SurfaceStations.org paper Accepted

[ORH_wxman]

This is a strawman.

I don't defend Hansen when he makes sensationalized and/or incorrect statements to the media. I've criticized them over and over and over nearly once per month for 3+ years.

There are certain statements which have been taken out of context or manipulated and I have defended him in those instances, but not in others.

A strawman to what?

I said its hypocritical to attack someone for their action outside of peer review and then defend someone who does the exact same thing on the opposite side. A strawman to my hypocritical argument? That makes no sense. It is what it is. Everytime we called out Hansen's extreme views in the media you were frequently quoting his peer reviewed stuff to defend him and say that's not what he thinks "officially" in a scientific setting. Its the same thing.

[ORH_wxman]

Which by the way I don't have a problem with doing that...its just you did have a problem with it when we did it to Hansen but not Watts. I think its fine to call out both.

[BethesdaWX]

I wasn't responding to you.

You're somehow trying to spin the affirmation of the surface warming trend as disproof of AGW. I guess that's a denier argument I hadn't heard before. "The surface is warming TOO FAST!" LOL

We don't even know how fast the LT is warming exactly. Multiple methodologies show the LT warming faster than the surface as expected. The rest are close enough as to be a non-issue. Even John Christy says that any differences between surface and satellite warming is most likely measurement error, not a problem with AGW theory.

STAR? U callin me a "denier"to what... a catastrophe hypothesis? You're the messiah of all Deniers. No point in arguing this with you for that reason exactly.

You don't think temps correlate to GCR drivers? Wake up.

AA index through 2008 vs Global temps thru 2008... GCR's respond to Solar Magnetism, which explains the strong correlation between Solar Magnetism & Global Temperature.. Strong Nino Disrupted it, but not for Long, Later this decade it'll come back to bite the IPCC in the Butt.

Of course the correlation will not be perfect... theres a Lag, the PDO/AMO cycles, it takes timeto reach equilibrium, and there is some AGW, but you should begin to understand by now that there are larger forces than CO2, and we have over-estimated climate sensitivity.

"AGW catastrophe" just isn't happening.

http://www.appinsys....larEvidence.htm

While some climate scientists deny the cosmic ray – cloud connection, a study done at the State University of New York [http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17523551.900-cosmic-rays-and-newborn-clouds-explain-one-of-the-mysteries-of-global-warming.html ] found that: "The solar wind... deflects cosmic rays. As the sun becomes more active and the solar wind intensifies, the theory predicts fewer cosmic rays should reach the earth and less cloud should form. Data from the past 20 years backs this up: as the sun has become more active, low-altitude cloud cover has dropped.

The following figures compare cosmic rays (red) and the low atmosphere global cloud cover [http://www.spacecenter.dk/research/sun-climate/Scientific%20work%20and%20publications/resolveuid/86c49eb9229b3a7478e8d12407643bed]

The following figure adds the inverted plot of solar irradiance (red) to the cloud and cosmic ray data shown above, showing a correlation with solar irradiance [http://folk.uio.no/jegill/papers/kkk_asr_2004.pdf]

The UN periodically produces an assessment of the worldwide ozone depletion. The most recent report: WMO/UNEP: “Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion: 2006” by the Scientific Assessment Panel of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer [http://www.wmo.ch/pages/prog/arep/gaw/reports/ozone_2006/pdf/exec_sum_18aug.pdf] states: “at some midlatitude stations in the Northern Hemisphere, surface UV irradiance continued to increase at rates of a few percent per decade. The observed increases and their significance depend on location, wavelength range, and the period of measurements. These increases cannot be explained solely by ozone depletion and could be attributed to a decreasing tendency in aerosol optical extinction and air pollution since the beginning of the 1990s and partly to decreasing cloudiness, as estimated from satellites”.

The following figure is from Usoskin & Kovaltsov: “Cosmic Rays and Climate of the Earth: Possible Connection”, C.R. Geoscience 340 (2008) [http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/usoskin_CR_2008.pdf] and compares low cloud cover and cosmic ray intensity (CRI): “A link between low clouds and CR appears statistically significant on the interannual time scale since 1984 in limited geographical regions, the largest being North Atlantic + Europe and South Atlantic”

The following figure shows the correlation between sun spot cycle, galactic cosmic rays, and global cloudiness [http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=010405M]. Increased solar activity deflects cosmic rays away from the earth. “when cosmic rays are deflected away from the Earth there are fewer clouds, which permits a little bit more secondary radiation to penetrate to the surface. Thus we no longer have the problem caused by solar variability only varying by 0.1% through a sunspot cycle, the change in global cloudiness permits more than ample solar energy through, which can significantly change climate. There is now a viable explanation to explain the great correlation that has been observed between solar records and temperature records. The correlation gets even better through longer-scale solar cycles. For example, the intensity of cosmic rays varies by 15 percent through the 11-year sun spot cycle. At the longer wavelength decadal-scale Gleissberg, centennial-scale Seuss, and millennial-scale Bond cycles the cosmic ray intensity varies by up to four times that much, causing significant changes to the climate.”

Correlation of Solar Irradiance and Cosmic Rays with Low Cloud Cover

The following figure shows the change in global cosmic ray flux (GCR) from four independent proxies (left) showing the decrease in GCR throughout the 1900s. [http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Gray/Influence_of_Solar_Changes_HCTN_62.pdf] The right-hand figure compares the same data with the solar magnetic flux shown previously, showing the correlation between the solar magnetic flux and the cosmic ray flux. The figures above and below indicate a strong correlation between the solar magnetic flux, the cosmic ray flux, and the global temperatures.

[skierinvermont]

A strawman to what?

I said its hypocritical to attack someone for their action outside of peer review and then defend someone who does the exact same thing on the opposite side. A strawman to my hypocritical argument? That makes no sense. It is what it is. Everytime we called out Hansen's extreme views in the media you were frequently quoting his peer reviewed stuff to defend him and say that's not what he thinks "officially" in a scientific setting. Its the same thing.

I'm saying that I do criticize Hansen for his sensationalized comments so suggesting it's hypocritical of me to criticize Watts but not Hansen is a strawman, since I criticize both.

What I've objected to is the manipulation of some of Hansen's comments to make them more extreme than they really are. There's no need to manipulate his claims since there are plenty of legitimate beefs to deal with.

[ORH_wxman]

I'm saying that I do criticize Hansen for his sensationalized comments so suggesting it's hypocritical of me to criticize Watts but not Hansen is a strawman, since I criticize both.

What I've objected to is the manipulation of some of Hansen's comments to make them more extreme than they really are. There's no need to manipulate his claims since there are plenty of legitimate beefs to deal with.

A strawman argument is generally something that is not very relevant to the original point, so you should have just accused me of saying what I said was wrong rather than saying it was a strawman argument. That's why I said it made no sense.

I don't entirely agree with your assessment though. I think you have gone out of your way to defend some of the sensationalist comments that Hansen made...well not the comments themselves...but commonly diverted the argument to something like "he never said that in peer reviewed literature". You have said the comments were a bit extreme, but immediately pointed to the peer reviewed literature that basically proved his comments were way out of whack with his research which is all we said but still accused us (or some blog like Watts for lying about it)...so then turning around and killing Watts for posting pics of poorly situated weather stations and then accusing him of being misleading is exactly what you were defending Hansen for when some of us accused of him of being deceitful. All I said was that is hypocritical behavior.

Again, I don't have a problem with accusing Watts or Hansen of being misleading outside of their peer reviewed stuff, but I do think its cheap to be hypocritical.

[tacoman25]

However, it is important to note that since the -PDO phase change (2008-present), U.S. surface temps are running markedly cooler. So trends from the 1970s (the last time we saw a PDO phase flip, that time to +PDO) to the 2000s are now being reversed.

I think this point is being ignored. The data trends for U.S. surface stations being examined showed a rapid warming from the 1970s to 2000s...which fits perfectly with the PDO phases (U.S. temperatures are influenced much more by the PDO than most places). However, since the PDO flip to negative phase in 2007-08, U.S. temperatures have consistently been running much cooler, reversing the trend.

Bethesda, I think it's a mistake for you to look at this paper as evidence that the surface is warming faster than the LT. For one thing, it only covers U.S. surface stations, and for another, see my point above about the PDO.

[tacoman25]

A strawman argument is generally something that is not very relevant to the original point, so you should have just accused me of saying what I said was wrong rather than saying it was a strawman argument. That's why I said it made no sense.

Cries of "STRAWMAN!" have become the default response for too many. As you pointed out, it doesn't even make any sense half the time...completely unoriginal and inapplicable.

[BethesdaWX]

Bethesda, I think it's a mistake for you to look at this paper as evidence that the surface is warming faster than the LT. For one thing, it only covers U.S. surface stations, and for another, see my point above about the PDO.

Actually I was only speaking of the US. And yeah def, the -PDO has cooled US temps significantly, especially during the recent winters. When the AMO goes cold, that brings us down even further. We're actually only 4 years into the -PDO, so its in its emerging state right now, but is getting stronger.

But in the areas that both UAH/RSS & NCDC/GISS/HADCRUT cover together, the Surface has been warming faster than the LT in all of those cases.

I guess we'll see what happens later this decade.

[tacoman25]

Actually I was only speaking of the US. And yeah def, the -PDO has cooled US temps significantly, especially during the recent winters. When the AMO goes cold, that brings us down even further. We're actually only 4 years into the -PDO, so its in its emerging state right now, but is getting stronger.

But in the areas that both UAH/RSS & NCDC/GISS/HADCRUT cover together, the Surface has been warming faster than the LT in all of those cases.

I guess we'll see what happens later this decade.

I agree that at this time there is little evidence that the LT is warming faster than the surface.

[nzucker]

What's really hilarious is how you can barely contain your gleefulness about the results. Yay for science?

I think it's admirable Watts did this study, and published the results even though they might not have agreed with his original perspective. I also think it's impressive that Watts has found so much documentation of poorly sited weather stations, demonstrating how prone to inaccuracy surface measurements are, especially when they involve stations near airstrips/towns used to extrapolate large areas of land in sparsely populated areas. As much as we try, it will always be impossible for every station to be completely free of bias, as stations must be placed in populated errors, which are prone to constantly changing and varying UHI. This is one reason I prefer satellite temperature measurements.

[ORH_wxman]

Guys don't make it personal again.

[skierinvermont]

A strawman argument is generally something that is not very relevant to the original point, so you should have just accused me of saying what I said was wrong rather than saying it was a strawman argument. That's why I said it made no sense.

I don't entirely agree with your assessment though. I think you have gone out of your way to defend some of the sensationalist comments that Hansen made...well not the comments themselves...but commonly diverted the argument to something like "he never said that in peer reviewed literature". You have said the comments were a bit extreme, but immediately pointed to the peer reviewed literature that basically proved his comments were way out of whack with his research which is all we said but still accused us (or some blog like Watts for lying about it)...so then turning around and killing Watts for posting pics of poorly situated weather stations and then accusing him of being misleading is exactly what you were defending Hansen for when some of us accused of him of being deceitful. All I said was that is hypocritical behavior.

Again, I don't have a problem with accusing Watts or Hansen of being misleading outside of their peer reviewed stuff, but I do think its cheap to be hypocritical.

Not to get too much into semantics but I believe the term strawman is applicable because you've falsely represented my opinions and then proceeded to criticize those opinions which are not representative of my actual opinions.

Anyways, I will come up with a full list of criticisms I have of both Hansen's media commentary and his peer-review work.

What we have here is not a case of hypocrisy but a case of genuine substantive disagreement about which of Hansen's activities are deserving of criticism and which aren't. I believe many are deserving of criticism, but apparently there are some you believe I have defended wrongly. So I don't think the hypocrisy charge is really relevant or productive here. What we should be discussing is which of Hansen's activities you believe I have defended wrongly. (Or since this is a fairly boring trivial subject we could just throw our hands up in the air and forget about it ).

[skierinvermont]

I think it's admirable Watts did this study, and published the results even though they might not have agreed with his original perspective. I also think it's impressive that Watts has found so much documentation of poorly sited weather stations, demonstrating how prone to inaccuracy surface measurements are, especially when they involve stations near airstrips/towns used to extrapolate large areas of land in sparsely populated areas. As much as we try, it will always be impossible for every station to be completely free of bias, as stations must be placed in populated errors, which are prone to constantly changing and varying UHI. This is one reason I prefer satellite temperature measurements.

There have been numerous studies correcting for UHI and proving that it doesn't bias the final adjusted result.

That's basically why Watts had abandoned that tack and moved onto the station siting tack. Which ended up also being a non-issue. But I guess now we're changing tacks again and going back to the UHI tack. Oh well.

Also where was your admiration 6 months ago when Menne did the exact same study and Watts shat all over it with blatant lies?

[skierinvermont]

stil not there. I hope Watts didn't bilk his readers out of a few thousand dollars of phony page charges.

From what I've read this does seem to be peer-review quality work with some subtle analysis and good points, but really doesn't help the skeptics at all. The biggest most important conclusion is that station siting is not causing a disparity. So this particular study isn't whackjob and probably would make it through peer-review. Pielke is also a co-author and he does have a lot of peer-reviewed work.

[Msalgado]

Since you are asking essentially the same question you asked earlier, I am going to respond with essentially the same answer I gave then.

His activism is directly related to his field of research. It demonstrates too much emotional involvement and commitment to a cause that depends on the research finding certain results. That's a dangerous position to be in as a scientist, and it's simply not appropriate for someone in his position.

Would you be comfortable with a nuclear scientist being an activist for nuclear energy development? Or how about a certain political party conducting public polls and reporting the results? A newspaper being funded by the government? These are all things that are not necessarily wrong in and of themselves, but they create an inevitable conflict of interest.

This is a ridiculous position. You are basically saying that having an invested emotional interest in a field prevents you from studying it objectively. That is simply and utterly wrong and that is why we have the methodology, data, and results all reviewed through the peer review process.

[tacoman25]

This is a ridiculous position. You are basically saying that having an invested emotional interest in a field prevents you from studying it objectively. That is simply and utterly wrong and that is why we have the methodology, data, and results all reviewed through the peer review process.

1. No, I am not saying that it necessarily prevents objectivity. However, as a prominent scientist working for a major government program, I think it is important to be as objective as possible. When you are also getting arrested for activist activities that relate directly to your field of research, at the very least you are doing a poor job of presenting yourself as objective.

2. There seems to some sort of naive idea that the peer review process is a silver bullet that eliminates bias and ensures accurate research. A study can be completely wrong and still pass the peer review process.

[tacoman25]

specific example (link)?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwang_Woo_Suk

Here's a good article examining how well the peer review process does or does not work. Especially interesting is the section on "The Religion of Peer Review".

http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/23061/

[BethesdaWX]

specific example (link)?

What are you trying to say here? I really hope I mis-interpeted your post, otherwise you have a delusional view of reality.

The science can be right or wrong, with or without peer review, when discussing things that we do not understand well. The climate system is very complicated, so a peer reviewed study showing "evidence" for something is only based off what we understand, and can be invalidated later on.

So yeah, peer review doesn't mean the science is correct, and there are peer reviewed studies on both sides of the debate in complete contradiction with eachother.

[skierinvermont]

This is a ridiculous position. You are basically saying that having an invested emotional interest in a field prevents you from studying it objectively. That is simply and utterly wrong and that is why we have the methodology, data, and results all reviewed through the peer review process.

This.

I don't know any scientist that doesn't have an emotional interest in their field. Are all the mets on here to be scorned for their love of snow? Does that prevent them from being objective? No.

[tacoman25]

This.

I don't know any scientist that doesn't have an emotional interest in their field. Are all the mets on here to be scorned for their love of snow? Does that prevent them from being objective? No.

Are these mets getting arrested for their snow activism? Are they writing alarmist books about snow? Do they represent the U.S. government as a paid employee of one of its premier programs?

And why did you ignore my response to him? I never said it prevents objectivity.

[BethesdaWX]

This.

I don't know any scientist that doesn't have an emotional interest in their field. Are all the mets on here to be scorned for their love of snow? Does that prevent them from being objective? No.

There would be no reason to accuse Hansen of anything if he didn't have an Gigantic huge fat Bias... there is no arguing that. He has a massive bias, case closed.

If he were objective and not screaming in terror constantly, then he'd be very well respected. Even Phil Jones and the IPCC as well cautiously stay back from him and GISS.

[Scuddz]

There would be no reason to accuse Hansen of anything if he didn't have an Gigantic huge fat Bias... there is no arguing that. He has a massive bias, case closed.

If he were objective and not screaming in terror constantly, then he'd be very well respected. Even Phil Jones and the IPCC as well cautiously stay back from him and GISS.

How is it that you're claming someone has a gigantic bias due to the fact that his data and results point to a certain conclusion? If all his data and results pointed to once conclusion but he repeatedly advocated against them, then I might consider it bias. But releasing and supporting your scientific conclusions? Naso much.

[tacoman25]

You wanted an example of when the peer review process failed, I provided one. Do you disagree? Do you think the peer review process is flawless? Do you disagree with the article from The Scientist?

The facepalm says very little, but the fact that you failed to put together a reasoned response speaks volumes.

[tacoman25]

that wasn't science that was wrong--it was science that was FAKED and where the sources were not made available to the reviewers. it has zero to do with your dumb claims about Hansen--the data he uses is widely available.

So faked science isn't wrong science? You asked for an example of where the peer review process failed, I provided one. Why would science where the sources are not available to reviewers make it through the peer review system? Why do you think that exact example was mentioned in The Scientist article?

And what "dumb claims" am I making about Hansen? The only claims that I have made about him are that he acts inappropriately for a scientist in his position, and makes him look anything but objective. And I've also made the claim that the peer review process doesn't guarantee anything about him or other scientists, and I stand by that.

it's not flawless, but there are huge differences between publishing in the life sciences and in the hard sciences. one of them is that the data from the physical sciences isn't closely guarded in locked laboratories, but can be independently verified from the atmosphere, land, or sea.

You are completely ignoring pretty much every point made in the article. The main issue is not whether data is accessible or not, at least not according to The Scientist.

[tacoman25]

Richard Horton, editor of the British medical journal The Lancet, has said that:

The mistake, of course, is to have thought that peer review was any more than a crude means of discovering the acceptability—not the validity—of a new finding. Editors and scientists alike insist on the pivotal importance of peer review. We portray peer review to the public as a quasi-sacred process that helps to make science our most objective truth teller. But we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong.

[tacoman25]

why does every thread in this subform devolve into a discussion of Jim Hansen, even if he isn't part of the original topic? it's tiresome.

Because he is a polarizing figure that makes himself an easy target. My points in this discussion have gone beyond Hansen, though.

[ORH_wxman]

why does every thread in this subform devolve into a discussion of Jim Hansen, even if he isn't part of the original topic? it's tiresome.

Probably because he is the most vocal to the media and often spouts ridiculous sensationalist comments to them. Its the same thing when someone gets on the case of Steve McIntyre or some other skeptic about something they have posted or said to the media.

[tacoman25]

the peer review process can't account for a total lack of integrity. the science presented in that cloning work was solid science. the problem was that the perfect data was faked. that's entirely different than your beef with Hansen.

One wouldn't know that by some of the inferences made about peer review on here. It's as if some people think peer review guarantees integrity, objectivity, and fail-proof science. Simply not the case. And if you can't differentiate between my points about Hansen and my broader points about peer review, that's on you.

you can stand by it, but it doesn't make your position reasoned or informed. either you are maintaining that Hansen fakes his data or you are saying there is huge collusion to get his serious scientific work through the peer review process. it also appear you can't differentiate between the peer reviewed science he does and his popular work.

No, that is not what I'm saying, stop trying to misrepresent me. I've made my points clear, but I'll break them down for you one more time: 1) the peer review process is not flawless and does not guarantee anything, and 2) Hansen acts inappropriately for someone in his position, and undermines the case for scientific objectivity with his extremism.

and? believe it or not, The Scientist isn't a scientific journal. it's a magazine about scientific publishing put out by someone with a vested interested in scientific publishing. I'll leave you to do the reading.

Isn't scientific publishing what we are discussing? At least you admitted you didn't even read the article. Way to be open-minded!

[Clifford]

From what I've read this does seem to be peer-review quality work with some subtle analysis and good points, but really doesn't help the skeptics at all. The biggest most important conclusion is that station siting is not causing a disparity. So this particular study isn't whackjob and probably would make it through peer-review. Pielke is also a co-author and he does have a lot of peer-reviewed work.

It is a very long paper, at least in the manuscript form, which might knock it out of some journals.

Looking at the chart, there obviously are differences between the stations, and the CRN5 stations probably should be eliminated.

The Adjusted Average Temperature for all the stations is very flat. Which is GOOD. It means that the adjustments are effective. That alone should be worth publishing. The maximum and minimum temperatures still retain some artifacts, but in opposite directions.

The other thing that is apparent from the chart is that there is a warm bias.

So the unadjusted temperatures average about a 0.02 degree per year increase, and the adjusted temperatures about a 0.03 degree increase.

Perhaps more effort needs to be used at analyzing why there is this apparent warm bias in the adjustments as such a bias could affect how one evaluates today's temperature vs the temperature in the 40's.

Anyway, outwardly, there appear as if there would be benefits of publishing the study.

[tacoman25]

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/02/a_baffling_failure_of_peer_rev.php

Another example of peer review failure.