Surfacestations: NOAA Has Overestimated Land Surface Temperature Trends 474
New submitter BMOC writes "Anthony Watts of Surfacestations project (crowdsourced research) has finally yielded some discussion worthy results (PDF). He uses a siting classification system developed by Michel Leroy for Meteofrance in 1999 that was improved in 2010 to quantify the effect of heat sinks and sources within the thermometer viewshed by calculation of the area- weighted and distance-weighted impact of biasing elements to calculate both raw and gridded 30 year trends for each surveyed station, using temperature data from USHCNv2. His initial claims are that station siting is impacting the surface temperature record significantly, and NOAA adjustments are exacerbating that problem, not helping. Whether you agree with his results or not, recognize that this method of research is modern and worth your participation in the review. Poke holes in publicly sourced and presented research all you can, that's what makes this method useful."
Oh dear... (Score:3, Insightful)
He uses a siting classification system developed by Michel Leroy for Meteofrance in 1999 that was improved in 2010 to quantify the effect of heat sinks and sources within the thermometer viewshed by calculation of the area- weighted and distance-weighted impact of biasing elements to calculate both raw and gridded 30 year trends for each surveyed station, using temperature data from USHCNv2.
Had to read that a couple of times before my internal parser came back with an approximate translation into lay-English.
I fear that this will be ammunition for the climate change deniers, which if I understand correctly is not the intention here. The gentleman in question is merely pointing out possible bias and error and the open invitation is to critically analyse and see if his theory stands up. You know, like real scientific method! Still, I'll sit back now and watch the fireworks in what promises to be yet another pitched battle between the deeply entrenched sides in a war where actual fact is not nearly as important as name calling and idealogical strength of will.
And the insults start in 3.....2......1......
Re:Who cares what it said? (Score:3, Insightful)
If it's public, then stop shouting and screaming and pointing fingers like little children and act like a proper scientist and show where it's flawed, if it is.
In the manner with which you're currently acting, you would have taken the odd FTL results from the Italian physicists to be true instead of pouring over it and finding what errors there were.
Science has checking and verifying results as a major part of itself. Leave your bias and presumptions at the door.
Re:Who cares what it said? (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is exactly what the peer-review process does. Which is why you never trust non-peer-reviewed work. I can write whatever I want about anything, make it look like a paper, and then send it out to the media. Which is precisely what happened here.
You're walking down precisely the opposite road. Even one peer-reviewed paper on "remarkable claims" isn't enough - that's just the start of a process that can only be confirmed by a series of followup studies, spawning a process that can lead to dozens or hundreds of papers before one can feel confident in the truth of the matter.
This here is *zero* published results.
And the scientific process is the peer-review process, which this has not undergone, and will almost certainly fail like Watts' other "work". If he even bothers actually submitting it instead of just saying that he's going to.
Re:So, not "may have", but "has". Right. (Score:4, Insightful)
Doesn't matter. What matters is that the deniers will now publish this as "scientific fact" on every possible news/media channel and the USA will get a tiny bit stupider as a result.
Re:Oh dear... (Score:5, Insightful)
Attack the work, not the man or his (lack of) credentials.
AFAIK, the work is relatively simple statistical analysis of time series data. No advanced science required. I have not looked in detail, but they claim that the adjustments made to climate data are biased.
If this is an erroneous claim, it should be easy to demonstrate.
Re:Not Published = Trash (Score:1, Insightful)
extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Of course, that only applies to one side of the debate.
Re:Not Published = Trash (Score:5, Insightful)
The BEST study that made headlines all over the globe, including here on Slashdot just a few days ago, isn't peer reviewed yet either.
Both should thus be treated with the normal caveats for pre-prints.
Re:Oh dear... (Score:5, Insightful)
But he didn't attack the man. He merely pointed out that he's not a meteorologist. In my country when I see somebody on TV forecasting the weather that person is a meteorologist, they have spent years studying the weather and know a lot more about the climate than I do. In the US they're just an actor reading from a script.
The US does _have_ meterologists, who might know something about the climate, but this man is not one of them.
Re:Not Published = Trash (Score:4, Insightful)
The current pro and anti-science debate is really just truth versus advertising. Advertising can look very convincing is enough money is put in to do so but it falls over in contact with reality.
Re:Not Published = Trash (Score:5, Insightful)
Publishing is quite political, and journals are often reluctant to publish controversial findings.
Journals like controversial findings, for the same reason that newspapers up-play their headlines: it attracts attention. Furthermore, a shoddy paper with a controversial conclusion will often spur a slew of debate and comments, each citing the original paper, and thus raising the journals impact factor.
Further, larger / more prestigious journals are extraordinarily reluctant to publish a paper if the author hasn't already published enough in the past, again, regardless of the papers actual quality.
This would be relevant if the paper had been disregarded for not being in a prestigious journal. It wasn't, it was disregarded for not being in any journal. There is always a journal that will publish the paper, it is just a matter of trying until you find it and/or are lucky with the reviewers.
Be honest and let the findings stand or fall on their own merit, not your opinion of the author or how he decided to make his findings available.
The way the research is published often raises some question: If it is good enough to pass peer review, why hasn't it been tried? There is a reason why "science by press conference" is a derogative.
Re:Not Published = Trash (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, well given that the report just showed basically the same trend as IPCC reports, the report was not really the story. The real story was that we had a big non-believer on AGW had a change of heart when he did the research himself and came to the same conclusion as IPCC.
It basically said that if you dont trust IPCC reports - do the research yourself and you will get the same results.
Re:Not Published = Trash (Score:1, Insightful)
Problem there is that one side controls the "peers."
Re:Not Published = Trash (Score:1, Insightful)
The fact that you try to reduce such a complicated system to a string of single dimensional cause and effect statements and presume that this is the truth is truely extraordinary,
Re:Not Published = Trash (Score:4, Insightful)
The real story was that we had a big non-believer on AGW had a change of heart when he did the research himself and came to the same conclusion as IPCC.
That part has me confused. He's never been a non-believer in AGW [populartechnology.net].
(and I'm not sure there is a conclusion to talk about yet since the paper isn't peer reviewed. It also seems his former paper was rejected in peer review [rossmckitrick.com] which doesn't bode well)
Re:Not Published = Trash (Score:5, Insightful)
Does this mean that for balance we have to start including YECs, flat earthers, etc as reviewers in studies? Cause that's definitely how the scientific method works.
Re:Oh dear... (Score:4, Insightful)
He was dismissing the paper because one author appears to not be formally trained as a meteorologist.
Again, this is more about data analysis than weather. You have hundreds (thousands?) of different stations of different quality. Some records are incomplete. Records stop and start at different times. Measurement devices change. Measurement times change.
There is not much in the way of climate science in this, just putting data together. There are implications for climate science, however.
The problem is to put all that data together intelligently. The current paper says the traditional methods are biased to the warming side. If this is not true, it should be refuted.
If you followed the climategate issues, you might realize some established climate scientists appear to have biased their own work to fit an agenda. Some also say they have also worked the peer review system to unduly suppress opposition opinions.
Re:Not Published = Trash (Score:5, Insightful)
I seem to recall that there was a big article and discussion here about the BEST study...before it was peer reviewed.
Re:Oh dear... (Score:2, Insightful)
Credentials are, however, something.
Watt's lack of academic credentials are not the primary reasons to dismiss his work. Those are, in rough order:
1) His results contradict enormous amounts of well-scrutinized other scientific work on both the same and related topics, and explanations offered for that contradiction are grossly inadequate;
2) His past results appear to have involved deliberate deception;
3) His past results, and a casual reading of these results, suggest a serious ignorance of science;
4) His past results were thoroughly wrong;
and 5) He is quite plainly in this to produce a particular result he wants.
His lack of credentials is just number 6. This doesn't really even have that much to do with science; this is simply how, in a world where you have finite amounts of time and attention, you decide what to pay attention to. If the first five of these things were true but Watts had been Einstein's personal protege, we might still pay a little attention on the off chance that the rest of science had grossly missed something this genius had uncovered, or at least that he had come up with some specific relevant point. There's no reason to think that here. The scientific problems are the main reason to ignore this guy, but his near-complete lack of scientific education is perfectly reasonable as the nail in the coffin. This is particularly true for non-specialists attempting to evaluate the newsworthiness of a story.
Re:Not Published = Trash (Score:5, Insightful)
However, the claim that human emissions of CO2 surpass all the volcanic activity on Earth evidently is extraordinary. The claim that CO2 levels now are geologically high is extraordinarily false (we've had way higher CO2 levels during the Jurassic, for example. And much warmer temperatures, with global averages above 25 degrees. Biodiversity endured.). Actually, there's clear evidence that we're on a cool period; global temperatures are highly correlated with the formation and breaking of supercontinents, and we're between supercontinents).
There should be more geologists in climate sciences. Their long-term view should be considered over the "OMFG we've had 10 warm years we're burning the planet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" alarmism. There are various cycles of global temperatures, ranging from hundreds of millions of years to tens of thousands. A short term (~100yr) variation is nothing.
Re:Not Published = Trash (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the purpose of this site is to look at how the original data is collected and check the quality of it. I read through the paper and all they did was re-evaluate the sites to a new standard Leroy (2010). The previous standard looked just at how close heat sources/sinks were from the thermometer. The new standard takes into account not only the distance but area of the heat source/sink. This makes sense to me. It also brings up questions about the roles that shade and vegetation will have as something that needs more study.
This isn't about a large scale heat island effect. It is about a much more local one. If you had a thermometer in a field for 100 years and then built an asphalt parking lot around it you will have an increase in temperature even if it is still in a rural area.
Also it brings up a problem with a sensor that was installed at airports and used for automated data gathering.
I think the importance of this study lies more with how those in the field receive it. A real scientist would be interested if someone pointed out an error in their data collection. A politically motivated individual would brush it off without a second thought saying it isn't relevant. Time will tell.
Re:Oh dear... (Score:5, Insightful)
Self selection (Score:2, Insightful)
There is a problem when the definition of 'climatologist' is effectively 'someone who studies the effects of AGW and recommends policy to mitigate it'. A scientist should understand the proper ordering of cause and effect. A scientist would understand the difference between real debate and rigging the game to ensure a predetermined outcome.
There is a point where the case would be settled to the point where it would be more like flat earthers wanting a seat at the table to draw maps. But we ain't even close to that sort of certainty.
I looked at some of those 'climate models' once. Oh. My. God. A few hundred sample points to model the entire Earth? I actually saw one that crappy, the best aren't all that much better. I don't care how much calculating you do on each point, when total resolution is that low I really doubt anything useful can be taken from such a model about next week, next century isn't even a joke.
The problem is we still don't have the ability to model anything as complicated as the Earth's climate. We don't even have good enough data to input into a model if we had one. We only have semi-reliable temp data for less than a century on most of the world, humidity, rainfall, cloudcover/sunlight and pressure data are even worse. And a century is nothing when trying to understand longterm trends. The proxies used to attempt to make up for that lack of primary data is a very rough substitute. So anyone who even tries to make definitive statements at this point should be instanly suspected of being a quack.
Now combine with the hard reality that it is painfilly obvious to anyone who looks at the history of the 20th Century that this is a case of a solution in search of a justification and the politicization of science we are dealing with here makes perfect sense. It makes sense but it still pisses me off how easy it was to make scientists betray science in the name of power and funding. We have real problems, many of them ecological, and we need scientists we can trust to help solve them. But I don't trust em at this point. I'm as pissed as I suspect the average Catholic is at the priests molesting kids. A trusted institution turned out to be rotten to the core and in need of a major cleansing and instead getting a whitewash and a 'nothing to see here, move along.'
Re:Not Published = Trash (Score:5, Insightful)
Belief: Increased CO2 will cause runaway global warming. Reasoning: Venus is 95+% CO2. Implication: continued output of CO2 will take us to a tipping point situation that will result in $badthings (some alarmists go so far as to claim human extinction, more level headed people worry about rising sea levels and changing weather patterns).
Belief: CO2 emissions can be decreased through application of carbon taxes. Reasoning: You get less of what you tax. Implication: imposition of a tax reduces carbon emission, but raises prices of commodity goods, the governments that collect the tax money then spend it on goods that are produced using fossil fuels, meaning no net decrease in CO2 emissions, more poverty, and already impoverished people will have less food.
Belief: Global warming is bad for the poor, therefore not global warming is good for the poor. Reasoning: the opposite of a bad thing is a good thing. Implication: Silliness. The opposite of drowning is dehydration. Neither is good, obviously. In this case, it is bad for people to be forced to move, but it is arguably much worse for them to starve.
Your list is good, because it contains testable predictions. Clearly, mankind puts out a great deal more CO2 than volcanoes, so that is not a valid argument against AGW. However, other things come out of volcanoes, and as far as greenhouse gases go, CO2 is the ultimate lightweight. You can only get weaker effects from diatomic and mono-atomic gases. I would be interested to see what else comes out of volcanoes in quantity.
Peer Reviewed != True (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not Published = Trash (Score:4, Insightful)
That's just stupid. Most qualified scientists agree So we can't trust them to review each other's work . If we applied that sort of thinking everywhere there would be no accepted concensus on basic arithmetic.
It depends on which side of the debate they are on. If they are AGW proponents, then it's a consensus of experts. If they are deniers, then it is confirmation bias.
Re:Not Published = Trash (Score:4, Insightful)
No. No, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. No!
Peer review doesn't 'put the weight of authority behind' the results, and it *does* serve a scientific function. The purpose of peer review is to (attempt to) validate that the methodology used in the experiment/study doesn't have any significant flaws overlooked (or ignored) by the person/team publishing the paper under review.
The only sociological function of peer review is to minimize the amount of flawed science being published. (I say minimize because it is possible for bad/flawed science to slip through peer review. The larger the pool of well-informed reviewers, the less likely this is to happen.)
Re:Not Published = Trash (Score:0, Insightful)
"Belief: Increased CO2 will cause runaway global warming."
Not believed.
"Belief: CO2 emissions can be decreased through application of carbon taxes"
That isn't the science.
"Belief: Global warming is bad for the poor, therefore not global warming is good for the poor"
The therefore does not follow from the premise. And isn't the science.
Your list is silly.
Re:Self selection (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a problem when the definition of 'climatologist' is effectively 'someone who studies the effects of AGW and recommends policy to mitigate it'.
There would be, but that's not the definition of a climatologist. It's also not the selection criteria to be a peer reviewer for a climatology journal. (And, for that matter, climatology journals are not the only places to publish peer-reviewed climatology papers.) It's just what you imagine the selection criteria to be, which is very different.
I really doubt anything useful can be taken from such a model
It's a real shame we don't have a systematic way of investigating the accuracy of a model and are forced to rely on the gut feelings (I mean, doubts) of random people on the Internet.