The orthodoxy has been that as a consequence of greenhouse gas emissions global temperatures will continue to increase. But what is really meant by global temperatures? According to James Hansen from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies even defining surface air temperature is not easy:
“I doubt that there is a general agreement how to answer this question [of what is surface air temperature]. Even at the same location, the temperature near the ground may be very different from the temperature 5 ft above the ground and different again from 10 ft or 50 ft above the ground. Particularly in the presence of vegetation (say in a rain forest), the temperature above the vegetation may be very different from the temperature below the top of the vegetation. A reasonable suggestion might be to use the average temperature of the first 50 ft of air either above ground or above the top of the vegetation. To measure SAT we have to agree on what it is and, as far as I know, no such standard has been suggested or generally adopted. Even if the 50 ft standard were adopted, I cannot imagine that a weather station would build a 50 ft stack of thermometers to be able to find the true SAT at its location.”
He is also ambiguous when it comes to daily mean surface air temperatures:
“Again, there is no universally accepted correct answer. Should we note the temperature every 6 hours and report the mean, should we do it every 2 hours, hourly, have a machine record it every second, or simply take the average of the highest and lowest temperature of the day ? On some days the various methods may lead to drastically different results.”
Read more here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/abs_temp.html
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
For once he’s right. The “surface sir temperature” at 4 feet above the ground is dependent on lots of things including the wind speed and local turbulence at night. On a still night with clear sky the temperature at 4 feet will be greatly different from that at 100 feet. Just what is being measured here? In this case just a thin layer of air in contact with the surface while most of the atmosphere won’t change much.
One more reason why satellites and balloons are better and sea temperature including at depth is even better than SST.
If you were starting from scratch you would think what scientific use the data will be put to before deciding. i.e. let the research question inform the sampling scheme – not the other way around.
Most plants and animals live quite close to the ground. So if the interest is ecological that’s the physical environment they experience.
And you would have a global standard for design, fabrication and location of instrumentation.
Satellite inevitably have issues with sensor radiometric correction, calibration and drift. Great spatial coverage but still not perfect.
The NASA item “The Elusive Absolute Surface Air Temperature (SAT)” is quite reasonable.
Ive been doing a frustrating home based exercise over several days in field observations and error assesment, so frustrating I should have quit when it started. Perhaps I should outline some of it later.
Let’s say one needs to do the homework again to know what to write about
No one has a problem with accepting any particular definition.
Lots of us have a problem with changing a datum, long accepted, year-in & year-out inorder that the current data fit a hypothetical curve.
Now who could I have in mind?
We are talking about a temperature field in three dimensions. You can’t really say what the average temperature is of a room, only guess at it. A very simple example is take three thermometers close to one another. One in an ice cube one in hot water the other in air. How do you relate the temperature of each to the others? I have thought about this for some time and it beats the hell out of me. In practice arbitary weightings are used to account for heat island effects but I have not found any convincing theory to justify them. An exercise is to find out how many ground stations are used and the distribution of them. I think about one every million square kilometers.
DHMO
This is all old ground which Essex and McKitrick discussed in detail some years back, so your conundrum is well justified. I may add that I have been emphasising it as well.
All Hansen is doing is laying the ground so can’t be held responsible for the impending economic mess he and his happy harriers have inflicted on the world with their AGW scam.
Louis – “This is all old ground which Essex and McKitrick discussed in detail some years back, so your conundrum is well justified. I may add that I have been emphasising it as well.”
Louis and DHMO – for gods sake what do you expect? One of the most underfunded and neglected area of science is basic temperature measurements. Given the total lack of interest, until now, that the temperature network has received it is a wonder that we have any records at all to work with.
Mostly it has been due to the sometimes unpaid are heroic efforts of individuals that keep the network going that we have data that we can work with. The recent photographing was an insult. These people should have volunteered to manage the temperature station, not taken a happy snap.
The main reason the temperature network exists is for safe air navigation and services for agriculture and mostly it was built for this. It does this job perfectly well as these applications do not need extreme precision.
You cannot bleat now that the temp record is crap as what has any skeptic scientist done in the past or now to improve the network or demanded more funding for the network to be improved.
Similarly where is the call for better satellites to be launched? The current MSU satellites are not designed for the job and the current measurements are cobbled together from instruments that are not really designed for what they are doing. Name one septic scientist that is calling for better satellites and/or is currently in a program to improve the satellite coverage.
Sure climate scientists would love to have had for the last 50 years temperature sensors mounted 50 feet off the ground in perfect unpopulated areas all over the world staffed with paid professionals to take perfect measurements. They would also have liked to have had satellites in stable orbits with sensors designed for the job and with global coverage.
What they have is a cobbled together system with imperfect instruments and uncertain measurements that require a massive data processing effort to get anything at all. However this situation arose because of years of neglect.
If you want to improve it then stop bleating and start improving it otherwise we have to work with what we have. What we have is telling us that we are warming the planet up with our CO2 emissions and land use changes.
Hansen is not laying any ground, he is a scientist that is used to working with imperfect data.
RSS data is out. It’s the same as last month. Anomaly 0.08. That will continue to pull the trend line down for the last ten years.
Y’know, Ender, I thought it was the True Believers that did the wolf crying over AGW assisted by their contaminated data.
The sceptics have always said just use the data from the correctly specified gear.
The Great Adjuster is the one who loves the dodgy stuff to make his argument.
Now it seems he ducks for cover.
Ender,
So the data are not perfect, and the warming you have insisted has been happening now all of a sudden is no long substantiated by this data because Hansen now considers it problematical.
This is called Shifting the Goal Posts, Ender, and another typical pseudoscience tactic.
You really don’t understand the scientific method, do you.
The arithmetic mean is not necessarily a good indicator of central tendency. What is the distribution of a vertical ‘stack’ of temperature readings? Normal, skewed or random?
Louis – “So the data are not perfect, and the warming you have insisted has been happening now all of a sudden is no long substantiated by this data because Hansen now considers it problematical.”
No the warming is happening and is substantiated by the multiple layers of data that we have, as imperfect as it is.
Hansen along with all the other real scientists working in the field doing actual research have always known the data contained errors and have evolved methods to cope with it. This is what scientists do.
“You really don’t understand the scientific method, do you.”
I guess not. If the scientific method is now to cherry pick the data you want and then sensationalise it on a blog and/or complient media, or nitpick data that really does not change anything like the denier scientists do then no, I do not understand this new denier scientific method.
Ender,
Trying to wind me up again are you?
“The recent photographing was an insult. These people should have volunteered to manage the temperature station, not taken a happy snap.”
What an incredible thing to say. I suppose you think it reasonable a handful of people ‘volunteer’ to manage the hundreds of temp. stations in the continental US, when the organisation that actually set the temp. stations up has been either unable or unwilling or simply thought it unnecessary to take a ‘happy snap’ in the past. Just incredible.
The rest of your comment is equally incredible and for that matter ridiculous:
“You cannot bleat now that the temp record is crap as what has any skeptic scientist done in the past or now to improve the network or demanded more funding for the network to be improved.”
Pointing out the uncertainties doesn’t count? See McKitrick, Pielke Snr. But this isn’t good enough for Ender. They have to either man the weather stations or just shut up.
Do we have to apportion blame anyway? People like McIntyre etc have been saying for years the surface temp. network were never designed to distinguish rises or falls in temp. of 0.1 degree C, etc. They’re weather stations, FFS.
Gereen Davey
Provided you have enough data, plotting histograms should make it obvious.
I have a temperature logger here in Halls Creek which logs the temperature every minute. I might spend some time in collating it and seeing what results. Post here probably under a new thread? (Still working on my other task Jen gave me).
proteus – “What an incredible thing to say. I suppose you think it reasonable a handful of people ‘volunteer’ to manage the hundreds of temp. stations in the continental US, when the organisation that actually set the temp. stations up has been either unable or unwilling or simply thought it unnecessary to take a ‘happy snap’ in the past. Just incredible.”
No I don’t think it is reasonable at all however that is the situation that penny pinching and neglect has left your data collection system in. Australia is actually a lot better as the BOM has done a magnificent job over the years with very little resources. The organisation that you mention has always been constrained by money and resources – what is your solution for this? Taking a happy snap does nothing.
“Pointing out the uncertainties doesn’t count? See McKitrick, Pielke Snr. But this isn’t good enough for Ender. They have to either man the weather stations or just shut up.”
Pointing out uncertainties does a lot however they have done nothing that the scientists do not already know and compensate for. The only contribution that they have made is sensationalising through non peer reviewed channels and created uncertainty which was their only aim anyway. They also have done nothing to improve it, as the system is the same as before they started their tirades.
Their bleating is just pissing in the wind as far as improving the temperature record is concerned. Unless they can suggest better data processing method or lobby to increase the funding for the sensors then yes they should put up or shut up.
“People like McIntyre etc have been saying for years the surface temp. network were never designed to distinguish rises or falls in temp. of 0.1 degree C, etc. They’re weather stations, FFS.”
For years?? What 5 years? How about in the 1970s when global warming was first noticed? Yes they are weather stations. What are we supposed to do just sit on our blogs and moan about the quality or use what we have as best we can?
Ender
Warming was first noticed in the 1970’s ?
Your Wikipedia has this to say
“Global cooling in general can refer to an overall cooling of the Earth. In this article it refers primarily to a conjecture during the 1970s of imminent cooling of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere along with a posited commencement of glaciation.
This hypothesis never had significant scientific support, but gained temporary popular attention due to press reports that did not accurately reflect the scientific understandings of ice age cycles and a slight downward trend of temperatures from the 1940s to the early 1970s. Scientific consensus is that the Earth has not durably cooled, but undergone a period of global warming in the 20th century.”
I believe your esteemed Steven Schneider was one of the main supporters of Global Cooling at the time.
Here is the link I quoted from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
But how long will it remain in its present form now that a nasty, denialist has pointed to it!
Louis – Try this one:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm as well.
As it says it gained temporary attention in the press not the scientific community.
“For years?? What 5 years? How about in the 1970s when global warming was first noticed?”
Yes, I suppose McIntyre should have been noticing these things 30 years ago, when he was interested in other things and there was very little public interest in these questions. Shame on you, Steve, shame! I suppose I should have been raising these question myself but being less than 8 years of age I was, forgive me, more interested in playing footy with my next door neighbor.
“What are we supposed to do just sit on our blogs and moan about the quality or use what we have as best we can?”
Well, yes, Pielke Snr should be writing a paper something like this:
Unresolved Issues with the Assessment of Multi-Decadal Global Land-Surface
Temperature Trends (2007)*
rather than writing informative posts on his blog. Oops, he has!
*I’m working off a draft and I can’t seem to access his site at the moment so can’t provide the full citation.
You’d be good on Wiki Louis – remember your past mantra from your old blog “This blog is the kamikaze version of some more mundane climate sceptical views. I get fed some ideas to then throw them as intellectual hand grenades into the blogosphere”. A serious scientist eh?
And you’re now a bloke that worries about responsibility on Wiki are you? An old cold war propagandist now without a cause just having a bit of a stir.
Maybe you could help Wiki on physics or astronomy?
http://timlambert.org/2004/12/hissink/ Just wait by the phone – we’ll call you if you’re needed.
Ah, Luke,
Oh sorry I was right, you have metamorphsed into the Alarmist Creep now that new data is showing that AGW is somewhat flawed.
I would be good on Wiki – now what on earth do you mean by that Luke? I only quoted Wiki as that would be the only source that Ender would recognise as being authorative. If I quoted some other source, Ender would ignore it.
Worrying about responsibility of Wiki? How on earth can you come to that conclusion from my brief comment. Ender of course did not read the Wiki quote either, because it explicity states that it got “popular attention due to press reports etc”.
2004? Dredging the past Luke? I must read that since it would interesting to know what Lambert wrote at the time, especially when I never bothered reading much of his comments about my opinions.
I posted over on Watts that no one ever discusses the 1998 peak. It looks an aberration massive so is there a driver for that peak? An event, was there something at that time, because CO2 forcing is supposed to exponiate the warming, isn’t that what we mean when we say a postive feedback effect, a forcing. We should see it driving temperature up consistently.
The rest of the curve looks like it relatively should, ups and downs, statistical analysis is about removing the peaks generally how you apply it but that one one peak at the same time the world went ballistic on Global warming doesn’t look statistically normal when compared to the rest of the curve.
and please when I use curve I mean it mathematically, that’s what the smoothing is supposed to do but looking at it data wise it should not be there without an effect to explain.
What was the abnormal heating effect?
proteus – “Unresolved Issues with the Assessment of Multi-Decadal Global Land-Surface”
So amongst the chorus line one scientist writes a paper in 2007. Wow that is progress. I thought there were over 400 skeptical scientists.
Ender, there are 15 named scientists from 12 research institutions on that paper.
But why let the facts get in the way of Ender’s chorus line.
Actually, Ender’s slow dirge would be more approriate.
The surface network is dead; long live the surface network.
Alarmist Creep,
Thanks for that link to Lambert, seems I did reply to it but the site on which I did is now dead. Never mind I will fisk it and put it up on the web for you to become mealy mouthed over.
Hansen, the dissembling Yank, whose research has been caught out repeatedly as something approaching fraud has now gone all post-modern on us. Empirical T evidence, which he simply use to have his NASA goons adjust and readjust, sometimes dozens of times and then lose the code, is now slipping even deeper into the existential swamp of relativity. Now the poor bloke says who knows what the temperature is?
Kind of blows the whole sense of impending doom the prophecies of global warming apocalypse were meant to induce if the main man admits he don’t know what the temperature is or was. Hello. What time is it? How do we know whether it is getting hotter or colder?
Hansen sudden seems like an angst-ridden undergraduate struggling with the implication of Tractaus Logico-Philosophicus. How the bloody hell do we know anything!
How hard could it be to measure the bloody temperature? It’s like a bad joke–How many NASA scientists does it take to read a thermometer? Answer: Huh, what’s a thermometer? Makes you wonder how those people ever got a man to the moon and back. (or if they ever really did.)
I wonder if the constant chipping away with FOI requests by Climate Audit, et al and Watts’ very revealing inspection of weather stations in the states, among many other scrutinizers is finally beginning to yield results. The truth is out there.
Hansen and Mann are notorious for hiding code, deleting data, refusing to reveal method to peer reviewers, refusing requests of documentation and generally being really nasty scientists turn ideological moonbats. Their work has to be reproduced using reverse engineering techniques. And the results reveal pitifully odious undergraduate levels of methodology. They call themselves climatologists. Reality is they’re snake oil salesmen with a spiteful socioeconomic agenda.
But we shouldn’t condemn Hansen and Mann without first attempting to understand why they went renegade psycho, like mad scientists in a 1970’s James Bond movie. It’s a real tear jerker.
They developed a God complex. A lot of early research seemed to point to either an impending ice age (in the late 70’s) or later greenhouse overheating. The environmental sciences were full of soppy pseudo-scientific peans to mother earth, and it was obvious that she was getting angry.
I believe Hansen came to see himself as a messianic figure whose mission was to Save The Planet from the depravations of the multi-national petrochemical industry, which ironical was headquartered in Houston, Texas, the home of NASA. Hansen would have rubbed elbows with executives of the industry at almost every social event. Perhaps he had some less than pleasant experiences?
Hansen and Mann believed that fudging a bit of research to make a point that they KNOW is true was a small price to pay for saving the planet from an apocalypse. Future generations would gratefully forgive them for averting human extinction. Statues and temples would be built in their names, perhaps virigins would…
Hansen and Mann are what Eric Hoffer called True Believers. Hoffer wrote an excellent book about the dementia that afflicts certain personality types when they become obsessively and self-righteously consumed by a cause, which they religiously and faithfully believe to be the One True Path to Salvation. Read Hansen’s personal rants and judge for yourself. The man has become a classic Hollywood caricature of a mad scientist.
In fact, back in the 1990’s Hansen and Mann probably never thought they would get caught out. Climatology was an obscure ivory tower realm, everyone was mates. “A good old boy network” as the Yanks say. No one was going to daub anyone in.
Hansen and Mann massively under estimated the amount of scrutiny their work would get this century once it began to be the basis for consideration of trillions of dollars worth of socioeconomic paradigm shifting. Poor academic sods,they became victims of their own success. They always wanted to be messiahs, but they didn’t understand what that would fully mean for their shoddy and, well, let’s just say substandard methodology. Now they are caught out as the yanks say, “like deer in the headlights.” And, of course, part and parcel of being a messiah, especially a false one, is the crucifixion. Ouch.
Personally, I feel sorry for the old fools, but not for their Faith and not for the truly unredeemable hucksters that follow in their path sheerly out of avarice, like the demagogue Al Gore.
proteus – The paper is here
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2006JD008229.shtml
“Received 7 November 2006; accepted 14 May 2007; published 29 December 2007.”
Hooray one paper – now you can detail the changes in the methods that resulted from this paper that Pielke Snr or any of his co-authors are vigorously championing.
Oh – you can’t ……
True, Wes. Ender’s defense of the weather stations would have been acceptable had it not been for the fact that the climate mafia have made such a big deal about a variance in global mean that is less than Hansen has just admitted can be found in a 2 metre column of air just about anywhere on the planet.
Hansen has also admitted that a set of means derived from hourly readings might produce a vastly different, and much clearer picture of what is actually taking place. I have taken flack from both Ender and Luke over my repeated assertions that means derived from simple daily max and min are just not good enough.
If the capacity is in place to log more frequent data at minimal extra cost then it should be used. But this is no excuse for excluding older data that did not have that capacity.
But the interesting issue in all this is that if the prophet Hansen has known all along of the deficiencies in the data record then why has he not conveyed this to the IPCC before they plucked their stupid 90% certainty figure out of their collective bums?
Of equal relevance to the variation in temperatures in a column of air is the variation in CO2 levels in the same column. Young seedlings and grasses are routinely exposed to CO2 levels as high as 1000ppm within a few cm of the ground.
And presumably any reflected heat from the earth must pass through this dense layer of CO2 or be trapped by it.
More ranting and drivel from our new found blog goon. How much difference does all this Hansenesque trivia make to one’s overall understanding of temperature trends versus other data sets. What does the Australian high quality network record look like. Might there be any other alternative lines of evidence.
We’ll suddenly soon hear how using the same untrusted data that the 1970s were a period of cooling and that current temperatures aren’t increasing. But how can these discussions take place when the analysis is flawed. It’s called having it both ways. No hypocrisy there.
(Time for DS to make a cheer squad contribution or Louis to utter a metaphysical incantation)
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Well Motty get the envelope and calculator revved up and show us how it makes a major difference over a 10 year period. Plenty of literature in the field day degree development for poikilotherms.
There are lots of things we could design into new data logging systems – with modern computers you could integrate every second or more – pity we’ll have to wait a few decades to get a time series going. And will you be any the wiser? Will it revolutionise your understanding?
Can see you still don’t know how greenhouse 101 works either.
Presumably if you the ultimate – one really wants to know the energy balance – not just the temperature. Humidity and wind levels are therefore important as is regular integration of the data.
So you’d want to get into eddy correlation.
http://www.licor.com/env/PDF_Files/EddyCovariance_readonly.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddy_covariance
So Motty are you up to integrating your eddies.
“No the warming is happening and is substantiated by the multiple layers of data that we have, as imperfect as it is.”
So, for example, can you substantiate the .8C of warming that we have had in the industrial era, according to the surface records, with temp proxies that show the same .8C of warming over the same time period? Can you tell me why Hansen’s surface temp record for April jumped by 5 times the amount of the satellites and almost twice the amount of HadCru. If the globally averaged readings can be off by as much as .3C in a single month, then how can we have any faith in their ability to accurately reflect a .8C variation over 150 years. How can you be certain that half of that variation isn’t error? How can you know if Hansen’s corrections as well as HadCru’s corrections don’t contain built in biases?
“How hard could it be to measure the bloody temperature? It’s like a bad joke–How many NASA scientists does it take to read a thermometer? Answer: Huh, what’s a thermometer? Makes you wonder how those people ever got a man to the moon and back”. (or if they ever really did.)
This is a classic! Thanks Wes, you will see a lot more from me on that subject.
Being a practical chap it reminds me of how hard is it to stop that dripping tap in the shower, the sink or the water leak down the tubes to the washing machine.
How often am I accused of not doing my job (in retirement)? Btw; the part time housewife says none of us are capable of running out first nuclear power plant.
IMO that we ever got to the Moon has to be a miracle.
Two questions have to be answered in regard to measuring bulk energy change at the earth’s surface.
How important is temperature measurement?
How useful are max / min records?
In the 1960’s it was my job to maintain instruments recording energy transfer between groups of manufacturing companies. Some days I could find a bucket of spilt mercury on the floor.
Sure; we had temperature recorders everywhere but the main instruments measuring heat transfer were pressure gauges and flow meters. Kent manometers were my bread and butter. Max or min temp was never an issue.
Trivia. Hansen’s set alone contains an estimate for the Arctic. Data sets have different base periods. But really who cares about April – overall do all the data series tell you pretty well the same story in terms of trends. Does the Australian BoM high quality data series give a similar story.
Does all this detail matter ? It’s just an excuse for some Hansen bashing.
http://cce.890m.com/part06/
Key terms in some fancy stats
“Bayesian Climate Change Detection ,Attribution Assessment”.
“multiple ridge regression as a regression procedure, ization parameter determined from general cross validation (GCV)”
“ the theory of ridge regression and its relation to generalized’ – ‘increasing temperature and finally go negative at the higher temperatures”
Wes: Regarding any climate records, Science has a lot of catching up to do
Alex J Cannon UBC “Negative ridge regression parameters for improving the covariance … A graphical sensitivity analysis for interpreting statistical climate models” abstract –
“Synoptic downscaling models are used in climatology to predict values of weather elements at one or more stations based on values of synoptic-scale atmospheric circulation variables. This paper presents a hybrid method for climate prediction and downscaling that couples an analog, i.e., k-nearest neighbor, model to an artificial neural network (ANN) model. In the proposed method, which is based on nonlinear principal predictor analysis (NLPPA), the analog model is embedded inside an ANN, forming its output layer. Nonlinear analog predictor analysis (NLAPA) is a flexible model that maintains the ability of the analog model to preserve inter-variable relationships and model non-normal and conditional variables (such as precipitation), while taking advantage of NLPPA’s ability to define an optimal set of analog predictors that maximize predictive performance. Performance on both synthetic and real-world hydroclimatological benchmark tasks indicates that the NLAPA model is capable of outperforming other forms of analog models commonly used in synoptic downscaling”.
Here’s a *real* challenge to models, measurement, and everything else which global warming experts have piled into their trove of ‘expertise’:
‘Chile eruption spurs evacuations’, BBC, 6 May 2008,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7386050.stm
“Chaiten volcano in the southern Patagonia region began erupting on Friday for the first time in 450 years.”
–What impact will this have on the temperature of Earth, say, on Aug. 28, 2009? We’ve recently spent billions on climate studies, and now’s the time for it all to pay off in an accurate forecast.
Jen you seem to be mixing change with absolute values. It doesn’t matter whether you measure the temperature at 1m, 2m, 5m or 10m as long as you do it consistency. These layers are all tightly coupled through convection etc.
If you change your method then you need to take that into account in your calculations.
This stuff has been discussed in thousands of scientific papers over the last 3 decades.
BTW why do you persist in using loaded words like orthodoxy? The expectation of warming is based on a massively overwhelming scientific consensus.
“Hooray one paper – now you can detail the changes in the methods that resulted from this paper that Pielke Snr or any of his co-authors are vigorously championing.
Oh – you can’t ……”
The papar was published last year and you expect ‘me’ to detail the changes this immediately lead to in datasets I don’t actually manage. What a childish argument you’re making.
Anyway, according to Pielke Snr, surface air temp. is the wrong metric; ocean heat content is the right one.
No you haven’t.
What’s fascinatingly new in the GISS propaganda release is the kind of “moral relativism” that Hansen wants to apply to a purely empirical and unambiguous procedure.
To summarize: There is no real SAT, it’s all relative. You say it’s cold, I say it’s hot, but the data says it could be either, that is if we were collecting the data right, which we aren’t. In fact, reported temperature is meaningless. But trust me, I got a secret computer model that will create climatology.
Any punters want to place odds on what Hansen’s post-empirical climatology narrative will reveal?
On one point where I agree with alarmist creeps–this is surely is The End of the World as We Know It. If our civilization’s billion dollar research institutions have suddenly lost the ability to read a thermometer, it’s all over red rover.
What we are witnessing is Hansen’s performance of a decidedly deconstructionist dance ritual around the temperature record, which is the main empirical evidence we have for GW. Derrida must have caste a fleeting smile up from Level 9, niche 666 of the Inferno.
Hansen is deliberately confusing the sign with the signifier in a nihilistic attempt to deny the possibility of empirical temperature knowledge. In other words, he is creating FUD to cover his ass.
Watch the little True Believers here dance the obfuscation jig with Hansen. Gavin is really rocking out on the unnecessary complexity of it all. Whoo hoo! Look at him go! Some one should take Occam’s razor to these dancing fools.
Hansen needs to manufacture complexity where none should exist for the ideological driven GISS manipulation of T records to hide behind. The recent work at Climate Audit, et al has expose his methodological morbidity, yet it’s only now becoming widely understood among US technocrats and policy wonks, who are increasingly becoming worried that they have bet their careers on a false paradigm.
So watts up? It’s pretty basic undergraduate level science. The T record could have been a worry a decade or more ago, before the call to dump Western Civilization and our multi-trillion dollar socio-economic system in order to save the planet from AGW Apocalypse. A call, which was based largely on, you guessed it, the surface temperature record and now must be based on almost nothing at all—anecdotal pictures of glacial calving, backstroking polar bears and Rube Goldberg GCMs. Oh, yeah, and on specious claims of ridiculously high levels of climate sensitivity to atmosphere CO2 concentrations.
I can’t deny it, change is in the air. And the heat is on Hansen, et al, to release code and documentation that they have been hiding for years. GISS is furiously obfuscating, but ain’t rocket science. Rock on, Gavin!
Pass the FOI forms, please.
David
“The expectation of warming is based on a massively overwhelming scientific consensus.”
There is no such thing in science – in politics pseudoscience and religion, yes, but not in empirical science.
Asking very very simply – how does Hansen’s view when compared to other measurements of temperature vastly change our understanding of overall trends?
It doesn’t.
Actually, Louis, you’re wrong there. We don’t even have a ‘consensus’ in politics or religion. When was the last time you had a dinner party conversation or attended a academic conference that acheived or reflected a consensus on either of those subjects?
Here’s a *real* challenge to models, measurement, and everything else which global warming experts have piled into their trove of ‘expertise’:
‘Chile eruption spurs evacuations’, BBC, 6 May 2008,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7386050.stm
“Chaiten volcano in the southern Patagonia region began erupting on Friday for the first time in 450 years.”
–What impact will this have on the temperature of Earth, say, on Aug. 28, 2009? We’ve recently spent billions on climate studies, and now’s the time for it all to pay off in an accurate forecast.
Tons and tons of all sorts of things are going into the atmosphere. The experts will tell us what this will do.
Thanks Schiller – indeed climate science finds these volcanic events very useful. Thanks for bringing it up.
Science 26 April 2002:
Vol. 296. no. 5568, pp. 727 – 730
Global Cooling After the Eruption of Mount Pinatubo: A Test of Climate Feedback by Water Vapor
Brian J. Soden,1* Richard T. Wetherald,1 Georgiy L. Stenchikov,2 Alan Robock2
The sensitivity of Earth’s climate to an external radiative forcing depends critically on the response of water vapor. We use the global cooling and drying of the atmosphere that was observed after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo to test model predictions of the climate feedback from water vapor. Here, we first highlight the success of the model in reproducing the observed drying after the volcanic eruption. Then, by comparing model simulations with and without water vapor feedback, we demonstrate the importance of the atmospheric drying in amplifying the temperature change and show that, without the strong positive feedback from water vapor, the model is unable to reproduce the observed cooling. These results provide quantitative evidence of the reliability of water vapor feedback in current climate models, which is crucial to their use for global warming projections.
1 Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08542, USA.
2 Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA.
Gosh, Luke, I thought you were a water vapor denier.
Huh?
Wes – “Now they are caught out as the yanks say, “like deer in the headlights.””
The “mad scientist” is hardly an exaggeration. For example, you would think that Mann would want to update Idso’s bristlecone series for the last 20 years to see how well it corresponds to the most recent climate change. It’s his most important and most heavily weighted series. Unfortunately, what happened to those trees is already known from others like them. Not only do they not follow the current temperature trend, but in many cases they actually go the opposite direction. Mann makes excuses about the expense of the updates and all the time it would take. But Steve McIntyre did his own up date of a significant portion of Idso’s trees while he was on a week long holiday in Colorado Springs. Cost – next to nothing. Not only does Mann rely on Idso’s bristlecones, but so do most of the hockey team in their temp reconstructions. It’s obvious why Mann will not go and create that update to his series. He simply refuses to have the truth placed in front of him – knowing that it will contradict him.
If that isn’t bad enough, along comes Linah Ababneh who creates her own bristlecone series for her doctoral dissertation. She goes to the same place where Idso got many of his trees and samples twice as many as Idso. What was her result? Virtually no temperature data for those trees. They are humidity limited. Mann’s most important proxy – the one that he weighted 200 times as much as his least most important proxy – is next to worthless as a temperature proxy. Mann now knows all of this. And yet he persists in placing religion over science. Not only does he maintain the hoax, but his level of arrogance rises as his level of credibility falls.
“It doesn’t matter whether you measure the temperature at 1m, 2m, 5m or 10m as long as you do it consistency. These layers are all tightly coupled through convection etc.”
No David, only during the day after some heating and convection starts.
In any case, what is consistent about the way surface temperatures are being measured? Anthony Watts has shown that it simply isn’t so.
Tilo,
I’m not the least bit surprised that trees are humidity limited. A long time ago now when I worked in atmospheric science we had a visit from a US tree growth ring expert. He didn’t even talk about temperatures but was using them for a rainfall proxy. The example he gave was for the Colorado River. Before damming it they got 40 years of good rainfall and streamflow records and after the dam was built they never got that much water again. Our expert showed that by looking at tree growth rings the 40 years in question(approx 1890 to 1930) were the wettest 40 in the previous 400.
Climate change anyone?
Hansen made those statements, yet still can extrapolate temperatures up to 1200km to the north pole, where he says it is warming rapidly.
And then there is ocean heat content. Always remember the “smoking gun” Hansen so proudly exclaimed.
Some have claimed GISS is not diverging from other temperature data products. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:2007.0/to:2008.25/plot/uah/from:2007.0/to:2008.25/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2007.0/to:2008.25/offset:-.146/plot/gistemp/from:2007.0/to:2008.25/offset:-0.238
This does not include April. Any questions?
Kevin Trenberth then:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/302/5651/1719
“Modern climate change is dominated by human influences, which are now large enough to exceed the bounds of natural variability.”
Kevin Trenberth now:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/01/science/earth/01climate.html?ref=science
“Too many think global warming means monotonic relentless warming everywhere year after year,” Dr. Trenberth said. “It does not happen that way.”
There is no shortage of statements by AGW alarmists, scientists or otherwise, and they need to be held accountable.
The Warmologists have already conceded prior to the Chaiten eruption, so there’s no weasel room to blame cooling on a volcano as the primary cause. Timing is everything 🙂
The last and most important observation is: where in IPCC AR4 SPM is there any mention of anything but “monotonic relentless warming everywhere year after year”?
The backpedaling has begun.
Eyrie: “He didn’t even talk about temperatures but was using them for a rainfall proxy.”
Makes sense. With Mann’s bristlecone pines the situation is worse that with most trees. They live in places where the annual moisture is about 13 inches. The trees live at high altitude and are watered in the spring and summer by slowly melting snow. Warm years would make that snow disappear early and the bristlecones would have less water than normal. So at times, warm temperatures could even be counter-productive.
But the problem goes beyond that. When Idso gathered the series that Mann ended up in using he was actually trying to find a CO2 fertilization effect. Idso picked strip bark trees because they were older and would show a longer record. Idso also archived only about a third of his trees – so he may have been doing a little cherry picking. Idso did get a bit of a rise in the twentieth century. But Ababneh’s work showed that most of the rise that Idso saw was a result of the trees going strip bark. Ababneh plotted her non strip bark trees against her strip bark trees, and found that while the non strip bark trees showed virtually no 20th Century temp effect, the strip bark trees showed some accelerated growth. But that growth seems to be caused by the trees going strip bark rather than by a temp or CO2 feeding effect.
Sorry which page has the word monotonic and relentless again?
Seems to be lots of discussion of the PDO in the 4AR though e.g. “In the Pacific, the long-term warming is clearly evident, but punctuated by
cooler episodes centred in the tropics, and no doubt linked to the PDO.”
Currently I am studying the use of computer models in all sorts of environmental matters. One that is used extensively predicts erosion on the sea shore. Various parameters are plugged in as being important and a result obtained. If the result doesn’t suit then factors in the equations are changed. Here we are discussing the difficulty of actually finding by empirical measurement the global temperature now. Louis I think the data logger will tell you the average temperature of it and provided you did not move it of the point it has occupied. Take a point a metre away and its average temperature could be quite different. Yet many on this blog will maintain a GCM can calculate what the global average temperature will be well into the future in the same way that modellers of beach erosion use the Bruun rule to state what the future will be. In both cases they have no idea really but it does not seem to matter. The reason being the results are being continually adjusted to suit the political agenda. We are told we must believe since there is consensus. There is consensus on religion, astrology, homeopathy, tarot and even that there are fairies. Billions of people believe these things many of whom are quite intelligent and of a scientific mind, am I to believe all this without question?
The words of Hansen may presage a new tactic in the debate. With more and more people now becoming aware of the divergence of reality from models, both in the present and in the past, it is now time for the modellers to ditch the real world. I believe there is a major article in Science coming up, by a batallion of modellers, that will argue that any discrepancies between models and real data is due to faulty (or misinterpreted) real data.
Trust the models. They will provide.
I would like to ask DHMO as someone studying computer models a RTFM sort of question:
Why can’t models be built ground up from “first principles?” And thus work like an equation, plug in the variables and let it rip?
I know why GCMs can’t. The problem is far to complex and hardly understood and the data isn’t there. As Hansen points out GISS can’t even figure out what the SAT is, much less the climatology of the next 50 years.
However, you’d think modeling beach erosion might be a manageably contained system. Why can’t a relatively simple model within the bounds of fractal variation generate scenarios given known attractors?
And I concur with Braddles, we are in for the post-empirical stage of AGW theory. If not already there.
I should have said “useful scenarios” as computer models of any variety will usually generate scenarios. It’s the useful one we after.
David: “If you change your method then you need to take that into account in your calculations”
What the non believers can’t get over is the imperfections associated with any method, and what the stats people can’t get over is all the older thermometer readings with an error band around 2C.
IMO perfection is as elusive as it ever was and people remain their own worst enemy when it comes to developing faith in something concrete. Instruments are no exception
Weather station design was not about recording long term trends or absolute values. Their methods too were probably outside our weights and measures standards regime. Creating mutually agreed climate science only began in 1958. That grew outwards from the poles.
Perfection is just an illusion. Bloggers need to get over it soon for their own sake.
Gavin,
Which basically tells me that the historical temperature data cannot be used to determined cooling or warming, especially when the preferred method of showing temperature is by way of “Temperature anomaly”.
So ignoring these data, just how does anyone therefore show that CO2 is increasing temperature?
DHMO
Yes I agree entirely with your rationale concerning etsimating temperature averages – you basically can’t because it’s an intensive variable as well, and most scientists forget what can, and can not be done with intensive variables.
If you want to get the average temperature of the earth’s surface by sampling the air above it, then you have to come up with a standard volume of air to which measured factors are applied to that sample volume, those factors being temperature, humidity, density, etc. The factors are all “intensive” variables which are applied to a physical extensive variable to produce a countable quantity of what ever.
I don’t think climate science has ever understood this simple sampling protocol. I am in the mining game and if we estimate averages of anything the way climate science does, we would become broke rather rapidly. It’s for this mercenary reason that we had to very quickly figure out how to estimate averages correctly. Climate science has yet to, and Hansen’s back pedalling is evidence that the penny is starting to drop.
One has to estimate the temperature of some sort of physical object and if it is air, then a standardised volume has to be used under standardised conditions. Period.
Aggregating weather station temps over gird cells defined by lat/long is baloney ion case of temperature.
But I am feeling a sense of schadenfreude seeing the climate alarmists now suddenly changing the goal posts in light of the obvious global cooling, especially in the more accurate data since that collection was commenced in 1979.
Climate scicence is a spinoff from geography and in my experience, the scientific method was never really a strong point with that area of science – caused no end of acrimony when I had to study the subject as an undergraduate coming from the nasty school of geology.
Oh lordy no – not the intensive/extensive lecture. We’ll convert to denialism – renounce Marxism – start eating meat ….get a job even ….. anything but that …,ARGH >>>> gurgle. {choking noises}
Yes Louis it’s absolute zero between the met stations. We’ll agree to anything just DON’T tell us again.
hmmm …. wonder why boreholes say it’s warmed … hmmmm …. probably heated by layers of magma from inverse plate non-tectonic theory or an electric universe plasma negative reality inversion ARGH !!!!!! No more pls Louis.
Well Wes George you might think beachs are simple enough but there are least 49 factors involved. These are governed by weather so what are the first principles? A simple example is how do you account for that major storm tomorrow? Waves do not come from the same direction it can even be an interference pattern coming from more than one source at a time. Finally computers can’t do magic even though the general public thinks they can. Computers are remarkably simple compared to natural systems and there is now fffing manual to program them with in this case.
Gavin,
You wanker, thermometers haven’t had a 2c margin of error since before Daniel Fahrenheit decided to label the temperature of the human body at 98.6 Fahrenheit, in the 1720’s (circa)
Dealing in tenths of a degree F is far more accurate than you claim for the “older” part of the modern surface T records which don’t really begin in earnest for at least a CENTURY after Fahrenheit’s pioneering work.
Don’t post crap, unless it is crap that can’t be repudiate with a 5 second google search. You’re a waste of space and producing more deadly CO2 emissions than a flatulent cow.
Please, do yourself a favor, seek out some secondary education and do us a favor and refrain from hitting the post button until you do your homework. That’s a good boy.
DHMO, I see. When you start to quantify the variables it all begins to multiply quickly and spiral beyond the scale of the manageable.
So what are the limiting parameters? Is it the code language or is it the ability to create equations that mimic the physical effects? Or is it the actual computing power and memory available.
By first principles I was naively imagining that some how you could link up a bunch of basic physics and chemistry equations with some sort of integrating algorithms and WHAM! a little virtual model of the universe would appear where somewhere deep, deep down a tiny virtual Gavin was sitting at a keyboard in a room full of virtually empty pizza boxes wasting bandwidth.
Sorry, perhaps I should pursue some secondary ed myself…
And when did mother duck last use a clinical thermometer at a weather station?
For those who have never used a chromed cased (complete with nurse’s clip) standard issue clinical thermometer, they have a very restricted temperature range and a mercury thread that separates on its return to the bulb thus holding the reading. Can anyone guess its accuracy when used in the field?
BTW finer mercury threads have a habit of breaking further up the column.
Now let’s see what mother duck and an average google can find on all those other weather station instruments starting with Oz
Alarmist Commie Creep, Luke, or Phil Done, well done – another magnificent display of mouth frothing.
Anything Louis – but pls don’t do the extensive/intensive rant EVER again.
It doesn’t matter how good the thermometer is if the exposure is no good as Anthony Watts is showing.
BTW someone figure out how much of the Earth’s surface area is NOT covered by the microwave sounding satellites as they only cover to 82.5 degrees north and south. I keep getting less than 1%.
UAH data just came out. Looks like it went down about .05C for April. With the huge divergence from the satellites that cult leader Hansen gave us last month, I wonder if he will try to maintian that hoax this month. If he does, people will no longer be able to say that the surface temp records must be okay because they align with the sattelites. Even given the difference in baseline for measuring anomalies that are used, Hansen has still diverged from the satellites by almost .4C. In other words, he has diverged by about half of the total warming of .8C that we have had since 1850.
Fundamentalists still claiming science hey
I wonder how all the railway men ever got going, no temp probes all round the boiler, no computers, no blogs, just common sense and experience.
This constant demand for proof prior to authorised action stifles creative thinking and engineering.
Tilo: “UAH data just came out. Looks like it went down about .05C for April” ???
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/05/05/rss-msu-lt-global-temperature-anomaly-for-april-2008-flat/
ftp://ftp.bom.gov.au/anon/home/ncc/www/temperature/maxanom/month/colour/history/wa/2008040120080430.hres.gif
That’s RSS Gavin. Do you know the difference between UAH and RSS?
http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/UAHMSUglobe.html
http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/RSSglobe.html
Ender, a basic rule of arguement is “he who asserts must prove.”
Now, I’m not going to make an arguement against the role of CO2. I’m not qualified. I’ve read a smidgen about it’s ability to absorb specific wave lengths, etc and it sounds reasonable. I’ve also heard that the world has warmed quickly in the past and that CO2 followed the warming, so there isn’t a historical test to show that CO2 can do the job. I suspect there are more unknowns than admitted and the claims of definitive knowledge are overblown. The errors in Gore’s movie, by the way, tend to reinforce my doubtful disposition.
UAH v RSS data ?
so Watt !
Folks: There arguments over temperature series can always be settled by the latest info on sea level.
Mike – “Ender, a basic rule of arguement is “he who asserts must prove.””
He who has asserted has proved. Please please read the excellent history of the discovery of AGW and you might understand a little more.
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
Ah, the indignation of the reliously profaned!
Ender
Your link is not a peer reviewed paper! Shame on you, hypocrite!
Louis: “Ender
Your link is not a peer reviewed paper! Shame on you, hypocrite!”
Louis, more glib fatuities comment again, I see. Spencer Weart, the author of the material at the American Institute of Physics website (yes, that’s spelled American Institute of Physics) is the author of a book on the subject and of an article in ‘Physics Today’ (the house journal of said Institute). The material at the website is from the book. Perhaps you’re just envious because you haven’t published anything in an AIP journal.
Why don’t you run off and read the articles. You might learn something. Then again, you might not.
Gee Louis – but I thought you eschewed the literature. Can’t trust it etc. You know you’re a genius science maverick with secret inside knowledge and everyone else is wrong including all the literature. Or perhaps just an eccentric twit with indulgent ideas. You decide. And gee what’s this at the bottom of the AIP paper – 59 “references”.
Of course if it was published in E&E you might have read it.
Peterd,
No not envious at all, actually, just highlighting the double standards of Ender. When it comes to Peak oil published, peer reviewed papers, he refuses point blank to even look at them.
Lucy, more ranting is it? You really bite well!
One is always suspicious of any technical reference global alarmists point to in support of their position. I suspect that close scrutiny of Enders reference might be interesting, irrespective of its origins.
One can only assume that the sheer amount of venom spat in my direction by the AGW cheer squad here means I must be a serious threat. If I wasn’t I would be totally ignored.
On that basis I should do some more baiting.
So, Louis, why don’t you scrutinise the paper of Ender’s yourself and give it good critique?
Why this endless quibbling about temperature? We now have the summer Arctic sea ice increasingly rapidly disappearing – expected to be gone by 2013 – 100 years ahead of IPCC worst case scenarios. The accelerating melting of the Grennland ice. And Actic sea already 5 degrees warmer. Do any of you actually read any of Hansen’s material???
PeterD
Because it is not a paper per se, but a blog opinion.
JR,
you seem to confuse computer model predictions with reality. We cannot predict weather more than a week ahead, if at that, so where on earth do you get the idea that we can do that for weather 100 years ahead?
JR You sure about that? How long have we been recording sea ice quantities? I have seen reports of no ice at 81 degrees in 1922. How do we predict something we no damn all about? Last northern summer Arctic ice was very low but Top Gear drove from Resolute Bay to the North Pole. At the same time explain why Antarctica is getting larger and colder.
Louis does a runner – it’s normal behaviour Peterd – he never engages. Would also involve him confronting his demons.
Thanks for posting this. I despise the way that the media and NASA report the latest temperature trends and pretend that the temperature of something as vast as the entire planet is a concept that everyone has come to agreement on, and that we have the ability to measure it with absolute accuracy.
Louis: “PeterD
Because it is not a paper per se, but a blog opinion.”
You mean this http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm paper?
As I wrote, Louis, this is material from Weart’s book. It’s not a blog at all.
PeteD
True it is not a blog, but it is not a paper. Which journal was it published in?
“you seem to confuse computer model predictions with reality. We cannot predict weather more than a week ahead, if at that, so where on earth do you get the idea that we can do that for weather 100 years ahead?”
You seem to confuse the weather and climate :).
http://diastery.my3gb.com/spyware5313.html spyware doctor 3.1 serialz
spyware cometcursor
[url=http://diastery.101freehost.com/spyware1435.html]msn music assistant spyware [/url]