscurring either the data or the method or both, asserts his dubious authority through the courts.
Watts made a HUGE, HUGE mistake in posting at Lucias site to reply to Zekes drivel analysis of your work. I think these guys don’t realize the game is UP, OVER, FINITO. AGW is absolute bullshit Co2 has not one iota on an effect on climaTE ETC… NOAA etc are all massively comitting fraud to back up a non-existent story. Skeptics are turning to deniers in droves this is Watts et al has completely missed. I for one am not prepare to listen to the drivel of Mosher, Zekek, BEST data ect any longer. My bet is that WUWT has already lost 50% of his continuous audience. That’s not to say the man has done a great job to date he just doesn’t get the shift in thought going on at the moment as all this fraud is brought to light. You cannot pander to lukewarmers as they unconciously are feeding warmist drivel. WUWT will ahve to take a MUCH HARDER line if its to survive in the climate “Skeptic” business.
Watts is an opportunist and is making money and fortune from his efforts. He is a sophist. He believes one can heat their house by simply surrounding a candle with mirrors. He lost me about 2 years ago when he banned me for questioning him on one of his posts. I haven’t been back since, and I don’t care to read or consider any of the bullshit that is posted on his site, especially the crap that comes from Willis. I have seen way too much sophistic crap coming out of that blog rag. And to think I wasted several years as a daily reader of that site. I will admit, there have been some good things posted there, but unfortunately the bullshit negates all of that.
He doesn’t believe you can heat a house by surrounding a candle with mirrors. You never learned a thing, did you?
The Bish has a thread going on this.
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2014/6/24/watts-reasons-with-goddard.html
I defended you in a comment while mentioning some USHCN data derived from the GHCN databases. It appears you have a mix of defenders and detractors over there.
Keep it up Steven.
How many ‘adjustments’ go against AGW theory?
How many work in favour of AGW theory?
it seems almost every single adjustment just happens to fall in favour of AGW.
That’s cooler when cooler is called for, AND warmer when warmer is called for.
Well I’ll go to the foot of my stairs!
So not just in the same direction every time, then, regardless of circumstances.
Instead, it’s down when down is needed, and up when up is needed.
Voila!
What are the odds of that, then?
There’s your answer right in front of your eyes.
You should get a paper out asap.
I have read a large amount of statements on “science” that Watts has personally made that are completely nonsense and easily demonstrable as such.
“The way an actual greenhouse works is by trapping infrared radiation. Glass is transparent to visible light, but not to infrared light, as we see below.”
Nonsense – glass is an excellent absorber and emitter of IR frequencies above 4 micrometres – there is no way you can call this a “trap”.
“Mr. Gore was attempting to demonstrate this effect in his setup, but there’s an obvious problem: he used infrared heat lamps rather than visible light lamps. Thus, it seems highly likely that the glass jars would block the incoming infrared,..”
BUT all the evidence I could find is that most glass transmits almost 100 % of IR in the 2.7 micrometre frequency and up to 50 % in the 4.3 micrometre frequency that CO2 absorbs most strongly. The temperatures associated with a peak emission in these frequencies are 800 and 400 degrees C.
This information comes from the glass manufacturers themselves !! It is not simply made up out of a mistaken belief in some generalised statement read somewhere and accepted as gospel as Watts does with regular monotony.
By using nonsensical voodoo scientific misinterpretation Watts tries to claim infrared lamps do not emit IR radiation capable of transmission through glass which could be absorbed by CO2.
This formed his “scientific” rebuttal of the Gore sponsored CO2 in a glass jar experiment and it is simply nonsense. The rest of his rebuttal may be accurate but on the fundamental science Watts is completely wrong.
He is so completely wrong in the majority of his “scientific” pronouncements – these are simply 2.
Watts and others play right into the gov’ts lie when they invoke ‘greenhouse’. There is no greenhouse. The earth’s climate is a convection system, something I learnt in grade 9 science, back in the middle ages when rational science was still taught.
If this planet is viewed as a greenhouse, its a greenhouse without a roof. It is IR free to radiate through the top of the atmosphere, there is no CO2 blanket crap, its free to leave the planet.
Steve you are rather arrogant and boneheaded at times. You also hate to admit to mistakes, although that doesn’t mean you haven’t admitted, grudgingly, to a few mistakes in the past. This is an unfortunate personality flaw which detracts from your intellectual abilities.
If you have something specific to complain about that I can debate, you are welcome to do so here. Making mindless personal attacks like you just did without any specific complaint is complete bullshit, Will.
Pathetic.
Your misrepresentation over Hansen’s scenario A, B and C is a good example. When I pointed out that you were incorrectly comparing CO2 emissions to scenario A when a fairer comparison was probably scenario B, you misdirected by claiming that methane didn’t warm the atmosphere as much as Hansen’s model assumed. That’s a separate argument. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. But what you have to do is accept whatever the model predicts should happen (irrespective of whether you think the assumptions are right or wrong), against what happened to atmospheric composition. Because the question was this: How good was the model at predicting future temperature based on its assumptions? Anything else you try to do to defend your position, such as attacking the internals of Hansen’s model, are irrelevant. We all know it’s wrong. Even RealClimate has admitted this. The question was: how wrong was this model if we evaluate it honestly?
That’s why you piss some sceptics off. But I still like your blog.
So when Hansen told Congress that Scenario A was business as usual, he was just lying and you know better than he does about what he meant.
Brilliant.
See? You’re doing it again! Exactly the thing that pisses some skeptics off. You conflate Hansen the political activist and what he says as a political activist, with his computer model, which now stands on its own as a published paper.
You know why Zeke and Mosher are publishing comments on this blog recently? Of course you do, because you’re getting publicity in the wider media. It’s a threat to them. Because pressure might be brought to bare on them to defend their work. So of course, certain forces will muster against you to discredit your claims. They’ll do that by focusing on your personality flaws, rather than those arguments you make that deserve some attention. But, what’s the point of telling you something you already know?
So you think you know better what Hansen meant than he does. And you call me arrogant.
I’m not arguing with Hansen and I’m happy to accept whatever Hansen says as indicative of what Hansen believes. Best not put words in my mouth. It just backfires. 😉
I have absolutely no clue what you are complaining about.
He represented Hansen’s claims perfectly. Not a single iota of any of Hansen’s extremist hand-waving has been replicated in reality. This was the main point. So what is yours ?Why do you need to split hairs and argue over word-arrangement? Are you a gov’t bureaucrat ?
Mr. Watts from your comments one has to conlude that Hitler was not a criminal, just incompetent…
Mr Watts got it partly right. It is actually malicious incompetence.
I am an IT modelling expert, I would guess after 4 hours of work on one of NASA’s infilling model algorithms, I would uncover that the entire exercise was a mixture of fraud and forced data output. We need a complete audit of all computer programs which purportedly prove globlaoneywhatever.
From that premise my question is: What is Watts’ problem ? He admits you are right, then says you are ‘extreme’ – the usual ad hominem moniker Marxists use [as if Marxist-Dialecticism is not extreme ?] It is clear that data is being fabricated, which in plain english means ‘made up’. You can argue only about how much and why. The ‘how much’ is a lot – the exactitudes can be argued over, but not the intent.
Here is the banality – Watts blames the bureaucracy ? The man must be daft. Governments fund hundred of billions of dollars into non-scientific frauds ranging from globaloneywarming to pond-scum mutated into professors, and Islam is peace. They breed the lies and the propaganda to tax, regulate, control, manage, brainwash. Gov’t is not benign.
What we need is a combined open-systems audit of all gov’t data pertaining to their claims that the earth is heating up due to Co2. Instead of pissing into each other’s bed, Watts should be spending more energy on that initiative. I do not trust the new lukewarmist Watt.
E.M. Smith spent a lot of time looking at GISS’s source code, it inspired the creation of his blog at http://chiefio.wordpress.com/
That would be a good place to start, though I don’t think he has updated it for the current GISS code. (Are they getting adjusted data from the NCDC? I haven’t been following this debate much over the last couple of years.
I finally put Reason magazine in my spam folder when I realized they sound like crazed old hippies. I lost a lot of respect and interest with Anthony Watts when he did a big piece on going solar at his residence~ having no guilt feeding off the Government trough i.e. taking subsidies.
As a humble observer of the passing show it seems to me that Anthony Watts’ unseemly pronouncement is more to do with Real Science being in the limelight as opposed to WUWT than a genuine desire to to provide objective information.
However you want to spin it – fabrication, deceit, naivete – the original data is tampered with and NOAA conveniently ignores that fact when publishing information. Watts does a kind of jujitsu using differences in interpretation to bash RS instead of dealing with the main NOAA issue.
Very disappointing.